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Wednesday, September 2, 2020

THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (1947)

Trim detective yarn suffers from high expectations it can’t meet since the trim detective at hand is Philip Marlowe and the story Raymond Chandler’s THE HIGH WINDOW.*  But taken on its own, this John Brahm programmer is smooth & striking as George Montgomery’s youngish Marlowe (sounding like Clark Gable) wisecracks thru a case when widowed matron Florence Bates calls him in to retrieve a rare coin (the doubloon) gone missing from her collection.  She claims to know who took it, but won’t tell.  Just bring it back.  Suspects include Conrad Janis’s disrespectful son; personal secretary Nancy Guild (working a Gene Tierney meets Veronica Lake act); and a mob loan shark, a coin dealer, a newsreel cameraman, plus various cops working a step and a half behind Marlowe.  Stumbling over murder victims, Marlowe barely has time to get beat up in this one; instead, every other character pulls a gun on him . . . earning a laugh each time.  And what impeccable technique Brahm brings to the zippy, easy-to-read action sequences.  Textbook worthy stuff even if cinematographer Lloyd Ahearn can’t match the noir textures Lucien Ballard & Joseph LaShelle gave Brahm in HANGOVER SQUARE/’45 and THE LODGER/’44.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Filmed before, as TIME TO KILL/’42, last of the Lloyd Nolan MICHAEL SHAYNE P.I. programmers (not seen here).  OR: For more Brahm, HANGOVER SQUARE with Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders & Bernard Herrmann's piano concerto climax.

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