Violent Saturday (1955)
Directed by Richard Fleischer

Film Review

Violent Saturday is a pretty good example of what can happen when two wildly contrasting genres are brought together without any real attempt to meld them into a coherent whole.  The film begins promisingly enough as a classic film noir caper movie, but for some inexplicable reason it suddenly careers off into Douglas Sirk territory and starts to resemble an overly sentimental, and not very convincing, melodrama.  The film then zips back and forth between the two genres, getting more hackneyed and irritatingly mawkish as it does so.

The first film that Richard Fleischer directed for 20th Century Fox, this proved to be such a hit that the director landed himself a contract with the company.  He stayed with Fox for the next fifteen years, delivering such varied films as The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Doctor Dolittle (1967).  By the mid-1950s, Fleischer had a string of fairly impressive B-movie noir thrillers behind him, most notably Follow Me Quietly (1949) and Armored Car Robbery (1950).  He was now keen to widen his repertoire, and this ambition is painfully apparent in the somewhat hybrid character of Violent Saturday.

Fleischer handles the film's thriller and action sequences with his customary aplomb, but the more intimate sequences are heavy-handed and evoke the opposite reaction to what is intended.  The obvious failings of the lacklustre screenplay are exacerbated by the mostly undistinguished performances, and the only member of the cast who does not disappoint is Lee Marvin, who makes a suitably vicious gun-slinging villain, prefiguring his iconic role in John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (1960).

Film Synopsis

A small Arizona town sleeps, unaware of the heap of trouble that is coming its way.  Boyd Fairchild, the owner of a large copper mine, contemplates having an affair with nurse Linda Sherman just to get back at his cheating wife, whilst his engineer Shelley Martin has to endure the contempt of his son for not winning himself a medal for valour in WWII.  Meanwhile, a seasoned crook named Harper is planning to rob the town's bank with his two criminal associates, Dill and Chapman.  The robbery takes a far more violent turn than expected and in the ensuing mêlée Fairchild's wife is killed.  Martin has the opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of his son by helping his father defeat the bank robbers in a bloody shootout.  Fairfield is left grieving for the wife he loves, but his loss is compensated by the affection offered to him by Linda.