Odd Man Out (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Odd Man Out (1947) – C. Reed

One of the first DVDs I ever bought, but it has been ages since I watched it.  James Mason stars as one of the leaders of the IRA in Belfast, Johnny McQueen, who has been hiding out after escaping from prison but is now planning a payroll robbery in order to finance their operations. Yet from the start things don’t go right – Mason plays McQueen as tentative and uncertain and director Carol Reed (later famous for The Third Man, 1949) uses expressionistic touches to show McQueen’s wooziness as he gets into the car to head to the job.  Of course, the subsequent heist suffers as a consequence and McQueen kills an innocent employee during the escape while also being shot himself. He then falls backwards out of the getaway car, with his panicked partners leaving him passed out in the road.  From there, the movie depicts McQueen’s journey through the snowy night in Belfast, encountering numerous supposed loyalists and other friendly souls, none of whom assist him enough to help him back to safety. At the same time, McQueen experiences delirious hallucinations, as he is both dying and coming to terms with his crimes. There is a burning spiritual fever in Johnny as he attempts to avoid the police dragnet – but to what end? Kathleen Ryan is in love with Johnny and wants to rescue him, but neither she nor anyone else can see a way forward beyond Johnny’s pre-ordained fate. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker shot the film as a blend of postwar neo-realism (the slums of Belfast), film noir (the chiaroscuro lighting and dark themes), and expressionism (McQueen’s visions distort reality). To me, the film seems to share structure and themes with Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), which also follows a man on a journey from life to death, offering a critique of society on the way. In both films, humans struggle with difficult moral decisions where right and wrong can confusingly depend on the eye of the beholder.  Yet, at the end of the day, as the police inspector hunting Johnny succinctly states, for him, there is neither bad nor good, only innocence and guilt.

 

A Double Life (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A Double Life (1947) – G. Cukor

I’ve had this DVD for a couple of decades and it is a comfortably familiar watch, reminding me of my time in the theatre (high school and some of college). Ronald Colman (who won the Best Actor Oscar for this part) plays Tony John, a Broadway leading man, currently starring in a smash hit comedy but being enticed to consider Othello as his next big role. Screenwriters Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin use their knowledge of the theatre to good effect to bring authentic backstage drama to the screen. Director George Cukor allows Colman the latitude to develop his character, an actor who allows his parts to intrude too much into his personal and daily life (cue expressionistic sound and visions).  So, when it comes to Othello, we see Tony John gradually start to seethe with jealousy – which is easy because he is still in love with his ex-wife Brita (Signe Hasso), playing Desdemona, and suspects she is falling for press agent Bill Friend (Edmond O’Brien).  Earlier in the film, when mulling over the part of the Moor from Venice, Tony stumbles into an Italian restaurant and he ends up going back to the cheap apartment of the waitress (Shelly Winters) for a one-night stand (she does not recognize him). Three hundred performances later, out of his mind with jealousy, he returns to her apartment, confused and tormented – and the film turns noir.  Although Colman’s take on Shakespeare is hammy, the use of the Bard’s scenes to subjugate his inner psychological conflicts, unconsciously, is pretty genius.  Although I never acted in Othello, I fondly recall my time doing Shakespeare during the Advanced Studies Program for NH kids at St Paul’s School (summer of 1984).   Tis truth, his lines have entered our culture, even if we’ve long forgotten their derivation: Othello (and Tony John by implication) “loved not wisely but too well.”

