In Film Noir Dreamland-With The Black And White 1940s Film World In Mind

In Film Noir Dreamland-With The Black And White 1940s Film World In 

Mind  

By Lance Lawrence 

Steve Roberts admittedly was a quirky guy, a guy known for an ironic turn of phrase but also for his eclectic taste in all things cultural, if his love of movies, old time black and white movies could qualify as cultural, a term he himself would not have used to describe his interests being an old working-class guy who would eschew such fancy terms of art. He just liked them, didn’t need a guy like Professor Jameson, a guy he read about recently in the newspaper, see I told you he was an old-fashioned working-class guy who the heck reads newspapers these day, who wrote a book of observations about the great crime novelist Raymond Chandler which went way overboard with the sociological and critical jargon. Tried to place old Chandler’s work, you know Phillip Marlowe mostly, in some high culture academic frame-work instead of just accepting the stuff as good story-telling about a time and place that was worthy of some play. Chandler himself would have roasted Jameson alive for his quirky interpretations of his work.  

Here’s is how that quirky fit played out recently to give the reader an idea of how Steve’s mind works when he gets an enflamed idea. He and his lovely wife Lana had gone to their local movie theater, the Majestic, in Riverdale to see Brad Pitt’s latest film, Allied, where Brad as a Canadian British Intelligence Officer during early World War II is in the thick of espionage and counter-espionage as well as in the thick of an off-hand romance that had all the signs of nothing but trouble for him-and anguish too in the end. Lana’s reason for going was simplicity itself. She wanted to see Brad’s female co-star, Marion Cottillard, who plays a French Resistance fighter aiding Brad in his work and his heartache romantic interest but more importantly had been involved in a swirl of rumors about being the reason that Brad and his paramour Angelina Jolie had split up. Steve’s reasons were more pedestrian once he found out from Lana who had heard a review on NPR one afternoon which included a chat with the film’s director that part of the storyline was set in wartime Casablanca (World War II in case you forgot to clarify which war we are talking about in an age of endless wars). That reference made him automatically think about Rick, Rick’s Café, Ilsa, Victor Lazlo, Louie the Vichy-loyal local gendarme, Bogie, Ingrid Bergman,  Claude Rains, Paul Henreid,  Play It Again, Sam and a million other off the top of his head thoughts about the classic black and while film from the 1940s, Casablanca.               

 After viewing Allied Lana had asked Steve the inevitable question about what he thought of the film and naturally he mentioned that while he liked it Casablanca would kick the thing down the road and have time for lunch as a saga of wartime romance. Lana accepted that answer although as usual without good grace since she was thrilled by the whole period piece and begged the opinion that this Cottillard woman looked like a home-wrecker and had the full blush lips that Brad seemed to go for but such were their different takes on movies (and music) that she just let it go. (Although Steve would never know when his opinion might come back to haunt him in some future more serious argument as an example of how they were too different to breathe but he, they had been through enough of those spats they called them that he had long ago given up trying to curb his real opinion just to keep peace in the household.) 

Steve that night though having a fitful night as always when he sees a current film that provoked some serious thoughts unlike the vast bulk which he would be glad to inform that Professor Jameson are just plebian entertainment, harmless and not worthy of the high culture treatment. Were written, directed, produced, acted strictly for the cash nexus-end of story. So he ran through the film in his mind again-and as he did he mixed in his tenth at least re-run through the plot of Casablanca. Something was gnawing at him and he could not quite figure out what. Finally he went to sleep with visions of Bogie telling Claude Rains not to do anything foolish like the Nazi officer had done trying to stop Victor Lazlo-with lovely Ilsa in tow-from leaving on the last plane out of Casablanca that night.      

The next afternoon he went on to his computer to Google any reviews of Allied. Most of them were laudatory which would be his own estimate if for no other reason that the feel of the film as a 1940s period piece, including a party hosted by Max and Marianne in bombed-out London with Benny Goodman, the king of swing, holding forth in the background as the partiers jitterbugged away the night (before being curtailed by the inevitable German bombing raids) but one stuck out which caught the feeling that he was having about the town of Casablanca as backdrop for romances. 

