By Gary Deane
When trying to nail down an endpoint of the classic film noir cycle, four titles generally find their way to the head of the line: Touch of Evil (1958) for its baroque inflections of character and style; Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) for its modernist tonal shifts; Psycho (1960) for its narrative and generic dislocations; and Blast of Silence (1961) for its utter moral desolation. In each case, the film represents a defining shift from what had gone before and, in doing so, extends the period’s time frame.
However, it might also be
argued that the real endpoint could be a late-period noir from 1957, which looks back to exactly what had gone before. That film is The Scarlet
Hour, which exemplifies — thematically, narratively, and visually —film noir’s
most resonant motifs, as framed in the 1940s and early '50s: a male
protagonist obsessed with a sexually alluring woman; another female, good,
dutiful, and in love with the man; an urban setting where lives are lived out
unhappily by day and by night; a lurid and convoluted plotline conveyed with
hard-boiled urgency; and a shadowland of expressive and unsettling camerawork.
The Scarlet Hour,
unseen and little known until a few years ago, was produced and directed by Hollywood
great Michael Curtiz, with studio backing from Paramount. However, the film was
released with little fanfare, receiving far wider distribution in the UK than
in the US. After that, it languished in obscurity for more than fifty years,
with little reference to its existence other than some harsh assessments of the
film in the British press, like that in the UK Times:
“(The Scarlet Hour) is a
very drab hour and a half, in the company of actors who have not yet
established their reputations and are unlikely to achieve them as a result of
this movie. The story combines a rather unsavory triangle with a jewel robbery
and the director Mr. Curtiz has achieved a certain amount of suspense but
little else.”
However, to present-day
eyes, The Scarlet Hour isn’t drab at all. It is a deeply noir-stained
tale of dark love, obsession, duplicity, and murder — dense in its generic underpinnings
and saturated with character types that seem both contemporary and
anachronistic at the same time.
Tom Tryon plays E.V. ‘Marsh’ Marshall, the protégé of land developer Ralph Nevins (James Gregory). Marsh also is having an affair with his boss’s wife, Paulie (Carol Ohmart). Paulie wants the life Ralph’s wealth affords her, but she doesn’t want him. Her chance to get away comes when she persuades Marsh to hijack a jewelry heist the two overhear being planned while parked in a lovers’ lane. However, Ralph is aware that Paulie has something going on the side. The plot both thickens and darkens when he decides to do something about it.
That is about as much as
you want to know going in. Much of the pleasure to be had from these tales of
triangulation and treachery is in the details, supplied here by screenwriter
Frank Tashlin, best known for his comedies, including The Lieutenant Wore
Skirts (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). Although The
Scarlet Hour would be Tashlin’s only association with noir, there was a palpable
undercurrent of desperation in his comedies. As observed by writer/ curator Dave
Kehr, “More than most of his contemporaries, Tashlin was attuned to how our
desire betrays us.”
Unfortunately, some of The
Scarlet Hour’s potential is hampered by Tom Tryon’s limited range and a script
that leaves little leeway for his character to connect the dots between virtue
and temptation. A more adroit performer might have found the connection, but the
most Tryon can manage is a hangdog haplessness.
On the other hand, former
model and beauty queen Carol Ohmart was the perfect choice for Paulie, a far
more complex and sympathetic character than noir’s stereotypical femme fatale.
While Paulie uses Marsh and is prepared to betray him, she does so out of
jealousy, not malice. Her actions and betrayals are never that straightforward.
An unusually self-reflexive femme fatale, she goads herself into a criminal act
seeking some nether region of self-worth. Paulie is Double Indemnity’s
Phyllis Dietrichson and Walter Neff combined. With her wintery affect and smoky
voice, Ohmart harkens back to the ‘fire and ice’ sirens of the 40s, but without seeming derivative.
Adding to the mix is Elaine Stritch as Phyllis Rycker, friend and confidante to Paulie. Phyllis is a retired-but-not-quite-reformed B-girl who’s found true love in the arms of a blue-collar hedonist. She and Paulie have a history and through their exchanges, we learn more about who Paulie is and what motivates her. While always dressed to kill, Paulie appears confident, but she’s both damaged and sad with regret. When Phyllis toasts her slightly sozzled husband, “Here’s to happy marriages made in heaven,” Paulie replies, “Here’s to happy marriages made anywhere.” Stritch, always a brash scene-stealer, challenges Ohmart to stand up to her. Ohmart responds in kind and their time together on screen juices up the film.
James Gregory as the
vengeful husband, David Lewis as the jewel heist mastermind (who makes a
memorable reappearance via the film’s bravura plot twist), and E. G. Marshall
and Ed Binns as the investigating police officers were ready-made for film
noir. The four would all go on to become fixtures on the small screen.
Jody Lawrance, playing Nevins’ secretary, Kathy Stevens, is the ‘good girl’ who pines for Marsh, a la
Virginia Huston in Out of the Past. Lawrance does what she can with her
role but, in her bottle-blonde incarnation, begs comparison with Jan Sterling,
a more arresting actress. On the rebound from an aborted launch at Columbia at
the time, Lawrance faded from view in 1961.
Clearly, The Scarlet
Hour doesn’t shy away from its indebtedness to Double Indemnity.
Curtiz pays further respect in a scene where Marsh and Paulie furtively meet up
across the aisle in a record store. Their troubled tryst could easily have
taken place just down the street at Jerry’s Market on Melrose. The script also
has its share of well-turned one-liners, most of them handed to Paulie. Many of
the lines function in the way Walter Neff’s voiceover frames Double
Indemnity. Not only are they memorably hard-boiled, but they also add resonance
to the characters, such as when Paulie says to Marsh: “Don’t try to brush me
off, Marsh — when I stick, I stick hard.” and “I never thought about the
things I wanted, only the things I didn’t want.”
Curtiz’s attempt to
return to the more embellished noir style — one that he’d virtually invented in
Mildred Pierce, embroidered in The Unsuspected (a textbook
example of Foster Hirsch’s notion of “italicized visual moments”) and finally
synthesized in The Breaking Point — was compromised to some extent by a
combination of factors he couldn't overcome. In those earlier films, the
complicated choreography of plot, visuals, and actorly presence meshed into
something greater than the sum of its many parts.
In 'The Scarlet Hour,
all the elements of a top-notch 40s noir are present, as is the framework for a
great and satisfying movie. Unfortunately, the combination of a weaker lead
actor and the ultimate lack of velocity in the film’s final reel means the
component parts manage to not quite fit. However, what we do have is a categorical
study on celluloid of how classic noir was supposed to operate, The Scarlet
Hour unquestionably is the last honorable attempt to build a noir from the
classic recipe. The film also can be seen as a look into the ‘what if’ career
of Carol Ohmart, in every sense a compelling actress who was made for a style of
film style on the verge of extinction — just as she was offered the chance to
be the very embodiment of it. Ohmart’s portrayal of icy, sexual cunning brings
the arc of the true noir cycle to a close — an arc that would not be revisited
until Body Heat (1981) nearly a quarter-century later.
