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I am a huge enthusiast of film noir style films and especially those of the 40's and 50's. I decided to finally begin this category dedicated to noir films. I have seen plenty and have a decent DVD collection to review. I might add that for me film noir is not limited to tough talking detective films, though those movies represent the core of what film noir is noted for, but can include boxing films such as The Set Up and Requiem for a Heavy Weight, and in a stretch even westerns such as High Noon or Gregory Peck's The Gunfighter. Some newer films such as the excellent Body Heat and L.A. Confidential draw from the film noir tradition but are not really film noir to me for one big reason: they are not in sensational black and white. Color just eleviates the despair and suffering to a tolerable point. The soul is to so dark and stained any longer and you cannot get those great smoke rings against the black background any longer. Lets begin this category with triple doses of the underbelly of life, beginning with pretty boy Tyrone Power's experiment in carny angst:

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Nightmare Alley

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1947/Director: Edmund Goulding/Screenplay: Jules Furthman , William Lindsay Gresham (novel)

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Cast: Tyrone Power , Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith

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From what I understand Tyrone Power bought the rights to Lindsay Gresham’s novel for something like $60,000 and wanted it to be a vehicle to shed his romantic lead image and establish him as a legitimate actor. The studios at first felt the material was unfilmable but Powers and prospective director Edmund Goulding were persistent and the movie was filmed. Powers plays a traveling sideshow carnie on the look out for his big break who he finds in the sideshow fortune teller. They team up after her alcoholic husband or boyfriend drinks a bottle of wood grain alcohol and do a mind reading act that soon grows too small for Powers. He is shotgun married to the strongman’s (Mike Mazurki) naïve but sexy daughter played convincingly by pretty Collen Gray.

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He crosses paths with smart and sultry Joan Blondell who plays the typical film noir femme fatal who is always one step ahead of the desperate and haunted male lead. She plays a high class psychiatrist whose clientele include the social elite that Powers targets for his big scams. The movie plays with moral issues and big questions in the way a good film noir film would, and that is with great photograhy, tough dialog and cool acting. The films never become pompous or overblown because the people suffering from these existential calamities are people on the edge of life, living pay check to pay check who live by their wits and luck and flexible morals.

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His transformation into “the geek” is excellent and there are plenty of great lines. There are some problems too that require some added suspension of disbelief, for example, that the so called code Powers and Gray uses to dupe the audiences could be so effective based on how it is used in the film is far fetched. It just could not work but we have to accept that it would work in order for the story to be propelled along. Another problem is that Blondell uses a vinyl record and old style phonograph to record all her therapy sessions when in fact records and phonographs can only be used for playback. Again we must accept this for the plot to work. Sometimes some things like this can ruin a movie for me but in this case it did not.

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Despite these minor flaws and the fact I usually hate carnival movies (except for La Strada and few others) the movie works well and Powers in fact becomes a legitimate actor and left his pretty boy image behind for the most part. The black and white is marvelous.

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Panic in the Streets

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1950/Director: Elia Kazan/ Screenplay: Edward Anhalt

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Cast: Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes. Jack Palance, Zero Mostel

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While this is not one of Elia Kazan’s best films it is nonetheless a good movie and you can see many of his signature touches in some of the scenes, especially in the indoor shots. The opening shots of the poker game are similar to the ones shot for A Streetcar Named Desire, a remarkably great movie only a couple years down the road. Richard Widmark plays a civil service employed doctor working in New Orleans who comes across a case of Pneumonic Plague brought in by an illegal alien on one of many cargo ships. The movie becomes a race against time story as both Widmark and murderous hooligan Jack Palance look for the same man for different reasons; Widmark to stop the highly contagious and air born spread form of plague from killing thousands and Palance to get information on an imaginary fortune in something he feels the dying man is hiding. Zero Mostel is good and sweaty a Palance’s partner in crime with a little more of a conscience.

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The acting and dialog are pretty good although Widmark is a little over the top at times. He is ready to blow a fuse even when he seems to be getting everything he asks for from the local police chief (Paul Douglas) who puts his career on the line to help. This is okay since this is that Widmark does best. Even better is Palance who hisses and menaces his way from scene to scene and seems lacking in any scruples at all but is street savvy and lethal from the opening scenes where he kills a guy for just wanting to leave a poker game. While far from a flawless movie it is difinently worth a watch or two.

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The Big Knife

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1955/Director: Robert Aldrich/ Screenplay: Clifford Odets (play), James Poe (screenplay)

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Cast: Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters

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Based on a play this movie takes place on one set for the most part, that of a large living room with a huge wet bar every one mingles around. The talking is fast and tough and the acting is pretty good if not a little over blown in some parts, but I liked the movie alot. Palance plays a burned out actor with no way out from under the thumb of movie boss Rod Steiger because of Palance's stained past. Ida Lupino plays his tormented wife and Shelly Winter's is a lushy starlet whose only role is that of party girl for the movie execs. Everyone is jaded and on edge. The confrontations between Palance and Steiger are terrific. Palance is the A-list actor who has gotten everything he was promised and everything he desired but who suddenly does not want to renew his contract, much to the chagrin and consternation of movie mogul Steiger who is not letting him out of the deal without a battle to the end.

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There are some great moments int he film. One great scene where Palance imitates a growling crocodile and then a skimpering, slithering lizard that is worth a few replays. I have to admit I like him more as the heavy in a film,as in Panic in the Streets, than as a wishy washy, whiny sentimental actor with budding principles but the movie is fine. I found some of the interaction with his physical trainer a little unintentionally (I assume) homoerotic really and sort of silly. As far as noir style films go it is not what I like the most, but I can recommend it. It is a scathing look at the greed and vanity of Hollywood behind the cameras.

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VACANCY

2007/Director:Nimród Antal/Screenplay:Mark L. Smith

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson, Frank Whaley, Ethan Embry, Scott G. Anderson, Mark Casella, David Doty

The story here is a Psycho type thriller that really was not as bad as the reviews made me think it was going to be. There are a few references to Psycho, for example in the assorted stuffed birds that decorate the office, the quirky manager played very well by the dependable Frank Whaley and the invasive voyeurism that takes place in the honeymoon suite. The voyeurism though lacks the psycho-sexual peeping Tom aspect that characterized Norman Bates though, and here it instead is done in the form of video taping snuff films and supplying them in quantity to the booming snuff film trade I guess (though I belong to the school of thought that puts snuff films into the category of urban-myth… but what a suitable myth to base a slasher style movie on).

The film is not a gratuitous gore film and the edgy drama is built up perfectly before the actual mayhem breaks loose. While there are no real surprises for the most part it is a watchable film. The story centers on an unhappy couple played by Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson who have some serious problems in their marriage that are about to break them apart when suddenly in the middle of their ongoing tirade of insults to one another their car fan breaks after Wilson swerves to miss a raccoon on a dark and sparsely populated stretch of highway in the middle of backwater USA. They trek back to a gas station and hotel and reluctantly stay the night to wait for the garage to open. Frank Whaley plays the genuinely unnerving hotel manager who from the very beginning makes you uncomfortable. The simple scene where he is counting out dimes is sheer personality disorder incarnate. He is a Norman Bates type psycho in that he does not belong to the class of modern film “super” pyscho slashers and he dispalys uncertainty and anxiety later in the film as he loses control of the situation little by little. His unimposing physique seem to make his character more believable and common and therefore more frightening. I am so happy there was no “sexy master mind” killer here. God, that is such a bore anymore.

After Beckinsale and Wilson get in to their room and continue their litany of complaints and criticism the tension begins in the form of banging doors and phone calls. It is done very well and soon they find copies of video tapes showing the former occupants of the very same room being murdered and taped. The film develops into a cat and mouse game soon as our couple go on the offensive but the predators are well seasoned and have all the upper hands. Beckinsale is a commanding presence of a woman (Underworld and Van Helsing) and this movie would be much different had Mia Farrow been in the lead role, but she is vulnerable and shaken up and out of control here and does some good acting. Wilson is fine in the role of the more sentimental of the wayward couple who wants to salvage some of the relationship and confront some losses (the death of a child?) that Beckinsale wants only to forget. He is not a strong man really but soon takes control and shows Beckinsale he has some testosterone after all, until he is knifed in the gut in front of her. In movies it always works out that as you show the woman what a real man you are you immediately get knifed or shot saving her and she can suddenly realize that she had over looked all these qualities in you and feel a little guilty. I wish real life were so simple.

The ending is no surprise as Beckinsale kicks all the bad guy’s asses in no time flat. The movie is predictable in the way a good movie like this will be (the only alternative ending is what, where the bad guys win and kill all the good people and you are left feeling depressed and nihilistic… I guess you could have an ending where the good guys and bad guys all decide to change and team up and become friends, but that would really suck too). But it is how the formula unfolds that makes the difference I suppose, the way two roller coaster rides can be different and yet you expect the same ending from both. The film is well made and well acted and not over the top in the violence department which can be a relief really. There is blood and violent death, do not worry about that okay. But it is controlled effectively by director Nimrod Antal who does not use the film as an excuse to simply show intestines and livers dangling from people, which brings us to our second film, the dismal and forgettable, exploitation mess Maintenance.

MAINTENANCE

2007/Directors: Paulo Diaz and Jil Guenther/Screenplay: Paulo Diaz and Jil Guenther

Cast: Mark Masten, Melissa DeBaca,Rondi Temple, Justin Frumkes, Doc Pingree

This movie has the feel of the type of films made by the Film Threat Video company. Really low quality, almost with a shot on video look, and usually with an emphasis on gore and graphic violence and no concern towards the acting or technical aspects. I will admit that there were a couple scenes in the beginning where the dialog and basic acting looked promising, but all those hopes disappeared quickly. The story is so simple as to defy belief. Of course the story line in Vacancy is simple too and it has been done in one form or another a million times. The problem with a movie like Maintenance is that it takes a simple form and makes no effort to do anything with it other than exploit it for gore purposes. If you think about it the concept for Rocky is simple and unoriginal, but Stallone made a great script out of it. Okay, not every movie will be Rocky, I know. I did not buy this DVD thinking it would be an Oscar winner (as if that were an indicator of a good movie anymore).

This is the so-called plot. After a short introduction that tries to give the film social credibility (why, it is only a movie trying to make us more aware of the dangers around us and the shortcomings of the American justice system) shows some percentages about the release of dangerous prisoners back into society and their reoffense rate the movie goes right into the story. A guy played by Mark Masten gets a job in a high rise apartment complex with only four female tenets living in it at the time because of ongoing renovations and then immediately begins killing them off one by one. Well, that’s about it.

The murders are brutal and are followed up by dismemberment scenes. He stores his “trophies” in his refrigerator and a clueless detective never seems to consider searching his apartment since he is a violent ex-con and he began work the same day the disappearances begin. Why make a connection there? It ends on a fatalistic note with the heroine being killed by the landlord himself. I hate these kinds of endings as they are not a twist in any way. They are a cop out and an attempt to make the film have some sort of impact on the viewer that the film maker could not acheive in some more subtle or sophisticated fashion.

Another thing that drove me up the wall was the camera work. It seems like 80% of the film is shot from a really low angle, like the camera is mounted on a hand dolly and is pushed around everywhere. Even in scenes where two people are simply having a conversation the camera is aimed up from knee level and it gets old real fast. Furthermore, the film is all washed out in some green tone or something. I do not know if this is on purpose or what. The look of the scenes I have posted here is exatcly how the movie looks!

It is hard to get into the suspense because the acting is bad and the story is implausible and the camera work is inane. Like I said before, these two films are like two different roller coaster rides. They do the same thing, but take the one with some vacancy because this one needs a lot of maintenance.

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Born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, Basil Rathbone’s family fled after his father was accused of being a British spy. An auspicious beginning for a man who play suave and sophisticated villains as well as portray the master mind sleuth Sherlock Holmes. His long and colorful career included work in silent films as well as on the stage. He most wanted to be remembered for his stage work and yet he will no doubt be remembered not only for his engaging interpretation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s keen detective but also for his swashbuckling adventured along the likes of Errol Flynn and his host of often campy horror films.

I have hardly even read a quarter of the Sherlock Holmes adventures that originally appeared in the Strand magazine (and the illustrations by Sidney Paget, to me, look like Rathbone, though have it on good account by my friend and G.K. Chesterton devotee Delsen Wall that Doyle did not like the Paget drawing all that much) , but when I read or reread the tales I fashion the image of Holmes in my mind after Rathbone’s portrayal. I will be frank, I have not seen another Holmes I like except for the performance by Peter Cushing in the fine Hammer version of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

I have about eight of the fourteen Holmes movies filmed between 1939 and 1946. Twelve were filmed by Universal and the first two (Hound of Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) by 20th Century Fox. Now I have to admit I not always satisfied with the fact that 20th Century Fox took Holmes out of his late Victorian period and placed him in then contemporary London. A couple have WWII themes and one even has Holmes fly to Washington DC and cruise around the capital in a convertible car. But some of the films capture a gothic essence that is atmospheric and timeless.

Another slight issue I have is with the way that Dr. Watson is portrayed as a babbling often addle headed good meaning oaf. It is not the way the stories portray him at all. In the stories he is married and quite sharp and keen himself. You must recall he is the chronicler of the stories and all interpretations of Holmes comes through the eyes of dr. Watson. That being said however, the portrayal by Nigel Bruce is endearing and the balance created between Rathbone’s moody and arrogant Holmes and Bruce’s kind and mumbling Watson are one of the classic “cop” partnerships in movie history.

Rathbone would become type caste after Holmes and found it hard to escape the huge shadow the role cast over his life. Despite this his career continued onward at a busy pace until his death in 1967. As a note, unlike many of his fellow country men who came to Hollywood and became americanized in the 30’s and 40’s, Rathbone never renounced his British citizenship and was a decorated soldier for his service in WWI.

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PERFORMANCE

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1970 / Directors: Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg / Writer: Donald Cammell

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Cast: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton, Ann Sidney, John Bindon, Stanley Meadows, Allan Cuthbertson, Anthony Morton, Johnny Shannon

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Amazingly this historic and influential film was not released on DVD until February of this year (2007). It stars James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Palenberg. Palenberg also helped with writing some of the film script. Prior to Performance James Fox had played mostly proper English gentlemen of one sort or another. Here he convincingly plays the viscous and violent Chas, an East side London gangster who is the enforcer for boss Harry Flowers. Fox' s performance is chilling and has been cited as influential on the London gangster type that appear in the newer British crime movies by directors like Guy Ritchie. It is too bad Fox did not do more roles like this. In fact he would all but retire from acting after Performance and devote his energy to being an evangelical Christian, only appearing here and there over the years in films, most recently as Varuca Salt' s father in Tim Burton' s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

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The film itself was controversial at the time and Warner Brothers was shocked by what directors Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg delivered to them when they were expecting a pop-music movie similar to The Beatles A Hard Day' s Night. The film captured the darker feel of late 60' s period London and there is fairly graphic sex and drug use (some purported to be real). In one scene Anita Palenberg injects what we assume is heroin into her butt cheeks. Even by today' s "flexible" standards the scene is unnerving. There were rumors that Palenberg - who had dated Rolling Stone' s temperamental and star-crossed guitarist Brian Jones and then later became Keith Richards common law wife and mother of their three children - had an affair with Jagger during the filming. Neither have ever confirmed this and Palenberg has sharply denied it.

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While Fox stretched his capable acting abilities and created the evil and yet ladish Chas, Jagger and Palenberg simply play themselves and yet it is a perfect balancing act between Chas' uptight and rigid sensibilities and Taylor and Pherber's "free love" and drug using inclinations. After Chas becomes a target of the mob he works for he goes into hiding while trying to escape the country to America where gangster like him are truly appreciated. He winds up staying in the bizarre and decadent household of reclusive rock star Taylor (played by Jagger) and his girlfriends Pherber (Palenberg) and Lucy (Michele Briton). Taylor does not warm up to Chas, but finally Chas convinces him that he needs a " Bohemian atmosphere " to hole up in for a short while. Chas and Taylor begin to get drawn into each other' s dangerous worlds and a twisted connection is formed. Pherber slips Chas some psychedelic mushrooms and Fox is soon wearing wigs and lipstick and searching his soul while grooving to some far out tunes. Jagger is great as the reclusive and jaded Taylor and performs a really good blues song on guitar in one scene.

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The ending is somewhat odd and confusing but it seemed fitting really in this case. Normally I do not like a strange ending to a movie that leaves too many questions. The look and sound of the film is marvelous and it is supposed to have been the first full length film to employ what is known as the " cut-up technique " , formally used in literature by people like Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. It is the method of splicing random scenes together to create an effect of irregular yet seemingly purposeful continuity. It is a common technique in film anymore and you hardly think it is anything special now.

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The film had problems with release and distribution and was widely panned at the time of its release as lurid and exploitive (are those supposed to be bad qualities?), but has since went on to be considered one of the great films of British cinema. Some parts may seem dated, such as the strange synth tracks and experimental photography played at the beginning during a court room scene. Some other parts are ahead of their time even, for example a song sequence that predates MTV in the way it is done. It is tough and hallucinogenic at the same time. A hippie/gangster movie. Not a genre that was explored much. It does not become an " acid trip " movie in any way though some scenes have those elements.

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Also, if you are intersted in some really subperb acting and black and white cinematography check out Fox's excellent performance as Peter Marlowe in one of my all time favorite films, 1965's King Rat with George Segal and Tom Courtenay, about existence in Changi POW camp in Singapore during WWII. There will a post of that remarkable film coming soon.

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Here is a fine little piece about the film showing the reactions to it in the early days and then how those opinions have changed. The statements are from the cast and crew:

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http://www.phinnweb.org/roeg/films/performance/articles/neon.html

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