lemon_magic Pop culture treats some of its icons better than others, and "Quicksand" demonstrates convincingly that Mickey Rooney is unjustly underrated as a "real" actor (and not just "Andy Hardy" or a guest cameo appearance in a movie or TV show where he plays himself.) Rooney is absolutely believable here going somewhat against type as a likable, but not-especially-bright (or honest) working stiff whose life completely unravels after he gives into temptation to swipe/borrow $20 from the office cash register until he can tap his friends for the money they owe him.($20 was a good chunk of change back in a day when lunch at a diner cost 40 cents, though). In fact, the performances here range from pretty good to very good indeed, especially Peter Lorre, who manages to be disreputable and pathetic at the same time and whose every line oozes weariness and bleak humor. Also of special interest was Jeanne Cagney's role as "the Blonde" (who of course leads our protagonist down the road to ruin)- for the first minute she was on camera, I just couldn't see how she was going to fill that role, and then her hard features lit up and transformed into something altogether more interesting and appealing.And that transformation happened often and reliably enough that I began looking forward to seeing it.The plot is tightly constructed, although it relies too much on coincidence at a couple points, as Rooney's character keeps making more bad decisions and his crimes escalate from petty theft to robbery to burglary and Grand Theft Auto, to assault and murder and kidnapping...but in every case, it's not something the character wants to do, and so somehow he manages to remain a sympathetic figure. (He even feels bad about the way he treats the good woman who is in love with him). The subtext for the screen-play is even more interesting than the actual events of the film; early on it becomes obvious that everything in modern day society is stacked against "the little guy", and straying from the approved path brings punishment swift and sure...even if the little guy didn't mean any harm. It ends the way it must (since this is Rooney's film, it couldn't possibly end in any other way), which makes me wonder why they wanted to do a noir film in the first place rather than a straight melodrama...but there's plenty of solid, enjoyable film-making here, enough that anyone with a taste for this genre would find it worth their time.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Quicksand contains a few winning elements, but for the most part it is extremely contrived and unintentionally funny. And some of the film just doesn't make sense at all. The scene where Mickey Rooney is on top of the desk throttling the car salesman is where it is most absurd. How can you root for him? He's too stupid to garner any respect or empathy from the audience. You instead root for Jeanne Cagney's pathetic femme fatale because she at least has more intelligence. And what about the part where Rooney tells a brunette girl that he killed someone and she doesn't even seem bothered by it. Instead, she wants to hop in the car and go to Mexico with him. This is even more ridiculous than the murder scene. Peter Lorre is the only good thing in this sad attempt at a film. He plays a slimy arcade owner and seems to be a substantial part of the story in the beginning. But then, he just disappears half-way through the movie. The biggest problem with Quicksand is that they played it straight, when it should have been done for laughs. If it was a black comedy with a wink at the impossibility of the situations the main character was embroiled in, then that may have worked. But for an audience to take this plot seriously means the filmmakers were expecting too much and were not even half as smart as the cardboard characters they created.

seymourblack-1 This low budget thriller is a cautionary tale and a marvellous example of pure film noir. The predicament of an ordinary guy who makes a bad decision which propels him into a nightmare sequence of events, provides the basis for numerous noir stories and in typical fashion, "Quicksand" delivers a fast moving drama which is consistently compelling to watch and full of twists. Other familiar noir components include a gullible protagonist, a femme fatale, a good natured woman who's taken for granted, expressionistic lighting and an ambiance which becomes progressively darker as each new development produces dangers which are regularly more serious than he ones which preceded them.Dan Brady (Mickey Rooney) is a garage mechanic who having made a date with a waitress at the local diner desperately needs $20 to take her out. As he has no cash and no-one who can give him a loan until payday, he takes the money he needs from the garage till, fully confident that he'll be able to replace it before the bookkeeper carries out his regular check of the business' funds in a few days time.Dan finds himself in a tight spot when the bookkeeper arrives a couple of days early but neatly manages to cope with the situation by purchasing an expensive watch on credit and then pawning it straight away to get the cash he needs. His scheme is successful but a little while later, a detective visits him and explains that he's breached the terms of the credit