Body and Soul (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Body and Soul (1947) – R. Rossen

Not just another boxing noir, but one that uses the sport as a vehicle (or metaphor even) to attack capitalism and its ill effects on individuals and society.  (It might come as no surprise that star John Garfield, writer Abraham Polonsky, and director Robert Rossen and many more from the cast and crew had trouble with blacklisting via HUAC – but Rossen named names and escaped their fate). Charley Davis (Garfield) is from a poor background and, after his father dies, the only way that he can see to bring money into the house is by boxing; in other words, the only way to get ahead is to beat up somebody else.  Of course, it is even worse because the fight game is corrupt; to secure a chance at the title he needs to make a deal with a gangster who then arranges for his opponent (a poor black fighter with a blood clot in the brain) to take a dive in the final round.  As soon as he reaches the top, Davis is surrounded by people addicted to money – and soon he is also hooked into spending big, taking cash advances against his next purse, and constantly needing more.  His idealistic artist girlfriend Peg (Lilli Palmer) eventually tells him that it is boxing or her – and he leaves her for a gold-digging floozy.   Of course, the moment finally comes when Davis himself is asked to throw a fight so that the gangsters can bet against him (the sure favourite) and make a killing.  Suddenly, Davis has some moral qualms (supported by Peg and his mother, played sternly by Anne Revere) – the final fight, shot intensely by James Wong Howe, doesn’t disappoint. I’m not sure the metaphor holds up completely (“everybody dies” seems to be another way of saying that capitalism has no mercy) but we know that the rich get richer and the gangsters are not going to sit quietly at film’s end. 

 

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) – G. Seaton

When was the last time I watched this? Not for a while and certainly not with kids by my side.  We are at that time when the boys may be doubting Santa’s existence, so this movie which confronts that issue directly was particularly relevant.  They were both glued to the screen but indicated afterward that the movie was “not the best” (but it is hard to take that judgment seriously – although it could be a general disdain for B&W films as a whole).  Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle who is recruited by Maureen O’Hara to “act” as Santa for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and then in the store meeting with children. However, he claims to be the real Santa and eventually falls foul of the store’s psychologist, despite passing all of the mental exams they could provide.  Fortunately, when he is assigned to a commitment hearing, he has lawyer John Payne in his corner. Payne is also romantically interested in O’Hara, who by the way has been raising her daughter Natalie Wood not to believe in Claus.  Gwenn sees it as a personal challenge to convince them – but he and Payne also have to convince the New York Supreme Court that Santa is real and Kringle is him.  Of course, they do!  I teared up a few times, I must admit. 

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Monsieur Verdoux (1947) -- C. Chaplin

Long, peculiar, and ultimately very bleak and biting. Great moments of suspense mixed with weird comedy. Numbers sanctify, indeed. (2009 review)

Out of the Past (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Out of the Past (1947) – J. Tourneur

Quintessential noir with as many of the features of the genre as you would hope to find.  Of course, film noir as a genre has been constructed post hoc, so director Jacques Tourneur wasn’t exactly working from a formula – but this wasn’t the first noir, so something was definitely in the water.  Robert Mitchum plays a detective hired by arrogant rich Kirk Douglas to find his girlfriend (Jane Greer) who shot him and absconded with $40K.   Mitchum does catch up with her in Acapulco where they idle away their days until they decide to doublecross Douglas and hole up in San Francisco as lovers.  Ultimately, though, they are tracked down by Mitchum’s ex-partner, now working for Douglas.  All this is shown in flashback a number of years later with a voiceover by Mitchum as he relates his past to new love interest Virginia Huston in the small town where he has escaped to run a gas station.   He’s finally told her the sordid details because Douglas has finally found him again and called him to Lake Tahoe for a meeting.  It turns out that Douglas has another job for him, one that he can’t refuse, one that might be a frame-up.  And that doesn’t begin to detail the complicated plot that ensnares the laid back but fatalistic Mitchum.  Showing the noir protagonist’s true disdain for his own welfare, when the femme fatale starts to reveal some of the ensnaring complications, Mitchum utters the classic line, “Baby, I don’t care…”.  But he should have.  A masterpiece of the genre.

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) – E. Kazan

This is the movie where Gregory Peck plays a journalist who goes undercover as a Jew in order to experience anti-Semitism himself for a magazine series he is assigned to write.  So, immediately, it seems somehow wrong or in bad taste.  But obviously director Kazan and the team had their hearts in the right place and the result (although flawed) is shocking and overt – not the sort of dialogue you hear in films of the time.  And the decision to target those who are complicit in allowing prejudice to continue by not speaking out against it when they hear it from friends, family, or others -- even though they disagree -- is a good one (and in fact this was the focus of my Ph.D. dissertation, although I focused on anti-Black prejudice, conspicuously ignored here).  Dorothy McGuire is brave to play an unlikeable character who passively allows the country club set to continue their bad jokes and exclusionary policies.  Although the whole thing feels dated, so do most films of the 1940s, right?  Prejudice hasn’t disappeared but often isn’t as overt – except toward certain groups where somehow some still feel free to express it publicly (sexual minorities, Muslims, unfortunately).  Again, as the film points out, the obvious bigots are the ones you can fight and the subtle complicit types are more nefarious.  Gregory Peck is wooden but is able to demonstrate the distress and pressure a target of stigma must feel, especially when speaking out; John Garfield seems more authentic as Peck’s Jewish friend when he explains the actual experience. The point here, and in my dissertation, is that we need to make certain that the norms of the situations (and world) we inhabit do not allow expressions of prejudice and we need to do that by countering it vocally wherever we see it, no matter how difficult that may be.      

Quai des Orfevres (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Quai des Orfevres (1947) – H.-G. Clouzot

A dogged policeman (Louis Jouvet) investigates a married music hall couple after a repugnant film producer and pornographer turns up dead in Clouzot’s first post-war film (prior to well-known thrillers Les Diaboliques and The Wages of Fear).  Not exactly noir and not exactly police procedural but blending elements from these genres with the backstage musical (albeit the particularly French kind).  Bernard Blier (the husband and accompanist) is spurred to passionate jealousy by Suzy Delair’s (the wife and singer) willingness to flirt with producers to advance her career.  Thus, he is suspect number one when she gets mixed up with the soon-dead producer – or perhaps she is suspect number one – or perhaps their lesbian friend downstairs is suspect number one?  With Jouvet on the trail, the clues start to fall into place in a satisfying way – although Clouzot is much more interested in l’affaire de coeur than in any diddly-squat murder investigation.  Top notch.

  

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) – O. Welles

Classic film noir from Orson Welles, famous for its nearly incomprehensible plot, but rife with stunning set-pieces (the aquarium, the funhouse, the hall of mirrors, Acapulco, San Francisco’s Chinatown) and odd characters (Everett Sloane as Arthur Bannister, Glenn Anders as George Grisby).  Welles stars as Michael “Black Irish” O’Hara, sporting a not quite passable brogue, who falls for Rita Hayworth (as Mrs. Arthur Bannister), his soon-to-be ex-wife in real life, and ends up on trial for murder (in the film), defended by Bannister himself, a famous trial lawyer (and trickster).  O’Hara’s narration seems trustworthy but no one he meets on the yacht trip from NYC through the Panama Canal and on up to San Francisco possibly could be.  He tells us himself that he was a fool for chasing Mrs. Bannister who may or may not really love him but when Grisby hires him to kill Grisby, he really should have walked away.  Nearly every scene contains a flourish of some sort or another, lending a degree of ostentatiousness that feels different from the more integrated stylishness of Citizen Kane; here, the backgrounds are busy and details might be thrown in on a lark (because Welles likes Chinese opera perhaps) and the whole thing starts to feel crazy and cock-eyed and not nearly as serious as noir would later get. But Hayworth in her blonde makeover is unfathomable as the archetypal femme fatale, getting done over by her own husband, on screen and off.  Not to be missed. 

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Ride the Pink Horse (1947) – R. Montgomery

Set in a New Mexican nowhereland, Robert Montgomery's weird noir casts himself in the lead as an alienated GI hunting down a war profiteer (with strange hearing aid) who killed his friend. He is assisted by Thomas Gomez as Pancho, Wanda Hendrix as Pila, and Art Smith as Retz, who take a liking to him for no apparent reason, because he is not a nice guy (and does not have nice motives). Perhaps you could say he is rehabilitated through his stay in the small town and his contact with these kind souls and this reaffirmation of community is what is needed for the post-war period when people felt jaded and burnt.

Boomerang! (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Boomerang! (1947) – E. Kazan

From the producer of “The March of Time” comes this police procedural cum courtroom drama cum righteous social justice proclamation, directed by Elia Kazan.  Kazan famously named names to McCarthy’s HUAC, so he knew a thing or two about moral decision-making and the stresses upon it.  But here in the mid-to-late ‘40s, he can’t make up his mind about whether we the people need to be protected from the government (corrupt) or the mob (able to be galvanized to hate).  Indeed, it falls to local District Attorney Dana Andrews to choose whether to indict a possibly innocent man (for the murder of a beloved priest) and score political points that might put him in the governor’s office or to do the right thing by him.  Richard Murphy’s Oscar-nominated screenplay succeeds in showing the political context surrounding the work of both the police and the D. A.’s office and heaps as much pressure as possible on Andrews (who is good at showing this kind of stress – see his work in Fritz Lang’s films).  Lee J. Cobb glowers in support and Arthur Kennedy is good as the accused. This all leads to a theatrical and very sudden conclusion that makes you feel better about justice than you should be feeling given the state of the world in 2015.

  

Brighton Rock (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Brighton Rock (1947) – J. Boulting

Sir Richard Attenborough (RIP this year) provides a psychotic turn as an (impossibly) young gang leader in the seaside town of Brighton.  First, he hunts and kills a newspaper reporter who told too much in the press (leading to a gang member's death). Then, in trying to create an alibi, he more or less dominates a young waitress by pretending he is in love with her to make sure she doesn't talk.  Moody and with a good sense of place -- but also suspenseful (like a good detective story) when Hermione Baddeley's character gets on Pinkie's (Dickie's) trail and starts collecting evidence to turn over to the police.  The ending -- some call it a "trick ending" -- is a surprise and I think I like it (everything pushes you to expect something different, which of course must eventually happen anyway).  Graham Greene wrote the original novel and the screenplay here;  Catholicism does play a role.  A very good Brit noir.

T-Men (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

T-Men (1947) -- A. Mann

Anthony Mann teams up with cinematographer John Alton to create an archetypal film noir (falling into Paul Schrader's theoretical middle period where police procedurals and "realism" came to the fore -- here we see an actual Treasury official introduce the story). Dennis O'Keefe is undercover to break a counterfeiting ring -- and finds himself in a lot of danger. All shadows and fog, uh, I mean steam.

Le Silence de la Mer (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Silence de la Mer (1947) -- J.-P. Melville

Melville's first film is very good indeed.  Drawn from a popular short story circulated by the French Resistance during WWII, it depicts a German officer taking forced lodging with an elderly French man and his niece.  The German is full of romantic notions of a merger of French poetry and literature with German classical music, a marriage of two cultures, and although the man and his niece refuse to speak to him or even acknowledge his presence, he delivers them nightly monologues that make him a sympathetic character.  Unfortunately, the reality of the Nazis' aims is eventually made clear and the German is seriously disillusioned.  Melville's attention to small details (and sounds) is already apparent and he decorates the film with expressionistic touches (point of view shots, close-ups of eyes, distant views of Chartres, etc).

Black Narcissus (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Black Narcissus (1947) -- M. Powell & E. Pressburger

A perennial favorite, now with extra detail and more appropriate technicolor on blu-ray. The Archers, Powell and Pressburger, score a bullseye with this adaptation of Rumer Godden's tale of nuns transplanted to the Himalayas.  Of course, they slowly go crazy, due to culture shock, altitude, what have you.  Beautiful to watch and full of the heightened emotions that seem so extreme in these otherwise repressed Brits. There are a few glimpses of the attitudes of the times (toward the "primitive" locals) but generally these beliefs can be attributed to the characters not the filmmakers. This is a must see (for art direction alone!).