Strangers in the Night (1944), directed by Anthony Mann. This is an early Mann picture, his fifth I think, and made for the quickie studio, Republic. It does have elements of noir – lighting, and camera work, a somewhat sappish hero, entrapment – but it is more of a gothic thriller in the Rebecca vein. It is short, under 60 minutes, and driven by the performance of Helen Thimig as Hilda Blake, an elderly woman who walks with a crutch that signals her origin in folk tales that feature a chthonic character, a character with sinister overtones. She is deranged. She is devious. She is manipulative. She is waiting for her daughter to return, a daughter that never came in the first place. She lives in a huge house set upon a huge cliff. She makes the lives of a local female doctor and a veteran recently returned from the war because of injury ah, difficult. The solider (actually a marine) has come to this small seaside village in California to meet Hilda’s daughter, Rosemary. As I say, the film is short and snappy. It oozes atmosphere. Some of the performances are just okay, but Helen Thimig delivers the goods. You can also see her in Val Lewton’s Isle of the Dead (1945).

Strange Impersonation (1946), directed by Anthony Mann. Another noir. Here Mann moves closer to the noir conventions with this story of a female chemist whose experiment, with the help of her female assistant, goes horribly wrong. And then there is the tipsy female who appears to be nudged by the female chemist's car. This is a noir that puts women front and centre. It delivers plot twists and more plot twists. Spoiler: it's narrative reminds me of a slightly later and better noir, Woman in the Window. The story also has something of A Woman's Face in it. Here we have a web of deceit and betrayal entangling a young woman who just wishes to carry out her scientific research without impediment. The film has a narrative shape reminiscent of noir, and it has some of the canted angles we associate with expressionist cinema. Despite lots of plot - I haven't mentioned the unpleasant lawyer or the sympathetic fiancé/husband or the murder mystery or the play with identity - this is a snappy 68 minute film.

Desperate (1947), directed by Anthony Mann. A young couple on the run, these newlyweds are desperate to get away from the hulking villain played by Raymond Burr. This is the film that gives us a basement beating under a swinging lightbulb. We also have a vortex of a stairwell. Perhaps there are some implausible touches to the plot, but all in all this is an effective noir. Steve Brodie takes a turn as a noir hero, a well-meaning young man with a truck who finds himself in a predicament and running for his life from thugs who mean to rub him out. Then there is the wry and cynical policeman who serves as something of a deus ex machina. We have both gritty city locales and brighter country places. Everything moves along briskly, until the ending with the clock ticking and time slowed to an agonizing crawl. I especially appreciated the getaway among large creepy masks.

Side Street (1949), directed by Anthony Mann. Just after their pairing in They Live By Night, Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell appear in this film by Anthony Mann. Mann is best known as the director of a series of westerns, mostly with James Stewart, in the 1950s, but in the previous decade he made a series of procedural noirs. His eye for detail gives these films an edge. Here he uses the canyon-like streets of New York as location for the cat and mouse chase between his luckless hero, the villains, and the police. Late in the film, we have perhaps the first of the modern car chases on film. This one looks both tense and unusual, unusual because the streets are mostly empty unlike more recent car chases in which streets are crowded with people and vehicles. The photography has both a documentary look and a compositional look of planned cinema. The opening aerial shot of the Empire State Building and the streets of New York looking like a maze is impressive, going one step farther than Ray's opening helicopter shot in They Live By Night. The film, partly through the opening voice over, makes it clear that the city contains a stark contrast between the wealthy and the down and out. For the sake of $200, young Joe Norsom (Farley Granger) sets off a series of events that take him deeper and deeper into the ugly labyrinth of the big city, endangering himself and others.

 Some noir for November

Another noir for a Tuesday evening, this one quite apropos to current events. This is The Killer that Stalked New York (1950), directed by Earl McEvoy. The killer in this film is a woman who has just returned from Cuba and, along with some diamonds she is smuggling, she unknowingly carries a deadly disease, small pox. The film tracks her movements in the city as she comes in contact with various people, including children. Soon hospitals are receiving patients with similar symptoms, soon the city becomes a hot zone of fear as authorities, both the police and health officials scramble to get the situation under control and to find the person who started the epidemic. Soon the health system runs out of vaccine and scrambles to find the money and the means for more. What makes this film work is the plot that involves not only the outbreak of small pox among 8 million people, but also the machinations of a small time crook who is the sick woman's lout of a husband. The characters are tough and raw coming from the hard knocks side of the city. Evelyn Keyes as the small pox carrier is convincing. Even Jim Backus turns up as a seedy night club proprietor whose lascivious actions get him more than he bargained for. The film has fine cinematography, perhaps most striking in the opening credits with the huge silhouette of a woman looming over the city. This is another film to watch during a pandemic!

The Reckless Moment (1949), directed by Max Ophuls (credited as Max Opuls). Ophuls is best known for films such as La Ronde (1950), Lola Montes (1955), and Le Plaisir (1952). His signature is a fluid camera, constantly moving and tracking characters as they move about. In The Reckless Moment, a noir that has a woman as the trapped central character, the camera follows prim Mrs. Harper (Joan Bennett) of Balboa, California, as she discovers a dead body, a man she thinks her daughter has murdered (she hasn't). After finding and disposing of the body, Mrs. Harper soon finds herself confronted by an insistent blackmailer (James Mason speaking with a light Irish lilt). The plot moves along with sufficient tension, but the most arresting aspect of the film is the camera work as it tracks, climbs, descends, moves in or out, all the times following things as if it was carrying out an intricate surveillance. The sets in a small coastal town with houses and boathouses that have many stairs and docks also with stairs give the camera opportunity for moving up and down. Meanwhile, shots inside automobiles or oppressively furnished rooms give the impression of entrapment. All in all, this is a pleasant little exercise in the noir mood.

Racket Busters (1938) directed by Lloyd Bacon. This is one of the many Warner Brothers gangster films of the 30s and 40s. This one is about union corruption in the trucking and produce business. John 'Czar' Martin (Humphrey Bogart) is the boss of a gang that sets up a rival union to the proper truckers' union. The film focuses on the people whose lives suffer because of the criminal infiltration into the unions. This is not one of the more powerful of the Warner crime films, but it does nicely remind us that corruption seeps into pretty much all areas of life. The main character, Denny Jordan (George Brent), finds himself compromised because he needs money to pay for his wife's hospital and medical bills. If this sounds familiar, it is. More recently we have TV series such as Breaking Bad or Good Girls that contain a similar plot line - the debilitating effects of a health system that can bankrupt patients and their families. Denny Jordan is caught between the mob and a system that demands he put himself and his family in danger. He is in a position of what we now think of as precarity. In other words, what this film presents has its contemporary applications. A final note: Alan Jenkins as Skeets finally has a role that gives him something to work with. His character knows both the trucking business and the produce business from the inside. His character also has strength of character. As for Bogart, his character wants to control the food chain!