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Undescribable Perfection

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

IT HAS LONG been said that there is no such thing as strict fiction. The premise being that all writers are influenced by actual happenings involving real people, either by choice or subconsciously. Having just recently screened GLORY ALLEY years after seeing on the nightly TV movie series, we must say that it flies in the face of that adage.THE FILM APPEARS to have been assembled using bits and pieces of other genres from previous periods in Hollywood history. Director Raoul Walsh, himself being if not exactly a sort of living anachronism, was a sort of living, breathing history of the film industry. His own career had begun in the Silents, but before the cameras as actor. (He famously portrayed John Wilkes Booth in D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION.)* SO, CALLING ON his many experience as actor and director to bring us a story that was both similar and yet unlike anything else. The story exists both in a period of time (Post World War II New Orleans, Louisiana) and yet is timeless. Its reference and involvement with the Korean War could just as easily have been World War II. This leads us to believe that the story had been around, sitting on the shelves, gathering dust before it finally got made.IN MANY RESPECTS the production looks like a comic strip or comic book display of "sequential art". The manner in which the characters, both main and supporting, are made to fit neatly into conformity of their particular pigeon holes. The Judge, Pig and Shadow Johnson (Louis Armstrong) are all prime examples.AND IN SPEAKING of the cast, we found it to be both well constructed , if just a trifle far ranging. Leslie Caron finds her way into a most unusual portrayal of a potentially gifted ballerina's being forced to perform in dance halls. Louis Armstrong does a fine job of being general purpose good guy and servant. His duties range from boxing corner man, musician and valet to the Judge.IT IS PERHAPS the one role, odd as it may seem, to showcase the talents of Ralph Meeker as main character, Socks Barbarossa. Being a very complex man with great wisdom and many other eclectic talents. Making the hero a denizen of the gutter (Glory Alley) just adds to the drama.WE MUST MENTION the role of narrator, retiring newspaper man, Gabr Jordan (John McIntyre), who adds a touch of authenticity to this convoluted, meandering, hybrid of a story.WE ALSO MUST posit the question: Did John McIntyre ever look young or portray a younger type? NOTE: * As director Raoul Walsh had compiled a tremendous number of very memorable pictures, largely at Warner Brothers. They include: WHITE HEAT, GENTLEMAN JIM, THED STRTAWBERRY BLONDE, HIGH SIERRA, THE ROARING 20's,.......................

MGM Never Understood and Always Looked Down Upon the Film-Noir of RKO and the Socially Conscious WB and Considered All of that Stuff Low-Brow and Not Worthy of the Sanctimonious Studio. Eventually in the Late Forties and Early Fifties while In Decline and in Desperation to at least Compete with those Types of Movies that were Popular, they Relegated Second Units to Make Movies in those Genres. Most of the Time they Failed and in this Case they Failed Miserably. A Film with No Clue about what it is or what it wants to be, the Studio Delivered a Film Hodgepodge with No Conviction on Any of its Multiple Styles.Streetwise Locations are on the Back Lot with Enough Room for a Prancing Musical Number or Two, Seedy New Orleans Interiors are Slick Highly Lit Sets Filled with Happy Folks who Sing and Dance on Cue. Narration is used with some of the Worst Hollywood Writing of the Time and the Story is Concerned with Propagandizing the War in Korea.Ralph Meeker Fans Better Stay Away from this one as He Struggles to be a Man and is Haunted by a Past that in a Reveal is Skull Crushingly Dumb. Leslie Caron Looks Cute and Flashes Her Legs Vibrantly Until You Notice, but the Idea of Her Doing Ballet in a Girly Bar says it all about the Filmmakers being So Far Out of their Element that it is Painful to Watch.

This movie had one of the dumbest plots I have ever seen...spoiler alert..an undefeated boxer runs out of the ring at the start of the championship fight because he has a scar on the top of his head and is afraid somebody might see it...dumb,dumb,dumb. Good stars, wasted in this film. Leslie Caron is doing ballet on top of a bar at a New Orleans dive - very unlikely. She is French, but her father is Italian? Gilbert Roland (who is one of my favorite stars) just wanders around with nothing to do in this picture. Even Louis Armstrong is wasted in this film. He plays a little trumpet and sings a couple of very unremarkable songs. The battle scene (which lasts about 30 seconds) in Korea takes place in what looks like a Douglas Fir forest. I don't think they have any of those in Korea. The whole thing doesn't make any sense.

GLORY ALLEY is one of the films that signaled the end of the golden age of MGM. Set in a silly back-lot New Orleans, the drama centers on a prizefighter who inexplicably flees a championship bout just as it is about to begin. We have to wait the whole movie to find out why - and when we do the reason is so silly that it makes the whole movie seem like a complete waste of time. Ralph Meeker, a good-looking but rather genteel actor, struggles to play the street-wise boxer. It's the sort of part John Garfield played so well, but Meeker, lovingly filmed by William Daniels, just seems too pretty. The ludicrous 'on-the-skids' montage hardly helps - nor does the fact that his character is called "Socks"!Then we have Leslie Caron as his love interest. It looks like this part was hurriedly re-written for her after her triumph in AN American IN Paris. She performs ridiculous ballet routines in a seedy bar (you know the patrons would have booed her off immediately). You see she wanted to be a ballerina, but she gave it all up to support her blind father. He's played by Kurt Kaszner - an actor still in his thirties but donned with silly silver hair to make him look ancient and wise.Then there's Louis Armstrong, sadly named "Shadow", and seemingly the only African-American in New Orleans. He's supposed to be Meeker's trainer, but he spends the whole movie playing his trumpet and leading absurd sing-a-longs at the local bar. He does have a couple of good acting scenes though. The excellent Gilbert Roland floats around the film's edges with nothing to do, while John McIntire adds pseudo profound narration to the story - told in flashback like a film noir.Probably the worst sequence in the film, and that's saying something, is the ludicrous Korean War scene, with some stock footage, four soldiers, some sort of pine forest and a rear projected bridge deemed sufficient to portray a major world conflict.So we have a boxing picture, a musical, a film noir, a war film, and a pseudo-Freudian psychological study all rolled into one! What more could you ask for?It's hard to believe a fine hard-boiled director like Raoul Walsh oversaw this mess - he probably wanted to run straight back to Warner Bros afterwards.