Noirvember #7: Fallen Angel (1944)

fallen angel poster

Laura the Otto Preminger film from 1944 is one of the all-time classic film noirs. It was a huge success upon its release and remains one of the genre’s most beloved films. Preminger followed it up with another noir, Fallen Angel, which also stars Dana Andrews. Here, he’s no longer a detective trying to solve a murder, but a drifter, a conman who gets into trouble he may not be able to get himself out of.

His name is Eric Stanton and he drifts into a small town called Walton because he doesn’t have the bus fare to make it to San Francisco and the driver kicks him off at the first stop once he learns Stanton doesn’t have a ticket. There he meets Stella (Linda Darnell) a beautiful, sultry waitress and like any good film noir sap, he falls immediately in love. But like any good dame in a film noir she won’t have him until he’s got some money. He figures he can get it from June (Alice Faye) a pretty, but reserved woman who hasn’t had much luck in love, but does have a lot of money.

Stanton figures she’s an easy mark. He can get lovey-dovey with her, score some cash out of her fat wallet then drop her and head back over to Stella. Naturally, things don’t go as planned and he finds himself on the run from the cops as a murder suspect.

The plot is just as complicated as Laura, but it isn’t nearly as compelling. Linda Darnell is the standout. She is radiant and mysterious. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get a ton of screen time and her character isn’t given much. Dana Andrews is fine. I love morally murky characters, especially men who think they have it all under control but are really quite clueless. Likewise, Alice Faye is perfectly acceptable but she’s missing that certain something to make this film truly great.

Well worth your time, but if you haven’t seen Laura grab that one instead.

Heat 2 by Michael Mann & Meg Gardiner

heat 2

Heat, the Michael Mann film from 1995 is one of my favorite movies. It stars Robert DeNiro as a master criminal who heads a crew of high-end professional thieves (including Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Danny Trejo) and Al Pacino as the highly-skilled detective out to catch them. It would be a great movie if it was just a cat-and-mouse game between those two forces, but it is so much more.

At its heart, it is really a character study of these two characters who are both very similar though on opposite sides of the law. Both men are highly intelligent, great at their jobs, and extremely dedicated. The DeNiro character swears off all attachments because he says he needs to be able to flee without a second thought, he has to be able to leave everything behind. Pacino’s detective is married, but it is falling apart (and this isn’t the first time that’s happened) because he can’t ever leave the job at the office. Kilmer plays a man kind of in the middle of these two. He is smart and very good, but he’s got a girl and he’s dedicated to her. He’ll get the job done, but he’ll never leave her.

It is a long movie and one that takes its time. It allows the audience to really soak up these characters and live in this world. It is a film I like more and more each time I watch it and one I always enjoy spending time with.

So, I was excited when I learned that Michael Mann (with help from Meg Gardiner) had written a sequel to Heat. As a novel. Which is weird, right? Mann has never written a novel before, and Heat is a movie. Except Mann often talks about how when he writes a movie script he writes long character descriptions giving them background stories and filling in their characters. Apparently, he writes hundreds of pages of background stories that never make it to the actual script. Heat was actually a remake of an earlier film of Mann’s called L.A. Takedown, which was originally intended as a TV pilot but when it wasn’t picked up he converted that into a television movie. What I’m saying is Mann knows and loves these characters so it makes a certain amount of sense that he’d want to revisit them in this format.

Heat 2 is really good, even if it is a little convoluted and relies a little too heavily on coincidence. It follows two timelines that eventually converge. The first follows directly after the events of the film. Chris (that’s the Val Kilmer character) has escaped with his life (barely) and is on the run. He makes it to Paraguay where he begins working for a crime syndicate.

The second timeline follows Vincent (the Al Pacino character) several years prior to the events of the movie as he chases a violent gang of home invaders in Chicago. Neil (the DeNiro character) and Chris and their cohorts are also in Chicago at the same time, involved in an unrelated crime.

The stories converge in interesting ways. At least to me. Your mileage may vary.

Spoilers for the movie: at the end of the film Neil is dead and so he can’t factor into the events of the book that unfold after that moment. It is clear from the film that Neil and Vincent had never met before. In this book, the two characters circle each other without really knowing it and the various coincidences and events that connect them do feel a little contrived and may be a little too much for some readers.

Personally, I didn’t mind. Mann and Gardiner do a great job of bringing us back into this world. The voice of the characters line up so well with the actor’s performances in the film that I do wonder how it would come across to someone who hasn’t watched the movie.

I highly recommend watching the movie then reading the book. Mann has already said he’s interested in adapting the book into a movie or possibly a TV series. I’d vote for a series as there is so much crammed into these pages it would be difficult to fit it all into a movie, even a long one. It will be fascinating to see who they get to play these characters as the original actors are far too old for it now.

Noirvember #6: This Gun For Hire (1942)

this gun for hire

I had forgotten I had seen this before, but once I got started it was too good to turn it off.

Alan Ladd, in his first real role (he’d been in other films before but they were bit parts, so small he gets an “introducing” credit here) stars as Raven, a sadistic killer-for-hire. But he’s so good in it, he brings such emotional complexity to the role that you can’t help but root for him. He’s hired by Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) to bump off a chemist and steal some papers. Raven doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t care what’s in the papers. He just does his job and takes his pay.

Gates double-crosses him by paying out in marked bills, ones that he claims to the police were stolen from his company. Detective Michael Crane (Robert Preston) is put on the case. He’s in love with Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) who was just hired by Gates as a performer in one of his nightclubs. She accidentally winds up on a train next to Raven. Gates sees them sitting next to each other, thinks they are in cahoots, and calls the cops. Raven holds Ellen hostage in order to get away from the cops. Though she isn’t in cahoots with Raven she is working with a local senator who believes Gates is selling secrets to foreign agents.

As you can see, it is a complicated, convoluted plot. Director Frank Tuttle keeps things moving at a quick pace but still manages to more or less keep all the convolutions understandable. Veronica Lake is lovely as usual though she isn’t given much to do. She sings a couple of songs while doing some pretty fun magic tricks and makes googly eyes with Detective Crane. Her scenes with Ladd are good, but mostly she’s just there to look pretty. Preston has even less to do. He’s top-billed but he’s in the fewest scenes out of the three main cast members and when he is on screen it is just to move the plot along.

This is completely Ladd’s film and it is easy to see why he became a star. He really nails the nuances of the role and makes us feel sorry for a guy who kills for a living.

Noirvember #5: Reign of Terror (1949)

reign of terror

The thing about film noir is that nobody really agrees on exactly what makes a film noir a noir. The plots for this genre are all over the place. But the one thing everybody agrees upon is that a film noir has a certain style, a certain look. It is all about the light and the shadows. Noir had a way of lighting a set and a character like nothing else.

Normally you wouldn’t say a movie about the French Revolution could be a film noir, but director Anthony Mann who was no stranger to the genre having directed He Walked By Night, one of the great noirs, films Reing of Terror just like it was a perfect fit.

In this version of events, Maximilian Robespierre (Richard Baseheart) is not satisfied with having led France into a revolution, overthrowing the King and instilling a reign of terror by beheading anyone who opposes him, he wants to be dictator for life as well. Charles D’Aubigny (Robert Cummings) is tasked with infiltrating the Jacobin Party in order to find a Black Book. In this book written all the names, Robespierre intends to kill at one time or another. Since nobody knows whose name is in the book, everyone is afraid to oppose him. But if the book is opened to the people then the people may decide the time has come for Robespierre to face the guillotine.

Or something. The details of the plot get a bit muddled as it goes along. But it looks fantastic. The sets are brilliant and the lighting is full of bold, dark shadows. It is the sort of film where you can forget what is happening in the actual story because you are so mesmerized by how it looks.

Cummings is good but it is Arnold Moss who steals the show as one of Robespierre’s henchmen who wouldn’t mind seeing him at the wrong end of a guillotine if it helps line his own pockets and gains him a little more power.

Reign of Terror is definitely worth the watching.

Noirvember #4: The Black Glove (1954)

the black glove

A popular jazz musician named James Bradley (Alex Nicol) arrives in London for a series of performances. One late night, on his way to his hotel, he hears a beautiful voice singing along to a nice jazz band. He stops his cab, slips inside the club, takes out his trumpet, and plays along. The girl is pretty. The girl is nice. He takes her home. In the morning the girl is dead. The cops think he did it. He spends the rest of the film trying to clear his name.

This British production was produced by Hammer Studios which is usually associated with horror films and directed by Terence Fisher who helmed some of their best horror flicks. But this is all crime drama with lots of noir trappings. It is yet another film I’ve watched of late that’s just pretty good. There is some nice jazz music, some good images, but the story never quite succeeds.

Noirvember #3: A Blueprint For Murder (1953)

a blueprint for murder

Joseph Cotten plays Whitney Cameron who is called to the hospital when his niece has taken ill. There with him is Lynne (Jean Peters) the widowed wife of his brother. When the girl dies Whitney decides to stay in town a little longer. When the doctor cannot figure out how the girl dies Whitney and his two friends suspect foul play. Lynne, it seems, stands to inherit a lot of money if her two step-children die. With one gone that only leaves the boy. With no proof that Lynne is the killer, Whitney must try to find some evidence while also keeping the child alive.

A Blueprint for Murder has many of the hallmarks of a good noir, but it never quite got there for me. It was directed by Andrew L. Stone who won an Oscar for a film called Julie (1956) but I had never heard of him prior to watching this film. It looks good, but it never quite builds up the tension it seems to be going for. Whitney Cameron has doubts as to whether or not Lynne is actually the killer but the film never gives us any reason to doubt. There are scenes in which the child’s life seems to be in danger, but what Hollywood movie from 1953 is going to kill off a child like that? And so there isn’t any real tension built up.

It is a perfectly run-of-the-mill movie. I suspect I’ll be watching quite a few of those this Noirvember, as I’m intentionally seeking out lesser-known ones. Yet I still love this sort of thing. I like Joseph Cotten quite a bit and I’m always glad to see more of his films. And, while seeking out and watching lesser-known films often brings movies that aren’t that great, you also find hidden gems, and that makes it all worth while.

Noirvember #2: The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

the house on telegraph hill

I know I said I wasn’t going to write about every movie I watched for Noirvember, yet here we are. I definitely won’t be writing full reviews of everything. Like tonight I’m too tired to say much. But I’ll say a little.

The House on Telegraph Hill was directed by Robert Wise which is why I decided to watch it. He directed the wonderfully spooky haunted house movie The Haunting (not to mention West Side Story, The Sound of Music and a bunch of others) which is why I watched it.

It is about a woman, Victoria (Valentina Cortese) who survives a Nazi concentration camp, and takes on the name of her friend who died there. The friend was American. When she arrives in San Francisco she discovers the friend (and thus her) has inherited a lot of money. She marries the man who has been taking care of her son, only to later discover that he is perhaps not quite what he seems. She’s pretty sure he is going to murder her.

It is a bit slow-moving and the intrigue never quite intrigues. The performances are fine and Wise’s direction is good. It isn’t bad, but neither is it all that good.

Noirvember: The Big Clock (1948)

Knowing that I’m a big film noir fan, my wife recently bought me a bunch of postcards with film noir posters on them. Some of them I’ve seen, some of them I haven’t. A big chunk of my list of films to watch this month comes from those postcards. This is one of them.

Ray Milland plays George Stroud an editor at a big magazine in New York City. His boss Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) is tyrannical. He’s the type of guy who calls a meeting to yell at everybody because subscriptions are down, then demands they come up with immediate solutions only to berate them when they respond. He doesn’t berate George because he’s just got a major lead on a missing person’s case. Janoth demands that George stick with the case even though he has a vacation planned for the next day.

George can’t miss that vacation. He’s missed too many vacations with this job, including his honeymoon. His wife is none too happy with him. He quits the job, but still misses his train. A glamorous woman, Pauline York (Rita Johnson) overhears his predicament and sees it as an opportunity. She’s Janoth’s secret lover and she’s ready to sell him out. She wants George to tell the story.

She gets herself murdered. Janoth learns that someone was seen leaving her apartment not long after the time of death. He forces George to supervise a team of reporters to figure out who that man was.

Spoiler alert: that man was George. He spends the rest of the movie trying to find himself.

The Big Clock is a lot of fun to watch. Milland and Laughton are terrific. Elsa Lanchester, in a tiny role, steals the show. It is one of those films that’s really quite good, but there is some little something that keeps it from being great. Still, it is a swell time at the movies.

Noirvember (2022)

Now that 31 Days of Horror is officially over we can now move on to Noirvember. That’s an amalgamation of Film Noir + November. Film Noir is a cinematic genre without a solid definition. When filmmakers were making film noirs during what is now considered the classic period (the 1940s and 1950s) the term wasn’t widely known. It was coined by a French critic in 1947 but was not widely used until the 1970s. Noir is the French word for black and even though the films are usually shot in stark black and white he was talking about the character’s dark night of the soul.

The fims are usually, but not always, crime dramas. They usually, but not always, follow a police detective or a private detective as they solve a case, or just as often they follow the criminal. There is often (but not always) a love interest, and if that’s a woman, she is usually a femme fatale. The criminal is often a bit of a schmuck. They are always cynical and hard-boiled.

Many of the plots come from the hard-boiled literary school of authors like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Jams M. Cain. Classics of the genre are Double Indemnity (1944), The Third Man, Mildred Pierce (1945), and The Maltese Falcon (1941).

I love a good film noir, probably even more than I love a good horror movie. I’ve participated in Noirvember for the past several years and just like my 31 Days of Horror list I made a Letterboxd list of films I’d like to watch this month. This year I tried to include a lot of relatively obscure films in the list. I’ve seen most of the classics and I want to broaden my knowledge base of the genre. I know I won’t watch all of these films, and I will watch many other films that aren’t on this list. But it is a good place to start.

I will be writing about many of the movies I watch for this theme. I’ll try not to bomb you with quite as many reviews as I did last month. But I can’t really make a promise about that.

31 Days of Horror: Halloween Ends (2022)

halloween ends

Somewhere around 2007 or 2008, I started keeping track of all the films I was watching. It was a fun way of remembering what movies I had watched and when I watched them. I’ve since moved all my tracking to my Letterboxd account (which you can view here).

That first year I watched right at 100 movies. That seemed like a decent amount of films to watch, so I decided I would try to watch 100 movies every year. I quickly calculated and decided that I should watch 10 movies a month to meet my goal. Now, I’m bad at math, but I’m not that bad at math – I knew that 10 movies a month times 12 months equaled 120 per year but that was easier than doing the real math (it is 8.3333 movies per month if you really want to know) and 10 is a nice round number so I just went with it. Plus watching 120 movies a year is better than watching 100 movies a year and I was happy to increase my goal.

Ten movies a month is 2-3 movies per week and I worked diligently to meet that goal. Those of you who know me, you’ll know I actually stressed myself out more than once when I didn’t meet that goal. I managed to watch 120 movies or more for most of the years I was tracking it. For those of you keeping count, there were a couple of years in which my wife was in charge of a study abroad program and we spent three months a year living in Europe. I did not meet my goals during those years.

As my daughter got older I started watching more movies. She no longer needed my attention every moment of every day and so when she would play with her toys or whatever, I’d throw on a movie. She also started going to bed earlier and when she’d go down I’d put on another movie. My annual views went up.

Then COVID hit and we stopped going anywhere for a couple of years. I watched movies like a fiend. I’d get off work, spend a little time talking to my family then I’d start a movie. I might finish it, or I might not. Then there would be supper and clean up. Maybe a TV show or a game with the family. Then I’d put on another movie, or finish the one I started. But it was the weekends that made me a true movie addict. I’d watch something after work on Friday. Then I’d watch a horror movie that night, maybe two. Then on Saturdays, I’d watch 3 or 4 or 5. I think 6 was my record. I’d watch 2-4 more on Sunday. I was averaging something like 9 movies a week. Suddenly I was watching some 400 movies a year.

Even now when we are venturing out more on the weekends I’m still averaging about 1 movie per day or more.

Still, I watched a lot of movies this month. Fifty to be exact. Forty-four of these were horror movies. That’s a little crazy.

But I like stats so I’m going to break them down even more.

Twelve of the movies I had seen before. Twenty were made before I was born. The most movies I watched in one day were four. I did that twice. I only went to a movie theater once and that was to watch the original Halloween on the big screen. My final movie this month was indeed Halloween Ends. But it was kind of terrible and I don’t want to talk about it.

Truth is there was a bit of sickness in my family this month which kept us home on a couple of weekends. Also, the budget has been tight of late which kept us home even more. I tend to watch movies when I’m home.

I’ve done 31 Days of Horror for a few years now and I’ve never watched this many horror movies. Usually, I watch maybe 12 or 15 horror movies in October. I had no intention of writing about them every day either. But once I wrote my first 31 Days of Horror post I couldn’t stop. When I start something like that I have this weird need to keep it going. So I kept watching horror movies so that I could keep up with my posting. I’d watch multiple horror movies on the weekend so I could ensure that I’d have movies to write about even if I wasn’t able to watch a full movie on any given weekday.

To tell you the truth I’m kind of tired of watching horror movies

Next month is Noirvember. I’ll do a post about it tomorrow. I do not think that I will watch a film noir every day, nor do I plan to write about them every single day of the month. But I’ve said that before. I’m definitely looking forward to watching something that doesn’t have a lot of blood splatter.