Larceny

Watching Larceny I thought the way the film was building toward the climax I was sure of a sentimental ending. But far from it with this film. What we get is a crackerjack and original realistic ending in this noir film.

John Payne plays a smooth talking confidence man who is part of a gang headed by Dan Duryea. Duryea has set up a big score and Payne has to romance war widow Joan Caulfield who thought her hero husband walked on water. The con involves swindling Caulfield ot of money to build a youth center for the town's young people and Payne poses as a GI buddy of the late husband.

Payne's working a few cons here. He's also going out with the sultry and possessive Shelley Winters who is two timing Duryea. In the end though he falls for Caulfield and that sets up the climax.

Shelley Winters also has one of her good career roles in Larceny. The kind of woman that ought to come with a warning label. And Duryea gives us one of his classic bad guy roles as well.

The script is a fine piece of writing and the director gets some great performances out of his ensemble cast. Do not miss this one, it's one of the best noirs out there.

Based on Lois Eby and John Leming novel The velvet fleece and excellently adapted to the screen, the movie benefits from a well written script by Herb Margolis, Lou Morheim and William Bowers and from excellen performances by the whole cast. Not only John Payne and Dan Duryea provide their characters with solid credible acting. Also Shelley Winters does a good acting job as the femme fatale obsessed with Payne. She was an actress who had deserved more subtle roles that the ones she usually played. After shining in musicals, light comedies and adventure movies, Payne did several interesting film noirs with Phil Karlson: 99 river st. And excellent Kansas city confidential. Always credible, he conferred a solid presence to his works. This movie is not an exception mainly thanks to great dialogue lines. Screenwriter Bowers also did the script of several other good noirs like The web, Criss Cross, and Cry danger. Payne, Duryea and two more partners are confident men who work scamming rich people. When their last job fails they decide to go for a young wealthy war widow. But problems begin when, while payne is trying to seduce her, Duryea's girl Shelley Winters tries to seduce Payne - who is falling in love with the widow - causing complications and leading the job to fail. Deserves a watch.

While 'Larceny' has a cast of nasty, amoral characters, those expecting a traditional noir with the interesting camera work and lighting might be disappointed. However, it does have a fair bit of suspense, a few twists and turns and some fine acting, so I'd rate it slightly above average.

The plot revolves around a group of fraudsters who come up with elaborate fundraising schemes to bilk hundreds of thousands from wealthy investors then skip town; frighteningly relevant to today's mainstream business world. And they're very successful until one guy meets a dame and falls in love.

Unfortunately, the love story isn't very convincing, nor is the main character's transformation from amoral scumbag to upstanding citizen, which really makes everything else seem a bit implausible.

Regardless, there are some suspenseful moments, you do feel for John Payne's predicament, and the acting is generally quite good from Payne, Dan Duryea, character actor Percy Helton and especially Shelly Winters as the superbly annoying scorned femme fatale. She's good at being bad.

Anyway, if you're a completist like me, it's worth a go.

Like Dick Powell, John Payne was another crooner and hoofer from ‘30s musicals – a light leading man – who saw new opportunities waiting in the changing Hollywood of the late ‘40s and seized them. Eschewing also-ran roles in prestige pictures (The Razor's Edge, Miracle on 34th Street), he found he was better off taking top billing in the grittier Bs of the newborn noir cycle. It was a smart move. With rugged good looks but no glamour boy, a strong, silent type who didn't make it a gimmick, he turned into a plausible and appealing Average Joe, without ever fading into the generic. In the half-dozen or so noirs he starred in, he straddled both sides of the law, though he usually found himself stranded in a no-man's land in the middle.

In Larceny, he's one of a gang of con-men led by Dan Duryea. They've just finished a grift in Miami Beach, so Payne is sent to the far coast, to `Mission City,' to lay groundwork for the next job. He poses as an old service buddy of a slain war hero so the widow (Joan Caulfield) will spearhead a fund-raising drive for a memorial – sort of a posh Boy's Town for underprivileged youth – that, of course, is nothing more than a scheme for bilking donors.

But that mischievous cherub Cupid throws a few monkey wrenches into the works. First off, Payne starts developing protective feelings for Caulfield and, more slowly, she for him (she's been playing Vestal Virgin at her husband's altar for so long she finds her own feelings a betrayal). Even worse, Duryea's moll, a `boa constrictor in high heels' (Shelley Winters, in full blonde-bombshell mode) carries such a torch for Payne that she follows him out west, by bus yet. The sicker Payne grows of her, the needier and more reckless she gets – their unstable chemistry threatens to blow them both sky high. The plot executes several quick turns when the possessive Duryea shows up (as does the victim of the Miami scam), when Caulfield reveals that she plans to put up all the money herself, and when Winters decides to take matters into her own pistol-packin' hand....

The violence in Larceny is toned way down, confined mainly to Winters' being slapped around (but she slaps back). It relies instead on a tight script, bristling with smart-mouthed cracks: `[Winters] is like a high-tension wire. Once you grab on, you can't let go – even if you want to;' `You kiss like you're paying off an election bet;' `I said I'm sorry but I'm not going to write it on the blackboard 100 times.' It allows Percy Helton and Dorothy Hart space enough to flesh out their small parts (Hart does a scrumptious riff on Dorothy Malone's bookstore clerk in The Big Sleep). All in all, Larceny proves a congenial vehicle for Payne's welcome arrival in dark city.

There is nothing more frustrating for a critic to review than a good film that goes slightly awry at the end. I will not give you any spoilers, but suffice it to say that Payne and Winters do a pretty good job, along with Duryea in convincing us that the world is divided among the rotten and the honorable. And then there are those who are stuck somewhere in between. The ending did not ring true to me, but others may have found it more convincing. See this one for yourself and decide if you think it was handled correctly.

Payne, who normally played goody-goody roles in most of his other films, is, at times, convincing as a confidence man, but at other times falls back into his Mr. Nice Guy persona. Maybe that was the intent of the writers, but I was not buying it.