Drive A Crooked Road (1954)

Although a fairly lightweight film noir (which viewers may already suspect is the case when they see Mickey Rooney in a lead role), Drive A Crooked Road is an enjoyable, if predictable, bit of entertainment that benefits from a couple of the main performances being much better than I expected.

Rooney plays Eddie Shannon, a car mechanic/occasional racer who spends a lot of his workday being ribbed by his workmates about his lack of experience with women. That looks set to change when he meets Barbara (Dianne Foster), who seems to take a real liking to him. Barbara then introduces Eddie to one or two others (including Steve, played by Kevin McCarthy) and it isn’t long until Eddie is being invited to assist with a criminal plan that will rely on his outstanding driving skills. 

While it isn’t a big surprise to see that this was directed by Richard Quine (a dependable helmer with a few gems in his filmography), it is slightly more unexpected to see that Quine worked on the screenplay with Blake Edwards, adapting a story by James Benson Nablo. It is also unexpected to realise that the screenplay isn’t very good. This is a film that works because of the main characters, not because of any great plotting or snappy dialogue. I enjoyed it, but it isn’t a classic noir I would rush to recommend to others.

Rooney is fun in his role, a sweet sap you just know is going to be manipulated by those around him. He still feels more like Rooney than a fully-developed character though (a style that suited him well throughout most of his career). Foster does well in the lone central female role, believable as a potential femme fatale or as someone just as manipulated as Eddie, depending on how you view the journey of her character. But it’s McCarthy who lifts the movie, entering the action like a breath of fresh air, believably persuasive and charming before showing himself as equally believable when threatening or mistreating those who try to go against him.

While the runtime is a shade over 80 minutes, I expected this to be even shorter. It’s barely a film, often feeling more like a 4-page comic book storyline, but there’s enough to enjoy for those who aren’t looking for any kind of gold-plated classic. I had fun with it, largely due to the performance of McCarthy, and I suspect other film fans will get some enjoyment from it, even if it’s more disposable and forgettable than many other crime films from the period.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Noirvember: Pushover (1954)

A man and a woman meet in the kind of encounter that could lead to the 1950s version of a rom-com. She is having car trouble. He can offer her somewhere to stay while it gets fixed. But she may have another man in her life. And, as viewers find out in the next scene, her latest admirer is actually a cop. 

Directed by Richard Quine, Pushover is an enjoyable film noir that pairs up Fred MacMurray (as Paul Sheridan, the cop) and Kim Novak (as Lona McLane), allowing them to struggle against their attraction as if both were magnets trying to join together as opposing forces keep showing how they should stay apart. McLane is a woman who is due a visit from her fella, a criminal who has hidden the money from a recent bank robbery somewhere, and Sheridan is one of the cops trying to ensure his arrest, but love complicates the whole situation. And greed. Love and greed. A classic film noir combination.

While not as dark and gritty as many other film noirs, Pushover is an excellent depiction of a man making one bad decision and then seeing events spiral way out of his control, causing the kind of damage that he soon realises there’s no coming back from. Apparently based on a couple of different source texts (“The Night Watch”, by Thomas Walsh, and “Rafferty”, by William S. Ballinger), the script by Roy Huggins continually builds momentum as everyone is dragged towards a tense finale. Quine ensures that everyone can see the pieces moving into place, and he does so without anything feeling rushed or illogical.

MacMurray does a great job of being the dependable guy we’ve seen him play in so many other movies (a man without malicious intent who is changed by the unfolding chain of events that he kickstarted), and Novak is already a shining star in her first credited feature role. If anyone is going to get themselves in big trouble then doing so for Novak feels like pretty good motivation. Philip Carey, Allen Nourse, and E. G. Marshall make up other members of the force who are focused on cracking the case, and all of them do well in very stereotypical roles, and Dorothy Malone stands out as a woman who inadvertently puts a spanner in the works of the unstoppable scheme.

This is never going to crack a list of top 10 film noirs, I doubt it would even crack a top 50, but Pushover is well worth your time. The leads have great chemistry, the supporting characters are all memorable in the right ways, and the tension keeps getting ratcheted up nicely as soon as one small error creates a tragic butterfly effect. I REALLY liked this, and hope others check it out.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share