Category: crime drama

Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1965): Part I: “There’ll be no later, this town is clean”

The Naked Kiss (1965) Shock and Shame, the story of a Night Girl.

Directed by the maverick auteur Samuel Fuller, with a screenplay by Fuller and black, gray, and white shades in the striking cinematography by Stanley Cortez

-(The Magnificent Ambersons 1942, Since you Went Away 1944, The Night of the Hunter 1955, Shock Corridor 1961), Cortez creates a sense of space that is almost surreal and disconnected from the outside world. The Naked Kiss stars Constance Towers as Kelly, Anthony Eisley as Griff, Michael Dante as Grant, Marie Devereux as Buff, Patsy Kelly as Mac, and one of my favorite unsung actresses Virginia Grey (The Women 1939, All The Heaven Allows 1955, Crime of Passion 1956, Backstreet 1961) as Candy.

Let me say that this is one of my favorite films. I think that it’s such a bold concoction of visual style, specific alienation that we as spectators experience along with Kelly our female Protagonist. The undercurrent of sexual pathology of a perverse nature and raw energy that fuels some crude reactionary moments on film. Normally I wouldn’t write about the ending of a film so as not to ruin it for the viewer, yet Constance Tower’s remarkable performance and Fuller’s raw cinematic veritae must be experienced, the story will not lose anything by my relating it here. I actually consider this part of my Women in Peril series, but more aptly put, it’s a womanhood in peril film.

Samuel Fuller’s B post-noir films are not like anyone else’s. Fuller’s work is often confrontational and visceral considered the kinkiest of all the B post-noir auteurs. Naked Kiss is his most potent work alongside his noir masterpiece Pickup on South Street (1953) starring Richard Widmark and Thelma Ritter as Moe Williams.


Alain Silver and James Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 2 “Fuller’s Naked Kiss “boldly offers a different kind of descriptive pause. Fuller takes on Patriarchy and directly assaults the spectator with a bizarre opening”

In their book they inform us that Fuller actually attached a camera to actor Monte Mansfield who plays Kelly’s pimp Farlunde, the guy she pummels in his swanky apartment right from the tip of the film. He has shaved off her hair and in retaliation she takes her primal vengeance out on his, beating him with her purse and high heels. Kelly only takes the money owed to her. The scene already prepares us, and what is created is an off-kilter and disorienting mood. The opening of The Naked Kiss is perhaps for me one of the most audacious beginnings to any cinematic work. It sort of punches you right in the face along with Farlunde.

The greater theme of the film is its narrative of women’s role within society. In a way not unlike Elia Kazan, Fuller has created a sociological framework, to lay out questions of what womanhood, as well as motherhood, means discursively. While at the end of the film, Kelly is relegitimized as being a savior and not a whore, she is still not allowed to live amongst the clean town’s people. She is still an outsider. Silver and Ursini also correctly bring out in their noir reader the fact that the context of the film is a “discursive-based attack on men and how they define women as well as the limits they place on them”. Also notable is the displaced female rage that only became better articulated later on with feminists during the 60s and 70s.

It reminds me while watching television’s soap opera junk food Peyton Place with its pillory that sits prominently in the middle of the town square as a reminder of New England Puritanical morals and the lurking hypocrisy in the shadows of quiet provincial values, that warn girls to beware of giving away their virtue. Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) learns this when she is condemned as the archetypal whore, the tainted girl who gave up her purity to a boy during a summer fling and then was thrown away like autumn trash. The pillory stands in the middle of the town, 200 years prior a woman like Betty had her head shaved bald, was locked in the pillory to be mocked, and then was driven out by the good town folk of Peyton Place. Much like Kelly who we first meet at the shocking opening of the film (one reason The Naked Kiss is such a uniquely memorable excursion for me) is completely bald and striking back at the man who took her hair, her power away.

The Naked Kiss written, directed, and produced by Sam Fuller, opens wide like a steel trap, with Constance Towers as Kelly viciously beats up a pimp Farlunde in his swanky apartment, smashing away at him with her handbag. Hitting his face and neck, it’s like watching a brutal choreographed dance. Fuller creates this wavering movement to give us a sense of the dizzying brutality. Farlunde begs “I’m drunk Kelly please,” “Enough Kelly please.” The savage jazz riffs underscore the bashing. Her wig comes flying off, and now we see a bald Kelly still attacking the man relentlessly. The jazz is coherent with the hyperactive saxophone.

Stripped of her hair looking like a mannequin (perhaps to show us Kelly as an “object”) she beats him till he staggers to the floor, spraying seltzer water in his face. He’s wasted by the beating, she rifles through his pockets and grabs some cash from his wallet. “Eight hundred dollars… you parasite… I’m taking only what’s coming to me.” She starts counting out bills, throwing them down upon his chest, “Fifty, sixty, seventy-five… I’m not rolling you, you drunken leech, I’m only taking the seventy-five dollars that’s coming to me.”

She crumples up her share, shoves it into her bra, and kicks him while he’s lying there. She stares at us like we’re her mirror. Gratified she puts her wig back on and the title rolls, The Naked Kiss. Sam Fuller’s story of alienation, gender subjugation, and the question of immorality and deviant sexual pathology, opens up in a big way.

The Paul Dunlop score becomes more dreamy, with melodramatic strings and Kelly brushing her wig. getting it right. The credits roll and Kelly are applying her eye pencil transforming herself back into a woman and not a bloodthirsty she-devil. Now the blush is applied, the music fades back into the jazz number and we see Farlunde knocked out, lying on the floor. The saxophone is hurling trills at us, Kelly grabs a photograph down from a collection of beauties and she starts tearing it up to pieces, throwing them on the ground, the Farlunde stirs, coughs a bit, and starts to get up, Kelly slams the door.

As he starts picking up the debris Kelly has left in her wake he puts crumpled-up bills on top of a calendar and we see the date July 4, 1961. A quick cut, flash forward to a banner in the street touting August 12, 1963, and the melodramatic music is serenading us again. The camera pulls out for a wider angle, we can see the entire banner now, it reads 2 years later. August 12, 1963 Fashion Show for Handicapped Children Grantville Orthopedic Medical Center

The top of a bus moving through the street, a parked car, a mostly empty street, with a few people crossing it, and mulling about. This is the suggestion of a quiet, quaint American town.

Then a car horn toots, 3 men standing outside a Bus Depot, Griff (Anthony Eisley) says “Ten bucks, that right Mike?” Mike says “Why spend your own money on that punk?” Griff turns to the young man and says while stuffing it in his pocket “Here’s your ticket” smiles at him and shoves some money into his pocket as well. All the time the young man is looking down as if ashamed. He says “Thanks a lot Griff… I’ll pay you back.” Griff looks at him sternly, “I’m giving you a break, cause your brother was in my outfit… I don’t want to see you in this town again.” The young man looks down again.

Then a Greyhound bus pulls over to the curb. We see the marquee of the movie theater is playing Shock Corridor, a nod to Fuller’s other psychologically wrenching film about a newspaper reporter going undercover in a lunatic asylum, only to become one of the patients.

Continue reading “Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1965): Part I: “There’ll be no later, this town is clean”” →

They Live By Night (1948) Part Two “A woman is sort of like a dog”

They Live By Night (1948) Part One “This boy and girl were never properly introduced to the world”

It’s the first 10 minutes of They Live By Night that sets the stage for our ill-fated lovers. When Keechie comes out to the barn to get water, Bowie follows her, rattles some chains to make noise, and then he slumps down against the wall. When the headlights of a car startle him, he begins to whisper a little ritualistic number-counting verse to himself, a way to calm himself. Perhaps something he picked up in jail. Bowie is 23 years old and spent 7 years of it on the prison farm where he met Chickamaw and T-Dub.

He tells Keechie that he doesn’t really know how to talk to a woman. The old man Mobley shows up in a car with a woman. It’s Mattie, wife of T-Dubs brother still in jail trying to get paroled. Mobley is soused and nearly crashes the car, but smashes some crates and tires and damages the front tire. Mattie gets out complaining about the drive there, and the drunken fool who picked her up. “That’s the best you can send?”

They go into the cabin and leave Bowie and Keechie still in the barn. Keechie asks Bowie if he likes his old man. He says “Not much.” Then Bowie asks if it’s true that her Ma ran off, and she answers yes. He tells her his ma ran off with a guy who ran a pool hall. His Pa used to take him there. He relates to her a story of how one night, there was an argument, but there is usually an argument centered around a game of pool. This time his Pa raised his cue but the other guy had a gun. His Pa turned to him like he was trying to say something, his face went white like he was going to cry. “The blood running into his eyes” Then Ma went to live with the guy who killed him.

Here the backstory lays the groundwork for the couple, who never had a chance to live a normal life, with decent parents who could raise them with a moral code.

She asks why Bowie would run with men like T-Dub and Chickamaw, her uncle “lives for trouble” and is “wild” Bowie keeps a newspaper clipping in his pocket about a guy convicted of murder just like him, who had no due process of the law. The Supreme Court said, “Let that man out!” Bowie fantasizes about running away to Mexico. Dreams are all he has.

This is what Bowie is living for, the day he can afford the Lawyer in Tulsa, who can overturn his conviction and he can get himself “squared around” a significant phrase that will come back at the end of the film. The idea is that these young people are fueled by the desire to belong to the right side of society. Bowie and Keechie start to develop an obvious attraction to each other.

Mattie takes an instant dislike to Bowie and tells Keechie that he’s Jail Bait.

Chickamaw and T-Dub want to pull a big job in Zelton Texas, rob a bank. Bowie agrees to be the driver of the getaway car.

The day before the robbery, we see a large street clock, Bowie looks at it, always asking what time it is. He’s sitting in the car, we hear a train whistle blow. Then Bowie cases the bank. He purchases a beautiful woman’s watch for Keechie at the Zelton Jewelry Store. He doesn’t have smaller bills with him so the jewelry store owner will have to take him over to the bank to break the large bills.

T-Dub and Bowie return to the house where Mattie and Chickamaw are. T-Dub asks Mattie what’s going on. It appears there might be a sexual relationship between the pair. Chickamaw says “How long does a woman wait for one man?” Mattie gets upset “Listen you crumby one-eyed nut” T-Dub goes to slap Mattie but Chickamaw grabs him, and Mattie smashes a mirror. Bowie is spooked and says “That’s 7 years!” is there an emphasis on his superstition because he is uneducated and from a lower class?

 

On the day of the bank robbery, the same train whistle blows, the clock is standing in the same spot outside the bank, and Bowie is in the car waiting for the two men to give the signal, when the jeweler recognized Bowie and tried to strike up a conversation with him. When Bowie keeps telling him to “get away” and he doesn’t stop talking, Bowie pushed the man to the ground and he hits his head.

All 3 men are in the getaway car now, fleeing the robbery, back on the wide expanses of open land. Blue Grass music is playing on the radio. They pull off the road. Chickamaw pulls out a gas can and sets the robbery car ablaze. The radio starts to die out as the car is consumed by the flames until it sounds like a dying doo hickey.

They drop T-Dub off and Chickamaw says, they can start struttin’ and the one thing Bowie has to learn “is to look and act like other people.” Again we see the emphasis on trying to fit into normal society. They buy fancy clothes and new cars. On the way back to the house, an old jalopy cuts off Bowie and they crash the car. A police officer comes over to question them about how fast they were going and requests that they come along with him, and Chickamaw calls him “friend” and then shoots him.

Chickamaw takes Bowie, who’s sprained his back in the crash, to his brother’s place so Keechie can take care of him. Old man Mobley starts complaining about having to close the station, but Chickamaw says not to worry and shoves a wad of cash in Keechies blouse pocket. Her uncle Chickamaw has a very unhealthy boundary around his niece. He leers at her a good deal of the time and objectifies her, by calling her the girl instead of his niece. When Keechie hands the money over to her father, the old man says, “Girl that’s more money I’ve seen since we collected on that fire we had.” He takes the money, and we know that he’ll blow all of it on booze later on.

Bowie is laying face down on the bed. Keechie takes her hair down and starts brushing it. The first sign that she is embracing her sexuality, her womanhood, amidst this band of dirty thugs, her father included. Bowie awakens and is framed on screen behind a wrought iron bed, that looks like the bars of a jail. Noir characters are often trapped by framing.

Bowie asks Keechie “Who’s your fella…other girls have ’em?” she says “I don’t know what other girls have.” She rubs his back down with something, and the wind in the telephone wires from out the highway, makes an eerie noise outside. Bowie asks if she ever thinks about leaving town, most girls would want to go, again she says “I don’t know what most girls want.” Keechie has been so sheltered from the world. He tells her that he has lots of money now from the robbery, but this offends Keechie. He doesn’t mean to offend her, but she replies, “I’d do this for a dog.” Then he tells her to look in the side pocket of his shirt. She takes out the package and finds the watch he bought for her. She mentions that there is no clock in the cabin, though she wants to set the watch to the right time. Perhaps people who live outside of society have no sense of belonging so need to track the hours of the day. That’s the sense I got from all the references to time and why it was so important for Bowie and Keechie to know what time it was.

He puts the watch on her. She says she never saw any sense in having a fella, then asks him if he’s trying to say that he should be her fella. He says “I guess maybe it is.” This is a very sweet moment for the two of them. She tells him to stay until morning, by then her drunken father will have shot off his mouth all over town, so he’ll need to get away. She’ll go with him.

They leave on a bus. A baby crying incessantly, on a seat next to Bowie, but the mother could care less about quieting the child. They stop for coffee and notice a flashing neon sign Marriages Performed. The waitress pours more coffee and interjects, Hawkins class B, organ music, and everything for $20. She says the way people pop in and out of there you’d think they’re getting dog licenses. At that point, Bowie tries to tell Keechie that he’s no good for her. He’ll always be a black sheep. and she tells him “The only thing black about you is your eyelashes.” She saw the goodness in him from the beginning. After complaining about how awful that wedding place is, he asks her to marry him and they get off the bus, and enter Hawkins, to be married. The old man running the quicky ceremony says to Bowie “You don’t think much about the way I marry people” “I sure don’t” “Me neither but you gotta give people what they want.” Then he sells them a car and heads off for their honeymoon, at Lamberts Inn where they take a room all the way at the end, from Mr Vines and his little son Alvin. They set up a house there. And life seems quiet and “normal” like other people.

In the meantime, old man Mobley goes to the police and tells them about Bowie, kidnapping his daughter. Tells them where they can find him. “That boy belongs in the electric chair, and I’d like to be the one to pull the switch!”

Bowie asks Keechie about “these women who don’t wait for their men” and she gives him her philosophy. “Those women don’t love…woman only loves once. I guess a woman is sort of like a dog, a bad dog would take things from anybody, and he’ll bite anybody who tries to pet him. There was a man back up home, and after he died, his dog wouldn’t eat or do anything, and he died too.”

Chickamaw shows up “Aint you shacked up nice and cozy,” He asks for alcohol, but since there wasn’t any, he asks for candy and starts munching on it. Tells Bowie the newspapers are “plastered with his face.” Every time some dingbat robs a filling station, they say it’s “Bowie the Kid”, the Zelton bandit. “You’d have to have wings to be every place they say you did.”

Chickamaw and T-Dub are out of money and now want to pull another job. ” kid we got a bank in Cedars, just itching to be charged” Bowie offers half his loot from the Zelton robbery but Chickamaw strongarms him into coming along. “you know that’s friendly, real friendly…you aint gonna be handing me out no two bits at a time for ice cream cones, that doe you got where’d you get it?! working the shoe store, it takes 3 to pull a trick and you’re number 3, even if the papers say you’re number one.” T-Dub tells him later on that they took him out of jail over other men. Keechie is furious with Bowie for going along.

After the bank job, Chickamaw is gets righteously riled. T-Dub got killed during the bank robbery. Chickamaw tells Bowie that it “rips his guts out” All the papers do is talk about Bowie the Kid. He wants Bowie to stop for a drink, but Bowie refuses, Chickamaw grabs a pipe from the back seat and tries to hit him with it. Bowie orders him to get out of the car.

Bowie returns home that night to Keechie. “I guess you heard over the radio” “I heard T-Dub’s dead, Chickamaw was killed breaking into a liquor store…they say it runs in threes.”

She tells him she’s going to have a baby, no matter what. Bowie says “That’s right, he’ll have to take his chances just like us.”

They go out for the day and walk around the park like other “real people”, Bowie talks about going to Mexico again. they go out for supper and dancing.

A drunk stumbles into Keechie, so they decide to leave, but Keechie asks Bowie to get her some cigarettes. While in the bathroom getting the pack of cigarettes from the machine, a man crouches behind him and says “Bowie the kid” pulls the gun away from Bowie “Papers say you carry a .45” Bowie comes back “Papers say a lot of things.” The man tells him “We want you to leave town tonight, we don’t want any trigger-happy hillbillies around.”

There are no safe places for Bowie and Keechie to belong. They’re too innocent for the thugs like Chickamaw and T-Dub, yet they’re perceived as hicks by a whole other hierarchy of criminals. They Live By Night really is a story about human suffering and class disparity.

When the couple realizes that the plumber who came to fix the busted pipes in their place has recognized Bowie, they flee their little home and head out for the Prairie Plaza Hotel, a piece of property that Bowie remembers Mattie owns. Mattie is not happy to see Bowie, even though she finds out that Keechie’s ill and pregnant, unknown to the young couple, she turns them in to the police in exchange for her husband finally getting paroled.

Bowie goes back to the man who married them, asking about getting help to flee to Mexico, but the old man tells him that he’s a thief just like Bowie, but he won’t sell him “hope” when there ain’t any. Bowie realizes that there just isn’t a place in the world for “people like us.”

Note: the use of the metaphor of dogs is used a lot in the film– as obedience, faithfulness, and submissiveness. loyalty.

I won’t spoil the climax of They Live By Night, it is a poetic masterpiece of director Nicholas Ray

 

They Live By Night (1948) Part One “This boy and girl were never properly introduced to the world”

They Live By Night (1948) Directed by the great Nicholas Ray. Ray was responsible for one of my all-time favorite films with Bogie and Gloria Grahame, In A Lonely Place (1950), and he also gave us On Dangerous Ground (1952), Rebel Without A Cause, and Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar.

They Live By Night is an adaptation by Nicholas Ray from the Novel “Thieves Like Us” by Edward Anderson. Produced by John Houseman.

Farley Granger plays Bowie, Cathy O’Donnell is the simple girl Keechie, Howard Da Silva is the ruthless”one-eyed “Chickamaw, Jay C.Flippen is T-Dub, and all three men make up the band of criminals responsible for robbing “charging “banks, across Texas. Will Wright plays old man Mobley a drunk (Ben Weaver, cantankerous store owner in The Andy Griffith Show) Helen Craig, plays Mattie who is married to T-Dub’s brother who is stuck in jail, having difficulty getting paroled.

“This boy and this girl were never properly introduced to the world we live in…

To tell their story…


Ray uses open vistas, the cars driving through open expanses of land, not the often dominating skyscrapers, or closely cropped staircases and framed structural shadows. yet a certain desolation permeates the screen. Textually and thematically, They Live By Night breaks away from the urban milieu and plants itself in the rural countryside, in contrast to other darker noir environs.

This is yet another RKO excursion into the noir realm that they became well known for.  RKO had been one of the original production studios from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Val Lewton had done his low-budget yet groundbreaking horror collection(I Walked With A Zombie, Bedlam, Cat People, Isle Of The Dead) while at RKO.

There is a sentimentality and romanticism surrounding our two lead actors, the young couple project innocent victims, who were just born into a bad station in life. We get the sense that had they have been given another set of circumstances in another place, their lives would have been so far contrasting to the lives they’re leading because Bowie and Keechie are both essentially good people. We also see the very plain and feral Keechie blossom into her sexuality, as Bowie awakens this primal undercurrent that’s been subverted by her sheltered existence.

The certain outcome they faced, was always inevitable because they never had a chance to rise above the choices they’d been given.

There is so much of the narrative focused on what “other people normally do”, “to be like everybody else”. Our two young figures are trapped in a world, not of their own making.

Though most of the story is set in the rural countryside, which opens up the environment from the usual claustrophobic city scenes and defies the familiar mechanism of darkness, They Live By Night has an oppressive sensibility that makes the film a dark piece. The protagonist Bowie is still closed in by his situation.

Another departure from the more commonly seen protagonists with rough exteriors like Richard Conte, Robert Ryan and Charles McGraw, Farley Granger exudes a sexual ambiguity. Granger’s characters (Rope (1948), Strangers on A Train (1951), Side Street (1950)) have often been morally weak and susceptible to crime, not able to hold off temptation. He projects a sullenness, a softness that makes him appear the noir victim.


The divergence of the gentle souled Bowie with the cutthroat ruthlessness of his two treacherous partners in crime, set up the combustible dynamic that threatens Bowie’s safety from the outset.

As the lush and poignant music opens, it creates an unusual mood for us, not the typically hard-edged jazz thematic score we’re used to hearing with dark noir offerings. They Live By Night starts by serenading the sweet embraces of Farley Granger’s Bowie and O’Donell’s naive Keechie. The musical strings become threatening and the Titles roll as an old jalopy is driving eclipsed by the words They Live By Night.

It’s the 30s and two jalopies are speeding furiously down a desolate road. We see Bowie toss his shirt out of the car, and four men in the car, spin off the side of the road stirring up a dirt cloud, as they stop the car.

“I knew that tire had to go,” a farmer they’ve kidnapped says to Bowie sitting in the back seat. 2 men step outside of the car holding guns, one of them, Chickamaw wearing a hat says “You talk too much” The dusty isolation frames the men like a gray wilderness.

Chickamaw jerks the farmer out of the car as he begs, “Please mister please.” At first, Chickamaw holds a rifle up to his face as if threatening to shoot, instead he is forced to the ground out of our view, obscured by the car but we hear Chickamaw pounding on the farmer.  The music is serious, the horns play brutal tones, and then we see a concerned expression come over Bowie watching from his viewpoint, startled at the brutality he is witnessing. We get a glimpse of humanity in one of the 3 thieves.

We can’t see but we hear “Smack, smack” like pops and bones breaking. The picture, the photograph we see is so filthy, the environment itself so angry, like the dirt could devour all the men whole.

They toss the beaten man into the back of the car and Chickamaw says “Now what” T Dub replies “Now we gotta get to that brother of yours and get to that doe you got stashed away.”

The 3 men leave on foot we get an aerial view of them walking in the tall grass passing a billboard sign that says “Cosmo Nifties.” Bowie falls and grabs his foot. “How far we gotta go?” “About 10, 15 miles.” Bowie’s foot appears injured. The two other men tell him to hide out in the bushes beneath the billboard and that they’ll be back for him at night. They tell him to “take it easy son,” he says “I’ll take it easy. I gotta lawyer in Tulsa to see.”

It is night now. The Cosmo Nifties sign bares a sultry-haired beauty with a flower in her hair, the sign shapeshifts on the screen into a fence. Bowie is peaking through the fence, and a little scrappy dog comes into the scene, Bowie sits back down the little approaches him for food. But he suddenly sees headlights of a car approaching. he looks through the fence again. The fence, he is fenced in. We hear the twinkling song of night crickets, a truck pulls up and stops, the breaks screeching to a halt.

Bowie steps out from behind the fence, and we hear the truck trying to be started but stalling. The dog is following him. He asks the driver, “you having trouble?” a voice shaded by the dark and a hat answer back. it is the soft comeback of a female voice, this is Keechie.
“Could be” he asks “Who are you?  Do you live around here?” The crickets serenade the two veiled in shadow. Again the only two words she utters are “Could be.”

“You haven’t had a couple of visitors have you?” ” That wouldn’t be a sore foot making you limp would it?” “Could be” she says “I got some other stuff to pick up, get in or we’ll both get pneumonia” Her profile is solemn, and she looks down at the steering wheel.

She gets the car started and now her face is lit a little more, we can see she’s very plain, but very pretty, he comes around the side and starts to get into the car. A train whistle sings in the background. He looks at her “They sure took their sweet time sending for me”

Bowie asks “Who are you?” “they sent this for you, get in.” They arrive at a shabby place, in the car only the edges of their faces show light, like crescent moons, the rest is pure darkness surrounding them. They are staring at each other, she tells him “I’ll take that stuff, you go around the shed, through the trees, a cabin back there.”

He knocks on the door to the cabin, there are several men inside, one smoking a cigar opens it up to greet him with a smirk. Chickamaw says “Look who’s here” T-Dub sitting down counting money, says “Hello son,” Chickamaw says “You took your time gettin’ here… what are you and the gal been doin’, swimmin’?” “Say hello to Mobley, Chickamaw’s brother,” the old man says, ” I told you she’d find him… she’s a weasel that daughter of mine” “Sorry we had to keep you waiting son…had to be that way” Chickamaw gives Bowie a new shirt and says “here kid this’ll fit a lot better over that bandage.” He takes it, still very silent, Chickamaw slightly admonishing him says “You’re welcome.”

