A few coming up this week that shouldn't slip under your radar, especially if yo've never seen them. All times are
CST. Links are to trailers or clips.
Sunday, June 8
9:30am –
D.O.A. (Rudolph Mate 1950) – A film noir classic! A small town CPA goes on vacation to San Francisco. Feeling ill, he is diagnosed with radiation poisoning and is told that he only has a few days to live. He spends those days trying to find his killers and why he was targeted. Rudolph Mate is one of film’s most important cinematographers:
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer 1928);
Vampyr (Carl Th. Dreyer 1931);
Dodsworth (William Wyler 1936);
Gilda (Charles Vidor 1946). This is his finest movie as a director.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS_FIrQaS9Y With Edmund O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Beverly Garland, Luther Adler &, one of the best heavies in film noir, Neville Brand. A must-see. [Entire movie on YouTube.]
Monday, June 9
1:00am –
Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus 1959) – Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture. Modern re-telling of the myth of Orpheus set in Rio during Carnivale. Dance, music (Luis Bonfa & Antonio Carlos Jobim!), and black magic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkxGkL7o9xk A must-see.
3:00am –
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau 1949) – The myth of Orpheus set in Paris. It’s Cocteau...it’s beautifully surreal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_o9l3OqPMk With Jean Marais. A must-see.
Thursday, June 12
1:30am –
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah 1973) – Wealthy ranchers hire Pat Garrett as sheriff. His mission: kill his old friend, Billy the Kid. Two links here: the first is the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-e47wAkg9g & the second is one of the most poignant scenes in movie history (according to the lump in my throat that I get every time I watch it).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFxwq33rVAs With James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, Barry Sullivan, Jason Robards, Bob Dylan, Slim Pickens, Rita Coolidge, Jack Elam, L.Q. Jones, Harry Dean Stanton, Elisha Cook, Jr., Gene Evans & Dub Taylor.
1:15pm –
Outrage (Ida Lupino 1950) – Ann (Mala Powers in her first leading role) is the happiest gal in the land because her long-time beau, Jim (Robert Clarke), has asked for her hand in marriage, and her parents approve. Leaving work late one night, she is raped by the food truck vendor whose stand she eats at most days. Traumatized, she rejects her fiancee's demands that they still marry and interprets every glance, touch and chat toward her as a criticism of her. She gets on a bus to L.A. Leaving the bus in the middle of nowhere when she thinks she'll be discovered, she passes out on a country road. Ann is rescued by Rev. Bruce "Doc" Ferguson (Tod Andrews), a single middle-aged saintly sort, who gets her a room with the Waltons and a job at the Walton's packing plant. She and Doc grow closer. At a community picnic and dance, a plant worker (Jerry Paris) puts the move on her, she relives her rape, clubs him with a wrench, and runs away...to a secluded spot she has shared with Doc. Doc finds her there, takes her back to the community, discovers her past, gets her the help she needs, and convinces the prosecutor and judge to drop the assault charge against her because "this world has created neuroses." Doc tells her that her parents want her back and Jim still wants to marry her. He puts her on a bus to go home, then looks to the sky and says, "Thank you."
That's the synopsis, but the camera is telling us much more. The rape sequence: Ann leaves work at night, whistling merrily. When she senses she's being stalked, she stops whistling and starts walking faster, then running, and trying to hide in an alley and behind trucks. In an homage to M, the stalker whistles (to try to get her to see it's a friendly face, or to stop her for the rape? There are no aural clues because there is no music.). We see parts of her, running left to right, through slats on the trucks. She falls and the rapist is upon her...but as soon as she sees him, there is a cut to her walking home, disheveled and wobbly. The scene seems to take forever, and tension mounts throughout. When she is hit upon later, Lupino replays the rape sequence in reverse. It's daylight in the country, not night in the city. We see the worker's advances. She falls to the ground. We see her re-living the rape. She clubs him and runs, in bright sunshine, right to left, and we see parts of her through slats in a fence.
