I Wake Up Dreaming 2013 - 99 44/100% Noir

I saw 17 films at I Wake Up Dreaming 2013 which was held at the Roxie from May 10 to 23.  I Wake Up Dreaming is programmer Elliot Lavine's spring event.  His late summer/autumn event is typically called Not Necessarily Noir.  The 2013 edition of I Wake Up Dreaming had the subtitle of "99 44/100% Noir."  I wonder how many people under the age of 50 picked up the Ivory soap slogan.

Of the 30 films on the program, I had seen 12 before including All Through the Night which I saw again during the 2013 festival.  The two films which I had not previously seen and did not watch during the festival were My Gun is Quick (1957) and The Tattooed Stranger.

The 17 films I saw during the festival were:

Blues in the Night starring Priscilla Lane, Richard Whorf, Betty Field, Jack Carson & Lloyd Nolan; with Elia Kazan & Howard DaSilva; directed by Anatole Litvak; (1941)
I Wake Up Screaming starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar & Elisha Cook, Jr.; directed by H. Bruce Humberstone; (1941)
The Monster and the Girl starring Ellen Drew, Robert Paige, Paul Lukas & Joseph Calleia; directed by Stuart Heisler; (1941)

Fall Guy starring Leo Penn; with Elisha Cook, Jr.; directed by Reginald Le Borg; (1947)

Club Havana starring Tom Neal; directed by Edgar G. Umer; (1945)

Island of Doomed Men starring Peter Lorre, Rochelle Hudson & Robert Wilcox; directed by Charles Barton; (1940)

Nightmare starring Diana Barrymore & Brian Donlevy; directed by Tim Whelan; (1942)

All Through the Night starring Humphrey Bogart; with Kaaren Verne, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, William Demarest, Jackie Gleason & Phil Silvers; directed by Vincent Sherman; (1942)

Bewitched starring Phyllis Thaxter; directed by Arch Oboler; (1945)

Five  starring William Phipps, Susan Douglas, James Anderson, Charles Lampkin & Earl Lee; directed by Arch Oboler; (1951)

All Night Long starring Patrick McGoohan, Marti Stevens, Paul Harris & Richard Attenborough; directed by Basil Dearden; (1961)

Autumn Leaves starring Joan Crawford & Cliff Robertson; with Vera Miles & Lorne Greene; directed by Robert Aldrich; (1956)

Killer at Large starring Robert Lowery; directed by William Beaudine; (1947)

Key Witness starring John Beal; directed by D. Ross Lederman; (1947)

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons starring George Sanders; directed by W. Lee Wilder; (1960)

Death of a Scoundrel starring George Sanders, Yvonne De Carlo & Zsa Zsa Gabor; directed by Charles Martin; (1956)

The Crooked Way starring John Payne; directed by Robert Florey; (1949)

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Although I enjoyed several of the films, overall I was slightly disappointed with the program.  Granted, I missed two films in the program which are among the all-time great noir films - Sweet Smell of Success and Criss Cross.

The best double feature was a George Sanders' pair on the penultimate night.  Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons was a dark comedy which reminded me of Sweeney Todd with a dash Hitchcock cheekiness.  Sanders plays a used furniture dealer who is in love with a chanteuse.  Unfortunately for him, she has expensive tastes and monogamy is not exactly her strong suit.  One thing leads to another and Sanders ends up a killing series of women whom he is romancing.  Now that sounds very harsh but director W. Lee Wilder handles it with a deft touch.  Sanders is very frugal and keeps track of all his costs in a little ledger.  When he buys train tickets to take his victim to his country cottage, he saves money by only buying her a one-way ticket.  How does he dispose of the bodies?  Fortunately, his cottage has a large stove that custom built to cook large game animals.  A better man would be offended but the film tickled my admittedly perverse funny bone.

Whereas Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons was a fun little film, Sanders strives for the epic in Death of a Scoundrel.  Oddly, Sanders with his RP accent plays Sabourin, a Czech refugee in New York by way of South America.  Having survived a Nazi concentration camp, Sabourin calls on his brother only discover he has married his true love.  Undeterred, he sells his brother out to the police in exchange for passage to New York.  Once in NYC, he spots Yvonne DeCarlo pulling a scam.  Seeing a chance to scam the scammer, he steals her stolen loot.  For his trouble, he gets shot but that leads to better things. The back alley doctor tips him off to penicillin which he promptly buys on the stock market.  With his insider tip, he makes friends with the wealthy Mrs. Ryan (Zsa Zsa Gabor).  Eventually, Sabourin sets up a company and parlays unscrupulous and fraudulent deals to great wealth.  Juggling amorous intentions towards Mrs. Ryan, her secretary cum actress, his sister-in-law, Sabourin is a scoundrel in every sense of the word.  Only DeCarlo understands and even appreciates his flaws and strengths.  Sanders is magnificent in the role.  His performance is even more incredible given that Sanders and Zsa Zsa Gabor were less than 2 years divorced in real life at the time of the filming.

