Black Widow (1954)

'Black Widow' is a 1954 whodunnit mystery that Fox conveniently lumped into their 'fox film noir' DVD series for marketing purposes, but really is only marginally noir at best. Not that it matters, as it's a pretty good movie that is both fun and thrilling. It was produced and directed by Nunnally Johnson, who also wrote the script which was based on a story by Patrick Quentin (which was really one of several pseudonyms used by a group of authors, 2 of which wrote this particular story, namely Hugh Wheeler and Richard Webb). The beautiful (in a non-noir way) cinematography, in colorful and 2.55:1 widescreen Cinemascope, was done by Charles G. Clarke.

At the start of the movie successful Broadway producer Peter Denver (Van Heflin) is putting his wife Iris (the ever-so-beautiful Gene Tierney) on a plane, so she can take care of her sick mother. He then goes to a party thrown by Carlotta 'Lottie' Marin (Ginger Rogers), who is the star of his latest production. She happens to live in the apartment right above the Denver's with her husband Brian Mullen (Reginald Gardiner). At this party he meets Nancy Ordway (former child actress Peggy Ann Garner, who looks nothing like that hit, seductive girl in the poster), an aspiring writer. She throws him a classic line 'My mother always told me that if a girl could be at a party for thirty minutes without getting a man to talk to her, she might just as well go on home and shoot herself. I've already been here twenty-five.' and ofcourse he's more than happy to save her life. But no, he's not into her that way. After all, he's married to Gene Tierney, if you know what I mean. He does take her out to dinner, which he later jokingly talks about to his wife over the phone, because she ate a ton (there's a running gag throughout the movie where Nancy claims she's 'hungry enough to eat a bear'). The movie then does a flashback and recounts how Nancy arrived in NYC from her hometown of Savannah, GA and visits her uncle Gordon Ling (Otto Kruger), who is a stage actor in one of the Peter's plays. She then befriends siblings Claire and John Amberley (Virginia Leith and Skip Homeier) while working as a waitress, and eventually moves in with them, and it is with Claire that she ends up at Lottie's party. Some time after the party, she gets Peter to allow her to work on her writing from the Denver apartment, because the view is inspiring her. This ofcourse raises more than a few eyebrows, but Peter ignores it, and Iris is more understanding than any woman I know. When Iris returns to NYC she finds Nancy hanging dead from the ceiling in the bedroom, and there's a note with a drawing of a hanged person with a quote from 'Salome' about love and death above it. It is assumed this is her suicide note. Detective lieutenant Bruce (George Raft) is investigating the suicide, which eventually turns out be murder. And not only that, but the persons who knew about Nancy working at the Denver apartment are all under the impression that Nancy and Peter's relationship was not quite as platonic as Peter makes it seem. Nancy wasn't quite as innocent and sweet as Peter thought she was, as she's been telling Claire she was having an affair with Peter, which also ruined her relationship, and possible engagement, with John. And to make matters even worse, the autopsy revealed she was also pregnant! Peter quickly becomes the #1 suspect and he has to conduct his own investigation to clear his name.

Peter Denver's character has two sides in this movie. Before Nancy's death, he's a very friendly, almost naive good guy who's liked by pretty much everybody, and who holds no grudges. After her death, he becomes almost a polar opposite of himself and has no qualms about squeezing a girl's arm hard and shaking her wildly to get an answer out of her. He's desperate and determined. That is one aspect of this movie that does have a noir element to it, Peter is forced far out of his comfort zone in order to be able to clear his name, but it is also never truly clear if he's on the level about his relationship with Nancy. Van Heflin is a great actor and he gives a good performance here.

Ginger Rogers is the real star of the movie however. Her Lottie is a true bitchy diva, who has to put everybody down in order to feel good about herself, she enjoys gossiping, thinks very highly of herself and has to be the centerpiece always. Rogers almost radiates in every scene she's in, you can definitely tell she enjoyed this role greatly. Lottie does show at some point that she has a heart and has her own insecurities and that it is really Brian who controls her rather than the other way around (tho not in a mean-spirited way, more in a loving way). Reginald Gardiner plays the loving husband who introduces himself not by his own name but as Carlotta Marin's husband pretty well, with a thin smile that can be thought of as meaning both amusement and resignation.

The weakest character/actor in the movie is George Raft because well... he's George Raft and the only character he can play is George Raft as he rattles off his lines without emotion. Also Gene Tierney was going through a bad depression at the time and was taking heavy medication so her part is understandably kept to a bare minimum, and she comes across as slightly lethargic at times. Which is unfortunate, she was a great and dropdead gorgeous actress, but her truly tragic life also held her back a lot. In fact, this was one of the last movies she did before she took a break from acting due to her personal issues. Also, I couldn't help but notice that Otto Kruger looked so much older in this color movie compared to his 40s black & white movies, even though timewise it was only 10 years earlier that he played in 'Murder, My Sweet' for instance. His portrayal of the dandy-esque Gordon Ling is good tho, unfortunately his part is quite small.

The movie has only a few scenes that were shot on location, the majority of the scenes take place on studio sets and more specifically in the apartments of Peter and Iris Denver and Lottie Marin and Brian Mullen (which was really the same set but with different props, especially the Marin/Mullen apartment is beautifully decorated). The living room is quite spacious and is the perfect location for the 2.55:1 aspect ratio. I understand that this movie is occasionally shown on TV in a cropped pan & scan version, it must look awkward that way with actors positioned on the edges of the widescreen regularly. Even though it is fairly obvious that the daytime & nighttime backdrops of the apartments of the NYC skyline were painted, they look really good and real enough to not be distracting. Visually the movie is far from noir, but the extreme widescreen look and the usage of the large apartments, the backdrops, the way the actors are generally occupying as much of the available space as possible, and the fairly subdued colors give the movie a very pleasing and classic, almost stage-y, aesthetic.

While the movie is not exactly a film noir and it is even debatable whether it is borderline noir, it's a fun and beautiful-looking movie with a bit of a surprise ending, and personally I rate it much higher than the 6.6 it currently has on IMDb.

Blonde Ice (1948)

A lot of reviews of this movie will mention its tagline at some point, and it's a pretty good one indeed, so let's get it out of the way, shall we?

ICE in her veins - ICICLES on her heart

Now, if that isn't a film noir tagline, I don't know what is. It is immediately clear this movie has a true 'femme fatale', a fatal woman, and a blonde one as the movie title suggests. The movie is based on a novel by Whitman Chambers and supposedly, but unconfirmed, the screenplay was written by Edgar G. Ulmer ('Strange Illusion', 'Detour') and not Kenneth Gamet as the credits suggest. It stars Leslie Brooks as one of the deadliest femme fatales to grace the 40s film noirs. It would also be one of her final roles before she retired at the age of 26. Leslie Brooks plays Claire Cummings here, a columnist for a newspaper who wants it all, power, money and social standing, and she'll stop at nothing to get what she wants. Even though she's short on writing talent, she's positively bursting with ambition and has managed to work her way up to the position of columnist. But her ambition is not in the area of journalism, but in the area of becoming a wealthy and powerful socialite. And she'll take no shortcuts in getting there, come what may.

The movie starts in a mansion on the outskirts of San Fransisco where Claire's about to get married to Carl Hanneman (John Holland). Two of her co-workers, Les Burns (Robert Paige) and Al Herrick (a slimey James Griffith who looks like a weasel) are also there and it becomes painfully clear they're both former lovers of Claire who got nothing to show for it but having identical cigarette cases with almost identical engravings, save for the first names, that she gave them. There's a nice shot where Claire descends from the stairs and gives them both a smile. She then extends her arm right after the camera shows Les' face, making it seem she's offering Les to walk her down the aisle. But alas, her newspaper chief Hack Doyle (Walter Sande), takes her arm and off they go. Claire gets married to Carl and so far things are looking quite normal. But to show the true nature of Claire, a few minutes after the wedding, right before the newly weds are off on their honeymoon, Claire meets up with Les on the balcony right next to the room where she got married, and after some chit-chat they make out. The groom notices but she manages to make it seem innocent enough. Les know she's not in love with him or with the groom, and is only after material gain, but he is in love with her despite everything, so he puts up with her antics. And as the movie progresses, he puts up with a lot.

On their honeymoon, Carl accidentally sees a letter she's writing to Les, despite Claire even preparing a less steamy letter for Les' secretary. The letter starts with 'My darling Les' and how she can't wait to see him again. Carl realizes she was never in love with him and is only interested in his money and returns to San Fransisco, to file for divorce. But Claire has something else in mind, and buys off a local airplane pilot to fly her to San Fransisco and back again, all within the night. She also has a physician prescribe her some sleeping pills at a local pharmacy to give her an alibi as well as make sure a hotel employee notices her in the morning, to make it seem like she was in her hotel room the entire night. Carl ofcourse never wakes up that morning, or any morning thereafter for that matter. Her devilish character doesn't stop there, as she cleverly manages to implicate Les in Carl's death, because she knows Les will do anything for her. Les is a tough and masculine sports columnist but with Claire he's also a meek little lamb and against better judgement he cannot let Claire out of his heart, even tho he is fully aware Claire will let nothing stand in her way.

The chief of police who is investigating Hanneman's death knows he's dealing with murder and not suicide, which his death was made out to look like, but he can't make a case against either Les or Claire so eventually the case ends up in a desk drawer. Claire then sets her eyes on a local up & coming attorney who's running for senator, Stanley Mason (Michael Whalen), and he falls for her, hard. But things get complicated when the airplane pilot she hired the night of Carl's murder comes back to blackmail her. She eventually manages to get rid of him tho, in the most permanent of ways. After Mason wins the poll to run for senator he announces his upcoming marriage to Claire, but that same evening she goes over to Les' apartment who's distraught over her. She explains she does love him, but that he could never give her what she wants. The senator comes over and catches them as they're about to kiss, and tells her the marriage is off. Les takes off to drown his sorrows in booze and when he returns, Claire's already stabbed the senator to death and he just picked up the penknife she did it with. Claire might love Les, but Claire looks out for only one person, herself. The movie then rushes to its end. The ending of the movie is a complete disaster, one moment yer pretty much glued to the screen and a minute later yer wondering what the hell just happened. I won't spoil it for you, but it definitely came out of nowhere and makes no sense whatsoever. It appears that whoever wrote the ending had a slightly skewed idea about psychoanalysis (and possibly was a bit too concerned about the Hays production code). In any case, it's not the ending I was hoping for, and definitely not the ending this movie deserved.

The movie was directed by Jack Bernhard ('Decoy') and cinematography was done by George Robinson, who mostly worked on horror movies before that, such as 'House Of Frankenstein'. Robinson did a lot of work for Universal, which might explain the very nice look of the movie and the use of tracking shots. It was made for Film Classics however, a short-lived poverty row studio and while the actors weren't exactly A-list actors either, and their acting is not amazing, they do an adequate job. Leslie Brooks won't be mistaken for a Shakespeare actor, but she's pretty and certainly was able to smile and glance in a manner that made her role memorable and convincing. She would marry actor Russ Vincent not too long after making this movie and unlike so many marriages of actors and actresses at the time, they stayed married for the rest of their lives. As an interesting sidenote, Russ Vincent plays Blackie, the blackmailing pilot, in this movie. Robert Paige gave his character enough character to not come off as a complete loser while also not being too soft to be the macho sports buff he was if it hadn't been for Claire. James Griffith is great as Al who cannot say a sentence that isn't implying something or isn't some sort of snide remark.

What I like about this movie is that the typical gender roles have been reversed, at least for the two main roles (which is not exactly uncommon for films noir). Claire is in power, all the time, and she can work everybody in a way that's to her advantage. And if someone isn't willing to do what she wants, well, they'll be sure to regret it. Les on the other hand is like putty in her hands, despite being a man's man when he's not around her. Even when he knows exactly how deadly she is, and how far she'll go for what she wants, he cannot give her up to the police. The female is masculine here and the male feminine. But don't get me wrong, there are plenty of steeotypes left. All the men, at least when they first get to know Claire, like her or even fall for her, while all the women, even those who don't know Claire, instantly see her for what she truly is. Men love women they cannot possess and women hate women who outmatch them in looks and sexuality/sensuality. Then there's also Les' homely secretary who ofcourse has a secret crush on him, and ofcourse Les is too blinded by Claire to notice. There's the psychoanalyst with the slightly foreign accent, to add more gravitas to his words. In fact, pretty much all characters besides Claire and Les are fairly one-dimensional and you can get a pretty good idea of their general actions based on their first appearance in the movie.

There's more to like about this movie tho. It's simply a lot of fun to watch Claire get away with everything and to watch how she plays with Les. You do often wonder why Les puts up with it all and how dumb he must be, but it's fun to watch anyway. Which is all the more reason why the ending is so bad, it really brings down the overall effect of the movie. Not that this movie would have been a classic film noir if the ending had been any different, most of the characters are too obvious for that, but it could have been a more memorable movie anyway. It's not recommended viewing, but don't pass up on it either if you get the chance to watch it.

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

The locked room mystery is a staple when it comes to detective/mystery movies. It involves a confined space in which an event takes place (usually a crime of some sort) which seems impossible within the constraints of the confined space and/or where vital ingredients of the event (usually the body, the perpetrator or the weapon, or a combination thereof) have seemingly disappeared from the confined space. A well-known and early movie to depict this type of mystery is the classic Hitchcock movie 'The Lady Vanishes' from 1938, which is placed on a moving train. In the case of 'Dangerous Crossing' a person disappears on a cruiseship, and is nowhere to be found, and apart from one person nobody seems to know about the missing person. The story was based on a radio play, 'Cabin B-13', which was written by John Dickson Carr, who was very adept at this type of mystery and he wrote several radio plays in this genre. The radio play was written for the popular Suspense radio play series, which also hosted the radio play after which the movie 'Sorry, Wrong Number'  was made. Leo Townsend adapted 'Cabin B-13' into a screenplay, Joseph M. Newman directed the movie and Joseph LaShelle did the cinematography.

At the start of the movie, newlyweds Ruth Bowman Stanton (Jeanne Crain) and John Bowman (Carl Betz) board a cruiseship for a honeymoon. Due to the large amount of people trying to board the ship, they don't board it at quite the same time with several people entering the cruiseship after Ruth and before Bowman. After they find their cabin, B-16, Bowman goes off to give some money to the purser to store in a safe, and tells Ruth to go to the main deck and watch the cruiseship leave the harbor and meet him at the bar in 15 minutes afterwards. But he never shows up at the bar. When Ruth returns to their cabin to see if John is there, she finds the room locked. After she has an attendant open the room for her, she finds the room empty, without their luggage. It turns out it was never booked for this trip, and Ruth is booked into room B-18 instead, under her maiden name, and by herself. And her luggage, but not John's, is already in B-18. Ruth is flabbergasted and slightly worried, trying to convince everybody she did not come by herself, that they were really in B-16 before, and asking people where her husband is. She becomes increasingly hysterical and frantic and eventually the ship's doctor, Dr. Paul Manning (Michael Rennie), is called in. Despite nobody knowing anything about her husband, or seeing her board the ship with him, he is helpful and while he doesn't fully believe Ruth, he tries to check her story as much as he can. The captain entrusts her with him, provided he keeps a close eye on her, because he doesn't want her throwing a scene and making the trip unpleasant for the other passengers. He doesn't believe her story, also because she has no wedding ring nor can remember vital details of the wedding (due to it happening so fast and in a random wedding chapel church by the side of a road in Maryland, in fact they'd only met a month before), but Manning doesn't let her out of his sights. Ruth finds herself in an even bigger mystery when John calls her in her room that evening and says he cannot make himself known to the crew but wants to see her. As Ruth struggles to find out why John has to keep in hiding Manning stays on her tail, and eventually the twist is revealed what is going on with John and how involved Ruth is in John's plans. In the meantime, it's hard for Ruth, and the viewer, to know who she can and cannot trust, and she is slowly driven into madness.

At various points during the movie, characters are introduced which are potentially involved in one way or another with the mystery of the disappearing husband. Several scenes can be interpreted multiple ways, suggesting that there's some sort of conspiracy going on, involving a German-speaking old man with a cane. In some of these instances, perfectly reasonable explanations are given later, but ofcourse, can these explanations be trusted? Ruth does not know who to trust or not, especially after John's call in which he warns her to not trust anybody, and she becomes increasingly worried and alarmed. She isn't even sure about Dr. Manning, whether he's an ally or not. But he also seems to be the only person who's trying to help her.

Jeanne Crain, who plays Ruth Bowman Stanton, is a beautiful actress who gives her character a pretty soft edge. Ruth seems slightly hapless and naive and a bit too hysterical at times, but it's also understandable that she's doubting everything and everybody, especially after John tells her so during his first call. At various points in the movie, there's a voice-over where she's talking to herself inside her head, mostly to tell herself to not trust anybody and play along with the people around her so she does not raise any suspicion. This device to keep the viewer informed of her state of mind and reasonings for certain actions seems a little redundant and unnecessary as it is usually pretty clear why she does something. On the other hand, it is a good way to keep the viewer involved with her, also because the majority of the scenes have Ruth in 'em. In that respect, credit has to be given to Crain for keeping the viewer interested in her and the story.

Dr. Paul Manning is played by Michael Rennie. He's most famous for playing Klaatu in the sci-fi classic 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'. He does a nice job here, albeit a somewhat bland one. He does have a somewhat striking face (I didn't know him beforehand and the first comparison that came to mind was a cross between Jack Palance and Leonard Nimoy). He plays his character with a very distinguished and calm demeanor, becoming of a seasoned doctor who's seen it all. Dr. Manning seems to see Ruth as more than a patient after a while, even telling her at some point that maybe he wishes there was no Mr. Bowman. But the way he acts, you'd never know it, he's just too reserved, not even his eyes really show his affection for Ruth.

