Category: 1940s

Alfred Hitchcock | 1hr 41min

The most obvious dramatic tension that emerges in Notorious comes from its thickly plotted conflict of romance and thriller conventions, tugging our central lovers between deep passion and cold, methodical pragmatism. This riveting narrative of high-stakes subterfuge could be read through the lens of either genre, especially when the initial honeymoon period between Cary Grant’s U.S. agent and Ingrid Bergman’s German defector is interrupted by official orders for her to seduce and spy on a suspected Nazi affiliate, Alex Sebastian. Their breakup is as clean as can be under these circumstances, with Devlin especially putting up a front of stoic impassivity, but Alfred Hitchcock’s fractured blocking betrays their mutual, wounded sorrow. Even the champagne bottle that Devlin bought to share with Alicia over a romantic dinner is suddenly missing, and thus their evening comes to an abrupt end.

It is in that final detail though that Notorious’ most robust motif begins to manifest, developing a tension through layers of formal symbolism that is far more intricate than its overarching genre clash. It begins with Alicia’s alcoholic lifestyle and reckless drink driving, allowing her an escape from the guilt of her father’s Nazi convictions, but wine bottles are also integral to the conspiracy she investigates for the U.S. government. One of Alex’s associates grows agitated at the sight of one specific bottle during dinner, and later Alicia discovers that her keyring grants access to every room in the house except for the wine cellar, making it apparent that these symbols of upper-class aristocracy hold darker secrets than one might expect. In one lush ball scene, Hitchcock even uses regular cutaways to an ice cooler of bottles to drive up the suspense, placing a time limit on her and Devlin’s investigation of the cellar by tracking the party’s dwindling supply.

Indeed, these intoxicating refreshments which promise a few hours of light-hearted fun only ever lead to danger in Notorious, and could potentially even instigate a third World War given the uranium ore contained within them. This is far from the end of Hitchcock’s beverage motif too, as once Alex and his mother discover Alicia’s loyalty to America, innocuous servings of coffee also become deadly weapons. Glasses and bottles are swapped out for teacups in Hitchcock’s mise-en-scène here, dominating and obstructing shots that leave her shrunken in the background, while she remains unaware of the poison hidden in their contents.

Even more astounding are the close-up tracking shots which suspensefully trace the movements of these cups across rooms, from the moment Alex’s mother fills them with coffee to their eventual contact with Alicia’s lips. The murderous operations of these scheming Nazis are elegantly lethal, incrementally weakening her health over time, and Hitchcock’s camerawork is every much their equal in precision and sophistication. It reaches an enormous stylistic peak in a crane shot that sweeps us from a wide frame of Alex’s opulent entrance hall into a close-up of Alicia’s hand grasping a stolen key, and often punctuates dramatic beats with subtle push-ins on faces, but even beyond these agile motions his visual storytelling is remarkably dextrous.

At its most potent, he lands us within Alex’s own silent investigation of the wine cellar, excising dialogue completely as he follows a trail of clues – the lost key mysteriously back where it belongs, the tampered order of bottles, a broken seal, and shards of glass swept under a shelf each point towards Alicia’s guilt. The editing is precise throughout, and the pacing measured, suspensefully building up to Alex’s major turn. His tightly framed face is tilted down in shadow when he finally comes to his mother with this revelation, and as he confesses, he rises it very gently into the light.

“I am married to an American agent.”

For Alex’s mother who has mistrusted Alicia from the start, it is enormously vindicating for her suspicions to be proven right, yet this development may be even more satisfying for Hitchcock who revels in the Freudian insecurities of their relationship. Her protectiveness over Alex has been simmering with jealous undertones ever since he invited this other woman into his life, so now with her son fully on side, she relishes killing off his lover in a slow, painful manner, effectively becoming a slightly less twisted version of Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho.

In a strange way, this complex mother-son relationship also reflects the stifled romance between Devlin and Alicia, who correspondingly hold onto an emotional repression keeping them from expressing themselves honestly. It is often much easier for them to deny the existence of impractical feelings altogether so that everyone can move on with their work, yet in Notorious it is also those who deceitfully conform to rigid, impersonal standards that come closest to losing everything.

For our main characters to be saved then, they must allow their truest feelings to break through their cool exteriors, and Hitchcock approaches these arcs with an incredible formal mirroring between Notorious’ first and final acts. Alicia’s hangover early in the film blurs and spins the frame when Devlin comes to her with a job offer, and as he comes to take her away from Alex’s mansion, her vision is once again impaired. The initial meeting between Devlin and Alicia where conversation turns to alcohol and love is similarly echoed here as well, as they discuss her poisoning, and he confesses his feelings.

Tentatively, they move downstairs in full view of Alex’s co-conspirators, who now peer suspiciously through a door at their compromised friend. The scene is reminiscent of that which previously saw a judge sentence Alicia’s father to prison, and now frames these Nazis as the judges of Alex’s own fate. Even the night-time drive which saw Devlin use his government position to save a drunken Alicia is inverted at this climax, where he lies about his identity to make a safe getaway in his car. No longer is he just a bureaucrat looking to use her for work, but a man so deep in love that he will put himself in harm’s way to keep her safe.

In Notorious, this is the reward that comes to those who reconcile their subconscious desires with their conscious actions, invigorating its narrative with a muscular formal structure. Grant might be given the meat of this character development, but Bergman shines even brighter for the dazzling highs and profound depths that Alicia reaches, eventually finding sincere happiness as her true self beyond her alcoholic indulgences and deceitful double life.

It is not Devlin and Alicia who Hitchcock sticks us with in the final minute of Notorious though, but Alex, left to face the consequences of his actions and saunter through the large doors of hell. For a few seconds it looks as if the camera might follow him too, until they close in our face with a final clang. Hitchcock does not need to tell us what comes next. It is all there in the subtext of his collaborators’ accusing stares. Even in this den of humanity’s greatest evil, there is no haven for liars – merely a sad, pitiful end to a life of dishonesty.

Notorious is currently streaming on Tubi TV.

Robert Siodmak | 1hr 43min

There isn’t a whole lot separating the narrative structures of The Killers and Citizen Kane, with both films seeking to dismantle the mystery of the men who die right at their very start. The friends, colleagues, and lovers they have accumulated throughout their lives each hold a piece of the overall puzzle, and as we trace flashbacks along non-linear paths, unexpected layers of their lives begin to emerge.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Swede is almost the inverse of Charles Foster Kane. He does not come from the world of multimillion-dollar corporations and mass media, but boxing and organised crime. He is not smooth and charming in the way a political aspirant might be when speaking to potential voters, but still personable on a much smaller scale when he isn’t losing his temper in fits of paranoia. He stands above virtually everyone else with his broad shoulders and strong physique, exerting a raw, physical energy impressively mustered by Burt Lancaster in his invigorating screen debut.

Also unlike Kane, the Swede dies young – assassinated by a pair of hitmen who have tracked him down into a small, rural corner of New Jersey and dispatched him without much struggle. That he so despairingly accepts his fate seems strange to those who knew him, and is even stranger to us when we get to know him ourselves. What ensues is not a search for the truth of a man’s life, but rather an autopsy of his mysterious death, closely studying the circumstances which led him to such a tragic and uncharacteristic end.

Jim Reardon is the insurance investigator we follow through this trail of fragmented clues, played by Edmond O’Brien as a diluted take on Humphrey Bogart’s wise guy screen persona. On paper, Reardon is simply motivated to track down the beneficiary of the Swede’s life insurance, but upon discovering that she is a meek hotel chambermaid who barely even knew him, he is anything but satisfied.

Additionally, the Swede is only one of three titles that he goes by, Reardon soon discovers. Pete Lund is what most people in his local community know him as, while Ole Anderson is the birthname he has been running from ever since leaving his mob days behind. This is only the beginning of a thrilling plot layered with treacherous triple crosses and seductive intrigue though, all revolving around one lonely man doomed by his own fatal, obsessive insecurity.

Robert Siodmak was a director well versed in expressionist filmmaking by the time he got behind the camera on The Killers, and that experience is evident in the shadow-drenched mise-en-scène and piercingly deep focus he skilfully displays here. Even before we move into flashbacks, the astounding 12-minute sequence which opens the film in the town of Brentwood is filled with chiaroscuro lighting, cutting silhouettes out of two men in fedoras and trench coats wandering the dark, empty streets. This is where Ole has taken refuge and kept a low profile as a gas station attendant, but for the time being he is little more then a name floating about in conversation between these suspicious outsiders and the owner of the diner they have come across. Siodmak is patient with his tension, slowly turning up the heat as we recognise the inevitability of their mission, and submitting us to the same fatalistic resignation as Ole before shots are even fired.

