Category: Films

Caught (1949)    Max Ophuls renders the most elegant and romantic noir melodrama you will ever see. Robert Ryan, Barbara Bel Geddes and James Mason are superb in a  toxic triangle of entrapment and maniacal control.  Ryan is a rich nuerotic who marries Bel Geddes to prove he can, and Mason is the doctor committed to social justice who falls for her.  An effective morality tale delivers a subversive plot with the integrity of commitment combating the perverting nature of greed: opulence and decency fight it out in a young woman’s soul.  We can forgive the contrived resolution.

Escape (UK 1948)   A hidden gem of a thriller directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz starring Rex Harrison and  Peggy Cummins.  Moody noir photography on fog-laden moors at night,  the use of flashback, and  the dire consequences of a chance encounter give it a noir dimension.  Harrison is great as a toff prison escapee and Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy) is cute as a button as an upper-class girl who falls for Harrison a la The 39 Steps.

I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1951)   Abraham Polonksy’s last script before the HUAC blacklist destroyed his career.  A solid drama about the NY garment business, directed by Michael Gordon and starring Susan Hayward, Dan Dailey, and George Sanders. A soft ending mars an otherwise acid critique of naked ambition and the American dream.

Night Editor (1946)    A sexually charged cult noir starring the queen of b-movies Janis Carter as a rotten rich dame who double-crosses her cop lover in a story exposing the lurid morals that sometimes accompany privilege.  The dialog is heavy with sexual  metaphors and the repartee ‘hard-boiled’.  One scene where Carter begs to see the bashed body of young woman is one of the most explicit portrayals of sexual psychosis in any noir.  The atmosphere created by director Henry Levin and DPs Burnett Guffey and Philip Tannura is dark and claustrophobic.   Solid entertainment and downright fun to watch.  The only weakness is the framing of the story inside a wider newspaper at night theme and the feel-good ending – the movie was a pilot for a movie series which did not proceed.

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)    Edward G Robinson is magnificent as a man trapped by an accursed gift. Redemption is a zero sum game.  A moody and deeply unsettling film based on the Cornell Woolrich novel.  The deeply intelligent script  by Jonathan Latimer and Barré Lyndon is more subtle and superior to Woolrich’s novel, and showcases the richness to be found in many b-movies.

I like to think here at FilmsNoir.Net, readers are made aware of movies that are under the radar and do not fit established categories, genres or movie lists. Many such films were made by major studios on modest budgets and while not likely to make best-of listings or have major genre standing, they are pictures that are good entertainment made with craft and discipline, and sometimes with special elements that reward the discerning viewer.

Two such films were made in 1950 and, while having noir aspects, are largely entertainment features made memorable by facets that have been largely ignored by film reviewers and other writers on film.

Young Man with a Horn from Warner Bros. was directed by Michael Curtiz, and Joseph H.Lewis directed A Lady Without Passport which was produced by MGM.

Each of these films is special in its own way.

Young Man with a Horn is loosely based on the biography of jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderdecke: the story of how a lonely kid in L.A. learns the trumpet from a black musician, who becomes his close friend and mentor. His shift to New York in pursuit of a career is the stuff of melodrama; young guy makes good, marries the wrong woman and abandons his friends, and after tragedy finds a kind of redemption. There is great jazz played by Hoagey Charmichael and Harry James, nice songs from a young Doris Day, solid acting from Kirk Douglas in the lead, Lauren Bacall as the wife, Junco Hernandez as the black trumpeter, and Charmichael as Douglas’ piano-playing buddy. Competent direction by Curtiz and inspired cinematography from DP Ted McCord also add value. Of particular interest is Baccall’s acid performance as the neurotic wife.

But the real strength of the film is in the script by Carl Foreman (who during filming of his script for High Noon in 1951 appeared at HUAC and was later blacklisted by Hollywood studio bosses).  Redemption for the young man with the horn comes from a realisation that a great artist’s obsession with his craft is not the only requirement for artistic fulfilment – it cannot come from a sterile wedding of player and instrument but ultimately from a deeper maturity which comes from embracing human relationships and commitment – a responsibility to and for others.

The tragic aspect of the story lends a true pathos to the melodrama, and the prominence given to the black father-figure in a film of this era is a revelation. Here we have a powerful expression of the personal and the social filmed with empathy and commitment.

A Lady Without Passport is ostensibly a police procedural, one of the many that began to emerge in the early 1950’s as the noir cycle began to explore other directions, after the success of on-the-street exposés such as Jules Dassin’s The Naked City. Director Joseph H. Lewis made his seminal noir, Gun Crazy, in 1950, and as the noir cycle began to decline, he directed perhaps the best 50s noir, The Big Combo, in 1955. These two classic films noir established Lewis’ reputation as an innovative and iconoclastic film maker.  In A Lady Without Passport he has a more prosaic script, but together with his DP Paul Vogel and a romantic score from David Raksin, he brings to the project a wonderful transforming elegance to a fairly routine story. Also unusually for Lewis, in this movie, violence is handled with restraint, but not without originality.

A U.S immigration agent played by John Hodiak is sent to Cuba to investigate the murder in New York of an illegal alien, and uncovers a people-smuggling racket run by a suave villain played by George Macready. The agent falls for a Viennese refugee played with understated angst by 35-yo Hedy Lamarr, who was then entering the decline of her career. There is romance, humour, intrigue and sensuality – the stuff of a minor Casablanca, but filmed with a casual elegance that enthralls as well as entertains. The charm of pre-revolutionary Havana is rendered with a calm detachment and the sympathetic portrayal of Latin life is boisterous yet respectful.

Much has been written of the bank robbery scene in Gun Crazy shot from within the getaway car, but equally arresting is a long take for the opening scene of A Lady Without Passport from inside a taxi. While less tense the shot is more fluid when compared with the Gun Crazy take.  Indeed, Lewis in A Lady Without Passport displays the élan of Max Ophuls, with his camera often on the move, and zooming,  turning and panning,  as well as placed at unusual angles. In one scene an exotic cabaret dancer is filmed by placing the camera at a low angle near the floor so that the viewer is in the position of voyeur, looking up at the dancer’s legs and hips as she dances.  A particularly stunning scene towards the end shows the crash of a plane and a violent killing as seen from the cockpit of a government plane that was in pursuit, with a running commentary radioed to base by the pilot. This technique gives a strong documentary feel to the whole scene and a sense of stricken helplessness.  The dénouement in a foggy swamp is very reminiscent of Gun Crazy, and what it lacks in tension is made up in the artistry of the photography.

The picture’s final scene has the government agent make a radical re-statement that is sufficiently subversive to underline the human element of the story free of any romantic allusions.

Two fine Hollywood movies.

Some Dead Peasant Policy Holders. From Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

In the United States many large corporations take out secret ‘dead peasant’ or ‘dead janitor’ life insurance over the lives of rank-and-file workers for a tax-free payout on the death of an employee. Insurers have sold millions of these policies to companies such as Dow Chemical and others.  Michael Moore in his documentary film, Capitalism: A Love Story, recounts the story of one young middle-manager who died of cancer, and whose employer received a payout exceeding US$1.5 million. His widow learned of this when the payout letter was mailed to her by mistake.

In Moore’s film no-one was aware of the origin of the term ‘dead peasant’.  As I was watching the film, Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 novel, Dead Souls, came immedately to mind.  In Gogol’s novel, a savage social satire of pre-revolutionary Russia, the protagonist, Chichikov, an aspiring bourgeois con-artist, has hatched a get-rich scheme.  His plan is to ingratiate himself  with landowners and buy dead serfs, dead souls.

At the time the Russian government taxed landowners based on how many serfs they ‘owned’, as determined by the most recent census. As census were infrequent, landowners often had to pay taxes on dead serfs.

