1957's Chicago Confidential is but one of many movies that purports to be "ripped from the headlines" and tackles (read: exploits) contemporary news trends in hopes of converting them into ticket sales. This B-movie formula ran rampant throughout the 1950s, with Chicago Confidential just one in a string of many low-budget films that sought success on the promise of a tell-all expose. Labor racketeering is the salacious subject here, "suggested" by a 1950 book by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer which exposed the seedy underbelly of the famous city.

Like several other B-movie noirs of the fifties, Chicago Confidential features an authoritative, god-like narrator in an attempt to provide a sense of importance and credibility. I suspect this narration exists because the story itself cannot establish much gravitas on its own due to its low budget and by-the-numbers direction from workman director Sidney Salkow, who did much better work elsewhere (Robber's Roost with George Montgomery and The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, to name two). Also worth noting, this is a movie that takes place in one of the great U.S. cities, and yet features very little footage of Chicago itself and is frequently (though not entirely) set-bound.

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Lest one think that this is an easy skip, the real reason to watch Chicago Confidential is a stellar cast that consists of Brian Keith (The Rare Breed), Beverly Garland (The Alligator People, It Conquered the World), and Dick Foran (The Fearmakers). Character actor fans will also enjoy seeing Elisha Cook Jr. (House on Haunted Hill) as a drunk named Candymouth Duggan and former Lois Lane actress Phyllis Coates in an uncredited role. It's a shame that they don't all have a little bit more to do here. Don't get me wrong, the movie is perfectly watchable, but with so many stellar examples of film noir vying for the attention of viewers, Chicago Confidential doesn't do much to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack. The cinematography is solid, but the movie has no sense of urgency and the characters all feel flat and uninteresting. Film noir almost always taps into our own fear and guilt, but this movie doesn't seem to have much interest in that, or if it does, it fails to convey it. One of the only things that stands out here is a few scientific scenes, such as when a forensic audio analyst uses a machine to discover that two tape recordings do not feature the same person speaking.

The film was made at Peerless Productions by Robert Kent for Edward Small, who is one of the bigger names of independent film production and whose career spanned half a century. It was Small who was largely responsible for the spate of "confidential" B-movies hitting theaters, a trend he had helped create back in 1951 with Kansas City Confidential, continued in 1955 with New York Confidential, and capitalized upon once again here. The finished product was sold to UA for distribution, and now makes a Blu-ray debut courtesy of Kino Lorber's Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema VII, a box set of three films which consists entirely of United Artists movies by way of MGM. The through-line of Volume VII is political and corporate corruption, of which this film loosely fits. Chicago Confidential is the only film in the box set to not feature a new scan or a commentary track, but the video quality is good, with nice contrast and a clear, unblemished image.

At only 75 minutes long, Chicago Confidential is certainly not a bad movie; it's just not particularly compelling, especially when compared to other, similar pictures. Frankly, it sometimes feels like a television episode of Perry Mason, not a theatrical film. The introduction of science and technology does set it aside a bit, as do some of the action scenes that take place at night. Unfortunately, this one seems to be missing the human pathos that defines the film noir style. I'm grateful the film has a Blu-ray release, but it will be of primary interest to character actor enthusiasts and is not recommended for those just beginning their exploration of film noir.

>>Luckylibbet: Your Swedish is spot on ? I guess it's a little easier getting access to fashion movies in Europe and at least Lagerfeld Confidential hit the cinemas in my hometown. But I still wish that these movies became more accessible, since fashion makes for intriguing viewing I think. I'll try to review a couple of more movies soon, and I also got a couple waiting in the mail, but work and general life stuff seems to get in the way of blogging and reviewing right now.

The opening scenes of "L.A. Confidential" are devoted to establishing the three central characters, all cops. We may be excused for expecting that they will be antagonists; indeed, they think so themselves. But the film has other plans, and much of its fascination comes from the way it puts the three cops on the same side and never really declares anyone the antagonist until near the end. Potential villains are all over the screen, but they remain potential right up to the closing scenes. What the three cops are fighting, most of the time, is a pervasive corruption that saturates the worlds in which they move.

