Category Archives: 1940s

Joan Crawford: Possessed, The Damned Don’t Cry, Harriet Craig

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In our ongoing exploration of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’s filmographies, here are three more films building on Crawford’s renewed critical success in the 1940s after Mildred Pierce (1945) and Humoresque (1946).

Possessed (1947)

Possessed opens with Joan Crawford wandering the city streets past cable cars and hamburger joints with a far-off look in her eyes. Although I should briefly clarify this is Possessed from 1947 (as the actress made an earlier movie with the same title). The unknown woman is searching for a man named David, and instantly we have the pretext for our story.

There’s a  wonderful extended POV shot of Crawford being wheeled into the hospital as she is overtaken by a catatonic stupor, and the doctors try to piece together what to do for her and who she is.

If they’re in the dark, then we at least learn a little bit more about her. David (Van Heflin) was a man in her former life, in love with a piano and a parabola but not ready to marry her. He doesn’t want to be tied down and his ambitions lie in his work and a job up in Canada.

She’s obsessed and crazed with him, and the thought of him leaving her forever. Instead, she resigns herself to a life with her employer (Raymond Massey) who has lost his wife and has sent his kids away to school.  Crawford’s not a villain, but how this relationship blooms, there’s another obvious reference point. It’s apparent how the movie blends and finds itself at the crossroads of Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce.

As her mental instability takes over, it’s almost as if a scene from Mildred Pierce is playing out in her head as she duels with a vitriolic stepdaughter. However, while this feels more like a facsimile of the prior’s year success, it’s really Hefflin who steals the picture’s other half.

Because Possessed finds Hefllin at his most caddish and cold (“My liver rushes in where angels dare to tread”). He has wit like Johnny Eager, but he’s also willing to run roughshod over Crawford without any amount of remorse. He’s a hedonistic, self-serving creature, and it only becomes more evident when the impressionable Carol (Geraldine Brooks) gets drawn in by his casual wiles.

They get married and Louise becomes more paranoid and hallucinatory by the hour. This movie is bookended by her descent into mental turmoil, and it’s hard not to laud Crawford for her genuine alacrity for the part making the rounds of psych wards and facilities just so she could provide greater authenticity. No matter what feels antiquated to our modern sensibilities, the movie is worthwhile for her performance, which seems to come in sharper relief with each subsequent layer of her ever-shifting personality.

3.5/5 Stars

The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)

The film’s title was ripped from a Eugene O’Neil quote, and it gets at the poetic essence of the movie more than its particulars. When a racketeer’s carcass is found ditched near a desert resort, it sets off alarm bells and triggers a search for a missing oil heiress played by Joan Crawford.

The impetus of her entire existence in the film is summed up in a single scene of definitive exposition.  She lives alongside her husband, parents, and their little boy near the oil fields where her husband works. It’s a meager life. They can’t afford pleasure. And so when she splurges to get their son a bright new bicycle, her agitated husband (Richard Egan) tells her to take it right back.

The bike effectively becomes a vehicle for their marital conflict since they are scrimping and saving just to make ends meet. However, it’s also a token of tragedy in Ethel’s life searing her with wounds she will never forget. She leaves her past behind to make a new life for herself as an individual because her corner of familial bliss looks to be dead.

As the story progresses, it feels like a bit of a throwback for Crawford from the ’30s and her days as a driven working girl making a go of it. She learns quickly how to play the game to get ahead, modeling and then doing some overtime with out-of-town buyers after hours.

Then, she literally meets a man, a CPA (Kent Smith), at the water cooler. She winds up sprawled out on his desk asking for a cigarette and making his acquaintance with her self-assured flirtations. She has some misguided notions about his importance and yearly take-home pay. Either that or she confuses her acronyms.

In other words, he hardly has the money to bankroll the evening he has unwittingly been escorted to. Still, she goes to bat for him putting Martin in contact with some of her other “friends.” It starts out with the men discussing business together behind closed doors with Lorna left in the drawing room withing for their return. It feels oddly uncharacteristic because we know Crawford will get into that room eventually (and most likely dominate it).

George Castleman (David Brian) is the kingpin at the top, an elegant self-made mobster fascinated by art and antiquities. He’s trying to keep his cronies in check, the most headstrong of the bunch being Steve Cochran, who’s running the racket out in California. This is not Martin’s world, but Ethel has gotten him into it, and for the time being it’s lucrative enough.

But with her innate ambitions, Crawford’s character always has her sights set on the next prize. With the help of the society pages, she turns herself into the newly-minted heiress Lorna Hansen Forbes.  Going forward, the movie blends the world of some of Crawford’s Pre-Code working-class drams with that of 711 Ocean Dr., another ’50s film concerned with wires, bookies, mob influence, and of course, California desert getaways.

Here it’s a more hands-on approach. For most of the film, Cochran waits in the wings brooding, but he gets his moment in California with some filming even taking place at Frank Sinatra’s own home made up in mid-century modern. Crawford has them all. The whole crux of the drama is composed of these spokes radiating out of Joan Crawford leading to four men who are attached to her at different times.

It gets so overblown and preposterous, and yet you can’t quite look away because the dilemma is made plain. She’s ingratiated herself with so many people to get what she wants, and since she’s caught between so many options, for the first time in her life, she’s not sure what to choose.

Everything must succumb to a bombastic round of Production Code comeuppance where all retribution is neatly doled out and moral ambiguity is left to languish. It makes for a hearty round of theatrics but also a minor disappointment. Because we’ve seen these tactics used in this kind of forced storytelling so many times before. Still, you can’t take the film’s title away. It’s one for the ages. Moreover, Crawford seems more than worthy of it.

3.5/5 Stars

Harriet Craig (1950)

“How many ways do you lie Harriet?” – Wendell Corey

In Harriet Craig, Joan Crawford plays the quintessential domineering lady of the manor. Before we even see her onscreen she has her whole staff in a tizzy as she rushes off on a last-minute visit to her sickly mother. If we can make an early observation, she’s a bit beastly.

Wendell Corey makes her stand out all the more thanks to his free and easy charm as her husband. He’s rarely been more likable playing gin rummy with the elderly Mrs. Fenwick, a woman of good humor and a light in her eye.

As Crawford’s opening perfectionism slowly burns off or at least is put aside, Harriet Craig somehow gives off the sense of an early sitcom of the era. It has to do with the setting and the world — the way the spouses interplay — and it doesn’t seem like the scenario could possibly boil over into something cataclysmic.

At first, Harriet feels nitpicky and fastidious. These aren’t negative qualities on their own per se, and her husband coaxes out brief moments of good humor. However, it becomes evident how deeply manipulative she really is.

Suddenly Harriet Craig becomes a blatant subversion of the portrait of post-war suburban bliss. Walter is offered a job to work with the company over in Japan. It’s a big promotion, and he’s elated. Harriet finds ways to derail this threatening source of change.

She drops a few intimating remarks to keep her orphaned cousin (K.T. Stevens) and her husband where they can serve her best. She gets snider by the day trying to preserve her life under glass.

One of the few who sees through her is the perceptive housekeeper Mrs. Harold, who has faithfully shared Walter’s family for years, but recognizes just how much Harriet is a canker. Her household is all a sham cultivated by its primary architect: Harriet.

Eventually, her pyramid of well-orchestrated deceit begins to tumble as all her half-lies and casual mistruths are found out. In all her neurotic pride, she’s prepared to rot in that house. The irony of the picture is how she’s tried to control everything — she’s particular about every iota of that place — and now that she’s made her own mausoleum, she has to lie down in it. That home is all she has.

I’ve never ventured to watch Mommie Dearest, and far be it from me to pry the fact from fiction, but part of me wants to know how the core faults of Crawford’s character were indicative of her real self. Part of me likes to believe she intuitively made the role into something that resonated with her, whether she fully recognized it or not.

3/5 Stars

Humoresque (1946): John Garfield and Joan Crawford

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The manner in which Garfield is lit in the opening scene is striking. We don’t know the reason yet, but there’s a prevailing angst and discontentment spelled out over his face. It sets the tone for the rest of Jean Negulesco’s swelling drama Humoresque.

I’m not sure if it’s curious or not how John Garfield, the man who made a break for himself with Golden Boy on the stage, did a boxing movie — a story of brawn — and then did a violin picture — one focused on art. It’s as if he broke off in both directions thereafter because these are the two dualities at the core of Clifford Odett’s original work.

At first, I didn’t know who wrote Humoresque, but these themes made it ridiculously simple. Yes, Odett obviously wrote this too. It inhabits the same world and gives Garfield a similar context — one that he knows firsthand.

On one fateful birthday, Paul (Robert Blake) wants a violin. His father (J. Caroll Naish) holds firm and won’t buy it for him, but he’s not a bad man. Just a poor shop owner. However, his mother (Ruth Nelson) wants to cultivate her son’s talents opting to buy him the extravagant present in the hopes he will make good. Instead of playing ball, he stays home and practices, eventually growing into his own. He literally turns into John Garfield.

At first, Oscar Levant featuring in this movie feels a bit like Hoagy Carmichael in the Best Years of Our Lives. They don’t necessarily fit with the continuity of the drama, but we have enough grace to forgive them and enjoy what they bring to the table. To his credit, Levant evolves into more of a snarky mentor before coming into his own as Garfield’s quipping second banana.

Of course, that’s what he always seems to be, but piano playing aside, that’s what he was always so good at, ready with a remark for every situation. He’s one of the singular figures. Naturally gifted in front of the camera, but also an astounding artistic talent.

Garfield also has some of the best fake instrument playing I’ve seen in some time. Isaac Stern is his stand-in, and yet they film Garfield in a way that feels especially tight, never fully breaking the suspension of disbelief. He feels like a virtuoso on strings. Levant, of course, needs no assistance.

But we’ve held off long enough mentioning Joan Crawford. She was coming off her own success in Mildred Pierce from the year prior and during the ’40s and early ’50s, she would continue in a row of pictures that continue to bolster her reputation (ie. Daisy Kenyon, Sudden Fear). It’s no different with Humoresque.

She makes her ravishing appearance at a soiree. It’s Paul Boray’s coming out party with some real tastemakers. His first acquaintance is an older fellow, not unkind but passively resigned to his fate with a bit of wry commentary. This is Mr. Wright. She’s the woman at the center of it all: Mrs. Wright. Slightly tipsy, near-sided without her glasses, yet still alluring and swarmed by a host of other men.

They all fall away as she puts on her glasses to watch Paul play. She playfully rides him, and he fires right back. It sets the precedent for what their relationship will be, and we would expect nothing less from both stars.

Violin films are few and far between, but during Garfield’s first grand performance when everyone turns out from his family, including a local sweetheart, and then the social elite led by Crawford, the cadence of the scene is rather like a boxing film. You have the action, in this case, his fingers on the strings, instead of boxers in the ring, and then everything is made by the reactions from the crowd. They play in tandem with one another to add up to something richer than the sum of their parts.

The Garfield-Crawford dynamic really is appealing because they carry off such command of the screen. She calls him an obstinate man, but she’s hardly a pushover, and it makes their working relationship, with the suggestive romantic undercurrents, all the more intense.

There’s a cut from her seltzer water to the ocean surf that feels like an ellipsis in the story and their relationship. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense. Garfield is suddenly more forward in pursuit of her, although prior he was busy trying to ward her off. It’s analogous to his romp at the beach with Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice as the visual consummation of their romance.

Later, there’s a lovely introduction of an ice rink and the adjoining restaurant. It’s instant ’40s atmosphere, and Paul and the long-smitten Gina (Joan Chandler) sit waiting for the perenially tardy Levant. It leaves ample space for dialogue over their relationship, which, aside from a couple scenes and mild inference, is all but non-existent. What it suggests is the promise of an alternative life if Paul were to choose it. She is the good sensible girl his mama would love. But, still, there’s his music to think about…

In another packed-out hall, he plays again, and this time Mrs. Wright watches from the balcony. The camera lingers on Crawford’s face and closes in on her expression, with a look that can only be described as ecstasy washing over her eyes and lips. They can hardly be seeing this, and yet as the camera cuts to his mother and Gina in the cheap seats down below, their own faces fill with worry. Their intuition or the cinema fates are telling them Paul is lost, and he’s been taken over by other powers altogether. Something uncontrollable has taken over.

I’ve never taken much notice of Jean Negulesco, but here the artistry of the creators feels very much on display in the most intriguing ways. It pairs nicely with the motifs of Odett’s work dabbling in art and commerce and dreams versus pragmatism. Because these are often the forces that divide people when it comes to pursuing a life of art and then sticking with it. Boray finds someone to commission him even as he has plenty of his own private ambition.

There’s a perceptive change in his parents as well. His father becomes warmer and proud of his son’s talents in old age. Then his mother, who empowers and even coddles him, grows highly protective. She becomes wary of the company her son keeps.

Oddly enough, I never found myself totally detesting her. Because I see her point of view. She wants her son to have stability but also the space to pursue his life’s passion. As a divorcee and a different breed of woman, Helen strikes out on two accounts. But it’s not simply this. Ruth Nelson has a gaunt sadness in her eyes I could not get away from.

Even as his familial relationships shift with his newfound success so does his love life. Helen goes from mere patron to jilted lover. She doesn’t want their relationship to be business and formalities, and yet she’s “playing second fiddle to the ghost of Beethoven.” Paul’s first love is really his music.

In the final concert, Helen listens from her Malibu beach house. His parents have gotten upgraded to a box. Gina still sits by faithfully in the audience. But it’s all overshadowed by Crawford as she heads out to the shore. Her listless walk on the beachfront is perplexing. A man playing with his dog wanders into the frame, and it feels unexpected. Because she is in her own world overwhelmed by the music totally deluging her life at this moment in time.

I was mesmerized by the waves crashing around as we get fully submerged through image and score, immediately comprehending the weight of what is happening before us. The actual ending doesn’t rationalize or totally sugarcoat this story, but the words Garfield gets out can’t do anything to improve on the preceding images.

Humoresque feels like an uncommon movie. Its subject matter in this particular form is not often examined with this much detail, and John Garfield side-by-side with Joan Crawford makes for a tumultuous, rapturous, confounding melodrama. Try as I might, I can’t quite put it into words. It deserves music.

4/5 Stars

Bette Davis: In This Our Life, Now, Voyager, Mr. Skeffington

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In an effort to gain a greater appreciation for the breadth of both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s careers, we wanted to watch some of their films including a majority we hadn’t seen before.

Here are some of our thoughts on a trio of Davis movies from 1940s Warner Bros:

In This Your Life (1942)

It sounds like an impeccable title for a soap opera, and this presumption is not totally baseless. Here John Huston early on in his career takes on another Warner Bros. project. This one has no bearing on The Maltese Falcon or much of his later work. Instead, it became an outcropping of his contemporary fling with Olivia de Havilland.

As such, the movie is set up early around a local family. The father (Frank Craven) is a man with a benevolent twinkle in his eye. His wife (Billie Burke) is a bit of a drama queen playing favorites between her grown-up daughters. De Havilland is the sensible one, Roy, who is betrothed to be married soon. Stanley (Bettie Davis) is the feisty one with plenty of temerity. We never learn how their parents arrived at their naming conventions.

However, we do meet their uncle: ever-domineering, agitated uncle Fitzroy (Charles Coburn) with a touch of Rockefeller and an affinity for tough-minded folks such as himself. Namely, Stanley. And right about this time, given the tone, content, and world, we realize we have been handed a small-town melodrama easily playing rival to the likes of Kings Row.  Max Steiner’s score rages quite liberally to accentuate the narrative unrest in case we had any lingering doubts.

In other words, the story feels worthy of Bette Davis. Her particularly protuberant eyes somehow undercut her actions. She doesn’t look all that bad, but as Kim Carnes famously sang in “Bette Davis Eyes,” “She’ll tease you. She’ll unease you. Just to please you.” She also has no scruples.

Dennis Morgan is featured in one of his more “daring” roles. He only remains a soft-spoken heartthrob for the majority of the movie. There are actual interludes where he’s petty and unstable. Of course, he can’t hold a candle to Davis or De Havilland.

Because it does become a drama of fluctuating love interests. George Brent starts the film with Davis (his perennial costar) but spends most of the movie being uplifted by De Havilland. It is a film mediated by the weak and the strong, the soft-hearted and the hard-hearted.

Olivia de Havilland comes off like most of her early, generally thankless ingenues, but there’s some sense she is inching toward something more substantial. We see it later as she evolves in front of us — hurt by her own sister — and vowing to never let something this egregious injure her again. She resolves to switch camps once and for all.

But I have yet to mention the film’s most intriguing character and arguably its lynchpin. Parry (Ernest Anderson) is the young black man who works for the family. However, he has ambitions that include becoming a lawyer. He is well-spoken and indirectly combats all the stereotypes piled up from years of dismissive cinema. It’s so refreshing to have a part that looks and feels so strikingly different than many of its contemporaries.

And he becomes far more crucial as the story progresses, thanks in part to the histrionic privilege of Stanley. She tries to use Parry in her own lies knowing intuitively the state of the world: A black man’s word will never hold up against hers (“It ain’t no use in this world”). In the end, Hollywood morality must prevail even if reality feels like a much murkier affair.

3.5/5 Stars

Now, Voyager (1942)

If films like All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? were in dialogue with Davis’s persona on and off-screen, then Now, Voyager seems totally representative of what her Hollywood image actually was. She’s the homely girl who in the same breath can transform into an immaculate beauty. This is her success story and grand fairy tale.

Mrs. Vale (Gladys Cooper) is a stern woman of authoritative means when it comes to ordering the life of her youngest child and ugly duckling Charlotte. I have difficulty looking at Bette Davis early on not because she’s “ugly,” but because they’ve tried so hard to make her frumpy, and it just looks a bit unnatural. In general, I find the deglamorization process a bit mystifying for these types of pictures.

Claude Rains provides his brand of benevolent authority that’s never threatening and lends a level of enlightened wisdom to the proceedings. Ilka Chase and Bonita Granville add levity, and I’d be remiss not to mention the incomparable Mary Wickes.

20 minutes in we see Davis emerge totally reincarnated as a regal creature capped in the most iconic of hats. Paul Henreid is rightfully pleased to make her acquaintance, and we have our movie.

The shorthand of glasses and ugly duckling syndrome being cast off feels rather simplistic, but I tried to stretch my imagination to make this into a Hans Christian Andersen world.

Paul Henreid lays the groundwork for Casablanca by playing the quintessential symbol of self-sacrifice, which in itself is such a powerful bulwark for romantic drama. In Now, Voyager his lot in life is made plain. Not that he goes grousing about it, but it’s evident he has a wife back home who plays the martyr. He’s tied down to her.

The moments between Davis and Henreid are like a dream and the rest of the movie feels like unnecessary baggage at times. That’s not to say we should cast off all the cares and responsibilities of life, but in the movies, these are the details that somehow get in the way. They distract from the reverie between two people.

Of course, it’s perfectly articulated in its most intimate and imitated act of affection, if not out and out chivalry — a man lighting up two cigarettes in his mouth and giving one to a lady. It plants Now, Voyager in a different era and perhaps this is part of the rose-colored allure.

I do appreciate what the lapse in the middle means for them both. He must go off, and she returns home to her mother’s house, prepared to do battle there. Because she is different, no longer a child anymore. Then, when she makes a big reveal in front of the family, she commands the room with the aplomb of a seasoned socialite.

Finally, the moment arrives and the two lovers are reunited when their private tete-a-tete crosses back into the real world at a dinner party. Alas, it cannot be so Charlotte must find ways to show her affection vicariously. She takes on a pet project — it’s a mission of mercy — to bless her man.

Although I will always subjectively like Greer Garson in Random Harvest or Gene Tierney in Ghost and Mrs. Muir better, I must admit Bette Davis is one for the ages. Try as I might, I could never take that away from her or begrudge the legacy she rightfully garnered for herself. Now, Voyager reminds us — no matter the pitfalls of the studio system on display — people like Davis really could turn it into a dream factory. In bandying about words like auteur, she certainly lays some claim to the label because the whole movie feels molded to her vision. She commands not just the screen but the entire production.

3.5/5 Stars

Mr. Skeffington (1944)

The opening plays like an Epstein Brothers riff off an Ernst Lubitsch drawing-room comedy. There’s an immediate comic lightness to the scenario. A row of eligible young men show up fashionably early to pay a visit to Fanny. It just so happens they all had the same idea.

They also adopt that slightly risible movie convention of constantly calling one another by first names, but of course, that’s part of the point. They’re partially hoodwinked when another man pops in and saunters up directly to Fanny’s quarters. No, he’s not another love interest but her solicitous older cousin George (Walter Able).

Davis is as airy-voiced and bright-eyed as ever doted up in the most flamboyant regalia. It covers up the salient fact that she and her brother are broke, and they have wealth in name only. They’ve all but used up everything their dear departed father ever bequeathed them.

Fanny’s a superficial girl, chatty and taken by the many whims of the wind. She’s turned off when the proclamation of war spoils her perfectly good dinner engagement with a quiet gentleman named Mr. Skeffington (Claude Rains).

There’s something about Davis and Rains together that’s easy to favor. I think they noticed it too, with Davis supposedly saying years later that he was her favorite costar. She went to bat for him, and he wound up in one of his most prominent roles. He’s never going to upstage Davis, and yet his wit is deceptively charming. It settles the movie and gives it an anchor.

Over time it feels like a gargantuan narrative, albeit not without its curiosities. One of those is the undercurrent of the whole picture. It starts with Skeffington himself. He is a man like so many remade after a childhood kicked off at Ellis Island. There’s a sense about him and his origins, even an inference here and there, but never anything outright.

And then, he sits at dinner with his daughter as a final goodbye. He has paid a settlement to his wife, they are getting a divorce, and his daughter will go live with her mother. She doesn’t want to leave him, and he explains part of what makes them different. He is Jewish. She is not.

In the year 1944 and the contemporary moment, it suddenly becomes a far more serious issue worth our time and consideration. Though within the movie it feels mostly like a loose end as Rains all but disappears from the picture. At least for the time being.

However, the movie evolves into something else almost like a vanitas portrait of the Charles Foster Kane variety. Vanity of vanities, thy name is Fanny Skeffington. It becomes evident that beauty is fleeting as her suitors stay young, and she continually staves off the advances of age.

She has a bit of a nervous breakdown; all her old boyfriends are long since gone, balding and gray-haired, and she looks in the mirror and her illusions are shattered by the lonely fragility staring back at her. Because time can be cruel. Her daughter (Marjorie Riordan) returns as a grown young woman and Fanny recognizes how the years have passed her by. She missed out on knowing her.

But it’s inevitable. Our primary players must have a reunion. The final scene has a real emotional import as we wait for Rains. It’s building to a crescendo and then falls into place as a weirdly contrived propaganda piece. The development is a bit disappointing because it means Skeffington isn’t able to explore all of its themes. Given its length, this is profoundly unfortunate.

3.5/5 Stars

A Woman’s Face (1941)

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The movie’s faux Scandinavian backdrop can be traced back to its origins in an early vehicle for Ingrid Bergman back in her native Sweden that was released in 1938. Since I haven’t seen the original, I cannot attest to Bergman, but she doesn’t immediately spring to mind in a role that calls for some amount of moral ambiguity — at least on screen.

Still, A Woman’s Face was a stepping stone part for Joan Crawford, from her effervescent flapper days and pertinacious working gals to something vulnerable and bold for a fresh decade. She sheds all glamour, something used so often as a mask in Hollywood, and willfully puts on a different facade of scars and perceived ugliness. It’s a move her rival Bette Davis readily made as well.

Here Crawford is a creature tormented and self-conscious about her own appearance. She’s crawling with shame. Mildred Pierce always gets the plaudits, and rightfully so, but surely there’s room in the conversation for this picture. Still, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

We stand by as a prisoner is marched through the hallways of a court. A menagerie of witnesses has been called to testify in the wake of a murder trial. The very same woman, her face hidden by her hat brim, stands accused, and the film effectively uses each of these disparate individuals to elucidate her story for the sake of the jury (and the audience).

It’s not an unheard-of device, but it’s rather clever, starting on the outer ring with a peculiar sort of character before getting closer and closer to who she is as a person with each subsequent flashback. As such, a sprightly waiter (Donald Meek) and a more guarded manager (Reginald Owen) recount their days serving at a local tavern.

One of the guests, Torstein Barring (Conrad Veidt), is a curious fellow. He’s the life of the party and expects certain privileges. One of those is running up an overflowing tab at the establishment after a merry night of wining and dining. He exhibits a piercing kind of magnetism, sleek and somehow unnerving.

When the lady of the tavern steps out of the shadows and excuses his bill, he’s immediately taken by her. She’s scarred over her face, and yet all he sees are those striking Joan Crawford eyes. There’s something immediate between them, and it comes out in the courtroom that the whole tavern was essentially a set-up for petty blackmail. When people get giddy their tongues loosen, and they are availed of all their faculties.

There’s a level of dubiousness and doublespeak with her underlings providing another layer to the film involving both humor and intrigue. Because they ran a fine and highly lucrative con game complete with all manner of deception. Now they’re looking to save their necks.

The ready victims are the adultress Vera (Osa Massen) — wife of reputed surgeon Gustaf (Melvyn Douglas) — and then her latest beau. The joy of A Woman’s Face is how there are building blocks for melodrama. In literary form, it might come off as convoluted and unclear, but the cinema screen makes it sing.

In one moment Anna (Crawford) is trying to peddle some stolen letters for a weighty sum with a level of vindictiveness. She scoffs at others. In another, she meets Gustaf, who returns home unexpectedly both catching this woman in the act and becoming genuinely interested in her. His wife doesn’t want any of her dirty business getting out so she reluctantly plays along.

Almost everyone has an enigmatic side, some sort of angle or self-serving motive we’re trying to detect. Melvyn Douglas is the one character who is straightforward and easy to read. He offers to transform her face. Not with an ulterior motive, but out of a sense of decency.

There’s a fine level of suspense waiting to see Anna’s face reconstructed. We know what it will be and yet are forced to wait for moments with the camera working to evade a direct shot of her; it adds something, a level of expectation.

It’s yet another soap opera contrivance that works wonders. Because Joan Crawford takes this blemish and turns it into something powerful and ultimately beautiful. With it comes new confidence and new life. Anna and Torstein grow closer and closer and he’s even more drawn to the vision of her rebirthed self. Also, her disposition shifts.

Still, he has almost a Nietchzean charisma, and he coaxes Anna into playing nursemaid to a young relative who’s set to inherit a large fortune. She’s become a governess of the Phyllis Dietrichson persuasion.

Watching Crawford come down the stairs with the precocious little kiddy, I couldn’t help but think of those old glossies of Marion Davies parties except this is a party at a Scandinavian version of Hearst Castle. Images of piano and dancing superimposed over Crawford’s face say everything.

Actually, I misspoke earlier because aside from the young tyke and the kindly Gustaf, the Consul Barring (Albert Bassman) is a jolly old man, who welcomes Anna cordially even as his housekeeper (Marjorie Main) remains distrustful of their latest guest. In truth, they’re both right. They see the two different sides of Anna on display.

There’s an old Hollywood axiom about getting an actor’s good side, and I couldn’t help noticing how A Woman’s Face plays with this practically. Crawford’s right side is kept hidden for much of the first half of the movie and traditional 180-degree filming means it’s all but masked from us.

I noticed the change at the party when she meets the good doctor again. Finally, she’s on the left side of the frame fully unmasked and open to us. It’s true we see her in a different light just as he does too. Perhaps she’s changing — softening even — and he has something to do with this.

Arguably the best scene of the entire movie comes when Crawford’s with her charge in the trolley over the waterfall. It’s the moment akin to Gene Tierney letting the crippled boy drown in the lake in Leave Her to Heaven. There’s the intent. We know what’s happening, and we watch the mechanisms on the face of Crawford. It’s totally wordless and, thus, so effective because the whole sequence is borne on her features. She has a choice to make — caught in a moral conundrum — and it’s a showcase for the total evolution of her character.

In some strange sense, it feels like the dissolution of a femme fatale starting out one way and then slowly changing and eroding until she has a heart of flesh and blood again. She chooses her inclinations to protect over those to destroy. It comes with consequences. Watching a crazed villain disappear into the snowy rapids below is mesmerizing in black and white. Somehow something so deadly looks equally gorgeous.

The ending itself is pat as Anna is exculpated in the courtroom, and yet it somehow works contrary to a whole generation of noirs made in its wake. In other words, I don’t mind the happy resolution because it leaves just enough to the imagination.

4.5/5 Stars

Double Feature: Apartment for Peggy & Take Care of My Little Girl

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Recently I was appreciating some films starring Jeanne Crain, an alluring actress who was at the height of her popularity during the ’40s and ’50s. Although she was rarely touted as a preeminent actress, I wanted to highlight two films of hers that more than highlight her appeal.

Both Apartment for Peggy and Please Take Care of My Little Girl are set in the context of college in the post-war years. One has Craine as a newlywed wife tracking down student housing and in the latter film she plays a naive college freshman with sorority aspirations.

Read my thoughts on the two films below:

Apartment for Peggy (1948)

Apartment for Peggy is one of those Classic Hollywood films packed with pleasant surprises. The first of them is Edmund Gwenn. He’s best remembered as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. Here he’s directed once more by George Seaton this time playing a listless university professor.

He lives off his pension in his crusty old abode spending his evenings with the same colleagues playing the same music they have for years. However, one evening he quite matter-of-factly announces his aspirations to commit suicide. He’s very rational about it. Still, his doctor won’t give him more than two sleeping pills at a time so he dutifully stores them up for a rainy day.

Then, something else far more momentous happens. He meets a young woman (Jeanne Crain) on a bench. Peggy Taylor motors about 1,000 miles per minute — her mind and conversations leapfrogging all over the place — so her new acquaintance can barely get a word in edgewise. He’s bowled over by her irrepressible zest for life. She’s precisely the person to prickle the professor’s curmudgeonly sensibilities. But she’s also the best equipped to turn Mr. Hypothetical’s life upside down for the better.

Because she tackles just about anything she sets her mind to with this same infectious verve. This is not just the age of the GI Bill (her husband is currently a student), but they are also dealing with a housing crisis. She puts her ear to the ground and manages to scrounge up a space in Pop’s decrepit attic. He’s quite against the imposition and still, Peggy keeps ping-ponging off the walls leaving no room for a rebuttal.

It’s one of many miracles how she spruces up the space and puts it through an astounding transformation. This is just the beginning. With Pop’s begrudging help, she conceives a daytime course for wives and mothers so they can learn about the great philosophers of the modern age (Spinozi included). They want to receive intellectual stimulation on par with their husbands so they can communicate with them.

Pops soon learns his new students are intrinsically driven to learn, and the professor is delighted to serve as their instructor because they seem to intuitively understand his teaching as his most receptive pupils. Their discussions are life-giving. You see already how Peggy single-handedly resurrects the old man so he’s able to see the world with new vim and vigor. Now it’s his turn to return the favor.

William Holden is just about the most innocuous thing about the picture, and that’s not to say he’s bad. Still, this is a picture made by the chemistry of Crain and Gwenn. It acknowledges the generation gap chafing between most any generations with varying perspectives on life with a comic touch. However, any conflict on the part of the elders ultimately engenders mutual affection.

Best of all, it’s a film about ideals and worthwhile pragmatism where the merits of both are made evident. But then again, film is not so much a science as it is a philosophy, an art — concerned with humanities — and the film works in this manner.

It gives off the appearance of a light, inoffensive comedy as we conceive would exist in post-war America. There are many. Certainly, this is true. However, it also sheens with warmth and goodness. Seeing the movie multiple times, the appeal of its brand of geniality just continues to bloom.

3.5/5 Stars

Take Care of My Little Girl (1951)

Sorority movies certainly feel like they’re solely made to meet an audience demand as a convenient cash grab. Take Care of My Little Girl wasn’t the first picture in this genre as I can think of at least a couple predecessors like Sorority House and These Glamour Girls (1939).

However, this movie actually had its origins in the master’s thesis of Peggy Goodin, who eventually turned her research into a novel. She was particularly concerned with how racial and religious discrimination played out in the highly moderated spaces of college sororities. To be clear, 20th Century Fox’s adaptation excises all of this commentary by casting their stable of homogenous Hollywood starlets (Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters, Mitzi Gaynor, Betty Lynn et al.) and a couple of male heartthrobs.

And yet that doesn’t mean the film doesn’t come with any teeth. For its day, it was actually rather controversial if only for its forthright portrayal of the social politics and hazing rituals that have continued to go under scrutiny generations later. The film looks different and yet at its core, it speaks to the very same issues we see today.

Jeanne Crain has such a radiant poise, it’s so easy to like her and not only like her but admire her for how she cares about others. Because she’s a shoo-in as a legacy at Tri-U sorority. Just as importantly, she’s probably the prettiest girl on campus. Not even the resident mean girl Dallas (Peters) can blackball her.

Liz cares deeply for her friends and isn’t totally swayed by the popularity contests even as she strives to make a good impression. She strikes up a rapport with a slightly cynical G.I.-turned-student (Dale Robertson), who helps advise her on classes and thrumbs his nose at the establishment after everything he’s been through. He recognizes something different in her that he likes.

Still, she’s not totally impregnable. Like any young person, she wants to be well-liked helping the class flirt (Jefferey Hunter) with the answers to his French exam. This in turn leads to being pinned. She’s the talk of the sorority house. And yet she’s not easy to categorize.

The picture is surprisingly poignant and perceptive. It’s not some hyperdramatic, superficial portrait of college life even if it’s playing to a specific audience. Also, thanks in part to Crain, there’s a genuine candor to the picture and a visible evolution to this young woman.

It may not be a lot, but it’s something. We do see her change as a human being. Surely college life looks so different now 70 years on from what we’re used to, and yet there are elements that have not changed. We still have fraternities and sororities and social hierarchies. I was aghast to realize even bluebooks have been around for well nigh a century!

This movie doesn’t necessarily suggest these institutions are inherently bad. However, sometimes we believe that tradition is good only because it’s the way things have always been done. But there should be better reasons. There need to be dissenters and people to challenge the status quo. There need to be brave folks who are willing to do what is right compared to what is easy. People who are loyal to their friends rather than simply playing the games for want of status and approval.

Even if the Epstein Brothers’ script forgoes some of the most intriguing aspects of the original story, I appreciate that they explore their topic with something a little bit more involved than superficial exploitation. It actually strives to be about something, however small.

3.5/5 Stars

Abbott and Costello Films: Naughty Nineties, Time of Their Lives, A&C Meet Frankenstein

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The Naughty Nineties (1945)

The next genre Abbott and Costello took on in The Naughty Nineties was the show boat-style musical. Henry Travers fits as a kindly old ship captain who promises family-friendly entertainment headlined by his daughter and a very familiar leading man (Bud Abbott).  Costello crops up in a local band pounding his drum with a parade off the beaten path. Soon enough he’s getting up to all kinds of his usual shenanigans as the lone stagehand for their stage production.

Comedy like this must have a rightful antagonist: Rita Johnson and Alan Curtis lead a trio of shady malcontents. They’re getting brushed out of town, but they set their sites on the naive Captain. His one vice is gambling, and they know how to bend the odds. Soon he has no recourse but to work with them by their rules. They commoditize and taint all he’s worked so hard to build.

Enter Abbott and Costello. They take on a crooked roulette wheel with the hiccups using a wad of chewing gum. Lou makes himself useful in the kitchen whipping up a feather-filled cake though he gets his comeuppance with a cat burger routine that has him cringing over his dinner after every mew.

Although it’s not very organic and feels like the most shoehorned gag in the story (because it was), we do get one of the recorded versions of “Who’s on First?” standing in the halls of comedy as one of the most revered routines of all time. Partially because it only works with the duo. You need the straight man, you need the comic, and then the situation to put them at odds. Few have done it so cleverly as this one.

The rest of the movie isn’t so lofty and that’s okay. Costello’s running around the deck being chased and chasing. It’s puerile entertainment, but not the worst we could have. If nothing else, his ever-present wheezing, warbling sound effects feel reminiscent of Stan Laurel though Costello’s portly frame makes him feel a little more like a man-child. This too became the bedrock of Abbott and Costello’s comedy.

3.5/5 Stars

Time of Their Lives (1946)

Time of Their Lives feels like an obvious departure for the team. We found ourselves planted in a colonial drama with a spritzing of the usual comedy. Box office woes or not, I’m not quite sure I’m amenable to how they retooled the Abbott and Costello formula. This movie begins as a straight period piece. It can be done well with something like The Court Jester, but it does feel like the boys rarely get enough time together. Perhaps this was by design.

Still, like many of the great comedians of their day and age, they seem to work best when they can break away from the rigors of plot and the confinement put on them by a narrative arc even if it’s for the sake of a few throwaway gags. Because this is what their entire reputation is founded on, and it’s these moments in between where they lose the plot and we gain laughter.

Time of Their Lives is certainly in danger of becoming moldy pretty fast if not for a quick change of direction leading into an entirely different movie. The ghost angle is something — Mister Topper redux if you will — but it feels a bit uneven and not quite in the vein of what we’re used to. What it does morph into is a bit of the Costello and Marjorie Reynolds show, which isn’t an entirely bankrupt proposition. In comparison, Abbott as a straight-laced and tormented psychiatrist doesn’t provide much in the way of genuine laughs. He functions best in conjunction with his able partner.

I’ve already made it painfully apparent, I’m not an admirer of haunted house films with seances and the like, but Abbott and Costello probably give us the funniest version (although I need to rewatch I Love Lucy to make doubly sure). I especially appreciated when Costello the apparition made his presence fully known by rapping his comedy partner over the foot. There’s not a great deal of this kind of interplay in the picture, but it seems telling these are still among the most noteworthy moments.

3.5/5 Stars

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Between the animated credits and their pairing of some historically lucrative stars, Universal does well to promote their assets. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein also shows an understanding of the continued shelf life of IP. If that was true in the 1940s, it’s even more of a buzzword in the modern media landscape.

At its best, we get Abbott and Costello trading off their impressions of some of the most iconic monsters. But more important than that is how our team is back together again. All is right within their world with their patented antagonism restored along with their attempts at menial labor.

Abbott’s bossing Costello around even as he’s somehow managed to nab the pretty girl. It’s really a reversal of the Hope & Crosby dynamic where Bing always seems to get the girls. Here it’s the lovable pudgy nincompoop Costello. Though both his pretty ladies have ulterior motives.

They also have ample opportunity to bump heads with a belligerent businessman. It’s only the beginning of their troubles. McDougal’s House of Horrors is a personal showcase for the traditional gags where Lou crosses paths with Dracula who is very much alive, though he’s never around when Bud comes back to investigate.

Lou can’t catch a break, but of course, that’s the gag. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, he unwittingly has run-ins with them all, and somehow comes out on the other side still intact. This is the ultimate joke that can only work with a foundation of laughs. It’s his absurd invincibility in the face of all of this supernatural threat and menace that seems bent on destroying him time and time again.

It’s also one of the first movies in their catalog with a dramatic turn — Abbott must believe his buddy for once — he knows he’s not just seeing things. It does disrupt the situational irony fundamental to their brand of comedy, but it comes late enough, we’re ready for our resolution, and the movie pays it off in the most melodramatic Hollywood form.

But it is a glorious crescendo of scaredy-cat comedy, and it seems to suggest to forthcoming generations just what can be done if you successfully meld these genres together. Because it doesn’t merely trivialize them. By weaving together the mythology of the Universal monsters from their own standalone entries, this addition effectively built on all their legacies. 

3.5/5 Stars

Abbott and Costello Films: Buck Privates, Hold That Ghost, Who Done It?

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Buck Privates (1941)

Service comedies almost feel like a rite of passage for comedy teams, and it’s no different with this early success from Abbott and Costello. Against their hijinks, there’s a blatantly obvious love triangle (Lee Bowman, Jane Frazee, and Alan Curtis) meant to lend some balance to the drama. It feels reminiscent of what studios tried to do by domesticating all the Marx Brothers’ later works with “plot.”

The Andrew Sisters — at the height of their powers — also sing a couple of their best toe-tappers including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Bounce Me Brother, With a Solid Four.” There’s a certain amount of buoyant jingoism about them. This is a staple of their appeal.

Still, it’s strange to think Pearl Harbor had not yet occurred when the film was shot. The country was on the cusp of something but not yet plunged into the abyss of World War. For now, Abbott and Costello can live their charmed comedic life.

This is the picture that transitioned them from the vaudevillian circuit and really made them lucrative movie stars. It’s all about the bits from playing craps to army physicals and a bumbling drill regimen as only Abbott and Costello could pull it off. They do have a mark and easy rival who goes from police officer to hulking company officer (Nat Pendleton), but just as often the comic tension is borne out of their own self-made antagonism.

Costello is always a hapless victim and Abbott always has a way of either berating his ineptitude or egging him on. This was the crux of their not-so-secret formula. Again, like the Marx Brothers, it’s not like they were an overnight success trying to come up with their personas as they went along. They already feel like a well-oiled machine we can thoroughly enjoy without any reservations.

3.5/5 Stars

Hold That Ghost (1941)

Hold That Ghost finds Abbott and Costello perfectly in rhythm. First, they’re bumbling waiters at a fancy restaurant. Then, they’re gas station attendants and in both places, they find themselves unwittingly linked with a local gangster named Moose, who’s tangled up with a blackmailer and the D.A.

All of this is a set-up because the majority of the picture takes place in a haunted house. Even if the studio added these earlier scenes to capitalize on the musical success of Buck Privates, it does feel like the perfect entree.

Our hapless heroes are piled into a jalopy full of a menagerie of mostly second-rate character players and then dropped off in front of a dark and haunted tavern. There’s a ridiculously handsome professor with his head buried in his work, and the pouting blonde just waiting for him to notice. The third member is a jovial radio actress who’s more than game to make Lou’s acquaintance. I was gleeful when the cast took to the floor of the haunted manor for some after-dinner dancing with some raucous choreography courtesy of our portly twinkle toes.

The dark and stormy night elicits all the typical scares especially because Costello is the king of the yellowbellies (and for good reason). Because while his partner chides him for being a lily-liver, gangsters commit murders, detectives show up unannounced out of nowhere only to disappear, and of course, there are the ghosts.

The way Costello sounds off like a little kid taps into his shtick at its best. He’s known for being hoodwinked and demonstrative in some of their most well-known skits (ie. Who’s on First?), but the dynamic works when he’s totally nettled his straight man with his utter idiocy. One can only work with the ire of the other. The same goes for any of the sleights of hand or deception gags they pull.

They work on this spectrum of perceived intelligence. Costello sees things and protests. We know he’s speaking the truth, but to any objective outsider (in this case Abbott), he’s being unreasonable.

Like Stan Laurel, he’s a bit of a charmed character, and the world in all its many lunacies is observable only to him. His hat is swiped from his head, a bedroom turns into a gambling joint, and dead bodies fall on the floor only to disappear into thin air.

The ongoing candle gag only works due to this same principle predicated on timing. Abbott’s out of view and yet standing just off stage so he comes back into frame at the most inopportune (or opportune) time for the visual gag to take. Abbott and Costello pretty much built a career on this, and why not? I find it delightful even after all these years.

4/5 Stars

Who Done It? (1942)

It wouldn’t be an Abbott and Costello picture without them taking some menial job ripe with some humor to show off their usual conflicting ineptitude. They display perfectly out-of-sync, synchronicity if you will. You have to be working together to be so visually discordant.

Costello’s behind a cafe counter cutting a piece of cheese — Linberger cheese — and he’s about to suffocate from the smell. The customer’s grousing for his food and Abbott’s barking after his pal, who has no recourse to bring out a gas mask…

Again this feels like the appetizer whetting our appetite for coming attractions as Costello keeps on getting fleeced by a kid bellhop. But they’re on to better things because our boys are aspiring radio talents moonlighting as soda jerks.

They meet another professorial fellow, who might be their inroad to a career in radio murder mysteries. However, when the network president (Thomas Gomez) gets murdered mid-program, they have a chance to prove just how good they are at solving crimes. Most of the movie takes place in these stationary interiors, inside the radio set, and yet the boys tumble all over the place as per usual.

What sets the movie a cut above some of the other A & C pictures comes with the supporting cast. Who Done It is bolstered by some well-remembered talent of the era falling into their readily available parts.

Patric Knowles and Louise Albritton are well and fine as the prospective young lovers caught in the drama after losing the good colonel. Mary Wickes brings her ever-wry wit to play up her own fledgling romance with Costello.

William Gargan and Bendix can be called upon in a pinch to lampoon their typically hardboiled cops plucked from just about any noir you’ve ever seen. There’s Jerome Cowan in another role. This familiarity helps carry the lulls when our heroes aren’t front and center.

All the rest of the time they’re hard at work filling us with belly laughs. There’s a familiar-sound “watts and volt” bit. Then, with a killer on the loose, Costello gets beset by transcription machines, stage acrobats, and sound effects; it feels like a comedic jungle gym with so many possibilities for his elastic talents. I’ve rarely considered halitosis so funny.

But just about everything is superseded by the finale kicked off by the anxiety-inducing phone gag I knew in another iteration during my childhood. Every person and his brother is able to patch through their calls in an instant — the world over — and yet the operator tells poor Lou his line is busy.

It doesn’t matter if he has thousands of dollars on the line or if there’s still a murderer to be apprehended. Because he constantly reminds us these pictures are about the means, not the ends. This one’s a lively ride hyping up the melodrama and leaning into chaotic bits of slapstick in all the best ways.

4/5 Stars

House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

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Like many of the directors of his day and age, Robert Wise cut his teeth on noirish material on his way up the industry totem pole toward more prestigious projects. House on Telegraph Hill supplants a Belsen Concentration Camp survivor named Karin Dernakova (Valentina Cortese) who emigrates to San Francisco on the prospect of a better life.

This might have felt like a very prevalent narrative in a post-war world, but what makes her story unique is her secret: She’s not actually Karin Dernakova. Her real name is Victoria Kowalska but her feeble friend Karin shares the hope of her distant relatives in America. Although Karin doesn’t live to see it, in a moment of decision, Victoria decides to don the life of her friend. It’s a risk but one she is willing to take as it promises more than she would ever have otherwise.

The Allied liberators are decent, enlightened people who handle her with a human touch. They aren’t looking to find her out, instead intent on helping her assimilate back into society. Her first stop is a displaced person’s camp and then her relatives who live in San Francisco.

Richard Basehart is one of the men watching over the assets of her late “aunt.” In fact, he’s a little more closely involved as guardian of a child and his estate. The lady she was meant to stay with is dead, and her young son doesn’t remember his mother very well; Alan does what he can to make her feel welcome. The attraction between them is also of convenience to her as she’s driven by fear and a desire to realize her American dreams. Ultimately, they get wed.

As House of Telegraph Hill settles and finds itself as it were, what becomes apparent are these varied strands coming together. Because it shares elements we see in innumerable films of the same period. The first is the gothic home and the woman in danger noir. At first, it’s not altogether explicit, but there’s an eery sense about the place.

An imperious portrait of a deceased relative sits prominently in the middle of the parlor. There’s something slightly unnerving about it like it might somehow catch her in the lie. Likewise, their governess Margaret (Fay Baker) is built out of the Ms. Danvers prototype, making Karin feel thoroughly unwelcome in her own home. Though this is the undercurrent of the entire movie, isn’t it? It actually isn’t hers to have.

There is this general sense of unease bubbling up from the surface from any number of nooks and crannies. Although Rebecca is a better mood piece and its actors are probably more prominent in their evocations, House on Telegraph Hill not only has an illusory housekeeper and a specter of a proprietress but also a man of the house with dubious intentions.

In order to offset the perceived menace, there must be an escape valve and Marc Bennet (William Lundigan) is just the man. Although Alan is reproachful of his old school chum, he has the kind of good-hearted, easy charm to provide Karin with a much-needed ally — someone to let her know she is not crazy. For that matter, there’s her son, and Gordon Gebert is just about one of the best child actors of the era if we’re basing our criteria solely on spunky adorableness. Playing baseball with his mother is one of the most humanizing activities you might imagine for a young boy.

This general malaise displaces the hope and prosperity brought on by the end of the war and happiness is extinguished by this unnerving sense of unease. It seems the horrors of the Holocaust are given a very real form and expression. We have a paranoia-filled framework perfect for a noirish tale of distress brimming with psychological torment and underlining duress.

There’s a mysterious drop-off in the rickety old playhouse caused by a sudden explosion, and later faulty breaks causing her car to careen violently through the hills. Somehow she survives, and it feels like it could all be an illusion — not just back projections of a studio lot — but also a manifestation of the pervasive mania she finds herself stricken by.

Basehart doesn’t necessarily have a cushy headliner role. Still, he’s good at playing bad with his charming manner and dashing good looks. And yet this becomes a glorious noir portrayal because it provides such a contradictory projection of truth and falsehoods that we must reconcile as an audience alongside Cortese. In other words, the ominous scoring says one thing, while his demeanor says another. We’re always kept in this state of uncertainty. It doesn’t help since we have the contradiction of the budding love affair between Basheart and Cortese in real life.

In Suspicion, Hitchcock was forced to pull Cary Grant away from the brink and if there is one thing in this picture’s favor, it’s that we can still have our villain. True, it resorts to wildly histrionic melodrama in its final moments, stewing in all its gothic glory. There are strings and drums pounding away, as orange juice, not milk, is ingested. If it’s not altogether satisfying, at least it delivers on the kind of cinematic delirium we expect from a movie like this, wearing all its many facets right on its sleeve.

3.5/5 Stars

He Walked By Night (1948)

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He Walked by Night is akin to T-Men or Border Incident in its pervasive use of “Voice of God” narration. Today, all of this feels blase and staid like newsreel footage without much substance. Over time, the voice feels a bit like a pesky mosquito not so much in tone or frequency but simply in his tendencies. He won’t leave us in peace. What he is worth are a few minutes of civic history circa 1948 for those invested in knowing something about the distant past.

The real juicy bits are when noir seeps into the equation. To set the scene, there’s a cop returning home from his beat late at night; he sees a mysterious-looking figure loitering around a shop. He confronts the passerby, and the fugitive opens fire.

Quickly, the wheels of justice are notified on the switchboard, and the police force is mobilized to track down the fugitive who vanishes into the dead of night. Like any of these sorts of police procedurals, most of our “heroes” are innocuous types with a chiseled jaw and voices made for straightforward “just the facts” television — Scott Brady and Jack Webb among them.

In fact, Webb would use the experience of this movie to bring a little program called Dragnet to the radio waves. It would take on a life of its own with two subsequent runs on the newly minted medium of television. He Walked By Night is of the same ilk.

