Summer of Darkness Week 1 6/01 - 6/07
I am taking part in Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir class as part of TCM's Summer of Darkness. 9 weeks of noir, it should be fun.
Dark Passage - 1947 - Delmer Daves
Quazi-noir but in the end too optemistic. Bacall can due the femme fatale but here, as Irene Jansen, is too kind hearted to be the undoing of Bogart's Vincent Parry. There is plenty of darkness here but in the end love wins out.
The film opens with exterior shots of a prison shown under the credits ending with a truck driving away hauling some cargo that include a number of barrels. Over the rim of the last barrel we se a pair of hands belonging to one of the convicts. As the truck drives down the road the barrel begins to rock back and forth until it falls of the truck and careens down the embankment on the side of the road. This is the point at which the film become interesting; the shot of the barrel rolling down the hill is first person from within the barrel. The P.O.V. shot adds an immediacy to the action. It puts you in the shoes of the convict as he attempts to escape. After the barrel come to a rest, he removes and hides his prison issue shirt and makes his way back up to the road. We stick with the first person P.O.V. as he surveys the immediate area looking for somewhere to run or hide. He spots a car coming down the road and flags down the driver. The driver begins asking a number of questions until a bulletin comes on the radio describing Bogie (and finally giving his name) and alerting people to watch out. Here we are told that he was in prison for the murder of his wife. Vincent then punches the man several times until he is unconscious and steals his clothes. While he is finishing up with the removal of the drivers clothes, a woman stops and tells Vincent to get into her car. She knows who he is but he does not recognise her. They make it back to her place, through a police road block where she tells him that she followed his trial and thought he was given a raw deal. This is where the story hit its biggest stumbling block. Why was Irene in the neighborhood of San Quentin in the first place? Fair play to the script, it does address this unlikelihood with an exchange in which Irene says she was just out in the hills doing some painting and she went out there that day because of a feeling. Throughout all of this we have been in a first person view with the exception of a couple of long shots that showed Vincent from behind. Vincent does not want to involve Irene so he decides to leave for a friend's house. He catches a taxi and is recognise by the driver. Here we see a few standard two shots from the front of the cab but the lighting has Vincent's face in total shadow. The cabbie tells him that he knows a plastic surgeon that can help him. Vincent agrees that it would be a good idea and they set a meeting for latter on that night.
We do not see Vincent's face for the first half hour of the film then the camera focuses on a newspaper featuring a headline about the prison escape and a picture. The man in the picture is not Bogart. When Vincent is put under for the surgery he has a nightmare montage of all of the characters that have appears up to that point in the film. Only Ireene keeps appearing saying "you'll be alright". After the surgery we see Vincent's face for the first time though under bandages. He returns to his friends place only to find his friend has been murdered. He then goes back to Irene. After several days the bandages come off and for the first time, over an hour into the film, we see Humphrey Bogart's face for the first time. This is some of the most daring filmmaking to be found. Not only is there amble use of the first person perspective, something rarely ever used in film, but the audience does not see the headline star for over half of the film. This is not like Orson Welles in The Third Man, Bogart's character is in every scene.
After the Bogie face reveal the plot starts to unravel. For some reason in a city the size of San Francisco everyone knows each other. Of course Irene is friends with the woman that testified against Vincent. The murder story wraps up in noir fashion with Vincent in a position to never be able to prove his innocence. The divergence from typical noir comes in the last ten minutes of the film. We are given the template for the conclusion of the Shawshank Redemption. Vincent call up Irene from a bus station and tells her the name of a little town in Peru. In the last shot she comes into the cafe he is at we fade out on the happy couple beginning to dance. It is a fine ending for a Bogie and Bacall picture but it undermines the noir themes that are present throughout much of the picture.
Formally this is an underappreciated gem. The first person P.O.V. is often stiff and you get the feeling the Bogart had to do a fair amount of reaching around the camera to grab items in the shots but it is a technique seen so infrequently that it deserves praise for the effort.
Nora Prentiss - 1947 - Vincent Sherman
Opening with a man being brought into town by a policeman surrounded by reporters asking him why he did it. The man stays silent. Even when his court appointed defence attorney is asking him about the murder the man stays quiet. Then we flashback to the purported victim a Dr. Talbot.
Talbot is a buttoned down type with a straight laced boring wife, suck up son and comparatively free spirited daughter. As he is leaving the office one day there is an accident across the street. He goes to help, taking the woman that was stuck to his office. That women is the titular Nora Prentiss, a nightclub singer. Nora is self reliant and confident in a way Talbot is not used to seeing. Talbot quickly falls for Nora and they begin having an affair. Talbot embraces this new found irresistibility, getting into the office late in the mornings after spending the late evenings with Nora. It comes to a head on the day of his daughter's birthday, which he forgot. He tells Nora that he is going to ask his wife for a divorce but when he comes home to his daughter's birthday party he loses his nerve. When he tell Nora what happened, she decides to leave town. While closing up the office that night a patient comes in having a heart attack. Talbot is unable to save him. Distraught over the loss of Nora Talbot see this as an opportunity. He puts his ring, watch, and identification on the body, drives out to a cliffside, douses the car and body with alcohol, lights it on fire and pushes the car off the cliff. He then goes to catch Nora before she leaves town and goes with her to New York.
In New York things goes down hill. Talbot (now going by Thompson) gets a copy of a San Francisco paper and see that the police are investigating his death. Talbot does not tell Nora about faking his death nor does he tell her about the police investigate. He insists that they lay low. The secrecy takes a toll. Eventually his comes clean.Talbot continues to go downhill, drinking constantly and staying shut in his hotel room. Nora take a job singing at a club owned by the man that owned the club she sang at in San Francisco. One night Talbot goes down to the club in a drunken rage, starts a fight with the owner, steals and crashes his car. While in the hospital the police go through his things and find a bank book that get the attention of one of the officers. Something later, after Talbot has recovered from his wounds, the police come back and arrest him for murder. He was sloppy in faking his death and left behind fingerprints that match the ones the police take from him under his assumed name. This brings the film full circle and we now know the murder suspect from the start of the film was Talbot. Refusing to talk to his attorney Talbot is convicted of his own murder. He tells Nora that she must never say anything and he accepts his fate.
Talbot is a classic noir protagonist. He is a well meaning every man until he meets his femme fatale and his life falls apart. Nora, on the other hand, is a femme fatale through no fault of her own. She tries to stop the relationship before it starts, she tries to go off to New York by herself when it looks like Talbot is going to stay with his family, she even tries to help him stay hidden after he tells her about faking his death. But Nora is a beautiful woman and she does lead to the downfall of the protagonist even if it was not through malice and deceit.
The Letter - 1940 - William Wyler
Adapted from a Somerset Maugham play that was base on a real life case, directed by master craftsman William Wyler, and staring the incomparable Bette Davis. A dark tale of passion and betrayal in the steamy jungles of Singapore.
Pan through a grove of rubber trees and past a tranquil hut where some of the workers are relaxing. A shot rings out as the camera reaches the front door of a bungalow. A man staggers out the front door. A woman follows, gun in hand and continues to fire. The man falls to the ground, the woman drops the revolver. She is calm in the darkness but shocked when the clouds blow and she is exposed to the light of the full moon. One of the greatest openings in film history. Wyler does not bury the lead. Seeing Davies empty the gun into the man's back as he lay dying on the steeps is a powerful image. This woman wanted this man dead, of that there is not doubt. What is left is to sort out the whys.
When questioned about why she shot the man Leslie (Davies) says the he attempted to 'make love (rape) to her'. Everyone believes her except her lawyer who seems unconvinced. She is arrested and held in jail until the trial but everyone is she that she will be acquitted until Ong Chi Seng, the lawyer's assistant, brings in a letter that was written the day of the killing. The letter reveals the Leslie requested the man come over on the evening of the killing. She gets the letter and is acquitted of the murder. Outside of her celebration party she runs into the victim's wife and meets her end, once again under the light of the full moon.
Journey Into Fear - 1943 - Norman Foster
This is a mess. Based on the Eric Ambler novel adapted by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles and directed by Norman Foster; this war time thriller feel like someone took a weed wacker to it. First there is the mystery of who actually directed the movie. Foster is credited and Welles said that Foster did the directing but the story goes that Welles at least partial directed it as part of his out with RKO. At 70 minutes it feels rushed, like it is constantly trying to make time.
Cotten is great as a confused naval engineer with a group of Nazis trying to kill him. Everyone else is sound but nobody else really stands out. The look of the film is fine with the rainy night time shootout on a hotel balcony standing out.
Stanger on the Third Floor - 1940 - Boris Ingster
Headlining with Peter Lorre is somewhere between a strech and a complete lie. Lorre is there but John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet are the stars. Mcguire is Mike Ward a report who becomes the key witness in a murder case. Tallichet is Jane, his fiancée, the one person who believes the suspect may be innocent. After a trial with a terrible defence attorney, disinterested judge, and sleeping jurors the suspect if found guilty and dragged off screaming that did not do it. That night when Mike arrives home he see a stranger, Peter Lorre, in the hall of his building. He notices that he cannot hear his annoying neighbour and begins to think about how a case could be built against him for the murder before falling asleep and having a nightmare about the possibility. He wakes up thinking that he is just being paranoid and goes to check on his neighbour finding that his is in fact dead. He tells the police about the stranger but they cannot find him. Jane goes around the neighbour asking everyone she runs across if they have seen the stranger with no luck. At the end of the day she stops at a cafe for a cup of coffee and Lorre walks in. Jane follows him out and asks him to walk her home. She attempts to get someone to call the police. He gets upset and attacks he. She runs across the street, he follows but is hit by a truck. Before he dies he confesses to both killings.
The dream sequence that Mike has is great noir paranoia. Lorre is great in his small role as a delusional killer.
Johnny Eager - 1941 - Mervyn LeRoy
An 'anti-noir' for want of a better term or maybe a foundational noir for a branch of the movement that never took hold. Starting out like an average gangster picture, with Robert Taylor as Johnny, being a mob boss that is brought to a level of redemption by a woman, Lisbeth Bard played by Lana Turner.
Johnny Eager lives by the Jay-Z creed I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man. It is all about the score and how he can get the better end of it. But Johnny is out on parole so he has to keep up the appearance of being reformed. He drives a taxi and is sure to check in with his parole officer every month. On one such visit he runs into Lisbeth Bard, a beautiful young sociology student. He sees her again later at a gambling club his is checking on but this time he is not in his cabbie uniform. Rather he is in proper gangster form. She leaves with him having been abandoned by her date. When he drops her at home for the evening he discovers that her father is the district attorney. The D.A. is the one who has an injunction stopping Eager, through an associate, from opening up a dog track. Eager sees this as an opportunity to get leverage on the D.A. by setting up Lisbeth to look like she killed a man. It works and he is able to open his track. Unfortunately Lisbeth does not take it well. She is overwhelmed with guilt. Eager, realizing that he is in love with Lisbeth, tells her about the ruse and that nobody died but she does not believe him. This leads to his downfall. Eager becomes determined to make Lisbeth believe him so he sets it up so she will be able to see the man that she thinks she killed. He manages to pull this off but ends up in a shootout that leaves him and his rivals dead.
Eager is the man that moves the action but there are two interesting characters in this movie. First is Eager best (only?) friend Jeff Hartnett. His is too smart by half to be in a criminal but he is also a drunk. He quotes poetry, references history, and is the only person willing or able to tell Eager the truth. It is also pretty clear that he is, at least on some level, in love with Eager.
The other character of interest is lisbeth and much of that comes from Lana Turner's performance. Turner was just 19 during the filming of Johnny Eager but she had been in several films over her first few years in Hollywood. Turner is physically stunning, young enough to still carry a bit of wide eyed innocence, and a talented actress. She is a good person that get in over her head. If the film makers had devoted more screen time to Turner, Johnny Eager would have a more traditional noir structure of good person caught up in bad situation. Four year later Turner would give one of the iconic noir performances in The Postman Always Rings Twice but she is just as good here.
Turner has a line early on in the film that is exceedingly disturbing but delivered in a way that adds another layer of depth Lisbeth. After going on a parole field visit to see Eager with a friend and his P.O. she says to her friend "I think he'd beat a woman if she'd made him angry". Turner delivers the line wistfully with a little smile on her face. She is attracted to the dangerous side of Eager but combined with some dialogue later on with her father, the film could be open to an even darker reading.
Scarlet Street - 1945 - Fritz Lang
Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson), a weak willed, milquetoast little cashier, helps a beautiful woman, named Kitty (Joan Bennett) being beat up by her boyfriend one night. He kind of tells her he is a famous artist and she tells him she is an actress. Kitty's boyfriend Johnny talks her into scamming the old man. Chris seals money to put Kitty up in a nice appartment, Johnny sells Chris's paintings as if they were done by Kitty. Chris finds out about Kitty and Johnny seeing each other, loses it, and kills Kitty. Johnny goes down for the murder. We get an out of place lecture about how the guilt over getting away with murder is worse that being executed. And in the end Chris winds up homeless, haunted by the fact he was responsible for the two deaths.
Lang's presentation of women in this movie is nothing short of deplorable. Of the three women with appreciable screen time, only Margaret Lindsay as Kitty's friend Millie comes off as a human being of any worth. Kitty is too lazy to do anything and not even smart enough to come up with her own schemes. She is completely reliant on Johnny who she stay with because he hits her not in spite of it. When she is telling Johnny that she doesn't like being around Chris she says if he were mean or vicious she would like him better. Her one line description would be dumb pretty girl that likes to be smacked around. Last there is Chris's wife Adele. She is a caricature. Bitter, mean, cheap. Story goes Chris rented an extra room in her house and she essentially force him to marry her. She hates his paintings and keeps a large portrait of her dead husband in the living room.
Born to Kill - 1947 - Robert Wise
A bit of gender equality going on here. Sam (Lawrence Tierney) is a man so attractive that women will do anything for him. unfortunately Sam has a bit of an impulse control issue and will not stand for people cutting in on what he thinks is his. It all begins in Reno with the murder of Laury Palmer (I hope the Twin Peaks similarity is not just coincidence) and a man she went on a date with by her boyfriend Sam. Helen (Claire Trevor) discovers the bodies but seeing as she is leaving town the next morning decides not to phone the police. Helen meets Sam at the train station and fall for him like all women do. Sam stop by unannounced to see Helen just as she is about to head out to dinner with her previously unmentioned fiancé and her foster sister. Sam hits it off with the sister and they get married. At the wedding a detective investigating the murders in Reno sneaks in and is discovered by Helen. She gives the P.I. a clue about Sam, likely because she is upset about Sam marrying her sister. Next Helen invites Sam's friend Marty to move in to the mansion they all live in. Sam ends up killing Marty after seeing him leave Helen's room one evening. Helen's fiancé breaks up with her, leading her to call the police on Sam. Sam shoots Helen, the police shoot Sam, and the P.I. heads back to Reno.
Helen's downfall is a common one for noir protagonist she wanted to have her cake (money) and eat it too (Sam). It never works out well.
Week one take aways are; it was the hip thing to beat women in the 1940's and Lana Turner should rate higher among the all-time great actresses.
Best of the Week: Johnny Eager - 1941 - Mervyn LeRoy
Dark Passage - 1947 - Delmer Daves
Quazi-noir but in the end too optemistic. Bacall can due the femme fatale but here, as Irene Jansen, is too kind hearted to be the undoing of Bogart's Vincent Parry. There is plenty of darkness here but in the end love wins out.
The film opens with exterior shots of a prison shown under the credits ending with a truck driving away hauling some cargo that include a number of barrels. Over the rim of the last barrel we se a pair of hands belonging to one of the convicts. As the truck drives down the road the barrel begins to rock back and forth until it falls of the truck and careens down the embankment on the side of the road. This is the point at which the film become interesting; the shot of the barrel rolling down the hill is first person from within the barrel. The P.O.V. shot adds an immediacy to the action. It puts you in the shoes of the convict as he attempts to escape. After the barrel come to a rest, he removes and hides his prison issue shirt and makes his way back up to the road. We stick with the first person P.O.V. as he surveys the immediate area looking for somewhere to run or hide. He spots a car coming down the road and flags down the driver. The driver begins asking a number of questions until a bulletin comes on the radio describing Bogie (and finally giving his name) and alerting people to watch out. Here we are told that he was in prison for the murder of his wife. Vincent then punches the man several times until he is unconscious and steals his clothes. While he is finishing up with the removal of the drivers clothes, a woman stops and tells Vincent to get into her car. She knows who he is but he does not recognise her. They make it back to her place, through a police road block where she tells him that she followed his trial and thought he was given a raw deal. This is where the story hit its biggest stumbling block. Why was Irene in the neighborhood of San Quentin in the first place? Fair play to the script, it does address this unlikelihood with an exchange in which Irene says she was just out in the hills doing some painting and she went out there that day because of a feeling. Throughout all of this we have been in a first person view with the exception of a couple of long shots that showed Vincent from behind. Vincent does not want to involve Irene so he decides to leave for a friend's house. He catches a taxi and is recognise by the driver. Here we see a few standard two shots from the front of the cab but the lighting has Vincent's face in total shadow. The cabbie tells him that he knows a plastic surgeon that can help him. Vincent agrees that it would be a good idea and they set a meeting for latter on that night.
We do not see Vincent's face for the first half hour of the film then the camera focuses on a newspaper featuring a headline about the prison escape and a picture. The man in the picture is not Bogart. When Vincent is put under for the surgery he has a nightmare montage of all of the characters that have appears up to that point in the film. Only Ireene keeps appearing saying "you'll be alright". After the surgery we see Vincent's face for the first time though under bandages. He returns to his friends place only to find his friend has been murdered. He then goes back to Irene. After several days the bandages come off and for the first time, over an hour into the film, we see Humphrey Bogart's face for the first time. This is some of the most daring filmmaking to be found. Not only is there amble use of the first person perspective, something rarely ever used in film, but the audience does not see the headline star for over half of the film. This is not like Orson Welles in The Third Man, Bogart's character is in every scene.
After the Bogie face reveal the plot starts to unravel. For some reason in a city the size of San Francisco everyone knows each other. Of course Irene is friends with the woman that testified against Vincent. The murder story wraps up in noir fashion with Vincent in a position to never be able to prove his innocence. The divergence from typical noir comes in the last ten minutes of the film. We are given the template for the conclusion of the Shawshank Redemption. Vincent call up Irene from a bus station and tells her the name of a little town in Peru. In the last shot she comes into the cafe he is at we fade out on the happy couple beginning to dance. It is a fine ending for a Bogie and Bacall picture but it undermines the noir themes that are present throughout much of the picture.
Formally this is an underappreciated gem. The first person P.O.V. is often stiff and you get the feeling the Bogart had to do a fair amount of reaching around the camera to grab items in the shots but it is a technique seen so infrequently that it deserves praise for the effort.
Nora Prentiss - 1947 - Vincent Sherman
Opening with a man being brought into town by a policeman surrounded by reporters asking him why he did it. The man stays silent. Even when his court appointed defence attorney is asking him about the murder the man stays quiet. Then we flashback to the purported victim a Dr. Talbot.
Talbot is a buttoned down type with a straight laced boring wife, suck up son and comparatively free spirited daughter. As he is leaving the office one day there is an accident across the street. He goes to help, taking the woman that was stuck to his office. That women is the titular Nora Prentiss, a nightclub singer. Nora is self reliant and confident in a way Talbot is not used to seeing. Talbot quickly falls for Nora and they begin having an affair. Talbot embraces this new found irresistibility, getting into the office late in the mornings after spending the late evenings with Nora. It comes to a head on the day of his daughter's birthday, which he forgot. He tells Nora that he is going to ask his wife for a divorce but when he comes home to his daughter's birthday party he loses his nerve. When he tell Nora what happened, she decides to leave town. While closing up the office that night a patient comes in having a heart attack. Talbot is unable to save him. Distraught over the loss of Nora Talbot see this as an opportunity. He puts his ring, watch, and identification on the body, drives out to a cliffside, douses the car and body with alcohol, lights it on fire and pushes the car off the cliff. He then goes to catch Nora before she leaves town and goes with her to New York.
In New York things goes down hill. Talbot (now going by Thompson) gets a copy of a San Francisco paper and see that the police are investigating his death. Talbot does not tell Nora about faking his death nor does he tell her about the police investigate. He insists that they lay low. The secrecy takes a toll. Eventually his comes clean.Talbot continues to go downhill, drinking constantly and staying shut in his hotel room. Nora take a job singing at a club owned by the man that owned the club she sang at in San Francisco. One night Talbot goes down to the club in a drunken rage, starts a fight with the owner, steals and crashes his car. While in the hospital the police go through his things and find a bank book that get the attention of one of the officers. Something later, after Talbot has recovered from his wounds, the police come back and arrest him for murder. He was sloppy in faking his death and left behind fingerprints that match the ones the police take from him under his assumed name. This brings the film full circle and we now know the murder suspect from the start of the film was Talbot. Refusing to talk to his attorney Talbot is convicted of his own murder. He tells Nora that she must never say anything and he accepts his fate.
Talbot is a classic noir protagonist. He is a well meaning every man until he meets his femme fatale and his life falls apart. Nora, on the other hand, is a femme fatale through no fault of her own. She tries to stop the relationship before it starts, she tries to go off to New York by herself when it looks like Talbot is going to stay with his family, she even tries to help him stay hidden after he tells her about faking his death. But Nora is a beautiful woman and she does lead to the downfall of the protagonist even if it was not through malice and deceit.
The Letter - 1940 - William Wyler
Adapted from a Somerset Maugham play that was base on a real life case, directed by master craftsman William Wyler, and staring the incomparable Bette Davis. A dark tale of passion and betrayal in the steamy jungles of Singapore.
Pan through a grove of rubber trees and past a tranquil hut where some of the workers are relaxing. A shot rings out as the camera reaches the front door of a bungalow. A man staggers out the front door. A woman follows, gun in hand and continues to fire. The man falls to the ground, the woman drops the revolver. She is calm in the darkness but shocked when the clouds blow and she is exposed to the light of the full moon. One of the greatest openings in film history. Wyler does not bury the lead. Seeing Davies empty the gun into the man's back as he lay dying on the steeps is a powerful image. This woman wanted this man dead, of that there is not doubt. What is left is to sort out the whys.
When questioned about why she shot the man Leslie (Davies) says the he attempted to 'make love (rape) to her'. Everyone believes her except her lawyer who seems unconvinced. She is arrested and held in jail until the trial but everyone is she that she will be acquitted until Ong Chi Seng, the lawyer's assistant, brings in a letter that was written the day of the killing. The letter reveals the Leslie requested the man come over on the evening of the killing. She gets the letter and is acquitted of the murder. Outside of her celebration party she runs into the victim's wife and meets her end, once again under the light of the full moon.
Journey Into Fear - 1943 - Norman Foster
This is a mess. Based on the Eric Ambler novel adapted by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles and directed by Norman Foster; this war time thriller feel like someone took a weed wacker to it. First there is the mystery of who actually directed the movie. Foster is credited and Welles said that Foster did the directing but the story goes that Welles at least partial directed it as part of his out with RKO. At 70 minutes it feels rushed, like it is constantly trying to make time.
Cotten is great as a confused naval engineer with a group of Nazis trying to kill him. Everyone else is sound but nobody else really stands out. The look of the film is fine with the rainy night time shootout on a hotel balcony standing out.
Stanger on the Third Floor - 1940 - Boris Ingster
Headlining with Peter Lorre is somewhere between a strech and a complete lie. Lorre is there but John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet are the stars. Mcguire is Mike Ward a report who becomes the key witness in a murder case. Tallichet is Jane, his fiancée, the one person who believes the suspect may be innocent. After a trial with a terrible defence attorney, disinterested judge, and sleeping jurors the suspect if found guilty and dragged off screaming that did not do it. That night when Mike arrives home he see a stranger, Peter Lorre, in the hall of his building. He notices that he cannot hear his annoying neighbour and begins to think about how a case could be built against him for the murder before falling asleep and having a nightmare about the possibility. He wakes up thinking that he is just being paranoid and goes to check on his neighbour finding that his is in fact dead. He tells the police about the stranger but they cannot find him. Jane goes around the neighbour asking everyone she runs across if they have seen the stranger with no luck. At the end of the day she stops at a cafe for a cup of coffee and Lorre walks in. Jane follows him out and asks him to walk her home. She attempts to get someone to call the police. He gets upset and attacks he. She runs across the street, he follows but is hit by a truck. Before he dies he confesses to both killings.
The dream sequence that Mike has is great noir paranoia. Lorre is great in his small role as a delusional killer.
Johnny Eager - 1941 - Mervyn LeRoy
An 'anti-noir' for want of a better term or maybe a foundational noir for a branch of the movement that never took hold. Starting out like an average gangster picture, with Robert Taylor as Johnny, being a mob boss that is brought to a level of redemption by a woman, Lisbeth Bard played by Lana Turner.
Johnny Eager lives by the Jay-Z creed I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man. It is all about the score and how he can get the better end of it. But Johnny is out on parole so he has to keep up the appearance of being reformed. He drives a taxi and is sure to check in with his parole officer every month. On one such visit he runs into Lisbeth Bard, a beautiful young sociology student. He sees her again later at a gambling club his is checking on but this time he is not in his cabbie uniform. Rather he is in proper gangster form. She leaves with him having been abandoned by her date. When he drops her at home for the evening he discovers that her father is the district attorney. The D.A. is the one who has an injunction stopping Eager, through an associate, from opening up a dog track. Eager sees this as an opportunity to get leverage on the D.A. by setting up Lisbeth to look like she killed a man. It works and he is able to open his track. Unfortunately Lisbeth does not take it well. She is overwhelmed with guilt. Eager, realizing that he is in love with Lisbeth, tells her about the ruse and that nobody died but she does not believe him. This leads to his downfall. Eager becomes determined to make Lisbeth believe him so he sets it up so she will be able to see the man that she thinks she killed. He manages to pull this off but ends up in a shootout that leaves him and his rivals dead.
Eager is the man that moves the action but there are two interesting characters in this movie. First is Eager best (only?) friend Jeff Hartnett. His is too smart by half to be in a criminal but he is also a drunk. He quotes poetry, references history, and is the only person willing or able to tell Eager the truth. It is also pretty clear that he is, at least on some level, in love with Eager.
The other character of interest is lisbeth and much of that comes from Lana Turner's performance. Turner was just 19 during the filming of Johnny Eager but she had been in several films over her first few years in Hollywood. Turner is physically stunning, young enough to still carry a bit of wide eyed innocence, and a talented actress. She is a good person that get in over her head. If the film makers had devoted more screen time to Turner, Johnny Eager would have a more traditional noir structure of good person caught up in bad situation. Four year later Turner would give one of the iconic noir performances in The Postman Always Rings Twice but she is just as good here.
Turner has a line early on in the film that is exceedingly disturbing but delivered in a way that adds another layer of depth Lisbeth. After going on a parole field visit to see Eager with a friend and his P.O. she says to her friend "I think he'd beat a woman if she'd made him angry". Turner delivers the line wistfully with a little smile on her face. She is attracted to the dangerous side of Eager but combined with some dialogue later on with her father, the film could be open to an even darker reading.
Scarlet Street - 1945 - Fritz Lang
Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson), a weak willed, milquetoast little cashier, helps a beautiful woman, named Kitty (Joan Bennett) being beat up by her boyfriend one night. He kind of tells her he is a famous artist and she tells him she is an actress. Kitty's boyfriend Johnny talks her into scamming the old man. Chris seals money to put Kitty up in a nice appartment, Johnny sells Chris's paintings as if they were done by Kitty. Chris finds out about Kitty and Johnny seeing each other, loses it, and kills Kitty. Johnny goes down for the murder. We get an out of place lecture about how the guilt over getting away with murder is worse that being executed. And in the end Chris winds up homeless, haunted by the fact he was responsible for the two deaths.
Lang's presentation of women in this movie is nothing short of deplorable. Of the three women with appreciable screen time, only Margaret Lindsay as Kitty's friend Millie comes off as a human being of any worth. Kitty is too lazy to do anything and not even smart enough to come up with her own schemes. She is completely reliant on Johnny who she stay with because he hits her not in spite of it. When she is telling Johnny that she doesn't like being around Chris she says if he were mean or vicious she would like him better. Her one line description would be dumb pretty girl that likes to be smacked around. Last there is Chris's wife Adele. She is a caricature. Bitter, mean, cheap. Story goes Chris rented an extra room in her house and she essentially force him to marry her. She hates his paintings and keeps a large portrait of her dead husband in the living room.
Born to Kill - 1947 - Robert Wise
A bit of gender equality going on here. Sam (Lawrence Tierney) is a man so attractive that women will do anything for him. unfortunately Sam has a bit of an impulse control issue and will not stand for people cutting in on what he thinks is his. It all begins in Reno with the murder of Laury Palmer (I hope the Twin Peaks similarity is not just coincidence) and a man she went on a date with by her boyfriend Sam. Helen (Claire Trevor) discovers the bodies but seeing as she is leaving town the next morning decides not to phone the police. Helen meets Sam at the train station and fall for him like all women do. Sam stop by unannounced to see Helen just as she is about to head out to dinner with her previously unmentioned fiancé and her foster sister. Sam hits it off with the sister and they get married. At the wedding a detective investigating the murders in Reno sneaks in and is discovered by Helen. She gives the P.I. a clue about Sam, likely because she is upset about Sam marrying her sister. Next Helen invites Sam's friend Marty to move in to the mansion they all live in. Sam ends up killing Marty after seeing him leave Helen's room one evening. Helen's fiancé breaks up with her, leading her to call the police on Sam. Sam shoots Helen, the police shoot Sam, and the P.I. heads back to Reno.
Helen's downfall is a common one for noir protagonist she wanted to have her cake (money) and eat it too (Sam). It never works out well.
Week one take aways are; it was the hip thing to beat women in the 1940's and Lana Turner should rate higher among the all-time great actresses.
Best of the Week: Johnny Eager - 1941 - Mervyn LeRoy
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