T-Dub, asks old man Mobley, “A thousand dollars, is that enough for a used car?” “Could be, you can’t tell though, the way things are…” They are interrupted by a sound outside, he says, “Oh that’d be my daughter.” T-Dub rises to his feet and says ” Hello Miss Keechie.” Bowie puts on his clean shirt and looks up at her, holding groceries, a surprised expression, as she too looks back at him curiously.

T-Dub looks at Chickamaw and gestures that he wants some of the cash, so he starts shuffling money through his thumb and fingers to hand to the old man, “That’s five hundred more, that’s fifteen hundred for the car… can’t have you coming back in no rattle trap, not for this trip.” Bowie with food in his mouth says “Fifteen hundred bucks for a second-hand car?” T-Dub says “That’s right” Bowie comes back. “That’s worse than robbing a bank!” but T-Dub explains “They’re thieves just like us” (meaning old man Mobley and his daughter Keechie).

T-Dub sits and faces the old man Chickamaw, “Now don’t forget the clothes, and tell Mattie the first big doe goes to getting her man out of jail.. tell her that or she won’t come.” “I’ll tell her for sure… well so long fellars… I’ll try to get back here with Mattie before tomorrow night.” Chickamaw says to his brother the old man Mobley, “Say big brother stay sober” he puts his hat on and answers “Me?…oh I won’t touch a drop, not a drop” he says resentfully. T-Dub still sitting down says, “Of course, he won’t, we take care of our friends Mobley” The old man cries out “I know, I know that T-Dub, he turns to Keechie and asks if she’ll take care of the station, then says “so long.”

Chickamaw says, “Take care of the station he says, he hasn’t done a lick of work in his life…that brother of mine.” Close up we now see that his right eye is hazed over and blind. He starts grinning and laughing, “Did you catch the look on his face?”…more laughter, “he’s still trying to figure out where I had that doe hid.” He laughs even more sardonically.

Keechie looks so worried. We hear a noise, Bowie is fiddling with the small stove, she goes towards him and says, “Can’t you make that stove work?” but as she starts to move, Chickamaw grabs her by the arm. “He’d a grab you too wouldn’t he?” T-Dub says, “You show ’em how Miss Keechie” “That’s one machine he don’t know nothing about..” Bowie hands her a clean cloth and says “Here”, she smiles a little and says “Thanks.”

T-Dub says, “That boy’s some gallant eh Miss Keechie?” and Chickamaw says “Yeah, he’s got a soft heart…” takes the cigar out of his mouth, “and a head to match”

Keechie says “his head looks alright to me” She gets up and walks away.

Bowie says “That little girl don’t think any too much of what’s me I tell you.”

Chickamaw relates “Her ma was just the same way, always acting like she was the Queen of Romania!” just then Keechie steps back from behind the heavy floral curtain that partitions the room. Bowie asks curiously “Keechie’s ma?” Chickamaw tells him “Yeah, you know what she did?…she ran off with a fella, now they’re running a medicine show” Keechie throws down what she was holding and walks back through the partition.

Fade to Black

T-Dub says “No matter how, I tell you we’re short…we need another thousand dollars” Chickamaw replies while looking at a newspaper “Hey we’re in it… Prison Farm break, the escape of 3 lifers was announced today by Warden E K Lardub (of some such name) the fugitives have captured a farmer in their flight”, then Chickamaw gets angry and slams down the paper. T-Dub picks it up and continues to read, “Elmo One Eyed Mobley” aka (Chickamaw) mumbles and paces, “It’s always one-eyed something.”

T-Dub reading “RT Waters, farmer of Akota, gave a description of the 3 men who commandeered his car at the point of a gun.” Chickamaw pipes in still pacing with the cigar in his mouth, “I shoulda blast his head off with that gun.”

T-Dub sees that there’s a dance at a dance hall that used to be Chickamaw’s old stomping ground, he gets the idea that there would be enough for the take there to be a small cushion for the big Zelton job they’re planning on.

Chickamaw picks up the paper from the table and says, “Sunday night, yeah that…” Then he pauses, “That one eye!…they didn’t’ print a very big piece about us either.” T-Dub says “Don’t wish it was more than just 2 lines..newspapers raise more heat than anything Chickamaw In a few days, they’ll really have somethin’ to print about us?” Bowie says “Yeah” and Chickamaw continues, “3 boys like us, we could charge any bank in the country, any bank!, how many have you knocked off T-Dub?” “Enough,” Chickamaw says to Bowie “You’re in luck kid, you’re traveling with real people“ T-Dub puts his hand on Bowie’s shoulder, and Chickamaw says “It takes 3 to charge a bank…and we’re the 3 mosquitas.”

“We move fast” looking deep into Bowie’s face. “Can you take it? “me?” “You!” “Sure.”

Bowie “I can rib myself up to anything,” Chickamaw says “Maybe. You ribbed yourself up once to killin’ a man didn’t ya?” Keechie walks into the room just then and looks faintly startled, and disappointed, Bowie stares at her concerned, and ashamed, Chickamaw asks again “Didn’t ya?” then Bowie breaks his gaze away from Keechie and looks up at Chickamaw and says “Yeah… I sure did” then looks back at Keechie who now looks down at the floor and walks out of the room.

It’s the first 10 minutes of They Live By Night that sets the stage for our ill-fated lovers.

To be continued in Part II…

They Live By Night (1948) Part Two “A woman is sort of like a dog”

The Narrow Margin 1952: Nobody likes a fat man

The Narrow Margin (1952) Directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charles McGraw plays the sandy graveled voice of Detective Sgt. Walter Brown who’s reluctantly been chosen to escort a mob widow to the grand jury hearing in Los Angeles by train.

In the process of picking up Mrs. Frankie Neal, in Chicago, Walter’s partner is shot and killed in the darkly lit stairwell by a mysterious assassin played by Peter Virgo, the ruthless Densel, who wears a fur-trimmed coat.  This only causes Walter to further resent the woman he’s been charged to protect and see to it that she makes it to the trial to testify against the mob.

This noir film has a lot of familiar elements, gangsters, the train ride, the detective’s dilemma – as the die-hard cop fends off the criminal elements that surround him, and the wrong man/woman trope. The mobsters, Vincent Yost, Densel, and Joseph Kemp want to get hold of a valuable list of names that Frankie’s widow will bring to trial. Yost tries to bribe Det. Walter Brown, but he’s an honest cop who can’t be taken in.

The Narrow Margin also stars Marie Windsor as Mrs. Frankie Neal’s widow and Jaqueline White as the respectable Ann Sinclair, a classy woman, and mother,  traveling on the train with her little boy Tommy and their nanny.

Ann gets caught in the cross hairs of the intrigue when the gangsters mistakenly take Ann for Frankie’s widow. The majority of the film takes place on the train heading for Los Angeles. Don Beddoe plays Det. Sgt. Gus Forbes, “the fat man” who keeps getting in the way of Walter. He repeats the self-abasing proverb “Nobody likes a fat man” as he lumbers his way through the narrow passageways of the train en route to L.A.

Frankie’s widow Mrs. Neal is an obnoxious loud-mouthed dame, who doesn’t want to play by the rules and blasts her record player even after Walter warns her to hide out in the train compartment that the thugs think is empty. Marie Windsor reminds me a bit of the wonderfully quirky Ileana Douglas (Goodfellas, Six Feet Under, Cape Fear 1991). Douglas is the granddaughter of the great actor Melvyn Douglas. The fabulous actress isn’t a stranger to film noir, having appeared in some of the most underrated films of the genre, Force of Evil 1948 with John Garfield, The Sniper 1952, City that Never Sleeps 1953, and what I consider to be one of the top ten film noirs of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing 1956. Windsor is perhaps at her best in the role of the conniving Sherri Peatty who beats the spirit of her husband George (Elisha Cook) until he’s desperate to pull a heist that goes terribly wrong.

Walter: Sister I’ve known some pretty hard cases in my time, you make em all look like putty. You’re not talkin’ about a sack of gum drops gonna get smashed. You’re talkin’ about a dame’s life.You make think it’s funny for a woman with a kid to stop a bullet for ya, but I’m not laughing.

Frankie’s widow: Really well I don’t care, she got twins, you talk like you’d rather I got the bullet who’s side are you on anyhow?

Walter: Listen Jingle Jaw nothin’s happened to you yet has it?

Frankie’s widow: No, well it better not.

Walter: Well then shut up!

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Impact: (1949) “This is for me and Irene sucker”

Impact (1949) Directed by Arthur Lubin Impact stars Brian Donlevy as Walter Williams a wealthy San Fransisco businessman who thinks his wife Irene played by Helen Walker ( great as the dark dominating force Lilith in Nightmare Alley) is truly the adoring woman she pretends to be. Here’s a great article from Movie Morlocks about the unsung talent of sexy Helen Walker.

Movie Morlocks.com a TCM site

Irene Gives her husband monogrammed shirts with his initials and calls him softy. She so adept at delivering the saccharine flattery of a doting wife. Unknown to the misguided Walter, she’s done the same monogram initials bit for her lover Tony Barrett as Jim Torrence a ruthless opportunist who has no hesitation in harming Walter to get what he wants.

Jim utters the iconic words from the film that reverberates in Walter’s head once he awakens from the nightmare, “This is for me and Irene sucker” just before he smashes the tire iron down upon Walter’s head.

Before the married couple are supposed to leave on a trip, Irene sets Walter up by feigning illness therefore not feeling well enough to travel with him. Instead, she sends her lover who is pretending to be her cousin Jim Torrence to meet up with Walter so he can give Jim a lift. Jim plans on bumping Walter off along the roadside and meeting up with Irene later at a Hotel under assumed names.

In a moment of sheer fatalistic retribution while speeding away from the crime scene Jim Torrance dies in a horrible head-on collision with a truck, which burns his body beyond recognition. After hitting Walter on the head with a tire iron he viciously throws him down the side of a cliff and leaves him for dead.

But Walter awakens bloodied and dazed climbs onto the back of a Bekins truck and winds up in Larkspur Idaho where he takes a job as a mechanic working for a war widow, the exquisite Ella Raines as Marsha Peters. Ella is even sylph-like in her greasy mechanic’s jumpsuit and cap.

Walter is hired at the gas station using a fake name, and while Marsha is beloved in the community she is not a very good mechanic so Walter takes over for three months, living as a roomer at Marsha’s kindly mother’s home. Walter becomes part of the community, as a volunteer fireman, and starts to relish leaving the big city life behind and the double-crossing wife Irene for this quaint existence in Larkspur.

Walter is assumed to be dead, which is all over the newsprint and later his wife Irene is sent to jail accused of plotting his murder, being hounded by Lt.Quincy played by Charles Coburn.

Walter reads the news, anticipating his revenge now with Irene sentenced to death, and he and Marsha begin to develop feelings for each other. When Walter tells the truth to Marsha..she insists that he do the right thing and go back to San Fransisco and show that he’s still alive.

Ironically, the police then believe the yarn that Irene spins that it was Walter who murdered her lover and not the other way around. Now Marsha and Lt Quincy must track down Su Lin, the William’s maid played by Anna May Wong who isn’t sure if her testimony would either help or hurt the kindly Walter Williams.

While Impact has some of the essential elements of a noir film, it works really well as a MeloNoir, the merging of melodrama and noir together. Brian Donlevy gives a great performance as the paragon betrayed patsy by his ruthless wife Irene. Helen Walker is icy as ever and Ellen is just gorgeous sitting on the stoop in Larkspur.

The Narrator starts off the tone of the film by saying  Impact, the force with which two lives come together. Sometimes for good, sometimes for evil.


Visit this revised piece that covers Impact in more detail.

https://thelastdrivein.com/2021/11/27/31-flavors-of-noir-on-the-fringe-to-lure-you-in-part-2/

The Killers (1946): Brutal Noir- A green silk hankerchief with golden harps

The Killers (1946) is the quintessential existentialist film. Based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1920s short story as he was immersed in the pre-war existentialism of that time period, which fostered tales of crimes and violence. As the two French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton remark in their fantastic read and seminal work A Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-153 the killer’s gunmen walking into the diner in Brentwood N.J. and begin complaining about the menu predates the dark Absurdism of the existential movement of playwrights like Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett.

It reminds me of how great directors like Quentin Tarantino pay homage to films like The Killers in Pulp Fiction, or the work of Samuel Fuller who didn’t hold back on the vicious realism that was groundbreaking in its day.

According to the Electric Sheep blog, “The first twelve minutes of The Killers (1946) is a faithful (almost word for word) adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's much-anthologized short story. Two hit men enter a diner (shot to look like Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks "“ itself apparently inspired by Hemingway's story) typical Hemingway heroic fatalism.”

Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946): Brutal Noir- The First 12 Killer Minutes!

The Killers (1946) the original version scripted by Hemingway himself, was produced by Mark Hellinger (The Naked City, Brute Force, and The Two Mrs Carrolls– 3 of my favorite films,) and once again boldly directed by the great Robert Siodmak. With the rise of Nazism Siodmak left Germany for Paris and then for Hollywood. He’s singularly responsible for a great deal of the noir films that are so memorable.

In my opinion, Siodmak’s film is a meatier piece of work that rendered a more brutal impression than the 1964 version directed by Don Siegel.

Perhaps due to its more neo-gangster noir style, it gave it a liminal and evocative intensity. Siodmak’s Killers has a more violently surreal tone, than the stylishly slick and richly colorful pulpy Siegel version. The effective black-and-white environment of the 1946 Killers once again sets the stage for the players to live in a world that is condemned by shadow. While I love Siegel’s version, it does seem brighter and the world more aired out than usual frames of noir desolation.

Although I’m a huge fan of Angie Dickenson and she was incredibly lush and provocative in the role of Sheila, Ava Gardner’s Kitty Collins was more subtly carnal as the temptress who becomes Swede’s downfall. Siodmak’s version gives us the noir police investigation, there is pervasive Machiavellian cruelty, and the characters have more stratum to their personas. John Cassavetes is more icy while Burt Lancaster’s Swede is a very sympathetic yet imperfect man, that fatalistic heroism.

Burt Lancaster plays Ole “Swede” Andersen ex-boxer and con, Ava Gardner is Kitty Collins, Edmond O’Brien is  Jim Reardon insurance investigator, Albert Dekker is Big Jim Colfax (Dr. Cyclops) criminal mastermind and Virginia Christine is Lily Harmon Lubinsky (she cameos in the ’64 version as the blind secretary).

Sam Levene is Lt. Sam Lubinsky Swede’s old childhood friend Charles McGraw( The Narrow Margin) is Al the killer and William Conrad (Cannon tv series)is Max the other killer. The Killers also casts Jeff Corey as “Blinky” Franklin (The Outer Limits O.B.I.T.episode) one of Big Jim’s criminal lackeys with a “monkey on his back” implying that he has a drug addiction. And Vince Barnett as Swede’s devoted and world-weary petty thief Charleston.

The film opens with Miklos Rozsa’s ominous brassy jazz score that later becomes the killer’s motif, as the two men drive into a small American town, anywhere USA,  we see them from behind in the darkest black silhouette in the car. Then a long view of them walking onto the scene still surrounded in shadow, we know they are trouble. The opening scene of The Killers is perhaps one of the most powerfully ferocious I’ve seen from a 1940s film.

The two men enter Henry’s Diner William Conrad’s Max and McGraw’s Al, are The Killers, who begin to psychologically torture George who works the counter, and Nick Adams the boy at the end of the counter. They exude an obnoxious egotism. A cruel anti-social spirit as they barrage the men in the diner with verbal assaults, having a somewhat perverse quality that begins with the menu.

George: What’ll it be, gentlemen?
Max: I don’t know. Whatta you want to eat, Al?
Al: I don’t know what I want to eat.
Max: I’ll have the roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes.
George: That’s not ready yet.
Max: Then what’s it on the card for?
George: Well, that’s on the dinner. You can have that at six o’clock. That clock is ten minutes fast. The dinner isn’t ready yet.
Max: Never mind the clock. What have you got to eat?
George: Well, I can give you any kind of sandwiches: bacon and eggs, liver and bacon, ham and eggs, steak…
Al: I’ll have the chicken croquettes with the cream sauce and the green peas and the mashed potatoes.
Max: Everything we want is on the dinner.

They continue to harass George, asking for alcohol, “Al: You got anything to drink? George tells them “I can give you beer, soda, or ginger ale. Al: I said you got anything to drink?” George submits a quiet “no.” Max says “This is a hot town, whatta you call it?“George“Brentwood” Al turns to Max “You ever hear of Brentwood?” Max shakes his head no and then Al asks George “What do you do for nights?”Max takes in a deep breath and groans out “They eat for dinner, they all come here and eat The Big Dinner” George looks downward and murmurs  “That’s right” and Al says

“You’re a pretty bright boy aren’t you”, meanwhile George is a grown middle-aged man. The term “boy” is designed  to demean him. George mutters “sure” and Al snaps back “Well you’re not!”

Al now shouts to the young man at the end of the counter “Hey you what’s your name?” he looks earnestly at Al and says “Adams, Nick Adams.” Al says, “Another bright boy.” There is an emerging sadism at work here, almost subconsciously homophobic/homoerotic, in the way they are using the terminology of “boy” working to subvert these bystanders’ manhood. Max says, “Town’s full of bright boys”

The cook comes out from the kitchen bringing the plates of ” one ham and one bacon” George starts to serve the men the food and asks “Which one is yours?“Al says “Don’t you remember bright boy?” the continued use of this phrase truly begins to flay the layers of our nerve endings. George starts laughing and Max says “What are you laughing at?” “nothing” “You see something funny?” “no” “Then don’t laugh” “Alright” Again Max says, ” He thinks it’s alright,” Al says “Oh, he’s a thinker” Here we see the anti-social backlash to an intellectual society that would perceive them as outcasts. The term “thinker” is used pejoratively as is “boy.” This is where the film begins to break the molds of the Hollywood window dressing of a civilized society when two intruders trespass on an ordinarily quiet community and shatter its sense of security. It is the death of humanism in film language.

Max and Al proceed to tie up Nick Adams and the cook in the kitchen. They further taunt George who asks “What’s this all about?” Max “I’ll tell ya what’s gonna happen, we’re gonna kill a Swede, you know big Swede, works over at the filling station” he lights a cigarette. George says, “You mean Pete Lund?” As Max takes the cigarette out of his mouth the smoke enervates in George’s face, “If that’s what he calls himself’, comes in every night at 6 o’clock don’t he?” Georges asks “What are you gonna kill him for? what did Pete Lund ever do to you?” Max replies,” he never had a chance to do anything to us he never even seen us.” The conversation is so matter-of-fact that it’s almost chillingly absurd. Again George asks, “What are you gonna kill him for?” and Max smirks “We’re killing him for a friend.” Al pokes his head in from the sliding panel window to the kitchen “Shut up you talk too much” but Max says ” I gotta keep bright boy amused don’t I?”

Once the killers believe what George tells them, that Swede isn’t coming into the diner for his supper because it’s passed 6 pm, they go to Swede’s boarding house. George unties the two men in the kitchen who have been bound up with dish rags, and Nick jumps over fences trying to head off the killers and warn Swede that they’re coming for him. Nick bursts into Swede’s room.

At first, we only see the obscured figure of a man lying on his bed, only from the neck down to his feet. We do not yet see the figure clearly. Swede is framed in shadow. Nick tells him about the men at Henry’s Diner, they were going to shoot him when he came in for supper.”George thought I oughta come over and tell ya” Out of breath Nick is panting, and we still only hear Lancaster’s substantial voice in a whispering tone “There’s nothing I can do about it,” Nick says “Don’t you even wanna know what they’re like?” “I don’t wanna know what they’re like, thanks for coming” Don’t you wanna go and see the police?” “No that wouldn’t do any good,” Swede tells Nick he’s sick of running and “I did something wrong (pause) once, thanks for coming” he ends very solemnly. Nick leaves. The last words we hear Swede utter are “Charleston was right, Charleston was right.”

Now we see Swede’s face just staring and waiting. Sitting up, as the killers come bursting into the room, blasts of light from the gun spray, we are left looking at Swede’s hand lying limp against the side of the bed, surrounded in shadow once again, he is dead.

The Killers relies a lot on the noir mechanism of the flashback. At times there are flashbacks within flashbacks.

We’re now at the police station with Nick and Sam the cook giving their statements. We see a silk scarf with harps among his effects. Swede left a death benefit life insurance policy for $2,500 that goes to a woman in Atlantic City. The case is now being investigated by an insurance detective for the Atlantic Casualty and Insurance Company. Edmond O’Brien plays Reardon, who refuses to drop the case even after his boss insists that it’s not financially worth the company’s time. But Reardon wants to know what happened to this man who had “8 slugs in him, nearly tore him in half.”

Reardon goes to the hotel in Atlantic City and talks to the old chambermaid, Queenie, who is the beneficiary of Swede’s death benefit. She tells Reardon that at least he could be buried in consecrated ground and Reardon asked why she thought it was a suicide.

Queenie tells him in flashback how she was working that night and came into Swede’s room to clean, and he was visibly disturbed, smashing and stomping the furniture crying out “She’s gone, she’s gone!” Queenie asks “Who’s gone, mister?” He picks up a chair and breaks the window and tries to jump out, but Queenie grabs him and tells him” For the sake of God, you’ll burn in hell for all time” and stops him from killing himself. The death benefit was his way of saying thanks for her kindness.

Reardon embarks on a journey to get the bell to ring in his head, about why the green silk handkerchief with the golden harps is on the tip of his mind. His boss says that claims are piling up and he’s off running around with a 2 for a nickel shooting, but Reardon wants to know why 2 professionals put the blast on a filling station attendant, a nobody. He also notices his hands, scarring which indicates that Swede had been a boxer at one time.

He meets up with Swede’s old boyhood friend from the 12th ward in Philly. Lt Sam Lubinsky who is now married to Swede’s one-time girlfriend Lily played by the young and ever-present character actress Virginia Christine who was also in The Killer Is Loose. In The Killers, she is absolutely beautiful as the “nice girl” playing opposite Ava Garner’s femme fatale role as Kitty. Sam joined the police force and Ole Swede started fighting professionally. They always kept in touch, but “when you’re a copper, you’re a copper” and eventually after taking a savage beating in the ring, Swede breaks his knuckles beyond repair and has to stop boxing. Sam winds up putting ” the pinch” on his friend Ole later on.

In a flashback, we see Lily and Swede at a party thrown at a swanky hotel by Jake, one of Big Jim Colfax’s men. Lily doesn’t like Jake, he’s got mean eyes. Swede sees Kitty for the first time sitting at a piano. Swede is mesmerized by Kitty. The women share competitive glances. Kitty says, “Jake tells me you’re a fighter,” he says “Do you like the fights?” Kitty says “I hate brutality Mr. Anderson the idea of 2 men beating each other to a pulp makes me ill.” Lily tells Kitty that she’s seen all of Swede’s fights, but Kitty comes back with “Oh really, I couldn’t bare to see the man I care about hurt” At that point Lily is finished once Swede remarks how beautiful Kitty is Lily leaves the party.

Lt. Lubinsky tells Reardon that “It seems like I was always in there when he was losing, ever see him fight? He took a lot of punishment.”

Ole’s manager leaves Swede after he isn’t any good as a money-making fighter anymore since the bones in his hand are crushed. It’s why he didn’t use his right hand to fight the night he lost the bout to Tiger Lewis. That night his manager says “No use hanging around here, never did like wakes”

In a flashback within a flashback, Ole starts dating Kitty Collins, Big Jim’s girl. Evidently, she shoplifts a diamond pin, Reardon recognizes it as she’s wearing it at a table sitting with a group of thugs who work for Big Jim Colfax. She drops it into a plate of soup, but Reardon stops the waiter, fishes it out, and rinses it off in a cup of coffee then tries to take Kitty in, but then “Ole” Swede walks in and winds up taking the rap for her spending 3 years in jail for Kitty’s robbery then he gets released for good behavior.

Kitty’s given him this green silk scarf with golden harps of hers, which he strokes in jail. Swede has a cellmate and friend in a man named Charleston, a petty larceny crook and old-time hoodlum who bonds with Swede while in prison. Charleston brings up Jupiter one night. He liked to look at the stars after lights out, he knew their names because he got a book from the prison library.

“You can’t learn any better about stars than by staring” Swede and Charleston stares out the window at the stars, while Swede is stroking the silk scarf Kitty gave him. He asks Charleston if he knows what “harp” means. He says “Yeah, angels play ’em” “They mean Irish, Kitty gave me this scarf.” But Kitty hasn’t come to see Swede once while he’s in prison for the robbery she pulled. Swede asks Charleston to look up Kitty when he gets out because he’s worried about her. But Charleston knows she’s not sick or in trouble. Swede is too much in love to see it.

Later on, Charleston relates to Reardon at a pool hall where he was told to bring Swede on the day after his release from jail because Big Jim is planning a “big set-up.” Also in the room is a thug named Dumb Dumb and Blinky Franklin. Charleston opts out, he only wants easy pickings at his age he’s spent half his life in stir, but Swede seeing Kitty in the room, still Big Jim’s girl, says he’s in. Kitty becomes Swede’s mistress again. We see the glances between the two, and Swede knocks Jim down when he tries to hit Kitty. The two men swear that after the heist, they will even up the score with each other.

The last thing Charleston says to Swede before he leaves the room is “Want a word of advice? stop listening to golden harps, they’ll land you in a lot of trouble.” We now know what Swede meant by his last words. Charleston leaves the room. Closing the door, hoping Swede will follow, but ” he never showed up, and I never seen the Swede again” We see the character Charleston in flashback standing outside the door. Framed by the shot making the door a principal moment in the film. Charleston stared at the door waiting, looking trapped and small. The door symbolizes the unknown and what lies behind or ahead.

Back at Atlantic Casualty and Insurance Co. Reardon tells his boss the “bell rang” he remembered hearing about it in relationship to a big caper that was pulled on July 20th, 1940 at The Prentiss Hat Company. Armed gunmen got away with a quarter of a million of Atlantic’s money. One of the robbers was seen wearing a green scarf with golden harps wrapped around his face like a bandit. Swede was one of the people involved in the heist. Now hiding out under an assumed name, and working at a filling station supposedly hiding all the loot from the Hat Company heist, taken away from the other members of the gang. Who sent the killers to assassinate Swede and did Kitty Collins sign his death warrant?

The Killers, details double crosses of all double-crosses, as ‘the killers’ go to the sleepy town of Brentwood to even a score with Swede, who didn’t take Charleston’s advice and stops listening to golden harps. In noir films, there is often a fetishistic quality to an item or action. I think the scarf is a sexual symbol of Kitty for Swede. It bares her scent, it was a token of her sexuality being made of “real silk” as if her skin. the idea of touching something golden. The scarf acts as a surrogate for Kitty’s body, as he strokes it in place of the real thing.

The Killer Is Loose: Gutsy Crime Noir: Get Lila (1956)

Part of my Women in Peril series.

The Killer is Loose (1956) directed by Budd Boetticher revolves around a bank robbery in downtown L.A. While the police have set up a wiretapping operation it is revealed that the meek bank teller Leon Poole is the inside man. Leon had faked going after the robbers and getting struck by one of them in the process. This impresses his old army Sargent who was in the bank at the time. We learn that the nickname Foggy was given to Leon by his superior officer and the entire company apparently to poke fun at Leon” Foggy” Poole for being a simple-minded coward. Starring Joseph Cotten as Detective Sam Wagner, Rhonda Fleming as his wife Lila, and Wendell Corey as Leon “Foggy” Poole.

During the apprehension of Leon, Detective Sam Wagner accidentally kills Poole’s young wife who wasn’t supposed to be home, and at Leon’s trial, he swears to get back at Detective Wagner while staring at Detective Wagner’s wife who is present in the courtroom.

This is the inception of the woman in peril theme once Leon sets his gaze on Sam’s wife Lila the object of his hatred fixed on her from here on in.

In a very chilling manner, Leon asks why Sam’s wife Lila should still be alive. Leon’s lack of affect shows us a more deranged man than someone who might be prone to violent outbursts, and it is this subtlety of his underlying psychosis that is so frightening.

About three years later, Poole (until then a model prisoner) abruptly takes his chance to kill a guard and escape. It’s clear during the ensuing manhunt that Poole is obsessed in pursuit of a single end; but not quite the end everyone supposes.

After serving 3 years in prison, Leon gets assigned to an “honor” work farm, where because of his mild manner and seemingly model behavior is trusted to go on a ride with one of the prison guards to unload a truck. Leon seizes the opportunity to escape by brutally killing the driver and then proceeds on his odyssey of revenge. Like a shark that never stops moving, Leon is driven only by his desire to exact the same outcome for Detective Wagner, to target Lila as retribution for the killing of his beloved wife. Leon becomes a killing machine. Going from one opportunistic murder to the next until he can reach Sam’s wife. So begins the full-scale manhunt for the killer on the loose.

Budd Boetticher gives us a very bleak yet dramatic landscape of America’s man vs society, cop vs criminal, and good vs evil. Like some of the wild west pictures that Boetticher is known for, except here it’s played out in an urban city setting. Leon is a man set on revenge with no other driving desire and void of a consciousness that we can see.

The Killer is Loose is uncompromisingly realistic and often brutal in its portrayal of the ordinary machinations of a psychotic murderer, especially for its time. I’m not a huge Rhonda Fleming fan, but I do love Joseph Cotten in anything even his later cult and horror period like Baron Blood, Airport ’77, and Soylent Green.

The really memorable star of this gutsy Mise en scene police vs criminal noir is the killer himself Leon “Foggy” Poole played brilliantly by Wendell Corey who defined his sober character with simplicity, and an almost naivete childlike quality. This is what makes the film so compelling. Leon doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t kill the people who are getting in the way of his fixing Detective Sam Wagner for having inadvertently killed Leon’s wife during a raid on his apartment.

Wendell Corey’s Leon never comes across as unhinged in an overt way, it’s the way he holds back his emotions that makes his killer enigmatic and makes your skin crawl.

There are moments of exasperation in The Killer Is Loose for me. The police often miss the mark when trying to effectively do their job, and I find Rhonda Fleming’s character as Sam’s wife Lila annoying most of the time. I  was more sympathetic to Mary, the wife of Sam’s partner Michael Pate (Curse Of The Undead)Detective Chris Gillespie played by great character actress Virginia Christine.

Still, The Killer Is Loose is a compelling watch, because of its existential informality in some of the more brutal moments which are powerful. The tone of Killer overrode the failings of this film for me and so  I was able to separate myself from the few things that irked me like Lila’s stubborn harping and the police’s ineffectual fumblings.

There are some other great veteran actors in this film like the always jovial Alan Hale Jr and John Larch who plays Otto Flanders, Foggy’s superior officer in the army who gave him the nickname Foggy as an insult.

Sudden Fear: Shadows wicked, shadows gladdened, an offertory of clocks: time’s running out.

SUDDEN FEAR Joan Crawford: Queen of the volatile eyebrows with a life all their own. Her vulcanized eyebrows frame her austere gaze.

In Sudden Fear, the tale of Myra Hudson, a wealthy San Fransisco Heiress and playwright whose new play Halfway To Heaven is about to become another smashing success. At first, we see a very empowered woman who doesn’t like to be referred to as an heiress. She’s independent and obviously is well-guarded in terms of her emotions. Here she is an iconic figure of the woman as an upper or middle-class protagonist, perhaps unconsciously inviting in something ominous into her safe environment. She’s unaware of being provocative yet allowing this intruder into her normal life.

This is a stylish noir – melodrama with a villain lying in wait for the innocent, vulnerable bystander to give way to the intrusion. A secret desire perhaps to shake up the ordinary world they usually inhabit.

Lester Blaine is played by Jack Palance*, the imposing and saturnine actor whose appearance generates that of a Minotaur rather than a leading man. (Palance’s appearance fated him to play the villain in more than one Noir film in its prime. His jawline conveys menace, his dark and brooding deep-set eyes betray a sinister inner prayer for self-satisfaction and malice.)

Lester has failed to land the lead in the play. Myra, watching from the theater seats while auditioning him, says “he sounds romantic enough, he just doesn’t look romantic enough”

Once Blaine finds out that he hasn’t landed the part in Myra’s play he bursts forth onto the stage and delivers a diatribe about a famous painting of Casanova that she should really visit. “He’s got big ears and a scar, and looks just like me.”

Is he genuinely hurt or is he contriving to get close to Myra? At this point, we are unsure of his motivations, yet we do see a glimpse of something unsavory, sinister in his unctuous mannerism.

Now Myra is on a train from New York headed back to San Francisco, where she sees Blaine from her compartment window and calls out to him. Miraculously Blaine is boarding the same train. After a few awkward moments, Myra trying to justify not picking him for the lead actor in the play, the ice is broken and Blaine begins to romance her. We sense that his charm, his parlor tricks of affectionate gestures are lures for the bait. His oily, silken tone, wiling her into his gaze and out of her safety zone. To us, he has a sadist’s air, but Myra has already started to loosen her grip on her formality. She has given in. They ride through to Chicago, where he takes her to an acting school for wrestlers, we’re told. Back on the train, he asks her why she works. “The desire to achieve, to stand on my own two feet, instead of my father’s fortune, make a place in the world.” Here again, we are reminded that Myra was a very strong-minded and independent femme inoffensif.

Now that the Minotaur is lurking, and the romance has been kindled, Crawford’s face is softening with each frame as she accepts him into her soul’s stoic citadel. They share quotes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and then their hands mesh, his fingers baring a ring, she asks if it’s a wedding ring, he says it’s his mother’s.

The trap is set. She is caught. She brings him home to her apartment in San Francisco where he meets her two friends, her lawyer Steve Kearney – played by the innocuous Bruce Bennett, the ever-vigilant and devoted attorney/friend. She then takes him up to her study where “plays are born” She shows him her dictaphone where she records everything, scene descriptions, and the bequests for her last will and testament. And they drink milk. A virtuous drink. The drink of lily white modesty. He begins a soliloquy from one of her plays. ” It’s flattering to be quoted. Another move closer, piercing her tough heart seed. He moves towards her and now they kiss.

We are taken along through scenes of sightseeing the great points of the lookout for San Francisco; the Trolley, the Bridge, and Muir Woods. The music tells us the mood is that of metropolitan musings. The bustle of car horns and trumpet hollers. The city is now fresh with a new love for Myra and Lester Blaine.

The celebratory, outdoor frames end and suddenly relinquish themselves into a frantic moody setting at  Myra’s apartment. Guests downstairs at a party she’s thrown in honor of Lester. She’s frantically ringing his room. We see her black glassy shoes pacing in the room. She lights a cigarette. Her friends Steve and Ann come in to see if she’s coming back down to the party.

Now we see Blaine pacing. His shoes are the vantage point with which we understand the fervor of his first inscrutable stratagem set forth to weaken Myra’s self-possession. She relentlessly rings his phone. He’s lying on top of his bed, smoking a cigarette allowing her to become more diminished with every dead silence.

She tells her friends to “Tell the guests anything”. She is now a desperate woman, something must have happened to him. She goes to his room. We see him at the top of the stairs with his bags packed. He looms like a great menacing presence. Stairs in Noir films are often a symbol, a mechanism to facilitate the atmosphere of the ascent toward danger and insecurity. He tells her that he doesn’t belong in her world. She tells him she has nothing without him. His ruse has worked. They are married.

At her summer house, they awaken from their marriage bed, and greet the new day, by walking out onto the balcony near the stairs leading down towards the ocean. It’s very steep and rocky with no guardrail. Treacherous if you were to lose your balance. I wondered, will he try to push her down this rocky tor? What Myra calls the precipice. Blaine feigns concern for her safety and she quotes Nietzsche’s ‘Live dangerously” a foreshadowing of the pact she has inadvertently signed with the devil.

At the reception of Mr and Mrs Lester Blaine, the dubious Irene Neves played by the sweltering Gloria Grahame comes walking in on the arm of Steve’s brother Jr. (Mike Connor) The sultry vulpine blond unwraps her white head scarf and everything changes from here.

We see Lester leering at Irene curiously. Do they have a past relationship?

After the reception Irene, once again climbing a set of stairs to her apartment, puts the key in the door, and is startled by Lester who comes at her from behind. She screams as he pushes her into the apartment with brutal compulsion. Sounding furious he asks ” What are you doing in San Francisco?” she replies so cooly “An old friend of mine married a San Francisco girl.” Throwing a newspaper at him she follows up with “Here I’ll show you it was in all the newspapers.” He slaps it out of her hands and says “Don’t be cute.”

Now we understand that we have a pair of anti-social opportunists who not only know each other but have never severed the relationship. Lester gets furious at the thought of Irene dating Jr. and wants to know what she’s done to impress him. He warns Irene, if she ever does, she’ll need a new face! Blaine’s violent potency has manifested in full force now for us to see.

Amidst several diversionary tactics, like asking Steve, Myra’s trusted friend and lawyer to help him find work because he would never live off his wife’s money. Lester and Irene meet in secret. He asks why she’s still dating Jr. “Cause the rents are due, and I’d rather eat dinner than starve.” These two ruthless people begin to plot Myra’s demise. They must be careful. It must look like an accident.

Steve suggests to Myra that she makes a sensible change in terms of the will. She is about to inherit her father’s entire fortune soon. But Myra says she won’t hang onto any man she loves from the grave nor from this side of the grave either. For the first time, she feels poor because all she has to give is her love to Lester. And for the first time, she feels rich because she is getting so much back from him in return. She wants to share all her worldly goods with this reptilian deceiver she’s fallen in love with. She bequeaths her entire estate onto the Dictaphone, in her study. That night there is a party, and people are playing poker, Lester and Irene slip away into Myra’s study and begin to conspire and embrace.

The next day, the secretary tells Myra that she left the dictaphone on. Myra disagrees but lets the issue drop. Once in the study, she listens to the bequest “For the happiness he’s given me…” then a sudden skip in the recording and now we hear Lester and Irene who had inadvertently recorded themselves scheming.

And now the veil of deception has been lifted. She has been so naive, so fragile for once. She is horrified, the look on her face bears her devastation and betrayal. She hears how he’s never loved her. How it makes his skin crawl to tell her he loves her. She weeps, as she hears them read the will that Steve intended for Lester. ”She doesn’t sign the Will until Monday, and can’t get the old man’s money ’til then, suppose something happens between now and Monday?” They have to make it look like an accident. They’ve got 3 days. The record starts to skip. And Gloria Grahame’s razor-edged voice, drones on and on ” I know a way… I know a way”. Myra runs to the bathroom and gets sick. She realizes that she’s got proof of their plot to murder her, but in her frenzy to hide the recording she accidentally breaks it.

This scene is one of the most powerfully driven slow burning revelations– the gestalt of this dark story. The droning voice of Irene, she’s defenseless, staring at her marriage bed, where lies were perpetrated upon her. The incessant violation, “It’ll have to look like an accident.” She clasps her ears. She begins to dream, the dreams sow the seed of nightmares. All the ways she could die. Being pushed from the tallest window. Being smothered by unseen hands pushing a pillow over her face. Suddenly she is woken up by Blaine who has broken through the door, acting concerned. She flinches, afraid of him. We see the shift in her now. Her gaze has shifted to abject fear of this man. Then her fear seems to turn to scorn. A little sign of her durability comes back to her complexion.

Instead of going to her friend Steve who would have readily believed her story, she contrives to undermine Lester and Irene by laying the groundwork for her own strategy, to set them both up. The film begins to unwind into a dark forest of shadowy contours and murkiness. Scenes of Crawford’s machinations through the lens of her extraordinary eyes. The shadow of the clock’s pendulum oscillates on her face, over her heart, while she envisions her plan enacted. There are a variety of scenes with clocks. The use of the clock in this film is emblematic of Myra’s living on borrowed time. Of time running out for all the players. There’s also a very gripping and inventive scene with a little wind-up toy dog that escalates the atmosphere of agitation and tautness. The shadows that frame the figures are like contoured walls of darkness. Crawford’s eyes convey much of the rest of the narrative.

You’ll have to see the film yourself, I will not spoil the way the rest of this film plays out. It doesn’t unbend at the final frame but rather awakens from the shadows, the noir landscape, the sound of high heels fleeing on cobblestone streets no more. Wet down in bleak and dreary puddles of rain. The sun comes up slowly mounting on the back of the morning sky, ascending renewal. The end of sudden fear.

Sudden Fear features a screenplay by Lenore Coffee and Robert Smith from the novel by Edna Sherry and was directed by David Miller and the director of photography was Charles Lang Jr. (Some Like It Hot, How The West Was Won, The Magnificent Seven, Charade, and Wait Until Dark.)
The film’s evocative score is by the prolific composer Elmer Bernstein.

* Several years ago I had the great privilege of sitting at a neighboring table across from the great Jack Palance, at a very quaint Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. Although I had been such a huge fan of his for years, I did not want to insinuate myself into his dinner conversation. He had been sketching with crayons on the tablecloth something for someone who appeared to be a director. They were obviously discussing the details of some project. I felt so special to be seated near him. In person, he seemed as gentle as a labrador retriever. Not the imposing gargoyle of a man that he came across in most of his films. I consider that meal, a very special moment in time.

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