Bekstva (1968)

Yugoslavia / 94 minutes / color / Avala Dir: Rados Novakovič Scr: Rados Novakovič, Muharem Pervič Story: Bekstva (1966) by Oskar Davičo Cine: Nenad Jovicič Cast: Dusan Djurič, Bata Zivoinovič, Ljuba Tadič, Slavko Simič, Zlatko Madunič, Rastislav Jovič, Slobodan Aligrudič, Josif Tatič, Julije Perlaki, Mida Stevanovič, Ljudmila Lisina, Slavka Jerinič.

A prison movie of peripheral noir relevance but of interest because of its unusual setting—a Serbian prison during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941–5—and its subtext. In the opening credits we learn that the movie celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Communist Party, and the prisoner protagonists, captured Yugoslav Partisans, are all communists of greater or lesser fervor. The prisoners and their jailers are assuming that in the not too distant future the penitentiary’s administration will be taken over by the Ustaše, the Croatian version of the Gestapo, at which time the miseries and cruelties will inevitably intensify manifold.

We see events through the eyes of Slobodan Radenik (Djurič), who is probably representative of novelist Davičo himself. He arrives at the penitentiary almost looking forward to his sentence because he knows he’ll be spending it in the company of legendary communist resistance figure Vitor (Zivoinovič). After a beating from the guards lends him in the infirmary, Slobodan has sex with a visiting nun (possibly his girlfriend in disguise?) as they watch an old man die—one of several small surrealist flourishes that ameliorate the movie’s prevalent grimness. Soon he’s fairly well integrated with his fellow communist inmates, who engage in constructive dialectic as a matter of course whenever there’s a decision to be made, although most often bowing to the inclinations of Vitor, who serves as local party secretary. A hunger strike promoted by Vitor brings them a relaxation of the regime.

Croatian Communist Antun Dezman (Julije Perlaki) would rather die under Croatian bullets than betray his Serbian and other comrades to the fascist Ustase.

But then the status quo is thrown into turmoil by the arrival of Troskot (Tadič), another politically heavyweight communist; we learn in due course that Vitor sheltered him from the cops for weeks before Vitor himself was arrested . . . at which time, although Vitor never formally learns this, Troskot immediately took advantage of his absence to force himself on Vitor’s wife Mara (Jerinič). In the prison, when Troskot engineers Vitor’s downfall as party secretary, succeeding to the post himself, Vitor chooses solitary confinement to the continued society of the other communists; he eventually taunts a guard into shooting him dead as he heads off toward open country and freedom.

Slobodan becomes regarded as an expert on tunneling. We understand there was an abortive attempt earlier to excavate a way out of the prison from one of the network of pipes and sewers that lies underneath the complex. This time the efforts of Slobodan and his colleagues look destined for more success, but then the project is hijacked for political gain by Troskot and his toady Jernej (Jovič), who now seek the downfall of Slobodan’s best friend, the professorial Krajinovič (Simič), a thoughtful rather than slavishly doctrinaire, obedient communist.

Troskot and Jernej stage a show trial in which they plan the condemnation of Krajinovič; when Slobodan declines to cooperate, they try to accuse him as well of betrayal of the comrades. This backfires in a big way when the newcomer Grujič (Tatič), sent by Central Committee, exposes their conspiracy as a tissue of lies aimed at consolidating Troskot’s power. But Slobodan must live with the guilty knowledge that he came within a whisker of speaking out falsely against his best friend . . .

Tensions escalate as a planned mass breakout comes to nothing because of lukewarm support from the Party hierarchy outside and as a flood collapses Slobodan’s tunnel. Grujič manages—just—to save the life of the mentally unstable prisoner Albrecht (Aligrudič), whom others seek to kill lest he betray them to the guards. From time to time the comrades hear the sounds of firing squads at work in the prison yard. And then the dreaded Ustaše arrive, intent on shipping the comrades to a death camp.

In the nick of time the floodwaters retreat, and our friends escape through Slobodan’s tunnel into the welcoming arms of the partisan SKOJ (Savez Komunisticke Omladine Jugoslavije/Young Communist League of Yugoslavia), sent to save them.

The movie’s title translates from the Serbian as “escapes”; I’m not sure if this refers to other events than the obvious attempts to break out of the penitentiary. For a movie produced in a communist country, Bekstva is refreshingly open about the way that Communism can all too easily be perverted by the corrupt and power-crazed, personified here by Troskot and Jernej. The editing uses an odd but quite effective way of indicating flashbacks and the like: a momentary flooding of the image with pink, almost as if the film had suffered a processing error.

Although it has its longueurs, especially in the first half as the comrades discuss ad nauseam the pros and cons of various decisions, Bekstva‘s overall effect is quietly impressive, aided considerably by a sensitive central performance from Djurič, who’s more than ably supported.

The movie doesn’t seem available on Amazon.com, but Davičo’s book is listed: BEKSTVA

You’re Out of Luck (1941)

JUST A REMINDER THAT ALL MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS COPYRIGHT

US / 58 minutes / bw / Monogram Dir: Howard Bretherton Pr: Lindsley Parsons Scr: Edmund Kelso (i.e., Edmond Kelso) Cine: Fred Jackman Jr. Cast: Frankie Darro, Kay Sutton, Mantan Moreland, Vicki Lester (i.e., Vickie Lester), Richard Bond, Janet Shaw, Tristram Coffin, Willie Costello, Alfred Hall, Paul Maxey, Ralph Peters.

The sixth of the eight movies Darro and Moreland made together for Poverty Row studio Monogram; although the name and specifics of Darro’s character might change from one outing to the next, these movies essentially form a series of comedy thrillers/mysteries. They have minimal but not zero noir interest. The others, which I’ll get round to including here in Noirish in due course, were:

Irish Luck (1939)
Chasing Trouble (1940)
On the Spot (1940)
Laughing at Danger (1940)
Up in the Air (1940)
The Gang’s All Here (1941)
Let’s Go Collegiate (1941)

The Daily Star-Tribune—in the ample shape of reporter Pete (Maxey)—is on the necks of the cops because of the latter’s seeming inability to cope with the rising rates of gambling-related crime in the city. When gambler Hal Dayton (uncredited) is gunned down in the parking lot of the Carlton Arms apartment block, the witnesses are elevator boy Frankie O’Reilly (Darro) and his janitor pal Jeff Jefferson (Moreland). The crime’s investigated by Det.-Lt. Tom O’Reilly (Bond), Frankie’s elder brother, who has a thing going with the Arms’s receptionist, Margie Overton (Sutton).

When going through the Rogues’ Gallery at the precinct house, Frankie and Jeff recognize the man who shared the penthouse with Dayton, Dick Whitney (Coffin); in police records he’s named as Roger C. Whitman. The pair follow Whitney/Whitman to the Ringside Club, where he extracts from clubowner Johnnie Burke (Costello) the $60,000 in winnings that Burke owes the dead man. Before being himself murdered, Whitney/Whitman gives the money to Frankie and Jeff to pass on to Dayton’s sister Joyce (Shaw); but Whitney/Whitman’s sultry moll Sonya Varney (Lester) is forced by Burke to pretend to be Joyce . . .

Things go worse for our pals before their inevitable triumph over the bad guys. It’s all fairly amiable, alternating between amusing and tiresome. The racial stereotyping of Moreland’s character, portrayed as capable of being no more than a simpleton because black, grates more than a little; though on the plus side the relationship between Frankie and Jeff is depicted as a genuine friendship and Moreland’s always good value.

o/t: they’re here!

My author advance copies of A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir have arrived, and I have to admit it looks pretty damn’ splendid!

My wife promptly snapped a photo of me cradling my new baby . . .

On Amazon.com: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir: The Essential Reference Guide (shirt extra)

Young Dynamite (1937)

US / 58 minutes / bw / Conn Dir: Leslie Goodwins Pr: Maurice Conn Scr: Joseph O’Donnell, Stanley Roberts, Arthur Duriam Story: “The New Freedom” (1927, Cosmopolitan; vt “For His Money”) by Peter B. Kyne Cine: John Kline Cast: Frankie Darro, Kane Richmond, Charlotte Henry, William Costello, David Sharpe, Carlton Young (i.e., Carleton Young), Pat Gleason, Frank Austin, Frank Sarasino, Earl Dwire.

The government is clamping down on gold hoarding, and the gang ostensibly headed by Flash Slavin (Costello) is using the situation to mount a racket. When Flash’s sidekicks Butch Barker (Gleason) and Spike Dolan (Young) murder a gold smuggler rather than pay his price, the State Troopers are soon on the case.

New to the Troopers that day is Johnny Shields (Sharpe), to the delight of his sister Jane (Henry) and her fiancé Corporal Tom Marlin (Richmond), another Trooper; Johnny’s kid brother Freddie (Darro) feigns ennui, but is soon running a campaign of his own to catch the crooks.

The next victim of Butch and Spike is Johnny . . . a demise that, bizarrely, appears to affect Freddie, Jane and Tom not at all, for that evening they’re clowning and joking just like always! Obviously, Freddie and Tom eventually snare the bad guys, Jane conveniently disappearing (bridge night, perhaps?) when her presence might hamper events.

The intent is clearly to give the character played by ex-child actor, ex-silents star Darro an appealing irrepressible-trickster quality, but he comes across as merely brattish—and also as far older than the teenager he’s supposed to be (he was 20 by now). Story and screenplay tend toward the clichéd—it’s hardly a surprise when the gang’s real boss proves to be the Shields’s purportedly crippled lodger Endebury (Austin). The dialogue has on occasion a certain naive charm, as when Spike tells elderly simpleton farmer Finnegan (Dwire): “Listen, whiskerpuss, don’t move from this spot or I’ll plug ya!” There’s a fairly depressing lack of ambition on display: the moviemakers seem to have aimed only as high as mediocrity and been perfectly content to fall short of that target. For Henry it was a long way down from such roles as Alice in the all-star Alice in Wonderland (1933).

Author Peter B. Kyne was best known for his The Three Godfathers (1913), which has been adapted for the screen a number of times, most famously as 3 Godfathers (1948) dir John Ford, with John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Harry Carey Jr.

 

On Amazon.com: Young Dynamite

Xun Qiang (2002)

vt The Missing Gun

China / 89 minutes / color with some brief bw / China Film Group, Huayi & TaiHe Dir & Scr: Lu Chuan Pr: Yang Buting, Wang Zhongjun Story: “The Search for a Missing Gun” (n.d.) by Fan Yiping Cine: Xie Zhengyu Cast: Jiang Wen, Ning Jing, Wu Yujuan, Liu Xiaoning, Shi Liang, Wei Xiaoping, Pan Yong, Wang Xiaofan, Huang Fan, Li Haibin.

Waking up the morning after getting outrageously drunk at the wedding of his sister Juan (Huang), small-town cop Ma Shan (Jiang) discovers his police-issue gun is missing—a matter of such deep shame that his entire squad will be punished because of the loss. His sister and her new husband, Liang Qingshan (Haibin), are as incapable of remembering what happened the night before as Shan is himself, and he doesn’t get much help from old friends who were there, such as restaurateur/caterer Chen Jun (Liu) and Old Xiang/Old Tree Ghost (Pan), who claims to have saved Shan’s life many times during the war.

The trail next takes Shan to the home of spivvish Zhou Xiaogang (Shi), who Shan discovers is living with the pretty Li Xiaomeng (Ning), a lover who long ago dumped Shan to marry someone else, but who’s now divorced . . . and still capable of casting a spell over him.

Shan confesses his loss to his superiors and is stripped of his uniform. Continuing to investigate, he discovers that one of Zhou’s crooked enterprises is an illicit liquor factory. When Xiaomeng is found shot with Shan’s gun, his bosses identify him as Suspect #1. However, Zhou, in whose presence she was gunned down, stipulates that Shan wasn’t the killer, and it’s soon obvious that the target was Zhou himself, who shoved Xiaomeng into the path of the bullet.

Deciding to set a trap for the killer, Shan ties up Zhou and, wearing his clothes, takes a bus to the nearby train station, making believe he plans to head out of town. There he’s shot by the noodle-seller Liu the Stutterer (Wei), who thinks he’s Zhou; Liu has lost friends and family to the toxic illicit liquor Zhou sells, and has been seeking revenge.

