Noir City Northwest: Loophole (1954)/Crashout (1955)

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The curtain came down on the Seattle roadshow edition of Noir City with two crackerjack movies that can only be screened theatrically due to the efforts of the Film Noir Foundation. (Reminder #1: Donate here.)

In Loophole, regular Joe bank teller Barry Sullivan is the victim of a 50K robbery so shocking that he initially doesn’t report the loss. Once he does, he becomes the prime suspect in the heist, with a relentless insurance investigator (Charles McGraw) dogging his every move. The movie doesn’t get off to a promising start with a voiceover that’s like an endless Dragnet intro written by Ed Wood. But as soon as the money goes missing, the screws tighten. Loophole features something you seldom see in ‘50s crime dramas: a healthy marriage, with Sullivan and Dorothy Malone in it together and bucking each other up. Mary Beth Hughes is the brassy broad in pedal pushers calling the shots. But the movie works as well as it does because of McGraw’s cop-turned-company-man Gus Slavin. He’s so implacable and destructive it’s like being pursued by a Mack track and an earthquake at the same time.

Crashout had been sold to me in a major way, both by host Eddie Muller and my friend Christa Faust. And justifiably so. Crashout is a deranged delight, a banquet of brutality, and the most entertaining film of the festival. (Here’s Christa’s valentine to film noir, her contribution to the For the Love of Film (Noir) Preservation blogathon. Which reminds me: donate here.)

You know you’re in for something special when a movie begins with thirty men beating feet out of a prison. Screw the planning and the tunnel digging! Only a half-dozen of them make it out alive, and what a rogues’ gallery they are. William Bendix as the wounded mad dog leader, noir favorites William Talman, Luther Adler and Gene Evans after a share of his hidden bankroll, a ferocious Arthur Kennedy as the outsider along on a pass. It’s an uncommonly harsh film for its era, both physically and psychologically; not only is each escapee undone by his own weakness, but the people they meet on the outside are bitterly disillusioned. This includes Gloria Talbott, heartbreaking in a bravura sequence as a girl who is made to understand in more ways than one that the world is a cruel place, and, be still my heart, Beverly (Wicked Woman) Michaels. Crashout is a repository of hardboiled philosophy, with lines like “It takes all kinds to make a world. Especially suckers” and “Every day you live is the day before you die.” It was a hell of a way to end a fantastic week.

It’s been my pleasure to attend these movies and to work with my lovely wife Rosemarie at the Film Noir Foundation booth in the SIFF Cinema lobby. I can personally attest that we were kept jumping before every show, and sold out of more than a few items. My thanks to Eddie, SIFF, and the festival’s sponsors.

It was a pleasant coincidence that this year’s Noir City Northwest overlapped with the For the Love of Film (Noir) Preservation blogathon. I’ve been thrilled to participate and awed by both the caliber of the contributions and the organizational savvy of our hostesses, Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren.

And now my last pitch. If you’ve enjoyed these posts or are a regular reader of the noir-heavy content of this blog, please donate to the FNF. They are doing extraordinary work not only preserving America’s cinematic history, but making it available to entirely new audiences. All week Reverend Muller was out at Seattle area schools, preaching the noir gospel. Noir City fests are now in San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., with new venues coming. Make a contribution so that you’ll have a chance to go out to a theater and see pristine prints of movies that deserve to be remembered. Maybe you’ll get to hear an audience member, completely caught up in a 57-year-old film, gasp “Oh, shit!” at a plot twist long thought forgotten. There’s nothing else like it.

Noir City Northwest: The Woman on the Beach (1947)/Beware, My Lovely (1952)

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Robert Ryan is one of the actors most closely associated with noir. His uncanny ability to play rage and sorrow simultaneously, each feeding the other to create an electric mood of danger, made him a natural in movies about the dark side of life. Night six of the festival showcased two of his lesser-known performances in a pair of rare titles.

The same year that Ryan played the murderous bigot in Crossfire – the movie that netted him his only Oscar nomination and led to his being typecast as a brute – he appeared in The Woman on the Beach, one of the few American films directed by French master Jean Renoir. A test screening proved so disastrous that Renoir mercilessly hacked almost 30 minutes out of it. What remains is both haunting and haunted, often nonsensical but frequently fascinating.

Ryan plays a Coast Guard officer still recovering from wartime trauma. The opening nightmare sequence is astonishing: Ryan falls through the water, surrounded by the silhouettes of battleships, then walks across the ocean floor over the bodies of dead men toward a bewitching siren. What follows may seem prosaic in comparison but is every bit as bizarre, as Ryan is drawn into the dynamic between a once-famous painter, now blind (Charles Bickford) and his wife, muse and prisoner (Joan Bennett). Bickford is wonderful, playing notes of Zen hostility. And Renoir makes excellent use of a shipwreck as both location and metaphor. His elliptical approach to character and Ryan’s readily accessible pain could have worked in perfect concert, but in the wake of the editing the film never establishes a rhythm. It’s the celluloid equivalent of the phantom limb theory. Watching it, you’re constantly aware of what’s missing.

By contrast Beware, My Lovely is crude but undeniably effective. It’s a straight suspense piece, a two-hander that allows Ryan to go head-to-head with fellow noir stalwart Ida Lupino. She’s the war widow who hires itinerant handyman Ryan for the day, unaware of why he’s constantly on the move. Soon she’ll be trapped in her home just as he’s trapped by his erratic impulses. You’ve seen the story before – Rosemarie referred to it as “claptrap,” and she liked it more than me – but this rendition works thanks to the leads. Lupino fleshes out frustrated decency, while Ryan does extraordinary things with his eyes as slights register and thoughts fade. You’re on the edge of your seat wondering what he’ll remember and what he’ll forget.

One more night, Seattle. Come on down to SIFF Cinema. As usual, Eddie Muller has saved the best for last.

Noir City Northwest: The Dark Mirror (1946)/Crack-Up (1946)

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The For the Love of Film Preservation blogathon is not only rolling along, it’s getting attention. Specifically from Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott and, on this morning’s editorial page no less, the New York Times. Head over to Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren for all the contributors. And, as always, click on the link at the top of this post to make a donation.

As for Tuesday night’s fare at the Seattle run of Noir City we return to the evil twin well, a trip from which no one ever comes back thirsty.

The Dark Mirror opens with what ought to be an open-and-shut case: a dead doctor, with multiple witnesses swearing his fiancée fled the scene. The problem is that said fiancée (Olivia de Havilland) has an identical twin, and neither is talking. The detective in charge (Thomas Mitchell, finding gold in what could be a rote characterization) can’t abide a perfect crime, so he sics besotted psychologist Lew Ayres on the twosome. And as he works his magic with inkblot tests, jealousy rears its ugly head.

The movie is a field day for de Havilland, aided by monogrammed accessories, chokers that are hard to swallow, and the epic rivalry with her own sister Joan Fontaine. Robert Siodmak, who pound for pound has to be the best director in noir, pulls out all the technical stops in allowing his leading ladies to work opposite each other. But for all their efforts the film never rises above the level of exercise. The script by producer Nunnally Johnson is a few twists short and, like Ayres’ character, a bit too pleased with itself. An entertaining but essentially hollow film.

When I saw Crack-Up several years ago I couldn’t get past the notion of hale two-fisted Irishman Pat O’Brien as an internationally recognized authority on fine art, casting that rivals Jack Palance as Fidel Castro. But as Eddie Muller pointed out the filmmakers have fun with the idea, making O’Brien’s George Steele an ex-military man who tracked down Nazi swag turned populist arbiter of taste. Steele smashes his way into a museum, jabbering about how he has survived a colossal train wreck that, naturally, never happened. As friends and colleagues alike begin doubting his sanity, Steele scrambles to find the truth. Irving Reis directs the train sequences phenomenally well, and there’s a memorable scene at a penny arcade that captures the post-war era in amber. Herbert Marshall’s quicksilver charms are ably deployed, and Claire Trevor is at her clotheshorse best. Crack-Up is based on a short story by the great Fredric Brown, so you know you’re in for a ride even if George Steele may not be.

Two nights left. Come on down to SIFF Cinema and watch me return to my retail roots, selling Film Noir Foundation goodies in the lobby. Even better, buy some of it.

Noir City Northwest: A Double Life (1947)/Among the Living (1941)

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Monday night’s Noir City twin bill managed to demonstrate how flexible the term noir is, while dishing out the strongest dose of crazy yet.

George Cukor isn’t commonly associated with film noir. Neither are urbane husband and wife screenwriters and frequent Cukor collaborators Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon (Adam’s Rib, Pat and Mike). Yet the mood and form of the genre were so prevalent in late 1940s Hollywood that they used the genre’s trappings to tell a gripping story of the theater in A Double Life. Successful stage actor Anthony John (Ronald Colman) is given the opportunity to direct and star in his cherished production of Othello on Broadway. But over the course of the show’s run, with his ex-wife Signe Hasso as his Desdemona, the line between actor and role becomes dangerously blurred. It’s about a performer driven deep within himself to realize his greatest artistic challenge at the risk of his psyche. Or as Rosemarie put it, “It’s the original Black Swan.”

The Kanin/Gordon script is a sophisticated marvel, making cunning use of Shakespeare while finding room to give sharp dialogue to even the most minor characters. Cukor matches their efforts, allowing the sound design to convey much of Anthony John’s descent into madness. His attention to the mechanics of stagecraft is also a joy. All of these efforts support Ronald Colman’s spectacularly nuanced, Oscar-winning performance, full of so many details of life as both a working actor and a celebrity. Where A Double Life falls in the noir pantheon is an open question, but there’s no denying that it’s a magnificent film.

From the sublime we leap past the ridiculous to land squarely in the WTF territory summed up by one of the finest phrases in the English language: evil twin.

Eddie Muller described the genuine curio Among the Living, which has never been on home video in any format, as “proto-noir.” I’d push it even further back. It represents the primordial ooze from which noir dragged itself before sizing up the talent and ordering a drink. It’s Southern Gothic horror with a few nods in noir’s direction. New York businessman Albert Dekker, who looks like Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter put together, returns home for his father’s funeral and discovers that his “dead” brother has been living in the basement of the family’s ramshackle homestead for decades.

Dekker insists on using Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion voice for the sinister sibling, but the effects of the boys together hold up. The movie starts out bad, thanks largely to Harry Carey’s performance as a lousy doctor who’s an even worse philanthropist. Then it turns good, with director Stuart Heisler bringing solid craftsmanship to Dekker’s clip joint collapse and his stalking of his next victim. Then it veers into so-bad-its-good with a climax involving the most dubious legal proceeding ever. The work of former Jean Renoir cinematographer Theodore Sparkuhl is an asset throughout, and a young Susan Hayward makes an impression as a firecracker. At the very least, Among the Living proves that the definition of noir can be stretched to the point that it snaps, and someone loses an eye.

Noir City Northwest: Angel Face (1952)/The Hunted (1948)

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Today marks the start of the For the Love of Film Preservation blogathon, with the proceeds going to the Film Noir Foundation. My thanks to Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren for organizing and hosting the event, and especially for choosing the FNF as this year’s beneficiary. Visit their sites for links to a host of bloggers writing about noir.

More to the point, click on the very first link to make a contribution to the FNF, which will go to funding a restoration of the film The Sound of Fury. I don’t ask for much, kids. But if you’re a regular reader of the blog, please kick in a few dollars to the cause. Any amount you can give, no matter how small, will help to preserve one of America’s most lasting artistic movements.

And now, on with the show ...

Angel Face was the film in this year’s lineup that I was most interested in revisiting because ... well, it always left me cold. Odd, considering it stars noir titan Robert Mitchum and is directed by Otto Preminger. The plot is certainly solid. Ambulance driver Mitchum responds to a suspicious accident at a swank L.A. manse and finds himself drawn into the web of poor little soon-to-be-rich girl Jean Simmons, who comes complete with wicked stepmother (victim of the aforementioned accident). The legal maneuvering by Leon Ames thickens the plot nicely, and if you judge a film by its ending then Angel Face should be gangbusters. Yet I’d found the proceedings curiously low-boil and never quite compelling.

But Eddie Muller was on hand with valuable background. He screened the film in Los Angeles with Jean Simmons in attendance but not in the audience, because she found watching Angel Face too painful. Over a Big Mac in the green room, she recounted why. Producer Howard Hughes, angry over Simmons’ spurning of him, put her in the film to end her contract but told Preminger to make the production a living hell. Simmons seems to have taken an actor’s revenge, offering a realistic and internalized portrayal of obsession in a film that cries out for an over-the-top approach. The resulting tension isn’t fully satisfying, but it is interesting. And there’s much to appreciate throughout. Especially those last few minutes.

The Hunted is an example of the FNF at its best. Once upon a time there was an ice skater turned actress known as Belita, who didn’t particularly enjoy ice skating or acting. She appeared in a trio of noir films, and at some point in each of them the action literally stops cold so Belita can take a turn on the ice. Eddie has written the definitive piece on Belita’s strange career. It’s also available in the Noir City Sentinel Annual #2, which additionally includes several pieces by yours truly.

In The Hunted Belita plays Laura Mead, freshly sprung from a jolt in Tehachapi after being sent there by her boyfriend, Detective Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster), for her role in a jewelry heist. Insisting on her innocence, Laura went to prison vowing to kill the men who destroyed her life. Now she’s out, and Saxon watches her closely even as he falls for her all over again. Things start slow, particularly with a mind-boggling expository scene between the two leads that seems longer than Inception. But the film builds up a head of steam thanks to a script by pulpmeister Steve Fisher that toys with every femme fatale convention. Belita has an authentic presence, abetted by a sleek athletic build that makes her look unlike any actress of the era. Only a misfire of an ending keeps this from being a true sleeper.

Because of the Film Noir Foundation, all three of Belita’s films have been preserved on 35mm so that future generations can ponder her mystery. Which reminds me to ask you again: go up top, click the link, and make a contribution. You won’t regret it.

Noir City Northwest: They Won’t Believe Me (1947)/Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)

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The storms outside were no match for the turmoil that raged during Noir City night two.

Host Eddie Muller branded They Won’t Believe Me as one of the most unfairly neglected noirs of the 1940s. It’s so neglected that I’d never heard of it before. A brilliantly cast against type Robert Young takes an homme fatale turn as a cad who has married well (to social X-ray progenitor Rita Johnson) but still fools around on the side. First with Jane Greer, then with Susan Hayward. Johnson, every bit as warped as her husband, simply moves them to a new house in a new town whenever she learns of his dalliances. Young tells his tale of woe – three women, you poor bastard? – from the witness stand during his trial for murder, but who exactly did he kill? (I’m not an attorney, but here’s some legal advice: when on trial for your life, do not wear a light-colored suit.) The script, by one of my screenwriting heroes Jonathan Latimer, does such a deft job of slipping the twisted sexual psychology past the censors that it’s disappointing when some of the second act plotting gets muddled. All is saved by a humdinger of an ending, compromised though it may be. As is typical of films produced by Hitchcock protégé Joan Harrison, you end up feeling sympathy for all of the players no matter how loony they are.

Don’t Bother to Knock opens with airline pilot Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) getting the heave-ho from his hotel singer girlfriend. But Jed spots another potential conquest in a nearby room and decides not to waste any time. Little does he know that Nell Forbes (Marilyn Monroe) isn’t a wealthy hotel guest but an emotionally devastated young woman working as a babysitter, one who has little interest in tending to her charge. Monroe established herself as a dramatic actress in this film, playing the extremes of her character with skill; her vulnerability breaks your heart even as you genuinely fear for the little girl temporarily in Nell’s care. As good as this movie is I find it tough to watch, because Monroe’s fragility here is so hard to separate from what we know about the actress in real life. Anne Bancroft makes her screen debut as the chanteuse, her earthy sensuality providing a bracing contrast to Monroe’s damaged availability. Jed doesn’t deserve either woman, but together they make him a better man.

Noir City Northwest: High Wall (1947)/Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

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Noir City kicked off its fifth Seattle edition last night to a packed house. Master of ceremonies Eddie Muller began by commenting on the importance of preserving movies in their original form. “Scratch ten feet of a film and you can still show it. Scratch a DVD and you can toss it out.” Or as we learned later, in a short documentary about the Film Noir Foundation’s restoration work, “Digital lies. Film doesn’t.”

High Wall proves a perfect case study. The movie is available from the Warner Archive, but only through the efforts of the FNF is there a preservation print that can be screened publicly. The movie warrants such a print for historical reasons but also for entertainment value. It impresses me more each time I see it.

Robert Taylor, in his best performance, plays a wounded WWII veteran accused of murdering his wife during a memory blackout. He’s sent to a mental hospital, where he initially resists treatment to avoid going to trial. But the efforts of comely headshrinker Audrey Totter convince him otherwise. The movie is a shrewd blend of crime drama – the machinations of the real killer Herbert Marshall are so well thought out you almost root for him – and social issue picture, with some affecting scenes inside the asylum. Having the stolid Taylor battle for his sanity instead of one of the usual noir suspects adds to the film’s impact. Frank Jenks scores as Pinky, the drunk roped into Taylor’s desperate bid for justice. Bonus points for having one of Audrey’s fellow psychiatrists live with his mother.

If it’s historical value you want, you’ll find it in the evening’s second feature. Stranger on the Third Floor is widely regarded as the first film noir. It’s a standard B movie (usual disclaimer that “B movie” is not an indicator of quality but running time), but one with startling eruptions of German expressionism. After his testimony condemns a man – and not just any man, but Elisha Cook, Jr. – to the electric chair, reporter John McGuire works himself into a guilt-induced frenzy spurred by the appearance of the titular alien (Peter Lorre). McGuire tries and convicts himself of the murder of an obnoxious neighbor in a bizarre but compelling dream sequence, then awakes to discover the neighbor really has been killed. It’s up to McGuire’s gal, the strikingly modern Margaret Tallichet, to track Lorre down. The clash of naturalistic acting and director Boris Ingster’s baroque visuals renders the entire enterprise cheerfully nuts. Which is appropriate, considering that this year’s theme is Who’s Crazy Now?