VIOLENT SATURDAY (1955)

It's Friday afternoon in the small Arizona town of Bradenville. We see a traveling salesman (Stephen McNally) arrive at the hotel. Two associates (Lee Marvin and J. Carroll Naish) arrive soon after by train. But the trio aren't businessmen, they're bank robbers, casing the downtown area in preparation for a Saturday noon holdup. In the bank, we meet a nerdy bank manager (Tommy Noonan) who, though married, ogles women and occasionally peeps in windows. In the library, we see a librarian (Sylvia Sidney) who, when she receives a past due notice from the bank threatening to put a lien on her wages, steals an unattended purse from a table. Elsewhere, a copper mine worker (Victor Mature) has to deal with breaking up a fight that his young son instigated when another kid called his dad a coward for not serving in WWII—he was kept home by the government for his important war work. Meanwhile, the copper mine manager (Richard Egan) is drinking too much because his wife has been having affairs, and that night, he drunkenly comes on to bar patron Virginia Leith, who has to help him get home, which sparks a confrontation between her and Egan's wife. Finally, we meet an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) and his family who have strict non-violence beliefs. The next day, the "violent Saturday" of the title, most of the townspeople will have their lives changed by the bank robbery.

If this had been made a few years earlier, in black & white, in a square TV screen ratio, by B-film filmmakers, it might have been an interesting and moody film noir. But in widescreen and color and by a big studio (Fox), it's at best a quirky novelty. The first half of the movie plays out like the set-up for a small town melodrama TV series; the second half gets all the characters in place for their various involvements in the robbery, then the robbery and its aftermath occur in almost real time. Most of the soap opera situations get resolved, some for the good, some not. I don't want to give too many spoilers, but the most predictable resolution involves Victor Mature who gets to act heroically and make his son proud—though honestly, ten years seems like a long time for people, especially kids, to hold a wartime grudge. The Amish farmer's story has a particularly satisfying ending, though again predictable. Not all the resolutions are happy, and the story of the librarian doesn't really get one, unless I just missed it. The actors are all fine, with Noonan making the peeper relatively sympathetic. In the beginning, I had a hard time identifying the leads because Mature, McNally and Egan all have big, beefy faces, and it took me a few minutes to get McNally and Egan separated and settled. I can't recommended this without reservations about its pace, but the climactic battle almost made it worth sitting through. Pictured are Borgnine and Mature. [DVD]