Check out my quick column, online at Phoenix Magazine, about the "NOIRvember" film series at Phoenix Art Museum...
...featuring one of the all-time greats--and arguably the "original" film noir, John Huston's 1941 The Maltese Falcon, and also, posting here belatedly, the John Hughes favorite Planes, Trains and Automobiles...
Now a quarter-century old, the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs remains my favorite film festival in the country.
Held at the Camelot Theatre on Baristo, it specializes in crime movies, mostly from the '40s and '50s, mostly in black and white. Some of them are classics, familiar from Turner Classic Movies or other channels. But I go to see the obscurities, the oddball, forgotten quickies that rarely turn up on TV even in wee hours.
Here are three I caught this year:
Swell Guy (1946)-- The title role, ironically meant, is a celebrated war correspondent who returns to his wholesome small town. His family and the other townies welcome him as a hero; only his Mom (Mary Nash) drops her smile, and drops stitches from her knitting, when no one is looking, because she knows her son is a thieving, amoral creep. Sonny Tufts plays the great man; his name has long been almost a byword for bad actor, but he carries the movie pretty capably as the hale-fellow-ill-met, and he leads a cast that includes Ann Blyth, nearly as unlikable as she is Mildred Pierce, Ruth Warrick, William Gargan, Thomas Gomez and Millard Mitchell, along with Frank Ferguson and Charles Lane among the uncredited bit players. Directed by Frank Tuttle from a clumsy but sassy script by Richard Brooks (based on a play by Gilbert Emery), this uneven but fascinating yarn was presented in a sparkling new 35mm print; we were told that this showing was its debut before an audience.
Lust for Gold (1949)--This gripping, grimly funny western/noir hybrid is set and was partially shot in the Superstition Mountains here in the Phoenix area. It's about the fabled Lost Dutchman Mine, and stars Glenn Ford as Jacob Walz, the "Dutchman" (actually German) who claimed to have discovered gold in the Superstitions but took the location with him to his grave. The movie presents Walz as a slack-faced, dead-eyed rat-bastard, treacherous and murderous and spiteful but also stupid and gullible. He makes the title character in Swell Guy seem like a genuinely swell guy. Ford's not a favorite of mine, but he's excellent here; like a lot of bland nice-guy actors (Fred MacMurray is another good example) the chance to play a louse brings him to life. The presenter warned us that the movie had not one sympathetic character, and right he was; Ford is way outmatched in cool Machiavellian villainy by his leading lady, the exquisite Ida Lupino. The film is oddly structured, with the period western part set within a modern-day frame story of nearly equal screen time featuring William Prince, Paul Ford and Will Geer. The old west story is resolved by a dues ex machina; the modern story is resolved by a serpens ex machina. The cast includes Gig Young as Lupino's weakling hubby, Edgar Buchanan as Ford's partner, and, among the uncredited players, the likes of Arthur Hunnicutt, Will Wright, Hayden Rorke, Percy Helton and Jay Silverheels, among others. Hard to go wrong.
The film's version of the Lost Dutchman story is probably pure fiction, but that's fair enough, as none of the other versions are any more reliable. Nonetheless, the film opens with the following gobbledegook Certificate of Authenticity from Dan E. Garvey, then the Governor of Arizona, on AZ Governor's Office letterhead no less:
"The picture which you are about to see represents, to the best of our knowledge, the true facts concerning this unusual situation, as substantiated by historical records and legends of the State of Arizona."
Nice to know that it isn't only in today's political climate that legends could be used to substantiate facts.
Unmasked (1950)--This brief programmer from Republic stars a fleshy, pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr, indolently slimy as the editor of scandal sheet called The Periscope. He impulsively murders his mistress, then frames her husband (Paul Harvey) for it. This was the least of the three movies I made it to, but Burr puts on a good show, as does Harvey, as does Norman Budd as Burr's squirrely sidekick. And near the end, there's a wild fistfight, just to remind us it's a Republic picture.
Lots of fun, but alas, the relentless march of time is not treating this festival kindly. I've been going, not every May but most, since 2007, and for the first few years many of the screenings were attended by actors from the films; over time I got to see June Lockhart, Marsha Hunt, Ann Rutherford, Richard Anderson (not wearing socks!), Norman Lloyd, Robert Loggia and Ernest Borgnine, among others, including grown-up child actors like Billy Gray and Gordon Gebert.
Now that even these kids are getting a bit long in the tooth, the festival has had to resort to offspring. This year's guests included Errol Flynn's daughter and Joel McCrea's grandson.
Your Humble Narrator is back in the Valley after a quick trip to the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs, California, where I caught up with this 1948 artifact:
The Argyle Secrets--William Gargan, as a wisecracking reporter, is beset by a variety of sinister types, from a femme fatale to a southern dandy with a swordcane to a politely murderous continental gent with a towering henchman. The McGuffin they're all after is an album containing a list of corporate bigwigs willing to play either side of the Allied or Axis fence, depending on who won World War II.
The writer-director is the great Cyril "Cy" Endfield, adapting his own 1945 radio play The Argyle Album from Suspense on CBS. The film version feels, indeed, like little more than an illustrated radio play, with narration and energetic rapid-fire dialogue powering its 65-minute running time. The characters spew detailed exposition at each other even while they're trying to kill each other.
Even with his face bruised and his hair mussed from the various beatings he endures, Gargan is jolly company in the lead, and the supporting cast is a joy: Jack Reitzen as the southern fop, Marjorie Lord as the mendacious beauty, Ralph Byrd as the disapproving police detective, Peter Brocco as one of the shady cronies, and Sgt. Schultz himself, John Banner, here trim and dapper, as the principal bad guy. In a supporting role is a young Barbara Billingsley, and if you've ever wanted see Mrs. Cleaver take a punch right to her adorable kisser, this is the picture that will fulfill your wish.
As with El Vampiro Negro at last year's festival, the restored print of this movie shown at Palm Springs is another collaboration between UCLA Film and Television Archive and The Noir Foundation, and like the Argentine film, The Argyle Secrets looks like a million bucks onscreen. Catch it if you get the chance.
While in Palm Springs, I enjoyed lunch at Sherman's Deli, egg salad and chopped liver on rye...
...dinner at Kalura Trattoria, tortellini panna rosa...
...then back to Sherman's for breakfast, eggs benedict with nova lox...
Yummy.
I also made a pilgrimage to my beloved roadside dinosaurs at Cabazon. When I was there in October they were painted Flintstones-style, with T-Rex as Fred and "Dinny" the sauropod as Dino. This week they were painted to extoll love and peace...
Hard to argue with that. But I'd like to see the Cabazon Dinos painted blue and yellow, maybe with a sunflower on T-Rex's chest...
