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9.5.08 - 10.26.08
COOL DRINKS OF WATER: COLUMBIA'S NOIR GIRLS OF THE '40S AND '50S Our annual series highlighting Sony/Columbia's restorations can only be described as eclecticism at its finest. Grover Crisp and his staff methodically work through Columbia's rich library to attend to films in ill repair, whether blockbusters or those that time forgot.
This year's program focuses on a group of actresses cast as Columbia's "Bad Girls" of the '40s and '50s. This group--Gloria Grahame, Nina Foch, Cleo Moore, Rochelle Hudson, Lizabeth Scott and Evelyn Keyes--also happen to be some of the most interesting actors of the day--even if they never quite made it to the top. Groomed as starlets, they were often billed as types--Lizabeth Scott: "The Lauren Bacall-type;" Cleo Moore: "The Marilyn Monroe-type"--and it was perhaps their individualism that intervened and muted their careers. Only Grahame became a household name, but whether you've heard of the others or not, once you see them here, you are not likely to forget them.
Special Thanks: Grover Crisp, Rita Belda, Helena Brissenden--Sony Pictures. Friday September 26 2008, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
THE GLASS WALL
(1953) Directed by Maxwell Shane  After a string of box office successes-- The Greatest Show on Earth, Macao, Sudden Fear--and an Oscar win for her performance as Dick Powell's southern wife in The Bad and the Beautiful, Gloria Grahame was on the brink of super-stardom by 1953. The Glass Wall was a natural next step as a showcase for Grahame's rising talents. Grahame plays Maggie Summers, an unemployed factory worker who finds herself mysteriously drawn to Holocaust survivor and European refugee Peter Kuban (played by suave Italian leading man Vittorio Gassman in his American film debut). On the run from the law and desperate to avoid deportation, Peter engages Maggie's aid to track down the only person who help him attain political asylum: an American GI he saved from death in the war. Director Maxwell Shane cleverly utilizes Grahame's emotional range to contribute to the tense cat and mouse structure of the film, which culminates on the top of the newly constructed U.N. building in New York City. HUMAN DESIRE
(1954) Directed by Fritz Lang  Human Desire was Grahame's second film with both German-émigré director Fritz Lang and leading man Glenn Ford (they had made The Big Heat in 1953). This was the second adaptation of Emil Zola's novel La Bête Humaine--the first was directed by Jean Renoir in 1938 and starred Jean Gabin and Simone Simon--and like the earlier version, Lang's film updated the tale for contemporary America. Grahame reprises Simon's role as the unfaithful wife Vicki, who genuinely falls in love with her railroad worker lover, Tom (Ford), but cannot leave her abusive husband, Carl (Crawford). Vicki becomes so distraught that Carl will discover their illicit affair and kill them both that she convinces Tom they must murder him first. Like her breakout role from In a Lonely Place, Grahame delivered a convincing performance as an emotionally tormented woman hounded by her subconscious fears. In spite of her genuine feelings, she draws her innocent lover into a in a web of precarious deception. Sunday September 28 2008, 7:00PM* ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
TWO OF A KIND
(1951) Directed by Henry Levin  In this tale of duplicity and deceit, Scott plays the bewitching blonde Brandy Kirby, who convinces the reluctant Mike Farrell (O'Brien) to sever the top of his left pinky finger in order to impersonate an elderly wealthy couple's long lost son in order to secure his inheritance. It's a simple plan that lust and greed spin increasingly out of control. As Brandy and Mike fight an uncontrollable attraction to one another, Brandy's secret co-conspirator (Knox) decides he can't wait for "nature to take its course" and turns to murder as a quicker means of securing the cash. While Scott's Brandy initially seems to be the classic femme-fatale, the role marks a deviation from Scott's dangerous screen image, as she helps foil the cold-blooded crime, and romance blossoms when she and Mike realize that there are indeed "two of a kind." Although by the 1950s Scott more or less found herself bound to her usual good girl done wrong or femme fatale stereotype, she managed to bring a complexity to roles like Brandy, and transcended the limitations Hollywood placed on her career. BAD FOR EACH OTHER
(1953) Directed by Irving Rapper  By the end of the 1940s, Lizabeth Scott's femme fatale image was firmly fixed. Indeed, promoted as "The Threat," she starred in more film noirs than any other actress in the decade. Bad for Each Other continued the trend with Scott starring as a spoiled, twice-divorced, wealthy socialite with her eyes on an idealistic doctor. Director Irving Rapper combines the intensity of a hard-boiled film noir with Sirkian melodramatic themes of class-conflict to fully utilize Scott's intimidating image. When doctor and Korean War vet Tom Owen, played by a robust Charlton Heston, finds himself saddled with his deceased brother's debts, he falls easy prey to Helen who lures the young man from his Pennsylvania small mining town to the swanky, high class life in Pittsburgh. Despite the warnings of friends and family, Owen forsakes his ethics to bilk rich, hypochondriac matrons in a private clinic before Helen's corrupting influence drives the two of them an action-packed, climatic confrontation. * Please note the early start time. Wednesday October 8 2008, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS
(1945) Directed by Joseph Lewis  My name is Julia Ross was Foch's first starring role for Columbia and it is arguably her best film. Teamed with director Joseph H. Lewis (known for his alluring compositions and off-beat style) and British actress Dame May Witty, Foch was in talented company in this shadowy film noir set in postwar London. As the film's down on her luck title character, Foch gratefully accepts a personal secretary job only to become an unknowing target of a duplicitous murder plot by her new employers, a perverse mother and son team. Instead of taking dictation, they expect her to play the role of the son's murdered wife in order to cover up their hand in the crime. As Julia gradually uncovers the bizarre and twisted plot, Foch turns in a breakthrough performance as a woman pushed to the brink of madness. Though Columbia intended to release Julia Ross as a "B" movie, the film's unexpected critical success prompted the studio to elevate the film to a main release. DARK PAST
(1949) Directed by Rudolph Maté  After garnering a Columbia contract at the age of 19, Nina Foch was more or less under utilized by the studio who cast her in relatively modest fare. The film noir Dark Past was one of many B-movies in which the Dutch-born Foch furnished a striking performance in spite of the film's low production values. As Betty, the girlfriend of escaped killer Al Walker (Holden), Foch provides crucial insight into her lover's troubled childhood to one of his hostages, psychiatrist Dr. Collins (Cobb), who seeks to treat the criminal instead of sending him back to jail. By doing so, Betty and the doctor advocate the use of psychoanalysis to unlock the secrets of Walker's past, believing that his self-discovery and understanding of his mental afflictions will prevent him from future killings. A replacement for Veronica Lake, Foch made the most of her gangster moll supporting role and steals many scenes from Holden and Cobb. Sunday October 12 2008, 7:00PM* ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION
(1953) Directed by Hugo Haas  Following the breakthrough success of Marilyn Monroe, Cleo Moore was one of many in the 1950s to garner fame using her golden locks and curvaceous figure. Moore became a cult icon for her roles as a B-movie "bad girl", most notably in the films by writer, director, producer and star, Hugo Haas. In the second of seven Haas films starring the buxom blonde, Moore plays Mary Adams, a waitress working at a waterfront diner formerly owned by her father. Tired of being used by her father's corrupt ex-business partner as eye candy to lure in customers, Mary steals his entire savings aiming to hide the cash, turn herself in and recover the loot after serving her sentence. Like all best laid plans, Mary's goes considerably awry and she plummets in a self-destructive wayward descent, proving herself to be the kind of girl every man wants, but should never dare marry. OVER-EXPOSED
(1956) Directed by Lewis Seiler  This titillating bit of pulp sensationalism was the last in a string of "B" films that Cleo Moore starred in at Columbia. Moore plays Lila Crane, an ambitious career woman with flexible morals and a penchant for fast money. Formerly a clip-joint floozie under the name of Lily Krenshka, Lila undergoes a change in name and occupation, rapidly hustling her way to becoming New York's foremost commercial photographer. Moore stays steadfast to her "bad girl" personae--brassy and suspicious; conniving, yet sweet--in this smirky glimpse at the back-biting nastiness that accompanies wealth and glamour. * Please note the early start time. Friday October 17 2008, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
DANGEROUS BLONDES
(1943) Directed by Leigh Jason  Though best remembered as Scarlett O'Hara's sister in Gone With the Wind, Evelyn Keyes enjoyed a brief period of popularity while under contract to Columbia Pictures. Dangerous Blondes was made midway between two of her (and Columbia's) biggest hits of the 1940s -- Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and The Jolson Story (1946). A lightly comic murder mystery, the film strives to be its own version of The Thin Man. Though they never quite match Nick and Nora's sparkle and polish, sleuthing couple, Harry (Allyn Joslyn) and Jane Craig (Keyes), hold their own with style and wit. THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK
(1950) Directed by Earl McEvoy  In an interesting spin on noir's familiar femme fatale, Keyes stars as Sheila Bennet, a diamond smuggler and Cold War incarnation of Typhoid Mary (only this time spreading smallpox amongst the hysterical masses). Keyes gives an impassioned performance while doubly on the run from federal agents and New York's entire medical community, doggedly persevering even as she deteriorates. Inspired by New York's real-life smallpox scare in 1946, The Killer That Stalked New York, is part-documentary, part-noir. Shot largely on location, the film acutely depicted America's looming postwar anxiety and paranoia over forces unknown. It was one of Keyes' last films with Columbia before scouting around for roles outside the studio. Saturday October 18 2008, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
GIRLS UNDER 21
(1940) Directed by Max Nosseck  Preaching the dangers of the fast life to wayward girls, this teenaged morality tale stars Rochelle Hudson as Frances White, a former gangster's moll trying to make good. Leaving her husband, the notorious Smiley Ryan (Bruce Cabot), after his incarceration, Frances returns to the tenements of her youth, only to become an unwilling role model to a group of delinquent girls. Seduced by the extravagance of her former life, the girls reject Frances's appeals to reform. When their escalating misconduct leads to tragedy, she is forced into an act of self-sacrifice, making amends for her own mistakes by paying for theirs. ISLAND OF DOOMED MEN
(1940) Directed by Charles Barton  Once again paying the penance for an easy life made by ill-gotten gain, Hudson plays the glamour-puss wife, Lorraine, of fascist megalomaniac Stephen Danel (Peter Lorre). Marrying Danel to escape working as a showgirl, Lorraine finds herself trapped on a remote island, indulging her husband's proclivity for the finer things while forced to silently witness the illicit dealings that finance them. When a secret service operative arrives to investigate Danel's use of slave labor, Lorraine must work covertly to aid in her husband's undoing. Ironically, two years after the making of Island of Doomed Men, Hudson was involved in real-life espionage, taking a temporary leave from acting to work undercover in Mexico for U.S. Naval Intelligence throughout World War II. |