Tag: film noir

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett – Some Observations on the Book

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Someone my age or older if he is familiar with Hammett’s story, “The Thin Man” probably has only seen the 1934 film with William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles.  And as I’ve reviewed elsewhere, it is a fantastically entertaining movie made up of equal parts comedy and murder mystery.

I have a copy of the Library of America volumes for Dashiell Hammett and for whatever reason this past week I decided to read the short novel that the movie is based on.  And to start with I’ll say I wasn’t disappointed.  It’s a good story and well written to entertain the reader with vivid characterizations and plenty to keep your interest piqued.  But one thing it isn’t is a blueprint for the movie.  So, I thought it would be interesting to just give my impressions on how the book and movie differ and then to say which version was more satisfying.

The first piece of bookkeeping is the suitability for general audiences.  Now the film was pre-code meaning that strict censorship of risqué images, language and themes was not yet being enforced in Hollywood.  But even saying that, the film version of the story would today be rated (at worst) PG-13 due to violent circumstances in the plot.  But in reality, a G rating would not be a terrible stretch.  Several of the characters were criminals and murder and other crimes are the focus of the story but everything was handled in a sanitized portrayal.  The book however leans heavily into the seedier aspects of several of the characters’ lifestyles.  There is allusion to sexual activity and the violence that is portrayed is much more graphic than in the movie version.  And as an example of an unusual bit of reality one character is compared to a lesbian in her “hatred of men.”

And as far as the characterization of some of the more important people in the story, the two grown children of the eponymous “Thin Man,” Dorothy and Gilbert Wynant are described as at the very least highly neurotic and very possibly dangerously disturbed due to the terrible parenting of their mother Mimi.  And this differs significantly from Dorothy’s character in the movie where she is portrayed very sympathetically.  And as one of the main characters Mimi is definitely portrayed as a much worse person in the book than in the film.  In the movie she’s a greedy, manipulative woman but in the book she’s close to a psychopath.  She brutalizes her daughter for almost no reason and she lies pathologically at every turn.  At one point she becomes so angry at Dorothy that she goes into a sort of blind fury as she tries to get at her while Nick restrains her by main force.  She is easily the ugliest character in the book.

As far as the characterization of Nick and Nora Charles, one thing that agreed in both versions is that they both drank hard liquor almost continuously both day and night.  Now in the movie it almost seemed to be a joke.  But in the book, it was just their routine.  I guess allowances would have to be made for the prohibition era mores and customs but to a modern reader it is very noticeable.  As far as their personalities they come off slightly harder edged than Powell and Loy’s remarkably affable screen personae.  Nick especially is quite willing to get tough with both men and women who get in his face.  At one point he has to stop Mimi from assaulting her daughter by lifting her off the ground and pinning her arms while holding her down on a couch while someone throws water in her face to calm her down.  In the final scene he becomes angry at the police Lieutenant Guild for not seeing that Wynant was the murdered man and knocks out MacCaulay as much out of anger as to stop him.  And in general, both Nick and Nora are not as “nice” as their screen versions.

The book characterizes most of Nick’s friends in upper crust New York City as morally compromised while his underworld acquaintances come off as “good fellas” if a little on the rough side.

Evaluating overall the contrast between the book and movie, what we have is a gritty detective story versus a film that is basically a light-hearted comedy as much as it is a murder mystery.  And considering the audiences that each of these stories were aimed at both are highly successful in their entertainment value.  The book was aimed at adults, probably particularly men.  The movie was a family entertainment with some double entendres thrown in for the adults.  But I think the short novel is well worth reading and I only wish he had written more stories for Nick and Nora.  The screen sequels never measured up to the original film but I’m sure Hammett could have provided more gritty adventures for his Nick and Nora.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – A Movie Review

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The Asphalt Jungle is a heist film noir co-written and directed by John Huston.  It stars Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Sam Jaffe with a supporting role for Marilyn Monroe.  Sam Jaffe plays “Doc,” a criminal mastermind who was recently released from prison and is now recruiting a team to steal a million dollars-worth of gem stones from the safe of an upscale jewelry business in the unnamed mid-western city in which the story takes place.  Local racket boss Cobby points Doc to Alonzo Emmerich (played by Louis Calhern) as the fixer who can finance the caper and line up the fences to sell the jewels.  He also finds him a getaway driver (James Whitmore as Gus Minissi), a safe cracker (Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli) and a “hooligan” (Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley).

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

As the team assembles Doc privately discusses with Dix his distrust of Emmerich and tells him that he will depend on Dix to protect the loot in case Emmerich attempts to double-cross them.  There is a subplot around a dirty cop; Lt. Ditrich who receives protection money from Cobby but is being pressured by the police commissioner to find Doc.  And we learn more about Emmerich’s personal life and his problems.  Emmerich has an aging bed-ridden wife and a young beautiful girlfriend; Angela Finlay (Marilyn Monrie) that he keeps in a love nest downtown.  And maybe not coincidentally he’s broke and can’t fund the heist.  But his associate     Bob Brannom; a hard-boiled private detective who doesn’t see crime as an obstacle to making money, talks Cobby into fronting the heist expenses and throws in with Emmerich in a plan to steal the jewels and leave the heist team out in the cold.

At this point we watch the team in action.  And it’s like clockwork.  Right up until the point when the nitroglycerin blows the door off the safe.  Somehow the blast triggers an alarm at a bank down the block from the jewelry store.  And when the security guard shows up at the back door Dix flattens him with one punch to the jaw.  But his gun flies out of his hand hits the ground, discharges and shoots Louis Ciavelli in the gut.  Gus takes Louis home and tries to get a doctor who will keep his mouth shut about the gunshot wound while helping his friend.  Meanwhile Doc and Dix show up at Emmerich’s to transfer the loot and get their cut.  But when Brannom sticks them up Dix shoots it out with him.  Dix is wounded in the side and Brannom ends up dead.  Doc convinces Emmerich to fix his mistake by using his legitimate connections to work a deal with the insurance company to get $250,000 in return for the return of the jewels.

Meanwhile the police have offered a reward for the capture of Doc whom they assume is responsible for the theft.  A witness comes forward saying that Doc had been seen entering Cobby’s gambling house and Lt. Ditrich is given an ultimatum to find Doc.  Ditrich slaps Cobby around until he confesses and gives up everyone involved in the heist.

The police go to arrest Emmerich and he shoots himself to death rather than go to jail.  They arrest Gus and go looking for Louis but he has already died of his wounds.  Dix has a girlfriend Doll who hides him and Doc while the police search the city for them.  Doc decides to head out on his own and catches a cab that will take him to Cincinnati.  But stopping off at a café he indulges in watching a young woman dance provocatively to a jazz tune a little too long and a couple of state troopers recognize him and arrest him.  Dix and Doll drive out of town, heading for Dix’s boyhood home in Kentucky.  But Dix has been slowly succumbing to his gunshot wound and just as he reaches the farm his family used to own, he collapses and dies.

This sounds like a pretty wild story and it is.  But it’s very well done.  Jaffe, Hayden, Whitmore and Calhern do a splendid job portraying their characters and selling the plot.  And even the secondary characters like Monroe and Caruso are very strong and provide an entertaining atmosphere for this noir.  I may be biased but I’ve always thought this was one of the best crime dramas ever made.  And this was done in the days when the Hays Code limited the amount of violence that could be displayed in a motion picture and when special effects were basically non-existent.  I would say this movie gets my highest rating for fans of crime and noir films.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 6

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Film Noir (Crime)

So once again there is some chicanery going on here.  Because of my previous list I have to leave out all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies that should be in this category.  “Strangers on a Train,” “Dial M for Murder,” “Rope” and whole bunch of his stuff is right near the top of this genre.  But consistency was never my strength.  Laziness is.

I have emboldened the movies I particularly like.  Take that as personal preference.

I’ve reviewed some of these movies separately if you want my detailed opinion on them search the site.  So here’s a list of what I think is some pretty good noir.

  1. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
  2. HIGH SIERRA (1941)
  3. MURDER, MY SWEET (1944)
  4. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
  5. THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
  6. THE STRANGER (1946)
  7. THE BLUE DAHLIA (1946)
  8. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946)
  9. GILDA (1946)
  10. OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
  11. ODD MAN OUT (1947)
  12. DARK PASSAGE (1947)
  13. THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948)
  14. KEY LARGO (1948)
  15. SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (1948)
  16. THE NAKED CITY (1948)
  17. WHITE HEAT (1949)
  18. THE THIRD MAN (1949)
  19. ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949)
  20. D.O.A. (1949)
  21. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)
  22. IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)
  23. KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952)
  24. THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953)
  25. THE BIG HEAT (1953)
  26. SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)
  27. TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)

If I left out one of your favorites or if you detest one of my listed films, feel free to speak up and make your opinions known in the comments below.

Gilda – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Currently the cable channels available to me contain two kinds of movies I might watch.  There are Halloween movies (horror and slasher movies) and classics (mostly movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s with a smattering of later movies that supposedly have “timeless” qualities).

So tonight, my choice was between John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) and the 1946 film noir “Gilda.”  In deference to Camera Girl’s presence (she wanted something quiet in the background) I put on the older movie.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The plot of Gilda is slightly goofy.  The motives of the three main characters are hard to reconcile with their actions.  Glenn Ford plays Johnny Farrell, an American down on his luck in Buenos Aires for some unknown reason.  We meet him he has just won a sum of money in a craps game from some American soldiers.  As he walks away, he is accosted by a robber armed with a pistol.  He is rescued by Ballin Mundson who happens by with a walking stick that has a retractable 18-inch blade hidden inside.  We find out that Ballin owns an illegal gambling casino.  And after a very short time Johnny inexplicably becomes Ballen’s indispensable operations manager.

When Ballen returns from a business trip he introduces Johnny to his new American bride Gilda played by the absurdly beautiful Rita Hayworth.  But of course, Ballen doesn’t know that Johnny and Gilda were married and divorced sometime before the start of the movie timeline.  And they vehemently hate each other.  But neither of them reveals to Ballen this common history.  And because Gilda resents Ballen’s trust in and friendship with Johnny she attempts to torture Johnny by forcing him to cover up for a string of flirtations that she initiates with every man who catches her eye at the casino.  The logic of this isn’t really well explained.  But Johnny apparently feels its his responsibility to keep Gilda from upsetting Ballen.

During this part of the movie, we learn that Ballen has other business interests in addition to the casino.  Somehow through patents he has a monopoly on the world-wide production of tungsten (of all things).  And eventually we find out that his position was provided to him by Nazis(!).  Eventually the Nazis return and want their monopoly back.  A crisis arises when Ballen refuses their demands and he murders one of the Nazis at the casino.  Ballen must flee the country to escape the law.  He tells Johnny to find Gilda and bring her back to his house from which he will be fleeing with Johnny and Gilda that night.

When Johnny extracts Gilda from a romantic rendezvous that she was on and brings her to Ballen’s house they have a bitter fight which of course ends with them in a passionate kiss.  And, of course Ballen enters the room at that exact moment.  He rushes out and drives away.  Johnny jumps in his own car and follows him to the airport where Ballen runs to a waiting plane and flies out over the ocean.  The police have followed both of them and they tell Johnny that they have been waiting for the Nazis because they want to bust up the tungsten cartel.  They watch Ballen’s plane heading off into the night when it suddenly explodes.  We are then shown Ballen parachuting into the ocean where he is picked up by a boat.  He tells his rescuers that he will be hiding out for a while but he will return to deal with a situation, which we assume is Johnny and Gilda.

Thinking Ballen dead, his will is read and Gilda is his sole heir but Johnny is the sole executor of his estate.  So, Johnny marries Gilda to get control of the casino and the tungsten empire.  Afterward he treats her like dirt as revenge for what Johnny thinks of as her disloyalty with other men.  Gilda rebels by acting even more disloyal.  Finally, there is a rapprochement when Johnny finds out that Gilda has only been pretending to have affairs with various men.  Now the police tell Johnny that he must give up the casino and tungsten business because Argentina is about to seize them.  Johnny and Gilda decide to return home to America.  But at that juncture Ballen returns and announces that he is going to kill the couple.  And because he has to kill them both he won’t use his sword cane but his gun instead.  But just as he bears down on them, the friendly philosopher/bathroom attendant (I didn’t mention him before?) Uncle Pio stabs Ballen in the back with his own sword cane.  The understanding police inspector declines to press charges against the amiable killer saying, “you can’t murder someone who has already been declared dead plus haven’t you ever heard of justifiable homicide?”  And Johnny and Gilda live happily ever after.  Well, anyway we hope so.

Good lord.  This movie is a hopeless mess.  As I said earlier the plot and the motivations of the main characters are hopelessly absurd.  Gilda’s marriage to Ballen can’t be reconciled with her actions.  And Gilda’s and Johnny’s feelings for each other are hopelessly confusing and annoying to the audience.  The whole plot of the Nazi tungsten business makes no sense and seems ridiculous on its face.  Sure, uranium would have made sense for crypto-Nazis to be dabbling in but tungsten?  What were they planning to do, deprive the world of light bulbs?  And then there is the laid-back police inspector who wouldn’t let a little thing like homicide stand in the way of a happy ending.  Add to this Gilda’s almost incessant habit of saying Johnny’s name in every sentence she utters at him and you have a movie in which it is impossible to suspend disbelief.  The only possible motive for this movie was to showcase Rita Hayworth’s face and figure.  And without a doubt that is a worthwhile endeavor.  Hayworth is featured in several song and dance routines where she parades and shakes her very charming assets for the audience.  She was a very lovely woman in the prime of her life.  Now is this a movie worth recommending?  I would say only if all that I’ve said is taken into account.  You have to be going in just to watch Rita Hayworth dance to “Put the Blame on Mame.”  If not then don’t.

 

The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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I think the chief interest in this movie is that it comes across as a light-hearted crime drama.  In a real sense I think it could be considered a comedy.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Edward G. Robinson is the eponymous Clitterhouse, a surgeon with a keen and inquiring scientific mind.  When we first meet him in the opening scene, he is in a darkened bedroom rifling through a wall safe.  Just then a burglar enters through the second story window.  Clitterhouse trains a strong flashlight on the burglar and convinces him that he’s being covered by a gun.  He gets the burglar to stand facing the wall with his hands up.  Just then a second burglar who’s on the ladder looks in.  It’s Bogart playing Rocks Valentine (some name, huh).  He sees the situation and heads back down the ladder to escape.

Clitterhouse leaves the burglar in the bedroom and reenters a society party that’s going on downstairs.  A coloratura soprano is singing an aria.  Clitterhouse accepts a brandy from a butler, calls one of his associates about a patient he is treating and then calls the police and an ambulance just as a woman screams from upstairs and someone in the house shoots the burglar as he attempts to exit the house.  Clitterhouse treats the wounded burglar but he is recognized by his voice.  But Police Inspector Lane played by Donald Crisp laughingly allows Clitterhouse to be on his way to a surgical appointment without even inspecting Clitterhouse’s medical bag filled with the pilfered jewels.

Thus, the scene is set.  Clitterhouse is engaged in research on the physiological aspects of crime.  For this experiment he has committed four burglaries.  Now to expand his research he is reaching out to a jewelry fence, Jo Keller (played by Claire Trevor) and a gang of burglars headed by Rocks that includes such familiar character actors as Ward Bond, Vladimir Sokoloff and Burt Hanlon.  Clitterhouse identifies the victims and meticulously plans the heist.  The gang and Keller provide the manpower and the connections to perform the thefts and sell the loot.

In the final crime, a theft of furs from a warehouse, Rocks tries to double-cross Clitterhouse by locking him in the refrigerated vault.  But one of Keller’s men saves him.  At this point Clitterhouse has completed his research.  He has taken blood samples, blood pressure and other diagnostic tests on the gang members and now he wants to end his association with the underworld.  But Rocks figures out Clitterhouse’s true identity and tells the doctor that he will be forced to continue his criminal activities indefinitely.

Clitterhouse seems outwardly to agree to Rocks’ ultimatum but actually he doctors Rocks’ drink with a deadly dose of a drug.  Rocks falls asleep and then Clitterhouse and Keller dump the body in the river.  Eventually the police discover Clitterhouse’s guilt in Rocks’ murder and he goes on trial for murder.  His lawyer uses an insanity defense.  The prosecution gets Clitterhouse to testify against himself by stating that his scientific study is completely accurate and therefore the work of a sane man.  But the jury finds him insane based on the idea that only a madman would knowingly admit his sanity when he knows it would cause his own death.

Despite the fact that Clitterhouse murders Rocks in cold blood I see this movie as a comedy.  Throughout the story the atmosphere of the whole thing is light-hearted and I find it impossible to take any of it seriously.  There are a number of silly moments when the various gang members come off more as clowns than criminals.  The only menacing character is Bogart’s Rocks.  And as we see he is no match for Robinson’s genteel madman.  So, what can I make of a whimsical film noir?  Well, not too much.  It’s not a great movie but it is amusing in its own way.  I’ll recommend it to fans of the 1930s.  If we need a serious movie with Bogart and Robinson we’ll have to wait for their rematch in Key Largo

Murder, My Sweet (1944) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Murder My Sweet is based on Raymond Chandler’s book “Farewell My Lovely,” one of his books about the fictional detective Philip Marlowe.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Marlowe (played by Dick Powell) is contracted by an ex-con named Moose Malloy to find an old girlfriend named Velma.  Malloy is a hulking brute who has just spent eight years in prison for some violent crime and several times in the movie he overreacts over some disappointment by strangling or roughing up one of the protagonists.

As Marlowe begins to get a lead on someone who knew Velma, he is sidetracked when he is hired by Lindsay Marriott to assist in an attempt to pay ransom money for the return of an expensive piece of jewelry.  The two men head out to a lonely stretch of road to perform the exchange but when they split up both Marlowe and Marriott are attacked by an assailant using a lead sap.  Marlowe eventually regains consciousness but when he returns to their car, he finds that Marriott has been bludgeoned to death.

The police, in the person of Lt. Randall, grill Marlowe on the details of the murder and after threatening him with indictment over his involvement finally let him go.  They do ask whether Marriott mentioned a Jules Author in regards to the stolen jewelry but they refuse to give him any details about Amthor and warn him to not get involved in the case any further.

The next day a woman pretending to be a reporter questions Marlowe about the jewelry theft.  She refers to it as a necklace.  Marlowe figures out that she isn’t a reporter and finally gets her to admit that she is Ann Grayle, the daughter of the man who lost the necklace.  Or rather she is the stepdaughter of the woman, Helen Grayle, who actually lost it.  She hates her stepmother but is trying to recover the very expensive jade necklace that her father gave to Helen.

Ann and Marlowe drive to the Grayle estate.  The house is a palace and we find out that Mr. Leuwen Grayle is a collector of fine jade and the necklace cost over $100,000.  We then meet Helen who is a beautiful blonde who barely waits for her husband to leave the room before she comes onto Marlowe and hires him to recover the necklace.  At that point Jules Amthor shows up at the Grayle residence and Marlowe finds out that he is a quack doctor who is mixed up with both Helen and the deceased Marriott.  Later Ann tries to persuade Marlowe to give up the case because of the unscrupulous nature of her stepmother.  But Marlowe refuses.

Amthor gets in touch with Moose Malloy and has him bring Marlowe to Amthor’s penthouse.  He questions Marlowe about the whereabouts of the necklace but when Marlowe assures him, he hasn’t got the necklace Amthor convinces Malloy that Marlowe is hiding Velma from him so Malloy chokes Marlowe into unconsciousness and Amthor has Marlowe installed in the private sanitarium of a Dr. Sonderborg where narcotics and truth serum are used to try to pry the necklace’s location from Marlowe’s mind.  After three days of this treatment Marlowe manages to escape his captors and when he meets up with Moose Malloy again, he convinces the dimwitted giant that Amthor was lying to him.

Fearing that the police and Amthor might have his apartment staked out Marlowe shows up at Ann Grayle’s home and tells her about Amthor’s actions.  She decides to help Marlowe and after updating the police on Amthor’s involvement in the necklace theft Marlowe and Ann head to Marriott’s beach house to try and figure out what was actually going on among all the shady characters involved in the case.

And there they find Helen.  She chases off Ann and then provides the real situation with the necklace.  Amthor was blackmailing Helen over things in her past.  The necklace was the price he was demanding.  Marriott was working with Amthor.  Helen admits that she murdered Marriott in order to get back the necklace.  Now she wants to enlist Marlowe to murder Amthor and thus get herself clear of his blackmail.  Marlowe appears to go along with her plan.

When he gets back to his office, he finds Moose there and discovers that Moose has killed Amthor by accident.  Marlowe brings Moose back to the beach house and leaves him outside waiting to bring him in to see Helen whom he has figured out is Moose’s “Velma.”  Helen is in the house and Marlowe brings her up to date on Amthor’s death.  Now Ann and her father show up.  Helen then reveals that she’s had the necklace all along and was only toying with Amthor.  When she finds out that Marlowe is going to turn her over to the police for Marriott’s death, she pulls a gun on him and has her husband take Marlowe’s gun from him.  But when she points the gun at Marlowe to kill him her husband shoots her with Marlowe’s gun and she dies.

The gun shot causes Moose to enter the house and seeing his “Velma dead he goes to attack Mr. Grayle.  When Grayle raises his gun at Malloy, Marlowe tries to stop the gun play but he instead has his face near the gun muzzle as it goes off and his eyes are scorched by the muzzle flash.  The scene shifts to Marlowe with his eyes bandaged telling his story to the police.  Unbeknownst to him Malloy was killed by Mr. Grayle but not before he had a chance to turn the gun on Grayle.  In the final scene we see Ann Grayle drive off with Marlowe in passionate embrace.  Somehow love has triumphed over murder and greed!

As with all Raymond Chandler stories the plot is convoluted, confusing and loaded with bizarre characters.  Moose Malloy is definitely a cartoon character.  And several of the female characters seem unable to resist Marlowe’s debatable charms.  There is a decidedly frantic aspect to the constant action.  Maybe some people would find this off-putting and unreal.  I think of it as the hallmark of the film noir style that this film exemplifies.  Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe a few years later in “The Bid Sleep.”  But I think Powell in Murder My Sweet is the quintessential Marlowe.  I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys film noir and anyone else who would like to try out the genre.  Highly recommended.

Obsession (1949) – A Movie Review

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“The Hidden Room” is a crime drama that was made in England.  It was released in the United States with the title “Obsession.”

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Dr. Clive Riordan’s wife Storm is cheating on him with an American named Bill Kronin.  After catching them together when they thought he was out of town he kidnaps Bill and imprisons him in a bombed out building on the outskirts of London.  He plans to murder him and then liquify the body with a corrosive chemical that he formulates in a lab in his medical office.  But Riordan has decided to wait before killing Bill until he is sure that the authorities don’t suspect him in Bill’s disappearance.  The majority of the movie is made up of Riordan’s visits to provide food and drink to Bill in his improvised prison cell.  Bill is shackled to a wall and Riordan has marked on the floor in chalk the areas of the room that are outside of Bill’s reach.  Riordan is a polite and even accommodating host, providing Bill with his choice of books and even cocktails.  And being a psychiatrist, he explains the psychological reason for his need for revenge.

But finally, after four months Riordan is convinced that it is safe to dispatch his guest.  However, Riordan’s wife has been in touch with Scotland Yard and eventually Superintendent Finsbury pays a visit to Riordan and this buys Bill a reprieve.  When Riordan overhears his wife on the phone with Finsbury, he decides to finish off Bill and he mixes a poison in Bill’s martini for the night.  But thanks to Finsbury’s actions Bill is rescued before the poison can take his life.  Riordan is arrested by Finsbury and Storm says goodbye to Bill in his hospital room before she leaves on a sea voyage to find a new man with which to stave off boredom.

None of the actors will be familiar to an American audience but this movie is interesting because of the scenes between Bill and Riordan.  Their strange companionship in these scenes is amusing and surprisingly compelling.  Since neither has anything to lose by being honest they both portray their thoughts candidly.  Not that murder is an acceptable social action but Riordan does explain openly his decision to punish his wife’s infidelities as a salve for his pride.  And Bill maintains his spirits believing that Riordan will back away from his murderous plan when the authorities maintain their pursuit of his disappearance.  The story is somewhat preposterous but I very much enjoyed it for the scenes with the prospective victim and murderer.  Their pleasant discussions of Bill’s upcoming demise make this a movie I can recommend.

Out of the Past (1947) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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This is one of the quintessential film noirs.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Robert Mitchum is Jeff Bailey, an auto repair shop owner living in a small town.  He has a girl, Ann Miller who is in love with him and a deaf-mute boy who helps him with his shop.  But he is hiding from his past.  He was Jeff Markham, a private detective that was sent on an assignment by underworld boss Whit Sterling (played with good natured panache by Kirk Douglas) to find a girl who stole $40,000 from Whit and shot him for good measure.  The girl, Kathie Moffat is hiding out in Mexico and while staking her out Jeff falls entirely in love with her and the two run away to live their lives far from Whit Sterling.

But Jeff’s partner Jack Fisher, hunts them down and demands the $40,000 to keep from telling Sterling about their double cross.  During a fistfight between Jeff and Fisher Kathie shoots Fisher dead.  While Jeff buries Fisher’s body Kathie skips out on him.  Jeff decides to take on the new identity as Jeff Bailey and settles in the small town of Bridgeport, California.

But now one of Whit Sterling’s men arrives in Bridgeport and recognizes Jeff.  He summons Jeff to Whit’s summer house on Lake Tahoe.  When Jeff gets there, he finds Kathie has reconciled with Whit and now it’s Jeff’s turn to square accounts with the underworld boss.  There is a complicated scenario where Jeff is supposed to recover some tax documents that Whit’s accountant is using to blackmail him.  But it’s really a set-up whereby Jeff will be the fall guy for the accountant’s murder.  And, of course, Kathie is part of the double cross too.  There are a number of reversals but finally Jeff arranges a deal with Sterling such that Kathie will be on the hook for Fisher’s murder and Jeff will be cleared of all the various crimes he’s been framed for in return for the return of the tax documents.

But Kathie decides to upend the deal by murdering Sterling.  Now she and Jeff are on the run for the various murders that have been committed and Jeff realizes that he’ll never have that small town life he tried to escape to.  He and Kathie die in a hail of bullets as he drives their car into a police ambush.

Interspersed between the action scenes we have the love story between Jeff and Ann.  She’s a gentle woman who believes that Jeff has a good side that exists beneath the tough persona that he projects to the world.  And her belief in him propels him to try and escape from the criminal existence that Kathie has drawn him into.  But fate eventually claims his life and leaves Ann to mourn him.

As with all good film noir, the plot is an awful mess.  All of their terrible choices propel the protagonists to their bleak fates.  But the movie is a pleasure to watch.  Mitchum is at the top of his game with a tightly knit plot and lots of great lines to toss off.  Kirk Douglas is an affable crime boss and adds a lot to the film.  Kathie is a wonderfully dishonest femme fatale and is constantly double-crossing everyone in sight.  And the rest of the supporting cast is fine too.  I highly recommend this movie for film noir devotees and basically anyone who likes a good story.

Mystery Street (1950) – A Movie Review

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“Mystery Street” is a 1950 black and white film noir that I decided to write about because it’s one of very few old Hollywood movies shot in the Boston area.  The plot is the story of Vivian Heldon, a girl who works at a low-class bar called the Grass Skirt.  She’s gotten pregnant by a married man and is trying to get him to pay for her child.  She calls up the father Joshua Harkley who lives down on Cape Cod and tells him to meet her at her bar.  When he doesn’t show up and leaves his phone off the hook, she convinces a drunk to let her drive him home.  But instead, she drives sixty miles to Harkley’s town, Barnstable and calls him to force a showdown.  Because the drunk (Henry Shanway) is starting to sober up and complain she abandons him on the side of the road and drives off with his car to the rendezvous with Harkley on a lonely road.  Harkley shoots her and dumps her naked body in the ocean and drives the car into a canal.

Three months later Heldon’s skeleton washes up on the beach.  The local police Lieutenant Peter Morales, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, goes to the Harvard Medical School’s crack forensic expert, Dr. McAdoo to try and discover whose bones were found and how she died.

Using estimated date of death and a photograph of the skull on a transparency they superimpose it over each photograph of a missing woman from that time period and are able to determine that Vivian Heldon was the probable victim.  Also, they find the bones of her unborn child and a broken rib that showed traces of the metal from a bullet and they deduce that Vivian was murdered.  Next, they find from the bar patrons that Vivian left the bar with a man driving a specific color and model car.  Looking into stolen car records for that date they find Henry Shanway.  Once the bar patrons identify Shanway in a police line-up he is arrested for the murder.  Also, Shanway’s car is pulled out of the water sealing his fate.

After that there is a whole bunch of interaction between Vivian’s landlady and the murderer culminating in her stealing the murder weapon, a service .45 automatic that she found in his office desk drawer.  Meanwhile Dr. McAdoo figures out that based on which rib was hit, it was possible that the bullet was still embedded in the car.  Finding the bullet they then try to find the gun to cinch the story.  But Shanway doesn’t have a gun.  This disturbs Morales who then starts checking the rest of Heldon’s contacts to see if any of them had a gun.  Of course, when he checks Harkley’s desk the gun isn’t there.  But this alerts Harkley that the landlady has stolen his gun.  He goes to her home and chokes her until she agrees to tell him where she hid it, a storage locker at the train depot.  But just then the police show up and to keep her quiet Harkley hits the landlady on the head, knocking her out and eventually killing her.  Harkley escapes but Morales finds the key to the locker and decides to stake out the depot and find out who tries to get the gun.  After a lot of running around a train yard Morales catches Hartley and Shanway is saved from false conviction.  Three cheers for forensic medicine and Ricardo Montalban.

This is a solid B movie.  The acting is pretty good and the forensic science was state of the art in 1950.  But I have to take off points for lack of local authenticity.  At one point one of the “locals” pronounces Barnstable as if it sounded like the two words barn and stable.  Now admittedly I’m a refugee here in New England with my Brooklyn accent and all, but even I’ve picked up more of the local names than that.

I’ll recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys both old movies and police procedurals.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) – A Movie Review

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(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” is a crime drama that takes place in and around Boston.  Robert Mitchum is Eddie Coyle, a small-time member of an Irish gang who is about to be sentenced for a truck hijacking that he did for another gangster named Dillon who is played by Peter Boyle.  Because Eddie doesn’t want to do anymore time he agrees to act as an informant to ATF agent Dave Foley.  He informs on the gun runner Jackie Brown who has been providing Eddie with pistols for use by a bank robbing gang being run by Eddie’s friend Jimmy Scalise.

At the same time, we discover that Eddie’s associate Dillon is also providing information to Foley too.  Eventually Dillon provides information on Scalise’s operation and the gang gets busted.  When both Jackie Brown and Scalise both get taken down by ATF the head of the gang decides that Eddie is responsible for the leaks and sends his hitman to kill Eddie.  And ironically the hitman is Dillon.

The movie consists of the various crimes, the gun-running and the bank robberies along with Eddie’s and Dillon’s meetings with Dave Foley.  The movie’s strengths are the dialog and the portrayal of these characters.  Listening to them justify the various and contradictory actions they take rings true.  Even Eddie’s relationship with his wife and family demonstrates what a hopeless mess his life is.  And the ending where Dillon takes Eddie to a Bruins hockey game and gets him black out drunk before executing him in a car ride into the suburbs is completely believable and emblematic of the faithless fraternity that these men inhabit.

Living in New England I asked a friend of mine what he thought about the somewhat recent Boston mob movie, “The Departed.”  He said that the legitimate quintessential New England mob movie was the “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.”  And I agree with him completely.  This movie feels about right as a representation of Boston corruption.  Whether it’s gangsters or crooked politicians this is what that world looks and feels like.  It’s petty and disloyal and penny-ante and very, very local.  There’s nothing grandiose and nothing heroic.  It’s gritty and believable.

If you like crime movies that reek of small-timer sweat, this is it.