Knock on Any Door (1949)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Nicholas Ray

Writers:

John Monks Jr. (writer)
Willard Motley (novel)

Release Date:

22 February 1949 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Drama

Plot:

Andrew Morton is an attorney who made it out of the slums. Nick Romano is his client, a young man with a long string of crimes behind him...

Plot Keywords:

Slum | Attorney | Suicide | Trial | Punch To Face

Cast

Humphrey Bogart	...	Andrew Morton
John Derek	...	Nick Romano
George Macready	...	Dist. Atty. Kerman
Allene Roberts	...	Emma
Candy Toxton	...	Adele Morton (as Susan Perry)
Mickey Knox	...	Vito
Barry Kelley	...	Judge Drake

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Italian

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Lake Arrowhead, San Bernardino National Forest, California, USA

Company:

Santana Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

The book by Willard Motley was a best seller. It was serialized in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers and abridged versions appeared in Look Magazine and Omnibook (a Reader's Digest-type of magazine of the day).

Goofs:

Continuity: In the court, when Morton stands up for the first time, he puts his both hands in the pockets. The next shot shows him with only his left hand in the pocket.

Quotes:

Sunshine: How can a guy be happy and broke at the same time?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in True Romance (1993)

A pretentious attempt to glorify a young hoodlum...

Bogart plays a forceful attorney who spends almost the entire film trying to convince the jury and the audience that Derek is an innocent victim of circumstantial evidence…

To prove his point, he takes the audience through a series of flashbacks into the dirty squalor and deprivation that brought about the killing in question…

The film is a patently phony attempt at social commentary which simply didn't come off… A sequel, "Let No Man Write My Epitaph," was made in 1960…

One line of dialog from "Knock On Any Door," used as Derek's motto, was often quoted by young people in the fifties: "Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse."