Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension)
by André De Toth, Anthony Mann, Don Siegel, Fred Zinnemann, Jack Bernhard
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Van HeflinDirector: André De Toth, Anthony Mann, Don Siegel, Fred Zinnemann, Jack Bernhard
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; German (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); Turkish (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Box set, Closed-captioned, Full Screen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 833 minutes
Published: 2007-07-31
DVD Release Date: 2007-07-31
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 115020
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Ex-World War II pilot Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a respected contractor and family man. Then his troubled, gimp-legged bombardier (Robert Ryan) shows up with a gun and a score to settle. Perhaps neither man is what he seems to be as director Fred Zinnemann (The Day of the Jackal) guides a searing Act of Violence, "the first postwar noir to take a challenging look at the ethics of men in combat" (
Movie Reviews of Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension)
Movie Review: Wall-to-wall film noir masterpieces
Summary: 5 Stars
FILM NOIR: VOLUME 4 has no less than ten movies, five double features and all excellent. Each has a notable audio commentary, a short filmmaker discussion, and the theatrical trailer. This set is a must-own knockout.
Volume One has ACT OF VIOLENCE and MYSTERY STREET. ACT OF VIOLENCE is a most interesting film noir, brilliantly photographed by Robert Surtees, who is better known for epics like BEN-HUR and RAINTREE COUNTY. In a rather ordinary small town, crippled Robert Ryan chases after happily married husband and father Van Heflin over something Heflin did to Ryan and several other men during World War Two. This film is fascinating because the characters slowly switch roles--who is good and who is bad? Janet Leigh and Phyllis Thaxter are the likeable wives, and Mary Astor is unforgettable as a sympathetic middle-aged prostitute. Audio commentary is by Dr. Drew Casper, my old thesis advisor at USC Cinema.
MYSTERY STREET has fine location work all over Harvard and Cape Cod. Jan Sterling is murdered on the cape one foggy night. The crime lab here is a forerunner of all the C.S.I. shows on TV now. We start with just a skeleton, then add a face, then find out who stole a yellow car on a given day, and so forth. John Sturges, who did BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, directed this gripping police procedural. John Alton, who worked a lot in noir land and won an Oscar in a different vein for AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951), photographed. Starring are Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce Bennett, and Elsa Lanchester. Question: Why does the film say "Filmed in Hollywood, U.S.A." at the end when the whole thing was made in and around Harvard? Audio commentary is by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward.
VOLUME 2 has CRIME WAVE and DECOY. Andre de Toth's CRIME WAVE, brilliantly photographed by Bert Glennon all over night for night Los Angeles on actual locales, has Sterling Hayden as a homicide detective trying to solve a rash of gas station armed robberies and murders. Also with the good guys are Gene Nelson and Phyllis Kirk. The opening is memorable--a gas station robbery with a Doris Day recording on the soundtrack. Kirk, de Toth, and writer Crane Wilbur later collaborated on HOUSE OF WAX. Audio commentary is by novelist James Ellroy (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) and Eddie Mueller.
DECOY is a lulu, even for film noir. Made by Monogram, with a strong script by Ned Young and story by Stanley Rubin, this has femme fatale Jean Gillie bringing her partner in crime (Robert Armstrong) back to life chemically after he has died at San Quentin! There is no love lost, she just wants to know the whereabouts of a stash of money. Let's not say anything more about this unusual and suspenseful film, except that the ironic ending is dazzling. Directed by Jack Bernhard. Rubin and Glenn Erickson do the audio commentary.
Volume 3 has ILLEGAL and THE BIG STEAL. ILLEGAL 1954) is another neglected noir gem with formidable talents--it stars Edward G. Robinson as a prosecuting attorney who sends an innocent man to the death chamber and has to live with the consequences. Lewis Allen (THE UNINVITED) directed a script by no less than W. R. Burnett (LITTLE CAESAR) and James R. Webb (HOW THE WEST WAS WON). And the superb photography is by J. Peverell Marley (THE TEN COMMANDMENTS). An unusually sour Nina Foch, co-star, is part of a disappointing audio comentary with historian Patricia King Hanson.
THE BIG STEAL (1949) is a tongue-in-cheek extended car chase through small Mexican towns that had to be filmed on location. Super nasty bad guy William Bendix is after money that Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer have. Don Siegel, who jump-started Clint Eastwood's career with the early DIRTY HARRY movies directed. Richard Jewell, whom I knew at USC Cinema in the 1970's, does the superb audio commentary that reveals volumes about Mitchum, his marijuana bust, and RKO working methods in the late 1940's..
Disk Four has two of the finest offerings in this noir set--Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as two married couples involved in crime in Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948) and Anthony Mann's SIDE STREET (1949). Ray made his directorial debut with THEY LIVE, based on a novel called THIEVES LIKE US, which Robert Altman later made into a movie with that title. It has Granger as a newlywed forced to be a crime accomplice in the Depression era Deep South; the truly bad villains are Howard da Silva and and Jay C. Flippen. Both romantic and violent, the movie is an unforgettable noir with a happily alive Granger helping on the audio commentary.
Even better is Mann's SIDE STREET, strikingly filmed all over Manhattan by lighting master Joseph Ruttenberg. Newlywed postman Granger steals what he thinks is an innocent $200 to pay bills for wife O'Donnell. It is really $30,000 in mob money, and they will kill to get it back! The climactic car chase through Wall Street canyons on a Sunday morning is one of the all-time greats. Sydney Boehm wrote the great screenplay. Watch for Jean Hagen as a treacherous femme fatale posing as a nightclub singer if you have just seen SINGIN' IN THE RAIN and want to know what the actress really sounds like. Of the ten films noirs in this boxed set, SIDE STREET is one of my personal favorites. The renowned Richard Schickel does the audio commentary.
Best of all for me is Volume Five, with WHERE DANGER LIVES (1950) and TENSION (1949). Where have these masterpieces been hiding, and why is Leonard Maltin so stingy with his ratings on them? In director John Farrow's DANGER, brilliantly written by Charles Bennett and Leo Rosen, we are in noir San Francisco from the first scene: a nighttime hospital with overworked doctor Robert Mitchum. He falls in love with wealthy mystery woman Faith Domergue, who is the wife of Claude Rains (in his bad mode). A murder goes wrong, Rains ends up dead, and Mitchum finds himself headed south for Mexico with Domergue. So we have a doctor and a femme fatale sharing a car in small town California and then Arizona small towns at night. Let's not reveal any more, except to say that WHERE DANGER LIVES, which I had never even heard of, is now one of my favorite films noir.
And director John Berry's TENSION tops it and is my favorite film noir in this ten-film boxed set. Again, we have noir from the word go: scholarly Richard Basehart working as a pharmacist and soda jerk in a nighttime Los Angeles. He has an unfaithful wife, the matchless femme fatale Audrey Totter, who has a lover at a beach.cottage. Basehart creates a second identity and what he thinks is the perfect alibi to kill the lover, but Totter beats him to it and says she still loves Basehart! Now it gets good, with likeable photographer Cyd Charisse living at the same apartment as Basehart and knowing him only in his #2 identity. And Barry Sullivan and William Conrad, both always great, as homicide detectives. This film was made under the Hays Office and censorship, so we know that Totter will probably get caught at the end. But how, when she and Basehart both have an air-tight alibi? And remember that noirs usually end unhappily. A photo and contact lenses are key evidence in the magnificent and little-known TENSION, superbly written by John Klober (story) and Allen Rivkin (screenplay). The moody jazz score is by Andre Previn.
More Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension) reviews:
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5
Summary of Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension)
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