King Creole

Curtiz's intelligent, austere, film noir-ish direction provides the perfect antidote to the occasional excesses of a script based on a Harold Robbins novel (A Stone for Danny Fisher), and an ideal complement to Presley's performance as a street hustler who forges himself a magnetic rebel image through his music. The sequence in which he sings 'If you're looking for trouble' in a bus-boy's uniform in response to gangster Walter Matthau's dare is prime stuff.