The Glass Key (1935)

Dir.: Frank Tuttle
Plot: Erm... much the same as the more famous 1942 remake. A semi-corrupt politician sparks a gang war, and his trusty lieutenant has to navigate both sides in order to save his boss' career and, increasingly, his own life.

George Raft might not really have been able to act (even at the time, NY Times critic Andre Sennwald remarked that Raft success here was due to his being 'happily cast in a rôle which allows him to be sinister and suave without making excessive demands on his talent') but he could look great just standing around. If you saw nothing but stills of him, you would probably think he was a terrific actor. In what is probably his best role, as ill-fated sidekick Little Boy in the original Scarface (1932), he barely utters more than a few terse lines. And yet the scene in which he first meets Tony's sister, watching her at her window whilst tossing a coin, is one of my favourites in the whole movie. Here, for instance, he has all the thoughtful intensity of Spencer Tracy, but when he opens his mouth, it's the same old Raft.

Funnily enough, the same is also true of Alan Ladd, who would go on to play Raft's role in the 1942 reboot of this brilliantly bleak Hammett novel. Hammett's unique narrative style, wherein the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist (Ned Beaumont in the book, Ed in both films, for reasons unknown) are concealed from everyone, even the reader, means that even a minimalist performance can really knock it out of the park, provided we believe there's something going on behind the mask. And in this case, I think we do. The reason? Well, a lot of people think that Raft was so successful playing gangsters because he sort of was one himself. But to my mind, it's even better than that: Raft is so good in this particular film because he was never a gangster, only a hanger-on, an onlooker - and here he is playing a guy just like that, flirting around the edge of criminality but never fully immersing himself.

Several reviewers have fingered this movie as a very early example of the noir aesthetic. This estimation is perhaps a little too optimistic - the picture is very heavily anchored in the world of the early 30s gritty quasi-realism which produced the likes of The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932), not the hyper-stylised world of noir. That said, director Frank Tuttle went on to make a marvellous noir - This Gun For Hire (1942) - and aficianados will notice some stylish early use of light and shadow. This is particularly noticeable during the long opening scene in Paul's office, culminating in his standoff with Nick Varna (later to be borrowed, nearly word-for-word, for a similar standoff in the Coen brother's Miller's Crossing (1990) - watching both scenes one after the other is very eerie indeed).

What I really love about this version is that although it fillets down elements the book's plot considerably, what makes it to the screen remains strictly faithful to the material. Whilst the remake (although fairly faithful itself) was tied down by the necessity to have Ladd end up happily shacked up with Veronica Lake, the 1935 version focuses strictly on the relationship between Ed and Paul. And because it pre-dates film noir, it feels no pressure to crowbar in a twisted love story, apart from the one going on between Raft and Arnold. They are portrayed as incredibly close - Ed calls Paul's mother 'Mom' and treats his daughter as a baby sister. The book's small romantic subplots are completely cut out, as well, further emphasising the central relationship holding the film together. When the two have their pivotal showdown about halfway through the film (deliberately staged by Ed, unbeknownst to Paul), the expression on Arnold's face after Raft socks him is a second of masterful acting. Far more so than in the 1942 version, where Ed comes off as a bit of a sucker for punishment (or as Jeff remarks in the book "a goddammed massacrist"), in this version we really do believe that he will do anything for his friend.

 Arnold's version of Madvig is a little more dopey and avuncular than Donlevy's cheerily insouciant take in the remake, sort of begging the question of how he came to be in a position of power in the first place. And although on the whole I slightly prefer Donlevy - I will forever see something of the sinister meglomaniac capitalist around Arnold - he and Ladd never quite gel as a pairing the way Arnold and Raft do. Therest of the cast is mixed, generally a tad wooden, but making all the necessary noises to keep the plot rolling. The only supporting actor to distinguish themselves (aside from Ray Milland and Ann Sheridan in pre-stardom bit parts) is Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams as unstable bruiser Jeff. With him in the part, the famous captivity and beating sequence loses all of them homoerotic charge that William Bendix brought to the later version in spades, but in Williams' defence I just don't think he could be homoerotic to save his life. Where he really shines is in his final scene, drunkenly shifting between threatening Ed and calling him his best friend, before snapping completely and choking his bullying boss to death. The strange tinge of vulnerability behind the menace calls to mind Mike Mazurki's similar turn as Moose Malloy several years later in Murder, My Sweet (1946).

The ending is also an improvement on the infuriatingly fatuous conclusion of the 1942 version (although, with Ladd and Lake above the marquee audiences would hardly expect anything less). Although still far more upbeat than the rather bitter ending of the book, the film finishes on a nice scene which doesn't promise anything - we don't know if Ed and Paul will stick together, if Opal will stay on the straight and narrow. It's still far too cheerful to be described as noir-ish exactly. Let's say noir-tinged, then, like the rest of this half-gangster picture half-melodrama, which skulks around the shadows without fully disappearing into them.

8/10