It’s a very good read, and I love some of his choices for
noirs that should be on DVD but aren’t: Ace in the Hole (1951), for
example. This underrated
classic—directed by the one-and-only Billy Wilder—stars Kirk Douglas in one of
his preeminent rat-bastard roles; that of an unscrupulous newspaperman who uses
a man trapped in a cave-in to crawl his way back to the top of the print
journalism game. This corrosive
film—dubbed by Paramount wags as “Ass in the
Wringer”—was remarkably prescient in its examination of today’s media, and of
course, it co-stars TDOY fave Jan Sterling as the man’s wife who has one of filmdom’s
most memorably cynical retorts: “I don’t pray.
Kneeling bags my nylons.” Someone
mentioned a while back that they were finally going to release Hole—also known as The Big Carnival, its re-release title—on DVD
but unfortunately that version is a documentary about the capture of Saddam
Hussein.
Other “SBA’s” (should be available) noted by Rosenbaum
include While the City Sleeps
(1956), Fritz Lang’s better-than-it-ought-to-be account of the hunt for a
serial killer by a team of reporters who spend most of their time getting
sloshed in gin joints throughout the film’s running time, and The Sound of Fury (1950, a.k.a. Try and Get Me!), a movie that features
OTR veteran Frank Lovejoy’s finest hour on the silver screen as a man who
stupidly allows himself to become enmeshed in the schemes of a seriously-disturbed
Lloyd Bridges (this flick was based on the events dramatized in Fritz Lang’s
first American offering, Fury). Another movie mentioned oh-so-briefly by
Jonathan is The Phenix City Story
(1955) a little-seen Phil Karlson docu-noir based on the corrupt Alabama
town of the same name. (I’d buy all
these for a dollar!)
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