The Tall Target (Revisit): Wildly entertaining period noir full of delightfully surprising turns that threaten to upend Dick Powell's rogue efforts to protect the president at each stage of the game. The high stakes are rattled with tension as our protagonist barely hangs on by a thread - Powell strips himself, or is forcibly stripped of nearly every asset and piece of credibility he has, which supports each twist with extra heft. The finale may not live up to earlier set pieces, and one character's involvement might be too obvious, but it hardly matters in such a brisk and eventful film.
Reign of Terror aka The Black Book (Revisit): Another period noir from Mann with emphasis on style, but the relentless momentum of its plotty narrative trajectory is what sells this as a great work. No history prerequisites required for enjoyment, but an appetite for brash activity and violence is -
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There's one up-close gunshot to the face that feels impossible to include here, but it made the cut!
Dark Stranger: Arthur Ripley directs an episode of Edmond O'Brien getting vacuumed up into his own dimestore novel, cast against type from the preferred narrative of his identity. It makes sense that the helmer of The Chase would be drawn to this surreal mess, but the metacontextual aspects everyone seems to baldly accept wind up sucking the fun out of the story instead of adding clever touches to it. The reveal is anticipated from a mile away, and it's plainly uninteresting, just as the ambiance lacks any mood to sell it with feeling. Speaking of no feeling, O'Brien spends his time courting Joanne Woodward in a career-worst performance that's essentially Stepford-wife robotic - though I suppose one could argue that she's a paper-thin caricature created by a terrible writer! Either way, this is a waste of time that even fans of Ripley's work should avoid.
He Walked By Night: Fake semi-doc police procedurals are my least favorite type of noir, but this was above-board thanks primarily to the quick pace and enveloping yet tempered style of the picture (John Alton plus an uncredited Mann surely contributed greatly to this achievement). The violence is brutal and its consequences are portrayed in an effectively curt manner. I enjoyed how the film gives as much time to the killer feeding his cute dog as a wife of his victim grieving - its all-around objective gaze is punishing but cool and distanced, casting aside tragedy right after giving it a sensitive close-up. The movie cares but allows brevity to be enough, and, like Fincher, is more interested in professional process than anything else - from the detective work to the villain's self-surgery. Unfortunately all these parts don't add up to a memorable whole, and in the end I wished we were given some more investment in character to make this a kind of lite-Crime Wave, which it doesn't even come close to embodying. Props for doing The Third Man's ending first though.
99 River Street: This has got to have one of the stupidest set-ups in noir history: Jewel thief is so infatuated with a woman that he brings her along to his crime business meeting, making out with her the whole time, only to find out that.. wait for it.. criminals don't like it when civilians see their crimes! He's somehow surprised at being outcast, and has to do away with her, which suddenly comes pretty easy to him. What a dope. Anyways, from there things heat up and get exciting due to Payne's hotheated would-be-patsy taking the lead. At first he’s emasculated time after time (there's even an opportunity taken to sully him via a rando acting audition occurring out in public! What?) only to come back harder in each and every instance. Payne's ex-boxer-turned-cabbie has an urgent temperament that finally gets a release in the back half as he cracks down on the plot against him, and it's a joy to behold. It’s an uneven picture, but worth checking out for the cathartic bits, including an unanticipated morality in Payne's demeanor that shines brightly between the beatdowns. The finale's kinda lame though.
The Prowler (Revisit): Van Heflin's sleazy cop dominates the opening act of this Losey masterpiece. A specialist of slippery role-shifting, the protector becomes the abuser (or the titular prowler) from the outset, and things move on unpredictably from there. While the film eventually settles into a reverse-Double Indemnity sitch, Trumbo's script is exalting. Even when activity seems to follow a foreseeable rhythm, there are still nuggets of idiosyncratic menace and ambiguity in personality and motive sewn into the fabric of these dynamics as the progression unfolds. The audience isn't primed for the familiar beats in part because these characters are just slightly unknowable (and cheekily to one another just as much as to the viewer - Evelyn Keyes sells this blind hysteria well), creating a surreal effect that distances us further from them in a dramatically unsettling fashion.
Sunset Boulevard (Revisit): I've already written about this film on the forum, so I'll keep this brief - I still really want to like this but find it rather obnoxious. The satirical self-reflexivity is a bit overblown -though I do appreciate the bite of a dead screenwriter narrating the story with a silver tongue- but Wilder and co. generally know what the material is and run with it semi-constructively. I always come back to the sadness inherent in the transactional relationship and Holden's performance of guilt in particular; how he lashes out and engages in a series of behaviors that don't spell out his 'tough love' sensitivity but hint at it underneath the veneer of pure greed. As far as I'm concerned it's his film more than Swanson's. The sense of place is well-drawn - the sets are striking and feel lived-in (that garage, with the leaves and all, etched in my mind forever). It just.. doesn't add up to anything worthy of its little sardonic touches or sincere attempts at dramatics. The sum of its parts is weak, even if a few of the brushstrokes are amusing. Its gaudiness is only partially self-conscious and ironic, but the bulk of it is oblivious and cringe-inducing.
The Racket: With stars like these, we should've gotten a better movie. Robert Mitchum plays a good 'ol boy cop going after Robert Ryan's big-time crime boss with Lizbeth Scott as witness in tow, and the result is hardly more than a forgettable programmer. Ryan confiding his family problems in Mitchum and then becoming upset by his 'who cares' reaction is a good example of the puzzling activity this film tries to drum up for some kind of effect, but falls flat on its face each time. It's no surprise that Hughes cycled through five directors, as the tonal and narrative resolutions are routine, leading to a banal and final product. It'd be more appealing if they were drastically incongruous because at least that would be stimulating in some direction.
Hollow Triumph aka The Scar: Absurdly plotted but fantastically surprising noir, with inconsistent doses of strong style and inspiring directorial wit. Paul Henreid, a gangster on the run from other gangsters he's robbed, finds a doppleganger and decides to take his identity before wild complications ensue. There are some lulls, but the economical pacing hardly allows them to drag down the picture. From the crackerjack opening robbery to the clever twist on inescapable fatalism in the last act, this is a leisurely good time peppered with juicy supporting parts and strong location shooting. If you're able to suspend disbelief, you’ll probably find something to like here.
He Ran All the Way: John Garfield is a feral hood caught up in a manhunt, and relentlessly engages in immoral self-preservation when he shacks up with an unsuspecting family. A precursor to stuff like Desperate Hours and Good Time, this potboiler rides on Garfield's anarchic spirit, and the tension is almost painful as we wait for a terrible implosion amidst the psychological torture Garfield unleashes on Winters et al. This might be perfect if cut to an even leaner hour, but it's a strong firecracker of a movie that's well worth seeing if just for Garfield's perf handsomely shot by Howe.
Body and Soul: A well-crafted boxing noir / fictional biopic by Rossen. There's not too much to say about this one - the performances, direction, writing are all solid, and the time allotted to each section of Garfield's life is well-timed and edited. Even though everyone is good here, I thought Lilli Palmer was the standout as his primary romantic partner - she radiates the screen in a novel, quirky manner at times. Great use of montage, too.
Kiss Me Deadly (Revisit): The apotheosis of film noir is also its most experimental and nihilistic work, that's somehow also one of the more entertaining genre entries. Inspiring everything from nouvelle vague to cyberpunk sci-fi, Aldrich's urgent picture aims its fury at a range of targets, from narcissistic personalities to the studio system to the world at large. Today would be a good day to revisit it again if I hadn't already four times this year.
