If Casablanca was a cocktail of moral clarity and romanticism, Ride the Pink Horse is the flat beer you drink after, sweating in the sun and wondering what happened to your wallet.
Directed by and starring Robert Montgomery (yes, that Montgomery—he of Lady in the Lake first-person-experiment fame), Ride the Pink Horse (1947) is a noir that insists on baking its fatalism under a Southwestern sun instead of drowning it in rainy alleyways. Adapted from Dorothy B. Hughes' novel (she also penned the equally deliciously grim In a Lonely Place), the film follows Montgomery's Lucky Gagin—a name soaked in irony if ever there was one—as he arrives in a fictional New Mexican town to blackmail a corrupt politico, only to find himself wrapped in a sweaty cloak of small-town surrealism, existential threat, and mariachi music.
Criterion’s Blu-ray release gives this sun-bleached noir a transfer as crisp as the creases in Lucky's suit. The 4K restoration gleams, emphasizing Russell Metty’s arresting cinematography—where light isn’t so much an escape from darkness as it is a trap of its own. The daytime sequences are almost too vivid, like watching despair in HD. The audio, cleaned and clarified, still crackles with the sharp edges of postwar tension and Gagin’s weary, sardonic quips.
And the supplements? A film historian's fever dream. The commentary by Imogen Sara Smith is thoughtful, precise, and academically robust—like having a seminar in your living room, if your seminar leader also isn’t afraid to call out the film’s weird tonal tension between noir fatalism and vaguely folkloric absurdity. There’s a new interview on Hughes’ influence, which rightfully puts her back in the literary limelight, and an archival short from NBC’s Screen Directors Playhouse for those who enjoy comparing radio drama adaptations to their celluloid cousins (masochists, all).
But let’s be honest: Ride the Pink Horse is a film with a chip on its shoulder and a death wish in its pocket. It's not a smooth ride—it’s abrasive, uneven, occasionally bizarre (a titular carousel horse? Really?), and wholly compelling. It's noir with dust in its teeth and tequila in its bloodstream.
Criterion’s release gives it the museum polish it probably doesn’t deserve—but like Gagin, it somehow earns your begrudging respect anyway.
Verdict: For fans of noir who’ve had enough of shadowy cities and want their cynicism sun-drenched. Or for those who enjoy the Criterion Collection as a kind of high-art roulette: sometimes you get Bergman. Sometimes you get a pink horse.
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