Film Noir 2  (Fall 2017)  Class ID: 2109

Study Leader:  Lloyd Stires (lstires@auxmail.iup.edu)

Osher Ambassador:  Toby Chapman (tchapman@pitt.edu)

Articles (and videos) available on the internet:

Schrader, P. (1972). Notes on film noir. https://filmgenre.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/notes-of-film-noir.pdf

Place, J., & Peterson, L. (1974). Some visual motifs of film noir. http://www.surfacenoise.info/neu/film101/readings/VisualMotifsPlacePeterson.pdf

Haskell, M. (2007). Ace in the Hole: Noir in broad daylight. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/591-ace-in-the-hole-noir-in-broad-daylight

Silver, A. (1996). Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of a style. https://acnoir13.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/silver-kiss-me-deadly-style.pdf

Jack’s Movie Reviews. (2016). Defining film noir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K77aPil7btM

Filmmaker IQ. (2013). Origins of film noir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i2CsU2ldQA&t=38s

Filmmaker IQ. (2013). The basics of lighting for film noir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsmVL7SDp5Y

Suggestions for further reading:

Silver, A., Ward, E., Ursini, J, & Porfirio, R., Eds. (2010). Film Noir: The Encyclopedia.  Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. A basic reference book first published in 1979, it has been revised several times. This is the most recent edition.

Muller, E. (1998). Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir.  New York: St. Martin’s. One of the best of many books about film noir.

Silver, A., & Ursini, J. , Eds. (1996). Film Noir Reader.  New York: Limelight Editions. There are three additional volumes in this series, but the most important articles are in this volume.

McArthur, C. (1992). The Big Heat.  New York: Macmillan.  A short book in the British Film Institute’s Film Classics Series.

Thomson, D. (1997). The Big Sleep.  New York: Macmillan.  Another in the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series.

McGilligan, P.  (2013).  Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  A biography of Lang.

Lingeman, R. (2012). The Noir Forties.  New York: Nation Books. A political and cultural history of 1945-1950, illustrated by films noir.

Halberstam, D. (1994). The Fifties.  New York: Ballantine Books. A similar cultural history of the 1950s, but without the emphasis on films.

Other suggestions:

Check Wikipedia’s “List of film noir titles” for a comprehensive list of hundreds of films.  See also “List of neo-noir titles.” [www.wikipedia.org]

The only television network that shows films noir with any regularity is Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Unfortunately, they have discontinued their Sunday morning series.

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has a couple of dozen films noir.

Some films noir whose copyrights were not renewed and are in the public domain are available for free viewing on You Tube. The drawback is that picture and sound quality is usually substandard. Enter the title of a film you think might be available, or enter “film noir” for several playlists containing 100-250 movies and television programs. [www.youtube.com]

You can learn quite a bit about a film by looking it up at the Internet Movie Data Base. [www.imdb.com]

September 5–The Big Sleep

What is film noir?

Film noir literally means “black film,” but “dark film” is a better translation. It refers to any of about 300 black and white crime films released in the U. S. between 1940 and 1959. Pre-noirs are similar films released before 1940. Neo-noirs are from after 1959 and are usually in color.

Film noir as a genre can be defined by its setting, plot, characters, mood and visual style (to be considered later):

• The setting is the contemporary world, usually a city at night. The environment is corrupt.
• The plot: A protagonist commits a crime, usually a murder. An investigation ensues which involves the protagonist in a web of misadventures, typically ending unhappily.
• The characters usually include a protagonist, a femme fatale and an investigator. (A character may play more than one of these roles.) Others may be a conventional wife or girlfriend, police, criminals, corrupt politicians, a psychiatrist, etc.
• The mood of films noir is pessimistic and cynical. Two typical characteristics of a film noir protagonist are alienation from society and obsession with a goal (which may be the femme fatale).

Genres are sometimes said to have a prototype or perfect example. Damico (1978) has described the following film noir prototype:

Either because he is fated to do so by chance, or because he has been hired for a job specifically associated with her, a man whose experience of life has left him sanguine and often bitter meets a not-innocent woman of similar outlook to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted. Through this attraction, either because the woman induces him to it or because it is the natural result of their relationship, the man comes to cheat, attempt to murder, or actually murder a second man to whom the woman is unhappily or unwillingly attached (generally he is her husband or lover), an act which brings about the sometimes metaphoric but usually literal destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attached, and frequently the protagonist himself.

Very few films noir fit the prototype. (This is a good thing, since watching the same story repeatedly would be boring.) The question then becomes: How far can a film deviate from the prototype and still be classified as a film noir? Some argue that film noir is not a genre, that its plots and characters are so diverse that its only defining characteristics are mood and visual style.

Hard-boiled detectives

A major influence on film noir was hard-boiled detective stories from the pulp fiction of the 1920s through the 1950s, by authors such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. Traditional mysteries are like an intellectual exercise in which the detective searches for clues and announces the solution at the end. The private eye’s strategy is to stir things up by asking questions, behaving unpredictably, etc., in the hope of provoking guilty people into revealing themselves. The solution to the mystery may be less important than the atmosphere.

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

Began writing crime fiction at age 44 with short stories in pulp magazines. He wrote seven hard-boiled detective novels, all featuring private detective Philip Marlowe. The Big Sleep (1939) was his first. The others were Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The High Window (1942), The Lady in the Lake (1943), The Little Sister (1949), The Long Goodbye (1953) and Playback (1958). The first four were made into films noir. An unfinished manuscript of Chandler’s was completed by Robert B. Parker under the title Poodle Springs (1989).

Chandler wrote the original screenplay for The Blue Dahlia (1946). He and director Billy Wilder adapted James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity for the screen. He co-wrote the screenplay of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train (1951) for Alfred Hitchcock. He was known for the excellence of his prose and the incisiveness of his dialogue.

Howard Hawks (1896-1977)

One critic called Howard Hawks “the greatest American director who is not a household name.” He was a prolific director, making 46 films between 1926 and 1970. His films cut across genres, including war films (Sergeant York), crime dramas (Scarface), screwball comedies (Bringing Up Baby), westerns (Red River) and science fiction (The Thing.) The Big Sleep was his only film noir.

He was known for his natural-sounding, overlapping dialogue and his portrayal of women in assertive roles. He once said that a good movie has “three great scenes and no bad ones.”

The film

The Big Sleep had three screenwriters, William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, but much of the dialogue is lifted verbatim from Chandler. The title refers to death, which Marlowe, in his thoughts, describes as “sleeping the big sleep.”

TBS is known for its convoluted plot. (If I gave you a list of all the people who were killed, could you name each person’s killer?) During filming, Hawks and the screenwriters couldn’t decide who, if anyone, had killed the Sternwood chauffeur Owen Taylor; they sent a telegram to Chandler, who replied that he didn’t know either.

Narrative structure: When Chandler wrote novels, he cannibalized his previously published short stories. TBS combines “Killer in the Rain” and “The Curtain.” It plays as two separate stories with some of the same characters—the first involving the Geiger murder and its aftermath, and the second, the search for Sean Regan.

The film was heavily censored to satisfy the Production Code Administration. In the book, Geiger’s bookstore is a front for his primary business, selling pornography. He has a homosexual relationship with his chauffeur, Carol Lundgren. When Marlowe enters Geiger’s house, he finds him dead and Carmen naked, passed out from drugs. In the scene where Carmen waits for Marlowe in his apartment, she is naked in his bed.

There are two versions of TBS, the 1945 and 1946 versions. The original 1945 version is available as a supplement to the DVD release. The film was shot between October 1944 and January 1945, and was ready for release in March 1945. But there was some dissatisfaction with the film, especially Bacall’s performance. Her agent, Charles Feldman wrote a letter to Jack Warner, president of Warner Brothers studio, requesting that several scenes be reshot and that she be given more screen time with Bogart. Warner agreed. New scenes were shot in January 1946 and the film was finally released in August 1946.

About 15 minutes of screen time was eliminated and replaced. Scenes were cut to speed up the pace, to make Bacall more attractive, and to increase her face time. A scene between Marlowe, the cop Bernie Ohls and the DA in which Marlowe summarizes the plot to that point was eliminated. This is one reason the story is confusing. A new scene was written with Bogart and Bacall in a restaurant, using horse racing as a sexual metaphor.

The conventional wisdom is that this “studio interference” made TBS a better film. It certainly changed the film, making it less of a hard-boiled detective story and more of a romantic comedy.

A minority view is that the 1945 version is better than the 1946 version and Chandler’s novel is superior to both. The film’s best dialogue was transcribed directly from Chandler. The two best-known non-Chandler scenes, the bookstore scene with Dorothy Malone and the horse racing scene, are comic interludes that distract from the story. The film portrays Marlowe as irresistible to women, a la James Bond. His involvement with Vivian Rutledge compromises his integrity as an investigator. In the book, he turns her down. The film is given a simpler good vs. evil focus. In the book, Eddie Mars is not such a bad guy and he lives on; in the film, he’s blamed for almost everything, and is essentially murdered by Marlowe.

September 12–Crossfire

Reconversion

Harry Truman: “Sherman was wrong. Peace is hell.”

World War II brought an end to the depression. The postwar mood was optimistic, but government officials were concerned that the end of the war would lead to economic decline and a new depression.

The Truman administration discharged soldiers at a moderate pace because they were afraid that there would not be enough jobs for the simultaneous return of a large number of veterans. Soldiers and their families were unhappy with the slow pace. Returning veterans faced psychological problems such as post-traumatic stress that created problems of adjustment to civilian life. Some men returned home to find that their wives and lovers had found new partners. There was a substantial increase in the divorce rate.

Some 2.1 million defense industry workers were laid off in 1945; defense spending dropped from 44% of GNP in 1944 to 4% in 1948. Women had entered the work force during the war, and not all of them wanted to return to being housewives. Approximately 7 or 8 million Americans were unemployed in 1946.

During the war, the Office of Price Administration enacted wage and price controls to prevent inflation. They did a better job at controlling wages than prices. After the war, price controls were ended and consumer prices increased by 30 in1946. Meanwhile, the Truman administration responded aggressively to strikes or threats of strikes. Truman’s approval rating went from 90% in 8/45 to 34% in 9/46.

Eventually, the economy sorted itself out, as industry began producing consumer products and family incomes rose, but this took several years.

Crossfire is set in Washington, D.C., after the war as soldiers were waiting to be discharged. Some were suffering from war-related stress. They had little to do (except drink) and a lot of pent-up energy, a recipe for trouble.

The Red Scare, HUAC and the Hollywood Blacklist

Many Americans joined the Communist Party (CP) during the Depression. This included a substantial number of the actors, writers and directors of films noir.

There Was No There There. That is, concern about Communist influence on motion pictures was almost entirely unfounded.

• Most of these people joined the CP because it was the most liberal of the organized parties at that time. They were not spies, nor did they advocate overthrow of the government. The Soviet Union was our ally in WWII. It was only after the war that CP membership was retroactively redefined as disloyalty to the US.
• HUAC espoused an unsophisticated theory of media influence stating that movies were brainwashing the public with socialist and Communist propaganda. This silver bullet theory greatly overestimated the effect of mass media on public attitudes. In fact, only a small percentage of Hollywood films of the late 1940s were “social problem” films with a liberal message. Motion picture people had less power to influence public opinion than HUAC seemed to think.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) started holding hearings investigating alleged Communist influence on movies in 1947. There was a second wave of hearings in 1951.

HUAC was invited to investigate Communists in the film industry by a conservative group of filmmakers, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA). There was also a liberal faction, the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA), which defended the rights of those called before HUAC, but they broke up due to internal disagreements after the Hollywood Ten refused to testify.

The dilemma:  At the HUAC hearings, people were called before the Committee and asked whether they had ever been a member of the Communist Party. If they said “yes,” they were asked to name the names of people who attended meetings, placing them in a lose/lose situation: If they refused to testify, they could go to jail—and some did. If they did name names, they betrayed their friends, and might be blacklisted anyway.

HUAC’s motive was not to get names, since almost all of them were already known. The hearings were more like show trials, designed to publicly humiliate the witnesses and to advance the political goals and careers of HUAC members. Richard Nixon, a HUAC member between 1947 and 1949, used anti-Communism as a springboard to the vice-presidency in 1952. Another goal was to eliminate liberals from positions of influence in Hollywood. Some researchers have suggested that HUAC was also motivated by anti-Semitism. Most of the owners and executives of the film studios were Jews.

The Hollywood Ten were ten writers, producers and directors who refused to testify before HUAC, were convicted of contempt of Congress, and served jail time. Two of them were Adrian Scott, producer and Edward Dmytryk, director of Crossfire.

The Blacklist was a secret list of several hundred actors, directors and writers that the studios and TV networks would not hire because they had been associated with the CP or other liberal organizations. If you refused to testify, you would certainly be blacklisted. If you cooperated, you might be. The safest thing was to not only cooperate, but make a public confession and dramatically change your political views. The secrecy of the blacklist and the inequality of the way people whose backgrounds were similar were treated created an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, which itself became the subject of some films noir (in disguised form).

The primary effect of the blacklist was to eliminate many talented writers, directors and actors from the film industry. To demonstrate that they were not liberals, the studios abandoned “problem films.” Eric Johnson, head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), promised HUAC to discourage “controversial” movies, those that opposed racism or anti-Semitism or were sympathetic to organized labor. The only acceptable “problem films” dealt with crime, provided that crime was shown to be caused by psychopathic individuals, rather than being a product of social conditions, and provided that the solution was “law and order.”

Edward Dmytryk (1908-1999)

A Canadian born director, he left the Communist Party in 1945, was one of the Hollywood Ten, was convicted of contempt of Congress, and served a 6-month prison sentence.

He had directed 24 films between 1929 and 1949, including three important films noir: Murder, My Sweet (1944), Cornered (1945) and Crossfire (1947), all produced by Adrian Scott.

According to social psychological theory and research, people who suffer for their beliefs usually become more strongly committed to them, e.g., Nelson Mandela. Dmytryk was an exception. After his release, he found himself blacklisted and unemployable. In 1951, he volunteered to testify again before HUAC, renounced his earlier political beliefs, and named names.

He subsequently directed 25 more films, including The Caine Mutiny, nominated for best picture of 1954, and The Young Lions (1958).

Adrian Scott (1911-1972) was a screenwriter and producer, a member of the Hollywood Ten who served jail time and was blacklisted for the rest of his life. Crossfire‘s screenplay was written by John Paxton, based on the novel The Brick Foxhole by future director Richard Brooks.

The film

Crossfire was frequently mentioned at the HUAC hearings as evidence of Communist influence in Hollywood. It was condemned as anti-military and anti-American. It was screened by the FBI, who labeled it “near treasonable in its implications,” and said that its effect was “to arouse race and religious hatred.”

It combined three themes:

• Murder mystery: Not so much who done it, but why, and how are you going to prove it?
• Anti-Semitism
• Psychological problems of returning WW II veterans

In The Brick Foxhole, the novel on which the film is based, the murder victim was a gay man. RKO was willing to make a film condemning anti-Semitism but not one condemning homophobia. It was forbidden to even mention homosexuality in 1947.

If there is a noir protagonist, it is the psychologically disturbed soldier, Mitchell, but the noir theme is obscured by the casting of an unknown actor (George Cooper) in the part, while better-known actors played less important roles.

Crossfire was an unusually low budget film, shot on a Hollywood back lot in 20 days for $250,000. According to Dmytryk, film noir visual style was used in part to conceal the shabby sets. Examples of film noir style include:

• Frequent use of low key lighting and shadow, especially in corridors and stairwells.
• Use of vertical positioning of actors vis a vis the camera to indicate psychological dominance.
• Two important flashbacks, one of which disorients the viewer because it is not truthful. (At that time, flashbacks were almost always truthful.)

There are several parallels between Crossfire and Gentleman’s Agreement, directed by Elia Kazan.

• Both were about anti-Semitism.
• Both were released in 1947.
• Both were nominated for several Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.
• Both directors were former Communist Party members persecuted by HUAC.
• Both saved their careers by naming names and publicly converting to conservatism.

Gentleman’s Agreement was a bigger budget film. Its message was about “softer” forms of anti-Semitism, including discrimination at work, in housing, and in everyday social interaction. It won the Academy Awards for best picture and best director.

Robert Ryan (1909-1973) appeared in more films noir than any other lead actor. Crossfire jump-started his career, but he was typecast as a villain. He specialized in racist villains. Ironically, he was the most committed liberal of any actor of his generation.

Both Ryan and Gloria Grahame received supporting actor Oscar nominations, but did not win.

Robert Young (1907-1998) had a long film career appearing mostly in light comedies. Crossfire was his only film noir. He is known primarily for two conventional TV series, both of which he apparently hated. He became an alcoholic, suffered from depression, and made an unsuccessful suicide attempt.

September 19–Pitfall

Suburbs

One of the problems of reconversion after World War II was a serious housing shortage. There had been very little new housing construction during the Depression or World War II. 2.7 million new homes were needed for returning veterans. Several trends coincided to make affordable housing available.

The template for the modern suburb was created by Abraham Levitt and his sons William, a builder, and Alfred, an architect. The first Levittown was built in 1946 in a potato field near Hempstead, LI, 20 miles from New York City. They employed Henry Ford’s mass production techniques, but instead of an assembly line where the car moves from worker to worker, the housing construction process was divided into 27 steps, such as framing, roofing, and painting. Crews of workers went down the street from house to house completing their tasks.

At peak production, they completed about 30 homes per day. Levittown had 17,400 homes, housing 82,000 people. The lots were identical, 60 feet by 100 feet. The basic Levitt home had a 12 x 16 foot living room, two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen, and sold for $8000. The deluxe model had an extra room at $9500. The average salary at the time was about $3000/year. Returning veterans had access to VA and FHA loans which required no down payment and had low or no interest.

The residents were homogeneous not only in age and marital status, but also race. The Levittown deeds specified that homes could be sold to whites only.

There was a long-term trend of migration from rural to urban areas throughout the 20^th century. However, the percentage of Americans living in cities of 1 million or more dropped from 12% to 10% in the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1980, 83% of the nation’s growth was in suburbs. By 1970, more people were living in suburbs than cities.

Suburbs such as Levittown were criticized. The houses were called “little boxes” and the towns “fresh air slums.” Bland housing was said to produce bland people who would lead bland lives. To be fair, most people would not have been able to afford the kinds of homes of which the critics approved.

Conformity

One of the criticsms of post-war culture was that society demanded too much conformity. People were said to be trapped in unfulfilling jobs and in boring suburban locations, resulting in a new type of alienation.

This concern was addressed in fictional best sellers such as The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), a semi-autobiographical novel by Sloan Wilson, who had worked in advertising. Several similar books by sociologists became best-sellers. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (1950) by David Reisman portrayed two personality types: the inner-directed and the other-directed. Employment by large corporations and suburban living was said to induce people to abandon their individuality and seek approval by conforming to the values of the community.

Other best sellers with similar messages included White Collar (1951) by C. Wright Mills, The Organization Man (1956) by William H. Whyte, and A Nation of Sheep (1961) by William J. Lederer.

Social psychologist Solomon Asch (1947) did classic studies of conformity showing that a majority of people will conform to the obviously incorrect judgments of the majority. Factors influencing the conformity rate included the majority’s size and unanimity, the participant’s attraction to the group, and whether the judgments were public or private. Social psychologists were further discouraged to find that experimental participants liked conformists better than people whose judgments were independent of group influences.

There was a cultural backlash against what many perceived as excessive demands for conformity. Rebellions in literature, art, and music had their origin in the 1950s. The beat generation in literature was exemplified by Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road (1957).  Pitfall (1948) was ahead of the curve in addressing these themes.

Andre de Toth (1913-2002)

De Toth was born in Hungary, and directed his first five films there. He moved to London, then to Hollywood in 1942, where he directed about 30 films between 1942 and 1968. They were medium to low budget films, about half of which were westerns. He was known for his “no frills” directorial style. His most successful film was House of Wax (1953), in 3-D, which he made despite the fact that he had lost an eye during childhood. He directed two films noir, Pitfall (1948) and Crime Wave (1954).

The film is based on the novel The Pitfall (1947) by Jay Dratler, who also wrote the screenplay for Laura (1944). The screenplay is credited to Karl Kamb, put was actually written by de Toth and William Bowers, a prolific screenwriter who was nominated for an Academy Award for The Gunfighter (1950).

Dick Powell (1904-1963)

Powell was a song-and-dance man who made several successful musicals in the 1930s, e.g., 42^nd Street.

In the 1940s, either because of his age or because he thought musicals were in decline, he set out to remake his image into that of a tough guy. He lobbied unsuccessfully for Fred MacMurray’s part in Double Indemnity (1943). He played the role of Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944), directed by Edward Dmytryk. He starred in four other films noir, Cornered (1945), Johnny O’Clock (1947), Pitfall (1948) and Cry Danger (1951).

He later became a director. His film The Conqueror (1956) was shot in Utah, downwind from a government nuclear testing site. The cast and crew totaled 220. By 1981, 90 of them had developed some form of cancer, and 46 had died, including Powell, co-stars John Wayne and Susan Hayward, and supporting actors Agnes Moorehead and Pedro Armendariz.

Lizabeth Scott (1922-2015)

Scott was a second tier leading woman who appeared in several films noir, including Dead Reckoning (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and I Walk Alone (1948) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. She was not highly regarded as a actress, in part because she was the girlfriend of producer Hal Wallis. Her reputation has grown over the years.

The film

Pitfall was produced by an independent studio, Regal Films, and was largely unavailable until it was restored by the UCLA Film Labs in 2015.

It meets the essential definition of film noir: The protagonist knows what he is doing is wrong, but does it anyway. The noose gradually tightens on Forbes, the noir protagonist. It deviates from the prototype primarily in that the actual crimes come at the end.

De Toth subverts the femme fatale prototype. Mona is more innocent than most, and in the end, Forbes gets away with killing a man, while Mona is arrested even though her actions seem justifiable.

The film has elements of noir visual style. De Toth makes up somewhat for the lack of urban, night shots in the scenes of Forbes and Smiley pursuing one another at Forbes’s home. Venetian blinds provide abundant chirarascuro. While visiting the jail, Mona is framed by bars, suggesting entrapment.

Among Pitfall‘s strengths are the fact that it was one of the first films about stalking, at a time when women had considerably less protection against stalkers. The wronged wife turns out to be surprisingly assertive, and the ending strongly suggests that the world is not fair.

De Toth claims that he chose Powell for the Forbes role because Powell was in the process of atoning for his own extramarital affair, and he could take advantage of the parallel with Powell’s personal life to get the performance he wanted.

Pitfall ran into trouble when the Hays Office objected that Forbes committed adultery (not homicide) but was not sufficiently punished. De Toth claims that he spoke privately to two members of the censorship board, telling them that he knew they were carrying on extramarital affairs, and after that, he had no further trouble.

October 3—Ace in the Hole

Tabloid (or “yellow”) journalism

These terms refer to the use of exaggeration, scandals and sensationalism to sell newspapers. “Yellow” describes the cheap paper on which some tabloids were printed. The terms came into use in 1890s, during a circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. Both papers were accused of sensationalism and of leading the US into the Spanish-American War.

Floyd Collins

In January, 1925, Floyd Collins, a cave explorer, was trapped in a sandstone cavern near Mammoth Cave in central Kentucky. William Miller, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, crawled into the cave on his hands and knees to interview Collins. When the story made national headlines, tourists and vendors descended on the cave site, creating an atmosphere that was compared to a carnival or circus. Collins was trapped in the mine for 18 days and finally died. Miller won a Pulitzer prize for his reporting.

In April 1949, a 3-year-old girl, Kathy Fiscus, fell into a well in the Los Angeles suburb of San Marino. Several thousand people showed up to watch the rescue operation. Rescuers dug a parallel shaft, but by the time they got to her she was dead.

Ace in the Hole can be said to have been ahead of its time, since even though the media have changed, the tabloid problem is even greater now than in 1951. However, the film does not address one of the main claims about contemporary sensationalism—that it is used for political purposes to distract the public from more important real events.

Billy Wilder (1906-2002)

He was born Samuel Wilder to a Jewish family in Austria and spent his early years in Vienna. His first jobs were as a journalist for tabloid newspapers. He moved to Berlin in the late 1920s, where he was a screenwriter at UFA (Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft), a large and successful German film studio.

Wilder was one of the first among his peers to see the danger posed to Jews by Hitler and the Nazis. He left Germany for Paris in 1933, where he directed his first film. He made several unsuccessful attempts to persuade his mother to leave Austria. He learned after the war that his mother, stepfather and grandmother were murdered, probably at Auschwitz. Speaking of World War II, Wilder said, “I learned many things about human nature, none of them favorable.”

He came to the US in 1934, where he and his writing partner, Charles Brackett, became successful screenwriters. He said he turned to directing because he was tired of other directors changing his scripts for the worse.

Double Indemnity (1943), his third film, was his first film noir, and a critical and commercial success. Wilder directed 25 feature films, including two other films noir, Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Ace in the Hole (1951). He received six Academy Awards, two for best director, three for best screenplay, and one for best picture (The Apartment, 1960).

Ace in the Hole was Wilder’s next film after the hit Sunset Boulevard. This gave him the credibility with Paramount to do a very risky film. It was also his first film without Charles Brackett, who had been regarded as a civilizing influence on Wilder, restraining in his tendencies toward abrasiveness and cynicism.

Wilder hired two writing partners. Walter Newman, a 23-year-old radio writer, was the one who suggested doing a film based on the story of Floyd Collins. Lesser Samuels was a screenwriter and former newspaper man. The script was written under conditions of secrecy, for fear that the press would learn about the film before it was completed.

Kirk Douglas (1916 – )

Douglas was an actor who was willing to take on the roles of unsympathetic characters. He was coming off the successful role of a ruthless boxer in Champion (1949). However, he wrote a note to Wilder requesting that his character, Chuck Tatum, be given more likable qualities. Wilder refused and Douglas took the part anyway.

The film

Is it a film noir?

In her essay “Noir in Broad Daylight,” Molly Haskell suggests that Ace in the Hole requires an honorary expansion of the term “film noir.” The noir, she says, is interior—in the mine shaft and in the mind of the reporter. Another reviewer stated, “If film noir illustrates the crackup of the American dream, Ace in the Hole is an exemplar of the form.”

Tatum is not a typical noir protagonist, in that he initially seems to have no reservations about his behavior, but when the consequences became apparent, he shows remorse. All three of Wilder’s films noir feature a male protagonist who has a change of heart at the end, which is followed by his death.

Ace in the Hole is not the only film noir much of which is filmed mostly outside, in daylight. Others include Detour (1945), The Hitchhiker (1953), and in spite of the title, They Live By Night (1948).

Censorship

The Breen office’s main objection was that the film “lacked a proper voice for morality.” The story was intended to contrast Tatum with the journalistic integrity of his publisher, Jacob Boot (“Tell the Truth”), with Tatum’s assistant, Herbie representing the audience. Their complaint was that Boot was not a strong enough representative of the moral alternative. Tatum paid with his life, which satisfied the censors, but they were concerned that the corrupt Sheriff Kretzer was not punished. Wilder added dialogue indicating that Boot planned to publish an expose of the sheriff, which would ruin his chance of reelection.

Popular and critical reaction

The film was both a critical and financial flop. Newspaper reviewers were especially hard on it, calling it an unwarranted attack on the integrity of the press, and saying that it portrayed Americans as a bunch of fools who are easily duped by a con man. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said that while it’s easy to imagine an unscrupulous reporter trying to take advantage of a tragedy for personal gain, it was unrealistic to think a single reporter could dominate a story of this size for so long.

Paramount executives panicked and issued a press release saying it was not an attack on journalists, but only a few bad apples. They withdrew the film, but re-released it the following year, changing the title to The Big Carnival without Wilder’s knowledge or consent. The financial failure of the film caused Wilder to lose credibility with Paramount. His next three films were less risky and more commercial, all based on successful Broadway plays.

Wilder defended the film, citing multiple examples of cynical behavior by reporters. He rationalized the box office failure by saying that the audience was disappointed or angry because they expected Leo to be rescued. He was also quoted as saying, “Fuck them all! It is the best picture I ever made.”

It was better received in Europe, winning the Golden Lion (best picture) at the Venice Film Festival. It was nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay. It was rediscovered when the American Film Institute released a restored print in 2007 and labeled it an “overlooked masterpiece.”

Although this is obviously conjecture, the film has been interpreted as follows: The cave represents a concentration camp, Tatum represents Wilder, and Leo, his family. The film is Wilder’s attempt to work through his survivor guilt for not having successfully persuaded his family to leave Austria.

October 10—The Big Heat

German Expressionism

One way of classifying schools of filmmaking is along a realism vs. expressionism dimension. Realism is an attempt to capture the subject objectively. Expressionism focuses on the power of filmmakers to manipulate reality. Expressionism in film first appeared in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. German expressionism was characterized by dramatic lighting (chiaroscuro) , distorted sets, tilted camera angles, and frequent use of symbolism.

Film noir could be said to be Hitler’s gift to American cinema, since many of its best known directors, such as Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak and Fred Zinnemann, were trained in Europe. Most were Jews, who emigrated to this country from Germany or France before World War II.

Fritz Lang (1890-1976)

Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a wealthy architect/owner of a construction company. His mother was born a Jew, but converted to Catholicism when she married. Lang served in World War I, was wounded three times and suffered damage to an eye.

UFA (Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft) was a large and successful German film studio that produced and distributed movies from 1917 to the end of World War II. Lang went to work at UFA in 1918, first as a screenwriter, then a director of several classics: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Metropolis (1927), and M (1931)–his first sound picture, starring Peter Lorre as a child murderer. Many people regard M as the very first film noir.

In 1932, he made a Mabuse sequel, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, in which he taunted the Nazis by putting quotes from prominent Nazis in the mouth of the villainous Dr. Mabuse. There was a meeting between Lang and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1933, in which Goebbels told him that Testament would be banned, but that he admired Lang’s work, and he offered him the position of director of UFA. Soon after, Lang fled to Paris. Not only was he not interested in making Nazi propaganda films, the fact that his mother was born a Jew made it unsafe for him to live in Germany.

Lang directed one film in France, then came to the US, where he made 23 features between 1936 and 1957. His first two American films were successful: Fury (1936), about an innocent man almost killed by a lynch mob, and You Only Live Once (1937), the story of a fugitive couple on the run. However, Lang was an autocratic director who micro-managed his actors’ every move and insisted on dozens of takes until he got exactly what he wanted. American actors were used to having more autonomy and some refused to work with him. Since not all of his films did well financially, he eventually had trouble financing his films and was forced to settle for lower budgets.

Lang was under constant threat by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), even though he was never a member of the Communist Party. Ironically, he felt it was due to his anti-Nazi activism before World War II. He described himself as a “premature anti-fascist.”

About half of Lang’s American films are classified as films noir. Among the best are Ministry of Fear (1944), Scarlet Street (1945) and The Big Heat (1953). He returned to Germany in 1959 and made three more films, including The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). By this time his health was failing and he eventually went blind.

The film

The Big Heat is based on a 1952 pulp fiction novel by William P. McGivern that was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. The screenplay was written by Sidney Boehm, who wrote several other films noir. The film was a largely faithful adaptation of the novel, but it simplified the plot and eliminated some characters, including a Black man and a left-wing union leader, perhaps for political reasons.

Several factors influenced the making of The Big Heat. Hollywood was in a recession. Profits fell from $187 million in 1948 to $31 million in 1952. This was a low budget film. In the aftermath of the HUAC hearings, the studios were committed to avoiding social problem films or any films with a liberal message. The only problem that was permitted was crime. However, The Big Heat differed from most other crime films of that era in that it depicted systemic corruption, involving the police and government.

The film was barely noticed. It was reviewed in only a few publications and returned average box office receipts. This is surprising considering its scenes of extreme violence. It may have been due to inadequate promotion by Columbia, since they released the blockbuster From Here to Eternity at about the same time. Like many films noir, its eventual recognition is attributable to its reception in Europe, particularly with French critics such as Francois Truffaut.

The striking opening scene of the film was the result of censorship. Lang had intended to show the cop’s suicide on camera. The crime boss Lagana’s interaction with his servant George and his great fuss over his relationship with his mother implies that he is gay, but this seems to have escaped the censors’ notice.

Lang is known for the economy and efficiency of his direction. His scenes include many visual comments on the story. For example, his characters, especially Debbie, frequently check themselves out in front of mirrors. Debbie’s facial injuries allow her good girl/bad girl ambiguity to be made physical. Different sides of her face are visible in different scenes. The “sisters in mink” scene draws a visual parallel between Debbie and Bertha Duncan.

Some critics have pointed out that the protagonist Bannion’s character is self-righteous, stubborn and reckless to the point that it becomes increasingly difficult to identify with him. While some noir protagonists are self-destructive, he is “other-destructive.” He is indirectly responsible for the deaths of four women: Lucy Chapman, the “B-girl;” his wife; Bertha Duncan and Debbie. He virtually invites Debbie to kill Bertha Duncan by telling her how convenient Bertha’s death would be, and by leaving her his gun. He seems oblivious to the effects he has on others. Film historian Julie Kirgo describes Bannion as a male femme fatale in that every woman with whom he comes into contact is either killed or endangered.

The film is a precursor to popular 1970s vigilante films such as Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974). However, unlike these later filmmakers, Lang seems to have reservations about his protagonist’s macho behavior.

October 17–Kiss Me, Deadly

Nuclear Anxiety

Kiss Me, Deadly is very much a commentary on the 1950s, a time when American politics and foreign policy were dominated by the fear and paranoia associated with the possibility of nuclear war.

The first atomic bomb was developed and used by the U. S. in World War II, but Russia was secretly working on nuclear weapons as well. In August, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, breaking the American monopoly on nuclear weapons. Both countries spent massive amounts to increase the quantity and quality of their nuclear arsenals. The theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD) held that if both sides knew that their opponent had sufficient second strike capability to wipe them out, this would restrain each country from attacking the other.

In the U. S., the Office of Civil Defense was supposed to prevent loss of civilian lives in the event of a nuclear attack. “Duck and cover” was the suggested method of personal protection during a surprise attack. Children were targeted by the “Tommy the Turtle” video (see link below). Families were encouraged to build fallout shelters to protect themselves from the long-term effects of nuclear radiation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

Nuclear anxiety gave rise to popular science fiction and horror films about unintended effects of nuclear testing, i.e., The Thing (1951), The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Them (1954), as well as more serious films like On the Beach (1959) and Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Mickey Spillane (1918-2006)

Mickey Spillane was the most popular author of the 1950s. He started his career writing for comic books such as Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. His first novel, I, the Jury (1947) introduced his hard-boiled detective, Mike Hammer. He claimed to have written it in 19 days; it sold 6.5 million copies. Spillane wrote 13 Mike Hammer novels, plus 19 others. Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) was the sixth. In the mid-’50s, he had written six of the top ten best selling American novels of all time.

Mike Hammer was an honest private eye in a world in which just about everyone else, including the police, were dishonest. He was also a vigilante who took justice into his own hands. The title of his first book comes from the tag line, “I was the judge, and I, the jury.” In the beginning, Hammer’s adversaries were ordinary gangsters, but by the mid-50s, Communists became the villains in Spillane’s novels.

Critical reaction to Spillane’s books was almost uniformly negative. Malcolm Crowley, in The New Republic, called Mike Hammer “a dangerous paranoid, sadist, and masochist.” Spillane’s response was, “You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar.”

Robert Aldrich (1918-1983)

Aldrich came from a wealthy family. He was the grandson of Senator Nelson Aldrich (R-RI). His aunt married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., making him a first cousin to New York Governor and future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. He was a successful director who worked his way up through the system, serving as assistant director to William Wellman, Robert Rossen, Abe Polonsky, Joseph Losey, and Charlie Chaplin (Limelight, 1947). He was a lifelong liberal, but not a member of the Communist Party. Considering the people he had worked with, he might have expected to be called before HUAC, but he wasn’t, possibly due to his family connections.

He directed a total of 31 films. Four of them were films noir: World for Ransom (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955) and The Garment Jungle (1957). Other notables included What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and The Longest Yard (1974).

As a director, Aldrich was the opposite of Kurt Lang. He treated his cast and crew as collaborators and invited their suggestions. They were extremely loyal to him.

A. I. Bezzerides (1908-2007)

Bezzerides was a novelist turned screenwriter. He also wrote They Drive By Night (1940), Thieves’ Highway (1949) and On Dangerous Ground (1952). He might have been more successful, but he was “gray-listed” (a milder, more uncertain form of blacklisting). Aldrich shot the film in 21 days. When asked how he completed it so quickly, he attributed it to the near perfection of Bezzerides’ script.

The Film

The film is only loosely based on Spillane’s book. Bezzerides’ first script followed the book more closely, but was called totally unacceptable by the censors because of drug references and cold-blooded vigilante killings. He completely revised it, substituting atomic spies for gangsters. The “Remember Me” poem was added by Aldrich and Bezzerides, as were the classical music, modern art, and references to mythology. Spillane was deeply dissatisfied with the film. He asked, how could they mess up something so good?

The film was criticized for violence.  Its ads were displayed during 1955 Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency. Aldrich defended the film in the New York Herald-Tribune, pointing out that the torture takes place off camera. “Filmgoers will luridly talk of this torture scene, but at least 60% of what they describe will be the product of their own thinking.” Surprisingly, the censors overlooked the violence, but objected to the way singer Mady Comfort handled her microphone. The film was largely ignored by U. S. critics, but, like many films noir, was resurrected by French critics, especially future director Claude Chabrol.

There are two endings. The original release of the film showed Hammer and Velda surviving, staggering into the ocean. Sometime during its release, one minute of footage of Hammer and Velda was removed, with the film ending as the house blows up, implying that they were killed in the blast.

The opening scene is justly famous. At that time, movies almost never had pre-credit sequences.  Even though some of the film is shot in daylight, it contains many example of film noir visual style.  The night shots feature high contrast lighting, and sometimes deep focus.  The screen is often filled with geometric shapes—not only in hallways and stairwells, but even on location, where Aldrich found interesting camera placements.  High and low angles establish dominance by vertical position.  There are some tilted camera scenes, which produce a feeling of disorientation.

The film is known for the excellence of its sound design. Many of the sound effects are amplified to make them louder than real life. There are several long takes, i.e., the scene in the gym. These are difficult to shoot, but they are said to increase the audience’s involvement in the scene.

The film has a mythological dimension. The search for the “great whatsis” can be compared to the quest for the Holy Grail, with Hammer as an anti-Galahad. The “great whatsis” may also represent Pandora’s box. When Gabrielle opens it, she is motivated not by money, but by a desire to know what is in the box.

Critic J. Hoberman called Hammer “one of the sleaziest, stupidest, most brutal detectives in American movies.” In a feminist touch, the female characters bluntly critique Hammer’s behavior and values. The film could be said to have contemporary relevance, since it shows what could happen when a cruel and ignorant narcissist comes in contact with nuclear weapons.

Kiss Me, Deadly is sometimes said to mark the end of film noir. The genre was already being undermined by happy endings (so called films gris, or gray films), and by the gradual replacement of honorable detectives such as Philip Marlowe by self-righteous vigilantes such as Bannion in The Big Heat. According to Stephen Prince, “The object of Hammer’s quest, when he finds it, blows up in his face, turning a section of the California coastline into ground zero. Hammer’s encounter with the bomb provides not a resolution of the mystery but the extinction of narrative and culture.”