Noir Alley

[JamesJazGuitar]

2 hours ago, misswonderly3 said:

Rain is one of the principle elements of noir,  like crime and alienation and drinking.  I'm pretty sure all those classic noir era directors used fake rain , i

You got it: how many noirs set in sunny,  it never rains in California,  feature rain,  as a way to darken a scene.   

[Fading Fast]

2 hours ago, misswonderly3 said:

... Rain is one of the principle elements of noir,  like crime and alienation and drinking.  I'm pretty sure all those classic noir era directors used fake rain , in fact, I've heard that even when there was real rain, it didn't show up enough in the camera,  so they'd add more fake Hollywood rain.  I'm glad they did.

 

1 hour ago, JamesJazGuitar said:

You got it: ow many noirs set in sunny,  it never rains in California,  feature rain,  as a way to darken a scene.   

Early on in the outstanding noir "The Blue Dahlia" there is (from memory) what must be a fifteen minute or more sequence of a constant downpour (not one take, but still, one long sequence, again, from memory). The actors had to be soaked to the bone and it couldn't have been easy to film, but man did it set the mood for the movie - this is no sunny LA pic. 

[Eucalpytus P. Millstone]

On 5/18/2022 at 3:32 PM, Polly of the Precodes said:

Eddie Muller and the Film Noir Foundation are interested in Latin American Noir--based on your description here this sounds like just their sort of thing.

Eddie Muller on Victimas del Pecado

[JamesJazGuitar]

23 minutes ago, Fading Fast said:

Early on in the outstanding noir "The Blue Dahlia" there is (from memory) what must be a fifteen minute or more sequence of a constant downpour (not one take, but still, one long sequence, again, from memory). The actors had to be soaked to the bone and it couldn't have been easy to film, but man did it set the mood for the movie - this is no sunny LA pic. 

That is a fine example.   Another example is The Big Sleep.   Hey both were released in 1946 so maybe it really was raining in So Cal a lot that year.   (just joking since The Big Sleep was filmed mostly in 1944 and early 45 but withheld until the war ended).

I like how The Blue Dahila plays up So Cal;   E.g.  Ladd and Lake are driving and need to decide if they are going north or south.  They decided to flip a  coin;   Heads we go to Malibu,  Tales we go to Laguna (where I live).   Lake asks what happens if the coin lands on it's side;   Lake says "we go to Long Beach"  (which is about in the middle of these two So Cal beach towns).

 

[JamesJazGuitar]

This weeks Noir Alley film is My Name is Julia Ross (1945);    Directed by  Joseph H. Lewis and staring Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty and,  as her son,  George Macready.

Running at 64 minutes this  film is well paced and keep me interested.    It is filmed more in a gothic style than noir (mainly due to its setting outside the London countryside).  

This is the film that made me take notice of Nina Foch.     Worth seeing and it will only take up about an hour of your time (I'll watch it again since I haven't seen Eddie's  take on the film).

[Fading Fast]

40 minutes ago, JamesJazGuitar said:

This weeks Noir Alley film is My Name is Julia Ross (1945);    Directed by  Joseph H. Lewis and staring Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty and,  as her son,  George Macready.

Running at 64 minutes this  film is well paced and keep me interested.    It is filmed more in a gothic style than noir (mainly due to its setting outside the London countryside).  

This is the film that made me take notice of Nina Foch.     Worth seeing and it will only take up about an hour of your time (I'll watch it again since I haven't seen Eddie's  take on the film).

I enjoyed this one, too, saw it for the first (and only for me) time a couple of years ago. But it was seeing  "Executive Suite," many years before that, that called Nina Foch to my attention. 

[Thompson]

4 hours ago, misswonderly3 said:

I'm pretty sure the rain was deliberate; in fact, as I posted earlier, it was the opposite situation. It wasn't that Boetticher wasn't expecting or wanting rain and had to adapt his filmmaking and the story to a sudden unexpected rainfall.  It was the other way around,  he wanted rain in the scene he was filming,  the weather wasn't serving up any,  so he created Hollywood rain.

