Film Noir: The Crooked Way

Amnesia stories require an enormous suspension of disbelief, at least for me, and yet they can be such great yarns.

“The Crooked Way” from 1949 is one of those stories.

Eddie, played by John Payne, is a returning World War 2 veteran with a brain injury that erased his memory. He believes he was originally from Los Angeles and so returns to that city to see if there isn’t something he might recognize that will help him recover. Shortly after arriving, he is harassed by cops who claim he is a gangster, a woman who tells him she is his wife, and some thugs who work him over for cheating them.

If the amnesia premise was not hard enough to overcome, why Eddie would not turn around and get back on the train – any train – and get out of there, is an even bigger mystery than the one proposed in the film. But then, if he did that, there would be no movie. So Eddie sticks around and takes a lot more punishment at the hands of gangster, Vince, played by Sonny Tufts.

Tufts has the usual beef with his former colleague in crime, but even more interesting here is the very strong suggestion that Vince is a drug addict. Drug addiction in movies was strictly forbidden by the Hollywood production code of the time. The filmmakers get around this with a quick explanation that Vince is taking meds for his nerves. They even show the audience his prescription bottle. And somehow they got it past the censors.

Director Robert Florey provides a fast pace and a lot of violence in this 90-minute movie. And not just movie violence, but people getting the living snot kicked out of them. This was a rare thing for movies of the 1940s, a little less rare in noir films. Still, in this production, the violence is intense. Perhaps the code enforcers paid less attention to modest little pictures than they did to the big studio productions.

Cameraman John Alton – the man who really puts the noir in film noir – keeps everything dark, intriguing and menacing. Even ordinary moments, like three gangsters going up a staircase, is so interesting in its angle and use of light and shadow that it exudes tension. Alton also had a technique in close ups of placing a speck of light in the lead actor’s eyes which somehow created a subtle star burst that gave the players’ faces a special life. He used this technique on leading lady Ellen Drew. He was also great at lighting the villain. Vince always looks crazed and dangerous.

There are a lot of clichés in “The Crooked Way”, and John Payne is not too convincing as a tough guy – not like Robert Mitchum or Robert Ryan could be – but the movie is worth watching, especially for fans of the genre.

(For more posts on movies and television, check out Todd Mason's blog.)

Film: “The Big Combo” the End of Film Noir

The crime picture, “The Big Combo,” is so chock-full of noir elements it is almost a parody of that film style.

Hitting theaters when it did, in 1955, makes it one of the last movies of the film noir era. That era – the dates are constantly argued – goes from the end of WW2 to about 1955, when the form ran out of gas and tastes changed. Some say film noir started in 1944 with Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” and ended with Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” in 1958. Others claim earlier and later start and end dates. Whatever the time frame, “The Big Combo” shows the genre coming apart at the seams.

Shot in shadowy black and white by ace cinematographer John Alton, “The Big Combo” is the story of Lt. Diamond, a police detective, played by Cornell Wilde, with twin obsessions – he wants to rid his city of a racketeer named Brown and he desperately wants Brown’s girlfriend, Susan, played by Jean Wallace.

Brown, played by Richard Conte, also has twin obsessions – he wants to be the biggest wheel in the city and he must have sex with Susan, the former society girl now living with Brown. He nearly loses control whenever he is around her, and his touch sends her into a sexual fog. In one scene, Brown practically breaks her neck in the roughest screen kiss ever. In interviews, director Joseph H. Lewis said he pushed the Hollywood production code further than anyone ever had with those scenes. But they are so overwrought that they border on the comical.

In supporting roles as Brown’s hired guns, Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman play heartless killers who also share a bedroom. Veteran tough-guy, Brian Donlevy, is a resentful second in command of Brown’s empire, and through no fault of his, Donlevy’s final scene is so bad that he must have needed the paycheck. Helene Stanton has a nice turn as a leggy chorus girl obsessed with Diamond.

Diamond, the tormented cop, has a smiling, untrustworthy superior, played by Robert Middleton, who is constantly trying to cool down the detective, to the point of killing Diamond’s investigation into a disappearance that Diamond believes was a murder committed by Brown.

Lust, corruption, crime, and violence all play into “The Big Combo,” and are barely contained by director Lewis, who also made “Gun Crazy” and was no stranger to modestly budgeted crime films. He usually handled atmosphere and action well, but in “The Big Combo” he stages a torture scene that is so ludicrous that it damages the remainder of the movie. The dramatic scenes are presented in long, uninterrupted takes with his actors speeding through their lines.

Rushing through Philip Yordan’s script was a mistake. He should have trusted Yordan, a reliable Hollywood vet. (Yordan was also a hero for serving as a “front” for blacklisted friends the 1950s, putting his name on their scripts and selling them to the studios, then turning the money over to the writers so they could make a living.)

Yordan’s stylized lines usually sound great in films like this, and many of them come through fine in “The Big Combo.” For instance, when Diamond tries to convince Susan to leave Brown, she tells him:

“I live in a maze, Mr. Diamond, a strange, blind, and backward maze. And all the little, twisting paths lead back to Mr. Brown.”

Now is that noir dialog, or what?

(For more posts on films and television, please see Todd Mason’s blog.)