Hey, thanks to ChiO for the recommendation of
Stranger on the 3rd Floor!
I really enjoyed this film a lot, thanks to Boris Ingster's direction, a good cast, and especially Nicholas Musuraca's lighting. My gosh, the entire middle section was just so enormously innovative, with scenes washing in and out of each other in different ways, and shadows becoming increasingly fragmented and overpowering. Ingster threw everything but the kitchen sink into that imaginative section of the film. It made me like him for trying everything in the book that hadn't really been written yet.
The leading man reminded me of Tom Neal a lot, he was very effective, if not a perfect actor - I think a more polished performance might have actually been less effective. You really felt this poor fellow had fallen off the edge of a cliff, emotionally speaking. He's just a normal guy who suddenly has his eyes opened to the infinite possibilities of being wrong. It's actually not that far off from screwball, if you think about it, where a man or woman is broadened by the sudden influence of a new anarchic presence. In this film, our hero's mind is expanded, but darkly, as his options constrict.
I very much liked the heroine as well, Margaret Tallichet I believe was her name, but she belonged to the sane part of the movie, she didn't figure into any of the more noir aspects, as all good girls in noir are relegated to the sidelines.
Peter Lorre is such a presence, I always leaned forward when he came onto the screen only to vanish again before he got a chance to do anything. If anything, that's the only weakness of the film, aside from not taking the noir to the next level - turning it into reality at the end.
And if the lighting, the dark direction, or the story doesn't prove this is noir, the presence of Elisha Cook, Jr. should. Great, as usual, Cook gives the film it's foundation in fear and darkness, setting the hero on his mental journey. it's the one movie I can think of where he doesn't buy it in the end.
I am now firmly of the belief that Nick Musuraca was a genius - I've seen his name a lot in the last month, and the movies he's attached to I always like the look of. I don't believe he was a huge name in lighting, plugging away for years on B movies, coming up through the silents. But he lit so many of my favorite films, and on a small budget, that I am more and more in admiration of his talent. He lit
Cat People and
Curse of the Cat People, and that alone is enough to put him on the top of the mountain in my book. Here are a few others he did that are favorites:
The Seventh Victim
Ghost Ship
The Gay Falcon (OK, not the most exciting lighting project, but still it's my favorite in the series)
Five Came Back
Allegheny Uprising
Tuttles of Tahiti (I didn't really care for this movie, but the look of it really stood out to me)
The Spiral Staircase
Deadline at Dawn
Bedlam
The Locket
Out of the Past
The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer
I Remember Mama
Blood on the Moon
The Blue Gardenia
Clash By Night
So Musuraca is starting to be my hero. Think of movies like
The Spiral Staircase or
Bedlam, then take away the lighting.... you've got nothing left.
Stranger on the 3rd Floor got me thinking about the beginnings of noir. Do you think noir was inevitable? I mean, was it simply time, in the historical timeline of the movies for noir to take it's place as the prime artistic force?
I had always thought that the tensions and fears of WWII, the rise of communism, and the subsequent blacklist brought noir to the forefront in cinema, but here it is, 1940, and all the elements are there. And we've discussed
Pepe Le Moko and
Gueule d'Amour as having many elements of noir in them, though granted, the french were dealing with the threat of war far earlier than we were. So what REALLY brought noir forward? Was cinema simply growing up, growing more adult? Would have happened even if we hadn't had the war or any of the concomitant problems it brought up?