christopher-underwood

We thought it was going to be rather good, at the start we have Gale Storm trying to find her sister and Dennis O'Keefe as a reporter helping her, in the dark and the shadows we see Raymond Burr looking most sinister. It seemed her sister has killed herself but Gale is not happy and the mystery was on. But then we understand there was a baby lost as well but somehow it doesn't get any better. We imagined that there are babies being taken from hospitals and stolen and thought that this was a sensational noir but then it turns rather into a melodrama and not very sensational at all. It was great having Burr and although he made many decent films but only 8 years on and he was on TV with the his popular numerous Perry Mason series.

Not particularly wonderful or even as the noir I had hoped. But it is interesting and at the beginning a killing and a good chase in the atmospheric shadows in this postwar city. Towards the end there is some thrilling action but I would have liked a little more. Burt Lancaster is really good and Joan Fontaine and Robert Newton good, but maybe we could have done without Newton's and his theatrical winks. Even though, at this time, Lancaster had only made two films, The Killers (1946) and Brute Force (1947) but already set up his independent company. In this film we are not really in London but it pretends to be in the dark and they made some sociological sense out of the mess and rubble in a war, that men might make out of this.

It was beautifully and splendidly done and I loved it. I guess many youngsters would not enjoy or even understand some of this but certainly for me this really gave me spine tingling moments for at least the first half and I thought the other half was really good as well. It was for me the first part it was so wonderful because it brought me so many memories so many years ago. Timothee Chalamet really did look like Dylan now and again and he was very good, I was so surprised that he was fine doing the singing and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro for Joan Baez. I also liked Ella Fanning, as his girlfriend, and thought she had also been good before in Refn's, The Neon Demon (2016). James Mangold did a good job with Johnny Cash's, Walk the Line (2005) but he was even better with this one. The songs and the dialogue were great and Chalamet and Barbaro managed to convey so much with just a look and the music did the rest.