Framed (1947)

Excellent but underrated film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"Framed." A great title. Plus there is Glenn Ford, who brought so much torque to the role of heedless avenger in "The Big Heat." Then there is the plot, involving embezzlement, attempted poisoning, drunkenness, betrayal, murder, and playing doctor.The narrative is really too twisted to go into in any detail but the general idea is that Barry Sullivan is a banker who pretends to lend the grizzled old prospector, of which there is no other kind, a quarter of a million dollars, then steal the money himself, murder the old prospector, and frame the innocent mining engineer, Glenn Ford, for the crime. After that, Sullivan and his girl friend, Janice Carter, will take the loot and leave town. I hope I got that right.Sadly, although it looks like a neat noir thriller, it's just an ordinary, rather slapdash story of greed and treachery.Example of "slapdash." There's a scene towards the end in which Janice Carter realizes that Ford suspects her of the murder of which she is, in fact, guilty. She offers to make him some coffee. Alone in the kitchen, she reaches for a bottle of poison in the spice rack. Now, this bottle deserves some attention. It's not labeled "rat poison" or "weed killer." It's just labeled in bold black letters "POISON", as it would be in a Laurel and Hardy short. Add to it that the bottle is simply tucked in among the sugar and condiments -- probably alphabetized, just after "paprika" and just before "rue." She dumps some in his cup of coffee. Anyone who imagined how, say, Hitchcock would have handled this scene must have wept.Ford does little to help the narrative along. He's sullen and intense throughout, though capable of a much better display of skills. Janice Carter may have been a genuinely nice lady in real life -- kind to children and small animals. And she was a singer too. But her every expression, each utterance, each movement, are variations on the theme of perfidy. She telegraphs what she's thinking, and she does it with the subtlety of a traffic light. This is "worried." Now I'm "plotting." Here is "lying." Edgar Buchanan gives what is, for him, an animated performance. He's good natured and trusting, but dignified and practical too. He's a delight in a solemn movie like this.

***SPOILERS*** It was a desperate looking for a job and out of work mining engineer Mike Lambert's, Glenn Ford, great misfortune in being spotted at a local bar by blond sexy waitress Paula Craig, Janie Carter, as he was gulping down his troubles. Paula together with her boyfriend bank vice president Steve Price, Barry Sullivan, have been planning to embezzle the bank that Steven works in for $250,000.00 and all they needed was a fall-guy or pasty to make their plan complete. And it was the luckless Mike Lambert who fit the bill perfectly.Lambert for his part gets somewhat lucky by later landing a job with local silver prospector Jeff Cunningham, Edger Buchanan, who's struck a mother load of the white and shiny stuff and needs an experience's mining engineer to help him work it off. At an estimated yield of some 140 ounces of silver per ton that would make both Cunningham & Lambert ,who's been offered not only a job but 10% of the profits, very rich. The big problem in all that is that it would screw up the plans that both Janis & Steven have for Lambert as being a fall-guy in their plan in that his disappearance would not go unnoticed! With a nobody and friendless Lambert disappearing off the face of the earth which the two's sinister plan calls for!With Steven's bank the only bank in town it's easy for him to deny the never deflating or being late in a payment on a loan Cunningham a loan to buy his mining equipment. With Lambert's job with Cunningham no longer there it makes it easier for Janis & Steven to get him into position to take the fall in the robbery that they both planned. The fall would be in Lambert getting killed in a car crash with Lambert drunk and behind the wheel and burnt to a crisps where he'll be suspected to be Steven Price the guy who robbed his own bank!****SPOILERS*** It when Janis falls in love with the person that both she and Steven are setting up that things start to unravel for the both of them. That's with Steven the person who's supposed to be killed in a car crash ending up unknowingly taking Lambert's place. That while a dead drunk and out of it Lambert when he finally sobered up thinking that he in fact killed him! What's even worse is that Lambert's friend Cunningham is the person framed in Price's murder when it's discovered by the police that his car accident was no accident at all! It's now up to Lambert to pick up all the pieces in this bizarre puzzle and put them together to get to the bottom to who was behind Steven Prices murder. Not realizing that it's the person closes to him Paula Craig who in fact did him in. And even worse had Cunningham a totally innocent man not only take the rap for his murder but possibly end up paying for it with his very life.It was Lambert's going out of his way to save Cunningham from being framed by Janis that turned the tables on her without him even knowing it. Being the one slated to be murdered by Janis & Steven Lambert in a way felt responsibly to get those who attempted to murder him to face justice. The fact that he survived due to Janis falling in love with him made it also possible for Lambert to prevent his friend Cunningham from taking the fall for Janis' crime that both she and her now dead partner in crime Steven Price unknowingly,by rejecting him a loan and getting Cunningham all heated up and threatening, framed him for.

Janis Carter boasted a largely undistinguished filmography from the 1940s but she deserved (as so many of her female peers from this era did) better parts and greater exposure. As the scheming and duplicitous Paula Craig, she personifies the cool blonde bombshell (while her line readings are a wee bit stilted, her body language is instinctive and sensational). She's the spider into whose web drifts Glenn Ford, an out-of-work mining engineer with a bit of an alcohol problem who's looking for a break. Meanwhile, Carter's on the lookout for her embezzling boyfriend's lookalike, to furnish a warm body to provide a charred corpse. This is James M. Cain territory, and, though we've been through it with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray and with Lana Turner and John Garfield, this effort by Carter and Ford deserves more prominence; its writing, direction and cinematography are all well above average. One unique moment: a banner head in the local newspaper lets us know that one of the characters has been charged with murder, but just below it, in the mock-up, is the smaller headline "Meteorite lands near baby." I think they made that movie, too, about 10 years later.

This little film, made by Columbia Studios, is very enjoyable!! All about a woman who is greedy and wants to get hold of a quarter of a million dollars and plans to rob a bank with the bank president himself, but then something goes awry and well........ you will just have to watch this great B-movie to find out the rest, but I assure you that it is a film that is very good!! Nice work by Glenn Ford and Janis Carter. This film is a bit like "Double Indemnity", only with a twist ending, and a lower budget. Oh, to have this released on DVD--I would be so happy. I just love these old black and white film noir type films from the 1940's and 1950's.