Film Pairing — Phillip Marlowe At His Best, Mike Hammer At His Worst

If you read through my blog, you’ll notice that while I’d like it to help market my books, I’ve not avoided subjects that might alienate a portion of the population. The only exception is that I won’t write about new books that I don’t like. I don’t feel I have the credentials to judge, especially in cases where such judgments might affect sales and therefore livelihoods.

Kiss Me Deadly

Old movies are different. And I’m sure I’m on my way to offend a great number of noir lovers.  I think Kiss Me Deadly is a horrible movie.  While Mike Hammer is not my favorite kind of private eye, the fault lies not with Mickey Spillane or the legendary character he created.  The director apparently decided to turn a P.I. story into science fiction and redefine Hammer.  No longer merely a tough guy, Hammer (Ralph Meeker) becomes a sociopath.  I wanted someone to kill him early on.

I’m in the minority here.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it 97 Percent.  The only thing I would give it is that if you want to take a trip back to the U.S.A.’s paranoid fifties, this is worth unearthing from the time capsule. One other plus: Cloris Leachman makes her first big-screen appearance in one of the film’s most interesting scenes.

Murder My Sweet

Admittedly, Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe is a more personally appealing P.I.  More wit, more humor. Over the years the character has been blessed with portrayals by Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, James Montgomery, and James Garner. He’s also been played by Dick Powell, an actor whose films and TV shows I tried to avoid from my post adolescence to the onset of my senility. Cry Danger (1951) changed my mind.  Fortunately so or I might not have watched Murder My Sweet (aka, Farewell My Lovely), in which he plays a wonderfully complex Marlowe, at once vulnerable, dogged, tough and funny.

Both films are set in LA.  Kiss Me Deadly shows you the city in 1955.  Murder My Sweet, which co-stars Claire Trevor, was released in 1944.  For those who wish to imbibe, the night’s cinema, no matter how you pour it, suggests some sort of whiskey — on the rocks if you’re a dame or a dandy.

Film Pairing — Cry Danger, The Big Combo

The two main attractions to noir, for me, are the stark, shadowy cinematography and the crisp, tough dialogue that often accompany them. Cry Danger has the banter — some of the best of the genre. The Big Combo has the photography. Maybe only Night of the Hunter catches the dark world of crime on celluloid as well.

While I was growing up I remember watching Four Star Theater. The idea was that four major stars would take turns making high-quality dramas for TV, still in its infancy. There was some confusion in the launch, but in the end the four big-screen Hollywood stars that would grace little ole network TV were Dick Powell, David Niven, Charles Boyer and Ida Lupino. For some reason I never looked forward to the Powell installment. He always struck me as an announcer-type, the emcee introducing Jack Benny. A leading man? I didn’t understand it.

What I hadn’t seen was Powell in his heyday. After Cry Danger, it’s clear I must go back and see Powell in all this early movies. He was the perfect wise-ass hero, delivering one-liners as well as anyone. The film, (1951), set in Los Angeles, is about a guy released from prison who wants to find the money he was accused and convicted of stealing. Richard Erdman is a witty, cynical alcoholic conman who becomes Powell’s best and most trusted friend. The femme fatale is Rhonda Fleming. We also see a slim, or relatively slim William Conrad play one of the bad guys. The film has guns, blond bimbos, big old Nash automobiles, and trailer courts. What else could you want?

The Big Combo, a name that unfortunately makes it sound like a special from Pizza Hut, was made a few years later in 1955. It stars Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Jean Wallace and Brian Donlevy, who gives the best performance of the film as an aging tough guy. Conte, as a heartless gangster, does a good mean and his destruction is police lieutenant Wilde’s obsession. As good and evil battle it out, the big star of the movie is cinematographer John Alton, who makes what little illumination there is in the film glow as if it were more spirit than light. Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef play minor thugs who share a bedroom. There were a few other moments that must have given the overly prudish 1950s censors pause. Then again, they may have missed the subtle, scandalous innuendoes.

Though less than clear about which big city was the setting for the Big Combo, it was definitely a big city — a Chicago or New York. Cry Danger was definitely L.A. That being the case, maybe we soften the hard liquor a bit. Maybe it’s a whiskey and soda over ice kind of thing.