Given that I had appointments to keep today I took the day off from my day-job and that provided me the opportunity to head out to the cinemas and see Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light which is the Guillermo del Toro production presented in black and white.

First off let me say that the feature was absolutely fabulous in B&W. There have been other feature films in recent years that have released monochrome editions, Mad Max: Fury Road Black and Chrome and Logan Noir, and neither of these alternative versions were as beautiful or as fitting as Nightmare Alley’s. I think del Toro envisioned the feature in black-and-white, with all the production design aimed at that target. Also as a period piece we movie lovers are so used to seeing that era in monochrome that it feels more natural and strangely more realistic without vibrant colors. That is not to say that the production design suffered in color. It was beautiful and captivating and a true testament to the artistry and skill of the team.

Where The Tragedy of Macbeth in Black and white feels stagey, unreal, this film feels grounded because of it.

Watching the film a second time it grew on me more and I was even more deeply immersed in the story and the characters.  The film is layered and the performances at time quite subtle. With a repeat viewing I became more aware of symbolic establishments that foretold the eventual end for the charlatan Stanton Carlisle. It was also clear in subtle moments when characters had committed themselves to irrevocable courses of action. I enjoyed the movie the first time, last night I loved it.

Included with the Blu-ray set Noir Archive: Volume 3 The Lineup from 1958 in my opinion scarcely qualifies a film noir and rather a poor police procedural. Despite being penned by noted screenwriter Sterling Silliphant and directed by veteran filmmaker Don Siegal the movie plays like a larger budget television series episode which is understandable as it adapted from a TV and radio show of the same name.

After a stolen luggage job goes wrong at the steamship docks leaving a cop and a cabbie dead police inspectors Guthrie and Quine start searching for the members of a narcotics ring that uses unsuspecting passengers to smuggler rather small amounts of heroin through customs. Simultaneously a hitman, his handler, and a local get away driver, are crisscrossing San Francisco retrieving the contraband murdering as they go.

While The Lineup has some nice location shooting and captures much of the flavor of the city by the bay the film is ultimately too sedate to be of much interest. The Inspectors are never emotionally involved in their case and the hitman and his handler are too unsympathetic to be engaging characters despite some minor quirks to make them at least superficially interesting. Over all my verdict is that there is no need to seek out this movie as there are far better low budget noirs to watch.

The Crimson Kimono will never be counted among my favorite noirs but despite its flaws it is an intriguing film and an entertaining one.

The story centers on two LAPD homicide detectives, Joe Kojaku (James Shigeta, perhaps best known as Mr. Takagi from 1984’s Die Hard.) and Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) investigating the shooting murder of a celebrated stripper. The detectives, friends, partners, and roommates, following their service together in the Korean War, have little to go on to solve the murder save the stripper’s plans for a new act inspired by Japanese culture. Their investigation brings them into contact with local painter Christine Downs (Victoria Shaw) and a romantic triable between the two detectives and Christine forms threatening both the investigation and Joe’s and Charlie’s friendship.

The Crimson Kimono is bold in its depiction of interracial romance in defiance of the Production Code still a year out from its official abandonment in 1968. Joe Kojaku and the other Asian characters, both Korean and Japanese, are treated with respect and written as fully developed characters with their ethnicity as an aspect of their characters and not the sole defining elements. the friendship between Joe and Charlie feels real and has the depth that writer/Director Sam Fuller often explored in men who have seen brutal combat. Christine is a little less fully developed but does have at least a few layers to her personality.

Fuller’s script is clumsy in handling the twin plots of this brief 82-minute movie, never quite grasping a pleasing balance between investigation and romantic drama with large sections that make it seem like the other thread has been forgotten. While the film deals with racism and is plainly anti-racist in its views it also is hampered by a naivete as to racism’s prevalence in American society. I found it impossible to accept Joe’s assertion that he had never encountered anti-Japanese racism once in the Army or on the LAPD force. The declaration dramatically undercut the tension when Joe has mistakenly believed that Charlie’s animosity is in part racially inspired.

The film is further harmed by a score that attempts to incorporate traditional Western and Asian musical themes but does so in a manner that feels cheap and inauthentic with the Asian motifs sounding more like parody or satire.

However even with those fairly blatant flaws The Crimson Kimono remains a brave piece of fiction depicting love, romantic and otherwise, between characters of different races and manages to thematically tie the murder at the center of the mystery to this premise.

Guillermo del Toro like Edmund Goulding in 1947 has adapted William Lindsay Gresham’s cynical crime novel Nightmare Alley to the silver screen. Del Toro and Kim Morgan’s screenplay follow the same core beats and arc as the 1947 film and the novel.

Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) drifts into work for Clem’s (Willem Dafoe) low-end carnival. There he learns the basic of the carny trade, how to fake mind-reading while getting a taste for
the grift. After acquiring the skills and confidence to aim higher than carny life, together with the innocent Molly (Rooney Mara) Stan leaves for bigger, brighter gigs as a nightclub act. There a chance encounter brings him to psychologist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) and the possibility of even greater cons and even greater dangers as Stan reaches beyond his grasp.

While following the same core acts, events, and arc of the 47 film Del Toro’s is 39 minutes longer, lingering with the world of the traveling carnival and amid the misfits that del Toro so clearly loves. If you are a fan of the Tyrone Power adaptation nothing in this one is going to come as a major surprise with the most explicit differences arising from the original film’s Production Code limitations. Molly remains virtuous, Stan remains too ambitious for his own good, while Dr. Ritter is even more icy and more calculating than before. That said del Toro has returned to the source material for the story’s final resolution which the 47 adaptation avoided leaving the audience with a colder, darker, and more cynical thematic tone.

The cinematography is this production is dark, moody, and while there is a wide color palate the colors are far from saturated giving the film’s environments a used and shabby atmosphere. Costuming is subtle and on point capturing each character without drawing over attention. the acting is mostly restrained and naturalistic save for the moments of highest emotional strain and in a small role Mary Steenburgen frightens with a smile.

It would be wrong to compare the 47 and the 2021 productions. They were made under very different restrictions and with very different intentions. I think it is possibly to embrace and love both films as they are without preferencing one over the other. Again, the most meaningful difference lay in the film’s final resolution and the very different lives ahead for Stan in each version. I am thoroughly happy that I braved the cool wet weather and three hours in a fabric mask to witness this beautiful, haunting, and frightening film.

Despite the cresting, crashing, calamity that is the Omicron wave I still plan to go out the theater this holiday weekend and treat my vaccinated and boosted self to a couple of in the goddamned cinema films.

First up and possibly on Christmas eve will be Del Toro’s adaptation of a 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley. Previously adapted for the screen in 1947 this is a film noir about ruthless manipulation of people for money by low carny folk and upper-class cons hiding behind prestigious degrees. I have seen the 47 movie and thoroughly enjoyed it but very much want to see Del Toro’s interpretation. It came out last weekend but between Role Play Gaming nights and seeing Spider-Man: No Way Home this was pushed off for one week.

Opening Christmas Day is another long-anticipated film for me, Joel Cohen’s adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Long my favorite of the Bard’s plays Macbeth is open to and has been widely interpreted and re-interpreted. Macbeth can be analyzed through a psychological lens with spectral daggers and unwanted ghostly dinner guests seen as manifestations of greed, ambition, and guilt. It can also be seen as a supernatural story where the witches have actual power and slain friends literally haunt their murderer. It has been reported that Cohen’s vision in his first film without his brother Ethan at his side leans heavily into the supernatural. Luckily San Diego still has some art house theaters, and I will be able to see this on the big screen rather than waiting until next month’s debut on Apple TV+.

The 1958 film Elevator to the Gallows is often considered one of the foundational films of the French New Wave of cinema and is also a dark cynical noir with an underlying theme of futility.

Julien Tavernier, an ex-paratrooper and now an executive under a corrupt businessman, Simon Carala, plots with his lover Florence to murder his boss. The film opens with the murder and reveals Julien’s careful planning, but an ill-timed telephone call disrupts the plot initiating a chain-reaction of events that over the course of a single night cascades into more murder and tragedy.

Adapted from a novel of the same name Elevator to the Gallows is a film with very little fat on it. Within its slim 91-minute running time Gallows presents fully realized characters and explores the futility of attempting to fully controls events. Julien’s plan it meticulous and intelligent but with one stray event is crumbles as chaos revealing chaos as the ultimate determiner of our fates.

Many low-budget noirs utilized inexpensive jazz scores, but Gallows stands apart from these with its improvised jazz score by legendary musical Miles Davis. Filmed on location and at night the movie has a realism that adds weight and poignancy to the doomed lovers. The cinematography often relies on short lenses, isolating the characters from their out of focus backgrounds, visually reflecting their lonely existence.

Elevator to the Gallows is currently streaming, with bonus content, on the Criterion Channel.

Sunday night’s movie this week was another classic noir Night and The City, starring, Richard Widmark, and Gene Tierney with a standout support-role performance by Herbert Lom.

An ambitious but two-bit street con man, Harry Fabian (Widmark) dreams of making a name for himself, of becoming someone respected and admired but his life is one of running from debtors and hustling tourists for unscrupulous nightclubs that drain wallets with watered-down drinks and women hired to keep them drinking. Harry’s girlfriend Mary (Tierney) is dubious of Harry’s constantly failing get-rich-quick schemes but remains hopelessly in love with him. A chance encounter while hustling for nightclub clients leads harry to believe that he can launch an enterprise to control wrestling entertainment in all of London while neutralizing Kristo (Lom) the organized crime figure currently behind the exhibitions. when things inevitably begin to go wrong Harry’s skills at fast-talk and quick thinking are the only factors between his success and Kristo’s vengeance.

With its lack of sympathetic or moral characters, save for the ineffectual Mary, Night and The City is a perfect example of the dark, cynical tones found in true film noir. While not as depraved as Double Indemnity’s Walter Neff, Harry is a morally compromised character not unlike Squid Game’sprotagonist Gi-hun who steals from his own mother to fuel his gambling addiction. Unlike Gi-hun Harry has no redemptive arc but instead as he struggles against fate and fortune sinks ever deeper into his own immoral quicksand.

I’ve seen Richard Widmark give stellar performances and I’ve seen him ‘phone them in’ when he has no respect for the material he is in, here he is at his best form, always charming, always fully committed to the character, managing to invoke empathy for a character that in actual life it would be best to avoid. That said the standout performance to me was Herbert Lom as the respectable gangster Kristo. My principle cinematic experience with Lom has been his work with Blake Edwards in various comedies where Lom player broad exaggerated characters seeing this early turn as a nearly sociopathic heavy is quite a revelation. Kristo is a cold and precise character with only room in his heart for his beloved father and when he turns to revenge there can be no doubt that with Kristo is will be achieved.

Night and The City, while not well received upon its release has claimed its well-deserved place among the best of noirs from the classic period. The film is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their Fox Noir collection.

Please consider purchasing My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge which is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

Before I get into my thoughts on this classic noir just a note that as this is the busy season for my day-job with loads of overtime my posting here will be sparser and erratic and after the new year.

Nightmare Alley, adapted from the novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham, is the relatively rare noir that boasts a cast of top studio leads, A-picture budgeting, and promotion, unlike most noirs that were either studio B-pictures, that is they played the second half of a double bills, or produced independently of the major studios. Tyrone Power, looking to expand his roles beyond dashing heroic types, plays Stan Carlisle, an amoral carnival worker willing to use and discard people in his quest for money and fame. From lowly beginnings in a second-rate travelling carnival, complete with an off-screen geek biting the heads of chickens, Stanton cons, charms, and connives his way to the top of the nightclub circuit as a ‘mentalist’ but like Icarus the higher he flies his danger grows.

Nightmare Alley is a dark and cynical film even for the genre of film noir. While there are ‘good’ characters in the story their effects are limited, and Stanton uses them as ruthlessly as anyone else he encounters. It is perhaps a fault of the film that a few early scenes telegraph the films ending a little too precisely or perhaps that is simply the danger of a writer watching the filmmakers palm the card because we know the tricks played on the rubes. Either way Nightmare Alley, with is impressive cast and excellent production values combined with a thematically compelling story about the cost of an ambition is a classic noir worth watching.

In December of 2021, next month as I write this, Guillermo del Torro, reportedly inspired by the novel and not the classic film, will release his adaptation for theatrical distribution starring Bradley Cooper as Stan Carlisle.

Nightmare Alley (1947) is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,