Wow! Such a good movie.

i must have seen a different film!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When con-artist John Garfield is released from Army hospital, he is eager to see his old girl Faye Emerson again, as well as the $50K he left in her care. But she found a new guy, a nightclub owner she also works for as a singer, and she made some bad investments with the money. Garfield smells something fishy and beats the money out of the nightclub owner. With his pal George Tobias he heads to LA. They find Garfield's old mentor Walter Brennan there, as well as another group of con-artists led by George Coulouris. Coulouris found a new mark, rich widow Geraldine Fitzgerald, and begrudgingly needs Garfield to work on her. Garfield pretends to be a wealthy businessman and befriends Fitzgerald. Soon Fitzgerald falls for Garfield, but he falls for her as well. Garfield wants out, and tries to pay off Coulouris and his gang. But they won't let their fat fish off the hook that easily.A noir melodrama with a by-the-numbers story by W.R. Burnett ('The Asphalt Jungle'), but the excellent cast and crew elevates the movie. Garfield ('Body And Soul') is great as always and has great chemistry with Fitzgerald ('The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry'), who is excellent, bringing a lot of depth to her character. But the rest of the cast is great as well, altho Emerson ('The Mask Of Dimitrios') is underused, but does give off a nice femme fatale vibe every second she's on the screen. Coulouris ('Citizen Kane') is as oily and sleazy as can be expected, and Brennan ('Bad Day At Black Rock') does well in a stereotypical 'father' role.Director Jean Negulesco ('The Mask Of Dimitrios') and DoP Arthur Edeson ('The Maltese Falcon') keep this movie interesting throughout, by offsetting the light and opulent surroundings of Fitzgerald's life with the dingy, dark and claustrophobic rooms that Coulouris and his crew live in, with top con-artist Garfield effortlessly navigating between both lifestyles. The movie ends with a fog-filled climax in a small harbor, which is beautifully shot and quite thrilling, but then ends in a bit of a redemptive whimper/cop-out. That and the story which lacks any real surprises or twists, are the only 2 flaws in an otherwise good movie. 8/10

I have an aversion to gangster films. However, every once in a while one comes along that I can get into. This is one such film.Perhaps it's because for many years I avoided John Garfield films, but recently became somewhat interested in his acting. Additionally, this film has one of my favorite character actors in a major role -- Walter Brennan.The story here doesn't start out very promising -- another con artist story. And, of course, in the long range, the bad guy (Garfield) goes straight due to love. It's done very well. So what's the problem that keeps the film alive? The other bad guys who aren't going to let Garfield get away with getting out of the swindle.This movie stands above many gangster films due to some very good acting. John Garfield is excellent, and the plot requires him to tread a thin line between being a con artist, but also a good hearted man; he does it masterfully. Geraldine Fitzgerald is very good as the mark; she handles being a sensitive and fragile woman well. Walter Brennan is superb as a down-on-his-luck old con artist with a heart; a fine performance. George Coulouris is satisfactorily creepy as the ultimate bad guy in the story. George Tobias has a bigger role than usual, and handles it well. Richard Gaines plays his character well.It's difficult to find much to complain about here. It's a well constructed noir tale. Recommended.

***SPOILERS*** Originally offered to Humphrey Bogart who turned it down for the part of private eye Philip Marlow in the overly plotted and almost impossible to follow "The Big Snooze" no one could have done a better acting job portraying con artist Nick Blake as the ruggedly handsome as well as sensitive John Garfield; who was also some 15 years younger then Bogart. Nick who just came back from the war in Europe finds that his 50 G's he left with his girlfriend Toni Blackburn, Faye Emerson, was gone due to bad investments on Toni's part. It's now Toni's boyfriend grease ball Chet King, Robert Shayne, who runs the New York City night club that Nick controlled before he was drafter into the US Army. Using a little friendly persuasion, like threatening to brake his skull, Nick gets his 50's G's back and heads west with his friend Al Doyle, George Tobias, for greener and sunnier pastures in far off, from NYC, California. It's there that Nick plans to practice his craft in romancing and then conning elderly widows and end up taking them for a ride together with their deceased husbands money.It's when Nick set his sight on young & pretty recently widowed Gladys Halvorsen, Geraldine Fitzgerald, that he starts to get second thoughts about ripping her off of her's dead husbands 2 million dollars that he left to her.This doesn't go well with Nick's fellow con man Doc Ganson,George Coulouris, who never like Nick in the first place and resented Nick getting 75% of the take: Gladys' two million! What soon happens in that Nick falls in love with Gladys and decides to back out of the con and buy off Doc and his boys , from out of his own pocket, with the money that he promised them. This causes Doc to do things, like he alway likes to, his own way by kidnapping Gladys and holding her hostage until she get's Nick to pay Doc and his boys off with her, and well as his, money.***SPOILERS*** The great John Garfield was never better as Nick Blake a man with both fists of stone as well as a heart of gold which almost ends up costing his as well as Galdys' lives. with the help of Al and old friend and con artist Pop Granson, Walter Brennan, Nick goes all out to rescue Gladys. That soon ends up with a wild shootout at Doc's hideout with both Doc and Pop getting gunned down in the crossfire. As for the surviving Nick he finally saw the light and went legit and now together with Gladys put his life of crime behind him.P.S Check out Richard Erdman as the bellboy at the hotel that Gladys was staying at who's surprisingly, now, almost 70 years after the movie was made, is still around with us! Erdman was later to play the role of US POW Huffy the guy in charge of the German POW camp "Stalag 17" in the Academy Award winning film of the same name.

