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The gloss on Lucky Luciano is promptly expressed as a change in regime at the clip joint, the gangster (Eduardo Ciannelli) has little use for subtlety, "Club Intime" on the marquee becomes "Club Intimate." Customers are tended to by "hostesses" who must surrender their earnings for "protection," among them is the toughie (Bette Davis) taking the long view: "I can beat this racket." She and colleagues (Lola Lane, Isabel Jewell, Rosalind Marquis, Mayo Methot) share a flat, provide each other with hard-boiled solidarity, banter with a wardrobe weasel (Allen Jenkins). "Don't you believe in knocking twice?" "Don't you believe in paying once?" The crusading prosecutor (Humphrey Bogart) wants a testimony from the heroine, she's more worried about her younger sister (Jane Bryan) finding out about her trade. A gambler's murder brings everybody to the courtroom. "You know, if I weren't in such a hurry, I'd break right down and cry." The Davis verve in spades, punchy Robert Rossen dialogue, an underworld parallel to LaCava's Stage Door. The innocent sibling prepares for a night out and the camera cuts from the bobbling doll on her dresser to the joint jumpin' with hot jazz—an atypical flourish from Lloyd Bacon, or a typical one from the uncredited Michael Curtiz? Confronting the capo after Bryan washes up dead in the river, Davis hones her gaze into a laser beam for a signature aria: "I'll get you, even if I have to crawl back from the grave to do it." The title is the ultimate punishment for a worker dependent on looks, the vicious battering is kept off-screen but the aftermath is revealed at the witness stand, the scar on the demimondaine's face only heightens her bravery. The finest shot is saved for last, "five crabby dames" step out into the fog and suddenly it's as if the Mizoguchi of Osaka Elegy had dropped by the Warner Bros. lot. With John Litel, Ben Welden, Damian O'Flynn, and Henry O'Neill. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |