Black & White and Chic All Over
She was born today in 1922 in Brooklyn. Lake was almost as popular for her sexy long peek-a-boo hairstyle as she was for the film noir titles she starred in with Alan Ladd: “This Gun for Hire,” “The Glass Key,” “The Blue Dahlia” and “Saigon.”
She died July 7, 1973.
Alert: This review contains a spoiler.
Foxcatcher/2014/Sony Pictures Classics/134 min.
“I’ve been looking for a father my whole life and I finally found him in John du Pont,” says Channing Tatum as Olympic wrestling champ Mark Schultz in “Foxcatcher.”
The movie is based on the real-life saga of the ultra-wealthy du Pont (Steve Carell) and his working relationship with Mark Schultz and his older brother Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), both of whom won Olympic gold medals in 1984.
With the apparent aim of coaching wrestlers for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, du Pont invites Mark to train on his family estate, Foxcatcher Farm. But du Pont has little talent for coaching and it’s clear he wants to be more than a father figure to his protégée.
When Dave joins his brother at Foxcatcher, Mark is pushed aside and becomes alienated. Du Pont sours on his coaching plans and ultimately commits murder.
Director Bennett Miller (“Capote” and “Moneyball”) won the Best Director prize for “Foxcatcher” at the Cannes Film Fest. E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman wrote the script. The film strikes a grim and chilling mood, and Miller elicits memorable performances. From his pasty skin to his hunched gait to his clipped, halted speech, Carell perfectly conveys the menacing arrogance and internal emptiness that apparently defined du Pont’s personality. Ruffalo and Tatum are excellent as well.
But the film is strangely lopsided. Though it creates intensely compelling portraits on the surface, it shies away from examining the characters, especially du Pont, in real depth (once the triangle grows strained, Mark is essentially sidelined) and avoids any probing of du Pont’s interior life or motive for a cold-blooded killing.
Steve Carell is almost unrecognizable as creepy John du Pont.
That was a conscious decision, said Miller at a recent press conference in Beverly Hills. “[The film] resists the temptation of concluding anything, of putting labels on what this complex is. It purposely denies you the satisfaction of saying that’s what it was and to let you stop thinking about it. There was no conclusion in real life.”
At du Pont’s trial, neither the prosecution nor the defense suggested a motive for the crime. A jury rejected du Pont’s request to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was found guilty but mentally ill.
Carell said du Pont’s longtime sadness and loneliness influenced his portrayal. “I never approached him as a villain,” he said at the press conference.
And though Carell is compelling to the point of being almost unrecognizable as this awkward creepy loner, the fact remains that du Pont was indeed a villain, in more than ways than one. Completely sidestepping this essential component of the story dilutes the overall impact.
That said, “Foxcatcher” is worth seeing, especially given the Oscar buzz around the actors. “It’s very rewarding that it is resonating with people,” Carell said. “It was challenging, exciting and exhilarating.”
“Foxcatcher” opens in theaters today.
Simone Signoret in “Dedee D’Anvers,” one of the films in The French Had a Name for it at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
Mick LaSalle of SF Gate reports: “The Roxie Theater is launching a remarkable festival on Friday, Nov. 14, of films you’ve never heard of. Until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never heard of them either. I didn’t know they existed, or even that there were movies of this kind. But now I’ve seen every one of them, and the experience is like finding gold where you thought was rock.
“The festival is called The French Had a Name For It: French Film Noir 1946-1964. Of course, I knew that the French adored American noir and that the French critics gave the genre its name. But I had no idea they were also churning out noirs themselves, nor that they were doing them so well.
“Some of these films are great. Some are very good. And some are completely insane.”
Read the rest of his story here.
Oh, how I would love to dash up north for this festival!
But I’m not complaining. We at FNB are fully immersed in the AFI Fest by Audi, which runs through Thursday in Hollywood.
Clark Gable
Clark Gable flew five combat missions in World War II, including one to Germany. Gable’s military awards were the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal. He also received aerial gunner wings.
Adolf Hitler admired Gable more than any other actor and offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable to him unscathed.
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Who doesn’t love the sexy drama and irresistible hype that’s packed into just about every movie poster made in the heyday of film noir?
Now available in the U.S. and the U.K., “The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir” (Overlook Duckworth Publishers), by noir czar Eddie Muller, is brimming with vintage allure.
Full of swaggering dudes, feisty ladies with perfect pouts and a whole lot of phallic imagery, these brash, bold posters were saturated with style and rich with original artistry.
The films covered in the book were produced in the U. S. between 1940 and 1960, though one of the book’s themes is how artists of other countries depicted the peculiarly American phenomenon of film noir, writes Muller.
Primarily, he says, the book is a tribute to the craftspeople who created the artwork. And, although film noir is the segment of the poster collector’s market that has seen the steepest rise in value, the posters in the book weren’t chosen for their monetary worth. Instead, says Muller, he made his selections based on the posters’ artistic and historic relevance as well as their ability to spotlight cinematic contributions from writers, directors and performers.
We will discuss the book more extensively later on, but just wanted everyone to know it is now available on both sides of the pond. Meanwhile, you can read Anne Billson’s review in the London Telegraph.
A double-bill of “Detour” and “The Strange Woman” on Friday, Nov. 6, will launch the Academy’s Edgar G. Ulmer screening series. A production designer and director, Ulmer worked in many genres and, as the “King of Poverty Row” in Hollywood, was underrated in his lifetime. We, of course, adore his film noir titles.
The six-film series is running in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma). The films will be shown at Lacma’s Bing Theater.
By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Film Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). All movies below are from the schedule of TCM, which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
“Badlands” (1973, Terrence Malick). Friday, Nov. 7. 12:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m.).
Kit and Holly are played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, the first lead roles for either of them.
The late 1960s and early 1970s, in America, were marked by violence and loneliness, war and craziness, and wild beauty. We see a portrait of a lot of that trauma, in microcosm, in Terrence Malick’s shattering 1973 classic, “Badlands.” Set in the American West of the 1950s, it’s the story of two young people on the run: Kit, who works on a trash truck and tries to model himself after James Dean, and Holly, a high-school baton twirler with a strange blank stare, who thinks Kit is the handsomest boy she’s ever seen.
Driving stolen cars, Kit and Holly embark on a savage cross-country trek.
These two moonchildren run off together after Kit fails to reconcile Holly’s mean, smiley-sign-painter father (Warren Oates) to their relationship. Then, plumb out of arguments, Kit shoots him dead and burns his house down. It’s probably Kit’s first murder; he’s such a weirdly polite guy that it’s hard to envision it otherwise. But soon he develops a taste for slaughter. And he and Holly embark on a savage cross-country trek by stolen cars, one that includes the massacre of many people, including Kit’s best (only) friend Cato (Ramon Bieri).
Kit appears to be killing not out of need or fear, but out of some perverse pleasure he gets from pulling the trigger and making a soul disappear from a body. “He was the most trigger-happy person I’d ever seen,” says Holly, in her flat, unemotional voice. Kit and Holly are played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, the first lead roles for either of them.
Read the full review here.
Thursday, Nov. 6
Burt Lancaster stars in “Brute Force” by director Jules Dassin.
8:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m.): “Brute Force” (1947, Jules Dassin). With Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Yvonne De Carlo, Charles Bickford and Ann Blyth. Reviewed in FNB on Aug. 15, 2013.
10:15 p.m. (7:15 p.m.): “Bullitt” (1968, Peter Yates). With Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn and Robert Duvall. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 27, 2012.
12:15 a.m. (9:15 p.m.): “The Third Man” (1949, Carol Reed). With Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli and Trevor Howard. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 12, 2013.
Friday, Nov. 7
8 a.m. (5 a.m.): “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955, Nicholas Ray). With James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper.
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Detour” (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer). With Tom Neal and Ann Savage. Reviewed in FNB on Sept. 27, 2011.
9:15 p.m. (6:15 p.m.): “The Hitch-Hiker” (1953, Ida Lupino). With Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy and William Talman.
10:45 p.m. (7:45 p.m.): “Gun Crazy” (1950, Joseph H. Lewis). With Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Morris Carnovsky and Russ Tamblyn.
Saturday, Nov. 8
6 a.m. (3 a.m.): “His Kind of Woman” (1951, John Farrow). With Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price and Raymond Burr. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 18, 2012.
6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Saboteur” (1942, Alfred Hitchcock). With Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger and Norman Lloyd. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 18, 2014.
10:45 p.m. (7:45 p.m.): “The Big Knife” (1955, Robert Aldrich). With Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Rod Steiger and Shelley Winters. [Read more…]
We at FNB are eagerly awaiting the start of AFI FEST 2014 presented by Audi.
The terrific slate of shows runs Nov. 6-13 in Hollywood. The fest opens and closes with neo-noir titles that are generating Oscar buzz. “A Most Violent Year,” starring Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain and David Oyelowo, will kick things off. Set in 1981 in New York City, the film tells the story of an immigrant struggling to survive amid intense crime and danger. “A Most Violent Year” is directed by J.C. Chandor (“Margin Call” and “All Is Lost”).
There will be two screenings on Sat., Nov. 8., of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature: an adaptation of “Inherent Vice” by novelist Thomas Pynchon. Joaquin Phoenix stars as P.I. Doc Sportello in 1970-ish Los Angeles. We’re in. Phoenix leads a stellar cast including Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Jena Malone, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short.
On Monday, Nov. 10, “The Gambler” is the gala screening. In this remake of the 1974 James Caan film, Mark Wahlberg plays Jim Bennett, a college professor immersed in the watch-your-back world of underground gambling. English director Rupert Wyatt (“The Escapist” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) joins forces with Boston-born writer William Monahan (“The Departed”).
“Foxcatcher,” the closing night movie, is based on the real-life saga of ’80s Olympic wrestling champs Dave and Mark Schultz (Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum) and their uneasy working relationship with ultra-wealthy wrestling hobbyist/“coach” John du Pont (Steve Carell). Things go from tense to deadly in this spare and thoughtful drama, for which Bennett Miller took home the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Fest. (His previous work includes “Capote” and “Moneyball.”) We caught this at a press screening last night – it is very chilling and very well done. From his pasty skin to his zombie rasp that passes for a voice, Carell perfectly conveys the menacing imperiousness and internal emptiness that apparently defined du Pont’s personality. Ruffalo and Tatum are excellent as well.
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These are just a few of the film-noir offerings and there is much more going on, such as the Sophia Loren tribute on Nov. 12. Who doesn’t love this supremely talented and stunningly beautiful actress?
The complete AFI FEST program includes 118 films (73 features, 45 shorts), representing 39 countries. There are 29 films directed/co-directed by women, 16 documentaries and 17 animated films. The breakdown by section is: Galas/Tributes (6), Special Screenings (8), American Independents (8), New Auteurs (10), World Cinema (29), Midnight (4), Breakthrough (4), Conversations (4), Cinema’s Legacy (4) and Short Films (45), and includes 9 official Foreign Language Film Oscar® submissions.
Free tickets are available: http://www.afi.com/afifest/freetickets.aspx
Miriam Haskell costume jewelry on display at the Skirball Cultural Center’s Holiday Pop-Up Shop.
Do yourself a favor and be sure to stop by the Light & Noir Holiday Pop-Up Shop at the Skirball Cultural Center in West Los Angeles. Allow plenty of time because you’ll be amazed at all there is to see.
The shop houses a terrific variety of merchandise – from bar accessories, Black Dahlia candles, bright yellow Crime Scene scarves and a slew of books in the detective’s office to the vintage dresses, hats, lingerie and cosmetics in the femme fatale’s boudoir.
The Light & Noir Holiday Pop-Up Shop at the Skirball Cultural Center.
And what boudoir would be complete without jewelry? One exquisite example: a limited-edition vintage reproduction brooch and bracelet from costume jewelry house Miriam Haskell.
Additionally, there are toys, T-shirts and games as well as several items that play up the high-contrast black-and-white cinematography of film noir, such as stunning compact mirrors and specially designed chocolate bars.
Light & Noir curator Doris Berger (left) and The Noir Effect curator Linde Lehtinen. FNB photo
The Light & Noir Holiday Pop-Up Shop is open through Jan. 4, 2015. The outstanding exhibitions Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 (curated by Doris Berger) and The Noir Effect (curated by Linde Lehtinen) run through March 1.
Take a walk through all three and explore the richly layered legacy of film noir. Ahead of their time artistically, the classic movies still intrigue today and their neo-noir counterparts continue to reinvent the genre. What’s particularly fascinating from a historical perspective and what the Skirball shows illustrate so beautifully is the unusual confluence of forces that came together to give birth to film noir.
The film noir visual style is referenced in the Holiday Pop-Up Shop.
The influx into Hollywood of supremely talented Jewish and anti-Fascist artists that began in 1933 after the Nazi government came into power forever changed the American movie-making landscape.
The exiles and émigrés brought a sophisticated, cynical and wryly humorous sensibility to their new work. Perhaps most strikingly, they brought the daring and sublime visual style that many had learned while working at the German movie studio UFA in the 1920s.
Detail of a Miriam Haskell pearl bracelet on display at the Holiday Pop-Up Shop.
But German Expressionism wouldn’t have meshed with musicals, comedies or lightweight whodunits. By serendipity, there was a perfect narrative pairing: the hard-boiled, realistic work of American crime writers, such as James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith and Dorothy B. Hughes.
Sometimes snubbed by the literary establishment, these scribes took inspiration from downtown, dangerous streets, from real court-room cases, from seedy dive bars and elite private drinking clubs. They wrote tough, gritty detective stories as well as satirical novels about doomed love and perverse murder schemes. Heavyweight writers like Chandler, Billy Wilder, William Faulkner and Ben Hecht turned these books into scripts.
The Holiday Pop-Up Shop has great gifts for men. FNB photo
Another boon: Hollywood was in its heyday. In 1946, 80 million people (57 percent of Americans) went to theaters every week. Post–World War II audiences craved realistic fare and film noir fit the bill. Technical innovations allowed for more creativity with the camera.
At the same time, the bare-bones budgets of B movies typically left directors to their own devices, spurring their inventiveness. The strict codes of the censors also drove writers and directors to find subtle ways to subvert the status quo.
To bring larger-than-life characters like Philip Marlowe and Phyllis Dietrichson to the big screen, there was a remarkable pool of Golden Age acting talent. Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Ryan, John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson, Peter Lorre, Lauren Bacall, Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Grahame and Joan Crawford were just a few of the charismatic, one-of-a-kind stars who played these unforgettable roles.
Candles and chocolate and books, oh my! FNB photo
All these factors came together at exactly the right time to engender a startlingly original and truly international cinematic art form. But, as in any film noir story, there was a dark and troubling side underneath the surface.
The exiles and émigrés often faced bias and fierce anti-Semitism in America. Some of them couldn’t find work, some were relegated to low-budget titles, some of their careers faltered and faded. It stands to reason that a sense of fear and persecution lingered in their psyches long after they left Europe.
Step back in time with a little boudoir browsing. FNB photo
Imagine then, the new surge of terror they must have felt when in 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings (into alleged Communist ties and influence) named the Hollywood Ten, six of whom were Jewish.
After the hearings, the studios blacklisted hundreds of artists and many had to leave the U.S. in order to survive.
But, today, more than 80 years after the rise of Hitler and the emigration that followed, these artists are widely recognized and their work endures in one of the most powerful, stylish, resonant and entertaining of all movie genres: film noir.
(Photos not identified as FNB are courtesy of the Skirball Cultural Center.)
Did a Jamaican immigrant and Los Angeles gumshoe inspire Raymond Chandler’s and Dashiell Hammett’s characters? LA Times writer Daniel Miller posits a fascinating theory that is short on solid evidence. It looks as though he was duped by an aspiring screenwriter seeking publicity for the movie she wants to make. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a guy got tricked by a dame.
Read the story and see what you think: http://graphics.latimes.com/finding-marlowe/
From FNB readers