I'll Get You for This

The plot creaked and were I that bothered I might watch this film again (I've just seen it on YouTube) to see if I missed something.

I'm unclear why the gang went to so much trouble to set Nick Cain up with the body of the agent - why not just dump it in the sea or out in the country? And it was remarkable how townspeople identified Nick and Kay just from their names on a Wanted poster - and how on a couple of occasions someone conveniently turned up out of the blue.

The settings were nice enough, and Hugh French made an impression on me as the hotel manager, reminding me of David Niven - in fact he was even more suave, if that's possible. I'm surprised he didn't have a bigger film career.

Gambler George Raft shows up in a casino town on the Italian Riviera, where he's welcomed by the management as a star attraction. They give him a suite, offer him police protection and a case of wine, open the baccarat table early for his pleasure. They also tell Coleen Gray they will forgive her debt if she simply keeps him interested enough to stay in town. That evening, Raft opens a bottle of the complimentary wine, pours a couple of glasses...and realizes too late it's doped. When they wake, the staff and police want to know about the dead body in the room. They escape and try to figure out what's going on.

It's based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, and I hope the novel was good. This is an incredibly clumsy movie as directed by Joseph M. Newman. At one point, Raft and Miss Gray dance a tango.... and the entire dance is shot in close-up, showing only their heads and shoulders. the entire movie is directed in that way, the easiest camera set-ups, so cheaply shot that it's clear this is another paycheck movie for Raft. The real villains, despite the obvious care and intelligence of their operations are so overt and clumsy, it's astonishing, and there's a cute kid dragged in to make sure we know that Raft is a good guy.

There are three draw cards to this movie: Coleen Gray is one. She's so relaxed and natural, while ageing George Raft is stiff and dull. Two: the Riviera/Italian locations are easy on the eye. Three: it's good to see Enzo Staiola (from The Bicycle Thieves) in a supporting role as a shoeshine boy. Otherwise it's another lacklustre melo/thriller, with no-one really trying hard enough to breath life or thrills into it. There's even a sequence where Mr Raft is given a chance to perform the tango (for which he had been famous a couple of decades previously), but none of the camera angles give a look at his moves; we have to imagine how graceful he is (or was) from the inadequate mid-shots. It seems George was a bit past it. British movies would often attempt a boost to international sales by importing an old Hollywood star. Usually it didn't work. The young Hollywood star works for me, and the even younger Italian neo-realist star, but George is walking through this one.

James Hadley Chase,among other writers, was well renowned for his ability to capture the readers attention from the beginning to end in all of his crime-thriller novels. That is where the difficulty sets in, can the director and crew capture the same in the movie? The story starts off with the arrival of an American gambler (Nick-George Raft) at a Mediterranean town of San Paola. Soon he gets acquainted with Kay (Coleen Gray) and finds himself framed for a murder, forcing him to go on the run with her. So far so good yet this is the turning point of the movie. Instead of going the edge of your seat 'why and who?' it turned into mediocrity. Overall, had the potential to be a great movie and could have rivaled movies like The Fugitive (1993) had a bit more suspense/tension been pumped into the screenplay and other movie making aspects.

James Hadley Chase was a British writer who surrounded himself with American maps, reference books and dictionaries of popular slang before he sat down to write American style pulp fiction. With titles like "You Find Him, I'll Fix Him", "You're Lonely When You're Dead" and "Lady, Here's Your Wreath" and always with lurid covers, he managed to fool most of the paperback buying public into thinking he was a Yank!!! But with expressions like "jolly good" and "let's go to the cinema" some readers may have been scratching their heads. By 1950 George Raft had lost a lot of his popularity because of a series of less than prestigious films. Movies like this one didn't help, although it probably looked good on the drawing board.

It started off great - professional gambler "Lucky" Nick Cain (Raft) has the red carpet rolled out for him when he visits Sao Paolo - and he's suspicious!!! When he sits down to play baccarat his notoriety brings patrons to his table, including Kay (Coleen Gray) who quickly finds herself in debt to the casino. As a way of repaying them, they suggest Kay be "nice" to Nick in order to keep him at the casino. Back at his apartment, Nick is drugged and awakes to find himself accused of murdering a U.S. Treasury Agent (who had desperately tried to see him earlier in the evening). So begins a cat and mouse adventure involving counterfeit plates from the Third Reich. Colour would have enhanced the beautiful Italian countryside but considering the action was mostly set in the early evening and at night, there was not a lot to see. All in all a very dreary, run of the mill movie.

One actress I thought I might see more of was Greta Gynt, probably Britain's first sex symbol (even though she was Norwegian), but unfortunately she had one scene which took place in a darkened room!! George Raft bought class and professionalism to a role he could have performed in his sleep. Coleen Gray was always good - she is remembered as the carnival girl in "Nightmare Alley" and Sterling Hayden's decent girlfriend in "The Killing". Peter Bull had a small scene as Hans. He was usually the villain and was Britain's answer to Sidney Greenstreet. The brightest scene is at the beginning of the movie and one that made the movie look more promising than it really was. It involved Enzo Staiola, the little boy from "The Bicycle Thieves" - he played Toni, a little street urchin and someone who proves invaluable to Nick during the movie.