moonspinner55 On the heels of their hit pairing in the 1942 noir "This Gun For Hire", Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake were re-teamed for this adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's popular crime novel (previously filmed in 1935 with George Raft), cementing their box-office status while giving the gritty genre a heavy dose of star appeal. Brian Donlevy is excellent as a jovial, two-fisted politician who shows no hesitation squashing underworld types and playing dirty pool with gangsters; Ladd is his henchman and babysitter to Donlevy's sister, whose murdered boyfriend was mixed up with racketeers about to bring down a major newspaper publisher; Lake is a politician's daughter romantically linked with Donlevy but now eyeballing Ladd. Complicated yet drolly confident, with lust and power seething under the stoic surface. All it needed was a bit more heart. ** from ****

InjunNose "The Glass Key" should have served as the model for all subsequent films based on hardboiled crime fiction. Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd, William Bendix and tiny, delectable Veronica Lake all seem born to play their parts: Ladd, in particular, is perfect as the snappy, no-nonsense Ed Beaumont. Director Stuart Heisler gets the bleak atmosphere down pat. And, most important of all, the script is true to the morally ambiguous vision of Dashiell Hammett (except for that minor but cringe-inducing change to the ending, of course). There are no "good guys" in this tale: some of the characters behave much more reprehensibly than others, but there are only degrees of bad. This is what made Hammett's writing special, and it's why "The Glass Key" stands head and shoulders above many other, better-known examples of film noir like Howard Hawks' wildly inconsistent adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep". (In the scene during which Ladd is held captive and roughed up by Bendix, Akira Kurosawa fans will immediately recognize the inspiration for a pivotal scene in the Japanese master filmmaker's "Yojimbo".)

jzappa Dashiell Hammett's writing style is by and large acknowledged as being exceedingly beneficial to movie interpretations. It's handsomely evocative of atmosphere and situation and the angle is practically always that of a neutral onlooker, a stand-in for the audience. The Glass Key and Miller's Crossing signify two distinguishing readings of Hammett. The former is a straightforward conversion, the latter takes basics from Red Harvest and then sets them afloat in a plot which reverberates with a virtual mirror image of The Glass Key but also wanders gamely into original ideas.This second and better known adaptation of the classic Hammett novel, released just seven years after the first, focuses more on the political stratagem and one particular murder which functions to throw a dainty milieu of suspicion and caginess into disarray, flaunting a murder mystery accompanied by a backdrop of politics, gambling kingpins, flirtation and almost farcically eager brutality. A vital part of Stuart Heisler's almost Hawksian version is the casting of Ladd as Ed. Hammett wrote about commanding but aloof guys, who demonstrate a stiff and closely controlled style of code and who seldom show feeling or vulnerability. His hard cases were pessimistic, solidly committed to their work, unscrupulous, plucky, and apparently not influenced to feelings. Ladd wears some of these characteristics with his physical look, taut and severe, keeps his actions in check to look cool and unruffled. He punches only one character, though it's just a calculated move instead of a ceremony of bluster. The only actual aggression that Ed makes use of is an unsurprisingly brusque and snappy reply to the aggravation of Richard Denning.The physical stiffness and steadfast temperament of this character is a bit diluted by Ladd's compromises in playing Ed as good-humored and affable. His recuperation from a savage pounding becomes a spell where he, like 007, flirts with nurses. The pressure of Ladd's assumed role, an up-and-coming matinée icon and celebrity, appears to have permeated the portrayal of Ed and modified the Hammett protagonist into something resembling a Hollywood negotiation. On the other hand, Brian Donlevy takes advantage of his character being the political organizer who wrestled his way up from bottom, while Ladd is just his henchman and sounding board. Veronica Lake is the fickle daughter of the gubernatorial nominee who initially makes a play for Donlevy but dithers between him and Ladd, while Joseph Calleia has the gambling house franchise throughout the metropolis. Merged skillfully, the effect is an amusing thriller.The most thrilling, as well as the funniest, and most loaded scene is definitely the epic battering incurred by Ladd in a spell of amusingly forward sado-masochism as William Bendix bashfully pleads for his "little rubber ball" to spring back for more. Filmed and performed with misleading airiness, the scene is key to the film, parading a sensual riptide that plants ongoing suspicions throughout. Tinkering with his customary pokerface as he twists cagily through a labyrinth of political intrigues and underworld traps in the name of his superior, Ladd stays just as ice-covered whether conveying his passion for Lake or his allegiance to Donlevy. The effect is a taunting sexual vagueness, significantly augmented, at least until the excuse finale, by the fact that Hammett's protagonist, here thick-skinned enough to confess a readiness to throw Lake under the bus if required in furtherance of his intentions, has been case-hardened by being abridged into a star mouthpiece for movie-going audiences. But man, love that William Bendix. His entire role is comprised of wanting nothing more than to beat Ladd into a pulp, and is insatiably enjoyable at being a big lug with nothing more on his mind.

bobt145 (possible spoilers)As I nodded in and out of consciousness, one word kept going through my groggy head."Why?" I thought. "Why?"As I started to wrap my mind around the concept, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I was out like a light again.In the recesses of my throbbing skull, there were voices, voices that had the answers. Alan Ladd puts up with a pounding from William Bendix because he knows it will get him in a hospital bed with a good looking nurse? Veronica Lake is using Brian Donlevy because she thinks he's gonna win something, but what? An election? Control of the eighth ward? Some Cliff's Notes for this thing?Oh I like a lot of the material, taken as isolated scenes. Ladd dangling from a window, the search for a shooter in Donlevy's office that never gets explained, the scene where Ladd makes out with the publisher's wife in the living room causing the publisher to blow his brains out upstairs.Well, maybe those aren't the ones I liked. The room is spinning and I'm fading out again. Damn, where's that envelope of magic script writer powder when you really need it?