Broderick Crawford

  • Night Unto Night (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) You don’t have to scratch all that deeply to find plausible excuses to watch Night unto Night, even if they may leave you unsatisfied. It’s an early effort from director Don Siegel, who would go on to have a long and significant career up to the New Hollywood era. More amusingly, it stars Ronald Reagan as a scientist (!) grappling with issues of faith and spirituality in the face of impending death and developing romance. Broderick Crawford shows up in a supporting role, bringing his comforting gruffness to the role. There’s some supernatural melodrama, with the (unsatisfactory) mushy-spiritualism conclusion never being in doubt, considering the usual ideological alignment of major studio films in Hollywood history. The cinematography (helped along by some audacious special effects) is more interesting than the humdrum plot and its dull flights of philosophy. Released two years after its production, Night unto Night does have the mark of a disappointing film—not exactly bad, but nowhere near what could have been, and viewers even today will feel the lack of satisfaction.

  • Human Desire (1954)

    Human Desire (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Fritz Lang directed what seems like a dozen film noirs and I’m slowly making my way through them. Human Desire is roughly up to the quality level of his other ones. It certainly plays with some of the big guns of the genre: a dangerous psychopath (Broderick Crawford in fine gruff form), a hero who struggles with temptation (Glenn Ford, bland but likable) and the femme fatale who orchestrates mayhem to her benefit (Gloria Graham, quite good). The stylistic interest of the film largely comes from a focus on railroads and trains that provide much of the visual and auditory motifs. There aren’t many wholesome characters to be found here, but in-keeping with noir standards, that’s the way we like it. Much of the rest is about as bland as the title. Human Desire is not necessarily a great noir, but it is a representative one — clearly in that tradition and satisfying to those who like the subgenre.

  • The Mob (1951)

    The Mob (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) Genre can be as important as topic matter in distinguishing a film, and for a good example of this, you can take a look at quasi-contemporary The Mob and On the Waterfront, two early-1950s films both dealing with crime and corruption among longshoremen. But whereas On the Waterfront attained immortality through a finely drawn dramatic portrait of people fighting the system, The Mob goes for a cops-versus-mob film noir. I’m not necessarily complaining: The Mob is far more entertaining on a basic level, and it doesn’t need Marlon Brando when there’s Broderick Crawford to play the tough grizzled cop going undercover to expose a crime ring. While technically a film noir due to its tone and production era, it’s a film that harkens more to the 1930s gangster pictures — there’s not much darkness to the protagonist, order is restored in the end and the status quo of American society is not seriously questioned. Chalk it up to another subgenre distinction. Still, it’s a solid crime picture, and it clocks in at an economical 86 minutes. Unlike On the Waterfront, there aren’t that many wasted moments and dull sequences in The Mob — it’s mean and lean, and it affirms Broderick’s stature at the time. Not a bad pick for a quiet evening, and you get a lot of mileage out of a double bill with its illustrious waterfront companion.

  • A Kiss in the Dark (1949)

    A Kiss in the Dark (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Short and perfunctory, A Kiss in the Dark works best as a showcase for David Niven and Jane Wyman, as he plays a concert pianist who discovers he’s the owner of a slightly dilapidated apartment building in Manhattan. Investigating the situation, he comes to meet the eccentric tenants and finds himself captivated by the cutest of them all (Wyman, obviously). As a comedy film, it runs a bit long even at 87 minutes — the narrative arcs are familiar, from the easily-resolved romantic triangle to the workaholic-no-more theme to the bellowing tenant tortured into submission. (Wait, what? Well, yes — the film does suffer from a bit of protagonist-centred morality in how a tenant is cruelly sleep-deprived. You’d argue that he had it coming by punching the protagonist in the first place, but that only raises more disturbing questions as to why the film seems so fond of its characters frequently punching each other in the face and why the police aren’t brought in for assault charges.)  This is not sophisticated stuff, although Niven’s stereotypically British persona and Wyman’s attractiveness will make anyone overlook most of the film’s flaws. It’s also fun to see Broderick Crawford in a supporting role as a cranky-and-violent antagonist. Still, there simply isn’t enough in A Kiss in the Dark (not the best title!) to stay interesting. Despite the building’s 53 tenants, the film focuses on too few of them and pads its comic scenes with too much repetition. There’s some chemistry between the leads and it’s all too likable to dislike… but this is an average comedy as best, one that just happened to star compelling performers.

  • Born Yesterday (1950)

    Born Yesterday (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) There’s a deceptive simplicity to the premise of Born Yesterday: from afar, it’s a standard Pygmalion spinoff, what with a journalist being asked to educate the girlfriend of a businessman. But it’s in its execution that the film proves to be quite a bit more than expected. For one thing, the film (which takes place in Washington) doesn’t miss an opportunity to link personal virtues to political values—the coarse businessman who slaps his wife is proved to be a criminal who aspires to fascism (how familiar!), and the ingenue who learns better about the bedrock principles of the nation uses that knowledge to emancipate herself from a bad situation. Then there’s Judy Holliday, who comes across (though a grating voice and uncouth manners) as a hopeless self-obsessed hick but eventually proves herself as smart as everyone else—and do so in an almost imperceptible manner, making us care before we even know it’s happening. William Holden and Broderick Crawford also provide good performances to round up the lead trio. The script is a bit blunt at times and certainly predictable overall, but it does have moments of cleverness and humour, good dialogue and effective directing. Handled by veteran George Cukor, Born Yesterday proves to be a solid comedy with a timeless message, a still-impressive lead performance and a political message that really wouldn’t be out of place in a Frank Capra film.

  • All The King’s Men (1949)

    All The King’s Men (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2018) Americans have a long history of examining their political system through popular entertainment, and All the King’s Men (an adaptation of a popular 1940s novel) endures even today given its subject matter, tragic arc and acknowledgment of how power corrupts. The tale of how an idealistic lawyer becomes a corrupt governor, as narrated by a journalist turned political operative, this is a story that stands on its own in addition to being a roman-à-clé about Louisiana governor Huey Long. It spans decades, charting corruption as it transforms the protagonist of the story. It’s a clear-eyed view of the political system that still holds a lot of resonance today, and it’s told well enough to still be interesting. Some of the montage sequences have a very modern feel (the film was nominated for an editing Oscar), supported by clever cinematography that goes from pastoral to noir as the mood of the story changes. Broderick Crawford is very good as the character at the centre of the story, equally credible as a young populist and as an older corrupt politician. Writer/director Robert Rossen does spectacular work transforming a novel in a solid movie (although we’re told that merciless editing saved the film), with good supporting work by Mercedes McCambridge (as the dour yet lovelorn Sadie) and John Ireland as the self-effacing viewpoint character. All the King’s Men was remade in 2006 but the remake, despite very polished visuals and an astonishing ensemble cast, doesn’t quite manage to capture the energy of the original.