Showing posts with label newspaper movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspaper movies. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

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.

Monday, April 29, 2024

The Famous Ferguson Case (1932)

The Famous Ferguson Case is a pre-code movie from First National Pictures that is both a murder mystery and a newspaper story.

It begins in the sleepy American town of Cornwall. Marcia Ferguson (Vivienne Osborne) is perhaps getting a bit too friendly with bank cashier Judd Brooks. They’re both married, but not to each other. Marcia Ferguson’s husband arrives back in town unexpectedly. 

That night Mr Ferguson is murdered. Mrs Ferguson is found bound and gagged. She tells the sheriff that two men broke in and killed her husband. The sheriff has a few doubts about her story but there is absolutely no solid evidence against either Mrs Ferguson or Judd Brooks.

Bruce Foster (Tom Brown) is a wet behind the ears cub reporter on the town’s newspaper, The Cornwall Courier. He does know enough to know this is a big story and he sends it off to a major New York paper. By the next day Cornwall is overrun with New York reporters.

They’re not a very inspiring lot. They’re out for a sensational story and being reporters they don’t care if the story has any truth to it as long as it will sell newspapers. If they don’t look like getting a sufficiently sensational story they’ll manufacture one. They decide that the story they want is that Mrs Ferguson and Judd Brook were the murderers. It’s a sensational story, combining sensationalism and salaciousness. They manipulate the county attorney into charging Mrs Ferguson with murder. They don’t care if she’s innocent or guilty as long as they get the story.

There’s certainly a murder mystery plot here but the main focus is on the appalling behaviour of the press. These reporters give the word cynicism a whole new meaning.

There are romantic dramas being played out as well. The most unscrupulous and unethical of the reporters is sleazy alcoholic Bob Parks (Kenneth Thomson). He’s set his sights on young Bruce’s girlfriend Toni (Adrienne Dore) who is also a reporter on The Cornwall Courier. Bob Parks already has a girlfriend, fellow reporter Maizie Dickson (Joan Blondell). That doesn’t stop him from chasing anything in a skirt. Maizie is getting fed up not just with Bob but with herself and the newspaper game. She’s jealous, but mostly she’s disgusted - especially given the fact that Toni is so naïve and is inevitably going to get hurt the way Maizie herself has been hurt.

The gentlemen of the press continue their campaign to railroad Mrs Ferguson straight to Death Row.

Joan Blondell gets top billing and she is of course very good but her character is not really the main focus of the movie. Kenneth Thomson makes a great drunken sleazebag gutter journalist. Leslie Fenton is excellent as Jim Perrin, a reporter who is even sleazier more loathsome than Bob Parks. The other cast members are all very good.

Lloyd Bacon was a more than competent director who doesn’t receive much attention from critics but he was reliable and really keeps things moving in this picture.

There’s not a huge amount of pre-code content but the story has a nicely sordid sleazy cynical edge to it. It’s also quite open about the ways in which public officials allow themselves to become the willing tools of dishonest journalists. The criminal justice system doesn’t come off too well.

Unfortunately there’s some speechifying, mostly intended to try to convince us that most reporters are ethical.

The resolution of the murder mystery is a bit too obvious but then the murder mystery is not what this movie is primarily about.

The ending is a bit of a letdown - the movie pulls its punches a bit here.

On the whole a pretty decent examination of the awfulness and cynicism of the press. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD provides a very pleasing transfer.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Smart Blonde (1937)

Smart Blonde, which came out in 1937, was the first of nine Warner Brothers B-movies featuring the Morning Herald’s ace girl reporter Torchy Blane. Glenda Farrell played the title rôle in all but two of these films. And in all but two films Barton MacLane played her partner in crime-solving, Lieutenant Steve McBride.

Fitz Mularkey (Addison Richards) is a sports promoter who also owns a night club. Surprisingly he has a reputation for honesty. Now he’s decided to sell all these enterprises to his old friend Tiny Torgenson (Joseph Crehan), who is also regarded as an honest man. Obviously there’s not much of a story here for an ace girl reporter to get her teeth into. That all changes when Tiny Torgenson gets gunned down in broad daylight. Now it looks like there could be a swell story in this after all.

Torchy’s pal (well actually her boyfriend) Homicide Lieutenant Steve McBride (Barton MacLane) is the investigating officer but Torchy intends to be in on the case as well. McBride doesn’t really mind and he doesn’t have a choice anyway. He’s smart enough to know that there’s no stopping Torchy when she smells a big story.

The obvious suspect is Fitz’s right-hand man Chuck Cannon (Max Wagner). Chuck packs a rod and he’s hot-headed and he’s made it clear that he doesn’t want Fitz to sell out. But it soon appears that Fitz might be a suspect as well. Or there’s torch singer Dolly Ireland (Winifred Shaw), who’s in love with Fitz and isn’t pleased that he intends to marry socialite Marcia Friel. His proposed marriage to Marcia is the reason he’s selling up, so Dolly could have a motive. And then there’s a bunch of hoodlums who want to take over Fitz’s sporting interests.

Steve McBride has his theories. Torchy thinks he has no chance of cracking the case without her help, but then she doesn’t think he could solve any case without her. And naturally she’s right. Of course if McBride had any sense he’d just marry her. Torchy has plans to make that happen. She just can’t help loving the big palooka.

The source material was a series of short stories by pulp writer Frederick Nebel (who wrote hardboiled crime and also some great aviation adventure stories featuring very disreputable adventurers Gales and McGill). In Nebel’s original stories McBride was the hero and he had a male sidekick. Turning the sidekick into a woman and making her the central character works pretty well.

Glenda Farrell plays Torchy as fast-talking and moderately hardboiled (in a feminine sort of way), in fact Torchy is exactly what you expect a feisty girl reporter to be. Farrell manages this without making her obnoxious or irritating. Farrell was a rising star in the 30s and she’s terrific. Barton MacLane as McBride makes an effective foil for her. They never stop arguing. That’s how you can tell they’re in love.

Jane Wyman as ditzy hat-check girl Dixie adds some surprisingly effective comic relief.

The story is suitably convoluted with multiple twists. Maybe the twists aren’t that difficult to figure out but they come at you so thick and fast that the plot works better than it has any right to. Director Frank McDonald knew how to make B-movies - if there’s a chance the audience might have time to think too much about whether things make sense or not, have someone pull a gun.

All nine films in the series are included in the Warner Archive Torchy Blane DVD set. There’s a very small amount of print damage evident in Smart Blonde and it’s just a tiny bit grainy at times. Personally I think a touch of graininess enhances a black-and-white B-movie. Otherwise the transfer is very good with good contrast. Sound quality is fine.

Smart Blonde is like Torchy Blane herself - fast-talking, brassy, hyperactive, just hardboiled enough, with a knack for wisecracks and fun to spend some time with. It’s no masterpiece, it’s just a B-movie, but it’s an enjoyable B-movie. Recommended, and if you like B-pictures about feisty girl reporters you can upgrade that to highly recommended.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Nancy Drew...Reporter (1939)

Nancy Drew…Reporter, released early in 1939, is the second of four B-movies made by Warner Brothers featuring the popular fictional girl detective. Nancy Drew had made her first appearance in print in 1930. Amazingly, new Nancy Drew books are still appearing ninety years later. The books were written by various writers, all using the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Both the fans and the writers of the books had mixed feelings about the films since Nancy’s character was changed somewhat (and apparently livened up a little).

Nancy Drew…Reporter starts with hardbitten city editor named Bostwick who discovers, to his horror, that he has been enveigled into giving temporary work experience jobs to half a dozen teenaged would-be reporters. He fobs them off with assignments to cover the most trivial stories he can think of. Unfortunately for Bostwick his ace reporter Tracy, who is supposed to be covering a sensational coroner’s inquest, is nowhere to be found. Bostwick leaves the assignment on Tracy’s desk. Even more unfortunately for Bostwick one of the teenaged aspiring reporters, Nancy Drew, spots the assignment and pockets it and sets off to cover the inquest.

Eula Denning is facing a murder charge over the death of an elderly lady. The evidence against her is pretty strong but Nancy knows she’s innocent because, well just because ul seems really nice. And Nancy thinks she might be able to find the vital piece of evidence the police couldn’t find. Of course it’s crazy for Nancy to try to find the evidence on her own since the real killer is going to be searching for it as well but Nancy doesn’t stop to think about the danger.

Nancy also manipulates her father, a top-flight attorney, into defending Eula Denning. Nancy manipulates everybody but nobody really minds because that’s just what she does and she’s pretty transparent about it. She’s just the sort of girl you can’t stay mad at for very long. Young Ted Nickerson, who lives next door and is not exactly her boyfriend but they are maybe just a little sweet on each other, gets manipulated by Nancy a lot. He knows that she manipulates him but he still falls for it every time. Teenaged boys tend to do that where cute teenaged girls are concerned.

There are some genuinely clever moments. Poor Ted finds himself having to go three rounds with a prize-fighter and fully expects to get beaten to a pulp. This is of course the result of another of Nancy’s bright ideas. There’s also an odd but amusing scene in a Chinese restaurant. Ted and Nancy can’t pay the bill but instead of being forced to wash dishes they have to provide some musical entertainment for the patrons. This one isn’t Nancy’s fault, it’s the fault of Ted’s bratty kid sister and her pal. Ted and Nancy’s escape from the hotel later on is also fairly ingenious. These scenes are a bit more inspired than you expect from a run-of-the-mill B-feature.

Bonita Granville was just fifteen when this movie was shot although she was already a film veteran with an Oscar nomination to her credit. Her hyper-energetic performance works and she manages to be pushy without being obnoxious. With the wrong performance Nancy could have been extremely irritating but Granville gets it just right. Frankie Thomas is pretty good as Ted Nickerson. Nancy leads him around by the nose but somehow Thomas is able to make Ted not seem like a complete fool.

What’s really nice about it is that we laugh with Nancy and Ted rather than at them. They’re a bit naïve and inexperienced but they’re not just dumb kids. They’re smart and resourceful and Nancy has the stubborn doggedness that makes a good detective. Nancy and Ted are characters that the target audience would certainly have been able to relate to and to admire. It doesn’t condescend to its audience.

When judging a movie like this you really have to take account of what it’s trying to, and what it’s trying to do is to appeal to an adolescent audience (and probably primarily adolescent girls). The ingredients were chosen accordingly - there’s a not-too-complicated mystery, a feisty but likeable young heroine, a fair amount of comedy and just a hint of (suitably chaste) romance. It’s a formula that the target audience would have been expected to lap up (and they did). Even adolescent boys would have tolerated it and maybe even enjoyed it because it has a juicy murder, a car chase, plenty of comedy and all that hardboiled newspaper reporter stuff.

William Clemens directed all four Nancy Drew movies along with plenty of other B-movies. The secret to making a successful B-movie is to keep things moving so the audience doesn’t notice any shortcomings in the plot and Clemens certainly manages to do that. Kenneth Gamet wrote the screenplays for all four movies and while this one doesn’t have a plot that is going to offer the viewer much of a challenge it does have enough gently amusing dialogue to keep things entertaining.

As with most major studio B-movies of that era it doesn’t look like a big-budget movie but it doesn’t look cheap either. It’s polished and slick. That was perhaps the single biggest virtue of the studio system - they could make B-movies on limited budgets but with all the resources of a major studio behind them the results had real quality.

Umbrella’s Region 4 DVD offers a pretty decent transfer without any extras. All four Nancy Drew movies are also available in a boxed set in the Warner Archive series.

Nancy Drew…Reporter is very lightweight but that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s light-hearted entertainment but it has charm and a certain panache and it has boundless energy. I’ve never read any of the books so I don’t know how much the character was changed but as played by Bonita Granville Nancy Drew is impossible to dislike. Highly recommended.

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Assignment: Paris (1952)

Assignment: Paris is a 1952 Cold War spy thriller from Columbia.

Dana Andrews stars as ace New York Herald Tribune reporter Jimmy Race. He’s covering the trial of an American named Anderson convicted of espionage in Hungary. The newspaper’s Paris bureau chief Nick Strang (George Sanders) wants to tread carefully. He has the crazy old-fashioned idea that newspapers should stick to the facts. There’s no evidence that Anderson was wrongly convicted so it would be wrong to make such a claim. Jimmy Race has no time for outdated ideas like journalistic ethics. He doesn’t really care if Anderson is guilty or not. Jimmy just wants to lead an anti-communist crusade. It’s fairly clear that the viewer is expected to be on Jimmy’s side.

Of course there’s a romantic complication. Nick and glamorous reporter Jeanne Moray (Märta Torén) are in love but Jimmy’s personal morals are on a par with his professional ethics so he sets out to steal Nick’s girl. Jeanne is French so naturally she was in the Resistance during the war.

Jimmy is sent to Budapest to replace the Tribune’s correspondent there. He makes contact with the Underground and he attracts some unfavourable attention from the secret police. They think he’s there as a spy and they arrest him. Of course by making contact with the Underground he really is playing at espionage and the Hungarians are therefore perfectly justified in arresting him but the movie glosses over such inconvenient details.

Now Nick and Jeanne have to find a way to get Jimmy out.

There’s not a great deal of excitement to be had here. Mostly it’s predictable and the characters are not interesting enough to persuade us to care very much what happens to them.

I like Dana Andrews as an actor but he gives a one-note performance here, playing Jimmy as a rude arrogant blowhard. Märta Torén is adequate but rather on the dull side. George Sanders is miscast as a hard-driving editor and is largely wasted anyway. Since the Hungarians are communists they’re all played as sinister cardboard cutout bad guys. There’s not a character in this movie who isn’t a cliché.

Assignment: Paris is included in the nine-movie Noir Archive Blu-Ray set from Kit Parker Films. Its claim to being film noir thematically are non-existent, and visually they’re very very thin. The attempts to make us believe we’re in Paris and Budapest are about as convincing as you'd expect in a Hollywood movie of this era. Robbert Parish directed and you can see why his career was less than stellar. Supposedly Phil Karlson also took a hand which I guess gives it a very tenuous connection to film noir.

As a spy story it’s too slow and lacking in real suspense. There are a couple of scenes that are reasonably atmospheric and competently executed, especially towards the end.

The most interesting thing in the movie is seeing the bad guys editing audio tape by hand, using scissors.

This is not so much a spy thriller as an out-and-out propaganda film, and a fairly clumsy one. The hero is meant to be noble and brave although to me he seems to be an obnoxious jerk. The other good guys are very heroic. The bad guys are totally evil but not in an interesting way. The screenplay by William Bowers is heavy-handed. A newspaper story needs to be snappy and sparkling but this one fails to ignite.

This Blu-Ray release is essentially a way to fit nine movies on just three discs. The transfer is basically DVD quality, but it’s good DVD quality. The black-and-white image quality is good. Sound quality is fine. There are no extras.

As anti-communist hysteria movies go Assignment: Paris isn’t outrageous enough to be fun. It’s fairly stodgy. Even Dana Andrews completists might want to think twice about bothering with this one.

I honestly cannot recommend this film, even as a rental.

Monday, July 17, 2017

I Cover the Waterfront (1933)

I Cover the Waterfront is a lurid newspaper melodrama released by United Artists in 1933. And it delivers the goods.

Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is an embittered hardboiled newspaper reporter who covers the waterfront for The Standard. He’s tired of the job and he’s tired of the city and he’s very very tired of the waterfront. This is the middle of the Depression though and even if he hates it it is a good job and he’s good at it. He’s a good newspaperman. That’s why he hates himself so much. All self-respecting good newspapermen hate themselves, because it’s a dirty job and you can only succeed if you have no morals at all. You don’t get good stories by being a Boy Scout.

Joe has found what he thinks is a very good story. He’s convinced that local fisherman Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence) is involved in a racket bringing Chinese illegal immigrants into the country. He just can’t find hard evidence. Eli is cunning and ruthless and if he’s boarded and searched by the Coast Guard he makes sure he destroys the evidence beforehand. He does this is an effective but brutal way, by throwing the illegal immigrants overboard (weighted with chains so they sink real fast).

In the meantime there are routine stories to cover. Like a report of a young woman swimming in the sea. The fact that she’s swimming in the sea isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that she’s stark naked. He spots the girl easily enough (strangely enough men usually don’t have much problem spotting naked women) and she turns out to be Julie Kirk, the daughter of Eli Kirk. She’s played by Claudette Colbert and what follows is a delightful exchange of pre-code banter between Joe and the nude Julie (sheltering behind a rock as a token concession to decency).

Joe realises this could be his big opportunity. If he romances Julie he might get some information on Eli’s people-smuggling operation. It’s a mean low-down cynical thing to do but he’s a reporter and such things come naturally to him. Of course there are going to be complications. Julie is a sweet kid and he gets to be rather fond of her, especially after he sleeps with her. Their spending the night together follows a memorably clever and slightly kinky seduction scene (that’s assuming you think that chaining a girl up so you can kiss her qualifies as kinky). He could fall in love with a girl like Julie (it’s not that easy to find girls who like being chained up after all).

Joe continues his relentless pursuit of Eli Kirk. Eli’s methods have become even more ingenious, and even more ruthless, but Joe is a dogged newshound and his mind is as devious as Eli’s. All Joe needs is a small amount of luck and soon it looks like he’s going to get it.

There’s at least one pretty exciting action scene. There’s plenty of atmosphere - the waterfront itself becomes a character in the movie. There’s hardboiled dialogue. There’s shocking, and unusual, crime. There’s romance. There’s a decent plot and the pacing is lively.

This is a pre-code movie and it has its share of the salacious elements that pre-code fans seem to enjoy. The sexual relationship between Joe and Julie is taken for granted. There’s risque dialogue. And there’s nudity. Yes, there’s an actual nude scene although you’ll need good eyes to see anything since it’s a long shot. A very long shot. But I’m assured that if you have good eyesight you can see what is presumably Colbert’s body double’s naked bottom.

Ben Lyon is reasonably good as Joe although an actor with a bit more charisma would have helped. Colbert does her best to generate the required sexual heat and since that was something she was pretty good at (OK it was something she was very good at) she almost succeeds but somehow the chemistry between the two leads isn’t quite there. You can understand why Joe falls for Julie. This is Claudette Colbert at her most beautiful and she has those big big eyes and any man with a pulse would fall for her. It’s not so clear why Julie would fall for the morose and cynical Joe. He doesn’t even have a bad boy vibe going for him.

Colbert’s other problem is that she’s too classy to be convincing as a fisherman’s daughter. It doesn’t really matter. She’s charming and sexy and likeable and she’s a fine actress and she gets away with it.

I found a copy of this movie in one of those Mill Creek public domain compilation boxed sets, their Diva 20-movie pack (which I don’t even remember buying). The transfer is iffy in places but generally watchable. 

I Cover the Waterfront is slightly racy fast-moving entertainment and Claudette Colbert in fine form is hard to resist. It’s a lot better than most pre-code movies because it doesn’t just rely on its mildly risque elements. Highly recommended.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Headline (1943)

Headline is a 1943 British crime film set against the backdrop of a big city news room. 

David Farrar is “Brookie” Brooks, ace crime reporter for The Sun. He’s under pressure from his news editor, the hardbitten L.B. Ellington (John Stuart), since Dell (a rather young-looking William Hartnell) of The Daily Record seems to keep beating him to scoops. Now a juicy murder story seems to offer Brookie the chance to steal a march on his rival but Brookie uncovers a piece of evidence that puts him in a difficult dilemma.

We know who the murderer is right from the start, and right from the start we also know that the Mystery Woman spotted at the scene of the crime is Ellington’s wife Margaret (Antoinette Cellier) so this is a suspense film rather than a mystery film.

The audience knows what is going on but most of the major characters don’t. For Brookie it’s just another story and at first it seems like Dell is going to come out on top yet again but Dell makes a fatal error. Arthur Jones (Richard Goolden) is a scatter-brained eccentric who likes to play at being an amateur sleuth. Every time a murder is committed he has a theory that will solve the case, but of course none of his theories actually work. Dell decides to play a bit of a joke on his rival by suggesting that Jones take his latest theory to Brookie at The Sun. This is a mistake because this time Jones really does have the solution.

While Brookie and Dell are frantically trying to out-scoop each other they’re not neglecting their love lives. Brookie’s girlfriend is Sun newspaperwoman Anne (Anne Crawford) but their romance faces one major obstacle - Brookie is already married, to his job, and he thinks it would be unfair to ask any woman to marry a reporter.

The romance angle and the rivalry between Brookie and Dell are treated in a breezy light-hearted manner and both these elements provide a certain amount of comic relief (comic relief being something William Hartnell was often called on to provide in his early film career).

There is however a more serious side to this movie and the suspense story is pretty effective with a nice twist at the end. There’s also a surprisingly serious and subtle treatment of newspaper ethics and it takes a slightly jaundiced view of the newspaper game.

David Farrar does the brash pushy reporter thing well and still manages to be a reasonably sympathetic character. William Hartnell (best remembered of course as the first Doctor Who) is delightfully unscrupulous and doesn’t overdo the comedic moments. Anne Crawford is charming and likeable. Antoinette Cellier is quite good also - Margaret Ellington is not exactly a femme fatale but there are perhaps hints of the femme fatale to her character. And she has the right touch of glamour.

John Harlow’s career as a director was far from glittering but he does a solid enough job here and there are one or two fairly atmospheric moments.

The script is very competent and the balance of humour, romance and suspense is just about right.

Network’s Region 2 DVD is typical of this company’s releases - there’s virtually nothing in the way of extras but the transfer is good and the price is reasonable.

Headline is basically a B-movie and it’s really rather lightweight but the well-executed and suspenseful ending makes it worthwhile and as a bonus the climactic action scene takes place on a train. You just can’t go wrong with train thrillers. On the whole this is an entertaining little movie, especially if you enjoy newspaper crime thrillers. Highly recommended. 

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Ace in the Hole is Billy Wilder at his most vitriolic and misanthropic. It’s as subtle as a sledgehammer to the jaw but it undeniably works. Made at Paramount in 1951, this is a full-scale frontal assault on the press. While there is technically no actual crime committed in a legal sense, or at least nothing that could easily be proved in court, there is most certainly a very serious moral crime. And the central character follows the classic film noir trajectory, making this movie (like Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard made a year earlier) an unconventional but very definite film noir.

Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) was once a high-flying big city reporter. After being fired from no less than eleven newspapers, for offences ranging from drunkenness to seducing the proprietor’s wife, he arrives in New Mexico penniless. He talks his way into a job with the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. For a man who was once a star reporter it’s a very humble job indeed but he figures that a story will come along soon enough that he will be able to exploit to propel himself back into the big time. He hates everything about New Mexico. Central Park in New York is as close as he ever wants to get to the great outdoors.

