This is the promising voice-over one hears at the beginning of what may be the least known cinematic adaptation of one of Raymond Chandler‘s Philip Marlowe stories.  Made into a Michael Shayne mystery starring Lloyd Nolan in 1942′s Time To Kill, the author, still peeved at his story’s treatment in that decent, if workmanlike version and further miffed that he had no more income from any other movies made by the studio that owned the rights to the story, 20th Century Fox reportedly hoped to cash in on the ‘craze’ for crime stories set in the still exotic environs of a dark tinted Los Angeles following the great popularity of such films as Murder, My Sweet and The Big  Sleep.

George Montgomery, at 30, was one of the youngest actors cast to play the character in the movies, is seen in this opening scene approaching an ominously photographed mansion buffeted by the dry, swirling Santa Ana winds pushing the gnarled trees that surround the house against the walls. As he approaches the door, a sylph-like figure admits him into the house, swallowing him up in the same way that this movie seems to have been subsumed in a cinematic vault.

Never having been issued commercially on dvd and only broadcast rarely to the best of my knowledge, I was eager to see this movie when a friend recently lent it to me. In this case, The High Window, Chandler‘s third novel, published  in 1942, was fashioned by the stylish director John Brahm and his scenarists Dorothy Bennett and Leonard Praskins into a 72 minute dash through various film noir motifs and presented to a waiting public in the form of 20th Century Fox’s The Brasher Doubloon (1947). You have some of the same atmospheric elements of the other popular movies made from Chandler‘s novels in that period. Actually, after watching this movie recently, I started to wonder if the filmmakers at 20th Century Fox got together around this time to put together a film noir kit with ingredients that should have resulted in a memorable classic. Perhaps this hypothetical film noir kit might have been planned out neatly at a few production meetings that might have gone something like this…

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I really do enjoy visiting the sites or locations where movies have been  shot, whether they are classic award-winning dramas or forgotten little b-movies. Apparently so do a lot of other people, because movie tourism accounts for the latest trend touted by the travel industry. [Okay, I confess, I actually co-wrote a book about movie tourism in Florida called FLORIDA ON FILM, published by the University of Florida Press in 2007, but even before that, I was drawn to visiting movie locations.] 

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Please note: To review this two part blog from the beginning, you can start here.

By the end of 1946, Dorothy McGuire found herself a successful screen actress. She had played two benighted servants who overcame their problems, a child-wife, and another, more knowing wife with a bitter heart, who was also an inarticulate mother struggling to help her family and to master her own repressive tendencies. For any actress, her work on screen was an enviable achievement. There was one problem with her career. She was unconventional in her naturalism; neither a glossy fantasy nor a femme fatale, but something in between that Hollywood found vexing to cast–an undeniably intelligent actress.

McGuire‘s position may not have been helped by her place in David O. Selznick‘s stable of actors, who then included Joan Fontaine, Gregory Peck, Shirley Temple, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton, and Jennifer Jones, among several others. As these talented contractees soon learned, Selznick‘s creative reach often exceeded his grasp in getting projects off the ground after the near paralyzing success of Gone With the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940). Increasingly preoccupied with his byzantine business schemes and his growing passion for Jennifer Jones, he began to rely on income from the services of his actors sold at a premium for films that he had little to do with producing. Though he often managed to inundate chagrined filmmakers with his endless memos offering suggestions about his clients’ appearance and acting, as his soon to be ex-wife, Irene Mayer Selznick pointed out, with astute bluntness, as his creative skills waned, he was becoming “a glorified agent…a flesh peddler of talent.” READ MORE

I’m a huge fan of Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962), so how could I not be interested in a recent German film that was supposedly inspired by that enduring cult classic? Yella (2007) is the third film by writer/director Christian Petzold and it won two awards at the Berlin Fim Festival and four Lolas at the Germany Academy Awards (aka: Deutscher Filmpreis). Lola is Germany’s version of Oscar, named in honor of three German actresses: Marlena Dietrich (who played Lola Lola in The Blue Angel), Barbara Sukowa (playing the titular character in Fassbinder’s Lola), and Franka Potente (Run, Lola, Run). In Yella, Nina Hoss, playing the title character, definitely earns her Lola for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role by carrying the film from beginning to end and being in almost every scene – keeping our interest all the way as she reveals many different and surprising dimensions to her character. READ MORE

I moved recently, and as I was packing countless boxes of books, DVDs and tapes, and souvenirs from my life, I came across one of my prized possessions, a poster for Thunder Road. Thunder Road is often called a cult movie, which is a movie without wide popularity that nonetheless appeals to very specific groups. “Cult movie” brings to mind people in costumes throwing pieces of bread at the screen during The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But, my family are all big fans of Thunder Road , and they don’t dress in costumes and throw stuff at the screen, though they wouldn’t hold it against you if you did. They are from West Virginia, and Thunder Road is one of their favorite movies because it authentically and sympathetically portrays the people and culture of Appalachia.

