RickeyMooney

In 1946 W. Lee Wilder, less famous brother of director Billy Wilder, made his debut as producer-director with low-budget noir The Glass Alibi.

Nine years later, possibly dissatisfied with the original or feeling he could do the story more justice with not quite so minimal a budget, he remade it as The Big Bluff.

It's not a scene-by-scene remake and the characters and dialogue are quite different from the original, but the basic plot remains the same. A cad, bounder and all-around nogoodnik romances a young wealthy heiress/widow with a short time to live and at the same time another woman who already has a boyfriend/husband.

To give just one example of the difference, in The Glass Alibi the central character is a typical brash fast-talking Hollywood newspaper reporter of that era who is suspected by his boyhood friend, a police detective not in the other movie. In The Big Bluff the central character is a con man suspected by the widow's traveling companion, not in the other movie.

Both films have attracted some scathing reviews here that to me seem undeserved. My guess is that some people were so turned off by the central character that the movie repelled them.

I've seen both films, the earlier one first, and enjoyed both. In fact I liked the more low-budget earlier one a little better because it couldn't afford much in the way of frills. I remember thinking while watching The Glass Alibi at least we're spared the obligatory scenes of the cad wooing the widow by taking her to a casino, the race track and a roller coaster. Well, at least the remake left out the roller coaster.

Having said that, I recommend watching The Big Bluff because it's available online in a much better print than The Glass Alibi. I don't recommend watching both unless you're obsessive about such things. Despite their differences, both films are almost identical for the last ten minutes or so, which have a few creative twists and surprises which aren't surprising when you've already seen them.

Since the movie starts with June Havoc turning herself in to the LA police, it's no spoiler that it's about her descent.

The rest is all flashback. The old story of a luckless seeker of employment tempted to join forces with a criminal, in this case Iris Adrian, a shoplifter in San Francisco.

Havoc manages to escape unscathed to Los Angeles and get a job as a waitress but falls heavily for small-time crook Cesar Romero, whose specialties include bilking gullible working women of their savings. To make matters worse, Havoc takes in Marie McDonald as a roommate who proves untrustworthy. And then Adrian turns up in LA.

All very Dostoevskian (like I know anything about Dostoevsky). Anyway a gripping drama with various twists and turns. And it's always a nice change of pace to see a noir without issues being decided by fistfights and gun battles.

Definitely not upbeat but well-acted and absorbing.

This noir film is unusual in that its biggest surprises occur in the first half of the movie. The user reviews that consist mostly of recounting the plot thus spoil the effect of seeing it for the first time. If you think you'd like to watch it, I recommend avoiding them.

It's usually best to save surprises for the end of a story, but given the film's plot it would have been difficult.

Without giving away too much, Frank Lovejoy plays an LA drive-in restaurant owner and compulsive gambler who gets inveigled into a plot to recover Nazi loot hidden during WW II.

The second half of the film is straight adventure and suspense, much of the latter coming from trying to guess who is or isn't in on what seems to be a rather large conspiracy for a relatively small goal.

Co-stars Mari Blanchard and Richard Denning are enjoyable in juicier parts than Lovejoy's. An enjoyable watch even if a tad implausible in spots.