‘Decoy’ quick hit

January 25, 2012 by

Decoy/1946/Monogram Pictures/76 min.

She’s hard-boiled and thoroughly heartless. But did I mention that she looks good and gets all the money for herself? English actress Jean Gillie as Margot Shelby in “Decoy” shows American femmes fatales a thing or two about seduction, scheming and betrayal. She’s tougher than any Yank and more creative – tapping science fiction to come up with her brilliant plan to steal her boyfriend’s hidden cash. Discovered and directed by husband Jack Bernhard, Gillie delivers a knock-out performance.

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Santa Monica shows its dark side at NoirFest

January 23, 2012 by

“Farewell, My Lovely” screens Wednesday, Jan. 25, as part of NoirFest Santa Monica.

The newly launched festival includes art, film, photography, literature, music and spoken-word events. NoirFest runs through March 28.

Other films to be screened include: “The Brasher Doubloon,” “Murder, My Sweet,” “Double Indemnity,” “The Big Sleep,” “Strangers on a Train,” “The Lady in the Lake” and “The Long Goodbye.”

The fest is the brainchild of longtime Santa Monica resident and artist Helen K. Garber, whose solo show “Encaustic Noir” runs through Feb. 25 at Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave. Also on display is vintage night photography by famed Parisian photographer Brassaï and several of his contemporaries.

“Farewell My Lovely” screens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Vidiots Annex, 302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica 90405. There is a pre-screening reception at 7:00 p.m. Seating is limited to 35; rsvp essential: vidiots@labridge.com.

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‘Miss Bala’ exudes anti-Hollywood, anti-glamour realism

January 20, 2012 by

Miss Bala/2011/Canana Films/113 min.

“Miss Bala” is a grisly tale of crime and corruption, a grim neo-noir that chooses not to temper the darkness with snazzy visuals, sympathetic characters or sly one-liners.

The film starts with Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman) posing in front of a mirror adorned with cut-outs from magazines; she imagines a glossy, improbable future that will whisk her away from her hardscrabble life in poverty-stricken Baja, a Mexican border city. Her potential escape is entering the Miss Baja California beauty pageant with her best friend Suzu. (Bala is a play on the word for bullet.)

Laura’s dream veers crazily off course when she agrees to go to a nightclub with Suzu the night before their audition. Amid the tacky lights and cranking music, armed men barge in and shoot dozens of patrons. Laura survives but cannot find Suzu; her attempt to re-connect throws her into the violent nightmare world of a drug lord named Lino (Noe Hernandez) who puts her to work for his gang. After completing smaller jobs, she crosses the border to exchange money for weapons with a corrupt U.S. officer.

Meanwhile, Lino uses his pervasive influence to ensure that Laura wins the beauty-pageant crown. Laura/Miss Baja is introduced to the general of the Mexican police at a formal event, which serves as the backdrop for another deadly ambush and an ironic climax.

Based on true events (outlined in a 2008 newspaper story), “Miss Bala” is Mexico’s entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The film exudes anti-Hollywood, anti-glamour hyper-realism. We learn little about these opaque characters’ inner lives and dialogue is uncommonly spare. In fact, we never see drugs or hear them mentioned.

“These gangsters aren’t cool, going to parties and wearing gold,” said director Gerardo Naranjo at a round-table interview last week in Santa Monica. “These guys are living a pathetic life.”

This restraint and realism extends to the look of the film as well, with long takes, minimal editing and an absence of close-ups. Naranjo said he did not look to other movies or directors for stylistic inspiration. Instead, he said, everything in the story had to pass though a logic filter. How would it feel? How would it happen in terms of logic?

“Miss Bala” is told mostly from Laura’s point of view and she is very much a victim, one who believes that fighting back is pointless. Naranjo says this reflects the fact that Mexico is frozen with fear about drug cartels and their enormous power. Laura is a metaphor for fearful Mexican society, he says, even if that passivity might sometimes alienate the audience.

On a dramatic level, the lack of pushback does spur frustration. Though we feel sorry for Laura, it’s hard to connect emotionally with her. For her to resist would incur great risk, it’s true, but in terms of telling a story and melding realism with art, it would have been more dramatically satisfying, more soul-touching, if she’d tried. Despite that frustration, “Miss Bala” is a unique, gripping ride through a dark and dangerous world.

“Miss Bala” opens today in LA and New York.

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Weegee works on display in New York and Los Angeles

January 20, 2012 by

Weegee's Hats in pool room, Mulberry Street, New York, circa 1943. Copyright Weegee/ICP

Opening today at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York is “Weegee: Murder Is My Business.”

The famous photographer was born Usher Fellig in 1899 in what is now the Ukraine; his family moved to New York in 1909. He later acquired the nickname Weegee from the Ouija board game because of his knack for arriving at crime scenes just minutes after the crimes were reported.

Says the ICP: Between 1935 and 1946, Weegee was one of the most relentlessly inventive figures in American photography. His graphically dramatic and often lurid photographs of New York crimes and news events set the standard for what has become known as tabloid journalism.

