Comic Noir

This is my entry in the Noirathon hosted by Maddy Loves Her Classic Films

As I have stated before I enjoy the concept of film noir    If you are unfamiliar with the term, it was created by French essayist Nino Frank to describe a specific sub-genre of mysteries that became popular post WWII (although the concept had been around for a few years prior.)

I could try to describe film noir, but I think David J. Hogan does a much better job in his book Film Noir FAQ:

"As noir evolved, themes became increasingly familiar.  You do not control the circumstances of your life.  Choices you agonize over are likely to be bad ones.  Choices you make without thinking are likely to be worse.  Whatever you love and value can be taken from you at any moment.  Forces greater than you, and greater even than your leaders, can conspire to destroy you.  These forces are no smarter than you, but they have the power and you don't.  You are not a true participant in the events, only an observer.  If you are particularly foolish, or just unlucky, you will be a victim."

(David J. Hogan; Film Noir FAQ; pg xiv).

There are several tropes that pop up in the average film noir.  One is a regular schmo who gets caught up in some rather unsavory incidents due to his being just an innocent bystander (the "victim").  Another is the femme fatale.  The schmo can be seduced easily by a pretty woman, and in the case of the film noir, the woman is not so innocent as public perception would lead one to believe. (the "values that can be taken")  And, as always, there is a puppeteer behind the scenes manipulating the poor schmo (the "forces greater than you").

By 1949, the film noir movie had been developing into a well-loved genre, and was ripe for parody.  Along comes Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, who had already been hard at work parodying one of the classic Universal monsters of days gone by, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  (The rest of the oeuvre of A & C  vs. monsters would come later.)

In Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer, Boris Karloff,  we finally got the match-up of the comedy duo and the monster king.  (Karloff had declined to participate in the Frankenstein parody because he felt the monster genre deserved more respect, but he apparently had a change of heart by this time.)

 .

Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer, Bros Farloff (1949):

A group of reporters await the arrival of a bigwig attorney, Amos Strickland (Nicholas Joy).  Freddie (Lou Costello), a bumbling bellboy gets off on the wrong foot with Strickland by breaking his glasses, dropping his golf clubs on the man's foot, and in general just being a clumsy fool.  Strickland adamantly demands that the manager, Mr. Melton (Alan Mowbray) fire Freddie.  When this happens Freddie indignantly tells Strickland he will get even with the attorney.

Later, Freddie goes to Strickland's room to try to apologize and hopefully get his job back.  Unfortunately Freddie finds the murdered body of Strickland.  And, of course, Freddie is bound to be Suspect Number One, since he had previously threatened the man.  His friend, hotel detective Casey (Bud Abbott) tries to help by declaring Freddie wouldn't do such a thing, but the police are not so sure and demand that he be held under house arrest.

A host of other guests also are suspects.  Much like the riders in the Murder on the Orient Express, they all have some previous association with Strickland.  These include a Swami (Boris Karloff), and our femme fatale Angela Gordon (Lenore Aubert).  All of these people have some sort of motive for killing Strickland and thus work in conjunction with each other to shift the blame to Freddie and away from themselves.

In particular, Angela tries to seduce Freddie and gets him to sign a confession to the murder.  Ostensibly the idea is presented to Freddie that Freddie will find the murderer and get him to sign the confession, but that is not her true intent.  And the Swami will use his powers of hypnotism to try to convince Freddie to commit suicide, thus eliminating any potential for Freddie to discredit the confession.

Meanwhile, two other murder victims show up.  Unfortunately for Freddie, they show up in his htel room;  in the closet, in the bathtub in his bed....  Casey and Freddie try to move the bodies out of Freddie's room, leading to some of the funnier antics of the film, including Freddie and Casey trying to pretend to be playing cards with the two dead men, and Freddie dressing up as a maid to transport the bodies in a laundry cart.  (And this scene includes an hilarious exchange between Freddie and the night manager (Percy Helton) who tries to put the movies on the "female" Freddie.)

