Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fine Forties noir with Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and Brian Donlevy, and a startling performance by William Bendix, 11 Jul 2007
Maybe not a great noir, but The Glass Key, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, is one of the most satisfying crime movies to come out of the Forties. I've watched it several times and undoubtedly will again. Why does it work so well? First, there's a death tied to a whodunit and the solution is well disguised until the very end. Second, there's the milieu...big city crime and politics, corruption and violence. Third, a startlingly unhinged performance by William Bendix. And fourth, and most importantly, there is the relationship between two strong men, both slightly amoral but which is based on friendship and trust.
We're talking about Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy), a big-time gambler and enforcer who has moved into big-time politics, and Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd), his right-hand man. This bond of trust and friendship between the two is one of the movie's major themes. It's the engine that drives the movie. Madvig is a tough, cheerful guy who can use his fists or a threat or use a pay-off to get his way. Surprisingly, he's backing a reform candidate for governor. He's gone so far as to shut down illegal gambling operations, which has made a dangerous enemy of gambler Nick Varna (Joseph Calliea). Even more surprisingly, Madvig has fallen for his candidate's daughter, Janet Henry (Veronica Lake).
Beaumont, on the other hand, is a taciturn hard case. He's no one's fool. He's smarter, or at least shrewder, than Madvig. His loyalty to Madvig is complete but he never hesitates to try to talk sense to Madvig. At one point Madvig is bragging about his entry into high society and respectable politics with his association with the candidate he's backing. "I'm going to society, " he says to Beaumont. "He's practically given me the key to his house." Says Beaumont, "Yeah, a glass key. Be sure it doesn't break in your hand." Beaumont sees Janet Henry and her family as wealthy, condescending snobs. Why do you stay with Madvig, she asks him with a coy little condescending smile. "I get along very well with Paul because he's on the dead up-and-up. Why don't you try it sometime?" he says and walks out.
Before long Janet's brother, the wastrel son of Madvig's candidate, is found dead and Madvig is the prime suspect. Beaumont doesn't believe this for a minute. He's sure Nick Varna had something to do with it. Soon Beaumont is being used as a punching bag by Jeff (William Bendix), one of Varna's goons. It doesn't take much time, either, for Beaumont and Janet Henry, who has said she'd marry Madvig, to realize there's a strong attraction between them that's starting to show. Beaumont, however, is determined to respect Madvig's feelings. By the time we reach the end of the movie, there have been plenty of beatings, deaths and corruption. The person responsible for the brother's death has been discovered. It's a clever surprise. Of course, in an Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake movie, there's also a happy ending.
William Bendix was a big, beefy actor who more often than not played good guys. When he played a bad guy, he was something to see. Jeff is just this short of a psycho, but short on the other side of the line. "Meet the swellest guy I ever skinned a knuckle on," he says, draping an arm across Beaumont's shoulder. He enjoys dishing out beatings. The most startling scenes in the movie center on Jeff. In the first, Ed Beaumont is being held captive. He's going to be beaten until he gives the low-down on all of Madvig's less savory activities. He won't talk, so Jeff beats him within an inch of his life. It's an almost sadomasochistic scene. Ladd's face, with some realistic make-up, looks like hamburger...and Jeff isn't through. The other scene has Jeff losing control when a major character gives him one too many orders. "Now you see what we gotta do," Jeff says, "we gotta give him the works." As Beaumont leans against the door in the background and watches, we see the sweating, shaking face of Jeff as he strangles the guy. We don't see the victim, only the victim's kicking legs. Which is worse, Jeff killing the man or Beaumont watching with a slight smile?
This was Alan Ladd's follow-up film to This Gun for Hire. He was never a great actor; he said so himself. But he had whatever it takes to be a star and this movie secured his star status. Veronica Lake leaves me with mixed feelings. In The Glass Key she is so carefully coifed, dressed and made-up that, with her tiny stature, she looks like a kind of odd porcelain doll. Although Ladd and Lake never much cared for each other, they made an intriguing couple on the screen. And what of Brian Donlevy? Sure, he was a stolid actor, very straight forward. Yet, for me, he always combined a kind of honest, nice-guy quality with a streak of solid bad-guy potential. "Reliable," I guess is what people would call him, yet I can't think of anyone who could have done a better job as Sergeant Markoff in Beau Geste. Donlevy had top billing for The Glass Key.