There's also Kay Prentiss (Marjorie Hoshelle), a wealthy single woman who's been married several times and has a good line during her first encounter with Ruth: 'Husbands can get lost so easily, I know'. They meet as Ruth is standing on the deck, waving at the people on the harbor when the ship is sailing off. They bump into each other several times afterwards, including one encounter which gives Ruth reason to believe Kay knows more than she's telling. It is kind of weird how Kay continues to be friendly towards Ruth and treats her as a friend when during most encounters Ruth brushes off Kay or even openly ignores her.

Oddly enough one of the best part of the movie to me is the monotonous & droning foghorn sounding every few seconds during the night scenes, which creates a very ominous & tension-filled atmosphere, it has an almost foreboding quality. It's a simple but effective and dramatic effect. Add to that the thick, soup-like fog making ghostlike shadows out of anybody who dares enter it (before they disappear completely into the dense soup), and you've got some great and atmospheric noir scenes. During some of the more thrilling scenes the music takes over from the foghorn but continues with the monotonous droning theme, again with very effective results.

Another interesting visual, besides the fog, is the moment Ruth gets handed a telegram that was sent to the doctor, from the head of her dad's company. It explains her dad died 4 months ago and Ruth has been seeing a doctor since. The last sentence says that neither the housekeeper nor the doctor know anything about John Bowman and are certain Ruth is not married. What's so interesting about the shot is that the light shines on the telegram she's holding in such a way that this last line is in the light while the rest of the telegram is in the shadows. It gives this line, which confirms the belief of everybody else on the ship that Ruth's lost it, an even more damning quality.

'Dangerous Crossing' was shot on a pretty tight budget in 19 days and re-used some of the sets used for 'Titanic', which had already been re-used for 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'. That's how you churn out movies, conveyor-belt style. Thankfully, and because of re-using sets from A-movies, this movie doesn't feel like cheap at all. It's not too long at 76 minutes, but it doesn't look or feel cheap, and it does what it's supposed to do, and it does so pretty well. It was also one of the last cheap B-movies that Fox made, with the rise of television the need for 2nd features on a double-bill diminished.

The cinematography was done by Joseph LaShelle, a very good cameraman who had won an Oscar for his work on 'Laura' in 1944 and who also did the cinematography on some other film noirs by Fox, namely 'Fallen Angel' in 1945, 'Road House' in 1948 and 'Where The Sidewalk Ends' in 1950. As mentioned before, his use of fog in the outside night scenes is very noir, even if the movie as a whole isn't. I don't know whose choice it was, but in several scenes the camera moves up and down, slowly and almost unnoticable. It's a neat little trick to make the viewer feel as tho he/she is also on the ship, as it moves across the waves.

This movie is not exactly film noir, it's more of a straight-forward mystery movie and only has some of the visual characteristics of a film noir. But it is entertaining nonetheless and despite some characterizations which seem quite outdated now, the movie is well-made and clever.
 

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Radio plays were quite popular in the first half of the 20th century, and movies were regularly adapted into radio plays (often with the same actors even), and vice versa. 'Sorry, Wrong Number' was a popular radio play, written by Lucille Fletcher, which starred Agnes Moorehead in what was pretty much a one-woman show. Moorehead performed the radio play several times between 1943 and 1960. It was such an over-night success that Lucille Fletcher turned it into a book as well as a screenplay for a movie. In 1948, the movie was released but not with Moorehead in the lead role even though she was a movie actress in her own right, having already played in movies such as 'Citizen Kane', 'Jane Eyre' and 'Dark Passage'. Paramount Studios felt that Moorehead didn't have enough star power to carry the movie tho, so Barbara Stanwyck took the role and she did so well she was nominated for an Oscar. Fletcher's screenplay added a big additional plot to the movie, which the radio-play didn't have.

Stanwyck plays Leona Stevenson, a spoiled woman who is bedridden due to a weak heart and she has a lot of problems walking or even moving her legs (which, as we learn along the way, is all inside her head). She is the daughter of James Cotterell (Ed Begley) who owns a pharmaceuticals company, and she is married to Henry Stevenson (Burt Lancaster). Henry and Cotterell don't get along, Cotterell thinks Henry is below Leona's standards and Henry is unhappy with the (pretty cushy) job Cotterell gave him in the company. The fact that they're still living at her father's house doesn't help either. The movie takes place in a single evening, but in true film noir fashion, has plenty of flashbacks, even flashbacks within flashbacks. This particular evening Leona is in her bed waiting for Henry to get back home, the maid had already left for the day, so she is all alone inside the big house because her father's at a party. The telephone rings and naturally Leona answers. However, it seems some lines are crossed as she ends up listening in on another phone conversation between 2 unidentified men. The conversation details the murder of a woman that will happen at 11.15pm that same evening. Before Leona can hear who is the target, the line gets cut off. She tries to frantically get the details of the callers from the operator but is unsuccessful. Calling the police also doesn't do her much good, because she has very little details. Slowly but surely, by calling her husband and various other persons close to her, she becomes more and more convinced that the 2 men she overheard were talking about murdering her. Slowly but surely the hour of 11.15pm approaches...

That is the basic plot of the radio-play. What was added by Fletcher was a story-line that explains how Leona met Henry and Henry's involvement with the telephone conversation Leona accidentally intercepted. Leona finds out from Henry's (nosey!) secretary that Henry had seen his old sweetheart Sally Hunt (Ann Richards) earlier that day, she was his sweetheart right before Leona got her hands on Henry. As it so happens, Sally's current husband Fred Lord (Leif Erickson) is a lawyer working for the district attorney's office on special assignments. He is investigating Henry's involvement in a case he's working on, which Leona overhears parts of as she's calling Sally. Sally later calls Leona back and explains as much as she knows about the investigation, including following her husband and his associates to a remote corner of Staten Island. By following up on new leads given to Leona by the people she talks to, Leona slowly finds out about the case Lord is working on. As it turns out Henry has started a little business on the side, selling stolen pharmaceutical ingredients from her father's company, with the help of Waldo Evans (Harold Vermilyea) who works in one of the company's labs. When Henry decides to cut out the middle-man, Morano (William Conrad), things start to go awry for him and Evans, which leads to the connection between the intercepted call and Henry, and to Leona. At 11.10pm Henry and Leona finally get to talk on the phone and everything comes together in the movie's final few minutes, which are incredibly tense and exhilarating as the clock approaches 11.15pm. Even as I watched the movie for a second time, I was on the edge on my seat. The bombastic & dramatic musical score was also very effective in bringing across the intensity of the scene. A great ending to a pretty good movie.

Barbara Stanwyck does a really good job at portraying Leona. Leona's been spoiled rotten by her father, aided by her health. She has a tendency to fall ill whenever she gets too distressed, so her father pampers her. Because Leona's spoiled and used to getting what she wants, Stanwyck gives her a manic, overly dramatic edge which works great in those scenes when Leona is losing all control and starts to panic. Stanwyck's not an actress I would really watch a movie for, but she is a very good actress nonetheless, and I enjoyed her greatly in this movie. I can see why some people think it's too over-the-top however. This movie is all about Leona/Stanwyck, make no mistake about it, and Stanwyck carries the movie. In 1950, Barbara Stanwyck starred in a radio-play adaptation of the movie adaptation of the original radio-play.

Burt Lancaster's role is much smaller than you'd expect, seeing as he's billed second on the poster.  Lancaster is fairly decent as Henry Stevenson, but also unremarkable. Stevenson's almost a wallflower, but even after he starts up the illegal side-business, he seems sullen. To be fair, most of the other roles are fairly one-dimensional, which might be a consequence of Fletcher having to create all these characters as well a (pretty decent) side-plot for the movie. So Lancaster might have felt too good for the part? Either way, besides Stanwyck, only Harold Vermilyea as Waldo Evans really stands out. I quite enjoyed his characterization of an employee who's worked diligently for many years, trying to save up some money only to lose it in a bad investment, and being given a chance to make up for all of that and make quite some money before his retirement.

The movie was directed by Anatole Litvak with cinematography by Sol Polito and the musical score was done by the great Franz Waxman. They manage to give the movie the right claustrophobic edge that is necessary, both visually as well as aurally/musically. There is a really nice long shot where the camera moves away from Leona's terrified face as she's making a call for a nurse, it then exits her room through a window, and pans down to the first floor where the shadow of a man is moving towards the house. It really exemplifies her solitary confinement and how the walls of her room are closing in on her, as well as creates a lot of tension. Masterful shot. But most of the shots inside Leona's room are effective at showing her claustrophobic surroundings, despite the size of the room, which is also emphasized by the large empty, echo-ey staircase when somebody rings the doorbell and Leona cannot come down to answer it.

One of the recurring themes in film noir is that a lot of the main characters, even if they're 'good' people, aren't 100% good or even likeable. Just like in real life, people are flawed, nobody's perfect. This can certainly be said for 'Sorry, Wrong Number'. None of its characters, apart from Waldo Evans and Sally Hunt maybe, are very likeable. Leona is a spoiled brat who's used to getting what she wants, Henry Stevenson is spineless and spiteful and Leona's father is overbearing and likes to boss people around. For me, it works, I don't need to identify fully with a character or even feel sympathy, or empathy, for a main character to enjoy a movie. In the case of 'Sorry, Wrong Number', it's the story and the way it develops and is shown that keeps me intrigued. It's not a classic film noir, but it is certainly a very enjoyable one, which I intend to re-watch every now and again.

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

'Murder, My Sweet' is a 1944 adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel 'Farewell, My Lovely' from 1940, and is the first movie with iconic private detective Philip Marlowe as the main character. It wasn't the first time the novel had been made into a movie however. The first version was called 'The Falcon Takes Over', but it took elements from the novel and the Marlowe character was replaced with a different one, the at the time popular 'Falcon' character. This movie however stuck closer to the novel, and as mentioned was the first time Philip Marlowe appeared on the white screen. Edward Dmytryk ('Cornered', 'Obsession', 'Crossfire', and who directed another 'Falcon' movie a few years prior actually) directed this movie and Harry Wild ('Pitfall', 'Cornered') did the cinematography. In 1975 the novel would be made into a movie once again, called 'Farewell, My Lovely', starring film noir icon Robert Mitchum.

This version however stars Dick Powell, who was primarily known for light-hearted song and dance type movies at the time, and wanted a change of character (apparently he signed to RKO with that wish as a stipulation). He sure managed it with this movie! He would star in a number of film noirs afterwards ('Cornered', 'Pitfall', 'Johnny O'Clock') as well as other less light-hearted movies. He was also the reason the movie was renamed from 'Farewell, My Lovely' to 'Murder, My Sweet', as the original title in combination with Dick Powell's name and reputation might lead casual viewers into believing they were going to see a typical Powell movie.

On to the story... In typical Raymond Chandler fashion, the plot of this movie is complex, convoluted and might leave the viewer with some questions about events that are never answered. Chandler didn't worry too much about tieing up loose ends, creating atmosphere and interesting characters was his main goal. The movie starts with Marlowe (Dick Powell) being interrogated by cops while being blindfolded. It isn't clear right until the very end of the movie why he's blindfolded. The rest of the movie is a long flashback sequence as Marlowe tells the entire story, in narration ofcourse, of how he got involved in 2 cases which were linked in more ways than one. The first case happened when a big guy called Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) hires Marlowe to find his old sweetheart, Velma Valento, whom he hasn't seen since he went to jail 8 years before. Marlowe doesn't have much to go on, as Malloy cannot even supply him with a pic of Velma. But Marlowe obtains a pic of Velma when he visits the wife of the former owner of a nightclub Velma was working at last time Malloy saw her. So that would be good start... But the next day, a well-off man named Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton) hires Marlowe to do a quick and easy job for him. He wants Marlowe to accompany him to a drop-off where Marriott is supposed to pay off some robbers to buy back a jade necklace that was stolen from a friend of his. Marlowe doesn't trust it, but figures that as long as he gets paid, it's an easy way to earn some money, and he can get right back to looking for Velma the next day. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite go that way, as Marlowe gets knocked over on the head at the drop-off. 'A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived right in. It had no bottom.' When he wakes up, a young woman asks him if he's all right, and then runs off. And to top it off, Marriott is dead. Marlowe explains everything to the cops, at least what he knows, who let him off, for now. The next day, Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley) is sitting in his office, who turns out to be the woman at the drop-off, but Marlowe doesn't realize this until much later. It was her father's jade necklace that Marriott wanted to buy back. Marlowe and Grayle go to her father's mansion, where Marlowe meets the father (Miles Mander) and his much younger wife Helen (Claire Trevor), who implicates a doctor, or a quack as Mr. Grayle calls him, called Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger). Marlowe is then hired by Mr. Grayle to find the jade necklace, and he gets dragged deeper into its murky waters, and the search for Velma seems unimportant. But eventually it becomes clear that the two cases are linked together tighter than hairs in a hairball.

The movie moves at a fairly rapid pace courtesy of the convoluted plot and tight screenplay, and especially in the second half of this 90+ min movie the amount of twists and doublecrosses that occur are enough to fill 3 feature-length movies. It can become quite dizzying, I have to say. Let's just say that in good film noir fashion, almost everybody gets doublecrossed and/or doublecrosses somebody else several times in this movie. Gotta love it.

Dick Powell does a pretty good job at playing Marlowe, although his Marlowe isn't as hardboiled as one would imagine. Maybe it's Powell's past as an actor, but at times his hardboiled one-liners seem more comical and out of place, solely because it's Powell reciting them. Overall tho, great job, and judging by the movies he did afterwards, people seemed to be into Powell's change of character, so good on him. There is a drug-induced, nightmare-ish dream sequence where Powell does over-act a bit, as well as in the following scene where he confronts the doctor who kept him drugged. The dream sequence is pretty decent however and has a few interesting effects. But the change between Marlowe the cool detective and Marlowe the delirious, emotional patient is a bit too much really.

Anne Shirley and Claire Trevor as the two leading women do great jobs. It is pretty clear that Shirley/Ann Grayle, is more on the up-and-up than Trevor/Helen Grayle who is the femme fatale here, but there are a few curveballs here and there as to who Helen really is and what her intentions are. Solid performances, and the same can be said for Mike Mazurki as the not so clever, but humungous, Moose Malloy who gets used by Amthor to do his dirty work for him.

In terms of directing and cinematography, the movie's done in a clean and effective manner. It's definitely noir in look, feel and lighting. But it doesn't stand out in this respect. The scenes at the beach house are definitely the ones which stand out the most here for their lighting and cinematography as there's a good use of light and especially darkness to create a tense atmosphere. But it also felt at times that Dmytryk, or maybe it was RKO, wanted to show glimpses of Powell's light-hearted past to keep his old fans entertained, for instance when he jumps around on the floor of the entry hall (or mausoleum as he calls it) of Grayle's mansion.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, it's got pretty much everything you'd expect to find in a film noir. Powell did a great job at shaking off his stereotypical type of role and entering a new phase in his career. Make no mistake tho, he's no Humphrey Bogart or Alan Ladd in terms of being a tough hardboiled character actor, at least not yet. But I'm definitely going to check out the film noirs he did later on to see how he evolved.

Here's the trailer for it. Notice how it mentions the 'amazing new type of role' for Dick Powell.

The Amazing Mr.X (1948)

This is a very nice little oddity. 'The Amazing Mr.X' from 1948, also known as 'The Spiritualist', is not exactly a prime example of film noir, but it's got enough noir elements to warrant review on this blog. What it is however is simply a fun movie with outstanding noir lighting and cinematography with an interesting combination of horror, mystery and film noir with a psychic/supernatural edge that is quite unique but in my opinion works remarkably well.

The Mr.X/spiritualist from the titles refer to Alexis, a con-artist who calls himself a 'psychic consultant'. He uses some pretty neat trickery as well as research into his victims, psychology, his natural charm & way with words and a keen ability to read people to lure in unsuspecting victims, predominantly wealthy widows, and make a nice profit out of their gullibility and grief. His latest 'prey' is Christine Faber. She lives in a huge mansion on top of a cliff overlooking the sea, together with her much younger sister Janet. Her husband Paul died 2 years earlier in a car crash and she's about to be engaged to Martin Abbott, even though she still misses Paul and is haunted by memories of him and hears his voice calling out to her from out on the beach. As it turns out, the voices are more real than Christine, or Alexis, thinks. Alexis might be after Christine's money, but a far more dangerous shadow is planning to take a lot more from Christine, as Paul turns out to not be as dead as initially thought.

While not exactly a classic example of film noir, this movie directed by Bernard Vorhaus does have noir elements. The use of stark contrasting shadows and lighting is definitely one of them. As 'low budget' as this movie was, the cinematography as well as the visual ideas are outstanding. The lighting and cinematography was done by John Alton, who once said 'the most beautiful photography is in a low-key, with rich blacks'. He sure lived up to those words with his work for this movie! This was a low-budget movie by all means but Alton made it a work of beauty. There are many fine examples of his outstanding work throughout this movie. Some that come to mind:

• The opening scene where Christine is standing on the balcony and the shadow of a person holding a gun moves in, but which turns out the be Janet holding a hairbrush. It's very effective in its simplicity and is a sign that something bad will happen to Christine.
• After Martin proposes to Christine and gives her an engagement ring, she goes to a lamp to look at it more closely. The lamp is switched off and the wall behind it is dark except for the face of Paul, overlooking the shot. As she switches on the lamp we see it's a painting of Paul sitting at his piano. Once Martin comes over as well, we see Christine and Martin on either side of the lamp, with Paul in the middle, as if he's judging their relationship.
• At the seance with Christine and Janet there's a similar shot where the only illumination comes from the crystal ball with Christine and Janet sitting on either side of it, and for a few moments a 'third eye' appears right above the crystal ball. Very creepy! These seances also have hands flying around through the air and other ghostly effects. Good stuff!
• Almost every scene at Alexis' house, especially during the various seances, is filled with beautiful lighting and innovative visual effects.
• One shot is filmed through the bottom of a sink in Christine's bathroom. I have no idea why they did the shot that way, but it's quite striking. The same concept is used, more effectively in my opinion, during the seances where the camera looks from below the table through the table at the people sitting around the crystal ball. It is a very clever trick to add a phantasmal element to those scenes, almost as if we're looking through a spirits eye, right before the spirit makes itself known to the people sitting at the table.

