Customer Rating: Summary: NICHOLAS RAY, OPUS 17 Comment: ***** 1958. Directed by Nicholas Ray. Chicago in the early 30's. A dancer, Cyd Charisse, falls in love with Robert Taylor, the lawyer of the local mob. She persuades him to start a new life. Last masterpiece of Nicholas Ray who pays tribute to all precedent gangsters movies. The dance acts of Cyd Charisse are sublime and Robert Taylor's performance beyond comparison. PARTY GIRL is a film that should be in every movie lover's library. If you own a multi-zone DVD player, you have now the opportunity to buy a zone 2 DVD of PARTY GIRL at Amazon.fr. No bonus features but a superb copy. Indispensable. Customer Rating: Summary: "Nobody ever quit me. I got rid of a few guys, but nobody ever quit." Comment: At a party for gangster Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb), Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse), a showgirl, meets Thomas Farrell (Robert Taylor), Rico's lawyer. Although they get a rocky beginning, over time they fall in love. Farrell doesn't enjoy being a lawyer for a ruthless mobster, but when he tries to quit in order to live a happy, peaceful life with Vicki, Rico threatens to cripple him permanently and ruin Vicki's face with acid. Needless to say, Farrell decides to remain Rico's lawyer, even after Rico starts a bloody war with mobster Cookie La Motte (Corey Allen).
Because of the frequent bloodshed the police go after everyone in Rico's organization, and they arrest both Farrell and Vicki as witnesses. The police get no where after questioning Farrell repeatedly, so they get Vicki to convince him that helping them is the right thing to do. As time passes by, Farrell realizes that Rico has no intentions of bailing him out of jail. After finally telling the cops everything he knows, Farrell doesn't have to wait long before Rico's goons grab him off the street for a meeting with the boss. Both Farrell and Vicki are held prisoner by Rico and his mob, and it's up to Farrell to stall the hoodlums long enough for the police to show up and save the day. But stalling these psychotic killers proves to be difficult, and before long there's more blood being spilt.
NB: n'oubliez JAMAIS ROBERT TAYLOR qui fût l'un des monuments du GOLDEN AGE!! SO PUT PARTY GIRL IN DVD THANK's Customer Rating: Summary: Love redeems all, even sleaze Comment: The core of this 1958 movie is the relationship between a showgirl of somewhat loose morals and a sleazy but brilliant Mob attorney. The attraction is there from the beginning, but they shy away from each other until each demonstrates that he/she retains a modicum of integrity-she by returning the $400 "gift" she was given to be "nice" at a party, and he by refusing to dine with his gangster client. Over the rest of the film, their relationship develops against a background of 1930s Mob violence. She wants him to stop working for the Mob, but he knows too much and doesn't think he has any other professional options because of his tattered reputation. Crippled in a childhood accident, he leaves for Sweden to undergo a series of surgeries to cure the limp. This long, painful process marks a turning point symbolically in his moral transformation. When he returns, he's reluctantly drawn back into legal work for the Mob. If he doesn't, the boss will have his girl's face disfigured with acid. Arrested after a Mob blood bath, he continues to maintain his silence, again to protect his girl. Everything works out in the end, but not without a few suspenseful scenes.
"Party Girl's" plot is nothing special and is even a bit hackneyed at time. The power of love as redemptive is an old standard, but the movie is well done. The colors are rich and production values are high. The sexual aspects of the story are relatively frank considering the mores of the time. Cyd Charisse's dancing, for example, was steamy for the period. Lee J. Cobb and Robert Taylor as mob boss and lawyer respectively, turn in strong performances. There are a few scenes that edge on being over the top, but mostly they don't go beyond the sometimes overstated style of the 1950's. Cliched though it may be at times, "Party Girl" remains a decent movie for popcorn-eating afternoons.
Customer Rating: Summary: No longer trash - but art! Comment: Chicago, the early thirties. The film starts with a flesh parade: dishy dames are singled out for a gangster party. When Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb) entertains his fellow gangsters an accommodating girl can expect a hundred dollar bill, and when the evening is drawing to an end the crooks are often too plastered to ask for more. Vicki Gaye (Cyd Charisse) is an old hand in this business and a cynic when it comes to love: " I was taken in once. At fifteen with a neighbor in a dark barn. It was very romantic". Vicki is helped by Rico's attorney and protege Thomas Farrell (Robert Taylor) when her fellow-lodger cuts her wrists: She should not take this occurrence to her heart, suicide among party-girls happens, he comforts her before limping out of her apartment on his walking-stick.
Tommy handles his foster-father's business matters and acts as defense counsel for his crooks. Before court he makes shameless use of his physical disability to raise the compassion of the jurors. ("If pity is what you want, you certainly have mine" Vicki tells him with disdain). But they have a strong attraction for each other and the old "I work in this rotten business, but I'm better than the rest of them" cliche works: Tommy defends gangsters but declines to dine with them, Vicki, on the other hand impresses him when she returns the $400 present of a murderer. Tommy owes his handicap to a foolish boyish prank. Rico is like a father to him, and he is still married to a woman who found the sight of his crippled leg so unbearable that she left him.
Meanwhile, Rico becomes more and more power-mad. When Tommy witnesses him slashing another gangster, Vicki implores him to get out. But he is unwilling to settle down, because he feels that his reputation is as crippled as his leg. When he learns of a new, long and painful treatment that could cure his leg he leaves for Sweden. The operation is successful. His brand-new hip-swing is so attractive that his wife has even the face to claim him back - guess what Vicki tells her! The lovers tour Europe, but their happiness of short-lived: Rico orders Tommy to defend a young psychopath in a seemingly easy case: all the witnesses for the prosecution have already been eliminated, the state's attorney will be next... Tommy revolts, but Rico threatens to smash his artificial hip-joint to pieces and demonstrates the effect that hydrochloric acid could have on Vicki's face...
The plot in itself - The minion of a gangster boss bites the hand that fed him - could fill any episode of THE UNTOUCHABLES, but the director and the stars give it the "A" film treatment, and the cinematography exceeds all expectations. The dominant colors are red and black, except for Charisse's two show-numbers, one in pink, the other in a leopard-design dress. The atmosphere is rather fifties than thirties, the score is rock- and rolly, but this is a posh film. The scene where Charisse and Taylor enter a bathroom and discover a dead girl in red water still shocks, and Lee J. Cobb is magnificently repulsive in his over-the-top performance as acid-brandishing villain. The handicapped attorney is one of Taylor's most memorable performances, and Charisse was one of the most impressive dancers on screen. PARY GIRL has what most films about organized crime usually lack: a strong role for a woman. A frequent guest on tv, it was recently shown by ARTE: It' no longer considered as trash but as art!