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I watched Libeled Lady with William Powell and Myrna Loy on Turner Classic Movies last week, and it was a delight to see their chemistry together in something other than The Thin Man. While I appreciate the Thin Man series, it has become ubiquitous. I also noticed the chemistry between Powell and Jean Harlow, which is no wonder considering their offscreen romance. This past summer, I had seen Powell in Manhattan Melodrama, along with Loy and Clark Gable, on the big screen at the Portage Theater in Chicago. Manhattan Melodrama was the film John Dillinger had watched at the Biograph the night he was shot, and the Portage was showing it at 1934 prices to bring attention to Michael Mann’s film about Dillinger, Public Enemies. For a mere quarter, I got to see Gable, Loy, and Powell at a key point in their careers. Manhattan Melodrama represented the first pairing of Loy and Powell, while it cemented Gable’s identity as MGM’s dynamite male star. Yet, it was Powell who impressed me as the governor who refuses to commute the sentence of his childhood pal, played by Gable, because it was not the right thing to do. Both films reminded me of Powell’s powerful screen presence and his ability to meld his image as a sophisticated gentleman into any role. He played the urbane sophisticate, but he was never pompous or arrogant; he had a light touch that gave him the ability to handle comedy and drama with rare sincerity. I love most of Powell’s films — the Philo Vance mysteries, Life with Father, My Man Godfrey, Mr. Roberts — primarily because he is in them, but I think the best use of his screen persona has to be Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.

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On a lonely Saturday night late last June, I walked to a tiny theater in my neighborhood to see Call Northside 777. Located behind a bank, this unusual movie venue is one of Chicago’s unsung gems. The Bank of America Theater is devoted to projecting classic Hollywood movies on the big screen – as they were intended to be shown and seen.  Though the theater has its loyal patrons, it does very little promotion or advertizing. Despite this, the theater was packed with excited Chicago residents eager to see a movie about their hometown shot in their hometown. They were not disappointed.

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This past summer I have become increasingly annoyed at the lack of interesting female characters in Hollywood movies. I have endured embarrassingly shallow cardboard cut-outs in superhero films (Gwenyth Paltrow in Iron Man), long-suffering former lovers who are then killed off for the sake of the franchise (Maggie Gyllanhall in The Dark Knight), and women characters who are really male archetypes in female form (Angelina Jolie in Wanted). I did see Sex in the City, and while I am delighted that a film starring women shocked the male executives in Hollywood by becoming a box-office success, the women were all exaggerated in the way that television-based characters generally are, and some were simply too over-the-top for me. The most compelling female characters that I have seen all summer are in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona; while Vicky and Christina are flawed protagonists who are not good material for role models, they are smart, independent, articulate, and relatable.

            And, it’s not that I don’t like formulaic genre films, in which all characters are familiar archetypes that are sometimes two-dimensional. I actually prefer genre films to serious films or social dramas with “important” subject matter. I just watched Diane Lane in the detective thriller Untraceable, and I liked her character quite a bit. First, she was the protagonist in what has become a male-dominated genre. Second, she was beautiful and feminine but also admirable, tough, and respected by her male peers. However, the film did not get much support when it was released, either by the industry, which did not market its strengths, or by reviewers, who are rarely able to see beyond the surface to understand how a genre film works.

            Part of the problem is obviously the lack of women behind the scenes in positions as writers, directors, and producers—a situation often discussed but never addressed. And the few that do exist have no clout in a male-centric Hollywood where the corporate mentality has strangled creativity. My thoughts about this have been stirred this summer because I have been reading a great deal about the film industry during the Golden Age and the silent era. I am as pleasantly surprised by new discoveries and revelations about Hollywood back in the day as I am profoundly disappointed in Hollywood now.

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