Another stand-out aspect of the film is Alexis and the actor playing him, Turhan Bey. Alexis is shown to be a phoney early on in the movie, which works quite well here to me, now we can enjoy his tricks even more unabashedly. Alexis is incredibly enjoyable in how he goes about deceiving people. I found some of his methods to be quite convincing not to mention very entertaining to watch. He uses a tame raven for a sinister touch to his persona, he uses shadows and lights in really clever ways to create a mystic and ghostly atmosphere, and he uses more 'modern' tricks such as automatic sliding doors, carbon paper and a one-way mirror to get a good idea of people's intentions and get inside their heads. Not to mention he's incredibly charming, great with words and has a lot of confidence in his own ability to read and deceive people. He also has a partner helping him out with researching people so he's better prepared. As to Turhan Bey, I am unfamiliar with his other movies but from what I read he was usually typecast into stereotypical villain roles. While he's a villain here as well, his character is quite complex and he is definitely not a stereotypical ruthless villain. Bey is truly great here, he obviously greatly enjoyed playing Alexis and gave Alexis a lot of depth and a three-dimensional character. There's smoothness, charm, wit, playfulness, deviousness, even heroism in Alexis. Some might say Alexis is quite the slimey smooth criminal, but I found him too entertaining and enthusiastic in his methods to really dislike him. He's quite the character!

Christine is played by Lynn Bari. I don't know if this was the director's intent but she stares almost directly into the camera quite a bit, which felt awkward to me. Maybe that was the intent however, giving Christine a more 'dreamy' character who cannot help but pine for her dead husband. The problem for me however is that she's a bit too one-dimensional. Lynn Bari plays her role well enough but her character just comes across too flat and absent-minded for me, Christine hardly questions what's happening with and around her. It's as if she's on sedatives half the time.

Janet is played by Cathy O'Donnell who was already in her 20s at the time, but Janet's character could be 16, she could be 21, it is unclear. Whatever age she is however, she's much more skeptic than Christine is as she doesn't believe in Alexis' powers for one second, and she is also far more industrious than Christine. She does also have a naive, impressionable side to her, as she's completely taken in by Alexis when she meets him and she even develops a crush for him. I also have to say that her performance would not be so effective anymore in modern movies, her wide-eyed puzzled look is a bit too comical for current-day thrillers.

Martin Abbott is played by Richard Carlson, but his character is not really fleshed out. He's there, and that's about it. His main contribution to this movie consists of involving detective Hoffman, together with Janet, to look into exposing Alexis. Detective Hoffman is played by Harry Mendoza (real name: Harry Bernard Solomon), who was a real-life magician and his background is used quite effectively here, as that is also Hoffman's background. He does some cool sleight-of-hand tricks when Janet and Martin first meet him and his magician's background is used to give his character a deeper motive for exposing frauds. He is also the person who knows the sort of tricks Alexis pulls off during his seances, but due to circumstances he doesn't quite manage to, quite literally, pull the trigger on Alexis in one of the scenes.

As mentioned, the real villain of this movie, and one who was thought to be dead at the start of the movie, is Paul, played by Donald Curtis. Unlike Alexis, he is ruthless and callous and will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. It is unclear why he faked his own death and why he waited two years before going after Christine's estate and money, also because when he does explain his intentions to Alexis, he blackmails Alexis into helping him out, seemingly because he needs an accomplice. There are some gaping plotholes when it comes to Paul's character, but oh well... It didn't bother me all that much.

There is also a recurring (almost minimalist) musical piece, a prelude, in this movie. It was Paul's favorite piece and it becomes this creepy soundtrack that adds to the overall atmosphere whenever it is played.

This is a fun movie, and while I originally rated it 7 out of 10 on IMDb, after watching it again for this blog, I changed my rating to an 8. Yes, it's unashamedly B and low-budget, but it's a lot of fun, it keeps you drawn in, and the lighting is simply beautiful. Don't pass up on this one, it's got something for everyone.

I watched a version of this movie that is available on archive.org. However, it is not the best copy around and even misses some (very short, but noticeable) parts. A better copy is available from Sony, as evidenced by this clip (I've not seen the full version of this DVD tho):

The Killers (1946)

Robert Siodmak's 'The Killers' from 1946 is based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Two hit men drive into a small town looking for a guy named the Swede. They end up in a diner and inquire about him. As it turns out the Swede has dinner there regularly, so they decide to wait for him. After it becomes clear the Swede, who is known as Pete Lunn in town, won't show up that evening, the hit men head for his apartment. One of the people in the diner, Lunn's co-worker Nick Adams, quickly takes a shortcut to Lunn's apartment to warn him. Lunn says that nothing can be done about it, that he made a mistake once and tells his co-worker to leave. The hit men arrive a bit later and unload their guns on Lunn. Only 12 minutes into the movie, this is where Hemingway's story ends and where the movie's second part starts.

