Robert Siodmak

Quote:
Phantom Lady (1944) is one of the high points of ’40s film noir, the title alone evoking a potent mythology of this era. At the center of its narrative is the seemingly hopeless search for the title character who potentially serves as the only reliable witness in the murder trial for Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis), falsely accused of killing his wife. But the search is frustrated by Henderson’s inability to remember any details about the woman outside of a flamboyant hat she wore during the night they spent together, an unlikely memory lapse that only intensifies his apparent guilt. Furthermore, no one else who saw Henderson and the woman together will admit to the police that they had seen her.Read More »

Plot Synopsis
from IMDB
The film opens with Karl Schroeder (Don Murray), chauffeur to an East German Major, seeing a friend killed as he tried to drive his truck through the wall, He is persuaded by the friend’s sister, Erika Jurgens (Christine Kaufmann), and his own family to engineer an attempt to make an escape to the Western sector of the city by digging a tunnel under the wall which is close to their home…
Based on a true story.Read More »

The son of a wealthy Maine shipping magnate causes a crisis in the family when he announces that he wants a career in music rather than in the family business.Read More »

When 11 young Parisian women mysteriously disappear, the police recruit Adrienne Charpentier, the friend of the latest victim, to investigate. The only thing which seems to link the disappearances is that each of the victims replied to a small ad in the newspapers. In answering a number of ads herself, Adrienne meets some suspicious individuals, but they all turn out to be innocent. Then she meets a cabaret performer, Robert Fleury, who instantly falls in love with her. Soon after marrying Fleury, she discovers damning evidence that inculpates him as the murderer of the missing women…Read More »

Steven Soderbergh mixes Siodmak’s 1946 and Siegel’s 1964 The Killers
with wide selection of musical numbers “when presented with the challenge of delivering
some audio/visual material for a series of events organized in LA “Read More »

It starts straight away with our young hero trying to shoot a bullet into his head. No explanation whatsoever is given as to his motives – moviegoers in the Germany of 1931 obviously did not need any. He is disturbed by a burglar and puts a contract on himself, so to speak. The burglar tells him that he will hit him in the near future and dutifully makes a cross on his back with a piece of chalk – not unlike the ‚M’ in Fritz Lang’s movie of the same year. With the cross on his back the young hero goes to a nightclub – and falls in love with a young girl. Of course he tries to rescind from the contract and desperately looks for the burglar, only to learn that he had passed on the job to a subcontractor! Not just any subcontractor, but the very same Jim, the man with the scar, as he solemnly declares.Read More »

IMDB:
Two journalists from different papers are looking for the same story. They want to know, who a group of gangsters getting young women from Europe to South America, where they are forced to work in brothels. But the gangsters have their own battels against each over, so the journalists can escape the danger, in which they’ve brought themselves.Read More »

An American gangster sent back to his home country falls in love with a widowed countess.

Letterboxd review
★★★½ Watched by Reza Said 04 Sep 2021

Deported (Robert Siodmak, 1950) 7/10

Atmospheric B-movie is very loosely based on events in the life of Lucky Luciano. An Italian-American gangster (Jeff Chandler) is deported to Italy after spending five years in jail for a robbery in New York. The tough, cynical man finds that the local people in his village look up to him, the street urchins love him and the local Countess (Märta Torén), a widow, is enamoured of him and likes his company. A local cop (Claude Dauphin) is suspicious and lies await for the crook to get the stolen loot across from America. Siodmak, back in Europe after many years in Hollywood, creates an interesting little film which also turns out to be an Italian travelogue with scenes shot by the great William Daniels in Naples, Siena and Tuscany. There is great chemistry between Chandler and Märta Torén while lovely Marina Berti adds to the local colour.Read More »

The Tsar Alexandre II meets a young student, Katia. He understands that he loves her and try to send her away but they end up seeing each other again and becomes his mistress. With the help of Katia, Alexandre prepares a liberal constitution, but these reforms make him hostile to the more privileged subjects without satirising the revolutionaries against the regime.Read More »