The Film Noir Foundation's Noir City Film Festival began its fourth annual stop in Seattle at SIFF Cinema last weekend, to deservedly-packed houses.
The Fest has always earned major props from film noir hardcores for bringing obscure but top-drawer examples of the genre to light, and Friday's opening double-feature delivered a couple of honest-to-God undiscovered gems in Pitfall and Larceny.
The transformation of Dick Powell from apple-cheeked Busby Berkeley hoofer to noir tough-guy represents one of the great image overhauls in Hollywood history: Picture Zac Efron morphing into Clint Eastwood in an eight-year span, and you're about there. But Powell managed just such a hat trick with his hard-boiled turn in 1944's brilliant Murder, My Sweet. Pitfall hit theaters in 1948, and marked the continuation of Powell's exploration of the dark side.
In it, he plays a happily-married insurance agent magnetically drawn into a fling with fashion model Lizabeth Scott. This being a film noir, things go rapidly astray--compliments of a sloe-eyed monster of a private eye (future Perry Mason star Raymond Burr), Scott's jealous ex-con boyfriend, and fickle fate.
It's the most wrenchingly honest and unflinching portrayal of infidelity you'll probably ever see from a Hays Code-era movie. Scott and Jane Wyatt (the female points of this triangle) are both realistically-rendered and likeable characters: The former assumes far more complex (and unfortunate) shading than the stereotypical noir femme fatale, and Wyatt's an unexpectedly iron-spined (and, um, kinda sexy) little pistol. Powell finds a core of charm and sympathy despite his actions, and director Andre de Toth keeps things moving like a recklessly-fired-off bullet. Burr, the movie's metaphoric and literal heavy, coolly steals the show with a performance that's a glorious kin to his villainous, flambé-tossing turn in Anthony Mann's Raw Deal.
Larceny, also released in 1948, explores a lighter, almost jaunty, corner of Noir City for most of its run time. John Payne plays Rick, a confidence man working the young widow of a World War II soldier. He's banking on a war-memorial scam to bring him that last big haul, but complications--in the form of his boss Silky (Dan Duryea), Silky's firecracker of a girlfriend Tory (Shelley Winters), and Rick's own mounting fondness for the comely widow (Joan Caulfield)--gum up the works.
Before it dives square into a death-and-karmic-retribution-stoked final few minutes, Larceny plays like a near-Preston Sturges comedy. Payne's charming rounder seems tailor-made to thaw out under the influence of Caulfield and sundry colorful locals, and the dialogue snaps, crackles, and pops like a bowl of Rice Krispies marinating in scotch (this double feature served as a fine tribute to underrated screenwriter Bill Bowers, who contributed to both films' scripts). Payne possesses likeably-tossed-off charm in spades, but as befits most noirs worth their shadows, Larceny's MVPs dwell on the peripheries. Duryea--a slightly serpentine imp with a memorably sing-song voice who made magic from smarminess--was one of the great jerks of film noir, and he's a delight here. Meantime, if all you know of Shelley Winters is her high-camp turn in The Poseidon Adventure, be prepared to have the wallpaper in your residence peeled by her va-va-voom curves and caliente delivery of Bowers' best lines.
I missed Saturday's double-bill of Cry Danger and The Mob (see local noir guru and Noir City Sentinel contributor Vince Keenan's ace recap here), but Sunday's double-bill showcase of noir icon John Garfield helped compensate nicely.
Garfield was a big star throughout the 1940s, but his legend looms somewhat smaller than a lot of his peers today. Perhaps that's directly keyed into his flawed (and quintessentially noir) persona: He possessed a lived-in, fascinating mug in the mold of a Humphrey Bogart, but possessed none of Bogart's laconic self-assurance. Garfield's protagonists always seemed to be in over their heads, no matter how much they tried to keep things together.
The Postman Always Rings Twice richly deserves its status as one of the noir genre's high points. The chemistry between Garfield and the succulent Lana Turner couldn't be more combustible; Cecil Kellaway mines earthily-likeable gold from his cuckold role; director Tay Garnett keeps the pace as breathless as the duplicitous lovers he films; and Harry Ruskin's and Niven Busch's resourceful screenplay brilliantly shoehorns the James Cain novel's more objectionable turns into Hays Code acceptibility without sacrificing one iota of steam and sleaze. It all plays brilliantly today.
He Ran All the Way, conversely, hasn't aged quite as well, but it's an absolutely fascinating footnote to John Garfield's career. The 1951 feature details the saga of a small-time hood (Garfield) who holes up in the small apartment of lonely Shelley Winters in an attempt to wait out a police manhunt. It could hardly be called a masterpiece--it's too short to really flesh out its scenario and Garfield's low-rent thug goes nuts a bit too early for Winters' attraction to him to be truly plausible--but the actor remains a riveting presence, and Winters further proves her genius by crafting an achingly-empathetic and nuanced human being from that thankless cliché, the working-class wallflower. The palpable sense of wits-end desperation conveyed by Garfield, alas, proved all too real: The actor died in 1952 at the age of 39, hounded into near-unemployment and abject misery by Joseph McCarthy's pack of Red-baiting pit bulls. You couldn't write a more fitting--if melancholy--end for one of film noir's most singular presences.
Noir City at SIFF Cinema ends tonight with screenings of Slattery's Hurricane and Pickup on South Street. Coming soon: A lengthy chat with Noir City mastermind and Czar of Noir Eddie Muller. Stay tuned, bub.
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