The More He Struggles, The More He Sinks

I've been working my way through another collection of noir films. The first three (Whirlpool, Shock, They Made Me a Criminal) haven't really fit my definition of "noir". The endings are all too happy. Happy couples reaffirming their love, bad guys getting their just desserts, cops being decent, hard-working sorts, rather than crooked scum. On the plus side, Shock had Vincent Price, and They Made Me a Criminal had Claude Rains. I might get around to talking about those three in detail later, but for now I'm going to focus on Quicksand, which I'm watching as I type.

So you have Mickey Rooney. He works in a garage for a penny-pinching boss, but he meets a swell dame at the lunch counter he wants to take out on the town. One problem: He's broke, and he decides to take a loan from the register, figuring he has days before the bookkeeper comes by. Things spiral rapidly downhill from there.

It's well set-up how things keep building upon each other. Dan continuously opts to keep his problems to himself, and the situation keeps getting worse. He goes from needing 20 bucks, to 100, to 3 grand. He keeps making rash decisions, keeps trusting the wrong people, keeps fearing the punishment of the crime he's committed so much he figures it's safer to commit more crimes. This in spite of the fact he's really bad at being a crook. He doesn't pay attention to details, he gets spotted regularly, keeps losing firearms or otherwise incriminating evidence. It would be comical if he weren't so legitimately stressed out over it.

Of course, by this point in the typing, the film has ended, and things are at least somewhat happy. It appeared for a moment that Dan might be killed fleeing the police, while crawling underneath the docks like a rat, but the film couldn't commit itself to that path. Which was kind of surprising, and a bit disappointing.