Undertow (1949)

Undertow (1949) is included in Kino Lorber’s Film Noir: Dark Side of Cinema XVII and it’s a real surprise - it’s just about the only movie in any of these sets that is actually slightly film noirish. Don’t get me wrong. These sets include lots of fine movies that are very much worth seeing but most have no connections whatsoever to actual film noir.

Undertow is an early directorial effort by William Castle, later to become legendary for his imaginative promotional gimmicks for his low-budget horror films.

Tony Reagan (Scott Brady) has just been demobilised from the army. He seems like a pretty nice guy. At a casino in Reno he meets a rather sweet young lady schoolteacher, Ann McKnight (Peggy Dow). Ann seems like the sort of girl who’s waiting for Mr Right to come along, and she seems to think that Tony might qualify. Tony however is not interested - he’s heading to Chicago to marry his sweetheart Sally Lee (Dorothy Hart).

There’s nothing more than harmless flirtation between Tony and Ann.

We now learn that seven years earlier Tony had left Chicago under a cloud. He had been involved in organised crime and had run foul of Big Jim Lee. This could be a problem now - Big Jim is Sally Lee’s uncle.

Tony finds himself framed for murder and he has a minor gunshot wound. He needs to hide out for a while but the cops have all his old friends under surveillance. Then he remembers the cute lady schoolteacher. She lives in Chicago. She is keen to help. She just knows that Tony could never have murdered anybody. He’s not her man but she’ll stand by him anyway.

The biggest problem with this movie is that we don’t really feel that the odds are stacked against Tony. He’s in a jam but he has people on his side and we figure he’ll be OK. The movie also reveals a bit too much information too early.

Tony does qualify to some extent as a noir protagonist. There’s some moral ambiguity to him. He’s been a bad boy in the past but he’s tried to keep out of trouble since. He’s a basically decent guy in danger of being drawn into the noir nightmare world.

There is also a femme fatale of a sort, but not enough is done with the character.

For me film noir should take place in a rather hostile world - an unforgiving world in which a guy makes one mistake or gets one bad break and he’s doomed. The world of Undertow is a bit too ordered and fair. It doesn’t feel particularly like the world of film noir.

The bad guys are all that sinister. The femme fatale does some femme fatale stuff but she’s not all that seductive and she doesn’t have the full-blown evil spider woman vibe.

There’s also not much in the way of genuine noir visual style (although there is some).

Watching it today this movie seems like it has the ingredients for a film noir but they’re not sufficiently exploited. But of course nobody in 1949 was consciously trying to make film noir. Castle was just trying to make a crime thriller.

Judged in that light he does a very competent job.

The acting is solid but none of the main players has real star presence or charisma.

A few more nasty plot twists would have been nice but there’s nothing particularly wrong with Undertow. It’s only marginally film noir and it’s no masterpiece but it’s an enjoyable enough B-movie and it’s worth a look.

Kino Lorber have provided a very pleasing transfer.

Chicago Deadline (1949)

Chicago Deadline is a 1949 Paramount release that is difficult to classify. It’s definitely not film noir. There’s a mystery, but not of the usual type. There are crimes, but they’re peripheral to the main plot. Perhaps it’s best to think of it as just a hardboiled newspaper movie.

Ed Adams (Alan Ladd) is a reporter for the Chicago Journal. He comes across a young woman, dead in her apartment. Her name was Rosita. There’s no mystery to her death. She died of tuberculosis. And this is not one of those movies in which what appears to be death by natural causes turns out to be murder. She really did die of tuberculosis.

Ed finds her address book. Being a reporter he naturally steals it before the police arrive. It’s unethical but no big deal. This is not a suspicious death.

This is at best a very minor human interest story. A pretty young woman dies alone in a seedy apartment. Ed, being a reporter, decides to track down some of the people in her address book. He discovers something that interests him as a newspaperman. All of these people suddenly get really nervous when Rosita’s name is mentioned. Maybe there might be a bit of a story here after all.

He slowly uncovers Rosita’s story through the people in her address book. We see Rosita (played by Donna Reed) in a series of flashbacks.

Rosita seemed to have lousy luck with men. Some of these men are now having lousy luck. Getting murdered certainly qualifies as lousy luck.

Some of these people have colourful backgrounds of a less than strictly legal nature. Some are important people. It seems more and more likely that there’s a real story here. Ed wants that story, but he gradually becomes obsessed with Rosita herself. How did her life fall apart? It’s a mystery that Ed wants to solve.

