SUNNYLANDS NOIR: 2015 PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (January 2015)

 'CUT SNAKE' Australia 2014 

In Aussie-speak, if someone is ‘mad as a cut snake’ he's so ‘round the bend you don’t want to know. Here the someone is Jim aka ‘Pommie’ (Sullivan Stapleton) who after release from prison loses no time in tracking down an old mate, Merv ‘Sparra’ Farrell (Alex Russell).

The problem is, Farrell seems not all that happy to see him. It’s not exactly clear what Pommie wants of Farrell. Though the two did jail time together, Farrell's now settled and about to be married to Paula (Jessica De Goux), the daughter of a well-to-do Melbourne family. But Pommie is a threat to all that and in ways that you might not imagine.

Directed by Tony Ayres ‘Cut Snake’ is another stand-up example of how Australia continues to turn out some of the most real and compelling crime thrillers on the planet e.g. ‘Felony’, ‘Mystery Road’, ‘Snow Town’, ‘The Square’, ‘Wish You Were Here’ and the Academy Award-nominated ‘Animal Kingdom’.

Like the others, ‘Cut Snake’ is resolutely committed to its story and characters. Though the film’s set in 1974, there's no over-studied attempt to evoke the period. Direction and editing are straightforward, with visual flourishes thrown in only to lend attention (usually during moments of violence).

In contrast is ‘Cut Snake’s out-sized cast of rising stars - the doe-eyed, pretty boy Russell, the glowing De Gouw and the fearsomely physical Stapleton (who imposed himself in the same way on ‘Animal Kingdom)’. Pommie is a terrifying cinematic invention, a creature both blindly ferocious and emotionally exposed. 

Sullivan Stapleton is a mesmerizing actor with high-wattage star-power. Unfortunately his go-big-or-go-home plays in the muscle-movie ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ (2014) and the comedy-thriller 'Kill Me Three times' (2014) were to no one's' advantage, least of all his. However he's lined up to feature in a couple of hopeful-sounding US-produced crime/ action dramas and continues to star in the British television series, 'Strike Back'. 

Meantime, there's 'Cut Snake'. And even if Sullivan Stapleton's not around much any more, it shouldn't be the last of these audacious films. Noir down-under is bred in the bone and as long as a few shape-shifting actors like Guy Pearce and Ben Mendellson still come out to play in the Land of Wonder, everything should be fine.

Gary Deane

‘TO KILL A MAN’ aka ‘MATAR A UN HOMBRE' Chile 2014

Jorge (Daniel Candia) is a simple man, a maintenance worker at a forestry research station who wants only to keep to himself. But he and his family are being bullied by street thugs from the nearby projects. One evening Jorge gets badly roughed up and when his son Jorgito goes to confront his father’s tormenters, the gang’s leader, Kalule, shoots him. Kalule then self-inflicts a gunshot wound to make it look like self-defense but ends up going to jail for two years. When he gets out he begins to take his vengeance, including assaulting Jorge’s daughter. Jorge to this point has remained passive and the timidity eventually costs him his marriage. However, after police and local authorities fail to respond to the provocations and acts of violence, Jorge realizes he's come to a crossroad.

Though nominally a revenge drama, ‘To Kill a Man’ unfolds differently from what one might expect. Jorge is no Charles Bronson. He's slow to understand, to make decisions and to act. And even having done so, it’s not a given Jorge knows how to deal with what he's done nor the moral implications thereof. There's no signal moment of catharsis and release for Jorge or the audience, only increasing confusion and doubt as the film approaches its low-key conclusion.

Based on a true story, director and screenwriter Alejandro Fernadez Almendras has fashioned the film in a way that reflects how such a situation might play out in real life in which the aftershock of a vengeful act is as significant as the act itself. Jorge’s revenge happens not so much out of anger but of desperation, a sense of which that pervades the whole film. Jorge is a just a pawn in a game in which there is no victory – or if there is, it's hollow and short-lived.

While Alendras’ storytelling may seem opaque and undramatic, that’s the way he means it to be. His method is meditative and dogged and he sets out a straightforward mis-en-scene and middle-distance camera that weights everything equally in the interest of realism. 

No doubt amateur killers often do things in what may seem like agonizingly dragged-out and clumsy ways. But as will happen in noir, ‘To Kill a Man’ demonstrates how anyone can be trapped by decisions made and actions taken from which he or she may never escape.

‘To Kill a Man’ is available on Netflix.

Gary Deane

‘WILD TALES’ aka ‘RELATOS SALVAJES’ Argentina/ Spain 2014 

Dark and darker is the new black for film comedies these days, though a bona fide ‘noir comedy’ is a ball yet to be kicked through the goalposts. Film noir’s playingfield of despair, folly, desperation, obsession, lust, betrayal, and misfortune has long proven too potent a mix to tolerate deliberate and willful funniness. Though drollery and irony abound in modern noir (as they do everywhere), the noir comedy has remained an oxymoron - and a toxic one at that.

However Argentinian director Damian Szifron may have done the deed. His terrific 2015 Academy Award-nominated ‘Wild Tales’ is at once both deeply noir and darkly, fiercely comic. And no one suffers for it except the victims. 

