Writer-director Rian Johnson’s gloriously inventive 2005 debut, Brick, was inspired by Johnson’s love of Dashiell Hammett’s novels and his own dark memories of high school.
Brick is a hard-boiled detective story, complete with a femme fatale and a plot right out of a Dick Powell classic noir like Murder, My Sweet or Cry Danger.
The genius of Brick is that it takes place in the teenage culture of 2005 San Clemente. The characters roam the isolated school corridors where the nerd eats lunch by himself, the drama room, the vice-principal’s office, the empty football field where kids can meet after school the party at the popular girl’s house. The kingpin crime lord operates out of his mother’s basement; he and his gang emerge upstairs in the kitchen where his mom supplies breakfast cereal and dispenses milk from a pitcher shaped like a chicken.
The dialogue is Hammettesque:
I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.
The ape blows or I clam.
Bulls would gum it. They’d flash their dusty standards at the wide-eyes and probably find some yegg to pin, probably even the right one. No cops, not for a bit
Brad was a sap. You weren’t. You were with him, and so you were playing him. So you’re a player. With you behind me I’d have to tie one eye up watching both your hands, and I can’t spare it.
The noir patter works because Johnson and the cast play it dead seriously, with no hint of irony.
In Nate Jones’ interview in Vulture, Johnson says “One thing I don’t believe in is the notion that this is a dusty old genre and you have to find a way to flip the old tropes on their heads. The basic machinery of it, the tropes of it, are why it works.”
Brick was at that point in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career, between Mysterious Skin (2004) and Lookout (2007), when it was becoming clear what a major talent he is.
Norah Zehetner in BRICK
The femme fatale is played by Norah Zehetner in an unforgettable performance. Zehetner works a lot, and did ten episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, but Brick may be her career-topper.
Rian Johnson went on to make another original feature with Gordon-Levitt, Looper, along with the 2017 Star Wars movie. Knives Out, Johnson’s new take on the drawing room mystery, hits theaters this weekend.
Brick is available to stream on Netflix, AYouTube and Google Play.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.
The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of the 2016 festival. The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.
Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.
In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.
Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).
Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.
I saw Frank & Lola in 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016. Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Make plans to attend Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 25-February 3. Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.
The 2019 Noir City will focus on film noir in the 1950s – from just after the genre’s peak to its transition into neo-noir. The festival tag line is, “Think the 1950s were buttoned-down and conservative? Think again.” The Film Noir Foundation has restored Trapped (1949), and the world premiere of the restored version will open the fest. Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see Trapped in sixty-nine years. Closing night will feature that most brutal and emotionally bleak of neo-noirs, Blast of Silence.
Three of the best films in the program are not available to stream, and five more are impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format. This year’s program features eight movies on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.
Noir City runs from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, February 3. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.
I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 23. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover the opening weekend.
There has to be a first of everything, and more scholars name Stranger on the Third Floor as the first film noir than any film. (Personally, I go with the more popular and influential The Maltese Falcon, released 14 months later.) Indeed, due to the groundbreaking cinematography of Nicholas Musaraca, Stranger on the Third Floor did pioneer the look of German Expressionism in an urban American crime drama – so it has the look of a film noir.
A go-getter reporter (John Maguire) is the witness who placed a murder defendant (Elisha Cook, Jr.) at the scene of the crime. The reporter’s fiance (Margaret Tallichet), however, can’t stop worrying that an innocent man is going to the air, so the reporter turns detective to find exculpatory evidence. Mid-story, a creepy loner (Peter Lorre) shows up – is he the real murderer, and a serial killer to boot?
The engaged couple is sickeningly lovey-dovey. This sappiness and the corny ending almost disqualfy Stranger on the Third Floor from noirdom. But the story does has some noir aspects.
For one thing, it is very cynical about the American justice system. Elisha Cook, at his most loserly, is convicted by an apathetic court jury. Everyone involved in the trial, including his own lawyer and the judge, can’t wait to send him to the chair so they can go to lunch.
Then there’s Lorre, sneaking around like a malevolent elf. It’s almost as if he is sending up his serial killer role in M. He practically holds up an “I Am a Serial Killer placard”.
Peter Lorre in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR
And the bland reporter hates his obnoxious neighbor so much that he has his own murder fantasies. His torment leads to a surreal nightmare. Most of the 1940 audience had probably never seen anything as bizarre as this dream sequence.
There’s also the voiceover interior dialogue so typical of film noir.
Margaret Tallichet, however, is very engaging. Her performance comes less than two years into her 43 year marriage to William Wyler, just before she left the movies to raise her kids.
And then there is Musaraca’s cinematography. There are shadows everywhere, most exaggerated during the nightmare scene. The faces are dramatically uplit. Musaraca really gives the film what was in 1940 an entirely fresh look.