About 15 years after making Death of a Scoundrel, Sanders married (and divorced) a second Gabor sister (Magda).  If he hadn't committed suicide in 1972, Sanders might have been able to pull off the Hungarian Hat Trick given his apparent partiality towards the Gabor sisters and their collective propensity for marriage.  Magda, Zsa Zsa and Eva had something on the order of 20 marriages between them.

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I Wake Up Screaming features one of the iconic images in film noir:  Victor Mature standing with the shadow of an elevator cage partially obscuring his face (see program below).  The film was quite good but not in the pantheon of noir.  Victor Mature is a Broadway producer who "helps" young actresses.  Together with newspaper columnist Allyn Joslyn and Broadway actor Alan Mowbray, the three seem to make sport of building up the next big thing.  Carole Landis is a waitress who is the latest object of the trio's attention.  However, she ends up dead and creepy cop Laird Cregar thinks Mature is the prime suspect.  Betty Grable shows up as Landis' sister who develops an unusual attraction to Mature, who was in love with her sister and is the prime suspect in her murder.  Elisha Cook, Jr. is the front desk worker at the apartment building where Landis & Grable live.  Most memorable for Cregar's menacing performance, I Wake Up Screaming is a solid film.

Autumn Leaves was paired with Female on the Beach which I saw at the 2011 edition of Not Necessarily Noir.  Both films feature Joan Crawford as vulnerable woman.  In Autumn Leaves, she is a lonely spinster who is won over by Cliff Robertson.  At least they acknowledge the age difference in the film.  Crawford was 20 years older than Robertson.  Interestingly, Lorne Greene played Robertson father despite only being 8 years older than Robertson.  In true noir fashion, Robertson's Burt turns out to have serious psychological issues and Vera Miles shows up claiming to be his ex-wife.  Crawford's Millie has a strong nurturing streak due to childhood trauma.  Desperate to personally care for her husband, Millie rejects all entreaties that she commit Burt to a mental sanatorium.  As you see, Autumn Leaves is fairly melodramtic.  In addition, Crawford is vulnerable and I think she is at her best when she has a bitchy role.  We do get to watch Robertson chew up the scenery when he is in one of his fugue states.

Peter Lorre seems to be one of those actors whose presence elevates a film.  Such was the case with Island of Doomed Men.  Lorre plays the warden of an off-the-books private island prison which is kind of cross between Devil's Island and a slave plantation.  Lorre takes sadistic pleasure in lording over the prisoners and his beautiful but captive wife.  A G-man goes undercover to break up the racket but needs the help of the wife.  Lorre is the best thing about the film and makes it worthwhile.

The final film of the festival was The Crooked Way, another amnesia film.  John Payne is a soldier convalescing (at Letterman Hospital in the Presidio) after WWII.  Permanently unable to regain his memory, his doctor decides to send him back home to Los Angeles where familiar surrounding may help him adjust.  What doctor & patient are unaware of is that he is a former gangster who joined the army under an alias and his return stirs up old feuds with the cops, other gangsters and his ex-wife.  It's a run-of-the-mill plot with above average performances.  Sonny Tufts as the gang boss and Rhys Williams as the hard-nosed cop stand out among the cast.

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I had never heard of Arch Oboler before this festival.  Lavine programmed a Oboler double bill one night.  Bewitched was about a young woman who "hears voices in her head" and whose fiancé ends up murdered.  Technically, she only hears once voice but that's enough to lead to multiple homicides.  It was a nice try but ultimately the film fell flat.  Phyllis Thaxter gives it her all as the lead character.

Five was more interesting for me.  The premise is that a nuclear holocaust has killed everyone in the world except for five people.  Interestingly, the buildings are still standing and the nuclear fallout doesn't seem to be particularly fatal.  Even more amazing is that these five people find each other but contrived situations and incredible coincidences are part and parcel of cinema.

