Film Noir, though it frequently has moments of violence, usually plays out on battlefields of the mind. Sometimes this is manifested in back-and-forths of wit ala Philip Marlowe, but others it is internal and psychological with characters struggling against themselves. The movies were reflecting the increased public interest in psychoanalysis post-War War II. After the horrors of war and perceived insanity of the Axis leaders, it was en-vogue and the works of Freud became common knowledge to the public. The Dark Mirror deals heavily with psychoanalysis and it's use in crime solving, as well as the corrosive effect of jealousy and sibling rivalry.
The movie begins with the murder of a prominent Doctor, with a woman (Olivia de Havilland) being witnessed coming and going by several people. However, when the woman is questioned by police Lt. Stevenson she is able to produce multiple alibis for the time of the murder. Stevenson is puzzled, until he goes to the woman's house and discovers she is actually two people, sisters Ruth and Terry Collins, identical twins. There is no way of knowing which one is the murderer and Stevenson has to give up the case; one of the twins has effectively gotten away with murder. Until, that is, Stevenson enlists a psychoanalyst, Dr. Scott Elliot (Lew Ayers) to analyze the sisters and discover which one committed the murder. What immediately stands out about The Dark Mirror is de Havilland's performance as the sisters, which is equally subtle and distinct. One sister is dominating, abusive, and psychotic, while the other is meek and neurotic, but de Havilland doesn't make this obvious at first. Most people with metal disorders don't act abnormal all the time, they show signs here and there while slowly unravelling, and this is how she plays it. On the flip side however, these are two different people and many actors would play them too similarly at first, as the same person, but de Havilland is able to pull the performance off, experimenting with method-acting for the first time in her career. Also helping the movie is the use of special effects, allowing both sisters to seamlessly be on screen at the same time, it's never a distraction and you never notice the effect. Veteran Noir director Robert Siodmak makes great use of it, having the sisters interact on screen as much as possible and using mirrors plentifully, a key theme in the movie. Mirrors appear to show us an exact replication of whatever it is reflecting, with one glaring difference: everything is backwards. Ruth and Terry look exactly the same, but are really exact opposites.
The Dark Mirror is a gripping, psychological thriller that stands up today from an entertainment standpoint, add to the de Havilland's great performance and Siodmak's atmospheric direction and you have an excellent, unique Film Noir.
Up until this point in Studio run Hollywood, most films had happy endings, especially during the depression of the 20s and War War II. Times were tough then, real life was depressing enough, people didn't want to go to the movies and see a sad ending. Crime pictures and Film Noir didn't follow this trend, however, frequently ending in deadly shootouts and the death of the main character. It's not surprising that one of directors that started this change was Fritz Lang. Lang had been making movies since 1919 in Germany, including ones that had a big influence on the Noir genre such as M (1931) and Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922). When coming to America, Lang was able to easily slide into the Noir genre, which has a lot in common with his previous Expressionist style. One of the most notable of his early American Noir is Scarlet Street.
Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson) is a middle-aged amateur painter and cashier at a monotonous job for the past 25 years, his wife (Rosalind Ivan) is domineering and doesn't approve of his hobby. This dull life leaves him ripe for the picking for by con artists Kitty March (Joan Bennett) and her boyfriend Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea). Kitty dupes him into believing she loves him, and uses him for personal gain. The movie chronicles Chris' transformation to killer, building up more and more as Kitty and Prince continue manipulate, cheat, and extort him. Scarlet Street is as dark a tale as they come, watching Chris go from meek and bumbling to tortured murderer can be painful, but is also full of potential pitfalls. The path that Chris followed has to credible to the audience, or the end result will not ring true. Kitty is the driving force behind this change, the quintessential femme fatale, so desirable yet so manipulative and frustrating for Chris. It's Bennett's performance of Kitty that makes the ending ring true and Chris's downfall believable. Scarlet Street is a perfect example of how outside-the-box Film Noir could be when directors were willing.
The loose nature of Film Noir allowed for significant experimentation by the filmmakers, especially in the 1950s when directors were given more and more freedom. This was due to the decline in the studio system and the fading away of the high powered producers. The films were generally pretty cheap to make so the studio didn't get very involved and producer/director partnerships were common, so all those involved were on the same page.
The Killing employs what was at the time a unique narrative structure, using multiple points-of-view, including an omniscient narrator, to tell its story. There aren't any true main characters in the movie, instead focusing on a group of criminals as they prepare for, and attempt to pull of, a racetrack heist. There's Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), the ringleader; the financier Marvin Ungar (Jay C. Flippen); George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.) a meek betting teller; a sharpshooter, Nikki Arane (Timothy Carey); a fighter to create a distraction; Maurice (Kola Kwariani), the track bartender Mike O'Reilly (Joe Sawyer) and Randy Kennan, (Ted de Corsia), a dirty cop. The buildup to the heist introduces us to these characters, and gives us their motivation for pulling the job. Johnny hopes to leave crime and marry his girlfriend, Fay (Coleen Gray), Mike wants the money to get better health care for his sick wife, and George is trying to appease his greedy and adulterous wife Sherry, who along with her boyfriend Val (Vince Edwards), want to cut in on the take. The middle of the film is the heist itself, drenched in tension and full of action, the film cuts back and forth from character to character, while also jumping back and forth in time, from early in the morning to right in the thick of the heist. This was very uncommon at the time and very influential in the heist movie genre from, with Ocean's 11 (1960) just a few years later, borrowing significantly from the structure.
Director Stanley Kubrick considered The Killing his first mature picture and it was certainly the first time he had stepped outside of the box, something he's continue to do for much of his career. The Killing isn't just a notable experiment in narrative, it is also a gripping crime thriller and a perfect example of Film Noir in the 50s.
While pulp fiction was a key influence on Film Noir, notable mainstream authors also had their works adapted by Noir directors, or even worked on the films themselves. Graham Greene, William Faulkner did both, while Ernest Hemmingway had a couple of stories turned into Films Noir, most notable The Killers, based on his 1927 short story.
The Killers tells the story of insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien) as he attempts to piece together the story of a gas station worker, and former boxer, known as "The Swede," (Burt Lancaster) who was recently killed by two professional hitmen. During this investigation, Reardon encounters Swede's former girlfriend (Ava Gardner) and the group of criminals he eventually falls in with, including "Big Jim" Colgax (Albert Dekker). The flashbacks take him from his last fight as a boxer, through his criminal days, and up until his shooting. Being based on a Hemingway story, it's not surprising that the films first 10+ minutes, lifted directly from the story, are the high point of the movie, climaxing with one of the most iconic "hits" in movie history. It may seem like a bad thing if a movie peaks in the first 10 minutes, but in reality that scene is the narrative's chronological ending. The Killers toys with storytelling structure by telling much of the story through interviews and flashbacks, so when the Swede is gunned down at the beginning of the movie, we are really seeing the end of the narrative. Many movies introduce to a character, spend the whole picture trying to show us why he is so interesting, then kill them in the end to shock us. This can work, but if the beginning and middle fails to interest us, we find no emotional reaction to the death of the character at the end. The Killers begins with a reason for us to be intrigued, the killing of the Swede, then spends the rest of the narrative proving to us we were right to be interested.
The Killers was Burt Lancaster's film debut and one that would propel him into stardom throughout the latter half of the 40s through the 60s, and while not Ava Gardner's debut, it was her first major film role and turned her into a star as well. Director Robert Siodmak was in the middle of a impressive run of Films Noir and using a script, based Hemmingway's story, written by the legendary John Huston and
Richard Brooks. This is an impressive collection of talent and one that delivers on multiple levels.
Consequences are a huge theme in Film Noir, every cause in these movies has an effect, and characters can never, ever escape their past. In Out of the Past, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) makes a series of decisions, driven by love, that eventually catch up to him and draw him back into a world he hoped to put behind him.
The story opens with hired gun Joe Stephanos tracking down Jeff in a small town near Lake Tahoe. Joe tells him to go to the house of Jeff's former employer, gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). While on the way to the house, Jeff tells his girlfriend Ann (Virginia Huston) all about his past as a private detective in the employ of Sterling, tracking down a girl, Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), who Sterling believes stole $40,000 from him. When Jeff does find Kathie, they fall in love, double-cross Sterling, and go on the run together. The whole time Jeff believes Kathie didn't steal the money, but one night she shoots Jeff's former partner, sent from Sterling to find them and Jeff discovers she did steal it. Disgusted, Jeff retires to the small Tahoe town, where he meets Ann and settles down. Now the past has found him and Sterling hires Jeff for another job, but is only trying to frame him. Jeff is on the run and the rest of the movie shows how it plays out. Director Jacques Tourneur was a master of light and shadows, of creating atmosphere in every day locations. A hotel room, a rain soaked street, a bar in Mexico, each a malaise of darkness and light, with characters constantly blowing wafts of smoke out of the dark into a flood of light. The smoke is reminiscent of the moral grey area in between black and white that Film Noir operates in. There aren't any heroes in Out of the Past, just people, decisions and consequences.
When Sterling and Jeff are talking on his Lake Tahoe balcony, Sterling says that paying taxes would be "against my nature," and that is what this movie is really about, Jeff isn't trying to hide from his past, he is trying to escape his nature. No matter how much he tries to bury in the Northern California country with a small town girl, he can't stop being who he is, nor can he stop it from destroying himself.
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