Wonderful Movie

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

I rather like the director, Allan Dwan, because he was a no-nonsense guy who was in the movie business from the beginning. Nothing pretentious or arty. Yet this movie sucks. It should open with some guy dressed in rags, tinkling a bell, chanting "B Feature." There's no sign of imagination and the story -- from James M. Cain -- is pedestrian. But then everything is dull, from the score to the photography.Arlene Dahl is the bad girl. We know it at once because the camera cuts from a sign ("Woman's Prison") to Dahl being picked up at the gate by her equally red-haired and devoted sister, Rhonda Fleming. Arlene Dahl and Rhonda Fleming. Two aces.Dahl, without being the least angry, blames Fleming for not having enough money to get her out of jail for theft. Fleming is happy and solicitous. When they reach Fleming's home -- she's a secretary to a mayoral candidate in Bay City -- Dahl heads at once for the booze while the morally upright Fleming refuses a drink in the most polite manner.You ought to see Fleming's house. She's a secretary but she lives in a grand estate that looks like it might have been an apartment set aside for Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas. Every set looks just as opulent and tasteless. It doesn't matter whether it's a rich guy's house or somebody's office. It's as if they changed the shape of the room but just shifted the accouterments from one set to the next. Except for a few minutes the whole movie is shot on a sound stage.Dwan shows no interest in the production. It's all functional and lapses into cliché at every opportunity. If Dahl wants to admire herself in the mirror, she looks into the mirror at an angle, so that she's not really seeing herself, only the camera lens.There's a good guy and a bad guy. One of them (Ted de Corsia) is named Solly Kaspar. The other (Payne) is named Ben Grace. Guess which is the good guy and which is the bad guy.The plot has the ambitious Payne taking over the politically influential gang of de Corsia. There is a conflict. The two red heads are dispensable, and both of them have about as much talent as you'd find in a community college play somewhere in Cranford, New Jersey. It's not just the actresses though; it's the roles as written. Fleming has unbelievable devotion to her unbalanced sister. Yes, the heart has its reasons that the mind will never know, but the reasons are stupid.Watch it if you like, but it's not as carefully done as, say, any early episode of "Law & Order."

Anyone remotely interested in cinematography and art direction should see this. John Alton, chiefly famous for his work in black and white, here switches to livid colour and achieves some of the most daring and moody effects ever known in colour films. This was a decade before 'flashing' the film became popular (a technique developed by Freddie Young, who told me all about it at the time he began the trend, with Lumet's 'Deadly Affair'). Everything here is so vivid, and the games played with colour in choice of sofas, walls, carpets, not to mention hair, are so intense, that the film is really chiefly of interest for all of that. Alton had to work only with variations in lighting, not with film processing possibilities. What he did is incredibly audacious, worth watching over and over just to study it. He has whole figures in shadow, and faces often are eclipsed by darkness in a bright room. It is really an incredibly dazzling display of virtuosity and genius. The two lead gals have matching hair, which plays well on the sets. Rhonda Fleming was a notorious strawberry blonde, and although I seem to recall that Arlene Dahl was really a normal blonde and presumably had her hair died to match Fleming's for this film, here they are very like the sisters they play indeed, with matching peachy hair and bright blue eyes. It is all a symphony of light and dark and colour combinations, like a modernist painting. The story is tepid, diluted from a James Cain novel about city corruption and crime. Arlene Dahl is not very convincing as a kleptomaniac siren who is supposed to be deeply psychologically disturbed (that part only comes out at the end, though we know about the thefts from the beginning, as the film begins with her coming out of prison). Rhonda Fleming swings her hefty bust around with confidence, and glares with her blue eyes at people as she challenges them, which with her fiery nature she does a lot. Into this mix comes a very seedy character played by John Payne, who by this time was really getting a little too old for such roles, nice fellow though he was. However, a sufficiently noirish tale ensues which is worth watching, though it is not a proper film noir, but merely has certain elements of that left, as the mid-1950s were asserting themselves, and people were getting more interested in Debbie Reynolds and Doris Day, and the War was a fading memory, and even the Korean War was passé by this time. Yes, things were changing, people were getting cheerier and more bourgeois by the minute, and gloom was no longer so popular, or must be relegated to horror films instead. Time to lighten up! So this is an interesting historical curiosity, a lingering shadow cast over the smiling face of a complacent Middle America which was just settling down to a nice long afternoon nap which would last until the sixties.