‘Wild Tales’ is all about revenge served up both red hot and cool over six short stories in which:  a chance encounter on an airplane is not as random as it seems; a waitress recognizes  a man who once did her family harm; a driver on a remote highway provokes another only to regret it; a man whose car is impounded on parking charges refuses to accept them; another man must decide whether to cover up a crime committed by his son; a bride at her wedding reception has her suspicions about her new husband confirmed.

To say more would be to say too much and take away from what’s in store. But though the stories are short, none are slight. There’s enough going on in each to carry a full-length feature and unlike many portmanteau movies with contributions from different directors, ‘Wild Tales’ has no weak links. 

The stories are very different but Szifron’s exuberantly Latin approach to the telling is all of a piece. Though outrage and violence are everywhere and retribution turns to madness, the director diverts attention away from the horrific happenings to the absurdity and hilarity around them.

It’s a tight straddle but one that plays out beautifully. Cinematographer Javier Julia joyfully captures the chaos with a dexterous camera while Szifron calculates to the frame if and when he’ll allow the audience to see what’s coming or if it’s better to hold something back. Either way, the outcome is sure to be unnervingly macabre and alarmingly funny at the same time. 

Produced by Pedro Almodavar and starring among others, Ricardo Darin (‘The Secrets in Their Eyes’, ‘Carancho’ ‘El Aura’, ‘Nine Queens’), ‘Wild Tales’ is both wildly subversive and entertaining and is an impressive calling card for the young Argentinian director to hand to the world. 

('Wild Tales' got a repeat viewing on Valentine's Day at the 2015 Victoria (BC) International Film Festival where it won 'Best Film')

Gary Deane

THE HEAVY MOB AND THE FILTH: WHEN BRIT NOIR GOT NASTY

Though the American classic film noir cycle had mostly run its course by the late 1950s, its British equivalent kept calm and carried on well into the 1960s. One reason for the difference was broadcast television's much slower rollout in the UK. Hence, theatre audiences held up, as did their enthusiasm for low-budget, second-bill crime dramas. Part of the equation was the underlying and unforgiving grimness of post-war life in Britain. The human and economic toll of WWll upon its citizens had been devastating. Such a depressing psychic landscape provided the fertile ground on which film noir’s darker narratives might still fall and flourish.

The early ‘sixties saw the release of numbers of anxious and cheerless noirs such as ‘The Criminal’ (1960), ‘Hell is a City’ (1960), ‘The Frightened City’ (1961), ‘Payroll’ (1961), ‘Blind Corner’ (1963), ‘The Small World of Sammy Lee’ (1963) and the best of the multiple Merton Park ‘Edgar Wallace Theatre’ releases incl. ‘The Verdict’, ‘Act of Murder’, and ‘The Third Secret’ in 1964.  These were followed by a couple of brutally cynical ‘spy noir’ titles, ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ (1965) and ‘The Deadly Affair’ (1966) both based on novels by John le Carré.

  

However, after the collapse of the nation’s prohibitive censorship regime in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, the gloves came off. While many US crime dramas released during this ‘post-noir’ and formative ‘neo-noir’ period such as ‘Harper’ (1966), ‘Chandler’ (1971), ‘The Long Goodbye’ (1973), 'Chinatown' (1974), ‘The Drowning Pool’ (1975)’, ‘Night Moves’ (1975) and ‘Farewell, My Lovely’ (1975) still tilted towards a fated romanticism, Brit noir leaned in a far more violent direction. Instead of moody private dicks and their suspect clients, the British chose the devils they knew better – raging and brutish London gangsters (the heavy mob) fierce to go at it either with each other or off-the-leash coppers (the filth). If hazy sunshine and lucent swimming pools now were to be signifiers of American noir, it would be heavy skies and dank abandoned cesspits that would signpost the British. And here are ten films that left no doubt as to the difference.

   
1. Robbery (1967)

‘Robbery’ is closely-based on the famous real-life Great Train Robbery, news of which held the world in thrall in late 1963 and beyond. At the time of production, the actual events of the real-life robbery were still fresh in the public’s mind. With limited room for invention or surprise, ‘Robbery’ opts to focus on the planning, mechanics, and execution of things--starting with an audacious hit-and-run jewel robbery, the proceeds of which were needed to finance the train job. The sequence features the jaw-dropping car-chase that would help land director Peter Yates’ his next film, ‘Bullitt’, starring Steve McQueen. 

    

‘Robbery’s mastermind, Paul Clifton, is played by the stolid Stanley Baker, an actor who, as someone once said, had 'a face like a fist'. Exchanges among Baker and crew are few and brief, sharpening the suspense. Though not much is said, it’s clear these are men never to hold down straight jobs or lead patient lives. Some are obsessed with money and status; others are just desperate not to return to prison. While Clifton instructs his gang, ‘no guns’, he keeps one close, telling his distraught wife Kate (Joanna Pettet) that he'll never go back inside. Meantime the police are aware that something dodgy is going on and that Clifton is involved. James Booth gives a  prickly performance as the tenacious Inspector George Langdon, who’s got his suspicions, but has to fight to convince the higher-ups. ‘Robbery’ plays out like a rogue sporting event in which both sides evince grudging respect and some willingness to observe a few rules. It's a  thrilling outing--whether you know the outcome or not.

 
 
2. The Strange Affair (1968) 

After failing his university exams, Peter Strange (Michael York) joins the London Metro Police as a lark.  Not long after, Peter gets involved with an underage waif, Frederica (Susan George), the two of them unaware that their sexual romps are being filmed by her aunt and uncle who are porn dealers. Peter's boss, David Pierce (Jeremy Kemp), who's obsessed with bagging Quince, once a cop and now a big-time drug dealer, comes by the footage and uses it to coerce Peter into planting drugs on Quince, setting him up for an easy bust. However, the case soon begins to fall apart, along with whatever's left of the careers of Pierce and Strange (‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.’, to quote from Gilbert and Sullivan). Directed by David Greene (‘The Shuttered Room’, 1967 and 'I Start Counting', 1970) the film is set at a time when London was still swinging and was a breakthrough in its daring. However, no matter how sensationally and stylishly told, ‘The Strange Affair’ is a melodrama of pure despair.  

3. The Big Switch (1968)
  

Hard man, John Carter (Sebastian Breaks),  pulls birds just for the asking. One night, he picks up a girl in a London bar and they go back to her place. Later, after going out for smokes, Carter returns to find her shot dead. Not appearing to care, he walks out. Days after, he's hauled back to the bar by some goons. Mendez, the sleazeball owner, tells Carter that he's got evidence linking him to the murder and offers him a way out–a 'job' in  Brighton (‘Where the Filthy Rich Go for Dirty Weekends’). Carter, at this point, figures he doesn't have a lot of choice in the matter.

Directed by Pete Walker, once a bête noire of British cinema, ‘The Big Switch’ is a behind-the-counter guilty pleasure--largely due to a plot that keeps you guessing until it’s ready to offer up an explanation of what’s going on that doesn’t insult your intelligence. Given that the film was basically intended as a sex-and-violence exploitation title, 'The Big Switch’ is a pretty good deal. Walker works in an impressively compact and unflashy way, managing to shoe-horn smart bits of action/ titillation into otherwise mundane sequences. Walker made a point of getting up establishment noses (Monty Python's ‘toffee-nosed, stuffed-upped, sticky-beaks’). However, the British Film Institute since has given a special DVD release to several of Walker’s pulp noir entries-- demonstrating that some, if not all, has been forgiven.

4. Performance (1968)

Chas (James Fox), a violent East London gangster, needs a place to lie low after a hit that should never have happened. He finds cover in a guest house run by the mysterious Mr. Turner (Mick Jagger), a one-time rock star who’s looking for someone or something to rekindle a faded career. As critic John Simon said of the film at the time, “You don’t have to be a drug addict, pederast, sadomasochist or nitwit to enjoy it, but being one or more of these things would help”. Though it’s useful to include mention of ‘Performance’ here, there's no great need to dwell on it.

5. Man of Violence (1970)

Moon (Michael Latimer) is a bit of a lad. His clothes are stylish, his car is sporty and his women are choice. He’s also a go-between, a mercenary who sells his services to the highest bidder. He’s been hired by two gangsters, each of whom is paying him to spy on the other. While he’s happy to play along, it seems that both his employers also are busy scrambling to track down a huge amount of gold bullion removed from a recently-liberated African country. Moon realizes that with the stakes so high, being piggy-in-the-middle between two gangland villains isn’t the smartest place to be. He decides to go after the bullion on his own with a gorgeous blonde, Angel (Luan Peters) in tow, and the race across three continents is on.   

‘Man of Violence’ was intended to be just another Pete Walker cut-and-run title. It only passed the British Board of Film Censors with major edits but still isn’t hurting for any lack of mayhem and sex – including an eye-popping scene in which Moon beds the boyfriend of a homosexual Member of Parliament in order to get information. Moon, if not likable, is at least entertaining--along with the film’s other characters, its under-control direction and cinematography, and a better-than-might-have-been-expected script.  Walker’s films were always smarter than they at first seemed. He went on to find commercial success in noir-drenched 'terror' films but eventually packed it in to become a successful property developer.   

6. Villain (1970)

The ‘Villain’ here is a London gangster named Vic Dakin, an unappealing and ruthless thug. Dakin (played by Richard Burton) rules his gang with an iron fist while loving both his old mum and his boyfriend, Wolffe (Ian McShane) with whom he likes some very rough trade.  Dakin’s crime empire is built around drugs, gambling and prostitution. Hence, he’s not that enthusiastic when approached about pulling an armed robbery. But the £70,000 payoff proves too much to resist, even though Dakin is aware that Scotland Yard already is moving in on his gang. It’s a big chance to take but Dakin has insurance in the form of a packet of explicit photos of a Member of Parliament who will give him an alibi if he needs it. And he will.

With Dakin’s character based on real-life crime boss, Ronnie Kray, one-half of the infamous Kray twins, ‘Villain’ is a hard, brutal film. In that way, it's everything a British gangster movie should be,  boasting a number of ever-capable British performers, including McShane, Nigel Davenport as Dakin’s nemesis Inspector Matthews, and Donald Sinden as the licentious Gerald Draycott MP. However, it’s Burton who grabs our attention by the throat. When the film came out, Burton was derided for his attempt at a cockney accent and for appearing sometimes content to just recite his lines. But critical hostility toward the film was all of a piece. ‘Villain’s throw-down of sadism, violence, corruption, and twisted sexuality in itself was sure to affront and offend. That Richard Burton would have been party to it all sent the nobs off the deep end. Since then, the thinking on ‘Villain’ has changed. While ‘Get Carter’ often is credited with having spawned the brood of noir British gangster thrillers to come, many of those offspring more resemble ‘Villain’, not a pretty picture, but a very good movie. 

7. Get Carter (1971)

‘Get Carter,’ a dark and gritty revenge tragedy based on a novel by Ted Lewis and starring Michael Caine, generally is regarded as the best British crime film ever. Certainly, it's among the smartest and most stylish and its reputation only has grown in the years since its release. Made for a modest $750,000, the movie was savaged upon release for its disturbing violence and amorality and was dumped by its studio onto grindhouse and drive-in circuits in the UK and abroad. A review in the (London) Observer at the time said that the experience was like 'a bottle of neat gin swallowed before breakfast'. Today that sounds like a whole-hearted recommendation.

Michael Caine stars as Jack Carter, a London mob lieutenant who returns to Newcastle in the north of England to attend the funeral of his brother who'd died in car accident when driving drunk.  Carter suspects his brother was murdered, a suspicion which both his bosses in London and gang leaders in Newcastle would like him to abandon. But Carter eventually finds out the actual circumstances of his brother’s death and begins to inflict serious pain and retribution.  

‘Get Carter’ was the film that shattered Michael Caine’s reputation for playing posh lads and preening loverboys and his performance as a remorseless anti-hero wreaking havoc on Newcastle’s underworld is signature. Though Caine is in nearly every scene,  the supporting performances are impressive, too--especially that of playwright John Osborne (‘Look Back in Anger’) as a local heavy, Cyril Kinnear. He’s ostensibly the villain of the piece–though Carter‘s own villainy and sex-and-violence-fueled lifestyle muddies the moral waters. Britt Ekland's around to add a touch of glamour as one of the film's throwaway females.

Given a lean direction by Mike Hodges and strikingly photographed and edited, ’Get Carter’ showed the world how much British crime films had changed by the early 1970’s. It not only reflected more liberal social attitudes and less stringent censorship laws but also the  bleak realism of ‘60’s ‘kitchen sink’ dramas and television police series like ‘Z Cars’. Simply written and stripped clean of sentiment, 'Get Carter' was both of its time and well ahead of it. The movie remains as threatening today as the day it was released.

8. Sitting Target (1972) 
  

‘Sitting Target’ is a coarse and bloody thriller offering a naked and no-holds-barred performance from Oliver Reed as escaped convict, Harry Lomart, who’s obsessed with getting revenge on his cheating wife, Pat (Jill St. John) pregnant by another man. Reed’s well-supported by Ian McShane as Birdy his more cheerful accomplice and Edward Woodward as the straight-edge copper who wants to offer Pat protection. Lomart's break from prison is just the first of the film's sensational set-pieces. In this lengthy sequence, he, Birdy, and another convict McNeil (Freddie Jones) manage to evade prison screws, guard dogs, and barbed wire, before negotiating a heart-thumping relay along a rope suspended above the yard. It’s thrilling action and leaves no doubt as to Lomart’s determination to get to his wife and kill her. 

Like ‘Get Carter’, ‘Sitting Target’ has a documentary-like feel for its locations and settings. Director Douglas Hickox has London at its dingiest--polluted by industrialization, dominated by slums and tower blocks, and scabbed by rubble-strewn wastelands. It’s an anonymous place where streets and neighborhoods have been abandoned, or where those left behind live in fear. The film itself becomes increasingly fearsome as it moves towards its explosive ending. While ‘Sitting Target’ doesn’t achieve the depth or significance of ‘Get Carter’, the movie still rates as one of the most unforgettable and essential British crime noirs of the era. 

9. The Offence (1973)

World-weary copper Detective Sergeant Johnson (Sean Connery) is a police force veteran of twenty years. The murders, rapes and other grievous crimes he’s had to investigate have left him raw with rage. 

The long-suppressed anger finally breaks surface when Johnson goes in to interview a serial child molester, Kenneth Baxter (Ian Bannen), whom the detective is sure has carried out a series of brutal attacks on schoolgirls. During the claustrophobic questioning process, Baxter cunningly maneuvers Johnson into a face-to-face confrontation with his own demons. Johnson sees that his identity has become blurred with that of the criminals he despises--and that realization is unbearable.  The interrogation ends in violence and an internal investigator, Lieutenant Cartwright (Trevor Howard) is left to try and determine what went wrong.

 

Directed by Sidney Lumet ‘The Offence’ is a cross between a police procedural and a psychodrama and is as grim and unfriendly as it sounds. The film was a self-conscious attempt by Sean Connery to distance himself fully from the Bond franchise following ‘Diamonds are Forever’. If that were his intention, it succeeded. Connery gives the best performance of his career. Though ‘The Offence’ didn't easily find an audience when first released, Ian Bannen received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He didn’t win, but then to have awarded him would have given recognition to a movie that the British Academy was determined to ignore. Ben Johnson, took the prize for his performance in ‘The Last Picture Show'. As good as Johnson was, Bannen really should have got the cigar.

