This year's annual Film Noir Festival at the Guild Cinema in July featured another powerhouse lineup (though we didn't catch the Japanese or French double bills). It included contributions from Stan Getz and Stanley Kubrick.
MICKEY ONE (1965) (B+) - Wow. In 1965, all you had to do was throw Warren Beatty in a movie with a couple of pretty gals, and you're halfway there. Toss in a bonkers script and a slither through the underbelly of Detroit and Chicago, and you've got quality entertainment.
Beatty teams up with director Arthur Penn -- just two years before they would make history with "Bonnie and Clyde" -- for this truly gritty tale of a club comedian on the run from the mob after he slept with the boss' girl. The verite technique by Penn -- featuring realistic side characters -- gives this a documentary feel and a "Naked City" gravitas.
Opening scenes suggest John Cassavettes making a black-and-white James Bond film. It bops along to a jazz soundtrack featuring improvisations from Stan Getz. Beatty is on top of his game as a desperate, but often flippant, man on the run. His scenes doing standup are genuinely funny and disturbing. This one comes out of left field and doesn't disappoint.
SPOTTED: Well, I blinked and I missed him, or I don't remember spotting him, but Chicago everyman Dennis Franz has a bit part as an unnamed guy in a dressing room. Franz, of course, would go on to star in "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue."
THE HARDER THEY FALL (1956) (A-minus) - Late-period Humphrey Bogart anchors this pulpy boxing film about a shady promoter milking a foreigner for big bucks by setting him up with a bunch of palookas willing to tank fights for $1,000 a pop. Rod Steiger also steps up with a meaty performance as the greedy promoter who won't let any thing stand in the way of making a mint.
A perfect mix of casting: Two heavyweights, Bogart and Steiger, slugging it out; a bounty of ace character actors, like Nehemiah Persoff, Harold J. Stone and Edward Andrews; and non-actors, like the boxing champs Jersey Joe Wolcott (as a trainer) and Max Baer (as the reigning champ). The sharp script by Philip Yordan is based on a novel by Budd Schulberg ("On the Waterfront").
Bogart is Eddie Willis, a veteran journalist out of a job who stoops to shilling as a PR man for Steiger's Nick Benko, whose syndicate has imported from Argentina a big lug with a glass chin, Toro Moreno (burly Mike Lane). Never mind that Moreno is a bust; there are plenty of tomato cans who will take a dive in the ring so that Moreno can climb the ladder toward the heavyweight title. As Moreno gains a wide following with every win, Eddie slips lower and lower into the slime, watching his reputation slide into the gutter. The guilt gradually eats away at him.
Along the way, one fighter dies in the ring, and Moreno is headed toward a massive reckoning once he faces off with the champ. The big guy's disappointment will be heart-breaking. Bogart, in his final film role, was born to bring this conflicted character to life. It's a gem from start to finish.
SPOTTED: Too many to count, a virtual who's who of bit players from '60s and '70s television. Stafford Repp (Chief O'Hara on TV's "Batman"); Nehemiah Persoff, the prolific character actor who died last year at age 102; Harold J. Stone ("Bridget Loves Bernie"); Edward Andrews, the grandfather on "Sixteen Candles" who is housing Dong, the foreign-exchange student; and hangdog Herbie Faye (Fender on Phil Silvers' "Sgt. Bilko")
NOTORIOUS (1946) (A-minus) - A year after World War Two ended, this must have seemed like some sort of marvel of artificial intelligence, a leap in filmmaking. Today it's merely a good old movie from long ago and far away, Alfred Hitchcock shepherding two charismatic leads - Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant -- through a devilish thriller with a killer ending.
This is another heavyweight match that withstands the test of time. Grant's G-man T.R. Devlin recruits Bergman's Alicia Huberman -- the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy -- to help the U.S. infiltrate a den of Nazis in Brazil. Devlin and Alicia immediately start to fall for each other, but Devlin overdoes playing it cool, and he begins to hang her out to dry in a dangerous situation. Alicia goes so far as to marry one of the ringleaders (a perfectly smarmy Claude Rains) -- to Devlin's frigid disregard -- only to put her life in danger.
Hitchcock comes into his own with his patented camera tricks -- for example, distorting the focus and angle when a character is woozy from poisoning -- and crisp pacing. He could have snipped at least10 minutes off of the 101-minute run-time, but he's never really in danger of losing the thread or jeopardizing the suspense. Once you appreciate the ending, you'll forget how long it took to get there.
SPOTTED: Two future "Beverly Hillbillies" alums have tiny roles -- Bea Benaderet (Pearl Bodine) as a file clerk, and Frank Wilcox (Mr. Brewster) as an FBI agent.
KILLER'S KISS (1955) (B) - From Stanley Kubrick comes this glorified TV police procedural, lasting barely more than an hour. We get another boxer, and this time the setting is on the grimy streets of New York City.
A washed-up fighter, Davey (Jamie Smith), falls for a neighbor across the way, sad dancer Gloria (a striking Irene Kane, "Naked City"), who lives under the iron fist of gangster Rapallo (snarling character actor Frank Silvera). Davey hopes to make one last score in the ring and run off with Gloria, if he can rescue her from the evil gangster.
Kubrick takes his camera on location to the likes of Times Square, Penn Station and the Brooklyn waterfront. He ratchets up the tension, building the suspense to a showdown between Davey and Rapallo in, of all places, an abandoned loft full of unclothed mannequins, the two men doing battle with axes. Will the lovers meet up at Penn Station and escape to Seattle? Tune in and find out.
SPOTTED: We saw nobody who looked familiar. There is a dancer played by Ruth Sobotka, who was Kubrick's wife at the time.
DEMENTIA (1955) (C) - At less than an hour, this mind-freakout -- devoid of dialogue -- is self-described thusly: "A young woman wanders the streets in a nightmare through a landscape of mutilations, patricide, and paranoia, waking in her apartment amidst clues that suggest it wasn’t a dream." Variety called it "the strangest film ever offered for release."
Let's just say that it's an acquired taste. Where there would be dialogue is a constant stream of jangly music, typical jazzy noir fare mixed with spooky space-age bachelor-pad woo-woos. It's a needless gimmick.
A woman, identified in the credits only as the Gamin (Adrienne Barrett), awakes from a nap and then interacts with a series of creeps along urban streetscapes, the kind who leer, grab women at will and even slap them around a bit if the guys are in the mood. She hangs out for a while with a vulgar fat-cat (Bruno VeSota), who ends up stabbed and defenestrated.
SPOTTED: Barrett would resurface in two obscure films in the '80s, and tubby VeSota was a regular on "Bonanza" in the '60s playing various characters. Apparently Shelley Berman and Aaron Spelling make uncredited appearances.
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