A Dandy in Aspic

A Dandy in Aspic (Anthony Mann, Laurence Harvey, 1968) Another spy thriller from the 1960's, just one of dozens that were released post-James Bond boom, hoping to capitalize on the success of those films.

 

In this one, Laurence Harvey plays a double agent—Alexander Eberlin—working for the British Secret Service. He's upper-class, arrogant, and a snob, but quite good at his job, and when we first see him he is in the business of burying a colleague—killed by the Soviets, apparently, the third agent to meet such a fate recently. The Service is in a tizzy With three men down, they assign Eberlin the job of tracking down the suspected soviet agent behind the killings, whom they identify as Krasnevin. They want the agent tracked down and killed before any more harm can come top one of their own. Seems easy enough.

 

The only complication—which the British do not know—is that Eberlin himself is Krasnevin. He has been working for the Soviets for years, infiltrating the British Service for years. The man identified in the briefing as Krasnevin is actually his Soviet contact "Pavel" (Per Oscarsson). Somehow, he must convince the British that he can do the job, while at the same time, get back to his masters in the USSR, before he is found out. 

One can see why the story would attract director Anthony Mann, who directed a slew of fine films (mostly in the film-noir and western genres) about conflicted men pushed to their self-imposed limits by individuals just that much worse than they are. For Eberlin, it's his fellow agent Gatiss (Tom Courtenay), who is determined to find the traitor in their midst and has a sociopathic zeal to do whatever it takes to bring him to ground. Gatiss, ironically, is the perfect spy, while Eberlin is not. And they're pitched in a mano a mano battle, while Eberlin fights his on a larger scale between nations and their bureaucracies.

The film itself is not so interesting, save for that one aspect. It has the curious distinction of being one of those spy films with no one to root for, everyone in a pitched battle of wits with merely the size of the arena being the distinction. No, the curious thing is that it feels like two distinctly different films, owing to the fact that it's Mann's last film—he died after finishing principal photography in Britain and while filming in West Germany, where star Laurence Harvey (who had directed The Ceremony in 1963) was picked to complete the film in mid-filming to protect the project's investment. And their styles are decidedly different.

This (I'm fairly certain) is an Anthony Mann shot.

Where Mann has a composer's eye for interesting angles and communicating relationships with where he puts his camera relative to its subject, Harvey's style is less classically-trained (especially with wide-angle compositions) and more geared to current catch-as-catch-can fashion. Mann, also, traditionally, tried to fill the frame with as much detail as possible, those specifics forming patterns to direct the eye to what he thought was important, whereas Harvey seems satisfied just to "get the shot" artfully or not.

This looks like something Harvey shot.

Mann's way has a scope to it, a dimensionality, whereas Harvey's compositions are flat and uninteresting, almost static and off-kilter (something Mann was more than capable of, but to a narrative purpose). It makes it a distracting watch, not because it's a good movie, but because one ends up playing "who shot this?" as a way of passing the time, until, finally, one just runs out of good material to admire and admits that "Harvey did this" for the remainder of the movie.

"Harvey" again

Hardly a way to generate suspense. But a way to get through it, at least. Plus, one has early roles for Mia Farrow, Peter Cook (playing straight but in a disorientingly comic way) as well as Lionel Stander, who's always fun to watch.

Mann directing? The shadows make me think so.

So. A potentially good film, tragically not living up to it. The film didn't do well at the box-office as the 1960's "spy-craze" was waning, and about to go undercover as comedies. And although Mann is officially credited as being the director on it, I have a hard time thinking of A Dandy in Aspic as his last film.

Raw Deal

Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948) There's something just a wee bit different about this film-noir featuring the director-cinematographer team of Anthony Mann and John Alton (who were responsible for so many moodily-lit film-noir films that managed to excel in their ability to transcend their B-movie budgets and actually display something of unforgettable visual artististry). It's told from the woman's perspective as she observes the plight her boyfriend-paramour is going through in trying to exact revenge on the gangland boss who did him dirt. Her plans are to spring him out of prison and go on the lam, out of the country, but, first, she has to convince him to let his unfinished business go. And since that unfinished business has a good share of 50 grand attached to it. 

Well...men can be so practical, sometimes.

I mean, he IS still in prison and all.

Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) has a lot of time juice-stewing while in the slammer. He's taken the fall for the no-good-high-roller rat named Ricky Coyle (Raymond Burr) and ended up serving time and wasting it. His only high-points in the gray-bar hotel are when the do-gooder legal case-worker Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt) comes to visit him to try and get him out of jail if he'd just turn state's evidence. She's a cute kid and all ("Next time you come up, don't wear that perfume...it doesn't help a guy's good behavior"), but Joe's got other plans for busting out. 

And that's where Pat Cameron (Claire Trevor), our narrator, comes in. She's been working angles outside, so that she and Joe can run away together, even if it is on the lam. Trouble is, Pat's a little on the desperate side and naive, and the plan that she's got for springing Joe comes straight from Ricky Coyle, who's having a very good time spending Joe's share of the loot and doesn't have any plans to split it. It doesn't occur to Pat that, should his prison-break succeed, it won't be just the cops they'll be running from, but Coyle's gang, as well.

But no one but Pat figures on Joe's resourcefulness and he does manage to escape...but just barely. A bullet-riddled gas tank from the attempt and "a dragnet tighter than a fist" forces them to start altering plans and Joe decides to hide out for a couple days at the one address that might hold a sympathetic soul, Ann's. Plan B is to take Ann hostage (for the police...and maybe for Joe) and meet up with Rick at Crescent City to settle scores. Joe and Rick have different ideas of what that means, and so he sends some hit-men to meet up with Joe and rid Rick of the problem for once and for all.

The triangulated action, between the pursuers and the pursued—who have their own internal tensions—makes it a more complicated plot than most noirs, despite the lack of mystery inside it. It's a standard chase, but coming at different angles, with the "wanted" man circled by two forces that want him dead or back in prison, and two women who want him alive, but with conflicting emotions about what that might entail. In the meantime, Mann never gives you a sense of space or of freedom. There's always a sense of entrapment from the dark frames of doors to the grill-work on the prison windows and everyday fences...right down to the veils that the women wear, even if it's a little premature to be in mourning. Still, in the noir-niverse, one can never start too early.

Despite the artistry, Mann directs with a rough savagery that, at times, is unnerving. At one point, during a party that Coyle is giving, the true villainy of the man is displayed by his throwing a flaming chafing into the face of one of the party-goers. It shocks, and makes one a little wary of what might come. The action is brutal, with a particularly frenzied fight at the end that leaves you shocked and more than a little relieved when the end comes and you can vacate this dark Hell that starts in prison and never really leaves.

Desperate

Desperate (Anthony Mann, 1947) The same year Anthony Mann made T-Men, he also made this noir for RKO. Coming from that studio, it is low budget, fast-paced and. due to the sensibility of director Anthony Mann, filled with amazing images that show he was as capable of creating a dynamic image, with or without his cameraman John Alton (Desperate's cameraman is George E. Diskant).

And Desperate is as simple a tale as can be: an ordinary man discovers a dark world he had previously never known existed and must prove himself to save himself and those he loves. It's a plot right out of Hitchcock, but much less ornate, much less witty, and with a palpable sense of danger that seems to linger just out of the corners of the frame. That frame is edged in a terrifying, thick blackness, threatening to envelope and enshroud the poor figures in the frame.

Steve Randall (Steve Brodie) is a common enough guy, newly married and trying to scratch out a life for himself and his wife, Anne (Audrey Long). He's an independent trucker—"Long and Short Hauls"—and is used to jobs with strange hours and long absences with reasonable returns. But on the night of his first anniversary, his wife takes a message from a "Mr. Reynolds" who has "a load of perishables" that need to be hauled tonight. Steve starts to beg off but when the amount of $50 is mentioned, well, when you're starting out right out of the army with a new bride...

At least, that's how Walt Rattak sees it. Walt knows Steve from "back in school" and where the one has taken the right road, Walt has taken the dark path. He's a racketeer and a bit of a sadist, even if he doesn't want to get his hands dirty, and he has no qualms in placing his acquaintance, Steve, into a compromising position. He's much more reluctant about his baby brother Al (Larry Nunn), whom he dotes on. But, when Al starts to whine about going along on the job, Walt protests a little, but relents. After all, it's a bit-job, what can go wrong?

But, he still gives Al a gun.

Bad parenting skills.

And probably a little too cocky for his own good. When Steve gets to "the job," he becomes quickly aware there are no "perishable goods"—with the exception of him—and starts to back out, wanting nothing to do with criminal activity. Trouble is, he's already in it—the crooks could turn evidence against him, and then there's the matter of the loaded guns that could also turn—his way. He's in a tough spot.

But, a beat cop walking nearby gives him an idea. He flashes his headlights, alerting the cop, and a panicking Al starts to fire. There's just enough time for Randall to squeal out of there and Al, on the loading ramp of the truck, takes a tumble. The shots bring a patrol-car and Rattak and crew beat it, leaving an unconscious Al behind with a cop-killing charge—the officer he's fired at is hit—and for that, he'll swing.

This does not sit well with Walt. He starts to put pressure on Randall—a lot of pressure—to take the fall for killing the cop. Part of that is pure viciousness, but a lot of it is his cold feeling of responsibility for letting his kid brother go out on the job with no experience and abandoning him when the heat was on. He's not going to take the blame for that. Randall is.  Watch the scene below:

Amazing how Mann makes the beating seem so much worse by not showing it and he uses the available light in the room to suggest the violence and invoke a queasy feeling in the audience (yes, Hitchcock borrowed this for the basement scene in Psycho), but rather than have the light simply swing, it arcs in a circle and the way the light plays on Walt and "Mr. Randall" (William Challee—he played Jack Nicholson's elderly father in Five Easy Pieces) is cold and eerie, making them look like statues—they are the only still things in the room—before Walt threatens Randall's wife.

There begins a chase, with the Randalls, trying to evade both the police and the mob, leading to a tense scene that surely must have influenced the showdowns of Sergio Leone. For a low-budget film noir, it boasts a lot of A-list ideas and the efficiency and economy with which Mann shoots it—he was only a few years after assisting Preston Sturges direct at Paramount—shows a director who could satisfy both the demands of drama and the studio. He would move from RKO quickly to direct the low-budgeted T-Men and hone his craft in the dark recesses of film-noir before moving to more prestigious projects.

T-Men (1947)

T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947) "T-Men" stands for "Treasury Men" or agents for the Department of the Treasury. Before 9/11, they were just behind the FBI in terms of domestic crime investigation, dealing with tax fraud, counterfeiting, bootlegging, illegal arms, as well as housing the Secret Service. The ATF and the Service broke off in 2003 to be a part of Homeland Security, but at the time this film was made it was still all under one bureaucratic roof...and probably looking for some publicity.

Now, an FBI movie could get an A-list budget. But, T-Men was strictly a B-picture, consigned to the bottom half of what they used to call in the movies "a double-bill" (look it up, you kids), but it had the great good fortune to be directed by a young up-and-coming director named Anthony Mann, who'd made a name for himself directing low-budget films for RKO and Republic. Mann brought to the mix a brilliant cinematographer John Alton, and together, the two would craft some of the more interesting examples of "film-noir" in cinema.

But, Lordy, it doesn't start out well. After a brief introduction to the work of the Treasury Department by a stern announcer (who will serve as narrator for the film), there is an introduction by former Treasury Law Enforcement Head Elmer Lincoln Irey, who flatly introduces the film as a case-study from the annals of the Department. The only notable thing about the sequence is that it's filmed, not across at the former director, but at desk level looking slightly up, giving him a slightly more authoritative air—especially to audiences naturally looking up at a screen from theater seats. But, from there, the film takes a decidedly dark turn.

In a dark-Los Angeles-alley behind a stadium, there is a rendezvous in progress. A Treasury Agent is going to be meeting a snitch. But before he can reach him a figure comes out of the shadows (literally) and cuts the contact down. End of the road. End of the investigation. The Department needs to take another tack.

Two agents are called to Washington: Dennis O'Brien (Dennis O'Keefe) and Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder), who are called upon to go undercover and infiltrate the gang of counterfeiters, who have been passing bills with a superior paper very similar in composition to that used in legitimate currency. They travel to Detroit posing as former members of a crime ring that have been subsequently killed, leaving no traces of contacts that might blow their cover. They manage to do enough research of their cover identities as "Vannie Harrigan" and "Tony Galvani" that they work themselves into a counterfeit liquor stamps business, getting a lead on an overseas smuggler of the paper, known as "The Schemer" (Wallace Ford). The two split up with O'Brien going back to Los Angeles tracking down The Schemer, while Genaro stays in Detroit and continues to make in-roads with the counterfeiters.

O'Brien manages to find The Schemer eventually, as he's a frequenter of turkish baths, and after several steams—"I think I lost eight pounds," he tells his superiors—he makes contact with the older hood and gains enough trust that he proposes a joint effort. If "Schemer" can provide the paper, he can provide engraving plates for currency far superior to what's making it into the streets. The Schemer, though, wants to make sure that O'Brien is legit and has two of the gang's enforcers, Moxie (Charles McGraw) and Brownie (Jack Overman) to work over the agent to try to determine why he's so interested in the business. O'Brien's failure to "crack" wins him and Genaro a visit to Schemer's boss "Shiv" Triano (John Wengraf), who is interested in the venture, but wants to run tests—O'Brien only turns over one of the plates and says he'll only deliver the other to Triano's boss, a shadowy figure that is never mentioned by name.

A chance encounter in San Francisco makes Schemer suspicious of Genaro, just as O'Brien gets to meet the next tier of command, Diana Simpson (Jane Randolph), who is suspicious of any betrayal. She orders a hit on both The Schemer and Genaro: The Schemer being roasted alive in a steam bath and Genaro shot in front of his partner, who can only stand and watch helplessly as Genaro implicates himself, taking suspicion off O'Brien, and is executed, gangland-style. 

But Genaro has been clever enough to leave O'Brien clues to where he can find The Schemer's coded notebook, which the agent turns over to his superiors, bringing them closer to cracking the case, even as O'Brien has to overcome greater suspicion, due to his closeness to Genaro.

He has one advantage, however, he still has the other engraving plate that the counterfeiters now want...very much. But, as he's being watched closely—too closely by the assassin, Moxie, he has to find a way to complete the transaction, with the added incentive of bringing the ring to justice and avenging his partner.

T-Men is filmed in that "semi-documentary" style popular in the 1940's whenever a studio wanted to lend an aura of verisimilitude to a story "based on a true story" (as they like to say these days) by using real locations whenever possible. However, no documentary, semi or otherwise, has been as artfully shot and lighted, here by Mann and his cinematographer John Alton, who make the photography as oppressive as it is beautiful, enveloping the government agents in precipitous angles, uncomfortably close close-ups, and an ever-encroaching darkness that seems to swallow them up in the frame. The danger is so visually palpable you can practically smell the sweat, with or without the benefit of steam-baths.

It's a fascinating portrait of professionals, good and bad, just "doing business" with a restraint of attitude in the "Dragnet" manner, but explodes into ferocity when the guns come out. In fact, there's an energy to the finale that almost has a supernatural "horror" quality to it, of implacable hate that pulses through the veins of wounded men, rather than blood. The darkness veils emotion throughout the movie—especially in the scene where O'Brien's hat-brim shadows his eyes after witnessing Genaro's murder—only the spare splashes and flashes of light betraying the character's inner thoughts and rages. Despite good restrained performances, there's almost no acting needed, when Mann and Alton are presenting all the drama in their choices of light and dark. T-Men is one of the greatest of film-noirs, of the forces of light trying to penetrate the darkness. 

He Walked By Night

He Walked By Night (Alfred L. Werker, 1948) It's funny the things you find. You go down the twisted, dark corridors of the film noir genre and once in a while you find a gem shining in the black, one that has many facets and goes beyond its origins and haunts.

He Walked By Night is one of those. Picked up at the Socialist Book Collective (Your Public Library) for free, it looked to be a modest little film. It starred Richard Basehart and Scott Brady, an actor so anonymous they had to bill him with a past movie as a middle name—Scott "Canon City" Brady.* It's a low, low budget film that looks like a million bucks because it was photographed by one of the great cinematographers in Hollywood history, John Alton. Alton painted in black and white and his intricate screens of shadow are works of art, made quickly and with little money. He worked often with director Anthony Mann who is rumored to have directed parts of this film (and sections of it look like Mann's T-Men, one of the best film-noirs). But credit goes to Alfred L. Werker, a director who toiled in the "B" and "C" strata of movies, working with such talents as Laurel and Hardy, even Disney, and directed the second (and I think best) of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939).

But He Walked By Night is a different detective story entirely. Based on a "true" LAPD investigation, ** it's a police procedural that details the work the force went into to capture a cop-killer and criminal who "seemed to be one step ahead of" them, all the way. The case drags on for months, and its only the dogged determination of one dedicated cop that leads to the case being solved. It boasts that beautifulAlton cinematography, L.A. locations, and a sense of realism that even precludes the use of a musical score. The film begins with a city-wide dragnet and ends with an incredibly well-done chase and fire-fight in the cavernous drainage system, the gun-fire echoing endlessly through the concrete corridors.

Performances are stalwart throughout, with Richard Basehart given the chance to shine through as the creepy killer, and slate-voiced B-actor Whit Bissell as the best lead witness who gets more than he bargained for.

Then, down in a the credits is a thin, odd little actor who plays the CSI expert—or as it would become known "One of the Lab-Boys"—with a perverse sense of humor: Jack Webb. If He Walked By Night comes off as seeming a little familiar, that's the reason. Although having only a minor memorable role, Webb managed to strike up a relationship with technical adviser Marty Wynn, who suggested a radio series based on the crime-files of the LAPD. Webb ran with the idea and debuted the radio series "Dragnet" four weeks after this film premiered. The blue-print is here: the no-nonsense narration with the city as character and even the well-worn phrase "the names have been changed to protect the innocent." It's not exactly "Dragnet"—Webb drained the emotion out of it and did it on an even more thread-bare scale, but it's the facts, ma'am. This is where "Dragnet" started.

Why not look for yourself? He Walked By Night has slipped into the Public Domain, and you can watch it for free here.

* Not so anonymous, really. Brady was one of those crusty dependable actors who could do just about everything and did, playing spokesmen, governments agents, cops, people in authority, but strictly blue-collar. You'd know his face if you saw him. He had a rough-hewn authenticity and credibility that was used to its full advantage as the nuclear plant worker who vindicates Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome. He was also the more successful brother of actor Lawrence Tierney. There's a resemblance.

** Well, that's stretching it. A lot. Some of the particulars are used--the electronics genius, the use of the L.A. storm drain system for escapes, the meticulousness, the murders. But the truth is far stranger, and not so neat and tidy.

The story is based on the career of Erwin "Machine Gun" Walker, who returned from WWII slightly unhinged by survivor's guilt and the death of a friend at Leyte Island—a death he felt responsible for. He began a series of robberies to fund--I kid you not--a project to create an electronic "death-ray." This led to the murder of Officer Loren Roosevelt, who was gunned down attempting to question Walker after seeing him casing a store.

Instead of technologically-savvy, dogged police work, Walker's undoing was bragging about his crimes to his catholic girl-friend, who mentioned the story in confession, and the priest informed police—and so much for the story of sanctity of the confessional.

Walker pleaded insanity for his crimes—he wasn't tracked down in the drainage system and killed—but was captured in a raid on his home (like the one depicted in the film) and wounded in the arrest. Citing insanity in his family and his war trauma, he made his plea, but was found competent and sentenced to death. 36 hours before his execution, he was found nearly strangled with an electrical cord, a suicide attempt—his father had killed himself six months earlier.

The suicide attempt led to Walker being declared insane and his execution postponed for 12 years, while he was remanded to various mental health facilities. In 1959, he was deemed "cured," but, reasoning that it might provoke another suicide attempt, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Then, he was granted a re-trial, and because it ruled his initial confession at the time of his arrest was coerced, he was set free.

Rather than being cut-down in a melodramatic blaze of gun-fire as in the film, Erwin "Machine Gun" Walker walked.

The Man from Laramie

The Man From Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955) "Hate's not becoming on a man like you." Hmm. 

 

Then, they shouldn't have put this star and director together again, as hate, obsession and (sometimes) disfigurement were the order of the screenplay. The last of the James Stewart-Anthony Mann pairings (the others being Winchester 73, The Far Country, Bend of the River, and The Naked Spur, all superior disturbing Westerns), The Man from Laramie is a continuation of the director/star collaborations produced in the 1950's that pushed Stewart's psychological boundaries in the Old West by pushing the physical and story boundaries traditional in movies about the Old West, that tended to keep things "White Hat/Black Hat."* 

 

The work of Mann and Stewart tended to smudge the distinctions a bit, making the hats more of a dirty gray, not too far from the morality of men in a new territory, finding their ways and their fortunes.

Stewart's Will Lockhart rolls into the town of Coronado with his small transport business delivering merchandise to the general store.  Along the way, he stops from his day job to indulge in his hobby—seeking revenge for his younger brother whose cavalry unit was ambushed by Apaches who were brandishing repeating rifles, too many to be acquired on raids. The Apaches are another story. He's after the man who sold them those rifles.

Coronado, though, is hardly welcoming. He can't take a few steps into the street without being warned to leave the town the same way he went in—under his own power. That advice, with intentions good or bad, stems from the town's controlling interest, a cattle baron by the name of Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), one of those autocratically protective father-figures who like things the way they are (once they have them), are suspicious of any changes, and is a bit blind to how others see it. They're NIMBY's with the biggest backyard in the frontier.

He's particularly near-sighted when it comes to his entitled son Dave (Alex Nicol, in a thankless performance, rather dimly performed), a bully who's next in line to run the ranch—probably into the ground given his business acumen—and (as John Wayne used to put it) "if he lives." To prevent those eventualities Waggoman has installed the only picket-wire he might approve of, his chief ranch-hand Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy, who often provides the counter-balance in the Mann-Stewart westerns) as a nanny to keep Dave under control.

But Vic, with so much responsibility to the Old Man, always seems to be a day late and a dollar short, unable to keep Dave from single-handedly destroying Lockhart's business, burning his wagons and killing his mules, a rather contrary manner of getting him to leave town, by destroying the means. And, of course, it just inspires Lockhart to get all-cussed and motivates him to stick his nose in everybody's business and his fists in Dave's mid-section. Things don't get any better when Lockhart decides to take a job ranching for Waggoman's rival Kate Canady (Aline McMahon), a crusty woman-rancher who won't give an inch on territory or principle, or one hoof of cattle to the larger concern.

From any angle Lockhart is caught in the middle, guaranteeing a rise in tensions and an escalation of grievances. And if the elder Waggoman wanted peace and quiet, he should have looked for the anarchy running wild in his own midst. So, there's that familial element running through it. And Mann and Stewart, through their collaborations, were exploring psychological depths that weren't mentioned between the gun-shots in the standard shoot-'em-up. 

All of their westerns involved Stewart's character going through a trial by fire—he's actually dragged through a campfire in this one—facing humiliation and crippling at the hands of the Waggoman's, the confrontations with the clan making up the best part of the film, with only Stewart's rather half-hearted interplay with Waggoman's niece (Cathy O'Donnell) seeming like time wasted, although it provides one more conflict for Lockhart to be distracted by. 

Mann's use of location shooting is always imaginative and compositionally interesting, and he uses the Vistavision format to get as much horizon into the frame as possible. Certainly worth a look-see, just don't go expecting Shakespeare.**

Maurice Thomas' Stewart portrait for some of the film's poster art.

* The two also worked on the non-westerns Strategic Air Command and The Glenn Miller Story.

** Curiously, Shakespeare is on a lot of people's mind when they see this film, comparing it to "King Lear."  Um, okay, not the "King Lear" I'm familiar with, although there's a thematic string in there (actually there's a Shakespearean string in just about everything, isn't there?).  Actually, there's more "King Lear" in "Bonanza" than here (except that everybody gets along).   And, of course,  the movie Legends of the Fall has more than a bit of both in it.