An Ode to Film Noir
For some time, Turner Classic Movies has run a program every Saturday at midnight called “Noir Alley.” Hosted by Eddie Muller, the foremost authority of all things Noir, the show features the classic films of that genre that flourished in the decade and a half after World War II. I rarely miss the show because as a product of that era, film noir was a major force in shaping my outlook on life. Derived partly from the German expressionist film movement of the 1930s and built around the work of directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Anthony Mann, Don Siegel and others, film noir was one of the art forms that films developed, as unique as the Western or the Hollywood musical.
I was part of the post-war generation, a Depression-era baby born in 1936. Too young for WW II, coming of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb when movies were still the predominant art form, what I saw on the screen every Friday night and Sunday afternoon, especially film noir, influenced me in a way that even the good Sisters of Incarnation of Our Lord School couldn’t compete with. Sitting in darkened theaters, I learned valuable lessons of life: Good men can go wrong and get killed, nice guys really do finish last, and you should never trust sultry dark-haired women.
I recently listed those films that most influenced me, ones that I can rewatch with pleasure, if that is the right word, because I recognize what an impact they had on me. Five standout among the dozens that I watched and enjoyed, if that is the right word: "The Killers," "Brute Force," "Criss Cross," "High Sierra," and "The Pitfall."
Going to movies held element of surprise
My local movie house, the Lindley, ran a special feature every week called "Request Performance." Supposedly these were films that patrons “requested.” I found from the manager, for whom I occasionally ran errands, that they weren’t requested, but were films that they could get cheap. Another lesson learned for a 13-year-old: Don’t trust a lot of advertising. That’s how I got to see my first film noir: "High Sierra."
The wonderful part of watching films in those days is that you didn’t know what to expect. Although I was more knowledgeable than most of friends — I read movie reviews — most of us depended on “Coming Attractions" to determine if we wanted to see a film. That is how I decided to watch "High Sierra." It had one thing going for it that I liked: Humphrey Bogart.
"High Sierra" was made in 1941 and directed by one of Hollywood’s best action-film makers, Raoul Walsh. It told the story of a 1930s John Dillinger prototype, Bogart in one of his breakthrough roles as Roy "Mad Dog" Earle. He is sprung from jail to help engineer a robbery of country club resort. The gang that he is to lead is made up of young "punks," played by future stars Arthur Kennedy and Cornell Wilde, who don’t know what they are doing. They also have a "moll," played in her best sympathetic manner by Ida Lupino. Of course, I didn’t realize she was really a prostitute. On the positive side, she did have a very appealing dog Pard that Bogart's character reluctantly adopts.
Although Bogart plays a gangster you sympathize with him and hope that somehow, he and Lupino can escape from the law when the robbery goes out of control. That doesn’t happen. Bogart is hunted down by the police and killed on a mountain when Pard runs up to him.
This was my first introduction to the sympathetic villain. I wanted Bogart and Lupino to get away and be happy together with their dog. The film carefully led me to forget about the robbery and to find tragedy in their fate. I learned that things aren’t always black and white but a mix of the two. Sometimes bad people can seem good and maybe life is a mix of black and white or maybe better yet, gray.
I did not understand the sex in "High Sierra" -- that Lupino was an easy woman and that while her relationship to Bogart which is never spelled, she was his lover. By the next film noir, I knew like all 13-year olds that sex was an important part of your life.
Life lessons from film noir
I saw "The Killers" (1946) directed by Robert Siodmak, a name that would become familiar to me as one of the best directors of film noir, again at the Lindley when I was fourteen going on fifteen. It is based on Ernest Hemingway’s short story of that name. Two killers go to dinner to kill someone known as ‘The Swede," played by Burt Lancaster, in his breakthrough role. Although Hemingway’s story forms just the opening, the film revolves around why ‘The Swede" was targeted. An insurance agent played by Edmund O’Brien, a regular in noir films, investigates his death and discovers that he was betrayed by a young Ava Gardner, at her sensuous best. Even as a 14-year-old I could understand the allure of Gardner and realized that ‘The Swede’s" love for her was something different -- lust. And so, noir taught me another lesson: All sultry and beautiful women — and Gardner was all of those and more — can be dangerous.
The Killers was remade in 1964 with Ronald Reagan in his last role playing the ruthless gang leader who betrayed his partner and had him killed. He was remarkably convincing as the unsmiling, vicious gang boss who hired hit men to kill his version of ‘The Swede."
After "The Killers," I recognized that the protagonist was usually misled by a beautiful woman, a feeling that I now was beginning to understand and had something to do with sex. In my lower middle-class world of the late 1940s and early 1950s, sex still was something of a mystery to us. There was no pornography and I doubt if any of my friends had ever seen a naked woman, and I know that none of us had had sex. The film that brought these confusing feelings to the surface for me was another Siodmak entry in film noir, "Criss Cross" (1948). Starring Burt Lancaster once again as the starcrossed and betrayed lover, it featured one of film noir’s greatest villains, Dan Duryea at his snarling best. If ‘The Swede” was a sucker for Gardner, then Lancaster totally was under the spell of Yvonne De Carlo playing his ex-wife Anna. De Carlo’s Anna in "Criss Cross" personified what desiring a woman gone wrong can do to a man. She was also my first dream woman.
Lancaster returns to his home in Los Angeles two years after divorcing Anna. On his first night back, he goes to his old haunt and sees her dancing a sensuous rhumba (with a young, uncredited Tony Curtis). Watching her dance, Lancaster's passion and longing for her returns, something I then was coming to understand. He discovers that she is married to the loathsome "Slim Dundee," (Duryea) a cheap crook and head of small mob of thieves. Lancaster’s passion, really obsession, for De Carlo, lures him into making a deal with Duryea to rob an armored car, a robbery that sees one of Lancaster’s closest friends killed. Duryea believes that Anna and Lancaster have betrayed them, hunts them down and kills them just as the police arrive. "Criss Cross" was film noir at its peak. Lancaster was trapped by his love for Anna and led into a plot that brought about his death. As the character says in one of the classics of genre, the "Dark Corner": Lancaster was “backed up into a dark corner” and can’t get out.
Around the same time, I saw "The Killers" at my local movie house, which also brought back another grim classic, "Brute Force" (1947) directed by Jules Dassin who would go on to make a series of film noir, "Thieves Highway," "Night and the City," and one of the greatest caper movies, "Rififi." "Brute Force," in reality was reminiscent of classic jail-break films of the 1930s such as "Each Dawn I Die," "The Big House," and "Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing," with strong noir features.
Five convicts led by Lancaster and Howard Duff are brutally treated by the Captain of Guards, played with hints of Nazism and sexual sadism by Hume Cronyn, plan a jail break. Their cell is the hell that the convicts must get out of even if they recognize it might cost them their lives.
Lured by women, often into death
"Brute Force" is one of the most violent films of its era. A man is crushed to death in a stamping machine for squealing. Cronyn tortures a convict played by Sam Levene while classical musical is played in the background. What gives the film its noir quality is that once again all the men are in prison because of women. In a series of flashbacks, each convict relates how his love for a woman brought him to jail. Lancaster is in love with a sickly Ann Blyth, and he was caught during a robbery to get money for an operation for her. Duff, fresh from playing detective Sam Spade on the radio, and in his first film role, is jailed for trying while he was soldier to help De Carlo in occupied Italy. Once again people are trapped by their attempt at doing a good deed.
The breakout fails and all the convicts are killed, but not before Lancaster hurls Cronyn from the top of the guard tower to the mob of convicts below who proceed to tear him apart like a wild animal. "Brute Force" was the most gruesome of the noir films and even as a teenager, I recognized that while gripping and powerful it was overdone.
The last of the noir films on my list, and in some ways the most disturbing to me personally, was "The Pitfall" (1948) directed by Andre de Toth whose best work was done in Westerns. The film stars Dick Powell at his unsmiling, sour best as an insurance executive who must recover stolen goods from Lizabeth Scott at her husky-voice, sexy best. A blonde temptress was rare in noir — the best might have been Jane Greer in "Out of the Past." Scott was not a betrayer like Gardner in "The Killers," but an innocent by stander in the crime committed by her boyfriend.
Powell, the happily married but bored husband, falls for Scott. Their love affair angers Raymond Burr who wants Scott for himself. Burr's performance as Big Mac is one of his definitive roles as a heavy, part he would play to perfection in a dozen film noirs. Powell kills Scott’s lover and she, in turn, kills Burr. The film ends with Powell released on the grounds of self defense but it's not a happy ending. His wife, played with proper bourgeoisie respectability by Jane Wyatt, prepping for her role as the perfect other in TV’s Father Knows Best announces that she will take him back, but their marriage will never be the same.
The unhappy ending and the whole theme of the film was an indictment of how a marriage could go sour. It bothered me because in my lower middle class world, Powell’s family seemed to have everything: a nice house, a good job, happy kid, and a loving wife. I couldn’t understand why Powell threw away everything. For De Carlo maybe, but not for Scott. It really disturbed me. Could this happen to me and my family? I didn’t think so, but look what happened to Powell and his family. I carried memories of that film for years. When it popped up on television recently it brought back many of these fears. That is what film noir could do.
Decline of Film Noir
Film Noir peaked in the decade and a half after World War II. The sense of tension, even gloom of the immediate post-war world gave way to the great prosperity of the Eisenhower 1950s. The Hollywood Studios’ greater use of color robbed the art form of its place. Film Noir only really worked in black and white. Gaudy musicals and big sprawling Westerns became the rage. To me the last true noir was "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1973). It was in color, but featured the drab streets and bars of a run-down Boston. Robert Mitchum, who probably made more noir films than anyone in Hollywood, played the doomed Eddie Coyle sleepwalking his way to death. A sad film.
Film Noir petered out by the late 1950s. When the studios turned to crime, they tended to prefer caper films or films about the power of the mob brought out into the open by the Kefauver hearings of the early 1950s.