In 1940, the Italian-born Nicholas Musaraca was already a Hollywood veteran, having operated cameras since 1923. Soon after Stranger on the Third Floor, Musaraca shot Val Lewton’s seminal horror films Cat People, The Seventh Victim and The Curse of the Cat People; the dark, dark look of those films also highly influential. Then Musaraca returned to noir with The Fallen Sparrow, Deadline at Dawn, The Locket, Out of the Past, Born to Be Bad, Roadblock, Clash by Night, The Hitch-Hiker, The Blue Gardenia, and Where Danger Lives. Along the way he shot films for Jacques Tourneur, Ida Lupino and Fritz Lang. All of these movies were before 1953. After 1955, Musaraca only worked in television, except for the 1957 noirMan on the Prowl.
In contrast, John Alton, the other great master film noir cinematographer didn’t get started in noir until noir’s high point of 1947-49, with his The Big Combo coming in 1954.
Turner Classic Movies will be airing The Stranger on the Third Floor on September 18. Or you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play.
the electric chair dream sequence in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR
Jane Wyatt amd Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
In The Man Who Cheated Himself, which I saw at the Noir City festival earlier this year, a cop falls for a dame who makes him go bad. But it’s not just any cop and not just any dame.
The cop is Ed, a seasoned and cynical pro who knows better. He is played by Lee J. Cobb, whom Czar of Noir Eddie Muller called “the most blustery actor this side of Rod Steiger”. Cobb is known for playing Juror 3, the primary antagonist to Henry Fonda, in 12 Angry Men and the ruthless mob boss Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront. Ed seems impervious to human emotion and says things like, “You’re a big girl. Cut the tantrums”.
The dame is the much wealthier – and married – socialite Lois (Jane Wyatt). Lois is a puddle of capriciousness and carnality. She has the same fluttery appeal as Mary Astor’s Brigid O’ Shaunessy in The Maltese Falcon.
Wyatt rarely got a chance to play as mercurial a character as Lois. Of course, she’s best known as the mid-century suburban mom/wife in Father Knows Best, rock steady and super square. Before that Wyatt worked in film noir, but not as the femme fatale. She was in Pitfall as the good wife that Dick Powell gets bored with when Lizabeth Scott comes along. In Boomerang! she was the heroic DA’s wife. She played the wife of a murderer who falls for her brother-in-law in House by the River and the sister in a message picture, Gentleman’s Agreement.
But in The Man Who Cheated Himself, Wyatt got to uncork more hysterical unreliability, sexual predation and neediness than in all of her other roles combined. You know when you see a woman and think, She’s trouble? Well, Lois is trouble.
For all of his world-weariness, Ed is really enjoying his affair with Lois. Despite knowing better, he is in deep. As he says, “She’s good for me. She’s no good, but that’s the way it is.”
Lois impulsively shoots her husband, and, in the moment, Ed makes the fateful decision to cover it up.
To complicate matters, Ed’s younger brother Andy (John Dall) has followed his brother on to the police force and just been promoted from walking a beat to detective. This murder is his very first case and he’s really eager to show his big brother proud. It turns out that Andy is smart and has the makings of a first class detective.
John Dall and Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
Writers Seton I. Miller and Philip MacDonald cleverly plotted The Man Who Cheated Himself so Ed and Lois get not one, but two, lucky breaks that make it look like they are getting away with it. But then Andy’s young wife and a CHP officer help Andy link the pieces together. Miller and MacDonald have embedded lots of humor in double entendres and absurdly close escapes. One of the funniest bits is an eyewitness, the earnestly unhelpful Mr. Quimby (Charles Arnt).
Are Ed and Lois going to get away with it? Well, this is noir. They find themselves cornered at Fort Point, the windiest spot on the west coast of North America, The notorious wind (actually underplayed in the movie) helps build the suspense.
Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
And what an ending! In their final encounter, Lois is going one way – the way that those privileged by wealth and good looks always go. Ed is going in the other direction – the way every noir protagonist goes when he falls for a bad dame. He lights a cigarette and their eyes lock wordlessly; when she leaves, we see in his eyes whether it was all worth it.
The noir in The Man Who Cheated Himself comes from the falling-for-the-wrong-woman theme and the snappy, sarcastic dialogue. There’s no noir camerawork with looming shadows, venetian-blinds-across-the-face and cigarette smoke dancing to the ceiling here.
But there are plenty of glorious mid-century San Francisco locations – hills, mansions of the nobs, grittier streets and the waterfront (back when it was a sketchy working port). It’s the San Francisco that I remember as a child in the 1950s, with women wearing gloves during the day and human-tended toll booths at the Golden Gate Bridge (when the toll was collected northbound, too!).
And, odd for a San Francisco-set noir, it is definitely not fog-shrouded. The day I saw The Man Who Cheated Himself was one of those gorgeous sunny days that San Francisco gets in the winter – and that’s what the movie looks like.
The Man Who Cheated Himself’s director was the otherwise undistinguished journeyman Felix Feist. Feist made a handful of other noirs, including The Threat with Charles McGraw as a vengeful hood, Tomorrow is Another Day with an irresistible Ruth Roman and The Devil Thumbs a Ride with Lawrence Tierney. Then Feist left the movies to direct over seventy episodes of TV shows.
The raison d‘être of the Noir City film festivals is to raise money for the Film Noir Foundation’s restoration of classic film noir. The FNF just restored The Man Who Cheated Himself so it could be seen again in a theater for the first time in decades. It’s not yet available to stream, but Turner Classic Movies will air it on Muller’s Noir Alley series on June 23 and 24.
Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
This Friday night, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, the masterpiece of director Burt Topper, who specialized in low-budget exploitation movies. It’s on my list of Overlooked Noir.
First, we see that lonely lab tech Otto Kroll (Victor Buono) is twisted enough to murder random women and then return to his lair to fondle his doll collection. Then we learn his motivation – he dutifully visits his hateful mother (Ellen Corby – later to play Grandma Walton) in her room at the convalescent home; she heaps abuse on him in every interaction. Pretty soon, even the audience wants to kill Mrs. Kroll, but Otto sneaks around taking out his hatred for his mom by strangling other women.
Because Otto is outwardly genial to a fault, it takes a loooong time to fall under the suspicion of the cops. The character of Otto and Buono’s especially brilliant and eccentric performance elevate The Strangler above its budget and launches it into the top rank of serial killer movies.
Victor Buono and Ellen Corby in THE STRANGLER
The Strangler, which plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies, is NOT available for rent from Netflix or streaming providers. You can buy the DVD from Amazon or find a VHS on eBay.
Betty Grable, Carol Landis and Laird Cregar in I WAKE UP SCREAMING
As a tribute to the Noir City festival of film noir in San Francisco, my DVD of the Week was just featured at Noir City. In I Wake Up Screaming, the promoter Frankie (Victor Mature) discovers the hardscrabble beauty Vicky (Carole Landis), and seeks to turn her into a star. She gets her Hollywood contract, but leaves Frankie behind with a pile of nightclub tabs and furrier bills. Vicky turns up murdered, and the cops, led by the menacing Cornwell (Laird Cregar) try to pin the crime on Frankie. Frankie and Vicky’s sister Jill (Betty Grable in a rare dramatic role) try to find the Real Killer. They discover that Frankie isn’t just a convenient suspect, he is being framed – and the stakes get higher as they race the cops to solve the crime.
As befits a noir, we see gritty diners, top end nightclubs, the police interrogation room and an all-night theater. When the light goes on in the den of a stalker, set up as a shrine to his victim, it’s a jaw-dropping moment. I Wake Up Screaming is on my list of Overlooked Noir.
This is Laird Cregar’s movie. Cregar’s hulking and insolent Cornwell dominates every scene that he’s in, and several times he makes us literally jump. Cregar understood how to use his size and looks to intimidate. Cornwell is almost buoyant as he explains to Frankie how he intends to ruin Frankie’s life. But when Cornwell doesn’t know that he’s being watched, he drops his chin and lapses into an open-mouthed stare at Landis. This is a very early and groundbreaking portrayal of a stalker. There are early hints to his unhealthy obsession, but nothing prepares the audience for the revelation of just how unhealthy it turns out to be.
Cregar was an immense acting talent. A closeted gay man and overweight, he was uncomfortable in his own skin. Sadly, aspiring to become a leading man, he died suddenly from damage caused by a quackish, extreme diet. (At the time, no one could foresee Raymond Burr’s path – playing film noir heavies and later becoming a huge star on TV.)
Betty Grable, Carol Landis and Victor Mature in I WAKE UP SCREAMING
In her brief career, Carole Landis was usually cast based on her impressive, top-heavy figure. Here, she brings some nuance to the role of Vicky, for whom there is more going on than apparent. She’s far more than the Eliza Doolittle that Frankie thinks she is. It’s later revealed that she can get what she wants from a slew of men and that she can make a canny and ruthless business deal. She cheerfully cuts Frankie out of his Return On Investment with an “it’s just business” attitude. Landis was only 23 years old when she made I Wake Up Screaming. After four stormy marriages, she committed suicide at age 29 – right after boyfriend Rex Harrison refused to leave his wife for her.
The hunky Mature went on to spend an entire decade shirt-free in sword-and-sandal movies. Of course, Grable would soon become the favorite pin-up girl for the US military in WW II. The most unintentionally funny part of I Wake Up Screaming is when the two decide to top off a date with a late-night swim at a NYC indoor pool. It is easy to visualize the studio brass ordering the poor screenwriters to somehow get Grable and Mature into their swimsuits.
Before getting stuck in beefcake roles like Samson, Horemheb the Egyptian and Demetrius the Gladiator, Mature proved himself to be a pretty fair noir hero, especially in 1947’s Kiss of Death. He’s good here. So is Grable, without any singing or dancing (although she did have a song in a deleted scene on the DVD). Film noir favorite Elisha Cook, Jr. has a role that seems small but juicy, until it becomes pivotal.
Scholars place 1940’s Stranger on the Third Floor as the very first film noir. Released in 1941, I Wake Up Screaming is a very early noir, along with The Maltese Falcon, Johnny Eager, Suspicion, High Sierra and The Shanghai Gesture. Director H. Bruce Humberstone and cinematographer Edward Cronjager did not become giants of noir, or even notable noir artists, but their lighting was impressive. Cregar often lurks in the shadows, and when he doesn’t, we usually see his shadow, often dwarfing another character. Cregar also gets the horizontal shadows of Venetian blinds across his face. At least three times, characters turn on the light to find that another character has slipped into their apartment – yikes!
The exposition in I Wake Up Screaming is pretty muck by-the-numbers. The primary appeals of the film is the proto-noir style, the matter-of-fact sexiness of Landis, the easy-to-root-for pair of Grable and Mature, and the amazing performance of Laird Cregar. Incongruously, the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow keeps showing up in this dark and oft creepy movie. I don’t understand how or why, but it is an effective choice.
I Wake Up Screaming plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. The DVD is available with a Netflix subscription, or you can buy it from Amazon. I Wake Up Screaming was featured at the Noir City 2018.
The Stream of the Week comes from my Overlooked Noir. The Burglar (1957) is known primarily as the movie debut of Jayne Mansfield, but it’s a fine film noir. It starts out with a tense burglary, but once the necklace is successfully burgled, the story focuses on the heist team going stir crazy as they wait for the environment to cool down so they can safely fence the booty. They are strung so tight that even the whistle of a tea kettle is enough to startle the gang. While dodging the cops, they find that they are also being hunted by a corrupt rogue cop and his partner.
The core of The Burglar is the stellar lead performance of Dan Duryea as the chief burglar. He’s a tortured and worn-out guy – with one deep loyalty.
There are plenty of noir moments – lots of shadows, uplit faces in the darkness and amoral, grasping characters. We have not one, but two noir vixens – Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers. Asked at a bar by Duryea what she wants, Vickers answers “Basically, I’m out to find myself a man.” The characters in this fine film noir find themselves in Atlantic City, where the bad cop chases the protagonists through the House of Horrors and the Steel Pier, culminating in a final confrontation under the boardwalk.
The acting is excellent, other than Peter Capell, who gives over-acting a bad name while playing the most nerve-wracked member of the gang. Even Mansfield is good; (The Burglar was held in the can for two years and then released when Mansfield became a sensation with The Girl Can’t Help It).
The movie was shot on location in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. We see Independence Hall, and it’s hard not to think of Rocky when Duryea climbs the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Burglar plays from time to time on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, Xbox Video and Flixster.
[Note: The Burglar features John Facenda as his real-life role as a Philadelphia newscaster (when local TV stations aired 15-minute newscasts). Facenda later found much broader fame as “The Voice of God” for his narration for NFL Films football documentaries.]
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of SFFILM.
The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of last year’s festival. The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.
Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.
In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.
Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).
Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.
I saw Frank & Lola in May 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016. After a brief and tiny theatrical release in December which did not reach the Bay Area, Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
I’ve been recommending the Noir City film fest, underway in San Francisco and running through Sunday. 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 movies not available on DVD. And we get to watch them in vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.
To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. Here are the highlights of Noir City’s bang up final weekend:
Charley Varrick: the shamefully underrated American neo-noir from the 1970s with Walter Mathau. To survive, he’s got to outsmart the mob all by himself.
The Aura: A completely overlooked 2005 neo-noir from Argentina about an epileptic taxidermist. He’s smart enough to plan the Perfect Crime, but does he have the sociopathic ruthlessness?
Before the Devil Know You’re Dead: A masterpiece from the then 84-year-old director Sidney Lumet, it features one of the best performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Then there’s Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei and Michael Shannon – but Albert Finney steals the movie at the end.
Victoria: A 2015 European thrill ride filmed in a single 138-minute shot.
