Commentary Track on THE GUILTY

 

I had a blast doing the commentary for Flicker Alley's restoration of John Reinhardt's great poverty row noir THE GUILTY (1947). The film is included in a new set with Reinhardt's *other* great noir from that year, HIGH TIDE. The package is fantastic, packed with extras, including a commentary by Alan Rode on HIGH TIDE, informative features on the stars, director, and producers--all with a nice intro by Eddie Muller. If you're a serious noir geek, then you really don't want to miss one. Check it out here.

NOIR CITY CHICAGO 2019

One of the highlights of my moviegoing year--hell, one of the highlights of my year, period--is Noir City Chicago. This is the festival where the Film Noir Foundation rolls into town and sets up shop at the Music Box Theater, showing a selection of classic film noir curated and and presented by Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode. These events are always a blast, and this year looks to be no different. The festival this year focuses on the noirs of the 1950s, and the showings are all double bills. Must-see double bills for me include: IN A LONELY PLACE & THE FILE ON THELMA JORDAN, PUSHOVER & PRIVATE HELL 36, and ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW & CRY TOUGH. Check out the rest of the line up at the Music Box's festival webpage. 

Dirty Sand and Eddie Bunker

The new issue of NOIR CITY is out and I have a couple of pieces in it. One is a look at the way beach culture was presented in film noir in the classic period in films such as THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, TENSION, IN A LONELY PLACE, and DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD.

The second piece is a book vs. film comparison of Edward Bunker's novel NO BEAST SO FIERCE and Ulu Grosbard's STRAIGHT TIME starring Dustin Hoffman. For more info on the issue, which includes an interview between James Ellroy and Eddie Muller, click here.

My 2017 At The Movies

In 2017, I saw 125 movies on the big screen. That breaks down to a movie every 2.9 days. This is, I am quite certain, the most times I've ever gone to the movies in the course of the year. I'm pretty happy about that.

Of course, in the real world, 2017 has been a horrific year. God help us all, it's been the year of Trump, a year of daily outrages both petty (the bizarre spectacle of the White House spokesman transparently lying about inauguration size) and monumental (the travel ban, the stolen seat on the Supreme Court, the plutocratic tax bill, Charlottesville). And, under it all, there has been the steadily building of pressure of the Russia investigation.

So it's been a good year to seek solace at the movies, not just because the world has given us so many reasons to seek solace, but because it's been a great year for the movies themselves.

There's a prevailing notion that the movies themselves are in dire trouble--that the act of going to a theater to see a film is something that won't last much longer. The most oft-cited reasons for this decline are changing viewing patterns among younger moviegoers, the rise of ticket prices, the popularity of streaming, and the ever increasing consolidation of the industry itself. As someone who loves going to the movies, I worry about these things, too, but I take a lot of comfort in the robust nature of filmgoing that I witnessed over the last 12 months.

The most emotionally explosive movie I saw this year came early, Raoul Peck's I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, the James Baldwin essay film that went into wide release in February. The film has the power of a great Baldwin essay, fierce and honest and brilliant. You could feel an electrical current ripple through the screening I attended. In terms of sheer impact, I'm sure I didn't see a better film this year.

At the other end of the spectrum, when I saw Patty Jenkins's WONDER WOMAN, I got to ride along on a wave of pure joy. The film is, of all things, old fashioned--an epic, romantic, funny, exciting adventure yarn. It was the best popcorn movie I saw this year.

I got to see other films where the crowds were brimming with excitement. I thought IT was okay, but I can tell you that the crowd of mostly teenage moviegoers I saw it with had a blast. GET OUT, which is one part serious social commentary and one part pure popcorn flick, was another film that blew the roof off the theater where I saw it.

Smaller films had a fantastic year. When people saw that movies are going downhill, that they don't make 'em like they used to, I have to respond that I just don't see it that way. I see a lot good movies. I saw A LOT of great movies this year, and small productions by serious filmmakers are as good as they've ever been. 

THE FLORIDA PROJECT, from director Sean Baker, is a masterpiece about a young girl living in poverty on the outskirts of the Disney's sunshine state empire. It is a hilarious and heartbreaking film, a work of cinematic art. A very different film-- though a film cut from something of the same cloth--is the thriller GOOD TIME from Benny and Josh Safdie. This was the best crime film of the year, pure exhilarating neo-noir filmmaking.

Of course, a huge part of my filmgoing life is consumed by classic film retrospectives. Chicago is rich with venues for the classic film geek: the Music Box Theater, the Gene Siskel Film Center, Doc Films and the Chicago Film Society showings at NEIU. I've had nothing less than an extraordinary year at the movies. I've gotten to enjoy old favorites like WRITTEN ON THE WIND, UGETSU, BLOOD SIMPLE, DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, A PLACE IN THE SUN and so many others. Even more exciting, though, are the new discoveries I've made. A classic film geek's job is never done, so I got to catch up with some films that I'd either never seen before or films that I hadn't seen in decades. These films included PANIQUE, LEON MORIN - PRIEST, WHEN YOU GET THIS LETTER, GIRLFRIENDS, TIME TO DIE, and CANYON PASSAGE. This was the year I got to see one of my favorite films (1979's neo-noir HARDCORE) on the big screen for the first time, and it's the year I discovered an old film (the 1946 melodrama TO EACH HIS OWN) that instantly became one of my favorites. 

I could go on, but the point is already clear: it was great year at the movies.

I'll close with a couple of lists. My top movie experiences new and retro.

New Releases
1. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (technically 2016)
1. THE FLORIDA PROJECT
2. GOOD TIME
3. LADY BIRD
4. NOVITIATE
5. WONDER WOMAN
6. ATOMIC BLONDE
7. BLADE RUNNER 2049
8. THE DISASTER ARTIST
9. GET OUT
10. THE SHAPE OF WATER        

Retrospective and Classic Films 
(This is not a ranking of how "great" these films are--in other words I could just put CHINATOWN down as the best movie I saw all year and be done with it--but rather this is a ranking of my experiences at the movies. This is a list of the great experiences I had at the movies this year.)
1. TO EACH HIS OWN (1946) Chicago Film Society showing at NEIU
2. OPEN SECRET (1948) Gene Siskel Film Center
3. WORKING GIRLS (1931) CFS showing at NEIU
4. HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) Music Box Theater
5. IXCANUL (2015) GSFS
6. DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD (1954) Noir City Chicago at MBT
7. A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951) Doc Films
8. COOL HAND LUKE (1968) MBT
9. LEON MORIN, PRIEST (1961) GSFC
10. WENDY AND LUCY (2008) DF
And the honorary mentions would include the collections of Buster Keaton Shorts (1918-1921) I saw at a boisterous showing at the Music Box, and the packed showing of LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997) at Noir City Chicago (hosted by Eddie Muller and James Ellroy), just shortly before the Kevin Spacey scandal broke, making me one of the last people to see that movie in a state of relative innocence.

All in all, 2017 was a great year at the pictures. Here's to 2018.

Georges Simenon: The Father of European Noir

I'm really proud to be associated with the Film Noir Foundation and its journal NOIR CITY. Published and edited by FNF honcho and host of TCM's NOIR ALLEY Eddie Muller, it's one of the best movie journals around. The new issue is out and it's pretty damn great. There two pieces by Imogen Sara Smith, who's certainly my favorite writer on film working today. She's got a piece on Jean-Pierre Melville and another on the 1929 silent noir A STRONG MAN. Alan K. Rode writes about the great, if not widely known, screenwriter Frank Fenton. And there's a lot more.

Oh yeah, there's me. I have a couple pieces in this issue. One is a epic overview of the massive influence of Georges Simenon on European film noir. Adaptations of his novels started with Jean Renoir in the early days of sound and have extended to the present, so there's A LOT of territory to cover. It was a blast to write.

The other piece is a look at the film version of ALL THE KING'S MEN, the film about a blowhard populist politician who sweeps to power by inflaming his white rural base. Total fantasy stuff.   

You can learn about about the magazine and the Film Noir Foundation here.

Jake Hinkson on NOIR TALK

I was pleased to be a recent guest on the podcast NOIR TALK. Host Haggai Elitzur and I discussed my profiles of Tom Neal and Peggie Castle, my adventures on book tours in France, what it's like to attended Noir City Chicago, and much more. Check it out here.  

Noir City Chicago 2017

Noir City Chicago returns to the Music Box Theatre August 25th to August 31st. Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode will be on hand to introduce an eclectic group of films that will center around this year's theme of "The Big Knockover." I love caper films so I'm especially excited by this year's selections which include classics like THE ASPHALT JUNGLE and KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL, as well as lesser known (but equally excellent) heist flicks like PLUNDER ROAD and DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD. The latter film, in my opinion, is one of the great underrated noirs. Maybe I'll run a piece on it before it shows.

Here's a link to the Noir City Chicago 2017 schedule.

MYSTERY SCENE Interview with Eddie Muller

In the new issue of MYSTERY SCENE, I interview Film Noir Foundation founder and president Eddie Muller. We discuss his new show NOIR ALLEY on TCM, his work rescuing forgotten films, and the meaning of the word "classic."

On news stands now, check it out. 

The Vagabond: Martin M. Goldsmith

The 1945 film noir DETOUR is a movie that seems to have been made out of grit and blood. It certainly wasn't made out of money. As the crown jewel of Hollywood's Poverty Row, DETOUR is best known today as the premiere work of slumming master Edgar G. Ulmer, the penurious auteur who has since become a hero to every filmmaker who ever tried to make art on a budget.

With all due respect to Ulmer, though, we would do well to remember the man who wrote the screenplay (and original novel) of DETOUR, the fascinating firebrand Martin M. Goldsmith. A true eccentric who rejected the materialism of Tinseltown, Goldsmith was one of the key screenwriters of Poverty Row film noir in the 1940s and 1950s. He deserves as much credit as anyone for the masterpiece that is DETOUR, but his career, both in films and as a social activist, doesn't stop there.

I wrote about Goldsmith for the Summer 2016 issue of NOIR CITY. You can read a PDF of my article here. And go here to learn more about the Film Noir Foundation and how you can contribute to its effort to rescue and restore America's noir heritage.

WARNING SHADOWS: HOME ALONE WITH CLASSIC CINEMA by Gary Giddins

I love a good collection of film essays. In particular, I like to curl up with the work of a single author, watching one mind as it travels through disparate works or genres or eras. As a kid, I was a Roger Ebert fanatic. I used to buy his huge Movie Annuals every year. (My mother: "Another one? Didn't you get one last year?" Me: "You don't understand.") As I got older, I discovered Pauline Kael and Peter Bogdanovich and Eddie Muller, revelations all.

My latest favorite is Gary Giddins' 2010 collection WARNING SHADOWS: HOME ALONE WITH CLASSIC CINEMA. The book has a brilliantly simple conceit. Giddins begins with an introduction that traces the development of cinema from the solitary experience of the earliest Edison nickelodeons to the Golden Age movie palaces to post-studio era multiplexes to the rise of home video and the DVD revolution. He stops just short of the latest earthquake in cinema distribution and exhibition, the era of digital streaming.

I'm glad that he stops at that point, because it allows the book that follows to focus almost exclusively on the act of watching classic cinema on DVD. As much as I think about film, I have to admit that I've never given much thought to the fact that I've seen more classics on DVD than any other format. Giddins--writing for outlets like The New York Sun, DGA Quarterly, and the Criterion Collection--is examining the films within their current context, as part of DVD packages like the Warner Bros. Signature Series which collects the work of a star like James Stewart or the Criterion Collection which assembles packages like THE COMPLETE MR. ARKADIN by Orson Welles. It's fascinating to consider these films not just as works of classic cinema (as if we were beaming ourselves into the past to watch them as part of a double feature at some long lost movie temple) but as works that exist largely as solitary home entertainments. Giddins has a particular insight into the way that this new context has affected the delicate charms of classic comedy. Chaplin and Keaton created movies to be seen by hundreds of people crammed together in the dark, their laughter a communal event. How haunting it is to see them play out in the relative silence of your living room.

The book itself covers a wide range of topics--from great directors (Welles, Hitchcock, Ford, Bergman, ect.) to great stars (Crawford, Davis, Bogart, ect) to genres like the biopic, the musical, and the film noir. Giddins is a deft and daring guide down these well traveled roads. At a certain point, a reader needs a writer to reject the conventional views of artists and works. The way Giddins reframes something like the career of Alice Faye made me want to revisit her work. 

And really a reader couldn't ask for more from a collection of writing on film. Giddins writes about movies that are sixty, seventy, eighty years old and makes them fresh candidates for tonight's movie viewing.

NOIR CITY is here

The new issue of NOIR CITY is a real piece of work. It spotlights a few of the under appreciated women who made noir happen. Eddie Muller spotlights producer Joan Harrison, and there are pieces on Ella Raines, June Havok, and the great Dorothy B. Hughes. My own contribution to this issue is a piece on Jean Gillie and Jack Bernhard, the wife and husband team who made the most deranged of all classic noirs, 1946's DECOY.

There is much, much more by a stellar lineup of guest voices like Megan Abbott and Vicki Hendricks. Check out the issue here. 

NOIR CITY On Sale!

I've been writing for NOIR CITY for a few years now, and I've been really happy with all the feedback I've gotten from people who love the magazine. The only problem has been that folks could only get the issues on a subscription basis.

Well, I'm happy to say that you can now buy NOIR CITY on an issue by issue basis. My contributions to these issues include an overview of Orson Welles's impact on film noir, my profiles of people like Tom Neal (DETOUR), Peggie Castle (99 RIVER STREET), Beverly Michaels (WICKED WOMAN), all the entries in my series on Poverty Row Professionals, and much more.

You can find out more, and get complete table of content listings for each issue, including great work by regular contributors like Eddie Muller, Imogen Sara Smith, Vince Keenan, Gary Deane, Steve Kronenberg, and Dan Akira Nishimura--and special features by people like Ed Brubaker, Ken Bruen, Michael Connelly, Christa Faust, Barry Gifford, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippmann, Scott Phillips, Duane Swierczynski and many more. Every issue is beautifully designed by the great Michael Kronenberg.

Go check it out at the new Noir City website.

THE BLIND ALLEY is here!

Very happy to say that my essay collection The Blind Alley: Investigating Film Noir's Forgotten Corners is now available in paperback!

Here's some nice stuff some very cool people have said about the book.

“Jake Hinkson is the Roger Ebert of film noir studies. His stylish prose bristles with memorable insights and the kind of fun only a true movie lover can bring to the table.”

Ed Gorman, co-founder of Mystery Scene and winner of the Anthony Award for Best Critical Work for The Fine Art of Murder

"Newcomers to noir and connoisseurs alike can both revel in Jake Hinkson's riffs on the subject. He brings to the films a wealth of insight, valuable context, and—most vitally—real passion and a sense of fun. It was a privilege to publish many of these pieces the first time around, and it's a pleasure to read them again in this smart and savvy collection."

Eddie Muller, author of Dark City and president of the Film Noir Foundation

“Even though it is hard to believe that there are any dark corners left in the study of classic film noir, Jake Hinkson in The Blind Alley manages to shine light into a few of its more obscure niches with perceptive and entertaining studies of character actors like the redoubtable Art Smith, unrecognized femme fatales like Peggie Castle and Joan Dixon, as well as taking on neglected social issues in noir such as lesbianism and unwanted pregnancy.”

James Ursini, author The Noir Style and editor of the Film Noir Reader series

“Jake Hinkson’s concise, highly readable essays cover the wide waterfront of film noir, offering insightful new perspectives both on monumental films like Double Indemnity and Touch of Evil and overlooked figures such as Peggie Castle and Norman Foster.  A must-have collection for every student of this eternally fascinating genre.”

Dave Kehr, author of When Movies Mattered: Reviews From a Transformative Decade

“In The Blind Alley, Jake Hinkson ventures down some of the darkest and most unfamiliar back streets of film noir. A knowledgeable and passionate tour guide, Hinkson illuminates neglected corners with insightful essays on noir’s treatment of subjects from religion to childhood, lesbianism to the “crisis pregnancy.” Incisive profiles of overlooked figures—Norman  Foster, Richard Quine, Tom Neal, Mickey Rooney—rescue their contributions from the shadows while revealing lives often more noir than their films. The Blind Alley is especially to be treasured for its loving tributes to women who never quite had the careers they deserved, but who left their indelible mark on noir, among them Peggie Castle, Martha Vickers, and Thelma Ritter. For the noir fan, delving into this collection is like opening a box of extra-dark chocolates.”

Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond The City

“If you want to learn more about film noir, read The Blind Alley. Jake Hinkson is like a literary Reed Hadley. His lively, informative essays comprise an essential voiceover tour of the characters and foibles of film noir.”

Alan K. Rode, author, Charles McGraw: Film Noir Tough Guy and Sit On The Camera, Pant Like a Tiger: The Life and Films of Michael Curtiz

The Long Wait of Norman Foster

The 13th edition of Noir City: The San Francisco Film Noir Fesitval kicked off with a showing of the latest film to be rescued and restored by the Film Noir Foundation, WOMAN ON THE RUN (1950).

A couple of years ago I wrote about the film and its director, the long overlooked Norman Foster, for Bright Lights Film Journal. You can click here to read my essay The Long Wait of Norman Foster. 

Noir City Chicago 6: CAGED and TENSION

Last night was another fantastic line up at Noir City Chicago 6. The Music Box Theater, in conjunction with the Film Noir Foundation, showcased two indispensable noirs: CAGED (1950) and TENSION (1949). God, what a line up. I don't know how many times I've watched these two classics, but last night was my first time to see them on the big screen and they did not disappoint. CAGED is simply a masterpiece--an all-time, top ten, noir hall of fame masterpiece. Crime films really don't get any better. And while TENSION has less unity and formal perfection (at least at the screenplay level), it is a shimmering jewel--and an enduring testament to the glorious Audrey Totter.

I've written about both movies before. Here's more on CAGED. And here's something on TENSION.

The festival is going great. It kicked off with a magnificent restoration of TOO LATE FOR TEARS (for my money, the best thing the Film Noir Foundation has done is to restore this movie), with the wonderful ROADBLOCK as a second feature. I had to miss a couple of days, unfortunately, but Sunday night I caught Jean-Pierre Melville's rarely seen 1959 TWO MEN IN MANHATTAN. 

Alan Rode has been doing a crackerjack job introducing the films all week, and tonight the Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Muller, takes over. The remaining films all look terrific--including a double feature of Losey's 1951 M, followed by The BLACK VAMPIRE, an Argentinian feminist reworking of the M story. Here's the full schedule.

Film Noir Books: What To Get

Noir studies are big right now. There are about a million books on the market--from vast overviews of the genre to studies of individual films and filmmakers. 

Over at Criminal Element, I've put together a list of some beginning tomes. This is far from an exhaustive list, just a nice starting place for the fledgling noir geek.

You can read Build Your Book Case here.

A Forgotten Masterpiece Restored: TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949)

The set up is wonderfully simple. A woman named Jane Palmer and her husband, Alan, are driving home from a party one night when a bag full of money is tossed into their backseat from a passing car. The next day, they discover that the money is the payoff from a botched extortion drop. Alan wants to turn it over to the cops. Jane, alas, does not. That’s going to mean bad things for her husband.

So begins Byron Haskin’s TOO LATE FOR TEARS, one of the greatest—and most overlooked—of all film noirs. It was written by Roy Huggins who is best remembered today as the creator of hugely successful television shows like THE FUGITIVE and THE ROCKFORD FILES but who started his career as a hardboiled crime novelist in the vein of Cain and Chandler. This film, based on his excellent 1947 novel of the same name (first serialized in the SATURDAY EVENING POST), is a movie which has been nearly forgotten, even by many people who consider themselves noir fans. But while the film exists only in ragged prints and grainy DVDs, it remains an essential contribution to the genre.

It’s a femme fatale movie, but before we go further we need to unpack the phrase ‘femme fatale’ a little because femmes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are duplicitous girlfriends. Others are certifiable nutjobs who lure hapless men into their neurotic webs. Sometimes they’re sirens with a taste for married men, and sometimes they’re just bored housewives. What they all have in common is that they’re all bad news. 

Jane Palmer (Lizabeth Scott) is definitely bad news but TOO LATE FOR TEARS makes the diabolical suggestion that there might be a femme fatale hiding inside the ostensibly happily married woman. Like DOUBLE INDEMNITY this film sees the married woman—the symbol of fertility and domestication in most American films of the forties and fifties—as a cold blooded murderer lying in wait. Jane Palmer and Phyllis Dietrichson could be sisters.

Well, maybe. The major difference between DOUBLE INDEMNITY and TOO LATE FOR TEARS (indeed between TOO LATE FOR TEARS and most other femme fatale movies) is that Jane Palmer’s story is told from her point of view.

The truth is, most film noirs are about men. Even most femme fatale movies are told from the point of view of a man who meets a beautiful woman, falls in love (or lust) with her, and then suffers to his last breath. When Walter Neff sizes up Mrs. Dietrichson at the beginning of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, it’s his eyes we’re looking through. But in TOO LATE FOR TEARS we stay mostly with Jane Palmer. When we do leave her point of view, it is to drift momentarily to her suspicious sister-in-law Kathy (Kristine Miller) and Alan’s old army buddy Don (Don DeFore) as they attempt to bring Jane down. This, of course, builds suspense but also paradoxically strengthens our identification with Jane. She’s the smartest person in the movie. We’ve been with her from the beginning. When we eavesdrop on Kathy and Don plotting against her, we want to run off and tell Jane.

This identification with the femme fatale owes a lot to Lizabeth Scott’s performance, which alternates between desperation and cunning, and is perhaps the best one she ever gave. Part of what she brings to the role—and it is something that many iconic noir actresses (like Ann Savage and Marie Windsor) brought to their roles— is a sense of having been disappointed by life.. Scott was originally molded by studio executive Hal B. Wallis to be the new Lauren Bacall (just as Windsor was supposed to be the new Joan Crawford). When that A-list career didn’t materialize, she was relegated to B pictures, playing femme fatales and gangsters’ girlfriends. Something of her disappointment shows in her portrayals of women whose dreams have never come true, and this is especially true in TOO LATE FOR TEARS. No one in the audience could possibly root for her husband Alan (played by Arthur Kennedy as a befuddled bore). This poor sap comes across like a well-meaning prison warden standing guard over all of his wife’s dreams. We don’t yearn for his destruction, but we also don’t hate Liz for wanting to escape. And her escape starts to seem impossible once Ubervillian Dan Duryea shows up looking for his lost luggage.

With the possible exceptions of Kirk Douglas and Richard Widmark, no one ever played a son of a bitch better than Dan Duryea. And Duryea did them both better on one count: his raison d’être was terrorizing women. Inside the insular world of noir, Duryea was a woman’s worst nightmare: a charming, rakish ne’er-do-well who, when the going got tough, got tough with his woman. Duryea made this kind of thing watchable because he oozed sleazy charm and because he always wound up going to hell at the end. In TOO LATE FOR TEARS he turns on both the charm and the hard stuff, but no one slaps around Lizabeth Scott and lives to brag about it.

Ultimately, noir is built upon the themes of transgression and ruination. There is no doubt that Jane Palmer is a transgressor. She’s a thief and a cold-blooded killer. She earns her ruination. And yet the best noirs always find a way to implicate us in the guilt of the protagonist. Jane is eventually brought down by Kathy and Don, but while they’re supposed to represent the forces of normality, we never feel anything for them. Kathy is a bland cipher, and Don’s a smug asshole. We can easily imagine them sitting down with good old Alan for the most boring dinner party in the history of the world. And we can imagine Jane Palmer sitting there with them, suffocating on the inside and yearning for some excitement to drop into her lap.

***

For years TOO LATE FOR TEARS suffered the same fate of other noir classics like DETOUR and QUICKSAND. It was abandoned in the public domain —which means that you can watch this movie right now. Or you can buy one of many DVD copies (here's the best one). What you can’t do is find one in nice condition. This movie was dumped on the market, made ten cents, and then hit the market again as KILLER BAIT. As such it has been kicked around for fifty years, and once something is in the public domain any yokel with a disc burner could sell a copy. That made it impossible to find a copy that wasn’t washed out and covered in scratches. It also made it difficult to raise the funds for a restoration. The folks who pony up cash to refurbish obscure old movies understandably like to have the only product on the market (after all, unsuspecting buyers looking for a deal might buy the five dollar shit-version of the film rather than a decked out thirty dollar version). I remember speaking with Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller years ago about this film, and he hinted then that a restoration might be possible in the relatively near future. He knew as well as anyone that the film is indispensable, that it’s the Queen of Noir at her best, and it deserves the royal treatment. That restoration has come to pass, and on January 25 Muller and the Film Noir Foundation crew unveiled the new restored print of this great film. The movie will be on tour this year as the FNF does their annual NOIR CITY retrospectives around the country. Look for it.

***

One last word on Byron Haskin. A professional who worked in Hollywood as a special effects man, cinematographer, and director, Haskin is a mostly forgotten figure today. When he is remembered it is usually in conjunction with his extensive work in science fiction (he directed WAR OF THE WORLDS in 1952 and worked on the pilot episode of STAR TREK), but his contributions to noir are top rate. In addition to TOO LATE FOR TEARS he directed Liz Scott, Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas in the terrific 1947 I WALK ALONE. He also directed John Payne’s best performance in the political drama THE BOSS in 1956. All these films are worth finding, and Haskin deserves to be remembered.

Eddie Muller Talks

Check out the Indianapolis Star's recent interview with "cultural archeologist" and film noir expert Eddie Muller. It's a good introduction to Muller and his work. There's also a bit of encouraging news for fans of the Lizabeth Scott masterpiece Too Late For Tears...

Read the interview here.

Noir City Sentinel

I've written before about the Film Noir Foundation, the nonprofit organization committed to rescuing and restoring the great noir films of the classic period. It's a wonderful organization that is responsible for the popular Noir City film festivals, including the DC festival I wrote about last November. Even more importantly, the FNF has funded or partnered in the rescue and restoration of films like Farrow's Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Byron Haskin's I Walk Alone, and Losey's indispensable masterpiece The Prowler.

The FNF also publishes a terrific electronic magazine on all things noir called Noir City Sentinel. The Sentinel features articles by a host of talented writers, including Megan Abbot, Don Malcolm, Eric Beetner, Vince Keenan, Marc Svetov, and Eddie Muller. Recent issues have featured articles on Robert Siodmak, John Farrow, "Gothic Noir", "Radio Noir", character actors like Don Beddo and Thomas Gomez, an extensive tribute to Ann Savage, and much much more. Your humble correspondent has published a few extended essays in the Sentinel, including a ranking of noir's best brawls (expanded here), a look at the ironic use of tacked-on happy endings, and a discussion of noir's religious undercurrents.

The Noir City Sentinel is available for subscription here. Kick in a little cash, get a great magazine, support a fabulous organization doing essential work. It's a win-win situation.

You can also order a copy of Noir City Sentinel Annual #1, an anthology from the Sentinel's first three years as a bimonthly newsletter.

A Report From Noir City DC

Yesterday I went to the AFI Silver (located in downtown Silver Spring, MD) to see a couple of the best noirs ever made. The films were part of a series the AFI is running called Noir City DC. The films they were showing were The Prowler by Joseph Losey and Raw Deal by Anthony Mann. I'm a big fan of both of these movies, but you rarely (i.e. damn-near never) get to see them in the theater.

The Prowler is a full-tilt masterpiece, a black-as-midnight story about an unhappily married woman named Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) who calls the cops after she spots a peeping tom outside her window. The cops show up to investigate, but unfortunately for Susan one of them is a charming rake named Webb Garwood (played by the congenitally underappreciated Van Heflin) who takes one look at her and decides she belongs to him. This film is a gorgeous piece of work, lovingly restored by the Film Noir Foundation, a nonprofit outfit that saves these beautiful old, largely forgotten crime flicks. The film isn't available on DVD, but bootleg versions are floating around out there and, of course, the FNF sponsors showings in different cities. Try to find it if you can. Losey's direction is subtle (we're never exactly sure what Webb's game is, though we're sure he has one), and the script by blacklisted Dalton Trumbo is a sophisticated piece of work that keeps getting more complicated as the film progresses. Both Susan and Webb continue to surprise us, their characters changing in relation to each other until the very end of the film. What, for example, does Susan want from Webb? It's hard to say--in many ways, she's as complicated as he is--but what's easy to say is how extraordinary Keyes is as Susan. Her performance here is exhibit A for my theory--born out by 99 River Street and The Killer That Stalked New York--that Evelyn Keyes was the most underrated actress of the 1950s.

The second film on the bill was Anthony Mann's Raw Deal. Mann is most famous today for his Westerns with Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, but among noir geeks he is generally considered one of the masters of the classic era crime flick. His work was heavy on ass-kicking (his rough-and-tumble movies are among the most violent in the genre, up there with Karlson and Fleischer) and they were also enlivened by the work of cinematograper John Alton. Here's another theory for you: Alton was the most important artist in noir. Bar none. No director, actor or actress was greater than Alton. His films will remind some newbies of Sin City, and it's clear to see his influence on Miller's original graphic novels as well as the film. Believe me, though, Alton is better. See Raw Deal--available on DVD--to see what I'm talking about. It's gorgeous piece of work, featuring Clarie Trevor and Marsha Hunt as two women in love with the same escaped convict (Dennis O'Keefe). The three leads are terrific and Mann's direction is brutal and immediate (he loved to move action up until it nearly touched the camera lens). Alton's lighting is stark and gorgeous, no one did high contrast black and white like this guy, and his work is here is among his best (He Walked By Night, T-Men, and the imperfect-though- underrated I, The Jury). If all that isn't enough, the movie also features perhaps Raymond Burr's best villain performance.

The program yesterday also featured introductions to the films by Foster Hirsch and Eddie Muller. Hirsch is the author of a terrific noir book called The Dark Side of the Screen as well as the biography of Otto Preminger, one of the genre's great practitioners. He's a semi-regular at the AFI. I saw him introduce Preminger's Fallen Angel and Angel Face.

Eddie Muller is a hero of mine, a great author and a hell of a activist. He wrote the single best--and certainly the most entertaining overview--of film noir out there, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, as well as Dark City Dames a collective biography of Evelyn Keyes, Ann Savage, Marie Windsor, Colleen Gray, Audrey Totter and Jane Greer. He's also the author of a couple of good noir novels and the director of a short film called The Grand Inquisitor, which was screened after Raw Deal (it's a fun piece of business featuring a creepy performance by Marsha Hunt). His most important work, however, might be as a preservationist of classic film noir. He's the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation. I got to speak with him before the showings, and he told me that he felt chief job was to be an advocate for these films, struggling to get the studios to see the goldmine they had in their vaults. I asked about Too Late For Tears--a personal obsession of mine and one of the very best noirs ever made--and he said it was next of FNF's list of films to restore. That means that you and I might one day get to see Liz Scott's best movie projected in a theater. This is due to the efforts of Eddie and his organization.

To learn more about the Film Noir Foundation (including how to lend support) check out their website:

http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/


Quite honestly, this festival, which started Oct. 17th has exceeded my expectations. They had Farley Granger in town to attend the showing of Strangers on a Train, screened the incomparable Detour (not a great print unfortunately, but still...), showed Mann's great Side Street, and unleashed Tomorrow is Another Day, a Steve Cochran thriller which is obscure even by noir standards. They also showed a couple of overrated classics, Double Indemnity and They Live By Night. All in all, the festival has been a raging success, and still to come are Kiss of Death and Night and the City.

If you live in the DC area, you owe it to yourself to try to make it out to the remaining days of the festival. The AFI is the best theater in the country, and their presentation of these great films is topnotch (the pristine print of Raw Deal was on loan from the Library of Congress). In his closing remarks about the festival, Eddie referred to it as the "first" DC Noir. That's a good sign. Maybe next year we'll get some Liz Scott.