With the foreknowledge of the Swede’s death accompanying us through the subsequent flashbacks, Siodmak often signposts each step that he takes towards it with some inspired visual flourish. Ava Gardner’s duplicitous femme fatale, Kitty Collins, enters the Swede’s life like a magnet, drawing his eyes from across the party while his girlfriend Lilly stands next to him. The three layers of blocking which positions Kitty in the foreground and staggers the two others into the background immaculately distils this love triangle into a single, poignant shot, though Siodmak isn’t done there. A subtle camera movement following Ole into a new position right behind Kitty cuts Lilly out of the frame altogether, all the while his new love interest croons a slow, romantic ballad.

“The more I know of love,

The less I know it…

The more I give to love,

The more I owe it.”

Ole’s boxing career being cut short due to a hand injury may have been out of his control, but when presented with a choice to either follow his friend Lubinsky into the police force or Kitty into a life of crime, the blame comes squarely back on him. Similarly, when he willingly takes part in a sensational robbery orchestrated by mob boss Colfax, Siodmak infuses the scene with a Hitchcockian suspense, expertly navigating the industrial factory through a two-minute crane shot. A voiceover reading about the exploit in a newspaper article details the events as we soar over fences, scale buildings, and follow the bandits’ escape, tracing their movements with a precision equal to their own perfectly choreographed plot.

The more we get to know Ole, the more we recognise the fatal flaws which put him on this road to hell. Siodmak formally lays out his weaknesses in smaller scenes as grounding for his more consequential downfall later on, especially revealing an inherent paranoia when he falsely assumes Colfax is cheating in a game of poker and foolishly attacks him. It seems that Kitty is the only person he does have total faith in, but when he willingly takes the rap for her stolen jewellery in a spur of the moment decision, his recklessness gets the better of him again and lands him in jail. The Killers may have been based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, but Siodmak, Lancaster, and screenwriter Anthony Veiller put in a huge amount of work to develop this character even further into a complex man of quick judgements, foolhardy actions, and perhaps beneath it all, a genuinely good soul.

With all of this in mind, we can see how Ole could have gotten out at each step along the way, and simultaneously accept that he was never going to make any other choices than the ones he ultimately commits to. Most significantly, the lie Kitty fabricates that his associates are planning a betrayal sets up the dominoes perfectly, manipulating him into stealing the money from them so that she can run away with it herself. With most of the pieces of Reardon’s puzzle finally in place, the loop that brings the story back to the present day is mostly closed, save for the danger which has moved on from Ole and now attached to our curious investigator.

We are given two big clues that Reardon is in trouble when he eventually meets with Kitty and enters a diner with her. The first is the diner itself, established in the very first scene as a prime spot for hitmen to hunt down targets. The second is Kitty, who has proven herself on numerous occasions to be an untrustworthy figure. Fortunately, Reardon is not fooled so easily by her feigned innocence. Siodmak is skilled with his foreshadowing in this way, but it is also a beautiful piece of bookending he crafts here too, bringing the film back to those two enigmatic assassins who enter these venues of warm hospitality and defile them with violence.

This potent metaphor of corruption pervades Siodmak’s film on every level, as much like the titular killers, Ole too has tainted something pure – his own innocent soul. As we recall those calm final seconds before his demise though, we see a new choice being made. His graceful acceptance of consequences runs in stark contrast to Kitty’s hopeless, desperate begging for Colfax to absolve her of guilt in front of the police. Perhaps his decision was born of a newfound humility, inspired by his time as small-town gas station attendant Pete Lund, or maybe he was simply tired of running. We might get most of the answers we have been looking for in this splintered collection of memories and clues, and yet even after all this, the mystery of the man’s uncharacteristic death remains.

The Killers is not currently available to rent or buy in Australia.

Fritz Lang | 1hr 40min

Between Professor Richard Wanley and the portrait that he fixates on, a shop window draws a thin, transparent barrier. He is as close to this artwork as he is distant from the fantasy woman it is depicting, though it is upon that glass pane where they are united in the ethereal reflection of Alice Reed – the model whose likeness has been so attractively rendered in paint. She arrives in Richard’s life like a ghost, and he too subsequently crosses into hers, intersecting worlds through psychological dreams of seduction, murder, and subterfuge.

Many noirs inspired by The Woman in the Window took note of its grim, shadowy detachment from reality and built out similarly imaginative underworlds, though Fritz Lang’s approach is quite unique in literalising his protagonist’s expressionistic nightmares. Here, the twist of the story taking place inside his mind is saved for the end in a Wizard of Oz-style reveal, bringing to light the inspiration for many of Richard’s dream characters. It doesn’t quite land with the same impact as Victor Fleming’s Technicolor fantasy, but it isn’t the shoddy, tacked-on resolution so many criticise it of being either. Instead, it is the pay-off to one long series of imagined, improbable situations, subconsciously warning our impressionable professor of the dangers that come with falling into foreign temptations.

All through the large, airy apartment that Alice invites Richard back to after their chance encounter, Lang lays out walls of mirrors that might visually suggest a deceptiveness at play, or at least a detachment from the world we are familiar with. His compositions are vividly blocked, building out the motif of reflections which first brought this femme fatale into his life and largely defines her expansive living space. Perhaps there is also a feeling of guilt and claustrophobia wrapped up in this imagery though, forcing Richard to reconsider this route he is travelling down towards infidelity. Fortunately, he is interrupted before he gets a chance to cheat. Unfortunately, it is by Alice’s own wealthy, jealous lover, Claude Mazard, who promptly attacks Richard and is killed by a pair of scissors to the back.

After hiding the dead body in a nature reserve and mutually deciding to cut off all contact, problems start to stack up. Richard’s friend Frank is the lead investigator on the case, and the naïve professor evidently isn’t used to lying given his tendency to let on more about the murder than he should know. Meanwhile, Mazard’s bodyguard is on his and Alice’s tail, intent on blackmailing them. Nunnally Johnson’s script is tightly plotted in its foreshadowing, sowing the seeds of Richard’s potent sleeping pills and initialled pen early on before later turning them into key narrative devices via attempted murders and loose pieces of evidence.

If The Woman in the Window is going to suffer in comparison to any other film noir, then it is the delightfully macabre film noir Double Indemnity also released in 1944, which bears a good number of similarities. Edward G. Robinson stars in both as good-natured men, but where he plays the lawful investigator in Billy Wilder’s film, here he puts a lighter spin on the Fred MacMurray role of a man caught up in the murder of his lover’s partner. We don’t have any qualms about getting behind this nervous, jumpy figure, though at a certain point even he takes a dark turn when he decides to dig himself even deeper into this mess.

Save for a few scenes, it is his perspective we are stuck with through most of The Woman in the Window, and Lang is careful with his camerawork to ground us in his uneasy experience. After dumping Mazard’s body, Richard is moodily framed behind his car’s rain-glazed window, doused in the scene’s gloomy ambience. The camera’s deep focus lens is used effectively too, keeping us at a tense distance from the investigation when Richard desperately peers out of a car at the police bringing in Alice for questioning.

Whether as windows or mirrors, Lang keeps weaving in these glass barriers as motifs of duplicity and disconnection, quietly feeding our doubt over Richard’s self-awareness. This nervous mistrust is the dark, beating heart of film noir, distilled here by one of its leading figures into a literal dream that glides by on hazy long dissolves and a score of tense, whiny strings. Like Richard, we may slip out of its hypnotic spell as smoothly as we fell under it, but its disquieting psychological impact is one that continues to linger long after it is over.

The Woman in the Window is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Michael Curtiz | 2hr 6min

There is a scene in Yankee Doodle Dandy where, after a lifetime of many accomplishments, famed Broadway composer, lyricist, and performer George M. Cohan is confronted by a posse of teenagers oblivious to his fame. It becomes apparent by this point that Cohan is not a name that has the same cultural cache as his more contemporary predecessors, and in effect it is almost as if the film is recognising the potential cluelessness of its own audience. Michael Curtiz doesn’t quite dispel the notion that Cohan belongs to an older, simpler era of jingoistic patriotism, and yet we still find something undeniably compelling about the showman’s vibrant stage presence and bright, flag-waving theatre tunes. He may not be a household name like he used to be, but his role in pioneering the ‘book musical’ format as an integrated blend of drama and music continues to be felt in contemporary theatre, and in adapting his life story, Curtiz renders the fluidity of his lyrics, melodies, and dances onscreen as a magnificently propulsive biopic.

Given his background of playing loud, bullish gangsters, James Cagney is not the most obvious choice for the role of Cohan, and yet he pulls off something quite unique in translating his strong, physical presence into a performance far more agile and dextrous than we have ever seen from him. It is almost impossible to believe that this short, stocky man can move his feet with such grace, and he especially delights in subverting those expectations even further by using show make-up to convince one adoring fan (and future wife) that he is in his late 60s, before breaking into a tap dance so fast it becomes a blur. Onstage, his body moves as if controlled by a puppeteer, bouncing on his heels and letting his limbs fall around him in effortless coordination, and Curtiz’s camera is in love with every second of it, elegantly tracking him across stages and swooping down from ceilings in majestic crane shots.

As a result of the collaboration between these two major Hollywood talents, there is a spry nimbleness both in front of and behind the camera, coming together in effervescent displays of patriotism and dazzling beauty. Curtiz’s transition into Cohan’s show-stopping number ‘Yankee Doodle Boy’ is just as energetic as the performer himself, lifting us from the conductor’s sheet music to the chorus onstage, clearing them out of the way to the sound of brilliant fanfare, before finally revealing Cagney standing proudly atop a podium. If it isn’t the camera movements revelling in the commotion of the theatre, then Curtiz is arranging his ensemble in tight formations and setting us back in wide shots to admire the military march of ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’, or the unified raising of arms up to the Lincoln Memorial in ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’.

Curtiz’s deep focus lens assists his direction a great deal in capturing the full scope of his stage ensembles, but it is used to even greater effect offstage where we get to understand Cohan’s place as the dedicated son of a travelling, vaudeville family. As he grows successful, there is clearly an unspoken imbalance between his rising star and their financial struggles, so that even when he generously gives them ownership of all the theatres and properties he owns, Curtiz still isolates him in the foreground against the staggered staging of his family in the background. It is a moment of joy, and yet the camera fully registers Cagney’s wistful expression. Later upon the passing of Cohan’s father, Curtiz’s blocking fragments them entirely, recognising this tragedy as the end of a chapter in both his career and personal life.

For the most part though, there is little time in Yankee Doodle Dandy for misfortunes and setbacks. The odd artistic compromise or failed play mounts to little when all is said and done, as Curtiz instead builds Cohan’s successes to glorious cinematic heights, driving his story forward with energetic montages of falling curtains and cross-country tours. Even more astounding than his editing though is one particularly inventive sequence that navigates an entire city of Art Deco miniatures and billboards shining Cohan’s name up in lights, flying Curtiz’s camera through urban cityscapes for close to 2 minutes without a single cut.

For such a culturally ubiquitous and pioneering figure though, there is something quietly subversive about his quaint, old-fashioned patriotism, bolstering his popularity in the aftermath of World War I by calling back to a more innocent era in the United States’ history.

“Manhattan went wild with post-war hysteria, but I spiked my shows with pre-war stuff… the sentiment and humour an older America had aged in the wood.”

In his music too, this love of the old days is almost always right there in its melodies and lyrics, referencing traditional American songs such as that which is right there in the title of the film. Ray Heindorf and Heinz Roemheld do a magnificent job of working Cohan’s tunes into their score as well, letting the original pieces breathe when it is their time to take the spotlight, and elsewhere keeping them in mind as instrumental arrangements. To Cohan, these may just be expressions of great national pride, but to virtually everyone else, they become a pure embodiment of the American spirit, moving beyond the theatre and taking on a new life in grand parades and celebrations. This culminates in the magnificent finale of ‘Over There’ sung by a chorus of soldiers marching through the streets of Washington D.C., but it is more broadly embedded in the very framing device of Cohan’s meeting with the President too, leading into the flashbacks of his life story.

It makes a lot of sense why a film like this struck a chord in 1942, when America was right in the middle of a world war and morale was at a low. A reminder of the nation’s prosperous past was needed to imagine a hopeful future, and there are few cinematic characters so emblematic of that as Cagney’s representation of Cohan, who in his final minutes of screen time casts a shadow across the Oval Office and then, in an inspired bit of improvisation, joyfully tap dances down a White House staircase. Yankee Doodle Dandy’s politics are unsophisticated, but its nostalgic sentiment is strong, beating back whatever accusations of outdated mawkishness might be thrown its way with Cagney’s dynamic energy and Curtiz’s dextrous displays of creative ingenuity.

Yankee Doodle Dandy is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Video.