Of course he'd want rain in those scenes.  Rain is one of the principle elements of noir,  like crime and alienation and drinking.  I'm pretty sure all those classic noir era directors used fake rain , in fact, I've heard that even when there was real rain, it didn't show up enough in the camera,  so they'd add more fake Hollywood rain.  I'm glad they did.

Okay, but it didn’t seem like fake rain to me, so it worked whether it was fake or not, because it looked real, the raincoats looked real.

[Dargo]

17 hours ago, JamesJazGuitar said:

That is a fine example.   Another example is The Big Sleep.   Hey both were released in 1946 so maybe it really was raining in So Cal a lot that year.   (just joking since The Big Sleep was filmed mostly in 1944 and early 45 but withheld until the war ended).

Total Seasonal Rainfall 1877-Present for Downtown Los Angeles, California (laalmanac.com)

Nope, it seems during 1944-45, there was actually a little less rainfall than normal in L.A., James. 11.58" and which was 3.89" below the average of 14.67".

However, during the year1955-56 and when The Killer is Loose was being filmed, the rainfall that year in L.A. was 16.00" and which was 1.33" above the average.

(...and so with this data unfortunately not supporting your contention here, but on the OTHER HAND, thus adding further credence to the thought that I now have WAY TOO DAMN MUCH free time on my hands now days in this year of 2022!!!)

LOL

[JamesJazGuitar]

1 hour ago, Dargo said:

Total Seasonal Rainfall 1877-Present for Downtown Los Angeles, California (laalmanac.com)

Nope, it seems during 1944-45, there was actually a little less rainfall than normal in L.A., James. 11.58" and which was 3.89" below the average of 14.67".

However, during the year1955-56 and when The Killer is Loose was being filmed, the rainfall that year in L.A. was 16.00" and which was 1.33" above the average.

(...and so with this data unfortunately not supporting your contention here, but on the OTHER HAND, thus adding further credence to the thought that I now have WAY TOO DAMN MUCH free time on my hands lately!!!)

LOL

Here is a photo from a soon to be released,  filmed in Los Angeles neo-noir:

 

[jameselliot]

4 hours ago, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:

Eddie Muller on Victimas del Pecado

It looks perfect for Noir Alley. Few TCM viewers have seen it let alone heard of it and Eddie is a fan of the movie. 

[cigarjoe]

16 hours ago, JamesJazGuitar said:

That is a fine example.   Another example is The Big Sleep.   Hey both were released in 1946 so maybe it really was raining in So Cal a lot that year.   (just joking since The Big Sleep was filmed mostly in 1944 and early 45 but withheld until the war ended).

I like how The Blue Dahila plays up So Cal;   E.g.  Ladd and Lake are driving and need to decide if they are going north or south.  They decided to flip a  coin;   Heads we go to Malibu,  Tales we go to Laguna (where I live).   Lake asks what happens if the coin lands on it's side;   Lake says "we go to Long Beach"  (which is about in the middle of these two So Cal beach towns).

 

Another that begins in heavy rain is Appointment With Danger

[cigarjoe]

11 hours ago, jameselliot said:

It looks perfect for Noir Alley. Few TCM viewers have seen it let alone heard of it and Eddie is a fan of the movie. 

The DVD has Rita's risqué song translated. 

[cigarjoe]

16 hours ago, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:

Eddie Muller on Victimas del Pecado

The closest Hollywood Noir equivalent would be Party Girl, and a heads up there are a couple of Greek Noir that fit the  "cabaretera" Noir zeitgeist  - Red Lanterns and Ogre Of Athens

[TomJH]

I just caught up with NO MAN OF HER OWN and was touched by the unexpected sensitivity of Lyle Bettger's character. There's Stanwyck making a racket as she's banging on his door in the wee hours of the morning (one neighbour came out of her room to rightfully tell her off) and Lyle, instead of complaining, is decent enough to slip her a train ticket so she could relocate to a nice new town, along with five dollars to help her out with the expenses.

I didn't hear a word of thanks from Stanwyck, who was ungrateful enough to leave the money lying on the carpet. So just how insulted do you think poor, good hearted Bettger will feel if he finds that money afterward? I mean she probably hurt his feelings!

Despite that insult Lyle reappears later in the film. Being a guy who understandably wants to get ahead he's got a money making scheme and he's kind enough to include Babs as part of his plan. But does she want to go along with it? Noooo! And while Lyle might have a conceivably cold exterior to some (people are so quick to judge others by their appearance) beneath it all I suspect he's really a sentimental softy. After all he wants to marry Stanwyck, something the ungrateful wench had wanted earlier in the film before she found a wealthy family she could latch on to like a blood sucker. It just took an independent, freedom lovin' guy like Lyle a while to come around to her way of thinking.

And then, after his offer of marriage, all mercurial Stanwyck wants to do is murder the guy. The same guy who gave her a free ticket out of town! The same guy who later travelled to that town to see how she was doing!

I won't go into the tragedy of what finally happened to Bettger's character. It's too heart breaking, except to say that poor guy obviously got himself hooked up with the wrong kind of girl. Good guys like Bettger, they always seem to finish last.

 

[Terrence1]

Tom, are you forgetting that Lyle abandoned Stanwyck after getting her pregnant?  She was left all alone, until fate happened to introduce her to Phyllis Thaxter and her life.

[JamesJazGuitar]

27 minutes ago, Terrence1 said:

Tom, are you forgetting that Lyle abandoned Stanwyck after getting her pregnant?  She was left all alone, until fate happened to introduce her to Phyllis Thaxter and her life.

I believe that post falls under the category of sarcasm.  

[TomJH]

38 minutes ago, Terrence1 said:

Tom, are you forgetting that Lyle abandoned Stanwyck after getting her pregnant?  She was left all alone, until fate happened to introduce her to Phyllis Thaxter and her life.

I don't think Lyle realized she was pregnant when he gave her the free train ticket. He just figured she was a little stressed and needed a nice relaxing trip. What a guy!

[filmnoirguy]

18 hours ago, Fading Fast said:

I enjoyed this one, too, saw it for the first (and only for me) time a couple of years ago. But it was seeing  "Executive Suite," many years before that, that called Nina Foch to my attention. 

Executive Suite was the only Supporting Oscar nod Nina Foch ever received.  She said that originally she was going to turn it down as it was too small a role.

In 1951, Celeste Holm was cast as Gene Kelly's art patron in An American in Paris but she was wrapping up another film.  So, MGM contract player Nina Foch stepped in to read lines for auditions.  Producer Freed and director Minnelli liked her readings so much, they recast Foch as Milo Roberts.

 

[JamesJazGuitar]

Nina Foch was also in the Columbia noir Johnny O'Clock;   Her part is rather small,,, well lets just say she makes an early exit.

But the studio still promoted her as shown by this lobby card promo photo:

 

[Eucalpytus P. Millstone]

3 hours ago, cigarjoe said:

The closest Hollywood Noir equivalent would be Party Girl . . .

On the Reality is Scary blog, reviewer cmaddren cross-referenced Victimas del pecado and Touch of Evil.

Reality is Scary: Victimas del pecado
https://realityisscary.com/2011/07/06/victimas-del-pecado-victims-of-sin-1951/

[Fading Fast]

38 minutes ago, JamesJazGuitar said:

Nina Foch was also in the Columbia noir Johnny O'Clock;   Her part is rather small,,, well lets just say she makes an early exit.

But the studio still promoted her as shown by this lobby card promo photo:

 

It is a shame she didn't have a bigger role as she was really good in this one. 

[cigarjoe]

6 hours ago, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:

On the Reality is Scary blog, reviewer cmaddren cross-referenced Victimas del pecado and Touch of Evil.

Yea I can see that

[cigarjoe]

6 hours ago, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:

On the Reality is Scary blog, reviewer cmaddren cross-referenced Victimas del pecado and Touch of Evil.

Reality is Scary: Victimas del pecado
https://realityisscary.com/2011/07/06/victimas-del-pecado-victims-of-sin-1951/

I read that already, I think it's also in the IMDb reviews 

[JamesJazGuitar]

[Thompson]

Film starts out with rain, so that figures.  Frankly I was surprised at almost every twist and turn.  Saw nothing coming.  It was a tad slow in the beginning but built up speed nicely.

Ain’t no rain in next week’s film.  Spencer Tracy is a fine actor, but one thing he cannot do is wear a hat.