Browse: Home / Film on the Internet: THE SECRET OF CONVICT LAKE

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • Guest Review: James Williams on JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR
  • Film on the Internet: COLD IN JULY
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray
  • Local 32-Year-Old Man Successfully Expands His Taste In Music
  • Celebrating the Living: Kirk R. Thatcher

Film on the Internet: THE SECRET OF CONVICT LAKE

Posted By ZoeZ on December 28, 2022 in Reviews | Leave a response

Michael Gordon’s The Secret of Convict Lake cannot live up to its title, which sounds like an especially good Nancy Drew mystery, but it’s an unusual and solidly executed noir Western. Made in 1951, it’s set eighty years earlier and purports to offer a kind of window–via a frame that feels part folk history, part emptily sonorous documentary–into the story behind California’s suggestively named Convict Lake.

The movie is set in a small middle-of-nowhere town, huddled at the foot of the mountains, frosted over with a bad winter, and currently missing all its men. Six escaped convicts arrive. They’re in a desperate position: they don’t trust each other, they don’t have any resources, they don’t draw their lines in the same place, and the only reason they’re still alive is that the posse hunting them believes the incoming bad weather will finish them off.  And one of them is more closely connected with the town than he originally seems.

The women of the town are faced with the dilemma of how to treat strangers–how, in a harsh and unforgiving environment, the moral imperative to offer some kind of shelter and aid to the vulnerable ultimately fares when brought up against the desire for safety. It’s a familiar theme, and The Secret of Convict Lake muddles it by adding in great unmixed lumps of plot that provide distraction, not action. But there’s something dramatically appealing about the almost archetypal intensity and up-close moral examination in the early parts of Convict Lake. It has a theatricality to it that I appreciate, and the story’s outline–again, without getting into the plot–feels universal but still surprising in its various particulars.

It’s not an actor’s movie, and though it has a strong cast that includes Glenn Ford and Gene Tierney, it doesn’t really allow its scenes to lean on their performances. (Ethel Barrymore is the only one with a really striking role, as the town’s confident, competent matriarch.) But the setup sticks with you, and so does the setting, which is what got it classed with the Criterion Channel’s other snow Westerns. The wintry environment really makes itself felt.

 

The Secret of Convict Lake is streaming on the Criterion Channel.

—

(… Actually, the problem with The Secret of Convict Lake is that my subtitles for it identified Ronald Reagan as its narrator, information that I almost confidently repeated here. That would have been a nice bit of trivia!

Posted in Reviews | Tagged Film Noir, Film on the Internet, western

About the Author

lamijames@gmail.com'

ZoeZ

Related Posts

Film on the Internet: COLD IN JULY→

Film on the Internet: BASKET CASE→

Film on the Internet: LEVEL 16→

Film on the Internet: JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    33895 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    27465 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    25093 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20110 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • Yvonne, or: CASABLANCA In One Character and Three Scenes

    11152 views / Posted August 21, 2014
  • Guest Review: James Williams on JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR

    March 29, 2023 / Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott
  • Film on the Internet: COLD IN JULY

    March 29, 2023 / ZoeZ
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray

    March 28, 2023 / Greta Taylor
  • Local 32-Year-Old Man Successfully Expands His Taste In Music

    March 27, 2023 / Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis
  • Today, in "images you can hear"

    Celebrating the Living: Kirk R. Thatcher

    March 26, 2023 / Gillianren

Last Tweets

  • Guest Review: James Williams on JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR - https://t.co/luSXZmy1EQ, 47 mins ago
  • Film on the Internet: COLD IN JULY - https://t.co/jXq2wsmCy5, 5 hours ago
  • New on DVD and Blu-Ray - https://t.co/eTSlUOrMxP, Mar 28

©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

Menu

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!