Curapedi
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Salubfoto
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
gordonl56
New York Confidential – 1955Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, Anne Bancroft, Onslow Stevens, J.Carrol Naish headline this violent film noir from 1955.Crawford is a New York mob bigwig who has moved the syndicate into being more like a business. He prefers to keep the violence to a minimum if possible. It draws too much attention from the media and the Police. Crawford though, has no problem putting out contracts on people who step out of line.There has been a mob killing done without an OK from the top. Two civilians were caught in the hit as well, and the Police pressure is on. Crawford calls up his boy in charge of hits, Mike Mazurki. He has Mazurki call in a hitter from Chicago to do the job. Richard Conte is the up and comer brought in to take care of business.Conte does the job, neat and clean, which impresses Crawford, who takes him in to his mob. Crawford had been a friend of Conte's father in the old days. Conte quickly moves up the ladder and into Crawford's inner circle.Besides business, complicating Crawford's life is his daughter, Anne Bancroft. Bancroft is a girl who likes the booze and is somewhat of a spoilt brat. She also hates how people treat her once they discover who her father is.Conte becomes Crawford's fixer of problems because he is so smooth and efficient at his job. He continues to move up in the organization as others are moved out. Conte is pleased with the life, flash cars, 200 dollar suits and plenty of night life.Of course things go bad when a Federal Government type on the take, William Forest, screws up a multi-million dollar deal for the mob. The Mob bosses have a vote and decide to bump Forest off. Mike Mazurki, William Phillips and Henry Kulky draw the hit.The hit goes bad and a cop is killed during the getaway. The media play up the cop's death and a big investigation is started. Crawford sends Conte to clean up the mess by eliminating the three hitters. He manages to dispose of Kulky and Phillips, but Mazurki gets away.Mazurki decides the only way to stay alive is to turn State's evidence. He offers to exchange info on his bosses for protection and a deal. The Government uses this to go after Crawford, who then goes into hiding.The Mob bosses have another vote and decide that Crawford has to go in order to take the Police pressure off. Conte is the man sent out to take care of the problem, which he does. What Conte does not know is that the Mob has also decided he knows too much as well. They have sent a man to eliminate Conte after Crawford is dealt with by Conte.The first 35 minutes is real cracker-jack noir. Then it stumbles a bit in the middle before picking up steam again at the end. The look of the film is not what it could have been. A better director of photography would have helped. Eddie Fitzgerald was best known for being the d of p on the long running LASSIE television series. But, as a whole, it is an entertaining 87 minute fun ride.
clore_2
The credits come on and one is really set up for something good. Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, Anne Bancroft, Onslow Stevens, Marilyn Maxwell, J. Carroll Naish, Barry Kelley, Tom Powers, Mike Mazurki, Celia Lovsky...The film starts with location footage and the stentorian tones of a narrator so you figure you're going to get one of those De Rochemont docudramas or at least a cheapie along the lines of Conte's The Sleeping City which was shot on location here in NYC.No, soon we're on the Goldwyn lot which wouldn't be bad if there were some creative angles or lighting. But no, individual scenes are all harshly lit except for a fist fight when they needed to hide the stunt men (not very well either). Also, there are no dissolves, all scenes end with a fade to black and you half expect to see a commercial.The story structure is no better - two major characters are just written out with no drama to punctuate the exits. The story in itself is promising enough, with hit man Conte imported from Chicago and recruited to remain with Crawford's mob after he neatly disposes of some upstart who causes headlines which "the syndicate" would prefer to avoid.Crawford's daughter Bancroft seems to be falling for Conte, but that goes nowhere. Crawford's girl Marilyn Maxwell is definitely falling for Conte, but that goes nowhere, but hey, at least now the subtext folks have something to read into it. All I saw there was poor writing.Conte's character is fairly bright it seems, then Bancroft uses the word "penchant" and he seems dumbfounded. That reversal happens again at the end of the film, but I won't reveal in what manner. Crawford keeps telling Conte he's brighter than all the other "pigs" he has in his employ who can't even spell their own names. So then, how has Crawford managed to head the East Coast mob and hold off trouble for 20 years if everyone working for him is an idiot? By the way, you will never hear the word "pigs" used so often in 87 minutes unless you're at a hog-calling contest.Worth watching to see so many familiar faces in one film, but as to whether it's worth watching again is another matter. If I do, it won't be soon.
kdbilesncoast
It has been quite a long while since I've seen this film. Yet even though it has been at least 30 years since I last saw this movie it stands out as one of my favorite films. I have never been able to find it on VHS and it is just never shown on television. I can't understand why Turner Classic Movies hasn't shown it because it is definitely a classic film noir gem. But it is more than film noir; it is a genuine motif of organized crime brought to the screen. The cast is excellent as far as talent goes. Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, and Ann Bancroft just being in the cast should merit it being shown on TV once in awhile. One of the central themes of achieving success and the American dream through crime and corruption is an old staple of Hollywood, but it is presented in such a way as to provide the viewer with a definite amount of empathy for the main characters in spite of the fact that they are mobsters. It is entertaining and interesting without a lot of violence and since it was released in 1955, no profanity. In my mind I rate it along with another film of the same genre that was released some 12 years later titled "The Brotherhood" starring Kirk Douglas. I just wish I could get this film on VHS, DVD, or television. I would greatly appreciate any help anyone could give me in that endeavor.
bmacv
In Russell Rouse's New York Confidential, Broderick Crawford plays a darker extension of his Harry Brock character in Born Yesterday. Brock was a corrupt businessman, a wheeler-dealer with senators in his pocket, but the movie (a comedy, after all) never went so far as to label him a mobster, much less a killer. But five years later, in the wake of the televised Kefauver hearings which brought the scope of organized crime to a rapt public, Crawford has become a cog in a vast `syndicate' or `cartel' - an important cog in its Manhattan headquarters, yes, but only one piece of its unstoppable machinery.When one of his vassals stages an unauthorized hit, Crawford calls in some talent from Chicago (Richard Conte) to enforce discipline. The widowed Crawford warms to Conte as the son he never had, though he does have a handful of a rebellious daughter (Ann Bancroft) as well as a high-maintenance mistress with a platinum chignon (Marilyn Maxwell). Maxwell has eyes for Conte, but his eyes stay affixed on the unstable, hard-drinking Bancroft, who wants nothing to do with her father's business - or with any of his minions.The triangulated romance, however, takes second place to the mob's tangled business interests. When a recalcitrant lobbyist scuttles a scheme to profit from government shipping contracts, he's ordered killed. In the movie's best orchestrated sequence, torpedo Mike Mazurki accomplishes the hit but botches his escape from a hotel; wounded, he decides to flip and sing.With the big heat now on, the executive board decides Crawford must take the fall; he, however, decides to join Mazurki in singing a duet. So the board contracts Conte to eliminate the now dangerous Crawford....The gangster movies of the early 'thirties endure as character studies of flamboyant but flawed figures played by the likes of Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney and Paul Muni. This spats-and-tommyguns genre, however, fell out of favor in the 'forties (given global upheaval, bootleggers became small fry). When mob pictures reemerged in the 1950s, their difference in tone was palpable. From 711 Ocean Drive in 1950 to Phil Karlson's 1957 The Brothers Rico (also starring Conte), crime had become corporate, with formalized hierarchies, far-flung interests, and strict, if ruthless, rules for doing business. That's the thread that runs through New York Confidential: that no there's no individual who's indispensable, that the survival of the organization remains paramount.
