The Best British Film is...

Apparently Roeg's 1973 horror film DON'T LOOK NOW. At least according to Time Out London.


Really?

The Prowler comes to DVD

It's always gratifying when a real-deal masterpiece claws its way out of the dustbin of history. After fifty or so years of being a cult favorite of noir geeks, Joseph Losey's brilliant 1951 THE PROWLER is finally out on DVD.

Here's why you should see this film posthaste:

1. It's the best example of what historian Eddie Muller calls "bad cop noir." Van Heflin plays a cop who responds to a panicked call by housewife Evelyn Keyes. She's just seen a prowler. Heflin looks around and doesn't find anything, but then he looks Keyes up and down and decides she needs a boyfriend. The moral of the film: the cops might be worse than the crooks.

2. It's l'homme fatale at its finest. Here the man is the problem, an inversion of the more typical femme fatale storyline.

3. It doesn't go where you think it's going to go. The last half hour of this film will blow your mind. It's shocking that such a movie made it to the screen in 1951.

4. It features terrific performances by two of the most underrated noir performers. Van Heflin did hanging-by-the-last-thread desperation better than just about anyone (see his companion performance in ACT OF VIOLENCE). Often cast as the morally conflicted everyman, here he shows that he could also play scumbags as well as anyone. Opposite him is the divine Evelyn Keyes. The star of such must-see films like HELL'S HALF-ACRE, THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK, and 99 RIVER STREET, Keyes was one of the best actresses of the 1950s. This might be her most complicated performance because her lonely housewife is equal parts need, lust, and sadness. Through much of the film we know more than she does, yet Keyes never loses our sympathy.

5. It is one of the three impressive noirs Losey made in 1951 (along with his brilliant remake of M, and THE BIG NIGHT). They were to be his last films in the US before Losey had to flee the blacklist and headed to England to begin his impressive collaborations with playwright Harold Pinter and actor Dirk Bogarde.

Restored in part by the Film Noir Foundation THE PROWLER is available now on DVD. For those of us who've been watching scratchy bootleg copies for years now, this is amazing news. For those who haven't seen this film, a revelation awaits.

Fritz Lang Retrospective

above: Coop kicks Nazi ass.

The New York Times ran a good piece last Sunday on director Fritiz Lang in advance of a new series, FRITZ LANG IN HOLLYWOOD, running at the Film Forum from January 28 to February 10. I'm happy the article singled out the often overlooked Lang spy film CLOAK AND DAGGER, which provides our only chance to see Gary Cooper as a physics professor who dukes it out with Nazis. You read that last part right. Coop's a two-fisted physics professor. The movie is no one's idea of a masterpiece, but it's more fun than your average Lang film (which tended to come in shades of dark and darker).

The series is showing THE BIG HEAT and HUMAN DESIRE, Lang's two films with stars Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame. The first one is more famous and highly regarded, but I've always rather preferred the second film's bitter take on, well, human desire. The series also features both of Lang's films with Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and SCARLETT STREET. Both are well worth seeing, but for my money SCARLET STREET is the best film Lang ever made and one of the indispensable noirs.

For more on the series, including a complete list of films they're showing, read here.

Read the Times article here.

Then Again...

above: want to see John Huston in Welles's unseen THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND? Me, too. Sorry.


Wellesnet has knocked down the Observer report. So we go back to waiting.

Sigh...

The Other Side of The Wind Update

Is it too early in the year to begin passing along reports that Orson Welles's final uncompleted film, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND may be about to see release? It seems like one hears these rumors every year. Made in the early seventies with a group of friends and associates, WIND is only one of a shelf of projects that Welles was unable to complete and release in his lifetime (others include DON QUIXOTE and THE DEEP). Ever since footage from his long lost anthology film IT'S ALL TRUE was recovered and released in a documentary in 1993, however, it seems like the rumblings about WIND have grown steadily stronger.

They may be about to get even louder.

On January 23, Dalya Alberge reported in The Observer that a deal is in the works to finally clear the way for the film's release. Click here to read the report.

To learn more about the film and the controversy surrounding it, click here.

Andrews on Preminger

Check out the archival interview of star Dana Andrews--the quiet man of film noir--over at Fathom.com. In it, he discusses working with his frequent director, Otto Preminger. Their films together, one of the great actor/director collaborations in noir history produced LAURA, FALLEN ANGEL, WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, and DAISY KENYON. Easily available on DVD, these movies are not to be missed.

The interview offers a rare look at this often undervalued star. Fans of Andrews' hardboiled screen persona will be surprised how talky and urban he was. Listen to the interview here.

Mug Shots #16: Barbara Stanwyck aka The Angel of Death

Over on the nice side of town she's the heroine of slapstick comedies and Capra parables, but over here in the land of perpetual night Stanwyck is death in high heels. From THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS to CRIME OF PASSION, she killed more men than smoking. Her most famous role, of course, was as the archetypal femme fatale, Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY.

Full disclosure: unlike many noir geeks, I'm not really a Stanwyck devotee. I like her, I'm never unhappy to see her in a movie, but I don't love her. There's something about her clench-jawed intensity that doesn't attract me. Her spunk plays well in comedies (my favorite Stanwyck performance is as the wisecracking Sugarpuss O'Shea in BALL OF FIRE) because her inner tomboy is allowed to come out and play with the guys. Something in her noir persona, however, leaves me a little cold. Maybe it comes down to this: I'm pretty sure Ava Gardner could have talked me into murder. I'm not sure Stanwyck could.

Even if Stanwyck has never been my favorite actress, I would never deny her impact on noir. Among A-list female stars, no one spent more time in Noirville. For a lot of people, Barbara Stanwyck is the embodiment of the femme fatale.

Essential Stanwyck Noir:
Double Indemnity
Clash By Night
The File on Thelma Jordan
Sorry, Wrong Number
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
No Man Of Her Own

Non-noir Stanwyck:
Ball of Fire
The Lady Eve
Meet John Doe
Golden Boy