After his death, insurance investigator Jim Riordan does a routine check into the Swede's death and the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. He is intrigued by the murder, Nick's recollection of Lunn's final words and a green handkerchief with harps on it that he finds among the Swede's belongings. The beneficiary turns out to be a lady who once rented out a room to Lunn, however she knew him as Ole Anderson, and he was desperate and almost suicidal last time she saw him. Riordan is now deadset on finding out what caused Anderson's death and starts an investigation into Anderson's past and the events that led to his untimely death. He meets up with a childhood friend of Anderson, police officer Sam Lubinsky, and together they start to unravel things, including an unsolved robbery Anderson was involved in, the stolen money which was never recovered, a gorgeous lady called Kitty Collins and all the doublecrossing that took place.

Ole 'the Swede' Anderson (Burt Lancaster in his first role) was a prizefighter once with a pretty girlfriend, Lilly Harmon (Virginia Christine) and a good friend called Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene). He's force to retire from fighting due to an injury, and turns to crime as a new career, despite Lubinsky being a cop, thus pitting them against each other. At a party that Ole attends with Lilly he meets 'femme fatale' Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner in one of her first major roles), and he falls head over heels for her, something which he doesn't even try to hide from Lilly. Kitty, being the seductress and vixen she so clearly is, doesn't mind pushing the dagger a bit deeper into Lilly's heart when Ole and Lilly are introduced to Kitty and briefly discuss Ole's prizefighting. After Kitty mentions she does not care for watching men fight, Lilly quickly remarks 'I saw all Swede's fights.' obviously trying to show her devotion to Anderson, whom she's in love with. Kitty however has the perfect rebuttal: 'How wonderful of you! I could never bear to see a man I really cared for being hurt.' Kitty is then called away and Ole adds insult to injury by casually and almost absent-mindedly remarking (more to himself than to Lilly): 'She's beautiful.' Auch, that's pretty damn harsh. Obviously Lilly knows the score by now. But Ole becomes even more oblivious to Lilly's presence as Kitty sings a song and Ole is standing close to her, admiring her, leaving Lilly to fend for herself. If this had been a scene from a cartoon, Anderson would have been standing in a pool of his own drool, he's that taken in with Kitty. I have to say, a fair amount of the more 'high end' film noirs feature a scene with one of the main female leads singing a song, which is something I don't really care for. Whether it's Marlene Dietrich in 'Witness For The Prosecution' or Ava Gardner in this movie, I find these songs to be rather dull and boring and not really adding much to the movie. Oh well...

Kitty plays a crucial role in Anderson's downfall, as expected. When Anderson's in prison (arrested by Lubinsky no less) she hooks up with Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) who is the mastermind behind the robbery, which is to take place shortly. After Anderson's out of of prison again he gets asked to join Colfax's gang for the robbery. Kitty is also present when Anderson first meets up with Colfax and the gang. As she lies on the bed and Anderson sits next to it, you can see Kitty delighting over Anderson's uneasiness at her presence. Her claws are still dug deep into him. Kitty Collins is played by Ava Gardner in one of her first major roles, and damn, what a vixen she is! She's stunningly gorgeous in this movie, with a cool demeanor and a look that screams sex (even though this could not be shown or mentioned in too direct a manner at the time, but seductive stares, and veiled innuendos more than made up for it). While Veronica Lake still tops my list of film noir femme fatales, Gardner is definitely up there.

Ole Anderson on the other hand is not the most clever criminal ever. His motives appear fairly basic, greed (for money) and lust (for Kitty). But he's not cold, determined or calculated enough to truly succeed as a criminal, or as Kitty's lover. And his feelings for Kitty (which some might call love, but which I think is more lust-motivated than anything else) definitely get in the way of him seeing that he's being used as a patsy by those around him, including by Kitty. He does eventually figure it out, but by then it is too late and he has no choice but to change identity and disappear to a small town. Burt Lancaster plays him really well. I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but Lancaster played Anderson with an almost absent-minded look in his eyes which to me is a good fit for Anderson's character. But the best performances in the movie to me are those of Ava Gardner and especially Edmond O'Brien. His Jim Riordan is exactly the kind of tough and almost hard-boiled character that you'd expect to find in a film noir. He smokes a lot, he addresses women as 'honey' or 'baby' and he's determined to find out what's going on. His lines could have been straight out of a hard-boiled detective story, except he's not a detective or a criminal, he investigates insurance claims. I loved his character and his tenaciousness.

The opening scene is amazing on more than one level. Everything about it is perfect. The two hit men, Al and Max (William Conrad and Charles McGraw), are as tough and hard-boiled as they come. Their faces show hardly any emotion as they spew rapid-fire vitriolic lines at the other people in the diner. Through words they turn the atmosphere at the diner around from pleasant to dark and menacing. While they do eventually show a gun, it is their use of words that truly terrorizes the people present. The shots, especially the outside scenes and those inside Anderson's apartment, are very dark and shadowy, also creating a tense atmosphere. Add to that the awesome soundtrack, scored by Miklós Rózsa. Its tone is as threatening as the scene eventually becomes and really draws you in. Parts of it are repeated again in key parts of the movie. The theme of the soundtrack really adds to the movie here and the overall feel of the movie.

One of the other standout scenes in the movie besides the opening scene is the flashback of the actual robbery of the hat factory. In one long continuous single take we see how the robbery takes place, from the moment the robbers walk through the hat factory gate to the moment they speed away in their cars. I hadn't realized until the scene was almost over that I was still looking at the same take, it is so smooth, captivating and natural-looking. It is one of the many scenes in the movie that shows the expert direction of Siodmak who also directed other notable film noirs and crime movies such as 'Criss Cross' (1949, again with Burt Lancaster), 'The File On Thelma Jordon' (1950) and 'The Spiral Staircase' (1945). I don't know how many takes had to be done for this, or why Siodmak decided to do it like this in the first place, but it works so well. A truly great scene.

It's an awesome, suspenseful and intriguing movie and a perfect introduction into film noir. I know this because it was my own 'formal' introduction into film noir. 'The Killers' was the first film noir I watched because of it being film noir. It's considered one of the great film noirs and it is easy for me to see why. The story, the way it unfolds through flashbacks that build onto each other, all the doublecrossing, Kitty Collins, the way it's filmed... Great, great stuff.

Here's the trailer, which also features the amazing soundtrack: