David Janssen

Man-Trap

/ Colin McGuigan / 42 Comments

By the 1960s film noir had had its day, at least that’s what the critical consensus tells us. Anything after that gets variously referred to as post-noir, neo-noir etc. I don’t know, age has made me less interested in labels and I find myself paying only scant attention to them these days; they are useful for marketing purposes and the like, but I’m not selling anything. So, all of that is just in the nature of a disclaimer lest anyone should object to my hanging the tag film noir on Man-Trap (1961) – I did so because the subject matter, resolution, personnel and general feel pointed in that direction for me.

There’s a brief opening section, a prologue of sorts, which takes us back to 1952 and Korea. The purpose is to establish some facts that will influence the story to be told. We learn that Matt Jameson (Jeffrey Hunter) is a decorated war hero who got a medal pinned to his tunic and another piece of metal inserted in his skull while saving the life of his comrade in arms Vince Biskay (David Janssen). Years pass and Matt is trapped in an unsatisfying job and a marriage to the boss’ daughter Nina (Stella Stevens) that is even more toxic. He’s essentially been consigned to a suburban hell, an American nightmare of disillusionment and disenchantment. So, when Vince turns up, apparently out of the blue, brimming with roguish charm and a business proposition, Matt is moderately receptive to say the least. Vince has been hiring his services out to the highest bidder in Central America and in so doing has hit on a scheme to profit from political unrest and bag a cool $3 million dollars. As Matt’s relationship with the alcoholic and promiscuous Nina deteriorates, his desire for his secretary as well as the promise of full financial independence drives him to fall in with Vince’s scheme. All of this leads to a botched heist and a radical change of plan as the law, hitmen and domestic discord all begin to apply pressure.

Man-Trap is full up of the kind of bad choices, ill fortune and empty opportunities that characterize film noir. Perhaps it doesn’t have the classic look, but that arguably evolved over time anyway and the slightly flat, TV movie appearance of the visuals is not entirely out of keeping with other late era offerings. Aside from a couple of television shows, this was only Edmond O’Brien’s second feature as director after his collaboration with Howard W Koch on Shield for Murder. It’s only a partially successful effort though, the low budget is always noticeable and the script isn’t all it could be. On the plus side, the heist sequence and its aftermath through the streets of San Francisco is well filmed and quite exciting. O’Brien manages to fit in some imaginatively framed shots here and there, but the writing remains problematic – the screenplay is an adaptation of a John D MacDonald (Cape Fear) story, which maybe creates unrealistically high expectations. The high point is the heist and the momentum is never regained after it takes place. That wouldn’t have to be a problem if the film wound up faster, but there’s still a whole lot of storytelling to get through before the credits roll.

I also get the impression that either O’Brien or the screenwriter Ed Waters wanted to make the movie a critique of the state of middle class America as much as a thriller, but ended up with those elements orphaned and only partially addressed. Matt and Nina’s rotten marriage feeds into this but it’s the portrayal of the appalling neighbors which hammers it home. This suburban degeneracy is peopled by a gallery of grotesques, sad swingers who spend their time boozing, leering and gossiping. It’s a snapshot of the moral decay simmering below the surface of the backyard barbecues. Maybe  it’s the presence of Jeffrey Hunter that had me thinking how it was vaguely reminiscent of aspects of Martin Ritt’s No Down Payment, though that is a far superior movie on every level and indeed almost like a Douglas Sirk film with the varnish scraped off. Man-Trap can’t aspire to that and although these aspects are diverting enough, I feel it might have worked better all round had it avoided them and kept its focus tighter.

As for the acting, Jeffrey Hunter does reasonably well as the dissatisfied Matt, uncomfortable and unsettled for much of the running time, but the developments in the latter stages of the movie don’t succeed. Everything takes a detour into the type of ill-starred territory one would associate with a Cornell Woolrich tale yet it lacks the suspense that give such fatalistic fables their teeth. David Janssen, however, is excellent throughout. He nails the charm and duplicity that define the character of Vince, beguiling and bedeviling just about everyone he comes into contact with. On the other hand, the real weak link for me was Stella Stevens. She does well in the early scenes where her coquetry is to the fore, but the more her angst and desperation grow, the less convincing she becomes. In the end, it feels like a very transparent performance and it hurts the film as a result.

Man-Trap was a Paramount production and got a release in the US via Olive Films some years ago. That was a solid transfer, crisp and attractive in the way black and white ‘Scope movies tend to be. Olive are now defunct of course so I’m not sure how readily available the film is these days. All told, it’s a picture that works in places – Janssen’s characterization, the heist – but falls down due to scripting issues and some unsatisfactory work from the leading lady.

The Square Jungle

/ Colin McGuigan / 25 Comments

Hollywood in the 1950s seemed to fall in love with the idea of jungles, metaphorical ones at any rate. They ranged from the Asphalt to the Human, from the Blackboard to the Female, and those titles always carried at least a hint of film noir about them. The Square Jungle (1955) has been marketed as noir, but I don’t believe it fits in that category. Sure the trajectory followed by the protagonist takes a detour into the darker corners of despair and disgust, but it is ultimately headed in a different direction and is arguably best approached as a sporting melodrama that charts the sometimes painful journey from hubris to humility.

Eddie Quaid (Tony Curtis) is a man with ambitions, albeit modest ones at first. He’s working as a grocery store clerk and doing his best to offer moral support to his father, Pat (Jim Backus), who is weighed down by an unholy trinity of widowhood, unemployment and alcohol dependence. Desperate to haul his old man back from the brink after he’s been arrested for a drunken assault, and smarting from the consequent break-up of his relationship with Julie Walsh (Pat Crowley), he stumbles into the world of prizefighting. Since Eddie is clearly showing aptitude for the fight game, his father along with a sympathetic cop, McBride (Paul Kelly), persuade him to give it a go as a professional boxer. Under the watchful tutelage of Bernie Browne (Ernest Borgnine), an atypically learned and thoughtful man who is almost Socratic in his approach to training, Eddie (or Packy Glennon as he is known in the ring) rises fast through the ranks to earn a shot at the world title. This all occurs in the first twenty minutes or so of the movie, cutting through a lot of potentially tedious build-up and allowing the focus to rest firmly on Eddie’s period at the top, the three fights and their consequences that define him as a champion and, more importantly, as a man.

Many a boxing drama has focused on the corruption and underhanded shenanigans taking place in that shadowy world beyond the stark and floodlit square where the modern gladiators jog out to do battle with the promise of riches, glamor and celebrity always just one punch away. Yet there is little if any of that on display in The Square Jungle. Instead, it is replaced by a kind of ragamuffin romanticism, where pride, honor and self-respect are put to the test and are seen to win the day as opposed to the self-regarding venality that one normally associates with the fights.

I guess director Jerry Hopper would be classified as a journeyman, although that is not a term I am especially fond of due to that air of drabness it carries with it. He is never going to be regarded as a great and there isn’t any one film he made that commands our attention. Then of course there is also the fact that he worked so extensively in television, with many more credits in that medium than in the cinema, and that was rarely a career route that brought critical praise, or which permitted the creative breathing space essential to it for that matter. For all that though, I don’t think I have watched anything Hopper made which I didn’t enjoy on some level and those often undervalued television credits include some exceptionally fine work. One welcome feature of The Square Jungle is the pacing, the story maintains a strong sense of forward momentum all the way through, and I’ve already mentioned the brisk and efficient way the early part of the story is handled. Naturally, a boxing film needs to have well staged fight scenes and I think that is the case here, with the three major bouts being shot and edited in such a way as to impart a kind of brutal intimacy. The aftermath of each successive fight is vital to our understanding of the emotional, and indeed the spiritual, development of Eddie in particular. It’s quite subtly achieved given the nature of the subject matter and the brash milieu of fighters, trainers, promoters and sundry hangers-on. Personally, I was taken by the marvelous stillness that Hopper brought to the end of the fateful third fight, an all-encompassing silence that descends abruptly, the gravity of it all perfectly captured in the terseness of the referee and the wordless, tear-stained anguish of one woman’s face.

Eddie Quaid/Packy Glennon was the second time Tony Curtis would play a fighter, having already done so a few years earlier in Joseph Pevney’s Flesh and Fury. It is a good performance, charming throughout and moving smoothly from the open, selfless young man of the early scenes to the conceited and vaguely boorish champion he becomes before finally attaining wisdom and warmth, and winning a far more valuable prize in the process. Pat Crowley is quietly supportive as the girl he loves and who helps anchor him.

However, this is not a love story, but rather a look at how men can reach an accommodation with themselves, with their own masculinity in all its forms. As such, the relationship Eddie has with his father is a key one, the older man – who has tasted failure many times – living vicariously through his son’s success and the way that impacts on the younger man. Jim Backus was good in that kind of role. I find I tend to hold onto my first conscious impressions of actors and in the case of Backus that would have been his part as James Dean’s father in Rebel Without a Cause, so he is someone I automatically associate with weak but well-meaning figures. Then there is Ernest Borgnine, who could do no wrong around this time, as the saturnine philosopher carrying his own private guilt. In smaller roles, Paul Kelly, David Janssen, John Day, John Marley (long before he would wake up next to a horse’s head in The Godfather) and Leigh Snowden all make telling contributions. There is also a very brief cameo from former heavyweight champion Joe Louis.

