Archives for March 2011

What Zee sees

March 20, 2011 by

Joe Zee

“I love movies,” Joe Zee, creative director of Elle, recently told Alex Williams of The New York Times. About a Jennifer Lopez photo in 2008 by Carter Smith, Zee said: “I wanted a Polanski feel about it, so that’s why it was a black-and-white, with that sort of pained, but very glamorous, look on her face.”

Looking forward to Zee’s new reality show, “All on the Line,” which starts March 29 on the Sundance Channel. Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/fashion/17upclose.html.

Joe Zee image from www.zimbio.com.

Filed Under: Noir Style Tagged With: , , , ,

‘Sweet Smell of Success’ beautifully captures the sour stink of moral decay

March 17, 2011 by

Sweet Smell of Success/ 1957/ United Artists/ 96 min.

Michael Wilmington

This month, I am giving away a copy of Criterion’s new two-disc edition of “Sweet Smell of Success” directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Just leave a comment on any post in March and you will be entered; the winner will be drawn at random. Here, critic Michael Wilmington reviews this unforgettable film.

“Sweet Smell of Success,” an American movie masterpiece and one of the best and gutsiest of all the classic film noirs, is a sleek killer comedy/drama about Broadway in the ’50s.

It centers around two influential New Yorkers: megalomaniac star gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) and one of his more energetic publicist-sources, scummy but fashionable Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis).

Falco, who wears a suit black as night, a dazzling white shirt and a poisonous leer that implies he’s seen something dirty and knows something even filthier, lives and dies each day by whether he gets a story planted in Hunsecker’s hugely successful column. Hunsecker, meanwhile, mostly holds court in the night spots that are his fiefdom, condescending to all the people, from Falco and other flacks, to movie stars to a U.S. Senator, who come to sip, smoke and pay him homage.

Hunsecker and Falco are unashamed users, almost proudly amoral. Hunsecker thinks he’s above morality; Falco thinks he can’t afford it now. Falco treats his potential patron with a fawning but mean-eyed servility. Hunsecker, with his ominous spectacles masking eyes of ice, freezes out Falco dismissively. “Match me,” Hunsecker tells the weasely Falco, in one of this movie’s many famous lines. Though Falco doesn’t actually scramble to light his cigarette, he does far worse.

Both these monsters have need of each other in this dark night and smoky day, in this world bounded by the Stork Club, Twenty One, Broadway and 42nd Street. Falco wants to use Hunsecker to ascend higher, into the sweet, smelly heights of Broadway gossip success, to become another Hunsecker.

Meanwhile, Hunsecker has nominated Falco for one of the dirty jobs he can’t get too close to: sabotaging the romance between his younger sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and her straight-arrow musician lover Steve (Martin Milner).

“Sweet Smell” deliberately patterned Hunsecker after one of the country’s most famous and powerful newspapermen Walter Winchell (1897-1972). Winchell’s daughter Walda was the model for Hunsecker’s sister Susan.

When you watch Hunsecker and Falco do their routines – snazzy, cruel, funny – you’ll never forget them. You’ll hear Hunsecker telling Falco, “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” Or Falco circling cigarette girl Rita (Barbara Nichols) and answering her query about whether he’s listening to her by wisecracking, “Avidly, avidly.”

Falco and Hunsecker are classic American movie characters, written with knifelike wit, commanding craft and true street genius by Ernest Lehman (who worked in this world) and Clifford Odets (a one-time playwright king of Broadway). It is directed with stinging life, energy and flawless insight by Alexander Mackendrick, an American of Scottish descent, who was one of the comedy experts of that British treasure-house, the Ealing Studio.

“Sweet Smell” was a sometimes-chaotic production. But Lehman or Odets never produced a better script. Mackendrick never directed a better movie. Elmer Bernstein rarely wrote a jazzier, sharper score. The master cinematographer James Wong Howe (“Hangmen Also Die!” “Pursued,” “Body and Soul”) never shot a darker, more brilliant noir.

Lancaster was sometimes more impressive, more richly colored and dominating, in tonier classics like “Elmer Gantry,” “From Here to Eternity” and “The Leopard.” But Curtis never topped Falco, not even in “Some Like It Hot.”

Lancaster was not Mackendrick’s choice for Hunsecker. He wanted Orson Welles or Hume Cronyn. It’s a weird piece of casting that works and it makes this a stronger, sexier and more subversive film. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Film noir’s feline stars: The cat in ‘Femme Fatale’

March 15, 2011 by

More on the most famous kitties in film noir …

The Cat on the Control Panel in “Femme Fatale” 2002

Name: Funk Soul Furrier

Character Name: Clouzot the Control Room Cat

Funk Soul Furrier has long been famous in the south of France.

Bio: Funk Soul Furrier is a part-time actor and full-time DJ, creating the intense, kit-kat rap that critic Naught DeClawde calls “the edgiest sound yet from the alley.” His album “No Mo’ Kow-Tow to the Bow-Wow” sold 24 million copies worldwide.

With his sultry good looks and haute high-tech, Funk Soul was a natural to play Clouzot the Control Room Cat, a key staffer at the Palais du Cinema, the primary theater of the Cannes Film Festival, and setting for the suspenseful opening of “Femme Fatale.”

While he may be new to American audiences, he has long been famous in the south of France, particularly in Nice, where he owns and runs Le club de Chat et de Souris (The Cat and Mouse Club).

Since playing in “Femme Fatale,” he has landed starring roles in several high-concept cat-food commercials as well as cameos in a handful of Polish art films.

“Femme Fatale” director Brian de Palma said of Funk Soul’s performance: “His honesty and emotion just knocked me out. He did an amazing job with very little input from me.”

Image from http://catsinsinks.com

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Good, clean fun from Filthy Farmgirl

March 13, 2011 by

Filthy Cougar soap is all natural goodness.

“Well groomed, smooth as silk, and ready to pounce!” proclaims the label on Filthy Cougar soap from Filthy Farmgirl. It’s true, any cougar must be primped, plumped and primed for action. Get ready for the hunt with this chunky golden bar and citrusy suds.

Says the company’s web site: “We believe our soap puts people in touch with the earth through their senses, and enlivens the otherwise mundane ritual of washing.” And Filthy Farmgirl, which lists workshops in Hawaii and Vermont as its contact info, is 100 percent natural, with “no yucky stuff” such as detergents, surfactants, sulfates, artificial scents, colorizers, or petroleum products. Nice!

The retro labels, printed on recycled paper, are my favorite part. These soaps will make nifty gifties for my friends, especially since shipping is free in the U.S.; for overseas, shoot an email and they’ll work something out, according to the site.

The cougar soap is $3 for a small bar, $8 for a large and $18 for a three-pack. What filthy cougar, poet, lumberjack, nurse, secretary, flight attendant, vampire, philosopher or delicate dude, etc. (there are 69 varieties total) wouldn’t appreciate a product that tells us to Live Nakedly?

Product Source: From my own collection; I did not receive products or compensation from Filthy Farmgirl.

Filed Under: Noir Stuff Tagged With: , , ,

Prada plays with old-school influences at Paris Fashion Week

March 12, 2011 by

Loved Miuccia Prada’s update of vintage Hollywood style – fur stoles, flashy pumps, ankle straps and sassy sunglasses – at Paris Fashion Week.

The New York Times’ Cathy Horyn described it this way:

Miuccia Prada provided a strong if surprising close to the Paris shows on Wednesday, with a Miu Miu collection based on glamour from the 1930s and early ’40s. That meant delicate crepe dresses embroidered with lilies of the valley and pinched with tiny pleats at the front, wide-shouldered jackets and fur-trimmed coats. Other dresses and skirts, in crepe, had cummerbund effects in contrasting tones.

At times I felt that I was in a Bette Davis movie – Charlotte Vale alighting a gangplank but now in sparkly yellow pumps. Other collections, notably Balenciaga, had a ’30s undercurrent, but the influence at Miu Miu was pronounced.

Read her full report at http://nyti.ms/i6Vwt7.

Filed Under: Noir Stuff, Noir Style Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Helping those affected by the earthquake and tsunami

March 12, 2011 by

The American Red Cross is offering assistance to the Japanese Red Cross following Friday’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami that left towns and villages in Japan devastated.

You can read more and make a donation at www.redcross.org.

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Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd are smokin’ in ‘This Gun for Hire’

March 8, 2011 by

This Gun for Hire/ 1942/ Paramount Pictures/ 80 min.

Veronica Lake in “This Gun for Hire” from 1942 is an angel-food cake kind of femme fatale. Alan Ladd’s stone-faced, yet complex, hitman is a devil, but damn he’s debonair. He also likes cats and kids so it’s hard not to want to cut him some slack.

Veronica Lake

Lake plays a smart, svelte and stunning nightclub singer/magician named Ellen Graham who’s essentially engaged to amiable and solid cop Michael Crane (Robert Preston). Essentially but not officially engaged because there’s no ring or dress shopping, just some affectionate banter about getting domestic, which means darning his socks and cooking corned beef and cabbage.

But those scenes aren’t exactly sizzling with passion. That’s because of Ladd. It was his first major film and once he was aboard, director Frank Tuttle realized the actor was A-list material and changed the script to give Ladd more prominence. Even though you know Lake and Ladd aren’t going to end up together, there’s a mighty sexy undercurrent between them.

As Ephraim Katz of “The Film Encyclopedia” puts it: “She clicked best at the box office as the screen partner of Alan Ladd in a matchup of cool, determined personalities.” They went on to make six more flicks together, including noir fare “The Glass Key” (1942) and “The Blue Dahlia” (1946).

In this one, Ladd’s character, Philip Raven is on the trail of Los Angeles-based Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) a blubbery, unctuous exec at a chemical company who hires Raven to bump off his colleague, a blackmailing paymaster named Baker (Frank Ferguson). Gates then pays Raven off in stolen cash, a ploy to put him in the hands of the police.

But chemical formulas aren’t really Gates’ thing – on the side, he likes to chomp on peppermints, hang out in nightclubs in LA and San Francisco, and indulge his “vice,” as he calls it, as a part-time impresario. When he sees the head-turning Ellen perform in San Francisco, he’s hooked and invites her to perform at the Neptune Club in LA.

Ellen’s trying to get close to Gates, too, but not just because she craves the spotlight. She’s been recruited by a senator (Roger Imhof) who wants hard evidence that Gates is the Benedict Arnold of 1942, i.e., he’s suspected of selling chemical formulas to the Japanese. It is war time, after all.

So, as Raven tracks down his prey and eludes the police, Ellen juggles her high-minded snooping with sequin-drenched dress rehearsals. Before long, their paths are bound to cross, especially when they board the same train to LA …

Known primarily for musicals and crime dramas, and for naming names to HUAC during Sen. Joe McCarthy’s reign of terror, director Tuttle wasn’t what you’d call an artist or a poet, but he managed to make a top-notch thriller, based on one of Graham Greene’s best crime novels. True, the movie doesn’t do the book justice, but for every one of its 80 minutes, the film is engaging and entertaining.

Tuttle easily balances moody suspense, wholesome romance, patriotic duty and the not-quite-jaded vibe of young performers trying to earn a living at a nightclub. Cinematographer John Seitz (of “Double Indemnity”) lends his elegant eye to the lighting; the scenes of Ladd and Lake on the train and on the run are especially beautiful. Crisp dialogue comes from writers Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett, a Midwesterner whose stint as a night clerk in a Chicago hotel inspired the 1929 crime novel (and the 1931 film) “Little Caesar” as well as many other novels and screenplays.

Unrepentant and casual about killing for a living, Ladd’s performance is classic noir; it influenced Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai” from 1967. Unlike most femme fatales, Ellen Graham isn’t motivated by money or revenge but by doing her part for the war effort. Still, Lake gives us bemused detachment and a glimmer of tenderness; she also helps humanize Raven. And how could you not love her musical numbers and surprisingly modern costumes, especially the sleek black “fishing” garb with thigh-high boots? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

‘This Gun for Hire’ quick hit

March 8, 2011 by

This Gun for Hire/ 1942/ Paramount Pictures/ 80 min.

This role hardly qualifies Veronica Lake as a femme fatale. She’s loyal to her man, works for a living and helps out Uncle Sam. Shocker! That said, this movie is still full-on noir and Lake, who blazes a trail with hitman Alan Ladd, completely captivates. Laird Cregar delights, as always, as the peppermint-popping heavy. Based on a Graham Greene novel; directed by Frank Tuttle.

Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

Free stuff from FNB: Win ‘Sweet Smell of Success’

March 4, 2011 by

Tony Curtis, left, and Burt Lancaster in "Sweet Smell"

Sarah K. has won February’s giveaway and will receive a copy of “The Night of the Hunter,” recently rereleased by Criterion. For the March giveaway, the lovely people at Criterion will provide a copy of 1957’s “Sweet Smell of Success,” a searing study of corruption, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. Midmonth I will run a review of the film by critic Michael Wilmington.

To enter, just leave a comment on any FNB post in March. The winner will be randomly selected at the end of the month and announced in early April. Include your email address in your comment so that I can notify you if you win. Your email will not be shared.

Good luck, sweet readers!

United Artists image

Filed Under: Noir Stuff, Noir Style Tagged With: , , , ,

What’s new at the Aero, Egyptian: Hurray for Harlow!

March 3, 2011 by

Jean Harlow

Get your blonde on this Sunday at the American Cinematheque. Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre will host a Jean Harlow centennial tribute, co-presented with the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles, featuring a slideshow, book signing and screening. Harlow’s birthday was today, March 3, 1911.

The Cinematheque event starts at 2 p.m. Sunday with a slideshow on Harlow, the first blonde sex symbol. At 3 p.m., Darrell Rooney and Mark A. Vieira, authors of the new book “Harlow in Hollywood,” will sign books in the lobby. After the ink is dry, stay for the screening of Harlow’s screwball comedy/satire “Bombshell” from 1933, directed by Victor Fleming. Turner Classic Movies is also paying tribute to Harlow this month; for more details, visit http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/362075%7C0/Jean-Harlow-Tuesdays-in-March.html.

Other highlights of the Cinematheque’s schedule include:

Charles Laughton gets some love with a double feature at the Egyptian. Laughton directed “The Night of the Hunter,” starring Robert Mitchum, and starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Witness for the Prosecution”; 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 11.

Sharon Stone will visit the Aero for a discussion, after the showing of “Casino” at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 18.

More stunning Stone fare at the Aero: “Basic Instinct,” which marks its 20th anniversary, and “The Quick and the Dead” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19.

Director Michael Mann will attend the Egyptian’s 25th anniversary screening of “Manhunter” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19. There will be a discussion after the movie.

Be sure to check complete schedule. The Egyptian Theatre is at 6712 Hollywood Blvd. The Aero Theatre is at 1328 Montana Ave. General admission is $11; members pay $7.

Jean Harlow image from Wikimedia Commons

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