The movie also documents a specific time when the world of police work edged into show business. These days, when we can watch video recordings of cops actually busting suspects, when celebrity trials are shown on live TV, when gossip is the prime ingredient of many news outlets, it is hard to imagine a time when crime and vice lived hidden in the shadows. But they did, and the tipping point when that era ended must have been in the early 1950s, with the rise of instant celebrities, scandalous tabloid magazines like Confidential, the partnership between Hollywood and law enforcement agencies and the end of the media's reticence about seamy subject matter. "L.A. Confidential" (1997) shows the current era of sensationalism being born.

The first voice heard from the screen comes from the confiding, insinuating publisher of Hush-Hush magazine, Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito). He sets the tone: "Insiders" know the score and are getting away with murder. His most valued contact is Detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), the technical adviser on "Badge of Honor,' a "Dragnet"-style TV show. Jack also stars in some of Hudgens' scoops. They set up celebrities or politicians in compromising situations, Vincennes breaks in to bust them and Hush-Hush gets the story.

Vincennes will be one of the film's protagonists. The other two cops are Officer Bud White (Russell Crowe), who believes in bending the law to enforce it, and Detective Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), a straight-arrow type whose self-righteous morality gets on the department's nerves. These three cops, so different from one another, all possess some essential quality of honor that draws them together in untangling the film's web of corruption.

For much of its running time, "L.A. Confidential" seems episodic -- one sensational event after another, with no apparent connection. Mickey Cohen, the head of organized crime in L.A., has just been sent to prison, and now hit squads are rubbing out his top lieutenants. A millionaire named Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn) has sidelines in slick porn and high-priced call girls, and specializes in prostitutes who have had plastic surgery to make them resemble movie stars. A bunch of drunken cops beat up Mexican suspects and get their photos on the front page. Exley and Vincennes, for quite different reasons, testify against their fellow officers, breaking the department's code of silence. There's a massacre at the downtown Nite Owl Cafe, and a cop is one of the victims. Calling sternly for justice to be done in all of these cases is ramrod-stiff Capt. Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), who presides at morning roll call

The plot, based on the novel by James Ellroy, can only be described as labyrinthine. For long periods, we're not even sure that it is a plot, and one of the film's pleasures is the way director Curtis Hanson and writer Brian Helgeland put all the pieces into place before we fully realize they're pieces. How could these people and events possibly be related? We don't much mind, so long as the pieces themselves are so intriguing

Consider the business of the call girls who have been "cut" to make them look like movie stars. One of them, Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), looks like Veronica Lake, but the truth is, she's never had plastic surgery. White tracks her down because she's the friend of a girl who was killed at the Nite Owl. Then he pays a return visit because he is powerfully attracted to her, and they fall into bed without having had six words of personal conversation. Is that typical behavior for a hooker? Does she have another motive? As the Basinger character plays out, her motives and real feelings coil about one another, creating a deep and sympathetic character. Despite Crowe, Pearce and Spacey, it may be Basinger who gives the film's best performance. Her speech to Exley, about how she sees Bud White, is a monologue as simple as it is touching.

White has compromised himself by sleeping with a potential witness. He is also in deep with Capt. Smith, who uses him as a strong-arm man to beat up "suspects," including out-of-town mobsters (the message: go home). Vincennes compromises himself by ratting on fellow cops, something he says he would never do -- until his job on the TV show is threatened. And the straight-arrow Exley believes he could never bend the official rules of conduct, until he discovers that sometimes they need bending.

It would be unfair for me to even hint at some of the directions the story takes. Let me instead describe superb moments. One of the most famous comes when Vincennes and Exley enter the Formosa Cafe, a Chinese restaurant close to a Warner Bros. lot, to question the mobster Johnny Stompanato. He's with a date, who gives them some lip. Exley tells her to shut up: "A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker." Notice how the camera frames Exley in foreground and holds Vincennes in background, as he confides, "She is Lana Turner." This line, one of the movie's most famous, works so well, I think, because of the particular way Spacey delivers it, and the little smile he allows himself, and because Hanson does it in the same shot; a cutaway to Vincennes would have been all wrong 152ee80cbc

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