Daily Archives: July 16, 2015

Where Danger Lives
Directed by John Farrow
Written by Charles Bennett; story by Leo Rosten
1950/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First Viewing/Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4

[box] Frederick Lannington: ‘Now’ can be a long time, Dr. Cameron, but time passes, and then there’s the end of the line![/box]

This noir might have been better without Howard Hughes “protogee” Faith Domergue.

Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum) is the kind of doctor who tells his small patients bedtime stories about Elmer the Elephant.  He is having a romance with nurse Julie (Maureen O’Sullivan) and buys her a single white rose every day.  One night Margo Lannington (Domergue) is brought in, the victim of an attempted suicide.  The good doctor decides to help his patient get over her loneliness and before we know it Julie is completely out the window and the couple are talking wedding bells.  Margo is immensely wealthy and entertains Jeff at home while her “father” is out of town.

Margo begs off one of their dates to tell pops about Jeff.  He decides to show up unexpectedly.  When he announces his good intentions to Frederick Lannington, the older man Margo lives with (Claude Rains), he learns he is her husband and not her father.  Jeff wants nothing more to do with this situation and starts to leave.  He is drawn back by Margo’s screams.  He goes to her rescue and decks Frederick.  Jeff receives a blow to the head in the process.  He goes to get something for his pain and when he returns Frederick is dead.

Jeff wants to call the police but Margo manages to scare him into taking it on the lam.  Jeff diagnoses his own concussion and predicts he will become blind and paralyzed within hours.  In the meantime, Margo is suspiciously eager to avoid listening to any news about the murder.

This is OK if farfetched  but I didn’t care for Faith Domergue’s acting at all.  She is very shrill and poor at screaming, which the script requires her to do at regular intervals.  Mitchum can’t help being the perfect noir hero, though, so there’s that.

Howard Hughes became infatuated with Domergue when she was 17, even buying her adoptive parents off with a house, and immediately signed her to RKO, the studio he owned.  The romance was off by 1944 but Hughes promoted her career until 1950 when Vendetta, a vehicle created for her, and this film both bombed at the box office.

Trailer

To Joy (Till glädje)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ingmar Bergman
1950/Sweden
Svensk Filmindustri
First viewing/Hulu

[box] No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — Ingmar Bergman[/box]

Ingmar Bergman allows a little bittersweet joy to seep into yet another of his early films about a failing  marriage.

The opening of the film has violinist Stig Eriksson called to answer a phone call in the midst of rehearsal.  We see him running frantically home.  There he learns that his wife Marta was killed when a kerosene stove exploded and that his daughter is recovering from her injuries in the hospital.  The story then segues into flashback.

Violinists Marta Olsson IMai-Britt Nilsson) and Stig Eriksson (Stig Olen) join the symphony orchestra of their provincial city on the same day.  Its crusty old conductor (Victor Sjöström) is all business.  Stig is a gloomy sort of Bergman hero who obsesses about his art and the meaninglessness of life. To make things worse, he is terribly insecure about his violin playing.  Nevertheless, he manages to fall in love with and marry the more stable Marta.  She soon reveals her pregnancy, which he does not welcome.  But eventually he gets used to the idea and they end up having two children, a boy and a girl.

The marriage starts out very tenderly.  Eventually, Stig is asked to replace a soloist for a concert at the last minute.  His performance is a disaster.  This setback causes him to wallow in self-pity and bitterness and he begins an affair with a much-older musician’s young wife.  Marta patiently bears this initially but finally they separate.  After some time, Stig comes to his senses and the couple reconciles.  I’ve already told the way the marriage finally ends.

As I have come to expect from Bergman, this is beautiful, psychologically insightful, and well acted.  Despite much vicious fighting and the downer ending, this is actually more optimistic and life affirming than some of his other early films.  The ending is a really beautiful sequence of the orchestra rehearsing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy while Stig’s little son looks on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dulyYxJqrGE

Clip — love blooms