‘Double Indemnity’: Two On a Conveyor Belt Toward Doom

Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson, 'Double Indemnity' (1944).


This article contains many SPOILERS, so if you haven't seen the film yet be forewarned.

By Paul Parcellin

In “Double Indemnity” (1944), housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and gets him to kill her husband. She’s after a big payout from a policy that Neff sold him under false pretenses. It’s a classic noir — maybe THE classic noir. The story’s got all the right stuff — murder, sex and the promise of a bundle of cash for the two lovebirds. Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong and they both pay dearly for their misadventures. 

Neff and Phyllis swear allegiance to one another, repeating several times throughout the film that they’ll stick together “straight down the line” — words that prove all too prophetic. For a while, the scheme seems to have come off without a hitch, but later Neff realizes that a double-cross is in the works. Worse still, his co-worker and friend, claims supervisor Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), is doggedly working to crack the case, and for Keyes, this case is like red meat to a lion.

When Keyes begins to suspect that Phyllis and an unknown man are behind her husband’s death, he also invokes a train trip. When two people commit a crime together it’s not twice as safe, it’s ten times more dangerous. "It's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops,” he says. “They're stuck with each other and they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.”

Like the rows of canned goods in Jerry’s Supermarket where the two conspiring killers meet clandestinely to plot their moves, Neff begins to realize that he’s been used by Phyllis and is nothing more than a commodity on a conveyor belt whose ultimate destination is a meeting with the executioner.

It’s all rather dire, but beneath the surface of a crime film lies a satire of modern day life — can the drudgery of the workaday world that Neff slogs through be enough to transform a morally challenged worker bee into an adulterer, embezzler and a killer? The answer is a resounding yes, here in Neff’s world, at least.

Also just beneath the surface is the film’s extremely subtle comments on big Hollywood and its tendency to crush the creative spirit of its faithful servants — it’s there but you might need a magnifying glass to see it. 

Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder.

Director Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, who co-wrote the screenplay, were not fans of the City of Los Angeles, and the film echos their disdain for the metropolis. They thought of the place as hyper-capitalized, highly industrialized and morally bankrupt. Chandler once said that Los Angeles has “no more personality than a paper cup.” He viewed the City of Angels as a modern day Sodom filled with greasy burger joints, phony spiritualist and fast-talking hustlers trying to make a dishonest buck.

James Naremore in his book “More Than Night” lays out some of the film’s underpinnings. Putting aside the heinous crimes Neff commits, the author views him as a cog in a machine, namely the insurance industry, and his foray into a murderous scheme is a doomed effort to break away from the shackles of his job and a rootless existence. After years of faithful service he wants to crook the system and go far away with his newfound lady love. 

Wilder’s satirical portrait of the drab assembly line that is modern industrialized civilization is that of a wasteland teeming with alienated masses. And the insurance business is not much different from the movie industry. Naremore points out that the insurance company offices where Neff works, which we see in the film’s opening sequence, is a near duplicate of Paramount Pictures’ New York offices. And Neff’s Hollywood apartment is a carefully constructed copy of Wilder’s suite at West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel, where he lived while shooting the film. Wilder’s in-joke is that, like Neff, he’s become an automaton for the big money people. 

We see both Neff and Keyes suffer through a painful meeting with their oafish boss, Mr. Norton (Richard Gaines). A self-righteous airhead with little hands-on experience in the insurance industry, Norton tries to worm out of making good on the Dietrichson insurance policy only to have his clumsy maneuvers blow up in his face. It’s not hard to imagine that Norton is a stand-in for the executives the director was forced to report to — the kind that offer unwelcome and usually unhelpful advice all in the name of putting their imprint and a project that would do just fine without them. In this environment one could imagine upper management quoting Samuel Goldwyn when he implored his screenwriters to “Come up with some new cliches.” 

Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson. The end of the line for Walter Neff.

Wilder faced studio pressure both when trying to put his script into production and after filming got under way. The Breen Office complained about an initial script, which was closer to the James M. Cain novel on which the film is based. That one had the two murderers die at each other’s hands instead of being arrested, tried and punished appropriately by the courts and penal system as the Hays Code strongly suggested. Wilder revised the screenplay to include an execution scene with Neff in the gas chamber, which he shot. It was reviled by studio brass as too gruesome. Ultimately, Wilder cut the scene, saying that it was unnecessary, but Naremore speculates that it would have played an essential role in the film. 

Stills of the scene show Neff, the condemned man, through the death chamber’s plate glass window as he’s obscured by clouds of cyanide gas and Keyes is one of the execution witnesses. 

The payoff scene after the execution, which was cut from the final print, would have added an even stronger ending to the film. After the execution is done, Keyes, alone, obviously grieving at the loss of a friend, is emotionally conflicted. He’s a straight shooter who is pained by the whole ordeal. Throughout the film we’ve seen a repeated ritual between Neff and Keyes, who smokes cheap stogies. He’s never got a match to light his cigar, but Neff comes to the rescue, flicking a wooden match to light up Keyes’s smoke. As a somber Keyes files out of the death chamber he takes out a cigar and pats his pockets looking for a match. He comes up empty and we see in his eyes the void that Neff’s death has left in his life. Too bad that such a touching moment ended up on the cutting room floor, especially since Wilder said it was one of the best scenes he'd ever filmed. But Naremore is hopeful that the excised film is sitting in a Paramount vault and will one day be restored to the film, although there’s no reason to think that this will ever happen. 

It’s open to question whether Wilder cut the scene due to pressure from his studio bosses or if he decided that the scene was truly unnecessary as he claimed. It’s all speculation because few people have actually seen the footage. But if Naremore’s description of it is accurate it would add an additional layer of emotional complexity to Keyes — his friendship with Neff being at odds with his dedication to doing the right thing. It’s an intriguing proposition.

Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck.

‘The Big Clock’: Time Runs Short for Crime Mag Editor

 

Charles Laughton and Ray Milland in 'The Big Clock.'

At first glance, “The Big Clock” is merely a workplace crime drama set in a New York magazine publishing firm, a cold-blooded enterprise that gives new meaning to the phrase, “This job is killing me.”

But beneath its surface, the film is satire, lampooning corporate climbers’ empty pursuit of material gain. Those who wade into big business’s choppy waters, the film posits, may suddenly realize they’re waist-deep in quicksand — otherwise known as a middle management job.

 “The Big Clock” was part of a post-war trend that diverged from classic noirs that focused mainly on the poor and working class and were set against an urban backdrop. The newer breed of noirs shifted their attention to the burgeoning American middle class. Films such as “Pitfall” (1948), “Mildred Pierce” (1945) and “In a Lonely Place” (1950) depict a more upwardly mobile population that left the city’s decaying quarters and landed in swank neighborhoods and leafy suburbs.

In “The Big Clock” we meet Crimeways magazine editor George Stroud (Ray Milland) who’s in the doghouse with his neglected wife Georgette (Maureen O'Sullivan). Yes, that’s really the characters’ names — a saccharine-flavored coincidence made tolerable when blended with noir’s bitter aftertaste.

A former small-town newspaper editor, George made the unlikely leap to a Manhattan publishing mega-firm after digging up a crime story that scooped the big boys. He’s a hot shot now and his personal life takes a back seat to his job duties — predictably, Georgette’s at the end of her rope. 

To appease his wife, George promises that he’ll quit his job and he, Georgette and their son will return to their West Virginia home. This is a reversal of noir’s typical story trajectory in which urban wretches, trapped in the crumbling glass, concrete and steel wastelands of America, long for great riches and a penthouse suite. The Strouds are part of the urban upper middle class, aiming to return to a more modest standard of life in the sticks — cue the “Green Acres” theme song.

Conflicted Over City vs. Country
George and Georgette idealize small town life, blaming the rat race for their marital woes. But he gets an adrenaline junkie’s thrill out of chasing down high-profile murder cases, and is conflicted by his decision to choose placid country life over the raucous excitement of the newsroom. 

His boss, media mogul Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), keeps George and the rest of his charges on a tight leash. He’s the kind of executive who fires the janitor who left the light on overnight in the supply closet.

Sensing that George is ready to leave the fold, Janoth tries and fails to keep him in place, and in retribution he sends George packing.

Laughton plays the portly Janoth as quietly aloof, unscrupulous and vindictive. He would give Logan Roy of HBO’s “Succession” a run for his money in a competition for the title of New York’s most vicious propagandist. Janoth’s firm publishes a plethora of magazines that appeal to every niche of American life. Nothing, it seems, goes untouched by hyper-commercialization.

A massive clock, reputed to be the world’s most advanced and complex timepiece, dominates the building like a mechanical overlord. Operated by a control room full of buttons and switches, it keeps precise local time and that of other cities around the world. 

Janoth’s daily work schedule adheres precisely to the oversized chronometer, like a control tower guides an airliner. Later in the film the clock stops briefly and the publisher is panicked, an omen suggesting that Janoth’s world is about to crumble.

A Missed Connection

Smarting after being fired, George misses the train he was to catch with Georgette for a deferred honeymoon and he knows he’s on thin ice. Making matters worse, he’s tossing back stingers with a blonde, Pauline York (Rita Johnson), he meets by chance in a bar. 

George has no designs on Pauline, but that doesn’t prevent him from getting into trouble. Milland’s George is basically pure of heart, driven and hard-working, but a bit of a klutz in managing his personal life. He worries about the missed connection for a minute or two, shrugs it off and boozes it up some more. Despite the promise to his wife, George can’t quite accept his departure from the job that has dominated his life.

