Desperate times call for desperate measures. And sometimes, desperate movies.
You can’t get any more desperate than film noir, dark movies in which corruption, duplicity, violence and dames collide.
There certainly is no absence of film noir on the big or little screen these days. Opening in theaters around the country is The Killer Inside Me, an adaptation of the novel by seminal pulp crime novelist Jim Thompson that’s already generating controversy. Previously filmed in 1976 by western specialist Burt Kennedy (Support Your Local Sheriff) with Stacy Keach in the lead, this new Killer is set in 1958 and stars Casey Affleck as a West Texas deputy whose tough past is revealed in flashbacks and may have something to do with his increasingly violent behavior in the present. While dating nice gal Kate Hudson, he falls into a sadomasochistic fling with prostitute Jessica Alba. The affair leads to some very disturbing scenes in which even more troubling characteristics about Affleck are revealed.
Directed by the prolific, provocative Brit Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, Nine Songs), The Killer Inside Me has been taking heat for its explosive violence, especially against women, and particularly in the latter portion of the film. Does it go too far? That depends on where individual viewers drawn the line. But that is what Thompson’s rambling story calls for, as does an unusual, affected performance by Affleck and superior acting from a supporting cast that includes Bill Pullman, Ned Beatty and Elias Koteas. The light at end of the tunnel for Affleck grows dimmer and dimmer as the film proceeds, true to the cruel nature of film noir.
Theaters are not the only place to get a dosage of noir these days. Sony has gotten it right with Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics II, a compendium of thrillers from the Columbia library, all of them fascinating, not only for their finished form, but for the people behind the scenes involved in bringing their darkness to light.
The great Fritz Lang used his background in silent German Expressionism masterpieces like Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) to make a career helming noirs like Scarlet Street (1945), The Big Heat (1953) and Human Desire (1954), the latter of which is featured here. Based on a novel by Emile Zola and previously filmed by Jean Renoir as La Bete Humaine, the film stars Glenn Ford as a Korean War vet turned New Jersey railroad worker involved with femme fatale Gloria Grahame who happens to be married to volatile Broderick Crawford. Murder, passions and double crosses fly off the screen with the ease you could only find in classic noir.
Richard Quine, a Columbia contract director and onetime MGM boy ingénue at home with Jack Lemmon comedies, courtroom dramas and weepies, got the assignment for Pushover (1954), scripted by Roy Huggins of The Fugitive fame. In a companion piece to his nice-guy-lulled-to-the-dark-side in Double Indemnity (1945), Fred MacMurray plays a cop whose efforts to crack a murder/bank robbery puts him on the trail of gorgeous moll Kim Novak (in her lead film debut). McMurray quickly becomes smitten with Novak—who wouldn’t be?—and she ends up persuading him to kill the ringmaster of the heist. Playing an integral part in the film is Dorothy Malone, as a nurse who lives in Novak’s apartment and is also under surveillance by the cops. While not in the same league as Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Pushover is a taught and highly effective suspenser that offered further proof MacMurray was more versatile an actor than he’s been credited with, and that Novak was…well, you’ll have to check it out.
Writer David Goodis, who famously asserted that Huggins cribbed one of his stories for the premise of The Fugitive, penned the story for Nightfall (1957). Jacques Tourneur, the director of Out of the Past (1947) and alumnus of the esteemed Val Lewton school of horror, helmed this crackerjack thriller in which vacationing hunters Aldo Ray and Frank Albertson find their Wyoming trip interrupted by the discovery of a crashed car. Unfortunately, the vehicle belongs to a pair of bank robbers (Rudy Bond,Brian Keith), who shoot both would-be Samaritans so there are no witnesses to finger them. Turns out that Ray is still alive; further, the creeps took off with M.D. Albertson’s doctor bag, leaving Aldo with their large cache of loot. The once genteel war vet becomes a criminal on the run, hiding the cash, taking on a new identity and eventually landing in Los Angeles. And that’s just the beginning of the cynical saga in which an insurance investigator (James Gregory) and a fashion model (Anne Bancroft) play key roles.
There has been no shortage of films or TV shows based on the work of author Georges Simenon, the creator of the detective Maigret. Phil Karlson’s The Brothers Rico (1957), based on one of Simenon’s stories (and co-scripted by an uncredited, blacklisted Dalton Trumbo), is a tough look at internecine crime syndicate dealings from the low-budget auteur. Here Richard Conte plays Eddie Rico, one of three brothers who have been involved in lives of crime. Eddie, who has given up his role as a bookkeeper for the mob in Florida, now runs a legit laundry business. But he gets a call from a ganglord telling him that his younger brother Johnny (James Darren) was involved in a hit with older sibling Gino (Paul Picerni). Now, Johnny’s on the run and Eddie is asked to track him down. Little is Eddie aware of the mob boss’s ulterior motive. What makes The Brothers Rico particularly interesting is the fact that gone-straight good guy Conte is so much more imposing than the narrative’s crime boss, played by actor Larry Gates like a beloved uncle.
