The Big Knife

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day

The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich, 1955) 

"Odets, where is thy sting?" George S. Kaufman 

How much you like this movie depends on how much you like Clifford Odets and his writing. 

Me, not so much. 

Clifford Odets has always grated on me, his writing seeming like a creative writing parody of Tennesee Williams. He's of the "cookie made out of arsenic" school,* where every metaphor is tortured and every character is an overwrought drama-queen, pontificating in the most flowery way possible their transparently obvious thoughts, often at the top of their lungs. Their world comes down to good and bad, the bad being moustache twirling scene-stealers and the good down-trodden martyrs. It's a theater-world as realistic as a proscenium arch and as subtle as projecting to the back of the house. 

The Big Knife is no better. An "exposé" of Hollywood corruption written in the '40's, but filmed in 1955—a decade saturated with industry self-loathing—the film suffers from its over the top theatricality. Robert Aldrich has never been the most tasteful of directors, but his stylishness with dreck has never been questioned. He can make chopped liver look like foie gras (even though it still tastes like chopped liver). Directing The Big Knife** (the year after directing the brutal, but terrific Kiss Me Deadly) he barely leaves the ornate living room of screen idol Charlie Castle, nee Charlie Cass (Jack Palance), well-payed but agonizing over signing a seven-year contract with a studio that might not be artistically fulfilling. At the time of the signing, he's artistically throwing himself into a boxing picture, so already his motivations are suspect. Mrs. Castle (Ida Lupino), recently separated from Castle, doesn't want him to sign (they're separated for Castle's philandering—what does she care?).

The reason Charlie's even considering signing is the hit-and-run accident that the studio has covered up to keep Castle's reputation with the public spot-less. And studio chief Stanley Shriner Hoff (Rod Steiger) is only too willing to spill the beans if Castle doesn't co-operate and limits his work to his studio. As a signing bonus the studio just might eliminate the only witness to the case (Shelley Winters).

Odets prided himself on being of the "Kitchen Sink" school, but here he expects you to feel sorry for the plight of the privileged boo-hooing through their silk handkerchiefs rather than tissue paper. By the time of writing "The Big Knife," Odets was making good money, so maybe it was more artistically fulfilling to write about his contemporaries "in the biz," than take on the troubles of Ma and Pa Average. He also has no problems with Charlie being a perpetual letch and philanderer, but "a sell-out?" Horrors! One might ask Frances Farmer her opinion of his choices. 

John Garfield, who was Odets' stage mouth-piece, played Castle on Broadway in 1949. But the role is beyond Jack Palance—he didn't yet have the polish to play (or be) a Hollywood leading-man, so he mostly just seethes and heaves himself around the room. Ida Lupino, one of the best actresses around, is reduced to soap opera sop work here. The only actors who seem able to cope with Odets' purple prose are Winters with a force of cluelessness and Steiger, who just powers his way through like a bull—no hesitations, no apologies, which works well for the character—a studio mogul of the Louis B. Mayer/Harry Cohn ferocity. 

The final act of the film is a mess of theatrical hysteria and misdirection that compresses a lot of story and reactions off-screen, while a running narrative informs us (or rather misinforms) about what all that hub-bub is upstairs. Perhaps Aldrich rushed through it to cut through the giggle factor, but the material is lumpen at any speed. You need a bigger knife than this movie's got to make it play.

 

* A bit "on-the-nose", that, as Odets wrote that line for The Sweet Smell of Success.

** I keep seeing The Big Knife being referred to as a film noir. Nah. Sure, it's got a gritty title, and it's filmed in black and white, and the souls are sordid and Aldrich directed noirs--but, this is as much a film noir as The Oscar is!

On Dangerous Ground (1951)

On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951) Big city detective Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) is a one-man "good cop/bad cop" shake-down. Of all the detectives on his night-time beat, he's the one who takes the work home, studying mug-shots, knowing the rules, keeping his nose clean.

One little problem—he's taking his work home with him. The job's weighing on him, poisoning his mind. All he sees are the mean city-streets, and the nighthawks who scurry through it. It's being noticed. "All we ever see is crooks, murderers, wino's, stoolies, dames—all with an angle." muses his new partner. "You get so you think everybody's like that. 'Til you find out different, it's kind of a lonely life...Jim just takes it harder than the rest of us." There's been a cop-killing recently—Wilson's partner, in fact—and it's gone unsolved. He knows why: "Everybody hates cops," he tells his captain (Ed Begley). "On either side of the law."

He's not helping the image: When a guy running down the street matches the description of a robbery suspect, he gets pulled over, gets cleared, he starts squawking about "Dumb cops" and Wilson's ready to take a poke at him before he gets held back by his partners; and when he finds an associate of the more likely cop-killers, he beats the information out of him. "Why do you make me do it?" he yells at the guy before laying into him. "You're know you're gonna talk. I always make you punks talk! Why do you make me DO it?"

Well, now the guy's got a ruptured bladder from the beating and Wilson's captain has an ulcer from another civil suit, not Wilson's first. And he's not showing any remorse or any inclination to change. He gets results. He's got a medal. "For being judge, jury and executioner?" grumps his captain. "Make up your mind to be a cop. Not a gangster with a badge." 

So, Wilson gets sent up-state for awhile—"Siberia" he calls it—as there's been a murder of a little girl up there. He needs the space. He needs to get out of the city. And, although he doesn't suspect it, he's going to be particularly well-suited for the job, as he has no pity. And he'll find himself in the odd position of not being the worst thing that could happen.

Once he gets to the county, he finds a scared populace with a mob mentality. Visiting the Brent family, whose daughter is dead, he finds few leads as the girl's sister is too traumatized to offer any help identifying the killer. And the victim's father, Walter Brent (Ward Bond, playing the role with all the reactionary fervor natural to the actor) finds the detective's presence and questions just a delay to vigilante action: "No trial by jury. No sob-sisters. I'm just gonna empty my gun into his belly. Anybody try to stop me'll get the same thing." Up there, Wilson actually finds himself a voice of reason.

A snowy chase into the back-country causes both cars to spin out and ditch. And Brent and Wilson must continue the pursuit on foot following tracks in the snow. The way leads to a cabin with only one light on. The inhabitant is Mary Malden (Ida Lupino) who welcomes the men into her house and it's a few minutes before Wilson realizes that Mary is blind and has been for some years. Brent is suspicious and goes out to track Danny, leaving Wilson and Mary alone in the cabin, where she gets tea for the two of them. Wilson just observes.

She notes this, suspecting she's not the first blind person he's known. When Wilson asks why, she says he didn't offer her help and there's no pity in his voice. She asks him what it's like to be a cop, and he says you get to where you don't trust anybody.

"You're lucky," she says. "You don't have to trust anyone. I do. I have to trust everybody."

For Wilson, out of his element and having to deal with nuance and honesty, the case becomes one of negotiation, between two individuals—without angles—who either want the culprit alive or the culprit dead, and his understanding the cases for both sides. The extremes must coalesce if justice must be served...if only one can trust.

On Dangerous Ground (it's original title was "Mad With Much Heart", as per the original novel by Gerald Butler) boasts a great script by director Ray and A.I. Bezzerides** (one of the better noir screenwriters), which was originally a three-act structure, with the upstate scenes bracketed by the city action with a downbeat ending. But Howard Hughes, in charge of RKO at the time, was in a tinkering mood, and moved the last episode, earlier in the picture, so any inspiring words have to be recalled in echoed memory, rather than told to him for the first time, making Ryan's Wilson a cop who doesn't listen too good. And a tacked-on happy ending doesn't help things as far as a consistent tone, which makes it tough for both Lupino and Ryan, who does some mighty subtle work on a character who doesn't go in for subtle. The film already treads the noir landscape of cynicism, paranoia and naive romanticism, but, in the ecstatic ending, it doesn't remain true to the characters and their core souls.

The film also has a great score by Bernard Herrmann which gives a hastily shot scramble up a bunch of rocks that are standing in for a mountain a sense of urgency and largeness; it foreshadows his work on North By Northwest. It elevates the film several notches above its roots and has the verve of another movie entirely.

Just the music from the chase scene On Dangerous Ground

** Bezzerides wrote the scripts for Thieves Highway and Kiss Me Deadly.

While the City Sleeps

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day, and while this film is certainly "trashy," it's sophisticatedly multi-layered.

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956) 

"I wonder what the nice people are doing tonight?" asks esteemed writer-author-journalist-TV personality Walter Mobley (Dana Andrews).

Well he should ask, because there are few nice people in his circle of work, which happens to be some form of multi-headed Hydra of journalism, known as Kyne Enterprises. The head of Kyne has just died and the heir-apparent Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) is now in charge, but is a bit feckless and knows nothing of the news business, nor, apparently is he willing to have anybody tell him about it as he decides to delegate. He's going to create a new Executive Director position that will answer to him without having to know all the details. But who is it going to be?

There're many to choose from, besides Mobley, an Edward R. Murrow-type: there's also the urbane head of the wire-service Mark Loving (George Sanders); crusty newspaper head John Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell); and there's television head "Honest" Harry Kritzer (James Craig). They all want the job and will stoop to any advantage to get it. But Walter has other ideas. He's going to make the contenders fight for it in a "Hunger Games" kind of run-off—winner take-all, and the losers...well, they extend to more than Kyne Headquarters.

It just so happens they're in the news business and New York has a big news story: there's a serial killer in town breaking into apartments and attacking women and has been labeled "The Lipstick Killer"—that would be the ironically-named Robert Manners (John Drew Barrymore), a nervous, slimy type dressed in leathers. It's okay that we know who it is—Lang starts the film out with him carrying out one of his strangulations—as the director is more interested in the power struggle of the media elites eating each other to get the job of "Top Toady."

Meanwhile, as they connive, deceive, and block each other from finding whodunnit, the City sleeps, albeit not very peacefully.

This is territory Lang has worked with before, as early as his silent films for UFA in Germany. In his films Metropolis, Spies, the "Mabuse" features, authority figures wrangle in power struggles completely ignoring the plights of the ordinary citizens who might fall victim as a result. But, those films involve cat-and-mouse games between authorities and criminal masterminds. In Where the City Sleeps, the field of play is publishing/broadcasting, and the criminal is not mastermind, but a craven nobody like the child-murderer of Lang's M. While the department-heads wring their hands worrying about advantage, he's in the streets looking for opportunity.

Lang's film has enough layers that one might even miss that his film is lumping the newsmongers in with the serial killer in more ways than mutual benefit. For instance, how do they maneuver and manipulate the "contest" to their advantage? By throwing women under the bus, of course: Loving uses writer Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino) to seduce Mobley in order to get any inside info from the anchor (it doesn't matter that Mobley is engaged to Loving's secretary, Nancy Liggett, played by Sally Forrest); Kritzer is having an affair with Kyne's wife (Rhonda Fleming) in order to use her as a mole for scoops and news oh his standing in the contest and so she can talk up her lover—they've even set up a rendezvous apartment, which happens to be close to Liggett's, as well; and finally, Mobley hatches a scheme with the police lieutenant working the case (Howard Duff) to set up the "Lipstick Killer" using his fiancée as bait. "Nice!"

Mobley's little scheme is to go on the air, using inside knowledge of the investigation and taunt the Killer into targeting his fiancée as an act of revenge. Then, it should be an easy thing to just keep tabs on her until the killer makes his move. Easier said than done, and things get dicey enough that it gives these paragons of the public trust a little taste of terror in the midst of stabbing each other in the back for a single rung up the power ladder.  

The cast is great; everybody's a character actor who can milk their scenes for all they're worth and rattle off movie lines like they're still stuck in the 40's. The only thorn among roses is Barrymore, who seems to have gotten directions from Lang that might have been more effective in the silent era. He's all slack-jawed, hooded-eye malice who could only look like more of a pervert if he had the letter "M" chalked on his leather jacket.

Still, that's the only glaring misstep from one of the masters of German cinema, still employing the old tricks and getting away with it (because the tricks were novel and original when he invented them). One still sees the high-contrast shadows—even though the film is mostly a daylight picture, it's still considered "noir"—the surprises just out of frame, the window-partitioned world, and décor that reflects character. Lang even gets to use his old trick of having his actors facing the camera and delivering their lines directly to the audience, challenging them—in the age of television, it happens all the time!

I first saw While the City Sleeps—one of the last films Lang made in America—about a year ago, and I notice it's becoming a staple of movie channels, especially those that feature packages of "noir films." It's becoming more and more available and makes for entertaining viewing.

They Drive By Night

They Drive By Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940) Warner Brothers-style action-and-intrigue pot-boiler about...wild-cat truckers. Well, that shouldn't be much of a surprise. In lieu of gangsterism, the trucking world could serve as a substitute for rough-and-tumble world of trying to make a fast buck on the legitimate side of the ledger in the world of capitalism The subject hit something of a zenith combining trucking and film-noir in Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway. This tough little film from Raoul Walsh—who made definitive films on both crooked and straight paths to success concerns the brothers Fabrini (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart) are partners in a truck who decide to stop working for other shipping companies and do the deals themselves. This pushes their murderous schedules to the edge and consequences determine a change of focus. An interesting little movie where two Warner's tough-guys—Raft and his understudy at the time, Bogart*—do "everyman" jobs and mine real drama out of it. Of course, it couldn't be a Warner's picture without action and the film boasts two nail-biters where truck-drivers fall asleep at the wheel, filmed with the snap that one can expect from Raoul Walsh.

Where the movie excels is the smart patter that spins drama in the economic realities of this corps of transport specialists. The movie manages to slip in lessons in Unionization and Modernization amid the wise-cracks and the trumped murder-plot that dominates the film's second half. You begin to feel like you're learning something without being preached to.

And there's enough good acting going on that raises it above "B" level. Raft is a bit looser than usual in the starring role, but Bogart has the most dramatic...and fun part. Ann Sheridan does well with her wise-acre dialog and Ida Lupino manages a mine-filed of femme fatale neuroses with dexterity and quick-silver reactions. But the stand-out is Alan Hale—"The Skipper''s" dad—who takes the part of a trucker-who-owns-a-company and can't believe his good fortune. Hale's "Ed Carlsen" never has a "down" moment, and is carried out with wolfish good spirits and the sense that he's making it up as he goes along. His performance is the diamond in the rough in this rough little film about trucking. 

*At this time in his career, Bogie was still upset at the way his career was going, he was still doing the occasional western, and just the previous year he starred in the worst movie of his career--The Return of Doctor X! But in his next movie would be a part that Raft tosses aside--"Mad Dog" Roy Earle in High Sierra. And the next part meant for Raft but inherited by Bogart would be detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.