The Postman Always Rings Twice (MGM, 1946): (Links to an external site.) "With its depiction of a blonde femme fatale (Lana Turner) leading astray a veteran (John Garfield) adrift in a world of corruption, The Postman Always Rings Twice stands as one of the key works in the development of film noir. The film represents one of the ultimate depictions of doomed love in the film noir genre, making it a major influence on more recent films such as Body Heat (1981), Final Analysis (1992) and The Last Seduction (1994). The success of The Postman Always Rings Twice opened the door for more film noirs at MGM, even though studio head Louis B. Mayer had a distinct dislike for the genre. The film was a breakthrough in the battle against screen censorship. Although the Production Code Administration had kept James M. Cain's novel off the screen for twelve years, they approved the 1946 picture despite its sizzling love scenes. Shocked fans even insisted the two stars were French kissing on screen. Garfield's restrained performance marked a turning point in his career, a transition from the kinetic street toughs of early films such as Four Daughters (1938) and Dust Be My Destiny (1939) to the introspective, emotionally distant characters of more mature films like Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948). Lana Turner's portrayal of Cora Smith is her best performance of the '40s and a rare look at what she could do with a solid dramatic role."

On The Big Clock (Links to an external site.): "In The Big Clock (1948), George Stroud, (Milland) the editor of Crimeways magazine has been given the task of solving a murder before his own staff finds evidence that will point to him as the killer. As he races to find the real murderer, Milland discovers that his search has led him to his magazine's corporate headquarters. Located in a massive tower within the cold confines of those headquarters, the big clock seems to dominate and watch over everything. Even when Milland hides in a room just behind the clock, it's as if he's trapped inside a box of time within other boxes, one onto the other. All of them enclosed in the labyrinthian corridors of the imposing, futuristic-looking Janoth building. Time is the real enemy in The Big Clock."

Here is a clip from The Big Clock that reminds me that film noir challenges all of our assumptions of rational investigation. This scene, done in a splendid long take style, has Milland seeking to demonstrate the rational aspects of a murder investigation, but as you will discover if you watch the whole film, no investigation is ever so straightforward in the noir universe, and fate and postwar uncertainty will tear at the very fabric of such rationality:

https://youtu.be/3j3aSvHqY9g (Links to an external site.)

On Detour (Links to an external site.): "It might be extremely low-budget and it might not have any major stars but Detour (1945), with a brisk running time of only 68 minutes, may be the most bleak and nihilistic film noir thriller ever made....and that's a compliment. The film has long enjoyed a cult reputation in Europe and among American film buffs for its existential tone. The main character, Al Roberts (Tom Neal), is an unemployed piano player intent on hitchhiking from New York to Hollywood where his girlfriend is a singer. When he reaches Arizona, he thumbs a ride with a dissipated gambler who relates a disturbing tale about a female hitchhiker he recently encountered. From that point on, the film travels quickly into nightmare territory with border crossings into paranoia, death and despair." (TCMDb) You can film for free online at Archive.org (Links to an external site.). You can also search YouTube or watch it at Open Culture (Links to an external site.).

Curator's Note: Alfred Hitchcock is a special case in discussions of film noir. He wasn't one of the German émigrés like Lang or Siodmak. He wasn't an American director like Welles or Huston. He was an English filmmaker and producer who made his first Hollywood film in 1940 (Rebecca). And here in today's Dose, though Warner Bros. is the name before this film's title, it’s Hitchcock’s name above the title. Even from the opening shot, we know we are watching a Hitchcock film. In 1951's Strangers on a Train, we encounter visual motifs in this opening sequence that we have seen in other Daily Doses: shots of legs and shoes a la Kiss Me Deadly or The Hitch-Hiker and a POV shot of criss-crossing railroad tracks that could be from La Bete Humaine. But Hitchcock, as the master of suspense, elevates each of these elements to add his particular touch to the opening of his film. Hitchcock emphasizes a strong contrast in the type of shoes and luggage the two characters are carrying, as we watch them eventually converge and "bump" into each other on a train car. Pay attention to how Hitchcock foreshadows the theme of "criss-cross" in these opening moments. As scholar Foster Hirsch would say, while Hitchcock "work[ed] in that narrow vein of the thriller he has made distinctly his own…[he] is pre-eminently a noir stylist." Stylistically, this scene is carefully staged, with a dynamic, criss-crossing rhythm, and the action zips along accompanied by Dimitri Tiomkin's wonderful musical score. For discussions on this film's noir credentials, consider that this film has strong hard-boiled literary bloodlines. Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (who also wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley series) and with a screenplay credit to Raymond Chandler (though little of what he wrote made it into the final film), this film's literary influences match up with the best of film noir. Finally, this opening promises what so many Hitchcock films deliver in spades: elaborate, tightly designed set pieces that will keep us on the edge of our seats! [Curated by Richard Edwards]

Since I covered this film already in a Daily Dose, I'll just add another observation that fits into this week's topic of The Opportunity. According to Bill Hare in a Film Noir of the Week (Links to an external site.) post: "By the time of the film’s release America was immersed in the Cold War opposite the Soviet Union. Albeit Hitchcock was not a political person, as a filmmaker he was not only acutely aware of American and global trends; he knew that by incorporating familiar themes and images in his films he increased the likelihood of audiences identifying with them. Walker could be seen as a dark totalitarian image as he was observed hovering around Washington’s familiar historical sites such as the Jefferson Memorial shrouded in darkness. While Walker represents the anarchistic challenge to established authority, the always distinguished, frequent Hitchcock character performer Leo G. Carroll appears as the cool establishment figure that stands for order and reason, seeking to comfort fears of his lovely daughter Ruth Roman and son-in-law to be Granger."

Curator's Note: The final Daily Dose is one of my favorite films noir from the classic era: Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949). I'm a fan of heist films and this is one of the great ones, reuniting actor Burt Lancaster and director Robert Siodmak after their 1946 classic The Killers. The opening of this film is carefully designed and sets up the dynamics that will propel this film forward towards an inexorable meeting with fate. We start with aerial views of the city at night accentuated by Miklos Rozsa's musical score. A noir tone and mood are established quickly. The aerial camera, as the credits are playing, seems drawn to a particular corner of this dark noir universe as we continue to close in on a parking lot. Headlights suddenly illuminate a tryst between Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) and Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), embracing between two parked cars. Steve and Anna engage in a quick conversation, but one that continually shifts between the past, present and the future. But, if we have learned anything about film noir, we know to be wary about what comes out of the past and the long odds against tomorrow. The next scene introduces Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), as the action switches to the interior of a nightclub. Played superbly by Duryea, Slim's introduction in the film ratchets up the tension immediately. Watch this film to see one of the high points of film noir and the heist film. If there was a heist of the Hollywood studio system, one of its master thieves was Robert Siodmak. [Curated by Richard Edwards]

Considered one of the best of the film noirs to come out of Hollywood in the post-war years, Criss Cross (1949) tells the story of an honest armored-car guard whose involvement with his scheming ex-wife, now married to a sleazy gangster, lands him in the middle of a tangled and disastrous robbery. With a twisting narrative full of double crosses and deceitful characters so typical of the genre, the film is also something of a blueprint for the "heist" or "caper" film, a subgenre of the gangster movie that would become so popular with John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956) right up to the present day with Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and David Mamet's Heist (2001).

Criss Cross was slated to star up-and-coming actor Burt Lancaster, with a script by Anthony Veiller. It was also to be directed by Robert Siodmak, and produced by Mark Hellinger, reuniting the team responsible for successful noir thriller The Killers (1946). Before it went into production, however, Hellinger died (in December 1947), and the board of directors of Hellinger's production company voted to sell the property and two other projects to Universal to pay off debts. Siodmak's and Lancaster's contracts came as part of the deal, but Lancaster didn't want to do the film without Hellinger. He was offered several ways out of his potential breach of contract, but none of them panned out. So in June 1948, Lancaster reported to the set, along with co-stars Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, and Stephen McNally.

On Crossfire (Links to an external site.): "Crossfire (1947), one of the best film noir to come out of RKO Studios, is a film of many firsts. It was executive producer Dore Schary's first film for RKO (he would take over as chief of production at MGM in 1948). It was based on Richard Brooks' first novel, The Brick Foxhole, written while he was still in the Marines (he later became a Hollywood screenwriter/director). And it brought first time Oscar® nominations to both Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame in supporting roles and to Edward Dmytryk for his direction. At the same time, Crossfire marked the last time Dmytryk and his producer Adrian Scott would work together after collaborating on such popular movies as Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Cornered (1945); both men would be called before the House Un-American Activities Committee after completing Crossfire and blacklisted for refusing to answer questions about their alleged Communist Party affiliations." (TCMDb)

The Third Man (Selznick International, 1949): (Links to an external site.)"Film Noir is typically thought of as a purely American style or genre, but in 1949 two Englishmen - novelist Graham Greene and director Carol Reed collaborated to flesh out an idea by producer Alexander Korda for a film set in the divided war-torn city of Vienna. The resulting movie, The Third Man, was an overnight worldwide hit and is often listed as the greatest British film of all time. An American influence came from producer David O. Selznick and the stars Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, but there is no mistaking the European flavor of the movie. Shot largely on location, it captures the darkness and decay of the formerly grand city that is now littered with rubble, just as it captures the corruption and decadence in the soul of people warped by World War. The Third Man works on many more levels than merely the "entertainment" that Greene termed it to be. It wonderfully captures a time and a place unique in history; it is an early example of a cold-war intrigue that, while not depicting a single spy, can be seen as a prototype for spy thrillers to come. It also works as a study of post-WWII morality with Harry Lime viewing his victims not as human but as far-removed dots that stop moving. It is also a character study featuring a hopeless love triangle.

On Kiss Me Deadly (Links to an external site.): This is the one we will all probably be watching, so this one doesn't need much set up by me. If you watch nothing else this Friday, watch this. It's essential: "Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Robert Aldrich's hard-edged, stylistically innovative adaptation of the Mickey Spillane novel, features what may be the most violent and unsympathetic private eye in the history of cinema. As Mike Hammer, Ralph Meeker is like a bull in a china shop, lurching haphazardly from one deadly encounter to the next, often employing the same brutal tactics of the criminals he's pursuing. But as the plot of Kiss Me Deadly unfolds, Hammer goes from being just a cheap hood who specializes in divorce cases to serving as an unwitting accomplice in the retrieval of a mysterious box that holds "the great whatsit."

Reason to watch: Jeanne Moreau in a claustrophobic Hitchcockian-style thriller with Miles Davis' amazing film score

Back in 1957, before the French New Wave knew it was the New Wave, Louis Malle was a 24-year-old aspiring filmmaker who admired Robert Bresson, Alfred Hitchcock and Hollywood noirs ranging from The Asphalt Jungle (1950) to The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Putting his own spin on these sources, Malle's debut feature, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'echaufaud, 1958), remains a vivid, stylish thriller that genuflects to the noir genre with elegant brutality and cool rigor, taking it to a few new places en route. It and Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur (1956) are the New Wave's two great precursors, arriving before Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959) and Godard's Breathless (1960). But too much energy has gone into classifying it and Malle and not enough into simply enjoying it.

There's much to savor, especially the sculpted face of Jeanne Moreau in closeup as Florence Carala, plotting with her ex-paratrooper lover (Maurice Ronet) to murder her rich arms dealer husband (Jean Wall). Her face, first seen as she murmurs "Je t'aime, je t'aime" to her lover on a phone, is a mask of smoldering anticipation, then anxiety, then doom.

One of film's great jazz scores in a golden age of jazz scores, even more envelope-pushing than Duke Ellington's score for Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Johnny Mandel's for I Want to Live!(1958) and The Modern Jazz Quartet in No Sun in Venice (1957). Malle was a jazz nut. He used Charlie Parker music in his student film. When he heard Miles Davis was coming to Paris to play at the Club St. Germain, he went to the airport to meet the great trumpeter, musician, and -- as Davis soon was to make clear to the world -- composer. No sooner had Davis deplaned and introductions were exchanged than Malle asked Davis to compose the music for his film. Davis agreed. Using drummer Kenny Clarke and three French musicians Barney Wilen, Rene Urterger and Pierre Michelot -- Davis improvised and recorded the entire score a suite of 10 pieces on a single December night in 1957, working from midnight to dawn, sometimes watching scenes and conferring with Malle.

Out of the Past (RKO, 1947): (Links to an external site.)"Bitter, cynical, fatalistic and peppered with some of the best tough-guy dialogue in the genre, Out of the Past (1947) is a consummate example of film noir made during the movement's golden age in the '40s and '50s. Robert Mitchum stars as Jeff Bailey alongside Kirk Douglas as Whit Sterling, two shrewd, rock-hard individuals enthralled by the same mysterious, danger-courting woman, Kathie Moffat (played by Jane Greer). Jacques Tourneur directed with an eye toward the baroque, the evocative, and the erotic. The son of French-born director Maurice Tourneur (The Last of the Mohicans, 1920), Jacques made his own memorable mark on the noir genre with a string of inspired choices, from the casting of the film to the use of real locations to enhance the film's gritty realism. Tourneur had handled equally macabre subject matter, though in a different genre, in such horror films as Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943). The cynicism of Out of the Past was also well served by the taut, acerbic script by gifted novelist/screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (aka Geoffrey Homes). Mainwaring, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel Build My Gallows High, went on to write the equally gripping screenplay for the science fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Mitchum and Kirk Douglas are beautifully matched in Out of the Past. As with many film noirs, the relationship between the brutally cynical Whit and Jeff, who share a woman and a cynicism about human behavior, turns out to be more honest and affectionate than either man's love for Kathie, a woman with the face of an angel and the impulses of a viper. The two actors, who both became known for their idiosyncratic, combative temperaments, reportedly engaged in an extended power play for attention in their scenes together."

Reason to watch: Otto Preminger directing Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons

During his hey-day, Otto Preminger was one of the few famous directors whose face was immediately recognizable to the average movie-goer, due mostly to his success at playing vicious Nazi commandants in World War II pictures. But few people realized that he was actually Jewish. Preminger was always a hard man to pin down. There was a perverse streak running through almost all of his film work, both in front of and behind the camera. Honestly-name another accomplished filmmaker who would have agreed to play Mr. Freeze in the original Batman TV series!

Angel Face, which Preminger directed in 1952, stands as one of his more memorable projects. The "Angel Face" of the title is Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons), the apparently innocent daughter of a wealthy businessman named Charles Tremayne (Herbert Marshall.) Diane may seem like a sweetie on the surface, but she also happens to be a psychotic who will stop at nothing to maintain her own happiness, including killing her stepmother (Barbara O'Neil.) Diane also sets her sights on the family's hunky chauffeur, Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum), even though Frank already has a girlfriend (Mona Freeman.) Suffice it to say that things don't go well for Frank and Diane. You'll need a very broad definition of "happy ending" to smile at how this one wraps up.

Curator's Note: As we conclude the course, I return to a topic that has helped structure our entire learning experience from the very beginning: the heist. Remember way back in the first modules, I playfully set-up that film noir was the result of a heist of the Hollywood studio system in the early 1940s, and we didn't even know for years that any cinematic thievery was taking place-perhaps making film noir the perfect art crime! I used that metaphor to suggest that the best way to learn more about film noir might be to conduct our own hard-boiled investigations into the means, motives and opportunity behind that heist, what I call "The Case of Film Noir." In that spirit, I wrap up our final four Daily Doses with clips and analyses of four wonderful "heist films." First up, John Huston's 1950 film The Asphalt Jungle. This film is one of my all-time favorite heist films: it has a colorful cast of characters, an excellent heist sequence and was directed by John Huston just nine years after his breakthrough film noir picture, The Maltese Falcon. There is much to be gained by a careful viewing of the opening scenes of this heist film and the way we are introduced to the main character, Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). The composition of the opening shots of this "unnamed" city (a vaguely typical Midwestern noir city along the lines of Greil Marcus' comments about Iverstown) emphasizes the angularity and diagonality of the streets and buildings, providing a sense of an imbalanced world, surrounded by a crumbling architecture that calls up the look of Italian Neorealism and its depiction of postwar cities in Europe. The sound design is splendid, too. The ambient use of police radios in this opening reinforces our feelings of unease and urban malaise. In many ways, the city itself is one of the characters in this heist film. [Curated by Richard Edwards]

The Asphalt Jungle is a different kind of film noir from John Huston, director of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Key Largo (1948), two key entries from the heyday of the classic noir period. Instead of the cramped, claustrophobic settings of The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo, Huston adopts an open, smooth, and uncluttered style of framing. This is an ironic gesture, since other films noir, such as The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and the later Killer's Kiss(1955), are oppressive and threatening. But the city is more than an incidental setting of the plot. It is a crucial element to the story, one that influences the story, the characters, and how we respond as viewers. Huston understood that the city was, in a sense, the most important character in the film.

The Asphalt Jungle was also different in that the criminal element is given human dimensions. Huston not only creates sympathy for the gang, but he shows respect for the way they do their jobs. Furthermore, instead of painting them as soulless, murderous brutes, Huston imbues them with human weaknesses, frailties, and certain aspects of humanity that viewers at the time would not expect in a movie about criminals. Gone are the uncomplicated, unethical killers like Tom Powers (James Cagney) of The Public Enemy (1931) and Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) of Scarface (1932). The hoods in The Asphalt Jungle are family men, proud professionals who perform their crimes with proud precision, and essentially good men who happen to steal things. This is a far cry from the psychotic Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) in the previous year's White Heat (1949). Additionally, the women in The Asphalt Jungle are not femme fatales, dangerous females that the male protagonists of film noir should usually avoid like a bad habit. Rather, it is the man's obsession with women that causes his downfall.

On Nightmare Alley (Links to an external site.): "Noir, by its nature, is defined by despair and disillusionment. Yet few Hollywood noirs are as despairing, or as darkly glittering, as Nightmare Alley, the 1947 film adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham's novel of the same name, which had been published just a year earlier. Reviewing the novel in The Washington Post upon its republication in 2010, critic Michael Dirda wrote, "'Nightmare Alley' portrays 1930s America as a sleazy, run-down carnival, where everyone is either on the make, a born sucker or trapped in a real or psychological cage. Nearly all its major characters are emotionally damaged or physically deformed. Except for one, each is also pitiable -- there, but for the grace of God, go you or I."" (TCMDb)

On Mildred Pierce (Links to an external site.) (one of our Daily Doses this week): "...much of the look of the film can be credited to him and Grot, working together to create the stark daylight of Southern California and the expressive night shadows that underscore the characters' darkest motives and desires...It's this look, as well as the flashback structure and cynical tone, that places Mildred Pierce among the moody postwar motion pictures that have come to be known as film noir. Some film scholars argue the movie belongs more correctly in the genre of "woman's melodrama" because, unlike film noir, it has a female at the center of its story and its conflicts revolve around family and relationship issues. But film noir films, for all their excursions into the paranoid underworld, are often about tangled and "unhealthy" relationships, too, and have much to say in their own way about gender politics. And like the typical male protagonist of film noir who is led astray by a double-crossing femme fatale, Mildred is also brought to ruin by a wicked female - her own daughter." (TCMDb)

On Laura (Links to an external site.): "Laura is one of the quintessential examples of film noir that has endured as a classic for over 70 years. While it started out as a B-picture, its polish came about as the result of a series of happy accidents, second choices and great talent that helped elevate its status on all levels. It ultimately achieved five Oscar® nominations (winning one). It's a somewhat unconventional noir with a collection of odd elements that all come together and work." (TCMDb)

On The Lady From Shanghai (Links to an external site.): "As experimental and groundbreaking in its way as Citizen Kane (perhaps more so in many respects), this film was always intended by its director-writer-star to be "something off-center, queer, strange," as Welles said in a memo to Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn. By giving his picture the feel of a bad dream and striving for performances that were "original, or at least oblique," Welles was working against cliche. Film critic Pauline Kael once pointed out that Welles's contribution to the evolution of film language lay in his dramatizing the techniques of cinema. That is obvious in every frame of The Lady from Shanghai. Jump cuts in the editing, the almost Brechtian distancing effect of the stylized performances, the doubling of the film frame in the Chinese theater scene, the deep focus that disorients by giving far backgrounds equal weight with extreme close-ups, the use of optical devices ranging from water tumblers to windshields to (in the film's most famous set pieces) aquarium glass and multiple mirrors - all of these serve to forefront the experience of watching cinema and to push the envelope of what is expected and permissible on screen."

Here is a clip from that film that shows Welles effective use of deep focus photography, constantly moving mise-en-scene and extreme close-ups. But most important for me, this scene starts to show the "substance of film noir" as a mediation on hunger and guilt, two of the great themes in the noir era, and also topics we will address in our next module:

https://youtu.be/bzcyns91hDY (Links to an external site.)

On Gilda (Links to an external site.): "Marked by the distinctly cynical viewpoint and shadowy ambiance of film noir, Gilda could be described as a "hate story." By focusing on the polluted, venomous relationship between Gilda and Johnny, Vidor gives the film its slightly perverse - some have said sadomasochistic - feel. Ford showed remarkable insight into the film's racy themes when he pronounced "the picture was about hate being as exciting an emotion as love." Johnny and Gilda seem to delight in hurting and humiliating each other, making this one of the oddest film romances ever made. In reality, Ford and Hayworth were great friends and even lived next door to each other for a time in Hollywood." (TCMDb)

Eddie Muller's 'The Czar Of Noir' favourite

Curator's Note: You can tell that film noir is right around the corner, if not already arrived, in 1940's The Letter. This film is not going to pull any punches. However, the film opens not in a gritty urban noir setting but on the grounds of a rubber plantation in Singapore. We are brought into this world by a slowly moving camera that introduces us to some of the workers on the plantation. The camera moves about the grounds languorously, taking in what seems to be a tropical and peaceful night scene. Though there is a full moon, Wyler isn't tipping his hand much, and does little to prepare us for what comes next. Considered one of the most famous opening scenes in Hollywood history, the noir style of storytelling is starting to shatter the comfortable introductions and gentle establishing shots common in classic filmmaking. Rather than giving us time to find our footing in this new world, an opening like we find in The Letter, is intended to be a gut shot, to induce a deliberate disequilibrium in us. We are knocked down and dragged into these kinds of stories with a new startling ferocity, soon to be a hallmark of film noir. Curated by Richard Edwards

Producer Mark Hellinger had wanted to make a prison movie for almost a decade, and when he read an article by a former convict, the basic story of Brute Force (1947) began to take shape. Hellinger hired San Francisco Examiner reporter Robert Patterson to come up with the scenario and then brought in Richard Brooks to write the screenplay. A young screenwriter, Brooks had already worked on two of Hellinger's productions: The Killers (1946, uncredited) and Swell Guy (1946). Hellinger also reunited Burt Lancaster with two of his costars from The Killers: Sam Levene and Charles McGraw. Brooks and Lancaster clearly got along. At one point, Brooks told Lancaster to get himself a copy of the Sinclair Lewis novel Elmer Gantry, as Brooks was determined to turn it into a film. Though it took thirteen years, he and Lancaster did make that picture, and both received Academy Awards for their work.

Part film noir and part Hollywood "message movie," Brute Force is filled with images of extreme, almost psychopathic violence. In the prison workshop, Lancaster's buddies take revenge on a stool pigeon, cornering him with lit blowtorches and pushing him into the giant press. An informer is strapped to the front of a railroad car as it hurtles towards manned machine guns. The prison captain tortures an inmate with a rubber hose while blaring Wagner from the record player.

Curator's Note: Like yesterday's Daily Dose on Desperate, we have another clip from a 1947 film noir: Jules Dassin's Brute Force. And, like our clip from Desperate, we again witness a savage beating-this time delivered by Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn) to prison newspaper reporter Louis (Sam Levene). As the Film Noir Encyclopedia states: "The essence of Jules Dassin's Brute Force is violence. Functioning as a blatant allegory for an existential vision of the world (Sartre's No Exit can be seen as a theatrical counterpart), the prison of Brute Force becomes a living hell from which escape is impossible." And as we read in Robert Porfirio's article "No Way out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir," "It would be untenable to assert that the American film noir was directly affected by the writings of European existentialists, although after the end of the war there were a few films like Brute Force, which in its use of a prison as microcosm and in the fascist nature of its major antagonist indicates a familiarity with French existential novels." In Brute Force, we encounter one of the strongest examples of the influence of European Existentialist philosophy on film noir. And, as a final note about this film, just three short years later, after making this film, The Naked City, Thieves' Highway and Night and the City (four outstanding contributions to film noir), director Jules Dassin would find himself blacklisted in Hollywood for his membership in the Communist Party in the 1930s (he left the Communist Party in 1939). In 1952, after not finding any work in the US for two years, Dassin moved to Europe and in 1954 directed a film in France that might be one of his most influential-the great noir heist film Rififi. [Curated by Richard Edwards]

Reason to watch: A film noir with a flashback within a flashback within a flashback (I'm serious: this is one of the great narrative designs in all of film noir!)

The Locket, a 1946 film noir has intrigued audiences for decades with its intricate narrative. Like several other films in the genre, its story is told largely in flashback -- psychiatrist Brian Aherne tries to warn Gene Raymond that the woman he's about to marry (Laraine Day) is a dangerous psychopath. But in the middle of his story, the film switches to a flashback recounting the memories of her previous husband (Robert Mitchum), who then leads the audience into a flashback told by Day. Few films had tried anything as intricate as a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. At the time, audiences often arrived in the middle of a film and stayed until its later showing to pick up on what they had missed. That was impossible with The Locket, however, a fact contemporary critics were quick to point out. For later audiences, however, the film's unconventional structure has become one of its most distinctive features, helping it to earn cult status.

The Locket was written by Sheridan Gibney for producer Bert Granet, who had forged a strong bond with Laraine Day working on the comedy Those Endearing Young Charms (1945). When she learned about the project, which featured a strong female role in the tradition of such femmes fatales played by Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944) and Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), she asked her agent to put her up for the role. The character was a distinct change-of-pace for Day, who had built her career playing simple girl-next-door types like nurse Mary Lamont in MGM's first Dr. Kildare films. But Granet loved the idea of casting her against type as a compulsive liar and kleptomaniac who lets a man go to the electric chair to cover up her evil deeds and drives another to suicide. Even when much bigger stars like Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Joan Fontaine, expressed interest, he fought to keep Day, no mean feat considering that Fontaine was then married to Bill Dozier, the head of RKO, where the film was to be made. But Granet persisted, giving Day what would become her favorite role and earning her the best reviews in her career.

Curator's Note: We've been here before at the beginning of other films noir: a car at night, two headlights beaming, a deserted highway, a man encased in shadow. And, as we know, fate roams these noir-ish roads in the postwar era— and down this particular stretch comes married couple Alan (Arthur Kennedy) and Jane (Lizbeth Scott). A twist of fate, initiated by a bag unexpectedly hurtled into Alan and Jane's backseat, will propel this film into the bleak and dark territory of the noir universe. But perhaps the most enduring mystery of this film is how it was almost lost for us to view at all. As TCM's movie database on this film summarizes: " Half a century after its release, Too Late for Tears was on the verge of becoming a lost film. It had fallen into the public domain, which meant that existing prints were in terrible shape and fly-by-night home video distributors had flooded the market with awful-looking copies. It also meant, as UCLA Film & Television Archive preservationist Steve MacQueen put it, that there was 'no one with a vested interest in putting resources into saving such a film—no one except organizations like the Film Noir Foundation and film archives.' Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller spent five years as the driving force to restore the film, which he described as 'the best unknown American film noir of the classic era.' Muller discovered that the original negative had long since been lost, so he set about searching for the best copies of the film still out there that the UCLA restoration team could use as sources. In the end, after some false lead—and in an echo of how producer Hunt Stromberg had cobbled together the film itself—Muller found three viable source materials: a 1949 nitrate French composite dupe negative, a 1955 reissue print that was already decomposing and a 16mm television print. Finding these sources was tricky in and of itself, as the French negative was catalogued under the title La Tigresse and the 1955 print was listed under an alternate title, Killer Bait. But UCLA was able to use the best pieces of all these sources to create a fresh negative from which new 35mm prints could be struck. The restoration was funded by the Film Noir Foundation with additional funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust." You can see the result of this restoration effort this Friday with its broadcast premiere on TCM at 8 pm ET. Lucky for us, this is one film we still have to investigate in our Case of Film Noir! [Curated by Richard Edwards]

