First Noir of the Year: The Killers

There are so many lauded classic noirs that I haven’t yet seen and on Sunday evening one more was scratched off the list with The Killers.

Directed by Robert Siodmak and debuting Burt Lancaster The Killers is adapted from a short story by Ernest Hemingway though as is par for the industry the screenplay differs significantly from the source material. With additional stars Edmund O’Brien and Ava Gardner, The Killers is a taunt exploration of a man’s life following his violent murder. With its fragmented flashback construction, the film is very nearly a noir Citizen Kane but with a more definitive conclusion.

The film opens with a pair of hired killers, including a wonderfully menacing performance by William Conrad, arriving in the early morning hours into the town of Brentwood New Jersey.  Locating their target, the ‘Swede,’ they gun him down in his boarding house room and though warned of the assassins’ approach Swede neither flees nor fights for his life but seemingly accepts his murder as punishment. The rest of the film follows Insurance investigator Reardon (O’Brien) as he tries to discover the murdered man real identity and the reason for his killing. An investigation that reopens old crimes and romances prompting fresh threats.

Released in 1946 The Killers is a wonderful example of film noirwith its morally ambiguous central character played by then unknown Burt Lancaster, its dark moody cinematography, and its sharp punchy dialog the films deftly explores the underside of American life and how closely intertwined the criminal world was with the rest of society. In addition to launching Lancaster’s career the film also propelled Gardner from relative obscurity to star with her compelling and captivating performance as Kitty, the obsessive interest of both the Swede and one of the city’s gangland bosses.

Nominated for a slew of Academy awards in 1947 including best Director, Editing, Screenplay, The Killers has been included in the National Film registry.

The Killers is available for rent via VOD and is currently streaming for free on the Roku channel Film Movie Classics.

The Criterion Channel has a collection of Joan Crawford films and I decided to give Mildred Pierce, adapted from a James M. Cain novel, a spin.

Crawford plays Pierce, a role which won her an Oscar, a middle-class woman who’s forced to survive and flourish after her husband leaves her stranding her with two daughters to raise, one, Veda, with expensive tastes and a growing sense of snobbery. Navigating lecherous men, back-stabbing business deals, heartbreak, and the growing gulf between herself and Veda’s increasing obsession with money and status Mildred also find friendship, loyalty and a strong sense of self as she carves out success founding a small chain of restaurants.

Unlike the novel the film centers around a murder investigation hen Mildred’s second husband is shot dead at his beach house, providing a flashback framing device for the film’s script. This adaptation also eliminated several sub-plots from Cain’s novel due to the restrictive production code enforce on all Hollywood productions at the time.

Crawford delivers a compelling and powerful performance. I was pleasantly surprised to find Eve Arden, whom I had primarily known for her much later career work in the 70s, here as Mildred’s sharp toothed friend. Arden displays a talent for delivering a cutting the remark that would serve her well throughout her career.

Directed by Michal Curtiz the film is competently produced and never lacks for pacing or a strong sense of style despite being hampered with an overly melodramatic scrip and more than a few dry performances in addition to the, even for the period, overly racist caricature of Mildred’s servant girl Lottie, played by Gone with the Wind’s Butterfly McQueen.

While the tacked-on murder plot adds a criminal element Mildred Pierceunlike some of Cain’s other works can only be considered noir adjacent and not noir itself.

HBO has produced a limited series adaptation of the novel which hewed much closer to the original story and not shying away from elements of infidelity and incest.

This weekend I continued my exploration of the Criterion Channel’s collection Columbia Noir with Human Desire.

Human Desire is the story of Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford), recently returned home from the Korean War and now resuming his job as a locomotive engineer. In his absence the Assistant Yard Supervisor Buckley, (Broderick Crawford) has married a much younger woman Vicki, (Gloria Grahame.) Before long there is jealousy, robbery, and murder the staples of American Noir. This is very much like the descriptionprovided by the Criterion Channel and it is in my opinion

dŽsirs humains
human desire
1954
rŽal : Fritz Lang
Broderick Crawford
Gloria Grahame
Glen Ford
Collection Christophel

quite misleading and capture where I think the film took its initial and consequential misstep. The entire movie is told from Jeff’s point of view treating the unfolding events as principally his story and it really isn’t his at all. The story should have been written and presented from Vicki’s point of view. When Buckley, a brute and intellectually challenged man, is fired from his position it falls to Vicki to win him his job back but in doing so triggers his violent jealousy launch a series of events that will entangle Buckley, Vicki, and Jeff in robbery and murder as she desperately tries to survive.

Despite its erroneous point of view Human Desire is a film worth watching. Glenn Ford plays the sort of role that he is best known for the fundamentally decent man though in keep with noir’s traditions he has a difficult time resisting temptation. Broderick Crawford as Buckley convincingly gives us both a man who is dangerous and unpredictable but also deeply flawed and trapped by his own self-doubted that is amplified by his alcoholism, but the real star of this film is the luminous Gloria Grahame. Grahame’s realistic portrayal of a woman desperate to escape her circumstances using the means and methods at her disposal without sliding across into evil is a wonder to behold.  Grahame appeared in many great noirs and died too young at 57 but her star continues to shine bright through her performances such as this one. Direct by Fritz Lang is a competent film though a number of plot threads were either never completed or are used simply as audience misdirection. Particular attention in the story is paid to a distinctive watch and yet that element never closes back to a resolution.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Human Desire but I have no desire to add it permanently to my library.

The COVID-19 crisis among other things stopped could the Film Geeks San Diego’s year-long presentation of Italian Genre Films that my sweetie-wife and I were enjoying so much. So, while we wait for the crisis to pass, we have been scrounging streaming services for gems of Italian Genre movie from the 70s and earlier. Last night we watched Caliber 9 1972.

I would classify Caliber 9 as an Italian neo-noir. It stars Gastone Moschin as Ugo Piazza a small time mobbed up crook just released from three years in prison. Unfortunately for Ugo both the police and the local crime boss, Mikado, believe that Ugo took part in the theft of 300 hundred thousand American dollars from the mob and that he has the money stashed away. Even Ugo’s girlfriend Nelly, played by Barbara Bouchet, thinks he stole the cash. When Mikado puts a particularly brute thug Rocco on point for finding out where Ugo has hidden the loot, thing begin to spiral out of control leading to murder and Ugo’s quest for revenge.

While the quality of these 70s era Italian exploitative movie can vary a great deal I thoroughly enjoyed Caliber 9. This film has a gritty, realism to it that helped sell the story to betrayal, greed, and fractured loyalties. It is not surprising that there is a re-make currently in post-production slated for a release this year, but between the trouble with foreign producers finding American distribution and the pandemic who knows if we’ll get a chance to see that in theaters at all. It’s a nice tip of the hat to the original that Barbara Bouchet will be appearing in the remake.

Caliber 9 is currently streaming on Amazon as one of the movies available to Prime Members.

Continuing my expedition into Columbia Noir hosted on the Criterion Channeland early Kim Novak performances Sunday night I streamed the 1955 noir 5 Against the House.

Directed by Phil Karlson from a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant and John Barnwell based on a novel of the same name by Jack Finney who is better known for penning the novel The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 5 Against the House is about a collection of college students that decide to rob a Reno Casino as a prank with intentions to return the money. Naturally the plan goes from prank to plot when one of the students seizes on the idea that this sudden influx of cash will end his troubles.

While the characters attend Midwestern College, they are older than the usual student body because they are Korean War Veterans going to school on the G.I. Bill, particularly Al, played by Guy Madison, whose life was saved in combat by ‘Brick’, played by Brian Keith. Brick suffers from what is now known as PTSD and struggles both academically and socially due to his difficulty integrating back into civilian life and leaving the horrors of the battlefield behind. His instability coupled with a tendency towards violence drive much of the films tension for the second half.

My trouble with this movie is that while there is taunt tension in the second half the first is devoid of any serious conflict and none that concerns all of our major characters. Al wants to marry his girl Kaye, played by Kim Novak, but she’s uncertain about their love and skittish to commit while the others in the friendly clique engage in freshman hazing and comic banter that is well written but serves no function in advancing the plot, making this 83 minute feature feel much longer. The actors rang from adequate to quite engaging with the obvious star power of Novak and Keith driving much of this movie’s appeal.

Continuing my exploration of the Criterion Channel’s hosting of a number of noirs from Columbia studios I watched Pushover from 1954. The movie stars Fred McMurray, a decade after his turn as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, E.G. Marshall, Phil Carey, and introducing Kim Novak. Directed by Richard Quine and with a screenplay by Roy Huggins based upon two different stories. This is not the only time two source materials have been combined into a single screenplay though the best-known example of that process is probably The Towering Infernowhich was adapted from the novels The Glass Inferno and The Tower, this movie is a serviceable noir, better that Drive a Crooked Road but not quite on target.

McMurray plays police detective Paul Sheridan, who along with his partner Rick (Carey) is staking out Lona (Novak) the girlfriend of a man wanted for bank robbery and murder. Paul’s boss stresses that after Lona leads them to their suspect, he is to be taken alive so that he can disclose where hundreds of thousands stolen from the bank has been hidden. Paul become at first infatuated and then emotionally entangled with Lona and eventually hatches a scheme to, using his duty as an excuse, kill her boyfriend, and then take off with her and the stolen loot. Getting to this point in the film takes about half of the 88-minute running time and felt like a tire re-tread of Double Indemnity. Once Paul’s less than brilliant plan goes astray complication upon complication pile on his haphazard improvisations with escape becoming less and less likely.

During the set-up of this movie I was scarcely engaged with this cruder version of Wilder’s far superior film but once Paul’s plan derailed I became more invested. The nature of the plan’s failure was nicely established but without blaring klaxons announcing that establishment and I found it very credible that a person once they crossed the line discovers that were never the nice and good person that they had imagined themselves to have been. Still that didn’t justify the tedious and well-trod first half and aside from Novak most of the cast seemed to be sleepwalking through the establishment. Perhaps what makes Pushover unique as a noir is that Novak’s character is not a femme fatale and generates considerable sympathy because she is not the murderous schemer.

Part of the Columbia Noir series running on the Criterion Channel Drive a Crooked Road stars Mickey Rooney in a dramatic lead along with Kevin McCarthy a couple of years before his encounter with Pod People in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Diane Foster in the role of the obligatory Femme Fatale.

Rooney plays Eddie Shannon a mechanic and a driver in local car races. After coming in second in a race Steven Norris (McCarthy) and his partner in crime Harold (Jack Kelly) single out Eddie as someone without a family or a girlfriend, perfect for their scheme. Playing upon Eddie’s social awkwardness and self-consciousnesses over his prominently scared face Barbara (Foster) seduces the naïve Eddie emotionally manipulating him so that he will be willing to assist the gang in a daring bank robbery that requires his impressive driving and mechanical skills.

With a brief running time of just 83 minutes Drive a Crooked Road doesn’t have the room to fully explore either that characters or the situation but rather races from plot element to plot element ticking off the elements of a story without ever fully engaging the audience. Directed by Richard Quine from a script by Blake Edwards and Quine this movie presents a serviceable premise that fails to deliver. An overreliance on under cranking the camera, lowering the frame rate artificially acceleration the action on screen, along with an intrusive musical score that doesn’t know when to back off and allow the actors to carry a scene Drive a Crooked Road ends up feeling cheap despite boasting an impressive and skilled cast. While the story is a classic noir set-up and pay off, he did it for the money, he did it for the girl and he didn’t get either the money or the girl, this film spins its wheels without ever reaching a destination.