Country: USA
Year: 1955
Duration: 90'
VIOLENT SATURDAY
Three gangsters arrive in a small town to hold up the
bank. Before the hit, they mingle with some of the citizens - an
engineer and his son, a playboy and his wife, a librarian, the bank
Director, a nurse, an Amish man - who reveal hidden relations and
realities. Fleischer makes the most of Cinemascope to film a taut
gangster movie that also has hints of the family melodrama in its
construction of the relationships between the characters. The film's
careful description of small-town America calls to mind Thornton Wilder
and William Faulkner.
"Violent Saturday puts the accent on the characters and their problems,
rather than on the real action. Right from the start, you understand
that all these different people are going to meet up at a certain point
and that their lives will be changed. I really like Ernest Borgnine's
moral dilemma; a non-violent man forced to choose between letting
someone die and intervening. I worked with Lee Marvin with great joy, he
career took off with this film, whereas Victor Mature's career was
already in decline. […] This was the first film Fox shot in Cinemascope
and in color, and it was filmed for less than one million dollars,
something which helped my career a lot. I finished shooting a few days
ahead of schedule and I am very satisfied with the film on the whole."
(R. Fleischer)
Biography
film director
Richard Fleischer
Richard Fleischer (New York, 1916), son of producer and director Max Fleischer and grandson of Dave, a famous cartoonist of the 20's and 30's, began studying medicine but then enrolled at the Yale school of drama. After founding and directing a theatrical company, he joined RKO at the beginning of the 1940's, first as an editor and journalist, and then, starting in 1944, as a director. His medium-length film Design for Death won an Oscar in 1948, launching a long career which, in view of his ability to manage large budgets and to pass from one genre to another with great professionalism, led him to collaborate with the Hollywood majors. For RKO, he directed mainly taut and alienating B noir films, like Follow Me Quietly(1949), Trapped (1949) and The Narrow Margin (1952). He brought Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to the big screen for Walt Disney (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954). He directed many different types of films for 20th Century Fox, maintaining the originality and the vigor of his style, which was able to give new life to the stylistic features of the classical cinema with which he regularly confronted himself. Fleischer adapted gangster movies to Cinemascope in Violent Saturday (1955); he reconstructed turn-of-the-century New York in the melodramatic The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) and ancient civilizations in the historical film The Vikings (1958). He dealt with psychological mystery stories in Compulsion(1959), The Boston Strangler (1968) and Ten Rillington Place (1971, produced by Columbia), science fiction in Fantastic Voyage (1966), peplum in Barabbas (1962), comedy in Doctor Dolittle (1967) and war films in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). During the 1970's he divided his time between the United States and England, and continued his versatile and often experimental productions, including the futuristic Soylent Green (1973), and the thrillers Blind Terror (1971) and The Last Run (1972). During the 1980's he was once again successful with the adventure films Conan the DestroyerRed Sonja (1985), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
FILMOGRAFIA
Memo for Joe (1944), Flicker Flashbacks No. 1, Series 1 (1945), Child of Divorce (1946), Banjo (Piccolo cuore, 1947), Flicker Flashbacks No. 1 (1947), Mr. Bell (1947), Flicker Flashbacks No. 2 (1948), Flicker Flashbacks No. 3 (1948), Flicker Flashbacks No. 4 (1948), Flicker Flashbacks No. 5 (1948), Bodyguard (Squadra mobile 61, 1948), Flicker Flashbacks No. 6 (1948), Flicker Flashbacks No. 7 (1948), Design for Death (Progetto di morte, mm, 1948), So This Is New York (Così questa è New York, 1948), The Clay Pigeon (Bersaglio umano, 1949), Follow Me Quietly (Seguimi in silenzio, 1949), Make Mine Laughs (1949), Trapped (1949), Armored Car Robbery (Sterminate la gang!, 1950), His Kind of Woman (Il suo tipo di donna, 1951), The Narrow Margin (Le iene di Chicago, 1952), The Happy Time (Tempo felice, 1952), Arena (1953), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (20.000 leghe sotto i mari, 1954), Violent Saturday (Sabato tragico, 1955), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (L'altalena di velluto rosso, 1955), Bandido! (id., 1956), Between Heaven and Hell (I diavoli del Pacifico, 1956), The Vikings (I Vichinghi, 1958), Compulsion (Frenesia del delitto, 1959), These Thousand Hills (Il re della prateria, 1959), Crack in the Mirror (Dramma nello specchio, 1960), The Big Gamble (Il grosso rischio, 1961), Barabbas (id., 1962), Fantastic Voyage (Viaggio allucinante, 1966), Doctor Dolittle (Il favoloso dr. Dolittle, 1967), Think Twentieth (1967), The Boston Strangler (Lo strangolatore di Boston, 1968), Che! (id., 1969), Tora! Tora! Tora! (id., 1970), Ten Rillington Place (L'assassino di Rillington Place n. 10, 1971), The Last Run (L'ultima fuga, 1971), Blind Terror (Terrore cieco, 1971), The New Centurions (I nuovi centurioni, 1972), Soylent Green (2022: i sopravvissuti, 1973), The Don Is Dead (Il boss è morto, 1973), The Spikes Gang (La banda di Harry Spikes, 1974), Mr. Majestyk (A muso duro, 1974), Mandingo (id., 1975), The Incredible Sarah (Sarah Bernhardt - La più grande attrice di tutti i tempi, 1976), Crossed Swords (Il principe e il povero, 1978), Ashanti (id., 1979), The Jazz Singer (Il cantante di jazz, 1980), Tough Enough (Il duro più duro, 1983), Amityville 3-D (id., 1983), Conan the Destroyer (Conan il distruttore, 1984), Red Sonja (Yado, 1985), Million Dollar Mystery (Il mistero da 4 milioni di dollari, 1987), Call from Space (1989).