NO QUESTIONS ASKED (1951)

Director: Harold Kress
(Significant films as director: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, The Yearling, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Silk Stockings, How the West was Won, The Poseiden Adventure, The Towering Inferno.)
Cinematographer: Harold Lipstein:
(Significant films as DP: The River’s Edge, Pal Joey, Ride a Crooked Trail, Hell is for Heroes.)
Story: Berne Giler
Screenplay: Sidney Sheldon
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, George Murphy, Jean Hagen.
Released by: MGM
Running time: 80 minutes

A black widow without a mate is just another spider.

A man is on the run through the wet and deserted streets of lower Manhattan. He dodges into the shadows of a stairwell just as a prowl car tears by, its siren whining against concrete and brick. As the man hunkers down we hear his voice, “My name is Steve Keiver. That’s what all the sirens are about. They were screaming for me, I was very popular that night — everybody wanted me, dead or alive. You think there’d be a thousand hiding places in a large city, but there aren’t.” More police cars make the scene, closing off any possible egress and penetrating the deep shadows with searchlights. As Keiver presses his back against the dark recess of a doorway in an effort to become invisible, the narration inevitably turns to the source of his present dilemma, “You wonder how it happened and where it all really began…”

Keiver (Barry Sullivan) is an insurance company lawyer who gets the brush from his girlfriend Ellen (Arlene Dahl) because in spite of a promising future, he can’t give her diamonds and pearls. A telling exchange early in the film provides some insight into their characters. The scene finds Steve and Ellen discussing their relationship over a taxicab ride home from the airport. Steve erroneously believes Ellen to be returning from a solo ski trip to Sun Valley:

Ellen: “I’m not a one-room flat kind of girl. I don’t want to raise my children in the kind of poverty I was raised in. I couldn’t stand it. I want security.”
Steve: “If you’re just patient honey —“
Ellen: “— I’ve waited a year. You can’t deposit patience in a bank.”
Steve: “We’re never gonna be rich, that’s not security. But we love each other, you can deposit that in my bank.”

Steve asks for a raise the following day, but is put off by his boss who reminds him that, “Ladders are built for patient men.” However during the meeting his boss makes an offhand remark about some stolen furs: he’d pay ten grand to the thieves, no questions asked, in order to avoid settling the insurance claim. Steve gets a big idea: he’ll find out who heisted the furs and broker a deal between them and the insurance company. He’ll receive a finder’s fee and everyone will be happy: the thieves will get more for the goods than a fence would pay, his boss dodges a six-figure payout, and Steve’ll have enough loot in the bank to give Ellen everything she wants. Unbeknownst to him, it’s already too late. Ellen has married Gordon Jessman (Dick Simmons), a smooth operator she met in Idaho, and spent the balance of her vacation honeymooning in Europe. Steve is crushed when he visits Ellen’s place and finds it deserted.

Though he’s unsuccessful in his first attempts, Steve eventually contacts the crime syndicate and arranges to buy back the furs. It isn’t long before he’s contacted about another cache of stolen goods, and then another. Soon he’s flush enough to leave his job at the insurance company and start his own little cottage industry. In the wake of Ellen’s departure from his life, Steve develops a relationship with the Joan (Jean Hagen), a coworker from the insurance company who has carried a torch for years. Joan represents the “good girl” to Ellen’s femme fatale. She knows that Steve is embarking on a treacherous path, yet she’s pined for him for so long that she can’t help but to tread along with him.

During the gala premiere of a Broadway show, two henchmen of the vicious gangster Franko (Howard Petrie), pull off a lurid robbery. Dressed as women (!), they crash the powder room during intermission and steal the jewelry of everyone present. The police become suspicious when they learn that Steve attended the premiere with Joan, who was pistol-whipped by one of the thieves. They suspect Steve’s involvement on some level and blame him for single-handedly starting a crime wave within the city. One in which crooks will steal anything, including difficult to fence items like artwork, knowing that Steve can broker an insurance company buy-back. Steve, a polished attorney, knows how to balance himself between both sides of the law — but the difference between legality and morality is one that he fails to grasp. It will come to cost him.

When Ellen learns of Steve’s success, she attempts to reenter his life by claiming her marriage with Gordon is loveless. At Steve’s apartment, she learns that he’s about to handle the buy-back of the loot from the Broadway premiere heist. When Gordon discovers what Ellen has been up to he decides to rob Steve and take the jewels for himself. In doing so he kills a police detective, and makes it look like Steve pulled the trigger. Already leery of cops, Steve runs. Real time and flashback coalesce as the film returns to its opening scene, where Steve attempts to melt into the shadows of the urban nightscape.

In the meantime, Ellen and Gordon are frantically packing their bags when Franko’s men arrive, hoping to find Steve and the jewels. Ellen gets the idea that they can score big if they can sell the bundle back to Franko, and she and Gordon go willingly to negotiate a deal. It’s in this sequence that No Questions Asked becomes something special. The moral of the film is simple: Crime doesn’t pay — especially for amateurs. Decent people fail to understand that crooks play by a different set of rules and shouldn’t be trifled with. Everyone in the picture who has chosen to “play” at crime is about to learn a cruel lesson. Ellen and Gordon, believing their elevated social status gives them some advantage over hoodlums, pompously attempt to handle Franko:

Ellen: “How much are they worth to you?”
Franko: “How much are they worth to you? I don’t think I’m going to have to pay anything for them Mrs. Jessman. You’ve got the jewels — I’ve got you.”
Ellen: “If anything happens to me you’ll never find those jewels.”
Franko: “You’re smart, but you made on big mistake: I never went to Vassar. I’m afraid you’re dealing with dirty people. When we get finished with you you’re going to be begging to tell us where those jewels are.”

Franko opts for torture, the mere threat of which makes Gordon squeal. Mere seconds after Franko learns the location of the bundle he orders Ellen’s execution, which happens as Gordon looks on. Gordon himself is shot a moment later, just as Steve is brought in. The matter-of-fact brutality of the killings is so unusual and so bluntly casual, that even though both shootings occur just outside the frame the effect is chilling, even by film noir standards.

Following the killings of the Jessmans, Franko nods to one of his men: kill Steve Keiver. Steve grabs at Franko, and the two men tumble backwards into a swimming pool. The setting of the denouement is contrived — we learned early on that Franko’s personal exercise regimen involves holding his breath under water for extended periods of time. As soon as the two bodies disturb the surface we know that Steve’s luck has run out. So often in films two characters engage in a death struggle beneath water. Convention assures us that the protagonist will somehow rise to the surface, gasping for breath, having prevailed. Not this time. The leering Franko, in his element, calmly and sadistically pushes Steve’s head under the water. He wraps his arms and legs around Steve’s torso and simply holds his breath until the smaller man drowns. Yet when he rises to the surface, leaving Steve’s lifeless body at the bottom of the pool, the dynamic has changed: The police have arrived, and his men are in handcuffs. Steve is fished from the water and after a time resuscitated, though refreshingly the film doesn’t give in to convention: Although it’s clear to all that Steve didn’t pull the trigger on the murdered cop, he’s charged as an accessory. As he is loaded into an ambulance for Bellevue and then Rykers, Detective Duggan tells Joan that she’ll have to wait for Steve a while longer — he’s looking at a two-year stretch.

Let’s get one thing straight about the femme fatale in film noir: she can’t exist without a man. And not just any man — she requires one compelled to throw away everything he’s got and everything he believes in to possess her. In No Questions Asked, Ellen Jessman is that rare girl: a bona fide femme fatale: she’s greedy, manipulative, superficial, immoral, and exists to lure Steve into sacrificing his place in the world in order to satisfy her material needs. Nonetheless she represents only half of the proverbial coin. A femme fatale can only be a femme fatale if she has a man to lure to his doom. Although the opening sequence of No Questions Asked vividly establishes the movie as a noir through such stylistic conventions as dark, wet streets seen from disconcerting angles; an alienated, fugitive character; voiceover narration; and flashback — its primary thrust is in the narrative exploration of the symbiotic relationship of Steve and Ellen. If Ellen is an archetypal femme fatale, Steve is every bit as archetypal a film noir protagonist. Like others before him, he suffers from a fatal inability recognize the difference between good and bad in women. It’s tough to fathom why he would abandon a healthy relationship with Joan in order to return to Ellen, because the differences in their character are meant to be apparent to the viewer. But Steve can’t see beneath the surface — and so like most men in similar situations he errs on the side of sex (and redheads). But because the character of Ellen is beyond redemption she’s killed off, along with her cowardly and murderous husband. Steve is killed too, if only for a moment. He abandoned an honest career for a fast buck and gambled a life with the good girl in exchange for adultery with the bad. Fate holds Steve accountable for his choices — his career is lost, but he’s given a second chance with Joan, who despite his foolishness is willing to wait for him to do his time in prison.

In spite of the title’s admonition, one question must be considered as the end titles roll: Does Steve really get wise or is he the same sucker as before? With Ellen dead we’ll never know.

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)

“You worked a whole day just to dance a minute at Dreamland?”

“It was worth it.”

Director: Felix Feist
Cinematographer: Robert Burks
Story: Art Cohn
Screenplay: Guy Endore
Starring: Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman
Released by: Warner Brothers Pictures
Running time: 89 minutes

Woody Allen’s most sentimental gesture comes at the end of The Purple Rose of Cairo, when Mia Farrow, kicked around by men and by life, finds joy in the fleeting images of Fred and Ginger dancing across the screen. In that moment, so wonderfully free of dialogue, Allen speaks directly to the audience more poignantly than in all the times he ever tossed witticisms through the fourth wall. For me Tomorrow is Another Day, a film noir light on crime and laden with emotion, recalls that moment at the end of Allen’s film. There has been little written about this astonishing movie, and what there is criticizes the ending as too upbeat and “studio” to be taken seriously. I disagree. Like Mia’s Cecilia I find in movies entertainment and escapism; and like her I live vicariously through the characters, imagining myself in similar situations. That’s my personal attraction to film noir — watching flawed people in trouble try to get out from under, and hoping they’ll make it. There’s something so desperately American in that notion that it stands to reason the best film noirs (and Westerns) were made in that brief period after the war when America quite possibly stood its tallest. If movies can teach us about redemption there’s no better model than the morality plays of film noir.

Tomorrow is Another Day is an intelligent, very well acted film that explores paths to redemption — whether or not change is possible, if people are damned by their pasts, if grace even exists. It’s a movie about two troubled souls who somehow save one another. The first is Bill Lewis (Steve Cochran), who at thirteen shot his father and went to prison. Bill is a unique noir hero — he shot an abusive drunk in order to protect his mother, leaving his soul free of stain but suffering from a severe case of arrested development. Cochran is a surprise — what he lacks in physical expressiveness he makes up for through a deep understanding of character. There’s a moment in the opening scene, when Bill meets with the warden prior to his release, where this comes through loud and clear. Bill is nervous, fidgety — swimming in a prison-issue suit. Though the warden is supportive, Bill’s got eighteen year’s worth of chips on his shoulder. When scolded to make good choices lest he end up back behind bars, Bill responds, “Nobody’ll ever put me in a stinkin’ cage again.” This is where Cochran shines — although trying to sound tough Bill can’t make eye contact with the older man — and pauses before summoning the guts to add the word “stinkin’.” Cochran understands that even though Bill is now a “free,” he remains a kid in a man’s body, mad at the world for punishing a guiltless crime, equally terrified of returning to prison and of being set free. Bill’s standoffishness springs from his inability to grasp that the older man, an authority / father figure, may actually care for him. Cochran nails the part — Bill reenters society with a bitter heart and hardly more maturity than when he left it.

The film convincingly depicts the first moments of freedom for such a man-child. Bill’s age is incalculably significant — in spending his formative years behind bars he missed out on the life experiences that turn boys into men, including the one in particular that defined his generation. No only has Bill not kissed a girl; he’s never even spoken to one. He missed the vital school-age interactions that we take for granted, instead spending those years with hardened criminals. He’s never driven a car, voted, or taken a drink. He has no friends, and with a prison record instead of a war record, he has little in common with men his age. We see Bill’s first walk on the streets of his hometown through the eyes of a newshound who shadows him. He’s drawn first to automobiles — he can’t help but lean into a convertible and test the buttons and knobs. Then he notices a woman and does a quick one-eighty, falling into lockstep behind her. Again Cochran’s portrayal rings true. When she pauses to meet a friend Bill thrusts into her personal space, studying her as if she were a sculpture. She nervously flees and Bill skulks into a hamburger joint, where he does what any kid would do: he orders not one, but three pieces of pie, as well as his very first beer. It’s here that the reporter introduces himself. Although he doesn’t reveal his intentions, he admits making Bill as a jailbird and draws him into conversation. The following day Bill is furious to see his mug splashed across the front page, and he departs for the anonymity of New York City.

In Manhattan we encounter the film’s other main character, peroxide blonde dime-a-dance girl Cay Higgins (Ruth Roman). Although Cay’s job as a taxi dancer at Dreamland is meant to suggest that she’s really a prostitute, I’ve long been fascinated by this precursor to the burlesque club and choose to interpret the scenario at face value. The taxi dance craze swept America between the wars and dance halls sprang up from coast to coast. Patrons bought a ticket for a dime, which entitled them to one dance with the hostess of their choice. The system was mutually beneficial: in keeping a nickel on each ticket, a girl could do well — provided she was pretty and light on her feet. For the customers the dance halls afforded the chance for social outcasts to buy time with a girl of their choice. As with all things that bring the sexes together it fell prey to vice, and by the early fifties the dance halls were fading. Nevertheless, a few remained in New York, and Tomorrow is Another Day portrays them accurately. Someone like Bill would naturally gravitate to a dance hall, which serviced his need to interact with women he wouldn’t have access to if left to his own social skills.

Cay came to New York to pursue a ballet career. “I started out on my toes and ended up on my heels” (or back, if you prefer). Now she’s a taxi dancer (pro) with a cop boyfriend (pimp) when Bill Lewis enters her world. Cay sees him as a yokel and an easy mark, though she finds herself unexpectedly charmed by his boyish naiveté. She accepts his gifts and even agrees to a sightseeing date, afterwards inviting him to her room. There they find detective George Conover, Cay’s beefy beau. In the ensuing fight Conover knocks Bill out before turning on Cay, who shoots him in self-defense. Injured, Conover shambles out in search of a clandestine physician. When Bill awakens, unaware that Conover was shot, he finds Cay leaving for her brother’s place in Jersey, where she intends to hole up. He learns of the shooting later via the evening newspaper, and heads south for a confrontation with Cay. It’s in New Jersey that the story takes a crucial turn. Bill confronts Cay with his knowledge of the shooting and asks, “How did it happen?” Cay realizes that Bill has no memory of the shooting she decides to convince him that he pulled the trigger. She also drops the bombshell that Conover has died. This is the moment in the film where Cay becomes something akin to a femme fatale. Her character displays the moral ambiguity central to film noir. Always the schemer, she figures that an innocent like Bill will fare better with the cops than her, and that he’ll beat the rap by claiming self-defense. Bill refuses this idea and shows Cay the recent clipping from his hometown paper, finally exposing his prison record. Realizing that the cops are unlikely to believe either of them, Bill and Cay decide to run. They borrow a car (Cay driving, Bill doesn’t know how.) and head for the state line.

The turning point in the film comes at a rural motor lodge. Bill and Cay check in pretending to be married, though the jaded Cay recognizes that the proprietors couldn’t care less. This is the moment, far from Manhattan, when they have the chance to separate — yet choose not to. Bill departs for a time but returns with a cheap wedding ring. This romantic gesture causes Cay’s tough façade to crumble, and in a heartbeat their antagonistic relationship becomes tender. Bill then discovers that during his time away the blonde has become a brunette. Cay’s physical transformation is the climax of the middle of the film, and is symbolic of the deeper change in her character. The tramp from Dreamland is gone, replaced by a wholesome and demure portrait of fifties womanhood. Though this transition seems fatally abrupt on paper, Roman pulls it off — she makes us believe the old Cay was an illusion, easily discarded when Bill discovers the woman within.

Through marriage Bill experiences sex and intimacy, and he begins to open up. However Cay, fearing that she’ll lose him, remains unable to come clean about Conover’s shooting. The newlyweds’ Joad-ian odyssey ends at a California farm camp, where he finds work in the lettuce fields and she keeps house amidst a community of shanties. They ingratiate themselves with the other workers and begin to live a relatively normal life. It all comes crashing down when Bill’s mug shot and a substantial reward offer appear in a Confidential-style crime rag, and a neighbor in desperate need of cash reluctantly informs on the couple. Sensing their impending doom, Cay summons the courage to tell Bill that it was she who really shot Conover, but he doesn’t believe her. Whereas earlier Cay set Bill up as a fall guy because she thought he’d get off easy, he now thinks she’s trying to take the blame for the same reason — that her recently discovered pregnancy will rate a soft sentence. When the police come knocking Bill, remembering his vow to the warden, prepares an ambush. In one of the most ironic moments in all of film noir Cay grabs Conover’s revolver and shoots Bill with it. The symbolism here is critical — in shooting Conover Cay was selfishly trying to protect herself, but now she shoots Bill in order to save him. As the police take him away, Cay pleads, “I couldn’t let you get into more trouble on account of me.”

Tomorrow is Another Day is a film of mirrored halves, of repeated acts imbued with new meaning — it ends as it began, with an authority figure summoning Bill to his office through the intercom. In that first scene Bill moves from one prison to another — without walls, yes, but a prison just the same. The final time, with Cay, he is truly set free. The scene is the Manhattan DA’s, with Bill and Cay clumsily trying to take the blame for each other. In attempting to sacrifice herself for the man who loves her, Cay is able to overcome the sins of her past, while Bill is able to consummate adulthood by assuming responsibility for the life of another. Here is revealed possibly the most ironic twist in the entire story, but I’ll leave it up in the air. As I wrote earlier, the film ends well. Redemption indeed.

THE FEARMAKERS (1958)

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cinematographer: Sam Leavitt
Screenplay: Chris Appley and Elliot West, based on the novel by Darwin Teilhet.
Starring: Dana Andrews, Dick Foran, Mel Tormé.
Released by: United Artists
Running time: 85 minutes

Dana Andrews is one of the more iconic actors of the film noir cycle, yet in the grand scheme of things he’s one of the most underappreciated in film history. The image of him standing amidst the hulking carcasses of bombers at the end of The Best Years of Our Lives is so viscerally powerful that it brings tears to my eyes. I’ve always admired him as a “film first” kind of guy, meaning that he never allowed his ego to get in the way of his characters. “Low key” for him wasn’t a vapid Hollywood actor’s false modesty; it was his personal way of exploring character and demonstrating faith in his audience’s ability to empathize. He was a fairly regular Joe who suffered through the ups and downs of life as most people do, though it can be argued that he had more than his share of bad luck. That he struggled mightily with alcohol in the years after his career began to decline isn’t surprising — less was known of alcoholism in those days when the evening cocktail was much a part of American culture. It didn’t help that in 1935 he buried a young wife, followed in 1964 by their child. He worked as he found it in his later years, and died without fanfare in the early nineties. His body of work is extraordinary, and it’s easy to imagine that his screen persona was probably not much different than the man in real life.

Oddly, one of the roles for which I best remember him is as Ted Stryker from 1957’s Zero Hour!. In the film, famously lampooned in Airplane!, Andrews plays a neurotic WWII fighter pilot who can’t overcome the guilt he feels over the deaths of a number of his squadron members. He gets his shot at redemption years later as a passenger in a commercial flight that is overcome by food poisoning. (“Don’t order the fish!”) The film depicts Andrews as a shaky, sweat-drenched nervous wreck — a coward even. By the end he’s a hero — though an incredibly reluctant one. You leave thinking that had anyone else been able to fly the plane, Andrews would have kept his ass strapped in row F. Even as the flight crew asks if anyone on board has flight experience, he keeps quiet. It isn’t until his ailing son volunteers that his “pop flew in the war” that Andrews grudgingly owns up to it. The guy in the control tower who talks him down is Sterling Hayden of all people; and the big man browbeats Andrews through his ordeal until the plane flops onto the tarmac. Even then, Stryker never gets that moment of movie triumph that eighties actions films led us to expect. Instead of a rousing ovation everyone seems joyously relieved that a schmuck like Stryker didn’t get them all killed. The film’s treatment of Stryker is pretty tepid, yet Andrews bangs out the role and brings to it the same level of professionalism evident in all his other parts.

Shortly after Zero Hour! Andrews and director Jacques Tourneur made two films together, The Night (Curse) of the Demon — which everyone and his ma has seen — and the obscure The Fearmakers. The Fearmakers is a communist exposé picture situated in the world of DC lobbyists and public relations firms. Andrews plays Alan Eaton, just released from a North Korean prison camp, where he was relentlessly beaten and tortured. The opening credits roll against one of his beatings, and the film’s first scene takes place on Eaton’s flight back to the States. It’s on this flight that he meets a “fellow traveler,” nuclear physicist Dr. Gregory Jessup. Jessup preaches nuclear disarmament, and warns Eaton that PR companies have begun to manipulate public opinion just as often as they reflect it. He just so happens to be looking for a good PR man, and asks Eaton for his contact information.

Let’s stop here for a second. The message of this scene is that Jessup is a communist — the fact that he’s stumping for nuclear disarmament is a dead giveaway. This notion has confused some who have commented on this film in recent years, as if the filmmakers are suggesting that anyone with a “no-nukes” bumper sticker must be a Red. It appears to go unnoticed that Jessup’s communism doesn’t actually make him a peace-lover — it just makes him a liar. The film’s attitude however, when viewed through the lens of the late fifties, makes a great deal more common sense. Remember that the nuclear arms race and nuclear stockpiling hadn’t yet begun in earnest, and that consequently American views about the defense program were decidedly pro-nuke, and a bit less fatalistic. After all, this was the atomic age — in the minds of most folks the Fat Man and Little Boy detonations had saved the lives of thousands and thousands of US servicemen. People were fairly jazzed about the idea of nuclear power, they saw it as a good thing. In the same year The Fearmakers was in theaters, the Ford Motor Company was fervently developing a nuclear-powered concept car, complete with onboard reactor. The excess of the buildup was still in the offing, and the “bomb” remained an essentially American concept — When The Fearmakers debuted the Soviets had the bomb for only eight years and lagged behind in the associated technology. Even by 1964, the US held in reserve 7,000 warheads to only 500 for the Soviets. The truly frightening concept of remote delivery hadn’t yet taken hold either, though in October of ‘57 the Russians would deploy Sputnik via the first functional ICBM, changing attitudes forever. With all of this in mind, Jessup’s pitch to Eaton is a logical ploy: let’s get a respected American PR man to sway public opinion in the direction of disarmament, while in the meantime we secretly catch up to them in the arms race. Of course communists would want to sow the seeds of disarmament in America — and Andrew’s Eaton is perfect for the job: he’s naïve, rattled, and has possibly even programmed to be sympathetic by his North Korean / Chinese captors.

It would also appear to be a plot contrivance of the first order that Jessup would happen to be on the same plane as Eaton in the first place, but we later learn he’s a plant. As it turns out, Eaton’s former business partner died under mysterious circumstances just after exercising his power of attorney and selling the their PR firm to a third man, Jim McGinnis (Dick Foran). McGinnis is an unscrupulous fellow whose primary concern is greed. He’s in it for the money and doesn’t care much who he works for or what information he applies spin to. The film’s depictions of the PR racket falls well short of its clever take on Connecticut and K attitudes. (Take my word for it, I paid my dues there. The only thing I remember fondly is the “L Street Chicken” sandwich at Jonathan’s Gourmet Deli.) Despite the fact that Eaton & Baker is one of the most respected agencies inside the Beltway (McGinnis kept the firm’s name for, ironically, its PR value), nobody seems to actually work there. McGinnis’ only employees are right hand man Barney Bond (played like a weasel in coke bottle glasses by Mel Tormé) and secretary Ms. Dennis (Marilee Earle). This probably owes more than anything to the movie’s B status, but it lands much of the dramatic weight of the film onto the shoulders of Tormé and Earle, neither of whom was able to handle it. Earle is an especially weak performer, and her bizarrely fleshy face doesn’t help.

Eaton of course knows none of this — he expects to return to the company that he built from the ground up and resume his old life. Instead he gets hit by a ton of bricks: not only is his former partner long dead and gone, despite seeing his name is still on the door he no longer owns the business. McGinnis recognizes that Eaton still has some juice, so he offers him the chance to “write his own ticket” if only he can secure the account of a crusty senator whose business was lost when McGinnis took over the shop. Eaton agrees, but when he meets with the senator and a reporter friend, they clue him in as to whom McGinnis really fronts for. Horrified, Eaton becomes a sort of double agent and conspires to bring McGinnis down. Why? Because his name is still on the door and that makes him responsible for whatever the company has become in his absence. And although Eaton has endured hell in Korea, he’s still compelled somehow to do the right thing. He’s not devoid of cynicism though; after he gets clear he’s getting out of the PR rat race and heading for an easier life in California. Eaton has no desire to return his company to its former level of respectability — he knows a lost cause when he sees it. The Fearmakers wraps up with a series of conventional movie run-ins with colorful communist agents in various guises, and all’s well that ends well. The end titles find Eaton and Ms. Dennis necking at the foot of Abraham Lincoln.

As much as The Fearmakers can be applauded for being conceptually ahead of its time, its downfall is in its failure to fully understand the crime it presents; or if it does understand the crime, to cinematically exploit it. The movie is about a corruption of the truth, one that continues to be perpetrated against the public more perversely and pervasively than even The Fearmakers could prophesize. This concept of corrupt but nonviolent crime must have been deemed too obtuse for a movie to communicate to audiences using fifties convention, because in the end the filmmakers reduce the crooks to mere thugs with fists and guns, showing us that the Hollywood didn’t yet understand that violence doesn’t always lie at the heart of all crime. Though it may also be true that we all still wanted to live in a make-believe world where a lone good man could trumpet down the walls of Jericho.

BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN (1950)

Director: Gordon Douglas
Cinematographer: George Diskant
Story: Leo Katcher and Gerald Drayson Adams
Screenplay: Eugene Ling
Starring: Mark Stevens, Edmond O’Brien, and Gale Storm
Released by: Columbia Pictures
Running time: 89 minutes

“A brutal policeman is a terrible thing. He has too much power, too many chances of taking his viciousness out on helpless people.”

