The Crooked Way *** (1949, John Payne, Sonny Tufts, Ellen Drew) – Classic Movie Review 3319

Director Robert Florey’s 1949 film noir melodrama stars John Payne as a decorated amnesiac World War Two war veteran called Eddie Rice, who sustains a head wound in combat and is treated at a San Francisco military hospital for a permanent form of amnesia.

There is no cure but medics advise that if he returns to Los Angeles he could find people who know him and could fill in the blanks. Soon he is recognised, but not as Eddie Rice, instead as missing dangerous gangster Eddie Riccardi. So, having found out that he was a gangster, then he discovers that his old mob is out to put him out of his misery and, in particular, that ruthless crime boss Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts), who was betrayed by Riccardi, is out for revenge.

It is a fairly interesting thriller with the old amnesia film noir plot, stirred nicely into a complex little brew, and greatly elevated by Florey’s imaginative, pacey direction and John Alton’s stylised, eerie camerawork. The war hero losing his memory plot may have been even more familiar at the time as it is similar to that of another, earlier film noir Somewhere in the Night (1946).

Payne, Tufts, Ellen Drew as Nina Martin and Rhys Williams as Lieutenant Joe Williams are effective stars, giving decent, solid performances. But elsewhere some more moderate acting lets down this solid little number with a screenplay by Richard H Landau based on the radio play No Blade Too Sharp by Robert Monroe.

Also in the cast are Percy Helton, John Doucette, Charles Evans, Harry Bronson, Snub Pollard, Greta Garnstedt, Raymond Largay, Hal Baylor, Don Haggerty, Jack Overman, Crane Whitley, John Harmon, Garry Owen, Frank Cady, Lester Dorr, Eddie Foster, Al Hill, Esther Howard, Mike Lally, Barbara Pepper, Frank Richards, Syd Saylor and Charles Sullivan.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3319

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