Many films from the mid-forties deal with men struggling to readjust to their civilian lives after their wartime service. NOBODY LIVES FOREVER offers a twist: the hero's pre-war career was as a successful con artist. He doesn't have any trouble getting his job back, but does he still want it? World War II is a source of anxiety and moral confusion in many postwar noirs, but this film (set during the war) suggests that a stint with Uncle Sam can straighten out a crooked guy.In contrast to the convoluted plots so common in noir, this is a simple story. Just out of the army, Nick Blake (John Garfield) returns to New York to find his girlfriend has given the money he left in her keeping to another man. After clearing up that little business, he takes off for Los Angeles, where he is talked into fleecing a rich widow, Gladys Halvorson (Geraldine Fitzgerald.) Guess what? He falls for her and wants out, but has to deal with his vengeful accomplices. The plot is unoriginal but also foolproof, and the film's leisurely pace and rich characterizations are the primary appeal, evoking a raffish, Runyonesque world. Leading the troupe of colorful character actors is George Tobias as Blake's sidekick Al Doyle, who doesn't do much except tag along for the ride, cracking wise in thick New Yorkese and complaining bitterly when he realizes Nick has "gone overboard for this tomato." Walter Brennan is Pop Gruber, Nick's boyhood mentor in crime, now down on his luck and scraping a living with a telescope, selling "the moon and stars for a dime" and picking the pockets of his drunken customers. Then there's cadaverous, sinister George Colouris as Doc, a has-been con man consumed by jealousy of Nick. Even the smallest characters—from an ex-jockey bellboy to the counterman in an all-night diner who can't stand to hear the words "java" or "pal"—add flavor; they're a great bunch of "cheap, hungry chiselers." Richard Gaines (Jean Arthur's fiancé, Mr. Pendergast, in THE MORE THE MERRIER) is also amusing as Manning, the widow's business manager, whose only interest in life is golf. Only Faye Emerson, as the nightclub singer who betrayed Nick while he was overseas and keeps turning up for vague plot purposes, misfires; she sings well, but she's a little too bony, toothy and disgruntled for a femme fatale.When someone suggests that after his sabbatical in the army Nick might not be up to conning the widow, he snaps scornfully, "For me that would be like turning over in bed." The same is true for Garfield playing this morally-conflicted-tough-guy role—but he never lets you feel he's just going through the motions. His performance is split between his "Jewish Jimmy Cagney" persona, spitting out lines like, "Come up with a rod and I'll make you eat it," and his sexy romancer mode. When he turns on the charm, his mark starts to melt like a snowman under a sun lamp. (I can sympathize, being a pushover for Garfield myself.) Geraldine Fitzgerald is lovely and gracious, with a frail, childlike innocence guaranteed to soften the toughest guy.There are some scenes in smoky back-rooms, and a terrific show-down on a misty oil rig, but this noir is really about as dark as chocolate ice cream. It's full of low-key charm, often stemming from the culture clash between the mugs and the ritzy world they invade. Nick belies his pose as a sophisticate by making paper airplanes out of his program during a concert of classical music. ("Don't you adore Bach?" Manning asks, and Al, awoken from a deep slumber, replies, "Bock? Yeah, cold, with a nice big head on it.") Nick is also uncomfortable leading Gladys through a rumba ("A man looks sort of silly doing this") and looks like a fish out of water when she takes him to the mission of San Juan Capistrano. As was the case with Garfield (the former Julie Garfinkle) in Hollywood, it's precisely Nick's streetwise grit and bad-boy charm that win over the classy dame.NOBODY LIVES FOREVER was the last film at Warner Brothers for both Garfield and Fitzgerald, who were equally thrilled to escape the studio. Garfield went on to form an independent company that produced his finest films, including BODY AND SOUL and FORCE OF EVIL. He and many others had good reason to resent the studio's relentless pigeonholing and the poor material they were sometimes forced to accept; but this farewell film is a reminder of what the factory system had going for it: a reliable output of supremely watchable movies. With its witty script, easy craftsmanship and excellent cast, NOBODY LIVES FOREVER is a prime example of how good an average, formulaic studio product could be during Hollywood's "golden age." It's a shame that, like so much of Garfield's output, this film is so hard to find.