This film is populated by the riff-raff, hustlers
and down and out grifters that scriptwriter W.R. Burnett was familiar with
from his time as the night clerk in a low-rent Chicago Runyonesque hotel.
These were the people he knew and wrote about in a number of novels and then
scripts. One of his first books that went big and then was made into a film
was Little Caesar. Characters headed for a bad ending. High Sierra and This
Gun for Hire were a couple other of his film scripts that fit this theme.
Nearly everyone in this film is out for a crooked dollar. A morally murky
world where people are divided into two groups - suckers and those who can
spot them. Nick belongs to the second group. As played by John Garfield he
is smooth, confident and charming. A perfect conman. He makes it all look
so easy and the dialogue from Burnett is so natural that his pitch seems irresistible.
I would have handed my savings over to him.
Nick is just out of the army after spending
a few months in the hospital. His buddy and hanger-on Al (George Tobias) is
waiting for him and ready to get back in the game of swindling people. But
first Nick wants to see his old girlfriend Toni (Faye Emerson) who he left
his dough with. She sings at a nightclub, a swank slender angled Lizabeth
Scott type blonde, with poison running through her veins instead of blood.
Cold like meat in a deep freeze. She has moved on from Nick after spending
his money. This is a woman that you would never want to have behind you. He
gets his money from her sponsor and decides that NYC is no longer his town.
Go west. To Los Angeles but you know Toni is the bad penny in the jar and
it won't be the last we see of her. She must be able to smell money from across
the continent.
In Los Angeles he looks up his old friend
and mentor Pops (Walter Brennan) who has a mark for him. A widow with two
million in the bank with his name on it. Pops was put on to her by Doc (George
Coulouris) and they all want their bite out of the proceeds. Coulouris was
one of the great character actors of his time - hardly noticeable because
he is so legit as his character. He had been part of the Orson Welles Mercury
Theater group. I just came across him in the much later The Blood from the
Mummy's Tomb in a terrific performance as the guy in the mental institution.
Here he is a desperate conman past his prime and resenting every minute of
it. It is a young man's game. At least where women are involved. But Nick
breaks the golden rule of the conman. He falls for his mark (Geraldine Fitzgerald)
and his playmates are not happy. A great little ending on a foggy pier that
director Jean Negulesco drags every bit of suspense out of.
