The Velvet Touch (1948)

(On Cable TV, February 2022) Aside from a leading performance from the ever-reliable Rosalind Russell, there really isn’t much to say about film noir The Velvet Touch. It does start on a promising note, as our heroine accidentally kills her producer, and the film then (through flashbacks) takes noir archetypes to the Broadway circuit. As usual for the genre, there is a very comforting quality in tackling murder and mayhem in the late-1940s context: it’s dark and suspenseful enough to be interesting, but you know that there are limits to how far the film will go. Executed as slickly as most of its contemporaries, it tries to go beyond the sordid crime story to tackle the neuroses of an actress pursuing dramatic fulfillment. The fusion of noir themes and Broadway backdrop works well in bringing together two of Hollywood’s most enjoyable subgenres, but The Velvet Touch can’t quite sustain the expectations created by its premise. The dialogue is triter, not quite as hard-boiled as it should be, and the conclusion can be inferred from the aforementioned limits of Classic Hollywood. Sydney Greenstreet does turn in one of his last performances here as a dogged policeman on the case, and he’s the one with the best lines as the film wraps up. Not terrible, not exceptional, The Velvet Touch may work better as comfort material for viewers wanting a bit of crime in their Broadway stories or a bit of Broadway in the noir films.