Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

An ex-pilot finds his wife being unfaithful to him when he returns from war, and not soon after is accused of having killed her. There are some great moments in this film, that I still vividly remember: The arrival of the hoodwinked husband at his "welcome" party. The scenes of his brain-injured combat buddy and obviously one or two images of Veronica Lake. The end was a bit of a let-down, feeling a bit staged and contrived. I also got confused by the fact that the police guy suddenly became "in charge of it all" - it sort of became a Poirot shtick. In essence, the ending is completely useless. I do prefer Gun for Hire to this one, although it wasn't bad or boring. Maybe the Ladd's character was just a bit more poignantly interpreted - here he is just a tad too much of a good guy, although I could easily take to his cause.

 A contract killer meets a beautiful girl on his futile attempt to outrun the law. Obviously, there's a lot more story to the movie than can be written in one short line. Although the movie gets great reviews, I didn't manage to find a way into the story. But it had all the hallmarks - an anti-hero, Veronica Lake, and it's downwards from the first shot on. I felt that there were too many accidents (sitting next to each other on the train, etc) which made the story quite fantasy-like. A bit more straight drama would have been nice. The most interesting part is Alan Ladd's lead. His portrayal of the killer is quite multi-layered. Maybe the script tried to help him just a bit too much, by having him "save the cat" and "spare the kid". Anyway, he's a bad man with a good heart - and I am actually not quite sure if that was responsible for his downfall. The story to me felt more like the grinding of the cosmic cogs, and by the way crushing the ma...

A rich director tries to research the life of the poor by unsuccessfully living as a tramp. I could feel that this movie is following some kind of blueprint for romantic comedy, or maybe, invented it for itself. The plot is quite predictable and the twists are silly to say the least. Most of it seems to work due to the absolutely amazing screen presence of Lake. There are some interesting playful attempts at nudity - the shower scene for example must have given the censors a headache and make Sturges grin diabolically.