This past weekend I managed to add to my Roku enabled television the streaming service Kanopy. Founded in 2008 Kanopy is an on demand streaming service that functions in conjunction with public libraries and universities. I first heard about Kanopy a few months ago when I attended a screening presented by the San Diego Film Geeks and fellow audience member told me about the service. With a catalog that includes award winning documentaries and foreign film, including a fair number from the Criterion Collection, Kanopy is perfect for the discriminating cinephile. Immediately after that afternoon’s screening of a classic noir, I hurried home only to be disappointed to discover that the San Diego Public Library did not participated in Kanopy.

Fast forward a few months and I found myself at the San Diego State University’s writers Conference, a program that was a function of the University’s college of extended studies. At first that meant very little to me, but when NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour discussed the Oscar nominated documentaries for 2018 they mentioned Kanopy and I decided to see if the San Diego Public Library had joined the program.

They had not.

But San Diego State did, and I realized that because of the Writers Conference I had a SDSU student ID. After a bit of trial and error I managed to activate both my library access at SDSU and my Kanopy account. Once I added the channel to my T.V. everything was in place and I started browsing the catalog.

Man, it is quite an eclectic collection. Everything from cheap horror films to esoteric art house productions and famous entries into the cannon of classic cinema. This past Sunday I watched The Naked Kiss, a 1964 noir  from iconoclastic writer/producer/director Sam Fuller about a prostitute moving to a ‘clean’ American town and the terrible secrets she uncovers about their local philanthropist and hero.

I anticipate quite a few hours watching the film of Kanopy’s library and if you love film it is something you should explore.

Not to be confused with the conclusion to Fox’s canceled Science-Fiction/Western  Firefly 2019’s Serenity’s  trailer would seemingly place it more in the noiror neo-noir  though the trailer itself isn’t very helpful for sussing out exactly what sort of film to expect.

Matthew McConaughey plays Baker Dill an Iraq war veteran turned charter boat owner/captain obsessed with an elusive monster sized tuna he had name ‘Justice’ and eludes his every attempt to land the fish. His life is upended with the arrival of his former lover Karen Zariakas, played by Anne Hathaway. The Iraq war changed Dill and destroyed their relationship and now she is married to an abusive, wanna be child-rapist, crime lord played by Jason Clarke. (It was quite the Jason Clare even at the theater last night in addition to Serenity  (2019), he was featured in two previews before the film.) Karen offers Baker 10 million dollars in cash if he will take her husband out on a day excursion and drop him in the ocean for the sharks. The rest of the island is made up of mostly stock characters, the loyal friend and second mate that often acts as Baker’s conscience, the barkeep that furthers plot and gives baker someone to at least partially open up to about his inner thoughts,. Rounding out the main speaking roles is Diane Lane playing Constance, Baker’s ‘sugar-momma’, keeping him in gas, expenses, and booze money in return for sex.

Much of this, including the central dramatic elements of the plot to murder the husband, is laid out plain in the feature’s trailer, painting a picture of a classic neo-noir  set-up, mysterious past, a femme fatale, and a moral chasm that threatens to destroy the protagonist and yet the film is, once it plays out in its entirety, is not a noir  but rather belongs to a far different genre.

To even tell you which genre it occupies by the conclusion is in itself a massive spoiler. About the half-way through the run time a minor mysterious character finally reaches Baker and reveals for Baker and the audience that this story is far stranger than either may have expected. Serenity (2019)with it unique twist is the sort of film that one expects to be produced on a shoestring and gathers ‘talk’ on the festival circuit before landing a distribution deal and playing in art house across the country. Instead we have a major studio production with bankable stars playing with the form and audience expectations. Directed and written by Steven Knight who gave us the usual feature Locke

a film that presented Tom Hardy driving at night for 90 minutes while juggling professional and emotional crises on telephone calls, Serenity (2019) is his most unusual movie.

Should you see it?

I really can’t say. I do know that it is failing fast the box office, probably because of that genre jump at the mid-point, and for many people that will be a deal breaker, but I enjoyed the film, it audacious swinging for the bleachers, and I am terribly happy to have seen it. If you plan on seeing avoid all comments in reviews, spoilers abound and more than the usual ‘who done it’ kind of early reveals, this movie is particularly damaged by spoilers.

For 2018 the San Diego Film Geeks are holding a yearlong celebration of film noirshowing a different noireach moth at the Digital Gym Cinema and this months movie was Pitfallstarring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Raymond Burr, and Jane Wyatt. Because I had already had a bad reaction to Dick Powell in Murder my Sweet, I skipped seeing this one with the Film Geeks but instead watched it over two nights at home by way of Amazon Prime Streaming.

Dick Powel plays Johnny an insurance man, bored with his wife, Jane Wyatt, his son, and his life that is stuck in a dull predictable routine. When he has to reclaim items purchased with stolen money from the lovely Mona, Lizabeth Scott, he begins an affair. Mac, Raymond Burr, is a private eye who works on contract for the insurance company and who has developed an unhealthy obsession with Mona. The situation spirals out of control with Mac turning murderous and Johnny realizing the good life he has endangered with his short sighted and selfish drives.

Over all this is the sort of noirI like, an ordinary character drawn into extraordinary circumstances, but my reaction to Dick Powell remained and made me glad I had not seen the film at the theater. Also the final ending where the ‘loose woman’ suffers a terrible outcome but Johnny skates free because that’s the ‘moral’ outcome is a down check on this movie.

Johnny is the sort of wise cracking character that is actually very tricky to play. SF author John Scalzi has a saying, ‘The failure mode of clever is ass.’ It far too easy for someone who thinks they are being clever to come off as an ass and this it would seem turns on performance. Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falconcan wise crack as Sam Spade and it’s endearing, Peter Jurasik in Babylon 5can make you see the humanity within Londo Mollari even as he schemes and makes terrible choices, and Kristen Bell in The Good Placemakes Eleanor Shellstrop a relatable character even when in her own words ‘she’s kind of a monster’ but Dick Powell can’t pull off this trick. When the psychopathic Mac is beating the crap out of Johnny (Dick Powell) in front of his own house I found myself cheering Mac. The things is I’ve seen Powell in other roles and he was just fine, but he cannot walk that fine line between clever and ass. Invariably he falls over into ass.

Next month is Gun Crazyone of my favoritenoirs.

Recently I discovered that there are a few Roku channels showing public domain Film Noir movies. Many of the films made by smaller and independent productions fell into the public domain when the companies failed to file for a renewal of the copyright and one such movie was 1949’s D.O.A. The 1988 Remake starring Dennis Quad and Meg Ryan borrowed the central conceit of the film but invented its own plot and mystery.

1949’s D.O.A. centers on Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) an account who is unwilling to commit, that is marry, is long time girlfriend and secretary Paula (Pamela Britton.) Frank scampers off to San Francisco without Paula for a hedonistic vacation. The fun transforms into fear when he discovers that he has been poisoned and has at most a few days to live. Utterly at a loss to understand who would do such a thing or why anyone wants him dead, Frank begins a desperate search for answers as his hours dwindle.

With a strong compelling premise D.O.A. should have been a better movie, and certainly I have better memories of the 1989 remakes than I do for the original production. While boasting a good cast with the talent Edmond O’Brien carrying the weight of the film, the execution of the movie is flawed and undercuts what could have been a true classic. The directions are not up to even journeyman standards. Scenes of composed of shot/reverse shot that center frames the subjects robbing the sequences of emotional heft and power. The soundtrack carries an unfortunate element when Frank arrives in San Francisco looking for female fun and has not yet been poisoned. Each time Frank gives a woman his up and down elevator stare the score lampshades the emotion is an intrusive slide-flute ‘wolf call.’ The unpleasant sound pulled me out of the film every time it played. Worse yet that terrible tone was utterly uncalled for, Edmond O’Brien fully convened his character lecherous leer with conviction that required no assistance from the soundtrack much less such a ham-handed one.

Aside from the intriguing concept D.O.A. also has good cinematography with several night shoots that were not day-for-night but shot at night on the city streets giving those scenes a reality that enhanced the Frank’s danger as he dodged criminals and assassins.

Over all I enjoyed watching D.O.A. but ultimately this represents a good candidate for being remade as the original contained enough flaws to warrant taking another bite at the apple. After all it took Hollywood three tries to The Maltese Falcon right.

While I love film, and I love noirwith its dark cynical tones there are many classics that I have not seen. As a youth I was drawn only to genre films and that has left a gapping hole that I still work to fill-in. Strangers on a Train is a part of the missing education which I was fortunate enough to not only see last night but experience on the big screen at the local art house as part of their week of classics.

Released in 1951 and from the master of suspense (should there be a trademark there?) Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers, is about tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger), trapped in a marriage to a woman who not only cheats on him, but has the gall to get pregnant while doing it as well. A chance encounter on a train with the mentally imbalanced Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) leads to Bruno murdering Guy’s wife as part of Bruno’s harebrained scheme for a perfect murder. Not only does Guy end up with a dead wife and himself as the prime suspect, Bruno expects Guy to murder Bruno’s father as part of the deal that Guy never accepted. With the police watching his every move and Bruno burrowing into his life like a murderous tick, Guy is trapped with little hope for escape and vindication.

Spoilers from here on out.

I can’t judge the plotting of the novel that the screenplay was adapted from but I can say that the script display’s Hitchcock’s preference for suspense over logic. Hitchcock cared more the mood of a piece, for its emotional impact than any moments that failed make sense when considered at one’s leisure. The third act revolves around to elements, Bruno’s plan to plant Guy’s lighter at the scene of the murder to implicate him and Guy’s need to quickly win his tennis match so he will have enough time to get there ahead of Bruno. The use of the lighter is a classic example of Hitch’s ‘macguffin’ an item that drive the plot by compelling the characters’ action but in this case it’s rather weak especially when one takes a moment and realizes a much more power item of evidence was displayed and discard in the film, the glasses the murdered woman was wearing when Bruno killed her.  Glasses that Bruno brought to Guy as a ‘gift.’ Finding those in Guy’s possession is far more damning than the fact his lighter was found near his wife. Yet this very damn bit of evidence, once handed to Guy, is dropped and never visited again during the rest of the film. Second, if Guy, fighting for his life against Bruno’s plot need to get out of the tennis match quickly, rather than trying for a fast win, throwing the game and loosing serves his needs far better. Frankly if I am trying to avoid an unjust murder conviction I’d be willing the lose a match.

With Hitchcock one expects these sort of logical inconsistencies and setting those aside, and the very clear ‘queer coding’ for Bruno, the film Strangers on a Train is fun experience, though not one I need to at to my library of movies.

Technically this was two nights as coming down with a cold I found my late night energy flagging, sending me to bed early on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Fallen Angelis the story of a down on his luck con man, Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) stranded in the California coastal town of Walton without even enough money to buy bus fare out. After helping a pair of fellow conmen running a traveling fake medium show Stanton becomes embroiled with two women, Stella (Linda Darnell) a fiery brunette, tough and no nonsense that nearly every man in town is pursuing, and June (Alice Faye) a sweet, sheltered, blonde who plays keyboard in the church with a large sum of money held by her suspicious guardian sister Clara. Intent on winning Stella with riches, Stanton begins a love affair/con with June. Things do not go as planned and Stanton finds himself on the run from a murder rap.

Spoilers from here on out.

I enjoyed this movie but it is not destined to become of my favorite noirs. My tastes in noir tends towards the darker films with fewer ‘happily ever after’ endings. Sam broken heart in The Maltese Falcon, or Walter Neff’s doomed end in Double Indemnity, these have more punch and more noir than the ones that work out in the end. Sadly, Fallen Angelis one of those with a happy ending. You can nearly hear the production crew flipping back and forth through the production code as the film progresses, shying away from anything that strayed too close to the line and thereby neutering the film.

When Stella turned up murdered I perked up. It was clear that Stanton wasn’t going to be the killer and at first I had pegged the guardian sister Clara. Later as June insisted with conviction that Stanton could not have killed Stella I really hoped that she turned out to be the killer. The sweet quite girl lashing out to keep what was her’s would have been verily cool. You could have still had the arc of Stanton growing as a character and learning to love, but losing it all as they took June off to prison. In the end it turned out to be one of Stella many thwarted admirers leaving Stanton and June to live happily ever after.

Of course, your mileage may vary.