Sam Lowell, one of the fairly well-known reviewers for the American Film History blog whom Steve had read reviews by before although usually not current films but classics where they had a mutual interest, had mentioned that Casablanca was a tough town to have a romance blossom in. Maybe something about the desert air, maybe the decadent of the Casbah, hell, maybe the colonial atmosphere of the place in those days. That phrase that idea got Steve thinking back to the film Casablanca and how thwarted love was a big theme there when it came right down to it. Maybe the fate of three high-strung people didn’t mean much against all the craziness of the world at war, didn’t as Bogie said mean a hill of beans but he had let her go because a guy like Victor Lazlo whatever personal bravery he had could not face the nights alone and because Ilsa was made to keep such men intact.

He had written down a little something about the plotline and how things played out for his own purposes after finishing reading the other reviews which didn’t quite speak to his concerns the way Sam Lowell did, to show Jack Davis his friend that night when they would have a couple of drinks and catch up on each other’s week. That write-up trying to figure out what in Casablanca made things go awry in turn got him thinking about other classic love thwarted classics from the 1940s and that led inevitably to a humdinger of love thwarted, Billy Wilder’s film adaptation of James M. Cain’s potboiler Double Indemnity. Quirky guy, right.             

Steve believed almost without question that the Billy Wilder-directed Double Indemnity was the greatest noir produced in the 1940s, better by far than Casablanca even in the romance department since it got down to the real nitty-gritty that mattered a hill of beans to the two twisted lovers. The grift in Double Indemnity is pure unbridled, unhinged passion gone amok leading to, well, pure murder, murder my sweet when you got right down to cases. Watch this one unfold from minute one when the gunshot- gutted insurance man grabs a Dictaphone to “confess” his crimes just for the record, just to get things straight. But our man had had sunnier days, did not always have the mark of Cain on his forehead. 

Okay here’s the play, take a hustling insurance salesman Walter, played by Fred McMurray, out in the sunny slumming streets of pre-war Los Angeles before the hordes came out to infest the land looking for defense jobs, sunny weather, the end of the frontier and to get the damn dust out of their throats from the Okie dust storms (by the way the war is World War II again), looking to close an insurance deal walked right into lonely housewife man-trap Phyllis, played by alluring Barbara Stanwyck, with his eyes wide open, very wide. Wide open from that first moment he took his hat off as he feasted his eyes on her after sunbathing and moments later as she came walking down the stairs all sexy and swagger with an ankle bracelet he would not soon forget. And the smell of jasmine, honeysuckle, something like that which goes deep into a man’s sexual instincts honed over a millions years or however a man has hungered at the sight of good-looking if dangerous women.

Almost immediately they did the dance around each other for who knows what purpose she all coy and he all resistance, fast fading resistance. (There was great foreplay with her talking about the speed limit in the state as he rushed her and he countered with, well, false contriteness.) The unbridled passion took hold of each of them (at least he thought so and he after all is telling the story into that damn jittery Dictaphone) so quickly that they lost their moorings, or at least he did. She, a classic femme fatale to rival Jane Greer in Out Of The Past although not as handy with a gun when it came right down to it, as will be found out by Walter later had the morals of a great white shark. That is to say none but she kept him driving her chariot anyway.                

So Walter, egged on by that jasmine, hell, maybe the ankle bracelet, maybe frontier fever, or strictly lust, in any case being led by the nose, or some such organ, with his great insurance man instincts for the main chance put together a “fool-proof” plan to murder her husband after getting him to unknowingly sign an accident policy with the fatal double indemnity clause of the title. Fatal for hubby  meaning if he died of an accident the claimant would double up, or double down maybe a better way to put this delicate matter. He was a goner any way you cut it once that signature got inked on that contract (and the payment check handed over). Beautiful. Walter’s plan was simplicity itself, although it required too many moving parts in the end. Get her subsequently injured boorish stingy husband (the original plan had assumed that he would be healthy) to board the train to Palo Alto for his class reunion-or to appear like he was on the train and due to his injury had fallen off the back of the train. Accident-go straight to the cashier’s desk.

