Margaret Millar At 100: DO EVIL IN RETURN

This month marks the centennial of the great Margaret
Millar. At her peak, Millar was about as successful as a
mystery writer could be. She published 27 books, won the Edgar for best novel (twice), served as president of the Mystery Writers of America, and won the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement. Her fan base was so notoriously fervent it caused one critic to remark, “Millar doesn’t attract fans; she creates addicts.”

Check out my post over at Criminal Element on one of Millar's greatest works, the noir novel DO EVIL IN RETURN.

Lizabeth Scott: The Sad-Eyed Queen of Film Noir

(top: Liz Scott as sex siren in a publicity shot for Dead Reckoning; bottom: as the girl next door in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers)

Lizabeth Scott, the Queen of Film Noir, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 92.

As long as there are movie geeks, there will be a debate over who most deserves the title of Queen of Noir. Barbara Stanwyck is most often given the crown, followed by Marie Windsor, and occasionally Clare Trevor. I mean no disrespect when I say that as great as those women are, they are not the Queen. Neither is Audrey Totter, Ava Gardner, or Anne Savage. Each of these actors is invaluable. They are movie goddesses who will, in all likelihood, live on for years and years as silvery dreams projected in the dark. But there is only one Queen: Lizabeth Scott.

Why is she the Queen? Well, first of all, she starred in more noirs than nearly anyone. It depends on what you choose to label noir, but by my count Scott made at least twelve certifiable noirs. There are a handful of other films you might add to that count. Anyway you slice it, that’s a lot of time to spend in the City of Perpetual Darkness. Consider, too, the list of noir icons she worked with: Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Barbara Stanwyck, Edmond O'Brien, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Dick Powell, Raymond Burr, Van Heflin, Mary Astor, Jane Greer, Dennis O'Keeffe, and on and on. It seems like everyone who passed through Noirville stayed a night at Liz's house.

More important than the quantity of her work, however, is the quality of it. She could do everything--and did. Achingly lovely and unbelievably husky-voiced, most of the time there’s something wounded and likable about her. In her first noir (only her second film) THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS she’s the good girl to Stanwyck’s psycho femme fatale. She played the nice gal role well, and in films like DARK CITY and I WALK ALONE she soldiered on as sweet, brokenhearted nightclub singers. Occasionally, she was cast as a conniving vixen, as she was opposite Bogart in the awful DEAD RECKONING, but her best performances are marked by ambiguity. You can see this in STOLEN FACE where she gets to have it both ways, playing both the good girl and the bad girl.


To even better demonstrate this split, consider her two best films, both noir masterpieces: In TOO LATE FOR TEARS she plays a deeply human and deeply scary femme fatale who will stop at nothing to keep a bag full of money. In PITFALL she plays a good woman who gets involved with the wrong man and pays a heavy price.

The thing these roles had in common was Liz's weary humanity. Fragile, a little sad, and completely indestructible. That's Liz. That's the Queen.

Essential Queen Liz:
Too Late For Tears
Pitfall

Best of the Rest:
Stolen Face
Dark City
I Walk Alone
The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers


Other Scott Noirs:
Dead Reckoning
Two Of A Kind
The Racket
The Company She Keeps
Desert Fury
The Weapon

The Making of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

Cahiers du Cinema recently named THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER the number two movie of all time (behind CITIZEN KANE). The ranking, like all ranking of art, is beyond meaningless, but I am happy to see such a strange and beautiful film getting so much love and attention.

I wrote about the making of the film a few years ago for NOIR CITY. In particular, I focused on the often undervalued contributions of novelist Davis Grubb.

Here's a link to my essay "The Little Story of Right-Hand/Left-Hand." You'll be able to find this essay is my forthcoming essay collection THE BLIND ALLEY, set to drop March 11 2015 from Broken River Books.

Interview

I did an interview over at Bad Citizen Corporation. Maybe I mentioned you. Maybe not. Find out here.

HELL ON CHURCH STREET Goes To France

Robin Wood on Communal Art

I'm a big fan of the late critic Robin Wood. He wrote two of my favorite books on movies: HITCHCOCK'S FILMS (1969) and HITCHCOCK'S FILMS REVISTED, REVISED EDITION (2002). The first book was a masterpiece that forever altered the way people viewed Hitchcock as an artist (I think you could argue that it's the most influential work of scholarship on any filmmaker). The second book was something truly amazing--a radical rethinking of the previous book in light of Wood's growing preoccupation with gender theory. You don't have to agree with any of Woods's arguments in either book to appreciate that you're dealing with a brilliant scholar bringing the full weight of his thinking to an important artist.


I say that all at the beginning because although Wood has been lumped in with auteurist critics he was quick to admit that movies are a form of communal art. I'm writing an article right now on the great screenwriter Leigh Brackett's work with director Howard Hawks, and I was flipping through an old copy of Wood's book on Hawks's masterpiece, RIO BRAVO. Here's what he had to say at communal art in that book:

"Classical Hollywood seems to have been the last stronghold of 'communal' art, in which artists, artisans and mere hacks could learn from each other, borrow from each other, share a common legacy of idioms, forms, genres, and conventions: the kind of community that nurtured Shakespeare, or Mozart and Haydn, all of whom vastly extended the legacy they inherited without feeling the least need to jettison it. We still (whatever the transformations of modernism, post-modernism, etc.) live in the lingering aftermath of romanticism, the notion of 'personal' art produced by some 'genius' out of his own private cerebrations. The richest periods of art have always been the communal ones, in whatever culture, whatever period. Hawks's achievement should not be belittled simply because he had the good fortune to develop within such an environment. He used existing forms and genres and idioms, he welcomed and worked with collaborators without feeling any qualms about 'stealing,' about 'originality,' about repeating himself (or others), and his name is on a body of work of quite exceptional richness, individuality, and integrity. I see no contradiction in these statements, though I would certainly acknowledge certain differences between writing King Lear or composing Le nozze de Figaro (in private) and filming Rio Bravo with actors and technicians on a set. I would go further and claim that 'communal' art, with its acceptance of sharing and collaborating, the 'ivory tower' as far removed as possible, is the ideal and necessary configuration for a 'democratic' or 'socialist' art. It is of course ironic that what seems to be (for the time being) its final flowering should have taken place within a supremely capitalist industry or 'dream factory' supposedly dedicated to lulling 'the masses' into hypnotised acceptance.... In any case, when I use the word 'Hawks' in what follows, I want it to refer to the total signifying practice of the films that bear his name.... With the proviso that I do not believe the films could ever have existed without the presence of Hawks himself somewhere at their centre."

Poverty Row Professionals: Edward L. Cahn

My new piece on the director Edward L. Cahn appears in the Winter Issue of NOIR CITY. It's the newest entry in my series on Poverty Row Professionals, and Cahn certainly fits the description. He was the kind of workman who cranked out picture after picture at studios all over Hollywood--though the bulk of his work was produced at small outfits that operated on shoestring budgets. Despite these constraints, his work was always interesting and he made some notable additions to film noir.