Film Noir Favorites

In the past few years I have become a big fan of a certain kind of American film from the 1940s and 50s. They are primarily black and white, dark crime dramas that French film makers and critics called film-noir after they rediscovered American films after the liberation of France in 1945. The term film-noir refers not only to the dark themes of these movies but also to the nighttime settings and the often startling contrasts between light and dark, black and white. 

Originally, these films were low budget productions usually designed to be seen as the second feature on traditional Hollywood double bills. Nevertheless, today many are regarded as ground-breaking classics. They featured great directors, actors, writers, and film craftsmen and craftswomen. To fill the insatiable demand for movies in America, Hollywood even imported great talents from abroad. In my opinion, film-noir represents a short-lived American film renaissance that came to an end with the advent of television and technicolor. 

Below find brief descriptions of nine of these films that I have viewed this year. Not only are they gripping, extremely well-told stories with masterful directing and acting, but also they bring me back to the days of my childhood. In the background I can see a world that is no more: the dark dingy streets, the small apartments, the cars, the old telephones, and the incessant cigarette smoking and drinking. 

 

Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy

Gun Crazy.  Peggy Cummins and John Dall star in this 1950 story of two star-crossed lovers who meet in a carnival shooting contest and immediately go together like guns and ammunition. The two become bank robbers on the run who roar into movie history in a bench-mark film noir thriller.                             

Call Northside 777. James Stewart stars in this 1948 film as a newspaperman who reluctantly investigates the case of a convict who has already spent ten years in prison for the murder of a policeman. Richard Conte and some superb character actors also appear in this very naturalistic film that was based on a true story. 

Strangers on a Train. Alfred Hitchcock produced this 1951 psychological thriller starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker. Two strangers meet on a train: one a charming psychopath who hates his father, and the other a young tennis player trying to get out of a bad marriage. The rest is pure Hitchcock. 

Whirlpool. Gene Tierney stars in this 1949 story of a woman secretly suffering from kleptomania who turns to a hypnotist to cure her condition. Soon afterwards she is found at the scene of a murder with no memory of how she got there and no way to prove her innocence. Richard Conte and Jose Ferrer co-star. 

Scarlet Street. In this 1945 film Edward G. Robinson plays a lonely middle-aged man locked in a horrible marriage who accidentally becomes involved with a beautiful young woman. When her sleazy boyfriend prods her to get money out of the man, things go from bad to worse. Directed by Fritz Lang, the film co-stars Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea                                          

The Woman in the Window. Edward G. Robinson stars in this 1944 film as a middle-aged professor who engages in an innocent flirtation with a chance acquaintance (Joan Bennett) and inadvertently commits a shocking murder. Things quickly go from bad to worse as they try to cover up the crime. Directed by Fritz Lang. 

The Big Sleep.  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall star in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s famed crime novel. Bogart plays legendary private eye Philip Marlowe on the trail of killers, pornographers, gamblers, and a bevy of beautiful young women. Directed by Howard Hawks.

They Live by Night. Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell star in this classic 1949 film of young lovers mixed up with a gang of criminals. This film is regarded by many as the forerunner to Bonnie and Clyde. Directed by Nicholas Ray.

I Confess. Montgomery Clift stars in this 1953 Alfred Hitchcock thriller as a priest who hears a killer’s confession but then is accused of the murder himself.  Unable to speak out because of the seal of the confessional, police and public opinion turn against him especially when it turns out there was a woman (Anne Baxter) in his past. Filmed onsite in Quebec.

Montgomery Clift in I Confess

Note; Most of these films can be viewed on Netflix or Youtube. I prefer to use DVDs because they often include excellent commentaries, background information, and subtitles for people like myself who are hearing impaired. ###

Cultural Socialism

Russian Orphans

Socialism is in the air in the United States and will be a big issue in the 2020 Presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist, is one of the front-runners for the Democratic nomination. On the other hand, President Trump vows that the United States will never be a Socialist country.

For most people Socialism is a political and economic system but it is also, and always has been, a cultural phenomenon. Many years ago I read practically all the novels and historical works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author of the twentieth century, whose writings contributed enormously to the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 

I recently found a tattered copy of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward at a library sale. It is a novel about the inmates and staff of a cancer facility in the Soviet Union of 1954. It is semi-auto biographical since that author himself had been treated for cancer after years in USSR prison camps. The novel grips the reader from the start but it also turns a spotlight on the cultural revolution that resulted from the triumph of Socialism after the Revolution of 1917.* 

One of the patients in the ward is Dyoma, a young man who is suffering from a deadly tumor in his leg. Here is Solzhenitsyn’s account of a significant aspect of Dyoma’s early education. 

Ever since he had been in the first class, before he could read or write, Dyoma had been taught, knew for certain and fully understood that religion is a drug, a three-times reactionary dogma, of benefit only to swindlers. Because of it the working people in some places had been unable to free themselves from exploitation. But as soon as they got rid of religion they would take up arms and free themselves. And Aunt Styofa with her funny calendar, with the word ‘God’ always on her lips, with her carefree smile even in the gloomy clinic, and her pasty, was obviously a thoroughly reactionary figure. (138)

The fruits of this cultural revolution could be seen in 1954 in the plight of young Russian women like the attractive nurse Zoya in a world without religion.

Did this mean that marriage was the only alternative, that that was where happiness lay? The young men she met all danced and went for walks with the same aim in mind: to warm themselves up a bit, have their fun and then clear out. They used to say among themselves, ‘I could get married, but it never takes me more than an evening or two to find a new “friend”, so why should I bother?’ 

Indeed, why marry when women were so easy to get? If a great load of tomatoes suddenly arrived in the market, you couldn’t just triple the price of yours, they’d go rotten. How could you be inaccessible when everyone around you was ready to surrender?

A registry office wedding didn’t help either. Zoya had learnt this from the experience of Maria, a Ukrainian nurse she did alternate shifts with. Maria had relied on the registry office, but a week after the marriage her husband left her, went away and completely disappeared. For seven years, she brought up her child on her own, and on top of it all, she was trapped by her marriage. (172)

Solzhenitsyn wrote Cancer Ward more than fifty years ago but the fruits of the Socialist cultural revolution are very evident today in the massive problem that Russia has with orphans or just plain unwanted children. 

President Trump may vow that America will never be a Socialist country, but there is no doubt that the Socialist cultural revolution has already come. Its tenets have been taught in American schools for years, and the results are more and more obvious. 

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*Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward, 1968. Penguin book edition 1971.

Fathers' Day Recipe

While trying to clean out years of accumulated papers in my home office, I came across a little story about my paternal grandfather and grandmother that appeared in the New York Daily News on the occasion of their 63rd wedding anniversary back in 1972. I thought it might be appropriate to post it as Fathers's Day approaches.

My mother died when I was only eleven and I and my two younger brothers then moved next door to live with our grandparents. BaBa, my grandfather, was 70 at the time and NaNa, my grandmother, just 58. I never could have realized how difficult this invasion must have been for them, and they never made us feel unwelcome or unwanted. Although the article speaks of wedded bliss, the death of my mother and the subsequent plight of their son, was just one of the many hardships and trials they had to endure during their long life. Nevertheless, the article is basically correct in its description of their long love affair. Among their many recipes, they did find the recipe for success as husband and wife, father and mother, and grandfather and grandmother.


Bernard Rabin, They Still Add Chapters to a 63- Year Love Story. NY Daily News, Wednesday, October 11, 1972, p. 47.

Take a lot of love and affection, mix it with mutual respect, add a generous dose of humility, sprinkle with humor and you have the prefect recipe for 63 years of wedded bliss.

“It seems like yesterday,” said a proud Joseph DeStefano, 92, of 49-13 69th St. , Woodside, as he kissed his beaming wife, Maria, 81. “We were married on Oct. 10, 1909, by Father John Milo in St. Mark’s R.C. Church, Bronx, and the day was just as beautiful as this day is.”

Their love story, Mrs. DeStefano recalled, began in their hometown, Agerola, a small village near Naples. They knew each other as children. When DeStefano came to the United States in 1896, they were separated but did not forget each other.

In the summer of 1909, DeStefano, then living in East Harlem, came to visit a former Agerola neighbor, who had two teenage daughters. His object was to meet and possibly court one of the daughters. But, unknown to him, Maria had come from Italy and was staying with the neighbor.

“No sooner did we meet again,” said Mrs. DeStefano, “than he told me he wanted to marry me. I had other boyfriends, but he insisted. In fact, he sent his mother to me that night with a huge basket of fruit and with a message that his intentions were honorable. “

“He said he’d give me three months to make up my mind and that he’d see me once a week. Instead, he came to my house every night, and before three months were up, I not only said I would marry him, but I did.”

Fruit and vegetable store owners for most of their married life, the DeStefano’s bought their present home in 1928. There they raised two daughters and a son, who in turn gave them five grandchildren.

Now retired and in good health, the couple spend their time watching television, gardening, baking, cooking favorite Old-World dishes and visiting their grandchildren.

Looking back on their 63 years together, the couple, holding hands said: We’re still lovebirds.” 


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Battle of Midway: June 4, 1942

The anniversary of the Battle of Midway coming as it does on June 4, is usually overshadowed by remembrances of the Allied landings on the coast of Normandy on D-Day, the sixth of June. Nevertheless, if not for the American naval victory in the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942, D-Day might never have happened.

Nowhere is the story of Midway told better than in Admiral Samuel Morison’s epic history of United States naval operations during the Second World War. Admiral Morison was a rare combination of sailor and historian. Before the war he had written a magisterial biography of Columbus that still ranks with anything ever written about that great sailor. As part of his research Morison even used a sailing ship to cover the route Columbus had taken.

When the war broke out, the U.S. Navy asked Morison to be its official historian. The Navy took pains to put him on actual ships that were very likely to see action. He was not at Midway but his account reads like an eyewitness. Below are excerpts from his depiction of the pivotal two minutes of that epic battle.

First, a little introduction. After their stunning success at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the Japanese had rolled up one victory after another. By the spring of 1942 Japanese strategists thought that they only had to secure the tiny island of Midway in the central Pacific to completely solidify their hegemony over most of Asia.

They sent a huge naval task force including four of their best aircraft carriers and most of their best pilots to take the tiny island in the middle of nowhere. Even though the American navy had been battered at Pearl Harbor, it was able to send a carrier force to intercept the Japanese after code-breakers deciphered enough of the Japanese naval code to reveal that Midway was the target. 

The Japanese had already bombed the small garrison at Midway when the American carriers came into range. Admiral Raymond Spruance was in command of the American fleet and he followed the advice of Captain Miles Browning who shrewdly predicted the location of the Japanese force. Spruance launched an immediate attack and the American planes quickly found the Japanese. Unfortunately, the initial torpedo bomber attack was thwarted by Japanese fighters (Jekes). Not one torpedo reached its target and practically all the torpedo bombers were shot down. It seemed like all was lost for the Americans. Morison relates what happened next.   

Lt. Commander McCluskey

"The third torpedo attack was over by 1024, and for about one hundred seconds the Japanese were certain they had won the Battle of Midway, and the war. This was their high tide of victory. Then, a few seconds before 1026, with dramatic suddenness, there came a complete reversal of fortune, wrought by the Dauntless dive-bombers, the SBDs, the most successful and beloved by aviators of all our carrier types during the war. Lieutenant Commander Clarence W. McClusky, air group commander of Enterprise, had two squadrons of SDBs under him: 37 units. He ordered one to follow him in attacking carrier Kaga, while the other, under Lieutenant W. E. Gallaher, pounced on Akagi, Nagumo’s flagship. Their coming in so soon after the last torpedo-bombing attack meant that the Zekes were still close to the water after shooting down TBDs, and had no time to climb. At 14000 feet the American dive-bombers tipped over and swooped screaming down for the kill. Akagi took a bomb which exploded in the hangar, detonating torpedo storage, then another which exploded amid planes changing their armament on the flight deck—just as Browning had calculated. Fires swept the flagship, Admiral Nagumo and staff transferred to cruiser Nagara, and the carrier was abandoned and sunk by a destroyer’s torpedo. Four bomb hits on Kaga killed everyone on the bridge and set her burning from stem to stern. Abandoned by all but a small damage-control crew, she was racked by an internal explosion that evening, and sank hissing into a 2600 fathom deep.

Lt. Commander Leslie

The third carrier was the victim of Yorktown’s dive-bombers, under Lieutenant Commander Maxwell F. Leslie, who by cutting corners managed to make up for a late start. His 17 SBDs jumped Soryu just as she was turning into the wind to launch planes, and planted three half-ton bombs in the midst of the spot. Within  twenty minutes she had to be abandoned . U.S. submarine Nautilus, prowling about looking for targets, pumped three torpedoes into her, the gasoline storage exploded, whipsawing the carrier, and down she went in two sections....

Never has there been a sharper turn in the fortunes of war than on that June day when McClusky’s and Leslie’s dive-bombers snatched the palm of victory from Nagumo’s masthead, where he had nailed it on 7 December.

Midway was a victory not only of courage, determination and excellent bombing technique, but of intelligence, bravely and wisely applied….it might have ended differently but for the chance which gave Spruance command over two of the three flattops. Fletcher did well, but Spruance’s performance was superb. Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice, keeping in his mind the picture of widely disparate forces, yet boldly seizing every opening, Raymond A. Spruance emerged from this battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval history.

Admiral Spruance

Admirals Nimitz, Fletcher, and Spruance are, as I write, very much alive; Captain Mitscher of Hornet, Captain Murray of Enterprise and Captain Miles Browning of the slide-rule mind have joined the three-score young aviators who met flaming death that day in reversing the verdict of battle. Think of them, reader, every Fourth of June. They and their comrades who survived changed the whole course of the Pacific War."

For military history buffs here is a link to an excellent 40 minute video on the Battle of Midway. 

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