film noir – Page 2 – The Movie Gourmet

THE ARGYLE SECRETS: racing for a politically explosive Macguffin

January 16, 2022 by movie gourmet

Marjorie Lord and William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

The Argyle Secrets is a fast-paced 63-minute espresso noir, a race to find a politically explosive Macguffin. That Macguffin is the Argyle Album, a list of those Americans playing footsy with the Nazis, just in case Hitler might win the war. This list has obvious value, both as a news media exposé and as blackmail leverage. value.

The Argyle Secrets starts out with voice-over exposition, flashes of the characters to come, and some rapid voice-over exposition from our protagonist, the investigative reporter Harry Mitchell (William Gargan).

Mitchell has the opportunity to meet a visiting national columnist (George Anderson), who tells him about the existence of, but not the content of the Argyle Album. When the columnist suddenly dies amid suspicious circumstances, Mitchell comes under suspicion and goes on the run to solve the case and prove his innocence. Of course, he also wants the Big Scoop for his own newspaper.

George Anderson and William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

But Harry Mitchell is not alone in his pursuit of the Argyle Album. Just like in that Macguffin classic The Maltese Falcon, he is racing devious characters with multiple aliases. In pursuit of the Argyle Album themselves, they’re now in pursuit of Harry. There’s even a fat man in a white suit (Jack Reitzen).

The fat man is a solo operator, but there’s also a gang with an accented leader (John Banner, 20 years before his Sgt. Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes) and sunglasses-wearing muscle (Mickey Simpson) – and they’re willing to use a blowtorch on Harry. Plus a shifty fence (Peter Brocco).

There’s also the alluring Marla (Marjorie Lord), a sexy femme fatale who may or may not be loyal to the gang. Fondling Harry’s lapels, she puts on her best Brigid O’Shaughnessy and coos, “You think I’m really rotten, don’t you? I am. I really am.”

The plot transpires over 24 hours. Who will find the Argyle Album? Is Marla playing Harry? Will Harry survive?

William Gargan carries the story as Harry. Gargan made a career of playing fictional detectives – Barrie Craig for four years in the popular radio series Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, then Ellery Queen in three movies and Martin Kane in 51 television episodes.

Marjorie Lord, who considered herself primarily a stage actress, did massive amounts of television, especially 227 episodes playing Danny Thomas’s wife in The Danny Thomas Show (plus another 24 episodes as the same character in in Make Room for Granddaddy).

However, Lord is right at home playing a movie femme fatale in The Argyle Secrets, exuding sexuality and unashamed self-interest.

The Argyle Secrets was written and directed by Cy Endfield, then a 34-year-old Orson Welles protege, in what he called his first film as an auteur. Blacklisted in the US, Endfield went on to direct the fine 1957 British noir Hell Drivers and the 1964 hit Zulu.

The Argyle Secrets has been newly restored by the the Film Noir Foundation. The world premiere 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets will be at the 2022 Noir City film festival.

The Argyle Secrets is very hard to find and is not available to stream; I expect that a Film Noir Foundation DVD will become available.

NOIR CITY returns in-person in January

December 12, 2021 by movie gourmet

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.“

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

The Accused (1949)
Open Secret (1948)
The Sniper (1952) – shot on location in San Francisco.
Force of Evil (1948).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, T he Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER. Courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.

on TV: ASHES AND DIAMONDS: a killer wants to stop

November 1, 2021 by movie gourmet

Photo caption: Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Coming up tomorrow night on Turner Classic Movies, a masterful director and his charismatic star ignite the war-end thriller Ashes and Diamonds, set amidst war-end treachery. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

It’s the end of WW II and the Red Army has almost completely liberated Poland from the Nazis. The future governance of Poland is now up in the air, and the Polish resistance can now stop killing Germans and start wrestling for control. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young but experienced soldier in the Resistance. His commanders assign him to assassinate a communist leader.

Maciek is very good at targeted killing, but he’s weary of it. As he wants out, he finds love. But his commander is insisting on this one last hit.

This is Zbigniew Cybulski’s movie. Often compared to James Dean, Cybulski emanates electricity and unpredictability, Unusual for a leading man, he often wore glasses in his screen roles. He had only been screen acting for four years when he made Ashes and Diamonds. Cybulski died nine years later when hit by a train at age forty,

Andrzej Wajda fills the movie with striking visuals, such as viewing Maciek’s love interest, the waitress Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), alone amidst the detritus of last night’s party, through billows of cigarette smoke. Wajda’s triumphant signature is, literally, fireworks at the climax; the juxtaposition of the celebratory fireworks with Maciek’s emotional crisis is unforgettable.

Wajda adapted a famous 1948 Polish novel into this 1958 movie. In the adaptation, the filmmaker changed the emphasis from one character to another.

Ashes and Diamonds was the third feature for Andrzej Wajda, who became a seminal Polish filmmaker and received an honorary Oscar. US audiences may remember his 1983 art house hit Danton with Gerard Depardieu.

Ashes and Diamonds can be streamed from Amazon and AppleTV. It was featured at the 2020 Noir City film festival.

Rediscovered masterpiece of Argentine noir on DVD

October 25, 2021 by movie gourmet

Photo caption: Carlos Cores in LOS TALLOS AMARGOS

Thanks to the Film Noir Foundation, two newly restored classics of film noir are available on DVD. Both are from Argentina – and one of them is a masterpiece.

The masterpiece is Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems), one of the most imaginative and psychological movies of the classic film noir era. Because of his insecurities, a man invents imagined threats, but his real nemesis is himself. The shocking and ironic ending that would have been far too dark for any Hollywood film of the era.

Los tallos amargos was listed as one of the “50 Best Photographed Films of All-Time” by American Cinematographer. Its storied dream sequence is one of the most surreal in cinema. Los tallos amargos won the Silver Condor (the Argentine Oscar) for both Best Picture and Best Director (Fernando Ayala).

Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Laura Hidalgo in THE BEAST MUST DIE

The other film newly available on DVD is The Beast Must Die, which begins with the murder of a man so despicable that every other character has at least one motive for killing him. A visiting detective novelist becomes a murder investigator. As he peels back the onion, the whodunit revolves around which motive propelled the act of murder. There is a big reveal and a shocking ending.

The Los tallos amargos and The Beast Must Die DVDs can be pre-ordered from the Film Noir Foundation, and they will ship beginning November 2, 2021.

coming up on TV – THE BITTER STEMS, a lost masterpiece, rediscovered

July 16, 2021July 14, 2021 by movie gourmet

Photo caption: Vassili Lambrinos and Carlos Cores in BITTER STEMS

Turner Classic Movies brings us a rare treat this Saturday and Sunday, July 17-18, the recently recovered Argentine masterpiece of film noir – The Bitter Stems (Los tallos amargos). TCM will air it on Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley.

The Bitter Stems was listed as one of the “50 Best Photographed Films of All-Time” by American Cinematographer. It won the Silver Condor (the Argentine Oscar) for both Best Picture and Best Director (Fernando Ayala).

The Bitter Stems was thought to be lost until a print was discovered in a private collection in 2014 and restored with the support of Muller’s Film Noir Foundation. I saw it – and was enthralled – at the 2016 Noir City film festival in San Francisco. That was probably The Bitter Stem’s US premiere and probably the first time that it was projected for any theater audience in over fifty years.

There is often an Icarus theme in film noir, with protagonists who over-reach and risk a lethal fall. Here, Gaspar (Carlos Cores), a grasping Argentine journalist, conspires with Hungarian immigrant Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos) to concoct a fraud that will make them a quick and easy fortune. Unfortunately, the scheme requires a hamster-in-the-wheel effort to stay ahead of collapse – and everything must go just right…

Lambrinos’ performance is particularly sui generis.

This was a very early film for director Fernando Ayala, who went on to establish himself as one of Argentina’s major directors. Cinematographer Ricardo Younis had studied under Greg Toland, who originated the groundbreaking techniques in Citizen Kane. Ayala and Younis combined to create the film’s storied dream sequence – one of the most surreal in cinema (see images below).

The Bitter Stems (Los tallos amargos) is a masterpiece, but almost nobody has seen it in over fifty years. Don’t miss it this time – set your DVR.

coming on TV: WITNESS TO MURDER

January 14, 2021 by movie gourmet

On January 16 and 17, Turner Classic Movies is airing the gripping and hard-to-find Witness to Murder. Richter (George Sanders) and Cheryl (Barbara Stanwyck) live in neighboring apartments. Cheryl believes she has seen Richter murder someone, but Richter’s clever and ruthless duplicity makes it appear that Cheryl is just crazy. Will Police Lt. Larry Mathews (Gary Merrill) believe her before Richter can make Cheryl his second victim?

What a wowzer first scene! Witness to Murder opens with a gripping scene that economically sets up the plot. “Operator, get me the police! Hurry!” We know immediately and certainly that Richter really committed the murder and that Cheryl really saw it. Throughout the movie, the audience knows this and Richter knows this, but no one else does, and neither does Cheryl herself during segments of the story.

Cheryl reports the murder and the police (Larry Mathews and sidekick) respond. However, Richter has concealed the crime so well that cops can’t find any evidence that a crime occurred. Could Cheryl have been mistaken? Or dreamed it? or made it up? or hallucinated? Is she neurotic and mildly hysteric or is she psychotic and delusional?

Larry develops an immediate attraction to Cheryl, and, despite her apparent emotional instability, begins a courtship.

Richter (malevolently) and Larry (paternalistically) begin gaslighting Cheryl, trying to convince her that she really only imagined what she saw – trying to convince her that what seemed so real, was not. Cheryl starts doubting herself.

Of course, Richter knows that he committed the murder, and he knows that Cheryl knows. To get her out of the way, he schemes to have her seen as crazed stalker. His scheme drives her to an outburst that serves as a pretext for locking her up in a psychiatric facility (with an interview by an oddly brusque shrink). Richter’s attempts to murder Cheryl continue right into Witness to Murder’s Perils-of-Pauline ending.

See my complete post on Witness to Murder, for more on the filmmakers and supporting cast. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

On this weekend’s TCM broadcast of Witness to Murder, film historian Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir – will provide his always insightful intro and outro. Witness to Murder is not available to stream; I own the DVD. Be sure to DVR it when it airs on Turner Classic Movies.

coming up on TV: THE BURGLAR – loyalty among

December 10, 2020 by movie gourmet

Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea in THE BURGLAR

Turner Classic Movies is presenting one of my Overlooked Noir on December 12, and you shouldn’t miss it. The Burglar (1957) is known popularly as the movie debut of Jayne Mansfield, but it’s a fine film noir. It starts out with a tense burglary, but once the necklace is successfully burgled, the story focuses on the heist team going stir crazy as they wait for the environment to cool down so they can safely fence the booty. They are strung so tight that even the whistle of a tea kettle is enough to startle the gang. While dodging the cops, they find that they are also being hunted by a corrupt rogue cop and his partner.

The core of The Burglar is the stellar lead performance of Dan Duryea as the chief burglar. He’s a tortured and worn-out guy – with one deep loyalty.

There are plenty of noir moments – lots of shadows, uplit faces in the darkness and amoral, grasping characters. We have not one, but two noir vixens – Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers. Asked at a bar by Duryea what she wants, Vickers answers “Basically, I’m out to find myself a man.” The characters in this fine film noir find themselves in Atlantic City, where the bad cop chases the protagonists through the House of Horrors and the Steel Pier, culminating in a final confrontation under the boardwalk.

The acting is excellent, other than Peter Capell, who gives over-acting a bad name while playing the most nerve-wracked member of the gang. Even Mansfield is good; (The Burglar was held in the can for two years and then released when Mansfield became a sensation with The Girl Can’t Help It).

The movie was shot on location in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. We see Independence Hall, and it’s hard not to think of Rocky when Duryea climbs the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Burglar plays from time to time on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, and other platforms.

[Note: The Burglar features John Facenda as his real-life role as a Philadelphia newscaster (when local TV stations aired 15-minute newscasts). Facenda later found much broader fame as “The Voice of God” for his narration for NFL Films football documentaries.]

NOIR CITY comes to your home

November 24, 2020November 16, 2020 by movie gourmet

Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

Here’s a once-in-a-pandemic film noir experience, the opportunity to see classic film noir that you can’t see anywhere else. The Noir City International at the AFI Silver is available to stream through November 29.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming.

This January, as usual, I attended this year’s festival, sharing the program with a thousand other film fans in a vintage movie palace, San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. In normal years, Eddie Muller then takes the program on the road, but the pandemic eliminated the satellite Noir City mini-fests in other cities. Good news – this year’s festival program is streaming through the AFI Silver so everyone can watch it at home.

This year’s program is Noir City International 2 – l focusing on international film noir, as it did so successfully six years ago. Then I was enthralled by the Argentine Bitter Stems and the Swedish Girl with Hyacinths, and must admit that I had never even imagined that vintage film noir from those nations existed. This year’s fest brings us titles from Argentina, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Poland.

One of best things about Noir City is the opportunity to see films that are not available to stream. This year Noir CIty is outdoing itself by presenting SIX films that can’t found on a streaming platform, most of them impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format.

Black Gravel (West Germany 1961)
The Black Vampire (Argentina 1953)
…And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Czechoslovakia 1965)
The Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany 1957)
Panique (France 1947)
Razzia (France 1955)

Pale Flower, Ashes and Diamonds and Any Number Can Win are only available to stream periodically on the Criterion Channel.

“Difficult to find” doesn’t mean “obscure”. The program includes films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Pierre Melville and Roebert Siodmak and starring Ingrid Bergman, Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

My personal favorites on the program:

Pale Flower: Writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece is a slow burn that erupts into breathtaking set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.
Black Gravel: This tragic romance is set in post-war Germany, a Petri dish for hustlers. Rarely has a movie plot swung as rapidly between They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught.
Ashes and Diamonds: Auteur Andrzej Wajda‘s filmmaking gifts are on display in this Hit Man Finds Love tale, set as the Polish Resistance battles for a place in post-war Poland. As kinetic and unpredictable as James Dean, Zbigniew Cybulski makes for an irresistibly charismatic leading man.
The Black Vampire: In this often trippy 1953 remake of Fritz Lang’s M, Nathán Pinzón is AT LEAST AS GOOD as was Peter Lorre in the original.

The offerings also include Leave Her to Heaven with Gene Tierney as the most disturbing female villain in film noir and Detour with Ann Savage as the grungiest and most predatory. The Korean The Housemaid is so bizarre as to defy description. And the coolest middle-aged guy in cinema, Jean Gabin, stars in Razzia and Any Number Can Win.

DO NOT MISS this rare opportunity. Individual screenings are $12 and the Festival Pass is $125. Explore the program and get your pass or tickets.

coming on TV: NIGHTFALL

November 5, 2020 by movie gourmet

Here’s a rare chance to watch a highly recommended film on my list of Overlooked Noir. Nightfall (1957) is not available to stream, but it plays Saturday and Sunday on Turner Classic Movies.

The set-upl: How’s this for a hard luck guy? Aldo Ray is camping in the Tetons with a buddy, when two bank robbers careen into a car accident, kill his buddy and frame poor Aldo. Aldo manages to escape, and, in the chaos, the crooks misplace their bag of loot, which is soon obscured by an early Wyoming snowfall. Now both Aldo and the robbers have to wait for the spring thaw to recover the treasure. In the mean time, Aldo – now in hiding from both the police and the outlaws – skips from town to town.

As the movie opens, we’re in a neon-lit LA night. Just as Ray meets a beautiful but broke model (Anne Bancroft), the bad guys appear with lethal intent. Brian Keith made for one coldblooded bank robber, and his partner (Rudy Bond with a machine gun laugh) is psychotically blood thirsty. Ray and Bancroft go on the run through LA, and then head for Wyoming to locate the money. Unknown to both the good guys and the bad guys, James Gregory (most well-remembered as Inspector Fran Kruger in TV’s Barney Miller) is also closing in on the loot on behalf of the bank’s insurer. It’s a crackerjack plot, adapted from a novel by David Goodis (Dark Passage, The Burglar). The final confrontation involves a death by snow plow.

The LA scenes are dark and shadowy, no surprise since Nightfall was directed by noir master Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past). Tourneur evokes Hitchcock with a set piece when the killers hunt Ray and Bancroft at a poolside fashion show where Bancroft is on the runway. Bancroft bolts, and Ray has to pick her up because she can’t run in her long, clingy gown.

An important part of the appeal of Nightfall is the chemistry between Ray and Bancroft. Ray is a sympathetic Everyman, trying to make the best out of a hopeless circumstance. Bancroft was 31, ten years before her Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, and very believable as a stunning model down on her luck. Because of the Production Code of the time, these two spend a lot of time NOT having sex when it’s clear that they SHOULD BE having sex. Bancroft purrs to Ray, “You’re the most wanted man I know”.

ASHES AND DIAMONDS: a killer wants to stop

May 14, 2020May 9, 2020 by movie gourmet

Maciek is very good at targeted killing, but he’s weary of it. As he wants out, he finds love. But his commander is insisting on this one last hit.

Wajda adapted a famous 1948 Polish novel into this 1958 movie. In the adaptation, the filmmaker changed the emphasis from one character to another.

TCM will be preceding Ashes and Diamonds with the documentary Wadja by Wadja, which I haven’t seen, but I will be recording. Ashes and Diamonds can be streamed from Amazon and iTunes. It was featured at the 2020 Noir City film festival.