After hearing it praised and discussed on the Junkfood Cinema podcast and knowing it was part of the Criterion Channel’s current Neo-Noir I decided to 1973’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye a viewing.

In the film Marlow is awakened in the middle of the night by his friend who needs an emergency car ride to Mexico from Los Angeles following a fight with his wife. Marlow, apparently a very good friend, complies and later when the wife turns up dead finds himself considered a co-conspirator in her murder kicking off the plot.

Sadly, I can’t say the film was an overwhelming success for me. Elliot Gould’s mumbling and seeming distracted take on P.I. Philip Marlow never fully engaged me as a character but only as an affectation. In addition to that Marlow in the script jumps to correct conclusions for the next stage of the mystery but seemingly without have seen or discovered the clues that would actually lead to such a leap of logic. For example, he asks a woman if she knew a particular couple that lives in the same gated community as she. She answers that she vaguely knew them and later he’s asking the woman’s husband if his wife was having an affair with the husband of the pervious couple and nothing in the film established or hinted at such a relationship. Marlow simply knew somehow. The gangster sub-plot, apparently an invention of the screenplay, is jarring both tonally and logically to story. It’s odd and absurdist but never fully explored or explained.

Directed by hailed filmmaker Robert Altman with a screenplay by the legendary Leigh Bracket, The Long Goodbye should have been a film I loved but instead it slots in as a piece of film history I can now say I have watched but I have desire to see again.

Noir Review: Kiss of Death

It was difficult to find a copy of Kiss of Death to watch but I eventually managed the task. The film, starring Victor Mature, is particularly notable for as the first screen appearance of one
Richard Widmark as the vicious and psychopathic Tommy Udo a screen debut that scored
Widmark an Oscar nomination.

Mature plays Nick Bianco a thief nabbed in an armed robbery that goes wrong and rather than cooperate with the district attorney’s office takes his hard time sentence rather than squeal. However, when events intervene Nick has a change of heart and begin working for the state which brings him into conflict with Udo who has an intense hatred of those who turn on their criminal brothers. There is a romantic sub-plot between Mature and a younger woman, Coleen Gray, but the film’s real focus is Bianco and Udo.

This is one of Mature’s best performances and the conflict Nick suffers as his world crumbles if evident on his feature but without a doubt the standout performance is Widmark’s Udo. If you have watched any documentaries about the film noir movement, you have undoubtedly seen the clip of Udo sending a helpless woman tumbling down a long flight of stairs. While this capture the cruelty of his character the performance is much more than acts of wonton violence. Widmark manipulates every muscle in his face, creates a perverse curl to his upper lip, and give a joker-like grin as Udo that radiates that this person has no empathy for anyone.

Kiss of Death plot wise is fairly standard and the voiceover narration could have been dropped to improve the movie, but it should not be missed for the performances.

This past weekend was a noir watching time for me and a friend. We often watch movies after the end of board and card games and following last weekend movie The Big Combo I wanted to watch The Big Heat on Friday night. That put me in a mood for more Gloria Grahame and on Saturday I rented In A Lonely Place a noir I have heard about but had never actually seen.

The story centers on Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) a Hollywood screenwriter with an explosive temper that often spills over into violence. We are introduced to Dixon when a pause at a traffic light turns heated and he climbs out of his car in the middle of the street to start fighting. After a hatcheck girl that Dixon brought to his home to assist him with a screenplay is found murdered Dixon is brought in by the police for questioning. Dixon tells the police that a neighbor in his open-air apartment complex can vouch for his story and they bring in Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame.) She confirms his account of the evening and following this introduction Dixon and Laurel begin a romantic affair. However, the police are not convinced of Dixon’s innocence, he already has a long record of fights and attacks that only amplify their suspicions. With the police pressuring Dixon and other warning Laurel of his violent outbursts fear creeps into their relationship along with the possibility that Dixon actually did murder the young woman.

In A Lonely Place made for an excellent follow-up to The Big Heat providing a fine example of Gloria Grahame’s range as an actor. The film is also a good vehicle for Bogart to stretch his preforming wings and om scenes where Dixon’s sanity is called into question you can see hints of his upcoming classic portrayal of Queeg from The Caine Mutiny being planted. In A Lonely Place also represented the final collaboration between Grahame and her husband director Nicholas Ray before their separation and divorce. The scripts original ending was too dark for Ray and working with Bogart and Grahame they improvised the final scenes with its ambiguous ending.

I very much enjoyed watching this film and throughout its run time never felt absolutely certain of where the filmmakers were taking it. I do feel that this might have been an even better and more powerful film had our viewpoint character been restricted to Laurel with more of Dixon’s nature being recounted second-hand leaving us in the dark even more to what really transpired between Dixon and the hatcheck girl. Still, this is one worth seeking out and watching.

Saturday night a friend and I watched the 1955 noir film The Big Combo. The film stars Cornel Wilde as Police Lieutenant Diamond who is obsessed with charging and jailing a local organized crime boss, Mr. Brown, played by Richard Conte while having unrequited love for Brown’s mistress Susan Lowell. Combo in the title is a shortening of Combination one of many names assigned to organized along with Commission, and such, when for whatever reasons the title ‘mafia’ is avoided.

The film’s limited budget gives it a decidedly B picture feel and the dialog from time to time to too on-point with characters delivering clumsy exposition, but the twisty narrative delivers nicely with the final reveals of the plot playing out well.

This is a movie where the supporting cast have the most memorable characters and performances. John Hoyt, perhaps best remembered as the Enterprise’s original doctor in Star trek’s first Pilot The Cage, has but a single scene as a retired Swedish Sea Captain but fills his few moments on screen with life and vitality.

However, the support characters that fascinate me the most in The Big Combo are a pair of hitmen, Fante and Mingo, playing to perfection by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman respectively. The pair are inseparable, traveling together, eating together, and sharing a tiny apartment. Fante is the judicious, calculating and older member of the duo while Mingo’s character is brash, juvenile and more likely to react without considering the consequences.

While the characters are never ‘coded’ as gay by any of the usual traits used by cinema of the period, no lisps, no perchance for extravagance, no perfumed cards or elaborately stylish outfits, the pair’s relationship can clearly and be easily interpreted as a close, bonded pair or lovers. This is even more evident when Fante’s leaves Mingo utterly shattered emotionally so much so that all traces of criminal loyalty vanish. Never is there an overt action that would support the interpretation of the characters as gay but neither are there any of the easily dropped clues such as ogling women or discussing girlfriends and dolls that would have countered such a conclusion. Fante and Mingo live in the liminal space between what is suspected and what is confirmed, shadowy, hidden, a perfect film noir relationship.

Starring a young 29- year-old Toshiro Mifune Stray Dog is a 1949 Japanese noir that has its recurring themes guilt and the pressures of societal decay on people without resources.

Rookie homicide detective Murakami tired and suffering from an oppressive heatwave blanketing the city has his pocket picked but instead of taking his wallet the thief makes off with Murakami’s police issues Colt pistol. Murakami dutifully reports the theft already quite guilty about his negligence certain that this will get him booted from the force into a city that has few opportunities as the nation crawls out of the destruction, physical and emotional, of the war.

Partnered with veteran policeman Sato (Takashi Shimura) the pair begin following leads to identify the thief and recover the stolen gun. The hunt leads them down a trail of petty crimes growing more serious and more dangerous as they penetrate the underbelly of the city’s criminal element. With each crime the pistol is tied to Murakami’s guilt grows as he takes on more and more responsibility for its abuse by the criminals. Simultaneously he develops an empathy for many of the people he encounters, people for whom the harsh realities of the nation have trapped in lives of desperation and shattered illusions.

An early film by renowned director Akira Kurosawa Stray Dog has clear inspirations from the American genre of film noir while still presenting the themes and imagery that is iconic to Kurosawa’s film legacy. Mifune here presents a different sort of character than the gruff and imposing types he would often be associated with later in his equally impressive career. Murakami is a sensitive man and it’s said many time in the film perhaps too sensitive for policework but it is this quality and Mifune’s excellent portrayal of it that provides the bridge that allows the audience to see the crushed humanity in the city’s underworld.

Stray Dog is an excellent example of the universality of noirand that the human conditions it comments upon are universal rather than national and I can heartily recommend watching it.

Stray Dog is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.