Film Noir #17

 

Noir: Boomerang, Born To Kill, and The Brasher Doubloon

BOOMERANG (1947) --- Bold at spelling out how politics dictate local civil and criminal matters. How many innocents were hanged to keep one party or other in power? Noirish for bleak viewpoint alone, also for locations indoors and out at Stamford, Ct., where most of Boomerang was shot. This was among novelty flush of docu-dramas that promised, and appeared to deliver, on-spot realism and gloves-off depict of postwar American life. The real killer is never verified even after wrong man Arthur Kennedy faces trial and a gas pipe, Dana Andrews the honest prosecutor who refuses to view his case as open-shut and won’t toady to party interests. Were there ever such men in public life, then or now? Issue is less who did it than what is everyone going to do about it. Elia Kazan directs, a good choice for this, even better for similar Panic in the Streets that followed. Had he but continued with noirs instead of hopping Streetcars headed a heavy and to-date-fast direction. Word is he didn’t think Dana Andrews was much of an actor, and here I was thinking Kazan knew all about acting. Support cast includes eager beginners (Karl Malden) and vets (Taylor Holmes, always a stimulant to see). Narrating Reed Hadley at the end assures that the story just told is true. Does that include probable guilty man killed in a road accident right after A. Kennedy is cleared? That device looked to me like Code accommodation under heading of no murder goes unpunished. If we love this stuff, then we take them as are, largely OK by me, because really, did noirs get better once the Code was vacated?

BORN TO KILL (1947) ---  Registers almost scary thanks to Lawrence Tierney deadly beyond bounds of even noir decorum. Did Larry just being there intimidate co-workers? He was said to have been meanest of drunks, all the way to a next century when he’d yet play bad men for fans who grew up on his oldies. I touched on Tierney re Bodyguard so won’t linger, and besides, Born to Kill is plenty pitiless with or w/o him, on-screen murders cruel and casual. Robert Wise directed. He later called Born to Kill more B than A, him wanting into A’s and forever out from B’s, preferring to go back to editing rather than direct on small change. Born to Kill does not look cheap despite fact it was ($466K negative cost), but then everything at RKO was done cut-rate, artisans left to make talent felt. Best of these did better than if they’d had unlimited resource, many living to tell of crumbs whipped into rich confection (Dmytryk especially spoke of this), and consider magic Val Lewton wove from his unit, where Wise got a directorial start. High-Def can make low-budget look lush, as observe what Blu-Ray did for The Curse of the Cat People, Wise’s first credit at the helm. Born to Kill earned but $505K worldwide, lost $243K, so must be considered a failure, though surely not an artistic one. There were bitter objections to its violence, Crowther writing a tut-tut review. Similar volleys were fired at White Heat two years later. Critics, and censors, had to face reality of films lusting more for blood. Was it war that increased appetites for same? And yet if folks wanted rougher play, would not Born to Kill have performed better? Uneasy by today’s reckoning is talk among women at an opening Reno divorce stop where each admit preferring men who’d “kick their teeth in” if they talked back, such tough customers always a better choice than “turnips” (read nice guys) who in any race for sex finish last. What happens in Born to Kill bears out the philosophy, for it is mean man Tierney women gravitate to. Not food for forbidden thought in 1947, but certainly would be now. Amazon has Born to Kill for HD streaming, Blu-Ray not so far to be had.

THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (1947) --- George Montgomery as a Philip Marlowe who looks like he just came off a vigorous volleyball game at the beach. He’s also too much a standard-issue “wolf” like in wartime when lead men were expected to sniff after any woman crossing their path, Montgomery an oft-exponent of this in earlier and lighter work he did at Fox. Now it was postwar and him back with Twentieth, only lesser valued because his agent tried holding up Zanuck for more money than the studio thought George was worth. That landed him in virtual B that was The Brasher Doubloon, remake of a Michael Shayne series mystery with Lloyd Nolan a few years earlier. Raymond Chandler was liked by his reading public, but movies saw him too often as mere resource from which to extract yarns, be it for Irisher gumshoe Shayne, or too familiar Falcon with Tom Conway anything but Philip Marlowe as crafted by Chandler. The Brasher Doubloon pleases still because it at least tries getting back to basics, and there is effort at capturing Los Angeles after Chandler’s design. That may have been for economy’s sake, or to link The Brasher Doubloon with realist thrillers made popular after the war. 1947 was a year at least before markets were saturated with what later was called “noir,” surfeit of it causing studios to back off, or reduce spending on a cycle winnowing down to support positions. The Brasher Doubloon had negative cost of a million, economical in light of inflation that by ’47 had gripped an industry, but $520K in domestic rentals was among lower numbers Fox saw that year, $296K from foreign receipts worse, though expected as this sort of material had little oversea appeal. A loss of $506K made the venture hardly worth the doing, result no more Marlowes for TCF, let alone with George Montgomery, him soon enough to do westerns, cheaper ones, for time left as a lead man. Femme threat was Nancy Guild, but only on posters, where graphics promised her as man-hater to top all previous, but maybe a public by now was tipped to deceptive way this stuff got merchandised. In any case, too few were buying. The Brasher Doubloon is available from Fox’s old On-Demand program.