Glenn Ford is in a pickle, driving down a steep, winding mountain road and in a truck without functioning brakes. The emergency brake is out as well, and this is definitely an emergency. By the time he gets to the town at the base of the mountain, he’s going full bore. It is astonishing he doesn’t roll over when sharply rounding a corner to avoid hitting another truck. He finally comes to a stop when he hits a different truck. Conveniently, this is in front of the trucking company for which Ford is driving that vehicle. Ford demands the $15 owed him for getting the truck there, then puts the bills in the hat of the guy (Edgar Buchanan) whose vehicle he hit. Then he takes back one of the bills, as he’ll need that to buy a shot of whiskey in the place across the road.
This is the opening scene of 1947 noir Framed. Just from the runaway truck sequence, I thought the picture would be about a corrupt trucking company. Instead, Ford finds himself caught in a scheme by Barry Sullivan and Janis Carter. She thinks Ford is the same height and general physique as Sullivan, which has me thinking she needs her eyes checked. After all, Ford is several inches shorter than Sullivan. Then again, a body that is supposed to be Sullivan’s will be in such a state after the car it is in goes over a high cliff that only dental records could be used as proof of identification. As Sullivan says of the facial differences: “Doesn’t matter. We’ll fix that.”
Ford had only come to town to find a job for which his mining engineering degree might apply. Turns out Buchanan, whose truck he crashed into earlier, is a mimer who has just recently hit a streak of silver. The two men hit it off right away when they meet for the second time in the assayer’s office, despite Ford making a different kind of impact the first time they met. There is a good rapport between these two, and I simply enjoy the moments the film spends with them.
That excavation can only commence once Buchanan secures a loan from the bank. Go figure, Sullivan is the president of the bank. While initially receptive to the idea, the banker abruptly changes his mind after a phone call interrupts their meeting. What the miner doesn’t know is Carter was the one calling, and she is scared Ford can’t be used for their scheme if he secures employment.
So far, she has been Ford’s sole provider of money since he came to this town. She paid the $50 in court costs Ford was facing after that crash at the start of the film. She puts him up in a hotel room she pays for. She even puts money in his wallet while he’s asleep, and that is the first time I have ever seen a femme fatale do that.
The scheme she and Sullivan have planned concerns the quarter million dollars he has embezzled from his bank. I am shocked he was able to squirrel away that much dough without raising the suspicions of any of his employees. The money is sitting in a safety deposit box in her name. The plan is for her to sit behind Sullivan and Ford in the former’s car, sock Ford over the head with a monkey wrench, push it off that cliff and she will get the money. Then they will join up together later.
What is surprising, and not completely believable, is a sudden change of heart in Carter, motivating her to instead kill Sullivan. Ford was nearly blackout drunk at the time. When he sobers up the next day, she convinces him he killed Sullivan in a moment of unhinged rage. I’m not sure why she even bothered with that, as the police apprehend Buchanan for the murder. Sullivan’s secretary had overheard some unfortunate words the miner yelled at her boss when leaving the meeting when his loan application was denied.
This is the kind of noir where a mere waitress in a podunk town is somehow always dressed in the finest fashions. But this is also the kind of picture which explains how she manages to do so, as explained by Ford when he finally sees her as she really is: “Now this is beginning to make sense—a waitress that doesn’t look like a waitress, quitting her job. Expensive perfume, plenty of money to throw away on a guy like me. Pay his fine. Getting him a room.”
There’s more sharp dialogue where that came from, such as this exchange between her and him which immediately follows: “Mike, you’re insulting” “I couldn’t insult you, that wouldn’t be possible.” There are also lines such as one from Karen Morley, underused as Sullivan’s wife, after he tries to justify his duplicitous behavior with her knowledge he had always been a lowlife. After a slap, she says, “That’s for telling me what I bought and paid for.”
Every minute of the film looks good, though it is largely a set-bound picture. One especially eye-catching creation is Sullivan’s secluded retreat. This two-story bachelor pad is in a style that seems to foretell James Mason’s place in North by Northwest, a kind of mid-century modern mountain lodge.
I greatly enjoyed Framed, even if the plot sometimes beggars logic, especially when Carter knocks off Sullivan instead of Ford. Other than that, the characters act largely as the genre expects them to behave. What I found most interesting is when Carter stops by to see Ford in his hotel room at one point and she finds him sewing a button on his shirt. The men of noir often shoot guns, fly planes and fix cars, but this is one who knows there is strength is knowing how to do a bit of everything, and is comfortable enough in his skin to sew on his own damn buttons.
Dir: Richard Wallace
Starring Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan, Edgar Buchanan
Watched as part of Powerhouse/Indicator UK (region B) blu-ray set Columbia Noir #2