SMALL PICTURES, BIG PERFORMANCES: MICKEY ROONEY AND FILM NOIR

“He sure is short.”

“Yeah, well, so was Napoleon” (‘Drive a Crooked Road’ 1954)

Mickey Rooney was too big to fail.

For nine decades Rooney was never more than steps away from the footlights or the limelight. When he died in 2014 at age 93, the little actor with the outsized personality left behind an amazing 340 screen credits, an Emmy, two Oscars, and a pair of Golden Globes. 

From the mid 1930’s to the post-war 1940’s Rooney was among the biggest movie box office draws in the world. Starring in a series of films as Andy Hardy, the go-getting teenage son of a small-town judge, Rooney won hearts the world over with his on-screen display of inexhaustible exuberance and equally boundless talent.

However, the war changed everything and Rooney, now well into his ‘20’s and still looking like a pug-faced kid, knew he had some growing up to do. First efforts in that direction were sports pictures: ‘Killer McCoy’ (1947), a boxing story; ‘The Big Wheel’ (1949), a race car drama; and ‘The Fireball’ (1950), based on a novel by Horace McCoy (‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’) about pro roller derby. 

Though providing decent entertainment, the movies remained extensions of what had gone before, with Rooney as the unabashed little world-beater who, after finding humility in defeat, would emerge a champion. Unfortunately audiences no longer seemed to care. Rooney's brand had become stale and confused. In order to revive his career, it was now critical that he find whatever path he could to greater maturity and restraint both on and off the screen.

However, Rooney was intent on living large. He loved drinking and gambling and when it came to women, the little guy made out like a bandit. With marriages to Hollywood beauties Ava Gardner and Martha Vickers and known relations with Carole Landis, Joi Lansing, Lana Turner (who aborted their pregnancy), Linda Darnell, Mary Beth Hughes and many others, Mickey the Rooster and his love life were perpetual low-hanging fruit for the scandal sheets.  

By 1950, having left MGM and without a contract, Rooney had become yesterday’s news. Nearly broke, he had to take what would be on offer, including a succession of low-budget noir dramas featuring Rooney in starkly memorable portrayals of raw ambition, desire, obsession, betrayal, greed, and moral disintegration.

While Rooney was born to be a many things, he was made to be in film noir. He had more than a fair idea going in to these grievous tales what it was like to be hard up against it. His unstoppable train wreck of a life - a disquietingly dark tale in itself – would be scarred by alcohol abuse, drugs, gambling, divorces, career implosions, squandered millions, murder, and suicide. He’d been hard up against it his whole life and his performances in the films to follow are as fiercely aware as any in classic noir.  

1. ‘QUICKSAND’ (1950)

“I feel like I'm bein' shoved into a corner, and if I don't get out soon, it'll be too late. Maybe it's too late already!”

Dan Brady (Rooney) works as a grease monkey at a Santa Monica garage. He’s got an on-again-off-again girlfriend (Barbara Bates), though thoughts of settling down with her don’t appear to spark his plug. Then one day at the local diner, a new counter-girl walks in who does. She’s called Vera (a hard name for a hard-edged blonde played by Jeanne Cagney) and he asks her out. Strapped for cash, he takes twenty dollars from the garage till, intending to put it back before it’s missed.This petty theft sucks Brady down into a vortex of crime - assault and battery, armed robbery, extortion, car theft, murder, kidnapping - and a world of pain, every bit of it deserved.

Directed by Irving Pichel (‘They Won’t Believe Me’ 1947) and shot  by Lionel Linden (‘The Scarlet Hour’ 1956, ‘The Big Caper’ 1957, ‘I Want to Live’ 1958), 'Quicksand' sounds like a lot to swallow but the film's brisk resolve renders it all not only plausible but inevitable. Vera wants a mink coat and Brady wants to buy it for her. Brady’s boss (Art Smith) wants payback for a car he’s stolen but at a big premium. Vera wants Brady to take what they need off a greasy penny arcade operator, Nick (Peter Lorre) who's blackmailing Brady. One sorry want leads to another.  

In fact, Brady’s a ready chump and just as crooked as Vera. He's just too thick and unaware to realize it. Like everyone else in the movie he’s small and grubby and it’s no longer fate that condemns them but the smallness and grubbiness of their ambition. 

Mickey Rooney’s playing against type in the film works as well for him as he does for it. Elements of his cocksure little self are present but as things unfold we see sides of Rooney, the actor, which weren’t so apparent. At the time of release ‘Quicksand’ sank without a trace; fortunately it fell into the the public domain and now is among the better known of Rooney’s film noirs.

2. ‘THE STRIP’ (1951)

“You talk pretty big for a little man”

Stanley Maxton (Rooney), who's just out of the service, heads to Los Angeles to find a job. He gets hooked up with a bookie operation headed by Sonny Johnson (James Craig) and then meets Jane Tafford (Sally Forrest), an aspiring actress, dancer and cigarette girl and in a club called ‘Fluff’s’. Stan used to be a jazz drummer and jumps at a chance to join the club’s house band. But then who wouldn’t want to sit in with Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden and Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines?

So far, so good. However, Stan makes the mistake of introducing Jane to the debonair Sonny who promises some studio introductions. Stan tries to warn her off but she won’t listen. He tells Sonny to back off and threatens to expose Sonny’s bookmaking set-up if he doesn’t. Things get nasty and people get hurt. Some even get killed.

‘The Strip’, directed by Leslie Kardos (‘The Tijuana Story’ 1957) and billed bizarrely as ‘MGM’s Musical Melodrama of the Dancer and the Drummer’ is more noir drama than musical. Meantime, there are long-ish musical interludes and how you feel about that depends on how you feel about classic renditions here of ‘Basin Street Blues’ by jazz luminaries like Armstrong,  a young Vic Damone warbling a wistful and warm ‘Don’t Blame Me’ and Forrest herself in a couple of rousing, hip-shaking dance numbers expansively shot by Robert Surtees (‘The Bad and the Beautiful’ 1952). But the drama holds its own, helped along by seasoned character actor William Demarest as avuncular club-owner, Fluffy, and James Craig as the double-dealing Johnson.

Rooney is fittingly attentive and subdued in 'The Strip'. Stan is naive and unprepared and the flashback structure of the story serves to emphasize his helplessness. In the memorable closing scene, he returns to the club and retreats to his drums in an attempt to relieve the anguish. It’s a touchingly open moment that suddenly makes the movie something much more that it had been. 

3. 'DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD' (1954)

“Do you have $15,000? Well, I can’t wait. I know what happens when people wait!” 

On Sundays Eddie Shannon is a big man on the amateur auto-racing circuit. The rest of the week he’s small potatoes and he knows it. Women don’t pay him much attention and the guys at the garage get on his case. Until the day Barbara Mathews (Dianne Foster) brings her car in for repair and shows interest. They start going out and Eddie begins to believe that his life is going to change. It is, but not in any way he could ever imagine or want. 

The fact is, Barbara’s slick-dick boyfriend, Steve Norris (Kevin McCarthy) and his smartass sidekick Harold Baker (Jack Kelly) need Shannon to be the wheelman on a bank job they’re planning. At first Barbara’s willing to play the honeypot. But when he agrees to go along (only because he thinks that's what Barbara wants) she begins to feel sorry for him and regret her involvement. Things start to get complicated and stay that way.

Deliberately-paced and low on melodrama, the film is not so much interested in the robbery as what occurs immediately before and afterwards. Close to meditative at times, ‘Drive a Crooked Road’ feels like a film noir made in France.

According to Rooney’s autobiography ‘Life’s Too Short’, one of the reasons that he wanted a deal with Columbia after being released by MGM was the chance to do a picture with Richard Quine (‘Pushover’ 1954). The young director already was seen as good with actors and ‘Drive a Crooked Road’, scripted by Blake Edwards is very much an actors’ picture.

Rooney again pushes the envelope, this time in the part of the lonely, damaged dreamer, Eddie, and he's splendid in it; likewise, Dianne Foster as Barbara. Foster was an attractive, responsive actress who never moved on to bigger things despite featuring well in a number of other high-test noirs, ‘Bad for Each Other (1953), ‘The Brothers Rico’ (1957) and ‘King of the Roaring ‘20’s’. Barbara eludes judgment as a classic femme fatale. While desperately chasing the good life, she’s compelled to find things to both admire and pity in Shannon, calling him ‘a lonesome little animal’. Where she goes with that ends up steering ‘Drive a Crooked Road’ beyond the expected.

4. 'BABY FACE NELSON' (1957)

“More vicious than ‘Little Caesar! More savage than ‘Scarface’! More brutal than ‘Dillinger’! The baby-faced butcher who line ‘em up and chopped ‘em down and terrorized a nation!”  (poster taglines)

As attitudes in crime films and film noir began to harden in the late 1950’s there was renewed interest in the gangster movie which had settled as a genre in the 1930’s.  However, the gangster as tragic hero left the building during the orgy of uncontained violence that erupted in 1957 with ‘Baby Face Nelson’ and continued on with copy-cat true-crime titles, ‘The Bonny Parker Story’ 1958, ‘Machine Gun Kelly’ 1958, ‘The Purple Gang’ 1959, ‘The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond’ 1960, ‘’Al Capone’ 1960’, ‘Ma Barker’s Killer Brood’ 1961’, ‘Portrait of a Mobster’ 1961 and ‘King of the Roaring ‘20’s:  The Story of Arnold Rothstein’ 1961. But none were as perturbing as ‘Baby Face Nelson’ starring Mickey Rooney. For a start, none were about anyone quite as unhinged as the real-life Nelson, born Lester Gillis.

Gillis was in juvie by the age of twelve, though the movie opens with his release from Joliet prison in 1933.  He soon reverts to form, with his girlfriend, Sue Nelson (a fictional creation played by Carolyn Jones) along for the ride. Gillis runs afoul of mob boss Lou Rocca (Ted de Corsia) by refusing to do a hit. But Rocca has it done anyway and frames Gillis for it. Gillis is arrested but with Sue’s help makes a break and returns to Chicago to kill Rocca. He's shot during a robbery and while getting fixed-up by a drunken sawbones (Cedric Hardwicke) meets John Dillinger (Leo Gordon). It’s Dillinger who starts calling him ‘Baby Face’ (he’d already adopted the name Nelson as an alias). Dillinger and Nelson team up to rob banks but Dillinger is murdered and Nelson takes over. Now he’s Public Enemy Number One and determined to live up to the billing.

Rooney is fearless as Nelson in a performance that goes toe-to-toe with Jimmy Cagney’s in  and ‘Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye’ (1948) and ‘White Heat’ (1949). Rooney’s Nelson is pure, uncontrolled aggression - which it’s inferred arises from his obsessive little-man complex (the only person Nelson doesn’t kill during several robberies is a bank manager who’s shorter than he is). 

But Rooney’s dazzlingly high-pitched and flowery performance is matched by that of Carolyn Jones’ Sue whose blind, unyielding love for Nelson is as unnerving as Nelson himself. Jones with her pixie face, girly cap cut and flitty slenderness is a delusional Betty Boop who too late begins to see Nelson for the nasty little thug he really is. Up to that point, whatever humanity Nelson appears to possess has only been a reflection of Sue’s devotion.   

  

‘Babyface Nelson’ is easily the most impressive entry of the late 50’s gangster noir cycle.  With a script by Daniel Manwaring (‘Out of the Past’) and made on the cheap by director Donald Siegel in just 17 days, this fragmentary and revisionist biopic is raw and twitchy. It’s one of the best early examples of Siegel’s uncompromisingly stripped and intense style, one which would inform Clint Eastwood as an actor and later as director.

Backing up is a welcome cast of familiar character actors including Jack Elam, Elisha Cook Jr., Anthony Caruso, John Hoyt, Robert Osterloh, Dabbs Greer, Emile Meyer, as well as Ted de Corsia and Leo Gordon – whom Don Siegel called ‘the scariest man I ever met’. Siegel purposely frames scenes with the towering Gordon in ways that makes Rooney look like a tyrannical toddler whose next outburst we can only dread. 

5. 'THE COMEDIAN' (1957)

“Don’t make me the heavy all the time! Shut up back there, I’m talking!"

As television kicked the legs out from under the careers of even the biggest movie stars in the 1950’s, most were able to pick themselves up and make peace with the enemy – some of it lasting. Many found new acclaim with appearances on 'anthology series' such as CBS Playhouse 90, a weekly program of live hour-and-a-half-long studio dramas that ran from 1956 to 1961.

The ‘Comedian’ is one of many noir-stained productions that would become TV touchstones of the period. Written by Rod Serling (who won an Emmy for the script) and directed by a young John Frankenheimer, it's a searing, behind-the-scenes look at Sammy Hogarth (Mickey Rooney), an abusive and egomaniacal comic genius who makes life hell for everyone within distance. Hogarth’s main victim is his weakling brother, Lester (Mel Torme), whom Sammy ridicules in the opening monologue of his show each week.

No one gets off easily, including Lester’s put-upon wife Julie (Kim Hunter) and Al Preston (Edmund O’Brien), Hogarth’s lead writer. Preston despises Hogarth and also increasingly himself. He’s no longer sure that has what it takes - if he ever did. Desperate, Preston submits a script he didn’t write but one he hopes will buy him time. Added to the sulferous mix is gossip columnist Otis Elwood (Whit Bissell), another favorite target of Hogarth’s sneering put-downs. In revenge, Elwood exposes Hogarth’s shadowed liaisons with Lester’s wife.

It doesn't matter. Hogarth may be without a friend but he settled that deal long ago. If that’s what it takes to have his monstrous need for adulation fed on demand, then so be it. Rooney is unshrinking in his portrayal of Sammy whose wounding anger goes unexplained, leaving limited room for sympathy. Eventually maybe he’ll pay in hell for his abusive behavior and suffocating fraudulence. Though by the end of ‘The Comedian', it's clear it'll take at least that long to settle accounts.   

6. ‘THE LAST MILE’ (1959)

“Maybe there’s a better place somewhere. They’re sure oughta be!”

 ‘The Last Mile’, about an attempted breakout from death row, is based on a 1930 stage play and for much of the first half the film does little to disguise its theatrical origins. This makes for slow going, with on-set movement confined to that of the prisoners in their cells. ‘The Last Mile’ finally comes alive as a movie when inmate John Mears (Mickey Rooney) reaches through the bars to put a chokehold on one of the guards. He grabs the guard’s key-ring and soon the convicts are out of their cells. They find guns and ammunition and launch their assault against the tower gaurds in one of the most famously ferocious fire-fights in classic noir.

Meantime, Mears has given prison officials an ultimatum – give the escapees a car and passage out or they will shoot their guards and also a priest assigned to death row (Frank Overton). Mears means it. He’s prepared to kill and not at all afraid to die. He’s has had it with the system and the guards' sadistic provocations. As ‘The Last Mile’ would have it, none are without sin and few are without blood on their hands. 

And so it goes, until the warden refuses Mears’ ultimatum and Mears executes one of the guards (Don ‘Red’ Barry), shooting him point blank as he begs for his life. At that point, we become less concerned about prison reform and the death penalty than about who’s going to get it next. 

Mears is a deranged murderer with a hate-on for the world and ultimately deserves whatever is coming to him. Nevertheless, as twisted as Mears might be, Rooney still manages to invest him with enough humanity to make us care. It’s a bravura showing by the actor, who now looks his age and as physically hard and imposing as he ever will.

Though the ‘The Last Mile’ was made on the cheap, director Howard Koch (‘Shield for Murder’ 1954, ‘Big House U.S.A.’ 1955) and cinematographer Joseph C. Brun (‘Odds Against Tomorrow’ 1959) brings atmosphere and surprising style to this late-period noir with some evocative framing and lighting. Composer Van Alexander who scored ‘Baby Face Nelson’ and two other films here inserts a keyed-up jazz score. 

But by the end of production, ‘The Last Mile’ was viewed by the studio as a being a ‘New York’ film i.e. a violent and soul-searing psychodrama that wasn’t looking for an audience. The film was given an apathetic release, making sure it never found one.

7. THE BIG OPERATOR(1959) 

“Listen, you don’t set anybody on fire unless I tell you to! Understand?”

The night before a hearing on racketeering charges against corrupt union organizer, Little Joe Braun (Mickey Rooney), the court’s chief witness is killed by Braun’s henchman, Oscar Wetzel (aka ‘The Executioner’), played by Ray Danton. When he delivers the witness’s files to Braun, he says he thinks a couple of Braun’s own members, Bill Gibson (Steve Cochrane) and Fred McAfee (Mel Torme) may have seen the handoff take place. Braun figures he can head off any trouble by offering them cushy office jobs with the union. But the pair is wise to what’s going on and tell Braun to forget it. Of course, that’s not the answer he wants to hear and things do not go well for the boys. McAfee is beaten up and set alight and Gibson is later kidnapped and tortured. It's tough stuff. 

Though all the movies here are from the B side of the tracks, ‘The Big Operator’ is the first one that really feels like it. The sloppy screenplay by Paul Gallico and Charles Haas’s overly-hurried direction make it visibly hard on everybody, especially Ray Danton as Braun’s inexplicably hapless hitman (before there was George Clooney there was Ray Danton!). It’s definitely not a movie at ease with itself.

On the other hand, if you’d never seen Mickey Rooney before you might assume that this was the performance of a lifetime. Rooney is terrific in another larger-than-life gangster part demanding an equally larger-than-life effort from the actor. 

The rest of the cast, some of them curiously interesting choices, also pull their weight: Mamie Van Doren playing against type (more on that later) as Cochrane’s sensible spouse; Mel Torme as a blue-collar working stiff; and Jim Backus as labor investigator, Cliff Heldon.  And although Rooney is the magnetic center of things, screen time is shared with film noir favorite Steve Cochrane whose easy-going character likes his job, adores his wife and son, and lives a modest, cautious life. But when the time comes to deal with Braun, he does so and without heroics. Cochrane gives a thoughtfully tone-downed performance, reflecting his range and proving again that Michelangelo Antonini had seen something more than just ‘Steve Cochrane’ when casting him in ‘Il Grido’ two years prior. 

Despite the doubtfulness of the script, ‘The Big Operator’ at least is never drab. Mickey Rooney would never let that happen. While there’s not a whole lot of money up on the screen, what's there is more than enough to cover the price of admission.  

8. 'PLATINUM HIGH SCHOOL' (1960)

“Look, I’m sick of this. I’m going to find out the truth for myself, whatever the truth is, good or bad!”

With a title like ‘Platinum High School’, it's a good bet the movie might feature Mamie Van Doren as a slutty switchblade sister. At least, we hope it would. But’s it’s not that kind of movie and not that kind of high school. Black Rock is an expensive private military academy, a ‘rich kid’s penitentiary’ for incorrigibles located on ‘Sabre Island’ (Catalina Island) off the coast of California. It’s run by Major Kelly (Dan Duyea) along with Jennifer Evans (Terry Moore), his School Assistant and piece-on-the-side, and Hack Marlow (Richard Jaeckel), one of several hard-ass ex-marines hired to keep the spoiled punks in line.  

Steve Conroy (Mickey Rooney) shows up on the island unannounced, wanting to find out more about the death of his son, Steve Jr. But no one wants to talk apart from Harry Nesbit (Elisha Cook Jr.) the local hash-slinger and barkeep and Lorinda Nibley, the mute storekeeper’s daughter played by a stirringly beautiful eighteen year-old Yvette Mimieux. 

It doesn’t take long for Conroy to outstay the little welcome he’s already had. Conroy is assaulted and shot at by goons including several senior classmen – among them, Billy Jack Barnes, a noxious redneck delinquent played by Conway Twitty. However Conroy, also a former marine is ready to give as good as he gets. Eventually he uncovers the truth and sets out to bring Kelly and crew to justice.

After picking up their checks, everyone involved in the movie likely was happy to be done with it. That would include producer Albert Zugsmith and director Charles Haas for whom such exhilaratingly peculiar drive-in features were just another day at the office. 

But no matter how wondrously improbable the story or inept the filmcraft, Mickey Rooney does not seem to notice or care. As earnestly professional as always, Rooney delivers a somber and convincing performance as the aggrieved father. On the other hand, Dan Duryea doesn't look half as sure of himself which only affords Rooney greater stature in every sense. 'Platinum High School’ might be the first film in which Rooney's size doesn’t even register.  

