Raoul Walsh

  • Raoul Walsh – High Sierra (1941)

    1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsDramaFilm NoirRaoul WalshUSA

    Roy ‘Mad Dog’ Earle is broken out of prison by an old associate who wants him to help with an upcoming robbery. When the robbery goes wrong and a man is shot and killed Earle is forced to go on the run, and with the police and an angry press hot on his tail he eventually takes refuge among the peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, where a tense siege ensues. But will the Police make him regret the attachments he formed with two women during the brief planning of the robbery.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – The Man I Love (1947)

    1941-1950DramaFilm NoirRaoul WalshUSA

    Quote:
    Tough torch singer Petey Brown, visiting her family, finds a nest of troubles: her sister, brother, and the neighbor’s wife are involved in various ways with shady nightclub owner Nicky Toresca. Sexy Petey has what it takes to handle Nicky, but then she meets San Thomas, formerly great jazz pianist now on the skids, and falls for him hard.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)

    1941-1950ComedyCultRaoul WalshScrewball ComedyUSA

    Synopsis by Hal Erickson
    Though Jack Benny made a cottage industry out of joking about the purported rottenness of his 1945 vehicle Horn Blows at Midnght, the film is in fact a delightful comedy-fantasy-certainly not Benny’s best film, but far from his worst. While dozing off during a radio broadcast, studio musician Athaniel (Benny) dreams he’s a trumpet player in Heaven’s celestial orchestra. At the behest of glamorous angel Elizabeth (Alexis Smith), Athaniel is brought into the lavish chambers of The Chief (Guy Kibbee), who has a job for our hapless hero. Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – The World in His Arms (1952)

    1951-1960AdventureClassicsRaoul WalshUSA

    Synopsis:
    Frustrated by illegal competition from Russians in the seal fur trade, Capt. Jonathan Clark (Gregory Peck) struggles to raise funds to purchase Alaska from Russia. Another competitor, unscrupulous trader Portugee (Anthony Quinn), is hired to transport Russian Countess Mariana Selanova (Ann Blyth) to marry the callous Prince Semyon (Carl Esmond). After Jonathan falls in love with Mariana, he squares off against Portugee, the prince and the Russians to rescue her and restore the trading business.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – The Yellow Ticket (1931)

    1931-1940ClassicsDramaRaoul WalshUSA

    Marya, a Russian Jewish girl (Elissa Landi) is forced into a life of prostitution in Czarist Russia – a scandal to the naïve muckraking British journalist (Laurence Olivier). They both eventually find their lives endangered when she reveals to him tales of social crimes rampant in her country. The lecherous Baron (Lionel Barrymore), popping pills for “extra potency,” is also head of the secret police, and he is determined to seperate them.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Big Brown Eyes (1936)

    1931-1940ComedyMysteryRaoul WalshUSA

    Synopsis:
    Dan Barr is a flatfoot on the trail of jewel robbers. Eve Fallon is his girl of 5 years. We meet them spitting and sparring, but never doubting they’re in love. Eve is a manicurist, with an eye for news. Soon after we meet her, she’s out of the beauty salon and into the news-room as an ace reporter. With Eve’s help, Dan nabs one of the jewel gang members, Cortig, whose stray bullet killed a baby in the park. A spooked witness and a slick lawyer get Cortig off. Disgusted with the lack of justice, Dan quits the force to find his own justice. Eve, likewise, quits the paper and returns to her job as manicurist. While giving a manicure, Eve unwittingly discovers that a prominent local citizen is the jewel gang’s leader. All the while, Dan is hot on the trail. Their trails merge and the case is solved.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Pursued (1947)

    1941-1950Raoul WalshThrillerUSAWestern

    Synopsis:
    After his family is murdered in the 1880s, orphan Jeb Rand is raised by the Callum family on their nearby horse ranch. He remains haunted by this childhood trauma in a recurring nightmare of flashing spurs and confinement inside a trap door as his family is slaughtered. Widow Callum does her best to make Jeb feel loved as he is growing up, but the young man stubbornly maintains a sense of his own identity. While he has great affection for his foster-sister Thor, his relationship with her brother Adam is tenuous at best, especially when Jeb blames him for shooting a colt that he was riding.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Under Pressure (1935)

    1931-1940ActionDramaRaoul WalshUSA

    Two members of a crew of “sandhogs”, men who work on an underwater tunnel project, battle each other over the same woman and a rival team of sandhogs to see who will finish their half of the tunnel first, with the winning team getting more money and guaranteed future work.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Regeneration (1915)

    1911-1920CrimeRaoul WalshSilentUSA

    Raoul Walsh had just come off The Birth of a Nation both as one of Griffith’s assistant directors and as an actor (most prominently as John Wilkes Booth), when he made this film. In his autobiography, Walsh credits Griffith with “teaching” him not only about much of the art of fiction filmmaking, but also about production management technics that aided him in taking full advantage of many of New York City’s most pictorial exterior locations. The locations play an important role in adding to the naturalism of an otherwise highly melodramatic plot with the high society young woman turned heroine social worker (much overplayed by a major star of the 1910s, Anna Q Nilsson) and the regeneration of the one-time Lower Manhatan gang leader. The wonder of this film is the performance of the male “star”, Rockliffe Fellowes, who played in over a dozen nearly unremembered films until he died in 1950. His performance is so subtly varied and electrically alive that one is reminded of Brando in his early 1950s films.Read More »

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