FRANTIC. Nouvelles Éditions de Films (NEF), 1958, as “Ascenseur pour l’échafaud.” Aka Elevator to the Gallows. Maurice Ronet, Jeanne Moreau, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin, Jean Wall. Based on the novel by Noël Calef (Paris, 1956). Director: Louis Malle.

   Frantic is a typically French Crime Drama, filled with clever turns that kept me guessing right up to the end. Ronet is an ex-war hero, Moreau the wife of his wealthy bastard of a boss, and they’re so magnetic together I kept rooting for them to get away with that pre-doomed plot-hook of the genre, the “perfect murder.”

   To tell anything at all about how their well-planned crime works out would be to spoil a genuinely ingenious piece of work. Indeed, watching it, I thought for a moment that the writer or director (or both) had taken leave of the story to pursue a hodge-podge of irrelevant detail — only to have everything tied together in a finish that left me gasping.

STREET CORNER. J. Arthur Rank, 1953. Released in the US as Both Sides of the Law, Universal Pictures, 1954. Peggy Cummins, Terence Morgan, Anne Crawford, Rosamund John, Barbara Murray, Sarah Lawson, Ronald Howard. Screenplay by Muriel Box & Sydney Box. Director: Muriel Box.

   I don’t know how common it was for a British film in the early 1950s to have a female director, but I have a feeling there weren’t many of them. Looking at Muriel Box’s list of directing credits, and there were 15 of them, the only one that catches my eye is Rattle of a Simple Man (1964), and that the last one she did.

   Street Corner was the second, and I don’t know what the title means, but I purchased this on DVD as being a noir film, and to tell you the truth, I’m not so sure about that either. What Street Corner is, when it really comes down to it, is a rather nitty-gritty portrayal of London’s women police as they go about their everyday duties, told in stark black-and-white documentary style.

   Let’s get back to the word “noir,” though. Life in Britain after the war was often a struggle, and this movie, shot every so often on outdoor locations, reflects that struggle a lot more than you’d able to learn about it from only reading books about it.

   Cramped quarters, when you could find quarters, vacant lots, life on the make (and on the take) and even life without much hope, that was England in 1953, even without a scriptwriter concocting up a story to go with it.

   The women who are policemen in Street Corner are largely anonymous. In these early days of the very concept of female officers, in this film they are treated as though they were the women’s auxiliary.

   I couldn’t match any of their names (fictitious) to the actresses (real) who played them, perhaps by design. The stories – three of them, otherwise unconnected – are what’s designed to catch the viewer’s interest:

   (1) A young married woman (Peggy Cummins) with a small child and her husband on the road is tempted into world of far more glamour by a young hoodlum looking for a score. (2) A young girl goes AWOL from the Army to come to the assistance of her ill new husband. (3) A three-year-old girl is left alone to fend for herself in a dingy apartment by her uncaring father and stepmother.

   Peggy Cummins, last seen and written about by me for her role in Escape (reviewed here ), continues to impress me as an actress. Her career didn’t go all that far, however. It was essentially over in 1961 when she was only 36.

GIRLS IN CHAINS. PRC, 1943. Arline Judge, Roger Clark, Robin Raymond, Barbara Pepper, Clancy Cooper, Allan Byron, Sidney Melton, Emmett Lynn, Richard Clarke. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer.

   The title, first of all is a misnomer. The girls in the reform facility in this rather limp feature film, from one of Hollywood’s legendary bottom-of-the barrel movie studios, are all in their late 20s if not rather obvious 30s, and there are no chains. (I accept the title either as a metaphor, or if not that, then as obvious over-the-top hyperbole.)

   Second of all, however, is that when Sid Melton (Ichabod Mudd in the Captain Midnight TV series) is the only name you spot right off the bat when you start running down through the credits, then you know that Girls in Chains is not going to be a big-budget extravaganza. It is not even a low-budget extravaganza. (I accept the fact that it may be my fault for not recognizing the names of the two leading stars, but I am always willing to learn, and next time I will.)

   There is a lot of story in this movie’s 75 minutes of running time (which I am told it took only five days to shoot), and every once in a while there are some good scenes. Viewers on IMDB have taken a great dislike to this film, but using a sledgehammer to demolish it from one end of the room to the other seems like overkill to me. I have seen worse.

   The story? Well, it’s complicated, and nicely so. When Helen Martin (Arline Judge, she of the magnificent upsweep bird’s nest hairdo)) is fired from her teaching job because her sister is married to low-life criminal boss Johnny Moon (Allan Byron, who has the whole town wrapped up in his left side back pocket), a friendly police officer (Roger Clark, bland beyond belief) gets her another teaching job, this one at the local girls’ reformatory, where the warden is on Moon’s payroll, but scamming the books on him. More? Johnny Moon’s latest girl friend on the side (Robin Raymond) is about to land in the very same slammer on a shoplifting charge.

   Life behind bars is tough enough, with a handful of prison cells for the worst of the offenders, but mostly it’s the laundry room and the barest of dorm rooms for the rest. After discovering early on what she’s up against, Helen is persuaded to work undercover to get the goods on the warden and Johnny Moon, and I suppose that this is all you need to know about the plot.

   Overall, Girls in Chains is a strange mixture of funny moments with, let us say, strange takes on courtroom scenes plus puzzling mobster mistakes, with at least one tense situation for the undercover Helen Martin going absolutely nowhere.

ESCAPE. 20th Century Fox, UK, 1947. Rex Harrison, Peggy Cummins, William Hartnell, Norman Wooland, Jill Esmond, Betty Ann Davies. Based on a play by John Galsworthy. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

   I don’t know about you – and there’s absolutely no reason I should – but when I think of Rex Harrison, I think of My Fair Lady. I’ve seen him in other films, I know, and so have you, I’m sure, but to me, Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins was such a defining role, it dwarfs anything else he ever did in comparison.

   There are scenes in Escape, however, in which Mr. Harrison is nearly 180 degrees the polar opposite of the impeccably dressed Henry Higgins, and which (perhaps) I will remember for an equally long time.

   Playing an escaped prisoner named Matt Denant, his headlong flight across the rough rural English countryside means watching him splash his way through numerous small rivers and streams, snatching food up from wherever and whenever he can, and ending up thoroughly covered with as much dirt and mud as you can possibly imagine.

   Convicted of manslaughter – having accidentally caused the death of an overly officious bobby accusing a young woman in a public park of being a prostitute (this aspect of the film portrayed discreetly – it is up to audience to come to their own conclusion that that is what she is), Matt Denant is (was) a well-to-do former fighter pilot in World War II. That he was unjustly imprisoned he is utterly convinced — and so, for that matter, is the audience, foursquare and solidly.

   And audiences ought to be trusted. They recognize and know the rigid, inflexible hand of justice when they see it. But one man fleeing a pack of bloodhounds on his trail needs assistance. Denant cannot do it alone, and coming to his aid (somewhat mystifyingly, even to herself) is a young socialite girl named Dora Winton (Peggy Cummins), who is engaged to be married, but who also sees in Denant a fox at the fox’s end of a fox hunt.

   William Hartnell, later of Dr. Who fame, plays the plodding Inspector Harris, intelligently and fairly but also unwaveringly, in the solid English tradition.

   Escape is most definitely belongs to the film noir category, one that’s nicely done, British style, but also one that’s slightly undone by the uplifting scene that takes place in the church that becomes a temporary place of refuge for Denant toward the end of the film.

   I happen not to think that the finale is as upliftingly optimistic as the audience is led to believe – and perhaps the audience at the time was wise to this as well – but also perhaps I am wrong. I like happy endings as much as next fellow. Even relatively happy ones.

ACROSS THE BRIDGE. J. Arthur Rank, UK, 1957. Rod Steiger, David Knight, Marla Landi, Noel Willman, Bernard Lee, Bill Nagy, “Dolores.” Based on a story by Graham Greene. Director: Ken Annakin.

   I do not believe I have ever seen a movie in which Rod Steiger had an important if not starring role that I did not find fascinating in one way or another, and that fascination has almost always meant considerable enjoyment.

   I cannot tell you why I had never heard of this movie until last month, nor do I remember who pointed it out to me then, but I owe that person or website a huge, great big thank you. I was fascinated with Mr. Steiger’s performance all the way through, and I enjoyed every minute of it tremendously.

   Steiger plays a German financier named Carl Schaffner in Across the Bridge, an arrogant fellow (as arrogant as having lots of money, mostly questionably gained, will allow, if not cause) who gets into trouble with Scotland Yard while he’s in Manhattan scheming away at his next plan.

   Trouble that’s serious enough that he makes his way headlong out of the country by train – no passenger lists, you see – but not fast enough for the news of his escape to make the newspapers while he’s still riding the rails.

   Thinking fast, he drugs a fellow passenger who looks like him, a gentleman traveling with Mexican papers, which he steals after dropping him off the end of the train. Fate has fickle fingers. The man who identity Schaffner has assumed is even more wanted than he is – an assassin with 100,000 pesos on his head, dead or alive.

   Ending up – after considerable travail, which I will restrain myself from going into – in a small town in northern Mexico, Schaffner finds himself with an unfriendly police chief watching his every move; a man from Scotland Yard breathing down his neck (but unable to touch him as long as he does not cross the bridge back to the US); no friends; and a dwindling supply of money. He is a victim of his own making, a desperate man trapped by his own avarice and greed.

   What Across the Bridge is, in my not-so-humble opinion, is a true noir film, as noir as noir can get. In this case, and I invite you to see this for yourself, the ultimate irony is that the worse his problems become, the more we (the audience) begin to empathize with him, with the plot taking some very surprising (if not bizarre) twists and turns (plus a good old-fashioned handful of healthy coincidence as well) along the way.

   There is one note I have to add, and it’s an important one. I said he had no friends in the paragraph above. I was incorrect in saying that, quite wrong.

   You cannot watch this movie and ignore the role played by mongrel dog (part cocker spaniel?) who belonged to the man whose identity he stole. A dog who steals nearly every scene she’s in. Remarkably, and totally in spite of himself, Schaffner does has one friend, one with the saddest eyes you will ever see.

   I don’t know whether Dolores was a method actor or not, but it is one of the characteristics of Steiger’s performances that he is known for. During the making of this film this put him at odds, so we are told, with Bernard Lee, for example, who plays Schaffner’s not totally ethical adversary from Scotland Yard, but the technique gives Steiger an edge up in every film I’ve seen him in. Across the Bridge, a movie that’s unfairly all but unknown today, is no exception.

THE FINAL EXTRA. Gotham Productions / Lumas Film Corp., 1927. Marguerite De La Motte, Grant Withers, John Miljan, Frank Beal, Joseph W. Girard, Billy “Red” Jones, Leon Holmes. Story and scenario by Herbert C. Clark; cinematography by Ray June. Director: James P. Hogan. Shown at Cinevent 42, Columbus OH, May 2010.

   Pat Riley (Grant Withers) greatly admires his senior colleague, reporter Tom Collins (Frank Beal) who is murdered when he’s about to reveal the name of the leader of a gang of bootleggers in an expose he’s writing for his newspaper.

   Riley, who’s sweet on Collins’ daughter Ruth (Marguerite de la Motte), vows to finish the story, a promise that leads to Ruth being trapped in a house with the murderer as Riley races to her rescue.

   Hogan would later direct entries in Paramount’s Bulldog Drummond and Columbia’s Ellery Queen series, while Grant Withers would have a career in sound films that included programmers, serials and, later in his career, several of John Ford’s features.

   The Final Extra was a fast-paced, exciting film that was expertly produced in all departments, and was a splendid conclusion to my 34th Cinevent.

CAGE OF EVIL. United Artists, 1960. Ronald Foster, Pat Blair, Harp McGuire, John Maxwell, Doug Henderson, Helen Kleeb, Robert Shayne. Director: Edward L. Cahn.

   A standard entry black-and-white crime movie that more than likely wasn’t considered noir when it was made, but there’s no doubt that it was (or is) one.

   Passed up for promotion too many times, when police detective Scott Harper (Ronald Foster), somewhat of a hothead, is assigned to get close to blonde nightclub hostess (and good friend of gangster Kurt Romack) Holly Taylor, played to icy perfection by Pat Blair, he ends up getting a little too close, and it doesn’t take much more to get him started down the path to ruin.

   At first it’s only a small fortune in uncut diamonds that’s at play, but after two murders are committed, the stakes are raised a whole lot higher. Harper is smart but not lucky, and eventually, without giving away more than I should, his own brand of fortune runs out.

   The story plays fast and loose on the details regarding proper police procedure, I should like to believe, and looking back at the last hour and ten minutes it took to watch it, there really isn’t a lot of action in this small budget crime film.

   Nor do any of the cast have any name recognition, I don’t believe, but all of them have long resumes. (Pat Blair, the very lovely femme fatale in Cage, did have a long run on Daniel Boone, married to Fess Parker.)

   They all know their marks, in other words, and while no new territory is broken, I wasn’t bored, either. There’s been no official DVD release, but the movie has played on TCM, so copies should be easy to find on the collector-to-collector circuit.

ONE GIRL’S CONFESSION. Columbia Pictures, 1953. Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Glenn Langan, Ellen Stansbury, Burt Mustin. Written, produced & directed by Hugo Haas.

   And if Hugo Haas could have played Cleo Moore’s part, he’d have done that, too. But since she’s a hard-featured, statuesque blonde, it think it’s just as well that he didn’t try.

   Statuesque in the Anita Ekberg sense. Bodies like this don’t seem to be in favor today, but back in 1953, I’ll bet this movie was the trash equivalent of Gangbusters. This was long before nudity was acceptable on the screen, but there are a lot of open blouses with frilly lingerie underneath to (almost) make up for it.

   Anybody who’s honest about it knows exactly why this movie was made. And yet — even though at times it reminded me of the cinematic equivalent of a Gold Medal novel — when it comes down it, this movie is as moral as a Sunday morning in church.

   Mary Adams is a waitress who robs her employee and long-time benefactor of $25,000, and goes to jail for it, without telling anyone where she hid the money. As bad it sounds, it’s not, since the money was part of the rackets, and her boss at the restaurant is also the crook that cheated her father many years ago. This, at last, is her chance to get even.

   Crooked money is cursed, as they say, however, and when she’s paroled after only three years of good behavior, she finds this out. When she finds a need for the money, the plot suddenly doubles back on her. After some travail, justice finally wins out.

   The plot is flawed — how could anyone believe that Mary Adams would be as trusting as she is? — but the essential point is that she is really a Fine Person at Heart. You may not believe it from the screen images you see here, but Cleo is a marshmallow in this film, and so is Hugo Haas.

[UPDATE] 12-01-10.   You’d think with all that this movie has going for it, I’d remember it, but I don’t, and I have no idea why.

   This is a problem with a solution, however. This film was released on DVD earlier this year as part of the Bad Girls of Film Noir, Volume II collection, a set I purchased as soon as it was out.

  CLUB HAVANA. PRC, 1945. Margaret Lindsay, Tom Neal, Don Douglas, Marc Lawrence, Eddie Hall, Renie Riano, Ernest Truex, Eric Sinclair, Gertrude Michael, Paul Cavanagh, Pedro DeCordoba, Carlos Malina, and Isabelita. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer. Shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

   The program notes referred to this as a bargain basement Grand Hotel, with direction by Ulmer continuing his tradition of making sparsely budgeted films look good. (Maybe somebody should do a book on directors who were consistently better than the films they directed.)

   The setting is a vaguely Art Deco night club, with a Latin band, and undistinguished musical numbers that add little to the interlocking stories.

   The main plot involves a gangster (Marc Lawrence), suspected of a murder but released when a witness goes missing.

   Club Havana is his hangout and he learns that a young musician (Eric Sinclair) saw the murder, has called the police and will identify Lawrence when they arrive.

   The mounting suspense as Lawrence arranges for a hit on Sinclair is interspersed with music and comic turns (rich, ugly widow Renie Riano agreeing to marry gigolo Paul Cavanagh and both knowing exactly what they’re getting into; Ernest Truex attempting a reunion with his indifferent wife) prolonging the thin plot.

   This is entertainment by the ’40s numbers, with a little cinematic gloss provided by Ulmer’s ingenious camera and smooth direction of his competent cast.

Editorial Comment:   This somewhat hard to find movie has also been reviewed by James Reasoner over on his blog.

BACK DOOR TO HEAVEN. Paramount, 1939. Wallace Ford, Patricia Ellis, Aline McMahon, Stuart Erwin, Van Heflin, Bert Frohman, George Lewis, Bruce Evans, James Lydon. Director: William K. Howard. Shown at Cinefest 28, Syracuse NY, March 2008.

   This low-budget production had some promise with the superior cinematography of Hal Mohr, a good cast, and the experienced direction of William K. Howard.

   However, the grim, downward spiral of the fortunes of a poor but decent kid gone wrong (played by Jimmy Lydon, with Wallace Ford portraying him as an adult) climaxed in a scene bathed in a synthetic pathos that undid much of the gritty, late Depression realism of the film.

   An overwrought score by Erno Rapee constantly undercut the director’s restraint in the handling of a script based on his original story and personal experiences. This film continued what seems to be a tradition at Cinefest of disappointing openings.