Slightly Scarlet (1956)
A drippy Technicolor melodrama from the early widescreen era, with crossed purposes and crossed stars? Sounds like Douglas Sirk, yes, but this lacks the depth and dreamy romance (and loneliness) of his films, and the seeming irony. This is really a kind of late film noir, though the themes of that era are diffused so it ends up mostly a crime drama with emphasis on the emotional troubles of the leading women. It's interesting more than compelling, but it is interesting.
It's hard to say if this is a John Alton movie, or a James M. Cain movie. The leading women with their almost scarlet hair (in Technicolor, which was unusual for RKO), are certainly not what makes this movie float, though they try very hard. And it's not John Payne, the leading man who is his usual understated self.
I'll go with Alton, the cinematographer, who transfers with some success the film noir feeling to color. Maybe too literally. Sometimes the shadows on the walls are caricatures of the old days, references to noir but not purely ominous. (In this way the movie really is like a Sirk film, which seems to confess an end-of-Hollywood decadence.) But in all the film looks very good—the shots, the editing, the color coordination (thanks to Technicolor's advisors), and the sets, which are quite deliberately distracting. (In this sense, it's again not a noir where the shadows hide the details—details abound.)
The plot, which I seem to be avoiding, is a bit strained, and even a bit confusing, and this is Cain's doing, and the screenwriter's. It's not that you can't follow, but that you wonder what people's motivations are. Payne plays a lowly henchman of a crime boss running to be re-elected mayor, and he mostly digs up dirt on enemies (by spying with camera and tape recorder). Events turn quickly and he's, what? running the whole underground racket? Yes, but only after cleaning it up a bit. And so allegiances flip flop and his girlfriend (one of the sisters) doesn't seem to notice.
The sisters are the centerpiece in a way—one has just gotten out of jail and the other is trying to help her. But naturally the "bad" one can't stay out of trouble, small stuff. One thing leads to another, sort of, but it doesn't much matter. What does matter is their interaction, and the overacted and rather fun performance by the "bad" sister, played by Arlene Dahl. Revenge and a few gunshots and gasping last thoughts and you have it.
So watch this from above, as a kind of low-grade spectacle. It's so vivid and well- meant somehow you can't help be curious. And you won't stop watching, I think. But you'll end up wondering why exactly it got made. This is one RKO's last films, and it feels like a last gasp.
A drippy Technicolor melodrama from the early widescreen era, with crossed purposes and crossed stars? Sounds like Douglas Sirk, yes, but this lacks the depth and dreamy romance (and loneliness) of his films, and the seeming irony. This is really a kind of late film noir, though the themes of that era are diffused so it ends up mostly a crime drama with emphasis on the emotional troubles of the leading women. It's interesting more than compelling, but it is interesting.
It's hard to say if this is a John Alton movie, or a James M. Cain movie. The leading women with their almost scarlet hair (in Technicolor, which was unusual for RKO), are certainly not what makes this movie float, though they try very hard. And it's not John Payne, the leading man who is his usual understated self.
I'll go with Alton, the cinematographer, who transfers with some success the film noir feeling to color. Maybe too literally. Sometimes the shadows on the walls are caricatures of the old days, references to noir but not purely ominous. (In this way the movie really is like a Sirk film, which seems to confess an end-of-Hollywood decadence.) But in all the film looks very good—the shots, the editing, the color coordination (thanks to Technicolor's advisors), and the sets, which are quite deliberately distracting. (In this sense, it's again not a noir where the shadows hide the details—details abound.)
The plot, which I seem to be avoiding, is a bit strained, and even a bit confusing, and this is Cain's doing, and the screenwriter's. It's not that you can't follow, but that you wonder what people's motivations are. Payne plays a lowly henchman of a crime boss running to be re-elected mayor, and he mostly digs up dirt on enemies (by spying with camera and tape recorder). Events turn quickly and he's, what? running the whole underground racket? Yes, but only after cleaning it up a bit. And so allegiances flip flop and his girlfriend (one of the sisters) doesn't seem to notice.
The sisters are the centerpiece in a way—one has just gotten out of jail and the other is trying to help her. But naturally the "bad" one can't stay out of trouble, small stuff. One thing leads to another, sort of, but it doesn't much matter. What does matter is their interaction, and the overacted and rather fun performance by the "bad" sister, played by Arlene Dahl. Revenge and a few gunshots and gasping last thoughts and you have it.
So watch this from above, as a kind of low-grade spectacle. It's so vivid and well- meant somehow you can't help be curious. And you won't stop watching, I think. But you'll end up wondering why exactly it got made. This is one RKO's last films, and it feels like a last gasp.