Forgotten Roles

Occasionally, I see lists of past Oscar winners and nominees. I'm frequently surprised by the films I don't recall or have never heard of. So it was at this year's Noir City which I forgot to mention in my last post.

Ronald Coleman won an Academy Award for Best Actor in A Double Life (1947). I am most familiar with Coleman's work in Lost Horizon and had never heard of A Double Life. In A Double Life, Coleman plays a successful Broadway actor who takes method acting to extremes. He brings Shakespeare's Othello to stage and stars in the play-within-a-film as the Moor of Venice. The play becomes a smash and Coleman is left to stew in his toxic creativity over the extended run. Eventually he murders waitress Shelley Winters in the same manner which Othello murders Desdemona.

I tip my hat to Coleman as he essentially plays three roles - Othello, the actor and the actor descending into madness. So his Oscar was well deserved although the only performance that I can recall from among the other 1947 nominees is John Garfield in Body and Soul. Despite Coleman award-winning turn, I was largely bored by A Double Life. The film was well staged and photographed but I found the plot to have major holes and it dragged at times. A Double Life did not distinguish itself among this year's features at Noir City. I noted that although Ronald Coleman was nominated for his performance, the film was not nominated for Best Picture.

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I also compared the two versions of True Grit in a previous post.

This weekend, I was able to catch almost an hour of the 1969 version on AMC. It's been several years since I saw the film. AMC doesn't play it with all the other John Wayne films they show on various holidays. Perhaps they were restricted by producers of the version currently in release.

Anyway, the 2010 version closely follows the plot of the 1969 version including LeBouef's dialogue which I don't remember as being so stilted as Campbell and Matt Damon delivered.

The 1969 version had the courtroom scene which I didn't recall. It even used the same joke where the lawyer asks Rooster to restrict himself to the number of people killed in the line of duty so that they may work with "a manageable figure." As I was watching the scene, I realized that Morgan Freeman played the bailiff or court clerk. His voice was aa distinct and well enunciated in 1969 as today. Freeman didn't receive a credit for the role and it isn't listed on IMDB but I am positive that was him.

As I was watching True Grit (1969), the score reminded me of The Magnificent Seven. Looking on IMDB, I see that Elmer Bernstein wrote the score for True Grit which I must have forgotten or never knew.

Noir City 9 Recap

The 2010 Noir City Film Festival closed on January 30. I saw 19 of the 24 films that were screened. Of the five I missed, I had seen three of them previously and the fourth film (Gaslight), I had seen on television. The film I hadn't seen or even heard of before was Strangers in the Night (1944).

2011 Noir City Films
High Wall starring Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter; (1947)
Stranger on the Third Floor with Peter Lorre; (1940)
They Won't Believe Me starring Robert Young and Susan Hayward; (1947)
Don't Bother to Knock starring Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe & Anne Bancroft; (1952)
A Double Life starring Ronald Coleman; directed by George Cukor; (1947)
Among the Living starring Albert Dekker & Susan Hayward; (1941)
The Lady Gambles starring Barbara Stanwyck; (1949)
Sorry, Wrong Number starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster; directed by Anatole Litvak; (1948)
Crack-Up starring Pat O'Brien; (1947)
The Woman on the Beach starring Robert Ryan, Joan Bennett & Charles Bickford; directed by Jean Renoir; (1947)
Beware My Lovely starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan; (1952)
The Two Mrs. Carrolls starring Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck; (1947)
Crashout starring William Bendix; (1955)
Loophole starring Barry Sullivan & Charles McGraw; (1954)
Blind Alley starring Chester Morris & Ralph Bellamy; (1939)
Secret Beyond the Door starring Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett; directed by Fritz Lang; (1948)
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry starring George Sanders and Geraldine Fitzgerald; directed by Robert Siodmak; (1945)
Angel Face starring Robert Mitchum & Jean Simmons; directed by Otto Preminger; (1952)
The Hunted starring Preston Foster & Belita; (1948)

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There were a number of short films before some of the features. Serena Bramble made another short film. You may recall, she edited Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir which screened at last year's Noir City. This year, they screened her short film San Francisco is the Scene of a Perfect Crime. Eddie Muller has a credit at the end as producer, I believe.



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I'll also add that the 2011 Miss Noir City, Angela Rocconi (aka Leslie Bone Rock Girl on 107.7 FM The Bone) was the most polished spokemodel Noir City has had since I have started attending. She was a very accomplished public speaker and knew how to play up her feminine charms for the crowd.

A few more items before I talk about the films. There were fewer on-stage interviews than in prior years. Stranger on the Third Floor co-starred Margaret Tallichet who was married to director William Wyler. Tallichet's daughter (Judy Wyler Sheldon), who is a San Franciso resident and was present at last year's Silent Film Festival, introduced the film.

Alan Rode (pronounced row-dee) who is on the Board of the Film Noir Foundation and runs the Palm Spring Film Noir Festival introduced a few films during the matinee performances.

The crowds were healthy but I thought slightly down from last year.

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On to the films...I thought the line-up was a little weak this year although it improved greatly over the last three days of the festival. The theme was "Who's Crazy Now?" and featured villains and victims who suffered from mental instability or at least neuroses which ruined their lives or the lives of others.

The standouts were They Won't Believe Me, The Lady Gambles, Sorry, Wrong Number, Loophole and Angel Face. Still interesting but a half-step behind were The Woman on the Beach, Crashout and Secret Beyond the Door.

The rest of the films had their moments but I was decidedly mild towards them. In fact, I dozed off on a number of films this year, even during matinees. Perhaps, I've seen too many films or too many noirs in particular.

My favorite was The Lady Gambles which featured a bravura performance by Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who discovers she has a gambling problem on her first trip to Las Vegas. Her marriage and life are ruined as she sinks ever deeper to satisfy her gambling addiction. My favorite part is when various men hold the dice to her mouth and ask her to "kiss them for good luck." The blatanly Freudian and so effective. I'm beginning to look for clues in these Golden Age films where the filmmakers try to push the production code. In this case, Stanwyck's character's sexual repression is given release in her wanton gambling.

Ironically, The Lady Gambles was the only "film" screened from a DVD. Czar of Noir Eddie Muller put to a vote whether or not a print of The Lady Gambles should be restored with Film Noir Foundation funds. The vote was unanimously in favor.

A close runner-up was Angel Face which featured a damaged Jean Simmons who hates her stepmother and eventually resorts to murder to rid herself of her. Robert Mitchum plays the chump with more style than anyone else. However, Simmons is absolutely feral as she manipulates Mitchum, Mitchum's girlfriend, her father and everyone else. The frightening part is that she doesn't even really know what she wants but she is willing to kill for it. Again, I detected a hint of the forbidden. I think Simmons' character and her father were having an incestuous relationship based on their conversation during a chess match. Regardless, Simmons strikes pose after pose as she murders or tries to murder. That look alone is classic.

They Won't Believe Me is more memorable for the amorality of the lead character played by Robert Young. Having not one but two extramarital affairs and benefitting from not one but two deaths of women who loved him, Young is positively sociopathic as he fulfills his sex addiction.

Loophole was notable for Charles McGraw chewing up the scenery as the single minded insurance investigator hassling Barry Sullivan, an innocent bank teller accused of stealing $49,900 from his employer. With hints of Les Misérable, Loophole is a thinly veiled criticism of the methods and practices of HUAC. McGraw gets knocked unconscious and doesn't rough anyone up but he is at his most intimidating as man with the single minded pursuit of breaking down Barry Sullivan will so he will slip up and reveal where the money is.

Finally, Sorry, Wrong Number is a classic noir about a bedridden woman who overhears a phone conversation of what turns out to be her own murder. Once again Stanwyck delivers a great performance - ambitious and bitchy college co-ed, domineering wife to Burt Lancaster and frightened invalid. Although Lancaster is solid in his role, his main purpose is to provide a foil for Stanwyck to play off of.

The Woman on the Beach (directed by Jean Renoir) and Secret Beyond the Door (directed by Fritz Lang) was heavy on symbolism and I could benefit from repeat screening of both films. Woman on the Beach was anchored by a tremendous supporting performance by Charles Bickford as a blind (or is he?) artist. Secret Beyond the Door allowed Joan Bennett to show her acting chops by taking a walk on the wild side of her psyche. Death fascinates her and that's a good thing because her new husband (Michael Redgrave) likes to recreate murder scenes...and he is building a recreation of her bedroom.

Crashout is about a bunch of tough guys who break out of prison. William Bendix is the toughest of the tough and leads the bunch to their ultimate doom but not before wreaks havoc on as many people as possible. The film is one-dimensional but depicts hyperstylized sense of masculine malevolence.

Stranger on the Third Floor was notable for early performances by Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook, Jr. It also featured a dream sequence that was better suited to a German Expressionist film but would eventually become cliche.

Of the three Belita films I've seen in the past 18 months, The Hunted is the best. Belita has this noticeable scar on the left side of her face. I wish they would have incorporated it into the plot.

Blind Alley reminded me of a second-rate Hitchcock film but was reasonably interesting. Stars Chester Morris and Ralph Bellamy played their parts satisfactorily enough to keep me awake until the last few minutes.

