Fritz Lang Noir Smackdown! THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW vs. SCARLET STREET

Before we get started, let’s have a big round of applause for Kristina Dijan of Speakeasy for suggesting this particular TotED post! Between chatting online at the Speakeasy site, The Dark Pages; Shadows and Satin, and Twitter, Kristina and I have discussed and good-naturedly joked about various film noirs. In a recent communiqué, we happened to discuss the similarities between two classic 1940s thrillers by Fritz Lang (1890—1976), namely 1944’s The Woman in the Window (TWitW) and 1945’s Scarlet Street (SS). Clever gal that she is, Kristina thought it would be great fun if I discussed both of these films, and before you could say, “Cheese it—the cops,” The Woman in the Window vs. Scarlet Street Smackdown was ready to rumble! Many thanks for the great suggestion, Kristina!

When I was a teenage movie buff (hey, maybe some fresh new classic blogger should give the title I Was a Teenage Movie Buff a good home in some nice warm blog, if someone hasn’t already done so! But I digress….), I mostly knew who Fritz Lang was because of Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). It wasn’t until years later that I learned more about director/writer/producer Lang’s body of work. But once I finally had the opportunity to see these suspense dramas, both of them produced by Walter Wanger (Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 thriller Foreign Correspondent) and his beautiful and talented wife Joan Bennett, both films grabbed me and held me riveted to the TV, intrigued by those films’ similarities and differences! Also, both movies had Milton Krasner as Director of Photography (All About Eve, The Set-Up, the Oscar-winning Three Coins in the Fountain) but H.J. Salter composed the SS score, while TWitW was scored by Arthur Lang and an uncredited Hugo Friedhoffer, Charles Maxwell, and Bruno Mason.

With all due respect for Lang, I must admit that Edward G. Robinson was the main attraction in our little smackdown as far as I was concerned. Born Emmanuel Goldenberg in 1893 in Bucharest, Romania, Robinson emigrated to New York City with his family when he was 10. “Eddie,” as friends called him, rose to stardom playing gangsters and other tough guys in films like Little Caesar, Five Star Final, Tiger Shark, and the Damon Runyon/Howard Lindsay mobster comedy A Slight Case of Murder. However, during his long career, he also proved to be both a fine leading man and a character actor of great talent and range in such films as The Stranger (1946), The Prize (1963), and Robinson’s final role, in Soylent Green (1973), which particularly touched my heart. This time around, we’ll be seeing Robinson’s sensitive side as Our Man Eddie finds himself becoming putty in the hands of dangerous dames and conniving crooks! Where’s his sensible, fearless Double Indemnity character Barton Keyes when you need him?


Both TWitW and SS are set in my hometown, New York City, and both films have the same three stars: Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea. Taken at face value, it looks as if the leads in TWitW and SS are more or less playing the same character archetypes:

1. Our man Edward G. Robinson as a kind, dignified older gent whose quiet life is turned upside-down when he finds himself infatuated with a pretty young woman who may or may not make a chump out of him. Talk about “middle-age crazy!”
   
   
2. Joan Bennett as a beautiful young woman of negotiable affections, as Vinnie would say. She was a member of the renowned Bennett acting family, which included dad Richard Bennett, sister Constance Bennett of Topper fame, and younger sister Barbara Bennett of The Valley of Decision. Joan’s long, successful career included silent films; the 1933 version of Little Women; our director Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941); Father of the Bride (1950), with Joan as the mother of bride-to-be Elizabeth Taylor and the wife of comically beleaguered Spencer Tracy, followed by the sequel Father’s Little Dividend (1951); Dark Shadows on TV and in the feature film House of Dark Shadows; and Dario Argento’s giallo horror classic Suspiria (1977). She started her acting career as a blonde, but I think our Joan always looked best as a brunette, whether she played good girls or shady ladies.
   
   
3. Dan Duryea as a sleazy opportunist who’s not above blackmail and violence to get what he wants. For most of his long career, Duryea excelled at playing Guys We Love to Hate in such classics as Ball of Fire and Criss Cross (no relation to Robinson’s character in SS, but do read and enjoy our friend and fellow blogger John Greco’s stellar review at his blog Twenty-Four Frames!) A native of White Plains, New York (just a short drive from the Bronx neighborhood where I lived for much of my youth!), Duryea’s character actor career was born when he became a Broadway star in the original stage versions of Dead End and The Little Foxes, the latter starring the great Tallulah Bankhead. The Little Foxes also became Duryea’s Hollywood debut; this time he played opposite another powerhouse star, the great Bette Davis! Despite his usual roles as rotters and bounders, Duryea was by all accounts a nice guy in real life (indeed, he’d been a scoutmaster and a PTA parent!),

Let’s get this noir party started!

