Back to the Wall (1958)

Back to the Wall (Le dos au mur) is one of three 1950s French crime movies included in Kino Lorber’s recent French Noir Blu-Ray boxed set. It’s based on the novel Délivrez-nous du mal by Frédéric Dard.

It lays out its noir credentials right at the start. The opening scene is not just a night scene, but it’s that film noir kind of night. You know, those nights when you know that bad stuff is going to happen.

Then we see a sinister guy in a trench-coat and he’s clearly up to no good.

We’re not surprised that there’s a murder. At least we assume it’s a murder although we don’t see exactly what happened.

We then get some grisly scenes of the body being disposed of.

It then gets even more noir, with a flashback and voiceover narration.

There’s an adulterous wife, Gloria Decrey, played by Jeanne Moreau during the film noir icon phase of her career. The cuckolded husband knows about her betrayal but his reaction is not quite what we expect. He intends to do something about it but his plan is convoluted and indirect.

There’s a blackmail angle. There’s a sleazy private detective and he’s surprised that what he’s being asked to do is not quite what he anticipated.

It becomes a war of nerves.

What a director doesn’t tell you is just as important as what he does tell you, and being told things can be just as misleading as not being told if the director knows what he’s doing. You’re going to suspect from the start that there may be a bit of misdirection going on but suspecting such a thing does not necessarily help. This movie keeps leading up to obvious plot twists and then the plot twist turns out not to be the one we expected.

We understand part of the motivations of one of the key characters but we don’t know what that person’s actual intentions are.

And there’s plenty of suspicion, guilt and emotional ambiguity.

I don’t know anything about director Édouard Molinaro but he does a confident assured job here, leading us up the garden path with considerable skill. He has a clever literate script from which to work which always helps.

I know almost nothing about Gérard Oury, whose acting career apparently petered out by the early 1960s, but he’s very good here. It’s a very noir performance as a man in control on the surface but in turmoil underneath.

This movie was in the same year that Elevator to the Gallows AKA Lift to the Scaffold (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) made Jeanne Moreau a huge star. She’s excellent here. Gloria is not exactly a femme fatale, or at least not in a straightforward way, but she has the same kind of disastrous effect on men.

This is a nicely shot and very atmospheric movie.

Back to the Wall is genuine film noir as well as being a clever mystery suspense thriller, and it’s very highly recommended.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray offers the movie in French with English subtitles. The transfer is extremely good (the movie was shot in black-and-white) and thankfully there are no extras.

I’ve also reviewed Speaking of Murder (1957) from this set. It’s not quite as good but it’s well worth a watch.

High Road to China (1983)

The problem with High Road to China is that it inevitably gets pigeon-holed as a Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-off and slammed for not being as good as Spielberg’s movie.

It also seems to have had a rather troubled production history with both John Huston and Sidney J. Furie being lined up to direct. In the end Brian G. Hutton directed. It was a co-production with one of the partners being legendary Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest.

Tom Selleck famously had to turn down the lead role in Raiders of the Lost Ark after having signed the contract to do Magnum, P.I. for television. That of course is another reason for the endless comparisons between the two films.

What Raiders of the Lost Ark actually did was to establish that there was still a huge market for old-fashioned adventure movies and thereby made movies such as Romancing the Stone (1984) and King Solomon’s Mines (1985) possible. Which in my book was a good thing. I love those movies.

High Road to China is set in the 1920s. O’Malley (Tom Selleck) is a broken-down former fighter ace. When the war ended he crawled inside a bottle. He’s been there ever since. He also consoles himself with women. This tends to get him into trouble with the husbands of those women.

And now Eve Tozer (Bess Armstrong) enters his life. She needs to find her father. He’s been missing for several years. His slimy business partner Bentik (Robert Morley)

is trying to have him declared legally dead. Bentik will then own the business and Eve will be left with nothing. Eve has to find dear old dad pronto. She will need a plane. O’Malley has two planes. She offers him a lot of money to help her find her father. O’Malley is indignant. He tells her he can’t be bought. She doubles the offer and he decides he can be bought after all.

O’Malley doesn’t know that Bentik has hired people to kill Eve. It’s one of several important things she forgot to tell him.

They get captured by a crazed Wazieri chieftain (Brian Blessed in glorious full-blown Brian Blessed Mode). The trail later leads to Nepal, and to China. With lots of action along the way.

Now maybe this movie is a bit formulaic but that’s the point. It’s trying to be an old-fashioned rollicking adventure tale and it has to include the elements people expect in such a story.

There are lots of narrow escape from certain disaster. There are aerial dogfights. There are larger-than-life villains. There’s the beautiful slave girl who might be able to help them. O’Malley has the standard likeable loyal sidekick, Struts (Jack Weston).

There’s the broken-down embittered hero who might still be a hero if he can stay sober long enough. Tom Selleck is perfect - alternating between being charming, pathetic, amusing, suspicious, brave and really really annoyed.

And there’s the Feisty Heroine, in this case belonging to the Spoilt Rich Girl sub-group. When we first see Eve she is wearing the full-blown flapper gear, a look that I happen to love. Not every woman can get away with wearing the dress she’s wearing but Bess Armstrong pulls it off perfectly. Bess Armstrong is as cute as a button and she’s lively and fun.

Of course the embittered hero and the feisty heroine hate each other until they finally figure out that they’re madly in love.

So there’s nothing dazzlingly original but the movie is fast-moving, there’s great location shooting, there are flying sequences, shoot-outs and explosions. The action sequences are nicely done. The two leads have fine chemistry.

Most critics seem to have approached this movie with the assumption that it was going to be a second-rate Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off and so they’d already decided they didn’t like it before they actually watched it. If you just approach it as a lightweight romantic adventure movie you might enjoy it quite a bit, as I did. Highly recommended.

The Hen’s Teeth Video Blu-Ray is basically barebones but it’s a good transfer.

If this is the sort of thing you enjoy I can’t recommend the 1985 King Solomon’s Mines too highly. It’s a blast.

No Mercy (1986)

No Mercy is a 1986 thriller which pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. It could perhaps at a stretch be considered to have a slight neo-noir tinge and also perhaps an erotic thriller vibe although to be honest that’s a lot of a stretch.

As an indirect result of a bungled drugs stakeout Chicago cop Eddie Jillette and his partner Joe Collins stumble upon something much bigger - a planned hit. Eddie and Joe, perhaps unwisely, arrange a meet with a mysterious New Orleans businessman (we will find out that his name is Paul Deveneux) who wants a rival rubbed out. Eddie poses as a hitman. Perhaps Eddie and Joe should have realised the meet might not go smoothly. The guy who wants to hire a hitman doesn’t seem the type. He’s more of an old southern aristocracy type.

This guy has a girl with him. Her name is Michelle (Kim Basinger). She’s the reason for the hit. So it’s not business but a personal grudge, which could get messy.

It does get messy. Eddie’s partner gets disembowelled. He’s not the only one who gets killed. Eddie is off to New Orleans, ostensibly to bring his partner’s killer to justice but in fact his objective is revenge pure and simple.

The problem is that Eddie doesn’t know the identity of the target of the aborted hit. All he knows is that the target was a powerful ruthless man, and that he is Michelle’s owner.

Eddie is going to have to track down Michelle. He finds her, and he finds the man who owns her, Losado (Jeroen Krabbé). He also finds out that everything that he assumed he knew about the case is wrong, and everything that he assumed he knew about Michelle is wrong as well.

Another unpleasant discovery is that the New Orleans cops do not want him in their city. Or rather Deveneux’s brother doesn’t want him in New Orleans. Deveneux is extremely rich. If he’s upset, the New Orleans PD is upset.

Eddie ends up in the middle of a bayou, handcuffed to Michelle. They’re lucky to be alive. Losado doesn’t just employ a couple of goons to enforce his will, he has a veritable private army.

Eddie is just one cop on his own in a strange city but by now he’s seriously annoyed. You don’t want to get Eddie Jillette seriously annoyed. And as far as Eddie is concerned if his mission is to be a kamikaze mission, so be it.

He still has to figure out what to do with this strange girl. And Michelle is a very strange girl. Eddie is not just in a strange city. He’s stumbled into a totally foreign world. This is the world of the old French Louisiana. It’s the 1980s in Chicago but here time has stood still for a couple of centuries. And Michelle is like a girl from another planet.

Looking at online reviews I’m surprised that so many people dislike this movie. There’s no shortage of adrenalin-rush action and mayhem with some terrific action set-pieces. There’s good suspense. There’s a weird twisted love story. There’s an exotic setting. As far as thrillers go this one ticks most of my boxes.

I’m also surprised so many people dislike Richard Gere. His performance is very much in that intense edgy wired mode that was so popular at the time but for my money Gere does this sort of thing with more class than most actors of this type. He doesn’t have to shout and wave his arms about and jump up and down to get the message across that he’s a man on the edge. I like him a lot in this movie.

As for Kim Basinger, she has a tricky role. She’s playing a woman who just doesn’t see the world the way women of the 80s see it. She’s like a woman living in two different eras at the same time. I think Basinger is very good indeed in this part.

There’s nothing subtle about Jeroen Krabbé’s performance as Losado but he radiates pure evil and that’s what the part calls for.

The one weakness is that although the acting chemistry between Gere and Basinger is excellent this is a movie that needed a lot more erotic heat.

Richard Pearce is not a particularly big name as a director but he handles matters here with assurance.

No Mercy hits the ground running and maintains the momentum. Whether it’s a neo-noir or an erotic thriller or a plain old action thriller doesn’t matter - whatever it is it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray presentation looks great.

Pale Flower (1964)

Pale Flower is a 1964 Japanese film relased, surprisingly, not by Nikkatsu Studio but by rival studio Shochiku (although it was independently produced). It’s a film noir but not a conventional one and it’s a yakuza movie but not a conventional one.

Muraki (Ryô Ikebe) is a yakuza who had just been released from prison after serving a sentence for killing a member of a rival gang. Now he discovers that the two gangs have joined forces, but there are no hard feelings.

Muraki is obsessed by gambling. He meets a strange girl, a fellow gambling obsessive. Her name is Saeko (Mariko Kaga).

They are drawn to each other, but not just by their shared love for gambling. They both feel somehow doomed, as if their lives have no meaning and no direction and can only end in disaster. The gambling is clearly symbolic - they both have a desire to play for the highest stakes of all, life itself. There are lots of gambling scenes in this movie.

It’s important to note that the plot has not offered us a single reason why these two people see their lives as having no value or purpose. It’s something missing within them.

Perhaps they fall in love. They don’t seem quite sure about that. Perhaps their obsession with each other is like their passion for gambling - it’s just a way to deal with the boredom.

The plot kicks in slowly but this is not a heavily plot-driven movie. The two now united yakuza gangs are facing a challenge from a powerful Osaka-based gang. Muraki will be a key player in the defensive moves against this encroaching gang. Muraki believes he will have a high price to pay but he accepts this with his usual indifference.

Ryô Ikebe as Muraki gives a very noir (and very good) performance. Mariko Kaga as Saeko is rather mesmerising.

Saeko is not really a femme fatale. It’s more that these are two doomed people drawn together, not to try to save each other but to share their doom.

Director Masahiro Shinoda claimed that the background to the movie was Japan’s political position at the time as a not entirely willing U.S satellite which he felt had robbed the country of a sense of purpose. This is the kind of thing that exercises the minds of intellectuals while ordinary people are too busy living their lives. I cannot see any political angle whatsoever to this movie, except perhaps that it does give us a sense of a society adrift, and individuals within that society adrift. But mercifully there’s no overt political content whatsoever.

Although stylistically they are poles apart in its own way this movie is, like Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, an attempt to reinvent the yakuza movie. There’s an intriguing subtly surreal dream sequence.

The film is set in Tokyo but the location shooting was done in Yokohama. It has a very noir look.

It certainly has plenty of noirish impending doom vibes. But it’s not quite straightforward noir. Muraki knows that he’s headed for disaster but unlike the typical noir protagonist he makes no attempts to escape his fate.

Muraki’s motivations are to some extent determined by the yakuza code of honour but to me this doesn’t feel like a conventional yakuza movie, or even a conventional Japanese movie.

I got some rather French vibes from it. A definite whiff of existentialism. If Camus had written a screenplay for a yakuza movie he might have come up with something like this. It doesn’t feel quite Japanese. There’s some Christian symbolism. It seems to be about people finding all the existing belief systems (traditional Japanese values, the yakuza code, Christianity, materialism, consumerism) unsatisfying. So they’re left with a vague existentialism of a warped kind - a death fetish.

There’s also a fascinating hint that both Muraki and Saeko have an erotic interest in death, and particularly in murder. In fact that’s the whole basis for their attraction. Saeko is attracted to Muraki because he killed a man (that’s why he was in prison). But not only that. He enjoyed it. It was the greatest pleasure he had ever experienced in his life. Muraki is attracted to Saeko because she understands how he feels about killing. And then there’s a wildcard in the pack - Joh, a stone-cold half-Chinese hitman also in love with killing.

This is vaguely similar to the territory explored years later in Basic Instinct. In this case we have three characters with a sex-death fetish.

This is a very dark disturbing provocative movie. Very highly recommended.

It’s on Blu-Ray in the Criterion Collection.

The Glass Web (1953)

The Glass Web was a product of that brief period when Hollywood actually believed that a ridiculous gimmick like 3D was going to win back the audiences that had deserted them when television appeared on the scene.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray includes both 2D and 3D versions and I watched it in 2D. The movie includes lots of the silly gimmick shots you expect from 3D.

Don Newell (John Forsythe) is a TV writer screenwriter on a true crime series called Crime of the Week, made by a production company named TVC. It’s a series that claims that it aims for absolute accuracy. Henry Hayes (Edward G. Robinson) is the chief researcher. He thinks that he’s the key member of the production team but he isn’t. He is obsessive about getting the details right. The series is up for renewal and everyone is nervous.

Henry comes up with the bright idea of basing their season finale on a case that is happening right now, a murder case in which a suspect has been picked up but has not yet been indicted. Viewers will in effect be watching the case on TV even as the actual court case will be happening. In reality of course the network’s lawyers would put the kibosh on such a risky idea.

The real-life case involves people actually involved with the production of Crime of the Week.

Both Don and Henry have been having dalliances with TV actress Paula Ranier (Kathleen Hughes). She’s a cheap blonde who is obviously ruthlessly using both men but Don and Henry are the kinds of guys who fall for tramps like Paula. She’s obviously a no-good dame but everything about her is ripe with the promise of steamy illicit bedroom thrills.

It’s no surprise when Paula’s manipulations and attempts at blackmail end in murder. There are several possible suspects, including both Don and Henry.

The key to the movie is when Paula tells Don that she picks her victims carefully - weak men who don’t have the guts to fight back.

As a whodunit this movie flops completely. The identity of the killer is embarrassingly obvious. Maybe the screenwriters didn’t care and maybe their intention was to focus on an innocent man caught in a trap, partly due to his own poor judgment and party due to the schemings of others.

Kudos to Kino Lorber for not trying to pretend that this is a film noir. Its affinities to noir are superficial. And it is entirely lacking in noir visual style. Visually it’s flat and uninteresting.

Playing a sad schmuck who gets taken for a ride by a cheap blonde is something Edward G. Robinson could do in his sleep. He’s OK here but he’s hampered by the overly obvious script. I like John Forsythe as an actor but he’s a bit on the dull side here, although in fairness he is playing a bit of chump.

Kathleen Hughes pulls out all the femme fatale stops. She’s a riot. Paula is a gal who could make doing the ironing seem like a sleazy come-on. There’s no subtlety to Hughes’ performance but the only time this movie comes to life is when she’s onscreen.

The use of a TV studio as a setting provides some interest - this is TV in its infancy when shows were extremely clunky and so it’s quite appropriate that we get the impression that Crime of the Week is a clunky show.

This is a movie that just doesn’t work. There’s no mystery and no effective suspense. It’s just lifeless. The script is feeble. I like Jack Arnold as a director but in this case it feel like something he just did for a pay cheque.

Overall rather disappointing. I cannot recommend it.

For a more favourable review of this movie check out the Riding the High Country blog entry.

You’ll Never Get Rich (1941)

Given that You’ll Never Get Rich, released by Columbia in 1941, was the first movie that teamed Fred Astaire with Rita Hayworth and that it was the movie that made her a star I was looking forward to watching it. In fact it turned out to be a huge disappointment for a variety of reasons.

Robert Curtis (Fred Astaire) is producing a Broadway show. Sheila Winthrop (Rita Hayworth) is one of the chorus girls. The owner of the theatre, Martin Cortland (Robert Benchley), is pursuing Sheila while trying not to let his wife find out about it. He tries to cover his tracks by making it appear that Robert is the one pursuing her. Both Robert and Sheila realise they’re being manipulated and they’re soon at odds with each other.

The first time Rita Hayworth appears on the screen we’re knocked out by her star quality, her beauty, her charm and her wit.

So at this early stage the movie looks like it’s going to be a fine breezy musical romance.

Then it becomes a totally different movie. It becomes a service comedy, and there is no species of movie I dislike more than service comedies. This was 1941, America was not yet in the war but Hollywood had worked itself up into a war frenzy which presumably explains why we get to see Fred Astaire in uniform and most of the film takes place on an army base. War was coming (or at least that’s what Hollywood hoped) and it was going to be so much fun.

It’s not just a service comedy, it’s a lame service comedy. The comedy is not just feeble it’s excruciating.

Inevitably this switch means that Rita Hayworth gets nowhere near as much screen time as she should get. She gets few opportunities to dance with Astaire and they have only one great dance together. This is a problem since Hayworth is the best thing in the movie. In fact she’s the only good thing in the movie.

You’ll Never Get Rich is in black-and-white. That’s OK, I love black-and-white movies. But the 1930s RKO Astaire Rogers movies had exquisite black-and-white cinematography and stunning sets. You’ll Never Get Rich has dreary black-and-white cinematography and boring ugly sets.

Even the costumes are dull, apart from one really nice dress won by Hayworth. But she should have been put in lots of gorgeous dresses.

It has a score by Cole Porter (something which should be a major asset) but it’s an entirely forgettable score.

The screenplay, by Michael Fessier and Ernest Paganoin, is feeble. The service comedy plot is the film’s major plot strand and it should have been ditched in its entirety. The love story between Fred and Rita is relegated to being a minor subplot when in fact it should he been the whole movie. The entire script should have been thrown in the trash can and decent writers hired to write a new one.

Director Sidney Lanfield’s efforts are barely competent.

Hayworth is great but Astaire is all at sea with material that doesn’t suit him at all. Robert Benchley is a lot of fun as the inept philanderer. The other members of the supporting cast are either unmemorable or irritating.

I hate to say this but this is a terrible movie. Unless you’re a Rita Hayworth completist it’s not worth bothering with.

The second (and final) Astaire-Hayworth musical, You Were Never Lovelier, is much much better. In fact it’s terrific.

The Woman Racket (1930)

The Woman Racket (later retitled Lights and Shadows) is a 1930 MGM pre-code romantic/crime melodrama. I have heard that it was originally shot as a silent film but that only the talkie version survives. It’s one of MGM’s early attempts at a hardboiled feel, which works fairly well.

It begins with a police raid on the Blue Moon speakeasy. Patrolman Tom Hayes (Tom Moore) takes pity on one of the hostesses, Julia Barnes (Blanche Sweet) and allows her to escape. They go out together, they fall in love and they get married.

The problem is that Julia likes glamour excitement and pretty things and you don’t get much of that married to a cop, on a cop’s salary. Tom is decent enough and he’s crazy about her but he’s a cop through and through.

She succumbs to the temptation to pay a visit to the Blue Moon.

And she’s tempted to fall back into her old wicked ways. The marriage is on the rocks.

Pretty soon she’s the mistress of the owner of the Blue Moon, Chris Miller (John Miljan). But her old life doesn’t appeal to her so much any more and she’s riddled with guilt.

There’s also the matter of her friend Buddy (Sally Starr). Buddy is a sweet kid and a promising chanteuse but Julia is worried that the wicked Chris Miller will corrupt her. And Chris has every intention of doing just that. Julia wants to save her Buddy from making he mistakes she made.

The other problem is that Chris isn’t just a nightclub owner but also a bit of a gangster, in a modest way. So Julia and Buddy could get mixed up in some very shady goings-on if they’re not careful.

The Wall Street Crash happened in late October 1929. The Woman Racket was released in January 1930 which means that production would have been well underway or perhaps even completed) before the Crash hit. Which means this is a Jazz Age movie rather than (like so many pre-code films) a Depression movie. And it does have a Jazz Age feel.

Blanche Sweet had been a major star in silent films but failed to make a successful transition to talkies. In this film she’s trying to achieve a mixture of mildly hardboiled with sweet and good-natured and she does a fairly decent job but by this time new time new stars were starting to emerge, who did this sort of thing better. But there’s really nothing wrong at all with her performance here.

John Miljan was one of the great slimy oily villains of the early sound era. Maybe he wasn’t quite in the Warren William class but he was very nearly as good. He’s in deliciously sinister manipulative form here.

The plot is serviceable enough. There are moments that betray its stage origins (it was based on a successful play).

The ending is slightly contrived but the final confrontation in total darkness is quite well done.

Is it really pre-code? Not overly, although it is fairly obvious that Julia really is Chris’s mistress and she is of course a married woman. She was a hostess as well as a singer and the title of the movie suggests that perhaps we’re intended to assume that the hostesses at the Blue Moon are part-time prostitutes. It’s possible that that element was more evident in the original script but was seriously downplayed in the final cut.

I enjoyed The Woman Racket and I’m happy to recommend it.

The Warner Archive DVD is fine.