NOTW 1/4/10 THERESE DESQUEYROUX by Don Malcolm

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

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)

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.