Reviews by JxSxPx

A near nihilistic obsession with fatalism pervades noir as whole but particularly in the branch of “heist gone wrong.” The Killing practically announces its failed central conceit from the outset, The Asphalt Jungle follows all its thieves as they die, and into this gloomy outlook comes Criss Cross. This one not only follows the tragic outlines of those films but throws in reunited exes for good measure.

If nothing else, Criss Cross is a bit like drinking in noir straight from the hose. I mean, not only is Burt Lancaster the lead, but there’s Dan Duryea, best remembered for Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window, and a pre-Munsters Yvonne De Carlo. There’s also Robert Siodmak behind the camera, best known for launching Lancaster’s movie career with The Killers, incidentally, and a Latin dance sequence that bursts with sensual promise and suspense.

In short, the journey of Criss Cross nearly doesn’t matter as everything here seems engineered from the start to provide an enthralling noir experience. And so, it does even if the episodic structure can become a bit thin at times. De Carlo’s vamp was once married to Lancaster but is now with Duryea, De Carlo and Lancaster reunite, Duryea pulls him in on an armored car heist, and things spiral out from there.

It nearly doesn’t matter what happens as every moment is seemingly signaling towards a very bleak end for all involved. But it’s the tiny details and juicy parts for character actors along the way that you remember. Alan Napier, Alfred from the Adam West Batman, and Percy Helton, for example, provide a lot of color in their brief roles. But nothing tops the sight of De Carlo’s sweaty dancing to Esy Morales’ band with an uncredited Tony Curtis, in his first role. The camera lingers on her face and body and practically signifies one of the male gaze’s profound truths: that the female body in motion can ensnare the heterosexual male psyche like nothing else.

B-picture director extraordinaire, Robert Siodmak, crafts this taunt little thriller about a devoted secretary (Ella Raines) going above and beyond to clear the name of her framed boss. That’s essentially the beginning and the end of the film aside from a few sequences of tremendous visual and tonal power. Phantom Lady isn’t exactly an undercover gem waiting for rediscovery and extraction, but it’s better than its limited reputation would suggest.

The opening scenes suggest the oncoming post-war malaise and loneliness that would flourish in films like In a Lonely Place. And soon we’re in familiar realm – the wronged man getting framed for the crime and a plucky amateur detective figuring out the subterranean intrigue swirling all around them. Phantom Lady has this in spades, and the structure does begin to feel largely episodic and thin after a while.

But the film bursts into vivid, disturbing life in a handful of sequences. Raines’ secretary follows the lead provided by Elisha Cook Jr.’s drummer and we’re treated to the best scene in the film. Cook Jr.’s drummer begins a frenzied, erotically charged solo that also functions as a seduction. But who is seducing who throughout this scene as Raines alternates between the real and fictional persona on a dime? The combination of extreme angles, rapid editing, and outsized acting combines into something dangerous and sexy, something that rapidly runs away from the rest of the film and the rest of the film never quite recovers.

The other great scenes involve Franchot Tone and the eventual reveal of the actual murderer. It isn’t just the revelation and the mounting tension as Raines plots her escape, but the monologue the character is given about hands and their propensity for doing good or harm. Tone taps into that oily entitlement that remained just below the surface in his glossy romances with Jean Harlow in the early ‘30s.

It is here that line from Phantom Lady and the, if not compassionate than at least not heavily judgmental, eventual ascension of films from the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, and numerous others. Here is a film from 1944 that openly admitted its killer’s motivation as a sense of emasculation from the female sex, and that is fascinating as a bit of historical perspective. From the “dizzy spelled” killer here to Norman Bates and beyond, Phantom Lady winds up taking a central place in the depictions of the fragility of the male ego destroying the feminine body over perceived threats.

A minor noir about the ways in which family can be an albatross around your neck, The Brothers Rico is unremarkable if solid. Eddie (Richard Conte) is living the straight life in Miami when his brothers’ presence causes him to get pulled back into the criminal underworld. Much like Michael Corleone but without the operatic grandeur, Eddie is once again pulled back into the life. Hired by his former boss to warn his brothers about a bounty placed on their heads, Eddie zips across various locales for his brothers and unspools the central mystery as he goes along. There are double-crosses and shocking twists, Italian stereotypes abound, and a strong showing from Conte to recommend, but Karlson directs with a flat style that deflates everything. Where’s the pizzazz? Film is a visual medium and noir is a genre known for its embellishments, and The Brothers Rico is sadly lacking in that department. Its workman-like as a thriller, but mediocre as a noir.    

I’m not sure if I could dream-up a better swan song for Humphrey Bogart than that of hardboiled reporter blowing the lid off of fixing in boxing. It combines everything that had made Bogart a major star: a combination of weary cynicism and righteous morality, dripping in noirish signposts and a brutality that becomes quite absorbing. This is not to say that the film is an undervalued masterpiece awaiting rediscovery, but it is a perfectly solidly made little stunner.

Bogart’s sports journalist falls on hard times when his paper folds and he takes a job working as PR man for a boxing ring. He quickly discovers that the whole thing is fixed and has to figure out whether or not he reports the truth or lines his pockets. The Harder They Fall is fairly enthralling because of Bogart’s prodigious talent for displaying his character’s moral dilemmas and making you root for their better angels to win out.

Director Mark Robson alternates between providing the film a gritty verisimilitude and occasionally dipping into preachiness. Sure, documentary footage about the brain damage the sport can cause is worth exploration, but its presentation here is sermonizing. It feels out of step with everything else going on around it. Robson was always a better director when his budgets were tight and his production limited in scope. Think of his work for Val Lewton like Isle of the Dead or The 7^th Victim.

This occasional foray into by-the-numbers filmmaking is at odds with the brusquer elements that shine far brighter. It is this that keeps the film from achieving that next level. It’s also quite fetching to Jan Sterling, the poisonous wife of Ace in the Hole, perform as the righteous wife waiting for her husband to go straight, and she manages to hold her own against Rod Steiger quite well.

Even better are the fight scenes which clearly paved the way for Raging Bull in their realism and violence. It is when Steiger, as the sleazy manager, gets off the leash that so much of The Harder They Fall zips along with greater energy. It needed more of this and less of the patronizing and messaging. All things considered, this is a solid, fitting end for a career as titanic as Bogart’s and a reasonably good time.

Director Phil Karlson is something of a minor critic’s darling with his beloved noirs The Phenix City Story and Kansas City Confidential frequently getting thrown around on lists of the greatest examples of the genre. Even some of his lesser-known works exhibit a competency with mood and genre that other directors could only hope to master. Enter Tight Spot, a fun little showcase for Ginger Rogers towards the end of her film career with fine supporting work from Brian Keith and Edward G. Robinson.

Rogers plays a gangster moll released from prison and kept in police custody in hopes she’ll agree to testify against a notable crime boss. Robinson is the US attorney and Keith is the detective assigned to guard her. Naturally there’s a slow burning erotic chemistry between Keith and Rogers, but it’s really the Rogers show through and through.

Karlson and Rogers make for a great team as he needs a star capable of holding our interest throughout without the aide of varied locations or a lot of pictorial distraction. Much of the action takes place in the same hotel room and relies on her character, a floozy with a golden heart. This part seems tailor-made for her talents as an actress like it was the logical conclusion to her daffy dames and hoofing chorines from Gold Diggers of 1933 and 42^nd Street.

While not exactly an undiscovered jewel, Tight Spot is a minor film that is a good time. The ending is something of a compromise and that leaves a bit of a distaste as the final credits roll. Still, it’s a chance to spend with Rogers towards the end of an illustrious film career with palpable erotic chemistry with Keith. That’s worth quite a bit, as it turns out.

Here’s a little hidden gem in the film noir genre. A nasty little thing that depicts the dire state of mental health services in 1952 (sadly, not much has changed) and a disturbing portrait of a serial killer seeking methods to stop yet incapable of doing so, The Sniper is nearly radical in its presentation. There are no soulful, romantic, yet deeply cynical heroes or sordid, narcotically sensual dames to be found here. Instead, director Edward Dmytryk goes for something deeper than good guys vs bad guys, even if the script can get a little too preachy at times.

The is stopped dead by producer Stanley Kramer’s portent for sermonizing, here exemplified by a police psychologist that unloads moral certitude and psychoanalysis at the drop of a hat. His monologues function in a similar manner, of guide posting the audience towards a character’s psychology, as the summary in Psycho, but without that film’s higher level of artistry and one-time info dump. Still, there’s plenty to enjoy and recommend in The Sniper.  

Meet Eddie (Arthur Franz), a man obsessed with brunette women he cannot possess and guns them down for daring to arouse any type of feeling within him. His character is explained away perhaps too much as some of his central mystery and terror gets diluted as time goes on, but there’s no mistaking the escalating suspense and tension of each scene where he enacts his horrible ritual. We know that certain women are walking innocents awaiting the slaughter, but when and how anticlimactic some of their deaths are only underscores the perverse power of the film.

Dmytryk utilizes the streets of San Francisco as its own character and detailing the emotional state of its twisted subject matter. Eddie cannot walk on stable ground as he is always at an odd angle. The on-location shooting adds a lived-in texture to the proceedings that undergirds everything with an atmosphere approaching reality. The Sniper may not be a perfect movie, but there’s a lot here to recommend it.

After a four-year absence from the screen, Rita Hayworth returned with frequent co-star Glenn Ford in a film that feels like a rehash of Gilda with a healthy portion of various Hitchcock thrillers thrown in for flavor. The resulting films is a mess of generic plotting and beats that felt rusty in their joints long before this film. There’s also the pervasive sense that we had seen this before and better.

One can’t entirely fault Columbia for rushing out a product of its preeminent sex symbol, but they couldn’t find a better script to usher in her return. Affair in Trinidad has a convoluted plot that involves Ford and Hayworth as a photogenic couple and them working opposite gun runners or something, and it all adds up to nothing in particular. What you’ll really remember is Hayworth’s wanton dancing as her hair twirls around her and her hips provide erotic promises the rest of the film cannot keep. Hayworth burns up the screen and sometimes that’s a good enough excuse for a movie. Shame they couldn’t surround her with something more interesting.

Something of a dry run for On the Waterfront, The Mob is another expose of the subterranean connections lurking within the waterfront. Broderick Crawford stars as an undercover cop who witnesses a homicide and assumes a new identity to explore the dockworkers union for corruption and mob ties. He finds them, alright, and Crawford gets the chance to merge his comedic and dramatic personas in a film that jobs along at such a brisk pace that its various twists and turns don’t have time to register before it’s off unfolding more of them. It’s a fun way to spend 90 minutes and a solid enough ‘B’ entry in the film noir catalog, but don’t expect anything more from it.

A movie star remake of 1939’s proto-noir Blind Alley, The Dark Past substitutes that film’s sweaty intensity for a glossier approach. The results are a mixed bag as William Holden does well as the psychologically fraught prison escapee while Lee J. Cobb overacts, as was his wont, as the college professor-turned-interrogator. The Freudian psychobabble hasn’t aged particularly well, and there isn’t much meat on the film’s bones, either.

The nondescript direction, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this as a filmed play, and clunky dialog is part of the problem, but so is the uneven acting. A good director can take various types of actors and make them congeal into a whole or use the different styles as a method for generating dynamism between the characters. Cobb is an acquired taste that needs a big canvas to work on, and he worked best opposite steady hands like Henry Fonda or towering Method players like Marlon Brando, but this part seems ill-suited to his abilities and he comes across as pedantic.

It is the William Holden show as this gives him an early chance to stretch beyond the limited roles that he had been given up to this point. Billy Wilder would tap into the swirling torrents of darkness, cynicism, and pain lurking underneath his sexy exterior in Sunset Boulevard shortly, but The Dark Past is an early glimpse of his depths as an actor. He perhaps overdoes some of the contortions and fractured psychological torture, but his promise is all right there just waiting to be nurtured and given even greater chance.

Something of an ur-noir as the genre was still developing its rhythms while also pointing forward towards the more brutalist and suffocating films to come, Dead Reckoning is a second-tier noir that functions perfectly as an introduction for the genre. In production before the seminal essay which gave a name to a certain form of post-war cinema rapidly coalescing into a movement, here is a film suffused with moody lighting, a twisty-turny plot that borders on indecipherable, and a femme fatale to nearly out-do them all. It’s like noir straight from the source with all of the signposts and accoutrements.

The entire film follows a flashback structure, a noir staple in just a few years, as a broken man confesses to a priest about his sins. While a pervasive sense of guilt and emotional corruption is nearly endemic to noir, confessing to a priest is an extreme example of it. what follows is a story that twists and turns and is so convoluted that its nearly impossible to keep it all straight.

But the pleasure of so many of these densely plotted noirs is getting lost in the atmosphere of suffocating and doomed romance, a weary cynicism that merges into melodrama and bathed in tilted angles and expressionistic shadows. The inky frames dance around guys in trench coats, seemingly haloed by cigarette smoke, and femme fatales that slink around luring men into destruction with their throaty siren calls.

Dead Reckoning is so indulgent in all of these pieces and moods that it nearly tips itself into self-parody. Bogart isn’t doing his typical noirish tough guy thing, but rather a man who stumbles into the demimonde by accident rather than, say, Sam Spade who feels grown out of it. His actions are occasionally improbable and Bogart’s performance flirts with irony and self-parody.

He isn’t met with equal fervor by his leading lady, though. I just don’t seem to grasp Lizabeth Scott as a noir actress. She seems immobile and expressionless, but not with purpose. There doesn’t seem be anything below her surface and her character is clearly engineered as Lauren Bacall type. Bacall managed to project intelligence and steely resolve, often meeting and matching her male costars with her own brand of braggadocio and strength. Scott seems adrift and can’t quite pull off the sinister undertones required for the role.

Yet I still really enjoyed the sheer spectacle of the whole thing. Sure, it feels like an excessive exercise in style, but that’s sometimes exactly what you’re open and ready to experience. For all its problems, I still enjoyed Dead Reckoning quite a bit. It the most purplish of noir films, and sometimes that’s all you need in an immersion in genre excess from time to time.