Road House (1948)

Directed by Jean Negulesco

Road House (1948) is a good Hollywood melodrama that is also a curious noir piece – noir, due to the nature of what happens and curious because it isn’t in the usual urban setting but a rural one, the roadhouse being located in the northern U.S. near the Canadian border.

Jefty (Richard Widmark) owns the roadhouse. His best friend Pete (Cornel Wilde) runs it. Everything is peachy until Jefty brings in a torch singer, Lily (Ida Lupino). Now we have that old troublesome triangle.

Jefty falls for Lily. Unfortunately, she falls for Pete as Pete does for her. Jefty is the odd man out. That would be problem enough but it’s compounded by the fact that Jefty doesn’t handle jealousy well and also has a bit of a screw loose.

While not Richard Widmark’s first movie (he had done Kiss of Death and The Street with No Name previously), Road House is one of his earliest films and he does here what he did so well in his early films: play a lunatic killer. He has the twisted giggle and the sad, desperate and wild eyes.

I think I first became familiar with Widmark years ago in the television series of Madigan (originally a Don Siegel film), where he played a very dry, skeptical cop. I inevitably forget that he played crazed killers when he began, and played them very well.

He shines in this movie, as does Ida Lupino as the singer, Lily. Her character goes to the roadhouse simply because it’s a job. She’s a city girl and appears out of place in such a rural setting. She grabs everyone’s attention once she starts singing (which actually is Lupino singing, “One for the Road”).

The movie doesn’t try to pretend Lupino is a great singer; rather, it even comments on her not having a great voice. But she does have a husky, sexy delivery, and that is the point.

Cornel Wilde has the least interesting role largely because he plays the hero/good guy part and it needs to be fairly bland in order to highlight the Widmark and Lupino roles.

The character of Pete generally doesn’t initiate action; things happen to him, such as when Jefty frames him for a crime.

The crime and subsequent trial lack a certain credibility, I think, because they seem so implausible, but they do allow for the movie to take its final, third act turn that leads us to its conclusion.

Put in baseball terms, Road House isn’t an out-of-the-park home run, but it is a solid double or triple. It’s very well paced, rarely sags, and has that interesting twist of playing out what is essentially a noir in a rural setting.

In fact, it uses its backwoods setting to its advantage, the idea of a killer plotting to punish two lovers out in the middle of nowhere helping to elevate the suspense.