agreement and that unless he can produce the full value of the watch within 24 hours he'll be arrested and charged with grand larceny. In order to deal with this problem and the complications that follow, Dan soon finds himself locked into a position where he continually has to commit crimes of ever increasing seriousness just to avoid having to pay the penalties for what he's previously done. Dan's crimes then escalate from mugging to robbery and strangling his boss before he finally goes on the run to Mexico.One of the most ironic aspects of the story is that Dan gets into more serious trouble than some of the other characters who are infinitely more evil and immoral than him. The girl from the diner is Vera Novak (Jeanne Cagney). She proves to be manipulative, acquisitive and completely untrustworthy. Dan is so naive that when she takes him to see an expensive fur coat and her ex-lover on their first date, no alarm bells seem to ring in his head. Later, she encourages him to carry out a robbery and then, without his agreement, spends half of the proceeds to buy the fur coat.Vera's ex-lover is arcade owner Nick Dramoshag (Peter Lorre) who is totally unscrupulous and blackmails Dan because he has evidence which could be used to convict him for one of his crimes. Dan's boss Oren Mackey (Art Smith) is a amoral miser who's also duplicitous and at one stage even pulls a gun on Dan and threatens to report him to the police. The only person who's consistently decent and loyal to him is his original girlfriend Helen (Barbara Bates) who he rewards, most of the time, by treating her with a complete lack of affection or respect!Mickey Rooney shows convincingly that he's just as comfortable and effective in this kind of role as he is with his more familiar parts in comedies and musicals and the supporting cast, especially the wonderfully sleazy Peter Lorre are also excellent.

mark.waltz If you watch any documentary on film noir, there is one agreement by all critics as to what film noir actually is. To put it politely, some man destroys his future after meeting some dame who gives him the best night of his life. What comes after that can send the hero to the gas chambers, into the arms of the woman he should have been after all the time, or into a mass of bullets that tear him apart like a jigsaw puzzle. "Quicksand" is the perfect title for this low-budget independent movie released by United Artists two years after its star, Mickey Rooney, left the studio where he had been a top box office draw for a decade.As the title states, "Quicksand" tells the story of a man whose life begins to sink around him because of bad choices he makes when he meets one of Film Noir's most notable tramps. Not since Ann Savage in the cult classic "Detour" had there been such an obvious bad choice for a "pick-up", and in Rooney's case, it's Jeanne Cagney. He first meets her while on a lunch break from the car garage he works at when she takes his tab at the greasy spoon down the street. He flirts, she nastily rejects him, but he's determined. He leaves the diner with the promise of a date and then realizes he's broke. Since the bookkeeper who audits his cash register isn't due until later, he "borrows" $20 and then does all sorts of shady stuff to get the money back in the register. This leads him into more trouble. Before you know it, he's committing crimes with Ms. Cagney's help, which includes mugging a rich drunk and stealing money from arcade manager Peter Lorre's office. Cagney gets more and more vicious, Rooney gets more and more into trouble, and soon he thinks he's killed the owner of the garage he works at who, in addition to Lorre, has turned to blackmailing him.There are a lot of wholes in the story but it doesn't really matter. It's all a lot of fun and a reminder that there is a price to pay for every mistake we make in life. Rooney is outstanding, this coming at a time when his personal life and career were in a bit of shambles. United Artists released a bunch of sleeper film noirs on low budgets with independent producers such as this, "Sleep My Love", "Too Late For Tears" and "The Seond Woman". Most of them are easy to find on budget DVD's because they ended up in the public domain.Lorre is wasted in the small role of the rather violent manager of the arcade who obviously has had a bit of a past with Cagney, but what he does have to do as acting is very good. Barbara Bates plays the good girl who ends up an accessory to Rooney's crimes. She is quite believable as she goes from a naive loyal friend to the woman Rooney realizes he should have gone after. Like the old saying, "Gentlemen prefer blondes, but they marry brunettes", "Quicksand" takes this theme to a new level, especially with the scene where Bates almost gives up everything she's ever known to help him. It's a really incredibly thought out plot twist, and helped by the thoughtful lawyer the two encounter as they go on the run.While this may not be one of the four star examples of film noir, it is still a surprising delight that shows that low budget or fast filmed movies are not worthy of examination. Rooney had outgrown Andy Hardy, and this is one of the best of the many crime dramas he would do during his downward spiral that lasted until he made a good comeback as a character actor.