Pun Salad

Mrs. Salad has gotten into a film noir mood. She composed a list of possible titles. Many of which she'd forgotten we watched during one of her previous film noir moods. But this one we hadn't seen, and it's free on Amazon Prime Video, so…

Bottom line: Ava Gardner is really easy on the eyes. Maybe the best way to watch this movie is to turn off the sound and fast forward through any scene she's not in? Unfortunately impractical in 2020; technology has brought us many wonders, but not the ability to do that. I'll suggest this to Jeff Bezos.

Anyway, the whistle stop of the title is the dinky town to which Ava returns from her high life in the big city (Chicago). She wants to sell her old house, so she never has to come back again. But she's waylaid by the attentions of two former suitors: George Raft, who's been spending his time turning into a lazy gambler with an alcohol problem; and Tom Conway, sleazy rich owner of a swanky nightclub. Both George and Tom flirt with criminality. There's also Victor McLaglen, playing "Gitlo", a bartender who's George's old buddy. He hatches a scheme to eliminate Tom… Well, it's pretty complicated, the scheme goes wrong, there's a chase, George gets shot, …

It's really tough to care about any of these people. Even Ava wears a little thin.