Cornered (1945)

A lot of the Hayes code seems destined for the trash heap in this film. We see women who are obviously willing to sleep with our protagonist. There's blood. There are bodies, right out in the open. Burned up or riddled with bullet holes, there they are. One of our characters gets slugged in the mouth and we see a bloody drizzle escaping his lips.Yes, the Hayes code took a beating with this one.There are dark, sinister looks, from dark sinister people. Gerard (Powell) is surrounded by murderous people and we don't know who is for him or against him. At least not until the end of the film.This one film is proof positive that the innocence of America is long gone. No one is smiling. No one is truly happy. Everyone is on edge because, even though the war is over, our cast is headed for a long torturous road to normalcy. We are all hoping they make it.During the war, Gerard (Powell) is returned to friendly territory were he recovers from his wounds. While in hospital, he receives a letter from his wife's father, telling him that his wife is dead. Gerard knows something isn't right and that "Dad" isn't telling the whole story.He applies for a visa and is told a background check (his) will take a month. He returns to France illegally, to get answers. And thus the fun begins.This is excellent film noir told from the perspective of writers, a director, and producer who have been affected by real war.It shows.

Dick Powell plays a Canadian pilot who returns to France at the end of WWII to find his wife was executed by the Vichy government, along with other French patriots. The man who ordered the execution is believed to be dead, but Powell doubts that and sets out to track him down. The trail leads him to Argentina where he finds himself surrounded by enemies.Noirish revenge drama starts out strong but falters due to a lead character with little intelligence, an overly talky script, and running on about 15-20 minutes more than it should have. One of those movies where the villain catches the hero and, instead of killing him, just talks and talks until it inevitably bites him in the rear. Still, it's Dick Powell playing a tough guy and that's always worth a gander.

"Cornered" is a bleak, bitter and brutal revenge thriller about a surly Canadian pilot who, at the end of World War 11, embarks on a manhunt which takes him from England to France Switzerland and eventually Buenos Aires. The plot is very convoluted, many of the relatively large number of characters look suspicious and the villain of the piece is difficult to trace (especially as no-one seems to know what he looks like). All of these elements together had the potential to make this a very confusing movie, but the fact that it isn't, is due to the skillful direction of Edward Dmytryk who brings crispness and clarity to the action as well as a good deal of suspense.After completing his military service at the end of World War 11, Lieutenant Laurence Gerard (Dick Powell) discovers that his French wife, Celeste (who he'd only been married to for 20 days), had been executed on the orders of a Nazi collaborator called Marcel Jarnac (Luther Adler). Jarnac, as an official of the Vichy government, had been responsible for the executions of numerous French patriots but had been declared dead. On learning how his wife had died, Gerard swears to hunt down and kill Jarnac. He doesn't buy the story about his death, especially as Jarnac's a man who nobody anywhere seems to be able to identify.Following reports that Jarnac had been trapped in a house somewhere near Marseilles; Gerard visits the site and discovers documents that enable him to pursue his investigations further and he finds that Madame Madeleine Jarnac (Micheline Cheirel) has a residence in Buenos Aires. When he arrives at Buenos Aires airport, he's met by an obese man called Melchior Incza (Walter Slezak) who claims to be a tour guide and surprisingly seems to know who Gerard is. Despite Gerard's initial hostility, Incza proves to be useful as he is able to introduce him to Madame Jarnac and her circle of friends.Gerard's investigations become increasingly difficult as he finds it impossible to know who to trust, Madame Jarnac's unpredictable nature and the circumstances of her marriage limit severely the amount of help that she can provide and the presence of Nazi supporters and a group of characters, who are allegedly trying to bring them to justice, only complicate matters further. Despite this, Gerard perseveres until he eventually tracks down his quarry.Dick Powell's performance is significant in the context of his career because, after initially being known as a song-and-dance man who appeared in light comedies, it reaffirmed his ability to be convincing in hardboiled roles. As Gerard, he's consistently grim, angry and abrasive and the type of guy who's so driven that he habitually takes rash actions without thinking too deeply about what he's doing. The supporting cast provide rather uneven contributions but Walter Slezak does stand out as the larger-than-life Incza who's extremely crooked and untrustworthy but also adds some much appreciated colour to the proceedings."Cornered" is strong on intrigue and atmosphere and the cinematography is wonderful. It's also very intense and contains a couple of particularly brutal episodes which are surprising to see in a film which was made in the 1940s.

As World War II ends, Canadian flyer Laurence Gerard(Dick Powell)returns to France to track down a German collaborator named Marcel Jarnac(Luther Adler), who is reportedly the one in charge of killing a group of Resistance fighters that included his newlywed wife. Gerard is let to believe that Jarnac himself is also dead. Not believing this, Gereard decides to track down Jarnac through his wife Madeleine(Micheline Cheirel), who has relocated in Argentina. Walter Slezak plays an agent that appears to want to aid Gerard; but actually is working to bring Gerard to Jarnac. His journey will become crowded with Nazi sympathizers and double crossers; but he is determined to avenge his wife's death. Other players: Morris Carnovsky, Jack La Rue, Edgar Barrier and Nina Vale.