Very few of the characters impose any sort of will or inventiveness on the story. It’s strictly by the book with John Alton putting everyone else to task. Boy oh boy could he shoot a gorgeous movie; it shows in every frame.

There is one challenger to Alton’s preeminence because Richard Basehart’s performance stands out, and it’s the most visible and elegant opportunity at something memorable. Everyone else is an average Joe or a victim. He actually gets to do something and embody an enigmatic character with multiple layers and compulsions. Set off by his matinee idol good looks and tentative demeanor, he erupts with wrath creating an indelible impression.

If there’s any downside, it’s only a minor qualm he probably had little control over. There’s never an appreciation or at least an understanding of the killer. In 1948 the movies weren’t ready for that, but it’s part of what makes the movie feel rather sterile. It’s all about the case, which while somewhat contentious, plays out in conventional parlance. The exhibition in style more than makes it worthwhile, but He Walked by Night feels fairly paltry in narrative terms.

It’s true that the real events have a tinge of cinematic drama and in the post-war years, these kinds of hard-fact docudramas were in vogue. But with this being based on a real killer and genuine terror, the creators cannot sketch too much in any way that makes the audience too uncomfortable.

Again, where it deviates or rather executes to the most sublime is through the photography of Alton. It punctuates and accentuates the story in ways that are irreducible. You simply have to marvel and people have done so for generations. If you want a solid representation of film noir, this is it, hook, line, and sinker.

Take a scene midway through the movie where the cops have gotten in touch with a shop owner (Whit Bissell). He unwittingly did ongoing business with the wanted man — not knowing the evasive Roy was actually a violent kleptomaniac. In fact, Roy returns to the electronic dealer’s office wary of a trap.

It’s here where Alton finally gets another chance to spring into action, exerting himself on the movie and forever changing its course. The shadowed interiors bisecting Basehart’s face as he slinks back into the darkness are positively sumptuous. The sound design proves equally striking; we don’t hear any scoring, not one foot hitting the ground. It gives it this almost illusory quality. These are phantoms at work.

When they put out his description, and he’s forced on the lam, it’s the next progression in the picture’s glorious dragnet of immersive chiaroscuro. Basehart makes a daring escape on the rooftops with a getaway set up for just such an occasion. Then, he escapes into the catacombs of the city evolving into a full-fledged storm drain noir. I’m accustomed to the waterways of Vienna as opposed to the sewers of L.A. They play just as well in what becomes a defining moment of the film.

Pounding feet and flashlight beams spell impending doom as they encroach on the fugitive’s position. It relies even more on the juxtaposition of light like a knife in the dark. I know my own timeline is not chronological, but if I had never seen The Third Man, He Walked by Night’s finale would feel even more novel and like a truly slam-bang finish. It accomplishes so much through visual tension and delivering on the manhunt that has been going on throughout the entire movie. There really is no better way they could have gone about it.

Until the very end, He Walked by Night is a performative war between the by-the-book sense of realism that feels like post-war convention, and then the manic, slightly repressed expression that burst forth only after hours. It’s no contest and this bodes well for this ’40s crime procedural.

3/5 Stars

Desperate (1947)

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It’s easy to imagine Steve Randall (Steve Brodie) has the life of many men circa 1947. He’s a war vet, and he makes an honest wage as a truck driver. Brodie and the effervescent Audrey Long are stars befitting the budget of the film, but I rather like them for it. There’s nothing prepossessing about them, and we appreciate them for their sheer likability; they’re humble, honest folks.

From the first instance they’re in a room together, they also prove themselves to be an adorably in-love couple, between flowers, anniversary cakes, and news of a baby on the way. It certainly is an auspicious beginning, and yet it’s all so wholesome; it feels like an instant tip-off that this picture is going to hell very fast. It proves to be the case.

Because Steve gets a call to carry a special load of goods. He doesn’t think anything of it, and he could use the extra dough on his salary. Only too late does he realize his old friend is asking him to haul stolen merchandise. This wasn’t what he signed up for, but they don’t care.

Raymond Burr fortuitously has a reputation for playing the pertinacious district attorney Perry Mason because without that there’s little doubt he would be forever immortalized as one of the most vicious baddies ever conceived in the age of noir. There’s something between his piercing eyes, the command of his voice, and his formidable frame that just leave an instant impression. He knows how to use them to his full advantage in the role of Walt Radak, a merciless criminal who also has a protective streak when it comes to his kid brother.

This is crucial because, in the botched burglary, it’s his brother who is taken by the authorities; the other thugs are frazzled but get away, and all of a sudden Steve is in a load of quicksand sinking fast.

Arguably, the creative apex of the film — or at least its fundamental allure — is suggested in a low-lit sequence in the gangster lair. Steve is cornered and Walt is ready to rough him up, literally knuckling the camera. Moments later, the man’s face is disfigured by a jagged bottle, and he’s pounded to a pulp under a swinging light fixture. We don’t see it explicitly, but the scene is so violently expressive; it’s all the more evocative thanks to this very specific stylization. It’s noir at its finest courtesy of Anthony Mann.

Although maimed, Steve does get away, and he whisks Anne out of town, disregarding her pleas for him to go to the police. He’s scared, worried for his wife’s safety, and he wants to vindicate himself before going to the authorities. What it means is that both Walt and a wry police detective named Ferrari (Jason Robards Sr.) are looking for him, and only time will tell what happens when one of them finds him.

They trade out the urban apartments, trains, and trucks for rural farm life, which becomes a kind of escape valve accentuated even visually. It’s the film’s moment of reprieve as they are immersed in Anne’s doting family who agree to throw her a true Czechoslovakian country wedding — what they never had time for before — and they dance the day away.

The ending is already inevitable. Walt’s slimy private dick (Douglas Fawley) is able to locate Steve, and the vindictive mobster comes ready to pay the fugitive a call. With his baby brother’s impending appointment with the electrical chair, he’s bent on having Steve knocked off at the exact same hour. He might not be able to save his brother, but he can get some semblance of revenge. It’s an eye for an eye mentality with noirish stakes.

When they’re finally thrown together in Steve’s apartment, Mann’s not messing around, and the film’s climax delivers both in its theatrics and as an extraordinary exercise in substantive style. Between the music, the smoke, and the nervous rat-tat-tatting creating the cadence of scenes, he goes into those fabulous claustrophobic close-ups of all his main players and the ticking clock smashed together as one. They create an excruciating effect because we know when the time runs out so does Steve’s life.

Mann milks the moment for everything it’s worth and his handling of time is so very effective. There’s not an ounce of realism in the scene. Maybe we have a dining room table, a kitchen, a fridge, but everything else is fabricated and manipulated to ratchet up the tension of the moment. The results speak for themselves.

The final shootout on the stairwell of the apartment building is yet another feat of ingenuity using everything at his disposal from the visual motif to the shadows, even frightened neighbors opening their doors momentarily only to slam them again.  It all culminates in the final crescendo and the ultimate release of anxiety.

It’s easy to see Anthony Mann coming into his own and what a stunning creative force he was. Desperate doesn’t garner too many laurels today, but it capably highlights what makes Mann such a popular journeyman filmmaker. There’s so much grit and tenacity stamped into the very fabric of his genre pieces, whether film noir or his later westerns with Jimmy Stewart. There’s nothing lifelike about them, and yet he magnifies the tension so much so that they function as such a blistering exploration of crime and vindictive human psychology.

3.5/5 Stars