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AGEE ™ ALL NOIR www.noircity.com www.filmnoirfoundation.org VOL. I NUMBER 5 CCCC**** A PUBLICATION OF THE FILM NOIR FOUNDATION MONTHLY 2 CENTS AUGUST, 2006 THIRD IN A SERIES Bay Teens Caught In UNSUNG HEROES OF FILM NOIR AGEE ON NOIR DANIEL FUCHS “Black Tide,” Survive By Marc Svetov ames Agee’s film criticism, which Special to the Sentinel By Simone Polgar ing style and cultural taste. appeared concurrently in The Nation and The lecture, flowing through sponta- aniel Fuchs (1909-1993) was, and Time during the 1940s, is classic prose Special to the Sentinel J neous question and answer sessions, includ- still is, an underrated writer, and about films that few expected to be classics. A GROUP OF YOUNG film enthusiasts was ed a screening of the 28-minute DVD, his work in film was a labor of His tongue is a bit more tart than usual for D recently immersed in the world of classic Amour C’est Noir, a collection of clips from love for a medium he admitted he could the films we know now as “noir,” but that’s a noir at this year’s Young Critics Jury, held at disparate noir films, assembled by Muller to never quite fathom. good thing. In this installment, Agee breaks the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center emulate, in his words, the “definitive noir He came from Brooklyn — off some classic one-liners, surprises us by in San Rafael, California. The annual pro- storyline.” Williamsburg, to be exact — and went out revealing himself as a fan of Victor Mature, gram, sponsored by the California Film The youngsters heard snappy dialogue west in 1937 on a short-term contract to and consistently demonstrates that he prefers Institute, is an intensive three-day course for (many were getting their first taste of Double write screenplays. He’d already published hard-boiled elements to melodrama. Too bad teens taught by selected film professionals Indemnity), relished some beat-downs, and three novels, each in its own way extraordi- he never reviewed Try and Get Me! from a variety of fields. were exposed to a handful of shootouts and nary: Summer in Williamsburg (1934), —Don Malcolm Film Noir Foundation president Eddie stylized criminal behavior — everything Homage to Blenholt (1936) and Low Muller, this year’s representative “film histo- about noir that is emulated in television Company (1937). Double Indemnity rian,”, held court with a group of students today, but never matched in style. The stu- But in Wilder’s apparent desire to make it ranging in age from 12 to 17 years old. Most dents loved it. The end of the presentation clear that nympholepts are cold he has neg- were aware of, if not fully acquainted, with was met with a chorus of “So cool!” and lected to bring to life the sort of freezing rage the defining facets of noir. When initially “Awesome!” of excitations which such a woman presum- asked whether they understood “what film The Film Noir Foundation had initiat- ably inspires in such a fixer as Walter Neff; noir is,” most of the equally-mixed group of ed almost two-dozen teens in less than two this sort of genre love-scene ought to smell boys and girls expressed a surprisingly good hours, leaving behind a truly exhilarated like the inside of an overwrought Electrolux. grasp of the genre. group of freshly-minted noir neophytes. Wilder has not made much, either, of the ten- Refreshingly knowledgeable about “Turning young people on to noir is sions of the separations of the lovers after the film, the students were quickly engrossed in the most satisfying and gratifying part of the murder, or of the coldly nauseated despair the noir discourse, eager to inquire and Czar of Noir’s job,” Muller said, when asked and nostalgia that the murderer would feel. debate, listen attentively, or — in true noir why he became involved with the program. Daniel Fuchs [from The Nation, 10/14/44] fashion — backchat incessantly. In fact, he said that the Film Noir The class peppered the instructor with Foundation will offer “community outreach” He wrote screenplays for some The House on 92nd Street queries about which contemporary films seminars such as the one with the Young remarkable films, most notably Criss Cross Convincing inadvertent suggestion that the could be considered “noir,” sparking a lively Critics Jury as a integral part of the FNF’s (1949), starring Burt Lancaster, Yvonne FBI functions efficiently less through intelli- discussion about such recent works as Sin mission. If you know of a group that would DeCarlo and Dan Duryea, a noir classic — gence than through doggedness plus scientif- City, Memento, and Match Point. Muller be interested in such a event, contact fnfad- with a powerful, unforgettable ending. Less ic equipment. Effective pseudo-naturalistic traced the roots of these