Raw Deal (1948)

Directed by Anthony Mann (Desperate, Railroaded, T-Men, Reign of Terror, Border Incident, Side Street). 

Written by Leopold Atlas and John C. Higgins and suggested by a story by Arnold B. Armstrong

and Audrey Ashley

Cinematography by John Alton. Music by Paul Sawtell

The film stars Dennis O'Keefe as Joseph Emmett (Joe) Sullivan, Claire Trevor as Pat Cameron, Marsha Hunt as Ann Martin, John Ireland as Fantail, Raymond Burr as Rick Coyle, Curt Conway as Spider, Chili Williams (Chill Wills) as Marcy, Regis Toomey as Police Capt. Fields, and Whit Bissell as  Murderer.

Re-watched this today, entertaining with great cinematography by John Alton 

Story

It only takes a minute and fifteen seconds to get to the end of the credits all basically title cards. At the end our first view is of a prison gate a sign directs to . It's a state prison somewhere in the mountains. It should have been Walla Walla (to make any sense) but its San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California, filling in. (See image of Walla Walla State Penn from roughly same time period.)

San Quentin

(Later se see a map of the West Coast and the marked prison site looks like the Southern Washington Northern Oregon area. Story and geography wise it doesn't wash, plus the escape route is to San Francisco. (Maybe originally the screenplay was all set in Washington State and Portland? Who knows without doing a lot of digging. Anyway the distance between San Quentin and San Francisco was only a little over 20 miles). 

Walla Walla State Penitentiary in the 1940's

Back to the film.

Here is where we first hear the theremin leitmotif for a Pat Regan V.O.'s that punctuate the film.

BTW the theremin, the first electronic instrument, was also used in The Lost Weekend (1945) and Spellbound (1945), and would become more associated with 50's sci-fi and horror movies, some of which like The Day The Earth Stood Still, and The Thing From Another World (1951) are also great examples of Sci-Fi Noir.

Here is also one of the few Classic Noir with a female V.O.  

It starts while she approaches the prison office entrance and then cuts to her coming down the all the the visiting room guard.

Pat Regan [V.O.]: This is the day. This is the day. The last time I'll have to drive up to these gates. These Iron bars who keep the man I love locked away from me. This night he breaks out of these walls. Its all set, 11:30, that's the word I'm bringing him. I don't know which sounds louder my heels or my heart, its always this way when I go to see...

Pat Regan [to the guard]: Joe Sullivan. 

The guard hands her a pass but as she turns to go he tells her that she'll have to wait, he's already has a visitor.

We cut to the visiting room and see Ann Martin and Joe Sullivan conversing between the wire barrier.

Ann works in the law office of his defense attorney and is updating him on his case. Joe is wondering why she is so interested in him. He spars with her a bit, and asks her, if as a woman would she wait for him three years. Ann gives Joe her address, if he needs anything. As Ann is leaving Joe stops her.

Joe Sullivan: Next time you come up, don't wear that perfume.

Ann Martin: Why not?

Joe Sullivan: It doesn't help a guy's good behavior.

So when Ann comes out Pat of course notices. When she gets into the visiting room, they call Joe back in and he and Pat occupy the same seats that Ann and Joe did. 

Of course Pat makes a comment about Ann to Joe, and how she was practically sitting in his lap during the trial. Joe replies her green light is showing.

Pat tells him that Rick's got it all set up for 11:30 tonight.  

Joe Sullivan: I want to breathe. That's why I want out of this place... so I can take a deep breath again.

I want out of this place... so I can take a deep breath again.

Pat tells him that Rick's got it all set up for 11:30 tonight.  

Joe Sullivan: I want to breathe. That's why I want out of this place... so I can take a deep breath again.

We cut to a cityscape at night. Then pan down to a streetlamp and below, a street sign Jane Street & Corkscrew Alley. A car pulls down the street towards a blinking bulb-can Hotel sign. We fade from the street and into the Hotel suite of "Pyro" Rick Coyle. Rick is also a sadist. 

We fade into a conversation between Big Rick and his hoods, Spider, Fantail, and gal pal Marcy. Spider is questioning why Rick is springing Joe. Pyro Rick comes up behind Spider and puts a lighter to his ear. 

Rick looks at Fantail to see if he has anything to say. Fantail tells Rick he's not asking any questions. 

Rick then goes into a Q&A about the odds of Rick making it out of his cell, out of the ward, and over the wall, then of those of him getting through all the roadblocks the 1000 miles back to San Francisco. 

Rick explains to Spider that he's greased the cell and the prison ward parts of the plan, but not the rest. The chance is slim to almost none. No Joe, means no splitting the take from the Spokane Mill Job that he and Rick pulled. Fantail admiring 

Fantail admires Rick's plan, tells him you even got the cops working for you. 

So if the robbery was in Spokane the prison is the Walla Walla State Penn which jives with the map.

So we cut to a shot of a tower clock at 11:25PM. Pat is sitting outside the prison in a '46 Dodge De Lux, and we get more of Pat's V.O. and the theremin music. She looks at her watch.

11:30 comes and the prison alarms go off and Joe comes over the wall in a hail of gunshots. He hops in the Dodge back seat and starts changing out of his prison clothes for civvies. 

Here is also where we see the map with the escape route marked out with San Francisco circled. 

However the planned escape is already screwed up because the prison guards got lucky and put some holes in the De Lux's gas tank. The car sputters and Pat pulls over to the curb.

Here we cut to Pat and Joe in a cab pulling up to a stop by a house. The cabbie is incapacitated in the back seat with Joe. 

(So there was a whole sequence cut out here or never filmed, and we have to assume they flagged down the cab. This is how Hollywood streamlined these "B" Noirs. Also, pause a moment here for a bit of head scratching.  So, this is the address that Ann gave Joe back in the prison visiting room. Ann told us that she worked for Joe's lawyer and was at Joe's trial every day, which implies, Spokane, Washington, in the state where the crime was committed. Her address should be there and not in the prison town of Walla Walla, no?  lol).

So Joe has Pat stay in the cab while Joe sneaks into Ann's bedroom though an open window. He wakes Ann by kissing her. 

He tells her that he told her that she shouldn't have worn that perfume. Of Course she wants him to give himself up. 

Joe is wondering why she cares and she tells a story about reading about a kid who was awarded a medal for saving a bunch of folks and that that is the Joe she cares for. Joe replies that that kid had to hock that medal when he got hungary. 

Joe Sullivan: What do you know about anything? You probably had your bread buttered on both sides since the day you were born. Safe. Safe on first, second, third, and home.

Ann Martin: That's what you think? Just because I own a car and a tailored suit and my nails are clean, you think I've never had to fight? I got an education, sure. I suppose that means I was born with a silver spoon, doesn't it? My father was a schoolteacher. He died in the war of The Depression. Only he didn't get any medals. Or any bands. Or any bonus. He left three children. You think *you* had to fight? The only way you know how to fight is that stupid way with a gun. Well, there's another way you probably never even heard of. It's the daily fight that everyone has. To get food and an education, to land a job and keep it. And some self-respect. 'Safe'? I never asked for anything safe. All I want is... just a little decency, that's all.

He tells her he's and his partner are going to use her place for a hideout. Ann tells him she'll get dressed. While Joe is signaling to Pat from the window, Ann grabs her phone, takes it into another room and calls the police. 

Joe catches her, grabs the phone away, and asks if she has a car. She tells him no, but Joe checks her purse and finds car keys. Pat arrives and Joe tells her to make sure Ann gets dressed quick they got to spit the cops are on the way. 

They head out the back way, just as a patrol car shows up and pulls up alongside the taxi. Now we segue into a Road Picture

 

Cut to Joe, Pat, and Ann in her 1946 Dodge Custom cruising out of town. They are supposed to be going through the Blue Mountains, we get this bit of info from the police manhunt sequence. 

Joe figures they'll be looking for Ann's car, so at a filling station, he has the gals scoot over out of the Dodge and into an empty 1948 Willys Jeep Station Wagon on the other side of the pumps. 

While Joe stands guard at the door to deal with the owner if he comes out too soon. Which is just what happens.  

When the Jeeps owner comes out, Joe asks if he's got a light, and the guy sparks him a flame, and when the the owner hears his Jeep start up and reacts, Joe gives him a gut punch. The guy jackknifes and Joe runs to, and hops into, the Jeep with Pat at the wheel.

They take off, soon followed by the Jeeps owner in Ann's car.  

Soon two motorcycle cops spot the Dodge Custom on the two lane, and pull it over, they arrest the guy thinking that he's feeding them a line of bullshit. As a result, all the roadblocks are called off buying more time for Joe, Pat and Ann to put distance between them and the authorities. 

We cut to a campfire scene. Pat's V.O. gives us the details.

Joe, Pat and Ann, have stopped to cook some dinner off on a gravel road under some pines. Their last pitstop, before they make the last push to Oscar's Tavern, a backwoods roadhouse, the hideout arranged by Rick. 

They got the car radio playing tunes for entertainment and to catch any news bulletins about them. We never see what they cooked, probably hot dogs and beans, or spam. 

They hear something approaching, and Joe hides out behind a tree and pulls his gun. It's a ranger.

Ann seeing this makes sure she stands between Joe and the ranger. The ranger rides up on a horse, asks them if they got a camping permit, and after the girls explain that they just stopped for a bite to eat, he tells them to make sure the fire is out before the leave. False alarm. 

At this point it goes Noirsville when we cut back to Pyro Rick's hotel suite. It's Rick's birthday party. Rick is losing at cards playing with Brock and Fantail. 

Fantail is ribbing him. Rick's gal pal Marcy comes in and whines that she wants to dance, and complaining about him playing cards at his own birthday party. 

Rick brushes her off telling her to dance with a waiter or Brock. Brock gets up to dance with Marcy.

Spider comes back to the card game agitated and tries to get Rick's attention but Rick shuts him up as a waiter brings in Rick's cherries jubilee. 

Rick, looks in the bowl and tells the waiter to add more brandy and of course Rick lights it. Rick likes the flames.

Rick: Its beautiful.

Joe what?

Spider [leaning in towards Rick]: Joe! 

Rick [turning towards Spider]: Joe what?

Spider: The word just came through, Joe Sullivan he's in the clear. 

Fantail [laughs at Rick]:  A million to one shot, and you even greased the doors.

Spider: You're supposed to meet him in Crescent City tomorrow night.

Fantail: With fifty grand, this sure is your birthday.

Rick jumps up pissed, and gets bumped into by Marcy and Brock. The drink that Brock is holding gets sloshed over Rick. 

Pyro Rick picks up the flaming cherries jubilee with both hands and tosses it over Marcy. She screams.

Rick: Take her away she should have been more careful. [Looking at Fantail] What's the matter Fantail, you didn't like that? You don't have anything to say? You were having a lot of fun weren't you? This will amuse you. You're to meet Joe for me tomorrow night in Crescent City and I don't want him to meet me ever.

Rick: Take her away she should have been more careful. [Looking at Fantail] What's the matter Fantail, you didn't like that? You don't have anything to say? You were having a lot of fun weren't you? This will amuse you. You're to meet Joe for me tomorrow night in Crescent City and I don't want him to meet me ever.

Noirsville

Anthony Mann and John Alton create a quickly paced Noir that's very entertaining. 

All our Noir Vet actors now bring cinematic memory and slip into their various parts flawlessly. Denise O'Keefe from The Leopard Man, T-Men, Cover Up, Abandoned, Woman on the Run, Las Vegas Shakedown, and Chicago Syndicate. Claire Trevor from Street of Chance, Murder My Sweet, Johnny Angel, Crack Up, Born To Kill, Key Largo, Borderline, and Hoodlum Empire. Marsha Hunt in Jigsaw, and Mary Ryan, Detective. John Ireland, from Somewhere In The Night, Repeat Performance, Railroaded, The Gangster, All the Kings Men, The Scarf, Party Girl, Transitional Noir era One On Top The Other, Neo Noirs Welcome To Arrow Beach, and Farewell My Lovely. Raymond Burr from Desperate, I Love Trouble, Ruthless, Pitfall, Red-Light, Abandoned, Borderline , M, His Kind of Woman, The Blue Gardenia, Rear Window, and Crime of Passion. Also in the cast are Whit Bissell, Somewhere in the Night, Brute Force, He Walked By Night, Side Street, The Killer That Stalked New York, The Sellout, Shack On 101, and the Neo Noir Psychic Killer, Regis Toomey (played a lot of cops Phantom Lady, Spellbound, The Big Sleep, High Tide, The Tall Target, The Human Jungle)  as Police Capt. Fields, and Chili Williams from Where The Sidewalk Ends and Captive Women.   

If you don't pay too much attention trying to make some of the plot details make sense it's a good watch 7/10.  

 

bmacv from IMDb do the review

What is film noir? An object lesson from Anthony Mann and John Alton, 17 June 2002

Author: bmacv from Western New York

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Gunplay is for Westerns (of which Raw Deal's director, Anthony Mann, went on to direct several). Film noir prefers more baroque outbursts of malice, ideally illuminating, however briefly, the dark crevasses of human psychopathology. Crime kingpin Raymond Burr, shot from below to make his bulk loom even more frighteningly, nurses a fascination with fire. His chambers glow with candlelight, and he playfully singes the earlobes of his henchmen with a cigarette lighter. When, displeased with some news he's just heard, a party girl splashes him with some of her drink, he reacts with lightning-quick instinct, hurling a chafing dish of flaming Cherries Jubilee into her face - and, not so incidentally, ours. (This, by the way, five full years before Fritz Lang arranged for Gloria Grahame to get a kisserful of scalding coffee in The Big Heat.) Of course, in accord with Chekhov's dictum that a rifle produced in Act One must be discharged by Act Three, waiting in the wings there's a conflagration with Burr's name on it.

Raw Deal was the second of the collaborations between Mann and cinematographer John Alton, following T-Men. There's scarcely a frame in the film that Alton has not composed, lighted and shot with offhand brilliance, yet the film flows along without the fussy, embalmed look that comes from self-conscious artistry or uncertainty about what to do with it.

A subdued voice-over opens the movie - not the stentorian narration with which so many noirs are saddled (including T-Men) but an almost interior monologue spoken by a woman, Claire Trevor. (Never has she been better - not in Murder, My Sweet, nor Born To Kill, nor Key Largo, which snagged her an Oscar.) A savvy moll of a certain age, she knows time is running out on her, hence her obsession with clocks: wristwatches, clock faces in towers, wall clocks (at one crucial point Alton encloses her anxious face within a dial). She's been carrying a torch for Dennis O'Keefe, in stir. But a breakout has been arranged, with the codependent Trevor driving the getaway car, her purse holding two tickets to Panama on a freighter leaving in three days time.

But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. First, a jam forces them to include in their getaway plans a young social worker (Marsha Hunt) who has taken a professional interest in O'Keefe (much to Trevor's chagrin). Next, Burr has sent one of his deranged torpedoes (John Ireland) in pursuit. Third, O'Keefe is determined to have one last reckoning with Burr. Fourth, Ireland manages to abduct Hunt....

Half the movie takes place in San Francisco, mainly in fog-shrouded Corkscrew Alley. The great outdoors of the Northwest accounts for the rest - with a haunting nocturne in a pine forest, which city-gal Trevor remarks makes her feel `I dunno, both big and small at the same time.' But indoors or out, darkness reigns (and, thAanks to Alton, the film's many and intricate shadows all but achieve co-starring stature). It's hard-core noir, to be sure, sinister and brutal, but shot through with a redemptive touch of poetry.