Small town America has a poisonous underbelly in Michael Curtiz’s Flamingo Road, which stars a slimy Sydney Greenstreet as a town sheriff determined to destroy former carnival dancer Lane Bellamy (Joan Crawford). When up-and-coming deputy Fielding Carlisle (Zachary Scott) becomes romantically attached to Lane, the despicable, milk-chugging Sheriff Titus Semple (Greenstreet) steers him back toward his more politically acceptable girlfriend, Annabelle Weldon (Virginia Huston), and gets Lane fired from her diner waitress job. Despite the sheriff’s sustained, corrupt efforts to cast Lane out of town, including arresting her on a false prostitution charge, she refuses to cave to “that fat man”; instead, she takes her revenge by charming (and ultimately marrying) local wealthy businessman Dan Reynolds (David Brian), whose money Semple needs to fund his political ambitions. There’s plenty of Crawfordian melodrama to go around, but noir fans will love the finely wrought production design (tents, nightclubs, mansions), luminous B&W cinematography (crisscross shadows, moonlit walks, glowing lanterns, dust floating in columns of light) and, of course, the occasional murder and suicide.
