Film Pairings — Suddenly An Albino Alligator or the Hostage Days of Summer

One of the reasons I like baseball is that it reminds me of summers in my childhood — hot, sunny days, lemonade, the sound of propeller airplanes in the sky and the sound of the wood-framed screen door slamming shut.  Fewer clothes and the world moving more slowly.  I also associate summer with baseball, a kind of slow, almost lazy sport.

Today, I watch the Giants whenever the game is on TV.  I look forward to it.  Maybe some fried chicken, baked beans and potato salad.  I also look forward to not having that intense commitment to the game as one might to basketball or football as it unfolds.  Baseball on radio was actually pretty good. Most of the time, I can look at a magazine, talk on the phone, or jot some notes down on a book I’m working on — all while the game goes on.  You can’t do that with other sports.

Sometimes I’m in the mood for movies like that.  Most of the time I’m looking for a film to take me completely away or draw me completely in.  I’ve written about them before here. A good, not quite spine-tingling, not obsessively engrossing story with competent writing and performances can, in the right mood, be desirable.  And here are two of them.

Both are hostage dramas.  Both have good casts.  Both should have been in black and white.  Only one of them was.

Frank Sinatra plays a tough, little hood in Suddenly (1954). Three thugs descend on a home inhabited by “decent folks,” in order to use the house’s strategic location to assassinate the President of the United States.  The film got and is still given pretty good reviews, though I suspect many younger viewers will see it not only as dated (and not stylishly so like The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca), but also stilted. It is considered by many to be in the “noir” tradition. I don’t think so. It is, in the end, hopeful and upholds the values promoted in the 1950s.  Sterling Hayden is the good-guy, male role-model sheriff.  One suspects J. Edgar Hoover approved.

Matt Dillon in Albino Alligator

Oddly enough, Suddenly was one of the first films to be colorized (I saw and recommend the b&w version).  Albino Alligator (1997), the other film on the double bill with hostages, should have been in black and white.  It is far more “noir” than Suddenly.  And the title, if not the story, should have motivated director Kevin Spacey to go retro in black and white.  As in most decent hostage films, the drama is about the interaction of those held in close quarters under stressful circumstances.  Reviewers have not been kind to this film with Faye Dunaway singled out for particularly bad acting. Certainly, there was nothing subtle about her performance. Others also saw it wasteful of the talents of Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise, Viggo Mortenson, Joe Mantegna and Skeet Ulrich.  I liked it.  I tend to like anything set in New Orleans, but it really didn’t matter in this case.  We spend all our time in a dark cellar bar, where we witness the appropriate disintegration of humanity and a genuine noir-style ending.

It’s definitely a beer night.  Any beer.  And if you get bored, switch over to a baseball game.

Film Pairings — A Strong Sense Of Time And Place, 1950 At Night

I watched a late ‘40s film the other night, one that some critics had given the noir seal of approval.  And it wasn’t bad.  A malicious, greedy woman’s life ended with irony. She died thinking she got what she wanted. But getting what she wanted killed her.  And in the end, she didn’t get it anyway.  The strange little drama was set in San Francisco, or so the dialogue would suggest.  But there wasn’t a hint of the city anywhere on screen.  Watching it wasn’t a waste of time, by any means.  It was clever and innovative in its way, but it might as well have been done in dark clothing on an empty stage.

Not at all true for these two films — Crime Wave (also known as The City is Dark), which was set in 1950s Los Angeles and Night and the City, set in 1950s London. 

Crime Wave, L.A. night.

Crime Wave (1954), after some jumbled scenes behind the opening credits, settles into a dark, tight drama with a backdrop oozing LA.  A gas station is robbed. A cop is killed. One of the three robbers is wounded. Seeking safe haven, the killer tracks down a guy he did time with a few years earlier, a decent enough guy who has managed to find a girl, a job and plan for the future.  Tough luck for the guy trying to straighten out his life.  Worse, there’s a hard ass cop determined to put them all way.

The cast, Sterling Hayden as the cop, Gene Nelson as the decent ex-con and Phyllis Kirk as the girlfriend do well more than a convincing job in this surprisingly realistic portrayal of a guy caught in a system that doesn’t give second chances.  As it turned out, this film was one the first chances for actor Charles Burchinsky, who later changed his last name to Bronson. It’s easy to see why he rose to the top.  Hayden is also rock solid, dominating every frame he’s in without really trying.  The real surprise is Gene Nelson, better known as a Broadway dancer. He does a great job as an ex-con. At six foot, he seemed dwarfed by Hayden, who was 6’5”. But then, so was everyone else. Even with this cast, the star is the city at night.

I have a new, old star to track down.  Francis L. Sullivan.  He’s every bit as important to Night and the City as Sydney Greenstreet was to The Maltese Falcon.  Sullivan plays the owner of the Silver Fox Club in London — a sleazy place where tourists are lured with vague promises of sex and instead plied by cheap champagne at outrageous prices. Gene Tierney is a singer there, unhappy about the situation, but surviving.  Richard Widmark is the con artist who brings in the unsuspecting marks for expensive drinks and inevitable disappointment.  The thing is, Widmark has higher aspirations.  He wants to be somebody.

With the exception of Tierney, everyone is out to screw everyone else. Widmark and Sullivan keep raising the stakes.  Widmark, the small-time crook keeps finding ways to turn each disastrous failure into an even greater opportunity, though each step takes him closer to destruction.

Richard Widmark in Night and the City

We see London in 1954 — and not Big Ben and Windsor Castle.  We get a look at down and out alleys as well as witness a marriage of British character actors with a couple of American stars, both playing their parts in recreating an underworld of petty crimes played out against an essentially American tragedy. This aspect may have been unintended in the beginning.  The director, Jules Dassin, was a victim of the McCarthy era and was forbidden to work in Hollywood films. They moved the production to London and brought in the other American, Tierney, as a favor. It worked.  The direction and cinematography is exceptional, from an opening scene that is a work of art to a closing scene that is a technological triumph in filmmaking.

While there have been dark, dramatic films of the era that have had greater impact, these strike me as near perfect films.  They are not only fascinating as entertainment, but they help capture the history of film through a deep grasp of both time and place. That, in turn, becomes an archive, chronicling an era in the city.

These are tough, moody films, shot mostly at night.  I’d skip the cheap champagne. Let’s drink with the tough guys — Hayden, Widmark and the owner of the Silver Fox Club. Whiskey on the rocks seems about right.

Film Pairing — "The Big Lug," Sterling Hayden, Classic Noir Star

I was pretty young, maybe six, when I began riding the electric bus from Indianapolis’ Eastside to the city’s downtown on the weekends. Under the watchful eye of my older brother we would take in lunch and at least two films. Sometimes we’d see a double feature or we’d go to two of the half-dozen grand old movie theaters to extend our escape from reality for as long as we could.

I was always more attracted to adventure films — especially westerns and crime. But who was in the movie was important. I was attracted to movies starring Cary Grant, Robert Mitchum, David Niven, and Humphrey Bogart. If I saw Sterling Hayden in those days — and I must have — he made little or no impression. I understand why he didn’t make an impression then and why he is much more interesting now. His characters, while they were tough, didn’t come across smart or in control. He was a “big lug.” At 6’5”, he was big. And in the films I’ve seen he wasn’t the smartest man in the room. He was kind of a lug.

And that’s it. He wasn’t leading man handsome, but ordinary. He was never really in charge of anything. As a character, he played along with people he trusted. He had his own code, but it wasn’t set up so he could get ahead. If he made a promise, he’d keep it, whether that promise was to himself or someone else. But he wasn’t charming and sophisticated like Grant and Niven or as tough and smart as characters played by Mitchum and Bogart or Edward G. Robinson, for that matter. Hayden’s characters weren’t extraordinary. They were regular guys who seemed confused by and caught up in the system. They were, perhaps, a little too true-to-life.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) — A weakness for the horses puts the big lug in debt. A blow to his pride causes him to borrow some money to pay off the bookie. In his own honorable way, to pay off what he borrowed from a friend means taking a job to rob a jeweler. And when it’s over, he thinks, he’ll leave the big city and go home to a happier place in Lexington, Kentucky. He’d hang around racehorses rather than bet on them — all in beautiful blue grass country. John Huston directed the film, based on a novel by W. R. Burnett, who also wrote Little Caesar. It’s an extraordinary black and white film that focuses on the layers of corruption and hypocrisy among respected business leaders, corrupt law enforcement and most certainly members of the criminal class. Marilyn Monroe has a small role in this classic.

The Killing (1956) — This is also classic noir. It was directed by Stanley Kubrick who, along with Jim Thompson, adapted the screenplay from Clean Break, a book by Lionel White. The film has Hayden in a role very similar to the one he played in Asphalt Jungle. It is another heist film, and the story follows a similar pattern. Our guy is going to do one last job and then he’s going to put it all behind him — the crime and corruption. How it ends is how it has to end. These are the rules. There is no escape. But this time it’s the ingenious heist itself that makes the movie. Stunning timing, stunning cinematography and brilliant directing.

What to drink? Cheap whiskey, probably. Not beer though. Not tough enough.