Noirathon - LA vs NY: Round 7

[Christa Faust]

The Champ: THE GLASS WALL (NY)

Man, times sure have changed. Handsome (and obviously Italian) Vittorio Gassman plays Peter Kaban, a Hungarian escapee from a Nazi concentration camp who illegally stows away on a ship bound for New York City. He hopes to locate an American soldier whose life he saved, a clarinet player he knows only as “Tom.” Needless to say, it’s not that simple but our hero has help, including saucy Gloria Grahame as a down-and-out factory worker and an aging Hungarian stripper named Tanya (“She’s Atomic!”) The issue of illegal immigration is such a complex, hot button topic today with lots of anger and emotion on both sides, but in 1953 a simple, sympathetic morality play like this one made perfect sense. The idea that the plight of a single illegal immigrant would be big enough to rate the full front page of every newspaper is laughable now, but back then you could see how the whole city would follow a story like that. After all New York City is nothing if not a city of immigrants. Nearly everyone in town had a mama or papa who came from somewhere else. That aside, I don’t think I really cared for this movie all that much. Sure, it was entertaining and had it’s moments. I loved all the wonderful footage of Times Square back in the day and Gloria Grahame is always a treat, but in the end, it was a little too upbeat and happy for my taste. It just wasn’t Noir enough. If sweet, innocent Peter had been sucked into crime, degradation and a desperate downward spiral that ultimately did him in just inches away from freedom, I think would have liked it much better.
The guest was the lovely Ann Robinson, who played the clarinet player’s girlfriend in GLASS WALL. She talked more about WAR OF THE WORLDS than GLASS WALL but that was okay with me, since I love that great Sci Fi classic.

The Challenger: THE CROOKED WEB (LA)

As an unapologetic B monster movie fiend, I was really jazzed to see this one. Directed by Nathan Hertz Juran, who also did ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, BRAIN FROM PLANET ARROUS and THE DEADLY MANTIS, and co-staring CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON’s Richard Denning and SHE DEVIL Mari Blanchard, WEB had me before the first frame. Frank Lovejoy plays Stan Fabian, a drive-in owner in love with one of his carhops (Blanchard.) When her sleazy, felonious brother (Denning) shows up and offers to cut Fabian in on a deal for a box of stolen wartime gold, it sounds almost too good to be true. But Fabian likes to play the longshots so he decides to go for it and from there the plot takes some amazing twists and turns as the trio travels from LA to Chicago to Germany. It’s not a particularly brilliant film and not strictly a pure LA film either (although I’m sure all the Germany scenes were actually shot in LA) but it’s a hell of a ride and I can look at statuesque Mari Blanchard all day long. I have to give this round to LA and THE CROOKED WEB.
Tonight’s match up: HE WALKED BY NIGHT vs THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK.