JohnHowardReid Charles McGraw (Joe Peters), Joan Dixon (Diane), Lowell Gilmore (Webb), Louis Jean Heydt (Harry Miller), Milburn Stone (Egan), Joseph Crehan Thompson), Janet Scott (Mrs MacDonald), Dave Willock (airport clerk), Dewey Robinson (Mike), Joe Forte (Brissard), Barry Brooks, Frank Marlowe (policemen), Ben Cameron, Joey Ray (hoods), Martha Mears (nightclub singer), Harry Lauter (Saunders), Jean Dean (airline hostess), Phyllis Planchard (Bobbie Webb), Steve Roberts (De Vita), Dave McMahon (police radioman), Howard Negley (police captain), Peter Brocco (crook in cemetery), Richard Irving (Partos), Clarence Straight (Talbot), John Butler (hotel clerk), Taylor Reid (Green), Harold Landon (nightclub bartender).Director: HAROLD DANIELS. Screenplay: Steve Fisher, George Bricker. Story: Richard Landau, Daniel Mainwaring. Photography: Nicholas Musuraca. Film editor: Robert Golden. Art directors: Albert S. D'Agostino, Walter E. Keller. Set decorators: Darrell Silvera and Jack Mills. Costumes designed by Michael Woulfe. Music: Paul Sawtell. Music directed by Mischa Bakaleinikoff. Song, "So Swell of You" (Mears), by Leona Davidson. Assistant director: James Casey. Sound recording: Frank Sarver, Clem Portman. RCA Sound System. Producer: Lewis J. Rachmil.Copyright 24 July 1951 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: 17 September 1951. Australian release: 4 January 1952. 73 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Hardboiled insurance investigator falls for gangster's moll. PRINCIPAL MIRACLE: The surprisingly competent job of direction handed in by little-known Harold Daniels. Particularly exciting and well staged is the climactic chase along the Los Angeles riverbed. Between 1943 and 1965, Mr, Daniels directed no less than fourteen other movies, all of little significance. In fact, the only one that fans would recognize is the 1961 TV feature based on Lee Falk's "The Phantom."COMMENT: This late entry in RKO's film noir cycle deserves to be better known. Charles McGraw of "The Narrow Margin" becomes even more interestingly abrasive on the wrong side of the law, whilst Joan Dixon makes a most convincing femme fatale. As the principal heavy, Lowell Gilmore provides a fascinating light touch which contrasts well with the usual demonic portrayals. Louis Jean Heydt proves just right for the thankless role of Mr Honest, and there are the usual top character turns from such as Peter Brocco, Janet Scott and Dewey Robinson. The story (from the pen of none other than Daniel "Out of the Past" Mainwaring) not only presents a trio of involving principals but moves at a fast clip right up to its shattering climax. Production values are solid and the movie is beautifully photographed in typically noir style.

blanche-2 Charles McGraw and Joan Dixon face a "Roadblock" in this 1951 film also starring Milburn Stone of "Gunsmoke" fame and Lowell Gilmore. McGraw is Joe Peters, an insurance detective who meets a beautiful, sexy woman, Diane, while traveling home by airplane after a case. The whole airplane thing was interesting in itself - spouses could fly half-price, I guess (as the Dixon character claims she and Joe are married so she can do so - she didn't have to show ID either). And though it still happens, it's less common to board from outdoors today.Joe falls hard for Diane, but she isn't interested - he's not in her league. She wants someone who will spend big money on her. One night, Joe sees her in a club where he's on an investigation, and she's with the biggest mobster in town, Kendall Webb (Gilmore). Eventually, Joe's and Diane's passion get the better of them. Webb warns Joe that Diane's enamored state of being in love with a poor man is just temporary - once the bloom is off, she'll go for the money again. Joe decides to go into partnership with Webb and steal $1.4 million that's scheduled to be on a train.McGraw, who had a big career in television until a few years before his death in 1980, is a solid noir actor - tough and good-looking. The character of Diane, however, is the one to watch. Dixon, helped by the script, gives her many layers and leaves you wondering (though you do know the answer) - was she a big chiseler or did she really care?"Roadblock" is good and interesting if implausible - Joe gets himself in deeper and deeper. It's hard to believe he would turn that dramatically that quickly. It's a minor point in a way because it's still an atmospheric noir.

aimless-46 Are you tired of getting misinformation about "film noir" from people who think they know what they are talking about, but are clearly clueless on the concept? Most everyone has heard the term and most have a vague idea that it refers to a group of shadowy crime dramas (principally produced by Hollywood) from the 1940's and 1950's which include corruption as their main thematic element and sex as an audience draw. The shadowy cinematography grew out of a visual style that characterized German Expressionist cinema (realism that was not so much real as it was exaggerated). For most producers of these films, it was an unconscious style only identified by film historians in retrospect. Which means that any effective definition must be rather loose and most style inconsistencies simply accepted. It is broader than many realize, going from Billy Wilder (actually from the German cinema) stuff like "The Lost Weekend", to classic Chandler adaptations like "The Big Sleep", to Welles' "Touch of Evil". By accepted definition it stays in the crime genre (private eyes, police, social problems) but could sometimes cross into other genres.So just in case there is any confusion, "Roadblock" (1951) is clearly an example of "film noir", not just a good example of the style but a surprisingly entertaining film. It's a low-budget understated picture whose technical flaws and modest resources ironically enhance its most compelling feature, the distance of the self-discovery journey its two main characters traverse during the course of the story. What makes this spellbinding is that they begin on opposite extremes, move toward each other and then keep going until they actually end up beyond the other's starting position. To package a story of such a grand human scale, inside a modest little package, actually makes the story even more compelling as it adds to its allegorical theme and exaggerated expressionistic element.Joe Peters (Charles McGraw-a completely nondescript leading man) begins the story as a Joe Friday ultra straight arrow insurance investigator. He and his partner (Louis Jean Heydt) open the film with an ingenious ploy to force a robber to reveal the location of some stolen money for which their company is on the hook.Honest and ethical as the day is long, Joe at first seems drawn to strikingly beautiful femme fatale Diane (Joan Dixon) more by a sense of protectiveness than because of any physical attraction. Which is part of the genius of the casting, as McGraw was in his late thirties and Dixon had just turned 21. They first meet when Diane scams the airline for a half price first class ticket by claiming to be the wife of Joe Peters; revealed to Joe only after they are seated together on the plane. She is headed from Ohio to Los Angeles, where she intends to use her feminine charms to move up in class. Over the course of the first half of the film there are flirtatious advances by each of them, ending with the other saying "it takes two". But ultimately they connect and get married only to discover that in their movement to the center they have passed the point of intersecting belief systems and actually switched places. The young Dixon holds her own with McGraw and they effectively navigate the demands of playing characters whose principle characteristic is behaving out of character (huh?). Also well written are the elements surrounding the investigation of the train robbery which is solved by good plausible detective work rather than by a lucky break or an illogical character development. The last 20 minutes is a disappointment, as the film becomes a standard fugitive drama with no interesting twists. The device that leads to Joe's undoing has no symbolic significance inside the story and unlike the best of these things was not revealed in such a way that you could have foreseen its significance at the time it was first introduced. The low budget actually starts working against the production at this point as they stage some really lame car crash and chase sequences; finally ending up in the Los Angeles riverbed (a staple of 1950's productions-insert "Them" here). It does however provide a nice backdrop for the great closing shot (the shot they go out on), much like the way Polanski ends "Chinatown".The car crash that Joe stages to cover his tracks is a brief bit of stock footage that bears no relationship to the setting or vehicle he sets up for the crash. This is inexplicable given that we are not talking about anything that would have taken a huge budget to stage realistically, and the producers missed an opportunity to showcase something visually interesting.The weakest thing is crime boss Kendall Webb (Lowell Gilmore), a finishing school, smoking jacket style crime boss who at one point waxes on nostalgically about growing up juvenile detention facilities. You have to wonder why they didn't simply alter the script a bit to give Gilmore lines that were at least vaguely consistent with the way in which the director was having him play his character. If not it should have been trimmed during the editing process. Speaking of editing, watch for the glaring jump cut when Joe and Diane are talking to each other on the plane. If the production crew failed to get adequate coverage the editor should have cut-away to an ashtray or something; even a few frames of black would have been better than what was actually assembled.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Neil Doyle I'm fast becoming an admirer of CHARLES McGRAW who did some nifty B-films in the '40s and '50s, usually as a granite jawed anti-hero with murder and mayhem on his mind. He does some of his best work here as a man whose greedy girlfriend leads him astray from his job as an insurance inspector. It's the sort of film you'd expect from RKO, the studio that seemed adept at turning out these smoothly produced B-films and giving them sharp-edged dialog in true film noir style.I can't say anything too favorable about the choice of JOAN DIXON as the femme fatale who looks a lot like a cross between Ellen Drew and Ella Raines but lacks Raines' ability to get inside of a role. Dixon is a blank check as an actress. LOWELL GILMORE does a nice job as an equally corrupt man who meets his fate in a fiery car crash engineered by McGraw. It seems almost like overkill since he's not quite the villain the screenplay wants him to be.But it's McGraw who gives the most truthful performance in this noir type of exercise. His steely gaze and powerful build give him the right kind of charisma for this type of thing. One can easily see him portraying someone like Dick Tracy, on the other side of the law, if the chance ever came. Instead, he spent most of his career as a hardened, bitter type, and as ruthless as he is here.Summing up: Surprisingly good B-film from RKO that gives McGraw a chance to shine in the type of role he did best.