"C"-Man

“C”-Man (1949)

Runtime: 77 minutes

Directed by: Joseph Lerner

Starring: Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Harry Landers, Lottie Elwen, Rene Paul

From: Laurel Films

I return to the world of film noir with this random film I found. Unfortunately this is only about average at best but at least I gave this obscure motion picture a shot. The Letterboxd review is below and I'll return Wednesday night.

I'll be honest here, I watched this tonight as I realized I hadn't watched a film noir in about two months and I stumbled across this film on a certain website and I was not only interested in it “being shot in a semi-documentary style” but also its two main stars being Dean Jagger and John Carradine; note that Carradine's role is rather small, lasting just a few minutes long.

The film is definitely low-budget but they tried shooting it different, so that's why it's called a semi-documentary. It has that look and style. The musical score is odd and yet it somehow fits, even if it's overbearing at times. While it's shot better than expected, unfortunately the story (about various people who are looking for an expensive and fancy necklace, with Dean Jagger's Customs Agent for the U.S. Treasury Department Cliff Holden leading the way; his buddy gets killed in the mess so now it's personal) is too often confused and for being the hero, Cliff Holden doesn't have the moves like Jagger; rather, he's ineffectual too often and he lucks into a few things.

While it may look the part (looking at old New York City was interesting too), have occasional narration, have some hard-boiled dialogue and there are sleazy bad guys, overall I can only rate this as average at best.