Out Of The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Drifter’s Farewell- “Moontide”- A

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

DVD Review

Moontide, starring Jean Gabon, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, 20th Century-Fox, 1942

There are a million ways, a million ways cinematically and maybe in life too, that boy meets girl, crime noir or not. Even if that “boy” is a not so young drifter sailor, Bobo (played by Jean Gabin last seen by this reviewer in the incredible French film, Max Ophuls' Children of Paradise), whose been around, and thinks he wants to stay been around. Except fastened to the California waterfront like glue by his profession he is called upon to save a damsel in distress. A young woman, Anna, who serves them off the arm in some hash house (played here by Ida Lupino last seen by this reviewer in High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Pard) who was, at wits end for some unknown reason, sets out to drown herself. Naturally sea-worthy Gabin saves her, and the romance is on.

But wait a minute this is a crime noir as well as a boy meets girl story. And Bobo is set up to fit the frame while he was drunk by his friend Tiny, a serious ne’er do well and slightly psycho, after Tiny has killed a denizen of the waterfront over some trivial matter. So the boy meets girls setting up house (on a barge of course out on the breakwater) part keeps on getting set back by the Bobo frame-up part. All, by the way, done in high 1940s melodramatic style.

But there is more. This film’s script is filled with little philosophical reflections by one and all, Bobo most of all. For Bobo about leaving the high seas adventure life and its down time waterfront dive existence and settling down. By Anna about whether she is “worthy” to be Bobo bride and find happiness in their cozy little barge by the breakwater. And by other charactersas well like Doc (a boat owner) and the night watchman, Nutsy (played by Claude Rains). Hell, even Tiny makes a pitch that he just needs a new life up north to break out of his psycho ways. Like I said very melodramatic but as always with Gabin you get some incredibly expressive acting and Ms. Lupino does her misspent working class unworthiness existence whine to a tee.

Out In the 1950s Crime Noir Night- A Grifter’s Farewell- “Dark City- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, Dark City.

DVD Review

Dark City, starring Charleston Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paramount Pictures, 1950

No question after running through a seemingly endless run of crime noir films that not all the films in the genre are equal. The classics like The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Gilda, and Out Of The Past speak for themselves with fine plot lines and slightly awry femme fatales to brighten things up. The film under review, although not in that category, could have been better had it not gotten caught up in some melodramatic flim-flam and stayed the hard-boiled, gritty classic grifter story that it set out to be. The outlines of the plot surely gave more promise that was delivered.

Down in those post-World War II means streets out West a lot of war-weary, war-tousled, war-scarred guys tried to do, well, the best they could. And the best they could usually was some grifter scheme to make a score off some bozo mark and hit the road, hit the road fast, and leave no forwarding address. That is the substance of the plot here. Ex-soldier (World War II just in case you might have forgotten, or were not sure what war I was talking about since there are many to choose from these days) Dan Healy (played in an understated, post-war alienated, existential man kind of way by Charleston Heston before he became Moses or Ben Hur or whatever big screen techno-color champ he became later) make his downwardly mobile way to grifter-dom in some seedy skid row town.

Dan's thing is gambling and, of course, for such an endeavor you need suckers with dough, easily parted with dough. And, as well, some confederates in on the scam. That is the case here as Dan and two fellow grifters (one played by Jack Webb before he got “religion” and became Sergeant Friday on the 1950s television show, Dragnet) rope in the sucker, a guy holding a five thousand dollar check (serious money, serious money down on mean street then) although the money is not actually his. Needless to say a fool and his dough are soon parted.

And that is where things start to go wrong with this film (as well as in the lives of our three gamblers). Filled with remorse the mark (played by Don DeFore) can’t face the horror of going back and confessing to his employers that he blew the dough on gambling, and instead hanged himself in his lonely room. Not for him the easy road of blowing town and changing his name, toughing it out, or even filing a court claim against the miscreant gamblers. In short, nobody, nobody this side of Hollywood takes the rope on the facts presented here. And then it gets worst. See the mark has an older dominating brother who watches out for him. Now this suicide business once he finds out the cause gets him a little exercised. See the brother is a stone-cold psycho and he is out to even the score-three dead, very dead gamblers.

Well, if you have been paying attention you know that Charleston Heston, the star and therefore kill-proof, is one of those marked for extinction so the other two get their just desserts and old Heston squeaks by after some close moments. The problem is when we see finally see who the killer-brother is there is no way that anyone could believe, or at least I could believe, that this gorilla was anybody’s brother. Come on.

The other place where the film goes wrong is on the inevitable love interest angle. Now Danny boy, who spends a good part of the film moodily cutting up old torches from back in the day, has a sort of girlfriend. A very fetching smoky-voiced chanteuse, Fran, (played by Lizabeth Scott) girlfriend who wears her heart on her sleeve for him, although he is mostly indifferent to her. No femme fatale here-just a what you see is what you get gal who can sing the blues, while having them over her man who done her wrong. The problem is that the chemistry between Danny and Fran is all wrong, all wrong alls ways. Fran is the girl next door and Danny, is well Danny, a grifter and the two don’t mix. And the plot gets further muddied when Dan, trying to get a lead of where the mark’s brother is, starts to play footsie with the dead mark's non-grieving widow. So you see now what I mean when I say that not all crime noirs are created equal.

Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night, Kind Of- Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, Right, “Stolen Face” –A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Stolen Face.

DVD Review

Stolen Face, starring Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott, Hammer Film Productions, 1952


Love, as almost everybody knows from personal experience, will make you do crazy thing sometimes. It will drive a seemingly rational calm and thoughtful man or woman over edge every once in while. Make “evil” in the world without missing a beat. That, my friends, is the premise behind the film under review, Stolen Face, one of a long line of films that portray the bad results of fooling around with Mother Nature too much, and with getting fogged up in that love embrace.

A British doctor, a plastic surgeon, (played Paul Henreid last seen leading the anti-fascist resistance as Victor Lazlo in early World War II in the film Casablanca) in post-World War II London working apparently for the National Health Service, and working very hard and diligently, thank you, takes a little vacation to the wilds of coastal England. He winds up in an inn along the way, an inn which also is hosting a beautiful American pianist ready to go on a European tour (played by smoky-voiced Lizabeth Scott) with a cold. Well, naturally, Doc comes to the rescue, and as part of the "cure" they fall head over heels in love. However, Lizabeth is already “spoken for,” leaving Doc very unhappy. So back to work he goes with a vengeance.

And that vengeance, as previously, entailed working on the faces of criminal types to give them a chance to change their ways (okay, Doc, if you say so). As part of that work he runs up against a disfigured dregs of the working-class young woman (okay, lumpenproletarian), Lily, whom he thinks that he can help by use of the surgeon’s scalpel. After much ado he gives her a new beautiful face, a face that is strangely very, very, very similar to his lost love’s. On top of that he goes off and marries her. But here is where things get dicey and the scriptwriter proves to be no Marxist or other believer in the ever upward rise of human progress. Lily, skin beautiful or not, goes back to her old ways “proving” that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Worst Lizabeth comes back; ready to get back into Doc’s arms. Fortunately Lily, drunk as a skunk riding on the train with hubby Doc, falls out of the train door (or was she pushed) just as Lizabeth shows up. Very convenient, very convenient indeed although no one is looking to make a court case out of it. Yes I guess beauty is really only skin deep, but no question love can drive you screwy. No question.

Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night-I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You-For Prescott And Delores Breslin

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I'll Get By to give a little flavor to this sketch.

CD Review

Sentimental Journey, Pop Vocal Classics, Volume 2: 1947-1950, Rhino Records, 1993

Scene: Brought to mind by the sepia-toned family album-style photograph that graces the cover of this CD and by the song Far Away Places.

“Prescott James Breslin get your dirty hands off that wall this minute, yelled Delores Breslin (nee LeClerc), Mother Breslin to some, including the yelled at Prescott, honey, to Prescott Breslin, Senior, Father Breslin to the junior one being yelled at just this minute. Just as Mother Breslin, hell, let’s call her Delores, was getting ready for cascade rant number two aimed in Prescott, Junior’s direction wafting through the air, the radio WJDA air, came the melodious voice of Bing Crosby singing in that sweet, nuanced voice of his, Far Away Places. Their song. Their forever memory song.

Delores flashed back to the night in 1943 over at the Stardust Ballroom on East Grand in Old Orchard Beach that she, then a typist for the State Insurance Company right here in Olde Saco (and making good money for a single, no high maintenance girl), and Marine PFC Prescott Breslin, stationed after serious service in the Pacific wars (Guadalcanal, etc.) at the Portsmouth Naval Base, met while they were playing that song on the jukebox between sets. Sets being performed by the Be-Bop Sextet, a hot, well, be-bop band that was making a national tour to boost civilian morale while the boys were off fighting. They hit it off right away, made Far Away Places their song, and prepared for a future, a joint future, once the war was over, and they could get their dream, shared dream, little white house, with or without picket fence, maybe a dog, and definitely kids, a few although they never specified a number. The perfect dream to chase the old Great Depression no dough blues and World War II fighting dust away, far away. And to be to breath a decent breathe, a not from hunger breathe.

Just then Delores snapped back into the reality, the two by four reality, of their made due, temporary veterans’ housing set up by the Olde Saco Housing Authority (at the request of and funded by the War Department) to house the housing-hungry returning vets and give them a leg up. Add on the further reality that Prescott’s job at the Macadam’s Textile Mill was none too sure now that rumors were circulating around town that the mill-owners were thinking of relocating to North Carolina. And the biggest reality of all: well, Prescott, Junior, Kendrick, and most recently still in the cradle Joshua. And three is enough, more than enough thank you. But as that terrific tenor of Dick Haymes singing Little White Lies was making its way into her air space she fell back to thinking about that now old dream of the little white house, with or without picket fence, a dog and a few (exactly three, thank you) that was coming just around next corner. And just as she was winding up to blast young Prescott, his dirty hands, and that wall, maybe a little less furiously than she intended before, her thoughts returned to her Prince Charming, Starlight Ballroom 1943, and their song. Their forever memory song. Yes, she would get by.

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Corner Boys Grow Up- Richard Widmark’s The Street With No Name.

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1940s crime noir The Street With No Name.

DVD Review

The Street With No Name, starring Richard Widmark, 1948

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip-synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.).

Some, like the film reviewed here, The Street With No Name, starring well-regarded bad guy character actor Richrad Widmark, while classified as crime noir are no more than propaganda films. In this case a paean to the FBI, to its so-called scientific effectiveness, and gritty no-nonsense crime fighting personnel, and to its unlamented (for civil libertarians, anti-fascists, and just plain, garden variety believers that the cops, local, state and federal need to be reined in) founder and long time chief, J. Edgar Hoover. Interspersed throughout the film, including an introduction that had an early docu-drama quality to it, are various pieces of footage touting the efficiencies of the organization in the battle against crime, in this case street crime, not the more notorious “red scare” political crimes that it was infamous for, and that its efforts helped cause a political ice age in America in the 1950s

Without addressing the propaganda aspect of the film further, after all in the end every crime noir is about some aspect of how crime does not pay, this one is saved by three things, Richard Widmark’s performance as a tough post-World War II gangster on the make trying to parlay those organizational skills learned in the war-time military. You know, standing around and waiting, here for the next criminal caper, acknowledgement of hierarchy, here Widmark is the max-daddy boss, and, oh yes, how to use weapons, and use them to deadly purpose.

The long and short of it was that just after World War II there was no shortage of corner boys looking to make a score. I know of corner boys from back in my own working class neighborhood later, in the 1950s, but their stuff was penny-ante compared to the serious massed armed robberies (of the Mayfair swells, mainly) that Widmark planned and executed. The plot thus evolves around a cat and mouse game to break up this gang after a spree of murder and mayhem that draws the FBI in. Of course bringing in an agent-informer, having him win Widmark’s confidence (for a while), putting him in right in the center of harm’s way, and also, in the end, winning against the mob finishes the story. Oh, except, crime does not pay. Yes, we get it.

