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Curtis Bernhardt

Climbing the Noir Walls

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“Murder! Infidelity! Brain damage!”

That could’ve been the tagline for the MGM (yes, they made dark stuff too, not just glossy musicals) noir High Wall (1947).

Y’see, High Wall is a terrific example one of a fascinating film subgenre … the damaged vet/re-establish life and family noir, sometimes with amnesia thrown in as a sideline (others include The Crooked Way (1949), The Blue Dahlia (1946), Somewhere in the Night (1946), and last week’s Cornered (1945)).

Amnesia was a staple of films, particularly with war veteran heroes — check out Random Harvest (1942) for a quintessential example–but in the hands of the noir masters, these films weren’t about amnesia as much as they were about wiping the slate clean.

Think about it: after the cataclysm and upheaval of the world’s biggest and bloodiest conflict–one that forever reshaped this country, overthrew Empires and remade the Superpowers–redefining one’s place in the New World Order was imperative … and frightening. Dramas like William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)–which certainly possessed a few noirish touches–helped reestablish normalcy in a forever changed and abnormal world. But noir … well, it tackled the anxiety head on.

Wartime marriage? Afraid you married a slut? Get in line, bub. Having trouble sleeping? Nightmares? Head injury? We know just how you feel. And thanks to the era’s fascination with and confidence in psychiatry, we’ve got a cure, too, and she sometimes looks like Ingrid Bergman (Spellbound, 1945) or Audrey Totter (High Wall).

These films said it was OK if you got hurt and you can’t remember and nothing is what it seemed like in 1942. They said it was OK if you married in haste and she’s been cheating on you with a black market 4-F. Don’t murder the bimbo–just divorce her and move on to Veronica Lake. The films typically offered cures, either through therapy or a dame or both, and ended with the vet establishing a new family, location in a dislocated environment.

And that brings us to High Wall. Directed by the under-appreciated Curtis Bernhardt (Conflict (1945) Juke Girl (1942) and Possessed (1947)), it stars Robert Taylor as a brain damaged flier who suffers black-outs … and who has apparently strangled his greedy, adulterous wife (Dorothy Patrick). Enter Audrey Totter, in a rare non-femme fatale role, as devoted and caring psychiatrist Dr. Ann Lorrison, who treats Taylor while he’s locked up in the looney bin. The once sleek and sophisticated Herbert Marshall plays the bimbo’s boss (he’s a publisher of a religious books) with a certain degree of both debauchery and pathos, and even H.B. Warner (It’s A Wonderful Life, 1946) shows up in a small role.

Taylor turns in an able performance, proving he was more than just a pretty face. Like John Payne and Dick Powell, who made successful second careers playing tough guys in noirs, his film roles had been light comedies or romantic melodramas like Camille (1937), and High Wall gives him something sturdier.

Totter, however, steals the show–as she usually did. And this time without being the bad girl! Paul Vogel’s stunning cinematography (he filmed the Chandler adaptation Lady in the Lake (1947), also with Totter, and a little gem with Marsha Hunt and Van Heflin called Kid Glove Killer, 1942) makes me wish he shot more noir and less films like Jupiter’s Darling (1955).

Sydney Boehm worked on the script, which is crisp and fast-paced, if not at the deliriously baroque levels of his masterpiece, The Big Heat (1953). He later wrote Rogue Cop (1954), another noir vehicle for Taylor.

All in all, High Wall is a terrific film, and a magnifying glass on the very real anxieties and social issues of the immediate post-war era. Unfortunately, you can’t find it on DVD, but watch for it on TCM or try The Danger and Despair Knitting Circle, the best source for noir on the planet. So … what have you been watching lately? 😉

Marriage-Counseling, Noir City Style

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Bogie was a great actor. Sure, he had a distinct presence, a remarkable voice, and nobody could mistake him for Ronald Colman. But given those idiosyncratic and unique characteristics, he could go from Rick Blaine to an egotistical wife-killer with one twitch of the eye.

Noir City on Friday, February 1st, showcased Bogie in one of his rarest films … Conflict. Paired with a young Alexis Smith and squared against a psychiatrist in the rotund and lovable form of Sidney Greenstreet, Humphrey plots and plans to dispose of shrewish wife (and why, I ask, don’t these women ever agree to a divorce?) Rose Hobart, and succeeds … or does he?

The story was based on a story by Robert Siodmak (the personal favorite of Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir — gentleman and noirmaster extraordinare), though Siodmak never got to direct it himself. Instead, the under-appreciated Curtis Bernhardt, Siodmak’s mentor, creates a suspenseful noir of psychology and murder, obsession and desperation … all the stuff we crave. 😉 This baby’s not on DVD, but if you can catch it on TCM, don’t miss it.

The second “wife-killing” feature was actually one of my favorites of the festival … and not just because Noir City 6 is about stretching the boundaries of noir past the middle of the twentieth century. Obviously, that’s a cause I’m proud to call my own, since I’m pushing it back to the first century A.D. The Suspect is one of a few “period” films screened at the Castro this year, and it is one of the best.

Though the source material — the novel This Way Out by James Ronald — was not set in Edwardian England, the film is. Eddie revealed in his pre-show talk that it was really a film about Dr. Crippen — the story that Hitchcock always wanted to film.

The movie was directed by Siodmak, and is a knuckle-biter, proving once again what an incomparable actor Laughton was. His wife is an absolute harpy, a truly evil bitch of a woman, pure malice. The audience clapped when he finally got her.

The innocent girl he falls in love with is Ella Raines — she of the startlingly blue eyes, even in luscious black and white. Ella projected more vulnerability than Bacall, that other famous Howard Hawks discovery, and it’s in full force here.

I found that changing the film’s setting enhanced the plotline and made it much more believable. Young women had fewer options in 1902, and divorce was scandalous, a sin, especially for a petit bourgeois business man like Laughton’s character. And the time and place made it much more plausible that Ella might hook up with Laughton … it also added to the sense of suffocation that hangs over the movie like Burt Lancaster with a pillow (OK, if you don’t get that reference, email me). Henry Daniell (the star of many a horror film) plays a satisfyingly despicable fellow, and Rosalind Ivan channels one nasty harpy (look for her in Scarlet Street). Make no mistake — The Suspect was as black as all night diner coffee.

So it’s historical. And it’s noir. It’s also not on DVD, but hey–search for it. One terrific film, by Eddie’s favorite director.

Later: Saturday at Noir City 6, and a Peter Lorre/Edmond O’Brien double feature of trick voices and face masks!