Film Noir #29
Noir: Chicago Deadline, Conflict, and Convicted
CHICAGO DEADLINE (1949) --- A person might watch Chicago Deadline bi-yearly and enjoy it as if new, having forgot much of mystery and all its solution. As was common of noir, there is setting and atmosphere, also attitude to compensate for incoherence. I like Ladd for whatever he’s up to, especially when modern-set and allowing for trench coat, gun, whatever accoutrements we’d aspire to minus his aplomb. There is girl casualty Donna Reed to propel thicket that is plot, Ladd closing in on killers, or does he? You see, already I forget, mere weeks after watching. Kino let this out among packet of noirs, Chicago Deadline long wanted because where else could we see it over a last four decades? Sometimes noirs need not be especially good so long as they are rare. Lewis Allen directs; results might have been better had John Farrow done so. I’ve wondered why Ladd went years before performing for the Hal Wallis unit (Red Mountain in 1951). Perhaps his tag was too high, for despite fact Wallis was on the Para lot and using their facilities, it was otherwise an arms-length deal and his independent unit would be expected to pay for contract talent same as anyone, Wallis and loaner banks financing much of what he made for studio release. Mysteries even muddled are hard to resist when there’s a cast of noir regulars as here, each reliable and arresting to watch even where leading us down rabbit holes a chore to climb out of. Donna Reed is an OK co-lead, but there’s no co-Ladd to that, since the two never meet, not even in flashbacks that drive much of narrative. There are noir classics like Out of the Past, and then there are the Chicago Deadline (s), more of latter than former, though the more familiar famous ones get, the more welcome are bent toys like Deadline, newfound treat in every visit one ventures to take. Nice then to have Chicago Deadline around, nicer still to close in upon Paramount noirs missing till lately, and we can hope (depend?) on the rest surfacing eventually.
CONFLICT (1946) --- Humphrey Bogart in a role he intensely did not want to play, a wife killer brought to book by a scheme the seeming entire cast works out to pull him down, Bogie as unwitting dupe manipulated back to the scene of his crime where cops and cuffs await. Rick the proprietor at Casablanca brought down to this? It plays like punishment, means of letting Bogart know he’ll pull a familiar plow however big a star he appears otherwise to be. There was a recorded conversation between HB and JL Warner where Bogie is bullied and Jack has clearly the upper hand. Ingrate Bogart will do Conflict or else … and sure enough he submitted. We don’t like this sort of Bogart lore, and yet Conflict emerged a good picture, written by Robert Siodmak, directed by Curtis Bernhardt, a first dip of HB toe into neurotic parts he’d embrace more firmly later. His killing is furtive, an escape from suffocating marriage (the wife nags incessantly and Bogie has to take it and like it), his object to wed a sister-in-law (Alexis Smith) who does not love him and never will. Bogart’s age is for the first time an issue. Sydney Greenstreet refers to himself and HB as “old fogies,” and notion that Smith could want him is dismissed out of hand, her better suited to age-appropriate Charles Drake. All this plays stark against To Have and Have Not and Bacall, a teenager when she and Bogart were co-starred, their vehicle released two years ahead of Conflict, latter which was completed (1943) ahead of To Have and Have Not going into production. Yes, Conflict was “wrong” for Bogart, but right now that we have perspective of the whole career, a noir drench that has more honest elements of the style than more flamboyant and comedic The Big Sleep, and here's the kicker, Conflict was a healthy earner and not at all the rat poison Bogart would have anticipated.
Conflict seems almost anti-Bogart from the start, so far at least for feeding his image, him hen-pecked, complaining to no avail of mutton being served at dinner (“You know I hate mutton” to Rose Hobart’s hateful response). Hobart had worked with Bogie when he was still a juvenile on Broadway, so was not awed by the star aborning, her saying as much in years-later interviews. Too many had Bogart’s number, including offscreen shrew wife Mayo, who when she didn’t throw bottles was sticking knives in him. The tough guy persona must have been a welcome retreat, even as it had nothing to do with who Bogart really was. Nice to see him back with Greenstreet however, only this time latter is the cat and former the mouse, so we don’t get to enjoy Bogie getting the better of the Fat Man. Why then do I like Conflict so? Maybe for the indoor exteriors, toy cars sped up hillsides that are like landscapes built for tabletop electric train sets, city street bustle on the Warner backlot, crowds aplenty to show us this is an A project. Plot device has Bogie driving ninety miles back-forth to a lake lodge over winding dirt roads. I’m spoiled enough to be uneasy driving on anything but solid asphalt, but back in the 40’s they abided, in fact appreciated any road that would get a car from one place to another, whatever its surface. This all reeks of noir, plus Bogie wears his trench coat to do the killing. Any clip of Conflict might make you think it was one of his best. For me it almost is, but then of course, I like any Bogart. 16mm renters back in the day could get Conflict cheap, $35 in UA’s 1975 catalogue, a tip as to low esteem it held. Warner Archive offers a DVD, and TCM plays Conflict in HD.
CONVICTED (1950) --- Convicted and others of Columbia crime family are like tunes that linger in one’s head. It always seems I’ve heard their scores before, cues repeated to signal each bump of modest mellers. Convicted was fruit of a play Columbia bought long before and filmed as The Criminal Code in 1930, latter “by” Howard Hawks and shown still because among other interests, there was a colorful part for rising Boris Karloff, the role done by Millard Mitchell for Convicted. I wonder if H. Hawks was even aware of Columbia re-doing The Criminal Code, or if he’d care. Glenn Ford is imprisoned for an accident-killing, him less dangerous or hothead than Everyman a by-then Ford signature, if Everyman was of sort to skirt law or soldier-of-fortune toward sudden wealth or exotic romantic opportunity as was this actor's often bent. Ford was a major and popular leading man that Columbia used for stock … he’d get no Academy Awards toiling for them. Broderick Crawford would know like circumstance after freak win for All the King’s Men, after-words to that more action than thought, hard case sorts we expected and preferred from him. Were there actors born only to play convicts? If so, they are all here. It is for that reason I adore faces put to toil in prison laundries and looking their respective parts. Were such sorts feared by other shoppers when visiting the market for sundries? I envision men like Harry Cording or John Doucette sending the wife or kids rather than go themselves and be viewed with apprehension. Convicted is the more precious for being predictable. How many 1950 viewers do you suppose got part way in and then exclaimed, Wait, I’ve seen this exact same thing before!, not as register of complaint, but mere recognition that cards movies shuffle can’t help duplicating, limit after all in tales told or absorbed over a lifetime of filmgoing. Convicted for all of old clothing took $753K in domestic rentals, less than Glenn Ford generally yielded, but OK withal for what Columbia likely spent. It shows up streaming, lately at Amazon Prime.
6 Comments:
"Conflict" is coming to Blu-ray on Sept 30.
After years of watching Bogart classics, followed by his pre-"High Sierra" output, of late I've been into his post-1945 movies including "Conflict" and "The Two Mrs. Carrolls". I liked them both mainly because the characters were unlike the movies made him a star. (Bogart as an architect or artist isn't what most people had in mind.) Same for his Columbia releases and his final movies, like "The Left Hand of God" -- and in Cinemascope yet! There's an emotion in his later performances, as if he knew he didn't have long to live.
As for "Convicted" -- I think that's the first time I've seen Frank Faylen's name on a movie poster. Usually, he was too far down in the credits to fit.
I recently re-watched CONFLICT and loved it even more the second time; so I find this backstory about Bogart's displeasure with the project quite fascinating. He is terrific in it and plays the part so well; one would never know there was any reluctance on his part. The movie itself has a neat little plot too, which benefits greatly from all of the classic Warner Brothers talent, in front of and behind the camera. I am looking forward to the blu-ray.
Richard M. Roberts considers Alan Ladd plus CONFLICT:
John,
As you know, I've been catching up on Alan Ladd movies I had never seen of recent, and have really upgraded my opinion on him as an actor and a star. I definitely think he has been somewhat underrated and forgotten by so much of current film fandom and it's a pity, he really was a terrific actor with a great voice and a versatility nobody seems to appreciate. Here is an actor who can indeed do Humphrey Bogart-type trenchcoat noir roles who, unlike Bogart, is just as at home in westerns or adventure films, and so many of his denigrated-by-the-historians later starring vehicles, self-produced or otherwise, have turned out to be solid and entertaining films at least by my viewings. It's a shame that only one biography has ever been written on him, but at least that biography shows that whatever problems and insecurities he may have had in his career, he seemed to have been a nice guy who kept his money and raised a family where his kids actually turned out rather well, which may be why his untimely death (most likely accidental rather than suicidal) has not earned him a following among the death cultists.
If Ladd is discussed today, usually the whole height thing gets rehashed, which always seemed a bit odd to me considering that, if he was in the 5.5, 5.6 range, he was no different than many of his contemporaries like Bogart, Cagney, George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, who didn't get the same hassle about their size (isn't it interesting though, that even the Paramount Publicity picture you have for CHICAGO DEADLINE presents a cut and paste puny Ladd amazoningly towered over by his three leading ladies?).
I recently watched CHICAGO DEADLINE as well, and it's not a bad picture, I think you're being a little unfair to Lewis Allen, who's saddled with a muddled script especially in terms of the Donna Reed backstory (I'm still not sure about her connections to all the villains of the piece). To me both Allen and John Farrow are as good as their scripts, and have their fair shares of mediocres and clunkers interspersed with some dandies. Allen does better immediately following up CHICAGO DEADLINE with another Ladd vehicle APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER, which has a much better script and supporting cast (Jack Webb and Harry Morgan playing gangster hitmen years before they were a DRAGNET team), and other Allen winners include his first feature, THE UNINVITED (1944) a superb ghost story with Ray Milland ,SUDDENLY (1954) with Frank Sinatra cast as another hitman, and the neglected but darn good ILLEGAL (1955), a crackling remake of THE MOUTHPIECE starring Edward G. Robinson.
I always liked Bogie's CONFLICT too, it looks great, he's great in it and I always enjoy seeing Sydney Greenstreet when he's playing sympathetic, he was intelligent and riveting in everything he played, and was a great villain, but I always felt it a pity that he only played Nero Wolfe on radio, what a great series of B films that would have made for him at Warners.
As to Bogie's bellyaching about playing in CONFLICT, I hate to say that when he was making his own choices of scripts in his Santana Productions over at Columbia, he was making films that for the most part don't work anywhere near as well as anything he starred in at Warners, maybe that studio did have a better idea of how to use him, even if it galled him that Jack Warner kept wanting him to play bad guys after he had broke away from that typecasting. Fortunately much of his fifties career after departing the Burbank Studio for good consisted of good or great Directors getting him for good films that even made him stretch his acting muscles and play more against type, but remember, he bellyached all through Billy Wilder's SABRINA as well, thinking he was wrong for the role and didn't want to play it, and ate some amount of crow over that when he got such good reviews for it afterwards. Actors are frequently not the best judges of the material that suits them best.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Granted, it's a bit jarring to see Bogart as a pure villain at this stage of his career, but CONFLICT is a really underrated cat and mouse thriller., with both male leads cast against type. From our perspective, knowing about the Breen Code, we KNOW he won't get away with it, but it's exciting to anticipate HOW he'll fail.
I agree with Richard's assessment of the Columbia/Santana films. I like KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, but TOKYO JOE and SIROCCO really didn't impress me. It's hard for me to appreciate DEAD RECKONING, largely because of my preconceived notion of Lizabeth Scott as a Lauren Bacall substitute.
Thank you, John -- not only a great essay, but a great guide to navigating "long covid." I watched CONFLICT (realizing half way that I'd fallen asleep on it the first time) and very much enjoyed it -- though Alexis Smith has always seemed a cold fish to me.
Then I watched CHICAGO DEADLINE on Internet Archive -- crappy copy but a great movie, and any chance to see June Havoc is welcome. (And twice I heard the main motif from NOW VOYAGER in CD's score -- having watched MILDRED PIERCE the night before, I was quick to pick up on it in both.). The YouTube trailed for CD are fairly pristine, and I'd watch it again if I could find a better copy. Couldn’t follow the plot, but as with THE BIG SLEEP, who cares when it’s so much fun.
I found that CONVICTED streams free on Amazon Prime, but Glenn Ford leaves me cold. The Internet Archive site then suggested THIS GUN FOR HIRE, which I had never seen and really enjoyed. Now I'm on a Ladd kick -- next up BLUE DALIAH and THE GLASS KEY.
I realized my entire previous exposure to Ladd had been SHANE, which (heresy, I know) I didn't like ("I killed Injuns to get this land, and nobody's gonna take it from me!" isn't an attitude I can get behind -- so there was nobody to root for), the Loretta Young soaper AND NOW TOMORROW, and his brief self-spoof in MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE.
I had alway underestimated him as an actor, but he was truly skilled -- and those eyes. I can see why THIS GUN FOR HIRE made him a star -- what a debut; and that great monologue about being beaten as a child still holds up. Now I wanna look at more of his work.
Thanks for making this "new and improved" strain of covid a little less miserable.
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