Charles Halton – Sat In Your Lap

We Have Plenty Of Hearsay and Conjecture, Those Are Kinds Of Evidence

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

Peter Lorre appeared in several of the most important movies ever made. Most famously, Casablanca, but he also appeared in two movies instrumental to the film noir genre, Fritz Lang’s M and The Maltese Falcon. Then there is Stranger On The Third Floor, a film largely unknown yet often identified as the first film noir. Although it can be hard to identify a year-zero for the genre, with predating films featuring elements of what later became referred to as noir, Stranger On The Third Floor may be the closest a film can be bestowed with such an accolade. However, rather than just being a curio due to its esteemed status, Stranger On The Third Floor is, by its own merits, a great piece of cinematic artistry wrapped up in a thrilling single hour.

Stranger On The Third Floor contains many elements associated with noir. Deep shadows. Flashbacks. Voice-over narration. Low and diagonal camera angles. An urban jungle. The blinds motif. Late-night coffee shops. Cynical reporters. A falsely accused man, etc. When looking at the crew behind the film, starting with noted art director Van Nest Polglase, along with the European talent of Russian-born director Boris Ingster (reportedly an associate of Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, and with only three directing credits to his name) and Italian-born cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, it makes sense how this work of German expressionist imagery came to be.

Reporter Mike Ward (John McGuire) is the key witness in a murder trial after observing Joe Briggs (Elisha Cook Jr.) standing over the body of a dead man in a diner. This is instrumental in having Briggs found guilty and sentenced to the chair. For Mike, on the other hand, it gets him a big promotion at work and a story on the front page of his paper – “Star Reporter is Key Witness In Murder Case”. Mike isn’t the hero as seen in many Hollywood films at the time. He is not driven to do the right thing but rather acting in his own self-interest and to protect himself. He does not have much of a guilty conscience over his testimony sending a man to death, but instead, he is worried that his past actions will result in him being implicated in the murder. While John McGuire is a footnote in Hollywood history, his voiceover delivery is unmistakably noir with its thoughtful yet flat tone (his overthinking about his words being taken out of context is relatable to observe). Mike’s delirium-soaked nightmare sequence is the film’s crown jewel, proving it refuses to be confined by its B-movie budget. The sequence is full of unforgettable, surreal images and moments of hammy acting from Mike’s imagined arrest to his trial and eventual execution on the electric chair.

Despite being top billed, Peter Lorre only appears sparingly as the titular character. His role in the film is not too dissimilar to M, in which he lurks in the background before making a splash in the film’s climax. Whether or not this was intentional remains to be seen, as the story goes that Lorre’s involvement and limited screen time in the film came about as he owed RKO two more days in his contract. Lorre appears incredibly thin in Stranger On The Third Floor (especially compared to the more pudgy Lorre of earlier films), while the visible gaps in his teeth make him all the more unnerving. Likewise, his character is repeatedly seen throwing a scarf over his shoulder, a memorable little motif which does humanise him somewhat. Elisha Cook Jr., on the other hand, was 37 years old in Stranger On The Third Floor, yet he looks like a teenager (which the movie itself comments upon – “he looks like a kid”). Upon hearing his guilty sentence, the innocent, wide-eyed, aw-shucks Cook is hair-raisingly brilliant as his echoing voice repeatedly utters “I didn’t kill him!”. The following year, both Cook and Lorre would star in The Maltese Falcon.

Mike and his fiancée Jane (Margaret Tallichet) are not entirely likeable characters. In the opening scene, Jane is hogging a spare seat in a busy diner to the open dismay of other customers, but that’s on the low end compared to Mike. He is seen during the film having a very confrontational relationship with both his landlady and his kind and elderly next-door neighbour (Charles Halton). He even goes as far as grabbing the old man by his bathrobe and threatening him, not to mention Jane herself sees him doing this and chooses to remain with him. Although it makes sense that the film has an unlikable protagonist since the film has a cynical outlook on his profession, questioning the morality of journalists profiting off crime. None of the reporters in the film are portrayed with endowing much sense of journalistic responsibility (“How do you know he did it?, Who cares, what a story, what a story!”). Likewise, in classic noir fashion, Stranger On The Third Floor is also critical of that other pillar of American society, the justice system. During the courtroom sequence, Joe Briggs is being tried on circumstantial evidence, the judge is clearly uninterested in the case, the lawyer on behalf of the accused is uninquisitive and there is even a juror who treats himself to a nap during proceedings.

Stranger On The Third Floor concludes with Briggs now a free man and working as a cabbie, offering Mike and Jane a taxi ride on the house — a tidy resolution that feels almost suspicious in its optimism, although it could be argued that it is intentionally ironic. After all, Briggs is only free as a by-product of Mike’s self-interest and not out of any heroic deeds. The truth did not triumph; justice was merely accidental. Welcome to the shady, morally incongruent world of film noir.

A Rootin-Tootin Good Time!

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

A Texas cattle agent witnesses the brutal lawlessness of Dodge City, Kansas and agrees to take up the job of sheriff to clean the town up. If that doesn’t sound like the most stereotypical summary of a western then I don’t know what does. 1939 was the year in which the western went from a B-movie genre to getting the big studio treatment almost overnight and as a result, the inclusion of just about every western trope in Dodge City almost feels slightly comical. We get a train, a stagecoach, cattle drives, a saloon brawl, dancehall girls, an evil gang terrorising the locals, the “new sheriff” in town, a schoolmarm, lynch mobs, a crusading newspaperman, poker games, herds of bison, a climactic shootout, rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore! Perhaps the only elements which are missing are a fight with Indians and big ol’ saguaro cactus (geographically inaccurate I know)

Errol Flynn transitions well to the role of a cowboy as Irishman Wade Hatton (“Thirty years ago, my father met my mother at the Londonderry fair” – excuse me, no true Irishman calls it Londonderry). Dodge City was the 5^th of eight pairings of Flynn and Olivia deHavilland in which she plays feisty frontierswoman Abbie Irving. The magic is still there with any scene in which they are alone – you can tell these two really are in love, and like in The Adventures of Robin Hood, deHavilland is given many a memorable, brightly colored costume change throughout the film. Abbie’s brother Lee (William Lundigan) on the other hand is one of the biggest twats in screen history. A spoiled, trouble-making, tantrum-throwing drunkard who carelessly fires his gun into the air which causes a cattle stampede that leads to his untimely death. However, I don’t quite get why Abbie resents Wade for his involvement in Lee’s death as he ultimately got what was coming to him. None the less, Henry Travers perfectly sums up the situation – “Women’s logic and emotions are often very confusing”.

Dodge City is a story of morality and civilization – another chapter in how the west was won. The bad guys of Dodge City lead by Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot) are essentially gangsters, murdering for business interests, running gambling clubs and threatening the press. However, once Wade becomes the sheriff and begins cleaning up the town of its crime and degeneracy, my libertarian alarm bells start going off as he restricts gambling, gun rights (is he violating the 2^nd Amendment by decreeing “No firearms permitted north of Front Street”?) and introduces taxes (at least his barber recognizes they are a necessary evil).

Dodge City may have the best bar fight ever committed to screen. One spurred on by post-civil war tensions as the Confederate half of the saloon sings (I Wish I Was in) Dixie’s Land and the Yankee half retaliates with Marching Through Georgia before dozens of men cause utter fist-fighting destruction, destroying ever corner of the saloon and even falling through walls and multiple floors as they pummel each other. The beginning of the scene in similar to that from Casablanca (which Curtiz would also direct) in which the Germans at Rick’s Place start singing Die Wacht am Rheinin in front of the French of whom retaliate by singing the La Marseillaise.

The film’s score by Max Steiner sounds awfully similar in parts to that which Steiner would compose for Gone With The Wind, released 8 months after Dodge City. Even some of the shots present in the film are reminiscent of the scenes in Atlanta from GWTW. From the beautiful artwork in the title screens to the grand 3-strip Technicolor encompassing many scenic horizons, Dodge City is a visual delight (it’s just a shame the DVD copy of the film suffers from some colour bleeding). The film’s climactic shootout on the train, however, lets the film done slightly as the cuts back forth between the location and a studio set fail to convincing match each other.

Errol Flynn and Alan Hale once again make a great duo and Hale even receives his own comedic spotlight moment when he wanders into a temperance union known as the Pure Prairie League, only to find he’s the only man among a group of older women. Likewise in an interesting twist to convention, it’s Alan Hale and not Errol Flynn who takes out the film’s main villain played by Bruce Cabot. I’m just disappointed Ann Sheridan’s part in the film is barely beyond a cameo despite being third billed. She performs several songs as a saloon singer but has no impact on the plot – did she have any deleted scenes? I could also do without that cutesy little kid (Bobs Watson), although to be fair at least he has a major role in the progression of the plot. Regardless of any minor shortcomings, any film is worth it when it has earned its right to culminate in the most endearing of cinematic images, the hero riding off into the sunset.