Pauline has dirt on Janoth, it turns out. She’s his former mistress and has been blackmailing him — he pays for her “singing lessons.” She’s ready to squeeze a larger payout from the publisher, and will let her new drinking buddy, George, come along for the ride, using her leverage to get his job back. George agrees, but he’s exceedingly tipsy and any verbal agreement he makes may as well be written in sand, but the idea of returning to the magazine intrigues him.

Their drinking bout spills over to Pauline’s apartment, and as George leaves that night he spies Janoth. Crouching in a dark hallway corner, he watches the publisher enter the apartment he’s just left. Puzzled by this, George sidles off into the night to sleep off his stupor. Janoth notices a man in the shadows but doesn’t realize it’s George.

Pauline proves herself a cunning counterpart to ex-paramour Janoth. There’s a good deal of emotional baggage that they share, and when she presses him for more money in a histrionic outburst, the media boss is incensed — he thinks she’s having an affair with the shadowy man in the hallway. Unfortunately, alcohol and blackmail are often a toxic mix. 

The following day, George returns to Pauline’s apartment and finds her dead. With their bar-crawling boozy evening still fresh in the minds of multiple witnesses, he’ll be a prime suspect if the law catches up with him. He flees and joins his family in West Virginia, making amends with Georgette, but keeping his misadventures secret.

An Unexpected Offer
Out of the blue, Janoth calls and asks him to return to his job. In an effort to throw police off his trail, Janoth wants George to investigate the case and find the man whom Janoth saw visiting with Pauline on the night of her death. To save his own skin, George agrees to come back to work even if it means wrecking his marriage. 

He conducts an intentionally fruitless investigation, misdirecting his staff just enough to keep himself from getting caught. Then, there’s the problem of finding a way to bring Janoth to justice.

Police have been fumbling their investigation, but they think they’ve hit pay dirt when they find an artist who saw a suspect, namely George, the night of the murder — he bought one of the eccentric painter Louise Patterson’s (Elsa Lanchester) artworks that evening. 

The artist (Elsa Lanchester) presents her sketch.

In a comic moment, she’s brought in to sketch from memory the man she saw, but turns in an abstract drawing that’s useless to the cops. On her way out, she whispers to George that she’d never inform on one of her patrons. It seems that artists, at times, must depend on unscrupulous benefactors — where would Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo be without the Medici family?

As the police pursue blind leads the Crimeways investigation picks up steam and the atmosphere becomes downright surreal. The magazine’s staff has unheard of investigative authority in an open criminal investigation. They run the show while the police stand sheepishly on the sidelines. 

The crime magazine’s peculiar methodology involves recording and analyzing all clues associated with misconduct, even the ones the police consider minor and unimportant — apparently, Crimeways’s staff is somehow privy to all privileged information and the police have been bullied into ceding power to a corporate demagogue.

Cornered and Desperate
Witnesses to George and Pauline’s bar hopping night are brought in, and lo and behold, they spot George in the Crimeways building’s lobby. Police cordon off the building to rout out the murderer, whose identity is still a mystery to them, and the witnesses stand by in the lobby, ready to identify him when he shows his face. 

In the film’s final act, the office building is a trap in which George may be snared if he tries to leave — a scenario that many an office worker must see in their darkest recurring nightmares.

When police begin closing in on him, George has in hand some recently discovered evidence that throws a new light on the crime. That it could be immediately deemed exonerating proof of his innocence is something that only happens in movies. 

Here, plausibility is less important than a fast-paced story. Aside from its plot twists and colorful characters, the film drives home the point that Janoth’s company holds excessive power over law enforcement authorities. 

In the end it’s George, not the police, who crack the case. But it’s not until he discovers how constrictive, mechanized and demoralizing an environment the company is that he is able to free himself from it and return to a less tumultuous way of life. Perhaps there the police will be the ones who investigate crime and he can go back to merely reporting on it.

In 'Double Indemnity,' A Stalled Car is a Flash of Genius

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, in 'Double Indemnity.'

 As many times as we pore over "Double Indemnity," there are still important bits that may be missed. Sometimes that leads to revelations that change our understanding of the film.

I'm not talking about the Raymond Chandler cameo that went unnoticed for decades — that was a whopper of a find. It's those scenes that we've watched countless times that are entertaining, gripping even. But it's not until the umpteenth viewing that we have an "A-ha!" moment. 

By the way, for those who have yet to see "Double Indemnity," you'd be well advised to do so. In the meantime, let's summarize the story without giving too much away. However, if you're particularly sensitive to spoilers, you might want to stop reading here.

The story goes like this: An ethically wanting, rather shallow man, insurance salesman Walter Neff, falls for a married woman, and she for him. Together, they decide to cash in on a life insurance policy. Neff gets her husband to sign on the dotted line without his knowing what he's putting his John Hancock on.

The femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson, and Neff plot to do away with the unsuspecting hubby and leave his body in a lonely spot. After the deed is done, they make their escape. Or, at least they try to. 

It's one of many scenes in which director and co-writer Billy Wilder's flashes of genius take hold. The murderous pair hop into the getaway car, turn the key ... and it won't start.

A look of dread crosses their faces. Neff tries coaxing the engine another time. Finally, it catches. Relief.

An Unforeseen Turn

But something unexpected happens, not to Neff and Phyllis, but to us, the audience. We collectively, and perhaps subconsciously, white knuckle it until the motor at last turns over. Then we sigh with relief. Bear in mind that these two perps have just committed as terrible and cold-blooded a murder as one could imagine. Sure, Phyllis's husband was a lout, but did he deserve to die? 

Yet, we hold our breath, hoping against hope, that the engine will start and the two can leave before being discovered. In other words, that short scene crystalizes where we stand — we're slowly and subtly being lured to the dark side. It's a small but important moment.

Wilder revealed in an interview that he shot the scene as it was originally written. The two get into the car and leave. But overnight, he realized that he'd missed an opportunity to ratchet up the tension. So, he reshot that sequence, this time with the uncooperative engine, and it certainly does increase our level of stress as we watch it.

The result is that we worry about Neff and Phyllis's wellbeing; two criminals who kill for money. That's a pretty neat trick. When we fret about their safety, the director has fulfilled his intention, at least in part. Wilder knew that audiences must empathize with, if not admire, the lead actors. That's no mean feat with this pair of degenerates.

So, why does the sequence have this effect? Most of us have felt tension when a car threatens to stall just when we need it most. It's a powerful emotional experience. Powerful enough, it turns out, to make us pull for the other team even if we don't remotely like them.

That Wilder rewrote this scene, squeezing all of the agonizing tension he could out of it, is further proof of his impeccable dramatic instincts.

Of course, by noir's very nature our anti-heros are unlikely to be model citizens. Part of film's allure is that we get to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Someone who may be quite different from us. Maybe even someone we wouldn't let into our homes.

So our desire to empathize with shady characters for 90 minutes is explainable. But not all anti-heroes are created equal, and few are as alluring as Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson. Billy Wilder created a couple of doozies, and we can't stop watching them.

Danger Lurks in the Seedy World of Film Noir Carnivals

Tyrone Power, 'Nightmare Alley' (1947)

T

raveling carnivals are supposed to roll into town and deliver family entertainment — tacky, corny stuff that kids adore: amusements, games of skill, sideshow acts and cotton candy. They bring with them a whiff of nostalgia and remind oldsters of more innocent times. 

But in film noir, carnivals are seldom harmless fun. Peel back the layers and you’ll see that they’re about as wholesome as a floating craps game. 

In noir, carnivals invade small towns like Trojan horses filled with menace. Glittering magnets to humanity from all walks of life, they’re fly-by-night road shows festooned in cheap glitz that serve as shimmering arenas for con artists — Pied Pipers in baggy pants who herd the bumpkins in and make off with their wallets. 

Behind the scenes, they heartlessly exploit their downtrodden workers, promising bed and board in return for what amounts to indentured servitude, or worse. 

 Their atmosphere is intoxicating and disorienting. So, you can be excused for feeling light headed as you wander the carny midway. In noir, these playgrounds for the common folk can induce hallucinatory experiences in the unfortunates who are lured inside. 

What’s more, the surreal, hyper-stimulating atmosphere that permeates carnivals can incite average folks to act on their darker impulses with little thought of the consequences. There, a thrill-seeking public, drunk on adrenaline and hungry for rough action, morphs into a brutal mob. 

Noir carnivals remind us that our sense of security is tenuous — the simple enjoyment of mindless entertainment can be easily punctured when unseen dark forces are at work. At nighttime, the icy glow of light bulbs illuminating the midway throw the darker side of human existence into high relief. 

Carnivals come with an unsavory reputation and offer a near perfect backdrop for the three Ds: deceit, double-crossing and debauchery — cornerstones of film noir. 

If this sounds like your cup of tea, here is a short guide to a handful of film noir’s more notable carnival hellscapes that will help you maneuver through treacherous terrain. 

The primary focus here is feature films made during noir’s classic period, (roughly, the 1940s and ‘50s), and more recent neo noirs. So, cable series, such as HBO’s “Carnivale” (2003), as well as non-noir feature films, such as “Carny” (1980) are not included. 

A word of warning: Spoilers Abound, so you might want to skip over the parts about films you intend to see. 

“Panique” (1946) 

In post-World War II France, a woman is murdered and the eccentric and irascible Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) is the perfect dupe for a frame-up by the real murderer, Alfred (Paul Bernard). Monsieur Hire, a taciturn and eccentric outsider, raises the local folks’ curiosity and disdain. 

'Panique,' Michel Simon

His every move is regarded with suspicion. When he requests extra bloody meat from the butcher, eyebrows are raised, and eventually his outré behavior fans the flames of public trepidation. 

Meanwhile, a carnival is in town, and Monsieur Hire takes a ride on, of all things, the bumper cars — an odd move for one who maintains a rather dignified and aloof distance from his neighbors. Others riding on the amusement cheerfully gang up against him and deliberately crash into his car. 

An undercurrent of anti-Semitism permeates the local populace, and this rather minor but unprovoked attack hints at things to come. Violence is in the air, and we see it in a rowdy crowd of town folk who are thrilled by a sideshow of women wrestlers. 

It’s not long before a frenzied mob at the carnival amasses with the intent of hunting down Monsieur Hire and administering mob justice. Meanwhile, the real killer rides a roller coaster as the police receive proof that Monsieur Hire was not guilty of the murder, and that the culprit and his accomplice have been right under their noses. 

The inspector tells the officer to let the culprits finish their ride on the amusement before arresting them. It’s their last moments of freedom among a community that has also taken part in the awful miscarriage of justice. 

In “Panique,” the carnival hasn’t brought evil to the community, but acts as a gathering place, perhaps even a catalyst, where prejudices and fear of outsiders results in harsh, unjust consequences for an innocent man. 

“Strangers on a Train” (1951) 

In “Strangers on a Train,” tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) wants to divorce his childish, mean and manipulative estranged wife, Miriam (Kasey Rogers). Miriam is hell-bent on milking Guy for all he’s worth. 

'Strangers on a Train'

We find Miriam, a still-married woman, allegedly pregnant with another man’s baby, who is leading a couple of younger guys around by their noses as they frolic at a carnival, where her self-centered antics are at full dudgeon — she’s got the two suckers running in circles trying to please her. 

When a handsome stranger, gazing from afar, catches her the eye, she’s thrilled. Unbeknownst to Miriam, the stranger is Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), a psychopath who by chance met Guy on a train and concocted a silly and terrifying scheme. He tailed Miriam and her two friends to the carnival and is intent on snuffing out her life. 

Earlier on, before crossing paths with Miriam, Bruno encounters a boy dressed in a cowboy outfit who pretends to shoot him with his toy six-shooter. In a comical moment, Bruno pops the boy’s balloon with his cigarette. Maybe Bruno’s intentions are less than sinister, we might wonder. But here, the director, Alfred Hitchcock, uses humor to lighten the mood, and perhaps dash our expectations, before Bruno gets down to his grim business. 

For a while, it’s a cat and mouse game between the two. Bruno hops aboard the carousel with his target and her two friends, as if pursuing her on horseback. The ride ends and the action moves to a dark island in the carnival’s tunnel of love. 

Miriam’s narcissism and vanity make her an easy target for the monstrous Bruno. Under the slightly surreal dazzle of carnival lights, we can picture her believing that in this land of make believe no harm can come to her. 

She and Bruno finally meet at a dark and remote corner where he’s been lying in wait. Miriam expects that a romantic tryst is in store, but in the film’s most horrifying scene, his powerful hands choke the life out of her. We watch the sequence play out in the reflection of her cat’s eyes glasses that have fallen to the ground in the scuffle. 

Word of the hideous crime spreads fast, but not quickly enough to prevent Bruno’s escape, and he flees the scene with impunity, having transformed a tranquil, family-friendly spot into the scene of a cold-blooded murder. 

The film’s dramatic climax takes place later, back at the carnival’s merry-go-round, where Guy and Bruno fight to the death amid of gaggle of terrified children. By a fluke, the carousel speeds up and spins out of control, sending the rotating platform careening off its axis and ending the battle. 

For a moment it feels like the entire planet has broken free of its orbit. The carousel, a children’s amusement, is transformed into a terrifying instrument of death — Mr. Hitchcock’s mischievous dark humor is at work here. He assures us that we’ll never again look at a seemingly innocent carousel quite the same way. 

“Nightmare Alley” (2021) 

The two "Nightmare Alley" films (1947 and 2021) are the gold standard of carnival noir. Both present horrifying views of carnival life in the depths of the Great Depression, however the more recent film will be the focus here. 

'Nightmare Alley' (2021)

Into this milieu strides Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a man with a sordid past. He’s looking for a place to hide out and he finds work at the traveling carnival, where the despicable owner, Clem (Willem Defoe), maintains an extensive display of deformed humans' remains floating in glass jars of preservative. 

Equally vile is his practice of seeking out alcoholics and drug addicts and feeding them opium-laced moonshine. The broken men are reduced to a sub-human existence in which they bite the heads off of live chickens for the savage delight of carnival gawkers, who, Clem theorizes, need someone to look down upon. 

Stan, having stolen the secrets to another performer's mind reading act, eventually leaves the carnival and sets out on the road with Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara), the carny’s electrically charged sideshow performer — she is able to withstand large surges of electrical current that flash across her body like chain lightning. 

The pair make good as nightclub performers and phony spiritual mediums, conducting seances for well-heeled suckers. But their hocus-pocus act summonsing the spirit world eventually falls apart, and for Stanton, there’s nowhere else to go but back to the carnival, which is under different management. 

The new carnival owner offers Stan a place to stay, but he must start at the bottom, and Stan knows all too well what that means. He will be the geek, subsisting on opium-laced booze, and biting the heads off of chickens for the savage delight of sideshow audiences. He has at last descended into hell. 

“Ride the Pink Horse” (1947) 

Angry, vengeful Lucky Gagin (Robert Montgomery) arrives in a small New Mexico town during its annual fiesta with the intent of blackmailing mobster Frank Hugo (Fred Clark). 

'Ride the Pink Horse'

Gagin is disoriented and can’t settle in, until he meets Native American teenager Pila (Wanda Hendrix), and Pancho (Thomas Gomez), who operates a tio vivo (carousel). Gagin insults and ignores Pila, who inexplicably hovers near him like a guardian angel. 

The hotels are stuffed with crass, rich Americans who have come to experience the fiesta. Unable to book a room, Gagin accepts Pancho’s invitation to stay at his place. The accommodations are more rustic than Gagin anticipates, but still quite drunk from a night at the cantina, he crashes for the night beside the tio vivo, which becomes the central motif in the second part of the film. 

Its wooden horses travel in a circular motion like racetrack thoroughbreds, but never get anywhere — perhaps a metaphor for Gagin’s inner conflicts. He dreams of a better life, with money and status symbols, and the pink horse seems to represent his aspirations, but alas, his wishes prove futile. 

The tio vivo also serves as a refuge for Gagin when Pancho and Pila hide him in on the spinning amusement as gangsters pursue him. 

The flying horses of the tio vivo are a connection to more innocent times. The children who ride on the tio vivo are unspoiled by greed and the pursuit of status symbols, and we can imagine a time when Gagin was less enthralled with material gain. 

Conversely, Pancho’s belief that money is not an essential ingredient for a happy life — quite the opposite of Gagin’s view — begin to rub off on Gagin. The would-be blackmailer’s initial disdain for Native American and Mexican American cultures fades as he realizes that, unlike the crass, brutal gangsters who are like him, Pila and Pancho are the ones who have cared for and helped him. 

At the film's start, Gagin is an empty, weak man who berates Pila, telling her to fix her hair and clothes so that she’ll look “human.” But it’s the teenaged Pila who rescues him from peril, and through this experience Gagin is a bit humbled. He develops a touch of social grace and better manners — in other words, he’s becoming more human. 

“Ace in the Hole” (1951) — also known as “The Big Carnival” 

A man is trapped in a cave-in at the site of a former Native American settlement and a rescue operation is in progress. 

'Ace in the Hole'

Spectators gather, and some are eager to step in and make a quick buck. That includes disreputable tabloid newshound Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who not only covers the story for his paper, but uses his influence to prolong the rescue operation so that he can continue to exploit this tragedy for all it’s worth. 

The story catches fire with the public, and droves of sightseers arrive on the scene. A carnival with a Ferris wheel soon follows, demonstrating that exploitation can infect the most sobering of events.

The trapped man, Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), whose life hangs by a thread, does his best to keep his sanity as the rescue operation drags on. Meanwhile, the spectators are all too ready to hunker down with popcorn and cotton candy and watch a tragedy unfold. 

Unlike other noir carnivals, this one doesn’t deliver unsavoriness to an innocent public, but instead arrives to entertain gawkers and thrill seekers who are drawn to the scene of a tragic event like iron filings to a magnet. The carnival is merely an outward expression of the spectators' callousness.

Carnival barkers exploit the tragedy for all it’s worth, and the audience stays riveted to the grotesque spectacle as it develops. The unsavoriness of the carnival atmosphere reflects the exploitive, opportunistic wrangling of Tatum, who uses the cave-in rescue for his yellow journalistic purposes. Images of families frolicking while a human life is at stake is particularly unsettling. 

“Ace in the Hole” is a meditation on the public’s unquenchable thirst for tragic exhibitions, and disregard for the cost in human lives that results from those calamities. 

As the story reaches it inevitable heartbreaking end, spectators turn and leave, the media circus rolls up its tent, and with no more profit to be had, the carnival barkers move on to greener pastures. 

“Lady from Shanghai” (1948) 

Irish sailor Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles) gets mixed up with Elsa "Rosalie" Bannister (Rita Hayworth) and her older husband, Arthur (Everett Sloane), who begins to suspect that Michael and his wife are having an affair. 

'Lady From Shanghai'

Michael is a man of humble means — Arthur is a wealthy and arrogant attorney. He hires Michael to pilot his yacht, and before long, tension mounts as the trio embarks on a cruise. 

When one of Arthur’s associates is shot and killed, suspicion falls on Michael. He’s tried for a murder he didn’t commit, and at the trial, he gulps down a bottle of pills to create a diversion and escapes from the courtroom. 

He flees to nearby Chinatown and ducks into an auditorium where a theatrical production is in progress. He begins to feel groggy, but when the police enter he runs again, this time to a carnival. He enters a surrealistic funhouse that seems to reflect his perceptions altered by his adrenaline-fueled escape and the drugs coursing through his system. 

At last he comes upon a carnival’s house or mirrors, where Elsa has followed him. Arthur appears, and a shootout between the husband and wife ensues. The mind-bending multiple reflections of Elsa and Arthur, which seem to stretch into infinity, are shattered as they exchange gunfire, leaving a roomful of shattered glass and a couple of corpses. 

Like the the Bannisters' illusions and deceit, the house of mirrors is an apt location to draw the curtain on their tortured marriage. Finally, their lies and machinations are smashed into tiny pieces, and Michael walks away, free, at least for now. 

“Gun Crazy” (1950) 

There’s nothing quite like firearms to bring people together — or drive them apart. 

'Gun Crazy'

So, it’s no wonder that Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) and Bart Tare (John Dall) should meet cute at a sharpshooting sideshow. Laurie fires hot lead at targets for the audience’s enjoyment and her handiness with a Colt makes Bart light up — he’s a sharpshooter in his own wright, and there’s an immediate attraction between the two. 

The smitten Bart hops onstage to challenge the young Annie Oakley wannabe to a contest — there’s palpable magnetism between them and also a struggle for the upper hand. As the contest heat up, the shooting match looks a lot like foreplay. Bart wins and conquers the resistant Laurie, and it’s not long before they pair up and go on robbery and murder spree — as young lovers in noir do. 

For the “shootin’ iron” obsessed pair, life grows dull when firearms aren't part of the picture. With no wars to fight, no frontier territory to claim and defend, a young couple must set out and create their own adventures. 

In “Gun Crazy,” the carnival backdrop provides a tawdry environment for this ill-fated couple to find each other, flirt and embark on the off-center life to which they were destined. 

Who knows how many felonious partnerships may have sprouted in the apparently innocent environment of a carnival sideshow? Of course, when gunfire is a catalyst for romance, the smitten couple walk a path of near certain doom. 

“Man in the Dark” (1953) 

Unlucky Steve (Edmond O'Brien), a convicted felon, is released from prison after undergoing an experimental procedure that erases from his brain all criminal impulses — the side effect being permanent memory loss. 

'Man in the Dark'

Using beautiful blonde Peg (Audrey Totter) as bait, Steve's old cronies — Lefty (Ted de Corsia), Arnie (Horace McMahon) and Cookie (Nick Dennis) — kidnap the amnesiac ex-con and try to jog his memory to learn where he hid the stolen loot before he went to the pen. 

He manages to get away from the bad guys, and later dreams of visiting a carnival. In his apartment, he finds a slip of paper with a number scrawled on it, but the number doesn’t correspond to a post office box. 

On a whim, he and Peg go to the carnival that he saw in his dream. Pursued by the police and his criminal buddies, Steve hops on an amusement ride with the cops hot on his heels and firing shots in his direction.

In a revealing bit of montage, the scene cuts to an animatronic figure of a hefty lady guffawing, seeming to mock the fleeing fugitive. The crowded carnival, with it glimmering lights and the strange laughing puppet mirror Steve’s disoriented state of mind. He’s trying to make sense out of disjointed snippets of things he can remember while chaos and the threat of death surround him. 

The action comes to a head on the roller coaster, with Steve hopping off and fighting to the death atop the tracks. All the while he's been trying to spark his memory in hopes of finding the dough. 

He realizes that the scrap of paper is a parcel check room ticket, and  at last he strikes pay dirt. His mental confusion dissipates and he must choose whether or not to hand over the money to the authorities. 

With the prospect of starting anew, he returns the loot, hoping for a better life ahead. For Steve, the carnival is a test of his wits and brawn, a crime scene, and finally, a place of redemption — a rare phenomenon in noir. 

“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) 

I know what you’re going to say: “They Shoot Horses ... ” is a film about a dance marathon, not a carnival. True, but both share similar themes of exploitation of the desperately impoverished who are abused for cheap entertainment. 

'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?'

The public can feast on the dancers’ humiliation as they limp through the physically and psychologically punishing spectacle, hoping to win a cash prize. Most exit the contest after profound physical breakdowns. 

Much like carnival freaks, the dancers’ pain is on display, and it’s a distraction for Depression-era gawkers who can take comfort in knowing that others are much worse off than are they. 

It’s a game in which only one couple goes home with the cash. Among the hopeful vying for the big payout are Gloria Beatty (Jane Fonda) and Robert Syverton (Michael Sarrazin), who team up and withstand the tortuous demands of a contest that drags on for days. 

Somewhere along the way, the marathon barker, Rocky Gravo (Gig Young), tells the dancing couple that if they’re willing to marry before the audience of dance hall gawkers, a rich woman will pay them a bonus. Gloria refuses, and later they learn that the contest isn’t what it seems. 

Expenses deducted from any prize money they might win will leave them with virtually nothing. It’s the kind of raw deal that is typical of film noir. No matter what you do, or how hard you try to avoid the penitentiary or the gallows, fate will push you in the wrong direction. 

“They Shoot Horses” ends in tragedy, made all the more grotesque by the air of merriment surrounding the self-destructive pair. Callous spectators, unsympathetic to others’ pain, watch with passive amusement as lives disintegrate before their eyes — not unlike the Roman Coliseum. 

As a pair of victims collapse, the audience turns to view the next ugly spectacle that catches their eye. Regardless of the human wreckage it leaves in its wake, the show must go on.

When Works of Art Bewitch, Haunt ... and Judge

Detective Mark MacPherson is mesmerized by the portrait  of Laura Hunt. 

Noir anti-heroes often come from the wrong side of the tracks, and then struggle to brush off the dust from the old neighborhood. Lured by the trappings of the filthy rich — jewels, swell apartments, gorgeous babes — they cross the line into a saturnine world of deceit, plunder and sometimes murder, all in an ill-advised effort to reinvent themselves. And it usually ends badly.

One plaything of the well-heeled seen often in film noir is the painted portrait, a symbol of power and wealth, and sometimes the keystone of the noir drama’s plot. Portraits of women frequently turn up, sometimes echoing a character's desire to isolate and possess the sitter. Other times the subject of a painting seems to lord over a room, casting judgment on those who behold the artwork. 

In Otto Preminger’s “Laura” (1944), police Det. Lt. Mark McPherson (Dana Andrew) falls in love with the eponymous murder victim, Laura Hunt (Jean Tierney), whose portrait hangs over her living room mantelpiece. His frequent visits to the scene of the crime, the dead girl’s apartment, are part of his investigation, so he says. 

But while there, he compulsively sifts through her possessions, listens to her favorite recordings of romantic music and moons over the portrait. All the while Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a poison-tongued gossip columnist, chides the detective about “falling in love with a corpse.”

But the alluring portrait of the murdered woman has an unmistakable attraction for MacPherson, and the artwork is as much a character in the story as any of the living cast members. It also helps set the stage for a dramatic plot twist that comes halfway through the film. Under Laura's spell, MacPherson is suddenly snapped awake from his reverie as the story takes its unexpected turn. 

Gene Tierney, in 'Whirlpool'

In another Preminger noir, “Whirlpool” (1950), Anne Sutton (Jean Tierney, again), a psychiatrist’s wife, suffers from kleptomania and is hypnotized to treat her condition. Those around her consider her grasp of reality shaky at best.

Echoing “Laura,” a portrait of a deceased woman plays an outsized role in the film. Anne is blamed for the woman’s death, and the portrait, again, hung over the living room mantelpiece, seems to haunt the victim’s former residence — the piercing eyes of justice looking down on Anne, judging her and ready to pass sentence.

Joan Bennett, Edward G. Robinson,  
'The Woman in the Window.'

In Fritz Lang’s “The Woman in the Window,” Prof. Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson), a beloved university educator, lectures his students about ethical principles. One night, he finds himself in a quandary that throws his life into turmoil and causes him to question his own principles.

His burgeoning problems begin after he spies a painting of a beautiful woman on display in a gallery’s front window. The story takes a magical turn when the woman in the painting suddenly appears on the sidewalk next to him. 

The heralded professor eventually lands in the middle of a spiraling set of circumstances that threaten to envelop him like quicksand. For Wanley, the woman of his dreams, who seems to materialize out of the painting, is a siren lying in wait, ready to take possession of him.

Edward G. Robinson in ' Scarlet Street'

Likewise, in "Scarlet Street" (1945), Edward G. Robinson plays amateur artist Christopher "Chris" Cross, who gets mixed up with tawdry characters Katherine 'Kitty' March (Joan Bennett) and Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea) who exploit his creative talents. 

Kitty takes credit for Chris's paintings after an art critic gives the works a rave review. Chris, the meek artist, is unable to convince the world that he created the masterworks that are selling for large sums.

Paintings used in these films, however, aren't likely to command whopping prices at auction. In fact, some are hardly paintings at all. The portrait of Laura Hunt, for instance, was actually a varnished photograph of actress Jean Tierney, who played the ill-fated title character. 

Then, there's a downright silly example of art appearing in noir. A portrait, supposedly by Renaissance master Raphael, appears in "The Dark Corner" (1946) (also starring Clifton Webb). It's a left-handed imitation of the artist's work that wouldn't fool a child.

So, let's just call them what they are — movie props that tell a story of their own. They're not great works of art, but part of larger creative works — the films they appear in — that oftentimes achieve greatness in their own wright.

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