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Flamingo Road (1949) More at IMDb Pro »

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Crawford's Face/Off with Greensreet, 9 March 2005

Author: nycritic

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Somehow it didn't occur to Crawford that the believability of her playing what would essentially be a twenty-something circus dancer when she was already up in years would strike her as vaguely ridiculous and could eventually do her more harm than good. But, being the star who wanted to ensure she stayed at the top and not evolve into playing older (except in her Oscar-winning MILDRED PIERCE), second leads, or anything but the star of the film, she finished off the 40s with this film which fares well despite this discrepancy.

FLAMINGO ROAD is an interesting pot-boiler about political corruption in a southern town, with well-matched performances by Sydney Greenstreet, David Brian, and Gladys George to match Crawford's ego. Zachary Scott seems weak in more ways than one when seen with Crawford, but plays his part well in what looks like a repeat performance from MILDRED PIERCE. This movie was the basis for the 1980 TV movie and the subsequent 1981-82 series of the same name with Cristina Raines, Mark Harmon, Howard Duff, and Stella Stevens in the leads.

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Perhaps, an acquired taste, but..., 7 November 2004
Author: Greg Couture from Portland, Oregon

Like a dry Martini with just a tad too much vermouth, garnished with an olive that hasn't been washed of its brine, this one can leave a nasty taste if you're looking for something that goes down smoothly. But if you're not too fastidious, this Crawford star vehicle is almost ridiculously entertaining. Joan might have been just a little long in the tooth to be playing a hoochy-coochy carnival girl in the film's opening sequence but it isn't long before she's on her way up, constantly being tripped on that inexorable climb by one of the slimiest villains that Sydney Greenstreet ever played. Warners trowels on the class "A" production values (except for some glaring back projections at a construction site) and Michael Curtiz's direction is, as usual, briskly efficient, getting the best from everyone in the cast, principal and supporting players alike, except perhaps for Greenstreet who really doesn't look well at all and seems to be struggling against imminent collapse in some scenes. (He made only one picture after this one and died from complications of diabetes about five years later.)

Max Steiner contributes his usual melodically overwrought score (with heavy reliance on the popular song, "If I Could Be One Hour With You [Tonight]"), lushly orchestrated by Murray Cutter, under the musical direction of that Warners stalwart, Ray Heindorf. It's almost too distracting but the frequently crackling dialogue keeps the audience's attention focused on the pulpy proceedings. Ted McCord's black-and-white cinematography is an outstanding example of why not every picture should be in color and I suspect that it was Travilla who was given the task of gowning Crawford once she'd finally crossed over to the right side of the tracks. (Sheila O'Brien, also credited, probably ran up those nifty waitress uniforms and the prison garb Crawford gets to wear not once, but twice!)

They really, REALLY don't make 'em like this anymore, and thank goodness Turner Classic Movies, for instance, trundles a tasty morsel like this out of their archives every once in a while for us to savor once again.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Crawford jumps the tracks, 28 March 2006

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

Flamingo Road is not the best Joan Crawford film ever done. But it surely is one of the most entertaining with a few unforgettable characters in the film. No wonder it got picked to be the basis for a night time soap opera in the Eighties.

Sydney Greenstreet is one of those larger than life characters in every sense of the word. His southern county sheriff dominates this film. I would have to say it is my third favorite Greenstreet role, next to The Maltese Falcon and The Hucksters. Joan Crawford good as she is loses all the joint scenes when she's on the screen with Greenstreet.

Joan's a carnival girl stranded in Greenstreet's town and picked up by Greenstreet's deputy Zachary Scott. Greenstreet has big political plans for Scott which include a proper marriage with some modern version of Melanie Hamilton. Virginia Huston's the girl he has in mind.

After Crawford doesn't take Greenstreet's advice and leave town, he has her framed on a prostitution rap. After doing a six month stretch Crawford is understandably wanting vengeance. She takes a job at a road house run by Gladys George where a lot of the state bigwigs meet and enjoy all forms of pleasurable relaxation.

The characters in Flamingo Road jump right out at you, they really were made for a night time soap opera. Of course Crawford is great as she and new husband and ally David Brian gives her a new found respectability. The best portrayal in the film besides Crawford and Greenstreet goes to Gladys George. She's a southern version of the Texas Guinan like character she played in The Roaring Twenties.

If you like soap opera and revenge this is the film for you.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
loved it, but what was up with Greenstreet, 16 September 2005

Author: blanche-2 from United States

"Flamingo Road" is one of those Joan from the other side of the tracks ending up living large, and it's great. After how many years of doing these roles, at 45, Crawford still pulled them off with aplomb. She's wonderful to watch in this. I remember seeing this at a revival cinema, on a big screen, and it was the first time I realized how petite a woman she was - but she always seemed so tall! In this film, Crawford plays a ex-carny girl who takes up with Zachary Scott. Scott is the protégé of a ruthless political boss, played by Sydney Greenstreet. He turns out to be too weak-willed to do anything but stay under Greenstreet's thumb. He marries someone more proper while Greenstreet does everything he can to drive Crawford out of town. When she winds up married to an even more powerful man than Greenstreet, he seeks to destroy both her and her husband.

