New York Confidential (1955)

Good movie but grossly overrated

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The credits come on and one is really set up for something good. Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, Anne Bancroft, Onslow Stevens, Marilyn Maxwell, J. Carroll Naish, Barry Kelley, Tom Powers, Mike Mazurki, Celia Lovsky...The film starts with location footage and the stentorian tones of a narrator so you figure you're going to get one of those De Rochemont docudramas or at least a cheapie along the lines of Conte's The Sleeping City which was shot on location here in NYC.No, soon we're on the Goldwyn lot which wouldn't be bad if there were some creative angles or lighting. But no, individual scenes are all harshly lit except for a fist fight when they needed to hide the stunt men (not very well either). Also, there are no dissolves, all scenes end with a fade to black and you half expect to see a commercial.The story structure is no better - two major characters are just written out with no drama to punctuate the exits. The story in itself is promising enough, with hit man Conte imported from Chicago and recruited to remain with Crawford's mob after he neatly disposes of some upstart who causes headlines which "the syndicate" would prefer to avoid.Crawford's daughter Bancroft seems to be falling for Conte, but that goes nowhere. Crawford's girl Marilyn Maxwell is definitely falling for Conte, but that goes nowhere, but hey, at least now the subtext folks have something to read into it. All I saw there was poor writing.Conte's character is fairly bright it seems, then Bancroft uses the word "penchant" and he seems dumbfounded. That reversal happens again at the end of the film, but I won't reveal in what manner. Crawford keeps telling Conte he's brighter than all the other "pigs" he has in his employ who can't even spell their own names. So then, how has Crawford managed to head the East Coast mob and hold off trouble for 20 years if everyone working for him is an idiot? By the way, you will never hear the word "pigs" used so often in 87 minutes unless you're at a hog-calling contest.Worth watching to see so many familiar faces in one film, but as to whether it's worth watching again is another matter. If I do, it won't be soon.

This isn't nearly as bad as it starts out to be or as it sometimes becomes. It has to overcome a couple of weaknesses that are so obvious they cry out for attention.One is the utter absence of any local color. It's all about "New York" but we only see a minute or two of the city in some stock shots under the credits. The film is studio bound and the production design lacks any imagination. All the rooms and offices are cheap and strictly functional. Sometimes the painted backdrop outside the window is presented at the wrong angle and the effect is dizzying because the perspective is askew, as in a de Chirico painting. Speaking of painting, a gang of rival hoods takes a pot shot at the Syndicate Big Wig, Charlie Lupo (Crawford), and just wing him, though the bullet goes through a painting he "paid thirty grand for." I hope it was the one with the two Degas ballerinas because I've checked Degas' ballerinas up close and his pastels are far better than mine ever were, the swine.This was also the period in which J. Edgar Hoover, President For Life of the FBI, was doing his best to convince the public that there was no such thing as a "Mafia" because he didn't want his boys to get too close to all that money. So there is no Mafia here, only "the organization" or "the syndicate." And, Crawford aside, nobody has an Italian name. They have names like Nick Magellan and Johnny Achilles and Whitey.Richard Conte is Nick Magellan and with the revelation of his character the movie picks up pace. He's brought in from Chicago, pulls off a professional hit, and soon works his way up to a position as Crawford's trusted deputy. Crawford's trust is justified. Conte's character is a complex one. He is loyal, polite, well spoken, and plays by the rules. The rules are pretty tough. The Organization always comes first. Crawford made up the rules and suffers for it, as does Conte.There isn't room to spell out the entirety of the plot. It's a crime thriller that puts Crawford, Conte, and Crawford's daughter (Bancroft) through the wringer. Crawford himself is the barking dog that he lapsed into whenever the direction was slack, as it is here. (He was much better elsewhere, as in "All The King's Men.") Conte's character is an honorable man and he plays it with restraint.Poor Anne Bancroft as the put-upon daughter is resentful and alcoholic and is burdened with some of the worst lines. "What's the matter, Nick? TAKE me! I'm THROWING myself at you!" But Nick, a heterosexual, is still a man of honor and never violates someone else's territory. He gives Marilyn Maxwell, Crawford's main squeeze, the same treatment. Man, how she would love to have Conte stay for that nightcap. But the script isn't entirely dumbed down. Maxwell is a hardened whore, yet when Crawford finds his daughter has been killed, she is there to comfort Crawford and share his grief.It's not a "film noir," a term that seems to have lost almost all meaning. It's a crime thriller that takes place mostly in daylight and with few expressionistic effects. Maybe Russell Rouse didn't have the time, the money, or the imagination to bring any poetry to the story. There is one tense scene that takes place in an elevator descending from the top floor to the lobby -- too slowly, because it's carrying three murderers who must get out of the building before the maid discovers the fresh cadaver. (The scene is lifted from 1947's "Kiss of Death".) And there's another scene in which Conte brings off a hit and we see the victim slowly twist and fall, but only his shadow.In many ways the story isn't THAT different from "The Godfather". "New York Confidential" has the family values, the code of honor, the equivalent of the Five Families, the Italian connection, the need to kill one or two of their own, and even a consigliere. But it illustrates the difference between the work of studio hacks and the work of a talented director.

