Directors

Undertow

/ Colin McGuigan / 61 Comments

In an era where entertainment gives the impression of becoming ever more bloated and unwieldy, where books seem to be sold by the page count and thus by weight like some indigestible stodge, where even movies which tell essentially pulp stories have running times that defy both logic and the endurance of the human body, it is a true joy to watch a film which is tight and trim enough to take care of business in just an hour and ten minutes. That ought to be a recommendation in itself yet Undertow (1949) has the added bonus of being a remarkably entertaining film noir, William Castle’s best effort in the genre/style in fact.

The war as a watershed – how many times has one come across that particular bromide? Yet its essential truth is undeniable. The image of the returning veteran, those men who dreamed of better days amid the waking nightmare of their years of service, is one familiar to the noir audience. Such men immediately draw sympathy by virtue of the sacrifices they made and this adds an edge to the dangers and depravities they confront on their return home. By 1949 the war was already slipping back into the misty corners of the past, the world was rushing ahead and wasn’t necessarily in any mood to slow down and wait for men trying to catch up with events that had bounded four years and more ahead of them. Tony Reagan (Scott Brady) is introduced as a classic postwar character. He’s a veteran with a vaguely shady past who has grown as a result of his experiences and is now focused on cementing a future for himself and the woman he hopes to make his wife. He has just bought a share in the hunting lodge business of a fallen comrade in arms, and is on his way to Chicago to propose to his fiancée Sally (Dorothy Hart). His last evening in Reno sees him briefly hooking up with a pal from his gambling past Danny Morgan (John Russell), as well as making the brief acquaintance of vacationing schoolteacher Ann McKnight (Peggy Dow). All of these people will cross his path when he lands in Chicago and also lands in deep trouble.  The classic noir protagonist frequently finds himself skewered on the horns of a dilemma, trapped somewhere between the pull of his past and typically bad choices going forward. This certainly fits Tony Reagan, a man who was told by crime boss, and Sally’s uncle, Big Jim Lee to stay out of Chicago and away from his niece.

There’s to be no hero’s welcome for Reagan; on his arrival at the airport he’s met by cops who run him downtown for a bit of friendly advice from the precinct captain, namely that he shouldn’t waste any time unpacking. That he ignores this tip shouldn’t come as any surprise, nor should the fact that he is soon slugged, blindfolded and shot, all as a prelude to a frame that looks like fitting him very snugly. If the movie has a weakness it stems from the way it sets itself up as a kind of whodunit where there’s no great mystery with regard to the actual culprit. In this case certain character traits as well as the way a vital piece of information was only available to one person don’t so much point the finger at as turn the spotlight full force on one individual, and when you see who that is then the rest of it kind of falls into place. Still, none of that really matters as much of the pleasure derived from following Reagan on his nighttime odyssey through Chicago trying to keep a half a step ahead of the cops, calling in favors and only realizing the full extent of his peril at the last moment.

William Castle, like all studio era directors, worked in just about every genre but the bulk of his work fell into three categories: horror, crime and westerns. The horror movies have traditionally gained more attention from critics and fans alike, which arguably says as much for the enduring popularity of that genre as it does for the movies themselves. If I’m being honest, I don’t believe the quality of Castle’s films overall is commensurate with the level of attention they have received down the years. That may come across as somewhat curmudgeonly yet it’s not my intention to do so – I like Castle’s films for the most part and find the majority of them entertaining, just not necessarily always that good. Still, his better work does stand out and I’d have no hesitation in placing Undertow among those better pictures. At this stage in his career there was none of the gimmickry and clowning that would come to be seen as characteristic of the man. Instead, what we get is a compact and atmospheric piece of budget filmmaking that punches well above its weight.

Shakespeare had Caesar remark that Cassius had a lean and hungry look and was therefore dangerous. Perhaps John Russell ought to have been cast as Cassius then at some point in his career for he surely fitted that description. Even though he had heroic leading roles on TV  in both Soldier of Fortune and then Lawman, his villainous parts on the big screen tend to be memorable and carry an edge of authenticity to them. He turned in a strong performance in De Toth’s Man in the Saddle and I watched him a while back in Hell Bound and was again impressed. The latter has that typical mean streak that can be found in Bel-Air movies and Russell managed to embody that successfully. Scott Brady was a suitable pick for the lead too, only a few years out of WWII service himself, he had the right combination of toughness and sympathy to be believable as someone with underworld connections but also with the nous to realize his future lay in a different direction. Bruce Bennett’s reassuring presence as the conflicted friend adds solidity to the supporting cast; his well played scenes with his boss and particularly the short interlude in the basement workroom of his home help to ground the story. The two female roles were filled by actresses who had very short screen careers. Peggy Dow appeared for a mere three years between 1949 and 1952 , while Dorothy Hart stretched it out a little longer, running from 1947 to 1952 in features and a couple more on TV. Both had a number of good movies to their credit with Dow possibly squeezing more memorable work in during her brief time as an actress.

Undertow acts as a noteworthy example of the kind of well crafted crime and noir movies Universal-International was capable of producing. It’s gratifying that so many of these are now accessible and can be viewed in good quality, something fans of the studio’s output could only dream of a few years ago. Already released in the US in one of Kino’s box sets, the movie is getting an individual release in the UK ( Amazon link – As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases) with plenty of supplementary features via Powerhouse/Indicator in January.

Gun Fury

/ Colin McGuigan / 91 Comments

Every time I view a Raoul Walsh movie I find I’m struck by one thought: why don’t I watch more of his movies more often? It says something for a director whose work is so diverse and spread over so many decades that this should occur to me so consistently – in short, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Walsh movie that didn’t leave me thirsty for another. Gun Fury (1953) is a standard pursuit and revenge western, but it scrutinizes other themes such as pacifism, isolationism, the hold exerted by the past, and a flirtation with, as opposed to a full embrace of, the classic concept of redemption.

The setup is quite simple. A stagecoach headed west is carrying among its passengers one Jennifer Ballard (Donna Reed), a woman journeying to meet her fiance Ben Warren (Rock Hudson) in order to get married and then continue on their way to California and the prospect of a future ranching. They find themselves sharing space with several others, ostensibly traveling on business of one kind or another. Before long these supposed gentlemen are revealed to be Frank Slayton (Phil Carey) and Jess Burgess (Leo Gordon), a pair of outlaws making the journey simply to facilitate the robbery of the stagecoach by the rest of their gang. In the course of the holdup Warren is shot and while merely wounded he is mistakenly thought to be dead and so abandoned. Slayton has set his sights on Jennifer and brings her along as they set out on the run south to Mexico. The pursuit element is therefore set in motion as Warren goes off in search of his woman, while the revenge aspect is strengthened by the fact Slayton and Burgess quarrel over the decision to abduct the woman, resulting in the latter being bound and left to die in the shadow of circling vultures. His rescue by Warren leads to the formation of an initially uneasy alliance, one held together by the promise of taking Slayton as the prize. Support comes from an unlikely quarter, an Indian called Johash (Pat Hogan) who is also hungry for revenge on Slayton whom he blames for the death of his sister. And so the chase is on, with the outlaws unaware to begin that anyone is on their trail.

Gun Fury was written for the screen by Roy Huggins, the creator of Maverick, The Rockford Files and, more significantly, The Fugitive. The previous year Huggins had both written and directed the very fine Randolph Scott vehicle Hangman’s Knot, also starring Donna Reed as it happens. Gun Fury proves to be a pacy and surprisingly tough little western which utilizes the revenge motif well. All of the characters are essentially driven by a desire for revenge of one kind or another – Warren for the treatment of his woman, Burgess for his the grisly fate planned for him, Johash for his family honor, later a Mexican girl (Roberta Haynes) for her betrayal, and even Slayton himself seems bent on settling scores with life itself for the losses inflicted by the Civil War. As with the best written westerns, revenge for all of these characters is ultimately shown to be a hollow and unworthy goal. The redemption strand is mainly seen in the character played by Leo Gordon, although it has to be said this not as successfully executed as it might be. Personally, I feel this thread ends up being undermined by the developments that take place in the final act. Others may be less swayed by that though. While the script by Huggins offers much food for thought, the direction of Walsh powers it all along. There is never any sense of drift and, as ever, the director skillfully juggles the character development with regular bursts of action, and all shot against a primal Sedona backdrop.

Rock Hudson is credible in the lead, catching something of the driven quality that Anthony Mann would coax out of James Stewart in their western collaborations, even if it doesn’t quite attain those levels of intensity. Hudson holds onto that hopefulness that defines his character, a feature that one would expect to find in a young man on the cusp of a new life in California. It is through Hudson’s Ben Warren that the pacifist and isolationist elements are explored. He has been strongly influenced by the recent Civil War, sickened by the wholesale killing and no doubt that would have struck a chord with audiences less than a decade after WWII and right at the tail end of the Korean War. His isolationist stance – he refers early on to his ranch being bounded on the west by the ocean and on the east by the river, and he claims to have no interest in anything happening on the other side of that river – is tested and thrown back at him as he seeks out allies in his race to catch up with the outlaws. Rebuffed time and again by people too scared or just apathetic and self-absorbed, he is left with no option but to face up to his own former beliefs and reassess them. Finding a way to reconcile a desire for peaceful coexistence with the realization that a civilized man cannot simply retreat behind the barricades of personal interest is a complex theme to examine; it’s to the credit of all involved that it is articulated so smoothly within the framework of the movie.

Phil Carey never quite made it as a lead player. Columbia was casting him in some pretty good pictures around this time, but mainly as the second lead and sometimes in rather unsympathetic parts. The character of Frank Slayton was not what anyone could term attractive – he’s not only a killer but a sadistic one to boot, leaving one man to perish horribly in the wilderness and having another of his gang staked out on the ground and trampled to death for an act of betrayal, and that’s before we get to his frankly abusive treatment of both Donna Reed and Roberta Haynes. The paradox of course is that he regards himself in a wholly different light, as a dispossessed gentleman craving only a return to the gracious living he believes he was robbed of and which is his due. The following year Donna Reed would star alongside Carey again in Phil Karlson’s They Rode West.  Her role here is better than that unfocused effort and she would go on to do further good work in westerns over the next couple of years first in another Roy Huggins scripted movie Three Hours to Kill and also more impressively for John Sturges in Backlash.

Leo Gordon is such a welcome presence in just about anything. Frequently cast as the one-dimensional villain, it’s a pleasure to see him given a more nuanced role. I’m not convinced that the character we have followed on screen would have behaved in the way he does in the final act, but that’s not the fault of the actor. Lee Marvin typically did a great deal with minor characters in small parts in his early films. Some actors have what it takes to make their mark on screen, something largely indefinable but instantly recognizable too. Marvin had that something. The movie business is rife with “what if” scenarios and always has been. There’s some irony in the fact that  Roberta Haynes tested and apparently came close to being cast in From Here to Eternity, in the role which would ultimately go to Donna Reed and for which she would win an Oscar. That’s Hollywood for you! Also featured in a supporting role as one of the outlaw gang is perennial heavy Neville Brand.

Gun Fury is a mid range Raoul Walsh movie in my opinion, which means it’s a good film by any standard. Plots which are relatively straightforward yet carry within them an abundance of ideas that are put forward in an intelligent and adult way are very appealing. I have always liked this film and I reckon it is the kind that should go down well with most fans of the classic western.

Back from Eternity

/ Colin McGuigan / 31 Comments

If there are really only seven basic plots or stories then that probably explains why remakes, which are practically as old as cinema itself, are so common. From a business perspective, something that has proven to be successful once may well do so again so the temptation is always there to take another trip back to the creative well. In among the virtual ocean of remakes there is to be found a more exclusive subset, that of a director redoing his own earlier films. Filmmakers as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock, Raoul Walsh and George Marshall did this over the course of their careers. In two of those cases ,The Man Who Knew Too Much and Colorado Territory, I know I like the later films better and if I wouldn’t go quite so far with Marshall’s Destry, I still feel it’s a worthwhile movie. In 1956 John Farrow remade his own Five Came Back (1939) as Back to Eternity, but I can make no comment on how it stacks up against its first iteration for the simple reason that I’ve not seen the earlier version.

The “stranded in the wasteland” story is one which is ripe with possibilities. It promises danger, excitement and suspense, it allows for drama to grow out of shifting group dynamics, it acts as a platform for endurance and ingenuity, and it can also easily blend in themes of spirituality and even notions of redemption. Back from Eternity manages to combine all of those elements in its sub-100 minute running time. The first half hour or so is given over to the kind of character introductions that are necessary. Thus we see the eager new pilot (Keith Andes) and the older flyer (Robert Ryan) weighed down by the accumulation of a lifetime’s emotional baggage as well as a fondness for the whiskey bottle. There is a glamorous refugee (Anita Ekberg) now discarded by her shady lover and on her was to an even shadier future in what sounds like a South American bordello. Among the others there’s a brace of couples, one young and contemplating marriage (Gene Barry & Phyllis Kirk) and the other old and devoted (Beulah Bondi & Cameron Prud’homme), and a political assassin on his way to face execution (Rod Steiger). When a violent storm forces their plane down in the middle of an unexplored jungle in headhunter country, the real drama kicks in. They say that a crisis brings out the best and the worst in people and that is seen to be so here, selfishness and selflessness clashing like a couple of ethical knights in a jousting match of the conscience. Casting people back into a primal landscape and circumstances peels away their civilized veneer and reveals the true characters beneath. Everything comes to a head when the plane has been patched up but only to the point where it is capable of safely taking off and staying in the air with just five people on board. The question naturally arises as to who will go and who will stay, and all the while the unseen threat in the jungle inches ever closer.

Back from Eternity was scripted by Jonathan Latimer, a man who wrote a good many screenplays which John Farrow directed. He was a fine novelist too and his Bill Crane mysteries are a real delight and are highly recommended. As a novelist he was adept at weaving a rich thread of humor into his hard-boiled setups, however there is none of that on display here. Instead, there is a strong flavor of what I think of as Farrow’s influence. He was a director who frequently evinced a noticeably spiritual side to his work and it is clear to see in this movie. Aside from one overtly religious scene, there are the allied themes of sacrifice and redemption coursing through the fabric of the narrative. This is placed front and center in the decisions taken and the character arcs traced by the elderly Spangler couple and Rod Steiger’s Vasquel. It can be glimpsed too in the change of heart experienced by Jesse White’s former hood, in the renewed hope and motivation which stirs in Ryan’s disillusioned pilot, and also in the maternal protectiveness that a new found sense of responsibility draws forth in Ekberg.

All of this lends substance to the story, although it should be noted that it doesn’t arrive at the expense of the tension or danger that sustains the interest of the viewer. William C Mellor does some fine things with the lighting in the airplane and jungle scenes and I feel Farrow was wise to keep the headhunters off screen throughout. We only see the results of their handiwork on a couple of occasions and the rest of the time their oppressive presence is indicated only by the softly ominous beat of drums and a brief glimpse of a hand brushing aside some vegetation – out of sight yet very much on our minds.

What then of the acting? Rod Steiger is nothing if not interesting, a performer steeped in the Method and one who has garnered both fulsome praise and scathing criticism. Humphrey Bogart said his technique was of the “scratch your ass and mumble” variety, yet he was nominated for an Oscar in On the Waterfront, won one for In the Heat of the Night and did some remarkable things on screen in The Pawnbroker. Like him or loathe him, he was a talent, but he too often abandoned all restraint and seemed to tear movies apart with the sheer artificiality of his work. Fortunately, he holds himself in check in Back from Eternity, operating within his boundaries instead of trashing them. His one indulgence is his adoption of a frankly bizarre accent, a weird type of strangled German or middle European effort that calls unnecessary attention to itself. Robert Ryan is very subdued as the pilot, disenchanted and with a cool noirish cynicism, but never despondent. Anita Ekberg is largely decorative, a pleasingly pneumatic presence and Phyllis Kirk comes over rather starched and stuffy in comparison. Gene Barry is pretty good too as a slick type who quickly sees the polish wear off when he’s in jeopardy – it’s not at all a sympathetic role and I always admire actors who have the guts to take on that kind of part. Generally, the cast turn in professional work and all of them have their moments.

Back from Eternity was released by Warner Brothers on DVD as an Archive title. It looks solid throughout, presenting a crisp widescreen image which is in good shape overall. As I said at the top of this piece, I’m not in a position to draw comparisons with Farrow’s first go at telling this story, but I hope to get to that movie at some stage. Anyway, I’m a believer in taking films on their own terms and merits, and I can only say that I enjoyed this one.

Viewing Notes – A Month with Hitchcock

/ Colin McGuigan / 87 Comments

Without having initially planned to do so, I ended up watching a selection of movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock all through September. I tried to choose those titles I had not seen for quite some time and have been jotting down and recording my thoughts on each in brief as I’ve gone along. Having done so, I figured I might as well assemble them here as an end of month round-up. So here goes:

The Birds (1963)

It’s been many years since I last watched this and I’d forgotten just how well constructed it is, not to mention its technical proficiency bearing in mind the era.
That long, slow build-up is the work of a deeply confident filmmaker. It’s never boring or tedious and the gradual, estrogen-fueled tension, with all the cats among the pigeons, is drawn ever tighter in tiny but finely judged increments. When the full chaos is finally unleashed in the apocalyptic latter half Rod Taylor does get to flex bit of muscle, literally and figuratively.

Under Capricorn (1949)

Very much lesser Hitchcock, a movie which barely anyone ever has a good word to say for. Well, I’ll at least say that it is handsomely shot, courtesy of Jack Cardiff, and the acting is fine even if Michael Wilding does lay the whimsy on with a trowel at times.
But yes, it is a problematic movie. And that is largely because it tells a story which is thin, not uninteresting in itself but too thin for its running time. It needed to be trimmed and compressed, which would have been hard to do because of the other great flaw – the director’s insistence at the time on experimenting with long takes. It hamstrung the previous year’s Rope (though that one has other issues dragging it down too) and was a technique that was antithetical to Hitchcock’s style.

Rope (1948)

I’ve never especially liked this. The technical ambition is admirable, and I’ve always been somewhat hypnotized by the seamless skill involved in the gradual change in the lighting of the studio bound skyline as the tale unfolds in real time. However, the whole continuous take conceit imposes huge limitations on the cast and crew and the process must have been a genuine pain for everyone involved. As with Under Capricorn, the entire business works to undermine the director’s natural strengths.

The biggest problem I have with the movie though is the coldness and indeed the malice at its core. Nobody aside from Cedric Hardwicke’s anxious and compassionate father comes out of it well. That’s not to say it’s badly played of course. Granger could do that weak sister act with his eyes closed and Dall has the clinical and supercilious aspects down pat too – he always seemed to manage that though and there’s a hint of that inherent unlikeability also found in Laurence Harvey in all his parts. James Stewart nails the creeping suspicion that blossoms into horror and then outrage and (self?) disgust. But his character is not really sympathetic either – a man of his intelligence ought to have realized the kind of seeds his intellectual posing was planting.

Psycho (1960)

It’s probably 15 years, maybe even more, since I last watched this. The first half always worked best for me and I still feel the same. The paranoia and gnawing guilt of Janet Leigh’s Marion is perfectly encapsulated in the minimalist style of that whole opening section – the rain, the ever more frantic musing, Herrmann’s nervy score and those seemingly permanent close ups of Leigh’s huge, expressive eyes.

And then there’s that frankly sublime sequence in the motel cabin. Cagey and uncomfortable, pathetically flirtatious and taut all at the same time. I reckon it’s the best scene in the entire movie. What follows in the last hour engages me less. It remains visually astounding and technically flawless, but too much of the artful subtlety drains away with the bath water. It still grips and shocks at times, just much more conventionally and it never again approaches the emotional precipice that was teased by the interaction amid stuffed birds, sandwiches and milk.

Nevertheless, it is still undeniably a great piece of cinema, the heights approached and attained in that first hour and the total assurance of a director genuinely in love with his medium are enough to ensure that.

Lifeboat (1944)

A wartime propaganda picture from Hitchcock. Still, being a Hitchcock movie there’s more to it than that – by a circuitous route it winds up as something of a celebration of cohesiveness. Just about every stratum of western society is represented, from Henry Hull’s super rich kingpin to John Hodiak’s blue collar revolutionary, from the stoicism of Canada Lee to the louche decadence of Tallulah Bankhead. All the disparate characters are by turns gulled, threatened and finally drawn together by the malignant presence of Walter Slezak’s cool and cunning Nazi.

It’s another of the director’s challenges to himself, an exercise in the potential of confinement that makes up for in intensity what it arguably lacks in suspense. Alongside the more eye-catching dramatics of those further up the cast list, it’s satisfying to watch the slow development of a gentle romance between fairly regular Hitchcock collaborator Hume Cronyn and Mary Anderson, an actress who never much graduated beyond supporting roles except perhaps in the rarely seen but rather good Chicago Calling.

Torn Curtain (1966)

This is the point at which Hitchcock’s decline can be discerned. This Cold War thriller starts out as a double-cross drama where the bluff is drawn out too long before turning into a more successful cross-country chase, the kind of affair Hitchcock could make with his eyes closed.

The first half of the movie misses more than it hits, the brief bookstore scene in Copenhagen errs just on the right side of oddness, but the drab grey/green palate when events move to East Germany reflects the dullness of much of that section, not helped by a listless and detached performance by Paul Newman and an uncomfortable looking Julie Andrews. Some of it does work though – I like the entire build up to the farmhouse scene where the Stasi spook Gromek is laboriously disposed of, and Ludwig Donath is spikily entertaining as a caricatured professor.

The bus ride/pursuit has its moments, helped by John Addison’s slightly eccentric score and an earnest David Opatoshu. There are a few late flourishes too – the hiding among a crowd/creating a distraction ploy is revisited for at least the fourth time – off the top of my head variations thereof are employed in The 39 Steps, Saboteur and North By Northwest if not more.

So, a mixed bag all told. I guess it does more wrong than it does right yet I’ve always had a greater fondness for it than it probably deserves.

War Arrow

/ Colin McGuigan / 28 Comments

Something about the mid-range westerns that Universal-International was producing in the 1950s points to that hard to define quality which makes the genre so attractive. It’s partially down to the look, the color and locations, and partially the no nonsense style of storytelling. It’s not always easy to come up with a movie that offers entertainment while quietly making some point about a given issue. Universal-International movies often managed this, and the westerns directed by George Sherman during his time at the studio from the late 1940s on are a good example of this. In particular, his films that give some prominence to Indian or Native American affairs sidestep the ponderous or pretentious  pitfalls that have bedeviled many a well intentioned movie. War Arrow (1953) will not be found on any ‘best of’ lists and there’s no reason why it should; it breaks no new ground, nor does it do anything especially startling. However, the film is enjoyable, it uses its strong cast effectively, and Sherman’s characteristic sympathy for the Native American is subtly and seamlessly blended into the narrative.

War Arrow is one of those westerns that takes its inspiration from some real historical event, in this instance the recruitment of Seminole tribesmen as cavalry scouts. I say inspiration here because it is a movie after all, not some attempt to represent real history. The film starts out with Major Brady (Jeff Chandler) and two sergeants (Noah Beery Jr and Charles Drake) on their way to Fort Clark, Texas. They have been sent to help in the struggle to contain the raiding parties of Kiowa that have been sweeping the state. They come across the grisly aftermath of one of those raids, with corpses and a burnt out wagon strewn like broken and discarded playthings on the scorched grass. Quite what three individuals are supposed to achieve where the full complement of a fort have failed is anybody’s guess. Their arrival is greeted with some suspicion by the local commander Colonel Meade (John McIntire), a feeling that will gradually be distilled into open hostility as he sees his approach sidelined and his authority not quite usurped but certainly undermined by Brady’s willingness to think outside the box. Meade is an adherent of the West Point manual, rigid in his views of both military tactics and the local tribes. Brady, on the other hand, is an opportunist at heart, a man who is prepared to take a more unorthodox path, and to improvise where necessary. His plan is to employ the kind of guerilla methods the Kiowa themselves have perfected, fighting fire with fire in a sense. And he’s keen to go a step further, to use the dispossessed and dislocated Seminoles as a sort of semi-official, roving commando. As the friction between the two schools of military thought grows in intensity there is another complication elbowing its way into Brady’s life.  The widow (Maureen O’Hara) of one one of the fort’s officers who is missing presumed dead has caught his eye. In itself, that ought not to represent a great problem were it not for the fact that she appears uneasy, and perhaps unconvinced, over the fate of her husband, while the frankly radical daughter (Suzan Ball) of the Seminole chief is also showing signs of interest.

Sherman was a director who knew the genre and how to bring in a movie according to the studio’s requirements. Universal-International seemed to suit him and his time there saw him do some of his best work. I won’t claim that War Arrow represents him at his best, but it is an example of how he could produce a solid piece of entertainment from fairly ordinary material and get worthwhile work from his cast. His depiction of the Native Americans is as sympathetic as one would expect – granted the Kiowa do not come off well and act as bogeyman villains open to outside manipulation, but the Seminole fare much better. The script is by John Michael Hayes, someone who hadn’t much of a pedigree in westerns and who I tend to think of more in relation to his work for Hitchcock in the 50s, and it presents the Seminole in a strong light. They come across as indispensable to the success of the campaign planned out by Brady. They are seen as gutsy and committed, and a good deal more honorable than the frequently petty and hidebound Meade and his junior officers. Sherman gives plenty of time to this aspect, and shoots the battle scenes and skirmishes in a way that is both exciting and which highlights the contributions of the Seminole.

Jeff Chandler typically was good in military roles, either in westerns or contemporary war movies. Gravitas and authority came easily to him and these qualities could be tempered by thoughtfulness, inner conflict or iron determination as required. The part of Major Brady is a relatively straightforward one, an easy run out for him in essence and he carries it off with his usual smooth accomplishment. Maureen O’Hara made a number of films for George Sherman, including the director’s last Big Jake, with variable results. Personally, I think the actress did her best work in the genre for Ford, but this isn’t a bad effort and she is better in the latter stages where her character is given a little more depth. Suzan Ball was the other female star and she is marvelously forthright and assertive, although probably anachronistically so. It’s an attractively spirited performance and serves to emphasize the cruel tragedy of her short life – cancer would claim her just two years later at the age of 22. I think it’s fair to say that any movie benefits from the presence of John McInitre, a class act who could play it mean or sympathetic and who manages to inhabit the obduracy of his character here. Charles Drake and Noah Beery Jr add some lightness to proceedings, while Henry Brandon – still a few years away from his most memorable role as Scar in The Searchers – is the Seminole chief Maygro, with Dennis Weaver and Jay Silverheels filling the other native parts.

It always pleases me to sit down with a George Sherman film, especially one of his westerns. Even if War Arrow isn’t among his top titles, it still shows his professionalism and his sensibilities as a director are apparent, not least with regard to how he viewed Native Americans. The movie shouldn’t be that difficult to track down on DVD although the German Blu-ray, originally released by Koch Media, that I picked up years ago sadly seems to have drifted out of print.

I’m offering this as a contribution to the Legends of Western Cinema Week being hosted by Hamlette’s Soliloquy and others.

The House on Telegraph Hill

/ Colin McGuigan / 45 Comments

The fact that it is not a proper genre, per se, means film noir is in the fortunate position of being able to cross over all kinds of boundaries. This allows it to shift from its most characteristic low-rent, modern urban milieu to various points in history as well as a wide range of locales. In short, it is versatile enough to hook up with just about any genre one cares to mention. The woman in peril picture is a sub-genre that has a strong connection to the Gothic romance of literature. It typically sees a young woman, often of humble background, who is suddenly thrust into an alien situation or environment, one where the initial attractions are soon stripped of their charm only to reveal some ugly threat beneath. Both in visual and thematic terms, there is ample opportunity to apply the classic noir setup and The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) does so very attractively.

The story has its roots in a very understandable desire to escape the past, to eke out a more promising future, and to do so by assuming a totally different identity. Everything begins in Europe, in the death camp of Belsen to be precise. A young Polish woman Viktoria (Valentina Cortese) endures the horrors and deprivation of the camp and when liberation arrives she impulsively grabs at the chance to make a new start. She takes on the identity of her dead friend Karin in the hope that this will facilitate her move to the USA, where that friend’s young son is being raised by relatives. Since the boy was too young to have any memory of his real mother and no other direct family members are still alive, the deception looks like it may succeed. It seems even more likely when she ends up marrying the child’s guardian Alan Spender (Richard Basehart) and moving to San Francisco to live in the titular mansion overlooking the city by the bay. After the living hell of Belsen this opulent life in California seems almost too good to be true, and so it proves to be as the realization gradually dawns on her that someone is determined to kill her.

A Gothic mystery, or romance, conjures images of the past, of imposing and isolated houses under lowering skies that serve to confine as much as protect. So it is with The House on Telegraph Hill, where despite the contemporary setting the residence itself feels like it is an extension of a bygone age. This is the source of both its allure and its peril – the house is wonderfully realized, ornate and oozing old world luxury within while the exterior has a brooding aura. It draws Karin, and the audience too, with the promise of comfort and security and simultaneously acts as a trap of sorts, a jail with expertly carved balustrades and pillars standing in for the more customary stark iron bars. The location work on the streets of San Francisco add a touch of modern realism to the movie – especially in the excellent sequence where Karin’s car races uncontrollably down those steep hills after the brakes have been tampered with – but those interior scenes are the most atmospheric.

Robert Wise had cut his teeth and learnt his craft at RKO editing for Welles and then getting his chance to direct a couple of dark fairy tales under the supervision of Val Lewton. By the time he made The House on Telegraph Hill he had almost a dozen movies as director under his belt. The opening scenes at Belsen have a suitably grim and gritty tone, similar to what he had captured in the prison sequence in Two Flags West a few years earlier. The pace does flag a little after that and while the build up to Karin and Alan’s marriage needs to be shown, and is done reasonably briskly, it still slows things down somewhat. Nevertheless, once we move to San Francisco both the tone and pace remain remarkably consistent and focused. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography is used to great effect here and he evokes suspicion and unease from such normally mundane images as a branch tapping against a window pane at night or a figure silhouetted in a doorway. Sol Kaplan delivers what I would term a muscular score, admittedly one which some may find overbearing a times.

Hitchcock liked to use the generally innocuous glass of milk – see Notorious or Suspicion – as a conduit for something altogether less wholesome, as did Peter Godfrey in The Two Mrs Carrolls for that matter. Wise opts for a glass of orange juice and gets some mileage out of a game of chicken as a result. Richard Basehart started out playing vaguely unhinged types and the fact is he had a certain look about him that encouraged that. There was something about his fair features and impenetrable eyes in those early years that was slightly unsettling and that business with the orange juice, which allowed for and demanded close-ups, leaned into that quality. I believe The House on Telegraph Hill was the film where Basehart and Valentina Cortese met, and they subsequently married. She excels in the concentration camp scenes and their aftermath, touching on the right blend of determination and despair. All told, she does good work and convincingly grows into the part of woman whose increasing confidence is continually being undermined by her fear and a gnawing sense of guilt over the deception she is engaged in. William Lundigan was an actor I have always felt was a bit colorless – that said, he did appear very creditably in Richard Fleischer’s hugely enjoyable noir Follow Me Quietly. Robert Wise had already directed him in the slight but fun Mystery in Mexico and uses his grounded, modest air well in this film. He provides a kind of equilibrium amid all the melodrama. Fay Baker is someone I feel might have had a better or more prominent career based on her work as the nanny/housekeeper, but for one reason or another it wasn’t to be.

The House on Telegraph Hill was a 20th Century Fox movie and has the characteristic gloss of the the studio’s output at that time. It was released years ago on DVD as part of the Fox Noir line and while I’m not sure if it ever made it to Blu-ray there really is nothing to complain about in terms of quality with that old disc. It’s a professional and atmospheric piece of filmmaking and if it’s one of Wise’s less celebrated movies it deserves to be better known.

Cry Danger

/ Colin McGuigan / 22 Comments

The frame up and revenge are classic noir ingredients, saps suckered into taking a fall and then looking to square it with those responsible have kept the motors humming on many a dark crime drama. Cry Danger (1951) is based on these themes, with thoughts about loyalty and love tossed into the mix as well. The movie is a bit like an old friend in the sense that it is packed to the rafters with familiar elements, and like an old friend I’ve visited it a few times over the years. I guess that’s another characteristic that applies to most films noir; they never seem to wear out their welcome no matter how many times they’ve been viewed, the setups and situations becoming something akin to reminiscences among acquaintances.

I mentioned revenge in the opening sentence, but the fact is that Cry Danger is more concerned with a quest for justice than anything else. Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) has just caught a break, even if he’s not thinking of it in those terms as he steps off the train in Los Angeles. He’s fresh out of prison, having served five years of a life sentence for his part in a killing and robbery. Why is he back on the streets so soon? Well aside from the fact he knows he was not guilty of the crime, a witness has just turned up who could corroborate his alibi from all those years ago. Delong (Richard Erdman) is a one-legged ex-serviceman who is only now able to back up Mulloy’s claims that he was drinking in a bar with a group of Marines when the heist was going down. Mulloy is naturally sore that he’s essentially lost those years but he’s also keen to find the real perpetrators, both for his own vindication and to secure the release of a friend who has also been jailed for the crime. In a neat twist, it’s revealed very early on that Delong never spent the evening drinking with Mulloy, never even met him before. He’s just a guy on the make who reckons that helping out like this will mean he can come in for a cut of the $100,000 take which was never recovered. Mulloy’s search for justice takes him to the trailer park where his friend’s wife and his own former fiancée (Rhonda Fleming) is living, and then back into the murky world inhabited by crooked bookie Castro (William Conrad). By the end, after more crosses than there are factors to describe them and some gratuitous violence on the side, Mulloy digs his way to an unpalatable truth.

Cry Danger was the first movie directed by Robert Parrish. He’d served a long apprenticeship in the editing and sound departments and worked on a number of films for John Ford. By 1951 he was therefore in a strong position to take what he’d learnt and craft his own pictures. Cry Danger saw him off to an impressive start and he made a series of mostly good, and in a handful of cases truly excellent, films throughout the decade. This was also the first of four productions for Parrish where William Bowers was involved in the writing. And the script here is one of the strengths, tightly paced and twisty without becoming unnecessarily complex, it benefits from some marvelously snappy dialogue that catches the flavor of the hard-boiled idiom. Unlike a lot of films noir, there isn’t a great deal of overt social commentary. There’s not, for instance, much if any background provided for Mulloy, nothing to hint at how this man got himself tied up with bookies and crooks in the first place. The one concession to the consequences of life in the post-war world is the portrayal of Delong. This disabled veteran makes only the briefest reference in passing to the loss of his leg, but there is a suggestion that his prodigious drinking has its roots in that injury. A good deal of that too is treated in a light and offhand manner, though there is one point where the possibility or advisability of his trying to quit is raised. The wistful look, one tinged with a shadow of desperation, that passes over Delong’s face alludes to some inner suffering. Nothing much is made of this but it is there for the viewers to take on board should they wish to do so.

Dick Powell had grown confident and comfortable in roles such as this, a tough and smart guy who has some blind spots when it comes to friends. The clever patter rolls of the tongue easily and he has an excellent foil in Richard Erdman who was just as quick on the quip. Rhonda Fleming is arguably too attractive to be entirely believable as someone living out of a trailer park, though the fact her husband is doing time kind of justifies this. The path of her relationship with Powell’s character is complicated and, bearing in mind how everything is resolved in the end, it’s quite a subtle piece of acting on her part. As such, Cry Danger is certainly one of those movies where repeated viewings help to emphasize just how carefully she played the role. I’ve already referred to Erdman and it will probably suffice to say that his deadpan wit adds considerably to the film and makes it all the more enjoyable. In support, William Conrad never looks like someone trustworthy although he never comes across as all that menacing either – corrupt and devious, but not all that threatening. Regis Toomey was born to play cops and did so on numerous occasions. He had that weary practicality about him that felt authoritative and he uses it effectively as Powell’s ever present shadow.

Olive Films released a restored print of Cry Danger well over a decade ago now and it still looks fine. It’s a slick and pacy noir with the kind of plot that avoids overdoing the complications yet offers Powell the type of cool but tough part he excelled at playing. Highly watchable.

Pitfall

/ Colin McGuigan / 39 Comments

The daily grind, routine and repetitious. This is something most people can relate to, an integral part of all our lives just as much as sunrise and sunset. What does it represent though? Is it boon or bane? Well it certainly encapsulates the concept of security, and not just in a financial sense. That familiarity, that precise knowledge of where one is going to be at a given hour, perhaps even a given minute, of any day of the calendar offers reassurance. Yet reassurance is necessarily wedded to restrictiveness and at some point the balance between those two points of reference might just start to slip. That’s what happens in Pitfall (1948), a frank analysis of the way post-war suburban security and comfort could start to smother. Everything about it characterizes the classic film noir setup, the slow drift into dissatisfaction, the allure of the forbidden, the unwise choices and the way rapidly snowballing consequences threaten to smash everything in their path.

Johnny Forbes (Dick Powell) is a man who ought to be happy with his lot in life. He’s got a devoted wife (Jane Wyatt) and a bright young son. He’s got what appears to be a successful career in insurance and lives in a neat and attractive suburban home. What could be better than waking up to a breakfast that has been prepared and laid out before him, with his family around him, the sun pouring through the window and the promise of another relatively carefree day ahead. That’s how it should be, but the pain of predictability is etched into the hangdog features of Johnny Forbes as he contemplates it all. Both his demeanor and his conversation betray a man ripe for rebellion, a guy who has wearied of respectable averageness, of being part of the backbone of society. Such a man is just a step away from recklessness, he’s practically sleepwalking into peril. A visit to an embezzler’s ex in order to see how much can be recovered is all it takes. The ex in question is Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), a model in a dress store. The hook that snags Forbes comes in the form of a trip to the marina to see the boat Mona’s boyfriend bought her with the money he stole. Just a smile from the girl and then a quick ride in the speedboat are enough – Forbes is soon asking her out for drinks, and it doesn’t take much imagination to realize where all this is heading. The affair itself only goes so far though, and not necessarily due to any moral qualms on the part of Forbes at this stage. A bigger issue is the fact that the private eye employed by the insurance firm to track down Mona Stevens in the first place (Raymond Burr) is besotted with her to the point he not only roughs up Forbes, but is also prepared to destroy anyone who stands in the way of his desires.

