Road House (1948) Reviews

• Widmark Goes Psychotic Again!

  ccthemovieman-12006-11-14

  This was a very interesting character study of three people: "LIly Stevens" (Ida Lupino), "Jefty Robbins" (Richard Widmark) and "Pete Morgan" (Cornel Wilde). The two guys are attracted to Lupino, who prefers good-guy Wilde. The scorned Widmark then gets his revenge. This film was a year after Widmark played sadistic killer "Tommy Udo" in "Kiss Of Death" and his character in this movie isn't too far removed from Udo. In both films, Widmark provides the spark when the story needed it. That's not to say the rest of the cast isn't good, too, but Widmark playing these psycho villains is just fascinating and just stands out. Another fine thespian is Celeste Holm, who also is in this picture but with a role that did not stand out. I can't even remember what she did in here, although it's been awhile since I've seen this. Hopefully, this film noir will be issued on DVD some day.

• " I told you she was different "

  chinaskee2002-11-03

  This is one of my favorite film-noirs. I could watch it every night and not get tired of it. What Ida Lupino was able to do with a cigarette, a few shrugs of her shoulder and a gravelly singing voice, well lets just say they there oughta be a law against it. The casting of this film could not have been better.Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde and Celeste Holm are all at the top of their game here. And to top it all off, it has one of the greatest bar-room brawls of all time. If you've never seen it, you're wasting valuable time here. Shut off your computer, go down to your local video store and rent it immediately. You won't be disappointed. Or better yet, try to catch it on a big screen somewhere.

• "Again, this couldn't happen again..."

  jotix1002004-11-22

  The main attraction here are the amazing performances by Ida Lupino, and Richard Widmark. Jean Negulesco was able to capture it all in this tale of passion gone wrong. Lily Stevens arrives at Jefty's Road House to entertain in the lounge area. Jefty, has offered her 250 a week, a sum that in Pete Morgan's estimation is a lot more than the place can afford. Pete offers money to send Lily back to Chicago because he senses she will bring chaos between him and Jefty, the man who has been generous to him and who, he feels, will fall again for this chanteuse of mysterious origins. Thus begins one of the best films of that era. It's a noir because of the elements, but actually it might be considered a semi-noir since it's not an obvious one. Ida Lupino had a way for 'talking' her songs at the Road House. She had a style that got to the lounge patrons that heard her sing. Her interpretation of "It's a quarter to three" is done faultlessly. Her voice, a combination of alcohol and the cigarettes she positions at the piano's lid while singing, contribute to create a portrait of the sultry woman she is. She sings "Again" twice; her rendition of that song makes it impossible for anyone else to sing it without comparing it to what Ms. Lupino did with it, much better! Richard Widmark was the favorite looney in the 40s. His acting was always an exercise on intensity. He always played the weird roles on the screen. In "Road House" he appears almost normal until he realizes that Lily will never love him. He has to get his revenge on Pete who has stolen Lily's affection away from him. Jefty will stop at nothing in order to get her back. Thus he accuses Pete Morgan, his loyal friend, of stealing the week's receipts. Cornel Wilde plays a passive role as Pete. He too falls for the charms of Lily, but at the same time, Lily wants him because she sees in him her own salvation from joints and a ticket to a normal life. Celeste Holm is the other principal. Her role is not as well defined. She should be resentful of Lily, but she is a kind soul who accepts the fact that Pete never loved her. Ultimately, she is the one who solves the puzzle of the missing money. "Road House" should be seen more often.

• Intriguing Noir with a Sultry Performance by Ida Lupino

  Kalaman2003-10-24

  A fascinating, quietly invigorating noir piece from director Jean Negulesco. Richard Widmark is fantastic as the owner of the roadhouse who spoils the marriage of Cornel Wilde and Ida Lupino in the quasi-idyllic setting located in the U.S.-Canadian border. There are two things that kept me fascinated by this odd and satisfying little noir. One is the sultry presence of Ida Lupino as the silky, smooth-voiced torch singer Lily (her rendition of "One for My Baby" is itself precious). Without a doubt this is one of Lupino's best performances. The other is director Negulesco's intriguingly stylish direction: the use of languorous long takes and deep focus, particularly in the misty, smoke-induced finale in the wilderness is quite haunting and expressive. This is the only Negulesco film I've seen. I'm looking forward to this other works.

• Behind a white piano gouged with cigarette burns, Lupino proves her mettle

  bmacv2004-09-07

  '...and then by bus to a throaty restless obsessed temptress 'thrush' slouched in mortal danger atop a white piano, singing the blues and chain-smoking, somewhere in the long, dark, wet and winding night between Chicago and 'the coast.' – James McCourt, "Mawrdew Czgowchwz" Jean Negulesco's Road House must have inspired that sentence (or rather fragment). With her voice shredded by Scotch and Luckies, Ida Lupino is the thrush, the canary, whose smoldering cigarettes leave a bar-code of burns scarring the smart paint of her white piano. She's been brought up from Chicago by Richard Widmark to lure paying customers into the cocktail lounge of his establishment – Jefty's Road House – up in the piney woods a few miles from the Canadian border. (On one side, it's a bowling alley – that kind of joint; the only game in town). In the past, Widmark has been known to engage no-talents who strike his romantic fancy. So when Lupino arrives, Widmark's boyhood pal and now Man Friday Cornel Wilde, cruel to be kind, tries to send her packing. He fails ('Silly boy,' she scolds him after slapping his face). But Wilde was wrong; Lupino brings down the house at her debut, with a gravelly, sprechstimme rendition of the Mercer/Arlen 'It's A Quarter To Three.' ('She does more without a voice than anybody I've ever heard,' marvels Celeste Holm, another worker toiling under Widmark's thumb.) Maybe it would have been better had she packed. Widmark assumes that Lupino's as mad about him as he about her and runs off to get a marriage license. But after starting off on the wrong foot, Wilde and Lupino find a grudging romance kindling between them, to Holm's chagrin – she assumed she was Wilde's girl. (The whole plot's based on unfounded assumptions.) When Widmark stumbles upon the truth, he frames Wilde for stealing the week's take. And that's only the start of Widmark's delusional plot to redress the wrong he thinks been done him, to an extent that Lupino turns on him: 'And you know what else? Your mind's gone. You're crazy, Jefty. Crazy!' Since, in film noir, that's about the worse thing you can say to someone with a mad little glint in his eye (and demented giggles to match it), Widmark goes totally unhitched.... Like the following year's Beyond The Forest, Road House is an overheated melodrama set in the cool climate of hunting lodges and icy lakes where loons (not only the avian kind) call through the dusk. It's a pastoral backwater where routine passions build up to explosive force, without the many vents cities offer for release. (We see it in a drunken bear of a backwoodsman who comes violently onto Lupino, thinking her torch songs were sung not for a paycheck but expressly for him.) Negulesco was working at the top of his game in Road House, as was Widmark (though we had seen his gleeful psycho before). With his constitutionally dour manner (maybe it's just his face), Wilde was not one to set celluloid aflame, but the part of victim fits him; Holm, alas, has to grapple with a thankless, ill-thought-out character (it's an Eve-Ardenish part that needs another splash of vinegar). But Lupino gets one of her best roles, and runs with it. Scion of a British theatrical family whose roots go back to Renaissance Italy, she never received the star treatment or the prestige productions her talents deserved (she did, however, help to shatter the directorial glass ceiling). As Lily Stevens, world-weary chanteuse of a certain age, she stays the headliner in a dark, accomplished and entertaining movie. It's a late-show treasure that makes a television an appliance worth having.