You got to keep going, but you got to hide like all this trash

[sovay]

Tonight on TCM at their usual midnight EST, Noir Alley is running Act of Violence (1948), one of the films I point to when people ask me what noir looks like: not a shamus or a chanteuse in sight, just the abyss falling fathomlessly away beneath the superficial reassurance of the American dream. Its take on the stock figure of the damaged veteran is confrontational, shape-shifting, as double-sided as its polarity of horror and sympathy. The questions it slides under the skin of America's good war still stick out like badly set bones. Van Heflin deserved a second Oscar for the depths to which he folds like a deck chair when the nightmare of the truth comes home. Robert Ryan and especially Mary Astor shoulder their shares of reality and Janet Leigh and Phyllis Thaxter fill in the perspectives a lot of films would leave cursorily sketched even now. I saw it in 2016 as half of a local arthouse double bill and have watched it every chance I could get since. If you can tune in, you should, too.



(If you cannot tune in, please feel free to resort to the usual suspects of your choice. The film is just worth seeing.)

Comments

[selkie]

Oh, good, I was just coming over to see if you'd crossposted! Huzzah.

[sovay]

Oh, good, I was just coming over to see if you'd crossposted! Huzzah.

Thank you! I care about people seeing this movie!

[gwynnega]

Plus a cameo appearance by the Glendale train station!

[sovay]

Plus a cameo appearance by the Glendale train station!

I have never been to Glendale in my life, but I learned to love its psychogeography because of you.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Its take on the stock figure of the damaged veteran is confrontational, shape-shifting, as double-sided as its polarity of horror and sympathy.

Absolutely, what an excellent movie. And your 2016 review is great too, thank you for linking to it!

[sovay]

Absolutely, what an excellent movie. And your 2016 review is great too, thank you for linking to it!

Thank you! I loved it instantly, so much.

[ethelmay]

I have put a hold on the DVD at my library and note that I am third in line and the system owns eight copies. It's not a recent release, either (2017 DVD I think). It is a twofer with another film, Mystery Street, so I don't know for sure which one is unexpectedly popular, but AoV has top billing.

[sovay]

I have put a hold on the DVD at my library and note that I am third in line and the system owns eight copies.

I am extremely impressed. Our local library system seems to own one. It's the same double-bill DVD—it comes from a box set originally released in 2007, which I guess got a reprint ten years later. For what it's worth, Mystery Street is a small neat procedural noir which rates highly with me for its forensic science, its location shooting of Boston, and its starring of Ricardo Montalbán, but I really hope you like Act of Violence. It holds up for me.

[asakiyume]

Just one paragraph with such great lines!

just the abyss falling fathomlessly away beneath the superficial reassurance of the American dream. -Whoa.

Van Heflin deserved a second Oscar for the depths to which he folds like a deck chair when the nightmare of the truth comes home. --He definitely looks well folded in this photo (if that's him? That's him, right?)

[sovay]

Just one paragraph with such great lines!

Thank you so much!

--He definitely looks well folded in this photo (if that's him? That's him, right?)

That's Van Heflin! I believe this picture to be a production still, but there's a shot in the same scene in the film where he has his head in his hands which is very characteristic.