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 of its solution. As was common of noir, there is setting and atmosphere, also attitude to compensate for coherence deficiency. 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 for him 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 the shrew wife at home, 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 terrified of a hundred feet over 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 look it. 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.