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Raw Deal (1948 film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the 1986 film, see Raw Deal (1986 film). Raw Deal Theatrical release poster Directed by Anthony Mann Produced by Edward Small Written by Story:Arnold B. ArmstrongAudrey AshleyScreenplay:Leopold AtlasJohn C. Higgins Starring Dennis O'KeefeClaire TrevorMarsha HuntJohn Ireland Music by Paul Sawtell Cinematography John Alton Editing by Alfred DeGaetano Distributed by Eagle-Lion Films Release date(s) May 26, 1948 Running time 79 minutes Country United States Language English Raw Deal is a 1948 film noir directed by Anthony Mann and shot by cinematographer John Alton.[1] Contents[hide] 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Critical reception 4 See also 5 References 6 External links [edit] Plot Prisoner Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe), who has "taken the fall" for an unspecified crime, breaks jail with the help of his girl, Pat (Claire Trevor). Neither Joe nor Pat is aware that the escape has been facilitated as a set-up by mobster Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr), a sadistic pyromaniac, who has arranged for Joe to be killed during the break-out in order to avoid confronting him and paying Joe his agree-upon share of $50,000 for the crime. When the break-out scheme succeeds, contrary to Rick's expectations, Rick decides that he must have Joe done in some other way, by somebody else. In the course of their run, Pat and Joe kidnap a social worker, Ann (Marsha Hunt) who has been visiting Joe in prison, trying to reform him. This begins a doomed film noir love triangle. A fight with a vicious thug ends when Ann shoots Joe's attacker in the back. After this act of murder, Ann realizes she is in love with Joe. Relenting, he sends her away and prepares to flee the country with Pat. In their hotel room, Pat receives a phone call from Rick's associate warning them that Ann has been seized by Rick, and will be harmed if Joe and Pat do not come out from hiding. Pat does not disclose the nature of the phone call, but instead tells Joe that it was a call from the hotel desk clerk about their check-out time, since she is anxious to avoid telling him anything about Ann that would lead him to hesitate beginning a new life with Pat. After boarding a ship to flee the country, Joe attempts to convince Pat that they can start over a new life together, however Pat finally realizes that Joe will always be thinking of Ann. Pat realizes she must tell Joe that Ann is in danger and does so. Before the ship sets sail, Joe races to save Ann and kill her captor Rick. Under the cover of a thick fog, Joe manages to get past Rick's thugs who are positioned to ambush Joe, and sneaks into Rick's room. Surprised by Joe’s sudden intrusion, a sudden gunfight erupts with Rick and Joe shooting each other and inadvertently starting a fire. Joe and Rick, both wounded, fight hand to hand with Joe finally pushing Rick through an upper story window to his death. Mortally wounded, Ann comforts the dying Joe in her arms as Pat looks on. [edit] Cast Dennis O'Keefe as Joseph Emmett (Joe) Sullivan Claire Trevor as Pat Cameron Marsha Hunt as Ann Martin John Ireland as Fantail Raymond Burr as Rick Coyle Curt Conway as Spider Chili Williams as Marcy Regis Toomey as Police Capt. Fields Whit Bissell as Murderer Cliff Clark as Gates [edit] Critical reception When the film was released, The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, panned the film, "But this, of course, is a movie—and a pretty low-grade one, at that—in which sensations of fright and excitement are more diligently pursued than common sense...Except for the usual moral—to wit, that crime does not pay—the only thing proved by this picture is that you shouldn't switch sweethearts in mid-lam.[2] In Girl and a Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir, David N. Meyer wrote "It's the richest cinematography in noir outside of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane."[3] [edit] See also List of American films of 1948 [edit] References ^ Raw Deal at the Internet Movie Database. ^ Crowther, Bosley (July 9, 1948 accessdate=August 31, 2008). "Raw Deal (1948)". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9904EFD8123EE03BBC4153DFB1668383659EDE. ^ Meyer, David N. (1998). A Girl and A Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir. ISBN 0-380-79067-X. [edit] External links Raw Deal at the Internet Movie Database Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_Deal_(1948_film)"
Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent… Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image. Crime is all that lies outside the pack and which is envied, coveted, lusted after. Crime flashes a million brilliant knife blades every minute of the day, and in the night too when waking gives way to dream. Crime is such a tough, such an immense tarpaulin, stretching from infinity to infinity. Where are the monsters who know not crime? What realms do they inhabit? What prevents them from snuffing out the universe? - Henry Miller, ‘The Air-Conditioned Nightmare’ (New Directions, NY, 1945) pp 86-87Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/noir-poets-henry-miller.html#ixzz1IFFOx3yD Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Sam Juliano December 1, 2010 at 2:48 am(Edit) Here’s another from Miller: “The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.” Miller’s language is vivid and textured, and his philosophy uncompromising. He is unquestionably a gven for this distinguished series, but your own passage here is a lucid examination of the connection between crime, God and the universe. It’s absolutely stunning.Read more: http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/noir-poets-henry-miller.html#ixzz1IFH4QdHH Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Henry Miller’s “On the Road” The Air-Conditioned Nightmare Henry Miller Review By Dan Geddes Henry Miller is famous for leaving New York for Paris in 1930, and writing sexually-explicitly literary novels that were banned in the United States for over thirty years. His notoriety spread, however, when American servicemen discovered Miller’s novels during the liberation of Europe in 1944-45, and smuggled copies entered the U.S. Miller lived abroad for ten years, leaving France only three months before the outbreak of the Second World War. After a brief time in Greece (which produced his classic travelogue The Colossus of Marousi), Miller returned to America, and set out on a cross-country journey to re-discover his homeland. The result was The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945). After an introduction about Miller’s ex-patriate status at the time of his cross-country trip, each chapter addresses a particular American locale, and an emblematic person from each stop on his journey. Miller’s usual remarks about non-artistic people or places as dead is manifested throughout the book. While Miller’s prose vibrates with colorful insights and unusual words, he also issues summary judgments constantly. In that way, Miller is something of a moralist, a moralist in favor of the artistic-hedonistic lifestyle. Miller is a great champion for the bohemian life in both his life and work, but he often betrays his impatience with the lives of simpler folk. True, in the course of issuing so many judgments, he will arbitrarily single out certain simple folk for praise, but Miller’s work is so full of judgment, even as he protests, mock-modestly, about how little he knows. So The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is a collection of sketches, all infused by Miller’s endless judgments and generalizations, variously insightful, humorous, poetic, elitist. Consider: “Walt Disney…is the master of the nightmare…Disney works fast—like greased lightning. That’s how we’ll all operate soon. What we dream we become. We’ll get the knack of it soon. We’ll learn how to annihilate the whole planet in the wink of an eye—just wait and see” (40-41). “The most difficult adjustment an expatriate has to make, on returning to his native land, is in this realm of conversation. The impression one has, at first, is that there is no conversation. We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines, and digests.” (109). Since he eschews any importance at all to political movements, Miller feels free to say nearly anything in the way of criticizing the system. Many of his comments appear irresponsible. When he meets an ex-con on a train, Miller and his traveling companion later track him down to see if they can be of help to him. Miller fulminates that we are all as guilty as the ex-con, who has a heart after all, and that prisons only develop the criminal skills of his inhabitants. This is typical Miller: he does point out some of the worst aspects of the criminal justice system (as he does in other books), but of course cannot offer any practical alternative. He has only the idealists’ wish that war and crime would go away, and he apportions blame to society for causing these evils, and using naked force to maintain a corrupt society. Miller does his job as a travel writer, providing the local color, the sights and the sounds and the personalities of each place. Miller’s main charm is his enthusiasm. Even while denouncing American cities as godforsaken holes, Miller prides himself on being able to find the good in it, the few eccentric characters that perhaps justify a place’s existence. Much of Miller’s fulminating against the soullessness of America will be familiar to readers of other Miller books, such as Tropic of Capricorn. Americans are awash in consumer commodities, which they mistake for tokens of happiness. Miller’s critique of the American system is far from a Marxist one, though it may appear that way to some readers. Miller repeatedly avows that he is uninterested in political reform, and we don’t hear him calling for unionization of the workers. Miller’s critiques from the artist’s perspective, especially a supposedly spiritually motivated writer’s perspective. People must free themselves from their own slavery. Miller repeatedly invokes the character of the 19th century Indian mystic Vivekananda as the greatest sage of our age. Vivekananda visited America, and attempted to spread his message; Miller tells us that one evening Vivekananda looked at the faces in the audience and found them so utilitarian minded that he was filled with despair, and refused to give his speech. Miller also enjoys European or Eastern sages to critique America’s spiritual bankruptcy. Miller’s critiques appear all the more prescient, considering he was writing The Air-Conditioned Nightmare in 1940-1. He sees the mass media as bankrupt, and singles out newspapers, movies, radio and Disney for particular contempt. He doubts that radio’s world-wide reach will do anything to make humanity—especially Americans—feel more connected. “We get about as much information about the other peoples of this globe, through the movies and the radio, as the Martians get about us.” (44). The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is an especially important Miller work, as it was not banned in the U.S., as were Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Miller’s influence on the Beats is obvious. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare reads like the Ur-text for Kerouac’s On the Road. Miller’s songs of praise for sex, art, food, freedom from normal bourgeois life are all repeated by the Beat writers.
