Guilty Bystander

Something about a noir McGuffin that doesn't make any sense only heightens the inscrutability and unstable soul of the lead: we're given nothing, like him, yet somehow we hope for the best. May Zachary Scott's performance make it up there with the best of the great Screen Alcoholics: this is as profoundly hurt as Under the Volcano yet as desperate for attention as Leaving Las Vegas. It's mesmerizing in its search for meaning, and survival.

It's a detective noir, so it gets some slack from me, and I'm ok with a twisty plot that doesn't make much sense, but I wish there was more here. It's fun enough but never does anything special, though I guess the terrible print quality doesn't help.

The story seemed a bit confusing, which may be partly because of the lousy print, but there's definitely a convoluted Chanlder-esque structure to it. Some of the cinematography looked good. What I particularly liked was Scott's performance, he handled the alcoholism very well, without reducing it to caricature. Boland was interesting as well, although I thought her work at the climax was a bit uneven. The film is creaky and rough, but fits well within the noir atmosphere.

Wasn't really enjoying this as much as the darker mood suggested I would. Zachary Scott is a actor I sometimes struggle to connect with, and with so much of Guilty Bystander (1950) being centered around him, I wasn't drawn in. Some of this was still okay, it just didn't have the personality involved for me personally to get engaged.

A cheap noir that gives exactly what you can expect from it, and not much more.

Clearly a lowbudget B-noir; the direction is journeyman-like, the plot is convoluted and the dialogues feel Chandler-wannabe, the acting, apart from a passable Zachary Scott in the lead, is mediocre. But it's enjoyable because it has that quintessential mood of a noir about an alcoholic ex-detective stumbling through New York City's sleazy underworld.