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You haven't exactly kicked me in the face, you know
All right. Black Angel (1946). This is the L.A. noir, the gem of Sunday's double feature of female protagonists from novels by Cornell Woolrich. I can't understand how I could have run into noir oddities like Lured (1947) or Mystery Street (1950) and yet never heard of this movie. Like Phantom Lady (1944), it follows the travails of a woman determined to clear a man's name; unlike Phantom Lady, it doesn't fall apart in the third act and features one of the most interesting male-female relationships I've seen in this genre since The Reckless Moment (1949). Peter Lorre doesn't play the most compelling character in it and that's saying something.
June Vincent stars as Cathy Bennett, a self-effacing housewife whose husband was recently convicted of a sensational killing—the strangling of bombshell torch singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) with her own monogrammed scarf while her signature song "Heartbreak" played over and over in the next room. His wife believes in his innocence. No one else does. Kirk Bennett (John Phillips) was one of Marlowe's many lovers; he was also one of her many blackmail victims. The singer's own maid can place him at the scene of the crime. Even the tolerant police captain has no more time for Cathy after her husband's verdict comes in: "We're three months behind on unsolved homicides now . . . The case is closed, out of my hands. And unless new evidence is discovered, it's going to stay closed." A gossipy insinuation overheard in a studio canteen sends her in the direction of Marlowe's estranged husband Martin Blair, the man who wrote "Heartbreak" for his spellbinding, sultry wife, then crashed into alcoholic obscurity after she left him; he's played by Dan Duryea in a departure from his usual heels and heavies and he really looks like six months straight of lost weekends when he rolls over on his flophouse bed to squint at the woman hovering over him in a flat straw hat, an unflattering plaid jacket, and an expression of daunted determination. Between his hangover and defensiveness, and her eagerness and pity, their first meeting is a mutually wounding disaster. By their second, however, their awkward rapport has begun to move toward active alliance, as Marty puts a corrected assumption together with a monogrammed matchbook, and before long the two of them are posing as a cabaret duo to gain the confidence of mysterious nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre) who might be in possession of some important evidence.1 As an investigative tactic, this imposture could obviously use some work. As a dramatic opportunity for the characters to spend time with another, it pays off for the story big time.
There must be a word for the motif seen in romances or narratives with a strong romantic element where two people who are not yet a couple have to play at marriage for purposes of subterfuge and inevitably it foreshadows the real thing. I think of it as one of the standard screwball progressions; it gets its most famous airing in It Happened One Night (1934), although I think I saw it first in The 39 Steps (1935). When one or both parties are married for real, though—to other people—the outcome becomes less predictable. It's not just the potential for infidelity, although that layers the tension in narratives where monogamy is the assumed and cherished default. There's a real sense of substitution, of doubling. You can see more clearly who isn't there by who is. Cathy and Marty present themselves as business partners rather than a couple, but the echoes are there all the same. They ghost marriage with one another, linked to their absent spouses by familiar patterns and new variations. As "Carver and Martin," held over as headliners at Rio's for the third week in a row, they perform the same roles of singer and accompanist that Mavis adopted professionally with Marty and Cathy for fun with Kirk. It is associated in both cases with an earlier, happier stage of the marriage, when Marty was still sober and successful and Cathy's husband had not yet started cheating. Marty even writes a signature tune for Cathy, just as he wrote one for Mavis; both feature as significant motifs in the soundtrack. Notably, although the songs are voiced from a female perspective, the first accurately reflects the eventual state of Marty's relationship with its singer ("I've much to regret / Finding your arms so thrilling / And finding myself too willing / So what do I get?") while the second makes a more cautious, wistful declaration ("And while I'm in your spell / Will I love wisely or too well? / Who can say? / Time will tell"). Whatever this uncertain intimacy can be called, it's not simply going through the same motions. Cathy and Marty thrive in each other's company, apparently more so than they did with their actual spouses. Despite her initial demurrals, Cathy turns out to have a smoky, low-throated way of putting a song over that blossoms unexpectedly from her self-image as a drab homemaker; as her star rises with Marko, she begins to dress more confidently and flatteringly, her gowns off the shoulder, her hairstyles softened, a square-cut glitter of gems at her wrists and throat. In the meantime, it escapes neither the audience nor Cathy that a sober, conscientious Marty is an attractive prospect, despite being nothing to look at conventionally.2 They dance together, they rehearse, they plan the next stage of their investigation. He brings her flowers and she is never surprised to see him around the house. She takes risks and he worries about her. After a show, they always share a Coca-Cola at the bar.
They double one another, too. As the cheated-on wife, Cathy was an object of pity, but not so much sympathy: her husband was the one who strayed, but she was the one who couldn't hold him, the dowdy housewife outcompeted by the glamour girl.3 Marty wasn't just the cheated-on husband, he was the husband who got kicked out by his wife and collapsed into a bourbon-soaked punch line and kept pining for her anyway while she balled half the guys in Hollywood, earning him the inevitable nickname of "Heartbreak"—he used to play the song in dive bars until he passed out on the keys. Mavis and Kirk are the hardboiled archetypes at the heart of the story, the manipulative mistress and the two-timing man who loved and—allegedly—killed her. Marty and Cathy are the halves left out of this charmed/poisoned circle, the ordinary people on the outside, the ones who weren't loved enough. A romance would put these wounded characters together, let them find wholeness in one another. Black Angel does, but not equally and not for long.
Proceed at your own risk from here on. The stuff that really interests me requires the rest of the plot. I have some arguments with the script's expression of it, but I am intrigued by a story which raises such obvious symmetry and then averts it. Past the familiar routines of performance and camaraderie, Marty recognizes his attraction to Cathy and assumes it must be mutual, the romantic inevitability of swapping partners from two unhappy marriages into one loving one: "We both need someone. We need each other, Cathy [. . .] I knew from the very beginning that you were everything I wanted and everything I'd missed. It has to be you and me, Cathy." Her reply is gently spoken and crushing: "There's only been one man. There can only be one man. Ever." In order to accept this line, I have to assume she's speaking for her own idiosyncratic experience rather than all of womankind, but it is true that in real life people do not automatically fall in love with each other just because it would close a circle. Cathy's feelings for Marty are real and honestly expressed; the man she misses is her husband, now waiting on death row and no closer to an exoneration than when they started performing at Rio's. The irony is perfectly balanced. The very force that brought out the qualities that make her such an ideal partner to Marty—her compassion, her loyalty, her tenacity against the odds—is the reason she will never see him in the same light, because it's her devotion to her husband. Now the substitution is performed in reverse. Where her husband's transgression brought a potential new love into her life, Cathy's rejection of a lover's overtures leads directly to her husband's salvation. Marty takes the news badly. Sober for weeks now, he throws himself off the wagon with a vengeance, culminating in the fever-sweating discovery that he himself was the one who took the ruby brooch from Mavis' apartment; in a drunken blackout, he was the one who killed her. His recollection is a marvelous delirium dream of montages and double exposures, images wavering as though seen through the bottom of a tilting glass. It's the truth; the recognition token of the jewelry heart proves it. Kirk Bennett is in the clear.
(I admit that while I find this conclusion emotionally effective, realistically foreshadowed, and totally noir-compatible—shadow sides, the return of the repressed, the monster you chased down the maze of the city was yourself—I have a pattern-recognizing brain and so found myself briefly thinking oh, hey, Sydney Carton, didn't see you there as the formerly irresponsible alcoholic decided to exchange his death for that of his doppelgänger, the beloved of the woman he loves. It is probably more useful to think of this device as Marty doubling himself, not realizing that he's been tracking his own footprints all this while. I do think it speaks well of him that not for a second does he consider keeping the information to himself and then renewing his courtship after Kirk's execution. Cathy already told him what she wanted and it wasn't him. While I've got this parenthesis going, I am fascinated that Cathy suffers no narrative punishment for sleeping with Marko in her efforts to get into his safe. I suppose it might have gotten past the censors on the grounds of plausible deniability: we never see the characters so much as kiss, although the timing of the fadeout, the preceding and subsequent dialogue, and the manner in which he gives her jewelry, expects her company, and touches her face are all suggestive enough to convey the message without it. It's conceivable that it's allowed because she is portrayed as neither physically nor emotionally attracted to him: where Marty poses the threat of really replacing Cathy's husband, her association with Marko is strictly a ploy and one that she endures rather than relishes, assuring the audience of the real marital fidelity in her heart. Possibly the censor was just taking a smoke break.)
And so the investigating woman is rewarded for her fidelity and her hard work: she will get her husband back, with any luck harrowed by his experience into appreciating the hell out of her; the audience may feel ambivalently about this prospect, but she has accomplished what she set out to do. Had she not gone looking for "new evidence," she would never have found Marty; without the impetus of love and frustration, he might never have recovered his incriminating memories. For all this reinforcement of the permanence of marriage and the importance of standing by one's man, however, the ending of Black Angel is decidedly ambiguous. Marty's last line is a lightly spoken, truthful callback to the idyll that neither of them recognized at the time: "Carver and Martin. It was a good team while it lasted." But the last image of the film is not the picture of Kirk that Cathy kept on the piano, or even the man himself reunited with his faithful wife, but the published sheet music for "Time Will Tell" with its dedication "To Cathy," scattered across the floor as the theme itself plays. The photographed faces of "Catherine Carver" and "Jack Martin" smile up from the cover, heads close together. Somewhere the ghost marriage is still going on.
I have little interest in reading the Woolrich novel on which it's based, The Black Angel (1943), because by all accounts it sounds about four times more misogynist than the movie: the protagonist is the eponymous black angel, destroying each man she meets in her desperate, oblivious efforts to save her husband. The film's bittersweet ending does make it possible to read in this fashion, but because the collateral damage of Cathy's quest is greatly decreased from the book—and the responsibility crucially redistributed—it is just as persuasive to consider Marty in this deceptively attractive light, or even beautiful, blackmailing Mavis. The screenwriter responsible was Roy Chanslor, none of whose other movies look familiar to me, although he wrote the novels later adapted into Johnny Guitar (1954) and Cat Ballou (1965). The film itself was the last project of Roy William Neill, best known for directing all but one of Universal's Sherlock Holmes series. It's tight at 81 minutes without feeling crammed; stylistically, it mostly confines itself to realistic compositions with the occasional slatted shadow or plate-glass reversal, but its expressionist breakout packs a punch when it arrives. The songs are convincing and catchy. Lorre is delightful. Vincent and Duryea and their mismatched chemistry anchor the picture.4 Woolrich famously hated it and I am delighted to report that it appears to be readily available on DVD. This flashback brought to you by my musically minded backers at Patreon.
1. The key to the murder is a heart-shaped ruby brooch, a spurned gift from Marty that Kirk swore he saw pinned on Mavis' breast when he discovered her body, conspicuously missing a few moments later. Finding it on any other person will link them to the crime scene and earn him a reprieve from the gas chamber.
2. He really isn't, although it doesn't stop him from being great to look at. Duryea has one of those lanky, flat-angled faces, with a mulish set to the jaw; he sneers easily, which means that watching Marty's gentleness emerge from his bruised, hungover cynicism is as nice a surprise as Cathy's hitherto undiscovered facility for siren song. The character brilliantines his hair severely, which in his drunk scenes gives him a look I haven't seen much outside of manga: disheveled and bed-headed, he looks like a sardonic dandelion.
3. Even Marty makes a crack about it, right after she's woken him up that first inopportune morning: "Mrs. Kirk Bennett. So you're the one he left sitting at home." The fact that he apologizes for it almost as soon as they see each other again is one of his first signs of sensitivity. I feel it may also be relevant that the first Carver and Martin song, performed in full at their audition for Marko, is an arch number called "I Want to Be Talked About" in which the narrator breezily boasts, "Sticks and stones won't break my bones and names will bring me fame / A man in the hand is worth two in the arms of some other dame." The Mavis Marlowe murder case was a front-page spectacle; nobody's private lives stayed that way. Putting a jaunty spin on it—as they perform incognito—might well do both of them good.
4. I had never seen Vincent before, although I note that two of her early roles are in musicals. I thought I hadn't seen Duryea, either, but IMDb informs me that it's just that I've seen him in two other roles against type: a wry tank gunner in Sahara (1943), making endless trivial bets with Humphrey Bogart to cover the stress of the North African war, and the mild-mannered company accountant who names the eponymous aircraft in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). IMDb also seems to believe that he did his own piano playing in Black Angel, which if true is pretty cool.
June Vincent stars as Cathy Bennett, a self-effacing housewife whose husband was recently convicted of a sensational killing—the strangling of bombshell torch singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) with her own monogrammed scarf while her signature song "Heartbreak" played over and over in the next room. His wife believes in his innocence. No one else does. Kirk Bennett (John Phillips) was one of Marlowe's many lovers; he was also one of her many blackmail victims. The singer's own maid can place him at the scene of the crime. Even the tolerant police captain has no more time for Cathy after her husband's verdict comes in: "We're three months behind on unsolved homicides now . . . The case is closed, out of my hands. And unless new evidence is discovered, it's going to stay closed." A gossipy insinuation overheard in a studio canteen sends her in the direction of Marlowe's estranged husband Martin Blair, the man who wrote "Heartbreak" for his spellbinding, sultry wife, then crashed into alcoholic obscurity after she left him; he's played by Dan Duryea in a departure from his usual heels and heavies and he really looks like six months straight of lost weekends when he rolls over on his flophouse bed to squint at the woman hovering over him in a flat straw hat, an unflattering plaid jacket, and an expression of daunted determination. Between his hangover and defensiveness, and her eagerness and pity, their first meeting is a mutually wounding disaster. By their second, however, their awkward rapport has begun to move toward active alliance, as Marty puts a corrected assumption together with a monogrammed matchbook, and before long the two of them are posing as a cabaret duo to gain the confidence of mysterious nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre) who might be in possession of some important evidence.1 As an investigative tactic, this imposture could obviously use some work. As a dramatic opportunity for the characters to spend time with another, it pays off for the story big time.
There must be a word for the motif seen in romances or narratives with a strong romantic element where two people who are not yet a couple have to play at marriage for purposes of subterfuge and inevitably it foreshadows the real thing. I think of it as one of the standard screwball progressions; it gets its most famous airing in It Happened One Night (1934), although I think I saw it first in The 39 Steps (1935). When one or both parties are married for real, though—to other people—the outcome becomes less predictable. It's not just the potential for infidelity, although that layers the tension in narratives where monogamy is the assumed and cherished default. There's a real sense of substitution, of doubling. You can see more clearly who isn't there by who is. Cathy and Marty present themselves as business partners rather than a couple, but the echoes are there all the same. They ghost marriage with one another, linked to their absent spouses by familiar patterns and new variations. As "Carver and Martin," held over as headliners at Rio's for the third week in a row, they perform the same roles of singer and accompanist that Mavis adopted professionally with Marty and Cathy for fun with Kirk. It is associated in both cases with an earlier, happier stage of the marriage, when Marty was still sober and successful and Cathy's husband had not yet started cheating. Marty even writes a signature tune for Cathy, just as he wrote one for Mavis; both feature as significant motifs in the soundtrack. Notably, although the songs are voiced from a female perspective, the first accurately reflects the eventual state of Marty's relationship with its singer ("I've much to regret / Finding your arms so thrilling / And finding myself too willing / So what do I get?") while the second makes a more cautious, wistful declaration ("And while I'm in your spell / Will I love wisely or too well? / Who can say? / Time will tell"). Whatever this uncertain intimacy can be called, it's not simply going through the same motions. Cathy and Marty thrive in each other's company, apparently more so than they did with their actual spouses. Despite her initial demurrals, Cathy turns out to have a smoky, low-throated way of putting a song over that blossoms unexpectedly from her self-image as a drab homemaker; as her star rises with Marko, she begins to dress more confidently and flatteringly, her gowns off the shoulder, her hairstyles softened, a square-cut glitter of gems at her wrists and throat. In the meantime, it escapes neither the audience nor Cathy that a sober, conscientious Marty is an attractive prospect, despite being nothing to look at conventionally.2 They dance together, they rehearse, they plan the next stage of their investigation. He brings her flowers and she is never surprised to see him around the house. She takes risks and he worries about her. After a show, they always share a Coca-Cola at the bar.
They double one another, too. As the cheated-on wife, Cathy was an object of pity, but not so much sympathy: her husband was the one who strayed, but she was the one who couldn't hold him, the dowdy housewife outcompeted by the glamour girl.3 Marty wasn't just the cheated-on husband, he was the husband who got kicked out by his wife and collapsed into a bourbon-soaked punch line and kept pining for her anyway while she balled half the guys in Hollywood, earning him the inevitable nickname of "Heartbreak"—he used to play the song in dive bars until he passed out on the keys. Mavis and Kirk are the hardboiled archetypes at the heart of the story, the manipulative mistress and the two-timing man who loved and—allegedly—killed her. Marty and Cathy are the halves left out of this charmed/poisoned circle, the ordinary people on the outside, the ones who weren't loved enough. A romance would put these wounded characters together, let them find wholeness in one another. Black Angel does, but not equally and not for long.
Proceed at your own risk from here on. The stuff that really interests me requires the rest of the plot. I have some arguments with the script's expression of it, but I am intrigued by a story which raises such obvious symmetry and then averts it. Past the familiar routines of performance and camaraderie, Marty recognizes his attraction to Cathy and assumes it must be mutual, the romantic inevitability of swapping partners from two unhappy marriages into one loving one: "We both need someone. We need each other, Cathy [. . .] I knew from the very beginning that you were everything I wanted and everything I'd missed. It has to be you and me, Cathy." Her reply is gently spoken and crushing: "There's only been one man. There can only be one man. Ever." In order to accept this line, I have to assume she's speaking for her own idiosyncratic experience rather than all of womankind, but it is true that in real life people do not automatically fall in love with each other just because it would close a circle. Cathy's feelings for Marty are real and honestly expressed; the man she misses is her husband, now waiting on death row and no closer to an exoneration than when they started performing at Rio's. The irony is perfectly balanced. The very force that brought out the qualities that make her such an ideal partner to Marty—her compassion, her loyalty, her tenacity against the odds—is the reason she will never see him in the same light, because it's her devotion to her husband. Now the substitution is performed in reverse. Where her husband's transgression brought a potential new love into her life, Cathy's rejection of a lover's overtures leads directly to her husband's salvation. Marty takes the news badly. Sober for weeks now, he throws himself off the wagon with a vengeance, culminating in the fever-sweating discovery that he himself was the one who took the ruby brooch from Mavis' apartment; in a drunken blackout, he was the one who killed her. His recollection is a marvelous delirium dream of montages and double exposures, images wavering as though seen through the bottom of a tilting glass. It's the truth; the recognition token of the jewelry heart proves it. Kirk Bennett is in the clear.
(I admit that while I find this conclusion emotionally effective, realistically foreshadowed, and totally noir-compatible—shadow sides, the return of the repressed, the monster you chased down the maze of the city was yourself—I have a pattern-recognizing brain and so found myself briefly thinking oh, hey, Sydney Carton, didn't see you there as the formerly irresponsible alcoholic decided to exchange his death for that of his doppelgänger, the beloved of the woman he loves. It is probably more useful to think of this device as Marty doubling himself, not realizing that he's been tracking his own footprints all this while. I do think it speaks well of him that not for a second does he consider keeping the information to himself and then renewing his courtship after Kirk's execution. Cathy already told him what she wanted and it wasn't him. While I've got this parenthesis going, I am fascinated that Cathy suffers no narrative punishment for sleeping with Marko in her efforts to get into his safe. I suppose it might have gotten past the censors on the grounds of plausible deniability: we never see the characters so much as kiss, although the timing of the fadeout, the preceding and subsequent dialogue, and the manner in which he gives her jewelry, expects her company, and touches her face are all suggestive enough to convey the message without it. It's conceivable that it's allowed because she is portrayed as neither physically nor emotionally attracted to him: where Marty poses the threat of really replacing Cathy's husband, her association with Marko is strictly a ploy and one that she endures rather than relishes, assuring the audience of the real marital fidelity in her heart. Possibly the censor was just taking a smoke break.)
And so the investigating woman is rewarded for her fidelity and her hard work: she will get her husband back, with any luck harrowed by his experience into appreciating the hell out of her; the audience may feel ambivalently about this prospect, but she has accomplished what she set out to do. Had she not gone looking for "new evidence," she would never have found Marty; without the impetus of love and frustration, he might never have recovered his incriminating memories. For all this reinforcement of the permanence of marriage and the importance of standing by one's man, however, the ending of Black Angel is decidedly ambiguous. Marty's last line is a lightly spoken, truthful callback to the idyll that neither of them recognized at the time: "Carver and Martin. It was a good team while it lasted." But the last image of the film is not the picture of Kirk that Cathy kept on the piano, or even the man himself reunited with his faithful wife, but the published sheet music for "Time Will Tell" with its dedication "To Cathy," scattered across the floor as the theme itself plays. The photographed faces of "Catherine Carver" and "Jack Martin" smile up from the cover, heads close together. Somewhere the ghost marriage is still going on.
I have little interest in reading the Woolrich novel on which it's based, The Black Angel (1943), because by all accounts it sounds about four times more misogynist than the movie: the protagonist is the eponymous black angel, destroying each man she meets in her desperate, oblivious efforts to save her husband. The film's bittersweet ending does make it possible to read in this fashion, but because the collateral damage of Cathy's quest is greatly decreased from the book—and the responsibility crucially redistributed—it is just as persuasive to consider Marty in this deceptively attractive light, or even beautiful, blackmailing Mavis. The screenwriter responsible was Roy Chanslor, none of whose other movies look familiar to me, although he wrote the novels later adapted into Johnny Guitar (1954) and Cat Ballou (1965). The film itself was the last project of Roy William Neill, best known for directing all but one of Universal's Sherlock Holmes series. It's tight at 81 minutes without feeling crammed; stylistically, it mostly confines itself to realistic compositions with the occasional slatted shadow or plate-glass reversal, but its expressionist breakout packs a punch when it arrives. The songs are convincing and catchy. Lorre is delightful. Vincent and Duryea and their mismatched chemistry anchor the picture.4 Woolrich famously hated it and I am delighted to report that it appears to be readily available on DVD. This flashback brought to you by my musically minded backers at Patreon.
1. The key to the murder is a heart-shaped ruby brooch, a spurned gift from Marty that Kirk swore he saw pinned on Mavis' breast when he discovered her body, conspicuously missing a few moments later. Finding it on any other person will link them to the crime scene and earn him a reprieve from the gas chamber.
2. He really isn't, although it doesn't stop him from being great to look at. Duryea has one of those lanky, flat-angled faces, with a mulish set to the jaw; he sneers easily, which means that watching Marty's gentleness emerge from his bruised, hungover cynicism is as nice a surprise as Cathy's hitherto undiscovered facility for siren song. The character brilliantines his hair severely, which in his drunk scenes gives him a look I haven't seen much outside of manga: disheveled and bed-headed, he looks like a sardonic dandelion.
3. Even Marty makes a crack about it, right after she's woken him up that first inopportune morning: "Mrs. Kirk Bennett. So you're the one he left sitting at home." The fact that he apologizes for it almost as soon as they see each other again is one of his first signs of sensitivity. I feel it may also be relevant that the first Carver and Martin song, performed in full at their audition for Marko, is an arch number called "I Want to Be Talked About" in which the narrator breezily boasts, "Sticks and stones won't break my bones and names will bring me fame / A man in the hand is worth two in the arms of some other dame." The Mavis Marlowe murder case was a front-page spectacle; nobody's private lives stayed that way. Putting a jaunty spin on it—as they perform incognito—might well do both of them good.
4. I had never seen Vincent before, although I note that two of her early roles are in musicals. I thought I hadn't seen Duryea, either, but IMDb informs me that it's just that I've seen him in two other roles against type: a wry tank gunner in Sahara (1943), making endless trivial bets with Humphrey Bogart to cover the stress of the North African war, and the mild-mannered company accountant who names the eponymous aircraft in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). IMDb also seems to believe that he did his own piano playing in Black Angel, which if true is pretty cool.
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I loved it and will be doing my best to acquire it on DVD this holiday season, after which I will gladly show it to you and anyone else who's interested. It deserves to be better known. (Dare I ask what Foster Hirsch said about it?)
Kind of like it belongs in the same genre as The Reckless Moment, really.
I think very much so. It didn't occur to me while watching—I was mostly tracking the plot against Phantom Lady and drawing conclusions about Cornell Woolrich—but almost immediately afterward the similarities piled into my head. Which interests me, because both movies have well-documented origins as novels, and makes me wonder what else is out there beyond more Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. Do you have other examples on film? Three and we get a genre.
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I can't think of any right now (unless you count the remake of The Reckless Moment with Tilda Swinton, which seems like cheating) but I'll keep cadging my brain.
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Fair enough! It might be detrimental to have some of that stuff in there anyway.
Depending on timing, we could even recreate the double feature that I missed.
I believe this is a worthy goal.
I can't think of any right now (unless you count the remake of The Reckless Moment with Tilda Swinton, which seems like cheating) but I'll keep cadging my brain.
The universe keeps offering me more female-focused noir than I thought existed, so I am sure some more will turn up soon.
[edit] In case you didn't see when it went by on DW/LJ, I think I found one.
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Thank you! It was completely unexpected. Phantom Lady was the one we were curious about, mostly because of the presence of Joan Harrison; Black Angel was the second half of the bill. Then it started and it was good and it just got better. I am going to pay attention to Dan Duryea now, even if I worry I've just seen him in his most sympathetic screen role. I've got to stop meeting character actors this way.
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I've recently been introduced to the song "Johnny Guitar," which hints at a larger story, as well, so it doesn't surprise me there's a film. Maybe I should try seeking it out, too.
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I knew nothing about the movie going in and it blew me away. Once again, I'm not sure why it took me until now to find it. It's very highly rated by people who know about it, but you have to know about it first. I am trying to spread the word.
I've recently been introduced to the song "Johnny Guitar," which hints at a larger story, as well, so it doesn't surprise me there's a film. Maybe I should try seeking it out, too.
It's legendarily weird: a classic battle of rivals in the American West, complete with hired guns and a fight over the railroad, but the saloonkeeper and the rancher are played by Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge and everything about gender and sexuality in the film is supposed to be fascinating. I have never seen it and I really should. What's the theme song like?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeCWuN0dc5w
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I have no idea how that squares with the film's plot, but that's fascinating.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWIRfEzjdg
I've never had much time for Woolrich for the same reasons as you, but I'd watch the hell out of this. And Phantom Lady.
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That song works really well as . . . whatever genre it is that sounds like Timber Timbre. Goth blues. Underwater guitars. Thank you!
I've never had much time for Woolrich for the same reasons as you, but I'd watch the hell out of this. And Phantom Lady.
They were a really excellent double feature. Even with Phantom Lady's flaws, I think it is going to be one of the movies I am fond of, and Black Angel should just be better known. I am starting to keep a list in the back of my head of noirs with interesting women: these two, The Reckless Moment, Caught. There must be more.
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Enjoy!
Off-topic
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-bffs-who-ruled-silent-hollywood
Re: Off-topic
Thank you!
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Anyway. Onto the Netflix queue it goes!
ETA: I wonder if at Netflix Central they notice little blips in requests for old films as your reviews come out...
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Marty argues with her about it. At first it's more ironic admiration than anything else: "Knocking yourself out, aren't you? Trying to help a guy who let you down." Later, when the investigation has gone much farther, he speaks more seriously: "You've stuck by him. Then, when he gets out of all of this, you won't owe him a thing." And not just self-servingly, as far as I can tell: it's one of the reasons I think it's important that he goes immediately to the police—or tries to—as soon as he remembers the night of Mavis' murder. He doesn't want Cathy at all costs. He's just in love with her and quite reasonably believes she's putting way more effort into saving Kirk's life than he ever put into their marriage. Which is fair if the man is innocent, he doesn't deserve the gas chamber for being a lousy husband, but neither does he deserve the red-carpet treatment for it.
It is part of the film's chiaroscuro nature, I think, that while Marty is a drunk (a dry drunk while he's with Cathy, but the addiction is still there) and eventually proved a murderer, he makes a better partner for Cathy than conventional Kirk Bennett who gave her the marriage and the house in the suburbs and the quietly repressed heartbreak to go with it. Marty doesn't take her for granted. He's incredibly supportive. I even consider it likely, watching the two of them together for the majority of the film, that they could have lasted in the long term. But it isn't going to work for a whole host of reasons, not least the fact that Marty killed the last woman he loved, even if it was kind of an accident. That's the genre for you.
I really like Duryea as a romantic lead partly because he's not the traditional Hollywood type for it. He's tall and thin and sandy; he has an interesting face rather than a handsome one and a light, slightly nasal voice; it's an ordinary voice rather than a screen lover's and he's capable of mumbling as blurrily as any Method actor right after he's woken up. The actor was best known for playing cynical villains with a sadistic twist—his characters became so famous for hitting their women that it was a feature of the promotional materials for Black Angel that Duryea never laid a finger on June Vincent. But he plays a wounded, wistful, self-destructive character both appealingly and believably, by which I mean that I find him a consistent person whether he's down-and-out on a bender or cleaned-up and staying sober to be there for Cathy. He's attractive in the way that most interests me, based on the kind of person he is rather than how nice he looks doing it. I'm having difficulty establishing if it ever happened again.
Onto the Netflix queue it goes!
Enjoy!
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He's attractive in the way that most interests me, based on the kind of person he is rather than how nice he looks doing it. --I can't wait to see this. I've moved it to first place in the queue.
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That is a wonderful compliment. Thank you.
--I can't wait to see this. I've moved it to first place in the queue.
I hope you enjoy it! I was really impressed. It had such a generic title, we were expecting nothing from it except perhaps that Peter Lorre would be fun to watch.
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YES, SYDNEY CARTON PARALLELS. I'M SO GLAD TO KNOW I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO GOT THAT VIBE.
This was a great read (thanks for self-promoting and pointing me in the direction of your film writings), and I don't really have a lot to add beyond the fact that you may yet want to give the novel a try. I read it before seeing the film, and I actually think it's less misogynistic, in the respect that Alberta (Catherine's book counterpart) is a stronger character, and less frustrating from a feminist perspective. (This is in fact one of my favorite exchanges in the book.)
The cynic in me wants to say that the reason the novel might come off as more misogynistic in most reviews/summaries is because most of the reviews/summaries out there are written by men, who (obviously) aren't approaching the story from a female--or even feministic--perspective, and are also maybe shoe-horning the character into the now-ubiquitous femme fatale archetype (because if you aren't an abject Good Girl in noir, you must be a femme fatale, amirite?--there's no in-between). While you could definitely make the case that Alberta is a femme fatale, I actually think she's more of a deconstruction of the archetype, if that makes sense. (Also worth noting is how she just as much embodies the traditionally male detective archetype, even more so than Catherine in the film adaptation.)
I'm kind of a Woolrich fan, so you'll have to excuse my defensiveness, haha. I do find his work more genuinely enjoyable than a lot of that of his (male) contemporaries, in that he occasionally played with gender roles and in that his female characters (the ones I've met so far) generally strike me as believable and sympathetic
which cannot always be said for women in literary noir, pfft. At the very least, he was one of the few (perhaps the only?) male crime author at the time who wrote legit female protagonists, Alberta included, which counts for something, I feel.ANYWAY, if you want more details, here's the book vs. film comparison I wrote. (I also have a few more noir reviews over there, in case you happen to be interested. I'm by no means a prolific reviewer, but sometimes the mood strikes, heh.)
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I'm so glad it wasn't just me! And very glad you enjoyed the review. I still stand by all my feelings about this movie.
The cynic in me wants to say that the reason the novel might come off as more misogynistic in most reviews/summaries is because most of the reviews/summaries out there are written by men, who (obviously) aren't approaching the story from a female--or even feministic--perspective, and are also maybe shoe-horning the character into the now-ubiquitous femme fatale archetype (because if you aren't an abject Good Girl in noir, you must be a femme fatale, amirite?--there's no in-between).
Your cynic seems to be making a quite cogent point to me, since the femme fatale filter was one of the first things I realized I flamingly disagreed with about the popular reception of film noir. (I still bristle at otherwise sound criticism if it unproblematically accepts the primacy of the archetype. Noir is the post-Code genre where I can reliably find complicated women and vulnerable men. I have seen the femme fatale in the wild, but far less often than I have seen just about any other kind of female character—or even male characters who fill the same dangerously attractive niche.) I will reconsider my avoidance of the novel and resign myself to the absence of the film's ghost marriage which I love so much. That scene you quote is indeed badass.
While you could definitely make the case that Alberta is a femme fatale, I actually think she's more of a deconstruction of the archetype, if that makes sense.
It does, and I am interested in those. I've seen at least one full-on deconstruction in Wicked Woman (1953), one sympathetic variation in Pitfall (1948), and one so far unparalleled stone antiheroine in Too Late for Tears (1949). Feel free to ignore as many of these links as you like, obviously. I am just enjoying so much having someone to compare notes with.
(Also worth noting is how she just as much embodies the traditionally male detective archetype, even more so than Catherine in the film adaptation.)
I am guessing from the general drift of this conversation that you have seen Phantom Lady (1944), but if not, it's totally worth it for its amateur detective played by Ella Raines, even if the plot melts down completely in the third act, as I later discovered its source novel, damn it, does not do. Woman on the Run (1950) also falls into this category, although it glitches more than I would like on the follow-through.
I'm kind of a Woolrich fan, so you'll have to excuse my defensiveness, haha.
No excuses necessary! I've read less of his original work than I've seen adapted, but I recommend all the adaptations I've seen—Fear in the Night (1947), The Leopard Man (1943), and The Chase (1946) are the ones most germane to this discussion—and I agree that he fits perfectly into the gender flexibility that thrives in noir.
At the very least, he was one of the few (perhaps the only?) male crime author at the time who wrote legit female protagonists, Alberta included, which counts for something, I feel.
David Goodis pulled it off at least once with the co-protagonist of The Wounded and the Slain (1955), but I agree that otherwise I read a lot of Dorothy Hughes, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Charlotte Armstrong etc.
(I also have a few more noir reviews over there, in case you happen to be interested. I'm by no means a prolific reviewer, but sometimes the mood strikes, heh.)
Absolutely. I shall check them out!
(You have seen Too Late for Tears, w00t!)
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I have not actually seen Phantom Lady, though it's on my to-watch list (just as the book is on my to-read list)! It's one of those I know I'll want to really savor, you know? So I've been waiting for the right time, haha. (And even the film--while I know it deviates from the book, it'll still have all that glorious cinematography to visually feast on, yum yum yum.)
Woolrich, as an author, has rather fallen into obscurity these days. I think part of that might be due to his work being a bit weirder and more experimental than that of a lot of his contemporaries, but I wonder, too, if part of it is because his male protagonists don't really fall into that wish-fulfillment/power-fantasy role that characters like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and even Mike Hammer (oh, Mike Hammer) do. So while the average man over the decades has been able to read and enjoy, say, The Big Sleep (and thus keep it in the public consciousness to an extent, because Patriarchy), the same can't really be said for Woolrich. Indeed, most people now know him through his adaptations, which tended to take extraordinary liberties with the source material. (Which is a long-winded, round-about way of saying I wish more people--and more women especially--read Woolrich, as I'd love to see more feministic takes/analyses on his writing. When I do get around to reading Phantom Lady, it'll be great to have someone to discuss it with, if I so desire!)
On the topic of women-as-detectives, you may have already run across the relevant post on my Wordpress, but if not, you may also want to track down a copy of Woolrich's short story, "The Dancing Detective."
Or else I could just hook you up with a .txt version--let me know?It's definitely a favorite, and is kind of a perfect blend of detective fiction and Gothic horror.And while I'm reccing things, are you by chance familiar with What's In the Basket? It's a film history podcast hosted by three women, and while their posting schedule is erratic (to say the least), I've really enjoyed their takes on things, a few noirs included. Thoughtful and intelligent, while also being funny and irreverent.
(And yes, I have seen Too Late For Tears! I'd still like to read the book one of these days for comparison purposes, but man, WHAT A RIDE THAT FILM IS.)
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I have only written about This Gun for Hire in the process of complaining about gender in a different film starring Veronica Lake, but seriously!
I wrote about Clash by Night (1952) entirely because someone was wrong on the internet about its protagonist being a femme fatale.
(Interestingly enough, though, I've seen the case made that Raven in that film could qualify as one of those rare homme fatales.)
Huh! I would buy that argument without a blink in The Glass Key (1942). I will have to consider whether I agree with it in respect with This Gun for Hire. He is certainly beautiful and deadly. I'm not sure he's destructive enough to Lake's Ellen Graham, if that makes sense. She is obviously going to spend a lot of time processing the events of the movie, but I happen to agree with you that on some level the worst thing Raven does to her is die on her.
(Which is a long-winded, round-about way of saying I wish more people--and more women especially--read Woolrich, as I'd love to see more feministic takes/analyses on his writing. When I do get around to reading Phantom Lady, it'll be great to have someone to discuss it with, if I so desire!)
I will look forward to your thoughts!
In case the American Mystery Classics has not crossed your radar, they have reprinted two novels by Woolrich in recent years: The Bride Wore Black (1940) and Waltz into Darkness (1947). Which holds out hope that they may reprint more; they seem to be working steadily through the back catalogues of Dorothy Hughes and Mary Roberts Rinehart, for example, which makes me happy.
On the topic of women-as-detectives, you may have already run across the relevant post on my Wordpress, but if not, you may also want to track down a copy of Woolrich's short story, "The Dancing Detective."
I have read it, but since it was something like five years ago in an anthology from the library—the one time I was in a dealer's room with a collection of Woolrich's short fiction, I couldn't afford it—I wouldn't say no to a text file falling off the back of a truck. Thank you for asking.
And while I'm reccing things, are you by chance familiar with What's In the Basket? It's a film history podcast hosted by three women, and while their posting schedule is erratic (to say the least), I've really enjoyed their takes on things, a few noirs included. Thoughtful and intelligent, while also being funny and irreverent.
I am not! I am not an ideal audience for podcasts, but I'm glad to hear it exists and is good.
(And yes, I have seen Too Late For Tears! I'd still like to read the book one of these days for comparison purposes, but man, WHAT A RIDE THAT FILM IS.)
I fully support your missing scene for Jane and Danny. Whichever way it went, it wouldn't be what he was expecting.
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He is certainly beautiful and deadly. I'm not sure he's destructive enough to Lake's Ellen Graham, if that makes sense.
Agreed. I don't think the character totally works as an homme fatale, but if I squint, I can kind of see it, or at least see why some other people could see it. Part of it is because, to me, the femme fatale archetype (at least in its purest form) is so rooted in being a secondary character and love interest (AKA, very much not the protagonist)--and so by definition her male counterpart would be the same. And whether you see TGFH as having a single protagonist or dueling protagonists, Raven's still always there as a protagonist in some respect. (And then there's also the fact that Ellen's not explicitly attracted to him--it's just that the on-screen relationship reads as some weird sort of pseudo-romance by sheer virtue of the actors' chemistry.)
She is obviously going to spend a lot of time processing the events of the movie, but I happen to agree with you that on some level the worst thing Raven does to her is die on her.
My fics (as you might have noticed) take an eleventh-hour turn for the AU, presuming that Raven actually lives at the end, but a friend and I got to discussing canon!Ellen at some point over in the AO3 comments, and we came to the conclusion that she and Michael still break up after the film, and--still reeling from the events of it and the fact that this weird, tragic dude died helping her--she ends up devoting herself to the war-effort full-time. It just seems like the kind of extreme thing she might do in reaction to all that, especially without the benefits of modern-day therapy.
I wouldn't say no to a text file falling off the back of a truck.
If you wouldn't mind shooting me an email address through a private message, I'll send the text file right over!
I fully support your missing scene for Jane and Danny. Whichever way it went, it wouldn't be what he was expecting.
I highly doubt a proper fic will ever emerge
famous last words, amirite?, but I'm inclined to think it might be strangely hilarious? Like I can just see Jane lying there, sighing and rolling her eyes (and maybe even checking her watch), like, "Seriously, dude, is this all you've got?"--and then Danny, in an ego-bruised fit of pique, changing tack and doing his absolute best to get her off and thus wipe the bored expression off her face. Maybe they both come out surprised at how it all eventually went down? (I'll admit to having the occasional fondness for a mutually-terrible disaster couple, and with just a couple tweaks, Jane and Danny could certainly qualify.)no subject
I am willing to accept co-protagonist status just because a romantic dyad is so often the anchor of a plot, but I agree that the element of attraction is vital and if it's not canonically present—and exploited as such—then the best I can count that character is regular bad news.
Like I can just see Jane lying there, sighing and rolling her eyes (and maybe even checking her watch), like, "Seriously, dude, is this all you've got?"--and then Danny, in an ego-bruised fit of pique, changing tack and doing his absolute best to get her off and thus wipe the bored expression off her face.
Famous last words.