Out In The Be-Bop 1930s Night-When Primitive Man “Wins”- “Petrified Forest”-A Film Review

Out In The Be-Bop 1930s Night-When Primitive Man “Wins”- “Petrified Forest”-A Film Review

By Brad Fox  

Okay here is the genesis of this review. Recently, being on a something of a film noir tear, especially a crime noir tear, I reviewed a little light puff of a noir film, Moontide, where well-known 1940s French film star Jean Gabon tried to break into the Hollywood film racket with a role as a tough hombre, seen-it-all dockworker who is really, just ready, to settle down after all the wine, women and song escapades have worn thin. And settle down in 1940s movie parlance (and maybe life too) was with a good woman and a white picket fenced house (or in this film a barge, it’s near the sea, see). The good woman, a kind of eternal working-class version of everywoman also happened to be down on her luck, and in that film was played by Ida Lupino.

Well, seeing Ms. Lupino in that role got me to think about a similar role that she played trying to be a good “wifie,” (and “mother” to the dog Pard) to Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra. In that film the grizzled Bogart played a serious desperado, a three-time loser desperado, Roy Earle, looking to “retire” to that picket-fenced house except the cops would not let him. Let him, especially after a certain messed-up resort hold-up caper went awry. And when Mr. Earle bought it, as it had to be since crime does not pay, grizzled wised-up gangster or not, Ms. Lupino was left to keep his memory fresh and keep moving on.

Of course all of that high Bogartism got me to thinking about other grizzled gangster roles (and grizzled detectives too) that the bad boy actor Humphrey Bogart played, and that led naturally to the film under review, Petrified Forest, where as Duke Mantee Bogart put in his bid for king of the gangster hill. In fact this film (he had also played the role on Broadway, I believe) first established him for that challenge. The story line here has him on the run from, what else, a busted bank robbery, and every cop in the Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dellinger, Bonnie and Clyde American untamed West was looking for him and his confederates. He winds up in a flea-bitten café located, where else, next to the Petrified Forest, a great symbol of humankind’s age old struggle to deal with nature, and to break with the primitive past.

And that isolated, flea-bitten café setting is important because there is a young serving- them-off-the-arm waitress, Gaby, played by a very young Bette Davis, as the owner’s daughter, trapped there, full of dreams, literary dreams, and a very, very strong to desire to put those silly tree rocks behind her. And, as the film opens, a very well-turned out gentleman/intellectual/ hobo/alcoholic, Alan, played by Leslie Howard, on his uppers trying to get off that dusty road. And that little tension, a tension that was palpable to audiences in the 1930s, between Bogart’s gangster take-everything-you-can-grab-and-grab-it-quick and Howard’s ordered intellectual world gone awry with the times, the 1930s despair times what they were, is what drives the theme of this one. Alan, knowing his time has passed, in any case, makes a pact with the devil to insure Gaby’s future hold on her dreams. And while Bogart, perhaps, played more memorable roles later he certainly was believable as the primitive man gangster trying to claim his rightful place in the modern world. Naturally, in movie life he must pay, pay big-time, with his life because we all know, or should know, that crime does not pay.

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Crime Noir Night- Dana Andrew’s “Where The Sidewalk Ends”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir Where The Sidewalk Ends.

DVD Review

Where The Sidewalk Ends, staring Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill, directed by Otto Preminger, 20th Century Fox, 1950

I guess if you get into a crime noir crazed mode as I have been over the past several months then nothing should surprise you as far as plot line, photography (black and white of course), or actors are concerned. No way, no way in hell, would when I started out this jail break-out reviewing process of the old time films from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s mostly would I have believed that I would be reviewing a film like the one under review, good, bad, or indifferent, with the title Where The Sidewalk Ends. And no way, no way in hell, would I have believed that I would be, seemingly endlessly now, on a Dana Andrews run. Bogie, no question, Robert Mitchum sure, even Dick Powell in a pinch but Dana Andrews? Oh well, at least he has classic good girl (no femme fatale here even though she is a model) Gene Tierney to keep his eyes on once he gets control of his anger.

With all that build-up you may thing that this one is one for the ages like The Big Sleep or Out Of The Past. No way. First of all it is just a police procedural with a little twist, a bad copper/good copper little twist. See “real” crime noir gumshoes are strictly private, not messing up on the public payroll. And certainly not messing up like Detective Mark Dixon, the role played by Brother Andrews. See he is a cop, a big city cop naturally, whose father was a big-time city crook and he is trying to live that idea down. Live it down by busting up the bad guys, literally and physically, in some cases. And most definitely with no concern, no pre-Miranda concern at least, for the niceties of constitutional law.