So who actually killed the three men?  Was it our psuedo swami?  Was it one of the three duplicitous women?  Or was it Freddie's friend, Casey?  One thing we know.  As pretty much pointed out in the film, it wasn't Freddie...he's not smart enough to have pulled it off.

As far as film noir goes, this film is a pretty good example of how one can take the tropes of the genre and twist them around.  It's not as good as The Maltese Falcon or  any other of a number of classic serious entries in the genre.  But compare it to some of the really low-budget poverty row entries and it shines.

Well, folks, the time has come to hit the road.  Drive safely.

Quiggy

Never Too Late for Crocodile Tears

This is my entry in the Arthur Kennedy Blogathon hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema

Things I have learned from watching film noir movies:

1.  Never trust a woman.
2.  If you meet a woman stranded on the side of the road, never trust a woman.
3.  If you see a woman across a crowded room, never trust a woman.
4.  If you are selling life insurance, never trust a woman.
5.  Even if you are married to her and think the marriage is a happy one, never trust a woman.
6.  And especially if that woman is Lizabeth Scott, never trust a woman.

Unfortunately for Alan Palmer,  he failed on the last two.  He's married to Jane (Lizabeth Scott) who already has one dead husband, and she's about to have her second.

Too Late For Tears (1949):


Married couple Jane (Lizabeth Scott) and Alan Palmer (Arthur Kennedy) are traveling down to the road on their way to a get together with another couple.  But Jane really, really, really doesn't want to go.   She implores Alan to turn back and go home.  She doesn't like the other couple, especially the wife, whom she feels looks down on her because of her class as a poorer financial status.  Alan finally concedes even though he thinks she is overreacting.

When they turn around a car coming the other way swerves towards them.  Although Alan avoids a collision, his convertible is the recipient of a package that the passing car flung into their convertible.  When they check out the package they discover that it contains bundles of cash.  Not only that but another car gives chase to the Palmers.  They manage to elude the other car, but now have another dilemma.

While Alan wants to turn the money, which is possibly illicit, over to the police, Jane thinks they should hold on to it for a while.  She eventually talks Alan into stashing it in a locker at Union Station for a week while they decide what to do.  But Jane has dollar signs already in her eyes.  Unbeknownst to Alan, she purchases some rather extravagant items behind his back.

When a police detective shows up at her door asking questions, she allows him in the apartment, whereupon the ruse is exposed.  Danny (Dan Duryea) is not really a detective.  He is the driver of the car that gave chase to the pair after the inadvertent transfer.  See, Danny is a blackmailer who had been the intended recipient of the payoff, and now he wants his money.  When he demands the money, Jane lies, telling him they turned it over to the police.

Of course, Danny finds out about the lie and returns to be even more forceful in his demands.  Jane then makes plans to get the claim ticket from Alan, but only if Danny agrees to split the loot with her.  Figuring, apparently that half is better than nothing he agrees.  Unfortunately for Alan, who has decided to turn the money over to the police after all.  Because Jane arranges a situation where she kills Alan and dumps his body in the lake, with Danny around to pose as Alan so no one gets the wiser when she comes back.

Jane's neighbor, who is also Alan's sister, Cathy (Kristine Miller) becomes suspicious and starts to investigate.  She is assisted by a newly arrived former army buddy of Alan's , Don Blake (Don DeFore).  They try to discover what has happened to Alan, whom Jane has claimed has run off.  It doesn't hinder Jane's story when the family car is stolen and found near the Mexico border.

In true film noir fashion, nothing is really what it seems.  There are enough twists in the plot of this one to open a bakery shop.  Just one word of advice, should you choose to wade in; take nothing at face value.  Except for the fact that Lizabeth Scott is the most duplicitous woman this side of Phyllis Dietrichson.


As a side note, I have a new crush.  I think Kristine Miller is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in the film noir movies, and I'm lining up several to seek out in the future, just so I can see her.  (And I won't be entirely disappointed if it turns out she's not all that good an actress...)

