Welcome to Cinema Sunday. Last week I posted about a double feature of comedies starring Cary Grant.
This week it's another double bill, a couple of film noir pictures starring Humphrey Bogart.
What exactly is film noir? Eddie Mueller of Turner Classic Movies describes film noir as "suffering with style". Which is a pretty good way to summarize it. Yes, film noir involves people caught up in a complex web of deceit and treachery in a quest for power, wealth or revenge or a little bit of all three, all after the sun goes down. And these people look good doing all this, gunsels in their tailored suits and their jaunty fedoras and dangerous dames dripping with satin, silk, fur and diamonds.
From 1947, Dead Reckoning stars Humphrey Bogart as Captain "Rip" Murdock, a WWII army paragtrooper on a quest to locate his AWOL friend and paratrooper, Sergeant Johnny Drake. Murdock tracks Drake Gulf City in the southern United States but it's too little too late. Drake is dead, killed in a car crash and burned extra crispy.
But questions remain. Why did Drake go AWOL, right on the cusp of receiving an award for meritorious service in the war? Why did Drake hide under an assumed name? What was his relationship with nightclub singer Coral? Who killed her husband? Was it Drake? Coral? Night club owner and crime boss Martinelli?
Dead Reckoning checks off all the boxes for a classic film noir. Perhaps a little too perfectly which is the problem.
- Erudite crime boss who sees himself as a worldly civilized paragon? Check!
- Psycho quick tempered henchman? Check!
- A world weary man stuck in the middle of a mystery he didn't ask for but is stuck trying to solve it because damn, his pal is dead and somebody needs to answer for it? Check!
- A gorgeous dame with perfectly smooth features and perfectly coiffed hair dressed in satin and silk? Check!
In short, Dead Reckoning borders on self-parody of film noir except it takes itself too seriously and isn't remotely funny.
The biggest void at the hear of Dead Reckoning is Lisabeth Scott (not a typo, that's how she spells it) as Coral. The real power of a good femme fatale in film noir is never being quite sure at any given moment if she truly loves our hero or is prepared to kill him. Lisabeth Scott may have been aiming for mysteriously inscrutable but she's mostly just flat.
And her musical number in the night club is just weird. Her singing voice is so creepily low, if it wasn't made in the 1940's under the Hays Code, I would've expected the big twist is that Coral is a man, baby.
And don't get me started on this bit. At the start of the film, Murdock stumbles into a church, finds a priest who just happens to have also served as a paratrooper in WWII and begins to tell him the story of Drake, Coral, etc. About 3/4 of the way through the movie, Murdock realizes there's still some plot to get through and leaves the priest who is not heard from again. It is a ham-handed plot device to justify having Humphrey Bogart do some hard boiled narrating.
If Dead Reckoning tries too hard with it's rote recitation of film noir tropes, our next film plays around with the conventions of the genre a bit.
Released in 1942, All Through the Night checks all the boxes for film noir but does so with a sense of humor.
Humphrey Bogart is Alfred "Gloves" Donahue, a big-shot Broadway gambler who stumbles across a mystery when the baker who makes his favorite cheesecake gets murdered.
You don't mess with "Gloves" favorite cheesecake.
There's a beautiful dame involved of course. Whose side is she on anyway?
And of course we have an erudite gentleman up to no good.
The "no good" in question is a Nazi plot to blow up a Navy vessel in New York harbor.
"Gloves" strings together a team of fellow gamblers, over all tough guys and gangsters to take down the Nazis.
Gangsters vs. Nazis? Yeah, I'm on board for that.
"Gloves" growing knowledge of the world beyond the sports page is funny to watch. He really had no idea Nazis were in New York up to sketchy shit.
"Gloves" and a friend infiltrate a secret Nazi meeting and engage in complete and total gibberish to cover that they have no idea what they're talking about.
In a donny brook between the gangsters and the Nazis where they are are dressed the same, the gangsters make the Nazis stand out by shouting "Hiel Hitler!" and the Nazis reflexively respond with the Nazi salute and they get punched in the face.
It's our 2nd Bogart film where the leading lady spells her name weird. In the role of Leda, our requisite film noir dame, is Kaaren Verne. Nope, she spells it with two A's.
The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department
Peter Lorre as Pepi does his custom Peter Lorre shtick like we saw in The Maltese Falcon.
In the role of Madame was Judith Anderson who would go on to appear in 1984's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the Vulcan High Priestess T'Lar.
Jackie Gleason is Starchy, many years out from his turn as Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit.
There may be some question if All Through the Night counts as film noir. The entry in Wikipedia calls it a "gangster comedy". But all the elements are there for film noir.
The protagonist caught up in a plot he really doesn't want to be involved with but damn it, someone important to him is dead (seriously, do not mess with his cheesecake) and somebody needs to answer for that.
There's the beautiful dame who is either in trouble or the cause of trouble.
I think All Through the Night counts as film noir. It just has a few more laughs than you normally expect.
Next week, Cinema Sunday explores a couple of other film noir movies including a strange classic from Orson Welles.
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