Anyway, the five consist of Roseanne (Susan Douglas), a woman who turns out to be pregnant.  She goes to take refuge at her aunt's remote home only to discover her aunt is missing and man is living there.  His name is Michael (William Phipps) and  I believe he was an architect.  Later, two men drive down the deserted road near the house.  The younger man is Charles (Charles Lampkin), an African American who worked at a bank.  The older man is Oliver (Earl Lee) and also worked at the same bank.  The four of them survived due to chance - Roseanne was in lead lined X-ray room, Oliver & Charles were accidentally locked in the bank vault and Michael was in an elevator in Empire State Building.  Wouldn't the EMP knock out the elevator?  As Oliver shows signs of radiation poisoning, they take him to the beach to recuperate where they meet the fifth survivor.  Eric (James Anderson) is a mountain climber was trapped at the top of Mt. Everest at the time of the nuclear detonation.  After the blizzard passed, Eric flew back to the US (despite having a French accent) where his plane ran out of fuel just off the coast.

With the quintet set, we see societal ills played out in a microcosm.  Eric brings discord to the group.  He and Michael both have romantic intentions towards Roseanne.  He is also a racist which causes tension between him & Charles.  His greed and selfishness causes problems for the small group (by this point, Oliver has died of his illness).  From a rational perspective, Eric's behavior is counterproductive.  Everyone knows that all three of the men should impregnate Roseanne to created the large gene pool but I guess that would be a little risque for 1951.  Eric's desire to go to the city and "steal" jewelry and money is ridiculous in a post-apocalyptic world as is his destruction of the crops Michael & Charles have cultivated.  Human foolishness knows no bounds.  The film was a little predictable and pedantic but interesting nonetheless.

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Lavine appears to have an affinity for the obscure and B-films.  Sometimes this results in unearthing hidden gems.  Other times, I feel as though these films were obscure for a reason.  I wouldn't say the films were "bad" but they were largely forgettable.

As I scan the list of films I saw, I cannot recall the full plot for many of them.  A scene or two is as much as I can remember per film.

Blues in the Night - a jaxx band gets mixed up gangsters at a roadhouse.  Jack Carson played the trumpeter, Elia Kazan played some instrument.

The Monster and the Girl - a human brain in a gorilla; enough said.

Fall Guy - a guy has no memory of the previous night but he is covered in blood and a woman is dead.

Club Havana - a large cast and multiple subplots set in a nightclub.  There was a shootout in the parking at the end.

Nightmare - Brian Donlevy breaks into a house and makes himself some fried eggs.  A woman in the house confronts him and the next thing you know, they rooting out Nazi spies in wartime England.  There were explosives in marked bottles of wine or some liquor.

Key Witness - a guy has no memory of the previous night but he is covered in blood and a woman is dead.  Sounds like Fall Guy, eh?  I liked this one more because the guy goes on the lam and eventually switches identities with a dead man whose face is disfigured.  It turns out the dead man is the estranged son of a wealthy industrialist.  The older man has not seen his son since he was boy so he doesn't recognize the man claiming to be his son.  Actually, now that I started writing I think I liked Key Witness more than the other films in this section.  The man's achieves success as the rich man's son which brings him to the attention of his wife who has assumed he was dead.  The ending was pure hokum but it was fun ride until that point.

Killer at Large - two newspaper reporters (one male & one female) investigate the murder (suspicious suicide) of a city leader.  Eventually, the trail leads back to the female reporter's father.

All Night Long - I forgot I saw this at the 2009 I Wake Up Dreaming.   A retelling of Shakespeare's Othello set in a London jazz club in the early 1960s.  An impressive array of jazz musicians appear as themselves over a long night at the club. Patrick McGoohan's performance stood out.  He always seems to stand out from the cast.

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All that is left is All Through the Night.  About as noirish as a Bowery Boys film, the film is essentially a screwball comedy.  It was embarrassing to see Humphrey Bogart ham it up and sprout gibberish.  I guess I've typecast Bogie but he seemed to want to have it both way - part tough guy, part comedian.  Growing bored with the film about halfway, I wondered how Bogie & Gleason got along.  Gleason was infamous for his all night parties and the prodigious amounts of money & alcohol he consumed.

Seven at the Stanford

I saw seven films at the Stanford Theater from August to October.

