NOIR OF THE WEEK: Selections from the Blackboard

NOTW 8/15/10 THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS by Rand

2010-08-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS

1944/USA

Director: Jean Negulesco
Screenplay by Frank Gruber from the novel A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS by Eic Ambler
Cinematographer: Arthur Edeson
Lead actors: Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson
Supporting actors: Victor Fracen, Steven Geray, Eduardo Ciannelli, Florence Bates

A noir of international intrigue, The Mask of Dimitrios launched the film career of Zachary Scott, and featured noir stalwarts Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Faye Emerson, Victor Francen, Steven Geray, and Eduardo Ciannelli. Jean Negulesco directed Frank Gruber's screenplay adapted from Eric Ambler's novel, with cinematography by Arthur Edeson.

Gruber's screenplay is remarkably faithful to Ambler's novel, with Lorre's portrayal of thriller author Cornelius Leyden as a slightly befuddled naif coalescing nicely with Greenstreet's alternately warm and solicitous, then cold, hard and greedy Mr. Peters, seeking vengeance on his former partner, Scott's Dimitrios. Emerson is the slatternly madame done wrong by Dimitrios, and the others are various functionaries who help Leyden on his quest for the former fig packer's story. Starting in Istanbul with the discovery of Dimitrios Makropoulos' body, Leyden alternates between blunders and cleverness in tracing Dimitrios across the Balkans, from Turkey to Greece to Bulgaria and finally to where all good pre-WWII intrigues end up, Paris.

Edeson's photography is strikingly evocative, much more so than the somewhat bland look of his work on The Maltese Falcon. His work here is informed more by the darker style Hal Wallis encouraged him to use on Casablanca.

There are no heroes in The Mask of Dimitrios. The officials who help guide Leyden on his quest reveal themselves to be venal, pompous, and corrupt, and, in one instance, easily corrupted by Dimitrios. Scott demonstrates the cool but sleazy womanizer character he would make his trademark in subsequent films noirs. From simple theft to robbery and murder, Dimitrios climbs the criminal staircase to political assassin and kingmaker, but with missteps and loss of fortune along the way. From vicious, snarling conniver to weaselly supplicant, Dimitrios seems always to survive to gain another day in the maelstrom that was, and is, the Balkans.

Leyden's and Peters' quest to find the truth of the fig packer's end leads to a rendezvous in an abandoned hotel that brings the story full circle to a bloody dénouement.

For sophisticated intrigue and conspiracy, The Mask of Dimitrios does not disappoint. The ensemble cast could hardly be improved on, with both Lorre and Scott doing perhaps their finest film work. This is one to watch and you might check out Ambler's roman noir as well. Both are worth the effort.

NOTW 6/23/08: THE GREAT GATSBY by Don Malcolm

2010-08-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

THE GREAT GATSBY

1949/USA

Director: Elliott Nugent
Cinematographer: John Seitz
Screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Lead actors: Alan Ladd, Betty Field, Macdonald Carey
Supporting actors: Ruth Hussey, Barry Sullivan, Howard Da Silva, Shelley Winters, Henry Hull, Carole Mathews

John T. Irwin, in his literary etiology of film noir (Unless The Threat of Death Is Behind Them, Johns Hopkins, 2006), identifies F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as the literary fulcrum for the invention of hard-boiled fiction.

Well before the rise of the gangster film, Fitzgerald linked romance and amour fou with the underworld and set in motion forces that would ultimately coalesce into the world of film noir as it is now known to us.

The literary debt of the five “founding” hard-boiled writers (Burnett, Cain, Chandler, Hammett and Woolrich) to Fitzgerald is also clearly delineated by Irwin.

But does this mean that The Great Gatsby is, in and of itself, “noir” by any possible sense of the term? And what about the film version made in 1949, at the apex of noir’s presence in Hollywood? How does it fit into that stylistic formulation and historical jjgsaw puzzle?

Regarding Fitzgerald’s novel, it seems clear that the term “noir precursor” is the most appropriate characterization. The story becomes more lurid as it plays out, approaching hard-boiled fiction if only for its plot elements (the zombie-like revenge of Wilson, the grief-stricken cuckold) if not for its linguistic gear-shifting as the confrontation between Gatsby and Tom Buchanan comes out into the open.

As for the film, it’s clear that a series of tantalizing opportunities to tilt it firmly into the realm of noir existed during its long production prehistory. While most of these opportunities were not fully incorporated into the finished product, enough of the residual elements were captured so that the film can be viewed in the penumbra of noir.

Paramount came close to assigning Raymond Chandler himself to the screenwriting chores. Chandler’s agent, H. N. Swanson, who represented many notable writers (including Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and James M. Cain), had attempted to steer Chandler into such an arrangement prior to his team-up with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity. Once that project achieved its runaway success, Chandler’s services were focused more exclusively on “pulp” source materials.

James M. Cain was assigned to a scriptwriting cycle on Gatsby right after WW II ended. Unlike Chandler, who intensely admired the book, Cain had little affinity for the material and his efforts to rewrite the ending caused him to be summarily dismissed from the project.

The adaptation finally wound up in the hands of Cyril Hume, an old crony of Fitzgerald’s, and a bright young writer-producer, Richard Maibuam, who was working his way up the ranks at Paramount, having demonstrated some rapport with Alan Ladd in developing the successful espionage film O.S.S. for the studio’s most bankable male star. (Maibaum’s claim to prominence would be cemented a few decades later, when he became a prime mover in the immensely successful series of James Bond films.)

In the midst of shaping the Gatsby script, Maibaum served as producer for John Farrow’s The Big Clock, but the two men did not get along, quashing any hope that the talented but arrogant Farrow would assume the director’s chair for Gatsby. Instead, the film was assigned to Broadway veteran Elliott Nugent, a contract director with little affinity for either literary material or films with a dark visual style. (The closest Nugent had come to noir was the Bob Hope parody My Favorite Brunette.)

The resulting film is carried into the borderlands of noir by the writing team and by the presence of Alan Ladd himself. Ladd had been fascinated by the prospect of playing Gatsby for some time, and exerted unremitting pressure upon Paramount to make the film. In it, he proves that his judgment concerning his affinity for the role is justified.

Hume and Maibaum instinctively pushed the screenplay structure toward what we now recognize as classic noir strategies: the story is told in multiple flashbacks, and Fitzgerald’s evocative but leisurely digressions into the emptiness of social climbing are neatly excised in favor of a more direct portrayal of Gatsby’s reckless pursuit of Daisy.

As with the novel, the script becomes darker and more lurid as the climax nears. Barry Sullivan is particularly adept at capturing the layers within Tom Buchanan’s consummate lack of character, and his actions become pivotal to the fatal finale.

But it is Ladd who does virtually all of the emotional heavy lifting—no mean feat when one recalls his well-documented (and often caricatured) “steely reserve.” Here, however, we can see Ladd has refined and deepened his skill at acting with his eyes. In his scenes of self-revelation with Nick Carraway (Macdonald Carey) and in his scenes with Daisy (Betty Field), we see how comprehensively Ladd has succeeded in capturing Gatsby’s obsessive love—and the relentless drive that has propelled him to such grandiose acts of impersonation.

Ladd’s performance is itself sufficient to carry The Great Gatsby over the threshold into the noir universe, despite the indifferent staging that Nugent often provides for the unfolding action. It’s as if a “noir paint-by-numbers” kit had been handed to the creative team and the most obviously characteristic attributes of noir were then applied to the production effort. Cinematographer John Seitz is a bit more circumspect than is usually the case, slowly building the use of light/shadow effects over the course of the film, highlighting these only in key flashback sequences and in the closing scenes at Gatsby’s pool, where Wilson’s misplaced revenge takes place.

Those key flashbacks, featuring character actor Henry Hull as Dan Cody, Gatsby’s first mentor, represent Hume and Maibaum’s most significant departure from the novel. Cody’s character is significantly expanded, and he takes on distinctly Mephistophelian elements. Hull, often hammy elsewhere, is startlingly effective in this role, with its taunting, sadistic edginess, as a bully who delights in torturing Gatsby over his attraction to Cody’s desirable young wife (played with great skill by the criminally underutilized Carole Mathews).

It is an obsession-defining sequence that gives us an intriguing fix on Gatsby’s inner self, and Ladd captures the nuances within this strange personality trait, making it clear how the character could graduate to a more encompassing, all-consuming love quest.

Noir fixtures such as Elisha Cook Jr, Ed Begley, Howard Da Silva (as Wilson), Shelley Winters (Wilson’s wife, who is having an affair with Tom Buchanan), and the unsinkable Tito Vuolo wend their way through the proceedings, adding ambience to the oddly uniform “noir veneer” that hovers in the air with a strangely indefinite insistence.

The theme of amour fou that Fitzgerald parallels so deftly in the novel (one cannot seek redemption through love, one can only be redeemed by setting limits on love) is focused solely on Gatsby in the film. (Nick’s affair with Jordan Baker is the low-key contrasting action in the book.) Nevertheless, its application is strong enough to remind us of how central such a theme is to the romantic underpinnings of noir: Gatsby’s grandiose acts of reinvention are parallel to the “escape from the self” that obsesses and ultimately entraps so many noir heroes—many of whom are, without knowing it, following in his footsteps.

The 1949 version of The Great Gatsby remains in limbo along with much of the Paramount-Universal catalogue; eclipsed unfairly by the empty gloss of the 1974 version featuring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, it is exceptionally obscure--especially given the esteem in which the novel is held. While nowhere near a masterpiece, it is nonetheless a fascinating artifact, and has much to tell us about the forces at work in the noir era--forces that, like Gatsby himself, were driven to a grandiosity that remains tantalizingly larger-than-life.

NOTW 3/14/10: CALCUTTA by Rand

2010-04-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

CALCUTTA

1947/USA

Released by Paramount Pictures
Directed by John Farrow
Produced and Written by Seton I Miller
Cinematography by John F Seitz
Lead actors: Alan Ladd, Gail Russell, William Bendix, June Duprez
Supporting actors: Edith King, Lowell Gilmore, John Whitney, Benson Fong

Alan Ladd stars as Neale Gordon, former CBI (China/Burma/India) “hump” pilot during WWII now flying freight over the hump aka the Himalayas, from Calcutta to Chungking, China along with wartime buddies Pedro (pronounced "Pee-dro" by Ladd) Blake (William Bendix) and Bill Cunningham (John Whitney).

Ladd was entering the peak years of his box office prowess in 1947, ranking 7th among male actors, ahead of such luminaries as Cary Grant, Van Johnson, Roy Rogers, Fred MacMurray, and Tyrone Power. I mention this because of the remarkable obscurity today of most of Ladd's pictures, especially from the late 40s.

And Calcutta may be the most obscure of them all. I worked pretty hard at obtaining it 11 or 12 years ago when I first got serious about collecting film noir and ended up with three different versions, all of which had parts missing, one of which was mostly unwatchable. Still, I cobbled together a mostly complete version.

One thing immediately noticeable about Calcutta is the music. The opening credits are backed by an appealing, somewhat oriental score by Victor Young that suits the exotic setting very effectively. The movie begins with Gordon and Blake flying their loaded C-47 cargo plane towards Calcutta. An engine failure over the hump forces them down in a mountain valley. Although hundreds of bomber and cargo plane crews died under similar circumstances during the late war, Gordon sets his crippled bird down without even blowing a tire, demonstrating the preternatural calm competence that Alan Ladd characters always have in spades. This incident also gives Farrow an opportunity to get Gordon's shirt off while he's working on the aircraft, another necessity for a Ladd picture at the time. Why it's so hot in a Himalayan valley is not explained.

Cunningham flies the necessary parts to his partners (also landing with no problem) and we're given a glimpse of the relationship of the three. After retiring to a fortuitously nearby bar, Cunningham drops a bomb on the boys, informing them of his upcoming nuptials. Another Ladd character trait—misogyny—pops up here, with Gordon informing his buddy that, “You've combed enough dames out of your hair to know what they want! STABILITY!!” Pedro pipes in, “You can't do this to us!"”

But Cunningham defends his betrothed, says she would never want to “bust us up,” and elicits a promise from the boys to attend a party to meet the lucky wench. Then he picks a fight with another patron who has tripped over his foot, even though avoiding such recreation was a condition for Gordon and Blake to agree to come to the bar. Cunningham has shown up with a bandage on his face from another recent disagreement and we get the idea of his hotheadedness. The ensuing brawl is one-sided, except for Cunningham who's promptly flattened. After hauling their buddy back to his plane, Gordon and Blake reaffirm their appearance at the party.

Tragedy intervenes, however, and they learn of Cunningham's strangulation death at the hands of the thugee death cult on their return to Calcutta. Gordon shows no emotion at the news (stoicism—another Ladd character trait), merely asking for time off to conduct his own investigation, natch.

Another character is now introduced, as the scene shifts to a casino: we meet chanteuse Marina Tanev (June Duprez), lovely in a clinging gown, singing a haunting tune—in French no less.

Gordon and Blake have entered and Marina joins them at their table. They quiz her on the circumstances of their friend’s death; Marina defends Cunningham's fiancee from Gordon's description of her as a “dame.” June Duprez may be the most intriguing character in the movie, an adult in a one-sided relationship with Gordon, who knows she isn't the most important thing to him. When Gordon leaves to interrogate the casino owner on the circumstances of the murder, Blake stays behind to try to convince Marina to leave Gordon! Some buddy. But Marina is OL with the way things are and she says so. A non-possessive woman in a noir? Hmmm.

Gordon finds Eric Lasser, the owner of the casino, and also meets a Mr. Malik, an Indian of indeterminate means, who makes rather indiscreet comments about the beauty of Miss Virginia Moore (Gail Russell), Cunningham's fiance. Ladd eventually finds Miss Moore and is immediately suspicious of her story of Cunningham's last evening with her.

Russell is the weakest link in Calcutta, sleepwalking throughout the film. Although cast because of a successful pairing with Ladd in Salty O'Rourke, Russell's effort in this film is stultifying, with her character's attempts at subterfuge being not only completely unconvincing, but laughable.

After snapping an expensive necklace, a gift from Cunningham, off the neck of Miss Moore, Gordon meets the final noteworthy performer in Calcutta, Edith King as Mrs. Smith, a somewhat shady businesswoman who sold the necklace to “that big, good-looking pilot. If I were twenty years younger, I could have gone for him.” Gordon now starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together when the stories of Moore and Lasser, who claims Cunningham won the money at the tables, don't quite fit. However, Mrs. Smith verifies Moore's story.

In returning to his room, Gordon finds Marina in his bathtub. When she emerges in a voluminous robe, Gordon says, “You should have worn Pedro's(!) robe. It wouldn't fit you so tight.” One must use one's imagination in several ways here. One, to picture June Duprez in a different robe than the one she's wearing and, two, to wonder why Pedro and Neale must share a room? When Gordon has only a perfunctory kiss for her, Marina tells him, “It's no fun being in love with you.” But when Virginia shows up (after things have warmed up considerably), Marina takes care to show her possession of Gordon, kissing him and straightening his jacket lapel. But she must go to rehearsal, leaving Gordon and Virginia to retire to a nearby drinking establishment to work on their suddenly burgeoning relationship.

Malik also re-enters the picture, with Blake discovering his involvement in “importing and exporting goods” (aka smuggling). Gordon searches his plane, discovering a hidden cache of jewelry, and is attacked by a thugee in the same manner as his late partner. Gordon, of course, is an Alan Ladd character, cool and confident, and manages to survive the attack, although his assailant escapes. Blake, who continues his habit of showing up a bit late for the fisticuffs, is still steamed to discover that Ladd has actually let the thugee escape!

Then, a key turning point occurs: Malik pays a visit to Gordon at his hotel and ends up dead in the hall moments after leaving.

Gordon finds that Virginia is missing and her room ransacked, which leads to another fine June Duprez moment, when Gordon asks the desk clerk if the bed had been slept in, to which Marina, no fool, says, “I'm glad you asked that!” She then asks Neale if he has fallen for Virginia—“You have all the symptoms”—and when the reply is affirmative, she replies: “Well, we'd better find her then." You've got to love a woman like that.

Things move to a climax pretty quickly from that point, with screenwriter Miller borrowing liberally from The Maltese Falcon to wrap things up. Marina sends Gordon off on another trip over the hump with the comment that he's safer in the air than with a woman.

Ladd is cast very much to type in the film and does a competent job, but the real pleasure in the cast is Duprez, who brings good looks and a very attractive and adult demeanor to her role. Edith King is also good, while William Bendix doesn't have much to do in this one. As I've mentioned, the real disappointment is Gail Russell, whose somnolent performance really drags the entire movie down, making what would otherwise be a scintillating exercise in noir exotica into a mostly routine, suspenseless thriller.

NOTW 1/4/10 THERESE DESQUEYROUX by Don Malcolm

2010-03-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

THERESE DESQUEYROUX

(1962/FRANCE)

Director: Georges Franju
Screenplay: Francois Mauriac, Claude Mauriac and Georges Franju from the novel by Francois Mauriac
Cinematographers: Raymond Heil, Christian Matras
Music: Maurice Jarre

Lead actors: Emmanuelle Riva, Philippe Noiret
Supporting actors: Sami Frey, Edith Scob, Renee Devillers, Helene Dieudonee, Jacques Monod

As our idea of the noir landscape continues to expand, there are more intriguing discoveries from foreign lands to confirm the power of carefully crafted mise-en-scene and its ability to explore dark interior regions.

One of these discoveries is French director Georges Franju, whose directing career did not begin until his late 40s with La tete contre les murs (Head Against the Wall/1959), which almost certainly had an impact on Samuel Fuller’s 60s films Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss.

Franju is best known in American for his film Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without A Face/1960), a film pitched more toward horror than noir but, like Lewton, showing the tendon-like connections between the two narrative languages. It’s a film that deserves its own examination in the context of noir, as does Franju’s next film, Pleins feux sur l’assassin (Spotlight on a Murderer/1961).

Therese Desqueyroux, made the next year with the striking blonde star of Les yeux san visage, Edith Scob, in a secondary role, is a woman’s noir that fits squarely in the female voiceover subgenre explored by Britta Sjogren at last year’s “Into the Vortex” series at PFA.

Therese (played with remarkable sensitivity and attention to detail by the great Emmanuelle Riva, best known in America for her starring role in Hiroshima Mon Amour) is a failed murderess who suddenly finds herself imprisoned by her baffled, loutish husband (Philippe Noiret).

Via a long set of flashbacks that take up the first three-fifths of the film, we come to see Therese’s existential malaise: thwarted lesbianism, provincial puffery, and an odd, pervasive sense of entrapment by the landscape itself, tellingly repeated in a series of bridging shots that symbolize the increasing encroachment of the world on the individual.

We see how Therese longs for a freedom she cannot have--a divorce will leave her without any means of support--and how the murder impulse becomes almost an matter of aesthetics. It does not hurt her chances for sympathy that her husband is such a monstrous provincial boor, with all of the failings and blinded viewpoints that tyrants of remote lands tend to possess.

The only respite for Therese comes in a fleeting association with a young man (played by Sami Frey, shortly to become a key face in the nouvelle vague) who is the love interest of her sister-in-law (Scob). He is from an old Jewish family and as a result is disapproved of by the Desqueyroux family. As a man, his options are infinitely greater than Therese’s, and their intellectual interaction (where Therese is clearly his equal) only shows how out of place she is in the world she is forced to inhabit.

Once she is imprisoned in the family home, Therese begins to starve herself. It is a form of existential brinksmanship, and it leads to a relaxation of the harsh conditions that the husband has imposed. Eventually she is permitted to move to Paris, where she will be supported in a modest way and will only be obligated to appear at key family functions (weddings and funerals, the key symbolic events in provincial Catholicism).

There is a bracing final scene between Therese and her husband (played superbly by Noiret, who captures every feature of the character’s small-mindedness) where he attempts to draw out the reasons why she tried to kill him. Naturally, her attempts to describe the impulse in terms of an aesthetic/existential context fall on deaf, disbelieving ears.

At the film’s close, we see Therese on the streets in Paris, freed--and yet, in her thoughts, she finds herself drawn back to the imprisoning branches of the provincial forest, which dominate the final shot.

Like Mizoguchi in Japan, who created a series of dark proto-feminist melodramas over the course of the 30s and 40s, Franju explores what might best be characterized as the flip side of the femme fatale conundrum--the need for a true independence that, when thwarted, often takes a destructive turn.

Therese Desqueyroux has some interesting affinities with Yves Allegret’s seminal 1949 noir, Une se jolie petite plage: both films avail themselves of beautiful landscapes turned barren and withering, and that seem to become active agents in overpowering the will to freedom. We can only conclude that the wounded protagonists of these films will have extreme difficulty in overcoming the spirit-draining events they’ve experienced. The two lead actors in these films (Gerard Philipe and Emmanuelle Riva) give performances that fully inhabit these harrowing interior realms, providing us with a broader, more encompassing sense of what a “noir protagonist” is all about.

NOTW 2/1/10 WHEN STRANGERS MARRY by Carl

2010-03-13T08:19:00.000-08:00

WHEN STRANGERS MARRY

1944/USA

Directed by William Castle
Screenplay by Dennis Cooper and Philip Yordan from a story by William K. Howard and George Moskov
Cinematography by Ira Morgan
Starring Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum, Neil Hamilton

“I have seldom for years now seen one hour so energetically and sensibly used.” – James Agee

“It isn’t as slick as Double Indemnity or as glossy as Laura, but it’s better acted and better directed by William Castle than either.” – Orson Welles

To think, such high praise from such high people was heaped upon this Monogram cheapie even before it also could be classified as one of the first genuine examples of film noir at the outset of the classic period. And if that isn’t enough, this early B wonder offers the first Robert Mitchum performance in the noir genre, and a pretty fine one at that.

So why isn’t When Strangers Marry (aka Betrayed) mentioned in the same breath with DI and Laura anymore? Why isn’t it even mentioned in some "all-inclusive" books like The Rough Guide To Film Noir at all? Goodness, why has it never been available on video or DVD? Its festival screenings have been few and far between, even though it was the leadoff film at the Egyptian Theater’s second annual Festival of Film Noir way back in 2000. So it’s hardly lost, just too often forgotten or ignored.

The film deserves better, even if it may have been a tad overhyped by Welles. Agee is probably a bit more spot-on, because WSM is a lean-and-mean 67 minutes that demonstrate how effective and potentially great a budget film can still be if you have a dynamic script (by a young Philip Yordan), committed actors and a director who accepts the challenge of his limitations to produce something special.

When Strangers Marry was made in seven days on a budget of $50,000 by the future horror schlockmeister William Castle, a $100-a-week contract director at Columbia at the time he was loaned to Monogram and the notorious King brothers (who later would produce an acknowledged noir classic, Gun Crazy). But the company was intent on delivering something worthwhile, and in the process, may have done even more.

It’s hard to believe the images of Manhattan were essentially recreated on a handful of small, sparsely decorated sets, but Castle somehow pulled it off, to degree that he takes us on a tour of Harlem and an all-black urban juke joint, a real shocker in a film from 1944.

The story: A young waitress from a small town in Ohio (played by 22-year-old Kim Hunter) has married a middle-aged traveling salesman (played by a 37-year-old Dean Jagger looking more like 47) after just a few meetings. She agrees to rendezvous with him on one of his sales trips in New York City, where they’ll enjoy a first-class honeymoon.

When she gets to NYC, however, her new hubby mysteriously hasn’t arrived at the hotel from his previous stop in Philadelphia. Instead, the young girl happens upon an old boyfriend who is also a salesman – played by a 27-year-old Mitchum – who comforts her big-city angst and also tries to assist her in finding her husband. But when word comes of a strangulation and robbery at the Philadelphia hotel where her husband was working. all signs point to Hunter’s new hubby as the killer/thief.

Hunter's character Millie Baxter (now there's a Middle America moniker) doesn’t buy it at first, even when Jagger's character Paul Baxter finally arrives covertly under an alias and tells her to meet him in a slum-area apartment on the Bleeker Street. The couple gets along swell at first and they tour the city as planned, albeit with the unscheduled detour into Harlem. But as Jagger’s behavior becomes more cryptic, she starts to suspect him of the crimes.

Mitchum massages her suspicions to the point where she’s near hysteria, but then comes a surprise twist in the suspenseful climax. As a cherry to the unlikelihood of such a strong film, a gorgeous young Rhonda Fleming turns up in a cameo that serves as the closing denouement.

Somehow, it all worked, and despite its short running time, When Strangers Marry never feels terribly rushed or sloppy. One wonders if it had been a longer movie on a bigger budget whether it could have been nearly as effective. Doubtful. It was simply was one of those rare convergences of unproven talent that delivered the first noteworthy B film of the classic noir era, even if they didn’t know it at the time.

In fact, one scene in particular almost acts as the preface to Noir 101 – Hunter as the young, virginal Middle America girl in her first trip to the cold, foreboding, predatory city. She’s all alone in an oversized, impersonal hotel room, with a large neon sign across the street blaring its blinking lights into the room and a shrill, loud jazz band tooting a jitterbug riff at a nearby nightclub. Without dialogue, it’s a pure two-minute expression of the noir idiom: the comfort, safety, and naivete of a small-town existence gives way to the dangerous, invasive, sinful and frightening clamor of the urban jungle. Finally, as she's near the point of hysteria, a phone rings that nearly shakes her out of her shoes.

Brilliant, brilliant stuff. Hunter undergoes an emotional transformation during the scene, almost as if she’s been violated. Without question, she has been subliminally raped of her innocence. In the bigger scheme of things, the scene almost serves as a gateway clip of to what was to come in the film noir world over the next 15 years. If nothing else, that one scene is what makes WSM essential to the noir canon.

Of course, it is much more than that, and as a bonus, we have Mitchum’s breakout performance to boot. Some critiques I’ve read of WSM paint him as stiff and amateurish in his role as the spurned boyfriend Fred Graham (how's that for a Middle America name?). I would go the other way. While there are a few rough edges, you also see every side of Mitchum that would soon make him an icon. The suave, stolid persona. The dreamy walk. The heavy-lidded indifference. And in the end, of course, we even get a prelude to the Night Of The Hunter/Cape Fear Mitch. He also gets a couple of helpful props in the film. He has a Boston terrier companion who travels with him, and he also smokes a pipe, which give him the initial aire of a trusting, responsible and caring soul.

I love this Mitchum performance because some of his detail work regarding simple mannerisms is already impeccable. Watch the scene of him alone at a breakfast table, smoking a cigarette and paying the check. Tough to explain, but nobody but Mitch can make it look like such a cool thing. He already had that especial cinematic presence, even if he didn’t completely realize it (the Kings did, and tried desperately to sign Mitchum to a long-term contract during filming ... without success).

The rest of the cast works well here, too. Jagger is solid (if a bit unbelievable that he possibly could steal away Hunter from a young, hunky Mitchum) as the husband looking old enough to be Hunter’s father. At first Jagger seems so mysterious and menacing, and in the end he’s such a lamb. Two character actors also help give this film a very big lift. Portly Dick Elliott, who probably played more mayors than anybody in film history, plays the boorish drunk businessman to the hilt, flashing his money in the bar and essentially begging someone to rob him in the opening scene. The other is Lou Lubin, the jockey-sized man with the sad, bony cheeks who most often portrays hoods, bums or newspaper jockeys. He’s the bartender here who incriminates Jagger’s character as the most likely murderer, and he has one very effective scene with Hunter at a police station. The police inspector might look familiar, too: he's Neil Hamilton, who played Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series.

The scene with Hunter and Jagger hiding inside the black jazz club to escape the threat of the law is another interlude of wonder, an accurate portrayal of how blacks and whites lived in two distinctly separate worlds, and rarely tread on each others turfs. There is something of a racist moment during the scene when sirens go off and all of the black people look up with bug-eyed guilty looks on their faces. But all returns to normal when its discovered it’s just the black boxing champion (obviously a faux Joe Louis) arriving by motorcade at the club after defending his title uptown. The scene closes with an intriguing dialogue between two black motorcycle cops as they discuss a bet on the fight, another rare instance from that time period when an African American is shown holding a dignified job and wasn’t portrayed as a maid, butler, shoeshine boy or janitor. In short, it may be another reason to admire this film.

It’s probably a bit of a shame that When Strangers Marry was adopted as the predominant title for this work as opposed to its alternate title, Betrayed. The former doesn’t really hint to much as powerful film noir, the latter pretty much stamps it. Sadly, legal issues over the Monogram holdings have been cited as a reason WSM doesn’t show up on TV too often and hasn’t received the DVD treatment it merits. But it is work tracking down if you haven't seen it. It is a certified B classic that lives up to the early high notices it receives from Agee and Welles, as well as Manny Farber. It even takes it a step beyond--in retrospect, it is essential to understanding the development of film noir in the first half of the 1940s.

NOTW 2/8/10: TWO O'CLOCK COURAGE (by DT Out West)

2010-03-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

TWO O'CLOCK COURAGE

1945/USA

Directed by Anthony Mann
Screenplay by Robert E. Kent
Starring: Tom Conway, Ann Rutherford
With: Richard Lane, Bettejane Greer, Jean Brooks

Years before stories of those suffering from the effects amnesia became the stocking trade of the Lifetime Network; they were a staple of film noir. A bevy of films with memory lost as a central focus point were churned out with names like The Crooked Way, Impact, The Unsuspected and one of my personal favorites, amnesia or otherwise, Somewhere in the Night.

Two O’Clock Courage, put out by RKO in 1945 is one more of those film noirs using amnesia as the hub of the wheel around which rotates murder, double-crosses, false accusations, and a boat load of wise cracking. The over abundance of wise cracking pretty much relegates this story to the sub, sub genre of “noir lite.” While it’s got the requisite mayhem, cops, guns & dames it lacks any sense of desperation and the cornball ending pretty much leaves no option whatsoever for this breezy 82 minute programmer to be taken seriously. This is all fine if you’re in the mood for something along the lines of Fly-By-Night, Take One False Step or one of the Falcon films.

I specially make mention to The Falcon as Two O’Clock Courage stars, as the falsely accused murderer and amnesia sufferer, Tom Conway. Conway, the older brother of George Sanders, starred as Tom Lawrence, in 10 films tracking the adventures of the debonair P.I. The Falcon. Conway’s acting, and mannerisms coupled with the story line and its release date occurring during the run of the Falcon series makes in practically impossible to separate the two.

Two O’Clock Courage opens with a scene of the back of a staggering male shuffling through the dark over the obligatory wet pavement towards a single street lamp of a dimly lit corner. The moaning of a fog horn and the street names on the lamp post (Ocean View & Arch Street) cleanly places the action near some unnamed waterfront. Once under the dim glow of the light we can make out the face of Conway and see a trickle of blood from his left temple.

Upon righting himself, his first move is to attempt to cross the street right in the path of an on coming taxi. The cab of course comes to a screeching halt with the cabbie bellowing “Get back on the curb, you idiot!” Well, “bellowing” isn’t quite the right word as the cabbie turns out to be the former main squeeze of Andy Hardy, Polly Benedict, I mean Ann Rutherford.

If you guess Rutherford gets Conway into her cab and the two of them get into various jams, figure out who he is, elude the cops (on several occasions), prove he didn’t commit a murder, catch the real murderer and live happily ever after; then go to the head of the class.

With such an easy to figure story and the way it’s acted out, it’d be easy to dismiss Two O’Clock Courage. What does make it of interest is that it’s an early directorial turn by Anthony Mann. Yes that Anthony Mann of such noirs as Desperate, Railroaded, T-Men, Raw Deal, and He Walked by Night, etc, etc, etc. It also bears noting he; working along with Jimmy Stewart, Mann pretty much transformed the Saturday matinee shoot-em-up western into films identified as “adult westerns.” It should be enough that taken as an early entry to the cannon of Mann alone makes Two O’Clock Courage a worthwhile film to view.

A few other points; first the title Two O’Clock Courage is completely misleading as “two o’clock,” as in time, never figures in the story. Rather it’s the name of a play and the royalties associated with it over which the murder in question is committed.

As noted, if one needs an excuse to watch the film, “directed by Anthony Mann” should suffice, but if you need a another nudge how about it’s also the film debut of one of the great femme fatals in noir, Bettejane Greer, who’d soon be Jane Greer. While not given much to do, nevertheless when she’s on screen she’s captivating.

Couple other notables lending support are Charles C. Wilson who not surprisingly plays a newspaper editor. A quick review of his almost 250 screen credits revealed he played an editor on at least 18 occasions and a cop in the darn near all the rest. Lastly, I’d be remiss if not mentioning Richard Lane, who here grabs third billing. Lane plays a newshound with a nose for a story and a mouth with an always ready snappy retort. Truth be known his mouth works a lot better than his nose as he’s constancy wrong and ends up being one other anatomical part, the butt of most of the jokes. As child of the 50’s growing up in LA, Lane was a stalwart of local channel KTLA broadcasting live sporting events such as Jalopy Derby, Wrestling from the Olympic Auditorium and the LA T-Birds of Roller Derby. Of course no mention can be made of Lane without noting his name became the punch line for the joke about the renaming of the famous make-out stretch of road along Mulholland Drive; Dick Lane.

NOTW 9/28/09: BLONDE ICE (by DAN IN THE MW)

2009-10-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

BLONDE ICE

1948/USA

Director: Jack Bernhard
Screenplay: Kenneth Garnet from the novel “Once Too Often” by Whitman Chambers. Uncredited co-workers on adaptation: Dick Irving Hyland, Raymond L. Shrock, and Edgar G. Ulmer
Cinematography: George Robinson
Lead actors: Leslie Brooks, Robert Paige, John Holland
Supporting actors: Russ Vincent, Michael Whalen, Walter Sande, Selmer Jackson, Emory Parnell

Blonde Ice is a decidedly low rent film noir that highlights the criminal exploits of a femme fatale played by Leslie Brooks. Claire Cummings is a ruthlessly ambitious social climber who uses and discards men in order to secure wealth, security and social position.

When the picture opens, Cummings is late for her own wedding to Carl Hanneman, a furnace manufacturer. Among the wedding guests are several of Cumming’s colleagues from “The San Francisco Tribune” where Claire worked as a society reporter. In addition to the newspaper’s editor, Hack Doyle (Walter Sande), sportswriter Les Burns (Robert Paige) and reporter Al Herrick (James Griffith) are also in attendance. Burns and Herrick are two of Claire’s former suitors. Herrick discovered Claire working as a stenographer and helped her secure a position on the newspaper before losing her to Burns.

No sooner than the brief wedding ceremony is completed, Claire asks her husband to excuse her so that she can say goodbye to members of "the old gang" and she joins Burns on the terrace where she suggests that her newly acquired marital status should not be an impediment to their continued extramarital relationship. Burns accuses Claire of deriving a "sadistic kick" out of inviting him to attend the ceremony. After exchanging a kiss and an embrace with Les, which arouses the jealous suspicions of Hanneman, Claire assures Carl that she thinks of Burns as "a brother" and she is simply grateful to him for helping her during her journalistic career. As the Hannemans depart for their honeymoon, Burns tosses his engraved cigarette case, a gift from Claire onto the lawn at the Hanneman mansion.

While in Los Angeles, the newlyweds begin quarreling when Hanneman objects to his wife’s expensive habits. When Claire wins a wager at the race track, Carl is shocked to learn that she risked $100.00 on a single race and questions the wisdom of her placing such large bets. Back at their hotel suite, Carl discovers that his wife has been secretly corresponding with Les. He seizes one of the incriminating letters, packs a suitcase and leaves for San Francisco to institute immediate divorce proceedings. He announces his intention to cut off Claire without so much as a single cent in alimony.

One day later, Claire calls Les at the newspaper office and asks him to make plane reservations for her and to pick her up from the airport that same night. She informs him that her husband has been called away on business. When they drive to the Hanneman residence, Les discovers Carl’s dead body in a neatly constructed tableaux which indicates that the man may have committed suicide.

Police Captain Bill Murdock (Emory Parnell) and District Attorney Ed Chalmers (Selmer Jackson) are not so certain: the gun found near Hanneman’s body bears no fingerprints and his coat does not have any powder burns. Claire insists that she and her dearly departed husband were "supremely happy" throughout their marriage. Murdock reminds her that the entire duration of her marriage was "one week."

While the investigation is pending and her late husband’s sizable estate is tied up in probate, Claire fixes her attentions upon a prominent attorney, Stanley Mason (Michael Whalen), who is also favored to win a seat in Congress. Initially, Claire claims to be interested solely in protecting her legal rights in the probate case, but, of course, she has other designs as well.

Soon Claire is actively romancing Mason, but she begins to receive threatening calls from a blackmailer. She buys off a charter pilot named Blackie Talon (Russ Vincent) temporarily by giving him some of her jewelry. Blackie has a gambling problem of his own, so he has no intention of going away without securing a larger payment at a later date.

In short order, Claire dumps Les for a second time and becomes engaged to Mason the lawyer/politician. Unfortunately, Claire did not anticipate that one of Mason’s closest friends is Dr. Geoffrey Kippinger, a psychiatrist who takes a special interest in studying Claire’s manners and morals. Kippinger is convinced that Claire is mentally unstable and that her problems relate back to her impoverished childhood which occurred as the result of her father abandoning his wife and daughter.

Blonde Ice is an over the top delight that allowed Leslie Brooks a rare chance to showcase her viciousness after a Hollywood career spent in largely supporting roles. For example, Brooks played one of the women who was a romantic interest of Paul Henreid in Hollow Triumph but Joan Bennett had the more important role of the female lead. She makes the most of her opportunity despite a somewhat trite and clichéd script.

One of the amusing features of Blonde Ice is how all of the male cast members seem to be completely smitten with Claire and totally oblivious to her cunning and manipulative nature while many of the female cast members seem to recognize her for exactly what she is and drop casual comments about her that go unheeded by the clueless men. June Taylor, played by Mildred Coles, is Burns' loyal and devoted secretary. Although she is privately in love with him, Burns completely ignores the brunette "Girl Friday" while chasing after the selfish blonde with an ice cold heart.

This is one of those enjoyable movies in which the dialogue is pleasingly overripe and the audience is always several steps ahead of the dim witted on screen actors. The climactic scene which rapidly ties up all of the loose ends has to be seen in order to be believed.

A persistent rumor about the film suggested that Edgar Ulmer had a hand in creating the scenario for Blonde Ice or at the very least he gave the script its shooting title. Ulmer made a passing reference to the film in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, but also seemed to confuse the plot of Blonde Ice with that of another Producers Releasing Corporation knock off production Apology for Murder. While film scholars have argued as to whether or not Ulmer was mistaken about the origins of Blonde Ice, I am inclined to believe that he may have seen the scenario at some point in time. The prodicer was Martin Mooney, who worked with Ulmer at Producers Releasing Corporation, most notably on Detour and Club Havana. A few years later, both men worked for the short lived Film Classics Studios, which ultimately released Blonde Ice.

Blonde Ice was thought to have been a lost film until its rediscovery several years ago. The last known prints had been televised in the Seventies. The best currently available print of the film was restored by Jay Fenton, who was able to replace missing footage and recreate a most serviceable print of the movie.

NOTW 9/14/09: THE THIRD MAN (by RAND)

2009-09-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

THE THIRD MAN

1949/UK

Director: Carol Reed.

Screenplay: Graham Greene, from his novel.

Cast: Orson Welles as Harry Lime, Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt, Trevor Howard as Major Calloway.

Cinematography: Robert Krasker.

Soundtrack (since everyone obsesses over this): Anton Karas.

The Third Man was filmed on location in Vienna and on a sound stage in London.

Vienna was in ruins after World War Two, controlled, as was Berlin, by the four allied powers, the US, Britain, France, and the USSR. The devastation wreaked during the war is emphasized in the opening of the film, as the condition of the city, moral as well as physical, is narrated for the viewer by the director, Carol Reed:

" I never knew the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We'd run anything if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay. Of course a situation like that does tempt amateurs."

All this accompanied by shots of baroque old buildings and rubble, with a body (an amateur?) floating in the Danube for good measure.

Holly (Rollo in the book) Martins is a hack western writer who has come at his old college classmate's request to Vienna, apparently with an offer for employment. But Harry Lime has been run over and killed by a truck in front of his apartment. Martins is numb and shaken but embarks on a quest to learn all he can about the circumstances of his friend's death. He makes the acquaintance of Major Calloway (who he insists on calling "Callaghan") at Lime's funeral and accepts a ride back to town where they engage in the following conversation:

Martins; "It was a shame." Calloway; "What?" "Him dying like that." "Best thing that ever happened to him." "What are you trying to say?" "He was about the worst racketeer that ever made a dirty living in this city."

Martins takes deep offense at this speaking ill of the dead and becomes combative, upon which he is decked by Calloway's aide, Sergeant Paine. Immediately solicitous, Paine helps Martins up and offers this:

"Please be careful, sir. Written anything lately? I'm so glad to have met you, sir. I've read quite a few of your books. That's what I like about them, sir. You can pick them up and put them down any time."

Damning with faint praise, a fact not lost on Martins, who has no self-illusions, about his writing anyway. But Paine, being a fan, offers Martins as a speaker to a Mr. Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White) whom they encounter at Martins' hotel. Crabbin heads the Cultural Re-education Society and explains to Holly;

"Last week we had Hamlet. The week before we had....mmmm...something...." "Striptease, sir." offers Paine, helpfully. "Ah yes, the Hindu dancers! Thank you, sergeant."

This engagement offers a way for Martins to stay in Vienna so he accepts, showing his knack for getting in over his head. He meets Lime's neighbors, friends, and lover but finds more questions than answers about Harry's death.

There seems to have been an harmonic convergence at the scene of the tragedy of his doctor, his driver and two friends plus a mysterious third man, whom no one can identify, who helped carry the stricken Lime to the curb. Martins is too experienced with poorly written scenarios to believe this one.

