Road House (Fox Film Noir)
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Movie Reviews of Road House (Fox Film Noir)
Movie Review: ROAD HOUSE Revisited
Summary: 5 Stars
I hadn't seen tis film since it's original release. It was great to see it again after all these years.
It was especially fun to see Widmark in one of his early "bad boy" roles. Solid cast! Great story, cinematography, and direction.
Movie Review: ida lupino singing AGAIN
Summary: 5 Stars
I have reviewed this film noir before on amazon, when I. was asking for its
release on dvd I shall be amongst the first to order it . TIME WAS
Movie Review: One of Lupino's Best
Summary: 5 Stars
This is by far one of Ida Lupino's finest films. She looks terrific and she sings too. This is one actor and director who is sadly missed.Movie Review: Film Noir in an Oddly Rustic Setting, with an Unusual Female Lead.
Summary: 4 Stars
"Road House" is a film noir from the height of the noir cycle with a strangely rustic setting: a stone and wood roadhouse -restaurant, lounge, and bowling alley- named "Jefty's" after its owner, located somewhere up north, near the Canadian border. Jefty Robbins (Richard Widmark) owns the place and hires Lily Stevens (Ida Lupino), a singer from Chicago with whom he is smitten, to entertain in the bar. He thinks it will double their bar receipts, but his business manager Pete Morgan (Cornell Wilde) thinks Jefty paid too much and tries to get Lily to leave. Lily has a contract and is not to be swayed, so she stays, and she's a hit at the bar. Jefty pursues her with increasing vigor, but Lily rebuffs him. And she clashes with Pete...until Jefty goes out of town.
Nightclubs are a classic film noir setting, but they don't usually have moose heads on the walls or exposed beams in the ceiling. Or bowling alleys. "Jefty's" is in a small town, where the other recreations are hunting and swimming in the river. Jefty's cabin in the woods is an even more rural location. Richard Widmark does his signature psychologically nuanced bad guy, with which he made some memorable film noir between 1947 and 1953. Here he borrows a bit from his famous Tommy Udo performance in "Kiss of Death" (1947). Ida Lupino's Lily Stevens is an interesting version of a noir woman. She has all the makings of a femme fatale. She's cool, cynical, and sharp-tongued. But she makes the choices of a protagonist, not a villain. She's a tough drifter, the kind we usually see as a male character, crossed with a lonely woman with traditional values.
But when the bad girl is actually a good girl, that makes the good girl a thankless role. The traditional good girl is the cashier at the roadhouse, Susie Smith, played by Celeste Holm, just off of her Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actress in "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947). Susie is a nice, bright woman who pines after Pete, selfless and respectable until the end. She always wears a coat or bulky clothing to make her look heavy next to the slight Lupino. Susie's a fine woman, but not destined to get the guy or the attention in this film. "Road House" has great cast all around, though, and the odd location adds to the intrigue.
The DVD (20th Century Fox 2008): Bonus features are one featurette, an "Interactive Pressbook" with close-ups of the Exhibitors Campaign Book so that we can read the articles, 4 Still Galleries (124 images), and an audio commentary. "Killer Instincts: Richard Widmark and Ida Lupino at Twentieth Century Fox" (19 min) interviews a collection of film historians about the careers of Widmark and Lupino and their work in this film. The audio commentary is by film noir historians Eddie Muller and Kim Morgan. They discuss the actors, character interaction, and compare the film to the original version of the story, which was darker. I wish they had done more scene-by-scene analysis. This one is less informative than most of Muller's commentaries. Subtitles available for the film in English, French, and Spanish.
Movie Review: Great movie, great commentary!
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me first say that this is an extremely enjoyable film. Ida Lupino is perfect as the hard-bitten nightclub singer, and dominates the early part of the film. But it's watching Richard Widmark's character Jeffty's smoldering jealousy slowly build, finally erupting into full-fledged psychosis at the end of the film that makes this a movie worth re-watching, and owning.
But the reason I'm writing this review is as a kind of counter-weight to a prissy pseudo-intellectual response to the commentary another viewer has posted. Eddie Muller and Kim Morgan know and give a lot of insightful back-story on the production of Road House, and the life and careers of the cast and crew. The problem this Stellhorn character seems to be having is simple: they're actually watching and enjoying the film! And yes, they'll be telling a story about Widmark or Lupino, and stop to say something like, "Oh, look at THAT!"
To me, the biggest sin one can commit while doing a commentary is simply not watching the movie. And, unfortunately, noir has been subjected to an endless parade of academics sitting there and reading from their long-winded notes, and just never looking up at the screen. They're more interested in their own Theories and Opinions about why the film is important to "the noir cycle" than they are in the movie. I suspect most of them would never have become interested in the films themselves in the first place if the French hadn't legitimized them.
Noir Directors and actors are notoriously cynical about these critics and their pet theories. More often than not, these critics were busilly taking notes the first time they saw the films. There are a number of levels to most noirs, and Road House is no exception. Far from creepy, Muller is just enjoying Lupino's performance on exactly the level that it was meant to be taken on. And both he and Kim Morgan are not above savoring the deliciousness of the film's innuendo.
In fact, I would say Eddie Muller's excellent 1998 book, Dark City, The Lost World of Film Noir spearheaded a renewed interest in these films that is much more legitimate than the dissecting the genre was subjected to in the late 60s and 70s. A lot of pompous windbags achieved tenure by unsuccessfully trying to emasculate what has always been an intelligently made, but essentially visceral genre. I highly recommend both the commentary and the documentary on this disc to anyone who is actually capable of enjoying the film itself.
And I also recommend Eddie Muller's books, especially these two...
Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir
Art of Noir: The Posters And Graphics From The Classic Era Of Film Noir