Category: Articles

John Alton: The Amazing Mr X (aka The Spiritualist 1948)

capturing bits of light at rest on things of beauty – John Alton *

John Alton: Noir Filmography as Cinematographer

1947

  • T-Men Directed by Anthony Mann Eagle-Lion (Edward Small Production) 96 minutes
  • The Pretender Directed by W. Lee Wilder Republic 68 minutes

1948

  • The Spiritualist (The Amazing Mr. X) Directed by Bernard Vorhaus Eagle-Lion 79 minutes
  • Raw Deal Directed by Anthony Mann Eagle-Lion (Edward Small Production) 78 minutes
  • He Walked by Night Directed by Alfred Werker Eagle-Lion (Bryan Foy Production) 80 minutes
  • Hollow Triumph (The Scar) Directed by Steve Sekely Eagle-Lion 83 minutes

1949

  • The Crooked Way Directed by Robert Florey United Artists (Benedict Bogeaus Production) 80 minutes
  • Border Incident Directed by Anthony Mann MGM (Nicholas Nayfack Production) 92 minutes
  • Reign of Terror (The Black Book) Directed by Anthony Mann Eagle-Lion 89 minutes

1950

  • Mystery Street Directed by John Sturges MGM 92 minutes
  • Witness to Murder Directed by Roy Rowland United Artists (Erskine Productions) 81 minutes
  • Devil’s Doorway Directed by Anthony Mann MGM 84 minutes

1950

  • The People Against O’Hara Directed by John Sturges MGM 101 minutes

1955

  • The Big Combo Directed by Joseph H. Lewis Allied Artists (Sidney Harmon Production) 86 minutes

1956

  • Slightly Scarlet Directed by Allan Dwan RKO (Benedict Bogeaus Production) 91 minutes

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* John Alton, ‘Painting with Light’ (Macmillan, NY, 1949), p. xli

Books Digest: Crossfire, Jewish Directors, and Streets With No Names – Part 1 Jewish Noir Directors

This is the first in a series of posts in which I will cover books on film noir that I have been reading, and which aficionados of film noir will find interesting.

For this first post, I have chosen DRIVEN TO DARKNESS: Jewish Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir (Rutgers University Press, 2009 ) by Vincent Brook.

In Driven To Darkness author Vincent Brook argues that the development of film noir in Hollywood was largely driven by emigre Jewish directors; and that the the noir motifs of the femme-fatale and the weak and ambivalent noir protagonist, have their origins in Jewish folklore, the historical oppression of Jews, and the German expressionist theater of the early 20th century.  He argues his case by reference to the films of Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Edgar G. Ulmer, Curtis Bernhardt, Max Ophuls, John Brahm, Anatole Litvak, and Fred Zinnemann.

While Brook presents his case in detail and with a broad historical sweep, I am not convinced.  The Jewish influence exists, but it does not explain the rise of noir. Brook supports his thesis principally by reference to plot elements, based on the (questionable) presumption that these derive from the director and not from the script. Many of the films cited by Brook have screenplays (or are from stories) written by non-Jews, and the influence of the American hard-boiled crime fiction of the 30s and 40s is not given sufficient consideration.

Nonetheless, I found particularly interesting the chapters on Fritz Lang. Brook presents the novel view that Lang in his films noir is escaping his Jewishness and perhaps seeking expiation for something he may have done in Germany before he fled the country. Lang’s recollections of his life in Germany and his reasons for leaving, have been found to be unreliable, and this has been of interest to scholars. Lang’s first wife died by his own hand. He claimed to have accidently shot her. There is a lingering suspicion in some quarters that Lang actually murdered her. Brook hypothesises this presumption of guilt and sees real parallels in a number of Lang’s noirs, particularly Scarlet Street (1945), where a weak artistic male protagonist is driven by lust and jealousy to kill the femme-fatale who has betrayed him. By the end of the movie, the killer is so consumed by guilt that he lives a deranged homeless existence in a noir city, so hopelessly dark, that it shattered the closed romantic realism of Hollywood for good. Brook’s analysis has a particular cogency in the case of Scarlet Street. The film was Lang’s first independent Hollywood feature and he “was allowed the luxury of working for three months on the script with Dudley Nichols” (Andrew Spicer, ‘Film Noir’, 2002, p123).

