What really surprised me about this powerful 1951 noir classic is that not only had I never seen it, I had never even heard of it. It had sailed completely under my radar all these years. So when it came on TCM one middle of the night a few weeks ago, I recorded it, not expecting much. And what I saw blasted me right between the eyes.

Ginger Rogers, whose dancing career was in her rear view mirror at this point, is a big-city dress model on her way to a big show. She gets off the bus en route in the small town of Rock Point to pay a one-day visit to her sister, effectively played by Doris Day. Within minutes, she witnesses a murder by the Ku Klux Klan. What follows is a descent into Klan terror and the grip that organization had over Rock Point and so many towns like it back in those days.

Storm Warning is not like any other movie in which the Klan plays a role. The murder victim is white, and the subject of race never comes up. Race is only hinted at on one occasion, and even then very obliquely. Ginger is slowly drawn into a conspiracy to cover up the murder and to stymie the investigation, headed up by the anti-Klan district attorney, played with remarkable skill by Reagan in a surprisingly solid performance.

From the moment Ginger gets off the bus two minutes into the film, the tension never lets up. Under the confident hand of director Stuart Heisler, this film takes unpredictable turns every sweaty step of the way, aided immensely by a literate script, penned by no less than Richard Brooks and Daniel Fuchs. The final result deftly avoids all the usual stereotypes associated with Klan movies. The characters don’t even speak with Southern accents, letting the viewer know in no uncertain terms that such terrorism is an American phenomenon, not confined to the backwaters of Dixie.

Doris Day is clearly warming up her cutesy persona which would later bloom in the Rock Hudson comedies at the end of the decade, but her role here is a serious one and she handles it well. Her thick-witted husband, played by Steve Cochran, is one of the Klan killers. This is unquestionably Cochran’s finest performance. During his twenty-year career as a character actor, he was usually called upon to play gangsters and other assorted typical tough guys, but his portrayal of Hank Rice is utterly three-dimensional. Playing “stupid” requires an actor to walk a fine line, to flesh out a believable character without lapsing into stereotype, and Cochran pulls it off without one false note, making it look easy.

Despite the presence of all this talent working at the top of their game, the real star of Storm Warning might well be director of photography Carl Guthrie. His dizzying play of shadows and light rivals the best of the film noir cinematographers. In lesser hands, this potent story could easily lose a lot of its punch.

When the Klan’s Imperial Wizard, played by Hugh Sanders, says at one point, “We’re the law here,” a chill runs up your spine, because this movie is making you realize how true that was. Ordinary people were frightened out of their wits at the thought of snitching on any Klan crime, and no one, not even right-thinking law enforcement, dared stand up to them. Today, we can all be thankful that organization has gone into deep decline and is no longer a factor in American society.

Storm Warning is one of those rare B-movie gems that is seldom on TV. You should make every effort to see this film, one way or another.

Cummins and Dall hook up, shoot at targets, and get married. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? They can spend the rest of their little lives at the firing range trying to outdo each other. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for one thing, Dall has no job prospects and Cummins craves things money can buy. Dall can’t bear to let her go, so before you can say “Stick ‘em up”, the two of them rampage their way through a series of holdups and close calls. Cummins gets a little too trigger-happy and pretty soon, they’re wanted for murder, with cops looking for them seemingly in every state in the Union. They can’t drive ten miles without encountering a roadblock, and in no time at all, they’re reduced to riding freight cars and hiding out in freezing mountain cabins.

Dall is perfect in this film as the good boy gone astray, and he and Cummins generate considerable chemistry, but make no mistake, it’s Cummins’ show all the way. Her kittenish portrayal of Annie Laurie Starr is one of the best female performances in the history of film noir. Her Welsh accent gets in the way on occasion, but you don’t care, because you’ve totally bought into her powerful screen presence. The screenplay by blacklisted Dalton Trumbo (working through a front) sizzles and the two stars bring plenty of heat to beef it up even more. Director Joseph H Lewis reportedly gave them great leeway, including some scenes with improvised dialogue.

Subsequent films like Bonnie And Clyde and Natural Born Killers were made in much more lenient times, with no censors breathing down their necks, but they still seem derivative of Gun Crazy. And even though it was 1950, when all movies were ostensibly fit for the entire family, the eroticism of the gun itself was never explored more fully than it was in this low-budget cult classic.

And I was right.

When I watched it again, it didn’t seem at all stale. Rather, I was able to pick up things I’d missed the first time around (always a sign that a movie is doing something right). My overall appreciation of it rose considerably.

Frankly, I’d been waiting for something like this for many years. The 1945 film of the same name may have won an Oscar for Joan Crawford, but it didn’t do any justice to James M Cain’s novel from which it was adapted. For Hollywood purposes, they added a murder and other such nonsense and deleted much of the class division that Cain went to great lengths to portray. The HBO version, however, replicates the novel virtually scene for scene, and it vividly paints the picture of the sharp social differences between the characters. In 1945, Hollywood tried mightily for a noir atmosphere with lots of shadowy photography, especially in the police station (didn’t those cops have lights in their offices?). HBO achieves a thick, textured noir feel through well-fleshed-out characters and their motivations. You could almost call it “chick flick noir”.

Kate Winslet turns in a major-league performance in the difficult title role. Traipsing around in dowdy dresses and aprons, she crawls inside Mildred’s skin as she bakes her pies and eventually runs her restaurants. Crawford, on the other hand, always seemed to be going through her usual motions of acting, always mugging for the camera. Winslet makes you feel voyeuristic, like you’re watching her personal life unfold by peeking through the blinds. You will completely forget she was ever in Titanic as she plows through all five Mildred Pierce episodes, trying to get above her raising, caving in to the guilt trips her social-climber daughter is constantly laying on her, and ultimately falling for the conniving Monty Beragon, played with gusto by Guy Pearce.

Beragon, polo-playing man about town, has seen his fortune wane through the depression, and he’s reduced to living in the servant’s quarters of his damp, drafty Pasadena mansion. He was portrayed by Zachary Scott in the 1945 film, and truth be told, Scott fit that character like Clark Gable fit Rhett Butler. But Scott is gone, and Pearce approaches the role from a different angle. Where Scott was oily, Pearce is far more sincere, or so he seems. A key scene in the big Pasadena house where Beragon tells Mildred the importance of rooms and the things they contain makes you believe for a moment that he’s redeemable, that he’s not quite the rat you suspected. One of the audio commentaries that accompany the Blu-Ray set tells us that Pearce’s dialogue coach helped him nail the subtle speech inflections unique to old-time natives of Los Angeles, those who, like Beragon, came from old money.

The miniseries is set from 1931-1940, like the novel, and the title notwithstanding, it is almost stolen by the story of Veda Pierce, Mildred’s daughter, played as a pre-teen by Morgan Turner and from ages 17-20 by Evan Rachel Wood. Only the strength of Winslet’s star turn keeps the story in Mildred’s court. Turner is outstanding as the bratty, self-absorbed young Veda and Wood seems like the natural older version of her. I would imagine Wood’s performance was heavily influenced by watching Turner in the rushes for her body language, her voice inflections, and most of all, her all-about-me attitude.

In a smaller role, Hope Davis scores big as Mrs Forrester, a patrician grande dame who interviews Mildred for a maid’s job in one of the early episodes. Later on, her character marries a movie director and she becomes Mrs Lenhardt. Again she meets Mildred, but under very different circumstances, and can’t quite place her. Davis makes the most of her onscreen time, giving life to a minor character and preventing her lapse into stereotype.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to mention the production design in Mildred Pierce. Authentic period detail and a palette of muted greens and grays give the miniseries a vivid look at a middle-class American family of the 1930s. Production designer Mark Friedberg, Art Director Peter Rogness, and Set Decorator Ellen Christiansen shared the 2011 Emmy for Outstanding Art Direction.

Mildred Pierce is a winner for everyone involved, though, especially the late James M Cain, who was one of the great noir authors of all time. Nobody could tell a story better.

So I put together a little piece on The Men Of Film Noir. There have been countless blogs, articles, and yes, even TV specials on the women of film noir, those femmes fatales who gin up our heartbeat and cause considerable stirring south of our belt buckle. But I couldn’t recall anything about the men (I know what you’re thinking. Hmmm, he lives in Key West, men of film noir…Hmmmm). Okay, the troglodytes are excused now. You may return to your caves. But everyone else go to Heath’s website and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

And while you’re there, leave a brief comment, okay? Thanks.

I watched the 1967 film noir, Point Blank the other night. Believe it or not, I had never seen this film, although I’d always wanted to. It has rarely been on television and no one I know owns a copy of it. Frankly, it never occurred to me to buy it, since I’d never seen it.

But as I’m sure you know, the buzz on it has been tremendous for about 25 years now, since it was “rediscovered” and labeled one of the best movies of the 1960s, maybe even of all time. And with good reason. It stars Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, along with a sturdy supporting cast of well-known character actors. Marvin is without question one of the most watchable actors ever to walk onto the silver screen. With a role like this one, a revenge-seeking criminal whose partners have betrayed him, robbed him, and left him for dead, I’m thinking “No wonder everyone loves this film. It has everything going for it!”

I didn’t like it.

I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t like it is all.

For me the film had the look of a 1960s TV show. It was visually flat, lifeless and never seemed like anything more than a made-for-TV movie. Of course, the sex and violence elevated it out of the TV realm, but visually, it didn’t do it for me. The whole thing just lay there on the screen, pale and cold. Certain scenes filmed in the dark looked okay–the finale, for instance–but the daylight scenes were straight out of late ’60s network television, complete with all the standard, clichéd LA locations.

I knew there would be a problem as soon as I saw the opening credits. They were done in quick, sharp cuts, a la TV, as opposed to the softer, more subtle dissolves traditionally found in films. The sets were godawful and the harsh lighting didn’t do anyone any favors. The closeup of the broken toiletry bottles and their swirling fluids is a perfect example of ’60s excess. By 1970, all that stuff was passé.

Then there’s the story.

I know, I know, it’s great. But think about this. The story couldn’t've taken place at all if John Vernon had killed Lee Marvin, which he fully intended to do, instead of shooting him, looking at him, and running away. You remember the scene, right? There was no one around to hear the shots, Marvin was on the floor with two in him already. What’s one or two more? Preferably in the head. At least you’ll know he’s dead, which any self-respecting double-crosser will go out of his way to do.

Angie Dickinson was completely wasted yet again, as she was in so many of those 1960s movies. The scene where she slapped Marvin a few times was good, but that was about it. I never bought into her as a character. I could see her “acting” the whole time.

I lay most of this muckery at the feet of the director, John Boorman. Given the story, this film should have overflowed with grit, but it comes off as remarkably sanitized. But wait, you say, Boorman’s the guy who directed Deliverance. And The Tailor Of Panama. Surely he knows what he’s doing. Surely he’s great!

Well, yes, he did direct those outstanding films, along with a few others. But they came much later. Point Blank was really his first directorial effort (if you don’t count his UK film about the Dave Clark Five). He was feeling his way around, and let’s face it, he really didn’t know what he was doing. He was handed a terrific story with a great cast and a Hollywood budget, but he came up short.

The sad fact is, without Marvin’s compelling screen presence, this movie would be long forgotten and deservedly so.

All right, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for the tomatoes now.

That was gang leader Cody Jarrett talking, but Big Ed and his ideas weren’t the only things he had to worry about. A double-crossing wife, T-Men hot on his trail, and blinding headaches were just a few of his other major problems.

He went on to become one of the most memorable gangsters in film history, and James Cagney’s hair-raising performance as Cody Jarrett singlehandedly made White Heat (1949) a classic American film. From the tense opening to the final explosive moments, the film never loses its hard edge, never asks sympathy for any of its characters.

Cagney and his gang rob a train and make a clean getaway, but not without killing a few people in the process. They head for a cabin high in the mountains, where they freeze day and night, planning their next move. The tension among the outlaws in the cabin reaches dizzying heights, as we learn that Cagney’s wife Verna, played perfectly by a sexy Virginia Mayo, is constantly at odds with his mother, played with thick realism by 68-year-old British actress Margaret Wycherly.

Wycherly’s turn as Ma Jarrett, deadly mère fatale, is one of the most chilling portrayals in film history. She comforts Cody through his bouts of headache seizures, and offers motherly advice on pulling jobs, getting fifty percent of the action for her trouble. Like any mother, she’s there for her son, no matter what, so when Cody goes to prison for a brief stint on a phony rap, like any mother, she takes over the gang. She despises Verna, and deeply distrusts Big Ed, played with great venality by Steve Cochran. Big Ed has long had plans to wrest both the gang and Verna from Cody’s grip. While Cody’s doing his time, Verna and Big Ed make their move and Ma gets it in the back. Cody learns of this one day in the prison dining hall and goes berserk in one of the most compelling onscreen moments of Cagney’s entire career.

White Heat represented Cagney’s return to tough-guy roles after nearly a decade away from them, and it turned out to be his tour de force. But it’s also a riveting look at a deranged psychopath with a mother obsession, something rarely seen before 1949 and not seen again until Alfred Hitchcock probed the subject in Psycho eleven years later. Veteran director Raoul Walsh, imaginative cinematographer Sidney Hickox, and the aggressive score of Max Steiner combine to make a violent film that grabs the viewer by the throat in the opening scene and never lets go.

Again, they’re in no particular order. He-e-e-e-ere we go.

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973) / Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle. Director: Peter Yates. This powerful tale of a small-time street guy (Mitchum) facing a prison sentence is the flip side of The Godfather. Shot entirely in the Boston area in the most nondescript locations, totally deglamorizing the criminal life. Dreary autumn scenery adds to the proceedings rather than subtracting from them. Characters kiss their wives goodbye in the morning and then go to “work”, in other words, they hang around grimy coffee shops and bars and parking lots talking endlessly to each other. Based on a novel by George V Higgins, whose ear for dialogue has never been matched (not even by Higgins himself in subsequent books). Director Yates wisely lifted most of the novel’s dialogue verbatim. Without question, this was Mitchum’s finest hour. His muscular performance of a working-stiff street criminal stays with you forever. One of the greatest noirs of all time.

BODY HEAT (1981) / William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna. Director: Lawrence Kasdan. Kasdan’s remake of Double Indemnity hits the bullseye. Hurt is a lawyer who’s going nowhere, and Kathleen is…well, let’s just say the movie was aptly titled. She corrals Hurt into killing husband Crenna in a steamy south Florida town. Amid rustling wind chimes, Hurt throws a chair through a window to get at her in one of the most erotic scenes ever put on film.

SEXY BEAST (2000) / Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane. Director: Jonathan Glazer. Winstone is a world-class safecracker living the quiet life of retirement in Spain. He lays out in the sun, sips cool drinks with his friends, and loves up his woman. One day, however, Kingsley shows up on behalf of British crime boss McShane, trying to lure Winstone into one more job. Kingsley’s character is a violent sociopath, and his menacing presence throws everything off-kilter. Glazer’s debut feature is a knockout, as he extracts top performances from these three great actors. Winstone is properly nervous throughout, and after watching Kingsley swagger around in his short-sleeved shirts, it’s hard to believe he once played Gandhi!

ACROSS 110th STREET (1972) / Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa. Director: Barry Shear. Three men rob a numbers bank in Harlem and it’s only a question of who gets to them first, the cops or the mob. Not the cops and robbers movie it appears to be, rather a compelling, noir-drenched tale of desperate men, each driven by different forces. Quinn is the aging tough-guy cop who has outlived his time, Franciosa the Mafia enforcer called upon to retrieve the money and teach the robbers a real lesson. The stickup men just wanted a little money to better their own lives. Film looks like it started off in producer meetings as blaxploitation, but with the addition of Quinn and Franciosa, quickly superseded that genre. Shear shows a real feel for the material. Title song by Bobby Womack is memorable.

THE GRIFTERS (1990) / John Cusack, Angelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle. Director: Stephen Frears. One of the best of the post-1970 noirs. Riveting tale of small-time swindlers and their tangled relationships. Cusack is satisfied with making a few bucks a day on short cons until he meets up with sexy Bening, who has big things cooking. Complicating matters is Cusack’s mother, played with relish by Huston. She works for racketeer Hingle and struts around like she means business, inserting herself between Cusack and Bening at every opportunity. Penetrating look at the underbelly world of the con artist. Donald E Westlake’s script follows Jim Thompson’s 1963 novel virtually scene for scene. Harrowing finale comes out of nowhere.

CITY OF INDUSTRY (1997) / Harvey Keitel, Stephen Dorff, Timothy Hutton. Director: John Irvin. Retired thief Keitel returns for one last score with his brother (Hutton) and getaway driver Dorff. Things go very wrong, and Keitel heads for LA looking for those responsible. Director Irvin provides plenty of sweaty scenes in this hard noir tale. His sense of pacing keeps things moving and lets the viewer know that no matter what happens, no good is going to come from any of it. One of Famke Janssen’s early films. Elliot Gould appears unbilled.

AFTER DARK, MY SWEET (1990) / Jason Patric, Bruce Dern, Rachel Ward. Director: James Foley. Patric escapes from a mental hospital and falls in with Ward. Enter Dern, who urges them to pull a high-profile kidnapping job. Classic noir tale of a guy who’s in way over his head. Set in a California desert town, where no one knows anyone and no one cares. Moody, dark film, even though much of it was shot in blinding sunlight. Patric and Ward are perfect for each other. Dern is remarkably restrained. Based on the 1955 novel by Jim Thompson.

THE LAST SEDUCTION (1994) / Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman. Director: John Dahl. Fiorentino rips off her drug dealer husband Pullman to the tune of $700,000 and all hell breaks loose. She flees to a Buffalo suburb, of all places, and attempts to melt into society unnoticed. Pullman, however, is in hot pursuit. She eventually hooks up with Berg, and supposedly becomes involved in a murder plot. Plenty of twists in this one as the walls begin to close in on Fiorentino. Sharp direction and grade A performances make this an outstanding 1990s film noir.

THIEF (1981) / James Caan, Tuesday Weld, James Belushi, Robert Prosky. Director: Michael Mann. Early Mann effort centers around Caan as longtime jewel thief who wants to start a family with Weld. Unfortunately, however, he eventually falls in with Prosky, who forces him into a big job with big promises of milk and honey on the other side. Needless to say, things don’t go exactly as planned. Everything about this film is noir to the max. Story probes deeply into the mindset of a professional thief, with great attention to detail and the tools of the trade. Outstanding score by Tangerine Dream. Film marks the debut of Belushi, Prosky, Dennis Farina, and William Petersen. Caan carries the film in fine fashion.

HOUSE OF GAMES (1987) / Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, JT Walsh. Director: David Mamet. Psychologist specializing in addictive personalities gets drawn into the personal problems of one of her patients, a compulsive gambler. What follows is a nightmare trek into the demimonde of the grifter. Mamet’s directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, but the cast brings his difficult, unorthodox dialogue to life. Performances are top-notch, with Mantegna a standout. Look for William H Macy in a small role.

In no particular order, they are:

DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) / Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G Robinson. Director: Billy Wilder. A true classic in the noir tradition, inspiring many other similar movies. MacMurray, an average Joe if ever there was one, is an insurance salesman who gets reeled in by the slick cunning of Stanwyck and her anklet. Barbara’s the original femme fatale in this one, and a more vicious bitch never walked onto the silver screen. Fred didn’t stand a chance.

NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950) / Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Herbert Lom. Director: Jules Dassin. I devoted an entire blog to this film some time ago. You can check it out here. Widmark shows what a superb actor he was with this very layered portrayal of a loser whose reach exceeded his grasp. Shot entirely in London under Dassin’s steady hand. Cinematographer Max Greene’s use of shadows and angular shots is breathtaking and Franz Waxman’s exciting score hits all the right notes. Lom steals every scene he’s in.

HOLLOW TRIUMPH (aka THE SCAR) (1948) / Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett. Director: Steve Sekely. Ever hear that line about how everyone’s got a twin somewhere? Kind of makes you want to find yours, right? Well, you might think differently after seeing Sekely’s nightmare masterpiece. Henreid plays a minor-league crook who, with a few associates, robs an underground casino. This sweat-inducing scene occurs near the opening and sets the tone for the entire film, as the casino boss orders his men to find the robbers and dispense justice. A youthful Jack Webb appears in a brief sequence.

PLUNDER ROAD (1957) / Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook Jr. Director: Hubert Cornfield. Superior film with plenty of tension throughout. Raymond’s hardass gang plots a midnight hijacking of a huge gold shipment in a treacherous downpour. There’s plenty of gold involved, enough to make them all rich, rich, RICH!! Raymond has every detail worked out. The whole thing is foolproof. What could possibly go wrong? But of course, you see Elisha Cook Jr’s name in the credits, and you realize nothing is foolproof. This taut little film is a true gem, rarely seen, almost never on television. It’s a B-picture that was thoughtlessly cranked out by the studio, but under Cornfield’s clever direction, it became a film noir classic. You should make every effort to locate a copy of this one.

RAW DEAL (1948) / Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, John Ireland, Raymond Burr. Director: Anthony Mann. One of the toughest noirs of all time. O’Keefe escapes from prison with Trevor’s help, looking to settle a score with Burr, who is hundreds of miles away. The journey won’t be easy, though, because the cops are never far behind him, and neither is Ireland, whom Burr has dispatched to intercept him. Mann’s direction shows how thoroughly he understands film noir, while cinematographer John Alton skillfully mixes shadows, light, and angles to provide breathtaking visuals. O’Keefe is perfect in this great film, and Burr is at his absolute vilest. The tension rises to incredible heights, pulling the viewer to the uncompromising, violent climax.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950) / Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, Marc Lawrence, James Whitmore. Director: John Huston. A group of down-on-their-luck small-timers assemble for an improbable jewelry heist that will solve all their problems. Yeah, right. Huston pours on the grit and realism in this MGM film. The studio balked at the filming of WR Burnett’s classic noir novel because they felt it was too big of a departure from the Hollywoodized version of reality usually shown in their films. Wiser heads prevailed, however, and sixty-one years later, this one still packs a wallop. Marilyn Monroe got her break in this film, playing a lawyer’s midnight girlfriend. She gets to say, “You big bananahead.” Whitmore’s café is one of the grimiest places ever portrayed on film. Hayden gives the best performance of his career.

OUT OF THE PAST (1947) / Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas. Director: Jacques Tourneur. Mitchum thinks he can run away from his private investigator past by owning a gas station in a remote town in northern California. He goes fishing a lot, has a steady girl, and generally minds his own business. One day, however, a stranger rolls into town and tells him Douglas would like to see him up in Lake Tahoe. Mitchum and Douglas have a contentious history, but Douglas is willing to forget about it if Mitchum will locate some income tax records for him. Their history, however, won’t be so easily swept aside. Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who also shot the stunning Val Lewton film, The Cat People, fills the screen with striking, unbalanced images in a perfect blend of black and white. Considered one of the best films in the noir genre. Greer, as the deadly femme fatale, is sensational.

THE NARROW MARGIN (1952) / Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor. Director: Richard Fleischer. Tense, claustrophobic film shot mostly aboard a moving train. McGraw is in full trenchcoat regalia as he plays an LA cop, sent to Chicago to pick up Windsor, a key witness in a big case back in California, and return her safely. McGraw smokes plenty of cigarettes and Windsor is one of the hardest babes you’ll ever see, as she proves difficult to control. Her dialogue brims with tough talk and she’s the full match for McGraw, not an easy thing to do. More hardboiled than noir, really, because the good guys and bad guys are clearly defined, but the crisp direction and cinematography bring it back into the realm of noir. A scene with a car traveling parallel to the train is one of the most original noir shots ever.

SCARLET STREET (1945) / Edward G Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea. Director: Fritz Lang. Quintessential noir. Robinson is a meek corporate cashier who becomes ensnared in a web spun by sexy Bennett and slimy Duryea. Even the daylight scenes look dark in this one. Robinson makes one poor choice after another and we all know what happens to noir protagonists in that spot, right? The characters’ names are definitely for the ages. Robinson is “Chris Cross”, prostitute Bennett is “Kitty March”, and her pimp Duryea is “Johnny Prince.” Lang’s erotic morality play holds up to this day.

DETOUR (1945) / Tom Neal, Ann Savage. Director: Edgar G Ulmer. Classic noir made by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), one of the poorest of the “Poverty Row” studios in Hollywood. Ulmer shows what can be done with a microscopic budget as he transforms clunky dialogue and borderline acting into a haunting noir tale of one man overwhelmed with guilt. Neal, a veteran of low-grade B-movies, scores as a New York piano player who hitchhikes to LA so he can be with his cutesy-poo girlfriend. What he gets instead is Ann Savage. I’ll just leave it at that. This film holds the distinction of being the only film noir ever made in which no real crime was committed.

Joan Crawford stars as Ethel Whitehead / Lorna Hansen Forbes, but gets plenty of top-drawer support from David Brian (always underrated, in my opinion) as George Castleman and Steve Cochran, who turns in yet another stellar performance as the conniving Nick Prenta.

The DVD included an interview with, of all people, director Vincent Sherman. The date on the DVD is 2005, so the interview was conducted not too long before his death, which occurred the following year right before his 100th birthday. A veteran of Hollywood’s golden age, Sherman directed other films noir, such as Backfire and The Garment Jungle, as well as mainstream efforts like The Young Philadelphians, one of Paul Newman’s early efforts.

The Damned Don’t Cry, however, was his best. And it is arguably Joan Crawford’s finest hour, too, her Oscar-winning turn in Mildred Pierce notwithstanding. Her scenes with Brian and Cochran crackle with intensity. She worked well with them and they were both up to it. The story of a woman rising up from deep blue-collar roots to the top of society mirrors Crawford’s own life, enabling her to crawl into the skin of her character with ease. But Lorna Hansen Forbes’ meteoric rise is only a prelude to her introduction to the world of organized crime.

Brian runs the show and he sees in Crawford the kind of grit and tenacity that he had within himself during his own trip to the top. He finds her irresistible and eventually figures out how to integrate her into his empire. But of course, Cochran has other plans.

The film’s first half is set in Texas oilfields and New York back streets, but appears to have been shot primarily on the Warner Bros back lot. The second half, however, shifts to a Palm Springs-ish locale, where Cochran is plotting his next move. The look is so authentic, I almost felt as though I were watching a different film altogether. I don’t remember any film of that era with a Palm Springs setting, but this one was very effective.

If you haven’t seen The Damned Don’t Cry, or haven’t seen it in awhile, go find it. You won’t be sorry.

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE  / The DVD Package

Review by Mike Dennis, 2010

If it had been anyone but Criterion putting out the DVD of The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, I might not have purchased it. But Criterion has so firmly established itself as the premium purveyor of quality movies onto quality DVDs, that I couldn’t resist.

When I opened the handsome package, I was a little disappointed to find only one DVD inside. This usually means they didn’t go to too much trouble to put the whole thing together, and they weren’t interested in slipping in a lot of bonus features.

What is included is a digitally-restored, high-definition version of the film itself, an audio commentary by director Peter Yates, stills, and a 44-page booklet on the film and its star Robert Mitchum.

When you click “Play Movie”, the film surprisingly begins with only the Criterion logo, followed by the Paramount logo, then scene one. None of that annoying crap about FBI warnings and studio disclaimers. It looks and sounds terrific on my big screen HDTV from beginning to end. The color is crisp and the dialogue, which of course carries the whole story, is clear at all times. David Grusin’s restrained jazz soundtrack is a big plus.

The commentary was only okay, though. I was expecting a lot more, I guess, from Yates. Something along the lines of what I got from Jules Dassin in Criterion’s outstanding release of his classic 1950 film noir, Night And The City. Dassin, who only did an interview and not the commentary on that DVD, went into the deepest details of that film and its making, while film scholar Glenn Erickson did a very creditable job on the commentary.

Yates, in his commentary, talked about the things you might expect: shooting in Boston, how great all the actors were, and so on. But apart from his explanations on how they shot the hockey game scene and why George V Higgins failed to get a screen credit for the script, I didn’t get too aroused. I felt he tended to drift off a little too often into talking about his other films. You know, if I’m watching The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, I don’t want to hear anything about Barbra Streisand movies.

The booklet, however, is terrific. It begins with an essay by Kent Jones called They Were Expendable (no relation to the John Wayne movie), which offers far more insight into the making of the film than Yates’ commentary. For example, prior to shooting, Mitchum hung out with Whitey Bulger, notorious Boston gangster and the prototype for Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed. Mitchum apparently took some heat for consorting with someone like Bulger, but he defended it, according to Jones, by saying that Bulger was himself associating with a “known criminal” in talking to Mitchum.

The second essay is a profile on Mitchum called The Last Celluloid Desperado. Written by Grover Lewis, it includes contributions by co-stars Peter Boyle and Richard Jordan. It’s really all about Mitchum, though, and is a captivating look at his remarkable life, both in and out of films.

One fact which jumped out at me was that Alex Rocco, who plays Jimmy Scalise, was a former member of the Boston Teamsters, who were continually linked to killings ordered by Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang. In fact, Rocco himself was indicted for murder, only to have the charges dropped through aggressive actions by his attorney, F Lee Bailey. He then made his way to Los Angeles, where he soon landed the role of Moe Greene in 1972′s The Godfather.

Safe to say the booklet helps to make up for Yates’ lackluster commentary.

Criterion, which has given us top-shelf DVD releases of seldom-seen films such as Straw Dogs, The Long Good Friday, and Lord Of The Flies, has scored again with The Friends Of Eddie Coyle.

And like Yates says in the conclusion of his commentary, I hope this will expose the film to a whole new generation of viewers.