Yet more classic Noir films, Part 2 - Raw Deal, Out of the Past, Night and the City, They Live By Night, and Vertigo

Raw Deal (1948) was directed by Anthony Mann, one of the truly great Hollywood directors (his five 1950s Jimmy Stewart westerns represent one of the most impressive bodies of work by any director). Dennis O'Keefe as a criminal who has escaped from prison is the only weakish link, while Clare Trevor (O'Keefe's moll), Marsha Hunt (his legal caseworker, whom O'Keefe kidnaps),  Raymond Burr (as the gang boss for whom he took the rap, and who owes him a share of the $50,000 take), and John Ireland (the sneering weasel who Burr tasks with killing O'Keefe) are all in superb form. Burr, in particular, is wonderful...

... as a sadistic, cowardly gangster man-mountain (seriously, they could have made a circus tent out of the material from just one of his suits), whose fiery demise is a particular pleasure. This is genuine, no-nonsense noir - tough as old boots and so visually shadowy, it's hard to believe that cinematographer John Alton (born Johann Altmann, in Hungary) would win an Oscar for his gleaming technicolour work on An American in Paris just three years later! WARNING: the following clip from Raw Deal features an act of violence which some readers might find upsetting - it predates a similarly shocking outrage committedd by Lee Marvin on Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat by five years:

I'll admit to having already seen Out of the Past (1947). My reason for watching it again was that I originally encountered it under its British title, Build My Gallows High - and, by the time I realised this was the same film, I was hooked. It was directed by Frenchman Jacques Tourneur, who had limbered up earlier in the '40s by helming three of producer Val Lewton's classic cheapie but ultra-stylish and creepily atmospheric series of RKO horror pictures: I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People and The Leopard Man (Tourneur would go on to direct one of my all time favourite British horror movies, Night of the Demon, 1957, based on the M.R. James story, "Casting the Runes").

Robert Mitchum is a former New York private eye who had made a new life for himself - complete with new name - contentedly running a petrol station in a small Californian town, where he is courting a sweet local girl.

Long story short: working for crooked businessman Kirk Douglas, Mitchum once tracked down Kirk's former girlfriend, Jane Greer, who - Douglas claimed - had stolen $40,000 from him. Jane turns out to be a classic noir femme fatale (noir women are generally very bad news). Greer ensnares Mitchum in her sticky, deceitful web (as in Angel Face, he's not exactly MENSA material), which is why he's now in hiding. But Kirk has tracked him down. It all ends as happily for Mitchum as it usually does in this sort of role. The film helped propel Douglas - basically unknown when he appeared in it - to stardom: he and Mitchum made a great team (without a hint of homo-eroticism). Absolutely classic noir, whatever title it goes by.

I'd half-seen Night and the City (1950), and I'm glad to have finally caught all of it. Directed by the blacklisted American Jules Dassin, it's basically a British film noir, set in London. It Richard Widmark as a pathetic hustler who gets in over his head by going into competition with top wrestling promoter Herbert Lom (it contains a brutal and very convincing wrestling sequence). The acting is all top-drawer - Widmark, in particular, impresses in a non-psychopathic role which requires far more than a sneer and a snigger, Frances L. Sullavan is as fat and fruity as ever as a Mr. Fixit night-club owner, the ever-dependable Googie Withers is effective as Sullavan's scheming estranged wife, and Herbert Lom is as great as ever playing a sadistic gangster being given a hard-time by his Greek ex-wrestler dad, who accuses him of turning an ancient, noble sport into cheap, phoney entertainment for ignorant suckers. I also enjoyed former wrestler, Mike Mazurki, as The Strangler, who eventually turns out to be Widmark's nemesis: I've always had a soft soft for Mazurki, who was so memorable in one of my favourite noirs, Farewell, My Lovely (aka Murder, My Sweet), as Moose Malloy, the endearingly dumb giant ex-con who hires Dick Powell's Phillip Marlowe to track down his lost love, Velma Valento.

If you have one hundred minutes to spare, you can watch the whole of Night and the City on YouTube. If not, here's a trailer to be getting on with (Goojy Withers, indeed!):

They Live by Night (1948) is apparently a celebrated noir, but I'd never heard of it. It stars liver-lipped pretty boy Farley Granger (the tennis pro husband in Hitchcock's  Strangers on a Train), and was the first feature film directed by Nicholas Ray. Granger plays a punk unfairly incarcerated for murder, who escapes from prison, goes on the lam with two fellow-escapees, and agrees to rob a bank with them (he needs the money to hire a lawyer to prove his innocence - doh!). Injured in a car accident, the young sap is nursed back to health by the daughter of a gas station owner, who then agrees to go into hiding with him. They marry and she has gets pregnant. Members of the gang - including Howard da Silva , a commie thug in real life, who's brilliant as a one-eyed alcoholic psychopath - catch up with him, and very bad things happen.

While the film demonstrates many of noir's strengths, it also displays some of its weakness - it's hard to empathise with stupid, self-pitying weaklings (Granger's perfect for the part, because there was always something weak and insecure about him, no matter what role he was playing), and, in this instance, while he may not have deserved to have been imprisoned for murder, he effectively compounds his problems by agreeing to take part in a bank robbery. Fool. Here's a taster:

Is Vertigo (1958) noir? Marginally, at best. I just mention it here because I've finally watched all of it - and my opinion hasn't changed: it's one of my least favourite Hitchcock films. It's not a patch on, for instance, Rear Window (1954), which also starred James Stewart, or North by North-West, made the following year - or any of a dozen other Hitchcock masterpieces and near-masterpieces. Jimmy Stewart does his best, but Kim Novak is as vacant and unengaging as always, and, while it contains many impressive set-pieces, the whole overwrought farrago of pseudo-Freudian tosh ends being irritating.

Hitchcock was at his best dealing with heroes who become embroiled in danger through no (or little) fault of their own. You could argue that this is sort of true of Stewart's former police detective - but you just want to tell him to stop being such an emotional cripple and just get on with his life. I suppose it might have worked better in black and white, but, really, the basic premise is so silly, the film was always doomed. How it has found itself at the top of so many critic's lists of Hitchcock's best films - in same cases, lists of great films by any director - is beyond me: and I'm a massive, lifelong Hitchcock fan. It was based on a French novel - nuff said!

That's enough noir for now - a change of genre next time: I might even do musicals, of which I've enjoyed a surprising number in recent months.