The Violent Men starring Glenn Ford, Barbara Stanwyck & Edward G. Robinson; directed by Rudolph Maté; (1955)
Rainbow Over Texas starring Roy Roger, Dale Evans & Gabby Hayes; directed by Frank McDonald; (1946)
Way Down East starring Lillian Gish; directed by D.W. Griffith; silent with intertitles; live accompaniment by Dennis James; (1920)
Waterloo Bridge starring Mae Clarke & Douglass Montgomery; with Bette Davis; directed by James Whale; (1931)
The Impatient Maiden starring Mae Clarke & Lew Eyres; with Andy Devine; directed by James Whale; (1932)
The Bad Sister starring Conrad Nagel, Sidney Fox, Bette Davis & Humphrey Bogart; directed by Hobart Henley; (1931)
Seed starring John Boles, Genevieve Tobin & Bette Davis; directed by John M. Stahl; (1931)

I saw The Violent Men & Rainbow Over Texas as a double feature on August 2.  Way Down East was a single bill on August 3.  I saw Waterloo Bridge & The Impatient Maiden as a double feature on September 26.  I saw The Bad Sister & Seed  as a double feature on October 16.

The Violent Men was a nice find.  Glenn Ford plays John Parrish, a rancher who wants to sell his land and move east with his fiancee.  Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck play Lew & Martha Wilkison, a married couple who own the largest ranch in the area.  Wilkison lowballs Parrish for his ranch.  Unwilling to sell at such a low price and looking for revenge when Wilkison's hired gun (Richard Jaeckel) kills one of his ranch hands, Parrish digs in his heels.  Parrish is the wrong man to mess with since he has experience as a Confederate marauder.

The Violent Men is elevated by the presence of Robinson & Stanwyck.  Wilkinson is left wheelchair bound as a result of an Indian attack years before.  Unable to perform his husbandly duties, Wilkinson can only wonder about the relationship between his younger brother (Brian Keith) and his wife.  The audience and Wilkinson's daughter (Diane Foster) have no doubts regarding their illicit relationship.  This melodramatic love triangle among the hard-nosed and bitter Wilkinson, his Lady MacBeth wife and his brother is unique in that the villains rarely get such treatment.  Indeed, Wilkinson almost comes off as the most sympathetic of the bunch.  Even Ford's Parrish is less than admirable as his ruthlessness comes to the forefront.

Rainbow Over Texas is the first Roy Rogers film I can recall seeing.  Even as a kid, I don't recall seeing his films on television.  The most memorable scenes involved Dale Evans in a swimsuit.  I didn't realize what an attractive woman she was.  She plays an rich Eastern socialite hiding out from her father at their ranch in Texas.  I can't recall the plot too well.  There is a horse race over open country.  Roy & Trigger enter the race but some gangster has fixed the race so they try to cheat to win.  There was a murder in there somewhere too.  It involved a guy wearing the same shirt as the murderer and being falsely accused.  I can't remember the songs.  There was a scene in a saloon where Dale is jealous of a woman paying attention to Roy.  Dale dresses as man while stowing away on a train.  At 65 minutes, the film is like a tasty appetizer than you enjoyed at the time but cannot recall later.  Did I mention Dale Evans looked awfully good in the film?

I don't recall much about Way Down East.  Lillian Gish plays a country bumpkin who goes to the city to visit her wealthy cousins.  She falls in with the wrong man and her reputation is ruined.  Later, living in a small town, the rich guy arrives and the town gossip exposes Gish's secret.  She is cast out of town and dies on an icy river bank.  Heavy handed and predictable, I just couldn't enjoy the film.  Two scenes stayed in my memory.  There is a party scene where Gish's stands out (for appearance and conduct) and the aforementioned climax on the icy river.

Waterloo Bridge involves an American streetwalker (Mae Clarke)  and an American GI (Douglass Montgomery) in London during WWI.  Unaware of her profession, Cronin (Montgomery) invites Myra (Clarke) to his family's country estate.  Why an American in the Canadian army (as an enlisted man) would have a family estate in Britain was not explained.  Bette Davis shows up as Cronin's younger sister.  Keeping her secret despite Cronin's declarations of love and proposals for marriage, Myra goes to great lengths to avoid Cronin.  Finally, Myra's landlady reveals her true profession.  Undeterred, Cronin returns to Waterloo Bridge (her stroll and where they originally met) and finds Myra.  Desperate to marry before being shipped to the front, Cronin secures Myra's acceptance of his marriage proposal just before being hauled off by MPs to report to the front.  As his truck departs, a bomb detonates and Myra is killed.  It's quite a tearjerker.  The English accents and sound quality of films from the era made it difficult to understand all the dialog.

Not as well known as the Vivian Leigh/Robert Taylor version, this Waterloo Bridge was quite good.

The Impatient Maiden casts Clarke as a legal secretary for a divorce lawyer.  This makes her cynical about marriage.  Clarke lives on the Angels Flight street in LA which is always nice to see.  A suicide attempt by a neighbor puts her in contact with Lew Ayres as an ambulance doctor.  A love triangle forms between Clarke, Ayres and John Halliday who plays the divorce lawyer.

I can't say I disliked The Impatient Maiden but three months later I don't recall much about it nor do I recall what I thought of it at the time.  Clarke's roommate in the film is Una Merkel & the ambulance driver is Andy Devine.  The become a couple in the film and their two voices grated against my ears like sandpaper.

The Bad Sister is Sidney Fox.  Her younger sister is Bette Davis.  Fox is the most popular girl in town.  She falls for Humphrey Bogart, a con man.  She convinces her father to back Bogie's scam who then convinces the rest of the townfolk.  Abandoned and pregnant, Fox comes slinking back home.  A very abrupt ending indicates all was forgiven and Davis got the doctor who was more interested in Fox.  The Bad Sister was underwhelming.  At 68 minutes, it was probably a B film.

Seed was more interesting.  Davis plays John Boles' dutiful wife.  Boles was a former aspiring novelist who had to take a job in a publishing company to support his wife and five kids.  Wealthy Mildred (Genevieve Tobin) re-enters his life.  A former friend and admirer of his literary work, Mildred offers to support him while he writes his great novel.  Mildred's largesse drives a wedge between the man and his family.  Eventually Boles divorces Davis & marries Mildred.  To add insult to injury, Boles asks Davis if the kids can live with him and Mildred.  Rather than dashing the childrens' excitement of living the high life and being reunited with their father, Davis selflessly agrees.

Davis (like Joan Crawford) is at her best when she is bitchy.  Here she play the saint and it's just not very interesting.  More interesting that The Bad Sister, Seed has a few scenes showing the evolving relationship among the three main character which is skillfully done.  Taken as a whole, the film is old fashioned in its views about the role of women in society and acceptable behavior.  I was very aware that the situation seemed artificial in 1931 (when the film came out) and even more so in 2012.

Noir City X

The 2012 Noir City Film Festival ran from January 20 to 29 at the Castro Theater. 2012 is the 10th year of Noir City so this year's festival was referred to as Noir City X. They had a snazzy anniversary logo in which the "y" in "City" merges into the "X." I guess the festival is like the Super Bowl - big enough that it merits Roman numerals. Certainly the crowds were gargantuan in size. The evening screenings were packed and many of the matinees filled up the main auditorium (I think the balcony was closed for the matinees). It wouldn't surprise me if they had a total attendance of over 15,000 for the 10 day festival.

The 23 films I saw were:

Dark Passage starring Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall; with Agnes Moorehead; directed by Delmer Daves; (1947)
The House on Telegraph Hill starring Valentina Cortese & Richard Basehart; directed by Robert Wise; (1951)
Okay, America starring Lew Ayres & Maureen O'Sullivan; directed by Tay Garnett; (1932)
Afraid to Talk starring Eric Linden; directed by Edward L. Cahn; (1932)
The Killers starring Lee Marvin & Angie Dickinson; with Ronald Reagan, John Cassavetes & Clu Gulager; directed by Don Siegel; (1964)
Point Blank starring Lee Marvin & Angie Dickinson; with John Vernon, Carroll O'Connor, Keenan Wynn & Lloyd Bochner; directed by John Boorman; (1967)
Laura starring Gene Tierney & Dana Andrews; with Clifton Webb & Vincent Price; directed by Otto Preminger; (1944)
Bedelia starring Margaret Lockwood, Ian Hunter & Barry K. Barnes; directed by Lance Comfort; (1946)
Gilda starring Rita Hayworth & Glenn Ford; with George Macready; directed by Charles Vidor; (1946)
The Money Trap starring Glenn Ford & Elke Sommer; with Rita Hayworth, Ricardo Montalban & Joseph Cotten; directed by Burt Kennedy; (1965)
Unfaithfully Yours starring Rex Harrison & Linda Darnell; directed by Preston Sturges; (1948)
The Good Humor Man starring Jack Carson; with Lola Albright, Jean Wallace & George Reeves; directed by Lloyd Bacon; (1950)
Naked Alibi starring Sterling Hayden & Gloria Grahame; with Gene Barry; directed by Jerry Hopper; (1954)
Pickup starring Hugo Haas, Beverly Michaels & Allan Nixon; directed by Hugo Haas; (1951)
Thieves' Highway starring Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese & Lee J. Cobb; directed by Jules Dassin; (1949)
The Breaking Point starring John Garfield & Patricia Neal; with Phyllis Thaxter; directed by Michael Curtiz; (1950)
Three Strangers starring Geraldine Fitzgerald, Sydney Greenstreet & Peter Lorre; directed by Jean Negulesco; (1946)
The Great Gatsby starring Alan Ladd & Betty Field; with Ruth Hussey, Barry Sullivan & Macdonald Carey; directed by Elliott Nugent; (1949)
Roadhouse Nights starring Helen Morgan & Charles Ruggles; directed by Hobert Henley; (1930)
The Maltese Falcon starring Ricardo Cortez & Bebe Daniels; directed by Roy Del Ruth; (1931)
City Streets starring Gary Coooper & Sylvia Sidney; with Paul Lukas & Guy Kibbee; directed by Rouben Mamoulian; (1932)
Mr. Dynamite starring Edmund Lowe & Jean Dixon; directed by Alan Crosland; (1935)
The Glass Key starring Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake; with Brian Donlevy, Bonita Granville & William Bendix; directed by Stuart Heisler; (1942)

I only missed three screenings - House of Bamboo (which I saw at the PFA in 2010), Underworld USA and The Maltese Falcon (which I have seen several times although not on the big screen). House of Bamboo and Underworld USA were part of a Sam Fuller double feature which I regret missing. The Maltese Falcon was the final film of the festival and capped a six film Dashiell Hammett marathon on that last day. Having caught 5/6 of the Hammett marathon, I was too exhausted to stick around.

I actually had the opportunity to see Underworld USA but passed. I had one too many Sidecars at Sauce that evening. I occasionally do things other than go to the movies. I feel like admitting inebriation is more acceptable than admitting going to the movie theater every evening. I caught a ride home. As we were driving, I was tempted to ask the driver to drop me off at the Castro Theater but my swooning head and likely snickering comments made me reconsider. Sauce has a Guinness Stout Malt on the dessert menu which put me over the top...

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Let's get a few of the miscues out of the way first. January 24 was billed as "A Night of Comedy Noir." The two films were Unfaithfully Yours and The Good Humor Man.

Unfaithfully Yours, starring Rex Harrison and written/directed by Preston Sturges, was the better film. It reminded me of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Danny Kaye. In Unfaithfully Yours, Rex Harrison portrays a symphony conductor who suspects his wife of having an affair and fantasizes about how he will exact revenge. He fantasizes while conducting a symphony and his heightened emotions produce the most inspired work of his career. Unfaithfully Yours was a serviceable comedy. I wonder if I would like Walter Mitty now; it's been 30 years or more since I saw it. Anyway, I had a hard time seeing elements of noir in Unfaithfully Yours. Ultimately, I didn't think it was noir and its comedy was not completely to my taste.

However, Unfaithfully Yours was a masterpiece compared to The Good Humor Man. The Jack Carson comedy was slapstick at its worst (or best, depending on your tastes). The audience seemed to lick it up. The Good Humor Man can be described as a bad Bob Hope film crossed with a bad Abbott and Costello film. I found the film insufferable. It limped along for the first two thirds but a chase scene closed out the film. The scene was epically horrendous and seemed to last half an hour. Carson's character and his girlfriend were chased into a school by the bad guys but some kids come to their rescue by throwing balls, musical instruments, shop class tools and ultimately pies at them. I don't know what is about the pie in the face routine but for me, it gets old pretty quick.

Unfaithfully Yours and The Good Humor Man made me wish I had gotten sauced at Sauce that evening instead of Sam Fuller night.

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There were six films from the 1930s in this year's festival. I wouldn't consider those films "miscues" but between the rapid fire dialog, early sound recording and pre-WWII sensibilities, I can't rightly call these film noir even though many of them were based on Dashiell Hammett's works.

