Blues in the Night (1941)
Where Danger Lives (1950)
Vendetta (1950)
Soho Incident (1956) aka Spin a Dark Web (USA)
Man in the Shadow (1957) aka Violent Stranger (USA)
An on-going feature in no particular order…
Category: Actors
Femmes Noir #2: Lizabeth Scott
You Came Along (1945)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Dead Reckoning (1947)
Desert Fury (1947)
I Walk Alone (1948)
Pitfall (1948)
Too Late For Tears (1948)
Dark City (1950)
Two of a Kind (1951)
The Racket (1951)
Stolen Face (1952)
Scared Stiff (1953)
An on-going feature in no particular order…
Femmes Noir # 1: Barbara Stanwyck
Double Indemnity (1944)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)
Cry Wolf (1947)
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
The File On Thelma Jordan (1950)
No Man of Her Own (1950)
The Furies (1950)
Clash By Night (1952)
Witness to Murder (1954)
Crime of Passion (1957)
An on-going feature in no particular order…
Angel Eyes: Femmes-Noir
This is an elegant homage by Rob in L.A. to some of the iconic femmes-noir. Make sure your speakers are on as the haunting rendition by Bruce Springsteen of Angel Eyes is integral to the experience.
Credits
Song: “Angel Eyes,” music by Matt Dennis, lyrics by Earl Brent. Performed by Bruce Springsteen.
Film clips:
Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN (1952)
Cleo Moore in ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951)
Claire Trevor in BORN TO KILL (1947)
Veronica Lake in THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942)
Ella Raines in PHANTOM LADY (1944)
Louise Brooks in PANDORA’S BOX (1928)
Jean Gillie in DECOY (1946)
Jane Russell in HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1952)
Anne Baxter in THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953)
Lauren Bacall in THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
Jane Greer in OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
Rita Hayworth in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948)
Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann in PERSONA (1966)
Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946)
Simone Simon in CAT PEOPLE (1942)
Clara Bow in MY LADY OF WHIMS (1925)
Ingrid Bergman in ARCH OF TRIUMPH (1948)
Monica Vitti in L’ECLISSE (1962)
Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN (1952)
Anna May Wong in PICCADILLY (1929)
Ella Raines in PHANTOM LADY (1944)
Gloria Grahame in THE BIG HEAT (1953)
Ava Gardner in THE KILLERS (1946)
Lizabeth Scott in DEAD RECKONING (1947)
Hedy Lamarr in ALGIERS (1938)
Ella Raines in PHANTOM LADY (1944)
Gene Tierney in LAURA (1944)
Joan Crawford in MILDRED PIERCE (1945)
Dorothy Dandridge in ISLAND IN THE SUN (1957)
Constance Dowling in BLACK ANGEL (1946)
Mary Meade in T-MEN (1947)
Rita Hayworth in GILDA (1946)
Peggy Cummins in GUN CRAZY (1950)
Lizabeth Scott in DEAD RECKONING (1947)
Fay Helm in PHANTOM LADY (1944)
Louise Brooks in PANDORA’S BOX (1928)
Marlene Dietrich in SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932)
Vera: No Detours
Dedicated to Ann Savage
“Come on, come on
Put your hands into the fire
Explain, explain
As I turn and meet the power
This time, This time
Turning white and senses dire
Pull up, pull up From one extreme to another”
– Into the Fire by 13 Senses
standing by the highway
alone against eternity
one last chance
to make it – big time
your dyin’ babe
lungs can’t hold out too long
against the rising tide
choking blood
you need a ride
booze
a shower
wash the lizard’s skin from your nails
he offers
okay
what the hell!
maybe this time
another loser
lost
so stupid
he thinks fate did it
make it happen
he’s a goner
one last chance
do it
you need love babe
I need dough more
this guy’s a ticket
to blow before I split
booze
makes me sad
lonely
love me
just one time
before I go
Ann Savage: Postcript
I have come across two interesting video clips on YouTube. The first features a short interview with Ms Savage about Detour from a documentary on the film’s director Edgar G. Ulmer. The second is the official trailer for My Winnipeg. Of interest also is Eddie Muller‘s book Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir which has a chapter on Ms Savage based on a mid-90s interview.
