This is a rather strange film.It has a running time of 59 minutes but feels as if great chunks have been hacked out.Murphy is a nightclub entertainer who is set up for a manslaughter rap.In prison he becomes a trustee.He learns that his mother is dying but the warden wont let him out to see her.So he breaks out.However the mother is never mentioned again.He tries to break into Nancy Carrolls apartment.She catches him but takes pity on him.Guess what she is a dancer!They form a nightclub act only he wears a mask to hide his identity.However he is recognised by Thelma Todd who had worked with him prior to his gaoling.She tries to blackmail him.He tries to flee she calls the cops and he goes back to prison to await his parole and reuniting with Carroll.The ending just comes to suddenly that you just feel that maybe it was edited down.It seems as if this is Columbia's rather cheaper version of Bolero.There are some dances between Carroll and Murphy.She seems to have put on some weight since her early talkie appearances.Murphy is fresh faced and clearly heading in the opposite direction to her.This does not represent their best work.
7 Reviews
nifty little thing
mukava99131 May 2008
This short and snappy crime drama about nightclub dancers plunges us into the action from scene one. Three elements give the movie its special flavor: Thelma Todd as an alluring but nasty vixen; Nancy Carroll as her alluring and kindhearted opposite; and the insertion of full blown song and dance sequences without which the movie would clock in at around 45 minutes! The songs and dances themselves are nothing special but pleasant enough. And it must be noted that after seeing George Murphy and Carroll trip the light fantastic you clearly understand why it was Astaire and Rogers who are remembered today. Murphy was physically more attractive than Astaire but heavy footed in comparison. And his singing voice was thin like Astaire's but there is no life in his delivery. It makes sense that Murphy eventually abandoned performing to become a politician. It does not make sense that Nancy Carroll's career had to end so soon. She is absolutely winning every moment she is on the screen. And poor Thelma Todd was murdered the year this film was released so we will never know what she might have done with her comic (and, as revealed here) dramatic talents.
Show Don't Tell
Theo Robertson2 April 2017
One wonders how a film featuring a male dancer getting sentenced to jail for manslaughter plays out under the straitjacket of the Hays code . Come on you all know what getting at . Trying making a film featuring the Darwinian law of the jungle that is the American penal system without any allusion to gang rape. This is a movie we've all got to see as to how the producers, screenwriters and director are going to get around
AFTER THE DANCE starts after the inciting incident of the killing scene. This opening is so bizarre that I was left wondering if the censors edited the scene out before the film was distributed for release. Indeed as people on this page have noticed this is a film with an entirely strange feel where segments of the story feel like they're missing. The main bulk of the narrative - where the protagonist ends up in jail - isn't in fact the bulk of the story. Instead it's about a convicted criminal on the run who gets lucky enough to relaunch his career again as a dancer. None of it makes sense from a logical point of view and is very contrived . Likewise as everyone has noticed the film just comes to an abrupt stop which led me to ask what the point of the film was
AFTER THE DANCE starts after the inciting incident of the killing scene. This opening is so bizarre that I was left wondering if the censors edited the scene out before the film was distributed for release. Indeed as people on this page have noticed this is a film with an entirely strange feel where segments of the story feel like they're missing. The main bulk of the narrative - where the protagonist ends up in jail - isn't in fact the bulk of the story. Instead it's about a convicted criminal on the run who gets lucky enough to relaunch his career again as a dancer. None of it makes sense from a logical point of view and is very contrived . Likewise as everyone has noticed the film just comes to an abrupt stop which led me to ask what the point of the film was
A rather horrid little B-movie--thanks, mostly, to a terrible script that just abruptly ended!
planktonrules3 June 2008
This was a pretty poor B-movie--with a plot that makes little sense and a non-existent ending. George Murphy stars as a song and dance man who is wrongly convicted of manslaughter--making this one of the very few films to combine singing, tap dancing and prison---a very strange genre melange indeed! The problem is that the stories just didn't mesh well at all. At one point, he's getting into fights in prison and going stir-crazy and the next he's in a white tux doing a second-rate imitation of Fred Astaire!!! It's rather surreal and mind-numbing, so after a while I found myself fast-forwarding through the song and dance numbers. I'd have much preferred if they'd just made it a prison film--this was by far the best portion. If all this wasn't bad enough, the film just didn't make sense and by the end of the film it was hopelessly silly and unconvincing. By appearances, the studio must have felt the same way, since the movie just abruptly ended--with no real resolution. This was shown on Turner Classic Movies and they pride themselves for showing the most complete versions available. However, it sure looked like there was a huge chunk missing. Considering it was a B-film, I truly believe that at the one hour mark, they just edited out the ending to meet the usual time format for that style film. Regardless, it's very unsatisfying and hokey--not at all a pleasant or entertaining film.
Proto-noir?
max von meyerling30 May 2008
Warning: Spoilers
An unassuming Columbia "B" picture, really not given much more thought than say, Atlantic ADVENTURE, a picture it was paired with one morning on TCM. Atlantic ADVENTURE was the one about the newspaperman and his long-suffering girlfriend. He screws up and is fired and loses his girlfriend but finds the jewel thieves and the murderer and gets a scoop, his job back and marries his girl. AFTER THE DANCE is the one about the innocent guy wrongly convicted and sent to prison who breaks out and becomes a show biz hit but is recaptured and sent back to the pen. What's interesting about this little programmer is that in some ways it's a proto-noir.
If this had been made a dozen years later, the biggest difference would be in the protagonist. He is a gormless innocent, drawn into contact with evil fate though no fault of his own. The noir's protagonist would share in the guilt; have a tragic or even fatal flaw. The sense is that in the 30s the depression came in and people thought: What did I do to deserve this? Even the opening music echoes the theme of The Forgotten Man. In the 40s, because of the utter despair of war, mass murder, and atomic annihilation, people accepted some culpability and answered their own question: Oh.
The story is that a homicide has occurred before the picture has begun. The police arrive at a nightclub to find George Murphy admitting he punched out this guy who was assaulting his dance partner in her dressing room after the guy pulled a gun on him. He hit his head falling blabalbla. His partner, Thelma Todd can clear him just by telling the DA what happened but she refuses under legal advise. She has a record. She says, "I don't know" so many times she's like a member of the Bush administration testifying before congress or in court.
He pleads guilty to manslaughter and gets 2-10 in the big house. He gets into a fight with his bunkmate when he's called "deary". He doesn't squeal on his Bunkie to the warden but doesn't get into trouble because he asks the warden what he would do if some man called him "deary"? "Why I'd " he fumes. What was that all about? He makes Murphy a trusty driving a truck out of the gates regularly. His bad bunkmate, Jack La Rue, hijacks the truck in an escape attempt. The truck goes over the side of the mountain killing La Rue and Murphy is so convinced that he'll be blamed for the escape attempt that he takes it on the lam.
At one point he has to swim away and the transition to a ship's hold is handled by a simple diagonal wipe. There he's discovered by a black cook (an excellent Clarence Muse) who is afraid at first "Stay where you are white man. I know who you are " but is impressed by his prison number (7117) which encourages him to enter a crap game. He wins and brings Murphy food and clothes. This is followed by a very European montage of Murphy making his way on this escape trail.
Murphy is stealing a bottle of milk on a doorstep when he's caught by the resident, a nightclub dancer (Nancy Carroll). Eventually he becomes a nightclub star again this time in a mask and known as the Knave of Hearts. He's doing great until Thelma Todd shows up again and puts the screws to him. She blackmails him and eventually tries to get him to dump Carroll and start up an act with her instead. Murphy knows she's poison and makes plans to split and Todd borrows a nickel and drops it on him. The cops come, Carroll says she'll wait for him and they take him away.
It shares, probably for similar reasons, one of the great virtues of noir films, an economically and tersely told story. The outcome is never in doubt, which resonates with the fatalism of the noir. There is a femme fatale, an evil presence who opens wide the gate of hell for the anti-hero.
Compare George Murphy's hick dufuss with say Tom Neal's schulmpy wise guy in DETOUR. Another difference is that while Murphy is caught, it takes place after a strange throwaway scene between the kindly warden and a cop whose an implacable foe laying out the possibilities of a parole and that the best thing for Murphy would be to get caught, for his own good. Even his girl, the good girl assures him she'll wait. A noir would have the anti- hero dying bleeding in the gutter. It was thought that one day the depression would be over and right would be restored and everybody would be free and happy again. There was no optimistic future after The Holocaust and The Bomb.
Of course, in the typical depression picture, not only would Murphy have to be caught, because crime could never be seen to pay, but the evil woman would have to get her comeuppance and probably make a death bed confession freeing Murphy. In AFTER THE DANCE not only isn't she punished for her causing an innocent man to go to jail but also nothing bad happens to her after she blackmails and then betrays Murphy. In a noir she would have been pulled down for her sins just as surely as the protagonist.
All three scenes with the warden have an odd ambiguity. In one the warden has told Murphy his mother is seriously ill but refuses to give him a one-day pass to visit her. Murphy blows up and then there is a phone call that the warden, looking very dramatic, takes. We never find out what its about.
Frank Capra's cinematographer, 2 writers for Hopalong Cassidy and a Russian theatre director made this.
If this had been made a dozen years later, the biggest difference would be in the protagonist. He is a gormless innocent, drawn into contact with evil fate though no fault of his own. The noir's protagonist would share in the guilt; have a tragic or even fatal flaw. The sense is that in the 30s the depression came in and people thought: What did I do to deserve this? Even the opening music echoes the theme of The Forgotten Man. In the 40s, because of the utter despair of war, mass murder, and atomic annihilation, people accepted some culpability and answered their own question: Oh.
The story is that a homicide has occurred before the picture has begun. The police arrive at a nightclub to find George Murphy admitting he punched out this guy who was assaulting his dance partner in her dressing room after the guy pulled a gun on him. He hit his head falling blabalbla. His partner, Thelma Todd can clear him just by telling the DA what happened but she refuses under legal advise. She has a record. She says, "I don't know" so many times she's like a member of the Bush administration testifying before congress or in court.
