The Sound of Fury / Try and Get Me!

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Jo Pagano, based on his novel “The Condemned”

Director: Cy Endfield

Cast: Frank Lovejoy, Lloyd Bridges, Kathleen Ryan, Richard Carlson, Katherine Locke

Cinematographer: Guy Roe

Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Studio: United Artists

Release: December 12, 1950

When “The Sound of Fury” begins, I would not blame you for thinking this was just an average, run-of-the-mill noir. But as it progresses, it gains more and more power, until you can’t look away from the screen. It may be imperfect and muddle its thematic intent, but it still climaxes with one of the most harrowing, horrifying sequences ever put on film. If you see it, you cannot forget it.

United Artists clearly knew they had a powerful film on their hands. When it failed to make an impression upon its release in December of 1950 (this is not a Christmas movie), the studio decided to rename it and re-release it. Which was a great idea, except that the new name was the abhorrent “Try and Get Me!” and their new poster featured what appeared to be a 100-foot-tall Lloyd Bridges cackling with laughter while stomping on dozens of horrified tiny people. The revamp was clearly not an improvement. The movie subsequently lived in obscurity for decades.

Frank Lovejoy plays Howard, a perpetually out-of-work schlub of a husband to the pregnant Judy (Kathleen Ryan) and their son Tommy (Donald Smelick). Desperate for money, Howard meets up with criminal Jerry (Bridges), who becomes his homme fatale, seducing him with his rich clothes and gifts into a life of crime. The money is great, so Howard loves it for awhile, but then Jerry gets the idea to kidnap the son of a rich man in town and hold him for ransom. Though Howard resists, he ultimately agrees, only to witness Jerry savagely murder and mutilate the man’s body, then send out a ransom note anyway. Howard spirals into mental distress, finally confessing and being arrested for the murder, with Jerry caught a few days later. Concurrently, the newspapers twist and contort the story and get the entire town riled up enough to break into the police station/jail and lynch the two men.

The film and its source novel are based on a real crime that happened in the ‘30s which was also the inspiration for Fritz Lang’s first American movie (and first American masterpiece) “Fury.” That noir twisted the story into something completely different and transcendent. Here the filmmakers keep the storyline much closer to the crime, where two men kidnapped and murdered the heir of a rich family then pretended that he was alive to get the ransom. After they were arrested, the newspapers kept publishing hypotheticals that the men would each blame the other for the killing on the stand, resulting in both going free, which caused the city to descend into chaos… with a mob ultimately lynching the two men.

Frank Lovejoy (top left) and Lloyd Bridges (bottom right) in TRY AND GET ME a.k.a. The Sound of Fury (1950), directed by Cyril Endfield.

This is dark stuff. Even for noir, it’s dark. And it’s to writer Jo Pagano and director Cy Endfield’s credit that they embrace the fucked up nature of the narrative to an extreme degree. There is no hint of redemption or hope anywhere to be seen, and that gives the film all the more power as a result.

I just wish that Pagano’s screenplay had been more clear thematically. Obviously one of the main lessons of the piece involves the newspaper reporter Gil (Richard Carlson) writing stories about the murder which rile up the local community. But Pagano does not do enough to show the community in distress prior to the mob forming. And some of the dialogue actively seems to be arguing against the themes, as when a visiting professor named Vido (Renzo Cesana) talks to Gil like he’s a child, chastising him for daring to write an article about the murders. At this point, the articles have only been praised and described by Gil’s wife as “vivid,” so we have assumed they are good reporting and not the period equivalent of Newsmax. “They aren’t convicted yet!” he chides, even though Harry has already confessed. He lambasts Gil for putting in details of the murder, even though those are simply facts. After Harry’s wife Judy talks to Gil, reading him Harry’s confession and desire to die, Gil is again chided for being cruel to Harry because he has a wife and child. No. No. No. Let’s shift the crime in our minds, shall we? Vido would essentially be saying “Don’t be so hard on that rapist – he must be a good man at heart if he has a wife and child.” Moments like that left me furious.

But then later, we actually see the newspaper that caused the mob, and it’s full of lies (“Will They Go Free?!” is the main headline, horrifying cartoons fill the left side of the page and more editorializing than any editor in his right mind would allow fills the rest). Like I wrote, it’s more like Newsmax than actual reporting. If Gil was really writing stories this horrible, why not play up how he’s over-dramatizing everything prior to us seeing the page? All we get is an editor saying “Keep writing like that!” without specifics. If Pagano had painted Gil and the newspaper like that crazy cover right from the start, the message and theme would have been clear right away. But instead, we get scene after scene of Gil being attacked for publishing facts, only to find out later he’d really gone crazy with the embellishments.

The cast is overall quite good, with a few standouts. Lovejoy is excellent as a man losing the will to live, and Bridges starts shaky but gains power the more unhinged Jerry becomes. But the best performance in the movie is a supporting role I didn’t even mention in my plot outline: Katherine Locke as the amazingly named Hazel Weatherwax. Brought in by her friend as a date for Harry to get his mind off all the murder, Hazel is one of the most distinctive characters I’ve seen in the genre. Fundamentally broken, afraid and also just plain weird, Locke makes every moment she is onscreen unforgettable. With a lesser actress, it would be a nothing role, but she makes it transcendent. I love this line that she probably improvised after her terrible first date with Harry. As he wanders away without even saying goodbye, she musters up all her strength and calls after him “Call me sometimes!” It’s the “sometimes” that makes it perfect.

The climactic lynching is an astonishing thing to behold. Today you can’t help but watch it and think of the domestic terrorists storming the Capitol on January 6, 2020… who were also humans who allowed fake news to manipulate them into violence. Watching Jerry cackling and screaming in his cell is horrifying, as is watching the mob lift Harry’s dying body down the stairs as Gil stares in horror. The masterstroke is the jump cut from that to Harry’s child Tommy waking up with a nightmare in bed and being soothed by his mother… told everything will be all right. No, Tommy. It won’t. And it will never be again.

But that’s not quite the end. I only wish that the final scene of the movie didn’t exist. It only serves to re-underline and throw exclamation points on the already established themes we already know, going so far as to have Vido offer up a voiceover reiterating his thoughts as the movie fades to black. It’s unnecessary hand holding and takes a little bit of the air out of an ending that still stands as one of the most powerful in film history.

“The Sound of Fury” is essential noir viewing, even considering its flaws. Director Endfield would soon be accused of being a communist and be one of the blacklisted directors to flee to Europe, where he continued to make noir films under a pseudonym until it was safe. I’m sure this movie didn’t help Endfield’s case against HUAC, but it’s an important story that needs told. I just wish it was a little less muddled.

Score: ****

Crime Wave

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Crane Wilbur

Story: Bernard Gordon and Richard Wormser

Based on the story “Criminal’s Mark” by John Hawkins and Ward Hawkins

Director: Andre DeToth

Cast: Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk

Cinematographer: Bert Glennon

Music: David Buttolph

Studio: Warner Bros.

Release: January 12, 1954

“Crime Wave” is a blunt object of a film noir, filling its 74 minutes with a straightforward crime story of bullets and hostages. It’s not great, but it’s not bad either. It’s just kind of there, content to be a middle of the road film uninterested in bringing any real substance or depth to its characters or storyline. If it’s your first film noir, you’ll probably love it. If it’s your 100^th, you’re probably going to be a little bored.

The film begins with three men robbing a gas station at gunpoint. Things go ass up: a police officer is killed and one of the men named Gat (Ned Young) is gravely injured. Dripping blood with every step, he wanders to the doorstep of Steve (Gene Nelson) and his wife Ellen (Phyllis Kirk). Steve is an ex-con who has been on the straight and narrow for years, and when Gat dies of his injuries, Steve immediately calls his parole officer. The police arrive and the man is charge is the pompous ass Sims (Sterling Hayden), who is convinced Steve had something to do with it no matter how much the couple protests. Later, the other two men who robbed the gas station take Steve and Ellen hostage, insisting Steve help them with a bank robbery or they’ll kill his wife. Hot on their tails is Sims, all but foaming at the mouth as he tries to bring Steve in for crimes he is doing under duress.

The narrative is incredibly straightforward and there is not a single twist or turn to the formula anywhere to be seen. Screenwriter Crane Wilbur penned two other iconic noir films with “He Walked by Night” (which I am ambivalent to) and “The Phenix City Story” (which I adore). This is much, much more like the former, offering the audience a “Just the facts, m’am” throughline with little attention paid to the characterization. Steve and Ellen are introduced as having marital difficulties, something completely thrown out the window four minutes later and never touched upon again. Steve is blandly heroic now – we don’t for a second believe he’s going to slide back into his old lifestyle. And Ellen? Once again, we have a female character who is a complete afterthought – a chess piece for the men to use with no depth or voice of her own.

Wilbur seems more interested in Sims, ensuring the audience knows he’s a smart detective even though he is completely wrong about Steve’s involvement in the case. He’s given perhaps one of only two good moments of characterization in the entire script: when he says that he’s had to quit smoking and instead just chews toothpicks all day until they break. The other well-rendered moment involves a veterinarian involved in the case (Otto Hesler) who offers up a touching story about pets that have been written off by their owners but still have life to live. It’s a super obvious metaphor, but it still works because of the writing and performance.

Make no mistake, there is a lot of potential for thematic depth here. Not just in that your past sins always come back to haunt you, but most interestingly that society will never, ever, ever forgive you for your sins, even after you’ve paid the price. But the movie doesn’t have much interest in that (at least not until the last 90 seconds), and I wish that Wilbur would have gone just a little bit deeper to properly exploit the potential into reality. Ah well.

Nelson is a bland hero, allowing his hair to do most of the talking for him. To be fair, it’s really awesome hair that doesn’t seem to move even after he’s been in bed for several hours. He never convinces you that he could have ever been a criminal in another life. Kirk is likewise pretty lifeless, but I blame the script here more than the actress. Hayden could perform a role like his in his sleep, but brings a snappy rough edge to the proceedings that make the character much more engaging than everything else around him. The ensemble of bad guys are mostly interchangeable – Charles Bronson plays one of them and leaves almost no impact – except for Hesler, who garners your sympathy quickly and keeps it. After he disappears from the movie, you miss him.

I personally wish that the movie was set in a small town instead of Los Angeles – that setting seems more in line with the storyline, plus the fact that the seven main characters keep running into one another over and over. But the City of Angels does provide the movie with its one big shiny thing… the location photography is superb. Bert Glennon lensed the film, as well as the terrible-but-beautiful noir “Red Light,” and his work – particularly in the third act – is wondrous to behold. Fabulous places and spaces all over Los Angeles, and the final car chase actually seems to be following the correct route from the valley to Downtown! Bonus points to the scouter who found that dilapidated building in the middle of a field for the climactic fight. I only wish that the bank heist itself wasn’t so brief so that we could live in the shadows much more.

The director is Andre DeToth, a man who mostly directed Westerns but is remembered today for his 3-D horror movie “House of Wax,” which he directed even though he couldn’t see 3-D images. In this genre, he made the excellent “Dark Water” and the heinous “Pitfall,” which remains one of the worst movies I’ve watched on this Odyssey. “Crime Wave” sits smack dab in the middle of the two, good enough to eke out a recommendation, but just barely.

Score: ***

Deported

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Robert Buckner

Based on the novel “Paradise Lost” by Lionel Shapiro

Director: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Marta Toren, Jeff Chandler, Claude Dauphin, Marina Berti

Cinematography: William H. Daniels

Music: Walter Scharf

Studio: Universal

Release: November 1, 1950

I really wish that “Deported” was not the last film I was exploring in this Robert Siodmak series. Not because it’s bad… it’s a perfectly fine little noir. But it doesn’t feel like a Siodmak film, partially from its storyline but mostly thanks to its expansive, brilliant location photography. Where are the shadows and the claustrophobia that are the hallmarks of the master’s films?

Jeff Chandler stars as Vic, a gangster just out of a yearslong stint in prison and deported to his home country of Italy. There, his family misinterpret a letter from the government announcing that he’s headed to Italy as proof that he’s working for the US Government, and he becomes a hero among the starving neighborhood. Vic meets the widowed Countess di Lorenzi (Marta Toren), who is very concerned about the needy and destitute in the area, and comes up with a devious plan to get $500,000 back by buying the town a bunch of food, and then working behind the scenes to get it stolen. He also begins faux-romancing the Countess, but soon finds himself developing real feelings for her.

So the story is essentially old hat that we’ve seen dozens of times before, and gets especially clunky in the last fifteen minutes or so. But the script is fairly well written, with crisp dialogue and one outstanding scene where Vic and the Countess walk into an abandoned church to find his initials carved into one of the stones on the wall. But the thing that sets this movie apart is the setting. Siodmak famously did not like to shoot on location, but had recently done so with “Cry of the City” in New York, and the location work there helped elevate the film to a minor classic. Here the beautiful Italian cities, towns and countryside all but steal the movie from the cast and story. Paired with Cinematographer extraordinaire William H. Daniels (“Lured”), Siodmak brings the entire world to life – you remember the little location scenes like where Vic throws dollar bills to the kids on the dock or the just-mentioned kids slicing into bags of rice to feed their families. It’s not quite on the level of Vienna in “The Third Man,” but the beautiful places linger long after the film ends in the same way.

Again, none of this feels like Siodmak. But perhaps the one aspect of production that feels like him is the casting. In his many noir films, Siodmak liked to take big swings with his principles. Often it worked wonders, like Burt Lancaster & Ava Gardner in their career-defining work on “The Killers.” Charles Laughton & Ella Raines as an odd couple in “The Suspect.” Gene Kelly as a vile murderer in “Christmas Holiday.” But sometimes it would backfire spectacularly, as it did with George Sanders in “The Strange Affair of Uncle Henry.” Here the filmmaker makes similar big swings with Chandler and Toren… and unfortunately only gets it half right.

Chandler is grossly miscast in a role Richard Conte would have been perfect for. He’s stilted, awkward and seems to have a stick placed where the sun don’t shine in most every scene. The dialogue is decent, but he sinks many a good line with his terrible readings. He genuinely doesn’t seem to want to be onscreen most of the time, and only warms up somewhat during his romantic scenes with Toren.

Toren had a brief career before dying tragically at 31, and the only context I have for her is her work in the bad Humphrey Bogart vehicle “Sirocco.” Critics at the time compared her dismissively to Ingrid Bergman, but time has been kind to her performance and it’s clear now that she’s the best thing about that movie. Here she is likewise excellent, emoting so much while seeming to do very little. She quickly becomes the soul of the film, and is so good that she actually makes you believe she is falling for block-of-wood Chandler. He actually seems engaged when sharing the screen with her, which is… something, I guess.

The rest of the ensemble is aces – I know none of them because they are clearly locals having a ball working on a Hollywood production. Siodmak smartly lets the hoard of Italian kids behave like real kids, which is harder than you think.

There is one classic Siodmak suspense sequence, where Vic discovers all the food and supplies being stolen under cover of night. It’s confusingly staged at points – you never quite find your footing in the labyrinth of boxes and crates, but I love the darkness and the moment where Vic is surrounded.

“Deported” is a fine noir, though nearly sunk by Chandler’s casting. It’s not the worst noir Siodmak would direct (hello, “Phantom Lady”), but it is the most disposable. Even Siodmak’s most minor films in this series have ardent defenders, but I’ve never spoken to anyone who has even seen this movie. Still, Siodmak is one of the true masters of the genre. Like Val Lewton, who famously wanted to leave behind the horror movies that made him a legend for more “serious” work, Siodmak would often beg studios to allow him to try different kinds of movies, only to watch them wither and die at the box office. Just a few years after this production, he would throw up his hands entirely and leave to make movies in Europe… some of which are good, but none of which are remembered well today. All in all, he made 11 noir films, and I consider over half of them great movies. That’s not a bad track record at all.

Score: ***

The File on Thelma Jordan

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Ketti Frings

Story: Marty Holland

Director: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Paul Kelly, Joan Tetzel, Gertrude W. Hoffmann

Cinematography: George Barnes

Music: Victor Young

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Release: January 5, 1950

Though there is still one more film for me to tackle on this Robert Siodmak mini-Odyssey, “The File on Thelma Jordan” feels like the end of an era for the master filmmaker. No one else could make twisted, claustrophobic noir films like Siodmak, and this film represents his final exploration of that niche. After this, he would make one more straight noir with the much different, Italian-set “Deported” before turning his full attention to directing foreign films. Some were very good, many were dark, but none quite captured the mood of the noir films Siodmak made from 1944-1950.