Martins seeks out Harry's lover, Anna Schimdt (Alida Valli), who also expresses doubt as to the details of Harry's death, but seems not interested in pursuing the matter. Martins, in his blundering way, seeks out one of the two friends who carried Lime off the street, a Baron Kurtz, played wonderfully by Ernst Deutsch. His evil is palpable (my nine year old daughter, walking by, asked, "Is he a bad guy?").

Deutsch reminds me of another European noir stalwart, Victor Francen. They share a pompadour hairstyle, a haughty demeanor, cruel eyes, and a thin-lipped smile that offers no cheer. Krasker even manages, in a black and white movie, to give Deutsch the pallor of a ghost. The second friend, Popescu (Siegfried Breuer) is produced, and offers Martins some advice; "Everybody ought to be careful in a city like this."

Holly Martins is anything but careful and soon finds his sources falling like leaves. A witness to the accident is murdered and Anna is found to have a false passport and is to be "repatriated" to the Russian sector of Vienna.

At this point, in one of the most iconic scenes in any film noir, Martins spots the feet of someone spying on him from a darkened doorway across the street from Anna's apartment. His shouts of anger waken a woman who, in throwing open her window, illuminates the face of.......Harry Lime. But a car interrupts Martins' dash across the street and Lime escapes.

Martins goes to Calloway with the information and Lime's use of the storm sewer is discovered, but Lime is not found. Martins finally faces the reality of Lime's racketeering, involving the theft of penicillin from hospitals, the dilution and then resale of the drug on the black market, causing additonal trauma and death to the buyers.

Martins manages a rendezvous and comes to understand the full extent of Harry's perfidy. Lime is completely amoral, willing to kill children for profit, willing to kill to have a corpse to hide behind, even willing to turn Anna over to the Russians to ensure his safe haven in their quarter. Martins decides to play the Judas goat for Calloway, but Anna shows up and throws a wrench into the Major's plan to finish Lime's career once and for all......

The Third Man is remarkable for a number of reasons. Greene's dialogue sparkles with wit and irony, Krasker's use of lighting is textbook noir and the tilted camera gives a strong sense of the unsteadiness of life in occupied postwar Vienna.

The Third Man won awards in three different years because of a delay in its release in the US, taking the Grand Prize at Cannes in 1949, the Directors Guild Award in 1950 for Carol Reed, the BAFTA Best British Film the same year, and the Cinematography, Film Editing, and Director Oscars in 1951.

Anton Karas' zither did not win any awards, for good reason. It is the only weak point in the film. Often too loud and used to emphasize dramatic scenes so ham-handedly as to make it parodical, Karas' zither is an abomination in an othewise perfect example of noir style and storytelling. What a soundtrack there could have been with the classical music of Vienna as inspiration!

Amusingly, the film also gave birth to a radio show, The Lives of Harry Lime, which opened with Orson Welles as Harry Lime narrating the intro from the grave. Lime was presented as an irresponsible but loveable adventurer in episodes that predated the events in the movie. The only creator from the movie mentioned in the show's opening was.....Anton Karas.

NOTW 6/5/2009: BRIGHTON ROCK (by FLOYD aka OLD FEDORA)

2009-09-14T00:38:00.000-07:00

BRIGHTON ROCK

1947/UK

Directors/Producers: John and Roy Boulting (twin brothers who alternated directing and producing chores on many films: John directed and Roy produced Brighton Rock).

Screenplay: Terrence Rattigan from the novel by Grahame Greene

Cinematographer: Henry Waxman

Cast: Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Alan Wheatley

Brighton Rock is another of the British post-WWII "noir" films that were eagerly consumed by a public weary of rationing and deprivation. It may be the best. A very young Richard Attenborough stars as "Pinkie" Brown, a psychopathic, razor-wielding "spiv" (small-time criminal) who, along with his small gang, runs a protection racket at the racetrack in the seaside resort of Brighton.

The film is broadly based on fact and is beautifully written and photographed, with a strong storyline and great dialogue. The bleak and cynical outlook of the script is well matched by a marvelously suitable score by Hans May.

The sunny, festive resort of Brighton seems an odd setting for this type of film, but cinematographer Waxman and writers Greene and Rattigan achieve an underlying tension and palpable sense of menace. The film's realism revived memories of pre-WWII gaing violence in the city and prompted a disclaimed at the beginning (at the request of Brighton's town council) that the film depicts a "time between the wars" when crime was a problem in the city--"a Brighton happily no more."

Pinkie, the youngest member of the gang but the most dangerous, has taken over as leader following the death of his "chief" Bill Kite, murdered by a rival mob who believe that he had betrayed them by revealing facts to a newspaper reporter for an exposé article.

The movie centers around Pinkie's revenge killing of the reporter who wrote the article and the resulting fallout. Pinkie feels the heat from both the police and rival gangsters--and from within his own gang as his henchmen begin to doubt his ability to lead them out of the morass. The storyline follows his increasingly desperate attempts to beat the murder rap and retain his gangland status.

Attenborough is riveting as the ambitious young hoodlum whose monomaniacal pursuit of the newsman (Wheatley) and those he perceives as threats leads to disaster for all involved. Carol Marsh (in her first film) does a good job of portraying Rose, a young waitress whose testimony could convict Pinkie. To prevent this, he first weds her and then sets about plotting her demise.

Marsh's character was difficult to portray: she is so unbelievably lovestruck that she falls for the repellant Pinkie even after he tacitly threatens to blind her with acide on their first date! Throughout the film his treatment of her is cruelly contemptuous, yet she naively follows him into marriage--and she nearly pays the ultimate choice for her decision.

The rest of the cast is excellent, especially Hermione Baddeley as Ida Arnold, a brassy boardwalk performer who had briefly befriended the newsman and appoints herself his avenger, setting about to gather evidence against Pinky; and veteran heavy William Hartnell as Pinky's right-hand man Dallow, a thug capable of chilling brutality (like his boss) but who also possesses principles (which will, in the end, redeem him).

An intersting noir side note: the murder of Bill Kite is described in another, earlier Greene novel, A Gun For Sale (1936). The killer's name? Raven. You can connect the dots.