Film noir can be tricky to adapt to radio because all the characters tend to sound the same. This is an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s famous novel with its intriguing central relationship between mob boss and enforcer. I found the plot a bit hard to follow at times but it has plenty of atmosphere. Orson plays the mob boss, Paul Stewart is Ned – while Welles became a dab hand at noir I found his performance a little funny. Maybe it was just listening to him play a noir role after hearing him in all these more literary adaptations. Laura Baxter is the female lead.
There’s a special guest at the end of the episode – the governor of Sing Sing prison, who wrote the book on which Invisible Stripes is based, who makes an appeal to fix the causes of crime (i.e. society) and Orson gets into it. There is coughing in the background – from Orson? He sounds as if he’s got a cold, maybe that’s why his performance felt a bit off.
There’s a special guest at the end of the episode – the governor of Sing Sing prison, who wrote the book on which Invisible Stripes is based, who makes an appeal to fix the causes of crime (i.e. society) and Orson gets into it. There is coughing in the background – from Orson? He sounds as if he’s got a cold, maybe that’s why his performance felt a bit off.
No comments:
Post a Comment