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Thursday, August 1, 2019

DEADLINE - U.S.A. (1952)

Issues & characters as Black & White as printer’s ink in this seriously square newspaper meller from writer/director Richard Brooks. Humphrey Bogart, unusually gaunt even for him*, is the hard-charging managing editor of THE DAY, a courageous no-frills broadsheet racing the clock to take down Martin Gabel’s vicious, politically connected Mob King before the paper is sold by its heirs, closed for good. Writing, investigating, speechifying, Bogie is a whirling journalistic dervish, but still taking time to woo drifting ex-wife Kim Hunter before she marries a nice Butter-and-Egg man. Some decent character turns in here, and fun behind-the-scenes/at-the-presses insider detail. (The nickname for every edition slipped in for our delectation.) Back in the ‘30s, this would have been handled with a pacey, stylized treatment, but Brooks’ 1950s sensibility is far too realistic to support the well worn tropes, plot twists and last minute escapes. It's like watching a show runner’s Power-Point presentation of ‘the bible’ for a tv series on a big city newspaper.

DOUBLE-BILL: How stale & safe this looks next to the feisty, up-to-the-minute journalistic voice of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS/’57 (Tony Curtis/Burt Lancaster - Mackendrick/Odets/Lehman).

CONTEST: *Like Kate Hepburn in PAT AND MIKE/’52, Bogart’s first film after they made THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’51 shows them both looking almost painfully thin. EVERYONE got sick on that shoot. And there’s another link between these first films after that African adventure, spot it to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

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