Glenn Ford is unusually good here, although he plays the same character as he always did, but here at least he doesn't talk and act too much but is kept more aptly at bay by the expert thriller director Fritz Lang, who once again surprises you by appearing totally new in his ways of getting into people. Gloria Grahame is always good but here better than ever as a helpless victim of her exposed weakness as married to the hoodlum Broderick Crawford, who is here worse than ever, but only as a type, not as a character, because his acting is marvellous, going constantly from bad to worse in one of the most convincing revelations on cinema of a man going piece by piece to perdition.
I was disappointed by the Jean Gabin film on this story, which was downright depressing in spite of Jean Renoir's excellent direction, but this film is not depressing, although the same story but with a more human view of the situation. Glenn Ford is supremely reasonable all the way, he actually tries to help both the hopeless cases of the Buckley couple, and there is nothing wrong with the logics of the alterations here of Emile Zola's story. The Amphiteatrof music is terrific all the way and underlines Lang's fascinating direction and the very sophisticated cinematography. It's a great film on a bad story, Jean Renoir made the bad story even more destructive on film, but here at least you have genuine human feelings, in the despairing eyes of Gloria Grahame, the sharply investigating looks of Glenn Ford, and the exaggerated but marvellously convincing drunkenness, as an illustration of his helplessness, of Broderick Crawford. It's a small story of small people, which Fritz Lang succeeds in turning into a highly impressing film.
I was disappointed by the Jean Gabin film on this story, which was downright depressing in spite of Jean Renoir's excellent direction, but this film is not depressing, although the same story but with a more human view of the situation. Glenn Ford is supremely reasonable all the way, he actually tries to help both the hopeless cases of the Buckley couple, and there is nothing wrong with the logics of the alterations here of Emile Zola's story. The Amphiteatrof music is terrific all the way and underlines Lang's fascinating direction and the very sophisticated cinematography. It's a great film on a bad story, Jean Renoir made the bad story even more destructive on film, but here at least you have genuine human feelings, in the despairing eyes of Gloria Grahame, the sharply investigating looks of Glenn Ford, and the exaggerated but marvellously convincing drunkenness, as an illustration of his helplessness, of Broderick Crawford. It's a small story of small people, which Fritz Lang succeeds in turning into a highly impressing film.