The Man Who Cheated Himself

Femme fatale? Check. San Francisco police? Check. Unethical affair? Check. Yup, it's a noir. Jane Wyatt was pretty bad in this unless her goal was to portray a bad overselling liar. The point of the plot, I guess, is that the cover up is worse than the crime (probably justified self defense anyway). Fav scene: trying to redirect the brother from looking at the bullet hole in the book and he's doing some fake outs of almost seeing it.

The premise annoys me much more than it should, seems like there would be much more interesting films to be made if an actual rational decision had been made after the murder scene. I don't enjoy it all that much when the lead is an idiot early on and the rest of the film is him getting caught up in a web of idiotic lies to his eventual downfall. Still, that aside, it's a good film. The investigation is fun for a while, Cobb is entertaining and the ending is appropriate.

Dall starts off seeming a bit miscast, but he grows into the role as the story progresses. Fort Point makes a nicely eerie setting for the finale.

This is a decent film noir. This film has a good performance by Lee J Cobb, I had never heard of him before watching this film

The set up for the film works in a generic sort of way. The problem is that Cobb keeps making stupid decisions and there are way too many coincidences and his brother makes leaps of logic for no other reason except that it's in the script that way.

It starts off a bit clumsily but gets progressively better as Dall's character begins to unravel the web of clues and Cobb's character begins to feel the weight of his deceit bearing down on him. Ultimately, though, the whole premise of the film rests on the relationship between Cobb and Wyatt, and that wasn't something I felt I could buy into. A femme fatale should be sultry and seductive; Wyatt's character was selfish and spoiled... not a woman you would gamble your freedom on.

The common "criminal working closely with those trying to solve the crime" noir scenario. In this case, Lee J. Cobb is a cop trying to hide his complicity in a murder from his brother, a rookie detective. Formulaic, sure, but it's tight and flows very nicely. There seems to be a misunderstanding about how colorblindness works, but otherwise the script is quite satisfying. The photography is fairly bland, except for the thrilling climax in a great location. Nice button at the end, too.

Extra points for this film noir for being compact, action-packed and some great cinematography at a unique location.

A lightweight, but entertaining noir with Cobb making a good tough guy lead/heavy and Dall feeling absolutely perversely miscast as a cop.

Em honra do centenário de John Dall. Ótimo pequeno noir. Lee J. Cobb todo mundo conhece e trabalhou em uma porrada de obras-primas, mas o John Dall tinha tanto potencial, o ápice de sua carreira foram mesmo Rope do Hitchcock e Gun Crazy do Lewis, mas depois desse filme ele praticamente se entregou à televisão. Box Versátil Filme Noir Volume 13.

Odd casting, odd premise, oddly engaging.