Ah, what a whirlwind week it's been, and already we slide into week #2 of Elliot Lavine's latest candy-box sampler of poisoned Noir chocolates... Yes, these inky confections are infected by a dangerous, addictive strain of emotional masochism for which there is no cure. Like another? How 'bout eight? Contrary to a recent Bay Area weekly piece, this series is unusually strong, and is in fact a virtual compendium of twisted Noir oddities which expand and redefine the realm for those bantam-weight semi-initiates who have dipped merely a big toe into these murky waters... Word has gotten to me that some allege such major works as So Dark the Night aren't "real noirs". Apparently, there are a lot of suckers out there who've bought the goods dealt by the Noir lifestyle peddlers. These folks would have you believe that Noir is all about fast cars, flatfoots, revolvers, and cheap dames... in short, easily digested vicarious thrills suitable for middle-class slumming. Noir may contain all the aforementioned elements, but it's a terrain both much narrower and deeper than the peddlers would have you believe. Those who maintain it's a genre, with required generic elements are mistaken -- many champion cinephiles have fallen into this trap. Recently, one of the most intelligent, talented, and well-viewed of us turned to me after a screening of Joseph Losey's The Prowler to say something to the effect of "that's a great Losey and all, but it's not really a noir -- it's not urban". Right -- but urbanity has nothing to do with Noir, dearies. The identification of Noir came about after the flooding of post-WW II France with American movies, which had been embargoed during the years of Occupation. A new strain of malaise was identified in a national cinema so famous for reflecting the upbeat spirit of "can-do American optimism". Whether it was the post-war blues, a post-Depression hangover, or the influence of European émigrés to Hollywood who's lives and world-views had been subjected to, shall we say, "enhanced interrogation techniques" (actually, it was no doubt due to all of these), there was suddenly a tremendous vein of works most succinctly described as "doom laden". In keeping with this emotional tone, they were likely to be photographed in deep-shadowed black-and-white, and take place within urban digs, and amongst cops and crooks. But they could be in color, set in the country, and detail the dark psyches of the rich and prominent. John Stahl's magnificent Leave Her to Heaven is such a film, with the astonishingly beautiful Gene Tierney as a psychotic somnambule murderess who coldly watches her crippled young brother-in-law drown in a gorgeously sun-dappled lake. It is a key noir from 1945, and very much redolent of the tendency identified by the French right around that time. Similarly, a noir can take place in the French countryside if it accesses those dark, trapped aspects of the psyche which lure us into emotional quicksand. Film Noir: an Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style identifies Joseph H. Lewis's So Dark the Night as standing on the "summit of those films that deal with the degraded detective". A few years ago, after a Noir City screening at the Castro of Lewis's later Big Combo, a woman sitting next to me turned to her husband and said "now that's real noir!" I have no idea whether she'd say the same for So Dark, but the minor maestro's earlier work is even more "doom laden" than The Big Combo (which, after all, has something of a happy ending), though sans urban trappings...
Of the remaining films (which I call The Pay-Off, so strong does this cache seem), I'm unfamiliar with three, including tonight's double-bill. Between Midnight and Dawn is of great interest to me due to its auteur, Gordon Douglas. While his work has minor literary weight, every one of his films I've encountered (the excellent San Francisco-set They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, for example) evinces a sure hand with action and a unique sense of cinematic space, elements as important to evaluating the artistry of a film director as the handling of words and molding of sentences are in the case of a writer. I know next to nothing re. The Killer That Stalked New York, but with Dorothy Malone and a title like that, how could you go wrong? Over the weekend, we enter what might be termed the "Lit-Noir" portion of the series, with three of the four features showing Sat. and Sun. being adaptations of major works in the Serie Noire canon. But one could also make a case for the sole hold-out, Samuel Fuller's Crimson Kimono, as having a firm claim to a place of prominence within this sub-genre: as well as being Hollywood's only regular triple-threat (writer, producer, director) creative juggernaut of its Golden Age, Fuller was an oft-published novelist, author of such works as The Dark Page, which provided the basis for Phil Karlson's major noir, Scandal Sheet. (Fuller became aware of this novel's publication while on the march in Europe with the Big Red One, which he dramatized in the film he made many years later named for his WW II division: cigar-chomping Fuller surrogate Robert Carradine approaches a fresh blond dogface squinting intensely at the cheaply-printed Service edition of "The Dark Deadline" to announce: "That's my book, Baby-face!") I will be far from the first to note that Fuller's style is an outgtrowth of his youth in yellow journalism, and the eye-popping opening sequence of The Crimson Kimono is a sterling example of this, with each shot alternating with, or taking the place of an all-caps headline (which I semi-invent from semi-memory): HOT STRIPPER "SUGAR TORCH" MURDERED!!!! Actually, now that I think about it, Sat's program should be called "STRIPPER NOIR", considering that Screaming Mimi features a semi-nude (!!) Anita Ekberg on-stage in chains (!!!)... Haven't seen Mimi for many years, and I have to admit even with Anita, I was a bit disappointed the first time. After all, the brilliant and insane A Kiss Before Dying and Crime of Passion (Proto-Fassbinder Noir! -- Barbara Stanwyck in this film is an American analogue of Maria Braun and many another skewed RWF heroine) had taught me to expect much from the un-sung Gerd Oswald. I wasn't getting it from the super-low-budget Mimi, but that was before I'd read Fredric Brown's superb novel of origin (which also provided the basis of Dario Argento's fantastic debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage). I think Anita's terrain deserves another survey... Sun thru Mon we have Goodis Noir... David Goodis, one of the major figures of Serie Noire, became famous in his own country after Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, adapted from a Goodis novel, became an American art-house hit. The Burglar and Nightfall are two earlier adaptations made on his native soil -- The Burlgar especially so, as it was shot in the center of the Goodis universe, Philadelphia. Burglar's director, Paul Wendkos displays a bit of that semi-detached professionalism which was to do so well by him shortly down the road in such efforts as Gidget, but the film also has a certain tongue-in-cheek funkiness. Besides, the great Dan Duryea is the Goodis protagonist par excellence. Poor fellow -- if you gotta have a little step-sister for whom you're responsible, avoid having it be Jayne Mansfield, or you're doomed to a demi-existence of nightmarishly onanistic frustration... A dozen-or-so years ago, I exited a screening of Nightfall at the Roxie immediately after the lights had gone down and the first images had hit the screen. Aldo Ray, surely the most sensitive pug-type in cinema history, was sensitively ducking the bright lights flashing his way on the LA streets amongst which he was clearly attempting to hide. Uproarious laughter! Ten hyena barks on the camp-o-meter! Well, whether due to the death of hyperrealism in film concomitant with the detachment in contemporary film to any and all elements of recognisable human behavior, or the last eight years of political surrealism writ on the grand scale, which have normalized stylized media presentation, the squads of fascistic camp-followers have largely dissipated (long may it last!), and now I can head back to the Roxie to see Nightfall... With Orson Welles and Fritz Lang put to one side, and Robert Siodmak and Otto Preminger tucked tidily away somewhere, Out of the Past, Experiment Perilous, and Nightfall make a case for the magnificent Jacques Tourneur to be considered The Dean of Noir. As evidenced by these films, as well as his great horror collaborations with Val Lewton -- Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Leopard Man -- no filmmaker is better acquainted with darkness than this Franco-American of delicate sensibilities given to harsh-themed material, and Nightfall, featuring, besides Ray, Anne Bancroft and Brian Keith (Wow! A cast which makes this the most modern work of Noir's classical period), is one of Tourneur's major works... Last May, I had this to say re. the director of Roxie-Coumbia Noir's climactic double-bill: "Someday the Irving Lerner story will have to be told. This highly talented director of B pictures was also associated in various capacities with other men of great talent, such as Anthony Mann, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. He was the "supervizing editor" of New York, New York, and the "Technical Advisor" to The brilliant, independently produced Savage Eye. Of his directorial efforts, I've only seen the semi-superb Murder by Contract, a work possessed of a strange and dark luster. Based on the calendar description, I have high hopes for City of Fear: cops, fissionable material, and smack. Add Vince Edwards into the picture, and I consider this a done deal. Many of us males would wish to be Vince on one of his good days -- he's cat-nip to dames." I wasn't able to attend that screening of City of Fear, but finally paired with Murder, you can bet that only sneak attack by femme fatale could possibly keep me away...
As Burglar and Nightfall are also playing Mon, you have no excuse for not being in a PFA seat @5p.m. for the first (of two) screening(s) of Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs. A towering masterpiece by any standard other than current multiplex fare, Olmi's three hour intimate epic, set in turn-of-the-(previous)-century rural Italy, Wooden Clogs brings that time and place to life in a manner not only nonpareil, but nonpareil-able. The Barry Lyndon of peasant existence, this film is at first off-putting, then slowly seductive, finally luring one into a new sense of pace, making its narrative as engrossing and cliff-hangering as, say, On Her Majesty's Secret Service... Originally photographed (by Olmi himself) in 16mm for television broadcast, Wooden Clogs blown up to 35mm is one of the great glories of 70's cinema.
And now,
to
Roxie: Between Midnight and Dawn OTI The Killer That Stalked New York OI
Castro: Mean Streets TM Gangs of New York OI
Stanford: The Birds TM Psycho TM
Plays thru Mon.
PFA: Time Stood Still OTI
Roxie: The Crimson Kimono MW Screaming Mimi OTI
Castro: Goodfellas QG
PFA: Mode in France (w/ short: Contacts) OI No Orchids for Miss Blandish OI
Rafael: Children of Paradise MW
Plays thru Sun matinee.
Red Vic: The Room @ Midnite OI
Roxie: Nightfall MW The Burglar QG
Plays thru Mon.
Castro: Raging Bull PM The Last Temptation of Christ MW
PFA: The Tree of Wooden Clogs M
Red Vic: Dr. Strangelove PM
Plays thru Tues.
Roxie: Murder by Contract MW City of Fear OTI
Plays thru Wed.
Stanford: The Trouble with Harry QG Marnie TM
Plays thru Thurs.
Alameda: A Streetcar Named Desire MW/PM
Plays thru Thurs.
PFA: The French OI
Yerba Buena: Suspiria WSFSROO