Time for a few more films.

Voodoo Man (1944), directed by William Beaudine. This hokum is quite entertaining. Bela Lugosi is Dr. Marlow who lives in an out of the way house where the basement is home to a few female zombies. The nutty doctor has these women as subjects for his attempt to restore his dead wife to life (she has been dead 20 years, but looks as fresh as a daisy). Helping him is gas station owner by day/voodoo chanter by night Nicholas (George Zucco), and two dim-witted helpers, Toby (John Carradine) and Grego (Pat McKee). Carradine hams it up delightfully. Of course, we have a young couple caught up in the dark goings on. Ralph (Tod Andrews) is a Hollywood script writer who is just about to marry Betty (Wanda McKay). First Ralph meets Sally (Louise Curry) when the two of them are on their way to Twin Falls for the wedding. Sally finds herself abducted by Toby and Grego, and Ralph finds himself in the midst of a mystery. Where did Sally go? Soon Betty is involved and Dr. Marlow has eyes for her, thinking she will be the one whom he can use to bring his wife back to life. Through a voodoo ritual, Betty’s mind and will to live may be transferred to Marlow’s wife. If this all sounds preposterous, it is. Nutty. But everyone from the young couple to the zombie women to Zucco’s babbling voodoo man to the sheriff and his sidekick performs suitably. In short, the film is predictable, unbelievable, and short. Oh yes, Bela distinguishes himself in a role that calls for him to look at his victims with piercing eyes.

 

Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by Charles Laughton. A favourite film of mine, Night of the Hunter is Laughton’s only foray into directing, and what he produced is magnificent. (Stanley Cortez, the cinematographer here, also photographed Welles’s The Magnificent Andersons.) A fairy tale this is, and a Grimm affair with the children set upon by an evil “Old Harry” figure in the person of wily Reverend Powell, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). They find refuge with the elderly wise woman, Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who is something if an avenging angel. What distinguishes the film, aside from the performances, is the otherworldly, expressionistic photography, the shadows and lighting and compositions. For example, the Harper house into which Powell insinuates himself is angular and seemingly too small for its inhabitants. Its triangular walls and cluttered basement suggest enclosure and constraint. The underwater scene of Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) as she sits drowned in the old car is luminous and creepy and weird. Much of the film is creepy and weird. The plot hardly matters here; it is the familiar fairy tale story of children, here brother and sister like Hansel and Grethel, who find themselves in the clutches or near clutches of evil Harry Powell, preacher who sports, famously, the words Love and Hate on his eight fingers, hate being suitably on the left or sinister hand. Harry’s account of the struggle between Love and Hate is one of many great moments in this masterful film. The whole thing is as haunting as the ditty, “Leaning, leaning/safe and secure from all alarms/leaning, leaning,/leaning on the everlasting arms” that weaves its way throughout the film. Harry Powell seems an appropriate character for our own times, a man without a conscience, a duplicitous and callow grifter and murderer.

 

Dementia (1955), directed by John Parker and Bruno VeSota. Like The Thief (1952), Dementia is an experimental film without dialogue; it is, in effect, a silent film. It is also a film that explores the psyche. We follow The Gamin (Adrienne Barrett) during her peregrinations one night, or is she simply dreaming. Dream and reality fuse here. Anyway, we follow The Gamin through dark and shadowy city streets, alleyways, nightspots. A graveyard, hotel rooms, and a rich man’s flat. Early in the film she purchases a newspaper that has the headline “Mysterious Stabbings.” The Gamin carries a switchblade. In the cemetery interlude, we see action that suggests her mother was unfaithful to her father, her father shot her mother, and The Gamin stabbed her father. To complicate the psychological drama, the actor who plays The Gamin’s father also plays the Police detective (Ben Roseman). The film delights in Freudian gestures. For example, when is a cigar nor a cigar, or a piece of chicken not a piece of chicken? And the all those musical instruments doing double duty and signs of the times and sexual signs. One amazing scene gives us a castration (Orlac anyone). You will have to see the film for this to make sense. Anyway, the film channels Bunuel and Welles and clearly has the mark of noir. A second version of this film was released as Daughter of Horror, with a voice over narration by Ed McMahon.  

Invisible Avenger (1958), directed by James Wong Howe, Ben Parker, John Sledge. Why it took three people to direct this one-hour cheapie, I will never know. And one of these people is the esteemed cinematographer James Wong Howe. Anyway, in this one Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow (Richard Derr), and his assistant and teacher in the mystic arts Jogendra (Mark Daniels) are out to help an exiled president from Santa Cruz find his way back home and prosecute a successful revolution. The exiled politician also has an evil twin brother. The acting and the action are what you would expect from a low budget film. Wan. Mr. Cranston disappears before the eyes of adversaries, Mr. Jogendra hypnotizes people from a distance, Cranston and Jogendra talk to each other through thought transmission, and both of them generally befuddle the bad guys. The Shadow delivers his line about evil lurking in the minds of men, and cackles convincingly. All in all, this film provides mindless entertainment for an hour’s ride on the indoor bike.

 

Dancing with Crime (1947), directed by John Paddy Carstairs. Part of a cycle of films know as Spiv (underhand activity) films, Dancing with Crime is familiar as it looks much like American gangster films of the 1930s. We have the jazz music, the nightclub scenes, the gritty city streets, the men in trench coats, the common man, here taxi driver Ted Peters (Richard Attenborough), caught up in criminal activity and doing a bit of sleuthing, Helping Ted is his girlfriend Joy (Sheila Sim) who takes a job at the Palais de Danse in order to try and find evidence of the crooks’ wrongdoing. The Palais is owned by Mr. Gregory (Barry Jones); in reality Mr. Gregory is mastermind of a criminal operation. The postwar atmosphere of London is here impressively presented. The interior and exterior scenes are very well set up and managed. The action (e.g. fight scenes) are impressively mounted, although perhaps a tad unconvincing in one instance. Richard Attenborough makes for a likeable hero. Mr. Gregory’s second in command Paul Baker (Barry K. Barnes) gives perhaps the best performance as an icy yet suave villain. 

 

Mysterious Mr. Nicholson (1947), directed by Oswald Mitchell. The mysterious VLS (‘vivre le sport’), aka Mr. Nicholson (Anthony Hulme), has a double who has made it look as if Mr. Nicholson has committed a murder. Nicholson is, as happenstance would have it, a former Robin Hood thief who operated in Paris. He is now in London trying to put his criminal past behind him, and now he finds himself the centre of police attention. What’s a fellow to do but set out to find out who the real murderer is and why. To be quite blunt, the most memorable part of this low budget mystery thriller is the lengthy dog act that the two main characters watch at the Music Hall. The many dogs, large and small, cavort and somersault and act cheeky and fail not to gain our sympathies. As for the rest of the film, with the other mysterious fellow, Pedrelli, well it moves along amiably enough, if predictable. Oh, you may have noticed that I did not provide the actor’s name for Pedrelli. You can easily guess my reason, just as it is easy to grasp who this fellow is in the film. Another film to pass the time on the indoor bike.

A Life at Stake (1955), directed by Paul Guilfoyle. This is a rather heated little noir about an architect who falls in with a married woman and arranges a business partnership with her, and as it turns out with her wealthy husband Gus, played by Douglas Dumbrille. As things progress, the architect, Edward Shaw (Keith Andes), finds himself enthralled by the married woman, Mrs. Doris Hillman (Angela Lansbury), a woman who likes to swim in the nude and draw men into her web. Soon Shaw wonders if this woman is on the up and up or if she is out to get money from his life insurance. And is the husband part of this plot to scam the architect into signing a life insurance policy to ensure the business deal? What a web we weave. Oh, and Mrs. Hillman has a sister, Madge Neilan (Claudia Barrett). Is she too part of the nefarious plot to bilk the architect? There is plenty going on in this potboiler of a noir. We have the hot relationship between Doris and Edward, the cool anger of the husband Gus, the suspicious happenings such as the brakes failing on a car, the spritely charm of the sister Madge, the police who doubt Edward’s claims that he is going to be murdered, the mountain cabin where a person just might fall to his or her death, the thousand-dollar bill that Edward has framed, the plans for a trip to Las Vegas, and so on. As lower end noirs go, this one is pretty good, even if Keith Andes is a bit wooden. He spends much of his time without a shirt, and he has a deep voice. What I suggest by this is anyone’s guess.

