LATEST NO STOCKS DVD NO SPORTS NEWS ™ ALL NOIR www.noircity.com www.filmnoirfoundation.org VOL. 2 NUMBER 3 CCCC**** A PUBLICATION OF THE FILM NOIR FOUNDATION MONTHLY 2 CENTS AUG / SEPT, 2007 MARK THOSE CALENDARS PSYCHIATRISTS IN FILM NOIR FNF Opens DATES SET FOR SINISTER SHRINKS MySpace NOIR CITY 6 A Quick Taxonomy of the “Couch Trip” “Hideout” Frisco Fest Shaping Announcing the launch of the Film Noir By Don Malcolm mind for self-serving (and often downright Foundation on Myspace! We have taken Up As Biggest Yet Sentinel Managing Editor malevolent) purposes. up residence in a dark alley in the vast Let’s look at the categories: NOIR CITY 6, the latest edition of the most metropolis that is Myspace.com and sychoanalysis and film noir? A natural popular film noir festival in the world, will you’re invited to come on by and knock combination. With so much aberrant SURROGATE-DETECTIVES:Blind Alley, be held January 25 - February 3, 2008 in San back a few. If you aren’t already on behavior abounding in its reels, noir Conflict, The Dark Mirror, The Dark Past, Francisco, California. Once again, the his- P Myspace it’s easy to set up an account, has a direct pipeline to all matters of charac- Experiment Perilous, Possessed toric Castro Theatre, one of the nation’s few then you can join the fellow noirheads ter deterioration. Not every one of these surrogate remaining movie palaces (built in 1922), will and FNF members out there in cyber- There’s a broader cultural context for Sherlock Holmeses is a pipe-smoker (Lew serve as the host venue. space. We will feature a weekly rotating the infiltration of Freudian ideas into Ayres, in The Dark Mirror, prefers lemon Producer Eddie Muller and program- trailer of the week showcasing a classic American film, of course, and there is a drops), but you get the idea. mer Anita Monga maintain the program will Noir film trailer, tons of pictures, posters wealth of academic literature showing how Every one of these psychiatrists is again feature a number of films that haven’t and most importantly - you! The whole film is a medium most suited for displaying engaged in some kind of cat-and-mouse been screened in 35mm for decades. “The idea behind Myspace is social network- psychological concepts. game with a troubled, often violent person. studios are more responsive than ever to our ing so it will be a forum for discussion But it is clear that film noir made the Blind Alley is the template here; made search for obscure but worthwhile titles,” with a weekly topic or opinion poll but most consistent use of these ideas, and often in 1939, it’s not quite noir, but has lots of says Monga. “Which means we’ll again be mostly it is a place to gather like a digi- employed the psychiatrist as a central char- locked-room tension between pipe-chomp- able to surprise audiences with some movies tal local watering hole. We’re just the acter. We’re going to focus on those films ing Ralph Bellamy (in a surprisingly not available anywhere else at this time.” bartenders, you’re the skirts, molls, gun- within the noir canon that made the psychia- nuanced performance) and gun-toting It is also expected that the Film Noir sels, henchmen, goons, brutes, pretty trist a pivotal portion of the story and theme. Chester Morris, who has a dark secret from Foundation’s first full restoration project, the boys and dames who make it what it is. And, yes, an entire film festival can be his childhood that the doctor must reveal in 1950 classic The Prowler, will have its debut So sign up, chat away, and invite your constructed from this sub-genre of noir: order to neutralize him. (The Dark Past, in screening at NOIR CITY. Work on the film friends for a dark ol’ time. It only works more than two dozen noirs have a psycholog- the post-WWII wave of noir, is a very close is currently underway at the UCLA Film and if you spread the word. Just this once, we ical specialist, often distinguished from the remake). Television Archive. encourage you to sing like a bird and rest of the cast by his pipe-smoking habit, The most offbeat of these films is the “We’ll soon announce the lineup of give away the address to our little hide- either solving a crime, caring for a troubled period “melo-noir” Experiment Perilous, films,” says Muller. “Expect an eclectic out: patient, failing to cure a patient (sometimes which boasts one of the earliest historical assortment. Ten days, 21 films. That’s the www.myspace.com/filmnoirfoundation plan. Plus lots of additional surprises.” with fatal results), or using their powers of (continued on pg. 6, col. 1)

Emigrés In Noir MAX OPHULS NOIR’S STEALTHY MODERNIST

By Marc Svetov Ophuls, despite studio interference, managed Special to the Sentinel original concepts of art and filmmaking, albeit often through charm and stealth. MAX OPHULS WAS A DIRECTOR who Among the émigrés, however, he had to be a sneak. To make the films he appears to be the one who was most recalci- wanted—and to put in what was initially trant in adapting to the United States. His disapproved by the studio brass—was a mat- acclimation was worse than even Fritz ter of the director being, as Martin Scorsese Lang’s , and certainly worlds apart from termed it, a “smuggler.” younger émigré directors like Robert James Mason remarked on the ways Siodmak and Billy Wilder, who quickly felt of dealing with front office constraints on comfortable and established. Ophuls’ habits maverick directors, citing the examples of and tastes remained European, even old- Max Ophuls and Orson Welles: “Ophuls was fashioned; despite this, he proved to be a sufficiently sophisticated to know what Fier filmmaking revolutionary—perhaps against [Jack Fier, Columbia production office rep- his will. resentative for The Reckless Moment] stood Max Ophuls (1902-1957) was born in for, to understand his job, to know he was a Saarbrücken on the French-German border. hatchet-man, whereas Welles was too imma- While he was more than a little contemptuous ture, really, to give people credit for trying of Hollywood, he succeeded in doing his best to do their jobs conscientiously.” Welles had work there. His best films—two noirs: just finished The Lady from Shanghai at Caught (1949) and The Reckless Moment Columbia, where he had coined the public (1949)—were done while working under complaint issued against the studio and front tight studio-dictated budget and time con- office encompassed in the protest: “We have straints, demands Ophuls always managed to nothing to fear but Fier himself.” Whereas (continued on pg. 7, col. 1) Aug/Sep, 2007 Noir City Sentinel 7

OPHULS (cont’d from pg. 1) meet, albeit by his own methods. By story and modern urban setting, shadows-and- light camerawork, both films rate as full- blooded noirs. Consider those key scenes in The Reckless Moment where a visual chorus of quivering shadows is commenting on the psychological state of the protagonists, as the silhouettes of every branch of pine needles— indeed, each leaf, shaken by the wind through the trees—flits across the walls and their faces. It is a striking image. Max Ophuls was a strange fish—you might say one out-of-water. He was a man of the the- ater; he had been the director of countless plays on the provincial German stage and advanced to Berlin in the early thirties. His mind and aesthetics were molded, in Europe, by the German and French classics; he had a literary bent, clearly seen in his choice of film subjects while on the Continent. Yet Ophuls evolved into a supreme film modernist. His theatrical foundation was manifest in a lifelong preference for ensemble work; in his use of lengthy tracking shots; in his Above: Max Ophuls on the set in practice of long rehearsals alone with actors, Hollywood, 1948. in the absence of the film crew, before cam- eras rolled. He once remarked how he Right: Barbara Bel Geddes and Robert abhorred cuts in movies. Ryan in Caught. Those long shots were Ophuls’ trade- mark: he thought in terms of a mobile mise Consider one famous scene in Caught, an en scène. In addition to the traveling shots, extended and idiosyncratic shot where Dr. there was the crab dolly—it could move the Quinada (Mason) is pacing about, talking to camera up and down as well as sideways, go his partner Dr. Hoffman (Frank Ferguson) above and follow behind. His avoidance of while going back and forth between adjoin- close-ups and the stretched traveling shots ing doorways, from his office to his partner’s was in notable contrast to many of his male Ophuls’ longing for the Old World and set him apart and made him subversive in office, paying no attention to any camera, contemporaries. its culture overcame him eventually. Late in relation to Hollywood classicism, which leaving the room and disappearing. This In his European films, before and after 1949, he left America for France. At the tended toward short takes, covering shots, scene made the studio tear its hair out: what his stint in America, women in his movies time, he was still under contract with Walter close-ups of the stars. His words: “Moving a way of shooting a scene, with a star like appeared concerned with their sexual life Wanger and fully intended to return. Soon pictures should move.” At the wrap party for Mason! It went against all current ideas for a alone. Joan Bennett in The Reckless Moment after, in Europe, he wished he was back and The Reckless Moment, the crew presented star, without a close-up in sight. But Mason is light years removed from that; look how said so many times. But he would never Ophuls with a pair of roller skates, “to keep was in agreement with Ophuls, and wanted tough and hardboiled she is in addressing return to America. up with the camera” on his next film. to do it that way. At the same time, Ophuls Darby during their first meeting. Leonora in His Hollywood work had been accom- Ophuls’ theatrical predilections were did away with rules for shooting a master Caught learns not to rely on her sexy figure plished under budget, under deadline. Great both his greatest strength and greatest weak- scene—it looks as though the camera were and girlish charm: once she is confronted by films entailed getting away from visual con- ness. His editor on Caught, Robert Parrish, eavesdropping, not shooting. a selfish, sadistic and possessive “dream hus- vention: due to serendipity, something unex- noted: “With Max, first of all, you couldn’t Ophuls was the exception proving the band,” she finds herself a job and a new pected like a delay, for instance, Ophuls cut these shots, because they were designed; rule on women in film noir. He made two meaning in life. would get in another of his beloved tracking they were moving. And this sharp, clever “feminist” films. In film noir, ladies in lead Nor would Ophuls allow any of the shots, especially when he had temporarily man knew that’s what would have to be the roles ended up being, more often than not, figures in his two noirs to be parodies either. fallen behind schedule. Squeezed into a picture.” Ophuls thought and conceived his either femmes fatales or hapless victims. Yet We never see what amounts to a denuncia- lengthy tracking shot were several con- films in these dolly and tracking shots, with in this director’s imagination, his two main tion of a human being, something done more densed script-pages from a few scenes. The prolonged takes—not as separate, individual female protagonists—Barbara Bel Geddes as often in movies and literature than is gener- only extra costs involved were in cutting images. His visual thought formed itself in Leonora and Joan Bennett as Lucia Harper— ally acknowledged (the sole exception: Bea’s open three walls of an interior in order to dramatic scenes, like in the theater. are strong dames. Ophuls rendered them as loutish boyfriend Darby in The Reckless move the camera around, a crane needed to Yet this style proved astonishingly active players in their lives without being Moment). Robert Ryan’s portrayal of the film at 180 or 360 degrees, or laying down modern in mid-twentieth century film. evil witches; this artistic and ethical choice driven, egotistical and psychopathic multi- track. The front office would request cover- millionaire Smith Ohlrig in Caught is a vil- ing shots from alternative angles; Ophuls lain if there ever was one—yet it is a portray- dispensed with these, thus using up little al far surpassing parody. Ophuls’ conscious film. As a result, production bosses and edi- cynical entries, featuring Joan Bennett at the fantasies here, at the time, were set on sati- tors found themselves helpless to alter his SHRINKS (cont’d from pg. 6) peak of her beauty and her weltschmerz. rizing Howard Hughes and Preston Sturges. work. In effect, the studio was forced to getting his feet wet. Most memorable here, Henreid discovers that psychiatry is easy, but When Smith Ohlrig orders Leonora to play accept how Ophuls filmed because he was so perhaps, is Carlson’s definition of insanity: that the man whose place he’s taken has far hostess to his businessmen-guests well after economical with time and money. “It’s just like a nightmare, only you have it in more pressing real-life problems than he bar- midnight, taunting and humiliating her, the If the director did not exactly become the waking hours.” gained for. director claimed that this was identical to another person as a filmmaker in America, Finally, there’s the evil Dr. Amthor The second type is what we might call how he’d seen Sturges act with his own wife. he did become a more modern and focused (Otto Kruger) in Murder, My Sweet, whose a “handler.” This type is superbly embodied Sturges was a disaster: Ophuls’ disap- one. America must have cleared his mind. psychological skills are part of a nasty little by Robert Keith in The Lineup as Julian, an pointment in the wartime comedy The film noirs appear sui generis when seen blackmail racket. Not too much emphasis on aging crook who tries to regulate the raging director/writer was complete. After he’d lan- next to his European work. Here, by virtue of psychiatry here, but the effects of psychoac- aggressions of the unhinged mobster Dancer guished in Hollywood for four years since his stealth, he became a modernist master, tive drugs get an interesting treatment as we (a great performance by Eli Wallach). Julian arriving in 1941, his first directing job came striking out in new directions. “He [Ophuls] witness Dick Powell’s “crazy, coked-up tries to use a home-brewed mantra of stoical through Sturges’ independent company, Cal- was steadily gaining in stature, I think,” said dream.” misogyny and soothing exhortations to keep Pix, whose financial backer was Hughes. Douglas Sirk, “and developed fully only in things in hand, but it’s all to no avail. Soon after, however, Sturges took away the America. There’s a different handwriting … SUBSTITUTES: Hollow Triumph What is especially noteworthy here is film from him. No reason was given. He not and I do think the American period, though (aka The Scar), The Lineup the subtext: a late-50s America clearly head- only took it away, he actively humiliated the not especially rewarding to him, helped him There are two types of “stand-in psy- ed for its present-day incarnation as a self- émigré director. Hilde Ophuls later claimed to arrive at his most personal style.” chiatrists” here. The first is Paul Henreid as a help culture, where the homeless person you it was because Sturges could not allow ruthless crook who impersonates a psychia- bump into on the street may well be a “street another director to do a picture without inter- Marc Svetov is a regular contributor to the trist in Hollow Triumph, one of noir’s most healer”—or a down-on-his-luck psychiatrist! fering and eventually taking it over. Sentinel.