Asphalt (1929)

Joe May’s German silent film Asphalt (Der Polizeiwachtmeister und die Diamantenelse), made at Ufa Studios in 1929, can be seen as both the last gasp of German Expressionism and the first step on the road to film noir.

A very serious-minded young traffic cop named Albert Holk, straight out of police college (Gustav Fröhlich), arrests a glamorous jewel thief. When she flutters her eyelashes at the jeweller he asks the police to drop the charges but Wachtmeister Holk takes his job very seriously indeed. He is determined not to fall for such cheap tricks and to bring this dangerous menace to society to justice.

The thief, Else Kramer (Betty Amann), uses all of her feminine wiles (and she knows them all) on young Holk. He resists manfully but really he never stands a chance. She persuades him to let her go back to her apartment to get her papers, and after considerable effort she seduces him.

Young Holk is devastated. He has let the side down. Worse than that, he has let his parents down. And his father is a retired policeman. He is filled with shame.

All this is bad enough, but there is worse to come. Else sends him a gift. He goes to her apartment, intending to indignantly return the gift, but he falls for those feminine wiles all over again. And now he is drawn into the noir nightmare world, a journey that will end in murder.



Born in Vienna, Joe May was not one of the big names of German silent cinema but he was prolific and was in fact one of the pioneers, beginning his directing career as early as 1911. He ended his career in the United States after fleeing Germany in the wake of the Nazi takeover. His US movies were all B-movies - he was never able to achieve the same level of success there that he’d enjoyed in Germany.

Metropolis star Gustav Fröhlich makes Holk more interesting and more sympathetic than the synopsis would suggest. He tries his hardest to resist the noir nightmare world but he’s outgunned by the beautiful and glamorous Else.



Betty Amann was an American actress (although born in Germany) who take the same road to German film that Louise Brooks had taken. I have heard it argued that Amann was actually the better actress. That is of course nonsense and she is unable to give her characterisation the depth that Brooks gave to her roles. Having said that, Amann was a fine actress and she really was exceptionally glamorous, she’s perfectly cast and she gives a fine performance. Else is not a one-dimensional femme fatale. She genuinely falls for the naïve but handsome young cop. She starts out seeing him as a ridiculous figure, a clown she can manipulate, but she ends by not only falling in love with him but by seeing him as her chance of redemption.

Albert Steinrück as Holk’s father and Else Heller as his mother give moving performances. Holk’s father has such a high sense of duty that it overrides his own humanity. Else Kramer is a bad girl but she is in some ways more sympathetic - her feelings override her own best interests. The conflict between duty and emotion is the driving force of the story.



This is certainly not full-on Expressionism, but there are subtle hints of the stye in this movie. There is for instance a staircase scene that looks not merely Expressionist but also very film noir. There is plenty of proto-noir in this movie with moody shadows and the exciting but slightly sleazy backdrop of nightlife in Weimar Republic Germany which manages to be as noir as LA in the 40s.

Joe May may not have scaled the heights that German film-makers like Fritz Lang scaled but he was more than a mere journeyman director. Asphalt is stylish and visually arresting. The obvious comparison is going to be with Pabst’s masterpiece Pandora's Box (starring the aforementioned Louise Brooks). Asphalt inhabits similar territory and like Pabst May tones the Expressionism way down, leaving it as a subtle suggestion rather than an overwhelming visual signature.



Asphalt has been released in Region 2 by Eureka in their Masters of Cinema and in Region 1 by Kino. I haven’t seen either of these DVDs so I can’t comment on them.

Asphalt is not in the same league as Pandora's Box or Fritz Lang’s M but it’s not without interest, it’s stylish and entertaining and Betty Amann’s performance is enough to make it a must-see for silent movie fans. Film noir fans will be fascinated by the early hints of that style in this movie. Recommended.

Girl on the Run (1953)

Girl on the Run is a 1953 cheapie that is included in Something Weird’s DVD boxed set Weird Noir. Whether it’s noir or not can perhaps be debated (it’s certainly noirish) but its weirdness is not a matter of doubt.

A couple on the run hide out in a carnival. The carnival is run by Blake, a pint-sized midget with plenty of front. Bill Martin (Richard Coogan) has been framed for the murder of a man named Marsh, leader of a vice investigation. He and his girlfriend Janet (Rosemary Pettit) had been newspaper reporters covering the vice case and they got too close to the truth. They were framed by Clay Reeves (Harry Bannister), the corrupt local chief of police.


