Noirvember: Rusty Knife (1958)

rusty knife poster

I’ve mostly been watching American noir this Noirvember, but I wanted to get into something Japanese before the month was over. Rusty Knife is one of the films in Criterion’s Nikkatsu Noir set. Nikkatsu is one of Japan’s oldest, and most popular film studios. But by 1958 their popularity had waned due to the influx of Hollywood movies in Japan. To compete they started putting out American style crime stories.

It is set in Udaka, a new city made incredibly prosperous incredibly fast in Japan’s post-war industrial boom. With economic growth comes a criminal element ready to take advantage of both the city’s prosperity and its still-developing political machinery. The film follows Yukihiko Tachibana (Yūjirō Ishihara) an ex-convict just released from prison who wants to make a go of straight life.

Tachibana was in prison for murdering a man he thought had raped his wife which caused her to commit suicide. But as the film progresses he’ll learn it was much more complicated than just one man doing something heinous for his own pleasure.

To make things even more complicated before he went to prison Tachibana and two other guys, while out committing a burglary, witnessed the murder of a politician. It was gangsters that did it, making it look like a suicide. When they realize Tachibana and his friends saw the whole thing the head gangster, Katsumata (Noaki Sugiura) pays them off for their silence.

The police have been trying to put Katsumata in prison for years. When they learn that Tachibana and his friends witnessed the politician’s murder they pressure them to become witnesses.

At first, Tachibana refuses. He might be going straight but he’s no snitch. But as he learns more about his wife’s assault and Katsumata’s hand in it things become more complicated.

I liked Rusty Knife pretty well, but there was nothing to really distinguish it from the many other similar crime films I’ve watched in my lifetime. It says some things about Japan in the years that followed World War II, but again I’m not sure it says it any better than numerous other films from the era.
It is worth watching if you are a fan of this type of cinema as it does everything well. It just isn’t the best at what it does.

Noirvember: So Long at the Fair (1950)

so long at the fair poster

Vicky Barton (Jean Simmons) a young Englishwoman and her brother Johnny (David Tomlinson) travel to Paris for the Exhibition. They check into a nice hotel. They speak to the owner and the porter. The porter is miffed because Johnny gives him an English shilling for a tip.

They go to Montmartre for dinner and the Moulin Rouge for entertainment. They keep bumping into another Englishman, George Hathaway (Dirk Bogarde), and his two companions. His companions are staying at the same hotel and later that night he’ll borrow money from George to pay the cabbie.

Everyone goes to bed and when Vicky wakes up the next morning she finds that George is nowhere to be found. Not only that but his room doesn’t seem to exist. His room number, 19, is a bathroom and not a bedroom at all. No one at the motel will ever admit that they ever saw him. She arrived alone they say.

This story is based on an old urban legend. Usually, it involves a mother and daughter, but they’ve changed it to siblings here. It has been adapted into various stories over the years and it was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.

In the Hitchcock film, an elderly lady disappears from a train, and someone she only just met has to look for her. In that film the protagonist starts to think she’s gone crazy, that she only imagined the old lady. Which works because she didn’t really know the woman in question.

It seems much more difficult to convince someone that they don’t have a brother. Luckily, the film finds some clever ways to get past that. When she goes to the British consolute he says he believes her but that she’ll have to find evidence. He suggests finding someone else who saw her with her brother.

She remembers that a woman saw them together and that she was going to be at the exhibition. But something quite unusual (which I won’t spoil) happens to her keeping her from testifying.

The police chief likewise says that he believes her and goes to the hotel to question the owner. But again without evidence, there isn’t much he can do.

Enter George Hathaway again. Naturally, he helps the poor girl sort out exactly what has happened. It all leads to a surprising conclusion that is also somehow disappointing. They find a clever way to explain why they not only had to make Johnny disappear but his room too. It also satisfies questions of why they left her alone (except for the gaslighting).

And yet while it is clever, and it does explain everything, I found it not at all satisfying.

The film doesn’t amp up the mystery angle of the story very much. We know exactly who is involved, we just don’t know why. Vicky never seems to be in any real danger either. Instead, it is a story about a woman placed in an incredibly strange situation trying to understand what has happened and why no one will believe her.

On that front, it mostly worked for me. Jean Simmons is quite good and I always love Dirk Bogarde. He’s one of those actors that every time I watch him in a film I want to find him in other things.

In the end, it was a pretty good film, but I still prefer the Hitchcock version of this legend.

Noirvember: Dear Murderer (1947)

dear murderer

A man walks into a darkened house. He closes the curtains before turning the lights on. If he is a burglar he is a strange one, for he doesn’t take anything. He just looks around. He seems especially interested in some old letters, and flower cards that say simply “Love Always.”

He is Lee Warren (Eric Portman) and he lives in this house with his wife Vivien (Greta Gynt). He’s been away in America for many months on business. Those love letters are not from him, but from Vivien’s lover Richard Fenton (Dennis Price)

Lee devises the perfect way to murder Fenton and make it look like suicide. Even better he tricks Fenton into writing a letter that makes it sound like he’s killed himself over Vivien’s unwillingness to divorce Lee.

He almost gets away with it, too. Trouble is, Vivien had already broken it off with Fenton before Lee had even come home. There was only a brief affair and Fenton would not have killed himself over her. In fact, Vivien already has a new lover, Jimmy Martin (Maxwell Reed). Lee devises a new plan, with a little work, he can make it appear that Jimmy murdered Fenton and it was he that made it look like a suicide.

As this is a movie made in 1947 and is a film noir you can probably guess how well this works out for him.

This is a very British noir. It has little of that biting, cynical dialogue that comes with so many American noirs. The exchanges here are more polite, but still cutting. At one point Lee notes that he rather likes Fenton and under different circumstances, they might become friends. Later, Lee has a second change of heart and sabotages his own perfect murder because of his own feelings.

It has that detached British feel to the filmmaking as well. Like the camera is just an observer and we are an audience watching these strange events occur without ever needing to feel anything about them.

That’s not to say that this isn’t good. I mean it isn’t great, but it is an enjoyable watch. Greta Gynt is especially fun as a sort-of femme fatale who uses men to suit her needs and has no other use for them. Consider it middle-shelf noir.

Noirvember: Targets (1968)

targets poster

In August of 1966 Charles Whitman, after stabbing his wife and mother to death, climbed a clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin and shot over 30 people with a rifle.

Two years later Peter Bogdanovich directed his first movie. Famed producer Roger Corman told Bogdanovich he could make any movie he liked under two conditions. First Boris Karloff owed him two days worth of work so the film would have to utilize that. Second, he had to use clips from Corman’s own film with Karloff, The Terror (1963). Other than that he could do what he wanted (within the budget constraints of course.)

Targets blends a slightly autobiographical tale of Karloff as an aging horror actor who finds real life’s horrors to be more than he can take, and a Charles Whitman-esque “average man” who goes on a shooting spree. The way that these two separate stories merge is quite fascinating.

Karloff is Byron Orlok an elderly actor who starred in the type of horror movies Karloff used to star in. But he finds he no longer has an audience. Those old films seem dated and cheesy to modern audiences. Real life with its relentless real violence is much scarier than those old movies. He announces he’s going to retire, much to the chagrin of Sammy Michaels (Peter Bogdanovich) a director who has just written a part specifically for Orlok.

During these scenes, we watch Orlok watch scenes from The Terror, and later we’ll see him watch himself in The Criminal Code (1933). It is quite a treat to watch Karloff watching himself on screen.

Orlok is unrelenting in his decision to retire but does agree to make an appearance at a drive-in theater where one of his films will be shown.

Meanwhile, Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) is a seemingly normal young man. He has a pretty wife and a perfectly average set of parents with whom they live in a nice little house. He likes to go hunting with his father. He likes guns.

The film gives us hints that not all is well with the Thompsons. Nothing dramatic, but his interactions with his wife are bland. His conversations with his parents are empty. We watch them sit around the television laughing blankly at some broad comedy.

Then he kills his wife and mother, loads up a bag full of weapons, sits atop an oil storage tank, and begins taking potshots at cars on a nearby highway. When the cops arrive he escapes, making his way to a drive-thru playing some old film starring Byron Orlok.

Bogdanovich shoots all of this with a low-key style. He wisely doesn’t make any overt statements about movies and violence, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

It is a fascinating film and one that amazes me that it ever got made. There aren’t a lot of people who could take that mandate from Roger Corman and make something at all watchable, that Bogdanovich turned it into something great is a minor miracle.

Noirvember: No Way Out (1950)

now way out poster

Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) is the first African American doctor at the county hospital. He’s assigned to the prison ward where his first patients are the racist Biddle brothers who have just been brought in after a botched robbery.

Both brothers were shot in the leg. Ray (Richard Widmark) fixes up easily, but George (Harry Bellaver) seems to have unrelated symptoms. Luther does all he can for him, including administering a spinal tap, but ultimately George dies in the hospital. Ray, who did nothing but throw racial insults at Dr. Brooks while he was working lays the blame for his brother’s death at his feet.

Luther’s boss clears him of any wrongdoing, but Luther is rattled just the same. Maybe there was something he could have done differently. Maybe the racist insults clouded his judgment. An autopsy is the only way to be sure. But he can’t get that without a member of the family’s approval. Naturally, Ray doesn’t want to grant that approval, but maybe his sister will.

The film spends a lot of time with Luther’s family. He is a good man and his family are good people. But they are black in a time and place where that makes life difficult. Even with Luther’s success life can be hard.

Ray and his friends are planning an attack on Luther and his family. The African American community hears about this and they plan their own pre-emptive attack. Luther speaks to the hospital’s elevator operator about this and advises caution, that they should be better than them. Which prompts this response from the operator:

“Ain’t it asking a lot for us to be better than them when we get killed just trying to prove we’re as good?”

Poitier played in a lot of films like this during this time period. He played good African Americans awash in a sea of racism. He was a great actor, perhaps the prominent black actor of his time. This was a period when America was legally segregated, but that was slowly beginning to change. I’m no historian so I’ll leave that discussion to others but it is interesting to watch films like this try to deal with institutional racism on an artistic level.

Not all of the films Poitier played in like this were good, but this one is terrific. I love how it spends a lot of time with Luther and his family. It is a slice-of-life portrayal of these people in this place at this specific time, and the every-day, working-class racism that pervades their lives.

But it is also a pretty terrific little thriller. Richard Widmark is as terrifying as Ray. They say he often apologized to Poitier after a scene of him spitting racism at him. It can feel a little dated at times, but at the same time, it remains quite contemporary.

Noirvember: Woman on the Run (1950)

woman on the run poster

While out for a walk, Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott) witnesses a murder. He calls the police who want to detain him as he is the only eyewitness. But when he realizes the killers took a shot at him, only barely missing, he takes off.

The police then talk to Frank’s wife Eleanor (Ann Sheridan) to determine his whereabouts. She will become our main character. She also doesn’t know much about Frank anymore, certainly not where he might be. Their marriage has been strained to the breaking point for some time.

She’ll team up with ace reporter Danny (Dennis O’Keefe) to try and find her husband before the bad guys do. They’ll wander around the city looking for clues and edging ever closer to finding Frank. It concludes with a marvelously hectic ride on a roller coaster for Eleanor and a terrifying fight for his life for Frank.

This is one of those films that I should have written about when I first watched it, nearly two weeks ago, but I didn’t. Now the memory of it fades. What I do remember is that I loved it. The cast is terrific, the story twists and turns in the best possible ways. It is a perfectly pitched noir.

Highly recommended.

Noirvember: Berlin Express (1948)

berlin express movie poster

A group of strangers, from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities board an American Army train in France bound for post-war Frankfurt. One of the men is a German scientist headed for an important peace conference.

A bomb explodes in the scientist’s train car, killing the man acting as the scientist’s decoy. When the train stops at the next station the real scientist is kidnapped. His assistant Lucienne (Merle Oberon) convinces the other passengers (at least the ones the film has introduced us to) to help find him. An American, Robert Lindley (Robert Ryan) leads the way.

Filmed on location in a very bombed-out Frankfurt and Berlin the film blends a documentary style with film noir. This works both for and against the film. It is fascinating to see these cities lying in ruins, giving us a real sense of the utter destruction the war laid on Europe. It gives the film a heft that studio sets could never accomplish. But the film’s narration constantly comments on it taking us out of the drama and into the classroom.

The film also lays its morality on us a little thick. This is understandable as the film was made so close to the end of the war, the wounds were still fresh. It seems to be pleading with us “Can’t we all just get along?” which is a fine sentiment, but one that cheeses up the otherwise pretty terrific thriller aspects. The bad guys turn out to be underground Nazis which is a unique spin and highlights how even after the war was officially over Europe was far from a safe and peaceful place.

Director Jaques Tourneur gives it his usual noir feel with lots of great camerawork. Cinematographer Lucien Ballard keeps things locked in shadow. Merle Oberon is terrific and I always love Robert Ryan.

In the end, it is well worth watching if you are a fan of film noir and post-War thrillers, even if it doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

Noirvember: The Night of the Hunter (1955)

night of the hunter poster

Apologies for not getting a Friday Night Horror movie up this week. I had planned to make this film that post as it blends both elements of film noir and horror, but Friday turned into a very long day. Work was a series of mistakes and irritations and then my daughter performed at the high school football game. I was happy to support her but by the time we got home, I was nothing but exhausted. I did manage to watch this, but there was no chance my brain could come up with something to write about it.

Four days later and here I am.

I think The Night of the Hunter was the very first film noir I ever watched. I can’t be quite sure of that because I didn’t always know what film noir even was so it is possible something else was seen earlier than this, but I don’t know what that would be. I don’t even know exactly when I first watched this film. I remember being spellbound by it, but nothing surrounds that memory to give me a clue as to what time frame it occurred. At a guess, I would say college or maybe just after.

It doesn’t really matter, but I like tracking these things. It was definitely early days in my life as a cinephile. I had started watching classic movies and understanding them as art, but not so early that watching a film like this was a revelation.

I hadn’t watched this in years and maybe it is a revelation. It’s just so damn good. So strange in some ways, and beautiful. It was the first and only film ever directed by actor Charles Laughton. It bombed at the box office and they never gave him another chance in the director’s chair. I weep at what we missed because of that.

Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell a man who uses the veil of religion to lure women into his snare, marry them, kill them, then leave with their money. He’s got Hate tattooed on one hand and Love on the other. He loves to tell a flamboyant story about how Love conquers Hate which generally enthralls the listener.

While in prison for theft he meets Ben Harper (Peter Graves) a man sentenced to be hanged. In his sleep, Ben mumbles something about the $10,000 he stole and something else about his kids knowing where the money is hidden.

That’s all Harry needs to go on the prowl again. Once he’s out he finds Ben’s wife Willa (Shelley Winters) and quickly seduces her. Well, maybe seduce isn’t the right word. He woos her, talks her into marriage and then basically casts her aside. There is one chilling scene, their wedding night, where she comes in ready for the lovemaking and he lectures her that sex is but for childbearing, and since she’s already got two there is no need for them to consummate their marriage.

The kind veneer disappears for the children as well quite quick. At first, he acts as a loving father and gently works for them to spill the secret of the money, but wen that doesn’t work he gets angry and mean. The girl, Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) dotes on Harry, but the boy, John (Billy Chapin) knows what’s up.

Soon enough the kids are on a skiff floating down the river, desperately trying to escape the murderous grip of Harry. They wind up at the home of Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) a widow who lost her own child to the Depression and has started taking in homeless children. There they find kindness, grace, and love.

But while the story is really good, the filmmaking makes this a true classic. It is very theatrical in its production. The sets look stagey. Even the supposed outdoor scenes have an artificiality to them. It is designed to constantly remind you that what you are watching isn’t real, it is a story. A morality play. But it is also gorgeously put together.

