New York confidentiel

This is Richard Conte's role of a lifetime. He makes the most of it. The story of the syndicate in the US, and what happens when some of its machine parts are damaged is a riveting film. Broderick Crawford and his mother, however, are about as Italian as I am Norweigan. Both very fine actors in their own right, Crawford is miscast here as an Italian mobster, whereas Conte is letter-perfect. And even though Crawford is miscast as an Eye-Talian, he is still, nevertheless, extremely entertaining, and always fun to watch.

. Anne Bancroft is outstanding in one of her earliest film appearances; and this film helped launch her highly successful career. The film is a notch above the average gangster flick, and the mechanisms used by the syndicate are cold-blooded and efficient. A really good hood movie.

Flawed but always worth watching, this movie seems to have sprung from nowhere onto DVD. Certainly not pure 'noir' but neither is it simply a crime drama. Indeed with the documentary element and Crawford's wayward antics on the one side and the coolness of Richard Conte and his relations with the ladies on the other, this could be considered a bit of a mess. That it is not is due in the main to the tremendous performances of Conte, Bancroft and to a lesser extent, Marilyn Maxwell as Iris, Crawford's mistress. For me Crawford is over the top as the macho boss man and simply unable to deal with the more sensitive scenes, but he is overshadowed by Conte and we are soon persuaded to view the events through his steely eyes. A few location shots that really only go to show up the shoddiness of the studio ones but there is a great ending and as I say enough along the way to make this almost unseen film well worth a watch.

NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL is a perplexing film noir entry. Among its many merits is the astonishing cast: Broderick Crawford (who spits out his dialogue in Howard Hawks-rapidity as if he were on amphetamines), Anne Bancroft (astonishing) and the always reliable Richard Conte. But it never shakes the feeling of being two films in one, sitting uneasily side by side: a stern "semi-documentary" expose of the "syndicate" on one hand, and a bleak and brutal pre-Godfather mafia family saga on the other.

As such, it is wildly and tragically uneven. The leads all turn in brilliant performances, but the screenplay has all the earmarks of a committee job; fascinating ideas and characterizations butt up against terribly overwrought clichés. The main cast is on fire with weighty dialogue, but the supporting cast flounders about as if they were in the most pedestrian B-noir instead of a star-driven studio picture. For the most part, the design is static and lifeless, shot with little flair by Eddie Fitzgerald. Director and co-writer Russell Rouse's previous noir entry was the chancy THE THIEF, also an uneven experiment.

But the film has its scenes of incredible power, usually those revolving around Conte, as a cold and calculating hit-man for hire, and Bancroft, as the put-upon mobster's daughter who can't crawl out from behind dad's shadow; Conte dispatching with "hits", his gunshots creepily muffled by a silencer; Crawford's repeated near-meltdowns; murderous planning done completely straight in a corporate boardroom, just big business as usual.

A puzzler of a film, leaving the viewer to wonder what could have been, had it been shot by John Alton and penned by, say, Dalton Trumbo. Still, it's an extremely valuable entry in the film noir canon, strangely almost impossible to see.

It has been quite a long while since I've seen this film. Yet even though it has been at least 30 years since I last saw this movie it stands out as one of my favorite films. I have never been able to find it on VHS and it is just never shown on television. I can't understand why Turner Classic Movies hasn't shown it because it is definitely a classic film noir gem. But it is more than film noir; it is a genuine motif of organized crime brought to the screen. The cast is excellent as far as talent goes. Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, and Ann Bancroft just being in the cast should merit it being shown on TV once in awhile.

One of the central themes of achieving success and the American dream through crime and corruption is an old staple of Hollywood, but it is presented in such a way as to provide the viewer with a definite amount of empathy for the main characters in spite of the fact that they are mobsters. It is entertaining and interesting without a lot of violence and since it was released in 1955, no profanity. In my mind I rate it along with another film of the same genre that was released some 12 years later titled "The Brotherhood" starring Kirk Douglas. I just wish I could get this film on VHS, DVD, or television. I would greatly appreciate any help anyone could give me in that endeavor.

A nice bridge from the gangster pictures of the 30's to the modern day mafia flick. You can see echoes of this film in GODFATHER and GOODFELLAS and others. Going inside a crime syndicate and also the private lives of the gangsters, it's a pretty satisfying drama with a lot of facets. Richard Conte is superb as a polite but cold-blooded hit-man turned consigliere, and there are also memorable performances from Anne Bancroft and the reliable heavy Mike Mazurki. Broderick Crawford is generally quite good although he does deliver a few stiff line readings. Unfortunately, the film suffers from utterly bland cinematography, and we spend so much time in well-lit rooms that it often feels like a stage production. A very good script, but the execution only provides a few exciting moments.