When you're the top gang-boss of the Miami-Havana circuit, the cops tend to look the other way, leaving you free to instal a dual-control gadget in the back of your car, to over-ride the chauffeur on a whim. Predictably, this leads to some fancy driving, to put it mildly, influencing the story more than somewhat.
The boss (Eddie) is played by Steve Cochran, only newly arrived in Hollywood, but carrying full conviction as the menacing villain, silent and sinister, eyes full of death, accompanied by Peter Lorre as the cynical henchman whom that tortured Hungarian was surely born to play.
The chauffeur (Scotty) is Bob Cummings, acting as a wartime sailor, discharged with 'anxiety neurosis' and reduced to the pavement life, gazing enviously through the window of a cheap café at those lucky folk who can afford a hot breakfast. By chance (and rather improbably), he notices a wallet someone has dropped, and virtuously delivers it to the address printed on a visiting-card inside the flap. Under scrutiny by a suspicious Lorre, he is admitted to the gangster's palace, where Eddie is seen violently chastising a couple of female staff, before asking the newcomer his business.
Scotty hands over the wallet, complete with 80 dollars, nervously confessing that he spent the other dollar in the café. For a moment, it looks as though this might have cost him his life, but Eddie decides that he's amused at the young man's honesty (even as Lorre mumbles his unflattering opinion of mere law-abiders), and duly appoints him as chauffeur.
There follows a rather speeded-up Lady Chatterley situation, with Eddie's lonely and neglected wife Lorna, played by Michèle Morgan, finding excuses to be driven to the beach by her new friend, and they plan to elope to Cuba.
This would be the moment for a few spoilers - if I even half-understood the plot, that is. As it is, I can only suggest that the later story deliberately leaves you baffled, in order to earn its mysterious label of 'Film Noir'. Cummings makes a poor job of pretending to play the piano to impress Morgan, but he and Morgan don't really have the chemistry anyway. The only surprisingly good performance is the humble shopkeeper in Havana played by Russian opera star Nina Koshetz. And at least Lorre and Cummings would have plenty to swap notes about at break-time, Lorre being a morphine addict and Cummings being a client of the same Dr. Feelgood as John F. Kennedy.
The boss (Eddie) is played by Steve Cochran, only newly arrived in Hollywood, but carrying full conviction as the menacing villain, silent and sinister, eyes full of death, accompanied by Peter Lorre as the cynical henchman whom that tortured Hungarian was surely born to play.
The chauffeur (Scotty) is Bob Cummings, acting as a wartime sailor, discharged with 'anxiety neurosis' and reduced to the pavement life, gazing enviously through the window of a cheap café at those lucky folk who can afford a hot breakfast. By chance (and rather improbably), he notices a wallet someone has dropped, and virtuously delivers it to the address printed on a visiting-card inside the flap. Under scrutiny by a suspicious Lorre, he is admitted to the gangster's palace, where Eddie is seen violently chastising a couple of female staff, before asking the newcomer his business.
Scotty hands over the wallet, complete with 80 dollars, nervously confessing that he spent the other dollar in the café. For a moment, it looks as though this might have cost him his life, but Eddie decides that he's amused at the young man's honesty (even as Lorre mumbles his unflattering opinion of mere law-abiders), and duly appoints him as chauffeur.
There follows a rather speeded-up Lady Chatterley situation, with Eddie's lonely and neglected wife Lorna, played by Michèle Morgan, finding excuses to be driven to the beach by her new friend, and they plan to elope to Cuba.
This would be the moment for a few spoilers - if I even half-understood the plot, that is. As it is, I can only suggest that the later story deliberately leaves you baffled, in order to earn its mysterious label of 'Film Noir'. Cummings makes a poor job of pretending to play the piano to impress Morgan, but he and Morgan don't really have the chemistry anyway. The only surprisingly good performance is the humble shopkeeper in Havana played by Russian opera star Nina Koshetz. And at least Lorre and Cummings would have plenty to swap notes about at break-time, Lorre being a morphine addict and Cummings being a client of the same Dr. Feelgood as John F. Kennedy.