Square Eyes; Bullets, Broads…and BBC 4 August 17, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Television, Film General, Crime / Noir / Thriller, Square Eyes , trackbackThe redoubtable BBC 4 is running a short film noir season this coming weekend with six movies shown Saturday and Sunday and no less than five screenings of a new hour long documentary presented by Matthew Sweet, The Rules of Film Noir.
All the offerings on display are from the genre’s golden period, all from Hollywood studios and featuring some of film noir’s finest…
Saturday August 22
19:30; Farewell My Lovely (aka Murder, My Sweet - 1944). Two years before Bogie’s indelible impersonation of Raymond Chandler’s crumpled detective in The Big Sleep, former crooner Dick Powell made a courageous career leap into the murky world of noir with his rather more battered and bruised version of Philip Marlowe. Private eye Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend, embroiling the hard-boiled gumshoe in a plot which involves blackmail, murder, drugs, double cross… and delicious dollops of voice-over dialogue. Perhaps the most filmed of all Chandler’s stories (though sometimes heavily disguised; parts of the plot were even borrowed for a Bob Hope comedy vehicle), Powell and director Edward Dmytryk’s Farewell My Lovely boasts a grittiness only bettered by Dick Richards and Robert Mitchum 30 years later. Available on a rather nice R1 Warner DVD and a less impressive Universal disc in the UK.
21:00; The Rules of Film Noir. First showing of the new Elaine Pieper directed documentary. Also shown Sunday at 00.50, 0.3:35, 22:35, and Monday at 03:05. Through the lavish use of film archive and stylised graphics as punctuation, BBC Four’s one-hour documentary presents:“…an essential guide to one of the most influential movements in cinema history: dark, cynical Film Noir.” Let’s all hope it amounts to more than a little fluff.
22:00; The Lady from Shanghai (1947). Compelling and highly stylised (what else from director/writer Orson Welles?) tale of an Irish sailor who accompanies a beautiful woman and her husband on a sea cruise, and becomes a pawn in a game of murder. Includes labyrinthine plot twists and some breathtaking cinematography - particularly in the famous Hall of Mirrors scene. The cast includes Welles, as the sap Michael O’Hara, his then wife (but not for long) Rita Hayworth as the femme fatale, the wholly dependable Everett Sloane and William Alland is again uncredited as a reporter. Some read Welles own marital difficulties into a tale of deceptions and lies; it’s not impossible. Available in both R1 and R2 from Sony.
23:25; The Big Combo (1955). Stylish film noir about a police lieutenant (Cornel Wilde) who comes under pressure from a gang headed by a vicious thug (Richard Conte). He is helped by the gangster’s wife, jealous at her husband’s affair with another woman, who supplies him with information to help him close the net on his foe. Director Joseph H. Lewis hoped the Production Code would take less interest in a minor studio making Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef, as a pair of trigger men, not so obliquely gay. He guessed right. I think I’m right in saying the only DVD incarnations available have been chucked on to DVD by slapdash PD merchants now that the R1 Image version is OOP.
Sunday August 23
01:50; Force of Evil (1948). Dark, brooding and cerebral drama from writer/director Abraham Polonsky about two brothers caught up in crime and corruption. An ambitious lawyer (the superb, doomed John Garfield) in search of materialistic gain begins work for a New York criminal mastermind, who plans to take over New York’s illegal lottery. The attorney serves his boss faithfully until he realises his own brother will fall victim to the plan. But it seems he may now be too involved to escape the gangster’s violent ends. Martin Scorsese hails this as one of noir’s forgotten masterpieces, but certainly it’s not under-appreciated by film fans. Beautifully written, acted and directed with a fine David Raskin score, R1 and R2 have to make do with slightly underpar transfers from Lionsgate and Metrodome respectively.
21:00; Build My Gallows High (aka Out Of The Past - 1947). Quintessential American noir which tells a grim, complex tale of love and betrayal. A failed detective (Robert Mitchum) falls for the mistress (Jane Greer) of a mobster to whom he is heavily in debt. When she double-crosses him and returns to the mobster, the detective changes his identity and drops out of sight. But the gangster still wants his money back, and he and the woman plot to lure the detective into a vengeful scenario. Daniel Mainwaring wrote and literate and intelligent script from his own novel, Jacques Tourneur directs with aplomb, both Mitchum and Greer are on top form; also features Kirk Douglas and Rhonda Fleming. Warner delivered the DVD goods in R1, Universal, once again, had to make do with sloppy seconds in R2.
23:30; Stranger on The Third Floor (1940). Rarely screened Boris Ingster helmed psychological drama (for RKO) and touted by some as the first noir. The testimony of an ambitious reporter (John McGuire) helps to convict a young man (Elisha Cook Jr.) of murder, but the newspaper man has second thoughts about his contribution when he finds himself in the dock while a homicidal maniac is on the loose. Peter Lorre is top billed but while he has little to do, he does so effectively in this short (64 minutes) proto-noir. The only DVD out there appears to be a Spanish offering from Manga, but not having seen it, I can’t vouch for it.
Comments»
Despite my constant interest in film noir I’ve still not actually seen very many, so I’ll look forward to this. Thanks for pointing it out!
Though, trust BBC Four to show any new programming more times than is strictly necessary. I appreciate repeats, but in this iPlayer world surely one or two would suffice? And actually, seeing as the documentary will almost certainly be on iPlayer and the films almost certainly won’t, surely the time in the schedule would be better served repeating/showing more films.
Well, it’s a cheap way of filling airtime, and I don’t suppose it will amount to anything more than a beginner’s primer (not that there’s too much wrong with that).
I would have liked to have seen at least one Brit Noir chucked into the schedule though; still, musn’t grumble…
Thanks for commenting.
Will The Big Combo look nice or at least acceptable on a television showing like this? It’s disheartening how this film, along with several of the Mann-Alton noirs and various others (Slightly Scarlet, D.O.A., the Lupino films) haven’t been given definitive DVD editions, thus relegating them to also not quite getting the recognition they deserve as films.
Frustratingly, the BBC print of The Big Combo was excellent - sharp, good contrast, little evidence of damage from what I could see.
What did you make of the Rules of Film Noir documentary? Only caught the last 15 minutes unfortunately, but it looked fairly light on actual information…
It’s still on the PVR, waiting a watch; I’m not expecting much, to be honest.
Watched now, it was better than I had feared; yes, it was pretty much a primer, but it was well put together, with some decent interviewees (Roger Deakins, Paul Schrader - I particularly liked Neil Brand’s dissection of Miklos Rosza’s score for The Killers), and Matthew Sweet affably bound the whole together. If only the ’season’ had amounted to more than six films - the myriad clips show that they have a decent print of T-Men for a start.
“If only the ’season’ had amounted to more than six films”
Especially as the documentary focused on a select few for a bit more analysis (even if it was only brief), it would’ve been nice if they’d taken the time to show all of those.