John Dillinger is a cheap prick whose life is worth a mere $7.20. Max Nosseck directs this fictionalized Biopic like a fistfight, quick and dirty and over way too soon! Nosseck and his DP Jackson Rose are workmanlike in their compositions bit it’s Philip Yordan’s Oscar nominated script that is the real star. This admixture also includes wonderful editing and montage by Edward Mann with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin that ricochets between strident and subdued. The acting is also first rate from Lawrence Tierney and Edmund Lowe to the gang which includes a grape-eating Elisha Cook Jr. and a weary yet dangerous Eduardo Cianelli. Great stuff especially for a Poverty Row film!
The film begins in a meta-fashion with an audience watching a newsreel on John Dillinger. When the curtains a drawn, out walks Dillinger’s father (actor Victor Kilian: not the "real" father!) and he begins speaking about his son’s childhood. Soon, we flashback to Dillinger (Lawrence Tierney) and a blonde dame (Constance Worth) drinking at a dive bar. But the pugnacious Dillinger can’t afford to quench his girl’s thirst for beer, so he holds up a corner store and gets 10 to 20 years for $7.20. Remember that dollar amount. Once paroled, he hides weapons in a cement barrel so his cellmate Specs (Edmund Lowe) and his gang can escape from the prison work-crew. Soon, the gang is robbing banks and stealing headlines, and killing anyone who gets in their way! Dillinger’s strong-arm robbery of a ticket booth leads to a backhanded romance with Helen (Anne Jeffreys), a witness who could have picked him from a lineup but instead picks him up!
The film is economical in both time and budget, as establishing shots are dispensed with and locations are minimalist to great effect. No money for a violent action sequence inside of a bank? No problem, utilize a montage sequence of expressionistic images as the gang commits a series of robberies across the Midwest. In one early sequence, when the gang finds the weapons in the barrel we expect to see a brutal shootout with the guards. But Director Max Nosseck eschews this expected scene with a transition and immediately cuts to a bank shootout; this quickly communicates that their escape was successful and match-cuts with the gunfire and takes us into the future as the gang is already well established! Yordan’s script takes great pains to show us that Dillinger’s life isn’t glamorous and sexy, that he’s a killer who suffers in poverty even after their big scores. The gang is always photographed in cheap, dirty rooms without flashy clothes or dames, scrounging for food when their money runs out. Which it always does. There’s just no future in crime!
Tierney imbues Dillinger with a fierce and venomous personality, a man who smiles like a shark and is always moving, even when standing still. When Specs decries the gang’s use of violence and replaces him after Dillinger’s arrest (he subsequently escapes from county prison with a wooden pistol), our protagonist murders Specs in front of the gang...after taunting him with the faux pistol! Sadistic as fuck. As the gang tries to pull one last heist, Otto (Elisha Cook Jr.) gets gunned down on a train and Dillinger gets away but without the payoff. Broke, he’s imprisoned in a seedy hotel room for months as Helen visits until she needs a job for food money. But one last night on the town would be nice, so she wears her nicest red dress, and they take a trip to the movies to see William Powell and Myrna Loy. The rest is history. Shot dead in a filthy alley, the cops find $7.20 in his pants pocket.
Final Grade: (B+)
