Along with Louis Armstrong, cell phones and deep-fried Twinkies, film noir is America's great gift to the world, and it's back in style like nobody's business.
Not that these hardboiled crime classics of the '40s and '50s ever quite went away. But what more favorable moment for this darkest and most angst-ridden of genres than the uncertain, terrorized times in which we live? And what better way to enjoy these delirious journeys into the heart of darkness than by kicking back with a few of the many fine noir DVD collections that seem to be popping up everywhere these days? Here are some of the very best and the very darkest.
20th Century Fox continues its remarkable Film Noir Series – a collection that began with the sublime Laura – with three extremely welcome additions: Nightmare Alley, The Street with No Name and House of Bamboo. Probably the most anticipated of the lot is Nightmare Alley, a legendary film long unavailable on any home video format due to murky rights issues.
Matinee idol Tyrone Power, cast against type in a bold bid for artistic credibility, stars as a carnival huckster who becomes the darling of high society, falls victim to a shady lady and his own ambition, and winds up a sideshow geek, gobbling up live chickens for the horrified rubes. Bizarre, fascinating characters and mysterious subplots abound, and Powers' arc from petty con man to tuxedo-clad swell to gibbering zombie makes for one of the most complex, disturbing films of the entire noir cycle. The odd, atonal soundtrack's a kick too.
A noir of a more conventional sort, The Street with No Name uses the semi-documentary approach Fox experimented with in the late '40s to tell the story of an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a crime ring in order to snare the gang's boss (a terrifically psychotic Richard Widmark). While not as flashy as the stylish chiaroscuro of films like Nightmare Alley, Street with No Name makes good use of its you-are-there location footage to drive home the claustrophobic, high anxiety of urban L.A., presenting a less frequently seen but no less fascinating face of noir.
In 1955 (well after the noir cycle had semi-officially run its course), director Sam Fuller re-made Street with No Name as House of Bamboo, transplanting the action to post-war Japan, and amping up the moral ambiguity by stocking the crime gang with corrupt ex-GIs. Noir icon Robert Ryan is pitch perfect as the head nasty, whose subtle yet unmistakable attraction for his nemesis (Robert Stack, suitably wooden in the best tradition of sleepwalking noir heroes) adds an additional layer of murkiness to the proceedings. Quintessential two-fisted filmmaker Fuller lends his usual bravura approach to the material, delivering a series of visceral moments that culminates in a spectacular shoot-out at the weirdest kiddie park you'll ever see.
House of Bamboo is one of the few film noirs of its era to be shot in color (and super-widescreen CinemaScope to boot) but the visuals are beautifully saturated and full of ominous shadows that place it squarely within the noir tradition. The Fox DVDs deliver uniformly lovely, richly detailed transfers of all three of these movies (with only Street showing a few blemishes), and each film is accompanied by an insightful and accessible commentary track by James Ursini and Alain Silver, noir experts who provide just the right balance of history, theory and entertaining anecdotes.
The other indispensable addition to any self-respecting film buff's noir library is Warner Home Video's fabulous Film Noir Classic Collection Volume 2, a five-disc set that includes Born to Kill, Clash by Night, Crossfire, Dillinger and The Narrow Margin. The French dubbed these movies film noir (black film) for good reason: they're all about the dark, both in subject and look, and the gorgeous, pristine transfers on Warner's digitally remastered DVDs boast blacks so deep and velvety that you may never want to leave this lightless world.
My personal favorite in the set is Born to Kill, one of the most eccentric, unabashedly brutal and unforgettable of all noirs. The movie stars perennial tough guy Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs) as the appropriately named Sam Wild, a charismatic but completely insane natural born killer who attracts the perverse attentions of a pair of high society sisters. Born to Kill is an emotional and narrative freak-out of epic proportions from start to finish, and the bonus commentary track by film historian Eddie Muller (with archival contributions from director Robert Wise) sheds some fascinating light on it all.
Director Fritz Lang's contribution to this set, Clash by Night, leans heavily toward melodrama; it's loosely based on a Clifford Odets play about an adulterous romantic triangle. Intense performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan give the film its edge, though, and Lang's elegantly visualized attention to ominous undercurrents transforms Clash by Night into an ode to purely noir-ish obsessions.
Ditto for Dillinger, a tautly scripted, thoroughly unglamorized B-movie featuring a powerhouse performance by Tierney (in his big screen debut) as the famous '30s gangster. The DVDs boast extremely interesting commentary tracks by directors Peter Bogdanovich (on Clash by Night) and John Milius (on Dillinger).
The final two films in the Warner's set are pretty much textbook examples of what film noir is all about. Crossfire stars Ryan again, along with fellow genre icon Robert Mitchum, in the tense, twisty tale of a cynical detective uncovering all sorts of unsavory secrets surrounding a vicious hate crime. Then there's the nerve-shredding The Narrow Margin, which turns a speeding transcontinental train into the ultimate noir setting, populated by a nervous cop, a gangster's moll on her way to a grand jury, and a pair of hit men determined to keep her from testifying.
Filmmaker William Friedkin (French Connection) provides a fascinating commentary on this one, while Crossfire benefits from another of those great, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Noir commentaries by Silver and Ursini. All of which makes it easier than ever to understand why we keep coming back to these vintage movies and to the dark pleasures they so abundantly supply.
lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 5, 2005.