BY TIM GREAVES
(The following reviews pertain to the UK Region 2 releases)
When
I'm in the right mood I adore bit of film noir. I admire the diversity of its
storytelling, I love every facet, from the hardboiled private eyes, duplicitous
dames and characters that seldom turn out to be what they first appear, to the
alleyways bathed in inky shadows, ramshackle apartments and half-lit street
corners they inhabit. How can you not get drawn in by the sheer delight of Edward
G Robinson playing a second rate psychic trying to convince the authorities he
can see the future in The Night Has a
Thousand Eyes? Or amnesiac John Hodiak on a mission to discover his own
identity, in the process getting embroiled in a 3-year-old murder case and the
search for a missing $2 million in Somewhere
in the Night? Yes, indeed, there's nothing quite like a hearty serving of film
noir on a Sunday afternoon to soothe those end-of-the-weekend blues.
Newly
released to dual format Blu-ray and DVD in the UK – carefully restored by UCLA
Film and Television Archive following several years of sleuthing by the Film
Noir Foundation – are a couple real crackers. I'd seen neither before but both have
quickly found a spot among my favourites.
First
up is 1949 United Artists picture Too
Late for Tears (also known under the re-release moniker Killer Bait), directed by Byron Haskin
from a Roy Huggins
story (first serialised in the 'Saturday Evening Post'). The plot hinges on a
bag packed with an ill-gotten $60,000 worth of banknotes. Husband and wife Alan
and Jane Palmer (Arthur Kennedy and Lizabeth Scott) are drawn into a deadly
game when someone in a passing car hurls a briefcase full of cash into the back
of their open top saloon – cash so hot it's "a bag o' dynamite", as
Alan sagely recognises it. He’s insistent that they hand it over to the cops,
but Jane is having none of it; their ship has come in and she intends to hop aboard.
Initially she swings Alan round to her way of thinking but it's not long before
the intended recipient of the money (Dan Duryea) shows up to claim it back.
Jane, tougher than she at first seemed, is determined to keep it even if doing
so means resorting to murder.
Despite
striking support from the slinky Kristine Miller and an urbane Don DeFore, this
is 100% Lizabeth Scott's parade. She's breathtaking as the ice cold blonde schemestress
with a loaded shooter in one hand and a clutch bag full of seductive ploys in
the other; as femme fatales go they don't come much wilier. Huggins' script is
awash with mistrust and the razor sharp repartee born thereof: "Looking
for something?"/"My lipstick"/"Colt or Smith &
Wesson?". The twists come thick and fast as Jane's scruples, if ever she
had any, are casually discarded as she calculatingly works to finagle the cash.
With a sucker punch of a final twist that doles out the roughest of justice, Too Late for Tears is a little gem.
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Next up, a Universal Pictures release: Norman Foster's San Francisco based Woman on the Run, a tad lighter in tone
but equally gripping. Out walking his dog one night, artist Frank Johnson (Ross
Elliott) witnesses a murder – but the killer sees him too. With little faith in
police witness protection, Johnson does a runner. Believing that he's really trying
to escape their failing marriage, Frank's wife Eleanor (Ann Sheridan) sets out
to find him. Assisted by intrepid reporter Dan Legget (Dennis O'Keefe), eager
to scoop a front page exclusive, Eleanor follows a trail of clues that reveal
things about Frank she never knew, all the while dodging the police (who believe
she'll lead them to her husband, the only person who can identify the killer), and
blindly unaware she’s being watched by the killer himself, intent on eliminating
the sole witness to his crime.
Working
from a screenplay he co-wrote with Alan Campbell, Foster (who went on to direct
episodes of Batman and The Green Hornet for television) keeps
the action moving along at a fair old lick, never afraid to punctuate the mood
with a splash of comic relief; the Johnson's dog is called Rembrandt, because
"It's the nearest we’ll come to owning one". Although it initially
feels like folly when the story’s ace twist is played midway point, it’s in
fact a very shrewd move; arming the audience with such vital knowledge serves
to ratchet up the suspense thereafter to almost unbearable levels. Boasting
some fantastic San Francisco location work and climaxing amidst the after-dark
amusement park thrills of Santa Monica's Ocean Park Pier (a finale which
delivers squalling tension to rival the theme park located climax to Hitchcock
classic Strangers on a Train,
released the following year), if you dip into only one noir thriller this year,
be sure that it's 24-carat keeper Woman
on the Run.
Released separately in the UK by Arrow Films – they'd have made a truly spiffy box set – both films boast pleasingly vivid transfers. Too Late for Tears is occasionally slightly dark but has nice rich blacks (well, it isnoir!) with a moderate level of coarse grain present throughout. Here and there, usually in scenes where back projection is involved, the definition is so intense that there's almost a 3-dimensional quality at play.Woman on the Run is slightly softer with more noticeable traces of speckle in some scenes. But these are trivial observations and in no way detract from their desirability. The original mono sound is nicely robust. The discs offer up a selection of supplementary features: short retrospective 'making ofs', galleries of lobby cards and beautiful poster art (the like of which you sadly just don't see any more), and fascinating shorts detailing how rare copies of both films were hunted down and restored; the only 35 mm print of Woman on the Run was lost in a fire in 2008, but a nitrate dupe negative used for UK distribution prints back in the day and held at the BFI was later unearthed and married up with the sound from an illicit version residing in the possession of an enthusiast. There are also informative commentaries – film historian Alan K Rode onToo Late for Tears and 'noirchaeologist' Eddie Muller on Woman on the Run – and the latter has a couple of additional bonuses, a marvellous collection of then-and-now images of the San Francisco shoot locations plus a short about the Noir City Film Festival (after watching it you'll just ache to attend one). These releases each come with a collectible booklet and reversible sleeve art.
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