New York Confidential 1955 Directed by Russell Rouse
Story follows the rise and subsequent fall of the notorious head of a New York crime family, who decides to testify against his pals in order to avoid being killed by his fellow cohorts.
Broderick Crawford Richard Conte Marilyn Maxwell Anne Bancroft J. Carrol Naish Onslow Stevens Barry Kelley Mike Mazurki Celia Lovsky Herbert Heyes Steven Geray William Phillips Henry Kulky Nestor Paiva Joseph Vitale Carl Milletaire William Forrest Ian Keith Charles Evans Mickey Simpson Tom Powers Lee Trent Leonard Bremen John Doucette Frank Ferguson Hope Landin Fortunio Bonanova
Like the good(ish) daughter that I am, I bought my mom a bunch of presents that I knew she would enjoy for her birthday: DVDs of James Whale's The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) and the complete series box set of Magnum, P.I., character actor Benny Rubin's 1972 memoir Come Backstage with Me, and an only slightly creepy doll of Rex Harrison as Doctor Dolittle from 1967, which is totally in line with the time I bought my brother a vintage 80s Pee-wee Herman doll for his birthday, as well as one of my birthday gifts to myself last month, this Herbert West figurine signed by Jeffrey Combs (who shares my mom's birthday!). I also took a chance by buying…
Crime boss Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford) is on top of the world. He has a beautiful girlfriend (Marilyn Maxwell), a beautiful daughter (Anne Bancroft) and a thriving business. He even has a shiny new hitman* (Richard Conte) whom he deploys with regularity. But all this corruption will catch up to him, both in the business world and at home.
This one pretty much has to be watched based on the star power, as the story is fairly standard. Well done, but nothing too unique about it. Very tough, though, very, very tough. This has Crawford and Conte performing some of their roughest roles ever. Decent, though small, conflicted role for Bancroft too, who begins to hate her father and everything…
Not as good as I was expecting and not as good as it should have been.
It has a bit of a sluggish start, and although it does pick up in the second half, ultimately the potential in the story and the cast (my sweetheart Richard Conte, who lights up the screen in his scenes with the excellent Anne Bancroft; Broderick Crawford and his machine-gun delivery that borders on parody; old faithful Mike Mazurki; Marilyn Maxwell) is wasted with an unimaginative script and some deadly dull direction.
Passable crime drama but worth a watch for Conte and Bancroft.
This movie is a lot of fun to watch and a decent bridge between the gangster films and racket exposés of the 30s and later mob classics (The Godfather, Goodfellas). I’ll give the generally bland but functional look of the film a pass but I docked the film marks for the Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene script which pales when compared to the earlier Rouse/Greene efforts D.O.A. and The Well. The plot, though now standard, is compelling enough; but the dialogue is some of the most direct, literal, obvious stuff I’ve ever heard. There is zero room for anything resembling character nuance or ambiguity. No thought goes unsaid, no idea unexpressed, all is telegraphed and underlined. When a “hit” is…
Crime never pays - or at least it doesn't in 1950s American crime films, like this one about a New York crime syndicate and the problems they cause themselves and their families by being very, very bad. Entertaining but pretty forgettable afterwards.
Classic piece of 50s paranoia about a syndicate of organised crime being run like a business and with its corruption spreading to the establishment. It manages to come across as incredibly influential on the Godfather (of course star Conte references roles like this in that film) while also being a long way from positively identifying its criminals as Italian or being ale to root it's criminality in any real immigrant or ethnic experience (a gangster faces deportion at one point, and crawford's mother is an ethnic stereotype but the movie seems more interested in attacking the corporate nature of the whole syndicate and saying that that is the American way than in any kind of verisimilitude)
Conte's charismatic killer shares…
An ageing New York mob boss receives constant grief from his employees, family and doctor. The mother of said mob boss is still a major part of his life, imparting wisdom that he fails to heed. Corruption and double-crossing are a way of life.
The above may read like a synopsis for 1990s TV drama, The Sopranos, but rewind 40-or-so years and you’ve got the set-up to Russell Rouse’s long lost 1955 noir, New York Confidential, a film based on the book by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer which goes beyond the standard scenario of tough guys and their molls so beloved of the genre.
A sonorous voiceover and shots of the New York sky line introduce us to The…
The first forty or so minutes I found to be a real drag, with little flashes of Anne Bancroft in prime beauty and Richard Conte to keep me moderately engaged. But the second half of the film picked up the pace early and often and I was throughly entertained til the end from there.
Richard Conte played these mobster characters really well throughout his career but the script wasn’t too strong here and he came off a little too one-note than maybe the movie even intended him to be. The supporting cast was talented, but again there was nothing too special going on dialogue wise, and the plot was moving quickly while rather hamfisted. Anne Bancroft though...what a sneaky beauty…
Flawed but always worth watching, this movie seems to have sprung from nowhere onto DVD. Certainly not pure 'noir' but neither is it simply a crime drama. Indeed with the documentary element and Crawford's wayward antics on the one side and the coolness of Richard Conte and his relations with the ladies on the other, this could be considered a bit of a mess. That it is not is due in the main to the tremendous performances of Conte, Bancroft and to a lesser extent, Marilyn Maxwell as Iris, Crawford's mistress. For me Crawford is over the top as the macho boss man and simply unable to deal with the more sensitive scenes, but he is overshadowed by Conte and…
Loved it. Richard Conte is the best tough guy. Anne Bancroft is fantastic as rebellious daughter of mob kingpin Broderick Crawford. The movie would have benefited from more exteriors, it's all hotel rooms and offices and begins to feel like a sound stage, but other than that its great.
Broderick Crawford is Charlie Lupo, a stressed-out New York mob boss. Richard Conte is Nick Magellan, an enforcer brought in from out of town for a hit that calls for a strange face, then kept on to watch Charlie's back. Anne Bancroft is Charlie's daughter Kathy, college educated, dating a guy from a rich family and ashamed of her father's line of work, and it's clear that Nick is attracted to her. Meanwhile, he gets drawn by Charlie into an ambitious plot to control oil leases in an unnamed foreign country, involving lobbyists, lawyers and crooked politicians, and entailing a lot of trouble if things go wrong.
Crawford plays Charlie as constantly beleaguered and slightly overwhelmed, with a soft spot for both Kathy and Nick. Nick,…
Pretty good 50's noir. First movie I've ever encountered that had no trivia or goofs on IMDB, tho.
This film is about the head of a notorious crime organization known as the Syndicate which operates in New York City. Watching this film, I have to say it feels almost modern. I would describe as sort of the proto-Goodfellas in the way it depicts the organized crime life. Broderick Crawford and Richard Conte are both great as the head of the crime family and his enforcer respectively but this film features a very young Anne Bancroft, as the mob daughter who wants nothing to do with her notorious father's business. You can definitely see why she became a star. She pretty much steals the entire picture from under the men's noses. It's a fine, solid film noir.
Like the good(ish) daughter that I am, I bought my mom a bunch of presents that I knew she would enjoy for her birthday: DVDs of James Whale's The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) and the complete series box set of Magnum, P.I., character actor Benny Rubin's 1972 memoir Come Backstage with Me, and an only slightly creepy doll of Rex Harrison as Doctor Dolittle from 1967, which is totally in line with the time I bought my brother a vintage 80s Pee-wee Herman doll for his birthday, as well as one of my birthday gifts to myself last month, this Herbert West figurine signed by Jeffrey Combs (who shares my mom's birthday!). I also took a chance by buying…
New York Confidential is a decent, Noir-ish, mob movie from the 1950s. Unlike the typical gangster movies of that time, this is darker in theme and narrative. There's no glorification and glamorization of the gangster lifestyle. It doesn't restore order at the end with the defeat of the gangster. Instead, it shows the inner machinations of organized crime and how profoundly intertwined it is with the fabric of normal life.
It transcends the typical gangster film and flirts with Noir territory by asserting the pessimistic, cold, hard truth that the "syndicate" is a vital part of life, that law and crime will forever co-exist and the lines between the two are imaginary at best.
The main characters are trapped and…
Fantastic noir! I really admire how both Richard 'Don't Fuck With Me' Conte and Broderick Crawford deliver their lines; fast and furious. This is an above average crime movie which clearly had an influence on The Godfather. A young Anne Bancroft is a delight and has some of the best lines. What I really liked about this film is how the main criminals, Crawford and Conte, are not black and white 2D characters. They have depth and emotion which allows the viewer to relate to them (to some extent). Pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this film.
An above average 50s film noir. Richard Conte, an actor who never really got the recognition he deserved, was, as usual, brilliant as the hitman for the syndicate.
Γκάνγκστερ του Νιου Γιορκ φέρνει από το Σικάγο καλόπαιδο να του κάνει δουλειά, αυτός τα καταφέρνει μια χαρά, ο άλλος τον κρατάει στη δούλεψη του γιατί είναι άνετος κι ωραίος ως φονιάς ο νεαρός, όμως κάτι μια μπίζνα εκατομμυρίων ντάλρας που πάει να στραβώσει, κάτι μια δολοφονική απόπειρα με τoν ίδιο σαν στόχο, κάτι η κόρη του που επαναστατεί εναντίον του, το γκανγκστεριλίκι αρχίζει να στραβώνει ως επιχειρηματική κίνηση. Νουάρ και υπόκοσμος που καταφέρνει να ξεφύγει από τα άκρως τυπικά του είδους, καθώς βρίσκει χώρο για πολιτική και οικογενειακές σχέσεις, μαζί φυσικά με τα μπιστολίδια και τους έρωτες. Φοβερά κουλ ο Ρίτσαρντ Κόντε, σύντομη αλλά έξοχη εμφάνιση της νεαρής Αν Μπάνκροφτ, αφεντικό με το όλα του ο Μπόντερικ Κρόφορντ.
Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford) is a top Syndicate guy, glowering and growling and talking very fast, trying to manage the usual mobster's array of killings and rackets. He hires studly Nick Magellan (Richard Conte) away from Johnny Achilles to be his personal errand boy. (Great names, right?)
Lupo's feline daughter Kathy (Anne Bancroft, young and lovely) has had enough of mob life, and runs off, but not before a smoldering romance gets underway with Nick.
There's some shady stuff with an oil deal and loans and congressmen. The deal falls apart and so does a resulting hit, giving us some momentum to a satisfying, compact ending.
Good stuff all around. Stylish, hard-boiled dialog and a reasonable / sane plot. Anne…
Crime boss Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford) is on top of the world. He has a beautiful girlfriend (Marilyn Maxwell), a beautiful daughter (Anne Bancroft) and a thriving business. He even has a shiny new hitman* (Richard Conte) whom he deploys with regularity. But all this corruption will catch up to him, both in the business world and at home.
This one pretty much has to be watched based on the star power, as the story is fairly standard. Well done, but nothing too unique about it. Very tough, though, very, very tough. This has Crawford and Conte performing some of their roughest roles ever. Decent, though small, conflicted role for Bancroft too, who begins to hate her father and everything…
Loved it. Richard Conte is the best tough guy. Anne Bancroft is fantastic as rebellious daughter of mob kingpin Broderick Crawford. The movie would have benefited from more exteriors, it's all hotel rooms and offices and begins to feel like a sound stage, but other than that its great.
A typical Broderick Crawford performance sets the tone for this drama with some additional menace provided by Mike Mazurki.
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