Although I found it to be a flawed film, The Third Man left me wanting more. More film noir, more Orson Welles. Hence, I decided to watch The Lady from Shanghai, as it's considered by many Welles's best film noir.
The film follows Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles), a young Irish sailor who, after a fateful encounter with a seductive woman, Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), agrees to work on the yacht of her husband, criminal lawyer Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). Things get a sinister turn when Bannister's law firm partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anders), comes aboard and makes Michael an offer he can't refuse: $5,000 to help him fake his death.
Plot-wise, The Lady from Shanghai is a mess. The film feels off right from the start as it is highly improbable that Michael and Elsa would meet the way they do and that he would end up working for her. What follows is a plot so complex that it's hard to follow, that's filled with holes --the studios should be blamed for this as a huge part of the film was left in the cutting room-- and has some pretty ridiculous twists. It's not compelling and completely fails to engage.
The characters are a little more interesting, mainly because of who is playing who. Orson Welles usually plays intelligent and charismatic men that also happen to be the bad guys, but not this time. In The Lady from Shanghai, he is the victim. His character is a dim-witted, naïve man who, as Welles voiceover says, doesn't use his brain very much except to think of Elsa. It's an unusual role and therefore it was interesting seeing him. Also, him portraying O'Hara is very believable. His Irish accent though, not only it's terrible but it's also distracting and at times it makes it hard to understand him.
Rita Hayworth gives an excellent performance as Elsa, the film's femme fatale. The character seems to be genuinely vulnerable and childish at times; at others, she is cynical, the queen of manipulation. Her chemistry with Welles though is horrific, which is not a surprise considering they divorced shortly after the film was released.
Columbia Pictures
Everett Sloane gives a good performance as the husband, but Gleen Anders absolutely steals the show as George Grisby. He is such a bizarre, weird figure and his performance is very entertaining.
The Lady from Shanghai is beautifully filmed too. The black and white cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr. is atmospheric and evocative; lights and shadows are always on point; Hayworth's sex appeal is delivered every time she is on screen. Also, the musical score is good and the film has some memorable scenes --like the unrealistic and kind of humorous courtroom scene toward the end.
I was talking with Alex from Alex Raphael months ago (it was December 2017, it still qualifies as months ago, right?), and I learnt that The Third Man is his favourite movie. I hadn't heard of it before which didn't surprise me as my knowledge of film noirs is very limited, but after reading a great quote from the film that Alex had shared on his blog, I added it on my watchlist.
Set in the post-WWII, the film follows American pulp writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) as he arrives in Vienna to meet with an old friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who has offered him a job. However, he is soon told that Lime has just died in an accident, hit by a truck in front of his building. As Martins starts searching for details, he finds the circumstances very strange and begins his investigation to discover the truth.
The plot is rather simple and yet it manages to be complex and quite intricate and, more or less, it has your attention from start to finish. And it has a pretty good twist too. It does, however, have some flaws. First, it's a rather short story stretched to fit 1 hour 45 minute film; second, it has several plot holes and loose ends; third, it focuses too much on the girl; and fourth, the plot twist is revealed too soon, halfway through the movie, and it kind of gets boring to watch Martins search for the responsible.
I wasn't completely happy with the characters either. Holly Martins isn't particularly interesting nor mysterious as he is just an American writer of cheap books who is determined to find the truth about his friend's death. Anna Schmidt, Harry Lime's attractive girlfriend, is interesting at first, but eventually, I got tired of her as she has too much screen time and not much to do. And Harry Lime should have been more menacing. Also, none of the characters has clear motivations.
British Lion Film Corporation, Selznick Releasing Organization
Despite that, these characters still are pretty memorable and the credits entirely go to the cast. Joseph Cotten perfectly portrays the American novelist and has a terrific screen presence; Alida Valli gives a compelling and melancholic performance as Anna Schmidt; at last, Orson Welles makes a terrific bad guy, and delivers one of the best quotes ever written.
Thankfully, great acting isn't the only positive aspect of The Third Man. There are tension and suspense, especially in the Ferris Wheel scene, and the cinematography is nothing short of extraordinary with its odd angles, lighting and shadows. The musical score, however, doesn't fill very appropriate for a thriller. In fact, it often feels out of place.
I don't know exactly how Woman on the Run ended up on my watchlist, especially considering I've never heard of this film before (it is possible though that someone picked it on Thursday Movie Picks, I found it interesting and added on the list). Anyway, if it's there, there must be a reason, I told myself, so I watched it.
