Two Couples Who Murder: “Double Indemnity” Faces Off Against “Body Heat” — And It’s Not Even Close

Left, Kathleen Turner, William Hurt, "Body Heat" (1981).
Right, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, "Double Indemnity" (1944).

Warning: Contains Spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

After I moved to L.A. in 2008, I got together with a Meetup group that was going to see a screening of “Double Indemnity” (1944) at the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood. I was chomping at the bit in anticipation of watching one of my all-time favorite films with a group of cinema enthusiasts. I pictured us moving enmasse to the theater’s cafe after the screening and having a long discussion about the film, going over its finer points, savoring the subtlety of Billy Wilder’s direction, analyzing the screenplay co-written by Wilder and consummate grouch Raymond Chandler. Then there were the performances — Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson — how great was that cast?!

My fellow viewers were younger than me — let’s face it, almost everyone is these days — ranging from early 20s to around 30 or so. After the movie unreeled we drifted into the cafe. I was set for a stimulating, caffeine fueled conversation about classic film, old Hollywood and the like. But the banter took a dark turn. Not dark, as in noir-like shadows of venetian blinds on the wall. Dark as in, “Who the hell saw this coming?” The general reaction, saturated in Millenial social-media-ingrained ennui, was, “So, like, why is that supposed to be so great?” 

MacMurray as Walter Neff, spilling the details of his crimes.

The film’s opening scenes follow the mortally wounded insurance salesman Walter Neff (MacMurray), who makes his way to the office of his boss, claims adjustor Barton Keyes (Robinson) and records a voice memo on a Dictaphone machine in which he confesses to two murders, that of his paramour Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) and her husband (Tom Powers). It’s an emotional sequence that draws us into the story leading up to the confession, but the discussion went off the rails from the get-go. 

One young woman in the cinema group in her early 20s opined with incredulity, “Somebody shot him and he goes to make a recording? Nobody’s going to do that!”

Another noticed that MacMurray was wearing a wedding ring and the character he plays was unmarried. “Yeah, I noticed that, too!” another added. (MacMurray refused to remove the ring, and it was visible in that scene).

The conversation went on like that for a number of depressing minutes. I didn’t say a thing. Finally, someone noticed I was keeping it shut and asked me what I thought of the film, and I said I think it’s a masterpiece. That got their attention, but not in the way you’d hope. They looked at me with a mixture of pity, curiosity and annoyance, with annoyance being the dominant reaction. 

Explaining myself, I said that the film is witty, dramatic and character driven. It contains dialog that is the very definition of smart noir repartee. I called the script a marvel and, borrowing Barton Keyes’s description of the insurance scam Neff masterminds, noted that it “all fits together like a watch.”

Most of them paused for a nano-second to consider this, then silently dismissed my insightful, cleverly worded summary and began talking amongst themselves. 

A hellish red glow is the backdrop for Hurt and Turner in "Body Heat."

The 30ish guy hadn’t fully bailed on the discussion just yet, and he said he’d seen “Body Heat,” with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner and noticed the similarity between the two movies — “Body Heat” is based on “Double Indemnity.” 

In “Body Heat,” hack attorney Ned Racine (Hurt) kills Matty Walker’s (Turner) husband, Edmund (Richard Crenna), much like MacMurray in “Double Indemnity.” There’s a snag in both killers’ plans, however. In each movie an eyewitness is brought forward for questioning. Both Neff and Racine are present in the same room as their respective witnesses. 

For Neff, a man who saw him at the scene of the crime, and for Racine, a little girl who saw him in a passionate encounter with Matty. The tension has both perps on tinder hooks, but somehow they escape a close scrape with the law, temporarily, at least.

The 30ish guy in the cafe said that “Body Heat” did a better job of depicting that spine tingling encounter with justice, and the “Double Indemnity” version just wasn’t as good. 

Quelling my mounting apoplectic rage, I strongly disagreed, but it was pointless. He joined the discussion with the others about a current super hero film. Case closed.

I resisted the temptation to launch into a heated defense of “Double Indemnity,” realizing that I'd probably sound a lot like the old codger who shouts, “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!” But the encounter also made me think about those two movies.

I’d be the first to admit that Lawrence Kasdan’s “Body Heat” (1981) is a fine film. William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Richard Crenna, as the unfortunate husband, all put in terrific performances. The script is a tightly modulated work of emotional tension and release, and the twist at the denouement sews up the loose ends ably. 

But better than “Double Indemnity”? I think not.

Ruth Snyder, Henry J. Gray, murderers who inspired James M. Cain's novella.

The film “Double Indemnity” is adapted from James M. Cain’s 1943 novella of the same title. The book is based on a real-life 1927 murder perpetrated by Ruth Snyder, a married woman from Queens, N.Y., and her lover, Henry Judd Gray. They conspired to kill her husband, Albert, and both went to the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison.

Wilder and Chandler crafted a script rich in detail with finely realized characters, including the murderous couple. 

Kasdan crafted the “Body Heat” screenplay, which is rich in twists and turns and includes an erotic encounter between Ned and Matty that could only be hinted at in “Double Indemnity.” But there are big differences between the two that in my not so humble opinion demonstrate why “Double Indemnity” is by far the superior film:

 D.I. — Phyllis and Walter meet by chance; she seems to begin plotting the murder only after their second meeting, when she asks Walter about accident insurance.

Matty has long-range plans in mind.

B.H. — Matty has been playing the long game. She steals and assumes her best friend’s identity, and begins searching for a sloppy, careless attorney with questionable morals. Ned’s name comes up, and she figures out a way to meet him that will seem like a randon encounter — quite a far fetched turn of the plot.

Phyllis and Walter’s meeting is more plausible than that of Matty and Ned. Plausibility is not necessarily the most critical element in a film, but chance and character are all important in "Double Indemnity.” In “Body Heat,” Matty merely fabricates the illusion of a chance encounter to attract Ned into her web of deceit and murder. 

Fate is the big kahuna of film noir, and “Double Indemnity” wins points for its adherence to this existential tenet.

D.I. — “Double Indemnity” has a far greater emotional range than does “Body Heat,” especially in a scene between Walter and Mr. Dietrichson’s daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), that takes place after the murder. Neff’s conscience — yes, we learn that he does actually have one — begins to get the better of him. This is an element that’s crucial to the film’s ending, by the way, but more about that later. 

Phyllis, savoring the moment as her husband is strangled.

Phyllis, however, may as well have Freon coursing through her veins. The depths of her sociopathic personality is beautifully revealed in the gruesome scene in which Neff strangles her husband while she sits inches away from him. The camera cuts away from the film’s most disturbing scene, which government censor would surely demand, to a closeup of Phyllis’s face. She’s not cringing, as any normal person would. Instead, she’s barely able to suppress a smile. 

Wilder’s brilliance shows through here. Rather than waste the cutaway shot, he uses it to give us more information. We see Phyllis’s insanely calm reaction to her husband’s horrible death, but Walter doesn’t see it — he’s busy attending to business. This is the first time in the film in which we have more information than does Neff. His ignorance of Phyllis’s true demeanor allows him to continue on with their plan without reflecting on her abnormal behavior. Later, in voiceover, he says he expected Phyllis might fall to pieces, but is relieved that she’s managed to keep her composure.

Neff and Phyllis, a chance encounter.

Getting back to the disappointing discussion at the ArcLight, I’d answer that young woman’s disbelief that the wounded Neff — Phyllis plugs him before he returns the favor — would take the time to leave a confessional recording, with a clear and simple explanation — the kind that never seems to occur to me in the heat of a discussion:

The reason why Neff returns to record a confession despite the fact that Phyllis popped a cap in his chest, is two-fold.

First, he needs to explain himself to his father confessor, Keyes, who’s about the only one in the film who genuinely cares about him.

Second, he needs to save Nino Zachetti’s (Byron Barr) life. Who is Nino Zachetti? He’s the abusive jerk who’s secretly dating Lola. Neff realizes that Zachetti is the perfect dupe to frame for both murders. Keyes believes Zachetti might be guilty of killing Mr. Dietrichson and that gives Neff the perfect opportunity to keep his trap shut and let Nino go to the chair. 

But he can’t. 

Lola (Jean Heather) makes an unwelcome office visit to Neff (MacMurray)
and his stoic facade begins to crack.

Unlike Phyllis, Neff has a conscience. He’s been fighting off feelings of guilt for killing Lola’s father ever since the day she came to see him in his office. Her appearance throws a monkey wrench into his plan to keep his head down and remain stolid. 

But Neff can’t bear to send Lola’s boyfriend to the chair after all of the pain he’s caused her by killing her father. Instead, he plans to tell the whole truth to Keyes by leaving him a voice recording he’ll hear the following day. By then, Neff plans to be a free man in Mexico. He can’t explain himself to the cops, for obvious reasons, but Keyes is the perfect recipient of the message. There’s as much apology as confession in Neff’s memo to Keyes. He’s finally contrite for his deceptions and horrible behavior. 

So, the reason why Neff drives like a madman to the office and pours his heart out into a Dictaphone machine is because he feels that he must. It’s the final decent act he can perform in his foolishly wasted life. His confession will prevent Zachetti, whom Neff passionately dislikes, from paying for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s a moral judgment that shows us that, in the end, Neff does have a suppressed sense of morality that finally comes to light. But it’s too late to save him from the debt he must pay for his evil deeds.

We don’t see anything close to Neff’s moral journey in “Body Heat,” which is a clever story with a clever ending. But where’s the emotional and moral conflict? Both Matty and Ned are cold and calculating, with no visible remorse. 

Christian Bale is the killer Yuppie in "American Psycho" (2000).

In a sense it’s the perfect adaptation for its time, the early 1980s, when materialism and consumerism were at full dudgeon. Matty and Ned are like remorseless Yuppies who kill, maybe with a greater affinity to murderous investment banker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in “American Psycho” (2000) than to Walter Neff. 

“Body Heat” is still fun to watch now and then, but I don’t rewatch it like I do “Double Indemnity,” which I’ve seen innumerable times and will probably continue to do so. 

I wish I’d had all of this stuff in mind when I encountered the “Double Indemnity” doubters at the ArcLight. But if any of them are reading this — highly doubtful — I’ve laid out what I should have said. Not a quick answer, but better late than never. 

Fortunately, there’s always the option to rewatch “Double Indemnity” and give it another chance. I hope that they do.

 

Acting Through Clenched Teeth: Quirky Timothy Carey Performed in a Number of Noirs and Neo-Noirs … and Was Kicked Off Almost as Many as He Appeared In

Timothy Carey, “The Killing” (1956).

By Paul Parcellin

Timothy Carey was the kind of actor who refused to fade into the background — even as a movie extra. That cost him a job or two, including one of his earliest acting gigs, an occurrence that would prove all too typical in his professional life. He’d hitchhiked to the New Mexico location where Billy Wilder was shooting “Ace in the Hole” (1951) and managed to get hired as a background performer playing a construction worker trying to free a man trapped in a cave-in. To ensure that his face got into the frame, Carey stepped between the star, Kirk Douglas, and the camera a few too many times and the director issued him pay vouchers and sent him packing.

The experience did not damped his urge to crowd the spotlight. In addition to Wilder, Carey worked with a number of other high profile directors, including William Wellman, Elia Kazan, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Andre de Toth, and John Cassavetes. How often he made it to the final print is another matter. 

When he did appear on screen, at times he had the curious habit of keeping his teeth clenched when speaking — that’s how the shady characters he often played would talk, he reasoned.

Film critic Grover Lewis said of the actor’s portrayal of loathsome genre heavies, “You could look into his hooded, jittery eyes and sense real danger. Prankster or madman? Crusader or wise guy? The choice was hard to make … ‘  He added, “Carey’s strongest performances offer the kind of mixed signals associated not so much with art or craft as with pathology or the twisted mysteries of DNA.” 

Born March 11, 1929, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to a family of Italian and Irish descent, Carey made his way west as a young man to storm the gates of Hollywood. He eventually settled in the working class Los Angeles suburb of El Monte where he and his wife Doris raised six children: Romeo, Mario, Velencia, Silvana, Dagmar, and Germain. 

