1953: Second Chance (17th)

What else happened this year? Was this the embargo of Berlin? Who knows, but it was the year that the Queen of England was coronated. Wow that was a while ago.

What is the plot - in one sentence? in South America, a boxer and a runaway gangster's moll try to escape the gangster's terrifying henchman.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? At the end, they're all on a cable car together. The boxer fights the henchman off, leading to him to plummet to his death, and everyone else escapes on a scary looking contraption.

What is the meaning of the title? The second chance could refer to Robert Mitchum's character - a boxer - having a second chance at a successful career in boxing; it could be the gangster's moll getting a second chance at life without the gangster, or it could be both of them getting a second chance at love. It's probably that. 

 

Ah the 1950s, when the movie's ending is spoiled on the poster, and when if Robert Mitchum wanted to hold you, you just arched your back and let him. [Source]

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? We're in the early 50s, which might be prime 'woman gets slapped around' movie territory. The lead actress of the movie gets strangle-kissed and threatened with violence, she agrees to go with Jack Pallance in order to save her love's life - truly a fate worse than death. Also, a woman dancing provocatively gets slapped so hard she breaks up a South American party. She's later strangled (offscreen) by her husband in what turns out to be an important plot point. This was also filmed in 3D apparently, and features so much footage of cable cars going that I guess that cable cars were a brand new invention that everyone wants to see them all the time. 

Any thoughts? That idea of Chekov's gun - any gun mentioned in the 1st act will be used before the 3rd - comes here in the form of Chekov's right hook: Robert Mitchum was a prize fighter 'till he killed a man with his right hook, he's since refused to use it, leading to him fighting amateurs in South America. I was expecting the right hook to make an appearance in the final fight against Jack Pallance, but I watched closely and his finishing punch is a left. Weird. I also have a feeling that it was a dummy that was thrown off the cable car, and not Jack Pallance falling to his death, but I'll have to confirm that. 

I've talked before about the amount of walking that happens in movies, and this is another one with an awful lot of it. There's even more if you consider a chase scene through the city which takes place mostly on foot. With this, and the constant footage of the cable car, probably a third of the movie is taken up by those two, the rest crams a lot of weird details into a short time.

This movie was apparantly filmed for the 3D audience, but there's nothing I noticed that would have been cool to see in 3D - the footage of the cable car was always going diagonally to the screen, a pursuit through the streets wouldn't have been helped, the only thing I can think of is that sexy Spanish dance, but I don't think it would have added anything either. There's that maxim that adding 3d to a good movie doesn't improve it, and adding it to a bad movie makes it worse, I guess that this movie is somewhere in the middle.

The central tenant of this is unwanted romance. The central female character left a gangster, is pursued by his underling, who also wants her for himself. The underling is played by Jack Pallance, who looks and is terrifying in this movie. He makes threats of violence and strangles our heroine and pursues her like a slightly more robotic terminator. She is lucky to have met a prize fighter the day before he arrived, or she'd be a raped corpse by the end of the movie. There's a lot of weird consent stuff here - like she agrees to go with Pallance to save Robert Mitchum's life. But even her relationship with Robert Mitchum is weird, they have only just met and are willing to give each other's lives for each other. Creepily, she asks to be called the nickname her father used to call her as a kid. He obliges. The 50s was a weird time for relationships.

Also, last but not least, how did Jack Pallance get up the mountain? unless he was there already, he'd have had to have been in the last cable car of the day with the couple. As if you wouldn't notice that skeletor in a tiny cable car. Come on.

Would you recommend this? There's a fair bit of cliche and time padding. It also gets added to the list of 'Movies set in foreign lands with an annoying English couple in it,' and 'movies set in Spanish speaking countries with almost zero Spanish spoken in the entire thing.' Despite that it was unpredictable, enterntaining and the three central performances were all solid. This was fine.

Final thoughts? Yeah, not bad. Also, Robert Mitchum says he's 31 in this. He looks exactly the same as he would for the rest of his life. It's shocking to think I'm older than him, I look a solid decade younger than he ever would. He's good in this though.

Let's also spare a thought for the kid in the cable car. His mother was killed by his father, then his father died in a cable car crash in the space of about 8 hours. I don't think he's got a bright future ahead of him.

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