Guy Savage on Film Noir of the Week (Links to an external site.) writes: "Too Late for Tears has all the elements of my favorite type of film noir: a vicious woman--so crafty and so evil she fools, manipulates and destroys the men in her life, a once-in a lifetime opportunity to get rich (so what if it involves a few corpses), the double cross when you least expect it, and a fast trip all the way down that slippery moral slope to film noir purgatory. Directed by Byron Haskin (I Walk Alone and The Naked Jungle) and based on a novel by Roy Huggins, Too Late for Tears showcases former fashion model, gravel-voiced Lizabeth Scott in one of the two major roles she played in Hollywood. Although Scott was slated for stardom, her career fizzled, and she was never given the roles that could have catapulted her to the top. In 1955, she sued Confidential magazine for libel, but the case was thrown out on a technicality. In 1957, amidst rumors that she was blacklisted, Lizabeth Scott retired from the screen, bringing her all-too-short film noir career to an end. To see her play the main role of pathological housewife Jane Palmer in this 1949 film is nothing less than pure pleasure."

The relations that crime in America had become a big business built on corruption at almost every level of U.S. life shocked millions and inspired Hollywood to a new type of gangster film in the fifties, one in which the average Joe took on the mobs against fantastic odds and won. Of all these films - which include Robert Wise's The Captive City and Phil Karlson's Kansas City Confidential (both 1952) - the best was German-born director Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953).

From almost the start of his career, Lang had depicted the criminal underworld in such German classics as Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler (1922) and M (1931). When he fled Germany to escape the Nazis, his work took on a darker tone, with revenge as one of his primary themes. But his opposition to Hitler would lead to trouble years later, when he was falsely branded a communist in the early 1950s and blacklisted for two years. Once he managed to clear his name, however, he signed a two-picture deal with Columbia Pictures that began with this taut crime thriller.

The Big Heat - the title is criminal slang for a police crackdown on illegal activities - was originally a serial written for the Saturday Evening Post. It was so popular that Columbia bought the rights even before the final chapter appeared. They assigned former crime reporterSydney Boehm to the script. His chief change was to transform the main character, a police officer out for vengeance when a mob hit on him takes out his wife instead, from a scholarly detective to an average guy. This fit perfectly with Lang's approach to filmmaking, creating a character with whom the audience could easily identify.

On Hollow Triumph (Links to an external site.) (also known as The Scar): Please note: this film is in the public domain, so this is the film for everyone to watch! And don't get confused by the title, Hollow Triumph and The Scar are the same film.

To watch now on online for free, go to Archive.org's video of Hollow Triumph (Links to an external site.)

"It's a bitter little world full of sad surprises, and you don't let anyone hurt you." -- Paul Henreid, Hollow Triumph

"Actor Paul Henreid had his first shot at production with the 1948 film noir Hollow Triumph whose fate mirrored its title. Though the picture is a favorite with fans of the genre, particularly because of John Alton's atmospheric cinematography, it ended up a financial failure through no fault of Henreid's. Like many actors in post-World War II Hollywood, Henreid had been chafing under the restrictions of the studio system. After his second film with Bette Davis,Deception (1946), he had left the studio to freelance. The popular actor found himself courted by MGM, where he had made his first post-Warner's film, Song of Love (1947). Although that turgid biography of the Schumanns (with Katharine Hepburn as Henreid's wife) had been a critical and box-office disappointment, studio executives felt they could profit from his presence on the lot. When Henreid refused the encumbrance of another long-term studio contract, it triggered a rift between the actor and his agent, MCA's Lew Wasserman. Instead, he accepted an offer from Eagle-Lion, the recently formed U.S. arm of English producer J. Arthur Rank, to produce and star in a movie. With financing from railroad magnate Robert Young, he put together a production based on actor-novelist Murray Forbes' Hollow Triumph, the story of a criminal on the run who scars himself to take the place of a prominent psychiatrist, not realizing his new identity may provide more problems than those he had been fleeing in his own life. Henreid had heard of the novel from Hungarian director Steve Sekely, who had been languishing in B movies since his arrival in the U.S. in 1939. In gratitude, he hired Sekely to direct the film." (TCMDb)

On The Glass Key (Links to an external site.): "Full of tough talk, brutal violence, and a dash of romance, this 1942 version of Dashiell Hammett's novel is quite faithful to the book, and it's generally considered superior to the 1935 film version starring George Raft. Perhaps the main difference between the two, aside from the remake's shadowy noir look and bigger budget, is that the character of Ed Beaumont as played by Ladd is much less concerned with behaving morally than George Raft was in the original." (TCMDb)

On Ministry of Fear (Links to an external site.): "It's hard to imagine a more convoluted plot than Ministry of Fear (1944), one of the American thrillers that German expatriate Fritz Lang directed during World War II. Based on a novel by Graham Greene, the script keeps you blindlyguessing from one moment to the next. Even the main character is baffled for most of the movie. The story may or may not make complete sense, but Ministry of Fear is one of those pictures that operates by its own twisted logic. Though you get completely lost while you're watching, its sheer strangeness compels you to ride things out to the end." (TCMDb)

On Murder, My Sweet (Links to an external site.): "Murder, My Sweet is considered one of the first films noir and a key influence on shaping the genre in its use of low-key black and white photography, its convoluted mystery plot and its depiction of a tough, cynical detective thrown into a world of corruption. Its box-office success helped establish the genre in Hollywood, inspiring generations of tough-talking gumshoes." (TCMDb)

