Speaker 1: Oh, folks, it show die. People say good money to
Speaker 1: see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they are cold sodas,
Speaker 2: hot popcorn in no monsters.
Speaker 3: In the protection booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: St it off.
Speaker 5: It looked calmless enough. That's a professional models album of poses. Yep,
Speaker 5: this was the glamorous pitfall where they look the most seductive.
Speaker 2: Forses of email, violent jealousy.
Speaker 1: I like that. I don't care what you like or
Speaker 1: what you don't like.
Speaker 5: Torments of unfaithfulness.
Speaker 1: I met her a couple of months ago.
Speaker 6: While I was on a case.
Speaker 1: What about these kids? Somebody told him a lot of
Speaker 1: things about her and me?
Speaker 2: Are they true?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Then I must hate.
Speaker 5: Urraging theory of a guilty conscience.
Speaker 1: You'd better call the police.
Speaker 3: I just killed a man.
Speaker 7: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White.
Speaker 7: Joining me once again is mister Ian Burnell. Hello, friend,
Speaker 7: also back in the booth as mister Philip Marinello.
Speaker 3: What do you say we hang up this call and
Speaker 3: take a drive to South America.
Speaker 7: We are kicking off November twenty twenty four with a
Speaker 7: look at Andre Detat's Pitfall, released in nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 7: The film stars Dick Powell as John Forbes, an insurance
Speaker 7: man who is leading a life of quiet desperation. He's
Speaker 7: tired of getting dropped off at work by his wife
Speaker 7: Jane Wyatt as Sue Forbes, and being humiliated by his son.
Speaker 7: When he gets onto the case of Bill Smiley, who
Speaker 7: embezzled some dough to impress a dame, he sees a
Speaker 7: chance to have an adventure. We'll be talking about that
Speaker 7: Dame Mona Stevens played by Elizabeth Scott, and the heavy
Speaker 7: who menaces them JB McDonald played by Raymond Burr, as
Speaker 7: well as spoiling the movie as we go along. So
Speaker 7: if you don't want anything ruined, go track down that
Speaker 7: movie right now. It's even available over on archive dot
Speaker 7: org as a colorized version which should be taken out
Speaker 7: and shot. So Ian, when was the first time you
Speaker 7: saw Pitfall? And what did you think?
Speaker 1: Sir?
Speaker 6: I love film noir and I've been watching film noir
Speaker 6: double features for the last four decades at the Brattle
Speaker 6: Theater in Cambridge, mass which is the cinema where I
Speaker 6: do my regular podcast, and they've been running week long,
Speaker 6: month long summer long noir programs for longer than I've
Speaker 6: been alive, often in conjunction with Eddie Muller, Foster Brooks
Speaker 6: and other noir writers or members of the film noir
Speaker 6: found day. But the thing about film noir is that
Speaker 6: they share a lot of similar themes and plots and actors,
Speaker 6: and they tend to have interchangeable titles unless we're talking about,
Speaker 6: you know, the Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity. So often
Speaker 6: when I settle in to watch what I think is
Speaker 6: going to be a film I've never seen before, based
Speaker 6: on the title and the cast, and maybe like a
Speaker 6: one sentence synopsis in the Brattle calendar, I often find
Speaker 6: myself realizing, Oh, I've seen this movie before, maybe in
Speaker 6: the back end of a double bill, like fifteen years ago,
Speaker 6: though frequently that doesn't really happen until like twenty or
Speaker 6: thirty minutes into the picture. This was the opposite of
Speaker 6: that scenario. I settled in to give this movie another look,
Speaker 6: and a little way in I realized I had never
Speaker 6: seen this movie before. I was confusing it with another
Speaker 6: nineteen forty eight noir with Raymond Burr as a sadistic,
Speaker 6: heavy Anthony man's raw deal. So this ended up being
Speaker 6: a first time watch for me. I ran it a
Speaker 6: few months ago off the just Crappy the SD copy
Speaker 6: that's streaming on Amazon Prime, and then I watched it
Speaker 6: a second time off the restored Keino Blu ray. But
Speaker 6: I love the film. I love how straightforward and almost
Speaker 6: ordinary it is. There are not a lot of convoluted
Speaker 6: twists and turns, and even the dialogue is very matter
Speaker 6: of fact. It's not the kind of coded, double entendre
Speaker 6: laden dialogue that we think of when we think of
Speaker 6: film noir, which is one of the things we love
Speaker 6: about film noir obviously, but this is the refreshingly mature
Speaker 6: and direct movie about fairly ordinary folks who just make
Speaker 6: a couple of bad decisions and then try to deal
Speaker 6: with them.
Speaker 7: It Philip out about yourself.
Speaker 3: This has been on my radar for a while. I've
Speaker 3: seen some people talk about it. It's on my list
Speaker 3: of Keino Blu rays to pick up on sales eventually.
Speaker 3: But I yeah, this was also one for me that
Speaker 3: I had not watched before. I was familiar with a
Speaker 3: lot of the people involved, but yeah, earlier this week
Speaker 3: was my first watch, and then I watched it again
Speaker 3: today and I exactly on the pages Ian my first
Speaker 3: UH letterbox one sentence review was just how powerful this
Speaker 3: was in its simplicity. Like I love all of the
Speaker 3: noir tropes. I've been watching noir for quite a long
Speaker 3: time as well, and mar was kind of like my
Speaker 3: gateway to UH being like the next level of my
Speaker 3: cinema journey. And I think one of the like I've
Speaker 3: done Norvember before, but I think I've done a few
Speaker 3: Noir's just one off with you here and there, and
Speaker 3: it's something that is always very captivating. But something like
Speaker 3: this is just as exciting because it does the things
Speaker 3: that film noir does so well, while also whether it's
Speaker 3: intentional or not, subverting a lot of the things that
Speaker 3: you expect, and it it felt so refreshing.
Speaker 7: So I came to this one through Quentin Tarantino, of
Speaker 7: all people.
Speaker 3: You even need a filmmaker, right, Mike.
Speaker 7: Well, he's a really good gateway drug, of course. So
Speaker 7: I had the script for Reservoir Dogs, and on the
Speaker 7: first page of the script, he thanks a whole bunch
Speaker 7: of people. He thanks John Lucadar, he thanks Timothy Carey,
Speaker 7: Lionel White, Andre d. Toath, and I don't remember who
Speaker 7: all else. Probably I think he thinks Chilly and Fat,
Speaker 7: not Rango Lamb yet. But with Andre to Toath, I
Speaker 7: was not that familiar with his work. And this is
Speaker 7: still early nineties, so I don't know if you guys
Speaker 7: remember that big book at the video store where it
Speaker 7: was like the catalog that you would have and you
Speaker 7: could look up different activists. This might be way before
Speaker 7: your guys's time. I don't know, but I looked up
Speaker 7: Andre to Toth and I was just like, okay, and
Speaker 7: I wrote down all of the movies that he had directed.
Speaker 7: I went up to Toronto and was at Sam the
Speaker 7: record man, and they had just an amazing selection of
Speaker 7: VHS tapes, again dating myself, and I found Pitfall and
Speaker 7: I was just so excited. I found Pitfall, and then
Speaker 7: I found Fingerman and Fingerman had Timothy Kerey in It
Speaker 7: was pretty tough to find at the time. I don't
Speaker 7: know if that's been restored, hopefully it has. And then
Speaker 7: this one with having Dick Powell in it, but directed
Speaker 7: by Andre de Tod and I said, okay, let's check
Speaker 7: it out, and I fell in love with it. So
Speaker 7: those ninety four ninety five something like that is when
Speaker 7: I saw this for the first time and just really
Speaker 7: really liked this movie. And I'm so glad that we're
Speaker 7: able to talk about it because it feels there's a
Speaker 7: lot of noir tropes, like you guys said, but at
Speaker 7: the same time, there are some twists and turns on
Speaker 7: here where I just really didn't expect it, Like we
Speaker 7: have to talk about the fan fatal and just how
Speaker 7: different Elizabeth Scott is as a falm fatal versus you know,
Speaker 7: your your phyllis dietrix or any of these other like
Speaker 7: sex pot I need a man to manipulate and get
Speaker 7: him to do my bidding. Doesn't feel like she really
Speaker 7: is looking for that. It doesn't feel like she's a
Speaker 7: spy woman hanging out in a web just waiting for
Speaker 7: a fly to come in.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. I was going to say, like
Speaker 3: not to get too film browie, but I was going
Speaker 3: to say, like, is she even a femme fatal, Like
Speaker 3: how are we defining that and does she even qualify?
Speaker 6: Well, I think she qualifies. I know felm fatal has
Speaker 6: become shorthand for an evil, manipulative woman, but I think
Speaker 6: the pure definition of the term is more a woman
Speaker 6: who causes the downfall of a weak man. It doesn't
Speaker 6: necessarily have to be because she's duplicitous or out for
Speaker 6: her own gain. She can just be beautiful or vulnerable
Speaker 6: or in a tight spot, and the male protagonist ends
Speaker 6: up making choices that he knows he shouldn't make, but
Speaker 6: he can't help himself because he's smitten with this irresistible
Speaker 6: quote unquote fatal woman. But you know, she doesn't have
Speaker 6: to be fatal in the sense of evil, And I
Speaker 6: don't think John Forbes is an especially weak man, but
Speaker 6: he is bored, he feels trapped in his domestic life.
Speaker 6: He knows he should leave Mona alone, and he gets
Speaker 6: several warnings to leave her alone, which I think is
Speaker 6: part of what makes her qualify as a fem fatale,
Speaker 6: because like, he knows what he's doing, He knows he
Speaker 6: shouldn't be cheating on his wife. He knows Raymond Burr
Speaker 6: has the hots for this woman and kind of wants
Speaker 6: to do anything, including possibly kill him, but at least
Speaker 6: beat him up to keep him away from her. So
Speaker 6: you know, he pursues her anyway, and he comes to
Speaker 6: regret it, but it's no fault of her own, but
Speaker 6: it still makes her a fem fatale.
Speaker 3: I think, well, it's so fascinating because typically like I
Speaker 3: think of, yeah, like the Double Indemnities or the Postman
Speaker 3: Always Rings twice, things like that, when Mona finds out
Speaker 3: that John is married, she's taken it back, like she's
Speaker 3: not going for him, like the progression of their relationship
Speaker 3: throughout this movie, especially the second time I watched it.
Speaker 3: Just like he has said, like this is just like
Speaker 3: this has a lot more realism to it. It's a
Speaker 3: really well told story, like all the pieces and the dominoes,
Speaker 3: how they all fall is just like done very well,
Speaker 3: but it's not like you can feel the strings. Like
Speaker 3: this is very much a story, but it doesn't feel
Speaker 3: contrived and super heightened like a lot of noir does that.
Speaker 3: We all love it, just it feels like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: like that could genuinely happen without too much imagination. Like
Speaker 3: a guy not wearing a wedding ring, doesn't talk about
Speaker 3: his wife, makes very small compromises, and then gets himself
Speaker 3: into some awful situations.
Speaker 7: Well, he does wear wedding ring, but he wears it
Speaker 7: on the wrong finger, on his pinky.
Speaker 3: Okay. I couldn't tell if that if that was that,
Speaker 3: or if that was like I.
Speaker 6: Did not see that on the Amazon SD version. I
Speaker 6: had to wait till I saw it the Blu ray
Speaker 6: to get that detail.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Didn't know if that was like a symbol of like, oh,
Speaker 3: he's a successful insurance man. I could not tell what
Speaker 3: that was.
Speaker 7: I kind of wonder if he gained some weight after
Speaker 7: he got married and maybe he had to switch it over.
Speaker 7: But he's doing that even when before he meets Mona,
Speaker 7: like in the car with Jaden Wyatt, and that's that's
Speaker 7: the thing, like him being in that very weak position
Speaker 7: of being driven to work by his wife. You know
Speaker 7: that feels very emasculating to me in that and then
Speaker 7: he gives her that little speech before these where it's
Speaker 7: just like I.
Speaker 8: Leave the opposite exactly four minutes after five, takes six
Speaker 8: minutes to walk to the corner where Charlie picks me
Speaker 8: up at exactly five point fifteen, takes thirty two minutes
Speaker 8: to drive home, and as we hit a couple of
Speaker 8: stop signals, I'm kissing you on the cheek at exactly.
Speaker 2: Five fifty oh man routine getting you down again.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Sometimes I get to feel like a wheel within a
Speaker 8: wheel within a wheel.
Speaker 1: And fifty million others. I don't want to be like
Speaker 1: fifty million others.
Speaker 8: Oh but you're John Forbes, average American backbone of a country.
Speaker 8: I don't want to be an average American backbone of
Speaker 8: the country. I want somebody else to beat the backbone
Speaker 8: and hold me up.
Speaker 2: We've been reading Time his geography book again, Glamor's Bonio,
Speaker 2: Rubber Plantations, and Dusty Dames.
Speaker 8: Well, it sounds a lot better than Glamour's Olympic Mutual Insurance.
Speaker 1: Company, I think, speaking of which we're here.
Speaker 8: Oh well, see it exactly five fifty.
Speaker 7: Gives her that peck on the cheek and she's just like, hey, wait.
Speaker 8: A minute, I'm getting a little bored back kiss on
Speaker 8: the cheek too.
Speaker 1: Thanks, you're welcome.
Speaker 7: And then his kid, that whole thing with this kid,
Speaker 7: it's like, oh yeah, So and So's father was in
Speaker 7: the war and he won this and that, he got
Speaker 7: the Silver Star and this and that, and he's like,
Speaker 7: what do you get, daddy. He's like, you know, like
Speaker 7: basically get like.
Speaker 8: All your father got the good Conduct Medal for oh,
Speaker 8: beat clusters.
Speaker 9: Really, when did I do Jimmy his father only got
Speaker 9: the Silver Star?
Speaker 1: Son? I don't think i'd do that. If I were,
Speaker 1: you might sound like boasting. Fan hold it man, you too?
Speaker 1: You served him? Num I did saga? Well, how'd you
Speaker 1: lose your eye? Fucking round in the office.
Speaker 6: We were shooting paper clips at each other and one
Speaker 6: of the damn foods hit me.
Speaker 4: Now you know what.
Speaker 1: Those fucking metals on your coat?
Speaker 10: Well, and this one is for taiping' and this one
Speaker 10: is for dot champion, and this one is for ciphering,
Speaker 10: and got up.
Speaker 6: It might sound like bragging that you got the metal
Speaker 6: of conduct, you only got the silver Star. Jane Wyatt
Speaker 6: has this amazing line where she's like, you know, he
Speaker 6: kept the Japs out of Baltimore or something, you know,
Speaker 6: like just that's totally, you know, condescending, as you said,
Speaker 6: Like so many of the lines of this are very emasculating,
Speaker 6: but in such a funny way. It's not heavy handed.
Speaker 6: It feels very organic. Like the rest of the movie.
Speaker 6: It feels very natural. The dialogue feels natural. I love
Speaker 6: Jane Wytt in this movie because she's not some nagging,
Speaker 6: weak or clueless wife in the book that this is
Speaker 6: based on. She's dealing with like a complicated pregnancy and
Speaker 6: she can't really get out of bed, so she's kind
Speaker 6: of helpless, which makes Forbes like more of a jerk
Speaker 6: in the book, but it also makes her less of
Speaker 6: a formidable presence in his life. In the movie, she's
Speaker 6: funny and sassy and sexy. She meets his like gloom
Speaker 6: and doom and his cynicism with really good humor.
Speaker 3: Their rapport is great, Like, he's not in an unhappy marriage,
Speaker 3: he's just kind of in like a midlife crisis. Like
Speaker 3: when he's kind of reminiscing back talking about their high
Speaker 3: school days, he's like, you're voted prettiest and I was
Speaker 3: voted most likely to succeed. What happened? She said, well,
Speaker 3: I had a baby. What happened to you? Like she
Speaker 3: was just like gently ribbing him. It wasn't like a
Speaker 3: put down. She's like, hey, like get over yourself, Like,
Speaker 3: let's turn the life we have into the one we want.
Speaker 6: Like, man, she's someone who can deal with honesty in
Speaker 6: a marriage, which is another thing we don't often see
Speaker 6: in noir pictures. You know, She's like yeah, yeah, She's
Speaker 6: like a kind of an ideal I mean, obviously she
Speaker 6: was the wife on Father Knows Best, so in many
Speaker 6: ways she was an idealized American wife later in her career.
Speaker 6: But like you know, this is one of those movies
Speaker 6: where I often find myself like, there's a lot of
Speaker 6: movies that are either whether it's you know, a film
Speaker 6: noir or a movie like Damage, where I'm just like,
Speaker 6: you can't identify with a protagonist because I'm in love
Speaker 6: with his wife so much. I'm like, that's the actress
Speaker 6: I'm more attracted to. That's the character I'm more attracted to.
Speaker 6: But I still like in noir movies, I still find
Speaker 6: it compelling, like you do identify with Forbes because he
Speaker 6: does seem like just such an ordinary schmo.
Speaker 7: I love the part in the book where Mac and
Speaker 7: we'll talk about the differences a little bit more. But
Speaker 7: Mac says to him, how's your wife? And then he
Speaker 7: goes fine. I said, without thinking, then I thought, all right,
Speaker 7: I thought plenty S almost had a miscarriage. She was
Speaker 7: still taking those primo and tablets and opium. She's been
Speaker 7: in bed for over three months, not allowed to move
Speaker 7: at all. I get the connection. He nodded. I thought
Speaker 7: you'd be interested. I'm like, oh, so you can't have
Speaker 7: sex with your wife, so you just want a little
Speaker 7: strange then, buddy.
Speaker 3: Those are both very interesting dynamics. And for the movie,
Speaker 3: I kind of like the changes that were made again,
Speaker 3: like because the way they take all those things that
Speaker 3: we're used to, it's kind of like those punches land
Speaker 3: much stronger and you kind of don't see them coming.
