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Sunday, April 4, 2021

MAN IN THE DARK (1953)

Crummy film noir programmer, rushed thru production @ Columbia Pictures to meet a 3D exhibitors’ deadline.  Too bad workaday director Lew Landers (over 100 films) was already running on fumes as the basic idea has possibilities: career criminal Edmund O’Brien gets paroled for experimental brain surgery, but loses his memory on the operating table and now can’t remember where he stashed the loot from his last robbery.  Worse, his old partners, wanting their cut, kidnap him off the sanatorium grounds and use tough moll Audrey Totter to see if he’s faking to keep all the cash for himself.  Even watching in 2D, there’s some fun spotting the in-your-face 3D moves, but with only 11 days to churn this out, Landers’ staging, sets & lighting are flat as a pancake; the bad guys risible; and comic relief painful.  O’Brien, even beefier than usual, certainly knows the drill for this sort of thing, his classic D.O.A. a paradigm of the form; and, if anything, Audrey Totter even more steeped in noir æsthetic.  But not even a big Amusement Park climax (complete with process shot rollercoaster rides) able to lift this one up.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The same Amusement Park used in the finale of WOMAN ON THE RUN/’50?  A terrific little known noir with Ann Sheridan & Dennis O’Keefe worth the detour.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/woman-on-run-1950.html  OR: As mentioned, D.O.A./’49, O’Brien’s classic noir directed by an inspired Rudolph Maté.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: O’Brien all over the map at this time . . . in a good way:  Ida Lupino indies; JULIUS CAESAR @ M-G-M; anthology tv; Oscar’d for BAREFOOT CONTESSA.

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