Gradually, it is becoming easier to catch up with Universal-International titles that had long been hard to see. The Square Jungle has been released on Blu-ray in the US by Kino in one of their film noir collections and I’d like to think it might turn up in Europe or the UK at some point.It is a solid boxing drama with an attractive cast and a reliable director, and it’s well worth watching.

Warning Shot

/ Colin McGuigan / 31 Comments

As a fan of film noir, I’m always a little saddened to think  of how it gradually faded from cinema screens. Then again, that very briefness is part of its allure, those two decades or thereabouts of slipping in and out of virtual and literal shadows, of exploring the moral ambiguities of life. Of course, the point is that it did fade as opposed to completely disappearing – it never really went away (arguably the themes have a timeless universality which precludes that possibility) and by the 1970s we were simultaneously reassessing the phenomena and witnessing the resurgence of what would come to be termed neo-noir.  This leaves us with a type of cultural no-man’s land between these two eras, one which is often a fascinating place to take a spin around. A lot of people will tell you that the classic period of film noir drew to a close with Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. As such, it seems somehow appropriate to look at Warning Shot (1967), based on another Whit Masterson pulp story, as an example of one of these linking works.

A stakeout in Los Angeles on a foggy night, two weary cops sat in their car hoping to get a line on a killer, and hoping just as hard to get relieved and head home to spend the evening like regular human beings.  One of them, Sergeant Valens (David Janssen), goes for another look around and calls out a warning to a figure he glimpses exiting the apartment complex under surveillance. The figure bolts, the cop gives chase, another warning, a gun is drawn, and one fatal shot is fired. As the body is hauled out of the swimming pool it plunged into, the alarming fact that the victim was a respected doctor is revealed, not to mention the more troubling fact that no gun is turned up. Here we have a standard noir setup, a guy we have seen acting according to the rules is about to come in for a roasting by the media and, with all the available evidence suggesting his guilt, he’s on the point of seeing the law he serves focus all its attention and resources on him. His unhappy personal life and, more significantly, his previous near fatal run in with a shooter conspire to further darken his character in the public perception. With his badge suspended and his departmental favors running out, Valens is left with only one realistic option – prove that the victim was something other than the blameless philanthropist he’s been portrayed as.

The first thing to grab one’s attention as the opening credits play is the depth of the cast. David Janssen, fresh off what I continue to believe was perhaps the finest TV show ever made – The Fugitive, takes the lead and he’s a good pick for the part of the fall-guy cop. Those years spent playing Richard Kimble stood him in good stead, honing his edgy self-awareness and that trademark cautious uncertainty had become second nature by this stage. Interestingly, Ed Begley, frequently cast as loud, hectoring and unpleasant types (12 Angry Men springs readily to mind here), is instead handed a more sympathetic part as Valens’ superior.

After that the list of names is impressive indeed: Eleanor Parker, George Sanders, Lillian Gish, Sam Wanamaker, Stefanie Powers, Keenan Wynn, Joan Collins, George Grizzard, Walter Pidgeon, Carroll O’Connor. And there we have both a strength and a weakness of this movie. Frankly, it’s natural to want to see as much of these people as possible yet it doesn’t work out that way. The bulk of these performers appear in what are essentially cameos – popping in to add another piece to the puzzle Valens is racing to solve and then dropping out as abruptly, leaving the viewer wishing so many of these roles could have been expanded just a little more.

If there was a glut of talent in front of the cameras, there wasn’t exactly a shortage behind them either. Buzz Kulik may not have had a huge number of cinema credits to  boast of but his television work was extensive and his name turns up on a succession of well-known shows, not the least of which is The Twilight Zone. Some names just naturally stand out and that’s surely the case with cinematographer Joseph Biroc, whose long career stretched right back to It’s a Wonderful Life and included work in every conceivable genre. The movie can at times take on a slightly flat, TV feel but I reckon it’s down to Biroc’s skill that it rises above this as often as not. The mood of the whole piece is further enhanced by a typically classy Jerry Goldsmith score. And while we’re on the subject of notable names, it would be extraordinarily remiss not to mention veteran costume designer Edith Head’s stylish contribution.

 

Warning Shot was released on DVD in the US by Paramount years ago but seems to have gone out of print and, consequently, risen in price. I have an Italian DVD which is completely English-friendly and looks very nice; it is bright and colorful with a tight and smooth widescreen picture and no print damage I was aware of.  In terms of story and mood, I reckon this movie bridges the gap between classic film noir and its soon to be rebooted cinematic progeny. That said, it’s a flawed production overall and the attempt to pack it out with familiar faces ends up hurting it more than helping it – the succession of brief interludes stimulate the appetite like a teaser for a much-anticipated movie but you wind up feeling slightly dissatisfied when you realize that’s all you’re going to get. Generally, it’s an entertaining thriller, taking a sidelong look at mid-late 60s society, rising above its limitations in some respects but, paradoxically, finding itself bound by some others of its own making in the process.