Widely considered one of Richard Fleischer’s two best films – which alone makes it imperative viewing  – Violent Saturday has often been characterized as noir, though its brazen mid-Fifties colour and sprawling Scope are more typical of the melodramas of Ray and Minnelli, with which Saturday has its affinities. (It foreshadows Some Came Running in interesting ways.) Fleischer takes a classic bank heist story and elaborates it into an insolently entertaining  portrait of small town America (the film was shot in Bisbee, Arizona) with its alcoholic, philandering town aristocracy, purse lifting librarian, and voyeuristic stalker of a bank boss. Into this cauldron of cowards, Peeping Toms, and moralistic hypocrites comes a trio of natty bank robbers whose fail-safe heist turns out to be anything but – hence, the “violent Saturday.” Master of ensemble acting, Fleischer ensures that every role is vividly rendered, from Victor Mature’s engineer, prodded by his young son about his dereliction at Iwo Jima, and Richard Egan’s tippling mine boss, to Sylvia Sidney’s desperate thief and Ernest Borgnine’s pacificist Amish farmer (!), but none is more indelible than steely Lee Marvin, forerunner of Dennis Hopper’s psycho in Blue Velvet as he steps on a little boy’s hand or sucks deeply on his ever-present inhaler – always best as a baddie, Marvin brings glinting menace to the lanky outlaw who complains that women and children make him nervous. Dynamically shot and sweatily suspenseful, “with the possible exception of The Narrow Margin, this is Richard Fleischer’s best film, and seeing it on a big screen confirmed that opinion. . . . Great, nasty fun” (George Robinson, Cine-Journal).

Rated PG.