cigarjoe
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Posts posted by cigarjoe
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i feel like adding- almost as an aside- that my passion for classic movies and especially thrillers and noirs really escalated when I turned 15.
the year was 1993 and I was an avid reader and i found myself visiting a town that had THE BEST USED BOOKSTORE EVER TO EXIST. They had everything, I swear to God. If you asked nicely enough, they probably had a copy of THE NECRONOMICAN with a real working eye on it and everything...
anyhoo, I came across the source novels for THE LADY VANISHES, THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, SPELLBOUND, THIS GUN FOR HIRE and a few others, including the DOROTHY HUGHS novel IN A LONELY PLACE....
****ETA: the novel SUDDEN FEAR is based on too- a really decrepit paperback that irritated my throat.*****
nerd alert: I was euphoric.
Over the next year, I read them all and was actually disappointed by near every one with the surprising exception of THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, whose source novel (i still assert) BLOWS THE FILM OUT OF THE WATER.
It was, overall, an interesting and very valuable lesson for me in terms of adapting books to film- because in just about every case, the screenwriter sped things up, cut fat, and often wove a lot of much-needed missing elements and characters out of their own imagination.
they made the stories a lot better, or in some cases (ie SPELLBOUND) really just took an idea and ran with it.
I think IN A LONELY PLACE was one of the last of the haul for me to get to reading, and by that time, i was used to being letdown by book-to-film adaptations so i don't think i had a great deal of expectations for it, i remember rating it **1/2 stars out of my one to four star rating system i had for every book i read at the time.
why, yes, i was late to lose my virginity, what makes you ask?
anyhoo, it's been 24 YEARS (!!!!) soes, maybe I should give it another looksie...I know reading books that are set in California/LA have a lot more meaning for me since i lived there for a few years some time ago.
You should try and get a hold of the novel Nightmare Alley, that one is pretty outrageous and quite a bit more explicit, than the film.
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I just watched The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) for probably the 10th time and it reminded me of something that brought me great joy in my pre-teen years.
My older brother and I used to tease my mother daily with a quotation from this movie. We drove her NUTS.
She would ask: Have you done your homework?
We would answer: We don't have to show you any stinkin' badges.
She would ask: Do you have your scarf and mittens?
We answered: We don't have to show you any stinkin' badges.
You get the picture. We laughed hysterically and used this line to block all efforts at maternal control.
It may sound cruel but we loved it; and we still do it to her sometimes to this day, but now she laughs too.
There was a spoof of this in a Western with John Astin (from The Addams Family) he's Mexican bandit and he's got a sheriff's badge, and he's saying the line while pouring whiskey on it and hammering at it with his revolver.
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This post has motivated me to write about my own, apparently unorthodox, view of film noir, that is as far as I can tell, radically different from what most people who participate on these boards think of as noir.
In fact, I feel so strongly about this, I was going to start a whole new thread about it. But then I decided that this "Noir Alley" thread is as good a place as any to say what I want to say on noir and how it seems to diverge from what many others' idea of it is.
marcar talks about the novel In a Lonely Place. She describes how the author gets into the mind of the Dixon Steele character, with all its creepy violence and pathological nastiness and misogyny. The mind of a rapist and a serial killer. She (marcar) quotes some lines from the book, describing the twisted thoughts and the hatred going through the mind of Steele just before he kills some woman he's encountered on a beach.
Then she - marcar, the poster - says, "Now, that's noir."
I completely disagree with this idea of the workings of a serial killer's mind as ultimate "noir".
First, I want to say I mean no disrespect to marcar, who strikes me as an intelligent poster. I appreciate her review of the book. What prompted me to write this was, not just marcar's declaration that the ugly workings of a rapist and killer's mind is "Noir", but that so many agree with her. I'm in the minority here.
What I'm trying to say is this: Everyone's always going on about how nasty and bleak film noir is, and how it's all about the dark side of human nature, etc. etc. Yes, of course. That's why it's called film noir. I know that. And yes, I love that the world of noir is full of dark shadows and rain and desperate characters. But to me, noir is NOT about psycho killers or serial rapists. That is, there sometimes are such characters in film noir movies, but they are never the main characters, they're not the protagonists. If such characters do appear in a noir, they are depicted as repellent figures with whom we do not identify, and they are usually peripheral to the story.
