Books 📚: Contemporary Non-Fiction: Dark City – The Lost World 🌎 Of Film Noir (1998) Part 4

According to the Internet Movie Database there are 745 films that comprise the film noir canon. We have explored some of the best titles through Eddie Mueller’s Dark City but by no means all of them. Now, however, we’re approaching the home stretch of our bumpy ride through the rough sides of town to gather at “Knockover Square”. This is where the great heist capers happen, and The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is the most notable of this sub genre. This film was already discussed in my previous post of “Film Noir Reviews: Part 2”.

The Asphalt Jungle is such a standout among crime capers and the story resonates so well because the perpetrators of the heist are the deeply frustrated people struggling financially – who get nowhere following the rulebook and playing on the level. They aren’t intrinsically wicked types pursuing lives of crime for the hell of it, they do it out of desperation! As Mueller describes them: “They’re not hostile hoods looking for a way to wield power, they’re disgruntled city dwellers driven to score some breathing room.” (Pg. 146) There are no flashy gangsters here greedily gobbling up everything in their path. One of the main characters Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden) is desperate to remake his life, to get out of the Dark City trap and buy back the horse farm his family had lost, to return to a simpler, uncorrupted life – away from bad influences.

Hayden would headline yet another well-regarded heist caper, The Killing (1956). Hayden was a prolific actor in the noir realm (much like his contemporaries Dana Andrews, Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield, Alan Ladd, Robert Mitchum, Edmond O’Brien, John Payne, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Ryan, and many others) appearing in ten noir features during the busiest period of his career in the 1950s. The Killing is ranked at number fifteen in Mueller’s estimation of his top twenty-five favorite noirs. The semi-documentary style works well to keep viewers engrossed in the story, the use of real locations such as the horse track at San Mateo, CA enhance the narrative as well. The plotting of the track heist and the attempt to pull it off provides riveting suspense. Of course, Marie Windsor is superb as the greedy femme fatale who poisons the well, unraveling the whole affair and underscoring the futility of it all.

Crime Wave (1954) like The Killing also utilized actual locations to enhance the story. This worked especially well during the night sequences, reinforcing the sense of danger that permeated the Los Angeles region after dark, with criminals constantly on the prowl. Crime Wave also typifies how innocent victims (a young, married couple in this case) get caught up in circumstances beyond their control, coerced into participating in a bank robbery which would destroy their fragile beginning in life, while to stay on the straight and narrow. Crime Wave is one of many underrated, absorbing “B-level”noir films with a tight plot, (likely a tight budget as well!) but a story that moves along rapidly, still provides satisfactory character analysis, but doesn’t skimp on the action by wasting time on unnecessary exposition.

Crime Wave is also noteworthy for being the only noir where Sterling Hayden was on the “right” side of the law portraying a hard-ass police lieutenant driven in his determination to bring the cop killers and bank robbers in dead or alive. Moving on, we head to the Midwest to Kansas City Confidential (1952) a gritty, armored car heist noir which shows that there’s no honor among thieves – and who also have no compunction about making an innocent man the fall guy in their illicit get-rich-quick scheme either. In this account delivery driver Joe Rolfe (John Payne) becomes the patsy when police mistake him as the getaway driver and try to beat a confession out of him. Events swiftly move the story from Kansas City to a Mexican resort where the thieves are supposed to meet and divide the loot when the “heat” dies down.

However, Rolfe is reluctantly released from custody and is grimly determined to find the criminals. He trails and overpowers one of them named Pete Harris (Jack Elam) forcing the creep to reveal that the four heist participants all wore masks during the set-up and cannot reveal their full identities until the split takes place in Mexico. As it works out, Harris gets killed in a shootout with Mexico City police at the airport. Rolfe has his mask and continues on to the meeting place where a series of events leads to the demise of the remaining criminals and Rolfe is fully vindicated. Kansas City Confidential and Crime Wave are exceptional noirs where the main protagonist’s make it through the wreckage intact and have the hope of better futures.

There’s no such luck for the sorry denizens of “Loser’s Lane” as we move through the next sordid part of town. As Mueller tells it, this is the realm “of last chances” and “lost causes” with Richard Widmark as the “patron saint” of Dark City (Pg. 158) His debut as the gleefully psychotic, unrepentant criminal Tommy Udo in Kiss Of Death (1947) is one of the most memorable villains in Hollywood history. The scene where he lashes an old woman to her wheelchair and shoves her down the staircase of the tenement while cackling the whole time, leaves a permanent imprint on the psyche of the viewer. How this brutal scene passed the censors in 1947 is quite astounding in itself. In any case, Widmark left his mark on eight noirs between 1947 through 1959, but his single biggest loser role was in Night And The City (1950).

In this story Harry Fabian (Widmark) is a shabby little American conman trying to peddle his wares in London. Naturally, as noir narratives will have it, the small-time criminals like Fabian who perpetrate frauds and rackets aren’t as smart or slick as they think and invariably come to a rotten end. Cons like Fabian should know better than to try nosing in on mob rackets by trying to rig a wrestling match. Predictably, consequences are severe as he ends up hunted by ruthless mob enforcers through the harsh, gritty streets, grubby alleys, rooftops, stairways, bridges, docks, and construction yards of post-World War Two London to the bitter, squalid end. As with numerous other noirs such as The Asphalt Jungle, The Naked City, Crime Wave, The Killing and so forth, Night And The City utilizes forbidding urban locations to satisfactory effect by adding more reality to the proceedings.

As one might suspect, there are many more losers along this lane of Dark City and a couple more standouts include Stan Carlisle the amoral, scheming carnival barker of Nightmare Alley (1947). A carny outfit is always on the fringes of society, scrambling to stay one step ahead of the law, always being kicked out of one town or another. The role of Carlisle was quite a departure for Tyrone Power who was the leading matinee idol of 20th Century-Fox from the late 1930s up to the early 1950s, known primarily for playing romantic leads or swashbucklers. This time around, with Nightmare Alley he was looking to stretch his acting chops and break out of stereotypical roles. Quite a departure it is too. By the moral standards of 1947 Power’s portrayal of the sleazy carnival barker was considered depraved and ghoulish. He stopped at nothing to steal the secret of a successful “mentalist” act from a fellow carny he was having an affair with.

However, callously using and dumping people becomes his stock-in-trade. Being the greedy and overly ambitious type that he is, marks the start of his spectacular downfall. Soon, it isn’t enough just to squeeze the local hicks for nickels and dimes. He moves into big time grifting by teaming up with a shady therapist to use his so-called mentalist skills to fleece the wealthy elite of Chicago who had attended his swanky nightclub acts. How his downfall takes a turn for the ghoulish won’t be spoiled here as Nightmare Alley is a must see for anyone becoming a fan of noir. As we continue our seedy journey through “Loser’s Lane” we come upon our most pathetic and frightening loser of all in the person of delivery man Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz) in one of the most shocking, if little known films of the 1950s.

The Sniper (1952) presaged the rise of the firearms violence that has become all too familiar in our society where the mass shooter with mental issues has become a public health crisis. The issue as to whether or not assault rifles should be banned outright has become an incredibly ugly political hot potato (among many others), in American society, pitting the left and right against each other, with neither side open to valid compromise. All of this controversy seemed inconceivable in 1952, yet we still have this low-budget but chilling melodrama about about a dejected, deeply disturbed, lonely man with intense hatred against women he can’t have. This pathology finally boils over, exploding in murderous violence.

The Sniper is definitely one of the creepier noirs and it’s fascinating to watch how a police dragnet finally snagged the criminal, tracking him through San Francisco. Once again, the low-budget B-level noirs like The Sniper often make the best use of real locations, especially at night to heighten the drama and tension of the cat and mouse narrative. This story features nightclub singer Marie Windsor as one of the victims stalked and shot by Miller (Arthur Franz). Windsor was an underrated actress who excelled as one of the more sensational femme fatales in noirs of the 1950s – and her performances never disappoint, but it’s only too bad that The Sniper didn’t receive more notice in its initial release. It’s one of those noirs that seems uncomfortably immediate, tragically relevant today.

Our final trip through the Dark City will be a trek down “Thieve’s Highway” where we meet up with another, last round of low-lifes and reprobates. The crowning glory of our penultimate tour has to be Detour (1945) where we meet up with with a creature that Mueller describes in Dark City as “the meanest woman on earth.” Indeed, Anne Savage is possibly the most abrasive, heartless, and vicious female to rampage through a noir feature. In this coarse and tawdry tale a poor sap named Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is a small-time musician who decides to leave New York to follow his erstwhile girlfriend to Hollywood and pursue a show biz career of his own, hitchhiking all the way. A flamboyant businessman named Haskell (Edmund McDonald) picks Roberts up in Arizona, but dies en route while Roberts has taken his turn driving. In a panic Roberts hides the body and switches identities with Haskell continuing to California.

That proves to be one of the worst decisions ever made in a noir narrative. The second horrendous mistake was picking up the hitchhiking Vera (Anne Savage) who had previously ridden with Haskell. She plays Roberts like a fiddle, quickly figuring out the score. She callously blackmails him and is all other sorts of abusive, trying to force him to pose as a relative of Haskell to collect a fat inheritance. As it always happens in noirs, the brazen scheme backfires but the twist won’t be spoiled on this page! The minuscule budget, and cast of unknowns does nothing to diminish the impact of Detour – like the whack of a tire iron upside the head!

Now, for our final trip of the tour we ride the Union Pacific sleeper from Chicago to Los Angeles squeezing through The Narrow Margin (1952) This slick thriller packs a lot of action and suspense, coming in lean and mean at only 71minutes of screen time. As Mueller states it: “In The Narrow Margin a full ration of cops, dames, and hitmen were board for the ultimate ‘can’ movie (slang for a story set in the confines of a moving vehicle”) (Pg.180) Tough cop Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and his partner are assigned to escort a gangster’s widow from Chicago to L.A. so she can testify against a syndicate in cahoots with corrupt L.A. cops. Of course Brown and his partner don’t realize that the “gangster’s widow” (Marie Windsor) is a police decoy for reasons the story will make abundantly clear. Like Detour, The Narrow Margin is a sterling example of how having less to initially work with can be spun into cinematic gold – creating memorable, satisfying, and timeless stories that can be watched over again.

Well, I hope you readers out there have had a satisfying tour through Eddie Mueller’s Dark City: The Lost World Of Film Noir. His book is an incredible treat for aficionados of film noir. It is also a great introduction for those newly interested in this style/genre. We’ve had quite a ride through town with the amnesiacs, cops, detectives, femme fatales, grifters, hucksters, ingrates, robbers, thugs – and yes, the innocents caught up in the middle of it all! Nevertheless, we’ve only scratched the surface of this rich part of cinematic history. Mueller’s work also contains many true stories of how some of the actors in these films had off-camera lives that rivaled any of the plots described here. Check it out!