David Thomson in his ‘The New/ Biographical Dictionary of Film’ contends that Rooney had the ability to bring magnitude to the very least of his movies. Among them is ‘Platinum High School’, a film in which Thomson declares Rooney’s performance to be "brilliant". It’s a bold claim but in no way an outrageous one.

9. ‘THE KING OF THE ROARING '20'S: THE STORY OF ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN' 1961

“When you’re married to a gambler, the only game you ever get to play is solitaire!”

David Janssen stars in this plodding biopic that tries to tell the story of legendary gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein but doesn’t do much of a job of it. If Jo Swerling’s screenplay ever contained a dramatic arc, it had fallen flat by the time the production went to set. The uncharacteristically pedestrian, paceless direction of Joseph M. Newman (‘Abandoned’ 1949, ‘711 Ocean Drive’ 1950 ) does nothing to help things along.

The main problem is Janssen, a highly watchable but restricted actor who’s unable to find a way to bring charisma to a gangster who apparently didn’t have any of his own. The picture’s supporting players including Rooney, Dianne Foster, Jack Carson, Dan O’Herlihy, and Keenan Wynn do much better - as do William Demarest, Regis Toomey, Diana Dors and Robert Ellenstein, all of whom make interesting appearances. However, it’s really only Rooney who’s able to find a palpable heartbeat in this bloodless drama.

Rooney plays Johnny Burke, Rothstein’s loyal sidekick and partner-in-crime since childhood. As Rothstein becomes more powerful and forms new alliances, Johnny is no longer worth it to the mob and has to be eliminated.

While Johnny is a willing party to the crime and corruption, he’s a pointedly sympathetic character to whom Rooney provides a touching moral dignity. The few scenes in the movie with any emotional honesty are those in which Rooney appears. Accordingly the opening credits of the film end their scroll with “And featuring Mickey Rooney”. Though Rooney plays second fiddle in ‘The King of the Roaring ‘20’s’, he’s really the only fiddle here worth the listen. 

10. '24 HOURS TO KILL' (1965)  

“Drink up, Captain. You will need it when you hear what I have to say.”

Norman ‘Jonesy’ Jones (Mickey Rooney) is a crew member on a passenger jet that’s forced to land in Beirut due to engine trouble. Repairs will take about 24 hours, leaving Jones, Captain Jamie Faulkner (Lex Barker), co-pilot Tommy Gaskell (Michael Medwin) and a bevy of bouncy stewardesses with time to kill. No problem, except for Jonesy who suddenly becomes nervous and evasive - because Beirut is actually the last place he wants to be.

Norman Jones is a gold smuggler who inadvisably lifted a shipment for himself and now is on the run from Middle-Eastern mob boss Malouf (Walter Slezak). Faulkner and his crew get dragged into his mess without really knowing what’s going on. That is, until Malouf kidnaps Faulkner’s girlfriend (Helga Sommerfield) in a cut-throat attempt to force everyone’s hand.

‘24 Hours to Kill’, with its trippy ‘60’s Euro-spy trappings, exotic locales, coiffed babes in bikinis, arch villains with accents and a suave alpha-male at the controls makes much of its foreign frisson. British-born director, Peter Bezencenet capitalizes on the splendors of Beirut, ‘The Paris of the Middle East’ before it became an eternal war zone.

On the other hand Bezencenet sometimes neglects to make enough of the rest of the movie. Though a lot happens in ’24 Hours to Kill’, there’s not always the ‘happening’ excitement to go along with it. At times the pace slackens just when the movie should be gunning it. But where the direction occasionally falls short, the veteran cast is good for some extra mileage. Lex Barker with his assured American good looks and relaxed authority is as confident on screen as usual (Barker is here in one of his last English-speaking roles  before finally deplaning in Europe where the multilingual actor would go on to headline in over forty films). Also enjoyable is brash British character actor Michael Medwin as the skirt-chasing Gaskell and Walter Slezak, the duplicitous Malouf.  

However ’24 Hours to Kill’ again belongs mostly to Mickey Rooney and is another kick in the teeth to the breezy, affable character types with whom he’s forever associated – despite these outings as a guileless chump, petty criminal, righteous avenger, and merciless mobster. In ’24 Hours’ he adds another and different kind of criminal psychopath to the list. 