In San Francisco, Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott) witnesses a murder while walking his dog at night. When the police get there, he learns that the victim was about to testify in a court case against a gangster so Mr. Johnson feels from the police. The inspector (Robert Keith) in charge of the investigation asks Johnson's wife, Eleanor (Ann Sheridan), for help to find the husband and convince him to testify in court. She is convinced that Frank is only running away from their unsuccessful marriage, and, with the help of a reporter, Danny Leggett (Dennis O'Keefe), she sets out to find her husband. But the killer is also looking for him.
Though it does have a good twist, the plot is quite predictable and gives away the identity of the murderer way too soon which basically kills all the mystery. Also, I found some parts to be too slow paced which took away some of the tension.
That being said, the misleading Woman on the Run --it should have been Man on the Run, like the 1948 short play this film is based on-- still manages to be a captivating film and that's because of the main focus of the film. Manhunt films usually are either shown from the perspective of the police or from the perspective of the wanted man. Not this time. We see the whole story from the wife's point of view and that's the film's greatest strength (the title still doesn't make sense to me).
Universal Pictures
The unusual point of view is effective because the filmmakers put quite some effort in developing the main character. As the plot moves forward, we learn about her and about the relationship with her husband. She is bitter and cynical but she is not an evil woman and definitely not a femme fatale. Ann Sheridan gives a good performance and carries the film effortlessly.
Though the main focus is Mrs. Johnson, we also learn a lot about Mr. Johnson --thank you, Mrs. Johnson/Ann Sheridan, for that. The standout among the supporting characters though is the reporter, Danny Leggett. As he says, he is a little obnoxious but pleasant, and Dennis O'Keefe's performance is terrific.
Ultimately, Woman on the Run isn't the best noir film out there, but it's different, quite suspenseful and has a fitting sinister cinematography.
"Criminal pathologists try to crack a case with nothing but the victim's bones to go on."
This was the brief synopsis on TCM for the 1950 film Mystery Street. It sounded interesting so I added it to my list. I was also intrigued because the lead was played by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban, who I've watched recently in a couple Esther Williams films as well as the WWII film Battleground (1949) - in which he gave a wonderful performance.
As soon as I watched it, I knew I had to write about it. Showing the procedural side of police work, the film was groundbreaking in showing how policemen use the science of forensics to solve crimes, in this case a murder in which all that is left to go on is some bones buried in the sand on the beach.
The audience already know who the bones belong to and who committed the crime, so there is no mystery involved. The excitement comes from seeing the way in which the clues are gathered and how the murderer and his victim are identified by the police. There is of course some suspense/action near the end with the death of the victims' landlady who tried to use her knowledge for monetary gain.
Trailer
The film opens with the victim, Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling) making a phone call to the married man she is having an affair with. She demands he meet her at the Grass Skirt cafe, her place of employment in Boston. While there she meets a young man, Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson), who's wife has just lost their baby in childbirth. Vivian offers to take the inebriated Shanway home but instead takes over his car to meet her lover Hartley on Cape Cod. When he protested to ditches him on the side of the road a few miles from a diner. At the beach, Vivian demands Hartley give her money. Instead, he shoots her while she's still on the car, then buries her body among the sand dunes.
Three months later, her bones are discovered. They are all that remain of Vivian. The car belonging to Shanway, which was sunk by Hartley in a nearby pond, is also found. Police Lieutenant Peter Moralas (Montalban) is put on the case. They take the bones to Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett), the forensics expert at the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. McAdoo explains the process of gaining clues from bones. Once the skeleton is assembled, he is able to tell the sex, age, height, and build of the victim and when she died. The bones also reveal that she was pregnant. With that information, the police are then able to look through their missing persons file and narrow down the results. The most fascinating part (which you can watch here) is when they take photos of the possible candidates and match them with the skull (these scenes reminded me of the popular show Bones, which ended it's 12 season run last year).
Once they've ided the victim, Moralas sets out to figure out who murdered her. He visits her boarding house, run by Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester) and is shown the victims belongings that were left behind and packed away by Mrs. Smerrling. When questioned by Moralas, she does not reveal all she knows. Calling a number that Vivian had scrawled on the wall next to the telephone, she tracks down the killer and pays him a visit in order to blackmail him. While he doesn't give her any money, she steals his gun - the murder weapon - from his desk and slips it in her purse.
Moralas meanwhile, also visits the Grass Skirt and learns that Vivien left with a young man. They track him down and are able to confirm that the car they found in the pond was his, which he had reported was stolen from in front of the hospital. Caught in his lie, he becomes their prime suspect and is arrested. However, the discovery of the bullet that killed Vivian lodged under the car raises doubts in Moralas' mind. He continues searching and is lead to Hartley by checking Vivien's phone bill. Hartley denies knowing Vivien and watches nervously as Moralas searches his office. When the gun is not discovered, Hartley pays a visit to Mrs. Smerrling, who again tries to blackmail him. She has hidden the gun at the baggage claim at the train station and put the claim ticked in a bird cage. Hartley, getting desperate, forces her to reveal the hiding place then, when there's a knock on the door, hits her on the head with a candlestick, killing her.
The visitor is Shanway's wife, trying to prove her husband's innocence. Moralas shows up a few minutes later - he was going to question Mrs. Smerring again - discovers the baggage claim ticket, and hurries to the train station. He arrives just moments after Hartley convinced the baggage claim attendant to give him the bag containing the gun despite not having a ticket. He and his partner chase Hartley down and arrest him for the murder of Vivian Heldon, clearing Shanway in the process.
The film, directed by John Sturges, was filmed in Boston and had a special thanks to Harvard in the credits. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. Mystery Street is the Noir Alley pick for April 14/15 on TCM. Don't miss it!
When the name Robert Ryan is mentioned, the first image that comes to mind is a man with a hard glint in his eye and a menacing tone in his voice. But the man behind the oftentimes villainous character was a kind and quiet man at heart, content spending time with his wife and children and avoiding the Hollywood party scene.
My re-introduction to Robert Ryan was as a teacher at an all boys school in Her Twelve Men (the first film I saw with him in it was Flying Leathernecks but all I remembered about that movie is that his character and John Wayne's character did not get along. My second was Men in War which I watched for Aldo Ray...). I thought to myself, "Oh look, he plays a good guy in this movie." Even though I had hardly seen any of his films, I knew he was usually a bad guy.
I followed this film some months later with Tender Comrade (1943) in which he is the romantic lead in Ginger Roger's flashbacks. I fell in love with his character. And then Ryan. And then I started watching any film of his that showed up on TCM. And then I had to read his biography.
I was happy to learn that Ryan's personal life was quiet and scandal-free. Born Robert Bushnell Ryan on Nov. 11, 1909, Bob lived a happy childhood in Uptown, Illinois until the death of his younger brother at the age of six of lobar pneumonia. His life was lonely after that and he spent much of his time reading. His father signed him up for boxing lessons to help draw him out, which Bob loved. "Athletic prowess did a lot for my ego and my acceptance in school. The ability to defend yourself lessens the chance you'll ever have to use it."
Bob Ryan as a child
Bob also spent a lot of time at the movies - he never missed a Douglas Fairbanks picture. Aside from his fascination with how movies were made, it was also a way to get away from the smothering affections of his parents. "You cannot know the difficulties that attend an only child. Two big grown-ups are beaming in on him all the time - even when he isn't there. It is a feeling of being watched that lingers throughout life."
Bob as a football player for Loyola Academy
An Irish-Catholic, Bob attended Loyola Academy, during which time played football, becoming an All-City tackle his senior year. He also joined the literary society and wrote for the school's magazine The Prep.
Truly, I may say that a man's best friends are his books. Your companions may desert you, but your books will remain with you always and will never cease to be that source of enjoyment that they were when you first received them.
Bob's favorite book was Hamlet, which he memorized and which made him consider becoming a playwright instead of joining the family construction business.
After graduation, Bob spent the summer working on a dude ranch in Montana before heading to New Hampshire for his first year at Dartmouth. While there he won the school their first heavyweight title in boxing. During the first semester of his second year he suffered a football injury which caused his already average grades to drop. He left at the end of the semester and headed back home where he held odd jobs before returning to Dartmouth the following autumn. He defended the heavyweight title for two years, retiring from boxing in his senior year to focus more on literature
"Rum, Rebellion, and Ryan."
That was Bob's slogan when he ran for class marshal during Prohibition.
The stock market crash and some scandals with his families business made Bob even more determined not to join after graduation. He lived with a friend and tried out playwriting, did a little modeling to make extra cash, and worked a s a sandhog on the Hudson River. He even went in with friends on a gold mine, but pulled out when he realized it wasn't going anywhere.
In 1936 his father died and Bob returned home to take care of his mother. He tried to work at the family business but became frustrated with the way his life was going. It wasn't until a friend persuaded him to try acting that his life would change.
I never even thought of acting until I was twenty-eight. The first minute I got on the stage, I thought, 'Bing! This is it!'
Bob immediately signed up for acting classes and set his sights on Hollywood. He made the move to Los Angeles in 1938 and joined the Reinhardt School where he met his future wife, Jessica Cadwalader, a Quaker. The head of the school, Max Reinhardt, saw something in Bob and became his personal teacher as well as an important figure in his life, teaching him many things that he would carry with him for the rest of his career.
In 1939, Bob and Jessica wed. At the beginning things were rough, but after being noticed in the play Too Many Husbands, Bob secured a contract with Paramount where he was given several small parts. He was let go after six months, after which the Ryan's packed up and went to New York. The couple played in several theaters before Tallulah Bankhead saw him perform and picked him out to play a small role in Clash By Night with her (he would later play a bigger role in the 1952 film version with Barbara Stanwyck).
At the Robin Hood Theatre in Delaware, 1941.
The play made it's Broadway debut shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, causing the paly to close after forty-nine performances. Bob got good reviews from the critics and soon had a contract with RKO, where he held small roles in Patriotic pictures, most notably as a boxer in Behind the Rising Sun (1943). His break came when he was given a role in Tender Comrade (1943) as Ginger Rogers husband (see the opening scene in the video at the top of this post).
Bob's performance garnered him a spread in the April 1944 Photoplay.
I've never felt so at-home in a role in my life. Y'know, a lot of those scenes are retakes of things that have happened between Jessica and myself.
Ginger Rogers was skeptical when Bob was first suggested for the role, thinking his deeply lined face "too mean looking" as well as the major height difference - he was 6'4" to her 5'4". But after doing some scenes together she slipped a note to producer David Hempstead "I think this is the guy." Bob kept that note the rest of his life.
After completing one more picture, Marine Raiders (1943), Bob himself was finally called into service, with a promise that he would still have a job at RKO after the war. He joined the Marines and escaped the ragging that was typical of movie stars in the armed forces because, as a bunkmate said, "Most of these guys saw you beat that Jap in Behind the Rising Sun."
After completing basic training, Bob was frustrated to learn he would be recreation assistant and later a combat conditioner, teaching boxing, judo, and swimming. Jessica, who had quit acting and was writing for magazines at the time, was relieved. She moved near the San Diego base where Bob was stationed and started work on her first mystery, The Man Who Asked Why. In 1945, shortly before the end of the war, she found out she was pregnant.
Bob was honorably discharged on October 30, 1945 and was immediately put into his next picture, The Woman on the Beach (1947), directed by Jean Renoir. Bob played Scott, a Coast Guard suffering from shell-shock whose job is to patrol the foggy Pacific coast. He meets a woman (Joan Bennett) who is married to a blind artist (Charles Bickford) and they start an affair. Scott becomes convinced that Bickford is just pretending to be blind and takes him for a walk near the cliffs. Bickford falls off the cliff but escapes with only minor injuries. Scott then realizes what he's doing is wrong and breaks things off. In the end, Bennett goes back to her husband. Unfortunately the picture was cut and re-edited and so the final product did not do well at the box-office and it is evident that, while the film starts off strongly, it could have been a masterpiece.
Working with him [Renoir] opened my eyes to aspects of character that were subtler than those I was accustomed to.
On April 13, 1946, Jessica gave birth to Timothy. Bob was in between pictures and spent many happy days with his little son and wife. The couple preferred to stay away from the Hollywood scene and when they did entertain it was family and close friends only.
Bob with his son Timothy.
While in the Marines, Bob had read a book titled The Brick Foxhole that featured a racist, homophobic character who, as a cop, enjoyed beating up and killing blacks and Jews. As a man who would later fight for equal rights and the end of prejudice, he was interested in the book as a film and met with the author, Richard Brooks, to tell him that if it was ever made into a movie, he wanted to play that character. In 1946, RKO purchased the rights and Bob begged for the part. The film, Crossfire, would also star Robert Young as the policeman investigating the murder of a Jewish man and Robert Mitchum as a fellow soldier who is brought in by the police to help find the murderer.
Mr. Dmytryk has handled most excellently a superlative cast which plays the drama. Robert Ryan is frighteningly real as the hard, sinewy, loud-mouthed, intolerant and vicious murderer (NY Times).
I like how Ryan plays the bad guy yet he's the only one smiling in this cast picture.
Crossfire is a frank spotlight on anti-Semitism. Producer Dore Schary, in association with Adrian Scott, has pulled no punches. There is no skirting such relative fol-de-rol as intermarriage or clubs that exclude Jews. Here is a hard-hitting film whose whodunit aspects are fundamentally incidental to the overall thesis of bigotry and race prejudice (Variety).
The role could have meant the end of Bob's career, yet while he was in Berlin shooting his next picture, Berlin Express (1948) with Merle Oberon, the film had broken box-office records (it beat Gentleman's Agreement, another film that addressed anti-Semitism, to release by a few months). Bob was nominated for an Best Supporting Actor Oscar but lost to Edmund Gwenn for his role as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Despite not winning, the role was just what his career needed.
Bob's next big role, and maybe my favorite film of his, was as an embittered ex-soldier in Act of Violence (1948) co-starring Van Heflin, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, and Phyllis Thaxter. I watched it twice in the span of a couple of months and it was just as captivating the second time as it was the first. Frank Enley (Heflin) is known as a war hero in his town and to his wife, Edith (Leigh). But he's hiding a dark secret that only Joe Parkson (Ryan) knows: he ratted out his friends while being held prisoners in a Nazi POW camp in exchange for food, leading to the death of all but Joe. Now Joe is out for revenge, following Frank across the country with the plan to kill him. You can read about the making of the film here.
TCM Tribute to Robert Ryan
Well, this post is turning out a lot longer than I anticipated so I am going to divide it into two parts. Look out for the next part in two weeks on the 17th!
Also to look forward to: keep an eye out for my post on On Dangerous Ground for The Good Cop, Bad Cop Blogathon at the end of the month and "The Westerns of Robert Ryan" on April 14 for The Great Western Blogathon (I'm pretty much using any excuse I can to write about Ryan). You can also read my post on Her Twelve Men (1954).
Robert Ryan movies airing on TCM:
March 7 - Return of the Bad Men (1948) & Trail Street (1947) March 9 - The Dirty Dozen (1967 March 17 - Crossfire (1947)
There are also a handful of his films on YouTube that can be found by searching "Robert Ryan Full Movies."
Source:
The Lives of Robert Ryan. Jones, J.R. Wesleyan University Press, Middleton, CT. 2015.
Nobody Lives Forever (1946) is one of my favorite Noir Films. It stars one of my favorite actors, the ever-troubled John Garfield. It is also unusual in that much of the film takes place in the sunlight instead of the typical Noir darkness and on the beach instead of the city streets. Even then, the dark scenes are shrouded in mist instead of bathed in garish neon lights.
The story begins with Nick Blake (Garfield) getting out of a military hospital. A former con artist, his stint in the army and his injuries have changed his views on life and he is ready for a fresh start. His best pal, Al (George Tobias), is going to make the change with him.
The first person a guy usually wants to see when he gets out of the army is his girl. Before he left, Blake left his money for safekeeping with his girlfriend Toni (Faye Emerson). He heads to the nightclub in New York City where she works. Upon arriving he sees that business is thriving and presumes that she started it with his dough and made a good profit off of it. But like most women of Film Noir, Toni sold the struggling nightclub to her new boyfriend, Chet King. She tells Blake that his money is gone but he won't stand for that. He roughs up King, gets his dough, and then leaves New York behind for the sunny beaches of California.
In California, Blake rents a bright and spacious beach house. He also meets up with another old friend and fellow conman, Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan). His vacation doesn't last long, however, as he is approached/blackmailed by his old enemy Doc Ganson (George Coulouris) to do one more job. In return, they will leave him alone.
Before he went straight, Blake would con unsuspecting rich widows into sinking their money into phony companies by romancing them. His "assignment" this time is the young and beautiful Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald), worth two million. She is traveling with her business manager (Richard Gaines) and isn't having a very good time. He gets her interested in his "company," invites her over to his beach house, and takes her out dinner, dancing, and the theater.
Gladys quickly falls for him and surprises him with a date of her own. She takes him to the old Mission San Juan Capistrano, founded in 1776 by Father Junipero Serra. Its a lovely and poignant scene.
It is there that Blake realizes he is in love with Gladys. He tells Ganson he's not going through with the con and will pay the gang their original cut of the money, $30,000, out of his own funds. He then makes plans with Gladys to leave. Gladys is radiantly happy, and doesn't believe her business manager when he tells her his suspicions of Blake's shady past.
Everything looks like its going to work out for the happy couple when Toni enters back into the picture. She learns of Gladys and convinces the gang that Blake has simply cut them out so he can marry Gladys and get all of her money for himself. Before Blake has a chance to come clean with Gladys, she is kidnapped and taken to an abandoned shack on the dock.
Blake and Pop go after her and the film ends with a climatic noir gunfight. I won't tell you how it ends. You'll have to watch it to find out!
Before I wrap up this post, I want to share a few more screen shots with you. First, this awesome hat:
