Noir Watch: Side Street (1950)

Watched:  02/13/2022

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Decade: 1950's

Director:  Anthony Mann

For people familiar with New York or New Yorkers, I'd think this movie would be a kick.  It's filmed partially/ mostly on-location in NYC circa 1950, and they don't skimp on showing the city, including some nifty aerial photography I hear was done from a blimp.

Side Street (1950) is a dead on example of film noir.  Our central figure (Farley Granger!) is in a kind-of-bad-way to begin with, makes a decision to try something he knows is maybe a bad idea (bad risk/ reward calculation), and - indeed - things get out of control.  And there's a good looking woman in a great dress who is nothing but trouble thrown in for requisite contrast to the safe harbor of the idealized domestic situation.

I'm a big fan of They Live By Night, a different movie about our stars Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as young lovers in a jam.  I'd suggest both films, but I'd watch this one second.  There's nothing wrong with it at all, it just didn't hit me as hard as They Live By Night, which is like a bowling ball and I'm a pin hanging out by my lonesome on the alley.

Sorta Noir Watch: Over-Exposed (1956)

Watched:  01/24/2022

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lewis Seiler

Eddie sometimes plays fast and loose with what he'll bring to Noir Alley, and Over-Exposed (1956) is definitely on the outer limits of Noir Alley.  I mean, it basically follows a story that could appear in many-a-noir as a morality play, but driven by a woman instead of a man, and it doesn't end in a hail of bullets for our protagonist.  

This one starts with a clip joint getting knocked over, and Cleo Moore - desperate for work - meeting the aging photographer who took a picture of her as she headed to jail.  They hit it off and she decides to pick up the trade.  She makes her way to NYC where she struggles off camera for some amount of time before finding success, especially as one of the girls in a sparkly one-piece bathing suit who takes photos in nightclubs.  This leads to the fanciest club in town, while she ignores Richard Crenna, a newspaperman who seems like an honest joe.  But, man, does he want her to want to throw all of her dreams and security out the window so she can become his little woman.

Of course bad things happen and her meteoric rise as a person who points cameras at people falls apart.  Something something photo blackmail racket (don't blackmail people, kids).

This looks very good for what feels like a dopey B picture, mostly existing to show off Cleo Moore in bathing suits and clingy gowns.  But there's enough story there for it not to feel cheap.  And Cleo Moore is all right.  She's good in things I've seen her in, even if she's never exactly bowling me over.  

If you're like me and only know sun-beaten older Richard Crenna, the squeaky voiced kid on the screen is almost unrecognizable.  But he's all right!  

It's a cheesecake picture that's kinda short on cheesecake, but that's ok.  Cleo Moore is just fine doing her own acting thing.

Watch Party Watch: The Brain From Planet Arous (1957)

Watched:  01/14/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Firstish

Director:  Nathan Hertz

I'll tell this story again here, so...

The year is about 1978 or 79.  For reasons I cannot remember, my mom has to keep me busy while she deals with something else in the house.  I am about 3 or 4.  My mom does something she never does:  she puts me in my folks' room and turns on the TV and says "look at that til I get back".  I am left alone with a black and white movie on the TV.

The movie is well underway, I don't understand what's happening and then this shit appears on screen:

I lose it.  Giant floating menacing brains with glowing eyes are not something I yet take for granted.  

Noir Watch: 711 Ocean Drive (1950)

Watched:  01/16/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph M. Newman

Part of the "law and order"/ "crime doesn't pay" flavor of films that can get lumped in with noir, I'd seen 711 Ocean Drive (1950) listed for a while and figured I should get to it.  

It's.... fine.  A mix of "technology plus crime!" that is sometimes done well, but usually ends up with a bit of a hokey angle, plus the story of how easy it is to become an LA crime lord because you know how to patch through a phone call is... well, it's a set up.  

Starring the actor who always makes me think "well, shit, if that guy could become a lead in movies, why didn't I try?", Edmond O'Brien, the movie follows his phone-company technician who believes anyone who falls in love or who isn't trying to get ahead through whatever's at hand is an idiot (a real charmer, this character), O'Brien is presented by his bookie to a wire service/ gambling empresario.  He hooks them up with the magic of RADIO in a scheme I utterly never understood - as it seemed not illegal - but facilitated a lot of illegal bookmaking.  

I dunno.  There's a lot going on here and you'll either watch the picture or you won't.  But it is intensely plot heavy as O'Brien manages to take over ALL CRIME IN CALIFORNIA and then a syndicate moves in and he joins up.  Mostly because he wants to get with one of the Syndicate guy's wife, played by notable actor Joanne Dru (Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon).  

The film's big set piece is the access they had to Hoover Dam (then called Boulder Dam) and filmed Edmond O'Brien sweating his ass off running all over the damned thing trying to avoid police.  It's a reminder that I would very much like to one day tour the dam myself.  It seems keen.  But the movie makes the interesting choice to just cast the rangers at the Dam as themselves, so suddenly in minute 70 you're getting cops giving wildly wooden performances.  

The movie has some weirdly good cinematography, courtesy Franz Planer.  They made the most of the on-location work at the dam, but there's also plenty of interesting stuff in a gas works and just in how some sequences were thoughtfully framed or lit.  

I didn't hate the movie, but it's not threatening to knock any of my top 10 favorites out of place.  Joanne Dru is the best one in the movie, so much so that it can feel like she was imported from a different movie.  Edmond O'Brien is never bad, but he is always Edmond O'Brien.  I don't know what 711 Ocean Drive is, but I guess it's the house he lives in after becoming a crime boss.  

Any threat the movie received from actual organized crime about the secrets of criminal ways supposedly revealed in the film that would have required the production required police protection seems... well, it seems made up.  But I guess if you hire cops to hang around and then say "so hot, we needed people legally allowed to shoot people to protect it", that's a pretty good PR hook.  

Anyway, stay away from telephone switching equipment.  That way lies crime and personal doom.

Courtroom Watch: Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Watched:  01/10/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Billy Wilder

Look, I refuse to talk about the contents of this film.  Go into it knowing nothing as Jamie and I did, and you won't be sorry.  

Here's something fun - I've had this movie on my DVR for years, one way or another.  I've been meaning to watch it, and somehow it just never made it to be the next thing I watched.  Which is crazy.  But every once in a while I'd be reminded of the talent in the movie, all of whom I like, and after a recent convo with Laura, thought "man, I just need to watch this at long last."  And then TCM played it around Christmas and I recorded it again!

Directed by Billy Wilder from an Agatha Christie play.  Starring Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Elsa Lanchester, Una O'Connor, and the always impossibly old Ian Wolfe.  

It's basically a murder mystery starting with a suspect (Power) being brought to Laughton, a barrister, so he can defend him when he gets arrested.  Marlene Dietrich plays Powers' wife.  

There's 10,000 words to write about Dietrich, but plenty of others have already done it.  So, go find them. She earned them.  

But, also, delight in Lanchester and O'Connor in a film together again, where, once again, they share no scenes.

Noir Watch: The Lineup (1958)

Watched:  11/16/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  Second or third

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Don Siegel

I had seen The Lineup (1958) years ago, and remembered it was crazy and Eli Wallach was fantastic, but not much else.   It was part of a set of DVD's I was watching in quick secession, and I just didn't get back to it.  Which is too bad, it's a cool crime movie.

Bay Area residents will want to watch it just to see the locations in 1958, some of which are long gone, but most of which are still standing (something Austin would find horrifying.  We knock everything down, willy-nilly.).  As a police procedural in the years after The Naked City, the city itself is more than a backdrop, its geography and environs are crucial and inform everything, from the hook of the plot to the finale car chase.  

Meanwhile, the cast is kind of interesting.  There's the aforementioned Eli Wallach, but he doesn't enter the movie til the 1/3rd mark, along with Robert Keith (who I just learned is the father of Brian Keith) as a pair of heavies/ hit-men in from Miami.  A baby-faced Richard Jaeckel plays their driver hired on by The Man - the mastermind pulling the strings.  Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale from The Beverly Hillbillies) a manager of the San Francisco Opera who is involved in the case and Emile Meyer who seems like he's always a cop plays one of the lead detectives.

Noir Watch: 5 Steps to Danger (1956)

Watched:  11/10/2021

Format:  Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Henry S. Keslar

There's both too much and not enough going on this post-war roadtrip noir - that is barely a noir.  But it does star Sterling Hayden as a guy in a hat, and Ruth Roman as a dame in trouble who pulls Hayden in over his head.  

I hesitate to get into this plot-dense noir with a synopsis, because the plot isn't exactly nonsense, but how they go about it is a mess.   But the basic gist is that Hayden's car breaks down en route from LA to Texas somewhere, and Ruth Roman offers him a ride if he can help her split the drive to Santa Fe so they can keep moving.  

A mysterious nurse approached Hayden in a roadside stop and says they've been following Ruth Roman as she's an escaped mental patient or some such, but for some reason, they're just watching her? But, basically, it's a sinister spy story of former Nazis in the US (one played by Colonel Klink) trying to get ahold of some info Roman came into possession of whilst in Germany trying to get her brother out of East Germany (I think).  People keep trying to convince Hayden Roman is crazy - but she clearly isn't.  So.

Anyway, Hayden probably hated this script.  His character is kind of boring and always right about everything (which is not where Hayden shines), and Roman is fine, but a little dull here.  As is the movie.  

I did not love it.  I couldn't figure out why the CIA wasn't taking an active hand in the proceedings as so much was at stake and they were watching everything.  None of the movie's story really had much of a reason for happening.  I dunno.  I've seen worse, but this one was just kind of not my thing.  Except it's a ripoff in many ways of The 39 Steps, which I've only seen as a play, and I liked that.. so.

Noir Watch: Hell on Frisco Bay (1955)

Watched:  11/04/2021

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Frank Tuttle

This was not at all what I was expecting.  It feels almost like a rough draft of something like Heat, where we see both sides of the cop and criminal coin.  It's a smidge longer as a result, has some complicated character stuff going on, and is shot in color, which is... very strange, honestly, for the type of movie it is.

But I also want to watch the movie with Jenifer or Tammy so they'll tell me what all of the San Francisco locations are.  This is VERY San Francisco.  You expect them to sit down and eat a bowl of Rice-a-Roni.

The story is pretty good, but the cast is pretty stellar.  Alan Ladd is an ex-cop released from prison for a manslaughter charge that he believes was a set-up.  He's been in San Quentin for five years, and despite his wife's desire to get back together, he's been refusing her while in prison and is still, for whatever reason, mad that she saw someone else while he ignored her for five years.*  The wife is played by Joanne Dru (Red River), and you're gonna think Ladd is a moron for ignoring her, especially when she performs as a songbird in a nightclub.  

Halloween Watch Party: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Watched:  10/29/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Jack Arnold

My goal for the Hallow-Scream Watch Parties was to watch some of the classic monster films with folks who hadn't seen them.  And:  mission accomplished.  

I think Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) is a fantastic movie.  I've also seen it, like, 15 times, so I don't mind talking over it, giving it some light ribbing, and generally making it fun for people who might not otherwise watch the film.  

Anyway - I think it was more or less a success this year, so I'll look into it next year, too.  We didn't watch some classics like The Invisible Man, which absolutely demand a viewing.  And maybe Hammer?  I mean, people need to see Cushing and Lee fighting on a table.

But Creatch is a good one to end on.  It's really good, but feels a lot more like modern film.  Or, at least for those of us born 20 years after it came out, we have some perspective on what this was pointing to.  Especially as many of us are more than familiar with B-film.  And, man, it's such a pretty and well-designed film.  

Graham/ Kinda-Noir Watch: The Glass Wall (1953)

Watched:  10/09/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Maxwell Shane

I dunno if this is actually Film Noir.  It sure didn't feel like it, but Eddie showed it and brought Dana Delaney along, so who am I to argue?

The Glass Wall (1953) was a contemporary issue movie in 1953, but one that echoes in the events of today.  A Hungarian WWII camp survivor and resistance fighter has stowed away on a ship and arrived in New York.  But with no papers, he's set to be turned away and returned to Europe where he is fairly certain he will be killed.

Any of this ringing a bell?

He's stowed away under the notion that if he can find an American he saved and hid for days in a haystack, that man will support his entry to the US.  But all he knows is a first name and that he plays the coronet.  So - he makes good his escape, pursued by the law, walking through the streets of New York.

Also starring Gloria Grahame in a surprisingly small role for her at the time.  But after Bold and the Beautiful, Grahame knew she'd been good in earthier roles like in Crossfire, and so appears as a factory worker, down on her luck and knocked around by life.  (She also steals the coat of an impossibly young Kathleen Freeman, who makes a federal case out of it eve though she gets her coat back).   

Less familiar will be the stripper with a heart of hold, played by Robin Raymond - a very Americanized Hungarian transplant living with her less-adjusted mother and deeply American brother (Joe Turkel!*).  It's a great part of the film I hadn't seen coming, and rather than platitudes and Gloria Grahame looking amazing as a shop-worn girl who needs a pal - typical movie stuff - it's a look at the multiple angles of the immigrants here in the US.  And, man, in one of those shining moments of film, it feels *true*.  

In this era of dismissing the UN as useless, it's also a time capsule of what the UN was supposed to be, and what it represented to the world in the wake of the atrocities and devastation of WWII.  And as quickly as it's established, we can see how useless an empty UN is - maybe something not intended in the way you can see it now, but certainly how it was meant at the time.

Star Vittorio Gassman is exactly what the film needed - a handsome face that could look desperate.  The film wasn't shot entirely on backlots.  There's some real footage of Gassman on the streets of 1953 NYC including Times Square.  It's chaotic and dark, lit with neon.  As Gassman looks for his friend, the loneliness and alienation are stunning.  

The movie also features Ann Robinson from War of the Worlds and a handful of character actors, as well as real jazz musicians like Jack Teagarden and Shorty Rogers.  

The movie isn't great, but I have a feeling - because of it's period messages reverberating to today - I'll remember it.  

*ah, you know him from Blade Runner and The Shining.

Halloween Price Watch: House of Wax (1953)

Watched:  10/04/2021

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Third

Decade:  1950's

Director:  André De Toth

I knew I'd seen this one again in recent years, and here's that post from 2012.  The one thing I'd walk back from that post is - yeah, this is necessary viewing.  I dig it.  You should watch it.

The movie has a terrific cast, great sets, really good make-up and costuming.  It feels high budget (I genuinely don't know if the listed $1 million budget was high or not.  I see Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, that same year, was $2.3 million, for comparison, and that movie looks super expensive.).  But, House of Wax made that budget back twenty-times over, including a couple of re-releases, one in the 70's.

The movie was also originally in 3D, and one day, maybe Alamo Drafthouse will show this in 3D.  That would be great.  I mean:  it's got an extended paddle-ball sequence that demands to be seen in 3D.  

Noir Watch: Hell Bound (1957)

Watched:  09/30/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  William J. Hole  Jr. (what a name)

Confession - I sort of 3/4ths watched Hell Bound (1957).  I watched it from beginning to end, but was checking email and whatnot.  

It's a low-budget/ poverty-rowish crime caper, complete with post-Naked City heavy-handed voice-over in a bizarre film-within-a-film conceit.  It's a heist picture, and I genuinely wish I'd paid more attention (and will rewatch at some point), as this one does a surprisingly good job of setting up "here's how the heist will go" and "here's how none of those carefully planned steps worked out" as the characters pursue their own vices and agendas.  Classic heist stuff.

In some ways, heist pictures and books speak to me as a Project Manager.  It's a funky angle, but there's always a plan you're supposed to be sticking to, and then the job becomes about wrangling cats and dealing with unforeseen complications.  You can plan, but God laughs, etc...

You're mostly not going to know the talent.  There's a "that guy" I think I know from Dark Passage, but everyone else was a bit of a mystery.  The movie does give a role to Miss January 1957, and she's good!  She went on to a long career (and married one of Ozzie Nelson's kids for a while).  

Mostly - it's got some great street-level photography of Los Angeles, some of it probably shot guerilla style.  But especially the back 1/3rd has some memorable stuff as our lead antagonist runs like hell through industrial ports and junk yard (seeing the stacked street cars waiting to be scrapped is a punishing image).  

Anyway - I'll definitely rewatch at some point.   

Mixed-Feelings Watch: Man on a Tightrope (1953)

Watched:  09/23/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Elia Kazan

I'm somewhat shocked I'd never heard of this movie before.  But, that's what TCM is all about - pulling out movies from the library and saying "here you go.  This one's solid.  Folks used to know how to make a movie, huh?"  

Brought to TCM on a night in which Dana Delaney co-hosted (with Eddie Muller) a slate of films featuring screen legend Gloria Grahame, Delaney came ready to talk.  

Look - I have some mixed feelings on this one.  It's a terrific movie.  I believe in the conceit of the film, and I think Muller explained it as well as you could, so I'm in a hard-agree mode.  As much as I generally agree that Kazan is an amazing director, the guy named names during HUAC that did a lot of damage.  

So, when a movie is about the iron grip of post WWII Soviet-style governance in Czechoslovakia, and how it pushes an a-political head of a circus to consider his options...  well, I tend to agree with anyone who wasn't a fan of Stalinism or the authoritarian/ police-state governance employed in Eastern Europe.  This movie could easily spin up a TL;DR post or a full college thesis, but... I'll be merciful. 

Melodrama Watch: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Watched:  09/24/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's (so, so 1950's)

Director:  Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk was a @#$%ing mad man.  

This is one of the most bizarre looking and beautiful movies I've ever seen - like someone went to technicolor and just said "this one goes to 11".  Every shot looks like one of those super-saturated ads from a 1950's print magazine, is perfectly framed and blocked.  It's just amazing to look at. 

The story is not exactly whisper thin, and it's some very real stuff served up as a fluffy morality play.  Sirk was a guy who knew his audience - we first studied him in the "women's pictures" unit in film school.  But that audience is absolutely not just women, it just puts women front and center in their own stories.  

Jane Wyman (Ms. Falconcrest herself) plays a middle-aged widow with two grown kids (well, college-aged) who is dealing with the nonsense of East Coast bougie social life, including husbands making passes at her (not cool, husbands).  Wyman's best pal is, of course, Agnes Moorehead.  Who looks fantastic by the way.*

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.

Noir Watch: Human Desire (1954)

weird.  I used that same tag line in my wedding vows.

Watched:  09/20/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM 

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Fritz Lang

First - this episode of Noir Alley was hosted by Eddie Muller and actor Dana Delaney, and what a goddamn delight.  Delaney has a presence and intellect that fits in perfectly with the TCM vibe.  She's a total cool kid who knows her stuff.  This wasn't, as happens on TCM from time to time, some actor wandering in who kinda-sorta likes a topic or film.  She wrote articles on Gloria Grahame for this quarter's Noir City magazine - so she was more than a bit prepared.  And, as long as she's Dana Delaney, she's going to be great talking about any topic.

Human Desire (1954) has enough elements going for it that it's totally watchable, but there's a reason I haven't returned to it til now.  Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame star.  It's directed by Fritz Lang.  There's a budget behind it.  You can do worse than Broderick Crawford.  My memory of it was the last act sort of falls apart, and before the movie opened, Delaney basically explained why:  I guess they totally rewrote the last act from the book and French movie it was based upon, and for some reason give Glenn Ford's character a moral high ground he hasn't earned and Graham's character is totally thrown to the wolves despite this making no sense in the film.  

Noir Watch: Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

Watched:  09/15/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Richard Quine

Before the movie, Muller pointed out that this film sure feels like the same story they use in The Killers from 1964.  If you asked me which to pick, I'd say to reach for The Killers, unless you have the option of the 1946 The Killers, which shares only some cosmetic similarities.  

But, Drive a Crooked Road (1954) was better than I figured, but still not setting the world on fire.  Starring Mickey Rooney as a lonely-hearts mechanic and would-be-race-car-driver, it hits all the beats of noir in a very small scale and is intended to give Rooney a new persona as far from Andy Hardy as possible. 

It doesn't hurt that a young Kevin McCarthy plays a bank-robber who sets up Rooney to fall for his girl, the Rita Hayworth-ish Dianne Foster, and get him wrapped up into a bank robbery as the get away wheelman.  

And, unlike most noir films, they do literally perform the action of the title and drive a crooked road to get away from a bank as we turn the corner into the third act.  

Foster is... okay.  She was clearly signed because she... looks good on film.  But she never quite knocks it out of the park in the charisma department or has that ineffable quality that would have made a really solid femme fatale role one for the ages.  She's not boring, and you get how Rooney's character can't believe how his fortunes have turned when she shows interest, but I can imagine the role in someone else's hands (Rhonda Fleming, honestly) and how much more they might have squeezed out of the part.

McCarthy and his pal played by Jack Kelly are a buyable counterpoint to Rooney's guileless driver.

What really struck me was the third act feeling like crime fiction of the era and earlier, with the quiet, doomed ending when I expected the usual Hayes-approved turn to escape and a happy life for our protagonist as his bad-girl turns good.

Nope.

Anyway, a great installment for this week's Noir Alley.

Brit Noir Watch: Cloudburst (1951)

Watched:  09/06/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:

There's trouble!  Right here in London City!

It's interesting that the French focused so hard on the American films they'd dub "film noir".  It's not like the British weren't making gloomy crime movies around the same time.  Night and the City, Brighton Rock and others point not just to the "noir movement" in England, but that the films made there weren't afraid to go incredibly dark.

Produced by Hammer (they did more than horror, kids), this one stars American Robert Preston as a Canadian in service to British Intelligence as a codebreaker still doing his work in the wake of WWII to help prosecute war criminals.  The film takes place just a year after the war, and Preston is married to a fellow intelligence officer whom he fell in love with during their time as POWs, where both were tortured.

They have a chance now at a happy, calm life, with a baby on the way, when - one night as they pause on a country roadside considering buying some property, Preston's wife is struck and killed by criminals escaping a murder.  

Noir Re-Watch: The Big Heat (1953)

Watched:  08/22/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Fritz Lang

It's possible to say that The Big Heat (1953) is one of my favorite films.  I've seen it plenty, will watch parts of it when it pops up on TCM or wherever, and I think about parts of it a lot when considering other films.  I found it when I was discovering Gloria Grahame, and she's absolutely part of why I always come back to the movie.  She's so dang good in this movie as gangsters moll Debby Marsh - a plucky girl who has compromised a lot so she doesn't sink back into poverty.   To me, while she's very different from movies to movie, "excellent" is typical for the era from Grahame- but some consider this to be her final "great" performance.  Okay.  Fair enough.  She had some issues.  But what a way to leave a mark in cinema.

But I'm also fascinated by the story of the cop who spends his days and nights "white knighting" and not participating in the rampant corruption of his police department, only to lose his wife and... snap.  Like, Glenn Ford's Dave Bannion is not okay through a big part of the film.  It's an unusual fall from grace for a Hayes Era film, and while Bannion never quite breaks the Hayes Code, he sure seems like he might here and there.  

It's also got Lee Marvin in an early role, just filling up the screen and seeming like a whole lot more than the psycho second banana he's supposed to be, and playing it with a cool believability that his peers on screen aren't yet able to muster.

Anyway, I've written about this one before, and it's be a kick to podcast at some point.  So I'll duck out here.  But if you haven't seen it, give it a chance.  It feels remarkably modern for something 70 years old.

  

Noir Watch: Where Danger Lives (1950)

Watched:  08/11/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1950's

Director:  John Farrow

I had seen this before, about eight years ago, but only remembered bits and pieces of it.  

Mitchum plays an over worked San Francisco-based doctor who plans to leave the hospital to start his own practice (and not put in 24 hour days).  He's got a swell gal in the person a Maureen O'Sullivan, a very understanding nurse, and all is looking good.  UNTIL.  He takes on a suicide attempt in the person of Faith Domergue - pitched here as the sexy, wealthy, society gal who throws herself at Mitchum.  That is until he figures out that Claude Raines (in high Raines style here) is not her father, but her husband.  A scuffle ensues, and Raines ends up dead.  Plus, Mitchum ends up concussed when he was already drunk.

Domergue leads Mitchum on, and they make a pretty classic noir-era cross-country escape to get across the border and escape murder charges.   Meanwhile, Domergue might be a lunatic and Mitchum has a serious concussion that needs attention.

It has a bit of a fugitive The Live By Night, on the lam quality, a noir staple (I'm immediately thinking of a few others, including High Sierra).  And comparisons to Detour are inevitable and unfortunate as that shines a light on the fact that Domergue just isn't Ann Savage.  It's a bit unclear what the appeal is beyond "pretty".  As nutsy as Ann Savage was, she at least had personality to spare.  

Still, it's a good watch for a second viewing in 10 years.  Mitchum is surprisingly dialed in, playing the increasing medical trauma in a buyable, understated way that stretches him beyond "awesome dude with troubles".  Raines was probably on set for 3 days to get his part in, but he's terrific.  

There are a number of setbacks for our leads en route to Mexico, and, frankly, they feel both concocted to the point of stretching credulity and absolutely like the dumb things that can keep you from achieving what seems like very reasonable goals.  Especially while traveling.  

Anyway - I don't dislike it, but there's a reason I only sort-of remembered it before turning it on.  But from now on it'll be "the one where Mitchum gets way-layed by small-town folk and their insistence on beards".