The Hoodlum (1951), directed by Max Nosseck. This Poverty Row cheapie is a showcase for bad boy Lawrence Tierney. As Vincent Lubeck, the hoodlum of the title, Tierney complains about growing up next to the city dump. By the end, his long-suffering mother (Lisa Golm), angrily asserts that he, Vincent, is the smell, he is the stink. During the short running time, Vincent, smashes things, courts a woman who works in a bank so he can get information, impregnates his brother’s fiancé (a rather daring thing for films to discuss at the time), carries out a bank heist, and shoots a few people. He is bad through and through. This crime-doesn’t-pay little noir passes the time, but other than Tierney, the film does not offer a lot that we have not seen before. As for Tierney, brother of Scott Brady, he has no trouble performing the bad boy part.

 

Gangster Story (1959), directed by Walter Matthau. This is the only film Matthau directed. It is a low budget thriller with a preposterous storyline. Hoodlum Jack Martin (Matthau) escapes from police custody, and after things cool a bit, he sets out to rob a bank by calling the police and asking for police presence at the bank because they are shooting a movie there and a police presence would make things look more believable than they otherwise would. The police arrive to find Martin outside the bank, no cameras, no crew, no other actors. Martin tells the three policemen that they are rehearsing a scene. The bank manager arrives in a car, gets out, and enters the bank. Martin follows and holds the manager at gunpoint until he opens the vault at 8:00. No other bank personnel are there. Can you believe this? The rest of the film has more rather strained action. The acting is not the best, by any means. The film has the look of a 1950s television cop drama. As for Martin, he finds himself on the run and to get away from his pursuers, he enters a library where me meets a bespectacled (of course) librarian. They have a conversation about books; clearly, Martin has never read one. Anyway, they become a couple, as unlikely as this is. Things proceed in a predictable way until the final shootout. The film is mercifully brief, running just 65 minutes.

 I missed July, but here are a few films for August.

Salt of the Earth (1954), directed by Herbert J. Biberman. Written by Michael Wilson and produced by Paul Jarrico. Jarrico, Wilson, and Biberman were all blacklisted in the HUAC years. So were cast members such as Will Geer and Rosaura Revueltas. Most cast members were unprofessional actors. Upon release the film was censored and not seen by many until 1962. This is a film I think you should see if you have not already seen it. It resonates now more than ever. The story focuses on a zinc mine in New Mexico, its mostly Latino workers, their wives, and those who set out to break the Union that calls for strike action after a mine accident. The workers call for safety measures, and for pay equal to what the white miners make. This story is based on the 1951 strike against the empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. Both race and gender are at the forefront of this remarkable film. The company owners exploit the Mexican-American workers and are about to break the strike when the miners’ wives step up and take control. This is remarkable for a film made in 1954. The film is neo-realist in its look and has several visual echoes of early Soviet cinema. It is, perhaps, not without its faults, but it remains a compelling visual statement and call for equality and justice.

Highway 13 (1948), directed by William Berke. This low budget Lippert film benefits from its cast of familiar character actors from old geezer Clem Bevan and Mary Gordon who plays his wife to Dan Seymour as an Insurance Investigator. The two main characters are Robert Lowery as truck driver Hank Wilson and Pamela Blake as his girlfriend Doris Lacy, daughter of Pops Lacy (Bevans). Also prominent is femme fatale Mary Hadley played by Maris Wrixon. The plot has to do with a series of mysterious truck crashes, a couple of which result in deaths. Who is responsible? Why are these crashes occurring and why to they occur down the road from Pops Lacy’s garage and diner? As things develop in this 58-minute thriller, Hank finds himself accused of murder, and his relationship with Doris threatens to fall apart because of Mary’s machinations. I watched the film because I like Clem Bevans, and I was not disappointed. Admittedly, this film is a cheapie, but it has its charms and it also has Clem Bevans. The mystery villain or villains are pretty well hidden until the finale.

 

The Killers (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak. Yes, that musical score by Miklos Rozsa is familiar; it turns up a few years later in the Dragnet TV series. And yes, this film is deservedly considered quintessential noir, with its doomed hero, its femme fatale, its expressionist lighting and camera angles, and its dark and pessimistic view of the world. Burt Lancaster, in his first screen role, is the Swede, Ole Anderson, an ex-boxer who has, perhaps, taken too many punches. He falls for femme fatale Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner, in her first major role). Kitty is a double-crossing woman who is in league with crime boss Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker). Anyway, the film begins with a magnificent set piece. Two hitmen, played by William Conrad and Charles McGraw, arrive at a small diner in New Jersey. It is after dark. These two are looking for the Swede; they intend to kill him and make no secret of this to the people in the diner, including the owner, the cook, and customer Nick Adams (yes this part of the movie follows the Hemingway story). It is noteworthy that these two thugs show nothing but disgust with both the black cook and the person they have been hired to kill, the Swede. This is America where human life, especially human life that deviates from solid white North American stock, is cheap. Anyway, before too long we meet the Swede who lies in his boarding house bed waiting for the arrival of his killers. He stoically remarks that he once did something wrong, and he now waits for the consequences. The consequences arrive when the two hitmen open the Swede’s bedroom door and proceed to fill him full of holes. The rest of the film, like Citizen Kane, is structured with a series of flashbacks that detail the Swede’s friendship with policeman Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene), his affair with Kitty Collins, his final boxing match, and his participation in a heist masterminded by Jim Colfax. Of course, we have double crosses and bad behaviour. The story is pieced together by curious insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmund O’Brien), a character who brings to mind the journalist in Citizen Kane who tries to track down the significance of Kane’s final word. This version of The Killers is simply a touchstone for film noir.

 

The Killers (1964), directed by Donald Siegel. This is a remake of the 1946 Robert Siodmak film, a film that at first was slated to be directed by Siegel. In 1964, Siegel got his chance. His film was to be the first full-length movie made for television, but it was deemed too violent (in the wake of the Kennedy assassination) and shown theatrically instead of on TV. The opening sequence in which two hitmen, Charlie Strom (Lee Marvin) and his sidekick Lee (Clu Gulager), arrive at a home (school?) for the blind, beat up a blind woman in order to get information, find the person they are looking for, Johnny North (John Cassavetes), and fill him full of holes, sets the tone nicely. This film offers a cynical and unpleasant look at the ways of humanity. Even the choice to have Johnny be a motorcar racer seems intent on highlighting a human drive for speed and danger and thoughtless driving headlong into catastrophe. The villain here – wait, everyone is a villain in this film. However, one of the villains is the oily self-serving Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan in his last film). Somehow seeing Reagan play this unpleasant and greedy criminal who receives his comeuppance at the end of a gun is satisfying. The film delivers Siegel’s no-nonsense, in your face direction. An amusing touch is the focus on the two hitmen, one of whom, Strom, wonders why the victim of assassination waited stoically for the killers to carry out their mission. Strom, not an insurance investigator as in the 1946 movie, becomes the person who investigates the murder, the murder he himself carried out. In the end, the unpleasant characters, including femme fatale, Sheila Farr (Angie Dickinson), meet their ends violently.

 

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), directed by George King. Tod Slaughter plays the eponymous character and he performs with relish, lots of cacking and hand wringing and eye-rolling. Production values for a cheapie are quite good. The story is told in flashback, a modern day barber in Fleet Street regaling his customer with the story of the nineteenth-century Demon Barber. Sweeney Todd is in cahoots with the woman baker whose shop is next to his barbershop. She helps him dispose of the bodies. She also fancies herself more than his partner in crime, and she grows jealous when Mr. Todd steps out with Johanna Oakley (Eve Lister), daughter of wealthy ship owner Stephen Oakley (D. J. Williams). Being the villain he is, Todd has Mr. Oakley in his debt and to offset the debt, he offers to marry Johanna. This is Victorian melodrama at its most melodramatic, with a dash of the gothic thrown in for good measure. The film has an interlude that takes place in Africa that stretches things out and allows us to get to know the story’s hero, Mark the sailor (Bruce Seton). Mark is in love with Johanna, but he does not have enough wealth to enable him to marry her. You can see where this is going. The film is worth seeing for Slaughter’s theatrical performance. Step aside Johnny Depp.

 

Dragnet (1947), directed by Leslie Goodwins. Dragnet before Dragnet, this cheapie has Inspector Geoffrey James from Scotland Yard (Henry Wilcoxon) arriving in New York to investigate a jewel heist. Before he arrives, a body has been discovered on a beach. The beach also sports a shack owned by a local beachcomber. Anyway, we have lots of goings on including florescent dye found on the dead man’s clothes, a shady female, a mysterious fellow in a hat, a stewardess from a plane somehow involved in the plot to smuggle jewels into America, a life preserver, and much sleuthing. The actors are amiable. The script has its moments. The action keeps things moving along. The comic relief supplied by police sergeant Martin (Ralph Dunn) and restaurant server Molly (Maxine Semon) is passable. Sergeant Martin thinks the label on the dead man’s jacket that reads Harris Tweed is the man’s name. Anyway, this wee film is okay as a time waster. As for the title, it refers to police Lieutenant Ricco (Robert Kent) calling for a dragnet near the end of the film when the murderer’s identity becomes known. The film has little or nothing to do with the Jack Webb Dragnet, although at one point Lt. Ricco tells Molly to “stick to the facts.” He neglects to say “Mam.”

Black Magic (1949), directed by Gregory Ratoff and Orson Welles. By all accounts this is a ludicrous film telling the story of 18^th century magician, hypnotist, narcissist, and charlatan Cagliostro (Orson Welles). Power hungry Cagliostro falls for the beautiful Lorenza (Nancy Guild) who is a double for Marie Antoinette. Because she looks exactly like Antoinette (minus the beauty mark), Madame DuBarry (Margot Grahame) and the wicked Demontagne (Stephen Bekassy) who has executed the young Cagliostro’s parents, have a plot to replace the real Marie Antoinette with the look-a-like Lorenza and take control of France. So, Cagliostro, who has been trained in hypnotism by the famous Dr. Mesmer (Charles Goldner), finds himself embroiled in the plot to take over the country. The convoluted plot is silly, much of the acting over-heated, and the events of history distorted (to put it mildly). The script is not particularly compelling. What does work, for me at least, are the set designs and costumes both of which are lavish reminding me of von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934). In fact, the lavishness here rises to the level of camp. The credited cinematographers, Ubaldo Arata and Anchise Brizzi, are unknown to me, but their work here is noteworthy for its lighting, especially in the first half of the film.

Lady Gangster (1942), directed by Robert Florey. Faye Emerson stars as Dot Burton aspiring actor who agrees to take part in a bank robbery and ends up arrested. She does manage to get the gang’s money and hide it before she goes to jail. Much of the film takes place in the women’s prison where Dot finds trouble with the Deaf Annie (Dorothy Adams) and snitch Lucy Fenton (Ruth Ford). A highlight of the film is the visitor who turns up at the prison to see Dot. This visitor is Dot’s “sister,” the catch being that Dot does not have a sister. No, this visitor s actually the robbery gang leader Carey Wells (Roland Drew) in drag. Aside from this bit of high performance, the film is pretty predictable. Dot has an on again, off again relationship with radio personality Ken Phillips (Frank Wilcox), and we know things will work out favourably for this troubled couple. Performances and sets and photography are all fine for a low-budget film of 61 minutes. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but the film serves to make the time on the bike trainer go by nicely. Oh, and Jackie Gleason has a small part as a kindly member of the gang  of robbers.

Letter of Introduction (1938), directed by John M. Stahl. Aging actor, John Mannering (Adolphe Menjou) returns to New York where an aspiring young actress, Kay Martin (Andrea Leeds) accosts him with a letter of introduction. This letter reveals that Kay is Mannering’s daughter from his first marriage. (He has been married four times.) They both agree to keep Mannering’s paternity a secret, although I am not sure why. He is about to marry another young woman and I guess he does not want her to know. This woman, Lydia Hoyt (Ann Sheridan), soon leaves Mannering, but he and Kay continue to keep the secret. Finally, Kay and Mannering are cast in a Broadway production, but on opening night Mannering arrives both late and inebriated. Disaster. Oh, and I neglected to say that another fellow, Barry Paige (George Murphy) has fallen in love with Kay, but Barry has embarked on a tour with his dance partner, Honey (Rita Johnson), and plans to marry her. An entangled web. Eve Arden clomps about too as a friend of Kay and Barry. She is also a friend of Edgar Bergan who, along with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, entertain the audience with several routines that are something like interludes in the action. Director Stahl manages to hold this mishmash together, and the film is amiable mostly because of the performances. None of what goes on makes a lot of sense, but if you suspend disbelief…

 How about a few films before the end of June.

Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1 (2024), directed by Kevin Costner. Saga indeed. This three-hour film meanders along telling at least three stories, moving us from Kansas, to Wyoming, to Montana. It tells the story of a non-existent town named Horizon that attracts settlers of various stripes sometime in the mid 1860s. The scenery is magnificent and the echoes of earlier films such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, Cheyenne Autumn, and others float through the film. The acting is passable from Abbey Lee’s Marigold, the hooker whose heart may not be all gold, to Sienna Miller’s Frances Kittredge, the newly widowed mother trying to re-establish a life for her and her daughter, to Sam Worthington’s stoic Lt. Trent Gephart, to harried wagon train master Luke Wilson as Matthew van Leyden, to upright Danny Huston as Col. Albert Houghton, to taciturn Kevin Costner as Ellison Hayes, mysterious prospector and loner, and quite a few others. The storylines, however, are muddled, and the ending with shots that move us forward to Chapter 2 is confusing. Whether everything will finally come together in this four chapter saga remains to be seen, although we may never see chapters 3 and 4.What we have in chapter 1 is good to look at, and there are intriguing and engaging moments, such as the opening raid on the settlement that wants to be Horizon, or the interaction between Hayes and a bad guy as they walk toward the cabin where Marigold waits with a child not hers. The depiction of peoples both indigenous and white is raw. I am glad I saw the film, although it is not completely satisfying or successful.

 

Ça Sent La Coupe (2017), directed by Patrice Sauve. The film is set in the 2009-2010 hockey season when the Montreal Canadiens, improbably, went to the conference finals. The focus is on a small group of buddies who gather in Max’s apartment (Max is played by Louis-Jose Houde) to watch most of Les Canadiens’ games. Max has left his job as an engineer to manage his father’s hockey memorabilia and souvenir shop. The plot turns on the moment Max’s girlfriend Julie (Emilie Bibeau) walks out and leaves him. Max is in turmoil. He is still grieving the loss of his parents and now Julie leaves. His life is upended, and his friends begin to worry about his retreat into depression. The film celebrates friendship, hockey, the Montreal Canadiens. It also looks at relationships and grief. It brings to weighty themes (grief and loss) a delicate touch. The humour is attractive. The characters are engaging. I did think we would see more of the kid who covets a signed Saku Koivu card. This kid’s back story is intriguing, but it remains way in the background. For a fan such as I, the film appeals. Now only if we could have that smell of the cup come true again. The cup, by the way, is the one named after Lord Stanley.

 

The Power (1968), directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal. This film has the look of a George Pal film, the colour and the special effects. It tells a story of telekinesis. A group of scientists work in a Human endurance centre, experimenting with people to see their limits of endurance. This is part of the space program in America. The plot concerns this group – six people – one of whom has the power of telekinesis and who begins to kill the other members of the group. Noteworthy are the rather daring, for the time, moments: the bulging eyes and protruding tongue of the deceased Dr. Hallson (Arthur O’Connell) and the attempted seduction of Dr. Melnicker (Nehemiah Persoff) by a flirtatious convention girl (played by Miss Beverly Hills). Perhaps I should note that Dr. Melnicker is dead, as the seductress learns once she place a kiss on his still lips. We have an assortment of players from Aldo Ray’s sinister gas station attendant to Barbara Nichol’s slatternly roadhouse waitress to Earl Holliman’s scientist to Michael Rennie’s government inspector. Suzanne Pleshette and George Hamilton round out the cast. Hamilton plays Dr. Tanner, head of the Human Endurance Committee, and our protagonist. He is on the trail of the mysterious Adam Hart. The film has elements of the murder mystery, science fiction, and romantic comedy and these elements do not mesh successfully. We even have weirdness, as in the scene with the elderly couple in the desert. There are some striking moments such as Dr. Tanner’s merry-go-round ride or his hallucinatory vision of his own decapitated head. What we have here is a precursor for David Cronenberg’s Scanners.

 

Scorching Fury (1952), directed by Rick Freers. I am not sure I should bother with a notice of this film. However, should you want an example of a film that strives for an arthouse look and fails miserably, then this film is for you. Take for example, the bad guy Ward Canepa (Sherwood Price). For two thirds of the film, we only see his boots and striped trousers and gun belt. We hear his cackling after he does something ugly. Just why we do not see his face until just before the end is a mystery to me. He is not someone we have met and now when we see him we can say, oh gosh look who it is. Nope. His appearance is kept from us for no reason whatsoever. Then we have numerous shots of cavalry and Native Americans taken from earlier films, notably Stagecoach, that have nothing to do with the rest of the story. Nothing. As for the story, it unfolds in a series of flashbacks. You know, a slicing of the narrative that is artsy. Right. Then we have the acting. Hmmm. Richard Devon as Kirk Flamer is probably the most familiar face. The rest of the cast will not be familiar. So much of this film just hangs there without resolution: the cavalry/Natives conflict, the small group in the desert without water, the bad guy who only appears from the waist down. It there is something noteworthy here, then it is the fact that just about all of this film takes place on location. I guess location shooting was cheaper than building sets.

 

Once Upon a Time in China (1991), directed by Tsui Hark. This is the first of five films in the series, and it tells of a changing China at the end of the nineteenth century. Our protagonist is martial arts expert and doctor of traditional medicine, Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li). The film is sprawling and lavish, and the fight choreography is first rate, especially the jaw-dropping fight between Wong and Iron Vest Yim (Yen Shi-kwan), his martial arts rival. The film is a mixture of comedy, romance, adventure, and historical recovery of a troubed time in China. Both American and British imperial forces are trying to maintain a foothold of power, and one Chinese gang, the Shaho gang, assists the American Jackson (Jonathan Isgar) in his human trafficking enterprise. Men ae shipped off to work mines and railroads, and women are shipped of as prostitutes, all at their own cost. As the story unfolds, Aunt 13 (Rosamund Kwan), Wong’s love interest, is captured by the villains who intend to send her to America. Of course, Wong and his helpers rescue her and others rudely ripped from their daily lives by villains out to make money. Perhaps not up there with Yimou Zhang’s martial arts films, Once Upon a Time in China is well worth seeing. The title places it with a couple of other films with similar titles, all dealing with a country in changing times.

 

Tenebre (1982), directed by Dario Argento. This exercise in giallo cinema impresses with its fluid camera and architectural complexity. The acting may be overblown, but the narrative is as compulsive as the most intricate of murder mysteries. Here the murderer (well – spoiler - two murderers) we see lurking about in the shadows, his gloved hands with straight razor or knife or axe. It turns out that the murderer takes his cue from Peter Neal’s (Anthony Franciosa) latest mystery novel, Tenebrae; he sets out to rid the world, or Rome at least, of deviants and perverts. Accordingly, he murders two lesbians and a shoplifter. Mr. Neal finds himself caught up in the mystery and he sets out to discover the identity of the murderer. I am leaving much out here, but suffice to say that the film is obsessed with seeing, with the voyeuristic perspective that we have in film makers such as Hitchcock or Brian de Palma. Argento’s sense of colour and composition make the film interesting to look at, intensifying the theme of looking the narrative incorporates. The scenes of murder are, as we expect from giallo films, bloody, perhaps excessively so. The section that deals with a fierce Doberman is especially vicious. References to Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” thread through the proceedings. Mr. Neal and his young driver Gianni (Christian Borromeo) serve as the Holmes/Watson pair, although here Watson’s fate is rather dire. We also have John Saxon turning up in a hat he is fond of. 

Nosferatu (2024), directed by Robert Eggers. This remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu: A Symphonie of Horror, manages to give us visual echoes of Murnau’s film and Werner Herzog’s 1979 version with Klaus Kinski made up to resemble Max Schreck. Here, however, the Count Orlok character (Bill Skarsgard), although dressed like Schreck’s Orlok, looks more like Vlad the Impaler thank Schreck’s or Kinski’s Orlok. The film, for all its earnestness in giving us a version of Dracula, offers little that is new, aside perhaps from the look and sound of Skarsgard’s Orlok. Willem DeFoe, who played Max Shreck in Shadow of the Vampire (2000), turns up here as Professor Albert Eberhart von Franz, this film’s version of Van Helsing. The story unfolds as we would expect. No surprises. The distinguishing aspects of the film are its lighting and camera work that give the proceedings a suitably brooding, gothic atmosphere. Costumes and sets are good. The focus here is on the Mina Harker character, here named Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp). Also noteworthy is Simon McBurney as Knock, this film’s version of Renfield. All in all, a film that pays homage to both Murnau and Herzog, but does not outdo them.

 

Parallel Mothers (2021), directed by Pedro Almodovar. With his characteristic colors and décor, Almodovar here weaves a story that lets us know the past informs the present. Past absences, past choices, past events political and otherwise, make their mark on the present. This is the case for both of the protagonists here, two women who meet while giving birth. One is in her forties, Janis (Penelope Cruz) and the other is still a minor, Ana (Milena Smit). Both are single mothers, and Janis comes from a lineage of single mothers. They bond and before too long find themselves living together. Meanwhile Janis has managed to have her child’s father, the forensic archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde), arrange to exhume a mass grave from the Civil War. This grave has the body of Janis’s grandfather. While Janis (named for Janis Joplin, by the way!) seeks to give her grandfather a proper burial, Ana deals with her mother who places her theatrical career above family. Then there is the matter of each woman’s child. Here the film reminded me of Born in Absurdistan (1999), although the two films are quite different in tone and focus. Almodovar’s film is beautifully crafted and sympathetically drawn to its characters. We have no villains here, just human beings with all their faults, their hopes, their anxieties, and their relationships messy and loving. This is a poetic look at motherhood, family, and human complications.

 A few Spaghetti westerns for May.

Long Days of Hate, aka This Man Can’t Die (1968), directed by Gianfranco Baldanello. This one stars Guy Madison as the cigar-smoking hero. As Spaghetti westerns go, this one is pretty poor. The acting is awkward, the costumes laughable, and the story familiar. The sound track is good, courtesy of Amedeo Tommasi, and the action scenes are passable. As for that familiar story, Martin Benson (Madison) is an undercover agent for the cavalry, out to thwart baddies who are delivering guns and booze to the Native people. The bad guys discover his betrayal and kill his parents. His siblings, two sisters and two brothers, escape the bad guys and repair to a furnished cave somewhere. They bring with them one of the bad guys who has been badly wounded. This bad guy proves not to be a bad guy, but another undercover agent. The head bad guy is courting Martin’s eldest sister Susan (Lucienne Bridou), but when he is revealed as the head bad guy, Susan is revulsed. Then we have brother Daniel Benson (Steve Merrick, a Will Hutchins lookalike), and sister Jenny (Anna Liotti) who is raped by one of the bad guys and loses her voice for a while. One scene in which the saloon girls battle with the baddies has quite a bit of nudity. The bad guys are really bad, even killing two elderly innocent people for no reason. Finally, we have a Raymond Hatton lookalike who has a short ladder on his saddle to help him climb down from his horse (and up again when need be). All is all, this is not a Spaghetti western you need to see.

 

Find a Place to Die (1968), directed by A. Ascot (Giuliano Carnimeo). This Spaghetti western is a remake of the Gary Cooper film, Garden of Evil (1954), and it has the feel of a 1950s western. It even has the requisite bathing scene in which the female lead finds a mountain stream in which to bath sans habille. Jeffrey Hunter has the Gary Cooper role here; he is Joe Collins, an American living below the border and running guns to the Mexican outlaw Chato (Mario Dardinelli). A young wife, Lisa Martin (Pascale Petit), whose husband is trapped in the Sierras comes seeking help to rescue her husband. Of course, Joe, and three other ne’er-do-wells, accept the lady’s offer. Mostly, they are interested in the lady and her gold. These five pick up a sixth member on their way to the Sierras. This is the preacher and lecher, Reverend Riley (Adolfo Lastretti). Arriving at the mine, they find Mrs. Martin’s husband deceased. He has been tortured. Torture appears more than once in this film. Anyway, the gold is gone, and so this little band of fortune seekers returns from whence they came only to find Chato and his gang have taken over the small village. A siege takes place. The bad guys die, and things end as we expect them to end. This is an efficiently made Spaghetti western, but aside from its interest in torture, it has little to distinguish it. The plot is overly familiar.

 

Adios, Sabata (1970), directed by Gianfranco Parolini (Frank Kramer). Mark this one down as a guilty pleasure. It has wicked costumes, especially for the Sabata character (Yul Brynner), an elaborate firearm with a magazine that holds a number of bullets and one cigar, a Morricone-style soundtrack courtesy of Bruno Nicolai, a cast of eccentrics including one fellow who performs more than one the flamenco dance of death, and many tumbling and squawking bodies. As Spaghetti westerns go, put this one in the parodic category. Like Guy Madison in Long Days of Hate, Yul Brenner often lights a cigar but never smokes one. His black fringed, open chested, low-slung gun-belted, and over the shoulder blanket, along with bell bottoms make for a strange and uncomfortable-looking costume. His taciturn performance might remind us of his robotic character in Westworld. The plot involves a gold shipment and a number of gangs looking to get their hands on it. The backdrop is revolutionary Mexico under Maximillian, but the political theme is not at the forefront of this film in the way it is in a number of other spaghetti westerns. Parolini’s tongue is in his cheek, and this film takes nothing seriously. There are two other Sabata films, both with Lee van Cleef as Sabata, and in this film Brynner was initially to play a fellow named Indio Black. The character’s name was changed to Sabata to help sell the film.

 

A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (1975) Damiano Damiani. As comedic Spaghetti westerns go, this one has its charms. It clearly draws on films such as My Name is Nobody, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, Stagecoach, The Searchers, the Trinity films, and more. The musical score by Ennio Morricone follows suit and references earlier films. The cast too has its charms with Terence Hill, Robert Charlebois, Patrick McGoohan, and the perky Miou-Miou. Even Klaus Kinski turns up for a short while near the beginning of the film. The plot has something to do with the theft of $300,000, an Indian-hating colonel (McGoohan), the return of land to the Native people, the building of a railroad, and other stuff that bewilders me. The characters have names such as Joe Thanks (Hill), Steam Engine Bill (Charlebois), Jacky Roll (Piero Vida), and Village Idiot (Gerard Boucaron). The action, at times, plays like a Looney Tunes cartoon. The script is laced with silly remarks (well funny remarks). The landscape continuously shows us Monument Valley, although the film was shot in Spain. If there is anything serious going on here, it is in the focus on the Native people and their unjust displacement from the land. Damiani’s portrayal of Native people hovers between serious and ridiculous. This film can take its place alongside a few other comedic Spaghetti westerns worth watching, Corbucci’s The White, the Yellow, and the Black (aka Samurai), Tonino Valerii’s My Name is Nobody (a film with Leone’s imprint), and Enzo Barboni’s My Name is Trinity. A final note: the voices in this film (some dubbed, but not all) are strange to say the least. Squeaky and high-pitched barely communicates this strangeness.

Get Mean (1975), directed by Ferdinando Baldi. While watching this film, I kept thinking of Sergio Corbucci’s Samurai (aka The White, the Yellow, and the Black (1975). Both films are late Spaghetti westerns trying hard to be different, both try for humour, and both deliver strangeness in abundance. One succeeds, one does not. Get Mean does not. The opening sequence tells us all we need to know. The film begins with a horse racing through a barren landscape, dragging someone behind in the dust. This someone proves to be the Stranger (Tony Anthony). Why he is tied behind the horse remains unknown. But when the horse stops at an out of the way run down place, the people inside appear to be waiting for the Stranger’s arrival. They offer him $10,000 to accompany a Princess to Spain. He demands $50,000. So begins a film in which our hero not only gets dragged by a horse, but he also finds himself hanged upside down, chased by a rampaging bull, pummeled by invisible ghosts, roasted on a spit with a lemon in his mouth, all the time contending with what appear to be Vikings, Moors, a Shakespeare-quoting hunch-back who fancies himself Richard 111, and a gay fellow who is forced to eat a huge amount of mashed potatoes in order to make him disgorge a message the Stranger has forced him to swallow. Then we have the turret thing with the cannons that revolve 360 degrees. Then we have the bit where the Stranger disappears in a puff of smoke only to reappear as a black person. All of this has racist and misogynistic overtones. All of this struggles vainly to be coherent. All of this struggles vainly to be amusing. My advice: choose Corbucci’s Samurai instead.

 Just some films from the 1930s, including a couple by Dorothy Arzner.

Devil and The Deep (1932), directed by Marion Gering. This film boasts Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, and the inimitable Tallulah Bankhead. It also boasts a submarine that sinks to the bottom of the ocean (Oh wait, to the bottom of the deep blue sea); inside are a number of sailors, along with an axe-wielding Laughton and Ms. Bankhead and Cooper. Oh, and above water, the action takes place in some faraway exotic place where men dance and swing and night brings alluring goings-on. The plot hardly matters in this over-heated melodrama, but I can tell you this: Laughton as submarine commander Charles Sturm brings a lot of Sturm und Drang to his role of the jealous and psychotic husband, while Gary Cooper stands around wondering how he got here. As for Cary Grant, he appears for about 10 minutes and yet he receives third billing in the opening credits. Ms. Bankhead performs the abused wife well enough. As for the bit in the sunken submarine, this is noteworthy and engaging for being preposterous. The cinematography by Charles Lang is fine, but the sets and toy boat invite us to chuckle and we do. As a pre-code production, the film does offer us the following bit: a woman in a nightclub says to Diana (Bankhead), “You probably heard me say that I’d very much like to spank you!” In reply, Diana raises an eyebrow and says, “I should imagine that few things would give you greater pleasure.”

 

Hot Saturday (1932), directed by William A. Seiter. This pre-code outing from Paramount has Cary Grant as a rich playboy, Romer Sheffield, who has a summer home on the lake in a small community. He has his eye on local bank clerk, Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll). So too does another bank employee, Connie Billop (Edward Woods). Then we have local boy returning home, Bill Fadden (Randolph Scott). Bill too has eyes for Ruth. When a local gal sees Ruth returning home in the middle of the night, driven by Romer’s chauffeur, the rumour mill begins working and soon Ruth is the bad girl of town and fired from her job. The film has one daring scene in a cave when Bill, who has found Ruth passed out in a ravine and soaking wet, carries Ruth to his cave (he is staying there for work as a geologist – or something like that) and undresses her while she sleeps. Another scene has Ruth wrestle the underwear off her sister Annie (Rose Coghlan). The film deals with risqué subjects. The actors are fine, Nancy Carroll reminding me of Claudette Colbert. Grady Sutton (someone I know as Og Oggilby from The Bank Dick - 1940) also turns up. The location shooting by cinematographer Arthur Todd is impressive. As pre-code films go, this one is pretty nifty.

 

Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), directed by Dorothy Arzner. When, at her wedding to Jerry (Frederic March), Joan (Sylvia Sidney) discovers the ring Jerry has placed on her finger is the end of a corkscrew, she should realize the mistake she has made. This is a film about alcoholism, patriarchy, money and inequality, and open marriage. This is strong stuff for 1932. Arzner brings a sure hand to her examination of posh living late in the prohibition era. The film’s credits play on a theatre marquee and the lights that dazzle on the edge of the marquee serve as the merry signal of Hell. Going to Hell merrily, the people we meet suffer from a system that demands success and success demands performing specific roles, roles that set out what each gender may or may not do. Both Jerry and Joan struggle of free themselves from societal constraints, and this struggle leaves them with little but each other. When they first meet, Jerry sings a wee ditty to Joan: “First she gave me gingerbread and then she gave me cake; and then she gave me crème de menthe for meeting her at the gate.” Joan gives Jerry gingerbread and cake, but he finds the crème de menthe himself and fails to meet her at the gate. For much of the film, Jerry is inebriated and he is usually late or does not appear at all. The portrait of marriage here is not bright and cheerful. Quite the opposite. Arzner, the only woman director in 1930s Hollywood, offers a devastating look at marriage. The acting is nuanced, sharp, and believable. This is as good as it gets in pre-code Hollywood.

 

Christopher Strong (1933), directed by Dorothy Arzner. Perhaps not the best of Arzner’s films, Christopher Strong nevertheless has some amazing moments. The most famous of these moments occurs when Katharine Hepburn as Lady Cynthia Darrington enters a room dressed as a moth. She moves toward Sir Christopher Strong (Colin Clive) like a moth to a flame. Sir Christopher is a politician and a happily married man with an adult daughter, Monica (Helen Chandler, also seen as Lucy in Browning’s Dracula). Cynthia and Christopher’s affair is what controls the narrative. Sir Christopher’s wife Elaine (Billie Burke – yes Glinda from Oz) remains steadfast if sorrowful at the wandering of her husband. Another amazing moment occurs when Cynthia and Christopher make love. The love scene takes place before our eyes, but in a remarkably delicate manner. The camera stays on Cynthia’s ringed finger while the lovers talk just off screen. For 1933, this was a daring scene. What most impresses, however, is Hepburn wearing her aviatrix clothes, her jodhpurs, her voluminous coat, her long buttoned gown, and so on. The story has to do with marriage, fidelity, infidelity, independence, and the vagaries of the human heart. Of course, Cynthia and Christopher’s love cannot end well. Echoes of Amelia Earhart. This was Hepburn’s second film and first as lead; she carries the film.

Hôtel du Nord (1938), directed by Marcel Carne. Opening with a dinner scene celebrating a first communion and ending with a street scene of dancing and music on Bastille Day, this film takes us into the lives of the people who live and work in the titular hotel. This hotel is situated by the

Canal St. Martin in Paris, although the whole film is shot on a set, a magnificent set. Between the opening and closing festivities, we have two young lovers who attempt suicide together, a woman of the streets who switches partners, her pimp who is chased by a couple of gangsters, the lock operator whose wife cheats on him, the two owners of the hotel, and an assortment of other members of the common people. These various people give us romance, tragedy, comedy, and the stuff of life lived well. Carne’s fluid camera and carefully nuanced lighting and thoughtful angles work to deliver the famous poetic realism. The film begins and ends with two lovers, yes the same two who attempted double suicide, seated on the same park bench giving the film a neatly circular construction. Among the cast are such luminaries as Arletty (playing Raymonde the street walker), Annabella (playing the young lover Renee), Jean-Pierre Aumont (the other young lover Pierre), and Louis Jouvet (playing the pimp Edmond). Jouvet’s performance is especially noteworthy as this callous low life manages to redeem himself finding love, an impossible love, but love nonetheless. This is a film not to be missed.

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), directed by Robert Florey. This is one of the first round of sound horror features by Universal Studios and the cinematographer is Karl Freund who served as lighting person on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The Caligari connection will let you know that Murders in the Rue Morgue looks good, as good as any of the more famous flicks from that studio such as Dracula and Frankenstein. In fact, the sets here just may be more impressive. The plot, loosely based on the Poe story, has demented Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi) trying to find a woman whose blood is suitable for mating with Erik, the gorilla. Yes, you heard that right. Mirakle believes the mixing of human and ape blood will prove evolution. He also believes he communicates with Erik and that Erik desires a wife. The film has echoes of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and even King Kong. Most impressive to me is the good – or mad – doctor’s laboratory that looks as if it had been designed by Rube Goldberg. We also have a fellow named Leon Waycoff playing our young hero, Pierre Dupin. Waycoff later becomes the more recognizable Leon Ames. Charles Gemora (uncredited) plays Erik, and plays him convincingly. The film has style. For sure.

 

The Sphinx (1933), directed by Phil Rosen. This is a Monogram cheapie, but it manages to maintain interest. In short, we have a series of murders, a couple of which have witnesses who spoke with the murderer. Both witnesses identify the murderer as a wealthy philanthropist who happens to be a deaf mute. The mystery here is how this person who has medical doctors certify that he cannot speak because his vocal cords have been sliced can get away with the murders. He fools ace reporter Jerry Crane (Sheila Terry) who takes a shine to the accused but exonerated Mr. Breem (Lionel Atwill). Another reporter and Jerry’s boyfriend at the outset of things, Jack Burton (Theodore Newton), is convinced that the suave Mr. Breem is, in fact, the culprit. Along for the ride are familiar faces such as Paul Hurst, Hooper Atchley, Paul Fix, Ernie Adams, and a shaven and uncredited George ‘Gabby’ Hayes. This is one of Monogram’s better efforts. Efficient and quite well scripted.

 

The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935), directed by John Auer. Based on the Edgar Allan Poe story, "The Premature Burial," The Crime of Dr. Crespi is a creepy study of obsession. Filmed with an eye for expressionistic lighting and angles, Dr. Crespi stars Erich von Stroheim as the titular doctor who has taken to drink as he obsesses over the loss of his loved Estelle Ross (Harriet Russell) to his rival, Dr. Stephen Ross (John Bohn). Fate allows him to exact a fiendish revenge on this rival, and Crespi arranges for Ross to be buried alive. Of course things do not work out as Crespi hopes. For one thing, another doctor, Dr. Thomas (Dwight Frye – yes Renfield in Dracula) discovers Crespi’s skullduggery. Thomas and another colleague dig up the buried Ross, and low and behold, Ross sits up, then walks about. Oh dear. Soon the walking dead confronts Crespi. You know what happens, don’t you. Perhaps not. The film ends on Crespi’s terms, although these terms are rather dire. All in all, this is a creepy, effective little film. Erich von Stroheim is a nasty piece of work, snapping and even yelling at the people he works with. The atmosphere here is impressive. Films like this demonstrate that the low budgets of Poverty Row need not be an impediment to quality flicks.

 

Condemned to Live (1935), directed by Frank R. Strayer. This low budget vampire flick aspires to the look and feel of Universal’s Dracula, but does not quite make it. What it has going for it is the presence of a sympathetic vampire. Professor Paul Kristan (Ralph Morgan) is a local hero for his good work among the poor of a village, wherever this village may be. Sadly, years ago his mother, while in deepest Africa for some reason, was bitten by a large bat while sojourning in a cave. The result is the strange affliction her son suffers when he is an adult. The stress of overwork produces terrible headaches, which in turn lead to a loss of consciousness during which Paul becomes a horrible vampire. We have something of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, although Paul does not know what happens when he blacks out. Of course, we have a young women, Marguerite Mane (Maxine Doyle), who is betrothed to the good professor. She will marry him out of admiration, despite being very much attracted to local boy David (Russell Gleason) who desires to marry her. And of course, as things transpire, the fiendish nature of the Professor nearly does poor Marguerite in. Through all this, the loyal servant, hunchback Zan (Mischa Auer), tried to protect his master, the good professor, even going so far as to falsely confess to murders of a few local people. The villagers assume Zan is the monster. Things work out as you might expect. The good professor is played by Ralph Morgan, brother of Frank Morgan (see The Wizard of Oz). The plot, then, has some novelty, but the sets and camera work are pedestrian, at best. The studio from which this film comes is Invincible Pictures. Invincible indeed.

 

 Before March comes to an end, a few more films.

Daisies (1966), directed by Vera Chytilova. This is a zany surrealistic example of the Czech New Wave. Two young women take note that the world has gone bad. As the credits role, we see shots of bombs and devastation caused by war and toppling buildings, letting us see just how bad the world has gone. In response to this bad state of things, the young women decide to be bad. They set out on a wild adventure into excess, especially excessive eating. Their hedonism knows no bounds. Neither does the cinematography that jumps about, just as the women jump about, and changes colour as often as the women change clothes or make-up. Some of this reminded me of Bunuel’s Le Chien Andalou, although there are touches of Pasolini and Parajanov here too. I also detected Chaplin as an influence. Without a plot, but with much bravado, this film explores both the excesses of the modern state and cinema itself. This is not a film to be taken lightly; it demands attention and thought. It was banned and Chytilova was not allowed to work for nine years. This ought to indicate just how effective this film is in its critique of state control.

 

La Bestia Debe Morir (The Beast Must Die, 1952), directed by Roman Vinoly Barreto. This Argentinian noir has all the elements of a whodunit combined with the edge and visual appeal of film noir. The story is based on Ray Blake’s detective novel published in 1938. The plot is straight forward. Jorge Rattery (Guillermo Battaglia) is a rat of a human being who abuses his wife and his step-son and just about anyone else he can abuse. Soon after the film opens, he unknowingly drinks poison and dies. Who is responsible for this murder? As we begin to unravel the story behind the murder in flashback, we see that Jorge was a hit and run driver, having struck and killed a young boy one wet dark night. The boy’s father, a man named Frank Carter, who writes mysteries under the name of Felix Lane (Narciso Ibanez Menta), decides to seek out the man who killed his son and murder him. Things move along briskly as Felix Lane meets the killer’s sister-in-law, falls in love, finds himself involved with the sister-in-law’s family, becomes friendly with the beast of a murderer, and then briefly becomes a suspect in the beast’s murder. He has, however, a solid alibi. Who, then, did the deed? No, it was not the sister-in-law who has suffered the advances of the beast, Jorge, and who was in the car that fatal night. There are several other candidates, but what interests us more are the relationships between people. Perhaps the most powerful relationship is between Felix and the young step-son of Jorge, Ronnie Hershey (Humberto Balado). Ronnie reminds us, and Felix, of Felix’s deceased son. This is an impressive film with some impressive lighting and camera work.

 

Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems, 1956). This Argentinian noir opens with the clock sounding midnight as two men prepare to board a train. Thus begins the move to a perfect murder. This film has several features of noir: voice over, analepsis and prolepsis, cynicism, entrapment, a mysterious, if not fatal, woman, shadows and some dark nights. This is a noir without a villain in the usual sense. Oh, Alfredo Gaspar (Carlos Cores) does commit a murder, but he is really not such a bad fellow, just somewhat slow to grasp things. He is a poor schmuck of a journalist who embarks on a questionable venture with a new-found friend, the illegal immigrant Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos). Alfredo begins to think that his friend is out to con him as well as the customers the two of them are duping. This leads him to carry out an impetuous and extremely foolish act of murder. He buries the corpse, along with a number of seeds the dead man was carrying. From these seeds grow plants that are Alfredo’s undoing. He kneels in front of an oncoming locomotive. The end! This is all very dark and impressive. The camera work is effective, with lines of shadows that communicate threateningly early in the film and nice contrasts of dark and rainy nights with bright sunlit days. That opening with the signaling of midnight says it all. Midnight comes as the stroke of doom. Did I say “perfect murder”? Well yes, if only poor Alfredo knew anything about agronomy.

Death of a Cyclist (1955), directed by J. A. Bardem. This film brings together Hollywood noir melodrama with Italian neo-realism in order to expose the failings of the social system under the Franco government in Spain. Behind most of the action here is the war, the Spanish civil war and the larger European war a decade ago. The noir elements include a hero caught in a fraught situation, a femme fatale, an arch art critic cynical to a degree, and some of the lighting and camera work we would expect. Then we have the neo-realist parts of the film, shots of poverty and dilapidation, kids in the street, a city divided by wealth, and intense close-ups. The editing is clever and sly pairing shots deftly to bring out both emotion and meaning. For example, the cutting between gazes of the lovers as if they were in the same room, although she is actually with her husband and her lover is by himself in another place. Such cutting reaches its witty best when the lover, Juan, exhales cigarette smoke in one room/cut to Maria Jose, his mistress, brushes smoke away from her husband’s cigarette. We also have the pairing of wealthy children in their finery with the street kids struggling to survive. There is much more to admire in this film, but suffice to say the cyclist has the last word – as it were.

Beirut, Oh, Beirut (1975), directed by Maroun Bagdadi. This film reminded me of the Godard films of the mid to late 1960s, although the tone is more dark and ominous, as if something dire is on the horizon. What was on the horizon was the revolution in Lebanon that took place just as this film was being shot. The film deals with the aftermath of the Arab/Israeli War and takes place in 1970 or thereabouts. The film follows four characters trying to come to terms with the state of things after that war, the turmoil that runs through the country. The editing is rough and abrupt and renders the narrative in what I might call, stealing a term from Burroughs, a cut-up style. Events are not entirely clear, although the gist of things is very clear. Revolution is in the air, and so is an anxiety that things will not work out well. The film is prescient. As the title might indicate, this is a lament for a city and for a country.

Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976), directed by Felipe Cazals.  “1968 was an auspicious year. The Vietnam War increased in intensity with both the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre, both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy are assassinated, Pierre Trudeau becomes Prime Minister of Canada, students take to the streets in France and elsewhere, the Democratic Convention in Chicago fosters anti-war riots and results in the trials of the Chicago Seven. In other words, this was a tumultuous year.” This is a short passage from a book of mine coming out next year. I might have added the murders of four university workers in San Miguel Canoa, a small village in Mexico near the inactive volcano, La Malinche. This event is reimagined in Felipe Cazals’s film, Canoa: A Shameful Memory. Made just eight years after the event, Canoa is an intricate retelling visceral in its brutality. The film begins something like a travelogue, then has touches of documentary, and finally devolves into a horrific re-enactment of the riot in the small village, the villagers looking like the swarm of villagers in a film such as Frankenstein. The people carry torches, machetes, guns, sticks, anything that can deliver pain. Seemingly behind these events is the local priest (Enrique Lucero) who whips up the anger of the villagers by claiming that students in the university in nearby Puebla are atheists and communists bent on destroying the good Christian life. This priest controls everything in the small village and exacts money and crops from the poor; he sports a pair of dark glasses, making him look the part of a mob boss. Well, he is a mob boss, after a fashion. Juxtaposing the cool reaction of the press, the buoyancy of the five youths planning to hike La Malinche, the wariness of the village people, and the observations of a local field worker, the film exposes the corruption of a system that thrives on mind control and the subordination of people through with holding education. This is a powerful film. 

 Let's begin March with a few moors, mostly by Robert Siodmak.

The Killing (1956), directed by Stanley Kubrik. This late noir and early Kubrik is a doozy. Sharp contrast lighting, strange angles, dislocations in time, voice over, dark rooms and corridors, a fatal woman, grill work and bars and other premonitions of disaster, a nearly perfect plan, and a great performance from Elisha Cook, Jr. make this a noir to remember. The ending is especially memorable in its lassitude, its last weary sigh that says, "what the hell, the world is a dark place and it is no use trying to turn on the lights." The film's title might refer to the "killing" the main character makes at the racetrack or it might refer to the mayhem that takes place in the apartment where the crooks meet after the robbery. Then again, it may refer to the whole kit and caboodle.

 

The Suspect (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak. This early noir set in 1902 England has Charles Laughton as unassuming Kind Mr. Philip Marshall, a clerk in a tobacco store whose wife is a harridan of the highest pitch. By accident, Philip meets Mary (Ella Raines), and the two become close friends. As unlikely as it seems, the beautiful Mary falls in love with the sensitive Philip. Philip asks for a divorce from his wife, but she refuses. What’s a poor tobacconist to do? Mrs. Marshall (Rosalind Ivan) tumbles down the stairs at home and dies. Philip is now free to mary Mary, and he does so. Life is good. Then inebriate neighbour and layabout Mr. Simmons (Henry Daniell) becomes a thorn when he sets out to blackmail Philip. Philip has to dispose of Mr. Simmons. Meanwhile, Inspector Huxley (Stanley Ridges) of Scotland Yard is on the case, Columbo-style. For Philip and Mary, Canada beckons. Will they make it? Siodmak handles the night time scenes in London well with murky shadows and brooding fog. He also uses interiors well, the stairway, the sofa, the cane wrack. I failed to mention that Philip is kind to children and animals. He is not a murdering type. Nevertheless, he finds himself tangled up in shadow and fog.

 

Robert Siodmak is a director of several top-notch noirs: e.g. The Killers (1946), The Dark Mirror (1946), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The File on Thelma Jordan (1949). He also made Son of Dracula (1943), one of the later Universal horror flicks. As this last one might indicate, Siodmak has a flare for expressionistic cinema. He also discovered certain actors including Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, who both turn up in Criss Cross (1947), albeit Curtis's turn is fleeting. Criss Cross is a noir as dark as they come. Lancaster is the sad sack who has fallen for a dame, played by Yvonne de Carlo, who is sure to lead him into a maze of ugliness and disappointment. The oily villain is played by a smooth Dan Duryea. Anyway, as often in noir, family provides a backdrop to the action and family indicates the humanity of the main character. Against the pressures of family, the hero must assert his masculinity, even if this means pursuing his manly ways to oblivion. All this is gritty to the point of cynical. As so often in American cinema and literature, we have love and death leading a man to his less than welcome destiny! And, of course, a heist gone wrong is pivotal.

Cry of the City (1948), directed by noir stalwart Robert Siodmak. The man on the run here is not an innocent. Far from it. Martin Rome (Richard Conte) is an icy cold killer willing to put his family in jeopardy to stay ahead of the cops. At the beginning of the film, Rome is in the hospital with several bullet wounds. Throughout the film he sports a limp to let us know that he is not well and also to let us know he is crippled as a human being. His adversary, Lt. Vittorio Candella (Victor Mature), also comes up wounded later in the film. This is a wounded city, as the film’s title indicates. In these wet dark city streets, things go sour. In this place, people are bent: lawyers, nurses, kids, dames. Rome comes from a Catholic Italian family, and images of the Church are evident throughout. The Church, however, cannot serve to better the lives of these people. As usual with Siodmak, we have darkness drawing down and the beast slouches toward that place of hope, tainting everything on its way. Hope Emerson as the Swedish masseuse, Rose Given, gives an impressive performance as a tough moll. Also making an appearance are Shelley Winters and Debra Paget. This is, perhaps, not as impressive as other Siodmak noirs, but it is worth seeing.

Deported (1950), directed by Robert Siodmak. Vic Smith (Jeff Chandler) is a gangster deported from America to Italy. He has left $500,000, theft money, behind. Of course, a bad guy follows Vic to Italy to claim half, or all, of the stolen money. Of course, Vic meets a swell woman, the widow Countess Christine di Lorenzi (Marta Toren), and falls in love. Of course, we have a good fellow cop pursuing Vic. Of course, we have a friend of Vic’s who proves to be more interested in money than friendship. Of course, we have chases and dark shenanigans and a few dark streets with ominous shadows. This is predictable. The Italian setting is okay, but it shouts out – the setting makes this film different from other noir films of the time. However, it does not. The romance between Vic, an uneducated guy from the streets, and the Countess, a wealthy widow trying to help the poor who do not have enough food, works well enough. Perhaps the opening sequence where we see a gaggle of young boys scrambling to fetch money tossed from the just-docked ship explains things. In this world, one has to scramble, dive, and dart to survive. Not Siodmak’s best, but worth seeing.

 

Kiss of Death (1947), directed by Henry Hathaway. No auteur, but a workmanlike director, Hathaway did films in all the genres. He took the work the studios gave him. In this, he reminds me of Michael Curtiz, although he did not make films that stand with Curtiz's best. He did, however, make a few noirs, Kiss of Death being one of them. Kiss of Death remains a staple of noir mostly for Richard Widmark's portrayal of Tommy Udo, the psychopath. This is Widmark's first film, and he goes all out in his grinning, cackling portrayal of Tommy. He also pushes an elderly lady in a wheelchair down a long set of stairs. This is the scene most viewers remember. Aside from this shocking moment, the film is fairly tame. It tells the story of Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), a crook who decides to squeal to the Assistant DA in exchange for a parole after a jewel heist gone wrong. The plot turns on his testifying against Tommy in Tommy's murder trial. The jury acquits Tommy, and he goes free with a grudge against Nick. Nick's family, his two young daughters and their step mother, are now in danger. The film generates some suspense in the scenes after dark in Nick's home as he and his family wait for Tommy to show up with revenge on his mind. Things go along until finally Nick confronts Tommy or Tommy confronts Nick. Well, they confront each other. Bang bang. Shots ring out on those dark damp city streets. The end.