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| Face the Music (a/k/a The Black Glove) (1954) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 23 2012, 06:46 PM (368 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Feb 23 2012, 06:46 PM Post #1 |
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![]() Another Hammer noir from their pre-horror days; even Mr. Panzer would like this one. No, no, no - he would. Alex Nicol is an American trumpet player on tour in England; he meets a hot tootsie singing in a nightclub, and goes home with her, where nothing happens except they exchange witty poems about the differences between men and women. (Well, they DO.) They agree to meet the next night, so he leaves... fade to black, and when we fade up, the Scotland Yard guys are knocking at his door. Seems she was bumped off during the night. Nicol has to track down the real killer, with only a glove and a phonograph record of a left-handed piano player as his clues. Music and mayhem ensue. Terence Fisher keeps everything moving, the music is well done, and I like Alex Nicol. He had a very nice career as an actor (Target Unknown, Strategic Air Command, Meet Danny Wilson) and director (lotsa TV shows, mainly The Wild Wild West and Tarzan, and one of our fave FNF movies, The Screaming Skull, which he also starred in). I have no idea if he can play the trumpet but he fakes it really well. The dialog is crisper than I've come to expect from these things; I assume it's from the novel. Some favorites: Nicol to manager: "You made me an international star, but sometimes I want to wring your neck!" Nicol to girl: "Have you lived here all your life?" Girl's retort: "Not yet." Girl to Nicol: "How do you like your spaghetti?" Nicol's retort: "About 10 inches." Nicol's assessment of a fellow musician's ear: "He could hear a pound note hit a plush carpet a mile away." The Black Glove can be found on Hammer Film Noir Double Feature Vol. 6 from VCI, paired with Third Party Risk with Lloyd Bridges, which I'll be getting to presently, I'm sure. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Feb 24 2012, 01:33 AM Post #2 |
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Mouth Breather
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Don't you be taking my name in vain. I used to make out (sometimes walk out) during these pictures: they never held my attention. IMO it was color that brought out what little talent Fisher had, and then only in two or three pictures. I don't remember liking Alex Nicol in anything. And about that pound note hitting a plush carpet -- does that mean he was or wasn't a good musician? I can't imagine any tough guy saying such a wimpy thing, not even that flowery-talking poached egg fan, Marlowe. Wrong notes like this are one reason I dislike the Hammers. Naaaah. I'm not wasting the time I have left on quota quickies, or for that matter on Columbia shorts. They always seem so long... |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Feb 24 2012, 07:04 AM Post #3 |
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Well, see, the clue is that the piano player on the record is left-handed, which you need a good ear to hear. Or something. Anyway, a, nice, jazzy score and the Hammer guys loved the music and put extra work into this. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Feb 25 2012, 05:45 AM Post #4 |
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Mouth Breather
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I get that, but how much extra work can you put in on a two-week shoot? See, I remember these pictures, and the thing about 'em was, they came from a place where the lower-level writers weren't good enough to have the people talk naturally. The flicks were usually well-photographed and -edited, but they felt like nobody much gave a heck about them, probably because nobody much did. You may have found an exception, but I'll still opt for a real movie. The British films of today, needless to say, are generally better-written than most of ours; but in the early Hammer days most halfway decent writers felt that writing for films was slumming (especially at Hammer), and there were at least five terrible films for every watchable one. Oh, and did I mention? Whatever a noir may be, them things ain't. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Feb 25 2012, 08:01 AM Post #5 |
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Ah, but that's true about most of the things labeled "Noir" these days. I should've remembered to mention that Kenny Baker provided the trumpeteering in the film, but forgot. Whoops. (I don't think it's the same Kenny Baker that was stuffed into the li'l R2D2 suit.) One of the fun things about watching all of these early Hammers is seeing the Hammer studio (a big house) and the town of Bray over and over again. Michael Carreras, Terence Fisher, and the others were good craftsmen and did a good job under difficult circumstances. It's fun to watch, and when the script is decent and the cast is trying hard I enjoy the result. Alex Nicol did a good job in this one; I found an interview with him in which he said that he enjoyed his time in England (he did another Hammer film, coming up) but the pay was low and he was glad to come back home. Brian Donlevy, in last night's FNF film, seemed to be anxious to wrap up every scene he was in and get back to the pub. But that's a topic for a different thread. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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