Recommended.

Femme Fatale: Moscow Cafe

that sinister bloodcurdling, deep-probing, lashing look. It was a hangman’s look, a look like the contact of sexual organs

– M. Ageyev, Novel With Cocaine, 1929 (?) translated from the Russian by Michael Henry Hein (Picador 1985)

Noir City 1929: God’s Man

From Lynd Ward’s woodcut graphic novel God’s Man (1929)

Noir Poets: Lou Reed

Dirty Boulevard

Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
he looks out a window without glass
The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
his father beats him ’cause he’s too tired to beg

He’s got 9 brothers and sisters
they’re brought up on their knees
it’s hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
but that’s a slim chance he’s going to the boulevard

He’s going to end up, on the dirty boulevard
he’s going out, to the dirty boulevard
He’s going down, to the dirty boulevard

This room cost 2,000 dollars a month
you can believe it man it’s true
somewhere a landlord’s laughing till he wets his pants
No one here dreams of being a doctor
or a lawyer or anything
they dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I’ll piss on ’em
that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ’em to death
and get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard

Get to end up, on the dirty boulevard
going out, to the dirty boulevard
He’s going down, on the dirty boulevard
going out

Outside it’s a bright night
there’s an opera at Lincoln Center
movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
but the lights are out on the Mean Streets

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
he’s selling plastic roses for a buck
The traffic’s backed up to 39th street
the TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
he’s found a book on magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures and stares at the cracked ceiling
“At the count of 3” he says,
“I hope I can disappear”

And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly-fly-fly-fly, from dirty boulevard…

– Lou Reed  | LP Album ‘New York’ (1989)

Summary Noir Reviews: Casbah on the Bayou

Pépé le Moko (1937)
Jean Gabin is cool and Mireille Balin is an angel in this fatalistic but not noir classic.  What is subversive is that the lovers are not bourgeois: he is a gangster and she is a kept woman. Only the French could produce a tragedy of such romantic pathos, with the Casbah an exotic labyrinth of  both despair and sanctuary.  So was inaugurated poetic realism.  A film for the soul.

Dark Waters (1944)
A southern thriller of cruelty and  entrapment from Andre de Toth.  This little known bayou gothic challenges Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase for atmosphere.  Merle Oberon heads a solid cast which includes Thomas Mitchell and Elisha Cook Jr. as bad guys, and Franchot Tone as a small-town doctor who saves the day.  Oberon’s luminous innocence seduces you from the outset.

The Enforcer (1951)
Bogart as an activist DA pursues Murder Inc in a noirish police procedural.  The first time the sinister usage of  ‘contract’ was spoken on the screen.   Bogart sadly just goes through the motions, but the motley crew of contract killers display a truly disturbing pathology.

The Glass Wall (1953)
A great socio-realist sleeper buried by Columbia on release. Director Max Shane and DP Joe Biroc showcase the teeming streets of New York.   While Shane had a hand in the excellent script, his direction could have been tighter.  The protagonist, an Hungarian war refugee played by Vittoria Gassman, jumps ship after his request for entry into the US is rejected.  Scenes of the desperate Gassman amongst the crowds on the streets of NY are documentary, and the central noir motif of individual alienation in the anonymity of the city is dramatically evoked – a cold glass ‘wall’.  Gloria Grahame is beguiling as a young woman on the skids who helps.

Border Incident (1949)
Essential expressionist noir from director Anthony Mann, DP John Alton, and writer John C Higgins, is a savage critique of US agribusiness.  Alton’s imagery is wholly subversive.  Ostensibly a police procedural about the trafficking of illegal farm workers from Mexico for the farms of Southern California, Alton’s rendering of the desert landscape with a haunting natural light elevates the exploitation of the ‘braceros’ to the realm of tragedy, and from tragedy to a damning political indictment.

Out of the Fog (1941): “throw away the books”

Out of the Fog (1941), the screen adaptation by Robert Rossen and Irwin Shaw of Shaw’s play, The Gentle People, written for The Group Theater in New York in 1939, wears it’s lefist heart on it’s sleeve and has dated badly. Anatole Litvak’s direction is workman-like only, and while James Wong Howe’s camera suitably renders a fog-laden set as the Brooklyn wharf-side, it is to little avail.  Not even John Garfield as the cheap protection racketeer and Ida Lupino as the ‘ordinary’ girl to Garlfield’s homme-fatale, can save the enterprise.  Studio hacks so diluted the trenchant play’s down-beat critique of capitalism and anti-fascist intent, that the contrived ending is played for laughs and the heroes come out looking as amoral as their victim.  This moral ambivalence and the dark photography give the movie a noir tendency.

The film has one bright spot in a  Russian sauna when two rocking-chair revolutionaries hatch their plot to kill the racketeer.  George Tobias as a bankrupt store-keeper delivers a riveting background monologue on his fate. The writing brilliantly employs decidedly Jewish humor in a witty critique that runs to the core of the story, and is totally subversive of the melodrama played out in the foreground.

Out of the Fog (1941), the screen adaptation by Robert Rossen and Irwin Shaw of Shaw’s play, The Gentle People, written for The

Group Theater in New York in 1939, wears it’s lefist heart on it’s sleeve and has dated badly.

Anatole Litvak’s direction is workman-like only and while James Wong Howe’s camera suitably renders a fog-laden set as the

Brooklyn wharf-side, it is to little avail. Not even John Garfield as the cheap protection racketeer and Ida Lupino as the

‘ordinary’ girl to Garlfield’s homme-fatale, can save the enterprise.  Studio hacks so diluted the trenchant play’s down-beat

critique of capitalism that the contrived ending is played for laughs and the heroes come out looking as amoral as their

victim. This moral ambivalence and the dark photography give the movie a noir tendency.

The film however has one bright spot when the two rocking chair revolutionaries hatch their plot to kill the racketeer in a

Russian sauna. George Tobias as a bankrupt store-keeper delivers a rivetting background monologue on his fate. The writing is

brilliantly employs decidely Jewish humor in a savage critique runs to the core of the story, and is totally subversive of the

cheap melodrama played out in the foreground.  The scene is featured in the following edited clip.

Noir Poets: Philip Marlowe

Who am I cutting my throat for this time? A blonde with sexy eyes and too many door keys? A girl from Manhattan, Kansas? I don’t know. All I know is that something isn’t what it seems and the old tired but always reliable hunch tells me that if the hand is played the way it is dealt the wrong person is going to lose the pot. Is that any of my business? Well, what is my business? Do I know? Did I ever know? Let’s not go into that. You’re not human tonight, Marlowe. Maybe I never was or ever will be. Maybe I’m an ectoplasm with a private license. Maybe we all get like this in the cold half-lit world where always the wrong thing happens and never the right.

– Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister (NY 1941)

Subversive Poet: John Alton on the Border

Border Incident (1949) is perhaps the one film of the remarkable late 40s collaboration among cinematographer John Alton, director Anthony Mann, and writer John C. Higgins, where Alton’s imagery is wholly subversive.  Ostensibly a police procedural about the trafficking of illegal farm workers from Mexico for the farms of Southern California, Alton’s rendering of the desert landscape with a haunting natural light elevates the exploitation of the ‘braceros’ to the realm of tragedy, and from tragedy to a damning political indictment.

Morover, the scene where the undercover agent Jack is murdered by the furrowing blades of a tractor, is one of the most horrific in film noir.  As noted in my Dec 2008 post, Noir Citizenship and Anthony Mann’s Border Incident, Professor Jonathan Auerbach observes that the American  immigration agent “gets ground into American soil by the monstrous machinery of US agribusiness… [this is] a purely noir moment of recognition that reveals the terrifying underbelly of the American farm industry itself in its dependence on and ruthless exploitation of Mexican labor”.  Plus ca change plus la meme chose.

I put forward these frames from Border Incident in support.

Sidney Falco checks out: Vale Tony Curtis (1925-2010)

Tony Curtis’ best role has to be the sleazy publicist Sidney Falco in Alexander Mackendrick’s acid noir Sweet Smell of Success (1957).   Burt Lancaster’s manipulative NY celebrity columnist enlists  the amoral Falco to destroy his younger sister’s suitor. These guys are as bracing as vinegar and cold as ice: ambition stripped of all pretense.   The chemistry between Lancaster as the sinister chat columnist  and Tony Curtis as the ruthless publicist is palpable.  It is also DP James Wong Howe’s sharpest picture –  the streets of Manhattan have never looked so real.