More noir for November.

The Long Night (1947), directed by Anatole Litvak. This is a remake of Marcel Carne’s Le jour se Leve (1939), although the Fascist implications are muted here. The acting is fine, Henry Fonda as Joe and Barbara Bel Geddes as Jo Ann are convincing. Then we have Vincent Price as smarmy magician Maximilian and Ann Dvorak as Charlene. Charlene is a character who is under developed, and perhaps this is true to a lesser extent with the other characters. What we have is a noir, and the lighting and camera work make this clear, that focuses on star-crossed lovers. The main character, Joe, is a murderer who elicits our sympathy. As with many remakes, The Long Night offers nothing new. It is efficient and impressively constructed, but so was the original. We have some strange goings-on here with the police spraying Joe’s apartment with bullets, and Joe shooting Maximilian after relatively little provocation. From another perspective, the police action and the lying Maximilian give us something contemporary to chew on. Perhaps this film has Fascist overtones after all.

 

The Raging Tide (1952), directed by George Sherman. This noir may be Sherman’s best work, although much of the credit must go to Russell Metty’s cinematography. The film boasts excellent lighting and compositions, familiar with the genre. We do have dark city streets, but we also have the open sea and a fishing boat. The plot has gangster Bruno Felkin (noir stalwart Richard Conte) murdering someone in the film’s opening frames, then finding himself on the run. We even have a bit of voice over, something the film drops before long. Since all roads and other means of travel, aside from water, are covered by the police, Bruno hides away on a fishing boat owned by crusty Swede Hamil Linder (Charles Bickford, by golly) and his son Carl (Alex Nicol). Rounding out the cast are Shelley Winters as Bruno’s girl, Connie Thatcher, and Stephen McNally as Lt. Kelsey. The script has some fine moments, especially when Connie and Lt. Kelsey are onscreen. Conte’s Bruno is a stone-cold murderer with a soft heart, if you can get you mind around this. His time on the fishing boat makes him appreciate hard work, and he comes to admire Hamil, while seeing just how much of a sap Hamil’s son Carl is. Bruno serves as something of a mentor to Carl, both in a bad way and a good way. The plot has Bruno saving Carl, literally. As noirs go, this one is well worth watching.

For the Defense (1930), directed by John Cromwell.  Suave William Powell plays slick William B. Foster, a hot-shot defense lawyer who thinks he is above the law. He also thinks his girlfriend, Broadway star Irene Manners (Kay Francis), will stay with him despite his wish to remain unmarried. He is wrong on both counts. Something of an early film noir, For the Defense finds lawyer Foster caught in a tangle he cannot extricate himself from. His conceit catches up with him. Irene accidentally kills a man while she is driving one night. The man with her takes the blame, and Irene asks Foster to defend this man. This is where things go awry, as you would expect. Kay Francis and William Powell make a fine couple. The film has something to say about corruption in the judicial system, and it does this efficiently. Cromwell’s use of back projection is excellent, especially for a film made in 1930. All in all, this is a slim film that holds up well.

Take One False Step (1949), directed by Chester Erskine. William Powell and Shelley Winters make a strange pair in this man-on-the-run movie about a university professor, Andrew Gentling (William Powell), who runs into an old flame while in Los Angeles on a fund-raising trip. The meeting does not go smoothly, and Gentling finds himself in a jam, a suspect in the old flame’s disappearance. Why he does not simply go to the police and give his account of meeting Catherine Sykes (Shelley Winters) is beyond me. But if he had, then we would not have the story of his attempt to prove himself innocent, his encounter with a mean German Shepherd, his night time meeting with a hoodlum resulting in fisticuffs, his wild ride in the night ending with a bump into a tree and a barking dog, his tense meeting with a young boy while stopped in a lineup of vehicles being checked by the police, his close encounters with two police detectives, played by James Gleason and Sheldon Leonard, and his final encounter with Ms Sykes. As noir films go, this one is flimsy, but fun. As we would expect, William Powell fits the role of a professor well. As for Shelley Winters, she manages the whiny inebriate irritatingly well. Chester Erskine ain’t no Hitchcock, but he manages to give us an engaging film, thanks to an entertaining cast.

 

Chicago Confidential (1957), directed by Sidney Salkow. This is a neat combination of police procedural and film noir. It stars Brian Keith as Jim Fremont, state’s attorney, and Beverly Garland as fiancé and secretary of Artie Blane (Dick Foran). Blane is a union boss framed for murder by racketeers who want to take over the union for their nefarious purposes, girl smuggling being one of them. The film has a voice over by an unknown narrator, some dark streets, and noir shenanigans. The cast has several familiar faces, especially Elisha Cook, Jr, as Candymouth Duggan, a drunk who finds a murder weapon and becomes tangled with the bad guys and does not end well. Other familiar faces include Douglas Kennedy as Blane’s rival for top boss of the union, Jim Bannon as a pilot, Beverly Tyler as Sylvia Clarkson, a witness for the prosecution, Dennis Moore as the jury foreman, and Jack Lambert as a tough bad guy. Much depends upon the forensic people being able to identify a voice on a tape recorder. We see police work up close. This film offers familiar fare for its time, but it does so with verve. Satisfying.

The Body of My Enemy (1976), directed by Henri Verneuil. What distinguishes this film is its structure. It slides back and forth in time to tell the story of Francois Leclercq (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man wrongly convicted of murder who, as the film begins, has served seven years in prison. He returns to the town of Cournai, a textile centre that has changed considerably since Leclercq went to prison. Of course, he is seeking revenge on those who framed him. From this beginning, we move back in time to Leclercq’s childhood, then his rise to nightclub owner and lover of the town’s wealthiest man’s daughter, Gilberte Liegard (Marie-France Pisier), all the time keeping the story going in the present. The film is stylish in a Seijun Suzuki sort of way, with a hulking former bouncer turned cross-dresser and female dominatrix, a performance by Frida de Dusseldorf, la strip-teaseuse, and impressive locations. The story has a noirish tone. Instead of Gauloises, Belmondo smokes Marlboro cigarettes to remind us of the American noir connection. The target here is the bourgeoisie. Leclercq’s hatred of the wealthy is what has motivated him since childhood. All if this is well and good, except that all the characters, including Leclercq, are unlikeable. The young woman Leclercq meets near the end of the film may be an exception, although her naivete is likely going to derail her life as the last shot fades away.

Sudden Fear (1952), directed by David Miller. This RKO thriller has an excellent final twenty-five or thirty minutes. The finale is set up with a sequence in which Myra Hudson Blaine (Joan Crawford) thinks through her plan to murder her cheating husband, Lester Blaine (Jack Palance), and pin the murder on Lester’s lover, Irene Neves (Gloria Grahame). In her imagination, Myra’s scheme works like clockwork (a clock does feature prominently). Of course, when she tries to make her plan work in actuality, things go wrong, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine. Anyway, why is Myra setting out to “do in” her husband. Well, he is a cad of the highest order. He is also a good actor. But the main reason is that he is planning to do away with Myra in order to get her fortune for himself and his girlfriend, and Myra knows this. She knows because of a dictation machine that has inadvertently recorded a conversation between Lester and Irene in which they declare their love and resolve to arrange an “accident” for Myra. Much of this is reminiscent of Hitchcock. Crisscross, get it? The final minutes are well worth waiting for, and the longer build-up to the suspenseful climax is not without interest, especially if you find the facial expressions of Joan Crawford engaging. We get many close-ups of Ms Crawford. Mind you, we also have a number of shots that allow Jack Palance to express menace or concern or affection. The film is often taken as an example of film noir, and the final sequence does have all the attributes of noir, askew camera angles, lighting, dark streets, and so on. The earlier part of the film, however, is thorough melodrama, shot with full lighting, bright rooms or sunny days.

 

Crime Against Joe (1956), directed by Lee Sholem. This low budget noir has ambitions that do not quite make the grade. The story gives us war veteran and would-be artist Joe Manning (John Bromfield) who finds himself in a pickle after a night of drinking, a night in which he not only goes on a bender and has a fight, but in which he also kindly escorts a sleep-walking woman home. That same night, a woman is murdered, and Joe had been seen talking with her in a bar. Joe is accused of the crime and arrested. A local girl who works at a drive-in, Frances ‘Slacks’ Bennett (Julie London), gives Joe an alibi. He is allowed to go free, but only until the girl’s alibi for Joe proves false. To make matters worse, the father of the sleepwalking young woman lies to the police about seeing Joe that night. Then we have the matter of Joe’s “battle fatigue,” what we would now call PTSD. We have much to-do about a high school pin found at the scene. Ultimately, the mystery is not particularly mysterious. There are three characters Joe thinks may have killed the woman, but I figured out early on that none of these fellows were the perpetrator. The actual killer is someone else who proves not too difficult to discover. The cinematography is quite good and the location shooting in Tuscon is impressive. All in all, a serviceable little noir.

 Few films for November/Noirvember.

The Finger Man (1955), directed by Harold D. Schuster. Ex-con Casey Martin (Frank Lovejoy) agrees to help the authorities nab mobster Dutch Becker (Forrest Tucker). Becker is the person responsible for Lucille Martin (Evelyn Eaton) becoming a drug addict. This is quite a tough little noir with brutal beatings and the murders and disfigurement of two women. The film also sports Timothy Carey as Lou Terpe. Carey is well known for his portrayal of psychopaths and crazies. Obviously made on a shoestring, the film does manage to create the noir atmosphere of dark streets and alleys and dodgy nightclubs. Lovejoy’s voice-over also adds to the noirish elements. Noirish elements, however, do not make this an A-grade film. It is watchable, but also predictable. I have always liked Frank Lovejoy, but I confess he makes a bland hero. Peggy Castle, however, shines in her role as Gladys Baker, Casey’s girlfriend.

Motherless Brooklyn (2019), directed by Edward Norton. Set in 1950s New York, this film is a contemporary spin on the gumshoe/noir films of the 40s and 50s of the last century. It has much of the swagger of those dark contemplations of post-war America: gritty city streets, dark nightclubs, fedoras, smart dialogue, and corrupt power brokers. As well as noirs such as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, I am reminded of Huston’s Chinatown. What differentiates this film from those early exercises in noir is its take on masculinity. Here our hero/anti-hero is less the tough guy quick with either his fists or his gun, than he is the sensitive and even tender guy with a troubled past. He also has Tourette’s syndrome, something that has made him an outsider for much of his life. Norton’s performance as Lionel Essrog (even his name differs markedly from those early gumshoes such as Marlowe and Spade) is fascinating, nuanced, and intense. He is the “Motherless Brooklyn” announced in the title; this is a moniker given him by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), his boss, his mentor, and his friend. The plot has to do with real estate in New York. We have a New York Commissioner of various things, Randolph Moses (Alec Baldwin), who eagerly destroys the neighbourhood of Black people in order to build a high end building or just to push through a new motorway. Sound familiar? The world Norton creates is compelling and nicely relevant to the world we still inhabit in its greed, lust for power, and racial bigotry. I like this film.

The Madonna’s Secret (1946), directed by Wilhelm Thiele. And she shall keep it to her grave! This is the one about the tortured artist whose female models have a habit of ending up in the nearby river, whether this river is in France or in New York. Noteworthy here is the cinematography by the inimitable John Alton. As for the plot, it rambles all over the place, first following a city theatre critic, then taking up with one of the artist’s models who keeps appearing in the artist’s pictures looking like a previous model. Then the current model finds her way to the river and her sister shows up. Then we have the wealthy collector of husbands who offers herself as a model until she too makes her way into the river, not to return. And did I mention that the artist has a strong relationship to his mother? The film has elements of noir (how could it not with Alton behind the camera?), murder mystery, and romance. It is something of a mish-mash. Characters come and they go. I wonder what happened to the theatre critic who styled himself after a dapper William Powell. Still and all, we have Alton’s camera to make the proceedings worthwhile. And we have the furious scenes as the artist drives his boat in wild fashion on that nearby river.

Guilty Bystander (1950), directed by Joseph Lerner. Ex-cop Max Thursday is on the skids. He has a job as house detective in a sleezy hotel run by Smitty (May Boland). But mostly Max is inebriated. One night his ex-wife drops by to ask for help; their child has gone missing in a possible kidnapping and her brother is also missing. The plot has some murky moments, but on the whole things are clear enough. The world is typically dark and edges towards sadism. Especially effective is J. Edward Bromberg as the insouciant crime boss, Varkas, who seems to spend his time taking his pulse and downing a variety of medicines. Zachary Scott as Max works hard and brings, perhaps, just a bit too much enthusiasm to his role as the inebriate detective. Some of the camera work is suitably shadowed and twisted. The scene in the subway is vintage noir. All in all, a representative work in the genre, although for the life of me I cannot figure out who the guilty bystander is. The torn cigarette package is worth contemplating.

 

The Scarf (1951), directed by E. A. Dupont. If there is such a thing as a baroque film noir, then The Scarf is it. “The doctor is allergic to irrelevant laughter.” This is one line I remember from the film, but the script is laced with such niceties. The plot has an escapee from a penitentiary for the insane holding up at a turkey farm in the desert and forming a friendship with the farmer. Then on a trip to town for turkey feed, he finds himself meeting the inevitable dame, and they go for a ride, stopping for a picnic or something. Is he innocent or guilty? Is he sane or insane? We will find out, but not before some goings-on outside of town and in town, even in LA. John Ireland plays the man on the run and Mercedes McCambridge is the woman he meets. She has a job at a bar called Level Louie’s, and Level Louie also enters the story, along with the turkey farmer who plays a cello and assorted police and doctors. The characters are refreshingly original. The film is raw and fascinating. So what if things are preposterous, this is an interesting entry in the noir cycle. Mercedes McCambridge even sings while tending tables and wearing a gingham dress.

 

Private Hell 36 (1954), directed by Don Siegel. This is a low budget noir from master of the slick narrative, Don Siegel. We have a rather well-worn plot that involves two detectives who happen upon a box of stolen loot. One pockets a couple of small stacks of the money (Steve Cochran as Sgt Cal Bruner); the other wants nothing to do with such thievery (Howard Duff as family man Sgt Jack Farnham). You can predict what transpires as things go from bad to worse. Overseeing the proceedings is Police Cpt Michaels (Dean Jagger) who provides the voiceover at the beginning and end of the film. Then we have the two women, domestic housewife Francy Farnham (Dorothy Malone) and nightclub chanteuse Lilli Marlowe (Ida Lupino, who also was one of two screenwriters for the film). The whole affair has something of a Dragnet feel, as Lilli remarks at one point. Everything is stripped down, and the film moves along at a sluggish pace, especially in the middle when the two detectives and Lilli spend days scouting local racetracks on the lookout for the crook. Siegel manages to bring a certain minimalist style to proceedings. Note, for example the huge liquor bottles that decorate the nightclub. Then we have the trailer park, with trailer number 36 serving as the place where Bruner stashes the loot. The relationship between Bruner and Farnham has the whiff of something more than friendship, one peripheral character remarking to Bruner, “Your boyfriend’s a little over-prepped for the job,” and Lilli noting that “This is the first time I’ve ever lost a man to another man.” In other words, Siegel manages to create interest from the most basic of material.

 I haven't been here for a while. Here is a grab bag of films for early November.

He Who Gets Slapped (1924), directed by Victor Seastrom. This film marks the first appearance of the MGM lion. It is a melodrama starring Lon Chaney as He – the circus clown who gets slapped hundreds of times to the delight of the circus audience. Before he was He, this fellow was Paul Beaumont, a scientist working on the origins of mankind. He discovers this origin, but when he goes before the prestigious assembly of scientists to present his findings, his benefactor Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott) steals the show and presents Beaumont’s findings as his own. When Beaumont protests, Regnard slaps him and the assembled greybeards laugh uproariously. Next Regnard proceeds to seduce Beaumont’s wife, who also slaps him. Beuamont retreats to the circus where he becomes the clown, He – who gets slapped. Here he falls in love with the circus trick rider, Consuelo (Norma Shearer). She, however, is in love with her riding partner, Bezano (John Gilbert). You can see how things get complicated. Consuelo’s father sells his daughter to the slimy Baron Regnard. He knows Consuelo does not love him, and he sets out to rescue her from a marriage she does not want with the Baron. How he does this is to arrange for the Baron and Consuelo’s father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall), to be mauled to death by a circus lion. (Is this the MGM lion at work? I do not know.) Production values are excellent, and Lon Chaney has never been better at eliciting the audience’s sympathy. This is a fine example of silent cinema.

Hot Water (1924), directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. This one is a turkey! Well, let me rephrase, this one has a turkey in one of its extended scenes. It also has a "ghost" sequence. Here's how Wikipedia describes the plot:

"Episodic in nature (effectively three short films merged into one), the first episode features Hubby winning a live turkey in a raffle and taking it home on a crowded streetcar, much to the chagrin of the other passengers. The second features Hubby grudgingly taking the family en masse out on his brand new Butterfly Six automobile, and the third is an escapade with his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The third segment almost qualifies the film as a horror movie, as in it, Hubby mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law, and when she starts sleepwalking later, he thinks she's a ghost haunting him."

Girl Shy (1924), directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. The film has Harold Meadows (Harold Lloyd) working for his father in a tailor shop. Harold is painfully shy and has a terrible stutter. Only the sound of a whistle can stop the stutter. Harold is also an aspiring writer; he is writing a book that recounts his many love affairs and his various methods for seducing women. He is the Cave Man with Flappers and the Nonchalant with Vamps. Anyway, he finds himself on a train sitting beside a beautiful young woman who has a small dog she has to keep hidden because the train line does not allow dogs on board. You can imagine the gags that ensue. As always, the biggest set piece comes at the end, and here it is Harold's mad dash in as many conveyances as you can imagine to get him to the young woman's palatial house where she is about to be married to a cad who is already married to another woman. The ending is reminiscent of a somewhat later film, The Graduate. Those who have seen The Graduate will have an excellent idea how Girl Shy ends.

Continuing our Harold Lloyd festival, we watched Dr. Jack (1922), directed by Fred Newmeyer. In this film, Dr. Jack believes less in medications and more in physical activity and positive thinking to restore his patients to health. And his least concern is receiving money for his services. He manages to get two old fellows from the doldrums by boxing and with music. He rescues a doll from a well. He cures an ill boy who does not want to go to school. He perks up an elderly lady by getting rid of her medicines and bringing home her grown son. He also drives a car, gets out of it while it is running, and walks in front of it to clear cattle before getting back in. He rides a bicycle that lacks its chain. Anyway, you understand. The plot has him cure the Sick-Little-Well Girl and also fall in love with her. In order to remove her from the clutches of the sourpuss doctor who has prescribed medicines and total rest, something akin to what we have in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," Dr. Jack brings some excitement into the young woman's life. He does this mostly by assuming the disguise of a hunchback, fanged, long-haired, and black cape clad robber who flits about the premises causing mayhem. All this is amusing, if not hilarious. It reminds us of a time when doctors made house calls and put health before profit.

 

Harold Lloyd's second sound film is Feet First (1930), directed by Clyde Bruckman. The story tells of likeable young man, Harold Horne (Lloyd). He is something of a milquetoast. He works in a large shoe store, and is trying to move from stock boy to salesperson. His superior at the store says he needs more "personality," and so he takes a six month course in Personality. He also meets the daughter of the company he works for, although at first he does not know who she is. We have a series of mishaps that follow familiar sight gags of silent cinema until Harold finds himself in Los Angeles on the side of a building high above the busy city street. If this sounds familiar, it is. The last long sequence in the film reprises the famous sequence with the clock high on a building in Lloyd's Safety Last (1923), possibly his most famous film. Here there is no clock, but there is a painter's platform with two burly painters on the roof pulling the platform up and letting it down, all the time Harold rolls, falls, clutches, scrambles, and so on to save himself. He gets amusing assistance from a person he calls "Charcoal," and this part of the wild sequence is the most unfortunate part. Enough said. Frances and I kept focusing on Harold's right hand, knowing that he had lost a good part of it in an on-set explosion some ten years or so earlier. His physical agility is quite amazing, and the high-on-a-building sequence remains thrilling. Of the three most prominent comedians of early cinema - Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd - Lloyd made the most normative move into sound film. Feet First is amusing and shows a distinct connection to the films that went before.

We have been watching Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin comedies on Friday evenings, and last evening we decided to watch a few of Buster Keaton's short films. We watched The Boat (1921), and The Paleface, The Electric House, The Blacksmith, and The Frozen North, all from 1922. At this same time Keaton made a few of his genuinely funny and creative films such as Cops, The Balloonatic, and Seven Chances. These three films are among the best silent comedies ever made. The five we watched, however, are not among Keaton's best - by any stretch. They do have their interest. For example, The Frozen North is a surreal parody of the likes of William S. Hart and Erich von Stroheim, although its casual violence strikes me as unsettling. Or take The Paleface, a film that makes an attempt to present Native people in a positive manner, but cannot overcome the White man saves natives plot and the familiar stereotypical presentation of Indigenous people. The Paleface makes for uncomfortable viewing. The Boat gives us a variety of gags that stem from Buster's attempt to take his family on a boat trip. The boat, like the engine in The General, provides Buster with a location for his antics and he wrests as much humour from this location as he can. But somehow what we have is not nearly as inventive as Buster's work in The General. The Electric House has its moments, in a Chalpinesque way, with Buster playing an electrician who fixes a large house with electronic gadgets. And finally The Blacksmith in which Buster creates a shock absorbing saddle for a horse, a device that is as ugly as it is ungainly. Buster also fits the horse for shoes, using a brannock device.

 

Friday night Chaplin: from Keystone, Between Showers (1914), Recreation (1914), Cruel, Cruel Love (1914), and from Mutual, Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917), The Rink (1916). The first three from Keystone show Chaplin at the beginning of his film career and the films rely on mayhem, pratfalls, punches, and general rowdiness you would expect from the studio responsible for the Keystone Cops. The humour is more than broad and crude, but there are flashes of what is to come. While Chaplin worked for Keystone, he also in 1915 signed with Essanay and later with Mutual. The second of the three films here are from the Mutual period when Chaplin worked with Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell. These films show a marked change for the better in both plots and action. Chaplin is now perfecting his choreography and timing, and experimenting with his character. For example, in Easy Street the Tramp joins the police force, and he single-handedly cleans up the constant brouhaha that takes place outside the Easy Street Mission. We are also seeing a more pointed commentary on both the working class and the wealthy class. In The Cure, a well-to-do Chaplin, taking a trunk full of booze, enters a rehab centre for the rich. You can guess what happens once that trunk is opened. Chaplin often plays a tipsy character. In these two films Chaplins looks at both ends of the economic spectrum. In The Rink, the classes come together in that Charlie's Tramp character finds himself among the wealthy crowd enjoying a skating party. In The Rink we see his balletic prowess on roller skates, something he will reprise much later in Modern Times (1936).