Film Noir Blonde — Page 30 — Film Noir Blonde

‘A Christmas Carol,’ with Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, has touches of noir darkness

December 22, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

The FNB team wishes everyone a joyful holiday season. But that doesn’t stop us from relishing the dark side. Here, Mike Wilmington dishes on this psychologically acute, tormented version of Charles Dickens’ classic tale.

Almost everyone’s nominee for best of the many film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Yuletide evergreen “A Christmas Carol,” is this 1951 cinematic gem, directed by the underrated Brian Desmond Hurst and scripted by the underrated Noel Langley.

The movie is shot by the neglected near-genius cinematographer (later a prolific director), C. M. Pennington-Richards, whose other great photographic job was for documentarian Humphrey Jennings in his WW2 masterpiece “Fires Were Started.” “A Christmas Carol,” shot at the very height of the prime film noir period, looks like noir and feels like noir. (So, at the end, does that other great Christmas movie inspired by “A Christmas Carol,” Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”) And it has what are usually film noir politics and social views.

This is the one of the most faithful of all Carol adaptations and also one of the least sentimental, one of the most stylishly crafted and one of the more psychologically acute. That’s in part because Hurst and Langley have deftly resisted the obvious temptations of the material. It’s beyond question a film for adults more than for children, which is almost never how “A Christmas Carol” is played.

When the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Michael Dolan) and Christmas Present (Francis De Wolff, decked out like a plum pudding) show up on a horrific, dark Christmas Eve (it’s black as pitch outside even when it should be afternoon) to escort Scrooge though his sad, frustrated past and his greedy, cheerless present, they’re almost like a team of Freudian (Jungian? Scroogian?) psychiatrists covered with mistletoe, digging into the roots of Scrooge’s neuroses and compulsions. (That’s always been the modus operandi of Scrooge’s Ghosts, but never more so than here.)

Sim is unforgettable as Scrooge in a film that’s for adults more than for children, which is almost never how “A Christmas Carol” is played.

Of course, key to this movie’s lasting appeal is its star: juicily eloquent comic actor Alastair Sim as the pathologically stingy Ebenezer Scrooge – the mean, miserly London businessman who considers Christmas a humbug. It was Sim (otherwise best known for the thriller “Green for Danger” and various comedies) who became the Scrooge of all Scrooges, just as the film is deservedly ranked as the Christmas Carol of all Christmas Carols.

With his baleful eyes and snarling smile, Sim had a gift for playing men who know too much and are rather annoyed at the silliness of the world. His diction was shatteringly perfect and it’s the foundation of his comic style.

All the acting is expert, deliciously British and delightfully (but never annoyingly) exaggerated. Sim is supported by an excellent cast: the fantastic Michael Hordern as Jacob Marley, the touching Mervyn Johns and Hermione Baddeley as Mr. and Mrs. Bob Cratchit, Jack Warner as the youthful Scrooge’s big-hearted boss, Fezziwig, Glyn Tearman as the mild but never saccharine Tiny Tim, George Cole as young Ebenezer, Patrick Macnee as the young Marley, Brian Worth as Scrooge’s ebullient nephew Fred, and Peter Bull as both the film’s narrator and an even colder-blooded financier than Scrooge.

In the “Carol,” the eggnog is a little spiked, the tale a little darker than in other versions. And more truthful, more penetrating. It’s amazing, in fact, how modern this story and its message, and particularly Scrooge’s philosophy, now seem. Greed? Business? Save the rich? Eat the poor? Are there no jails? Are there no workhouses? Bah, humbug!

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: A Christmas Carol, Alastair Sim, Brian Desmond Hurst, Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, film noir, Noel Langley

The Film Noir File: Polanski goes to Towne in ‘Chinatown’

December 11, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

“Chinatown” (1974, Roman Polanski). Friday, Dec. 13. 1 a.m. (10 p.m.)

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway sizzle in “Chinatown.”

A nervous femme fatale with a slight stutter. A stocky PI with a hot temper and a bandage plastered on his face.

Perhaps not the most promising characters at first glance; in fact they are among noir’s finest. Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson deliver knockout performances in 1974’s “Chinatown,” a neo-noir that ranks as one of the greatest films ever made. Certainly, it’s among the top 10 movies of the 1970s.

With an Oscar-winning screenplay by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski, and produced by Robert Evans, “Chinatown” clearly has roots in classic noir, but also reinvents and subverts the tradition. The movie’s intelligence, artistry and uniquely dark vision elevate it beyond a simple homage.

Read the rest of FNB’s review here or read Michael Wilmington’s review here.

Cary Grant cracks us up in “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Sunday, Dec. 15

8 a.m. (5 a.m.): “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944, Frank Capra). Two sweet little old spinsters who run a Brooklyn boarding house (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) also help elderly bachelors into another, better world with their specialty: poisoned elderberry wine. Their frantic theater- critic nephew Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, in his wildest performance ever), who’s just discovered their secret (on Halloween), tries desperately to keep them out of jail. Meanwhile two murderous professional criminals on the lam (Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre) show up to further envenom the brew.

This mad farce is not the kind of movie Frank Capra usually makes but the pace and energy (as well as the Coen Brothers-ish dark humor) never flag. The movie also has Priscilla Lane as the Ginger Rogers-ish love interest, and those three yeoman comic supporting players Jack Carson, James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton. Of the loony sub-genre comedy noir, this is a prime example: the least sentimental, least Capra-corny and maybe the craziest-funniest of all Capra’s films. Adapted by brothers Julius and Philip Epstein (“Casablanca”), from Joseph Kesselring’s hit Broadway play.

Photo credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment/ Myrna Loy as Nora Charles, Asta the dog and William Powell as Nick Charles in "After the Thin Man" (1936)

Photo credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment
Myrna Loy as Nora Charles, Asta the dog and William Powell as Nick Charles star in “After the Thin Man” (1936).

6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “The Thin Man” (1934, W.S. Van Dyke). With William Powell, Myrna Loy and Asta. Reviewed in FNB on July 28, 2012.

12 a.m. (9 p.m.): “The Unholy Three” (1925, Tod Browning). With Lon Chaney, Harry Earles and Victor McLaglen. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 12, 2012.

2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “Pickpocket” (1959, Robert Bresson). An ascetic looking, light-fingered young man who looks like, and is, a starving artist (played by the thin, visually impeccable Martin Lasalle), lives out a Parisian Dostoyevsky tale, when he begins picking pockets at racetracks and metros. Together with Diary of a Country Priest and A Man Escaped, this is one of the untouchable black-and-white masterpieces of a true master, France’s austere film genius Robert Bresson. (In French, with subtitles.)

3:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m.): “Crime and Punishment, U.S.A.” (1959, Denis Sanders). Like “Pickpocket,“ this is another ’50s film modernization of Dostoyevsky’s themes of guilt, spirituality and redemption. And we can only thank God that the movie’s young star, George Hamilton wasn’t, after this, typecast as a Dostoyevskian anti-hero.

Eleanor Parker is most famous for playing the Baroness in Robert Wise’s “The Sound of Music” (1965), but film noir fans remember her from “Caged.”

Eleanor Parker is most famous for playing the Baroness in “The Sound of Music” (1965), but film noir fans remember her from “Caged.”

Tuesday, Dec. 17

ELEANOR PARKER TRIBUTE

Eleanor Parker, the notable auburn-haired Hollywood star of the ’40s and ’50s, passed away Monday at the age of 91. TCM will pay tribute to legendary leading lady on Tuesday, Dec. 17, with a 14-hour marathon, featuring seven of her films.

Parker earned Best Actress Oscar nominations for her performances in “Interrupted Melody” (1955) and John Cromwell’s classic prison picture “Caged” (1950) in which she co-stars with Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson. She was especially admired by film noir fans for her leading role in “Caged” as a brutalized prisoner. “Caged” plays at 11:45 a.m. (8:45 a.m.). Reviewed in FNB on July 13, 2012.

Check the TCM web site for the full list of titles and times.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Neo Noir Reviews Tagged With: Chinatown, Faye Dunaway, film noir, Jack Nicholson, neo noir, Roman Polanski, TCM

The Film Noir File: Czar of Noir Otto Preminger has his day

December 4, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

Pick of the Week: Otto Preminger Day

Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons star in “Angel Face.”

His nickname was “Otto the Ogre.” He was one of the most colorful and feisty of all the star Golden Age Hollywood directors. His verbal abuse of actors, including beautiful actresses and children, was legendary. Robert Mitchum once slugged him on the set for his vile treatment of co-star Jean Simmons. (He and Mitchum later made up and even made another film together, with Marilyn Monroe.) But Otto Preminger – known for his hot temper, thick German accent, bald bullet head, defiance of taboos and long camera takes – was also one of the czars of film noir in the 1940s and early ’50s, when he directed classics like “Laura,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Angel Face.” Later on, he made one of the best of all trial dramas, 1959’s “Anatomy of a Murder,” and directed the neglected 1965 British thriller “Bunny Lake is Missing.”

Otto was the son of a renowned and well-respected attorney general in the old Austrian-Hungarian Empire (Markus Preminger). He grew up in Vienna, where, instead of the law, he became enamored of the theatre and eventually was a protégé and assistant of the legendary stage maestro Max Reinhardt. During Hitler’s rise, the Jewish Preminger emigrated to America where he fairly quickly became a notable Broadway and Hollywood director, as well as an actor who played especially nasty Nazis (as he did in Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17“).

"The Man with the Golden Arm," starring Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, plays at 5.

“The Man with the Golden Arm,” starring Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, plays Thursday at 7:45 a.m. PST.

After his huge success directing the classic mystery “Laura” in 1944, Preminger became a 20^th Century contract director and an A-lister. He was also the bane of censors and blue noses, whose limits and “rules” he constantly tested and attacked: crossing the boundaries that held back candid screen portrayals of sex, drug addiction, politics and the legal system. He had an “open” marriage and long unpublicized liaisons with both the tragic black actress Dorothy Dandridge and gilt-edged stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. He helped break the black list in 1960, by hiring Dalton Trumbo, the long black-listed scriptwriter who used aliases on his ’50s screenplays, to write “Exodus” (1960) under his real name.

Some serious critics, offended by what they saw as his publicity-mongering, tended to dismiss him as a phony, except in France, where he was one of the admired auteurs of the Cahiers du Cinema crowd. Preminger’s greatest years, 1959 to 1965, when he produced and directed a series of epic bestseller adaptations on big political and social themes, were succeeded by a decade in which his movies were almost all mercilessly savaged by critics and ignored by the public. His nadir, in 1968, was an unfunny pseudo-hip Jackie Gleason prison comedy called “Skidoo,” in which everyone took LSD, Groucho Marx played God, and all the credits were sung. I like Preminger, but words fail me.

Lee Remick in “Anatomy of a Murder.”

He was a stylist. Perhaps because of his lifelong love of the theater, he liked to shoot his scenes in extremely long takes; he once said that, ideally, every film should be made in one unbroken shot. Late in his career, from the 1967 movie “Hurry Sundown” on, reviewers tended to beat up on him. But Otto the Ogre, in public, never lost his acerbic tongue, his feistiness or his capacity for verbal abuse until the end, when he died of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease at 80. Late in his life, he was interviewed about his contributions to film noir, and he professed to have no idea what film noir was, and proceeded to ridicule, abuse and hector his interviewer. That was pure Preminger — and Mitchum wasn’t there to slug him.

9 a.m. (6 a.m.) “Angel Face” (1953, Otto Preminger). Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons tumble into one of those awful noir twisted affairs, where a nice handsome guy is entrapped by an evil, obsessed, gorgeous woman who won’t take “no” or even “maybe,” for an answer. She’s a rich spoiled girl, he’s a straight-arrow ambulance driver and Herbert Marshall is also one of her victims. In the ’50s, critic-cineaste Jean-Luc Godard put “Angel Face” on his Cahiers du Cinema list of the Ten Best American Sound Films, along with another classic film noir: Orson Welles’ ‘The Lady from Shanghai.” And yes, this is the movie where Mitchum decked Preminger.

10: 45 a.m. (7:45 a.m.): “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955, Preminger). With Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker. Reviewed in FNB on November 10, 2012.

12:45 p.m. (9:45 a.m.): “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959, Preminger). With James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara and George C. Scott. Reviewed in FNB on March 14, 2012.

3:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m.): “Advise and Consent” (1962, Preminger). This star-studded, non-flag-waving adaptation of Allen Drury’s political novel about a fiercely contentious U.S. Senate confirmation battle has a stellar cast that includes Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Tierney, Burgess Meredith and Franchot Tone — and it may not exactly be classic pure film noir.

But, shot by Preminger in knife-sharp black and white on actual government and Washington D.C. locations with the co-operation of the Kennedy White House — it looks like noir, feels like noir, and is as murderously frank and coolly unabashed about taboo subjects as “Double Indemnity” or “The Maltese Falcon.“ Preminger, a liberal director filming Drury’s very conservative novel, shows us D. C.‘s dirtiest linen in one of the nastiest, most vicious mud-slinging confirmation battles ever.

6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Bunny Lake is Missing” (1965, Preminger). With Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley and Noel Coward. [Read more…]

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: film noir, Otto Preminger, TCM

‘Bettie Page Reveals All’ hits theaters

December 1, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

Now playing at the Nuart Theatre in LA: ‘Bettie Page Reveals All.’ It’s just here for a week so see it while you can.

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Filed Under: Noir Style Tagged With: Bettie Page, Bettie Page Reveals All, film noir, Nuart Theatre

The FIlm Noir File: neo-noir master Chabrol scores twice

November 23, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

Le Beau Serge (France: 1958, Claude Chabrol). Sunday, Nov. 24, 4:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m.)

Brialy and Blain in Les Cousins

By the time he died in 2010, at 80, with at least 80 directorial credits behind him, Claude Chabrol had become the most prolific and, in some ways, the most successful of all the great directors/friends of the old French Nouvelle Vague (or “New Wave“) – those arrogant young cinematic firebrands, prodigies and know-it-alls who traded barbs, blurbs and bon mots in Parisian cafes in the ‘50s while they were mounting their assaults on the French film industry from the pages of the legendary film journal Cahiers du Cinema.

Chabrol, by the time of his death, was still making movies and TV and had outstripped, in production and longevity, his famed compatriots Jean-Luc Godard (“Breathless“), Eric Rohmer (“Claire’s Knee”), Jacques Rivette (“La Belle Noiseuse”), and, the most popular New Waver of them all, and the first to die (three decades ago, in 1984), Francois Truffaut (“Jules and Jim“)..

In the ‘50s, before their directorial careers began, these five were called the Holy Family: out of envy perhaps, but perhaps too out of secret high regard. They all became famous and revered French cineastes. As for Chabrol, the first of them to make a feature film — well, he was a specialist. Chabrol primarily made crime dramas, thrillers, film noirs. (“Les Bonnes Femmes,” “Le Boucher,” “Violette Noziere,” “La Ceremonie”). He adapted or was inspired by Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, Ellery Queen, Stanley Ellin, Georges Simenon — mystery thriller specialists all.

Critics often called him the French Hitchcock, though, as Chabrol liked to point out, his own visual and dramatic style was far closer to that other great crime movie specialist, Fritz Lang. A man who seemed himself a model of high spirits, goodness and humanity, Chabrol understood evil very, very well. He once said that he couldn’t imagine shooting a script that didn’t have a murder in it, and he rarely did.

Chabrol was a funny-looking, fun-loving little man, with glasses, a thick French accent and a frequent smile. He looked playful and professorial, and when I interviewed him once in New York City, he joked and laughed continuously. He seemed to work continuously too. Almost every year, like clockwork, out would come a new Chabrol film (or two). They were (almost) always good, always well and elegantly-crafted, always intelligent, often highly critical of the provincial or Parisian bourgeoisie, the classes in which Chabrol had grown up (the provinces) or later lived (Paris). And almost always, they had a murder (or two).

TCM is showing Chabrol’s first two films Sunday night and Monday morning: both noir gems in black and white: the riveting “Le Beau Serge” (1958) and the masterly “Les Cousins” (1959). They make a complementary double feature: two classic film noirs, with the same co-stars (suave Jean-Claude Brialy, feisty Gerard Blain) in the same kind of dark, chatty, stylish, psychologically complex drama — both about people unwittingly destroying themselves.

In Le Beau Serge, set (and shot) in Chabrol’s home town of Sardent, Brialy, as Francois, plays a young intellectual who left Sardent for Paris, and now has come back, sick, to recuperate and also to revisit his old friend Serge a.k.a. “Le Beau Serge” (Blain), a village beau who is now an alcoholic in an unhappy marriage. They spend much of their time in the local bar, drinking and talking. The two probably love each other, are attracted to the same women — Serge’s wife (Michelle Meritz) and her sister (Bernadette Lafont) — and they seem to push each other to dissolution.

In “Les Cousins,” set (and shot) in Paris, Blain, as shy country cousin Charles, travels to The City of Light to revisit his urbane and hedonistic city cousin Paul (Brialy), and to join him at law school — where Paul spends most of his time drinking and throwing decadent parties for decadent people, including some women (Michelle Meritz and Juliette Mayniel) whom they both like. (Stephane Audran, later Chabrol’s wife and frequent star, is a regular party guest.) Paul rarely studies, yet seems to know everything; Charles studies constantly, yet seems to forget it all. They also seem to love each other, somewhat, and one of them seems to be pushing the other toward dissolution.

The two movies, in other words, almost seem to be inversions of each other, with the Brialy/Blain team returning as different versions of the same characters. Not quite though. One of the main differences between the pictures, is that, though Chabrol wrote both screenplays, the dialogue for The Cousins was written by Paul Gegauff, an urbane and hedonistic, cynical right-wing novelist who writes very good dialogue and who went on writing for Chabrol, and once starring for him (in Une Partie de Plaisir) until Gegauff was stabbed and killed by his second wife in 1983. (Remember that when you watch “Les Cousins,” one of whose protagonists is named “Paul.”)

Though they were the first two features Chabrol made, both show the hand of a master. Both also have beautiful and highly mobile, black and white cinematography by the superb Henri Decae. And, after seeing the pictures again, all I can say is that it makes you wish Chabrol had been able to shoot in black and white always, or at least most of the time, and more often with Decae. Black and white suits him: this New Wave master of film noir et blanc. (In French, with English subtitles.) [Read more…]

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Neo Noir Reviews Tagged With: film noir, TCM

Catch ‘Nightmare Alley’ on the big screen in Westwood

November 22, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

“Nightmare Alley” (1947, Edmund Goulding) plays at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24, at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. You will not be disappointed!

Lest you think classic noir is limited to private-eye offices, police stations and penthouse apartments, director Edmund Goulding’s flick transports us to the seedy world of traveling carnivals. Tyrone Power is Oscar-worthy as Stan Carlisle, a charismatic hustler looking to break into the big time. The excellent cast includes Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Ian Keith and Mike Mazurki. Based on William Lindsay Gresham’s novel.

This is one of my all-time fave film-noir titles!

You can read the full review here.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Coleen Gray, Edmund Goulding, film noir, Helen Walker, Ian Keith, Joan Blondell, Mike Mazurki, Tyrone Power, William Lindsay Gresham

The Film Noir File: Crawford at her finest, one of Lang’s best

November 16, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

“Mildred Pierce“ (1945, Michael Curtiz). Tuesday, Nov. 19; 10 p.m. (7 p.m.). With Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott and Ann Blyth.

Sunday, Nov. 17

10:15 a.m. (7:15 a.m.): “The Big Heat” (1953, Fritz Lang). With Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin.

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Johnny Eager” (1941, Mervyn LeRoy). With Robert Taylor, Lana Turner and Van Heflin. Reviewed in FNB on August 4, 2012.

10 p.m. (7 p.m.): “Johnny Apollo” (1940, Henry Hathaway). Tyrone Power and Edward Arnold undergo father-and-son traumas and reversals as two wealthy Wall Street family members gone bad. Directed with Hathaway’s usual tough expertise. Co-starring Dorothy Lamour, Lloyd Nolan and Charley Grapewin.

In “The Big Heat” from 1953, Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame create one of the most iconic scenes in all of film noir. It plays Sunday morning.

Tuesday, Nov. 19

4:30 p.m. (1:30 p.m.): “Man in the Attic” (1953, Hugo Fregonese). With Jack Palance and Constance Smith. Reviewed in FNB on March 5, 2013.

10 p.m. (7 p.m.). See “Pick of the Week.”

8 p.m. (5 p.m.). “The Maltese Falcon” (1941, John Huston). With Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and Elisha Cook, Jr. Reviewed in FNB on November 10, 2012.

Thursday, Nov. 21

3:45 p.m. (12:45 p.m.): “Jeopardy” (1943, John Sturges). With Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan and Ralph Meeker. Reviewed in FNB on July 21, 2012.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Ann Blyth, film noir, Film Noir Blonde, Fritz Lang, Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jack Carson, Joan Crawford, Lee Marvin, Michael Curtiz, Mildred Pierce, TCM, The Big Heat, Zachary Scott

‘Letters to Jackie’ documentary airs Sunday night on TLC

November 16, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

LETTERS TO JACKIE: REMEMBERING PRESIDENT KENNEDY. Directed and written by Bill Couturié, this acclaimed documentary about JFK’s inspirational presidency will air at 9/8c on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013 on TLC.

The film features 18 stars, including Anne Hathaway, Bérénice Bejo, Michelle Williams, Kirsten Dunst and Chris Cooper, reading from letters sent to Jacqueline Kennedy in the days following the death of John F. Kennedy. These letters illustrate the country’s remarkable ability to unite and uplift their first lady with words of compassion and love.

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Film noir stalwart Lizabeth Scott highlighted on TCM

November 14, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

Dead Reckoning/1947/Columbia Pictures/100 min.

It’s good to take fashion risks from time to time. But would I ever wear a polka-dot shower cap with matching bow-tie to take an ex-GI for a ride? Hmm, I think not. Sadly, Coral “Dusty” Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) makes this fashion choice in “Dead Reckoning” (1947). Honey, you’re trying to con Capt. Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart), the toughest tough-guy ever. You can’t afford a wardrobe slipup like that.

To put it mildly, Rip is slow to succumb to feminine wiles. As he tells his war buddy, earnest and Yale-educated Sgt. Johnny Drake (William Prince): “All females are the same with their faces washed.”

When Johnny mysteriously disappears on the way to pick up the Congressional Medal of Honor, Rip heads to Gulf City, Fla., to find him. Instead, he meets Johnny’s girlfriend Coral – pretty, poised and concerned for her beau – at the Sanctuary Club, a hangout run by Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky), a lowlife with a fancy vocabulary.

Rip’s next stop is the local morgue, where he learns that Johnny has died in a car crash. Convinced it was no accident, he determines to find out who’s responsible. Then a dead body shows up in Rip’s hotel room. As Rip and Coral join forces to figure out what gives in Gulf City, Rip allows her to get a little closer to his battle-scarred core. She reveals that Johnny didn’t really light her fire. But Rip’s another story, and a bumpy romance ensues.

At one point, Rip shares his ultimate female fantasy, that “women ought to come capsule-sized, about four inches high” and for the most part kept in a man’s pocket except for “that time of the evening when he wants her full-sized and beautiful.” Luckily that’s a no-brainer for lovely Coral. Other than that disastrous hat and bow, she looks impeccable.

Lizabeth Scott was born Emma Matzo in Scranton, Pa., one of six children. Her parents emigrated from the Ukraine.

Lizabeth Scott was born Emma Matzo on Sept. 29, 1922, in Scranton, Pa., one of six children. Her parents emigrated from the Ukraine.

“Dead Reckoning” joins top talent to create a solid example of the noir genre. John Cromwell provides fine direction; Steve Fisher’s crisp, funny script has Rip telling his story via flashback to a kindly priest, Father Logan (James Bell). Rip’s still-fresh memories of World War II intertwine with the neatly crafted plot.

Best of all we get to watch Bogart and Scott. Sculpted, slim and statuesque, fair-haired Scott (who looks a lot like Lauren Bacall) was a film noir stalwart and TCM is showing many of her movies Friday, including “Dead Reckoning,” “Pitfall” and “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” in which Scott holds her own with fellow cast members Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas. Other notable ’40s flicks include: “Desert Fury,” “I Walk Alone” and “The Racket,” co-starring Robert Mitchum and also directed by Cromwell, who was blacklisted from 1951-1958. (“The Racket” is also part of Friday’s lineup.)

(In 1950, Cromwell directed the classic prison flick “Caged” starring Agnes Moorehead and Ellen Corby. Moorehead would later star as Endora on “Bewitched” and Corby would play Grandma on “The Waltons.”)

Scott tended to play tough girls who lived by their wits and worldly charms, having been born on the wrong side of the tracks. Alluring and mysterious, she was sometimes a bit too aloof, a bit stiff in her expression, body language and gesture. In other words, she lacked the sizzle of a full-on femme fatale. The role of Coral Chandler was originally intended for Rita Hayworth, but she was busy making “The Lady from Shanghai.”

Still, Scott was a trooper and accumulated many credits: “Too Late for Tears,” “Easy Living,” “Paid in Full,” “Dark City,” “The Company She Keeps,” “Two of a Kind,” “Red Mountain,” “A Stolen Face,” “Scared Stiff,” “Bad for Each Other” and “Silver Lode.”

Scott never married, rumors circulated about her sexual preferences and the murky publicity was enough to sour her career. A pretty raw deal, I’d say. Scott recently turned 91 and we at FNB would love to take her out for dinner and drinks, say Musso & Frank’s? That’s the least we can do. Well, that and watch her Friday on TCM.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Dead Reckoning, film noir, Humphrey Bogart, John Cromwell, Lizabeth Scott, Pitfall, Steve Fisher, TCM, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

The Noir File: Robert Ryan is the acting champ of film noir

November 10, 2013 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Robert Ryan Day Monday, Nov. 11, 6 a.m. (3 a.m.) to 6 p.m. (3 p.m). His eyes were dark, narrow and penetrating, and they could sometimes take on a bemused crinkle or a murderous squint. His voice sometimes had a menacing rasp or whine. He had a powerful frame, hardened by his years as a college boxing champ and a U. S. Marine. He could portray pathology — the ruthlessness of a villain, the torment of a ordinary man caught in a web of violence or corruption — like few players in the history of film noir. He could break your heart, or make your blood run cold.

Robert Ryan is a brutal cop in “On Dangerous Ground.”

He was underestimated for much of his career, but we know him now as one of the great actors of film noir, and of American movies. He came from Chicago and his name was Robert Ryan. For most of his career, Ryan was one of Hollywood’s most underrated actors: a reliable villain, yes, and a supporting player who never gave a bad performance, but not, it was mistakenly thought, one of the monarchs of his profession, like Bogart, Tracy, Stewart and Fonda.

Perhaps only at the end of his career, when he was dying — and he played for John Frankenheimer, superbly, the role of Larry Slade in the American Film Theater film of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” did he get something like the full recognition as a master of his craft, that he always deserved.

On Monday, TCM is highlighting the work of this brilliant actor. If you can only catch one or two of the Robert Ryan movies, see “The Set-Up” and “On Dangerous Ground.” And then raise a glass to the guy, one of the greats, who never really got his due until he was almost gone. The champ.

Robert Ryan was underrated for much of career.

Monday, Nov. 11

6 a.m. (3 a.m.): “Berlin Express” (1948, Jacques Tourneur) With Merle Oberon and Paul Lukas. Reviewed in FNB on April 9, 2013.

7:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m.): “Act of Violence” (1949, Fred Zinnemann). With Van Heflin and Janet Leigh. Reviewed in FNB on Aug. 4, 2012.

9 a.m. (6 a.m.): “Crossfire” (1947, Edward Dmytryk). With Robert Mitchum and Robert Young. Reviewed in FNB on Nov. 20, 2012.

10:30 a.m. (7:30 a.m.): “The Set-Up” (1949, Robert Wise). With Audrey Totter. Reviewed in FNB on April 9, 2013, Reviewed in FNB on April 9, 2013.

11:45 a.m. (8:45 a.m.): “Beware, My Lovely” (1952, Harry Horner). Lonely woman Ida Lupino is put through the suspense drama wringer by bent handyman Ryan.

1:15 p.m. (10:15 a.m.): “On Dangerous Ground” (1952, Nicholas Ray). One of the great Robert Ryan roles and Nick Ray movies. Ryan plays a brutal, disillusioned cop, sick of the dark urban world in which he works, and prone to fits of near-murderous violence. He is sent to the country to track down an emotionally damaged young boy/murderer, whose sister is a blind woman (Ida Lupino). With Ward Bond as the vigilante father of the victim and Charles Kemper as Ryan’s sympathetic city cop partner. The excellent script is by A. I. Bezzerides (“Kiss Me Deadly”), and the great, alternately romantic and nerve-jangling, score is by Bernard Herrmann.

2:45 p.m. (11:45 a.m.): “Born to be Bad” (1950, Nicholas Ray). With Joan Fontaine and Mel Ferrer. Reviewed in FNB on April 9, 2013.

4:30 p.m. (1:30 p.m.): “Bad Day at Black Rock” (1955, John Sturges). With Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan and Lee Marvin. Reviewed in FNB on April 7, 2012.

6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Billy Budd” (1962, Peter Ustinov). Another of Ryan’s greatest performances. In Ustinov’s film adaptation of Herman Melville’s story of the beautiful, childlike sailor Billy Budd (Terence Stamp), Ryan is the sadistic ship’s officer Claggart, who relentlessly persecutes the boy and triggers a tragedy. With Ustinov as Captain Vere and Melvyn Douglas as The Dansker. [Read more…]

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: film noir, Robert Ryan, TCM