How sad is this?

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Ex-army John Garfield returns to his home town of New York to pick up with his girlfriend Faye Emerson (Toni) and the $50,000 he left with her to look after. Uh-oh, she's no longer his girlfriend and tells him that she's blown his money away in a poor nightclub business venture. She seems to be doing alright now, though, with her new partner nightclub owner Robert Shayne (Chet). Garfield wants his $50K back and negotiates this in his own way before heading to LA with buddy George Tobias (Al). It is here that he is persuaded by a gang headed by George Coulouris (Doc) to get involved in a scam to marry wealthy widower Geraldine Fitzgerald (Gladys) and fleece her of $2 million and share the spoils. He only goes and actually falls in love with her – scuppering all plans and putting himself in danger.The film starts well enough but tails off and becomes boring, especially towards the end. There is not really any suspense or anything particularly that stands out towards the end of the film and everything ends predictably. Far more should have been made of the Faye Emerson character and Garfield doesn't cut it as a tough guy. He's small in stature and would get a hammering in a fight between himself and any other cast member so it's quite an unconvincing portrayal due to a casting misfire. He is no hard man. He's more like a pipsqueak in the Elisha Cook Jr mold.The film is OK but what is of more interest is Faye Emerson's character of Toni Blackburn. Who would have thought that years later she would get a sex-change and actually change her name to Tony Blackburn and become a British DJ on Radio One.

I have an aversion to gangster films. However, every once in a while one comes along that I can get into. This is one such film.Perhaps it's because for many years I avoided John Garfield films, but recently became somewhat interested in his acting. Additionally, this film has one of my favorite character actors in a major role -- Walter Brennan.The story here doesn't start out very promising -- another con artist story. And, of course, in the long range, the bad guy (Garfield) goes straight due to love. It's done very well. So what's the problem that keeps the film alive? The other bad guys who aren't going to let Garfield get away with getting out of the swindle.This movie stands above many gangster films due to some very good acting. John Garfield is excellent, and the plot requires him to tread a thin line between being a con artist, but also a good hearted man; he does it masterfully. Geraldine Fitzgerald is very good as the mark; she handles being a sensitive and fragile woman well. Walter Brennan is superb as a down-on-his-luck old con artist with a heart; a fine performance. George Coulouris is satisfactorily creepy as the ultimate bad guy in the story. George Tobias has a bigger role than usual, and handles it well. Richard Gaines plays his character well.It's difficult to find much to complain about here. It's a well constructed noir tale. Recommended.

Nobody Lives Forever (1946)This is a quirky but good film. If technically a film noir in tone and structure, it largely lacks the darkness of intention in any of the main characters. Part of this comes from the casting—John Garfield is just too sweet a guy to pull off a devious, malicious scammer, and Walter Brennan as the sidekick couldn't appear evil if he tried.There are some classic noir elements which make the movie fun, like a nightclub (and nightclub owner), a femme fatale (played with restraint by Faye Emerson), and a host of thugs who are convincing (this is Warner Bros. after all). The main plot is a kind of crime romance, where Garfield, an ex-con man playing a returning soldier, has half an intention to go straight but then gets roped into one last big scam. The victim is a rich young widow, and as Garfield goes after his mark he naturally falls in love. The people backing Garfield have a stake in his success and they don't like what's going on—he could just marry the widow and they'd be left in the cold.So there is a turning of who is against who in the scenario. And this matters, but a lot of the first half of the movie is about the growing romance between the two leads. And it doesn't quite take off. I suppose it was important to make this widow a straight up type, a "good" woman," but casting Geraldine Fitzgerald made sure the chemistry would be restrained. You do want these two very nice people to make it, but it's not spiked with anxiety enough, or dreamy highs enough, to make you quite get swept away.Where it gets interesting is when the thugs get in the way. The plot takes some terrific twists, and there are some some terrific atmospheric scenes at a pier in the second half of the movie, with large pumps running and the mist rolling by at night. People's better natures are revealed. A tragedy for one man becomes a lesson for our leading couple.Director Jean Negulesco, though not as well known as a dozen of his contemporaries, made a series of strong, highly dramatic movies after the war that are often worth watching just for their moods. Here he uses legendary cinematographer Arthur Edeson ("Casablanca," "Frankenstein") to make this mood memorable and visually stunning. Throw in the usual high standards of Hollywood, and Warner Bros., at the time and you have a lot of why this movie, whatever its flaws, is still completely absorbing. Well worth watching.

Of all the Hollywood writers now associated with classic film noir --among them James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler & Dashell Hammett— the least known and perhaps least appreciated is W.R. Burnett who was responsible for the story and often the screenplay of a number of film crime classics, among them the films Scarface, Little Caesar, High Sierra and Asphalt Jungle. Burnett's dialog is as sharp and tough as the others, and he often displays a finer insight and even greater sympathy for the criminal mind than the others whose stories feature and sometimes romanticize the hard-boiled detective. This excellently directed and photographed film tells the story of a charming con-man, perfectly played by John Garfield, who falls for the widow he is trying to cheat. The petty crooks who people his world played by a superb cast of character actors (George Coulouris, Walter Brennan, George Tobias) are all clearly drawn and don't resemble the usual cliché gang members of other films. Burnett obviously knew this world better than his colleagues.