This noirish tragicomedy could hardly be more different in style from the contemporary offerings of HK cinema; there’s little of the pace and professional sheen you’d expect of something from China’s far better-known movie-production center. This is no adverse criticism: Xun Qiang is in many ways far more interesting and entertaining than the general run of HK noirish thrillers. The first quarter-hour or so can seem pretty disorienting, as the movie seems uncertain as to quite where it’s headed; but thereafter the pace picks up, and the narrative has a happy knack of being able to mix bright humor with genuinely affecting pathos without the combination ever seeming to be a mismatch.

We also witness a China that’s rather distant from the gleaming people’s utopia we might have expected. Shan’s village is pretty run down, and the school of his child Dong (Wang) is missing a few windows. On the plus side, it’s made clear that one of the reasons the loss of Shan’s gun is such a big deal is that there are so few guns available in Chinese society, so that even the three bullets in the lost weapon are significant.

The movie was recognized as Film of Merit at the Shanghai Film Critics Awards, where Jiang won as Best Actor. The theme of a cop questing for his shamefully missing gun is shared with Kurosawa’s classic Japanese noir NORA INU (1949; vt Stray Dog).

On Amazon.com: The Missing Gun or Xun qiang

Within These Walls (1945)

US / 72 minutes / bw / TCF Dir: Bruce Humberstone Pr: Ben Silvey Scr: Eugene Ling, Wanda Tuchock Story: Coles Trapnell, James B. Fisher Cine: Glen MacWilliams, Clyde DeVinna Cast: Thomas Mitchell, Mary Anderson, Edward Ryan, Mark Stevens, B.S. Pully, Roy Roberts, Harry Shannon, Charles Trowbridge.

It’s 1943 and the State Penitentiary at Arcadia is riven with breakouts and disturbances. At the forefront of those demanding a change in the prison regime is Judge Michael Howland (Mitchell); the state governor, Edward Rice (Trowbridge), responds by appointing Howland the prison’s new warden. Despite the evident doubts of Deputy Warden Mac McCafferty (Shannon), Howland institutes a hardline regime, prescribing brutal punishments of rock breaking and solitary for even relatively minor infractions; he’s in denial of the fact that analogous methods of people-management have destroyed his relationship with teenaged son Tommy (Ryan).

Eventually Tommy cuts loose from the family ties; by the time he reappears a couple years later he’s calling himself Frank O’Reilly and is facing a long stretch in the pen for his part in a holdup. His elder sister Anne (Anderson), who has always tried to reconcile father and son, has by now fallen for convicted embezzler Steve Purcell (Stevens). When she lets slip to Tommy that Steve took the fall for his brother, Tommy passes the information to tough con Marty Deutsch (Roberts), who uses it to blackmail Steve into assisting a breakout . . . By the time it’s all over, Tommy, Marty and a pair of prison guards are dead, but at least Howland has seen the folly of his rigid hardline tactics.

There are moments in this extremely modest borderline noir when our temporarily suspended disbelief comes crashing to the ground. At a trivial level, there are glitches such as that, when Tommy emerges from two weeks in The Hole, he’s still clean-shaven. A more persistent problem is that the very lovely, seemingly maidenly Anne swans around the prison in tight skirts and the like without sending the place into a state of perpetual riot.

Mitchell’s pretty dud in this, but Anderson and Ryan are really quite good (although Ryan’s death scene is worth avoiding). Oddly, both had fairly abbreviated movie careers. Anderson won a star on the Walk of Fame in 1960, by which time her movie days were numbered; after DANGEROUS CROSSING (1953) she did nothing but TV work save a small role in the thriller Jet Over the Atlantic (1959). She’s probably best known today, if at all, for her appearance as Catherine Harrington in 12 episodes of the TV shocker Peyton Place (1964–9). Ryan’s even greater obscurity is just as perplexing. He was a minor child actor who became a minor adult actor, playing uncredited parts until getting a break in the patriotic US Navy movie The Fighting Sullivans (1944). Most of his movies were fillers like Within These Walls; by 1949 his very occasional appearances were once more largely uncredited, exceptions being his bit part in the Bowery Boys movie Angels in Disguise (1949) and an embarrassing blackface cameo in Hollywood Varieties (1950).