Psycho killers and serial rapists belong to a different genre altogether - horror movies. Whether I like that genre or not is irrelevent; my point is, that kind of character does not dominate the genre I love and that I'm talking about here: film noir.
When I first discovered this style of film, back in the 80s, I was intrigued by its beautiful atmospheric black and white visuals, its seedy urban settings, and most of all, its desperate, often outcast characters. But almost always, the protagonist ( a better word than "hero") is someone we can identify with in some way. He ( almost always a "he") is usually an ordinary guy, a common man who, due to some bizarre twist of fate combined with a self-destructive weakness, gets drawn into a series of terrible circumstances over which he has no control.
This noir everyman character is often isolated from the mainstream of society, he's alienated, bitter - maybe because he was given a raw deal when he returned from the war, or he was imprisoned unjustly, or he's recovering from some traumatic experience. Often - but not always - he's led astray because he's in sexual thrall to a woman. Or he's trapped in a situation from which the only escape is to co-operate with a gang of criminals.
He may encounter psychotic violent characters on his noir journey ( yes, film noir is rife with these), but he is not one himself, and we the audience do not relate to these characters.
Also: more often than not, the protagonist comes out alive at the end of this journey. Changed, yes. In the best noirs, the hero is profoundly altered by his experience. But he usually lives. I've noticed a lot of people seem to think most noirs end with the hero's death. (For sure, there are a few - "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity" are two obvious examples - but there are just as many, and I believe more, that end with the protagonist alive and free - albeit different than he was before.)
Ok, this is a long and I'm afraid, somewhat rambling post.
But I really wanted to make this point, that I don't agree that noir is about evil people - or at least, it does not celebrate evil. It celebrates the dark side of life, but that to me is not evil. What noir really does more than anything, and what I like most about it, is explore and validate the grey side of human nature. Most people are neither "good" nor "evil", and noir acknowledges this more than any other film genre. If typical "noir" was about what goes on in the mind of a sick violent man who enjoys killing women, I wouldn't love noir.
First with the topic of Film Noir it's all subjective. Noir is in all of us. Think of us all as having an internal tuning fork, these tuning forks are forged by our individual life experiences which are all unique. When we watch these films their degree of Noir-ness resonates with us differently, so we either "tune" to them or we don't. The amount of "tuning" (I'm appropriating this term from the Neo Noir Dark City (1998)) to certain films will vary between us all also."
To one extreme some folks do not consider a film a Noir unless it has a detective and a femme fatale, the other end of the scale has hucksters and promoters declaring practically every Crime film a Noir as a "cool" selling point. But in it's original coinage, films noir, ran a gamut of subjects other than just Crime films.
I hold the Visual aspect in ascendance along with story, and consider Noir a style of filmmaking rather than a pure genre.
Let's start with the origins. The original circa 1930s French coinage "films noir" (from French right wing and religious publications associated film noirs with the poetic realist movement that was closely associated with the leftist Popular Front) definition, i.e., "the content contains murder or suicide and the other social taboos that are a mainstay of the film noirs." this was applied, at the time, to those particular poetic realist films that the publications did not approve of, i.e., Pierre Chenal’s “Crime and Punishment” (1935), Jean Renoir’s “The Lower Depths” (Les Bas-fonds) (1936), Julien Duvivier’s “Pépé le Moko” (1937), Jeff Musso’s “The Puritan” (1938), Marcel Carné’s “Port of Shadows” (Le Quai des brumes) (1938), Jean Renoir’s “La Bête Humaine” (1938), Marcel Carné’s “Hôtel du Nord” (1938), Marcel Carné’s “Le Jour se lève” (Daybreak) 1939, and Pierre Chenal’s “Le Dernier Tournant” (1939).
If we take the original coinage to the extreme the ultimately bleakest, purest in essence Noir Films would be Snuff Films, Propaganda, and Porno.
