'The Crimson Kimono': Big Crime in Little Tokyo

Tawdry newspaper headlines bark out plot twists
in 'The Crimson Kimono' (1959).

Director, producer and writer Samuel Fuller photographs the streets of downtown L.A. stunningly in "The Crimson Kimono," a film that's part mystery, part love triangle and part travelogue. We get to see the downtown exteriors, particularly Little Tokyo as it looked in 1959, with a gleaming City Hall in the background. The City Hall tower is a crucial visual marker in a metropolis whose skyline has few recognizable buildings. It instantly orients the observer, and in "The Crimson Kimono" it serves as a looming symbol of justice watching over the city's mean streets.

Sugar Torch (Gloria Pall).

He started his career as a teenaged crime reporter for New York tabloid newspapers, and it shows in his films. Fuller had a gift for exploiting the tawdry and the sensational. "Crimson Kimono"'s plot involves the search to find out who murdered stripper Sugar Torch, and the characters include the denizens of the urban demimonde plus a number of eccentrics thrown in for good measure — the story takes place in L.A., a city routinely portrayed in crime fiction and movies as kooks central. As the manhunt for the killer proceeds, the two detectives, who happen to be buddies and roommates as well, fall in love with the same woman, and the resulting turmoil is the backdrop to the central murder mystery.

Ziggy plays a small role in the story, but is worth mentioning because much of the rest of the cast, especially Corbett and his buddy, Det. Joe Kojaku (James Shigeta) don't have the same air of authenticity about them as does street canary Ziggy. They come across as much too square to be uttering the words that come out of their mouths. Kojaku observes, "Charlie figured bird-doggin' wouldn't appeal to you," and Bancroft admits, "You know, I knocked around an awful lot," and, "Somethin's eatin' him the way he clammed up." 

Wandering through Little Tokyo.

These two ivy league-looking dudes are almost painful to watch when they spout these howlers. Granted, the kind of stylized Runyonesque dialogue Fuller was going for probably never came out of anyone's mouth at anytime in real life. A grittier cast may have turned up the believability quotient a few notches, but, no matter, it's still a bracingly exciting film.

Fuller knew how to open a movie with a healthy dose of hoopla, and his aerial view of L.A. at night and the roaring Gene Krupa-like orchestration behind the soaring camera work perfectly sets the scene. As we view the city from a bat's-eye perspective, the title card tells us it's LOS ANGELES, in case there was doubt.

The greatness behind "The Crimson Kimono" is its ability to turn L.A. into a character in the story, not just a location, and at that Fuller excels. And if you're going to pick a city to play the backdrop for a crime story you could do a lot worse than L.A.

Crime Erupts Under the Streets of L.A.

Much of "He Walked by Night" is held together with the loose thread of documentary-style film-making. But those parts are no match or the last 20 minutes or so of the film that prowls the lower reaches of the city.

Richard Basehart is the killer who terrorizes L.A. and can't be stopped. Few have ever seen him, and that frustrates the L.A.P.D.

Jack Webb plays a supporting role as a police forensics officer, and it's obvious that this film provided the blueprint for the TV show that would become his shining achievement, "Dragnet."

The movie is an early, primitive police procedural that wants to be a German Neo-Expressionist art film. When the camera moves into the subterranean world of storm drains it's easy to imagine for a while that directors Carol Reed or perhaps Fritz Lang are calling the shots.

What makes it a must see is the wonderful black and white photography as Basehart becomes the human prey of the forces of justice.

Suddenly, Venice, Calif., stands in for Vienna. We remember Orson Welles being chased through that city's storm drains in "The Third Man." Oceans are crossed, and the European avante garde finds a safe refuge on the Pacific Coast.

Their Mileage May Vary: Thundering Down 'Plunder Road'

I took James Ellroy's advice -- it didn't come directly from him, you understand -- and checked out "Plunder Road," one of his all-time favorite crime films that was included in Monday's post.

It's a great-looking, pared-down gritty drama made in 1957, obviously on a small budget. The cast includes the great Elisha Cook Jr., as well as lesser known actors Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris, Stafford Repp and Steven Ritch.

"Plunder Road" starts with a train robbery that takes place in a driving rain. There's little dialog for the first 10 minutes or so, and what there is starts out with each robber's thoughts expressed in voice over. It's one of "Plunder Road"'s few unconvincing moments, and fortunately it doesn't go on for long.

The heist itself is carried out just about wordlessly, as any good heist ought to be. Then the gangsters split into three groups, each driving a truck with a third of the loot packed inside. It doesn't take long for things to go wrong, which is inevitable in a heist movie -- if the crooks got away without a hitch there would be no story.

They point their trucks toward California, which is 900 miles away, and split up rather than travel together. The crooks try to blend in with everyday traffic, which works for a while. The great irony is that while the escaping robbers are barreling down the open road toward California -- a trip that for many Americans is the very symbol of freedom -- they're trapped in a claustrophobic journey that is likely to have no good end.

The final twist in the gang's getaway plan -- a way to smuggle the ill-gotten wealth out of the country -- helps lift this film above others in this genre.

Like "Detour" and "DOA," two exquisite, low-budget noir road movies, "Plunder Road" gets a lot of mileage out of a simple but well constructed story. You can stream it on Netflix.

James Ellroy Names His Top 10 Crime Movies

Crime Fiction writer James Ellroy says these are his favorite 10 crime films. His opinion is worth paying attention to because he knows a thing or two about what makes a good crime story.

The first one on his list is based on one of his novels -- not exactly a humble position to take, but "L.A. Confidential" is a very good movie.

I'm not sure why he chose "Godfather II" and not "Godfather I." I've heard many say that they prefer the sequel to the original, but I have to hold Part I in higher esteem.

I haven't seen many of the rest, but that's the point of putting together top 10 lists. You'll perhaps find a good film you might never have seen otherwise. Time to log into Netflix and put some on order.

Here are Ellroy's top 10:

L.A. Confidential (1997)
The Godfather: Part II (1974)
The Prowler (1951)
Crime Wave (1953)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
The Killing (1956)
Plunder Road (1957)
The Lineup (1958)
711 Ocean Drive (1950)
Vertigo (1958).

Sunny Place For Shady People: 'Noir' TV

So Frank Darabont will be the guy who delivers an "L.A. Noir" pilot to TNT. It's going to be an interesting experiment to see if a period crime drama makes it on a channel whose bread and butter is police procedurals ("The Closer") modern police dramas ("Southland") and a law comedy ("Franklin & Bash").

"L.A. Noir," will rub elbows, stylistically, at least, with another period crime drama, HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."

Darabont has directed stylish period features ("The Green Mile," "The Shawshank Redemption"), and he was famously canned from AMC's zombie series, "The Walking Dead."

"L.A. Noir" will be based on John Buntin’s book "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City."

"L.A. Noir" follows the true story of the street war waged by Los Angeles Police Department under Chief William Parker and the L.A. organized crime world led by Mickey Cohen. It will be set in the 1940s and ’50s, the post-World War II era, and be a backdrop where Hollywood stars and studio heads rose to fame and ran amok while a massively corrupt police force and criminals jockeyed for control of West Coast’s most prominent city.

With "Gangster Squad," a feature film in the works that will also cover the Mickey Cohen era of crime, there seems to be a sizable uptick in interest about the City of Angels' sordid past. Stay tuned.

A Game Even Mickey Cohen Might Have Liked

"L.A. Noire" launched today. I'm not a video gamer by any means, but it's worth mentioning today's radio interview with John Buntin, author of "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City," the book about gangster Mickey Cohen's reign over the City of Angels.
The book and the video game are similarly titled, although the game title has an extra "e" for reasons still unclear to me.
Why mention the game at all in this forum? Because the video game is said to be more cinematic than a non-enthusiast for video games such as myself might suspect. The plot also borrows story points from the AMC TV series "Mad Men," a favorite of mine.
Buntin, who I've had the pleasure of meeting at a book signing he did at the L.A. Athletic Club, got a preview of the game, which has been under heavy wraps by its developer, Rockstar Games. Buntin admired what he saw, all in all, but noted that L.A.'s skies circa 1947, the era in which the "L.A. Noire" game is set, are too pastel blue (where's the smog?), the police don't act as violently as they were capable of then and the city is not shown as densely populated as was 1947 Los Angeles.
However, developers went to great pains to portray the city accurately, poring over 1947 topographical maps of the city, collecting vintage Sears catalogs to get the colors correct -- yes, this "Noire" is in color, not black and white.
For those of us who enjoy the films, fiction and true crime stories of 1930s to 1950s L.A., it's probably a good thing that pop culture is finally catching up with the literature from the shadowy underbelly of Los Angeles. Maybe film-makers will become inspired and create something like the old movies for the big screen.

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