Tag Archives: Film Noir

The Burglar (1957)

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The Burglar is instantly established with a pleasing visual geography. In fact, this kind of pervasively engaging visual landscape is constantly being reinforced, and in his first feature, director Paul Wendkos shows off his perceptive eye. Though he was a workhorse in television, it does lead one to wonder how an industry can so easily canonize certain names and so easily forget others.

But let me take a moment to laud the talents of Dan Duryea. He is such a fantastic bulwark to build a film around. He’s never one to garner prestigious fare, but all the pictures he was allowed to anchor have a certain predetermined grittiness to them that makes them feel inherently watchable. By now he’s older and not as sturdy as he used to be. But that face and his demeanor are still very much the same.

Jayne Mansfield had yet to reach meteoric stardom when the film was first made, although it was re-released a couple years later to make a profit off her newfound celebrity. What a stark and thrilling contrast it is to her usual bombshell image in the likes of A Girl Can’t Help It and Rock Hunter. It feels reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in Don’t Bother to Knock or maybe Niagara.

When glam girls are allowed to be something more than just a pretty face, it can be remarkable because we see them less and less as objects and more like human beings. Their emotions touch us, and they feel real with problems and issues in drab black and white as opposed to luscious shades of Technicolor.

The Burglar is conceived in such a depressing world. It opens with a Newsreel about Sister Sarah a pseudo-religious figure who lives lavishly thanks to the goodwill of some of her faithful benefactors. This subject in itself feels worthy of more dissection, but it’s really only an opener.

We realize of course this is all pertinent exposition. Nat Harbin (Duryea) and his cronies plan to get within the iron gates of her mansion and run off with as much as they can. However, they know they only have 15 minutes to pull the job while Sister Sarah watches her favorite news broadcast. That’s not much time barring any further complications…

It’s such a sweltering opening full of tension and real dramatic heat. Surely, the movie cannot maintain this kind of fervid criminal activity for the rest of the movie. Of course, it can’t and part of this is the function of the story.

They get the loot but now they must wait it out — we watch their nerves and relationships unravel around them — as the authorities begin their search. Except it feels less and less like your typical police procedural. It has more going for it — partially thanks to David Goodis’s script.

The pieces don’t all fit together seamlessly. They sort of bump up against one another and slide into place. It’s not always taut, cogent, or particularly pithy, but there’s an inbred existentialism and weariness dancing around the corners; it’s difficult to shake.

This melds quite well with the grungy, sweaty cinematography that feels suitable for the burgeoning TV market. At one time it can be both claustrophobic and artful in its construction of mise en scene. It’s the antithesis of decadence, but that doesn’t mean the frame isn’t packed with intriguing visual landscapes.

Martha Vickers also gets her second noteworthy femme fatale role a decade after The Big Sleep — too bad she couldn’t be bequeathed more of them. She had a knack, and it’s no different in The Burglar, although she doesn’t show up until well into the movie.

Simultaneously, the manhunt continues and Nat finds himself being tailed by a shadowy stalker who seems to have a far more private interest in what they are doing. If neither one of these threats comes to fruition, then the gang will probably end up imploding out of mutual distaste. Though they work together out of necessity, they also come to loathe each other’s guts, especially in such close proximity under constant duress.

Duryea is protective of Mansfield, but it’s more of an obligation than affection. He’s made a vow now buried in their past somewhere. He sends her off to Atlantic City for her own safety, but as the movie bowls over, he has no recourse to follow her there, regardless of the danger he brings in his wake.

Coney Island-like atmosphere provides a wonderful visual contradiction to play off the criminal elements that hold the impending tinge of noir-filled doom. It uses the shrieks and ghoulish attractions of a carnival show like many of its great noir predecessors — Brighton Rock, Lady of Shanghai, Woman on the Run, and Stranger on The Train all spring to mind. It certainly deserves at least a mention in this company.

Duryea and Mansfield make full use of the place going from the boardwalk to a house of horrors to a water show, and as the benches clear out and they’re left alone in the cavernous space, it signs the end of the story with one fatalistic final act. Of course, it feels like a foregone conclusion. These pictures rarely end another way. The inevitable catches up with them.

But what I will remember indelibly are some of the individual shots. The Burglar has some of the most epic perspective shots I can recall in recent memory. They punctuate the film like many of the close-ups, and we are left with something so resolutely impactful. It feels like a flawed diamond in the rough. It’s the kind of unwonted gem you won’t soon forget even as the blemishes slowly fade away.

3.5/5 Stars

Phenix City Story (1955)

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“From the ashes of Phenix City has risen the symbol of democracy at work. The power of the ballot will always be the voice of the American People.”

The cut of the film I watched had a rather unique opening prologue complete with interviews by esteemed reporter Clete Roberts (You might remember him from MASH’s Interview episode), and he supplies an instant ethos and credibility to the proceedings.

Faux-newsreel segments have actually been dropped in lieu of actual documentary as he stands on the steps of one of the city’s civic buildings. He takes a moment to talk with a couple notable players including the journalist who broke the story — Ed Strickland — as well as a lifelong resident, Hugh Bentley, who had his home dynamited.

Of course, if we didn’t know any better and we didn’t know these men or see their faces, we might guess this was all for the cause of civil rights. That’s not actually the case. The Phenix City Story is a tale of the criminal syndicate that controlled the city, providing much of its commerce, but also employing rampant coercion tactics.

It’s evident from the first images of Phil Karlson’s actual film, there is an instant dichotomy being created and the two layers of the society. There is the world belonging to the simple, hard-working, God-fearing folks and then the swindlers, gamblers, and generally corrupt subset of society.

Karlson introduces the latter with a knowing visual panache backed by a bluesy dance number. The saucy come-hither floorshow is the epitome of 14th street, and it beckons all men like a greedy seductress looking to bury them. It’s Sin City U.S.A.

What becomes plainly apparent is how evil can come in all shapes and sizes. Rhett Tanner has a gift for southern hospitality. He knows how to schmooze with the locals, chat about the preacher’s Sunday sermons, and keep up appearances. He’s also a shrewd customer behind closed doors as he is the go-to man maintaining the city’s thriving undercurrent of vice. In fact, he’s set himself to be an impregnable despot. No one can topple him because he’s so integrated into society.

Albert Patterson (John McIntire), as portrayed in this storyline, is one of the men who is reluctant to get involved. He’s a lawyer and a good one — he’s one of the town’s best — but he’s also old and feels the fight is not his. He can live on his side of town in relative peace.

It’s his boy, John (Richard Kiley) who really shakes up the status quo. He is a war vet returning to Phenix with his young family after time away, and he’s disillusioned by what he found. He’s faced with the bitter irony of fighting fascism overseas only to see it have such a deathly grip on his childhood home. He’s prepared to fight to give the town back to the good folks around him.

Kiley’s part is actually conveniently whitewashed to make him a more sympathetic hero. In real life, John Patterson ran on a segregationist ticket — although it might have been more pragmatic than anything — he also didn’t have the best track record as a family man.

But in an effort to probe this topic more, James Edwards is one of the characters we must gravitate towards. Edwards certainly never reached star status, and he’s rarely remembered outside of the classic film circles, but through a series of war films, it’s as if he was given an opportunity to exert himself and represent black characters with dignity.

Phenix City Story is one of the few films where he’s not in uniform, and Zeke is not a revolutionary part; he’s only a humble janitorial type, but he has a strong moral conscience. The fact that he, his wife, and his daughter (who becomes a tragic victim) are the only black characters, is also a salient reality of the film’s world.

The movie feels like a microcosm of the whole society, both what is shown and what is not. My historical geography leaves something to be desired, but I think of 1957 and Orville Faubus, or the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham in 1963, and the brutality of Selma after that. My mind starts going places. If this is how they treat other whites in a movie, imagine how it is with blacks. To its credit, the movie resolves to show some of this.

Pound for pound, it doesn’t feel like the Sunday school truth it’s trying to project itself to be, but in the world and qualities of life — especially the exteriors — we do get a real eye into society circa 1955. This is the aspect of many classic films that’s the most enlightening even if the actually perceived mimesis of the film itself is still beholden to the tenets of Hollywood drama. Thankfully, for all its forays into docudrama, it still holds onto Karlson’s always reliable sense of bruised and bloodied physicality.  It wouldn’t be one of his pictures without it. But of course, even this has real import.

The ensuing climax feels like a foregone conclusion. People feel a tug or a pull to do something and take a stand. Bystanders can no longer watch. They must act to turn the pervasive tides of oppression. One of them is the young woman Ellie Rhodes (Kathryn Grant before she met Bing Crosby), who saw her boyfriend ruthlessly disposed of. Finally, Albert Patterson resolves to fight as well, and he takes it to the top, running as attorney general. Both of them stick their necks out and pay the consequence. However, these weren’t rash decisions. They knew full well what they were getting into. They counted the costs and pushed forward anyway.

If we are to scan the contemporary movie landscape, something like The Captive City is a comparable movie. Whereas the actual visual plane is more pronounced in individual shots of the earlier movie, Phenix City has the advantage of its world, and if it’s not entirely more expansive, then it certainly feels more evocative. In the dark shrouds of night, we feel the sinister threat hanging over the city’s population.

The Captive City also calls on gangsters who feel like callbacks to the 1930s. The tone verges on social horror. Karlson’s picture is probably even more perturbing because it alights on something that feels fresh and honest in how it pertains to current events in 1955. There’s no escaping reality in this case. We’re still struggling against them over 65 years later. Suddenly, that corny rhetoric at the movie’s opening remains prescient. “The power of the ballot will always be the voice of the American people.”

3.5/5 Stars

The Captive City (1952)

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The movie opens briskly with a man and a woman racing through Middle America in their car. The shots provide a lovely, claustrophobic framing and closeups of our characters making the moment especially palpable. From what I can glean, this was actually attributed to a man named Hoge, a former grip for Gregg Toland who made this noticeable advancement with deep focus. This Robert Wise project was purportedly the first movie to use this new technology, and it pays great dividends over the course of the rest of the movie.

The couple continues to fly down the highway until they pull up outside of a police station in a small town to find some support. They don’t fit the surroundings, but journalist Jim Austin (John Forsythe) asks to record his testimony just in case anything should happen to them…

This kicks off the film’s all-encompassing flashback covering most of the movie. James T. Austin (Forsythe) was the local newspaperman in Kennington, which might as well be Everywhere America. There’s nothing too exciting there, but they find ways to keep busy, and life is generally calm and anodyne.

As such Austin has a generally chipper attitude and very little can sour his mood on the beat. He likes what he does and being a member of the local press avails him certain privileges. However, an inauspicious encounter with a P.I. named Nelson in the local library, leaves him feeling queer. The man is positively paranoid. He says he was working on a run-of-the-mill divorce case, but then sounds the alarm suggesting underworld syndicates and other entities are taking over the town. It’s utterly ridiculous. But he won’t stop looking over his shoulder.

That same day an accident takes place in town late at night. Although it’s actually a hit and run, and the man killed is none other than the same P.I. Austin starts to get queasy feelings. At the very least his interests are piqued, and he does what he does best: investigate. His character was built for such a film as this.

It leads him to a divorced couple, Mr. and Mrs. Murray Surak, who are somehow implicated but don’t want to talk. They’re scared of something. This goes far deeper than one or two people. The Police Chief, a genial enough fellow named Gilette encourages the journalist he might as well back off. In truth, he’s running interference for the bookies in town, and some of Austin’s pals even call gambling harmless fun. At any rate, it’s pervasive throughout town — everyone’s complicit — and it all goes back to one man named Dominick Fabretti.

With a conviction to seek out the truth for the sake of his readers and the community, Austin enlists the help of the paper’s budding photographer (a young Martin Milner before his Route 66 and Adam-12 days). They stake out Fabretti’s home base outside of town and grab a drive-by shot of the elusive kingpin. However, the victory is short-lived after Phil is pounded for the negatives. It’s another warning.

The film soon passes the point of no return as the journalist spies a car watching his house from across the street and his greatest allies at the paper start to turn on him. They can’t understand why he’s willfully stirring up the populous. In some ways, it plays like an early prototype of Invasion of the Body Snatchers without the Sci-Fi element as the world closes in on him and no one believes his story aside from his faithful wife (Joan Camden).

Here’s an unrelated observation but watching the movie you begin to understand the plague that beset people like Dr. King who had their lines tapped and were constantly hustled, harried, and intimated by forces in power. Even then this is only a very small representation of this kind of conflict between the powers that be and the righteous rabble-rousers.

Ultimately, Austin feels compelled to go to the local ministers. Surely they can speak truth into the current mendacity they find themselves enveloped in. And yet even in spite of this blatant hypocrisy, the religious leaders do not feel they are able to take on their own communities in this way. They too feel powerless to reach their audiences in the pews on Sundays. In essence, that’s the extent of their powers because for the rest of the week people go and live their own lives as they see fit.

Eventually, we circle back around, and in another sequence predating Body Snatchers, Forsythe, much like Kevin McCarthy’s character, tries to seek help in the present as the story comes back around. All due respect to Senator Estes Kefauver and his civic pursuits, but the last 2 or 3 minutes kill the movie.

It becomes yet another heavy-handed Hollywood public service announcement in the guise of entertainment. Up until that point, it’s a tense newspaper noir brimming with deadly, full-bodied conspiracy. We truly empathize with John Forsythe as the world begins to cave in around him. He makes it take.

3.5/5 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

Ossessione (1943)

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You half expect cinema to have remained dormant in wartorn Europe during the 1940s. That’s part of what makes Ossessione such a fascinating curio within this context. In fact, the film almost never made it out of the decade alive. One can only imagine how unpopular the picture might have been with the reigning government.

It doesn’t exactly preach good old-fashioned fascist values and Mussolini looked to exterminate the picture completely. Legend has it that Visconti, who had also joined the communist party, managed to salvage a copy so that his film debut could live on and he got out of the war as well with a sprawling career still to be determined ahead of him.

I learned only very recently that Visconti started out as an assistant on the films of Jean Renoir of all people. Not only does that seem like the most propitious of apprenticeships, but it’s also easy to trace the lineage of the Italian from the Poetic Realism of the French Master that would eventually coalesce into Italian Neorealism.

The films of Renoir and Michel Carne are fully present in this early work with the opening images of a train evoking something like Le Bete Humaine or Toni. Gino Costa (Massimo Girotti ) is the kind of working-class hero you’d expect in one of those earlier pictures or even some of John Ford’s work.

He’s an itinerant bum who used to be a soldier and then a mechanic in a former life. Now he’s hitched a ride on a truck bed only to be dumped outside a roadside tavern. And Visconti proceeds to introduce his primary couple through the visual synecdoche of two pairs of legs.

Finally, we see their faces together. They’re in a kitchen. Although Anna Magnani was originally meant to have the role, Clara Calamai channels the sultry come-hither coquettishness quite well even when it’s impossible to unsee the platinum blonde of Lana Turner in the part. But they have their own instant spark, like flint — burning with a consuming passion tantamount to spontaneous combustion.

If you’re well aware of the story already, she is a young woman married to a chubby misogynist named Bragana (Juan da Landa), who thinks he’s more than deserving of the marital comforts afforded by such a wife. He calls on her to rub him down after a long day, and she can’t bear to touch him. She has designs for someone else.

While her husband goes off with the local priest to do some duck hunting, in an early example of a bike-and-talk, Giovanna is quick to stoke the flames of romance with her much more desirable confidante. Visconti’s unauthorized rendition is purportedly more faithful to its source material although it’s hardly as streamlined as MGM’s later adaptation, essentially leaving more space for narrative asides.

When Giovanna clings to the security of her current life, Gino sets off on his own alone soon falling in with a hospitable street salesman, “The Spaniard,” who entertains the crowds. In what can only be expressed as noir sentiment, the tides of the narrative bring the couple together quite by chance.

Bragana is pleased to see their old friend and Gino gets pulled back into the whirlpool taking in some opera at a local tavern. This more than anything betrays Visconti’s affections for the stage.

Consequently, it’s also a film where arguably the biggest moments play out off-screen. I’m thinking of the illicit couples’ first rendezvous and then the fatal accident altering the course of the entire picture. Not all of this is due to content concerns either, but it does highlight how Visconti and his scripting compatriots, Mario Alicata, Giuseppe De Santis, and Gianni Puccini, conceived the story.

It offers another kind of dissonance because we don’t get to see what actually happened even if we’re well aware of their mutual intentions. We must wait for events to play out to see how the canker and unrest reveal themselves in due time. The most explicit response comes when Gino peels off  somebandages and then a violent struggle over a trinket ends in a passionate kiss. This might be the movie summed up in visual terms.

