When Just An Average Joe Gets Waylaid By The Strange Fate Sisters-Anthony Mann’s “Desperate” (1947)-A Film Review

When Just An Average Joe Gets Waylaid By The Strange Fate Sisters-Anthony Mann’s “Desperate” (1947)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Si Lannon

Desperate, starring Steve Brodie, Raymond Burr, Audrey Long, directed by the legendary Anthony Mann, 1947

You know not every guy who did his service, did his military time and came back to what we who were in Vietnam during the 1960s called the “real” world couldn’t hack it, couldn’t back to the nine to five idea once he had seen enough craziness, had committed stuff he never though he would commit, and saw others do the same. Bad stuff all around. This publication has been filled with many sketches, even a few expanded pieces, detailing the experiences of a bunch of corner boys from North Adamsville and their troubles trying to readjust after their fucking war. I was one of the guys who had trouble, drifted in and out of towns, relationships, jobs, friendships, larcenies and drugs before I got my head screwed back on somewhere near the right way. Of course nobody associated with this publication in even an attenuated form can forget the toll that war business took on one Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, who although we didn’t appreciate it that much at the time took his Vietnam time real hard. Not right away, but several years after having done an incredible job detailing the lives of a bunch of fellow veterans who were so bummed out by the world they came back to that they eventually formed an “alternate universe” down along the railroads and riverbanks of Southern California. Whatever haunted Markin, the Scribe, was just too deep for him to keep his own head on straight and he succumbed to serious drugs and treachery down in Mexico in the mid-1970s.

Like I said not every guy reacted the same way as I did, as Markin did and just went back to the real world and forgot about the past or at least didn’t let it get in the way. Probably most guys who served followed that road. And some guys, some straight-shooters still got fucked around with. Take the guy in Desperate, take Steve Brodie as straight a guy as ever wore shoe leather. Maybe the guys who came back from World War II were different from us, although the more stories I hear the more it sounds like the same old, same old only guys like my father and a couple of uncles kept it tightly under their lids. Steve came back after European Theater time, a few medals, a skill as a mechanic and truck driver to tide him over on cold night. Married a country girl from Wisconsin or one of those cow country places, started up his own small independent trucking operation in some Every town, they were, are legion. Hell, started out in a dinky cold water flat, didn’t even have a personal telephone but had to keep a stash of nickels like some rooming house joker which that country-bred blonde kept bitching about, had ideas about living in a ranch house and raising a parcel of kids and dogs. Sticking with his Anne, his love of his life through good times and bad. Then all hell broke loose, and he got caught in a grinder he couldn’t work his way out of.

The problem with Steve, like a lot of guys who are clueless about the ways of the world, is he couldn’t pass up a buck in order to help put up that down payment on his, their dreams. For fifty buck the world could toss and turn him around and spit him out. See the monthly payments, the bane of small dream guys, the truck insurance, or something was a little behind (Anne parceling out the weekly white envelopes each a little short in each bill packet, Jesus) so he took the job from an old friend, a guy from the old days back in the old neighborhood. Easy dough. Problem, problem is that old corner boy, a guy named Walt, but I knew him as Ray, Ray something, never got off the corner, always had to have the best of it, play every crooked angle. The job, the need a Steve truck job was a heist of some dark alley warehouse. Except things went awry as they do when you have small time crooks working the inside dope. Steve, once he knew the score took a pass, or tried to but the fate sisters weren’t rolling his way that night and he went for a fall. Worse, the botched job got a cop killed which meant the squeeze was on, somebody had to step off, take the big fall in the state pen for this one.         

This is where thing gets weird. The guy who got caught, the actual cop killer, a guy named Johnny, something like that, was this small- time hood Walt’s kid brother. Walt had an unexpectedly strong fondness for this brother and didn’t want to see him get the chair, the electric chair sitting waiting for him. Ray, Walt wouldn’t dream of taking the sword himself even though it was his botched caper so he came up with the bright idea that Steve should take the fall. Nice guy. At least Steve had sense enough to put a big bite into that plan once he got free from Walt’s clutches. The problem was that Ray, no, Walt threatened to do bodily harm to his wife, to Anne of the nickels, if he didn’t play ball, tell the coppers he was the cop-killer. Jesus, again.  They had to blow town, blow town fast and without a lot of fanfare.

Steve had to get his Anne to safety especially when she told him she was pregnant, was with child (she would deliver a daughter on the run, nice way to start life). But Walt was relentless especially after a jury put an X next to Johnny’s name. No matter where they went Walt and his cronies caught up to them. Finally, on the night Johnny was to meet the grim reaper, was to what did Seth Garth call it in a recent film review of Fallen Angel hear the noise of wings very close Walt cloistered Steve and expected to have a join execution with Steve as the sacrificial lamb who would cleanse the world for Walt over his Johnny boy. After a little gunplay Walt took a fall, although Steve did too. Yeah, not every guy had trouble coming back to the real world from their respective wars but trouble came their ways no matter what.   

Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground-I Hear The Noise Of Wings-A Drifter’s Tale-Alice Faye And Dana Andrews’ “Fallen Angel” (1945(-A Film Review

Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground-I Hear The Noise Of Wings-A Drifter’s Tale-Alice Faye And Dana Andrews’ “Fallen Angel” (1945(-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Fallen Angel, starring Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, directed by Otto Preminger in his prime, 1945

I am not going to fall all over myself spending good cyberspace getting into the thick of the “dispute,” nice tame word for a civil war, that has flared up at this publication. That is the dispute between young Sarah Lemoyne, who in the interest of transparency which seems to be a by-word these troubles days when nothing seems to be what it is on its face, or at least people want to suspect some deeper motive I have given some advice about how to handle my old corner boy from back in North Adamsville high school days her sparring partner Sam Lowell. Grandfatherly advice is the way Sarah put and that seems about right except to the gossips who think “something is going on” between us which is ridiculous although I would have to admit that if I was younger I wouldn’t be late taking a run at her assuming that I was between one of my three marriages not made in heaven. Sam, if he were honest which is not likely these days, would have too although if Laura Perkins sees this I am only kidding. All of this to say I am glad, lemmings to the sea glad, to be doing a film noir review after some time away beating down both Sherlock Holmes’ door and young fellow reviewer Will Bradley’s as well. What has happened is that Sam is so wrapped up in his dispute with Sarah that he let this one get away and Greg Green, our esteemed site manager, tagged me for the assignment. But enough, to the chase.  

My mother, rest her soul, maybe, when I was a kid, when her brood of five boys and two girls were growing up warned me, us against drifters, grafters and grifters, especially the latter since they will take all your money and laugh on the way out of town. Naturally I ignored that warning when I came of age and was totally enchanted by these guys, mostly guys then anyway although more than one woman acquaintance did me worse than any grifter ever did, and had done my fair share of drifting especially after Vietnam did me in about what was what in this wicked old world. So from minute one of this film Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel when Eric, lets call him Eric, Eric Stanton since that was the name he used when he grabbed a marriage certificate in his big end around on-screen scam, played by 1940s heartthrob Dana Andrews, got hauled off a Greyhound San Francisco bus by the world-weary driver after pulling the oldest trick in the book-the sleeping passenger who overshot his ticketed destination- I was all in. Not only pulled off that freaking bus in the dead of night by that bastard driver but wound up in some Podunk town, the name does not matter since such towns were, are, legion the exception being that this Podunk is along the Pacific Coast Highway with nice views of the Pacific heading to the Japan Seas.   

Eric, with a solo buck in his pocket heads to the all-night diner one can find in even the crankiest of towns. The joint, Pops Eats, it figured right will become headquarters for a time for Eric as he tries to turn that dollar bill into some working capital. Yeah, Eric is down and out right this moment but he is a big idea man, some working, some no but in the drifter, grifter racket you play the percentages and watch out for the dirty coppers who want to spoil your play. Here is Eric’s problem, a problem which will dodge him the rest of the film so you know it had to be a woman. A freaking waitress named Stella, played by saucy Linda Darnell, who has half the guys on the West Coast crawling up walls and spending sleepless nights trying to get into her bed (implied remember this is Code Hollywood). This Stella to my mind is nothing but a tramp, maybe not the worst round heels that has hit the streets but working her way up the food chain. Any man’s woman is what we called it back in the day, hell, whore and heart-breaking ball-buster if you really want to know.

Frankly a self-starter like Eric doesn’t figure to get into the claws of a she-devil like Stella (or maybe she was just a girl looking out for herself in a hard-ass world not selling her good looks and trophy wife aspect too cheaply). Maybe I missed something in her allure to the male sex but even senior citizen Pops tried to take a run at her, a run at his employee serving them off the arm at his joint (although her attendance record left something to be desired when she was out with some guy, who knows who, much to Pops’ chagrin). In any case Stella did get her claws into Eric and had him running through hoops to marry her. Problem-no dough. That is when after getting a little working capital doing a promo job for a fakir, a fly-by-night fortune teller, he gets the bright idea of going off and romancing the younger sister, June, played by fetching Alice Faye, who seems to be more his speed but who knows what churns a guy up, of one of the town’s leading families. The play is to marry her, grab her share of the family dough and then divorce her. I liked the play even if it seemed to have too many moving parts.     

 

I need not have worried because dear sweet Stella turned up dead, very dead, one late night after Eric had married June (and had taken off on his wedding night to see, well, to see Stella bad play, very bad). Guess who the number one fall is? Yeah, Eric has to think quickly because otherwise he will take the big step-off at the Q some forlorn midnight and then he really would hear the angelic noise of wings, hear them loud and clear. He and June take off for Frisco town to grab the dough since no matter what he has done she loves the guy, wants him to be whatever he wants to be, no questions asked. While in Frisco June gets picked up by the coppers and sent back to Podunk to put the squeeze play on Eric. This is where this seemingly naïve small-town girl with stars in her eyes shows her grit though. She doesn’t knuckle under, doesn’t rat him out to the local coppers. Meanwhile Eric has finally put two and two together since he didn’t do it. George a guy from Stella’s old home town of San Diego who had dated her on the night she was murdered. No. Pops. Come on. No, it was an old New York City ex-cop named Judd who had been kicked off the force for being too rough on the clientele. He had been sitting in Pops all along seeing what a tramp Stella was, seeing her moving toward Eric and that was that. So, yeah, Judd will be hearing the noise of wings. As for June and Eric, Christ he finally woke up to June’s charms for their own sake. About time. This film and review was certainly better than dodging the Sarah-Sam dispute.             

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Leslie Dumont

Dark Knight Rises, starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, 2012      

[I noted in a recent thumbs down film review of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable’s 1933 Dancing Girl which really turned out to be just a freebie chance to get a lot of stuff off my shoulders since the film itself took about thirty seconds to pan about what had been going on around this publication in the short time I have been here. Here as a result of it turns out a serious decision by new site manager Greg Green to change things around, to get young women, younger everything if not yet more widespread racial and ethnic diversity which the times and American social demographics cry out writing major pieces rather than the old standard stringer role that went on here for years. I have heard, mostly around the water cooler and mostly from Seth Garth who has become something of a mentor to me, that some of the older white writers have not been happy with this new regime, especially one Sam Lowell who I am now locking horns with over what is really the direction of the publication.

Frankly Greg has been all over the place trying new ideas, some working and some even to a novice like me just out of journalism grad school kind of crazy. I will give an example because it directly affects how I wound up doing this review of one of the endless DC Comics Batman sagas that has hit the cinemas. Greg, trying to assert his authority as new site manager, after what appears to have been an all-out bloodless blood-bath to remove former chief Allan Jackson who I really want to talk more about since it turned out he was “resurrected” or according to Seth who was involved in radical politics back in the 1960s with Allan “rehabilitated” to do the successful encore of The Roots Is The Toots series had the “bright” idea to have the older writers broaden their horizons by reviewing various Marvel/DC Comic films. That set of assignments set up a firestorm among the older guys who could not possibility sit through such fare much less understand why hard-working parents are forced to refinance their homes to get tickets, deadly soda and inane popcorn for their loving off-spring under penalty of insurrection-or worse.         

I freely admit I hope that the thing would fizzle giving me a chance to do my thing with fresher eyes and with a less draconian view of such films since they were a staple of one of my journalism classes- The Rise of The Blockbuster. As such thing were bound to do the older writers got squirrelly about things and so Will Bradley, Maura Mason, Lenny Grace and I think a couple of others, younger writers all got the assignments. But that is not the end of the story although I have already detailed my “dispute” with Sam Lowell in that last review mentioned above when he connived to get a prestige assignment away from me and under Seth Garth’s guidance and mentorship screamed to high heavens and got a couple of series of my own including the superhero comics work. Work that I will like Sam did to me on that prestige series rewrite what others have written in the interest of completeness. Since this one got lost in the turnover I will start with the last saga of the Dark Knight trilogy. Sarah Lemoyne]     

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There is a lot the average reader of film reviews, probably reviews of any kind at least professional reviews about what goes on behind the scenes in the selection, assignment and use of the editorial fist. Some of it is generic to any organization but other things are subject to the whims of whoever is in charge. The play of say the New York Review of Books which goes for high-brow twisting reviews is very different from the cloisters of the American Film Gazette which in its long history has reviewed virtually every Hollywood and foreign film ever made in its nearly seventy-five year existence. That who is in charge, who is in charge here is my first point and for a reason having nothing to do with this yet another super-hero comic book come to cinema Dark Knight Rises which frankly I thought had been abandoned once the site manager, the guy who shapes and gives out the assignments here, heard loud and clear from us peon writers that the mass audience for this stuff does not, I emphasize, does not read film reviews in exotic flower publications filled with plenty of other stuff they could care less about.

