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A Kiss Before Dying (1956) – on TCM Tomorrow – Read Our Review

It’s the usual love story, film noir style–boy meets girl at college, boy gets girl pregnant, boy tosses girl off a rooftop, making his murder look like suicide. So passes the first third or so of “A Kiss Before Dying” from 1956. Sure, a lot more happens during the first 30 minutes, but Robert Wagner (as Bud Corliss) is so stilted and wooden in the role that he makes the machinations he goes through to knock off his pregnant girlfriend seem boring and suspenseless. Joanne Woodward, as the girlfriend named Dorie Kingship (a pet name only the boyfriend uses), is forced into a terribly underwritten role, even by the standards of film noir leading ladies.

Of course, Dorie’s in a non-win situation–it’s 1956, and you don’t have children out-of-wedlock (at least on film); you also don’t have a back-alley abortion (again, at least not on film). In addition, Dorie’s father is apparently such a jackass that he would cut her off entirely if she were to elope with her boyfriend, the only real out she has in a movie abiding by the Production Code. The problem of course, is that Bud doesn’t really give a damn about Dorie–he’s been researching her father’s company, Kingship Mining, and is after only her money. What Dorie sees in Bud is beyond me, since he merely fains interest in her most of the time–maybe it’s some stock Freudian message (so popular at mid-century) where she’s looking for someone like her father.

After far too many contrived plot twists (most too boring to be described) as Bud is trying to eliminate Dorie, he finally lures her to the roof the municipal building on the morning they are to be married, a marriage to be attended by only the bride and groom, since she hasn’t even told her friends and family about the relationship with Bud. She blithely walks over to the the ledge of the 20 story building, and Bud tosses her off it like a rag doll. Since, through yet another plot contrivance that strains credulity, Bud effectively got Dorie to pen a letter that could be read as a suicide note, he’s off the hook.

The action moves forward several months, and we see Dorie’s sister, Ellen (played by Virginia Leith) and her father (played by George Macready). Ellen receives a letter from one of Dorie’s sorority sisters, which mentioned that Dorie had borrowed an old, ill-matched belt on the day of her death. Suddenly, Ellen, who doubted that her sister committed suicide from the beginning (and who is apparently a good deal brighter than her sister), begins to suspect that Dorie was getting married that day (borrowed belt, old tattered blouse, new gloves, a blue ribbon on her handbag), and hence unlikely to kill herself.

Ever his charming self, dear old Dad tells her not to bother, and to concentrate on the relationship with her new boyfriend (one guess here as to who her new boy-toy is). Nonetheless, Ellen heads to Dorie’s college to play Nancy Drew. She’s being helped Gordon Grant. He’s another bizarre and semi-credible plot contrivance; he was Dorie’s math tutor, but his uncle is chief of police, and sometimes does some investigations for the men in blue. He’s the only math tutor I’ve ever heard of who keeps a desk in the precinct house.

At any rate, Ellen arrives at the college, has the register break a long list of privacy laws, and finds the man that Dorie dated for a few weeks before Bud (seemed like a popular girl). Through her bumbling, she gets him killed, but not before his murderer (again, one guess as to who it is) types yet another fake suicide note, saying that he felt guilty for killing Dorie.

Feeling like she’s solved the mystery, Ellen returns home and is finally at peace with the situation. She promptly agrees to marry her boyfriend, who is revealed to be (please prepare yourself for a shock) Bud Corliss. It’s at this point that Ellen becomes as clueless as Dorie was–perhaps jackassedness is a general genetic trait of the family.

Grant arrives to reveal that the man that Bud killed (and disguised as a suicide) couldn’t have killed Dorie–he was playing with a band in, I kid you not, Mexico City that week. Grant also reveals that he thinks that Bud went to college with Dorie, a fact Bud neglected to tell either of the two remaining Kingships.

Being madly in love with a man who’s both deadly dull and a psychopathic murderer, Ellen of course refuses to believe Grant, and decides to take Bud on a tour of the family mine the next day. After a not-very-suspenseful interlude, Bud slips up and Ellen regains some semblance of intelligence. From there, it’s all down hill for Bud, who soon meets his downfall. (Please excuse the cheap metaphorical puns; it fits with the general mood of the movie).

Notes

GACK! Watch it once, and then put it away forever. In case you couldn’t tell from the review, I think that there are many, many better film noir out there to enjoy. The basic problem with the film, though, is that it seemed like the studio was trying to make a movie that would appeal to both young men (come see a crazed killer) and their dates (stare dreamily at Robert Wagner). Needless to say, it was a flabby mess, and a script that seemed like it was put together in a day certainly doesn’t help quality.

The most redeeming quality of the film is that you can watch it and see how far Robert Wagner has come: from two-bit actor in a third rate movie to Number 2 in Doctor Evil’s criminal syndicate.

Aug 5 is John Garfield Day on TCM

Great Classic John Garfield Film Noir All Day Long

9:00am est – They Made Me a Criminal

4:45pm est – Humouresque

8:00pm est – The Postman Always Rings Twice

10:00pm est – The Breaking Point

2:00am est – He Ran All the Way

Bonus Viewing: The John Garfield Story at 7:00pm est

 

Armored Car Robbery (1950)

The pace and great location shots make it more watchable and enjoyable than some more renowned heist films.

Synopsis

It’s a beautiful summer day in Southern California. The local nine, the Los Angeles Angels of the old Pacific Coast League, are playing n afternoon game behind the Spanish-style facade of Wrigley Field. Sirens suddenly pierce the air around the stadium. A radio patrol car, comes screeching to a halt in from of the box office. The cops had received a call about a robbery in progress at, of all places, the ballpark, but on investigating the scene, they realize that all is well. It seems like a false alarm. What it really is, however, is master criminal Dave Purvis probing police response time to an alarm at the park.

Thus begins Armored Car Robbery from 1950. A taut, well-paced and captivating heist movie (with elements of a police procedural and an overlaying love triangle), it features William Talman as mastermind Dave Purvis, Charles McGraw as lawman Lt. Jim Cordell, Douglas Fowley as Benny McBride (Purvis’s lieutenant in the scheme) and Adele Jurgens as Yvonne LeDoux, aka Mrs. Benny McBride, (and sometime mistress of Dave Purvis).

After probing the police response time, we see Purvis, with Benny’s help, assemble a crew for the job. One problem, however, is that Benny is not, shall we say, the sharpest tool in the box. Not only can’t he see that his wife is carrying on an affair with Purvis, he can’t remember simple details like Purvis’s alias, “Martin Bell”, or where Purvis is staying without writing it down. No-no number one for smart crooks everywhere.

Benny does seem to assemble a somewhat competent crew for the job, consisting of Al Mapes (Steve Brodie) and “Ace” Foster (Gene Evans). The crew is introduced to “Bell”, and told of the plan to hit an armored car on its last pickup of the day–collecting the box office receipts from the ballpark. Needless to say, Mapes and Foster are less than thrilled with the plan–they were probably thinking about sneaking into a fur warehouse late at night, tying up an elderly security guard or two, and making off with the loot before anyone found out. Hitting a safe on wheels, protected by three heavily armed guards, in the middle of the day with hundreds (if not thousands) of witnesses around is not their idea of a good job. As Mapes says, armored car jobs are a quick way to get yourself a $60 funeral.

Benny asks if it would make a difference if the job was planned by Dave Purvis, who pulled off a similar job in Chicago not too long ago. They agreed it would, but they’re slow to catch on that “Bell” is actually Purvis until Benny finally let’s them in on the secret. (These guys are two-bit hoods, after all, not Harvard Law School grads).

With all this settled, the gang snaps into action for the day of the heist. The wheelman waits in the getaway car a block or so away from the ballpark, but within line of sight of the entrance. Another crew member endeavors to have his old jalopy break down directly behind the armored car; he’s fiddling with the engine, attracting the interest of one of the guards and two passersby, who, as you can guess, are Purvis and Benny.

The other guard comes out of the ballpark, satchel in hand, as he approaches the back of the truck, and his partner unlocks the door, a thick cloud of teargas shoots from the engine of the broken-down jalopy. Purvis and Benny sap down the guards, as the wheelman pulls the car around. The thieves quickly don gas masks, and begin to move the money from truck to car; Purvis is in charge of keeping track of the time. Based on his initial false alarms, it should take 2 minutes before the police respond; anything left in the armored car after that stays there.

While the crooks are starting their job, an alert ticket agent grabs the phone and calls LAPD. It just so happens that Lt. Cordell, along with his partner Lt. Phillips (James Flavin) are in a radio car and closer to the ballpark than they’d normally be. They come screeching up, catching the crooks mid-robbery. Realizing that his plan has gone awry, Purvis tells his crew to drop everything and leave. In an exchange of fire with the cops, Phillips is shot; before he goes down, however, he gets one or two shots of his own off, and plugs Benny in torso.

Leaving his partner wounded and writhing in pain on the ground, Cordell jumps and the car and takes off after the crooks. He manages to run his car up on a sidewalk and smack into a brick will; his car immobilized he finally radios in about the robbery, and that there is an officer down at the ballpark.

We cut to the hospital, where we see Cordell at the hospital, inquiring about his partner Phillips; of course he’s dead (though if Cordell had gotten him help earlier instead of playing cowboys and indians with the Purvis gang, who knows). We then get the obligatory scene of Cordell vowing to avenge the death to Phillips’s widow, and see Cordell being assigned a new partner, a young and wet behind the ears detective named Danny Ryan.

Purvis and his crew have ditched the old car, and are currently disguised as oil field workers driving down to a warehouse along the water, someplace probably in Long Beach or San Pedro. Against an arid and barren landscape dominated by oil derricks and greasy little shacks, the men come upon a police checkpoint. Benny is in agony from his bullet wound, and can barely keep things together. He bucks up enough so as not to alert the police at the checkpoint, even as a motorcycle cop climbs across him in the back seat to check out Purvis’s ID. They bluff their way through the checkpoint, or so they think; the motorcycle officer notices that he has blood on his clothes, and a bulletin comes across with a general description of the new getaway car. Though the police set off after the criminal quartet, they eventually find their hideout, down by the docks.

The police, meanwhile, have at least one thing working for them–they know the general vicinity where the crooks disappeared making their getaway. They start blanketing the area.

Meanwhile, it become apparent that Benny is badly wounded and needs a doctor; this wrinkle doesn’t fit into the plan, and Benny gets shot trying to make an escape to find some help. Purvis tells Ace and Al to dump Benny and the getaway car off the end of a dock; outside, Ace and Al decide that Purvis (and the loot he’s holding) needs looking after as well, so Mapes stays behind to guard Purvis, who’s guarding the loot.

Things go from bad to worse as Ace is spotted by a police patrol dumping the hot car. He’s chased back towards the hideout; in a shootout, Ace is killed, Mapes just manages to get away in a speedboat, and Purvis is able to sneak past the police in the darkness, carrying the entirety of loot.

The cops quickly find Benny’s body, and, conveniently, the matchbook in which Benny recorded Purvis’s alias and temporary lodging. The cops soon make a connection between Benny and Yvonne; they wire her dressing room at the burlesque theater and her car with state-of-the-art wireless listening devices, hoping that Purvis would make contact with her. Their hope is strengthened when they pick up Mapes who, having the same idea about Yvonne as the police, was lurking around the theater; Mapes lets the cops in on the fact that Purvis and Benny’s wife had been an item.

It’s here that the movie starts in on its exciting ending, which starts with brave, young (and not too bright) Detective Ryan deciding to impersonate Mapes and try to put the squeeze on Yvonne. From there, it’s a race to the finish, which I won’t spoil here, though in a death that we see, you may be reminded of one of the more graphic scenes in Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark filmed three decades later.

Comments

I admit it, I have a soft spot for this film which at its start, combines two great American past times: baseball and rampant criminality. It packs a lot into its 67-minute run time, and doesn’t leave too much on the table. Obviously, there isn’t much in-depth character development going on, but I think that this movie shows how well-made and entertaining a B-movie can be. No, it can’t hold a candle to a truly great film noir heist movie like Asphalt Jungle, or one, like Rififi, with scenes that approach true cinematic art. But, I then compare ACR to a modern movie featuring the robbing of an armored car, Michael Mann’s Heat from 1995; the newer movie looks bloated and chock full of every crime movie cliche imaginable; I’m amazed Heat could contain the egos of its two lead actors with exploding. ACR is less intense to watch, and there are times when, indeed, this can make it more enjoyable to watch.

New York Noir Neorealism: The Naked City (1948) and The Tattooed Stranger (1950)

Most of the early film noir classics are set, if not in Los Angeles, then someplace in southern California. Think Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Even when set a bit further afield, such as the San Francisco of The Maltese Falcon, the movies were shot in studios and backlots located in Hollywood. This isn’t very surprising–Los Angeles and its environs are sort of the default setting for movies of all types from all time periods. The movies that would much later be classified as film noir were just average studio projects made to put patrons in seats of movie theaters across the country.

The Naked City (1948) filmed entirely on location in New York, and oftentimes out in the streets, apartments, shops and offices of that great city, bucked the studio-shot trend. Where the films mentioned above evolved from an amalgamation of 1930s gangster & detective films, pulp fiction novels, and German expressionism, Naked City takes these influences and adds in a significant does of Italian neo-realism, using not only location shots, but also using some non-professional actors in supporting roles and focusing in on “ordinary” people and their stories.

None of this is new; the topic of The Naked City’s debt to films such as Rome, Open City and directors such as Vittorio de Sica has been written about by critics, writers and academics much smarter and more skilled than I. What is interesting is looking at what has become a landmark film, like The Naked City, and comparing it to a very similar film (which, from all appearances, was heavily influenced by TNC) shot just two years later, The Tattooed Stranger.

Here’s the general plot of The Naked City: A young woman is found dead in New York City; responding to the crime are a veteran homicide detective, and a young WWII veteran recently transferred over the the homicide squad. At the scene of the crime, we see a 1940s version of CSI: New York. There aren’t many clues, but they take what they have and hit the pavement. We have also witnessed, earlier, the murderer dispatching his accomplice, who’s a hopeless alcoholic. The police begin their investigation by interviewing people who knew the victim, and the places that she worked and frequented. Throughout their search, their movements are followed by the murderer. Finally, it becomes apparent that the dead woman was involved in a criminal enterprise, and that one of her accomplices is her murderer. The young detective goes on a hunch and hunts down the perp, who leads him on a foot chase through New York, and meets his end in a shootout with police.

The same plot could be used to basically describe The Tattooed Stranger. Certainly, details were changed and they are not exact carbon copies of each other (Tattooed Stranger adds in a love interest for the young detective in the investigation, and it drops complexity of burglary ring from The Naked City). The differences in the quality and ultimate impact of these movies are profound, though, as a more detailed look at each will reveal.

The Naked City was director Jules Dassin’s next to last film shot in the U.S. before he fled the country, under investigation by HUAC and, like some many others, persecuted for his political beliefs. He had a number of direction credits under his belt already, and just prior to TNC, he had directed the prison drama Brute Force, coaxing from Hume Cronyn a chilling portrait of the sadistic prison guard, Captain Munsey.

While in Brute Force Dassin is confined by the four thick, solid walls of the prison, in The Naked City, Dassin can take the action and his camera across the entire expanse of the city. We see it from the first scene of the movie, an aerial shot of the city, of the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, taken from an airplane circling the southern tip of Manhattan.

This aerial shot is accompanied by a voice-over by the movie’s producer, Mark Hellinger (as strange as it sounds to have the producer narrate some of the film, was a famous New York city columnist, along the lines of Walter Wintchell), and is followed by a series of vignettes on city life at one in the morning–a dark and empty street in the financial district–a cleaning lady in Grand Central Station, bemoaning that the world consists of dirty feet–a typesetter for a newspaper, commenting favorably on being left alone at work–a latenight disc jockey, who’s only listener is his wife–a bunch of swells at a swinging after hours party. Only after seeing these quiet, somewhat serene scenes of the city the never sleeps, well, if not sleeping, then slumbering, we see the murder that will set the story in motion.

The opening montage sets the tone for the movie–throughout the film, Dassin will return to the technique, allowing us to see the case connected to the wider fabric of life in the city, while at the same time offering us fleeting glimpses into the lives, thoughts, troubles and desires of just a few of the city’s 8 million residents. It is the latter effect, the lying bare the lives and thoughts of his characters, which makes Dassin’s film different from our other “New York noir”, The Tattooed Stranger. Throughout the film, Dassin comes back to the voice-over and vignettes, constantly expanding the viewer’s horizon to the city as a whole.

The two lead characters of the film, Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor), could easily descend into typical stereotype and flat characterization: the Irish-immigrant veteran detective who has seen just about everything the City has to offer, and the young, wet behind the ears pup just promoted from the beat. Dassin gives each extra texture, though, showing Muldoon humming to himself and making breakfast at his apartment. Particular attention is paid to young Detective Halloran’s home life, not only his young pretty wife, but his young son as well. The sequences involving Halloran at home have a very non-noir, mundane feeling to them, showing a couple dealing with the realities of new parents everywhere.

The Hallorans are, in a way, juxtaposed with another set of parents in the film, Jean Dexter’s, Mr. & Mrs. Batory (Jean changed her name on moving from rural New Jersey to New York to something less “ethnic”). We meet them as they are taken to the morgue by Muldoon and Halloran to make a positive identification of their daughter’s body. Mr. Batory (Grover Burgess), a gardener from New Jersey, has the morose silence of a man facing one of the most horrific tasks imaginable. Paula Batory (Adelaide Klein) is the exact opposite–expressive and emotional, she reveals the deep hurt that Jean had inflicted on her parents. After leaving home and changing her name, Jean rarely called and almost never saw her parents; her daughter, Mrs. Batory says, was always too concerned with living beyond her means, always ashamed of where she came from, always too selfish to think about how her actions may impact her parents.

Paula Batory’s resentment and animosity come seething through the screen. Yet they melt away in an instant, when they enter the identification room, and the nurse pulls back the sheet on Dexter’s body. Overcome with the sight of her daughter lying dead, Mrs. Batory breaks down; in that instant, Dassin gives us a glimpse of real, conflicted emotions inherent in any human relationship.

Dassin takes the action of the film throughout the streets of Manhattan, from visiting rich doctors in Midtown, to talent agents in the Bowery; from the subway out to Queens, to the teeming tenements of the Lower East Side. He gives the viewer a sense of place, a sense of continuos energy; even though the city may be crowded and teeming with life, there is always a semblance of order amidst the chaos.

Pounding the pavement and wearing out shoe leather, Halloran finally gets on the trail of the suspected murderer, a former wrestler Wille Garzah (Ted de Corsia); meanwhile, Muldoon has spent his time attacking the case from the other side, unraveling the burglary ring led by Dexter (and which employed Garzah in committing the actual crimes). Thus supplied with both a suspect and the motive, the movie careens on to a suitably exciting denoument.

The film ends with yet another montage; with the Dexter case solved, we see New York’s newspapers moving on to the next big case, the city’s people turn their attention to their summer vacations or the Yankees. It’s a brief meditation on the fleeting nature of what constitutes news, and it’s striking if only because it may be more true today–with our 24 hour news cycle, blogs galore, and 300 television stations–than it was in 1948 (time to move on to the next young, pretty, missing blonde). Yet Dassin also shows those people on whom Jean Dexter made some impression–young Jimmy Halloran, her friends, and finally, her parents, sitting on a porch in the country on a warm summer evening, miles and miles from New York, but connected to the naked city through tragedy.

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The Tattooed Stranger on the other hand, is a thoroughly conventional film noir that gives you a very different sense of New York than The Naked City. As has already been noted, its plot is suspiciously close to the one from Naked City; unlike The Naked City, though, The Tattooed Stranger has a director (Edward Montague) who’s later claim to fame would be directing episodes of the television series McHale’s Navy and a lead actor (John Mills) who would never work again.

Aside from a distinct difference in talent, the film, unlike the previous, takes place not in Manhattan for the most part, but in the outer boroughs. While the shots of the city in The Naked City are teeming with life, the streets and businesses of The Tattooed Stranger are strangely silent. It’s almost as if the action and scenery of each movie mimics the importance of the case–while in The Naked City, the murder of Jean Dexter is front page news, in Tattooed Stranger, the murder of the unnamed woman (with a Marine corps tattoo on her arm, hence the title), is relegated to an inch of column space on the inside pages of the paper, right below the crossword puzzle.

The case begins with the aforementioned tattooed woman, found dead from a shotgun blast in a car located in Central Park. Veteran Detective Corrigan (Walter Kinsella) responds to the scene, and oversees the CSI examination of the site. Back at the Homicide Bureau, he’s told that his partner on the case is a transfer to the squad–newly minted Detective Frank Tobin, who had previously worked in the NYPD technical bureau, who served as an MP during the war, and who went to college in the intervening years.

From the start, we see Corrigan’s adherence to old fashioned shoe leather detective work, while Tobin goes in for the more technical side of the case, which is rich in interesting features–the woman was killed by a shotgun blast, but not by buckshot or a slug. Instead, the murderer filled a shell with compressed sand, not wanting to leave any evidence of where he bought the ammo. Also, since there was no other damage to the car (stolen the day before), it was obvious that the woman was killed someplace else; that someplace else had its own unique features, including a strange piece of plant matter adhering to mud on the woman’s shoes.

The movie soon takes Corrigan and Tobin to the Bronx docks, where they find the tattoo artist who gave her the ink–they find her name, and the last place where she worked. They also find out that it was actually a double tattoo–she had an anchor put on first, then a time later, she had the globe added, to make the Marine Corps emblem. It soon becomes apparent, through the shoe leather side of the investigation, that she had been marrying multiple men deploying overseas during the war, and collecting their benefits when they died. (Nothing like a little insurance scam–just ask Walter Neff).

Corrigan hits the streets to flesh out this thread of the investigation, while Tobin meets a beautiful young botanist (Patricia Barry) and starts on the task of identifying the strange grass on her shoes, and where it may have come from (and hence, where the murder scene was).

As with Halloran in The Naked City, Tobin eventually tracks down the subject on his own, and goes after the criminal. The ending of The Tattooed Stranger is handled much less deftly and much more conventionally than in the earlier movie, and when it’s done, you’re left with the feeling of seeing an entertaining movie, but not a great one.

At the end of the day, that’s probably all that one can expect from a B movie like The Tattooed Stranger.  It was meant to entertain, on the cheap, and the director obviously didn’t have the aspirations (or skill) of Jules Dassin. Two movies about Manhattan, with very similar general plots–in their differences, they show the diversity of film noir, and provide a nice point-counter point to each other.

Note: One last note–the academic film noir historian Alain Silver called The Tattooed Stranger “one of the seediest films ever made” in his classic Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style.  While I certainly wouldn’t call the movie elegant, his definition of “seediest” and mine are vastly different.