Customer Reviews

Below the Deadline (1936) DVD [Remastered Edition]

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1936 is almost directly in the middle of the Film Noir period when hollywood would churn out dark little crime and dectecive films to run before the main feature at the movies.

Below the Deadline, directed by Charles Lamont is set firmly in the Film Noir tradition and is one of the last great noir films, before the genre started to head into decline and cliche in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Lamont was know as an industry director - able to churn out dozens of movies a year that all met a certain acceptable standard of quality. Obviously when one is churning out films at that rate some are going to be be better than others.

While Lamont was certainly capable of churning out bad films, he was also able to make great ones and this is an example of one of his best films.

It relies on one of the great standard plots of the noir era - a man is framed for a violent crime he didn't commit and an intriguing woman has to find a way to save him before the cops get to him.

From there it moves on a dark path of tight suspense and some very well through out surprises.

The direction is paricularly taught and Lamont gets the most out of his mostly unknown actors and actresses.

It's a good film, that bears repeated viewing.

This movie reminded me a lot of "Ocean's 11" in that it is about charming con men who decide to pull off the con of their career. In this case it all involves diamonds and a lot of money and innocent people may lose their life savings. It's a very dark film and a good example of film noir. For an older movie the image quality is very high, as is the sound. I was entertained and impressed.

Black and white film stock. Smoke and shadows. Most of the action taking place at night. Criminals. Dangerous women. Detectives.

These are the main elements of any traditional film noir and we see all of them in Below the Deadline (not a bad play on words!)

In this case the "bad guy" is a girl who likes to steal diamonds and wrap men around her fingers. Of course she is doomed, but of course it is a long twisted road to her bad end.

This is the noir, the whole noir and nothing but the noir.