The Guild Cinema's annual Festival of Film Noir returned, on schedule, during the dog days of summer, curated by archivist Peter Conheim, who founded the festival 20 years ago and was responsible this year for many of the restored prints projected in 35mm.
GUILTY BYSTANDER (1950) (B+) - Zachary Scott gives a knockout performance as an alcoholic ex-cop recruited by his estranged wife to sober up and hunt for their kidnapped toddler.
When we first see Scott's character, Max Thursday, he's face down sleeping off a drunk in the fleabag flophouse he slums in, run by a hardened old gal named Smitty (Mary Boland). Georgia (Faye Emerson) pleads with him to put down the bottle and look for their disappeared son. Max sobers up the best he can -- he'll still do shots if it lubricates his investigation -- and, as he navigates New York's seedy underworld, he ends up falling for a dame who works in a club. Angel is played with outer-borough bravado by Kay Medford, the veteran comic who would go on to success in TV with "The Dean Martin Show" and a few memorable turns on "Barney Miller." Here, she steals the movie, playing it a little saucy and a little sexy.
Scott handles a little action and physical comedy well, and Joseph Lerner's camera lurks furtively around New York's mob scene, finding particular glee in the underground lair of a somnolent creep named Varkas, played perfectly by J. Edward Bromberg. When the reveal comes at the end, it is smart and well earned.
SPOTTED: A few well-traveled character actors: Dennis Patrick from "Dark Shadows" and dozens of other TV dramas. ... Jesse White, who was the original Maytag Repairman in TV commercials starting in 1967, seen here hitting on Medford's Angel at a bar. ... And Maurice Gosfield, who memorably portrayed Pvt. Doberman on "The Phil Silvers Show" in the '50s, in a five-second cameo as a bridge guard.
THE BLACK VAMPIRE (1953) (A) - The best of the fest was this visual masterpiece about a lonely loser who goes on a spree killing little girls, earning him the nickname the Black Vampire. It was inspired by Fritz Lang's classic "M."
When we first see mild-mannered language professor Dr. Ulber (Nathan Pinzon), we are alerted by the scream of cabaret performer Amalia, aka Rita (Olga Zubarry), who spots his figure stuffing a dead girl's body down a manhole. Ulber is portrayed as a mentally ill psychopath who can't help himself, and his lust for the blood of little girls as he stalks the streets of Buenos Aires earns him the nickname the el vampiro negro.
Director Roman Vinoly Barreto bookends this luscious black-and-white film with courtroom scenes as Ulber's case is about to go to the jury. In between, the director's camera explores the grimier side (and literally the sewer system) of the Argentine capital, roping in the homeless population as a Greek chorus. He also luxuriates in Amalia/Rita's joint, which is populated by willing escorts and run by the sketchy Gaston (Pascual Pelliciota), whose drug running will catch up to him by the final reel.
Plot aside, it is the visuals by Vinoly Barreto, assisted by cinematographer Anibal Gonzalez Paz, that are breathtaking. Shot after shot has the beauty and composition of a painting -- the angles arch, the lighting just so. Watching this on the big screen, in its restored glory, was a sumptuous feast.
SPOTTED: C'mon. It's Argentinian noir. It's not like any of them ended up on "Adam 12" or anything. The final girl featured at the end, playing Rita's daughter, is nicknamed Gogo, and she is the daughter of the director.
THE SLEEPING TIGER (1954) (B) - Joseph Losey directs this lead-footed but interesting suspense film about a common criminal infiltrating the home and marriage of a couple who have long fallen out of love. Dr. Clive Esmond (Alexander Knox) is determined to rehabilitate the petty criminal Frank Clemmons (Dirk Bogarde) by inviting the young thug into his home, to the horror of Dr. Esmond's maid but the secret delight of his wife, Glenda (Alexis Smith).
It doesn't take too many horse-riding jaunts with Frank for Glenda to eventually fall into the bad boy's arms. But Dr. Esmond is seemingly oblivious to the shenanigans, because he believes he can get to the bottom of Frank's sociopathic ways. Here's a hint: It has something to do with his childhood, in particular his mom. (The doctor might as well have a copy of Freud for Dummies on the vaunted bookshelf in his home office.)
But Frank can't give up his thieving ways or his affinity for a racy jazz club populated by all of his shady friends who like to engage in dirty dancing to the sweaty rhythms. Dr. Esmond soon coddles Frank to the point of paying off the police to clear Frank of assault charges against the maid -- which only emboldens Frank.
This all builds to a fevered pitch and an inevitable tragedy. Blacklisted director Joseph Losey ("The Big Night," "The Concrete Jungle"), working in exile in Europe, could have tightened this up by 5 or 10 minutes, but he does a workmanlike job of shepherding the story, which grows on you like a clever potboiler should.
SPOTTED: No surreptitious ringers in this British drama, but I'll note that the North American Alexis Smith was featured as a pin-up during WWII in a GI mag called -- and I'm not making this up -- Yank.
STARK FEAR (1962) (C) - Even a powerful performance by Beverly Garland can't fully make sense of this dense, sloppy barn-burner that wallows too much in creepy misogyny. Cruel men are portrayed as caricatures in a skewed attempt at dark humor to counteract the intrigue.
Garland, beloved from my childhood as the stepmother in TV's "My Three Sons," brings depth to the character of Ellen Winslow, who yearns to break free from her horrible marriage. Ellen gets caught between her husband, Gerald (Skip Homeier), and Gerald's old business rival, Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey), whom Ellen has gone to work for as a secretary. The hubby disappears, and Ellen starts falling for Cliff.
The plot gets twisted in on itself, but this oddity from 1962 has snippets of prescient moments as a pop culture artifact. There is the sassy single galpal (Hannah Stone) and a tacked-on buildup to a rom-com rush to the airport -- beta rumblings of the genre's tropes to come. This all doesn't really add up, and the misogyny actually devolves into sexual assault at one point, but Garland carries it to the finish line with her sheer charisma.
SPOTTED: Tobey, who made a living out of playing sheriffs, wardens and judges, had a long career spanning from "It Came From Beneath the Sea" in 1955 to "Big Top Pee-Wee" in 1988. ... And this was one of the first "composer" credits for the legend John Williams ("Star Wars," "Superman" etal.), credited here as Johnny Williams, creator of the "party music."
BREATHLESS (1983) (B+) - Richard Gere can do no wrong in this cynical remake of the Jean-Luc Godard classic. Valerie Kaprisky pouts like a classic dame, and the two of them sizzle with Cinemax sexuality in this tale of a pretty-boy cop-killer hopelessly on the lam in grimy post-punk Los Angeles.
This re-imagining of the 1960 touchstone reunited L.M. Kit Carson (writer) and Jim McBride (writer-director) from "David Holzman's Diary." This was McBride's mainstream breakthrough -- he would go on to direct "The Big Easy" and "Great Balls of Fire" with Dennis Quaid. Here they craft a jangly script with an improv feel, delivering a well-turned one-liner at every key moment.
Gere's Jesse hunts down Kaprisky's Monica in L.A. hoping to rekindle a recent affair in Las Vegas. Problem is, he shot a highway patrolman while speeding through the western night (with a devil-red sky) in a stolen sports car. Or is that a problem? Monica, darn it, just can't keep herself from getting entangled with Jesse. Their naked interludes tell you all you need to know about why she can't quit the goofy hunk. (I kept imagining her saying at every key turn, "I really shouldn't, but ..."; she doesn't do that, but she does serve as a prime model for Maria de Medeiros' Fabienne in "Pulp Fiction.")
McBride lets Gere riff as Jesse spirals out of control. The soundtrack bangs out of the gate with Jerry Lee Lewis' "Breathless," and it roams from rootsy romps from Link Wray and Joe "King" Carrasco ("Caca de Vaca") to modern hits (as featured below). Kaprisky is a little shaky at first, and her accent is heavy, but she settles in eventually and gamely goes along for the ride (literally, in a series of flashy stolen cars). A cache of solid character actors (like Art Metrano, Henry G. Sanders and John P. Ryan) ground this as a foundational L.A. noir. And its freeze-frame ending is one for the ages.
SPOTTED: Hack comedy writer Bruce Vilanch as "Man With Purse" getting mugged in a bathroom by Jesse.
BONUS TRACKS
After the haunting opening scenes in "The Black Vampire," police sirens fade into the soft wail of a saxophone in this sequence full of arresting images and a gorgeous song:
The serial killer in "Vampire" reflexively whistles a familiar tune throughout the film. It is "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, a sly callback to "M":
"Breathless" rocks Godard's new wave with a new-wave music soundtrack. A climactic chase scene plays out to Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders vamping with "Message of Love":
And the memorable remake of the title track, over the closing credits, from X:
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