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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Missed Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The artist (Elsa Lanchester) presents her sketch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dressed to Kill: ‘The Outfit’

Mark Rylance as Leonard Burling in 'The Outfit.'

Set in 1956, “The Outfit” (2022) is a smart-looking Chicago-based drama starring Mark Rylance as meek British cutter Leonard Burling, who has dedicated his life to crafting bespoke men’s suits. After a long tenure on London’s Savile Row, he’s set up shop in the midwestern city famous for its red hots, Wrigley Field and St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. 

The story is honeycombed with plots and subplots. This one involves a drop box in the back room of Leonard’s shop, where local mobsters deposit their earnings for pickup. Leonard’s assistant, Mabel (Zoey Deutch), is dating one of the wise guys who use the back room as their personal post office.

Things get sticky when a gang war breaks out between two opposing crime families, and there’s a surreptitiously made tape recording that both gangs and the police would like to get their mitts on. A number of deals and double crosses transpire, blood is spilled, conspiracies are discovered and perpetrators are vanquished.

The film leads us to an unexpected conclusion when yet another undiscovered plot comes to light. By then, we’ve gotten used to the idea that this is a Russian doll with secrets within secrets, so when the payoff comes we’re ready for it.

The story unfolds (lousy pun) in one space, Leonard’s shop, an old timey storefront with a cutting table, bolts of sumptuous fabrics and Leonard’s prize possession, his shears. Confined to the front of the store and the back room, the film’s staging feels a lot like a play. Characters make speeches, and conversations lack the spontaneity and ring of authenticity we expect in crime films. F-bombs sprinkled into the dialog are meant to blemish the gentile atmosphere that is Leonard’s shop, but the rough language rarely adds to the film’s authenticity.

Mark Rylance gives an admirably restrained performance as the English gentleman surrounded by dreamers, oafs and jackals. He brings life to his role, maintaining a serene presence despite the at-times violent drama that plays out over the course of an evening. Supporting players are just that; they exist in support of Rylance’s performance — their roles rarely suggest that there’s a lot going on beneath the surface.

Plot complexities are often explained in dialog rather than demonstrated visually or through action. It turns out that “The Outfit” has more in common with British drawing room murder mysteries than American gangster films. It’s like a good ole fashioned “who-dunnit” dressed in pinstripe suits and fedoras. 

Still, “The Outfit” is an absorbing if not totally convincing drama, and would be perfectly at home on the stage. All of which is fine, so long as you’re expecting a theatrical experience — not “The Sopranos.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Unforeseen Turn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danger Lurks in the Seedy World of Film Noir Carnivals

Tyrone Power, 'Nightmare Alley' (1947)

T

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Panique” (1946) 

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

'Panique,' Michel Simon

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Strangers on a Train” (1951) 

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

'Strangers on a Train'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nightmare Alley” (2021) 

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

'Nightmare Alley' (2021)

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

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

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

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

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

“Ride the Pink Horse” (1947) 

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

'Ride the Pink Horse'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Ace in the Hole'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lady from Shanghai” (1948) 

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

'Lady From Shanghai'

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

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

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

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

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

“Gun Crazy” (1950) 

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

'Gun Crazy'

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

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

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

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

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

“Man in the Dark” (1953) 

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

'Man in the Dark'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Scare Noir: Communists on the Waterfront

Janis Carter, John Agar and Thomas Gomez in ‘The Woman on Pier 13’ (1949).

‘The Woman on Pier 13’ (1949)

When the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, my first-grade teacher, Miss Berzetz, marched into the classroom and scared the bejesus out of us. To hear her tell it, this was the end of life as we knew it.

Soviet tanks would, no doubt, soon visit our small community to steamroll over our humble homes. Communists would appear and force us to leave school, perform menial labor and force us to speak Russian. At least, that’s what I got out of her overheated rant. 

I weighed the pluses and minuses of a communist dictatorship’s takeover versus life as a pupil in Miss Berzetz’s class. Which would be worse? It was a close call.

I was reminded of this tidbit of Cold War history while viewing “The Woman on Pier 13,” a film noir whose world view makes Miss Berzetz seem almost reasonable in comparison.

The story begins after World War II, when anti-communist sentiment rose to a fevered pitch in America, and Reds became the designated boogiemen du jour. The Korean War was on the horizon, Red-baiter Sen. Joe McCarthy was warming up in the bullpen, and in this charged, somewhat surreal atmosphere we find “The Woman on Pier 13,” an overheated, hyperventilating example of America’s burgeoning terror of an enemy within. 

The film previewed in 1949 with the straightforward but unintentionally silly title, “I Married a Communist.” RKO Pictures changed it after test audiences gave the thumbs down. Even with its new title, “Pier 13” is every bit the melodramatic tabloidesque B-picture that the original title suggests. But it reveals a lot about the country’s mood in that most unsettling era.

Its over-the-top depiction of American communists as a highly organized force of scheming, ruthless conspirators who infiltrated our institutions is a time capsule of American hysteria in the shadow of the H-bomb.  

While the Soviet Union conducted its first successful atomic test in 1949, the film came together a bit too early to press the nuclear annihilation panic button. Instead, it envisions a conspiracy of homegrown communists driving a wedge between labor and shipping industry management. 

“Pier 13” uses the communist threat in place of more typical forces of evil we see in noir — organized crime, corrupt politicians, police on the take and the like. Vast, ruthless and operating in a shadowy netherworld, these dark forces honor a rigid code of conduct, and disregarding it can have fatal consequences. Once you’re in, there’s no turning back. Like other noir heavies, the communist threat neatly checks off all of these boxes.

Richard Rober, Thomas Gomez and Robert Ryan.

As the film opens we meet San Francisco shipping executive Brad Collins (Robert Ryan), once, a card-carrying commie who labored as a stevedore in New York during the Depression. Later, he changed his name — he used to be Frank Johnson — and fled to the West Coast. A communist no more, he fits comfortably within capitalist society. But, his apparent serenity belies a dark stain on his past that won’t wash off.

Brad’s ex-flame, Christine Norman (Janis Carter), who’s secretly working for communist cell leader Vanning (Thomas Gomez), shows up unexpectedly and causes tense moments with Brad and his new bride, Nan (Laraine Day). Their whirlwind romance and quick, impulsive marriage hints at a darker core beneath an apparently shiny veneer.

Christine’s arrival isn’t a coincidence, she’s helping to put the squeeze on Brad. The local communists hold evidence that could send him to the gas chamber, and they want Brad’s cooperation. Brad labored under the misconception that he’d made a clean break with his past, but Vanning reminds him that this is folly. To underline the point, sadistic henchman Bailey (William Talman), who cackles madly as he kills (as homicidal maniacs do), disposes of an FBI informant in a particularly gruesome manner as Brad is forced to watch.

The scheme is to pressure Brad to reject dock workers’ contract demands, a move that will sabotage labor negotiations and send the industry into a tail-spin. Communists lurking within the union will arise, take power and trample loyal American workers with jackbooted feet. 

Meanwhile, femme fatale Christine, shunned by Brad, seduces Brad’s brother-in-law, Don Lowry (John Agar), while spoon-feeding him poisonous communist doctrine. Trouble is, Christine actually falls for Don. Commie boss Vanning, disgusted with her lack of resolve, chides her for being so “emotional.” Soon, pressures from within and outside of Don and Christine’s tortured relationship have grave repercussions. 

Nan gets wind of Bailey’s involvement in this web of treachery, and in an effort to collect intelligence against the killer, befriends him at the fairground where he operates a shooting gallery concession. When he’s not committing mayhem and murder, the leeringly randy communist hitman teaches attractive young ladies to shoot, all the while pawing them like a grabby uncle at Thanksgiving. 

Nan is later kidnapped, and Brad faces off against Vanning and Bailey, a duel that results in a familiar noir trope, a chase through a darkened warehouse. 

While westerns stage cowboy shootouts in the mountains, prairies or the sun-bleached dirt streets of a cow town, noir protagonists and villains, typically city dwellers, often have their last stand in steel mills, warehouses, atop train trestles or on rain-drenched asphalt — standard locations in the unforgiving heart of an industrial wasteland, where a man with a gun stands alone and overcomes unsurmountable odds — or doesn’t.

Howard Hughes, who owned RKO at the time, probably had little to do with “Pier 13” development, but we can safely assume that the film’s not-so-subtle suggestion that trade unions are peppered with communists and anarchist would appeal to the business tycoon who would have no doubt preferred that organized labor be relegated to Siberia. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, its fairly hysterical tone, “The Woman on Pier 13” may have helped nudge 1940s America toward a dimmer view of trade unions, signaling the start of their long, slow decline. 

In hindsight, organized crime, corrupt politicians and trade union officials, as well as industrialists’ propaganda probably played a more significant role in undermining their effectiveness than did the exaggerated threat of the relatively small, rather ineffectual Communist Party of the United States of America. 

These days, “Pier 13” may seem like low comedy or self-parody — the current situation in the Ukraine aside — but it neatly maps out the hot-button issues still before us, including home-grown and foreign conspirators, infiltration of government institutions, shadow governments seeking to undermine our way of life, while dishing out hefty portions of paranoia-inducing melodrama. 

The film ends on an optimistic note while serving as a cautionary tale of what might befall us if we aren’t more vigilant. That probably soothed frayed nerves back in 1949, however I’m reasonably certain that, for its reassuring sentiments and contention that justice ultimately prevails, Miss Berzetz would be loathe to take solace in it. 

 

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.