10. The Squeeze (1977)

Jim Naboth (Stacey Keach) is an ex-Scotland Yard detective turned London private eye. He’s also an alcoholic just out of detox who finds out his ex-wife Jill (Carol White) and his daughter have been kidnapped. Jill’s current lover, Foreman (Edward Fox), owns a fleet of security trucks and tells Naboth that Irish crime lord Vic Smith (Steven Boyd) wants a £1m ransom and company route plans in exchange. When Naboth starts out to try and find Jill, the villains then demand more–kill Naboth.

‘The Squeeze’is arguably the most sordid of the titles here-- and that’s saying something. Directed by a young Michael Apted, the film was described by a reviewer at the time as ‘a package tour of thuggery’. Included in that package is Smith’s right-hand man Keith (David Hemmings), a degenerate slime-bag who, in one scene, cues up The Stylistics’ ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New’ on the record player and makes Jill strip for him and his pals. It's a moment as deliberate and cruel as the infamous ‘ear’ sequence in ‘Reservoir Dogs’--and just as devastating.

That said,  ‘The Squeeze’ at times is as brave as it is ugly, thanks to the challenging, self-deprecating performance from Keach, who brings a welcome humanity to this yarn. When Nadoth makes his entrance, he's at the low point of a weeklong bender, bleary-eyed and bleeding. He knows he’s killing himself with booze, but also he’s maybe got one last shot at redemption--helped along by his wingman, Teddy, a likeable low-life who manages to keep Naboth on something like the straight-and-narrow. Tough and tightly executed, ‘The Squeeze’ was mostly shunned at release. Today's audiences are more able to appreciate the film’s exhilarating pulp mayhem. 

                                                    _

But at the end of it all, the release of ‘The Squeeze’ effectively signaled the end of the transitional ‘60’s and ‘70’s heavy-mob cycle with its unreconstructed glorification of guns, girls, and gangsters. By this time, Brit noir was in need of something else that would renew it for popular audiences.

That something else was ‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980), a film that exploded off theater screens throughout the UK and abroad and one that would come to be recognized as the first British ‘neo-noir’ (a niche occupied in the American canon by ‘Body Heat’). 

This densely-plotted film worked both as a straight-ahead gangster story and as a powerful and lasting metaphor for the state of contemporary Britain – a gangsterism of corrupt political and market forces aligned with a reverence for tradition and ‘Little England’.

That said, the whiff of social and political malaise hangs over much of British noir including these heavy mob titles. However, the ten films of this transitional cycle are both what were they were meant to be and what we would want them to be - compact and dangerous B noirs that go all-out to live up to the brazen and shameless promises of their lurid one-sheets and lobby cards. 

Most are throw-back thrillers that go all-out but never wantonly sell out. Each is a better film than it deserved to be given limited budgets and ambitions and each a part of a critical sub-genre that had a dramatic and lasting impact on British film to come.

Gary Deane

THE BIG CAPER (1957)

In the preface to her red-ripe tomato of an autobiography ‘Has Corrine Been a Good Girl?’ French actress Corrine Calvert writes of meeting Rory Calhoun: 

“I felt a towering shadow blocking the sun’s rays. I looked up as Rory Calhoun introduced himself. I tumbled into the dazzling whirlpool of his eyes. There was a fire in the depth of his glance that consumed all my resistance. It was too strong, too intoxicating. His hand was on my elbow. His touch had ignited me. Desire flowed through my body”.

Things move fast from there. However, Calhoun soon decides he’s had enough of Calvert.

“Move your car”, Rory ordered.

“I’ll go. Just kiss me, goodnight. Please Rory, just one kiss”.

Rory went back into the house. I went to my car and sat behind the wheel waiting. Rory reappeared and his hand grasped a small automatic pistol. He pointed at me directly.

“Move or I’ll shoot…You don’t believe me?" Rory challenged in a white rage. He shot a bullet across the hood of my car. 
  
I was paralyzed with terror. Rory was at the door of the car, the gun at my temple.    
   
“You’ll never get away with it, Rory”, I said. “Just kiss me and I’ll leave”.  

I decided to go back to France. 

That Rory Calhoun was born-to-wild there is no doubt. He’d spent most of his youth until age 21 in reformatories and prisons serving time for everything from car theft to armed robbery.  

Following release from San Quentin, Calhoun decided to go straight. After a series of laboring jobs, he got himself to Hollywood. He was noticed by actor Alan Ladd whose wife, agent Sue Carol got Calhoun a contract with Fox (under his real name Francis McCown). Fox later dropped Calhoun but Henry Willson, David O. Selznick’s chief talent scout persuaded the producer to add him to his contract list and renamed him 'Rory Calhoun' (Willson also famously coined the noms d’ecran Rock Hudson, Guy Madison, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Ty Hardin, Dack Rambo and Mike Connors and others). 

Calhoun’s first break came when cast as boxer Jim Corbett in ‘The Great John L’ (1945). Here he got to display the physique and athleticism that would win him parts in the countless (some would say endless) adventure movies and westerns with which he would become identified.     

In 1947 Calhoun was featured in Delmer Daves’ moody, rustic noir ‘The Red House’ sharing some torrid love scenes with Julie London. However, it would be ten years before the good-looking Calhoun appeared in another noir crime drama, ‘The Big Caper’, based on a book of the same title by Lionel White (also author of 'Clean Break’ filmed in 1955 as 'The Killing').

Calhoun stars as Frank Harper a small-time hood who’s buried under gambling debts. To get out from under he persuades his boss, Flood (James Gregory) to bankroll a big caper – knocking off a bank that handles the monthly payroll for a nearby army base. Harper buys a gas station across the street from the bank as a stakeout locale. He settles into the community (San Felipe, California) with Flood’s girlfriend, Kay (Mary Costa). They pretend to be man-and-wife and wait for the arrival of the other members of the crew. These include an alcoholic firebug (Robert H. Harris), a sinister sex-addled hipster (Corey Allen), and Flood’s loyal protector (Paul Picerni), any one of whom looks capable of screwing things up. 

Meanwhile, Harper and Kay, thrown together as they are, begin to enjoy each other’s company a little too much, as well as the square, small-town pleasures of card games with new friends and backyard barbeques. Flood begins to suspect and wonder what’s wrong with this picture. As it turns out he’s wise to do so and Flood is as dangerous as he is smart. 

‘The Big Caper’ is another of those more obscure late-period film noirs that either haven’t been seen or given enough credit by some who have seen them. The movies are stripped of much of the visual poetry and romantic narrative that qualified earlier noirs of the classic period. The lesser ones suffer for it but the better of them like 'The Big Caper' emerge as something else – more close-to-the-bone, more real, more modern. More Mickey Spillane than Raymond Chandler. 

Much of the credit goes to Robert Stevens’ very pacey, taut, hard-edged direction. Stevens had a long career in television prior to and after ‘The Big Caper’, notably as head director on both Alfred Hitchcock series for which he received an Emmy. Stevens also directed a quartet of provocative noir-stained psychological dramas: ‘Never Love a Stranger’ (1958) w/John Drew Barrymore; ‘I Thank a Fool’ (1962) w/Susan Hayward; ‘In the Cool of the Day’ (1963) w/ Jane Fonda; ‘Change of Mind’ (1969) w/ Raymond St. Jacques. Stevens clearly was secure with darker material and ‘The Big Caper’ is as one of his better films.

‘The Big Caper’ also would offer Rory Calhoun one his better roles. Though right enough for westerns, Calhoun by looks and temperament was born for film noir and was most interesting when playing roguishly handsome bad guys. And Calhoun was nothing if not cool. He was a natural actor - which set him apart from other Hollywood hunks like Ray Danton, Brad Dexter, Richard Egan, William Campbell, Jeffrey Hunter, Vince Edwards, John Russell, John Bromfield (to whom Corrine Calvert was married for as long as it lasted) and many others. 

Not enough has been made of Calhoun’s native talent and versatility on screen. While at Fox he’d been a reliable leading man to the studio’s female stars such as Betty Grable in a succession of musicals. Over a career that included eighty-plus films and a thousand television episodes Calhoun hit mostly high notes with the part of Frank Harper among the highest. 

Harper starts out as a hoodlum blind in his loyalty to Flood but then begins to consider (as Calhoun himself once had) that maybe a thug’s life wasn’t going to get him anywhere. But the decision to look differently at the world doesn’t come easily to the embittered Harper. He has his back to the wall and has to work through where he is with Kay and Flood both. The change-of-pace for Calhoun and his convincing performance in ‘The Big Caper’ shows how interesting a downbeat lead he could be.  

But everyone in the film steps up, especially James Gregory (‘The Scarlet Hour’ 1956, ‘Nightfall’ 1957) as the frightening and murderous gang boss, Flood. ‘The Big Caper’ is really about its characters and the workings of the gang as much as it is the plot - which admittedly is shaky in some elements, especially its abrupt and suspect 'studio' ending (suspect but not unexpected). However, it’s a small price to pay when the payoff is as substantial as it is with ‘The Big Caper’.      

Meantime, Rory Calhoun would carry on. In one of Hollywood most infamous divorce trials, actress Lita Baron, Calhoun’s wife of twenty-one years sued him for adultery naming seventy-nine women with whom the actor had had affairs while married, including Betty Grable. Calhoun’s response? “Heck, she didn’t even include half of ‘em”. Grable denied involvement. 

THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE (1947)

Sally: "What are you going to do about that lead in your back?" 

Clem: "Sell it for whatever it will fetch".


Some years back the British government of the day famously announced it was declaring war on the country’s ‘yob culture’ and the rampant anti-social behavior souring daily life. 

In truth the UK has always had its share of all-ages knaves: wide boys, bovver boys, teds, mods and rockers, punks, skins, lager louts and other scroats. But then 'lads’ll be lads, won't they?' 

This sideways affection for hooligans and crims has long shown up on screens big and small in Britain. In recent decades movies such as 'The Long Good Friday', 'Mona Lisa', 'The Krays', 'Gangster No.1',  'Sexy Beast', 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and the nasty little confection ‘Layer Cake’ all got world-wide attention.

Small-bore felons also feature in just as many earlier UK productions. Among them was Alberto Cavalcanti’s unnerving ‘They Made Me a Fugitive’, one of a cycle of ‘spiv’ titles ('Brighton Rock' being the best known) about the black marketeers who prospered from shortages during and following the war. 

'They Made Me a Fugitive' has spivs both bad and worse. Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard) is an ex-RAF pilot and officer who's been on the bottle since being demobbed. Disillusioned and depressed, he's looking for a way to climb out of the hole into which he's dug himself. He hooks up with a gang headed by Narcy (Griffith Jones). When one of the gang asks him about Clem's 'specialty', he snaps, 'He’s got class. We need a bit of that in our business'. 

With those words, Narcy says just about everything there is to say about his petty motives and aspirations. Like most British gangster protagonists, Narcy’s origins are working-class poor. Obsessed with overcoming these, Narcy sees association with Clem as his way out.

It doesn’t take long for things to turn ugly between him and Clem when Clem realizes that the gang’s latest haul includes a cache of dope. He tells Narcy that he’s not playing along if drugs are part of the deal. Narcy turns on him and asks Clem if he thinks that they’re not ‘respectable enough’ for him while one of Narcy’s henchmen accuses Clem of being 'stuck up' and 'just an amateur muckin’ about for the fun of it'. Clem himself confides to his 'posh' girlfriend, Ellen (Eve Ashley), 'Look, we’re slumming here' and 'I may be a crook but I’m not that kind of crook'. 

Though Clem for whatever reason has turned his back on the class 'that made him' (or it's turned its back on him), he’s not ready to succumb to low-life thuggery. Narcy, on the other hand is pathological in his hunger to become ‘a gent’. Suspecting he’ll never achieve it, he begins to make Clem the target of his fear and loathing. Narcy clearly covets Clem's station in life (as well as his girlfriend) and also despises Clem for everything he otherwise represents. Clem on the other hand looks at Narcy and sees an uneducated hoodlum with delusions of becoming something he’ll never be. 

Their relationship is rendered even more twisted with the film's inspired counter-casting of the two main actors. Clem, as played by Howard is by far the more rugged and masculine of the two. On the other hand, Narcy (short for Narcissus) played by Griffith Jones is slighter, affected and a bit of a dandy. But while not that physically imposing, Narcy is still a very scary piece of work.

An uneasy truce is arrived at when Narcy tells Clem that they don’t plan to make dope a regular part of the trade. Unfortunately for Clem, when the next job comes off, Narcy sets him up for a fall - a big one. Clem ends up convicted of manslaughter and is sentenced to 15 years hard labor in Dartmoor Gaol. Months later, Clem gets a visit out of the blue from Sally (Sally Gray), the now-former girlfriend of Narcy who dumped her for Clem’s bird, Ellen. Clem had his suspicions but it’s still not welcome news. 

Sally also tells him that Soapy (Jack McNaughton), who was in on the frame is now in hiding from Narcy and might be persuaded to turn's King's evidence against him, thus clearing Clem - at least of the manslaughter charge. Clem listens but also has his doubts about Sally's motives and why she’s there. He blows up and tells her to get lost.

The prison scene highlights Trevor Howard's stormy command of the screen. While British filmgoers usually preferred their chaps to be stolid and affable (think Jack Hawkins, Richard Todd, Bernard Lee), that never much suited Howard. His forte was playing brittle mavericks and self-destructive cynics.  As Clem – an embittered noir protagonist struggling to get out of a situation not entirely of his making but still forced to reckon with some of the blame and all of the consequences – Howard’s performance in ‘Fugitive’ is definitive. 

Poor Sally Gray on the other hand seems to have wandered into the wrong movie. The actress, a favorite of British film audiences in the 30's and 40's is to-the-manor-born and forever sounds about to choke on the plum in her mouth. That Gray is supposed to be a chorus girl and a sadistic gangster's bit of fluff is more than a stretch. But she’s likable enough in a goofy, distracted way and eventually she manages to work into her character (or vice-versa).

Jones’ Narcy on the other hand is a textbook psychopath - charming, glib, selfish, promiscuous, and without remorse. He’s a misogynist who beats and tortures. Narcy goes to see Sally in her apartment after he learns that she's been to see Clem in prison. In a rage, he kicks her into unconsciousness. He later confronts Cora, wife of the would-be snitch, Soapy, wanting to know where he's hiding. He orders Big Jim, one of his louts to use his 'coaxer', a heavy leather belt studded with angled-edged medallions as big as horse brasses. Threatened with disfigurement and worse, Cora breaks down and spills (which comes as a relief). 

It was screen moments like these – well outside the experience of most British filmgoers - that also resulted in the film’s truncated release in the US as 'I Became a Criminal' (a cultural inversion to ponder) with a running time of only seventy-eight minutes instead of original British version’s ninety-six. 

