Film Noir Favorites 2023

                               

 

As a Senior Citizen I find it very difficult to watch modern movies either in theaters or on TV. It is not only just the gratuitous violence and sexuality, but also the incessant and confusing image changes on the screen. Just as in TV commercials, no image seems to appear for more than a second or two. I can’t stand or understand the furious editing. What a difference from the films that people of my generation grew up with. A director could just set his camera down and let his stars act for a couple of uninterrupted minutes. Such scenes, so common in Hollywood’s Golden Age, would be unthinkable today.

Hollywood’s Golden Age refers to films made from the coming of sound in the thirties to the advent of TV in the fifties.  These were the films my parents watched in theaters, and which I originally watched as a teenager when they began to appear on TV in the fifties. My favorites are the black and white dark crime dramas that French film makers and critics called “film-noir” when 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 startling contrasts between light and dark, black and white. 

Often, many of these films were low budget productions usually designed to be seen as the second feature on traditional Hollywood double bills. 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 talent 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 some of these films that I have viewed again this past year. Actually, I have viewed them many times and always enjoy coming back to them. 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 old telephones that people always answer, and the incessant cigarette smoking.               

 

Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo

Kiss of Death. Victor Mature and Collen Gray star in this 1947 suspenseful drama of betrayal and violence. Mature plays a hoodlum who goes to prison rather than squeal on his associates in a botched jewel robbery. In this film the criminals are sons of Italian immigrants, as in many of the films of this era, but the film depicts the good, the bad , and the conflicted among them. Directed by Henry Hathaway this film provided a breakout role for Richard Widmark who plays a psychopathic murderer with a cackling laugh that would become his trademark. 99 minutes. CC                        

High Sierra.  Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino star in this ground-breaking 1941 drama. Bogart plays a prohibition era gangster released from prison only to find himself out of place in a new world. Written by John Huston, and directed with gritty intensity by Raoul Walsh, High Sierra signaled a new era in film in its attempt to humanize the criminal. 100 minutes. CC.

The Narrow Margin:  Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor, the dark lady of film noir, star in this 1952 thriller where most of the action takes place on a speeding train. McGraw plays a cop guarding a dead gangster’s moll (Windsor) as they travel from Chicago to LA to testify before a grand jury. Also on the train are determined hitmen who know the moll is on the train but don’t know what she looks like. This low-budget film effectively dispensed with background music in favor of the sounds of the moving train. 71 minutes. CC.

The Killing: Sterling Hayden stars in a 1956 heist drama directed in revolutionary fashion by Stanley Kubrick at the start of his career. Classic femme fatale Marie Windsor heads up a fine supporting cast that also includes Elisha Cook Jr. as her wimpy husband. This tough, tense film is one of the greatest crime dramas ever made. 85 minutes. CC.

He Walked by Night. Richard Basehart and Scott Brady star in a 1948 police procedural about a manhunt for a cop-killer. The ending takes place in the incredible Los Angeles storm sewer system. This film became the prototype for the famed TV series, Dragnet. Jack Webb, the creator of Dragnet, appears in a supporting role.  79 minutes. CC.

Roadhouse.  Ida Lupino stars in this 1948 film about a sultry, nightclub singer who upsets the friendship of two men with tragic results. Lupino sings her own songs in this film and demonstrates how a skilled actress can put over a song without much of a voice. Cornell Wilde, and Richard Widmark, one of the premier noir villains, co-star. Directed by Jean Negulesco with extraordinary black and white cinematography by Joseph LaShelle. 95 minutes. CC.

 

Too Late for Tears: Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea, one of noir’s top villains, star in this 1949 tale of a beautiful, scheming housewife who will let nothing stand in her way after a fortune drops into her lap. This role places Lizabeth Scott among the top femme fatales in noir history. The film also features Don Defore who would later become famous in TV sit coms like Ozzie and Harriet and Hazel. Directed by Byron Haskin, the film was recently restored after years of being lost. 100 minutes. CC.

 

Impact: Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines star in this 1949 film about a successful businessman whose wife and her lover scheme to bump off.  The film features Helen Walker as the conniving wife, Charles Coburn as a detective, and famed Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong. Directed by Arthur Lubin. 111 minutes.

Dark Passage: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall star in this 1947 film about a man who breaks out of prison after being falsely convicted of murdering his wife, and has to undergo plastic surgery to escape the law. Perhaps the least well-known of the four films that starred the famous couple, it ranks with their best. Based on a novel by famed crime writer David Goodis. Agnes Morehead is outstanding as the villainess, and Horseley Stephenson creates an iconic plastic surgeon who makes a man look like Humphrey Bogart in just 90 minutes, and for only $200. 106 minutes. CC.*

###

*Note: I prefer to use DVDs when watching these films. CC means that close captioning is available for the hearing impaired on the DVD. Many of them can also be available from streaming services.  

.

Teddy Roosevelt: Arena Speech

  

    

My younger brother Joe, a retired NYPD police sergeant, recently sent me a famous paragraph from President Teddy Roosevelt's so-called "Arena" speech given at the Sorbonne in 1910, just two years after Roosevelt had left the Presidency. Roosevelt had become the youngest President in history at the age of 42 when he succeeded the assassinated William McKinley in September 1901. As we enter into our next Presidential campaign, I thought it would be good to reproduce below the famous paragraph as well as the two preceding ones which serve as an introduction. The words below give an indication of why Roosevelt's image can be found on Mount Rushmore.

  

It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position, should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their—your—chances of useful service are at an end.

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

###

Carbon Dioxide Explosion

Last week much of the Eastern coast of the United States was shrouded in an orange haze caused by forest fires in Canada. A very unusual sequence of weather events caused the smoke from these fires to fill the atmosphere and drift south. The cause of these fires is debatable, but there is no denying their effects. The fires have spewed an enormous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, an amount the makes the efforts of humans to limit carbon dioxide emissions seem insignificant.

Things were uncomfortable here for a few days but eventually the sky cleared. Mother Nature cleaned things up with the help of trees and plants that have a voracious appetite for carbon dioxide. Actually, here in Connecticut we may see a banner year for crops and gardens due to the abundance of carbon dioxide from these fires. 

This latest event just confirmed my belief that Nature has more to do with Climate and weather than humans who make up just a small part of the natural world. M.J. Sangster made this point in The Real Inconvenient Truth,  a 2018 book on all the factors that make up the Earth’s climate.

Sangster did not deny that the Earth might be in a warming phase, or that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been increasing over the last 100 years, but in his well-researched book, he demonstrated that human-caused CO2, is a tiny fraction of the CO2 produced by nature, and that it makes up an  even tinier fraction of Greenhouse gases (GHG) which are 95% water vapor. In other words, human caused CO2, is little more than a drop in the vast ocean that is our atmosphere. Despite the claims of Climate Change Alarmists, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), human-caused or natural, is not poisoning the planet. Here are some facts from Sangster’s book.

 

“Carbon dioxide  (CO2) is not a toxic gas; it plays a vital role in plant and animal processes, including photosynthesis [CO2+sunlight+Water produces Plant food (carbohydrates) + Oxygen]. Obviously, we need the oxygen, and plants need the carbohydrates.” … [199]

“That CO2 is directly correlated with temperature is not the issue however, the issue is whether or not the relationship is the dominate climate driver in the presence of other natural events and feedbacks, and clearly it is not or, as CO2 increases linearly, so too would temperature… It is just one climate forcing event in a complex Earth system… “[198]

 

The major factors in the complex Earth climate system are the Sun, Tectonics, Wind and Ocean Circulation, Oceanic Oscillations, Clouds and Aerosols, and Greenhouse Gases. Sangster devoted a chapter to each of these factors and they are must reads for anyone really interested in following the science. Actually, his book is a fascinating introduction to Earth science. Did you know, for example:

That the Sun revolves in a relatively circular orbit around the nucleus of our galaxy at a speed of over 500,000 miles per hour. It takes 11 Earth years to complete its immense orbit, and drags us along with it although we don’t feel a thing. On route, we pass through fields of cosmic rays that bombard us. Our atmosphere protects us, but these cosmic rays still effect our climate. 

That the plate tectonics that formed our continents is still going on and generating vast amounts of energy. They also create mountain ranges. Did you know that 85% of the Earth’s volcanos are below the surface of the oceans?

That wind and Ocean circulation is a major factor in our climate. Without the warm waters of the tropical Gulf Stream, Northern Europe would be uninhabitable.

That clouds play a key role in regulating our climate. Some let in needed heat from the Sun, while others reflect it back into space. As noted above, water vapor makes up 95% of the greenhouse gas that keeps heat in, and that prevents the entire planet from looking like Antarctica. Sangster quotes former President Obama’s Science Czar, Dr, John Holdren: “a 1% increase in cloud cover would decrease the surface temperature by .8 degree C., the entire warming amount attributed to CO2 since the start of the Industrial Age.” [196]

That water vapor makes up 99% of the greenhouse gases that help regulate our climate, and that it is entirely natural. There is nothing we can do about this fact, or any of the other facts noted above. 

Finally, Sangster points out a basic truth: “Earth is the only planet in the solar system with an atmosphere that can sustain life. The blanket of atmospheric gases not only contains the air we breathe but also modulates the energy balance… “[197].

I have limited this post to Climate Science. The rest of “The Real Inconvenient Truth” deals with the politics of Climate Science. We will deal with that in subsequent posts, but for now I will just say that it appears to me that it is the height of hubris to think that humans can combat the vast and powerful natural forces that have shaped our Earth on its incredible journey through space and time. 

###              

Battle of Midway

This week marks some significant anniversaries in American history. June 6 marks the anniversary of D-Day, the day in 1944 when Allied forces landed on the coast of Normandy. A year later on June 8, V-E Day, Germany surrendered. However, June 4 marked the anniversary of the battle of Midway in 1942. Without the American naval victory at Midway, D-day may never have occurred. I like to put up the following post every year not because I like war, but because I would like my children and grandchildren to realize what they owe to the brave men who fought on both sides on that fateful day.

************* 

If we think things are bad in our country today, we should consider how dark things looked on June 4, 1942. We had been at war since Dec. 7, 1941 when the surprise Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor destroyed much of the American fleet in the Pacific. By 1942, Hitler and Nazi Germany had conquered France, eastern Europe, and threatened to invade England. America had been totally unprepared for war and the Japanese, who had achieved victory after victory in the Pacific thought that one final blow could force America to sue for peace.

The Japanese planned an attack on Midway in the hope of enticing American aircraft carriers into battle, a battle the Japanese were sure they would win. 

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 an attack on the tiny island of Midway in the central Pacific would entice American aircraft carriers into battle. The destruction of the US Navy carriers would force the Americans to sue for peace and secure the Japanese empire in the Pacific.

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. 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."

I recently watched and highly recommend Midway, a 2019 film with fine acting, incredible graphics, and a degree a historical accuracy rare in war films.

###