Roadblock (1951 film)

Infobox_Film
name = Roadblock


size =
caption = Theatrical Poster
producer = Lewis J. Rachmil
director = Harold Daniels
writer = Screenplay:
George Bricker
Steve Fisher
Story: Richard H. Landau Daniel Mainwaring
starring = Charles McGraw
Joan Dixon
music = Paul Sawtell
cinematography = Nicholas Musuraca
editing = Robert Golden
distributor = RKO Radio Pictures
released = September 17, 1951 (U.S.A.)
runtime = 73 minutes
country = United States
language = English
amg_id = 1:108137
imdb_id = 0043973|

"Roadblock" (1951) is a American film noir starring Charles McGraw and Joan Dixon. The 73-minute crime thriller was shot on location in Los Angeles, California. The film was directed by Harold Daniels and the cinematography is by Nicholas Musuraca. [imdb title|id=0043973|title=Roadblock.]

Plot

Insurance investigator Joe Peters (McGraw) falls for money-loving Diane (Dixon). The couple meet in an airport and wind up sharing a hotel room in Kansas after their plane is forced to make an emergency landing.

Diane wants Joe but loves the finer things in life like furs, jewelry, and more. Peters can't afford things like that on his small $350 a month salary, so normally "Honest Joe" Peters (what Diane call him), sets up a heist in an attempt to finance a dream life with Diane.

After the crime--an elaborate railway mail car robbery--things begin to go awry and love sick Peters tries to cover up his actions.

Cast

* Charles McGraw as Joe Peters
* Joan Dixon as Diane
* Lowell Gilmore as Kendall Webb
* Louis Jean Heydt as Harry Miller
* Milburn Stone as Egan

"Noir" analysis

In "noir" fashion sex and money leads to Peters destruction in the film. According to film critics Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver, the screenwriters take a hard-boiled mystery plot and combine it with "an aura of middle-class malaise and pervasive corruption to provide a motivation for Peter's alienation and fall." And, the "noir" notion of entrapment is illustrated by the staging of Peters death in the dry Los Angeles river bed. [Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward. "Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style." Film noir analysis by Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver, page 244. The Overlook Press, 3rd edition, 1992. ISBN 0-87951-479-5.]

"Noir" dialogue

The hard-edged clipped dialogue between the two lead actors--Joe Peters and Diane--is typical of film noir. The following is an example early in the film when Joe and Diane first get to know each other:
* Joe: What makes you the way you are?
* Diane: What makes anybody the way they are?
* Joe: You tell me.
* Diane: Where they got started maybe. I had a lot of jobs - modeling, clerking, secretarial work. I tried hard but it was no go.
* Joe: Does that make a chiseler out of you? Must have been something else.
*Diane: Whenever I got a job there was always a man who wasn't interested in my working ability.
* Joe: I understand that.
* Diane: Really? Coming from you that's a compliment.

Critical reaction

Hans J. Wollstein, writing for Allmovie, calls the film a "low-budget but highly engrossing film noir," [ [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=108137 Wollstein, Hans J.] Allmovie, film review. Last accessed: December 8, 2007.] and Dennis Schwartz, at Ozus' World Movie Reviews writes, "In the end everything was done in such a flat manner, that it was hard to care that straight-shooter McGraw lost his integrity and life for an icy broad who ironically would have loved him the way he was." [ [http://www.sover.net/~ozus/roadblock.htm Schwartz, Dennis] . Ozus' World Movie Reviews, film review.]

References

External links

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* [http://noiroftheweek.blogspot.com/2008/02/roadblock-1951.html "Roadblock"] at Film Noir of the Week.