The Sniper (1952)

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From the outset with Stanley Kramer’s name emblazoned over the opening credits it gives an indication of what this film is as does the name of Director Edward Dymtryk. Kramer is, of course, remembered as one of the most fervent socially-conscious producers behind a string of classics like Defiant Ones (1958), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) and…It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)?

But then there’s Dymtryk who was one of the most visible casualties of the blacklist as one of the scapegoated Hollywood 10 and also the helmer of such earlier pictures as Crossfire (1947) which had a very obvious message behind it.

Thus, the Sniper looks to be the perfect collaboration with a harrowing story that hopes to simultaneously enact some amount of social change. We are introduced to a man who is one of the “sex criminals” alluded to in the opening crawl who provide a major problem for the local police force.

In this case, we get stuck inside the head of the troubled figure named Eddie Miller, a deliveryman for a local dry cleaning service, who is plagued by not only paranoia and cold sweats but a burning hatred of women.

There’s a peeping tom, voyeuristic manner to the camerawork as we follow Eddie and his morbid curiosity. He sits in his second-floor apartment picking out women through the scope of his sniper rifle and pretending to pull the trigger.  He’s an unstable personality, an isolated individual with a mother complex that sends him seeking out brunettes. But rather than getting some perverse pleasure out of the thought or actual implementation of their suffering, it comes off as a nearly uncontrollable urge.

So rather than hating Eddie for his indiscretions, it’s quite easy to pity his impulses because they feel like precisely that. Something he cannot seem to rein in. In one particular moment, he sticks his hand on the hot burner of a stovetop scalding his hand because it’s the only release he can get from the maddening thoughts hammering inside his skull.

There’s also the suggestion that people like Eddie are the ones who need mental help and yet they get kicked back out to the curb in deference to more priority cases — the suggestion being that physical injury is more pressing than psychological problems. It’s true that it can be a difficult issue to reconcile with.

The front half of The Sniper proves to be a surprisingly frank depiction and we can attribute this to the fact that as an audience we get so closely tied to Eddie Miller as a character. It’s an unflinching portrayal delivered remarkably well by Arthur Franz.

But the picture falters in its efforts to get didactic and it becomes overtly a message picture instead of purely a character study of a troubled man. We sense it trying to make its point rather than allowing the actions to dictate what happens and thus allowing the audience members to arrive at their own conclusions.

The most obvious extension of this is the all-knowing psychiatrist who lays down his wisdom though no one seems ready to listen to his insights. He’s a proponent of nipping the problem of sex offenders in the bud at a latent stage putting them into a mental institution with newly proposed legislation. It’s not that the idea is bad but it’s the execution in cinematic term that proves heavy-handed.

The latter half is more about the investigation to find the killer headed by Detective Frank Kafka (Adolphe Menjou). Meanwhile, Frank Faylen was apparently promoted and transferred from New York following his days in Detective Story (1951). Marie Windsor appears in an uncharacteristic sympathetic role as a victimized nightclub pianist. Her outcome and a number of others subsequently turn The Sniper into a commentary on gender whether it meant to be or not.

I rather like how the film utilizes the streets of San Francisco and there’s no need to overtly make a point that the film is set there, existing within police precincts, humble apartment buildings, and hilly streets. It’s simply the world that the film makes its home. It includes a rather authentic Chinese restaurant which besides providing a little flavor, shows that Menjou could use some work on his chopstick form. Though on a positive note, Victor Sen Yung snags another uncredited appearance after showing up in the S.F. set Woman on the Run (1950) as well.

Still, despite the reality that the picture gets a bit too preachy, there’s often a modicum of truth in this type of film we could do well to consider. The same psychiatrist notes the following, “You’ll catch him and they’ll kill him and everyone will forget about it. That is until the next one comes along and it’ll start all over again.”

It’s the endless cycle that we as humans allow without actually ever fixing problems. Such issues cause me to say, again and again, there’s nothing new under the sun. The same old problems just reassert themselves in different ways. It doesn’t help when our attention spans get shorter and shorter while our knowledge of history continues to dwindle.

3.5/5 Stars

His Kind of Woman (1951)

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A real disaster. That’s what His Kind of Woman could have easily been because with Howard Hughes meddling in any production it was very likely that something would get dragged out, lopped off, or in some way switched around.

In this case, the whole film was shot by John Farrow only for Hughes to bring in Richard Fleischer (The Narrow Margin) to reshoot some material as well as calling on the services of Earl Fenton for some script doctoring. Not only that, but the picture sat on shelves unreleased for at least a year. Despite Hughes’ best efforts even unintentionally, His Kind of Woman somehow still succeeds for the very fact that it is so different from many of its contemporaries.

There are moments in hindsight where you see where one thread was tied to another or one scene was inserted to make the story comprehensible. However, in its essence, this picture is not so much a product of its plot but of its characters and the tone it deems germane in any given situation.

The chemistry is sizzling hot down to the last clothes iron between Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. It’s also a contest of the sidelong glances as they both case each other’s faces with their pair of iconic eyes. One pair indifferently cool as Mitchum always was and Russell as her playfully seductive self. But this venture is as much of a farce as it a true blue film noir. More on that momentarily.

It opens in Italy where a gangster (Raymond Burr) is on the lamb still trying to figure out how to get back into the U.S. to protect his interests. Our narrator (Charles McGraw) relates the action from Italy to Mexico and then Los Angeles where we finally get a line of one of our stars. Dan Milner (Robert Mitchum) is a detached gambler with few things tying him down when he receives a house call.

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The premise, on the whole, is an odd one. Mitchum goes to Morro Lodge on assignment. His orders are to wait and he gets $15,000 in advance for doing so and $50,000 total. We don’t know why he’s there but it gives us time to feel out the people who inhabit this curious getaway on a hidden inlet below the Mexican border. And it’s quite the crew aside from those already mentioned. It’s the same story for about an hour and the good news is it’s actually quite a diverting place to be.

We find out that Mitchum does have a noble side pulling a parlor trick in a game of poker that feels rather like Rick’s roulette wheel in Casablanca (1942). Then, a swacked pilot drops down at the nearby airfield. At first, it’s easy to surmise he’s a Howard Hughes caricature until you realize he’s actually a Federal Agent. Otherwise, we don’t know what we’re waiting for or even really why we’re waiting at all but in the meantime, we have some quality entertainment — a real first-rate floorshow from the stock company.

Jim Bachus is a wise-cracking real estate man who constantly searches out his latest gin rummy partner while trying to relive his old glory days out on the football field to impress the wife of another vacationer. His flabby physique and general manner do not do much to win her over. Still, he’s not a bad sort of fellow though he thinks the love life of a real estate man might make a good motion picture.

Anyways, the true attraction and the figure who causes us to stick around and truly relish the back end of His Kind of Woman is Vincent Price. He provides one of his most brilliantly wacky performances to offset any moments in the film that might give the pretense of being serious.

Mark Cardigan is batty about hunting and so enraptured with his own performances on the screen. One night he’s cooking up his duck for a nice dinner for three only to get his party disrupted by his publicity agent who also brought his estranged wife. Finally, he goes into battle spouting off Hamlet just as the film starts getting tense and someone must be spurred to action.

He’s a gung-ho hero both on the screen and off gathering the most delightfully mismatched band for his counterattack on the enemy fleet parked nearby. But to say they’re sunk before they’ve started proves too true.

What follows is a perfect collision of tones as has probably never before been captured in film noir. Though I must admit it’s a bit of a shame that Jane Russell is conceivably trapped in a closet for much of the film’s prolonged finale. She did so much to bolster the opening moments but alas Robert Mitchum is at it alone fleeing his adversary aboard a clandestine barge.

In fact, everything takes a turn toward a brutal course that feels much more like prototypical noir. However, this cannot outlast the vein of light humor and sensual chemistry that comes with the onslaught of Vincent Price and his seafaring battalion followed by a romantic reunion. Russell gets out of the closet just long enough for another sweltering exchange with Mitchum that reminds us just why she was missed.

3.5/5 Stars

Russell: What’s Out There?

Mitchum: Islands. 

Russell: Samoa and Tahiti

Mitchum: Bikini

Russell: You’re such a wise guy. 

Pursued (1947)

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A film like the Searchers (1956) or even The Bravados (1958) frames the western as a tale of vengeance, where a vendetta is carried out from start to finish, only to get twisted up along the way across moral lines. Pursued is a psychological western that takes up the story from the opposite end of the barrel, as its name implies, though the way it goes about it isn’t altogether straightforward. Such stories very rarely are.

Jeb (Robert Mitchum) is hiding out in a cave as his love Thor (played by Teresa Wright) rides to him. We don’t know their history, why he is there, or who is coming after him. All we know through obvious inference is that all these things must be true.

It’s screenwriter Niven Busch’s ploy to draw us into our story and then he fades into a flashback that carries most of the picture’s weight. As many stories channeling Freudian theories must begin, this one is conceived in childhood.

A young boy remembers glimpses of a horrible event. Bullets flying. A body of a woman crawling towards him as he hides under a bed. And this woman (Judith Anderson) would become his adopted mother as her two own kids become rather like his siblings. Thor and Jeb get on well enough but from their boyhood, there has always been an unresolved conflict between Jeb and Adam. The animosity stems from the fact Adam will always see the other as not a true part of his family and Jeb lives with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, understandable or not.

For the sake of their mother and their sister, they begrudgingly tolerate each other and that’s the extent of it. When the Spanish-American War erupts one of them must go and so they decide it in the most arbitrary way possible. With a coin flip. Jeb loses and goes off to be a war hero.

When the family finally reunites and gathers around to sing “Danny Boy” to the tune of Londonderry Aire, there is a sensitivity we feel unaccustomed to, since the rest of the story is brusque and distant nearly scene after scene.

While in its opening moments it began as a story of hospitality and family, Pursued really starts falling apart and allows its core themes to exert their full presence. It’s in these moments where we begin to see hints of a story playing out not unlike a crazed version of the prodigal son.

On another coin flip, Jeb loses out on his piece of the ranch and after having it out with Adam turns to his buddy (Alan Hale Sr.) at a gambling house. He is brought on as part of the operation. Meanwhile, the jealous older brother character begrudges the fact his mother will give Jeb an equal inheritance so he is looking to avenge this personal affront. It doesn’t end peaceably.

At his ensuing trial, Jeb’s life is on the line but even though he gets away scot-free, his relations with his surrogate family will never be the same. And it’s only made worse with every subsequent moment including a town dance where Thor’s latest beau (Harry Carey Jr.) is egged on to confront Jeb.

Dean Jagger makes a nuisance of himself hanging over the entire picture menacingly, but it does feel like his talents are generally wasted. Because when everyone else is gone, the most traumatized parties are Mitchum, Wright, and Anderson.

However, this noir western is a genre-bender blessed by the beautiful black and white imagery of James Wong Howe matched with the direction of that old Warner Bros. vet Raoul Walsh. Whether it’s the distant silhouette of Robert Mitchum illuminated in the doorway at night or the sheer magnitude of the cliffs and crags as they frame insignificant riders galloping by on their horses, the images are undeniably evocative.

There’s nothing all that surprising or thematically interesting about the film’s content initially. Still, this is not a full denunciation of the picture outright. Because the way it plays out does become marginally more intriguing as Mitchum comes under attack and finds himself becoming more abhorred by the minute.

I must admit it’s hard to buy sweet, innocent Teresa Wright could be vindictive at all. However, what the two stars breed is the most detached married life known to man. It’s a tribute to both of them. But they can’t stay that way forever.

What does remain is the fact Mitchum has been hounded his whole life by some unnameable specter hanging over him, and the picture has been hemming and hawing for a final showdown all along. It finally comes, though the ones who take a stand are not who we might expect.

The psychology puzzle of it all is up for debate — how memories come flooding back at just the right moment or how people can love someone and them turn around and hate them and then love them again almost on a dime.

But this does not completely neutralize Pursued which still deserves a reputation as a brooding and atmospheric take on the West. It’s not as mentally stimulating as might have been warranted but with the cast of Robert Mitchum and Teresa Wright, even ill-fit as they may seem, this oater still comes as a fairly easy recommendation.

3.5/5 Stars

Crossfire (1947)

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Like any self-respecting film noir, it opens with men whaling on each other amid stylized darkness. Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire is an issue-driven picture and it’s an important one given the cultural moment in which it came into being. There’s no doubting that.

But though the imagery is spot on and we have numerous noir regulars, it doesn’t feel like a noir film in the semi-conventional sense. Maybe it’s because the issue it was looking to root out takes precedence over any of its more formalistic qualities and that’s perfectly fine.

From a practical standpoint, Dymytrk opted to shoot the film with low key lighting as it’s a cheaper set-up and also a lot quicker which allowed the picture to be churned out in a mere 20 days. However, it’s still quite befuddling how a film this short can still somehow be incomprehensible at times.

Like any good procedural it whips out a long list of characters introduced in every sequence who either have significant amounts of screentime or show up for a few moments and still manage to play a crucial part in this obscured piece of drama.

Realistically, Crossfire can be touted as the film of the three Roberts: Young, Ryan, and Mitchum. Robert Young will always be heralded as a television father much like Hugh Beaumont and so while I can never take him quite seriously in such a role as a police investigator, he certainly doesn’t do a poor job as Captain Finlay.

Paradoxically, Robert Ryan is one of those actors who is probably grossly underrated and yet as far as personal taste goes I’ve never liked him much (Though my esteem steadily rises). Maybe that simply pertains to the kind of characters he often played such as the belligerent Montgomery in this film. They are not meant to be affable and he does a wonderful job of eliciting a scornful reaction.

Likewise, Robert Mitchum has arguably the least important role of the three, but he still has that laconic magnetism that wins us over, portraying one of the other soldiers caught up in this whole big mess. Sgt. Peter Keeley is a bit of a tough guy but also ready to watch the back of his brothers in arms. He’s our counterpoint to Robert Ryan.

The minor players list out like so. The victim of it all was a man named Samuels (Sam Levene) who crossed paths with the demobilized soldiers in a bar and seemed nice enough. He even struck up a conversation with a homesick G.I. named Mitch (George Cooper) who Keeley guesses might be a prime suspect for murder.

Jacqueline White is the wanted Corporal’s concerned spouse while Gloria Grahame plays a characteristic noir dame who might prove to be an invaluable witness on his behalf, if only she’ll cooperate.

This is yet another link in the chain of post-war crime pictures where soldiers were returning home only to meet a new kind of disillusionment (ie. The Blue Dahlia or Act of Violence). A certain bar scene played over from multiple perspectives proves to be a pivotal moment, but it’s full of fuzzy recollections and screwy bits of information. No one seems quite sure what happened and the film banks on this ambiguity.

However, it’s about time to cease skirting around the obvious and say outright what the film is an indictment of. It’s anti-Semitism. “Jew-boy” is the trigger word. Though the film requires some reading between the lines, thanks to the production codes, there’s no context needed to understand what that means. It’s instantly apparent bigotry is rearing its ugly head.

As such, Crossfire shares a similar conviction with the year’s other famed issue-driven picture The Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and it brings to mind the wartime short film headlined by Frank Sinatra, The House I Live In (1945).

But, of course, when you begin to analyze one group of people there always seem to be others still being marginalized whether Japanese-American, African-American, Mexican-American. You name it. And that’s part of what makes such a portrait fascinating. To see to what extent the lines of inclusion will be drawn up.

Though it’s evident that he’s preaching, there are still some steadfast truths coming from Robert Young as he tries to convince a soldier (William Phipps), still wet behind the ears, what he must do for the sake of his conscience. There’s a need to stand up to the bigots because hate is always the same. They hated the Irish and the Italians before just like they will continue to hate some other people group in years to come.

Even if the history gets pushed to the fringes and it doesn’t get taught in school, that doesn’t make it any less of the truth or any less of our history. It’s possible to contend that we are made stronger, not weaker when our troubled history and past indiscretions are fully acknowledged. Only then can we learn, heal the wounds, and pursue a better future together.

So Murder, My Sweet (1944) is still a superior film noir from Edward Dmytryk and probably a great deal more fun, but there’s no denying the message that’s at work behind Crossfire.

3.5/5 Stars

Detective Story (1951)

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“Who are you, God? Didn’t you ever make a mistake?” – Cathy O’Donnell as Susan Carmichael

Counselor at Law (1933) was an early William Wyler film from the 1930s that shares some cursory similarities with this feature. Along those lines, Detective Story proves to be an exploration into the life of a cop much as the earlier film allowed us to look through the keyhole at the life of a lawyer (John Barrymore). Fundamentally they also both provide the same cross-section of society with Wyler navigating the space in such a way to tie the threads together while keeping things engaging.

Detective Story proves to be a stage play and a morality play in one fell swoop and that is decidedly both good and bad. It’s true that the crossroads of so many films and talents meet here and all share a room together.

There’s another fiery role for “Mr. Instensity” himself Kirk Douglas as Jim McLeod, a man who strives to rid the streets of criminals and put them where they belong: The electric chair. He wants to be judge, jury, and executioner if at all possible. His all-out war on crime can be traced back to his lousy father. Ever since those days, he’s vowed to be everything his old man never was — not tolerating any kind of infraction of the law. It’s a thoroughly intense portrayal though it jumps off the emotional deep end a few times too often.

It’s his supporting cast that steadies him and guides the film toward something more authentic and attainable. William Bendix was potentially slated for a reunion with Alan Ladd before Douglas ultimately took the role. However, he trades out his image as a heavy for a policeman with a decent dose of humanity.

Frank Faylen is the acting desk clerk who fields all the incoming calls that come his way. Meanwhile, Lee Grant is a skittish young purse snatcher who winds up at headquarters for her first offense. Cathy O’Donnell (wife of screenwriter Robert Wyler) plays her always immediately likable ingenue role as the young woman trying to bail out her childhood friend on a charge of theft.

There are a number of others including journeymen cops, journalists, and four-time losers and then there’s McLeod’s wife Mary (Eleanor Parker). I’m not sure what to evaluate Eleanor Parker on but in the recent months, I have gained an appreciation for the fact that, good or bad, she will fearlessly commit to a role and pour her all into it. She owns a very eclectic body of work as well but Detective Story sees her succumbing to histrionics much like her onscreen husband.

Because at its best Detective Story is a slice-of-life drama that gives us insight into humanity much as Counselor at Law (1933) did. But this picture is high on the dramatics and whether or not they are completely believable is up for contention.

It’s also a fairly frank picture at that — at least for its day — though it does point out the duplicity that’s so blatantly clear.  Here a taboo is utilized as the fodder for melodrama as something so despicable. Yet in the heart of Hollywood itself, there were undoubtedly many women who did similar covering up jobs to save their reputations.

The Hays Code could try and keep taboos under raps but in doing so they were ignoring an unfortunate reality. It is necessary to remove the shrouds and let these things live on in the light.

But far from seeing this film with our enlightened postmodern sensibilities and condemning it for making such a frank subject seem sullied and unseemly, I would contend that this picture leaves me melancholy. Not for the reasons you might expect either.

I feel sorry for women ostracized and labeled as “tramps” like Mary is. I’m ashamed that there is a standard that everything must be good and pure. There is no room for grace. It’s this hypocritical nature that’s blatantly obvious in McLeod with the bitter irony coming to fruition. He became the very person that he was striving never to become.

The depressing depths of the drama suffocate any chance of a laugh by the film’s latter half and so while I’m all for fatalistic even tragic denouements in the right context, this film is so utterly discouraging and it has nothing to do with desiring a happy ending. It’s more closely related to the lens in which the film seems to use. There’s no integrity left in humanity. A world where beating hearts of flesh have been transformed into hearts of stone. That’s a very dark world to try and reconcile with.

Worst yet it does try by heaping on more drama and last minutes heroics to right all the wrongs in a matter of seconds. So we lose on two accounts. The picture doesn’t have the guts enough to dig into its disconsolate inclinations and still for almost its entire runtime it’s focused on those precise conflicts making it supremely difficult to enjoy Detective Story as much as we could have.

3.5/5 Stars

The Enforcer (1951)

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220px-The_Enforcer_1951.JPGNot that this should deter you completely but The Enforcer isn’t a particularly unique crime film by any stretch of the imagination. Still, we have Humphrey Bogart headlining the police procedural not unlike a Call Northside 777 (1948), The Naked City (1948), or Panic in the Streets (1950).

He’s the acting district attorney entrenched in the war against syndicated crime in the city. And the case he has topples like a house of cards when his one key witness is terminated. All the efforts behind four long years of tireless legwork go out the window.

They knew that it was an expansive operation with a multitude of contracts, a laundry list of hit men, and an undertaker on the payroll. They subsequently unearthed abandoned cars, drained marshes for the dead bodies, and questioned countless others who were purported to be involved. And yet it all seemed all for naught. No one knew enough or else they weren’t talking.

But Martin Ferguson (Bogart) is not about to let his case against the wanted crime boss Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane) crumble that easily. There’s got to be another way to nab him. The script from Martin Rackin spends the majority of the time filling in all the details. In fact, he probably spends too much time before finally tacking on Bogart`s last-minute hunch almost as if it were an afterthought.

Ultimately, The Enforcer could almost be called a Raoul Walsh picture as the veteran director and friend of Humphrey Bogart took over the project when the incumbent Bretaigne Windust was taken seriously ill early in production.

No disrespect to Mr. Windust at all but the film got a leg up thanks to Raoul Walsh who directed many of the film’s more volatile sequences, capturing the action with bullets flying and fists flailing — brought to us with his usual dynamism. That counteracts some of the faulty storytelling that bogs the plot down.

The narrative structure is strikingly similar to aspects of The Killers (1946) but it’s hardly executed in the same gripping fashion. In fact, the layering of the flashbacks is hardly ideal even if it feels canonically very typical of what we often term noir. By the film’s end, whether or not the story gets told feels beside the point but nevertheless, Walsh manages to provide us with a decently tense climax that satiates some of our clamorings for a quality ending.

The film’s better assets are a few of the supporting cast members that help to add color to the procedural. We are treated to the typical menagerie of seedy characters including Ted de Corsia, Jack Lambert, and Zero Mostel. But the kingpin of them all is Everett Sloane. I can’t decide if it’s simply an uncharacteristic role for the actor or simply a poor bit of casting for the role of the boss of Murder Inc. But no matter, it is what it is.

There are also no femme fatales and very few female characters to speak of at all. For one moment, a woman is important: one Angela Vetto. Otherwise, it’s pretty bleak going. Even Bogart is not particularly interesting per se but he is still Bogart, making his scenes worth watching at the very least because he’s more than believable in any incarnation as a tough guy.

3/5 Stars

Review: In a Lonely Place (1950)

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Director Nicholas Ray customarily takes his material and subverts our expectations or better yet deconstructs the conventions that we often take for granted. But this is also matched with his penchant for showing a very raw and honest percolation of emotion. It causes every one of his movies to leave a perceptible toll on the audience because it’s difficult to have any other response. In a Lonely Place is another textbook example.

Here is a film with a murder plot which would normally be of primary concern. Instead, it ends up falling by the wayside to become nearly unimportant. It sounds almost callous to make such a claim since a life is at stake but then there is a bit of a detached quality permeating the picture.

A brooding Humphrey Bogart is at his most explosive as screenwriter Dixon Steele, a man with some talent, but a very odd way of exercising it. He’s an exasperating case for many in the industry, including his agent. Art Smith provides a wonderfully vivid performance as the agent nursing his ulcers while still faithfully standing by his client despite the turbulent nature of his temper. (Coincidentally Smith was featured in the earlier Dorothy B. Hughes adaptation Ride the Pink Horse).

It’s true “Dix” can be a tough man to figure out. Bogart may have played more appreciated, more iconic characters but there’s something especially raw about him here.

On top of Bogart’s performance, this is Nicholas Ray’s own examination of the Hollywood industry’s mechanisms, spitting out has-beens and flops as much as fame and fortune. There’s the continuous inner conflict between making a smash — the kind of trashy stuff that sells — and then trying to create something of worth on the spectrum of art.

If we had to draw up thematically similar films, All About Eve is a more flamboyant choice and Sunset Blvd. boasts the cynical edge but In a Lonely Place probably deserves to keep the same company with these noted classics from 1950 as a film of truly morose sentiments. It’s not simply cutting through the artifice of Hollywood. It’s trying to provide a deeper study of the people who are cogs of the industry.

After a precocious hat check girl (Martha Stewart) is found murdered it sets off an investigation by the police force. As Steele had requested the girl come over to his home to give him the plot summary of the low brow novel he is meant to adapt, just hours before her demise, he is placed on the top of the lists of suspects.

Conveniently, his neighbor across the courtyard, a bit part actress (Gloria Grahame at her most aloof and restrained), who he hardly knows, is brought in and vouches she saw him and it’s not a lie. He really was at home and he did not commit the crime.

If we wanted to, we could leave the story right there but that’s not all the film is working away at. It unravels in other ways too. In another world, this almost voyeuristic setting could have been made for Rear Window (1954) but this is not that film either.

Frank Lovejoy is the average cop with a thoughtful wife (Ms. Jeff Donnell) — a genuinely nice guy who knows “Dix” from back in their war days. He takes orders but he also has an inherent confidence in Steele as a human being. At any rate, he wouldn’t be prone to killing girls and so Brub helps to humanize this man in the eyes of the audience.

And yet there are still some troubling caveats on Dixon Steele. He owns a history of violent outbreaks but it goes beyond this. There’s a raging darkness that is part of his makeup as a character. He is tortured by hatred and by his own accompanying desolation. We can chalk it up to a number of things. His own personality. His lack of consistency. The often cruel industry that became his livelihood. It could be any number of these things or all of them.

In fact, for a film noir, the outcomes prove to be unique. It has murder but we never see it. There’s an actress who played countless femme fatales playing a slightly different iteration here. Even Bogart, though carrying a simmering temper that goes off on several occasions, is generally not a hardboiled heavy. Just a tormented screenwriter with demons to exorcize.

Beating up a college kid doesn’t go with the glorified and gritty brutality that might crop up in a Maltese Falcon (1941) or The Big Sleep (1946). It’s just callous barbarity in the normal world. Throwing phones or beating up friends in public is not normal behavior. There’s no other conventional excuse for it.

But this is Dixon Steele for you. He’s just a troubled man. Not an archetypal noir antihero. As much as we fear for the people in his stead, there’s also a mild pity reserved for him. He shows himself capable of love. He simply proves to be very ill-equipped for the endeavor.

The layers go deeper still and more personal as Gloria Grahame’s marriage with director Nicholas Ray was splintering and was finally absolved quietly during filming.

Beyond that, you get the sense, Bogart who financed the picture is playing someone, not unlike himself. Perhaps it’s the closest he ever got. Like the film, he found love in a woman, Lauren Bacall, many years his junior who nevertheless made him very happy. Sure Bogey was a success but it took him a long time to get to the top of the summit. He was a hard-drinker with a notoriously white-hot temper to match. Still, he was a romantic and an idealist in such a way we sympathize with. He’s ardently beloved today as he was in his heyday.

The contents of the story take on an entirely new spectrum of meaning with this personal context. In a Lonely Place wasn’t just an examination of Hollywood and the lives of people who could be real. In a Lonely Place feels far more transparent. It is Hollywood and these are the very people who find themselves caught up in its disillusioning grip.

Loneliness is there’s to have and to hold. They don’t need the prototypical genre conventions of graft and crime — the brand we conveniently label as film noir. There’s really little need for the more darkly cinematic overtones. They have themselves. That’s dismal enough already.

4.5/5 Stars

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

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The finest compliment I can extend to House on Haunted Hill is how it manages to exemplify many of the tropes we have come to imagine in old horror movies of yore even without having seen one. Because the hallmarks of the genre, by some curious form of cultural osmosis, have been passed down through the generations. Rather than a blank slate, an entire history of preconceived notions serves you well since many of us do not have the benefit of the former.

Much like Psycho (1060), we have some vague sense of what we have consigned ourselves too before we’ve begun. In fact, the low budget success of director William Castle’s picture is said to be behind Hitchcock’s own impetus to make a low budget horror flick. It, of course, paid absurd dividends at the box office. But now for House on Haunted Hill which proved successful in its own right.

In the very nature of its quintessential campiness, this haunted mansion seems to have just about everything. We are met with shrieking screams in the night and for someone like me who partook through in-home viewing, we have to use our imaginations in order to fully appreciate what a pitch black theater and surround sound would do to the nerves.

Because House on Haunted Hill is very much about a created atmosphere both architecturally with the facade of the house in exterior shots and then interiors which though obviously shot on sound stages, develop the ever-present eeriness handily. The soundtrack as well is an integral component with creaking doors, the liberal use of the theremin, and of course, a blood-curdling scream sprinkled throughout every now and again.

Our first introduction comes in the form of the disembodied heads of first Elisha Cook Jr. and then our host. While the memorably flighty actor preaches a message of spooky legends, Mr. Vincent Price comes in to recount how he and his wife decided to throw a little spend the night ghost party.

