‘What Could Have Been’ is a continuing look into the reels of film history, analysing movies that could have been something special, but due to problems with script, production, budget, or any other type of issue, did not reach its full potential.
Big Tim Channing: “When you play with slugs, you get slugged on another day.”
The one armed bandit (also known as the slot machine). . . a dream for a select few winners, a nightmare for most others. Gambling, in many ways, can be an addictive curse, but could that also be the case for those thugs running the machines too? A crime centred noir-lite directed by William Witney, City of Shadows (1955), may just answer the above question.
Big Tim Channing (Victor McLaglen), is not living up to his name, as his thuggish fellow racketeers Tony Finetti (Anthony Caruso) and Angelo Di Bruno (Richard Reeves) are dominating the slot game, as his dilapidated machines are out of order half the time. That is, until a street wise twelve year old orphan, Dan Mason (as a young boy, Jimmy Grohman), gives him the grift that will put him back on top.
Flash forward twelve years, and Big Tim is on top – leading those dangerous gangsters that were once calling the shots, and Dan (as an adult, John Baer) is soon to be a top graduate from law school. Like a son to the larger than life criminal persona, Dan’s charm hides his dark side in the shadows, providing legal advice to keep Big Tim and his boys out of prison.
Yet, on one of his reconnaissance missions to find age old case law to get one of the soon to be extradited thugs off, Dan meets a school buddy’s pure as the freshly driven snow sister Fern Fellows (Kathleen Crowley). . . and he is immediately smitten. Looking to go straight and do some good with his life, he pleads with Big Tim to take his advice one more time and go legit and help him finance a security firm while also getting into insurance. Will the both street and legal wise Dan be able to go clean for the sake of his soon-to-be wife? More importantly, will his father figure Big Tim be able to keep his promise and stay legit with all kinds of corrupt pressure coming from Finetti and Di Bruno? Or, will things blow back onto one or both of the guys?
Though missing some of the pizzazz of your typical film noir – for example, there really isn’t a juicy femme fatale or mean streak of cynicism running through our central characters, Victor McLaglen is fun to watch. . . an always slightly fragile brute who never seems to be truly in control, even when he’s on top of the hill. Softened by being a father-like figure for the last decade plus, he is stuck between a rock and a hard place – being loyal to the closest thing to a son he’s ever had, or give in to the pressure baked on to him by his persuasive syndicate pals.
A rare noir ending set in a snow filled landscape (another example being On Dangerous Ground), City of Shadows is a short and simple seventy minute crime film that is by no means a dynamic gem, but does enough to justify a breezy watch this Noirvember. It’s also worth noting the rather striking original one sheet poster done for the movie – it’s mighty fine advertising art! So, cool off from all that steamy film noir city heat with this one, it might have more than one type of slug in it.
