Category: Articles

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.

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).

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.

Pithy Definition of Film Noir

Night in the City…

Geoff Pevere has today coined a nice expression of the film noir genre in his Toronto Star review of the just released Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 DVD set (see my post of yesterday):

… a genre defined by shadows, of harsh, sharp contrasts of light and dark: at any moment, those clouds of fate could pass right over your head.

Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman

A few of the obits on the passing of the great European director, Ingmar Bergman, refer to the influence of film noir on his ouvre. Personally, I don’t see it, unless perhaps you refer to the significant influence of 40’s Hollywood on all film-makers of his generation. His films were mostly dark intellectual ruminations on life and death, and appealed only to narrow audiences. Film noir is a genre that talks to everyman. The interesting thing for me is the realisation that he was at his peak when aged in his 40s and 50s. In today’s ageist realm, most of us in that age groove are considered history. The Financial Times obit on Bergman is recommended.

Brick (2005) – Disappointing

Brick (2005)

First time independent director, Rian Johnson, shot the alleged neo-noir Brick after raising $500,000 from friends and relatives. The film received the Special Jury Prize at Sundance.

After all the hype, I was disappointed. Though technically competent and with clever allusions to the film noir genre, I found the story distasteful and with little real meaning or social value. The plot is confusing and the mumbled dialog of tribal argot generally unintelligible. An obvious influence is Tarantino, and this is also a negative.

The film may have some meaning for local audiences, but outside CA you can give it a miss. Or maybe, I am just too old…

The Killers (1946) Revisited: Noir As Tragedy

The screenplay for The Killers by Anthony Veiller, Richard Brooks, and John Huston (uncredited), is not so much an adaptation of Hemingway’s short story (1927), but an imaginative response and more strongly a rebuttal to the last few lines at the end of Hemingway’s text spoken by Nick Adams, the guy who runs from the diner to warn Ole Anderson (‘the Swede’) of the Killers’ arrival:

“I’m going to get out of this town”, Nick said… “I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”

After establishing the absolute resolve of the killers in the opening sequence, which is essentially faithful to Hemingway’s text, the film ventures on to explore the burning questions in the mind of the audience. What did the Swede do to warrant this retribution? Why doesn’t he run? In pursuing the story, the film’s ethos is that it takes courage not cowardice to confront and accept an inevitable – even violent – death.

The Killers (1946)

In Hemingway’s text the Swede’s explanation to Nick is “I got it wrong”, but this is changed in the script to “I did something wrong – once”. These stronger words are the fulcrum of the picture. Ole’s repentance is established from the outset and his tragic redemption seared into the viewer’s sympathies even before his story unfolds. How the script and the director, Robert Siodmak, construct the narrative using flashbacks and the continuum of the insurance investigation is a lesson on filmic technique.

The ‘rap sheet’ read to insurance investigator, Jim Reardon, by his secretary, tells us that despite Ole losing his parents at a young age, he managed to grow up straight in a tough neighbourhood until after his career as a boxer is ended by an injury in his last fight, when he falls in with the wrong crowd, and ends up in the numbers racket. Ole’s life from that fight to his death is a story of betrayal. In the dressing-room after the fight, he is dumped by his manager and trainer without empathy or ceremony. Later, his childhood friend, a cop, let’s him take the rap for the femme fatale, who then goes on to betray him again when she enacts the final double-cross.

A decent man destroyed by fate: the stuff tragedy is made of.

The Killers (1946)

Film Noir’s Anti-Hero: The Outsider

Film Noir’s Anti-Hero: The Outsider

The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have [these] dangerous impulses, yet they keep up a pretence, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganised, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for truth… the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois… because he stands for Truth. What can be said to characterise the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, or unreality… The Outsider is a man who has awakened to chaos… Even if there seems no room for hope, truth must be told… chaos must be faced.

Colin Wilson – The Outsider (1956, Gollanz, London)