Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics II (Brothers Rico/Human Desire/City Of Fear/Nightfall/Pushover/Sony DVD Set)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Films: B

 

 

Sony is back with five more of their underseen Film Noir releases in the new Film Noir Classic II DVD set and once again, they have restored (with the help of The Film Foundation) have brought back to fine condition the following hard-hitting films worth rediscovering:

 

Human Desire (1954) is a Noir like the original Narrow Margin (1952, RKO) that involves a train and takes place on one, if not as much as that Richard Fleischer classic.  Another Noir by the great Director Fritz Lang, Glenn Ford plays a train engineer (amusingly with future Petticoat Junction co-star Edgar Buchanan) who falls for the wife (Gloria Grahame) of his boss (Broderick Crawford) and the situation becomes lethal.  Based on the novel La Bęte Humaine by Émile Zola, it is one of Ford’s more interesting films and as interesting as it is engrossing as you start to watch.

 

Pushover (1954) has Fred MacMurray still in his serious actor period meeting up with a sexy woman (Kim Novak in one of her earliest films) whose car has stalled.  She is the girlfriend of one of the men who just made off with a ton of money from a local bank and they start to get involved, no matter the consequences.  Director Richard Quine (Sex & The Single Girl) keeps this one moving, thanks in part to a really good script by Roy Huggins (later the creator of The Fugitive and The Rockford Files) off of the novel by Tom Walsh (Union Station) and Bill S. Ballinger (The Strangler, Kolchak: The Night Stalker) and delivers a really good film.  Besides the chemistry of the leads, we also get Philip Carey, Dorothy Malone and E.G. Marshall, so you can see hwy this gem is here.

 

Brothers Rico (1957) is another winner by the underrated Phil Karlson (see 5 Against The House on the first set) is about three brothers (Richard Conte, James Darren and Paul Picemi) whose lives seem to be in order and with some promise, but oldest brother Eddie (Conte) was involved with mobsters and now they and the life he thought he left behind have returned to bring him down.  Lewis Meltzer (Golden Boy), Ben Perry and an uncredited Dalton Trumbo adapted their screenplay from the book by Georges Simenon (The Train (1973), the Inspector Maigret novels), resulting in an honest, rich, sad film that holds up very well and is also worth rediscovering.

 

Nightfall (1957) is from the great Director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People (1942), Out Of The Past, Night Of The Demon) has Aldo Ray as a man chased by criminals and the law for different reasons and needing to stay away from them.  This works very well with the David Goodis (Dark Passage) novel adapted by the great Stirling Silliphant (In The Heat Of The Night, The Enforcer (1976)) with twists and turns that actually work for a change.  Brian Keith, James Gregory, Jocelyn Brando, Rudy Bond, Frank Albertson and Anne Bancroft in a stunning early film appearance make this highly watchable from start to finish.

 

City Of Fear (1959) actually comes one year after the Noir era ended, but its enough of a Noir to include here, though it is as much of an outright thriller as Vince Edwards plays an escaped convict who is convinced that he has a canister of a valuable illegal drug, but it is actually a radioactive substance that could poison millions.  It may not be as great as Robert Aldrich’s classic Kiss Me Deadly (the 1955 peak of the genre’s original reign), but Director Irving Learner (who did the Columbia Noir Murder By Contract with Edwards the previous year, included on the first volume of this series) once again proves what a strong director he was and there are some fine moments here.  Lyle Talbot, John Archer, Patricia Blair, Steven Ritch and Kathie Browne also star.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on all five films are from restored prints and the DVD format shows this to good effect, but we get many soft shows along with some stunning ones throughout all the films.  Burnett Guffey lensed them all except Pushover (Leslie White) and Fear (Lucien Ballard of The Killing, The Wild Bunch) as Director of Photography.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on all have been cleaned up and sound pretty good for their age throughout, though I wondered if we could hear more in a lossless codec.  Composers for the films include the great Arthur Morton on Pushover, the legendary Jerry Goldsmith on Fear, Daniele Amfitheatrof on Desire and George Duning on the remaining two.

 

Extras include trailers on all five films for each respective release and three featurettes where fans of three of the films talk about them in featurettes on their respective films.  Emily Mortimer talks about Desire in Terror & Desire, Christopher Nolan discusses City Of Fear in Pulp Paranoia and we get the great piece Martin Scorsese on The Brothers Rico.

 

 

You can read more about the previous set at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9204/Columbia+Pictures+Film+Noir+Classics

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo