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We’re still malingering in the last gasp of the classic period of American film noir. Just a suspicious group of gees in slouch hats and trench coats, clogging up the exit doorway of the decade of the 50s. Sorry about that. But it’ll be worth it. We’re going to take a look at a film that is completely in the genre but misses many of the elements most commonly associated with the form. The protagonist isn’t a cop. Not a double-dealing lawyer, nor a private detective. Get this --- the protagonist is a public relations flack. Can you imagine? There’s no flashback. No femme fatale. No voice-over to set our bearings. No one‘s shot or ends up in jail or the big house. However, our subject is full of dread, nihilistic forms, ducking and weaving to hold back fate --- but fate won’t be denied. It’s a set of the most blood-thirsty, conniving, desperate humans you’d ever want to meet --- or prefer not to meet. You choose. Plus, the dialogue is so sparkling and magical, it snaps off the screen and circles the air around your head, hanging there, to be lightly grasped and quoted endlessly. It takes place in the shadowed, dark night of New York City, the big, dirty city. It’s the Hecht – Hill – Lancaster production release of 1957 by United Artists of Sweet Smell Of Success. Whereas we’ve spent a good deal of time on the directors of the recent pod subjects, we’ll redress that by focusing on the writers, the dark cinematography from a genius of the trade, and a cast of favorites in front of the camera. And oh yeah --- Tony Curtis plays a serious role. Really.

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We do enjoy discussing the foundational effect modern directors have on their films --- the whole auteur theory of the style and technique of a director in producing idiosyncratic work. And in film noir, there are plenty of directors who made their reputation in film and the establishment of their hallmark style within the genre. In the last few months, we’ve visited several such directors who drove deep into the style of film noir --- some later branched out into other work while keeping their significant style. Others plowed a furrow mostly in noir and in retrospect furthered the recognition of the genre itself. To name but a few, we’ve recently clocked in Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Robert Siodmack, and Jules Dassin. You might add Otto Preminger, Jacques Tourneur, and the great Billy Wilder. They brought their characteristic feel to noir and contributed to the idea of the director as author of the entirety of the film --- all else subsumed to their vision.

But one of the more impactful and deeply moving of films noir was authored by a director who was an auteur before the phrase was created. A director who was famous and notorious in film – making from his first feature onward. The first feature delivered, by the way, at age 25. A proclaimed genius of film. Many have recognized his first film as perhaps among if not the greatest film in history. He had a nodding acquaintance with films that would be known as noir in later years --- but they merely reflected the fantastic and magical way he saw film and created with cinema. His style was seen across many genres and subject areas --- but it was especially valid for film noir. He was a natural in the movement. His name --- George Orson Welles.

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Nice little film noir survey you got here --- be a shame if something happened to it… If you’ll indulge us, we’re going to swing for the fences a bit this month and try to tie up three threads in noir. The first is that some gee goes against the mob, usually a cop. But, and second --- it’s got to be a cop who’s not as straight as an arrow, he (always he) has to have a bend to him --- to be as nihilistic as the mob he knocks up against. Finally, playing havoc with the bad girl, femme fatale character. We saw some of that last month in Raw Deal, in which Claire Trevor evolved from the fatal woman to the good woman, to the sorrowful woman. Some performance. We’ll try to examine another novel noir character flip in this month’s offering and hope it meets with your approval. Be a shame if something happened to your nice little podcast… We have some misgivings about the vehicle for all of this thread tying --- the protagonist is not our favorite actor --- not by a long shot. But the other characters are wonderfully fleshed out, and the director is one of the mainstays of the genre, helping to bring the Expressionism of his youth to full flourish on film in the US during the classic period of noir. It’s 1953’s The Big Heat, from actual big studio Columbia.

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If there’s a mainstay in the structure of a film noir, it might be the tension between the protagonist --- the gee, the mug, the sucker --- and the femme fatale. The male led around by his nose, or his whatever, down the road to his doom, or his prison cell, or to a long walk down a deserted, dark highway. She inevitably does him wrong --- sometimes willfully, at other times simply because she wants --- freedom, or money, or to get away and up from under. The femme employs her wiles, if I may use that term in the 21st Century (but it was totally relevant in the 1940s and 50s) to maneuver the guy into whatever she desires, whether he’s successful at obtaining it or not. We devoted an entire pod in the second season to the idea of the femme fatale and detailing the careers of some of the top actors who fit the role within the noir genre.

For most femmes, that’s as complex as the noir story demands --- exert some of those wiles! They skip off with the dough or the goods, free as a bird usually, leaving the gee to hold the bag. Occasionally, very occasionally, you may encounter a film noir that delves more deeply into the character of the femme, a film in which she is just as decimated or defeated at the curtain as the gee. Let’s take a look this month at such a film, crafted by three of the best --- one of the femmes fatale we highlighted in season two, due to her long and deep impression on noir, and a director and cinematographer who left a huge mark on noir in their time. It’s also a cast threesome, to increase the tension, if you will. From many – time noir supporters Eagle-Lion Films, it’s the 1948 production of Raw Deal. And no, Schwarzenegger is not in it…

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In most film noir, you may be able to pick out a teaspoon of nobility in even the most nihilistic, rotten protagonist --- they’re in the situation because of their attraction to someone, or due to desperation, or the breaks are against them. Or sometimes, because of the structure of the world around them. From this season’s own short list, witness the hard luck of Al in Detour as his ride is killed falling out of a car. Bart can’t leave Laurie and her homicidal tendencies behind in Gun Crazy. Marlowe wrestles with covering up a murder for love in The Big Sleep. The Swede is played for a sap in The Killers because he took the wrong course after giving up boxing. I mean, pick your reasons.

But occasionally in the genre, a protagonist is so unsympathetic, so outside the mainstream of human values that he (always he) plows on for the basest of reasons in his quest for money, or ease, or freedom, or carnal satisfaction. Combine that with a story that is beset by nihilism, directed by someone who was understandably bitter about their life’s turnings, populated with actors with a story to tell, and you have a bitter stew of noir that’s difficult to watch, let alone understand. Please stay in your seats. I present to you the wonderfully named Night And The City. The most noir of titles…

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Our Noirvember pod on The Big Sleep had me ooohhhing and aaahhhing about the talent that brought the film to life in front of and behind the camera. As we enter the classic period of noir in America, we’re going to look at a film that has some of the most impactful and prolific noir actors ever assembled, with just as talented a production team as in Sleep. For your holiday enjoyment by the crackling fire, we bring you the noir based on a very short Ernest Hemingway story, 1946’s The Killers from Universal. Historically, we’ve liked to propose that, if you want to introduce a friend to film noir in a short sitting, you’d put them in a comfortable chair, roll Double Indemnity from 1944, allow them to stretch afterwards, perhaps all “go out to the lobby,” then give them a shot of Bob Mitchum playing Bob Mitchum in 1947’s Out Of The Past. But if you wanted to show them a noir that has maximum acting talent at every level, so much so that it seems almost wasteful, you’d have to delight them with a triple feature and run The Killers.

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Exit Scary Season, hello Noirvember and back to film noir in earnest! We’re leaving behind the subgenre of crazy kids on the run and into more established noir territory --- the private detective story. And do we have a great one for our entrance! Among the first pre-wave of classic film noir released in the US after WWII, it’s 1946’s The Big Sleep. Packed with talent in front of and behind the camera, packed with confusion by one of the hallmark authors of the hard – boiled writing style, packed with intrigue beyond the simple telling of a story --- it’s a signal event of the genre. It’s packed.

It started, as do many of the early noir films, with a master of the pulp magazine story, the estimable Raymond Chandler. Chandler had an extremely round-about path to artistic success. He was a son of the Midwest, born in Chicago and raised in Nebraska, but due to family connections, well educated at Dulwich College in London. He became a British citizen and entered the civil service, which he found stifling. He moved on to newspaper work, had a stop in Canadian military service during WWI, then returned to the US, beginning an executive career in the Southern California oil industry. The Depression put paid to his work there, as well as contributed to his growing alcoholism. Short on funds, Chandler took a flyer and picked up on the paid – by – the – word pulp fiction magazines of the day, his first story in 1933 winning him instant success. He never looked back. He became more ambitious, his slow writing more fitted to novels than paid – by – the – word, publishing his first, The Big Sleep, in 1939.

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As the last four years, it’s time for our annual salute to Scary Season on the pod --- a little film nosh to whet your appetite for the fun of Halloween ahead. Last season we went down one of the paths of the classic Universal Pictures lineup of horror films, with the foundational Dracula. This season, we’re headed down another path of classics from the golden days of Universal, but the third in the series of this particular horror group. Not the film Frankenstein, not Bride Of Frankenstein, but the third and a nice addition (and the last that made sense) in the trail of the monster created by scientist Henry Frankenstein, the story of his human progeny. It’s Son Of Frankenstein! You knew that was coming next!

Why start with the third in the series? The first two, directed by James Whale, were great and foundational in their own right. But we do dislike Colin Clive chewing the scenery as Henry Frankenstein in the first two films, as well as a thin set of supporting actors. If we’re going to have an actor chewing the scenery, how about Basil Rathbone? Or Bela Lugosi? Also, many scenes in Son are immediately recognizable, as Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder mined so much of the story and characterizations for their inimitable film Young Frankenstein. Sure, the blind man played by legendary Gene Hackman in Young rose from a story line in Bride --- credit where credit is due. But most of the rest is Son. It’s just fun to watch and mark… Okay, that’s settled…

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Bluesky: @wonderfulpeople.bsky.social