(Spoilers ahead)
Stanley Kubrick was a really fine cinematographer. I like the way
he filmed New York, lit so cold, so impersonal and inhuman in spite
of the fast moving people on the streets. It really put Jamie Smith's
character into perspective. He's a basically nice man from, we learn,
a good, clean home somewhere in Washington state, I think, who like
so many others, came to the City to "make it". He was a boxer who for whatever reason I didn't catch, has pretty much decided he's had enough and will go back to the ranch when he sees a pretty blonde getting roughed up in the apartment across the way. Because he's not a city boy but has some compassion and because she's blonde and attractive to him (
) he rushes---no, leaps!---to rescue her and of course they get involved. She too, it is revealed, drifted into the City for reasons less defined but searching for some kind of better life I guess. The attacker turns out to be her boss (Frank Silvera) at a dance hall who is obsessed with her and tries to have Jamie Boy roughed up. Complications ensue when his boxing manager is killed instead and suddenly it seems like the right and left hands of the law are chasing after these two people. The movie felt, to me, like Kubrick was commenting on how environment shapes or reflects the people in it. He makes no attempt to glamorize New York. This is the city after all the illusions have dropped like scales from the characters' eyes.
Going back to what I liked best about this movie, the way it looked. I definitely see a lot of care put into Kubrick's most subjective staging and photography and this was appealing. I also like that the ending was almost lyrical and fairytale, going against the noir grain. Too bad he'd abandon that later on. Or maybe he had to tack on a happy ending because of the producers but I thought it made the movie unique. Less realistic, but the contrst between the harsh realism and that optimistic ending is more creative in my opinion.
I am not fond of Kubrick's later work, I find more that I can appreciate in his early, more intimate projects.
The only minus for me was the actress playing the girl. She was not very competent and seemed to have the same expression in every situation. Silvera was too cute to get stuck with someone like that.