On Danger Signal (Links to an external site.): "Look up the definition of lounge lizard in the dictionary and you'll see a picture of Zachary Scott. Okay, maybe not but you should. The actor made a career out of playing social parasites and sleazy gigolos, the type who preys on vulnerable, love starved women with disposable incomes. Scott's gallery of scoundrels were tailor-made for the numerous melodramas and film noirs that Warner Bros. churned out in the forties and fifties. In many ways, it was his debut performance as a despicable pimp turned murderer in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and his treacherous opportunist in Mildred Pierce (1945) that helped stereotype the actor for the rest of his career. Yet, these were basically supporting roles for Scott, and though they solidified his image as a loathsome character for filmgoers, it was Danger Signal (1945) that gave him his first major role. An ideal showcase for Scott's unctuous on-screen persona, the movie features the actor in a male version of the femme fatale role so synonymous with film noirs." (TCMDb)

On Deadline at Dawn (Links to an external site.): "Susan Hayward's film work can best be described as forceful- even when she's crying, her acting is never subtle. So it's not unexpected, really, that Deadline at Dawn (1946), a hard-boiled murder mystery that was written by playwright Clifford Odets, is as strange as it is. It's chock-full of Odets' trademark artificial dialogue, Hayward bulldozes her way through each scene, and the narrative features so many complicated twists and turns, it's impossible to tell what's going on. Even Bosley Crowther, the esteemed New York Times critic, wrote at the time: 'No wonder it is hard to guess the murderer; there is no basis for assumption at all.'" (TCMDb)

On Johnny Angel (Links to an external site.): "Johnny Angel is not a bad film, just a routine melodrama with effective film noir atmospherics and striking cinematography by Harry Wild. Raft plays a ship's captain searching New Orleans for clues to the murder of his father, also a captain whose ship was hijacked of its gold shipment and found adrift and abandoned." (TCMDb)

On The Gangster (Links to an external site.): "The Gangster (1947) was one of the first movies to be released by Allied Artists, the newly formed subsidiary of poverty row Monogram Pictures. Allied was designed as a label for the studio's higher-budgeted films -- its prestige films, if one can use such a word for any Monogram title. Produced by Frank and Maurice King, it was an attempt to repeat the phenomenal success of their earlier picture Dillinger (1945). That micro-budgeted film had been so successful, taking in a hefty $4 million worldwide, that the King brothers, whose family had started as bootleggers and slot machine purveyors, suddenly found themselves in the big time." (TCMDb)

On Gun Crazy (Links to an external site.): "Not many B pictures can lay claim to "essential" status, but then again, not many were made by someone like Joseph H. Lewis, a director who could raise uninteresting and mediocre low-budget fare to the level of art. With Gun Crazy Lewis had something more substantial to work with-a taut script about two of society's misfits who bond over their mutual fixation on firearms and take off on a crime spree-and he made the utmost of it. Nearly 20 years before Bonnie and Clyde (1967) brought a startling change to mainstream American cinema, Gun Crazy was already there, little seen by audiences for decades until its rediscovery made it one of the great cult films of all time." (TCMDb)

On Tomorrow is Another Day (Links to an external site.): "Director Felix Feist remains largely unknown even to most film buffs, but thanks to a handful of tough, lean, low-budget film noirs (notably The Devil Thumbs a Ride, 1947, and The Threat, 1949) and the cult science fiction film Donovan's Brain (1953), his reputation is slowly getting more respect. Though he worked almost entirely on the low-budget end of the business, Feist consistently created vivid, multi-faceted characters and found ways to turn limited sets into evocative spaces. In this film, as the couple flees New York, they take refuge in an automobile on a bulk carrier, hiding out of sight while the world goes past the car windows in a second-hand road trip."

This week's neo-noir offering is a film I really like starring Gene Hackman, Night Moves (Links to an external site.). This is the type of film that shows you how great directors like Arthur Penn took film noir to new places in the 1970s. This is one you should try to see, or if you can, record to your DVR or watch later on the TCM app.

As the article at TCMDb states: "Shot in 1973 on the tail of a writer's strike and unreleased by Warner Bros. until 1975, Night Moves had the misfortune to follow Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1973), Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973), and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) into cinemas; it emerged during a glut of so-called "neo-noirs" (among these, Dick Richards' Farewell, My Lovely, Stuart Rosenberg's The Drowning Pool, Robert Benton's The Late Show, Michael Winner's The Big Sleep, and Walter Hill's The Driver) films that recalled the postwar noir thrillers but with a contemporary edge. Lost in the shuffle of Byzantine plot mechanics, sundry deceptions, twists, and double crosses was Penn's ruminations on identity and the guttering of American self-respect. The filmmaker infused elements of his own life into the Night Moves script and his feelings of failure within the Hollywood community."

On Cornered (Links to an external site.): "Prior to the filming of Cornered, Dmytryk flew to Buenos Aires to research the town and to consider possible exterior shooting there. He quickly learned that Evita Peron, wife of Argentina military dictator Juan Peron, had confiscated all available film negative for her own film productions. "In time," he noted in his biography It's a Hell of a Life But Not a Bad Living, "the script of Cornered was completed, and a cast was assembled....My script girl, Ellen Corby, played a tiny bit in the film. Like most contrived pictures, it was not completely satisfactory, though the last reel and a half is a first-class example of what suspense ought to be and nearly makes the whole effort worthwhile. Though not in the same class as Murder, My Sweet [1944], the film grossed more money because the exhibitors were now completely aware of Dick Powell's new image and had all climbed on the bandwagon." (TCMDb)

On Crack-Up (Links to an external site.): "Two of the most notable film noir titles, Laura (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945), also make central use of painting and art, and all three films use the subject to create mysterious and even sinister atmospheres. In the case of Crack-Up, the presence of Claire Trevor lends an additional noir feel, since she was just coming off Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Johnny Angel (1945) and was still to appear in Born to Kill (1947), Key Largo (1948) and Raw Deal (1948), all of which are key noir titles. Trevor was a true icon of film noir and played both heroines and femme fatales, an unusual distinction." (TCMDb)