Blake and Reeves are old acquaintances, but they’re certainly not old friends. Blake was mixed up somehow in the vice racket that Marsh was investigating but his main object now is to collect enough dirt on Reeves to blackmail him.

Bill Martin and Janet had been heading for the carnival as part of their newspaper’s own investigation of the vice racket. Blake lets them hide out in the carnival. Blake is not exactly an honest citizen but he hates Reeves and he figures that anyone who is an enemy of Reeves is a friend of his. Besides, they might prove useful to him. Blake is more interested in feathering his own nest than in uncovering the truth. Bill and Janet can trust him, but only up to a point. Blake is playing his own game and the stakes are high, but that’s how Blake likes it.


Also involved in these sordid goings-on is Lil, who looks after the girls in the carnival’s girl show. Lil knows more than she’s prepared to let on.

After showing up the carny’s boxer Martin is offered a job. They can’t always find a sucker prepared to go three rounds with their champ in the boxing show, so when no sucker steps forward Bill gets to do he honours (which is easy enough, since he was light-heavyweight champion of Princeton University). Janet gets a job in the girl show.

The local police are closing in on Bill and Janet but they find an unexpected ally, but can they evade capture long enough to make use of this unanticipated stroke of luck?

This is not by any stretch of the imagination a good film, but it is highly entertaining. You can’t lose with a carny background and this movie makes the most of its setting. Arthur J. Beckhard and Joseph Lee share the directing credit while Beckhard and Cedric Worth were the co-writers. The script is rough and ready but it’s nicely hardboiled and dripping with carny atmosphere.

The actor who portrays Blake certainly steals the movie. Blake might not be much more than three feet tall but he thinks he’s a big shot and he has no difficulty in convincing others that he is. He’s a delightfully cynical and colourful character, as is Lil. Harry Bannister isn’t much of an actor but he plays Reeves with plenty of menace. Richard Coogan and Rosemary Pettit are adequate as the hero and heroine.

As so often Something Weird have managed to come up with an astonishingly good print of a very obscure movie. Sound quality is good throughout, there is very little print damage and the picture is sharp and clear. This movie is never going to make it to the Criterion Collection so this release is as good as it’s ever going to get for this movie, and happily it’s more than acceptable.

Girl on the Run fits the weird noir label perfectly. It’s more a Z-movie than a B-movie but it’s thoroughly enjoyable and if like me you love carny movies then you should have plenty of fun with this one. It might be technically a bad movie but it’s still highly recommended for its sheer effrontery, its considerable sleaze factor and its entertainment value.

Night Flight (1933)

Night Flight, a 1933 MGM production, is a story of aviation pioneers in South America. It was based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel of the same title.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was himself a pioneer aviator flying many of the early air mail routes from Europe to Africa and South America, experiences which provided the material for his books. He was killed fighting for the Free French when his Lockheed P-38 Lightning  crashed in 1944. The wreckage of his aircraft was discovered in 2003 although no explanation for the crash (which did not seem to be due to enemy action) has ever been found.

The movie was a tribute to the courage of the air mail pilots of the 1920s and 1930s who pioneered so many dangerous air routes. Saint-Exupéry, like the heroes of the movie, gave his life in the service of aviation.

The movie follows the experiences of pilots on the trans-Andean air mail route. The Trans-Andean Air Mail service is in fact the hero of the movie. Individual pilots might die but the service carried on, and those pilots who died willingly risked their lives in the service of the conquest of the air.



Riviere (John Barrymore) is the manager of the The Trans-Andean Air Mail service. He appears to be ruthless, cold and heartless but he isn’t really. He has a passionate love of aviation and he loves his pilots, but he can never let then know that. If he did he could not do his job. His pilots take great risks for him but their sacrifices would be futile if he ever allowed personal feelings to get in the way of running the service.

Lionel Barrymore is Inspector Robineayu, an official of the air service who has trouble separating his personal feelings from the performance of his job. Riviere is always trying to tell him that he must personal feelings to one side.



Auguste Pellerin (Robert Montgomery) and Jules Fabian (Clark Gable) are two of Riviere’s pilots. They face death every day, but they do so willingly. They love flying and if it costs them their lives, so be it. They could never imagine earning their living any other way.

There is no real linear narrative in this movie. The hero of the movie is the air service itself rather than any individual pilots. The air service is a living thing. Individual pilots might die, but the service will continue. The courage of the pilots ensures the service’s immortality.



The only way the air mail service can compete effectively with surface and sea mail is if the aircraft can fly in any weather and at night. As a result the service is introducing night flights. These are dangerous, but the risks are worth taking. The pilots love their jobs and they love flying and they are willing to face death in order to further the cause of aviation. If they are a few minutes late they get fined, but they accept this as well. They know that the air mail service cannot survive if schedules cannot be kept, so rather than resenting the fines they see them as a challenge.

This movie, directed by Clarence Brown, has an almost poetic feel to it. There is no attempt at characterisation, since individuals don’t matter. The individual pilots are more like religious heroes than conventional heroes. Aviation is their god and it is a god they serve willingly. It’s the sort of movie that could never be made today. Heroism and self-sacrifice are out of fashion.



The flying sequences are superb and they have a lyrical quality to them. The closest thing this movie has to a linear narrative is the story of an object rather than a person. The object is a parcel of serum which is  desperately needed by a hospital in Rio de Janeiro in order to save the life of a  small boy. The only supply on the continent is in Santiago in Chile, across the Andes. And the only way the serum can arrive in time is by air. None of the pilots who risk their lives to deliver the mail know that they are also carrying medical supplies that will save the life of a small boy. They believe that they are flying the air mail service just so that someone in Paris can receive a postcard on Tuesday rather than Thursday. But it would not make any difference to them if they did know. They have dedicated themselves to the cause of aviation, and that is enough for them.

John Barrymore is superb as Riviere. He is a man who seems to have repressed all his emotions but he is in fact a very emotional man. He goes through agonies every time he has to send a pilot on a dangerous flight but for the sake of the pilots he can never reveal his feelings. It would not be fair to them. Aviation is his whole life. He believes in it, passionately.



There is a fine supporting cast, with Clark Gable playing cool courage very effectively indeed. Helen Hayes provides the one false note, overplaying the role of Gable’s life. Robert Montgomery, an actor who can be very irritating, gives a fine and restrained performance. Lionel Barrymore overacts, but them he always did. Myrna Loy is good in a minor supporting role. With John Barrymore anchoring the film none of this matters. This is not a movie about individuals; it is a movie about men who devote themselves to a higher cause. This is a movie that reflects the confidence of an earlier era of western civilisation, an era in which heroism and self-sacrifice are taken for granted.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD presents this movie in an excellent transfer.

Night Flight is a movie that is dated in some ways, but only because it reflects the values of a better age. Highly recommended.

Stark Fear (1962)

Stark Fear is an odd little movie, but then I like odd little movies. Something Weird have released this one in a Weird Noir boxed set, and weird noir is probably a good description of it. Weird noir with a touch of rural horror and psychological horror.

This low-budget independent production was made in 1962, and it could also be described as sleaze noir.

Ellen Winslow (Beverly Garland) has just taken a job with successful businessman Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey). This sends her husband Gerry (Skip Homeier) into a rage. There are several reasons for this rage, as we will later discover. Gerry is a failure at business and Ellen has taken the job because it’s the only way to pay the bills. Gerry not only reacts with complete excessive and psychotic anger, he also demands a divorce.

Ellen ends up taking the job and it’s soon obvious that there is an attraction between her and Cliff. But Ellen can’t get over the dutiful wife thing ad when she finds out that Gerry has disappeared and is about to be fired she sets out to find him and save him. She makes several surprising discoveries. Gerry has some very disreputable friends she knew nothing about. And he didn’t come from Pennsylvania after all. He came from some two-horse town in the south somewhere.

Ellen’s visit to Gerry’s home town proves to be a big mistake (one of many big mistakes she will make in the course of this movie). She meets Gerry’s best friend, who promptly rapes her. Before doing this he tells her about Gerry’s Mom. Gerry clearly has very big Mom issues.

She does find Gerry, and he begins a campaign to wreck her life and to psychologically torture her. It turns out that there’s a long-standing enmity between Gerry and Cliff Kane, which is yet another factor driving Gerry’s hatred.

As if Ellen didn’t have enough problems, her best friend Ruth is a social worker. As you’d expect, Ruth’s advice is contradictory and confused. Ruth herself is bitter over an old love affair that didn’t work out.

Even though Cliff Kane is obviously a pretty nice guy and even though he obviously loves her, Ellen keeps pushing him away and keeps wanting to patch things up with Gerry. Ellen may be the dumbest noir protagonist ever. She just can’t see that Gerry is bad news. He’s not just an embittered loser - there is clearly some bad craziness going on in Gerry’s head. And Gerry’s hatred for women is so blindingly obvious that you can’t help wondering why Ellen can’t see it. Ellen just gets herself deeper and deeper into trouble.

Beverly Garland was a pretty successful actress in the 50s, in both movies and television, and although the role is a rather thankless one (Ellen being the perennial victim) her performance is very good and she manages to keep us interested in Ellen’s fate. Skip Homeier makes a very creepy psycho indeed.

There are some very effective scenes in the Juke Museum in Gerry’s home town, scenes that give the movie a decidedly weird and even surreal ambience. All of the scenes in Gerry’s home town are genuinely terrifying. It’s a nightmare experience to rival that of the hapless school teacher in the Australian classic Wake in Fright.

This movie is one of six in Something Weird’s weird noir DVD set. The transfer is not great, with a lot of print damage. Sound quality is generally atrocious with all kinds of extraneous noise, although the dialogue is still understandable.

Stark Fear is a combination of what might be called women’s noir but with hints of other genres including the psycho genre (it’s no coincidence that it came out two years after Hitchcock’s Psycho). It also belongs to the “when city folk find themselves in the sticks bad bad things happen to them” sub-genre. Despite its faults it’s undeniably fascinating and perversely entertaining. This one is worth a look.

I Married a Witch (1942)

In 17th century England a witch and her father, a notorious sorcerer, are burnt at the stake. The witch vows revenge on the family of the man whose evidence led to her condemnation. It sounds like the set-up for a classic horror movie, but in fact I Married a Witch is a light-hearted romantic comedy. And it’s a delight from start to finish.

The witch is named Jennifer and is played by Veronica Lake. Her curse is than the men of the Wooley family will never be happy in marriage. And so it proves through the ages. Meanwhile the witch and her father are imprisoned inside an oak tree that was planted on their grave for that purpose. Then in 1941 lightning hits the oak tree and they are released. They are disembodied spirits, taking the shape of puffs of smoke. The father (played with gusto by Cecil Kellaway) casts a spell to allow her to take human form again, so she can wreak her vengeance on the latest descendant of the Wooley family, aspiring politician Wallace Wooley (Fredric March).

Wallace Wooley is running for governor. He is about to be married to Estelle Masterson (Susan Hayward). Jennifer is delighted to hear this since Estelle seems like the sort of woman who would make any man’s life a nightmare. But Jennifer wants to make sure of torturing Wallace Wooley, so she gets her father to whip up a love potion so he’ll fall in love with her. Unfortunately in all the excitement of escaping from the burning building (fire being necessary to allow her to take human shape) she drinks the love potion by mistake.



So now Jennifer is madly in love with Wallace Wooley. Only she doesn’t want to make his life a misery; she wants to be a good wife and to make him happy. Her father is disgusted by this and plans to throw a spanner in the works, if only he can stay sober long enough to remember the words of the spells he needs to effect his purpose. But he can’t stay sober long enough to do anything.

Wallace gets lots of good publicity from apparently rescuing Jennifer from the burning hotel, but Estelle is not very pleased about the sudden appearance of this blonde bombshell. Even before the wedding she’s starting to make Wallace miserable. The wedding was mostly a pre-election publicity stunt and Wallace doesn’t seem all that much in love with her. Making Wallace love her shouldn’t be difficult for Jennifer but she doesn’t have much time, the wedding being scheduled for the next day.



There are various complications along the way but it’s obvious that Wallace is starting to fall for Jennifer. The resulting scandal will doom his election hopes, but Jennifer assures him that she can use witchcraft to make him win the election. She’s told him that she’s a witch, but of course he doesn’t believe it. Not yet. He will soon however have ample proof.

This is essentially screwball comedy with a supernatural flavour and the combination works perfectly. I’ve never been a fan of Fredric March in comic roles (or in any roles for that matter) but I have to admit he’s not bad in this movie. Veronica Lake shows a natural flair for comedy and has plenty of fun as the lovestruck witch. March and Lake develop a pretty good romantic chemistry.



Cecil Kellaway hams it up as her father. Susan Hayward has a thankless role with which she can do little.

In the director’s chair is René Clair and he handles proceedings with skill. The movie powers through its short 77-minute running at a frantic pace and there’s never time to be bored. He has a light touch and makes the most of an amusing screenplay by Robert Pirosh and Marc Connelly.



Blackhorse Entertainment’s Region 2 lacks extras but it looks reasonably good if not spectacular.

I Married a Witch is delightful lightweight entertainment and can be highly recommended. It’s a particular treat for fans of Veronica Lake, offering her one of her best comedic roles.

season's greetings

Clara Bow looks like she has lots of Christmas presents, and I hope all my regular readers have just as many. Season’s greetings!

Heat Wave (1954)

Heat Wave (the original British title was The House Across the Lake), released in 1954, was another of the early 1950s co-productions between Hammer Films and Lippert Films. All were low-budget crime movies with a hint of film noir.

Of all Hammer’s film noir output Heat Wave has perhaps the strongest claim to being pure film noir rather than a noirish crime thriller. It has flashbacks and voiceover narration, it has light filtered through venetian blinds, it has hardboiled dialogue (the hero wants to escape from “fast women and slow gin”), it has a femme fatale, it has an air of sleaze and desperation.

Mark Kendrick (Alex Nicol) is an American novelist living in England. He’s not a hugely successful writer but he makes a decent enough living. He’s writing his latest novel in a house by a lake. It’s not a fabulous life but it’s all he has ever known and he’s used to it. Until he meets Carol.

Carol Forrest (Hillary Brooke) rings him one night. She needs somebody with a boat to bring some guests to a party. And that’s how he first comes to High Wray. High Wray is owned by Carol’s husband, Beverly (Sid James). Mark doesn’t take long to figure out how it is at High Wray. Carol is the trophy wife of a rich man and she’s easily bored. When she gets bored she needs amusement. Her favoured form of amusement is men.

Beverly knows all about it. He’s not happy about it, but he doesn’t see that there’s very much he can do about it. His daughter Andrea (Susan Stephen), Carol’s step-daughter, is even less happy about the situation, but there’s not much she can do about it either.

Carol’s latest amusement is pianist Vince. Their affair is very open, much to Mark’s disgust. Adding to his disgust is that he can’t help admitting to himself that he’s attracted to Carol. Women are his weakness. Especially blondes like Carol.

Beverly and Mark get along very well. Mark can sense Beverly’s loneliness and he likes him. He has no desire to betray his new friend, but he knows in his own mind that he will anyway. Mark has a high tolerance for self-disgust and he is helpless when faced by women like Carol.

While Beverly is prepared to overlook Carol’s affairs and to finance her extravagant tastes while he is alive, he’s not prepared to do so after he’s dead. He intends to cut Carol out of his will almost entirely. His thoughts have turned to such matters because he knows he doesn’t have much time left. He has a heart condition and the doctors have given him a year to live if he keeps away from the booze and the cigarettes which of course he has no intention of doing.

You can see where this is leading and the plot is not exactly an original one. But film noir doesn’t requite originality; what it requires is atmosphere, and style. And this movie has enough atmosphere and enough style to get by.

Alex Nicol does the noir hero thing quite well. Like any good noir hero he is tempted by the femme fatale and he succumbs to the temptation, and like any good noir hero his personality is a mixture of weakness, self-pity and self-loathing. Hillary Brooke plays the femme fatale role like a pro. Both Nicol and Brooke were American, giving this movie even more of a transatlantic flavour than most Hammer noirs.

Sid James, as so often in his early movies, plays the supporting role and steals the picture. This is a good meaty role for him and he relishes it, demonstrating that his talents extended well beyond comedy. He makes it impossible not to like Beverly and he carefully avoids self-pity. Despite the betrayals of his wife and his friend we can’t being ourselves to despise Beverly. He’s a decent man and he faces life’s sick little jokes with stoicism. And with whisky.

Ken Hughes wrote the screenplay based on his own novel and also directed. Walter J. Harvey was responsible for the cinematography and both he and Hughes were clearly influenced by the style of American crime movie that we now refer to as film noir. The movie has the accepted noir look and the accepted noir feel. The whole thing has a very American feel to it.

VCI’s DVD is typical of all their Hammer Film Noir releases - not much in the way of extras but you get two films both presented in fairly good transfers. VCI certainly deliver value for money with this series. They’re absurdly cheap and they offer the opportunity of a quick introduction to the very interesting world of British 1950s crime B-movies.

If you’re prepared to accept Heat Wave as an unpretentious B-movie that isn’t trying to be anything else then there’s plenty to enjoy here. Recommended.