Speaker 3: And I know I don't want to jump to the end,
Speaker 3: but I mean just the way everything falls, and then
Speaker 3: the climax of this movie. At first, like the very
Speaker 3: first time I watched it, I mean I was like, what, like,
Speaker 3: what is going on? But then you kind of think
Speaker 3: back and you look at everything that went there, You're like, wow,
Speaker 3: that was really subversive and really honest and really genuine
Speaker 3: and sensational in a way that life is sensational.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the first time I watched it, I thought like
Speaker 6: the ending. I was like, oh, this is like the
Speaker 6: tact on Hollywood ending. And then like the second time
Speaker 6: I watched it, I was like, oh, actually not at all,
Speaker 6: Like this is actually the perfect ending, and it's really
Speaker 6: an atypical ending because it is so direct, like because
Speaker 6: of what she is talking about in terms of reconciling
Speaker 6: their relationship. You don't you don't see scenes like that
Speaker 6: at the end of most Hollywood nos.
Speaker 3: In nineteen forty eight. Like it's brutal, it's hopeful, it's
Speaker 3: kind of beautiful, it's very like it's really like if
Speaker 3: you've been in a marriage and you've had those conversations
Speaker 3: at all, Like it it felt so real in a
Speaker 3: way that yeah, nineteen forties Hollywood movies were not at all.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like it's not the fatal attraction ending where it's like, okay,
Speaker 6: like problem solved, family reunited, everybody's good. It's like problem solved.
Speaker 6: Like he's not going to jail. You know, yeah, he's
Speaker 6: still alive, he's still married.
Speaker 1: He eight dead.
Speaker 6: But you know, as she says, like I don't know
Speaker 6: if it's ever going to be the same.
Speaker 3: Usually noirres like jail or dead.
Speaker 7: Well in Port Elizabeth Scott is off to jail and
Speaker 7: she doesn't get that closure with him at all, Like
Speaker 7: they like miss each other by seconds. He seears are
Speaker 7: going off. He could call to her, but he doesn't.
Speaker 7: He just leaves, and this poor lady is getting carted
Speaker 7: off to jail. He's as guilty as she is. He
Speaker 7: killed the man in cold blood. She did the same,
Speaker 7: but in order to protect herself from this total creep.
Speaker 7: Raymond Burr plays a wonderful creep in this movie. He's
Speaker 7: just amazing. From the first moment where he looks kind
Speaker 7: of little because he's sitting.
Speaker 3: Down, he was fantastatic.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, his shoulders look like they're gonna go
Speaker 7: off the size of the screen, and he's got this
Speaker 7: tiny little head.
Speaker 3: He's in that cartoonishly big suit.
Speaker 6: He's always like that in movies of this period. He's
Speaker 6: a really fast I mean, as a fat guy myself.
Speaker 6: I love big actors who photographed well. Brian Deannahey is
Speaker 6: kind of like a personal hero, and I love how
Speaker 6: imposing Raymond Burr is. Like he's almost as big as
Speaker 6: Sydney green Street, but he doesn't have that big head,
Speaker 6: and he's not an old man like green Street is.
Speaker 6: He's very big, but in a sexy way. And those
Speaker 6: giant suits so are kind of part of it. Like
Speaker 6: he's like swimming around in all this fabric, but it
Speaker 6: doesn't weigh him down. It almost makes him buoyant. I
Speaker 6: have an older friend who just loves Perry Mason, the
Speaker 6: old black and white version, and she's watched like every
Speaker 6: single episode, like the way Star Trek fans watch like
Speaker 6: Star Trek episodes, and I watched a few of them
Speaker 6: with her. And he's really huge in that show too,
Speaker 6: Like he you know, but he's like young. He's running around,
Speaker 6: he's like bending down on the floor to like check
Speaker 6: out a body, and then he gets up and he's
Speaker 6: like running to the door, and he's just so big.
Speaker 6: And I'm just still not used to seeing that in
Speaker 6: any film or TV show really of any era, to
Speaker 6: have like the dramatic lead, the handsome dramatic lead, be
Speaker 6: so incredibly obese. He's not just overweight, he's an obese man.
Speaker 6: And obviously that's used wonderfully in movies like Rear Window
Speaker 6: and stuff like that, but I just find him kind
Speaker 6: of fascinating in this era, and especially in this movie.
Speaker 7: We should talk about the book real quick, because the book.
Speaker 7: In the book, he's a cop and his plan is, Hey,
Speaker 7: I sent this guy, Smiley and his partner. They were
Speaker 7: per snatchers, I think it is, and I sent them
Speaker 7: up up the river. But Smiley's got this really hot wife,
Speaker 7: and I really want to get with her. This is
Speaker 7: where the logic gap comes in. He somehow wants Forbes,
Speaker 7: who is a screenwriter in the in the book, which
Speaker 7: would have.
Speaker 6: Yay, he's a Hollywood screenwriter.
Speaker 7: Would have kind of put it into a little bit
Speaker 7: of a lonely place type of area. Though he's not
Speaker 7: a psychotic. It's Mac the cop in this one, who's psychotic.
Speaker 7: And so he sends Forbes off because he knows Forbes'
Speaker 7: wife is on bedrest and wants Forbes to get it wet.
Speaker 7: And then I guess he wants Forbes to dump Mona
Speaker 7: so he can sweep in the logic there is really well, yeah.
Speaker 6: He wants Forbes to break her in, like to dispel
Speaker 6: any loyalty she might have to her incarcerated husband if
Speaker 6: he kind of like cross if she crosses that line
Speaker 6: and maybe feels regretful, you know. But now she's already
Speaker 6: done at once, so what the hell, what's the second time?
Speaker 6: So he can swoop in and really, yeah, he can
Speaker 6: do the big seduction after the sort of failed guilty seduction,
Speaker 6: and Forbes like reluctantly agrees, but he falls for her
Speaker 6: and they start this affair and that's you know, McDonald
Speaker 6: sees that as a big double cross because their buddies
Speaker 6: in the book, like he's he gives him like real,
Speaker 6: like true crime facts from his cases that the Forbes
Speaker 6: the screenplays exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, well then Detalthin Bowers did such it. Like man,
Speaker 3: all of that is fixed perfectly for a movie that
Speaker 3: sounds like an interesting book. But man, that's those are
Speaker 3: some bold, very smart changes.
Speaker 7: It was very interesting and very well written in my
Speaker 7: opinion anyway. Especially there's some scenes where Forbes losing it
Speaker 7: and he's still trying to work, still trying to get
Speaker 7: the screenplay done. He's got the most understanding boss in
Speaker 7: the world who really cares about him. It's kind of
Speaker 7: like Keys from Double Indemnity. And then he's there popping
Speaker 7: Benny's like crazy in order to try to get through work.
Speaker 7: He can't get Mona off of his mind. He's worried
Speaker 7: about Mac. He's got all this stuff, and the writing
Speaker 7: is such that you just feel that that speed that
Speaker 7: is going through his veins and just the confusion that
Speaker 7: he has. He almost has a psychotic break from taking
Speaker 7: too many bends of dreams.
Speaker 3: I'll add that to my list I don't read a
Speaker 3: ton of noir pulpy stuff, but I would like to
Speaker 3: at some point, I'll throw that on the list.
Speaker 6: I read a lot of noir when I was in
Speaker 6: my twenties, you know. That was when I first really
Speaker 6: discovered the film genre, and that led me to wanting
Speaker 6: to read Chandler and Hammet and you know, all the
Speaker 6: sort of classic noirs. I had never read anything by
Speaker 6: this author, Drattler. Is that his name, Jade Ratler. He
Speaker 6: was all so pretty not a prolific screenwriter, but he
Speaker 6: wrote a bunch of films, including Laura, the quintessential Auto Preminger,
Speaker 6: you know, film from nineteen eighty four nineteen forty four.
Speaker 6: He also wrote called Northside seven seven seven, which was
Speaker 6: made only four years later, in this same year, forty eight.
Speaker 6: But it's an early example of like a shift in
Speaker 6: crime stories that I noticed when I was writing a
Speaker 6: piece for my blog about nineteen forty seven. The post
Speaker 6: war era, the film noir era is all about criminals
Speaker 6: and private eyes and people who work outside the law
Speaker 6: and look down at law enforcements dysfunctional and not like
Speaker 6: fully rebuilt after the war, and everything's still all upside down,
Speaker 6: and there's all these forgotten men and women who are
Speaker 6: like being forced back into the kitchen after like being
Speaker 6: in the workforce. And the nineteen fifties we see this
Speaker 6: big shift from cynicism to optimism that trades poetically cryptic
Speaker 6: detective narratives for clearly drawn police procedurals and all that.
Speaker 6: Not all that, but a lot of the shadowy, expressionistic
Speaker 6: style of film noir is in somewhat cases replaced by
Speaker 6: the pseudo documentary realism of location shooting in real cities,
Speaker 6: like all the new waves in Europe were, and police
Speaker 6: procedurals become really popular in film, but especially on TV,
Speaker 6: where you know, the wheels of justice always seemed to
Speaker 6: work out, and calin Northside seven seven seven is one
Speaker 6: of these many like ripped from the headlines docu drama
Speaker 6: style crime tales like The Naked City and He Walked
Speaker 6: by Night and it's a I think it's a really
Speaker 6: good movie with Jimmy Stewart as like a crusading journalist
Speaker 6: who's trying to right the wrongs of ten years earlier,
Speaker 6: and spoiler alert succeeds.
Speaker 7: The idea of making Mac a private eye and it
Speaker 7: feels like he was a cop, and it feels like
Speaker 7: something probably happened and that's why he's not on the
Speaker 7: force anymore. But he has ties to the force, so
Speaker 7: he's quasi legal, like he's he's in that position where
Speaker 7: he can manipulate the system still but yet manipulate everything.
Speaker 3: He gets information, he's privileged, he has access to Smiley
Speaker 3: to manipulate him. Later on, it's yeah, it's yeah, he's
Speaker 3: positioned himself very well, and you're kind of like, man,
Speaker 3: this guy is such a brute and an idiot, Like
Speaker 3: how is he getting by And it's because of the
Speaker 3: systems that he's manipulating.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he holds that over both of the other characters,
Speaker 6: like he basically forwards his connection and you know, he's like,
Speaker 6: you know, I know how the police work way better
Speaker 6: than you two. Do you know you you have no alibi,
Speaker 6: you have no you know, credibility in terms of what
Speaker 6: you're accusing me of. And yeah, that's you know, he
Speaker 6: just he just has them both.
Speaker 3: Mac is like a big brute idiot, yet he like Smiley,
Speaker 3: John and Mona, like all of them, He's like, I'm
Speaker 3: in charge. And it's that's such an interesting dynamic, Like
Speaker 3: you don't really see that very often as well.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, he's so smart when it comes to riling
Speaker 7: Smiley up. I mean the way that Smiley's like, yeah,
Speaker 7: this guy got me drunk and gave me a gun.
Speaker 7: I'm like, yeah, he's just setting you up, man, like
Speaker 7: setting Smiley up. He's setting up Smiley, He's setting up Forbes,
Speaker 7: you know. And this is all just to get Mona
Speaker 7: all to himself and for a while he succeeds.
Speaker 3: Is that not setting off any alarm.
Speaker 7: Bells for you, guy? What do you guys think of
Speaker 7: Elizabeth Scott and what do you think of Mona?
Speaker 6: I mean, I was never a big fan of Elizabeth Scott,
Speaker 6: and after listening to Eddie Muller's commentary on the Kenot
Speaker 6: Blu Ray, I can see I'm not alone. But she's
Speaker 6: a very unique screen presence. She always reminded me of
Speaker 6: Jenna Rollins. Not because of her acting, obviously, she's nowhere
Speaker 6: near the great actress that Jenna Rowlins is, but she's
Speaker 6: got that deep voice. The cadence of her speech is similar,
Speaker 6: and her face she has a similarly wide mouth, and
Speaker 6: her eyes are they seem kind of farther apart than
Speaker 6: a normal human being, which gives her a kind of
Speaker 6: unsettling look, even though she's obviously quite striking. But I
Speaker 6: think she's great in the movie like and and, as
Speaker 6: as Eddie Muller talks about in that commentary, like she
Speaker 6: was cast because andre to Toe thought of her as
Speaker 6: an ordinary woman as opposed to a gorgeous Hollywood starlet,
Speaker 6: which you know, technically she was a gorgeous Harleywood starlet.
Speaker 6: But she doesn't look like a knockout instantly, even in
Speaker 6: the glamour photos that he's that are his like first
Speaker 6: introduction to her, when he's like looking through her portfolio there, like,
Speaker 6: she still doesn't look like a great fatale that you're
Speaker 6: gonna like sack. You know you're gonna risk your marriage.
Speaker 3: For No, it's not the postman always rings twice. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna throw it all the way.
Speaker 6: Yep, you could just see it floating away. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7: She's going to learned how to lock her door though,
Speaker 7: because he just walks right in, and a lot of
Speaker 7: people just walk right into her apartment. It's like, come on, lady,
Speaker 7: locked that freaking door because yeah, he walks in. Ease
Speaker 7: her portfolio because she's a kind of a fashion model
Speaker 7: and that whole weird thing, Like we've seen that in
Speaker 7: movies before. I particularly remember Vertigo where it's at and
Speaker 7: what was that the one with gentlemen preferred blondes. I
Speaker 7: think that all of the main female characters in there
Speaker 7: were models at an apartment store where it's like, oh,
Speaker 7: I want to see that dress on this woman. I
Speaker 7: want to see that, And I'm just like, what is
Speaker 7: this weird thing where just men?
Speaker 6: I mean, how many it's in so many movies, how.
Speaker 7: Many perverts we're taking advantage of that, right, Yeah, It's
Speaker 7: like and the way that Raymond Burr is threatening to her, like, oh,
Speaker 7: you don't want to show me the dress, he says
Speaker 7: very loudly. So we're supervisor here is and it's just like, no,
Speaker 7: no customers. I was right, I don't want to get
Speaker 7: fucking fired.
Speaker 6: He's like, I got the money.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now that those scenes are in so many movies How
Speaker 6: to Marry a Millionaire? Like there's all these movies and
Speaker 6: movies in the thirties too with like I'm trying to
Speaker 6: think there's a really good one with the Roslyn Russell.
Speaker 6: Was it or maybe it's I can't remember, but like
Speaker 6: this was just a profession, Like if you were a model,
Speaker 6: it didn't necessarily mean you were like going to a
Speaker 6: photographer studio every day. You were going to a department
Speaker 6: store and showcasing these outfits, like you know, like a
Speaker 6: private fashion show for really just ordinary customers, not for
Speaker 6: like super wealthy New York elites, but just like regular folks.
Speaker 3: They didn't have the Internet. They couldn't be like, here's
Speaker 3: our archive of photos. They're like here's our people.
Speaker 7: Or it's a Snapchat filter to see how I look
Speaker 7: in this particular outfit.
Speaker 6: They didn't even have glossy color magazines that you could
Speaker 6: get in the mail. Yeah, you just had had to
Speaker 6: go down.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's such a I want to get back
Speaker 3: to Mona. But yeah, that's an interesting phenomenon, you said, Mike,
Speaker 3: Like it is very You can see so clearly how
Speaker 3: that can be abused and misused and how kind of
Speaker 3: skivy it is. The only then this isn't even modern.
Speaker 3: The only semi modern thing I can think even in
Speaker 3: that world world is Will Smith and enemy of the State,
Speaker 3: and that's like very seedy, and like that was a
Speaker 3: whole point of it. And it's like, yeah, like obviously
Speaker 3: this type of system is kind of built for abuse
Speaker 3: in ways, because again, money is power. Like a lot
Speaker 3: of the noir, a lot of the most powerful noir
Speaker 3: made in the US is about the systems that run
Speaker 3: people over. I mean, we talked about that a ton
Speaker 3: in our Naked Kiss episode, and I just saw that
Speaker 3: over and over here, especially on my second viewing. Just
Speaker 3: the way Mona with all three of the male relationships
Speaker 3: in this movie, whether she wants to have them or not,
Speaker 3: just the way that she deals with unwanted behavior, unwanted
Speaker 3: attention with Smiley. The whole reason that any of this
Speaker 3: happens in the movie is that Smiley is so in
Speaker 3: love with her. Whatever his financial or economic predicaments are,
Speaker 3: he didn't feel, as a man in America, that they
Speaker 3: were good enough. So he goes to robber. He goes
Speaker 3: to embezzlement in order to quote unquote provide what he
Speaker 3: feels like. She's like, yeah, I didn't even I don't
Speaker 3: want this stuff, like the fur coats and the diamonds.
Speaker 3: She likes the boat, but she's not asking, hey like
Speaker 3: turn to crime so that she's like, you're nice to
Speaker 3: me and I like that. But he feels that way,
Speaker 3: so she has to deal with the ramifications of this
Speaker 3: unwanted actions from him. Obviously, all of McDonald's stuff from
Speaker 3: her is unwanted. But the first time John goes, he
Speaker 3: literally just walks in our house and she is either
Speaker 3: so used to that kind of behavior or she's so
Speaker 3: like good at her defenses because it's like, there's a
Speaker 3: strange man in my house, Like I'm going to walk
Speaker 3: in and off from a beer rather than be like
Speaker 3: confrontational to him.
Speaker 7: I love what Muller says on that commentary track where
Speaker 7: it's like aid noir film has already happened, you know,
Speaker 7: like Smiley was the star of his own noir and
Speaker 7: it goes away to jail and this almost becomes like
Speaker 7: chapter two. You know, this is almost the sequel to
Speaker 7: Smiley's story, which I'm like, yeah, and really there could
Speaker 7: be a third part to this, because yeah, the way
Speaker 7: that this ends was so ambiguously where it's like, well,
Speaker 7: she's in jail now, and now he's back with his
Speaker 7: wife and things are not very good here. Things are
Speaker 7: going to be very rocky for John going forward, as
Speaker 7: in his entire life.
Speaker 6: And then there's the prequel, the McDonald's story about how
Speaker 6: he got fired from the police force and became a
Speaker 6: private detective quote unquote.
Speaker 3: That's a pulp novel I'd read.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, he's probably one of these guys where he's
Speaker 7: just like, Okay, you can kill you can shoot six
Speaker 7: people without getting fired from the police, and he grows
Speaker 7: to like it so much. Yeah that once it gets
Speaker 7: to seven, then he wanted eight, then he wanted nine,
Speaker 7: and he just got very hungry for that death. He's
Speaker 7: so fascinating. That's what I like about movies that feels
Speaker 7: like all of these characters live their own lives and
Speaker 7: are are very well formed. Doesn't feel like we're just
Speaker 7: watching cardboard cutouts walk around.
Speaker 3: To the fem fatale question, I think Mona's first interaction
Speaker 3: with John, when she finds him in there and he's
Speaker 3: looking at her photos, that's just so unique because she
Speaker 3: kind of clocks him as like a regular guy, and
Speaker 3: she's not quite trying to slam him, but she just
Speaker 3: reads him really well. It's like, you're kind of like
Speaker 3: a boring guy who goes by the rules. And then
Speaker 3: she gets like a little saucy. She's like, what, I
Speaker 3: bet you're probably gonna be with your boys later on,
Speaker 3: having beers being like, Oh, I met this baby, but
Speaker 3: I kept it all business like. That's probably projecting a
Speaker 3: lot of former traumatic nor stories that have happened in
Speaker 3: the past or her on him, like he's not exactly
Speaker 3: that guy. He's gonna go home to his wife and
Speaker 3: I have the same boring routine. But like that I
Speaker 3: feel like is maybe kind of the first seed of
Speaker 3: some of that. And then she kind of dumps out
Speaker 3: her whole story and she kind of asks him for
Speaker 3: empathy because she presents him, Yeah, I know you're all business,
Speaker 3: but think about my life. I'm just a girl trying
Speaker 3: to get on in the world. And the engagement ring
Speaker 3: I receive from the guy the universe brought me was
Speaker 3: a stolen one and that's just my lot in life.
Speaker 3: Can you give me like a little bit of care
Speaker 3: and concern here and not just treat me all business like.
Speaker 3: She's not seducing him, she's not coming on to him,
Speaker 3: and she's not belittling him. She's really kind of reaching
Speaker 3: out for a human connection because her life as a model,
Speaker 3: who knows what that's like, and her fella's in prison,
Speaker 3: and she's just trying to reach out for a connection.
Speaker 3: And I felt like that was innocent and unique.
Speaker 6: And again, I don't know if I'm a great in
Speaker 6: line you know where she just says, you know, I mean,
Speaker 6: not a line, it's the truth. She just says, you
Speaker 6: know who hates very nice to me, you know. And
Speaker 6: so she actually sees him as an nice guy, which
Speaker 6: is not the way we as an audience are perceiving him.
Speaker 6: Like we're perceiving him not as a bad guy, but
Speaker 6: as you know, not a great guy. He's like an
Speaker 6: insurance guy who's like, you know, collecting, yeah, and he's
Speaker 6: collecting like the stolen, the the embezzled goods from like
Speaker 6: the poor what you know, would be wife of the
Speaker 6: of you know, the guy who was put away. And
Speaker 6: it's like it's just a it's a seedy job. It's
Speaker 6: not pleasant. He doesn't carry it out in a particularly
Speaker 6: nice way. But to her, because she's used to mostly
Speaker 6: shitty guys, she she's like, you're a nice guy. And
Speaker 6: she even says it to him, and he's like me,
Speaker 6: I'm nice. Like he doesn't realize when she says, I
Speaker 6: meet a nice guy and you know, he does something
Speaker 6: nice for me. It takes him a second to realize
Speaker 6: she's talking about him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Moda's bar is very low, very low, tragic, right.
Speaker 7: Dick Powell is just always so good as these NOAR protagonists.
Speaker 7: I love the story of Dete hiring him because he
Speaker 7: knew that Paul was a schmuck, as he put it,
Speaker 7: because Paul was going through something very similar in his
Speaker 7: life where he had kind of blown up his life
Speaker 7: by having an affair. And he's just like, yeah, he'd
Speaker 7: be perfect for this because all can play kind of
Speaker 7: a sad, sack put upon guy. He can be very
Speaker 7: very charming, which you know you have to be that
Speaker 7: if you're gonna go after Mona Smiley here. But yeah,
Speaker 7: it's just he plays that role so well, and especially
Speaker 7: those scenes where he's just like, what are we gonna
Speaker 7: do tonight? We're gonna play Bridge? Yeah? We play Bridge
Speaker 7: every single week, you know, talking with this coworker maybe
Speaker 7: that's his boss and the insurance agency. He's just like,
Speaker 7: can we not do that for once?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 7: Even his son is like, I'm so sick of this town.
Speaker 7: It's like, wow, is that coming straight from your dad?
Speaker 7: Or is just like are you going to be another
Speaker 7: little John Forbes when you grow up and be like,
Speaker 7: I'm bored of this, and you always drive me to
Speaker 7: work and we always kiss on the cheek and we
Speaker 7: always have the same pot roast on Wednesday or whatever.
Speaker 7: It's just like he's so sick of the routine and
Speaker 7: just sees this opportunity. But yeah, to hear his kid go,
Speaker 7: when are we going to take a vacation? I'm sick
Speaker 7: of this town? I'm like, okay, all right, five year old.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I always when I was younger, I am confused Dick
Speaker 6: Powell with William Powell, you know, because they're both you know,
Speaker 6: film noir people and comedians or people who start in
Speaker 6: comedy movies and so like when I first saw Murder
Speaker 6: My Sweet, I was expecting to see William Powell as
Speaker 6: Philip Marlowe, and I was like, I was like this,
Speaker 6: ay William Powell, Like who is this sort of unattractive
Speaker 6: fellow here? And it wasn't until I started to watch
Speaker 6: all the Warner Brothers backstage musicals with William Powell and
Speaker 6: Ruby Keeler and Joan Blundell. I love that genre almost
Speaker 6: as much as I love film noir, Like gold Diggers
Speaker 6: of nineteen thirty three is one of my hundred favorite movies.
Speaker 6: Just love that movie. But I can see why Powell
Speaker 6: wanted to shed his like song and dance man, nice guy,
Speaker 6: gee whiz aw shucks, juvenile persona. And I know he
Speaker 6: lobbied really hard hard to play the lead in Double Indemnity,
Speaker 6: and obviously he lost to Fred McMurray, who was also
Speaker 6: a nice guy or you know, played a lot of
Speaker 6: nice guys. But you know, after he got to do
Speaker 6: Murder My Suite, he did all these film noirs and
Speaker 6: it really changed his career. And it's there aren't a
Speaker 6: lot of these careers where you have, you know, because
Speaker 6: he was never a child actor. He's not like Mickey
Speaker 6: Rooney or anything, but he was you know what they
Speaker 6: used to call a juvenile like he was young and
Speaker 6: he was a hoofer and he played you know, I
Speaker 6: don't think he really played the piano, but he played
Speaker 6: a lot of characters who played the piano in middle age.
Speaker 6: I mean, he's not a particularly attractive guy when he's young,
Speaker 6: but in middle aged he's not conventionally handsome. And in
Speaker 6: Murder My Suite there's a scene where he's topless for
Speaker 6: quite a bit and it's almost shocking to watch it
Speaker 6: with contemporary eyes, you realize why most leading men of
Speaker 6: this era did not take their shirts off unless they
Speaker 6: were Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglass. So he just he really.
Speaker 6: Every time I've seen him at it always strikes me that, like,
Speaker 6: this guy really should be playing exactly the kind of
Speaker 6: character that he's playing in this movie, like an insurance salesman,
Speaker 6: an ordinary guy who's got, you know, a pretty good life.
Speaker 6: You know, he's got a kid that loves him, he's
Speaker 6: got a wife that loves him. But you know, it's
Speaker 6: the grind. It's the daily grind that he can't stand.
Speaker 6: And all of us have been in that position one
Speaker 6: time or another, and it's just, you know, he makes
Speaker 6: the film noir choice, you know, which lots of people make,
Speaker 6: you know, but he's got to pay for it, and unfortunately,
Speaker 6: you know, the person who really pays for it is
Speaker 6: Lizabeth Scott's character.
Speaker 7: I really like e Lizabeth Scott. I know, not everybody does.
Speaker 7: She's kind of an acquired taste for some people. Kind
Speaker 7: of reminds me of is a Kara del Ven, the
Speaker 7: one who is the enchantress in Suicide Squad. I think
Speaker 7: it's the dark eyebrows with the later. I think if
Speaker 7: they did a Elizabeth Scott story, she'd be really good
Speaker 7: at that. But I love the Husky and all that,
Speaker 7: and I just find her so genuine in this movie
Speaker 7: and so nice compared to some of the other roles
Speaker 7: that she's played, because she can't play film fatal pretty
Speaker 7: darn well. I'm trying to remember if it was she
Speaker 7: in Dead Reckoning.
Speaker 6: I think, yeah, she's in Dead Reckoning. She's in the
Speaker 6: Strange Love of Martha Ives speaking of Ivers with Kirk Douglas.
Speaker 6: I think that's Kirk Douglas's first movie, I think, And
Speaker 6: you know she I think she's good in those movies. Well,
Speaker 6: I don't love her and Dead Reckoning, but yeah, like
Speaker 6: she's not. I don't think she's bad. I don't think
Speaker 6: she's a bad actress. She's just not one of those
Speaker 6: one like when whenever her name would come up in credits,
Speaker 6: when you know, back when I was watching all those
Speaker 6: film noirs for the first time, I was never like
Speaker 6: excited the way like if Barbara Stanwick's name came up,
Speaker 6: you were like, oh, Barbara Stanwick, you know, you know,
Speaker 6: So I think it's just that and and you know,
Speaker 6: the more I've learned about her, the more I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 6: I guess that was kind of her reputation. But as
Speaker 6: any Mullet points out in his commentary, this is a
Speaker 6: really good performance and it's a great script. You know,
Speaker 6: she gets to say all this dialogue that tons of
Speaker 6: characters in movies like this would love to say but
Speaker 6: never get the opportunity.
Speaker 7: I can't remember if it was Muller or if it
Speaker 7: was somewhere else that I read that was it. Burt
Speaker 7: Lancaster or Barbara Stanwick refused to work with her because
Speaker 7: they thought she was so untalented.
Speaker 6: I think both of those people felt that way.
Speaker 7: I thought she did very well in this one.
Speaker 3: I've not seen much of her work, but she was
Speaker 3: a knockout in this And again she played the simplicity
Speaker 3: so well, and I feel like that takes a lot
Speaker 3: of talent, because you're not just stars can carry big moments,
Speaker 3: but to make like an everyday kind of character real, Like,
Speaker 3: that's talent.
Speaker 7: Oh the other moment when I talk about his son
Speaker 7: humiliating him after Raymond Burr shows up and just beats
Speaker 7: the shit out of him, and I love that low
Speaker 7: angle shot up of Raymond Burr and he's just pounding
Speaker 7: on you know, what's supposed to be Dick Powell. You
Speaker 7: just see him fighting over and over again, and then
Speaker 7: it's like, oh, gee, my dad says it was two
Speaker 7: of them, because that's how many people it would take
Speaker 7: to you know, if it was just one, my dad
Speaker 7: could have beat him. And I'm like, yeah, it was
Speaker 7: just one guy. I mean, it is surprising when he
Speaker 7: comes back later and manages to beat up match.
Speaker 3: He gets his it like sometimes those skinny guys, man,
Speaker 3: you gotta watch out for him. But yeah, he when
Speaker 3: he gets when he gets an act by surprise, he
Speaker 3: gets his in pretty good. That was chilling and clearly
Speaker 3: an ex dirty cop.
Speaker 6: With bold to go after someone who's three times your
Speaker 6: size and weight.
Speaker 7: Class and that threat of you know, if you mess
Speaker 7: with my family, I'm gonna kill you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's just Raymond Burr's character is so narcissistic
Speaker 6: in the movie, Like he he even like you know,
Speaker 6: as you said, Lizabeth Scott tells him off. She's like
Speaker 6: she tries to tell him nicely that she's not into
Speaker 6: and when he doesn't take no finanswer, she's like, all right,
Speaker 6: I'll just make it plain for you. I have no
Speaker 6: interest in you. I want you to leave me alone.
Speaker 6: And he's just like, but what about what I want?
Speaker 6: And then like you know, when he goes to confront
Speaker 6: Dick Powell the first time he like goes to his house,
Speaker 6: he waits for his car to drive up, and then
Speaker 6: he's just like, hey, I told you I wanted that girl.
Speaker 6: Stay away from that girl. Like it is really really creepy.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and then he just like when when he's like
Speaker 10: leave me alone, he's just like boom boom point just
Speaker 10: like punches him about seven times, like really, yeah, just
Speaker 10: kicks the shit out of him.
Speaker 3: In front of his own house. No, he's a socio path. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he didn't catch him in an alley. That's like that's
Speaker 3: a in a.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's again, you know, even n film noir, it's
Speaker 6: a little shocking to see a character like that. And
Speaker 6: he really he doesn't see anything wrong. Like that's the
Speaker 6: thing that's so creepy about him. He's like, I told
Speaker 6: you I wanted that girl. Like, so lay off for
Speaker 6: at least three weeks, you know. I mean it's it's
Speaker 6: really harsh. It's really harsh. It's where where she works.
Speaker 6: It's like the department store.
Speaker 7: There's some interesting process shots in this movie. There's one
Speaker 7: where she's I think, trying to call him. It looks
Speaker 7: like she's at a store and it's just her and
Speaker 7: another actress, and then behind it it's all rear projection.
Speaker 7: There's one process shot that I absolutely love. It is
Speaker 7: when Forbes is on the ropes towards the end of
Speaker 7: the movie. It's about I don't know, an hour and
Speaker 7: twenty minutes in or so, and he's completely dejected and
Speaker 7: he's just wandering down the street and it is so
Speaker 7: Dick Powell on a sound stage wandering and then I
Speaker 7: don't know if it's red projection at that point or
Speaker 7: if they put this in later. I imagine it's rear projection.
Speaker 7: It's just him walking past all of these storefronts. And
Speaker 7: what's great is that you see the reflections of all
Speaker 7: the stores on the other side of the street, but
Speaker 7: you don't see his reflection. It's like he's so taken
Speaker 7: out of the world that you don't see his reflection
Speaker 7: in those storefronts, and you so should because of the
Speaker 7: way that it's being lit. You should really see his reflection.
Speaker 3: That was a really strong scene that gave me very
Speaker 3: strong eyes, wide shut vibes. I was like, Oh, I
Speaker 3: wonder if this was in the back of Kubrick's mind
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 7: He's very funny. Yeah, and you even get the brown
Speaker 7: derby being reflected in the mirror or in the windows
Speaker 7: and stuff like that's really nice, very very Hollywood here.
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe he's a vampire. I'll just kidding. If you
Speaker 6: want to see Elizabeth Scott in color. The year before this,
Speaker 6: she made not a very good movie and she's not
Speaker 6: particularly good in it, but it's kind of a crazy
Speaker 6: movie called Desert Fury, which is a three strip Technicolor.
Speaker 6: It's not really a Weststern, but it's it's definitely worth seeing,
Speaker 6: and you know it's most of her films are black
Speaker 6: and white, but that's that's one where it's like full technicolor.
Speaker 3: Interesting streaming on the Criterion Channel with over a three
Speaker 3: star average.
Speaker 7: Why not?
Speaker 1: Oh good?
Speaker 6: Yeah, check it out. Yeah, I saw it on thirty
Speaker 6: five milimeter just a couple of years ago, and uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I need to check out Dead Reckoning that I'm
Speaker 3: going to bump up on my list.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I actually saw that where the Nitrate Film festas
Speaker 7: helped George House. Yeah, I was very fortunate to be
Speaker 7: able to see that there. I was really excited to
Speaker 7: be able to see, you know, Amy Humphrey Bogart on
Speaker 7: the big screen. I'm excited to see.
Speaker 6: Speaking of three D, but you you were talking about
Speaker 6: your first introduction to Andre to Toath earlier, Like my
Speaker 6: first introduction, aside from the fact that you know, he
Speaker 6: made House a wax and he's a famously cycloptic director.
Speaker 6: He only has one eye, and that's one of the
Speaker 6: most famous early three D movies, but my first introduction
Speaker 6: to him was in Martin Scorsese's film, you know, Journey
Speaker 6: Personal Journey through Film History, where he is one of
Speaker 6: like seven directors who are interviewed in that movie with
Speaker 6: an eyepatch, you know, and they're all just old and
Speaker 6: grizzled and they've they're all like missing an eye, and
Speaker 6: you're just like, what happened to all these men? Like,
Speaker 6: but these guys didn't fight in the war? Well john Ford,
Speaker 6: johnsh Ford did, but yeah, Fritz Slang yep and Nicholas Ray. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean it literally is like six or seven eye patches,
Speaker 6: you know, everybody. We saw that at the Harvard Film
Speaker 6: Archive and everybody came out wanting to like wear an
Speaker 6: eye patch. You know, did you ever have.
Speaker 3: A big screening of that? Yeh, I should give out
Speaker 3: eye patches for the favors. I mean, I think the
Speaker 3: setup of the I guess, climax of the action, and
Speaker 3: then the fall. We've talked about the fallow it a
Speaker 3: little bit, but again, I thought it was both simultaneously
Speaker 3: really great storytelling and almost kind of just procedurally believable.
