Film Noir Foundation

NOIR CITY returns, bringing darkness from abroad

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Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
Photo caption: Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 19-28 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The program for each night (or matinee) will present a double bill – one classic film noir from the US or UK, matched with one from Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan or South Korea. This year’s tagline is Darkness Has No Borders.

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.

One of Noir City’s greatest gifts to noiristas, and to cinephiles in general, has been introducing us to previously unfamiliar foreign noir classics. It is ONLY because of Noir City that I’ve seen some of my favorite movies: Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems), Black Gravel, El vampiro negro (The Black Vampire), Ashes and Diamonds, La noche avanza (Night Falls), …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear and Girl with Hyacinths.

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Street of Chance (US)
  • Cairo Station (Egypt)
  • Victims of Sin (Victimas del pecado) (Mexico)
  • Black Tuesday (US)
  • Aimless Bullet (South Korea)
  • Plunder Road (US)
  • Without Pity (Italy)
  • Four Against the World (Mexico)
  • Across the Bridge (UK)
  • Strongroom (UK)
  • Murder by Contract (US)
  • Smog (Italy)

Not all the program is obscure. Here are three Must See classics:

  • Elevator to the Gallows: This is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first neo-noir.  It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old.  In 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. Totally original.
  • La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) and Human Desire: In this Murder-The-Jealous-Husband double bill, Jean Renoir’s classic La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) with the charismatic Jean Gabin and Simone Simon is paired with Fritz Lang’s remake, starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. Grahame projected an uncanny mixture of sexiness, vulnerability and unpredictability, perfect for this hard luck femme fatale; (the fact that Gloria was a Bad Girl in real life doesn’t hurt.) I have the Australian version of the Human Desire poster in my living room; the tag line is “She was born to be bad…to be kissed..to make trouble“, and the Aussie authorities have labeled it “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN“.
  • Le trou: This is the all-time best prison break movie, combining a riveting real-time escape procedural with a fear of betrayal that crescendos. Le trou is a true crime story, with three of actual participants consulting on the film and one of them playing the mastermind. It was the last film by Jacques Becker, who had directed Casque d’Or and one of the very best film noirs in any language, Touchez pas au grisbi.

Elevator to the Gallows and Human Desire are on my list of Overlooked Noir; check it out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in HUMAN DESIRE.

NOIR CITY returns – and returns us to 1948

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Claire Trevor in RAW DEAL
Claire Trevor in RAW DEAL

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-29, 2023 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland – and for the first time since the 2020 pandemic – for its traditional full ten days.

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.

Past Noir City fests have been built around themes, like international noir and heist cinema. In this year’s fest, all of the films were released in 1948. As an audience, we get to sample films from peak year in the Noir Era and appreciate film noir as a distinct movement within American filmmaking.

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Larceny,
  • The Spiritualist,
  • Road House, 
  • So Evil My Love,
  • Sleep, My Love,
  • The Hunted,
  • I Love Trouble,
  • Night Has a Thousand Eyes,
  • All My Sons,
  • The Velvet Touch,
  • Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, (my favorite title this year).
Richard Basehart in HE WALKED BY NIGHT

If you can make it for just one night, I’d recommend one of these four:

  • Friday, January 20 (Opening Night): Two classics that are famous for a reason – Key Largo (Bogart and Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor’s heartbreaking performance as a gangster’s moll aging out of her looks and an underappreciated supporting turn by Thomas Gomez) and The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles’ noir adventure with his glamorous ex, Rita Hayworth, and the stunning hall-of-mirrors climax). You’ve almost certainly seen both of these, but probably not in a vintage movie palace with hundreds of other noiristas.
  • Saturday, January 21: Three movies that I have not yet seen and are not streamable – Larceny (John Payne, Dan Duryea), The Spiritualist and Road House (Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, Cornell Wilde) – are sandwiching a more well-known film, The Big Clock, with Ray Milland being hunted down by the minions of the nefarious Charles Laughton.
  • Monday, January 23: Two more non-streamable films which I haven’t seen: So Evil My Love (Ray Milland) and Sleep, My Love (Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche in a noir?).
  • Saturday, January 27: Two of my favorite Overlooked Noir: Raw Deal (some of the best dialogue in all of film noir, a love triangle and the superb cinematography of John Alton) and He Walked By Night (more John Alton, with the LAPD hunting down a nerdy wacko).

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

Claire Trevor in KEY LARGO

Previewing this weekend’s Noir City

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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)
  • Force of Evil (1948).

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.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

THE SNIPER: lethal mommy issues

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Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper is an unfortunately prescient film noir that tracks the loner Edward Miller (Arthur Franz), whose misogyny drives him to murder a series of San Francisco women in what seem like random shootings.

From the beginning, it’s very clear that 1) every encounter with a woman pushes Miller’s buttons, and 2) he is trying to control a compulsion to shoot them.

When ER doctor treating him for a burn asks, “Can I ask you a question? Were you ever in a mental institution?”, Miller replies, “Only when I was in prison – in the psycho ward.” Uh oh.

Understandable public hysteria triggers a manhunt, led by a seasoned detective lieutenant (Adolphe Menjou) and his snarky assistant (Gerald Mohr), a guy who is never witty but thinks he is. The embattled police chief is played by Frank Faylen (cabbie Ernie in It’s a Wonderful Life). The cops don’t understand who they are looking for or how to track him down.

If The Sniper is any indication, the SFPD’s police methods of communications, investigation and crowd control  were very primitive in 1952.

A police psychologist (Richard Kiley) educates the cops about the killer’s profile, and they finally close in. The weakest part of The Sniper is a talky “message picture” segment where the psychologist tries to convince some civic dinosaurs that the mentally ill need treatment to keep them from killing the rest of us. It’s as lame as the Simon Oakland epilogue lecture in Psycho. 

It’s notable that The Sniper was released in 1952, before “active shooter” was a thing. This was 14 years before the Texas Tower shootings and 16 years before Peter Bogdanovich’s similarly-themed fictional narrative Targets. The Zodiac Killer, a real life anonymous serial killer who communicated directly with the police, first struck 16 years after The Sniper (and also terrorized the Bay Area).

The Sniper is also an early exploration of misogynistic attitudes and violence. Even the casual remarks from the folks on the street illustrate unconsciously sexist attitudes on gender.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper depends on the performance by Arthur Franz, and he is excellent. Of course, he gets to play full psycho, but he is best when he is observing women and silently registering disgust and repulsion. With his countenance otherwise placid, the look in Franz’s eyes changes at the instant that he is triggered into antipathy; you can see him thinking Bitch! Slut! This performance is Franz’s career topper.

I had a vague recollection of Franz, but couldn’t place his other screen work, which was primarily in amiable supporting roles. Franz was the young corporal who narrates The Sands of Iwo Jima, a young ship’s officer in The Caine Mutiny and had a supporting turn in the fine Fritz Lang/Dana Andrews noir Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. But most of his 152 screen credits came in 1950s and 1960s television, including five guest appearances in Perry Mason.

Marie Windsor and Arthur Franz n THE SNIPER

The most dazzling performance in The Sniper is Marie Windsor’s as one of Miller’s laundry delivery customers, the singer in a bar. Windsor is at her most charismatic; her sexy charm, however, is exactly what rubs Miller the wrong way.

Menjou is solid, but these are not Mohr’s or Faylen’s best performances. Jay Novello sparkles in a very small role as the tavern owner who employs Marie Windsor’s songstress.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper is directed by the accomplished Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Crossfire, The Hidden Room, The Caine Mutiny). Dmytryk elevates the tension with dramatic shots from the sniper’s and victim’s points of view. Dmytryk even gets a lttle showy when Miller shoots someone and the fatal bullet breaks the glass on her publicity poster.

The San Francisco locations are superbly detailed in the blog ReelSF, an essential for Bay Area cinephiles. (However, the boardwalk carnival was shot in Southern California, not at San Francisco’s Playland-at-the-Beach.)

The Sniper is very hard to find. It is not available to stream, and I needed to buy the French DVD. The Sniper is scheduled to screen at the 2022 Noir City film festival.

Adolphe Menjou and Gerald Mohr in THE SNIPER

THE ARGYLE SECRETS: racing for a politically explosive Macguffin

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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 in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

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 in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

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.

Marjorie Lord and William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

NOIR CITY returns in-person in January

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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.

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

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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.

NOIR CITY comes to your home

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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.

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.

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.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

GASLIGHT, GASLIGHT and gaslighting in domestic violence

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Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in GASLIGHT

On September 10, Turner Classic Movies will air Gaslight (1944), a classic suspense thriller that still has a lot to say about domestic violence and abusive power in relationships.

In Gaslight, an evil husband (Charles Boyer) isolates his wife (Ingrid Bergman) and uses manipulation to convince her that she’s going crazy. He’s seeking to conceal his crimes and gain unfettered control of her house and fortune. He’s also dallying with the maid (a nubile 18-year-old Angela Lansbury). Fortunately, the wife’s longtime admirer (Joseph Cotton) works for Scotland Yard and starts to investigate…

Domestic Violence is abuse of a partner, generally characterized by asserting power and control over the partner. Not all domestic violence is physical, and this phenomenon of abuse by manipulation takes it name – gaslighting – from this movie.

The Film Noir Foundation recently screened Gaslight to an audience of domestic violence survivors and support professionals. I recommend Noir Talk, the Film Noir Foundation’s excellent podcast on iTunes. Search for Gaslight and domestic violence in Episode 10. Here’s one of the tidbits from the podcast: Ingrid Bergman thought she was too vibrant and healthy-looking for the part; but that works to show how the manipulation can work on a woman who doesn’t look like a victim.

This famous Gaslight is actually a remake of the original 1940 version, which is also especially well-acted. Anton Walbrook is suave and evil as the hubbie and Dyana Wyngard is unforgettably haunting as the wife. Only 19 minutes in, we see his duplicity, manipulation and control. Frank Pettingell is very good as the detective, and the cast includes Robert Newton (Long John Silver in the 1950 Treasure Island). Cathleen Cordell plays the oversexed maid Nancy in a less nuanced performance than Angela Lansbury’s. This film version is reportedly the most faithful to the stage play source material. (Oddly, there’s a very good can-can dance in this 1940 movie, too.)

THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF: that woman is trouble

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Jane Wyatt amd Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF

In The Man Who Cheated Himself, which I saw at the Noir City festival earlier this year, a cop falls for a dame who makes him go bad. But it’s not just any cop and not just any dame.

The cop is Ed, a seasoned and cynical pro who knows better.  He is played by Lee J. Cobb, whom Czar of Noir Eddie Muller called “the most blustery actor this side of Rod Steiger”.  Cobb is known for playing Juror 3, the primary antagonist to Henry Fonda, in 12 Angry Men and the ruthless mob boss Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront.  Ed seems impervious to human emotion and says things like, “You’re a big girl.  Cut the tantrums”.

The dame is the much wealthier – and married – socialite Lois (Jane Wyatt).  Lois is a puddle of capriciousness and carnality.  She has the same fluttery appeal as Mary Astor’s Brigid O’ Shaunessy in The Maltese Falcon. 

Wyatt rarely got a chance to play as mercurial a character as Lois.  Of course, she’s best known as the mid-century suburban mom/wife in Father Knows Best, rock steady and super square.  Before that Wyatt worked in film noir, but not as the femme fatale.   She was in Pitfall as the good wife that Dick Powell gets bored with when Lizabeth Scott comes along.  In Boomerang! she was the heroic DA’s wife.  She played the wife of a murderer who falls for her brother-in-law in House by the River and the sister in a message picture, Gentleman’s Agreement.

But in The Man Who Cheated Himself, Wyatt got to uncork more hysterical unreliability, sexual predation and neediness than in all of her other roles combined.  You know when you see a woman and think, She’s trouble?  Well, Lois is trouble.

For all of his world-weariness, Ed is really enjoying his affair with Lois.  Despite knowing better, he is in deep.  As he says, “She’s good for me.  She’s no good, but that’s the way it is.”

Lois impulsively shoots her husband, and, in the moment, Ed makes the fateful decision to cover it up.

To complicate matters, Ed’s younger brother Andy (John Dall) has followed his brother on to the police force and just been promoted from walking a beat to detective.  This murder is his very first case and he’s really eager to show his big brother proud.  It turns out that Andy is smart and has the makings of a first class detective.

John Dall and Lee J. Cobb in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF

Writers Seton I. Miller and Philip MacDonald cleverly plotted The Man Who Cheated Himself so Ed and Lois get not one, but two, lucky breaks that make it look like they are getting away with it.   But then Andy’s young wife and a CHP officer help Andy link the pieces together.  Miller and MacDonald have embedded lots of humor in double entendres and absurdly close escapes.  One of the funniest bits is an eyewitness, the earnestly unhelpful Mr. Quimby   (Charles Arnt).

Are Ed and Lois going to get away with it?  Well, this is noir.  They find themselves cornered at Fort Point, the windiest spot on the west coast of North America,  The notorious wind (actually underplayed in the movie) helps build the suspense.

Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF

And what an ending!  In their final encounter, Lois is going one way – the way that those privileged by wealth and good looks always go.  Ed is going in the other direction – the way every noir protagonist goes when he falls for a bad dame.  He lights a cigarette and their eyes lock wordlessly; when she leaves, we see in his eyes whether it was all worth it.

The noir in The Man Who Cheated Himself comes from the falling-for-the-wrong-woman  theme and the snappy, sarcastic dialogue.  There’s no noir camerawork with looming shadows, venetian-blinds-across-the-face and cigarette smoke dancing to the ceiling here.

But there are plenty of glorious mid-century San Francisco locations – hills, mansions of the nobs, grittier streets and the waterfront (back when it was a sketchy working port).   It’s the San Francisco that I remember as a child in the 1950s, with women wearing gloves during the day and human-tended toll booths at the Golden Gate Bridge (when the toll was collected northbound, too!).

And, odd for a San Francisco-set noir, it is definitely not fog-shrouded.  The day I saw The Man Who Cheated Himself was one of those gorgeous sunny days that San Francisco gets in the winter – and that’s what the movie looks like.

The Man Who Cheated Himself’s director was the otherwise undistinguished journeyman Felix Feist.  Feist made a handful of other noirs, including The Threat with Charles McGraw as a vengeful hood, Tomorrow is Another Day with an irresistible Ruth Roman and The Devil Thumbs a Ride with Lawrence Tierney.  Then Feist left the movies to direct over seventy episodes of TV shows.

The raison d‘être of the Noir City film festivals is to raise money for the Film Noir Foundation’s restoration of  classic film noir.  The FNF just restored The Man Who Cheated Himself so it could be seen again in a theater for the first time in decades.  It’s not yet available to stream, but Turner Classic Movies will air it on Muller’s Noir Alley series on June 23 and 24.

Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF