This story about truckers back in the depression era is described as a film noir but I think I\u2019d call it a melodrama.\u00a0 George Raft and Humphrey Bogart are brothers Joe and Paul Fabrini.\u00a0 They are partners in a long-haul trucking business.\u00a0 They are owed money by the scheduler who assigns them loads and relatedly they owe money to the guy who sold them their truck.\u00a0 We see them dealing with both sides of this debt relationship.\u00a0 We also see how dangerous driving at the edge of exhaustion can be when their friend crashes his truck on the road in front of them because he fell asleep at the wheel.\u00a0 And finally, it catches up with the Fabrinis.\u00a0 Paul falls asleep at the wheel and drives off a slope.\u00a0 The truck is totaled and because of his injuries Paul has his right arm amputated.\u00a0 Joe breaks the news to Paul\u2019s wife Pearl and she admits she is almost relieved that his disability will keep him from driving trucks ever again and at least spare his life.\u00a0 Feeling responsible for what has happened to Paul Joe goes to an old friend of his Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale) who has a trucking company and obtains a driving job which will allow him to support Paul and Pearl.\u00a0 But it won\u2019t pay enough to allow Joe to marry his new girlfriend Cassie Harley (Ann Sheridan).\u00a0 But there is a complication.\u00a0 Ed\u2019s wife Lana (Ida Lupino) is infatuated with Joe.\u00a0 She talks Ed into making Joe the scheduler so that he\u2019ll be around the garage and therefore easier for her to fraternize with.\u00a0 But Joe refuses to go behind his boss and friend\u2019s back with this unfaithful wife.\u00a0 Finally, after being rejected categorically by Joe because of her status as Ed\u2019s wife Lana goes crazy.\u00a0 She drives Ed home from a party and after parking the car in the garage she leaves him drunk and passed out in the car and closes the garage door with the car engine on.\u00a0 She explains the asphyxiation to the police as Ed sleeping drunk in the car as he often did and him somehow waking up, starting the engine and then falling back asleep.<\/p>\n
With Ed gone Lana brings Joe into the business as a partner.\u00a0 But now she finds out that Joe is engaged to be married.\u00a0 She becomes enraged and tells Joe that she murdered Ed for him and won\u2019t be separated from him for any reason.\u00a0 Joe rebuffs her and walks away shocked.\u00a0 Lana, now consumed by bitterness goes to the police and confesses that she murdered Ed but swears that Joe forced her to do it against her will.\u00a0 Now there is a trial in which the circumstantial evidence provided by Lana makes Joe\u2019s position very bad.\u00a0 But when Lana finally testifies at the trial she has become totally unhinged through guilt.\u00a0 She claims that she was compelled to kill Ed by the presence of the automatic garage door mechanism.\u00a0 And she is dragged out of the courtroom laughing hysterically that it was the door that made her do it.<\/p>\n
And so, we get the happy ending.\u00a0 Joe owns the trucking business, Paul is his scheduler, the truckers admire and like Joe for his honest treatment and now Joe has the money to marry Cassie.<\/p>\n
This movie is a product of the Hays Code.\u00a0 Criminals have to be punished so we know that Lana is going to get her comeuppance and because Joe is a stand-up guy, he\u2019ll end up okay.\u00a0 And because this is a Warner Bros. studio production it has a lot of the character actors that were around at that time.\u00a0 Alan Hale, Roscoe Karns and Charles Halton were some of the more memorable faces you see.\u00a0 Karns has a relatively minor part as one of the truck drivers but he steals several scenes with his goofball manner and his fascination with playing the pinball games that seem to be in every diner that the truckers frequent along their routes between Los Angeles and San Francisco.\u00a0 The camaraderie between the truckers and the diner personnel is a substantial portion of the movie and some of the more interesting dialog.\u00a0 But the movie belongs to Raft and Lupino.\u00a0 Her ill-fated infatuation for him powers the plot, such as it is.\u00a0 As I said, I consider this a melodrama and not a great movie.\u00a0 But the Raft\u2019s interaction with the rest of the cast other than Lupino makes this movie an interesting slice of life from the depression era and full of human interest.\u00a0 This is not a great movie but it\u2019s fun to watch. I recommend it on that basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This story about truckers back in the depression era is described as a film noir but I think I\u2019d call it a melodrama.\u00a0 George Raft<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[2726,2724,2723,1562,1675,43,191,38,1355,2725],"class_list":["post-12696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-alan-hale","tag-ann-sheridan","tag-george-raft","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-ida-lupino","tag-movie-review","tag-ocf-classic-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-roscoe-karns"],"yoast_head":"\n