André de Toth made a handful of films noir and I think this is the best of them, although a strong case can be made for Crime Wave too. He perfectly captures the sheer ordinariness and regularity of suburban life, its bright and brisk order imparting a feeling of living on a well maintained social conveyor belt. Everything operates like clockwork, including the people. Dick Powell perfectly captures the ennui of a man gradually becoming just another obedient automaton. Everything about him screams normality, his quiet tailoring, his discreet briefcase, and the inevitable slow slide towards middle-aged and middle-class mediocrity that accompanies all that. This is no disillusioned veteran either – he was no decorated war hero like the father of his son’s friend, he rode out the war in Denver, Colorado – just an everyday guy who has come to the appalling conclusion that this is all he’s ever going to be. When he wrinkles his nose at the comic books he reckons have given his son nightmares it’s hard not to see a bit of resentment in it for not being one of those colorful figures himself. It is to De Toth’s credit that there is never any overt call to pass judgement on this man, no nudge towards any moral superiority or cheap finger pointing. Film noir works best when characters are portrayed as people with flaws who sometimes makes poor choices that the audience get to witness. Navigating life can be an ambiguous business at best and the better noirs seek to capture that incertitude rather than encourage self-righteousness.

The portrayal of the two female characters in Pitfall is interesting, and the movie offers good roles for both Jane Wyatt and Lizabeth Scott. There are those who say film noir must have a femme fatale, that it’s one of the vital ingredients. I’m not sure that’s true, and I’m also not sure if Lizabeth Scott’s Mona Stevens should be characterized as such. Yes, she draws the men in the movie into danger, fatally in one case at least and the ending leaves it open as to whether or not that’s going to apply to another as well. Still, if she is a femme fatale, she is surely a reluctant one and arguably a victim of both her own weakness and the limited options open to a woman like her at that time. She acts as a magnet for negative forces, drawing danger to her without actively wanting to. Jane Wyatt as the wife is a tougher, more grounded and practical creation. All the way through she remains focused on the security of the family unit. It’s quite a clinical piece of work by Wyatt and the cool way she appraises the benefits and drawbacks of each new development that assaults her existence contrasts with the reckless opportunism of Powell and the emotional helplessness of Scott. Raymond Burr gets the creepy obsessiveness of his character across well, manipulating everybody and maneuvering them like chess pieces towards an endgame that will profit only him. The scene where he stalks Scott in the salon where she works is masterly in the way he humiliates her in plain view yet maintains a wholly innocent air. His bulk and physicality is employed effectively too, filling and almost overwhelming Powell’s office when he visits.

1948 was a particularly strong year for film noir in Hollywood, maybe one of the strongest, and Pitfall sits comfortably among the leading pack. Nobody puts a foot wrong in this movie and the script has no flab or slackness about it. It is a tight, direct story that asks plenty of questions but offers up no easy answers. In short, it’s a good movie and one worth watching.

Last of the Comanches

/ Colin McGuigan / 57 Comments

Remakes come in for plenty of bad press – lazy, unnecessary and creatively bankrupt are some of the charges leveled. Granted some of that may be justified on occasion, as with most things in life, it is generally best to avoid blanket dismissals and instead approach these on a case by case basis. As such, let’s take a look at a remake, or reimagining, which I feel works very well. Back in 1943 Zoltan Korda, working off an adaptation of Philip MacDonald’s novel Patrol, made Sahara with Humphrey Bogart in the lead. It was a tense, spare wartime affair and the basic premise was good enough to see the script revisited by Kenneth Gamet a decade later, resulting in the André de Toth directed western Last of the Comanches (1953).

Last of the Comanches is a movie with a gradually narrowing perspective, where the shift outdoors into what ought to be the wide open spaces and all the freedom such a move implies actually brings greater restrictions. Fleeing the smouldering remains of a frontier town razed and massacred by rampaging Comanches, a ragtag troop of half a dozen wounded and weary soldiers under the command of Sergeant Trainor (Broderick Crawford) makes its way across the desert in search of respite and refuge at the nearest fort, 100 miles or more away. Aside from the obvious need to evade the raiding parties of Comanches, the greatest problem facing these battered fugitives is the lack of water in the blistering heat, a matter which is only further exacerbated when they meet and are joined by the passengers of a stagecoach. What are the chances then of their survival in the wilderness when faced with the twin threat of diminishing water supplies and a well armed enemy that vastly outnumbers them?

Normally, one would say the prospects looked more than a little bleak. However, they get thrown a lifeline in the form of a lone Kiowa boy who is also keen to stay out of the clutches of the Comanche. Despite being initially rebuffed, he is able to guide them to the ruins of an old mission where a reputed well holds out the hope of relief from at least one of the dangers. The presence of that elusive source of water tucked away in the heart of the barren wasteland also hands Trainor’s little band a bargaining chip. The Comanches are every bit as parched and in need of water, so whoever defends the mission is in a position of strength irrespective of numbers, so long as the water lasts, or at any rate, for as long as the limited nature of the supply can be kept a secret…

Every studio’s westerns had a certain look to them and it was usually most apparent in the mid or lower budget pictures. It’s hard to define exactly but if you’ve watched enough of all the major studios’ output, it is often possible to spot which one produced a given western just from that look or tone. Universal-International westerns, for example, tend to be almost instantly recognizable for their saturated palette and detailed sets. Paramount had a vibrancy to the colors too but more of what I’d term stateliness to their backdrops. Columbia is the studio whose westerns I think look least attractive overall, although there are clearly titles where this isn’t so; Randolph Scott’s films with Budd Boetticher all look very fine for instance. Nevertheless, a lot of their mid-range titles, especially those with a lot of interior work look somehow drab, not so much for the colors as the flatness of their set design and dressing. Those which made greater use of exteriors and location work fare much better, and Last of the Comanches falls into that category. Andre de Toth’s compositions and angles create unease and a sense of space compressed and limiting, while Charles Lawton lit and shot the whole thing with real flair, actually getting the day-for-night filters to produce genuinely evocative images for a change. As is often the case, placing a small central cast in a highly restrictive setting acts as an excellent conductor of tension and suspense. The fact that it’s attractively staged and is accompanied by a generous helping of fairly regular action sequences adds to the appeal.

Broderick Crawford doesn’t always draw me to a movie but, somewhat like Longfellow’s little girl with the curl,  when he was good he was very good indeed. When he made Last of the Comanches he was in the middle of a ten year run that contained far more hits than misses, from All the King’s Men right through to the curiously compelling The Decks Ran Red. His brash, bulldog demeanor was and machine gun delivery fit in perfectly with his role as the inventive and stoic sergeant. You get a sense of a man very much in possession of himself, faults and all, and all the more capable as a result. Barbara Hale was the only woman in the cast and I found it rather refreshing that despite the isolated setting and the presence of so many increasingly desperate men around her that none of the growing pressure emanating from the bluff and deception at the heart of the plot was siphoned off by some cheap exploitation of sexual tension. That said, I can’t help wondering if that hurt the box office take? Hale’s resilience plays successfully off Crawford’s gruff abruptness, but perhaps another more conventionally attractive male lead, or even co-star, might have opened the story up to a wider audience? Of the other cast members, there’s a lot to enjoy in Mickey Shaughnessy’s lumpy toughness and the edginess of Lloyd Bridges. Interestingly, the latter appeared Korda’s original take on the story in Sahara. There’s also a lot of pleasure to be derived from finding the immediately recognizable and almost supernaturally solemn Milton Parsons becoming virtually unrecognizable in beard and western garb.

Last of the Comanches is something of a neglected western. De Toth’s movies with Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea, Robert Ryan and Kirk Douglas certainly get more attention. I don’t know if that has to do with the casting, that the film is a remake (though I don’t believe that aspect should be used as a criticism since the frontier setting is ideal for such a story), or the fact that it’s a fairly simple and direct tale without a lot of subtext. Personally, I like it for its pacing, the often strikingly attractive visuals, and the purity of its storytelling.

I Walk Alone

/ Colin McGuigan / 59 Comments

You know, Noll, I think you’re afraid now. And I’m not. Frankie with his bootleg liquor, me with those checks I forged, you with this set-up here. Everyone trying to get something for nothing. Frankie paid, I paid. It’s your turn now…

Checks and balances, adding a bit here, taking away a bit there. The books and the by-laws, a new post-war landscape where the sheen of legality is little more than a patina, a glossy veneer to add on top of the old rackets to create the illusion of respectability. I Walk Alone (1947) trades heavily on that highly polished hypocrisy, presenting a world of glamorous nightclubs where sharp suits and elegantly gowned ladies in superficially smooth surroundings seem to have taken the place of the rough and tumble hoods of Prohibition. Still, the high class tailoring and drapery only offer a limited disguise for the muscle, corruption and decadence. The world depicted here, at least that which is seen through the eyes of the protagonist, is one which has been flipped on its head, where none of the old certainties hold any longer and hoods hide and mask their actions with a web of financial chicanery. Plus ça change…

Frankie Madison (Burt Lancaster) is just out of prison and he’s sore. He has served 14 years and now he’s looking to collect on what he feels is his due. To that end he heads to the glitzy Regency, an upmarket nightclub run by his old partner in crime Noll Turner (Kirk Douglas). The fact is Frankie and Noll made a deal just before the former was picked up and sent up the river to split their profits straight down the middle. However, in all those years the only thing Frankie ever received from his old partner was a carton of cigarettes every month, not even one visit. He figures he’s owed, and there’s a little voice just starting to murmur insistently that maybe Noll plans to gyp him out of the rich pickings that have since come his way. Why? Well for one thing there’s the nervy attitude of his friend Dave (Wendell Corey), a man who has been becoming gradually more neurotic over the years and who visibly pales whenever any mention of the unfortunate fates of those who had crossed up old acquaintances crops up. Then there is Noll himself, genial and velvety in his solicitude yet watchful and calculating at the same time. When he arranges for his torch singer mistress Kay Lawrence (Lizabeth Scott) to charm Frankie and coax information from him over a carefully staged intimate dinner all the pillars of a setup have been put in place. Slowly the full extent of Noll’s self-serving duplicity dawns on Frankie, and he’s soon to discover that the, arguably more honest, strong-arm tactics he would once have relied on to get results are now hopelessly inadequate when faced with an updated criminality, one that subverts the law to serve his purposes.

I Walk Alone offers a classic noir framework: a man who has been away for an extended period of time returning to a world that is recognizable on the surface but which has in fact been radically altered at the core. If one is to see mature film noir as an artistic reflection of the post-war perceptions of the returning veterans, then this is something of a textbook example. It’s hardly a stretch to see parallels between Frankie Madison’s sense of being frozen out and the struggles of a whole generation to rediscover its place and role in a society that must now have felt odd and alien. There are two scenes which takes place in Noll’s office underlining the societal shifts that have taken place and the frustration of trying to deal with this.

First up, there is Frankie’s confrontation with Noll when he learns how he’s been stiffed and is getting the brush off. He resorts to his old two-fisted approach, laying one on his former buddy and storming out fired up with indignation and plans for retribution. Then later, having cobbled together a ragtag bunch of would-be enforcers courtesy of another old confederate (the instantly recognizable pockmarked Marc Lawrence), he sets about muscling what he’s owed out of Noll. However, this is the point where he comes face to face with what can only be viewed as a corporate minefield, an impenetrably complex series of cutouts that serve only to emphasize the absolute inefficacy of Frankie’s brute force methods in this brave new world. To witness his enraged impotence is akin to watching a bull elephant in its death throes, and the humiliation is compounded and completed when Mike Mazurki’s hulking doorman hauls him out to the back alley to hand him the beating of a lifetime.

Nevertheless, this acts as a catalyst, striking the scales from the eyes of Dave and Kay and helping to galvanize Frankie into taking genuinely effective action. As such, the movie tosses a lifeline of sorts to those ruing the passing of a more straightforward age. There is the hope held out that the conmen and the chiselers would get their comeuppance, that some sort of justice would prevail, which may be considered as diluting the noir sensibility. Maybe, or maybe the late 1940s didn’t fully encapsulate, or not as fully as we’re led to believe at any rate, the kind of existential despair that is frequently cited as the basis of noir. Perhaps the world today where gaslighting fraudsters and incompetents sit unchallenged at the top of the heap is the real noir era. Perhaps.

I Walk Alone was the first collaboration between Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and the fact they played so well off each other makes it easy to see why they appeared together with such regularity over the following four decades. Lancaster’s star rose faster and he was receiving top billing at this stage whereas Douglas was still working his way up, albeit strongly, in supporting roles. Lancaster uses his physical presence very effectively, and there is that vulnerability too beneath it all that was brought out very successfully in these early Hal Wallis productions. Douglas is less imposing in physical terms but he has that menacing air, principally via his voice and those sharp eyes. Lizabeth Scott is fair but that’s about it, her smoky-voiced allure is always welcome though and she was made for slinking around nightclubs singing throaty odes to ill-starred romances. Wendell Corey did a nice line in whey-faced fear, that and indignation were his strengths and he gets to exercise both as the guilt-ridden bookkeeper.

After a few early efforts as director Byron Haskin spent two decades as a cinematographer and effects man. I Walk Alone signaled his return to directing and from that point on, barring a few blips, he embarked on a remarkably solid run right up until Robinson Crusoe on Mars in 1964.  It is a very entertaining movie, well cast and beautifully shot by Leo Tover. It both links to and contrasts with the old 30s gangster movies and the film noir mood and aesthetic of the time. Until Kino brought the movie out some years ago it was one of those titles that appeared to be destined to remain mostly talked about or featured in books on noir rather than actually seen. Happily, that is no longer so and I recommend giving it a look.