Movie Review: Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
directed by Robert Wise, starring Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte, Ed Begley

(Note: This is my entry in the Fabulous Films of the 50s Blogathon, hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association.)

Earle Slater (Robert Ryan) is a man with little to offer the world. An ex-con twice over, middle-aged and penniless, Slater is staring down the barrel of a merciless future and he knows it. All he really has is the unconditional love of Lorry (Shelley Winters), but that love comes attached with small gifts of money that Slater hates himself for using. He needs to get some kind of score or his chance for happiness will be gone forever. So when crooked ex-cop Dave Burke (Ed Begley) comes to him with a too-good-to-be-true plan for a heist, Slater snatches it up with both hands. There's a snag, though. Burke's plan depends on the cooperation of smooth-talking musician Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) to play a delivery boy. Thing is, Ingram's black and Slater is a racist. Even with everything at stake, Slater can scarcely bear to share the same room with Ingram, let alone cooperate on a crime with him. For his part, Ingram loathes Slater completely but his own massive gambling debts force him to go along. Dave has his hands full trying to keep this shoddy little trio together. As the clock ticks down to their one chance for fortune and freedom, these three men will have to ask themselves if they really have what it takes to beat the odds.

Odds Against Tomorrow is film noir's answer to The Defiant Ones. When asked the question, "Can a bitter white racist and a proud black man put aside their differences in the interests of survival," the answer here is simply, "No." Hate is enough to overpower all other instincts. 

The canny trick of Odds Against Tomorrow is the way it eases into that question. It doesn't immediately announce itself as a social problem movie or even as a caper flick. Instead, it spends most of its running time slowly introducing us to our three main characters: the old, blindly optimistic Burke, the desperate Slater, and the troubled young Ingram. We get insight into the fears that push them forward. Burke took a fall as a crooked cop and wants to get a little of his own back before it's too late. Slater is violent and miserable, lashing out at a world that doesn't want him. Ingram is addicted to gambling and weighed down by responsibility for his ex-wife and daughter. By the time the movie gets around to the actual heist, we're fully aware that hatred isn't just a social disease or an impediment to common sense. For men like these, hate and anger are tools for survival. One way or another, they've become life's losers and the only way they can put one foot in front of the other is by finding something else to blame for their problems.

The performances in Odds Against Tomorrow are uniformly excellent, from the trio of inexperienced thieves to the unhappy women that love them, but what really knocked me out in Odds Against Tomorrow was the visual style. There was an unwritten rule in Hollywood for decades that movies about social issues had to be in a gritty, unadorned black-and-white in order to underline the seriousness of the story. Director Robert Wise takes that rule and slices right through it, avoiding both the boring, TV-episode look of other '50s kitchen sink dramas, and the gorgeous, slick camerawork of the classic film noir. 

Instead, Wise's compositions borrow the best from both styles, alternating between slanted shadows and corner and disorienting, overexposed location shots. This technique creates a bleak, chilly landscape with blindingly white flashes of light along the horizon. Far from looking seductive or glamorous, the city in Odds Against Tomorrow looks almost as if it's gone through some kind of nuclear winter. Wise even adds in a few infra-red shots here and there, so Ryan at times is walking under a black sky with distorted white clouds. The effect is desolate and eerily beautiful. Just as Ryan and Begley's middle-aged thugs are fighting against the realization that life holds no more chances for them, the movie itself looks like the last document of a world slowly being burned out of existence.

It is a hard, perilous business, trying to steer the ship of Robert Wise Appreciation through the dark waters of film criticism. No matter which direction you go, you hit sharp rocks.  Turn the conversation to Citizen Kane and Wise's editing career and you run smack into the film fans who will forever hate Wise as the scissors-wielding mediocrity who butchered The Magnificent Ambersons. Turn the conversation over to Wise's directing success and you inevitably run up against someone grinding their axe against The Sound of Music or West Side Story. Try to find some calmer waters with the auteurists and you find a general sense of frustration at the slippery Wise, a man who went from beguiling fantasy-horror flicks all the way to gargantuan Hollywood crowd-pleasers without much hint of personal connection to his stories. Really, the only safe place for Robert Wise love is with the film noir fans, who are quite happy to hold up Born to Kill, The Set-Up, and Odds Against Tomorrow with the best that film noir has to offer.

I think one of the reasons Wise never quite achieves critical darling status is that he was one of the most chameleon-like of directors, subsuming himself to the demands of his story. Given a classic haunted house tale like The Haunting, he delivers exactly that. Given a blockbuster musical property like West Side Story, with its uneasy blend of passionate feeling and vague attempts at social relevance, he delivers that, too. His background in film editing seemed to give him an edge in making films that moved fluidly and consistently in whatever style he chose. With a great story, he can be superb.  With Odds Against Tomorrow, he had a simple idea but a sharp script by Abraham Polonsky (yes, that Abraham Polonsky, blacklisted screenwriter of Body and Soul and Force of Evil, here relegated to sneaking his work in through an alias). Wise seems particularly inspired by the material and his direction here is as beautiful as anything he accomplished under Val Lewton. It's an unusual thing, to see a '50s movie about racism that looks as good as this one does.

In addition to scripting and direction, Odds Against Tomorrow also has the benefit of a jagged, nervous jazz score by John Lewis. The score careens back and forth from a restless background rhythm, like an onlooker tapping his toe in the background, to blasting, dissonant crescendos. The music is practically screaming at these characters to get out while they still can, but they're living in a film noir and so they don't take the warning.

While Begley, Ryan, and Belafonte all do excellent work, it's no surprise that Robert Ryan emerges as the central protagonist and the most compelling character in the movie. Ryan was already a practiced hand at playing bigots (Crossfire, Bad Day at Black Rock), bullies (Caught) and out-and-out villains (The Naked Spur). Despite being shy, compassionate, and devoted to liberal causes in real life, Ryan had the ability to tap into something dark and raw onscreen that seemed to go beyond the hammy theatrics of villainy. His characters always seemed to be running away from human connection. Ryan's 6"4" frame made him tower over costars and yet there was a painful vulnerability to his tormented loners. Nobody could do self-loathing like Ryan. 

As Earle Slater, he's a fascinating mess of contradictions, a man who's both tender and vile. Ryan's introductory scene has him scooping up a little black girl running on the street and telling her, "You little pickaninny, you're going to kill yourself flying like that, yes you are." Ryan's voice is so gentle that the impact of the words doesn't fully register until you see him coldly rebuffing the friendly overtures of the black elevator operator, his whole body vibrating with disdain that this man dares to approach him. Slater is no less cruel in his treatment of women, either. He's brusque to girlfriend Shelley Winters, using her and cheating on her. And yet, there's a moment early on where Winters embraces him and Ryan buries his head on her chest, his eyes aching with the need for affection and understanding. 

No less striking is a scene where Ryan responds to the goads of a group of teenagers and ends up decisively punching one out. In a John Wayne movie, this would be the classic moment of the Duke proving his mettle against a callow younger generation. Here, the moment quickly turns embarrassing and awkward for Slater as the boy's whimpers and obvious pain make him look like a sadist. A bartender chastises him and Ryan's face, briefly flushed with triumph, turns confused, even childlike. "I didn't mean to hurt him." Slater's long since given into his worst impulses as a person and these brief flashes of a better nature reveal how painful life is to such a man. He knows enough to know he'll always be in the wrong.

As Slater's forgiving girlfriend Lorry, Shelley Winters gets one particularly good exchange with Ryan. When he tries to explain his scheme as something in her best interest, because what will she do when he gets old, Winters bites back, "You are old now!" Her face briefly reveals a tired certainty that this man will lie to her and fail her, no matter what he promises. It says a lot for the nature of the typical Shelley Winters role that the part of Lorry, hopelessly devoted to an ex-con, is relatively confident and astute in comparison to her standard role. At least nobody's trying to murder her this time.

The other two parts of the criminal trio, Begley and Belafonte, are both excellent in their respective parts. Begley has the least showy part; Burke's just the old-timer trying to make good. But Begley brings the man to life by focusing on his blind, grinning optimism. Burke is a man who knows he just has to score, he just has to make good, there are no other options. 

Belafonte plays Ingram, the only one in the trio who's still young enough and outwardly confident enough to make good without resorting to crime. His first introduction reads like a photo-negative of Ryan's; Belafonte turns up in a shiny car, playfully offers money to all the neighborhood kids to leave the car alone and then makes friendly conversation with the same elevator operator on the way up to Burke's flat. It's only later on that we get a glimpse of the demons that torment Ingram. When charm and persuasion fail to keep his debt collectors off his back (helped along by Burke's machinations), Ingram reveals a simmering resentment and outraged pride, pounding out his frustrations at the night club and yelling out interruptions to his friend's song. 

Even better is a scene with his ex-wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton in a brief but lovely part). The two reveal that they're still desperately attracted to each other and they'd gladly marry again if not for their little girl. Ruth can't trust this gambler to be a good father for her daughter. Ingram reacts to her blunt resignation with a blistering tirade about his wife's white friends. "Drink enough tea with them and stay out of the watermelon patch!" Just like his mirror image Slater, Ingram can't accept that his own faults have driven him into this corner. He'll grasp at anything to avoid taking on the responsibility and this need for blame will carry him away from the real love that he wants.

However, and this is the only major fault I can lay on this movie, Belafonte's rage is never as well-defined as Ryan's. His character is not so complex and while it's implied that he harbors a resentment against the injustices of the white community, his actual history is never explained. This muddles the motivation for Ingram at the end of the film, in a climax that depends on our willingness to believe that both Ingram and Slater have passed the point of reason. We've already seen that Slater has little to live for and might even welcome death. Ingram, on the other hand, has quite a lot to live for and still has plenty of hope for the future. It doesn't make much sense that he would choose hatred and vengeance over simple self-preservation.

While I may quibble at the journey we take to get there, the ending of Odds Against Tomorrow fulfills every bleak promise that it makes. Our heroes are rewarded, maybe not as they all deserve, but by the pitiless rules of the world they live by. They are made equal in spite of themselves. And isn't equality the shining hope of every Hollywood social problem film? Odds Against Tomorrow is what happens when such cockeyed optimism gets rewritten in the icy language of film noir.

Favorite Quote:

"Aren't things ever easy for you, Earle?"
"Only when I get mad. Then they get too easy."

Favorite Scene:

Gloria Grahame has a brief but unforgettable part as Ryan's neighbor, a married mother who starts out knocking on Ryan's door for a babysitter and turns out to be a secret sadomasochist, thrilled by the ex-con's murderous past. Grahame starts out a little stilted in her line delivery, almost as if she's asking for a cooking recipe rather than for detailed descriptions of a manslaughter charge, but the old black magic comes out when Ryan gives into her demand and starts talking. She wants to know what it's like to kill someone and before she can backpedal back into respectability, Ryan leans in. "I enjoyed it," he murmurs into her ear, offering it up like the seduction she wants. Grahame's lids flutter with arousal, and in response, Ryan's whole body seems to relax for the first time. He keeps talking. Even before he tugs Grahame's top off to reveal her bra and the movie cuts to black, you realize that this right here is the climax he's been waiting for. This is the moment where he can live out his sadistic impulses with no shame. And yet, you can't fully be sure how much Ryan's character is really revealing himself and how much is him playing up to the desires of this woman. The performance is that good.

There's something poignant and almost sweet about the casting of Grahame in such a small but still memorable part. If any woman represented the greed, desire, and masochistic longing of the film noir genre (The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place, Human Desire, Sudden Fear), she did. In 1959, Grahame was still beautiful, still sensual, but the trampy, troubled women she'd played through the decade were starting to be replaced by different types. Back in 1947, she'd co-starred with Robert Ryan in Crossfire, another film that blended social issues with crime drama. She'd been the tart, he'd been the racist. But back then, Grahame and Ryan had been fresh on the scene and their incendiary talents had won them critical acclaim. They were new, they were modern, they were exciting. Now fast forward to Odds Against Tomorrow, twelve years later and they're playing the same noir archetypes. They're older, wearier, and the regrets of time are palpable. Having them together again in a movie like this feels almost like a true goodbye to the golden age of film noir.

Final Six Words:

Men hanged by their own dreams

Movie Review: Phantom Lady

Phantom Lady (1944)
directed by Robert Siodmak, starring Ella Raines, Alan Curtis, Franchot Tone

Note: This is my entry in the Sleuthathon, hosted by Movies, Silently

Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is a man with one hell of a problem on his hands. He arrives home late one night and walks right into a welcome committee of sneering cops, who lead him to the strangled corpse of his estranged wife. Scott swears his innocence, but his only alibi is a flimsy little story about going to a bar and meeting a mysterious woman. He doesn't know the woman's name and can barely remember what she looks like except for one tiny detail: she was wearing a strange hat. By coincidence, the singer at the show they attended together was was wearing the very same hat. Police Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) is sympathetic to the hapless Scott, but it doesn't matter; everyone who supposedly saw Scott and the "phantom lady" swear it never happened.

Scott's fate is sealed. He's found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. But luckily for him, there's one person still fighting tooth and nail to save him: his loyal secretary Carol "Kansas" Richman. Secretly in love with her oblivious boss, Kansas is determined to track down the witnesses and force a confession out of one of them. Even if it means stalking men down alleys or seducing them or throwing herself into danger. Yet even with all her pluck and determination, Kansas is stymied time and again as the witnesses keep dying or disappearing. She enlists the help of Inspector Burgess and Scott's best friend Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone), but they likewise prove powerless. And all the while, the clock is running out for Scott. As impossible as it seems, the fate of one man's life might just depend on them tracking down that one strange hat and the phantom lady who wears it...

Ella Raines is one of Hollywood's more intriguing almost-success stories. The slinky brunette beauty with cat-like green eyes turns up in endless '40s glamor photos and she has some major movies to her name (Brute Force, Hail the Conquering Hero) but somehow she never became a box office draw on her own. Raines was discovered by Howard Hawks and the connection makes total sense when you see her on screen. Even in movies like Phantom Lady and The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, where she plays straight-talking "good eggs," there's an icy confidence to Raines, a challenging sneer lurking under the smile. She doesn't necessarily come across as a major acting talent but that cool charisma was tailor-made for a Hawks heroine. And yet oddly enough, after building her up for a minor role in Corvette K-225, Hawks apparently lost interest and signed her over to Universal. Phantom Lady was really her first major starring role and in retrospect, one of the best parts she would ever get.

Raines is the magnetic center of Phantom Lady, playing an archetypal "gal Friday" who turns out to be an amazing combination of Mata Hari, Nancy Drew, and the Terminator. Her character should come off as a mere stack of cliches, a lovelorn secretary turned girl detective and all for the sake of a very dull man. But in the hands of director Robert Siodmak and Ella Raines, Kansas is a relentless force of nature. 

A more traditional movie might simply have had the secretary going around and politely questioning people. Instead, Phantom Lady gives us a fascinating series of scenes where Kansas relentless stalks one of the witnesses, the barman who claims never to have seen the mystery woman. Night after night, she turns up at the bar and sit, her eyes fixed on him. Cold, implacable, silent. The barman slowly starts to crack up under the pressure. What does this dame want from him? One night, he goes home after locking up the bar and she starts to follow him. No matter how far he walks, he can hear the click of her heels behind him. Raines looks delicate and vulnerable in the flickering shadows, wrapped in her translucent raincoat and yet, for once, the frightened woman in the alley is also the pitiless avenger. I won't give away what happens when Raines finally catches up to her man but it's enough to send a shiver down your back.

Even more striking is the film's most famous sequence where Kansas tarts herself up as a swinging floozy, complete with jangling jewelery, chewing gum, and a hot-to-trot attitude, and descends into a jazz club to track down the drummer (Elisha Cook Jr.) She's determined to find one witness who'll talk, even if she has to let this sweaty, panting guy paw her all over. It's one of the film's odd little twists that the sexual energy between Cook Jr. and Raines feels palpable and not entirely fake, with Cook Jr. speeding up the tempo of his drum beats to impress this gorgeous creature giving him the eye. She professes her interest in him and in jazz ("I'm a hep kitten") and he takes her back to where his buddies hang out. Siodmak really goes to town here, creating a feverish, gleefully perverse atmosphere that almost swallows our heroine up then and there. You can practically smell the reefer in the air. The images and angles feel like a direct nod to Siodmak's roots in German Expressionism; he alternates between huge closeups and low angle shots that let the musicians loom threateningly even as they keep pouring out the notes, faster and faster. 

Cook Jr. starts pounding on the drum so fast, you start to worry he'll have a heart attack. And all the while, Raines is there, laughing, throwing her head back, urging him on. She bares her teeth and looks at Cook Jr like she wants to devour him. Despite the jazz music blasting away, her gestures feel like something straight out of a silent horror film. It's bizarre and thrilling to watch. There's no girl detective here; Raines plays the scene almost like she's become possessed. And yet, once the scene is over and Elisha Cook Jr. goes on to fulfill his role in the plot (I won't give away this one either but if you're an Elisha Cook Jr. fan, you already know how most of his roles end), the movie never feels compelled to comment on what we just witnessed. Either we're supposed to assume that Kansas is a master actress, or we have to believe that buried under that common sense and courage is something kind of bestial and repellent, something she lets out this one time and then never reveals to us again. 

I really like the ambiguity Phantom Lady gives to Kansas and I only wish it had been able to maintain the weirdness for the entire movie. Raines still gives us a fine performance throughout and Siodmak keeps giving us shot after shot to love (Did the man ever make a bad-looking movie?). But it must be admitted that one of the weaknesses of Phantom Lady is that outside of Raines and the excellent character actors Thomas Gomez and Elisha Cook Jr., it really doesn't have any performances or characters worth noting.

Generally, I'm a sucker for the whole wisecracking-secretary-in-love-with-her-boss plot. Movies like Footlight Parade, Wife vs. Secretary, and even something recent like Iron Man just get their hooks into me and I couldn't tell you why. But man, Ella Raines could hardly have picked a less interesting object of her affections than Alan Curtis. You can pretty much sum up Curtis and his performance in an early scene where the police roughly question him over his wife's murder. His eyes fill with tears and he mumbles, "I thought guys didn't cry." The line is silly enough as it is, but Curtis' trembling delivery sends it straight into "teenager who just got cut from the football team" territory. And then one of the cops practically jams a cigarette in Curtis' mouth, like someone silencing a squalling infant with a baby bottle. I feel like somewhere out there is an outtake of this scene with the cop rolling his eyes and saying, "Christ, man, will you at least try to remember what kind of movie we're in here?"

But, in the interests of fairness, Curtis isn't meant to be the main lead here. He's just the object of our heroine's devotion and frankly, the movie would have worked better if her motivation had been friendship rather than unrequited love. No, our male lead here is actually smooth-as-a-hat-band Franchot Tone, who strolls into the movie halfway through, playing Scott's best friend Jack. His arrival also coincides with a decrease in the energy and drive of Kansas' character. Not that she becomes weak exactly, but we suddenly get a lot more scenes of her talking with Jack and Inspector Burgess and demurely standing around. It's the great danger of being a female sleuth in a classic Hollywood mystery; once the male lead shows up, you're going to find yourself being elbowed out of the spotlight.

The mystery in and of itself is not particularly compelling and the movie ends up shooting itself in the foot by revealing the real killer halfway through. If the murderer was a particularly compelling character, this wouldn't matter so much, but he isn't, and we have to endure an awful lot of rambling from him about hands and the power in those hands and what they can do. It's about as terrifying as that guy handing out pamphlets on a street corner and wanting to tell you his theories on life. And then the murderer just keeps hanging around while we wait for one of the others to catch on. It's quite a let-down.

For all the illogical little plot conveniences strewn through the script, I do have to take issue with one particular bit of nonsense. The movie makes a big deal out of the "strange" hat that the mystery woman was wearing. This hat was so strange, so unique, you would know it anywhere, and so on. And yet, when we finally get a look at the damn hat, it doesn't look all that different from any other bizarre Hollywood concoction of the time. You can't scare me, 1940s milliners! I've already seen this. And this. I've even survived this. Don't promise me a funny hat, movie, and not deliver the goods.

However, what makes Phantom Lady an enjoyable film is not its plotting or its cliches or its hats. It's that wonderful, bizarre, Alice-in-Wonderland vibe that we get during Kansas' foray into the underworld. Robert Siodmak's direction is strong enough to lift a rather prosaic mystery into full-on nightmarish territory; I only wish the script had been sharp enough to keep up with him. I only wish it had been sharp enough to keep up with Ella Raines, too, who really does deliver a strong, startling performance, creating a female sleuth who'll definitely linger in your mind. But even if the movie ultimately decides to settle for convention, nothing could really dent the vibrant energy of the first half of the movie. It's proof enough that a few great scenes is enough to make a movie worthwhile.

Favorite Quote:

"What a place. I can feel the rats in the walls."

Favorite Scene:

It's really a toss-up between the scene of Kansas stalking the bartender and the scene of her with the jazz musicians. I like the ambiguity of the stalking more as a character thing but the imagery of her in the backroom jazz club is too powerful to ignore. So, in the end, I'll go with the jazz. She and Cook Jr. make some creepy, amazing music together.

Final Six Words:

The grime glitters most of all

Movie Review: Blues in the Night

Blues in the Night (1941)
directed by Anatole Litvak, starring Richard Whorf, Jack Carson, Betty Field, Priscilla Lane

Note: Review requested by W.B. Kelso, of the fabulous blog 3B Theater: Micro-Brewed Reviews

Jigger Pine (Richard Whorf) is a world-class pianist with only one dream in his heart. To start his own jazz band (or "unit" as he calls it). A group of guys that play the same, live the same, and think the same. All of them on a mission to find the music of the streets and give it back to the people. His friend, reluctant lawyer/aspiring clarinetist Nickie (Elia Kazan) believes in his vision and they recruit two of their friends: Pete the bassist (Peter Whitney) and Peppi the drummer (Billy Halop). It isn't long before their enthusiasm wins over more people, too. Scheming trumpeter Leo (Jack Carson) and his sweet, optimistic wife Character (Priscilla Lane). The quintet begin their ragged life on the road, hitching rides on boxcars and playing to whatever audience they can find.

It's a hard but happy life until one faithful day when they run across ex-con Del Davis (Lloyd Nolan). One careless act of generosity on their parts is enough to win the gangster's loyalty and he brings them to his roadhouse, the aptly-named jungle. The former members of Davis' gang, his old partner Sam (Howard Da Silva), his old flame Kay (Betty Field), and Kay's crippled ex-lover Brad (Wallace Ford), are running the joint and none of them are too happy that Davis has decided to adopt this group of stray musicians. It isn't long before Kay, still angling to win back Davis, takes up with Leo. When Leo gets wise, she sinks her hooks into Jigger. Her toxic demands turn Jigger from a confident musician into a hollow-eyed wreck, willing to tear down everything else to make her happy. Even if it means turning his back on the band and the music he loves.

Blues in the Night is a movie that seems specially ordered for a night of insomniac channel-surfing, the kind of movie you watch through bleary, dazzled eyes at 3:00 A.M. and then forget about until the next morning, when you try to summarize it to your friends. All goes normally at first ("There's these guys that want to start a jazz band"). But before long you start to stumble over the details ("So the baby's dead and the pianist goes on some insane acid trip on account of the gangster's ex-girlfriend and he starts hallucinating that he's an organ grinder's monkey, but the band convinces him to come back, but then the ex-girlfriend returns to plot more evil until her crippled sidekick decides to put a stop to her.."). And then you start to think, "Wait, what the hell was I watching?"

But Blues in the Night is more than the sum of its delirious plot points. It's an amazingly appealing genre mash-up, a film that starts out like any other light musical comedy of Hollywood's golden age and spirals into a proto-noir of backstabbing dames, mental breakdowns, and vengeful gangsters. Despite the descent into darkness, though, the movie remains innocent at the core, allowing its group of music-minded misfits to walk through Hell and emerge unscathed. I have a weakness for movies that can skip through multiple genres. Maybe it's because as movies get bigger, they also get safer. Scene after scene of well-made, polished sameness. Did Blues in the Night seem as messy to the theater audiences of 1941 as it does now? Probably. But I doubt those audiences could have predicted how exhilarating watching that kind of mess could be, seventy years later.

I can pinpoint the exact scene where I fell for this movie. We catch up with our band of musicians as they steal a ride on a boxcar. After raising each other's spirits with a round of "Hang on to Your Lids, Kids," our gang welcomes a fellow traveler aboard. Only this traveler is no ordinary bum; he's a hardened criminal, who immediately pulls a gun and demands money. They hand over all they have and the train travels on, into the night. The gangster, Del Davis huddles by himself in the corner while the gang falls asleep, clutching their instruments. When the train pulls into the station, a railway man opens the car and beams the flashlight into the faces of our heroes. Instead of getting mad, he greets them as old friends. "Last time I saw you was three months ago...still riding the boxcars?" He promises not to kick them off, leaving them with a warning not to play so loud. When he's gone, the gang promptly settles back down to sleep but Davis won't let them. 

"You could have turned me in," he snaps. 

"Why should we? We've been broke and hungry, too," says Jigger, the band leader. 

The band members lie back down, curled up together like kittens or a bunch of kids at a sleepover. They are total innocents, completely unafraid or resentful. A smile breaks out over Davis' face and you can see the lost humanity slowly return to his eyes. When this hardened gangster decides to take care of them, it plays out not just as some ridiculous plot twist, but a sweet fantasy. Nobody survives on luck and music alone but sometimes, it's nice to pretend we could.

Director Anatole Litvak doesn't give you any time to question the plot of Blue in the Night. He keeps it moving at a frantic pace; you can almost hear him snapping his fingers in the background of each scene, ordering each actor to pick up the tempo. These jazz musicians talk faster than Wall Street stockbrokers, trading quips and comments and insults at such a rate that one scene can shuffle through six different moods. I like the speed, though. It reminds me of His Girl Friday and Stage Door, other movies about people doing what they love, no matter what it costs them. If you love something so much you couldn't imagine doing anything else, then why wouldn't your brain zip along at the speed of twenty ideas per minute?

While Litvak's direction is smooth and confident throughout, the movie really turns on the heat with the montage sequences (credited to Don Siegel). The first one is a sharp evocation of what life on the road means for a penniless jazz band. We race through images of the band members playing, of maps, and outstretched thumbs and speeding cars. I especially like the way the film uses angles, swiping across the screen with a character's instrument when it cuts into the next scene, as if to show music itself as a physical force, propelling these people onward.

But the second montage is the crowning glory of the film, its most perfect, bizarre moment. Jigger Pine falls off the deep end after the femme fatale Kay leaves him. He can't even remember how to play the songs he wrote. Suddenly, after a disastrous reunion with his friends, Jigger falls unconscious and dives headfirst into a surreal hallucination. He sees his bandmates. Then they turn into the five fingers of a hand. He sees Kay, repeated over and over, until she becomes an entire orchestra, each of them playing a separate instrument. Giant hands wave in his face. He shrinks down into an organ grinder's monkey while his bandmates taunt him. And then, in an image that feels like it should have been storyboarded by Salvador Dali, Jigger finds himself at the piano, ready to play, only for the keys to melt into white goo, trapping his fingers completely. The imagery is so stark and arresting that the movie doesn't even try to follow up on it in any logical way. Jigger just wakes up from this crazy dream and that's it, he's ready to be cured. I'm sort of wondering if Kay herself is supposed to be a metaphor for drug or alcohol addiction, because it really does play out more like Ray Milland coming off the DTs in The Lost Weekend than anything else.

Richard Whorf plays the film's protagonist, Jigger Pine, as a man of almost unreal goodness and conviction. He's always smiling, always supportive. Litvak keeps Whorf as the focus of nearly every group shot, letting the other band members cluster around him like eager acolytes. Because the movie holds Jigger up to such a high standard, I found myself almost rooting for the femme fatale Kay to drag him off his mountaintop. And drag him she does, right into the mental ward. Whorf has a relaxed, friendly presence onscreen and he handles Jigger's descent into desperation without histrionics (except that loopy hallucination scene). The script doesn't give him much chance to add character depth. Jigger's downfall happens as simply and easily as if someone had just flipped a light switch. 

I'm really beginning to wonder what quirk of fate and casting kept landing dimpled, all-American Betty Field in the role of irresistible, untrustworthy female. Every time I see her, she's playing some kind of tramp, from low (Mae in Of Mice and Men) to high (Daisy in The Great Gatsby). Maybe it was that insinuating nasal whine she could put into her voice. Or maybe it was the go-for-broke energy she displays here as conniving Kay. Field's femme fatale is a jangling bunch of nerves and tinsel, a two-bit, no-talent floozy who chews through men like they were strips of gum. I've ripped into Field before on this blog, but she's much improved here, clearly relishing Kay's barbed-wire ambition more than Daisy's aristocratic charms. However, Field relishes it rather too much, playing up Kay's whiny, nagging side so much that it's difficult to understand how she ever manages to enslave men. Personally, I'd be hopping a boxcar just to escape the woman's awful vowel sounds. And when she calls down vengeance upon Jigger and Del and all the men who haven't given her what she wants, Field goes right for the rafters in a way that's madly enjoyable and downright silly. I mean, she doesn't shout, "And then I will build my race of atomic supermen!" but she comes close.

As Field's good-girl foil, Priscilla Lane manages the trick of being the squarest jazz musician ever seen, until Martin Milner stole her spot in Sweet Smell of Success. Okay, so that's rough on Lane. She does have a nice voice and if her sweet, blonde singer seems like she'd be more comfortable baking an apple pie than hitching it on boxcars, well, at least she provides the audience with a pleasant break from Field's nastiness. The script does add a bizarre touch by giving her character the name, "Character." Really? Maybe Ethel Waters could pull that off but Priscilla Lane?

 Blues in the Night benefits from a wealth of wonderful supporting actors. There's Jack Carson, playing a heel as only Jack Carson could. It's a typical Carson role, the guy who knows he's laying traps for suckers but is honestly hurt and confused that these suckers would expect any more or less of him. There's also Elia Kazan, turning in another enjoyable, fast-talking performance after City for Conquest. Seriously, guys, I never would have pegged Kazan as any kind of acting talent, but that's twice now I've found him pretty good. Lloyd Nolan, as the gangster Del Davis, manages to convey the perfect amount of affability and menace. 

But by far and away, my favorite supporting performer was Wallace Ford, who plays Brad, Kay's ex-lover and fumbling sidekick. At first, Brad seems like nothing more than a pathetic crony, a shuffling Igor too stupid to free himself from Kay and Davis. But in one key dialogue with Jigger, Ford slowly reveals the tragedy behind the man. Once he felt sorry for Kay. And then he fell in love with her, breaking his own body in a rodeo just to impress her. "I wasn't much good for anything after that except hanging around her." As Ford talks, you see Brad stand straight and tall for the first time, his voice free of self-pity, revealing a depth of experience that turns him from a cringing crony into a fallen hero.

Blues in the Night is a movie I'd be very happy to stumble across again. It's weird, it's sweet, it's got good Arlen and Mercer tunes, and it's entirely unique. I don't think I'd ever want to own it, though. It really belongs to that realm of happenstance movies. Too mixed-up for respectability, too cute for sophistication, and too enjoyable to resist.

Favorite Quote:

"You see, I'm a student of jazz. I know the anatomy of swing, not only musically but theoretically. I've heard everything from Le Jazz Hot to Downbeat. You'll find out for yourself. As the Latin say, res ipsa loquitur. On the side, I'm a student of the law."

Favorite Scene:

As I mentioned before, that crazy montage scene. Can't say it enough.

Final Six Words:

Exhilarating riff turns into fever dream

Movie Review: Scandal Sheet

Scandal Sheet (1952)
directed by Phil Karlson, starring Broderick Crawford, John Derek

Note: This is my entry in the Journalism in Classic Film Blogathon, hosted by Comet Over Hollywood and Lindsay's Movie Musings

Once upon a time, the Daily Express was a respectable newspaper. In the hands of the unscrupulous editor Mark Chapman (Broderick Crawford), it's devolved into little more than a tabloid, with headlines like "Police Seek Gorilla Man-Slayer." Honor and prestige don't matter much to Chapman though, so long as circulation keeps rising. His star reporter Steve McCleary (John Derek) is a chip off the old block, resorting to tricks and lies to get the best headlines. Columnist Julie Allison (Donna Reed) is appalled at Chapman and McCleary's tactics but her objections are always steamrollered.

But Chapman's latest gag will wind up tying a noose around his neck. At a Lonelyhearts Ball sponsored by the Daily Express, a woman (Rosemary DeCamp) approaches Chapman with news that could break his career. She's the wife he abandoned twenty years ago and she's going to let the whole world know what a crook he is. They struggle and Chapman accidentally kills her. He covers up the crime, but he doesn't reckon on just how well he trained his protege McCleary. The young man is convinced that the Lonelyhearts Murder will be the story of his career and he's determined to sniff out every possible lead. Now Chapman is caught in a game of keeping McCleary off his trail without drawing suspicion. He's got to keep this story buried...no matter who he has to bury along with it.

One of my high school English teachers used to quote from a text that said detectives are the most natural heroes of a story because they want the same thing the reader wants: to know what's going on. The same thing could be said for fictional reporters with one crucial difference. It's the reporter's job to tell the truth, to broadcast it and sell it. A fictional detective can uncover the murderer and go home to tea and biscuits, satisfied that his work is done. The reporter always has to make a choice in how the information is used. It's a distinction that makes the reporter equally adept in the role of villain or hero. Things will never be clear-cut for them. There will always be consequences. There will always be one eye on the profit margin. No wonder reporters are always such cynics in the movies.

Scandal Sheet takes a basic but irresistible premise: what if the reporter was the one who committed the crime? And what if he had to make it look like he wanted to uncover the truth, even while doing everything possible to conceal it? The movie raises the stakes even further by pitting the villainous protagonist against his own protege, a man who'll do anything to get the story because that's what his boss taught him. The irony is that the investigation begins to turn the selfish younger reporter into a more principled man just as his mentor keeps sinking further into evil.

The movie was adapted from a novel by Samuel Fuller, the same Fuller that went on to direct Pickup on South Street and Shock Corridor. Before he went into movies, he was in journalism, starting work as a crime reporter at the age of 17. His experiences gave him a perfect insight into the workings of a journalist's world and he would return to the theme many times, from the obsessive, ambitious protagonist of Shock Corridor, convinced he'll win the Pulitzer to the dedicated, idealistic reporters of Park Row (Fuller's own favorite film). Fuller unfortunately did not adapt the screenplay for Scandal Sheet nor did he direct; it would have been a real pleasure to see Fuller's gritty, chaotic take on the misfits that live on the edges of scandal rags. Few noir directors had Fuller's affection for the sleazy and grimy back alleys of the city or his ability to characterize its twisted inhabitants without condescension. The only one I can compare him to is Jules Dassin but Dassin was always more elegant and broadly humanistic in his approach. Fuller is messy and eccentric and that's what makes his style so fun.

But if we can't have Fuller, director Phil Karlson is no slouch either. In fact, he's probably the film's biggest asset. Karlson's greatest gifts were pacing and control; his movies transition smoothly from scenes of talk to scenes of brutal shocking violence in a way that leaves you dizzy. His masterpiece The Phenix City Story is a prime example, slowly upping the ante with each killing and somehow managing to make each one a sadistic surprise. Here, he stages the initial killing with a striking shot of Chapman's wife moving around him, her voice rising to a shriek as she threatens him with the destruction of everything he's worked for. Karlson's camera follows her in a circle, as if the woman is literally walking in the shape of a noose. When she and Chapman begin to struggle, it feels truly violent, with the wife digging her nails into the man's hair. The fight ends with her cracking her head on a pipe and Karlson lingers on the agonized expression of her face.

Even better is Chapman's later killing of an innocent, alcoholic former reporter (Henry O'Neill). The man knows too much and can't be allowed to live. Another director might have framed the scene to allow Broderick Crawford's threatening bulk to overwhelm the older O'Neill. Karlson keeps them in a merciless extreme closeup, cutting between Crawford's shadowed face and O'Neill's immediate awareness of his own death. The faces tell the whole story.

Faces are a constant visual theme in Scandal Sheet. Karlson keeps returning to extreme closeups throughout the film, allowing scenes to play out through the changing expressions of the actors. He also collects interesting faces to populate the film, from the beaten-down but elaborately made-up former wife (Rosemary DeCamp) to the pop-eyed drunk that comes with information. One of the more striking shots of the movie is a scene where McCleary goes to question the local alcoholics and Karlson lets the camera travel slowly down the bar, letting us look closely at each man's face, seeing the wrinkles and shadows and disappointments that make up these men's lives. That single shot tells us so much about how society and the glib McCleary view these men, while letting us see the barhounds' grim humanity. The whole movie in fact, hinges on people's ability to remember faces. It's that which trips Chapman up and it's his fatal flaw. He's so focused on circulation numbers and suckers and slobs that he can never truly see the faces, only the figures.

I've had an allergy to Broderick Crawford since Born Yesterday. His one-note, blustery, growly performance and lack of comic timing just dragged scene after scene through the cement mixer. Thankfully, Scandal Sheet asks him to play it cool and contained so the shouting is kept to a minimum here. As the editor and unwilling murderer Mark Chapman, Crawford is gruff but professional, careful to keep his frustrations under wraps. He conveys the man's growing panic mostly through the eyes, his gaze shifting away just a little too fast when someone tries to bring up a new angle on the Lonelyhearts Murder. Chapman ends up as the embodiment of "win-at-all-costs" journalism, a man whose disregard for the human beings behind the circulation numbers will be his undoing. Complete scum but Crawford finds a note of pathos in the man's ultimate fate.

What Crawford can't convey, however, is the kind of sleazy charisma that elevated other "evil journalist" films like Sweet Smell of Success and Ace in the Hole. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas were black of heart but nobody could doubt their smarts, the pleasure they took in working over the masses. They were con man, but you couldn't help admiring their style. Broderick Crawford has bull-headed determination on his side, but no allure. This really deadens the impact of the film's central relationship; the one between Chapman and his slick, admiring protege McCleary. Crawford just doesn't seem believable as the object of someone's hero worship. Put someone like Robert Ryan in his place and it would make more sense.

John Derek's performance as Steve McCleary has the opposite problem. While Crawford's performance only really becomes great at the end, Derek's only really great in the beginning. He's perfectly suited as the callow reporter, so convinced of his charm and appeal that he can hustle Donna Reed into buying him dinner and dismiss her in the same breath. Derek's long lashes and skinny good looks seem bizarrely contemporary for a mid-century film; he's almost drowning in the heavy overcoats of the period. You could CGI him into any random CW show today and he'd fit right in. Still, the man carries off McCleary's fast-paced dialogue and smug reactions well; it's like watching a man bang around in a sports car, not even realizing how much he's scratching up the paint job. Derek's on shakier ground when McCleary has to discover sincerity. The movie doesn't set up any great chemistry between him and Crawford and Derek can't supply the emotional depth on his own. You imagine something like the relationship between Edward G. Robinson and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and Scandal Sheet could have been a great film.

But if I'm faulting the movie for not achieving greatness, that's only because it so often seems close to getting there. The screenplay crackles with the kind of sharp, zinging lines that's essential to any great newspaper movie. "Don't count your steaks before you hear the sizzle." "I always said you were born in a field of shamrocks." "You're still too big for Dead End Street." "Does the judge's needle sew anything up?" "Everything but knotting the thread at the end...I mean the noose." The movie is full of clever details that add greatly to the atmosphere and themes. For example, The Lonelyhearts Ball lures couples to the altar with the promise of a bed with a built-in television set (oh great shades of the reality shows to come). The newspaper office is overshadowed by a giant clock that marks the rising circulation numbers. The numbers grow with the Lonelyhearts Murder Coverage, just as Chapman's time starts to run out. There's a lot of creativity and a lot of intelligence at work here. Ultimately the movie ends up as a good, sharp noir that promises a little more than it can deliver. But then, every journalist knows that it's not just the story. It's how you tell it. And Scandal Sheet does a fine job at that.

Favorite Quote:

"We got a new man on this beat that's built like you between the ears. He saw a hole in the back of the dame's skull and figured she was slugged." 

Favorite Scene:

The final confrontation. Karlson manages to take a climax that would be disappointingly basic, a simple case of a man remembering one crucial detail while the murderer foolishly hangs around rather than making a break for it, and makes it completely riveting. Everything plays out in tight closeups, with Broderick Crawford sliding in and out of the shadows. You can see his last shreds of hope warring with his fear as he tries, futilely, to hide his too-famous face from view. All while his protege slowly comes to realize that the man he's idolized has been a stranger all along. It's slow and suspenseful and finishes on a wickedly smart final image, a fitting riposte to the career of Mark Chapman, the man who traded in scandal.

Final Six Words:

Gives new meaning to "screaming headlines"

Movie Review: Desert Fury

 

Desert Fury (1947) 
directed by Lewis Allen, starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Mary Astor

Note: This is my entry in the Mary Astor Blogathon, hosted by Tales of the Easily Distracted and Silver Screenings.

The desert town of Chuckawalla is a quiet, sleepy place on the surface but roiling with greed and sin underneath. And nobody understands it better than Fritzi Haller (Mary Astor), the tough, no-nonsense owner of the Purple Sage Bar and Casino. She may not be respectable but she's fought her way into wealth and power and nothing's going to change that. However, Fritzi's plans are derailed when the gangster Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) rolls into town. He immediately catches the eye of Paula, Fritzi's rebellious young daughter. And it seems everyone's got a stake in keeping their rapid-fire romance from going anywhere. There's Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), the deputy, in love with Paula but too hesitant to plead his case. There's Johnny (Wendell Corey), Eddie's brooding partner, who burns with hatred at the thought of a woman coming between them. And of course, there's Fritzi, who wants her daughter to have a chance at a respectable, stable life. But nobody in this town is quite what they seem and it won't be long before Paula realizes the world is very different from what she imagined.

Desert Fury is a bizarre, colorful, and unsettling film, a pure example of Hollywood filmmaking at its most suggestive. The plot is actually pretty simple: a naive girl falls in love with a man who's no good for her. Of course, there's also a nice guy waiting on the sidelines for her and a mother who wants what's best for her daughter. But it's what's happening around the edges of those relationships that makes them interesting. Because in this movie, the girl's mother is no Stella Dallas, fighting valiantly through her tears. Instead she's a cool businesswoman with a butch haircut, cooing over her daughter's beauty like a possessive lover would. All while the daughter exults that she's finally found a man like her mother, except "bigger and better and stronger."

I mean, do you kiss your mother like this?

Or how about the dangerous gangster that the girl falls in love with? Who spends most of his time ordering around his ever-present partner while said partner tends to his every need and glares daggers at the woman who dares to intrude on their domestic bliss.

It's the weird little unspoken undercurrents that make Desert Fury such a memorable trip. I've never seen anything quite like it and I think anyone who's a fan of classic film should check it out at least once. That said, it's not really a good movie. At times, the script feels like a private bet on the part of screenwriter Robert Rossen to see if he could get away with making a movie that's essentially just one scene, repeated on an infinite loop. Said scene can be summed up in three steps:

1. Paula, the daughter, confronts someone who is trying to control or reject her.
2. Paula gets upset and leaves.
3. She reconciles with the person so that they can have the same argument all over again

After over an hour of this endless reshuffling, the movie finally picks up the pace for a climax that's genuinely disturbing and strange and satisfying. It's like the inverse of Gilda, another movie that brimmed with dark passions and subtext. But where that movie had a fierce, snappy pace and a lousy ending, Desert Fury has a strong ending but weak plotting. It's a lucky thing that the movie has a pretty talented cast to pull it off, including Lizabeth Scott, Mary Astor, and, in his film debut, Wendell Corey.

Lizabeth Scott was an actress made to order for film noir. Her deep, throaty voice suggested cigarette smoke and bar hopping and a lifetime of harsh experience. The haughty tilt to her chin and the flowing blonde hair gave her a touch of class. During her heyday, she was always compared to Lauren Bacall, but Scott was always more reserved, never as playful. Perhaps that's the reason she never became a big star; she always seemed to be holding something back.

In Desert Fury, she gets the full glam treatment, playing the woman that everyone wants and nobody understands. However, Paula isn't the femme fatale here but the protagonist. The entire movie is basically about her figuring out what she really wants, deciding whether she should tie her life to a controlling mother, a dangerous racketeer, or a friendly lawman. Her mother Fritzi is determined that she be respectable but Paula isn't having any of it."I'm like you, Fritzi, I'm getting more like you every day," she tells her. Scott's ambiguous style of acting helps in her portrayal of a character whose motivations don't really seem tethered to reality. I don't think most women would be turned on after hearing how much they resemble their lover's mysteriously dead wife. Nor do I think most women would look at Burt Lancaster, his magnificent tawny hair blowing in the wind, and then run after John Hodiak, who manages to look more uncomfortable here than he did starving to death in Lifeboat.

Out of all the main cast members, Burt Lancaster gets the least to do. Tom's just the straight arrow love interest, musing out loud over whether he should keep Paula on a short rope or a long. Actually, his methods of wooing his lady are oddly self-defeating. When Fritzi promises him money and a ranch if he'll marry Paula and make her respectable, Tom sarcastically repeats the offer in front of Paula. "Fritzi and I are cooking up a deal--how'd you like to marry me?" Sure he gets to put Fritzi in her place, but he must realize that by doing so, he's ensured that Paula won't go near him. In his review of Desert Fury, Randy Byers posits the theory that Tom might be impotent. It would certainly explain his passive-aggressive approach. 

However, Burt Lancaster as the aloof, moody, mother-approved boyfriend is still more charismatic than John Hodiak as Eddie Bendix. Hodiak makes a convincing gangster, with his ink-smudge mustache and twitchy mannerisms. Everything he says sounds like an order, every time he turns around, it's like he expects a gun in his face. But he doesn't have the kind of dangerous allure that would naturally capture Paula's attention. The film even undercuts Hodiak visually, letting Lancaster and Corey loom over him in group shots. Maybe Lancaster and Hodiak should have switched roles. Still, to give the man his due, he's perfect in the film's climax, when Eddie is finally revealed to be something more pitiable and more monstrous than Paula could ever have imagined.

Unfortunately, Hodiak and Scott have zero chemistry, no matter how much the
Miklós Rózsa score thrashes and wails when they're together. This is unfortunate since we have to spend a lot of time with these two. In Gilda, the ferocious sexual attraction between Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth was the plot. In Desert Fury, the most interesting relationships are the side ones. It's Mary Astor and Wendell Corey that bring the most passion to their roles. They're the ones with the most to lose. 

I've been guilty of ragging on Wendell Corey in the past. Something about his smug, square face always grated on me. Which is unfair. For all I know, in real life Corey was the kind of man who adopts orphan puppies and donates to scholarship funds. But in movies, he always came off like a serious buzz-kill. 

Desert Fury was a complete revelation to me. Here, Corey is icy and threatening and even kind of sympathetic as Johnny, Eddie's sworn companion and implied lover. Lord, do they imply it. When Eddie describes their first meeting to Paula, it sounds like a pick-up ("He ended up paying for my ham and eggs...I went home with him that night...we were together from then on"). In one scene, Eddie sunbathes shirtless while Johnny offers him coffee, smiling at him with tender concern. Johnny visibly bristles whenever Paula intrudes on him and Eddie, even as Eddie forces him to serve them food and make himself scarce. When Paula tries to understand Johnny, she's thrown back by the totality of his devotion. "There must be some of you apart from Eddie...two people can't fit into one life." Johnny looks back at her unsmiling. "Why would there be some of me apart from Eddie?" It's like the gangster equivalent to Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.

Wendell Corey delivers the most surprising performance but Mary Astor's is the best. Bitchy mothers are a dime a dozen in 40s films, but Astor had a way of digging beneath the cliche and keep you guessing. Even when she played shallow society snobs like in Midnight, greedy prostitutes like in Act of Violence, or dizzy nymphomaniacs like in The Palm Beach Story, her characters always had a weary intelligence about them that commanded respect. In Desert Fury, her character Fritzi Haller is the smartest one in the room. She strides around in flowing pants, clenching her cigarette holder as if she wants to bite clean through it. She resorts to harsh tactics in order to control Paula, including bribery and imprisonment. But when faced with the possibility of losing her daughter forever, Fritzi is devoid of self-pity. "Nineteen years, like that," she says, snapping her fingers, and the fond, rueful expression on Astor's face tells us everything we could know about loving a person who'll never understand you. Mary Astor would have made one hell of a Mildred Pierce.

The lesbian undertones to her character are just an added bonus of weirdness. Fritzi lights up in her daughter's presence and fawns over her like a mobster admiring the generous curves of his moll. "You look good to me, baby, even when you're tired," she tells Paula. "Give me a kiss, honey." She wants Paula to call her Fritzi, not Mother, and tries to settle her with shopping and presents. She calls her "baby" all the time and Astor snaps out the word like she's playing Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.  Without giving away the movie's ending, I'll just say that the resolution of their relationship is one of the most suggestively what-the-hell things I've ever seen, a truly memorable example of sneaking things under the Hays Code.

It's a surprise to me that Desert Fury doesn't garner much attention for its Technicolor visuals because it's a truly stunning film. Director Lewis Allen and cinematographer Charles Lang combine vivid color with stark noir compositions and the result is something shimmering and unreal, like a heat mirage. When Lizabeth Scott strolls through the Nevada sunshine, her blonde hair reflecting a thousand rays of light, it becomes achingly clear why everyone is obsessed with this naive girl. Even the frequent day-for-night shots look beautiful. Designer Edith Head also deserves a mention here for the way her eye-popping costumes fit the visual scheme. Scott is glamorous and stands out in each shot like a bolt of lightning. Astor is shifty, changing her style from matronly to garish to masculine as easily as she changes tactics.

Is it too soon to start making a case for Lewis Allen as an underrated auteur? Desert Fury is only the third Allen film I've seen and while it's not nearly as good as The Uninvited or So Evil My Love, it shares some of the same hallmarks. Sharp, varied female characters that actively drive the plot. Lavish but oppressive set design that visually traps the actors. Suggestions of the strange or uncanny. In a way, Allen's direction is even more interesting here than his other, better films since he's stuck with a script that keeps repeating the same confrontations over and over again. Allen compensates by flooding each brilliantly-tinted shot with dense shadows. He keeps the framing tight, even claustrophobic. It all gives Desert Fury a kind of hothouse atmosphere. It burns with contained neurosis and frustrated energy.

Desert Fury never reaches the heights of the truly great film noirs. It takes dark, tormented characters, gorgeous camerawork, and some inspired bits of strangeness and then lets them stew, like a sleek, freshly-painted sports car stuck in parking gear. But for all its weaknesses, it's still an incredibly memorable and worthwhile experience, a movie that's all the more interesting for what it's not saying.

Favorite Quote:

"People think they're seeing Eddie and all these years, they've really been seeing me. I'm Eddie Bendix. Why is it women never fall in love with me?"
  
Favorite Scene:

After getting her first kiss from Eddie, Paula returns home late, coldly brushing off Fritzi's questions. That night, she tosses and turns as a thunderstorm rages outside her window. A lightning flash wakes her up and after bolting up, Paula buries her head in her pillow and cries. Her sobs catch the attention of Fritzi, who comes into the room to comfort her, voice and movements more gentle than we've ever seen from her. "Even when you were a kid, you were afraid of storms, I used to have to sleep with you," Fritzi muses. "If you want to, I'll--?" "No," Paula cuts in, blinking back tears. She's confused and vulnerable, one moment refusing Fritzi's offer to take her shopping, the next begging her mother not to go. "I don't know what I mean," Paula whimpers, as Fritzi tucks her back into bed. 

A simple scene but it's ripe with strange overtones. There's the way the two women are costumed and lit. Paula has her hair tied back with a purple bow and looks like a kid. Fritzi is in a gauzy peach nightgown, the perfect vision of maternal concern, and yet the sickly green scarf around her hair turns her into something unwholesome. There's the way Fritzi's rejected offer sounds a little too much like a come-on. There's the sexual implications of the storm raging outside after Paula has just had her first kiss, a storm that's interrupted by the arrival of her mother. It's a prime example of the weirdness and beauty of Desert Fury, a film that always seems to know more than it's telling.

Final Six Words: So static yet so strangely mesmerizing