Missing In The Dark

Five film noir classics that need and deserve a DVD release.

For as many great film noirs have received an American DVD release over the last decade – a list that easily runs dozens of titles long – some of the better or more curious examples of the form have yet to see publication. Most of these elusive titles are not famous, and in fact many of them possibly remain obscure even among film noir aficionados. Yet, despite and nevertheless, they’re both eminently entertaining in their own right and dependable – if not superlative – representatives of the genre.

We consider the following five films to be fascinating noir showpieces that have become eclipsed, somewhat, by the fame of their better-known (and, admittedly, better-made) contemporaries. They’re generally less well-known than such genre watersheds such as Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, nor as critically embraced as, say, Night and The City or Pickup On South Street. But they are fascinating works and successful realizations of noir’s haunting potential and ambience all the same, well worth viewing as they make fleeting appearances on the various cable networks. Sooner or later, hopefully, they’ll take their DVD bow.

1. He Ran All The Way (1951) – After accidentally killing a policeman, desperate small time crook Nick Robey (John Garfield) uses the family apartment of lonely spinster Peggy Dobbs (Shelley Winters) to hide out while the ensuing citywide dragnet cools down. Peggy’s father (Wallace Ford) is leery from the first, but Robey’s charisma and intimidation combine to keep him tenuously, marginally safe, thanks in no small part to the dark fascination he has for Peggy.

Terrified and defiant at the same time, Robey is a loser who’s made a shambles of his life, smart enough to realize it but lacking the moral courage to do anything about it – the prototypical noir anti-hero and fertile ground for Garfield’s electric screen presence.

Providing an eerie poignancy to Robey’s desperation, the role turned out to be Garfield’s last. He suffered a fatal heart attack less than a year later.

2. Cry of the City (1948) – An almost archetypal urban gloom fills Robert Siodmak’s downbeat, melancholy thriller. Smooth criminal Martin Rome (Conte) killed a police officer during a getaway but was wounded himself; escaping custody and attempting to secure a flight for himself and his girlfriend (Deborah Paget), he’s pursued by Lt. Candella (Mature), a childhood acquaintance from the same Italian ghetto. Candella works to find Rome while, in scenes contrasting the city’s menace, attends to Rome’s family with an almost tender deference.

At the time of its release the film won praise for its bleak, uncompromising depiction of urban poverty and the wide array of disreputable personalities living in the city’s edges. Though less revered than Siodmak’s other noir entries (The Killers, Criss Cross), its pervading sense of desperation and, as author Colin McArthur points out, the “almost metaphysical hatred” with which Candella pursues Rome make the film completely riveting viewing.

Conte would team with Jules Dassin for the masterful Thieves Highway as his next release, while this film won Mature the critical praise that had eluded him for his previous turn in Kiss of Death.

3. Union Station (1950) – When a secretary (Nancy Olson) believes two fellow passengers aboard a California commuter train are involved in criminal activity, she enlists the help of Los Angeles’ Union Station police lieutenant (William Holden) to locate them. The men have kidnapped the blind daughter of the secretary’s wealthy boss, and with help from a wily city detective (Barry Fitzgerald) the police race to locate the missing girl, using whatever means necessary to secure her safety and punish the kidnappers.

Director Rudolph Mate (D.O.A.) uses the spacious, labyrinthine corridors and atria of the famous train depot to underscore a sense of frenzied movement and steely momentum. The police, far from the guileless upholders of law and order typical of 50s police fare, approach their work with the same ruthless tenacity as the criminals. Critics have suggested the film played an influence on later, more cynical noir artists, including perhaps most notably James Ellroy. It’s not hard to see why, especially in the similarities that Fitzgerald’s outwardly kindly, pragmatically ruthless Inspector Donnelly share with Ellroy’s Captain Dudley Smith.

4. The Blue Dahlia (1946) – Exemplifying noir’s recurrent theme of post-war disillusion with American society and the veterans who were left to fend for themselves, Raymond Chandler’s original screenplay depicts a returning bomber pilot (Alan Ladd) attempting to solver the murder of his philandering wife (Doris Dowling.) Teaming with her boyfriend’s estranged wife (Veronica Lake) and his two crew mates (William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont), he tries to track down the gangster that may be responsible.