On The Big Sleep (Links to an external site.): "With its interlocking murder investigations that reveal a world of decadence and corruption and its world-weary private eye hero, The Big Sleep is considered one of the screen's greatest films noir. Based on a private-eye novel by Raymond Chandler, the film has a convoluted plot. Bogart is detective Philip Marlowe, hired by a dying rich man to get rid of a blackmailer. The rich man's two beautiful daughters, Bacall and Martha Vickers, are constantly getting into trouble...and getting Marlowe into trouble as well. Even such distinguished writers as William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman couldn't make sense of the story. Chandler claimed that Hawks even sent him a telegram, wanting to know who had committed one of the murders. Chandler had no idea. But it didn't really matter. It's not the plot that makes The Big Sleep crackle, it's the witty dialogue, and the potent chemistry between Bacall and Bogart." (TCMDb)

On The Killers (Links to an external site.): "As numerous critics have pointed out, film noir is the slipperiest of all film genres. Unlike, the Western or the gangster film, film noir was not a term or category recognized by the industry itself. Invented by French critics, the term has spawned endless debates on what actually constitutes a film noir. Must the film take the criminal's point of view? Must it have a femme fatale? Need there be excessive violence? Expressionist photography? A convoluted plot? Desperate characters? A voice-over? Clearly, this is a genre with more exceptions to the rule than there are rules. While some critics cite John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) as the first noir, others go back to Joseph von Sternberg's Underworld(1927). And yet, despite all these disagreements, there are a few films that every critic and film buff agree are classics in every sense of the word. The Killers (1946) is one of these." (TCMDb)

On Nobody Lives Forever (Links to an external site.): "Nobody Lives Forever (1946) is a classic title for one of the first films of the dark, gritty, morally ambiguous style that would later be dubbed film noir. This one, however, moves from darkness into brilliant sunshine as the action switches from the streets of New York to California’s Malibu beaches. The setting may be bright, but the hero still carries a dark purpose...W. R. Burnett, the author of Little Caesar (1931) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), adapted the screenplay from his own novel I Wasn’t Born Yesterday. Warner Brothers initially announced Humphrey Bogart for the lead but he turned the film down and the role went to John Garfield. Garfield was not that happy about the role either, but he took the part because of his admiration for the acting of his co-star Geraldine Fitzgerald, the Irish actress who had been a sensation on Broadway in Orson Welles’ 1938 production of Heartbreak House." (TCMDb)

On Nocturne (Links to an external site.): "Former Warner Brothers star George Raft lends his iconic presence to RKO's Nocturne (1946), a film noir-styled tale of a police detective who risks his job to prove his superiors wrong when they rule a composer's mysterious death a suicide. Thanks to moody direction, an astute producer and a cast of B-movie stalwarts, Nocturne was a surprise success, earning more than half a million dollars on its initial release. The film was one of George Raft's many attempts to lose his gangster image. Although he had grown up in "Hell's Kitchen" and got his first big break on screen as Paul Muni's sidekick in Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932), Raft was tired of being typecast as a murderous thug. It didn't help that he counted a few real-life gangsters, particularly Bugsy Siegel, among his circle of friends. His later career was hampered by his insistence on re-writing scripts, as he did with Nocturne, to make his characters even nicer than they had appeared on the page." (TCMDb)

On Mystery Street (Links to an external site.): "One of several film noir thrillers produced by MGM between the years of 1948 and 1956, Mystery Street was a direct result of Dore Schary's reign at the studio. Unlike former studio boss Louis B. Mayer, Schary favored realistic dramas and serious "message" pictures over the colorful musicals and sentimental family pictures that characterized MGM's early years. Mystery Street was dark, moody, atmospheric and its attention to police procedure and investigative techniques bordered on the lurid. This was not the sort of film Mayer would ever have allowed during his tenure at the studio but Schary took the B movie thriller in a new direction with Mystery Street and, in the process, provided an ideal environment for some of the finest contributors to the film noir genre - screenwriters Sydney Boehm (The Undercover Man, 1949) and Richard Brooks (Brute Force, 1947) and cinematographer John Alton (He Walked by Night, 1949)." (TCMDb)

On Border Incident (Links to an external site.): "A dark, gripping film noir about illegal immigration on the Mexican border, the picture doesn't overly concern itself with politics. Instead, it depicts the plight of the immigrants, the ruthless cruelty of the smugglers, and the crime genre dramatics of the agents assigned to infiltrate the smuggling ring and bring it down. Gorgeously shot by the great cinematographer John Alton - who worked with Mann many times - Border Incident is also a fine example of a film which makes its cheap budget an advantage, using shadows and lighting effects to involve an audience. Mann and Alton had just collaborated on T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948), two exceptional noirs made for the low-budget indie studio Eagle-Lion. Invited to MGM to direct Border Incident, Mann wisely took Alton with him. Theirs is now considered one of the great director-cinematographer relationships in American film. Their styles were perfectly suited for one another; each seemed to draw on the other's strengths." (TCMDb)

On The People Against O'Hara (Links to an external site.): "A taut, suspenseful crime film, The People Against O'Hara (1951) stars Spencer Tracy as James Curtayne, a district attorney forced into early retirement because of his alcoholism. Several scenes from the film have a harrowing reality undoubtedly due to Tracy's own struggles with alcohol. After giving up the bottle, Curtayne is determined to salvage his reputation by taking on the defense of Johnny O'Hara, who has been accused of murder. Curtayne's daughter (Diana Lynn), worries that the pressure to prove himself will drive her father back to drink. Complicating matters is O'Hara's refusal to reveal his whereabouts on the night of the murder to his attorney -he was with his former sweetheart (Yvette Dugay), who is married to a powerful mobster, Mr. "Knuckles" Lanzetta (Eduardo Ciannelli)." (TCMDb)