That's the third or fourth time I see this authentic and unfortunately underrated film noir from the fifties. A true fierce, brutal, and so realistic tale of gangsters where the mob is presented as a big company and their members normal family men, such as Broderick - machine gun talking - Crawford, who is here at his best. So is Richard Conte, here as a cold, ruthless but also attractive killer. Many movie buffs speak of the GODFATHER when they present this feature. Yes, they are not wrong. If you compare with the other gangsters films made before, this one is rather close to the Francis Coppola's films. This movie is for me a little masterpiece, far better than more known gangster movies. Russel Rouse was also a damn good director. I have seen all his films, which I also have in my huge library. I confound this movie with Ken Hughes's JOE MACBETH, made at the same period, and starring Paul Douglas who, a long time ago, I confounded with Broderick Crawford. This another film noir was also a gangster family tragedy. Like this one.

The credits come on and one is really set up for something good. Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte, Anne Bancroft, Onslow Stevens, Marilyn Maxwell, J. Carroll Naish, Barry Kelley, Tom Powers, Mike Mazurki, Celia Lovsky...The film starts with location footage and the stentorian tones of a narrator so you figure you're going to get one of those De Rochemont docudramas or at least a cheapie along the lines of Conte's The Sleeping City which was shot on location here in NYC.No, soon we're on the Goldwyn lot which wouldn't be bad if there were some creative angles or lighting. But no, individual scenes are all harshly lit except for a fist fight when they needed to hide the stunt men (not very well either). Also, there are no dissolves, all scenes end with a fade to black and you half expect to see a commercial.The story structure is no better - two major characters are just written out with no drama to punctuate the exits. The story in itself is promising enough, with hit man Conte imported from Chicago and recruited to remain with Crawford's mob after he neatly disposes of some upstart who causes headlines which "the syndicate" would prefer to avoid.Crawford's daughter Bancroft seems to be falling for Conte, but that goes nowhere. Crawford's girl Marilyn Maxwell is definitely falling for Conte, but that goes nowhere, but hey, at least now the subtext folks have something to read into it. All I saw there was poor writing.Conte's character is fairly bright it seems, then Bancroft uses the word "penchant" and he seems dumbfounded. That reversal happens again at the end of the film, but I won't reveal in what manner. Crawford keeps telling Conte he's brighter than all the other "pigs" he has in his employ who can't even spell their own names. So then, how has Crawford managed to head the East Coast mob and hold off trouble for 20 years if everyone working for him is an idiot? By the way, you will never hear the word "pigs" used so often in 87 minutes unless you're at a hog-calling contest.Worth watching to see so many familiar faces in one film, but as to whether it's worth watching again is another matter. If I do, it won't be soon.

Broderick Crawford borrows a great deal from his Academy Award winning Willie Stark from All The King's Men in playing underworld boss Frank Lupo in New York Confidential. Crawford is a combination of Stark and Don Corleone and he doesn't get the best of it.Like Corleone and Stark, Lupo has trouble with his children, but unlike Stark, Lupo has a daughter played by Anne Bancroft. Now if Bancroft was content to be Connie Corleone she could have any number of willing suitors who are in the family business working for dad. She aspires to more and her father's reputation kills off any chance she can marry respectably.Not that respectability guarantees honesty. When old line money WASP William Forrest pulls the rug out from under a multi-million dollar deal the Syndicate is bankrolling they decide to take care of him in the true Syndicate manner. Crawford though he opposes the idea gets the contract and from their the dominoes start to fall.One thing however when the fires threatens, organized crime knows how to start backfires to make sure the organization itself is not touched. A whole lot of dead bodies start to pile up before the film ends.Also starring in the film is Richard Conte playing an out of town hit man who Crawford takes a shine to and has him stay in New York. Conte was always great in noir films and he certainly is here. New York Confidential touches upon a lot of the issues involving systemic corruption much the same way The Godfather films do. Of course it does not have the budget those blockbusters had nor an unforgettable music score, still New York Confidential makes it point. It's still a valid film for today's audience.

In Russell Rouse's New York Confidential, Broderick Crawford plays a darker extension of his Harry Brock character in Born Yesterday. Brock was a corrupt businessman, a wheeler-dealer with senators in his pocket, but the movie (a comedy, after all) never went so far as to label him a mobster, much less a killer. But five years later, in the wake of the televised Kefauver hearings which brought the scope of organized crime to a rapt public, Crawford has become a cog in a vast `syndicate' or `cartel' - an important cog in its Manhattan headquarters, yes, but only one piece of its unstoppable machinery.When one of his vassals stages an unauthorized hit, Crawford calls in some talent from Chicago (Richard Conte) to enforce discipline. The widowed Crawford warms to Conte as the son he never had, though he does have a handful of a rebellious daughter (Ann Bancroft) as well as a high-maintenance mistress with a platinum chignon (Marilyn Maxwell). Maxwell has eyes for Conte, but his eyes stay affixed on the unstable, hard-drinking Bancroft, who wants nothing to do with her father's business - or with any of his minions.The triangulated romance, however, takes second place to the mob's tangled business interests. When a recalcitrant lobbyist scuttles a scheme to profit from government shipping contracts, he's ordered killed. In the movie's best orchestrated sequence, torpedo Mike Mazurki accomplishes the hit but botches his escape from a hotel; wounded, he decides to flip and sing.With the big heat now on, the executive board decides Crawford must take the fall; he, however, decides to join Mazurki in singing a duet. So the board contracts Conte to eliminate the now dangerous Crawford....The gangster movies of the early 'thirties endure as character studies of flamboyant but flawed figures played by the likes of Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney and Paul Muni. This spats-and-tommyguns genre, however, fell out of favor in the 'forties (given global upheaval, bootleggers became small fry). When mob pictures reemerged in the 1950s, their difference in tone was palpable. From 711 Ocean Drive in 1950 to Phil Karlson's 1957 The Brothers Rico (also starring Conte), crime had become corporate, with formalized hierarchies, far-flung interests, and strict, if ruthless, rules for doing business. That's the thread that runs through New York Confidential: that no there's no individual who's indispensable, that the survival of the organization remains paramount.