800th Post Celebrations – A Film Noir Casebook

Although rare there are a few movie genres that I love unconditionally and will watch anything allocated under their gnarled aegis, regardless of the movies specific directors or stars, writers or critical prestige, I’ll always give them a chance regardless of fame, kudos, plot or origin. Casting your tired eyes over the past few years of activity on this quiet corner of the internet will reveal a deep affection for the horror and SF, fantasy or rather more accurately fantastical genres, but beyond those speculative frames there are other strands of cinema that I find deliriously intoxicating, as alluring and seductive as a cheap perfume in a lower West side flop-house – yes, I’m talking about Film Noir. As with one of my prefered choices of literature I’m infatuated with this specific subset of crime movies, and have been an ardent reader of James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Richard Price, James M. Cain and George Pelecanos plus numerous others since I was teenager, just give me a weary, cynical private eye half-cut on bargain-basement bourbon, a shambolic downtown office silhouetted in a blinking neon street advertisement and a mysterious, thermogenic dame offering time plus expenses for a job that might just violate that thin veneer of legality and I’m deliriously happy. Independent of these peccadilloes I find the genre fascinating as a historical movement, a genre that was instructed by a panoply of divergent forces both internal and external to the wider film industry, not many of the genres finest practitioners were even aware that they were contributing to this dark sister to the family friendly Hollywood melodramas, westerns and musicals of the era, it was only when European film critics were able to see a glut of foreign movies after 1945’s liberation that they detected a definitive, perceptible shift in American urban thrillers which they coined noir, and subsequent analysis over the years by cinema connoisseurs and early film students alike has identified the various constituents that defrauds this most fatal and fallen of all cinema movements.

Firstly there was the popularity of the cheap, lurid and trashy crime paperbacks that became popular in America and Europe during the period which formed much of the source material for the movies. Secondly the exodus of film talent to Hollywood from Europe, in particular the German expatriates from the UFA studios who fled the Nazi’s who brought with them both a predilection for expressionistic designs and a psychologically attuned, bleaker harmony to their art and designs that were co-opted and intensified when American filmmakers who were attached to the expeditionary force returned to the States after viewing the numbing horrors of World War II, most cruelly including the devastating horrors of witnessing the unbelievable inhumanity of the extermination camps. Thirdly were the technical innovations, as faster film stocks made the shooting more mobile, as lightweight cameras arrived promising easier location shooting in LA and to a lesser extent in New York was enabled, heightening that constantly strived for authenticity, and the emergence of faster capture rates also bred deep focus framing and compositions – leading to more nervous, collapsed and claustrophobic visual cues – and chiaroscuro lighting patterns which semiotically indicate the struggle of light and dark, offering a theatre of the soul against which these unsympathetic puppets struggle and twitch. That’s the real crux of properly tuned noir, these theatrical trappings are merely the subterfuge that obscures the real skinny, what we gloomy cynics really like in these films is their doomed ideology, the ideal of a cruel and inhospitable universe where all human mediations are transacted via greed or lust of any variety, an uncompromising nihilism that haunts these mean streets which are pregnant with menace.

I‘ve missed a few anniversaries over the past year (typical bloke eh?), I failed to celebrate my 750th post achievement a few months ago or last years 5th birthday in October, but given my current incapacitated circumstances there really is no excuse not to put some shady saturnalia together, so I’ve made an effort with this list of films which combines the well established with the slightly more obscure and marginal, with a few premiere viewings that I’ve shadowed over the past few weeks, just to keep this dossier as fresh as the blood smeared lipstick on a freshly clipped femme fatale. I’ve revisited the crime scenes of Double Indemnity and Out of The Past (AKA Build My Gallows High, is that not one of the greatest film titles ever?) to get the motors running, there is always plenty to admire in those pinnacles of the genre, but let’s begin with a less notorious suspect from 1946;

The Killers – Based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway this is a truly hardboiled noir, with neither introductory appearances by a doomed Burt Lancaster or manipulative Ava Gardner offering much in the way of spirits to root for – everyone’s got an angle, everyone’s looking out for numero uno, and no-one is to be trusted. After a terrifically atmospheric opening – see above – a flashback structure emerges as insurance investigator Jim Riordan (a cautious Edmund O’Brien) tracks down and interviews the culprits in Burt’s gang, enquiries that unfold against some terrific mood photography and a one take robbery that director Robert Siodmak stages with his consummate, prowling camera. A terrific start as this is essential viewing.

Out Of The Past– That scene is pure, uncut noir – the moody lighting, the weary voiceover, the sultry dame, the sexual frisson in a terrific dialogue exchange. part-time gumshoe Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) is despatched by syndicate heavy Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas in an early villain role) to bring back the feline Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) who has absconded with $40K of his earnings. Naturally Jeff falls for her feminine charms, and soon as the bodies start to pile up as she plays the panting stooges against each other, expressing an almost sexual thrill when the dumb marks start with the fisticuffs over her affections. Y’know, as the years roll by Robert Mitchum inches up my all time favourite actors list, along with some of the other old school figures such as James Mason, Robert Ryan and Jimmy Stewart he’s such a terrifically natural screen presence, barely perceptibly ‘acting’, it’s a whole other blog post but the lives some of these guys led before they made it in the movies are pretty crazy. An interesting anecdote, Jane Greer was being groomed as a starlet at RKO in the vein of a new Lauren Bacall, when Howard Hughes brought the studio and set up his own little casting couch harem she refused his amorous advances, thus her career was killed stone dead as although she remained on the lucrative studio payroll she barely appeared in any other movies. Best line, apart from the exchange at 4:07 above – ‘Y’know, a dame with a rod is like a guy with a knitting needle’…..

Crossfire – I’ve heard about this movie for years, it’s always cited as an influential early noir, but I’m afraid it left me a little cold. Sure the lighting was quite brave and extreme for its era but the plot concerning the murder of a Jewish businessman and the suspicion thrown on a group of drunken GI’s who have to piece the confused evening together with the help of a wily detective simply wasn’t arresting, if you’ll excuse a lame pun. It does however feature the delectable Gloria Grahame, one of the great all time noir dames with her slightly tainted, brittle exterior obscuring a compromised but decent soul, we’ll be seeing more of her later on….

This Gun For Hire – Here’s an oddity. Veronica Lake is a sultry and strange combination of nightclub singer and amateur magician as you can see above,  a bizarre espionage plot unfolds with some industrialists producing a new strain of military gas which degenerate and psychologically deformed criminal Philip Raven (Alan Ladd) has pinched the formula for through murderous means. It’s a disjointed, low-key entry to the genre with little in the way of compelling performances or incidents, but it an odd way it holds together as some gloomy WWII fable.

Murder, My Sweet – With a terrific title like that you suspect we’d be in Raymond Chandler territory, and you’d be correct. Dick Powell plays Philip Marlowe this time round, enmeshed in dual schemes to track down a hulking bruisers long-lost dame, and to track down a priceless jade necklace that a dark brunette, and her even darker blonde stepmother appear to have misplaced.  This has got a really dreamy, narcotic atmosphere as the divergent threads come together, with its misty scrubland out in the wilds and the smoky apartments and bars of downtown LA,  any film with lines such as ‘How do you feel Marlowe?…..Like a duck at a fairground’ or ‘She had a face like a Sunday School picnic…’ gets my vote.

Leave Her To Heaven – Although I’ve been aware of this strange beast – a film noir in crimson kissed Technicolor – this was a first time watch, despite long time champion Marty Scorsese extolling its merits for many years. Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) is a very, very jealous young woman who will not permit anyone to come between her and her beloved new husband, the author Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde), not even the prospect of his disabled brother or her own pregnancy will obscure her pathological instincts. Here’s a film that the Freudian’s seized upon with great vigour, from Ellen’s crimson seductive lipstick to her early confession that her new suitor is the spitting image of her dearly beloved father, this is quite a risqué number as it’s quite obvious that her homicidal jealousy is a manifestation of – well, now how can I put this delicately – by her overwhelming desire to get fucked senseless by her husband, with those repressed urges finding an alternate release of a rather horrific nature. The film has a strange, artificial pallor which reminds one of the decaying pigment on an old master, scratching beneath the surface to reveal the poison lurking below, with an icy plot twist that concludes events on a throughly surprising note I doubt even Hitchcock could have managed better with the source material and that’s praise which isn’t awarded lightly. Good to see Vincent Price in an early, non-horrific role as well and here is a fantastic article on the tortured career and life of Tierney, now a little known figure beyond us cineastes….

The Glass Key – This was another first time watch, although it transpires I wasn’t missing much. Dashiell Hammett provided the source code for this 1942 version of his mystery tale which was originally made in 1935 with George Raft in a starring role, it just goes to show that Hollywood has always been partial to remakes within a few years of a first innings. The backdrop this time round is politics, thus it just goes to show that even the most trustworthy and honest of professions is not free from the claws of this most nefarious of genres, as crooked politician Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) gets involved with the murder of his sisters degenerate gambler boyfriend, as his right hand man Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd) investigates the killing he gets embroiled with the sultry Janet Henry (Veronica Lake, her again), the victims manipulative sister. Well, it’s a serviceable enough film which doesn’t distinguish itself in any meaningful way, specifically any potential noir elements are distinctly undercooked which leads me to belive that the movie is given that  in an effort to get suckers like me to add them to the usual suspect list. Crucially there isn’t any  chemistry between Lake and Ladd, so it’s probably best to avoid this ones waterlogged charms…..

Double Indemnity – Now this is more like it. Bathed in the gloomy narration from our doomed mark and peppered with armour-piercing dialogue loaded by writers Raymond Chandler and director Billy Wilder this isn’t just one of the great film noirs, its one of the best American films of the forties. Phyllis Dietrichson (the poisonous Barbara Stanwyck) traps horny salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in her algific plot to kill her husband after implementing a lucrative life insurance policy. Some clever casting made this a big hit at the time – Fred MacMurry was primarily known as a Disney TV star, the equivalent of the Tom Hanks of the era and I’m fairly sure this is one of Stanwyck’s rare villain roles – this is one of the films that set the iconography for the medium as it slithers along to its predestined, promiscuous execution, also look out for  Edward G Robinson who steals the movie with his methodological dismantling of the conspiracy – it’s Wilder at his acidic best.

The Big Steal – Reuniting after the success of Out Of The Past five years earlier, this movie sees Lt. Duke Halliday (Robert Mitchum with the most ‘forties’ name I can recall) on the trail of some stolen GI payroll money, teaming up with the culprits disenfranchised wife Joan Graham (Jane Greer) the pair snake through Mexico in a film that’s more a caper / romance picture than a dark and moody film noir. It’s light and breezy, it speeds along with some adequate banter between the leads, but fades quickly in the memory and is of more interest to film fans as an early example of director Don Siegel at work, before he helmed the likes of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and later taught Clint Eastwood the basics of no-frills, direct, unflashy movie-making where the story trumps any artistic indulgences.  One face that this little exercise has brought to my attention is William Bendix, he’s put in an appearance in this and three or four others of the movies above, he was basically the go to guy for any heavy faced, big-lug, intellectually challenged gangsters muscle roles, he reminds of an earlier Peter Stormare, one of those stable, reliable actors whose quiet but essential contributions are frequently overlooked.

The Blue Dahlia – Chandler again, this time with PTSD suffering GI’s Alan Ladd and William Bendix back from the war only for the former to discover that his feline, femme fatale wife has transformed into an easy living party girl who now spends her time hopped up on the joy juice, and she accidentally killed their son in a car crash a few months earlier. When she turns up ventilated and his service issue revolver is found on the scene the suspicion naturally falls on her reluctant hero, with his buddies in tow will he be able to trace the real killer before the bulls take him down? The GI’s float through the film like rootless wraiths but its light touch noir again, the culprit isn’t difficult to guess and despite the noir trappings no real nest of malice is weaved,  although the film does have a great line which I’m going to try in the next bar I frequent – ‘I’ll have a bourbon back, with a bourbon chaser’…..

Since you asked my favourites apart from Double Indemnity and Out of The Past are Scarlet Street, The Lady From Shanghai, The Third Man, The Killing, On Dangerous Ground, The Big Heat, Detour, Stray Dog, Gun Crazy, Kiss Me Deadly, Odd Man Out, The Spiral Staircase and Secret Beyond The Door and of course Sunset Boulevard,  then when we get into the second phase of neo-noirs there are the obvious candidates – Blade Runner, Point Blank, Chinatown, Body Heat (which I revisited last year and it really stands up well), Brick, House Of Games, The Last Seduction, Thief, Klute, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, The Long Goodbye, The Grifters, LA Confidential, almost anything by David Lynch circa 1986 onward, and well, I’ll just stop there – it’s time to finally play catch up with some more recent releases.