Film Forum

(1946, Robert Siodmak) Gas jockey/boxer Burt Lancaster (in his debut) holes up in a small dark room awaiting his own assassins – so far so good, from Hemingway’s classic story – but then insurance dick Edmond O’Brien teams up with cop Sam Levene to dig up all the scheming, and double-crossing – and sultry Ava Gardner – that got him there. DCP restoration. Approx. 103 min.

Restored by Universal Pictures in collaboration with The Film Foundation. Special thanks to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg for their consultation on this restoration.

A UNIVERSAL PICTURES RELEASE

Reviews

“THE CITIZEN KANE OF CRIME MOVIES.”
– Eddie Muller

“LANCASTER’S FIRST AND PROBABLY BEST PERFORMANCE!” 
– Pauline Kael

“A prime example of Film Noir... its evocation of morbid atmosphere and in the sheer bravura of its staging have seldom if ever been surpassed.”
– John Russell Taylor

“Includes one of the most memorable set pieces in forties cinema: the robbery sequence filmed in one lone swooping crane take, the camera diving and panning like a demented bird. But it is the creation of the violent, alienated, amoral world that is the film’s most important achievement.”
– Christopher Lambert

“The splintered chronology, the flashbacks presented from multiple points of view, and the flashbacks within flashbacks, all have a crucial impact on both the mood and the meaning of the story… Swede is one of the most elusive of Noir’s anti-heroes, Kitty one of the genre’s most masked spider women; and the film’s own devious structure, its conflicting points of view, its choppy handling of time, reinforce the enigmatic aura that enshrouds the two main characters.” 
– Foster Hirsch