Hamlette's Soliloquy: film noir

Showing posts with label film noir. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Obsession or Love: "Laura" (1944)

What’s the difference between love and obsession? How can you tell if you’re in the throes of one versus the other? Can obsession become love? Can love become obsession?

These questions are at the heart of the 1944 noir film Laura. While it explores all of them fairly thoroughly, it does not provide any definitive answers. Instead, it seems to present obsession and love as two sides of the same coin, never far apart.

The New York Police Department tasks Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) with investigating the murder of a high-society working girl, advertising whiz Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). Like any good detective, he collects clues, interviews those who knew the deceased, and follows up on any hunches he might have.

Everyone he interviews professes to have loved Laura. They are all confused how anyone could have wanted her dead, much less murdered her. Yet, the body found on the floor of her apartment, clad in a negligee and shot at close range in the face, proves at least one person in New York City did not love Laura Hunt. Perhaps they were obsessed with her, and their obsession took a deadly turn.

As he investigates her murder, McPherson becomes more than a little obsessed with the dead woman himself. Everyone who knew her tells him how elegant and sophisticated, yet sweet and kind Laura was. She was intelligent and had exquisite taste, helped her out-of-work boyfriend find a job at her advertising firm, was always polite and friendly to her maid, and dazzled the entire world. How could anyone help himself from falling in love with her, even in her permanent absence?

It seems no one can resist Laura’s charm, even after she’s dead, not even McPherson, a working-class snob who calls women ‘dames’ and looks down his nose at his wealthy suspects because they live in expensive apartments surrounded by beautiful things. The only person he interviews that he appears to respect is her maid Bessie (Dorothy Adams), a working-class woman who practically worshiped her employer. Bessie and McPherson get off to a rocky start, but once he stops casting aspersions on Laura and starts listening to Bessie, they get along fine.

McPherson may be a reverse elitist, but when it comes to the murdered woman, all his prejudices go out the window. He doesn’t mind that her apartment is expensive, her things beautiful, her furniture and clothing in the best taste. That just makes him more fascinated with her. So fascinated that he spends the night in her apartment, going through her clothes and personal possessions, drinking her alcohol, and staring at her portrait. He even puts in a bid on her portrait when he learns it will be sold at auction.

You can’t fall in love with a dead person you’ve never met, but you can become obsessed with them. Maybe even as obsessed as the person who killed her so she could never be someone else’s. McPherson almost gets so lost in his own yearning for this woman he’s never known that he stops investigating her murder… but only almost. In the end, he finds the killer, and even gets a chance at actual love, the kind that could replace his unhealthy obsession with Laura.

(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on October 29, 2019.)

Friday, September 20, 2024

The Slumming Angel: Raymond Chandler

In his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler explores detective fiction in general, but especially the hard-boiled kind he perfected. It includes my favorite bit of writing advice: “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” By which he meant, if you’re not sure what should happen next, make things worse in the most exciting way you can. Which is exactly how his books and stories work—everything goes from bad to worse to the worst imaginable… and then somehow turns out all right in the end.

Novelist Ross MacDonald said Raymond Chandler “wrote like a slumming angel.” He set his books in the seedy underbelly of 1930s, ’40s, and '50s Los Angeles and its surrounding cities, showing the grime and moral decay that Hollywood glossed over with its movies. The California sun beat down on ugliness and beauty alike, and Chandler strove to capture that combination in his writing.

I was probably sixteen when I read my first Raymond Chandler mystery, The Big Sleep. It entranced me, and the power of his writing impressed me so much, I fell in love with hard-boiled detective stories and their cousin, film noir, all on the strength of that one novel.

I love Raymond Chandler’s books more for how he writes them than what he writes about. Yes, I love mysteries, but find his plots often convoluted. They don’t always resolve the way I’d like them to. He himself admitted that he didn’t know who killed one particular character in The Big Sleep. But the way he writes? I am continually in awe. Here are a few quotations from his books to show you what I mean:

Montmar Vista was a few dozen houses of various sizes and shapes hanging by their teeth and eyebrows to a spur of mountain and looking as if a good sneeze would drop them down among the box lunches on the beach. —Farewell, My Lovely

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream. —The Long Goodbye

The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips. — The Lady in the Lake

It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out. — Farewell, My Lovely

I was as empty of life as a scarecrow’s pockets. — The Big Sleep

I went out to the kitchen to make coffee—yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life-blood of tired men. — The Long Goodbye

As you’ve probably gathered, Chandler’s books don’t shy away from subjects that might be shocking, or even taboo. Murder, greed, lust, drug use, blackmail, alcoholism, deviant behavior, and theft all make appearances, some regularly. What’s remarkable about his writing is that he can include subjects like these without making his books dirty.

My sixteen-year-old self didn’t really get some of the things alluded to in The Big Sleep. I figured out that someone was being blackmailed with a photo of them naked, but I missed the other hints about even seedier subjects. This is because Chandler writes about these things obliquely, not glorifying them by dwelling on them. Instead, he glosses over them so they don’t gain importance from his attention. They exist, but he will not dwell on them.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he strikes that balance. And I think something else he wrote in “The Simple Art of Murder” goes a long way to explain it. When discussing the sort of detectives he wrote, Chandler said, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” His fictional hero, Philip Marlowe, is such a man. He’s innately honorable, moral, unflinching, and even kind. Though he touches dirt in his cases, he doesn’t become dirty himself. Therefore, neither do his readers.

I know I’m practically turning this whole article into one long string of quotations, but I want to include one more. Why? Because it so perfectly encapsulates why I love to read detective fiction. When he addressed that question in “The Simple Art of Murder,” he said that it all boils down to the fact that everyone “must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts.” Reading fiction, especially mysteries, is my favorite way to do that. And Raymond Chandler’s books delight me most of all.

(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on October 20, 2018.)

