Elmer Bernstein — Film Noir Blonde

Love at its worst, noir at its best: ‘Sudden Fear’ sucks you in

Sudden Fear/1952/RKO Radio Pictures/110 min.

If you’ve never seen 1952’s “Sudden Fear” by director David Miller, you are in for a treat. I’m not sure why but this film isn’t mentioned very often as an example of noir at its best. It is precisely that – with delightful darkness at its core. And it was nominated for four Academy Awards: actress, supporting actor, b&w cinematography and b&w costume design.

Hmm, where to begin my gushfest? Well, first of all, it stars Joan Crawford as heiress and playwright Myra Hudson. Glamorous, successful and gracious, Myra has everything in the world, except a man.

Jack Palance charms Joan Crawford on a train trip.

But that all changes fast. While sitting in on a rehearsal for her new play’s Broadway opening, Myra fires actor Lester Blaine (Jack Palance; the part was also offered to Marlon Brando). After the show is a smash hit, she runs into him by chance on the train back to her home in San Francisco. By the end of the trip, Myra and Lester seem to be in love. Lester is an actor, after all.

The truth is he has some unfinished business, or more accurately unrealized schemes, with ex-flame Irene Neves (Gloria Grahame). They have expensive taste but no cash; that’s where Myra’s money and a tragic “accident” come in.

Myra isn’t fooled for long, though certainly she has her share of night sweats and shakes. Her playwright’s skill for crafting plot lines as well as a knack for stunts and a talent for forgery come in mighty handy as she painstakingly plans a way to exact her revenge.

Crawford is captivating as the writer/wife with a wickedly resourceful streak. The scene in which she learns of Lester’s betrayal is remarkable – it hinges completely on her wordless, visceral reaction. Grahame sizzles as a smooth operator working every angle she can. Crawford also served as the film’s executive producer; she and Grahame reportedly did not get along. Shocker! Tall, craggy-faced Palance, in his first major screen role, effortlessly exudes mystery and menace. It’s chilling to see Lester morph from solicitous to sinister at the drop of a hat.

Miller, an underrated director, borrows a bit from the horror genre (rest assured, there’s a screeching cat, among other creepy tropes) and outdoes himself with this subversive, scary melodrama that just oozes tension. Love the chase scene toward the end. Miller worked from a strong, clever script by Lenore Coffee and Robert Smith from a novel by Edna Sherry.

The visuals are magnificent, noir at its finest, courtesy of cinematographer Charles B. Lang Jr. Black stripes and bars invade every scene, suggesting the characters’ entrapment in their fate. Intense contrast and chiaroscuro lend a painterly quality. Elmer Bernstein’s score, part nerve-wracking and part lushly romantic, is also key to building the suspense. [Read more…]

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‘Sweet Smell of Success’ beautifully captures the sour stink of moral decay

Sweet Smell of Success/ 1957/ United Artists/ 96 min.

Michael Wilmington

This month, I am giving away a copy of Criterion’s new two-disc edition of “Sweet Smell of Success” directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Just leave a comment on any post in March and you will be entered; the winner will be drawn at random. Here, critic Michael Wilmington reviews this unforgettable film.

“Sweet Smell of Success,” an American movie masterpiece and one of the best and gutsiest of all the classic film noirs, is a sleek killer comedy/drama about Broadway in the ’50s.

It centers around two influential New Yorkers: megalomaniac star gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) and one of his more energetic publicist-sources, scummy but fashionable Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis).

Falco, who wears a suit black as night, a dazzling white shirt and a poisonous leer that implies he’s seen something dirty and knows something even filthier, lives and dies each day by whether he gets a story planted in Hunsecker’s hugely successful column. Hunsecker, meanwhile, mostly holds court in the night spots that are his fiefdom, condescending to all the people, from Falco and other flacks, to movie stars to a U.S. Senator, who come to sip, smoke and pay him homage.

Hunsecker and Falco are unashamed users, almost proudly amoral. Hunsecker thinks he’s above morality; Falco thinks he can’t afford it now. Falco treats his potential patron with a fawning but mean-eyed servility. Hunsecker, with his ominous spectacles masking eyes of ice, freezes out Falco dismissively. “Match me,” Hunsecker tells the weasely Falco, in one of this movie’s many famous lines. Though Falco doesn’t actually scramble to light his cigarette, he does far worse.

Both these monsters have need of each other in this dark night and smoky day, in this world bounded by the Stork Club, Twenty One, Broadway and 42nd Street. Falco wants to use Hunsecker to ascend higher, into the sweet, smelly heights of Broadway gossip success, to become another Hunsecker.

Meanwhile, Hunsecker has nominated Falco for one of the dirty jobs he can’t get too close to: sabotaging the romance between his younger sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and her straight-arrow musician lover Steve (Martin Milner).

“Sweet Smell” deliberately patterned Hunsecker after one of the country’s most famous and powerful newspapermen Walter Winchell (1897-1972). Winchell’s daughter Walda was the model for Hunsecker’s sister Susan.

When you watch Hunsecker and Falco do their routines – snazzy, cruel, funny – you’ll never forget them. You’ll hear Hunsecker telling Falco, “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” Or Falco circling cigarette girl Rita (Barbara Nichols) and answering her query about whether he’s listening to her by wisecracking, “Avidly, avidly.”

Falco and Hunsecker are classic American movie characters, written with knifelike wit, commanding craft and true street genius by Ernest Lehman (who worked in this world) and Clifford Odets (a one-time playwright king of Broadway). It is directed with stinging life, energy and flawless insight by Alexander Mackendrick, an American of Scottish descent, who was one of the comedy experts of that British treasure-house, the Ealing Studio.

“Sweet Smell” was a sometimes-chaotic production. But Lehman or Odets never produced a better script. Mackendrick never directed a better movie. Elmer Bernstein rarely wrote a jazzier, sharper score. The master cinematographer James Wong Howe (“Hangmen Also Die!” “Pursued,” “Body and Soul”) never shot a darker, more brilliant noir.

Lancaster was sometimes more impressive, more richly colored and dominating, in tonier classics like “Elmer Gantry,” “From Here to Eternity” and “The Leopard.” But Curtis never topped Falco, not even in “Some Like It Hot.”

Lancaster was not Mackendrick’s choice for Hunsecker. He wanted Orson Welles or Hume Cronyn. It’s a weird piece of casting that works and it makes this a stronger, sexier and more subversive film. [Read more…]

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