Dashing young Fritz Lang

The Woman in the Window (1944)

Versatile writer/producer/director Nunnally Johnson brought audiences such classic films as The Grapes of Wrath, The Three Faces of Eve, The Gunfighter, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and How to Marry a Millionaire. He proved to be quite adept at film noir with The Woman in the Window (TWitW), based on J.H. Wallis’ novel Once Off Guard. Wanger and Bennett had been feeling stifled at Universal, so along with Lang, they joined forces to create their production company Diana, named after their daughter, providing Lang with the artistic freedom he craved. It was the first time that Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea had worked together. TWitW was set mostly in Manhattan, with side trips to the Henry Hudson Parkway, leading from Manhattan to the Bronx to Westchester County, near where our family lived at the time. The scene in question involves our desperate heroes trying to ditch a corpse—but I’m getting ahead of myself! (I assure you it wasn’t nearly as scary when we actually lived there!) Our protagonist is Assistant Professor Richard Wanley (Robinson), who we first see lecturing about “Some Psychological Aspects of Homicide” at the fittingly named Gotham College. Somehow I get the feeling our hero’s knowledge on this particular topic has more to do with book smarts than street smarts! Although it’s clear that Richard truly loves his wife and kids, he and his friends are nevertheless “summer bachelors” in the city while their wives and kids head for the country for fresh air and sunshine. But when the fam’s away, will the husbands stray? Is it beer o’clock and the boys are buying? Richard, for one, is perfectly happy to take it easy at his men’s club with a good book.

Richard was gonna read 
King Solomon's Mines,
but this is more fun!

Richard first sees the titular portrait of a beautiful, ethereal brunette in the window of a midtown Manhattan art gallery. His colleagues, District Attorney Frank Lalor (Raymond Massey of Mackenna’s Gold; Abe Lincoln in Illinois; The Fountainhead; and Arsenic and Old Lace, in which Massey replaced original Broadway cast member Boris Karloff) and Dr. Michael Barkstane (Edmund Breon of Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Gaslight; The Thing from Another World) have been admiring the portrait, too, playfully anointing her “our dream girl.” DA Frank gives his friends a word of friendly caution: “In the District Attorney’s office, we see what happens to middle-aged men who try acting like colts.” Hey, Massey played Abe Lincoln; he wouldn’t kid us about a thing like that!

What a picture: Still Life with Horndog

When Richard leaves after dark, he’s startled by a reflection in the art gallery’s glass window. It’s the woman in the window herself, lovely young Alice Reed (Bennett). She has a sweet smile and a frisson of loneliness about her, so Richard gallantly escorts her home for a nightcap. She shows him her etchings, ruefully mentioning that a man is paying for her swanky apartment. Richard and Alice chat and chastely enjoy each other’s company and champagne. Richard isn’t the two-timing type, though he does admit that “I should say no, I know, but I haven’t the slightest intention of saying it.” How about saying, “Help! Police!” Suddenly an older man wearing one of those straw boater hats bursts into Alice’s apartment and flies into a murderous rage—knocking over furniture, breaking glass, the works! It’s kill or be killed for poor Richard, and since they didn’t have anger management classes back in 1944, Richard fights back. To the horror of all concerned, Richard ends up killing Boater Hat Man in self-defense. They’re both panicky since Alice’s late sugar daddy was meeting her at the apartment on the sly. They pull themselves together and improvise a desperate plan to save their skins: if Richard leaves one of his belongings behind for Alice, and she leaves something for him, that’ll be a clue in case, God forbid, Richard doesn’t come back. In addition to the vest Richard opts to leave behind, Alice has another clue she only discovers after Richard bundles up Boater Hat’s corpse and leaves: his monogrammed pen!

I honestly didn't know where this joke came from --
the hubby had to show me!

Look who's playing Eddie G's son:
fellow Little Rascal Bobby Blake!

What a crazy party! Mama told me not to come! 

The suspense is nerve-wracking; every time Richard seems to have put the killing behind him, some new wrinkle emerges to taunt him. Will Richard’s loose brakes be our hero’s bad break? Will the critters who live along the Henry Hudson Parkway find the dead hothead has become a maggot condo? And what about Heidt (Duryea), the oily opportunist who smells an opportunity for blackmail? Things get worse when the dead man is finally found by the Bronx River Parkway Extension. He’s no Sterno bum that nobody will miss: he’s financier Claude Mazard (Arthur Loft from The Glass Key—and our other Fritz Lang Smackdown movie, Scarlet Street!), who was apparently always quick to anger. That’s what you get for underestimating quiet, unassuming college professors!

George “Spanky” McFarland of The Little Rascals/Our Gang has an uncredited role in TWitW, but it’s my favorite bit in the movie! He plays the Boy Scout in the newsreel who makes the gruesome discovery…

“I was practicing woodcraft in the woods just off the Bronx River Parkway Extension when I found Mr. Mazard’s remains. No, I was not scared. A Boy Scout is never scared. If I get the reward, I will send my younger brother to some good college, and I will go to Harvard.”

"Honest, dude, this isn't the WWE tryouts!"

Frank is on the case, and he brings Richard along, saying it’ll be an interesting adventure. But is he really trying to trap Richard, or is it plain old paranoia? It doesn’t help that our hero keeps slipping up and innocently commenting on incriminating evidence. I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn’t seen TWitW, but I will say the denouement either leaves audiences relieved, laughing, or furious. SPOILER-ISH: Personally, I like it, if only because I’m a sucker for a funny, upbeat ending!


 

Venerable film icon Fritz Lang

Scarlet Street (1945)
Named in honor of Greenwich Village’s famous Carmine Street, one of the world’s most celebrated art meccas, it’s almost a miracle that SS was able to be shown in neighborhood theaters at all back in 1945! It was initially banned in New York, Milwaukee, and Atlanta for fear that its “obscene, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious” subject matter might turn decent moviegoers everywhere into hordes of hooligans. In any case, SS eventually got away with minor cuts, and Joe and Josie Average could watch it in their hometown bijou and make up their own minds about the flick.

I like the stylized artwork here; perfect for phony Kitty!

Kitty and Johnny were lovers—and layabouts,
too busy with their “mad love” schtick to check
Chris’ bank account and see if he’s rich enough to sponge off of. 

Set in New York City, Robinson stars as our protagonist Christopher “Chris” Cross (no puns intended about Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train). As the film begins, Chris is being feted by his company for his 25 years of faithful service (or is that servitude?) as cashier for clothing retailer J.J. Hogarth & Company. Chris is happy as can be with his lovely inscribed pocket watch, and everything’s jake until Chris’ colleagues insist that their clean-cut compadre live a little. So he shares a smoke with them, and wouldn’t you know the men all light up using the same lit cigar, despite Chris’ superstitious reaction (including crossing his fingers)? Haven’t these guys ever seen Three on a Match? (If not, see FlickChick’s Three on a Match review over at A Person in the Dark from last fall!)  With life seemingly bypassing Chris and his cronies now that they’re nearing retirement age (I say they should stop whining and use their free time to mentor kids or something!), it’s no wonder they stare longingly, if not lasciviously, at the beautiful blonde in the big boss’ limo, clearly being pampered by her rich sugar daddy. But Chris has his own simple pleasures, like his hobby, painting—that is, when his harridan wife Adele (British character actress Rosalind Ivan) isn’t nagging him or reminiscing about her late heroic husband, Detective Homer Higgins, who drowned trying to save a woman in the East River. The pose in Homer’s portrait is hilariously pompous, and I love the dry disdain that slips into Chris’ tone when he says Homer’s name. It reminds me a bit of the scene in Witness for the Prosecution when Elsa Lanchester’s chirpy, peripatetic Miss Plimsoll chatters about her lawyer fiancee’s death: “Peritonitis set in, and he went like that (snapping her fingers).” Charles Laughton growls, “He certainly was a lucky lawyer.” Ever “supportive,” Adele constantly belittles his neo-primitive artwork, which others say lacks perspective. Too bad Adele didn’t join Homer in the East River! Sheesh, with all those negative, browbeating busybodies breathing down Chris’ neck, Michelangelo himself would be so distracted that he’d be lucky to finish drawing a stick figure, much less create a decent painting! It’s almost funny to hear Chris and his aging colleague Charlie (Samuel S. Hinds, whose resume includes Buck Privates; It’s a Wonderful Life; Call Northside 777) talk about having too much time on their hands, when nowadays so many people are either overscheduled or while away too much time on TV or the Internet. Can I get the free time that our hapless hero finds himself in, minus the agita?

Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Chris' dignity?

After the company dinner, Chris sets out for his Brooklyn apartment, and finds himself losing both his perspective and his sense of direction in the streets of Greenwich Village while he tries to find his way back home. (For those who aren’t familiar with the Village’s layout, things get tricky once you leave Manhattan’s numbered streets and find yourself confronting actual street names such as Perry Street, Barrow Street, and Houston Street, the latter being pronounced “House-ton.”) He comes across upon a pretty young brunette in a see-through raincoat who’s being assaulted by an equally young ruffian. Chris gets his Sir Galahad moment as he smashes the jerk with his umbrella in the great Foul Play tradition!
The brunette’s name is Katherine “Kitty” Marsh, a slightly naïve yet bold and beguiling brunette whose hints of tawdriness go sailing over Chris’ poor innocent head. For a tawdry dame, she sure has a smart Travis Banton wardrobe, especially after Chris becomes her sugar daddy. (For some reason, the IMDb doesn’t show Travis Banton’s SS screen credit, but you can read Christian Esquevin’s great 2010 “Batty for Banton” post over at Silver Screen Modiste!) Flattering our Gent of a Certain Age, Kitty coos, “You’re not so old…You’re not a boy, you’re just mature.” As they share a drink at local watering hole Tiny’s, Chris unwittingly talks about his love of painting in ways that mislead Kitty into thinking Chris is a man of financial means, and persuades Chris to get a gorgeous pad on the titular street that he can use to paint in peace. What’s more, the joint used to belong to renowned artist Diego Rivera, no less (including pictures he drew randomly around the house)!
Part of me wanted to hug Chris because I felt badly for him, while another side of me wanted to shake him by the shoulders, yelling, “Dude, snap out of it! That dame is trouble! Scram outta there and stay out, before it’s too late!” Besotted Chris doesn’t realize that the ruffian he smacked with his umbrella also happens to be the ironically-named Johnny Prince (Duryea), who happens to be Kitty’s boyfriend, though Kitty’s passing Johnny off as her friend/roomie Millie’s beau when Chris is around. People will say they’re in love, though the understandably cynical Millie (Margaret Lindsay from Jezebel; Bordertown; The Dragon Murder Case; The House of the Seven Gables; and the Ellery Queen movies of the 1940s) begs to differ, since it’s clear to her that Kitty and Johnny, shall we say, like it rough (maybe Kitty had an abusive childhood):

Millie: “That guy pushes you around the way I wouldn’t push a cat around.”
Kitty: “You wouldn’t know love it if hit you in the face.”
Millie (as Kitty storms out): “If that’s where it hits you, you oughta know!”

