Last night,I watched this film for the very first time on Foxtel in Australia.
In my opinion,E.G.R. gave his best ever performance.
The movie is superb as the script and the actors all give top notch performances.This is a must see film and the ending -well,I won't spoil it for you,see it for yourself.
Thankfully,I have taped it and I will definitely see it again.
I also watched Bill present it last night. Edward G was great, but it is a big call to nominate it as his best role. He did a lot of really superb stuff.
shareRobinson had many great roles such as the ones in Little Ceasar, Double Indemnity, Scarlet Street, Woman In the Window, The Ten Commandments, Key Largo just to name a few. However, this definitely stands high on the list.
I killed him for money and for a woman. I didn't get the money... and I didn't get the woman.
Add to that: Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (absolute beautiful film and he is wonderful as always), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, The Whole Town's Talking, and so many others.
An absolute horrendous oversight he was never nominated for an Oscar!
Shame on them!
Yeah, he's the only one of the three legedery "tough guys" (Bogart & Cagney being the other two) who never got a nomination. Well, at least, Cannes honored him for House Of Strangers.
Where am I from, you ask? "Pomona, Glendale, ((Fullerton, La Habra, Anaheim)), whatever."
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Maybe it's the artist in me or just his performance depth but Scarlett Street is terrific. What a great job to play the nebbish role and make it meaningful.
Actors playing to their core strength over & over like the Everyman, the Comic, the Heavy, the Lead, etc. are just fine. However reaching all out to play the opposite type, that's real art not mere craft.
Ed went from his tough guy persona to Scarlet kind of underling and kept his audience and critics intact. Couple people have tried to do this like Bill Murray in out of character things like The Razor's Edge and got blasted for the effort. He's kept at it with some other side projects and I give him credit for that. Maybe most successful was Robin Williams for reaching far & wide from soft side to edgier ones like One Hour Photo. Photo is a quite dark, short, venture into the 'out there' part of storytelling.
Small has as much import as large.
Sorry. I'm a big admirer of Robinson, but his accent here was terrible. He gave many fine performances but this one was marred by that phony accent.
Sam Tomaino
GREAT movie, GREAT performances, GREAT accent by EG Robinson, who gives his all time greatest performance here, and I've seen 80% of his films. Conte is also a an A+ talent and he really delivers the goods here. I want to say this film was flawless.
shareConte was top notch in this movie, I agree. Great performance.
Susan Hayward is great too.
And E.G.Robinson, excellent. His performance rivaled the classic performances he gave in "Little Caesar" and "Key Largo", among others.
Theres always someone who gripes about an accent, I thought his accent was spot on.
shareIn response to stomaino's post complaining about Robinson's Italian and his English accent:
Robinson grew up with immigrant Italians on the lower East side of New York and learned to speak seven languages fluently besides English, including Italian, Yiddish, Romanian and German. As a result his dialect was that of early 20th century Italian immigrants, quite dissimilar from the later 20th century Italian Americans. I thought his Italian as well as his broken English dialect was virtually perfect. I would have loved to see him in the role of the Godfather. It's all together possible he would have added a more genuine Italian persona than Brando, although I'm not denigrating the fine performance Brando gave in that remarkable film. If you watch British films of the early 20th century you can clearly differentiate the differences in pronunciation and dialect to the accents and dialects that English actors speak today. What a tour de force Robinson's performance was in this terrific drama! I might add, however, that it's so perfectly placed in its proper perspective as that of a 1940's melodrama that a remake could add even more depth, given the advances in dramatic depth that contemporary movies are capable of eliciting from classics of a less demanding time.
As a comparison, were you to watch "Things Change" (!988), you might mark a close similarity in the way Don Ameche speaks English with a pronounced Italian accent that immigrant Italians that emigrated to the United States in the early 20th Century spoke. It's virtually identical to that of Edward G. Robinson's, who wasn't Italian but learned to speak it and lived with Italian immigrants when he lived in the Lower East side of New York throughout his teens at the time he learned to speak English instead of his native Daco-Romanian tongue. There is a distinct difference from that of contemporary émigrés who carry with them the elements of a wholly different set of dialects, accents and linguistic characteristics.
I think its a very good performance but he drops the accent too often- usually at the end of lines on the last word- for me to consider it to be his best. Anyway it would have to go some to beat "All My Sons". Richard Conte's best? Now you're talking.
shareI agree with all the above except for the quirky complaint about EGR's accent. All his performances are greatest performances. He didn't know any other way to act.
I miss Big Band music and talented singers. Leonard Cohen is my idol. Civility, harmony, unity!
Griping about the accent -- It's usually someone from the "victimized" culture complaining because the actor didn't get his native regional accent just right, or doesn't like the sound of his own native accent played back to him. Edward G came from Romania, not that far away from Italy, and was a scholar -- and no doubt did his best, better than 99%.
shareI agree that Robbinson was one of the greats. He stole every scene he was in with Bogart, of all people, in Key Largo. "Yeah see, my name is Johnny. Johnny Rocko. Yeah."
share
Even when the material was beneath him,(MCKENNA'S GOLD) Robinson (like Bela Lugosi), gave it his all. I'm not sure why his accent should be a stumbling block to enjoying a bravura performance.
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."
I just watched. It had a more upbeat ending then I was expecting. Not complaining I liked it.
It`s a good turn - never seen a poor one from EGR yet - but, for one thing, the broad Italian pronouncements, even though amusing, are the kind of obvious stunt for which he deserves no extra points. Some serious command of screen the guy had though.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Well Edward G. wasn't an Actor's Studio type. I doubt he would've gone to the real Bank of America and spent two weeks absorbing the actual Gianini (sp?) atmosphere.
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?