Piège au grisbi

Great cast. Might be interesting. Hmmmm.... Well, it starts with a brassy, obnoxious jazz theme, followed oddly by bongo music. Our first scene is Ford as a detective at the scene of a crime wherein a woman was hung in a whore house by her husband. Next scene we have Elke Sommer undressing to go to bed with husband Ford. This film wastes no time! But then it goes on and on with crummy characters played by William Campbell, Ricardo Montalban, Hayworth and Cotten. Dreary all the way to the bitter conclusion. The post-'Gilda' reteaming of Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford is a sad spectacle. Ford's haircut is so bad his ears look bat-like. Hayworth, admittedly is not playing a glamour part, but her degradation is not pleasant to watch. Together they appear dissipated, like their careers at this point. Ford really seems bored and uncomfortable throughout. And Cotten is as dull as usual. But Montalban does show some energy as fellow cop, and Elke Sommer has never looked better and plays the most likable (maybe only likable) character in the film. If that valium is making you feel too good, bring yourself down with this movie.

Except for the music, THE MONEY TRAP is strictly by the numbers. Third billed Rita Hayworth has maybe five minutes screen time. No matter, she bring what little class this movie has to the screen. My big question is, what is such a terrific cast DOING in this insipid junk? Drawing a paycheck, I guess. Certainly, Glenn Ford, Ricardo Montalban and Joseph Cotton (all then under contract to MGM) were strictly drawing paychecks. This movie SHOULD be seen a reminder of sexual attitudes to which we should NEVER return. That is, whatever males do is OK, but woe be on to a female whom "transgresses," PARTICULARLY if she enjoys it! Otherwise, don't waste your time.

For this Post-Noir, which didn't seem aware that Film Noirs had ended, It takes former THE BIG HEAT actor Glenn Ford to make what could be an average, by-the-numbers programmer an intriguing glimpse into a planned heist of a crooked doctor's mansion wall-safe...

A man who, in Ford's opinion, murdered a thief that broke in... Part of the ingredients that makes THE MONEY TRAP a nice little page-turner with a touch of mystery, despite knowing whodunit from the get-go... Although it's never quite clear why the cops, including Ford's desperate partner Ricardo Montalban, would take such a risk, other than a payoff, each scene flows into the next in an eclectic hybrid of Noir and Soapy Melodrama...

The latter involving Ford's trophy wife, who is second billed over his once-famous GILDA co-starlet Rita Hayworth as a waitress sharing a past with the veteran cop, and she's a widow to the dead thief...

Too bad sexy blonde Elke Sommer doesn't veer into edgy moll or nefarious dame territory, or something other than a reason to provoke the main character into crossing the line: she's basically a plot-point with a perfect body. Meanwhile, Hayworth and Ford share a few scenes that could have been played by anyone; yet it's nice seeing both of them together in this B&W time-filler that's worth an idyllic afternoon viewing...

And safe seat gentleman Joseph Cotten's henchman Tom Reese is the most intriguing throughout. With a face looking like it'd been through a blender with a crocodile, he alone provides the real threat since, after all, the criminals here are the law.

I have always been in love, or at least enchanted, by this Burt Kennedy's surprising film from a westerner as he was. It is a tremendous and solid adaptation from a Lionel White's novel. Unfortunately never released and translated in France and in French. Many of Lionel White were not anyway. Here, Glenn Ford's performance reminds me Fred McMurray in Richard Quine's PUSHOVER, a rogue cop tale, also directed by a non crime film specialist, as Burt Kennedy; Quine was on the contrary a comedy specialist. And it is so touching to see Glenn Ford and his long time friend Rita Hayworth for the last time on screen after GILDA, LADY IN QUESTION, AFFAIR IN TRINIDAD and LOVES OF CARMEN. Yes I definitely love this underrated Burt Kennedy's film noir pulled by a tremendous acting, directing, production design, atmosphere.

The noir cycle had run its course by the early 60s, but a few stragglers made it through the gates before the 70s changed the way movies were made and viewed. The Money Trap is one of them, and could have been made, in terms of technique and sensibility, in 1956 rather than a decade later. (Digression: this was a time when a series of European "bombshells," most of whom seem to have learned their lines phonetically, starred in big-budget movies, in Hollywood's dizzy anticipation of multiculturalism. Here we have to endure Elke Sommer whose eyes all but cross in her attempt to pronounce English). The theme is the rot at the core of the American Dream (Norman Mailer's novel of that title appeared in 1966, too). Glenn Ford plays a police detective goaded by Sommer to a higher standard of living than his salary permits. He allows himself to be lured into the company of some very shady characters, chief among whom is Joseph Cotten, and starts his descent down the primrose path. Best part of the movie is the return of Rita Hayworth (Ford and she first paired, unforgettably, in Gilda 20 years earlier), as a blowsy waitress with whom Ford once.... Well, you get the picture. When he asks her how she's been, she grudgingly responds, "I've been around."