[ April 18, 2024 ]
For tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema selection I return to my favorite genre, film noir, but this one is not set in the familiar setting of shadows and mean city streets. This one takes place in the suburbs. And it’s one of the really great films about infidelity (back when America was a moral nation). Pitfall stars Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott, whose sultry looks and smoky voice led many a man to his downfall. Scott is the “femme fatale in the hard-boiled, film noir world of crime, tough talk and dark secrets.” Powell is in the second phase of his movie career. He more than reinvented himself in such bleak noirs. “He transformed his image, erasing his wholesome persona in favor of a tougher, grittier one.”
“A grimy, superior film noir by Andre de Toth (1948). Dick Powell is a foursquare family man who enjoys a harmless dalliance with model Lizabeth Scott, unaware that he’s risking the wrath of a psychotically jealous private eye, Raymond Burr. An iconographical plus is Father Knows Best’s Jane Wyatt as Powell’s patiently beleaguered wife.” (Dave Gehr) Perry Mason would be mortified by this maniac.
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The darker side of the American dream is explored in the fascinating film noir Pitfall. Dick Powell stars as John Forbes, a successful insurance man with a trophy wife named Sue (Jane Wyatt) and a model child named Tommy (Jimmy Hunt). Despite all that he’s achieved in life, Forbes feels somehow unfulfilled. During an attempt to recollect illegally purchased goods by a convicted bank robber, Forbes falls for his glamorous client Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott). When she “comes on” to him, it sparks an affair between them. Forbes suffers the pangs of guilt, a fact immediately capitalized upon by the seedy private eye MacDonald (Raymond Burr), who is upset because Mona has rejected him. If adultery has been committed, can murder be far behind? Many individual scenes in Pitfall are standouts….
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7 Comments
7 years ago
Great film. I love old movies and this ones especially good. The age of innocence is forever gone, but thank the Lord for the memories. Thank You Pamela!
7 years ago
omg love the scenes of driving in the city, old offices …
7 years ago
ThiS starlet harlot has got the most beautiful smile. It deforms her beauty which somehow makes it all the more.appealing and infectious! Great pick Pamela.
7 years ago
Movies of this era are still great…They were great because they were what movies were all about at that time…Entertainment…And being shortly after WW II we needed some “Entertsinment” I had .such rather watch these .movies today than the filth Hollywood is putting out…and I never seem go tire of them.
D
7 years ago
Pam. You sure can write!!! I just saw this movie the other day. Yes Lizabeth Scott is smokin hot for this ole 61 year old. Thanks for bring it to the fore.
7 years ago
Great pick…
7 years ago
America a moral nation? I think you missed the goings on in WW2. The dear John letters. The babies born to women whose husbands had been at war for a year or two. etc. Why would moral women do such things?
