Calcutta

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Seton I. Miller

Director: John Farrow

Cast: Alan Ladd, Gail Russell, William Bendix, Edith King

Cinematography: John F. Seitz

Music: Victor Young

Studio: Paramount

Release: April 23, 1947

“Calcutta” was made five years after “Casablanca” but was still thinking the audience was hungry for stories clearly inspired by that Oscar winner. It stars Alan Ladd doing his “I may be a sociopath, but I’m going to hint that I have feelings too” thing. In other words, mostly everything here is decently made but ten times warmed over noir. There is one exception, though, and that is Gail Russell as the movie’s femme fatale, who single-handedly makes everything feel fresher than it should.

Ladd plays Neale, one of three best friends who fly planes for the military between Chungking and Calcutta. His friends are Pedro (William Bendix, who doesn’t look like a Pedro) and Bill (John Whitney), who unexpectedly announces that he is getting married… and is subsequently murdered in an alley. Neale suspects Bill’s fiancé Virginia (Russell) is somehow involved, and he & Pedro begin an investigation into the death… all while Neale slowly falls for Virginia. The men uncover a smuggling ring, a plethora of money in Bill’s account that shouldn’t be there and find their lives in immediate danger.

If Russell seems like an odd choice for the female lead, you would be correct. One has to wonder why they didn’t just cast Veronica Lake, but I’m happy Russell made the cut, even if her inclusion seems like a miscast on the surface. She brings a genuine innocence to Virginia that is wholly unexpected – it’s all in her eyes. She might be speaking the usual noir hardboiled dialogue thanks to screenwriter Seton I. Miller (“Singapore”), but her eyes scream that she’s being genuine – it’s quite refreshing considering most femme fatale actors really like to lean into the grey areas of their character (or just appear evil from frame one). Here is a performance where, even when she is being confronted with her sins at the end, she does such a good job at convincing you that she genuinely means what she is saying that you wonder if there is going to be a twist on the twist.

There isn’t, of course. And Virginia’s involvement is quite obvious from act one, since Miller’s script offers up another female love interest for Neale in Marina (June Duprez), who is introduced early and then takes a backseat to the narrative, all but twiddling her thumbs in the background waiting for her kiss at the finale once Virginia is arrested. I hate when writers tip their hands so obviously – why not just have Neale (who is a misogynistic asshole to begin with) end the movie alone? It would work better thematically considering the rest of the storyline. Ah well.

There are other problems with the screenplay, specifically how it also abandons Pedro’s character (literally sending him to jail at one point) to keep him from actively taking part in the mystery. He’s sort of a non-entity, which is a shame since Bendix is such a strong presence – he’s too friendly to be a red herring suspect in the murder and offers nothing in terms of clues or narrative drive aside from volunteering to exit the movie by going to jail. Sigh. That said, Miller’s work isn’t completely a bust – he does a fantastic job with a jewelry dealer supporting character named Mrs. Smith (Edith King), giving her most of the great lines. Each time she pops up, the movie is better for it, and King clearly has a lot of fun with the role.

The director is John Farrow, who made the masterpiece “His Kind of Woman” (though most of his work was re-shot) and the excellent “The Big Clock.” This film is much darker than those, both content wise and in the cinematography by John F. Seitz (“Double Indemnity”). They both do great visual work making the Paramount backlots look like Calcutta, and have a lot of fun with partially see-through walls throughout. I also have to commend Farrow’s casting choices – unless I missed it, all of the native characters are actually played by the actors of the correct ethnicities instead of white people in brown or yellow face. It’s sad that I need to commend someone for that, but here we are.

Farrow also gets bonus points for getting Ladd shirtless and oiled up within the first ten minutes – I will be forever indebted to him for that. Ladd could play roles like this in his sleep by this point in his career, and does just fine – Miller’s screenplay makes his character particularly harsh towards women (Neale slaps Virginia eight times after discovering her betrayal – I counted), and Ladd spouts off horrifying lines and generalizations like he believes them. Bendix is dependable as always, but as written previously, has little to do. The real stars here are the women: Russell, King and Duprez – they’re the ones you’re going to talk about after the movie ends.

