Victor Trivas Movies

Glenn Ford plays a convict who breaks out of a 19th century Nevada prison in the company of several less handsome inmates. When they enter a snowbound California village, they find that all the men have left to prospect for silver; only the women remain. The village is known as Convict Lake because, years earlier, $40,000 of stolen money was hidden somewhere in the area. Town matriarch Ethel Barrymore seems to know where it is, but she ain't talkin'. After recovering the money, the convicts are forced to shoot it out with the returning menfolk. All prisoners are rounded up by the law except for Glenn Ford, who has fortuitously been cleared of false charges, allowing him a fadeout embrace with costar Gene Tierney. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Stranger is often considered Orson Welles' most "traditional" Hollywood-style directorial effort. Welles plays a college professor named Charles Rankin, who lives in a pastoral Connecticut town with his lovely wife Mary (Loretta Young). One afternoon, an extremely nervous German gentleman named Meineke (Konstantin Shayne) arrives in town. Professor Rankin seems disturbed--but not unduly so--by Meineke's presence. He invites the stranger for a walk in the woods, and as they journey farther and farther away from the center of town, we learn that kindly professor Rankin is actually notorious Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler. Conscience-stricken by his own genocidal wartime activities, Meineke has come to town to beg his ex-superior Kindler to give himself up. The professor responds by brutally murdering his old associate. If Kindler believes himself safe--and he has every reason to do so, since no one in town, especially Mary, has any inkling of his previous life--he will change his mind in a hurry when mild-mannered war crimes commissioner Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) pays a visit, posing as an antiques dealer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One can only imagine the reaction of arch-conservative MGM head Louis B. Mayer when Song of Russia first tumbled over the spools in the studio projection room. It must be remembered, however, that back in 1944 it was politically expedient for Hollywood to offer hosannas to America's Russian allies, and to gloss over the less-attractive aspects of the Stalin regime. Based on Scorched Earth, a story by Leo Mittler, the film stars Robert Taylor as John Meredith, a famous American symphony conductor who is touring Russia just before the war. Meredith falls in love with Russian lass Nadya Stepanova (Susan Peters), who impresses him with her conviviality and charm: why, she's almost like a typical American girl! In the course of their romance, Meredith and Nadya visit a collective farm, where the peasants sing, dance and smile all day. The lovers marry, only to have their honeymoon abruptly halted when the Nazis invade the Soviet Union. Nadya promptly joins the Resistance, solemnly assembling molotov cocktails and shooting down Germans with her comrades. Just before the Nazis swarm into Nadya's village, the peasants set fire to the place so that Hitlers minions will not be able to plunder its resources. All of this is played out against the music of Tschiakovsky and other Russian composers. During the HUAC investigations in the early 1950s, several of the personnel involved in Song of Russia were required to explain why they'd been involved in so blatantly "pro-communist" a project. Louis B. Mayer blithely explained that he "just wanted to make a picture about Russians, not communists," while star Robert Taylor -- likewise a staunch anti-Red -- insisted that he'd been forced to make the film, and that he'd demanded script deletions throughout productions. In the end, the losers were screenwriters Richard Collins and Paul Jarrico, both of whom ended up on the egregious Hollywood Blacklist, simply for adhering to America's wartime pro-Soviet sentiments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dans le Rue (Song of the Streets) was based on a novel by J. H. Rosny. In anecdotal fashion, the film charts the progress of a gang of Parisian street youths, headed by Jacques (Jean-Pierre Aumont). Living for the moment and by his wits, Jacques assumes that anything he wants is there for the taking. This proves not to be true in the case of Rosalie (Madeleine Ozeray), daughter of neighborhood "fence" Schlamp (Vladimir Sokolff). Jacques is forced to fight another young tough for Rosalie's affections, winning the bout and the girl all at once. But all bad things must come to an end, as Jacques discovers when one of his robbery victims dies of heart failure, forcing his gang to hide out from the relentless gendarmes. Hardly a pleasant film, Dans le Rue is undeniably compelling, with a forceful performance by Jean-Pierre Aumont in one of his first important roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hell on Earth is the English-language title for the German antiwar drama Niemansland (No Man's Land). Most of the film takes place in a WW I trench, where five diverse individuals have been unwillingly thrust together. The characters are not given names, but designations instead: The Frenchman (Georges Peclet), The Englishman (Hugh Douglas), The Jew (Wladimir-later Vladimir-Sokoloff), The German (Ernst Busch) and The Negro (Louis Douglas). Despising one another at first, the five protagonists come to realize that they must learn to get along if they hope to survive. The pacifistic sentiments (not to mention the ethnic mix) of Niemansland would be verboten by the Nazi regime within a few years after its original 1931 release; indeed, all copies of this film were ordered to be destroyed by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide