Riding the High Country

In many ways Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window (1944) plays like a dress rehearsal for his production of Scarlet Street the following year. Both films feature the same three stars - Edward G Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea - and tell the story of a married, middle-aged man whose chance meeting with a young woman leads him into a vortex of murder, blackmail and ruin. However, where Scarlet Street is relentlessly grim, The Woman in the Window is a paler shade of noir - and not just because of its ending.

Richard Wanley (Robinson) is an assistant professor at a New York college whose wife and family have gone off on a trip, leaving him to his own devices. After an evening spent at his club with a couple of friends, including the District Attorney (Raymond Massey), he pauses on his way home to admire a portrait of a woman in the window of an adjacent art gallery. As he’s gazing through the window, the subject of the portrait, Alice Reed (Joan Bennett), appears by his side and, one thing leading to another, he ends back at her apartment. Up to this point everything seems innocent enough, but the abrupt and violent arrival of Reed’s lover sends the situation spiralling out of control. Although Wanley is left with no alternative but to kill his assailant out of self defence, he is also aware that his story is unlikely to be accepted and, even if it is, his life will be ruined. The solution - dump the body, destroy all the evidence and make like it never happened. Naturally, all of Wanley’s well laid plans start to unravel before his eyes as the police investigation starts to build up a body of forensic evidence that may soon cast suspicion on the hapless professor. The greatest danger, however, is posed by a shady ex-cop (Dan Duryea) with blackmail on his mind. The plot builds inexorably towards a suitably downbeat climax, yet this film has one last sting in its tail. I won’t spoil things for anyone who hasn’t seen this, but suffice to say that this ending has led some to question the noir credentials of the movie. Personally, I don’t share this view but I can see why it remains a bone of contention with some.

As I said above, The Woman in the Window comes off as a lighter form of noir than Scarlet Street, and a good deal of this, aside from the ending, comes down to the portrayal of the characters. It is much easier to sympathise with Robinson’s character here, somehow his decisions, while questionable, seem more understandable. Bennett, too, is much less repugnant than would be the case in Scarlet Street. She is clearly a kept woman and a femme fatale, in the sense that she leads the protagonist into a dangerous, doomed situation, yet her motives are neither malicious nor wholly selfish. It’s only Dan Duryea, in another trademark role as a smirking villain, who fails to endear himself to the audience. There was something about the man - I think it relates to the casually mocking note in his voice - that led to his being typecast in such parts. There’s lots of noir imagery on show with a good deal of the action taking place at night and on rainy city streets. One recurring motif throughout the film is the number of shots which follow events through a series of open doors, symbolising (I suppose) the characters’ deepening crisis. The more I watch and re-watch Lang’s American films, the higher he grows in my estimation - I’d definitely rank him up among my top five directors.

The film was released on DVD last summer, along with a few other noir titles, by MGM in R1. The disc is totally barebones but the transfer is very good, maybe a little soft. There is a R2 available from Spain (I’m not sure about other countries) which, despite an English soundtrack and removable subs, is nowhere near this in terms of picture quality - fortunately, I managed to offload my copy on a friend who remains stubbornly locked into region two. If you’re a fan of noir or Lang then the R1 is the way to go, and I have no hesitation in recommending the movie.

I’ll start off by saying that I like films that employ flashbacks in the telling of the story. Of course, if this technique is going to be used it needs to be done well. An example of its misuse/abuse would be Passage to Marseille; where there are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks to the point that the viewer is driven half crazy and loses all sense of time and place. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) avoids falling into this trap. Here, those trips down memory lane are necessary to drive the story forward and they work perfectly.

The film was adapted from a radio play and summarising the plot is not so easy without giving away too much, and thus ruining it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Almost all of the action is played out via a series of telephone conversations involving Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck). Leona is introduced as a rich, pampered invalid who lives in luxury in Manhattan and, alone and bed-ridden, has only her telephone as a means of communicating with the outside world. As a result of a crossed line, she overhears a conversation between two unknown men as they finalise the details of a murder soon to be committed. Naturally alarmed, Leona first tries to tip off the police but they profess an inability to act given the sketchy information available. Her next thought is to get in touch with her husband Henry (Burt Lancaster), but that proves more difficult. Her attempt to contact him results in a series phone calls (and accompanying flashbacks) which gradually build up a complete picture of Leona, Henry and their life together. With each call another piece of the puzzle falls into place, and Leona slowly arrives at a horrifying realization.

