I Still Wake Up Dreaming Redux

I was able to catch all the films I missed from the Roxie's noir program, I Still Wake Up Dreaming.

The Roxie ran four days of encore presentations during which I saw

99 River Street starring John Payne and Evelyn Keyes; directed by Phil Karlson; (1953)
High Tide starring Don Castle; (1947)
Jealousy; (1945)

At the PFA, I also saw

Power of the Whistler starring Richard Dix and Janis Carter; (1945)

I had missed Power of the Whistler during I Still Wake Up Dreaming.

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Predictably, 99 River Street was my favorite. Evelyn Keyes gives a remarkable performance. Intentionally drawing attention to her acting, her portrayal of an actress pretending to be something else is pitch perfect for the time. Two scenes stand out. First, she convinces Joe Palooka/cabbie John Payne that she has committed murder during an acting audition. It's all an elaborate ruse to convince the theatrical producers that's she right for the role. Keyes plays the scene like she is on stage during a play. Her gestures and facial expressions fall just short of extravagant; appreciable within the context of film acting but not quite grandiose enough to ruin the scene.

The second scene is towards the end of the film. Keyes plays a tipsy round-heel (she's not really drunk or loose) looking to delay bad guy Brad Dexter by using her feminine charms. With slurred words, a tight sweater and an extremely effective bra, Keyes finds the holy grail for actresses - sexy & funny...at the same time. Using unmistakeably phallic imagery (unbelievable it wasn't censored), Keyes hilariously lights her cigarette using the lit end of the cigarette dangling from Dexter's mouth. All the while, she leads with her two best assets.

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The other films were less than stellar. Power of the Whistler was one of my least favorite of the series although I have to admit to snoozing for a portion of the film. It's the ageless "chicken or egg" question. Did I fall asleep because it was boring or did I not enjoy the film because I fell asleep? The latter has occurred but the former was likely the case in this instance.

High Tide wasn't too bad. I saw it on the first day of the festival but the soundtrack was horrible. I couldn't make out the dialogue. Ultimately, I couldn't find much in the film to distinguish it.

Jealousy was slightly better with Nils Asther playing a suicidal European expatriate; suicidal until he begins to suspect his wife is having an affair. Then he becomes homicidal. A telegraphed ending ruins the film but a solid plot keeps the film going for the most part.

Impressed with Phil Karlson

The Phil Karlson series ended on June 26 at the PFA. They screened a Phil Karlson double feature every Friday in June. I had previously seen three of the films - 99 River Street, Scandal Sheet and Gunman's Walk. I saw 99 River Street and Scandal Sheet at previous Noir City festivals and Gunman's Walk at the PFA last year.

I saw the other five films in the series.

Kansas City Confidential starring John Payne; (1952)
Tight Spot starring Ginger Rogers, Edward G. Robinson and Brian Keith; (1955)
5 Against the House starring Brian Keith and Kim Novak; (1955)
The Phenix City Story; (1955)
The Brothers Rico starring Richard Conte and James Darren; (1957)

I didn't know much about Karlson. I enjoyed the three films (especially Gunman's Walk) but I didn't connect Karlson to the three films. Now that I've seen five more of his films, I am ready to pronounce Karlson one my favorite director's of the era. Quoting from the PFA's copy, "Karlson is known for a particularly stark and punishing brand of noir, but his visual assaults are based in a brutal morality."

"Stark and punishing" are relative terms but what I note about his films are that they quintessentially noir in that the protagonists are not entirely undeserving of their fates. They have character flaws or made poor choices that have put them in the position they are in but they also elicit some empathy. In short, Karlson develops complex characters that transcend the standard pulp. However, his female character lacks development; Karlson definitely seemed like he was more comfortable with male characters. Karlson seemed to develop his own acting troop that he kept reuniting with - John Payne, Brian Keith and Kathryn Grant.

Kansas City Confidential is probably his best known film of the era. In the 1970's, Karlson directed Ben and Walking Tall. John Payne (who also starred in 99 River Street) plays an ex-con who is framed for a bank robbery. After being worked over by the cops but eventually cleared, he goes after the men who set him up (including Jack Elam and Lee Van Cleef). In this film, cops and criminals are indistinguishable. Indeed the criminal mastermind (played by Preston Foster) is a former cop.

Kansas City Confidential wasn't my favorite of the series. I think Tight Spot would take the top spot. Ginger Rogers plays an aging convict who is furloughed so that prosecutor Edward G. Robinson and cop (or FBI agent) Brian Keith can convince her to testify against a mob kingpin (Lorne Greene). Rogers plays a brassy broad that is making the most of her time out of prison. She falls for no nonsense cop (Keith) but Keith has a secret - he's a mole working for Greene and Rogers has been targeted for execution. Rogers is fearless in eviscerating her glamorous Astaire and Rogers screen persona. Her performance carries the film.

The Phenix City Story was extremely violent and realistic for (1955). Set in Alabama in the era of segregation, one character says something like "I don't have anything against niggers...as long as they mind their place." He spits the line out making no doubt of his self-delusion even if he hadn't used the N word but I was surprised to hear that line from a 1955 film. Shot on location and based on the actual assassination of the Alabama Attorney General-Elect, The Phenix City Story tells the story of how the mob corrupts the town of Phenix City. Racism doesn't play a major role in the action but it would have been impossible to ignore in 1955 Alabama.

The Brothers Rico tells the story of a man (Richard Conte) who thinks he is free of the mob but gets pulled back in when his two brothers get in a jam. In actuality, he was really never free but his brothers' predicament is the catalyst used to dupe him in setting up his brothers. Conte delivers a solid performance but the happy ending was unusually contrived (even for that era).

Finally, 5 Against the House was a lot of fun but the most dated. Perhaps most notable for a young and luscious Kim Novak in a supporting role, the film is about four Korean War vets in college. They still look too old by a decade to be going to school on the GI Bill or living in a dorm but they are. Keith suffered a head wound that causes him to go off the deep end when agitated (à la William Bendix in The Blue Dahlia). Keith convinces his buddies that they can pull off a casino robbery in Reno. They meticulously plan the heist; the centerpiece is a ruse where they convince the casino worker (William Conrad) that an armed midget is in a change cart. Karlson excels at filming the planning of and execution of the crime caper and 5 Against the House was very entertaining if not a little unbelievable.

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I saw Dillinger is Dead at the YBCA. The 1969 film starred Michel Piccoli and Anita Pallenberg and was in Italian with subtitles. It was very "1960's" but not necessarily bad. A gas mask designer decides to kill his wife. The film shows the last night of her life as he cooks dinner, watches movies, drips honey on his naked maid and assembles his revolver. All the while, his wife (Pallenberg) is passed out on the bed after taking pills for her migraine. Containing more plot than I expected, the story must have been difficult to film and script as Piccoli is frequently acting in scenes by himself but his acting skills and screen persona are up to the task. In one memorable scene, Piccoli acts opposite home movie images projected on the wall. A nice soundtrack helps the movie too. In New Wave tradition, there wasn't a message per se. Piccoli is just a man that is dissatisfied with his life and does something (albeit extreme) about it.

I Wake Up Dreaming: The Haunted World of the B Film Noir

The final tally is in at I Wake Up Dreaming at the Roxie.

They screened 29 features and one short film over 15 days. I previously had seen five of the features - Raw Deal, Framed, The Story of Molly X, The Burglar and Repeat Performance. I re-watched Framed which features a great performance by the alluring Janis Carer. I also watched Raw Deal again which wasn't as enjoyable as a I recalled.

Of the 29 features, I caught 23 of them. I missed four films because I opted to see some films at Women on the Verge at the Castro. The other two that I missed were The Burglar and Repeat Performance where I caught only half of the double bill.

Two films that I missed which are screening as part of the six day encore, Redux: The Best of I Wake Up Dreaming, are The Port of Forty Thieves and Private Hell 36. I'm not sure if I'll catch them. Frankly, I'm burnt out on noir, the Roxie and the Mission District. Festival programmer Elliot Lavine did mention that the $100 festival pass was good for the Redux screenings so I may be tempted.

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I Wake Up Dreaming: The Haunted World of the B Film Noir
All Night Long with Patrick McGoohan and Richard Attenborough; on-screen performances by Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus; (1961)
The Guilty with Bonita Granville; (1947)
The Devil Thumbs a Ride with Lawrence Tierney; (1947)
Raw Deal with Raymond Burr; directed by Anthony Mann; (1948)
Railroaded! with Hugh Beaumont; directed by Anthony Mann; (1947)
Canon City; (1948)
Framed with Glenn Ford, Janis Carter and Barry Sullivan; (1947)
The Madonna's Secret; (1946)
The Specter of the Rose written and directed by Ben Hecht; (1946)
Violence; (1947)
The Last Crooked Mile; (1946)
The Hoodlumn with Lawrence Tierney; (1951)
New York Confidential with Broderick Crawford, Richard Conte & Anne Bancroft; (1955)
Witness to Murder with Barbara Stanwyck; (1954)
Hollow Triumph (aka The Scar) with Paul Henreid and Joan Bennett; (1948)
Under Age; (1941)
Women in the Night; (1948)
The Pretender with Albert Dekker; (1947)
Suspense with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker & Bonita Granville; (1946)
Wife Wanted with Kay Francis; directed by Phil Karlson; (1946)
Allotment Wives with Kay Francis; (1945)
Shack Out on 101 with Keenan Wynn and Lee Marvin; (1955)
City of Fear; (1959)
Blind Alley; short film; directed by Elliot Lavine; (1981)

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June looks to be even busier than May for me.

Another Hole in the Head runs from June 5 to 19. The Oshima Retrospective at the PFA runs a double feature every Thursday and Saturday night in June. On Friday nights in June, the PFA screens a Phil Karlson double feature.

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Somehow, I want to squeeze in Psych-Out at the Red Vic on Friday, June 5 or Saturday, June 6.

Filmed in the Haight in 1968, Psych-Out is possibly “(t)he best Haight-Ashbury drug film. Susan Strasberg as a deaf 17-year-old runaway looking for her missing brother is `helped’ by the hippie team of Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson (as Stoney), Adam Rourke and Max Julien. They get her beads and a mini to replace her square clothes and give her some STP, which sends her wandering in the traffic. The lost brother turns out to be a long-haired Bruce Dern walking around like a mysterious Christ figure.” -- Michael Weldon, Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film

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The Burning Fuse Film Festival screens concurrently with Hole in the Head at the Roxie on June 5, 7 and 8. The Burning Fuse Films get the Little Roxie when the Hole in the Head films play at the same time. Two films from the festival look interesting.

Pussycat Preacher - A lapsed stripper becomes an evangelical minister, but her ministry outreach to sex workers stirs her congregation’s prejudice and doubt. The film presents a mesmerizing and at times hilarious portrait. I've seen the ex-stripper, Heather Vietch, on the news - FoxNews or MSNBC. It screens June 5 (Friday), June 7 (Sunday) and June 8 (Monday); 7:45 PM showtime each night.

Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans - The untold history of Black New Orleans. Not a Katrina film, but a love letter to a city, revealed when a newspaperman rebuilds a historic house in what may be the oldest black neighborhood in America, and the birthplace of jazz. Produced by Wynton Marsalis. It screens June 5 (Friday) at 6 PM and June 7 (Sunday) at 2 PM.

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With the $100 I Wake Up Dreaming Festival Pass, I've pushed my average cost down to $7.23/screening. It was at $7.75 immediately before the festival began. Please no wagering on the number.

Phil Karlson Enters the Fray in June

I was so excited by the Nagisa Oshima film series at the PFA that I overlooked another program there in June. PFA is screening 8 films (4 double features) during Tight Spot: Phil Karlson in the Fifties. The series runs every Friday in June.

I've seen some of the films in the series at Noir City (99 River Street and Scandal Sheet) or previously at PFA (Gunman's Walk). Scandal Sheet and Gunman's Walk have screened within the past six months but I can't blame PFA for screening them again as they were immensely enjoyable.

The lineup is:

Friday, June 5, 2009
Kansas City Confidential (1952)
99 River Street (1953)

Friday, June 12, 2009
Scandal Sheet (1952)
Tight Spot (1955)

Friday, June 19, 2009
5 Against the House (1955)
The Phenix City Story (1955)

Friday, June 26, 2009
The Brothers Rico (1957)
Gunman’s Walk (1958)

Welcome to Phil Karlson’s fifties America, where corruption and cruelty lurk not just in urban back alleys but in sunny resorts and leafy villages, and injustice is not an abstraction but a visceral blow to the body politic. Karlson is known for a particularly stark and punishing brand of noir, but his visual assaults are based in a brutal morality. Although he objected to screen violence for its own sake, Karlson said, “when it belongs, you should show it and you shouldn’t pussyfoot around it. You should put it on there the way it happened.” This fidelity to the physical was part of a pulp naturalism that combined authentic locations and downscale details with weird set pieces and startling twists, uncovering the uncanny in the real.

Born Philip Karlstein, Karlson (1908–86) came of age in 1920s Chicago and was seasoned in that city’s underworld as well as its high culture: he was a bootlegger’s lookout and witnessed a mob killing before attending the Art Institute. Later, to pay his way through law school at Loyola, he took a job at Universal, “washing toilets and dishes and whatever the hell they gave me.” He eventually landed a barely more glamorous position as a director at Monogram on Poverty Row, where he compared himself to “a mechanic that worked on a line”—but “I was experimenting with everything I was making, trying to get my little pieces of truth here and there.” The experiments paid off in the fifties, when Karlson put out the remarkable run of movies we feature here (all but one of which are unavailable on DVD). Join us for four nights of low-budget ingenuity and exhilarating eccentricity, laced with gritty little pieces of truth.

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Between the Oshima and Karlson programs at the PFA, I guess I'll be spending a lot of time in Berkeley this June. Actually, with Hole in the Head running June 5 to 18, June is shaping up to be quite a busy month for me.