USA,
1954, 73 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
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Andre de Toth
- prod
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Bryan Foy
- scr
-
Crane Wilbur, Bernard Gordon, Richard Wormser
- cam
-
Bert Glennon
- cast
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Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Phillis Kirk, Ted de Corsia, Charles Buchinsky (Bronson)
- source
-
Warner Bros. Classics, 5890 West Jefferson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90016 3108. FAX: 310-558-7588
-
COMMENTS
Screened as part of the Andre de Toth tribute, with Andre de Toth in person.
OTHER
The team that brought you House of Wax—de Toth, Crane Wilbur, Bryan Foy, Phyllis Kirk and Charles Buchinsky (aka Charles Bronson)—reunited with Crime Wave for a totally different type of melodrama. The horror here is real as a couple of hoodlums force an ex-con to participate in a bank robbery. In his quest for authenticity, de Toth took the camera out to the Bunker Hill neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles and to the old Glendale airport in search of original locations and even persuaded Bank of America to permit a robbery on its premises (The bank agreed, apparently because it thought the production would offer an object lesson to would-be robbers!). Sterling Hayden is perfectly cast as the veteran hard-boiled detective sergeant and, just as he did with singer Dick Powell in Pitfall, de Toth takes dancer Gene Nelson and transforms him into a dramatic actor. And watch how de Toth manipulates the actor's dancer body to show up the vulnerability, the willowy quality of the character; compare Nelson to James Cagney, another dancer turned gangster. Warner Bros. publicized Crime Wave with the slogan "crime crawls in shadow," and its director compared the film to a snake that silently and viciously devours its victims. The only escape for Nelson and Kirk, the innocent couple trapped in its path, lies in the dubious arms of the law.
—Anthony Slide
FACTOID #14
The longest film at the Festival, Sátántangó directed by Béla Tarr, screened in 1995. This Hungarian black comedy clocked in at 435 minutes (just over seven hours).