In 1951, Carey was a 22-year-old acting school graduate making his film debut playing a corpse in a Clark Gable western, but it was his brief, uncredited part as Chino's Boy #1, a member of Lee Marvin's motorcycle gang in “The Wild One” (1953) that began his run of unsavory onscreen characters. Going out on a limb as he usually did, he came up with the idea of squirting beer in Marlon Brando's face — Brando wasn’t wild about the idea.

He played Joe, the bordello bouncer who threatens James Dean in “East of Eden” (1955). Both roles were uncredited.

He was the go-to guy for a certain kind of Hollywood tough character, whether he was an abortionist in “Unwed Mother” (1958), a wino, in a silent walk-on in the Susan Hayward melodrama “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” (1955), a “hulking mental patient” in “Shock Treatment” (1951) or the pool shark South Dakota Slim in “Beach Blanket Bingo” (1965). As the heavy Lord High-and-Low, he menaced The Monkees in the Jack Nicholson-penned “Head” (1968) — Nicholson was one of his biggest fans. He acted in "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961) with Brando and in John Cassavetes's “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971) and “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (1976). 

But it was the role of  Nikki Arcane, the sharpshooter who is recruited by a gang plotting to rob a racetrack in Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956) that was among his more memorable and disturbing screen appearances. 

Timothy Carey, Ralph Meeker, Joe Turkel,
“Paths of Glory” (1957). 

The following year he portrayed French soldier Pvt. Maurice Ferol in Kubrick’s World War I drama “Paths of Glory” (1957). However, Carey’s outlandish behavior did not amuse his fellow thespians. During filming in Munich the film’s co-star, Adolphe Menjou, complained that Carey had disgraced the company with his behavior. 

“I had a toy monkey with me, and I was walking around with holes in my shoes,” said Carey. Producer James Harris said Carey embarrassed the crew, and that the Germans wanted to throw the whole company out of the country. The real reason for the uproar had little to do with the actor’s toy monkey or the holes in his shoes. The New York Times reported that Carey was found handcuffed and gagged on a desolate road outside Munich. Police said the actor had been picked up hitchhiking and was robbed by two English-speaking men. 

At a posthumous screening of Carey’s work, his son Romeo explained that his father staged the abduction because he was frustrated that Kirk Douglas and other cast members were getting all of the press interviews.

Timothy Carey, “The World's Greatest Sinner” (1962).

Equally outlandish was the film Carey wrote, directed, produced and starred in, “The World's Greatest Sinner” (1962), a 77-minute black-and-white feature that was filmed fitfully between 1958-’61 for a total cost of approximately $100,000 and was released in 1963. Carey plays Clarence Hilliard, an insurance salesman who quits his job, changes his name to God and starts his own political and religious movement, promising to turn everyone into millionaires, gods and super humans. Promotional material called it “The most condemned and praised American movie of its Time.” 

It wasn’t in theaters for long, but among the few people who saw it was Frank Zappa, who wrote the film’s score. He called it “the world’s worst film.” However, John Cassavetes held it in higher esteem, proclaiming that the film had the “emotional brilliance of Eisenstein.” Lacking a wide commercial release, “The World’s Greatest Sinner” achieved cult status as a midnight movie in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

It’s worth noting that the roles Carey turned down or self-sabotaged his way out of are as impressive as the ones he played.  He opted out of an offer to play Luca Brazzi in “The Godfather” (1972) and would have been cast in “The Godfather Part II” (1974) had it not been for a prank he played on the big shots. He smuggled a gun loaded with blanks, hidden in a box of cannolis, into a meeting at Paramount and proceeded to blast away at the mucky mucks. Producer Fred Roos was not amused and Carey was dropped from the production. “The Godfather” director Coppola also wanted him in “The Conversation” (1974) but contract haggling put the kibosh on that, as well. 

According to director Quentin Tarantino, Carey auditioned for the role of Joe Cabot in Tarantino's “Reservoir Dogs” (1992). Although he did not get the part, the screenplay is dedicated to him, among others.

In the twilight of his career, Carey saw fewer movie roles, appearing in a film every one or two years, the last one being “Echo Park” (1985).

He died of a stroke May 11, 1994 at the age of 65 in Los Angeles. His body is interred at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, Calif. 

Timothy Carey, Phyllis Kirk, “Crime Wave” (1953)

Here’s a sampling of Timothy Carey’s performances in films noir and neo-noirs:

Hired as a background actor for “Ace in the Hole” (1951), Carey plays a construction worker helping to free a man caught in a cave-in (uncredited and unconfirmed). He was fired for habitually stepping into Kirk Douglas’s shots.

Carey is uncredited in the role of Johnny Haslett, a psychotic drug addict who is on the run from the police in “Crime Wave” (1953). His performance is manic and unpredictable, displaying what might be the most strident example of scenery chewing ever committed to film.

In “Finger Man” (1955), Carey is cheap hood Lou Terpe, a suck-up to gangster Dutch Becker (Forrest Tucker). The sleazy Terpe disfigures prostitutes under Becker’s employ when they fail to toe the line. He’s dangerous and probably psychotic, which puts him in a league with many other characters the actor portrayed in noirs. 

As sharpshoot Nikki Arcane, Carey plays a significant supporting role in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956). Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) masterminds a plot to rob a racetrack as fans watch the ponies make their way around the oval. Arcane is recruited to fire one bullet that will throw the packed stadium into a panic. Carey has never been sleazier, particularly in his racist encounter with a parking lot attendant.


Gangsters meet greasers in “Rumble on the Docks” (1956), one of the few noirs with a rock ‘n’ roll interlude. Carey is Frank Mangus, a gangster’s flunky who helps him lean on a newspaper publisher who prints stories about the mob’s influence on the waterfront. Meanwhile, local teenaged hoods with D.A. haircuts rumble with rivals. Carey displays an exhaustive library of ticks and grimaces. Seated on a sofa he slouches, then throws a leg over a chair back  — he reaches deeply into his bag of hammy scene-stealing gimmicks.  

Carey is Carl Fowler, a violent thug with a grudge, in “Chain Of Evidence” (1957). He’s not above giving an unsuspecting man a savage beating. When questioned by the cops he’s a leather jacketed surly wise guy. A distraught woman whose boyfriend is missing is looking for answers. Fowler growls at her, “He ran out on you, baby.” But he knows different. It’s one of Carey’s more restrained performances.

In “Revolt In The Big House” (1958), Bugsy Kyle (Carey) is the grand poobah of the “big house” until stickup man Lou Gannon (Gene Evans) arrives. Together they work on a plot to bust out. Bugsy is the kind of guy who would stab you in the back — literally.

Jake Menner (Carey) is a mob guy who gets tangled up in Earl Macklin’s (Robert Duvall) plot to seek revenge for the killing of his brother, who made mistake of robbing a mob operation, in “The Outfit” (1973)

Flo (Carey) is one of the gangsters who leans heavily on Los Angles nightclub owner Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara). Cosmo has just paid off the mob loan he used to buy his club and now the gangsters want to take the joint away from him, in “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” (1976). And with his 6 foot, 4 inch frame, Flo can be intimidating.

Ben Gazzara, Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel,
“The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” (1976).

The Key to Marlowe’s Conundrum is In a Can of Cat Food

Elliot Gould, "The Long Goodbye" (1973)

One of my favorite neo-noirs is “The Long Goodbye” (1973), Robert Altman’s adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, published 20 years earlier. Altman’s most drastic alteration of Chandler’s opus is placing the story in the 1970s instead of eight years after the end of World War II, when the novel is set. In doing so the film puts Chandler’s hero, private detective Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould), in a starkly different Los Angeles. 

Here, Marlowe, the slightly impoverished white knight with a touch of wry wit, doesn't quite fit in. He's an anachronism in a time when private detectives in skinny ties and black morticians' suits are about as unhip as you can get.

His neighbors at the High Tower apartment building in Hollywood Heights are a gaggle of young female hipsters who practice yoga topless on their balcony and run a candle shop on Sunset. The grocery clerk (Rodney Moss) at his local supermarket gets busted in a protest march against police brutality. Marlowe also encounters a shifty psychiatrist (Henry Gibson) running a clinic that’s a cult-like new age treatment center. Still, the intrepid shamus takes his unfamiliar surroundings in stride, shrugging it off with bemused nonchalance. “It’s OK with me,” he says.

The film’s opening sequence finds Marlowe awakening on his bed, fully dressed, as if he’s coming out of a 20-year trance. Unlike the Marlowe we’re more familiar with, this one owns a cat and the kitty is hungry. After a trip to the market in the wee hours he tries to palm off a Brand-X cat food to the discriminating el gato, even putting the stuff in an empty can of the kitty’s favorite brand. But, as any cat owner could predict, it’s no dice. The famished feline isn’t fooled and takes a hard pass.

All of this may seem beside the point of the story, but in a way it hints at what’s to come.

Marlowe on a cat food quest.

Marlowe gets pulled into a murder case involving his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) who is accused of killing his wife in a most brutal fashion. Marlowe doesn’t believe that Lennox is guilty and he sets out to prove his pal’s innocence. His investigation takes a long, winding path. Along the way he’s hired by a Malibu socialite (Nina van Pallandt) to find and retrieve her alcoholic husband (Sterling Hayden) who’s gone missing, a matter that seems unrelated to Terry Lennox’s woes. But as is often the case in Chandler stories, we learn that the two are directly connected. 

That’s where the can of cat food comes in.

It's a signal that we’re going to see a much greater subterfuge unfold before the ending credits roll. 

Granted, it’s a bit of a trek before we discover who’s pulling the wool over whose eyes. That’s because none of Marlowe’s initial suspicions hit the mark. In fact, the freelance shamus is a few steps behind the LAPD in its investigation. But that’s OK, because part of the reason we like Marlowe is that he’s not the Superman of detectives and his fallibilities make him relatable. He’s driven by a sense of right and wrong and is doggedly determined to seek justice for all who deserve it. It’s those qualities that drive him to stick to a case even after the LAPD give up on it. 

Once Marlowe figures out the final piece of the puzzle his response is shocking. More than a few Chandler fans cried foul. Let’s just say that this Marlowe proves himself to be considerably changed from the one we may be more familiar with. He’s living in a different era and like the world around him, Marlowe has adapted.

But getting back to the cat food matter, Altman said that the sequence points out that “you can’t fool a cat.” Maybe so, but there’s more to it than that. Maybe you can’t con a kitty into eating Brand-X, but you can fool an audience, and that’s the point of it. “The Long Goodbye” does what any great mystery ought to do — misdirect us until its final, rather brutal and controversial reveal. We may know that we’re in for a big finish, but we never want to see it coming.

When Tinsel Town Turns the Camera on Itself

Rod Steiger, 'The Big Knife' (1955).

Face it, scandals make good news copy and the Los Angeles entertainment industry produces a bumper crop of the stuff that keeps gossip writers in business. 

From Rosco “Fatty” Arbuckle to Harvey Weinstein the press has never been at a loss for words when it comes to movie industry playboys who can’t control their libidos. An occasional murder, drug overdose or sexual assault crops up now and then and the public can’t get enough of the lurid details.

The gossip that follows a large public display of dirty laundry is especially enticing because it puts the Hollywood elite in a harsh spotlight that’s different from the radiant glow of positive press-agent-generated fluff that we normally see.

 With Damien Chazelle’s marathon tribute to decadent early Hollywood, “Babylon,” fresh in our collective memories, it’s a good time to consider some of the movies that Hollywood has made about itself over the years. Some of the best are noirs, or noir influenced, that examine the decadence and depravity of the movie making capital of the world.

‘Sunset Blvd.’ (1950)

William Holden

Films noir that savage the entertainment industry got their start with the granddaddy of Hollywood takedowns, “Sunset Blvd.” Young screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) has hit a career dead end and is about to leave Los Angeles. Broke and unemployed, he meets delusional former silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) who is self-exiled in her dilapidated mansion and is girding herself for a showbusiness comeback — although the industry wants nothing to do with her. 

“Sunset Blvd.” is a darkly comedic parable of youth obsessed Hollywood, whose older guard preys upon the vitality of the young fresh faces that migrate there with high hopes and naïve understanding of the parasitic society they’ve entered. Norma is a washed-up former star who cannot cope with no longer being the ingénue. She’s hit the half-century mark and there’s no one less wanted than an aging woman in Hollywood.

She latches onto Gillis and puts him to work rewriting a putrid script she scratched out on what we may darkly imagine is parchment made from human tissue. She expects this extravaganza, a retelling of the story of Salome, will be the vehicle for her big-screen comeback. Gillis plays along because he’s at the end of his rope financially and believes he’ll pocket some sorely needed cash. 

But Norma is too sharp for the rookie scribbler. When it finally dawns on him that he has become a fellow inmate in her Gothic nightmare of a home along with her dedicated man servant, Max Von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim), it’s too late to wriggle free. By the time he gets around to making a run for it, Gillis completes his journey through the depths of Hollywood depravity with an unscheduled dip in Norma’s pool and a couple of slugs of lead in his back. 

‘In a Lonely Place’ (1950) 

Humphrey Bogart

Dixon Steel (Humphrey Bogart) is a former A-list screenwriter whose career tanked. His last hit was before the war. He’s an alcoholic with a hot temper that occasionally flares up into violence. His inner rage, perhaps the result of war related post traumatic stress syndrome, causes him pick fights with the mean-spirited jokers he encounters. 

He gets into a barroom punch-out with a lout who degrades an old, washed up actor who lives from one drink to the next. Turns out the lout is the son of a studio chief, but Steele is far beyond worrying about how the brawl might hurt his career.

Based on the Dorothy B. Hughes novel of the same title, “In a Lonely Place” is a study of Dixon Steele’s insecurities and tendency toward self-sabotage. It’s also an indictment against toxic environments present in the Hollywood studio system. His handlers tolerate Steele’s artistic temperament, all right, and they’d probably be perfectly willing to look the other way and cover up any transgressions. When one of their own uses his star power to take advantage of a woman it’s just business as usual. 

When he brings Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart), a naïve coat check girl, to his apartment it’s clear that he’s no predator. She’s going to tell him the plot of a novel he’s supposed to have read so that he can decide whether or not he wants to adapt it to the screen. He changes into a robe to get comfortable, which startles Mildred at first until she realizes that he doesn’t have any hanky-panky in mind. She tells him about the book. But as she describes the plot he realizes that the novel is trash and sends her home in a taxi. 

But after Mildred is discovered strangled and left by the roadside Steele’s world begins to come apart. A few friends have a nagging suspicion that he may have done something terrible. His agent, Mel Lippman (Art Smith), is set with an escape plan to Mexico. We can only wonder how many times he’s helped other clients avoid the consequence for their bad behavior.  

When Steele is identified as a person of interest in the murder investigation we see the paranoid delusions that begin to cloud his brain. There’s no telling what’s liable to send him into a rage and as suspicion begins to coalesce around him his erratic behavior increases. His friends wonder whether or not he killed the young girl, and so do we. 

‘The Big Knife’ (1955)

Ida Lupino, Jack Palance

Charlie Castle (Jack Palance) is a movie star under contract with a major studio and he wishes he wasn’t. He lives in big house and has all of the comforts that a load of cash and celebrity can provide. But the film industry is ruining his life. He’s alienated from his estranged wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), who can’t stand being married to a drunken womanizer who has compromised his ideals. 

Charlie would like to quit the business but the snag is that his melodramatic boss, studio head Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), won’t let him off the hook. Charlie’s contract is about to expire and Hoff is determined to make him sign another. 

One of main attractions of “The Big Knife” is the three-ring circus Charlie’s living room becomes when all of the hangers on converge like sharks around a drowning man. Hoff, the lead shark, has a conniption when the Charlie balks at signing a new contract. Steiger’s performance as Hoff is, shall we say, over the top, even for an actor known for occasionally chewing the scenery like a chainsaw. 

“The Big Knife” is the story of a corrupted actor who has sold out to the Hollywood machine, gets caught in its gears and is about to be torn asunder. He’s sacrificed his artistic integrity for the monied life of a film star but it’s an empty existence that’s brought him little happiness. But why does Hoff have so much power over the actor? A dark secret lurks in Charlie’s past and because of it he’s doomed to walk the Hollywood treadmill for eternity. 

In movieland, depravity is contagious, and even a naïve palooka like Charlie can’t help but be drawn into it. It’s easy to become corrupted when everyone around you is ethically bankrupt and willing to cover up your embarrassing and felonious transgressions when you land in hot water. And Charlie is in it up to his neck.

‘Barton Fink’ (1991)

John Turturro 

A noir-tinged comedy set in the 1940s, “Barton Fink” tells the story of the titular character, played exquisitely by John Turturro, an up-and-coming playwright with a politically progressive bent — a thinly veiled stand-in for Clifford Odets. 

His socially aware dramas are taking the New York theater world by a storm. But Fink, irritated by the nitwits and hangers on who plague his existence, has high ideals and an even higher opinion of his own artistic merits. Lured to the West Coast by the promise of piles of cash, he has to twist himself into knots justifying his transition from the stages of Broadway to the backlot of Capitol Pictures, his new employer. 

But move there he does, and from his first day in Los Angeles Fink finds himself in a Kafkaesque nightmare. His hotel is extra creepy, the studio boss Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) kills him with spooky kindness, assuring him that the writer is king at Capitol Pictures — a deceptive reading of the facts, if there ever was one. 

His next-door neighbor at the dilapidated Hotel Earle, insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), is a too friendly, in-your-face bumpkin with some peculiar habits. Fink meets one of his idols, author W. P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), a thinly disguised William Faulkner, who, like Fink, has been lured to the shores of “the Great Salt Lake” by the promise of riches.

The darkly humorous conceit that runs throughout “Barton Fink” is that Hollywood is hell. Fink failed to read the sign posted at the gates of the city: “All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here.” It’s a warning that fools ignore, because, after all, they know better.

‘Hollywood Story’ (1951)

Richard Conte

If “Hollywood Story” has a familiar feel, that’s because it’s is based on the real-life murder of film director William Desmond Taylor (1872–1922), a crime that remains unsolved. 

In this fictionalized account of the Taylor case, New York theatrical director Larry O'Brien (Richard Conte) comes to Hollywood to direct his first picture with longtime pal Sam Collyer (Fred Clark). 

O’Brien’s agent, Mitch Davis (Jim Backus), persuades him to direct a film at a disused movie lot that thrived during the silent film era. The director becomes obsessed with a murder of a silent era director, Franklin Ferrera, that happened on the same movie lot more than 20 years before. 

It’s not of the same caliber as the above-mentioned films, but “Hollywood Story” needs to be added to the list when discussing noir’s cold, hard look at the entertainment industry. Perhaps most significantly, it was directed by B-movie maven William Castle, who produced many thrillers on the cheap and promoted them with gimmicks. 

For his film “Macabre” (1958), he came up with the idea to give every customer a certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyd's of London in case they should die of fright during the film. He stationed nurses in the lobbies with hearses parked outside the theaters.

It may not have been promoted with flashy attention-getting hokum, but “Hollywood Story” is, like other Castle films, a bare-bones production, ginned up with cameos by a number of silent film era actors and a few location shots. He knew how to stretch a production budget dollar. 

After O’Brien decides to do a film about the murder he meets resistance from his producing partner, his agent and the deceased director’s heirs who would rather let the matter rest. But then someone fires a bullet at O’Brien, warning him to drop the film. Of course, he doesn’t, and we’re left guessing the killer’s identity until the conclusion.

A forced happy ending tacked onto “Hollywood Story” no doubt calmed the nerves of studio execs and investors who feared a dark wrap-up would result in thin box office returns. Those concerns were probably unnecessary. Few things are more appealing to B-movie audiences than the sight of a Hollywood meltdown, preferably with a hack screenwriter floating face down in the pool. 

‘Eddie Coyle’ Introduced Us to ‘Boston Noir’

Robert Mitchum in 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' (1973).

How Boston labor union muscle
terrorized Hollywood film crews

No one was quite ready for the grittiness of “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” when it arrived in theaters in 1973. 

It didn’t look like most films that Hollywood turned out — it had a certain rawness in each shot that probably wouldn’t pass muster in Tinsel Town, and there’s not a single hint of glamor in the crumbling urban landscape in which the story unfolds. 

What’s more, it’s a tale of low-level hoods, about as far as one can get from the top echelon mafioso of “The Godfather” (1972).

All of those elements could and did work in various films set in the big, shiny, bustling American metropolises, but not so much in Boston. Sure, there was “The Boston Strangler,” a ripped-from-the-headlines police procedural that used then-fashionable split screen montages. But that was a psychological study, not nearly as unapologetically raw as “Eddie Coyle.” 

Lacking in Allure
You had “Mean Streets,” “The French Connection,” both New York stories, and even “Get Carter,” set in London and Newcastle, England. But, my God, this was Boston, a backwater with an abundance of colleges and universities and a depressed economy. 

City folks had been moving out to the suburbs in droves at least 10 years prior. As movie locations go, it was no New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. 

Labor Pains
To make matters worse, labor unions presented a major problem for film crews working in Boston in those days. A production could get shut down by a guy with a broken nose and a blackjack in his back pocket. The Teamsters labor union held Boston film productions in a hammerlock, according to Boston film critic Ty Burr. 

Teamster truck drivers smashed windshields and beat up crew members if they didn’t get what they wanted. It appears that the “Eddie Coyle” crew didn’t have significant difficulties with the union — could it be because the Teamsters were Robert Mitchum fans? 

A Familiar Kind of Criminal
Despite the drawbacks, British-born director Peter Yates liked Boston as a filming location and remarked that the criminals in Boston were like those in London. They wouldn’t harm others so long as they got the loot they were after — a criminal ethic of a bygone era, he wistfully declaims on the “Eddie Coyle” DVD commentary track.

What changed the perception of Boston as a lackluster setting for a crime story was George V. Higgins’s novel “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” on which the film is based. The book was so highly regarded that it not only put Boston on the crime film map, it inspired a sub-genre of fiction and crime movies — Boston noir, if you will. 

Novel Influenced Writers
The novel was a big influence on writers local to his area as well, such as Robert B. Parker (“High Profile,” “Valediction”) and Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone, Baby, Gone”). Elmore Leonard, who was based in Michigan, said “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” was the best crime novel he’d ever read, and it was an inspiration in his own writing. 

When Quentin Tarantino adapted Leonard’s novel “Rum Punch” into the film “Jackie Brown,” he changed the lead character’s name from Jackie Burke, as it was in the novel, to Jackie Brown in homage to George Higgins’s book — one of Eddie Coyle’s gun-running cohorts is named Jackie Brown. 

A Dialogue Driven Novel
What made Higgins’s book stand out, unlike other crime novels of that era, is that it’s around 80 percent dialogue and the dialogue beautifully defined the story’s characters. Higgins, born and raised in the Boston area, had a sharp ear for the way people talked. He knew their accents and inflections. 

Before embarking on a writing career, he was an assistant prosecutor who helped bring a number of Boston-area gangsters to trial. Then he went into private law practice and defended them. He knew how they spoke and how they thought and was skilled at getting the nuances and details of their speech down on paper. 

The Rich and the Poor
But what makes “Eddie Coyle” the cornerstone of Boston crime novels and movies is its depiction of two separate but intertwined worlds that are endemic to the city. There’s the Harvard-educated upper class and the struggling working class. 

The dingy areas in which Eddie Coyle travels are shown in marked contrast to the glimpses we get of bankers’ comfortable suburban homes. Prior to Higgins’s novel we’d not seen Boston portrayed in such a divided state, at least not in crime novels.

The story takes place in the late 1960s or early ‘70s when the city was especially down at its heels. Director Peter Yates shot the least photogenic sides of the city, unlike “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968), which presented a tourist’s view of Boston. 

The City's Rough Edges
“Eddie Coyle” shows the places that the chamber of commerce didn’t want outsiders to see, the tacky strip malls, dingy bowling alleys, dive bars, seedy cafeterias and the like — where working-class folks circulate. For that it has an authentic, unvarnished look. 

Shots are efficient, blunt and not as conspicuously composed as are other films of the genre in that era. It has none of Martin Scorsese’s artfully designed, meticulously lit scenes that somehow make desolation look beautiful. “Eddie Coyle” is as often as not lit by the greenish glow of fluorescent tubes and flickering neon Narragansett Beer signs.

Peter Boyle as Dillon, and Mitchum.

Adding Up the Pieces
We see meetings between gangsters and sometimes between gangsters and cops. The story’s episodic nature leaves us to piece together the facts and figure out what’s going on. Eddie Coyle is in only about half of the film. 

The rest of the time we witness his so-called friends, their machinations and the jockeying they do to get what they want. The title is ironic — Eddie has no friends, only acquaintances and crime associates on whom he’s come to depend and obviously shouldn’t. 

A Page Right Out of the Novel
The film retains the novel’s local flavor due largely to the screenplay’s loyalty to Higgins’s dialogue. Entire scenes are transcribed verbatim from the book, which works because the book often reads like a film treatment. 

In the end, the job of adapting the novel to a screenplay was given not to Higgins but to veteran TV writer Paul Monash who had worked on shows as varied as “The Untouchables” and “Peyton Place.”

The Low Man
It’s the dialogue that pulls us into the life of the title character, Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum), an almost flat broke gangster who sells guns to criminals. He’s on the bottom rung of the crime syndicate ladder and he doesn’t get much respect from his peers. 

Eddie is a family man who lives in a cramped apartment with his wife and three kids in a blue collar town on the outskirts of Boston. The family is his only ray of sunshine in the bleak world that he inhabits. He’s facing a criminal charge that means jail time and he’s desperate to avoid that. 

Not only because his family will have to go on welfare, but because people are beginning to wonder if he’s snitching to the police. Once inside prison it would be easy to have him done away with.

Made for the Role
Mitchum is a natural fit for the role of Eddie, the hard-luck gun runner whose life is in a state of increasing turmoil. He was first approached to play the role of Dillion, a bartender whose saloon Eddie frequents to sip draft beer and commiserate. 

But Mitchum read the script and decided he wanted to play the title character. As it turned out, his sleepy eyed, world-weary demeanor was made to order for the role. 

A 'Noir God' 
And what qualifications he had — a bona fide film noir god who in real life did time for a pot bust in the 1940s, further cementing his bad boy credentials. Other actors’ careers would have been devastated by the publicity. For Mitchum, it was merely good press.

He’d recently starred in David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970) playing against type as a cuckolded Irish schoolteacher. Although the film was a financial success the critics eviscerated it. His career was at a lull and he needed a role that would put him back in a favorable light, and Eddie Coyle was just such a role. 

A Night on the Town
Peter Boyle ended up playing the shifty bartender Dillon and handled the part magnificently. He was a shoulder for Eddie to cry on, and even gave the gun runner a night on the town prior to his sentencing. But beware of hoodlums bearing gifts.

Bank robbers use the guns Eddie provided to them.

To prepare for his role, Mitchum wanted to hang out with notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. 

A Word to the Wise
Actor Alex Rocco, who plays a bad guy in the film — he was also Moe Green in “The Godfather” — had a real-life history of association with Boston criminals having grown up in the city and gotten into scrapes with the law. 

Rocco gave Mitchum sound advice. “You don’t want to hang out with Whitey.” Instead, he introduced him to Howie Winter, a local gangster with whom Mitchum eventually spent time, all in the name of research.

An Insider's Pointers
Speaking of authoritative advice on the ins and outs of organized crime, Yates found that working in Boston, even with the hassles of dealing with thuggish union men, had its advantages. He recalled attempting to direct a scene depicting a gang hit, and he wasn’t sure how to stage it authentically. 

A Teamster truck driver piped up, saying he knew others who did such things, and he offered some advice which the director ended up following. It was at that point that Yates realized that the driver had probably done exactly what he was advising the on-screen talent to do.

That brought a greater sense of realism to the screen — much greater than anyone would have anticipated. And that's what you don’t learn in film school.

Hazy Memories of Hollywood

Brad Pitt and Mike Moh, 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.'

Ever since it hit the screen in 2019 there’s been a lot of talk about Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood,” especially the fight scene between stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and martial arts master and actor Bruce Lee (Mike Moh). Their fictitious on-screen dustup ruffled some feathers, particularly among Lee’s kin and the actor’s fans, who say that he was unfairly maligned. On the surface, the fight scene does makes Lee out to be a delusional windbag. While Moh’s portrayal is decidedly bizarre and probably a highly exaggerated portrait of Lee, Tarantino’s intention, I think, is not to disrespect Lee but to make us wonder about the reliability of Cliff’s recollections of events and to cast doubt on whether or not certain events actually took place. 

We see the scene filtered through Cliff’s recollection of it, which makes us wonder if he merely remembers Lee in the least flattering terms possible because of animosity between the two. Some say that the real Bruce Lee had a rough relationship with movie stuntmen, whom he didn’t respect. Rumor has it that he’d intentionally hit stunt actors rather than pull his punches, leading some to refuse to work with the actor.  

Cliff and Lee’s fight, a sparring match, actually, is seen in flashback. And to make matters all the more complicated, it’s followed by yet another flashback. The sequence starts when Cliff is fixing a rooftop TV antenna for his buddy and employer, TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio). His mind wanders to an encounter with Lee on the set of TV series “The Green Hornet” (1966-’67). In the flashback, Cliff, nattily dressed in a tuxedo and wearing a silly pompadour hairpiece, gets into a verbal scrap with Lee, who happens to be the show’s co-star. Lee is holding court with a gaggle of fawning crew members, and proclaims that he could beat Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) in a fight. Cliff snickers, and that leads to a round of fisticuffs; two falls out of three wins it; no hitting in the face. Before the action starts someone clues Lee into the rumor that Cliff murdered his wife, which gives the confident martial artist a moment’s pause. Things come to a head when Cliff deflects Lee’s kick and sends the martial artist careening into a parked Lincoln Continental, leaving a huge dent in the body. Stuntman Randy (Kurt Russell) fires Cliff for messing with the actor and damaging the vehicle. 

While this seems like straightforward storytelling there are strange and subtle activities percolating in the background. Crew members sit comfortably as they take in the action. But just before Lee is tossed into the car the spectators are suddenly gone. It seems like a continuity error in editing the film, not unlike those that were intentionally placed in Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” (2007), where Tarantino mimicked sloppy mistakes endemic in cheapo grindhouse exploitation films of the 1960s and ’70s. But, in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” the disappearing spectators suggest we’re seeing a highly subjective recollection of the facts, or perhaps a total fabrication of events. And, what about that smashed car door? It’s a big, gaping dent, as if the car was hit by a slow-moving 18-wheeler. The impact would surely be enough to kill a man.

Odder still is the flashback within a flashback, in which Cliff remembers himself on a boat with his now dead wife. She’s lambasting him about their crappy vessel among other things. Cliff sits impassively, a spear fishing gun in his hands. Did the browbeaten husband finally snap and skewer his furious wife? Their tense encounter on the ocean reminds us of a real-life Hollywood death when actress Natalie Wood drowned under suspicious circumstances while yachting with her husband Robert Wagner. The sequence ends, and Cliff does not fire a spear at his beloved, but we can’t help but suspect it’s on his “things to do” list.

When the flashback sequences end, things get weirder still as Cliff, still on the rooftop, notices a scruffy, bearded dude down below on the street — Charles Manson, as it turns out, who has just paid a call on the home next door. Manson gives Cliff a big smile and a courtly wave (howdy, partner) to which Cliff looks on with suspicion. His instincts about the weird little character would prove prescient — the house next door is the residence of actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski and was the scene of one of the most notorious multiple murders in the city’s history. 

That encounter weighs heavily on us as we watch the story continue to unfold, expecting the worst, holding our breath, and waiting for the inevitable. But, as anyone who’s seen “Inglourious Basterds” (2009) knows, Tarantino has a way of playing with historical facts when he weaves fictional threads into his non-fictional tapestry. And just as we can’t really be sure about the veracity of Cliff’s encounters, factually, Tarantino’s tale of Hollywood at a historic crossroad is a malleable as wet papier mâché. In the end, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is a fairytale. Not the kind you’d read to kids at bedtime, but a nostalgia-tinged farewell to a time and place that now exists mostly in our highly unreliable memories.

Is My Toaster Talking to Me? No, it’s just ‘Kimi’

I

s Steven Soderbergh’s tech thriller “Kimi” neo noir? Call it what you like, a crime thriller, perhaps, but the film, streaming on HBO Max, has undeniable links to neo-noirs of the past that focus on technology, how criminality can get wrapped up in it, and how tech’s persistent surveillance invades our privacy. Let’s call it “Paranoid Geek Noir.”

"Kimi" takes its time setting up the details, but once it gets underway all of the pieces begin to add up. David Koepp’s screenplay cleverly uses details that at first seem to be mere background information but turn out to be significant later on.

Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) is a tech worker whose job it is to listen to recordings of data streams from a voice-activated Internet device called Kimi, much like the real-life Alexa. She’s suffering the after effects of a violent trauma and is self-isolating in a Seattle loft — except when she has an occasional booty call from her man friend whose office is across the street from her home. 

Her work-at-home job is supposed to help improve Kimi’s accuracy by listening to users’ failed attempts at making the voice activated machine do what they want it to, and correcting the malfunctions. It seems like a thankless job, but she approaches it with enthusiasm.

Listening to one recording, she thinks she hears the sounds of a serious crime being committed. She pulls out some techy thingamajigs to filter out background noise and listens to a chilling conversation. 

It’s easy to assume that her suspicions are nothing more than a paranoia born from extended isolation. But as we later learn, this niche of the tech world proves itself even more evil and vicious than our worst fears of it.

When Angela is finally forced to leave the safety of her home, she makes her way down seemingly endless corridors and staircases whose walls feel like they’re closing in on her. Those of us with COVID cabin fever can no doubt sympathize.

“Kimi” echoes films that center on technology that unexpectedly captures crime evidence, such as “The Conversation,” “Blow-Up” and “Blow Out.” Like the protagonists in those film, Angela is met with bureaucratic resistance when she tries to come forward with troubling evidence. 

Her stressed out CEO boss, Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGaudio), wants to sweep the matter under the rug, and the woman in charge of ethical matters in the company, Natalie Chowdhury (Rita Wilson), avoids reporting it to the authorities. Angela is puzzled at first, then quite rightfully terrified.

Kravitz’s isolated and highly capable Angela is bright, struggling to overcome her fears and impatient with others in the outside world. She’s as moody and angry as you’d expect of anyone in her emotional position. 

Despite her prickly manner we’re with her all the way as she struggles to escape the forces that will go to extreme measures to cover up damaging information. To say that she’s unprepared for the ordeal she’s about to face is a vast understatement. But against all odds, Angela uses her modest resources to rise to the seemingly impossible challenges she faces. 

The story comes to a breathless conclusion that ties up the loose ends, perhaps a little too neatly, and if you ignore some pretty big plot-dependent coincidences, it’s a worthwhile outing that wraps up in a tidy 90 minutes. 

A word of warning: As you view “Kimi” you might want to turn off some of your appliances. It might give them ideas.

'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. 

 

Noir Evolves From The Black And White World

After having defined "film noir" as a black and white medium in a recent post, I'd like to point out that I was referring to the classic period of noir. That generally ran from 1941 to 1958, beginning with "The Maltese Falcon" and ending with "Touch of Evil."

But then came the noir revival, probably best exemplified by "Chinatown" (1974), the Technicolor detective story directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson -- possibly Polanski's greatest effort to date.

So how can a noir be shot in Technicolor, and lack atmospheric shadows and darkness that are the hallmark of the genre?

Polanski, masterfully, I think, gave the film a muted, almost faded look, like a picture postcard that sat too long in a sunny drugstore window.

The effect perfectly expresses the hazy, dusty sunlight typical of a Los Angeles summer day.

Additionally, it may not have been commercially viable to shoot a black and white "Chinatown." Who would have put up the $6 million to make a film that wasn't in color, even in the freewheeling early '70s?

Give due appreciation to cinematographers John A. Alonzo and the uncredited Stanley Cortez, too. They adapted Los Angeles's hazy, smoggy atmosphere to a new generation of in-color noir, and the genre's entire look was reborn because of it.

While the black and white films of the classic noir period suggest a universe that has broken free of its orbit and plunged into eternal darkness, "Chinatown"'s hazy, sun-scorched look implies a world where nothing is clear, even in broad daylight.

In "Chinatown," you see, meanings are always elusive and often misunderstood, and nothing is what it appears to be.