For several years now, I’ve been celebrating #Noirvember (November + Film noir), a hashtag that was created by film critic Myra Gates that is now pretty universally celebrated by noir fans. I watch film noirs throughout the year, but it is awfully fun to concentrate on them for an entire month. I like to mix it up where I watch some certified classics with some lesser-known and new to me films. I thought it would be fun this week to make my entire Five Cool Things about some excellent noirs I watched this month. And here we go.
To Have and Have Not
I recently discovered that Don Siegel directed an adaptation of this Ernest Hemingway story in 1958 with Audie Murphy in the lead role. It isn’t a bad film, but all it really made me want to do is revisit this adaptation from 1946 (it was also adapted into another terrific noir in 1950 called The Breaking Point).
Buy To Have and Have Not Blu-rayDirected by Howard Hawks, this adaptation (mostly written by William Faulkner) takes more than a few liberties with Hemingway’s story and borrows more than a lot from Casablanca. It stars Humphrey Bogart as Harry Morgan, a world-weary fishing boat captain on the Pro-German Vichy-occupied island of Martinique.
When his latest client stiffs him out of a large sum of money, he’s forced into a deal where he must take some French Resistance fighters from one island to the next. Much like Rick in Casablanca, Harry Morgan takes no sides. But unlike Casablanca, it isn’t an old love that changes things, but a new one. Slim (Lauren Bacall in her first film role) is an American who’s just kind of wandering about the world and who wanders into Harry’s life when he notices her pick someone’s pocket. They bicker, and flirt, and practically melt the film off of the screen with their smoldering.
Bogart and Bacall fell in love while making this film, and you can practically see it on the screen. Their chemistry is off the charts, which more than makes up for the flaws of the screenplay.
Cairo Station
This Egyptian noir is kind of a day in the life of a busy train station. The camera follows a variety of people from various backgrounds and social statuses, all of whom eventually ride the train. It eventually focuses on Qinawi (Youssef Chahine, who also directed), a lame newspaper seller, and his obsession with the beautiful, cold bottle-seller Hunuma (Hind Rostom). But always in the background are various social issues – a woman organizes the fight for the right to vote, a man tries to create a labor union, etc.
Buy Cairo Station (Criterion Collection)The film is shot like a noir with some beautiful stark black and white photography, but at times it feels more like a neorealistic picture, capturing slices of life. Whatever you call it, Cairo Station has haunted me with its tale since I first saw it.
Out of the Fog
Set near the docks of Brooklyn in a small, poverty-stricken enclave, this noir stars John Garfield as a wannabe gangster, extorting local fishermen for $5 a week in order for him to “protect” their boats. Ida Lupino plays the girl who falls in love with him because he’s the only really exciting thing she’s ever seen. Thomas Mitchell plays her dad, and John Qualen is his friend, and they both are the ones getting extorted.
Buy Out of the FogLupino and Garfield get top billing, but the beating heart of the story is Mitchell and Qualen. They are just two guys whose lives are hard, but for a few hours a week they get to slip away from everything, take a boat out onto the sea, and dream. Their friendship is beautifully rendered, and their despair deeply felt once Garfield’s gangster enters the picture.
True to its name, the film is drenched in fog, which infuses it with some stunning photography. I wrote a full review of the new Blu-ray release.
Hell Drivers
This British noir is a bit like Wages of Fear, but coked-up with adrenaline. Stanley Baker stars as Tom Yately, a down-on-his-luck bloke who takes a job as a truck driver. The place is run by the deplorable Cartley (a menacing William Hartnell), who forces his drivers to make far too many runs over bad roads, causing them to drive too fast and too dangerously. There is a bonus offered to the man who makes the most runs each day. Red (Patrick McGoohan) is the man to beat. He’s ruthless on and off the road. He drives fast, he takes shortcuts, and he has no problem running you off the road if you get in the way.
There are plenty of gnarly scenes of these trucks just flying down narrow country roads, keeping you on the edge of your seat. But it’s also a very human story. These men all live desperate lives. Nobody would do this job if they didn’t have to. Their desperation (and the companies tendency to pit them against each other) builds a tension between them, making them fight each other instead of the corporate forces that are bringing them down. But Tom finds a friendship in Gino (Herbert Lom), an Italian driver who longs for home. The companionship they find in each other gives them the strength to fight back.
Hell Drivers is a nail-biting drama with plenty of heart. It is the one film in this collection that I’d not heard of before, but it is well worth seeking out.
Kansas City Confidential
This noir partially inspired Quentin Tarantino to make Reservoir Dogs. Mr. Big (Preston Foster) organizes a bank heist, bringing in four guys who don’t know each other and who always wear masks so that no one can identify the other. The heist is meticulously planned and goes off without a hitch. Well, there is one hitch: the guy they planned to make a patsy is tougher than they imagined.
Buy Kansas City Confidential Blu-rayJoe Rolfe (John Payne) is an ex-con working as a flower-delivery guy. Mr. Big knows he makes his delivery to the bank at the same time every day and decides to pull the heist off in a truck that looks just like the flower truck. After the job is done, the police nab Rolfe, thinking he must have had something to do with it. When Rolfe is able to alibi himself, he’s let go, but now he’s on a mission. He’s going to find those guys and collect.
Mr. Big gives the thieves one half of a playing card, which they will use later, once the heat has cooled down, to collect their part of the stash. Rolfe tracks one of them down (a wonderful Jack Elam) and beats the info out of him. He takes the playing card and goes to the meeting place. Terrific stuff ensues.
Kansas City is an immensely entertaining little noir with some good performances and plenty of action. You can read my full review.
The Maltese Falcon
I just had to end this noir-infused Five Cool Things with this film. The Maltese Falcon isn’t my favorite noir, but it is probably the greatest example of what a film noir is. And what better actor than Humphrey Bogart should star? I could have made an entire post about all the noirs he’s starred in through his storied career.
Buy The Maltese FalconBased on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon finds private detective Sam Spade (Bogart) embroiled in a hunt for the titular treasure – a jewel-encrusted bird supposedly worth millions. Along the way he’ll come across an eclectic group of thieves and vagabonds (played with gusto by Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet).
Bogart gives Spade the perfect mix of cynicism, callousness, and heart, which will influence countless other noir detectives. John Huston’s direction is terrific, and the story is twisty, funny, and a little bit confusing, which makes it absolutely perfect for a noir and a glorious place to end our Cool Things.
