La Proie

Had Cry Of The City been done at Warner Brothers in the Thirties this would have been perfect material for a James Cagney/Pat O'Brien film with the story of two childhood friends, one who goes into the police force and one who goes into a life of crime. Of course they would have to have been Irish because neither Cagney or O'Brien would have made convincing Italian protagonists as Cry Of The City has in its leads.

And the leads are Victor Mature and Richard Conte. Mature is good as the upright cop who makes it personal to go after Richard Conte who has now committed the ultimate sin, he's killed a cop. But like a film a year earlier for Mature, Kiss Of Death, the film is dominated by Richard Conte who plays a charismatic and fascinating villain just as Richard Widmark did in Kiss Of Death.

Unlike Widmark who is a loner, Conte is charming and is ruthless in his use of that charm. The film opens with him seriously wounded after shooting a police officer. But he recovers and is in a prison hospital awaiting trial. It's the death penalty for sure, but Conte does in fact charm his way into an escape (I won't say how) and from then on because of his wound has to rely on a lot of help including his own family.

Some other standout performances including an old girl friend, Shelley Winters whom he has obtain an unlicensed physician to tend him. Hope Emerson who is as evil as she was as the prison matron in Caged, plays a masseuse who Conte uses to obtain traveling money as the woman is quite mobbed up. Tommy Cook plays Conte's hero worshiping younger brother who realizes just how much he and the family were being used in the climax.

Most of all there's Berry Kroeger who plays one of his usual slime ball characters as a criminal attorney who indulges in a bit of criminality himself most discreetly behind the scenes. Kroeger split parts like that with George MacReady back in the day and is always fascinating to watch.

Most of all there is Richard Conte who should have merited Oscar consideration in one of his best screen performances.

I remember seeing this movie many times on "Picture For A Sunday Afternoon", "The Early Show" and "The Million Dollar Movie" and I always loved watching it. I thought Richard Conte played one of the best "bad guy" roles I'd ever seen. Using his girlfriend, kid brother and even his mother to facilitate his life of crime. Victor Mature gives his usual solid performance and Fred Clark as his assistant was interesting as well considering that his future seemed to be bumbling comedic bit player. The sleazy lawyer and murderous masseuse were also well cast. What I can't understand is why this flick as well as One Million BC aren't available on DVD.

It is not surprising that so much has been written about the sub genre of the "film noir". The execution of a noir film required a tremendous artistry and expertise in all aspects of cinema. The classic noir films are truly works of art; cinema at its best, not relying on star power or big budgets, but rather a mastery of the very rudiments of making movies.

What Ford was to the western, Hitchcock to suspense, Sirk to melodrama, so was Robert Siodmak to the noir. While "Cry of the City" is often left out of discussions of the genre, it is, in many ways a near perfect example of the genre.

By 1948 the noir was beginning to hit its stride. Siodmak came to this project with much valuable experience. His execution of this not especially remarkable story has a fluidity and assurance of style that one can only marvel at.

Despite the well worn cop vs. gangster tale, there is a potent psychological complexity at the core of "Cry of the City". Richard Conte's Martin Rome, is charismatic and charming. Not only does he work his magic on unsuspecting females, we the audience are firmly on his side at the start of the movie. As the plot unfolds his ruthless, selfish and manipulative motives become apparent. Yet it will take some time before we are completely convinced. It's a masterly stroke of screen writing. It will take Victor Mature's impassioned indictment to completely convince us.

Victor Mature is surprisingly competent in the lead in what must be surely one of his best roles. Richard Conte is simply superb in a complex and tricky role. His method is one of economy and subtlety and a lesson to screen actors. Despite a host of fine performances, Conte seems to not have garnered the respect he deserved.

A classic of its kind.

You just know that slimy lawyer Niles (Kroeger) is going to get his somewhere along the line in this highly interesting noir. More a movie of parts than a whole, some of these parts nevertheless remain pretty memorable. Was there ever better tough guy than Richard Conte. Here he's wounded gangster Martin Rome getting his way with everyone, that is, until he runs into Rose. Now, whatever the 6'2", 230 lbs, Hope Emerson is, she's no rose. Her massage scene with Conte is priceless, and in my book, the movie's high point, one of the most amusingly unexpected and well calculated in all noir. At the same time, scope out the breakfast scene with Conte, where she fills her mouth like Godzilla churning up Tokyo, or where she manhandles the unfortunate cops trying to take her down. I hope there's a special place in Hollywood heaven for one-and-only characters like the hulking Emerson.

In fact, the film features a number of unusual and unheralded players that spice up the proceedings—Walter Baldwin as the trustee Orvy, crooked teeth and all; Betty Garde as plain- looking nurse Pruett, who takes no guff from anybody including cops; and Barry Kroeger as puffy-face lawyer Niles, an insult to his profession. These are not pretty people in the usual Hollywood sense, and I think one of the fascinations of noir is to feature such types at a time when movies prized good-looking people above all. Here, along with the shambling Emerson, they leave us with an impression of real city streets instead of a casting call along Hollywood and Vine.

Among the more conventional, it's fun to see a still slender Shelley Winters (Brenda) doing her cheap blonde bit as she fends off a tipsy masher in a bar. Her character sort of drops into the narrative out of nowhere, making me wonder whether something connective got edited out. Frankly, headliner Victor Mature (Candella) hasn't much to do except stand around and look handsomely imposing. Instead, co-star Conte gets all the best scenes, good lines, and audience interest. At the same time, something should be said for young Tommy Cook who makes a good gritty impact as Conte's younger brother.

Then too, check out director Siodmak's visual approach to the filming. Usually the light and shadow of expressionist noir takes place on a sound stage where control is absolute. But here, the imaginative Siodmak mixes expressionist light and shadow with location shooting to create an unusual overall effect. Note the number of location shots without the natural lighting that ordinarily would create a more documentary feel. It's a curious but effective blend. In passing—note too Siodmak's beautifully paced direction of the jailbreak sequence, a really suspenseful look at bureaucratic paper-shuffling, in this case, a police department.

The story itself is pretty shopworn—two friends growing up together in the ghetto, where one ends up becoming a cop, while the other turns to crime. In short, the sort of thing Cagney and O'Brien did in the 30's. Nonetheless, Siodmak's imaginative approach, plus the many interesting characters and entertaining vignettes make this version a noir worth catching up with.

Marty Rome and Vittorio Candella both grew up in an Italian neighbourhood in New York. Both are smart, handsome young men. But that's where the similarity ends. Marty became a violent criminal, and now he lies in a hospital bed, riddled with gunshot wounds. Vittorio went straight, and is now the police lieutenant investigating Marty.

It's not as if Marty never had a choice. The film stresses the decency of Marty's upbringing. The family is 'deserving poor' - crucifix on the living-room wall, mother attending Mass every day, display case of war medals in the back room. Marty's girlfriend, Teena Riconti, is also from an honest family. So what turned Marty bad? This is analysed through the treatment of Tony, Marty's kid brother. Tony is on the cusp of manhood and beginning to adopt Marty's warped values. Can he be saved, or will he inevitably gravitate towards the "poolroom hotshots"?

Lest we conclude that moral depravity is the preserve of immigrants or even the urban poor, the film offers us Niles, the crooked lawyer. Played by Berry Kroeger with almost Wellesian flamboyance, Niles is the distillation of nastiness - a man with every advantage in life who still elects to sup with the devil. Twentieth-Century Fox's films noirs exhibited little love for attorneys, but Niles is probably the most unpleasant of them all.

Victor Mature and Richard Conte are in great form as Candella and Marty respectively. There is no real romantic sub-plot - Teena appears briefly at the beginning and the end, but plays no part in the story - and Candella is too busy making himself at home in the Rome household to go out and get a girl. Shelley Winters plays Brenda, one of Marty's dumb broads. For her, here in 1948, the typecasting had already begun.

As always, noir uses external scenery to symbolise internal emotion in the classic expressionist manner. Marty and Teena are filmed through the bars of the hospital bed-head, representing both the imprisonment awaiting Marty and the way in which Society is bearing down on these two, restricting their options. The hospital architecture is much vaster than the human scale, making a similar point - we like to think of ourselves as autonomous individuals, captains of our own destinies, but we are little more than insects, and the nest we have built around us dominates our existence. Marty's journey through the tunnel of the prison hospital is like an expressionist bad dream, a virtual street with pedestrians and vehicles, but no sky. Arches are everywhere. Marty's hospital ward is a forest of arch shapes. Niles' office has two arched windows whose insistent geometry dominates the screen. The church continues this motif with its lines of arches overhead. The city is our nest, and its institutions are the linked burrows through which we are obliged to scurry. Neon signs continually force themselves on our attention - the Gillette ad in the street, and the garage sign intruding through Rose Gibbons' apartment window. Just as with the terrific el-train shot, the city creeps into our consciousness, never allowing us to forget that we are living in its bowels.

Tony's moral crisis centres on the hard decisions which his bad-guy brother forces him to make. We see his hesitation when Marty tells him to take Candella's gun, then later when he is asked to steal the family's savings. In the church, the wall picture shows Christ falling with His cross. When, moments later, Candella the Christ-figure slumps to the pavement, it is Tony who (quite literally) supports the police.