Once Chichikov had accumulated enough dead souls, his plan was to make massive borrowings against these phantom assets.

Sound familiar?  How about if we substitute sub-prime mortgages for dead serfs?

Similarly, at times of war, there is no shortage of criminals and the unscrupulous who will seek to line their own pockets through corruption and profiteering.

Two films noir I have reviewed here at FilmsNoir.Net use war racketeering as plot elements. In April last year there was Allotment Wives (1945), the story of a woman who uses her social status and ill-gotten wealth to front a bigamy racket where women marry multiple GIs during WW2 to skim the allotment support paid by the Defense Dept to spouses of men on active duty. Last week I looked at Ride the Pink Horse (1947), where a disillusioned war vet wants to blackmail a war racketeer using a check made out to a crooked govt. official signed by the hood.

In Ride the Pink Horse, the hood when cornered at the end tries to talk his way clear by appealing to the vet’s bitter resentments.  This spiel resonates just as strongly today and the argument has power because it is sadly still true: [the short clip of a few minutes has been removed by YouTube after NBC Universal claimed a breach of copyright].

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose… “

Universal International Pictures
Director: Robert Montgomery
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Cast:
Robert Montgomery as Lucky Gagin
Thomas Gomez (AAN) as Pancho
Wanda Hendrix as Pila
Andrea King as Marjorie Lundeen
Fred Clark as Frank Hugo
Art Smith as Bill Retz
Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, and Joan Harrison
Based on the novel Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes (New York, 1946)
Music: Frank Skinner

A bitter disillusioned WW2 vet, Lucky Gagin, arrives in a New Mexico town aiming to blackmail a high-stakes racketeer, and with the help of two locals and a federal agent, he finds more than he bargained for. From the wistfully up-beat Latino rhythm that accompanies the opening credits over a desert vista, you know this movie will take you places beyond noir. This is a film imbued with a deep humanity so rare and moving that you don’t want it to end – the final scene of departure is wrenchingly personal – ‘so long? ah is a sad word, but you make me happy if is not too long’.

The great script from Ben Hecht, elegant direction by star Robert Montgomery, and accomplished photography from DP Russell Metty, are suffused with an aching regret for the loss of a better simpler world, tempered with an idealism and optimistic faith in the integrity and wisdom of ordinary people .  The cast is very strong with impressive turns by all the major players. An 18-yo Wanda Hendrix is beguiling as a young peasant girl on her first visit to a big town, who attaches herself to Gagin, and Gomez is superb as Pancho, the poor merry-go-round operator who befriends Gagin.

They don’t make movies like this any more. As John Fawell says in his book , THE HIDDEN ART OF HOLLYWOOD: In Defense of the Studio Era Film (2008):  “Hollywood aimed at idealism, it’s true, but its idealism is subsumed under its larger aesthetic of understatement. The best Hollywood directors thought of idealism as they did of sex and violence, all potent ingredients that needed to be doled out carefully. And they had the sense that idealism, to be effective, had to give room to a certain degree of pessimism.” (p 111).

Phantom Lady (1944)
Loyal secretary Ella Raines desperately tries to save her innocent boss from  the gallows. Woody Bredell’s moody noir photography and an orgasmic jazz jam session add jive to Siodmak’s otherwise lack-luster direction. Franchot Tone is convincing as a closet psychopath. Elisha Cook Jr’s turn as a sleazy jazz drummer is anarchic, but Raines’ impersonation of  a gum-chewing floozy is just embarrassing.  Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Manipulative NY celebrity columnist enlists sleazy publicist to destroy his younger sister’s suitor. As bracing as vinegar and cold as ice. Ambition stripped of all pretense.  Great chemistry between Burt Lancaster as the sinister chat columnist and Tony Curtis as the ruthless publicist.  DP James Wong Howe’s sharpest picture:  the streets of Manhattan have never looked so real.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948)
A crooked clairvoyant manipulates a widow who believes her dead husband is back. A brilliant gothic satire with humor, poetry, and panache.  John Alton’s expressionist lensing, Bernard Vorhaus’ fluid direction, and an ace Alex Laszlo score deliver top-flight entertainment.

