Noirvember Watch: On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Watched:  11/20/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Nicholas Ray - w/ Ida Lupino

It's a Noirvember to Remember, and I am way behind on my noir intake.  I am also way behind on my Ida Lupino intake, in general.  

I'd watched this one previously on Noir Alley, and liked it pretty well.  On a second viewing, I think I appreciated it more - likely because I knew where and how Lupino was showing up, and I wasn't halfway through a movie wondering where the hell the co-star was.

I can't always account for how some movies stick with you, but certainly the imagery in this movie has come back to me in ways I wasn't really expecting from the first time I saw the movie.  The film moves between a post-war noir setting of urban squalor to the snowy mountains of Colorado, shot on location.  Ryan in his city-cop coat chasing down our killer in two sequences against the natural backdrop is something.  As is the darkened cottage where where Lupino lives, with her tactile posts to guide her through her own home.

It doesn't hurt that both Ryan and Lupino are memorable in almost any role.

Lupino Watch: The Big Knife (1955)

Watched:  04/29/2023

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Aldrich

I'd been meaning to watch The Big Knife (1955) for at least the past year through a few different channels.  Fortunately, Eddie Muller programmed the film as part of Noir Alley over on TCM.

The film is based on a play by Clifford Odets*, a playwright who had his own bad experience in Hollywood.  And, in many ways, feels very much like a filmed play.

My interests were Ida Lupino and Jean Hagen related, as both appear in the film, and I'd read Lupino was quite good in this (she is).  But it's an all-star cast, with Jack Palance as our lead - a successful actor who is a piece of studio machinery but who once had nobler aspirations for acting, film and theater.  Rod Steiger is astounding as a studio chief who needs Palance to sign a seven year contract, and Wendell Corey is similarly great as his fixer (a la Eddie Mannix).  Shelley Winters plays a would-be actress with information about Palance that's a big problem.

This is, by far, the best acting I've seen Palance do in any of the handful of films in which I've seen him.  He's not limited to general weird malevolence, or a bruiser of some kind.  He's a thoughtful guy juggling a lot of things and maybe just in over his head - and I bought him through the whole film.

In my opinion, this movie is very, very good, if a product of its time - not that the story doesn't work or even feels irrelevant.  It's more that the ending felt telegraphed in a mid-century drama sort of way.  But that doesn't make it bad.  I still felt like it worked, and was managed brilliantly.

Lupino just being rad as hell

This write-up is brief because I'm genuinely in a "I have no notes" mode with this one.  The story, performances, limited set, etc... all worked for me.  And Ida Lupino looked smashing, and was terrific.  And if you ever doubted Hagen, now's the time to see her once again nail the assignment.  

I'll take Muller's reasoning for why it's noir, and throw the tag on it.    

*who I've seen cited as the basis for Barton Fink

Noir Lupino Watch: Road House (1948)

Watched:  03/07/2024

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Jean Negulesco

Selection:  Me

I'd seen this movie before, about seven years ago now.  

All I remembered from the movie was Lupino bowling and Widmark cackling, that they had a really good exterior set for the hotel where Lupino is staying, ad that the back half got real, real dark.  All of these things were correct/ memorable.

Re-reading my original post, I could easily echo back pretty much the whole thing here again, but I won't, so go read it before continuing on here.

New items:

• Lupino gets top billing.  I don't really have a feel for Lupino's overall popularity, but she was riding pretty high in '48.  I feel like she's had a resurgence in popularity with noir and classic film buffs, in part because we know her career arc, but also because she translates very well to our sensibilities for what good acting looks like now.
• There's a throughline that Lupino's character used to have a good voice, but she lost it, and is doing the best she can.  She really sounds like a 3-pack-a-day smoker through the whole movie, and her (actually Lupino's!) singing voice is better than expected, and she's got charisma to spare.  She does smoke like a chimney through the movie and I wonder if she did off camera as well to get that sound.
• I think we're supposed to make something of the Madama Butterfly reference, but I would need to do logic pretzels to figure out what that is, other than perhaps Jefty's regressive attitudes about marriage?
• Widmark's character is named "Jefty", which is supposed to be a clever take on the fact his name is Jefferson T. Robbins.  You will hear the name "Jefty" approximately every 20 seconds during the runtime of this film.
• This movie led to some speculation at our house about whether people just bowled more in the 1940's so they knew they could get the shots they needed at the bowling alley (you could film me all day and I'm not sure you'd see a strike.  I suck.)
• The drunken shooting stuff at the end of the film is unhinged.  Just terrifying.
• In some ways this movie is about a guy who is driven to insanity by Ida Lupino existing in his orbit and one could write a thesis based on the gender roles in this movie, expectations, and class systems, and how that makes Jefty snap (and use his power to manipulate everyone).  There's a lot to dig into here.
• I'll argue that the right thing to do at the end of the movie is for Pete, Susie and Lily to form a throuple.  Susie seems game for just about anything.

I like this movie, as simple and straightforward and with at least two major plotholes as it is.  I would have liked more papering over the flimsiness of the case presented against Pete, but I do like the execution of where the movie is headed after.  

A fun, dark romp that feels like a melodrama and then gets real weird, real fast.  Plus, Lupino in gowns, singing is not horrible.

Ida Noir Watch: Woman in Hiding (1950)

Watched:  02/03/2024

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Michael Gordon

Selection:  Me.  

This one popped up on TCM's Noir Alley, and my memory was enjoying the film, so I gave it a spin.  Also, it had been a minute since I'd watched anything with Ida Lupino in it, and that seemed wrong.  

Anyway, I stand by the review from three years ago.  And my assertion that Ida Lupino is a good idea.

Noir Watch: Deep Valley (1947)

Watch:  07/04/2023

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jean Negulesco

This one felt like it had pieces of noir mixed in with American Gothic melodrama more than what you think of when you start searching the shelves for a noir.  And that's fine.  It's not like people in 1947 were setting out to make "noir".  

As a movie featuring Ida Lupino, I was pre-inclined to give it a shot.  And she's great!  Maybe not as good as in other things, but she and Fay Bainter - who plays her mother - are both terrific in this movie.  

But I'm not sure the movie quite sticks the landing, and it's probably 15 minutes too long at an hour and 44 minutes.  It also really does echo High Sierra, which Lupino had starred in back in 1941, and it almost feels like she should have played the young naive woman of this film in 1941 and the more mature woman of High Sierra in '47.  But that's not how it worked out, and I don't have a time machine to tell them what to do.

Lupino plays a 22 year old (she's 28ish here) who has been the middle-man for her parents who have been at a stalemate for years since her father struck her mother.  Now, the two don't talk as their once grand house falls apart around them.  The mother hasn't left her room in *years* (don't ask me the logistics) having Lupino wait on her hand and foot, and the father lives downstairs and tends to the farm.  Sort of.  The entire house is falling apart and Lupino is a nervous mess, complete with a crippling stutter.

Meanwhile, a highway (the PCH, maybe?) is coming along the other side of the hill where she lives in a Deep Valley.  The road is being built with prison labor*, and each day Lupino sneaks off to watch shirtless men labor in the sun.  No, really.  It's incredibly horny.  

Anyway, she has a favorite in  Dane Clark.  One day the crew comes to the farmhouse to fill up some water buckets and while there, Clark gets in an altercation with a guard and gets sent to a shed awaiting a return to San Quentin.  A landslide occurs, and Clark escapes in the chaos. Meanwhile, Lupino sees the walls closing in on her (relating to the prisoners) and makes good her own escape into the woods.  

The pair come across each other and fall in love/ make it off camera.  

Turns our Clark has a bit of a temper, and is known to basically go into rages and deck people, which is how he ended up in jail.  But he's convinced the love of a good Lupino will fix all this.  

Lupino runs home to grab some supplies so the two can make good their escape, but first realizes in her absence, her parents figured their shit out, and also she's somewhat trapped by the posse using her house and not wanting to draw suspicion.

The movie walks some fine lines.  Clearly Lupino's naive virgin has never really known a man before and is throwing herself at the first guy to really take her fancy.  Similarly, Clark is putting way too much on Lupino as an angel who will save him from himself.  And the movie never really does anything to de-romanticize all of that.  Or address that Clark "doesn't mean it", but he sure has homicidal impulses and if Lupino were to leave with him, sure seems like she'd be dead within a year.

I *do* think the movie wants to say something about this, but it's left to a brief bit of dialog from her mother to put the seed of doubt in the audience's mind.  And I'm not sure the movie (and 1947) is aware of what it's setting up.  But like many movies of young couples caught in an impossible situation (see: They Live By Night), it's all Romeo and Juliet star-crossed romance.  People are gonna wind up dead before things are over.

According to show-notes presented by Eddie Muller, this could have been a John Garfield movie, and we might have had a marginally different picture if that had occurred.  We have to buy a lot in a short amount of time, and the movie doesn't always sell it.  I don't know how that looks with Garfield.

But, also, the movie wants us to believe Lupino doesn't look great in a blouse and jeans and that makes the movie a liar.

Still, it's an interesting movie if not a great one.  Not all of these are grand slams.  

*no, this is never addressed

Ida Watch: Ladies in Retirement (1941)

Watched:  09/16/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Director:  Charles Vidor

Everything about this movie screams pre-WWII play.  More or less a single location/ set, daffy characters, moments of strong internal reckoning, a maid to be the dumb one, a ne'er-do-well relative, and a dowager-type causing trouble.

And I loved it.  

We picked this as a watch party before we dive into the monster season entirely on the cast.  Starring Ida Lupino, Louis Hayward, Elsa Lanchester, Evelyn Keyes, Isobel Elsom and Edith Barrett, I was entirely curious as I'd only seen mention of the film on Jenifer's blog before - and that was a faded memory.  It's now streaming on Prime, and I suggest you go check it out.  

And, man, is Elsa Lanchester ever good (and so underutilized by Hollywood).

Watch Party Watch: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Watched:  08/19/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1930's

Director:  Alfred Werker

Well.  What's not to like, really?  

If you like Holmes books, this is... close-ish.  Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are kind of the model for on-screen Holmes and Watson.  There's a great villain in Moriarty.  And a young Ida Lupino is charming as hell at the center of it all.  

What's amazing is how undated the film feels some 80 years later.  You can imagine all of this as the plot and performances in a modern Sherlock retelling,  And maybe that's because they made 14 of these movies in the span of less than a decade - not quite a serial, but certainly a series that left enough of an impact that this was how it was done until the 21st Century decided "what if Holmes was not at all like Holmes?" in two separate series of movies and a TV show.

I won't say the movie was flawless, but it was very, very *fun*, which is what I'm looking for in my Holmes reading or adaptations.  Give me a Holmes and Watson on the case, and a mystery I can't solve on my own, and I'll come back for more.

It will *surely* annoy Jamie that now that I know there are 13 more of these, I'm gonna watch them.  But she knew what I was about when she married me, so.

Ida Watch: While the City Sleeps (1956)

Watched:  07/20/2022

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  4th?  5th?

Director:  Fritz Lang

I've written this movie up multiple times.  I really like it, and I like it more every time I watch it.  

It's a newsroom film from mid-Century America, with shades of noir - but the cast in this movie is unreal and worth checking out, and it's the last, great Fritz Lang film.  

Here's who you have in the film:

Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, George Sanders, Rhonda Fleming, Thomas Mitchell, John Drew Barrymore, Sally Forrest and...  Ida Lupino.

I mean, it's worth the price of admission just for the cast and director, but I dig the hell out of this movie. 

It's a workplace dramady, a hard-nosed newspaper/ media film, a suspense-thriller and absolutely an ensemble piece.  It moves at a newspaper movie clip, and you have to pay a bit of attention to keep up.  But if you do - the workplace drama is phenomenal, and while a fascinating look at "juvenile delinquency" as seen through the lens of the 1950's - complete with blaming *comic books* for driving a young man to murder.  

 If you're looking for how one keeps sex and shenanigans just off screen in a Hayes Code era movie, this one is a lulu.  And despite Rhonda Fleming performing calisthenics, Ida Lupino is the thing you'll keep your eyes on through the whole film. 

This was Jamie's first viewing, and she spoke up afterwards about how great Lupino's character and performance were as a nuanced character with her own agenda.  I'm in complete agreement.  Lupino takes what's on the page, which could have been words given to anyone, and absolutely elevates the role as smart, conniving, amoral and sexy as hell.

She also drinks champagne with a peach in it, and I need to look up what the actual hell is happening there.

Anyway - this is becoming one of my favorite films.  Just a good watch every time.

Ida Watch: The Man I Love (1947)

Watched:  06/13/2022

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Raoul Walsh

Cubs were in weather delay, so I put on The Man I Love (1947) so that I might continue on my Ida journey.  

Ida Lupino had previously starred in High Sierra for director Raoul Walsh, and he must have known he had about four choices in Hollywood to pull off the part of Petey Brown (my new favorite character name in anything, ever), and by 1947, Crawford and Stanwyck were not going to sell the age Petey needed to be in relation to all the other members of her family.  

There's a lot of reasons to like this movie, but not least because Ida Lupino is in fabulous gowns and other outfits.  She's... well cared for on this movie in some ways (she also apparently suffered from legit exhaustion on the movie, which makes me think in other ways, she was run ragged), with gorgeous lighting, hair and make-up in every scene.  

Ida Watch: Out of the Fog (1941)

Watched:  05/24/2022

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Decade:   1940's

Director:  Anatole Litvak

Well, Jamie likes Ida Lupino, so it's never a huge fight when I declare "I'm gonna watch an Ida Lupino movie" which does, in fact, happen around here.  And right now Criterion Channel had a handful of options, most of which I've seen but a few I hadn't.  Tonight's choice was Out of the Fog from 1941.  

The film feels distinctly pre-war in content, a stage-like acting style derived from 30's-era norms plus - I assume - a desire to replicate the energy and pacing of source material from several of the players.  It's a tight 85 minutes of melodrama that feels like a mix of the socially conscious theater of the 1940's and some light crime.  

It also stars John Garfield (who is typically John Garfield excellent), Thomas Mitchell, Eddie Albert and a handful of other familiar faces and just faces.  

Garfield and Lupino out on the town

Western Noir Watch: Lust for Gold (1949)

Watched:  05/02/2022

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1940's

Director:  S. Sylvan Simon and George Marshall

Well, Criterion Channel is currently highlighting a collection of films starring Ida Lupino, and that's good news for me, anyway.  Always on the hunt for more Lupino, I wanted to check out something I hadn't seen, and we mostly randomly landed on Lust for Gold (1949), what appeared to be a Western, but which really turned out to be Western Noir, which is absolutely a thing.

This is a supremely weird movie, and they needed to make one movie or the other movie in their movie, but instead they give you two partial movies, and I cannot begin to conceive of the "why".  A full 2/3rds of the film is flashback to events from the 1880's, and the rest takes place, which a much-less-talented team of actors, in the present day of 1949.  And I'm not sure the whole section in 1949 needs to exist at all, and I'm not sure that the events of 1880 shouldn't have been mentioned in about three sentences in a very different version of how the 1949 stuff spins out.

The end result is that you don't get any Ida Lupino until something like 35 minutes into a 90 minute movie, and... come on.  What are we even doing here?

Happy Belated Birthday to Ida Lupino

 

Yesterday was the birthday of film star, producer and director, Ida Lupino.  

She's in several amazing films, including a personal favorite, While the City Sleeps.  In the movie, she plays the fast-talking gossip reporter for a major newspaper, who wants to get with Dana Andrews (and does, somewhat on screen enough that you know offscreen the characters hooked up) but he returns to his pure as the driven snow girlfriend in the film's finish.  

Dana Andrews made a wrong choice.

you fool, Andrews.  

Ida Watch: Private Hell 36 (1954)

this movie was also released as "Baby Face Killers" which makes no sense and is hilarious

Watched:  09/23/2021

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Don Siegel

I'd see this one before, one of the films from The Filmmakers, the producing company founded by Ida Lupino and her husband at the time.  Lupino had co-written the film, and co-stars in what I find an interesting role as a down-on-her-luck lounge singer who happens to be a witness valuable to two detectives (Steve Cochrane and Howard Duff) as they seek a murderer who has fled to LA and is now passing bills known to have been stolen in a murder/ robbery.  

It's a cheaper film, so it's smaller and occasionally falls into the trap of letting scenes linger on so we can make the necessary 80 minute feature run-time.  And there's a whole scene at the beginning that seems like a favor to Steve Cochrane so he can tear apart a set and do some cool action sequence stuff (there's not a ton of action, otherwise).  

But, I do like the set-up quite a bit.  Cochrane as the morally-shakey cop, Huff as the cop with a wife (Dorothy Malone in platinum hair) and kid who wants to be the one with the straight moral compass - who are assigned to track down the mysterious NY criminals.  Along the way they meet Lupino and eventually track down the criminal - and all that cash.  

Cochrane believes he needs money if he's going to keep Lupino, and Huff... is conflicted.  If the movie has a slow mid-section, it has some great moments of punctuation.  

Anyway, it's got some pure noir baked in, and something of an accidental femme fatale.

Ida/ Noir Watch: Woman in Hiding (1950)

Watched:  04/08/2021

Format: BluRay

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Michael Gordon

Well, it's still coming up on my birthday, and Jamie said "watch whatever, it's your b-day."  And, with a Totter movie cleared we moved on to Ida Lupino.  Well, friends, while it may have started pre-pandemic, Jamie has thrown in with the Ida Lupino Fan train the past year, for sure.  So, this selection was saluted.

I'd not previously seen Woman in Hiding (1950), but picked it up cheap on BluRay, because: Lupino.  

I will argue that the noir movement splintered into several familiar genres, from the erotic thriller to the Lifetime Network's basic movie programming.  Film's with "women in peril" such as Sudden Fear and Beware, My Lovely - which definitely have precedents from the start of film found a home in the crime genres of the 1950's, doubling as "women's films" with plucky heroines (scared out of their minds) and some chisel-jawed dude who might come to the rescue.  By the early 00's: I mean - have you seen the names of movies on the Lifetime Network?*

Woman in Hiding follows Ida Lupino playing the daughter of a wealthy mill-owner in small-town North Carolina.  After the accidental death of her father, she marries the factory foreman, only to be met at their honeymoon cottage by a young woman informing Lupino "he was my man, he married you for the mill, and he probably killed your dad."

Freaked out, Lupino goes into HIDING (see - the title is accurate).  Here she meets Howard Duff (whom she's marry the next year) and shenanigans ensue.  

The film does contain a drinking game noir item - there's a convention in the hotel where they're staying.  

The film co-stars the lovely Peggy Dow in one of her very few film roles - she was also in the film version of Harvey that same year - and she was out of movies by 1952.  Which is a shame - she's great here and totally different from her character in Harvey.  

It also stars "that guy" actor Taylor Holmes, as well as Don Beddoe.  

This isn't my favorite Lupino role, but that's the script more than anything she's doing.  But, man, when confronted by Dow's character with what her new husband of less than a day may have done - she's got a lot to do there and nails it.  

Special nod on this one to cinematographer William H. Daniels.  He manages to get in some great stuff, especially in the sequence on the stairwell, on the bus and in the finale sequence.  Gorgeous looking noir stuff.  And letting the drafts in the stairwell kick at Lupino's skirt of her dress was pretty great (and likely a happy accident).  

*it's a parade of playing on paranoia re: domestic insecurity mixed with actual issues of domestic trauma, and it's a wild ride that Lifetime programs that shit 24/7 and then flips to "and now two months of movies about Santa being your boyfriend's dad".

Ida Lupino at 103

 

Today marks Ida Lupino's date of birth, 1918.  She's a favorite here at The Signal Watch, and I probably go on about her too much, but that's just how we're gonna be.  I will defend this decision forever.

Ida Watch Party Watch: Jennifer (1953)

Watched:  02/01/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Joel Newton

Co-watched w/ JeniferSF

A thriller which lifts elements from plenty of Gothic mysteries, borrows from noir, and has an ending that's maybe whatever the opposite is of deus ex machina, Jennifer (1953) has some great things going for it, but was not my cup of tea, exactly, but I found myself actually fairly wrapped up in the mystery.

Starring the lovely and talented Ida Lupino, with photography by James Wong Howe (one of the best to ever DP a movie), it still feels oddly like a B- picture, and maybe it was.  The film runs (blessedly) short, relies upon a small cast where Lupino is the biggest star, and we see only a handful of locations.   

Lupino wasn't quite done with movies at this point, and two of my favorite of hers follow this one: Private Hell 36 and the phenomenal The City That Never Sleeps.  She'd just come off two great films with Robert Ryan, Beware, My Lovely and the icy On Dangerous Ground.  By the time she hit her 40's in the late 1950's, she was more or less transitioning to TV where she'd remain for the rest of her career - as, at the same time, she took to directing as much or more than acting.*

Forgot to Write It Up Watch: "The Bigamist" (1953) and "A Crime Against Joe" (1956)

 

Watched:  The Bigamist 09/02 and ACAJ 09/09/2020

Format:  Watch Party w/ Jenifer

Viewing:  First for both

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Ida Lupino and  Lee Sholem

Jenifer's been hosting Amazon Watch Parties on Wednesdays, and she's picked some good ones.  And A Crime Against Joe (1956).  

I was delighted to finally see The Bigamist, starring and directed by the great Ida Lupino.  And I watched A Crime Against Joe.  It was certainly a movie.

Not doing a write up of either, but suffice it to say, anything with Lupino is a pretty good idea, and seeing her get to direct is always a treat.

Lupino ponders how Edmond O'Brien of all guys landed two women at once

Happy Birthday, Ida Lupino

Today is the birthday of Ida Lupino, born this day in 1918.

A phenomenal actor, she also went on to direct and produce - while continuing to act.  While kinda unknown to the general public these days, she has her die-hard fanbase among film fans.

Be cool.  Get to know Ida Lupino.

get you a girl who can do it all

Noir Watch: While the City Sleeps (1956)

Watched:  07/30/2019
Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR
Viewing:  Second
Decade:  1950's

I'm always going to support a movie that features Ida Lupino slinging back drinks, dropping snappy dialog and not exactly being coy about her interests.  She's, however, just one of many name talents in While the City Sleeps (1956), an ensemble drama about the women and men at work in a major metropolitan newspaper.  Directed by Fritz Lang, this one features:  Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, John Drew Barrymore, Sally Forrest and more, all bringing their A-game and making for a fun, unsentimental look at how the sausage is made in the big news game.

Noir/ Lupino Watch: On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Watched:  07/10/2019
Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950s

If I were to buy this movie on Bluray (and it's Lupino, so don't count me out), I would wish it had Eddie Muller's conversations which bookended the showing on Noir Alley.  Muller says he's doing "barroom, not classroom", but I'll argue that by showing a wide variety of films on Noir Alley and talking about why we should pay attention, discussing what happened during production, etc... and not just lauding whatever it is we're about to see, Noir Alley is one of the best movie-watching experiences and educations you can hope for.  And, yeah, he makes it all as casual as a talk over cocktails. 

On Dangerous Ground (1951) is directed by Nicholas Ray and stars two of my favorite denizens of Noir Alley, Ida Lupino* and Robert Ryan (here wearing a coat and hat and a tough cops face in a way I wish with all my heart I could pull off).  I'd meant to watch it some time ago, and I can't recall why it fell off the list - but now was the time!  Muller certainly discussed details of the film and production, but his real focus was on the Bernard Herrmann score.  And it is very, very much a Bernard Herrmann score, which is almost off to see against an RKO b&w cop picture.