By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week: A Day with Sam Fuller
Tuesday, April 29
Cigar-chewing, ex-New York City newsman Sam Fuller was one of the toughest of all the tough noir directors. He made tough crime thrillers, tough war movies, tough westerns, and even a tough period newspaper drama (“Park Row,” which was his own favorite). Eight of his movies are on tap this Tuesday.
American film executives and critics were often bewildered by Sam Fuller.
Offhand, we can’t think of another moviemaker who began his scenes and camera takes by firing off a gun, or who ended one picture (“Shock Corridor”) by flooding and destroying his own set and vamoosing from the studio.
Sam Fuller knew what real crooks, cops, Army men and news guys were like, and he encouraged his casts to play it hard, spiky and dark. American film executives were often bewildered by Sam, and so were American film critics. But the French loved him.
Fuller served as a soldier with the famed WWII infantry squadron The Big Red One (which he and star Lee Marvin portrayed, to the hilt, in their 1980 war saga of the same name). And he served as a 20th Century Fox contract writer-director, under the formidable Darryl F. Zanuck, which may have been almost as dangerous.
Like Don Siegel and Phil Karlson, Fuller was one of the masters of B-budgets, though he did all right with a few “As” too, including “The Big Red One,” and the Venice Film Festival prize winner (with Richard Widmark), “Pickup on South Street.” He never made anything soft and he never made anything that put you to sleep.
7:15 a.m. (4:15 a.m.): “I Shot Jesse James” (1949, Samuel Fuller). With John Ireland, Preston Foster and Barbara Britton. Reviewed in FNB on July 13, 2012.
8:45 a.m. (5:45 a.m.): “The Baron of Arizona” (1950, Fuller). Vincent Price at his slickest, suavest and meanest, playing a real-life Arizona land-grabber who almost stole the whole state.
10:30 a.m. (7:30 a.m.): “The Steel Helmet” (1951, Fuller). A very dark, grim and relentless Korean war movie, about a platoon under fire bivouacked in a Buddhist temple, led by a hard-case sergeant named Zack (Gene Evans). One of the few times Fuller had most of the critics in his corner; “The Steel Helmet” is a B-movie classic. With Steve Brodie, James Edwards and Robert Hutton.
12 p.m. (9 a.m.): “Run of the Arrow” (1957, Fuller). The Civil War is over. Southern rebel survivor Rod Steiger is in Sioux country out west, trying to survive. This film and Forty Guns (with Barbara Stanwyck as a tough cattle queen) are Fuller’s best westerns, though “Run of the Arrow” has the stronger cast. Besides Steiger, who affects an outrageous Irish- Confederate brogue, there’s Charley Bronson, Brian Keith, Ralph Meeker, Sarita Montiel and Jay C. Flippen.
1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “Verboten!” (1958, Fuller). James Best, who usually plays sensitive cowboys, is a nosey yank soldier in post-war Germany, whose German girlfriend (Susan Cummings) leads him to a secret neo-Nazi group.
3 p.m. (12 p.m.): “Merrill’s Marauders” (1962, Fuller). Jeff Chandler, in his last movie, plays the real-life WW2 hero General Frank Merrill of the famed Merrill’s Marauders — fighting and suffering in the Burmese jungles, in what’s probably Fuller’s most conventional war picture. But it’s a good one anyway. Chandler is backed by much of the Warner Brothers TV Western repertory troupe: Claude Akins, Andrew Duggan, Ty Hardin, Will Hutchins and Peter Brown.
4: 45 p.m. (1:45 p.m.): “Shock Corridor” (1963, Fuller). With Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Edwards and Larry Tucker. Reviewed in FNB on Nov. 16, 2011.
6:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m.): “The Naked Kiss” (1964, Fuller). With Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Virginia Grey, Michael Dante, and Patsy Kelly. Reviewed in FNB on Jan. 16, 2012.
Saturday, April 26
1 p.m. (10 a.m.): “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951, Elia Kazan).
“Stella! Stella!”
A hot, steamy New Orleans night. A card game, busted. A wolf named Stanley is on the prowl, howling. His delicate prey, Blanche, unwisely challenges him. And it all leads to that annihilating last line, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” One of the greatest of all American stage plays becomes a great movie, with strong noir touches. Starring Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden. Leigh, Hunter and Malden won Oscars for their roles, but not Brando. We noir-lovers can’t complain, though. The man who beat Brando was Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen.”
3:45 a.m. (12:45 a.m.): “Séance on a Wet Afternoon” (1964, Bryan Forbes). With Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Patrick Magee and Nanette Newman. Reviewed in FNB, on July 13, 2012.
Sunday, April 27
8:30 a.m. (5:30 a.m.) “The 39 Steps” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935). With Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll and Peggy Ashcroft. Reviewed in FNB on Sept. 29, 2012.
2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “The Match Factory Girl” (1990, Aki Kaurismaki). If there’s such a thing as Finnish noir, it’s defined by the Kaurismaki Brothers: Mika (who directed an excellent documentary on the making, or unmaking, of Sam Fuller’s doomed John Wayne–Clark Gable vehicle “Tigrero,” and Aki , who makes mean, dirty poetry out of Helsinki low-life and bar-room malaise. Unlike the Coens, the Kaurismakis don’t work together (mostly). But they both know their way around a noir, and this chilly story of wasted lives – focusing on a glum plain-Jane factory girl (Kati Outinen) –makes the country look dark, grim and played out. (In Finnish, with subtitles.)
3:15 a.m. (12:15 a.m.): “Ariel” (1988, Aki Kaurismaki). Aki’s star/drinking buddy Matti Pellonpaa, who looks as much a part of an urban barscape as a pitcher of beer, and bottles ranged before a mirror, here embarks on the most famous and highly admired Finnish road movie of all time. One of Aki’s biggest critical hits, winner of the National Society of Film Critics’ Best Picture of 1988 award. With Turo Pajala and Susanna Haavisto. (In Finnish, with subtitles.)
4:45 a.m. (1:45 a.m.): “Gun Crazy” (1950, Joseph H. Lewis). With John Dall, Peggy Cummins, Morris Carnovsky and Russ Tamblyn. Reviewed in FNB on Apr. 10, 2012.
Monday, April 28
12:15 a.m. (9:15 p.m.): “The Racket” (1951, John Cromwell and, uncredited, Nicholas Ray). With Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan and Ray Collins. Reviewed in FNB on March 27, 2014.
5:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m.): “Angel Face” (1952, Otto Preminger). With Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and Herbert Marshall. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 4, 2013.
Tuesday, April 29
A Day With Sam Fuller (See Pick of the Week)
Wednesday, April 30
10 a.m. (7 a.m.): “The Bribe” (1949, Robert Z. Leonard). With Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton and Vincent Price. Reviewed in FNB on August 25, 2012.
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Letter” (1940, William Wyler). The one and only Bette Davis in one of her prime villainess roles: as the upper-class, supposedly faithful wife (of Herbert Marshall). She shoots and kills a trusted family friend, who she says attacked her. Trouble is that of some of her other chums, including her lawyer (James Stephenson), suspect that the victim was, in fact, her longtime secret lover. Based on one of W. Somerset Maugham’s most famous short stories, and one that (like “Rain”), Maugham insisted was taken, almost unchanged, from real life.
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