Railroaded (1947)
John Ireland is great as a savage hood who frames an innocent guy for murder.  Anthony Mann’s poverty-row pulp-b is very noir, cut with acid, and photographed in the deafening blaze of gun-fire. Very entertaining.

Raw Deal (1948)
A tragic love triangle very reminiscent of Marcel Carne’s Port of Shadows has to be one of  the great noirs.   A sublime film from director Anthony Mann and  DP John Alton, with a knockout cast in a strong story stunningly rendered as expressionist art.  The portrayals by Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, and John Ireland are career bests.  Poetic voice-overs by Claire Trevor are  beautifully enhanced by Paul Sawtell’s eerie scoring.

Obsession (1948 UK)
A macabre and sardonic melodrama. Psychopath shrink plans perfect murder. Taut direction from Edward Dmytryk with a Nino Rota score! Gruesome and disturbing.

Private Hell 36 (1954)
A flat crooked cop flic from Don Siegel. Ida Lupino, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Steve Cochran make it interesting.

Pursued (1947)
Noir western from Raoul Walsh. Robert Mitchum is trapped by a dark dimly discerned past. Solid but inferior to the moody western Blood on The Moon (1948), also starring Mitchum.  Story is far-fetched and the actions of the protagonists seem  un-convincing.

Strange Illusion (1945)
A truly bizarre Hamlet remake. Edgar Ulmer turns a PRC-b into a camp expressionist noir of foul villains with a knockout finale. Jimmy Lydon, remember Henry Aldrich, plays Hamlet to Warren Williams’ Claudius, who is a bit of a lecher and is not past feeling-up teenage girls in swimming pools!

The Long Night (1947)
A  war vet is under siege in a tenement after killing a romantic rival. An RKO Henry Fonda vehicle from Anatole Litvak plays as melodrama with a strong supporting cast.  Barbara Bel Geddes is interesting as the love interest, but Vincent Price as the rival is too rococo and out-of-place. Me, I’m stuck on the luscious Ann Dvorak, a straight-up dame who falls for Fonda. John Wexley’s script over-reaches on the social criticism angle.

A Colt is My Passport, a wide-screen b&w movie from the prolific Hikkatsu studio, is a hip acid noir with a 60s patina and a surreal spaghetti-western score.  A twist on a classic noir  motif has a hit-man as existential hero, committed to an austere private code that elevates him above the yakuza hoods that want him dead after a mob hit goes wrong.

Director Takashi Nomura fills the screen with elegantly composed flowing senarios that pan and follow the action, giving movement to even establishing placement shots.  The mis-en-scene is austere yet perversely satirical.  While the planning and the mechanics of preparing for the hit are slowly paced and meticulous, the bland assured peregrinations of the hit man and his young apprentice, who are both dressed like loyal company men, and in one scene are seated in an office behind a desk,  have an unnerving quotidian ambience.  These guys are cold and distant, almost effigies.

However, the mood changes when the staging of the hit backfires and the two are on the run.  They hole up in a sea-side hotel and are aided by a young waitress attracted to the older man, whose bravery and protective loyalty to his young buddy take on a mythic dimension.  Here a mood of fatalism takes hold, and the inevitable final denoument  is telegraphed by their  entrapment in a closet-like room.  After a final desperate bid to shake-off the mobsters, the classic western theme of redemption emerges, with the hero returning to face his pursuers after parlaying his fate for the escape of his buddy, who learns of the pact too late.  The girl is left forlorn and bitter. The finale is a cinematic tour-de-force staged with mannered precision but hinging on a chaotic precipice of climactic violence and retributive justice.

You start by seeing the protagonist as a cousin of Melville’s  inscrutable Samouri but by the end of the film he has been transformed into an avenging angel.  Uber cool.