They must reckon with an unsettling state of limbo: freedom that feels more like purgatory as they stew in their infidelities. A man of the cloth suggests that they part ways because people do talk about their situation, real or imagined, and of course, it is very real.

Instead of detonating the story to be a full-blown melodrama like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ossessione maintains these high levels of human intimacies. Gino reunites with his old pal again beyond delighted to see a familiar face, and yet it ends in fisticuffs because his fellow traveler is able to put words to everything he’s currently tormented by.

Then there’s a demure “ballerina.” Gino meets her knitting on a park bench, and they share an ice cream. I had to acclimate myself, thinking only momentarily that she was Giovana, but the emotions in the scene are enough to give this away. Because being around her Gino feels different; it’s as if, ironically, her purity is able to cover all his sins or at the very least help him forget them.

But the digressions only aid in leading him back to Giovana. If they aren’t totally a destructive pair, frolicking on the beach together, having rekindled their chemistry, then there’s some kind of fatalism that needs to be satiated.

In passing, Ossessione might earn the labels of Italian neorealism for its striking, ever austere imagery emblematic of the post-war working class. But it’s also often designated as film-noir for its sordid details and futile finale. However, I can’t stop but marvel at how Visconti was able to make the picture to begin with. Even after its initial release, it was hit with so many roadblocks of censorship and copyright problems only to gain a second life.

What an auspicious way to start a career, especially under such tumultuous circumstances. Much of the finest pieces of art are born out of the burnishing fires of the furnace and, for that matter, a certain level of creative obsession.

4/5 Stars

Woman in Hiding (1950) and Worrying About Ida Lupino

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Woman in Hiding doesn’t waste any time. A car races down a twisting highway only to go careening through the side rails into the drink. The car and its occupant look to be obliterated. Yet we have the dead talking, Ida Lupino whispering to us from the grave. Could this be a situation akin to Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd (1950)? We’re forced to wait before making any prognostication.

The story is set in North Carolina and as such, you have this lingering undercurrent of southern glory and heritage wrapped up in the wounds of secession and racial prejudice. There’s even reference made to the deep lurking traditions of the South with its pitchforks and rocks, of people who wouldn’t give up and wouldn’t allow their way of life to die. It’s actually rather unnerving rarely seeing an African-American character in this Hollywood tableau almost as if they’ve been erased.

Still, the locals go about their business dredging the local waters for the automobile and the missing Mrs. Deborah Clark (Lupino), even calling on the assistance of an old cannon, yet another relic from the aforementioned lineage. This is the backdrop against which Woman in Hiding plays out.

Because Seldon Clark IV (Stephen McNally) came out of this pedigree — tall and handsome, but proud and driven with maintaining the family standing, even to the point of delusion. He’s worked in the mill of a Mr. Chandler making many unwanted passes at his daughter Deborah.

For the time being, nothing comes of it because her father gives the boy a stern talking to, seeing right through the arrogant creep and the rest of the buffoons who beget him. In fact, it is at this point Lupino feels sorry for him — trying to defend him.

The story takes its most drastically abrupt turn on a single cut, when, in a matter of seconds, it comes out the forthright and perceptive old man died in a freak accident. Who was by his side unable to help him? Seldon Clark of course. It’s an obvious equation of two plus two, but, again we must wait until everything unfolds.

Marriage is proposed the day of the funeral, thus tying the knot (and the mill) between Deborah and Seldon. Their subsequent honeymoon at a cabin getaway is rudely disrupted by a former girlfriend. Peggy Dow debuts as a conniving southern belle on equal footing with her darkly vindictive suitor. It instantly rips away any pretenses we might have from her more widely remembered turn in Harvey (1950) as she gets backhanded for her many scandalous insinuations.

Could she, in fact, be the victim of the scenario? Doubts creep in? The first of many as Seldon’s colors become more and more obvious even to his wife. One of the most generous compliments that can be offered to Woman in Hiding is how it wears its melodrama brazenly on its sleeves.

It evokes a helpless world akin to Road House (1948) where nature is a trap — a place in which to be hunted like an animal, in this case, confined to a nightmarish marriage. The narrative does fold over itself and we realize where we find Deborah.

She is a woman caught in a state of matrimonial helplessness, in a society where she has little agency to do or say anything to free herself. It’s the same anxiety film noir of the post-war era gorged itself on, for both men and women. Because it becomes apparent the dividing line between victim and femme fatale is razor-thin. Really all that matters is the point of view provided.

From Deborah’s flustered perspective, there is a vague sense of searching out Patricia Monahan (Dow) because maybe together their corroboration might be able to put Seldon away. Just maybe someone might listen to the truth then.

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For the time being, staying dead is the most auspicious decision. Deborah takes to the road to disappear for a while and make some money on the side waitressing. But there must always be a foil and in this case, it’s a man named Keith Ramsay (Howard Duff).

He’s the genial man behind a newspaper stand striking up a conversation with a woman on the run. He seems like just the type of character who might provide a shoulder to lean on, whether solicited or not. In a world where everyone’s overstimulated with get-rich-quick schemes and radio giveaways, he seems decidedly unconcerned with the rat race as he works at his pop’s shop.

However, he does become a shoulder to lean on — offering comfort — but he’s also a part of the problem. Because this tale gets its punch from a woman being hunted, when she should, in fact, be a victim. In this regard, it’s a precursor to the same problem at the core of Blue Gardenia (1953) as the newspapers start treating her as a fugitive.

Because even as the local hotel is overrun by a traveling convention of drunken out-of-towners and conga lines, darkness can still find its way back in down the stairwells. The most excruciating development comes with the connection between our favorite fellow and the dastardly husband. He has no idea what’s he’s doing when he makes the identification.