If that weren’t enough, the film also showcases noir queen herself Barbara Stanwyck finally (finally!) uniting with Siodmak in the shadows. And boy-oh-boy does she get a humdinger of a role – still identifiably a femme fatale, but seen from a different, fresh angle.

Stanwyck plays the titular character, who one night steps into the office of ADA Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) to report an attempted robbery at the house of the elderly aunt (Gertrude W. Hoffmann) she lives with. But Cleve is near-blackout drunk – it’s his anniversary and his wife Pamela (Joan Tetzel) has invited her father to the dinner, which apparently is reason enough for Cleve to immediately initiate an affair with Thelma. Soon they seem to be in love, and one night Thelma calls Cleve because her aunt has been shot to death. Cleve hurries over and helps Thelma stage the scene, but after finding out she’s just inherited all her aunt’s money, the police still arrest her for the murder. So Cleve begins manipulating things behind the scenes and is soon the prosecuting attorney on the case, walking a tightrope to make it seem like he’s intent to get a guilty verdict while secretly working to free her.

Though Thelma’s ex-boyfriend Tony (Richard Rober) is brought up several times as a red herring, it’s pretty clear that Thelma murdered her aunt, though the audience does not see the murder and she keeps feigning her innocence. Her behavior directly after the murder seems really fucking guilty, and every time Cleve asks her a simply logical question, Thelma says something along the lines of “We don’t have time right now!” or “We shouldn’t be arguing like this!” instead of answering. And yet the ultimate reveal of what went down, though predictable, still feels fresh thanks to the way Thelma explains it, and the moment triggers a Russian nesting doll of plot reveals, all of which happen at a delightful breakneck speed over the final fifteen minutes.

The third act was especially pleasing to me because I was very annoyed by the Cleve/Thelma seduction scene that opens the movie. Cleve is drunk, belligerent and quite nasty – and yet Thelma seems super horny for his drooling self. I watched, my jaw on the floor at how unrealistic the sequence came off. But I should have had more faith in screenwriter (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Ketti Frings (“Guest in the House”), who was working from a story by one of the queens of pulp writing Marty Holland. Frings was keeping her cards close to her chest as to why Thelma was behaving the way she was early, but instead of allowing the character to be a token evil monster, Frings takes pains to humanize her and her motives as Cleve keeps sticking his neck out for her. Could she really have feelings for him?

Less successful is the subplot with Cleve’s wife Pamela. She functions entirely as a plot device, and comes across as so desperate in her appearances that you almost lose your ability to pity her. As the movie fades to black and Cleve welcomes disbarment for his actions, the screenplay still makes a point of saying that Pamela will still probably take Cleve back even after he was an accessory to murder because of the woman he was having an affair with. All that did was leave me with a sour taste in my mouth after the film ended.

Stanwyck is amazing. Because of course she is. Corey seems like an odd choice as the clueless ADA, and plays the role almost robotic in places. It weirdly works, though he has no chemistry with Stanwyck. Still, considering Stanwyck’s motives, maybe it’s better that they don’t? The rest of the ensemble offer up excellent supporting work – even Tetzel manages to make Pamela a little interesting despite the script sabotaging her in almost every scene.

Siodmak was working here with cinematographer George Barnes (“Ladies in Retirement”), and I wish they had collaborated more often. Without making any of the camerawork overly showy, which would have been a mistake considering the content, they still bring the world to life… particularly in the sequences surrounding the murder in the aunt’s house. The explosive car wreck finale is also beautifully rendered and feels fresh despite there being dozens of variations on this scene in noir. It may be the best car accident of its type next to the climax of “Angel Face.”

“The File on Thelma Jordan” is a sweet swan song for Siodmak’s classic noir period. Though it’s not on the level of “Criss Cross” or “The Killers” or “The Spiral Staircase,” not many films are. It’s still a very good movie with a fiery, exciting performance from Stanwyck which alone is worth the price of admission.

Score: ****