Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Time of the Heathen (1962)

Okay, this is not an overlooked film, it's forgotten to the point of being almost non-existent. I saw the movie on 35 mm film in the screening of the Finnish Film Archive, and I bet my money it's one of the very few remaining prints of the film in all the world, since there are no signs of the film having been shown anywhere in decades. Yet it's a very interesting and occasionally a very good movie.

Time of the Heathen (Ruoho nousee jälleen in Finnish, meaning "Grass Will Rise Again") is the sole film directed by Peter Kass. The film had its premiere in 1962. Kass wasn't a nobody: he was already a director in Broadway, and later on he became known as a trainer of actors. But his film is a total obscurity. To this day, I would know nothing about the film unless it were for the Finnish film critic Tapani Maskula who has mentioned the film to me from time to time. He said he was the only critic in Finland in the mid-sixties who wrote a review of the film.

The film was shown for some 40 people on Monday night here in Turku, where I live, and the film proved to be very exciting and intriguing. It's a very short film, some 75 minutes long, shot probably on 16 mm and widened to 35 mm for distribution. It's black and white, same sort of high-contrast and stark material that Night of the Living Dead and other indie films of the sixties were shot on. (Didn't Romero also shoot on 16 mm?) Time of the Heathen was probably a university project, since the music, composed by Lejaren Hiller, was performed by the Illinois University students' orchestra. Most of the actors are amateur and they don't have any other films to their credit, except for John Heffernan who's in the lead, and Ethel Ayler who has a small but significant role as a African-American servant. Then again she didn't perform in cinema again for ten years (then she was seen in Come Back Charleston Blue).

Heffernan plays a lone man called Gaunt, who's walking somewhere on the countryside, looking and acting strange and citing the Bible, when the sheriff stops him (hence the title, from the Book of Hezekiel). Gaunt comes across an African-American boy, and together they witness a rape attempt by a young white man that leads to the death of the servant. The racist and violent father of the rapist is going to accuse Gaunt of killing the woman, but Gaunt and the young boy flee to the woods.

The story is very simple, but there are enough twists to keep this interesting for the first 30 or 40 minutes. Then the story takes a turn and becomes even more simpler, reducing the story to a minimalist level, and then comes a flashback scene that's almost a complete experimental movie inside the film! It's in colour and at times very striking. It reveals Gaunt's traumatic past during the World War II (won't give it away, though) and broadens the film's thematic scope to greater levels. This is no mere man-on-the-run story.

The experimental scene was done by Ed Emshwiller, who also produced, shot and edited the movie. Emshwiller or Emsh is better known as a science fiction illustrator, but he also did lots of experimental shorts and other films (and a friend of mine recognized artist George Dumpson in a small role - Emshwiller has made a documentary on Sampson's art!). The experimental colour scene comes accompanied by computer-generated (or electronic, it as yet unclear*) music composed and performed by Lejaren Hiller, who's probably best known for his collaboration with John Cage. This is quite an early film to use electronic music. The scene works very well inside the film, because it's made clearly for Time of the Heathen and not as a separate piece of art that's just attached to the film.

Hope this is enough to convince you Time of the Heathen is an interesting film. It has neo-noir touches here and there, and as my friend pointed out, it's actually one long chase scene, so there's also action if you're into that sort of thing. There are some clumsy scenes from time to time, and I thought the script had some inconsistencies, but I'm willing to forget them. Amateur actors perform quite well, which is no miracle, given that Kass was a director on Broadway. The harsh country milieu (the film was probably shot in Illinois, though I'm not sure - it was said in the ending credits, but I forgot already) adds very refreshing scenery to the film, and this almost feels like a precursor to movies like Winter's Bone. Tapani Maskula who hadn't seen the film over 50 years was there in the screening, and he said after the film that it could be shot even today. The themes are still there: war, racism, hatred.

The problem is only that you can't see this film. It has never been released on VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray. It was shown on Finnish TV in 1968, but I don't know of any other screenings. If you know a film or video print exists, keep noise about it. Demand it be shown and eventually digitized. Ask John Heffernan (who's still alive and active) to be guest at your film festival. (Sadly, Peter Kass and Emsh are dead. The film was mentioned in Kass's obituaries, but it was clear not one of the writers had seen it.) Here's hoping this blog post starts the Time of the Heathen renaissance!

* There's indeed unclarity as to what kind of music was used in the film. I think the opening credits say Hiller did "computer-generated music" (or sounds) for this, but when another friend of mine got interested in this and wrote the University of Illinois about it, he received this answer:

"Hiller, like many early Electronic Music composers, was rather practical. He used sounds in compositions that were originally written for inclusion in other pieces. He composed a tape loop of percussive concrete sounds for the film, "Time of the Heathen." These sounds were never used in the film, though Hiller did include them as an optional third cue in the suite from "Time of the Heathen." (...) First, I believe the music created for the film "Time of the Heathen" was created by Hiller in 1961 within the Experimental Music Studio at Stiven House, and was realized with electronic sounds (from analog waveform generators) and possibly some musique concrète sources (of which Hiller was fond of using), not computer generated."

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Where the Sidewalk Ends

I'm a film noir buff, yet I haven't seen many classic film noirs everyone is already acquainted with. So I was lucky to finally see Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends from 1950, about which I remember reading over 30 years ago. It's a classic film noir, and without the ending it would be a perfect noir.

The plot is great, the stuff of the bona fide noir paperbacks: the violent cop, bent on destruction, kills almost inadvertently a suspect and tries to hide it. Dana Andrews playing the cop is actually a homme fatale in the film, as there's no femme fatale anywhere in sight. There's a woman the cop falls in love with, but she's no bad kitty. It's more like the cop drags him down in his personal hell. The ending is too optimistic, but what can you do? This was Hollywood in 1950.

Preminger keeps the story moving along in a nice pace, and Joseph LaShelle's very noirish cinematography shines throughout the film. There are lots of good character actors in minor roles, such as Karl Malden as a lieutenant and Neville Brand as a gangster. And, oh, did I mention it has Gene Tierney? She looks especially lovely in this.

Anyone read the original novel, Night Cry by William L. Stuart? Vintage Hardboiled Reads has, and it looks great.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Dennis Hauck: Too Late (2016)

Dennis Hauck's first feature-length film is Too Late that premiered earlier this year. It's an exceptional film, filmed on 35 mm film and shown only on film. I don't know if there will be a DVD or Blu-Ray later on or if the film will be available on streaming sites, but I guess not. (Oh, it's available on iTunes.)

I was lucky to have the opportunity to see the film last week. While Too Late is not a masterpiece, it's an interesting film in its own right, while it's also an interesting experiment, as it consists only of five shots, each 20 minute long. (The length of a film reel.) This is not done actually very consistently, as there are some scenes with split screens, and there are some edits in the end, but all in all Too Late is a marvelous technical experiment.

Too Late is also a crime film, a neo-noir, if you will. John Hawkes is very good playing a private detective getting caught up in his own past, and there are some other known actors in small roles, like Robert Forster, Jeff Fahey (whom I didn't recognize), Joanna Cassidy and some others. The story is about a stripper working at a seedy club and getting to know some intimate secrets of the owner - or is it...? It's a bit like David Lynch and also a bit like Quentin Tarantino and his Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs: the story moves back and forth in time and you have to be careful to really understand what's going on.

The major problem with the film is that it's too talkative. The 20-minute shots get caught up in people talking, and nothing much happens on screen. There's also the familiar problem with many experimental movies: you don't really invest much interest in these people. It's more a like game, though the surprise twist in end feels more touching than anything else in the film.

Still, Too Late is a very worthwhile film and if you have the opportunity, check it out.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog. (I hope there will be more Films.)

Friday's Forgotten Book: Martin M. Goldsmith: Detour (1939)

The film made from Martin M. Goldsmith's novel Detour is far from forgotten. Detour by Edgar G. Ulmer from 1945 is actually one of the better-known film noirs of its era, though it's been erroneously labeled as an extra-cheap quickie. It's now known that Ulmer exaggerated his tight budget and claimed the film was shot in a week, although it took longer than that. This is all well explained even in the Wikipedia article for the film. It also states that the film was shown regularly on television throughout the sixties and seventies, which explains why it was picked up by the first American critics of film noir, such as Paul Schrader, when other equally interesting films were neglected.

But the original novel by Martin M. Goldsmith is a different story altogether. The book was published in 1939 by Macaulay (a lending library publisher, if I'm not mistaken) and getting no reprints until the small press did it in 2005. This is astonishing, given the quality of the book. It's a moving tale of two persons living during the depression, trying to make ends meet. The other one, Alexander Roth, is a violinist trying to get to Hollywood to meet his girl friend living in Los Angeles. The girl, Sue Harvey, is a wanna-be actress, who hates her agent and is working in a diner. Alexander hitches his way across the continent, looking like a bum. He's picked up by a strange man, who has lots of cash and smokes joints. The man dies in his sleep and Alexander is left on nothing. He suspects that if he notifies the police, no one would believe he's innocent. He takes the money and the car, but meets a strange girl, named Vera. Vera reveals he also travelled with the dead man and hence know Alexander is not who he says he is. Vera is one of the meanest bitches in written word, and I'm not saying this lightly. The way Goldsmith paints her with words just makes your blood go chilly. The hate and lack of interest in anything (but money) ooze from her.

The first edition from 1939

Alex Roth is an amiable young man, if not something of a bore, and Goldsmith gives him a plausible voice. Sue, on the other hand, is not so amiable. She's a bit of a gold-digger, but also very earnest at that. The novel is written in terse and hardboiled vernacular, and the story races along smoothly largely through point-of-view narration. The depression era with all its worn-out ramblers comes alive in the pages of the book. When the film was made in 1945, the story of Sue Harvey was dropped alongside with references to sex and drugs. The book ends in an open note, in the end of the film the police pick up Al (changed from Alexander). Otherwise the film is pretty faithful.

Detour was republished, as I said, by a small publisher called O'Bryan House. They seem to have done only two books, according to this. Detour has its share of formatting errors, seems like they haven't done enough editing for the scanned text. Nevertheless, this was a very welcome reprint, a forgotten classic that should stay in print.

Here's Bill Pronzini on Goldsmith's two other crime novels, and here's Steve Lewis's review of Detour. And here's (also on Mystery*File) the foreword by Richard Doody for the O'Bryan House reprint.

More Forgotten Books for Friday found at Todd Mason's blog!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: a few Finnish neo-noirs

Some weeks ago The Festival of Finnish Cinema showed some Finnish films that can be labeled as neo-noir. This was continuation from the last year's theme of Finnish film noir. Last year only films from the studio era were shown, now the films were mainly from the eighties and nineties, with one film from 1978 and one from 2011.

Kaurismäki: Crime and Punishment

The first one shown was Aki Kaurismäki's debut feature based on Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. The film was made in 1983 and already shows the sureness of Kaurismäki. His style has changed somewhat after this, but it's still clearly his film. The spare narration, tight frames and the matter-of-factness of the dialogue are pure Kaurismäki. The film, taking place in Helsinki in the 1980s, is a bit like B-movie shot in only a few days, but it still packs quite a punch and remains one of Kaurismäki's best up to this day. Kaurismäki has some other films that could be labeled as neo-noir, such as Ariel, Hamlet Goes Business (even though it's pure comedy from the start) and I Hired a Contract Killer, in which a quiet man (Jean-Pierre Leaud) asks a hired killer to finish him off. There's also the TV movie Dirty Hands made from Sartre's play, which might also qualify, but I haven't seen it. 

Pauli Pentti produced and co-scripted and worked as assistant director in many of Kaurismäki's films, and he directed two neo-noirs in the eighties. Both were shown at the festival. Pimeys odottaa (Darkness Awaits, 1985) is perhaps the most quintessential Finnish neo-noir, strange drama of a young man who gets caught up in scheming and betrayal. The story unfolds a bit uneasily, but there's still lots of interest in the urbane film. Macbeth, made almost hand in hand with Kaurismäki Hamlet Goes Business in 1987, takes Shakespeare's nasty little tale into the late eighties' Helsinki. Macbeth in the film is the leader of the gang of criminals who rob empty houses and gas stations at the sea-side. The film is nicely photographed, but it's unfortunately marred by unclear narration of events. If you don't know the story beforehand, it's possible you don't really understand what goes on in Pentti's Macbeth. 

Pekka Hyytiäinen was an indie director, who made only three feature-length films two of which were shown at the festival. His first, Kirje (The Letter, 1978), was his most successful, as it was seen by 600 people when it opened! There are interesting elements in this psychological thriller, but the film is so slow there's actually no tension at all. Only glimpses of what was to come are seen on screen. Hyytiäinen's next, strangely titled 50-minute i + i (1981), is much more interesting. It's almost a collage of experiences in the life of a young man who's morbidly interested in suicide and dying. There's no coherent story line and it's difficult to tell what's going on in the film, as some of the film stock was almost destroyed by the laboratory, but the scenes were used nevertheless. i + i was seen by some 400 people in the premiere week after which it vanished almost completely. 

Hyytiäinen's best film, MP - minä pelkään (I Am Scared, 1983) was shown afterwards in the Finnish Film Archive's series, and it's ten or even hundred times more powerful than i + i. It's a dystopian horror tale set in a near future. There's possibly a war going on somewhere of which there are some really strange news on TV. A small family is trying to have a vacation at their summer cabin, and the reality and the dreams and nightmares of the family mingle with each other. MP is a very experimental film with some haunting imagery. It's an uneven piece of work (especially the actors are not up to their tasks), yet unlike any other film made in Finland, still it was seen only by some 300 people in 1983. After it was dug out from the archives some five years ago, it's been seen by more people than during its few weeks in the 1980s.

Tallinnan pimeys (The Darkness in Tallinn, 1993) by Ilkka Järvi-Laturi is more a suspense film than a proper neo-noir, but it was shown nevertheless, as it is not often seen and it's not out on DVD. I didn't watch the film at this time, but I saw when it came out. It's a well done caper movie set in Tallinn just after Estonia declared independence from Russia. Ilkka Järvi-Laturi's debut movie Kotia päin (Homeward, 1989) is also worth a look if you're interested in Finnish neo-noir, as is his History Is Made at Night (1999), but it's also so bad it practically ruined his career and he hasn't directed since. 

All the previous films were over 20 years old, but there was still one neo-noir more from 2011: Martón Jelinko's indie film Pystyssä (Indebted) that wasn't shown in Turku during its premiere week, so this was its proper premiere in this city. Jelinko, a Hungarian-born film-maker working in Finland, was at the screening and told how this movie was made with only 8,000 euros and how it was distributed without any funding from the Finnish Film Foundation (that's almost the only way to get your film properly distributed here). Jelinko also told his biggest influence in making Indebted was Nicholas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy, which to my mind is a recommendation. Indebted tells the story of two young women, the other working for a crime gang, the other working as a prostitute to pay her bills. It's hard-hitting movie with a recklessly moving camera and some tough violence. The ending is bleak, as befits a neo-noir movie. Indebted is not going to be released on DVD or Blu-Ray, but you can watch it at Indieflix. Comes highly recommended by me. 

There could've been more neo-noirs to be shown in the festival, but there were time and schedule restrictions. Some films, such as Veikko Aaltonen's two or three stylish and hard-hitting crime films, were shown during earlier festivals. I mention some other films in the post on studio-era film noirs; link at the top of this post.

More Overlooked Movies here. 

Luis Buñuel: Él

I've always loved Luis Buñuel's films, they are very fluent and his direction is almost invisible, yet they are full of surrealistic imagery and atmosphere, even though the events in the films aren't necessarily surrealistic or even weird themselves.

One of Buñuel's best films, to my mind, is this weird little melodrama Él, made in Mexico in 1952. Buñuel's Mexican period clearly was one of his most creative periods, even though there were no dull phases in his career (saying this must mean he's one of the best directors in the history of cinema, almost everyone else had their dull phases). Él is a noir melodrama that's more noir that any American film noir made in 1952 - or any other year from 1933 to 1958 (I'm thinking Touch of Evil here). Él is a hard-hitting drama about a man so jealous he's willing to kill his newly-wed wife for no reason at all, he's just imagining all the things he says his wife is doing behind his back. Yet this is a very funny film, though there's nothing funny about the way the man acts. Buñuel wouldn't be Buñuel, if the film didn't also mock the society and the Catholic church that protect and almost encourage this mad behaviour. Él is a perfect analysis of the narcissistic mind, made almost 50 years before talk about narcissism became commonplace.

Dan Gilroy: Nightcrawler

I've been saying this a lot lately: Hollywood handles neonoir pretty well these days. Just look at this list: Prisoners, Mud, The Place Beyond the Pines, Killing Them Softly, Out of the Furnace... Also End of Watch and A Walk Among the Tombstones prove my point. Even True Detective (a show I still have to write about) comes from under Ellroy's shadow.

One of these very good neonoirs from Hollywood is Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler that I finally saw the other night. I liked it a great deal - I knew going in I'd like it a great deal. It's a perfect case of noir: you know from the first minute everything is going terribly wrong, but you just can't turn your eyes away. (But saying this doesn't give away the film's superbly ironic ending.) Jake Gyllenhaal is masterful as a narcissistic sociopath who believes the neo-capitalist bullshit about how one can achieve anything if he just takes everything passionately.

Highly recommended. No easy solutions in this film, nor any genre trappings.

Finnish film noir: some worthy specimens

The Warsaw Song, Chris Paischeff in the middle

Some weeks (or months?) ago I wrote a review of John Grant's A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir and listed some Finnish specimens of film noir. I mentioned I'd be seeing some of them on big screen, since there was a festival of Finnish cinema here in Turku where I live and one of the themes of the festival was - ta-ta! - Finnish film noir. Here's a lowdown of the films I managed to see.

Varsovan laulu (The Warsaw Song, 1953, director: Matti Kassila): hardboiled and cynical tale of two booze smugglers, who struggle with love and lust. Very noirish with a downbeat ending and some quite seedy love triangle in the middle of the film. Chris Paischeff makes a very nice femme fatale in the lead. Suffers from the director's indecisiveness: there are two plotlines that don't mix easily. Suffers also from laughably props in the scenes set overseas.

Pikajuna pohjoiseen (Express to North, 1947, director: Roland af Hällström): I'm not sure whether this really qualifies as a film noir, but it has a very downbeat ending. The film seams almost effortlessly into a tragedy after being a thriller with comic overtones. Possibly one of the best Finnish feature films ever, reminiscent of English thrillers of the thirties and especially French films of the thirties and fourties. Set almost entirely on a train. Suffers from overacting at various points.

Silmät hämärässä (Eyes in the Mist, 1952, director: Veikko Itkonen): a very peculiar film about a writer who's down on his luck and drifts into a hotel room seeing four desperate-looking men in a room across the street. The writer imagines what has brought the men together. Their fictional story is told in a flashback (that has some flashbacks seamed in it), and in the end it's revealed the men's story forms the writer's new short story. Quite intricate with some good scenes throughout, but a bit contrived and not very plausible, but still possibly the most noir of the Finnish film noirs.

Joel Rinne gets mad in The Price for One Night

Yhden yön hinta (The Price for One Night, 1952, director: Edvin Laine): an attempt to bring the neorealistic formula of the films such as The Naked City to Finland. Succeeds at times, but is also unintentionally funny, especially in the scenes with criminals. On the other hand, Joel Rinne as the criminal mastermind gets into a Dennis Hopper craze as he twists his lady friend's head violently back and shouts: "Kiss Me! Kiss Me!" The film is fast-moving, though, and never really boring.

Olemme kaikki syyllisiä (We Are All Guilty, 1954, director: Aarne Tarkas): director-writer Aarne Tarkas was very interested in American film and film noir (and in American popular culture altogether, he picked his last name from ERB's Mars books!) and that shows in his comedies and crime films. This is a serious attempt to depict a doomed love story between a young man who suffers from mania and fits of rage and an innocent young woman who loves him first, but betrays him in the end. Quite believable and suspenseful to the end. I believe Tarkas himself suffered from ADHD that was left unattended, and I got to thinking this film might be something of a self portrait.

Tulio's The Criminal Woman

The film noirs I didn't manage to see:

Kultainen kynttilänjalka (The Golden Candelabra, 1946, director: Edvin Laine): crime film with gothic and comedy overtones. Never seen it, so can't comment. From what I've heard veers into camp.

Rikollinen nainen (The Criminal Woman, 1952, director: Teuvo Tulio): I've seen this earlier, a story of a woman who's driven mad by a jealous and abusive husband. I've written about Tulio earlier here.

These are of course not all the film noirs made in the Finnish studio system, I'm sure there's at least a dozen more. And of course there are some fringe examples, crime films that have lots of comic element in them, spy films made in the appropriate era, psychological thrillers that are devoid of the noir feel, pessimistic domestic dramas with downbeat endings etc.

I'm sure some of the films I mentioned above could be shown at a noir festival like, say, Noir City that has had British and Spanish film noirs during the past years. Paging Eddie Muller!

See also my posts on Finnish western films, part one here and part two here. And since this probably qualifies as an Overlooked Film post, go to Todd Mason's blog here to check the other overlooked films out!

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Private Hell 36

Don Siegel was once one of the Hollywood's best paid directors, but his star seems to be fading. Does anyone anymore remember any other film by him than Dirty Harry? Yet he directed some thirty films, some very good (Charley Varrick, Hell Is for Heroes, The Killers, Flaming Star, The Beguiled, The Shootist and others), some quite good, all quite capable. 

Private Hell 36 (1954) is one of his lesser-known films, yet it's a very capable, at times a very good film noir with cynical characters and a downbeat ending. It was produced by Ida Lupino's and Collier Young's indie outfit called Filmakers (no Filmmakers!) and Siegel was brought in at a late date. Collier Young scripted the film originally for his wife, Lupino, but Lupino had already divorced Young and married Howard Duff, who plays the other lead in the film. The other lead is Steve Cochran, who's very good at playing a sleazy cop who wants to get some extra money and start all over with Lupino with whom he's fallen in love. 

Some of the scenes last too long (something that mars also Siegel's The Killers), but all in all this is a pretty effective low-key drama. I'd hope there was more action, as Siegel really knows how to edit fight and chase scenes. I'm not complaining, though. There's also some naivety in the outcome, especially Howard Duff gets out a bit too nicely. 

Comes highly recommended by me, even though this is no means perfect. 

I saw the film at the Finnish Film Archive's screening. Before the film, the film critic Tapani Maskula offered a half-hour lecture on how he met Siegel in Finland in the late seventies (you know, Telefon was filmed partly in Finland) and discussed Siegel's fifties' films. Siegel told for example that while filming Private Hell 36 the lead actors were often suffering from hangover. There's a scene with Ida Lupino in which she's sitting on a bumper of a truck. Lupino had said to Siegel that he'd better shoot the scene quick, since she's about to throw up. And you can see it in the scene. It works miracles. Lupino has never looked so vulnerable, tired, bored and broken. 

More Overlooked Films here.

John Grant's massive encyclopedia of film noir

One of my Christmas presents was this huge film noir encyclopedia by film historian John Grant. I asked for it on purpose, because I had a hunch I'd enjoy the book.

And I most certainly did. Grant's book commands respect. He covers 3,500 films, both classic films noirs of the Golden Age of Hollywood and later neo-noirs of the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. He also includes lots of forgotten gems no one's ever heard of and has a feel for the Asian films as well. Grant knows his stuff and writes well. He has also nice things to say about some underrated films.

There are some problems with the book, though. The main thing for any reader is that it doesn't have a proper index. Some actors and directors are indexed, but it's a frustrating collection of only the most famous names. The point of this kind of book is the info on less-known films and directors, although Grant gives nice mini-essays also on well-known films, such as Citizen Kane. The info on the films is at times a bit thin, sometimes Grant provides only a short synopsis. And I happen to have a habit of skipping synopses and going straight to the review or the analysis part.

Grant also includes films I have a hard time to accept as noirs, mainly from the eighties and nineties, such as Ridley Scott's Black Rain, Gregory Hoblit's Primal Fear and Alan J. Pakula's Presumed Innocent. Are these noirs?

It's of course possible to say that it's better to give too much information than too little of it. Grant also includes films that are only fringe noirs, such as British suspense fillers from the fourties. It's unlikely they are full of sound and fury and despair that describes some of their Hollywood counterparts. But it seems Grant allows for many kind of definitions of film noir, even contradictory. He discusses these definitions in the foreword, giving out examples and thematic similarities, but still seems like his definition is too wide. I'm not really complaining, mind you, it's interesting to read also about those films.

I could find some films that Grant hasn't mentioned. What about Stark Fear from 1963? Radio On from 1979? I also checked - rather painstakingly because of the absent index - all the films based on the books and screenplays by Jean-Patrick Manchette. There's only one mentioned!

There are also some glaring omissions of foreign films noirs. It's understandable of course, when there's only scarce or no information on them easily available. Then again there are lots of non-Hollywood films Grant mentions I've never heard of (and likely will never see) from, say, Spain or Greece. Grant mentions some Finnish films as well, but he has only some three films by Aki Kaurismäki and one (half-Estonian) by Ilkka Järvi-Laturi. All of them are neonoirs from the eighties and nineties, while there were lots of studio-era films noirs made in Finland. Here are some of the classic Finnish films noirs for you:

Teuvo Tulio: Rikollinen nainen (The Criminal Woman); Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit (The Way You Wanted Me); Rakkauden risti (The Cross of Love) (all sleazy melodramas)
T. J. Särkkä: Kuu on vaarallinen (The Moon is Dangerous,  pure James M. Cainish stuff about a wild woman charming an older guy)
Roland af Hällström: Pohjoisen pikajuna (The Express Train to North, suspense in a train)
Edvin Laine: Musta rakkaus (Black Love - hey, even the title is purest noir!)
Matti Kassila: Varsovan laulu (The Warszaw Song; about smuggling); Tulipunainen kyyhkynen (The Crimson Dove, psychological suspense)
Veikko Itkonen: Silmät hämärässä (The Eyes in the Mist, one of the purest films noirs in Finnish cinema)
Aarne Tarkas: Olemme kaikki syyllisiä (We're All Guilty, what could be more noir than that?); Hän varasti elämän (He Stole a Life, marvelous Psycho pastiche, made already in the early sixties, absurd and darkly funny)

There are lots of others, but these came off top of my head. There are also many humorous crime films that because of the time they were done and the black-and-white photography are mentioned as films noirs, but I'm not sure whether they qualify. Some of the films mentioned above will be screened at the Festival of Finnish Cinema later in the coming spring, I'll write more about them then (as I did last year about Finnish westerns, see here and here).

As Grant also has lots of neonoirs in the book, here's also a list of Finnish neonoirs:

Pauli Pentti: Pimeys odottaa (The Darkness Waits); Macbeth (b&w rendering of the Shakespeare play)
Pekka Hyytiäinen: MP - minä pelkään (IA – I'm Afraid, uneasy but very hypnotic mixture of experimental dystopian film and some very personal horror; Hyytiäinen's other indie-produced films might also qualify, but they are very hard to come by)
Veikko Aaltonen: Tuhlaajapoika (A Prodigal Son, sleazy scumbag noir with S&M undertones); Rakkaudella, Maire (With Love, Maire, very stylish piece of Hitchcockian noir)
Petri Kotwica: Musta jää (Black Ice, family noir)
Ville Mäkelä: Lain ulkopuolella (Outside the Law, a vigilante film)
Taavi Kassila: Petos (Betrayal, a nice piece of epoque noir)
Mika Kaurismäki: Condition Red (Aki's brother's film filmed somewhere in Texas)
Visa Mäkinen: Yön saalistajat (The Predators of the Night,
sleazy hardboiled crime film from the only proper exploitation director-producer of the Finnish film history)

(Too many links to provide here, sorry - Google them or check them at IMDb!)

All in all, John Grant's book comes highly, highly recommended by me.

What did I say about noir in Hollywood in the 2010s?

Remember what I said about new noir films in Hollywood? See my post on Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners here.

I stumbled on a post at Hardboiled Wonderland listing the best crime films of the last year. Seems there are more noir or at least noirish crime films out there than I first realized. I hated The Counselor, but Jedidiah Ayres writes interestingly on other films he mentions. (Of course not all the films are Hollywood, but nevertheless.)

Denis Villeneuve: Prisoners

I just saw this in a movie theater (a press screening) and I was totally overwhelmed! What a movie!

The story about two missing kids and their families going through a heart-breaking and violent tragedy might play out sentimental and simplistic, but Denis Villeneuve, in his first Hollywood outing, keeps things both fragile and rough at the same time. You can feel the tension in the pictures, in the actors' movements, in the saddening Pennsylvania milieu the film takes place in... Although there are some things that were done less or more slackly, I'll give this five stars out of five.

It must've started out with Winter's Bone. There have been lots of recent interesting and touching films that have crimes in them, but are not crime films per se: Place Beyond the Pines, Paperboy, Mud, Take Shelter, End of Watch... There are also Andrew Dominik's admirable Killing Them Softly and William Friedkin's sick but funny Killer Joe, not to mention Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive and Only God Forgives and Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

Noir thrives in Hollywood.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Cause for Alarm (1951)

I caught this little film noir on a Finnish television just the other night. It's a slightly enjoyable suspense story starring Loretta Young as the disturbed housewife of a crippled man (Barry Sullivan) who begins to think Young is trying to kill him for his insurance money.

There are some implausibilities in the plot, and Loretta Young's behaviour when she tries to get back the letter his husband sent to the district attorney is pretty much all over the place, but this still fits in with the phenomenon I've dubbed "female noir". I think "domestic suspense" used by Sarah Weinman in her upcoming anthology is actually better for this. The images of Loretta Young under her sociopathic and bitter husband are pretty disturbing.

That said, the ending of the film should've been infinitely stronger. The director was Tay Garnett, the screenplay was by Mel Dinelli, who specialized in film noir. See also the Wikipedia article for the film.

More Overlooked Movies here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Tough Guys Don't Dance

I just watched Tough Guys Don't Dance from a VHS cassette I found free in a thrift store. I'd seen it when it was new and I remember even writing a review of sorts about it, but I really don't recall anything I said. I have a vague feeling I liked the film, but other than some reflections on scenes here and there I didn't remember anything about it. I'm not even sure if I've read Mailer's novel, but again I have a nagging feeling in the back of my head saying I read it at the time.

If I liked the film the first time, I certainly liked it less this time. The film drags heavily at points and is too dialogue-ridden and some of the actors are pretty bad. The film is not very focused and gets confusing at times. There are some very bad moments (the famous "Oh man! Oh God!" scene, for example). This all said, there's something in Tough Guys Don't Dance that makes me want to proclaim it one of the precursors of the modern neo-noir films. The same delirious feeling permeating Mailer's film is also found in films like Romeo Is Bleeding (the Peter Medak one, not the later one) or Coens' The Big Lebowski. Scenes are disjointed, the characters are campily overacting, everyone is using cocaine and talking nonsense, womens' heads are cut off mercilessly, everyone's overusing sex to get to their goals. Maybe Mailer was truly ahead of his time?

One thing I remember thinking about Mailer's film is that it reminded me of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (very important early neo-noir film, that). There's a secret in the woods and there's also Isabella Rossellini (Lynch uses her much better, there's not much to do for her in Mailer's film). There's also Angelo Badalamenti's score, but that's about it. I sure didn't get the same feeling watching the movie now.

Mailer's film has one asset not enough films have: Lawrence Tierney. He's simply great in this and he has great lines ("I just deep-sixed two heads"), though he's pretty thin thematically - but that's Norman Mailer's fault. 

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Strange One (1957)

I think this one really qualifies as an Overlooked Film, especially in Finland, where it's never been shown in the Finnish Film Archive's screenings and it was last seen in TV in 1971. There is a rather recent DVD, but there hasn't been much talk about the film, at least in the venues I follow. I managed to see the film last Monday, when it was - for the first time, I believe - shown in the Film Archive screening here in Turku.

The Strange One was made in 1957, during a time when there was discussion on the new wave of American film making and the likes of John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Lionel Rogosin and Irving Lerner. Jack Garfein fits the bill perfectly. The Strange One is a somewhat noir-influenced film about sociopathic Ben Gazzara who bullies other cadets and freshmen around a military academy somewhere in the South. Gazzara, making his film debut here, is simply wonderful in his moves and gestures. He's great in that he makes sure he's actually the only likable character in the film, albeit his misanthropic attitude. All the other characters in the story are stupid or irritating, so the viewer gets to sympathize the wrong guy. There's a strong noir undercurrent in The Strange One, one we know from the work of Jim Thompson and Jason Starr.

You probably realize that "The Strange One" refers to homosexuality - the title could be given to a gay/lesbian sleaze paperback of the early sixties. There's lots of homosexuality in The Strange One, from the latent homosexuality manifested in Gazzara's violent threat to the obviously homosexual writer of the barracks who wants to call Gazzara "Nightboy", clearly a queer moniker. The depiction of homosexuals in the film isn't overtly sympathetic, though.

The ending of the film could've been stronger, but it also has a surprise not many can see. This is based on Calder Willingham's novel End as a Man - I have it, but have never read it, any comments on it? The script was also by Willingham, from the play he made from the novel.

The Strange One is an alluring film that was ahead of its time in its depiction of homosexuality and sociopathic behaviour behind the walls of an institution. Some have said it's an analysis of American fascism. Whatever name you give the phenomena it depicts, The Strange One is still a powerful film in its own, marred only by some staginess and some overblown acting. What's most curious about the film is that the director Garfein is an Auschwitz survivor! His other film, almost dialogueless Something Wild, seems also very interesting.

More Overlooked Films here.

Sidney Lumet: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

There have been lots of raves about this movie, but I managed to see it only last night on Finnish TV. And indeed it turned out to be worth of the raves: a noir thriller worthy of the best Gil Brewers, Harry Whittingtons and every other working-class noir novel of the fifties and early sixties. It's great to see veteran director Lumet working at the top of his form.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are very good as Lumet's laymen who desperately need money for various reasons. They plan to rob the jewellery store of their parents. Of course everything goes terribly wrong. The family relations rise to front and the father, played by the great Albert Finney, gets suspicious. The ending is ironic and cruel and also plausible in every way.

If you like your noir believable and about ordinary people and not about sick, traumatized psychos, check this film out. If you like your noir without empty pastiche or knowing winks to the classics of the genre, check this film out.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Plunder Road

This is apparently a pretty rare late film noir, since it's got only five reviews in IMDb. I loaned this on a VHS cassette from a friend of mine, as I'd always wanted to see it, and while it didn't quite live up to my expectations, it's still a very worthwhile little thriller.

Plunder Road is a caper film, done on a minuscule budget, with limited sets and a small number of players, though the caper in the beginning of the film is quite far away from being minuscule. The film doesn't tell much about the guys who do the caper, but we are made known that some of them are career criminals and former inmates. The movie is about trying to take the loot to a safer place with three different trucks. It's a road movie, but the machines these guys drive are machines of imprisonment, not freedom, like they are in Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise. Likewise, the whole movie is intentionally mechanic, which increases the sense of irony. The players in the movie are nothing but pawns in the game. They struggle to get out, but because they do what they do, they have no chance.

There are some inconcistencies throughout that lessen the impact of the film, though, but not remarkably so. If you get a chance to see this, don't hesitate. All the actors are unknown (at least I didn't recognize the names of the faces), except Elisha Cook Jr., who's remarkably good in this as well. The writer, Steven Ritch, plays himself one of the crooks.

The director, Hubert Cornfield, is a very interesting figure in his own right: many of his few films were based on paperback originals: Lure of the Swamp is based on a Gil Brewer novel, 3rd Voice is based on a Charles Williams novel and The Night of the Following Day is based on a Lionel White novel. Later on he seems to have moved to France.

More Overlooked Films to be had on Todd Mason's blog. (At least I think there will be something. I won't have the time to do this tomorrow, so I did it already.)

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The City of Fear

Irving Lerner is not a household name, though he's been revered by some film noir enthusiasts for a long time, such as Martin Scorsese. Until last Monday night, I'd seen only his late and flawed conquistador film, Royal Hunt of the Sun. Now I've seen also his The City of Fear, thanks to the Finnish Film Archive. (Well, I organized the screening myself, but you know what I mean.) Thanks also to Tapani Maskula, a film critic from Turku, with whom I've talked about film noirs and other B-films for almost ten years now. Tapani was there in the screening to talk about Lerner, who seems to have had a very interesting life.

The City of Fear is a very tight little thriller about escaped convict Vince Edwards who thinks he's onto something when he gets his hand on a small metal cylinder. He thinks there's lots of heroin, but instead it contains radioactive material. Pretty soon he gets sick, but still tries to sell the "heroin". The ending is very ironic, even though there's something unintentionally funny about the radioactive bits in the film - what can you do, Lerner shot the film in seven days with a very low budget for Columbia who needed short films for drive-in theaters? Lerner was before everything else an editor, and this shows in many scenes as they are expertly edited, with verve, rhythm and style, with a touch of Russian montage here and there. Vince Edwards is very good in the lead role: he shows no empathy and you don't actually feel for him, but there's something about the empty stare that Lerner emphasizes with his shooting and editing. The facade reveals absolutely nothing, but the way Edwards fondles the cylinder in his pocket... there's something homosexual about the affair of the man and his fantasies.

I'm hoping to see more of Lerner's films: Murder by Contract (one of the all-time favourites of Scorsese), Edge of Fury (based on American surrealist Robert Coates's novel Wisteria Cottage), Studs Lonigan (from the James T. Farrell novel)... there are some others, too, but they seem to be too obscure. There's one here, take a look. The City of Fear and Murder by Contract are available in the Columbia film noir DVD set.

Tapani Maskula, whom I mentioned earlier, gave his speech about Lerner - I'd really like to read Lerner's biography. Anyone out there willing to do one? Tapani mentioned in the end that The City of Fear is the film that convinced him to become a movie critic.

Other Overlooked Movies here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Concrete Jungle

The Concrete Jungle is the US title for Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960). It's a very, very tough crime film, reminiscent of the best, the most hysterical film noirs à la Kiss Me Deadly or Brute Force. Very hardboiled (and not very unlike Sean Connery) Stanley Baker is the head character, a career criminal just getting out from the prison and already developing his next big gig. Everything goes well and they get 40,000 pounds, but afterwards Baker's criss-crossed, in the best tradition of the genre. The ending is very grim, which means it's very good. Some of the scenes are so hysterical you want to jump up and shout: "Stop!"

There are some problems with the film: there's too much music, some of the scenes are a bit stagey and there are some inconsistencies in the script, but all in all, a lovably dark crime film from one of the masters. There are some things here Joseph Losey couldn't have done if he hadn't left the USA after being blacklisted: the homosexuality of the inmates is not hinted at, it's plainly shown (even though there are no kisses here or even a mention of the relationships), and the violence is harsh and brutal. Here's a good review of the DVD. Check it out, if you can.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947)

As the last treat of their great film noir series, the Finnish Broadcasting Association showed a Felix E. Feist double bill: first his best-known film, Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) and then his lesser-seen atomic bomb thriller, The Threat (1949). I'd never seen both (and realized only afterwards that Donovan's Brain I've seen over a decade ago was directed by the same Feist) and I was very intrigued especially about the aforementioned film.

It's a very solid B-thriller about Lawrence Tierney, a ruthless killer who hitchhikes his way away from the cops and ends up in the car of an amiable young guy, who's driving back to see his fiancée. Two women down on their luck and life ride along with them. That's basically the plot - more tension comes out of whether anyone else realizes that Tierney is a sociopath and a killer. Seemingly not, and here lies the main problem with the film: you'd think Tierney would rather kill anyone than watch those jerks ruin his getaway trip. Well, maybe it's the neo-noir buff in me that's talking, but I thought the film lacked plausibility in this matter. Otherwise Tierney makes a great villain and the film moved along in a breakneck pace. This is based on a novel by Bob Du Soe - how come the novel's not in print? (The cover of the late fourties paperback reprint from Avon seen above.)

The Threat wasn't as good as Devil Thumbs a Ride, but interesting nevertheless in its story about a criminals waiting for the getaway plane at the atomic bomb test site. Charles McGraw is good as the head criminal wanting revenge on those who put him in jail.