Ann Savage Dead at 87
“Say who do you think you’re talking to – a hick? Listen Mister, I been around,
and I know a wrong guy when I see one. What’d you do, kiss him with a wrench? “
Ann Savage, who played the dark dame, Vera, in Edgar G. Ulmer’s cult noir Detour (1945), has died aged 87.
Her Hollywood career had largely been over since the mid-1950s, but she had a resurgence over the past year with a starring role in Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. Starting with her 1943 debut in the crime story One Dangerous Night, Savage made more than 30 films through the 1950s, including the Westerns Saddles and Sagebrush and Satan’s Cradle, musicals such as Dancing in Manhattan and Ever Since Venus, and wartime stories like Passport to Suez (AAP).
When announcing her passing, Savage’s manager, Kent Adamson said of her performance in Detour:
It’s actually a showcase role… [Tom] Neal and Savage really reversed the traditional male-female roles of the time. She’s vicious and predatory. She’s been called a harpy from hell, and in the film, too, she’s very sexually aggressive, and he’s very, very passive. It’s very unusual for a 40s film to have a woman come on that strong.
The Time Out Film Guide says of Detour:
Neither pure thriller nor pure melodrama (though it has its true complement of doomed lovers, dead bodies, and a cruel sexual undertow), on an emotional level it most resembles the wonderful purple-pulp fiction of David Goodis. Passion joins with folly to produce termite art par excellence.
Detour is in the public domain, and can be viewed below.
[veoh]http://www.veoh.com/videos/v9268445jrF3f3C[/veoh]
Otto Preminger: A Slap Too Many
Early in the film Angel Face (1952), Robert Mitchum slaps Jean Simmons in the face:
When [autocratic director Otto] Preminger called for retake after retake, Mitchum, worried about his costar’s face, finally hit the director across the face and then asked him if he would like another slap.
– Mayer and Mc Donnell, Encyclopedia of Film Noir (2007)
Jean Gabin Retrospective
Thanks to the mysterious Dark City Dame for a heads up on these screenings.
The American Cinematheque will this weekend (Sept 6-7) at The Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, screen four films starring French screen legend, Jean Gabin, under the banner Jean Gabin: The World’s Coolest Movie Star:
The Sicilian Clan (Le Clan Des Siciliens), 1969, 20th Century Fox, 118 Min
Moontide¸ 1942, 20th Century Fox, 94 Min
House On The Waterfront (Port Du Désir), 1955, 94 Min. Dir. Edmund T. Gréville
Grisbi (Touchez Pas Au Grisbi), 1954, Rialto Pictures, 88 Min. Dir. Jacques Becker
The full schedule and trailers are available here.
Apropos Jean Gabin – my favorite French tough guy – he starred in most of the poetic-realist French movies of the 30s, which were really the pre-cursors of Hollywood noir. As Geoff Mayer and Brian McDonnell say in their book, Encyclopedia of Film Noir (Greenwood Press 2007): “in these movies an ironical poetry was found in the everyday: hence the term poetic realism. The iconography of the cycle included the shiny cobblestones of nighttime Parisian streets (the faubourgs), the shadowy interiors of neon-lit nightclubs, and the moody, haunted, doom-laden faces of actors such as Jean Gabin. As well as inspiring Hollywood film-makers, who viewed them admiringly, some of these French films were actually remade as American noirs, for example, Le Chienne (1931) was remade as Scarlet Street (1945), La bête humaine (1938) as Human Desire (1954), Pépé Le Moko (1937) as Algiers (1938), Le Jour se lève as The Long Night (1947), and Le Corbeau (1943) as The Thirteenth Letter (1951).”
I saw La bête humaine a few years back and it is everything we would expect in a film noir of the 40s with a really downbeat ending.
Evelyn Keyes Dead at 91
Evelyn Keyes, who died on July 4, starred in a number of films noir: Johnny O’Clock (1947), The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), The Prowler (1951), and 99 River Street (1953).
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