Even as Deborah is taken back by her husband and Monahan turns up again only to be stepped on, the story must culminate where it began. In the same small town, at the dead of night, inside the mill. There’s something to knowing what’s going to happen and still having a potboiler raise the pulse. It comes down to the old adage, it’s not the destination but the road taken.

It also comes from actually genuinely caring for a character and as one of the best — some might even say an underrated actress — Ida Lupino plays the victim with an inbred resiliency, making the audience strive for her safety even as we sit powerlessly in the theater seats. It’s not some monumental derivation of the tried and true formulas, but audience identification goes a long way.

3.5/5 Stars

The Locket (1946): Laraine Day and Splintering Psychology

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“Have you ever done this before?” – Robert Mitchum as Norman Clyde

“No. I’ve never stolen anything in my life.” – Laraine Day as Nancy

We’re met by a wedding with all the trimmings. It’s a well-to-do affair and Laraine Day looks quite dazzling. Her groom (Gene Raymond) is high on his good fortune in finding such a spectacular bride, introducing her to the aunts and uncles. Taken at face value, it’s a suitable development for a drawing-room comedy.

However, the perceptive viewer will note the presence of two very telling names in the opening credits. They are director John Brahm (The Lodger & Hangover Square) along with Nicholas Musuraca, who helped define the shadowy compositions of RKO Studios all throughout the 40s.

If anything, it suggests that what we’ve seen up to this point is mere pretense, an ebullient calm before the storm, until the past comes crashing through to wreak havoc. Sure enough, a grim, well-spoken psychiatrist (Brian Aherne) walks into the man’s study for a quick word. He’s comes bearing some doom to drop on the deliriously happy groom’s lap.

It lends the injection of noir sentiment we’ve been waiting for with bated breath supplying a flashback to go with it. Dr. Harry Blair recounts how, in his distant more jovial past, he wound up crashing bicycles with Nancy (Day). From then on, they were all but destined to be lovers.

It’s in these interludes where it becomes apparent Nancy is not altogether unlike Laura (Gene Tierney’s character) not because of her mental state so much as this perfectly bewitching aura she is allowed to cast over the frames of the film. Although this makes it sound too manicured; still, it’s true between the scoring, photography, and Day’s own vibrant, fully alluring performance, it’s difficult not to be swayed by the captivating energy.

The cute buoyancy carrying the opening replicates itself in this prelude as Nancy and the good doctor plan a deliriously happy future together. And yet screenwriter Sheridan Gibney brazenly interrupts the gaiety again. This time it is none other than Robert Mitchum interrupting the matrimonial euphoria with his own futile warning — yet another couched deja vu moment to follow the others.

As a matter of fact, in a spectacular move, The Locket utilizes no less than three couched flashbacks involving the three men, layered on top of one another, and each making the same mistakes as the man before them, caught in a deadly cycle…I wouldn’t recommend it to budding screenwriters, but here the commitment’s rather impressive.

This is one of the first great Mitchum performances establishing his world-wearied embodiment of the noir hero — smoking a cigarette, coat upturned in the falling snow — and he’s only one of the supporting figureheads.

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Norman Clyde (Mitchum) is a fairly successful artist, not a sterling success but talented and proud; he’s not about to take flak from anyone. After he gets off on the wrong foot with a woman in his studio, he starts obsessing over the girl. He can’t get her out of his head and wouldn’t you know, she’s holed up in the same Italian restaurant he always frequents. They make amends, of course, and their resulting relationship looks eerily similar to the glimpses we’ve already been granted. Nancy’s deliriously happy with her man of choice. There are no visible blemishes in sight.

However, the fragments and wisps of story keep on fading into one another. It’s so exquisitely rendered by the camera, in particular, when Mitchum and Day go into the recesses of their own personal recollections.

The striking similarities with Laura or even Woman in the Window become even more obvious due to the art angle — the enchanting portrait of a woman — because it does create this meta sense of the woman in the art both painted and photographed on celluloid. It allows her this sense of being out of body — almost otherworldly to the viewer — existing in this illusory state we must come to terms with. In one sense, it’s hard to shake the image of her. Nancy is no different.

One turning point is at a fancy dinner party. Shots ring out and Clyde sees Nancy exit a room frantically. A maid comes, and they hide down the hallway slinking away. Musuruca captures the instantaneous decisions with a fluid ease. We don’t realize it at the time, but it’s a crucial moment teasing out a bit more about Nancy — about her past secrets — and who she is as a person.

My only qualm is with Mitchum’s exit. It serves the story best, otherwise, he would continue to steal the show, but it certainly does not gel with his soon-to-be cultivated image. Alas, it is what it is.

Next, remember the doctor also had his chance with Nancy. They go off to England to stay at a stately manor to get away from the intensity of the Blitz. However, the accusations he’s heard about his wife start to burrow into his mind, so much so he can’t get rid of them.

Surely the rumors can’t be true! Because Nancy is so warm and genial, hardly begrudging or showing malice toward any of her past suitors. In fact, she downplays every interaction she’s ever had with any of them. As if they were nothing. As if the man she’s with right now is the only man she’s ever loved.

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The extraordinary nature of Day’s character is how she is not a femme fatale — at least not in the traditional sense. They’re always two-timing and deceitful. With Nancy, at face value, you get none of that, and yet it’s not to say she’s not without her flaws. In a strange way, there are two sides to her as well.

She calls others out for being guarded, cynical, and suspicious, and yet she can often be found doubting everyone else’s motives even as she’s retroactively smoothing over her own. There’s the convenient compartmentalization of all the prior relationships into their individual spaces and the projecting of her issues onto others. It hints at something. Still, there must be a tipping point.

