Wordiezett So much average

Micitype Pretty Good

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Robert J. Maxwell I guess I saw this when it was released in 1958 because I seemed to remember Robert Taylor and his cane, and Lee J. Cobb clobbering somebody over the head with a gold-plated miniature baseball bat or whatever it was. The sudden eruption of violence in that scene was shocking at the time. It's since been imitated in, oh, "The Untouchables." And there's a similar scene in "Some Like It Hot." Seeing it now is something of a disappointment. Everything about the movie seems encrusted with time. I know it was directed by Nicholas Ray and I know he directed "They Live By Night", which was a nearly perfect snapshot of the time. That's precisely where this film fails -- fails distractingly.The titles tell us "Chicago: The Early 1930s." Yet what we see on screen is Hollywood: 1958. It's all splashy and colorful, and the city might as well be Caracas, Venezuela for all the local color we get. The men have slicked-backed hair, wear single-breasted powder blue suits with broad shoulders. Nobody wears a hat. Whatever appeal Robert Taylor has for women eludes me entirely. He's dark, corrugated, and scowls constantly. Well, sometimes he tries to laugh and one hears the creaking of long unused facial muscles.The ladies wear gaudy crimson gowns and costumes from a stage show, and their hair is Sidney Guilaroffed to a turn. No festoons of necklaces, no waistless dresses without boobs. Not a cloche hat in sight but plenty of bare legs. That brings us to Cyd Charisse with whom I am deeply in love, at least with her oh-so-supple undercarriage. She's beautiful and her acting talent is modest. She's a dancer, an extremely demanding profession, and she doesn't get to stretch her chops here except in two numbers, miserably choreographed, that don't do justice to her talent.The plot follows a familiar formula. You know the one about the gunfighter who tries to hang up his gunbelt but circumstances draw him back into another encounter? This is it.

bobsgrock Quite possibly Nicholas Ray's most visually eloquent film, the poorly- named Party Girl focuses not on the Cyd Charisse titular character but her romantic interest, mob lawyer Tom Farrell, played with great intensity and dedication by Robert Taylor. Charisse is even more luminous than usual thanks in part to the mesmerizing lighting and camera work utilized by Ray in two major dance numbers obviously included to showcase MGM's most talented dancer. However, Ray was also able to elicit a rather touching albeit somewhat unrealistic performance from Charisse in playing a lonely showgirl drawn to Taylor's disfigured lawyer trapped in the world of defending known criminals.Such a story had been done before many different ways, yet under Ray's direction the film achieves a certain sense of nobility and appreciation. It is not flashy, but not boring either. It is, as much of Ray's work was at the time, workman-like and beautifully crafted. Compared to much of the other features released at the time, Ray's films stand out today as rising above the material he was given to work with.

misctidsandbits Having passed up this movie many times, I decided to check it out when it came up again on TCM recently. Now that you can tape something and scan through, it is easier to evaluate before you waste your time. Going through, I noticed Robert Taylor coming across better than I've ever seen him. He was the main deterrent before. I've never thought him good enough looking to put up with, especially when the main lead. But seeing Lee J. Cobb in it and really liking the deep color, I became interested. Also, have always liked Cyd Charisse's dramatic persona – generally smooth, no overstatement. Her musical numbers were rather enlarged for the type of film, but guess they couldn't resist. And, MGM could really come up with some odd titles.Taylor proved to be convincing and capable throughout. Enjoyed him and Charisse together and definitely the visual. Cobb seems to have been used a lot for the more gregarious type, like the crime boss here. I initially saw him in roles as the no nonsense good guy, and I think I prefer him as that. He played that very effectively in "The Virginian" television series. He was the strong guiding hand, somewhat a father figure, who could bring up the volume when needed and take care of any foolishness, with dispatch. His screen time as such was my favorite part of that interesting series.Hey, it's a Hollywood movie, which is going to have some form of the Hollywood treatment, both good and bad. If you can anticipate and accept any given film's set of excesses and idiosyncrasies, it's easier to enjoy what is enjoyable to you. This one is liberally laced with improbables, for one thing. Again, expect that and other unrealities from old Hollywood. It's the nature of the genre. I certainly prefer it to where they've gone now. For this one, I could ignore the improbables and move along with things. The relationship of Taylor and Charisse (and the quality of the visual) captured this movie out from the ranks of ones I would usually pass over.

sol1218 **SPOILER** Lavishly produced, in wide-screen and rich metro-color, like a major Hollywood musical "Party Girl" in a brutal and unflinching gangster film that takes place in 1930's Chicago with more persons getting whacked and knocked off then even in the movie "The Godfather".It's when mob mouthpiece and high priced lawyer Tommy Farrell played by an oily looking Robert Taylor falls in love with party girl Vicki Gaye, Cyd Charisse, that his major client Chicago Mob Boss Rico Angelo, Lee J. Cobb, starts to put the squeeze on him. Angelo doesn't want Farrell to quite his job as mob lawyer and move out west to start up a practice in some out of the way hick town in the great American North-West which Vicki want's him too. It's not that Farrell is such a good lawyer but that he knows too much about Angelo's mob operation and can, in Angelo's mind, be pressured by the local Chicago D.A's office to be made to testify against him.With Farrell agreeing to handle one last case for Angelo he ends up getting deeper into his mob operations then he ever did. That's when Farrell takes on the case of Angelo's hot headed and a bit psychotic young partner Danny La Mott, Corey Allen. It's Danny who's to be indited in a number of murders by Chicago D.A Jeffery Stewart, Kent Smith, that Farrell by agreeing to defend him unwittingly end up getting himself into big big trouble with the law. Danny fleeing the state against both Farrell and his boss Angelo's advice now plans to knock off D.A Stewart before he can have him indited and extradited back to Chicago to stand trial.With Farrell traveling to Danny's hideout in Indiana to talk some sense into his head Angelo secretly had him and his gang gunned down in a major mob hit with Farrell, who survived the massacre, being the only witness! To make things even worse for the clueless, in what Angelo has planned for him, Farrell he's now not only in danger of spending the rest of his life behind bars in his involvement in the Danny La Mott massacre but his girlfriend Vicki a dancer at Angelo's Golden Rooster Nightclub is now being threatened by Angelo of getting her pretty face splashed with acid! That's if her boyfriend mob lawyer Tommy Farrell makes a deal, in keeping him out of jail, with D.A Stewart!Robert Taylor is very effective playing a grease-ball lawyer, he looks Iike he had an entire bottle of Wishbone Salad Dressing rubbed into his hair, with a heart of gold in trying to get out of Mob Boss Angelo's criminal organization and start a new life, as far away from Angelo as possible, with his girlfriend Vicki Gaye. It's when Farrell tried to break with Angelo that he realized, if he didn't already, just what a lowlife psycho and vindictive person he really was. It was then that Farrell did make a deal with D.A Stewart to get the goods on Angelo, in keeping Vicki from getting her face disfigured, with him being used as the bait to get Angelo to slip up.***SPOILERS*** The wild shoot-out finial at Angelo's headquarters had both him and his #1 henchman mobster Louie Carnetto, John Ireland, getting so distracted by Vicki's gorgeous looks, who they were to obliterate, that the two kept missing hitting Vicki with the bottle of acid meant for her. In the end the two uncoordinated and butterfingered hoodlums only ended up doing themselves in as the police lead by D.A Stewart closed in on them, in another wild Chiago-style shootout, just when they both thought they had Farrell and his girlfriend Vicki where they wanted them!