Catch-Up Neo-Noir Watch: Layer Cake (2004)

Watched:  05/28/2021

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2000's

Director:  Matthew Vaughn

For a moment there, Britain was exporting some hip crime movies that Americans decided were a pretty good idea.  For a number of reasons, I missed Layer Cake (2004) when it hit the States in the summer of 2005.  And just never saw it afterwards.  Which is crazy.  We're Daniel Craig fans in this house.

It's a plot-heavy, occasionally cheeky gangster movie that served as an accidentally good pairing with The Brothers Rico, which I'd watched the night before.  Both films are about guys who are doing well enough in legitimate business that they want to leave the life behind them - but in Layer Cake, we aren't there yet.  We're just considering retiring after years packaging and selling cocaine in London when our nameless lead, played by Daniel Craig (and - it's clear this is the movie that inspired someone to give him Bond), gets pulled in as an errand boy by his boss, to find a missing girl and to broker a deal with a wild-card hoodlum who has a million hits of ecstacy he's stumbled into and is looking to sell.  

Noir Watch: The Brothers Rico (1957)

Watched:  05/27/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Phil Karlson

For gangster and crime film fans, there's a lot to like in The Brothers Rico (1957), and I have to wonder how many future gangster pictures were influenced by this one.  A story about family loyalty, gang loyalty, and where the two intersect, it's a tough picture.

Fortunately, it stars Richard Conte, who plays Eddie Rico, the eldest brother, pitch perfect.  A former mob accountant, Eddie's gotten out, left NYC and is running a laundry company handling industrial jobs like hotels.  He's married to a girl from the old neighborhood who talked him into getting out - and he's domesticated and ready to adopt a child when he's reminded he's still taking orders from New York.  And on the heels of that, he finds his brothers have been involved in a hit, and aren't following the mobster playbook.  One of them fell in love and grew a conscience.  

Throw in an old school Italian mother (Argentina Brunetti) who sees her ties to the mob as a good thing for she and her family, when not genuflecting, and it's more than the usual mob story, and hints at what's coming in mob fiction.  

There's no white-knight cop in this, nor any sign of law enforcement.  Nor is there anywhere to go where the New York mob hasn't syndicated operations.  As noir, it's about a character's belief in people, despite the fact they run a system that was always murderous, violent and corrupt.  He may have walked away as a friend in his mind, but he had never truly walked away - especially with his brothers remaining entangled.

There are some phenomenal scenes in the film (Conte waiting all day with the local boss in his hotel room), and Conte's scenes with his mother.

But at the end of the day, the film has a very weird Hollywood ending that just doesn't fit everything we saw before.  And absolutely can't have been what was in the original novel by Simenon or in the original screenplay.  

Still, worth watching.  Sometimes it feels positively modern.

PODCAST: "The Descent" (2005) - a Signal Watch Canon PodCast with SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  05/18/2021

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2000's

Director:  Neil Marshall

For more ways to listen

Simon and Ryan delve deep and explore the dark passageways of one of Simon's favourite films. You never know what lurks around all the corners and what we'll take a bite out of next as we ponder the first big success by director Neil Marshall.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 148: "The Descent" (2005) - a Signal Watch Canon Podcast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Music:

Into the Cavern - David Julyan, The Descent OST

Alone - David Julyan, The Descent OST

Signal Watch Canon:

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Noir Watch: Phantom Lady (1944)

Watched:  05/22/2021

Format:  BluRay (Arrow)

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Robert Siodmak

Producer:  Joan Harrison

I enjoyed this movie a lot the first time, but *really* liked it on a second viewing.

I just picked up the book Phantom Lady:  Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Woman Behind Hitchcock - and as I finished chapter 1, figured I might as well re-watch another of Harrison's movies.  

The "phantom lady" of the title does not refer to my Canadian girlfriend I swear I had in high school.  Instead - the film follows a man who has hit a sour spot with his wife and is out on the town having a drink, when he meets a woman who is, herself, distraught, but doesn't want to talk about it.  Agreeing not to share names, the two spend an evening on the town (there's no romance, just companionship), but when he arrives home, his wife is dead and the cops are waiting for him.  

No, I don't know how the cops knew to be there.

The man admits he and his wife were quarreling, and when the man can't turn up "the phantom lady", he's off to jail and a swift trial.  

His secretary, Ella Raines, isn't buying it and starts up her own investigation, with the support of cop Thomas Gomez and her boss's best pal, Franchot Tone, just returned from Brazil.

The movie looks great with classic noir high-contrast lighting, but also some interesting ideas in set design (Tone's apartment) and framing (the famed "erotic" drumming sequence).  I don't particularly want to list every scene and how and why it works, but the thread pulling everything together is Ella Raines' "Kansas", the intrepid secretary who won't let injustice lie, at threat to her life and limb - but she's also smarter than the average bear.  

She's no Marlowe - she's operating out of loyalty and a long-hidden love for her employer, not as a professional detective with a sense of duty.  But that makes her interest and drive all the more buyable.  And I think Ella Raines - whose career was curiously short for someone who was starring in good films - is pretty terrific here, playing some challenging stuff.

Anyhoo - glad to watch it again.

Noir Watch: Touch of Evil (1958)

Watched:  05/22/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown - 4th?

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Orson Welles

Jesus, this movie.  

For anyone who wants to talk about the great days of America and imagines the 1950's as some period of Leave It To Beaver simplicity, knowing that the era could also produce a movie that every corrupt cop movie has tried to stand up to since is a hell of a reality check.  In an era where even the noir films were being relit for eventual television distribution (less in content than in visuals), Welles' final Hollywood backed opus hits some of the darkest notes in a noir of the entire era.  

I've written before about how anxious Touch of Evil (1958) makes me, and that's still true.  I'd previously attributed most of that anxiety to the frustration and sympathy with Janet Leigh's young bride character who seems to be (a) the only one with a clear-eyed view of the situation, (b) in absolute peril from multiple forms of assault, and (c) utterly ignored by the macho men playing cops and robbers around her - she's an absolute prop, even to her own husband.

SPOILERS