I tried to make this short but there is a lot to be said about this very interesting tail-of-the-cycle noirish yarn. It may seem that I discount this film as nothing more than an conceptual experiment gone awry. The use of color photography is so far misplaced it actually folds back onto the film like some Einsteinien cosmic quilt and provides a surrealism that in some ways compliments the noir attitude. However interesting that may be, it really is about as far as the overly saturated color gets in terms of complimenting the overall film. I have made some effort to find out if Alton actually felt that Slightly Scarlet should have been filmed in color or not and have found nothing readily available that says either way. I'm inclined to fantasize that in pre-production sessions there were gun blazing arguments about how the color would enhance or distract from the effect of the story and I can only imagine that Alton must have been virtually unarmed.My first comment that this is noirish, not film noir, is not solely because of the color but because the film lacks too many of the classical tenets of film noir to be considered anything more than an urban crime drama. Only with respect to the Ben Grace character and his seemingly chameleon ability to go with the flow does it provide the moral ambiguity that is inherent in all films noir. Make no mistake, he is a very nasty fellow. All other character moralities are easily discerned as good-guy bad-guy; that includes Dorothy who is what she is because of a psychological illness and not because of decisive moral indiscretion.There are some terrific noir moments while watching Solly and his henchmen strong-arm their way into city government which leaves no doubt that these guys are gonna burn in hell. But that is not enough for me to toss the accolade of film noir. The narrative, while very watchable and with enough twists to keep interest high, does not allow fate to intervene as it does so fluidly in films like Out of the Past and Double Indemnity. Don't misunderstand, if your looking to watch a film noir and you have seen all the heralded classics, this is not a waste of your time. It is a notable film and deserves far more recognition than it gets. I give it 4 outta 5 stars.Of course a theatrical screening at the Egyptian in Hollywood would be the preferred venue but on DVD we have full control of the color guns on our video sets. Fortunately with the DVD we can have our cake and eat it too. I strongly suggest that you view this film at least twice before you make any decisions about its quality. Watch it in its intended colorscape then watch again in B&W. First in point, it is one of only a handful of films by Alton that is available on DVD in anamorphic wide screen. That alone is important and contributes to the overall luscious appearance of this DVD release. Secondly, after viewing the film in its – yes – very garish color, you can enjoy an almost entirely different film by turning the color off on your set and reviewing simply for the classic Altonesque photography. You will be amazed at the contrast in the overall feeling of the film. Not just because it is B&W but more so because of the mise en scene and deep focus that makes film noir so interesting. So as to film noir or not film noir, that is a consideration I'll leave to individual viewers and their own interpretations. I doubt it will be argued by anyone that the cinematography by Alton - when viewed in B&W - is anything but glorious noir at its zenith and well worth the time spent to view twice.

"You're not good; you're not bad. You're a chiseler, out for anything you can get."So, says Solly Kaspar, crime boss of Bay City, of Ben Grace, the anti-hero of this story, adapted from James M. Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit. What holds our interest in this story is we're never quite sure what to make of Grace.There's an upcoming election and crime boss Kasper does not want the reform candidate to win, so Kasper strongarms the newspaper publisher backing him, and in the process kills him.Grace exposes Kasper, forcing Solly to flee to Mexico, and insuring the election of Frank Jansen, the reform candidate. He uses his influence with Jansen to get an honest police lieutenant friend of his appointed Chief of Police.Good guy, right?Then later in this movie he's seen giving orders to Solly's men, going over Solly's books, and positioning himself as Solly's successor. He calls his friend,the chief of police, and demands that his girlfriend's sister who was recently arrested be released without being charged, and so we begin to believe we've misjudged ol' Ben. He's just a hood, a little brighter than most, a little smoother than most, but in the end, no different from Solly Kasper.Bad guy, right?Well, we're not sure, because Grace isn't sure. Reform mayoral candidate, soon to be mayor, Frank Jansen has an assistant, June Lyons. On a 1 to 10 scale, Ms. Lyons, with her flaming red hair, and blazing headlights (think Good Girl art) is an 11. Rhonda Fleming never looked better, and Arlene Dahl as her sister, Dorothy Lyons, was equally stunning. But, back to Grace. He is falling for June, and June is a thoroughly decent girl, whose better nature seems to affect him.In the end, however, Grace's schemes come to naught. Jansen who really is a reform candidate orders Dorothy be tried for her crimes. Solly Kasper returns wanting to take over as rackets boss, and Ben Grace is forced to run. Here's where we see his true character, when he scrounges as much of Solly's money as he can and invites his girlfriend to go on the run with him (she declines).Solly Kasper was right all along. He really is just a chiseler, out for whatever he can get. Major disappointment, as in the end, Ben Grace disappoints not just his girlfriend, but the audience as well.This is a beautifully photographed movie in full technicolor. The sets are a wonderful amalgam of art deco - rococo excess. Others here have pointed out how garish everything looked. I didn't find it so. I thought it was beautiful. Certainly, the eye candy was stunning. There aren't any two actresses today who could team as good girl - bad girl siblings the way Fleming and Dahl did. Maybe Julianne Moore and Debra Messing, but they wouldn't look as good. The movie's high marks for visual style are undermined by its low marks for aimless, meandering story. 6 out of 10.