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HENRY MILLER BIO AND CRITICISM
Henry Miller Encyclopedia of World Biography 2004 COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. (Hide copyright information) Copyright /**/ Henry Miller American author Henry Miller (1891-1980) was a major literary force in the late 1950s largely because his two most important novels, prohibited from publication and sale in the United States for many years, tested Federal laws concerning art and pornography. Born December 26, 1891 in Brooklyn, New York City, Henry Miller grew up in Brooklyn and briefly attended the City College of New York. From 1909 to 1924 he worked at various jobs, including employment with a cement company, assisting his father at a tailor shop, and sorting mail for the Post Office. While in the messenger department of Western Union, he started a novel. Throughout this period he had a troubled personal life and had two unsuccessful marriages (throughout his life he married five women and divorced all of them). Determined to become a writer, Miller went to Paris, where, impoverished, he remained for nearly a decade. In 1934 he composed Tropic of Cancer (United States ed., 1961), a loosely constructed autobiographical novel concerning the emotional desolation of his first years in Paris. Notable for its graphic realism and Rabelaisian gusto, it won praise from T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Many were outraged by the sexual passages, however, and the author had to go to court to lift a ban on his work. The controversy caused it to become a best-seller, although critics continued to debate its literary merits. Black Spring (1936; United States ed., 1963) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939; United States ed., 1962) are similar in style and feeling, drawing from the experiences of Miller's boyhood in Brooklyn and formative years as an expatriate. In 1939 Miller visited his friend the British novelist Lawrence Durrell in Greece. The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), depicting his adventures with the natives of the Greek islands, and one of the finest modern travel books, resulted. Returning to the United States in 1940, Miller settled permanently on the Big Sur coast of California. His acute and often hilarious criticisms of America are recorded in The Air-conditioned Nightmare (1945) and Remember to Remember (1947). The Time of the Assassins (1956), a provocative study of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, states eloquently Miller's artistic and philosophic credo. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1958) deals with Miller's California friends. Miller's major fiction of this period was the massive trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, including Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953), and Nexus (1960). These retell his earlier erotic daydreams but lack the earlier violence of language. Miller's correspondence with Durrell was published in 1962 and his letters to Anaïs Nin in 1965. His The World of Lawrence: A Passionate Appreciation (1980) is about the life and career of his literary compatriot, D. H. Lawrence. Opus Pistorum (1984) is a novel reputedly written by Miller in the early 1940s when he needed money; most critics consider the work to be pure pornography and some question whether Miller was the actual author. In his later years Miller was admired mainly for his role as prophet and visionary. Denouncing the empty materialism of modern existence, he called for a new religion of body and spirit based upon the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, and D. H. Lawrence. Miller's novels, despite sordid material and obscene language, at their best are intensely lyrical and spiritually affirmative. With his freedom of language and subject he paved the way for such Beat Generation writers as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Miller lived his final years in seclusion pursuing his lifelong interest of watercolor painting. He died on June 7, 1980 in Pacific Palisades, California. Further Reading For more on Miller's life and work, see J.D. Brown's Henry Miller (1986). Book-length critical studies are Edwin Corle, The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder (1948), and Ihab Hassan, The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett (1967). For equally valuable insights and biographical information see Alfred Perles, My Friend Henry Miller (1955); Lawrence Durrell and Alfred Perles, Art and Outrage: A Correspondence about Henry Miller (1959); Annette K. Baxter, Henry Miller, Expatriate (1961); Kingsley Widmer, Henry Miller (1963); and William A. Gordon, The Mind and Art of Henry Miller (1967). The largest collection of critical essays is George Wickes, ed., Henry Miller and the Critics (1963). □