Chandler’s trademark blend of weary romanticism and brittle cynicism translate well to the big screen, though George Marshall’s (Destry Rides Again) direction is straightforward almost to a fault. Ladd is perhaps a bit too laconic to really inhabit the complexities of his character, while Lake is gorgeous and fetching as always. The truly weighty performance, however, belongs to character heavyweight Bendix. He gives his brain-damaged attack dog of a veteran equal parts sorrow, rage, and confusion.

Of all the films on this list, we understand this film’s absence from DVD shelves the least. It’s received at least one release overseas, and the far less-satisfying Ladd-Lake collaboration This Gun For Hire has been available in the United States for years.

5. The Naked Alibi (1954) – A B-movie in probably every sense of the term, this lean and gritty suspenser casts Gene Barry as Al Willis, an ostensibly upright (if hard-drinking) citizen hiding a dangerous secret. After the cops who roughed him up are killed, he’s perused to a seamy border town by the police chief (Sterling Hayden) who holds him responsible. Once free of his familiar setting, Willis’ psychotically violent true personality emerges, and he’s reunited with his torch singer girlfriend Marianne, played with almost preternatural sexiness by noir siren Gloria Grahame. The climactic rooftop pursuit is edge of the seat cool and intense at the same time, even if for some its plot details too closely resemble those of fellow Grahame showcase The Big Heat.

For the film’s nightclub performance pieces, director Jerry Hopper (The Atomic City) wisely allows the notoriously self-conscious Grahame to lip synch, evading the same pitfall that so harshly damaged her career after Oklahoma!, released the following year.

If you know of any online petitions to get these or other films published, pass it along and we’ll be sure and post them here on the blog. In the meantime, we’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Summer Vacation and Our Recent Best

Enjoy our best features as we enjoy our vacation.

Vacation time again.

It’s July. The sun is shining and the weather’s nice. Screaming Blue Reviews is suspending publication this week to get out and enjoy some time off but also to get caught up on our movie watching. We’ve got a full DVR and several new indies to check out, so our work is cut out already.

While we’re having fun, we suggest you check out some of these other reviews and features we’ve published over the last few months. We hope you like them. Join us when we return Monday, July 20 with our review of this summer’s brainy science fiction spectacle Moon. 

1. We love gangster movies for a lot of reasons, not least of which is their amazing resonance with the times surrounding them. Our Road To Gangsterland feature looks back at eight decades of gangster films, including video clips from some of the best of each era. And for what it’s worth, each film discussed is better than Public Enemies, this summer’s 800lb monster of disappointment.

2. Film Noir is both the gangster movie’s successor and perennial accomplice. Summer, with its steamy heat and oppressive atmospheres, is the perfect climate to take a walk down the genre’s long and seductive side streets. Last summer we talked about five movies to make a good film noir festival, films that merit a place in any film collector’s library but provide an excellent treat for fans of the genre’s bleak worldview and sumptuous textures. There’s a video clip of the notorious scene from Kiss of Death, too, which must be viewed to be believed.

3. If crime and criminals aren’t your thing, consider the careers of seven leading men and seven leading women we think are due for major comebacks. They’re talented performers who’ve made some pretty amazing films, and to a person their presences are missed. Happy to say, but at least two of the actors – a man and a woman – mentioned on the lists have independent films circulating this summer. We hope that’s the start of a trend.

4. With so many comic book movies in the pipeline right now and so much casting news and rumors making Internet headlines, check out this list of seven lesser known comics-to-film adaptations. Some had potential, some never had a chance, some were just… weird. Marvel Comics’ stalwart Captain America has had so many big- and small-screen misfires that he rated a film retrospective all his own.

5. Reading books makes us feel smart, but we’d rather be watching movies – it takes less time and there’s usually some kind of candy. Still, we recently made a list of five books with the potential to become great movies, including ideal casts and directors to do the novels profiled justice. There’s been a surprising amount of feedback on this piece – a surprisingly low amount. Does no one else armchair produce their favorite books into blockbuster films?

6. We also enjoy crap, with our without ironic detachment. Last Thanksgiving we ran a fun piece – we can’t quite call it an expose – on all the cheap knockoffs of American film franchises to come from the nation of Turkey. Some of the video clips will very probably blow y0ur mind. Also, we grew up in the 1990s (the golden age of ironic detachment), and our piece about eight of the worst films from the decade’s first half brought back a lot of memories we were content to leave dormant. We’re also embarrassed by how many we actually saw in the theatre. Be advised each of the cinematic train wrecks profiled comes accompanied with a video clip as proof of its dubious quality.

7. Finally, every now and then we talk about a film we want to encourage people to see, either because it’s under-appreciated or has gotten somewhat obscured by the passage of time. A few are box office turkeys we think got a bad deal from their marketing or public reception. These films include the 1973 realist drama Save The Tiger with Jack Lemmon, 2006′s David Fincher-directed Zodiac, and several more we present together . We’ve also got a list of films that deserve a DVD release but haven’t gotten one yet. Life is too short to watch bad movies, and we sometimes suspect that good movies are made every day. The hard part is finding them to watch.

See you next week.

- Michael Kabel

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John Garfield, Hollywood’s First Modern Leading Man

Five films from an underrated screen legend

John Garfield made over thirty films in his two-decade career, including some of the best of the film noir genre. Film historians remember him as much for his unflinching resistance to McCarthyism as his body of work, while his films’ subject matter was some of the raciest of its time - and the most complex. Nevertheless, his legacy remains largely unappreciated by the modern filmgoing public.

Garfield was a movie star almost from his first role in 1938′s Four Daughters, but a frenzied string of performances beginning after World War II and continuing until his death in 1952 show him crafting a fierce, often abrasive screen persona that never feels entitled to sympathy – in fact, his characters often insist on earning viewer loyalty. His willingness to take such risks influenced some of the most acclaimed actors of two subsequent generations, including Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and especially Jack Nicholson.

Unfortunately not all of his best films are available on DVD, though efforts by the Film Noir Foundation and Martin Scorcese have helped bring his work to modern audiences. The five films below represent some of his best work – though by no means all.

Force of Evil (1948 ) – Ostensibly a straightforward B-movie about the mob’s plans to rig an illegal lottery, under director Abraham Polonsky the plot gives way to a character study driven by Garfield’s ruggedly nuanced turn as a syndicate lawyer caught between his own ambition and concern for his hapless brother. The ending, in which Garfield descends various levels of Manhattan cityscape, is impressionist allegory at its best. Ubiquitous 40s character actor Thomas Gomez and screen siren Marie Windsor – arguably the archetypal female face of film noir – round out the cast. 

Pride of the Marines (1945) – Based on the true story of Al Schmid, a Philadelphia steelworker who won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Guadalcanal but lost his eyesight, Garfield observed the real-life Schmid for weeks researching the part. The film’s not afraid to show Schmid’s shortcomings, including a nasty reunion with his ersatz family after the war. Terse and sometimes proudly didactic, it’s a courageous film that bluntly addresses important postwar issues at an Everyman level without seeming condescending – probably the rarest trick in Hollywood.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) – Another deceptively smart twister, this thriller about illicit lovers conspiring to kill the woman’s husband was based on a potboiler by the then-wildly popular author James M. Cain. Yet it’s the smoldering obsession that Garfield’s doomed drifter carries for Lana Turner’s bored housewife, and their earthy, rich chemistry, that make the film unforgettable. The serpentine twists and plot reversals grind into the viewer’s memory, even as the ending becomes inevitable. And it’s not pretty.

Body & Soul (1947) – If you’ve ever seen a film about boxing, or sports betting – or both – this film inspired, influenced, or predated it in some way. Garfield plays Charlie Davis, the boxing champ spoiled by success and then determined to find redemption. Scorcese borrowed liberally from its plot and camera techniques when making Raging Bull – and freely admits to doing so. Nowadays, the film is so archetypal that the dialogue almost seems trite:

 

He Ran All The Way (1951) – Garfield’s last film before his fatal heart attack casts him as a troubled hoodlum hiding out in the home of a lonely spinster (Shelley Winters) he meets after fleeing a botched payroll robbery. Adapted to the screen by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, the airtight plot spins on Garfield’s barely-restrained physical energy and the increasing desperation of the girl and her family. In fact, Garfield made it while defying the era’s Communist witch hunts himself, a charge for which exoneration wouldn’t come until after his death. A small, taut film that rises or falls on performance rather than plot contrivance or atmosphere, it’s a fitting conclusion to the career of an actor brave enough to risk everything – both onscreen and off.

-Michael Kabel

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