A young psychopath with an Electra complex tries to murder her step-mother
(1952 RKO Directed by Otto Preminger 91 mins)

Angel Face is a dark and occasionally chilling gothic melodrama with Jean Simmons effectively cast against type as an ‘enfant-terrible’, and Robert Mitchum as her hapless object of desire and manipulation.  While well-made and with high production values, the film moves too slowly and Mitchum’s trademark laconic persona is a further drag on the action.  The final denouement though half-expected is still a shocker.  But on balance, Preminger’s sardonic detachment, which usually finds favor with film critics, makes the film look and feel one-dimensional.

An interesting costuming twist telegraphs the repression of forbidden sexual desire on the day a fatal plot is executed: the protagonist contrary to her usually modestly feminine attire on this day sports a very tight sweater and a waist-hugging belt.

The Director’s cut of Dark City (1998) has been released on DVD this week.  A sci-fi noir from director Alex Proyas, it explores the nature of consciousness and memory in a classic stylised noir city, which is the closest a contemporay color movie has ever come to evoking the look of a 40’s film noir.

It is a visually stunning and enigmatic dream-scape where true identity doesn’t exist, but is the construct of a biochemist in the employ of dark soul-less aliens, who inhabit cadavers, collectively employed in attempting to stave off extinction by reconstructing physical reality and manipulating the brain’s chemistry.  The noir motif of an amnesiac protagonist on the run after he is implicated in the serial killing of b-girls is the arc on which the story is woven.  It is an amalgam of Al Hartley’s Amateur (1994), which preceded it, and The Matrix (1999), of the following year: a brave new world with a ghost in the machine…

References:
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Ghost in the Machine - Arthur Koestler

A reformed hood, who turns state evidence to get parole to care for his kids after his wife’s suicide, is a marked man (Fox 1947 Directed by Henry Hathaway 98 mins)

Kiss of Death is usually remembered for the debut performance of Richard Widmark as the giggling psychotic hit-man Tommy Udo and his brutal murder of a hood’s wheelchair-bound mother. But it is a strong performance by Victor Mature as the squealer, Nick Bianco, out to save his family, that holds the film together. An unaffected Coleen Gray is engaging as the love interest Nettie.  Brian Donlevy gives his usual straight-up delivery as the Assistant DA who offers Bianco a get out of jail free card.

The action is tautly directed and is set mostly on the actual streets of New York, where the innocent streets of suburbia in the afternoon are a counterpoint to the dark sordid streets of the city at night. The only weakness is a redundant and banal voice-over commentary on the action by Nettie, which is also at odds with the noir theme that redemption costs. The climatic resolution is nicely nuanced and well-paced, as is the claustrophobic tension of the perps sweating out a slow elevator ride down from the 27th floor of an office building after a jewellery heist. The family scenes of Bianco with his daughters and Nettie are beautifully played and deeply moving, without resort to sentimentality.

In the 1940’s the Breen Office rejected initial scripts (amongst many other films) for The Maltese Falcon (1941), Laura (1944), and Murder, My Sweet (aka Farewell, My Lovely 1944):

The Maltese Falcon… required the… following revisions: Joel Cairo should not be characterized as a ‘pansy type’; the ’suggestion of illicit sex between Spade and Brigid’ should be eliminated; there should be less drinking; there should be no physical contact between Iva and Spade ‘other than that of decent sympathy’; Gutman should say ‘By Gad!’ less often; and ‘Spade’s speech about District Attorneys should be rewritten to get away from characterizing [them] as men who will do anything to further their careers.’ A similar pattern of objections can be seen in the Breen Office reports on other celebrated films noirs. A… review of Laura insisted that Waldo Lydecker must be portrayed as a ‘wit and debonair man-about-town’ and that ‘there can never be any suggestion that [he] and Laura have been more than friends’; meanwhile, scenes of police brutality had to be downplayed, along with the drinking at Laura’s apartment… [A] report on Farewell, My Lovely informed the producers that ‘there must, of course, be nothing of the ‘pansy’ characterization about Marriott’; by the same token, Mr. Grayle could not ‘escape punishment’ by committing suicide, and the scenes of pistol-whipping, drinking, and illicit sex would have to be reduced or treated indirectly.