The real deal was that Walter was going to be in the back seat of their sedan when Phyllis drove her husband to the station for his well-deserved rest at his reunion, Walter would kill him there, dump the body and crutches along the railroad track after he had replaced the husband as the man with crutches on the train. Hey, I like it in theory, a little off-beat, shows a nice knowledge of the inside of the insurance scam. Our Walter on his good days with that scent driving him crazy was still a pretty smart guy. What Steve and his boys in the old hang-out days called “street smart,” which were the only kind of smarts that mattered around his way. Book smart got you pushed around and punched out for simply reading some freaking book (Steve something of a bookworm survived by doing the other guys’ homework and besides he had had an older tough guy brother who looked after him.) Probably in Walter’s neighborhood too.          

Recently in a review of a film, Cassandra’ Dream, which Steve had read where two brothers wound up killing a guy who was ready to jam up the works for their rich uncle who had requested they do the deed so he could avoid jail (and go on providing very nicely for the family) Sam Lowell, as already mentioned the fairly well-known reviewer for the American Film History blog, noted there is a strong reason why most civilized societies put murder, murder most foul, beyond the pale and subject the act to harsh penalties. That little pearl of wisdom can be repeated here to advantage. This deed, this well-laid out plan even if expertly executed could have no happy ending. Helping that inevitable bad end was one Keyes, played by Edward G. Robinson, the chief fraudulent claims guy for Walter’s insurance company. Although it took him a while to figure something was not right in the end his tenacity made him believe that something was amiss-Phyllis’ husband had been murdered. The question was who beside the obvious murderous wife had done the evil deed, who had aided her in the dastardly deed.        

That is when the panic and bad blood between our lovebirds set in. After the deed was done, after the insurance company was ready to pay out Keyes put the brakes on the whole scam with his, what did he call it, oh yeah, his “little man” gnawing at his suspicion. That meant that our two confederates had to keep away from each other, keep their torrid affair under wraps. And that hard fact, that no dough situation, amounted to the kiss of death for somebody-hell, for our boy Walter. See after the split up Walter started getting some small, very small doubts, about his paramour. Seems sweet sexy tantalizing Phyllis had been her late husband’s first wife’s nurse who died under some seemingly mysterious circumstances. Mysterious to her step-daughter, Lola who gave Walter a chilling earful one afternoon. He had to clam her up about that, about her suspicions which she wanted to take to the cops so lover boy Walter started taking Lola around town for a good time to keep an eye or three on her. This worked out okay for a while since she had broken up with her volatile boyfriend Nino.         

Here is where any guy smitten or not, under the sway of that honeysuckle, jasmine or whatever the scent or not had to take stock for a minute anyway. When you run up against a real femme fatale or the on the screen kind watch your back, watch all of you if it comes to it. Keyes had what he thought was the whole thing wrapped up after all-the dame, the so-called grieving widow no doubt was the mastermind but through his snooping he found out that sweet Phyllis was keeping time with, get this Nino. Lola’s ex-beau. And the only reason that she was keeping company with her step-daughter’s ex-beau. Well you know why, who is kidding who here. Walter had become a loose cannon, had to take a fall. And if our Phyllis could wrap up a mature guy like Walter for cold-blooded murder with a simple ankle bracelet and a few whiffs of random perfume then it would be like taking candy from a baby to put the blast, the full court press on Nino. Then she would have had to gather up some poor sap to do the deed to Nino. It would never end. 

Fortunately Walter got wind that Phyllis had been seeing Nino and Walter saw he had to put an end to the madness. So in their last go-round he left her with some famous last words when they met and she tried one last lie, one last lie plus a few gunshots aimed at him, just to keep in practice-no dice. He wasn’t buying, had gotten wised-up fast. “Good-bye baby,” were the final words she would ever hear as he put two in her right where it would hurt. Nice work Walter, nice work and Steve hoped they would not hang him too high. Steve had had to laugh though when he thought Casablanca was not the only town that was tough on the love racket.            

Of course if Steve was a little cuckoo about old time movies his pal, his drinking partner of late, Jack Davis who has so far been a passive listener to everything Steve had to say while he was throwing down a few glasses of high-end whiskey (unlike the old days when he South Boston-born had to suffer through some terrible stuff that had probably been bonded the day before yesterday) was deep into such talk as well. Jack, although a contemporary of Steve’s who had logged in own his many Saturday matinee double-features at The Strand Theater, had been a late coming to an appreciation of the material he had seen when he was a kid. That say, when Steve made that remark about Los Angeles being as tough a town as Casablanca on frayed romances Jack automatically thought about another L.A. -based classic, another Billy Wilder-directed film which tells you how good he was, the classic jaded-eye view of Hollywood when that was the capital of the prime entertainment of the plebian masses, Sunset Boulevard.         

Steve smiled a knowing smile, a smile to acknowledge that Jack was onto something, on to thwarted love, murder, murder my sweet and everything else you could find hidden in the slumming streets of L.A.  Where he disagreed with Jack was in rating the pair of films against each other. Steve gave the nod by a hair to Double Indemnity. Steve also smiled because he knew that Jack was ready to spin his take on Sunset. Both men knew enough to keep silent when the play was on.

Jack who with his movie star good looks when he was younger (and was pretty well preserved even now although he had lost a step or two in the never-ending fight against a few extra pounds) had always been puzzled by the Bill Holden figure, by Joe Gillis, a budding screenwriter who was going down the wrong street in his career. Here was a guy that both Jack and Steve could relate to. A working class guy, a working stiff from Ohio who after serving in the Army during World War II (both Steve and Jack were veterans as well just a different war-Vietnam) grabbed a job as a journalist on the hometown newspaper. Probably like them had used the G.I. Bill to get ahead. But see a guy like Joe, maybe an average guy, but footloose after seeing his fill of war was dazed by the bright lights of Hollywood. Wanted to head west to the ocean, to the last frontier like a lot of people them who collectively changed L.A. from a small friendly insider town to what it is today-a megapolis. So that wanderlust got under his skin, got him shot six ways to Sunday when the deal went down and he wound up face down in some old has-been actress’ swimming pool.       

Maybe Joe should have talked to his friend, his buddy Arnie, played by a young Jack Webb, who was happy as a clam to be an assistant director, had known that he would always have steady paydays. Had a great gal too-Betty, played by Nancy Olson, who Joe filched from him (and then threw back when she found out some seedy stuff about him-about him and that has-been actress). What Arnie could have told him, at least warned him about was to keep the hell away from the high numbers on Sunset Boulevard. Maybe it would have sunk in but probably not because by the time he hit that neighborhood he was strictly from hunger-strictly one bus ticket from heading back to the Buckeye state.

But as a later real journalist, the late and missed Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, said when things got a little crazy, or a little interesting-buy the ticket, take the ride. Joe, poor clueless Joe, landed up on the high numbers in Sunset and wound up knee-deep with the old time silent film star Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson. Yeah, Norma knew a guy who was from hunger, a guy who could re-write some film scripts she had been working on since who knows when, her last silent film probably getting ready to make her comeback (sorry Norma, “return”). So she snagged the boy, snagged him good despite their age differences. And despite the worshipful jaded eye of her man servant, Max, played by Erich von Stroheim, who turned out have been both her old time director and an ex-husband. WTF was Joe thinking when he got into that mess.              

So Joe, come hell or high water turned from failed screenwriter to, well, take your choice, gigolo or “kept man” (more like kept pet like the monkey she had buried out in the back yard as Joe enters this new world). Norma came to rely on him in the process of falling hard for him-and preparing for her “return” to the bright klieg lights of Hollywood. Joe played along for a while but guys who have been around, seen time in war, had been in the glare of the bright lights needed some room. So he would sneak out and go to a studio and in the dead of night work with Arnie’s sweetie pie, Betty who was a screenwriter. One thing led to another and by that close proximity they fell in love.         

Mistake Joe, bad mistake because an over the hill “boss” like Norma was not going  to let things go-she wanted her man and no pretty young thing was going  to deny her that. So she snitched on Joe, had Betty come to the high numbers on Sunset to see what her lover-boy was really all about. That frosted it for Joe and Betty. But Joe reared up and told Norma he was leaving. Another mistake. A woman like Norma, a bit unhinged probably since “talkies” came in was not likely to take well to the woman scorned. Bang! Bang! In the end there was Joe face down in that foolish swimming pool. Tough luck, brother, tough luck.    

When Jack finished his take on the film even before he could say it Steve blurred out –“Yeah, L.A. was a tough town too on the love racket.”