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 Dick Powell plays a married man who sells insurance, but becomes "bored with
his perfect wife and ideal son." When he "succumbs to the advances of a pretty
younger woman, it leads to much more than a guilty conscience - a complicated
web of intrigue, jealously and murder." They note that Raymond Burr is in
this. They also tell you that this movie was restored by the UCLA Film and
Television Archive. Andre De Toth directed it (you may know him as Mr.
Veronica Lake.). 1948, 86 minutes, VHS
I'm assuming the title refers to the pitfall of having a boring wife and
annoying son. There's this guy named Johnny Forbes (See, just like how in
Japanese movies, there always has to be a character named Kenny or something,
in American movies
when the main character is some type of everyman, they always name him Johnny).
Johnny is living the American Dream. He has this wife with an impossibly
small waist, an aw shucks kind of kid named Tommy and a really sweet set-up at
the local insurance company. Johnny has everything pegged down to the minute
as to what will happen to him everyday. They drive this home in some
less-than-subtle scenes with his wife wherein he recounts to her how long it
will take him to get from work, and in scenes with his boss where he moans
about how every Wednesday for the last million years they always go over and
play bridge with him and his wife. Johnny is obviously feeling somewhat
unfulfilled, thus making him a ripe target for something like a mysterious
blonde whose boyfriend is in jail on insurance fraud. Johnny's company is
working on her case, trying to get back all the stuff her boyfriend bought for
her with the money he embezzled. In fact, the private eye the company has
hired to go out and shake her down, has located her and has developed an
unhealthy fixation on her. The PI is named MacDonald and he's an ex-cop,
played with creepy glee by Perry Mason, hisself, Raymond Burr. Burr is anxious
to go back out to harass the blonde (Mona) again, but Johnny, who obviously
deals with this guy while holding his nose, says that he'll go out and get the
stuff back from her.  Johnny goes out there and meets up with this Mona, who is some type of
department store model. Mona is played by Lizabeth Scott, a girl with platinum
blonde hair and a husky voice that would put Kathleen Turner to shame. He
wants all the stuff she got back, and she gives it to him. While he's filling
out all the paperwork, she starts talking about what a boring loser he must be
and what a square he was. He doesn't want to believe that that is how he
really is so he does what any of us losers/squares would do in that situation -
he heads out to the bar with a blonde that is not his wife in the middle of the
workday. Later she decides to tell him about the boat that her boyfriend got
her with the stolen loot, so they go out to have a ride in the boat. I suppose
Johnny just needed to take it out for a spin that afternoon to test it and
make sure that it was in fact a boat bought with stolen money (Hmm, it sure
feels like I'm riding in a boat, let's drive around some more while the wind
whips through your blonde tresses, so that I can make a determination that this
was bought with stolen money.). Johnny has told his wife, Sue, that he would
be home at his usual time, so it is a bit of a surprise when he gets home at
something like 11:30. Even though he apparently pumped this trampy gal and
cheated on his wife, he's decent enough to come home before Leno is completely
over. Sue was already fast asleep (part of the American Dream is having a
sullen wife hooked on Valium), but Johnny didn't do all this adulterous stuff
completely unnoticed. Guess what tubby TV detective has been staking out
Mona's house, hoping to find out whether Mona was a natural platinum blonde?
MacDonald! He follows Johnny home and beats the piss out of him. The next
day, he's laid up in bed with his face caved in and telling people it was the
Crips and the Bloods put together that beat him down. No one says anything,
but the only one really buying that line of crap is his American Dream kid. At
one point the American Dream kid was having nightmares and Johnny comes in to
the kid's bedroom and holds up a stack of comic books, blaming them for the bad
dreams. I almost soiled myself as I saw Johnny holding up a mint copy of Flash
Comics circa 1948. With about twenty more of those babies in his hands, he was
holding about $20,000 worth of comics. When he threatened to burn them, I
found myself hugging my television begging Johnny not to do anything so rash.
Since all I do in life is watch movies, read comics and eat Peanut Butter Twix
ice cream, I have no friends and no one saw this embarrassing moment.  Mona finds out that he's been hurt so she heads out to his house and is
surprised to see that he has a wife and kid. At this point you have to give
the movie
its due, because it shies away from many of the conventions of the film noir
genre. Women aren't seen as a real evil in this film, and in fact, Mona is
about the most understanding and fair femme fatale you'll find in the movies.
