Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

arthur_tafero Two heavyweights in this film; Dick Powell (Zane Grey Theater) and Lee J Cobb (On the Waterfront- Johnny Friendly). They carry the film easily and Powell is ably assisted by two women characters played by B actresses. The plot is fairly common; gambling house manager gets involved in murders and has to try to even the score. Even though the plot is not terribly original, Rossen, the director, gets the absolute most out of every scene, and Powell gives the lead character a ton of panache to last for the whole film. The cinematography is first-rate, and all the characters in the story are given some depth, not like the usual cardboard characters of most of the noir films of the genre. Highly recommended

dglink A well acted, above average film noir from the late 1940's, "Johnny O'Clock" stars Dick Powell as the title character. His "juvenile" roles in such films as "42nd Street" long behind him, Powell's Johnny is a tough gambling-house operator, who is involved with a mobster named Guido and a crooked cop named Blayden. When Lee J. Cobb as Inspector Koch arrives to investigate the murder of a gambler, the plot thickens. A vulnerable Nina Foch plays a hat-check girl in Johnny's establishment, who is involved with Blayden. However, Blayden disappears, and Foch evidently commits suicide. Convinced of Blayden's involvement, both Koch and Foch's sister, played by Evelyn Keyes, pursue the missing cop. A blood-stained coat fished from the water, an expensive engraved watch, a bright new Mexican coin; the clues surface along with the betrayal and duplicity in Robert Rossen's taut screenplay, which was adapted from a story by Milton Holmes.The sharp tough dialog is delivered by pros, with Powell, Cobb, and Keyes especially good. However, lovely Ellen Drew is a standout as Nelle, the alcoholic moll, who is Guido's wife, but harbors a history with and a persistent yen for Johnny; watching her expressions, even when silently in the background, is a lesson in film acting. Film buffs will spot a young Jeff Chandler as Turk, one of Guido's boys, in a small uncredited part. Nicely directed by Robert Rossen, the film features shadowy black and white photography by Burnett Guffey and a good score by George Duning. While not film noir of the first caliber, "Johnny O'CLock" is nevertheless an entertaining entry in the genre, and watching Powell during his tough-guy period is always a pleasure.

Michael Coy Johnny's the smart guy who never gambles – always with the clothes, always with the girls. With a bullet in his gut and fire in his brain, Johnny makes the REAL smart play, and chooses Nancy – and life.Debutant Director Rossen and Director of Photography Guffey have done something curious with this one. Some scenes are shot with a hand-held camera (revolutionary for the period) and there are some quirky, shaky bits of visual work, especially when the point-of-view shifts. Extreme close-ups of Powell and leading lady Evelyn Keyes have a strange "rocking- boat" movement in the background. Is this a Brechtian alienation technique, constantly reminding us that we're watching a movie, and forcing us to check out of the emotion, or merely the result of a very low budget?Remember Scorsese's wonderful bird's-eye-view shot of De Niro (Casino, 1995), as "Ace" Rothstein, walking through his gaming tables, like a shark gliding through home waters? Well, here is something remarkably similar, half a century earlier. The wounded Johnny retreats to a back room where rows of roulette wheels are mounted on the walls, symbols of the deception (and hazard) by which he lives, and in which he thrives. And they look like the net which threatens to entrap him.In a role of which his performance in The Exorcist now seems a parody, Lee J. Cobb is terrific as Johnny's foil and nemesis – the unkempt but mentally astute detective, jousting with the elegant, immaculate crook.Dick Powell is a grossly underrated film phenomenon. Golden tenor in the 1930s musicals, he segued easily into hardboiled noir hero in the 1940s. It was Powell, slated for the title role in Johnny O'Clock, who campaigned for Robert Rossen to direct his own script – and thereby bequeathed us a noir gem. Snappy suits and a glossy criminal milieu, dripping with an atmosphere of barely-suppressed violence – this is the zeitgeist of the late 40s at its purest. But it's also something more. Rossen was somehow in touch with European philosophical trends. The German Expressionist sets, giving shape to unruly, destructive emotions, are standard fare, but what is special here is the exploitation of Absurdist concepts through the medium of the American crime genre. In 1942 Albert Camus had published a work of philosophy which depicted human existence as essentially bleak. In this pitiless universe, the intelligent man-hero knows he cannot rely on the comfort of the God-myth. We are alone, and there is no purpose to anything, no meaning. Gide and Sartre quickly followed, and the Atom Bomb seemed to underscore what they were saying. In a world where our artistic, political and philosophical achievements can be snuffed out in one instant by a super-weapon, to look for worth in anything is an act of absurdity. So, when "Greaseball" Guido Marchettis has his gat pointing at Johnny, our hero angrily admonishes Nancy – if death comes, fairly or unfairly, Johnny will not have anyone beg to save him. To look this squalid world in the eye and to take what comes, without whining: that's the way Sisyphus has to play it.

bsmith5552 In "Johnny O'Clock" Dick Powell has three femme fatales for the price of one. The first is hat check girl Harriet Hobson (Nina Foch), the second Nella Marchettis (Ellen Drew) the gold digger wife of Powell's boss Guido (Thomas Gomez) and finally Nancy Hobson (Evelyn Keyes) the sister of hat check girl Harriet. How the three weave in and out of O'Clock's life forms the basis of this film noir ably directed by Robert Rossen.The name Johnny O'Clock is obviously an alias and although we hear Police Detective Koch (Lee J. Cobb) read off a list of Johnny's known aliases, we never learn his true identity.Johnny is the high living well-dressed junior partner of gambler Guido Marchellis. He runs the gambler's casino for him all the while professing that he himself is not a gambler. When two of the main characters turn up murdered, Johnny is immediately suspected of the crimes. He is dogged unrelentlessly by Inspector Koch who seems to have it in for Johnny. Through it all Johnny becomes involved with the three aforementioned females at various stages of the investigation.This was a different sort of role for Powell. This time around, he is not the hard boiled detective or wise cracking private eye he usually played but a shady sort of character who is out only for himself complete with character flaws and a past. Lee J. Cobb plays the police inspector as only he could, a role he would reprise several times throughout his career.Evelyn Keyes, who had just married John Huston, makes an alluring heroine. Nina Foch is suitably innocent as the Johnny's "blind date" and Ellen Drew is sexy and seductive as the real "femme fatale" of the piece. Others in the cast are John Kellogg as Charlie Johnny's "man", Jim Bannon as brutal cop Chuck Blaydon and a young Jeff Chandler as a gambler named "Turk".Complete with all of the dark shadows and night scenes, "Johnny O'Clock" makes for an entertaining "film noire" murder mystery.