This is Noir: I’m Supposed to be On the Edge of My Seat, So Why Am I Smirking?

A wigged out Barbara Stanwyck, "Double Indemnity" (1944).

By Paul Parcellin

Film noir is chock full of death and destruction and that’s the way we like it. There are other factors at play, of course — dramatic tension between characters and nifty heists meticulously planned and sure to fall apart once it’s showtime. We love alluring femmes fatale who make us fight off the temptation to holler at the screen and warn the dupe that he’s about to fall for her toxic charms, the equivalent of stepping onto a spring-loaded bear trap with big, sharp steel teeth. 

We love to see a poor sap struggle to pry himself out of the mess he’s gotten into thanks to his unabashed hubris or just plain bad luck. 

A house that "must have set someone back
30-thousand bucks, if he ever finished
paying for it."

It can all get pretty grim, so whenever a fleeting moment of comic relief pops up, either intended by the filmmaker or not, it stands out conspicuously, like “a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake,” to paraphrase Raymond Chandler. 

I’m talking about jokes that fall flat. They aren’t funny now and audiences probably weren’t bowled over by them back in the day. There are lines of dialogue that have aged badly and certain references that are wildly out of date. Don’t forget the technical gaffs that cheap-o productions didn’t have the scratch to redo, and strange, awkward moments that are probably due to a star’s unreasonable demands and the director’s lack of gumption to fight back.

Here’s a sampling of some film noir moments that are cherished by smart alecks such as yours truly who now and then can’t help but notice when things on screen just don’t add up:

Sometimes it’s the small observations that put a different spin on things. 

Except for a police squad, Sunset Blvd.
is disturbingly quiet.

Take, for instance, a traffic-free Los Angles main drag in the opening sequence of Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” (1950). The scene takes place as dawn breaks over the city, but on a roadway where, in reality, every hour is rush hour. Frankly, the lack of bumper-to-bumper vehicles casts a post-apocalyptic pall over the terrain. Maybe that was intentional, and now that I think about it, what better way could there be to suggest the end of civilization as we know it beneath the smog choked skies of Los Angeles?

Speaking of traffic, there’s a witty, self-aware moment in neo-noir “L.A. Confidential” (1997), which is set in the 1950s. Local dignitaries hold a ribbon cutting ceremony for the then new extension of the 10 freeway, announcing that the super roadway will allow motorists to go from downtown to the ocean in 14 minutes, or something wildly optimistic like that. In L.A., audiences jeer. It’s a fair bet that the first automobile to use that stretch of roadway made it to the ocean in 14 minutes. Since then, only helicopters and jet packs come close to that speed. 

Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) straightens out
his boss, Edward S. Norton (Richard Gaines),
in "Double Indemnity" (1944).

One of noir’s most beloved crime dramas, “Double Indemnity,” (1944) has a number of moments that give us a chuckle. In fairness, most of the humor is due to a first-rate cast and the masterful work of director Billy Wilder and co-screenwriter Raymond Chandler. For example, in one scene Edward G. Robinson, as crusty insurance adjuster Barton Keyes, fires off smart rejoinders and clipped observations that hit the mark. This is one between him and his annoying boss, Edward S. Norton (Richard Gaines). Keyes gets in a subtle dig at the pompous executive:

Edward S. Norton: That witness from the train, what was his name?

Barton Keyes: His name was Jackson. Probably still is.

But then there are a couple of moments in which some unintended comedy occurs: When insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) gazes at the upscale Spanish Colonial Revival home owned by one of his clients, he remarks in voice-over that it must have set the owner back “30-thousand bucks,” which elicited a knowing cackle from the audience at the Brattle, a Cambridge revival house where I saw it. It seems that there’s nothing like outdated real estate pricing to put an audience in a buoyant mood.

Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) gets his drink on.

Another guffaw out loud moment comes when Walter, fresh off a couple of strings at a bowling alley, stops for a cold one at a car hop diner. He’s behind the wheel of his auto, a tray hooked onto the window ledge holds a partly filled beer bottle as he tosses back a glass of suds. The crowd got a sarcastic laugh out of this one, too.

Wilder was responsible for one production misstep. He said he realized too late that plunking a blonde wig on Barbara Stanwyck, who portrays femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, was a mistake. He wanted her to look cheap, but instead, he admitted, she looked like George Washington. 

The plot of Alfred Hitchcock's “Strangers on a Train” involves tennis star Guy Haynes (Farley Granger) who encounters deranged gadabout Bruno Antony (Robert Walker). Bruno’s delusions lead him to commit a murder that he eventually tries to pin on Guy. 

Farley Granger, Robert Walker.
"Strangers on a Train."

At the film’s stunning conclusion in an amusement part, a tense struggle between Guy and Bruno ends with an out of control carousel careening off its axis and sliding across the amusement park’s midway. 

Cops arrive and the mortally wounded Bruno clutches a key piece of evidence that would tend to clear Guy of the murder he’s suspected of committing. The police size up the situation and declare that Guy is innocent. No questions asked. No trip to headquarters required. Badda-bing, badda-boom, he’s free to go.

In “Shield for Murder” (1954), Barney Nolan (Edmond O’Brien)
lures bookie Packy Reed (Herbie Faye) down an alleyway.
Note the boom microphone shadow that somehow snuck into the frame.

My favorite visual blooper is what must be the most visible boom microphone shadow in all of noir. In the opening scene of “Shield for Murder” (1954), crooked cop Barney Nolan (Edmond O’Brien) takes bookie Packy Reed (Herbie Faye) down an alleyway and gives him the works. On the way, an undeniably crisp shadow of a piece of sound equipment comes into view. Noir is supposed to be shadowy, but not like this. We can only conclude that a beer-money budget prohibited reshoots.

In "D.O.A." (1949) Frank Bigelow checks out
the local talent while checking in.

An embarrassingly bad bit of sound in “D.O.A.” (1949) temporarily mars the otherwise spotless noir it is. In it, everyman Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is living under a death sentence after someone slips him a dose of slow-acting poison with no antidote. But before all that happens he’s on vacation in San Francisco and he ogles some attractive women. Director Rudolph Maté saw fit to add a cheesy sound effect of a wolf whistle, just in case we didn’t get the point. Maté is best known as a cinematographer, and in helming this low-budget classic he created a minor masterpiece. But, oh, that cringe-worthy slide whistle!

Sometimes a character is so rotten that we can only chuckle in admiration of her sheer audacity. In “Decoy” (1946), another low budget thriller, Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) earns her spurs as perhaps the most cold hearted dame in all of noir. A sample of her frosty demeanor goes as follows: 

 Edward Norris, Jean Gillie, Herbert Rudley, "Decoy" (1946).

Motoring toward the site where a large cache of money is allegedly hidden, Margot’s car gets a flat. One of the two men riding with her changes the tire. As he lowers the jack beneath the front bumper, Margot slams the car into forward gear and runs over the unsuspecting sap. She hops out, rifles through the dead man’s pockets, grabs the tire changing tools and gets back behind the wheel. And why not? No need to share the jackpot with another schmo.

With her brazen disregard for the sanctity of human life, Margot earns a standing ovation. They don’t get much more fatale than that femme. 

So, those are a handful of cherished moments of ironic comedy. Surely, you’ve found a few that brought a smile to your face. Feel free to share them in Comments. I’d love to hear about them.

 

Crime Writer Ripped Hitch for ‘Flabby Mass of Clichés’

Farley Granger and Robert Walker in 'Strangers on a Train.'

Alfred Hitchcock at work.

A number of celebrated writers have had tortured relationships with Hollywood. Take Raymond Chandler, the writer whose work is closely associated with Los Angeles (he detested the city), and whose crime fiction elevated the genre to an art form.

 
Chandler was lured to the screen trade during a brief period in movie history when the studios thought that great novelists could automatically write great scripts. Some did, but the majority failed and soon slunk back to the burgs from whence they came.

 
Others hung around L.A., growing increasingly despondent and bitter toward the philistines who run the movie business. That was certainly the case with Chandler, who gave us outstanding crime novels, including “The Big Sleep,” “Farewell, My Lovely” and “The Long Goodbye.” He also helped knock off one of the all time greatest film noir scripts, “Double Indemnity.” 

Then he lost his touch and his life and career did a slow fade. Before the frame went black, Chandler crossed paths with Alfred Hitchcock and worked on the screenplay for the British director’s “Strangers on a Train.”

Raymond Chandler

It was six years after Chandler’s collaboration with director Billy Wilder on “Double Indemnity,” which proved to be a fine, if difficult, partnership. But Chandler’s pairing with Hitchcock was a match made in hell.

Below is a letter Chandler sent to the director out of frustration over changes made to his script. A heavy drinker who years earlier lost his job as an oil company executive over his excessive use of alcohol, Chandler could be blunt and thin skinned, as his letter to the director suggests. Clearly, working in a collaborative medium was not his thing.


Source: The Raymond Chandler Papers (2000)
Dec. 6, 1950

Dear Hitch,

In spite of your wide and generous disregard of my communications on the subject of the script of Strangers on a Train and your failure to make any comment on it, and in spite of not having heard a word from you since I began the writing of the actual screenplay—for all of which I might say I bear no malice, since this sort of procedure seems to be part of the standard Hollywood depravity—in spite of this and in spite of this extremely cumbersome sentence, I feel that I should, just for the record, pass you a few comments on what is termed the final script. I could understand your finding fault with my script in this or that way, thinking that such and such a scene was too long or such and such a mechanism was too awkward. I could understand you changing your mind about the things you specifically wanted, because some of such changes might have been imposed on you from without. What I cannot understand is your permitting a script which after all had some life and vitality to be reduced to such a flabby mass of clichés, a group of faceless characters, and the kind of dialogue every screen writer is taught not to write—the kind that says everything twice and leaves nothing to be implied by the actor or the camera. Of course you must have had your reasons but, to use a phrase once coined by Max Beerbohm, it would take a "far less brilliant mind than mine" to guess what they were.
 Regardless of whether or not my name appears on the screen among the credits, I'm not afraid that anybody will think I wrote this stuff. They'll know damn well I didn't. I shouldn't have minded in the least if you had produced a better script—believe me. I shouldn't. But if you wanted something written in skim milk, why on earth did you bother to come to me in the first place? What a waste of money! What a waste of time! It's no answer to say that I was well paid. Nobody can be adequately paid for wasting his time.

Signed,
Raymond Chandler