One Fourth of 2011 is Already Booked Up

The film festival season kicks off tomorrow evening with the opening night of German Gems at the Castro Theater. German Gems is the festival which Ingrid Eggers founded after leaving Berlin and Beyond. This is the second annual German Gems. I missed last year's screenings. The festival runs through January 16 at the Castro and presents encore screenings on January 22 at Point Arena.

The films that interest me based on the program guide are The Architect, She Deserved It on January 15 and Mountain Blood on Janaury 16.

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Noir City will be at the Castro from January 21 to 30. In total, they'll screen 24 films. The films I'm looking forward to are Don't Bother to Knock (1952) with Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark, Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach (1947) and Otto Preminger's Angel Face (1952) with Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum.

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The Mostly British Film Festival runs February 3 to 10 at the Vogue Theater. The festival is long on old school classics such Get Carter (1971), The Ipcress File (1965), Black Narcissus (1947), Gallipoli (1981) and East is East (1999).

Among the films which caught my attention are West is West (2010) which is the opening night film and sequel to East is East, Beneath Hill 60 (2010) and Down Terrace (2009).

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Overlapping Mostly British is the San Francisco Independent Film Festival or SF IndieFest at the Roxie.

The most outrageous titles are Nude Nuns With Big Guns and Machete Maidens Unleashed! which is a documentary about Filipino exploitation films from the director of Not Quite Hollywood (which I saw at 2010's Mostly British Film Festival).

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On February 12 at the Castro Theater, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will present their Winter Event.

The all-day program consists of trio of Chaplin's early short films, L’Argent (1928), an adaptation of the Émile Zola novel and King Vidor's La Bohème (1926) starring Lilian Gish and John Gilbert.

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From March 1 to 13, Cinequest screens in San Jose. From March 10 to 20, the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival runs at various locations. If the past is indicative, the festival will screen in San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley.

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On top of all these festivals, the PFA has a series that greatly interests me. It called Suspicion: The Films of Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock and runs from January 13 to February 25.

A founding member of the French New Wave, Claude Chabrol began, like his contemporaries Truffaut, Godard, and Rohmer, as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema; unlike his more rigorously intellectual colleagues, however, he embraced genre filmmaking, specifically suspense films (“I love murder,” he said). Chabrol’s career as a critic peaked with the 1957 publication (with Rohmer) of a pioneering study of Alfred Hitchcock; he turned to filmmaking a year later, beginning a cinematic career that could arguably be described as a continuing study—and continuation—of Hitchcock.

Like Hitchcock, Chabrol is the consummate craftsman; his films flow with the ease and assurance of someone who understands the power of cinema to manipulate emotion, while simultaneously embracing—and winking at—such power. “I am a farceur,” he once admitted. “You have to avoid taking yourself too seriously.” Unlike Hitchcock, though, Chabrol hits harder, with a steely condemnation of bourgeois values and a weighty moral resonance in his tales of infidelity, suspense, and murder. In a use of genre similar to his other great influence, Fritz Lang, “the stories he chooses become the frameworks for clear-eyed subtle explorations of guilt, innocence, and accountability,” wrote Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

Chabrol passed away in September, aged eighty, having made over sixty films. We present a generous sampling of his work, in conjunction with some of Hitchcock’s finest; two “masters of suspense,” together at last.

The series consists of 20 films. Many of them overlap with Noir City or IndieFest.

2011 Noir City Kickoff

On December 15, Noir City had a kickoff event at the Castro Theater for their 2011 Festival. Noir City 9 will be held at the Castro from January 21 to 30.

Looking over the program, I am excited to see films which I've not previously seen. I only see three films that I've definitely watched before. I saw The Dark Mirror (1946) at the Stanford Theater in September. I saw My Name is Julia Ross at the Roxie in September 2009 as part of their Best of Columbia Noir series (programmed by Elliot Lavine).

I've seen the 1944 classic Gaslight (with Ingrid Bergman) on television before. I don't believe I've seen it on the big screen.

I've already purchased my Noir City Passport.

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The Czar of Noir and Noir City founder Eddie Muller, got on microphone onstage at the Castro. He got the festivities started with The Bloody Olive (1996), a twelve minute, Dutch language noir about a love triangle with more plot twists than you can shake a stick at.

Then he introduced Miss Noir City 2011 who graces the Noir City 9 posters. I don't recall her name but her day job is Leslie The Bone Rock Girl at 107.7 FM The Bone.

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Then Eddie screened two great films which weren't quite noir but entertainng nonetheless.