Alan Ladd is in good form. Ed Adams is the hero but he’s a slightly tarnished hero. He’s a reporter, which means he has never had any morals. A story is a story. He’s hardboiled and cynical and that has never bothered him but as he uncovers Rosita’s story he starts to like himself a lot less. He starts to become slightly uncomfortable with the idea of treating people’s lives as nothing more than material for stories. Rosita was a real woman. Ed wants her story told fairly.

The touch of cynicism about newspapers adds some interest.

Rosita is supposed to be an enigmatic figure. That’s the whole point of the story. Was she a bad girl, a femme fatale, a victim or an innocent? Or just a very ordinary young woman whose life got out of control? Donna Reed’s performance reflects this. It’s not a showy performance because it’s not supposed to be.

The plot is perhaps a little over-complicated, with perhaps too many characters. That of course is to some extent the point - Rosita met her destiny as a result of all kinds of involvements with all kinds of people, good and bad. Some used her. Some loved her. You do have to pay close attention though.

There’s no need to worry too much about spoilers here - the movie tells us how Rosita’s life will end right at the beginning. Of course there could be no question of a happy ending - we already know that she has died alone and unloved. The pay-off at the end is satisfactory but it is just a tiny bit bleak. No-one was saved. This is is probably the movie’s only valid claim to being borderline noir. The one moderately bright spot at the end is that Ed has perhaps become a bit more of an emotionally mature human being.

Chicago Deadline is pretty decent entertainment. Recommended.

This one is included in Kino Lorber’s Film Noir: Dark Side of Cinema XVI Blu-Ray set (I’ve 
also reviewed Mystery of Marie Roget from that set). Chicago Deadline gets a lovely transfer.

The Single Standard (1929)

When people talk about Greta Garbo’s great movies they usually don’t mention her very late (1929) silent movie The Single Standard. Even when people focus on her silent films this one doesn’t get much attention. It was directed by John S. Robertson, from a novel by Adela Rogers St. Johns.

Arden (Greta Garbo) obviously belongs to the wealthy fashionable set. This was 1929 so this is a pre-Great Depression movie. This is still the Jazz Age, the Age of the Flapper.

Arden is rather fond of her handsome hunky chauffeur. One night she decides on a midnight drive, just her and the chauffeur. Arden is in the driver’s seat, and this is clearly a signal that Arden always likes to be in the driver’s seat in life. They find a romantic spot down by the lake. Just the two of them. They kiss. The movie doesn’t show us what happens next but I think it’s reasonable to assume that it’s what you would expect to happen between a healthy red-blooded young man and a healthy red-blooded young woman in a romantic setting in the moonlight.

Unpleasant consequences could probably have been foreseen, but this moonlight tryst has totally disastrous consequences.

There is of course a major class issue here. Women of Arden’s social class are not expected to offer their favours to servants.

Arden then meets Packy Cannon (Nils Asther). He’s a prize-fighter turned artist. He gives a demonstration of his pugilistic skills. Arden is impressed. Packy is artistic and very manly. He’s her sort of man. Romance is clearly going to blossom.

We’ve already figured out that Arden is a Modern Woman. She wants to lead a life of honesty and freedom. Which for her includes sexual freedom. We also know that she likes men, with a preference for masculine men. Arden believes that she has the right to make her own decisions where men are concerned.

Romance does indeed blossom. Arden and Packy sail off into the sunset together on Packy’s yacht. Things don’t quite work out and another situation arises which could potentially end as disastrously as Arden’s midnight cavortings with the chauffeur.

The title might tempt one to think that this movie was intended as an attack on the supposed “double standard” - the idea that women were held to a different moral standard compared to men. I am however not convinced that that makes sense in relation to this movie. In the context of this movie there really is only a single standard - scandal must be avoided. Morality doesn’t matter. Social approval is what matters.

Of course that is still true today. The things that bring social approval and social disapproval have changed, but social conformity still matters more than morality. Whatever the prevailing societal mores might be, however much they may change, conformity to those mores will still be ruthlessly enforced.

Arden’s mistake, which had nothing very much to do with her being a woman, was to assume that society will tolerate those who believe they have the right to make their own decisions. That has never been the case and never will be the case. This movie is really not dated at all.

We don’t think of silent movies as pre-code movies but of course a movie made in 1929 is indeed a pre-code movie, and The Single Standard feels very very pre-code. It is strongly implied that Arden and the chauffeur are lovers. It is made pretty explicit that Arden and Packy are lovers. It’s also made very clear that the audience is not meant to condemn any of these people for immorality. In fact the message of the movie appears to be that if love is on offer you should grab it. The complications that ensue for these people are not actually caused by sexual wickedness. In fact things would have worked out much more satisfactorily for everyone had Arden and Packy continued with their illicit love affair.

The Single Standard is more interesting than its reputation would suggest and I recommend it highly. And of course Garbo is terrific.

Sadly there’s a great deal of print damage evident in the Warner Archive DVD transfer but with silent movies we always have to be grateful that they have survived at all.

Union City (1980)

Union City, released in 1980, is a bit of a puzzle. It attracted mild interest at the time since it marked the real beginnings of Debbie Harry’s career as an actress (she had played a few minor roles prior to this). This film then sank without trace. It got a DVD release nearly twenty years ago and then disappeared once again into obscurity. There is still no sign of a Blu-Ray release. It’s rather bizarre. You would think that being a neo-noir starring Debbie Harry would make it well and truly viable as a Blu-Ray release. And it is a very good and extremely interesting movie.

I suspect the problem is that it’s also a slightly weird very quirky movie, the kind of movie that critics are always inclined to treat harshly. It’s also the kind of movie that would have presented a few challenges to the marketing guys. The usual response of studios to such movies is to simply not bother promoting them. And the usual response of critics (including today’s online reviewers) is to assume that such a movie is not worth bothering with.

It probably also didn’t help that this was the only feature film made by writer-director Marcus Reichert. The fact that it was made by a Hollywood outsider was another reason to dismiss it.

Union City was based on a 1937 Cornell Woolrich short story, The Corpse Next Door, and this is a very Woolrichian movie.

It is 1953. Lillian (Debbie Harry) and Harlan (Dennis Lipscomb) live in a seedy apartment in a generic fictional city, Union City. Their marriage is not a great success. Harlan is neurotic and dissatisfied with life and inclined to obsess over trivial things. Lillian has tried to be a good wife but she feels unloved.

Harlan’s latest obsession is the milk thief. Somebody is stealing his milk. He lays an elaborate trap for the thief, with disastrous consequences. As a result his fragile grip on reality becomes ever more tenuous.

Lillian seems to be drifting into an affair with the building’s super, Larry (Everett McGill). Lillian is not really that kind of girl but she’s starved of affection and Larry is much nicer to her than her husband.

Also living in the building is The Contessa (Irina Maleeva). She’s not really a contessa. She’s crazy, but likeable and harmless. She does however add to the movie’s atmosphere of weirdness.

Harlan is in a total panic because of the corpse. He has no coherent plan to dispose of it. His solution is for them to move to another apartment, which would simply make the corpse’s discovery a certainty. He is descending into a world of madness and paranoia.

As I said, this is all very Woolrichian.

I admire Debbie Harry for taking this role because, considering that she was seen at the time as perhaps the sexiest most glamorous woman in the world, it’s a very unglamorous part.

It also requires a very low-key performance. Harlan is the one who is cracking up in spectacular style and Dennis Lipscomb is the one who is called on to deliver a totally over-the-top performance (which he does very effectively).

Debbie Harry has to counter-balance that. Lillian is just a very ordinary woman. She just wanted a happy marriage. She doesn’t daydream about being a movie star or a fashion model or living in a penthouse. She just wants a bit of romance and affection, and it would be nice to have a husband who actually wanted to make love to her occasionally. She doesn’t want very much out of life, but she knows that she needs more than she’s getting.

Debbie Harry’s performance is believable and touching.

Look out for Pat Benatar in a small role. Yes, you get two pop queens in this movie.

Union City certainly has very strong neo-noir credentials but it has a feel that is quite different from other neo-noirs. It has its own totally distinctive style, possibly another reason for its neglect. It doesn’t look or feel anything like other neo-noirs with period setting (such as Chinatown, The Postman Always Rings Twice or Farewell, My Lovely) or other neo-noirs such as Body Heat or Basic Instinct.

Union City has an incredibly claustrophobic feel. It also has a very non-realist look. The use of colour to create mood is extremely interesting. There is no reason in plot terms for this movie not to have been set in 1980 - I suspect the period setting was chosen to achieve a further distancing from reality, from the everyday world. This is a movie that takes place entirely within a nightmare world. This is very obviously true in Harlan’s case but both Lillian and the Contessa can also be seen as inhabiting a world of unreality. Theirs is not a world of paranoia, but but it’s still a world of unreality. For these two women it’s a world of frustrated hopes and thwarted love.

The Tartan Video DVD is long out of print but affordable copies can still be found. I found my copy without any great difficulty. The anamorphic transfer is OK. The only extras are Debbie Harry’s screen tests and it’s easy to see why Reichert wanted her - she nailed the part perfectly right from the start.

Union City is a very unconventional neo-noir but it is still very much a neo-noir. It’s a slightly arty very moody film that makes no concessions to the conventions of cinematic realism. It’s a strange brilliant little movie and it’s very highly recommended.