Cornered (1945)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

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

Dick Powell made his name in silly musicals in the 30s before he under Edward Dmytryk's direction suddenly turned into a hard-boiled cleaner in murky business with plenty of fisticuffs, as in "Murder, My Sweet", the first real noir. He suffered for it even then, but here he gets into constantly double trouble investigating a mess of things that all the time gets more messy and intricate, as he searches for his wife's killer after the war first rowing across to France, making visits to Marseille and Berne and ending up with the final mess in Buenos Aires at the mercy of sophisticated posh people and two very beautiful ladies, while it's impossible even for the audience to guess who, if anyone, isn't a gangster. He gets tremendous use of both his knuckles and his gun, he is after all a military officer with a record of having got shot down a number of times, but he doesn't make things easier for himself by constantly blustering in, picking quarrels, insulting everyone and making himself impossible all over society by a clinical lack of any sense of humour - only once there is a faint shadow of a smile on his lips. Walter Slezak has every right to constantly call him a stupid fool, and every time he is called by that name he adds to deserving it.But it is a very intriguing story, as usual in Edward Dmytryk's films, which makes it worth watching with interest, as you are constantly more bewildered by the confusing intrigue getting all the time more knotted up, and not until the very end it all makes sense after all. The intrigue is thickening until it bursts open with a vengeance, and then at last you can even forgive Dick Powell his irrational clumsiness. He was only married for twenty days, his wife wasn't even beautiful, and it's difficult to understand why he would commit himself with immense pains to a wild goose chase across the world just to get a revenge, which only is explained by his incorrigibly hard and impossible character. It would be interesting to see the final bill for his France-Argentina berserk trip.

I really enjoyed this war-set film noir with avenging angel Dick Powell continent-hopping to track down the shadowy Nazi commander who ordered the killing of his young wife.The plot is a bit labyrinthine and probably peopled with too many characters but director Dymytrk keeps up the tension throughout and genuflects regularly in the direction of film noir with shadowy shots a-plenty, a mysterious woman who may or not be on Powell's side as well as Powell's turn himself as a sort of amateur private eye, getting deeper and deeper out of his depth as he closes in, he thinks, on his prey.Powell doesn't do hangdog like Bogart or style like Grant, but he's deadpan and feisty by turns and does a reasonable job carrying the film from chapter to chapter. I also liked Walter Slezak as a sort of younger version of Sydney Greenstreet, trying to play both ends against each other but coming a cropper by the end as two quite grisly murders are enacted for us.I liked the early location shots in war torn Europe and was otherwise satisfied too, with director Dymytrk doing a good job keeping the plates all spinning and who intelligently treats this terse thriller with a bit more attention to detail than other more slapdash filmmakers.I'll watch almost every noir film I can as it's probably my favourite movie type and consider this effort, if occasionally a touch on the dry side, nevertheless a fine example of this particular genre.

Cornered (1945)"You can't be serious," the cheerful man said to Dick Powell, playing an ex-soldier in post-war Argentina. "I'm always serious," Powell replies. And he is. This defines the actor, and the character, and the doggedness of this character's pursuit of some mystery in the movie. It's impressive and wearing--a little humor might make him more human, yes, and it would also make the move more watchable. The cheerful man is a mystery, too, played with usual irony and crossed agendas by Walter Slezak (seen in a similar role in "Born to Kill").Director Edward Dmytryk is as usual just short of superb. I don't think he has a bad film, but he often worked with compromised material (the story here is an example) or he worked too quickly (my guess) to pull together something extraordinary. But putting it this way is meant to say this movie has lots of aspects that are great.One strength is the section of shots of what looks like genuine war torn France made months after the end of fighting. Another highlight is the film noir style throughout--the lighting, the clipped dialog, the lone man against the world, the brooding depression. Powell is his own kind of attraction. As offputting as his anger can get after awhile, it's exactly what makes him good, bullheaded and bulldozing his way through a complex network of enemies (who would really just kill him in short order if this was a realistic film, which no noir is). The plot is unusually hard to follow (though other noirs come close, like "The Big Heat"). And the antagonists are largely only talked about--Powell is searching for someone, and that person and his collaborators are either unseen or so duplicitous you don't know where he stands, and so the ominousness gets vague, but also beautifully diffuse and omnipresent. It is this oppressiveness that is part of the success here, even as you get lost with the details of the plot. There are some nice night shots (one briefly in the park is ominous) and many facial close ups. There is a terrific conversation on a subway platform with the noise of the cars drowning out the talk now and then, great audio effect. And so the filming is worth the ride alone at times. The music is intense and dramatic, the bit actors really powerful even if they sometimes do foolish things (the valet getting shot, or half of the things Powell does).In the film noir "cycle" this is early--the core films come after WWII, so this, along with "Double Indemnity," is cutting edge in that sense. It's also definitive in its mood. It's not a crime film, not a gangster story (which is where the hard film style has its American roots). It's a plot about how a person tries to rearrange his life after having it messed up, internally and externally, by the war. Powell is a perfect early noir leading male (the other famous one in the 1940s is Bogart). So this is a critically important film, maybe more important than truly enjoyable, but if you like noir it'll be terrific enough to hold you. If you aren't predisposed to like this kind of story, you'll find it meandering and dull and confusing. Me? I'm predisposed to like it, and I did, and I'll even watch it again, probably figuring it out a little more and enjoying it better.

It seems as if Dick Powell is almost forgotten today, which is a shame. A wonderful actor, singer, and incredible producer, he gave Sam Peckinpah and Aaron Spelling their starts, and his "Dick Powell Theatre" on TV was marvelously entertaining. Unfortunately, cancer would take him at the age of 59. But he packed a lot into those years.Transitioning out of the Warner Brothers singing juvenile, Powell made "Murder, My Sweet" with the same director responsible for "Cornered," Edward Dmytryk, who would find himself blacklisted later on. Here, Powell plays a Canadian flyer, Laurence Gerard, who goes to France after the war to find out who is responsible for his wife's death. He learns it is a Vichy collaborator, Marcel Jarnac, now dead himself. Gerard doubts that Jarnac is dead, and his search for Jarnac takes Gerard to Argentina, where many Nazis have settled. Before long, Gerard realizes that he is unable to trust anyone, even those who claim to want to help him.This is a very good movie, which also stars Walter Slezak as a man who sells information, as well as two Broadway stars, Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky. Carnovsky was named as a communist by Elia Kazan but enjoyed a great stage career, dying at the age of 94.Well worth seeing for the good performances, direction, and story.