Dangerous Crossing (Fox Film Noir) Customer Review: Take a Cruise with Jeanne Crain
This is a fun little film that keeps building in suspense until the final payoff. The cast is competent and attractive and the production is pretty much first-rate. The mini feature about the making of Dangerous Crossing is interesting, as it explains how movie production in the old studio days was incredibly fast. To think this movie was filmed in 19 days, with the polished look of an A-picture, even though it was filmed with a B-picture budget. Sets from Gentleman Prefer Blondes and Titanic were reused making the film seem more prestigious than it really was. An important film for Jeanne Crain (who looks beautiful) fans, Dangerous Crossing won’t disappoint.
Customer Review: CLASSIC FILM NOIR SAILS INTO CLASSIC-DOM
Three new film noirs and a weepy double feature—what more could you want for a late winter’s evening (or evenings) entertainment? Some of the noirs are weepy, and some of the weepies are noirs, so it gets a little confusing. The one genuine, dyed-in-the-wool noir is 1953’s Dangerous Crossing, coming in at a taught 76 minutes. Jeanne Crain plans to spend her honeymoon on a luxury liner with new hubby Carl Betz; problem is, hubby disappears within minutes of boarding, and all the signs point to him never existing. Kindly ship’s doctor Michael Rennie straightens it all out, with a goodly number of thrills along the way. Black Widow is less successful a noir, despite the starry cast of Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney and George Raft. Set in the celebrity driven world of the New York theatre circa 1954,
an ambitious young author uses her wiles to get ahead to little avail, as someone offs her halfway through the film, it’s a whodunit that degenerates into a who cares. The main characters aren’t drawn sharply enough, and the plot seems oddly discombobulated. With the exception of Heflin, the stars are somewhat past their prime and seem, unfortunately, a bit seedy However, Daisy Kenyon is the pick of the litter, despite it being squarely a Joan Crawford weepy rather than a noir. A love triangle with Crawford, Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda deftly directed by Otto Preminger, one in a long line of her female leads making her way with pluck and honor in a man’s world. It’s black and white, it rains a lot, and there are some great atmospheric shots, but a film noir it ain’t. There are also vintage scenes of mid-century Provincetown, and former Cape resident Ruth Warrick plays Andrew’s beleaguered wife; despite Preminger’s earlier great noirs such as Laura and Whirlpool, this really is a weepy.
The weepy double feature from Universal consists of Portrait in Black and Madame X, both starring Lana Turner and produced by that sultan of excess, Ross Hunter. Hunter’s reality had little relationship to anyone else’s; his was a world of the rich or near rich, beautiful or near beautiful, with lots of jewels and Jean Louis gowns, where there were no small emotions, only large, operatic, over-the-top scenes. Portrait in Black is a noir, albeit a noir in blazing color that his nothing to do with the low, cheap detective thrillers we all know and love. Turner and Anthony Quinn kill off her ailing husband Lloyd Nolan, and somebody knows their dirty little secret. Is it bubbly Sandra Dee, pert John Saxon, crusty Ray Walston or the ever mysterious Anna May Wong? And, as weepy par excellance, little can be said about Madame X, other than a profound and astonished, “wow!” Turner, as the poor but honest wife of super rich John Forsythe, is blackmailed by her evil mother-in-law, Constance Bennett, into leaving him and their baby, who, as he grows up to be Keir Dullea, might not be such a bad idea on the face of it. Later, Lana’s accused of murder and her lawyer is—you guessed it—Dullea, who has no idea that he’s defending his mom. You know, they simply are not making films like this any more. We may all be better off.
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