Totter/ Noir Watch: FBI Girl (1951)

Watched:  12/08/2024

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Second

Director:  William Berke

I'd watched this movie years ago, and saw it available at a low price on DVD.  In my quest to have a decent collection of Audrey Totter movies, I picked it up.  

FBI Girl a 1951 release, and some post-WWII, pro-FBI propaganda.  The entire set-up is about the fingerprint files and a Governor who is not who he seems with a prior life as a criminal, whose prints are in the FBI files.  No one can hide from their past and elected leaders are clearly held to the highest standards of the law!  This is what the people want!  (cough cough)

The mob's attempts to retrieve those files leads to murder!  

The whole movie is a story about the importance of good file management, provenance of documents, and the power of a good look-up system.  And that speaks to me.  I have no idea how having fingerprints on file if there's 50,000 people named "John Williams" or how millions f inky stains help anyone if they can't digitally sift through the files, but they could do it somehow!  And now I want to know how this works in an analog world.

The movie is a weird huddle of second-tier stars of the era.  Caesar Romero and George Brent play FBI men.  Raymond Burr as (shocker, if you watch noir) a mob boss.   Tom Drake from Meet Me In St. Louis appears as Totter's beau and a K-Street guy.  For reasons I cannot begin to guess, the movie stops for Tom Noonan of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and his comedy partner to do their bit on TV, that our characters watch.

Speaking of blondes, not only does this movie star Audrey Totter, but Joi Lansing makes an appearance as one of her roommates.  And who can be mad at a Joi Lansing appearance?

The movie is *marginally* better than I remembered.  Totter is pretty great as the girl who is caught between love and country, and working against the shady Perry Mason.  Files are managed, duplicates are made, dopey paper pushers save the day.  Totter looks smashing, and it's a tight 74 minutes.  In one scene we see what kind of tough noir this could have been with Burr and Totter, but... nope.

Is the movie good?  No.  Is it fine?  Yes.  

Noir-adjacent Watch: Hangover Square (1945)

Watched:  11/25/2024

Format:  Kino BluRay

Viewing:  Second?

Director:  John Brahm

We previously watched this movie.

If I were going to program a series of movies and those movies were *about* (at least in part) music, I'd feel compelled to include Hangover Square (1945).  And I think I'd really manage to freak out the squares with this oddball character study/ thriller.  

Apparently the movie had a long road from book to screenplay to how it was finally shot and made.  It was also the final movie of Laird Cregar, one of the most promising actors of the 1940's, who died before this movie was released - a heart-attack brought on from a speed-fueled crash diet, intestinal issues from his attempts to lose weight, and other factors.  He was only 31.

Along the way, the book - which took place in modern London - was changed into a gaslight-era story about a composer, and almost nothing of the source material remained except the title.  Part of me is horrified for the original author, part of me knows this is basic studio mechanics, and part of me quite likes the final result.  So....

It's a bit of an odd movie because I'm not sure it has a "hero".  It has a protagonist you follow, but out of morbid curiosity.  After all, we know he is a killer in the first 30 seconds of the film - it's that no one else knows or wants to believe it.  So what happens when he's left free?  And gets cross-wise with a conniving songbird who is a walking red flag in the shape of Linda Darnell?

The score of the film is phenomenal, culminating in a diegetic performance of the concerto Cregar's character has been working on since before the film's start, The Concerto Macabre.  

The concerto is worked into the film throughout, as is the use of fire, pits, and other signs of Cregar's character's madness.  I really don't know how to talk about Bernard Hermann's work without gushing, or this one in particular.

And Cregar, himself is pretty terrific.  This may be his finest role in a very brief, very impressive slate before his untimely death.  He's sympathetic, even while you're screaming at the other characters to knock it off or stop him.  

I also think Darnell is at the height of her powers here.  Gorgeous, crafty, acting for the benefit of other characters while the audience knows what's up, and not making it cheesy...    And, ultimately, iron willed about what she wants and how to get it...  

oh no.  I've accidentally posted a pic of Linda Darnell.

Anyway - it's a dated portrait of mental illness that treats it a bit like a magical curse, but is pretty good nonetheless.  And manages two of the best scenes I've seen in a movie in recent years, with the Guy Fawkes sequence, and the finale, which I think is how real filmmakers should end a movie (more fire, you cowards).

At a tight 77 minutes, it's a complete story that rides like a roller coaster, ending in a huge twist and turnover at the end.  

I guess my pitch is this:  If the factors in a movie are imagery, sound and performances - they surely line up incredibly well in this movie.  That it stars two actors who died young and tragically, and that this likely got lost a bit in the shuffle as the war wrapped up may be why it's chattered about with a subset of film nerds, but not more in the conversation.  It was also not universally beloved when it came out - so maybe it just hits my sensibilities particularly well.

De Palma Watch: Blow Out (1981)

Watched:  11/21/2024

Format:  Criterion 4K

Viewing:  third

Director:  Brian De Palma

De Palma is a fascinating subject himself in so many ways.  He bows at the alter of Hitchcock, he works within frameworks that are uniquely his own - and *boy howdy* are they on display here.  He seems to think the only way to get people to show up for the movie on time is a surplus of nudity before the action begins.  I'm not sure he writes great characters, but he does keep you engaged with plot and ideas.

Here in 2024, I don't know if I like watching his movies because I like a thriller, or if I like watching De Palma do his thing and try to puzzle it out.  Why not both, I guess?

I've started getting 4K discs, and... holy cats, was this a good movie for that.  Shot by Vilmos Zsigmond (check out this IMDB page), and with a healthy dash of De Palma's weirdo split focus (via bioptic lenses) and split screen stuff...  but, the depth of field, the gorgeous lighting, wild camera angles...  

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.

Noir Watch: The Sniper (1952)

Watched:  11/18/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Edward Dmytryk

Watched Sniper (1952) again.  I re-read my second write-up of the movie, and it says everything I would say about it now.  It's a social-issues crime movie, and a pretty good one.  And beautifully shot, imho.  Looked great on Criterion.

Here's my first write-up of the movie.  

I mostly just always get irritated that they bump off Marie Windsor so early in the movie, but that's a me-problem.  And it does land exactly how it should in the movie.  Poor Marie.

Noirvember Watch: Pickup Alley (1957)

Watched:  11/7/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Gilling

It's Noirvember, so I'm trying to get a few of ye olde Noir films in.  Luckily, Criterion is here to offer up the goods with three separate categories of noir.  I got lazy and picked the category "Columbia Noir" which includes some Brit Noir.  

I will be 100% honest and say, I was just like "Victor Mature.  Sounds good."   I knew nothing about this movie until the credits started crawling by.  Had I seen the poster, I would have known THIS IS A PICTURE ABOUT DOPE!  I might also have noticed this is European film - and, in fact, a pretty British film.  Directed by a Brit and produced by one of the Bond-famous Brocolis (Cubby) and Irving Allen, who worked in both England and the US.  

The cast is anchored by Victor Mature, who looks mildly upset the whole time, but who has no character to work with or speak of.  He's just the relentless hero.  I assume this movie really got in the way of his European golfing vacation.

Anita Ekberg plays The Dame, and is... fine?  If you wonder what the big deal was with Ekberg and why you've heard her name, his movie is a pretty good argument for why.  Lastly, the movie stars Trevor Howard, who was in sort of everything - but Superman nerds will flip out realizing this is the guy who told Jor-El to be reasonable in Superman while the planet was set to explode.

And Trevor Howard is *great* in this as a mastermind drug kingpin.  Reviews at the time mostly agree.

What surprised me watching this, with the name Broccoli floating around in my head, is that there's certainly some Bond DNA here.  It's very light, but it's about a relentless government fellow pursuing an established mastermind across Europe, treating each place as an exotic locale and the locals as scenery.  There's, of course, a beautiful woman wrapped up with our villain who is doing his dirty work and doesn't like it.

It's not a 1:1, but once the idea is in your head, it's hard to shake.  

The idea is:  Mature's sister was about to finger Trevor Howard for the NYPD when he figured it out and killed her.  Since, Mature's been a mad-bull on the streets hoping to punch his way to the mysterious McNally.  They get a lead and he's sent to England to work with InterPol (the International Police, not the band).  Shenanigans happen and Mature and Co. get Ekberg's fingerprints and begin tracking her to get to Howard.  Soon, they're in Lisbon.  Then in Rome.  Then Athens.  It's sort of one long, continent-wide chase.  

It's not a great movie, but it gets the job done.  Lots of action, some amazing locations, camera work, and a score that does tons of heavy lifting.  

It is noir?  Sort of.  Close enough.

Noirvember Watch: Desert Fury (1947)

Watched:  11/1/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lewis Allen

Well, I'm not sure I started Noirvember 2024 with a bang, but I did finally check this one off the list.

First - yes, this thing is in color, and maybe worth seeing a 1947 crime film shot in vivid, even lurid, color.  See Lizabeth Scott's golden locks!  Marvel at the color of Mary Astor's pants!  (No, really, it's a pretty movie and maybe worth a watch just for that.)  But the minute people start talking in what is supposed to be snappy crime-drama dialog, you kind of know you're in trouble.  It's mostly non-sequiturs and stern declarations.

To me, Desert Fury (1947) is a bit of a melodramatic slog, and hinges on a protagonist hurling herself into bad ideas so often, while offering no sympathetic or redeeming qualities (other than a stellar wardrobe), it's hard to get, here in 2024, what we're supposed to like about her.  The motivation of the criminals in the movie is murky - and why they're even in the little desert oasis just feels like incompetence on someone's part.  

The set-up is that a clearly mid-20's Lizabeth Scott (playing 19 here and looking 32) returns home from quitting another finishing school.*  She wants to come work at her mother's casino so she can make a ton of cash and lord it over the judgey people of her hometown.  Not a bad plan.  On the way into town, she comes across John Hodiak and Wendell Corey, a pair of crooks.  A very young Burt Lancaster plays the town Deputy and soda bottle seller?  I never figured out what was happening.

Mary Astor, who looks like an older cousin to Scott (only 15 years older but looking maybe 7), plays her mother.  She's obviously the best actor in this by a country mile, playing a tough-girl from a rough background who made it big out west.  They live in an amazing mansion.  But Mary Astor basically wants for Scott to marry a nice-boy and join polite society and get away from her frankly very awesome-looking life of running a casino.

Hodiak and Corey have returned to the small town to sort of lay low and do some gambling at Mary Astor's casino.  Why?  It's unclear.  Hodiak is still recovering from the death of his wife that occurred in this one-horse-town.  So why they came back is anyone's guess.

Scott falls for Hodiak for absolutely no reason other than everyone tells her not to.  Just as she does everything just because someone told her not to - no matter how stupid that thing appears to be.  Men fall for her because she's the only sexually available woman in the movie, so Lancaster thinks she's swell, and Hodiak hurls himself at her.

Very, very clearly Hodiak and Corey are supposed to be in a gay relationship, and we learn that Hodiak was previously married to a woman - Scott's doppelganger - who wound up dead under mysterious circumstances.  And STILL Scott is like "I don't care!  I love his tiny mustache!".  

Things come to a head because everyone in this is kind of dumb, and the movie ends as you'd expect.

I'm just not a Lizabeth Scott fan.  She's fine.  She's not annoying when playing a well-written character.  But in an era littered with other actors I like, she doesn't move the needle for me as a plus for watching a film.  My understanding is that producer Hal B. Wallis was deeply in love with her, it ended up destroying him, and there's probably an interesting movie in there.

The movie was... okay.  From a "what's actually happening versus what we got past the censors" this movie is pretty amazing.  From a "do I like these characters or care about what's happening?" the movie was a bust for me.  I can take convoluted plots and characters making mistakes, even walking right into a bad idea for money or sex, but I'm not sure this one pulls it off enough that I care.  

*I finally read up on what finishing school was, and the past is a fascinating and foreign land

Noir/ Joan Watch: Female on the Beach (1955)

Watched:  09/18/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph Pevney

Y'all know I'm all in for Joan Crawford, and I think Jamie's a fan, too.  So, we put this one on from Criterion.  

There have to be papers written about Joan in this era and who her movies were aimed at.  She'd been kicking around since the Silent Era, was a huge star for a spell in the 1930's, then lost her box office mojo and was declared "box office poison", then had a massive come back in the mid-1940's with Mildred Pierce (recommended).  She came back around aged 39 - something to cheer for.  And she really is great in that movie.  And then she enjoyed real work for some time - including into 1955, when this movie came out.

I am sure there was an audience that knew and loved her from their youth and identified with her as they aged.  Further, she kept managing to play the very-much-desired woman here at age 49, when Hollywood still thought once you hit 28, you might as well be a grandma in movies.  But women attend movies, and I suspect - based on the female-forward stories (but still very much of the politics of the 1950's) - that her audience were women, and these thrillers served that loyal fanbase.