A year later he is still waiting for that lucky break. And finally he gets it. Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) runs a gas station and diner in the middle of nowhere. Nearby is an ancient Indian village and burial ground, the burial ground being located in a series of deep caves in the cliff face. While looking for Indian relics to sell at his two-bit roadside diner Leo manages to get himself buried in a cave-in. Leo is still alive but his legs are trapped under a huge pile of boulders and any sudden movement could bring the whole cave system crashing down upon him.

Chuck Tatum knows an opportunity when he sees one. He and a young photographer from the Sun-Bulletin, Herbie Cook (Robert Arthur), just happen to be on the scene. Chuck takes charge immediately. He intends to be in total control of the situation. This could be a very big nation-wide story and Chuck is going to make sure that he is the reporter who gets the exclusive stories. Assuming that the rescue operation will take a week or so, that’s a week of front-page stories and Chuck will have every newspaper in the country begging for his services. To ensure that no other reporters can get inside access to the story he makes a sleazy deal with Sheriff Gus Kretzer (Ray Teal).

In a week Chuck will be writing his own contract with the biggest of the New York dailies and Sheriff Kretzer will be guaranteed of re-election. The only problem is that the rescue operation is not going to take a week. It’s only going to take sixteen hours or so. Chuck and Sheriff Kretzer make sure that it will actually take a week. Sure it’s a pretty low thing to do, to keep a guy trapped in a cave for a week when he could be out within a few hours, but moral problems like that have never bothered Chuck Tatum. He’s going to get his big story, whatever he has to do to get it.

Within a few days the scene has become a media circus and thousands of sight-seers have converged on Leo Minosa’s diner. The money is rolling in for Leo’s wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) who intends to get as far away from New Mexico and Leo as she can, as soon as she’s made enough money to set her up. Chuck Tatum, the sheriff and Lorraine are all doing very nicely out of Leo’s predicament, but Chuck will find that events have a nasty way of getting out of control and the unexpected always happens at the worst possible moment.

This movie’s status as a film noir rests entirely on its content, having none of the classic film noir visual signatures. But the content should be noir enough to satisfy any reasonable person.

I’ve never had much time for Kirk Douglas as an actor but this role suits him perfectly. His scenery-chewing histrionics are just what Wilder wants for this movie. Jan Sterling does well as Leo’s wife, a woman who is in her own way as cynical as Chuck Tatum. Lorraine is not a classic femme fatale and Sterling doesn’t play her that way but she has enough cynicism and enough desperation to make her a very noir character.

Ray Neal as Kretzer is the sort of sheriff that city people like Billy Wilder like to imagine all rural sheriffs are - corrupt, petty and vicious. He’s a mere two-dimensional stereotype but Neal does the job effectively. The various minor characters are all either corrupt or morally weak or stupid. Wilder doesn’t make any distinctions - he just hates everybody.

Wilder co-wrote the screenplay and it’s a savage kick to the head. What it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in intensity and nervous energy. Wilder certainly knew how to hate and this script is positively dripping with loathing. His intention was clearly to do to the newspaper business exactly what he had done to Hollywood with Sunset Boulevard and it could be argued that Ace in the Hole is even more successful in the sense that the newspaper game is even more deserving of this sort of scathing treatment. Chuck Tatum is not evil; he simply has the moral sense of a rattlesnake.

The Region 4 DVD is barebones but offers a very good transfer. The movie is in the correct 4:3 aspect ratio and the black-and-white picture is sharp with excellent contrast.

Ace in the Hole is too crude to be considered a great picture but it’s certainly entertaining in a spiteful sort of way. Recommended.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Scandal Sheet (1952)

Scandal Sheet3Scandal Sheet is included in the Columbia Samuel Fuller Collection but Fuller himself was not actively involved in the making of the film. He did however write the novel on which the film was based.

