Welcome to Noirvember my friends. We begin my most favorite month with a pretty good little film starring Peter Lorre.
He stars as Janos Szabo a just off-the-boat Hungarian immigrant. He is full of hope and love for his new home in New York City. With only a few bucks in his pocket, he’s also relying on the kindness of strangers. Sometimes he finds it.
Sometimes he don’t.
A kindly police officer gives him a meal and directs him to a comfortable, but cheap hotel. A fire is accidentally started by another tenant and Janos’ face is badly burned. His hands, which are full of skill; in clockmaking and airplane mechanics – jobs he had in Hungary, were untouched in the fire.
He should be able to find a job easily. But because of his face, he is turned away at every corner. Desperate, he goes to the docks to throw himself off. There he meets Dinky (George E. Stone) a small-time crook who knows what it means to be at the end of his rope. They become fast friends.
At first, Janos pushes back against Dinky’s criminal instincts, but unable to find a job and desperate to receive an operation that might fix his face, he eventually relents.
Turns out Janos is really good at crime. He becomes the boss of a gang and begins rolling in dough. The plastic surgeon is unable to repair his face, but he gives him a pretty good-looking face mask to wear. But it isn’t enough. People still notice. People still stare.
Then he meets Helen (Evelyn Keyes) who is blind. They fall in love and Janos must decide between his life of crime and the woman he loves.
Peter Lorre is wonderful in the role. His transition from the naive innocent at the beginning of the film to the hard-edged criminal at the end is masterful. But he also maintains a warm heart that we see in his scenes with Helen. Evelyn Keyes is lovely as well.
The story is fine. There are some nice moments and the final scenes are terrific. It takes a fascinating look at the immigrant experience, and how our society so often grinds them into criminals. It really puts Janos through the wringer at every opportunity.
But there was something about it that didn’t quite work for me. Something in the filmmaking I think. It never grabbed me and completely pulled me into the story. But it is a fine film to start Noirvember off with and a good one for Peter Lorre fans.
themidnightcafe.org 