Three men come to a small town to rob the bank and several of the local citizens get caught up in it. It sounds simple but there is a lot going on, building slowly as the robbers make their plans and the townsfolk sort out their personal lives until the robbery itself when Saturday explodes into violence affecting the citizens for good or for ill. Filmed excellently in colour and widescreen by Charles G. Clarke and directed with a sure hand by the versatile Richard Fleischer you get to know not just the physical look of a town but the darkness beneath the sunny exteriors.The acting all round from a reliable cast is very good. Victor Mature as the reluctant hero, Richard Egan as the unhappy mine owner, Tommy Noonan as the tormented bank manager, Margaret Hayes as the wayward wife and a bearded Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer to name a few. The bank robbers perfectly played by Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin and J. Carrol Naish are not branded as evil but just doing a job. Lee Marvin in his sleepless scene is splendid. The veteran Sylvia Sidney has a small role as a librarian with a secret.Well worth a watch.

Once or twice this almost slips into melodrama but a strong cast with a strong script and magical direction and cinematography keep this moving wonderfully. Described in my Blu-ray booklet as a, 'sun-kissed noir' and it is hard to argue with as the bright and sunny cinemascope visuals collide with the devilish doings of the three bad dudes in town. Filmed in copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, the industry is woven seamlessly into the story as the various inhabitants criss cross each others lives and we learn remarkably much as they interact with each other. There is a marvellous scene in a drug store which sells everything (I even noticed a rack of pulp paperbacks) where we follow one character in, another is already in there and there is a brief exchange as unnoticed one of the bank robbers enters to make a crucial phone call. There are also great shots as the train crosses the desert, skies as good as any of Ford's. I'm not especially a fan of Victor Mature but he does well here mixing home life, work life and heroism. Not by any means action and hip talk all the way but convincingly and entertainingly structured to great effect. Oh and just watch out for Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer.

I liked it. Those '50's melodramas/dramas-they were so great. Lee Marvin is always interesting. I liked his monologue about his "skinny ex-wife, her colds, and his inhaler." By the way-my small hometown Ohio bank was open until noon on Saturday up until the mid-seventies-until ATMs, of course. They were closed on Wednesdays. So a "Violent Saturday" (when most people did their grocery shopping, made deposits, etc.) made sense then. Some of the characters were strange; the librarian, and the Tommy Noonan character for sure. The nurse is very forgiving of him. I've always liked Richard Egan and thought his last scene was well-acted. Victor Mature is not one of my favorite actors, but this is one of his better roles. If you like '50's dramas/melodramas, check it out!

It's either a heist movie wrapped in soap opera or soap opera wrapped in a heist movie. Take your pick. Either way the results are pretty awkward. Ten years earlier, it would have been a black&white noir with a hard edge, minus the extraneous sub-plots. After all, what is the point of Noonan's milktoast banker or Sydney's angry librarian other than to clutter up the story in needless manner. On the other hand, Hayes's faithless wife would have made a good spider woman had she been worked into the robbery phase instead of being left to dangle in one of the several subplots.There are two good reasons to stay with this film package. The shootout around the barn is tense, unusual, and very well staged. No longer tied down by an awkward script, director Fleischer shows his skills by taking over the action in expert fashion. He has an obvious feel for this kind of material instead of the soap opera that, by contrast, is filmed in straightforward unimaginative style. Then there's early Lee Marvin, already an eye-catcher with his gangly, lucid style, and apparently in need of a third nostril so his character can breathe right. And when he steps on the kid's hand who's accidentally bumped him, we get a moment of genuine character development only Marvin could bring off with such casual glee.I suspect the movie's odd format is the result of the studios competing with TV for viewers. This was, after all, the early 50's and the living room box was still a novelty. Movie makers figured they had to give people something they couldn't get at home. So movies tended to become "bigger", with Technicolor replacing b&w, "name" casts replacing newcomers, and bigger budgets replacing B-films. Thus slender material like Violent Saturday is stretched beyond its logical limits to accommodate a revised commercial format. At least, I think that's what happened. Too bad, because with lesser ambitions and a more streamlined approach, the material could have evolved into a compelling crime drama minus the distractions.