Tag Archives: Joseph H. Lewis

The Undercover Man (1949): Starring Glenn Ford

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The Undercover Man gives off an early vibe akin to Anthony Mann’s T-Men thanks to a disclaimer reading something like this: Behind the big headlines are stories of ordinary men and women with extraordinary courage. This picture concerns one of those men.

However, the title is a bit of a misnomer. It is about government treasury agents, among them Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) and George Pappas (James Whitmore in his debut), but the real “undercover man” is the stoolie looking to spill the dope on the Big Fella — a stylized, faceless take on Al Capone.

As is, Joseph H. Lewis’s picture plays as more of an updated (or out of date) riff on the Untouchables and the Capone story. Instead of guns constantly blazing, they’re trying to get to the mob kingpin another way: His taxes. Thus, it relies on the persistence of our protagonists to see the story to completion.

While the characterizations are worthwhile — Glenn Ford was born to play these types of stalwart tough guy roles — the documentary-styled drama itself feels mostly stodgy and uninspired. Especially given the B mavericks pedigree for punchy and rather unnerving material with unconventional flourishes, it’s rather disappointing to admit this one feels quite run-of-the-mill — at least content-wise.

Lewis still develops engaging scenes from the outset including the botched rendezvous staged at the train station. After their crackerjack chomping canary gets it unceremoniously, Warren finds himself back at square one and growing testy by the minute. Because the mob has a hand in everything, and they’re leaning on everyone.

It goes beyond police corruption or paying everyone off. Even as they run around looking for leads, there are tight lips all around, because everyone’s scared. They have good reason to be. They’re suspicious of authority as much as organized crime. What assurance do they have their lives will not be impinged upon.

One of the movie’s most inspired figures is lawyer Edward O’Rourke (Barry Kelley), a paunchy, beady-eyed besuited fellow who oozes sliminess from his generally sociable demeanor.

While he’s not an out-and-out criminal type, he also has no morals. One foot is planted in the good citizens league and the other gladly helps the gangsters keep their stranglehold by wheedling out of all signs of trouble. He seems to also glean great delight by watching the government agents stand down, their hands normally tied. He always has a smart response for them.

Still, Frank’s latest mark, Salvatore Rocco (Anthony Carus) — an AWOL husband who is currently courting a showgirl (Kay Medford) — looks like his exorbitant greed might provide a bite. He’s willing to squawk for adequate compensation. Purely a two-bit opportunist. There’s only one way to deal with him…It’s one of the movie’s best set pieces as the informant races off, his daughter, Warren, and his assailants, all sprinting after him through the midday crowds.

For Warren, the job always gets in the way of his lovely marriage, and he and his wife (Nina Foch) especially suffer for it. They barely get any time together, and the rest of the time he’s crammed in a lousy hotel room bickering with his colleagues. Back amid the tranquility of his home life, he resolves to give up the whole business because the safety of his wife seems like too high a price to pay in the pursuit of justice. The visual dichotomy between the two spheres is especially evident due to Burnett Guffey’s characteristically stark photography

His decision could be the unceremonious end to the picture, but we get a bit more — a nighttime visit. It is the obvious entreaty for him to consider the crusade. He’s not one to see evil and run away with his tail between his legs.

None of this is much of a surprise as we cycle through yet another bookkeeper, this time one Sydney Gordon (Leo Penn), who is on the lam with his newlywed wife (Patricia Barry). The question is whether or not they can convince him to talk and if he does agree, can they even protect him?

The last few minutes are worth seeing through to the end specifically because the action falls on the two most compelling characters in the whole story. For the first time, our hero has O’Rourke on the back foot forcing his hand. He really is the crucial piece since, with the sides drawn up between the good guys and bad, he plays like the wild card. The ending is a foregone conclusion, although, on the road, there are several tense confrontations predating the more action-dominated days of Robert Stack’s Untouchables.

3/5 Stars

So Dark The Night (1946): Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

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So Dark The Night is certainly a bit of an oddity functioning as Columbia’s attempt at a Parisian noir before being transplanted to the idyllic countryside. Linguistically, it’s a strange hybrid dominated by English with stylistic sprinkles of Francés.

Regardless, of any discrepancies, Joseph H. Lewis follows up My Name is Julia Ross with an equally befuddling little drama imbued with his usual elan, freely breaking through the obvious economy.

Some of the compositions are mesmerizing. For one thing, they often draw a moderate amount of attention to their near artificiality. Take, for instance, a tracking shot moving from outdoors to an interior in one fell swoop. There’s no fourth wall — real or invisible — to get in the way of the camera. You also cannot help but notice the very deliberate and rather ostentatious zooms applied throughout to emphasize character entrances.

He has other visual tricks too. One is reminded of the moment he introduces his taciturn heroine (Micheline Cheirel) hanging up laundry on the line. All we see are her hands as they move down the line as her head pops shyly over the articles of clothing. Then, noticing a fancy car rolling into the courtyard, she’s busy eyeing all the shiny grills and nobs with a mesmerized fascination. She barely notices the famed policeman Henri Cassin (Steven Geray ), nearly starstruck, staring at her before he’s snapped out of his own reverie. 

Most, if not all of the cast, are all but forgotten today. They are a homely crew, stilted at times, while still obliging with their own brand of blushing charm. Given the prerequisites, Geray, a chipper Austrian-American with a vaguely foreign accent, earns center stage. The quibbling mother and father are played by a pair of veterans, Eugene Borden and Ann Codee. However, it is the relationship between Gerray and Cheirel giving rise to this slightly perturbing psychology — not to mention a budding romantic connection.

The ensuing courtship feels like Lewis’s own artificial Hollywood-style take on the scenery of a Renoir movie, and it’s not meant to be as dismissive as it might sound. Because given his greatest successes — all low budget crowd-pleasers — he somehow makes the aesthetic work in his favor.

However, a threat is injected into the storyline with the jealous, near-suicidal obsession of Leon (Paul Marion), the young man she’s been pledged to be married to since adolescence. He makes it very clear he doesn’t want to see his Nanette with Cassin anymore and his brute jagged edges effectively disrupt the picture’s cornballish jauntiness with high-strung dramatics. It’s one extreme replaced with a new normal on the complete opposite side of the spectrum.

However, it remains to be seen where our sights are set. We can do little more than observe what is before us. Surely, someone will make a move amid the prevailing uneasiness. There must be an initiation of rising action. Soon enough we get an answer.

Nanette goes missing and all roads point to Leon. A crime of passion perhaps? Except he’s nowhere to be seen either. The local commissioner calls on the expertise of Mr. Cassin and the kindly man sets aside his vacation to investigate the troubling events.

Driven by empirical evidence, he nabs his man — under quite extraordinary circumstances — and his conclusions verge on the ludicrous. Given the little amount of time it’s allotted, So Dark The Night quickly spirals from a mere mystery to a tension-infused time bomb of anticipation. It’s a matter of knowing what’s coming: Murder!

Still, far from stripping the movie of its intensity, it lends the finale a Hitchcockian flair even in its abrupt denouement around the shattered shards of a window frame. This intermittent sense of spectacle is what will draw some viewers to an otherwise unassuming noir, which might be easily forgotten. Couched between the evocative cinematography of Burnett Guffey and this odd strain of psychological extrapolation, we have a most peculiar curio on our hands.

The one implausibility I cannot forgive is how Gerray could have been such a prolific policeman for such a long time and yet he nor anyone else picked up on the imminent warning signs swirling around. Otherwise, it’s idiosyncratic enough to enjoy without too much reservation.

3/5 Stars

Classic Movie Beginner’s Guide: 1950s Film Noir

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We follow up last week’s guide to classic film noir of the 1940s by continuing into the 1950s with 4 more entries. With the new decade came new progressions in realism, location shooting, and heightened character psychology.

As Paul Schrader wrote, the noir hero started to “go bananas.” What remained were graft, corruption, and the depravity of the human heart. True, gumshoes and femme fatales were never cut-and-dry. Now they were even less so. Enjoy!

