Wet Asphalt Movie Review

Calling this a "lost noir" is an uncommon stretch -- kind of like calling Blade II a "new classic" on TNT.

The store is a bit tricky -- and not helped being dubbed from German -- so try to follow along. The story involves a disgraced journalist (Horst Buchholz), back on the job after a stint in jail, Horst's paper is suddenly lacking a story. So his new boss simply makes one up, a ridiculous tale about Germans living under Poland in the six years since WW II has been over, and a blind one who has survived the ordeal.

Naturally, a sensation erupts, and the story balloons out of control. It becomes a worldwide story. German widows insist that the blind soldier must be their long-thought-dead husband.

For a noir, though, there's not a lot of mystery about where this will all end up. The hoax will be revealed, the heroes will fall, and we'll probably wonder what happened to the last 90 minutes of our lives. Maybe the issue is it being pegged as a noir. When the biggest crime in the movie is fabricating a story, well, that kind of thing worked in Shattered Glass, but people just weren't that jaded in 1958.

Students of quirky film relics may find something of curiosity here. Most others can give it a pass.

Aka Nasser Asphalt.