Broderick Crawford borrows a great deal from his Academy Award winning Willie Stark from All The King's Men in playing underworld boss Frank Lupo in New York Confidential. Crawford is a combination of Stark and Don Corleone and he doesn't get the best of it.Like Corleone and Stark, Lupo has trouble with his children, but unlike Stark, Lupo has a daughter played by Anne Bancroft. Now if Bancroft was content to be Connie Corleone she could have any number of willing suitors who are in the family business working for dad. She aspires to more and her father's reputation kills off any chance she can marry respectably.Not that respectability guarantees honesty. When old line money WASP William Forrest pulls the rug out from under a multi-million dollar deal the Syndicate is bankrolling they decide to take care of him in the true Syndicate manner. Crawford though he opposes the idea gets the contract and from their the dominoes start to fall.One thing however when the fires threatens, organized crime knows how to start backfires to make sure the organization itself is not touched. A whole lot of dead bodies start to pile up before the film ends.Also starring in the film is Richard Conte playing an out of town hit man who Crawford takes a shine to and has him stay in New York. Conte was always great in noir films and he certainly is here. New York Confidential touches upon a lot of the issues involving systemic corruption much the same way The Godfather films do. Of course it does not have the budget those blockbusters had nor an unforgettable music score, still New York Confidential makes it point. It's still a valid film for today's audience.

In Russell Rouse's New York Confidential, Broderick Crawford plays a darker extension of his Harry Brock character in Born Yesterday. Brock was a corrupt businessman, a wheeler-dealer with senators in his pocket, but the movie (a comedy, after all) never went so far as to label him a mobster, much less a killer. But five years later, in the wake of the televised Kefauver hearings which brought the scope of organized crime to a rapt public, Crawford has become a cog in a vast `syndicate' or `cartel' - an important cog in its Manhattan headquarters, yes, but only one piece of its unstoppable machinery.When one of his vassals stages an unauthorized hit, Crawford calls in some talent from Chicago (Richard Conte) to enforce discipline. The widowed Crawford warms to Conte as the son he never had, though he does have a handful of a rebellious daughter (Ann Bancroft) as well as a high-maintenance mistress with a platinum chignon (Marilyn Maxwell). Maxwell has eyes for Conte, but his eyes stay affixed on the unstable, hard-drinking Bancroft, who wants nothing to do with her father's business - or with any of his minions.The triangulated romance, however, takes second place to the mob's tangled business interests. When a recalcitrant lobbyist scuttles a scheme to profit from government shipping contracts, he's ordered killed. In the movie's best orchestrated sequence, torpedo Mike Mazurki accomplishes the hit but botches his escape from a hotel; wounded, he decides to flip and sing.With the big heat now on, the executive board decides Crawford must take the fall; he, however, decides to join Mazurki in singing a duet. So the board contracts Conte to eliminate the now dangerous Crawford....The gangster movies of the early 'thirties endure as character studies of flamboyant but flawed figures played by the likes of Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney and Paul Muni. This spats-and-tommyguns genre, however, fell out of favor in the 'forties (given global upheaval, bootleggers became small fry). When mob pictures reemerged in the 1950s, their difference in tone was palpable. From 711 Ocean Drive in 1950 to Phil Karlson's 1957 The Brothers Rico (also starring Conte), crime had become corporate, with formalized hierarchies, far-flung interests, and strict, if ruthless, rules for doing business. That's the thread that runs through New York Confidential: that no there's no individual who's indispensable, that the survival of the organization remains paramount.