Happy Birthday, Gloria Grahame

Actress Gloria Grahame would have been 89 today.  Unfortunately, Grahame passed in the early 1980's, well before her time.

We've profiled Ms. Grahame here before, and it's likely she'll get mentioned here again in the future.

Ms. Grahame is a bright point in the constellation of lady-actors from a certain era whose work I go out of my way to find.  It's hard not to love the work she does in movies like Crossfire and The Big Heat.

A little digging will turn up a lot of evidence that Ms. Grahame led a deeply complicated life, but its hard not to love what she did on the screen.

Here's to Ms. Grahame.

Noir Watch: Hotel Noir (2012)

The story on this movie is that it's a low-budget affair and a passion project that's made it's way to In-Demand on cable before theaters or BluRay.  The movie sports some pretty big names from Danny DeVito to Robert Forster to Carla Gugino and the perhaps too always-game Rosario Dawson.

The film is a tribute to various offshoots of the noir genre, recognizing the occasionally laconic pacing and low-rent nature of many of the stories in these films, of low-level cops and grifters making bad decisions for sex and money or some combination of the pair.

Noir Watch: The Set-Up (1949)

This is the third time I'd watched this movie, but every time it's been years apart.  

The Set-Up (1949) is the story of an aging fighter, well past his prime, but still taking to the ring on a low-class circuit, fighting at the bottom of crummy bills in shoddy venues.  Robert Ryan played a lot of heavies, but here he plays the fighter who truly only knows how to do one thing - and that's get up and get back in the ring again and again, not yet shaken off the promise of the one-in-a-million shot, now with much smaller dreams of respectability.  

Audrey Totter plays Julie, the woman in his life who has seen his string of losses and watched every fight, seeing the man she loves beaten and bloodied.  As the movie begins, they've hit a cross-roads - though it's possible Ryan's "Stoker" doesn't yet fully realize the gravity of the situation.

Meanwhile his manager, who can count on Stoker to lose in every bout, takes a pay-off promising Stoker will take a fall, but cuts his own fighter out of the deal, considering it a no-brainer that his guy can't make it and wont' get lucky.

Signal Reads: The Damsel (1967) by Richard Stark

At the conclusion of the Parker novel The Handle, Parker and Alan Grofield have landed in Mexico City with Grofield licking his wounds and Parker leaving him there so he can get on with it.

Richard Stark (aka: Donald Westlake) spun off Grofield into his own sub-set from the Parker novels with The Damsel (1967), giving Parker's occasional co-worker with the head full of flights of fancy room to pursue his own adventures.

Structurally, it feels a bit like a Parker novel, but tonally, The Damsel is a lot lighter on its feet and a bit wackier in scope.  While Stark narrates both books from a third-person perspective, the attitude of the protagonists infiltrates the worldview of the book.  Parker's methodical, systematic, almost obsessive-compulsive perspective is ditched for Grofield's devil-may-care approach, and talent for improvisation and theatricality giving the adventure more of... an adventurous air.

Signal Watch Reads: The Handle (a Parker novel)

The eighth in the line of Parker novels, The Handle places master thief Parker in several odd positions.  Most of the prior stories occurred above the Mason-Dixon line and detailed Parker working with a team of professionals.  This one has Parker working, for reasons of his own, alongside The Outfit, the bloated, corporatized mob from the first three or so Parker books.  The score settled between the two and pragmatism the word of the day, and The Outfit has hired Parker to crack a nut they can't solve.

Off the coast of Galveston, by forty miles, a casino has been built by a man with no affiliations with The Outfit.  Of course, that's bad business to have vice occurring so close to Outfit territory but with them getting nothing, so they'd like to see if Parker can rob the place blind and then shut it down.

Noir Watch: Killer Joe (2011)

So.  No one will be seated during the amazing chicken leg sequence!

I can't recommend KiIller Joe (2011) for a general audience, so let's get that out of the way first.  The movie made the hard choice to (a) get made and (b) not water itself down, and that meant an NC-17 rating. I can't even remember the last time I saw a movie with this rating, but even R-rated movies generally have a few swears these days and its mostly intended to keep people from bringing their kids with them to the 9:00 show of the latest Scorsese picture.  Basically, nobody really has the guts to do a Hard R movie these days (except the Hangover guys, I guess) and so an NC-17 should be box office death.

The movie is based upon a play by Tracy Letts which ran off-broadway some 14 years ago.  Its been adapted here to the big screen by Letts and directed by William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, The French Connection and a host of other films, but the last movie of his I saw was Blue Chips (which I actually quite enjoyed).

It's a deep-fried southern noir in the darkest corners of white trash America, and reads somewhat like one of those news stories you can both believe occurred - predicated on the notion that all of the players were unsympathetic, near-illiterate dopes whose grasp was further than their reach when it came to planning - and still find the fact that someone ever started this plan to begin with stupefying.

But, like I say, it feels a hell of a lot like a true-crime story, in its way.

Noir Watch: FBI Girl (1951)

I'm going to spoil the ending, but there are two great things in this movie.

• Lots of Audrey Totter
• Raymond Burr in a moving speedboat shooting at Cesar Romero who is shooting back from a helicopter.  Heck.  Yes.

Oddly, the movie doesn't really live up to either (a) containing Audrey Totter nor (b) the exciting Burr/Romero sequence I've described.

In the post WWII-era FBI director J. Edgar Hoover did a fine job of getting Hollywood in line and making sure movies about the FBI almost invariably celebrated the DOJ as a machine so powerful that even when infiltrated or somehow compromised, the power of righteousness would prevail.  And, if you were a red-blooded movie exec looking to stay away from HUAC, you could do worse than promoting J. Edgar's little club.

nothing like what you see of Audrey Totter here ever happens in the movie

FBI Girl (1951) spends no small amount of energy establishing the flawless nature of the FBI's fingerprint department - something criminals and lawmen alike in mid-century crime fiction seemed to worry about.  I've never understood how the whole fingerprint mechanism worked before computers, and this movie does nothing to shed light on why it was even an issue for criminals (I mean, with a million prints on record, and requests coming in all the time, how do you even know where to start with a comparison?).

Noir Watch: Over-Exposed (1956)

Back in the day there wasn't necessarily a concept of a "chick flick", but studios did produce something called "women's pictures".  Douglas Sirk made his name producing movies like Imitation of Life (featuring a lovely Lana Turner) that could be held up as the ideal of the genre of women struggling in a man's world, wrestling with romance or work, and often coming into conflict with their children (see:  Mildred Pierce - a movie I really dig).  

I'm not entirely certain how Over-Exposed (1956) made its way into a noir set, and like Women's Prison, it seems a bit of a stretch to find a place for this next to Double Indemnity or even The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers.  But given the turn in last third, it made be a matter of pacing that's throwing me off.  

It's an interesting mishmash of the money-driven, hard-scrabble girl from the wrong side of the tracks using whatever she's got to get ahead as in Baby Face (1933), but only able to hint at a dodgy past while assuming one could rise to fame and fortune taking pictures for the society pages.

It is 1956, so our leading lady pays and pays dearly for not jumping at the opportunity for marriage to an amiable guy with a good haircut (Richard Crenna).  

The star of the film is Cleo Moore - one of the platinum blondes Hollywood started cranking out in the wake of Marilyn Monroe's success and suddenly remembering Jean Harlow had been a pretty good idea.  She's all right, if a bit humorless, and lacks the punchy iciness of, say, a Joan Crawford (or, god forbid, Bette Davis at her best).  

Busted at a "clip joint" on her first night in a small town, Lily Krenschka falls in with the photographer who grabbed her shot outside the police station, learns his trade and heads to NYC where she tries to become a newspaper photog, and winds up a taking pictures for the society pages and personal portraits, which, according to the movie, makes you a celebrity yourself.  Eventually she gets pictures she shouldn't of had and things go badly for her.  

If only she'd just agreed to marry Richard Crenna.  She could have lived a life of adventure with Col. Trautman.  

I wasn't much of a fan of the movie.  You're on your own.

Noir Watch: Women's Prison (1955)

I think we're all friends here, and so it's in that spirit that I confess to a great love of the film Reform School Girls (1986).  It's high 80's cheese, completely self-aware, and has one of the most satisfying conclusions in cinema history.  If you haven't seen it, you likely believe it's some sort of pay cable late night hoo-hah, but it's a pretty straight up prison movie played for camp and some (intentionally) cheap thrills.

Man, someone was trying to sell a much racier movie than the one delivered.

Neither prison movies nor women's prison movies are something I seek out, and I was surprised that Eddie Muller had included a whole section on prison flicks in his book, Dark City.  I'm not going to argue with Muller over how or why prison films are considered part of the genre, so there you are.  And as this film was included in a set of "Bad Girls of Film Noir", I'm just going to deal.

Signal Watch Watches: Lady In The Lake (1947)

Released about 3 months after 1947's Dark Passage*, this movie also employs the first-person-perspective camera-work that somebody must have been wanting to play with at the time.  Where Dark Passage abandons the conceit fairly early in the movie, Lady in the Lake (1947) uses the trick more or less for the duration of the film except during a few, brief framing sequences during which Robert Montgomery, as Philip Marlowe, addresses the audience before merging with them in a spot of cinematic magic during which the audience is given a sort of thrill-ride like experience of seeing the film from Marlowe's perspective.

It's an oddball stunt, one easier to pull that the matinee jazz of 3D pictures or smell-o-vision, but Montgomery's direction definitely gives the effort a sort of "check this out!" quality, drawing attention to itself with awkward use of mirror shots that don't accomplish much but remind the audience that we're all watching a movie here - and, boy, isn't THAT cool...?

Vertigo is now the ruler, and Citizen Kane is for losers

I've now lived long enough to see a new generation of critics come upon the scene, question their predecessors, and seize control of the ship of citable certifiables when it comes to tweedy theoretical film discussion.  Sight & Sound released a list of "The Best Movies" as voted upon by people who watch a lot of movies, I'd guess.  So, bully for them.

It's interesting to watch the next generation come up and see them carving out their own opinions and angrily making statements of defiance against the assumptions and dogma of their forefathers.  In comics, with the target age now around 20 years old for a reader for the Big 2, we've been seeing the kids kicking back against the assumptions folks around my age take for granted.  No longer do the old rules I understood apply such as  "Dark Knight Returns is a good comic" or "Watchmen isn't boring stupid people standing around talking".  "I am not impressed" say the kids.  "This is nothing compared to <insert title of recent comic by current creator>."  Also "Stop making me think as well as read words."

It's Terrific?  Well, it says so right there.  CASE CLOSED.

This move is a bit different.  This isn't young kids wanting to believe that NOW is the most important time and NOW, WHEN I CARE is making the the best comics.  This is a gang of film fans with a different idea of what made the films good or great.

In Film 101, you, of course, watch Citizen Kane.  You sort of nod your way through, and it's a fantastic movie, no doubt.  The lights come up and the PhD candidate teaching your class says "Why is this movie considered the best film ever?"  And at age 19 I was mostly walking around in a haze of confusion at all times.  So, yeah.  Tell me: Why?  Because all I know is that I've seen a movie I liked, and it doesn't jive with other movies I've seen from that era.

Ah, ha!  Now you're onto it.

Signal Watch Watches: The Third Man (1949)

First of all:  Nathan, I'm sorry.  You told me, and I just got lazy.  And now I have finally seen The Third Man (1949).

I've been intending to watch this movie since I saw Heavenly Creatures in the theater, but somehow it never happened.  That doesn't mean I haven't seen Birdemic five times in the interim, and hopefully that informs why my new policies regarding movie watching are about trying to rectify some past sins of omission.

Suffice it to say, I throw myself at the mercy of the folks who would tut-tut me for having never seen this movie before.  I am sorry.  But I have now seen it.

So, I think last summer's "Oh my God" movie was The Hustler.  You hear the names of these movies, and you catch them, and if it's a 50 or 70 year old movie people are still discussing, there's usually a reason why the audience hasn't let the movie go like the hundreds of others that came out around the same time.  But, as with all narratives (or, perhaps, art...  a word I sort of balk at using around here because...  gnngh.), you can recognize quality without something necessarily fitting neatly in your wheelhouse not really resonating with you on a any personal level.  And those are things that are hard to quantify in discussing movies.

Happy Birthday, Ms. Barbara Stanwyck

Ms. Barbara Stanwyck would have been 105 today.

She played all sorts of rolls, and had an amazing career, from Ziegfield Girl to film and eventually to television.  But we'll always love her best for Double Indemnity.  

Playing it cool in the grocery aisle

Noir Watch: Desperate (1947)

Woof.

Desperate (1947) feels very much like a movie that was made because somebody needed a thriller and they needed one fast.

One of the things I like best about noir can be the the tightly woven plots that fit together like a Swiss timepiece.  Desperate is not an exemplar of this mode of noir-making.

The world's most illogical criminal gang, led by a pre-Godzilla Raymond Burr, decides that to make their heist run well, they should just hire a truck from a guy Raymond Burr knew when they were kids.  So, they hire the incredibly potent newlywed Steve Randall, played by Steve Brodie.

Steve is onto their scheme after showing up and letting the guys who announce "hey, we found some furs!" load their stuff onto his truck at a warehouse, but gets twitchy when one of them shows his pistol for absolutely no reason.  The gang decides to hold Steve in the truck, but in the cab of the truck where he signals a security officer with the lights.  Bullets fly and mayhem ensues.

Desperate to see the closing credits, maybe.

Your Mid-Day Peggy Cummins Moment

Peggy Cummins is that lovely sociopath nextdoor.

Gun Crazy, 1950

If you've never seen the movie, here's one of the scenes which helped garner its reputation:

Signal Watch Reads: The Jugger by Richard Stark

I've never been a book series guy before, but I guess between the John Carter books and now finishing my sixth Parker novel, I'm a book series guy.

I'm totally in the bag for the Parker books by Richard Stark (aka:  Donald Westlake).


The Jugger (1965) picks up finding Parker in small town Nebraska to check on his contact and the closest thing to a friend he's got (not that he's sentimental about it), Joe Sheer.  Only to to find that the panicky letters he'd been getting from Sherer were on the money, and by the time he's arrived, Sheer has died rather suddenly.

But since his arrival, local law has been keeping an eye on Parker, and now a twerp from the criminal underground has shown up insisting Parker must be there for some reason other than to say adios to Joe Sheer.  And he's just smalltime and dumb enough to think he can play ball with Parker.

Signal Watch Double Bill: Shock Corridor (1963) & The Naked Kiss (1964)

Holy hell, y'all.

I'm not familiar with the work of writer/ director/ producer Samuel Fuller, but he has one of those names you always hear.  And, I haven't had opportunity yet to visit the Paramount yet this summer for the summer series, nor had I ever been in the State Theater on Congress, side by side with the Paramount.  Wednesday night provided a great opportunity to knock some items off my list, and so I caught both Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), two movies that earned their bonafides.

Of the two films, Shock Corridor may have dated more poorly, even if it still holds up very well from a narrative standpoint.  It follows a newspaper journalist who knows he can earn a Pulitzer by going undercover into an mental hospital to solve a murder the police have been unable to crack as the only three witnesses were hopelessly mentally ill.  He recruits his stripper girlfriend, played by the lovely Constance Towers, into posing as his sister who files charges of attempted sexual assault.  With training from a psychologist, Johnny Barrett sneaks in undetected.

And then learns that a mental hospital run under the common practices of mid-20th Century medicine was no picnic.

When they make my bio-pic, tell them this is exactly what I want the poster to look like, but with Jamie dancing in the corner.

Noir Watch: The Killers (1946)

Back in January in San Francisco I watched 1960's version of The Killers starring the lovely Angie Dickinson.

It had been a long time since I'd seen the 1946 version of The Killers, and maybe even longer since I read (and re-read and re-re-read) the Hemingway short story upon which both films are ostensibly based.

I bought the DVD of the film probably around 2004, and I've seen it a couple of times.  I still think large parts of it are phenomenal, even if watching it now, I realize how many amazing coincidences occur to help along Edmond O'Brien's good-natured insurance company gumshoe, Riordan, as he tries to find out what happened to Ole "Swede" Andreson (played by Burt Lancaster).

Noir Watch - Nightfall (1957)

A pretty good little movie with a plot that works and a lead I found... curious.

Nightfall (1957) begins in medias res, finding our lead, James Vanning (played by Aldo Ray), followed by a stranger in the streets of LA.  The stranger asks for a light, asks a few questions and moves on.  Later we learn he's an insurance investigator, Fraser (James Gregory who would go on to play Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes) who has tracked Vanning to LA.  Vanning enters a bar where he meets a young (and terribly attractive) Anne Bancroft who has managed to forget her wallet.  The two strike up a conversation, and when leaving the bar together, Vanning gets picked up by a pair of heavies (Brian Keith - who I am really liking in this era - and Rudy Bond).

Movie Watch 2012: Shadow of the Thin Man

I'm not quite ready to submerge myself back into noir at the moment, so this evening I took the half-step of watching a Nick & Nora movie, Shadow of the Thin Man (1941).

Its definitely not the place to start with the series, and it seems to dial up the goofiness a few notches (especially with how the movie deals with Asta, Nick's loyal Fox Terrier).  In fact, the whole operation has the feel of a particularly high-end hour long police procedural series one might catch on ABC (its not bone dry and soul crushing enough for CBS, and there's not enough shame involved to qualify it for NBC).  Of course, Nick's habitual drinking would probably need to land the show on premium cable or late night on FX.

But this was a movie for folks who already loved the three prior Thin Man films.  By this movie, there's a Charles child, a maid and a whole lot of domesticity.  Nora is barely seen knocking them back.

Anyway, someone gets murdered and Nick and Nora get involved, and wackiness ensues.

I can't help but note that this movie was released in November of 1941.  Pretty tough time to be getting word of mouth out there.  Myrna Loy would become heavily involved in supporting the war effort, not making another movie until the 1945 follow up to this picture.

As with all previous Thin Man films, I recommend.

Also, again, Myrna Loy.