As Noirvember draws to a close, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about my favorite first time watches from my month of film noir. I didn’t get to nearly as much as I wanted to this month, but I still saw some great stuff.
Angel Face (1953)
An ambulance driver gets involved with a rich girl that might have a darker side.
We all know and love the femme fatale trope as one of the most defining characteristics of noir. But what I dug about Angel Face is that Robert Mitchum knows she's shady from the start - and falls for it anyway!
This isn't Double Indemnity, where Fred MacMurray walks right into Barbara Stanwyck's trap and has no idea until the end of his story, (that's not a spoiler for one of the greatest film noirs of all time - we learn that in the opening minutes during the flashback-inducing framing device.)
No, Mitchum is immediately suspicious of (twenty-three-year-old!) Jean Simmons. He recognizes right away that she's a liar and doesn't trust her, but is so enticed by her money, her status, and the fact that she looks like Jean Simmons, he just falls for it all anyway! When the ending happened (no spoilers!), I literally laughed out loud. He deserves it! And so would I because I'd have done the same thing. Oops!
The Breaking Point (1950)
A fisherman with money problems hires out his boat to transport criminals.
So much of film noir is steeped in post-WWII disillusionment, folks returning home from the war and trying to move on with their lives - and how that's become basically impossible for them, (Act of Violence is a great example where that regret and dread is represented literally by an old war buddy.)
The Breaking Point is one of the strongest examples of this despondency in the genre. Harry Morgan (John Garfield in a role he considered to be his best - he may be on to something) has returned from the war and just wants to make a quiet life for himself. It's simple stuff: captain his fishing boat and put food all the table for his beautiful family, his supportive wife (Phyllis Thaxter) and two darling daughters (Sherry Jackson, the younger of the two, is unbelievably adorable.)
But it's just not that easy. He can't make enough money, constantly gets shafted, and finds himself in enough trouble to consider some criminal activity in order to make ends meet. But no matter how hard he tries, he just can never get ahead. The immigrant smuggling, the gun his wife sees him pack, the murder - it's all too good to spoil, so I won't. But needless to say, it's a great literal translation of the feeling so many people had at the time - I'm doing all the right things...why isn't that enough?
Concluding with one of the darkest final frames in film history, The Breaking Point was worth every penny of the Criterion Blu-ray I picked up during a Barnes & Noble sale.
Malice (1993)
A tale about a happily married couple who would like to have children. Tracy teaches infants, Andy’s a college professor. Things are never the same after she is taken to hospital and operated upon by Jed, a “know all” doctor.
New York's hottest club is: Malice. This place has everything: serial rapists, serial killers, voyeurism, medical malpractice, nude Nicole Kidman, alcoholism, femme fatales, Anne Bancroft spouting exposition, insurance fraud, infertility, infidelity, and, of course, murder.
It's kitchen-sink neo-noir with three actors (Kidman, Bill Pullman, Alec Baldwin) who could've given the same performances five decades earlier. Minus the nudity, of course.
A wooden rollercoaster with a few planks missing - it's awesome.