I Walk Alone
Bootleggers on the lam Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub. 14 years later, Frankie is released from the clink and visits Noll with the intention of collecting his half of the nightclub's profits. But Noll, who has no intention of being so equitable, uses his ex-girlfriend Kay to divert Frankie from his intended goal.
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- Cast:
- Burt Lancaster , Lizabeth Scott , Kirk Douglas , Wendell Corey , Kristine Miller , George Rigaud , Marc Lawrence
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Reviews
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott continue to make a great couple, as they found each other in "Desert Fury". but here it is more sinister in black and white, and there is Kirk Douglas as an even fouler gangster than John Hodiak. Mary Astor is missing here and replaced by a more cynical and less motherly Kristine Miller, who didn't leave a mark on the screen. On the other hand, Wendell Corey is even better here than in "Desert Rage" and makes one of his finest appearances as the hopelessly subjugated slave worker with all his integrity lost. The great scene in the film is his scene, when Kirk forces him to lecture Burt on bureaucracy leading up to the crisis of Burt's own character and integrity assassination. Fortunately there is still Lizabeth Scott, and she upholds the entire picture, not only by her singing. As a singer she was worse than Ida Lupino.It's neither Burt's nor Kirk's best film, but both are excellent as former gangsters trying to resettle after the second world war, Burt after 14 years in prison and Kirk firmly established as a syndicate mobster. It just can't end well when the two meet again after 14 years when one let the other down.It was probably his performance here that gave Wendell Corey his only significant lead in a noir a few years later, ("The File on Thelma jordan",) but he was best as a supporting actor and will be remembered best as such - while both Burt and Kirk never stopped rising as stars.
If you think you've seen this one before you have. I Walk Alone takes the plot premise of Warner Brothers Angels With Dirty Faces and refines it quite a bit with far more character development than James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart were allowed to do with their characters in that other film.This was the first co-starring film of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in the salad days as Paramount contract players. Of course they would do better collaborative films in the future, but I Walk Alone was a pretty good way to start the team identification. Lancaster is an old time prohibition bootlegger who has just finished a fourteen year stretch in prison. Like Cagney he took the fall and like Cagney he wants his share of the business just like he left off.But in the intervening years which also included the Great Depression and World War II, Kirk Douglas in the Bogart part no longer runs a cheap speakeasy. He's the proprietor of a successful Stork Club like nightclub with Lizabeth Scott singing there nightly. He's got Scott on the side, but he's also putting the moves on society mover and shaker Kristine Miller. There's no place in his set up for an old time Twenties hood like Lancaster.Lancaster doesn't take the hint easily until he's left beaten and unconscious in an alley. After that he's framed for Wendell Corey's murder who ran the books then and now for Douglas. The film really belongs to Kirk Douglas. He does a variation on the part he did Out Of The Past, a rather elegant and fastidious man, whom you don't have to scratch too hard or too deep to see the menace come out. Blended of course with the Bogart role in Angels With Dirty Face in which quite more depth is given. Kirk just thinks he's the smartest guy around and everyone else is dumb, that's his downfall.I Walk Alone is a nice noir thriller from Paramount and the beginning of the partnership of Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas of whom columnist Hedda Hopper labeled the Terrible Twins.
I Walk Alone (1948)Wow, this should have been great. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas alone make a great combination. Throw in Lizabeth Scott, who practically owns the archetype of a film noir leading woman (which isn't to say she's the best at it, for sure). But there are two huge problems. The script, the story, is just too thin and old hat to matter--a club owner, an ex-con, a torch song singer, and some old scores to settle. Could have been a contender, maybe. Looming larger is something you don't always see so clearly--bad direction. It shows in a lot of ways, the biggest being great actors (all three) who are at their worst. It's really a shock, if you like these people. Even the photography varies, sometimes dramatic (there are some great sets, for sure) and sometimes static and functional.Now, it's not a disaster. And there is an interesting angle to the movie that echoes the movies more than real life. There is an attempt to revive the old Prohibition gangster feel. In fact, they work a time warp into the story by having Lancaster play bootlegger who was jailed in the early 1930s, and just got out in 1947. So he still has the old gangster mentality. Douglas avoided jail and for fourteen years has been semi-legit. The clash of eras ends up being the real height of the movie. Even the clash of desires (both men want the compliant singer, Scott) isn't enough to lift those scenes.
"I Walk Alone" is a wonderful example of film-noir cinematography. The high contrast, stark lighting, and interesting angles of film-noir are used very artistically and tastefully without ever calling undue attention to itself. Unfortunately, the movie goes downhill from there. As one would expect, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster manage to be somewhat entertaining, but they are greatly hampered by a lackluster and painfully predictable script, perfunctory direction, and a leading lady who isn't capable of creating the type of tension and chemistry which her role requires.