One thing will lead to another when you try to cut the corners on edge city and so our boy takes a tumble. Seems a “mark” in a big city gambling operation won too much dough and wanted to go home with it. Well the hard boys, or what passes for hard boys in this one, said no go, no go way. And so the mark is taken care of in the way the hard boys do, although they need a fall guy and he just happens to be the “roper.” Needless to say when Brother Andrews come to investigate the roper’s role in the killing his way-his two-fisted, no knock, no guff from hard boys way, he just happened to get a little carried away. And so mark and roper are joined together, R.I.P.

But wait a minute what about Brother Andrews’ pension and his delight with his job. Here is where the tale gets just a little too weird. He decides to use his little problem as a way to get the hard boys, especially their leader played by Gary Merrill, to take a tumble. The problem is when you start down that road, that cover-up the fix is in road, though you don’t know where things are going to fall. And who is going to take the fall. And who takes the fall, or at least the prime candidate, is none other than the taxi-driving father-in-law of that very dead roper. Now I don’t, personally, care if this or that average cab driver takes a fall for some off-hand murder, those guys charge too much anyway and they always want a tip, even the quiet ones. But this particular cab-driver has a, well, fetching model daughter played by Gene Tierney, who would be very upset, very upset indeed, if papa wound up in stir for a long time.

Also needless to say Brother Andrews is starting to go for said daughter in a big way. So he has to clean up the mess with the father, the mess with the mob, and his own misbegotten mess before the film ends. Tough work, very tough work indeed. But here is where it gets really weird, especially if you have read any newspaper from 1940 to this very day, this cop who gets the bad guys, straight up no questions asks, gets dear cabby papa off from the caboose, and throws an off-hand wink toward darling daughter, decides that he has to take the fall for his improper police procedure. Gone is that pretty little pension, and gone, long gone is the suspicion of disbelief on this one. Where are Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe when you need them.

Out In The Be-Bop Crime Noir 1940s Night- “Dark Passage”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Dark Passage.

DVD Review

Dark Passage, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Warner Brothers, 1947

No question that grizzled beaten-up Humphrey Bogart and a young coyly beautiful Lauren Bacall heated up the 1940s screen, heated it up as much as two people could and keep their clothes on, in their first film pairing, William Faulkner’s screenplay adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have Or Have Not (only loosely based on that short novel by the way). They also played together in the Raymond Chandler Phillip Marlowe detective noir classic, The Big Sleep and in Key Largo. In this Dark Passage pairing though, while still in thrall with each other off-screen, the steam is fading, fading fast. But not, perhaps, because of their familiarity to movie-goers as much as the plot line they had to perform under.

Let me explain a little. Vincent Parry (played by Bogart) is in stir up at Quentin for the foul murder of his wife. But, see, like they all say, he didn’t do it so he lams out of Q on his own to see if he can get out from under the life sentence he has received. So naturally when the cops are on his trail up shows come hither Irene Jansen (played by Bacall) to help him out. Seems that, for reasons of her own, she followed Vincent’s trial closely and is convinced that he might be innocent. So she hid him out at her place for a while until things got too hot. But getting out from under this life sentence is going to be harder than you would think. So while riding in a cab to another hide-out he is picked up by a friendly, very friendly cabbie who just happens to know a back alley plastic surgeon who will change Vincent’s face enough so that he can work without notoriety. Simple right.

Well the long and short of it is that while the facelift might have seemed like the answer to his problems everybody and their brother is on to him in the end. And as to finding the real murderer. Well she inconveniently falls out the window of her high rise apartment. While Vincent is there trying to talk sense into her. So, knowing he can’t win, new face and all, he lams it for parts south, way south.

You can see what I mean by the awkwardness of the main plot line. And what makes said plot lines even worst is that Irene has a big crush on Vincent, under either old or new face. Except, and here is the real crime, we do not see either face until fairly late in the film and by then any sense of the magic of To Have Or Have Not or The Big Sleep has dissolved into the be-bop 1940s crime noir night. Too bad.

Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night- Ya, Crime Doesn’t Pay-So What- James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the early film adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

DVD Review

The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, MGM, 1946

Ya, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he goes to the chair kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Yes, our boy, our never let your feet stand still for a minute on the road boy Frank (played by John Garfield) in the 1940s film adaptation of James M. Cain’s classic masterpiece crime noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice, had it bad, bad as a man could have it. Bad a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora (played by a very, very blonde Lana Turner) walked through the Twin Oaks café door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she is nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the screen for Frank to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy Frank. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.