Recurring Lupino themes and motifs: A young woman whose life is shattered by a single event. Dance as a normalizing activity. Her negative (saddened) reaction to other people after the shattering event. A woman who is reactive rather than being an agent of her own, with men -- even with good intentions -- who end up being the controlling factors in her actions. A man who cares for her who is good, disabled in his own way and, in effect, asexual (
NOT WANTED - bum leg and sexually reticent;
NEVER FEAR -- wheelchair bound and suppresses his desire). Here, Doc has only one lung due to a war injury, which is the basis for not putting tobacco in his pipe (or, as Herr Doktor Freud might say, the pipe is a phallic symbol and sans tobacco = impotence) and, though he clearly yearns for her, he behaves with gallantry bordering on prudishness. His look to the sky is thanking God for removing temptation. And, as with
NEVER FEAR, there is some ambiguity to the ending that creates the possibility that it is a false happy ending
a la Sirk. Will she complete this bus ride and go home? And, if so, will her life really be different and better?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzfd0yqFY4 Out-of-Print. A must-see. [Entire movie on YouTube in multiple parts.]
4:15pm –
On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray 1952) –
Why do you make me do it? You know you're gonna talk! I'm gonna make you talk! I always make you punks talk! Why do you do it? Why? A favorite film noir by a favorite director (Note: Ida Lupino directed portions of the movie as well). A bitter and cynical city cop gets sent to the boondocks to help investigate a murder. Everyone is transformed. Written by A.I. Bezzerides. And my favorite Robert Ryan performance (did he ever have a bad one?).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU-B-krF3QU With Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino & Ward Bond. A must-see.
5:45pm –
The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino 1953) – In spite its rural setting, largely occurring in daylight, and nary a fedora, upturned trench coat collar, raindrop or femme fatale to be found, it is safe to say that The Hitch-Hiker is universally considered to be an example of film noir. How could it not be with RKO's go-to noir cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca (
The Spiral Staircase,
Out of the Past,
Clash by Night), co-writer Daniel Mainwaring (
Out of the Past,
The Phenix City Story,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers) (he's uncredited, likely due to a conflict between his political views and studio boss Howard Hughes'), and stars Edmund O'Brien (
The Killers,
White Heat,
D.O.A.), Frank Lovejoy (
In a Lonely Place,
I Was a Communist for the FBI) and William Talman (
The Woman on Pier 13,
Big House, U.S.A.). But I like to think that Lupino, as the self-described poor-man’s Don Siegel, put her own stamp on things so that, like her other films, it is a twisted Domestic Melodrama. O'Brien and Lovejoy are two married men out for some bonding. Into their little family comes a virulent outside agent, Talman...a "real" man with a real gun that is always on display and used quite frequently (start dialing Herr Doktor Freud now). Lovejoy discloses that he has a child (potency). O'Brien does not. Lovejoy has a rifle -- a big gun -- and Talman orders him to shoot it...at O'Brien passively placing, then holding, the target. Talman orders O'Brien to put his arm around Lovejoy as they drive. Lovejoy remains calm, collected and logical throughout their capture while O'Brien gets intermittently hysterical. Lovejoy takes care of O'Brien when he gets hurt. Talman commands O'Brien to get undressed so that they can exchange clothes (
yikes!). And, at the climax, it is Lovejoy who fights Talman over the gun and gets it out of his possession...and O'Brien slugs Talman in the face only after Talman is in handcuffs and being held by the police. Yes, a twisted Domestic Melodrama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFKpbMjba5c A must-see. [Entire movie on YouTube.]
Friday, June 13
1:00pm –
The Woman on Pier 13 (Robert Stevenson 1950) – Perhaps better known under its other title,
I Married a Communist, but it’s more interesting to watch than many Red Scare movies. Oh, and it’s a Noir. An ex-Commie has done well in business, but is ripe for being blackmailed into spying for not-so-ex-Commies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCVBt-cDL4I With Robert Ryan, Laraine Day, John Agar, Thomas Gomez, Janis Carter & William Talman.