The look of love? Not for conniving Kitty!

What’s more, Kitty comes honestly by her nickname, “Lazy Legs.” She may have gorgeous Banton clothes, but with her apparent allergy to work (including housework), she won’t be seeking employment as a cleaning lady anytime soon! Things get even crazier when Johnny decides to get Chris’ paintings evaluated—and bona-fide art critics love them! In rapid succession, sly Johnny becomes Kitty’s agent; Adele sees the amazing art of “Katherine Marsh;” Chris finds out Kitty's been selling his paintings under an alias—and he’s thrilled, because now he thinks this will help him keep Kitty! I’ll say this for Chris: he sure knows how to take life’s lemons and make lemonade, without noticing any sour aftertaste.  It’s enough to keep your head spinning as screenwriter Nichols’ tangled but compelling web also encompasses Det. Homer Higgins (Charles Kemper of Intruder in the Dust, The Southerner, Where Danger Lives) who’s now a bum back from the dead (he couldn’t stand Adele, either, so he faked his death) and willing to stay that way—for a price. It all ends in betrayal, murder, misery, and frame-ups that stick. Alas, poor Chris’ basic decency is no match for his guilty conscience as the voices of the dead taunt him, dooming him to walk all over New York, homeless and hopeless. With the crazy twists and turns plot-wise and emotion-wise, at times it’s almost like a pitch-black comedy (not necessarily a bad thing)!

Wonder if this toenail-painting scene
gave Kevin Smith the idea for Clerks?

Even considering its then-controversial subject matter, SS certainly had an impressive pedigree, including a script by Dudley Nichols adapted from Jean Renoir’s 1931 French melodrama La Chienne (The Bitch). Nichols had already grabbed Hollywood’s attention when he won the Best Screenplay Oscar in 1936 for The Informer—and refused it, in order to show solidarity with his colleagues at The Screen Actors Guild, who were on strike at the time. I wonder if that’s what gave Marlon Brando the “Sacheen Littlefeather” idea back in the 1970s? (Nichols eventually got his Oscar statuette in his hot little hands in 1949.) Nichols went on to write such classic screenplays as Bringing Up Baby (1938), Stagecoach (1939), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and And Then There Were None (1945).  I found myself wishing that Ball of Fire’s Professor Potts and Sugarpuss O’Shea could’ve shown up to have an intervention with Chris before he got in too deep! Consider this a compliment, because it means Lang and Nichols made me care about these characters, especially poor hapless Chris. This role captures Robinson at his most endearingly, tragically vulnerable. How the man never won an Oscar in competition is one of the Academy’s mysteries. Yeah, I know Cary Grant and Myrna Loy and countless other greats didn’t get Oscars or even nominations, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. At least he reportedly knew he was going to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award before he died of cancer, though it’s a shame Eddie didn’t live long enough to enjoy even that honor. I’m glad we have so many of his movies to remember him by and enjoy, though!

Decision:  If you like your Fritz Lang film noirs with a spoonful of hope, chances are you'll love The Woman in the Window.  If you like your Fritz Lang noirs dark, with wry gallows humor, head for Scarlet Street.
See, there's something for everyone!

Bonus! !: George "Spanky" McFarland's show-stealing moment in The Woman in the Window!

DOUBLE INDEMNITY: The Secret Life of Walter Neff

When insouciant insurance salesman Walter Huff came over to the Nirdlinger house to renew Mr. N.’s insurance, he wasn’t in, but his wife was. This dame, Phyllis, was no perky housewife; for one thing, she greeted Walter wearing nothing but towels and a come-hither smile. Before you could say “accident insurance,” she was back with a honey of an anklet and Walter in the palm of her hand. So begins James M. Cain’s 1936 Liberty Magazine serial Double Indemnity (DI), in which Walter and Phyllis become adulterous lovers plotting to murder Nirdlinger and scam Walter’s insurance company. The Liberty serial eventually morphed into a best-selling 1943 novel. Even better, in Billy Wilder’s more-than-capable hands, it became a now-classic 1944 film noir, with the leads getting snappy new names: Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson. In fact, with all due respect to Cain, Wilder’s film version improves on the novel in many ways (thank goodness; it’s hard to read a hard-boiled suspense story about a killer named “Nirdlinger” and keep a straight face!). DI became a cinema classic almost in spite of itself, considering that its dark tone and scandalous subject matter freaked out Hollywood so much that it took 9 years to get DI from the printed page to the big screen!

Dick Powell, who was eager to change his then-crooner image, seemed to be the only leading man in Hollywood who was eager to tackle the role of antihero Walter Neff. But Double Indemnity was a Paramount production, and Powell was under contract to RKO at the time, so he had to wait until Murder, My Sweet to repurpose himself as a big-screen tough guy (and one of the best actors to play Raymond Chandler’s private detective Philip Marlowe, in my opinion).  It was Fred MacMurray, then best known for his breezy light comedy roles, who finally had the guts to take the role of insurance salesman-turned-murderer Walter Neff — but even MacMurray needed convincing at first. None of the other in-demand male stars of the period wanted Barbara Stanwyck’s conniving, money-loving, hubby-offing temptress Phyllis Dietrichson to make a chump out of him on screen. Their loss! It was quite a revelation to me when I saw DI for the first time, watching it on TV in my teens. I’d first seen MacMurray’s work back when he was best known to my generation as a wholesome Disney movie star and the lovable dad of TV’s My Three Sons. When I saw him playing underhanded types in DI, The Caine Mutiny, and another Wilder classic, The Apartment, I was both gobsmacked and impressed with MacMurray’s range. As a result, I was all the more disappointed that MacMurray was never even nominated for an Oscar for any of his stellar performances.

Director/co-screenwriter Wilder’s flair with suspense and black humor works perfectly with Cain’s storytelling style; it even improves on the book (which I read years ago). MacMurray and Stanwyck are dynamite in this, one of the most gleefully, unapologetically black-hearted noirs ever made. Their dialogue, especially in the first half of the movie, contains many of my favorite movie lines of all time — and of course, if I start quoting them all, I’ll pretty much be transcribing most of the script! The chemistry between Stanwyck and MacMurray blazes like the Chicago Fire as the wily, spellbinding Phyllis draws Walter into her web. As Richard Schickel points out in one of the two-disc DVD set’s pair of excellent audio commentaries, Stanwyck’s Phyllis is always reacting in the moment; as a result, you’re never sure whether she means a word she says, making her all the more fascinating. (To paraphrase a line from one of Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books: “I wouldn’t believe her if she swore she was lying!”) The words of Dashiell Hammett’s cynical Sam Spade to the equally slippery Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon could also apply to the quicksilver Phyllis: she’s good, awful good! Miklós Rózsa’s brassy yet brooding score accents the suspense perfectly. Edith Head’s costumes strike the right notes, too, despite Phyllis’s tacky fashion sense — but it works because Phyllis has a touch of trash about her that Walter seems to be drawn to, and Stanwyck is always mesmerizing no matter what.

Edward G. Robinson is DI’s crabby yet kind-hearted Voice of Reason in his portrayal of Barton Keyes, the Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company’s ace Claims Manager. As Keyes, Robinson is irresistible, with his zeal for detail, the “little man” in his gut giving him indigestion every time an insurance claim seems fishy, and his gruff affection for Walter. Heck, there’s almost more tenderness between Walter and Keyes than there is between Walter and Phyllis! If you ask me, the biggest crime in DI was the failure to nominate either of the male leads for an Oscar, especially scene-stealing Robinson, though at least the Academy was smart enough not to overlook the mesmerizing Stanwyck. For that matter, Robinson was never nominated for an Oscar for any of his superb performances. He was eventually given one of those special career Oscars, or as we like to call them here at Team Bartilucci H.Q., the “Yikes, He’s So Old He Could Croak Any Minute and He Still Hasn’t Gotten An Oscar? *D-OH!*” award.

Keyes, Keyes, he's our man! If he can't nail 'em, no one can!

DI boasts plenty of wonderful character bits, too; really, there isn’t a bum performance in the bunch! Our household’s DI faves include Fortunio Bonanova as Garlopis, whose phony insurance claim Keyes chews to bits “like a slice of rare roast beef;” and Porter Hall (from The Thin Man, among many others) as Jackson from Medford, Oregon, the jovial train traveler who innocently throws a wrench into the murder plot when he turns up on the train’s Observation Car while Walter pretends to be Phyllis’ injured, crutch-bound hubby. (Speaking of the crutches, is that opening credit sequence with the silhouetted, fedora’d figure on crutches one of the coolest credit sequences of all time, or what?) Any fans of The Thing from Another World who might be reading this shouldn’t blink when Walter lets Lola (the poignant Jean Heather) into his office at one point, or you’ll miss Douglas Spencer (with hair!) as Walter’s associate, Lou Schwartz, coming out at the same time.

Femme fatale Phyllis is so crooked,
even doors open the wrong way when she's around!

If you love the movie, you’ll go gaga over the DVD set’s nifty commentary tracks and extras. Among other things, we learn about the censorship issues in bringing Cain’s juicy, lurid tales to the big screen. For example, there were several European film versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice (including Luchino Visconti’s 1943 version, Ossessione, which works very well in its down-to-earth way) before Hollywood brought it to the big screen with John Garfield and Lana Turner in 1946. We’re also told about the different writing/working styles of Wilder and Raymond Chandler, who’d been hired to help adapt the story when Cain was under contract elsewhere, and Wilder’s then-collaborator Charles Brackett nixed the dark material. The experience became a collaboration made in hell for both Chandler and Wilder. For the record, I wouldn’t be surprised if Chandler was mostly to blame, since there are similar stories about him being just as difficult to work with during Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. (Hitch eventually brought in Ben Hecht’s assistant Czenzi Ormonde to finish/polish the SoaT script when Chandler took a hike.)

"Those dirty double-crossers are stealing our schtick!"

Disc 2 contains the 1973 TV movie remake of Double Indemnity (DI2), which is worth watching at least once, if only to appreciate how much better the original is! Wilder’s 1944 version rocks, but I'm afraid Jack Smight’s TV remake sinks like a stone. This isn’t film noir, it’s film blah! Still, both versions are worth a look for anyone who wants to learn how make a spellbinding film noir, because you learn a lot when you watch them back-to-back:

Samantha Eggar & Richard Crenna in the 1973 version. 

1. Just because your leading lady is pretty, it doesn’t automatically mean she’s irresistible enough to lead men to their doom. As the 1973 edition of femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, Samantha Eggar is very pretty. I’ll admit I liked Eggar’s long, lovely red hair better than Barbara Stanwyck’s trashy blonde wig. As a studio boss reportedly griped during the filming of the original DI, “I hire Barbara Stanwyck, and I get George Washington!” Eggar rocked that Lana Turner-style black turban she wears in the murder scene (and the entire black-and-white ensemble, for that matter). My dear late mom, who could rock a stylish hat and a turban like nobody's business, would have been proud! Nevertheless, Stanwyck exudes such sensual magnetism and charisma in the 1944 version, even that wig doesn’t keep Fred MacMurray from becoming putty in her hands. Eggar has been appealing in other roles, but while she’s undeniably pleasant to look at in DI2, I'm afraid she has all the carnal allure of an impatient English nanny; even Mary Poppins seems sexy and edgy compared to Eggar's performance here. Watching her try to be a sinful siren reminded me of the scenes in 1968’s Star! in which Julie Andrews tries to use her prim-and-proper, nigh-operatic tones to belt out torch songs and splashy Broadway production numbers: it’s not her style, and her discomfort shows. As a rule, discomfort isn’t sexy.

2. It don’t mean a thing if the leads ain’t got that zing.  That brings me to Eggar’s delivery; she always sounds vaguely bored and/or annoyed with Richard Crenna’s Walter Neff. In the original, even when Stanwyck was scolding or angry, somehow she seemed all the more fascinating. Her sultry voice, with just a trace of her native Brooklyn accent (from her lips, it sounded good!), was just as seductive as the rest of her. DI2 might be remembered as more than just a cinematic footnote if Eggar and Crenna had even a fraction of the chemistry that sizzles between Stanwyck and MacMurray; the latter was brilliant as a cynical smart-aleck whose street-smarts go out the window under this devious dame’s influence. It just goes to show that in a story like this, the best acting in the world won’t help if the leads don’t have chemistry and charisma.

3. A little moody atmosphere goes a long way in crime movies.  Despite the remake’s attractive locations, especially the Spanish-style accents in the opulent Dietrichson home (though I’d forgotten how prevalent the colors beige, harvest gold, and avocado green were back in the 1970s, not to mention blocky impressionistic artwork), DI2’s L.A. seems like a duller, less exciting place than DI’s original Los Angeles. The remake’s flat 1970s TV lighting and uninspired camera angles can’t hold a candle to the original’s menacing lighting effects and the great John Seitz’s photography, which looked almost like painting with shadows. Ironically, the 1973 update somehow feels more dated than the 1944 original — and if you listen carefully early on, you’ll realize the first film was actually set in 1938! DI2 does try for a bit of startling imagery here and there, though it’s made of cruder stuff than the sleek imagery of the original. For instance, the scene in which wounded, bleeding Walter tapes a confession for Keyes now opens on a close-up of Walter’s blood-stained cigarettes. Billy Goldenberg’s piano-and-strings music is somber enough, though it certainly won’t make you forget Miklós Rózsa’s powerful, brassy yet tender score for the original.

Kick the habit: Don't smoke bloodstained cigarettes!

Apart from Eggar’s forgettable performance, the good cast helps make DI2 fairly watchable, though far from a must-see except for nit-picky completists like me. As Walter Neff, Richard Crenna makes an amiable dupe who finds himself in over his head, though he doesn’t have MacMurray’s balance of insouciance and intensity (maybe Crenna should’ve worn a fedora :-)). Ironically, Crenna later played the rich husband-turned-murder victim in Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 noir Body Heat. Interesting note for vintage TV fans: when Crenna’s voice is cracking from the pain of his gunshot wounds during his confession-by-dictaphone, he often sounds distractingly like he did as a young man on the 1950s TV show Our Miss Brooks. John Fiedler and his “Piglet” voice suit Jackson-from-Medford delightfully. Lee J. Cobb’s portrayal of Barton Keyes is quite good, but also quite different from Edward G. Robinson’s approach. Unlike the energy and fighting spirit of Robinson’s performance, Cobb’s Keyes seems older and wearier. When he talks about how the “little man inside” upsets his stomach when he senses a phony claim, you really do get the feeling he’s about to throw up any minute! Don’t get me wrong, though; Cobb’s approach is quite effective in the context of the remake, especially since the remake as a whole has a lot less snap, crackle, and pop than the original. No wonder Cobb/Keyes has indigestion; maybe the poor man needs a nice soothing bowl of Rice Krispies. With a script by Steven Bochco and TV crime-show veteran Smight directing (he also did a nice job with theatrical suspensers Harper, Kaleidoscope, and No Way to Treat a Lady), you’d think DI2 would still be worth watching, but despite the occasional gripping moment, this ’70s show is still just polyester while the original is pure silk.

James M. Cain by Rick Geary

   
Here's a special treat: Double Indemnity bloopers!

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THE PRIZE: Swedish Mayhem

"C'mon, Eddie, do your Rico impression! Please?"

Thanks to the miracle of Print-on-Demand DVDs, one of my favorite Hitchcock pastiches, The Prize (1963), as in Nobel Prize, has become available from the Warner Archive. It couldn’t happen to a more entertaining movie! Loosely based on Irving Wallace’s best-selling 1962 novel, it’s quite appropriate that much of The Prize’s action takes place in Sweden’s Grand Hotel in Stockholm, since this lively, sophisticated yet impish international thriller plays like a cross between the classic movie adaptation of Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (my favorite film of all time, for those who came in late).

The folks at MGM clearly realized screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s witty dialogue would be as important to the success of The Prize as it was to Lehman’s Oscar-nominated screenplay for North by Northwest (1959), so they lavished The Prize with plenty of smart, snappy lines in addition to the time-honored glossy MGM production values. They also cast The Prize with many actors who’d worked with Hitchcock before and/or after they became part of the Prize package, like Paul Newman (more about his Hitchcock experience shortly); Marnie’s Diane Baker; The Birds’ Karl Swenson, along with veteran character actor John Qualen, as bickering room service personnel at the Grand Hotel; and frequent Hitchcock supporting player Leo G. Carroll as the Nobel committee’s outwardly calm but inwardly worried head honcho, Count Bertil Jacobsson. Virginia Christine of Folgers Coffee commercial fame briefly appears in The Golden Crown nightclub scene with Baker and friends and a wine chaser. (Fun fact: Ms. Christine was married to Fritz Feld of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and so many other comedies from 1940 to his death in 1993.) Fans of the classic private eye series 77 Sunset Strip (*snap snap*) may recognize Jacqueline Beer as another sexy secretary type, Monique, the mistress of Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Claude Marceau (Gérard Oury, renowned as a writer/actor/director in his native France). One of the more entertaining Nobel winner vignettes is a piquant running gag in which Newman as Andrew Craig, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, agrees to help fellow Nobel-prize winner Dr. Denise Marceau (Micheline Presle) pretend they’re having an affair to make her hubby and fellow Nobel-prize winner Claude jealous, culminating in an almost-naked Newman winding up in Denise’s suite with her slow-burning spouse—but I’m getting ahead of myself. The Prize is that kind of movie—very busy (mostly in a good way)! 

Between The Prize and Charade, 1963 was a great year for playfully glamorous Hitchcockian thrillers! Director of Photography William Daniels, who also did the honors for TV’s I Love Lucy and the Oscar-winning The Naked City, got to have fun with trick photography. Great driving symphonic score by Jerry Goldsmith, too, augmented here and there by musical riffs from Bernard Herrmann’s North by Northwest score and another musical riff I swear I’ve heard on Star Trek! Is it just me? Incidentally, I liked the way the filmmakers got past the language issues of the international cast of characters, as decreed by major domo Mrs. Ahlquist (Edith Evanson): “During Nobel Week, nothing but English is to be spoken, even when you quarrel…Now don’t let me hear another word about this, especially in Swedish!”

Paul Newman plays our charmingly sardonic hero, the hard-drinking, womanizing, and of course, Nobel-winning author Andrew Craig, honored for his novel The Perfect State. Indeed, according to the media montage in the film’s opening credits, Andrew is the youngest author to be thus honored since Rudyard Kipling. (Would that make fictional Andrew Craig the Nobel Prize equivalent of real-life youngest Best Actor Oscar-winner Adrien Brody? But I digress….) Andrew is just interested in the money — and maybe also Inger Lisa Andersson (Elke Sommer), the cool, beautiful blonde Foreign Office attaché assigned to keep his scamp tendencies in line. We can feel the chemistry beginning, but Inger Lisa isn’t going to make it easy for him:

Andrew: “How much do you know (about me)?”
Inger Lisa: “Your lack of regard for the Nobel Prize; your threat to turn it down; your decision to come to Stockholm only because fifty-thousand dollars…how did you put it in Time Magazine?”
Andrew: “‘Ain’t hay?’…Yes, I think you have caught the outer man, Miss Andersson. But bear in mind that nine-tenths of the iceberg is generally hidden from view.”
Inger Lisa: “In your case, it happens to be ice cubes.”

For Andrew, having Inger Lisa on his side is sheer delight!

When our irreverent hero gets around to schmoozing with his fellow Nobel Prize winners, he meets Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson, another Team Bartilucci favorite), the Nobel Prize winner in Physics. Dr. Stratman is a native German who reluctantly cooperated with the Nazis only to keep his family safe. The endearing Stratman gently chides Andrew in a warm, fatherly way about his flippant, mercenary approach to his Nobel honor. Andrew and Dr. Stratman agree to get together over a bottle of schnapps the next day. But what a difference a day makes: when they cross paths again at the Nobel press conference, Dr. S. acts as though he’s meeting Andrew for the first time! Little does Andrew know that after they said their goodbyes the night before, Eastern Bloc spies kidnapped the real Dr. Stratman to drag him back behind the Iron Curtain, replacing him with his lookalike brother (Robinson pulls double duty here; wonder if MGM paid him twice?), who plans to use the Nobel ceremony to denounce the West before Dr. Stratman “defects.” What’s worse, his lovely niece Emily Stratman (Baker) is playing ball with the bad guys. But Emily’s mercurial behavior is puzzling; is she really a modern-day Mata Hari, or do the bad guys have a hold over her, or what? It’s interesting to watch Emily’s expressions throughout the film, with her sweet face and shifty eyes always at odds with each other; it intrigues and amuses me (granted, I’m easy to please).

Meanwhile, Andrew grudgingly reveals his dirty little secret at the press conference: acclaimed though they are, Andrew’s literary novels haven’t been selling well — but the “private-eyewash” detective novels he writes under a pseudonym are selling like fresh hot pancakes with lingonberries! (Hey, Andrew, if you don’t want the pulp fiction gig, I’ll gladly take it, and so would any number of writers I know!) Skeptical interviewers ask Andrew for an example of his ability to find story material in whatever situation is at hand. Naturally, Andrew improvises a storyline about a Nobel prize winner — who just happens to be a lookalike imposter. You can almost hear the alarm bells going off for Emily and the counterfeit Stratman. Before you can say, “George Kaplan,” Emily, Off-Brand Stratman, and a couple of sinister fedora-wearing jaspers in trench coats are doing their damndest to screw up whatever shreds of credibility Andrew has left (ah, the time-honored “Hide the Corpse” gambit never gets old). Failing that, they’re happy to make Andrew a dead man who’ll tell no tales!

Winning the Nobel Prize turns life upside-down for author Andrew Craig (Paul Newman) when neo-Nazi thugs in Swedes’ clothing decide he’s a man who knows too much!

Our award-winning amateur sleuth thinks he’s finally catching a break in the case at the Nobel banquet. Andrew overhears the wife of fellow Nobel honoree Dr. John Garrett (Kevin McCarthy, yet another Team Bartilucci fave) as she mentions seeing a patient at the local sanitarium who looked like Stratman. This leads to more double-crossing Mata Hari antics from Emily, and the movie’s highlight: Andrew is chased at night from the sanitarium to a nudist conference, in a sequence that winks broadly at North by Northwest’s classic auction scene. According to the IMDb, an uncredited young Britt Ekland is in that nudist seminar as well. With so many attractive blondes in the audience, it was hard to tell one from the other. I wonder what Hitchcock would have said? (Perhaps, to quote The Producers, “Ah-woo-wah, ah-woo-ah-wah!”)

Ironically, Newman is more successful as a Hitchcockian hero in The Prize than he was in Hitchcock’s own Torn Curtain (1966), which had its moments, to be sure (like that great farmhouse scene; you’ll never look at your gas oven quite the same way again). But with its action-packed script, great dialogue, and appealing cast, The Prize is simply more fun than Torn Curtain. If you’re somehow listening in the hereafter, Sir Alfred, no offense intended; we still love you and your movies!

These hairbreadth escapes are getting Andrew's goat!

Not only does Newman let his funny flag fly, but he has delightful chemistry with the irresistible Elke Sommer, she of the eminently kissable lips, in one of her earliest big-screen roles. Sommer won a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, and the sultry yet ultimately sweet Diane Baker was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Director Mark Robson had worked with Lehman and Newman earlier in From the Terrace (1960), so I’m not surprised that they worked together so well on The Prize. 

Our hero's foe gets the point at Stockholm's Orpheus Fountain

As I mentioned earlier, the other Nobel honorees’ little subplots weave in and out of Andrew’s Hitchcockian hell. In addition to the jealousy charade that Andrew and Denise Marceau pull on Claude Marceau, the Nobel Prize for Medicine gets split as well, since the recipients all came by their findings independently; Dr. Garrett is hell-bent on proving that Italian doc Carlo Farelli (Sergio Fantoni from Luchino Visconti’s Senso) cribbed his research. Farelli brings his aging mother (Grazia Narciso, who guest-starred on Peter Gunn and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, among others) to Stockholm with him, though she seems to be there primarily as a sight gag. Sometimes all these mini-plots result in what Joe Bob Briggs would describe as “the plot getting in the way of the story” but they’re well-acted and entertaining overall. 

Elke Sommer wins Golden Globe over nominee Diane Baker.
Does that mean blondes really do have more fun?

The Grand Hotel has everything, including half-naked Paul Newman!