The novel was The Dark Page, published in 1944 while Fuller was serving in the armed forces. The novel was a bestseller and an award-winner and established him as an important pulp writer. Howard Hawks had bought the screen rights to the book but it did not get made until 1952, under the title Scandal Sheet, with Phil Karlson directing. It would have been fascinating to see what Hawks would have done with this story but Karlson does a fine job.

It’s both a classic newspaper story and a classic murder story. It’s a suspense story rather than a mystery - the audience knows the identity of the killer right from the start, but the other characters don’t. It doesn’t just rely on suspense; it’s also a psychological study of two men whose fates and interlinked in an unexpected way.

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Mark Chapman (Broderick Crawford) is the editor of the New York Express. It was once a quality newspaper with a modest circulation. The paper hadn’t shown a profit for years. Under Chapman’s editorial direction the Express has become a trashy scandal sheet with a huge circulation. The owners have promised him a huge bonus if he can lift the circulation above 750,000, a figure that would have seemed an impossible dream when Chapman took over the paper but that now seems eminently achievable. Thee is a delicious little irony in the way that Chapman finally breaks the 750,000 barrier.

Steve McCleary (John Derek) is a young and very ambitious hotshot crime reporter. He’s Chapman’s protégé. Such emotional feelings that Chapman has (and he has few enough of those) are centred on McCleary. There’s a lot of Sam Fuller in McCleary - Fuller became a hotshot crime reporter himself at the age of 17.

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Julie Allison (Donna Reed) had worked on the paper before Chapman took over. She doesn’t approve of Chapman’s editorial style but she has a long-term contract with the paper and he can’t fire her. She likes McCleary but she doesn’t approve of his approach to the job either. McCleary is obviously in love with her but is too busy proving himself as a reporter to realise how strong his own feelings are.

Chapman is on top of the world until the evening of the New York Express Lonely Hearts Club ball, a cynical and cruel circulation-boosting stunt. Then his past comes back to haunt him in a big way.

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It’s impossible to discuss this movie in any depth without revealing at least something of the plot. There will be some spoilers in the next couple of paragraphs but they’re not major. I won’t be evealing anything the audience doesn’t know within the first half of the movie, and I certainly won’t be revealing the powerful and effective ending.

One of the lonely hearts at the ball is Chapman’s wife Charlotte (Rosemary DeCamp). He deserted her twenty years earlier. His name was George Grant then. He meets her at her run-down apartment, they argue, and she threatens to reveal his own private scandal to a rival newspaper. They struggle, and she is killed. He does a reasonably successful job of making it look like an accident, but not good enough to fool McCleary. He has taught McCleary too well. McCleary knows it’s murder and he’s determined to find the murderer. His tragedy is that he doesn’t know that the man he is hunting is the man he most admires in all the world. Chapman’s problem is that he has to encourage McCleary; to do anything else would arouse suspicion. The Express’s biggest story ever will be the hunt for George Grant.

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It’s the sort of story Fuller liked. Chapman and McCleary are like father and son but McCleary will not rest until he finds the murderer. In another irony, a drunken bum who had once been a Pulitzer Prize-winning star reporter for the Express, a man Chapman once admired (Charlie Barnes, played by Henry O’Neill), finds himself in possession of the most vital clue in the case. 

End of mild spoilers.

Broderick Crawford is superb. He’s a single-minded ruthless man but he cannot escape his own past. John Derek is very  good as McCleary who is esentially a younger of Mark Chapma. Donna Reed and Henry O’Neill provide fine support while Harry Morgan has fun as a hardbitten press photographer.

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There are those who think this movie would have been even better had Fuller directed it himself. That may be so, but it’s being a trifle harsh on Phil Karlson. Karlson was a pro and this is the sort of material he relished. He doesn’t put a foot wrong. The movie as it stands is a very fine newspaper film noir with some great twists that do more than just create suspense; they create a powerful and moving psychological dynamic. This is a great little movie that deserves to be better known. Highly recommended.

The DVD presentation is flawless and includes a documentary on Fuller.