Gun Crazy (1950)

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B movies form the backbone of this often down and dirty genre. There are few better than Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy an exercise in inventive economy. It tells the tale of a romance-fueled crime spree with verve and violent passion. Although mostly forgotten today, John Dall and Peggy Cummins do a fine rendition as a latter-day incarnation of Bonnie and Clyde

The Big Heat (1953)

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It’s a cops and robbers procedural with Glenn Ford as the straight-arrow family man going against the local mob. What Fritz Lang does is boil it over with newfound vindictiveness. We soon find out the good guys aren’t always untarnished nor the noir dames (Gloria Grahame) always the villains. True to form, Lee Marvin plays an incorrigible heavy.

The Killing (1956)

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It’s early Stanley Kubrick so some might find it a stark contrast to his later works. Regardless, it’s one of the finest heist films of all-time. Because the best-laid plans — even the most meticulous — always have a habit of going awry. The set-up is gritty and no-nonsense with a cast headed by a fitting protagonist: Sterling Hayden. Likewise, it’s ending just about sums up film noir fatalism.

Touch of Evil (1958)

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It’s often cited as one of the final signposts of classic film noir. With its tale of below the border corruption instigated by a portly Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) against a Mexican policeman (Charlton Heston) and his wife (Janet Leigh), it more than fits the parameters of the genre. The extended opening shot is just one stunning testament of Welles’ vision as a director.

Worth Watching:

Sunset Blvd., In a Lonely Place, Night and The City, Where The Sidewalk Ends, Ace in The Hole, The Narrow Margin, Kansas City Confidential, Pickup on South Street, Night of The Hunter, Kiss Me Deadly, Bad Day at Black Rock, Murder by Contract, and so many more.

Review: Gun Crazy (1950)

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Bart has an intense obsession with guns. It’s what his life revolves around. It’s the only thing he wants to do as a boy and the only things he seems to think about. It becomes a problem when he breaks a store window, but during the following hearing, his sister and friends vouch for his character. He would never take a human life or kill. That’s not in his nature.

No matter, it is decided Bart should be sent off to a special preparatory school, and he only returns years later as a grown man recently off a stint in the army.  He’s back in his hometown not quite sure what his future plans will be, but his buddies are glad to see him. They shoot some, drink a few beers, and decide to take a jaunt to the carnival for a night of fun.

Their Bart meets the girls of his dreams. There’s a quality to John Dall that makes Bart into a pure victim of his circumstances. He’s quickly infatuated with the gun slinging and sensuous Peggy, who seems to share his one love. A goofy smile is plastered on his face as he faces off against her in an act of skill. He makes her uneasy and ultimately beats her. 

He gets a job with the carnival and spends as much time as he can with her when he’s not shooting guns. They are fed up with their boss and leave the migrant life behind. Marriage is on their radar, and they live it up with the money they have. But Peggy wants more and she wants to keep living the high life. 

She wants to rob a gas station. It’s one little idea that soon blows way out of proportion. They are holding up banks, gas stations, and any place with money that they can lay their hands on. The pair is fugitives with exploits plastered all over the front pages and roadblocks waiting to stop them up. All the while Bart makes Peggy promise not to shoot anything because he still is totally opposed to killing people. 

It seems like things might end peaceably, except once again the gun-toting lovers are nearly flat broke so Peggy coaxes Bart into one last job to end all jobs. For the first time, despite their planning, just enough goes wrong to nearly botch their mission. Bart drives off and Peggy shoots a guard. He’s not the only one. 

 guncrazy1When Bart finds out, after the fact, he realizes they have just stepped up a level with murder stuck on them. The game is winding down and the only place Bart can turn is his hometown where his sister is. For good reason, she cannot stand Bart or Peggy who she sees as poisoning her brother. And it’s true. Bart seems different now, so paralyzed by fear that he even pulls a gun on his old friends.

The last ditch effort of Bart and Peggy is to literally head for the hills. The dragnet is sent out and the hounds are let loose. They hardly have a chance before dropping from exhaustion in a swamp. They’re trapped and a crazed Peggy looks to shoot it out to the death. But for once Bart breaks with her remembering his friends. It doesn’t help him much.

Gun Crazy is a B-film and yet it is easy to forget because the way Joseph H. Lewis constructed this film is so impressive in its economy. One scene that reflects this so beautifully is the long take from the back seat of the car. The camera does not change positioning and so we see a bank job from the outside, and it only helps to build up greater tension.

