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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Perfect, posh fodder for a Hitchcock mind game

September 11, 2012 by

Dial M for Murder/1954/Warner Bros. Pictures/105 min.

A streetwise femme fatale she’s not. Grace Kelly is too refined, too ladylike, too exquisitely beautiful. But in “Dial M for Murder,” her first movie with Alfred Hitchcock, she proves herself to be a smart and capable heroine in this film that’s nearly as ravishing to look at as she is.

Ray Milland as Tony Wendice brims with confidence and charm.

We first see her character Margot Wendice, in a demure white dress, as she reads the London Times over breakfast with her debonair husband Tony (Ray Milland). Tony’s a former tennis champ who now sells sports equipment. But it’s Margot’s family money that pays for their posh lifestyle and elegant flat in Maida Vale.

Minutes after her breakfast, we see Margot with her lover, a mystery writer named Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), this time in a bright red dress that signals where her real passion lies. Margot is fretting a bit because she’s received letters from an anonymous blackmailer who knows about her affair and threatens to tell Tony.

Turns out, though, the “blackmailer” is suave old Tony himself. He’s known for quite a while that Margot and Mark are an item and he’s hatched a plan to do away with his wife, get her money and use her lover as his alibi. It’s a very clever plan and Tony has worked out every detail. But as I mentioned Margot is no slouch. She proves quite skilled at surviving and improvising with weapons. A little trick she picked up at boarding school, I expect. Still, Tony sees a chance to achieve his goal using a new ploy.

Mark (Robert Cummings) is the writer with whom Margot (Grace Kelly) begins an affair.

Like most Hitchcock noirs, the story takes place in a world in which manners and titles and accents count for a great deal – in which fate is determined over champagne cocktails and glasses of brandy by a roaring fire. This chi-chi, upper-crust milieu is far removed from the gritty, urban, angst-ridden territory of much of the film noir canon. But a common thread of film noir, regardless of setting, is that its writers and directors were intensely aware of class differences and divisions, of society’s inequalities and injustices.

With a screenplay by Frederick Knott (based on his Broadway and West End hit), “Dial M for Murder” boasts a very civilized, very English, very cozy atmosphere, at least on the surface. Whereas Hitchcock often tended to use novels and short stories as gestalts for his own uniquely original narratives, when he chose to film a play, he left them virtually unaltered. In fact, he considered “Dial M” a minor work, something to do while he recharged his creative batteries.

That said, he shot the movie in 3-D, in vibrant color with extreme camera angles to keep us from getting too claustrophobic (the action takes places almost entirely in the Wendices’ well appointed flat). The lush look, upbeat mood, romantic music by Dimitri Tiomkin and charming characters all belie the darkness at the core of the story.

Milland is magnetic, confident, perfectly composed with just a shimmer of vulnerability. Kelly, the flawless incarnation of ’50s femininity, seems the perfect wife for him. (The supporting cast is splendid as well. Anthony Dawson plays the college acquaintance whom Tony ropes into his scheme. John Williams is urbane as ever as Chief Inspector Hubbard.) But, as sumptuous as these appearances are, they are nevertheless deceiving.

A pawn in the game: Anthony Dawson tries to strangle Margot (Grace Kelly).

“Dial M for Murder” is an excellent example of one of Hitch’s favorite mind games – inviting us to get swept up in this picture-perfect world and then upending our expectations and revealing his (and perhaps our) mistrust of the upper classes, particularly through the use of subversive casting.

For instance, Margot and Mark’s fling is surely one of the most tasteful and thoroughly dull affairs in movie history (despite the red dress). I reckon any woman would take sexy, athletic Tony over sweet but insipid Mark. Of course, Hitchcock knows this. He uses Milland’s humor and appeal to build the audience’s sympathy for the wrong person, to get us to identify with a would-be killer, to subtly underscore the moral ambiguities and deep flaws that make us human.

Hitch liked to play cat and mouse with the audience, to entice us with wit, gloss and visual flair, then slyly expose our delusions and hypocrisies. Or as Francois Truffaut put it: “Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.”

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Robert Bresson retrospective starts tonight at the Aero

May 10, 2012 by

The Poetry of Precision: A Robert Bresson Retrospective starts tonight at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Starting the series is a new 35 mm print of a superb prison drama based on actual events: “A Man Escaped” (1956). François Truffaut called Bresson’s work, upon its release, “the most important film of the last 10 years.”

Though Bresson, known for his spare, unflinching vision and for addressing religious and spiritual themes, is not a film noir director, several of his movies deal with crime, fate, entrapment and damnation. These include: “Les anges du péché” (1943), “Les dames du Bois de Boulogne” (1945), “Pickpocket” (1959), “Une femme douce”/“A Gentle Woman” (1969), “Le diable probablement”/“The Devil, Probably” (1977) and “L’Argent” (1983) – all of which are showing at the Aero. Bresson died on Dec. 18, 1999; he was 98.

The series runs through May 20. It is presented by the American Cinematheque in collaboration with the French Embassy, the Institut Français, and the French Film and TV Office of the French Consulate in Los Angeles. All films are in French with English subtitles.

The Aero Theatre is at 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica, 90403.

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Free stuff from FNB: Win ‘Notorious’ by Alfred Hitchcock

February 6, 2012 by

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious"

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I am giving away a DVD copy of the 1946 Alfred Hitchcock classic “Notorious,” starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. Both an espionage thriller and a tortured love story, the movie is considered one of Hitchcock’s finest works and was François Truffaut’s fave. I will run a review in the next few weeks.

(Patricia is the winner of the January reader giveaway, a paperback copy of “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver. Congrats to Patricia and thanks to all who entered!)

To enter the February giveaway, just leave a comment on any FNB post from Feb. 1-29. We welcome comments, but please remember that, for the purposes of the giveaway, there is one entry per person, not per comment.

The winner will be randomly selected at the end of the month and announced in early March. Include your email address in your comment so that I can notify you if you win. Your email will not be shared. Good luck!

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Film noir gifts for the holidays: Books

December 15, 2011 by

Last week, I was beauty-product happy. This week, it’s all about pages.

Here are my book-buying suggestions and descriptions from their sellers/review highlights.

“Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark” by Brian Kellow, $27.95
Says fellow film critic Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter: “Kellow … writes beautifully and dexterously interweaves the story of a career long-thwarted with a sensitive reading of his subject’s youthful enthusiasm and intellectual growth. … Kellow admirably brings Pauline’s wit, insight and passion to life on the page and has made at least one critic nostalgic for the days when heavyweight critical battles raged and at least one of us lived a life worthy of a biography.”

“The Doll: The Lost Short Stories” by Dame Daphne du Maurier, $15
Writing in Elle, Kate Christensen says of du Maurier (who wrote “Rebecca,” “My Cousin Rachel” and “Jamaica Inn”): “It’s all here: her fascination with the interplay between ingénue and femme fatale, her caddish male characters and the clinging females they devastate, and the inevitable disillusionment of innocence. … The stories are not all equally well realized – a few of them feel more like sketches – but the best ones are astonishingly good.”

“Maigret at the Gai-Moulin,” a novel by Georges Simenon, $8
Belgian writer Simenon (1903-89) published his first novel at 17 and wrote more than 200 novels, many featuring a detective named Commissaire Maigret. Says People magazine: “Maigret … ranks with Holmes and Poiret in the pantheon of fictional detective immortals.”

“Marilyn: Intimate Exposures” by Susan Bernard/Bruno Bernard, $35
Hollywood photographer Bruno Bernard’s iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grate in a billowing white dress is synonymous with Hollywood glamour. Many of the images in this volume have never before been published.

Gary Cooper

Also includes forewords from Jane Russell, Marilyn’s co-star in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and Lindsay Lohan as well as excerpts from Bruno’s journal and a frameable print. (Next year is the 50th anniversary of Marilyn’s death.)

“Gary Cooper: An Enduring Style” by Maria Cooper Janis and G. Bruce Boyer, $60
The first monograph focused on the timeless fashion and allure of this leading man who was a fashion inspiration to his Hollywood peers, clothing designers and generations of stylish men. Unpublished, never-before-seen personal photographs, shot primarily by his wife Rocky.

“Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel” by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, $55
From Town & Country: “Before there was Daphne Guinness, before there was Lady Gaga, there was the original style setter. A new book takes a look at the career and influence of the woman who made fashion modern.”

Lisa Immordino Vreeland runs her own fashion design and production consulting business. She is the producer of a documentary film about Diana Vreeland, and is married to Vreeland’s grandson Alexander.

“Christian Louboutin,” $150
Red rules in more than 300 pages of the legendary designer’s work. Read more about him and his career here.

“Works on Paper” by David Lynch, $195
A collection of more than 500 drawings, dating from the 1960s by the renowned American film director, offers a unique glimpse into the artist’s creative process.

If you are in the LA area, treat yourself to a trip to Dragon Books, 2954 Beverly Glen Circle, 310-441-8545. There, you’ll find an inscribed first edition of 1984’s “Things I Did … and Things I Think I Did” by director Jean Negulesco (“The Mask of Dimitrios,” “Humoresque,” “Johnny Belinda” and “How to Marry a Millionaire,” along with many others); $150.

Also: a first edition of Don Allen’s “François Truffaut” from 1974, signed by Truffaut; $1,500.

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‘Le Cercle Rouge’ is an icy thriller by an immaculate artist

November 5, 2011 by

“Le Cercle Rouge” plays Saturday, Nov. 6, at 4 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood as part of AFI FEST 2011.

Le Cercle Rouge/1970/EIA, et al/140 min./in French with English subtitles

By Michael Wilmington

Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) was, in some ways, the Vermeer of the heist movie. A master of classic noir and neo noir, Melville was a cool, sure-fingered expert and an immaculate artist. Like Vermeer, his pictures were deceptively simple and utterly haunting, punctilious and mysterious. And, like Vermeer, he didn’t leave many behind him.

One of the greatest of all Melville’s films, with one of his most spectacular heists, is “Le Cercle Rouge,” a neo-noir which has, as its centerpiece, a spine-chilling depiction of a jewel robbery at the Place Vendome in Paris.

The job is pulled off with rare skill by three strangely honorable thieves, played by three international film stars: ex-convict Corey (played by Alain Delon), escaped prisoner Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté) and ex-cop Jansen (Yves Montand).

Alain Delon

The movie is about how these three come together, how they execute the robbery, and how they’re finally driven apart – largely through the quiet skill and determination of their relentless police antagonist. Deceptively lumpish, bourgeois-looking Inspector Mattei is played by comedy star André Bourvil.

Mattei is keeping watch over his prisoner, Vogel, on a train journey. But Vogel slips out of his handcuffs and escapes from the sleeper car of the speeding train. Mattei is humiliated, then obsessed with finding Vogel. The broken handcuffs become a psychological link.

Mattei has an invaluable source in Santi (François Périer), a double-dealer and underworld mole, who looks like a ferret in a suit. Santi owns a nightclub that seems to specialize in crooked assignations and ersatz ’50s American movie musical numbers, set to a cool jazzy score by Éric Demarsan. (The chorus girls in those numbers are almost the only women we see in the movie, except for one faithless lover and one cigarette girl.)

The title “Le Cercle Rouge” refers to a story of Buddha, who supposedly draws a red chalk circle and explains to his students that those who are destined to cross paths will do so within the circle, no matter what.

Melville made and released Le Cercle Rouge in 1970, one year after making his World War Two French Resistance masterpiece, “Army of Shadows” (1969) and two years before making his last film (with his last heist), the flawed “Un Flic” (Dirty Money), starring Delon, Catherine Deneuve and Richard Crenna. “Le Cercle Rouge” was his last masterpiece.

Back to Vermeer for a moment. There is one vital quality of Vermeer’s that Melville misses completely, probably never tries for: warmth. Melville’s films noirs are cold, especially when cinematographer Henri Decaë (of Melville’s “Le Samourai”) shoots them. His crooks are cool. They speak little, wear raincoats and fedoras, and smoke cigarettes, like Bogie. His cops are icy. His world is dark: noir to the brim.

Why was Melville so obsessed with criminals, with heists and with heist movies? Maybe because this underworld reminded him of the world that was the French Resistance, in which he had fought during the war.

And maybe it’s because of the one that got away. In the ’50s, Melville was hired to direct the movie that became one of the greatest of all heist movies (François Truffaut’s choice as the greatest of all film noirs), 1955’s “Rififi.” Melville was later fired and replaced by Jules Dassin, who chivalrously refused to take the job without Melville’s consent (which Melville gave). [Read more…]

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A deadly duo and classic of ’70s noir: ‘Honeymoon Killers’

July 21, 2011 by

The Honeymoon Killers/1970/107 min.

Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco star in "The Honeymoon Killers."

Based on a notorious real-life murder case, shot in striking black-and-white, and scored to the ominous strains of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 (“Tragic”), this is one of the true classics of ’70s neo noir: a low-budget masterpiece about a couple of ruthless killers who make the murderous lovers of “Double Indemnity” look almost normal.

Hefty Shirley Stoler unforgettably plays Martha Beck, a deadly nurse who joins with sleazy Lothario Ray Fernandez (the equally unforgettable Tony Lo Bianco) to seduce, kill and rob her wealthy women patients. Crime doesn’t play, but not before your blood is thoroughly chilled.

The movie was both written and directed by Leonard D. Kastle, and despite consistent rave reviews for “The Honeymoon Killers“ from François Truffaut and many others, Kastle never made another movie. A young director who was fired from the project earlier on did slightly better. His name was Martin Scorsese.

— Michael Wilmington

“The Honeymoon Killers” plays at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 21, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

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‘Diabolique’ is all surprise, all mystery, one twist after another

July 6, 2011 by

‘Diabolique’/1955/Cinédis/114 min.

Michael Wilmington

By Michael Wilmington

The worst kind of fictional horror, the kind that seeps into your psyche and stings into life your worst fears, sometimes springs from the seemingly mundane routines of life, when the placid world we know suddenly becomes a backdrop for darkness and evil.

In French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece of suspense, “Diabolique,” a school near Paris turns into the site for a cold-blooded murder and a den of everyday nightmares. “Diabolique,” called “Les Diaboliques,“ (“The Devils”) in France, is a movie about the mystery and terror of appearances, and the ways that they can ensnare us, drive us mad or destroy us.

If there was ever a movie review that needed a “Spoiler Alert” it’s “Diabolique,” a film that doesn’t have one surprise up its sleeve, but many. It’s all surprise, all mystery, one twist after the other, going off like firecrackers until the end of the film.

Vera Clouzot

Simone Signoret

“Diabolique” takes place in a boarding school, an ugly, sprawling ex-chateau run by a ferret-faced brute of a headmaster, Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) and his weak, ill and persecuted wife Christina (Vera Clouzot). Delassalle viciously exploits and abuses his wife, and is openly unfaithful to her, with the school’s science and math teacher, a sultry, smart blonde named Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret, in one of her most famous roles).

Headmaster Delassalle is an awful man and the school is an awful but believable place, with bleak dormitory rooms, rotten food, dark hallways, and a dirty swimming pool in which something terrible, we feel, will happen. Or maybe not.

In the first of the movie’s string of shocks, we discover that Christina and Nicole, wife and mistress, have formed an unholy alliance. Both seemingly disgusted by the swinish Michel, they are plotting to kill him and disguise it as an accident.

And Michel is such a cad and sadist – a brilliant performance by Meurisse, who was later just as fine for both Jean Renoir (“Picnic on the Grass”) and Jean-Pierre Melville (“Le Cercle Rouge”) – that we don’t condemn the women. Another brilliant actor of astounding longevity, Charles Vanel, plays superlatively well the retired detective Fichet, who starts sniffing around when he runs into Christina at the morgue.

The man who made this astonishing and frightening movie, writer-director Clouzot, seemed to be many things himself: a cynic and a sometime sadist to his actors (especially his own wife, Vera), a friend/collaborator of artistic greats like Pablo Picasso, a WW2 opportunist who worked for a company run by the occupying Germans, and, above all, a genius at making movies that tightened the vise of anxiety like a noose around the audiences’ throats.

Clouzot was, in fact, the only specialist in suspense who was ever plausibly bracketed with Alfred Hitchcock – and Hitchcock was one of “Diabolique” ’s biggest admirers. The wry British master of movie fear wanted to buy the novel, “Celle qui n’etait plus,” by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, on which “Diabolique” was based.

When “Diabolique” became an international hit, Hitchcock bought another Boileau-Narcejac novel, and turned it into his masterpiece “Vertigo.” Hitch then acquired a Robert Bloch novel called “Psycho” and essentially made it his own “Diabolique,” shooting in black and white, playing up similar scenes and themes (including the idea of murder in a bathroom), borrowing liberally from the earlier movie’s style and execution, even reworking some of its advertising gimmicks. [Read more…]

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