THE NOOSE (1948) ** It was a strange, faraway world...and like so many others it never existed. Well parts of it did. An Italian (Joseph Calleia, doing ok), of all things, took over Soho. For reasons best left alone, as was done in the script, this is discovered by an American fashion journalist (Carole Landis), for reasons probably having to do with necklines. Anyway she is married to a British vet who promptly organizes all of the veterans hanging out around boxing rings throughout the island, all in order to challenge the "foreign Englishman," if you get the drift. If you don't, don't spend much time worrying about it. Anyway, the good guys win. How different from the real world, where veterans return with skills that are only rewarded financially by the kind of people whom they here defeat, and how strange that Calleia ultimately flees into a chapel marked with an 8-pointed Templar cross, shot and focused twice, not thrice. It's too bad, it coulda been a surrealistic contendah, or is it a sign that something's missing?...Edmond T. Greville mixes beautifully unimagined shots of photographs and celluloid people with a plot that wouldn't have lost anything by unfocusing a few foundations.
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