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-From Rags To Riches- John Garfield’s Blues- “Force Of Evil”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film, Force Of Evil.
DVD Review

Force Of Evil, starring John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, M-G-M, 1948

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me their plot lines stand on their own merits, although I will make some comment here. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from the late 1940s starring John Garfield, Force of Evil, offers very little of either. It is not for lack of trying but rather that the stilted dialogue of the main characters, relentlessly hammering us with clear cut choices between good and evil when a lot of life is very gray, very gray indeed, gets in the way. And it is certainly not that John Garfield can not carry off a crime noir film. Hell, he and femme fatale Lana Turner burned up the screen in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, a film that I will review in the near future in this series. The plot line and dialogue just got in the way here. It is as simple as that.

Here is the scoop. John Garfield, through his brother’s Great Depression-era sacrifice went to law school and became a high-priced lawyer (silly brother, right?), made the New York City big time. A Wall Street lawyer big time. Well, almost big time, because the way he got there was through a very lucrative association with a crime boss who was looking to control the numbers racket in 1940s New York City (the numbers racket, now called the lottery, is now respectably controlled by the state, whatever state) and make it a legal business like any other self-respecting capitalist adventure. The trouble is said sacrificing brother is running a numbers “bank” slated for the dustbin as part of the crime boss’s consolidation plan. Capitalism 101, okay. This makes Brother Garfield queasy and filled with self-doubts and regrets (in between bouts of greed fueled by the dough to be made by a poor boy New York City slum corner boy). The tension between those two forces (ah, good and evil, got it) aided by a “girl next store-type (good force, right?) gnawing at his innards forces dear John to come clean at the end. Especially when said crime boss, through another criminal associate, offs his brother. Like I said, a little thin in the story line.

What is not thin though, and as is usually the case when New York City is the locale, is the black and white cinematography that gives some very interesting footage to the dramatic tension here- the good versus evil thing mentioned above. Additionally “the girl next store” character almost breaks out and becomes something of a human we can recognize when money, wealth and fame enter the picture. Although she never quite does break out of the good angel stuff. Still it is always good to hear John Garfield struggling with some cosmic message in his corner boy heart. But wait and see him in Postman if you want really gritty, attention-getting performance. This one is just very, very average.

***The Road To…., The Corner Boys Of The 1930s-Tom Hanks’ “Road to Perdition”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film The Road To Perdition.

DVD Review

The Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Dreamworks, 2002

I have spent a lot of time in this space writing about my corner boy experiences growing up in my old Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have also spent some time talking about the corner boys who just immediately preceded us in the early 1950s. Pretty tame really although if you were on the receiving end of a vicious beating, got your money stolen in some back alley, or had your personal household possessions ransacked or stolen by some midnight shifter your perspective might not be so romantic. The “corner boys,” Irish and Italian mainly, of 1930s Great Depression Chicago though, as portrayed in the film under review, The Road to Perdition, make all that other stuff seem “punk” by comparison.

Of course the motives to join a gang of lumpenproletarians in all cases were the same then, and today. That is “where the money was” to paraphrase the old-time famous bank robber, Willy Sutton. No question all those guys in the 1930s and later were (and are) from hunger. But also looking for the quick dollar and the “no heavy lifting” life not associated with steady working class factory every day values. Equally true is the fact that there are always more “hungry” guys than the market can bear which leads to two things-external “turf wars” between gangs and internal turf wars over who controls what within gangs. And that is the heart of this story.

The problem for Tom Hanks, a trusted, very trusted, enforcer (read: “hit man”) for Irish mob boss Paul Newman (he of many such corner boy roles going back to Cool Hand Luke and before) is that Newman's psychotic son wants his share of the goodies as befits a son and heir apparent. Needless to say that things get dicey, very dicey as they maneuver to the top, including the gangland-style execution of Hanks’ family that was suppose to include a son, the narrator of the film, who is forced to help Hanks’ seek the inevitable revenge required by the situation. In the end though Tom Waits is right in the opening line from Jersey Girl- “Ain’t got no time for the corner boys, down in the streets making all that noise.” A nice cinematically-pleasing 1930s period piece and what turned out to be a great farewell performance by the late Paul Newman.