Remembering the City's Prince of Pulp

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."
-- Raymond Chandler, "Farewell, My Lovely," 1940

This Saturday, July 23, marks the 123rd anniversary of the birth of one of this city's greatest fiction writers, Raymond Chandler. Chandler was born on July 23, 1888 in Chicago. But Los Angeles is the city with which he is most closely associated, and where his mystery novels are set.
Chandler's most famous creation is private detective Philip Marlowe, who prowled the "mean streets" of Los Angeles, a term that Chandler coined. Marlowe was a citadel of moral fiber in a city that had long ago lost its way, seeming to spiral downward into a pit of decay and decadence. Through it all, Marlowe soldiered on, but it was a lonely struggle.
Chandler turned to fiction writing after a failed career as an oil company executive. His hard drinking caused him to be fired in the midst of the Depression. He wrote short stories for pulp crime magazines, and eventually, by age 50, published his first novel, "The Big Sleep."
His novels reflected his attitude toward Los Angeles -- the city is every bit a character in his fiction as is Marlowe. He saw L.A. as a sun-drenched paradise rotting from the inside, filled with hopefuls determined to reinvent themselves, and hucksters looking to make a quick score at the expense of the suckers.
Hired on to adapt James M. Caine's novel "Double Indemnity" to the screen, Chandler not only co-wrote the script with director Billy Wilder, he appeared in one of the film's scenes, reading and smoking a cigarette in a hallway as Fred MacMurray walks by -- a fact that went undiscovered for 55 years.
In addition to "Double Indemnity," Chandler also penned the "The Blue Dahlia" screenplay. His addiction to alcohol was so strong he allegedly went on a round-the-clock bender and dictated the script to secretaries in order to meet the deadline.
He died in 1959 in La Jolla, Calif., tired, written out and alcoholic. It wasn't until some years after his death that American critics began to hold his writing in equal esteem with that of the country's other great authors. Disappointing for Chandler, but like Marlowe he more or less took his lot in stride. He was fighting the good fight.


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Crime Double Feature At LACMA

Get set for a night of Los Angeles crime on film. Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye," based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title and starring Elliot Gould (pictured at right), screens with Nicholas Ray's noir masterpiece "In A Lonely Place," starring Humphrey Bogart in one of his most masterful performances. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 22, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Googie Withers, “The Lady Vanishes,” “Night and the City”

Googie Withers, 94, a British actress best known for her appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 film “The Lady Vanishes,” died July 15 at her home in Sydney. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Georgette Lizette Withers was born March 12, 1917, in Karachi, then part of British India. She was given her lifetime nickname by her Indian nanny.
Her family moved back to Britain where Ms. Withers began acting at age 12. She was a dancer in a West End production in London when she was offered work in 1935 as a film extra in “The Girl in the Crowd.”
Soon after starting work, director Michael Powell fired one of the female leads and she stepped into the role.
Ms. Withers appeared in dozens of films in the 1930s and ’40s, but was probably best known for her role as Blanche in “The Lady Vanishes” playing opposite Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. She was dubbed by the English press as “the best bad girl in British films.”
She appeared in many other films, including “It Always Rains On Sunday” (1947), in which she sheltered a killer on the run, played by John McCallum, an Australian actor she married in 1948.
Ms. Withers also appeared in several British wartime dramas in the 1940s and played the memorable role of Helen Nosseross in the 1950 film noir classic “Night and the City,” directed by Jules Dassin and starring Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney.
In the 1950s, she acted on the British stage before moving to Australia with her husband in 1958. The couple co-starred in 10 popular films together, and Ms. Withers had occasional theatrical roles on Broadway and in England through the 1980s.
Ms. Withers won an acting award for her part as a prison governor in the 1970s British television series “Within These Walls.” She starred in the 1986 BBC adaptation of Anita Brookner’s novel “Hotel du Lac” and in a 1987 BBC production of Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey.”
Ms. Withers appeared in the well-received 1994 film “Country Life,” directed by Michael Blakemore, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” set in Australia in 1919.
In 1996, she portrayed a writer who furthers the career of pianist David Helfgott, played by Geoffrey Rush, in the popular film “Shine.”
When she was 85 in 2002, Ms. Withers shared the stage in London’s West End with her husband and Vanessa Redgrave in Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan.”
McCallum died last year at 91. Survivors include three children.

Touring The Scene of the Crime (Film) III

Left, detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) chats with ex-con Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran) in a scene from 1975's "Farewell, My Lovely." Note the vintage Skee-Ball tables in the background. The same ones, below, are still there, in the Playland Arcade on the Santa Monica Pier, where the scene was filmed. The pier is featured prominently in the Raymond Chandler novel on which the movie is based, although Chandler thinly veiled the location, Santa Monica, as "Bay City." The pier was the place you'd catch a speedboat out to the gambling ships anchored off the coast up until the late 1930s.

'Switch' Gets Some Things Right, Some Not So Much

Written by its director Frederic Schoendoerffer and crime novelist Jean-Christophe Grange, the French thriller Switch is part "Strangers on a Train," part "The Fugitive."

PARIS — A tightly wound French thriller that avoids some, but not all, of the genre’s pitfalls, Switch reps a solid fourth feature from writer-director Frederic Schoendoerffer (Secret Agents), making him one of France’s more worthy purveyors of kinetic, Hollywood-style fare. Although local box office won’t be spectacular, the Franco-Canadian co-production should find takers throughout Europe, while a Stateside studio might consider switching this into an English-language remake.

Doing a decent job in justifying some of its more dubious plot points (most of which are held back till the last reel), and keeping the pace turned up throughout, Switch is the kind of barebones, wrong man (or, in this case, woman) thriller that serves its purpose without trying to win awards or change the world.

Co-written by Schoendoerffer and crime novelist Jean-Christophe Grange (The Crimson Rivers), the script’s pitch is part Strangers on a Train, part The Fugitive: When Quebecoise fashion designer Sophie (Karine Vanasse) swaps her humble Montreal ranch house for a hôtel particulierin Paris, she’s hoping the change of scenery will boost her spirits. But after a day visiting various City of Lights landmarks, she wakes up the next morning with the police breaking down her door, behind which they find the decapitated corpse of an unknown male.

Clearly innocent of all charges, Sophie realizes she’s been set up by her psychotic home-swapping partner, Benedicte Serteaux (Karina Testa), who assumes her identity, traveling to Montreal to clean up any remaining traces. Meanwhile, a barrel-chested but otherwise soft detective, Forgeat (Eric Cantona), attempts to deconstruct Sophie’s various alibis. That is until she gives him the slip, taking along his gun and street cred as she sets out to nab the real killer.

That turnaround scene, where Sophie displays uncanny combat capabilities for someone we previously saw lugging around her design portfolio or, at best, jogging in the park, may not convince viewers looking for explanations behind Switch’s many action sequences, the highlight of which is an extended foot chase throughout a serene French suburb. But Schoendoerffer never takes things too far either, giving his film a gritty and realistic texture, while making fine use of Paris’ narrow streets and apartment hallways to show how the world is closing in around Sophie.

Canadian actress Vanasse (Polytechnique) definitely holds her own, especially when she’s on the run, and her performance is persuasive even when the screenplay itself is not. (Thankfully, the filmmakers do take the time to explain why Sophie doesn’t speak with a Quebecois accent, which likely would have incurred the wrath of French audiences.)

As the sympathetic yet rather incompetent Forgeat, former Manchester United footballer Cantona (Looking for Eric) proves that he can do steady low-key work, although given the cackles heard during a recent public screening, he’s yet to convince local viewers. (Picture, say, Barry Bonds playing a schlubby cop, and you’ll have an idea of what they’re contending with.)

Tech contributions are fine, with cool widescreen cinematography by Vincent Gallot (shooting his first feature), and a score by Bruno Coulais (Coraline) that never overreaches.

Opens: In France July 6
Production companies: Carcharodon, L&G, Pathe, France 2 Cinema, Jouror Productions, Tercera Prod.
Cast: Karine Vanasse, Eric Cantona, Mehdi Nebbou, Aurelien Recoing, Karina Testa, Bruno Todeschini, Maxim Roy, Niseema
Director: Frederic Schoendoerffer
Screenwriters: Frederic Schoendoerffer, Jean-Christophe Grange
Producer: Eric Neve
Executive producer: Adrien Maigne
Director of photography: Vincent Gallot
Production designer: Jean-Marc Kerdhelue
Music: Bruno Coulais
Costume designer: Marie-Laure Lasson, Claire Lacaze
Editor: Dominique Mazzoleni
Sales Agent: Pathe International
No rating, 101 minutes


Ripped from the pages of the Hollywood Reporter.

Son of a Satire: 'Chain Gang' Rattles On

I n 1932's "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," Paul Muni stars in the real-life story of a poor schlump who gets roped into years of hard prison labor for no reason at all.

"Chain Gang" is one of the "socially conscious" movies of that time. It was meant to publicize the brutal slave-labor incarceration system in the South.

In 1941, director Preston Sturges did "Sullivan's Travels," which was, in part, a satire of "Chain Gang." In "Sullivan's Travels," Joel McCrea plays a Hollywood movie director who wants to make a socially conscious film, titled "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

He goes on the road to get in touch with "real" people, and gets dragged onto a Southern chain gang. Sturges seems to ask, why make movies that just tell people how bad life is? We all need a laugh instead.

And then in 2000 Joel and Ethan Coen directed a little film called, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

"O Brother" was sort of a satire of "Sullivan's Travels," sort of a witty take on Homer's "The Odyssey."

The Coens' film ended up saying ... hmmmm, still not quite sure what it was saying. But it has a great musical soundtrack of early country, gospel and blues.

So, in essence, we have a parody of a satire of a socially responsible film. Quite an achievement.

Times Mag: New Mexico Meth Yarn a Heartland Hit

The New York Times Magazine did an excellent article on "Breaking Bad" executive producer Vince Gilligan, and the twisted logic that makes the show's characters so enjoyable to watch. It's called "The Dark Art of 'Breaking Bad.'"
If the Times' online subscription technology prevents you from reading it, you can download this PDF file, which has the text but not the photos that went with the article.
The article points out that B.B. is a hit in the heartland of America, namely the Mid-West, but not so much on the two coasts. It's a "Red State" hit, you could say. Besides breaking standard TV taboos -- the heroes are meth dealers -- the writers have canned the heretofore iron-clad rule of series writing: The protagonist's character can never change. He's got to be the same person from beginning to end, or else the show's premise goes out the window. In B.B., our hero, Walt White, is the king of personality and morality disintegration. Yet we can't stop watching him.