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Thursday, November 9, 2017

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS (1948)

Worth a look for the title alone. Good thing, too, since this handsome criminal-on-the-run meller doesn’t quite add up; close though, and compelling as you watch. Undersung helmer Norman Foster & lenser Russell Metty are on fire in the opening reel as Burt Lancaster's traumatized war vet (looking youthful & luscious at 35) strikes out & accidentally kills a pub-keeper, then chased thru back-alley London. Breaking into a second-floor flat to hide, he violently 'meets-cute' with Joan Fontaine’s lonely nurse and the two soon bond. But Lancaster’s past comes to call in the form of Robert Newton’s scamming low-life crook who was at the pub that night and now blackmails Burt into stealing hospital drugs to sell on the continent. Pacey & atmospheric, even when the storyline gets a little hard to buy, with exceptionally well run action along with an eye-popping 6-month prison term that includes a cat-o’-nine-tails whipping. (Yikes! A real thing in British prisons at the time?) The film also has a secondary use, or does for film mavens, serving nicely as a guide to the subtle differences between Hollywood post-war film noir and ‘30s predecessor French Poetic Realism, those fatalistic underworld crime dramas that more often than not starred Jean Gabin.* This one leans very much in that direction, or does until a truncated ending when the film writes itself into a corner and can’t get out. Instead, they punt, slap THE END on the screen, call it a day.

DOUBLE-BILL: Norman Foster does even better by Poetic Realism, and from a female perspective, in the superb, recently restored WOMAN ON THE RUN/’50 with Ann Sheridan.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *It's hard to put a finger on the noir/poetic realism divide.  But, to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on hardcore pornography, you know it when you see it.

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