Quicksand (1950)

The greatest tale of moral degradation in film noir is Quicksand (1950) — with Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney and Peter Lorre. It’s okay for a film noir to ship with a weak male lead, but often these guys have issues to begin with — their moral compasses have been spun to point to Palookaville — sometimes by war, by crime, suburbia or a dilemma that’s placed in their path. It ain’t so with Mickey Rooney as Dan Brady.

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Dan Brady in Quicksand isn’t crooked — not like his boss — and he ain’t a heel. He’s a happy-go-lucky hard worker who winds up on a an epic moral descent, which begins after he successfully chats up femme fatale Jeanne Cagney but then needs twenty dollars to take her on a date.

Mickey Rooney and Jeanne Cagney

Peter Lorre in Quicksand (1950)

Without doubt watch Quicksand for Peter Lorre — although leaving Quicksand, there is a strange feeling that Lorre’s aspect of the story hasn’t been wound up — something else that may have been addressed with an extra five or ten minutes. Peter Lorre plays the scheming owner of a penny arcade with huge relish. A Jeanne Cagney interview quoted in The Lost One, by Stephen D. Youngkin says of Lorre’s approach to Quicksand:

He did it with all his might. Even though the picture was not a top drawer film he still approached it as if it were the “A” picture of all “A” pictures.

And

He was so menacing that you felt as though that must have been a part of the initial performance. It was like finding gold. In the first place, the slow-moving quality was all gone. His reactions were so much faster, and his feet were so much faster that I was startled. The first reasction was just pure delight in finding an elfin quality. He seemed very much younger when you met him, very much jollier, and quick on the uptake. He and Rooney were just a marvellous team as far as springing off each other with the jokes.

Also to look out for is Jimmy Dodd (who plays Dan Brady’s mate Buzz) who was the original Head Mouseketeer of television's Mickey Mouse Club around two years after Quicksand.

Quicksand with Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre can be watched for free. It’s punchy, entertaining, and you get to see a frantic fresh-faced Mickey Rooney exploring criminality and the inevitability of that moral message — one crime leads to another — with theft from the register at work being the gateway crime to murder — he sinks, sinks, sinks, faster and faster, until this great chase at the end — with Rooney doing all his own stunts on the pier — with nowhere to go expect towards a policeman’s pointed gun — and the air slowly bubbling up as he loses control of everything, and sinks into a mire of his own devices.