Category / Film

by DrMabuse

Noir City #5

Noir attrition has kicked in. And it’s not just me. I had to assure a fellow film buff that Sydney Greenstreet did indeed appear in Casablanca. And neither of us could remember Leon Ames’ name a mere 24 hours after viewing his fantastic performance in The Velvet Touch. We only knew that he was also in Postman. Even Eddie Muller was susceptible on Monday night, going crazy about The Velvet Touch right before Crime of Passion. The hard lesson is that the more films you watch, the more you realize that nobody’s perfect.

Of course, this means nothing for those who are attending Noir City in piecemeal. But for the truly devoted film freaks, for the people who are either going every night or most nights, it’s fascinating to watch people who were once so lucid degenerate into atavistic carnivores whose only duty is to wander in for more. I blame Muller for this. The guy programmed four extra nights this year. And he knew that we film freaks would keep coming. Even with our day jobs and other obligations.

But no matter. With two nights left, I’ve already wistful about my nightly dose of noir soon coming at an end.

Crime of Passion (1957): If Crime of Passion demonstrates anything, it’s that a fifty year old Barbara Stanwyck could probably have Gwyneth Paltrow’s kidney for a midnight snack and still remain hungry. Stanwyck plays an advice columnist who falls for and marries a cop played by (who else?) Sterling Hayden. Hayden, perhaps the actor to play by-the-book characters, is extremely sensitive to Stanwyck’s needs — that is, when he’s not demanding ham and eggs (though not the Desert Fury variety), working long hours, growing stubble, and roughing other cops up shortly after spitting out a freshly lit cigarette. Shortly before marrying Hayden, Stanwyck quits her job and finds herself not only bored, but a tad febrile about her husband getting ahead. To the point where she’s even willing to do the horizontal tango with Raymond Burr, among other things.

The implausibility of this setup is helped in large part by the solid acting. Stanwyck delivers lines like a firecracker, with just the right amount of innuendo. Hayden is every bit her match. And their scenes together display solid chemistry (what Hayden does with his hands and Stanwyck with her eyes is nothing less than amazing), particularly when juxtaposed against drab parties of husbands hanging with husbands drinking beer and wives hanging with wives getting excited about social developments. There’s a dark undercurrent in this film that attracted me, but left me ultimately unfulfilled. I’m all for pre-Friedan examination of the housewife’s predicament, but why should the problem that has no name have its filmmakers intimidated? The ending, which cried out for a Lina Wurtmuller-like explosion, was too neat and anticlimactic. But it’s passable fare, though more Ladies’ Home Journal than noir.

The Velvet Touch (1948): Imagine The Sweet Smell of Success crossed with a good murder mystery and you have The Velvet Touch, an overlooked little gem bristling with wit and heartache. Whether it’s contemplating the secret meanings of chess or directly invoking Oscar Wilde, the dialogue is so crisp that I was astonished to learn that this was Walter Reilly’s only film script (the IMDB listed his only other writing credit as an episode of Climax!). Rosalind Russell propels this noir with class, playing an aristocratic actress locked up with a sleazy producer played marvelously by Leon Ames (think a low-rent William Holden type oozing with sleaze). Russell inadvertently kills Ames in the opening moment and, as is the custom of noir, we flashback to learn how it all happened. She’s wooed by an Englishman (Leo Genn) who orders her meals for her. And she’s trying to break out of her typecasting in painfully unfunny farces by appearing in Hedda Gabler. But then there’s the murder and the efforts to cover up.

The film is guided more by its dialogue and performances, than its predictable story arcs. Velvet features a spectacular theatre (that Mueller reports was constructed entirely on an RKO soundstage) and, if the lovely friction between Russell and Ames wasn’t enough, it throws in Sydney Greenstreet — this time, as a good guy, a detective that’s a cross between Columbo and Nero Wolfe.

More films seen and to be seen, all to cover later.

by DrMabuse

And the Nominees Are…

The nominees have been announced.

1. Spellbound was ignored in the Best Documentary category.
2. Granted, he was fun. But Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean?
3. The Triplets of Belleville doesn’t stand a chance against Finding Nemo.
4. City of God was a surprise. It’s up for cinematography, directing, film editing and writing. It’s also a Miramax film. So it was probably pushed like gangbusters.
5. A surprise Pollock win a few years ago and now a Mystic River nomination. The Academy really loves Marcia Gay Harden, don’t they?
6. Keisha Castle-Hughes for Best Actress in Whale Rider. She may be the youngest lead nominee ever. The kids are moving from the Best Supporting nominees (i.e., Anna Paguin for The Piano) to the lead roles.
7. Typically, the Best Writing category is the sympathy Oscar. So no surprise to see American Splendor, Dirty Pretty Things and The Barbarian Invasions ghettoized there (although the latter also scored a foreign film nomination).
8. Alec Baldwin in The Cooler — another surprise.
9. I feel sorry for any film up against Return of the King in the technical categories. It’s clear they don’t stand a chance.
10. A Mighty Wind up for Best Song!

by DrMabuse

Quickies

Primer: Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The film was made for $7,000, doesn’t appear to have a distribution deal yet, but somehow manages to involve time travel and ethics in its plot. The intricate story has also caused a lot of people to scratch their heads, which has resulted in several unclaimed ski caps left at theatres.

As if the Whitbread isn’t enough, Mark Haddon has walked away with another award — this time, from the South Bank Show. The British literary community is up in arms about this, trying to convince committees that “enough is enough.” An anonymous Important Literary Person has made calls, noting that, while The Curious Dog is a great book, Haddon has simply won too much praise and that there won’t be enough praise for the rest of the books.

Alexandra Ripley, author of Scarlett, has died. Several publishers, upon hearing the news, have been trying to determine which great Ripley book they can pilfer a sequel out of. Unfortunately, Ripley was no Margaret Mitchell. And no publisher wants to be reminded of how much they backed Ripley’s attempt to cash in, let alone the other stuff she wrote.

Prima facie that the New Yorker is overinfluenced by vapid McSweeney’s-like pop cultural riffs: “Boswell’s Life of Jackson”. (And Menudo is referenced in the first sentence. Oh no.)

James Fallows annotates the State of the Union address.

The Boston Globe interviews Tibor Fischer and Fischer comes across, no surprise, as a smug son of a bitch. Not only does he compare himself to Shakespeare, but he lauds cheapshots: “I’m with Amis, and so although in ‘Voyage’ I do have laughs at the expense of foreigners — so did Shakespeare — I also allow characters for whom English is not their first language to express dismay when someone British doesn’t know an arcane piece of English vocabulary: ‘It’s your language,’ they say.”

And to hell with the Golden Globes. How about a real award? Best Lead In A Rising Up and Rising Down Review: “For the past decade, it seemed Sacramento-based novelist William T. Vollmann was neck and neck in a war of prolificacy with Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, and anyone else who would take him on. With ‘Rising Up and Rising Down,’ he has put the issue to rest.” And I truly feel sorry for John Freeman, who, like all reviewers, read all 3,500 pages from a CD-ROM.

Lizzie Grubman (not to be confused with this Lizzie) is returning to the social scene. This may be the first time in New York history that first-hand accounts of road rage are discussed over caviar.

At long last, a New York Times I want to see. (via Old Hag, courtesy of Pullquote)

Pynchon’s voice on The Simpsons. He sounds like an angrier Harvey Pekar. (via Chica)

Francis Ford Coppola quotes Wodehouse! (via At Large)

[1/24/06 UPDATE: Primer, as nearly all film geeks know by now, did manage to nab a DVD distribution deal, leading to enthusiasts working out the multiple timelines. As for the McSweeney’s influence upon the New Yorker (and other places), I should note that litblogs, as much as they claim to be anti-Eggers, are guilty practitioners (including this one).]

by DrMabuse

Noir City #4

Thursday and Friday’s screenings made ten movies in five days. This was drastic media input by all reasonable standards, particularly given the four hours of sleep I was getting, the writing I was trying to get in, and the day job. By the end of Friday, I actually believed John Garfield and Liz Scott were inviting me to dinner to discuss a few double-cross angles over poisoned cabarnet — in today’s world, their schemings would probably be articulated in a marketing plan. Fortunately, a few friends stepped in at the right moment, delineating the differences between film and reality. They threatened never to speak to me again if I kept spending so much time at the Castro Theatre, whether solo or with other folks. Every obsession has its price. I learned this from film noir.

Movie blurred into movie. It was getting more difficult to judge each film on its own merits or lack thereof. Titles, directors, and actors were thrown into a mental cistern and memory required careful auditing. But now with sleep and time away from the screen, it is, at last, possible to dwell upon what I saw.

The Accused (1949): I’m not quite sure how much Jonathan Kaplan’s 1988 movie, an overrated piece of tripe that seemed to revel in its depiction of rape, had to do with this forerunner. The Kaplan version doesn’t have a source. What I do know is that both movies involve a woman who gets raped, an attorney who attempts to defend them, and some Hester Prynne-like stigma felt internally by the victims. Despite its intentions, beneath the surface, the Kaplan film went with Jodie Foster as the blue-collar pottymouth type who had it coming, “sexing up” the rape through an unnecessary flashback masquerading under the imprimatur of docudrama. But the 1949 version turned out to be smarter and more fascinating, even if it culminated in a disappointing finale that betrayed its intentions.

Loretta Young plays a psychology professor (in a 1949 film, no less!) who gets a ride from a student hoping to get into her pants. The student, fond of suggestively chomping down on pencils in the classroom, takes her on an extended ride, strips down to swimming trunks, and then tries to assault Young over a cliff face. Young beats him to death in self-defense and spends most of the movie dodging the scientific-minded detectives (who also toss around rough gender role generalizations) looking into the case, while rearranging her appearance when necessary.

The film’s first hour is its most fascinating. We see Young trying to convince an exchange student that college is a waste of money if a lady goes there solely to snag a husband. There’s the suggestion in this moment, which isn’t particularly didactic, that the film will be about the crumbling of a woman’s image. There’s a running undercurrent in the film’s dialogue and visuals on how people are judged by their looks. There’s a shot of Young looking into a compact as a man who may be able to identify her can be seen in the reflection. It’s a canny bon mot which implies that Young may also a victim of how society judges men and women in the smallest of ways. This is also reflected by the smoking gun pinning the case to Young: a blown-up display of a slide sample in a dark room.

Unfortunately, the film abandons this angle and turns Young into yet another hopeless spinster who needs a man. She swoons over Robert “We’ll win this war if the cows come home” Cummings, and apologizes for “a spinster’s kiss.”

It should be noted that The Accused was written by a woman, Ketti Frings. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Frings had to settle for the sickening transition into “woe is me” histrionics (or, for that matter, Young’s lame first-person voiceover, reinforcing the fearful woman racket) to get the early points across. I was very disappointed by the end. But for a 1949 film, it still managed to sneak in a few interesting assaults on gender relations.

The Reckless Moment (1949): The film, one of only two movies that the great Max Ophuls made in Hollywood, is based on the same source material as 2001’s The Deep End. I’d seen that film, which was propelled more by Tilda Swinton’s extraordinary performance than its passable script. But I didn’t realize how much directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel had appropriated Ophuls’ imagery. The 1949 version has the great Joan Bennett in the role of the mother doing whatever it takes to keep a murder on the q.t. Bennett has an altogether different desperation than Swinton. Where Swinton is the independent type, Bennett covers up the crime with a good deal of help from servants. While both ladies are competent protectors and not to be messed with, Bennett comes across better as the indomitable commander. But that’s largely because The Reckless Moment‘s script is better.

Other than this, the narrative distinctions between the two films stop. James Mason attempts an Irish dialect, but, alas, his is the voice of James Mason. Before you can say Humbert Humbert or Bigger than Life, he’s simpering on all fours in the way he does so well.

If I had to pick one movie or the other, I’d base my choice on one simple criterion. The Reckless Moment is 82 minutes long. The Deep End is 101 minutes. The Reckless Moment wins by way of its breeziness.

Desert Fury (1947): Desert Fury was one of two Technicolor noirs Mueller programmed. And, oh, what wonderful subtext in the Robert Rossen script.

The film stars Liz Scott, who, not long ago, I confessed my relentless devotion to (and, apparently, I’m not alone). Desert Fury is worth it just to see the lovely Ms. Scott filmed in beautiful Technicolor. I found myself blushing throughout the film. My able viewership was helped by the art department. If I had to offer a conservative estimate on the number of costume changes for Ms. Scott, it would stand somewhere around 204.

I confess these details not to run a film freak’s Vespa into a brick wall, but because, in light of the subtext, it’s necessary to point out that Liz Scott is nothing less than stunning, beautiful, sharp, a young lady who declares early on that she has no problem “playing with matches,” a woman who any man would go to jail over. And not the way you’re thinking.

Now the subtext: John Hodiak plays a gangster who has arrived at a Nevada desert town with his, uh, special male companion Wendell Corey. Corey has apparently been everywhere with Hodiak for quite some time. As Hodiak himself confesses, Corey bought him “ham and eggs” when they first met. And we all know what that means.

Hodiak is in a bit of denial about his, uh, relationship with Corey. He hopes to go off with Scott. But he tried the same thing earlier with Scott’s mother (played with snap and grace by Mary Astor). And Corey came along to the picnic then.

Now, as established above, any man would run off with Scott in a minute. And this is where Scott’s casting is crucial. She encourages Hodiak to run off with her. And he still can’t shake Corey. To the point where Hodiak’s conflicted through the film and snaps with a cruel act towards a local (and much more after) in a diner.

And then there’s Burt Lancaster, the deputy whose tousled hair looks gayer than Hodiak and Corey combnied. He has his eyes on Scott too. But Scott isn’t quite convinced he’s the rugged man who will take her away.

It is to the immense credit of Rossen and director Lewis Allen that they got away with so much mangled manhood at the time that this was made. Where The Accused abandoned its subtext early on, Rossen is a gifted enough writer to stay with it until the bitter end. I came down a bit hard on Rossen with The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, but where the dialogue of that film appeared dictated by a writer’s efforts to prove he was one with the atmosphere dammit and that he’s lived, Rossen is able to pull off a stylized Nevada vernacular here that, along with the subtext, makes Desert Fury a juicy, overlooked gem.

Leave Her to Heaven (1945): Like the 1948 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, I was underwhelmed by this purpoted classic. Perhaps I was distracted by Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde’s preternaturally perfect eyebrows. Or maybe I was hoping for more motivation into Tierney’s character. Or maybe I was just damned annoyed by director John M. Stahl’s stilted framings, the blocking of which resembled a really bad community theatre production. Or maybe I was vexed by the dimebag courtroom finale with the over-the-top prosecutor and the endless yeses. Or maybe I simply wanted to slap Wilde around because he had all the thespic range of a Mylar board.

With the exception of nice perspective shots during one murder sequence, I just couldn’t believe in this movie. But this was, after all, Number 10.

by DrMabuse

Noir City #3

Last night, Eddie Mueller paired two movies based on W. Somerset Maugham material. Maugham, who was the highest paid author in the world during the 1930s, had a good deal of his material produced for the screen — primarily because he was the kind prolific and popular writer to have four new plays running on the London West End at the same time. My own two-volume set of Somerset Maugham’s short stories alone runs several thousand pages. Often the long stories set in the tropics blur into each other, with Maugham recycling plots and characters without apology.

But that’s not to suggest that we should discount Maugham’s gift as a storyteller. He was a plot-heavy writer, who read every story of Guy de Maupassant in French at an early age. He worked the literary angle with Of Human Bondage but kept it real with his Ashenden tales. The Ashenden stories are considered by many to be the prototype for the modern spy story. Drawn from Maugham’s own experience in espionage, they were to prove so successful that Hitchcock used two of the stories as the basis for his film The Secret Agent. Fleming and Le Carre could not have existed without Maugham, much as Doyle could not have existed without Poe.

But Maugham was also concerned with intimacy, keen on domineeering figures in a family (he considered his happiest days to be his early ones with his mother). And it was two selections along these lines that Mueller presented last night.

Christmas Holiday (1944): Despite the presence of the great Herman J. Mankiewicz, this adaptation is bogged down by a flashback-within-flashback structure. It takes forever to get to the crux of the story. The camera ogles endlessly over Deanna Durbin — here, in her first adult role, cast against type as a browbeaten nightclub singer. After breaking down at Xmas mass, Durbin tells her story to army officer Dean Harens (the Matt Damon of his time, thankfully without the star status) and it is here that we are eventually introduced to her husband, Gene Kelly, who has just murdered an associate. Unfortunately, it takes so long to get to the film’s real goodies, best epitomized in a split-diopter shot of Kelly and Durbin hunkered over a piano while Kelly’s controlling mother (played by Gale Sondergaard) rocks in the background. It’s a pity, because there’s some nice lighting by Woody Bredell, and some magnificent shots of a concert hall. And the Durbin-described “pathological” relationship between Kelly and his mother, with the Durbin dynamic, is something special to behold.

But the problem with this movie is that it’s too much of a blatant vehicle for Durbin. At the time this movie was made, Durbin was desperate to break out of her wholesome teen singer image. It was she who read Maugham’s novel and she who convinced Universal to make the film. And while she does a commendable yeoman’s job, the camera cannot stop shoving itself up Durbin’s nostrils, a one-two punch with soft-light, as if to hammer home the point that we are seeing a wholly different Durbin.

The results are an underwhelming film directed by an underrated director (Robert Sidomak, the man behind The Killers and Criss Cross), with a few sparks. But it could have been much better.

The Letter (1940): Over the past few years, a friend and I have had an on-again, off-again dialogue over William Wyler. He claims that Wyler is overrated — the worst director of the studio system. I claim he’s hit-or-miss, but that you can’t discount The Ox-Bow Incident, Roman Holiday, Jezebel, or Ben-Hur. Whatever Wyler’s problems, I maintain, he’s still great with actors and knows how to deliver when he has a script in his hand. No, my friend says, Wyler couldn’t come up with a decent visual to save his overinflated pecs. Watch your back, he says. I’ll stab it in the morning. Sometimes.

The subject is so heated among film geeks that even a documentary was made in 1986 called Directed by William Wyler in an attempt to put Wyler alongside directors such as John Ford and Howard Hawks.

Up until now, I’ve had to agree with my friend’s stance on visuals. Wyler always struck me as a guy who was riding on Gregg Toland’s coattails, leaving Toland to frame that magnificent supermarket shot in The Best Years of Our Lives or make Bette Davis look nothing less than sensational in The Little Foxes.

But The Letter not only predates The Maltese Falcon as a potential missing link between German Expressionism and film noir by one year, but it may very well be a visual example I can use in the Wyler debate. This film is pure eye candy. It is a film I must see again. From the opening tracking shot, in which a murder is committed in a tropical wilderness, the photography offers endless semiotics to sift through, at one point even aping the movement of Bette Davis as she’s describing how she shoots a man to death. There’s one sequence that takes place wholly in a living room, in which three characters are sitting. Wyler and Toland frame them high to low. The man who has committed a highly unethical act is visually tainted in a gray suit. The pure character who had no idea of this act is in white. And the person who caused all this is dressed in black, seated on a striped soda that suggests a jail cell.

The blocking in this picture is exquisite. Characters arch their backs over to match the Venetian blind shadows on the wall. I’m almost certain that Bertolucci had The Letter in mind when he went off to make The Conformist.

Unfortunately, The Letter is hard to track down. Ironic, given that it might be the solitary film to restore Wyler’s status.