The second coming of the term was when it was used in Nino Frank and Jean Pierre Chartier's articles describing a handful of visual and thematically dark 1940s American Films that first reached France at the end of WWII. This is the usage that we are familiar with. Most of the films cited by Nino Frank and Jean Pierre Chartier were Cime films but one "The Lost Weekend" was a psychological noir about addiction.
Other later addiction noirs are, "The Man With The Golden Arm", "Stake Out On Dope Street", there are probably more.
A few serial killer Noirs were made also one right from the get go, Stranger on the Third Floor (1941), others Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Follow Me Quietly (1949). M (1951), The Sniper (1952), While the City Sleeps (1956), of course the success of Psycho (1960) combined with the demise of the MPPC kicked the door wide open to psychological based noirs. From IMDb "It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene in which Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed, with Marion in a bra."
(more from IMDb) The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of theaters as people had to wait for the next showing. This, along with box office numbers, led to a reconsideration of the film by critics, and it eventually received a very large amount of praise. It broke box-office records in Japan and the rest of Asia, France, Britain, South America, the United States, and Canada, and was a moderate success in Australia for a brief period..... Psycho was, by a large margin, the most profitable film of Hitchcock's career, earning over $12 million for the studio on release, and $15 million by the end of the year.
I've said this before, I think, what was going on post 1959 is, as the Motion Picture Production Code weakened and independent poverty row and low budget film creators were allowed more artistic freedom. So those Visual Stylistic Film Noir that went too far over the line depicting violence started getting classified as Horror, Thriller (even though they were just say, showing the effects of a gunshot wound, or dealing with weird serial killers, maniacs, and psychotics, etc.). Those that went too far depicting sexual, drug, torture, etc., situations were being lumped into or classed as various Exploitation flicks, (even though they are relatively tame comparably to today's films). The the noir-ish films that dealt with everything else, except Crime, concerning the human condition were labeled Dramas and Suspense. Those that tried new techniques, lenses, etc., were labeled Experimental. Some films are so so bad in all aspects that they acquire the "so bad it's good" Cult status.
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Rosemary DeCamp in her brief appearance is great
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S'more in RE: BLITHE SPIRIT
(SPOILERS!)
IN RE: THE ENDING...The only honest answer I can give on how I would end it is I DON'T KNOW. i think i would need a brainstorming session with input from others and possibly some mind-altering substances involved to come up with just the right ending for it...one thing i did not bring up in discussing the film was that it reminded me quite a bit of DEATH BECOMES HER- which has built a well-deserved cult following since its release- and many of the British horror anthologies that followed- as well as TALES FROM THE CRYPT- that last one kinda killed the genre in a way because every episode gave us an awful person who does awful things and is ALWAYS ALWAYS killed in some ironic form with NO VARIATION on the theme and zero surprise.
thus, watching BLITHE SPIRIT, i kinda sensed where it was going- but only because its original trail has been MUCH HACKED UPON since first it was blazed.
I'm sure BLITHE SPIRIT was a sensation when it came out because it was rather unexpected for it to end in such a way- being one of the first stories to use the above discussed method of storytelling- although the "horror" is subtle and the fact the protagonists are- kind of- awful people is subtle and hidden by their intrinsic Britishness.
You know come to think of it I remember liking the film, but can't remember how it ended, maybe it was that unaffecting.
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Sudden Fear (1952)
I loved this movie. At the urging of some of my friends here on the board, I recorded this film last December when it was a TCM premiere. It's been 9 months, but I've finally watched it. I should have watched it sooner because this was a great film--probably one of the best films I've watched in awhile.
I'm not the biggest fan of Joan Crawford's MGM years, but I love her work in the 1940s-1950s when she was with Warner Brothers and then later freelance (?). Sudden Fear was an RKO production. I thought the whole cast was excellent and I liked how the story was told. While the idea of a husband teaming up with his mistress to kill his wife is not novel, I felt that the way that the events unfolded in Sudden Fear was very creative and interesting. I also liked that Crawford was a strong character in this film and didn't just wait around being scared.
In a nutshell, without giving too much away, Sudden Fear tells the story of a woman (Crawford) who discovers that her husband and his girlfriend are planning on murdering her in order to claim rights to her wealthy estate. Crawford's character is a wealthy woman who is also a playwright. When the film opens, she is in New York watching rehearsals for her new play. The leading man Jack Palance, is good but Crawford doesn't think he's right for the lead in her play and has him fired. Palance is understandably upset. Later, Crawford is on a train headed back to her home in San Francisco. She ends up meeting Palance and the two have a whirlwind relationship on the week long train trip. By the time the pair make it to San Francisco, they are in love and marry soon after.
For awhile, it seems that Crawford and Palance are completely enamored with one another and have an ideal relationship. At a party, Crawford meets Gloria Grahame, the girlfriend of her lawyer (Bruce Bennett)'s friend, Junior (a pre-Mannix Mike Connors). Grahame seems innocent and sweet enough and Crawford doesn't think much about her. She soon discovers that husband Palance and Grahame are acquainted with one another and they're scheming to murder her over the weekend. Of course, they are planning on framing Crawford's death to look like an accident, as the husband would be the first suspect (any avid Forensic Files viewer knows that).
Palance and Grahame do not know that Crawford knows about their plan. Crawford does everything she can to foil their plans. There is also a deadline that the pair is working against, as Crawford is planning on signing a new Will on Monday (it's I believe, Thursday or something on the day Crawford finds out what is happening) which will greatly reduce the amount of money that Palance would be bequeathed.
The third act of the film when it's Sunday night and Palance and Grahame are desperate is the highlight of the film. Crawford's meticulous planning and execution of her plan is flawless and very interesting to watch in the film. The director chooses to only show Crawford's hands and body during the scenes where she is preparing for her plot. The cinematography during the climactic finale is excellent and very unusual. There were lots of various angles used, not to mention the great scenery of San Francisco.
I really liked Crawford in this film--especially her eyes. Her eyes were almost their own character in the film. Crawford's facial expressions conveyed every ounce of fear that she was feeling. I liked her in the scene where she collapses as her idyllic world has suddenly fallen apart without warning. Palance was excellent. I had never seen him in a film where he was young. He reminded me a lot of Martin Landau. I also really liked Grahame in this film. Every time I see her in a film, her screen presence is so unique and she brings so much to all her roles, no matter how small. I like that Grahame also manages to almost always bring a bit of a sleazy quality to her roles, it works well for noir. She's even a bit sleazy in It's a Wonderful Life.
This was a great film and I'd love to watch it again, even though I know how it'll end. I feel like this is one of those films that you can watch over and over and always get something different out of it. I was excited to find that it was on DVD/Blu Ray.
A very, very dark and claustrophobic noir, with good performances all around, especially by the more creepy than usual Palance, it has to be the lighting that is enhancing his train wreck of a face.It's a veritable juxtaposition of grotesques the ghoulish Palance with the almost buffoonish Crawford. Crawford no matter how you slice it looks downright clownish (wearing a nightgown inspired by Uncle Fester) while she runs about chewing the scenery with ape like hysterics that makes you feel like throwing her a banana. It's hard to root for a leading lady that looks like this:
Palance in one of his better closeups
I can only imagine what Joan's eye bulging school of acting must have looked like on a full 60' screen.Some great noir cinematography ominous convertible
All in all it has great atmospherics, the Kino DVD is bare bones, too bad, I have a feeling that a running commentary would have been hilarious. I'll subtract 2 points for the post plucked eye browed Crawford, final tally 7/10-
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That's crazy, because I hardly ever have technical problems with TCM ON DEMAND...The problem I nearly always have is that of the 6 to 10 movies inrotation, about 90% of them are films that I HAVE NO DESIRE TO SEE ( i.e. SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL and ALL THE GD BEACH PARTY MOVIES)
Well I agree with that too, On Demand over Roku seems to stall out once or twice every 2-3 films.
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Wait...today?
I thought today was supernatural day, I'm watching BLITHE SPIRIT right nOW
I forgot it's going to be on Monday, when I posted about it yesterday i was under the impression it was the next day but it wasn't Sunday was it
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So anybody watch The Narrow Margin today?
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IT'S BREAKING MY (shriveled black) HEART THAT THE SOUND SYNC ON MY TV IS SO MESSED UP!
9 times out of 10, the sounds goes out of sync watching live tv every 3-5 minutes and it is EXHAUSTING.
I missed BLUES IN THE NIGHT, I missed THE LONG NIGHT, I missed MOTERREY POP and I missed GOOD MORNING MISS DOVE because the feed lags and the sound keeps going and it gets out of sync and the only way to fix it is to TURN OFF THE TV AND TURN IT BACK ON AND WAIT 15 seconds FOR "SPECTRUM CABLE TO ACTIVATE MY CABLE EXPERIENCE" THEN CHANGE THE CHANNEL AND and then rinse, lather and repeat 14 more times over the next hour.
it is exhausting.
i am so sorry, you guys, but if it's not available ON DEMAND, it's getting where I just cannot watch it.
I actually have more problems with on demand than with regular streaming.
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Just watched La Bête Humaine (1938) again tonight, compared to American remake Human Desire the two films are quite different.<spoilers>The murder of Grandmorin the railroad executive occurs practically at the beginning of the film, it happens soon after Roubaud, who sent Séverine, his wife, to ask Grandmorin to smooth things over with the complaining customer, finds out that she was his mistress beginning at the age of sixteen. After the murder Séverine tells Roubard that she does not love him anymore, but Roubard is now a changed man, he doesn't seem care anymore what Séverine does, and spends his nights gambling.Jacques Lantier, the engineer is indeed a bit of a nut case, he loves his engine, I guess it's always there for him. The times he gets involved with women the family "sickness" unpredictably takes over, or maybe it's just a finely tuned instinctive reaction to women in general (just kidding).When Jacques meets Séverine it is in the corridor just after Roubard has killed Grandmorin. She goes to talk with Jacques who becomes smitten with her, and later at the inquiry, tells the cops that he saw no one on the corridor. One thing leads to another and they eventually become lovers and Séverine tells him that she won't be free of Roubard until he's dead. The film is a bit unclear (at least to me and from reading the subtitles) whether Séverine has been cheating on Roubard all along, there is one sequence where a man comes to the door bringing lace from "his wife" for Séverine, which gets Roubard all bent out of shape, then later at the railroad ball this same man is dancing with Séverine. So is she or isn't she?Jacques makes the first attempt to kill Roubard with a lead pipe but finds that he can't do it. Séverine tells him that she can't go on as they are and that it is over.At a railroad ball Jacques is watching Séverine dance with another man. Out of jealousy Jacques rekindles the romance with Séverine and tells her that he will kill Roubard this time, tonight. He and Séverine go back to her apartment and wait for Roubard. Jacques with Roubard's own gun with kill him and make it look like a suicide but just as they prepare for Roubard to walk in the door (it turns out to be a neighbor) the tension triggers Jacques' sickness to return and he in turn attacks Séverine first by choking her, and then stabbing her with a knife. The sequence is intercut with shots of a crooner at the ball singing about this coquettish Ninette and shots of the lifeless body off Severine.Distraught Jacques walks the tracks all night, getting back to work with two minutes to spare. He tells his best friend, the fireman of the locomotive what he did. Later at top speed going down the tracks he jumps off the engine breaking his neck.Of course Human Desire has the "Happy Hollywood" ending with Glen Ford going out with the good girl.
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Tear Gas Squad (1940) TCM
Oddball quickie from Warner Brothers, which is part musical, part romance, part police story, and almost no tear gas.
Dennis Morgan plays a singer (surprise) who does a “singing cop” act. He decides to join the force to impress Gloria Dickson, much to the dismay of her current suitor and cop John Payne. The only action, including the tear gas, occurs in the final ten minutes or so. Morgan is so appealing that you can put up with most of the nonsense that occurs for most of the film (like his singing in the police glee club). There are plenty of familiar faces, including Perry White as the Police Chief (and Morgan does get to call him “Chief”), Superman as Morgan’s brother, Paul Drake in a bit part, Dennis the Menace’s father, and Uncle Joe (movin’ mighty slow) from Hooterville. Speaking of which, Gloria Dickson was one hot babe.
