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They Live By Night (1948)

They Live By Night (1948)

Clydefro on his filmjournal.net blog has posted an interesting review of They Live By Night (1948) the first feature of director Nicholas Ray, in which Clydefro firmly establishes Ray’s auteur credentials.

While Clydefro’s exploration of They Live By Night is original and penetrating, I don’t quite agree with his take on the noir Outsider:

“Watching They Live by Night, I was reminded of the music of Bruce Springsteen and, specifically, the song “Atlantic City” off his Nebraska album. Both artists were able to locate the pulse of the outsider, someone not particularly special in any way but undeniably American in spirit and attitude. The idea of bettering one’s self and family, even if it means turning to crime or working outside the margins, is a recurring theme in both men’s work. Of course, Ray put his finger on this pursuit some twenty and thirty years before Springsteen.”

To me the persona of the outsider is more complex, and a universal (not parochial) archetype. The outsider is outside bourgeois society and does not share its aspirations, and in the noir genre this is manifested generally but not always in criminality. Ray and Springsteen both share this wider vision: consider Ray’s In A Lonely Place (1950) and Springsteen’s Streets Of Philadelphia.

They Live By Night is one of the 10 films noir released on July 31 by Warner Home Video in the Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 DVD box set.

Noir Directors List

This page provides a full listing of directors credited with a film noir, and the films noir for each director.

Noir Books List

This page provides a full and comprehensive listing of books on film noir that can be purchased on-line.

Richard Schickel on Film Noir

Film Noir

TIME magazine film critic, Richard Schickel, has written an article on film noir for the Wilson Quartely, which has been published on-line: Rerunning Film Noir. Generally an excellent historical overview, with some interesting movies discussed, but in some aspects unsatisfying:

Noir, despite its Frenchified name, is a truly American form, as Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward observe in Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1979). Yes, many of its leading directors (Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tourneur, André de Toth) were born in Europe and well versed in expressionism. But their ­source—­often directly, always at least ­indirectly—­was the American crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, W. R. Burnett, and others. Almost all noir actors and many of the directors’ significant collaborators (cameramen, editors, etc.) were American born and certainly American ­trained.

This dismissal of the influence of the European directors is defensive, and does not help readers to understand the real influence of these expatriate directors. Schiekel seems to deride the autuer influence of artists like Wilder, Siodmak, Lang, Tourneur, and others. Existentialism is not even mentioned: the noir anti-hero is more of an outsider than an urban refugee. And of course the French recognised and named the genre, and provided an analytical framework.

In A Lonely Place (1950): A Psychic Prison

In A Lonely Place (1950)

After my post of Aug 4, In A Lonely Place (1950): The “Creative” Outsider, I watched In a Lonely Place again last night, and found more to say about this intriguing movie. James Naremore in his book, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts(Berkely, 1998), quotes two post-war French auteur theorists on director, Nicholas Ray:

François Truffaut wrote that the essential theme of Ray’s films was “moral solitude,” and Jacques Rivette argued that Ray was concerned with “the interior demon of violence, which seems linked to man and his solitude.” (p. 26)

These themes are clearly evident in In a Lonely Place, where a creative outsider is imprisoned by his interior demons. The mood of the film is alienating too, with the protagonist kept at an emotional distance from the audience. The Bogart character is not only lonely, torn, and alienated, but amoral in his self-obsession. He leaves the hat-check girl to find her own cab alone late at night on the streets of LA, and so is partly responsible for what happens to her. When he learns of her murder the next morning, he cannot connect emotionally with the event – even when he is shown graphics photos of the crime scene – and he has no real remorse. As an afterthought he callously orders some flower to be sent to the girl’s home, but can’t be bothered to find out the address himself.

Nicholas Ray uses powerful imagery to visualise this alienation. Dixon Steeles’ apartment is on a lower level to his lover’s. He must walk up to see her and when he leaves for the last time, he must walk out and down a stairway. The strongest imagery is in the design of Steele’s apartment where prison-like bars are virtually everywhere – even in the patterns of curtains:

In A Lonely Place (1950) In A Lonely Place (1950) In A Lonely Place (1950)

And in almost all interior scenes having the view from windows obscured by the lateral bars of closed venetian blinds reinforces the mood of alienation.

In A Lonely Place (1950)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919): German Expressionism and Film Noir

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919)

Matt Holmes has posted an interesting article on the Obsessed With Film blog: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Suffering creates art?, where he explores the historical context of the film, and the influence of adversity on creativity. He also says that German expressionism is a major influence on the film noir genre:

Like the great speech from Orson Welles in The Third Man, who said that times of war and suffering bring out the most creative and artistic periods in history, Caligari is a testament to the human spirit and a way of how expression through film was a way of venting your social state.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the precursor to the great Universal horror movies of the 30’s and influenced the whole genre of film noir. You can see elements of German Expressionism in every single one of Tim Burton’s movies, must explicitly in the character of Edward Scissorhands (a double for Cesare), The Penguin (a double for Caligari) and the whole of Sleepy Hollow, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ed Wood (the painted sets).

Miklós Rózsa Centennial

On Aug. 17, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will kick off its Academy Centennial Salute to Miklós Rózsa at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Rózsa scored a number of films noir:

Double Indemnity (1944)
Ministry of Fear (1944)
Lady on a Train (1945)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
The Killers (1946)
The Red House (1947)
Brute Force (1947)
The Naked City (1948)
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)
The Bribe (1949)
Criss Cross (1949)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

My favorite is the Asphalt Jungle (1950). From the opening shots, Rózsa’s dramatic almost post-modern score establishes the feel of the picture, and remains in the memory forever. More from the LA Times.

In A Lonely Place (1950): The “Creative” Outsider

In A Lonely Place (1950)

Steve-O of Noir of The Week blog has posted a good article on In A Lonely Place, from Barry Gifford’s book, Out of the Past: Adventures in Film Noir. Don‘t read the article if you haven’t seen the film, as it contains spoilers.

I always go to my falling-apart paperback copy of Steve Scheuer’s Movies On TV and Video 1993-94 for a razor-sharp plot summary: Gripping story of a Hollywood writer who is under suspicion of murder and his strange romance with his female alibi.

This picture is an atypical noir, where the psyche of a “creative” outsider is explored. Its stars an aging Humphrey Bogart, and Gloria Grahame: both are great in these against-type roles. I prefer it to Sunset Blvd.

This is a movie in which the title has a real deep meaning. In a lonely place: those of you who have suffered from or been close to someone who has suffered major depression, will also find this story a painfully accurate portrayal of how a depressed person battles with his demons. Many creative artists are linked with depression or bipolar disorder, where anger is at a trigger point. Director Nicholas Ray, deftly explores the effects of frustration and anxiety on the creative psyche within the grid-lines of the noir genre.

Glen or Glenda (1953): More Schlock Noir from Ed Wood

Glen or Glenda(1953)

This camp classic is available on YouTube. Feature Dolores Fuller and Bela Lugosi (as the shrink).

“Upon discovering the suicide of a known transvestite, the police inspector seeks enlightenment from a psychiatrist familiar with the phenomenom. The psychiatrist tells him two tales. Glen is to be married to Barbara, but must find a way to tell her of his desire to wear her angora sweater, and of his cross-dressing needs in general. Another is the story of Alan, who decides to physically become a female via surgery (based on the contemporary story of Christine Jorgensen). Throughout the film a scientist inanely babbles about life and death in order to somehow elucidate the story.”

Watch it

Alphaville (1965)

Alphaville 1965

Alphaville, a futuristic B&W noir from 60’s “enfant terrible” French director, Jean Luc Godard, can be viewed in widescreen on-line at Google Video. It is a weird homage to the genre with Lemmy Caution, an American private-eye, played by Eddie Constantine, arriving in Alphaville, a futuristic city on another planet… The female lead is played by Godard’s then wife, the georgeous, Anna Karina. Watch it.

Anna Karina - Alphaville