Film Noir #32
Noir: Crime in the Streets, The Crimson Kimono, and Criss Cross
CRIME IN THE STREETS (1956) --- Again a thesis movie, amusement sacrificed on the altar of preachment. The Dead End Kids did these better, and had Bogart or Jim Cagney for grown-ups to ID with. Reginald Rose wrote Crime in the Streets for television. Maybe it got by easier there just for being shorter, and besides, big heads shouting at home jangled nerves less than bigger ones doing so from theatre screens. Director Don Siegel checked baggage Rose delivered and made necessary trims, Crime in the Streets a movie after all rather than lecture off a ten-inch lectern. Rose objected, but Siegel was boss, thus a film we may assume was improvement upon the tube version. All was built and executed at rented Goldwyn facilities but for a rumble opening shot outdoors, also at Goldwyn. Allied Artists would release during a youth problem cycle forged upon hit momentum of Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle. Rock and roll could ease burden of less earnest treatment, but Crime in the Streets was earnest, and so used Franz Waxman to score rather than relying on disassociated platters. John Cassavetes had his debut here, magnetic from a screen start even though playing an utter crumb of a wayward kid “born to be hung” as they used to say of J.D.’s from eras back to Billy the Kid. Much of Cassavetes can’t help being funny now, Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me! repeated enough to qualify for anyone’s nightclub impression. Being set bound for whole of the show plays less well than what worked for Dead End in 1937, but Crime in the Streets was a trim craft and there probably wasn’t money to enable street shooting. Among support is Sal Mineo in early incarnation of tortured boy, named “Baby” here, his eyes twin pools of suffering. Mineo was plenty good but suffered himself for too brief a shelf life, suddenly not wanted anymore (so he would recall) even after critic acclaim and Academy nomination for work done in the early sixties. A first truth taught to virtually all actors was life never being fair. Should juvenile drama be labeled noir? Perhaps not, but Warners put Crime in the Streets into one of their DVD grab bags, so I’ll play along.
THE CRIMSON KIMONO (1959) --- Samuel Fuller sometimes fired off a pistol rather than yell Cut on location. For young males intent on a career directing, from where came higher endorsement? Fuller lived the maverick life of making movies in all forward and back sense … writing, producing, megging, doing on-camera trailers as “Sam” of uncompromising breed that was largely gone even as he soldiered on. I don’t wonder he had devoted following among starter-outs in the 80’s, into 90’s, right till Fuller passed in 1997, his typewriter clacking to the finish. He was accessible and adored. Documentaries have been made on his life and career. His films are considered a best of their sort, which was mostly war, crime, bizarre topics, especially by the sixties when he went way off walls with things like The Naked Kiss and one that played our Liberty late show only, Shock Corridor, which I really wanted to go see for thinking it was a horror film, which it kind of was but not in the way I might enjoy in 1963. Just as well parents forbade my late attendance (single unspool at 9:30 PM, then back on the Charlotte Observer newspaper delivery truck where all prints went in/out of our town, more than appropriate mode of ingress/egress for Sam Fuller reels). The Crimson Kimono was sold on trashy terms, Columbia posters never attractive whatever content, but these made much of pairing between Victoria Shaw and James Shigeta, exploitative as in wait till you see them kiss, but Fuller didn’t mean his story to be received that way, had no say in any case, for what director could influence selling apart from Hitchcock, DeMille, precious few others? Forbidden love engages Fuller maybe more than the murder hunt Shigeta and detective partner Glenn Corbett engage.
Victim is a strip dancer called “Sugar Torch,” so merchandising could go all types of sleazy direction, The Crimson Kimono better bound for lower placement on bills and early forfeit to television. Its discovery by Fuller fanbase and noir listers amounts to rescue and assurance that what began as minor product should thrive forever on auteur and cult shelves. There was no denying such status for Fuller, as no word of his writing reflected other than a singular vision of life and people. Having been on newspapers from age 12 and experienced worst of the war, Fuller had nervous energy to write all night and direct all day, provided they'd let him, which too often was not the case, would-be projects fallen by the boards for not enough financial or moral support. Of course, that’s the story for most filmmakers, especially independents like Fuller, but there were periods when he was backed, notably in the fifties when Zanuck lent a continuing hand and enabled Fuller to make one fine film after another. Wish it could have lasted, but nothing does in an industry rocked by constant change. As Zanuck went from Fox, so went Fuller. The ninety-ten rule that applies to life goes especially here (as in ninety percent of what you want, you won’t get). What I noted about The Crimson Kimono this time was how sharply edited it was, plus dialogue eccentric as ever, terrific atmosphere shot around L.A.’s “Little Tokyo,” Fuller detailing Japanese culture as practiced stateside. There is emphasis on martial arts, so much so that I wish he could have revisited the theme in the seventies when a cycle of such pictures became popular. The fact Fuller films are unpredictable is what makes them easy to revisit. Even if you recall the essential story, details are what grab for repeat rides. There are You Tubes where Fuller’s daughter guides us through her father’s work room, still maintained and all his effects there. Families are what keep many great names alive, and it’s good Samantha Fuller is here to do that job. The Crimson Kimono can be had on Blu-Ray from Twilight Time with good extras.
CRISS CROSS (1949) --- Among grimmest of born loser noirs, Criss Cross is snappy but doesn't amuse, is actionful, but in disquieting ways. Noirs were about serious business but are more fun for increasing distance between our time and theirs. Criss Cross is an exception for pitiless reveal of hard lucks who come to messy finish, no mercy for the doomed nor us with one of the darkest fades ever in noir. Criss Cross had been set for Mark Hellinger's next after the producer's sensational triad for Universal release, The Killers, Naked City, and Brute Force, but Hellinger died suddenly, and properties in development, including Criss Cross, were sold by the estate. Packaging included the story plus services of Burt Lancaster, who had been pledged to Hellinger and did two for the producer. Direction was again with Robert Siodmak, he having come up Universal ranks earlier in the decade. Criss Cross status maintains mostly because he guided it, The Killers' pattern of a caper gone wrong more/less repeated, here an armored car robbery, it understood that these never succeed unless there's an inside man, which made me wonder if that's true for real life. If so, there was a lot of wasted effort on part of criminality in future noirs where armored stick-ups were tried and failed. Universal taking over the property and doing it in-house meant they could further develop Yvonne DeCarlo, an exotic second to faded Maria Montez, and till Criss Cross a saloon or desert wanderer with Rod Cameron or Tony Martin for consorts. She's the fatale here, but with shadings; we figure this girl wouldn't be altogether bad given plenty of cash and a less moody partner than Lancaster, who by 1949 had got monotonous as continual guy behind eight balls. He really needed rescue of The Flame and The Arrow that would come a following year.
6 Comments:
Criss Cross has long been one of my favourite noirs, along with The Killers. Yes, Lancaster's "born loser" character is similar in both films but the results are still impressive. If The Killers has one of the most memorable opening scenes in noirdom then the same can be said of Criss Cross's grim final scene. Dan Duryea's underplayed villain really adds to the film's effectiveness and that includes those final film moments. The final image of Criss Cross stays with the viewer.
Dan Mercer considers career choices Burt Lancaster made:
The "Flame and the Arrow" was a fun picture that did much to broaden Burt Lancaster's appeal as a star. It was produced by his own company, Norma Productions, though, interestingly, the first production from that company, made two years before, featured him in another of the "man behind the 8 ball" films that he'd been appearing in for the studios. In "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands," he is a former prisoner of war with continuing emotional problems related to his captivity. After accidently killing a man, he is on the run. Circumstances bring him into contact with a young nurse, played by Joan Fontaine, who lost her husband during the war. Lonely herself, she feels an innate sympathy towards him and tries to lead him back to a normal life. However, a witness to the killing attempts to blackmail him into participating in a criminal scheme involving stolen penicillin.
Aside from its deliciously lurid title, "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" had many of the elements of a really good film, with moody photography, evocative settings of the London dockside area, a fine musical score by Miklos Roza, an especially exciting opening sequence that benefitted from Lancaster's acrobatic abilities, and excellent performances by Lancaster, Fontaine, and, as the blackmailer, Robert Newton. The direction was by Norman Foster, best known for "Journey Into Fear," though his participation in that film was overshadowed by the presence of Orson Welles, who had a prominent supporting role and whose Mercury Productions produced the film for RKO Radio Pictures, creating the suspicion that whatever that was good in it was a contribution by Welles. Foster's work in the Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan series for Twentieth Century-Fox, however, showed that he was quite a competent director in his own right who could fashion tight, visually interesting stories. That is no less the case with this film.
What lets "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" down is a superficial script that never adequately addresses the motivations and desires of its characters. Human relationships are more than a cocktail in which the ingredients are added and shaken together. Joan Fontaine gives a luminous performance and much of our understanding of the woman she's playing is found in a glance, a raised eyebrow, or a caught breath, but while this suggests the inner life of her character, there is no corresponding exposition to give it substance. It is the same with Lancaster's character, the broad lines of his problems sketched with the sudden bursts of temper, but not why he would find himself drawn to this woman or what the basis of their relationship would be. The ending, with the unlikely possibility of redemption, seems both hasty and arbitrary, though it is a good deal less grim than the one in "Criss Cross." Since the film is scarcely longer than a B-movie at 79 minutes, however, there is a question as to how much material that might have addressed these aspects was lost in the editing process.
"Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" was made for release by Universal-International with a budget of $1 million. It reportedly earned $1.6 million in the United States and Canada, with the returns from Great Britain, France, and the rest of Europe for some reason unknown, but it probably did make money, even for Norma Productions. A marginal financial return from a film that seemed no step up from those he was making for the studios might have convinced Lancaster to take a new direction in his career, which led to such films as "The Fame and the Arrow" and "The Crimson Pirate" but also to such varied fare as "Vera Cruz," "The Sweet Smell of Success," "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" and, later, "Elmer Gantry."
The original live TV production of "Crime in the Streets" feels like the template for future "there's no such thing as a bad boy" stories, although I could be wrong. Cassavetes looks too old for 18 although he captures the teen angst well. It's interesting to watch his Method acting go up against Robert Preston's old school style as the therapist. And it's cool to see young Van Dyke Parks, long before he was Brian Wilson's collaborator, as Cassavets kid brother. Can't forget, too, the close-up of the sponsor's Longines wristwatch as the kids plan a murder.
New York Daily News' review describes CRIME IN THE STREETS as one of "several pictures of the like'' cashing in on the success of THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE the previous year. 5/23/56 ad for Times Square opening (at one of the more prestigious movie palaces) is quite nice. Film popped up on double bills hereabouts until 1961. NY TV debut 4/27/63 at 11:15 pm on WABC's "The Best of Broadway.''
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Not sure you got the ad for CRIME IN THE STREETS. Here's a link to my Twitter blurb. https://x.com/LouLumenick/status/1542153415257722881
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