While Rooney seems to be a decent chap on good terms with everyone, Barker trusts him for too long, as the pilot scrambles to try and protect himself and his crew. But no one could know how much of a liar and moral coward the little purser really is. Rooney is chilling as the ugly layers of his deceit are peeled back.

Rooney is the best reason to watch ’24 Hours to Kill’ but he's not the only one. There’s a surprise ending which actually is a surprise - except to the Malouf, who while incanting, “Man proposes, Allah disposes” is seeing to it that Allah lives up to his word.

11. ‘PULP’ (1972)

“It looked like her honor was on the missing list. So was her cash. I got the feeling it was way too late to retrieve either.”

A goof ball attempt at noir comedy, 'Pulp affectionately parodies the noir gangster movie, much as ‘Gumshoe’ starring Albert Finney burlesqued the private-eye genre a year earlier.

Mike Hodges directs and Michael Caine stars as Michael King a writer of trashy pulp novels who’s hired by Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney) to ghost his memoires. Gilbert’s a former Hollywood star living in exile in Malta along with characters played by Lizbeth Scott, Lionel Stander, Al Lettieri, Dennis Price and others. When Gilbert is murdered, King becomes an amateur sleuth and a sore thumb in the eye of mafia types who were determined to make sure they didn’t show up in Gilbert’s autobiography.

The movie is more ‘Get Smart’ than ‘Get Carter’. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. Finding and keeping a comfortable balance between sharp-elbowed parody and soft-hearted tribute is never easy. But something that both lovers and haters of the film seem to agree on is that Mickey Rooney’s eager and flamboyant send-up of himself makes 'Pulp' worth a look.

___________

“I don't regret anything I've ever done. I only wish I could have done more.”  

Of all the remembrances of Mickey Rooney in the major media following his death, only a handful mentioned any of the films highlighted here. Fair enough. They’re small productions, some an effort to find, and and usually of interest to committed fans of Rooney and/or film noir.

However, even within the film noir community appreciation of Rooney isn’t outright. For some, it's distaste for Rooney's public antics, his loud-mouth politics, and infamous relationship history. But as Ava Gardner said, “I loved him because he made me laugh”. Rooney made plenty of people laugh (and often love him), including those who found it hard to tolerate his excesses. He was who he was and if anyone were hurt along the way, it was often Rooney who got the worst of it. 

Others just resist crediting Rooney as a noir actor and leading man, as he favored genial parts in so many genial movies and stage productions for most of his career. In other words, he wasn't a Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Robert Montgomery or even Robert Young, all actors better able to fulfil urgent hardboiled hopes of them as noir protagonists and heroes. As well, Rooney was cast mostly as a villain in the noirs in which he starred, relegating him to creepy character status e.g. Elisha Cooke Jr. or Percy Helton or Peter Lorre in the minds of some. 

But this fails to give full due to the fact of Rooney’s extraordinary starring presence and command of craft in these films. As John Frankenheimer after being with Rooney on ‘The Comedian’ said of him, “Mickey Rooney is the most talented person I have ever worked with or will ever work with.” Others were just as admiring. James Mason when asked who was the best actor in Hollywood replied, “Mickey Rooney”; likewise, Sir Lawrence Oliver in answer to the same question.  Clarence Brown who directed him in ‘The Human Comedy’ and ‘National Velvet’ said, “Mickey Rooney could be a jerk but he was the closest thing to a genius I ever worked with."

None of these lowly B noirs are accepted masterpieces. But the genius to which Clarence Brown referred is there in every frame in which Rooney appears and insists on a more generous view of the actor as a legitimate noir icon, however singular. Despite whatever awards for the musicals and ‘The Human Comedy’ or ‘The Adventures of the Black Stallion’ (1979) and 'Bill' (1981), it’s far more likely to be Rooney’s film noirs that are most screened at festivals and to be seen eventually by more people than ever may have heard of his other films.   

As Rooney said towards the end of his life, ‘I don’t retire, I inspire’. From anyone else that would sound like conceit. From him it was the unassailable truth. But the little actor’s towering, inspiring performances in these films speak for themselves. It would be a shame not to listen.

Written by Gary Deane

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