Why Is Everyone So Sarcastic?

Noir City 5: Days Two and Three
Cry Danger (1951, Dir. Robert Parish
Special Guest: Richard Earlman
Abandoned (1949, Dir. Joseph M. Newman)
Hell's Half Acre (1954, Dir. John Auer)
99 River Street (1953, Dir. Phil Karlson)



Hell's Half Acre

The San Francisco Film Noir Festival
Friday, January 26th-Sunday, February 4th, 2007
The Castro Theatre
San Francisco, CA
For a complete listing of the screenings go to:
http://www.noircity.com/noircity.html

More Noir City 5 Articles:
http://www.siffblog.com/reviews/descent_into_darkness_003621.html#more
http://www.siffblog.com/events/welcome_to_noir_city_003613.html#more

Day Two of the San Francisco Film Noir Festival featured a double bill of films written by Bill Bowers. Bowers' plots may have been run of the mill, but his dialog was some of the best in noir. In the first film, Cry Danger (available on VHS from Republic) the terminally sarcastic Dick Powell stars as Rocky. A phony alibi has recently sprung him form the pen where he was serving a life sentence for a murder and robbery. When he gets out he immediately sets out to expose Castro, a ruthless thug who he thinks actually committed the robbery. He also wants the $50, 0000 he feels Castro owes him for time he did in jail for Castro's crime.

Supposedly Rocky wound up in jail because he was framed; I think it was his complete inability to answer any question without making a smart ass rejoinder, regardless of the gravitas of the situation, that actually landed him in jail. When Castro asks him, after an initial payoff of $4,000, "What do you plan to do with all the dough?" Rocky responds "I plan to get an operation, so I can play the violin again." His semi-alcoholic sidekick, portrayed by the great character actor Richard Erdman who attended the noir festival, is equally as witty. When cutie blonde trailer trash, Darlene sees him take a morning shot of bourbon she asks, "You drinkin' that stuff so early?" He replies, "Listen, doll girl, when you drink as much as I do, you gotta start early."
The second half of the double feature was Abandoned (not available on VHS or DVD) which Bowman script doctored adding much need wit to a fairly turgid story of a woman, Paula, who comes to the big city to find her missing sister. She finds out her sister was killed by some very nasty racketeers running an illegal adoption ring. Along with a charming local reporter, an unwed mother and the D.A. she busts up the racket. The real standout in the film was Raymond Burr as the corrupt private investigator who plays both sides against the middle. The scene where the racketeers torture him with a pack of matches is discreetly shot but incredibly brutal.
On day three, the festival screened two Evelyn Keys films, neither on VHS or DVD, Hell's Half Acre and 99 River Street. Keyes left me unimpressed as an actress, but the two films were great. In Hell's Half Acre, Keyes plays Donna Williams. Donna travels to Honolulu and searches the sleazy tenement district, Hell's Half Acre, for Chet Chester an ex-racketeer hunting down the killer of his girlfriend. Donna believes Chet may be her husband reported missing in action twelve years earlier during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What makes this film great is not the leads or the plot but a triumvirate of character actors giving completely unrestrained performances as the heavies. First, there's Phillip Ahn, a great actor, whose career followed the path of most Asian American actors of the classic period: Charlie Chan film, Japanese baddie, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Korean soldier, servants/small shop owners, tong leader and finally one of David Carradine's mentors on Kung Fu. In Hell's Half Acre, he portrays the lead bad guy with great gusto. In this pot boiler, he betrays the lead, murders two people with his bare hands and carries on a torrid affair with a married white woman played by Marie Windsor. Marie steals the show as Ahn's mistress. She's delightfully trashy and has a great drunk scene. Jessie White plays her slovenly husband. Better known for comedy, he strikes just the right balance between pathetic loser and menacing sleaze ball. He's quite effective in a scene where he drunkenly attempts to assault Keyes.
By the way, if you think I'm kidding about Love is A Many-Splendored Thing, then check out the scene where the heroine introduces William Holden to her Chinese family- it's a who's who of 1950s Asian American actors.
In 99 River Street, other more compelling characters overwhelm Keyes. It's really John Payne's film. Like Dick Powell, he transitioned from light musical comedy to film noir after the war. He gives a surprisingly complex performance as an embittered ex-boxer who simmers with barely controlled rage. He drives a cab, dreams of owning a gas station and argues a lot with his beautiful but shrewish wife, Pauline who married him when he was poised to become the champ. Unbeknownst to him, she has plans to move on. She's tied up in a jewel theft and with the handsome thief, Victor Rollins. When Payne goes to pick her up at the florist shop he sees her in the arms of Rollins. After a series of dizzying plot twists, Payne finds himself hunted by the police for Pauline's murder and in turn playing the hunter. He has to find Rollins so he can clear himself before Rollins leaves the country or his cohorts in crime gun him down. Keyes' plays the struggling actress eager to help him and fearful for his precarious situation. When she points out the danger he's in he replies, "It's dangerous to cross the street. Or to park your cab in front of a florist shop." Words to live by.

Descent into Darkness

Noir City 5: Day One
Raw Deal (1948, Dir. Anthony Mann)
Kid Glove Killer (1942, Dir. Fred Zinneman)
Special Guest: Marsha Hunt


Marsha Hunt torn between naughty Lee Bowman and nice Van Heflin

The San Francisco Film Noir Festival
Friday, January 26th-Sunday, February 4th, 2007
The Castro Theatre
San Francisco, CA
For a complete listing of the screenings go to:
http://www.noircity.com/noircity.html

More Noir City 5 Articles:
http://www.siffblog.com/reviews/why_is_everyone_so_sarcastic_003633.html#more
http://www.siffblog.com/events/welcome_to_noir_city_003613.html#more


Noir City 5 opened with two films, Anthony Mann's Raw Deal (1948) (available on DVD from Roan Archival Group) and Fred Zinneman's Kid Glove Killer (1942) (never available on home video). The two films were probably doubled up because of their star, Marsh Hunt who appeared at the festival and commented on both films and her career. However, the pairing of these two films served another purpose; they illuminate the deepening and darkening of film noir over the course of its cycle, the shifting of the emphasis in film noir from the external to the internal.

Kid Glove Killer opens with the election of a new mayor who promises to clean up the city and smash the protection rackets bleeding the small business owners. What he doesn't know is that his right hand man, Gerald I. Ladimer, is in bed with the racketeers using his position with the mayor to shield the head of the racket in return for money and a promising political career. Ladimer arranges for the murder of the D.A. to prevent the exposure of the big boss, Matty. Later Ladimer kills the mayor with a homemade bomb. The film follows two forensics experts, Gordon McKay and his beautiful assistant Jane Mitchell (Marsha Hunt) as they investigate both murders. Here the audience is asked to identify with the investigators on their quest for justice. The audience identifies with the good guys and waits for the forces of right and reason to expose the criminal for the benefit of the little guy, represented by restaurant owner, Eddie Wright.
Six years later, audience identification shifts radically in Raw Deal from the investigators to the criminal and his accomplices. Here the film focuses on Joe who escapes from the penitentiary aided by the willing Pat and the seemingly unwilling Ann. The man hunting him down, Police Captain Fields has only a few scenes and absolutely no character development. The characters who concern us are not the protectors of law and order but the ones who threaten it. Both films feature a love triangle; in Kid Glove Killer Jane is torn between the secretly criminal Ladimer and the upright McKay and in Raw Deal Joe is torn between "bad girl" Pat and "good girl" Ann.
These two love triangles illustrate profoundly the shift in film noir from external concerns to internal concerns and in doing so the how the genre moved from light tales of the forces of good triumphing over evil to complex stories dealing with people who struggle with the good and evil within themselves and even the question of what is right and what is wrong. In Kid Glove Killer, the triangle remains strictly surface, there's no real suspense in the question of who Jane will wind up with, once Ladimer is exposed, the audience knows she'll wind up in the arms of McKay. The focus here is on his exposure as the bad guy. On the other hand, in Raw Deal, Ann knows that Joe is a criminal but she sees the good in him, the heart of gold. Here the suspense centers around who will Joe pick the good girl or the bad girl and more importantly what way of life will he choose?
This is where things get complicated. In Kid Glove Killer Jane secretly wants to marry her boss, but agrees to marry Ladimer since he is ambitious and actually expresses interest in her. Later when she comes back to the lab after Ladimer's exposure as the criminal and the racket's been busted up; McKay breaks down and proposes to her. Her mission is accomplished; she is married and can give up the career she hates for the career she wants: Wife. In Raw Deal the criminal Joe actually starts to buy into the same suburban dream. Oddly when he chooses "bad girl" Pat he is choosing to be a husband and father (granted as an escaped criminal living in Panama). Pat is at first overjoyed by his decision, but guilt and more importantly, an understanding that she wins him only by default, drives her to tell him the truth that Ann is being held by his psychotic boss in an effort to force Joe out of hiding and be killed.
So here the externally "bad girl", Pat a gangsters moll from the wrong side of the tracks, is actually the "good girl". She is lovingly devoted to Joe and if he chooses to go with her to Panama, Joe can live out life as a husband and father leaving behind his life of crime. She is a fresh start, hope and ultimately more of a Madonna figure than Ann. Ann, externally the "good girl", a woman who struggled along, playing by the rules, to build a humble but morally upright life for herself, ultimately becomes the "bad girl". Her love for Joe and his for her is sexually charged in a way that it isn't with Pat. When he chooses to act on his love for her he ultimately chooses self destruction. He dies in her arms. His decision is an immediate impulse as opposed to the lengthy rationalization he employees to talk himself into staying with Pat. His passionate love for the "good girl" has destroyed him as surely as if he's fallen for a femme fatale. Both women are left heartbroken. Pat must face both the death of her loved one and the realization that he preferred to die in another woman's arms then to live in hers. Ann loses her lover, has to live with being the one who drove him to his destruction and has to live knowing that she was not the girl she thought she was. This is a far cry from Jane's game of musical fiancees.
Ultimately, the pairing of Kid Glove Killer and Raw Deal illustrates clearly how film noir moved away from a simple world view to a highly complex one. The move from the American Dream of a stable society, where the bad guy is exposed, the hero wins the heroine and they live happily ever after to a shadowy underworld, where the whole notion of good and bad is questioned and there is no happily ever after, just existential angst or death.

Welcome to Noir City

Noir City 5



The San Francisco Film Noir Festival
Friday January 26th-Sunday February 4th, 2007
The Castro Theatre
San Francisco, CA
For a complete listing of the screenings go to:
http://www.noircity.com/noircity.html
More Noir City 5 Articles:
http://www.siffblog.com/reviews/descent_into_darkness_003621.html#more
http://www.siffblog.com/reviews/why_is_everyone_so_sarcastic_003633.html#more

So what if you have to double cross your war buddy and take all the dough from the heist you've planned with him for months? Or embezzle a small fortune from your boss? Or maybe knock off your unwanted spouse and collect the insurance money? Won't it be worth it to sit at the historic Castro Theatre for ten glorious days and watch twenty films about people like you, people that had the guts to grab for what they want? Of course, you might want to remind yourself that most of them wound up dead. But won't it be worth it? After all she might be there waiting for you.

Yeah, she will be there, Marsha Hunt, star of RAW DEAL and KID GLOVE KILLER. Wouldn't you like to meet her at the reception? Watch those two classic films with her? Hear all those great stories about the making of the films, about her career and about those days in Hollywood? A dame who had to struggle against black listing in the fifties could probably teach a punk like you a thing or two about life. Richard Erdman will be at the festival too. He'll be grilled on stage about his role in CRY DANGER.
We're not talking about any twenty film noirs. Go ahead watch the same old movies in your cramped little apartment while the rain beats monotonously against the windows till you snap. Miss more then twelve films that have never been released on VHS or DVD. No one thought I WALK ALONE would see the light of day again. But there it will be on the big screen. A 35mm archival print of it surfaced sort of like that body you thought you buried so long ago. Then there's the new 35mm print of I LOVE TROUBLE struck especially for Noir City Five. Do you have any idea what programmer Anita Monga had to go through to get that print? To get restored 35mm prints of THE BIG COMBO and THE SPIRTUALIST? All so you could see them in their full black and white glory on the big screen. Don't you think you owe her something?
If all this won't convince you then there's just this. Wouldn't it be great to watch these films, even the ones you've seen before, on the big screen with a bunch of other movie lovers and listen to Eddie Muller, founder and president of The Film Noir Foundation and author of DARK CITY, tell you a thing or two about them. You may have caught him at SIFF last year when he brought us Seattleites two great and rare film noirs, THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF and THE WINDOW. He also taught us a lesson. Film noir boils down to this, "people who know they're doing the wrong thing and do it anyway." So do what it takes, and get your self down to San Francisco and spend ten days watching other people destroy their lives.

Local Produce: Local Shorts

Local Produce: Local Shorts
Saturday, October 14, 12:00pm
Harvard Exit

Still from To Be A Heart
www.seattlequeerfilm.com

This 92-minute program of shorts features the queer related works of Pacific Northwest filmmakers. The films vary greatly in genre, format, subject matter, production value and overall quality. If you want to see what local directors are up to and view a couple of really good films while wading through some mediocre, and some down right bad, films this is the program for you. If you want to see shorts of a more consistent quality then check out some of the other short programs at the festival like The Young and The Breathless.

Several films had either strong production values but weak stories or strong stories with weak production values. To Be A Heart had a great premise- it's a clever meditation on gender- but the acting and production design were a letdown. Another worthwhile entry was the four-minute short Bedfellows, which had a clever premise and a great amusing script. Drafting Dimensions had an interesting sci-fi/metaphysical concept, some great art design, but the second-rate cinematography and special effects along with wooden acting undercut the big ideas in the script.
The first film that stands out in this program is The Sisterhood of the Night. It's not a perfect film, the pacing drags a bit and the story was a rehash of The Crucible with a modern Buffy/The Craft/Ginger Snaps view of teenage female sexuality. However the narrative structure, the acting and the visual style of the film are first rate.
The best of the lot by far was Free Parking. The story is simple, two sisters are sent out to pick blackberries, but the complexity of their relationship is conveyed in a brilliantly naunced script and two realistically complicated performances by the young actresses playing the sisters. Frankly, I felt it was worth the whole program to see this short. It'll be interesting to see where the director, Laura Jean Cronin goes as a filmmaker.

2006 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

2006 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
October 13-22
http://www.seattlequeerfilm.com/06/index.html

It is time once again for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival which consistently excels in its programming. Over the past six years of covering this event, I have seen the festival grow in number of days, venues and films without losing its quality of programming while pursuing a higher quantity of films. This year's festival, the eleventh one, opens with a real programming coup, screening what will probably be the most controversial film of the year, James Cameron Mitchell's follow up to his brilliant directorial debut, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the sexually explicit Shortbus. The characters include a dominatrix, a sex therapist, and a gay couple looking for a third partner, all of whom are dealing with a variety of sex and intimacy issues. This film reflects the spirit of the rest of the programming, one of true diversity.

The diversity of the programming this year shows in the range of genre: documentary, comedy, romance, erotica, political satire, musical performance, and the ever popular annual sing-a-long musical, this year it's Funny Girl. Funny Girl is one of several archival screenings this year, they are also presenting Ken Russell's lush epic, The Music Lovers, a film about the life of Tchaikovsky (one of a series of films Russell made about great musical composers.) Both are being screened at the Cinerama. The festival is also screening the late Russ Meyer's ode to big-busted women and the violence they do, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Its iconic star, Tura Satana will be in attendance.
The festival will also have a diverse range of subjects in its feature length and short documentaries and narrative films. The subjects include some of the most pressing issues in the current human rights battle: marriage and family, religion, race and transgender issues. The films also cover non-political subjects like the humorous and tragic travails of love, the perils of music fandom and gay zombies.
Yes, gay zombies! Creatures from The Pink Lagoon, produced right here in Seattle will be playing at the festival. (This shameless plug brought to you by a minor crewmember of the film.) Also for the locally minded there is Boy Culture, which was also shot here in Seattle. (Click here:http://www.siffblog.com/reviews/boy_culture_003516.html# for a full review of it.) Plus there is an entire program of locally made shorts called Local Produce: Local Shorts that is also screening at the festival. Check out the schedule for show times and ticket information: http://www.seattlequeerfilm.com/06/schedule.html

Boy Culture

Sunday, June 15th, 9:15 p.m. Harvard Exit
Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
http://www.seattlequeerfilm.com/06/index.html

Please take advantage of Seattle getting this great film a second time. This review was originally written for its screening at SIFF.

Here's my problem with most gay dramas; they usually fall into one of four categories Coming Out, Dying of Aids, The Loves and Travails of a Group of Friends and Hustlers. Granted Boy Culture technically falls into Hustlers, but within the first five minutes of the film it satirizes this fact in a wittily self-reflexive way.

Admirably, director and co-screenwriter Q. Allan Brocka was able to incorporate several of these self-parodying jokes; as well as use cliched gay film scenarios like the gay man secretly in love with best friend; and the usual stock homosexual characters- older mentor, hustler with the heart of gold, and humorous sluttish twink with secret depths; and still manage to come up with an original smart and insightful drama about three dimensional characters behaving in a realistic manner. In other words, he gives us the best of both worlds and challenges the audience to look at gay interrelationships as they are in the real world. Plus, impressively, he makes Seattle, where the film is set, look like Seattle-there are days when it doesn't rain and there are locations other than the Space Needle.
Brocka also wisely cast the wonderful character actor Patrick Bauchau, whom you've seen a half a dozen times playing the wise mentor to numerous heroes, as, well, the wise mentor to the high paid hustler/hero of this piece the self-named X. Bauchau's character, Gregory, gives X, (insightfully played by Derek Magyar) much needed lessons in human connection and risk taking which in addition to living with his two roommates, Blowey Joey (the twink and X's surrogate son) and Andrew (X's potential love interest) may or may not lead him successfully down the rocky path to romance. Gregory winds up not being quite what he seem which again pays tribute to the cleverness of the screenplay and direction.

As The Sparrow Flies

Sparrows (1926)
Monday August 21, 7:00pm The Paramount, Seattle
http://www.theparamount.com/artists/artist.asp?key=206

Mary Pickford with her cameraman Charles Rosher and director William Beaudine during the production of Sparrows.
This photo is from The Mary Pickford Institute's collection available for viewing at http://www.marypickford.com/bts.html#

Marshall Neilan, Mary Pickford's favorite director, wrote an essay called "Acting For The Screen: Six Great Essentials" (available in the sadly out-of-print book, Richard Koszarski's Hollywood Directors 1914-1940). In it he opines that there are six essential qualities for great screen acting and not a single actress will possess all six. Instead the great silver screen divas possess one of those qualities to the nth degree.

The six qualities are beauty, personality, charm, temperament, style and the ability to wear clothes. (If you think the last one is trite, I have two words for you, Marlene Dietrich.) He then went on to cite an actress who exemplified each quality. For personality he chose Mary Pickford. "You just need to recall one of her radiant smiles, one of her delightful impersonations, or one of her raggedy roles in which her natural personal charm was almost obscured in the intensity of her characterization, to realize that you love Mary Pickford, first, last and always, because she is Mary Pickford. She has something irrespective of looks or age or anything else, will live on. She has personality.
I think the reason why a Mary Pickford film (as with a Bogart film) still plays well with a modern audience, is precisely because of her personality. (Further buttressed by her use of a subtle naturalistic style of acting she developed, when she realized that the screen magnified every gesture, and, so, the traditional broader style of acting that belonged to the theater didn't belong on the screen.) She convincingly plays likeable working class women, or girls or even boys, who challenge authority with courage, wit and determination. She is so convincing in those roles because that is who she was off camera too.
Mary was born into an impoverished Canadian family. After her father died when she was seven, she took over the role as the family breadwinner by becoming a stage actress. She started her film career in 1909 as a stopgap measure between Broadway shows. She worked as an actress and writer for the great D. W. Griffith, but did return to the theater. Eventually, however, she decided to dedicate her efforts to the film medium and became the most powerful woman ever to grace Hollywood. Not only was she the first movie star, she also demanded and received a salary and autonomy that rivals modern film stars. She also co-founded United Artists, with husband Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, to produce and distribute all four artist's films.
Like a character in one of her films, Mary went from rags to riches. She began as the impoverished daughter of an alcoholic father and self-sacrificing mother, and became one of the richest, most famous and beloved women of her time, married to her equally glamorous and successful actor husband, Douglas Fairbanks. A film would end there, but real life goes on and so did Mary's. She retired from acting after the advent of sound, due to artistic frustration (her audiences wanted her to keep playing the scrappy child-heroine) and personal heartbreak, the loss of her beloved mother, brother and sister as well as the heart rending break up of her marriage to Doug. Tragically, Mary succumbed to the family curse, a proclivity towards alcoholism and became a recluse doted on by her second husband, Buddy Rogers.
If you are interested in reading more on Mary Pickford I highly recommend Eileen Whitfield's Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood
For more information on Pickford's acting style, a review of Sparrows and more information on the beautiful print being screened at The Paramount read David Jeffers' article at http://www.siffblog.com/reviews/sparrows_1926_003361.html