Patrick Waltz is to be executed at dawn. All the wire services and papers in the state are covering it because it's the first use of the state's brand new electric chair. Waltz says he didn't do it, but no one else could have. His girl, Sally Parr, is heartbroken.
Writer-Director Paul Sloan has cinematographer Lionel Lindon shoot it as a peculiarly sparse film noir. The movie takes place in two locations: the prison, and a truck stop run by Housely Stevens, where the reporters wait and discuss what happened. There is no flashback, no femme fatale, and the villain of the piece turns out to be ambiguous. Sloan's world may be black and white, but his story resides in the grey.
Sloan was one of the early auteurs of American film. He broke into the movies as a writer for Edison. His first credit was as co-writer of THE COSSACK WHIP. By 1925, he was writing and directing his own movies for Paramount: 24 of them by 1939. Then nothing until this one, released by Eagle-Lion. Two years he turned out his last movie, in Japan. He died in 1963, aged seventy.
It's a bare outline of a life I offer for a bare outline of a third act for a film noir.
Writer-Director Paul Sloan has cinematographer Lionel Lindon shoot it as a peculiarly sparse film noir. The movie takes place in two locations: the prison, and a truck stop run by Housely Stevens, where the reporters wait and discuss what happened. There is no flashback, no femme fatale, and the villain of the piece turns out to be ambiguous. Sloan's world may be black and white, but his story resides in the grey.
Sloan was one of the early auteurs of American film. He broke into the movies as a writer for Edison. His first credit was as co-writer of THE COSSACK WHIP. By 1925, he was writing and directing his own movies for Paramount: 24 of them by 1939. Then nothing until this one, released by Eagle-Lion. Two years he turned out his last movie, in Japan. He died in 1963, aged seventy.
It's a bare outline of a life I offer for a bare outline of a third act for a film noir.