Click on the headline to link
to a Wikipedia entry for the B-film noir Desperate.
DVD Review
Desperate, starring Steve
Brodie, Audrey Long, Raymond Burr, directed by Anthony Mann, RKO Radio
Pictures, 1947
A guy, just an average, maybe
getting a few breaks here, a few knock arounds there guy, a guy who knew a few
things, knew a few guys, tough guys in the old broken down neighborhood, faded
since its glory days around 1910, but kept his own nose clean. Like I said,
just an average guy, an average guy who did his time overseas during the war
(World War II in case anybody is asking), grabbed a few medals, saw a few
things, saw a few more things that maybe he didn’t want to, or shouldn’t have seen
but kept his mouth shut just like when he saw things in the old neighborhood. A
guy trying to catch a break, maybe make a couple of bucks, have a couple of
kids and call it a day. An ordinary average guy, got it.
Then his world caved in.
Caved in big time, and not just his, but being an average guy, having done his
average guy duty overseas, he came home and got married, married to a swell
girl, sweet, pretty if not beautiful, and if pretty, also pretty naïve about
big city ways, and tough neighborhoods, when guys keep quiet about stuff,
unless and until they can square the thing themselves. And our guy, our average
guy has plenty to square. Starting with, well, starting with him trying to put
a couple of nickels together in the trucking industry in order to get that
white picket fence and the house that comes with it in order to shelter that
pretty wife and those future kids. So he takes a certain job see, a certain job
that comes with some unexpected baggage, some old neighborhood baggage, from
one of those wild boys who didn’t grow up to be just an average guy, but a
tough guy. A tough guy who needed to move some stolen goods fast, via a truck,
with no questions asked and no snitches.
Our guy, our guy to a tee. But see the
thing went wrong, went wrong from the start because Mr. Tough Guy has a younger
brother with the itch for the easy life. Naturally younger brother got things all
balled up, got it as balled up as thing can get balled, and a cop dies. And
when cops die extra heat, lots of extra heat gets turned on. So that is one
problem our average guy is going to have since the cops will shoot first and
sort the rest, the innocent or guilty part, later. The other problem is that
our tough guy is very, very fond of that younger brother of his, a younger
brother who is in the hands of the police and is set to step off , step off on
the big one for that cop killing. So tough guy is ready to move might and main
to get his brother free, including pointing fingers at our average guy. Our
average guy, let’s face it, is nothing but a candidate for the frame anyway you
cut it.
You could see with that
set-up where a square average guy might get a little desperate, especially since
he has no one to turn to except that pretty wife in order to make things right.
So they flee, flee as far as they can to some Podunk farm where pretty wife,
pregnant pretty wife as it turned out to complicate things for a guy trying to
square things, grew up. Things got a little tense, a little tight for a while
since our tough guy had this real thing about his brother and when that became
a lost cause his tough guy thing said our average guy had to take the fall in
revenge. And he did, almost, except, well except guys, even average guys, in
film noirs are not stepping off for things that they didn’t do and so once
again Mr. Tough Guy learns the noir lesson the hard way- crime doesn’t pay. And
our average guy? Last we heard he was heading to sunny California as part of
that great Okie/Arkie land giving out migration (no, not the Joad’s 1930s from
hunger one, but the restless westward pioneer trek that produced those
alienated hot- rodders, easy riders, and perfect wave surfers and their girls
after World War II) looking for that white picket fence and the great blue-pink
Western night.
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