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Home , Clash by Night, Clash by Night (play), Clifford Odets, Frances Farmer, He Walked By Night, Night Music (play)

LATEST NO STOCKS DVD NO SPORTS NEWS ™ ALL NOIR www.noircity.com www.filmnoirfoundation.org VOL. I NUMBER 7 CCCC**** A PUBLICATION OF THE FOUNDATION MONTHLY 2 CENTS OCTOBER, 2006 SPOTLIGHT ON Film Noir Featured at UNSUNG HEROES OF NOIR SUNSET BLVD. Hollywood 3-D Expo By Marc Svetov By Don Malcolm By Alan Rode lifford Odets (1906-1963) was the Sentinel Managing Editor Sentinel Senior Editor American dramatist with the greatest he recent deluxe DVD edition of Cinfluence on film noir. In terms of Double Indemnity got me thinking THE WORLD 3-D EXPO FILM FESTIVAL II, dialogue and character portrayal he was at about Billy Wilder and his contribu- after a three-year hiatus, returned to the least the equal of the pre-eminent hard- T Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood September boiled American crime writers of that era tion to film noir. And that got me thinking about Sunset 8-17, featuring a collection of classics and (Hammett and Chandler) who created a Blvd. oddities that, in some cases, hadn’t been tough, urban, uniquely American language. No, not the thoroughfare itself, though screened in half a century. Odets listened to the streets—but he some of my fondest memories from youth Fortunately for pop culture enthusiasts invented a language; he had to pull it out of revolve around that legendary, serpentine and 3-D film buffs, Jeff Joseph, producer of a hat. At the point he arrives on the scene, journey from the Pacific Coast Highway to the 3-D Expo, reneged on the vow of 3-D there were no clichés to lean on—only an downtown LA, a drive more tortuous today abstinence he took immediately after the pre- inner voice. than ever before. vious Expo, back in 2003. The first festival Odets could listen, hear it and write No, I mean Wilder’s savage-yet-tender had taken an exhausting year to prepare. it. He fashioned the tough, witty, painfully send-up of the grim, bizarre facts of life in “Although Expo I was wildly success- honest and ultra-sarcastic talk we now asso- Tinseltown. ful, we swore we never do one again,” said ciate with novelists like Saul Bellow and These two noirs bookend the classic Joseph. “But then some film elements were Philip Roth. In addition, he fashioned a cer- “dark film” era, which really comes to its discovered, some studios started to be very tain cynical, wily Hollywood chatter—the Rubicon in 1950-51, as Hollywood’s purge helpful, one thing let to another … and here banter of the wiseguys, with words and reaches its final fadeout. While Double we are.” phrases that ensnare, go straight to the heart Mitchum and Darnell dangle in the 3-D and wound, heightening drama, starkly illu- Indemnity ushered in the hard-boiled crime The 3-D classic films shown during melodrama Second Chance. caper, raising Cain (as in James M.) to a new the festival were all 35 mm prints screened minating his characters’ inner workings. level of estimable nastiness, Sunset Blvd. using the ‘double interlock’ Polaroid system. The 35 features, screened over ten His stories are shot through with shined a shadowy, sinister beam of light into This system uses two cameras filming left- days, included several film noirs, including aspiring actresses, small-time hoods, mega- the underbelly of the movies, with a panache eye and right-eye images that are projected The Diamond Wizard, Inferno, The Glass lomaniacal producers, sacrificing agents, that is still amazing today. using two polarized filtered projectors that Web, I, the Jury, and Second Chance. The abused and tragic wives, go-get-a-buck-at- One interesting fact about this film is operate in synchronization. When the images first two films were exceptional and merit any-price wheeler-dealers and business- that Wilder’s mordantly witty dialogue and are projected on a screen that maintains the special comment. men—all the elements defining troubled, carefully crafted camp leads some people to polarization, 3-D glasses permit each eye to As the ‘right-eye’ negative for The tortured humanity in the big city. the conclusion that we’re not really in noir perceive the correct image. This system was Diamond Wizard had never been exposed territory at all. Let me debunk that notion by used to theatrically screen the classic 3-D prior to the festival, the screening of this film quoting a higher authority, the Czar of Noir films during initial release back in the early was a genuine 3-D first! himself, Eddie Muller, who tells it like it is at 1950’s and is vastly superior to the anaglyph The game was clearly afoot in The his web site: method that uses red and blue glasses to Diamond Wizard and there are few better (continued on pg.4, col. 1) view like-colored images. practitioners of the noir crime drama than ace scripter John C. Higgins (T-Men, Railroaded, Raw Deal, , and CHANDLER SANS MARLOWE He Walked by Night). The underrated Dennis O’Keefe is an American agent working in the UK, tracking GRAPHIC NOVEL IS down diamond thieves that killed his friend BASED ON ’40s and fellow agent. It turns out that his erst- while girl friend (Margaret Sheridan) has a SCRIPT, NOT BOOK foreign-born Dad who looks nothing like her and is an atomic scientist who also happens Let’s celebrate the American release of to have disappeared before some authentic- an interesting “graphic novel” version of looking but artificial diamonds arrive on the Raymond Chandler’s original screenplay underworld scene and threaten to flood the version of Playback, which did not feature legitimate diamond market. When the clues Philip Marlowe, (It was only after the screen- start piling up, then Sheridan disappears, all Clifford Odets play was shelved by Universal—after hell starts breaking loose. shelling out $100,000 to Chandler for writing Even better was Inferno (1953), a top His work became more and more it—that it was transformed into the seventh notch film that proved once again that self-referential over time—later, the palette Marlowe novel.) movies don’t have to have complex story expands to include ruined, drunken actors, This screenplay was published previ- lines or be laden with special effects to be the hopeless and the doomed, dwellers in ously (The Mysterious Press’ Raymond richly entertaining. tinsel, cheap movie whores—anyone whose Chandler’s Unknown Thriller), but it’s taken The story has a classic flashback plays an eccentric and integrity has been bartered away, a sweaty, twenty years for graphic novelists to pick up sequence early on, where the mysterious ruthless tycoon (a probable screenwriting breathless pantheon of the wracked and on it as a source of inspiration. woman, Betty Mayfield, is shown to have a nod towards Howard Hughes) who is aban- wounded. As is often the case, we see the French serious burden from the past. Her murder doned in the California desert by his beauti- He showed the underbelly of the go- deriving fresh inspiration in noir themes: conviction is overturned by a judge, and it is fully lethal wife (Rhonda Fleming) and her after-it ethic—success, which tastes bitter, Paris-based graphic artists Ted Benoit and a most unpopular decision, forcing her to go amoral lover (William Lundigan). As Ryan and then its myriad of indignities, the Francois Ayroles collaborated to produce a on the run. Her travels take her to Vancouver, struggles to survive in the Mojave with a shame of prostitution to gain it, those who rough-hewn, shadow-laden exercise in where she winds up mixed up in another broken leg, the nefarious duo who left him to have sacrificed everything to get the golden black-and-white that does justice to the visu- murder. In yet another plot element borrowed die cover their tracks and send the tortoise- ring—its worship in America, and its hol- al elements clearly present in Chandler’s from Laura, the policeman assigned to the like search effort in opposite directions. lowness. screenplay. (continued on pg. 3, col. 3) (continued on pg. 4, col. 3) (continued on pg. 3, col. 1) Oct., 2006 Noir City Sentinel 3

of J.J. Hunsecker was modeled on Walter (cont’d from pg. 1) Clifford Odets Winchell, because there were other colum- In a sense, he boosted failure—he nists at that time wielding such power; it saw human dignity was contained in the was a final handful of nails in the coffin, struggle, in a series of humiliations and con- and the day when these types of columnists tradictions, which formed depth and led could define what the public thought was often to a moment of truth when there gone for good. Odets’ concise, threatening comes a side-stepping of the hectic pursuit banter, ever drawing blood, is unbeatable of status and what is termed success; well, here. “Making it” à la film noir is defined as his was a vote for the losers. It remains, if going to hell down a sordid, increasingly you take him seriously, something revolu- slippery slope. tionary. (1952), directed by Odets was a politically aware writer , is notable for its malicious dys- ing to the voice and persona of Philip Playback (cont’d from pg. 1) who nevertheless shunned even his own functional groupings of sad couples, with Marlowe. politics when writing about living human Paul Douglas dominating the picture, beg- case falls in love with Betty and tries to find The American edition, recently made beings. There was something in what he ging to stoop to love a ways of exonerating her, but finds himself available after having been published in portrayed that said things were simultane- poor slob like him, was true Odets fare. conflicted by his feelings and his sense of France in 2005, features an excellent intro- ously doomed, yet one could still have His penchant for pointed, hysteria- duty as pieces of evidence emerge that ductory essay by film historian/noir afi- hope; something fundamentally pessimistic tinged dialogue was perhaps best epito- appear to put her in a damaging light. cionado Philippe Garnier, whom some of in tone and at the same time erupting in mized in (1955), directed by The final sequence, where Betty is you will remember from his commentary in hope for—us? We all die, we fail in the , with , Rod being spirited away on a boat, possibly by the recently-released A.I. Bezzerides docu- end—but he made it make human sense Steiger, Ida Lupino, —and the real culprit, is quite affecting; it would mentary. because what he created was a drama show- in an unforgettable support- have made for a visually arresting denoue- There’s no question that this version ing it to be like that. And, moreover, there ing role as an utterly ruthless corporate ment, one that could have approached the of Playback is preferable to the reworked was some dignity. henchman burying the bodies for a dictatori- level of expansive intensity that pervades Marlowe title that was published a year He started out in the Great al, histrionic Hollywood mogul. This is Double Indemnity. The above panels give an before Chandler’s death. It’s readily avail- Depression as a dramatist with the Group Odets’ ultimate statement about Hollywood, idea of how gripping this final sequence able at low prices, so be sure to snap one up. Theater in New York. “The Group” was a as seen through the lens of one man’s moral would have been if filmed in the “high for- In the wake of our disappointment with geyser of major talents; Lee J. Cobb, John decline and self-destruction. The over-the- ties” noir style that was in vogue at the time recent neo-noir releases, it would be sensa- Garfield, , , Art top dialogue and melodrama heated to the Chandler originally worked on the script tional if someone would be inspired by the (1947-48). work of Benoit and Ayroles and take the next The original Playback, as rendered logical step, which would be to produce a here, really shows that Chandler was no one- full-blown “period neo-noir” from trick pony when it came to noir. Here is Chandler’s top-notch but long-overlooked another script that validates his ability to effort. bring off an intricate mystery without resort- —Don Malcolm

ago, it was the choice residential district of Marlowe (cont’d from pg. 2) the city, and there are still standing a few of In one sense, this is interesting in that the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porch- it gives us an informal ranking of Chandler’s es and walls covered with round-end shin- novels in terms of their quality and style. But gles and full corner bay windows with spin- from another perspective, it just doesn’t dle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, seem right that those two books should be their parquetry floors are scratched and left holding the bag. worn through the once glossy finish, and Descriptions of are rather wide sweeping staircases are dark with time skimpy in this volume, and while some of and with cheap varnish laid over genera- that may stem from Asher’s attempt to avoid tions of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard land- retracing the steps taken by Silver and Ward, ladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide it does tend to make the book seem incom- cool front porches, reaching their cracked plete. The High Window has many evocative shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit descriptions of specific Los Angeles places; the old men with faces like lost battles. A tense supper-club seminar in ; Odets adapted the screenplay how hard would it have been to utilize at So while The Long Goodbye is from ’s novella Tell Me About It Tomorrow. least one quote from the book? For example: arguably Chandler’s greatest literary Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, achievement, it’s clear that he had his word Smith, , , boiling point seem to confirm Odets’ claim shabby town, crook town. Once, very long mojo working back in those early days, too. Roman Bohnen, , Karl of being inspired by opera. It is similar to a And there are analogous passages in Malden, Leif Erikson, . feeling I always got with early Scorsese Playback that deserve a place in such a col- Individually and collectively, these artists films set in New York—a melodrama trans- lection. laid the foundation of the toughly urban, lated into filmed opera. Tornatore Returns These are minor quibbles, however. true-to-life, tragically bittersweet style, Odets wrote the screenplay from a The seductive power of Chandler’s prose which would later inform Film Noir. The Cornell Woolrich novel for Deadline at with “Noirish” will win you over, and you will be glad to Group and Odets, their greatest dramatist, Dawn (1947), with , Bill have this tiny volume available to tuck into a epitomized a naturalistic American stage Williams, and Paul Lukas in an unusual role Stranger coat pocket or a purse and keep on hand to with an urban setting—and Hollywood used done so amiably and smoothly, leading to a get a daily dose of Marlowe—something ROME — Five years after his sensual Sicily- them all. finish with its still surprising but typically that no one venturing out onto the mean set Malena, Giuseppe Tornatore returns to Odets’ key screenplays include: The Woolrich twist. streets should be without. the screen with a psychological thriller fea- Sweet Smell of Success (1957), with Burt Odets wrote the most muscular, con- —Don Malcolm Lancaster and Tony Curtis, a devastating cisely self-searching words in all of film turing an enigmatic Eastern European au movie whose knife-wielding dialogue fairly noir; he was its poet. Published work con- pair, played by Margherita Buy. stabs a hole in the audience’s head. What an sists of: Six Plays, Sweet Smell of Success “It’s a tale of mystery revolving QUERIES & SUBMISSIONS array of pathetic, monstrous, fetching dou- (screenplay) and The Time Is Ripe: The around the emotional life of a strange ble-dealers, street-wise innocents, including 1940 Journal of Clifford Odets, all still in woman,” the Sicilian director has said. If you wish to submit an idea the faux naif sister of the all-powerful J.J. print. Other key dramas, almost all of La Sconosciuta, to be entitled The or a finished article, please email Hunsecker, who actually knows how to which became screenplays/films, were pub- Stranger for U.s. audiences, is budgeted at Managing Editor Donald Malcolm at: defend herself against her big brother and lished in the following order: roughly E8 million ($9.4 million), and pro- [email protected] the complete cynic Sidney Falco: she will (1940), Clash By Night (1942), The Big duced by Medusa, which co-produced Finished articles, no longer than either throw herself off the balcony or Knife (1949), The Country Girl (1951). Malena with Miramax. 750 words, are subject to editing for deflate and defang her big brother’s While some feel his use of language “Though there are no killers hiding in space and content. Press releases will attempts to ruin her prospects for an inde- is dated and over-wrought, Clifford Odets the shadows or investigators hot on their be edited to conform to style guide- pendent happiness by leaving him flat. clearly cut a swath through his own times, heels,” La Sconosciuta may become labeled lines. The SENTINEL does not pay How empathetic Odets could be casting a significant shadow over the evolu- a noir," said Tornatore. The film was shot in for articles; all content is contributed. about Hunsecker, however, still knowing tion of “urban film” for half a century. His Trieste, the melancholy windswept Eastern We claim no rights on material con- him to be a louse! I don’t go for the idea work remains credible and, in many cases, Italian seaport where James Joyce wrote tributed for publication or posting. that Lancaster ’s vicious, pathetic portrayal enthralling. You won’t get it anywhere else. Ulysses.