Classic Noir Reviews — Page 6

Skirball Cultural Center offers a double dose of intrigue on the big screen this Sunday

January 21, 2015 by Film Noir Blonde

The Intriguante—Women of Intrigue in Film Noir series at the Skirball Cultural Center continues at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25, with an excellent double feature.

Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott face Raymond Burr in “Pitfall.”

The first film is “Pitfall” (1948, André de Toth), featuring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott and Jane Wyatt in a classic noir love triangle. Just a few years before, Powell, a song and dance man, reinvented his screen persona when he played detective Philip Marlowe in “Murder, My Sweet” (1944, Edward Dmytryk). Powell then became a regular on the film noir slate.

In “Pitfall,” he plays John Forbes, a happily married husband and father with a good job. Problem is, John is bored and it’s not long before he risks everything by getting tangled up with an irresistible femme fatale named Mona Stevens (Scott).

Further complicating the situation is Raymond Burr as a private investigator who also covets Ms. Stevens. Powell and Wyatt are spot-on, Scott lends humanity to what could be a two-dimensional role and this is one of Burr’s best performances.

You can read the full FNB review here.

Yvonne De Carlo and Burt Lancaster can’t stay away from each other in “Criss Cross.”

Next up: “Criss Cross” (1949, Robert Siodmak) is a spare, chilling story that zooms along at breakneck speed with characters you’ll never forget.

Here, the stunning Yvonne De Carlo (whom you might remember from TV’s “The Munsters”) lures her ex-husband Burt Lancaster into a high-stakes heist. The sleazy bad guy is played perfectly by Dan Duryea.

Lancaster’s Steve is essentially a good guy who just can’t get his ex-wife out of his system. Some would call him crazy. The French would term it “amour fou.” But what would film noir be without obsessive love? This somewhat neglected movie completely holds its own with any other title from the film noir canon. “Criss Cross” plays particularly well on the big screen and it’s great fun to see the Los Angeles locales. The opening shot is tremendous and look out for a young Tony Curtis.

You can read the full FNB review here.

Admission is $10 general; $7 seniors and full-time students; $5 members.

The exhibitions Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 and The Noir Effect will remain open until 8 p.m.

The Intriguante series concludes on Feb. 12 with “The File on Thelma Jordon” (1950, Robert Siodmak), a crime drama starring the inimitable Barbara Stanwyck.

Additionally, there are two more free Tuesday matinees at the Skirball Cultural Center. On Feb. 3 is 1939’s “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Edward G. Robinson as an FBI investigator. On Feb. 10, “Act of Violence” (1948, Fred Zinnemann) looks at the plight of returning World War II vets in a captivating film noir brimming with dark secrets, betrayal and revenge. Van Heflin, Robert Ryan and Janet Leigh lead the cast.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Noir Style, Out of the Shadows Tagged With: Act of Violence, André De Toth, Burt Lancaster, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Criss Cross, Dan Duryea, Dick Powell, film noir, Lizabeth Scott, Pitfall, Raymond Burr, Robert Siodmak, Skirball Cultural Center, The File on Thelma Jordon, The Intriguante series, The Intriguante: Women of Intrigue in Film Noir, Yvonne De Carlo

Film Noir File: Kazan taps TV’s evil in ‘A Face in the Crowd’

January 16, 2015 by Film Noir Blonde

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

“A Face in the Crowd” (1957, Elia Kazan). Tuesday, Jan. 20, 3 p.m. (12 p.m.).

Andy Griffith gives a mesmerizing performance.

Three years after they collaborated on the great noir “On the Waterfront,” screenwriter Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan joined forces brilliantly again, on another classic noirish drama: “A Face in the Crowd.”

Andy Griffith stars as a guitar-playing, propaganda-spewing vicious bum named Lonesome Rhodes, whom a bunch of TV types transform into a folksy national superstar – a crazy mixture of Arthur Godfrey, Hank Williams and Senator Joe McCarthy.

Not as famous or as influential as Waterfront, Face is nevertheless another American masterpiece. Thanks to Kazan and Schulberg it had another gutsy, gut-punching script, a similar sense of life in all its intensity and complexity, and another very strong (if not quite as remarkable) cast: Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick, Kay Medford, Burl Ives, Mike Wallace, Walter Winchell.

Patricia Neal leads an excellent support cast.

As for Griffith, he was as essential to “Face in the Crowd” as Marlon Brando was to “On the Waterfront.” There were few movie and TV actors more specifically, joyously American back in the ’50s and ’60s than Andy Griffith, a hugely talented small-town North Carolina guy who could so aptly play both good men and bad.

And as Lonesome Rhodes, he gives an explosive, mesmerizing rendition of pure guile and homespun brutality.

Saturday, Jan. 17

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Foreign Correspondent” (1940, Alfred Hitchcock). Saturday, Jan. 17, 8 p.m. (5 p.m.). Read the full review here.

10:15 p.m. (7:15 p.m.): “Contraband” (1940, Michael Powell). A Danish ship captain (Conrad Veidt) and a British beauty (Valerie Hobson) get mixed up in spy high jinx at the onset of World War II. Masterminded by Powell and writer Emeric Pressburger, who would make some of the most offbeat movie masterpieces of the World War II era.

12 a.m. (9 p.m.): “Above Suspicion” (1943, Richard Thorpe). This glamorous MGM chase thriller sends Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray (a pretty odd couple) on a honeymoon in terror, with villainous Nazis (including Conrad Veidt, of “Casablanca” fame) as their tour guides. Crawford shines off-type as a smart and loyal wife.

Monday, Jan. 19

6 a.m. (3 a.m.): “Intruder in the Dust” (1949, Clarence Brown). A stately, graceful adaptation of the Mississippi murder mystery by William Faulkner, in which a brave boy (Claude Jarman, Jr.) helps a stubborn, heroic old black man stand up to a lynch mob. A very atypical film for the elegant metteur-en-scene Clarence Brown, Greta Garbo’s most frequent director. But it’s probably the best film he ever made.

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Defiant Ones” (1958, Stanley Kramer). Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as escaped chain gang prisoners, shackled together and on the run, in the most Stanley Kramerish of all Stanley Kramer pictures.

4:15 a.m. (1:15 a.m.): “Edge of the City” (1957, Martin Ritt). With John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden and Ruby Dee. Brilliant acting – pitched in an “On the Waterfront” key and set in the same kind of grim dockside milieu – stands out in this tough yet humane film.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: A Face in the Crowd, Andy Griffith, Budd Schulberg, Elia Kazan, film noir, Foreign Correspondent, On the Waterfront, Patricia Neal, TCM

Film Noir File: John Huston’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’ is the stuff that dreams are made of

January 9, 2015 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

Pick of the Week

“The Maltese Falcon” (1941, John Huston). Sunday, Jan. 11, 12 p.m. (9 a.m.).

“The Maltese Falcon,” a spectacularly entertaining and iconic crime film, holds the claim to many firsts.

It’s a remarkable directorial debut by John Huston, who also wrote the screenplay. It’s considered by many critics to be the first film noir. (Another contender is “Stranger on the Third Floor” see below.) It was the first vehicle in which screen legend Humphrey Bogart and character actor Elisha Cook Jr. appeared together – breathing life into archetypal roles that filled the noir landscape for decades to come.

It was veteran stage actor Sydney Greenstreet’s first time before a camera and the first time he worked with Peter Lorre. The pair would go on to make eight more movies together. Additionally, “Falcon,” an entry on many lists of the greatest movies ever made, was one of the first films admitted to the National Film Registry in its inaugural year, 1989. Read the rest of the review here.

Saturday, Jan. 10

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Metropolis” (1927, Fritz Lang). The rich vs. the poor, the factory owners vs. the workers, and the mad scientist vs. the people and their heroine (Brigitte Helm as the human Maria and her double, the false robot Maria) in the greatest of all silent era science fiction epics. And it’s noir as well. With Alfred Abel and Rudolf-Klein-Rogge).

10:45 p.m. (7:45 p.m.): “Ministry of Fear” (1944, Fritz Lang). The always delightful Ray Milland plays a man desperately trying to stop a Nazi spy ring. Graham Greene wrote the source novel.

12:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m.): “The Blue Gardenia” (1953, Fritz Lang). Working girl Anne Baxter lets her guard down and gets mixed up in the murder of slimy Raymond Burr. The rest of the lineup includes Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Nat King Cole and George “Superman” Reeves. Not Lang’s best, but you won’t want to miss it anyway.

Sunday, Jan. 11

2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “Knife in the Water” (1962, Roman Polanski). Polanski’s great youthful thriller about three people on a boat in the water, with a knife aboard. The trio includes a nasty young hitchhiker and a malaise-ridden bourgeois couple who are going sailing (Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka and Zygmunt Malanowicz). It’s a sunny day; the sexy wife wears a skimpy bikini; the hitchhiker plays with the knife; the tension keeps mounting and mounting. Polanski’s high visual gifts and his flair for dark moods and rising tension were already in full play here. A world-wide art house hit, this film, co-scripted by Jerzy Skolimowski (Walkover) is a classic of brooding menace and erotic threat. (In Polish, with subtitles.).

3:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m.): “Purple Noon” (1960, Rene Clement).

Tuesday, Jan. 13

Rita Hayworth went blonde for “Lady” but her new look was not well received. Hmmpf!

2:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m.): “The Chase” (1966, Arthur Penn). Robert Redford plays an escaped convict whose race toward his Deep Southern home throws the town into turmoil. Jane Fonda is his old pal; Marlon Brando is the liberal sheriff trying to put a lid on the fireworks.

Poorly re-edited, but still an underrated socially conscious neo-noir, adapted by Lillian Hellman from a Horton Foote story. The cast includes Robert Duvall, Angie Dickinson and Janice Rule.

Wednesday, Jan. 14

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Lady from Shanghai” (1948, Orson Welles).

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: film noir, John Huston, TCM, The Maltese Falcon

‘The Woman in the Window,’ one of Fritz Lang’s best films, screens tonight at the Skirball Cultural Center

January 8, 2015 by Film Noir Blonde

The Intriguante—Women of Intrigue in Film Noir series starts tonight at the Skirball Cultural Center in West Los Angeles with “The Woman in the Window.” See previous post for more details about the series.

The Woman in the Window/1944/Christie Corp./99 min.

When you least expect your life to unravel is exactly when your life will unravel, at least in a Fritz Lang film. Take “The Woman in the Window” from 1944. Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) lives a cozy bourgeois life – he gives lectures on Freud by day, enjoys after-dinner port and cigars by night. But by the end of this night, Richard will be covering up a murder.

Sipping and smoking with him at their Manhattan men’s club are his friends, District Attorney Frank Lalor (Raymond Massey) and Dr. Michael Barkstane (Edmund Breon), who’s fond of barking “Great Scott!”

Richard leaves the club after their booze-fueled yack-fest and lingers at the window of the art gallery next door. While he gazes at the creamy-skinned, raven-haired lady peering out from the canvas, another creamy-skinned, raven-haired lady materializes – it’s the model, a woman named Alice Reed (Joan Bennett).

Alice (Joan Bennett) is the woman in the painting Richard (Edward G. Robinson) and his friends admire.

After chatting over drinks, she invites him back to her splendidly appointed place. Just as they’re getting to know each other, her flashy peacock boyfriend Claude Mazard (Arthur Loft) barges in. Clearly, Alice and Claude haven’t had that “Are we seeing each other exclusively?” talk and violence erupts.

Claude’s rumored “disappearance” doesn’t fool people for long – the cops are digging for info, Richard’s pals Frank and Michael chatter about the case endlessly, and a sleazy associate of Mazard’s named Heidt (Dan Duryea) sees a plum opportunity for blackmail.

Alice and Richard are randomly bound together.

Sharply written and brilliantly acted, “The Woman in the Window” proved a box-office hit. Nunnally Johnson produced the movie and wrote the script from the J.H. Wallis novel “Once Off Guard.” The movie’s original score, a group effort led by Arthur Lange and Hugo Friedhofer, received an Oscar nom.

Vienna-born Lang infuses the film with fatalism, despite its upbeat ending. “I always made films about characters who struggled and fought against the circumstances and traps in which they found themselves,” he said.

And, as usual, Lang pulls out all the visual stops, suggesting powerlessness, alienation and doom. A signature noir shot is Claude entering the shadowy lobby of Alice’s apartment building, against the backdrop of a lonely, rainy nightscape pierced by the glare of a neon clock. Later his body will be draped in more shadows, in the back seat of Richard’s car.

Inside Alice’s pristine white apartment, mirrors splice and distort images, contributing to a fractured sense of reality. The effect may have helped inspire Orson Welles to create the fun-house mirrors sequence in 1948’s “Lady From Shanghai.”

Alice and Heidt (Dan Duryea) make a bad but beautiful team.

Though he got typically great work from his actors, Lang also had a reputation for being difficult. But he clicked with Bennett. Maybe he appreciated the sacrifices she made for her art – a natural blonde, Bennett dyed her hair black. 😉 She also had lots of drama offscreen – she married four times and endured a scandal after her third husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot her lover in the groin. (Her second husband was producer Gene Markey).

Lang and Bennett made four (almost five) films together: another famous noir, 1945’s “Scarlet Street” (which also starts Robinson and Duryea, and is definitely the darker of the two), “Man Hunt” 1941, and “Secret Beyond the Door” 1948. Bennett also starred in “Confirm or Deny” 1941, but director Archie Mayo was brought in to replace Lang.

Later in her career, Bennett portrayed Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the ’60s TV series “Dark Shadows” and she appeared in the 1970 movie “House of Dark Shadows.”

The mood of “The Woman in the Window” is pure Lang, and much of that mood comes from the actors. Duryea convincingly plays a slimy loser while, in reality, he was a standup guy. It’s a testament to his versatility that Robinson, though famous for his tough gangster roles, is completely at ease as the innocent, cultured professor caught in a film-noir web.

Best of all is Bennett, noir to the nines, spinning that web.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Dan Duryea, Edward G. Robinson, film noir, Fritz Lang, Joan Bennett, Skirball Cultural Center, The Intriguante series, The Intriguante: Women of Intrigue in Film Noir, The Woman in the Window

The Intriguante—Women of Intrigue in Film Noir series starts Thursday at the Skirball Cultural Center

January 6, 2015 by Film Noir Blonde

If you’re feeling slightly sluggish after a whirlwind of holiday activity, remember that watching a feisty femme fatale on the big screen might be just what you need to feel newly energized and thoroughly entertained.

Alice (Joan Bennett) has Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) wrapped around her little finger in “The Woman in the Window.”

You can start this Thursday, Jan. 8, at 8 p.m., when the Skirball Cultural Center in West Los Angeles starts its four-film series, The Intriguante—Women of Intrigue in Film Noir. As the organizers note: “During World War II, many women took up jobs in previously male-dominated industries, which imbued them with a new sense of independence. These four movies – all made by émigré directors and featuring strong female leads – widely appealed to this newly empowered audience, as well as soldiers abroad.”

The series starts with 1944’s “The Woman in the Window,” directed by Fritz Lang. When you least expect your life to unravel is exactly when your life will unravel, at least in a Lang film. That’s the lesson Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) learns the hard way after he’s lured into the depraved world of street hustlers Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea. “Woman” is an excellent film and well worth seeing. You can read the full FNB review here.

Admission is $10 general; $7 seniors and full-time students; $5 members. The exhibitions Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 and The Noir Effect will remain open until 8 p.m.

The Intriguante series continues on Jan. 25 with an afternoon double-feature: “Pitfall” (1948, André de Toth), featuring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott and Jane Wyatt in a classic noir love triangle, and the taut thriller “Criss Cross” (1949, Robert Siodmak), in which a temptress (Yvonne De Carlo) leads her ex (Burt Lancaster) to his doom. The series concludes on Feb. 12 with “The File on Thelma Jordon” (1950, Robert Siodmak), a crime drama starring the inimitable Barbara Stanwyck.

Additionally, the Skirball Cultural Center is hosting a series of free film-noir matinees on Tuesday afternoons, starting Jan. 6 with “Somewhere in the Night” (1946, Joseph L. Mankiewicz), starring John Hodiak as an amnesic World War II soldier.

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Noir Style, Out of the Shadows Tagged With: André De Toth, Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Criss Cross, Dan Duryea, Dick Powell, Edward G. Robinson, film noir, Fritz Lang, Joan Bennett, John Hodiak, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, Lizabeth Scott, Pitfall, Robert Siodmak, Skirball Cultural Center, Somewhere in the Night, The File on Thelma Jordon, The Intriguante series, The Intriguante: Women of Intrigue in Film Noir, The Noir Effect, The Woman in the Window, Yvonne De Carlo

Happy New Year, everyone!

January 3, 2015 by Film Noir Blonde

Hope you had a decadent time bidding farewell to 2014 and that 2015 will be darkly delightful.

We took a little time off over the holidays to unplug and reconnect with family and friends. Now we’re back and looking forward to a new slate of noir news and events.

First up: Wednesday, Jan. 7, is Fyodor Dostoyevsky night on TCM, featuring film versions of four dark Russian classics and the talents of film noir stalwart Robert Siodmak among many others.

Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner star in 1949’s “The Great Sinner,” directed by Robert Siodmak.

(8 p.m. EST and 5 p.m. PST): “The Brothers Karamazov” (1958, Richard Brooks). An ultimate dysfunctional family – as portrayed by evil dad Lee J. Cobb and warring brothers Yul Brynner, Richard Basehart, William Shatner and Albert Salmi – clash in Brooks’ adaptation of what may be Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece. The beautiful Grushenka, the part that Marilyn Monroe (a big reader) called her dream role, is played here by Maria Schell.

10:45 p.m. (7:45 p.m.): “Crime and Punishment” (1935, Josef von Sternberg). With Peter Lorre, Edward Arnold and Marian Marsh. Reviewed in FNB on April 9, 2013.

12:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m.): “The Great Sinner” (1949, Robert Siodmak). In real life, Dostoyevsky was a compulsive gambler and this version of his tense short novel “The Gambler,” scripted by novelist Christopher Isherwood, stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Ethel Barrymore and Walter Huston. Reviewed in FNB on Sept. 11, 2014.

2:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m.): “The Idiot”/ “Hakuchi” (1951, Akira Kurosawa). Kurosawa lovingly adapts his favorite writer’s famed novel, with a brilliant Japanese cast that includes Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori (as Prince Myshkin, the “idiot”), Setsuko Hara and Takashi Shimura. (In Japanese, with subtitles.)

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Akira Kurosawa, Ava Gardner, Crime and Punishment, film noir, Gregory Peck, Josef von Sternberg, Maria Schell, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Brooks, Robert Siodmak, The Brothers Karamazov, The Great Sinner, The Idiot

Film Noir File: When ‘The Apartment’ invites us in, we can’t say no

December 17, 2014 by Film Noir Blonde

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

“The Apartment” (1960, Billy Wilder). Friday, December 19; 5:45 p.m. (2:45 p.m.),

Laugh-wise, it’s one of the classic American romantic comedies. But “The Apartment’s” high-style black and white look, mordant script, pungent dialogue, sense of entrapment, and sharp savvy urban mood are all very noir. So, of course, is the co-writer/director, the great Billy (“Double Indemnity”) Wilder.

“The Apartment” is Wilder’s comic-romantic ’60s masterpiece: a funny, stinging, dark portrayal of American corporate culture circa 1960 and the behind-the-scenes sexism, sex and sleaze that fuels it all, success-wise. Jack Lemmon, at his ebullient best, is C. C. (Buddy) Baxter, a rising young insurance-company employee who lends his apartment to his bosses for their extramarital shenanigans, in return for favorable job reports.

Shirley MacLaine is Fran Kubelik, the winsome drop-dead gorgeous elevator girl of Baxter’s dreams. And Fred MacMurray is Jeff Sheldrake, his boss, her married lover, and the man who (job-wise and infidelity-wise) holds the keys and calls the shots.

The movie takes place during the Christmas season, a not-so-joyous holiday time that Baxter’s horny bosses and tenants treat with little sentiment and much cynicism – a background that only emphasizes Baxter’s loneliness.

Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon play colleagues who are well versed in the seamier side of Corporate America.

There are two main settings, co-designed by Alexander Trauner (ingenious art director of the French classic “Children of Paradise”). First: Baxter’s slightly worn brownstone digs on Central Park West, where he strains spaghetti through a tennis racket and can’t quite get “Grand Hotel” on his dinky TV.

And second: the gleaming high-rise building and the floor where Baxter toils, among a sea of co-workers, modeled after King Vidor’s vast impersonal office space in “The Crowd.” It is there that our boy Baxter will learn, step by risqué step, that you can’t get a key to the executive washroom without getting your hands dirty.

Wilder’s main cinematic inspiration here, besides Vidor, Ernst Lubitsch and some of Billy’s fellow expatriate noir-masters, was David Lean’s and Noel Coward’s peerless 1945 extramarital romance “Brief Encounter,” starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, who have a chance to rendezvous in a friend’s pad but don’t end up doing so. In “The Apartment,” Wilder lets his imagination run wild and the results, comedy-wise, are bittersweet, hilarious and marvelous.

I.A.L. Diamond, Wilder’s witty fellow scribe on “Some Like It Hot,” co-wrote the script; Adolph Deutsch composed the effulgent score. Jack Kruschen (as Baxter’s mensch of a Jewish doctor neighbor), Ray Walston, Edie Adams and Hope Holiday ably support the three stars – who are all at their absolute best. A multiple Oscar winner and an enduring classic that can still make you tear up, nod in recognition or laugh your bum off, it’s one of own personal favorites. Wilder-wise. [Read more…]

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Billy Wilder, Brief Encounter, David Lean, Ernst Lubitsch, film noir, Fred MacMurray, I. A. L. Diamond, Jack Kruschen, King Vidor, Noel Coward, Shirely MacLaine, The Apartment

Film noir family fun: ‘Baby Jane’ might help you bond this holiday season

December 16, 2014 by Film Noir Blonde

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?/1962/Warner Bros., et al/134 min.

Rocking the season of festive joy and family fun is always easier when you actually like your relatives. On the other hand, unresolved issues have a pesky perseverance, sort of like Aunt Milly’s traditional fruitcake that never leaves the fridge.

A case in point is “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962, Robert Aldrich), a classic dark-humor domestic noir. In the movie, Sisters Blanche and Jane Hudson, two retired Golden Age actresses, are in dire need of a good therapist to help them navigate the layers of self-delusion and address the serious damage done by their rather warped parents.

“Baby Jane,” which stars the inimitable Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, was the only film in which these two supreme screen divas and stalwarts of film noir ever played together. Both were strong, gutsy, competitive actresses who didn’t shy away from a fight, especially with each other. The back story of longtime rivals Bette and Joan plotting battles and butting heads, literally and figuratively, is almost as famous as the movie itself. Nevertheless, their difficult offscreen relationship infuses the film with a delicious tension.

Davis is Baby Jane Hudson, a vaudeville child star whose talent expired when she hit puberty. Crawford plays Blanche Hudson, who, as an adult, became a highly regarded and popular Hollywood actress until a mysterious car accident ended her career.

Sisters Blanche (Joan Crawford) and Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) are two retired Golden Age actresses navigating a tormented relationship.

Confined to a wheelchair, dignified and gracious Blanche lives in a sprawling house. Jane, bitter and brassy and long forgotten by her fans, has nowhere else to go so she tends to Blanche as best she can – in between guzzling bottles of gin and scotch. And she’s planning a comeback, reprising her decades-old hit song “I’m Writing a Letter to Daddy” with the help of a blubbery, unctuous ne’er-do-well musician named Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono).

Realizing that Jane is losing it, Blanche plans to sell the house, get some psychiatric help for baby sis and live in a smaller abode with their kind, caring housekeeper Elvira (Maidie Norman). Think Jane’s going for that? Not bloody likely.

Thus the stage is set for Crawford and Davis to duke it out, including a scene where Davis reportedly kicked Crawford’s forehead and stitches were required. Crawford retaliated by putting weights in her pockets for the scene in which Davis had to haul her around, spurring back trouble for Davis. So much for mellowing with age. As Davis once remarked, “Old age is no place for sissies.”

Joan Crawford reportedly put weights in her pockets for this scene with Bette Davis.

Other gossipy asides: Knowing that Crawford was on Pepsi-Cola Co.’s board of directors (a result of her marriage to the firm’s chairman and CEO Alfred Steele, from 1956 until his death in 1959), Davis had a Coke machine hauled on to the set.

Davis arranged for her daughter Barbara Merrill (later known as B.D. Hyman) to play a small role as teenage neighbor Liza Bates. Crawford carped about Babs’ acting ability, which was not exactly in abundant supply.

(And some trivia: Liza’s mom, Mrs. Bates, was played by Anna Lee, who played Bronwyn in 1941’s “How Green Was My Valley” and much later Mrs. Quartermaine on the TV soap “General Hospital.”)

For years, some critics sneered at “Baby Jane” calling it exploitative, campy, far-fetched and too long. Admittedly, it’s medium budget and there is a key plot point that turns on a very creaky hinge. But who cares? The chance to watch Davis dive into her role as grotesque Baby Jane with such pure relish and to see Crawford’s restrained, reined-in performance in the far less showy, perhaps more challenging, part of self-contained victim Blanche is an absolute delight. The supporting cast sparkles as well.

Victor Buono plays the unctuous ne’er-do-well musician named Edwin Flagg who is helping Baby Jane relaunch her career.

For all the glorious moments of black comedy, hats off to Lukas Heller’s script from the Henry Farrell novel. Ernest Haller received an Oscar nod for his luscious cinematography.

