Pat Regan-Cameron from RAW DEAL (1948)

Film noir and its losers...

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Four. That’s how many movies Claire Trevor made in 1948. Four movies and one Oscar. Not for this week’s loser-fest, no; for Key Largo, in the Best Supporting Actress category. The Velvet Touch and The Babe Ruth Story make up the Claire Trevor quartet of 1948. One could make a case for any of them as strong contenders for a slot on The Losers of Film Noir, but Anthony Mann’s pre-Westerns-with-Jimmy Stewart film noir about cads, prison breaks and the women at the center of it all takes the proverbial cake.

‘Waiting. Waiting… all my life it seems I’ve been waiting for Joe.’ Pat Regan/Cameron

She says that in a voice-over monologue. Now, there’s nothing unusual about that in film noir, of course, but it is rare to see a female character in the driver seat – literally in this case. You see, Raw Deal, written by John C. Higgins and Leopold Atlas, features one of the genre’s few female narrators. Pat Regan or Cameron (she’s credited as Regan, but referred to as Cameron in the film) sits behind the wheel in the getaway car as her boyfriend Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe) breaks out of prison… We find out that he took the rap for his friend Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr) and now that he’s free, he is going after him. Somewhere along the way, Joe kidnaps caseworker Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt), whom he is in love with, and the three of them go on the run…

If this Substack went in the opposite direction, Ann Martin would probably qualify as a film noir ‘winner’. She’s smart, sophisticated, has a good head on her shoulders and she knows right from wrong better than most anybody in the noir world. But alas, we’re interested in losers here. And Pat Regan-Cameron is one of the most pitiful characters that ever graced noir’s many alleys. She’s desperately in love with a man who never loved her and never will, and she’s willing to do everything she can to have him, including helping him escape from prison. She’s not necessarily a criminal or a bad person. She’s just a fool in love. Throughout the movie, her voice-over narration helps us understand where she’s coming from and why, in her mind, her love for Joe makes it OK. We feel for her, and it’s Claire Trevor’s performance that really seals the deal. While Raymond Burr was busy being one of 1948’s ultimate villains, and Dennis O’Keefe was proving to everybody that hommes fatale are a thing, Claire Trevor was holding the picture together with her soothing voice and her expressive face, guiding us through one of the decade’s bleakest crime dramas.

‘Ok, go ahead, go to him, pin his ears back, be a hero and get yourself shot in the process. What do you care if you’re dead or caught again? Doesn’t mean a thing to me, not a thing…’ Pat Regan-Cameron

It would a be a disservice to think Pat Regan-Cameron is solely a love-sick fool though. By the film’s climactic final sequence, Pat’s internal monologue on the boat shows a different side to her. She, like Ann, also knows right from wrong. Her expression darkens as she realizes that Joe has never been hers, her face half-lit by the lights and fog outside the cabin, in a shot composition that firmly establishes John Alton as one of noir’s greatest cinematographers. This, coupled with Paul Sawtell’s intoxicating score, which frankly sounds more like a horror score than a noir one, is the poisoned cherry on top of the Raw Deal cake. Our hearts break along with Pat’s, but what a beautiful heartbreak it is. In that moment, we realize that it was Pat who was dealt a raw deal…

We bid farewell to Pat Regan-Cameron and Raw Deal. Next week’s loser, well, losers, were the henchmen for the toughest guy in town, so logically things didn’t go well for them. It’s Pride Month, and we have a literal couple of losers. The actors are Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman, the movie is The Big Combo (1955) and the losers… are Fante and Mingo.

See you on the sunny side of the street.