Sure, some may claim that she verges into doormat status, because she just lets
these men use her as they wish, while not holding them to any consequences for
their behavior, but after a plethora of females that use, lie, cheat, and laugh
in the face of ugly guys like E.G. Robinson, this non-confrontational approach
is a welcome change. She and Johnny have a pow-wow (down at the bar of course)
and she tells him that he can't leave his wife and that she will go gently into
that good night. Johnny and I are thinking, "Wow, what a stand-up chick! I'd
sure like to bang her again!" She may not be going to blackmail him or
pay the affair card on his wife, but that doesn't mean she won't be
calling him
all the time complaining that Big Mac is stalking her. But is he really? Or
is she just saying that to get Johnny back into her clutches (you know how
chicks are)? Well, I'm not one to judge, but Mac did manage to go dress
shopping at the department store where Mona worked and just happened to like the
one Mona was wearing (do you have that in a 52?). He's at his sleazy best when
he's telling her to take off her shawl so he can see the dress and when he
tells her to turn around so he can see the back of things. The oily sexuality
he projects is only matched by the vitriolic disgust she flashes at him with her
eyes. Raymond Burr does a great job of getting you to dislike and distrust
this guy and he's able to do it from the very beginning with his soft-spoken
voice and dead eyes. Later scenes like this, merely confirm the audience's and
the movie character's suspicions that Mac is something even lower than a thief
and a cheating husband.  Johnny decides that Mac needs to be taught a lesson and that he's not going to
be
permitted to bother his family and Mona again. Johnny goes to his house and
drops
him with an impressive flurry of punches, and tells him that that was a warning
and that if he bothered Mona or his family again, he would kill him. Mac is
one of those snakes that may not attack you directly when wounded, but will
certainly do things behind the scenes to stir up junk. He uses his police
connections to visit Mona's boyfriend in jail. Mac basically gets this hothead
all riled up by telling him that Mona turned all the stuff he ripped off for her
and is doing time for, back into the authorities and oh, by the way, Mona and
this
insurance guy are underwriting one another all over their actuarial tables, if
you know what I mean. Mona goes to see her boyfriend later at the jail, and
Smiley (he never does) asks her about all the stuff Mac told him. She denies
it and says that Mac is just a jealous dude that she spurned and he's just
trying to cause problems. Mona calls Johnny and tells him that Mac may have
gotten
Smiley all P.O.ed at him so Johnny goes to the jail to see Smiley, but Mac has
already been there and Smiley has been released. Does Johnny still have a full
time job? Mona and Smiley hook up and Smiley has a gun and leaves all drunk
and stuff. So Mona calls Johnny again (there's a lot of phone calls in this
movie) to tell him to watch out. Being the wuss he is, Johnny's first instinct
is take his kid to a movie while Smiley is out gunning for him, but his wife
nixes that idea and Johnny pulls the gun he keeps unlocked in his bedroom
drawer and fully loaded out and heads downstairs to lie in wait for Smiley.
Smiley shows up, gets his ass shot off by Johnny, Mac goes over to bother Mona,
she shoots him once she finds out Smiley is dead, she gets arrested, Johnny
gets cleared, gets icy stares from his wife and the movie ends. The movie is a spectacular rumination on the dissatisfaction that regular
folks had in postwar America. You go out and beat back the Nazis and Tojo,
come home to everything you were fighting for and realize that it maybe it
wasn't all that exciting. Wife, kid, crap job. Is that all there is? In a
word, yes. The great part is that when this movie came out, you probably
didn't have everybody and his brother complaining about postwar life and its
utter vapidity. Bigger cars, better houses, fancier refrigerators and all that
was what made up life (and I think still does). Deep down, there were probably
lots of people who wondered why they did all this stuff and still felt like
their life was pointless, but most either didn't think about it, or were
convinced it wouldn't matter if they did think about it. Johnny is the guy who
sees how dull and mindnumbing it all is and is fairly vocal about it,
complaining that he and his wife used to talk about building a boat and what
happened to those dreamers. "They got married and had a kid," she says or
something to that effect. He finally rebels when confronted by some hot chick
(if it's one thing that will get guys to try and prove something, it's a hot
chick), but like so many that rebel, he doesn't know how to do it
constructively and actually destroys the few good things he has (a wife that is
devoted to him and a kid that idolizes him). For a time after Mac beats him up
and he thinks things between him and Mona are done, he is content in his middle
class life, because it is comfortable in its predictability and because Johnny
is really just a poser when it comes to wanting more out of life. His wife will
stay with him, but she won't ever see him the same way she did, and his kid
surely has read the tabloids about his dad's sex scandal, so he's not going to
be idolizing him anymore. The movie actually has a pretty scary, depressing
message - the American Dream is something that will never satisfy you when you
think about it, but once you've bought into it, it will never let you go. He
tried to throw it away when he cheated on his wife, but she refused to give him
a divorce, saying that they would work through it, though things might not ever
be the same. You can see it on her face when they're driving away, that she
thinks he's a piece of crap and he made her life a shambles with his dirty deed
one night and now he was going to pay for it the rest of his life. Yo Johnny!
Don't mess with America! When you purchase a deed to the American Dream, there
ain't any refunds and you just as soon as try and weasel out of deal with the
devil himself
than escape the Dream. Another classic portrayal of a veteran trying to
integrate himself back into civilian life. Though they underplay his veteran
status, it's clear he fought in the war and coming home to wife, a kid, and 9
to 5 job is something that probably seems so much less important than fighting
for the safety of the world. Powell is great, displaying a dour and beaten
down expression the entire movie, slinging verbal barbs at anyone in spitting
distance. Watching him sulk his way through this story as a man who is
defeated and still
angry about it, it's hard to believe that ten years before Powell was known for
his
song and dance movies. I wonder how many people sat in the darkness of the
movie theatre and silently whispered to themselves when they saw Johnny Forbes,
"that's me." A fine effort that manages to get its message of middle class
angst across without getting on a soapbox to do it.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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