films back to books [email protected]. Information well-known is Between Two Worlds (1944), performances by Lydia St. Clair, Gene and movies of the mid-twentieth century, on the Young Critics Jury program can be an amazing film — not strictly noir — with Lockhart, William Eythe, and others, none of explaining how certain themes retain their found on the California Film Institute’s web- John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Eleanor Parker and Edmund Gwenn, with an over-the-top, (continued on pg.3, col. 1) inherent power, despite changes in filmmak- site at http:/cafilm.org. lush score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It involves a dangerous trip across the Atlantic to America from allied England BLOOD, SWEAT, AND FEAR: during the war, and is notable for its melan- choly and sustained poetic mood due to the THE INK-STAINED GENIUS make-believe world being shown: the audi- ence knows all the people are dead, while OF JOHNNY CRAIG they (seemingly, at least) do not. The film partakes of the same “make-believedness” By Eddie Muller an assembly line, for sure, but one that coupled with earnestness — parallel-world respected the work of its artists, and played vs. life-as-it-is-lived — that one sees in ne of America’s finest tellers of noir up their distinctive styles. some of Capra’s work. Or Cocteau’s. tales wasn’t a novelist or a film Young Gaines ended up creating a Fuchs wrote a very unsparing yet Odirector — he was a comic book taboo-busting cultural phenomena. EC’s compassionate screenplay for The Hard artist. During an inspired five-year burst in popularity surged mainly due to its gory Way (1942), with Ida Lupino in her vintage the early 1950s, using only India ink and Grand Guignol-inspired horror comics, tough cookie mode. And what an ending! (I Bristol board, Johnny Craig evoked a noir which featured grisly finales that gleefully won’t give it away. It’s long overdue for a universe every bit as compelling as what Jim shattered the boundaries of good taste. The DVD release — listen up, Warner Bros.!) Thompson and Fritz Lang were simultane- mayhem eventually earned EC government It’s here that Fuchs begins to master the art ously creating with prose and film. censure for “corrupting America’s youth,” of noir characterization, and The Hard Way Craig, a WWII veteran barely out of and brought about the Comics Code is a key transition toward a full-blown noir his teens, was one of a stable of young artists Authority, which policed comics the way the universe. hired at Entertaining Comics, a small New Production Code Administration regulated Then there is the film based on his York-based publishing house that W.M. movies. Despite the federal witchhunt — or own novel Low Company, which was pro- Gaines inherited in the late 1940s following because of it — the impact of Tales From the duced in 1947 as The Gangster, with Barry his father’s untimely death. (M.C. Gaines Crypt, Crime SuspenStories, Weird Science Sullivan, Akim Tamiroff, and John Ireland. had been a pioneer of the comic book indus- Fantasy and other EC titles is still felt today. Barry Sullivan’s Shebunka is a stellar role: try). Before the brash Bill Gaines took over, What set Johnny Craig apart from his a tortured, self-hating gangster. Fuchs the company was called Educational ink-stained EC comrades was his ability as a always had a simultaneous empathy/con- Comics, and it promoted a stagnant, almost writer. Editor Al Feldstein handled almost all tempt for these low-life hoodlums, men medicinal, roster of titles. Gaines was brim- the plotting chores at EC, but once Craig he’d seen or had heard about at close range ming with piss and vinegar, and had a desire proved himself a yarn-spinner, he established during his Brooklyn days. (Brooklyn was From “Twin Bill,” Vault of Horror #36 to run the company like a mogul ran a studio: (continued on pg. 4, col. 1) (continued on pg. 3, col. 3)

August, 2006 Noir City Sentinel 3

AGEE about native contemporary adolescence as I Daniel Fuchs (continued from pg. 1) (continued from pg. 1) ever hope to see. [from The Nation, 10/13/45] where Murder, Inc. was headquartered dur- whom, however, manage to suggest how ing the thirties; really lousy rats like Albert spies, counterspies and traitors who look and Murder, My Sweet Anastasia, Abe Reles, Harry Strauss, Lepke act like that are not identifiable to those inter- …as Raymond Chandler wrote it, combined Buchalter, Gurrah Shapiro.) ested at five hundred paces. Fuchs wrote the adaptation from an [from The Nation, 10/13/45] about equal parts of poetic talent, arrested- adolescent prurience, and the sort of self-pity unpublished story for ’s Panic in I Walk Alone which, rejoicing in all that is hardest-boiled, the Streets (1950), with Richard Widmark, turns the two former faculities toward melo- Paul Douglas, Jack Palance, Zero Mostel Good performances by Wendell Corey and dramatic, pretentiously unpretentious exami- and a host of character actors; once again Kirk Douglas; a sharp scene about an old- nation of big cities and their inhabitants. The the portrayal of lowlifes, three of whom — fashioned gangster’s helplessness against picture preserves most of the faults and although they think themselves exceedingly modern business methods. Some better than virtues of the book. I suppose a lot that I like clever — are about to become a great dan- ordinary night-club atmosphere. Otherwise about it is not really food exept by compari- ger to the community. As in his novels, this picture deserves, like four out of five son with the deadly norm, from the astute- Fuchs is sad and elegiac about their petty other movies, to walk alone, tinkle a little ness with costuming and sets — over-atten- greed, ignorance and doom. bell, and cry “Unclean, unclean.” tiveness to secondary levels of realism buy- Storm Warning (1951) (co-written [from The Nation, 2/14/48] ing off sharp enough attention to primary — with Richard Brooks) was a classic, with to the rather adventurous but rather arty pho- , Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Key Largo Steve Cochran and a host of others. It is a [John] Huston manages kinds of vitali- very dark film about the Ku Klux Klan in a ty, insight, and continuance within small Florida town, where the KKK is por- each shot and from one shot to the next trayed as a conspiracy of criminals in the which are the most inventive and orig- city, not as the racists they really were. inal, the most exciting and the hardest Steve Cochran is brilliant and pathetic as a to analyze, in contemporary movies; small-time bumbler, but a deadly one caught in the clutches of the Klan (with his own everything that he achieves visually is Criss Cross so revealing of character, atmosphere, connivance, however), with Reagan as a emotion, idea, that its visual and rhyth- crusader against the Klansmen. (It is finally as with his soul-brother John Garfield, went mic rightness and beauty, and the being released on DVD by Warner Bros. in hand-in-hand: both men hailed from poor, freshness and originality themselves, the Reagan Signature boxset.) tough Jewish New York slums and knew the generally overtake one as after- Fuchs won an Oscar in 1955 for his cost of life as it was lived there — of trying thoughts. screenplay of Love Me or Leave Me, star- somehow to “stay straight among the [from The Nation, 2/14/48 ring and Doris Day, a wacky crooked.” That’s why Fuchs can find com- love story, a tale of a mismatch — or is it? mon ground between his heroes and vil- Kiss of Death Murder, My Sweet — between a gangster who wants to pro- lains: his compassion for all of them resists mote a showgirl to a star à la Pygmalion, caricature and, as a result, all of his charac- The script, though expert, is certainly not tography. Neverthess, I enjoyed the romanti- who at the same time, however, wants to be ters are three-dimensional. inspired, and I can’t believe that the director cism of the picture, and much of its acting — loved for it — as a lover. The theme and the A last note: in the recently published and cameraman are better than thoroughly that of Miles Mander, Claire Trevor, Ralfe Cagney character are reminiscent of Low The Golden West: Hollywood Stories competent, either. All of which makes it the Harald, and Dick Powell especially. Even its Company, with the gangster — as was (2005), Fuchs often portrays actors as very more striking, for apparently if good techni- messiness and semi-accomplishment made Shebunka — enmeshed in self-contempt. unbalanced people when they’re not doing cians pay careful attention to the actual me feel better about it than the much better- While he tended to downplay his their job — as people whom one could term world, they can hardly help turning out a finished, more nearly unimpeachable, but achievements, it’s clear that Fuchs was an psychopathic but not necessarily dangerous. movie that is worth seeing… Victor Mature more academic and complacent Double original and an innovator. He almost single- Fuchs had a view of the film industry that is good as the burglar. I have always wished Indemnity. handedly originated urban Jewish-American was simultaneously wide-eyed and jaun- I might cast him right; he is well cast this [from The Nation, 12/16/44] literature, written with his unmistakable diced: his expression of wonder for whatev- time. In any adequate production of the pic- tough-cookie attitude; he then took that tone er it was that made a film work was one of ture he would be still better in a still better My Name Is Julia Ross and made it into a key feature of film noir. the truest representations of that ineffable role: as Diomed in Shakespeare’s Troilus and …a mouse-among-cats thriller, shows bewil- Fuchs said he and others were simply por- aesthetic — something you cannot quite put Cressida. dered Nina Foch, who thought she was mere- traying guys and dames who had hit some your finger on, but you know when a film [from The Nation, 9/13/47] ly a new secretary, trying to escape from hard luck, but these were people filled with just works. The awe of that process allowed a grasping, anarchic passion. No one else him to cut some slack to the people who The Long Night Dame May Whitty and George Macready, who insist that she is respectively their made desperation into something so nearly recited his words. It would be interesting to see it on a double daughter-in-law and wife, and who do their transcendent, thus ensuring an intense audi- His vision — empathic, humane, bill with its original version, the French best to drive to madness and mayhem. The ence identification with the characters. humorous but essentially dark, believing in Daybreak. Both films obviously rate them- film is well planned, mostly well played, Possibly the most sublime example of no political panacea for the human condi- selves as tragedies; both are merely intelli- well directed, and in a somewhat boom- this is Fuchs’s screenplay for Hollow tion — made him a natural for noir. Without gent trash. But the old one is much more dis- happy way well photographed — all around, Triumph (aka The Scar, 1948). Noir has him, the canon would be far less rich and creet with its self-pity and much more a likeable, unpretentious, generally success- never been so ironic and biting, and yet the not nearly so encompassing. sharply edged. The new one depends too ful attempt to turn good trash into decently relationship between Paul Henreid and Joan heavily on crowd-commotion; noise (there artful entertainment. Bennett is touching — strangely tender and NOIR FILMS OF DANIEL FUCHS are gruesome distortions of the slow move- [from The Nation, 11/24/45] vulnerable underneath the cynicism. Proto-noir: The Big Shot (1942), The Hard ment of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony); Toughness and tenderness in Fuchs, Way (1943), Between Two Worlds (1944). huge, lugubrious close-ups of Fonda looking Noir: The Gangster (1947), Hollow adenoidal; and class-angling. It is, however, Will HBO Ride the Wave? Triumph (1948), Criss Cross (1949), Panic much better than the run of contemporary in the Streets (1950), Storm Warning movies. (1951), The Human Jungle (1954). [from The Nation, 8/30/47] Milch, Nunn Create “Surf Noir” Mildred Pierce QUERIES & SUBMISSIONS David Milch, creator of the popular televi- final (uncredited) draft of the over-the-top Nasty, gratifying version of the James Cain sion series’ Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and noir Wild Things. If you wish to submit an idea novel about suburban grass-widowhood and Deadwood, is poised to ink a deal with HBO Nunn and Milch would share writing or a finished article, please email the power of the native passion for money to produce a new series for the cable network and executive producing chores. Managing Editor Donald Malcolm at: and all that money can buy. Attempt made to that he describes as “surf noir.” Serving as Milch last year signed a two-year pro- [email protected] sell Mildred as noble when she is merely idi- inspiration are the books of Kem Nunn, a duction pact with HBO, and some industry Finished articles, no longer than otic or at best pathetic; but constant, virulent, pioneer of the form, whose novel Tapping people were surprised that both the network 750 words, are subject to editing for lambent attention to money and its effects, the Source, was nominated for the American and the producer elected to pull the plug of space and content. Press releases will and more authentic suggestions of sex than Book Award in 1984. the critical hit Deadwood after this season. be edited to conform to style guide- one hopes to see in American film. Excellent Tapping was considered by many to be Milch’s touch does not always assure lines. The SENTINEL does not pay work by Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, the uncredited genesis of the 1991 crime success, it should be noted. In addition to the for articles; all content is contributed. Zachary Scott, and a little girl whose name I film, Point Break. Nunn has written two hits listed, he has also prodcued Beverly Hills We claim no rights on material con- can’t find [Ann Blyth] who is as good an other noir-tinged novels, The Dogs of Winter Buntz, Capitol News, and Brooklyn South, all tributed for publication or posting. embodiment of all that is most terrifying and Tijuana Straits, as well as writing the short-lived.