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)

Noirvember: Beware, My Lovely (1952)

beware my lovely

Ida Lupino plays Helen Gordon a widow living in a great big house who takes care of children after school. We see her being kind to the children, and teaching them. Loving them. She has a big heart. She takes care of an old lodger as well. She’s a practical person, but also a bit scatter-brained and not very good at the housekeeping.

One day a man pops by. He says he’s in need of work and he’d be happy to help around the house. His name is Howard Wilton and he’s played by Robert Ryan. She says she’s got plenty of work for him to do and hires him on the spot.

What she doesn’t know, but we do, is that Howard is mentally unstable. We watched him at the beginning of the film working for someone else, someone we saw lying dead in her cupboard. Someone who, when Howard saw her dead, caused him to flee in terror.

The film builds the tension slowly. Because we know Howard is unstable we know he will eventually turn violent towards Helen, but the movie is in no rush to get there. At first, Howard exhibits some little quirks towards Helen. He’ll say something a little odd, or do some little something out of the ordinary. He might even call attention to it but Helen treats him like one of her kids.

As those quirks turn more sinister she’s still polite, still kind. She should just run, but she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. When she finally realizes she must get out, it is too late. Howard keeps her from leaving.

The movie never quite boils over in the way I wanted it to. The tension stays on a low simmer, and I wanted it to explode. But the filmmaking is good. Ida Lupino is wonderful in everything she does and she’s terrific here. Her company The Filmmakers produced it. She was an extraordinary woman, I recommend reading up on her sometime.

Robert Ryan likewise is quite good. He’s always good as the heavy. There was something menacing about his presence.

Noirvember: Brighton Rock (1948)

brighton rock

Watch enough British cinema and you will eventually come across the name Graham Greene. He was a novelist whose books were often adapted for the screen. Eventually, he became a screenwriter himself. His films include The Third Man (1949), This Gun For Hire (1942), Went the Day Well? (1942), Ministry of Fear (1944), and many others. I’ve seen quite a few of them and there isn’t a bad one in the bunch.

This includes Brighton Rock, a terrific little film noir about a group of hoodlums in the titular seaside English town. Richard Attenborough stars as Pinkie the razor-wielding, sadistic leader of a small gang of hoods. He happens across Fred (Alan Wheatley) a man he thinks is responsible for the death of the gang’s former leader.

He and the rest of the gang members (including the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell) chase Fred through a carnival until finally killing him on one of those creaky horror rides.

While trying to hide at the carnival Fred meets Ina (Hermione Baddeley), for having a woman by his side might work as a disguise. She winds up playing detective as no one else seems to care what happened to him.

Looking for an alibi Pinkie latches onto Rose (Carol Marsh) whom he comes across working as a waitress in a restaurant. She’s lonely and never had a guy before and falls in love immediately. He treats her terribly but says enough sweet things to keep her by his side (when he needs her to be).

It is an extraordinary performance from Richard Attenborough. I’ll always think of him as John Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993). He’s young here, and terrifying. He’s icy cold and the way he manipulates Rose is just awful (awfully good).

This is film noir all the way through with terrifically stark black-and-white photography, pitch-black characters, and wonderfully made from start to finish.

Noirvember: Man on the Run (1949)

man on the run

A man walks into a club and finds his old Army compatriot, Peter Burden (Derek Farr) working behind the bar. Peter is a deserter and as this is post-War England that’s a bad thing to be. The man tries to blackmail Peter so he flees. We see him doing a series of odd jobs throughout the country before, desperate, he walks into a pawn shop looking to sell his Army revolver. Just as he takes the gun out of his coat, but before he can say anything a couple of actual armed robbers come in and beat the proprietor senseless. Before he dies the proprietor gives a description of the only robber not wearing a mask – our hero Peter.

As the police close in on him, a desperate Peter busts into the home of a widow named Jean Adams (Joan Hopkins). He promises not to hurt her, but begs her to let him stay. She being kindly and perhaps a bit lonely allows him overnight. While there he tells her his story and she believes him.

Together they begin searching for the two real burglars who can set the police straight and set him free.

Man On the Run is a terrific little British Noir. It doesn’t do anything new or amazing with the genre, but what it does do it does really well. During my month of watching Great British Cinema, I fell in love with this type of film.

The Brits were great at making this kind of tidy, nuts-and-bolts thriller. I don’t mean to say that there isn’t artistry to this film, because there is. The sets are fantastic, as is the camera placement, and the lighting all has that wonderful noir shadowy thing going for it. It mostly takes place in bars, police stations, and houses which gives it a claustrophobic feel. But it’s a film that doesn’t wow you with that stuff, it isn’t overloaded with style. It is a really good story told really well.

The relationship between Peter and Jean does develop a little too quickly. It is difficult to believe that she’s gonna fall for this man who just busted into her home, clearly running from the police. But that’s the movies and I didn’t mind. Both actors are quite good in it and they do make their love as believable as it can be. The thriller aspects are tightly wound and make their plight quite exciting.

It is surprisingly sympathetic the Peter’s plight as a deserter, something that was quite contentious and in the minds of its British audience at the time. He’s served four years as a soldier but when he requests some additional time off due to family members being deathly ill, his request is denied. He takes them anyway and is considered a deserter. The film puts the moral wrestling over this type of thing in the background, but the fact that it is there at all, and that it lends sympathy to a man (and men like him) who technically deserted is interesting.

The whole thing may be a little too Hitchockian for some but I found it be be delightful all the way through.

Noirvember: The Killer Is Loose (1956)

the killer is loose poster

A bank is robbed in broad daylight. Everything about it indicates there was an inside man. Lt. Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten) is on the case. Clues lean toward bank employee Leon Poole (Wendell Corey). When they come to his apartment to speak to him Poole shouts that he’s not coming out then shoots through the door, injuring one policeman. Wagner busts in, but with the lights out he can’t see. He sees a shadow and shoots. The victim isn’t Poole but his wife, who dies instantly. Poole is convicted and vows revenge.

For two years Poole is a model prisoner and he’s sent to a work camp with less security. When he’s asked to accompany a guard to go into town to help pick up a few things he sees his opportunity. He kills the guard and escapes. But it isn’t Sam Wagner he’s after, it’s his wife Lila (Rhonda Fleming) he wants to kill. An eye for an eye, or rather a wife for a wife is his feeling.

Director Budd Boetticher filmed The Killer is Loose in 15 days. In some ways, you can feel that time (and budget) constraint on screen. It often feels like a made-for-television movie. But in all the ways that count, the film is excellent.

I’ve seen quite a few of Boetticher’s films (including all five in the Ranown Cycle he made with Randolph Scott) and I’ve enjoyed them all. He wasn’t a flashy or even stylish director, but he knew how to get the most out of his limited resources. He was a master of efficiency and that’s certainly true here.

I’m very much a fan of Joseph Cotten as well, and he falls right in step with what Boetticher was going for. His performance is perfect, not flashy. It doesn’t draw attention to itself, it’s just a good performance by an absolute pro.

But it is Wendell Corey who catches my attention. He’s not showy, either, but he plays Poole like a wounded animal. There is a scene early on at the bank where his former Sergeant (John Larch) bumps into him. It seems Poole wasn’t much of a soldier and his Sergeant made fun of him ruthlessly. Later, while holding the Sergeant’s wife (Dee J. Thompson) hostage, he tells her that everyone has always made fun of him. Except his wife. In that moment we understand what he’s doing. It isn’t that the film exempts or forgives Poole of his murderous revenge, but the script and Corey’s performance make us understand, even sympathize to some extent.

Naturally, I always want all my films to be masterpieces, but if I can’t have that then I’ll take a solidly built, professionally created film every time. This is exactly that.