Noir City Visits Chicago

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ChiO
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Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by ChiO »

For the third year, some friends from the City by the Bay are visiting the City on the Lake and bringing some shadowy movies. This is the most intriguing lineup that Noir City has arranged for us (though not nearly as eccentric and idiosyncratic -- translation: WOW!-inspiring -- as our Dewey's Roxie fests), but, hey, any chiaroscuro port in a storm, right? Each night (with two exceptions) has a movie I haven't seen, which leads me to believe that there must be some Bay-side conspiracy to make me part with my money.

August 12: High Wall (Bernhard, 1947) & The Dark Mirror (R. Siodmak, 1948)

August 13: The Mob (Parrish, 1951), New York Confidential (Rouse, 1955) & Loophole (Schuster, 1954)

August 14: Larceny (G. Sherman, 1948), The Blue Dahlia (Marshall, 1946) & The Hunted (Bernhard, 1948)

August 15: Deadline USA (Brooks, 1952) & Chicago Deadline (Allen, 1949)

August 16: Crashout (L. Foster, 1955) & The Story of Molly X (Wilbur, 1949)

August 17: Among the Living (Heisler, 1941) & The Glass Key (Heisler, 1942)

August 18: Brute Force (Dassin, 1947) & Sorry, Wrong Number (Litvak, 1948)

A good enough reason to visit Da City dat Works this summer.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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CineMaven
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by CineMaven »

Sounds good.

Well when the City by the Bay decides to visit the City That Never Sleeps...please give me a shout-out here in New York City.

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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

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Last night was the opening. Good sized crowd. The theater seats about 800, so there probably 300 or so.

THE HIGH WALL (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947) has such a marvelous noir premise...that dissipates as it progresses. A brain-damaged WWII vet with amnesia returns home and drives his car off the road with his dead wife. He confesses to strangling her. Institutionalized, it appears that he is planning to use his mental condition to avoid the chair. His female psychiatrist thinks he might not have committed the murder, but he should at any rate be cured and take his chances. Lurking about is the wife's boss, an up-and-coming executive at a publisher of religious books. A few twists and turns, a couple of shots of truth serum, and the mystery is solved, and the vet and psychiatrist kiss and live happily ever after (thank goodness for transference).

This coulda been great, but, while still worth seeing, it fizzled rather than sizzled for me. Herbert Marshall is fine in the George Sanders role as the narcissistic executive. The problems for me: MGM production values, not exactly the pinnacle of noir grittiness; Robert Taylor as the vet, ditto (oh, for John Payne); and, Audrey Totter, one of the hottest of B-noir bad girls, is the attractive sexless psychiatrist and the opposite of a femme fatale. Also, about two-thirds of the way through, the feel of a romantic melodrama overtakes the noir. Plus, I guess I prefer my flashbacks, especially with amnesiacs, gradually to divulge facts and maintain more mystery. Here, there are two extended flashbacks -- one by Taylor and one by Marshall -- and most of the crucial facts are exposed.

Rescind my noir card. Robert Siodmak just is not in my Top 10 of noir directors. Oh, I love PHANTOM LADY and like some others, but his films tend to lose steam for me. THE DARK MIRROR (1948) is no different. Olivia de Havilland portrays the good twin and the bad twin, one of which killed a psychiatrist. But which one? Eye witnesses supporting one's alibi can't identify which one they saw -- because the identical twins look alike! Left to sort it out are Thomas Mitchell as the befuddled detective and Lew Ayres as the kindly psychologist whose specialty is...the study of twins! Ayres falls in love with the good twin (there's a breach of ethics) and she with him (there's that transference again). Or is it the other way around? Or is it the bad twin? Or both? Will he ever find out? Yes, and it is unfortunately anti-climatic because the audience is way ahead of him. And, again, the romance ends up swallowing the noir. Give me Bonita Granville, Don Castle and Regis Toomey in THE GUILTY (John Reinhardt, 1947) for a twins noir. Oh, well.

Higher hopes for today's lineup of THE MOB, NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL, and LOOPHOLE.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
RedRiver
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by RedRiver »

This sounds like a blast, Chio! Most of these movies are unknown to me. Some of them might not be good. But that's part of the fun. I like THE GLASS KEY. Maybe even more than most people do. BLUE DAHLIA is not as good. But it's cute. THE HIGH WALL sounds like some of the dime novels churned out in the 1950's. NIGHT WALKER, HOME IS THE SAILOR and so forth. I might like it in a silly, shake your head and smile way.

Mostly, I'm curious as to where all this is taking place. The Music Box? I'm not in Chicago anymore. But I lived there for years.
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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

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MrsChiO and I went to the Music Box Theater (yes, RedRiver, you called it) yesterday afternoon for a Broderick Crawford Fest.

First up, THE MOB (Robert Parrish, 1951). With 35 other attendees, we watched tough city cop Crawford go undercover to bust up the rackets that have infiltrated the docks. Along the way he meets a host of noir favorites: Charles Bronson (a dockworker), John Marley (a dock "collection" man), Jay Adler (a sleazy SRO manager), Richard Kiley (a slick dockworker who turns out to be an undercover G-Man), Neville Brand (a thug -- what, you expected something else?), Ernest Borgnine (a smiling gruff bad guy). Moral of the story: Don't trust a man who wears a wig. Violent and vulgar, it is throughly enjoyable, with a hard-boiled humorous screenplay by William Bowers (ABANDONED, CONVICTED, CRY DANGER, TIGHT SPOT, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF). Already Saturday was better than Friday.

The crowd swelled to about 100 for NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL (Russell Rouse, 1955)...and good for them. I first saw this at the Roxie in '09 at some other noir fest with more creative programming and had this to say at the time: Richard Conte. Broderick Crawford. NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL. Steely, smart hitman Conte goes to work for mob boss Crawford. With ice cold precision, Conte performs his duties...even when it means losing the man who's been like a second father. But it gets darker than that. This film is loaded with great performances and, for a B-noir, some nuance to the narrative. This must be released! Now!!

Well, it has been released, I've seen it since then, and it gets better with each viewing. Marilyn Maxwell, with bedroom eyes and a body to match, and Anne Bancroft also provide fine performances. But this is all about Conte to me, and I still contend that he is worthy of discussion along with the noir icons Bogart, Mitchum and Ryan. The ending is so bleak, but yet reassuring in a perverse way. You know the rules, you live by the rules, you enforce the rules. So there's no reason for the rules not to apply to you. See the conclusions of BLAST OF SILENCE and THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.

Home for supper while THE MOB was reshown, then a solo reappearance at the Music Box for LOOPHOLE (Harold Schuster, 1954). The gathering was now up to at least 350, thank goodness. Barry Sullivan is a bank teller who comes up $49,900 short at the close of business on Friday. Bewildered, he goes home to his wife, Dorothy Malone (that's noirish?). They go to the bank on Monday to report the shortage...but now he looks guilty. Erstwhile bonding company investigator Charles McGraw (ahh, now it's noirish) hounds him mercilessly. But we all know who took the money...that renown nefarious evil-doer and madman, Don Beddoe!...who has done the deed to keep his wife (now this goes beyond suspension of disbelief) Mary Beth Hughes happy. Enjoyable performances all around (especially Hughes), but unfortunately saddled by pedestrian directing and screenwriting.

Still, Saturday was a big step up (or down, depending on perspective) from Friday.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

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Largest, and most enthusiastic, gathering yet for Sunday's triple feature.

LARCENY (George Sherman, 1948) is another William Bowers script. John Payne and Dan Duryea are confidence men (That's a serious charge.). Shelley Winters, at her nasty mouthy blonde bombshell best, is the love of Duryea's life, but he suspects that Payne is seeing her on the sly...and he's right. The next big score will be conning Joan Caulfield into raising money for a war memorial/youth center in honor of her husband who was killed in WWII. Payne, as the handsome one who leaves a string of beautiful women in his wake wherever he goes, claims to have been a pal in her late husband's unit. She falls for him and he for her...or is that part of the con? Winters shows up to mess things up and gets smacked around by Payne (Stop twisting my arm! People will think we're married!). Will love triumph, or will the con? Does a con ever end? Hint: Winters ends up dead (and, for once, not in water) and the constabulary escort Payne and Duryea from the scene. With the ubiquitous Percy Helton portraying the manager of the local YMCA.

The noir moments -- scenes with either Winters or Duryea (is there a noir in which he doesn't wear two-toned wingtips?), or both, are marvelous. When it's a scene with just Payne and Caulfield, it gets bogged down as a romantic melodrama. It's as if Bowers was forced to write those scenes and his sardonic heart just wasn't in it.

THE BLUE DAHLIA (George Marshall, 1946) drew the crowd. You've seen it. You know it. Bring on the next one.

THE HUNTED (Jack Bernhard, 1948) was the second Allied Artist release, but -- luckily -- it maintains that Monogram look. Some swell writing from Steve Fisher (I WAKE UP SCREAMING, JOHNNY ANGEL, DEAD RECKONING, LADY IN THE LAKE, I WOULDN'T BE IN YOUR SHOES, THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS). Preston Foster is the cop who sent his love, Belita (yes, there's an ice skating sequence), to the big house for her part in a jewel robbery. Claiming she's innocent, she swore she'd kill Foster and her attorney. Foster keeps an eye on her and she on him. Is she toying with him? He falls for her all over again. But then the attorney is found dead and she hits the road with Foster in pursuit. When he catches up with her, what choice does she have but to shoot him. Luckily, he survives, a deus ex machina thief confesses to killing the attorney because of a double-cross, says the attorney was the brains behind the jewel robbery and that Belita had been framed, and Belita and Foster go on a well-deserved honeymoon. With Charles McGraw in a small role and the ubiquitous George Chandler as a bartender.

Absolutely enjoyable. And, with a tweak here and a nudge there, this could have been a screwball comedy, a film category that I find related to noir.

Skipping tonight's line-up of DEADLINE USA and CHICAGO DEADLINE -- seen'em and don't want to miss my Welles class, which is screening a little number called CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. Heard it's good.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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Dewey1960
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by Dewey1960 »

I love Belita! She's one of my favorites in fact: a wonderfully symbolic
noir goddess (at least in a couple of fine pictures) perfectly suited
to the icy rigors of femme fatalery.
Here she is in a 1943 Monogram short called "Silver Skates" Wow!
[youtube][/youtube]
And, the topper: (in 2 parts), her incedible performance in the
1946 Monogram noir classic SUSPENSE co-starring Barry Sullivan
and Albert Dekker.
[youtube][/youtube]
[youtube][/youtube]
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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by ChiO »

Thank you for that tribute, Dewey. Let's make it Belita Day!

My introduction to her was via those noir siblings, the King Brothers, and their THE GANGSTER
(Gordon Wiles, 1947), also with Barry Sullivan, Joan Loring, Akim Tamiroff, Henry Morgan,
John Ireland, Sheldon Leonard, Leif Erickson, Charles McGraw, Elisha Cook, Jr., Jeff Corey,
Shelley Winters, Billy Gray, Sid Melton and cinematography by Paul Ivano. Phew! With that cast,
no wonder there wasn't time for her to ice-skate.
[youtube][/youtube]
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by ChiO »

Last night's pairing is one I eagerly anticipated. Unfortunately, apparently that attitude was not shared by many others in Chicago. Very disappointing turnout for these two rarities.

Lewis Foster's noir resume is sparse, MANHANDLED (1949) being the only other one that I know of. But CRASHOUT (1955) makes up for quantity with quality. Six men break out of prison in order to search for a payroll stash. First, they hide out in a cave, then interact with locals, and finally they meet their doom as we know they must. Fabulous cast: William Bendix, Arthur Kennedy, William Talman, Luther Adler, Gene Evans and Marshall Thompson are the escapees, and Beverly Michaels, Gloria Talbott and (he's baaack) Percy Helton are among the locals. But the real star may be Universal's go-to cinematographer, Russell Metty (TOUCH OF EVIL, SPARTACUS, WRITTEN ON THE WIND, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS).

The only other time that I've seen THE STORY OF MOLLY X (Crane Wilbur, 1949) was courtesy of Dewey on the evening of May 19, 2009, at the Roxie Theater. Then I wrote:
Noir by nature is subversive (Bryce: make a note of that). THE STORY OF MOLLY X -- based on fact and real prison conditions, we are told in the opening -- goes beyond subversion by being a transgressive mash-up of several forms (Bryce: still taking notes?). It begins with June Havoc (is that the perfect Noir name?) taking over the gang once headed by her now dead husband, peppered by tough talk that would have done Dashiell Hammett proud. Then it's a caper movie. Then a WIP movie with, yes, little fish and cat fights. Then a Susan Hayward social message movie, ending with a grand round of redemption for all, thereby resolving the "murder, murder, who committed the murder?" plot line and guilty conscience. All in the name of Love. Whoo, what a ride! SSO favorite, Charles McGraw, is a straight-shootin' tough-talkin' cop whose apparent purpose is to appear occasionally to grumble.
It should also be noted that in addition to directing, Crane Wilbur wrote the screenplay. But since a prison was involved, you probably would have guessed that.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by ChiO »

Since the last film in the lineup that I had never seen was last night, I decided to make that my last journey to Noir City: Chicago. AMONG THE LIVING (Stuart Heisler, 1941), although entertaining, was more interesting for historical purposes. Being released in 1941 puts it right at the start of the classic age of film noir. The setting, plot and theme make it a Southern Gothic with a touch of horror (naturally). The superb photography by Theodor Sparkuhl (LA CHIENNE, BEAU GESTE, THE GLASS KEY) gives us clues as to what much of film noir would look like.

Albert Dekker, suave, educated, and wealthy, returns to his hometown to bury his father, the owner of the town's sole industry. It seems that only Dekker, his wife, Frances Farmer, and town doctor, Harry Carey, are sad the man is dead. The poor townsfolk obviously despise him for having shut down the factory. Carey discloses to Dekker that his long thought to be dead twin brother (Albert Dekker) is in fact alive (Carey had falsified a death certificate to maintain a monetary relationship with the father), hopelessly insane, and living in the rotting family home. Insane Dekker is actually harmless until he hears a woman scream, which reminds him of the screams of their long dead mother when their father would abuse her (shades of Frankenstein's monster). Insane Dekker goes into town, is of course unknown (he's been dead, you know), looks poor, but has money, behaves docilely and gentlemanly, and is befriended by the very saucy Susan Hayward. Murders are discovered. Sane Dekker offers a $5,000 reward for the capture of the murderer, insane Dekker. Townsfolk go wild to finally have a chance to get money. Identities get confused and sane Dekker almost gets lynched (shades of FURY) because his story of a revitalized, but insane, twin is...well...insane. Insane Dekker is found...dead...on their mother's grave.

Another historical twist is that one of the screenwriters was Lester Cole, Communist, co-founder of the Screen Writers Guild, and one of the Hollywood Ten. That makes it practically a requirement to search for the political message. Although folks with money are shown to be corrupt, the poor townsfolk are not portrayed as the salt of the earth. They are mean-spirited and ready to lynch an innocent man in their frenzy for money. So maybe that's it...the corrupt rich are so powerful and corrupt that they can corrupt and poison the poor who are just trying to survive. Or something like that.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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JackFavell
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by JackFavell »

That one sounds fantastic, ChiO! What an interesting cast.
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ChiO
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by ChiO »

For folks who enjoy humidity with heat and film noir, the 4th annual Noir City Roadshow hits Chicago on August 17-23.

The films being shown have been announced, but I couldn't find the dates; however, there are some obvious pairings for evenings of entertainment.

THREE STRANGERS (Jean Negulesco 1946) & THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (Paul Jarrico 1941) – An evening with Peter Lorre.

PHANTOM LADY (Robert Siodmak 1944), BLACK ANGEL (Roy William Neill 1946), & THE WINDOW (Ted Tetzlaff 1949) – An evening with Cornell Woolrich.

99 RIVER STREET (Phil Karlson 1953) & SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE (Arnold Laven 1956) – An evening on street addresses.

SHAKEDOWN (Joseph Pevney 1950) & UNDERTOW (William Castle 1949) – An evening with the Tierney brothers, joined by Bruce Bennett, Peggy Dow & Rock Hudson.

CAUGHT (Max Ophuls 1949) & ON DANGEROUS GROUND (Nicholas Ray 1952) – An evening with Robert Ryan in his hometown.

THE GREAT GATSBY (Elliot Nugent 1949) & THIS GUN FOR HIRE (Frank Tuttle 1942) – An evening with Alan Ladd.

KISS ME DEADLY (Robert Aldrich 1955) & WHITE HEAT (Raoul Walsh 1949) – An evening with explosive endings.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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CineMaven
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by CineMaven »

Ooooh ChiO, I'm feeling that itch. But good god man, I need dates. Dates!!!
"You build my gallows high, baby."

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RedRiver
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Re: Noir City Visits Chicago

Post by RedRiver »

Sounds like a HOT time in my second hometown! (Maybe my first. I'm still not sure!) Should I know UNDERTOW? The unpredictable William Castle, you say? Wish I could join you for movies, Super Dawg, a little jazz at the Green Mill, Carson's Ribs and, oh, what's the name of that northside baseball team?
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