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Home , Clash by Night, Die Nibelungen, Fritz Lang bibliography, Human Desire, Jocelyn Brando, Ministry of Fear

LATEST NO STOCKS DVD NO SPORTS NEWS ™ ALL NOIR www.noircity.com www.filmnoirfoundation.org VOL. 2 NUMBER 1 CCCC**** A PUBLICATION OF THE FOUNDATION MONTHLY 2 CENTS APRIL/MAY, 2007 NOIR’S UNSUNG HEROES FNF & UCLA ARCHIVE TO PERCY RESTORE THE PROWLER HELTON By Eric Beetner Work Begins on Pristine New Special to the Sentinel Version of 1951 Masterpiece

hort in stature, stoop-shouldered, and LOS ANGELES, CA—One of the greatest but least-seen noirs, 1951’s often peering through thick glasses, The Prowler, is being restored through a joint effort of the Film Noir SPercy Helton stood toe-to-toe with Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The collabo- many of the best noir performers of the ’40s ration agreement was reached in early April, and work on the project and ’50s. Much of Helton’s charm comes has already begun. If all goes according to plan, the restored film will from his voice, a strange squeak not unlike a be available for its “re-premiere” at NOIR CITY 6 in San Francisco. leaky balloon. This hoarseness came about at Although The Prowler has been screened several times in an early age from a stage role that required recent years, the 35mm print being used is the only one known to him to shout and scream night after night. exist, prompting FNF founder Eddie Muller to remark, “We’re thrilled When the play finished its run and his voice to resurrect The Prowler before that last surviving print dies a gallant didn’t return to normal, he became forever death.” The film, independently produced by Horizon Pictures and relegated to supporting roles. originally distributed by , has never been issued on VHS Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes in The Prowler. His film debut was in 1915’s silent or DVD and rarely, if ever, appears on television. “There are some interesting elements in the archive,” said The Fairy and The Waif (he was the waif) but Written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo (Hugo Butler acted Muller, “Just waiting to be turned into projectable 35mm prints.” his noir debut came in 1947 with Larceny, as his front) and directed by the soon-to-be-blacklisted Joseph Losey, The UCLA Film and Television Archive is internationally featuring , Joan Caulfield and the the film stars Van Heflin as sociopathic cop Webb Garwood, whose renowned for its pioneering efforts to preserve and showcase not only always reliable . Helton is pursuit of lonely housewife Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) leads to classic but also current and innovative film and television. murder. Horizon Pictures was a short-lived production company Additionally, the Archive is a unique resource for media study, with formed by producer Sam Spiegel and silent partner John Huston one of the largest collections of media materials in the United (Keyes’ husband at the time). States—second only to the in Washington, “The UCLA Film & Television Archive is ecstatic about this D.C.—and the largest of any university in the world. Its vaults hold new preservation partnership with the FNF,” said UCLA motion pic- more than 270,000 motion picture and television titles and 27 million ture archivist Todd Wiener. “The Foundation’s enthusiasm and tireless feet of newsreel footage. The combined collections represent an all- efforts in raising awareness for noir cinema preservation is vitally encompassing documentation of the 20th century. important on so many levels. The Prowler is a perfect title to initiate Under their arrangement, UCLA will handle the physical this new partnership, particularly since the Archive recently acquired restoration work, while the FNF acts in a marketing and fundraising pre-print materials that appear to be in excellent shape.” capacity. A significant portion of the restoration budget will come The project will be directed by UCLA restoration specialist from the net revenue earned by the NOIR CITY film festival in San Nancy Mysel. She has also initiated a search of the archive’s exten- Francisco. Author and FNF member James Ellroy has also made a sig- sive holdings for other neglected noirs that may be ripe for restoration nificant contribution, having cited The Prowler as one of his favorite in collaboration with the Film Noir Foundation. films.

Emigrés and Film Noir Percy Helton SEATTLE TO Charlie, a charming and kindly old hotel clerk, the only bright spot in a story of dou- BE LATEST ble-crossers and cheap hoods out to fleece a By Marc Svetov WWII widow. Special to the Sentinel Helton was himself a WWI veteran “NOIR CITY” (earning a distinguished service cross), but nsurmountable destructive human forces SUMMER IN SEATTLE tends to sunny skies—a performing was the only life he ever really unleashed by vast criminal networks, welcome respite for Rain City inhabitants— knew since his childhood, when he was fea- opposed to as well as collaborating with but the Film Noir Foundation will infuse the tured in his father’s vaudeville act. In 1931 I the police force—these criminal gangs, led Northwest movie mecca with darkness this he married a gal named Edna and they took by sociopaths plotting against civilized soci- July 6–12th, when Noir City inhabits SIFF that “'til death do we part” thing seriously. ety, are Fritz Lang’s specialty. So many of Cinema, the beautiful new state-of-the-art Helton is featured in small roles in a his films are populated by the sexually cinema operated by the folks who put on the surprising number of noir classics (21 in all) abnormal: psychopaths, sadists, masochists, Seattle International Film Festival. The 400- such as Call Northside 777 (1948), Thieves’ murderers, suicides, even child murderers: seat theater is located in the Seattle Center, Highway (1948) and Criss Cross (1949) it’s a veritable pantheon of perversion. and boasts impeccable picture and sound. where he plays that Noir stalwart: the bar- One source of Lang’s pessimism is his Fritz Lang Noir czar Eddie Muller will be on tender who knows all the dirt. cultural inheritance; he was the first to film temporary. hand to introduce many of the programs. That same year Percy Helton was , the German national saga, a Mixing unusual angles with bizarre Highlights include rarities that have never ringside for one of the great boxing films of bleak vision of a dysfunctional royal family close-ups, Lang employed an arsenal of been available on tape or DVD like I Love The Set-Up all time, . Director Robert Wise’s and the inevitable cataclysm coming from unique shots as he ordered take after take, Trouble, penned by TV legend Roy Huggins The Set-Up clever use of real time makes a mythic Destiny affecting entire nations. His exasperating his collaborators, treating the (77 Sunset Strip); Pushover, featuring Kim nonstop ticking clock of suspense. Percy vision of the future was , where actors like scenery. His crews were always Novak’s movie debut as a gangster’s moll Helton fit right in to the sweaty locker room again we encounter plans for conspiratorial, on the verge of mutiny. opposite Fred MacMurray’s smitten sap; and of the boxing hall as Stoker’s ring man, Red. diabolical forces let loose by a psychotic His visual style—chiaroscuro light- Phil Karlson’s signature film ; In his tank top and greasy comb-over he inventor. The ending is softened—where ing, shadows, streaks, vast pools of dark- plus a gorgeous brand new restoration of the dishes out tired advice to Stoker as he and Labor and Capital meet—but essentially, as ness, brilliant light; his imagery and themes Technicolor noir Leave Her to Heaven star- (continued on pg. 4, col. 3) with all of Lang, the defeat of evil is only (continued on pg. 5, col. 1) ring the magnificently deadly Gene Tierney. Apr/May, 2007 Noir City Sentinel 5

LANG (continued from pg. 1) newsreel and played in court as evidence, the scene of the mob storming the jail—torches reinforcing a notion of inevitable Destiny blazing in the night, a crowd’s bloodlust vis- within which we are caught as in a spider’s ible on their faces and in their gestures—still web; his architectural-geometrical composi- shocks. tion, a veritable encyclopedia of unconven- Lang followed with You Only Live tional camera angles—was best achieved Once (1937), starring and shooting inside a studio, where he could Sylvia Sidney. It was an early noir about ex- exert control over everything. Fate with a convict Eddie Taylor, played by Fonda, who, large F abounded in all his plots, and was as the film begins, is already a two-time loser matched by a determinism on the part of this looking to avoid a third conviction that will obsessive technician-craftsman who encased mean spending the rest of his life in prison. a film within his own box of constraints. Sidney is his fiancée. Taylor's destiny is Fritz Lang—or God? telegraphed in his half-desperate, half-sub- Lang’s Hollywood career has often missive look. He