Richard Basehart

"I got a file on you that goes back further than you'd like to remember and up to where you wish you could forget." "Tension" (1950)

This film noir has everything. The sultry B movie queen Audrey Totter poised to snakebite our protagonist Richard Baseheart, the ever-lovely Syd Charise (although she is underutilized as window dressing this outing), perennial B movie cop Barry Sullivan & the always reliable William Conrad of TV's "Cannon" fame as law enforcement back up. Add to that a good script by Allen Rivkin, a honeydripping tenor sax-laden Andre Previn score (Bernard Herrman must have listened to this while composing "Taxi Driver") & direction by John Berry & you've got a pretty poisonous noir potion. Berry was a cohort of Orson Welles at the Mercury Theater in New York & took the reins when Welles departed for RKO to make "Citizen Kane". Unfortunately, he was blacklisted not long after making this little gem. Baseheart was a tremendously underrated actor mostly relegated to chatacter roles, but when he was afforded the opportunity, as in this film & "He Walked By Night" (1948), he showed some serious chops. His transition from Casper Milquetoastish Warren Quimby to suave, devil-may-care John Southern is nothing less than spectacular. Audrey Totter does her Totter thing in the best Gloria Graham tradition & we get some roller coaster twists & turns along the way. MGM's B's were like A's at other studios, so production quality/cinematography are pretty top notch for the time period. All in all, it feels a little better than the sum of it's ingredients, a tight little programmer for all us noir fans & one worth seeking out if you've missed it up till now.

Except for a gratuitously "weird" ending, this is a masterpiece. it captures the essence of America's increasingly thin social fabric, illuminating, in advance, not just the Reagan years, as some would have it, but the slippery slide into narcissism this country has experienced in the last half century. And Peter Sellers never did it better.

Watch this classic Fellini film... and look for the scene where Anthony Quinn's character Zampano inhales an ice cream cone (a gelato?) in one bite. Quinn plays his role perfectly. Give it a chance... it's slow at times, but it's worth it.