With the trademark condescending lilt of his voice, he introduces his guests and blandly acknowledges how amusing his wife, Mrs. Loren, is for planning such an affair. However, it really does seem like he had a major hand in it, providing an incentive to each guest of $10,000 apiece if only they manage to stay in the building alive through the night.

Whereas his wife Annabelle (Anna Ohmart) seems generally lukewarm about the gathering, he seems strangely obsessed with it. A bedroom encounter sets up just how dysfunctional their relationship is hinging on dueling strains of jealousy and avarice. What makes it delightful is the playful threats embedded in their jousting. They are cajoling each other constantly but there’s also something sinister lingering behind their words.

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The guests themselves are wide-ranging. Watson Prichard is called upon to make the festivities more chilling. The rest of the continent include a dashing airline pilot (Richard Long), a distinguished psychologist (Alan Young), a local newspaper columnist (Julie Mitchum), and lastly a young secretary (Carolyn Craig) employed in Mr. Loren’s company. What ties them all together is their desperate need for cash even if some veil their intentions behind personal preoccupations.

Their welcome is hardly cordially as they let themselves in and have a moment to get acquainted and get accustomed to their surroundings — hardly a place of gaiety and warmth. Finally, Mr. Loren makes his entrance. By now, we know his relationship with the missus is a troubled one but that is privileged information.

For the time being, he leads the guests on a tour of his recently acquired property as Prichard recounts tall tales of severed heads of his ancestors among other legends. Ceilings dripping blood and a basement complete with a trapdoor leading to a vat of acid are two of the most harrowing attractions.

But Mr. Loren relishes to make the occasion interesting and after his wife makes a stunning appearance he passes out the party favors — in the form of handguns.  They aren’t much use against spirits so one must gather they are to fend off humans. It’s a startling twist to the proceedings though he doesn’t give much explanation for such a deadly gift.

Everyone decides to lock themselves away in their rooms. Easy enough right? Wrong. Because Ms. Nora Manning seems especially susceptible to scares at the hands of horrible creatures lingering in the shadows. They frighten her out of her wits and she races around looking for some friendly face. Only time will tell what other hideous unspeakable acts she will witness.

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But House on Haunted Hill has far more human origins than we might initially suspect. It’s not just a pop out at you scary movie. Though the atmospherics are a large part of the allure, there is also an underlying motive to all we see. It provides a crucial tie back to the real world and the people assembled.

So, in the end, it works best blurring genre lines between mystery, ghost story, and a tale of murder. It’s served by elements akin to Diabolique (1955) as much The Spiral Staircase (1946) though admittedly catering to the B-grade crowd. Mind you, that’s not meant to be an insult because in its own right House on Haunted Hill is a ghoulish delight.

Although I have to admit I couldn’t help but smirk when Vincent Price’s skeleton came alive again, it is soon tied back to something rational we can comprehend. The movie plays all these pieces as parlor tricks as much as supernatural acts. And this melding makes the dividing line between the two blurry. It could be everything Watson Prichard spouted was the truth. Then, again, it’s not hard to believe everything was a fabrication utilized solely for human gain. Because everyone in this picture wants something. This is important.

As per usual, it’s hardly difficult despising Vincent Price’s characters. However, in some paradoxical way we like him for the sardonic edge. Because he holds undying scorn for just about everyone. It’s so very easy for him to turn into a parody of himself but then again in a genre such as horror so often prone to parody, it rather works to his advantage.

3.5/5 Stars

Love Crazy (1941)

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Love Crazy puts William Powell and Myrna Loy in their wheelhouse as the lithe and sprightly romantic partners placed at the center of this screwball comedy.  Steve Ireland (Powell) is in a terribly good mood getting home in his taxi singing ditties as he makes his way up to surprise his wife Susan on their wedding anniversary.

All of which is an encouraging change of pace because Hollywood often made the nagging of marriage look like a real ball and chain. For once that’s not the case. They want a romantic second honeymoon full of dancing, escapades, and a dinner served backward. It’s the fact that he can never get enough time with his wife to suit either of them. Well, there you have the film in a nutshell anyway.

Except storytelling 101 tips us off that the film will have to begin swinging like a pendulum in such a way that both our lovebirds in this connubial comedy will no longer be so inseparable. The main instigators prove to be his overbearing mother-in-law who inserts herself into all their plans. The other is a former flame, Gail Patrick at the most delightful I’ve never known her to be, who playfully cajoles him to have some fun. She’s married but acts as if she’s still single and ready to mingle.

You would think he already had more excitement than he could take getting trapped in the elevator shaft with this frisky female and the elevator boy (Elisha Cook Jr.). Proving I’m no comic snob, I heartily enjoyed watching Powell’s head get clunked around. It’s a resoundingly hilarious image.

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However, he forgot about who was waiting for him back home. It’s the lesser of two evils to sneak out for a drink with Isobel and while his wife has to step out he uses his worst possible lifeline to get away from his aggravating mother-in-law. It doesn’t take too much for the root of doubt to sneak up and it only gets worse when Ward Willoughby (Jack Carson) is introduced as a studly archer in an undershirt. What else? Now both spouses have someone to be jealous of.

It hearkens back to the days where the sitcom hadn’t been invented yet because we didn’t have TV so instead, there were films like this which function around all the most cringe-worthy bits of comedic irony, namely mistaken identity and all sorts of misunderstandings. But like its predecessor from the year prior, I Love You Again, the steam slowly begins to evaporate off about midway through.

Because the main subplot becomes the whole plot in a way that provides some gags but on the whole feels tired and worn out. I want to see Powell and Loy together or at least more of Patrick and Carson who actually bring a lot of comedic chops to the picture. In fact, one of the more hilarious wrinkles involves Powell getting the other man interned at the sanitarium only to have him escape later. But it means very little to the integrity of the story. That’s part of what makes it so enjoyable.

Otherwise, Powell plays up his insanity to string along his wife so she can’t divorce him. His main showcase is at a party where he emancipates a fleet of hats trying to play up his looney side, followed thereafter by a string of other coincidental mishaps. His wife knows it’s a game but the man he’s christened “General Electric Whiskers,” who he met at the party, is actually a doctor who thinks he’s very sick indeed.

This all feels like fairly uninteresting fluff. Meanwhile, the film’s finale relies on another bout of concealed identity but to its credit, it circles back on the things that made it laudable before, entering back into the apartment complex. There the chaos of all those individuals from earlier is heightened in close proximity with a supposed crazy man on the loose and the police after him. They are aided by Willoughby and Steve is helped first by Isobel and then his wife.

But the crowning piece of comedy has to do with Powell’s ultimate masquerade as he even sacrifices his beloved pencil-thin mustache for the sake of it all. While not particularly inspired by today’s standards, Love Crazy boasts Powell and Loy in as fine a form as ever. That is enough to enjoy the picture even in its middling moments.

3.5/5 Stars

I Love You Again (1940)

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The film’s plotline can be summed up by amnesia. A no-fun businessman named Larry Wilson who drinks nothing harder than grape juice is conked on the head while saving a drunk who went overboard. Poof! Just like that Larry is no longer and he becomes his presumed former self — the suave alter ego — George Carey. If you’re willing to buy into the premise and not ask too many clarifying questions, it’s quite easy to enjoy the inevitable wacky ride ahead of us.

I even got the inkling that it was going to be a funnier version of Random Harvest (1942). Really it’s part of that esteemed screwball subset — the comedy of remarriage. Carey heads back home with his newfound pal and fellow grifter Doc (Frank McHugh) to scope out his past life and do his best to be the man he is supposed to be with humorous complications. You see they don’t realize he’s a married man until his wife comes to meet them at the gangplank. Well, actually he’s a soon to be a divorced man. Hence the marital conflict perfectly positioned for ensuing comedic fodder.

The main wrinkle and ultimately what makes it so different is that Powell and Loy are at separate poles in this film by necessity. All throughout The Thin Man pictures, they’re in perfect cadence and that’s what makes their chemistry and the onscreen marriage work.

Here Powell is a charming man with a twinkle in his eye like always — but his wife is expecting the same boring schmuck she married all those years before. She’s coming at this man from a different point of view and boy is she surprised with what she gets. In one way, annoyed because he makes it infinitely more difficult for her to let him go but then thankful because he is the precise man she always dreamed was right in front of her.

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In this way, I Love You Again is actually a fairly personable romance beyond its simple roots in screwball comedy. There’s almost a bit of depth there if we dare admit it but of course, that doesn’t take away from the underlining laughs most especially offered up by Powell.

He’s not opposed to making a fool of himself by dancing all by his lonesome until his wife saves his self-respect. And he plants a kiss on her that all but broke the world record in the sleepy town of Haversville. But she’s not going to go down without a fight and in one particular squabble he gets scrambled eggs all over his face (and on top of his head). Her current beau is an idiotically annoying bloke in his own right who is made for antagonizing. They always are.

If William Powell fly fishing in Libeled Lady (1936) was one of the defining comic images of his career than perhaps its equal is found in the confines of this film where he dons a boy scout uniform from his past life. Because he’s a woodsman of some repute who has quite the following with newspaper articles being penned about him and little tykes (AKA Alfalfa) being discouraged by how difficult he is to track. I feel that I saw some of these images years later in another intrepid yet bumbling outdoorsman, Barney Fife.

The moments exuding entertainment appeal outpace the rest including Powell’s constant cooing impression of a lovebird but nevertheless, it does drag in segments after a fairly interesting setup. Extended boy scouting sequences and spying out the old stomping grounds aren’t all bad though.

One could say that it’s even necessary as we watch the malleable relationship between Powell and Loy morph into something new. Everything else serves this singular purpose. It’s really what you wait for in a comedy of remarriage as the wistful regrets and longings seep in only to get replaced by happy expectancy of what is yet to come. The future is made sweet and those truths remain in I Love You Again.

3.5/5 Stars