Greg Green, the guy who shapes the contours of what gets into the public prints here after a grueling internal battle in 2017 before I signed on thought, I believe in order to quell the disquiet after that battle, to solidify his new position and create his own brand, or maybe all of the above that reviewers should feel free, without recrimination, to what old leftie the wizened and somewhat senile Sam Lowell has called “fire on the party headquarters” meaning a reviewer can, if she or he so chooses, go beyond the scope of the review and let readers get an insight glimpse of what goes on in section of the publishing world. I have taken that liberty here and without recrimination since it has seen the light of day. More ominous thought, my second point stab, is why after all of the anguish and gnashing of teeth by serious writers here are we going back to reviewing this kids’ stuff, this comic book madness. That is where the whims and whatever other fluff is going on in an editor’s head comes into play. Greg although he acquiesced ready did believe that action-packed films, above all comic book super-heroes were the wave of the future.

He suffered in silence for a while apparently but once Black Panther came out and he saw the gross ticket receipts he did a big backslide. He called it “in the interest of completeness,” meaning that we collectively had not reviewed every possible film in the genre. So here I am, woe is me, doing hard time going on and on about what mind-numbing stuff I have to review. I had to laugh when in a recent review of one of the million 007 James Bond films, another Greg Green pet project, Seth Garth brought back to memory the old days in the industry when we got paid by the word and he, I, would when we were lowly stringers trying not to starve “pad” our reviews with plenty of stuff which had not much to do with the film and hope to not get edited too badly. Now I have to write this extraneous stuff for a flat fee. And I do so here.     

This Superman, no, Batman long drawn out film is the long- expected sequel to the first one in this series. Stay with me on this since Batman like his buddy Superman has had various reincarnations depending on a generation’s take on what will play, or at least some half-baked Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of what will play, beyond the bang-bang action a minute pace expected of these things. In the first film Batman had taken the sword over the death of some do-gooder D.A. who harbored evil thoughts although he had nothing to do with that good guy turned bad guy’s demise. Except it allowed him, Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, to hibernate in some isolated splendor out on mansion row and not worry about scumbags and creeps returning to fair Gotham (the sky line of which looked amazing like, ah, New York City), to wreak havoc and turn the place into a cesspool of drugs, prostitution, gambling, shady deals and endless corruption-again. A thankless task.  

Maybe someday we will reduce the scumbag and creep population to manageable size but for now every crazy monomaniac with some dough and manpower sees such places as Western Civilization urban areas as fair game, as merely a subject for spoils. Enter one hellish brute Bane and his underground, literally underground, army ready to reduce Gotham to their playground. This guy is relentless, tough and unlike others who have tried to make an end run on the town had a plan, a plan beyond total devastation if he does not get his way. So once word gets up to Mansion Row Batman has the old flame lighted under his ass to save “his” city once again. Save with the sometimes help, sometimes unhelpfulness of Cat Woman, played by fetching Anne Hathaway breaking the mold of her girl next door looks who has her own agenda, has her own rock to get out from under.

Like I said this Bane really was a piece of work, really had his stuff together despite wearing a weird semi-mask to alleviate ancient wounds. As the battled ensues on the first go-round Batman shows some rust after that long hiatus and loses the round, is taken prisoner never to be seen again. At least that is what Bane had thought. Once Bane and crew take some action which includes having access to a nuclear machine which can be turned into a weapon the town’s police force and its general population accept the new regime for a while. At one point the machine was in cold storage but a big- time woman environmentalist has taken charge and so despite her the damn thing was weaponized. A few resistance fighters, including Cat Woman in her better moments, pushed back until Batman escaped coming back to town looking for creeps, scumbags and glory. Push back not only against Bane and his thugs but that woman who controlled the nuclear button turned out to be something like the big guy’s lover, or friend. So chaos looms, looms as long as Batman can’t figure out how to get that freaking bomb out of Gotham City’s harms’ way.           

Bruce/Batman falls on his sword again but really only off-stage in case there is to be another sequel, the desire to make this yet another trilogy which seems to be the way these comic book adventures go. Having said all that I hope, I really hope, everybody can see what a forlorn task it is write this foolishness. I hope Greg is listening-again. Just kidding but I wanted to show that I can do insightful film panning just as well as moribund Sam Lowell, or whoever writes his stuff these days