The definition of film noir is debatable but I always believed that post-war weariness and trauma were integral parts of the film noir protagonist and/or contemporary audiences. Several of the 1930s vintage films were quite good but didn't feel like film noir to me.

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As it happens, my favorite film of the festival was a 1930s film - City Streets based on a Hammett's story. Starring a youthful Gary Cooper and effective Sylvia Sidney as a young couple caught up with the mob, City Streets remind me of one of those cautionary tales put out by Warner Brothers during the period. Cooper plays a carny sharpshooter who is duped into joining the gang to help his girlfriend (Sidney) who refuses to testify. When she gets out of the joint, she is dismayed to learn that Cooper (simply known as The Kid) has become a big shot in the mob; he found better uses for his gun skills. As they try to navigate their way to happiness, the couple has to contend with rival gangsters and gun molls as well as Cooper's embrace of the lifestyle which Sidney is trying to distance herself from.

Strong performances by the lead actors and pre-Code sensibilities elevated City Streets to top of my list of 2012 Noir City films.

I was also entertained by Bedelia, a British vehicle for Margaret Lockwood as a black widow trying to prey on her next soon-to-be-deceased husband. Her efforts are foiled by an insurance investigator posing as an artist who insinuates himself into the title character's life. Full of suspense and Lockwood's bravura performance, Bedelia stood out for me.

Angie Dickinson was in the house for a double feature - The Killers and Point Blank. Both films were very gritty films that were immeasurably buoyed by Lee Marvin's performances. Taciturn, merciless and single-minded in both films, Marvin was a true movie star and made for these types of roles. Dickinson's roles were most definitely secondary (even tertiary) to the plots but she made the most of her screen time. The Killers and Point Blank were among my favorites as well.

Gilda is a classic and I'd seen it before. I'm still not sure about some of the plot specifics but the film is a showcase of Rita Hayworth in every sense. When not looking sexy or singing torch songs ("Put the Blame on Mame" is a great song), Hayworth banters with Glenn Ford to great effect.

More surprising was how much I enjoyed The Money Trap. Made 20 years after Gilda, Ford plays a straight arrow cop who is induced into stealing mob money because of money problems at home. Home is where his younger, sexy, younger wife (Elke Sommer) throws parties every night. Egged on by his partner (Ricardo Montalban, in a great performance), Ford plans out the caper but he unexpectedly encounters his high school sweetheart - a ravaged looking Rita Hayworth. Hayworth was an alcoholic and perhaps suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease but it was truly depressing to see her appearance in The Money Trap. The film exploits her condition to full effect as she plays a washed up alcoholic in the film. This give the film a tragic feel which would not likely have been achieved with another actress in Hayworth's role. It puts a regretful hue on everything Ford's character does. It improves the film but I felt like I was exploiting Hayworth just by watching her at this stage of her life.

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The Breaking Point which was based on Hemingway's To Have and Have Not and The Great Gatsby had the benefit of great source material. I read both novels in high school and recall being greatly impressed by them. I re-read both novels in my twenties and was relieved that I still thought highly of them as that is not case with all the books I re-read.

However, neither film really captured the full greatness of their respective source novels. That's a shame because both films were "near misses." John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Alan Ladd & Betty Field gave strong lead performances in the two films. Certainly, I thought more highly of these films than their well known cousins - To Have and Have Not with Bogie and Bacall and directed by Howard Hawks and the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby with Redford and Mia Farrow.

I was particularly impressed by Neal's performance which captured her sexiness and intelligence better than anything else I've seen her in.

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Pickup also entertained me. Hugo Haas is tremendous as a man who fakes deafness to collect his pension early only to find out his wife (Beverly Michaels in a great role) not only doesn't love him but also want her boyfriend to kill him. The scenes where Michaels talks openly with her boyfriend about her disgust with her husband while he is within earshot but feigning deafness were incredible.

Afraid to Talk also stood out as one of the most cynical films of the festival. A bellhop witnesses the murder of a mob boss. Crooked politicians and the mob conspire to frame him for the murder. Another pre-Code film, Afraid to Talk was very dark and intense; it surprised me by the way its plot forced the everyman protagonist to suffer.

Naked Alibi and Thieves' Highway were potboilers helped by strong performances by Sterling Hayden and Richard Conte in the lead roles, respectively. Gloria Grahame, who is great in everything I've seen her in, added her screen appeal to Naked Alibi as did Gene Barry as the villain.

I'm fairly certain that the Coen Brother's Miller's Crossing (1990) is based on The Glass Key, either the film or Hammett's novel. Albert Finney played the Brian Donlevy role and Gabriel Byrne in the Alan Ladd role. Miller's Crossing is one of my favorite films of all time so once I picked up on the similarities, there was no way I could The Glass Key in anyway except in comparison to Miller's Crossing. The Glass Key held its own but ultimately couldn't displace Miller's Crossing in my estimation. That's unfair to The Glass Key but I can only watch watch a film from the perspective of my past experiences.

All the other films were a step below the ones mentioned above.

I'd like to write more but I'm pressed for time...too busy watching films to make time to write about them.

Benny & Bogie

The first films I saw in the Bay Area in 2012 were at the Stanford Theater.

To Be or Not To Be starring Jack Benny & Carole Lombard; directed by Ernst Lubitsch; (1942)
Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman; with Claude Rains; directed by Michael Curtiz; (1942)

I was curious about To Be or Not To Be because I had never seen Jack Benny in a role except as "himself" which he portrayed in a few films and a long-running television series which I saw in reruns. That's the character that says "Well..." and has Rochester as a chauffeur.

In To Be or Not To Be, Benny plays Joseph Tura, the star actor in a Polish theater troupe. Carole Lombard plays Maria, his wife who is also an actress but jealous and dismissive of her husband's vanity and limelight. She copes by accepting the attention of younger men. A running gag throughout gives the film its title. Maria tells her would be paramour's to come back stage when her husband begins his soliloquy in Hamlet which starts with "To be or not to be..." In each instance, Benny deadpans a look of fury as a the young men stand up (invariably in the center of the 2nd row) and make their way backstage. Benny pulls it off for laughs like a pro.

Set immediately before and during the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the theater troupe deals with the Nazi blitzkrieg and occupation. Robert Stack shows up as a young Polish aviator who is enamored with Maria. After escaping to London, he returns to stop a Polish double agent from revealing the underground resistance network. That's pretty serious stuff but it's played for laughs as mistaken identities, an actor who masquerades as Hitler and Benny's vanity are all expertly mined for laughs. I guess it is the "Lubitsch Touch."

Sig Ruman, who would gain cinematic immortality as Sgt. Schultz in Stalag 17 (1953), plays a more bumbling Nazi in To Be or Not To Be. He shows a fair amount of comedic skills going head-to-head with Benny in many scenes. Lombard, looking less bombshell than usual, also gets some gags (at Benny's expense frequently).

To Be or Not To Be is clearly Benny's showcase. He gets to dress as a Nazi, Hamlet, a Freudian looking Pole and I'm sure I'm missing some of his disguises. He pulls this off with his normal nonplussed aplomb. However, Joseph Tura is not that different from "Jack Benny." Still, it's hard to dismiss To Be or Not To Be. It was Lombard's last film before dying in an airplane crash. I (and the audience) laughed repeatedly throughout which, let us not forget, is a comedy about the Nazi occupation of Poland.

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There's not much I can add to the volumes written about Casablanca. In fact, I've seen the film so many times that I can recite the dialog and plot intricacies by memory. This time, I did forget that my favorite song of the film until it was played. I'm not referring to "As Time Goes By." No, a few minutes before that iconic scene, Dooley Wilson perform a toe tapping rendition of "Knock on Wood" which features a call and response with the band.

Everyone was there - Peter Lorre as the unctuous Ugarte, Sydney Greenstreet as the venal Ferrari, Conrad Veidt as the odious Major Strasser and whoever the actors are that play the young Bulgarian couple trying to escape Casablanca. For all the praise heaped on Bogart and Bergman and even Paul Henreid as Lazlo which I have always thought was a thankless role, Casablanca's real star is Claude Rains as Captain Renault, the delightfully corrupt police chief of Casablanca.

Like his character, Rains steals every scene that's not nailed down. Every line coming out of his mouth is loaded with humor, cynicism, innuendo and weariness. It was a role of a lifetime for any actor. Unfortunately, Rains lost the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor to Charles Coburn in The More the Merrier, a film I've rarely heard of, much less seen. I'm anxious to see Coburn's performance.

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I've noticed the Stanford does good business. They must pack in 100 to 200 people per screening at a minimum. All the tickets are double features and I notice a number of people leave after the organist finishes but I still think they are doing well. The Stanford is owned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation so their lease and perhaps operations are reduced or subsidized which explains their low admission prices and extremely low concessions prices.