“In the 1940’s, a new genre – film noir – emerged from the world of hard-boiled pulp magazines, paperback thrillers, and sensational crime movies. These films, tough and unsentimental, depicted a black and white universe at once brutal, erotic, and morally ambiguous.”
Film Noir officially started in the 40’s, but the movement was well underway by the early 30’s. You can trace its roots to the Great Depression and the arrival of the dime pulp magazines. These were highly stylized, mostly mystery stories that provided cheap escapism for the masses who were not having a good time of it. Writers like Raymond Chandler crafted the mold that was easily transferred to the silver screen. These were low-budget films that were intended to be second billing with the more mainstream releases. They were shot quickly. Many have a very flat look, created intentionally. The lighting was often minimal, crafting odd shadows and unusual textures. The dialog wasn’t intended to be natural or realistic. These characters usually spoke in clichés and had names like Mac, Griff, or Dollface. There was often a shade of gray to these characters. Good and evil were not always so clear-cut. Gangsters became common themes of the genre. And while the dialog might have been cheesy, the cinematography was often gritty and almost ultra-realistic. At times the films played out like documentaries, often including narration. The narrator would always be a voice of authority; often film-reel stars were used. The films were heavily influenced by German Expressionism, perfected by the likes of Fritz Lang in the silent era and carried over to more modern themes. The films always contained a steady supply of stock characters and actors. It was smoky rooms and neon lights. It was a reflection on the times. It was Film Noir.
Kino Lorber has been releasing films in this genre for a while. I’m sorry that I come to this collection on the 11th entry. I have a soft spot for this stuff and find there’s very little of it out there, particularly on Blu-ray.
Here are the films collected here:
I Was A Shoplifter (1950)
“The American public spends more than $4 billion in the nation’s great department stores. Some pay cash for their merchandise. Others use the installment plan; a few try shoplifting, a criminal practice annually amounting to $100 million. Shoplifters come from all walks of life. Temptation and opportunity lie for them wherever merchandise is displayed … Among the professionals, those who attempt to eke out a living by the practice, are many drug addicts, and among the amateurs are some who are mentally ill and unable to control their impulse to steal. Described sometimes as kleptomaniacs, they are often tempted by the glitter of things, often by the touch and feel of things, and sometimes by a button, a spool of thread, or a mere bag or tote, which to them may mean more than all the riches they might possess. This is the story of one such person.”
Faye (Freeman) is in an upscale L.A. department store, and she’s taking a few things. She’s being followed by a store detective, Herb (Drake), but also a man who appears to be engaged in the same activity but with some professional gear. He’s Jeff Andrews, played by Scott Brady. He tries to warn her that she’s being watched, but she doesn’t get the message. She ends up getting popped, and Andrews for his trouble is also caught up in the bust. She’s given a warning but forced to sign a confession so that the next time she goes down harder. The trouble is she’s a judge’s daughter, and she can’t afford word of her indiscretion to get out. That’s when we learn that Andrews is really an undercover cop who teaches criminal psychology at the academy. He’s working for a task force that includes the police and the store to bring down a ring of professional shoplifters that have been hitting the store hard of late. Faye is bait, but she doesn’t know it. Andrews is going to keep tabs on her. They believe she’ll be contacted by the ring … and she is.
Faye works as a librarian, where she is approached by a woman who calls herself Ina (King), and she knows what happened to Faye and offers to get the confession for her if she shows up at an address for a meeting. Andrews acts like he just happened by and ends up getting himself invited to the meeting, because Faye thinks he’s just another crook now out on bail. Faye is forced to join the ring, and Andrews works himself into the deal. Of course, he starts to fall for Faye, and when his cover gets blown, it might be curtains for the both of them.
The film was directed by the prolific Charles Lamont. This guy got a lot of work because he knew how to work fast, which saved studios a ton of money. Lamont often directed as many as seven or eight films in a year, and all under budget. He’s most known for his long collaboration with Abbott and Costello, directing most of their iconic films. This wasn’t one of his better known films, but it might be one of his better efforts.
The cast includes a couple of unknowns just starting out on their careers. One unknown was a fella named Rock Hudson, who isn’t even credited, and plays a short stint as one of the security guys in the department store. He only went on to be one of the most iconic actors of his day. Another unknown was a guy named Anthony Curtis, who you might know by his later billing as Tony Curtis. He actually has a bigger role here and one of the first in his career. He plays a ring member named Pepe, who tries to rape Faye and gets into some fisticuffs with Andrews.
Mona Freeman plays the lead as Faye. Freeman was a contract player, and this is one of her bigger parts. She left movies shortly after this one and did a few years in television before quitting her acting to devote full time as a portrait painter, where she painted the famous portrait of Mary See, founder of See Candies where the portrait hung in the HQ for decades. Scott Brady appeared mostly in westerns throughout his career and played the police captain nemesis of Carl Kolchak in the television movie The Night Strangler.
For a low-budget film there were some nice scenes in the film. There’s an aerial chase when Pepe tries to kidnap Faye and race her to the Mexican border. It’s a car … or truck chase scene that doesn’t often fit the budget of these films. There’s also a dramatic ocean scene where distraught Faye tries to drown herself in the ocean before Andrews comes to her rescue. The lighting and shadow working against a raging surf is a truly spectacular moment in the film and adds an unexpected weight to the film. It’s no surprise. In addition to director Lamont the film was shot by cinematographer Irving Glassburg who got his start as a cameraman on James Cagney’s iconic The Public Enemy. These are the kinds of things that make unknown gems like these so much fun to watch. I have to confess that I love these cheap old noir films. “Bad things to be leaving around, confessions”.
Behind The High Wall (1956)
Warden Carmichael (Tully) has been the temporary man in charge at a prison for six months, since the death of the previous warden. He’s been waiting for the government committee to give him the official job, but they keep putting him off. Suddenly he finds himself the hostage of a couple of inmates as they hijack his car to escape the prison. The gang also take along a mechanic related to one of the escapees. The mechanic, Johnny Hutchins (Gavin) was forced along at gunpoint. The convicts end up in a gunfight with a motorcycle cop, and the car goes out of control and down into the woods. The inmates are killed. One in the crash. The other by Carmichael, who shoots him trying to get away with a suitcase. Inside the case is $100,000, and Carmichael decides to take it. When he sees Hutchins waking up, he buries the money to come get it later. The trouble is that the warden’s story puts Hutchins on trial for the murder of the motorcycle cop when Carmichael won’t say for sure he was forced into the crime. Carmichael also accidentally buries Hutchins’s only piece of evidence with the money. Carmichael’s wheelchair-bound wife Hilda (Sidney) is pained by her husband’s actions as he watches Hutchins convicted and sentenced to execution. When other convicts guess that Carmichael has the money, he gets taken hostage once again and has a chance to come clean.
Betty Lynn plays a pretty big role as one of the convicts wives. Fans of the Andy Griffith Show know her as the long-time girlfriend and eventual wife of Don Knotts’ character Barney Fife. In a real life-imitates-art, she grew frustrated with Hollywood after her house was broken into for a second time in a year and quit the business to move to Mount Airy, North Carolina, which was the real-life town that inspired Mayberry. She would show up to the museum often to surprise tourists and lived there to the ripe old age of 95 when she passed away.
Hutchins was played by John Gavin, who was almost James Bond. When Sean Connery was holding out for a ton of cash to make Diamonds Are Forever, the decision was made to feature Bond as an American, and the part went to John Gavin. Connery broke down and ended up doing the film, but Gavin had already been signed and got paid for the gig even though he never got to play the role. He was a two-term president of the Screen Actor’s Guild and played the role of Loomis in Psycho. While Hitch was not fond of the performance, it would go on to great inspiration for John Carpenter, who based the name of Halloween’s Dr. Loomis on the Gavin character. He also played the role of Julius Caesar in Spartacus. This was just his second film and first big part.
Tom Tully who plays Carmichael was a prolific actor who was in such films as The 152 remake of The Jazz Singer and Till The End Of Time. His career was cut short when he appeared in Vietnam with Bob Hope’s USO tour where he contracted a worm that later led to a blood clot in his leg that led to amputation.
A Woman’s Vengeance (1948)
“Wouldn’t have minded being a dog myself. Comfortable kennels, free meals, unlimited access to the females of the species, and when you’re old, they shoot you. No wheelchairs, no torture, no blasted nurses – one bang and it’s over.”
Henry Maurier (Boyer) is in a bad marriage. His wife is very ill, and they fight most of the time. He’s having an affair with a younger woman, Doris (Blyth), and his brother-in-law has caught them and demands blackmail to keep his secret. When he returns from one of his dates he’s met by the family doctor, Dr. James Libbard (Hardwicke), who tells him that his wife has died. A long-time friend, Janet (Tandy) has believed that the two of them would be together when the unfortunate wife was finally out of the picture. When Henry quickly marries Doris, it sends Janet into a spiral of bitterness that leads her to accuse him of murdering his wife. With the affair it looks bad for Henry, and he is convicted and sentenced to death to the glee of his wife’s nurse (Natwick) and the consternation of the good Doctor, who does not believe Henry committed the crime. He believes he knows who did it and sets out to try and set things straight through some trickery, drugs, and psychology.
The film is filled with wonderful performances that truly make this slow-burn thriller far more compelling than it rightfully should be. Charles Boyer was on top of his game. By the way, there is a commentary by supposed film scholar Jason A. Ney. Why do I say supposedly? He constantly mispronounces Charles Boyer’s last name. He says it like it appears, but anyone in the industry knows he pronounced it as boy-yay. Boyer was so infuriated by people getting it wrong that he often signed correspondences with the phonetic boy-yay. A film scholar of any true merit would absolutely know how it’s pronounced and would also know how much it irritated the actor to have it said as such. Seems like a small thing, but I found it hard to take the guy seriously because of the glaring error, and that makes this, the only real bonus feature, a complete waste of your time. Fortunately, these films are more than worth the price of admission.
Back to Boyer for a moment. He gets to play a nice range here, from the pain of a nagged husband to the tortured soul awaiting execution. You also can’t go wrong with Sir Cedric Hardwicke in the cast. From The Ten Commandments to The Ghost Of Frankenstein, he was truly a master thespian. Ann Blyth plays Doris, and she’s had quite a career of her own. She was Helen Morgan in The Helen Morgan Story and appeared in Mildred Pierce, Kismet, and The Great Caruso. She’s still around at the age of 96.
Of course, we lost Jessica Tandy back in 1994, but not before she saw a resurgence in her career as an elder actress in such classics as Driving Miss Daisy, Cocoon, and Fried Green Tomatoes. What a career she had, and this should be an outstanding overlooked performance by even her biggest fans.
All three of these films are quite fantastic. It’s hard to pick a best film, but I rather enjoyed I Was A Shoplifter a little better than the others. But put these three gems in one release? “I couldn’t have been more pleased by anything in my life.”
