Violent Saturday

This is a dizzyingly silly fifties crime pic, very watchable, with some capable actors in small roles. Some of the behind-the-scenes people have done some fine work elsewhere, notably director Richard Fleischer and screenwriter Sid Boehm. There's a touch of The Asphalt Jungle in the caper aspect, while Victor Mature's businessman-father-who-didn't-serve-in the-war is out of Stanley Kramer or maybe Studio One. Richard Egan tries ever so hard to bring conviction, and does, to his flashy role of a rich boy alcoholic weakling, but doesn't have the chops to pull the part off. (I can imagine someone like Richard Baeshart might have done better, and even got an Oscar nod had been been cast.) The bad guys, a sinister-looking but bland Steve McNally, a menacing Lee Marvin, and a sometimes jovial J. Carrol Naish, do decent work. The small-town that provides the background for the crime is populated by such hick types as Sylvia Sidney and Tommy Noonan. Nothing about this movie is credible. Everything takes place in a Hollywood-manufactured world, not in itself a bad thing except that the picture makes a serious stab at realism, which is a fatal aesthetic flaw, since the story would have worked better on a smaller scale, in black and white, or on a bigger, more artificial one. The slice-of-life character study part of the picture suggests a small-town Executive Suite, while the examination of the hypocrisies and oddities of Middle America evoke the yet-to-be-made Picnic. There's deja vu all over the place in this one, though to the best of my knowledge Ernest Borgnine had never played an Amish farmer before.

The main reason I like this film is that the characters show what real people were like in 1955. It's a little like going back in time to an average american town where one observes various folks in everyday life including a variety of personal problems. Of course, I have always been nostalgic about the 50s as I spent my childhood in that era.

20th Century Fox's "Violent Saturday"(1955) is exactly the kind of movie they were so good at producing in the forties when they came up with such noir gems as "Cry Of The City", Kiss Of Death", "Where The Sidewalks Ends" etc. and all in glorious Black & White too. But here, it must be said, this 1955 production, elaborately but mistakingly filmed in Cinemascope and DeLuxe colour, never achieves the atmosphere required to maintain a credible noirish look or feel. Besides the garish colour and the totally needless use of Cinemascope its main fault as a movie is the inclusion also of little vignettes of stories concerning individuals of a small town who will become effected in some way by the arrival of three crooks with a plan to rob the local bank. Firstly there is the voyeuristic bank manager (the irritating Tommy Noonan) who has the hots for local nurse (Virginia Leith), is awestruck every time he sees her and gets his jollys from watching her undress through her window at night. There is engineer Richard Egan trying desperately to save his rickety marriage to (the awful) Maggie Hayes who is having an affair with Brad Dexter (who must have been hard up for some work) and there is library employee (the totally forgotten) Silvia Sydney pilfering from her place of work to pay off her mounting debts. These minor subplots, about totally uninteresting people (who are not particularly well written or played either) are quite mundane really and only serve as so much padding until we get to the actual robbery and its fairly exciting aftermath. Deriving from a novel By William L.Heath it was produced for the studio by Buddy Adler and was dryly directed by the estimable Richard Fleischer whose name is usually stamped on much classier efforts than this. The rambling screenplay came from Sidney Boehm and the wasted Cinemascope cinematography was by Charles G. Clarke. Three crooks (Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J.Carroll Naish) come into the town of Bradenville to rob the bank. After pulling off the heist they force hapless engineer (Victor Mature) to drive them out of town to a prearranged rendezvous at an isolated farm run by an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) his wife and young family. Tied up and blindfolded in the barn Mature manages to undo his bonds, free the family and with the crooked guard's shotgun take on the gang in a well devised and exciting shootout. The acting is just about OK! Mature turns in his usual workmanlike performance (he once famously declared "I'm no actor and I've got a scrapbook at home full of reviews to prove it"). Also reasonably good are the three baddies but Richard Egan is wasted in a nothing role and subsequently it is hard really to empathize with anyone in it who are all by and large uninteresting cardboard characters. Borgnine is about the best in it! In an unusual sympathetic role as a pacifist anti-violence Amish farmer forced to abandon his faith when a member of his family is wounded. Another plus for the film is the fine noirish score provided by the great Hugo Friedhofer. His sweeping music over the credits pointing up the multi-faceted drama that is to follow. No, not a great picture by any means but perhaps worth a look if only for the final 30 minutes.

Thanks to FXM we can now see the widescreen version of Violent Saturday. Its a terrific, tense crime drama that must have been somewhat controversial in 1955. Certainly the onscreen violence is stronger than anything else I've seen from the period, except possibly Richard Widmark shoving the wheelchair down the stairs in Kiss of Death. There are definitely some hints of the future Hollywood of Sam Peckinpah--the sadistic Lee Marvin grinding a little boys hand into the ground, and a bearded Ernest Borgnine using a pitchfork on Lee towards the end of the film. Well worth catching.

This is a gem, an excellent little picture, smart and menacing. If you're a fan of '50's pictures, particularly crime melodramas then this is a must-see. The plot is simple. A small town is visited by three hoods (Stephen McNally,Lee Marvin,J.Carroll Naish) intent on holding up the bank. The film revolves around their plans and folowing the lives of the townsfolk, who, oblivious to the villains in their midst, go about their mundane, everyday problematic lives until the saturday the two worlds collide. Richard Fleischer made an excellent job of this potboiler,which manages to sustain the tension managed in more celebrated films(High Noon) as the villains arrange their plot to rob the town. There's a stellar cast on display, McNally, Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Sylvia Sidney and even the normally lifeless performances given by the film's principal, Victor Mature, doesn't happen in this case. It's shot in terrific colour and has a genuine air of small town claustrophobia and menace. Check it out.

source: Violent Saturday

Violent Saturday

There are 50+ IMDb reviews already, so I'll try to make this brief and succinct. The first 55 minutes is a melodramatic soap opera that's borderline boring. This section gets 4 out of 10. The remainder is a thrill ride that gives the film its title. This section gets 8 out 10. Averaged out, this motion picture gets 6 out of 10. Several reviewers take issue with the casting. I had no problem with it. Everyone does a decent, or above decent, job at acting. I could feel that they cared about their roles and were professional, carrying out the director's and producers' visions. Considering the decade/century in which it was made, this film's violence is quite shocking. Apparently, critics took issue with this fact. By today's standards, it's no more than a PG rating.

The main reason I like this film is that the characters show what real people were like in 1955. It's a little like going back in time to an average american town where one observes various folks in everyday life including a variety of personal problems. Of course, I have always been nostalgic about the 50s as I spent my childhood in that era.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of this 50s view of small town America for the glossy technicolor and cinemascope photography. How clean even a quarry looks. Victor Mature in a suit looks like Tarzan in New York, and it all felt like good trashy fun, especially with Lee Marvin as the hood. I still kept watching when it turned on the 50s morality of a TV episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents, and everything fell too neatly into place, but was less enthralled. Still, the film stays in the mind for it's location in Arizona, the suits, the sex, the schmaltz. How conveniently the adulterous wife is removed to allow the drunken husband a second chance with the cute young nurse. How ridiculously obvious the bank manager makes his schoolboy crush on the same nurse. How predictable the hero's chance to prove he's a hero to his son. Despite the wide screen and its visual pleasures, this is mostly an elongated TV show.