Noirvember 2023 - Rate the last noir you watched

White Heat (1949)
Raoul Walsh

I can't believe this has a 8.1 IMDB rating. Other than a few cool ideas which apparently were all James Cagney's ideas, White Heat is a snoozer.

Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of Cagney. In fact Cagney is the main reason to watch this two hour noir. Nothing wrong with a two hour noir if it has material enough to fill those minutes and this doesn't. I found the script to be uninspired despite having some really neat ideas as a framework: like Cagney is a psychotic who's devoted to his mother who happens to be part of his gang. Cagney suffers from blinding headaches and one of his gang (Steve Cochran) wants to bump him off and take his wife (Virginia Mayo). To that mix add Cagney's ma is out to kill Cochran's character to protect her son. That sounds like a dynamic, double crossing, twisty, dark noir...only the film doesn't rise above average, though Cagney himself does.

Pickup (1951)
Hugo Haas

Before last night I had no idea who Hugo Hass was. But as I watched the credits for Pickup, I noticed that he had wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film...that caught my attention! After the film was over I went to IMDB & Wiki and read about Hass and learned that he had lead a very interesting life. He'd been a major film star & director in his native Czechoslovakia but was forced to flee after the Nazis invaded his country. Like so many other European directors he made his way to the U.S. and started over in the film industry, by starting at the bottom. Apparently he was as frugal as his character in the movie as he saved enough money to eventually produce his own movies, which allowed him full artistic control.

Pickup (1951), The first couple minutes I was like OMG the acting is bad and this seems like a student film...but with the start of the next scene at the carnival this film hooked me and hooked me hard. I've never seen a noir that felt like this. For all of it's seriousness, it had this lighter touch that one sees in an early Czech films. Hugo Hass as an actor was good, very good. I liked the setting in a remote railroad station it worked well for the movie's storyline. Hass is the station manager living all alone in a little house.


Beverly Michaels is the blonde femme fatale who learns that the railroad station manager is lonely and has a lot of money in the bank. I loved her mouthy attitude and the blunt one-liners she threw out. I thought she was pretty a good actress. This is the first time I've seen her and I plan on seeing more of her work. The noir story was original and nothing like I'd seen before. I liked Pickup so much that I have a bunch of other Hugo Hass noirs to watch.

The Big Knife (1955)
Robert Aldrich

The Man I Love (1947)
Raoul Walsh

I thought this was pretty good and different for 1947. It's tagged noir but it's more drama with interconnecting stories. Ida Lupino is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. She often played jaded or sarcastic characters and in that way she reminds me of a female version of Bogart. Here she's a no nonsense, lounge singer who quits her job in New York and goes to the west coast to visit her two sisters and a brother who all live together. In a way this reminded of a 1940s version of Hannah and Her Sisters. Solid cast with the sisters being played by Andre King and Martha Vickers (The Big Sleep). Robert Alda is a shady nightclub owner and some unexpected side characters makes this a rich tapestry as opposed to the usual fare.
+

The Hard Way (1943)
Vincent Sherman

"Embittered, ambitious Helen Chernen sees an opportunity to escape her drab small-town life by becoming a 'stage mother' to her musically-talented younger sister."

Reportedly based on Ginger Rogers and her pushy stage mother. Here Ida Lupino is a schemer who will stop at nothing to get her and her younger sister (Joan Leslie) out of a dirty mining town and into the glamours spotlight of the theater. Ida plies a leading lady in a stage pay with booze (Gladys George) while filling her head with ideas that the part is too small. Once she torpedoes the actress she maneuvers her talented sister into the role. It's interesting watching Ida at work as she manipulates everyone around her including poor Jack Carson who along with Dennis Morgan have a vaudeville show. Not really noir though once again it's tagged as such. I liked it fine.

The Bigamist (1953)

Ida Lupino directs a very special film and alot of that uniqueness is due to Lupino's smooth direction with an eye for realistic character and narrative development. The Bigamist is about a traveling salesman (Edmond O'Brien) who's happily married to Eve (Joan Fontaine). The couple is childless and seek to adopt. The adoption agency has one careful man (Edmund Gwenn) who says he once made a mistake when adopting out a child. We don't know what that mistake is but that one line gives weight to his character's diligence in carefully researching the backgrounds of the would be recipients. That's when the story flashes back to how this nice family man ended up married to a second woman (Ida Lupino) who had his child.

The Bigamist could not be made today, not in the form that Lupino directed. I surprised it was made back in the 1950s. What's refreshing is the usual & tired Hollywood notion that a film must have a bad person to make the good person look saintly...isn't utilized. Instead we have a very balanced film were the first wife is not some nagging diva driving her husband to cheat. Nor is the cheating man shown to be a cad. What is shown is all human nature and for that I give the film and Ida Lupino as director credit.