See not only is Ms. Cora a Ms. but a real live 1940s Mrs. married to Nick, the owner of Twin Oaks. And Nick is nothing but an old guy, an old penny-pinching guy with small dreams getting smaller, whom Cora married on the rebound from, well, from something, something bad from the look of Nick. Yes, Nick is definitely nothing but a third party “has been” once the chemistry starts between Frank and Cora, starts to really get going as will often happen once you take those midnight swims in the white-flecked, our homeland the sea, pacific, Pacific Ocean just above slumming Los Angeles before the criss-cross roads took away many of the scenes. If Nick was smart he would watch his back very carefully because I smell murder in the air, hellish highway murder, once our sweet go-getter Cora coos to Frank that it is, and I quote, “the only way.” The only way to that white picket fence heaven old Nick is too cheap to buy her.

Needless to say, if you have read any of James M. Cain’s crime novels or short stories, there have to be a few twists and turns in the plot before the inevitable, and I mean inevitable in its fullest sense, road to perdition narrows and there is no escape from the grim fate that those who play with fate usually have to suffer. Here the inflamed lovers botch the first attempted murder of Nick but arouse so much suspicion from a very conveniently located neighboring District Attorney that they will not just get to go about their merry ways.

Moreover, have you been paying attention? Cora’s got her hooks in Frank so bad that you know there will be another attempt. And there was, and it was “successful.” And they got away with it after some nifty legal maneuvering that would do any modern defense attorney proud. Except you know as well as I do, and if you have ever read any previous crime noir review of mine, you damn well know that it can’t just be left like that. Crime, brothers and sisters, does not pay even for the mere legally not guilty. And that is where Frank’s smile, or half-smile, comes in. Because in the end he faces the chair not for Nick’s death, but for her’s. And all he cared about by then was whether she would in death forgive him. Ya, our boy Frank had it bad, real bad and that is what makes this a classic crime noir, no question. But Frank don’t feel bad there are about three billion guys who have gone through those same hoops for a dame, including this writer, although I personally tend to sultry brunettes not blondes.

Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night- The Rich Really Are Different –“ Fear In The Night”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir Fear In The Night.

DVD Review

Fear In The Night, DeForest Kelley, Paul Kelly, directed by Maxwell Shane, Paramount Pictures, 1947

Okay here is the familiar rote. Not all crime noir is top shelf, top shelf like Out Of The Past or The Maltese Falcon. By now that proposition has been pretty well established after more than a score of crime noir reviews in this space. Still some of these things can be sleepers, of a sort. Take the film under review, Fear In The Night. On the face of it looking at the unfamiliar cast, the no-name director and the B-movie quality of the production one would throw this one in the has been bin. And mainly that would be right, except that the story line possibilities, never fully exploited, save it for the justly deserved extinction of many of the films in this genre.

Let me show you. A bank clerk (played by Deforest Kelley), an average just trying to get ahead in this wicked old world 1940s marble building bank clerk, has a terrible dream, a nightmare really and cannot figure it out, cannot figure out why he would have, dream or not, murdered an unknown stranger. Moreover in the fresh light of day he cannot figure it out when many parts, too many parts, of the dream wind up being reality. So said clerk takes his problem to a very convenient brother-in-law who just happens to be a homicide detective (played by Paul Kelly). After a ton and one half of skepticism the detective finally sees that this is one bank clerk who is in serious trouble. And solving this riddle is what makes this thing kind of twist and turn a little before the real bad guy is caught.

And the real bad guy, or rather his maniacal plan of operation, is what could have made this thing jump better than it did. Seems a Mayfair swell, a very jealous Mayfair swell, with a young wandering wife finds out she has been keeping company with someone else on his time. So he, the Mayfair swell Mr. Belknap by name, sees red but knowing that crime doesn’t pay or rather that he doesn’t want to pay for the crime sets our bank clerk up, sets him up big-time, through hypnosis. That little off-beat technique makes all the difference in the world. And the theme that could have better explored the social tensions in this film as we know all too well as of late- the rich don’t want o pay for nothing from taxes to their crimes-never gets it full workout. Why? Well, easy on that one. Something that also has become a mantra in this space. Crime, well crime in crime noir, doesn’t pay. Just ask our Mayfair swell.

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- A Twisted Sister- “Possessed”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir, Possessed.