Following in the footsteps of Billy Wilder and “Sunset Blvd.,” Aldrich masterfully paints this sympathetic portrait of losers and those left behind by the Hollywood machine. And in the reversal at the finale, despite the arch humor throughout, Aldrich probes the poignant depths of a sibling relationship – evoking long-simmering feelings of resentment and guilt, regret and sadness.

Jane’s evil mind-games are chilling and her telephone impersonations of Blanche are hilarious. But what’s most unforgettable and perhaps most brave of Davis is Jane’s dreadful appearance. Her rat’s nest of bleached-blonde curls appears to be groomed on an annual basis. Jane’s caked-on cupid’s bow mouth and heavy bands of jet-black liner apparently made Davis cry when she finally saw herself onscreen. Davis described it as the look of a woman who never bothered to remove her makeup from day to day but simply kept adding more.

Would FNB dare to choose sides between these pioneers of female power, these bastions of bitchiness? Well of course she would! Team Joan is clearly the way to go. Disciplined, determined and driven, Crawford fought tooth and nail for everything she ever had. And she proved to have better business sense than Davis, asking for a percentage of “Baby Jane’s” profit whereas Davis settled for a flat fee. Last but not least, Crawford apparently tried to befriend an unreceptive Davis before the cameras started rolling.

The Warner Brothers DVD edition has a disc of extra goodies, including a short documentary comparing the careers of Davis and Crawford; a Turner bio feature of Davis, narrated by Jodie Foster; a clip of Davis on a ’70s TV show singing “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” and wearing a perfectly horrid old-lady dress; and a British TV interview with Crawford, looking and sounding as regal as the queen.

So, pop some corn, roast some chestnuts and gather the family to watch this delicious dysfunction. Happy holidays, everyone!

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews Tagged With: Bette Davis, Ernest Haller, film noir, Henry Farrell, Joan Crawford, Lukas Heller, Maidie Norman, Robert Aldrich, Victor Buono, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Film Noir File: Postman rings twice for Garfield and Granger

December 11, 2014 by Film Noir Blonde

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

“The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946, Tay Garnett). Sunday, Dec. 14; 6 a.m. (3 a.m.). With Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway and Hume Cronyn.

Lana Turner, John Garfield and Cecil Kellaway are the players in the “Postman” love triangle.

In the opening of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” a sign reading “MAN WANTED” flashes at us twice. This man, John Garfield as it happens, is really wanted. But you wouldn’t know it from Lana Turner’s imperious entrance.

She drops a tube of lipstick, then deigns to let him pick it up and return it to her. He decides to let her get it herself. She’s unruffled and he’s hooked. In a way, these first few minutes of the film foreshadow the sexual power play between Garfield’s Frank and Turner’s Cora.

Read the full review here.

Friday, Dec. 12

4:15 p.m. (1:15 p.m.): “Kid Galahad” (1937, Michael Curtiz). In this archetypal boxing-gangsters crime drama, a bumpkin bellhop (Wayne Morris) with big natural prize-fighting talent, tangles with a wily promoter (Edward G. Robinson), a mean mobster (Humphrey Bogart) and a true-blue dame (Bette Davis). One of those ’30s movies that late-night TV audiences loved. Later remade by Phil Karlson as an Elvis Presley vehicle, “Kid Galahad” was a major prize winner at the 1937 Venice Film Festival.

Saturday, Dec. 13

12 p.m. (9 a.m.): “Gaslight” (1944, George Cukor). Set in foggy Victorian gas-lit London, this is the best of all the melodramas and noirs where a bad husband tries to drive his wife insane. With Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, Angela Lansbury and Dame May Whitty.

A distraught Tippi Hedren confronts a wary Sean Connery in “Marnie.”

2 p.m. (11 a.m.): “Marnie” (1964, Alfred Hitchcock). With Sean Connery, Tippi Hedren, Diane Baker and Bruce Dern.

Sunday, Dec. 14

3:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m.): “Blowup” (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni). With David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles and The Yardbirds. Reviewed in FNB on June 19, 2014.

Tuesday, Dec. 16

4:15 a.m. (1:15 a.m.): “The Sea Wolf” (1941, Michael Curtiz). Jack London’s philosophical sea-going melodrama about vicious cargo-ship captain Wolf Larsen (Edward G. Robinson). Larsen is an egghead fascist and brutal autodidact who’s going blind and crazy as he toys with his crew and his passengers (John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Barry Fitzgerald and Alexander Knox).

With its noirish cast, writer (Robert Rossen) and director, this is probably the best of many film versions of London’s dark tale. The movie seethes with gangsterish menace and obvious parallels to then-contemporary WWII conflicts.

Wednesday, Dec. 17

“Side Street” was the second noir to feature young lovers played by Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell.

7:15 a.m. (4:15 a.m.): “Dial 1119” (1950, Gerald Mayer). Crisp little B-thriller about a barful of New York City types held captive by a maniac. With Marshall Thompson, Andrea King, Sam Levene and Keefe Brasselle.

1 p.m. (10 a.m.): “Mystery Street” (1950, John Sturges). A good, smart police procedural, set partly at Harvard University, with a homicide cop and forensic scientist (Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Bennett), trying to crack a murder with sexual overtones. Co-starring Elsa Lanchester, Sally Forrest, Jan Sterling and Marshall Thompson. Written by Sydney Boehm (“The Big Heat”).

4:15 p.m. (1:15 p.m.): “Side Street” (1950, Anthony Mann). The postman rings too often here too, as Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, the two tenderly romantic, stunningly photogenic stars of Nick Ray’s love-on-the-run noir classic “They Live by Night,” are rematched for one of Anthony Mann’s best B-noirs. Granger is a financially strapped postal delivery guy who makes one slip and swipes money that turns out to be the property of some particularly murderous criminals. O’Donnell is his lovely and loyal wife. The stellar gallery of crooks, cops and bystanders lurking around them includes James Craig, Paul Kelly, Jean Hagen and Charles McGraw. The cast, Sydney Boehm’s taut script, the evocative New York City location photography (by Joseph Ruttenberg) and the full-throttle, exciting action set-pieces make this “B” special. (Also see our FNB Farley Granger piece on April 4, 2011.)

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Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Neo Noir Reviews Tagged With: Cecil Kellaway, film noir, Hume Cronyn, John Garfield, Lana Turner, TCM, The Postman Always Rings Twice

The Film Noir File: Paying tribute to Otto Preminger

December 4, 2014 by Film Noir Blonde

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

Pick of the Week

Happy Birthday, Otto Preminger (1905-1986)

Friday, Dec. 5

During the filming of “Angel Face,” Robert Mitchum bonded with Jean Simmons when he came to her defense against Preminger’s mistreatment.

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.

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.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Gene Tierney and Vincent Price size each other up in Otto Preminger’s “Laura.”

6:15 a.m. (3:15 a.m.): “The Human Factor” (1970). Preminger’s last film – a faithful adaptation of Graham Greene’s dark, knowing novel about a British defector/putative spy (Nicol Williamson) – has a good, smart script, inspired by the Kim Philby case, written by playwright Tom Stoppard. The top cast includes Derek Jacobi, Richard Attenborough, Iman, John Gielgud and Robert Morley. But it suffers from a parsimonious budget and Otto’s declining film fortunes.

8:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m.) “Advise and Consent” (1962). With Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Tierney, Burgess Meredith and Franchot Tone. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 4, 2013.

12:45 p.m.: (9:45 a.m.): “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955) As a man struggling to give up his heroin habit, Frank Sinatra leads a superb cast in this riveting adaptation of Nelson Algren’s novel. Kim Novak plays his ex-girlfriend. Sinatra earned a Best Actor Oscar nom; the film’s music (by Elmer Bernstein) and art direction-set decoration also were considered for Oscars. With Eleanor Parker and Darren McGavin.

4:45 p.m. (1:45 p.m.): “Angel Face” (1953). With Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and Herbert Marshall.

6:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m.): “Laura” (1944). With Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson and Vincent Price.

Other non-noir Premingers shown on his birthday are his two well-made stage adaptations: George Bernard Shaw’s historical drama “Saint Joan” (1957), scripted by Greene, with Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark and Anton Walbrook at 10:45 a.m. (7:45 a.m.) and F. Hugh Herbert’s controversial sex comedy “The Moon is Blue” (1953), with William Holden, Maggie McNamara and David Niven, at 3 p.m. (12 p.m.). Both are worth a look.

Sunday, Dec. 7

8 a.m. (5 a.m.): “The Lady Vanishes” (1938, Alfred Hitchcock). With Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Dame May Whitty and Paul Lukas.