One Revealing Moment: Something that Happens in “The Night of the Hunter” Made Me Rethink My First Impression of the Film and See It in an Entirely New Light

Robert Mitchum, "The Night of the Hunter" (1955).

By Paul Parcellin

I first saw “The Night of the Hunter” (1955) around 20 or so years ago and walked away impressed but not particularly in love with the movie, and having said that I know what many of you are thinking: Heresy! 

I have no real excuse for my initial reaction. I’ll blame it on a lack of sleep, fatigue after sitting through too many double features in a row, or some other convenient but less than honest alibi. 

Whatever. 

Sometimes the point of a film, that is, the thing that distinguishes it from others, can fly right past you. At least in my case it did. But, I’m glad that I recently rewatched it because I’d missed one salient point. Perhaps that is the reason why the popularity of this Charles Laughton directed drama, the only film he ever helmed, which has been an audience and critics’ favorite for decades, puzzled me a bit.

The story goes like this:

Itinerant preacher and psychopath Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) scours the American countryside during the Great Depression, preaching the word of the Lord as he searches for rich widows to romance, marry and bump off, after which he absconds with their dough. To say the least, Harry’s theological credentials are questionable. He’s the picture of evil, and if that isn’t obvious enough he has the words “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on the fingers of both hands. 

Sally Jane Bruce, Billy Chapin,
Shelley Winters, Robert Mitchum.

Before long he finds Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), widow of Ben Harper, who was executed for a couple of murders he committed during a bank robbery. Harry was Ben’s prison cellmate, and the evil preacher suspects that Ben stashed a pile of the loot from the robbery in his homestead. Once he locates his prey, Harry expertly worms his way into the Harper family, which includes 9-year-old John (Billy Chapin) and 4-year old Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). 

A supreme conman, Harry earns Willa’s trust and dazzles her friends and neighbors with dramatic sermons. A look of serene satisfaction washes over the townsfolk’s faces whenever Harry waxes poetic about the struggle of good over evil. While his LOVE/HATE tattoos ought to be ample warning that something’s rotten in Denmark, a gaggle of believers, including Willa, remains deeply under his spell.

Before long, young John finds himself in the increasingly treacherous position of resisting his gullible mother, who marries the evil man and wants John to embrace Harry as his stepdad. The youngster already has Harry’s number, and tries to make his mother see the truth, but she’s smitten and unable to accept the obvious. It seems that nearly every adults in town has fallen down on the job of protecting the little ones.

Another Serial Killer Comes to Mind

Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten,
"Shadow of a Doubt" (1943).

“The Night of the Hunter”’s plot resembles Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943), in which Joseph Cotten plays Uncle Charlie, a mentally disturbed rake who hides from the law with his sister and her family, and has a habit of knocking off rich widows for profit. But Hitchcock’s film is anchored in a more natural and realistic view of small town American than is Laughton’s. “The Night of the Hunter” has a surreal edge that at times makes it seem like a storybook legend of horrific proportions come to life. 

Unlike Cotten’s seething but restrained Uncle Charlie, Mitchum’s bad guy is a thundering force of nature whose mere presence can charm an entire community whilst putting the lives of the vulnerable in danger. Like most villains, Harry is the hero of his own story and is only doing the Lord’s work, he reasons. He talks to God, seeking direction, and the Almighty furnishes the phony preacher with victims to murder and rob so that Harry can continue to spread the good word. Or at least that’s what Harry believes. 

So, is Harry delusional and psychotic or crystal clear about the ethics of his deeds and purely remorseless? Hard to say, exactly, but most likely it’s a bit of each of the above. But there’s no doubt that he’s a monster and what is most disturbing is that no one is suspicious of him when they ought to be — no one except John, that is, who seems to have inherited all of the common sense in his family. 

Mitchum, glowering at the Burlesque show.

Early on, we see the psychological conflicts behind Harry’s anti-social behavior. When we first meet him he’s tooling around in stolen car. The cops eventually catch up with him and haul him out of a burlesque show where he’s been seething and glowering at a dancer. It’s distinctly possible that the highly repressed preacher is window shopping for victim on whom he could murderously vent his psycho-sexual rage. Later, on his and Willa’s wedding night, she nervously prepares for her first erotic encounter with her new spouse, but Harry is enraged and disgusted by her conjugal expectations. Clearly, Willa is not in for a memorable honeymoon.

So, What’s the Problem?

From the above plot summary you’d rightly conclude that this film has a lot of the elements that a noir ought to have, and you may be wondering why I hadn’t revisited it over the years.

As I relate this to you I can almost hear the crowd gathering on my doorstep, pitchforks, torchlights and axes in hand, so I’ll have to make this somewhat brief. This isn’t going to be a hatchet job, so please lay down your weapons for a moment as I make my case.

Part of the reason why I allowed this film to lie dormant in my memory for so long might be because it’s just plain hard to pin down exactly what kind of movie it is. Depending on who you talk to you might call it a noir, which I do, but it skirts other genres and styles, too. 

For instance:

An escape on the river.

If you think of it as a noir, you’ll probably notice that it tends to wander into unfamiliar territory from time to time. The young ones flee Harry’s murderous wrath, narrowly escaping on a skiff that carries them downstream on the river Huckleberry Finn style, and the film begins to feel more Mark Twain than James M. Cain.

At other times we get a distinctly western vibe, in part because of its rural setting, but especially when Harry takes to horseback in pursuit of the runaway children. 

To add yet another flavor to the stew, you might call it a monster movie and that wouldn’t be too far off base, either, although nothing supernatural occurs and it has not a hint of science fiction. But Harry Powell is clearly a demon and a serial killer in clerical garb who wants money and is willing to murder women and children to get it. 

Robert Mitchum, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce.

Also muddying the noir waters are those carefully arranged visual motifs that crop up every now and then. Even the dark, forbidding basement, with the staircase and doorway looming above the kids as they hide from Harry, is an artfully framed composition that is at once terrifying and strangely aesthetically pleasing. Almost each scene begins with a well composed, meticulously framed shot, like photographs in a picture book that come to life. Shots of the crescent moon, jackrabbits and an owl are incorporated into the nighttime scenes on the river. We see the kids on their skiff shot through a spiderweb in the foreground —  a metaphor that makes us wonder if they will be caught in Harry’s web? 

As the youths journey downriver, heavy (maybe heavy handed) symbolism continues. They pass a flock of sheep and we think of sacrificial lambs — Harry liked to call the kids “little lambs,” a creepy smokescreen that fooled everyone except John. 

Safe at Last?

Lillian Gish, Robert Mitchum, Gloria Castillo,
Harry waits to pounce.

They finally drift into the sheltering arms of kindly Miss Cooper (Lillian Gish), who has turned her home into a refuge for orphans and we’re allowed to breathe a momentary sigh of relief. Echoing John and Pearl’s dramatic trip downriver, more symbolism is in store at Miss Cooper’s nightly Bible reading, which happens to include the parable of Moses and the bulrushes; the infant Moses, floating downstream, is rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter, a story that is all too familiar to the two youngsters.

I must admit that part of my problem with these thoughtfully composed sequence was that I didn’t get the B-movie charge I’d associated with noir. That’s not to say I didn’t care for films from the major studios, but I was, and still am, hooked on the slapdash craftsmanship that went into low budget Poverty Row B-movie, such as “Detour.” To me, their kind of ragged, shot on the fly aesthetic has an unselfconscious energy that’s hard to replicate.

Confronted with “The Night of the Hunter,” a strangely allegorical film, I had trouble accepting it as a noir. It’s full of dark shadows, thundering locomotives and murder; all the stuff that sounds like noir. But how could it be noir? It doesn’t take place in the present day, nor is it set in the city. Needless to say, my short-sighted views have since been revised.

Most significant of all was that “revealing moment” in “The Night of the Hunter” that caused me to rethink my opinion of the film. It’s one of the story's most important scenes: Harry’s arrest. 

It passes rather quickly so it’s easy to miss its significance — especially if you’re not particularly alert at the time. In it, John witnesses the lawmen’s takedown of Harry. As the police wrestle him to the ground and snap on the cuffs, John is nearly moved to tears, pleading with the cops to take it easy on Harry. 

John and Pearl's father, Ben (Peter Graves),
is taken into custody.

That scene is a replay of the one we see in the beginning of the film in which John witnesses his father, Ben, being roughly taken into custody. It’s a dramatic flashback for the young boy, who had remained stoic as he and his sister traveled through hell before arriving at this concluding scene, and it opens a floodgate of emotion in him. The whole experience may have cost him his innocence, but John has not forfeited his humanity. He still regards Harry as a human being even though the murderous thug killed his mother and was inches away from slaying him and his sister.

Because John was dragged through the virtual fires of Hades and survived, and was not tarnished or jaded from the experience, he is one of the film’s heroes. The other is Miss Cooper, who, with her trusty rifle saves the day. 

Another thought I had after seeing the film again:

In the end, it took a perceptive 9-year-old boy to see through a charlatan’s facade while most of the adults were hoodwinked by a conman who exploited their religious fervor. 

John's clarity of vision is something we could well use more of today.  

The Man From Nowhere: Who is Larry Cravat and why do so many people want to do him harm?

John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, "Somewhere in the Night" (1946).

Battle Fatigue on the Homefront:
Two views of life after the big one

By Paul Parcellin

“Somewhere in the Night” (1946)

George Taylor (John Hodiak) awakens in a military hospital, and to his horror discovers that his memory has been wiped clean by a serious wound he received in the war. He can’t remember his name or anything of his past, but he hides his amnesia from the doctors to prevent them from holding him longer. After his bodily scars heal, he’s resolved to discover who he really is. 

Shell shocked returning veterans like George are often seen in noir. Characters such as Gerard (Dick Powell) in “Cornered” (1945) and the unforgettable Buzz (William Bendix) in “The Blue Dahlia,” with a steel plate implanted in his skull and tormented to the brink of insanity by “monkey music.” Both walk down hostile streets, vulnerable, filled with rage and terribly lost. 

Like his war damaged brethren, George embarks on a mission, believing he may fill the black hole that has replaced his memories. Back in civilian life, he searches for leads but there’s scant information to go on. A note from an anonymous person wishing him the worst of luck because he committed an unforgivable deed, and a letter from a man he doesn’t know, Larry Cravat, is all that he’s able to find.

Right away we notice that he has an intuitive ability to analyze clues, which is itself a hint about his ilife before the war. His quest begins in Los Angeles, his hometown — he wouldn’t have known that if the discharge officer hadn’t mentioned it. 

As the story unfolds, we’re left to ponder two equally mysterious men, Larry Cravat, whom we haven’t met, and George, who will lead us on a circuitous journey that is his quest. George sports the pencil thin mustache of a slick operator, and nearly everyone he encounters in his hunt for the truth lives a fast life, mostly on the wrong side of the law. 

Some might imagine that he’s been handed the opportunity of a lifetime, especially for someone with a sketchy past. This could be his chance to reinvent himself and start anew. But his blank slate of a life holds no appeal to George; it’s more like a nightmare from which he can never wake up.

It’s not until he encounters an older woman who reflects on her own isolated, lonely existence that George's existential crisis comes into focus. Few are as cut off from society as those with no history or ties to others. He’s not marooned on an uninhabited desert isle, but he may as well be. Worse still, danger can come from any direction, and he’s never sure who he can trust.

Once we see that desperation and terror are what drives him forward, it’s easier to understand why he takes the kinds of risks that he does. Most of us would go to the authorities for help if we were in George’s position, but he soon realizes that his pre-war activities make that impossible.

In Los Angeles he runs into some tough guys who want to know why he’s looking for the elusive Larry Cravat and are willing to pull a trigger to get rid of him.

The pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place when he discovers that a small fortune in cash is up for grabs and members of the underworld are eager to grab it. But most of all, the gangsters want to find the mystery man, Larry Cravat, and so does George. He finally does, and it’s an encounter that he could hardly have anticipated.

Hodiak’s Noir Films

John Hodiak was featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” (1944) opposite Tallulah Bankhead. Fox gave him his starring role in “Somewhere in the Night,” and he acted with Lucille Ball in MGM’s “Two Smart People” (1946). He appeared with George Murphy and Frances Gifford in “The Arnelo Affair” (1947), and Paramount’s “Desert Fury” (1947) with Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott. He played a supporting role in “The Bribe” (1949) and co-starred with Hedy Lamarr in “A Lady Without Passport” (1950).

Co-star Nancy Guild also appeared in “The Brasher Doubloon” (1947).

“Somewhere in the Night” director Joseph Mankiewicz wrote “Manhattan Melodrama” (1934), and wrote and directed “No Way Out” (1950), which launched the career of Sidney Poitier. He’s probably best known for directing “All About Eve” (1950) with Bette Davis.

His last film under contract with Fox was “5 Fingers” (1952), starring James Mason and Danielle Darrieux.

Barry Sullivan, Loretta Young, "Cause for Alarm!" (1951).

“Cause for Alarm!” (1951)

From the outside, everything looks chipper in Ellen and George Jones’s marriage, but for them, post-war domesticity is anything but blissful.  

Ellen (Loretta Young) and George (Barry Sullivan) meet during the war. She’s a nurse at a naval hospital and George is a pilot. Ellen has an amicable split with the physician she’s been dating, Dr. Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), and takes up with George, who happens to be Ranney’s buddy. After the war, George and Ellen marry and settle down in the quiet of the suburbs. George, it turns out, is a brash lout whom Ellen can never seem to please. She endures a mountain of abuse from this narcissistic manipulator who never fails to play the victim.

“Nothing a woman likes better than shoving a man around,” he mutters at one point, although it’s clear that in his marriage, George is the one doing the shoving.

Later, he relates a telling story: As a boy, another youngster tried to take a toy ship he’d painstakingly built. He brutally assaulted the boy in retribution, and as punishment his mother made him give the toy to the battered youth. Despite the many hours it took to craft the ship, George intentionally dropped it on the ground and let it shatter.

It’s painfully obvious that Ellen will end up like that boat should she ever decide to leave him, although that seems unlikely. Despite George's rotten treatment of her, Ellen is devoted to him and is an apologist for his bad behavior.

But matters get worse when he shares with Ellen his paranoid delusion that she and Ranney are secretly involved and are planning to do him in.

A chain of events causes Ellen to rush madly across the city in an attempt to intercept a letter that George dropped into the post. In it, he fabricated evidence that could put Ellen in prison for life. The film’s last act is filled with near misses and constantly worsening complications. A nosey neighbor, her insistent mother-in-law and a child on a tricycle conspire to scuttle her quest to retrieve the all-important envelope from the rigid U.S. Postal Service. 

Despite its suburban setting, “Cause for Alarm!” shows us that  tree-lined residential streets can present a deceptively placid facade that masks what’s really happening behind the scenes. And it may be every bit as threatening as the mean streets of the big, bad city.

Hey, College Boy, Wanna Rob a Casino?

Four vets attending college on the GI Bill and a
cabaret singer try to rob a Reno casino and 
pull off the perfect crime. 

‘Five Against the House’ (1955):
Part soap opera, part screwball comedy,
with a heist tacked on at the end

A

quartet of Korean War veterans studying at college are best buddies. While they’re older than the average college kid, some are in their second childhood. They chase girls; a couple of them haze a freshman and make him their personal slave. This is supposed to be all in fun but on today's campuses it would break the needle on the creepy meter. All of which has little to nothing to do with the heist that they’ll eventually plot.

The foursome goes to Harold’s casino in Reno, Nev., for a quick shot of gambling before they must turn around and get back to campus. Pop culture enthusiasts may be interested to learn that the film was shot on location at Harold’s, which long ago met with the wrecking ball, as aging casinos do.

By chance, a couple of the guys witness one of the all-time dumbest robbery attempts at the cashier’s window. The would-be holdup man gets caught, but that’s when Ronnie (Kerwin Mathews) gets the idea to pull a stickup of his own. He’s a rich kid who doesn’t need the money, but wants to prove he’s smart enough to rob the joint without getting caught (shades of Leopold and Loeb). 

The idea is to leave the stolen loot where the casino can recover it. It’s meant to be a prank. But Brick (Brian Keith), who suffered a head wound in the war, is a wild card in this shaky spectacle. This gimmick recalls William Bendix’s shell-shocked Buzz Wanchek in “The Blue Dahlia” (1946), who may or may not have committed a murder.

The most serious-minded of the group, Al Mercer (Guy Madison), whose on again, off again relationship with Kay (Kim Novak) takes up a chunk of the film’s first 40 minutes or so, plans on a career in law and the prank is clearly not his cup of tea. But he's tricked into going along with the group.

That a band of such well-scrubbed lads would flirt with arrest and possibly deadly consequences is a stretch. The whimsical tone shifts to somber when we realize that there's a deranged maniac among the lads who’s been waiting to show his cards.

We never feel that this band of preppies is up to the task of pulling off such a hoax, but never mind. The film’s final minutes are what makes it worth watching, assuming that you can hang in there that long. The guys employ a clever but highly improbable homemade machine which they hope will make a successful robbery possible — but then things go wrong. 

With a bigger helping of hijinx, or a more disciplined approach to the caper, “Five Against the House” could have been a winner. Instead, it runs low on chips toward the middle, and just about folds before the game really gets underway.

'Nightmare Alley' 2021: Guillermo Del Toro's Noir Carnival of Horror

 

I should have known better than to smuggle a chicken burrito into the theater from the taqueria next door to it. Why, you ask? Let’s just say I bit into it at an unappetizing moment in the film. If you saw the original “Nightmare Alley” (1947) with Tyrone Power, or if you know what a carnival geek is, you’ll get the idea. Bummer.

But the good news is that “Nightmare Alley” (2021), the stunningly dark reincarnation of the original, is a black-hearted wonder. Although it’s usually a bad idea to remake a great old film, and the original was just that, director Guillermo del Toro gives it a new and, yes, darker life, closer to the novel on which it is based.

 

The film opens before the start of World War II — at one point a character remarks that the guy who looks like Charlie Chaplin just invaded Poland. The Depression is at full dudgeon and desperation hangs over the populace like a thick toxic cloud. 

In this dystopic world we encounter the amoral, tormented Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), whose life is a puzzle from the start. When we meet him, he’s committing a startlingly grim act, and only later do we learn the story behind it. He hightails it out of town and stumbles into a traveling carnival, where he’s offered temporary work, and so he mingles with the denizens of this underground culture in which it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done — lucky for Stan.

He wanders into the residence of fortune teller Zeena the Seer (Toni Collette), who, with Stan, cheats on her mate Pete (David Strathairn), but seems a kind-hearted soul compared with the vipers who populate the traveling carney. 

Detestable carney boss Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe) oversees a particularly grotesque carnival attraction, an assortment of glass jars that contain a virtual museum of deformities with remains floating in liquid preservatives. One, in particular, an infant with a protrusion through the forehead, whose mother died in childbirth, reappears on the screen from time to time, darkly implying painful details of Stan’s history. That this is a showpiece for the ogling masses casts a dark view indeed of the populace in the years leading up to the war.

With the worst of the Depression upon them, sideshow freaks are in great demand with a public who wants someone to look down on and feel superior to, Stan is told. We soon meet the most degraded sideshow performer, the geek, a tragically demented man who bites the heads off chickens for the audience’s savage amusement and is kept in a cage like an animal. 

When the geek escapes from captivity, Stan is ordered to help flush him out of the fun house where he’s likely holed up. The place is filled with monsters and other spooky things rendered in wood, cardboard and plaster of paris, a delightfully hellish landscape filled with playful menace. It may also serve as an ominous glimpse into Stan’s future. 

More ominous still, Zeena’s tarot cards predict Stan will face the opportunity to choose between a straight and narrow life and doom. When this comes to pass, we already know which path he’ll choose.

 

Stan meets Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara), the carney’s electrically charged sideshow performer — she is able to withstand large surges of electrical current that flash across her body like a lightning storm. She’s a sweet girl who manages to stay removed from the sideshow ruffians thanks to the watchful eye of carney strongman Bruno (Ron Perlman), who keeps her out of harm’s way. Unfortunately for her, she comes to believe in Stan, much to Bruno’s dismay, and the two become an item.

Stan has ambitions to go on the road with the mentalist act he swipes from Zeena’s Pete, a good-hearted but weary tippler. Stan wants to go after well-heeled dupes who are ripe for the picking. The other carneys urge Stan to avoid doing a “spook show” — posing as a true mind-reader and spiritualist, which is a line that none of them will cross. But, Stan’s all too ready to hoodwink suckers with fatter wallets than the beaten-down masses who crowd the sideshows, so he and Molly leave the carney behind and eventually make the leap to the upscale nightclub circuit.

 

It’s not long before he connects with a slippery psychologist, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a seductive shape-shifter who, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, is a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. They begin an affair of sorts, and she offers him the means to cash in on some wealthy dupes. He lands a promising but somewhat dangerous client, troubled millionaire Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins).

But, with every silver lining comes a dark cloud, and Stan is eventually in for a precipitous fall — this is noir, after all, and that's a prime convention of the genre.

Speaking of conventions, most traditional noirs were shot cheaply, which meant that color film was verboten. Del Toro wants to release a black and white version of his film. The muted tones of the color print are quietly effective, but it would be thrilling to see it in black in white. Let’s hope that happens.

As remakes go, “Nightmare Alley” more than holds its own with its many outstanding performances, even in the smaller roles, wonderful direction and taut script. What sets it apart from  standard Hollywood do-overs is its refusal to compromise. True to its noir roots, the film is an oddity today, minus an upbeat ending calculated to resonate with the masses, and that’s a good thing. The chilling conclusion is devastating. Be warned, if you’re hoping for even a glimmer of sunshine when emerging from this darkened house of horrors you may need whiskey — but hold the chicken burrito. 

 

'The Silent Partner' : A Noir Bank Job, 1970s Style

Elliot Gould in 'The Silent Partner.'

Elliot Gould is Miles Cullen, a Toronto bank teller whose chief companions are tropical fish that flutter about in an aquarium in his cramped apartment. To his female co-workers, Miles is a teddy bear nerd with as much sex appeal as one of his guppies.

One day, he realizes that sinister acts are taking place in the mall where his bank is located. Something churns within him, and before long his ruminations bubble to the surface. He fusses over his chess board — the first clue that this drama will be a tactical battle of wits.

Frustrated in his dreams of winning the love of a beautiful woman, Julie (Susannah York), he takes an uncharacteristic step that could free him from his mundane life or lead to ruin  — pocketing a healthy chunk of the bank's funds after a hold-up man makes off with some of the cash drawer contents.

As ineffectual as he is with the opposite sex, Miles proves himself a surprisingly skilled criminal, although it becomes clear he has not considered all of the consequences of his actions.

Once the deed is done, a number of snags appear, including the reappearance of Reikle (Christopher Plummer), a sadistic criminal who is the diametric opposite of Miles. Further complicating the matter is Elaine (Céline Lomez), a femme fatale with murkey allegiances — as femmes fatale often have.

Along the way, Miles comes close to losing the purloined fortune he hopes will serve as an early retirement fund. In addition to keeping his hands on the cash, he must figure out how to rid himself of his nemesis, Reikle, who has made Miles his unwilling silent partner.

The screenplay, written by Curtis Hanson, who co-wrote and directed "L.A. Confidential," has a lean framework typical of neo noir. Scenes fit together nicely and project an understated authenticity. 

If one weakness must be singled out it's that "The Silent Partner" lacks noir's fatalistic outlook — the ending buttons up neatly and just misses greatness. See it anyway, because, unlike Julie's withering summation of Miles, its total is greater than the sum of its parts.

What the Devil is Film Noir, and Who Named It?

A scene from 'The Crimson Kimono,'  a 1959 thriller directed by Samuel Fuller.

I'm a little late in posting a link to the great 2014 New Yorker article by Richard Brody, "Film Noir: The Elusive Genre."
It's a smart discussion about what exactly makes a movie a noir. I won't be spoiling anything by saying that it's hard to really pin it down.
There are all kinds of crime films that you'll recognize, including gangster pictures, heist films, movies with kidnapping plots and murder mysteries. But film noir is defined not so much by the kind of criminals involved or the sort of crime that gets committed.
So what makes it noir?
It's the characters involved and the kinds of conflicts that they face.
Check out the article. It's a fairly short read, by New Yorker standards, anyway. And as always for that magazine, the writing is tops.
If the above link doesn't work, click this link.

A Touch of Orson: Venice Beach as Border Town

Orson Welles prepares a crucial scene in "Touch of Evil"

Downtown L.A.'s refurbished Million Dollar Theater recently screened the Orson Welles classic dark tale of corruption and murder, "Touch of Evil." The film was originally released in 1958 after the studio took control of it from Welles. There’s a recut and redubbed version in circulation these days that is largely restored to the version that Welles intended thanks to a 40-plus page memo he sent the producers protesting changes made to the film. Using the memo as a guide, restorers fixed much of the damage done by studio meddling 50 years after the original release. 
Film historians consider "Touch of Evil" to be the last film of the classic noir era, which began with "The Maltese Falcon" in 1941.
"Touch of Evil" is set in a Mexican border town, but Venice Beach, with it's Spanish style colonnades, stood in for a jerkwater berg overlooking our neighbor to the south.
Welles co-wrote the script, directed and co-starred along with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Marlene Dietrich. Also, playing supporting roles are Zsa Zsa Gabor and Dennis Weaver.
Below, a video about the "Touch of Evil" restoration:



See the photo at top, and note how the crane shot is used in a clip from the film's opening:

A B Picture That Profoundly Influenced Martin Scorsese

Whenever I see him in interviews, Martin Scorsese never fails to amaze me with the breadth of his film knowledge.
Click on this link to see a short video in which he talks about a crime movie that had a profound effect on the way he perceived, and later, made films. It's called "Murder By Contract," and you've probably never seen it. Above, you can watch a couple of scenes from the movie.

Tarantino's Twists and Turns Add Up Perfectly

Vincent, left, and Jules settle a score.

Some may quibble with “Pulp Fiction”’s herky jerky storyline. It dodges back and forth from the past to the present without warning. The trouble is, at first it’s challenging to figure out exactly what is happening in the present and what took place in the past.
You have to watch it more than one time before the sequence of events starts to make sense – and it does. There is really no “present” in the film. Each sequence, no matter where it fits into the story, past, present or future, is the only present you have to pay attention to.
The Oscar-winning “Pulp Fiction” screenplay is so skillfully written that you barely notice its complex time shifts. You just surf the narrative wave from beginning to end, and come in for a soft landing at the end of a fairly wild ride – is it just a coincidence that the opening music is Dick Dale’s surf guitar blast, “Miserlou”?

Knocked Off-Balance
Director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino’s non-linear storytelling – he co-wrote the script with Roger Avary – is hardly the artifice some make it out to be. In fact, the darting and weaving storyline serves a purpose, other than keeping the audience slightly off-balance, and the film would not be nearly as effective without it.

Honey Bunny, left, and Pumpkin.

The beginning and ending scenes are part of the same sequence. On an impulse, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) hold up a diner, but their plan goes awry when they unexpectedly meet up with Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), two mobbed-up hitmen.

Coffee and Handguns
The beginning sequence shows Honey Bunny and Pumpkin, over coffee and breakfast, hatching a plan to rob the diner. They kiss, brandish weapons, then go to work scaring everyone in the joint. Their plan is to clean out the cash register and grab everyone’s wallet without incident.
The scene cuts away to the opening credits, after which we begin meeting the motley cast of characters who inhabit L.A.’s underbelly.
The story plays out, and we're back at the same diner where we started, but Jules and Vincent, as it turns out, are catching some breakfast there, too. The four characters collide, of course, and the result is as anxiety-provoking and hilarious as the rest of the movie.

Ends at the Beginning
When you piece it together, though, the entire diner sequence actually takes place in about the middle of the story. By the time we reach the last scene we don't know how the diner stand-off between robbers and mobsters will end. But we do know what is going to happen after the scene is over, and we have seen everything that led up to it. But why put this out of sequence scene where it is in the film?

Like Kung-Fu Cain.

The answer, I think, is that it firmly establishes both the movie's theme, which is redemption, and the hero of the story, Jules. By the time we reach that fateful scene we learn that Jules has decided to leave his life of crime behind and "walk the earth like Kung-Fu Cain."

The Wrong Choice
Vincent, on the other hand, is going to keep being a mobster, and, because we've already seen the future, we know that he will meet a dark fate due to that unwise decision.
The actual ending, sequentially, is the death of Vincent and the triumph of Butch (Bruce Willis), the corrupt prizefighter who double-crossed the mob. But the film ends with Jules and Vincent, who are about to part ways as crime partners, exiting the diner into the blinding L.A. sun. It’s a new day, and Jules has found redemption. It’s the perfect place for the film to end.

A DIFFERENT WHITEY FROM BOSTON -- Warner Bros., the studio with a storied history of gangster film production, has tapped James Grey ("We Own the Night," "The Yards" and "Little Odessa") to write and direct "White Devil," inspired by the true story of Dorchester (Daw-chest-ah to the locals) native John Willis, who was adopted by a Chinese family and allegedly rose to the top of the Asian mob in Boston. His nickname? You guessed it: White Devil.

High Mass: Whitey Bulger, LSD and a Devil's Deal

Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger? Yup, the actor who played Dillinger in "Public Enemies" is going to play another crime icon, and the movie is slated for release next year. More about that later.

Dick Lehr, a former Boston Globe reporter and co-author of a new book about the life of James "Whitey" Bulger was in L.A. last night, and he brought along screenwriter Mark Mallouk who has adapted Lehr and Gerard O'Neill's previous tome, "Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal" for a movie that is to begin filming in Boston this summer. Depp and director Barry Levinson are both attached. Levinson is also in pre-production with "Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father."

James "Whitey" Bulger, 1956

Whitey, the crime boss who went on the lam and got busted here in Santa Monica, was an outstanding figure among underworld bosses, said Lehr. "His gang had reach." Whitey not only controlled Boston rackets, he had a hand in fixing horse races up and down the East Coast, and had a money skimming scam netting him $10,000 per week from World Jai Alai. He is a suspect in 19 homicides, including that of World Jai Alai owner Roger Wheeler.

Lehr read from his latest book, recounting Whitey's prison years in Atlanta in the 1950s, where he volunteered to participate in studies on what was a new drug in the United States, LSD. Psychiatrists thought that LSD might be a useful tool in the study of criminal psychopaths. However, Lehr says the CIA also got into the act and tested numerous other drugs on prisoners. We'll likely never know which substances were used in the testing because all records were destroyed. As you might expect, the agency's shadowy behavior during that study resulted in quite a scandal.

Whitey is probably most noted for having compromised the nation's leading law enforcement agency, the FBI. The G-Men protected him from prosecution for the crimes he committed in return for information he provided that helped smash Boston Mafioso operations. FBI agent John Connolly, who came from Whitey's South Boston neighborhood, was instrumental in setting up the quid pro quo deal between Whitey and the FBI. Connolly said of his first meeting with the infamous Whitey, "It was like meeting Ted Williams," the legendary Red Sox slugger.

Lehr noted that, aside from the FBI, Whitey conned other notable figures into helping him sidestep the penalties due to him, including speaker of the U.S. House John McCormack, and Father Robert Drinan, a Catholic priest and dean of Boston College Law School, who would later become a Massachusetts congressman.

"McCormack's fingerprints are all over Whitey's records," noted Lehr. The House speaker stepped up to the plate for Whitey, as did Drinan, and saw to his early release from detention, including two years served in Alcatraz when the norm for most inmates was an eight year stretch.

Whitey's most commonly heard refrain was, I'm no angel, but I'm not ... fill in the blanks: As bad as they say. A drug pusher. A murderer. Of course, his self-assessment was dubious at best.

Ed Harris, left, Whitey, right

As for the movie, both Lehr and Mallouk have no control over casting, so they can't be blamed for the choices that have been made. While I like Johnny Depp, I can think of few actors less suited to play Whitey -- how about Ed Harris instead? Of course, Harris doesn't have Depp's A-List credentials, and in Hollywood that's the only thing that counts. I thought Depp was also miscast as Dillinger, and of course the movie bombed. But in tinseltown, A-Listers are allowed to repeat their mistakes -- until they're no longer A-Listers.

Whitey, being the notorious narcissist that he is, is undoubtedly aware of and concerned about the movie project. Someone last night asked Lehr if a special screening is in the cards for Whitey, who is sitting in a Plymouth County jail cell awaiting trial. "Whitey isn't going to be having any special screenings," the author said.

This Scarface is in Chicago, Not Miami

Living dangerously, Tony Camonte muscles in on his boss's girlfriend.

"Scarface" (1932) is one of the seminal American gangster films of the 1930s, along with "Little Caesar," "The Roaring Twenties" and "The Public Enemy." Each one tells the story of a gangster's rise in the bootlegging business and his assent to the top of a powerful crime syndicate. After tasting success, each of the crime lords has a precipitous fall back to earth due to errors in judgment and his own hubris. 

The films are a study in how criminal empires are built on the sale of whisky, gin and beer to a willing Prohibition-era public. The 1930s "Scarface was remade in 1983 with Al Pacino in the title role. Both films tell similar stories but could hardly more different in content, tone and style. The Pacino "Scarface," directed by Brian De Palma, is a good deal more graphically violent and involves cocaine trafficking rather than rum running.

Howard Hawks directed the original and Ben Hecht wrote the break-neck paced script that is as witty as his screwball comedy, "His Girl Friday" — Hawks directed that one, too.  

Hawks's film had to sit on the shelf for two years after its completion. The studio was reluctant to release it because of the violence it depicts. But compared with the Pacino film, the original "Scarface" is almost a Sunday school picnic. Although Hawks's film is hardly violence-free it seems mild compared with the bullet-riddled 1983 film, which contains, among other atrocities, a chainsaw murder. 

Paul Muni is terrific as the wisecracking Tony Camonte, a gangster who wants to control all of Chicago's booze biz. He must step over or crush many other hoods to get the job done, and like many a successful gangster he'll rub out even a longtime pal who stands in the way.

Tony flirts with his boss's girlfriend and talks of taking over the North Side of Chicago's bootlegging business that's run by a powerful rival gang — both actions suggest a death wish at the core of his being. But pretty soon he makes good on his ambitions.

Tony (Paul Muni) likes the feel of a machine gun in 'Scarface.'

Despite his penchant for deep-sixing his rivals, Tony has a goofy side that might have seemed out of place in such a dubious movie hero, but here it doesn't.

The newly rich Tony shows off his fancy new digs to the girl he's taken a shine to and she tells the vocabulary-challenged mobster it's sort of gaudy, which he takes as a compliment.

When Tony gets his hands on a Thompson machine gun, the first one he's ever seen, he's delighted with the weapon's raw destructive power. He takes adolescent delight in spraying the room with bullets, but it doesn't take long before he starts training the weapon on human targets.

Tony is devoted to his mother — do all wiseguys have mother issues? He's also a fierce overlord to his younger sister, demanding that she never go on dates with young men. His fixation with his attractive sibling is a bit creepy and ultimately becomes a key part of his undoing.

Tony's fancy townhouse is equipped with steel shutters, making the joint a fortress to stave off bullets and bombs that rivals and the police might fire in his direction. But he can never completely shut out the threats that will ultimately rain down upon him.

Racked by paranoia, he ultimately finishes off his friends as well as other hoods looking to put out his lights. Alone, he's no longer a force to be reckoned with and he pays the ultimate price for his misdeeds. A fitting end to a strange bad guy who we can't help but like.