Optimism and pessimism fight it out in Between Midnight and Dawn, an entertaining and well-crafted crime melodrama from 1950. These competing worldviews are embodied in the characters of prowl-car officers Rocky Barnes (Mark Stevens) and Dan “Pappy” Purvis (Edmond O’Brien). Having formed a friendship as Marines on Guadalcanal, the pair returns to Los Angeles and a continued partnership as cops. The laid-back and gregarious Rocky has come through his war experiences in better shape than Dan, who in typical Edmond O’Brien fashion is portrayed as bitter, cynical, and brooding. Dan has trouble seeing the world in anything other than black and white — people are either all good or all bad, as he says to Rocky in a telling early exchange, “Wait until you’ve had your fill of the scum. Slugging, knifing, shooting holes in decent people. You’ll toughen up junior.”

The film opens with a solid noir sequence that finds Rocky and Dan responding to a call of suspicious activity at a warehouse. They come upon two young women in a parked car, doing a piss-poor job as lookouts for their beaus inside. Rocky and Dan put the bracelets on the girls and make for the warehouse. Inside they corner the suspects and short gunfight ensues, with Rocky forced to graze one of the youths with a shot from his service piece. Back at the station, the delinquents put on a tough act while one of the girls breaks down, pleading and “blubbering” to be let go. Though Rocky wonders about justice for a wayward teenager, it’s plain that age and gender merit no consideration with Dan — stone-faced as the hysterical girl is taken into custody, screaming over and over “I don’t want to go to jail!” as she’s dragged away.

The scene above does much to establish the competing personalities of Rocky and Dan, as well as the noir milieu of Between Midnight and Dawn. Although the dark visual framework of the picture is thoroughly realized by noir stalwart George Diskant (The Narrow Margin, On Dangerous Ground), the narrative is just as distinctive. Rocky and Dan live in an uncertain world of deteriorating values in which people are not what they appear to be. Two innocent-looking girls in a parked car are engaged in larceny, shop owners live in fear of all-powerful hoodlums, and children in the street are as prone to violence as accomplished hoodlums. Even the most innocent character in the film, love interest Kate Mallory (Gale Storm), initially deceives the pair — though her deception is understandable. As the daughter of an old-guard Irish cop who was gunned down in the line of duty, Kate is reluctant to begin a relationship with the infatuated Rocky, who has quietly fallen in love with the sultry voice of the dispatcher he hears each night in the radio car.

Speaking of Gale Storm, she’s a revelation. The poor man's Lucille Ball does very well here, and although she doesn't sing in the film she demonstrates surprising range as an actress. All of the characters in Between Midnight and Dawn are developed to a greater degree than expected, and Storm plays the part of the dead cop’s kid with clever aplomb. She projects outward confidence and wit carefully blended with the street smarts of one reared in a cop’s house. The movie takes seriously her efforts to steer clear of involvement with Rocky and Dan, and includes a few nice scenes between Gale and her live-in mother (Madge Blake). There’s a fine moment when Mrs. Mallory, having lost her own husband to violence, is able to convince her daughter that beginning a relationship with Rocky is the right thing to do. It might be odd for a noir picture to have such a pronounced romantic angle — as Between Midnight and Dawn does — but it actually works quite well because the romantic tension between Rocky and Kate is so firmly situated in her neurotic fear of his death.

And Rocky does indeed die, gunned down by foaming-at-the-mouth gangster Richie Garris (Donald Buka). This shouldn’t come as a surprise to viewers since every element of the story points to Rocky’s death. In fact, even in 1950 it was a sturdy movie-land convention that in a buddy-cop film one of the partners was doomed from the outset. What makes this particular scenario of interest is how Kate and Dan respond. Both characters suffer from a markedly cynical strain of pessimism. Kate’s is rooted in the fear of losing yet another loved one, while Dan’s is more complex — his idealism wasn’t lost in the war, but instead when he came home to a world changed from what he perceived he as fighting for. The wonderfully depressing notion is that unlike in other, more typical Hollywood productions, the worldview of these characters ultimately pans out! Kate loses her man, whom she loved against her better judgment, just as she lost her father, while Dan’s best friend falls victim to the senseless violence of a world gone mad. He and Rocky somehow managed to survive the island-hopping campaign of the Pacific war, only so Rocky could be shot in cold blood by a cheap gangster looking for cheap revenge. While Kate’s response to Rocky’s death is melancholic yet hopeful, Purvis sinks into despair and self-pity. He begins to haunt the nightclub where Garris’ girlfriend Terry Romaine (Gale Robbins) sings, hoping for a lead. When nothing pans out he confronts Terry — so enraged that he beats her when she denies knowledge of Garris’ whereabouts or wanting to be with him.

The notion of the gangster villain in a 1950 noir is interesting. In the legendary Warner Brothers pictures of the depression era, the romanticized gangster-hero was ultimately undone by the society he exploited — he was an aberration against a fundamentally incorruptible and morally superior social system — assuring his demise when that system inevitably became aroused against him. One of the crucial differences between film noir and the gangster film is in its view of the system itself, which noir presents as far more chaotic, cruel in its bureaucracy, and prone to corruption than in products of previous decades. By the 1950s Hollywood’s treatment of the gangster was also somewhat passé, and certainly less romantic. Donald Buka plays Garris as a caricature — a sputtering hood who manhandles his songbird girlfriend and tries to ham-handedly bribe or bulldoze his way out of every tight spot he gets into. His irrational actions are those of a child, and he represents everything in the world than Dan Purvis hates. Yet within the mid-century film noir construct, the power of the system and social justice is diminished. The iconic gangster figure is evolved into a pure sociopath; yet he exists in a system that is unable too stamp him out. When Garris is convicted of murder, his cronies bust him out of prison with laughable ease. He’s then able to exact revenge on Rocky and successfully elude the dragnet until tripped up by his need to possess a woman who no longer wants him — Garris is finally discovered by police running a stakeout of Terry’s apartment.

It’s in this final set piece that Purvis finally has the chance to avenge his friend and set the world in order. But even in this he’s somewhat thwarted — though he’s clearly the better man with his hands or his firearm, fate conspires to muddy the waters of his revenge — and in so doing change the way he sees the world. As Garris attempts to escape the surrounded building, he dangles a child out of a high window as a warning against further police action. Purvis gets permission to quietly enter in an attempt to bring Garris down on his own. When he sees the child safe in a different room he tosses a gas bomb into the apartment and climbs through the window. Inside the smoke-filled apartment Garris gets the drop on Purvis and opens fire, but not before Terry dives in front of Dan, taking the bullets intended for him and saving his life. Dan overtakes Garris in the hall and blasts him. Garris tumbles down the stairs, leaving a bloody, smeared handprint on the wall. Dan leaves the building and finds Kate waiting for him. Dan has a great deal to ponder as he and Kate exit the film arm in arm: has to live knowing that he wasn’t Kate’s choice — that Rocky had to die for him to get the girl. He also bears the burden of redemption, granted to him by a woman he had denigrated and beaten, yet gave her life to save him.

MURDER IS MY BEAT (1955)

Director: Edgar Ulmer
Cinematographer: Harold Wellman
Screenplay: Aubrey Wisberg
Starring: Paul Langton and Barbara Payton.
Released by: Allied Artists
Running time: 77 minutes

If we were going to debate the film noir credibility of Ulmer’s Murder is My Beat the primary question would be whether or not Barbara Payton’s Eden Lane is a proper femme fatale. That seems to be the jazz on this picture. Payton’s character gets mixed up with some shady underworld types trying to perpetrate a blackmail scheme, and next thing she knows the cops are looking at her for a murder. By the time all is said and done and we learn she’s innocent of the snuff, Paul Langton’s Detective Ray Patrick has already pissed his career down the drain in order to keep her out of stir. From one point of view it’s easy to say Murder is My Beat is not a film noir because Eden Lane turns out to be a good girl — that’s an easy, uncomplicated position to take (and plenty have taken it). I’m not so sure though. One of the significant characteristics of the noir milieu is a world that is all at once complicated, uncertain, chaotic, and morally ambiguous. With this in mind is it not then enough to consider Beat a film noir simply because Detective Patrick gives up everything for a girl he thinks might be guilty? Whether Eden is pure evil or merely pure turns out to be irrelevant in this instance — her power isn’t moral, it’s entirely sexual. Detective Patrick doesn’t trip over his own feet to help her because she’s innocent — he just wants to get into her pants. That she turns out to be innocent is for him nothing more than dumb luck — considering the fate film noir protagonists who made similar choices Patrick gets off lucky.