Trance (2013)

UK / 101 minutes / color with brief bw / Pathé, Fox Searchlight Dir: Danny Boyle Pr: Christian Colson Scr: Joe Ahearne, John Hodge Story: Joe Ahearne Cine: Anthony Dod Mantle Cast: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson, Danny Sapani, Matt Cross, Wahab Sheikh, Mark Poltimore, Tuppence Middleton.

“There is a painting. It’s by Rembrandt. Storm on the Sea of Galilee, it’s called, and he’s in it. Old Rembrandt—he’s in the painting. He’s in there, right in the middle of the storm, looking straight out at you. But you can’t see him. And the reason you can’t see him is because the painting has been stolen. Lots of paintings have been stolen . . .”

These words, done in voiceover by Simon Newton (McAvoy), a staffer at the upscale London auction house Delancy’s, introduce what looks at first glance as if it’ll be a standard art-heist movie; in fact, it’s anything but.

Yes, it starts with an armed robbery from Delancy’s. As he has been drilled to do, Simon takes the most valuable piece in sight, the Goya painting Witches in the Air, puts it in a case, and heads with it and two colleagues toward the dropslot for the time-release safe. As they reach it, though, they’re intercepted by the robber gang’s ringleader, Franck (Cassel). There’s an altercation involving a grossly incompetent attempt to use a taser, and Franck knocks Simon unconscious.

Franck, confronting Simon as the latter heads for the dropslot.

The next we see of Simon he’s in hospital being treated for partial amnesia. On his eventual release he finds his flat trashed, and almost immediately he’s picked up by Franck and henchmen Nate (Sapani), Riz (Sheikh) and Dominic (Cross). It proves Simon was the inside man for the heist but managed to appropriate and hide the painting somewhere between the auction room and the dropslot. Franck and company torture him grievously to tell them where the painting is before becoming convinced he has genuinely forgotten.

The answer to that problem seems to be hypnosis. Franck, who may be ruthless when need be but is no monster, tells Simon to pick whichever hypnotherapist he’d like from the directory, and so Simon selects Harley Street practitioner Elizabeth Lamb (Dawson)—for no real reason except that he likes the name. (The photo accompanying the listing might have helped too.) At his first consultation he claims to be David Maxwell, amnesic after a mugging and trying to find his car keys. Elizabeth seems startled by him, but the session goes well and, once home, he does indeed locate . . . a set of car keys. Not the outcome—i.e., the painting—that the gang was hoping for.

At the next consultation it becomes obvious that Elizabeth recognizes Simon—supposedly from newspaper photos after the heist—and she spots the microphone through which the rest of the gang are listening in on the conversation. Soon she cuts herself into the gang’s enterprise and, working as a team—Simon included—they try various hyponetherapeutic techniques to extract Simon’s memories of what he’s done with the painting. For the audience things are—deliberately—made confusing, as quite often we’re not sure if we’re witnessing reality or Simon’s fantasies/dreams. We discover for sure, though, that, a compulsive gambler, he approached Franck with the idea for the heist in consideration of Franck paying off all his gambling debts. We also learn that Simon in fact recovered from being knocked out, stumbled into the street and, while receiving a text message, was bowled over by a red Alfa Romeo whose driver (Middleton) picked him up and offered to drive him to the hospital.

And we discover, too, something we hadn’t known about Elizabeth—that, however much she might seem today to be in complete control of events around her, she has not long rid herself of an abusive boyfriend. What she did, apparently, was hypnotize the abusive lover into forgetting all about her . . .

Simon tries to rid himself of Franck.

There’s more, much more, to the plot. Toward the end of the movie, there’s a long monologue/infodump from Elizabeth explaining—not necessarily reliably—the true meaning of the events we’ve seen (unsurprisingly, there’s been a godgame in progress, but it’ll take us a while longer to be certain of who’s godgaming whom); this is probably the weakest moment in the movie because the effect of delivering so much revelation to us in a single blurt is merely to convince us that the plot is ludicrously more elaborate than a movie plot ought to be. Yet, later, the final resolution comes as a perfect satisfaction, as if we shouldn’t be caviling about the earlier stumbles.

Another example of this dichotomy in the movie between excellence and amateurishness: while Trance overall is visually very striking, the cinematography and shot selection quite superb, there’s one odd little clumsy sequence where the camera coyly teases us by not quite showing us a fully naked Franck, as if we were schoolgirls peeping agog between our fingers in hopes of seeing his willy. Yet there’s also one of the very few examples in neonoir of a scene of full-frontal female nudity being entirely justified by the plot, rather than just a cheap thrill.

There’s a way out: Elizabeth offers Franck the Trance app.

There are strong performances from all three principals, with Dawson — as a very likeable (and unusually intelligent) femme fatale — being especially magnetic. (She and director Boyle briefly became a couple after shooting the piece.) The movie is an elaborated remake of Trance (2001 TVM) dir and scr Joe Ahearne, with John Light, Neil Pearson and Susannah Harker.

On Amazon.com: Trance (Dvd.2013)

While the Patient Slept (1935)

US / 66 minutes / bw / Warner, Clue Club, First National, Vitaphone Dir: Ray Enright Scr: Robert N. Lee, Eugene Solow, Brown Holmes Story: While the Patient Slept (1930) by Mignon G. Eberhart Cine: Arthur Edeson Cast: Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee, Lyle Talbot, Patricia Ellis, Allen Jenkins, Robert Barrat, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dorothy Tree, Henry O’Neill, Russell Hicks, Helen Flint, Brandon Hurst, Eddie Shubert, Walter Walker, Virginia Howell.

Patriarch Richard Federie (Walker) is elderly and ailing, and the family are gathering at the old ancestral pile—all except reprobate son Charles (Barrat), who’s serving time for manslaughter. On getting a telegram from Charles to say that he too is coming home, Richard has a stroke; family physician Dr. Jay (Hicks) gives an optimistic prognosis, and nurse Sarah Keate (MacMahon) is called to Federie Manor to tend the comatose patient.

That evening, in turn, family lawyer Elihu Dimuck (O’Neill), Richard’s beloved granddaughter March (Ellis), Charles’s twin brother Adolphe (Barrat again), Richard’s niece Mittie (Tree) and unparticularized family member Eustace (Cavanaugh) each requests Sarah that they be the first to be informed should the old man wake.

During the night, as Sarah slumbers on a couch in the room where Richard lies, Adolphe creeps in, takes from the mantelpiece an ornamental green elephant in which, as we later discover, a vital clue is concealed, and then, as he seeks to depart, is gunned down by an unknown figure.

Sarah (MacMahon) prepares to fire a decoy shot.

The cops arrive in the shape of Sarah’s old acquaintance and romantic aspirant Det.-Lt. Lance O’Leary (Kibbee), his irritatingly loud-mouthed dimwit sidekick Sgt. Jim Jackson (Jenkins, playing exactly the same role he did in many other movies) and Detective Muldoon (Shubert). They and the plot bumble along, O’Leary seeming so clueless that at one point Sarah tells him, “Well, the fact that you suspect me is all the defense I need.” Just as O’Leary’s about to arrest the butler, Grondal (Hurst), who’s discovered to have a police record and an old feud with Adolphe, Grondal is found strangled . . .

Eberhardt’s novel, her second, won the reportedly prestigious Scotland Yard Award, but you sure wouldn’t guess it from this farrago. It’s hard to believe the script wasn’t originally written as a stage play, then lazily filmed without alteration. About the only things the movie has going for it are MacMahon’s performance and the wisecracking chemistry she shares with Kibbee.

By movie’s end, although the mystery is supposedly solved, we’re left with various unanswered questions. For example, did Ross Lonergan (Talbot) arrive at the house because summoned by sweetheart March, as we’re first told, or to try to recover a hefty debt owed to him and his father by Adolphe, as is next spelled out? And, although it seems reasonable that March be Richard’s grandchild, she appears to have no parents: it’s made quite clear that she’s not the offspring of any of the other Federies. Oops.

 

On Amazon.com: While the Patient Slept