Party Girl

A crime film set in the Chicago of the 1930s. Thomas Farrell is very good in a courtroom. He has a bad leg and uses it in front of a jury; most of the men he defends are guilty and all of them belong to the same organisation. The boss of the city, Rico Angelo, keeps him to get his men out. One night he meets Vicki, one of the dancers at a club. She lives in the same world and does not want to stay in it. The relationship makes both of them want out. But the lawyer of an organisation cannot resign; what he knows makes him valuable and dangerous. What is interesting is the mixture of registers: musical numbers and colourful club sets on one side, heavy violence on the other. The two sit side by side in the same film. Rico's scenes of rage are harder than the gangster films of the period; in one section he uses a cane. Robert Taylor plays Farrell, Cyd Charisse plays Vicki and Lee J. Cobb plays Rico. Charisse performs her own dances. Nicholas Ray directed. On release the film was taken as studio work; it was later reassessed as one of the productions where Ray's style can be traced. An interesting production for anyone who likes gangster films in colour and the studio aesthetics of the 1950s. For a viewer expecting realism, the film builds its period like a stage set.