For those who like old songs as well as old movies, there's a nice instrumental version of "I Remember You," music by Victor Schertzinger and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, used as background in a scene. "I Don't Want to Walk Without You, Baby," with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Frank Loesser, is sung by an uncredited Lillian Randolph in a dive while Jeff glowers and downs a couple of scotches.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cut the chat and get to the action, 16 May 2009
"The Glass Key" and "This Gun for Hire" were both made in 1942, at the start of the Film Noir movement; previously only Fritz Lang had really visited this territory in "Fury" and "You Only Live Twice" at the end of the 30s. "This Gun for Hire" pretty much introduced Alan Ladd and made him a star. On his upward trajectory, here he has third billing after Brian Donlevy and Veronica Lake, but carries most of the action.
The plot is well summarised by another reviewer, so I won't go over it again. I think it is worth pointing out what makes it disappointing compared with later Noirs. First there are the stars. Both of them are - well, the only word is "odd". Ladd built his reputation on hardness, but it's a soft face, high forehead, receding hairline, weak chin. He tries to put Hard into his eyes but he's no Richard Widmark. So we're left with his smile, which he creates by self-consciously lifting his upper lip above his upper teeth. It's not a pretty sight, but it seems also artificial, a little boy acting tough.
As for Lake, her face is extraordinary. It comes straight out of medieval painting, or a Modigliani. The person she reminds me most of is Edith Sitwell, with her swanlike neck and pure Plantagenet bloodline. But beyond the shape of the face, the skin has a stretched quality, as if Lake has already had several facelifts at the age of 23. She is stick-thin, despite generous support in the brassiere area.
Put the two of them together and they look like two grotesque little dolls on the loose in the adult world. Neither of them handles dialogue well, with unnecessary facial signalling and clunking pauses. This makes a dialogue-laden film, with more exposition than action, slow going.
Where the movie does score is in its relationship between the Ladd and Donlevy characters (Ed and Paul), an intense bonding which elicits total loyalty. It ought to be homosexual, but there is little hint of it. But the test of loyalty will become a staple of the moral ambiguities of Film Noir.
When it finally does get going in the action, the filming is well up to snuff. Shot largely in shadow, the sado-masochistic relationship between Ladd and William Bendix as chief Heavy Jeff is chilling and funny in equal turns. Bendix is given a rare chance to be more than the comedy tough, and he does the psycho very well indeed. Here the sexuality is explicit to a surprising extent. Jeff calls Ed darling so many times, and at one point refers to him as "pretty-boy". "Meet the swellest guy I ever skinned a knuckle on," he says, draping his arm over Ed's shoulder. The beating he hands Ed is pretty horrifying for the time, and the pulped face of Mr Ladd is not a pretty sight.
Noir is essentially a post-war movement because it depends on a mood of disillusionment, when the ideals which motiviated troops are beginning to look pretty tarnished. Here the theme is corruption in politics, not something which played well in 1942 when Our Boys needed to know that the home front was right behind them. For this reason the central character, Paul (Brian Donlevy), is softened and made into a charming bad politician who isn't really bad. It makes for a less challenging movie, less harsh and less effective.
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1 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
5 stars never, 28 Dec 2007
I'm sorry but I have to disagree with the only other reviewer of this film.
To me its what was known in the U.K. many years ago as a "B" film, yes your right Ladd wasn't much of an actor but then come to that neither was Lake they both seemed wooden and why film going audiences considered Lake a star I don't know she wasn't even good looking!The only decent actor in it was Bendix maybe because he had an easy part to play a "psycho".I just kept waiting for him to say "its that monkey music".The film itself well two guys have a thing for each other one the boss the other the hit guy ,they also have a thing for a woman (Lake) who plays both along,lots of corruption as I suppose was common in those days in America. A few fights a bit of torture which in reality would have killed a real person or at least knocked his teeth out! (but then this is Hollywood) "bad/good" guy triumphs in the end and Lad gets Lake with his friends blessing all the "nasty" people are arrested or killed end of film..the whole thing is as wooden as the stage sets ..if you really want film noire get hold of some Robert Mitchum classics with lines like "your like a leaf you blow from gutter to gutter" at least they give you something to remember.Oh one last thing why on earth did the studios think that they could hide the fact that Lad was
a shorty ? in this film the manner of his walk gives it away, he walks like a woman wearing high heeled shoes...
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