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). The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard). All films without a new review have been covered previously in Film Noir Blonde and can be searched in the FNB archives (at right).
Pick of the Week: Summer of Darkness soldiers on
Barbara Stanwyck plays the tough-as-nails title broad in “Martha Ivers.” Kirk Douglas plays her husband.
Unless you’re a noirista who has been living under a rock, you know that TCM’s badass binge of film noir continues this Friday.
This week TCM’s list includes the spine-tingling masterpiece “Strangers on a Train” and the lesser-known but compelling melodrama “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” plus noir highlights by and with ace actors like Humphrey Bogart, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, recent birthday gal Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott, and Audrey Totter, brilliant writers like Patricia Highsmith, W. R. Burnett and Cornell Woolrich, and directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph H. Lewis, Phil Karlson and Anthony Mann.
Lizabeth Scott and Van Heflin co-star in “Martha Ivers.”
Curated and hosted by the Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation and the Noir City film festivals, TCM’s Summer of Darkness is one festival of classic dreams and movie nightmares, you don’t want to miss. As Raymond Chandler once said about Phillip Marlowe, in “The Simple Art of Murder”: “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid…”
Friday, July 17
7:45 a.m. (4:45 a.m.): “Tension” (John Berry, 1950).
Robert Mitchum
9:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m.): “Where Danger Lives” (John Farrow, 1950). Robert Mitchum is dragged to the bad side of the border and the law by second-tier femme fatale Faith Domergue. This one has its moments.
11 a.m. (8 a.m.): “The Woman on Pier 13” (“I Married a Communist”) (Robert Stevenson, 1950).
12:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m.): “A Lady Without Passport” (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950). Hedy Lamarr is an illegal alien who proves irresistible to secret service man John Hodiak. Stylishly wrought by the director of “Gun Crazy” and “My Name is Julia Ross.”
2 p.m. (11 a.m.): “Cause for Alarm” (Tay Garnett, 1951). Loretta Young, caught in a noir trap of lies and murder. With Barry Sullivan.
3:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m.): “No Questions Asked” (Harold F. Kress, 1951). Barry Sullivan is an insurance agent gone bad. With Arlene Dahl and other temptations.
Farley Granger and Robert Walker have a wonderful weird chemistry in “Strangers on a Train.”
4:45 p.m. (1:45 p.m.): “Strangers on a Train” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951).
6:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m.): “The Racket” (John Cromwell, 1951). Gangster Robert Ryan and tough cop Robert Mitchum duke it out in this moody adaptation of Bartlett Cormack’s hit stage play.
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Too Late for Tears” (Byron Haskin, 1949). Recently restored by the FNF, this sleeper stars Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. The film examines the evils of money. Seriously?
10 p.m. (7 p.m.): “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (Lewis Milestone, 1946).
12:15 a.m. (9: 15 p.m.): “99 River Street” (Phil Karlson, 1953). Taut little thriller, with unlucky but feisty cabbie John Payne caught in a frame-up, directed with panache by B-maestro Karlson (“The Phenix City Story”). Evelyn Keyes co-stars.
2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “Conflict” (Curtis Bernhardt, 1945). Bogie in his bad mode, tormenting Alexis Smith and trying to evade Sydney Greenstreet.
3:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m.). “Klute” (Alan Pakula, 1971).
Saturday, July 18
8:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m.). “Crime and Punishment” (Josef von Sternberg, 1935). Director Sternberg, in his Dietrich years, tackles Fyodor Dostoyevsky, with the young Lucien Ballard behind the camera, and a cast that includes Peter Lorre (as the gloomy, philosophical student killer) and Edward Arnold (as his nemesis, genial and persistent police detective).
3:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m.) “Rebel Without a Cause” (Nicholas Ray, 1955).
5:15 p.m. (2:15 p.m.): “Lolita” (Stanley Kubrick, 1962). Kubrick’s superb film of Vladimir Nabokov’s classic comic-erotic novel about the dangerous affair of college professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) with nymphet Lolita (Sue Lyon).
Sunday, July 19
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Metropolis” (Fritz Lang, 1927).
11 p.m. (8 p.m.): “Fury” (Fritz Lang, 1936).
12:45 a.m. (9:45 p.m.): “Spione” (“Spies”) (Fritz Lang, 1928). Espionage and romance from Lang, the master of German expressionist suspense, in his prime. With Rudolf Klein-Rogge (the super-villainous Dr. Mabuse himself).
Tuesday, July 21
1:45 p.m. (10:45 a.m.): “Two O’Clock Courage” (Anthony Mann, 1945). From Mann’s “B” years: A tense amnesia thriller, with forgetful Tom Conway, Ann Rutherford and Jane Greer.
2:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m.): “Peeping Tom” (Michael Powell, 1960).
Wednesday, July 22
6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Keeper of the Flame” (George Cukor, 1942). Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn find the dark side of an iconic American idol.
8 p.m. (5p.m.): “Gilda” (Charles Vidor, 1946).
From FNB readers