Well folks, this old Plymouth is bound for home.  Thank goodness it isn't a convertible, so I won't become the unwitting recipient of a large bundle of cash.  (On second thought, maybe I'll saw off the roof before I leave...)  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

Island Love

This is my entry in the Jean Simmons Blogathon hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema and Phyllis Loves Classic Movies

The Blue Lagoon started out life as a novel by H. deVere Stacpoole.  It has been filmed three times (with a fourth somewhat loosely based version that was made-for-TV).  The most famous one is the 1980 version featuring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins.  But a silent film version from 1923 featuring Molly Adair and Dick Cruickshanks predated it, as did a 1949 version featuring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston.  This post is about the second film.

The Blue Lagoon (1949):

On a ship in the middle of the ocean, a boy's father is laid to rest in the sea.  The boy, Michael (Peter Rudolph Jones), is put into the care of one of the sailors, Paddy Button (Noel Purcell).  Meanwhile, Emmaline (Susan Stranks) is a passenger on the ship.  When the ship catches fire, the plan to abandon ship ensues.  But both Michael and Emmaline, along with Paddy, end up being left behind.

The three end up stranded in the ocean, unaware of where they are, or where the rest of the ship's passengers and crew have gone.  They float endlessly for a few days until they find an island.  On the island they find an abandoned hut, of which all that remains of the previous resident is a cask of rum.

Paddy takes charge of his two new wards and tries to establish a temporary home, always counting on someone coming to look for them.  When a ship appears on the horizon the try to light a signal fie, but an unexpected rain dashes their hopes. Distraught, Paddy returns to the hut and gets smashed on the rum and eventually ends up dying.  Now the two children are all alone.

They survive by their wits and grow into young adults.  What was initially a relationship as brother and sister (although they aren't related, I should note), eventually develops into a love.At one point they consummate their love and Emmaline becomes pregnant.  But they are still stranded on the island and really don't have any idea how to be husband and wife, much less parents.

eventually they are found.  But the rescue is not what they expected.  The "rescuers" are some pirates who force Michael to work for them, diving for pearls.  Fortunately for the pair, the greed gets the better of the pirates, however.

The question of whether they will ever get off the island comes to Emmaline finally convincing Michael they need to build a boat.  She is concerned for the well-being of their baby and what will happen to it after they get even older.  What happens at the end is left for you to discover.

Time to head home folks.  Drive safely.

Quiggy

Gung Ho Soldiers

This is my entry in the Second Van Johnson Blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood

The heroes who won the Big One never got the respect they deserved so much as they did in Battleground, in your bloggers honest opinion.  The cast included Van Johnson, who was himself no stranger to war films.  beginning with A Guy named Joe, Johnson was in about a dozen films that centered on military escapades, including The Caine Mutiny, Go for Broke!, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo and The Last Blitzkrieg.

Joining Johnson in this story about the events in a battle in Bastogne were Ricardo Montalban, James Whitmore, John Hodiak, Richard Jaekel and even James Arness. 

Battleground (1949):


The credited star of the movie is Holley (Van Johnson), but the viewpoint of the movie is mostly told from a new recruit, Layton (Marshall Thompson).  Layton arrives just as the news of the troop's orders come in and he is initially treated as an outsider.


The 101st Airborne is going to Paris on leave.  However, events change those plans as the Germans unexpectedly start having a few successes in the battle..  The company is ordered to the front.

On their first night they hole up in the town of Bastogne.  Several of the soldiers bed down in the home of a local woman, and Holley tries to put the moves on her.  But of course, the brass (and in effect the Breen censorship committee) has other plans.  Holley gets off on his maneuvers with only a few eggs that he manages to commandeer from the chicken house.  (The eggs become a running gag throughout the movie as Holley tries vainly to cook them, only to have his plans interrupted because they have to move out).

Realistic or not, the movie shows not only the bravery of the soldiers, but also the occasional acts of cowardice.  Several soldiers try to desert, even Holley at one point.  One soldier, Slezak (George Murphy),  is hoping for a discharge order to come through because of situations back home, but these are slow to arrive.

