“As different as the street language of the gangster, detective, or newspaper film is from the high society chatter of the screwball comedy, all these genres are characterized by a rapid-fire delivery, a lovely zippy rhythm. In all cases, it is a cinema that has a buoyant energy and expresses that energy in a rapid, clever, excited use of language. There is a love of language here that seems to reflect a love of life.” – John Fawell, THE HIDDEN ART OF HOLLYWOOD: In Defense of the Studio Era Film (Greenwood Publishing 2008) p. 169

What I love about Hollywood movies of the classic period is their lack of pretentiousness, of not letting an earnest story-line become overwhelming and making the movie experience oppressive. After all entertainment was their business. You see this best in those gratuitous interludes that do not advance the plot nor involve the protagonists, and usually work, in the limited time allowed them, through clever dialog, and by, to paraphrase Fawell, rapid-fire delivery and a zippy rhythm.

A Cry in the Night (1956) is a solid Warner Bros. b of 75 minutes from director Frank Tuttle (This Gun for Hire (1942), Suspense (1946), Hell on Frisco Bay (1955)), in which an intelligent script by David Dortort, from a novel by Whit Masterson (aka H. William Miller), manages to survey parenthood and rebellious teens while telling the story of an 18-yo girl’s abduction by a disturbed 32-yo loner still tied to his mother’s apron-strings. The story of the abduction and the police search takes place over a few hours after midnight. Raymond Burr excels as the mama’s boy, and Natalia Wood is really impressive as the abducted girl. Edmund O’Brien plays the girl’s father, a blustery off-duty cop, and Brian Donlevy is the steady police captain heading the search.

As the investigation progresses, many of the film’s scenes switch between the local police station and the cops out on the trail of the suspect. Half-way through the film, the script in a nicely comic interlude introduces another shift back to the station. This throw-away scene, which is so well-crafted it is as memorable as the movie, is shown in the following clip. B-stringer Tina Carver plays the dame.

“Mister… What does it mean when a man crashes out?”
“Crashes out? That’s a funny question for you to ask now, sister. It means he’s free.”
“Free… free”

High Sierra (1941)
Screenplay by John Huston and W.R. Burnett based on the novel by  W.R. Burnett

Knock on Any Door (1949 – US)

Nick Ray directs Bogart as a lawyer with a social conscience, but the closing sermon to jurors is hammered and too late. A young John Derek impresses as a hood on a murder rap.

Bogart is disengaged in this minor Ray, which could have been great. Unusually for a noir, this picture attempts to portray the social origins of criminality, and how social disadvantage and a traumatic event in a young man’s life sew bitterness and rebellion. The movie fails by focusing on the lawyer who engages only at the end when he has to defend the hood after a cop is killed, with the young criminal remaining an enigma, despite some high melodrama that results in a girl’s tragic suicide. Visually pedestrian, the one ‘cinematic’ highlight is the placement of the camera in the court in the closing scenes.

A very imaginative poster for Party Girl (1958)

Party Girl (1958 – US)

30s Chicago mob lawyer Robert Taylor falls for a gorgeous Cyd Charisse in Nick Ray’s Metrocolored Cinemascope, but Taylor is wooden. Thankfully Lee J. Cobb chews up the scenery as an off-the-wall Mafioso.

A lot of money and wide-screen Metrocolor fail to infuse this rather dour film with any vitality. Ray’s direction is almost off-hand and the terrible acting of Taylor flattens any impact. Cyd Charisse is a great dancer and looks appealing, but her portrayal as the love interest lacks flair. Taylor who has built his career and wealth as a lawyer and fixer for the Mob, tries to go straight after falling for Charisse, who challenges his crooked life, with predictable consequences. Over-rated.

The House Across the Lake (aka Heat Wave) (1954 – UK)

Toff rip-off of J.M. Cain. A hack novelist falls for ice-cold blonde wife of English country gent played by Sid James.

This movie from English writer/director Ken Hughes, who specialised in Anglo-noirs with a Hollywood feel, is better than it sounds, as there are nuances that add some resonance. A Double Indemnity like scenario is given a cross-over treatment. Expat b-player Alex Nicol as an American writer of pulp novels attracts the perilous attention of the platinum-blonde wife of a wealthy English squire. She is a classic femme-fatale and is played to steely perfection by English actress Hillary Brooke, though the act comes unstuck in a too-melodramatic denouement. What is interesting is that the femme-fatale actually does ‘shove’ when push-comes-to-shove in her spider’s stratagem of seducing the hack into a murderous complicity, and that the hack’s capitulation comes not so much from greed or sexual obsession but from an existential ennui.

Manèges (aka The Wanton 1950 – France)

A cynical, dark and savage history of a femme-fatale and the sucker she destroys. But fate has the final say.

This very dark noir from the director of the superb Une si jolie petite plage (1949 – France), Yves Allégret, has the same essential plot-line as a later film from Julien Duvivier, Voici le temps des assassins… (aka Deadlier Than the Male – France 1956). A mother and daughter team of grifters are out to fleece a poor mug with dough. This time the chump is a naïve middle-aged petit-bourgeois, who runs a horse-riding academy for the local gentry. A young Simone Signoret plays the femme-fatale to the infatuated Bernard Blier. But this picture made straight after Une si jolie petite plage does not match the earlier film. The pace is laborious and the use of iris transitions and a weird sieve wipe to telegraph flashbacks is hackneyed. What is most disturbing is the strident misogyny of the story. All the women in the film are venomous, haughty, or stupid, while even a gigolo on the make has some redeeming virtue. Indeed Allégret hates everything and everyone. Nothing escapes his caustic condemnation: aristocrat, bourgeois, or worker. Even children are targeted: when an instructor is severely injured by a kick from a horse two young girl students observe “workers are always complaining”. The ending is as downbeat and vengeful as you will ever see.

Following my previous post on Jean Delannoy’s sexy and funny noir adventure-melodrama, Macao, L’enfer Du Jeu (aka Gambling Hell 1939), I want to share a delicious Ernst Lubitsch like scene from the movie featuring a mischievous Erich von Stroheim as the gun-runner Werner von Krall, and the utterly beguiling Mireille Balin as the cabaret dancer Mireille.

The background to the film is the 2nd Sino-Japanese war.  It is 1939 and in the battle-ravaged port of Canton,  Krall has rescued the lovely Mireille from internment by a local Chinese commander, with whom Krall has just struck a deal to deliver guns and ammo from Macao.  Krall offers to take Mireille with him to Macao on his yacht.  As Mireille has lost most of her luggage, Krall digs out an evening gown from his closet and offers  it to Mireille.  She wears the gown to dinner. The scene opens as Mireille returns to her cabin with Krall in tow.  Her cabin adjoins Krall’s and there is a connecting door. Enjoy!

In Jean Delannoy’s sexy, funny, and uber dark adventure-melodrama, Macao, L’enfer Du Jeu (aka Gambling Hell 1939), starring a charming Erich von Stroheim as an arms dealer, the luminous Mireille Balin as a cabaret dancer, and the suave but sinister Sessue Hayakawa as a racketeer, the spin of the roulette wheel offers no escape nor redemption.  Justice is swift and unromantic – only the innocent survive.

Don’t believe the dictates of  les enfants terribles of the French New Wave or the pompous snobbery of  contemporary ‘cineastes’,  mainstream movies do have craft, enduring meaning, and true value. Viva la difference!

The fantastic hellish climax which sees the anti-heroes destroyed is captured in the following clip.

Act of Violence (1948) Dir: Fred Zinnemann | DP: Robert Surtees | Locale: Los Angeles

Promises (1996)

Promises given
And promises broken
Words stain my lips
Just like blood on my hands

And words are like poison
That sinks down inside you
And some things you do
You just don’t understand

I offer no reason
I ask for no pity
I make no excuse
For the way that I am

And words are like poison
That sinks down inside you
And some things you do
You just don’t understand

If God is my witness
Then God is my savior
But if you are my judge
Then I’m already damned

And words are like poison
That sinks down inside you
And some things you do
You just don’t understand

And would if my fingers
To cut off and give you
Could gain my redemption
I’d cut off my hands

But words are like poison
That bends you and blinds you
And some things you do
You just don’t understand

So this is my story
And I hope that it finds you
For your sweet attention
I cannot demand

And words are like poison
That lives down inside you
And some things you do
You just don’t understand