20th Century Fox's "Violent Saturday"(1955) is exactly the kind of movie they were so good at producing in the forties when they came up with such noir gems as "Cry Of The City", Kiss Of Death", "Where The Sidewalks Ends" etc. and all in glorious Black & White too. But here, it must be said, this 1955 production, elaborately but mistakingly filmed in Cinemascope and DeLuxe colour, never achieves the atmosphere required to maintain a credible noirish look or feel. Besides the garish colour and the totally needless use of Cinemascope its main fault as a movie is the inclusion also of little vignettes of stories concerning individuals of a small town who will become effected in some way by the arrival of three crooks with a plan to rob the local bank. Firstly there is the voyeuristic bank manager (the irritating Tommy Noonan) who has the hots for local nurse (Virginia Leith), is awestruck every time he sees her and gets his jollys from watching her undress through her window at night. There is engineer Richard Egan trying desperately to save his rickety marriage to (the awful) Maggie Hayes who is having an affair with Brad Dexter (who must have been hard up for some work) and there is library employee (the totally forgotten) Silvia Sydney pilfering from her place of work to pay off her mounting debts. These minor subplots, about totally uninteresting people (who are not particularly well written or played either) are quite mundane really and only serve as so much padding until we get to the actual robbery and its fairly exciting aftermath. Deriving from a novel By William L.Heath it was produced for the studio by Buddy Adler and was dryly directed by the estimable Richard Fleischer whose name is usually stamped on much classier efforts than this. The rambling screenplay came from Sidney Boehm and the wasted Cinemascope cinematography was by Charles G. Clarke.
Three crooks (Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J.Carroll Naish) come into the town of Bradenville to rob the bank. After pulling off the heist they force hapless engineer (Victor Mature) to drive them out of town to a prearranged rendezvous at an isolated farm run by an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) his wife and young family. Tied up and blindfolded in the barn Mature manages to undo his bonds, free the family and with the crooked guard's shotgun take on the gang in a well devised and exciting shootout. The acting is just about OK! Mature turns in his usual workmanlike performance (he once famously declared "I'm no actor and I've got a scrapbook at home full of reviews to prove it"). Also reasonably good are the three baddies but Richard Egan is wasted in a nothing role and subsequently it is hard really to empathize with anyone in it who are all by and large uninteresting cardboard characters. Borgnine is about the best in it! In an unusual sympathetic role as a pacifist anti-violence Amish farmer forced to abandon his faith when a member of his family is wounded. Another plus for the film is the fine noirish score provided by the great Hugo Friedhofer. His sweeping music over the credits pointing up the multi-faceted drama that is to follow.
No, not a great picture by any means but perhaps worth a look if only for the final 30 minutes.
Three crooks (Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J.Carroll Naish) come into the town of Bradenville to rob the bank. After pulling off the heist they force hapless engineer (Victor Mature) to drive them out of town to a prearranged rendezvous at an isolated farm run by an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) his wife and young family. Tied up and blindfolded in the barn Mature manages to undo his bonds, free the family and with the crooked guard's shotgun take on the gang in a well devised and exciting shootout. The acting is just about OK! Mature turns in his usual workmanlike performance (he once famously declared "I'm no actor and I've got a scrapbook at home full of reviews to prove it"). Also reasonably good are the three baddies but Richard Egan is wasted in a nothing role and subsequently it is hard really to empathize with anyone in it who are all by and large uninteresting cardboard characters. Borgnine is about the best in it! In an unusual sympathetic role as a pacifist anti-violence Amish farmer forced to abandon his faith when a member of his family is wounded. Another plus for the film is the fine noirish score provided by the great Hugo Friedhofer. His sweeping music over the credits pointing up the multi-faceted drama that is to follow.
No, not a great picture by any means but perhaps worth a look if only for the final 30 minutes.