At one point, one soldier on guard ends up inadvertently letting some German soldiers pass his guard point.  The word is that some Germans have commandeered American uniforms and speak perfect English, but the word comes a bit too late for the  poor soldier.  The Germans get by him and end up blowing up a strategic bridge a few miles down the road.

This is war, so some of the soldiers do end up dying.  I won't reveal all of them, but one dramatic scene involves a patrol who end up under German fire.  Rodrigues (Ricardo Montalban) is wounded and tells his patrol members to go on without him, since his leg wound would only slow them down.  He crawls under a damaged jeep to hide and await the soldiers to return at a later time to get him, but he dies before they can get back to him.

One of the more dramatic scenes occurs during a Christmas church service.  The chaplain (Leon Ames) delivers the typical Hollywood propaganda speech in the form of a sermon:

"And the $64 question is: "Was this trip necessary?" I'll try to answer that. But my sermons, like everything else in the army... depend on the situation and the terrain. So I assure you this is going to be a quickie. Was this trip necessary? Let's look at the facts. Nobody wanted this war but the Nazis. A great many people tried to deal with them, and a lot of them are dead. Millions have died... for no other reason except that the Nazis wanted them dead. So, in the final showdown, there was nothing left to do except fight. There's a great lesson in this. Those of us who've learned it the hard way aren't going to forget it. We must never again let any force dedicated to a super-race... or a super-idea, or super-anything... become strong enough to impose itself upon a free world. We must be smart enough and tough enough in the beginning... to put out the fire before it starts spreading. My answer to the sixty-four dollar question is yes, this trip was necessary. As the years go by, a lot of people are going to forget. But you won't. And don't ever let anybody tell you you were a sucker to fight in the war against fascism. And now, Jerry permitting, let us pray. "

On that note folks, it's time to move on.  Drive home safely, and say a prayer of thanks to the men and boys who helped and continue to help keep America and the values of liberty and freedom still alive.

Quiggy

Top of the World

James Cagney was the Hollywood everyman, he played both dramatic and comedic roles, he was an excellent dancer, and could even sing.  Although he is most remembered for his gangster and tough guy roles, his highest acclaim came playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy for which he was awarded an Oscar.

I first saw Cagney on Saturday afternoon movies, when the local TV station would run old movies.  It was where I saw the old Universal monsters, and where I watched guys like Humphey Bogart, George Raft and Cagney burn up the screen with tough guy roles like Sam Spade, "Hood" Stacey, and Tom Powers.

Cagney was always great because he had that grin that was at times either enchanting and disarming, or volatile and malevolent.  Which is why he could play both George M. Cohan and Cody Jarrett equally believably.

The Public Enemy (1931)

This movie is a chronological look at the rise and ultimate fall of a gangster from a kid to an adult in the Prohibition era.  Tom Powers and Matt Doyle (played here by younger counterparts) present a fence/hood by the name of Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) with some stolen watches.  You get an idea of how weaselly Putty Nose is early on when he tries to bilk and short change the pair on their ill-gotten gains, but promises to look out for them when something big comes up.

A few years later, the pair are invited to participate in a robbery of a fur storehouse (now being played by Cagney and Edward Woods).   Putty Nose presents them with guns for use in the heist.  But things go wrong, and a policeman shows up.  The policeman is killed, and the two have now graduated to harder criminal activity.  But Putty Nose's promise to help them out turns to dust, when he has taken it on the lam and leaves them high and dry.

Meanwhile Tom has problems on the home front.  He's got a big brother Mike (Donald Cook), who is sure his little brother is involved in the crime world and begs him to turn over a new leaf.  He's got a mother (Beryl Mercer) who is blissfully unaware he is a in the crime syndicate.

 And he's got a girlfriend (Mae Clarke) who is just a bit on the sassy side.  The girlfriend is on the receiving side of one of the most infamous images from the early days of movies, the grapefruit to the face.

 Tom and Matt eventually team up with a bootlegger friend, Paddy Ryan  (Robert Emmett O'Connor) and become enforcers for his mob.  Ryan allies with "Nails" Nathan (Leslie Fenton) who is a bigger boss in the mob.

 He starts bringing in big money, which he tries to give to Mom, but big brother confronts him and rejects his blood money. Familial matters don't improve much after that, although Mom still thinks her son is a saint.

At this point there is what was probably not meant as funny, but a scene which elicited snickers from me, nonetheless.  The boys' boss, "Nails" Nathan is killed.  He was thrown from a horse.  The boys go to the stable and (off screen) execute the horse.

Needless to say all this underworld hijinks  puts Tom in bad straits.  The ultimate ending is just how Hollywood would have been forced to end it, by pressure from the censors.  But this being a so-called pre-Code picture, you still get a feel of a genuinely moral-less man trying to make a name and big money.

An interesting side-note.  Cagney and Woods were originally cast as the opposite roles, with Woods to be Tom Powers and Cagney to be Matt Doyle.  But the producers and director saw Cagney in a previous film called The Millionaire.  Cagney was just a supporting character in it, but he stole the show.  The powers in charge knew they had something and switched the parts.

Cagney became typecast as tough guy/gangster for a while because of this movie.  But it was after a string of non-gangster roles that he gave what was his bravura performance in...

White Heat (1949)

Cagney played Cody Jarrett with maniacal glee.   Jarrett makes Tom Powers look like a pantywaist, in my opinion.  He takes a kind of euphoric ecstasy out of killing and hurting people.  And behind every man is a "good" woman, in this case "Ma" Jarrett.  Cody suffers intermittently from headaches, probably brought on and encouraged by Ma as a way of controlling him.

The movie starts with a train robbery.  Cody and his men get away with a large bundle of cash, after killing several people on the train,  but one of Cody's men gets his face burned by steam from the locomotive.  Later while hiding out, we meet Ma, the driving force behind Jarrett, and a polar opposite of the Mom in The Public Enemy.  This Ma (played by Margaret Wycherly) is as equally evil as her son.  When the gang are escaping, Ma suggests to Cody that they kill Zuckie, the injured man, rather than leave him and send help.

While hiding out in a motel, a policeman figures out that they are there, but is gunned down by Cody.  Because he is a prime suspect in the train robbery, he and Ma hatch a plan where he will confess to a robbery in another state (where no one was killed, so the sentence will be light).  In the meantime, the officer in charge of the investigation of the train robbery is convinced that Cody and his gang were at the heist and doesn't believe a word of the "confession"  But he allows the conviction to go through so he can put a man under cover in the prison to find out the truth.

Hank (Edmond O'Brien) goes under cover as Vic Pardo and is jailed in the same cell as Cody, where he works hard to get on Cody's good side, even managing to save him from being killed by falling metal bin.  An event engineered by Cody's second man in his gang who wants not only Cody's job, but his girl (played by Virginia Mayo).  Ma visits him in prison and tells him about the whole affair and says she'll take care of it.

Hank plans an escape from prison in an effort to get on Cody's good side, but fate throws a monkey wrench in the works when Cody finds out Ma has died, and goes berserk.  He is put in the infirmary and plans are made to move him to a mental institution.  Hank engineers a different escape.  After exacting revenge on his former second man, Cody plans a new heist at a chemical plant. The plan goes awry when the police get wind of it and surround the plant.  But Cody ends up "Top of the world" just like his Ma had promised, and Cody goes out in a blaze of glory.

Cagney was Academy Award material for this role.  I'm sure his being left out had something to do with the prevailing censorship and sentiment of the time.  It wouldn't have done to give an Oscar for a character who had no redeeming social values and was a psychopathic character like Cody Jarrett.  20 years later, maybe, but in 1949 the Production Code still held sway.  The same goes for the conspicuous lake of a nod to Wycherly for Supporting Actress.  In fact, the only nom garnered by the movie was Virginia Kellogg for Best Story (which she lost to Douglas Morrow for The Stratton Story)

That's it for this show, kiddies.  Be sure to buckle up and drive safe.

Quiggy