Film noir aficionado Ray (“Cigar Joe”) Ottulich has launched a new blog where he will collect his film noir reviews from various forums, and post new reviews and noir-related snippets. The blog is appropriately titled Noirsville.
Ray over the past few years has introduced me to a number of b-movies and little-known neo-noirs, and Noirsville is a very welcome addition to the film noir blogosphere.
Click here to read his latest post on Arouse an intruiging and very obscure neo-noir from 1966.
I have just received the heads up on a new indie film noir, Trouble is My Business, that harkens back to the 1940s, with a thriller-mystery scenario about a gumshoe on the skids who gets mixed up with two seductively dangerous sisters. The film’s 8 minute trailer certainly gets you interested, and the production values are impressive. Nice noir visuals and characterisations with a flavor of the irony reminiscent of that great 1948 film noir I Love Trouble starring Franchot Tone, promise a fascinating ride.
The film’s maker Thomas Konkle is taking the film to the American Film Market in Santa Monica November 9 -12 and can be reached at www.lumenactus.com, or by visiting the movie’s web site.
Check out the Vimeo trailer below.
John Grant, the author of the just published ‘A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir: The Essential Reference Guide’, which I reviewed recently, has started a blog titled Noirish as an annex to his book where he covers at greater length (spoiler alert) movies that are either too borderline or too recent to have made it into the book.
This is great news for film noir fans. There is a dearth of published authors blogging about film noir, and John already has blogged about a whole bunch of intriguing titles ranging from obscure Monogram b’s to foreign films, and more.
He is certainly prolific, and must have privileged access to a secret vault of seriously old celluloid.
Another book on film noir directors. Do we need another? Arguably rather we need more books on film noir screenwriters, cinematographers, and composers. That said, a new book on film noir is almost always worth reading, and this goes for Alain Silver’s and James Ursini’s latest editorial effort.
Film Noir: The Directors a book of nearly 500 pages covers 28 directors and is loaded with over 500 images, mostly production stills and on-location shots of directors at work. Contributions come from the editors and a wide-range of writers, with a strong leaning toward academics. Each chapter focuses on a director with a short bio, a noir filmography, and an analysis of each of their noirs. There are very few actual frames and this is disappointing.
Most names you would expect are included: Robert Aldrich, John Brahm, Jules Dassin, André de Toth, Edward Dmytryk, John Farrow, Felix Feist, Samuel Fuller, Henry Hathaway, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Joseph Losey, Ida Lupino, Anthony Mann, Max Ophuls, Gerd Oswald, Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray, Don Siegel, Robert Siodmak, Jacques Tourneur, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and Robert
But there are major omissions which I find hard to fathom: auteurs like Abraham Polonsky, Robert Rossen, Richard Fleischer, Vincent Sherman, Rudolph Mate, and Phil Karlson, spring to mind. The editors acknowledge there are omissions in their Introduction, and put them down to a rather cryptic rationale “the best directors are not necessarily the best examples”, and they don’t elaborate. The result is that a number of seminal and important films noir are not included in this otherwise comprehensive compendium.
In a book about directors one shouldn’t complain of that focus, but despite acknowledging the contributions of writers there is a tendency in the essays to conflate story elements as the work of the director. Certainly many noir directors were closely involved in the development of scripts, but the contribution of the scenarist demands greater recognition. Equally the contributions of the cinematographer and the composer in major noirs were integral to the output, with a director’s better movies often made in collaboration with a particular DP or with the aid of a great score.
After recently viewing Felix Feist’s The Threat (1949), in this post I have chosen to look at the chapter on that director by noir writer and blogger Jake Hinkson. Hinkson offers analyses of Feist’s four noir films:
Hinkson’s writing is rather flat, in keeping I suppose with the book’s academic slant. He reads rather too much into these movies which are solid b’s and, apart from The Man Who Cheated Himself, not highly distinguished. Tellingly Feist was said to see himself not as an artist or craftsman, but as a story-teller as related by his son in an interview with Hinkson.
Hinkson uses the concept of POV (point of view) as a fair (but less then revelatory) approach in studying the dynamics of the noir protagonist’s interaction with the other characters in these films. In doing so Hinkson confuses the story told by the script with the director’s rendering of the playbook, by talking about a character’s POV as both a visual device and as an element of the story. While Hinkson is aiming to highlight how the director uses mis-en-scene to give visual cues to the dominance of the protagonist in each of the movies under discussion, the character’s actions are largely self-evident. (It is also hard to reconcile Hinkson’s focus on an aggressive protagonist with concluding his essay by saying that Feist consistently portrayed “weak-willed male protagonists”.) In any event it is the screenplay that determines this and Feist wrote the scenario for only one of these pictures, The Devil Thumbs a Ride, which was based on the 1937 novel by Robert C. Du Soe. I am happy with Hinkson’s solid treatment of that movie, though it is the strength of Lawrence Tierney’s perverse characterisation as the bad guy that distinguishes it from other b’s of the period.
Hinkson’s reading of The Man Who Cheated Himself, which I consider Feist’s best noir, is problematic. Oddly, Hinkson sees it as Feist’s weakest noir. In this film Feist goes beyond the confines of the b-picture and presents an overt moral ambivalence and a complex conflicted protagonist. Hinkson considers that Feist fails to convince the viewer of Lee J. Cobb’s infatuation with wealthy socialite Jane Wyman. He describes her as “sexless” and asserts “that Feist has a characteristic lack of interest in eroticism”. To the contrary, I think Wyatt is great in her role as the selfish society dame getting her kicks with an aging cop. Her narcissism and predatory sexuality are there – just not delivered with a sledgehammer. Ironically Hinkson later in his review of Tomorrow Is Another Day describes the relationship of the two lovers on the lam as an “amour-fou”. (Incidentally Hinkson fails to acknowledge that this amour-fou develops into a stable almost banal domestic intimacy that precipitates the protagonists’ redemption. In The Devil Thumbs a Ride there is also a strong sexual undercurrent with one of the abducted woman attracted to the violent Tierney.)
The Threat (1949) is an interesting screener. A vicious killer and gang-boss played by chronic bad-guy Charles McGraw breaks out of prison and hatches an elaborate plan to high-tail it to an isolated air-strip in the California desert where an accomplice will fly him out of the country. For vengeance and insurance he abducts the cop and the DA who put him in stir, and the ex-girlfriend of his plane-flying accomplice. (He thinks the dame sold him out to the cops.)
What is interesting is that McGraw’s protagonist is ruthlessly intelligent, hatching a wily ruse to get him past police road-blocks. Immediately after the break he repairs to a neat suburban home to lay low while he abducts his captives and readies his trip to the desert in a removalist’s van. Hinkson does a good job of dissecting the structure of Feist’s direction and his use of mis-en-scene. Although he incorrectly describes the staging hide-out as a “flop house”, and thereby misses a pivotal symbolic element.
McGraw holds the whole thing together and the scenario plays out in a decidedly subversive way. McGraw fails only because of chance after persistently outwitting the cops and the machinations of his hostages when they get the jump on him. His dénouement is one of retribution and driven by very primal instincts.
I hope to review other chapters in the coming months.
TV Noir: The Twentieth Century by Ray Starman and Screwball Comedy and Film Noir: An Analysis of Their Imagery and Character Kinship by Thomas C. Renzi…
A couple or recent publications have come to my attention.
TV Noir: The Twentieth Century by Ray Starman
Starman covers 50 prime-time television series over 50 years from Treasury Men (1950-55) to the X-Files (1993-99). For those like me who grew up watching b&w TV in the 50s and 60s there is a wealth of noir analysis and a big dose of nostalgia, with chapters on shows like Dragnet, The Naked City, The Untouchables, Peter Gunn, 87th Precint (a personal favorite), The Fugitive, and Streets of San Francisco. Available from Amazon.
Screwball Comedy and Film Noir: An Analysis of Their Imagery and Character Kinship by Thomas C. Renzi
A comparative analysis of Screwball Comedy and Film Noir. Despite their contrast in tone and theme, Renzi sees Screwball and Noir as having many common narrative elements in common, and discusses their historical development and related conventions, offering detailed analyses of a number of films, among them The Lady Eve and His Girl Friday on the Screwball side, and Gilda and Sunset Blvd. on the Noir side. Available from Amazon.
Noted film noir authority and writer James Ursini has just published a new book, Directors on the Edge: Outliers in Hollywood, analysing the work of five émigré b-noir directors…
Noted film noir authority and writer James Ursini (The Film Noir Reader series, L.A. Noir, and many DVD commentaries) has just published a new book, Directors on the Edge: Outliers in Hollywood, analysing the work of émigré b-noir directors Hugo Haas, Reginald LeBorg, Ida Lupino, Gerd Oswald, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Ursini argues that as ‘outriders’ working outside the Hollywood mainstream these auteurs were the best observers of their adopted culture – of the zeitgeist of their times – and purveyors of an alternative cinema, ‘transgressive’ films critical of the mainstream. Ursini says that hopefully the book will lead to a greater appreciation of these directors “who used limited budgets to create thoughtful and critical films within a system that encouraged conformity and repetition”, and who were forerunners to the American independent film movement.
Edgar G. Ulmer is the best known of the group for his cult b-noir Detour (1945). To my mind his best movie was the Black Cat (1934) – an erotic expressionist masterpiece. Ida Lupino has a reputation as the only female noir director of the classic film noir cycle, with The Hitch-Hiker (1953), considered her best picture. Gerd Oswald is best known for the late-cycle A Kiss Before Dying (1956), and TV productions in the 50s and 60s. Reginald LeBorg had a long journeyman career in movies and television from the 30s to the 70s. It will certainly be fascinating to see how Ursini weaves these film-makers into his thesis!
The book is available from Amazon for US$8.95.
The people behind the Noir Nation project have produced two excellent promotional videos which augur well for the quality of the publication…
I came across the Noir Nation project on KicketStarter.com this evening. The people behind the project are seeking pledges for a new eJournal of crime fiction offering high quality prose fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, and visual arts.
The people behind the project have produced two excellent promotional videos which augur well for the quality of the publication. But their funding deadline of July 6 looms and pledges are nowhere near the target of US$10,000. Any venture capitalists with big bucks should check out the site.
One of the videos is embedded here:
The Warner Archive has released on DVD for the first time a film adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel, The Breaking Point (1950)
The Warner Archive has released on DVD for the first time a film adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel, The Breaking Point (1950), a great John Garfield noir directed by Michael Curtiz, and to my mind infinitely superior to Howard Kawk’s over-rated adaptation To Have and Have Not (1944).
They stopped making noir movies over 60 years ago, but the books on film noir keep on coming… and capsule reviews of four classic noirs
They stopped making noir movies over 60 years ago, but the books on film noir keep on coming. A slew of new titles will be published before year’s end:
Gloria Grahame, Bad Girl of Film Noir: The Complete Career
Robert J. Lentz
Binding: Paperback
Release Date: July 5th, 2011
In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
Imogen Sara Smith
Binding: Paperback
Release Date: July 5th, 2011
The Maltese Touch of Evil: Film Noir and Potential Criticism (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture)
Richard L. Edwards & Shannon Clute
Binding: Paperback
Release Date: December 13th, 2011
What Is Film Noir?
William Park
Binding: Hardcover
Release Date: September 16th, 2011
Noirs I have recently watched – those marked with an * be added to my list of essential noirs (!):
Des gens sans importance (People of No Importance – France 1956)
French fatalism meets neo-realism in a tragic story of working-class life. A long-haul trucker falls for an aimless young waitress from a road-side café. Great acting from Jean Gabin and the earthy Françoise Arnoul. 4½ stars
Senza pietà (Without Pity – Italy 1948) *
Black GI and a local girl on the skids in a doomed love triangle cannot escape tragic entrapment. Compelling neo-realist melodrama with a decidedly noir denouement. 4½ stars
Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice – Italy 1949)
Classic neo-realist socialist melodrama. Homme-fatale destroys a passionate innocent. A bad girl is redeemed and homme-fatale meets a gruesome noir end in an abattoir. 5 stars
Guele d’Amour (Ladykiller – France 1937) *
A fatalistic tale of amour-fou fuelled by a callous femme-fatale. Hunk Jean Gabin and the luminous Mireille Balin star. Looks decades ahead its time. 4½ stars
Klute (1971) *
Alan J. Pakula’s signature reworking of classic noir motifs in a masterly study of urban paranoia and alienation. Jane Fonda earned an Oscar for her brilliant portrayal of articulate b-girl the target of mystery psychopath. 5 stars
Behind Locked Doors (1948)
An entertaining Bud Bottiecher b-movie. PI Richard Carlson enters a sanatorium undercover to flush out a crook. A feast of metaphors for Bottiecher aficionados and good entertainment for the rest of us. Moody lensing from Guy Roe (Railroaded!, Trapped Armored Car Robbery, The Sound of Fury). 3½ stars
Criterion has announced the coming release of remastered prints of two major films noir on DVD and Blu-Ray
Criterion has announced the coming release of remastered prints of two major films noir on DVD and Blu-Ray: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Le cercle rouge (France 1970).
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) This cult classic from Robert Aldrich is a noir masterpiece and an essential relic of cold war paranoia. Totally weird and compelling. The release is scheduled for June 21. Pre-order.
Extras:
Le cercle rouge (France 1970) From the master of dark urban cool Jean-Pierre Melville. Alain Delon plays a master thief, fresh out of prison, who crosses paths with a notorious escapee (Gian Maria Volonté) and an alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). The release is scheduled for April 12. Pre-order.
Extras:
FilmsNoir.Net 