DVD Review

Possessed, starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Warner Brothers, 1947

Most of the time film noir, especially crime noir out of the 1940s-1950s be-bop night, will get heavily involved in plot, and twists in plots and leave the question of motivation, deep motivation for the “shrinks.” After all if the medium is the message as the communications guru of a long-gone era, Marshall McLuhan, used to argue then the message in these things is nothing but the old saw that crime does not pay, does not pay for anyone if you watch enough of these noirs. So it was kind of refreshing, if somewhat odd, to see a film like the film under review, Possessed, where a deep look at the motivation for a crime, the mental anguish over the act, and the clash over good and evil inside the individual get a work out.

But wait a minute. Don’t get too immersed in the prospects for a deep study of the human psyche under duress because the motivation for a crime here, murder, is nothing other than the reaction of a lovesick, thwarted woman, a woman scorned if you like. This is Hollywood after all. So you can almost see, even before the act, the gun rising steadily in her hand. And that is what the plot-line here revolves around. How that gun got steadily into her hand to kill her blasé ex-lover.

See Louise (played here in a half- glamorous, half-maniacal way via flash backs by Joan Crawford) was hopelessly in love with a returning upwardly-mobile ex- GI, David (played here by a caddish Van Heflin), who was driven more by the prospects of an engineering career than by romance. When he called the whole affair off Louise fell to pieces. Well kind of fell to pieces because in reaction she had only one thing on her mind-get her man back, come hell or high water.

That hell or high water involved marrying the boss, the well-off boss (played by Raymond Massey), once his wife (who Louise had been acting as a nurse for) committed suicide although it was clear from the start that she still carried the torch for David. When David, who in the meantime had been working for her newly-minted husband, fell for his young daughter and planned to marry her Louise went over the edge. And over the edge, as I have already telegraphed, meant that sweet little equalizer, the revolver.

The way that the story unfolds as flash-backs while Louise is in a state of mental deterioration in the psycho ward of a mental hospital is how we get that deep look, using the now crude but then state-of-the-art 1940s psychiatric understanding of mental illness. That is what makes this one a cut above the- run-of-the-mill melodramatic 1940s noir (although there are more that enough melodramatic moments, especially between the relentlessly unhinged Louise and relentlessly heartless David). But when you think about it, even though Louise winds up in a psycho ward rather than the chair, crime still doesn’t pay. Right?

***Out Of The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Put The Lame Blame Frame On Frankie-I Wake Up Screaming- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film, I Wake up Screaming.

DVD Review

I Wake Up Screaming, starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carol Landis,

I have at this point reviewed a fair number of the crime noir films from the 1940s and 1950s. Some are classics like Out Of The Past, some are filled with simple crime doesn’t pay messages, some have femmes fatales that you would gladly commit armed robbery unarmed for just to get a whiff of their perfume. Others you would still be removing the bullets from your body, their bullets. Most, frankly, are just kind of run-of-the-mill like the film under review here, I Wake Up Screaming. Nothing exceptional here but the fact that the film has two, count ‘em two, femme fatales, well kind of, kind of femme fatales. And neither is bad, just misunderstood, but hell you would still give something to catch a whiff of that perfume mentioned above. Although maybe you would think twice about robbing banks unarmed for either.

Here’s the skinny. One wanna-be femme fatale starts out like many another country girl hitting the big city serving them off the arm in some hash house. Ms. Waitress (oops, waitperson, played by Carol Landis) is just waiting around to be “discovered” and plucked away from the eggs over easy. As luck would have it three, although only one counts, Frankie Christopher (played by ruggedly handsome, up-front-the dregs Victor Mature), men-about-town camp on her station and Frankie, a promoter of, well, let’s leave it as promoter, decides to take Ms. Waitperson from rags to riches, on the quick. He can see a meal ticket a mile away. And his preparations for the big strike work, work well, for a while.

What fouls things up is that one fine afternoon Ms. Waitperson is found by Frankie dead, very dead, in her apartment. And who fit the bill for the frame by his various actions toward the deceased is none other than Frankie. In a series of flash-backs the motives, actions, and responses of most of those involved are uncovered. And that is where Sis, femme fatale number two comes in; Ms. Waitperson’s sis (played by World War II soldier boys calendar heartthrob Betty Grable) who is her roommate, her confidante and her scolding younger sister is also in love with our boy Frankie (go figure, right) but is confused by the evidence against him. And Frankie is smitten by Sis as well so no fear things will get worked out. Hovering over the whole scene though are the bizarre actions of a relentless big- city cop trying to send Frankie to the chair for his own motives. Uncovering the cop’s motives is what drives the second half of the film. And that is all you need to know about this one. Oh, except as always the message is crime doesn’t pay, doesn’t pay even for bloody coppers. Got it.