He pleads guilty to manslaughter and gets 2-10 in the big house. He gets into a fight with his bunkmate when he's called "deary". He doesn't squeal on his Bunkie to the warden but doesn't get into trouble because he asks the warden what he would do if some man called him "deary"? "Why I'd " he fumes. What was that all about? He makes Murphy a trusty driving a truck out of the gates regularly. His bad bunkmate, Jack La Rue, hijacks the truck in an escape attempt. The truck goes over the side of the mountain killing La Rue and Murphy is so convinced that he'll be blamed for the escape attempt that he takes it on the lam.
At one point he has to swim away and the transition to a ship's hold is handled by a simple diagonal wipe. There he's discovered by a black cook (an excellent Clarence Muse) who is afraid at first "Stay where you are white man. I know who you are " but is impressed by his prison number (7117) which encourages him to enter a crap game. He wins and brings Murphy food and clothes. This is followed by a very European montage of Murphy making his way on this escape trail.
Murphy is stealing a bottle of milk on a doorstep when he's caught by the resident, a nightclub dancer (Nancy Carroll). Eventually he becomes a nightclub star again this time in a mask and known as the Knave of Hearts. He's doing great until Thelma Todd shows up again and puts the screws to him. She blackmails him and eventually tries to get him to dump Carroll and start up an act with her instead. Murphy knows she's poison and makes plans to split and Todd borrows a nickel and drops it on him. The cops come, Carroll says she'll wait for him and they take him away.
It shares, probably for similar reasons, one of the great virtues of noir films, an economically and tersely told story. The outcome is never in doubt, which resonates with the fatalism of the noir. There is a femme fatale, an evil presence who opens wide the gate of hell for the anti-hero.
Compare George Murphy's hick dufuss with say Tom Neal's schulmpy wise guy in DETOUR. Another difference is that while Murphy is caught, it takes place after a strange throwaway scene between the kindly warden and a cop whose an implacable foe laying out the possibilities of a parole and that the best thing for Murphy would be to get caught, for his own good. Even his girl, the good girl assures him she'll wait. A noir would have the anti- hero dying bleeding in the gutter. It was thought that one day the depression would be over and right would be restored and everybody would be free and happy again. There was no optimistic future after The Holocaust and The Bomb.
Of course, in the typical depression picture, not only would Murphy have to be caught, because crime could never be seen to pay, but the evil woman would have to get her comeuppance and probably make a death bed confession freeing Murphy. In AFTER THE DANCE not only isn't she punished for her causing an innocent man to go to jail but also nothing bad happens to her after she blackmails and then betrays Murphy. In a noir she would have been pulled down for her sins just as surely as the protagonist.
All three scenes with the warden have an odd ambiguity. In one the warden has told Murphy his mother is seriously ill but refuses to give him a one-day pass to visit her. Murphy blows up and then there is a phone call that the warden, looking very dramatic, takes. We never find out what its about.
Frank Capra's cinematographer, 2 writers for Hopalong Cassidy and a Russian theatre director made this.
He danced his way out of the jailhouse rock.
mark.waltz23 April 2020
Warning: Spoilers
George Murphy learn the hard way that some games are not to be trusted. he accidentally kills a man in her defense, and years later, he lives to regret it. He is sent to prison and manages to escape somehow, ending up as a masked dancer in a cabaret show with Nancy Carroll. By chance, the woman from his past (Thelma Todd) shows up and uses her knowledge of him being out of jail illegally to try and boost her fading career. Murphy gets to sing and dances with Carroll, and proves him to be as adept as Fred Astaire who was very popular with Ginger Rogers at the same time. Their styles are very similar in nature although Murphy for some reason ended up in B films even after his success on Broadway. Carol is an appealing heroine, and Todd is a very good femme fatale. Character actors like Arthur Hoyt and Victor Kilian add atmosphere to the prison sequences. It's a pretty good interesting B musical melodrama, not overstaying its welcome at just an hour's running time.
Hot Toddy Can Act
alonzoiii-14 June 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Thelma Todd, more famous for dying mysteriously than for her acting career, shows in this movie that, not only was she a good comic actress, but that she had a future in dramatic roles as well. In this one, she's the bad girl who lets Dan Dailey take the fall for manslaughter, even though she can prove it was justifiable homicide. When Dailey escapes prison and becomes a popular dancer, she becomes the compleat noir bad girl (about ten years early) and blackmails our hero. This one is worth seeing just for this performance. Nancy Carroll also is pretty good, and Dan Dailey is inoffensive.
The rest of the movie is OK -- mostly notable in that, while the movie is a musical, there isn't a moment of comedy in it. Instead, the plot is actually rather grim, with a fairly gloomy (but realistic) ending. The dancing is adequate. The songs that are rendered in Dailey's thin tenor are pretty forgettable.
The rest of the movie is OK -- mostly notable in that, while the movie is a musical, there isn't a moment of comedy in it. Instead, the plot is actually rather grim, with a fairly gloomy (but realistic) ending. The dancing is adequate. The songs that are rendered in Dailey's thin tenor are pretty forgettable.
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