The Great Flamarion
About The Great Flamarion
In a Mexico City cabaret in 1936 a shot is heard, and Connie Wallace is found strangled. Police hold her husband. The marksman Flamarion, himself shot, tells a stagehand what happened. On the vaudeville circuit he is an arrogant trick shot, with Connie as his assistant and her drunken husband Al as the other. Connie makes him love her and has him kill Al during the act so it looks like an accident. She tells him to wait three months, goes back to Hibbing, Minnesota, and takes up with another performer, Eddie. When she does not meet Flamarion, he drinks and gambles, then finds her. She says she never loved him and only wanted Al dead. He kills her and is dying when he gives the story.
Cast & crew
More about The Great Flamarion
Anthony Mann directed for producer W. Lee Wilder. Republic Pictures released the film on 30 March 1945. Heinz Herald, Richard Weil, and Anne Wigton wrote the screenplay from Vicki Baum's short story "Big Shot." John F. Link Sr. edited. Mann later said he had $150,000 and fourteen days, and refused Stroheim's idea of shooting the whole picture through the monocle.
Themes
Making
Mann called Stroheim difficult and a personality more than an actor, and said the monocle idea would not fit a fourteen-day schedule. Wilder produced it as a Republic release.
Look
James S. Brown Jr. photographed the picture, including the vaudeville gun act and the Mexico City frame story.
Music
Alexander László wrote the music.
Preservation
The film is in the public domain. A print is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Erich von Stroheim plays Flamarion. Mary Beth Hughes is Connie. Dan Duryea is Al Wallace. Stephen Barclay is Eddie.
- Lester Allen plays Tony. Esther Howard plays Cleo.
- The story is told in flashback from the Mexico City murder back through the vaudeville act.
- The film is in the public domain.
- Mann recalled Stroheim saying, "Tony, do you want to be a great director? Photograph the whole of Great Flamarion through my monocle!
Scenes
- Flamarion shoots Al during the act and the death is taken for an accident.
- Connie tells him in Mexico City that she never loved him.
- Wounded, he explains the strangling to a stagehand.
Influenced by
- Vicki Baum's short story "Big Shot
Also available
- Internet Archive (Great_Flamarion_1945)
