William Dieterle - Dark City (1950)

Danny (Charlton Heston) and his pals Augie (Jack Webb), Soldier (Henry Morgan), and Barney (Ed Begley Sr.) set up a poker game to take Arthur Winant (Don DeFore) for all his money, but after the fact they discover that the money he lost wasn't really his and, in desperation, Arthur killed himself. Arthur's brother Sidney (Mike Mazurki), a large man not known for his emotional stability, becomes enraged when he learns the facts about Arthur's death, and he vows to kill the men responsible. When his friends start dropping like flies, Danny hides out with his girlfriend, nightclub singer Fran Garland (Lizabeth Scott), and pays a visit to Arthur's widow Victoria (Viveca Lindfors) in hopes of finding out who the killer might be.






Dark City, a pretty decent 1950 film noir, is fairly enjoyable, at times excellent, and might have been a minor classic had the dreadul romantic sequences, plus songs, not pulled it down a couple of notches. Charlton Heston is a gambler who, with his friends Ed Begley and Jack Webb, play hardball poker with a hapless out of towner who signs over a check that doesn't belong to him to the gamblers and shortly thereafter hangs himself.

Problem: the dead man's brother is a psycho who decides to track down the card sharks and kill them one by one. Heston is good though not wildly convincing as as the youngest and shrewdest of the gamblers, Lizabeth Scott is as enigmatic, mannish and unappealing as usual, and Viveca Lindfors is fine as the dead guy's widow, with whom Heston (inevitably) falls in love.

The film was directed by William Dieterle, whose career was in inexplicable decline at this time, and he does a yeoman job. Reasonably well-paced and none too imaginative, the film gives good value for the dollar and ends satisfactorily. It's not too atmospheric,the photography is adequate and no more.

Dark City is a decent example of a late studio film noir; it has neither the moody, murky, artificial qualities of the forties noirs nor the comparative realism and occasional outlandishness of the fifties noirs. As such, it is an interesting, transitional film. (IMDB comment)







Ciudad en sombras
La primera película de Charlton Heston en Hollywood también es un interesante relato negro, ayudado por las sombras callejeras y ese inhóspito ambiente en que viven aquellos que bordean el delito. Charlton (con cara de niño) lidera un grupo de estafadores que despluman a un hombre de negocios (Don DeFore), que se sume en la desesperación y se ahorca. Ahí es donde toma partido el hermano psicótico del fallecido (Mike Mazurki), que inicia un raid para cazar y asesinar a los cuatro jugadores (Jack Webb, Ed Begley y Harry Morgan). Para completar el cuadro aparece la novia del protagonista (Lizabeth Scott) que es cantante de cabaret.





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