Daily Archives: July 21, 2014

They Won’t Believe Me
Directed by Irving Pichel
Written by Jonathan Latimer and Gordon McDonnell
1947/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Larry Ballentine: She looked like a very special kind of dynamite, neatly wrapped in nylon and silk. Only I wasn’t having any. I’d been too close to one explosion already. I was powder shy.[/box]

Robert Young plays an adulterer and liar with the same sober sincerity with which he approached Marcus Welby, MD.  It is surprisingly effective.

As the movie begins, we see Larry (Young) take the stand as the defendant on trial for the murder of Verna (Susan Hayward).  As he begins his testimony, the film slips into flashback.  Larry is a stockbroker with a very wealthy wife, Greta (Rita Johson).  He has a regular 11:00 rendezvous in a secluded corner with Janice (Jane Greer), Greta’s friend. They share an interest in deep sea fishing and much more.  Janice finally decides she cannot stand hiding any more and gets a job transfer to Montreal.  Larry tells Janice that his marriage is on the rocks, he will get his wife to divorce him that afternoon, and will join her on the train north.

This is a lie.  There has been no discussion of any kind with Greta, who however has guessed the affair with Janice.  He says he is sick of city life.  She tells Larry she has arranged a partnership for him with a brokerage in L.A. and bought them a house in Beverly Hills.  Larry caves immediately and stands up Janice.

It doesn’t take Larry long to be seduced by Verna, a sophisticated secretary at his new firm.  It also doesn’t take long after the affair begins for Verna to threaten to break things off unless Larry leaves his wife.  Once again, Greta bribes Larry with a ranch in the country and he stands up Verna.  This time Greta traps him in the isolated ranch house and has the phone disconnected. The sociable and randy broker can’t stand it and spends his time plotting how Verna and he can empty his joint checking account with his wife and escape. Verna agrees and they hit the road to Reno.  Life and fate have several lessons on hand for the cad.

Oh, how I hated Larry, the swine! Every silken word that drops from his lips is some kind of lie.  And yet Robert Young makes him hard to hate.  His comeuppance rivals that of George Minifer in satisfaction.  It was hard to tell from the fuzzy print, but I suspect that the visuals might be very nice with a restoration.  I had no expectations from the film going in but wound up really enjoying this intricate and offbeat little story and its many twists and turns.   Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S88xiQtccJY

Clip (spoiler) – cinematography by Harry J. Wild

Side Street
Directed by Anthony Mann
Written by Sydney Boehm
1949/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4 DVD

[box] [first lines] Capt. Walter Anderson: New York City: an architectural jungle where fabulous wealth and the deepest squalor live side by side. New York is the busiest, the loneliest, the kindest, and the cruelest of cities – a murder a day, every day of the year and each murder will wind up on my desk.[/box]

This movie has everything you could possibly ask from a fillm noir except the femme fatale.

Joe Norson (Farley Granger) has lost his gas station and is now living with his in-laws in New York City and working as a part-time mail carrier.  His wife Ellen (Cathy O’Donnell) is about to deliver their first child.  One day, he makes a delivery to law office and sees a couple of hundred dollar bills on the floor.  The next day he comes when nobody is in and cannot resist the temptation to break into a file cabinet  Big, big mistake.

When he has a chance to look inside the file folder he snatched, he finds that instead of the few hundred he expected there are $30,000 in carefully batched bills.  Terrified, he goes back to the law office to return the money.  Second big mistake.  The lawyer denies that it is his money or that he even had a file cabinet.   Joe leaves and stashes the loot, in a gift box, with a bartender.  Worse and worse.

After checking with his sources that Joe is not a cop, the lawyer sends his goons after Joe. Joe finds he is a suspect in two murders.  The rest of the story is taken up with Joe’s frantic search for the money and its origins and flight from the goons and the police.  With Jean Hagen in a small but choice part as a boozy nightclub singer who is the girlfriend of one of the goons.

Anthony Mann is becoming one of my very favorite noir directors.  With Academy Award winning cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, he creates a visual feast in Side Street. Mann loved to experiment with camera angles and a variety are used here without distracting from the story.  The car chase that ends the film is very innovative, including helicopter views of the tiny cars winding through crowded city streets.  The lighting is rich and expressive.   Granger makes an excellent angst ridden noir hero and O’Donnell and Hagen do what they do best. Recommended.

Trailer – cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg