‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ quick hit

October 11, 2012 by

The Postman Always Rings Twice/1946/MGM/113 min.

“Postman” is from that strain of noir that prizes stark realism above all else, particularly humor and visual style. Based on a James M. Cain novel and directed by Tay Garnett, it’s a grim story of two lovers – blonde-bombshell temptress Lana Turner and earthy, streetwise super-hunk John Garfield – who bump off Lana’s wealthy husband, get away with it, but then face a whole new set of problems.

Hard-as-nails Turner makes a splendid femme fatale and Garfield matches her beat for beat. The great supporting cast includes Cecil Kellaway, Leon Ames, Hume Cronyn and Audrey Totter. Dour and dire, yes, but also sexy and compelling. Required viewing for any noir aficionado.

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Chicago film fest opens Thursday with ‘Stand Up Guys’

October 10, 2012 by

The Chicago International Film Festival, the oldest competitive film festival in North America, starts tonight at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park with “Stand Up Guys,” a crime comedy about retired gangsters who reunite for one epic last night. The fest, now in its 48th year, runs through Oct. 25.

Produced by Chicagoan Tom Rosenberg (Academy Award winner, “Million Dollar Baby”) and directed by Chicagoan Fisher Stevens (Academy Award winner, “The Cove”), the film features an all-star cast including Academy Award winners Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin as well as Emmy and Golden Globe-winner Julianna Margulies, all of whom will be in Chicago to celebrate opening night.

“This is without a doubt the most exciting opening night for the Chicago International Film Festival in many years,” says Michael Kutza, CIFF founder and artistic director.

This year’s fest features 175 films, representing 50 countries. The After Dark competition is a selection of the most chilling films from around the world. There are also panels, parties, discussions and tributes.

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The Noir File: Tracy is tops in Lang’s anti-lynching classic ‘Fury’

October 6, 2012 by

By Michael Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

A guide to classic film noir and neo-noir on cable TV. All the movies are from the current schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

“Fury” (1936, Fritz Lang). Monday, Oct. 8, 8 p.m. (5 p.m.)

Spencer Tracy stars in “Fury,” one of the most Germanic of Fritz Lang’s American movies.

The two great American anti-lynching movies are Fritz Lang’s 1936 classic “Fury,” and William Wellman’s great 1943 Western “The Ox-Bow Incident.” “Fury” is the more powerful of the two, the more effective, the more memorable. Lang’s film, which he also co-wrote, is an explosive saga of a Depression-era small city descending into lynch hysteria. Spencer Tracy, at his youthful naturalistic best, is Joe Wilson, a decent, ordinary, working-class guy who stops his car in the town and is mistaken for a kidnapper. Locked in jail despite his desperate protestations of innocence, Joe is then subject to a terrifying nocturnal assault by the maddened townspeople, who drive away the craven police guards and burn the jail down, killing Joe – they think.

But Joe is alive, having fled back to the big city and his family and fiancée (Sylvia Sidney). And he is now consumed with obsessive dreams of fiery revenge and awful retribution. What happens in the course of that revenge may be unlikely, but “Fury” is still gripping, frightening and hypnotic. It’s one of the most Germanic of Lang’s American movies, one of the strongest social message dramas of the ’30s, and as obvious a precursor of ’40s film noir as Lang’s1931 masterpiece “M.” With Walter Brennan, Bruce Cabot, Walter Abel and Frank Albertson. Screenplay by Lang and Bartlett Cormack, from a story by Norman Krasna.

Saturday, Oct. 6

“Party Girl” is pure Nick Ray: romantic, moody and violent. Shown: John Ireland, Cyd Charisse.

6 a.m. (3 a.m.): “Party Girl” (1958, Nicholas Ray). In Nick Ray’s lusciously colorful and nervy gangland tale, Robert Taylor is a handsome mob attorney who milks sympathy from juries by walking on his crutches. Cyd Charisse is the leggy nightclub dancer/party girl he loves and Lee J. Cobb is Cyd’s other lover: Rico, the Chicago mob boss who carries a little vile of acid for anyone who double-crosses him. Set in 1930s Chicago, this is pure Ray: romantic, moody and violent. With John Ireland and Kent Smith.

Sunday, Oct. 7

4 a.m. (1 a.m.): “No Orchids for Miss Blandish” (1948, St. John Legh Clowes). A real oddity: British novelist James Hadley Chase’s bizarre take on American crime fiction, complete with a twisted gang boss, a kidnapped heiress, a cynical newsman, gunsels galore and pink gin. (Later remade quite well by Robert Aldrich in 1971 as “The Grissom Gang.”) With Jack LaRue and Linden Travers.

John Garfield

Tuesday, Oct. 9

1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “The John Garfield Story” (2003, David Heeley). Documentary-bio of the great, sensitive tough guy and New York City-born film noir star.

Wednesday. Oct. 10

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Haunting” (1963, Robert Wise). From Shirley Jackson’s shivery, intellectual, supernatural novel “The Haunting of Hill House” – about a group of mostly amateur spook watchers (Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn and movie-stealer Julie Harris) in an “old dark house” – noir and horror master Robert Wise (“The Body Snatcher,” “Born to Kill”) and screenwriter Nelson Gidding weave a classic ghost movie, seemingly without ghosts. (Or is it?)

Thursday, Oct. 11 (Robert Aldrich Night)

(Robert Aldrich Night begins at 8 p.m. (5 p.m.) with a great adventure movie: Jimmy Stewart, Richard Attenborough and Peter Finch in 1965’s “The Flight of the Phoenix.”)

10:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m.): “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962, Robert Aldrich).

1 a.m. (10 p.m.): “The Legend of Lylah Clare” (1968, Robert Aldrich). Perverse backstage thriller about an obsessive Hollywood movie director (Peter Finch) trying to recreate the image of his dead wife, film legend Lylah Clare, in the body of a new blonde bombshell actress (Kim Novak). Echoes of “Vertigo” and “Baby Jane” abound. With Ernest Borgnine.

3:15 a.m. (12:15 a.m.): “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955, Robert Aldrich).

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Free stuff from FNB: Win ‘Body and Soul’ with John Garfield

October 6, 2012 by

Ed L. is the winner of the September giveaway. (The prize is “The 39 Steps,” recently rereleased by Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray.)

The October giveaway is one of the most famous boxing movies ever made as well as a stellar film noir: “Body and Soul” (1947, Robert Rossen). John Garfield, starring opposite Lilli Palmer, received a Best Actor Oscar nomination as did Abraham Polonsky for his original screenplay. Francis D. Lyon and Robert Parrish won the Oscar for best editing. Shot by two-time Oscar winner James Wong Howe.

To enter this month’s giveaway, just leave a comment on any FNB post from Oct. 1-31. We welcome comments, but please remember that, for the purposes of the giveaway, there is one entry per person, not per comment.

The October winner will be randomly selected at the end of the month and announced in early November. Include your email address in your comment so that I can notify you if you win. Also be sure to check your email – if I don’t hear from you after three attempts, I will choose another winner. Your email will not be shared. Good luck!

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‘The Paperboy’ delivers pulpy trash but proves a dull read

October 5, 2012 by

The Paperboy/2012/Millennium Films/107 min.

Were you to meet some unenlightened soul who was unfamiliar with the concept of pulpy trash, you needn’t blather on about lurid images, sordid secrets and sweaty flesh. You’d simply need to steer this person to a showing of “The Paperboy.” One big problem: despite being an over-the-top, often shocking, tangle of murder mystery, neo noir, lust triangle and family/race relations drama, the movie is oddly dull.

Writer/director Lee Daniels, who earned a directorial Oscar nom for 2009’s groundbreaking “Precious,” takes us on a murky, hazy, lazy journey to South Florida in 1969 and does a nice job evoking that time and place. “The Paperboy” refers to the youngest member of a newspaper family, Jack Jansen (Zac Efron), who gets wrapped up in a mystery and wracked by obsession. Narrating the story is the family’s longtime maid Anita (Macy Gray), introduced as if she were being interviewed.

Jack’s older brother Ward (Matthew McConaughey) is a smart, smooth Miami Times reporter. Ward returns to his hometown (Lately, Fla.), to follow a controversial story with his writing partner, Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), a disdainful outsider with an English accent. They’re convinced that slimy Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) – a former swamp-dweller who now sits on death row – has been wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a corrupt sheriff.

Helping their efforts is Hillary’s fiancée, flirty, feisty Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman). Charlotte has a penchant for frosted pink lipstick, teased blonde hair and tight, tacky clothes. Oh, and for providing boxes of paperwork that she says supports Hillary’s innocence. When Jack begins driving the three of them around, he finds himself increasing drawn to Charlotte and dogged by darker and darker violence.

What starts as an engaging story ultimately proves flimsy and unsatisfying. (The depiction of “investigative journalism” is laughable.) The fact that we don’t know why Anita is narrating the story or to whom is one of many whys left unaddressed, the worst of which is why do we care? Apparently, that’s not a concern for Daniels who seems more into injecting the script with what?! just happened? This includes simulated sex, Kidman urinating on Efron in order to disinfect jellyfish stings and a scene in which McConaughey is brutally beaten and permanently disfigured. And we still don’t care. At least I didn’t.

On the plus side, “The Paperboy” seethes with period atmosphere; the grainy look and jittery editing add to the non-stop but misguided intensity. There are a few outstanding performances – Kidman mesmerizes as the trashy, troubled blonde and Efron holds his own as her devoted young suitor. Also effective are the scenes with Efron and Gray. McConaughey overdoes it as the slick, scar-faced Southerner. Cusack seems one-note as the puffy, greasy, low-down villain.

Though it might seem to have the makings of a tabloid masterpiece, “The Paperboy” isn’t much more than an eye-grabbing headline.

“The Paperboy” opens today in New York and LA.

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‘Where Danger Lives’ should reside in your film noir library

October 3, 2012 by

Boldly over the top and irresistibly campy, film noir posters are endlessly fascinating and fun. So, I’m very excited to tell you about a terrific new study of classic movie posters and lobby cards that were used to entice viewers around the world.

“Film Noir Graphics: Where Danger Lives” (CreateSpace, $39.95) by Alain Silver and James Ursini is an essential book for any noir library. The esteemed historians and authors of “The Noir Style” – as well as eight other volumes about film noir – here focus on a commercial art form that memorably represents the moods and mores of its era.

Says Ursini: “We have always wanted to do a book on noir posters and lobby cards. The graphics in these ads reflect many of the themes and iconography of noir in a very vivid way.”

Using more than 300 color illustrations never before reproduced in book form, Silver and Ursini trace the sometimes-lurid line of graphics from pulp magazines like Black Mask and the dust jackets of hard-boiled novels to the earliest examples of film noir. They also touch on sidebar topics such as fashion and Humphrey Bogart’s face on posters in the U.S. and abroad.

Primarily, though, the authors use these striking visuals to explore the genre’s context and subtext in an entertaining way. For example, in the chapter titled “Deadly is the Female,” they write: “There are some brunettes, the occasional red-head, but … the deadliest females in film noir are most often blonde.

“They don’t all have cigarettes dangling from their lips, a jaunty beret, or a pair of six guns in their hands, but the poses leave no question about what they’re selling. For the hapless victims, the dim-witted guys who take the bait and get caught in their mantraps, it really is ‘the kind of mistake a man can make only once!’ ”

Consider yourself warned. 😉 And definitely consider buying this book that is a rare combination: dazzling eye candy and compelling commentary from two of the best in the business.

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Honey, your October noir horoscope is here

October 1, 2012 by

Actress Carole Lombard died in a plane crash in 1942. She was 33.

Fate reigns supreme in film noir, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love us some zodiac fun. Hope your October is full of frighteningly good times. And happy birthday, Libra and Scorpio! A special shout-out and remembrances to A-list Libras Clive Owen (Oct. 3), Kate Winslet (Oct. 5), Carole Lombard (Oct. 6), Rachel McAdams (Oct. 7), Elmore Leonard (Oct. 11), Rita Hayworth (Oct. 17), Viggo Mortensen (Oct. 20), Catherine Deneuve (Oct. 22) and mighty Scorpios Julia Roberts (Oct. 28) and Truman Capote and Louis Malle (both Oct. 30).

Libra (September 24-October 23): You will gain strength and confidence, making you even more irresistible than usual. Be ready for heady romance midmonth and perhaps some terrific birthday surprises. If your b’day has passed and you acquired some good loot, try going back in time and writing a letter, you know, a penned missive that you drop in the post. Make decadence a priority at least once a week.

Scorpio (October 24-November 22): An investment pays off in a surprising way, which is especially lovely if you happen to be celebrating your birthday. It’s good to be a material girl, no? The world of money and finance can be navigated, just stick with it, even if it’s not your cup of tea. A friend may approach with an idea for a shared adventure or a great Halloween costume. Prepare for excitement! On the work front, be daring, especially on 8th – you may be on the cusp of a major innovation.

Sagittarius (November 23-December 22): “The ones that say they don’t want anything always get more in the end,” says Ann Newton, the little girl in “Shadow of a Doubt” from 1943. In 2012, though, that’s rarely the case. More often than not, if you don’t speak up, you won’t get. So be vocal and, at work, have a good case for why you deserve what you’re asking for. On the romantic front, let yourself be wicked – as often as possible!

Clive Owen turns 48 on Oct. 3. Another round on me. Marc Horn photo.

Capricorn (December 23-January 20): Though it is your nature to give freely, remember that not everyone is wired that way so if an offer comes your way midmonth, be sure to examine whether there are strings attached that might not be apparent at first glance. On the 21st, surrender to pleasure. And on the 31st, calories don’t count, so grab yourself a goody bag or 12 and dig in. Diets be damned!

Aquarius (January 21-February 19): A fiendish impulse overtakes you on the 6th. By all means, follow it! Then, in honor of Halloween, invite a few of your friends over so you can lead them astray. Pour some Chianti, watch “The Silence of the Lambs” and gorge on candy. At work, remember that overnight sensations are few and far between. More often, major success is the result of patience and perseverance. Whatever you do, don’t give up! The 12th and 21st will be lucky days.

Pisces (February 20-March 20): A bothersome situation calls for decisive action. Brandish a big old kitchen knife, boss anyone who gets in your way and feel the power! You’re good at being in charge, it’s a gift that should be cherished, not hidden. Then get your aggressions out on a hapless pumpkin. You may hit a rough patch with someone in your inner circle, perhaps a lover or Sig Oth. Don’t rush through this or look for a quick fix – it will, in the end, bring you closer. Definitely choose trick if given a choice.

Matt Damon turns 42 this year. His birthday is Oct. 8.

Aries (March 21-April 20): “I lied. I felt like lying so I did,” says Joan Crawford (an Aries) ever so nonchalantly in “Possessed” from 1947. What harm can a few little white ones do? You can always reform on Nov. 1. And of course always, no matter what the date, do only what you feel like doing. If by some strange chance, you are afflicted with notions of goodness, kindness or altruism, rest assured that a long overdue visit with a close friend and fellow femme fatale will ground you right where you belong – on the deliciously dark side.

Taurus (April 21-May 21): As Halloween approaches, Destiny is on your doorstep. There’s really not much you can do, so why fight it? Instead, invite Fate in, mix some martinis, try to make small talk. True, you may be screwed but if that’s the case, there are bound to be some fun fireworks first. And more than likely Fate has bigger and better plans for you – like a slew of good luck and winning the lottery. You should probably start packing for the south of France as soon as you finish your yummy cocktail. The weekend of the 12th may be memorably romantic.

Gemini (May 22-June 21): “I don’t play monsters. I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge,” said the inimitable Vincent Price (May 27, 1911 – Oct. 25, 1993). As you ponder whether is revenge really worth it, you may come to the considered conclusion, “Hell, yes!” Of course, there is something to be said for that living well theory, especially if it involves an elegant dinner or perhaps a shopping binge. Your calendar suddenly fills up very quickly so trust that you will have somewhere to wear that new LBD.

Ryan Reynolds (newly married to Blake Lively) will be 36 on Oct. 23.

