film noir

NOIR CITY 23: a musician walks into an alley…

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Elvis Presley and Carolyn Jones in KING CREOLE.

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 16 and runs through January 25 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The 23rd edition of the festival showcases noir and neo-noir movies with and about musicians. After all, how many guys start off playing in a nightclub and end up face-down in the gutter?

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person..

Noir Ciry 23 features films with real-life musicians Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Louis Armstrong, Keely Smith, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Hoagy Carmichael, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peggy Lee, Oscar Levant, Dave Brubeck, Charlie Mingus, Mel Torme and many more. It turns out that Elvis, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others, could really act when they chose to.

Of course, movie characters in the classic period of film noir inhabited a jazz-infused world, so films in the Noir City program feature plenty of movie stars playing musicians: Kirk Douglas (Young Man with a Horn), Rita Hayworth (Gilda), Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not),John Garfield (Humoresque), Mickey Rooney (The Strip), Frank Sinatra (playing a trumpet player in The Man with the Golden Arm).

Sammy Davis, Jr. in A MAN CALLED ADAM

Highlights include:

  • King Creole (1958): If you think that Elvis Presley never made a good movie, you haven’t seen this outstanding MIchael Curtiz crime drama. Elvis plays an impoverished wannabe singer who becomes entangled in the New Orleans underworld when he attracts the romantic interest of a sultry Bad Girl (Carolyn Jones), whose boyfriend is the local gangster kingpin (Walter Matthau). Jones, now best remembered for her campy Morticia in The Addams Family, had 44 previous screen credits, but only one as the female lead in a feature film. Besides future stars Matthau and Vic Morrow, the cast features past Oscar-winner Dean Jagger and the reliable noir stalwart Paul Stewart. The Good Girl is played by Dolores Hart, the only Elvis co-star to become a nun in real life. This was Elvis’ favorite of his movie performances, and his charisma, deployed in a grown-up story, makes us wonder what might have been had he returned to well-written screenplays.
  • Hangover Square: As with Elvis, we wonder what might have been, had not star Laird Cregar died at 31, when early weight loss surgery went wrong. Cregar’s rare combination of tortured magnetism and hulking menace dominates this noir set in Edwardian England.
  • A Man Called Adam (1966): In this hard-to-find gem, Sammy Davis Jr. plays Adam, a self-destructive jazz star. Adam draws people in with his talent and charisma, and, racked by guilt, pushes away those closest to him with selfish and cruel behavior. Claudia (Cicely Tyson, in her first screen credit) is drawn to Adam and tries to save him, anchoring herself in the roller coaster of his life. Remember that, after all the ups and downs, a roller coaster always ends at the bottom. Tyson absolutely commands the screen in two great speeches which reveal she is going to be a movie star. Louis Armstrong is very good here as an actor, and Sammy, a multi-instrumentalist who did perform with the trumpet looks credible as a musical prodigy. The best musical performance in A Man Called Adam is by Mel Torme, playing himself at an after-hours musicians party.
  • All NIght Long (1962): This is Shakespeare’s Othello, set in the jazz world of 1962 London – and with real jazz stars and real jazz music. When the musicians show up for the jam, they include none other than Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck – and a slew of top British jazz musicians, too. The juicy Iago role of drummer Johnny Cousins is played by Patrick McGoohan (Secret Agent, The Prisoner).
  • Pete Kelly’s Blues (1966): In real life, Jack Webb of Dragnet fame was a bona fide jazz enthusiast. Webb directs this story in which he stars as a speakeasy’s bandleader, amid mobbed-up nightclubs, alcoholism and murder. Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald perform, and the cast includes Janet Leigh, Edmond O’Brien, Lee Marvin and Andy Devine. Watch for Jayne Mansfield as the cigarette girl.
Patrick McGoohan in ALL NIGHT LONG

As always, Noir City features films that are not available to stream: so Noir City is your best chance to see them:

  • Hangover Square (1945)
  • The Strip (1951), with one of Mickey Rooney’s most naturalistic performances.
  • The Crimson Canary (1946), a very hard-to-find Brit noir.

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

ACT OF VIOLENCE: stunned into terror and self-loathing

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Van Heflin (right) in ACT OF VIOLENCE

You could argue that Act of Violence is the single most underrated film noir, because a story of moral relativity and situational ethics is told as a thrilling man hunt, with two career-topping performances and a starkly photographed nighttime chase through Los Angeles’ seamy Bunker Hill. Just like the top tier films in the film noir canon, Act of Violence has it all. I’m writing about it today because it’s playing on on Turner Classic Movies on Friday night, and it’s not available to stream.

WW II vet Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a successful developer with a new bride and baby, popular and prominent in his community.  Then, the sunny prosperity of the postwar boom – and Frank Enley’s life – is shattered by the arrival of Joe Parker (Robert Ryan), a guy with a trench coat, a limp and an obsession. Parker’s limp is only the physical manifestation of a psychological wound from the war. While in the same Nazi prisoner of war camp, Frank took an action that Parker believes cost the lives of their buddies. Parker has come to town to kill Frank as retribution.

In the extremity of a Nazi prisoner of war camp, Frank was faced by a situation with no good choices; he knows (correctly) that few in 1949 America will be able to see his action in that context. Because he would instantly lose his standing in the community, he can’t call the police. Now Frank is plunged into both the terror of being killed and self-loathing because he thinks he deserves it,

Frank flees in a panic, going underground in Bunker Hill, a far cry from Frank’s bright, well-tended suburb. Dazed by the position he finds himself in, Frank tries drinking, but there isn’t enough booze in LA to quell his terror. He encounters the world-weary prostitute Pat (Mary Astor), who hides him in her apartment while she figures out how to bleed some money from him; she connects him with a couple predatory bottom-feeders (Barry Kroeger and Taylor Holmes) who may be more heartless and lethal than Joe. All the time, Joe Parker is closing in, right up to the unpredictable climax.

There’s no question that Ryan’s Joe Parker is the villain here, but you can make the case that it’s Frank Enley who committed the unforgiveable and that Joe is the avenging angel, here to deliver justice.

Remarkably versatile for a leading man, Van Heflin was so good in war movies (Battle Cry) and westerns (Shane, 3:10 to Yuma) and corporate drama (Patterns). He may have been his best in classic film noir (Johnny Eager, The Kid Glove Killer, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Possessed, The Prowler and East Side, West Side) and the neo-noir Once a Thief. Underrated in his lifetime and overlooked today, Heflin was naturally relatable (but very scary in The Prowler and Once a Thief). Topped by his staircase scene with Janet Leigh and his wild stumble to Pat’s apartment, Heflin captures all of Frank’s stunned desperation and self loathing despair; in my book, Heflin never surpassed his performance in Act of Violence.

Mary Astor in ACT OF VIOLENCE

Mary Astor was one of the very most beautiful humans as a teenager, and was 35 when she played the alluring Brigid O’Shaughnnessy in The Maltese Falcon. Astor was 42 when she made Act of Violence, and she looked the part Pat, with all of the mileage on her, without any vanity, . Capturing all of Pat’s exhaustion, cynicism and ambivalence, Act of Violence rates with The Maltese Falcon as Astor’s finest performance.

Pat’s sordid apartment and the grimy joint where she drinks and picks up customers seem so much farther from Frank’s well-trimmed suburb than the actual distance of a few miles. It’s a milieu that has worn out Pat, and she knows it; she’s about to move and try another town.

Pat’s sense of morality is flexible. What she does for a living is illegal although it’s a victimless crime. She tries to milk as much money out of each man she meets. But she has her limits; she’s ok with bleeding some money from a rich guy like Frank, but, while she might tolerate fraud or blackmail, she won’t countenance murder.

Ryan’s single-minded, relentless and cruel Joe Parker would be the best thing in most movies, but the performances by Heflin and Astor are for the ages. Ryan is off-screen for the most chilling moment in the film, when Pat, holding the telephone receiver, relays Joe’s reaction to Frank’s buyoff offer.

Van Heflin and Janet Leigh in ACT OF VIOLENCE

Frank’s wife is played by a 21-year-old Janet Leigh, in only her second year of screen acting. Leigh is excellent as a fresh-faced, naive young woman who could never have imagined the situation she faces now.

Barry Kroeger and Taylor Holmes really elevate Act of Violence with their supporting turns. Kroeger’s shark-like grin is very scary, and Holmes is an even more venal lawyer (disbarred this time) than the one he played in Kiss of Death.

Van Heflin, Mary Astor and Barry Kroeger in ACT OF VIOLENCE

Act of Violence came early in the career of director Fred Zinnemann, who had debuted impressively with The Kid Glove Killer and was only four years away from his masterpiece, High Noon. As an A-lister, he went on to direct iconic films like From Here to Eternity, Oklahoma! and A Man for All Seasons, garnering seven Best Director Oscar nominations and winning for The Sundowners. Another thriller, The Day of the Jackal, is my personal favorite Zinnemann film.

Cinematographer Robert Surtees’ remarkably varied body of work included Oklahoma!, Ben-Hur, PT 109, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Collector, The Graduate and The Last Picture Show. Surtees was not known as a noir DP, but he brought out all the obsession, desperation and shabbiness of this story. No one ever lit and photographed Bunker Hill any better.

Van Heflin in ACT OF VIOLENCE

Robert L. Richards (Winchester ’73) adapted the screenplay from a story by Collier Young.

Remember, you can’t stream Act of Violence, so make sure to DVR it this Friday on Turner Class Movies. 

Van Heflin in ACT OF VIOLENCE

SUDDEN FEAR: twelve minutes of movie perfection

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Joan Crawford in SUDDEN FEAR.

The riveting final twelve minutes of the 1952 film noir Sudden Fear is movie perfection. Now, it’s a pretty good movie for the first hour and thirty-eight minutes, but its ending takes Sudden Fear up a couple of notches.

Here’s the set-up – a highly successful woman (Joan Crawford) marries a guy (Jack Palance) who really just wants her money; he plots with his longtime girlfriend (Gloria Grahame) to do in his wife for the inheritance. The wife discovers their scheme, and plans to get them before they can get her.

The wife has sneaked into an apartment when the husband unexpectedly returns, and she becomes trapped and defenseless in a closet, just hoping against hope that he won’t discover her. The tension mounts as he putters around the apartment, and there’s an ingenious use of a wind-up toy to build even more suspense. After several excruciating minutes, her cover is blown, and she manages to bolt. As she runs for her life through the hilly sidewalks and alleys of San Francisco, he careens after her in a large sedan.

Jack Palance in SUDDEN FEAR.

In this extended sequence, there’s almost no dialogue except for his yelling her name. The storytelling rises to the level of Hitchcock’s, and the storyboard could be taught in film school.

Director David Miller directed over forty features, many with big stars (Billy the Kid with Robert Taylor, Flying Tigers with John Wayne, Twist of Fate with Ginger Rogers, and The Story of Esther Costello with Crawford and Two decades later, he directed another thriller, the cheesy and tasteless conspiracy movie Executive Action with Burt Lancaster. But there’s nothing in his body of work that would indicate that Miller could create those twelve minutes of perfection in Sudden Fear.

Miller had a lot of help from cinematographer Charles Lang, who makes the best of the shadows and the natural Dutch angles of San Francisco’s sloped streets. Lang went on to shoot two of the most iconic film noirs, Ace in the Hole and The Big Heat. Lang had lots of ucess outside the noir genre, too: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Some Like It Hot, The Magnificent Seven, One-Eyed Jacks, The Flim-Flam Man, Wait Until Dark. Lang was nominated for an Oscar for his work in Sudden Fear, as were Crawford, Palance and costume designer Sheila O’Brien.

Jack Palance in SUDDEN FEAR.

I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but even I recognize the power of her best two scenes here. In the first, she silently listens to a conversation between the two plotters, and her face registers the changing emotions as she connects the dots. In he climactic scene, she recognizes what she can and cannot do, and changes her course of of action, but then, initially frozen with terror, must rally herself to escape from her husband. The sequence concludes with a final close-up that is vintage Joan Crawford.

Gloria Grahame in SUDDEN FEAR.

Palance, oozing physicality and intensity, is perfectly cast. Grahame, whose performance is very understated next to Crawford’s and Palance’s, is excellent.

Sudden Fear can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango and is free on kanopy; it also occasionally plays on Turner Classic Movies.

Jack Palance and Joan Crawford in SUDDEN FEAR.

NOIR CITY is here – don’t miss these three femmes fatale

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
Photo caption: Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

Tomorrow, the Noir City film fest opens at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland and runs through February 2. This year’s program showcases the women of film noir – which femme is the most fatale?

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person, this year with his TCM colleague Alicia Malone.

Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET
Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET

It’s a great program of 24 movies over ten days, jam packed with unforgettable female performances that span from the iconic (Jane Greer in Out of the Past) to the seductive (Claire Trevor in Murder, My Sweet) to the, well, savage (Ann Savage in Detour). Here are three of my personal favorites that you should not miss:

  • The Narrow Margin, Noir City’s opening night film with Marie Windsor. In this taut 71 minutes of tension, growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. McGraw might be film noir’s toughest Tough Guy, but Windsor gives him all the tough he can handle, and matches him snarl for snarl. “Relax, Percy, I wouldn’t want any of that nobility to rub off on me”.
  • 99 River Street with Evelyn Keyes and Peggy Castle. Film noir tends to be about guys with bad luck, but nobody would trade their luck with Ernie Driscoll (John Payne). Ernie has lost his boxing career to a fluke cut and his abusive and slutty wife (a suitably insufferable Castle) to a mobster, and, now, he’s been framed for a murder. His only hope is to track down the Real Killer while driving around with the murdered corpse in his cab. Evelyn Keyes plays a Good Girl would-be actress who goes along for the ride; problem is, Ernie can’t tell when she’s acting. Nobody can keep ’em guessing like Evelyn Keyes.
  • Cry Danger with Rhonda Fleming. Rocky (Dick Powell) has been released from prison; he knows he didn’t commit the crime, but he knows that his alibi is phony, too. Trying to figure out who framed and unframed him, he seeks out an old flame, his partner’s wife Nancy (Rhonda Fleming).  The exquisitely beautiful Nancy is as wholesome as anyone can be with a hubbie in the hoosegow.  We know that. if she turns out to be a femme fatale, it’s going to be a major punch in the gut for Rocky. Bonus: Rocky’s wing man is the perjuring alibi witness (an indelible Richard Erdman): “Occasionally I always drink too much.” It’s hard to top a frame, a drunk, a dame, hidden loot and an LA trailer park. This is not available to stream, so see it at Noir City.
Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming in CRY DANGER

Read my festival preview, NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale, which lists the twelve films from this year’s Noir City program that are NOT available to stream. Noir City is your best chance to see them.

I’ve written about The Narrow Margin, 99 River Street, Raw Deal, Caged, Cry Danger, The Prowler and Murder, My Sweet in my Overlooked Noir feature. Check them out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Don’t miss Noir City. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. Of the nine film festivals that I cover each year, I always insist on attending Noir City in person. To steal from Eddie Muller, see you in the shadows.

NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale

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Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET
Photo caption: Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 24 and runs through February 2 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. This year’s program showcases the women of film noir – which femme is the most fatale?

Come to think about it, noir is the only movie genre that practically REQUIRES a pivotal female character. You can make a western, a comedy, a sci fi, a war movie or even, these days, a romance without any women on the screen. But not a noir.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person, this year with his TCM colleague Alicia Malone.

Recent Noir City fests have introduced us to film noir from other countries and have sampled neo-noir. This year’s Noir City program goes back to the basics of American movies from the classic film noir period of the 1940s and 1950s. The program spans the genre, highlighting essential female performances, both famous and overlooked:

  • Out of the Past with Jane Greer manipulating Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in her most celebrated Good Girl/Bad Girl role.
  • The Narrow Margin: Charles McGraw might be film noir’s toughest Tough Guy, but Marie Windsor gives him all the tough he can handle, and matches him snarl for snarl.
  • Murder, My Sweet, featuring the Queen of Noir, Claire Trevor.
  • Raw Deal, where Trevor and the underused Marcia Hunt form a ménage a noir with poor Dennis O’Keefe. Two for the price of one.
  • 99 River Street: Nobody could keep the guys guessing more than the alluring Evelyn Keyes.
  • Tension with Audrey Totter as the most dismissive, humiliating, cuckolding wife in film noir.
  • Cry Danger and the ultra rare Inferno, with Rhonda Fleming, arguably the most beautiful American movie star of all time. When Rhonda goes bad, it’s a real gut punch for the sap.
  • Caged, the prototype for Orange Is the New Black. Eleanor Parker was the one nominated for an Oscar, but Hope Emerson, in an obviously LGBTQ role, steals the movie.
  • Detour: Ann Savage as perhaps the most rapaciously predatory and unhinged of femme fatales. One of the few Hollywood films where the leading lady was intentionally de-glamorized with oily, stringy hair.

Thirteen films on the program will be projected in 35mm.

Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Dennis O'Keefe in RAW DEAL
Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Dennis O’Keefe in RAW DEAL

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Hell’s Half Acre
  • The Sleeping City
  • Tension
  • Alias Nick Beale
  • The Long Wait
  • Raw Deal
  • Mary Ryan, Detective
  • My True Story
  • The Reckless Moment
  • Tomorrow Is Another Day
  • Cry Danger
  • Inferno

Next week, just as Noir City opens, I’ll be back to feature three Must See movies in the program. I’ve previously written about The Narrow Margin, 99 River Street, Raw Deal, Caged, Cry Danger, The Prowler and Murder, My Sweet in my Overlooked Noir feature. Check them out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

BLACK GRAVEL: too jaded for love?

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Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

On December 14, Turner Classic Movies airs the super hard-to-find German neo-noir romance Black Gravel. It’s not streaming, so this is your best chance.

In the German film noir Black Gravel (Schwarzer Kies), Inge, the beautiful German wife of an American military base commander, runs into the shady hustler Robert, her former lover. He is one cynical dude and an asshole, but he doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Their reunion is bad for her, bad for him and bad for everyone.

The most common situation in film noir is a guy who falls for a dame (or a dame who falls for a guy) to his ruin. The sap is infatuated and thinks he’s in love. Here we have two characters and the question is whether they are really in love. Robert insists that he doesn’t love ANYONE, even as he is trying to rekindle the romance with Inge. Inge insists that it’s over. But is it over – for either of them? That’s what – in the end – Black Gravel is really all about – noir romance

In the last twenty minutes, the circumstances swivel. Rarely has a movie plot swung as rapidly between They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught.

Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

Robert is played by Helmut Wildt, a German actor I hadn’t seen before. He is charismatic and confident, with a breezy swagger that reminds me of Ben Gazzara. The deeply conflicted Inge is played ably by Ingmar Zeisberg.

Anita Höfer, Helmut Wildt and Ingmar Zeisberg in BLACK GRAVEL

Black Gravel is set in a tiny German town corrupted by the presence of an US Air Force base, It’s the Phenix City of Germany, a sordid, trashy place. The character of Elli (Anita Höfer) is LITERALLY a slut.

Black Gravel is filled with tart observations of I Like Ike America, with its bland, conventional uniformity. The Germans are an amoral lot, reduced to leeching off the Americans. The Americans are clueless marks.

Helmut Wildt and Anita Höfer in BLACK GRAVEL

Note: A dog dies in the first minute of the film. I recommend that you don’t let this put you off this superb film; but, there it is, you’ve been warned.

The current version restores some bits that were cut from the film in 1961, supposedly as offensive to Jews. Those were probably the anti-semitic slurs uttered by unsympathetic characters; these slurs were not intended to debase Jews, but to illustrate the post-war continuation of antisemitism among Germans. (There’s some German racism in here, too). These are actually ANTI-antisemitic moments in the movie that were misunderstood at the time.

Unfortunately, it’s not streamable, but screenings can be booked from Kino Lorber, and it’s available for purchase in Blu-ray and DVD. I saw it at the 2020 Noir City.

Black Gravel was written and directed by Helmut Käutner. We don’t recognize this until late in the movie, but it turns out there’s no better noir romance than Black Gravel.

Helmut Wildt and Ingmar Zeisberg in BLACK GRAVEL

NOIR CITY returns, bringing darkness from abroad

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Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
Photo caption: Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 19-28 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The program for each night (or matinee) will present a double bill – one classic film noir from the US or UK, matched with one from Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan or South Korea. This year’s tagline is Darkness Has No Borders.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.

One of Noir City’s greatest gifts to noiristas, and to cinephiles in general, has been introducing us to previously unfamiliar foreign noir classics. It is ONLY because of Noir City that I’ve seen some of my favorite movies: Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems), Black Gravel, El vampiro negro (The Black Vampire), Ashes and Diamonds, La noche avanza (Night Falls), …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear and Girl with Hyacinths.

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Street of Chance (US)
  • Cairo Station (Egypt)
  • Victims of Sin (Victimas del pecado) (Mexico)
  • Black Tuesday (US)
  • Aimless Bullet (South Korea)
  • Plunder Road (US)
  • Without Pity (Italy)
  • Four Against the World (Mexico)
  • Across the Bridge (UK)
  • Strongroom (UK)
  • Murder by Contract (US)
  • Smog (Italy)

Not all the program is obscure. Here are three Must See classics:

  • Elevator to the Gallows: This is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first neo-noir.  It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old.  In 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. Totally original.
  • La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) and Human Desire: In this Murder-The-Jealous-Husband double bill, Jean Renoir’s classic La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) with the charismatic Jean Gabin and Simone Simon is paired with Fritz Lang’s remake, starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. Grahame projected an uncanny mixture of sexiness, vulnerability and unpredictability, perfect for this hard luck femme fatale; (the fact that Gloria was a Bad Girl in real life doesn’t hurt.) I have the Australian version of the Human Desire poster in my living room; the tag line is “She was born to be bad…to be kissed..to make trouble“, and the Aussie authorities have labeled it “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN“.
  • Le trou: This is the all-time best prison break movie, combining a riveting real-time escape procedural with a fear of betrayal that crescendos. Le trou is a true crime story, with three of actual participants consulting on the film and one of them playing the mastermind. It was the last film by Jacques Becker, who had directed Casque d’Or and one of the very best film noirs in any language, Touchez pas au grisbi.

Elevator to the Gallows and Human Desire are on my list of Overlooked Noir; check it out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in HUMAN DESIRE.

THE NARROW MARGIN: murderous hide and go seek on a train

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
Photo caption: Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

The overlooked film noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin (1952) is a taut 71 minutes of tension. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. It’s on my list of Overlooked Noir, and it’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on Friday, November 27 – set your DVR.

McGraw plays a cop assigned to protect a gangster’s widow on her way to testify against the mob. He immediately loses his partner to an ambush and will have to protect his cargo all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles by himself. His only edge is that the hit men don’t know what his target looks like.

The Narrow Margin has two very special elements. The first is the hardboiled dialogue between McGraw and Windsor and their performances. The second is director Richard Fleisher’s imaginative staging of the woman-hunt up and down the tight corridors and compartments of the train.

The screenplay is easily the best of veteran Earl Felton’s career, and he was nominated for an Oscar for this B picture. When McGraw, still in shock, reflects on the sudden death of his longtime partner, Windsor hisses, “Some protection they send me – an old man who walks right into it and a weeper”. McGraw resents having anything to do with her: “Sister, I’ve known some pretty hard cases in my time, but you make ’em all look like putty”. Later he snarls, “He’s dead and you’re alive. Some exchange.” But they’re both trapped together, and they’re not the kind to make the best of it – the great lines just keep coming: “Relax, Percy, I wouldn’t want any of that nobility to rub off on me”.

The Narrow Margin opens with trench coats and fedora, cigarettes and shadowed faces; when there’s gunfire, we know for sure that we’re in a noir. But then Fleischer moves it all onto the train, and we hear the sound from railroad airbrakes. Fleischer makes an early use of handheld cameras to maneuver around the tight spaces. There’s an especially innovative moment when a fight breaks out in a cramped train restroom – the bottom of a shoe flies up to camera level, then we’re under the sink as head is banged into wall.

The cast is uniformly good. I especially like David Clarke as a (gay?) hit man and Paul Maxey as a very fat traveler who keeps blocking the narrow corridors.

Of course, this is all fifty years before cell phones, and there’s a retro lo-tech moment where a slow-moving train leaves a message via hook to be wired.

Fleischer was a very versatile (and underrated director). When he shot The Narrow Margin, he was a 35-year-old rising director. The Narrow Margin was his sixth noir in five years. After The Narrow Margin, he moved to epics (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Vikings, Barabbas). He later made one of the very best WW II movies, Tora! Tora! Tora!, and the ahead-of-its-time dystopian sci-fi cult favorite Soylent Green. He even made the second Schwarzenegger Conan movie. His noir body of work (Bodyguard, Follow Me Quietly, Trapped, Armored Car Robbery, His Kind of Woman) is impressive, and, in my opinion, The Narrow Margin is his masterpiece.

The Narrow Margin plays frequently on Turner Classic Movies. It’s available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.  (Don’t confuse it with the inferior 1990 remake, Narrow Margin.)

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Director Richard Fleischer’s use of reflection

DECOY: the MOST FATALE femme fatale

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Photo caption: Ed Norris, Jean Gillie and Herbert Rudley in DECOY.

The obscure, low-budget Decoy is the first film that I’ve been unable to write about without spoilers, but you’ll still be able to appreciate it, even when you know some of what’s coming. It’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on Friday night, November 17. Decoy, one of my Overlooked Noir , is not available to stream, so set your DVR.

Decoy, from 1946, stands out from the rest of film noir (and from much of cinema) for two elements. The first is the most hysterically evil femme fatale ever. The second is that the plot pivots on a preposterous premise.

The ill-tempered Frankie Olins (Robert Armstrong) is on California’s death row because he killed a cop in a robbery. The robbery netted a huge fortune, which Frankie has hidden. Frankie refuses to disclose the location of his loot, because he wants to maximize the incentive for others to work for his release. Frankie’s girlfriend, Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie), is two-timing him with another vicious hood, Jim VIncent (Ed Norris), who is bankrolling Frankie’s legal appeals, They hope to get Frankie out of prison to recover the loot, and then steal it from him. Alas, the appeals go for naught, and Frankie is about to be executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber, taking his secret with him to the grave.

At this point, things get ridiculous. Margot and Jim revise their plan, pivoting to stealing Frankie’s body AFTER the execution and reviving him with a dose of methylene blue, an antidote for the cyanide used in the gas chamber. Now, the kernel of truth here is that methylene blue CAN be used as an antidote to cyanide poisoning in someone who is ALIVE. But, of course, methylene blue CANNOT reverse death by cyanide poisoning. But, indeed, the rest of Decoy’s plot is based on the resurrection of Frankie.

Margot and Jim manage to smuggle out Frankie’s corpse, and they force the earnest, do gooder Dr. Lloyd Craig (Herbert Rudley) to bring him back to life with methylene blue. Frankie unwisely draws a treasure map and is promptly removed from our story. Margot and Jim, with Dr. Craig driving his own car at gunpoint, head off to find and dig up the money.

At this point, Margot takes over the film. In Decoy’s final eight minutes, Margot is not only remorselessly murderous, but she’s sadistic as well. And she can even take pleasure in humiliating a man from her deathbed.

Jean Gillie in DECOY

As outlandish as Margot’s behavior becomes, Jean Gillie’s performance is fully committed. Her Margot actually rejoices in her own perversity. I’m serious when I rate Gillie’s Margot as the most evil femme fatale in cinema. Even compared to the Anne Savage role in Detour, and to the parts played by Cleo Moore in the Hugo Haas movies, she is the most depraved.

Gillie was an English actress who was married to Decoy’s otherwise undistinguished director, Jack Bernhard. That marriage broke up, and she didn’t like Hollywood. After her one major Hollywood movie, The Macomber Affair, supporting Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett and Robert Preston, she returned to England. Gillie promptly died of pneumonia at age 33.

Robert Armstrong is appropriately nasty as Frankie, and has a fun scene when he discovers that he has been resurrected. Thirteen years earlier, Armstrong played the human protagonist, along with Faye Wray, of King Kong.

The character of Jim Vincent is a one-dimensional thug, and Norris doesn’t add any other touches (as Dan Duryea would have).

Potentially, the best role in Decoy would have been Dr. Craig, who is a moral and decent man forced into misdeeds (and that resurrection) by evil people. He is psychologically ruined before he meets his end. There’s even a corny scene where the doc looks across his office, and the camera highlights the section of his medical oath that he is forced to transgress. By the midpoint of the movie, Herbert Rudley staggers around like a zombie as a Dr. Craig who is unable to fathom how his life could have been ruined in just one day. A better actor than Rudley could have brought more heartbreaking depth to this role.

Sheldon Leonard in DECOY.

One of the greatest delights in Decoy is Sheldon Leonard as the cop nicknamed Jojo, Police Sgt. Joe Portugal. Having put away Frankie, Jojo is watching Margot and Jim, waiting for the chance to nab them, too. He keeps showing up to pressure them, and he’s there at the end to pick up the pieces. Nobody could do out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth sarcasm like Leonard.

Leonard earned 109 film credits as an actor, the most memorable being the bartender Nick in It’s a Wonderful Life, Lt. Coyo in To Have and Have Not and Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls. Although he was a perfect fit for film noir, he was rarely as prominent as he was in Decoy and, a year later, The Gangster. Leonard’s biggest mark on American culture came as a television producer – he produced some of the most popular and iconic TV shows ever: The Danny Thomas Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, USMC and I Spy.

Decoy concludes with a startingly vicious act by Margot and then a very ironic ending (think Treasure of the Sierra Madre) when Frankie gets the last laugh.

Decoy is not a very good film, but it moves so quickly, and its two major elements are so astoundingly outrageous, that it’s fun to watch. Decoy is not currently available to stream. I watched Decoy on Turner Classic Movies.

Herbert Rudley, Jean Gillie and Ed Norris (around Robert Armstrong on the table) in DECOY.

NOIR CITY returns – and returns us to 1948

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Claire Trevor in RAW DEAL
Claire Trevor in RAW DEAL

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-29, 2023 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland – and for the first time since the 2020 pandemic – for its traditional full ten days.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.

Past Noir City fests have been built around themes, like international noir and heist cinema. In this year’s fest, all of the films were released in 1948. As an audience, we get to sample films from peak year in the Noir Era and appreciate film noir as a distinct movement within American filmmaking.

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Larceny,
  • The Spiritualist,
  • Road House, 
  • So Evil My Love,
  • Sleep, My Love,
  • The Hunted,
  • I Love Trouble,
  • Night Has a Thousand Eyes,
  • All My Sons,
  • The Velvet Touch,
  • Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, (my favorite title this year).
Richard Basehart in HE WALKED BY NIGHT

If you can make it for just one night, I’d recommend one of these four:

  • Friday, January 20 (Opening Night): Two classics that are famous for a reason – Key Largo (Bogart and Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor’s heartbreaking performance as a gangster’s moll aging out of her looks and an underappreciated supporting turn by Thomas Gomez) and The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles’ noir adventure with his glamorous ex, Rita Hayworth, and the stunning hall-of-mirrors climax). You’ve almost certainly seen both of these, but probably not in a vintage movie palace with hundreds of other noiristas.
  • Saturday, January 21: Three movies that I have not yet seen and are not streamable – Larceny (John Payne, Dan Duryea), The Spiritualist and Road House (Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, Cornell Wilde) – are sandwiching a more well-known film, The Big Clock, with Ray Milland being hunted down by the minions of the nefarious Charles Laughton.
  • Monday, January 23: Two more non-streamable films which I haven’t seen: So Evil My Love (Ray Milland) and Sleep, My Love (Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche in a noir?).
  • Saturday, January 27: Two of my favorite Overlooked Noir: Raw Deal (some of the best dialogue in all of film noir, a love triangle and the superb cinematography of John Alton) and He Walked By Night (more John Alton, with the LAPD hunting down a nerdy wacko).

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

Claire Trevor in KEY LARGO