Stranger on The Third Floor (1940)

Although it’s not a highly touted picture, Stranger on The Third Floor feels like an important enough footnote to aficionados of film noir because it embodies a few of the earliest definable features of the movement. It’s not an entirely new concept per se, but it feels like it’s reaching a new market taking the influences of European Émigré cinema to the American public.

The influence of German Expressionism on ensuing generations cannot be underappreciated, and there’s this very practical suffusing of these techniques into Hollywood because many of these writers and technicians were physically transplanted to the west coast thanks to the scourge of Hitler. He unwittingly injected American cinema with some of its foremost talents.

Although he was an immigrant from Italy, Nicholas Musuraca would soon prove himself to be one of the foremost figures in noir cinematography thanks to his run at RKO Studios, which hardly had the budget and personnel to pull off the lavish A-list productions of MGM and other bigger studios. This necessitated a different niche and an ongoing visual ingenuity.

It becomes evident early on in the film thanks to severe shadows and a patchwork of light and dark. The story itself is incredibly contrived but the movie is saturated in voiceover and fatalistic dread thanks to a man (John McGuire) being sent up for murder.

The tenets of what would become noir are plainly evident. Still, there’s something organic about it. This is not premeditated; it simply happened with the confluence of talents and a bit of happenstance.

It’s fitting that while The Maltese Falcon feels like the most high profile distillation of noir as an American breed, Stranger on The Third Floor uses two of its primary culprits. By this I’m referring first to Peter Lorre.  He’s called upon to do an import of his psychotic killer in M complete with his gaunt hand crawling up an apartment door frame. He’s hardly as slimy and therefore as conflicted and interesting as Joel Cairo; it’s his slinking foreignness that conjures up menace in the eye of the viewer.

However, there’s also Elisha Cook Jr. who plays one of his more reticent types a bit different than his blustering henchman Wilmer. However, they would both become integral figures to the movement even if it were only for their association with that individual film.

Although the movie’s a quickie, it still finds time for mini flashbacks as the inevitable noose of noir gets tied ever tighter around our hapless hero’s neck. The finest moments are when he’s overtaken by the nightmare of his conscience with men in bowlers chomping cigars start to cross examine him, and he falls apart inside his own head. As such, it’s probably more intriguing for its place in film history than as an undisputed piece of art.

3/5 Stars

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

The Mask of Dimitrios feels like an old world adventure story centered around a phantom figure who becomes the picture’s version of a MacGuffin. Zachary Scott turns up mostly in people’s recollections as a precursor to Harry Lime, the man everyone wants to find.

Although the movies could hardly be made today, there’s something about Warner Bros. and it’s aesthetic and stable of actors that was made for transporting western audiences all over map. The movie literally globetrots around the world.

It’s a pleasure to have Peter Lorre offered a bigger piece of the film’s pie at this point in his Hollywood career.  He’s allowed to be a far more genial and charismatic figure, a writer of detective fiction and a seeker of this great mystery because he has time for such whims and frivolities if only they pique his interest.

Then, Sidney Greenstreet turns up ominously both a friend and a foe. They form a tenuous alliance after the fat man all but ransacks the other man’s room. Greenstreet and Lorre feel like unlikely cinematic bedfellows as it were, and yet they feel inextricably linked for all posterity. They feel a bit like the Laurel & Hardy duo of Warner Bros. crime pictures based on physical characteristics and also their palpable rapport.

Here there’s no Bogart in the limelight and Scott, while a headliner, is mostly the enigmatic engine behind the picture so they are allowed to anchor the story. Thus, what makes the movie are the same cloak and dagger elements that make a romp out of The Maltese Falcon where characters have motives and unseemly sides, but it feels more like unadulterated fun rather than totally depressing drama. This is a testament mostly to our two worthy protagonists.

The Verdict (1946)

The Verdict feels totally indicative of the evolution of Don Siegel’s career, a road paved with many well-remembered films, and it all began right here. We’re met with a foggy London frequented by Sidney Greenstreet with every constable and upstanding gentlemen bidding him good evening. It’s a long way from Dirty Harry although the picture is equally indebted to the criminal justice system.

This comes in part because Greenstreet made a lapse in judgment by sending an innocent man to the gallows. Instead of feeling altogether remorseful, he’s seems more intent in proving the incompetence of his supercilious successor.

It feels like a chatty picture once Peter Lorre and the rest get involved, drinking and quibbling about politics and social reform. There’s a rather vindictive pretense as the two men despise one another.

Lorre, now with a bigger billing, is allowed a broader portrayal of gravitas and jocularity. He’s the picture’s most welcomed source of inspiration. He’s found casually wondering in on murder scenes and eavesdropping in closets as it seems he has nothing better to do. What’s more, he makes it look like a grand old time as everyone else is hustled and harried going through the paces of the drama.

Because there is a murder, a murder queued off by the raging score before we’re even aware that anything has happened. The newly enlisted police chief at Scotland Yard is called to solve the mystery right quick. He proceeds to question his suspects, distrusting everyone, and keeping them all under surveillance, including a nosy housekeeper and a spirited night hall singer.

The whip pans over the faces when the verdict is made feels like a dose of Don Siegel, and the kind of visual octane he would give his movies for generations to come. Although there’s a danger with all the Victorian exteriors, the picture might easily feel stuffy. However, there’s enough noir and a surprising amount of wit sprinkled throughout to give the film a shelf life.

It somehow manages to play on both Greenstreet and Lorre’s reputation as shifty villains by first casting them as our protagonists and then making us second guess their motives again and again. It’s a perplexing picture with a dose of mystery and some twists. The fact that it’s ludicrous seems beside the point because it’s the wild ride of the experience offering the most impact.

3.5/5 Stars