 We also have enough time to care about certain characters. We have enough time to see Peggy is really no good. Yet with her keen marksmanship, she is a different shade of femme-fatale who is still as deadly as any of her contemporaries. Along with They Live by Night (1948), this is one of the archetypal Bonnie and Clyde-esque films. Thank goodness this film’s title was changed from Deadly is the Female to the more apt Gun Crazy. That it is. 

4/5 Stars

The Big Combo (1955)

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b456e-bigcombo1There is so much to the plot of The Big Combo, but the irony is that the story is not altogether extraordinary. Instead, highlights include David Raksin’s (Laura) jazzy score infused with brass which is somewhat unusual for the genre. Cinematographer John Alton also helped in making this film visually and stylistically engaging. There are some crazy, overstated shadows making this undeniably film-noir. There are very few better examples of so-called “dark” cinema with prototypical chiaroscuro and low key lighting.

Honestly, I have never been a huge fan of Cornel Wilde, and I can understand why he is not that popular or well known. He’s relatively beady-eyed, not particularly good looking, and his voice is not altogether memorable. Like Mr. Brown said in the film, “It’s personality. You haven’t got it. You’re a cop.” Even Dick Powell has some wit but Wilde’s character is straitlaced and steady. There’s nothing of much repute about him. But enough about Wilde.

The story is your somewhat typical procedural with a righteous cop facing off against a big time mobster. Mr. Brown is practically untouchable with a large pool of money at his disposal and a group of faithful thugs ready to do his bidding. He has a girl, Susan Lowell, who is about fed up with him, but she sticks around.

Lt. Diamond (Wilde) is totally fed up with the corruption but himself is also infatuated with Lowell. His only lead is the name “Alicia” which leads to trouble with Brown and his thugs who rough him up and leave him drunk. However, he learns from a man named Betini that “Alicia” was Brown’s wife who was supposedly murdered and thrown overboard with an anchor.

Next on the beat is a tight-lipped Swedish antique dealer, and ultimately, Diamond comes up with proof that Brown’s wife is still alive. He’s getting too close so Mr. Brown sends out his thugs Fante and Mingo to shut him up for good. They get the wrong person.

Alicia finally turns up, a few more figures get mowed down in Mr. Brown’s wake including Diamond’s trusty colleague Sam (Jay Adler). All that’s left is a showdown at the airport that is like Casablanca‘s atmosphere on steroids. It truly is a stunning achievement in visual storytelling for Alton and director Joseph H. Lewis.

There is not a great deal of sympathy to be had for a lot of the characters who got it, and though she seemed to have little bearing on the plot, Rita’s demise was surprisingly difficult to take. She was the girl with the heart of gold. Brown’s heartlessness finally came back to bite him but honestly, I could have cared less if Diamond was the one to catch him or not. He couldn’t have done it without Susan anyways.

3.5/5 Stars

Gun Crazy (1950) – Film-Noir

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Starring John Dall and Peggy Cummins, the film opens with a young boy who is infatuated with guns. After stealing a gun from a hardware store, Bart is sent to reform school even though his friends and sister testify he would never kill a living thing with it. Bart spends some time in the army and finally returns home grown up. He goes to a carnival with old friends and meets a female sharpshooter. She gets him a job and they grow close only to be fired from the carnival. They get married and are happy for awhile but then she gives him a choice. Either they start robbing stores fro money or she will leave him. Reluctantly he agrees and they begin to get a little money robbing stores and gas stations. It is not enough so she convinces him to pull one last job so they can live a content life together. They begin working at a meat packing plant in preparation. The day arrives and they succeed but then Laurie shoots two people out of fear much to Bart’s horror. They must split up and the manhunt begins. The FBI track them down and the only place to go is back home. His old friends plead with him to surrender but they flee into the mountains with the authorities hot on their trail. They are trapped and Laurie is desperate once again but Bart cannot bear it anymore. Despite the tragic ending Bart ultimately redeems himself but it is too little too late. This was a precursor to Bonnie Clyde and it has its share of tense moments.

4/5 Stars