I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I am sure that Zachary Scott was cast in the lead role in Ruthless after the folks at Eagle-Lion remembered his debut in The Mask Of Dimitrios. As proof of that I'm sure that every effort was also made to acquire the services of Sydney Greenstreet who was also part of the cast of that film.Under Edgar Ulmer's direction, Scott paints a careful and calculated portrait of a driven and Ruthless man going back to his childhood. Some elements of Citizen Kane are present here as in several flashback sequences we see what has made Scott what he is today.What he's trying to do now is cover up what he's been in much the same manner as the robber barons of old by donating his vast sums of money. Like Andrew Carnegie when we meet Scott he's having a huge banquet where he's pledging the mansion and lots of money to a world peace foundation. Scott's invited a whole lot of people from his past including his oldest friend Louis Hayward who really knows him from way back when.And it's back in his childhood just as we were introduced to Charles Foster Kane and the events that shaped we are likewise meeting Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward, and Diana Lynn as the characters they are before they are adults. All I can say is that Scott as a kid was really traumatized by the antics of his parents. He goes to live with Dennis Hoey and his rich and genteel family which includes the daughter who grows up to be Diana Lynn and they give him a Harvard education.But what makes this a real Zachary Scott role is that it's not just business he's in, it's business mixed with bedroom pleasure. He woos many a woman and discards them with equal abandon. He steals Sydney Greenstreet's trophy wife Lucille Bremer for the 48% of the stock she has in her husband's company. Ulmer who may have done more with less than any other director around, gets if not a box office cast, a really competent one who suit their roles admirably. The script for Ruthless was written by Alvah Bessie of The Hollywood Ten and I can see why the GOP and Southern Democratic mastodons of the House Un American Activities Committee got their underwear knotted. Zachary Scott is Gordon Gekko 40 year ahead of his time. Some of the observations made by Bessie's characters could hold true for Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes as well as in Citizen Kane.A real crackerjack film and a fascinating portrayal by Zachary Scott in the lead makes Ruthless a must see.

I call this Wall Street Noir as a way of simple classification, but it's a odd film from Britain's Eagle Lion, directed by the usually "B" director of Bluebeard and Detour, this dark film detailing the rise to financial power of a man who lacks ethics, certainly mirroring many of the financial scandals surrounding us today. Director Edgar G. Ulmer had considerable talent, and here is given a literate script, a popular leading man in Zachary Scott, and lots of outstanding support, namely Sidney Greenstreet, Diana Lynn, Martha Vickers, and in a small,unrecognizable role Raymond Burr. Its a talky film with rich visuals, and it is a sad truth, not to be a crybaby about it, but most available DVDs appear to be made from bad VHS copies taken from a television print. The copies one finds today runs only 86 minutes, while the original film, richer and deeper in motivation, is 104. Apparently the streaming versions are much better--and lets hope the DVD Gods read the various reviews and provide the print this film deserves; I have a suspicion the ratings would ramp up with enthusiasm!

Ruthless (1948)A great, layered melodrama, with flashbacks and male and female rivalries and a really strong narrative thread. There are a bunch of interesting actors at work who never had huge careers, the main man being familiar to me from "Mildred Pierce" two years earlier, Zacharay Scott. The director, though, is a favorite noir director of mine, Edgar Ulmer, who had a string of great films in the late 1940s. So this is one of them, though not quite a noir.In fact, this is a kind of financiers movie, which isn't actually a genre thank God. But the weakest part of the film (at least for a non-Wall Street viewer) is a lot of talk about business deals. Luckily, you don't need to follow them to the letter, because it's the characters--their tricks, their greed, their games--who make it come alive. And of course there are women involved (compelling ones like Diana Lynn), and memories of a childhood girlfriend, so we feel something for the good friend of the leading capitalist male, and even for Sydney Greenstreet, who plays an aging businessman, even amusing.The whole enterprise gets fairly involved and makes you pay attention, which is good, and leads to a pretty spectacular last scene off the pier.

I just returned from an American Cinemateque screening of a UCLA restored print of this movie. Here is ample evidence that Ulmer, the King of the B's, given bigger budgets might well have had a much bigger career. Detour may be his most famous movie, but this is his best. The Alvah Bessie screenplay about greed and the relentless pursuit of success has dated not at all. The cinematography is excellent, with strong noirish elements. The sets and costumes are very good. Zachary Scott, one of the screen's great cads, is somewhat toned down here if still fairly nasty. There is strong work by Diana Lynn, Lucille Bremer, and Martha Vickers as women who get used and discarded along the way. Sidney Greenstreet shows up mid film as an equally greedy and grasping character, dominating all his scenes. But the standout, unexpectedly, is Louis Hayward as a sympathetic boyhood friend and link to the entire storyline. Ulmer brings out more warmth in this actor that was usually seen. Raymond Burr has a small part early in his career when he seemed to be copying Laird Cregar as Scott's father seen in flashback. Ulmer's daughter this evening explained that the studio Eagle-Lion/Paramount cut some scenes just before release with a particularly anti-capitalist tone. I hope the footage still exists somewhere. That aside, it is thoroughly accomplished film that needs no explanation or apologies. The current recession gives it renewed meaning. Hopefully a DVD release will soon follow.