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.

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 could’ve seen him as a film noir staple throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, then sliding into villainous character roles in middle age. Unfortunately, a serious injury resulting from a rafting accident in 1950 sent him reeling into a long, painful recovery period and heavy depression. Although he made occasional movies after that and digressed into TV, his film career never recovered.

Which is why I got excited the other night about watching Danger Signal (1945) for the first time. The synopsis said his character “murders women for their inheritance”. I could just hear the producer bellowing into his intercom, “Get me Zachary Scott!”

The film opens in classic Warner Bros style with Scott in a sleazy apartment at night, a female corpse sprawled on the bed. The landlady is pounding at the door, neighbors gather, and Scott rifles the dead woman’s purse. He grabs a fistful of cash and splits out the window. Next thing you know, he’s on a bus to California.

Soon he meets Faye Emerson and he slides right into his slick-gigolo routine that he carried over from Mildred Pierce. She falls for him and she has a younger sister played by Mona Freeman and…well, it gets a lot better from there.

I liked Danger Signal. I liked it a lot. It wasn’t nearly as predictable as it could’ve been, and Scott carried the film well, weaseling his way through a series of women, always looking for the score, the angle. Emerson was the female lead, and she handled it. Her attraction to Scott’s character was believable, as was her slow realization that his intentions were, shall we say, less than honorable. Taut direction by veteran Robert Florey (The Cocoanuts (1929), Murders In The Rue Morgue (1932), King Of Alcatraz (1938)) kept the tension high in all the right spots, while cinematographer James Wong Howe’s brilliant use of shadows and light elevate this film to very respectable film noir levels.

But Scott is really the star of this show. There weren’t too many actors in those days who could play these shameless characters with a straight face and make you buy into them, but he did it time after time. With his unswerving instincts and his solid grip on the material, he made it look so easy.

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.

In no particular order, they are:

DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) / Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G Robinson. Director: Billy Wilder. This is, IMHO, 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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IJdk9oYG8g&NR=1

Review by Mike Dennis

From the moment you see Richard Widmark running through dark alleys in the opening scene of Jules Dassin’s 1950 classic, Night And The City, you know he’s totally screwed. If only he knew it.

But such is the lot of film noir protagonists. Caught up in the backwash of their own bad choices, they can only hope to put off, not avoid, what inevitably awaits them. And they’re always the last to know.

Night And The City, adapted from the 1938 Gerald Kersh novel of the same name, takes a look at the London demimonde of the era, where Harry Fabian plies his trade as a nightclub hustler. He periodically “borrows” money from his girlfriend to finance his big dreams, not the least of which is setting up a life of ease and plenty without having to work. Standing in his way are the sinister fat man, played by Francis L Sullivan, pursuing a personal vendetta against Fabian, and the East End godfather, played by the dark-suited Herbert Lom, whose intense presence fires up the proceedings every time he walks onscreen.

This is truly one of the greatest films, not only of the noir genre, but of all cinema. Dassin’s direction is flawless, capturing perfectly the seedy filth of London’s underbelly, while telling the riveting story of one man’s misplaced dreams.

Max Greene, the Director of Photography, is superb, never allowing the viewer to get comfortable. The expressionist look of the film is all sharp black-and-white contrast and angular shadows, and this, along with his off-center camera angles, produces an unsettling effect throughout. This is never more evident than in a nightclub scene, where a mirrored disco-type ball casts its little gleaming points over the oddly-lit club, bleeding into the office above. Toward the end, as Fabian’s reckoning approaches, dawn breaks over London, and suddenly the film takes on a pasty, grayish cast. By then, I felt like I was covered with dirt and needed a shower.

Meanwhile, the stressful score of Franz Waxman pumps up the adrenaline in all the right places. As Fabian runs deep through the back streets of London, the music pulls you to the edge of your seat.

But most of all, this is Widmark’s tour de force. Fabian is a complex character, driven by his own twisted ambitions, and beset by deep emotions. When he whines to Gene Tierney, “I just want to be somebody,” he injects a whole new feeling, a real truth, into that tired line that has been uttered by countless lesser actors. Widmark makes it all look so easy, so real, that he pulls you with him, deep inside Harry Fabian’s head and heart, as he’s sucked down into the whirlpool. Never again would he be given a role so challenging, showing us how he was so tragically wasted through his long career.

For those who are unfamiliar with this 1945 classic film noir (and I hope there aren’t too many), it’s all told in flashback by an unshaven, despondent Tom Neal, who laments everything that has happened to him in recent weeks. All he wanted was to hitchhike from New York to Los Angeles to be with his cutesy-poo girlfriend who was trying to “make it in pictures”, but wound up slinging hash instead. That’s all he wanted.

But what he got was Ann Savage. I’ll just leave it at that.

Detour was directed by Edgar G Ulmer, and was made at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) Studio, the last stop on poverty row in 1940s Hollywood. Filmed in six days on a budget of $30,000, and using the cheapest sets and production values imaginable, Ulmer crafted a haunting tale of people at the bottom of society’s pyramid. To put this budget into perspective, Avatar, the new James Cameron bloatbuster, cost 10,000 times as much.

Drowning in desperation, the characters try to hold on to what they have, and never seem to have enough. When these people are confronted with extraordinary circumstances and emotions, they, like all of us, will alter their mode of behavior. Some will even cross the line, the line that separates legal from criminal, moral from immoral, good from evil, Tom Neal from Ann Savage.

Film noir is generally associated with sinister characters moving through shadowy lighting. Much of Detour takes place under bright light: sunny rides in an open convertible, a well-lit apartment, and so on, but Ulmer’s direction and the interplay between the two leads give the film a very claustrophobic feel, like it was shot in a phone booth. The relentlessly grim story line follows Neal’s character as his life spirals ever downward to the unusual finale.

While Detour might be considered classic crime fiction, it’s important to note that no crime was ever committed during the movie. There’s a scene where Neal takes money and clothes from a dead man, but you know that if he didn’t take the dough, the cops would when they found him. I don’t put that in the crime category.

This is definitely a movie that’s worth another look, noir fans. A great story, with both Neal and Savage delivering unforgettable performances in what has to be the finest hour for each of them. And if you haven’t seen it, by all means buy it. You can get it online for six or seven dollars. You won’t be sorry.

And you’ll never pick up another hitchhiker again.