This is a movie that satisfies on so many levels and even manages to overcome a less than perfect print (I have long coveted this title and mentioned it to the guy in Norway who has been so generous in supplying me with French Classics: he located a print which, bizarrely is dubbed into Spanish whilst RETAINING the original English soundtrack). It also has to overcome Jack Webb's wooden acting and my personal aversion to Janet Leigh and it does this in Spades. On the first level it's a wonderful mixture of the visual and oral with Webb's eye for detail, period and otherwise, perfectly complemented by Richard L. Breen's brilliant screenplay liberally laced with faux-Chandler narration and dialogue (Webb in voice-over setting the scene, a brownstone in KC where his band is resident: It used to belong to a dentist but he moved to Chicago to get a piece of the flu epidemic. This line is so good that it doesn't really matter that the great flu epidemic was in 1928, one year later than the setting of the film. Later, when the hot-headed drummer Joey Firestone, is gunned down in front of Webb in torrential rain in an alley outside the club, Webb goes back inside and addresses Rudy, the owner: Webb: Get someone to bring Joey in. Rudy: Why? Webb: It's raining on him.
Webb may have been wooden but he sure knew how to tell a story cinematically with touches like the one where he comes off the stand after a set, walks to the bar, leans against it, facing away from it, stretches a hand backwards into which the bartender places a towel, with which Webb (Pete Kelly) proceeds to wipe his brow. The movie is replete with touches like this, note, for example, the recurring motif when the band are relaxing in the kitchen in between sets and each time the door opens it creates a draught in the pizza oven. The beauty of this is that it ISN'T a plot point and no one remarks on it, it's just wonderful attention to detail. I could go on and on citing visuals like this and low-key dialogue because this movie is so rich in both. In a rare sympathetic role Lee Marvin is outstanding as Al Gannaway, the clarinet player and longest serving member of Pete Kelly's Big Seven, world-weary and tired of trouble, who leaves the band and returns again. Equally outstanding is Edmund O'Brien's Fran McCarg, a local gangster who offers the band both 'protection' and the services of a singer, his alcoholic girlfriend, Rose Hopkins, a truly outstanding performance by Peggy Lee. The final shootout is very reminiscent of Orson Welles, with one of McCarg's heavies lurking in the rafters above the glitter ball in a ballroom and Webb's camera shooting from above the man and looking down through both rafters and ball. Add Ella Fitzgerald to the mix plus some fine Dixieland Jazz (Dick Cathcart played cornet for Webb) and this is a true neglected gem.
Webb may have been wooden but he sure knew how to tell a story cinematically with touches like the one where he comes off the stand after a set, walks to the bar, leans against it, facing away from it, stretches a hand backwards into which the bartender places a towel, with which Webb (Pete Kelly) proceeds to wipe his brow. The movie is replete with touches like this, note, for example, the recurring motif when the band are relaxing in the kitchen in between sets and each time the door opens it creates a draught in the pizza oven. The beauty of this is that it ISN'T a plot point and no one remarks on it, it's just wonderful attention to detail. I could go on and on citing visuals like this and low-key dialogue because this movie is so rich in both. In a rare sympathetic role Lee Marvin is outstanding as Al Gannaway, the clarinet player and longest serving member of Pete Kelly's Big Seven, world-weary and tired of trouble, who leaves the band and returns again. Equally outstanding is Edmund O'Brien's Fran McCarg, a local gangster who offers the band both 'protection' and the services of a singer, his alcoholic girlfriend, Rose Hopkins, a truly outstanding performance by Peggy Lee. The final shootout is very reminiscent of Orson Welles, with one of McCarg's heavies lurking in the rafters above the glitter ball in a ballroom and Webb's camera shooting from above the man and looking down through both rafters and ball. Add Ella Fitzgerald to the mix plus some fine Dixieland Jazz (Dick Cathcart played cornet for Webb) and this is a true neglected gem.