That said, 'They Made Me a Fugitive' is given a deliberate and artful direction by Alberto Cavalcanti (or 'Cavalcanti' as he chose to be called) probably best known for his 'The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby' (1947). Cavalcanti began his career in his native Brazil, and then worked in several countries including France where he became part of both avant-garde and documentary movements that anticipated the French 'poetic realism' of the 1930’s.

There’s tension - though not friction - between realist and expressionist impulses that create unease within the frame. Cavalcanti often foregrounds and shoots around objects and sometimes through them for expressive effect. At one point Narcy's face is reflected in a mirror that casts an image as grotesque as seen in some carnival of horror. It leaves no doubt Narcy is completely deranged.

Behind the camera was Czech-born Otto Heller who too had been schooled in German Expressionism and arguably is as responsible for the film's intense affect as Cavalcanti. (Heller would later shoot Michael Powell’s infamous 'Peeping Tom' (1960). 'Fugitive' also is tightly edited by Margery Saunders who worked with Calvacanti on several more films before editing on a long list of low-budget crime titles - many of which are counted in as part of the British classic noir cycle.

'They Made Me a Fugitive' was based on a mystery thriller 'A Convict Has Escaped' by Jackson Budd. The book was adapted for the screen by playwright and screenwriter Noel Langley  who left to work abroad on less grievous projects such as the  'Wizard of Oz' and television's' Shirley Temple's  Storybook'. However 'Fugitive's script is bitter and corrosive in ways that distance it from even the darkest American movies of the period. 

Now nearly seventy years on Britain's seemingly intractable class system has weakened but remains a long way from going away - as do the acid resentments to which it gives rise. 

As for Britain's scurvy yobs - crude, obnoxious, stupid and violent - they still manage to infest daily life like cockroaches. Some things never change. 

FOR YOU I DIE (1947)

Georgia (admiringly): ‘Maybe you’ve got something. (He’s) almost like having a wild animal for a pet’.

Hope: (disgustedly) ‘You make me sick’.


Convict Johnny Coulter (Paul Langton), nearing the end of a prison sentence, is forced to take part in a prison break organized by gangster and thug Matt Gruber (Don Harvey). Coulter is told to hide out in a backwoods holiday camp. There he’s to make contact with Gruber’s woman, an ex-chorus girl Hope Novak (Cathy Downs) and let her know that Gruber will be along to fetch her as soon as things cool down. 

Coulter locates the camp, makes the meet, and keeps his head down. However Novak is not at all the hard-bitten hoofer that he’d been expecting. And it turns out she no longer wants anything to do with Gruber. Hope also believes she sees some good in Coulter, a guy who’s taken every kind of beating and is on the ropes. He sees her as someone he might trust. Maybe there's some Hope for Coulter. Meantime Gruber is out there and nothing‘s changed for him – which presents a serious problem for everyone.

'For You I Die' seems to be a film noir with good bones. However the black magic soon gives way to lame conjuring remindful of the foolishness of 'His Kind of Woman'. The movie gets handed off to a group of theatrical inanities who hang around the motor camp’s café in some unexplainable effort at 'comic relief'. Among the misfits: Alex Shaw (Misha Auer), a manic Russian artist and spiritualist; Smitty, an alcoholic hash-slinger who’s sweet on Hope; Mac and Jerry, cartoon cops who live at the lunch counter and repeatedly challenge Coulter with, ‘You know, you sure do look familiar’ or ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere’ (the 'joke' being that Coulter’s wanted poster is sitting large in their black-and-white). 

Thankfully after a time 'For You I Die’s better instincts show themselves and the film again begins to threaten. Johnny Coulter is straight out of the film noir workbook. Paul Langton a journeyman character player doesn’t take at first as featured lead but eventually comes into focus bringing together something of the unaffected brashness of Dennis O’Keefe and Richard Basehart’s sinister calculation. 

Maggie Dillion (Marian Kerby), the resort owner, is a toughened Ma Joad with a bible in one hand and deep-fryer in the other. She’s a sentimental character but she’s okay, our Maggie. 

Georgia (Jane Weeks) is a blonde tramp in the tradition of all great blonde film noir tramps. She slinks around the cafe and comes on to every guy who walks in the door including Coulter. It'd be a good bet she's listed on the menu as ‘Apple Strumpet’. But Georgia’s no fool and proves to be more dangerous than Coulter suspects. 

However it’s Hope Novak, Gruber’s once-girlfriend who takes charge of the movie. Novak is a girl who’s had a life but wants another. She has no illusions about where she’s been and is resolute about never going back. Intially Hope seems a bit too much of a goody two-shoes for someone who’s had such a hard start. It’s also a stretch to think that she’d hook up with another felon. But the under-rated Downs is able to convince us that Hope knows what she’s about and what she’s doing. 

Director John Reinhardt (The Guilty, Open Secret, Chicago Calling) and Cinematography William Clothier (Confidence Girl, Track of the Cat, Gangbusters) do a reasonable job of things given the fractured script. The film, a poverty row cheapie, has a contained and theatrical construction but framing and lighting of the stage-like sets frequently is evocative and haunting. 

But as much as one wants to root for 'For You I Die', it's a disappointment. It’s obvious where and how the movie could have been made better but all that and ten cents will only get you a 'Camp Cafe' cuppa joe and a big plate of regret.