One theater in Lexington, KY, advertised the film by sending this truck around town. If anyone was illiterate, they probably had the crap scared out of them.
Yea I watched this the other day also, but didn't think it was anything worth mentioning, lol.
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SPOILERAMAS !
Ok, I like Narrow Margin a lot, too. And I agree, it has to be one of the best movies (in any genre, not just noir) set almost entirely on a train. Ya gotta love the tough-talking interplay between cynical street-hardened Charles McGraw and equally flinty Marie Windsor (I love this noir lady - and as for toughness,she could give Anne Savage a run for her money...)
There are all kinds of fun little details in the film...the big fat guy who keeps blocking off the narrow train passageway from everybody, the ultra-noir dialogue (how can you not love a line like "She's the sixty cent special. Cheap. Flashy. Strictly poison under the gravy."?) , and damn, how about that loud trashy swing music Marie keeps playing in her train compartment? And why does she keep drawing attention to herself in this way? Just to prove she's trashy, the kind of woman who plays cheap popular music at full blast ? and how come she's brought a record player onto a train? ( or is it a radio?) Even back then, when train accommodation was roomier than it is now, that would have been kind of awkward. But I enjoy the loud swing music thing, and the implication that anyone who plays that kind of music is trash. ( A common device in old movies, especially noirs - show the person's shallow character by letting them listen to loud popular swing music. It always makes me laugh...)
Anyway, I'm digressing a bit. What I really wanted to say was - SPOILER - of course we find out that the trashy fast-talking Marie Windsor is a police officer, set up as a decoy to confuse the would-be assassin and derail ( pun intended) him from killing the real gangster's wife. What bothers me, a lot, actually, is that when poor old Marie is killed, Charles McGraw, even after he finds out who she really was, doesn't bat an eye. This woman risked her life - and lost it - in the line of duty, protecting a key witness, knowing that the odds of getting killed herself were high.
Yet does McGraw say one word in her favour? Does he express any regret for the nasty assumptions he made about her, and the rude way her treated her? Nah. He's too busy trying to curry favour with the real gangster's wife - who of course is everything poor old Marie Windsor was not ( decorous, quiet, "decent"...)
Every time I see this film, I want him to give a speech about how wrong he was, how fine a person Windsor was for giving up her life so the wheels of justice McGraw claims to respect so much can keep turning. But nope, he just doesn't care.
Here is a partial answer from a Five-O interview:
Stanley Rubin (SR) What happened with "Narrow Margin" was kind of interesting. We finished the picture in '51. Howard Hughes had taken over the studio. He ran the finished cut, our cut of "Narrow Margin," one midnight, which was rather typical of Mr. Hughes. By the way, I never met him. I did get memos, but never met him in person. Hughes had bought the studio while we were making "Narrow Margin," but later he brought in Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna to head up production at the studio. In any case, Hughes ran the picture, which had gotten very good word of mouth already. I got a memo from Mr. Hughes, saying he thought it was a very good film, but that he wanted to hold it — instead of releasing it when it was due to be released, the memo stated that he wanted to hold it for a while and he wanted me to think about some way to turn "Narrow Margin," which we had shot for under $250,000 and in under 15 days, into an A-picture. Well, there wasn't any way to turn "Narrow Margin" into an A-picture unless you just scrubbed the picture and recast it with A-names and shot it all over again. I communicated that feeling to Mr. Hughes, but he persisted in thinking that there might be some way to turn it into a big picture. And he held it under his arm or in his vault for a year and that's why "Narrow Margin" was released a year, year and a half after it was finished.Five-O: Was the Hughes cut much different from yours and Fleischer's?SR: Hughes added at least one additonal heavy. I think Dick Fleischer shot those scenes. I was gone. I was already at Fox. Hughes added one heavy, and then he did another thing which was not smart, it was just an oversight, I guess, on his part and we didn't discover it until one night at Cinematheque at the Egyptian.They ran "Narrow Margin" and someone asked: 'How come Charlie McGraw and Jacqueline White didn't go to pay their respects to Marie Windsor, who'd been shot and killed in the line of duty?' And I said, of course they stop to see her, before you saw them sneaking off the train to go down the tunnel to get into town. Well, we looked at the picture again and that scene had been removed. That moment we had shot was gone. That was a bad, bad, bad oversight on the part of Mr. Hughes. Nonetheless, the picture was a good picture. We were all very proud of it, and people were impressed with the performances, the pace, with the plot turns... The picture was screened by Darryl Zanuck and that motivated Fox to make me an offer to come over there. Dick Fleischer went on to do "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" for Disney. Both of those things came from "Narrow Margin."-
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Looking at Today's schedule Out of the Fog (1941) and The Long Night (1947) are films I'm sort of ambivalent about, the first is on some Noir lists the other on most but is a remake of Le Jour se Leve (1939) both versions are decent but not on my top 100 list.
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This is one of my favorite movies. As best I can tell, The Forty-Niner was an actual Southern Pacific/Union Pacific/Chicago & Northwestern joint train between Los Angeles and Chicago. This was train they arrived in Chicago on.
Central Pacific Railroad's The Golden West Limited was fictitious. The CPRR was a subsidiary of the SPRR at the time.
However, the Santa Fe did operate The California Limited between Chicago and Los Angeles via La Junta CO. Most passenger car exteriors are of Southern Pacific cars.
This is probably first movie in which I first identified Marie Windsor and have been a fan ever since. Same for Charles McGraw, although I recognized the face.
The film was remade in 1990 as Narrow Margin with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer. Though based on The Narrow Margin, it is fairly different. It is set primarily in Canada and uses VIA Rail Canada's Canadian.
While I like The Narrow Margin better, they are both good movies and well worth watching.
The second film 1990 lost my interest with the helicopter and actions sequences. Film Noir were fairly simple as soon as remakes forget that and get too ambitious they lose that overall Noir zeitgeist, in my opinion.
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That's still there? Amazing.
No there are new apartment buildings on the old site, across the driveway to the apartments to the south is 644 N. Hill Place that, is still standing (just quick checked on Google maps).
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One of mine too! (favorites!)
WOW. Nice trip Cigar. i have a book about Bunker Hill with pictures. I'm always trying to spot locations in noir films. Really sad, it's gone.
Yea I guess Angels Flight and the two tunnels 3rd & 2nd are all the remain, the new skyscrapers are like Bunker Hill's tombstones. What I didn't check out this last time was the location of the Clover Trailer Park for Cry Danger, that is North of Bunker Hill on North Hill Place.
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Just saw the promo The Narrow Margin (1952) Monday at 10:00AM (EST)
"Sunburn wear off..... on the way out?"The majority of the film takes place upon the RKO "Golden West Limited" set as it rattles and rolls through movie magic very believably towards Los Angeles. It's a work of Studio/Stage/Special Effects Art, the great design of the various rail car sets, the lighting effects, plus an all immersive sound design. This is all intercut with second unit exterior location material and stock footage that convey the illusion of " the jornada", a road picture on rails. There are not many road pictures as tight as this one just judging it visually and audibly alone. One of my favorites 10/10
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This looked promising written by a friend and co-worker, Suicide Blonde is the biography of a quintessential figure in the great American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. I have a copy of this. It glosses over a lot of the juicy stuff unfortunately.
It does depict on the cover the slightly pouty look that Gloria was always shooting for in her own obsessed quirky way by either stuffing tissue paper under her upper lip or through plastic surgery.
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Btw CJ, and regarding the following earlier comment of yours in this thread...
This would be one of the things I enjoy about Noirs, too. However in my case and being a native Angeleno, they're often a "time machine to my past" West Coast-style whenever the setting in them is L.A.
And, your post today in the "I Just Watched" thread about that John Payne flick THE CROOKED WAY, and your usual excellent blog in which you supply a more detailed analysis of these sorts of films, had me thinking of your above comment as I perused them.