is accused of robbing a been characterized as sad and unfulfilled, bank—the third strike. They are forced to owing mainly to his own arrogance and become outlaws, hiding from the police. We inability to adjust to America. Whether he want the young couple to escape. The film is, adjusted or not is a moot question, for he incidentally, a forerunner of Nick Ray’s They remained always the same Fritz Lang, his Live By Night, yet Lang’s picture is more films instantly recognizable, whether made Depression-stained, stark and realistic, in Germany or the USA. One has only to revealing a less sentimental strain of pes- , and in Lang’s classic compare him with Billy Wilder, also from simism. It is so uncompromising that at the Vienna via Berlin, to see how very different- end one is actually startled that Eddie’s preg- modern American appliances in their utopian squalid American settings. In 1956, Lang ly the Hollywood careers of two Central nant wife is not somehow rescued. The last suburban splendor. His wife bids him good- directed his final American noirs: While the European emigrés could look. While Wilder shot is unforgettable. bye, departing to run an errand. She starts the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, may have directed a couple of noir classics, In 1944, his noir work picked up again car in the driveway. It blows up! Lang shows which were critically savaged, ending Lang’s there is no question that Lang’s vision bore with , starring . Bannion struggling to get the car door open, career in Hollywood. an even deeper kinship with noir, and that his This is pure Lang, a creation out of a studio smoke pouring out the driver’s seat win- While the City Sleeps features a sexu- work was integral to its cinematic emer- hat, involving a Nazi conspiracy. Set in dow—a distressing scene, considering what al deviant and serial killer: a momma’s boy, gence. wartime England, it is a film that seems to had just been viewed moments before. whose job as a delivery boy affords him Lang arrived in the United States in have jumped out of 1925 Berlin, for its stage- There is an unmistakably strong ele- access to ladies’ apartments. This avid read- 1935 as a refugee; he was a privileged one, bound mise-en-scene, lighting and atmos- ment of sadism later as Lee Marvin throws a er of comic books—Lang was attuned to his however, in that he had been invited to phere are markedly Expressionist. pot of scalding coffee into his girlfriend times—is played by John Barrymore, Jr., Hollywood and did not come penniless. After Lang liked pulp-fiction material—this Gloria Grahame’s face. Grahame, a narcis- who suffers by comparison with cooling his heels for what seemed an inter- reaches back to his Berlin years, too. His film sistic fifties’ pin-up, is transformed by her in M, twenty-five years earlier. Shortly after minably long time, he got an opportunity in partner —his wife until scars into an avenging angel. She aids finishing this film, Lang returned to 1936 to direct his initial American film: 1933—wrote his screenplays. They collabo- Bannion, who has turned in his badge, to Germany. Fury, which is as ambiguous a study of mob rated on all Lang’s German films up to and defeat the conjoined forces of corruption. In In America, trucking from studio to mentality as you will ever find on celluloid. inclusive of M (1931). Harbou, however, the end, Grahame becomes a martyr. The fin- studio, having a home nowhere, Lang was Although Lang viewed himself as a political greeted the chancellorship of Hitler with joy: ish is quite moving. Translated into known as “the man with the monocle”—the liberal and anti-Nazi, this film graphically she turned Nazi. Her loss was a major ele- American terms, Lang’s stoic vision is raised epitome of the German émigré. He later gave cautioned against blind trust in the Goodness ment in the confliction of Lang’s American to a new humane level and is on a par with up wearing it. He loved Hollywood; it cannot of the People. years. his best work. be said that Hollywood reciprocated. The The Woman in the Window (1944) and Lang followed with high points of his American films, however, (1945), pairing Joan Bennett (1954). Ford and Grahame are again paired are very high indeed—and the texture of film with Edward G. Robinson, alongside Dan up, with . This was a noir would be immeasurably lessened with- Duryea, memorable in a minor role in remake of Jean Renoir’s La Bete humaine in out them. Ministry of Fear, were two of those contem- porary films the French famously first got to view after their liberation by American Mr. Modern Noir: Bonus Review troops. Their arrival, plus the films of other exiles like Preminger and Wilder, made a Keep Your Eyes Open profound impression on the French audience and generated coinage of the term film noir. For “The Lookout” Need one say more? Lang entered into a production part- THE LOOKOUT IS EASY TO OVERLOOK. It’s a ments of key 40s heist noirs like Criss Cross nership with Bennett and her husband Walter bare bones independent feature with a scant, and The Killers — back in the day this story Wanger after the success of these two films, scatter-shot marketing campaign, no major would have been told with Lancaster or but the relationship soured after the disas- stars, and a schizoid plot that is tough to maybe John Payne in the lead, Neville Brand trous reception of the psychological noir hang a label on. Is it a character study, a heist or Charles McGraw as the heavy, and any- (1948). thriller, a melodrama of youthful angst, or a one from Ava Gardner to Veronica Lake as (1952), a Clifford depressing portrait of small town American the femme fatale. In 2007 we get the noir Odets melodrama, directed for Howard desperation? It’s all of those — plus it’s pure elements without the noir dressing. No fancy Dan Duryea in Ministry of Fear Hughes at RKO, starring , 100% noir, right down to the droning first clothes, witty wordplay or expressionistic Lang later claimed he had wanted to and Paul Douglas, is char- person narration, used sparingly but effec- shadows here. The employed aesthetic is as portray an African-American as the lynch acterized by sado-masochistic relationships tively. flat and non-descript as the setting, Kansas; mob's victim. We now know this is hogwash, between all its protagonists. This was more The story deals with a fallen high the bleak landscapes and achingly lonesome myth-making on Lang’s part. There exists no Odets than Lang, perhaps. Another minor but school hockey star, Chris Pratt (Joseph ambience echo Fargo, but without the dark evidence he ever considered such a thing. engaging noir followed: Gordon-Levitt in an impressively subtle per- humor. This is serious stuff, boldly non- Actually, the film was based on a true inci- (1953), with and Raymond formance) who causes a fatal car accident commercial in tone though traditional turf dent that occurred in San Jose, California in Burr. which leaves him with brain injuries result- for those who know their noir. 1934; two white men were the lynch mob’s The Big Heat (1953) is considered— ing in random bouts of confusion, memory Writer-director Scott Frank is a veter- victims. (The factual story also served as the beside his two thirties’ masterworks—as the loss and a minor case of Turrets. The kid an traveler of this terrain. As a screenwriter basis of 1950’s Try and Get Me!) greatest of Lang’s American films. It certain- gets a shit job in the local bank, meets a sexy he successfully adapted two Elmore Leonard Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, ly hangs together well as a movie. It begins girl in a redneck bar, then gets sucked into a novels (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) as well as caught up in a strange town, arrested and with a corrupt cop’s suicide. Glenn Ford, as robbery plot by a small gang of odious James Lee Burke’s Heaven’s Prisoners. The accused of kidnapping. He is innocent. Det. Sgt. Dave Bannion, is put in charge of punks. The haunting flashbacks to the tragic dialogue and pacing in his directorial debut Hungry for instant justice, an angry crowd the case—which ultimately involves an night that changed his life twist Chris’s mind are terse and taut, suitable for the rawly real- burns down the jail where he is incarcerated investigation of his own police force. He is into rationalizing the rip-off as revenge istic context. Jeff Daniels hits a career high to get at him. The tables get turned in the end. told to lay off the case. against a world that has betrayed him. as Chris’s blind room-mate and only real Joe had escaped from the burning jail in Lang builds sympathy for Bannion by Ultimately, though, he may choose a second friend. Keep an eye out for this one on DVD time; he is believed to be dead. Through sub- showing him with his wife (), chance at redemption. Therein lies the com- or late night cable. Best viewed with a loved terfuges, Joe can view in court the town’s affectionately joking with each other, kissing pelling conflict. one or a couple of uppers for mood support. own indictment as his “murderer.” Shot as a in an idyllic fifties’ kitchen. One sees the The story structure bears trace ele- —Will Viharo