David Brian is excellent as Crawford's husband, as is Gladys George as a roadhouse owner for whom Crawford works briefly. Scott doesn't register as a wimp, stripped of his romantic underpinnings in "Mildred Pierce." And then we come to Sydney Greenstreet. You're telling me he lived five years after this film? I would have easier believed he dropped dead immediately afterward. He looks pasty and horrendous as he downs pitchers of milk, slurs his dialogue, and laughs in a very unworldly way - kind of a hah-hah, a sharp intake of breath, and then a higher pitched laugh that sounds like a hiccup. Always a sinister presence on the screen, Greenstreet comes off as evil, all right, but also ill in this production.

"Flamingo Road" became a television series in the '80s. I'll take the original.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
"You just wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get rid of a dead elephant!", 31 October 2003
Author: edward-speiran (edward.speiran@verizon.net) from Brooklyn, New York

I am clueless as to how this movie has failed to become one of the great cult classics. Yes, of course, the plot is pitiful...combination of State of the Union meets Stella Dallas meets Sadie Thompson...but my God, the dialogue!

Joan Crawford - truly an amazing actress. If there's a heaven and she's in it and I make it there, I'll be acolyte in her heavenly choir. In this one, she looks like she's about to be torn to pieces by the centrifugal forces of her conflicting character. She's part Great Lady of the American theaTRE, movie version, with an accent that must be part Mount Holyoke mixed with Bryn Mawr mixed with Locust Valley Lockjaw...so how this dame is working as a carny girl at the tender age of 45 is quite the sight to behold. And then there's Gladys George...the type of older character actress that I suppose only the Depression-era movie studio system could produce...she's seen everything and done everything twice, and still has time to get her hair peroxided and permed. And finally - Sydney Greenstreet - of course - he is awesome in everything I've seen him in...but the look on his face when Joan utters the deathless line I've just tried to quote above...well, anyway...forget plot, just sit back and enjoy mid-20th century glossy-film-noir with Joan lit from angles that would put De la Tour to shame. a fan.

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10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
One of Crawford's better films, 23 March 2004

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

Carnival girl Joan Crawford (looking pretty damn good for 45) settles in a small town. She falls in love with deputy sheriff Zachary Scott--but corrupt head sheriff Sydney Greenstreet wants her gone. He frames Crawford on prostitution and she's sent to jail. She gets out and is determined to get her revenge on Greenstreet...

The plot is kind of silly (and VERY rushed at the end) but I liked this movie. It's well-directed by Michael Curtiz and looks just beautiful--very elaborate. Warner Bros. obviously spent a lot of money on this one. When you get right down to it it's basically a soap opera--but a fun one!

Crawford gives one of her best performances. In reality she's too old for the role but she doesn't look it! You can't take your eyes off her when she's on screen. Scott is stuck with a colorless role. Also David Brian shows up as a politician and he's very good. And Gladys George shines as an owner of a "roadhouse". The big disappointment here is Greenstreet--he's just terrible! He's stone-faced throughout (he can't even register surprise in one crucial scene), looks very ill (but he was 70, overweight and diabetic) and slurs most of his dialogue which makes him appear drunk. He's very evil but his empty performance weighs the film down.

Still, worth seeing for Crawford alone. Easily one of her best.

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11 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Curtiz, Crawford reunite to rekindle Mildred Pierce by camping out on the South Coast., 1 January 2005

Author: bmacv from Western New York

Trying to pass off Joan Crawford, then heading toward her mid-'40s, as a plausible nautch-dancer in the side-show of an itinerant carnival proves a misstep from which Michael Curtiz' Flamingo Road barely recovers. But, once the layers of accrued campiness that cling to it are peeled back (and once Crawford discards her Salome-like veils), the movie, far-fetched as it is, generates some interest.

Owing to unpaid bills or some such, the traveling show, in which Crawford was a steamy if not entirely fresh attraction, blows town. Sheriff's deputy Zachary Scott, sent across the tracks to make sure the whole unsavory business has packed up, finds only Crawford, listening to her radio in a mildewed tent. Sparks are struck; he invites her back to town for the blue-plate special in the local beanery and finagles a job for her there as a waitress.

His superior, corrupt sheriff Sydney Greenstreet, sniffs out the burgeoning romance and vows to quash it; he has plans to run Scott for the senate of their anonymous Gulf state (its capital is Olympic City and its capitol a lovingly detailed piece of scenery painting), prerequisite to which is a proper marriage to a bona-fide local girl. Scott glumly acquiesces to the plan, drowning his doubts in drink ("I crawled into a bottle and can't get out"), while Greenstreet frames Crawford on a morals charge and runs her out of town.

New to the mix is David Brian, boss of the state political machine, whose eye is caught by Crawford (now back in town working in the obligatory "roadhouse" operated by Gladys George). He has a whopper of a hangover ("A party's like insurance – the older you are, the more it costs," he says), which Crawford assuages with an eye-opening whiskey sour followed by a home-cooked breakfast. Never underestimate the power of a well-scrambled egg. Next thing, they're married and living in a mansion on high-toned Flamingo Road (complete with a housemaid with the voice and the brain of a parakeet, as in the earlier Curtiz/Crawford Mildred Pierce, except that this time she's not Butterfly McQueen and is, amazingly for the era, white). But Greenstreet starts pulling even filthier strings than Brian – for once, a passably good egg – can countenance. Whereupon, after a drastic development involving the besotted Scott, Crawford slips a handgun into her clutch-bag and pays Greenstreet an amicable visit....

With at least two sensational movies behind him (Casablanca and Mildred Pierce), and one ahead of him (The Unsuspected), Curtiz can be forgiven for Flamingo Road. He brings it some verve, but its identity as yet another of Crawford's rags-to-riches vehicles gets the better of him. While his star supplies some startlingly naturalistic acting (and while the uncharacteristically clean-shaven Scott and the characteristically portly Greenstreet are dependably professional), Flamingo Road has fallen, rather unarguably, into the disreputable if transfixing gulch called camp. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
CRAWFORD VS. GREENSTREET, 2 February 2000

Author: Eric Chapman (caspar_h@yahoo.com) from Pittsburgh, PA

Despite the noted critic Pauline Kael's unreasonably negative review of this film, it's a lot of fun and a good vehicle for Joan Crawford's talents. Kael described it as overwrought, but in truth it's good old-fashioned melodramatic story-telling with a smart, literate script, and refreshingly quick pacing. The only flaw that bothered me was a musical score that is, at times, laughably incongruous. (The music swells bewilderingly and ominously when Crawford benignly offers Reynolds' Political Boss something for his hangover.)

Sure, you can quarrel with the casting of Shakespearean-voiced Sydney Greenstreet playing a Southern Sheriff, but he's so unrepentently vile and villainous that he's convincing in every role he plays. It is a joy to watch two such formidable actors as Crawford and Greenstreet squaring off in big confrontations.

It's not surprising that, some 30 years later, this became the premise for a night-time soap opera starring, I believe, Morgan Fairchild. It has so many jealousies, manipulations, secret ambitions, double-crosses, plots for revenge - it's just great fun if one doesn't take it too seriously. And clearly, Crawford, Greenstreet, and the director, Michael Curtiz, didn't. They recognized the material for what it was - pulpy entertainment served up with wit and style.

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9 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
"You're nothing but a Carny girl!", 29 September 2004

Author: BumpyRide from TCM's Basement

Alas, poor Joan is back to her usual tricks trying to pass herself off as an exotic harem dancer in a traveling circus. I think she's a little too old to be enticing the locals at 45. Perhaps her veil helps hide the years, but I digress. ~Spoilers Approaching!~ Half the movie has poor, struggling Joan trying to earn a descent living but Sydney "Mr. Mean" Greenstreet keeps throwing a monkey wrench in Joan's affairs. First he gets her fired from the local Italian eatery and then follows her to Lute Mae's road house. Pow Shazam, she marries money and moves into a big house where she gets to wear her leftover wardrobe from Mildred Pierce! She's now living the high life, and likes it, but Sheriff Titus just has a grudge against her. He tries to ruin her marriage and then throw her on the next train to "Destination Unknown." Joan fights back and finds Sheriff Titus Semple living it up at Lute Mae's. The confrontation begins! I give this movie four bitch slaps out of five.

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Mildred Pierce meets the devil on her way to easy street., 24 March 2004

Author: jotix100 from New York

This film is a joy to watch, even if defies logic. The narrative is convoluted, to put it mildly. Joan Crawford as a carnival girl? That's a stretch of the imagination. From the very beginning, watching Ms Crawford and the two other dancing women, the viewer realizes that he has to be kind to this film. Her take on Lane Bellamy is vintage Crawford!

This must have been a vehicle for the star right after her star turn in Mildred Pierce. It has some of the same people behind it, like director Michael Curtiz and Zachary Scott. The dialogue is something to be treasured. They don't make films like this anymore. Just imagine what panache Ms Crawford brought to anything she appeared in.

The cast that was assembled for this film is probably impossible to match. The great Sydney Greenstreet is so good as the evil sheriff Titus Semple, that we stay riveted looking at his every move. David Brian as the man who loves Lane and rescues her from poverty is also an asset. The minor players, Gladys George, Fred Clark and Virginia Huston, among others fit right into the story.

But this is a Joan Crawford's film. She dominates every scene in which she appears. What power she conveys with only an economy of gestures. No one working in films these days can come near to this actress, who left her own imprint in the canon of American cinema, not to be equaled by anyone any time soon.

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