Checks

The Gangster (dir. Gordon Wiles, 1947) is, as I wrote in this post, a super-stylish low-budget picture. Look what it does with a ceiling and floors.

At the soda fountain, Shubunka (Barry Sullivan) tears into cashier Dorothy (Joan Lorring), who looks down on him for his gangster ways: “I came up out of a sewer, out of the muck and mud: I came up by myself!”


And then he walks out.


His next stop will be “Club,” where someone is already waiting for him in the shadows:

[Click any image for a larger view.]

I would not be tempted to find in these images suggestions of a chessboard (upon which will be played a deadly game): I think these touches are meant to offer pure visual pleasure. The final image, an assemblage of shapes with a backwards CLUB, looks to me like something out of cubism.