A companion piece to his own 1958 opus Contract to Murder (featured in Sony’s Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics I), director Irving Lerner shot City of Fear (1959) on the cheap, which helps underline the film’s appropriately seedy atmosphere. Once again, Lerner works with actor Vince Edwards, but this time the future Ben Casey plays a con who escapes from San Quentin with a cylinder he believes to contain heroin. Little does he know that there’s no heroin in there—it’s radioactive cobalt, and there’s enough to destroy the city of Los Angeles. While the film has many apparent similarities to Robert Aldrich’s brutal Mike Hammer opus Kiss Me Deadly (1955), there is a marked difference in approach. Lerner’s direction at times is so low-key it’s unnerving—almost the opposite of Aldrich’s hyperkinetic helming in Kiss. Kudos to Edwards’ turn as the surly hood, aces photography by Lucien Ballard and a jazzy, early score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Sony is not the only studio hitting their vaults for noir goodies. Warner has also hatched another new batch called Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 5, a mix of much-requested films and cultier items in the boxed set of double features, taken from such diverse libraries as MGM, RKO, Allied Artists and financially frugal Monogram Pictures.
Cornered (1945) stars Dick Powell as a Canadian flyer, freshly released from his WWII POW internment, who heads back to France to hunt down the man responsible for the death of his resistance fighter wife at the conflict’s height. His surprise-filled journey takes him to Argentina, where he finds proof that the culprit is still alive. Director Edward Dmytryk was later blacklisted, as were other members of this production, a solid and often exciting war drama with noirish elements.
Anthony Mann, who also helmed great westerns with James Stewart and spectacles like El Cid (1961), proved himself a master at working on tiny budgets early his directing career, as evidenced by the first-rate noirs T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948). He brings all of his black-and-white visual razzmatazz to 1947’s Desperate. “B” movie stalwart Steve Brodie (The Steel Helmet) is the trucker duped into driving stolen goods on his anniversary. He balks at his role in the crime, and gets a cop shot and a gangster’s brother in trouble in the process. Soon, the lives of Brodie and his wife are threatened, prompting them to go on the run and prove their innocence before the head hood (Raymond Burr at his most evil) gets to them.
The aforementioned Phil Karlson cranked out four—count ‘em—films in 1955, including The Phenix City Story, a film shot on a paltry budget, but now considered a classic crime drama. It’s easy to see why: shot in semi-documentary style, Phenix is based on a true story, set in an Alabama town where corruption and racism run amok. Trying to bring changes are father-and-son attorneys, usually tight-lipped John McIntire and crusading Korea vet Richard Kiley. This is a dandy muckraking saga that doesn’t pull punches, even though it has its moments of moralizing. It’s interesting to compare its themes to those of Karlson’s generation-later audience pleaser Walking Tall (1973), another based-on-fact story. Next offered in the set is Dial 1119 (1950), an obscure but fascinating hostage drama with the young Marshall Thompson, best known as the African veterinarian in the 1960s TV show Daktari, as a sociopath who takes a group of eccentric bar patrons hostage. William Conrad (Cannon) plays the bartender, and there’s a no shortage of tense moments. There’s much reliance in the story on one of those newfangled television sets set to keep the tavern dwellers entertained and, later, informed of the efforts to get them released. By the way, the film was helmed by Gerald Mayer, nephew of MGM head Louis B. Mayer, and was indicative of the lower budgeted items that the studio was then turning towards.
Armored Car Robbery (1950), from the prolific Richard Fleischer, is a taut heist entry headlined by Charles McGraw, who’d be the lead in Fleischer’s subsequent noir staple The Narrow Margin (1952). Here, McGraw is an L.A. plainclothesman who helps abort the titular heist at the cost of his partner’s life, and determinedly tries to run the fleeing thugs responsible (William Talman, Steve Brodie, Douglas Fowley, Gene Evans) to ground. Key elements in this short and swift noir are the Los Angeles locations (including Wrigley Field—they had one there, too) and an ending similar to The Killing, while predating Stanley Kubrick’s classic by six years. Crime in the Streets (1956) was directed by Don Siegel, the same year he delivered the classic horror/sci-fi tale Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The cheaply shot but effective crime drama, based on a TV production by Reginald Rose, centers on warring juvenile delinquent gangs and social worker James Whitmore, who tries to offer them guidance. The film is notable for its cast, which includes a debuting John Cassavetes, Sal Mineo, and future director Mark Rydell among the troubled youths.
Deadline at Dawn (1946) is the one and only film Broadway legend Harold Clurman directed, lensing a screenplay by Clifford Odets taken from a Cornell Woolrich novel. The results of their labor are weird but fascinating, to say the least. Sailor Bill Williams is slipped a mickey by a barfly who happens to be the sister of a gangster. When Williams awakes, she’s dead, he believes he may have killed her, and he attempts to find out what really happened with help from philosophical cab driver Paul Lukas and dancer Susan Hayward. Some bizarre dialogue and great location shots of New York City at night make this a distinctive and cynical noir. Rounding out the new Warner collection is Backfire (1950), in which future musical star Gordon MacRae plays a GI recovering from back injuries who, after getting romantically involved with nurse Virginia Mayo, tries to help a shady old Army pal (Edmond O’Brien) accused of murdering a gambler. His trek brings him in contact with the cops (led by Ed Begley), a former GI associate (Dane Clark) who runs a seedy hotel, and a sexy nightclub singer (Viveca Lindfors).
That’s a lot of noir, joining Olive Films’ releases of the Paramount greats Appointment with Danger (1951), Union Station (1950) and Dark City (1950) on shelves now and in the near future. The powers-that-be have obviously recognized that desperate times call for desperate movies.