The Crooked Way (1949)

***SPOILERS*** Shot up WWII veteran Eddie Rice, John Payne, suffering from amnesia due to a severe brain injury in the Pacific theater of war wants to find himself or who he really is by traveling to L.A the place he last remembers he was living at before his memory went blank. It's there that Eddie's past catches up with him in the fact he's not really Eddie Rice war hero but Eddie Riccardi career criminal. With his former friend mobster Vincent Alexander, Sunny Tufts, finding out that his good friend Eddie is back in town he decides to pay him a visit as well as pay him back for ratting him out to the police that landed him two years behind bars.Eddie who has no memory of what he did and what happened to him the last five years plays it all by ear slowly getting to know what kind of person he was as well as who his friends, or are very few, and enemies, who are in the hundreds, really are. We the audience go along with Eddie in his mission to find out who he really is that has him framed by Vincent in a murder that Vincent committed of L.A cop Let. Joe Williams, Rhys Williams, who was about to be run him in by him for a previous murder. Through all this the blank looking and not knowing what's going on Eddie Rice/Riccardi gets deeper and deeper into trouble without even knowing it. It's Eddie's old lady hat-check girl Nina Martin, Ellen Drew, who divorced him three years ago and works in Vincent's night club who fills in blanks in his brain to not just who he is but what he's done over the last five lost years of his life.***SPOILERS*** Now with his memory restored Eddie plans to have it out with Vincent in his hideout that his gimpy associated Petey, Percy Helton, uses a front as a paint distributorship. The end of this very confusing movie has Vince and Eddie battling it out with a badly wounded Petey, who was shot by Vincent's thugs, trying to save himself and his pet cat Samson from getting killed in the cross-fire between the two and about two dozen policemen who are on the scene. Petey in fact saves Samson but ends up losing his life when Vincent who he missed putting a bullet in his back returned the favor blasting Petey between the eyes. It was Vince who got the worst of it when instead of surrendering to the police, who had him surrounded, decided to blast it out with them with him having already used up all his ammunition.

Robert Osborne introduced "The Crooked Way" on TCM as nothing special when it was first released but a particular favorite of film noir fans now. I count myself as one of those fans, but have to admit that I'm a bit perplexed as to what it is about this film that would cause it to stand out from any number of other perfectly serviceable films like it. The deep-shadow photography courtesy of John Alcott was another of the film's attributes pointed out specifically by Osborne, and it is indeed probably its best asset. As for the rest, it's standard-issue noir with John Payne in one of his tough-guy roles. Granted, standard-issue noir is fine with me, but there are countless other noirs I've liked more than this one.Grade: B

In the series of tough crime melodramas he made during the late 1940's and early 1950's John Payne invariably seems to be looking for something. In Kansas City Confidential (1952) it was the stolen loot from a robbery. In 99 River Street (1953) it was the thug who framed him for murder. In The Crooked Way (1949) it was something much more basic -- his very identity.Payne plays Eddie Rice, a WW II veteran recovered from the physical effects of a head wound but suffering a complete and permanent amnesia. He has no memory of his life before regaining consciousness in a hospital. All he knows about himself is what the Army has told him, that he enlisted in Los Angeles. When discharged from the hospital, he takes a train to L. A. to try and find out who he is. What he finds is more than he really wanted to know! That he was a hoodlum named Eddie Riccardi. That he has a wife (Ellen Drew), but she now hates his guts. That his former gangster partner, played with evil oozing from every pore by Sonny Tufts, is bent on beating him up, framing him for murder, and even more nasty things.How Eddie muddles though this dark nightmare of a past coming back to haunt him and how it is presented by director Robery Florey and cinematographer John Alton adds up to a classic forgotten gem of a noir thriller. The Crooked Way exhibits the classic elements of film noir -- a morally ambiguous protagonist, a femme fa-tale, a grim, brutal story, and the most starkly shadowed and obliquely angled cinematography found in any movie. Most of the scenes are at night, and Alton's camera throws a tenebrist gloom over every shot with only the speaker's face lighted. Sometimes all figures are silhouettes, then the face gradually comes to light. A tall man looks down at a short man, and the view is as from a second story window. All this dark, oblique cinematography is not only arty and thrilling on its on to noir groupies, but it works perfectly to portray the dream-like state Eddie is experiencing. The story moves along briskly under Florey's direction and Frank Sullivan's editing. The action is explosively sharp and brutal.John Payne was perfectly cast in the part of Eddie, maintaining a blank, confused expression you would expect from an amnesiac, even when getting tough. Getting tough was an item that John Payne, an ex-boxer and a WWII veteran in real life, was good at in spite of his mild, laid back manner. He was at this point starting to mature as a tough guy actor after abandoning his original song and dance career at least in part because he got too weathered and muscled up. Payne seems to be an acquired taste amongst present day lovers of classic movies, but I've acquired it and am now looking for all of his pictures.The Crooked Way, while a cut below Kansas City Confidential and 99 River Street, is one of John Payne's best.

Crooked Way, The (1949) ** (out of 4) Weak film noir about war vet Eddie Rice (John Payne) who is suffering from amnesia after going through shell shock. His doctor recommends he go back to his old stomping grounds to see if perhaps someone will notice him and tell him who he really is. This doesn't take long to happen but unfortunately for Eddie he learns that he's in bad with several gangsters. THE CROOKED WAYS features a few interesting ideas as well as some terrific cinematography but in the end the story is just way too loose and the direction downright flat. There are a few interesting ideas here including using a war vet who was a lousy crook only to discover bravery during the war. I think this aspect could have been focused on more and the film would have benefited. Another good aspect is simply the amnesia touch as this is a very simple but often effective gimmick used in various noirs and other dramas. I think this story line is something very hard to mess up but sadly Florey does just that. There isn't an ounce of energy to be found anywhere in this picture. The film is downright flat from the opening scenes all the way to the closing and it really appears that no one got the message that they needed suspense and tension in a film like this. The mystery involving who this guy is never comes off nor does anything doing with his ex-wife who is still with the gangsters. I think the twists and turns in the screenplay were all obvious ones that never really paid off. I also wasn't too impressed with any of the performances including Payne who seemed too bored here. I'm not sure what the reasons for but there wasn't any passion or energy in his performance. The same is true for Ellen Drew as the ex-wife. Rhys Williams is pretty good as the Lieutenant and Sonny Tufts isn't too bad as the gangster. Future Oscar-winner John Alton does a terrific job with the cinematography as he gives the film a unique and original look. As you'd expect there's a lot of darkness and shadows but the cinematography really makes the atmosphere something interesting and the look alone almost makes this film worth sitting through. With that said, overall this is 90-minutes worth of boredom without enough energy to keep it going through the end. Considering the talent you have to strike this one up as a disappointment.