Remember the Night starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck; written by Preston Sturges; (1940)
Mr. Soft Touch starring Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes; (1949)

I think Muller called them Christmas Noir but that's a bit of stretch. Mr. Soft Touch had some noir elements but it felt like a Pat O'Brien/Boy's Town film. Remember the Night reminded me of every other Preston Sturges film where the scamp sees the error in his/her ways and confesses his sins.

Remember the Night was the first on-screen pairing of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck who would go on to make the seminal noir Double Indemnity in 1945. It was also the last Sturges screenplay which he would not also direct.

In Remember the Night, Stanwyck plays Lee Leander, a sassy shoplifter who gets pinched for stealing a diamond bracelet in NYC. Her case is assigned to Assistant District Attorney John Sargeant who specializes in prosecuting women. At trial, Leander's attorney (scene stealing performance by Willard Robertson) spins a fantastic yarn about how Stanwyck was hypnotized by the diamonds and a victim rampant commercialism. Seeing that the jury is sympathizing with Leander, Sargeants asks for a continuance so he can ostensibly consult with a hypnotist to verify the defense's claims. Also, since is close to Christmas, Sargeant asks the trial resume in two weeks time after the New Years. The judge grants the continuance.

Sargeant is about to start his Christmas vacation but realizes sad it is to spend Xmas in jail so he posts Leander's bail. The bondsman misinterprets Sargeant's charity and drops Leander at Sargeant's apartment. With no where to stay, Leander is left with few options. Over dinner with Sargeant, the two discover they are both from Indiana and Sargeant offers to drive Leander back to Indiana so she can visit her relatives.

After some madcap misadventures involving dairy cows, a gun toting farmer, a hanging justice of the peace and cold reception by Leander's mother, Sargeant invites Leander to spend Xmas with his family which consists of his mother, his aunt and his cousin.

Predictably, they fall in love and after some guilt induced by Sargeant's mother, Leander agrees to return to New York, break it off with Sargeant, plead guilty and accept her punishment. However, Sargeant has decided to sabotage his case by antagonizing the jury and painting Leander in the most sympathetic light.

The film ends as only a Hays Code film can end. The judge accepts Leander's guilty plea, Sargeant proposes to Leander and Leander refuses the proposal, countering with a promise that if he still wants to marry her after she gets out of prison, she'll marry him then.

The film is buoyed by Stanwyck's and, to a lesser extent, MacMurray's performances. I've seen Stanwyck plays this wise-cracking, tough girl with a soft heart before. She played a similar character opposite Gary Cooper in 1941's Balls of Fire (directed by Howard Hawks). It was like watching a master at work as Stanwyck smart-talked her way in New York City but showed vulnerability in Indiana or how her frustration at unrequited love manifested itself. Like a comedy team, MacMurray played the straight man for Stanwyck to play against. It was a key performance but less flashy than Stanwyck.

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Whereas Remember the Night was a romantic comedy with few noir elements, Mr. Soft Touch hewed closer to what most would consider noir.

Glenn Ford plays Joe Mirakowski or something like that (aka Joe Miracle), a recently discharged GI who returns to San Francisco. He discovers his nightclub has been taken over by the Mob and his partner is dead. He knocks over the club and steals $100,000. The cops and more dangerously, the Mob is looking for him after the robbery. He needs to hide out for a day and a half to catch a ship bound for Japan.

He pretends to be a wife-beater(!) so he can be assigned to the Borden Street Settlement House under the supervision of Miss Jenny Jones (Evelyn Keyes), a neighborhood social worker.

While at the halfway house, Miracle falls in love with Jones and starts to admire her work. Unfortunately, an enterprising and amoral reporter (John Ireland) discovers that Miracle is at the settlement house and tips off the Mob. The Mob burns down the building and take the money from Miracle.

By now, Miracle has had his come-to-Jesus change of heart. He returns to his former nightclub, robs it again, dresses as and hires some men to also dress as Santa Claus and finally donates the stolen cash at a fundraiser to rebuild the settlement house. The Mob guessed as much and shoot him in the street. His final words (of the film at least) are to ask Jones to literally pull him out of the gutter which is what he has figuratively been trying to do all his life.

The film featured a solid performance by Ford who I think is hit or miss in these tough guy roles. Evelyn Keyes didn't have much to do as Jones except be played for a sucker and fall in love with Miracle. John Ireland nailed his character, a slimy Walter Winchell type. Percy Kilbride (best known for playing Pa Kettle in the Ma & Pa Kettle series) provided some laughs as a garrulous tennant in the house.

It was nice to see some exterior shots of San Francisco from 60 years ago. Apparently, in 1949 the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza was in a commercial district in San Francisco. Other than that glaring inaccuracy, the film didn't make much of the San Francisco cityscape. There were a few car chase scenes on the Embarcadero and Russian Hill, I think.