Nódoa Infamante

The System is a melodrama, and certainly not a film noir. If the script has been written by Jo Eisinger (Gilda, Night and the City), there are in this movie completely ridiculous scenes such as the kid's suicide (and that surrealistic shot of the vacuum cleaner, it has to be seen, such a mess, mixing comedy and tragedy) or the newspaper man's death (the two killers are more clowns than killers, unbelievable, and it's shot from far away without imagination), ans so many more scenes. What saves this movie is Frank Lovejoy's character as the chief of bookie Organization, he's an illegal businessman but doesn't want to go too far in violence, and Lovejoy is convincing in his tough acting. Two good appearances of Dan Seymour and Bruno VeSota (they both cannot be bad). But the rest of the casting is quite poor. Director Lewis Seiler is unknown to me, except The True Story of Lynn Stuart, with a frightening Jack Lord (the first sequence is a must). He also directed five early Bogart and I have to see the Guadalcanal Diary which has a good reputation.