Flamingo Road

One of Joan Crawford's harder films from her Warner period, made four years after Mildred Pierce and again with Michael Curtiz. The source is Robert Wilder's 1942 novel, which he and his wife Sally turned into a play in 1946 and which he then adapted himself. Sheriff Titus Semple sends his deputy Fielding Carlisle to run a travelling carnival out of town. By the time the deputy arrives, one person is left: a dancer named Lane Bellamy. He wants her gone; she does not go. What follows is not a romance but a straight contest for power, and Lane eventually gets into the town's wealthiest circle, the Flamingo Road of the title. Sydney Greenstreet's sheriff is among the best-known portraits of small-town power in 1940s American cinema. He never shouts and never threatens; he simply knows what everyone owes. Zachary Scott plays the deputy and David Brian the political boss. Curtiz, Crawford and Scott had worked together four years earlier on Mildred Pierce. Who it is for: viewers who like classical Hollywood melodrama and the anatomy of corruption in a single town. Who it is not for: anyone wanting nuance. The characters are drawn in thick lines and the ending is tidied up considerably to satisfy the Code.