Saturday, February 17, 2024

"Chicago Deadline" (1949)

On the surface, Chicago Deadline (1949) feels rather akin to Laura (1944). In Laura, a police detective becomes obsessed with learning everything he can about a beautiful dead woman and the people who were part of her life. In Chicago Deadline, a newspaper reporter becomes obsessed with the same basic thing. The ending goes quite differently from Laura, and I think that the newspaper reporter keeps in better mental health during the movie, but in a broad way, there are definite similarities.

Cynical yet compassionate reporter Ed Adams (Alan Ladd) has tracked down a random runaway girl whose parents called his newspaper in hopes of finding their daughter. It's never specified if finding runaway girls is a hobby of Ed's, or if he just drew the short straw that day and got sent out on this little errand, or what. He's certainly good at tracking people down from very slim clues, so maybe he gets assigned these sorts of jobs regularly. He cracks wise with the landlady and the runaway girl, but you can see he is genuinely glad the girl will be going home safely before anything untoward happened to her in the big city.

He's just told the runaway to pack her things when a cleaning woman down the hall screams in terror. Ed rushes over there and discovers a dead woman lying in bed. He peers at her face and diagnoses her as having died of a "hemorrhage," probably from tuberculosis. The audience only gets to see people's reaction to her, not her face or anything more than the back of her head and the vague shape of her body under the covers.

Ed quickly goes through the dead woman's belongings, starting with her mostly unpacked suitcase and proceeding to her handbag. There, he finds her datebook, which he pockets. I suppose, since she appears to have died of natural causes, he isn't actually removing or withholding evidence from a crime scene, but it's definitely not a particularly honest thing to do. Ed also drags that runaway girl into the bedroom and shows her the dead woman, warning her that she could have ended up dying alone in an anonymous bedroom too, if she didn't have parents who called the police and the newspapers and everyone else they could think of to try to find her. The girl is suitably chastised and subdued.

Ed asks the landlady who the dead woman was. She says she was named Rosita Jean d'Ur (Donna Reed), and she'd rented the room less than a week earlier. Ed tells the landlady to call the police, then leaves with the runaway girl in tow, bound for the train station so he can send her back home where she belongs.

Ed goes back to the newspaper office where he belongs and starts flipping through the dead woman's date book. It appears Rosita had a lot of friends, but she didn't supply full names for most of them, only first names or initials. Ed starts calling the numbers, figuring if he learns a bit about Rosita, he can write a human interest piece about her and why she died all alone.

But everyone he calls has very odd reactions to his asking if they knew her. Several deny knowing who she was. One person checks out of her hotel an hour after speaking with him. Others demand he explain how he got their phone number. Ed's newshound nose smells a much bigger story, and he starts digging deeper and deeper into Rosita's past.

By the time he's unraveled the story of her life, he's had run-ins with gangsters and crooks, brushed shoulders with wealthy financiers, interviewed a wheelchair-bound recluse, and gotten tangled up romantically with a lonely socialite.

Ed meets the socialite, Leona Purdy (June Havoc), at a party thrown by someone whose number is in Rosita's book. Leona knew Rosita for a while, and she liked her a lot, so she starts helping Ed try to piece together the story of Rosita's life. Before long, they're doing a little kissing once in a while, too.

I wish June Havoc had made more movies with Alan Ladd because I like her a lot opposite him. They trade quips really well, and they have lovely chemistry. They have a kind of comfortable rapport that I liked very much.

As a bit of a random aside before I resume relating the plot here, one of the reasons I like this movie so much is that Alan Ladd isn't playing a world-weary loner who gradually regains his own humanity after encountering genuinely nice people who help him rediscover his soul. I'm not saying he played that character in all his other film noir outings... but it feels like it. Some of his westerns go that way too. But his character in this has friends, colleagues, and a steady girlfriend. It's really refreshing.

Anyway, Ed is also aided by his friend and fellow reporter, Pig (Dave Willock), who tracks down leads for him offscreen and provides backup during a shoot-out in a parking garage. Have I ever mentioned that I find parking garages very scary? They always make me feel both trapped and exposed at the same time, and that is probably because I have watched so many movies where people get into shoot-outs in parking garages. There's only one parking garage where I don't feel even a little bit creeped out, and that's the one at Colonial Williamsburg because it is bright and light and airy, and it has openings everywhere on the ground and second floor, all the way around, so you can get out literally anywhere you want.

Anyway, Ed tracks down Rosita's brother Tommy (Arthur Kennedy), who is deeply saddened to learn Rosita has died. He fills in a lot of gaps in her life story for Ed, but can't really shed light on why other people keep behaving so peculiarly when Ed mentions her name.

I'm afraid I don't have any shots of Kennedy to add here -- this movie isn't available on DVD. It has recently been released to Blu-Ray by Kino Lorber, which is absolutely wonderful! I've watched it twice this month, and it's been such a delight to have a crisp and clear copy. I watched it once a few years ago, when all that was available was a murky version that looked like (and probably was) someone aiming their laptop webcam at a TV playing an old VHS tape that had been recorded off cable TV. So, I'm really excited that this movie is available legitimately on Blu-Ray now... but I can't get screencaps from a Blu-Ray because my laptop only plays DVDs. Which is why we have this random collection of production stills and lobby cards here. And no pictures of Arthur Kennedy because they don't appear to exist anywhere.

Skip down to below the next lobby card if you don't want SPOILERS because I am going to explain the plot here.

Unlike the detective in Laura, Ed Adams does not develop an unhealthy obsession with the dead woman. He does become pretty obsessive about figuring out why people keep trying to stop him from talking about her, though. It turns out that, after her husband left her in New York City, she returned to Chicago, where she became a small-time gangster's girlfriend, then caught the eye of a wealthy and crooked financier. The latter paid a big-time gangster to rough up her boyfriend until he promised to break up with her so the financier could become her sugar daddy. But the big-time gangster liked holding the leverage of what the financier did to get Rosita over said financier's head, so the financier decided she needed to disappear permanently so she couldn't be used against him anymore. Except the hitman who was supposed to kill her liked her, so he disappeared her instead and told everyone he'd killed her and dumped her body where she couldn't be found.

That's why, when Ed Ames finds her dead in a flophouse and her brother identifies her positively, suddenly creeps are crawling out of the woodwork and shooting each other and committing suicide and shooting at Ed. Because suddenly, the girl who was supposed to be dead already turns out to have been alive and only died just now, and (almost) nobody knows why. Everyone assumes someone else is lying and blabbing secrets, and fireworks commence.

It only took me three viewings of this movie to figure out what is actually going on in it. The whole thing is very convoluted and told in circular flashbacks, basically. But it does eventually make sense.

END OF SPOILERS.

Don't believe the above lobby card, by the way. Like the song says, Rosita is not merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead. Donna Reed never shares the screen with Alan Ladd at all in this -- she only appears in flashbacks. But Reed and Ladd had co-starred the previous year in Beyond Glory (which I haven't seen yet), and I guess the publicity folks wanted audiences to think they had another Ladd-Reed love story in the works. Or something.

Is this a great noir film? No. Is it a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable and rewatchable movie? Yup. I like it a lot.

But, is this movie family friendly? Basically, yes. Rosita's obviously sleeping with the financier, if not with her previous boyfriend, but that's very vaguely implied. Her brother may be incestuously attracted to her, but that's also vaguely implied, and it's possible he never revealed his interest to her. You can kind of read their relationship however you like. Rosita gets slapped offscreen at one point. Alan Ladd gets into a fistfight, and there's the gunfight in the parking garage that I mentioned earlier. And someone commits suicide. But, despite the ominous warning on some of the lobby cards and posters for the film, it's really not particularly unsuitable for children. It's also not intended for kids, though -- I can't see most youngsters being interested in it. Teens, sure.

Today is my 8th Alaniversary! Eight whole years devoted to Alan Ladd... and counting :-D

Thursday, May 25, 2023

What Makes Me Want to Watch It?

I recently posted a list of ten things that make me want to try out a book over on my book blog. I had so much fun figuring those out that I thought I should do the same about movies. What makes me think, "Yup, that is something I would like to watch?" about particular films? I've come up with ten magnets that will always draw my attention.

1. It's a western. I will try basically any movie or TV show based solely on the fact that it is a western. I don't have to know what it's about. I don't have to know or care about anyone who's in it, the director, the composer, anything. It's a western? I'm there. (With the obvious caveat that, if I learn it's skanky, I will either proceed with caution or skip it.)

2. It stars someone I hold dear. For a fairly large number of actors and actresses, not even remotely limited to my top favorites (actors, actresses), I will try nearly any movie or show. Nearly -- I do have some standards, so even top favorites occasionally have made something I will pass on. But the presence of someone I hold dear ties with "it's a western" for the top thing guaranteed to get me to watch something.

3. It's set during WWII. I mean, my top favorite TV show of all time (Combat! [1962-67]) is based in WWII. That should tell you a lot. A WWII-era setting, whether it's a war zone or the home front, will always grab my interest.

4. It's based on a good book. Bonus points if it's a classic book, but yeah, I love movies that are adaptations of books! I often watch them first to find out if I like the characters and story, then go read the book if I do. That makes the book feel like an expanded version of the story, rather than making the movie feel like a condensed version of a book I've read.

5. It has heroes in it. Yes, that includes superheroes, but it includes a lot more than that, too. You throw words like "hero," "rescue," "sacrifice," and "courage" at me, and I am instantly paying attention. I do enjoy superhero movies, but it's heroism in general that draws me to so many action movies, fantasy and sci-fi movies, and so on. Westerns and war movies appeal to me because they so often involve heroes.

6. It's film noir. Got some gritty stories and mean streets and fatally attractive women and weary almost-heroes and murky shadows you could drown in? I'm here for it. Yes, heroes are thin on the ground in this genre, but they're there. And antiheroes abound.

7. It revolves around a platonic friendship. If there are two characters who have or form a close bond of friendship, and that's the main relationship that the story centers around, I am interested right away. So many of my favorite movies and TV shows revolve around either a pair of friends or a group of them! "Found families" play into this -- group friendship bonds interest me just as much as a friendship between just two people.

8. It's set in the 1960s. My husband likes to tease me that I grew up in the sixties. I didn't -- I wasn't born until the eighties -- but when I was growing up, most of the movies and TV shows we watched at home were made in the sixties because that's when my parents grew up, so that's what formed their taste. And so, it's what formed my taste. Whether a movie or show was made in the sixties or later on, if that's when it's set, I want to try it out!

9. Someone I trust tells me I would like it. I definitely will try movies just because specific people tell me I should. My parents, my brother, DKoren, and two or three other people can get me to watch a movie on their recommendation alone.

10. It has a detective in it. Yes, I love mysteries. I particularly love to read them, but I enjoy watching them too. Many of my favorite TV shows revolve around detectives solving crimes, and I like movies about them too.

So, basically, if it has a certain setting or specific types of characters, or simply stars particular people, I'm interested!

Friday, February 17, 2023

My Ten Favorite Alan Ladd Roles

Happy Alaniversary to me! Seven years ago today, I fell hard for Alan Ladd, and I haven't recovered. Nor do I want to ;-) Today, I'm celebrating by sharing my ten favorite roles Ladd played. I have seen about thirty of his movies (many of them over and over and over) by now, and reviewed nearly two dozen of them, but I've never really stopped to figure out who my favorite characters of his were, other than the top three, which I have long loved best.

It amuses me how differently things are ranked here from my Ten Favorite Alan Ladd Movies list and my Ten Favorite Alan Ladd Westerns list. In fact, there are three characters on here whose stories don't appear on either of those lists! So interesting how I can love a character more than the movie they're in, or a movie more than the characters in it.

1. Shane in Shane (1953)

Shane has so much dignity, grace, courage, integrity... it's no wonder that this performance is the one Ladd is remembered best for. His past and future are mysteries, but we can tell he's haunted by his past, which clearly involved being a gunman.

2. Luke "Whispering" Smith in Whispering Smith (1948)

Luke Smith is a railroad detective, basically. He's another upright, brave, uncompromising guy who puts others above himself and stands up for what's right even if it means great personal sacrifice. It was watching Whispering Smith and Shane back-to-back that made me fall for Ladd in the first place :-)

3. Dan Holliday in Box 13 (1948-49)(radio show)

Holliday is a former newspaper reporter who decides to try writing fiction. To get ideas for his stories, he puts an ad in the paper that says he's seeking adventure and will go anywhere and tackle any problem. This leads to a whole lot of mysteries to solve, crimes to investigate, people to rescue, and other sundry adventures. I've actually been a fan of this radio show longer than I've been a Ladd devotee!

4. Choya in Branded (1950)

Choya is a drifting loner with a streak of decency. Even when he's mixed up in something illegal, he ends up doing the right thing to help and protect others. And standing up for others helps him realign his own moral compass in the process.

5. John Chandler in The Proud Rebel (1958)

Chandler is a kind, loving father who would do anything to help his young son be able to speak again. He's a former Confederate soldier who lost everything but his son during the war, and his attempts to build a new life for them both are heart-melting.

6. Captain Webster "Web" Carey in Captain Carey, USA (1949)

Web Carey is a brave and honorable guy who believes he was betrayed by the woman he loved back when he was a spy during WWII. When he discovers that everything he believed about that betrayal may have been a lie, he'll do whatever it takes to learn the truth. Even if that might break his own heart all over again.

7. Thomas O'Rourke in Saskatchewan (1954)

O'Rourke was raised by Canadian Indians, but is now a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He tries everything to keep peace between native tribes and white settlers, putting his own safety and reputation on the line repeatedly.

8. Dr. Merek Vance in And Now Tomorrow (1944)

Merek Vance is one of the characters Ladd played the most earlier in his career -- a cold, calculating man who is not interested in kindness or friendship or love... until he meets a girl who brings out the good parts of himself he's kept hidden inside. In this case, he's actually a good guy, a philanthropic doctor who spends most of his time treating poor people who can't afford his treatments. He just is more interested in science than his patients... until now...

9. Major Larry Briggs in Saigon (1947)

Briggs and his two pals, all ex-GIs, are only really interested in making money. He definitely doesn't like or trust women, as you can see from the picture above. He and his buddies are loyal to each other, but don't care much about anyone else until...

10. Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1949)

Poor Jay Gatsby. Hopeful, yearning, always reaching for what he can't have, never ready to give up on his great dream. Betrayed, hurt, wistful... Gatsby is pretty much tailor-made for Alan Ladd to play.

This has been a really fun list to come up with, and I may have to do similar gatherings of favorite roles for other actors and actresses I love! It's rather different from just "favorite films," and I like that.

Monday, May 16, 2022

Four Noir Films from Ladd and Lake

It's National Classic Movie Day today! Not only that, but Classic Film & TV Cafe is hosting the Four Favorite Noirs Blogathon today to celebrate -- read this post of theirs for links to all the participants.

For this event, I will be sharing some thoughts about the four noir films that Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake starred together in. I have fully reviewed all four of these previously, so I will link to those individual reviews as we go, too.

This Gun for Hire (1942) was Alan Ladd's big break. In it, he plays a baby-faced killer, Raven, a type that became very popular after this movie. Ladd brought such a powerful mixture of innocent charm and remorseless violence to the role that it became obvious to the filmmakers that they had a new star on their hands.

Hitman Raven is double-crossed by his employer (Laird Cregar) at the beginning of the movie, and he spends the rest of the story gathering evidence so he can get revenge. It just so happens that the heroine, Ellen (Veronica Lake), is gathering evidence of a very different sort about the same man to help the authorities catch him for selling military secrets to America's enemies.

You can read my full review of This Gun for Hire here.

Veronica Lake's star was on the rise when she made This Gun for Hire, as she'd just made a big splash with Sullivan's Travels the year before. She has a sweet charm, not the sultry sort we find in noir so often, which makes her kind of refreshing. Her character Ellen is not a femme fatale, but a good girl trying to do the right thing in a tough situation.

Ellen and Raven technically don't fall in love. They do eventually form a tentative friendship, but it's short-lived. Still, they get some wonderful scenes together, and Ladd and Lake had very good chemistry. So, the studio rushed to put together another film for them to star opposite each other in.

The Glass Key (1942) capitalizes on the antagonistic chemistry that sizzled between Ladd and Lake. It's based on a hardboiled detective novel by Dashiell Hammett (read my review of the book here) that had been made into a movie once before, in 1935, starring George Raft.

The story revolves around Paul Madvig, a criminal organizer (Brian Donlevy) who decides to enter politics. He falls in love with wealthy socialite Janet Henry (Veronica Lake), but she scorns him while secretly admiring his right-hand man Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd). When Janet's brother is murdered, both men fall under suspicion for the killing, and only one of them has the brains and guts to figure out the truth.

You can read my full review of The Glass Key here.

Alan Ladd carries his first real starring role pretty well, though I sometimes get the sense that he was feeling a lot of pressure to act extra tough and extra cool in this.

Ed Beaumont's nemesis is a thug named Jeff played by William Bendix. While shooting one altercation early in filming, Bendix failed to fully pull a punch and knocked Ladd cold. That may sound like a weird basis for starting a friendship, but the two of them became fast friends and were close for years and years after.

Veronica Lake plays aloof and skeptical for most of the film, which is very different from her earnest and kind character in This Gun for Hire. She pulls off the role just fine, letting us see her interest in Ladd's character even while she pretends to disdain him.

Lake and Ladd's characters do get to exchange some combatively romantic dialog, but their love story isn't exactly central to the movie's plot. That would change in their next outing together.

The Blue Dahlia (1946) does give Ladd and Lake a romantic pair to play. But, even here, their romance is a by-product of the plot, it doesn't fuel it.

Three military buddies freshly mustered out of the military return stateside to resume their normal lives. Buzz (William Bendix) and George (Hugh Beaumont) were part of the bomber crew led by Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd). Though George and Johnny bear no physical effects from their time in service, Buzz had a head injury that has left him moody and unpredictable.

George and Buzz set off to find an apartment together, but Johnny has a wife and a home to go to. The only trouble is, his wife (Doris Dowling) is a party animal who's cheating on him with a nightclub owner (Howard da Silva). When the wife ends up dead, Johnny is suspected of murdering her and has to race to clear his name. He inadvertently meets up with the nightclub owner's estranged wife Joyce (Veronica Lake), and the two share some sympathetic moments before they learn how their lives have already been tangled up thanks to their unfaithful spouses.

You can read my full review of The Blue Dahlia here.

Ladd is in top form in The Blue Dahlia. He spits out angry one-liners while letting you see the ache behind the anger at the same time. His character is a man displaced, a misfit who changed so much during the war he doesn't know where he belongs anymore. Ladd gives him a desperate edge that keeps the audience guessing as to whether or not he did kill his wife, right up to the end. But he also projects this innate kindness and decency that makes you really hope he didn't do it.

Veronica Lake plays one of only two thoroughly upright, good characters in the whole movie. She's a good girl in a bad marriage, but she hasn't let it harden or roughen her, which clues the audience in as to just how strong she is inside.

Lake and Ladd's characters don't get to do much more than yearn for each other and trade snappy dialog for the bulk of the film, but the audience has no trouble believing they will see a lot more of each other after the story ends.

In fact, the two of them are so good together that it's a shame they only made one more movie together after this one.

Saigon (1947) is the only one of these four movies not readily available on DVD right now. I hope that will change! You can sometimes catch it on TV, at least.

This is another tale of three military friends after the war, one of whom is not physically well. Major Briggs (Alan Ladd) and Sergeant Rocco (Wally Cassell) are keeping a terrible secret from their buddy, Captain Perry (Douglas Dick): he has a brain condition that could kill him any day.

The three of them use their flying skills to make money flying cargo planes around Southeast Asia for basically anyone who needs something flown somewhere. They take a job flying a rich guy and his secretary Susan (Veronica Lake) to Saigon but, thanks to a last-minute gunfight, only the secretary catches the plane. Perry promptly falls in love with Susan, and Briggs does too. Briggs won't admit he's in love to anyone, including himself, but Perry turns into a lovesick puppy. Susan learns about the brain injury and is kind to Perry, and she is definitely not attracted to Briggs because he is mean and crabby, and never says nice things to her. Definitely not attracted. As you can see from the production photos here.

A whole plot involving smuggling ensues, just to keep things interesting. Saigon is generally classified as film noir, but it's the least noir of these four, in my opinion. But it's still a really fun ride.

You can read my full review of Saigon here.

Although their characters spend most of the film distrusting each other, snapping at each other, and generally being as unpleasant to each other as they can, you can always feel the crackle of attraction between Ladd and Lake's characters. The best part of this movie is watching their scenes together, two total pros who know exactly how to bring out the best in each other.

Although the characters they're playing aren't my favorite pair of the four pairs they play, I think Lake and Ladd are the most fun to watch in this one. They're clearly very comfortable with each other, after making three movies together before this, and that lets them both relax and turn in awesome, confident performances.

Plus, they get a Really Good Kiss in Saigon :-) That doesn't hurt at all.

I hope you've enjoyed this little collection of my thoughts on these four films. Happy National Classic Movie Day! I don't know how you plan to celebrate, but I'll be watching Alan Ladd play The Great Gatsby (1949) with a friend this evening...

Friday, September 03, 2021

"Calcutta" (1947)

Today is Alan Ladd's birthday, so you know what that means! It's time for 93 screencaps and a lengthy, heart-eyed movie review.

::rubs hands::

So, let's get to it!

"Does a guy have to trust a girl to fall for her?"

That's the central question in Calcutta (1947). Neale Gordon (Alan Ladd) asks it aloud almost three-quarters of the way through the movie, but it's really the core of the whole story. And it's what his character arc revolves around, too.

The fun starts when pilot pals Neale and Pedro (William Bendix) have a bit of engine trouble on their routine cargo route between Chungking, China to Calcutta, India.

Their buddy Bill (John Whitney) talks to them via radio until he's sure they've dumped their cargo and are able to make a safe emergency landing. He then takes off to bring them engine parts, and says he has some big news to share.

For some unknown reason, only Neale got so hot while repairing that engine that he had to doff his shirt. Very mysterious.

This shot is just here in case you need a photo of Alan Ladd shirtless AND smiling. Usually, when he's shirtless in a movie, he's grim or serious, so this is actually kind of rare.

Bill lands on their makeshift runway and offers to buy Neale and Pedro a drink in a nearby town while their plane gets fixed up. That suits them fine.

Bill's a little banged up because he has this bad habit of drinking too much and picking fights, and last night, Neale and Pedro weren't around to help him out when he got in a brawl. But he says his barfighting days are over, because he's going to get married!

Pedro and Neale are not amused. Neale in particular likes women only on a temporary basis. He reminds his pal, "You've combed enough dames outta your hair to know what they want: stability. Settling down." And settling down is NOT Neale's idea of a good life. He has no use for any of this stick-to-one-woman-forever nonsense.

Bill gets in a fight about two seconds later, and Pedro and Neale happily fend off his assailants and put him back on his plane to head back to Calcutta. They'll be following as soon as their plane is fixed.

But when Neale and Pedro get to Calcutta the next day, they learn that Bill was murdered soon after he returned the night before. He was strangled, his body dumped in an alley. They go to the morgue with Inspector Kendricks (Gavin Muir) to identify Bill's body.

Neale instantly decides that he's going to find out who killed Bill, and he's going to do it before the police do so he can get a little personal revenge on the murderer before he gets locked up. Pedro has to fly a load of passengers to Chungking and back tomorrow, and he makes Neale promise not to kill the murderer before he gets back so he can take his pound of flesh too. You know, Bill seemed like a really nice guy, but his pals play kinda rough.

Neale starts his investigation by looking up his... best girl? Main squeeze? I'm not sure what to call her! Marina (June Duprez) is a nightclub singer who loves Neale even though she knows he plays the field constantly. She's always there for him, however and whenever he needs her company, even though she's about given up hope that he'll ever stop his philandering ways and become a one-woman man.

Anyway, Neale asks Marina if she knows anything about Bill's fiancée, whom Neale and Pedro have never met, and never even heard of until yesterday. Marina gives Neale a few clues, and he heads off to do some sleuthing.

Neale (and Pedro) start out by asking nightclub-and-casino owner Eric Lasser (Lowell Gilmore) about Bill's last visit to this establishment. They get very few real answers from Lasser, or from his business associate Malik (Paul Singh). Both of them seem to be hiding more than they're telling, and Pedro and Neale leave unsatisfied.

Random note, but Alan Ladd spends most of this movie with his hands in his pockets. I have never seen him do this so often in a movie before! I'm really curious as to why. Is it to show that Neale is suspicious by nature, and likes to keep tabs on his own valuables? Does it show he hides things from others? Is it to show that he usually doesn't stick his nose in other people's business, and so all this investigating is unusual for him? Were Alan Ladd's hands cold on set? I don't know! But in basically every scene, he either ends up with his hands in his pockets or his arms folded. The folded-arms thing, I get, because that's an easy visual cue to show that a character doesn't believe something, and Neale doesn't believe most of the stuff people tell him. But I don't know about the pockets thing. It's very interesting.

Anyway, guess who shows up at the last minute for that passenger flight Pedro has to take to Chungking the next day? None other than Malik, Lasser's "business associate." He's charming and polite and friendly, and Pedro gets very, very suspicious of him.

Meanwhile, back in Calcutta, Neale is trying to find this fiancée of Bill's. He knocks on her hotel door a couple times, with no answer. Then, as he heads back to his own room after another unsuccessful visit to hers, she calls out to him from above on the stairs. And there she is, the seemingly mythical fiancée, Virginia Moore (Gail Russell). She is young and soft-spoken and luminous and beautiful.

You can see this is not the sort of woman Neale was expecting, not even after his gal pal Marina told him Virginia was a sweet girl. (And, oh my goodness, is this not a beautiful use of shadows? Nom nom nom.)

Neale comes back up the stairs to meet Virginia. She's shy and nervous, but smiles and invites him in so he can ask her his questions about Bill.

Neale listens while Virginia tells him all about how she and Bill spent his last day or two in Calcutta, their plans to get married, and how horrible it was when she found out from the morning news that he'd been killed.

Neale listens... but skeptically. Neale does not think much of most women. He thinks they're nice to look at and touch, but that they're all devious and conniving, all just trying to hook a man for good. And here is the woman who hooked his friend for good, but then his friend died, so yeah... Neale is not feeling warm fuzzies toward this Virginia dame.

Virginia, however, has "sweet and young and confused and sad" written all over her.

So Neale continues asking questions and being cynical. And continues enjoying looking at her.

His questions annoy Virginia, eventually, and she decides he needs to leave. That's when he notices she's wearing a fabulously expensive necklace. She claims Bill gave it to her. Neale says Bill never had enough money at one time to buy anything half so expensive. He asks her to give him the necklace so he can look into this. When she won't, he snaps the chain and takes it anyway.

Virginia declares she doesn't know how Bill could ever have been friends with him, because Bill was nice, but Neale is, and I quote, "cold, sadistic, and egotistical." (I am not at all sure that "snapped the chain of my necklace" is enough to label Neale sadistic, but she's a bit given to hyperbole, so whatever.)

Neale grins at that. "Maybe, but I'm still alive," he purrs before leaving.

Neale knows where that fancy necklace came from, so he heads off to find out if Bill really did buy it for Virginia, and, if so, with what. And here we meet one of my favorite characters in the whole movie: Mrs. Smith (Edith King). Mrs. Smith owns an imported goods shop, smokes cigars, and has a really ridiculous hat. I love her.

In fact, my brain has tossed together some follow-up scenarios to this movie where Pedro and Mrs. Smith hit it off in a big way and get together. She is just plain awesome -- a straight-talking, intelligent, no-nonsense woman who knows more than she says. And she has an eye for handsome guys, too.

Sure enough, Bill bought that necklace from her. Paid her with a check. She's all hearty cheer and comradely helpfulness... until Neale tells her that Bill was murdered. Suddenly, Mrs. Smith goes still and serious. She'd taken a shine to Bill, and the idea of that sweet kid getting strangled in an alley bugs the crap out of her. She'll do anything she can to help Neale figure this out, and she's completely sincere about that offer.

Then she's all vivacious bonhomie again, and she and Neale bid each other a chummy farewell. MAN, I wish she was in this movie a lot more than she is.

Neale is stumped. He has no idea where Bill got so much money, and he's worried that Bill must've been mixed up in something illegal. But he just doesn't want to believe that. He goes back to his own hotel suite, where he lives when he's not flying.

Marina has spent the afternoon there, while he was out, taking a cool bath in his tub. She comes out wrapped in Neale's bathrobe and perches beside him on the... divan? Couch? Thing?

Neale toys with the robe's belt while they flirt a little, eventually tying it tighter rather than untying it because this is the 1940s and the Hays Code is still in effect, so of course he does.

Marina asks him what he's learned, and they do this cute little thing they did at the nightclub earlier, where Neale sticks a cigarette between his own lips to light it, then hands it to Marina. It sounds dumb when I state it like that, but I promise it's all kinds of flirty and sexy.

Marina reminds Neale that he hasn't kissed her yet, and he's been there for simply minutes and minutes.

Neale takes her cigarette and stubs it out with one hand while pulling her closer with the other. Cue a very sultry kiss and a fade-to-black.

We return to find Neale retying his tie when who should come knocking on his door but Virginia. She wants to apologize for being rude and calling him names, or something. Neal apologizes too, and gives back the necklace, along with the information that Bill really did pay for it himself.

Marina comes out of Neale's bedroom, prompting Virginia to frostily apologize if she was interrupting anything. Neale gets a kick out of her insinuations (at this point he kind of treats her like she's a funny kid, while he and Marina are clearly Serious Adults), but Marina brushes them aside with a calm smile.

Marina walks around Virginia, subtly giving her the once-over, and lands firmly beside Neale, right where she belongs. Without being obviously proprietary, she's letting Virginia know this man already has a woman, and reminding Neale not to be a sap where Virginia's concerned. Which Neale totally knows she's doing, and finds most amusing. I suspect him of enjoying having two pretty ladies vying for his attention.

Virginia's sweet face slides into a scowl. She knows what Marina's communicating too.

Marina even kisses Neale goodbye, chastely on the cheek, rather like a wife would. But Neale doesn't like the idea of being tied to one woman, so he only smirks rather than appreciating the loyal gesture.

Neale takes Virginia dancing. This gives him a chance to question her more, and us a chance to enjoy how nicely Alan Ladd dances. Frustratingly, like most of his movies, this dancing sequence is very short and mostly focuses on faces and dialog.

Virginia pours on the innocent-yet-glamorous charm.

Neale resists it, while looking pretty darn devastating himself.

Pedro returns from the airport at last, and he and Neale confront Malik, who has been behaving really suspiciously. (Oh look, hands in pockets again for Alan.) They get no real answers out of him, though.

This shot is here in case you needed a picture of Alan Ladd in suspenders (swoon!) reclining nonchalantly on a bed.

Neale has had an idea about what Bill might have gotten killed over. He calls the airport and asks what plane will be flying to Chungking next.

Then he leaves word for Pedro to meet him at the airport and heads over alone because it is always a good idea to go investigate an airport at night, alone, when you're looking into the mysterious murder of your best friend. ::shakes finger at Neale for not having better sense::

Actual surprise: Neale finds a bag of smuggled jewelry under the floor of the airplane.

Not an actual surprise: Neale is then attacked by someone who tries to strangle him.

Spoiler Alert: he gets away.

Also not a surprise: when Neale gets back to his hotel, Malik shows up with a gun before Neale can even get his coat off. Malik wants the bag that Neale took from the airplane, of course.

Neale thinks this is awesome. He's pretty sure he knows who was behind Bill's death now. Also, he knows something Malik doesn't know: the bag's empty.

Neale and Pedro stashed the goods so they can use it as bait to draw Bill's killer out, and Neale is quite chuffed at how well their plan has worked.

Except Malik says he has no idea who killed Bill. He simply heard something about smuggled goods being up for grabs and came sniffing around. Totally innocent of anything but curiosity, la la la la la.

Yeah, Neale's not buying it, but he lets Malik leave with his pistol and the empty bag. Look at that casual leeeeeeeeeean. He thinks he's about to wrap up this whole mystery.

I'm not done looking at that lean, are you? (Also, hands in pockets again.)

Now, the plot is going to kick into overdrive, and I'm going to start spoiling stuff all over, so if you don't want SPOILAGE, skip to after the last picture.

You've been warned.

Malik wasn't warned, though, and he ends up dead about 30 seconds after he leaves Neale's room.

I really like the composition of this shot, how crowded with action it is. Also, look how many patrons this hotel has, after seeming mostly empty all this time!

Dear old Inspector Kendricks arrives and questions everyone, especially Neale, who folds his arms and cooperates a little, but mostly just glares and makes a lot of snide remarks.

Then he sticks his hands in his pockets and glares some more.

This shot is here in case you needed to see a picture of Alan Ladd pouring himself a spot of tea.

I kind of collect pictures of favorite actors and characters drinking things, so I had no choice but to screencap this.

Anyway, Marina and Neale have a chummy breakfast while they discuss Malik's death and all the things Neale didn't learn when he was out dancing with Virginia, etc.

I missed this the first two times I watched Calcutta, but I think this is a turning point in Neale's character arc, even if Neale and Marina don't realize it. Up until now, we always see Neale lighting a cigarette and then passing it to Marina. But here, Marina lights one and hands it to Neale instead.

Neale doesn't even notice, really -- he's so wrapped up in trying to figure out if Virginia is involved in Bill's death, and who killed Malik, and where all that smuggled jewelry came from. He accepts the cigarette and goes right on pondering.

Isn't Marina pretty? I love her eyes.

Neale is still contemplating everything he doesn't know about who killed Bill when the Friendly Neighborhood Desk Clerk (Milton Parsons) calls to say that Neale should come up to Virginia's room right away. It's been ransacked, and Virginia is nowhere to be found.

We get treated to this sly little exchange that I can't believe got past the censors:

Neale: Has the bed been slept in?
Desk Clerk: No.
Marina: Well, I'm glad you asked that question.

Does Marina know that Neale sleeps with other women? Yes, she's known that all along. Is she okay with that? Not as okay as he's assumed she is. And she's getting less okay with it all the time. Marina's attitude toward Neale is changing from resigned to protective, and Neale hasn't quite noticed yet. He also hasn't noticed that he's started appreciating how steady and dependable Marina is, especially compared to the other leading lady in the story.

Speaking of other ladies, Neale goes back to see Mrs. Smith again, arriving when she's in the middle of a rather elaborate beauty treatment. Or, as she puts it, getting her warpaint on.

Neale thinks now that Mrs. Smith is behind the smuggling. She says she and Malik used to be partners in a bit of illegal exporting and importing, but that ended years ago. Before they can get any more info out of each other, the police arrive and take Neale off to the station for questioning regarding Malik's death.

I haven't talked much about Pedro yet. When the movie starts, you kind of assume Pedro is, well, dimmer than Neale. He's not dumb, but he's not the guy digging up clues. He's the sidekick, following along with whatever the hero says. But in this scene, you discover that Pedro is a fast thinker and keeps a cooler head than even Neale. He's extremely good at reading people, and he uses that to flip everything the police think they know upside down, ensuring that Neale can keep investigating, even though Pedro will have to stay in jail for a bit.

This doesn't come as a surprise when you think back over how accurately Pedro has pegged Bill, Marina, and Virginia over the course of the film. He's observant and savvy, and I love that about him.

I think Neale realizes here that he may also have underestimated Pedro -- not his intelligence, but his devotion to being sure they find out who killed Bill. It's a cool scene.

Virginia sends for Neale. She's staying at "a friend's" apartment across town. I'd just like to point out that, although Pedro's the one cooling his heels in jail right now, Neale's the one with shadowy stripes on his clothes, posed up against a beaded curtain that looks vaguely like bars in a jail cell.

In fact, there are bars and stripes all over this apartment, making it look like an elaborate cage.

Neale remains skeptical about the things Virginia tells him, especially about how Bill got that money to buy that necklace. She insists he won it gambling. Neale knows Bill wasn't a gambler.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuut she's beautiful, and she's in distress, and right here is where Neale asks that central question: "Does a guy have to trust a girl to fall for her?" Because he doesn't really trust Virginia (he claims he doesn't trust any woman), but he is really starting to fall for her.

For the record, Virginia's answer to that question is "No, he doesn't."

It appears that Neale spends the night in Virginia's apartment. Very early the next morning, he leaves her a note and heads back to the hotel. This shot is mostly here because I also collect pictures of favorite actors and characters writing.

Back at the hotel, Neale gets some extremely enlightening information from, of all people, the Friendly Neighborhood Desk Clerk.

This leads him to question the waiters for the hotel's bar, and this new information shoots holes all through Virginia's story about how she and Bill spent their last evening together, and about how she learned that Bill had died.

And now Neale has what he's wanted all along: a way to find Bill's killer.

Neale returns to Virginia, bringing all that smuggled jewelry with him. She just about drools when she sees it.

But then Neale confronts her with her lies about Bill. She responds by reminding him that she never claimed to love Bill, but she thinks she's in love with Neale now.

Uh, yeah, Neale's not buying what you're selling anymore, sweetheart. You gambled on the fact that most men will fall for a girl they don't trust -- it's worked beautifully for you for a long time now. But Neale... Neale has learned better, thanks partly to you and partly to having a girl in his life he really can trust.

When she won't answer his questions about how she helped get Bill killed, Neale slaps her around a little. "Do you think you're too pretty to hit?" he snarls.

Yeah, she did think that. She also thinks if she cries, he'll feel sorry for her. Virginia has never really understood what deep friendship there was between Neale, Pedro, and Bill. She's used to being able to charm any man into doing anything for her, even turning against his own friends. But Neale's cynicism about women, and his true friendship for Bill, keeps him from falling for her charms too far.

He finally gets her to confess that she's been in cahoots with Lasser (the nighclub owner) long before she met Bill, and that she used her feminine wiles to distract pilots and keep them happy while Lasser used their planes to smuggle things in and out of China. The only trouble is, Bill was an actually nice guy who actually fell for her, but then got wise to the smuggling, and Lasser had him killed.

Virginia insists she loves Neale. Then she tries to shoot him. Lasser turns up and tries to shoot Neale too. Neale shoots Lasser, finally fulfilling his vow to take down the guy who killed Bill. Or, had him killed, anyway. I can't actually remember if we for sure find out who strangled Bill -- I think it was the same henchman who tried to strangle Neale at the airport?

And then, Neale calls the police. All the way up to here, Virginia has been doe-eyed and sweet and trembling, still giving Neale the come-hither treatment. She's doing everything she can to convince him to blame everything on Lasser (including a murder she committed) and help her get out of this.

But when Neale really does turn her over to Inspector Kendricks, she loses all the sugar and snidely says, "I would have hated to have killed you." And she kisses Neale on the cheek, just the way Marina did earlier, but with a weird look of regretful malice.

We cut to Neale getting ready to take off on a flight to somewhere. Marina brings him the extra shirt he always forgets to pack, and a bag of sandwiches. Just the sort of domestic, wifely attentions that Neale has scorned all his life. But Neale has learned something important: trust is more important in a relationship than all the sexy sparkage you can feel toward a stranger.

Neale tells Marina, "You're an awfully swell guy." He said this to her once before, early in the film, but the meaning of his words has completely changed. Earlier, he meant that he liked that she didn't ask to be more to him than just a pal. Someone he could fool around with, without feeling guilty when he fooled around with some other girl.

But I don't think that's what he means by it now. Now, he means that he values her the way he values Pedro and Bill -- as someone he can trust and depend on. Someone he wants to be loyal to.

In fact, I wouldn't be awfully surprised if Pedro got asked to be best man at a wedding before too awful long.

(If you were avoiding spoilers, you're safe now.)

Is this movie family friendly? Well, yeah. All the love scenes fade to black a few seconds after they begin. Neale's philandering is obliquely referred to, and you could just view him as someone who goes around kissing a lot of girls if you want to. The death scenes are bloodless. There's no cussing. Lots and lots of cigarettes get smoked, though, and people drink various alcoholic beverages.

I find it very interesting that Alan Ladd made so many movies about three wartime buddies, one of whom gets in terrible trouble and has to be protected, helped, or avenged by the other two. This, The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Saigon (1947) all kind of use that basic set-up. I'm not really going anywhere with this observation, I just noticed it and thought I'd mention it. The three-wartime-buddies motif gets used in lots of other movies too -- Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), and It's Always Fair Weather (1955) come to mind.

Anyway, happy birthday, my dear Alan Ladd :-) Thanks for making all these delicious movies!

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