Photo caption: Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS
Coming up November 15 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,
Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS
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.
Ewa Krzyzewska in ASHES AND DIAMONDS
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.
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:
I particularly recommend the unfortunately prescient The Sniper, which presages the Texas Tower shooting, the Zodiac Killer and all manner of overtly misogynistic violence. Journeyman television actor Arthur Franz comes through in a career-topping performance as a woman-hater who can’t control his compulsions. Director Edward Dmytryk enhances the drama, Marie Windsor unleashes dazzling charm and the San Francisco locations are vivid. This is your best chance to see the rarely-seen The Sniper; (I have the French DVD).
The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The 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.
Photo caption: Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s absorbing remake of the 1947 film noir classic, a cautionary fable of overreaching. Del Toro has deepened the minor characters, creating a showcase for many of our finest film actors.
It’s just before WW II and a drifter named Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is desperate enough to take a menial job in a transient carnival. In the first scene, we learn that Stan is lethally dangerous; he also has movie star good looks, a gift of charm and enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies.
Stan befriends (and beds) the world-weary Zeena (Toni Collette), who stars in a mind-reading act. Zeena is married to Pete (David Straithairn), a master of clairvoyance acts, whose alcoholism has dropped him from vaudeville stardom to this gutter-level carnival. Stan ingratiates himself with Pete and steals Pete’s notebook of secret codes. Armed with Pete’s secret system, Stan seduces the good-hearted and pretty, young Molly (Rooney Mara), and the two head off to launch a new nightclub act in the Big Time.
Stan and Molly achieve great success and encounter Lilith, who has her own phony psychologist racket. Stan sees an opportunity for even greater riches by fleecing the rich – pretending to communicate with their dead loved ones. Pete had warned Stan against “the spook business”, and Molly has moral objections. But Stan sees Lilith as an equally ruthless and amoral partner, and he proceeds with his scheme. Will he succeed? (Hint – this is a film noir.)
Bradley is very good as Stan, a guy who will do anything to win, and who is intolerable when he gets to the top. Blanchett is superb as the sleek and cynical Lilith. Willem Dafoe is perfect as Clem, the carnival boss; Clem’s pay-by-play description of geek recruitment is one of the best scenes this year.
Del Toro wrote the screenplay with his wife Kim Morgan who is also (YAY!) a longstanding movie blogger (Sunset Gun). The source material for both movies was the William Lindsay Gresham novel. Gresham had a buddy in the – Spanish Civil War who was a carnie abd fascinated Gresham with his tales of the carnie life.
The 1947 original runs one hour and fifty minutes. With my strong bias against overlong films, I was initially skeptical of the 2021 version’s two hours, thirty minutes running time. But del Toro and Morgan invest the extra forty minutes into enriching the minor roles played by Straithairn and Dafoe, and other fine character actors: Ron Perlman, Mary Steenbergen, Richard Jenkins, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver and Holt McCallany (Mindhunters).
Willem Dafoe in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
I recently rewatched the original 1947 Nightmare Alley, and it still stands up. I’m not usually a fan of Tyrone Power, but I’ll admit that he’s perfect as Stan, and his work at the end, when Stan is on the skids, is heartbreaking. Joan Blondell is excellent as Zeena, and Colleen Gray is compellingly adorable as Molly. Helen Walker’s turn as Lilith is brilliant, and it’s a shame that an auto accident scandal derailed her career. Ian Keith, a stage actor with very few memorable screen appearances, delivered a touching performance as Pete (in far less screen time than Straithairn gets).
Tamara Deverell should win the 2022 Academy Award for production design; she deserves it for Lilith’s art deco office suite alone, never mind for creating the extraordinary world of the carnivals.
Nightmare Alley is the first film i”ve seen with geek credits: Paul Anderson as Geek #1 and Jesse Buck as Geek #2. I also stayed to the end to see no animals were harmed – bad things happen to chickens, so the CGI effects in Nightmare Alley are pretty cluckin’ effective.
The final line is one of the all-time best. Nightmare Alley is one of the Best Movies of 2021, and is currently in theaters.
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, The 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.
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,
Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS
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.
Ewa Krzyzewska in ASHES AND DIAMONDS
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.
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 isLos 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Burglarplays 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.]
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.
PALE FLOWER
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.
