Monday, June 06, 2022

The Money Trap (1965)

Rita and Glenn.... both apparently had
real life affair lasting decades
.

My beloved Rita Hayworth was already a faded star at this point….much like another darling of mine, Marlene Dietrich. The latter appeared in a semi-tragic role in Touch of Evil (1968), a former girlfriend of Orson Welles’ corrupt cop.

Rita’s is more or less the same role….and with longer screen time than Dietrich, she played a tragic figure, a gal who saw just one too many promises from men who are not all that they are cut out to be.

Her beau, ex, is Glenn Ford, a morally ambiguous cop who, through her, finds a large stash of money and heroin… and since his own current marriage to a rich socialite now requires serious funding seeing that her dad is planning to cut off the sponsorship, he plans to hide the stash…

Of course, this is the last of the few Film Noirs that flourished the previous two decades and the rule of the film dictates that the protagonists are doomed anyway – and the beauty of those films are just that, gloomy, downbeat and with shadows of dread following.

Both Ford and Hayworth are not new to this genre and the are both fantastic. This is not among the well known film of that era, considering the genre was making its way out,, lost in between big, colour extravaganza spy flicks and Rock Hudson / Doris Day comedies and the coming of the Brat filmmakers like Scorcese, de Palma, Lucas, Spielberg and Coppola. It will not be remembered…

….unless you are a fan of both stars… ME, especially as I wanted to watch this being the late entry in Hayworth’s ouvre. It is not a spectacular role, neither it is as memorable as Diettich’s in that Welles film… her performance was strong enough for a tragic character… at least I was moved.

A simple film, filled with morally skewered folks, running for about an hour and a half, definitely would be relegated to one of those forgotten B-grades with A-grade stars – or at least Hayworth was. But unlike her earlier roles that made oh-so-elated, this one just made me said – RKP 5/6/2021

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