Film Pairings — Noir, Here and There

Sometimes it takes a moment to adjust to the old black and white films. But once you do, you might wonder why so few filmmakers use the medium.

Ida Lupino And Robert Ryan

There are are a few B & W masterpieces nearly everyone has seen — The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and Citizen Cane. There are others, many others that are worth a couple of hours of your time. Tonight, should you accept the assignment, you can go for murder in harshly beautiful, wintry rural New York and then travel to Venice for a classic, and mysteriously twisty story in an unrivaled setting.

On Dangerous Ground:  Robert Ryan plays a tough, insensitive New York City cop who is sent to help some country police not experienced in murder investigations. The offer wasn’t entirely sincere because what the NYC precinct really wanted was to get the bad-news cop out of there to take the heat off the squad.  Beautifully photographed by George E. Diskant, equally beautifully scored by Bernard Hermann and directed by the highly regarded Nicholas Ray, the otherwise schmaltzy film is turned into a work of cinematic art. Ward Bond and Ed Begley join Ryan and Ida Lupino who will ultimately show the tough cop what life is about, but at what cost?  The 1951 film is based on Mad with Much Heart, a novel by Gerald Butler.

Eva Bartok And Richard Todd

The Assassin:  I’m convinced one could pick strangers, arm them with a Go Pro, send them to Venice with orders to take two hours of random video and release the unedited results as a film. It’s Venice, for heaven’ sake. Beautiful, romantic, mysterious and timeless.  But here we also have a decent plot a handsome, elegant actor Richard Todd as well as the canals, narrow alleys, stairways, bridges, gondolas and grand architecture — and all sorts of shadows. Everything about this film is elegant, including the chief of police, played by George Coulouris. P.I. Edward Mercer (Todd) arrives in Venice. He’s been hired to find a war hero who may or may not be dead.  And that is the question. If he’s alive, as some evidence suggests, why are so many convinced otherwise? Victor Canning wrote the novel, Venetian Bird, which is also the alternate film title for The Assassin.  Ralph Thomas directed this 1952 movie that also starred Eva Bartok.

For the first film, you’re going to get chilly.  Think Irish coffee or hot chocolate.  For the second, we change seasons and moods. Maybe Limon Ciello.

Film Pairing — The Fame Game, The Seamier Sides of Hollywood and Broadway

When I watched the two films I’m recommending I was trying to find a couple of the great old black and white films with tough guys, dark alleys, the kind of 50’s comic-book crime films that were comforting in their predictability and provide a little escape from reality. Sometimes I’m just in the mood for the mood. Sometimes, though, I’m fooled. The description or the movie poster doesn’t really get it right.

This was especially true of The Big Knife. The name said that its going to be a rough ‘em up black and white film. After all, it starred Jack Palance and Ida Lupino. That’s not what happened. What I found was a story that was a little larger in scope than what I expected and incredibly better written. The Sweet Smell of Success came highly recommended by another mystery writer and I found it to be the movie he said it was. And, as it turned out, the two were a perfect match. But it wasn’t until I did a little further research that I understood the relationship one had with the other.

Both The Big Knife (1955), an adaptation of a Broadway play, and Sweet Smell of Success (1957) were based on the words of American playwright Clifford Odets. He didn’t have kind things to say about what went on beneath the surface of the great white way and behind the private gates of Hollywood.

The Big Knife tells the story of a popular film actor whose dark secret was covered up by studio big shots, essentially saving his career and a lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. The actor, who always portrays the strong, principled hero, must pay the price, however. And the price is his freedom. He is now just another studio puppet, a rich one, but a puppet nonetheless. He is neither the man he portrays on screen nor the man he used to be. The cast is stellar. In addition to Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, who played against type, there was Wendell Corey, Rod Steiger, Miss Shelley Winters (as she was uniquely designated in the credits), Jean Hagen and Everett Sloane. The action all takes place inside the actor’s luxurious Beverly Hills home, revealing the film’s theatrical roots.

If The Big Knife is good — and it is — The Sweet Smell of Success is better. Minus the touch of melodrama that affected The Big Knife, this film exposes a nasty, overbearing New York gossip columnist who could make or break a celebrity’s career and a Gollum-styled agent who would do anything to get his clients in the papers. The two combine to control the life of the columnist’s younger sister — for her own good, of course. Burt Lancaster masterfully undertakes the role that at least spoke to the kind of power real-life columnists like Walter Winchell held over the lives of others. The late Tony Curtisplayed the slimy agent, showing anyone who might have doubted it that Curtis was an actor of the first order. Martin Milner played the object of cold-blooded, malicious rumor.

The two films, together, provide a glimpse at the underbelly of the entertainment world. Broadway and Hollywood are, in many ways it seems, not so different or at least weren’t so different in the mid fifties.

The evening demands cocktails. This is the sophisticated 1950s. Rum and Coke for the ingénues and Martinis for the tough-minded. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between