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Very disappointing...

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Here is a strange movie. Depending on what part you are tuned into, you may be watching a gangster movie with vintage Depression-era wise-guy chatter, or a heart-touching true-meaning-of-Christmas film, or a comic variation on a "Crazy House"-type theme, featuring scenes with eccentric characters pontificating weirdly. Then I saw that there were two directors, so maybe that is why the film shifts so much.Not that it is bad. On the contrary, "Mr. Soft Touch" is quite an entertaining movie, with a fast-paced script that barely ever pauses to catch its breath. The reason this film works for me is that Glenn Ford so easily slides from film-noir to romance to comedy and back and forth again. A very interesting role for Glenn, perhaps inadvertently given a chance here to show how versatile he could be.Evelyn Keyes plays an interesting character as well. It is unusual for a film made in what was still the 1940's to feature a character who so openly refers to, and sometimes uses manipulatively, a handicap such as deafness; the references to the hearing aid may make a modern viewer a little uncomfortable.The only character who seems out of place is John Irelands's crusading reporter. He wears a pair of dark-framed, "please don't hit me" glasses, which don't seem right for some reason. His character is perhaps a good guy, perhaps not; we never really find out, and in the end, neither we nor the directors seemed to care. Just not sure how he really fits in.From a social standpoint, "Mr. Soft Touch" presents an up-close and intimate look at private charity in the days before the government took over that role. We get a chance to spend quality time with those caring souls who fought tirelessly against an endless shortage of money and supplies, and who believed that it was worth helping people, even if it was only one person at a time. No one in this movie whines about getting a check from the government.The bottom line, then, is that you have a film that is part "Little Caesar", part "Its a Wonderful Life", part "Bowery Boys", and part "You Can't Take it with You". If you accept the genre-changes that occur haphazardly throughout the film as all part of the fun, then you can have yourself an enjoyable hour and a half in the company of "Mr. Soft Touch".

A war hero returns from the service and winds up stealing his own money back from the mob in "Mr. Soft Touch," a 1949 film starring Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, and Ted de Corsa.Ford plays Joe Miracle (shortened from his Polish name) who comes home before Christmas and finds out his partner in a club has been murdered by the mob, and the mob has taken his money. Joe retaliates by breaking into the club and stealing $100,000 from the safe. With everyone looking for him, Joe has a friend buy him a ticket to Japan, but the ticket is for a later date. So he takes off and enters a settlement house run by Jenny Jones (Evelyn Keyes). Jenny thinks Joe is a musician down on his luck. Meanwhile, a newspaper columnist who knows what happened wants Joe's story and is trying to track him down. In writing about Joe, the mob picks up his trail.Given the cast, Mr. Soft Touch was obviously intended to be a noir but turns into kind of a Christmas romance with comic aspects. For some reason it failed to hold my interest, even though I love Glenn Ford. The acting was good all around, but I preferred the beginning noir and wish it had stayed on that route. The original director was replaced, possibly to change the direction of the movie.Someone on this board mentioned that John Garfield would have been better in this role. He would have been very good as he always was, but he and Ford were different kinds of types and actors. Garfield looked and acted tough, and Glenn Ford was Everyman. I think his casting in this is the better choice. Joe is a likable, nice guy who was ripped off by the mob while he was off serving his country. Glenn Ford didn't have Garfield's range, but in the right role, he was very effective. And, I might add, easy on the eyes.

The ingredients are all there for a superb Christmas holiday classic, but Mr. Soft Touch somehow fails to measure up. It could be because two directors with two different visions if any, Gordon Douglas and Henry Levin got assigned to this film from Columbia.The film starts out with the same premise as Angels With Dirty Faces. Glenn Ford is a former nightclub owner who while serving in World War II was done out of his share of the club by the mob. Unlike James Cagney who expected to move back into partnership with Humphrey Bogart and George Bancroft, Ford's a bit more realistic than that. He just robs the place and he's got both the law and Ted DeCorsia and assorted hoods looking for him.Circumstances manage to place Ford in a settlement house in San Francisco where Evelyn Keyes takes an interest in him. He actually starts to help out around the place and spreads just a bit of that hundred grand he robbed from the mob. But Keyes who can't help falling for Glenn and her boss Beulah Bondi know he's trouble.Mr. Soft Touch is not a bad film, but it could have been a holiday classic, it goes wide of the mark with some bad direction. Or maybe no direction, could happen with two directors. The most interesting character in the film is John Ireland who plays a sleazy tabloid columnist, but a man with an impeccable nose for news and trouble.Glenn Ford's fans should like Mr. Soft Touch and Evelyn Keyes is absolutely radiant as the social worker. They teamed a few times as well for Columbia, but never got the acclaim that Ford did with Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Of course Mr. Soft Touch isn't Gilda.

The credentials for a superb Noir are all there: Glenn Ford has been one of the most convincing (and still strangely unsung) anti-heroes American cinema has produced. The wonderful opening sequence (in which Ford escapes both the police and the mob) is as minimalistic ally brilliant as the seemingly tight budget would have allowed. Yet after only a short while the film's tone changes radically: sweeter music, romantic comedy and a (however underplayed) Christmas tear-jerker emerge from what promised to be a crisp, economic little masterpiece.I'm not saying the uneven pacing ruin the film completely but my suspicion is, looking at the credits (no, I don't mean the cast which features a wonderfully noir-ish array of characters: Evelyn Keyes, John Ireland, Ted de Corsia) there are TWO directors (one made good noirs with Ford, the other made Rat Pack flicks with Sinatra, Davis Jr, Martin et al), TWO directors of photography...For what it's worth my guess is the producer got cold feet and hired a second director to save (a lame comedy? a routine noir?) a product he wasn't very happy with. He probably made a mistake...