(...just wanted to tell ya)
I was just there (your home town) at the beginning of August. I had a bunch of spots to see on my bucket list. I went to Union Station checking out the tunnels to the platforms (end of The Narrow Margin, the waiting room and entrance beginning of The Crooked Way, Cry Danger, and others Union Station, and Neo Noir Marlowe. From there over to City Hall, lots of films have that iconic tower, too many to mention. Then went over to 3rd St. and visited the Bradbury Building, it was featured at the end of D.O.A., was in the first I,The Jury, and again in Marlowe, and Neo Noir Blade Runner.
Then I paid my respects to Bunker Hill going to one of its last remaining vestiges the 3rd Street Tunnel head wall, many films used the tunnel, the North side of the East headwall was where Indus Arthur left the body of one of her victims in 1964's Angels Flight. Half a block away on Hill is the real Angels Flight, it was running, probably sort of a breakdown test for it's September re opening, It was featured in countless Noir, Criss Cross, The Hollow Triumph, The Unfaithful, The Money Trap, Act Of Violence, and others.
I then headed over to the bridges over the L.A. River, plenty of films used them (quite a few like The Case Against O'hara used them as a stand in for either New York's FDR Drive or the West Side Drive). The concrete L.A. River was used for the end of Road Block, for Point Blank, for To Live And Die In L.A. We then walked down Broadway, then drove back to Chinatown and checked it out, drove over to Hollywood and then down Sunset Blvd, to the PCH and up it to Malibu, finished the day driving on Mulholland Dr. to catch the sunset and to see L.A. at night.
Will definitely go back Dargo, a lot more to see.
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All the more reason to enjoy some nice wine while you're hanging around those dark alleys, etc.
Well for film noir it will probably be a muscatel wrapped in a brown paper bag. no?
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Well you can't expect a guy who likely spends a lot of time in
dark alleys, fleabag hotels, and all night picture shows to
know about sunny vineyards.
Yes it doesn't match his zeitgeist.
From watching some of his spots, he looks a bit bemused, sort of a fish out of water as he tries to match a wine with say Hitchcock.
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The Crooked Way (1949) The Most Graphic Noir
John Alton's chiaroscuro cinematography imparts upon The Crooked Way what could arguably be the most Graphic Novel look to a Classic Film Noir.Director Robert Florey (The Vicious Years (1950), Johnny One-Eye (1950), segued into TV early did some Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zones and Outer Limits), Director of Photography was Master Cinematographer John Alton (about fourteen Classic Noir to his scorecard). Music was by Louis Forbes.The film stars John Payne (Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Larceny (1948), Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), Hidden Fear (1957)), Sonny Tufts (No Escape (1953), Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955)), Ellen Drew (Johnny O'Clock (1947)), Rhys Williams (Nightmare (1956)), Percy Helton (nine Classic Noir), and John Doucette (eight Classic Film Noir), Ester Howard (Murder, My Sweet (1944), Detour (1945), Born to Kill (1947), No Man of Her Own (1950), Caged (1950)), Frank Cady, Charles Evans, who also had some Noir on their curriculum vitae. Cady I just watched the other day in The Asphalt Jungle.Payne plays a convincing amnesia victim, Drew is good as his ex wife, but Sonny Tufts as the mob boss is excellent, he is very convincing as an unhinged, wild eyed, mad dog, barely in control when angered, hood. He should have been in more Film Noir, his performance here is both impressive and very memorable. He spits, snarls, and I wouldn't be surprised if he bit, actually after checking his bio, he does bite. "In 1949 he had been found drunk on a Hollywood sidewalk. In 1950 he was sued by two women for allegedly biting each of them in the thigh." (IMDb mini bio)This film may also have the distinction of being one of the only Film Noir to feature some Western Swing its diegetic soundtrack.The screencaps are from the Geneon DVD, it's cheap, adequate but featureless, still a personal 9/10 for me. Full review in Film Noir/Gangster and with more screencaps here: https://noirsville.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-crooked-way-1949-most-graphic-noir.html
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Noir Alley
in General Discussions
Posted
Yes it was a bit long winded towards the end. I was hoping to get more detail on the code they used.