Then, we’re whipped back to the present. The wedding march in all its pomp becomes offset and infiltrated by the tinkling of a music box, like the memories slowly overtaking Nancy’s psyche. These latter moments turn into some of the most evocative sequences of montage in recent memory with all the weight of memory, trauma, and guilt flooding Nancy in the form of all the people she knew. There is no space to keep them apart and so they crush her under the weight, her mind totally fractured as she tumbles to the floor.

In a fit of irony, I couldn’t help but continually be reminded of the contemporary Frank Sinatra tune, “Nancy (With the Laughing Face).” It’s a startling juxtaposition with what we’ve just witnessed, a swelling, unnerving, engrossing exhibition in splintering psychology.

Laraine Day gives an absolutely unforgettable performance — easily the best of her career — and Brahm continues his run of moody melodramas with suffocating environs. The Locket doesn’t hold an instant appeal from the outside looking in, but once you get inside, it’s a bedeviling little gem of a film — as tantalizing as the trinkets so enrapturing to Nancy. There’s one major difference: we can enjoy this one without debilitating consequences.

4/5 Stars

Drive a Crooked Road (1954): A Malibu Sunshine Noir

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“On a clear day, you can see Catalina.”

Drive a Crooked Road might best be labeled as a So-Cal sunshine noir, and it easily has a place at the counter next to Shack Out on 101 and equally grubby fare.

Because under the right circumstances, it’s easy to see how Mickey Rooney could make a darn good noir protagonist. Like one of the genre stalwarts — Elisha Cook Jr. — he’s small in stature. Visually, he’s a bit of a pipsqueak and if you strip away his typical magnetism, the confidence, and charisma of a lifelong entertainer, there’s something quite fragile and forlorn there.

Rooney, for all his successes and the serpentine nature of his career, does himself credit here, reinventing his image once more. Eddie Shannon is the kind of guy who gets stepped on his entire life and takes it. He’s a lowly mechanic with far-off dreams of racing a European job at Le Mans. His other prominent feature is the scar on his forehead as if to mark him as a kind of social outcast.

Admittedly, his life is nothing more than fixing cars by day and going back home at night to a mantle lined with childhood trophies. It’s as if they’re compensation, a way of telling himself he is a big deal after all as he kicks back on his bed.

I won’t make any claims that the actor-turned-director Richard Quine is a virtuoso hand, but I do enjoy a handful of his films with varying themes. What draws together some of the better ones are his collaborators. Kim Novak made a startling debut in another sordid noir of the same year Pushover. Then, he had a good many collaborations with both Bill Holden and Jack Lemmon, just to name a few.

What Drive The Crooked Road shows off is his substantial collaborations with future mainstream directing giant Blake Edwards. Rooney, a fellow youth actor, was a holdover from their days together working on the screen as some of the industry’s promising talent. The greatest joy is how it shuns the prevailing song-and-dance, happy-go-lucky entertainment they normally stuck their name to and gladly takes a divergent path.

As good a place as any to start is with a femme fatale (Dianne Foster). She comes by the repair shop one day to get her car fixed up. That could be the end of it, but she has other plans. So Eddie pays the good-looking dame Matthews a house call.

It’s immediately apparent she’s shamelessly flaunting herself. First, on the lawn then, hanging over the side of her convertible, and finally, right next to him as he digs under the hood. Barbara makes her presence known, as it were, and she has total command of the scene.

This perceptible dynamic is so crucial as is Rooney’s diffident performance if the story’s to come off. How visibly uncomfortable he feels being around her — making eye contact with her flirtations — as she chats him up on the way to sunbathing above Malibu. It implicitly coaxes him out to the water’s edge.

Because even as his whole existence is uncomfortable in her very presence, he desperately wants someone as beautiful as her to give him the time of day. The fact she actually paid him notice gives him hope.

If it’s not obvious already, this bit of come-hither interplay devolves into a not so unfamiliar ploy used most definitively in Scarlet Street. Edward G. Robinson’s Christopher Cross was a suffocating nobody as well with nothing but his art. Kitty (Joan Bennet) exploits him for all he’s worth on the behest of her boyfriend (Dan Duryea).

In Barbara Matthews’s case, she’s operating on behalf of her major love interest, the dashing and charismatic, if generally despicable cad, Steve Norris (Kevin McCarthy). He and his smart-aleck buddy (Jack Kelly), don’t immediately strike one as a criminal types. And yet their high-living, bon vivant ways, and impatience with the normal tenets of capitalism cause them to buck the system.

They’re looking to rob a bank, a handy joint they scoped out while spending their summer vacation in Palm Springs. You could say the crime fits the criminals. The only problem is a driver. They need someone to navigate the windy backroads from Palm Springs to San Diego. Someone with handles who can help them make a quick getaway since time is of the essence. That’s why they called on Barbara to reel Eddie in.

However, she’s the only one to realize what is really happening. They label him like all the rest as an ugly little guy, a lonesome little animal; and it’s true by the world’s prognostications. But Matthews sees more being around him. There’s an earnestness, a candor in how he interacts with her.

She calls it devotion, a terrible kind of worship because he’s fallen for her irrevocably hook, line, and sinker. It’s pretty much instantaneous since the first moment she ever gave him the time of day. He’s not a normal mark; he’s completely given himself over to him, totally vulnerable. One can only imagine what he might do if he finds out he’s just a sucker.

Of course, her conspirators fail to heed her warnings. After all, what could a born loser do to them? So Eddie comes aboard, brought into their confidence, initially hesitant until Barbara leverages everything so he thinks he’s doing this for her. 15,000 smackers could do a lot for them. He studies their home movies religiously in an effort to gain a lay of the land in preparation for game day. Once more, he’s devoted because he thinks she wants this. It’s not for himself but to earn her affections.