Noir Watch: Lured (1947)

Watched:  08/27/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Douglas Sirk

Well, this was my second viewing, and my opinion on this movie did not change one iota.  It's a good one.  And I think my prior write-up handles my stance pretty darn well.  I am now more familiar with Sanders and Coburn, and recognize Calleia from other movies.  But, yeah - same is same.

In the comments on the first viewing post, Jamie said she'd watch it with me, and:  mission accomplished.

Still wrestling with Sexy Lucy.

Boat Noir Watch: Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Watched:  08/17/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph M. Newman

Criterion is being a bit silly for summer and added a collection of "Vacation Noir" films.  I've seen most of them, but will likely rewatch Niagara, because technicolor Monroe is in it, and it's pretty great, from what I recall.  

This one I'd never heard of.  Maybe that's because it doesn't star anyone with whom I'm particularly enamored and Joseph M. Newman has directed things I've seen, but he didn't quite set my world on fire.  I chose it in part because it was late and the movie ran under 80 minutes.  

It's...  fine.  Essentially the lovechild of The Lady Vanishes and Gaslight, Dangerous Crossing (1953) is a paranoid thriller aboard a steamer bound from New York to England.  Jeanne Crain plays a newlywed who boards a ship with whom she's rushed into marriage.  Once onboard, they split up so he can drop money with the ship's purser, and she heads to the deck to wave good-bye to NYC before hitting the bar.

The husband does not show up as planned.  And when she goes to find him, her room is locked and she can't get in.  No one can recall seeing him - but they do remember her.  She's shown she's checked into a different room under her maiden name and with none of her husband's luggage.  

Michael Rennie of space-movie fame plays the ship's doctor, who may also want to be on the lady who is either married and traumatized, or insane and traumatized.

Mostly the movie is Jeanne Crain running around looking for her husband and everyone else insisting she should rest.  

SPOILERS

No, you won't get out ahead of the mystery unless you throw common sense to the wind.  The villains' plot requires Crain to have chanced upon our baddie, fallen for him, immediately married him without telling anyone, and then getting on the exact ship in order for the scheme to work.  And for this guy to cook up this plan after seeing a rich girl's father died, just assuming he was that much of a player, is a bold, bold call.

I mean, it's a lot.  

Crain is... fine in the movie.  But watching her just run around a ship set looking frantic isn't much of a way to spend a movie.  

The movie did one thing that worked shockingly well that seems like it should have been annoying.  The ship is stuck in fog for a good chunk of the film's time, and so the fog horn just keeps blowing.  And it becomes a weird, ominous tone - and it really does get you into Crain's headspace.

Anyway, it's okay.  On the letter grade scale, an uninflated C+ or B-.  It's not original enough to suggest as a novelty, and it's too convoluted to feel they knocked the concept out of the park.  The performances are solid, but this is clearly not a huge blockbuster.  But it's entertaining!  And as a thriller, it kinda/sorta works.

JLC Neo-Noir Watch: Blue Steel (1990)

Watched:  07/06/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kathryn Bigelow

Criterion Channel is showcasing Neo-Noir films this month, and I absolutely remember this coming out and not understanding what it was at the time, and then never hearing from anyone who ever saw it.

But here at The Signal Watch, JLC is one of our patron saints, and I was curious.

The movie is a curious mix of genres - certainly an homme fatale noir, but 100% a thriller.  And sets itself in the New York of the late 1980's where finance-dudes were of interest to audiences, as were blue-collar types.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a young woman literally right out of the police academy who, on day 1, stumbles onto a hold-up occurring at a grocery, where she's forced to shoot the gunman.  Which she does in 1980's style, emptying her gun and sending the guy reeling through the front window.

Unfortunately for her, the gun the guy had goes missing, and no witnesses say they saw a gun.  And there's no tape?  In 1990 in New York?  But ok.  

She's on administrative leave when she meets a commodities exchange fellow who woos her.

But, uh-oh, he was at the scene of the crime, took the gun, and is now murdering people with the gun after carving her full name into the casings, that he leaves behind after killing innocent people.

One good cop (Clancy Brown) believes her while everyone else just wants to fire her or make her go away, but Eugene (Ron Silver) ups the ante, and eventually she figures it out just pre-coitus.  And then things get really nuts as she fights for anyone to believe her and he lawyers up while also murdering her friend (Elizabeth Pena, RIP) in front of her.  

On the whole - my take is this: 

Neo-Noir-Comedy Watch: Hit Man (2023)

Watched:  06/15/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Richard Linklater

As a good Austinite, I feel extra pressure to watch Richard Linklater movies, and still miss half of them.  But this one took literally no effort to watch as I have Netflix thanks to my T-Mobile service.  

Reviews were initially pretty good for Hit Man (2023/24?), as near as I can tell.  But I think the wider audience response has been more mixed.  And I get it.  The movie feels like it has a bit of a genre pivot or thematic pivot half-way through, and that's a pretty good way to lose people.  Arguably, it goes from a sort of goofy comedy to a dark-comedy neo-noir.  And that turn in the middle is some YMMV territory.

The basic set up is that we have our public college prof (people keep saying Community College, but he seems more adjunct at a full university.  TERMS MEAN THINGS.), teaching philosophy and psychology.  But - He moonlights for the New Orleans PD making surveillance equipment for catching people who are trying to hire a hit man,  So, when the NOPD gets a tip someone is looking for a contract killer, they send in an undercover cop posing as a hit man.  

One day, the main undercover cop can't do his thing, so they (Retta!) send in the tech, Gary Johnson (Glen Powell).  Turns out he has a real knack for sliding into the role, and as he tries again and again, finds he can be the hit man to meet the profile of the contractee.  

Noir Watch?: Bad For Each Other (1953)

Watched:  06/05/2024

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Irving Rapper

Well, this was on Noir Alley, so I gave it a spin.

It was the definition of "fine".  I don't really have much to say about it.  

A young Charlton Heston plays a doctor on leave at the end of the Korean War (after having served in WWII and Korea).  He comes back to his hometown, one of the coal mines outside of Pittsburgh.  

He meets Lizbeth Scott, who wants to be on Chuck, and he reciprocates after trying to resist her charms and offer of entree to cafe society.  

He soon finds himself just treating rich old ladies and young ladies who hope he'll make a move.  

Eventually his hot nurse convinces him he's not doing medicine, and then he has to help miners out, and the movie ends with him bailing on Lizbeth Scott and opening a practice in Coalville.  The End.

I mean, it *is* interesting to see a movie about a doctor deciding if he wants to live large while selling pills to rich people, or doing real medicine for people who need it.  And lord knows Heston could throw himself bodily into such a role.  

I'm not a huge Lizbeth Scott fan.  She's good, but there's a sort of detachment to how she plays things that makes it hard for me to click with what she's doing.  She's as good as ever here, but she and Heston just lack chemistry.  I believed his relationship more in The Omega Man.  

The best scene in the thing comes toward the end when Heston has to help the miners.  It's genuinely good stuff.  Well shot, etc...

Were Heston and Scott bad for each other?  Yes.  The movie told us that they would be, and, indeed, they were.  I do like her character's blunt honesty and, man, she got some nice gowns in this.

Muller programmed this, I think, to talk about writer Horace McCoy, who also wrote They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which is the goddamn most depressing way you can read a fictional book in, like, four hours.  (It's good, but.)

Is this movie noir?  I mean, no... I don't think so?  It just feels like a melodrama.  And yet, it was on Noir Alley.  So I'll give it the tag and shrug and move on.

Kurosawa Noir Watch: High and Low (1963)

Watched:  05/25/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Akira Kurosawa

The Kurosawa journey continues!

So, this was up in my queue when M.Bell wrote to say "if you're watching Kurosawa, you should watch High and Low soon."  So, I *did*.  

I dug this movie.  It's fascinating to see the then-nascent genre of the police procedural from a Japanese perspective and from the eye and hand of Kurosawa.

I've not read Ed McBain's King's Ransom, the novel on which High and Low (1963) is based.  And I doubt this is a 1:1 match for that novel - also, I've never read any Ed McBain, and maybe I should?

The movie stars an army of Toho players, topped off by Toshiro Mifune as an executive with a shoe company that would like more profits.  As we enter the story, he's being recruited by fellow executives to turn against the company president and take over the company.  But Mifune's character has his own plans, and has mortgaged everything against it - and is already millions in debt to make his plan work out.  But, then, his chauffer's son is kidnapped by accident (they intended to take his son, of similar age and build), and Mifune must make the decision to save the boy or himself.  

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 Watch: Panic in the Streets (1950)

Watched:  04/18/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Eliza Kazan

Selection:  me

Well, this was more fun before we actually had a pandemic.  

There are two movies I can immediately think of that are about plague carriers and which fit into the noir genre.  There's likely more, but the first is the Evelyn Keyes-starring thriller The Killer That Stalked New York (released this same year) and then Panic In the Streets (1950).  

This film is about a guy smuggled into the country who finds he's feeling horrible and tries to leave a card game, only to be bumped off by the guys running the game (including Zero Mostel and Jack Palance!).  What they don't know is that he's carrying the pneumonic plague.  

Richard Widmark plays a doctor in the employ of US Health and Human Services, who teams with the New Orleans PD to try to find out who the body was they find washed up, and who that guy might have been in touch with, spreading the disease through out the city.  

I wouldn't say the movie is uneven, but it pulls three separate directions:  the hunt for who may be contaminated, the domestic life of Widmark's character and him realizing that under pressure he takes it out on the ones he loves, and then the story of Palance as a would-be criminal mastermind who is reading all the signs wrong.

In the wake of the spread of COVID, it can be a little unnerving to watch a movie that's essentially about how no one will help, and no one trusts a doctor coming with bad news - and that even the bad news has to be contained - or people will do the worst possible thing.  

This is directed by Elia Kazan looking for realism, and so the casting isn't even from central.  It feels like real people straight up telling Widmark where to get off.  This isn't a stage set of New Orleans, they're running along the waterfront and walking the streets of the Crescent City.  However, it's also a New Orleans largely devoid of Black people, which...  is insane.  

But Kazan does manage to get some stark photography out of his locations, making for some great scenes and capturing of a time capsule - but really setting the noirish mood - curiously setting the final actionish sequences as Palance is taken down in broad daylight.  Sunlight a cleansing agent and all that.

On this go-round (this is my second time with the film), I was really struck by the domestic scenes with Barbara Bel Geddes and Widmark, and how delicately those scenes play out.  And how real it feels to get called on your @#$% in the middle of something else that's important as you do the wrong things with the people who actually do care about you.*

I do want to go dig up The Killer That Stalked New York.  It's been a good long while, and I no longer get an eye twitch just thinking about the reality of a very bad situation from screen winding up as a reality.

*not that I would ever

Noir Watch: The Sleeping City (1950)

This poster is a liar, and sells a movie that this movie is not

Watched:  04/15/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  George Sherman

Selection:  It is I

This has the feeling of an article or short story ripped from the headlines and turned into a movie, but I guess was an original screenplay.  Curiously, Richard Conte starts the film by  directly addressing the camera as himself, explaining that they had actual access to Bellevue Hospital where the filming occurred.

Admittedly, the location shooting provides a certain believability and grit to the movie, as does the look inside how hospitals were functioning in 1950 - with direct throughlines to how they work today.  

The film opens on a young doctor murdered by an unseen assassin as he paces near the hospital, clearly distressed.  Unable to find a motive for the murder, a suspect, etc...  the cops decide to plant their own inside the hospital.  And, here, you need to suspend disbelief.  Conte, 40 here and looking at least that old, plays a cop posing as an intern.    The hospital lets him come in as a doctor with a couple of years of "Pre-Med" under his belt and having had served in medical units during the war. 

Placed in the Trauma Unit, he partners with Coleen Grey, the head nurse, and the two hit it off romantic-stylez.

Apparently doctors would room *inside* the hospital, which seems problematic for any number of reasons, but must have been a real thing.  Conte's roommate first says he's leaving medicine and marrying Peggy Dow, which sounds like a plan, but he soon winds up dead.

SPOILERS

With the new angle, Conte digs into what's happening, and figures out that the wacky elevator operator is actually front man for a bookie.  And being a clever fellow, he knows how to set things up so that the doctors get in over their head, and have to start stealing drugs in order to pay off debts.  Once that starts, he squeezes them.  

Oh, and Coleen Grey is in on it, using her cut to pay for a sick kid's treatment and then getting in over her head.

The movie itself is... fine.  It's helped immensely by the location shooting, borrowing from The Naked City's concept of you are there! to lend credibility to the proceedings.   And the actual architecture of Bellevue is put on display.  

Buying that a hospital would allow a cop to pose as a doctor is a monumental leap of faith - the liability seems insane, not to mention the ethical lapse.  And that no one sorts out the fact he doesn't quite know what he's doing...  Like, seems folks would notice that.  Or you'd hope they would.  But Conte is a favorite around here, and I liked him in the part.

Peggy Dow is only in the film for a scene and change, but she does make an impression, and I was impressed with Grey's entire portrayal, especially her final scenes. 

I can't really say why the movie wasn't my favorite - maybe it takes too long to sort out what's happening and the mystery wasn't all that gripping.  But the location and the back 1/3rd of the movie make it worth checking out as more than a curiosity.

Noir Watch: Born to be Bad (1950)

oh, come on.  Clearly the artist forgot about the assignment til the night before.

Watched:  04/11/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Nicholas Ray

Selection:  moi

Uh.  So, this movie is not bad, no matter how it was born.  But Born to Be Bad (1950) is just not my cup of tea.  I can see how if you squint it's film noir, but it tilts much further toward just straight melodrama in my book.  

And I think it's odd I wasn't into it, even as a melodrama.  Directed by Nicholas Ray, starring Joan Fontaine, Robert Ryan, Mel Ferrer, Joan Leslie and Signal Watch fave Zachary Scott, I thought it would be a slam dunk.  But it's like Diet Coke All About Eve or something (curiously, All About Eve is also a 1950 release).  

Joan Fontaine plays a seemingly sweet young woman who comes to San Francisco (seen in exactly one shot) who is going to rent a room from Joan Leslie, engaged to millionaire Zachary Scott.  Novelist Robert Ryan is floating around, and she goes for him, but also while undermining Joan Leslie and Scott's relationship.  

In short, there's no real crime or danger in the movie.  It's just... Joan Fontaine being a naughty person and people take a while to figure it out.  

Now, I think this movie would be a *blast* to do as a watch party or to riff.  It's very well made, but Fontaine is such a heel in this, and everyone else such a dupe, it seems like you could have some fun playing along.  It's sort of the spirit Mel Ferrer's character is engaged with the movie, anyway.

Noir Watch: Violence (1947)

Watched:  04/10/2024

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Bernhard

Selection:  me

This was definitely a low-budget, poverty row B-movie, but:

• It felt weirdly timely in regards to the nonsense politics and politicians backed by big business, appealing to people's worst instincts to get them to work against themselves
• It has a full amnesia plot that involved getting bonked on the head to restore memories
• Star Nancy Coleman is cute as a button
• That Guy! actor Sheldon Leonard is pretty solid as the heavy behind the politician
• Perry White (John Hamilton) himself is in this for a minute as a doctor
• I think Michael O'Shea is a good actor who was terribly miscast here
• I confess to being disappointed no one texted or called to ask what I was doing while watching to the film so I could say "watching Violence".

Maybe the most interesting thing about the film is the conflict external to that of our leads, and that's the state of living soldiers were asked to return to after 4 years in the Pacific and Europe, and the expectation that they'd just slot back in like good boys (and girls).  A movie doesn't need to be a message movie to convey the spirit of the moment, but movies can reflect what is going on at the time to illuminate what was taken for granted or being discussed in every day life.  And certainly the desire of veterans to have a better life than what they left upon their return is something we can still understand.

I didn't hate it, but it's definitely not a slick 1940's or 50's big studio picture.  But it's also not so far down in poverty row that you're worried the walls of the sets might fall over.

Noir Watch: The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

Watched:  04/08/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincent Sherman

Selection:  Me

First:  The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is an amazing, pulpy-perfect name for a movie.  I am not sure more movies need to do this in this age, but The Dead Don't Hurt coming soon as a Western is a pretty dang solid name, too.  Marketers, challenge yourself when selling movies!  

Criterion Channel currently has a series going on featuring noir films made in 1950 entitled "Peak Noir", and I'm going to catch all of them I haven't seen.  Honestly, shoving Joan Crawford into a movie from this series was going to get me to prioritize it, so here we are. 

Crawford plays a mother to a young child, married to a roughneck and living with her parents in near poverty.  After the tragic death of her child on a bike they couldn't afford, she splits and heads for New York.  She moves swiftly into modelling for a dress-maker, and finds it has a side-hustle that's not quite prostitution, but adjacent.  Meeting a harmless CPA, she sees a way out, and gets him better gigs working for shady operations (and I think it's assumed, they're friendly).  However, this means she meets a 50's-style syndicate boss, and she trades up to become his kept woman.