Make no mistake Murder is My Beat is a second-rate picture. Were it not for the presence of an interesting director and an infamous leading lady the film would simply vanish into the haze — there’d be nothing of substance left. Paul Langton’s presence doesn’t help. If ever there were a guy less suited to take the lead in a feature film it’s Langton. Despite a long career as a character actor on a million different forgotten television dramas, Murder is My Beat represents one of Langton’s only starring roles, and he doesn’t make good. A tedious actor with a dead face and zero charisma, Langton comes off like a sack of potatoes in a JC Penney suit, with his best quality being a decent haircut. Harold Wellman’s cinematography is equally unimaginative, though he could blame the film’s miserable budget. In Wellman’s defense many of the second unit shots are pretty good. When given the chance to shoot exteriors in natural light Wellman was able to score. There are some strong period shots of LA, including City Hall; and one twilight exterior in particular that really stood out. There nothing good to mention about the interiors though — which all seem to have been shot with a single harsh light source against washed out, over-exposed backgrounds. Nevertheless, Murder is My Beat is a noir picture sans visual style.

So much has been made of Edgar G. Ulmer’s career, and rightfully so. While Murder is My Beat can’t be held up alongside Ruthless, Detour, or even The Strange Woman, it does offer some explanation of what made him a precious commodity on Poverty Row. Take for instance the train scene, in which Detective Patrick finally gives himself over to keeping Lane out of jail. The entire scene is played out on a single set, with the would-be lovers sitting opposite each other as a rear-projection landscape dances by through the window. The two spend the scene in conversation, but Ulmer uses a clever trick to keep things on the cheap: instead of showing the actors talking, he just as often shows them listening. He most likely shot the scene with two cameras — one for each actor, filming the speaker and the listener at the same time. In the finished movie the scene plays out in an unexpected way: we often see the listener while only hearing the speaker — we see Patrick’s passive face while hearing Lane’s spoken dialogue. The technique allowed Ulmer to correct himself in the cutting room and save quite a lot of time and money. If he didn’t like something about the actor’s expression or delivery, he’d just cut to the other person listening. If necessary he could even change the script and record different dialogue after shooting the scene.

Much has been written about how exploitative and cruel the Hollywood studio system was in its heyday, particularly concerning starlets. Actresses such as Barbara Payton, Gail Russell, and Frances Farmer are used as sad illustrations of beautiful and talented young women devoured by this insatiable machine. While it is true that show business is unkind to those who can’t cope with criticism and rejection (among other things), it’s also quite true that self-destructive people tend to self-destruct regardless of their circumstances — it just makes for better gossip when it happens in Malibu. After all, isn’t it fair to say that steel workers, coal miners, and the American farmer have been exploited almost as thoroughly over the years as Hollywood screen stars? Cheap attempt at sarcasm aside, the Barbara Payton story is certainly a sad one, if not quite on par with Russell’s. Payton turned to alcohol, drugs, and even prostitution after (or, if you like, because) her Hollywood star had fallen. Russell was a depressive who suffered from stage fright and abused substances in order to get up for her roles. Her star peaked all too soon. Murder is My Beat was Payton’s final grasp at the screen. She never had much of a career, and was known primarily for an ill-conceived and violent marriage with A-lister Franchot Tone. By the time she made this picture her M.O. was a shallow riff on Marilyn Monroe. With put-on breathiness in her voice and a puffy face she’s a shadow of the girl who starred opposite Cagney in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye just five years before. It’s clear that she’s working hard, but more telling that Ulmer regularly goes in tighter on the wooden Langton.

In the final analysis Murder is My Beat is one of those movies that is more interesting for the academic questions it poses and for the personalities involved than for anything that happens on-screen. It has its moments — like a grisly murder victim who goes face-first into a fireplace and a picture-snatcher in a dress more outrageously sexual than anything you’ve ever seen in an Eisenhower-era motion picture, but those lurid highlights arrive too early and too close together to carry the picture or capture engage the imagination for long.

THE DELINQUENTS (1957)

Note: Airing November 7 @ 3:15 AM on TCM.

Writer / Director: Robert Altman

Cinematographer: Charles Paddock

Starring: Tom Laughlin, Rosemary Howard, and Peter Miller.

Released by: Imperial Productions

Running time: 72 minutes

Filmed on the cheap in his hometown of Kansas City, Robert Altman’s first full-length feature is Eisenhower-era drive-in fare on the perils drinking, dancing, and “going steady.” The film features a cast of unknowns (and amateurs) balanced with professionals in key parts. The most notable acting presence in The Delinquents is that of Tom Laughlin, Billy Jack of seventies drive-in fame, in his first starring role. Also worth mentioning is Rosemary Howard, who plays Laughlin’s star-crossed girlfriend. I single her out not for her terrible performance (it would be her first and last), but for her uncanny resemblance to later Altman heroines — most notably Shelly Duvall.

I was excited to watch The Delinquents because I wanted to see if I could pin down the “Altman” in it. It’s very curious to look at a film like this knowing that the director (of whom I’m admittedly a little ambivalent) would go on to craft films that couldn’t be philosophically situated further from this one. Would there be any satire? Maybe some tongue-in-cheek? Alas, I was disappointed because the only recognizable characteristic of Altman present here is his promise as a storyteller. Unlike similar independent cheapies, Altman’s story and screenplay are thoughtfully constructed, with the resulting product being surprisingly cohesive and resolved — while remaining bound to conventional narrative construction. While it’s telling to applaud a film for simply making sense from start to finish, that simple accomplishment wasn’t often achieved in the teenage exploitation films of the day. The Delinquents is a ‘teenpix’ genre movie — understandably conventional and derivative, done in earnest, with many of the directorial decisions obviously dictated by such external concerns as budget, location, and talent. That’s not to imply that the film is diminished by the lack of Altman’s mature signature, or that Altman’s later work is betrayed by such a beginning — a mainstream “exploitation” film with conservative underpinnings.

The story features a Romeo and Juliet angle — except instead of doomed young Italians we have a pair so WASPy and all-American that one can practically see the Popsicle sticks shoved up their backsides. Scotty White is a Wally Cleaver-type who is all busted up because cute Janice Wilson’s father won’t let them go steady — she’s only sixteen. Although Scotty is a clean-cut boy from a good family Janice has begun to openly fantasize about someday getting married and starting a family. Both youngsters assure Janice’s parents that their relationship is completely above board and that they haven’t “done anything” yet, but Mr. Wilson nonetheless forbids the two from seeing one another. In a fit of angst, Scotty heads for the drive-in all by himself, where instead of watching the picture he sits behind the wheel with his head in his hands.

As fate would have it, he pulls in beside a gang of kids from the wrong side of Maple. Behind the wheel sits Bill Charters (Peter Miller) with his pal Eddy (Richard Bakalyan) and their bunch of cronies. While Bill’s blonde hair and spot in driver’s seat mark him as the leader of the gang, Eddy is clearly the riff-raff. His pompadour is a smidge more oily and unkempt than the others, and the phallic switchblade that completes his get-up never stays in his pants for long. Bill’s smooth confidence and sense of entitlement makes everyone feel safe and special while Eddy’s frayed and manic presence makes running with this crowd coolly dangerous.

While this bunch appears to have eaten just as many Wonder Bread sandwiches as Scotty, they are bent on drinking, necking, and paying no more attention to the movie than he is. In films like The Delinquents the bad kids can’t sit still for long — they need to have “fun.” The stage is set when Eddy notices some teens in another car parked a few rows away he and Bill recently “beefed” with. Eddy slinks behind their car and pops their back tire before hotfooting it to Bill’s convertible with a crowd giving chase. As he rounds the corner Eddy gets the inspired notion to throw open the door to Scotty’s sedan and crawl through, making it appear as if our boy was the vandal. Scotty is consequently yanked from his car and walloped before Bill, Eddy, and pals make the scene for an all-out rumble. Despite being shell-shocked Scotty comports himself well, which impresses Bill and leads to a quick friendship between the two. Realizing his error, a threatened Eddy begins to mull over the ramifications of this new friendship.

When Bill hears about Scotty’s girl trouble, he offers to pick Janice up for a sham date and deliver her to Scotty. Feeling indebted, Scotty agrees to bring Janice a wild party of Bill’s at an abandoned house. After only a few minutes a shocked Janice begs to leave — the other teens are shaking and shimmying a la Baby and Johnny, and crude Eddy is making her out to be a square — they don’t even have Coca-Cola at this party. She races for the door with Scotty in tow. Shortly afterwards the police crash in, leaving Bill and Eddy thinking Scotty ratted them out.

The next day they waylay Scotty and force him to drink whiskey. Their plan is to get him stinking drunk and then drive him somewhere to be cut up and dumped. At a service station Eddy gets the idea to crack the till while the attendant is busy fueling the car. Things go wrong and Eddy brains the guy with the gasoline nozzle while Scotty staggers away in the confusion. Having let him escape the gang decides to grab Janice to ensure Scotty stays mum on the heist. When Scotty learns of Janice’s abduction he runs wild — and the resulting confrontations are really entertaining. Scotty and Eddy mix it up on the front lawn of Scotty’s house, with Scotty choking out the greaser in a scene that looks a lot like the famous Mel Gibson / Gary Busey pissing contest outside Danny Glover’s place. Scotty finds Bill just before the police do, and its Bill that jerks a knife as they duke it out in a cramped kitchen. Scotty’s one-two outlasts Bill’s switchblade in a surprisingly bloody climax. The picture closes on the steps of the police station, with parents arriving to escort their children home as a narrator cautions against not only the “disease” of delinquency, but also any disobedience to civil and spiritual authority.

99 RIVER STREET (1953)

Director: Phil Karlson

Cinematographer: Franz Planer

Screenplay: Robert Smith

Story: George Zuckerman

Starring: John Payne, Evelyn Keyes, Peggie Castle, and Brad Dexter.

Released by: United Artists

Running time: 82 minutes

“The harder you’re hit, the harder you have to hit.”

Imagine this: you’re a prizefighter in the heavyweight division — a real comer after more than sixty bouts, never once knocked down­ — and you finally get a shot at the greatest crown in sports. Going into the last round up on all cards, you get a deep cut from an accidental bump and the ringside doc declares you the loser. As if that weren’t enough, the state athletic commission bars you for life, claiming that another hard pop could dim your lights. Three years later you pay the rent driving a cab through the five boroughs, and not one of your fares gives you a second glance. Your nag of an ex-showgirl wife has been working too many late nights, and now she’s flashing jewelry that you didn’t buy her. You’re a nobody. A sucker. Just another schmuck in the big apple.

That’s how it is for ex-pug Ernie Driscoll at the beginning of 99 River Street — one of the most hardboiled, brutal, and inexplicably forgotten films of the noir cycle. Self-pity is the deadliest of emotions and it defines Driscoll. There’s a certain kind of guy who, having fought for the heavyweight crown and lost on an accidental cut, would strut through later life like a big shot. He’d hit the bars after his shift to tell fight stories and relive the good old days — jabbing and hooking to the applause of drunks and floozies. John Payne’s Driscoll isn’t that guy. Instead, after coming so close and having it all snatched away, he’s a bitter, brooding, short-tempered hulk who considers his ring years a waste. Yet he’s also like the schoolgirl who’s had her heart broken — not eager to stick his chin out again. So what’s a guy like Ernie Driscoll, stumbling through life in a daze and hating himself for it, choose for a dream? A gas station. Saving up his tips to buy one is an absurd an ambition for a man who recently stood toe to toe with the champ, but even Ernie knows he’ll probably never make it happen. Driscoll is a man who feels sorry for himself and can’t get over it. Payne’s performance sweats with pathos and verisimilitude.

The story is a knockout. Phil Karlson takes a complicated script and delivers a fast-paced and coherent movie that plows ahead with well-drawn, convincing characters. A plot summary would read like an unwieldy mishmash so I’ll omit it — and besides, some of the film’s best moments are meant to surprise. The picture opens with first-rate ring footage where a beefed-out Payne makes like a real fighter. Heads snap from believable punches that the foley artist gives the resounding crash of hammer blows. In one of the film’s numerous, clever directorial nuances, what at first appears to be a live event turns out to be a televised ‘classic fights’ rerun that Ernie is watching on the small set in his flat. Payne is thereby transformed from hero to hangdog with one simple camera movement. Wife Pauline, played by Peggie Castle, turns the set off in a bickering exchange that is pure Dana Andrews and Virginia Mayo: “I’d have been a star if I hadn’t married you,” she says, and he fires back, “You were a showgirl — I could have been champion.” To which she smirks with venom and sarcasm, “Could have been.” Ernie then shuffles off to his cab for a night that will change his life forever. Before the sun rises again he’ll discover the truth about his marriage, and then scramble to steer clear of cops and crooks after Pauline turns up stiff in the back seat of his taxi.

The supporting cast is made up of a broad pastiche of downtown night dwellers — from hoodlums and hustlers to philanderers and insomniacs. Whether through lucky casting or plain good direction each role is strikingly realized. Evelyn Keyes, coffee shop habitué and Broadway wannabe, is Linda, the gal pal who makes a chump out of Ernie (in the film’s slickest and, possibly, most memorable scene) and then has to get square. Fighters and their trainers are never far apart in classic films, so it makes sense that Ernie’s best friend and former corner man is also his dispatcher at the cab company. Frank Faylen (who in a strange bit of movie serendipity played a cab driver named Ernie in It’s A Wonderful Life) is Driscoll’s pal and confidant, though his part is the least colorful in the cast. Brad Dexter plays John Rawlins, the sleazy jewel thief who cuckolds Driscoll. He’s even more memorable here than he was three years earlier as a crooked investigator in Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. Both parts call for the same sort of viperous scumbag, but Dexter is better in this film if for no other reason than his role has more meat. The best support in the film is offered by Jay Adler as Christopher, pet shop owner by day and big time jewelry fence after dark. Adler, with his quiet demeanor and air of almost grandfatherly respectability, makes Christopher into the most coolly terrifying presence in the film. Even amongst such a strong cast Adler is the scene-stealer.

The film’s brutality is plentiful and vividly cinematic. Films of this period often age poorly due to the artificial quality of their violence. Not so here. From the beginning boxing match to the climactic sequence at the titular address, the punches, slaps, gunshots, and crashes are unusually authentic. Blood spreads across cheeks and foreheads with surprising regularity and loving care. The film embraces the spectacular physicality of criminal life, and lingers blithely on those moments. Jack Lambert plays in many of those scenes, his face instantly recognizable as one of the more grotesque hoodlums in film history. Here he’s Mickey, an ambitious young thug who works for Christopher. In once scene, Pauline and Rawlins visit the pet store that serves as Christopher’s front. As they enter Mickey feeds milk to a puppy from a baby’s bottle, but within minutes he’s slapping Pauline to the floor while holding Rawlins at bay with a .38. Later he gives Driscoll the third degree, punctuating each question with a heavy chop, Ernie’s head jarring from one side of the screen to the other. Yet Mickey takes the beating of his life when he discovers, the hard way, that Driscoll was just waiting for an opening. Ernie makes the hoodlum pay for not remembering him as he unloads every ounce of pent up frustration onto poor Mickey’s face — and we get to see every punch. The closing set piece is potent and rewarding, and includes one of the best “deaths by car” in noir history, as well as an operatic climax where cruel fate finally rewards Driscoll: he’s shot, he’s exhausted, and he’s nearly broken, yet he’s given the chance to rise to his feet and answer that bell one final time.

Within the canon of film noir there are numerous fight films — from the famous Body and Soul and The Set-Up to the slightly less well known, yet equally brilliant, Champion with Kirk Douglas. 99 River Street isn’t a boxing film per se, but it is a story concerned with a boxer whose life and sense of self are defined by the events of one fateful night in the ring. In part what makes noir films so wonderful is their oppressive atmosphere of alienation and menace. However that atmosphere needn’t carry beyond the conclusion of the story — the film noir hero can occasionally live happily ever after. The doomed lovers from such archetypical examples as Criss-Cross, Double Indemnity, and Out of the Past don’t survive their respective films, yet despite the extraordinary popularity of those pictures they represent a fairly small percentage of noirs where the protagonist doesn’t end up alive, kicking, and somehow redeemed through his ordeal. For every cocksure Walter Neff who deserves the hand fate deals him there’s an Ernie Driscoll who endures circumstances worthy of Job in order to claim his own fair share of redemption. 99 River Street screams “Look at this sap. Life gave him a kick in the teeth and he deserves better, but brother, he’s gotta pay for it.” Things are grim for Ernie in the beginning and they get worse as the reels unspool, but the same narrative convention that assures us Walter Neff will get his in the end also promises that Driscoll will come out on the other side, and that payoff is what keeps us watching. We ache for slobs like Ernie — we want to see him get clear of his bad luck and find some sort of happiness. Despite its violence, cruelty, and capricious fates, in the end 99 River Street reveals itself to be a film that rewards our hopes.

THE WEB (1947)

Director: Michael Gordon
Cinematographer: Irving Glassberg
Screenplay: William Bowers and Bertram Millhauser.
Story: Harry Kurnitz
Starring: Edmond O’Brien, Ella Raines, Vincent Price and Bill Bendix.
Released by: Universal International
Running time: 87 minutes

Look, Ella Raines is in it. Now go find it and watch it.

That’s not advice — it’s just how I tend to respond when I discover a new Raines picture. There are only about twenty or so out there, and I savor each one of them. While The Phantom Lady has no peer, The Web is a good film with a big role for the elegant brunette. Most of the conversation about The Web tends to swirl around whether or not the movie is actually a film noir. For what it’s worth: it is a film noir, albeit a lesser one, written and filmed in that brief window of time following the war when the fear of nuclear devastation hadn’t yet permeated the American psyche, and the accompanying cynicism hadn’t taken root in film noir. That’s not to suggest that the film is without cynicism — the mere presence of Edmond O’Brien guarantees it. Instead, The Web is a film noir with roots in the conventional mystery film of the previous decade: though it is a noir it never feels hopeless, and it moves doggedly towards a positive outcome. It is different from the more iconic films to follow only in that it occurs earlier in the cycle — a cycle with evolving conventions.

The story is intriguing: Little old man does five years in stir after getting caught selling a million dollars’ worth of forged government bonds. He refuses to talk, knowing that if he does the time his partner will take care of him when he makes parole. Meanwhile, the partner figures it makes more sense to kill him than to pay off, so he sets up a patsy to do the job. After the deed is done the patsy gets wise and sets out to bring the big man down — he’s plagued by guilt and he’s in love with the man’s secretary / girl Friday. In the end though, the patsy and the girl are caught in the downward spiral of cruel luck, unable to save themselves (There’s the noir!) until fate takes a hand and the bumbling killer foolishly incriminates himself.

The slick businessman is Vincent Price, the patsy is Edmond O’Brien, the girl Friday is Ella Raines, and the smug cop investigating them all is William Bendix. Price was born for these sorts of parts, his mannered performance here reminiscent of his work in Laura, though not entirely — replace Shelby Carpenter’s whininess with smooth self-confidence and you’ve got The Web’s Andrew Colby. Price may have even borrowed from another “web” — Clifton Webb, his costar in Laura. One fascinating way in which this can be seen in Price’s character is the suggestion of his homosexuality. Colby spends his days and evenings with Faraday, and although their relationship is more than merely professional, the film does not ever wish us to think that it is romantic, which clearly defies Hollywood convention. In many ways it isn’t dissimilar from the relationship of Waldo Lydecker and Laura Hunt — except that in The Web Colby practically encourages the advances of Regan, demonstrating his lack of romantic feelings for a woman so beautiful that the other men in the film fall over themselves to be near her.

O’Brien is the smug attorney Bob Regan, smugness being one his signature characteristics as an actor. O’Brien’s brand of confidence is usually perceived as arrogant, which is exactly how he is meant to be seen. The comeuppance felt when he realizes he’s been made a sucker of somehow seems all the more real or gratifying to audiences when the joke is on O’Brien. Raines’ beauty was more sophisticated than sexual, and it’s obvious in The Web that her Noel Faraday is a match for any man in the film. Though she plays Colby’s secretary, she’s clearly his right hand and first choice for counsel. The script calls for Regan to come on like a drooling heel when they first meet, though it’s apparent the reason is to show us how deftly Noel fends him off. The script is rich with dialogue, and Raines does a plum job of making the conversations seem believable, even contemporary. The typical film noir “tough talk” is replaced with witty repartee, especially between Regan and Faraday. Even William Bendix gets the intellectual treatment in The Web. His signature physical presence is diminished by his character’s sarcastic and biting remarks — he even wears glasses!

In spite of the good dialog in The Web, the plot suffers from quite a large glitch that strains credibility. Needing the old accountant, Kroner, dead and gone, Colby contrives to have Regan shoot and kill him. His plan will only work if Kroner is shot dead though; if the accountant is only wounded and has the chance to tell his story, Colby knows he’ll be sitting in the hot seat at Rikers Island. Sure, it’s possible to imagine that Colby could get Regan to pull the trigger, but no reasonable man would roll the dice or whether or not the shots would kill or simply wound. Nevertheless that’s how it plays out. The scenario is repeated with a different victim at the film’s climax, when Colby himself guns down an employee who has the power to incriminate him — while framing Regan for the job in order to get him out of the way. In the film’s best use of irony, the police inform Colby that the man is still alive, and he’s finally undone when he sneaks into the wounded man’s room late that night in order to finish the job.

The Web’s production values are middling at best. In film noir it’s crucial for the director of photography to accentuate character emotions and reinforce specific aspects of the narrative with his camera and lighting work. In other words: form follows function, even in film noir. Irving Glassberg, a DP of little reputation, disappoints. He captures Ella Raines well, but his attempts to give The Web a distinctive visual identity fall short, and amount to little more than surface gloss. There are some dark corners and foggy streets, but contrary to what the average movie buff thinks film noir is not defined by a superficial visual style — what separates the great noir films from the not so great are reasons for using that style. What does that dark corner hold? What do the elongated shadows, absurd camera angles, and extreme close-ups suggest? What do they tell us about the hero’s predicament or state of mind? In late 1946 Glassberg didn’t know. The lighting is especially weak, and eventually becomes annoying. All of the scenes, regardless of where they are staged, are photographed with a directly overhead light source, which gives the film a stagey, theatrical quality. Also missing are the exterior shots. There are so many low-budget pictures that are elevated by excellent New York City location photography. This isn’t one of them. The promising opening titles roll against a car’s-eye view of Manhattan streets, but the film fails to follow up, and when it does return to street-level they are the all-too-familiar ones of the studio back lots.

Although The Web never rises above the ordinary as a film noir, it is still an entertaining crime thriller featuring a good script brought to life by an excellent cast.

SUSPENSE (1946)

Belita
Bonita
Director: Frank Tuttle
Cinematographer: Karl Struss
Screenplay: Phillip Yordan
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker, Bonita Granville, and Eugene Pallette.
Released by: Monogram Pictures
Running time: 101 minutes

On the one hand, if you are going to call your movie Suspense, try to make sure you’ve got some. On the other, unless you can imagine someone walking up to the box office and asking for a pair of tickets to “Turgid Potboiler,” Suspense ain’t so bad.

There are about a dozen plot formulae that account for at least half of the movies ever made. It might be fun to figure them all out at some point, but suffice to say that Suspense implements one of the doozies: Down-on-his-luck guy breezes into town and finds a chump job. Through some stroke of genius (or luck) he quickly becomes the boss’s right hand man. Guess what? The boss has a honey of a wife, and she and the new boy light a fire together. The boss feels the heat and all of a sudden him and his right hand aren’t so friendly anymore — and the dame is stuck in the middle. Something’s gotta give and someone’s gotta go — the hard way. Sound familiar? This story has been played out in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda, The Strip, and a million more dating all the way back to Josef von Sternberg’s iconic Underworld. The trick to using such an old saw effectively is to sharpen it up somehow — in the case of Suspense screenwriter Phillip Yordan put the production on ice — literally.

Maria Belita Jepson-Turner, known in film just by the exotic moniker Belita, was only twelve when she skated for Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, ironically finishing well back of Norwegian gold medalist Sonja Henie. With a face and figure that movie cameras took to well enough, Belita skated after Henie to California to make it in the picture business. While Henie landed at Fox, Belita ended up at Monogram. The studio, which would eventually become Allied Artists, was home of the Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong, The Shadow, Joe Palooka, and Cisco Kid franchises, was one of the better B factories. Monogram had scored a huge hit in 1945 with Lawrence Tierney in Dillinger (The bosses at Monogram knew you just can’t beat a well-made gangster picture — following Suspense, they would reteam Belita, sans skates, with Barry Sullivan in — you guessed it — The Gangster.) In an attempt to achieve “A” status for the studio, the profits from Dillinger were pumped into Suspense, the only truly big-budget picture to bear the Monogram trademark. Both Suspense and The Gangster did fair box office, though not enough to elevate either Monogram’s status as a studio or Belita’s as a star. She made a picture a year in the forties, and appeared in a few more in the fifties, then retreated to life on the road as a professional figure skater.

Look, Suspense isn’t a very good picture, but that’s not to suggest it isn’t still interesting. What makes it so is its absurdity. The banal roadhouse in Postman becomes a neon nightspot with an ice show in Suspense. In lieu of incandescent sweater girls like Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth who can command an audience while standing still, Belita is forced to skate about and soar through sword-encrusted hoops in sequined outfits. The movie is punctuated every fifteen minutes or so with either a musical number or ballet on ice, and the affect on contemporary viewers is one of wonder — as in ‘Did they really have clubs with ice shows in the forties?’ In a sense that’s beside the point as the film was made in order to cash in on Sonja Henie’s success and possibly grab some of her audience for Belita and Monogram. The movie is remembered today for its status as a film noir, but at the time of its theatrical run it was first and foremost an ice skating picture. That’s appropriate because the skating numbers play with much more verve than the story. Phillip Yordan’s screenplays in the mid-forties were pulp, but fairly derivative — he still had a way to go before penning The Big Combo. Yet with Yordan's story and Frank Tuttle assigned to direct a film noir was inevitable. The reason Tuttle wasn’t able to rise to the level of This Gun for Hire wasn’t his budget, or even the talent involved, but the difference between the Yordan and Graham Greene source material. Yordan’s dialog isn’t very good, the screenplay borders on obnoxious, and it’s full of contrivances that add at least 20 minutes of unnecessary prattle to the film. Worst of all, the darn thing doesn’t generate a lick of the promised titular suspense.