Weegee also wrote extensively (including his autobiographical “Naked City,” published in 1945) and organized his own exhibitions. He died in 1968. This show includes environmental recreations of Weegee’s apartment and exhibitions. It runs through Sept. 2.

And running through Feb. 27 at MOCA is “Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles.” More than 200 works from ICP’s Weegee archive are on display.

This Sunday, Jan. 22, at 3 p.m., Richard Meyer, guest curator of “Naked Hollywood,” Brian Wallis, chief curator at the ICP, and art historian Colin Westerbeck will discuss Weegee’s work, tabloid photography, celebrity culture and the lure of the lowbrow.

MOCA is at 250 S. Grand Ave. in Los Angeles.

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Noir City X film fest starts Friday in San Francisco

January 18, 2012 by

The Film Noir Foundation celebrates 10 years of deliciously dark programming with NOIR CITY X: The Stuff Bad Dreams Are Made Of. The 10-day festival features a Dashiell Hammett marathon, freshly preserved 35mm rarities, by-popular-demand encore screenings, and special guest star Angie Dickinson. The fest runs Jan. 20-29 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

Among the rarities NOIR CITY is presenting this year is a new 35mm print from Universal Pictures of 1949’s “The Great Gatsby,” starring Alan Ladd as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary hero. Universal is also providing a new 35mm print of 1954’s “Naked Alibi,” starring noir’s favorite bad girl, Gloria Grahame. Also on the bill are preservations of the 1946 classic “Three Strangers” and 1950’s “The Breaking Point,” directed by Michael Curtiz and starring John Garfield.

After San Francisco, the fest will travel to other cities with variations on the programming.

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‘Naked Kiss’ crowns queen of beautiful bald leading ladies

January 16, 2012 by

The Naked Kiss/1964/F & F Productions/90 min.

What better way to celebrate hump day than with a Sam Fuller double feature?

As part of the UCLA Wednesdays Classic Film Series, the Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles will show “Shock Corridor” (1963) and “The Naked Kiss” (1964) at 7:30 p.m. this Wednesday, Jan. 18. The Million Dollar Theater is at 307 S. Broadway Ave., Los Angeles, 90013; tickets are $10.

By Michael Wilmington

This Sam Fuller movie begins with one of the great shocker low-budget opening scenes: Kelly, a beautiful bald prostitute (played by Constance Towers) beating the crap out of her procurer, losing her wig, pulling out the cash he owes her, and dumping the rest on his whimpering chest. Fuller, freed of any strictures of big studio propriety, has Kelly aiming her purse at the camera and battering us movie voyeurs right along with her ex-pimp.

But “The Naked Kiss” is also a romance (of sorts) and a woman’s picture (of a particularly dark kind). And soon we see Kelly in a typical ’50s-early ’60s American small town, called Grantville, trying to escape her violent past by becoming a nurse’s aide: a care-giver specializing in adorable children, who sing sentimental songs. Kelly also happens to love Beethoven, especially “Moonlight Sonata.” Can she escape the past? Maybe not. The only movie playing in Grantville’s cinema is Fuller’s own previous Constance Towers picture, 1963’s “Shock Corridor.”

Kelly’s nemesis seems to be a salty cop named Griff (played growlingly by Anthony Eisley, of TV’s “Hawaiian Eye”). He beds her right off the incoming bus, pays $20, and then directs her to the nearest brothel (a bordello run by film-noir regular Virginia Grey).

Her salvation seems to be the strangely gentle playboy/philanthropist/Lothario (and Griff’s Korean War buddy) Grant (Michael Dante). Like Kelly, he loves Beethoven and Lord Byron. And something else. In the end, the appearances of her apparent nemesis and salvation prove to be deceiving. As it turns out, the naked kiss is the kiss of a pervert.

Like Fuller’s “Shock Corridor” the year before, “The Naked Kiss” was cheaply but strikingly art-directed by Eugène Lourié (Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game”) and gorgeously shot in black and white by Stanley Cortez (“The Night of the Hunter”).

“The Naked Kiss” is a fine showcase for Constance Towers.

Full of sock and sensation, “The Naked Kiss” has qualities we don’t see as much in “Shock Corridor” – a bizarre tenderness, a tough romanticism, and something part way between schmaltz and weltschmerz. “The Naked Kiss” is also Fuller’s most stylishly soap-operatic work in the Douglas Sirk tradition, just as 1949’s “Shockproof” (co-written by Fuller) was Sirk’s most Fullerian movie.

“The Naked Kiss” is also a fine showcase for Constance Towers, an underrated leading lady who worked for John Ford (in “The Horse Soldiers” and “Sergeant Rutledge”), but whom Alfred Hitchcock unfortunately missed. She’ll never be forgotten for that opening scene, though. Among bald prostitute pimp-battering leading ladies, Constance Towers is the queen.

The movie is also available from Criterion and includes these extras: New interview with Constance Towers; 1967 and 1987 French television interviews with Sam Fuller; trailer. Booklet with Robert Polito essay, excerpt on “The Naked Kiss” from Fuller’s autobiography “A Third Face,” and illustrations by the great cartoonist and comic artist Daniel Clowes.

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Gearing up to watch the Golden Globes

January 15, 2012 by

The Golden Globes red carpet in Beverly Hills

For me, a cozy spot on the sofa is the best place to watch the Golden Globes. Join me on Twitter as I scour the red carpet for nods to noir and retro charm.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association presents the awards; the first ceremony was held in January 1944 at Twentieth Century Fox in LA.

Entertainment Weekly photo

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Remembering the Black Dahlia 65 years after her death

January 15, 2012 by

Beth Short was 22 when she died.

Today is the 65th anniversary of one of Hollywood’s most famous unsolved murders: the brutal slaying and mutilation of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia.

Her body, which had been cut in half at the waist, was found in a vacant lot at 39th Street and Norton Avenue in Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 1947. She was 22 years old.

Born in a Boston suburb on July 29, 1924, Elizabeth was the third of five daughters. Her father abandoned the family and her mother struggled to make ends meet. In 1944, Elizabeth came to California, hoping to live with her father; after a brief stay, he told her to leave.

It’s possible that she hoped to find work as an actress in Los Angeles but, with little education or means to support herself, she was frequently on the move, looking for new opportunities and cheap places to live. A few weeks prior to her death, Elizabeth stayed with a family in San Diego. She rode back to Los Angeles with a man named Red Manley and was seen downtown at the Biltmore Hotel on Jan. 9, 1947.

The Black Dahlia case remains unsolved.

Because the case was gruesome and sensational, and so little is known for certain about her life, theories and speculation, suspects and confessions abound. Police corruption and unethical journalistic practice severely impeded efforts to find justice. Her story spurred a plethora of media coverage as well as non-fiction and fiction books, including James Ellroy’s 1987 novel, “The Black Dahlia,” which was the basis for Brian DePalma’s film of the same name, made in 2006.

While her murder remains unsolved and many details are sketchy, it seems likely that Elizabeth ran out of friends and favors, that in those bleak days of January 1947, now such a long time ago, she had very few places to turn. With that in mind and to remember Elizabeth Short, I hope you’ll join me in making a donation to a women’s charity, such as the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles, or a similar organization in your area.

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Los Angeles photo expo is worth a visit

January 14, 2012 by

Woman by the Pool (Beverly Hills Hotel, 1975) by Anthony Friedkin; copyright Anthony Friedkin

The 21st annual international Los Angeles photographic art expo continues through Monday at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The show features about 40 exhibitors as well as speakers and discussions.

To take his iconic Woman by the Pool (Beverly Hills Hotel, 1975), photographer Anthony Friedkin says he dressed up like a tennis pro so that he would blend into the “Hollywood thing – which is all about costume.”

Clad in white and carrying a racket, he saw his opportunity as soon as he got to the pool. “I believe photographers have a fate, a destiny, like all artists do. And much of this has to do with being in the right place at the right time. Regardless of the fact we work our whole lives to be there, at that precise moment in time, to get that extraordinary photograph, to visualize it and frame it artistically, there’s a certain amount of existential luck that has to come into play. And I felt it the day that I made that photograph.”

The Santa Monica Civic Center is at 1855 Main St., 90401. The show runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. General admission is $20, with discounts available.

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Visually stunning ‘Pina’ immerses you in singular style, but lacks context

January 13, 2012 by

Pina/2011/Neue Road Movies, et al/106 min.

Wim Wenders

Having long admired Wim Wenders as a neo-noir director (“The American Friend,” “Hammett,” “The End of Violence,”) and documentarian (“Lightning Over Water,” Buena Vista Social Club,” “The Soul of a Man”), I always look forward to seeing his work. His latest film, “Pina” is a documentary about Pina Bausch, a German dancer, choreographer and teacher, who died in 2009 at the age of 68. It is the German entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.

Shot in 3-D and visually stunning, the film fully immerses you in Bausch’s singular aesthetic, vision and teaching style. From the first frame, you sense her intensity. And if you like German expressionistic dance, you might find the film illuminating, even moving. There are moments of humor as well.

If, like me, that style of dance is not your cup of tea, but you’re curious as to who this woman was, how she got started, how she made her mark and what critics thought, you’d best Google Pina Bausch beforehand. It’s definitely not in the film.

Oh all right, I’ll admit it, I’m a lazy American who doesn’t follow trends in Tanztheater, but I was hoping for maybe half a chapter of Bausch’s backstory and at least a glimpse of what made this woman tick. Interviews with people other than Bausch’s former students, perhaps?

Once you’ve done your Googling, be sure to follow critic Debra Levine’s brilliant suggestion for preparing to see this film and watch Mike Myers in “Sprockets.”

“Pina” opens today in LA and New York.

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