ANN NO STOCKS SAVAGE NO SPORTS TRIBUTE ™ ALL NOIR www.noircity.com www.filmnoirfoundation.org VOL. 4 NO. 1 CCCC**** A PUBLICATION OF THE FILM NOIR FOUNDATION BIMONTHLY 2 CENTS MARCH / APRIL 2009 BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER IN MEMORIAM DAHL, DEADLINES ANN SAVAGE DOMINATE NC7 By Haggai Elitzur Special to the Sentinel n e l or January, San Francisco’s weather was l A .

unusually warm and sunny, but the atmos- M

d phere was dark and desperate indoors at the i v F a

Castro Theatre, as it always is for the NOIR CITY D film festival. On this, the festival’s seventh outing, Eddie Muller and Arlene Dahl onstage at the Castro most of the selections fell into the theme of news- paper noir. tive MGM when Warner Bros. was tardy in re- upping her contract. Arlene Dahl: Down-to-Earth Diva Dahl described meeting a large group of This year’s special guest was the still-beauti- friendly stars, including Gary Cooper, on her very ful redhead Arlene Dahl, whose two 1956 features first day on the Warner Bros. lot. She also offered screened as a double bill. Wicked as They Come some brief details about her two-year involvement By Eddie Muller was a British production featuring Dahl as a social with JFK, which was set up by Joe Kennedy him- Special to the Sentinel climber seducing her way across Europe. Slightly self. It was a spellbinding interview with a great Scarlet, a Technicolor noir filmed by John Alton, star; Dahl made it clear that she loved the huge ANN SAVAGE CHANGED MY LIFE . . . TWICE. paired Dahl with Rhonda Fleming as bad-girl / crowd that turned out that night, and the feeling The first time was in the dead of night more than 35 good-girl sisters, a tantalizing twosome of flame- was definitely mutual. years ago, when she snuck into my room via a small haired stunners who were surely born to costar in portable black-and-white TV and scared the living day- exactly this kind of a movie. Newspaper Noir: Reactions from the Audience lights out of me. In her onstage interview with festival host NOIR CITY 7’s media theme covered nearly I was in high school, in the early stages of film geek- Eddie Muller, following a compilation of her film two-thirds of the films shown, and proved very dom. A wise old cinema sage—he was maybe 30—told me clips from the 1940s through the 1960s, Dahl popular. “We couldn’t find everything that should that I’d seen nothing until I’d watched a little B picture entertained everyone with her sharp memories and have been shown,” noted Muller. “Even though the from 1945 called Detour. “Wait’ll you get a load of Vera,” warm recollections of the film business. While Film Noir Foundation has made great strides, he said. “The meanest woman in the history of movies, bar appearing in a musical in New York, on her first there’s still a lot of work to be done.” He cited two none.” trip east from her home state of Minnesota, she films—Joseph Losey’s The Lawless (1950) and Cy Vera did not disappoint. She was unlike anything I’d was discovered by Jack Warner. He threw her right Endfield’s The Underworld Story (1950)—as ever seen before, and I fell instantly in love. For me (and into the spotlight, costarring her with Dennis Mor- examples of films still needing rescue. “If we’d for many others, as I’d come to learn), she was the Circe of gan in Technicolor for her first appearance in front been able to screen those in this festival, it would (continued on pg. 12) of the camera. She switched to the more apprecia- (continued on pg. 11)

FUNNY GAMES AND THE HISTORY OF HOSTAGE NOIR

By Marc Svetov same title. It is not clear why he remade it, Sentinel Contributing Editor since it is shot-for-shot identical aside from the different, English-speaking actors and erman writer-director Michael the American setting. Perhaps the reason Haneke’s Funny Games (2007) had something to do with Ms. Watts, whom G follows a simple plot: Two prep Haneke admires and who returned the school–aged louts in short pants and white compliment by acting as his producer. gloves (Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet) invade There are two models for Haneke’s a middle-class family sanctum inhabited by film. The 1924 murders perpetrated by a father (Tim Roth), mother (Naomi Watts), Leopold and Loeb provide the ur-model and son vacationing in upstate New York. for the “inexplicable” killers. Alfred Hitch- They proceed to humiliate and torment the cock’s dissection of vaguely brilliant family. No reason is shown. The violence preppy killers in Rope (1948) is, of course, occurs off-screen throughout the film, but also a benchmark. In addition, Richard the special effects are acoustically Fleischer (Compulsion [1959]) and Tom omnipresent and unambiguous as the vio- Kalin (Swoon [1992]) provide contrasting lence is perpetrated. but equally iconic versions of real-life Funny Games is a Hollywood re- botched kidnappings. Naomi Watts in Funny Games make of Haneke’s 1997 German film of the (continued on pg. 10) 10 Noir City Sentinel March / April 2009 bus driver, kill him, and take five peo- What is interesting, however, is who went right. Bogart also embodies HOSTAGE (cont’d from pg. 1) ple hostage in a bar. that the family is usually shown to be March’s selflessness. But while But there is also a choice list of The finest of all hostage noirs is capable of defending itself, often March’s extends to his entire family, noirs dealing with families taken The Desperate Hours (1955), directed resorting to violence to escape its cap- Bogart’s extends only to his kid hostage. by William Wyler, with Fredric March tors and save the lives of loved ones. brother. Ultimately, each man displays Storm Fear (1955), produced and and Humphrey Bogart as its two duel- This can culminate in rather gruesome a mirrored appetite for destruction. directed by Cornel Wilde, starred Wilde ing protagonists. and sadistic scenes, as in Suddenly, Jack Kelly in The Night Holds alongside Dan Duryea and Jean Wal- Why were so many hostage noirs when one of the criminals is literally Terror intends to do as much harm as lace (Wilde’s real-life wife). It portrays released in the 1950s, the decade of fried to death via a massive electric he can to his family’s tormenters, hold- a not-very-wholesome family disinte- middle-class dreams of suburban peace shock contrived by granddad with the ing back only to spare his wife and two grating rapidly under the duress of an and harmony? Recovering from the assistance of the TV repairman. children, since at least two of the three invasion by a bank-robbing brother not-too-distant national traumas of In The Desperate Hours, Fredric criminals are homicidally unpre- (Wilde), wounded during a robbery. He World War II and the Depression, March is Bogart’s doppelgänger. Bog- dictable. But the bad blood between arrives at his brother’s mountain cabin America took to heart a triad of whole- art even acknowledges it, remarking on Kelly and Vince Edwards threatens to home with his two accomplices to hide some, moralistic received beliefs: rais- how he sees the wheels whirring in unhinge things, and Kelly is barely from the police during a seemingly ing a family, being a decent neighbor, March’s mind as the family father pulled back from primal vigilantism. endless winter snowstorm. The “good” respecting the law. Yet filmmakers in schemes against him. The escaped con- There is a deep ambiguity in brother (Duryea) is actually the bad those years were obsessed with night- vict sees his own ruthlessness reflected these hostage noirs. While the family’s brother, however: a bitter, sickly, failed marish portrayals of the violent inva- in March, but this mirror image is also right to defend itself is not questioned, writer. The strange twist [spoiler alert!] sion of this world by criminals. the man Bogart never became, the man there is an ever-present knowledge that is that the wife is Wilde’s former lover its wealthy idyll has been gained at the and still in love with him, and that expense of those cast out by society. Wilde is the real father of the couple’s The narratives hold up a mirror to son. America, showing that the American The Night Holds Terror (1955), dream is not created equal and leaves written and directed by Andrew L. many out in the cold. Stone with Jack Kelly as the husband Our feelings toward the hostage and father and Hildy Parks as the wife, takers consistently veer toward empa- deals with a family at the mercy of thy. Bogart in The Desperate Hours is invading criminals John Cassavetes, ultimately a truly pathetic man, while Vince Edwards, and David Cross. kid brother Dewey Martin becomes an In Suddenly (1954), directed by inadvertent victim—the true victim in Lewis Allen, Sterling Hayden is a cop the film, in fact. The pitiable loneliness in a small California town, and Frank of a loser hovers about Sinatra’s char- Sinatra is an ex-Army sharpshooter acter in Suddenly, while Cornel Wilde’s who passes through and holds a family portrayal of the criminal in Storm Fear hostage in order to assassinate the Pres- is outright sympathetic. While Mar- ident. shall Thompson in Dial 1119 and Cry Terror! (1958), also written Neville Brand in Cry Terror! are and directed by Stone and starring Rod clearly psychopaths, they are also lam- Steiger, James Mason, Neville Brand, entable persons for whom one feels and Inger Stevens, is a strange blend of pity. terrorist tactics and traditional hostage- Nor are the “good guys” always taking on the part of a criminal gang. angels. Even Jack Klugman, an accom- The convicted killer (Marshall plice of terrorist mastermind Rod Thompson) in Dial 1119 (1950) has Steiger in Cry Terror!, gets to display escaped from an insane asylum and signs of having moral scruples about quickly proceeds to steal a gun from a killing kids in cold blood, thus hinting at the possibility of redemption, moral- ity, and the limits of evil, even for bad Marshall Thompson holds bar patrons hosage in Dial 1119 (top); Humphrey guys such as he. Bogart terrorizes Martha Scott in The The filmmakers of an older era Desperate Hours (center); Vince Edwards who made hostage noirs were not threatens Hildy Parks as cohort David Cross watches in The Night Holds Terror naive. In The Desperate Hours, direc- (bottom left); and Naomi Watts is con- tor Wyler shows a clear understanding fronted by homicidal teens Michael Pitt of what drives people to do evil, to and Brady Corbett in Funny Games March / April 2009 Noir City Sentinel 11 inflict sadistic acts on “nice folks.” He (cont’d from pg. 1) knew what it was that had to be NOIR CITY 7 have made for a pretty definitive puts a smile on everyone’s face.” defended, too. examination of the theme.” Both Bogart films—Deadline-U.S.A. Funny Games is a spawn of this As it was, viewers still got to (1952) and The Harder They Fall tradition, but the ambiguity has been enjoy quite an array of features. (1956)—received extremely enthusi- tossed out with the bathwater. In an Well-known titles (Ace in the Hole astic responses. interview, Haneke claimed, “[I wanted [1951], Sweet Smell of Success to] show real people who suffer real [1957], While the City Sleeps [1956], S.F.–NOIR CITY Bond Continues pain.” But, like all directors of fiction, The Big Clock [1948]) mixed with Huge audiences, frequently he employs actors who are only actors; some rarities (Shakedown [1950], reaching into four figures, packed thus what he shows is actually not too Blind Spot [1947], Chicago Dead- the seats night after night. The col- different from what any Hollywood line [1949], Night Editor [1946]) to lective experience of seeing these action film shows: actors pretending to both captivate and baffle audiences, often-obscure films in high-quality suffer pain. who found an interesting historical prints with large, appreciative audi- Others who have tackled this resonance in the media theme. ences is unmatched. The pleasure is, fundamental dilemma of bringing Two that evoked especially certainly, largely attributable to the more realism to their art, such the Ital- positive responses were Shakedown combination of San Francisco film- ian neorealists or Robert Bresson (one (thanks to the shameless antics of goers’ love of noir and the top-notch of Haneke’s role models as a film- Howard Duff’s character) and The venue, the Castro Theatre. maker), found more convincing solu- Unsuspected (1947, with its scintil- NOIR CITY’s radius has tions. Comparing Funny Games with lating cinematography and a great already expanded to Los Angeles, Bresson’s pessimistic-but-moral mas- performance by Claude Rains). “I Seattle, and Washington DC, with terpiece Au hazard Balthasar (1966) was surprised to find that Wednesday Chicago coming in summer 2009. reveals that Haneke shares his men- night’s double-feature of While the Plans are also in motion for a trans- tor’s dispassionate technique, but none City Sleeps and Shakedown was the atlantic festival in France, ground of his compassion. best-attended night of the entire fes- zero for the first identification and Even more here than elsewhere tival,” Muller commented. “It says celebration of film noir as a genre. in his oeuvre, Haneke is didactic. He everything about the San Francisco No matter how far-flung the seems to be lecturing to the audience filmgoing audience. They are the circuit becomes, however, there’s no through his characters, in the form of a savviest fan base anywhere, and they question that San Francisco has harangue directed at present-day love noirs (Shakedown) set in their earned the title Muller bestowed on America. It seems that he wishes to hometown.” it during the very first NOIR CITY sting them for their viewing habits, And then there’s Humphrey in 2003. “This is noir city. Not New their voyeurism and taste for violence. Bogart. “The affection for Bogie is York. Not L.A. My hometown, San Among his devices is the breaking timeless,” noted Alan Rode, Film down of the so-called fourth wall. The Francisco.” n Noir Foundation board member. “He two young killers talk directly to the camera, and one of them uses a remote-control reverse-action device to erase the death of the other young killer, presumably to frustrate the audi- ence’s expectations. Haneke’s “alienation effects” are anything but new; they’ve been a sta- ple of the avant-garde since the birth of modernism. The film’s intentions are painfully obvious. Goethe had an apt quote for this: “One infers the intention and one is annoyed.” Carrying Haneke’s stated goals to a new level of extremity, Funny Games defiantly denies the audience its catharsis— ironic, given Haneke’s credo that film is catharsis! What remains is an unpleasant taste, and the feeling that Funny Games is trying to say that the victims—the family members, in their splendid, obliviously privileged isola- tion—deserve what is happening to them. Such a stance may seem edgy in its now-timely anti-Americanism, but the real result is to rob the film of any tension or ambiguity. Nothing in the story keeps you waiting to see what will happen next, since the plot is pre- dictable. Its protagonists, killers and family alike, make little sense as peo- ple and less than that in terms of what Images of NOIR CITY 7: Ms. Noir City they do. They remain flat and abstract. 2009, Alycia Tumlin, stops traffic in Haneke’s film tries to kidnap the con- front of the Castro Theatre (top left); a cept of humanism itself—a quality that full house watches the Wednesday-night double feature (middle left); Bill Arney, was never discarded in the 1950s the “voice” of NOIR CITY, in the booth hostage noirs, even at their most (above); shipping cans filled with brand- new prints from Universal (left) unseemly—and botches the job. n All photos by David M. Allen