Confidence Girl

Andrew L. Stone's Confidence Girl is an above average B crime film about a team of bunco artists. This 1952 flick is a tight and compact 81 minutes with nary a rhetorical flourish or flashy camera movement. Stone, ably assisted by his editor wife Virginia, was able to churn out B features that he also wrote and produced for nearly forty years. His hallmark was documentary like verisimilitude utilizing actual locations. If you want to see what the May Department store on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles looked like in 1952 then Confidence Girl is the place to start. The police procedural aspect of Confidence Girl reminded me of Dragnet which had premiered on radio in 1949. In fact, Stone's pictures closely resemble the just the facts directorial style of Jack Webb. A cheap, but direct style with which to create cinema. Tellingly, Confidence Girl begins with a speech from the real life LA chief of police, warning the audience to be wary of scammers, flim-flam artists, and swindlers.

Happily, the audience soon is ensconced in the machinations of the film's miscreants. Roger Kingsley (Tom Conway) and Mary Webb (Hillary Brooke), along with a couple of confederates, are lifelong fraudsters, adept at all sorts of chicanery. We witness them pilfer an expensive mink coat from May's and fleece a pawn broker. Kingsley keeps the couple one step ahead of the law by posting as a private detective. He feeds the police just enough info to earn their trust, but not enough for him and Mary to end up in the clink. His access to the police comes in handy when Mary embarks on a career as a medium, packing them in at a nightclub. The reveal as to how Mary appears clairvoyant is the cleverest bit in the script. Eventually, Roger and Mary's scam is intertwined with a murder case. Do the nefarious duo reform in the final reel in order to prevent a tragedy? You betcha, but the flick is enjoyable in its predictability. 

Tom Conway was best known as being the older brother of George Saunders. Conway had similar talents as his brother and a similarly limited range. Thus, he is well cast here as a cad. Conway had a pretty good career, all things considered, with memorable roles in a number of classic Val Lewton films and appearing as the Falcon in a successful serial. Hillary Brooks did not have as stellar a career, but, like Conway, was an effective performer within a narrow range. She is better displaying the hard bitten aspects of her character than her vulnerable side. She is best when mesmerizing an audience as a medium. Somebody connected with Confidence Girl must have remembered her superb turn in a similar role in Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear. John Gallaudet and Jack Kruschen, well remembered by the surviving remnants of my generation who were glued to the boob tube, offer wonderful support as a pair of clueless, yet dogged flatfoots. The MVP of the picture is cinematographer William H. Clothier. His elegant compositions give depth to the minimal production values on display while adhering to the demands of Stone's realism. Clothier would graduate to A films and work with practically every American Western director before retiring in 1973. His most eye-popping work, in which he was required of much more than on Confidence Girl, includes Track of the Cat, The Comancheros, Merrill's Marauders, and Donovan's Reef. 

Desperate Journey

                        
Raoul Walsh's Desperate Journey is a World War 2 flick that is more exciting and entertaining than it has any right to be. The film was hastily concocted and is part Allied war propaganda, part Errol Flynn vehicle, and part celebration of raucous male camaraderie à la Walsh. Arthur T. Horman was credited as the author of the screenplay, but many hands were involved in the makeshift script that bumped Gentleman Jim from production so Warners Brothers could show they were supporting the war effort. Second billed Ronald Reagan received his call for active duty as production commenced, so his rushed scenes added to the chaos surrounding the picture. 

Desperate Journey was shot in early 1942 before the tide of the war turned in favor of the Allies. Thus, there were precious few American victories to celebrate. Warners solved this problem by setting the film before America's entrance. The plot hinges upon a dangerous mission undertaken by an RAF bomber which is crewed by a bizarrely international lot. The Brits on board are all sacrificial lambs. Alan Hale Sr. is one of them and serves as the film's comic relief, spitting seeds on friends and foes alike. Flynn is an Australian co-pilot, Arthur Kennedy plays a Canadian navigator, and Reagan is a Yankee bombardier. I'm sure British audiences found this odd, but Hollywood was stressing the international effort needed to defeat the Axis foes, as in the next year's Sahara. 

Desperate Journey opens with a near silent prologue in which a Resistance fighter blows up a train crossroads. He is shot, but not before releasing a carrier pigeon which flies to England and gets the plot rolling. Walsh dollies in on the bird just as it takes flight. An apropos gambit in a film concerned with flight, movement, and pursuit. We then move from the pigeon's den to the cooped up pilots awaiting their mission. Stellar cinematographer Bert Glennon shoots the picture as if it were a noir, the Europe of the film consumed by darkness. Rudi Fehr's superb editing gives the illusion of verisimilitude to this set bound action film, mixing studio and newsreel footage. Flynn and crew's plane crashes after finishing their mission. Thereafter, they must cross Germany with monocled Nazi Raymond Massey the chief hellhound on their trail. Most of the actors playing Germans, including Massey, actually speak German in the picture, a rarity among Hollywood war pictures. 

Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, and Arthur Kennedy

Desperate Journey would be a rather dour picture without the bantering bonhomie of the players, a Walsh specialty. The three leads above play along well with the real surprise being the flippant charm of Mr. Reagan. This is his best performance along with his apposite turn in Don Siegel's The Killers. Flynn was a little jealous of the attention the younger star was receiving and tried to wrest a key comic turn from his co-star, but the producer was adamant and Reagan got to spew amusing gibberish at the expense of Mr. Massey. In that same scene, Reagan looks longingly at Massey's lunch, a shot echoed by the one of Tom Hanks gazing at a roast beef sandwich in Saving Private Ryan. Nancy Coleman is the sole skirt in the picture, a requisite noble Resistance supporter. She is fine, but only gets a kiss on the hand from Flynn for her efforts. 

Max Steiner's score suffers from his typical bombast. I cringed at the use of God Save the King, Deutschlandied, and The British Grenadiers Song. I did appreciate Steiner's use of harps in the picture's first major death scene. Massey is under used. He is merely on hand to sneer at the scion of the "decadent democracies." The film boasts stellar production values. I wondered if the flyers were hiding in the castle from Robin Hood at one point. The depiction of military weaponry and communications are fairly accurate amidst much japery. Desperate Journey is no masterpiece, unlike Gentleman Jim, but it has surprising craft and personality for a piece of wartime proselytism.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin

Pavel Talankin and David Borenstein's Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a remarkably brave and revealing documentary. Mr. Talankin worked as an event coordinator and videographer at a large school in the Russian town of Karabash. Karabash is a burg of 10,000 nestled in the Ural Mountains and dominated by an enormous copper smelting plant. Talankin recognizes the limitations of his hometown, but displays an undying affection for its humble landmarks and inhabitants. His aged mother also works at his school as a much put upon librarian. The film chronicles two years in the life of Pavel and his students beginning with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Not only do we witness the inhabitants of Karabash reacting to the conflict, but we see how the Russian government shapes the propaganda fed into the minds of its students. Not only must teachers recite state approved scripts extolling the war, but Talankin has to record this being done and then relay the recordings to the central authorities. He feels that he has become a cog in Putin's war machine and becomes increasingly uneasy. As the war progresses, the school becomes increasingly militaristic, a proving ground for future cannon fodder. Talankin was lucky enough to receive assistance from a Western producer and fled Russia in 2024 along with his film. One cannot forget those left behind, including his mother, who are caught in the maw of a rough and heinous beast. 

Yet, Talankin does not demean those who support the war. He lets them speak for themselves. In particular, a party toady on the faculty who is rewarded by Moscow for his loyalty. When Talankin asks the man who his heroes are, the man cites the most violent and vile of Stalin's henchmen. Talankin's own mother takes an extremely fatalistic view of the situation. Men fight wars she says resignedly and who can refute her. Mr. Nobody Against Putin is as an expert portrait of a totalitarian nation at war and the manifold complexities of its populace. It is a must see. Just this March, the Russian Ministry of Justice named Talankin a foreign agent. This designation of Talankin as a traitor is a capital crime that carries with it a sentence of death.