an unconventional movie for christmas
Mr. Soft Touch (Gordon Douglas and Henry Levin, 1949)
Imagine, if you will, a movie about a charming ruffian and a principled social worker falling in love. Now imagine a movie that is about a war veteran who’s stolen a lot of money from the mob on the run before they feed him into a cement mixer. Now imagine a Christmas movie. Now imagine these are all one movie. Now imagine that this single movie is directed by two different men, who, between them, have maybe produced one other movie you’ve heard of or seen.1 Now imagine the male lead of this movie is called, for real, “Joe Miracle.”
That’s Mr. Soft Touch. It sounds like a disaster and it really should be a disaster. But it’s not. Its shifts in tone should be comically severe but… it all works.
Joe Miracle (Glenn Ford) used to run a club with his friend Leo. But then Joe went off to war, and when he came back home, Leo had disappeared and the club has been take…