Again, Barbara is overcome by misgivings about the entire operation. In her own way, she tries to give him a way out — knowing where they are headed listening to Eddie’s big talk about driving better than he ever has, doing the job so he can get the money she wants. He couldn’t see he’s being played unless he was hit in the head with it. That’s what it takes.

One of the greatest investments of the film really comes with Foster’s performance. Because at first, she feels like a prototypical noir vamp, merciless in how she uses her feminine wiles, and yet, if we can coin the phrase, she is a tender femme fatale.

Take, for instance, one scene where Eddie makes an impromptu house call to see her. They’re supposed to stay apart for the good of the mission and still, he cannot bear to be away from her. She comes out into the living room, closing the bedroom door to meet him.

At first, I thought she closed her door behind her to cover up something — maybe a male visitor lurking behind. But it’s simpler than that, even more innocent. Finally, Eddie leaves and she goes into her bedroom and cries. Whereas Kitty’s laughter was mistaken for tears in Scarlet Street, here the tears are real, there’s this conflicted tenderness present.

But of course, all this must be put on hold as the day of the bank robbery arrives. They make their best-laid plans, intercepting the route of the usual bank employee. In another quality creative decision a la Gun Crazy, we are forced to wait out the job from the getaway car with Eddie and Steve. It comes off without a hitch because it’s not primarily a heist film at all.

If that were the case, everything would need to go awry at this point. The question remains, Why do we hold off? Because the true pearl in the oyster is how the story is not solely about the tension of the bank robbery and whether they will succeed, though that becomes of great interest. Encompassing all of these genre elements is really the underlying character piece.

What will Eddie do? What will happen to him at the end of said crooked road when reality sets in and he finds out he’s been used. Because it’s not a question of if but when it will happen; eventually it does.

There’s the confrontation, the reveal, the turn of events. You’ll have to witness them for yourself. The images resonate most deeply with me. A car overturned on the beach, the tide lapping up against the shore in the background. There’s not a more fitting summation of the film’s juxtaposition of elements — that is sun-soaked, Malibu beachfront noir.

The final interludes bring to mind another paranoia piece of the atomic age, Kiss Me Deadly, and far from jumping off the deep end, Quine’s picture has its own misanthropic edge. Where the beach, shrouded in shadows, provides the perfect landscape for a devastating capitulation. It’s a testament to his core players, Rooney and Foster in particular. I’ll never look at Mickey Rooney the same way again.

3.5/5 Stars

It Always Rains on Sunday (1947): Drizzly British Noir

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“Lovely weather for a manhunt.”

Childhood vacations to England have given me a lifelong cache of fond memories of the British Isles. Tea and scones conjure up only good things as do Cathedrals and cobblestone streets. Somehow even the daily drizzle, when it feels quintessentially English, is something I don’t altogether mind. It has to do with it being novel as I always came from sunny California. We romanticize it.

However, It Always Rains on Sunday is nothing like that. It is a film generally for people who have lived in these locales all their lives. The novelty quickly dissipates; it’s always dreary, dismal, and damp. They have their slickers turned up and their Wellington boots on, if they have any. Of course, in a cinematic sense, rain functions as instant atmosphere. It sets a very specific tone while being an evocation of England through and through. It proves to be an ongoing theme.

Furthermore, the picture was produced by Ealing Studios, that British film institution, known for their Alec Guinness comedies of the 1950s and, subsequently, directed by Robert Hamer, most well-remembered for helming one of those Guinness’ comedies, Kind Hearts and Coronets.

But with It Always Rains on Sunday (the title fits the weather and therefore the environs), they found themselves crafting a proto-kitchen sink, day in the life drama that really dug into a community of post-war Britain. We get everything from the daily grind, the mundane activities, and the dodgy dealings playing court with everyday life.

As the rain pours outside, perpetually, men have their papers open. The front pages are plastered with the biggest headline: Dartmoor Escape. Escaped criminal Tommy Swann (John McCallum) is on the run! Coincidentally, three cronies are milling about. Could it be they have something to do with this man or maybe a load of rollerskates that were nicked?

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A typical British family becomes our anchor and Hamer is constantly drawing the story back to them. The husband is a generally benevolent chap content with his morning newspaper and the breakfast at the kitchen table. He’s remarried to Rose (Googie Weathers), a former bar hostess, who is not altogether horrid, but there’s an undercurrent of this being a marriage of convenience — at least for her. It becomes most transparent in her sometimes callous dealing with the step-children.

Two daughters, one dutiful the other blonde and bodacious, when it comes to the boys, and a young son bent on getting some extra spending money to buy a new mouth organ. She doesn’t seem to have any maternal concern for them even as she dutifully runs the house.

The question remains how these seemingly disparate strands might possibly be tied together. But this is a day in the life long before the Beatles ever cornered the market. We come to understand It Always Rains on Sunday is this type of story. It readily covers the beats of the city with all its shadings. This is the joy of the picture, especially all these decades later. It envelopes us in the highly colorful world of the East End, with its smells, markets, fish shops, and pubs.

The local policeman, Inspector Fothergill, goes about his usual business, making his rounds, followed by a cheeky journalist ready to pounce on a scoop. He’s looking for any news on Swann that might be of interest to him.

The best human interest story of the movie is actually behind the scenes romance. Because, upon meeting one another on the set of this picture, Googie Weathers and John McCallum would fall in love and get married soon thereafter. Their union lasted over 60 years, well into the 21st century.