“Calcutta” is the type of movie you’d enjoy more if you’ve never seen a film noir before. As it is, it’s a routine amalgamation of about fifteen other tropes, with only Russell’s involvement setting it apart from the others. I’m giving it a minor recommendation, but feel free to leave it pretty low on your watchlist.

Score: ***

All the King’s Men

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer/Director: Robert Rossen

Based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren

Cast: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Mercedes McCambridge, Joanne Dru, John Derek

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Music: Louis Gruenberg

Studio: Columbia

Release: November 8, 1949

“All the King’s Men” is the type of movie where you cannot take a bathroom break. So many events happen so quickly, that if you walk away from the screen for more than 15 seconds, chances are that you will miss a secret affair, a son being paralyzed, secret payouts or someone getting slapped around. The film runs 110 minutes and stuffs in enough content for 11 movies, a television spin-off and a tie-in podcast.

Writer/Director Robert Rossen is one of the all-time MVPs of film noir, and I have yet to watch a movie with his name on it that I have not enjoyed. He wrote the undervalued noir/musical mash-up “Blues in the Night,” the LGBT-forward “Desert Fury” and directed one of my favorite noir films ever in “Body and Soul.” This is, with the possible exception of his late-career blockbuster “The Hustler” his most popular, critically acclaimed movie – it made double its budget back at the box office and won three Oscars, including Best Picture.

I think it’s very good, but if I am being very honest with myself, it’s also the work I probably least engage with.

In an obvious prequel to “Big Trouble in Little China,” Jack Burton (John Ireland) is a journalist assigned to do a series of stories on a local politician named Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), who is running for county treasurer. Stark is a fascinating guy in that he seems genuinely good and trying to better himself – he is self-teaching himself law, has a loving wife (Katharine Warren) and adopted son Tommy (John Derek). He loses that race, but soon has his sight set on the governor’s office. We first see him trying to get his message across and being strongarmed by local government trying to stay in power, and by the end of the movie he has gotten all the power and is the one doing the strongarming. Jack has become part of his posse (digging for dirt on Willie’s enemies), and Willie has realized that the public doesn’t want actual change – they want the idea that the government is against them and that they have an ally in him. Also in play his Willie’s sometimes campaign manager/sometimes mistress Sadie (Mercedes McCambridge), who stays even after Willie abandons her for other women.

Part of the reason the movie doesn’t have as much of an impact as it once did is not the movie’s fault. This film, and the classic novel by Robert Penn Warren upon which it was based, remains such a groundbreaking narrative that it has caused hundreds if not thousands of imitators who have mined every plot and subplot to the point where the original has lost some of its power. That said, part of me is still astonished by how much the movie got right about dirty politics and how often modern politicians have arcs similar to Willie… sometimes following it all the way to the White House.

Rossen’s script has three too many things going on at any given moment – he would have done well to cut four or five of the subplots. My plot detail has five characters, but there are easily another 20 of importance spinning in and out of any given scene. As a result, things feel overstuffed and people like the main character come off as a cipher instead of a three-dimensional human who is slowly losing his soul the longer he stays in Willie’s orbit. Rossen famously had a four-hour cut before bringing in Robert Parrish as an editor (he shares credit with Al Clark), who cut out the beginning and ending of almost every scene, focusing a specific time to the heart of a scene and that’s it. The result is fascinating to watch, as we enter certain scenes with characters already speaking and find ourselves playing catch up (it honestly feels kind of Sorkin-esque), but I can’t help but think that the movie would have been better with full subplots excised instead of getting 50% of every existing one.

That said, it’s still very good, and there are moments within it that rival the excellence of anything else Rossen wrote or directed. The moment Sadie investigates herself in the mirror and compares herself to another woman is heartbreaking, and Willie’s fury with his son that inadvertently causes Tommy’s paralysis is horrifying to watch. Crawford and McCambridge are rightly viewed as the MVPs of the film, giving astonishing performances (both won Oscars) that are both very human and terrifying within the same moment.

The rest of the cast is fine. Derek has some good moments as Tommy, but Ireland is adrift as our hero, and fails to land his big barnburner scenes late in the movie. Joanne Dru is given a very difficult part to play, and though she is a very good actress elsewhere, fails to conquer the material.

The cinematographer is Burnett Guffey, a guy so important in film history that I feel comfortable saying that he defined the look of film noir for Columbia Pictures. His work on “In a Lonely Place,” “The Reckless Moment” or “My Name is Julia Ross” is iconic, and I could have listed five or ten other films here just as easily. His collaboration with Rossen is smart because they shoot the film completely as a noir, complete with the smoke-filled back rooms that are nearly identical to the ones gangsters inhabit from other films in the genre. There are also several shout-outs to “Citizen Kane” visually, which I appreciated.

Despite its aging, “All the King’s Men” remains essential noir. In retrospect, “The Heiress” probably should have won Best Picture, and yet even as I write that, I cannot take away how influential this film has been since its release. Crawford and McCambridge’s work has not aged at all, and the movie is worth admission price for their work alone – the beautiful direction and cinematography are just bonuses.

Score: ****

Awards: The film won Best Picture, Crawford won Best Actor and McCambridge won Best Supporting Actress. It was further nominated for Best Director (also nominated was “The Fallen Idol”) but lost to “A Letter to Three Wives.” Ireland was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (also nominated was Arthur Kennedy for “Champion”) but lost to Dean Jagger for “Twelve O’Clock High.” Rossen was nominated for Best Screenplay (also nominated were “Champion” and “The Fallen Idol”) but it lost to “A Letter to Three Wives.” Finally, it was nominated for Best Film Editing (also nominated was “The Window”) but it lost to “Champion.”

Last Embrace

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: David Shaber

Based on “The 13^th Man” by Murray Teigh Bloom

Director: Jonathan Demme

Cast: Roy Scheider, Janet Margolin, John Glover, Christopher Walken

Cinematography: Tak Fujimoto

Music: Miklos Rozsa

Studio: United Artists

Release: May 4, 1979

 When I do a neo-noir film, I try to make sure that it’s a movie with a lasting impact on the genre that will add something to the Odyssey. I had never heard of this film before, but when I discovered that the great Jonathan Demme created a noir film, the Kino Blu ray was in my cart within five minutes.

Turns out there is a reason I had never heard of “Last Embrace.” This movie is complete batshit, with an emphasis on the shit part.

There is only one credited screenwriter for the project, David Shaber (“The Warriors”) which is confounding to me because it feels like a new screenwriter seems to take over the film every six minutes. And no, I’m not exaggerating. Maybe there was a fleet of ghostwriters at work here?

Roy Scheider plays Harry, who is a secret agent for a shady agency (this does not matter in the end) and brings his wife on a mission, where she is gunned down (this does not matter in the end). After being thrown into an asylum for months (this does not matter in the end), Harry finds the agency has moved on without him and actually sends some of its agents to kill him (this does not matter in the end).

If you’re like “Huh, that sounds like an interesting movie,” I recommend turning off “Last Embrace” at 25 minutes, because it turns out it’s a whole different thing. It’s actually about a Goel, who in the Jewish tradition must avenge his or her relatives, especially if they are enslaved. I know, quite the left turn, right? Harry begins investigating a series of deaths by someone avenging the enslavement of their ancestors… and turns out he is one of the descendants in the crosshairs. Also in play is his sort-of roommate/sort-of love interest/obvious killer Ellie (Janet Margolin), who it turns out is the aforementioned Goel.

The story is absolutely baffling on a scene-by-scene basis. All of the characters act entirely insane in any given moment. The sudden cut to Ellie dressed as a sex worker and drowning a guy in the bathtub (he just submits without struggling) is wildly out of place and cringe-worthy. And none of the big suspense set-pieces, most of which are obviously inspired by Hitchcock, land with any sort of impact.

Look at this poster. It’s a fucking great poster, amiright? In addition to giving away the climactic moment in the movie, the actual moment is nothing like this amazing image, which could have been shot in a water park for all the perspective of Niagara Falls we get. I hated (hated!) “Niagara” with a heated passion, but the chase sequence at the falls in that film was leagues better than this. How boring is the climactic 15 minute (!) chase, you ask? Well, at a certain point the characters join a tour group. Yes. You read that right.

Poor, poor Scheider is one of the best actors of his generation, but he has zero idea what to do with this material. He is especially bad when he is intensely reacting to his life falling apart in the first 20 minutes. Though there was potential with the character, the execution in the writing left him with nowhere to go. There’s a moment early on when Mandy Patinkin (!) may or may not attempt to push Harry in front of a train, and Scheider spins around a poll all but screaming – the moment is supposed to be super-intense, but visually looks as if he’s restaging that iconic moment in “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Margolin is likewise adrift, but the sex work/murder scene she does is cringeworthy because she genuinely looks uncomfortable doing it. Aside from that, she does not have the range to switch from the geeky girl to the seductress to the tortured villain, and it shows. John Glover and Christopher Walken have roles too big to be cameos but too small to be featured… and both appear to have taken a bunch of caffeine pills just before the cameras rolled.

Demme is clearly trying to do his version of a Hitchcock movie, with shoutouts to a myriad of his films, from “Foreign Correspondent” to “Shadow of a Doubt” to “Vertigo” and many in between. None of these moments do anything other than make you wish that you were watching those movies instead. This was Demme’s first collaboration with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, who is one of the greatest DPs in the history of film. In addition to his work on almost all of Demme’s subsequent films, he’s lensed classics as diverse as “The Sixth Sense,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Devil in a Blue Dress.” Unfortunately, you get almost no sense of Fujimoto’s mastery of the camera here. I’ve already talked about the ending, but the film also opens with a dream sequence murder which Demme and Fujimoto purposely make feel off and awkward to underline the tone. Bluntly, it doesn’t work.

Ignore that amazing poster. Pretend Demme and Fujimoto’s names are not on the project. Also pretend Scheider is not the lead. Because then you’ll have no reason to watch “Last Embrace.” And, to be clear, you really, really, really, really should not watch it.

Score: *

Highway Dragnet

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Herb Meadow and Jerome Odlum

Story: U.S. Andersen and Roger Corman

Director: Nathan Juran

Cast: Richard Conte, Joan Bennett, Wanda Hendrix

Cinematography: John J. Martin

Music: Edward J. Kay

Studio: Allied Artists

Release: January 27, 1954

I have a real weakness for movies like “Highway Dragnet.” It’s preposterous, but that’s okay. And at 70 minutes, it knows it’s not here for a long time, but here for a good time.

Richard Conte stars as Korean war vet Jim, who is in Vegas to visit a friend but gets in a flirt fight (I hate it when that happens) with a former model (Mary Beth Hughes, nailing her cameo) who ends up strangled dead by a strap of some kind in the morning (I hate it when that happens). Jim is clearly suspect number one, and since his buddy is apparently off on a secret mission now, he escapes from custody and hitches a ride with photographer Mrs. Cummings (Joan Bennett), her model Susan (Wanda Hendrix) and Mrs. Cummings’ mysteriously leash-less dog Tiger. Meanwhile, the cops close in as Susan develops almost instant Stockholm Syndrome and falls in love with Jim.

Logic questions remains after the film ends. If Jim has a meeting set with his undercover friend two days from now at his old house, why doesn’t he just tell the cops that? How can there be quicksand over concrete? And why doesn’t Mrs. Cummings’ very white dress ever get dirty, no matter how long they spend stranded in the desert? Do these questions really matter much while you’re watching the movie? Well… yes… but it’s easy enough to overlook them because the movie is instantly on to the next thing.

And in case you weren’t able to connect the strap that killed the model with the leash that is mysterious missing from Tiger’s neck (the poor dog is felled by a car on the highway moments after its introduction. RIP.), then the fact that Joan Bennett is in a role that is otherwise throwaway for most of the running time should clue you in to who the real murderer is. And yes, it’s a BIG coincidence that Jim hitches a ride with her, but noir is all about fate, so whatever. Just smile and go with it.

The screenplay is filled with quirk and fun character moments. My favorite is how Mrs. Cummings communicates to a hotel owner (Harry Harvey, who is fantastic) that a fugitive is in his midst, and the owner then rushes into his lobby telling everyone that the killer is there… but they should remain calm and not tell anyone. I was in stiches, but even moreso when Jim corners him and he nervously calls him “Mr. Strap.” There are two credited writers and two credited for the story (including Roger Corman’s first movie credit), and they keep things moving at a good clip. I especially love them setting the final showdown in a half-submerged house at the Salton Sea.

Conte is quite good, especially in the early scenes where he is sparring with various police officers and detectives. His moments with Reed Hadley as a Lieutenant who assumes his guilt especially crackle – the men have fantastic chemistry with one another. Bennett has almost nothing to do for most of the running time, and doesn’t even try to elevate the material, which she clearly could have. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she seems to be eyeing the craft services table that is just offscreen, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Then again, when her final moment involves her standing in waist deep water claiming she’s being sucked into quicksand, I don’t blame her. Hendrix is really, really good and clearly having fun, but despite her ample sparks with Conte can’t quite sell her character’s sudden obsession with him.

The director is journeyman Nathan Juran, who started out as an art director before segueing into directing the excellent horror programmer “The Black Castle” and several wild sci-fi flicks with names like “The Deadly Mantis” and “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.” He also collaborated a few times with the legendary Ray Harryhausen on movies like “The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad” and “20 Million Miles to Earth.” His strength here is exploiting the various settings for everything they’re worth, like Vegas in the opening, the resort in the middle and that half-drowned house at the finale. There’s an odd moment in the house where part of the frame seems drawn on in front of an actor for no reason – was there a mic in frame somewhere?

If you approach “Highway Dragnet” as a serious film, you’ll loathe it. But if you put your tongue firmly in its cheek, you’ll have a rollicking good time. This is the type of movie you put on at 10 p.m. when you’re a little tipsy but not quite ready to go to bed. And I mean that as a compliment.

Score: ***1/2

The Lost Weekend

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder

Based on the novel by Charles R. Jackson

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling

Cinematography: John F. Seitz

Music: Miklos Rozsa

Studio: Paramount

Release: November 29, 1949

“The Lost Weekend” is not a film which I have been looking forward to watching.

It’s not about the quality – as you’ll read in a paragraph or three, this is a great film. But it’s the subject matter. There are certain movies which I just don’t want to emotionally engage with, excellent as they may be. Alcoholism runs in my family, so the main character of Don Birnam is much too familiar to me. My father essentially was him. How familiar some of his words and phrases are. Birnam hides a bottle of booze in a hanging lamp. My father kept a six pack of beer in the storage container between the front and passenger seat in his car. Watching this film is like ripping off a bandage even though the wound hasn’t healed yet.

Don is played by Ray Milland – a washed-up writer who was called a genius in college but has gotten lost in bourbon and whiskey. With no money to his name, he’s been living in his brother’s (Phillip Terry) apartment under his strict eye, and still has the support of his girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman), even after three years of his alcohol abuse. Ten days sober, Don is supposed to go out of town for a long weekend with his brother… but instead falls into a five-day binge which finds him sinking lower and lower. He steals. He pawns off his belongings. When the pawn shop is closed, he begs. He’s committed to an alcoholic’s ward after drunkenly stumbling down a flight of steps, but manages to escape. He begins to hallucinate. When is enough really enough?

