Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

711 Ocean Drive Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 8, 2019

Note: This film is available as part of Noir Archive - Volume 1: 1944-1954.

While the frequently questionable “expertise” of Wikipedia asserts that film noir lasted from the early 1920s until the late 1950s, my hunch is at least some fans of film history would tend to proscribe the idiom’s heyday to a probably smaller window of time beginning at some point in the 1940s and then extending into some other point in the 1950s. If that proscription is accepted, it might then be arguable that there was no better purveyor of film noir than Columbia Pictures during this period. While many of the undisputed classics of film noir came from other studios, as in the case of Paramount’s Double Indemnity (released on Blu-ray through Universal, due to the vagaries of film catalogs changing hands), or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (released on Blu-ray through Warner Brothers, due to — well, you get the idea), Columbia Pictures managed to churn out a rather significant amount of noir offerings, albeit often in what would probably be termed the “B-movie” category. Kit Parker Films and Mill Creek Entertainment have now assembled nine of these rather interesting Columbia offerings in one three disc package, and for noir fans, there are at least a couple of rather notable films in this first collection (it looks like Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954- 1956 is due in a few months), as well as some other outings which frankly might be best categorized as oddities.

One of the kind of interesting things about at least a couple of films in this set is the prevalence of a putative “hero” who has at least some character flaws. The “therapeutic reporter” played by Melvyn Douglas in The Guilt of Janet Ames, for example, is shown to be more than a bit fond of tossing back a few at the local watering hole. Probably considerably further down the hole of moral turpitude is 711 Ocean Drive’s Mal Granger (Edmund O’Brien), a telephone repairman whose gambling habit actually starts to pay off when he becomes part of a nascent crime gang due to his expertise in electronics. In what kind of hilariously presages a key plot element in The Sting, Mal is able to deliver a little “broadcast” about race results, which in turn leads to untold riches and, unfortunately, a gangland murder that gets Mal in hot water.

711 Ocean Drive is one of the more interesting films in this set, due to its provocative emphasis on a bad guy who pretty much “gets away with it”, at least for a little while. There’s a subversive element to this film suggesting bad guys can actually prosper (at least for a little while), a kind of anarchic ambience that really helps the film achieve considerable energy despite some more rote aspects like Mal feeling romantic pangs for a moll named Gail Mason (Joanne Dru). There’s a terrifically staged climax at Boulder (i.e., Hoover) Dam, which plays in a weird kind of way sort of like the iconic sewer sequence in The Third Man .

711 Ocean Drive Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

711 Ocean Drive is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Mill Creek Entertainment and Kit Parker Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. Noir fans may well feel that this film is the highlight of this particular set, and those fans should be generally very well pleased with this transfer. There's a bit of image degradation during the kind of hilarious opening text crawl (one which insists the film was made despite threats from organized crime), but aside from just a few issues due to the prevalence of rather long held optical dissolves, this transfer offers a nicely resolved grain field and excellent detail levels. Fine detail on elements like the tweedy jackets O'Brien wears resolve without any problems whatsoever, and a lot of the location photography offers good depth of field and nicely modulated gray scale. Some of the "bumps" in and out of dissolves are perhaps longer than usual, and you can definitely see when things return to the primary element. There are a few signs of age related wear and tear, once again consigned mostly to minor speckling a bit of dirt now and then.

711 Ocean Drive Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

711 Ocean Drive sports a fine sounding DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track. This is another film that has at least some narration, and that element sounds consistently clear, as does all dialogue. Sound effects like gunshots have good energy, and the film's score also sounds clear and full bodied.

711 Ocean Drive Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this release.

711 Ocean Drive Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

711 Ocean Drive wraps up with some narration decrying the "disease" of gambling, in a moment that might have been shoehorned into The Killer That Stalked New York without too much trouble. This is an exciting thriller that may not have real "traditional" noir trappings, at least in terms of tons of chiaroscuro or even an iconic blonde femme fatale, but which still details the moral downfall of a guy who seems to be basically decent, aside from a debilitating gambling habit and a knowledge of electronics. Technical merits are solid, and 711 Ocean Drive comes Recommended.