Film Noir M.I.A. July 31, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films, Film Noir , 1 comment so farThe past couple of years have been more than kind to film noir fans. Most notably, we’ve had the quarterly waves of Fox Film Noir, three Film Noir Classic Collection boxsets from Warners, as well as odds and ends from other studios: four noir releases last year (and an upcoming Double Indemnity SE) from Universal, a couple from Paramount (Detective Story, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers), some top-class Criterion releases, and a mixed bag of public domain titles.
However, even with all this activity, there are loads of worthy titles sitting unreleased. Of course, almost all are available in bootlegs of varying quality, but that’s no substitute for a good commercial DVD release. And so, after whittling down the field, here’s my list of top unreleased film noir:
12. Dangerous Crossing (1953)
In this twist on The Lady Vanishes, Jeanne Crain is a young bride whose husband goes missing on their honeymoon cruise. When nobody believes her husband was ever aboard the ship, Crain herself has to investigate; does ship’s doctor Michael Rennie know more than he lets on? R1 DVD rights: 20th Century Fox (20th Century Fox feature)
11. Johnny Angel (1945)
A nifty, atmospheric thriller with George Raft as the titular hard man: a merchant navy captain determined to find his father’s killer. Claire Trevor co-stars. R1 DVD rights: Warner Bros. (RKO feature)
10. Macao (1952)
Howard Hughes reunited His Kind of Woman duo Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell for this utterly hollow, yet immensely fun noir-tinged exotic romp, directed by Josef von Sternberg with reshoots by Nicholas Ray. R1 DVD rights: Warner Bros. (RKO feature)
9. Ministry of Fear (1944)
In wartime England, Ray Milland stumbles upon a Nazi spy ring in this tense Fritz Lang noir, adapted from the Graham Greene novel. R1 DVD rights: Universal (pre-1948 Paramount feature)
8. The Web (1947)
A private detective smells a rat when a simple bodyguarding job goes badly wrong, and sets out to discover what’s really going on. Edmond O’Brien, Ella Raines, William Bendix and Vincent Price are the quartet of noir all-stars populating this tightly-plotted thriller. R1 DVD rights: Universal (Universal Pictures feature)
7. They Won’t Believe Me (1947)
Robert Young’s womanising past comes back to haunt him when he finds himself on trial for murder. Will the jury believe his outlandish explanation of events? Susan Hayward and Jane Greer co-star in this atmospheric noir. R1 DVD rights: Warner Bros. (RKO feature)
6. The Glass Key (1942)
Tough, punchy adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in their second screen pairing. R1 DVD rights: Universal (pre-1948 Paramount feature)
5. The Woman in the Window (1945)
Edward G. Robinson finds his life taking a nightmarish turn after he and Joan Bennett unwittingly become implicated in murder. Director Fritz Lang would re-team with Robinson, Bennett and Dan Duryea the following year for the even better Scarlet Street. R1 DVD rights: Sony/MGM (United Artists feature)
4. The Breaking Point (1950)
John Garfield and Patricia Neal star in director Michael Curtiz’s take on Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. Sticking more faithfully to the novel than the 1944 Hawks film, this is nonetheless a powerful noir flavoured with despair, populated by flawed, human characters, and featuring a blistering performance from Garfield. R1 DVD rights: Warner Bros. (Warner Bros. feature)
3. Phantom Lady (1944)
Top-notch mystery thriller, with Ella Raines as an intrepid secretary who must track down this elusive ‘phantom lady’; her testimony is the only thing that can prove Raines’ boss innocent of murder. And because it’s her second film in this list (as if I needed an excuse) let’s have a pic of Ella … R1 DVD rights: Universal (Universal Pictures feature)
2. The Bribe (1949)
Robert Taylor is a federal agent sent to the Central American island of Carlotta to investigate shady business dealings. But as Taylor begins to fall for the suspect’s wife, the case gets a whole lot more complicated. Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, John Hodiak and Vincent Price co-star in this hot and humid noir. R1 DVD rights: Warner Bros. (MGM feature)
1. Ride the Pink Horse (1947)
Don’t be put off by the title - it’s not another gay cowboy movie, but a beguiling, poetic noir directed by Robert Montgomery. He also stars, as Lucky Gagin, a disilluisoned WWII veteran who travels to a backwater Mexican bordertown with revenge in mind, and the Feds on his tail. Gagin finds help in the form of Pilar (Wanda Hendrix) a naive yet enigmatic teenage girl who follows him everywhere, and the hard-drinking, fiercely loyal Pancho (Thomas Gomez). The straightforward plot gradually peels back to reveal rich and meaningful depths to this forgotten gem. R1 DVD rights: Universal (Universal Pictures feature)
My list isn’t intended to be exhaustive - there are many, many more notable noirs yet to show up on DVD. These are just my favourites.
Beyond Nick and Nora … July 26, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films , add a commentI’ve got many favourite screen couples: Bogie & Bacall, Cary Grant & Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief), Margaret Lockwood & Michael Redgrave (The Lady Vanishes), James Stewart & Donna Reed (It’s A Wonderful Life) spring to mind, but no classic pairing - not even the magical Fred & Ginger - lives up, in my mind, to William Powell & Myrna Loy.
Over the course of 13 films together in the 30s & 40s (six of them Thin Man movies), they lit up the screen, sparking off each other like fireflies with boundless energy, their dazzling chemistry exceeded only by the irresistible glint of mischief that one or other always conveyed. Both actors were successful in “solo” efforts - Powell’s My Man Godfrey and Loy’s The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer are personal favourites - but together they just … click. Watching Manhattan Melodrama a couple of months ago (*spoiler ahead*), I remember getting rather worried when it seemed for a short while that Myrna might wind up with Clark Gable instead of Bill. I would not have been pleased.
I confess, The Thin Man series are my favourites (how could they not be?); their mix of murder-mystery and screwball comedy lifting them to the heights of effortless entertainment. As perfect as they were as Nick & Nora Charles, their non-Thin Man efforts aren’t exactly second-tier: there’s Libeled Lady, one of the finest 30s comedies, the afore-mentioned Manhattan Melodrama, and a few others - which brings me (finally) to my point. You see, I just acquired copies of another two Powell/Loy comedies, Love Crazy and Double Wedding, and I couldn’t be more excited. If I was Asta, I’d be barking up a riot.
Never Say Never Again July 22, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films , 1 comment so far
The odds were stacked against Never Say Never Again right from the start. It had to compete with Connery’s previous “official” Bond efforts, the most recent of which had been over a decade ago; his best three (From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball) were almost 20 years old. That’s not all, though. I once read a review of the film which nailed exactly what the larger problem was: Never Say Never Again not only had to recapture the same atmosphere as the 60s films, it had to be as good as the viewer’s favourite - by which I don’t just mean Dr No for example, but rather the viewer’s composite favourite: the most evil villain, the most beautiful girl, the best title song, the wittiest one-liner, the most exotic location, the most exciting pre-credits sequence, etc. NSNA had to match the very best in each category, it had to compete against the audience’s warm, nostalgic memories of the earlier films, and as an “unofficial” Bond film, it had to do all this without any of the familiar supporting actors, John Barry’s music (he declined to score the film out of respect for Cubby Broccoli), the traditional Bond touches (gun barrel sequence, 007 logo, the James Bond Theme) and, crucially, without the experienced crew from the official series, who already had 12 Bond films under their belt.
Oh, and there was also the small matter of Roger Moore’s sixth official Bond outing, Octopussy, in production at the same time. No wonder the press dubbed it the “Battle of the Bonds”.
Never Say Never Again does suffer from its lack of “official” Bond touches: Edward Fox’s buffoonish ”M” is a definite mistake, the title song and Michel Legrand’s score are both unreservedly awful, and the plot loses its way in the second half of the film.
That said, the film otherwise largely succeeds. Klaus Maria Brandaeur underplays Largo beautifully as a chilling psychopath, nicely balancing out the comic-book excesses of his henchwoman, Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera). Kim Basinger makes for a suitably drop-dead-gorgeous Bond girl, the film moves briskly, belying its 130 minute running time, and the script has a lot of fun poking fun at Bond’s - and Connery’s - age. It’s a theme GoldenEye would pick up 12 years later: Bond is old, out-of-date, not politically correct. ”Q” gets the best line in this vein: “Things have been awfully dull around here since you’ve been gone … I hope we’re going to see a return to some gratuitous sex and violence.”
Then there’s the man himself. Looking tanned and in much better shape at 52 than he did in Diamonds Are Forever 12 years earlier, Connery steps up to the plate and hits one right out of the park: he’s a joy to watch, the trademark blend of charm, wit and toughness unchanged by time out of the role. His Bond has mellowed a little: older, world-weary, but still with a twinkle in the eye. And he dances a mean tango, too.
Largo: I wonder, do you lose as gracefully as you win?”
Bond: “I wouldn’t know; I’ve never lost.”
The Omega Man July 20, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films , 1 comment so farWhen I saw The Omega Man as a little kid, it was the coolest movie imaginable. In a plague-devastated USA, Chuck Heston, tough, cool ”last man alive”, prowls the deserted streets of downtown Los Angeles to Ron Grainer’s funky score. He has his pick of whatever he wants: clothes, food, drink, he can drive through downtown at 80 mph and run through every stop sign he sees. And if that isn’t enough, at night he holds up in his townhouse-fortress, and battles hordes of crazy mutants with his arsenal of automatic weapons! I remember being disappointed when it turned out there were other survivors too, and the movie got a little sidetracked from mutant machine-gun mayhem, and developed into a we-can-find-a-cure story.
As an older and wiser (oh, definitely!) movie fan, I watched the film again recently, and loved it just as much. The film’s shortcomings were only too apparent this time round, but the cheesy action, creepy set pieces, and deliciously evil Anthony Zerbe performance still entertained. I also realised for the first time just how good Chuck is in the film. As a kid I hadn’t seen it this way, but Heston’s Neville is a pretty fleshed-out character for this type of comic book sci-fi. He has his wisecracks and moments of fun, but he’s a tortured man, driven to the brink of insanity by Matthias’s gang; Neville hears dead payphones ringing in the street, sits through endless re-runs of Woodstock at a movie theater (never liked that bit myself. Why couldn’t he watch Dirty Harry or something?); back at his townhouse apartment, he dines and plays chess with his roommate, a bust of Caesar. When Neville finds other survivors, he doesn’t only help to save them from the plague, they save him from himself.
I still have a lot of affection for The Omega Man; I don’t find Neville’s world quite as appealing as I did at age ten, but the film still works for me, and reminds me why Heston is one of my favourite stars, the kind of leading man they don’t make nowadays.
“THERE IS NO PHONE RINGING, DAMMIT!”
An old favourite: “Conflict” (1945) July 18, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films, Film Noir , add a commentI was planning to open my blog with some comments on the new Bond Ultimate Editions, but I kinda changed my mind. After viewing Dr No and From Russia With Love so far, I can think of little else to say aside from ”Wow! These look great …” ad nauseum. Perhaps when I’ve finished my little Connery-fest by the end of the week I’ll have something half-interesting and semi-coherent to say. Until then, here’s a little something I made earlier …
Conflict is an often overlooked entry in Humphrey Bogart’s filmography, a picture he didn’t want to make, and one which pales in comparison to many of the classics dotted throughout his career. Yet I’ve always had a fondness for this minor noir.
Bogart is Richard Mason, successful engineer, just celebrating five years of marriage to Kathryn (Rose Hobart). Underneath the veneer of this idyllic marriage, however, the Masons’ relationship has degenerated into deep bitterness. Richard is in love with his wife’s younger sister, Evelyn (Alexis Smith), but knows that Kathryn will never grant him his freedom.
When he suffers a broken leg in a car accident, Richard sees a chance to escape his situation: Arranging a vacation at a mountain resort, he persuades his wife to make the long drive alone. That night, Richard intercepts Kathryn on the deserted mountain road and kills her, returning home before he’s missed, and maintaining the pretence that he’s still immobile from his broken leg, by way of an alibi.
As the police search for his apparently missing wife, Richard is free to develop his relationship with Evelyn, but odd things soon start to happen: Richard smells his wife’s perfume at home, he receives mail apparently written by her, then thinks he sees her walk by on the street. He begins to ask himself, is Kathryn still alive - or is something else sinister afoot? With the help of psychiatrist pal Dr Mark Greenwood (Sydney Greenstreet), Richard tries to solve the puzzle, without revealing his own guilt in the process …
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** Of course, Kathryn IS dead. It transpires that Dr Hamilton suspected Richard from the outset and, together with the police, he concocted an elaborate scheme to convince Richard that his wife was alive. The hope was that Richard would slip up and reveal his guilt, which he finally does - returning to the scene of the crime for proof that Kathryn is dead, only to be caught red-handed by Hamilton and the cops.
As evinced by its relative obscurity, “Conflict” is not a first-rate Bogart noir. It doesn’t help that the film is saddled with a vague, flat title that hardly engenders excitement, but my main problem is with the character of Evelyn. She’s key to the plot, and yet I found her role to be rather unfocused. She’s not a straight ‘love interest’ – she snubs Richard’s advances, the writers apparently unwilling to have her display feelings for a murderer. On the other hand, Evelyn isn’t given much else to do: she doesn’t harbour any suspicions of Richard’s guilt, nor play much of a part in the main mystery plot. Late in the film, an interesting idea is introduced, when the increasingly paranoid Richard starts to suspect Evelyn of orchestrating Kathryn’s ‘resurrection’, but the idea isn’t followed through and instead Evelyn simply disappears before the film’s climax, her character arc left without proper closure. It’s ‘resolved’ in a couple of throwaway lines between Richard and Dr. Hamilton, establishing that she wasn’t part of the police trap, but we don’t even get to see her reaction to the news that Richard killed her sister. Given that her character is the driving force behind the entire plot – Richard is driven to murder by his desire for her – I’m never happy with the level of development given to her thread of the story.
The elaborate scheme to trap Richard is the film’s main plot, though. It’s signposted by Dr Hamilton’s line early in the film: “a thought can be like a malignant disease that starts to eat away the will power” - exactly the strategy this expert on the mind uses to set his trap: first planting the seeds of doubt in Richard’s mind, and then manipulating events in order to confuse Richard further, until he begins to crack, unsure whether Kathryn is alive, that someone is toying with him, or even if he may be losing his mind. Privy only to Richard’s side of the story, the viewer is kept equally in the dark. It’s a well-sustained mystery, and on first viewing it kept me guessing until the climax, although more astute viewers could probably guess what’s going on.
My only criticism is the plot’s utter implausibility - would the police really allow an outsider like
Hamilton (who should be a suspect himself) to orchestrate such an outlandish scheme? I can imagine it now: the detective in charge approaches his boss: “Hey, lieutenant, mind if I borrow Carol from traffic for a couple hours? I need her to dress up as a suspect’s dead wife. Yeah, it’s all to drive the guy to a nervous breakdown; a new technique we’re trying out.”
A little implausibility never hurt anybody, though. Like another of my favourite Bogart films, Dark Passage, if you can suspend your disbelief you should find much to enjoy here. Conflict is a product of the slick Warner Bros. machine of the period, and comes with all the benefits: good supporting cast, solid direction from Curtis Bernhardt (who would later re-team with Bogart for Sirocco), and top production values. In fact, if nothing else, the movie looks great. The scenes on the deserted highway (where Richard murders his wife) are my favourite; richly lit and swimming with fog, these scenes are tremendously ominous and atmospheric.
The film also boasts an interesting protagonist in Richard Mason; he reminds me of the very best Columbo villains, those who are more complex, sympathetic characters than just your standard killer-of-the-week. Bogart does a good job of conveying the inner turmoil of a man driven to murder by desire and desperation, and unable to escape the repercussions of his act. Finding inspiration for his performance couldn’t have been difficult: in an interesting parallel to his character, Bogart also celebrated his fifth wedding anniversary while shooting the film in 1943. His volatile marriage to Mayo Methot was steadily disintegrating and Bogart was not happy off-set. Fortunately he fared better than Richard Mason, and by the time the picture opened two years later, Bogart was divorced from Methot, and had found new happiness with Lauren Bacall.
Finally, I can’t fail to mention the inimitable Sydney Greenstreet. Lending the film his usual larger-than-life presence in support, he carves a typically memorable performance out of a rather bland character.
Although originally released on VHS by Warner Bros., Conflict has yet to materialize on DVD. With so many of Bogart’s films now available on shiny disc, it’s about time that this enjoyable little film noir became available to a wider audience.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang July 17, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films , add a commentOK, I watched this last week, and FWIW, a few thoughts (I’ve tried to avoid any big spoilers) ….
Firstly, I loved it. It’s a very knowing, darkly comic hybrid of detective thriller, neo-noir and buddy movie. Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is a petty thief from
New York who, through a daft coincidence, ends up in LA for a movie screentest. Once there, he finds himself working alongside Private Eye “Gay” Perry (Val Kilmer), to get some background for his movie role. But, on the same night Harry bumps into old flame Harmony (the lovely Michelle Monaghan), he and Perry also fish a dead body out of a car. In a lake. And that’s just the start of the trouble for our trio.
As much as I loved this movie, I can see how it might annoy, rather than amuse, if you don’t approach it in the right frame of mind. Writer/director Shane Black (LETHAL WEAPON, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT) has crafted a very clever film: it’s at once a deconstruction of detective / buddy movie clichés, and also a playful homage to those movies. Black turns the clichés in on themselves: Kilmer’s tough-as-nails private eye is gay; Downey Jr’s narration isn’t the typical hard-boiled noir voice-over: he addresses the viewer (”My name’s Harry Lockhart; I’ll be your narrator”), and screws up the chronology of his flashbacks (”And that’s how she got to the same party as me. Oh s**t! I skipped something, damn it.”). Harry, Perry and Harmony bumble their way through the murder mystery without a trace of Philip Marlowe’s cool ease (Harry discovers a body in his bathroom while taking care of business, and accidentally urinates over it – “can they get DNA off that?”)
This post-modern, tongue-in-cheek approach worked for me because the story is also so knowingly constructed. Harry and Harmony share a love for cheap pulp thrillers featuring a tough PI: “Johnny Gossamer would always take on 2 cases that were seemingly unrelated. One’s normal, and the other one’s, like, some wild s**t. Then you find out … that they’re connected. It’s all one case.” Black, of course, then has KKBB follow exactly this formula. It’s all very nudge-nudge, wink-wink, with title cards that refer back to
Chandler (DAY ONE: TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS) and scenes that freeze frame so that Harry can explain stuff to the audience (“that … is a terrible scene – why was that in the movie? You think maybe it’ll COME BACK LATER?”). The dialogue is a riot throughout - I laughed out loud in several places, though admittedly it occasionally strained the comedy a bit too far (a brief subplot about a severed digit was too farcical for me).
It’s not true neo-noir, and it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s a post-modern detective movie and a witty buddy movie, with a slice of romance, a lot of swearing, a few gunfights, a trio of great performances and (best of all) no CGI in sight. Two thumbs up from me.
Girl at party: “What do you do?”
Harry: “I’m retired. I invented dice.”
Ministry of Fear (1944)
Posted by jackal in : Films, Film Noir , add a commentI’m a big fan of Ray Milland. He may not have had the greatest range in the world as a leading man, but he has a certain class, deportment, and an easy debonair charm - like a watered-down Cary Grant sans comic timing. Perhaps the most appealing thing about Milland is his role in “Dial M for Murder” – if he can pull Grace Kelly, there’s hope for every man …
In Fritz Lang’s “Ministry of Fear” (from the novel by Graham Greene) the setting is wartime
England and Stephen Neale (Milland) has just been released from an asylum. Determined to reintegrate into society, he heads to the local train station. Before his train to London can arrive, however, Neale is sidetracked by a friendly-looking village fete. It starts out as the prototypical old-fashioned English event, but gradually turns into the bizarre: the little old ladies are eager for Neale to visit the fortune teller. She tells him the correct weight to bet at the win-the-cake stall, but shortly after Neale wins it, a surly Dan Duryea turns up, and the little old ladies are suddenly deperate to get their prize back. Thus begins possibly the only film noir where the MacGuffin is a homemade cake, and one made with eggs, you know …
After an exciting, terrifically executed footchase and gunfight in the countryside during a German bombing raid, Neale finds himself back in London, where he sets about investigating the mysterious group responsible for organizing that strange village fete and nearly getting him killed. Soon he finds himself accused of murder, and plunged into a swirling mystery of deception, Nazi agents and war secrets, all played out among the day-to-day dangers of the Blitz.
I saw this film for the first time only recently, and enjoyed it immensely. Lang creates a lingering sense of dread throughout, as Neale moves alone through the foggy, bombed-out streets of London, uncovering a secret enemy network hidden beneath the veneer of respectable society. He can’t approach the police, because of his criminal record, and everyone he meets is a potential enemy - even the beautiful and resourceful Carla Hilfe (Marjorie Reynolds), who becomes his chief ally. I admired the way her character was written; even as Neale grows closer to her, we’re not quite sure where her true allegiances lie.
The psychological complexity of Milland’s character is hinted at in the opening scenes – why is he in an asylum? His character is only developed in a couple of scenes, though; chief among them is the scene in which Neal, caught in an air-raid and forced to a shelter with Carla, confesses the reason for his incarceration in an asylum: his terminally ill wife committed suicide with poison that Neale bought for her. It was a mercy killing, and Neale was spared a jail sentence, but is clearly still haunted by the experience. Beyond this scene, however, we don’t get a great deal more insight into his psyche – something which might add depth to the movie. This oversight was one of the few disappointments I felt with the movie, in addition to the tacked-on, utterly superficial ‘happy ending’ scene which closes it.
Those caveats aside, I found this to be top-notch entertainment, with many memorable scenes, most notably a creepy, highly atmospheric fake séance. It’s well-played by the principal cast – including the deliciously slimy villain Dan Duryea, whose role here is unfortunately limited. The audience would have to wait for Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street for Lang to make full use of Duryea’s talents.
Up and running … July 16, 2006
Posted by jackal in : Films , add a commentI’m new to this. Might be fun. Might be deathly dull, and of no interest to anyone, and I’ll stop before I kill even myself with boredom. For now, though, I’ll start over the next few days with some thoughts on the new James Bond Ultimate Editions. Yes, the martinis are mixed (scratch that; maybe a good Scotch) and I plan to re-watch my beloved 007 films in crystal clear quality (unlike the rather crap pic quality below, but hey - it’s my favourite Bond poster. Gotta love that tagline).