The director is Billy Wilder, who has crafted some of the most iconic noir films ever: “Double Indemnity,” “Sunset Blvd” and “Ace in the Hole.” He brings that visual sensibility and dark storytelling style to a subject matter that is not related to noir, and in the process, turns the story into a waking horror film. But make no mistake – this is a noir. The bottle is as much a femme fatale for Don as Barbara Stanwyck or Gloria Swanson. Other movies would ape this style to lesser results, notably “Smash Up: The Story of a Woman” and “The Lady Gambles.”

That said, the reason the film works is because of Milland. His casting was a masterstroke by Wilder, and this is the performance of his career. In one moment, he can appear handsome, witty and charming. But change the lighting and his posture, and he can suddenly be skeletal, aggressive and violent. It’s a genuinely impressive achievement, not least of which because of the lack of vanity. Milland’s brand was being light as a feather onscreen, romancing the ladies or fending off ghosts in movies like “The Uninvited.” This performance – not just the savagery, but how pathetic he is – could have ended his career if the movie wasn’t good. Luckily it is… and he was awarded with an Oscar for his work.

The rest of the ensemble come and go quickly. Wyman’s casting is baffling at first since the role seems so inconsequential, but that’s before her final scene, which she knocks out of the park.

Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with his best collaborator Charles Brackett (“Sunset Blvd.”), and they are smart enough to know not to structure the film – Don’s movements don’t matter as much as his slow descent into hell. Wilder apparently was inspired to do the story after his horrendous experience with alcoholic writer Raymond Chandler on “Double Indemnity,” and so making Don a writer tracks. What struck me was the specificity of moments – right from that first shot of the bottle hanging out the window. Don searching the apartment for a bottle, including searching the vacuum cleaner bag, feels all too real, as do his exchanges with each bartender he encounters. The sequence where Don tries to steal money from a woman’s purse at a nightclub only to be caught is the most cringeworthy (in a good way) thing in Wilder’s career, and I write that having seen “Ace in the Hole.” The screenplay is depressing, and its writers are smart enough to know that it needs to be depressing and as a result don’t offer any comic relief. Instead, they just make the viewer wonder how much lower Don can go.

Visually, the film looks great, and a late nightmare sequence where a bat murders a rat and drinks its blood is smartly played as reality without any weird special effects that would lessen the impact. The score by Rozsa is rightly famous for making the movie work, though his use of a theremin has aged badly since it has been used in so many science fiction pictures since, though it was groundbreaking at the time of release. In fact, I would be remiss to note that several moments and beats have lost some of their impact since there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of lesser productions ripping them off for decades. That’s not the film’s fault, though.

The ending is frustrating, with Don saved from committing suicide by Helen and promising to stop drinking once and for all, instead focusing his efforts on writing. There’s no easy ending to the story of an alcoholic because there isn’t really an end to the journey. Is this Don’s real low point? Or will he be back with the bottle after a few hours or days? I’m a pessimist from experience, so I don’t think his words here matter, like they hadn’t mattered the dozens of times he probably already said them to Helen. But maybe I’m wrong.

I hope I’m wrong.

Score: ****1/2

Awards: The film won the Oscar for Best Picture, against fellow films noir “Mildred Pierce” and “Spellbound.” Wilder won Best Director (also nominated was “Spellbound”). Milland won Best Actor. Brackett and Wilder won Best Screenplay (also nominated was “Mildred Pierce”). The film was further nominated for Best Scoring of a Dramatic of Comedic Film (also nominated was “The Woman in the Window”) but lost to fellow nominee “Spellbound.” It was also nominated for Best Black-and-White Cinematography but lost to “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (also nominated were “Mildred Pierce” and “Spellbound”) and Best Film Editing but lost to “National Velvet.”