Road House (1948)
Road House (1948), directed by Jean Negulesco.
First review
Tough cookie Ida Lupino is a singer who comes between club owner Richard Widmark and his manager Cornel Wilde. Celeste Holm is the reliable gal pal.
Builds slowly. The ticking bomb is, of course, Widmark, from whom we expect a psychotic eruption at any time. It happens in the last fifteen minutes.
Lupino is one of my favorite actresses from the period. Not conventionally glamorous, she still has pixie charm, intelligence, and a core of steel. She does her own singing here, and explains her non-pro performance by saying that she lost her voice when young.
She did less acting after a while and became a director.
Second review
Additional thoughts and new thumbnails from the Blu-ray.
Filmmakers tried to fit Ida Lupino into ingenue roles when she was younger but it never took. Something about her tiny frame, wide-set sharp eyes, and clear intelligence: she could never be a traditional film beauty.
She is only 30 here but projects vast, weary experience. If this is film noir then she is the Robert Mitchum character, unattached, not looking for love, just for a job. The two men fighting for her don't stop to consider whether she has the slightest interest in either. She does fall for one eventually; it happens.
She's smart: sarcastic to the younger men but polite and friendly to the bartender.
That cigarette-smoke singing voice: Celeste Holm says, "She does more without a voice than anyone I've ever heard".
The commentators seem to think Holm's is a thankless role, the reliable gal-pal who won't be getting either man. I find her immensely likable. Her quip at the end when Cornel Wilde picks her up: "I'm a little bit heavy". Well, compared to Lupino, sure. She's joking, shaking off a bullet wound, one of the boys.
The club itself is a great fantasy locale: rustic with antlers and moose heads, near a small nowhere town (like Twin Peaks, near the Canadian border), bar and pool hall and bowling alley. You can hear bowling in the background when Lupino starts to sing.
Widmark is still doing the psycho giggling with his teeth and tongue, his trademark from his debut in Kiss of Death (1947) the year before.
Wilde seems proud of his club and flinches when Lupino rests a burning cigarette on the white piano. Later we see a whole row of scorch marks, so his standards slipped.
Score by Cyril J. Mockridge, cinematography by Joseph LaShelle.
Available on Blu-ray from Kino. Eddie Muller and Kim Morgan's commentary track is extended Lupino worship. Always good to have a male/female team on these tracks.
They don't mention: Lupino and Wilde were both actors who wanted to be directors and who turned out to be rather good at it.
