This Gun For Hire (1942)

It took me until the film was two minutes from being over to realize I had already seen this. There is a scene at the end where the 300 pound Laird Cregar (a great fucking actor) is shot. The image of this enormous man tumbling down a small flight of stairs, as graceful as one of Disney's dancing hippos, was seared in my memory, I just thought it had happened in another movie. This stars the glassy yet hypnotic Veronica Lake and the just plain glassy Robert Preston (Preston hadn't yet tapped into his inner "Harold Hill" that would carry him through the fruitful autumn of his career). And "introducing" Alan Ladd as a paid killer (he had already appeared in a few small roles, including one of the reporters in Citizen Kane). This film made him a major star, he effortlessly steals the picture. This is a very early film noir, full of dames, nightclub singers, cops, killers, etc. You know, the usual suspects. No masterpiece, but fun...and it looks great (photographed by John Seitz, here laying the visual groundwork for some later noir classics like Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard). Directed by Frank Tuttle (not nearly an auteur, not even close...in "the system" films sometimes direct themselves, I suppose) and loosely based on a novel by Graham Greene.