Barbara Stanwyck has come to be regarded as something of a noir icon, largely through her icy portrayal of Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity. Where that film cast her as the archetypal femme fatale, Sorry, Wrong Number has her play the helpless woman in distress. She does well here with a character that starts off as an unsympathetic figure. As Leona moves from an initial petulance, through frustration to panicked terror, she manages to avoid the temptation to overact. All the emotions on display fit in with the type of woman revealed over the course of the film. Burt Lancaster was in the middle of a series of noirs, or noir tinged movies, at this point and he’s pretty convincing in the role of Henry. He begins as a blue-collar bit of rough who catches Leona’s fancy, becomes her pet plaything, and finally allows his simmering frustration and innate greed to draw him into criminality. There are also plenty of good turns from a support cast which boasts Wendell Corey, Ed Begley, Leif Erickson and William Conrad. While this is a movie full of flawed and unsavoury characters, the one sympathetic figure is Harold Vermilyea’s Waldo Evans. He’s the soft-spoken little chemist who dreams and saves in the hope of owning a farm where horses can roam free. When Henry spins him a tale that promises enough cash to realise this dream, the poor sap falls for it and his fate is sealed.    

Sorry, Wrong Number fits the noir bill by delivering a story where there are no winners and no happy endings. We have a roster of characters whose greed, selfishness and weakness set them on a path towards their own self-destruction. The moody photography of Sol Polito is another essential ingredient, and it’s at its most effective in the scenes on Staten Island. This desolate setting, especially the decrepit 20 Dunstan Terrace, is a place where you just know darkness lurks.

The film has long been available on DVD in R1 from Paramount, and it’s a pretty good transfer. The print used is clean but it does display very heavy grain, particularly in the darker scenes. As usual from Paramount there’s not much in the way of extras, just a theatrical trailer. Still, the disc can be picked up for very little and the quality of the movie alone is more than enough reason to justify a purchase.

I did something wrong…once.

So says the Swede (Burt Lancaster) as he lies in bed bereft of all hope, and calmly awaits his end. I love that scene near the beginning of the 1946 version of The Killers. It is one of the great moments of film noir and says so much about the genre - if you can even call it a genre. A good deal of its bleak power comes from the fact that it seems to run contrary to all normal human instincts. If someone were to burst into your room and breathlessly inform you that a couple of mean-looking hitmen had just rolled into town with the express aim of rubbing you out, most people would take the opportunity to make tracks fast. But Lancaster just remains prone in the shadows and delivers that line in the detached tone of a man already dead; when fate pays that last call there’s no ducking out. 

Robert Siodmak’s film takes Ernest Hemingway’s short story (and it’s a very short story) and uses it merely as the jumping off point. The rest of the movie follows insurance investigator Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) as he tries to find out why the Swede ended up in a small New Jersey town waiting passively to greet a hail of bullets. The story is revealed by a succession of characters who had known the Swede, and a number of flashbacks gradually piece together all the events that brought about his demise. The Swede starts off as a medium grade fighter who, after breaking his hand and ending his career, begins the slow descent into the criminal underworld. This culminates in a payroll heist, the aftermath of which leads to the eventual downfall of just about everybody involved. The character of the Swede is basically a good-natured oaf whose desire for easy money allows him to be dazzled and duped by the grasping and predatory Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). In a sense the whole film is as much about Kitty as anyone else; as we see her manipulations provide the catalyst for the betrayals that litter the story.

The Killers marked the screen debut of Burt Lancaster and his tough vulnerability is shown to good effect in the movie. There’s enough innocence in the Swede for you to genuinely sympathise with him and despair at the big lug’s stupidity as Kitty plays him for the ultimate sucker. Ava Gardner’s Kitty gets the classic femme fatale intro; we first see her as the Swede does - seductively clad in black satin and vamping for all she’s worth in a night club. Her character is rotten all the way through - effortlessly hooking the smitten Swede, playing the gang off against each other, and finally, tearfully begging a dying man to save her neck by damning himself. The role of Edmond O’Brien is to offer perspective and lead the viewer through the labyrinth of deceit; he’s really the linking device between all the small episodes that make up the whole. O’Brien’s own guide along the way is police lieutenant Lubinsky (Sam Levene from the Thin Man movies) and there is good support from gang members Albert Dekker, Jack Lambert and Jeff Corey. However, two of the most memorable turns come from William Conrad and Charles McGraw as Max and Al, the killers of the title. Their roles don’t extend much beyond the first ten minutes of the film, but those are ten truly magical minutes. They get some of the choicest dialogue (and deliver it perfectly) as they simultaneously mock and menace the occupants of the Brentwood lunch counter.  

Robert Siodmak made some of the best noirs of the forties and I feel The Killers is his standout work. This is one of those films where plot, direction, characterization and photography all seem to come together harmoniously. Deep, dark shadows are everywhere and only the policeman’s terrace, where the ideal wife serves lemonade on a hot day, seems to rise above the murkiness. I should also say a word about the powerful score by Miklos Rozsa which is especially effective whenever Messrs Conrad and McGraw make an appearance.

The Killers is out on DVD from Criterion in R1 and from Universal in R2. I can’t comment on the presentation on the R2 disc as I haven’t seen it but bitter experience has taught that Universal’s UK releases are a hit and miss affair, with a high proportion of misses. The Criterion is everything you would expect from them with a beautiful, clean transfer to show off those deep, black shadows. As you would expect, the film comes packed with useful and informative extras - and, best of all, it is paired with Don Siegel’s 1964 remake (and Andrei Tarkovsky’s student film version). All in all, this represents the definitive presentation of what is probably my favorite film noir.

The ‘entertainments’ of Graham Greene have provided a rich source of material for makers of Film Noir. The Third Man, This Gun for Hire and Brighton Rock have all been derived from his works and, if you want to stretch the point, a case could also be made for the inclusion of The Fallen Idol and Confidential Agent. This all goes to prove that there is enough darkness and pessimism in Greene’s writings for them to lend themselves to the shadowy world of noir. And so we come to Fritz Lang’s 1944 adaptation of Ministry of Fear, where a frightened Ray Milland blunders through the bombed out streets of wartime London in pursuit of fifth columnists.

Stephen Neale (Milland) has just been released from an asylum after having been confined for the mercy killing of his wife and, naturally, is anxious to avoid any further entanglements with the law. As he waits to catch a train to London, he wanders into a charity fete where a palmist helps him to guess the weight of a cake and win it. With this seemingly innocuous incident Neale finds himself drawn into a nightmare world of murder and espionage. It turns out that the fake spiritualist had mistaken Neale for a Nazi agent (Dan Duryea) and that the cake contained something worth killing for. Neale’s curiosity leads him to follow up the matter in London where he attends a seance in the company of, among others, the aforementioned agent. When the spy is murdered Neale is falsely accused.  He believes that due to his past conviction no one will believe him innocent of the murder and so he goes on the run. His only assistance comes from an Austrian refugee (Marjorie Reynolds), and while the pair try to seek out the truth they are all the time dogged by a shadowy figure in a bowler hat.  

Ray Milland’s star was in the ascendancy at this point and he would win an Oscar for his performance in The Lost Weekend the following year. His role here allows him to get in a bit of practice in psychological anguish and the natural affability of the man means that it’s easy to sympathize with the plight of his character. Marjorie Reynolds is fine as his Girl Friday but the forced Austrian accent does begin to grate a little at times. Dan Duryea is always good value as a villain and the only complaint that could be made is that his character is not given nearly enough screen time. Indeed the same could be said for much of the support cast who seem to breeze in and out of the picture, but all leave lasting impressions. A notable feature of so many films of this period is the marvellous gallery of eccentrics that cropped up time and again. These people, whose faces are immediately recognizable yet whose names escape us, were character specialists who usually played similar parts in every movie and their presence added enormously to the enjoyment.

Fritz Lang’s background in expressionist film-making serves him well here and is most notable in the early scenes of the picture. The charity fete provides that slightly surreal quality that continues throughout the film. The parts with the fake blind man on the train and the ensuing chase over the fogbound moor are also beautifully photographed. Everything seems to have been shot on studio sets but this is no criticism as it helps heighten the unreal, otherworldly feel of the movie.  

Optimum released Ministry of Fear on DVD in R2 last year. The transfer is not bad but it could use a clean up. All in all, this is a highly enjoyable mix of noir and espionage and it’s always good to see more of Fritz Lang’s movies making it out onto the market.

The Blue Dahlia (1946) was the third film that Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake had made together. While their two previous collaborations had been based on novels (This Gun for Hire by Graham Greene and The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett) this one was from an original screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Anyone who has read anything by Chandler will know that plot always took second place to dialogue in his writing, and that’s certainly the case with this film. For me, the holes in the plot make this a less satisfactory affair than the earlier Ladd/Lake movies - I can’t comment on their last one Saigon since I have yet to see it.

The story concerns Johnny Morrison (Ladd), a navy veteran, returning from the war in the Pacific theatre. Arriving back in L.A. in the company of two of his former crew (William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont) he goes to meet his wife. Their reunion is not a happy one as his unannounced arrival finds her in the middle of throwing a party. Not only that, but he finds her to be having an affair with the shady owner of a night club, the titular Blue Dahlia. Unsurprisingly, he packs up and leaves. Later, the wife will be discovered shot dead with Johnny’s automatic and the suspicion naturally falls on him. The rest of the movie deals with his efforts to evade capture while trying to run down the real killer. The list of suspects is a long one, with just about every major character having either the motive or opportunity to have done the deed.

The performances are generally good and Ladd is convincing enough as the tough hero. Lake is not so good playing the estranged wife of the night club owner, although that may have something to do with the allegedly sour relationship between her and Chandler. Still, her screen chemistry with Ladd remains and they share some good scenes. The real standout turn, though, comes from William Bendix as the shell-shocked buddy with a steel plate in his head and a violent aversion to what he refers to as ‘monkey music’. The movie fits nicely into the noir category due largely to the trappings - clubs, cheap hotels and cheaper people, a neon lit L.A. and so on. As I said above, the dialogue was Chandler’s strong suit and helps to paper over the cracks and outrageous coincidences in the plot. The biggest problem of all is the ending. Chandler had originally written a different climax to that seen on screen but was forced to change it as a result of outside pressures. What we are left with doesn’t really work at all, for it makes a nonsense of much of what went before - it just comes across as weak and contrived.

The Blue Dahlia, whatever it’s weaknesses, was a title long desired on DVD by fans of noir, and Universal duly obliged with a release in R2 last year. However, the fact that it has been made available is about the only good thing I can say. The movie has not had any restoration work done and looks quite soft, worse than that is the ghosting which plagues the last half. So, I don’t think this is the best of the Ladd/Lake vehicles but it is stylish and fun - just not all that logical.

You live in a small close-knit community where everyone knows you and yours. Your family is all around, both depending on you and making endless demands on your time. You are also the victim of a blackmailer. What do you do and who do you turn to? That’s the problem at the centre of the 1949 film noir thriller from Max Ophuls, The Reckless Moment.

Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) lives in a small California town. She is married with two teenage children, has a housekeeper and a large comfortable home. On the surface everything appears idyllic, but chaos is looming. The film opens with Lucia driving to Los Angeles to meet a man called Ted Darby. Darby (Sheppard Strudwick) has been dating the daughter of the family and Lucia means to put an end to it. She fails to do so and Darby comes secretly to the house later that night. The daughter (Geraldine Brooks) meets him in the adjacent boathouse and, after a quarrel, Darby stumbles off the landing to skewer himself on an anchor below. Lucia discovers the body the next morning and, with her husband travelling on business in Europe and she wanting to protect her daughter, decides to dump the corpse and cover everything up. It looks like she might pull it off until Martin Donnelly (James Mason) turns up with some compromising letters and proposes blackmail. 

Joan Bennett will be familiar to any fan of noir due to her work with Fritz Lang on a number of pictures, most notably Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window. There’s no femme fatale style vamping here though, instead she’s the competent, protective mother driven to near despair as the situation spins out of her control. Her measured underplaying is one of the factors which keeps the movie rooted in noir territory and saves it from straying into melodrama. The other factor is James Mason. Two years earlier Mason had given a blinding performance in Carol Reed’s beautiful and masterful Odd Man Out. Here he’s playing another doomed Irishman, albeit one with more dubious motives. He’s very believable in the role and there’s nothing that seems phony as we witness his self-doubts transform him.

The film is well directed by Ophuls and excellently photographed by Burnett Guffey. The location work adds to the realism and the interiors of the big open-plan house seem, paradoxically, to heighten the sense of domestic claustrophobia. It’s almost impossible to hold a private conversation anywhere as family members bustle in and out, cheerfully oblivious to the treachery that threatens them all.

The movie is available in R2 from Second Sight and it’s a great looking, clean transfer. The disc also has decent enough extras with a commentary, a good introduction and a stills gallery. Definitely recommended.

The Big Clock is a 1948 thriller about a race against time; a manhunt where the protagonist is essentially hunting himself. Does that sound complicated? Well, the plot is complex but it never becomes incomprehensible.

George Stroud (Ray Milland) is the overworked editor of a crime magazine who yearns for a holiday with his family. Just when this seems in sight his boss, time-obsessed media tycoon Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), insists that he postpone his vacation and follow up on a breaking news story. In a fit of pique, he tenders his resignation and ends up spending a drunken evening with Janoth’s mistress. While exiting the girl’s apartment Stroud sees his boss arriving, while the boss sees only a silhouette. Goaded into a rage by the mistress, Janoth clubs her to death. On the advice of his reptilian chief executive (George Macready) he now plans to pin the deed on the shadowy stranger he glimpsed in the corridor. To this end, Stroud is recalled to co-ordinate the manhunt.

This is a great suspenseful picture, and you really sense Milland’s mounting horror as he is forced to use his own investigative team and techniques to gradually build up a profile of the mystery man; a man who he knows better than anyone. The two principal female roles are taken by Maureen O’Sullivan (who was married to director John Farrow) as Stroud’s wife, and Rita Johnson as the ill-fated mistress. I always enjoy anything with that inveterate scene stealer Charles Laughton, and he gives one of his more restrained performances here. There are lots of familiar faces in the support cast, not least Laughton’s real life spouse Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric artist and her turn damn near steals the whole show. Harry Morgan also shows up as a darkly menacing gunman on Janoth’s payroll, made all the more sinister by the fact that his character utters not a word on screen. Seasoned noir watchers may also recognise Harold Vermilyea who remains forever memorable, for me at least, as the doomed Waldo Evans from Sorry, Wrong Number.

If the plot to this movie seems slightly familiar that may be due to the fact that it was remade in the 80’s as No Way Out, with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in the Milland and Laughton roles respectively. That film was not bad but, to my mind at least, not a patch on the original - isn’t that usually the case?

The Big Clock is available in R1 as part of the now, apparently, defunct Universal Noir line. If any fans of classic noir/suspense don’t already own this, I can only ask - Why?

I feel all dead inside. I’m backed up in a dark corner….and I don’t know who’s hitting me.

Those words are uttered by desperate private eye Brad Galt (Mark Stevens). He’s talking about the one lead that he’d hoped would get him out of a frame-up for murder; the one lead that’s just turned out to be another dead end. But those same words also go a long way towards defining the essence of Film Noir. 

Contrary to popular belief, there weren’t all that many Noirs of the classic period that featured a private detective as the hero, however, Henry Hathaway’s 1946 movie does. Galt is a New York P.I. who was double-crossed by his ex-partner. When the partner turns up in town and the police call around to warn Galt not to cause any trouble, you can be sure just what’s coming. Or can you?

The slightly convoluted plot introduces us to a cast of characters who are rarely what they first appear to be. Clifton Webb is a wealthy gallery owner, reminiscent of his earlier Waldo Lydecker in Laura. Cathy Downs is his trophy wife. William Bendix (one of the screen’s most memorable heavies) is…a heavy. Kurt Kreuger is Galt’s ex-partner and Lucille Ball is his ever faithful secretary. By the end of the movie we get to see all these characters for what they really are, and the ride there is never a displeasing one. Hathaway directs tightly on location and keeps everything moving along like an old pro. The interiors are all well shot by Joe MacDonald - lots of inky black shadows, silhouettes, figures framed in windows and so on.

So, have I any criticisms to make? Well, there’s Lucy! I have to confess that I have never been a fan of Miss Ball. Even as a youngster her TV shows irritated the hell out of me, now that I’m all grown up I find her even less appealing. While I watched this film, I found myself thinking that almost any other actress would have preferable in the role of the resourceful girl friday.

Nevertheless, I consider this to be a highly entertaining entry in the Fox Noir line. The R1 transfer is very good (it’s also available in R2 and I assume the image should be the same) and well worth picking up if you’re a fan of vintage noir/crime/mystery movies. 

British attempts at producing film noir have traditionally been regarded as a notch down from their Hollywood counterparts. There is, sometimes, that sense of the genteel that the harder-edged Hollywood movies don’t suffer from. However, when BritNoir is at its best it’s more than capable of competing with productions from across the pond. The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, It Always Rains on Sunday, Brighton Rock, for example, are all films that belong in the front rank of noir. The October Man (1947) may not be quite in the same league as those other titles but it’s not far off.

When you see a film boasting a script by Eric Ambler, you know you’re on fairly safe ground. Ambler was, first and foremost, a novelist and gave us some of the best espionage/mystery fiction of the last century. I would strongly urge anyone unfamiliar with his writing to seek it out, although I believe a good deal of it has shamefully fallen out of print. His script here contains those staples of any good noir, namely murder, guilt and psychological imbalance.

The story concerns Jim Ackalnd (John Mills) who we see in the opening scenes riding a bus and knotting his handkerchief into the shape of a rabbit for the amusement of the small girl seated next to him. The child - played by Mills’ own daughter Juliet - is the daughter of some friends, and Jim is accompanying her back home. As the bus makes its way along a  country road in torrential rain, a brake failure causes a fatal accident at a level crossing. This results in the death of the child and Mills spends a year in hospital with a fractured skull and brain damage. As Jim is released from hospital we learn that he remains racked with guilt and has already attempted suicide. He moves into a rundown boarding house peopled by an assortment of fine British character actors including a poisonous Joyce Carey, Catherine Lacey as the put upon manageress, and Edward Chapman (who should be recognizable as Mr Grimsdale from numerous Norman Wisdom movies). He also makes the acquaintance of model Kay Walsh, of which more later.

Jim’s life seems to be getting back on track and a romance with Joan Greenwood helps give him some renewed hope for the future. However, things are about to go pear-shaped - this is the world of noir after all. The model turns up dead in a park and a cheque from Jim is found close to the body; worse still he was out walking alone when the crime took place. This, combined with some malicious gossip from the other residents, leads the police to suspect Jim - and Jim to query his own sanity. With the psychological pressure mounting and distrust surrounding him, it falls to Jim to try to find the real killer before the net closes around him.

Roy Ward Baker provides his usual solid, unfussy direction but the real star is the cinematography. Erwin Hillier lays the noir atmosphere on thick, with lots of smoke, fog, deep shadows and harsh white lighting to pin the focus on the hapless Jim. John Mills plays the role perfectly as the quiet and essentially decent man driven to the very limit. Mills was ideal casting for this kind of part and would reprise it a few years later in the similarily themed The Long Memory. In fact, the acting is uniformly strong throughout and the scenes in the boarding house are memorable.

So, where does the weakness lie? Perhaps surprisingly, the fault is with Amblers script. I always feel that this kind of movie benefits enormously from creating suspicions in the viewers mind about the hero. In this case, we are never really in any doubt that Mills is innocent, moreover, the identity of the real killer is fairly obvious right from the off. Personally, I also found the repeated use of the knotted handkerchief motif - used to point up the mental strain of Jim - a little tiresome towards the end.

Generally though, this is one of the better examples of BritNoir and I would certainly recommend it to any fan of suspense/noir. The film is currently unavailable on DVD anywhere, save grey market copies, as far as I know. I believe the rights may currently reside with Optimum/Network/ITV in R2, all of whom have released some little known gems in the past. I very much hope they get around to this one soon.