Violent Saturday seems rooted in tradition, but as an exciting pulp story with a profound center, it manages to break all the rules.

The cast is a museum exhibit on the nigh-extinct art of scaled-in American bit acting, with the magnificent Sylvia Sidney as the daughter of a prominent family brought low, her flashing pridefulness intact, and Tommy Noonan as a peeping poltroon.

... Ernest Borgnine as a pacifist Amish farmer plunging a pitchfork into the back of the devil character played by Lee Marvin ....

The Brandenville Broth. Violent Saturday is directed by Richard Fleischer and adapted to screenplay by Sydney Boehm from the novel of the same name written by William L. Heath. It stars Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Lee Marvin, Stephen McNally, J. Carrol Naish, Tommy Noonan, Ernest Borgnine, Virginia Leith and Sylvia Sidney. Music is by Hugo Friedhoffer and cinematography by Charles G. Clarke. Stand Pat and Resist Evil. A simmering powder keg of criminality told in beautiful De Luxe and CinemaScope, Violent Saturday is one of the definitions of a slow burn movie that pays off with explosive aplomb. The town of Brandenville is the scene of a planned bank robbery by a trio of baddies led by Harper (McNally). The narrative has the trio arrive in town and plan for the robbery, as they move about the populace, a whole bunch of sub-plots pop up to maintain maximum interest and to of course set up the drama involving the robbery and the subsequent attempts at a getaway. I don't blame him – she moves like a Swiss watch. The characters are prime noir dwellers, they range from thieving dames and tramp wives, to a peeping tom, a drunkard husband and also a guilt ridden father, and this before we even get to the villains! Who, with Marvin in prime Benzedrine sniffing scumbag mode (he thinks nothing of hurting children), are truly shifty operators personified. The Arizona local…