The crucial reveal is that the current Mrs. Sandigate knew Thomas Swann in her previous life. Now he comes calling for a favor since he has nowhere else to turn, setting up a chilling reunion. For now, all we have is in front of the camera. It certainly heightens the available stakes as she harbors the wanted man, and he looks to coax her to remember the former life they had together. It’s obvious the situation can only end in some form of tragedy.

Simultaneously, one of the local gangsters, the angular-faced Mr. Hyams, checks in on one of his game parlors and offers a job then flowers to Doris Sandigate — claiming there are no strings attached though she unsure — he’s just feeling charitable.

Coincidentally, he also catches wind of some roller skates on the market, but he’s already had his hand in fixing the local fights. The dirty money is already being siphoned off from somewhere else. His generosity continues when he donates a large sum of money to the local gymnasium to counteract his shady dealings. One questions the state of affairs when we must turn to criminals as a primary source of charity.

In another vignette, a record store shopkeeper is caught kissing with one of his pretty clients, this time Vi Sandigate, who can’t stay away from any handsome face. He dishes out a pair of mouth organs to keep the blackmailing tykes quiet — including Vi’s baby brother Alfie. They proceed to stomp around town to the tune of “Colonel Bogey’s March.”

The music store owner’s wife Sadie is not stupid. She arrives at the local bar one day to let him know definitively, she’s walking out on him. In response, her weak-willed philandering husband goes scampering after her. Far from feeling like a sordid love triangle, it’s a pointless mess with at least two out of the three lives ruined for good (if not all of them).

Implicit to the movie is this context of a Godless nation. At least no one goes to church or has the normal Christian view of the world you half expect in mid-century Britain. However, given the context of the hell they went through during the war (and even after), I’m not sure the change is unwarranted.

One resident yells at the boys to pipe down with their infernal racket because they are desecrating the sabbath. Then, we see the priest running the orphanage in another scene. But these are isolated almost unimportant moments in a broader narrative.

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Otherwise, this world feels devoid of such religiosity. Maybe it’s simply from coming from an American perspective, but in films of the 40s and 50s, there’s a commonplace aspect to God in some way, shape, or form. Here such ritualism feels almost absent, if not done away with altogether. If nothing else, it does speak to something about our characters and the lives they lead.

It’s based on currencies of love and money. But everyone seems dissatisfied and always longing for something better. And to be completely clear, there is reason to gripe with the world set before them. America, more than possibly any nation, could recoup from the war without a physical need to regroup. Britain did not have such a luxury.

And while the police chase after a fugitive across brick-paved streets, train tracks, and train yards, not unlike the pursuit of Harry Lime, it all feels indicative of a broader problem. I’m not sure if we ever get to it. We are left with a climax and a conclusion that’s stirring enough. But the tale nevertheless leaves so many of its narratives in a state of indefinite suspension.

A lot like life, we do not know how or where they will fully resolve themselves. This illusion is powerful. Not only that, the stories extend outside the confines of a film, but also a happy ending, as it were, is not going to be handed to us blithely.

In short, It Always Rains on Sunday deserves to be named among the best of British noir alongside titles like Odd Man Out and Brighton Rock. The key comes with integrating the everyday occurrences with the criminal element. It makes us aware of how closely related they are. It’s pointless to try and pull them apart.

4/5 Stars

Classic Movie Beginner’s Guide: John Huston

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In our ongoing series of beginner’s guides for up-and-coming classic movie enthusiasts, we thought it would be well worth it to acknowledge one of Hollywood’s larger-than-life directors in John Huston.

Before starting out as a screenwriter, he galvanized his reputation collaborating with Humphrey Bogart and simultaneously helping shape the genre that would ultimately be labeled “film noir” by the French. His own career proved the film industry could be a family affair as he worked with both his father, Walter Huston and then his daughter, Angelica Huston, at the bookend of his own career.

Here are 4 of his most iconic films:

The Maltese Falcon (1941) - Images - IMDb

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Based on Dashiell Hammett’s indelible private eye, Huston’s Maltese Falcon is singular in its own right and it had to be. Not only was there the source material, but also an earlier film version. While Humphrey Bogart has none of the protagonist’s written characteristics, it’s immaterial. In a perceptive stroke, Huston pulled prose from the novel while creating taut, atmospheric, highly choreographed visuals to augment the performances. Consider Key Largo or The Asphalt Jungle for more noir thrills.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (1948)

One could easily argue it was John Huston who helped usher in a groundbreaking generation of on-location shooting in a more mobile post-war Hollywood. Armed with two dynamic performances from Bogart and his chipper father Walter Huston, this epochal story of greed is an absorbing drama about the souring of humanity. It’s doesn’t need no stinkin’ badge to prove it either.

New on DVD: 'The African Queen' - The New York Times

The African Queen (1951)

Whether or not it feels like a departure for John Huston (Beat the Devil or Heaven Knowns, Mr. Allision could be considered the same), The African Queen is a stellar adventure piece bolstered by two of the most inimitable players: Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Carving through the jungles makes fast friends of the two great giants of Classic Hollywood, and Huston makes it a gripping time at the movies.

Will🧙‍♂️Menaker on Twitter: "Basically everything about America ...

Chinatown (1974)

Many will probably note John Huston did not direct Chinatown. For some of his contemporary work behind the camera, consider Fat City or The Man Who Would Be King. However, his beguiling performance as Noah Cross, in one of the preeminent neo-noirs, is too good a turn to pass up in this acknowledgment. Despite the palpable charm, he undermines it with a deliciously despicable underbelly — much like 1930s Los Angeles.

Worth Watching

Jezebel, High Sierra, Sergeant York, The Killers, The Red Badge of Courage, Moby Dick, The Misfits, Night of the Iguana, **The Other Side of The Wind, Wise Blood, Prizzi’s Honor, The Dead, etc.