Cry of the City!
Yeah – we all know it’s ‘GIVE ME A MEGA BONUS – I TURNED UP FOR WORK AND DID MY JOB A BIT AND I DON’T PAY TAX COS IT’S FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE AND …’ but there was a time when there was honour amongst thieves! Robert Siodmak’s fast-paced crime thriller, starring Richard Conte, Victor Mature, Shelley Winters gets an airing as part of the BFI’s two month season of his work.
This classic 1948 film is a variation on the theme of a hoodlum (Conte) and a cop (Mature) who knew one another as kids. It opens with the former seriously wounded in hospital but determined to escape the police watching over him; he needs to clear the name of his fiancée, who’s suspected of a jewel robbery. Conte, all insolent, menacing charm, and Mature invests the detective’s pursuit with unsettling hints of obsession, the movie fields a glorious gallery of shady figures, from a lawyer oozing corruption to a memorably sadistic masseuse.
Perhaps nothing’s changed.
Cry of the CIty opens on 17 April 2015 at BFI Southbank, IFI Dublin and selected cinemas UK-wide