New Year’s Noir: 8 Crime Films Bring You Dark Tidings

Allen Baron, “Blast of Silence” (1961). Noir for the year's last day.

Was that a popping cork or the report of a firearm?

By Paul Parcellin

Why is it that a lot of noirs take place around Christmas, but not so many focus on New Year’s Eve? Granted, New Year’s doesn’t carry the same weight as Christmas — it’s just not a family holiday, with all of the sentimental memories (or emotional baggage) that you may find in Yuletide festivities. 

But starting a new year can bring more than a wisp of heartfelt reflection, sometimes quite unexpectedly. Anticipation of a fresh start mixed with pangs of regret about the year gone by often make it a bittersweet occasion. It marks the end of the holiday season and is among the early days of the winter ahead.

Like an abbreviated Mardi Gras, it allows us one night to party before facing the grayness of the coming season. 

In the noir universe a new start can mean different things — unsavory things. In noir, a new start often means the beginning of the end. Noir new starts take time to develop and blossom while endings are often abrupt and unmerciful. 

Here are some noirs (and other kinds of crime stories) with a New Year’s theme. They may not all include party hats and streamers, but in each the new year is more to be feared than welcomed:

Sue Moore, William Powell, Jack Adair, “After the Thin Man.”

“After The Thin Man” (1936)

OK, so it’s not a noir, more like a murder mystery wrapped in a screwball comedy. But it’s got a lot of noir atmosphere, fedoras, double breasted suits and femmes fatale in furs. Plus it’s based on the writings of Dashiell Hammett. A goodly chunk of the film does indeed take place on the eve and day of the new year, a fitting holiday for a Thin Man mystery. It’s also a comfortable setting for the story’s hero, Nick Charles, who approaches life as if it’s one long cocktail party. It’s the second boozy installment in a series of six Thin Man movies made between 1934 and 1947. Popular for the fizzy chemistry between Nick and wife Nora, the couple inevitably becomes embroiled in criminal cases despite Nick’s insistence that he’s retired from the private detective biz. 

As bleary eyed as the famous sleuth may be — he seems to be the toast of whichever town he happens to be in, here, it’s San Francisco — he’s the one who figures out the complex ins and outs of a mysterious murder and brings the perp to justice. 

Don’t go looking for any symbolic meanings in this New Year’s romp. Instead, do something more useful, like searching for some gin, a bucket of ice and a cocktail shaker.

Edmond O’Brien, Viveca Lindfors, “Backfire.”

“Backfire” (1950)

When you land in a military hospital with spine injuries, as did World War II vet Bob Corey, you hope that the worst is behind you and normalcy will return. Not so, for Bob. He’s been planning to go into business with a military buddy— they’re going to become ranchers. But things begin to take an odd turn on Christmas Eve, when Bob is awakened by a strange woman with some unsettling news. But was it just a dream? He’s released from the hospital on New Year’s Day, and morning gets off to a horrifyingly bad start. It seems his would-be business partner has gotten himself into trouble and is nowhere to be seen. The police want information, but Bob has none to offer, except for that spooky visit from the lady in the middle of the night — and no one’s buying that.

Allen Baron, "Blast of Silence,"

“Blast of Silence” (1961)

It’s a drag to have to work over the holidays. Still, hitman Frankie Bono is on the job and taking care of business. An overly ambitious Mafioso is getting coal in his stocking, so to speak, and Frankie is playing the role of bad Santa. But things get complicated. Frankie meets a girl and his outlook on life begins to change. He calls his employers to tell them that he wants to quit the job. It does not go over well, and they give him until New Year's Eve to perform the hit. There’s precious little joyful revelry here. The waning days of the year grow bleak for Frankie. He’s desperate and struggling to change his ways and make a fresh start. “Blast of Silence” is less about fresh starts and more a meditation on loneliness, and Frankie is in what must be the loneliest profession known to mankind, save for the Maytag repairman.

Edward G. Robinson, “Little Caesar.”

“Little Caesar” (1931)

New Year’s Eve marks a turning point in the career of Caesar Enrico Bandello, a small time hoodlum with an insatiable thirst for power. He organizes a nightclub holdup as patrons ring in the new year. While he and his gang make their exit, the small, paunchy criminal kills the city’s crime commissioner who happens to be a guest at the club. For Bandello, it’s both the start of his meteoric rise in the mob and the beginning of the end for him. As high as he rises in the organization he’s unable to wash the blood off his hands. From that day forward he’s a marked man and doomed to fail. Some viewers compare him with captains of industry who resort to any means necessary to ensure their advancement. In fact, Bandello’s rise from the gutter to prosperity is the stuff of the American dream — but an extremely skewed version of it.

Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Richard Conte, “Ocean's Eleven.”

“Ocean’s Eleven” (1960)

Because it’s a heist movie set on New Year’s Eve, this one makes the list. The Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford, play veterans who served together in World War II and are set to knock off a Las Vegas casino. They mean to handle the heist with the precision of the military operations on which they were once deployed as a team. On the plus side, the movie begins with the always delightful Saul Bass (“Psycho,” “Vertigo,” “The Big Knife”) animated opening titles, which set the film’s bouncy mood. Beyond that, it’s all about Sinatra and company simply playing their affable selves — what else could they do? Richard Conte and Angie Dickinson round out the cast. As you might expect, no one seems to be taking it all so seriously, and neither should we.

Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, “Repeat Performance.”

“Repeat Performance” (1947)

This is a story about do-overs, and in this case, a really big do-over. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot, Sheila Page kills her husband on New Year’s Eve, then gets her wish to redo the entire year. The seeds for this deadly event were planted in the previous months. So logically, if you can change the events leading up to the unfortunate circumstances things will change and hubby will be saved. Murder averted. No stripes, numbers or noose. But the question is whether or not certain events are in the stars or avoidable. In this case, circumstances leading up to the big event change, but fate has a curious way of grabbing hold of the wheel and taking us all on a wild ride. This may be the ultimate New Year’s Eve noir because we get not one, but two nights of celebration taking place a year apart. That’s nothing for Sheila to get excited about. As celebrations go, both are memorable, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Gloria Swanson, William Holden, “Sunset Boulevard.”

“Sunset Boulevard” (1950)

Who can forget the cringe-worthy New Year’s Eve celebration that Norma Desmond cooks up for Joe Gillis? He’s expecting a gala event, but Norma has planned a champagne toast for him and herself alone, followed by tangoing for two. Her sprawling, decrepit mansion, a monument to decadent Hollywood, is the fortress in which the once-famous silent screen star has hunkered down, refusing to see that the parade passed her by decades ago. It’s all too much for Gillis, a screenwriter whose sputtering career and naive outlook brought him to Norma’s door in the first place. Since then, he’s been a kept man. But as the new year dawns he finally sees Norma’s smothering embrace for what it is, and he bolts. But if he thinks he’ll get away from her that easily, he’s mistaken. Norma is the one who gets to write the third act.

Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, “Walk Softly, Stranger.”

“Walk Softly, Stranger” (1950)

An amorous relationship blooms between a socialite and a crook in a film that’s part romantic drama, part film noir. Joseph Cotten is the gambler and con man who maneuvers his way into a comfortable position in an Ohio town. An unlikely romance between Cotten’s criminally motivated grifter and his boss’s daughter finally takes root on New Year’s Eve. It’s the story’s high point and the con man’s fortunes begin a steady decline from that evening on. This is a story about the reformative powers of love, a theme atypical of noir. In fact, you might say it’s an anti-noir point of view. But when you’re drawing lines between what’s noir and what isn’t, consider that there are degrees of noir, despite what purists insist. It’s not an all or nothing proposition, and “Walk Softly, Stranger” has the necessary ingredients that allow it to fit snugly within the noir canon. 

Scrapped: The Original Opening Sequence of “Sunset Boulevard” was Even Stranger than the Final Cut, and Audiences had a Peculiar Reaction to It

Erich von Stroheim, William Holden, Gloria Swanson,
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950).

Test Audiences Were Stunned, Amused and Confused

Joe Gillis (Holden), a life cut short.

By Paul Parcellin 

At the start of "Sunset Boulevard," hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) floats face-down in a swimming pool with several bullet holes punched into his torso. He’d been the long-term houseguest of deranged former silent screen siren Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) until, in a fit of grief and jealous rage, she used him for target practice.

She’d hired Gillis to polish a hopelessly disorganized screenplay written by and for the delusional Norma as a vehicle to reignite her long-dormant career. Of course, things didn’t work out that way. By the film’s end, we learn that Norma’s return to the klieg lights is on permanent hold and she’s about to be hauled off to a sanitarium. Meanwhile, cops are fishing Gillis out of the pool with pruning hooks. So much for Hollywood endings.

For those who’ve never seen the film, that’s hardly giving too much away. Almost everyone has at least heard of the gruesome setup that puts the story in motion. As the film opens, we see the police and a caravan of news reporters speeding down Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard toward the scene of the crime as daybreak washes over the City of Angels. Angelenos will immediately sense that this story is fictional – Sunset is all but traffic-free. Even in the early morning hours in 1950, that’s pure poppycock.

Norma Desmond (Swanson)
in a hysterical rage.

But the opening sequence that appears in the final cut wasn’t the first one that director Billy Wilder had in mind. Preview audiences viewed a quite different and even more bizarre opening, and their reaction was not the one Wilder anticipated. 

The sequence in question was quickly re-edited into the version we’re all familiar with. All that remains of the original are a few short clips without sound and some still photos. Consequently, few have ever seen the completed original opening and it appears that no one is sure if copies of the entire sequence still exist.

However, surviving script pages outline the remarkably strange introduction that ended up in the dust bin. It opens with shots of the coroner’s wagon speeding along the streets, delivering the earthly remains of Joe Gillis to the city morgue. 

The body is taken into the sterile facility, toe-tagged, and wheeled into a room temporarily housing other recently deceased unfortunates. But ethereal music fills the air and a strange glow emanates from beneath a bed sheet covering the cold, still dripping wet Gillis. Suddenly, he reanimates, as do his new roommates, who begin to chit-chat among themselves. 

Each has a tale of woe about the circumstances leading up to their demise – a truck crash here, an accidental drowning there. Gillis is a bit of a curiosity to the others due to his Hollywood connections and because he was murdered. So, he begins telling his story, and thus, narrating the rest of the movie from beyond the grave, or in this case, the slab.

Preview audiences in Evanston, Illinois, and Poughkeepsie and Great Neck, N.Y., laughed at the morgue sequence and were unsure whether the film was a comedy or drama.

Enroute to the city morgue.

After the opening credits, when the story moved down Sunset Boulevard and into the L.A. County Morgue, spectators were stunned. Years later Wilder recalled, “When the morgue label was tied on Mr. Holden’s toe, they started to scream with laughter. I walked out of the preview, very depressed.”

The revised cut shows the arrival of police and reporters. Next, we’re assaulted by a complex and eerie view of the corpse that appears to be filmed from the bottom of the pool. From our vantage point, we look up at Gillis and see his lifeless face. The cops are poolside, looking down at the dead man and they seem to be looking down at us, too, as we gaze upward from the depths of Gillis’s watery grave.

Getting that one shot took a good deal of work and planning. First, since there was no swimming pool at the location, Paramount had to dig one. After much experimentation, art director John Meehan set up the shot. At the bottom of a portable process tank, he placed an eight-by-six-foot dance rehearsal mirror.

 After sinking the tank to the bottom of the pool, he placed a muslin canopy behind the police and news photographers, which, shot in black and white, would mimic the dawn sky. With those elements in place, cinematographer John F. Seitz could light the scene effectively in a short time. The camera was set up alongside the pool and Seitz pointed it down at the mirror on the bottom of the tank and filmed Holden’s bobbing reflection. 

According to Meehan, the shot “turned out to be a simple, inexpensive way to get through-water or underwater shots” by removing the need to use expensive underwater equipment. Meehan noted that the water had to be well filtered for clarity and kept at a low temperature of about 40 degrees because at higher temperatures the natural gases that build up in water would cut down on light transmission.

It’s unclear, however, how long Holden, face down in the frigid water, had to keep his eyes open and how he managed to stave off hypothermia.

A grim end for Gillis.

Despite the efforts to smooth over the original segment’s jagged edges and tone down its comedic content, the revised opening still caused a stir. In Hollywood, Paramount arranged a private screening for the various studio heads and specially invited guests. 

While many were appreciative of the film, MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer was incensed by the cheeky sendup of Tinsel Town. He allegedly shouted at Wilder, “You bastard! You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you.” The outraged movie mogul tried to buy the film so that he could bury it. Fortunately, he failed to do so.

Critical response was positive and box office receipts were good, making “Sunset Boulevard” an undisputed hit. But Gillis’s snappy, matter-of-fact voice-over narration, a sardonic mix of blunt fact, barely restrained venom, and self-deprecation didn’t sit well with all reviewers. 

Thomas M. Pryor wrote for The New York Times that the plot device of using the dead Joe Gillis as narrator was “completely unworthy of Brackett and Wilder, but happily it does not interfere with the success of ‘Sunset Boulevard’.” Taking a more hostile tone, The New Yorker described the film as “a pretentious slice of Roquefort,” containing only “the germ of a good idea.”

According to Sam Staggs in his book Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, no audience has seen the morgue sequence since 1949, although Wilder did save the footage.

When Sherry Lansing, head of Paramount, approached Wilder about including the deleted sequence as an addendum to the DVD version of “Sunset Boulevard,” he refused. Although Wilder sometimes claimed to hold the missing sequence, he told director Cameron Crowe, “I don’t know who has it now.”

This article was originally published in the Dec. 2023 issue of The Dark Pages. Check out The Dark Pages newsletter at: www.allthatnoir.com/newsletter/

An American Story: Murder In the Living Room

Left: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, "Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Center: Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk, Sterling Hayden, "Crime Wave" (1953)
Right: David Janssen, "The Fugitive" (1963).

By Paul Parcellin

The first time I saw a film noir I didn’t know what I was watching. Sure, I could tell that it was a crime film, a detective story, a mystery, but no one I knew called those movies “film noir.” The term did exist back then, but it was used by French critics, vintage film fans and the literati. To me, they were just movies. 

I didn’t see noir in an art house theater, either. These black and white prints were shown on television — “Dialing for Dollars,” if you want to be specific. It was a weekday afternoon broadcast in my berg and on any given day you might see a war picture, a western or a romance. Sometimes you got straight-ahead crime and gangster films, and those were the ones I liked best.

The show’s gimmick was a cash jackpot that lucky viewers could win. During breaks for station identification the host picked a random number out of the phonebook and dialed it. If he reached someone — usually no one picked up the phone on the other end — and they knew how much money was in the jackpot they’d win the cash. It was often a measly amount of dough, around 25 bucks or so and hardly anyone ever won.

If you could put up with commercial breaks and station identification you could see scratchy prints of old movies, and that’s where my film education began.

If you were lucky you might see William Holden’s car get a blowout with automobile repo men in hot pursuit. Holden ditches them by turning into a stranger’s driveway. He thinks he’s in the clear but his troubles are just beginning (“Sunset Blvd.” 1950).

Then there was Sterling Hayden as Det. Lt. Simms, chewing on endless numbers of toothpicks, one after another, as he sweats down suspects in L.A.P.D. headquarters. A compulsive smoker, Simms got the bum news from his doctor: Drop the coffin nails. So he chews toothpicks instead, hundreds and hundreds of them (“Crime Wave” 1953). Incidentally, Lt. Simms was James Ellroy’s inspiration for L.A.P.D. Det. Bud White in “L.A. Confidential” and other crime novels he authored.

Even though I didn’t see any connection between these films, it was clear to my youthful eyes that there was something different here. They weren’t like the spoon-fed pablum that was going out over the airwaves. The stories were darker, the characters were more desperate — these movies seemed to create an alternative universe where all hope goes to die. I was intrigued.

Gloria Swanson, "Sunset Blvd." (1950).

My afternoon movie oasis showed other noir titles, the details of which are blurred by the passage of time. Of course, I had no way of knowing that I’d be seeing those films again one day, except in later years there were crystal clear restored prints. And they’d be shown in theaters with large screens and good sound systems. Hell, you could even own a copy that you could watch at your leisure. But that was a number of years off.

In that pre-Internet era, “Dialing for Dollars” was our YouTube and Archive.org, offering an opportunity to see films that weren’t being show in many movie houses, certainly not in my town. But all was not lost. 

Little did I realize that a lot of the prime time TV shows, some dating back to the 1950s, were short noir movies with dozens of episodes each season.

When noir’s classic period peaked near the end of the 1950s, and fewer noir titles were shown in theaters, radio and television had already absorbed the genre and was broadcasting noir influenced shows with dark themes, intricate plots and moody cinematography. Notable examples include “Dragnet" (1951-’59) a pioneering police procedural series that showcased gritty urban landscapes and complex investigations. It helped set the tone for future TV crime dramas. Also influential was "The Twilight Zone” (1959-’64) and “The Outer
Limits” (1963-’65), both of which skillfully blended science fiction with elements of noir, creating thought-provoking narratives that reflected the moral ambiguity often found in noir. 

Jack Webb, "Dragnet" (1951-'59)

Other early TV shows that contributed to the evolution of storytelling by incorporating the shadows and mysteries of film noir include: “Johnny Staccato,” “The Man With a Camera,” 
“77 Sunset Strip,” “Naked City” and “The Untouchables.” Yes, this is nothing like a complete list of noir-influenced TV. Tons more were broadcast, not to mention the noir influenced episodes of anthology series that broadcast various kinds of stories including noir-like faire. Like early soap operas, these anthologies were broadcast live and so viewers were treated to the occasional boom microphone swooping into the picture and corpses that awoke from the dead and walked off camera.

But getting back to the weekly shows captured on film, one noir-laced series, “The Fugitive” (1963-’67), caught the viewing public’s attention and was perhaps the first such network drama that ended with a finale episode that brought the series to a conclusion. 

“The Fugitive” demanded a satisfying denouement. Each chapter of the story seemed to point toward an inevitable outcome and the show delivered on that promise. The last episode was ratings dynamite, with 78 million people tuned in. 

Based on the true story of Dr. Sam Sheppard, who like the fictional character Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen), was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. Sheppard was later acquitted after spending years in prison.

The fictional Dr. Kimble isn’t quite so fortunate. He’s convicted and sentenced to execution. But the train carrying him to the death house goes off the rails and wrecks. Riding with him is Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), the officer responsible for his arrest. Kimble escapes and stays on the lam for the remainder of the series while Gerard pursues him with the obsessiveness of Capt. Ahab hunting the great whale.

Ed Asner, David Janssen, "The Fugitive" (1963-'67).

Why single out “The Fugitive” among a sizable array of noir-influenced crime shows? With the possible exception of “Run for Your Life” (1965-’68), the story of a terminally ill man who has two years to live, “The Fugitive” may be the most noir of all 1960s American TV shows. Yes, there are other mind-benders, such as the British series “The Prisoner” (1967-’68) that inspired a cult-like legion of fans and became a favorite of stoners everywhere. Like “The Prisoner,” “The Fugitive” considers the plight of a man who has lost his identity. Both tend to land in some tight spots, but for very different reasons. 

As a fugitive from justice, Kimble cannot return to his normal life and must assume false identities, labor at minimum wage jobs and somehow remain invisible as he searches for the man who killed his wife. 

In one shot, foreshadowing the doctor’s unexpected transformation into a drastically different persona, he’s on the train bringing him to his execution and is seated next to the window. A cloud of cigarette smoke swirls around him, adding to the scene’s surreal quality. We see him and his reflection in the glass. The double image is the first indicator that he’s about to experience a split in identity.

He’s transformed into a loner who can never become attached to people or locales. Each day he risks discovery, and discovery means a return trip to the death house. 

Because of his precarious existence, existential dilemmas crop up. In the pilot episode a relationship between himself and a woman (Vera Miles) he meets begins to blossom. She’s married to an abusive man (Brian Keith) whom she’s trying to leave, but he won’t have it. Kimble knows he must protect her, but by doing so he’s taking his life into his hands.

Patrick McGoohan, "The Prisoner" (1967).

Like “The Prisoner,” Dr. Kimble’s misadventures are one long story told in multiple episodes. It’s something akin to an hours-long movie and it held the viewing public’s rapt attention for several seasons. The show wrapped at a good place in its run. After all, how long can a fugitive flee without getting caught?

No, it isn’t a private eye show or a police procedural, but “The Fugitive” gets to the heart of noir — loss of identity, alienation from society and the victimhood of the individual who is railroaded into paying for a crime for which he’s innocent. It's nightmarish stuff — the stuff that noir is made of.

 

Touring Scenes of the Crime (Film)

You can still see some of the hauntingly familiar locations where film noir scenes were shot in the 1930s to '50s. For instance, the rooming house at the intersection of Franklin and Ivar (1851 North Ivar Ave.) in Hollywood. Early on in Billy Wilder's masterpiece, "Sunset Boulevard," hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) taps out pages and puffs Luckies at the residence. Gillis, the struggling scribe with a couple of B pictures to his credit, plays gigolo to faded silent-screen legend Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). As we all know, things go badly for the writer. But Gillis does end up getting the in-ground swimming pool he always wanted.

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