VIOLENT SATURDAY

Richard Fleischer may never have made it into the very front rank of the great directors but he did make some terrific films and "Violent Saturday" may be his masterpiece. It's a heist movie, (and it's an excellent heist movie), but one with a difference since fundamentally this is also another 1950's small town melodrama of the 'Peyton Place' variety. We get to know, not only the trio of bank robbers, (Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin and a superb J Carroll Naish), intent on robbing the Bradenville bank, but also a number of the town's inhabitants, (Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Virginia Leith, Sylvia Sidney, Tommy Noonan, Margaret Hayes), all of whom are destined to be caught up in some way in the robbery. It's a brilliantly paced movie, beautifully written by Sydney Boehm and impeccably directed by Fleischer, making superb use of the Cinemascope format. Largely dismissed at the time of its release it is now, deservedly, considered something of a classic.