- James Naremore, More Than Night - Film Noir In Its Contexts (UCLA Press 1998)

In his last role, Humphrey Bogart, as an aging down-on-his-luck sportswriter, is drafted into fronting for a mob-controlled boxer. ( Dir. Mark Robson 109 mins)

After a stunning opening which tracks a series of cars heading to a New York boxing studio, The Harder They Fall, lapses into a visually mediocre boxing movie.  Strong performances from a haggard Bogart, who died not long after completing the picture,  and Rod Steiger as the mobster, keep the interest up, but overall the picture is flat and unmoving.

Bogart’s redemption comes too late and reluctantly, and seems shallow after the avoidable death of a punch-drunk boxer in which he is complicit.

What is interesting is the inclusion of fight fans in the denunciation of the “sport”. Bogart tells the boxer Toro when trying to persuade him to throw his championship fight to avoid getting hurt:

“What do you care what a bunch of bloodthirsty, screaming people think of you?  Did you ever get a look at their faces? They pay a few lousy bucks hoping to see a man get killed. To hell with them! Think of yourself. Get your money and get out of this rotten business.”

Another cynical touch is the scene where the mob “accountant” insists on itemising the “deductibles” from the million dollar take on the fight leaving the hapless boxer with $49.07 after “overheads”.

Factual Note: The interview on skid-row of real-life ex-boxer, Joe Greb, was not scripted or rehearsed.

The wife of a man who goes into hiding after witnessing a gangland killing, tries to track him down before the killer does (Fidelity Pictures 1950 Directed by Norman Foster 77 mins)

A great b-thriller from Foster, who had a (disputed) role in the making of Orson Welles’ Journey Into Fear (1943)  and directed Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948).  The  picture moves apace on the streets, tenements, dives, and wharfs of San Fransisco, with a novel climax at a beach-side amusement park.  A nice twist half-way through the movie ramps up the tension to the finale on and around a roller-coaster. Anne Sheridan is great in a role that moves from an indifferent wife in a failing marriage through a street-wise dame with a razor wit to the hysterical woman back in love desperately trying to save her husband’s life. The supporting b-cast performs well by playing stock characters with some considerable vitality and depth.

The movie’s noir credentials come not only from low-key lighting and sharply angled night shots, but from an intelligent screenplay that explores the ennui of a disintegrating marraige and its revival after the protagonists learn more about each other from other people than they can have imagined.   The savage murder of an innocent young cabaret dancer that gets in the way of the killer desperately trying to hide his identity, is off-screen,  but poignantly handled to add a tragic undertone to the story.

A truly engaging film.

“A knockout on all levels. In what’s probably the greatest performance of his career, John Garfield portrays Charlie Davis, a Jewish prizefighter who quickly rises to the top of the heap, only to fall hard and fast. Robert Rossen’s direction is superb, and the marvelous photography of James Wong Howe and the Oscar-winning editing by Robert Parrish set a whole new standard for fight pictures.”

- TV Guide

“With its mean streets and gritty performances, its ringside corruption and low-life integrity, Body and Soul looks like a formula ’40s boxing movie: the story of a (Jewish) East Side kid who makes good in the ring, forsakes his love for a nightclub floozie, and comes up against the Mob and his own conscience when he has to take a dive. But the single word which dominates the script is ‘money’, and it soon emerges that this is a socialist morality on Capital and the Little Man - not surprising, given the collaboration of Rossen, Polonsky (script) and Garfield, all of whom tangled with the HUAC anti-Communist hearings (Polonsky was blacklisted as a result). A curious mixture: European intelligence in an American frame, social criticism disguised as noir anxiety (the whole film is cast as one long pre-fight flashback).”

- Time Out

“It is Canada Lee, however, who brings to focus the horrible pathos of the cruelly exploited prizefighter. As a Negro ex-champ who is meanly shoved aside, until one night he finally goes berserk and dies slugging in a deserted ring, he shows through great dignity and reticence the full measure of his inarticulate scorn for the greed of shrewder men who have enslaved him, sapped his strength and then tossed him out to die. The inclusion of this portrait is one of the finer things about this film.”

- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, November 10, 1947

Body and Soul is one of the great movies of the 40’s.  The powerful screenplay by Abraham Polonsky is brought to the screen with an authority and beauty that is still breathtaking. From the editing to the photography and direction, the film is a work of art.  Throughout the picture, from the opening scene of the empty boxing ring and the fluid use of flashback and dreaming to the sensational fight climax, there is an assured elegance and, most profoundly, a freedom of expression that is rarely matched.  (The film was made by Garfield’s independent Enterprise Pictures.  Sadly, after one more great noir film, Force of Evil (1948), where the numbers racket came under the spotlight, and starring John Garfield with  the screenplay and direction by Polonksy, the company folded.)

The essential quality of Body and Soul is integrity: a masterwork by craftsmen committed not only to their craft but to film as social critique.  On one level the picture is a brilliant melodrama and expose of the fight game, and on another level a savage indictment of money capitalism where the individual has only commodity value, and the artisan and worker is owned body and soul by the capitalist. The boss and the laborer, even the crooked fight promoter and the boxer, are in antagonistic relations of production dictated by the market. When Charlie Davis in an heroic act of rebellion, in finally refusing to throw his last fight, breaks the chains of greed that bound him to a venal, shallow and alienated existence, his action is a subversive challenge not only to the crooked capitalist but to the false imperative that dictates he should act only in his material self-interest. By rejecting this false consciousness he not only exposes himself to retribution but to penury.  In the final words in the movie, spoken by Garfield to the promoter, he throws down the revolutionary gauntlet in an ironic play on the words “everybody dies” used by the promoter in an earlier scene when he writes off the life of the black boxer Ben:

Charlie: Get yourself a new boy. I retire.
Roberts: What makes you think you can get away with this?
Davis: What are you gonna do? Kill me? Everybody dies.

The final sad irony is the destruction of the careers of Polonsky and Garfield, and Canada Lee, who plays the black boxer Ben, by the HUAC which-hunt only a few years later.  Garfield died prematurely in 1952 at the age of 39 as the HUAC blacklist finally took its toll on his ailing health.

Ain’t Talkin’
Words and Music by Bob Dylan (2006)

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden
The wounded flowers were dangling from the vines
I was passing by yon cool and crystal fountain
Someone hit me from behind

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Through this weary world of woe
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
No one on earth would ever know

They say prayer has the power to help
So pray for me mother
In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell
I’m trying to love my neighbor and do good unto others
But oh, mother, things ain’t going well

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
I’ll burn that bridge before you can cross
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
There’ll be no mercy for you once you’ve lost

Now I’m all worn down by weepin’
My eyes are filled with tears, my lips are dry
If I catch my opponents ever sleepin’
I’ll just slaughter them where they lie

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Through the world mysterious and vague
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Walking through the cities of the plague

The whole world is filled with speculation
The whole wide world which people say is round
They will tear your mind away from contemplation
They will jump on your misfortune when you’re down

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Eatin’ hog eyed grease in hog eyed town
Heart burnin’ – still yearnin’
Someday you’ll be glad to have me around

They will crush you with wealth and power
Every waking moment you could crack
I’ll make the most of one last extra hour
I’ll avenge my father’s death then I’ll step back

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Hand me down my walkin’ cane
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Got to get you out of my miserable brain

All my loyal and much loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that’s been long abandoned
Ain’t no altars on this long and lonesome road

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
My mule is sick, my horse is blind
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Thinkin’ ‘bout that gal I left behind

It’s bright in the heavens and the wheels are flying
Fame and honor never seem to fade
The fire’s gone out but the light is never dying
Who says I can’t get heavenly aid?

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Carrying a dead man’s shield
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Walkin’ with a toothache in my heel

The suffering is unending
Every nook and cranny has it’s tears
I’m not playing, I’m not pretending
I’m not nursing any superfluous fears

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Walkin’ ever since the other night
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Walkin’ ‘til I’m clean out of sight

As I walked out in the mystic garden
On a hot summer day, hot summer lawn
Excuse me, ma’am I beg your pardon
There’s no one here, the gardener is gone

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Up the road around the bend
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
In the last outback, at the world’s end

Copyright © 2006 Special Rider Music