Speaker 3: Like it is sensational that mac Will would basically pick
Speaker 3: up Smiley, spring him from jail, booz him up, give
Speaker 3: him a gun like that. That's a very noir premise.
Speaker 3: But then if you boil that down, it's okay. This
Speaker 3: is a guy, This is a jealous lover trying to
Speaker 3: gonna defend her honor in a way, like he's a
Speaker 3: little bit off, and he he has a conversation with
Speaker 3: Mona where he's like, I can forgive you, but I
Speaker 3: can't forgive him. And I think that the theme of
Speaker 3: forgiveness is interesting because nah, not being an apologist for
Speaker 3: what they did at all these forties movies. Obviously they
Speaker 3: can't show everything. They weren't explicit things like that, but genuinely.
Speaker 3: I don't know what your guys's read of the movie was.
Speaker 3: My read was that their relationship was not all that developed.
Speaker 3: There was obviously like the relational intimacy, and they ki
Speaker 3: the one time, but I did not read that as
Speaker 3: they were always getting together kissing, Like I don't really
Speaker 3: necessarily know if I think that the film presents them
Speaker 3: as having like sexually consummated there a fair even was
Speaker 3: your guys's read.
Speaker 6: I think it's pretty clear because you know, there's a
Speaker 6: scene where he leaves his briefcase at her apartment and
Speaker 6: she returns, she's like, you left this, And also, as
Speaker 6: Eddie Muller points out, like the scene the sort of
Speaker 6: morning after scene, you don't see him, there's no evidence
Speaker 6: of him there. But she gets out her bedroom and
Speaker 6: she looks she's been styled to look like she had
Speaker 6: a pleasant night of intercourse. It is very subtle.
Speaker 3: It is then it was very subtle.
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, I agree with you that it doesn't feel
Speaker 6: like it's gone on for a long time. My opinion,
Speaker 6: my read is that they had one night together and
Speaker 6: then she instantly.
Speaker 7: They're going like bunny rabbits in lust.
Speaker 3: Yeah, still not good, but it wasn't deep. It's not
Speaker 3: like these It's again one of my favorites, if not
Speaker 3: my favorite, it's not the best, but just like my
Speaker 3: personal favorite, Postman Always Rings Twice was one of the
Speaker 3: first ones I read, so in my mind like I
Speaker 3: can't help but have that sometimes be like my meter
Speaker 3: for how I rate him. Like those two are like
Speaker 3: madly and deeply in love quote unquote, yeah, they are
Speaker 3: in lust. They are burning in lust. These two people
Speaker 3: kind of have a flirtation and an attraction, but then
Speaker 3: like it's not developed. Okay, let's say they had one
Speaker 3: night together, obviously a violation, but then like when it
Speaker 3: is explained to both of the partners, it's so interesting.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so the progression of events, so Smiley gets
Speaker 3: all amped up, goes over to John's house to confront
Speaker 3: him and like to kill him. Like John's intention or
Speaker 3: smile these intentions. Rather he wants to do something and
Speaker 3: maybe he wants to kill him, I don't know. But
Speaker 3: then right away Mona calls to warn him, and again
Speaker 3: very noir but also very real. She's like, I don't
Speaker 3: want this to happen. She's very kind of straight ahead
Speaker 3: going obviously it wasn't good. I'm sorry. Let's get on track.
Speaker 3: Let's get out of town. Like obviously things are weird here.
Speaker 3: Ma's definitely not leaving me alone. So for anything else,
Speaker 3: we need to get off of this guy's radar. But
Speaker 3: let's just leave, like I we are together. I want
Speaker 3: to be with you. Let's build a life. Let's leave
Speaker 3: the crime, leave all this comp this complicated situation. Let's
Speaker 3: just leave. And he goes, Okay, sounds good. After I go,
Speaker 3: maybe he'll this guy like she doesn't want him to
Speaker 3: go to jail, and she is begging him, so she
Speaker 3: calls John to hopefully diffuse the situation. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I was surprised again because John being this kind of
Speaker 3: milk toast insurance midlife crisis. He goes to his dresser
Speaker 3: and pulls out like a legit gun, not just like
Speaker 3: some six shooter, like a legit like this is my gun,
Speaker 3: like he knew how to use it. And he kind
Speaker 3: of goes to a place where he can't go back,
Speaker 3: and you see Mac just sitting in the car like
Speaker 3: very exciting. Mac can't wait for somebody to die because
Speaker 3: both of these guys are in his kind of narcissistic
Speaker 3: like kind of crazy brain. He's like, both of these
Speaker 3: guys are in my way, like like in Max's perfect world,
Speaker 3: like they cartoonishly shoot each other simultaneously and they're both gone.
Speaker 3: But for him, it's like one of these guys is
Speaker 3: gonna shoot the other guy and then maybe they'll be
Speaker 3: in jail or something. And then he goes to give
Speaker 3: moan of the bad news of oh Man, Smiley went
Speaker 3: over to John's and John shot him. So John's gonna
Speaker 3: be arrested and Smiley's gone, So pack your Bag's hun like,
Speaker 3: let's go.
Speaker 7: But I love it even more that it's the police
Speaker 7: radio that he comes over in turns on that police
Speaker 7: radio and then they report the address.
Speaker 3: He plays it for her on her radio, and I
Speaker 3: was like, is the police frequency? Like any homeowner with
Speaker 3: the radio that did rub up against me? As like
Speaker 3: any homeowner with the radio can hear what the police
Speaker 3: are saying at any time?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was odd. That was what was odd too.
Speaker 7: When John is just about to confess the affair to
Speaker 7: his wife and then his son cries out. His son
Speaker 7: is having a nightmare, and his son is like, oh,
Speaker 7: there was somebody here or something, And I'm just like oh,
Speaker 7: I was thinking, Oh, well, Smiley's outside, or it's Mac
Speaker 7: outside the window, because you can just imagine Mac like
Speaker 7: some sort of looming creature outside. Yeah, because he walks
Speaker 7: over to that window and I'm just like, hey, you know,
Speaker 7: close that window.
Speaker 3: Man, Like, No, yeah, I thought that was going to
Speaker 3: be Mac. I thought that was going to get dark
Speaker 3: for a second there.
Speaker 7: Because he's up on the second floor though, too, and
Speaker 7: I'm just like, oh, if you saw a creature outside
Speaker 7: the second floor. But no, Instead he just blames the
Speaker 7: comic books, you.
Speaker 3: Know, those darn comics.
Speaker 7: No one of those Busby Boy adventures.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I love that, the Buzzby Boys, little subtle, subtle
Speaker 6: callback to Busby Berkeley, those all those films he made.
Speaker 6: Just to go back to your the noir aspect of
Speaker 6: it and the exaggerated aspects of it, it really is
Speaker 6: just Mac, the Raymond Burke character who who makes this
Speaker 6: a film noir story. This could very easily have been
Speaker 6: a forties melodrama about a guy, an insurance agent who
Speaker 6: you know, cheats on his wife one time, and there
Speaker 6: can there might even be a character like Mac in
Speaker 6: a melodrama version of this, And you know it complicates
Speaker 6: situation for him and this woman and him and his wife,
Speaker 6: and it's a like a little bit of a love triangle.
Speaker 6: But because the Raymond Burke character is so exaggerated, such
Speaker 6: a menacing route and manipulates all these people to such
Speaker 6: a and you know, somehow is able to tune in
Speaker 6: police radio on a normal frequency like and all these
Speaker 6: things like that's what makes it into a noar like.
Speaker 6: And then the other characters, especially Lizbeth Scott's character, fit
Speaker 6: into noir patterns, you know, like, and they fit into
Speaker 6: these tropes. But it could easily be a melodrama. There's
Speaker 6: so many great melodramas from that same era that features
Speaker 6: some of these same actors. There's a great Joan Crawford
Speaker 6: movie called Daisy Kenyon, which is a you know, a
Speaker 6: not that dissimilar, you know film in the sense of
Speaker 6: it's a love triangle two men and one woman in
Speaker 6: that case. But you know, you could you can feel
Speaker 6: how this movie could work out and how this story
Speaker 6: could play out in different ways. If you read the book,
Speaker 6: it's much more pulpy, much more sexy, much more you
Speaker 6: know of a of a noir story. And that's again,
Speaker 6: I think another thing that makes this movie a bit
Speaker 6: of a outlier, and one of the things that makes
Speaker 6: it so interesting.
Speaker 3: His malevolent oblivion focus kind of necessitates the only way
Speaker 3: for him to not ruin Mona's life and take her
Speaker 3: is for him to be dead. And that's what and
Speaker 3: Mona knows that she's like okay, and she says in
Speaker 3: the very first scene that we see her, Hey, I've
Speaker 3: also got a gun, and I mean it's seated, it's
Speaker 3: and it also would make sense that a woman who
Speaker 3: ostensibly has experienced the things that this character has experienced
Speaker 3: would have a gun, and she takes care of herself.
Speaker 3: The movie that happens after this for Mona, it's unfortunate
Speaker 3: with his background being a cop, but also if they
Speaker 3: know he's bad, I was like, is she gonna actually
Speaker 3: go to jail? She's got a lot of eyewitnesses who
Speaker 3: can say, yeah, this guy is really harassing her all
Speaker 3: the time in several public places, So I was like,
Speaker 3: is she gonna actually go to jail? But whether she
Speaker 3: does or she doesn't, killing a man in your home
Speaker 3: is not something that you easily walk past eye either
Speaker 3: they both and I didn't realize that until my second viewing.
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, that's also really great subtle storytelling.
Speaker 3: They both had to deal with killing somebody basically in
Speaker 3: their home and kind of how similarly and dissimilarly things
Speaker 3: in the story that we're given work out for them.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, he says, we've got the wrong person up there.
Speaker 7: But you know, he said, white Anglo Saxon Protestant male,
Speaker 7: he's going to get away with murder.
Speaker 6: Literally, Yeah, Raymond Burr probably wasn't packing a gun when
Speaker 6: he went over there, so he I mean, I still
Speaker 6: think she could, you know, she could get off on
Speaker 6: a standard ground kind of thing, especially because it seems
Speaker 6: like the cop really does not want to put her
Speaker 6: in jail. Yeah, the wrong person's up there, should be
Speaker 6: you guy. Yeah, well he had a guy coming. He
Speaker 6: had a drunk man with a gun and a grudge
Speaker 6: coming into his house. Like that makes sense.
Speaker 3: But that conversation with I don't know the lieutenant or
Speaker 3: prosecutor or whatever, where he or John bears his soul
Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, you're guilty, but you're gonna go free.
Speaker 3: And that's characters in noir, and they're often seeking redemption
Speaker 3: or a life raft to.
Speaker 6: Know.
Speaker 3: They usually don't find what they're looking for. But him,
Speaker 3: he gets it. He gets it legally, and then at
Speaker 3: the very end he gets it relationally and there is
Speaker 3: almost hope.
Speaker 7: You're like.
Speaker 3: His wife is like things are never going to be
Speaker 3: the same. But I thought about leaving you. But we're married,
Speaker 3: we have a son, we have a life. I care
Speaker 3: about our life, and I would like to build it
Speaker 3: back if we can. And you're like, I don't know
Speaker 3: if I've ever seen that in a noir.
Speaker 6: And he even says like, are you sure you don't
Speaker 6: want a divorce? And it's just like shocking to hear
Speaker 6: that term.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that was stunning in nineteen forty eight, where
Speaker 3: the male character who done this is like, you want
Speaker 3: a divorce? Like, that's what I deserve. Like in the Precinct,
Speaker 3: he's like, I deserve to be in jail. You're not
Speaker 3: going to get jail on the ride home. I deserve
Speaker 3: for you to take the get in the house and
Speaker 3: leave me. You're not going to get that either, And
Speaker 3: he's like, Okay, what all the noir characters and all
Speaker 3: the other movies want. He's getting. But it also doesn't
Speaker 3: feel like a success either, which because of all the
Speaker 3: moral compromises. Like this is just a genius story in
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 6: You've got me thinking, like Mona Stephen's defense attorney here,
Speaker 6: because okay, she's established president. If we recall when he
Speaker 6: was threatening her, When Raymond Burr was threatening her, she
Speaker 6: said she had to like ask the floor walkers where
Speaker 6: she works to drive her home and make sure she
Speaker 6: got home. Okay, so not only where there are witnesses
Speaker 6: at that one time that he came and watched, but
Speaker 6: she told all these people that she works with that
Speaker 6: this big threatening guy is like, you know, creeping her
Speaker 6: out and showing up at her house. And they've even
Speaker 6: had to like drive her home and they can testify,
Speaker 6: so they're gonna get her off.
Speaker 3: He went to the station to sign out Smiley and
Speaker 3: then somehow but.
Speaker 6: Those guys are his buddies, like they might cover for him.
Speaker 3: But like it's a fascinating story. Like the more I
Speaker 3: think about it, I'm like, this is thank you Mike
Speaker 3: for having me on for this one. This is this
Speaker 3: is a gem.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was great to finally catch
Speaker 6: up to this movie. And like Annie Muller says, like
Speaker 6: this was a bit of a lost movie because it
Speaker 6: was an independent production, and very often those movies become
Speaker 6: orphans because nobody knows who owns them. After twenty years,
Speaker 6: you know, they get bought and sold and repackaged a
Speaker 6: million times. So there weren't a lot of I mean,
Speaker 6: that's why I never saw this movie at the Brattle
Speaker 6: or the Harbor Film Archive or any of these other
Speaker 6: theaters that I used to go to constantly to watch
Speaker 6: these movies. But there weren't print of this circulating around
Speaker 6: to see. So it's great that you know they've they've
Speaker 6: restored this UCLA and the Film Noir Foundation.
Speaker 3: Thank you UCLA and KENO.
Speaker 7: This is great. All right, we're going to take a
Speaker 7: break and play preview for next week's show right after
Speaker 7: these brief messages.
Speaker 1: Morning sir, good morning, Great, nice day. Evan's reports a
Speaker 1: pog rolling in.
Speaker 2: I have to stable saddle up Blackie. I'll want them
Speaker 2: after breakfast. We'll tell the Chief. I'll go over the
Speaker 2: personnel reports with him at fourteen hundred. Hi, sir, good morning, Chief,
Speaker 2: Good morning, sir.
Speaker 1: Eve. Can we get married?
Speaker 6: Sure? Didn't I say yes a long time ago?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No, I mean right now tonight.
Speaker 6: All right, I'll always.
Speaker 2: Love you, so I guess it doesn't matter how soon
Speaker 2: we begin together.
Speaker 1: Be all right?
Speaker 2: If a pick here at eight o'clock tonight, and I
Speaker 2: think you'd better wear a dress just this once A
Speaker 2: shame to me already, huh sure, but I love you.
Speaker 1: The chaplin doesn't, though, and I think he might like
Speaker 1: a dress.
Speaker 4: You're not going right away.
Speaker 1: I have to relieve chief warnikey, Oh.
Speaker 9: Mary, what's this about my husband?
Speaker 1: I'm on my way to relive him for child.
Speaker 9: Oh, don't be in a rush. It'll do him good
Speaker 9: to miss a meal. Honestly, I'll be bad when he's discharged,
Speaker 9: just so I can find him down a little bit.
Speaker 3: We're going to be married.
Speaker 9: Well, I should think you would be. I mean tonight,
Speaker 9: the sor the better.
Speaker 5: What is this a conspiracy?
Speaker 9: I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll wash your hair
Speaker 9: for you this afternoon. I bought some new fancy shampoo stuff.
Speaker 7: That's right. We'll be back next week with a renoir
Speaker 7: noir woman on the beach. Until then, I want to
Speaker 7: thank my co host I and Philip so Phillips. What's
Speaker 7: the latest with you, sir?
Speaker 3: Still running the substance? I have lost my editor, so
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get on a more regular release schedule,
Speaker 3: but you can find me over at the Substance Podcast
Speaker 3: with regular substantive cinema episodes coming out. I got some
Speaker 3: great ones in the can. If you're listening to this
Speaker 3: in no November you will, hopefully if I get the
Speaker 3: episode all done, be able to hear are Pal, Mike
Speaker 3: White and semi regular guest here Spencer Parsons talk about
Speaker 3: Sam Fuller's Shop Corridor. Got some other fun stuff coming
Speaker 3: up as well. But you can find me at the
Speaker 3: Substance Pod on the Socials or the Substance where you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts.
Speaker 7: And Ian how about yourself?
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 6: You can read my reviews and thoughts about film on
Speaker 6: my blog film five thousand dot com and on letterbox
Speaker 6: that Iananthony Brownew. And you can listen to me regularly
Speaker 6: on the Brattlefilm podcast. Film noir fans might enjoy the
Speaker 6: big episode we did last September, a retrospective of Lauren
Speaker 6: Bacall on what would have been her at the birthday.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you so much guys for being on the show.
Speaker 7: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 7: more of me shooting my mouth off, please check out
Speaker 7: some of the other shows that I work on. They
Speaker 7: are all available at Winningwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to
Speaker 7: our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 7: visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
Speaker 7: get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 6: Good ball?
Speaker 1: What am I.
Speaker 6: I'm calling in a good call of a lot.
Speaker 11: Of the first time that I met you, let me
Speaker 11: hold you, let me on and made me think that
Speaker 11: I could be you man, the way you cut it
Speaker 11: close to me until your lips you made my lonely
Speaker 11: heart giving. I lost no Southern fear. Then I felt.
Speaker 6: What if my coma.
Speaker 3: I'm called it a pi father of love?
Speaker 1: It isn't true.
Speaker 11: And when you held me close to you and whispered
Speaker 11: in my my head was spinning round and round. My
Speaker 11: brain just wasn't clear. You told me that you love
Speaker 11: me and forever you'd be true, and with your lips
Speaker 11: ress close to mine. Or what else could I do
Speaker 11: than I food?
Speaker 1: What am I gonna do?
Speaker 11: I'm calling a pickball of love?
Speaker 4: This truth