Cancer (June 22-July 23): Having trouble choosing a costume? Choose the one that’s most daring and shows off your best features. Then find ways to wear it more than once and why rule out the gym, yoga studio or grocery store? People take life entirely too seriously. Make it your goal to mix it up this month and vary your routine, especially when it comes to your love life. Your curiosity and sensitivity serve you well on the 18th but remember to weigh options carefully.

Leo (July 24-August 23): You may encounter sudden resistance or abrupt withdrawal from a contributor to a project. Frankly, it’s rather shocking for you. So, you fret: Did I say the wrong thing? Was page 47 of my report slightly creased? Was it wrong to wear fish-nets and thigh-high boots to our last meeting? No, no and no! Unless of course the fish-nets were drafty and you caught a chill. Don’t overthink this or take it personally. The project will go on and may even improve as a result of this development. And good God, if all that stress doesn’t justify a little romantic fling, I don’t know what does.

Virgo (August 24-September 23): Feeling overwhelmed? Well, no one ever said that treachery, entrapment and general bad-girlness wasn’t a major time-suck. Hair and makeup alone consume precious slots in your schedule. Make a master list of everything you’d like to accomplish, prioritize, set deadlines and don’t look back! If you can’t get to everything or have to knock a few items off the list, don’t feel guilty. Better to complete a few really flawless seductions than to fritter your energy away on endless flirtations. But rest assured you will be irresistible when you decide to turn on the charm. On the 7th, there may be extra cash in your pocket.

Filed Under: Noir Horoscopes Tagged With: , , ,

Hitch’s 1935 love-on-the-run spy story stands the test of time

September 29, 2012 by

The ever-resourceful Hannay (Robert Donat) manages to dodge the police repeatedly.

The 39 Steps/1935/Gaumont British Picture Corp./86 min.

This month’s reader giveaway is the Criterion rerelease of “The 39 Steps.” Michael Wilmington reviews.

Movie thrillers come and go, but, after more than three quarters of a century, Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” still reigns supreme. And not only for the breathless excitement of the story, the seamless construction, the chilling, beautifully realized atmosphere and the startling stream of plot twists. Nor for its historical importance, though almost every chase and spy thriller since 1935 copies it.

Nor for its actors – despite a truly excellent ensemble: Madeleine Carroll as Pamela, the cool Hitchcockian blond; Lucie Mannheim as a seductive lady of mystery; Godfrey Tearle as an urbane master criminal; Peggy Ashcroft and John Laurie as a moody farming couple on the barren Scottish moors; Wylie Watson as that Proustian prodigy, Mr. Memory; and, at the center of the action, Robert Donat as the endlessly suave and resilient Richard Hannay, a fugitive who keeps his quiet wit and brilliant resources, no matter what dangerous curve Fate (and Hitchcock) manage to throw him.

After spending the night at his London flat, the mysterious spy (Lucie Mannheim) warns Hannay that the criminal mastermind whom she betrayed is missing part of a finger.

More than anything else, the film keeps its preeminent place because this is the movie in which Hitchcock became “Hitchcock,” earning the reputation he never relinquished as “The Master of Suspense.”

Well into the 1960s, “The 39 Steps” was still commonly called his best movie. André Bazin: “It remains indubitably his masterpiece and a model for detective comedies.” And Pauline Kael: “This suave, amusing spy melodrama is . . . charged with wit; it’s one of the three or four best things Hitchcock ever did.”

Hitchcock had major successes before, but “The 39 Steps” was the first with major international impact. No previous Hitchcock so gripped, amused or thrilled audiences from Europe to America, Australia to Asia. More than any of his previous 19 British films, or the five that followed, “The 39 Steps” was responsible for his emigration to America as a first-rank filmmaker.

Madeleine Carroll as Pamela is just as appealing today as she was 75 years ago. She makes a point of being stroppy with Hannay while slyly flirting with him.

The Hitchcock of 1935 was no neophyte. He was a director of a decade’s experience, the master of his craft, adapting a novel by one of his favorite authors, John Buchan.

And Hitchcock was telling a story of strong personal appeal – so strong that he used bits and pieces of it throughout his career.

In “Young and Innocent” (1937), “Foreign Correspondent” (1940), “Saboteur” (1942), “To Catch a Thief” (1955), “North by Northwest” (1959), “Torn Curtain” (1966) and “Frenzy” (1972), we get part of the basic situation. The “wrong man,” accused of a crime he did not commit, flees through dangerous or colorful locales – sometimes engages in erotic sparring with a woman – and tries desperately to find the evil doppelganger who has committed the sin.

In discussing the film with François Truffaut, Hitchcock said: “What I like best about ‘The 39 Steps’ are the swift transitions.” The lightning transitions and ingenious editing keep the film fresh and bewitching. The landlady’s scream, on discovering a corpse in Hannay’s flat, becomes the shriek of the train whistle as Hannay escapes. We race at breakneck speed from London’s Portland Place to the forbidding Scottish moors, under eternal, glowering skies, and back to London, where another performance at the Palladium completes the circle.

Pamela and Hannay on the run in Scotland.

But the swift transitions are more than geographic. Hitchcock, as he would many times again, offers a dizzying set of moral alterations: a world where love and death, fear and desire are in constant, nerve-wracking and sometimes acidly humorous juxtaposition.

Hannay begins his perilous odyssey with what seems an innocuous peccadillo: meeting and taking home a woman who calls herself “Mrs. Smith.”

“Romance” leads to danger. The woman is not a pickup; she is a hunted spy, fearful for her life. The next morning, after she is murdered by the spies on her trail, Hannay escapes from his London flat by pretending to a milkman that he is a philanderer ducking a vengeful husband – something he nearly becomes when, still dodging the police, he stays a night with a dour Scottish farmer and his much younger wife.

The innkeeper mistakes Pamela and Hannay for a couple madly in love.

Earlier, fleeing the London murder scene by train, he tries to elude the police by embracing a total stranger (to her fury).

He winds up manacled to that same stranger, Pamela, taking refuge at an inn where the beaming landlady, impressed at their constant togetherness, exclaims: “They’re so terribly in love with each other!” Love and death, sex and slaughter – these are the poles of the universe so playfully presented here: reversing and replacing each other, becoming a shadowy, disturbing double mirror.

“The 39 Steps” is that rarity: a cinematic masterpiece that has stood the test of time, a great work that is also a great crowd-pleaser. Hitchcock liked to remark, with what may have been a sly touch of self-deprecation: “Most films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake.” This particular cake is one of his most luscious: dark, savory, a richly compulsive treat.

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

Btw, do see ‘Vera Stark’ and ‘Diana Vreeland’

September 28, 2012 by

Amanda Detmer and Sanaa Lathan in the West Coast premiere of Lynn Nottage’s “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” directed by Jo Bonney at the Geffen Playhouse. Michael Lamont photo.

A b&w movie inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage to write her latest work, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.” Making its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, the play runs through Oct. 28.

Says Nottage: “I was watching television late one night when I came across a 1930s film called ‘Babyface,’ which featured a very charming and talented young African-American actress named Theresa Harris. When the film ended, I immediately began roaming the Internet in search of more information. …

“I was struck by my own ignorance, not only about Theresa’s prodigious and eclectic career, but also about a whole generation of African-American screen actors who plied their trade in relative obscurity. My unmitigated curiosity … led me to the actress Vera Stark. Indeed, ‘By the Way, Meet Vera Stark’ pays homage to Theresa Harris and other African-American performers who for decades were relegated to the margins of the frame.”

I saw the play on opening night. Though I thought it faltered a bit in the second act, “Vera Stark” is insightful, witty and visually delightful. Sanaa Lathan leads the excellent cast. You can read the LA Times review here.

And a must-see movie: “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.” I saw this last year at the Chicago Film Festival and Vreeland is a fascinating subject, no matter how you feel about fashion.

I will be posting a longer piece based on my interview with Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Diana’s granddaughter-in-law) but wanted to at least note that it is open in some U.S. cities with more to follow. Why don’t you?

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Hitchcock blends noir, Americana in ‘Shadow of a Doubt’

September 28, 2012 by

By Michael Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

A guide to classic film noir and neo-noir on cable TV. All the movies below are from the current schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

“Shadow of a Doubt” (1943, Alfred Hitchcock). Thursday, Oct. 4, 3:15 a.m. (12:15 a.m.)

A bright and beautiful small town girl named Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright) is bored, bored with her well-ordered home in her pretty Norman Rockwellish little city of Santa Rosa, Calif., – where trees line the sunlit streets, everyone goes to church on Sunday, and lots of them read murder mysteries at night. Charlie has more exotic dreams. She adores her globe-trotting, urbane Uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) – for whom she was nicknamed – and is deliriously happy when he shows up in Santa Rosa for a visit.

Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright play kindred spirits, sort of, in “Shadow.”

But Uncle Charlie has some secrets that no one in his circle would guess – not Uncle Charlie’s adoring sister (Patricia Collinge), nor his good-hearted brother-in-law (Henry Travers), nor their mystery-loving neighbor Herbie (Hume Cronyn), nor Charlie herself. Uncle Charlie, who conceals a darker personality and profession beneath his charming persona, is on the run, pursued by a dogged police detective (Macdonald Carey), who suspects him of being a notorious serial killer who seduces rich old widows and kills them for their money. As handsome, cold-blooded Uncle Charlie, Cotten, who also called “Shadow” his personal favorite film, is, with Robert Walker and Anthony Perkins, one of the three great Hitchcockian psychopaths.

“Shadow of a Doubt,” released in 1943, was Hitchcock’s sixth American movie and the one he often described as his favorite. As he explained to François Truffaut, this was because he felt that his critical enemies, the “plausibles,” could have nothing to quibble about with “Shadow.” It was written by two superb chroniclers of Americana, Thornton Wilder (“Our Town”) and Sally Benson (“Meet Me in St. Louis”), along with Hitch’s constant collaborator, wife Alma Reville. The result is one of the supreme examples of Hitchcockian counterpoint: with a sunny, beguiling background against which dark terror erupts.

Saturday, Sept. 29

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Fallen Idol” (1948, Carol Reed). In 1948, a year before they made the nonpareil thriller “The Third Man,” director Carol Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene collaborated on another tilted-camera film-noir classic: this mesmerizing story of a little French boy (Bobby Henrey), a French diplomat’s son, who hero-worships the embassy butler (Ralph Richardson), but mistakenly comes to believe his idol has murdered his wife, and keeps unintentionally incriminating him. With Michele Morgan, Jack Hawkins and Bernard Lee – and stunning cinematography by Georges Perinal.

Sunday, Sept. 30

12 p.m. (9 a.m.): “Carmen Jones” (1954, Otto Preminger). From Georges Bizet’s great, tuneful, massively popular opera, based on Prosper Merimee’s novel about a lusty cigarette girl and the soldier who is obsessed with her, unwisely: A compelling noir musical, with an African-American cast (headed by Dorothy Dandridge as femme fatale Carmen and Harry Belafonte as soldier Joe), lyrics and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, and direction by Otto Preminger. The rest of the cast includes Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll and Brock Peters.

Monday, Oct. 1

2 p.m. (11 a. m.): “The Fortune Cookie” (1966, Billy Wilder). Billy Wilder, mastermind of that quintessential film noir “Double Indemnity,” comes up with another ingenious insurance swindle in this dark, very funny comedy noir. Jack Lemmon is Harry Hinkle, a likable pro- football TV cameraman who is run down before millions of spectators on a punt return. Walter Matthau won the Oscar playing Harry’s brother-in-law, a sneaky, cynical, loot-smelling lawyer.

Thursday, Oct. 4

1:30 a.m. (10:30 p.m.): “Marked Woman” (1937, Lloyd Bacon). Bette Davis plays a feisty “hostess” and Humphrey Bogart plays a crusading D. A. Together with Bette’s pals, other “hostesses” (aka ladies of the evening), they go up against the mob, in this feminist pre-noir crime classic, co-scripted by Robert Rossen. Based on a famous real-life New York City prostitution case. The Bogart and Eduardo Ciannelli characters are modeled on Thomas Dewey and Lucky Luciano. With Lola Lane, Allen Jenkins and Mayo Methot (Mrs. Bogart).

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