Notes From Noir City 2010:
Robert Parrish and William Bowers
Double Bill
The evening of the second night of Noir City 2010, the
San Francisco Film Noir Festival,
featured 2 films directed by Robert Parrish, with screenplays written by William Bowers. Bowers excels at witty, powerful dialogue, and these were no exception. We also got to watch a short
classic film noir montage,
which was a real treat.
The first, Cry Danger  (1951), was a newly restored print, a far sight better than the muddy, garbled version I saw a couple of years ago. We could enjoy the movie properly now, thanks to the Film Noir Foundation, Rhonda Fleming (who stars in the film),the UCLA Film And Television Archives, and probably others I don't know about.Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, William Conrad and Richard Erdman all star in the film, along with a dumpy L.A. trailer park, managed by "Williams" (Jay Adler). Erdman was live and in person after the screening, joking around on stage with host Eddie Muller about his Hollywood past. Dick Powell's character "Rocky" is so cynical, yet his hard shell is threatened when he looks at "Nancy" (Rhonda Fleming), the love he once lost to his best friend. That love threatens his very mission since getting out of prison: to find the real culprit who did the crime he did time for.
The second Parrish & Bowers film of the evening was The Mob (1951), starring Broderick Crawford as a tough, exceptionally brass balled undercover detective working on the waterfront to uncover a big mob boss. Johnny Damico (Crawford) is as violent as the criminals he deals with.This film was very talky, but compelling. Ernest Borgnine, Richard Kiley and Neville Brand all play in the mix. We even get treated to a profile and one-liner by a young Charles Bronson as a longshoreman.
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