There is a scene that takes place in Harry and Willa’s bedroom. It is a strangely shaped room with a sharply angled ceiling and a high window. Light shines brightly through that window but shadows loom. The camera sits way back, through what would have to be a wall. blackness frames the room, again as if we were watching a play.

Another scene is shot inside a screened-in porch at Rachel Cooper’s house. She sits in a rocking chair with a shotgun in her lap. Outside stands Harry Powell, waiting. The light inside the porch is off. We see her in shadow. A streetlight illuminates the preacher. Then a young girl enters with a candle. Now we see Rachael more clearly but it darkens our view of Harry Powell. The candle is blown out and he’s gone. It is masterfully staged.

Everything about the film is masterful. Robert Mitchum has never been more menacing. Shelley Winters never more vulnerable. And Lillian Gish is an angel.

It is a great movie. A great film noir. One of the very best.

Noirvember: The Face Behind the Mask (1941)

the face behind the mask poster

Welcome to Noirvember my friends. We begin my most favorite month with a pretty good little film starring Peter Lorre.

He stars as Janos Szabo a just off-the-boat Hungarian immigrant. He is full of hope and love for his new home in New York City. With only a few bucks in his pocket, he’s also relying on the kindness of strangers. Sometimes he finds it.

Sometimes he don’t.

A kindly police officer gives him a meal and directs him to a comfortable, but cheap hotel. A fire is accidentally started by another tenant and Janos’ face is badly burned. His hands, which are full of skill; in clockmaking and airplane mechanics – jobs he had in Hungary, were untouched in the fire.

He should be able to find a job easily. But because of his face, he is turned away at every corner. Desperate, he goes to the docks to throw himself off. There he meets Dinky (George E. Stone) a small-time crook who knows what it means to be at the end of his rope. They become fast friends.

At first, Janos pushes back against Dinky’s criminal instincts, but unable to find a job and desperate to receive an operation that might fix his face, he eventually relents.

Turns out Janos is really good at crime. He becomes the boss of a gang and begins rolling in dough. The plastic surgeon is unable to repair his face, but he gives him a pretty good-looking face mask to wear. But it isn’t enough. People still notice. People still stare.

Then he meets Helen (Evelyn Keyes) who is blind. They fall in love and Janos must decide between his life of crime and the woman he loves.

Peter Lorre is wonderful in the role. His transition from the naive innocent at the beginning of the film to the hard-edged criminal at the end is masterful. But he also maintains a warm heart that we see in his scenes with Helen. Evelyn Keyes is lovely as well.

The story is fine. There are some nice moments and the final scenes are terrific. It takes a fascinating look at the immigrant experience, and how our society so often grinds them into criminals. It really puts Janos through the wringer at every opportunity.

But there was something about it that didn’t quite work for me. Something in the filmmaking I think. It never grabbed me and completely pulled me into the story. But it is a fine film to start Noirvember off with and a good one for Peter Lorre fans.

Noirvember: All the Films

Several years ago film critic Marya E. Gates created the hashtag #noirvember. That stands for film Noir + November. I’ve played along for the last four or five years and two years ago I started blogging about it.

Here’s the list of films I’ve covered so far.

Berlin Express (1948)
Beware My Lovely (1952)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)
The Big Clock (1948)
Black Angel (1946), Second Review
The Black Glove (1954)
Blackout (1957)
The Blue Gardenia (1953)
Blueprint for Murder (1953)
Brighton Rock (1948)
The Dark Corner (1946)
Dark Mirror (1946)
Dear Murderer (1947)
The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
Human Desire (1954)
The Face Behind the Mask (1941)
Fallen Angel (1944)
The First Power (1990)
Guilty Bystander (1950)
Johnny Allegro (1949)
The Killer is Loose (1956)
Man on the Run (1949)
Night and the City (1950)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
No Way Out (1950)
Odd Man Out (1947)
Pitfall (1948)
Reign of Terror (1949)
Rusty Knife (1958)
So Long at the Fair (1950)
Targets (1968)
This Gun For Hire (1942)
Woman on the Run (1950)