Contempt (1963)

A screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) is hired by an arrogant American producer (Jack Palance) to punch up a script during filming, and his marriage to his disproportionately attractive wife (Brigitte Bardot) begins to deteriorate.

Director Fritz Lang plays director Fritz Lang. Real-life Lang’s directing career was already over, due mostly to failing eyesight. Here he is directing, interestingly enough, The Odyssey.

The film was a success for director Jean-Luc Godard, but for Bardot, one of the biggest stars at the time, it was a bit of a disappointment. Half of the million dollar budget went into her fee.

Husband and wife wander around their apartment while arguing. The scene goes on for thirty-four minutes and nothing sees to be communicated. This is the key to the film. A relationship goes from very solid to on the rocks, and the root cause is never uttered. It is left to the audience to decide. I have my theory, and it's not what's in the IMDb blurb.

Contempt is a very talky movie. Little action of consequence and the viewer is left to decide what it all meant. A second viewing may be in order, but I don’t feel compelled to do so. AMRU 3. It is, however, my favorite Jean-Luc Godard film so far.

Clash by Night (1952)

World-weary Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck) returns to her hometown, defeated by the past ten years. Now just wanting to be safe, she agrees to marry nice guy fisherman Jerry (Paul Douglas). Mae hates Jerry’s boorish, arrogant friend Earl (Robert Ryan), so predictably, they have an affair.

Marilyn Monroe plays the girlfriend of Mae’s little brother. On loan from 20th Century Fox, this was her first sizable role. Back-handed compliments aside, her performance earned her better roles. Old friend J. Carrol Naish played Uncle Vince. A very different role for him.

Commonly labeled film-noir, Clash by Night certainly has a noir title. It also has a noir cast and director, and the tone is fairly pessimistic, but It seems to just miss. Even TCM’s Eddie Muller seems to waffle on the subject.

Clash by Night is a domestic drama populated by fully flushed out characters. The setting feels very ‘lived in’, probably because it was based on a successful play. Robert Ryan performed in the play as Joe Doyle. Maybe not noir, but excellent performances make it an entertaining watch. AMRU 3.5.

While the City Sleeps (1956)

Pretty women are being murdered and the new head of a newspaper (Vincent Price) uses the story to fuel a competition to select the new Editor in Chief. Dana Andrews’ Ed Mobley isn’t interested.

The three competitors are George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, and James Craig. Sanders plays the high class charmer rather than the magnificent cad he is so adept at. Some may know Mitchell as a fantastic character actor with a knack of appearing in some great films, including Stagecoach, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), It’s a Wonderful Life, and Gone With the Wind. Craig also appeared in films. His character has an inside track on the position.

Ida Lupino is something of a free agent, offering assistance to Sanders but for her own reasons. John Drew Barrymore is our villain, more famous as John’s son and Drew’s dad, although apparently not much of one. Silent film star Mae Marsh makes an appearance. She has a ton of screen credits.

Typical of Fritz Lang, there’s a whole lot going on here. Hero Dana is dealing with his relationship with pretty Nancy while schooling the police and reporters on how to investigate a crime. The murders sometimes seem to be of secondary importance.

While the City Sleeps is a pretty good crime drama. While lacking in mystery, it’s an interesting watch from start to finish. It should be noted that not a whole lot of action seems to happen while the city is sleeping. AMRU 3.5.

Scarlet Street (1945)

Humdrum bank employee Chris (Edward G. Robinson) comes to the aid of a woman (Joan Bennett), and they strike up a friendship. Under the mistaken belief that he is a famous and fabulously wealthy artist, she and her abusive boyfriend (Dan Duryea) plot to scam him.

On today’s internet this would be called a romance scam, but back then the scammer was required to interact with the victim in real time. Oh, and actually be a pretty woman. Fritz Lang directed the 1944 noir The Woman in the Window also staring Robinson, Bennett, and Duryea, and featured a very similar plot (“A reserved professor meets a model and gets mixed up in murder.”)

I thought I had seen Joan Bennett before (outside of Suspiria, that is) but it was her sister Constance that appeared in What Price Hollywood? and Topper. There was also a sister Barbara who appeared in only five films and lived a troubled life. I shan’t go into detail.

Dan Duryea seems to always play the same character. A joyously hateful scoundrel. Here is no different. Robinson plays the hapless victim to perfection, led down the path like a lamb to the slaughter. But Robinson was capable of adding depth and complexity to the otherwise two-dimensional role. A subtle glance can express wonders.

The Big Heat is the standard bearer of later career Lang but Scarlet Street is a close second. Nothing compares to Lang's early work, but these latter films can be quite surprising. It's a solid story and Robinson's performance is fantastic. AMRU 4.

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Pretty Norah (Anne Baxter) gets a Dear Jane letter from her serviceman boyfriend and impulsively takes the date offer from notorious womanizer Harry (Raymond Burr). He proceeds to get her drunk, take her back to his bachelor pad, and get all handsy. She struggles, whacks him with a fireplace poker, then goes home. When he is found dead, the police and press search for a mystery woman.

Anne Baxter is great as the frightened and remorseful Norah, and Richard Conte is the ace reporter that maybe she can trust. Ann Southern is her older, more world weary friend. Despite Ann’s long and storied film career, this is the first time we’ve met. Early on she appeared in vehicles for name-brand male comedians but would later earn her reputation in the ten ‘Maisie’ films between 1939 and 1947. We shall meet again.

Singing the title song is musician Nat ‘King’ Cole playing musician Nat ‘King’ Cole. Cub reporter Al is played by Richard Erdman who is best remembered as that guy who reviews snack foods on youtube.

The Blue Gardenia isn’t much of a mystery and may fall technically short of the Film Noir definition, but it is a very good watch, and most of the credit goes to the adorable Anne Baxter. Not the important or innovative work of director Fritz Lang’s early career, but like I said. It’s a good watch. AMRU 3.5.

Woman in the Moon (1929)

Crazy and disgraced college professor clings to his theory that there is gold in the mountains of the moon. One of his former students is in a position to actually go and find out. He’d bring his bestest buddy but it seems that our hero is the odd man out in a love triangle. Also, Evil Corp will stop at nothing to make sure the plan proceeds to their direction.

I started this film years ago but for reasons lost to time I did not finish it. I remember that it was pretty long but a quick check on IMDb says it was just over an hour and a half. Not too bad, so I started it. I became suspicious when I hit the hour twenty mark and had yet to see a spaceship. Apparently there are many edits of this film and TCM ran the director’s cut, reaching almost three hours. I had a three day intermission.

Silent film storytelling takes a while to get used to and I don’t know I would have been able to appreciate this film when I first attempted it. Fritz Lang is a master storyteller at the height of his abilities. But man, the pacing. He needs to communicate that the disgraced professor is poor and disgraced. The angry protagonist is angry. The evil antagonist is evil. The lovely love interest is … lovely, I guess. And he does. But once he hits his message, he needs to move on. But no, he just keeps hammering the point.

Many characters are introduced but there are five or six main people. The crazy old professor is pretty crazy and the primary comedic element. The antagonist has a very Hitler feel about him. Gerda Maurus plays the object of affection that motivates the sub-plot. She was weird looking. In real life, she was having an affair with director Fritz Lang. But before you feel too sorry for his screenwriter wife, know that when Fritz fled Germany after the Nazi’s took power, she stayed behind to make propaganda films.

Women in the Moon appears to be the first ever in the ‘saucer and spaceship’ subgenre. It was well researched and got a lot of things right. It got some wrong, but hey, a lot happened over the next four decades. It is important and well made. But man, it could use a little tightening. AMRU 3.5.

The Big Heat (1953)

Detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is a cop that doesn’t play by the rules. When investigating the suicide of a fellow cop, he is told to back off. Not Dave Bannion. Back off isn’t in his vocabulary.

Big fan of Fritz Lang. M (1931) and Metropolis (1927) are wonderful films. Always liked Glenn Ford, too. And Gloria Grahame is one of my favorite Marilyn Monroe knockoffs. IMdb and Rotten Tomatoes both give The Big Heat very high rating, and I am more than a little confused by this. The story itself is fine. Cop investigates, gets too nosey, is burned, then the story is revealed. Been done a million times, and sometimes not as well. But oh, but the acting, it’s brutal. The dialog seems like it was written as a group project in a film-noir 101 class, and the over the top score beats us over our heads with the message. It's pretty cheesy.

A young Lee Marvin played the heavy. Blink and you'll miss a very young Carolyn Jones (Morticia in The Addams Family). Here, she’s a blond. Marlon Brando’s sister is also here. But let’s talk about Gloria, shall we?

Longtime readers may remember Grahame from such hits as The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and small parts in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Song of the Thin Man (1947). Eventually I will see her in a Lonely Place (1950) and maybe never in Oklahoma! (1955). She got this job as the babydoll floozy because Marilyn was too expensive. She didn’t get along too well in Hollywood, perhaps bristling over the stream of shallow sexpot roles she was offered, and quality work dried up.

Her personal life wasn’t much better. Her marriage to second husband Nicholas Ray may have been doomed when he found her in bed with his thirteen year old son. But don’t get the wrong idea, she made an honest man of the younger Ray when he later became her fourth husband. She ended up doing a lot of stage and TV work then died young of cancer. Cancer is a bitch.

The Big Heat isn’t terrible, but I am mystified by its reputation. It is over stylized in a bad way, almost laughable. When Bannion is having a touching moment with his family I don’t need the score to smother me with sentiment. I get it. Never-the-less, I won’t punish it for high expectations. AMRU 3.

Metropolis (1927)

Back when I got my collection of horror movies, there were a couple films on it that I was very much looking forward to watching. First was Nosferatu, which I found disappointing. Secondly was Metropolis, which amazed me. The video quality on that public domain was very poor and it made me long to see a restored copy. Finally I have.

Those looking for a restored copy of Metropolis will find many. The most authoritative version is the Kino edition, which includes the most footage and uses the original score (and no, it wasn't done by Queen). Why so many versions? The original film was long. Too long, studio execs felt, for American audiences. They also had little regard for it. The film was edited, reorganized, and rescripted. Many times by many different people. Trying to piece together the original masterpiece was quite an undertaking.

The Kino edition is a little over two hours. I had the boys watch. Someday they will forgive me.

Here's the basic story: rich guy runs the plant, the Metropolis. They workers are drones who live a brutal existence in the depths. Freder, the owner's son, is a playboy who spends his time ... well, playing. The mysterious Maria brings the children of the workers into realm of the privileged to see their "brothers and sisters". Freder is captivated. He goes down below and takes the place of a worker for a ten hour shift. He learns that Maria holds illegal meetings deep in the catacombs. She is looking for a mediator between the hands and the head. Perhaps this could be Freder? Good 'oll dad will have something to say about this.

What I saw in the public domain version was a visual work of art, obscured by scratches. The story didn't make a damn bit of sense. The title cards were sometimes clipped, unclear, and some seemed to be missing. But the special effects, given the time and technology, were wonderful. A machine the men operate has a breakdown and people are killed. In Freder's eyes, the machine transforms into a giant pagan god, consuming the people. A featurette on the disk describes what Fritz Lang had to go through to make that happen. It's worth watching.

One thing I found out was that approximately a quarter of the movie is lost. They inserted title cards to describe the missing scenes as best as they can piece them together. So, the full film was, what, close to three hours long? Seriously?

Oh, the religious imagery. The virginal Maria is waiting for a mediator, which seemed like something of a messianic character. Maria speaks of the story of Babel from the old testament, there is a reference to a character named Hel (from Norse mythology, not the double-hockey sticks place), and a character named Josaphat. Oh, and the pagan god monster mentioned earlier and pentagrams everywhere, especially in evil inventor Rotwang's house. Rotwang creates an evil robot version of Maria, maybe a reference to the whore Magdalene? (I know Mary Magdalene wasn't really a whore!)

Silent films are tedious. Two hour long silent films with missing scenes are doubly so. I put the family to sleep. There were moments where I myself found my eyes closed. The amazing art work and imagery could take it only so far. That's when I learned that an almost complete version of Metropolis was discovered in a film library in Argentina. A restoration is expected to be ready in 2010. Could I sit through another, even longer viewing? That is something I will have to consider.

In the meantime, AMRU 3.5.

M (1931)

Someone is abducting little girls and murdering them. Peter Lorre is Hans Beckert, a "rehabilitated" mental patient, who is frustrating the police. No material evidence is ever found and witnesses disagree on every detail. The police, in desperation, spend every night raiding every night club and harassing every two-bit crook.

The crooks have had enough. They band together to find the culprit so that they can get back to their businesses of picking pockets and other petty crimes. I'm going to stop right there. Anything more would be spoiling the film, and with M, I actually care.

I picked up M because in the category of Film-Noir, IMDB rates it number 3. 48th overall. I didn't know what to expect. M is a truly remarkable film.

Lorre's performance was nothing short of stunning. Earlier in the film, he'd be on screen and you'd say "oh, yea, totally a child molester". He just had that look. His big scene at the end is unbelievable. Truly out of this world.

I don't have anything sarcastic to say. I'm lost for snark! It's disorienting. Here's what I learned about Fritz Lang. Fritz was a German movie director principally remembered for Metropolis (1927). M, he felt, was his best work. When the Nazis took over in Germany, he fled. He continued to make movies in Hollywood, none matching the power and impact of M. He had the reputation of being demanding of actors, to the point of abuse. But, what did he look like? Think Colonel Klink, but more gay.

That's the stuff! In striking contrast to every other movie I've gotten from the library, this one was perfect. Not only was the restoration flawless, the disk itself was pristine. No skips! I must see this movie again. AMRU 4.