.

Warner Brothers

Jim Grayam (Jeffrey Hunter, a year prior to his turn in Star Trek’s 1st failed pilot) discovers Lorrie Benson (Anne Francis) passed out in her car stopped dangerously on a railroad crossing. Jim moves the car second ahead of a speeding train and returns Lorrie to her home and her possessive and domineering husband millionaire Cort Benson (Dana Andrews). Eschewing any monetary reward Jim is pulled back into Lorrie’s orbit when she insists on his attendance at a party while her husband is away. Jim and Lorrie begin a torrid affair. (Tastefully off screen as the production while weakened still ruled in 1965.) Benson learning of the affair, deploys his wealth and contacts to destroy Jim’s life and the couple begin to plot their escape with the murder of her husband.

Directed by William Conrad who is best known as an actor, Brainstorm is a tight and fairly entertaining late film noir. There is enough flair in the presentation that make one regret that Conrad’s turned more to performance and less towards direction. Somewhat hampered by the jazz score, as many lesser budgeted films of this period were, the movie still is bolstered by fine performances and reveals that organically develop from the noir plotting.

Anne Francis is quite convincing as Lorrie the trapped spouse of an emotionally abusive man. Her character is not the conniving plotted femme fetal of film noir but rather a sympathetic and terrified woman desperate for escape, but ultimately too broken to stand on her own.

Jeffrey Hunter threw himself into the part of Jim Grayam. Skilled at portraying deeply internal characters here Hunter not only employs those talents but in the film’s third act get to let loose and devour the scenery with deliberately overly expansive performance.

Dana Andrews turns in a perfectly acceptable performance, but his character is one there to drive the plot and as such is the least developed of the core three.

Sam Leavitt’s cinematography is not particularly atmospheric nor is it overly pedestrian but rather balances neatly between the two.

Brainstorm is part of the Criterion Channel’s Hollywood Crack-up collection, a compilation of films dealing with madness and mental manipulation. Before this set appeared on the channel I had never heard of Brainstorm (1965) but I do not regret the one and three-quarters hours I spent Sunday evening watching this piece of cinema.

Brainstorm is currently streaming on The Criterioon Channel.

Nell (Marilyn Monroe), a young woman shattered by grief and with only a tenuous grasp on

20th Century Fox Studios

reality, has, thanks to her Uncle Eddie (Elisha Cook Jr.) an elevator operator, been hired to baby sit Bunny, an eight-year-old, in a posh hotel while her parents attend a convention banquet. Elsewhere in the hotel Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) is coming to grips with his lady love, Lyn (Anne Bancroft) ending their relationship because Jed is not empathic with a cold heart. Spotting each other in their respective hotel room across a courtyard, Jed and Nell begin a flirtation that dangerously unhinges Nell from reality with potentially lethal outcomes.

On screen, I have seen Ms. Monroe in all sorts of emotional states, she has been ditzy, she has been sexy, she has been conniving but until last night I had never experience Marilyn Monroe as frightening. More than once in the film when Nell, disturbed and distraught, viewed her babysitting charge as an impediment the cold, calculating, and evil intent upon her face as she contemplated murdering a child was more horrific than many modern blood and gore movies.

The simple, spare direction of Roy Ward Baker, here simply credited as Roy Baker, elevates the taunt tension filled atmosphere of the film. With its brief running time and limited set, the entire story unfolds in the hotel over a single evening, Don’t Bother to Knock could very have been a B picture but there is nothing ‘B’ about Marilyn Monroe’s chilling performance.

Don’t Bother to Knock is currently playing on The Criterion Channel as part of the collection ‘Starring Marilyn Monroe,’ and available on VOD for rental elsewhere.

Hailing from Spain in 1955 Death of a Cyclist follows a couple having an affair, Maria Jose de Castro (Lucia Bose) who, by marrying Miguel Castro, (Otello Toso) has become wealthy and privileged, and her paramour Juan Fernandez Soler (Alberto Closas) an adjunct professor of mathematics. While returning from an evening’s assignation, with Maria at the wheel, the couple run over a cyclist and in their panic at being discovered flee, leaving the man to die at the side of the road. Paranoid at being discovered, each descends into trouble and crisis as their carefully managed affair and lives are consumed in the tangle of their crime.

An excellent character study and noir Death of a Cyclist presents the elements of noir that I find most compelling, ordinary characters caught in a web of extraordinary circumstances propelled forward by a flaw of character that prevent them doing to right thing as their compulsions push them to an inevitable conclusion.

The film is not without its own flaws, however. It does not bear to think at all upon the ages of the actor. The lovely and talented Lucia Bose was a mere 24 when this film was released in 1955 and would have been but 5 at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil war, hardly a fitting subject for a soldier’s affections. Aside from the disparity in ages Death of a Cyclist is an excellent foreign noir. Shot with expressive intent by Alfredo Fraile the film, while eschewing the typical using of shadowed bars across the characters manages to capture a stark and isolating sensation mirroring the characters’ psychological states as they are consumed by their guilt and paranoia. Written and directed by J.A. Bardem Death of a Cyclist is often referred to as a social realist film but it equally fits the bill as a film noir expressing the universality of human cynicism.

Frank Enley (Van Heflin) seems to have it all, celebrated as a war hero for piloting bombers mission over Germany, a thriving successful business building housing for the exploding Baby Boom generation, the respect of his community, and adoration from his lovely young wife, Edith (Janet leigh). And yet a mysterious stranger (Robert Ryan) has come across the continent to murder him. Frank is about to learn that the past is never very distant and that some betrayals are utterly unforgivable.

I believe that I first learned of this film when it was mentioned on Karina Longworth’s Hollywood history podcast You Must Remember This. Intrigued and curious about a noir that focused on misdeeds during the second world war, particularly a noir produced when the wat was not yet five years in the past, I have searched for this movie for years. I once found it on a commercial supported streaming service, but the poor video quality and very constant interruptions made viewing it there impossible. This week I located a file, with apparently fan produced Spanish subtitling, on the Internet Archive and at last watched this nearly forgotten film noir.

There is very little fat on the slim 82-minute feature and the stakes and tension are established very quickly. Several times I wondered how this was going to make it to feature length when it seemed that Joe, our mysterious man intent on murder, was about the ambush the unaware Frank. With a decent budget director Fred Zinneman, who three years later, also made one of my all-time favorites High Noon, and cinematographer Robert Surtees, have crafted a mood, atmospheric film that moves from the bright sunny California mountains to the dark, grimy, and dangerous back alleys of Los Angeles with ease, carrying the audience of a visual descent into literal darkness as Frank’s shameful past stalks him, forcing him to confront and confess his ugly truth.

My favorite scene in the film is when finally forced to tell Edith precisely why Joe is determined to kill him, Frank not only reveals the truth about himself but a universal one about humanity. That our to captivity rationalize, to create ‘reasons’ for our misdeeds, is a self-deception and that all too often the only life we are looking to save is our own.

The gangster subplot in the third act, introduced by the incomparable Mary Astor, is a bit far-fetched, exposing the hand of screenwriter Robert Richards, but allowing that to slide in the interest of suspension of disbelief is not a difficult task.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Act of Violence, finding the film to be tense, with a surprising empathy for all the characters.

Act of Violence is not, at the moment, streaming anywhere.

Universal Pictures

Criss Cross is a 1949 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak about a gang of crooks attempting to pull off an armored car heist of nearly half a million dollars.

Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) has returned home to Los Angeles after drifting about the nation for two years disillusioned after the disintegration of his marriage to Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). Anna has remarried to a local crime goon Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea) Soon Steve and Anna have rekindled their affair despite the lethal threat of Slim. Partly as a cover for their affair and partly to dissuade Slim’s suspicions, Steve concocts a plot with slim to rob the armored car company his works for with an intention to betray Slim and abscond with both the loot and the lady.

The film is a moderately decent noir marred by an intrusive and superfluous voice-over that, like Double Indemnity’s, seems to be the character recounting the events to a third party but without an actual third party to receive it.

Siodmak’s direction is sure and deft with creative and imaginative employment of rear screen projections the craft large spaces giving the impression of exteriors while maintaining strick studio control for cinematographer’s Franz Planer’s lighting and camera work.

Noted noir composer Miklos Rozsa fashioned the score but did not quite match his best work with the music sometimes as intrusive as the voice over.

The cast is uniformly good, portraying the conflicted and ultimately weak nature of the characters as they are consumed by their unrequited needs. While Criss Cross bears all the visual stamps of the noir style, more important to me the tone and theme of the story are true to the heart of noir, a dark cynical impression of humanity. Steve is trapped by his infatuation with Anna. While Anna and Slim are compelled by their respective flaws. The ending, dark, disturbing, and doomed is equally tragic and inevitable, paying honestly to the corruption in the human heart.

Playing as part of a Siodmak collection Criss Cross is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.