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DVD The Narrow Margin
This gem of a B-picture from RKO is the kind of trim, beautifully paced movie people have in mind when asking, "Why don't they make 'em like that anymore?" Two cops have to guard a gangster's widow against assassination as she rides the Golden West Limited sleeper train from Chicago to give evidence in L.A. Soon there's only one cop (gravel-voiced Charles McGraw, usually cast as a villain), and he's finding the sharp-tongued widow (Marie Windsor in excelsis) as obnoxious as she is endangered. Nothing goes quite as you'd expect in this exemplary train thriller, which rattles and rocks toward its destination without a music track or a wasted moment. The bad guys include a most distinctive, elegantly garbed hitman (Gordon Gebert); a soft-spoken, "Be reasonable, Sergeant" negotiator (the vulpine Peter Brocco); and possibly the fat man (Paul Maxey) who keeps blocking up the train corridor at just the wrong time. Detour writer Martin Goldsmith worked on the story, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and George E. Diskant's black-and-white cinematography is as sharp as the work he was doing for Nicholas Ray around the same time. Director Richard Fleischer went on to bigger things--but he never made a better movie. --Richard T. Jameson
This is a very fine film noir that is also the highlight of Marie Windsor's career. I want to carefully avoid giving away any of the nifty plot twists but want to emphasize Ms Windor's extraordinary ability to take one from feeling repulsion to respect and empathy (and sometimes back again in a single scene!)Her femme fatale is the only film noir character that can compare to Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity for portraying at once ruthlessness, strength, cunning, and sex. Highly recommended. Grab this immaculate transfer. Repeated viewing guaranteed.
The Narrow Margin
A "B" movie that scores a solid "A". Lean, sharp little thriller packs more thrills and suspense than movies with ten times the budget. Some of the dialogue and delivery go over-the-top, but this only adds to the film's vinegary flavor . The real winner is the story, which holds enough surprises to keep discerning viewers on point throughout. Film noir devotees should pounce on this, and the full set it comes from: Film Noir Classics Collection- Vol. 2.
The Narrow Margin
Two Los Angeles detectives travel to Chicago to escort the wife of a mob boss back to LA to testify against her husband. One of the detectives is played by Charles McGraw, Det. Sgt. Walter Brown, and Mrs. Frankie Neil is played by Marie Windsor. Although neither are very well remembered today, both were great character actors and extremely prolific b-movie stars. According to William Friedkin's admiring commentary track the lovely, dark haired and doe eyed Windsor was a Vargas model and a former Miss Utah. The internet clarifies the history a bit. In an on-line interview the late Ms. Windsor explains that her home state didn't have a Miss Utah, but she was a Miss Covered Wagon Days in 1939, which was about as close the Mormon State got to such a thing. In any event Windsor's combination of authority and raven-haired beauty suits her edged character well. Friedkin describes McGraw as `the most hard-boiled of the tough guys.' With a face that looked like it was chiseled from a solid block of sandstone, augmented with a deep, growling snarl of a voice that sounded as if it had been steeped in whiskey and filtered through barbed wire - supplemented by the three packs (at least) of cigarettes McGraw smokes in this 71 minute movie- you'd be hard pressed to argue with Friedkin's assessment. In the interview Windsor remembers McGraw as a sweet and gentle man. Still, even though other b-actors, Lawrence Tierney and Tom Neal, for instance, had real life assault and murder convictions, of the bunch McGraw is the one you least want tailing you when the pavement turns slick and the shadows grow long.
A great cast, and everyone in THE NARROW MARGIN is very good to excellent, can be betrayed by a weak script and/or poor direction. Fortunately, the story is a natural and the direction is top of the line. A valuable witness has to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles on a train infested with ruthless bad guys who'll do just about anything to eliminate her (if they can find her.) Almost all of the movie takes place on the train during its long journey, a hermetic and claustrophobic space with few places to run and fewer yet to hide. The dialogue crackles and Fleischer's direction, in a word, is propulsive. I've cribbed from Friedkin's commentary track a couple of times already. It's not necessarily the best c-track I've ever heard, but it may be the one I'm most in tune with. I had to dust the scales off my eyelids when he noted `they could make movies in seventy-minutes back then because the characters didn't spend all their time analyzing their actions.' Which, of course, is true. When you say a movie like THE NARROW MARGIN is fast paced you're talking about the overall pacing, not the jittery MTV editing style. Movies like TNM build tension through action, not reflection. Friedkin also points out the missing piece that keeps the `very good' TNM from being a classic. I hadn't thought about it, but after he mentioned it I knew he was right. It involves a major plot point, so rather than telling you I'll just recommend the commentary track (after, of course, you've watched the film the first time without commentary.)
Archive interview audio of TNM's director Richard Fleischer is also heard on the c-track. As always, it's a treat to hear the director of old movies speak about them. What he doesn't address are two of the incredible (now) though common (then) facts about THE NARROW MARGIN. Namely that it was made on a $90,000 budget (still under $1 million in today's dollars after adjusting for inflation) and that the picture was shot in either 14 or 21 days (accounts vary.) If Friedkin is right and TNM is not a classic, it's still a wonderful crime thriller, and one that I strongly recommend.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The long-awaited emergence of Nightmare Alley into the light of DVD should achieve two things: make a legendary film noir available to a new generation, and restore the horrific charge to the lately watered-down term geek, a concept that once had the power to give people very bad dreams indeed.
To his lasting credit, Tyrone Power--20th Century Fox's extraordinarily handsome but not terribly interesting star of the '30s and '40s--begged for the chance to play Stan Carlisle, the predatory charmer who snakes his way through this bracingly unwholesome story. A spieler for--and lover of--carnival mind reader Zeena (Joan Blondell), he displays uncanny skill at "reading" the susceptible rubes, including a tough sheriff who turns to jelly after Stan psychs him out. Once Stan's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tyrone Power - Joan Blondell - Coleen Gray Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"What's the use of having a war if you don't learn from it?" The speaker is Alec Stiles (Richard Widmark), a menthol-sniffing asthmatic in a snap-brim hat who's nailed down the organized-crime franchise for a burg named Center City, and who runs it "scientifically," using methods he picked up in uniform during WWII. He can even tap into the databanks of the FBI. Which, by coincidence, is gearing up to bring his mini-crime wave to an end. Street with No Name invites us to sit back and watch both sides deploy their methodologies at each other.
The semidocumentary crimefighting/spybusting thrillers of the late '40s are fascinating for their blend of institutionalized rectitude (the FBI is totally trustworthy and awesomely competent), authentic locations ("filmed where it... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Mark Stevens - Richard Widmark Director(s): William Keighley DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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