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.