Classic Movie Review: Johnny O'Clock (1947)

Johnny O’clock (1947)

Directed by: Robert Rossen.

Written by: Robert Rossen and Milton Holmes.

Starring: Dick Powell (Johnny O’clock), Evelyn Keyes (Nancy Hobson), Lee J. Cobb (Inspector Koch), Ellen Drew (Nelle Marchettis), Nina Foch (Harriet Hobson), Thomas Gomez (Guido Marchettis), John Kellogg (Charlie), Jim Bannon (Chuck Blayden).

 

Like many a noir hero before him, the title character of Johnny O’Clock gets drawn into a dangerous web deeper and deeper, until he cannot get out. But Dick Powell’s Johnny isn’t quite your average noir hero despite this. He isn’t a cynical detective in the Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum vein, and he isn’t a poor sap drawn in by a femme fatale – as perfected by Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. Powell plays Johnny with movie star cool and charisma. He is a legend in this world. It is a deliberate choice that although he is the title character, he isn’t the first one we meet. That would be Inspector Koch (Lee J. Cobb) – who comes into the high-end hotel where Johnny lives, and asks for – by a number of different names. Everyone knows Johnny.

 

In this film, Powell plays Johnny as kind of carefree playboy – someone who floats along on top of the world he inhabits, with a care. He runs a casino – the money behind it is Guido (Thomas Gomez), but Johnny is the face of the operation – the one who keeps things running. He has that nice hotel room in that fancy place, an underling, Charlie (John Kellogg) to do his bidding, and he goes from one girl to the next without caring that much. The women don’t even seem mad at him when it’s over – they knew who he was when they started, and they’re just happy to be there.

 

The plot of Johnny O’Clock is rather complex. It starts with a murder of a cop, and then an apparent suicide of the girl who works in the casino, who was with that cop. Her sister, Nancy (Evelyn Keyes) shows up – and wants answers, and like every other girl in the film, falls for Johnny. Guido likes Johnny – but when he finds out that his wife, Nelle (Ellen Drew) is another of Johnny’s conquests, he thinks that perhaps Johnny can be set up to take the fall. There are crosses and double crosses throughout – and a gunfight climax. And through it all, we still like Johnny – who may be a heel, but he’s better than most of the people he’s around.

 

The film was the debut of director Robert Rossen – who would go to direct better films like The Hustler (1961), and who’s All the King’s Men won the Best Picture Oscar just two years after this film. This was also the same year he directed Body and Soul – which has one of John Garfield’s best performances. His skill is evident from the start here. Johnny O’Clock is fairly lightweight for Rossen – and film noir – and he seems to know it, prioritizing speed and entertainment value over everything else. He gets a very good performance from Powell here – in full movie star mode – and an even better one from Lee J. Cobb, one of the best character actors of all time. They almost appear to be in different movies – yet it somehow works. Less successful are the female characters – who are kind of one note, and leading lady Evelyn Keyes seems to think she’s in some kind of overwrought melodrama, not a noir at all.

 

Johnny O’Clock isn’t one of the great noirs. It is in the Columbia Noir collection on Criterion – and like many in that series, it was lower budgeted than a prestige movie – a programmer designed to be entertaining, and make a quick buck. On that level, it works. It isn’t the best work of any of the major contributors – but it’s an entertaining B-picture – and that’s enough.