Still, the movie has its saving graces. Bonita Granville is one of them. The star of the late-thirties Nancy Drew franchise did a fair impersonation of Dick Powell and reinvented herself as a tough broad in the 1940s. In Suspense she plays the Barry Sullivan’s jilted lover from Chicago. She makes a delectable woman scorned and pumps a ton of life into Suspense — if only she could skate. Also of note is Eugene Pallette, in his final film. Pallette was a fixture in classic movies, and one of those guys with an unfamiliar name but instantly recognizable face — and voice. Most will recognize him as Henry Fonda’s pop in The Lady Eve. Here he plays the sort of character who serves as a bridge between the two male leads. He’s older, and consequently non-threatening to either man — a confidant to Albert Dekker’s man in charge and a mentor to Sullivan’s boy on the make. Pallette’s presence has the same affect of someone like William Bendix — the film feels a lot more comfortable with him in it. Also of note is the cinematography. If I’m putting a beating on this film, noir purists will still want to see it for it for Karl Struss’s camera work. Suspense is really Struss’s only film noir, which is a shame. This is the guy who won the first Academy Award for shooting Sunrise, and went on to DP The Great Dictator and Limelight for Charlie Chaplin. Suspense has overwhelmingly dark look, more shadow than light, yet still seems bright and sharp because of the incredibly high contrast. Struss likes to put the camera up high and establish a focal point for each scene, with the action often taking place in the middle ground instead of up close. One could say his set-ups and style are reminiscent of John Alton, but Kruss probably got there first.

Suspense is a film that leaves you wanting: wanting a more original story and better dialog, wanting more Bonita Granville, and wanting more Karl Struss. But it doesn’t leave you wondering what’s gonna happen — you’ll figure that out in the first ten minutes.

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS (1948)

Director: Norman Foster
Cinematographer: Russell Metty
Writers: Bercovici (story), Bernstein (adaptation), Butler (novel), Gray (dialog), and Maddow (adaptation). (Yikes!)
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine, and Robert Newton.
Released by: Universal Pictures
Running time: 80 minutes

With such an evocative title, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands stood out like a beacon on my list of film noirs yet to be seen. With A-list superstars like Burt Lancaster and Joan Fontaine involved, and considering the film’s noir status, I figured that it was locked up for some legal reason and would never be available for viewing. Thanks to the magic of bootlegs I have now seen it, and although the title turned out to be a bit of a reach in the hardboiled department, the movie isn’t. My DVD copy (quite good) is a recording from American Movie Classics, circa 1990 — you know, back when it was a real network. The showing must have been prime time, because the recording included Bob Dorian’s introduction to the film, as well as fifteen minutes of network promos at the end of the picture, before launching into the first few moments of “The Flame and the Arrow” with Burt and Virginia Mayo. Those were the days. I remember at the time that TCM took a backseat to AMC, and that many cable providers didn’t offer TCM as part of their basic package, while AMC reigned supreme. Being that I didn’t have access to Turner in those days, I was a slave to AMC and its two popular hosts: Bob Dorian and Nick Clooney. All of the promos, long since forgotten, came back to me in a rush. The biggest shame of the demise of AMC has been the lack of access to their classic movies, though recent chatter has it that TCM has finally secured access to the Paramount stuff. We’ll see.

In Dorian’s introduction to Kiss the Blood Off My Hands he mentions that the film was made by Norma Productions, formed in 1948 by Burt and his agent, Harold Hecht, because Burt was nervous about being typecast in those beefcake parts he was quickly becoming known for. Norma’s first film was Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, and in order to make it Burt turned down the lead in a new Elia Kazan production that both the young director and Tennessee Williams thought he was the ideal actor for: A Streetcar Named Desire. With Lancaster not available, the part went to a newcomer named Marlon Brando. There are a million of those stories out there where an actor or actress famously turns down a landmark role (ironically, half of them involve a Brando picture), but this one resonates with me — what a picture Streetcar would have been with Burt in angst on his knees under that streetlamp. While it’s fun to play what-if, things for Burt, just like for Rod Steiger who turned down the role of Vito Corleone, would turn out just fine. Norma productions would account for only five pictures, though that small number includes The Sweet Smell of Success, The Bachelor Party, and Birdman of Alcatraz.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands turned out to be a pleasant surprise. After reading the capsule in the Maltin Classic Film Guide (again I’m not certain anyone associated with that book has seen the picture), and considering that the film’s setting is London and that the female lead is Joan Fontaine, I was skeptical as to whether it would live up to it’s salacious title. It’s not that Joan Fontaine wasn’t an actress of extraordinary gifts, but c’mon, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands? The film screams noir from the opening beats, as Burt, having accidentally killed a bartender in a scuffle, leads the Bobbies on a ten-minute foot chase through the shadowy London waterfront. He only escapes by climbing through an open window and clamping down on the woman he finds inside — a mousy blonde woken suddenly from a restless sleep, guess who? The sequence plays without much dialog, and Russell Metty’s cinematography carries all the weight. Close-ups of a sweaty and terrified Lancaster abound. as well as handhelds, wonderful shadowy compositions, high angles, low angles, and waterfront topography make for such a strong noir motif that I’m surprised the film doesn’t have a cult following.

One scene doesn’t make a film noir, at least not in my book, but Kiss the Blood Off My Hands still rates. Though dappled with shadows and light, the film never quite recaptures the visual fireworks of its first ten minutes, maybe with the exception of a great scene in the rain where Burt dukes it out with some London riff-raff, and another where he mugs some elderly pubcrawler. Instead, its primary noir statement is made through the charaterization of Lancaster’s Bill Saunders. Having endured much of the war in a Nazi POW camp, and with no family to return to in the wake of his experiences, Saunders wanders aimlessly through a rebuilding London — it shouldn’t be lost on viewers that the movie opens with him hunched over a pint, half-drunk in a seedy waterfront gin joint. Saunders is more than just alienated, he is truly a man apart, and precariously close to coming unglued. Though the death of the bartender is accidental, and Saunders didn’t start the fight, he bears some responsibility for the man’s death. What’s telling isn’t the ferocity with which Saunders fights, but how he reacts when things don’t go his way. Time and again throughout the picture, when confronted with a difficult choice Bill chooses to put his head down, flail until he’s the last man standing, then cut and run. A heated exchange with Jane at the film’s climax cements the film’s noir credibility, “ You mean you can say it was self-defense and get it off. But if I go back I won’t get off — I’ll be sticking my head in a rope……listen, nobody gives anybody a break, not me anyway. It’s been run, run, run all the time — run from my old man, run from the kid I hurt in school. That’s why I didn’t mind the army — when you hit you didn’t have to run. Everybody’s against you, everybody!” No actor of the classic noir period could project a sense of impending doom like Burt Lancaster, and no actress wore empathy on her face like Joan Fontaine. It’s this damaged quality that draws Fontaine’s Jane Wharton to Saunders, and what keeps her coming back after she sees him run roughshod over those that have it coming, and even a few that don’t. It’s her enduring affection coupled with the mildly cliché need to save someone that eventually pulls Saunders away from the abyss — especially when he finds her waiting for him after he does a six-month stretch for punching a police officer.

In the noir tradition, Foster employs setting to visually reinforce his players’ emotional states. In an important scene early in their relationship, Bill and Jane meet at the zoo, where the caged lions and gorillas only serve to remind Bill of his own past imprisonment, as well as his potential for future incarceration. Lancaster plays it well, at first joining in with the school children who “ape the apes,” before realizing how much more shared experience he has with those creatures on the other side of the bars. Another interesting moment happens when Bill goes to prison. In addition to his stretch at hard labor, the judge also demands a flogging — yes, a flogging — eighteen lashes with a cat ‘o nine tails! The scene is brings to mind the inquisition, or something from Billy Budd, as Lancaster, bound by hands, feet, and neck to a torture device, is whipped mercilessly, while a pin-striped bureaucrat at a desk ticks off strokes. Another strong element is the presence of Robert Newton in a featured supporting role. Newton should be familiar to most film fans as either Bill Sykes in David Lean’s exquisite Oliver Twist, or as Long John Silver in Walt Disney’s Treasure Island. Here he plays a sleazy confidence man who witnesses Bill’s accidental killing at the beginning of the film, and holds it over him for the duration. His character at first appears to be nothing more than an amiable trickster — the kind of rascal who does nothing worse than claiming goods that have “fallen off the back of a lorry.” Yet when the stakes are at their highest at the end of the picture, he’s transformed into a grotesque, desperate ogre, and his welcomed fate foreshadows that of Anthony Dawson in Dial M for Murder.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is a fine film noir — beautifully photographed, well acted, and assembled with great skill. With everything it has going for it I hope it becomes available on DVD in the United States soon. I can’t imagine that most noir fans wouldn’t join the queue to purchase a disc, and maybe even a tin of biscuits.