Week 7, Feb 17th The 1950’s to 1960s Noir

Screenings: Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tourneur Shadows (1959) John Cassevetes, Touch of Evil (1958)

Orson Welles Readings:  Janey Place amd Lowell Peterson “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir “ pp 65-74 , and  “No way

Out: Existential Motifs in Film Noir” pp77-93  in Silver, A., and Ursini, J., Film Noir Reader

(Required reading).

Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tourneur

Jacques Tourneur 1904–1977)

Out of the Past (released in Britain as Build My Gallows High) a film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur. The movie was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring (using the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes) from his novel Build My Gallows High. Unaccredited revisions were made by Frank Fenton and James M. Cain.

Cast

Robert Mitchum as Jeff Bailey

Jennifer Houston as Ann Miller

Jane Greer as Kathie Moffett

Kirk Douglas as Whit Sterling

A small-town gas-station owner's mysterious past catches up with him.

Plot summary

In a small town in California, the mysterious Jeff Bailey owns a small gas station and is in love with the local Ann. When a stranger just arrived in town meets him, Jeff is ordered to travel to meet the powerful criminal Whit Sterling. Before traveling, Jeff calls Ann and tells her the story of his life, when he was a private eyes hired by Whit for US$ 5,000.00 to find his former mistress Kathie that had shot Whit and stolen US$ 40,000.00.

The competent Jeff finds Kathie in Acapulco, but she tells him that she had not taken Whit's money and they fall in love for each other and escape from Whit. When the former partner of Jeff, Fisher, finds the couple living in an isolated cabin, Kathie kills him and Jeff buries his corpse. Jeff accidentally finds the receipt of deposit of the amount in Kathie's purse and leaves her forever.

When Jeff meets Whit, he surprisingly finds Kathie living with him; Whit asks Jeff one last job to get even and release Jeff from his debt. But Jeff finds that Whit is actually framing him.

Night & Low-Key Lighting (Exteriors)

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Out of the Past is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The movie stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6NXIIpmbUk

Night and the City (1950) Jules Dassin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQw_tNGA7Q

Jules Dassin (1911 – 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMWvAxCmRGs

“You’re a dead man, Harry Fabian, a dead man.” Richard Widmark is a sleazy Yank con man on the lam from wrestling mogul Herbert Lom through the shadowy streets of Soho — London, With Gene Tierney (Laura, Leave Her to Heaven)

“In its hyperactive transmutations of London into a web of alleys and underground dens, its fevered chiaroscuro, its angular, fragmented images, and in Richard Widmark’s bravura performance of a born loser, Night and the City may well be the definitive film noir.” - Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the ScreenDassin's “over-the-top mise-en-scene turns all of London into a giant expressionist trap in this darkest of Noirs.” – Elliott Stein, The Village Voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmhuNRzPKQ&feature=related

Shadows (1959) John Cassavetes

December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989

Shadows (1959) is an improvisation inspired film about interracial relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City, and was written and directed by John Cassavetes. The film stars Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, Hugh Hurd, and Anthony Ray. Many film scholars consider Shadows one of the highlights of independent film in the U.S. In 1960 the film won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Film critic Leonard Maltin calls Cassavetes' second version of Shadows "a watershed in the birth of American independent cinema". The movie was shot with a 16 mm handheld camera on the streets of New York. Much of the dialogue was improvised, and the crew were class members or volunteers. The jazz-infused score underlines the movie's Beat Generation theme of alienation and raw emotion. The movie's plot features an interracial relationship, which was still a taboo subject in Eisenhower-era America.

In 1993, Shadows was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Phase 3 1949-1953Exhibiting psychological action and suicidal impulses. In this time the “noir hero seemingly under the weight of ten years of despair started to go bananas.” (Schrader suggests p. 59)This third phase represents the crème of noir with films that are “the most aesthetically and psychologically compelling”. Titles such as White Heat, Out of the Past, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, The Big Heat and Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil one of the last examples of film noir in the series classic era (from The Maltese Falcon (1941) until the late 1950s). 1958 American crime thriller film, written, directed by and co-starring Orson Welles. The screenplay loosely based on the novel “Badge of Evil” by Whit Masterson. With Orson Welles, the cast includes Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Joseph Cotten and Marlene Dietrich.

Touch of Evil (1958), Orson Welles

The film opens with a 3 minute, 20 second tracking shot widely considered by film historian to be one of the greatest long takes in cinematic history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4

The film was “regarded as a rebellious, unorthodox, bizarre, and outrageously exaggerated film, affronting respectable 1950's sensibilities, with controversial themes including racism, betrayal of friends, sexual ambiguity, frame-ups, drugs, and police corruption of power. Its central character is an obsessed, driven, and bloated police captain ("a lousy cop") - a basically tragic figure who has a "touch of evil" in his enforcement of the law.” (Dirks, T., Film Site.org)

• The film parallels and pre-dates Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) by two years - similarities include actress Janet Leigh in various states of undress who is victimized in an out-of-the-way motel managed by a creepy "night man" (Gunsmoke's co-star Dennis Weaver).