I Wake up Screaming (1941)

November 14, 1941, release date

Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone

Screenplay by Dwight Taylor and Steve Fisher

Based on the novel I Wake up Screaming by Steve Fisher

Music by Cyril J. Mockridge

Edited by Robert L. Simpson

Cinematography by Edward Cronjager

Betty Grable as Jill Lynn

Victor Mature as Frankie Christopher

Carole Landis as Vicky Lynn

Laird Cregar as Ed Cornell

Alan Mowbray as Robin Ray

Allyn Joslyn as Larry Evans

Elisha Cook, Jr., as Harry Williams

Chick Chandler as a reporter

Cyril Ring as a reporter

Morris Ankrum as the assistant district attorney

Charles Lane as the florist

Frank Orth as the cemetery caretaker

Gregory Gaye as the headwaiter

May Beatty as Mrs. Handel

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

I Wake up Screaming is another of my favorite films noir. I have read the book on which the film is based and, as I have already posted, the book and film are a little bit different. Here are a couple of the points I mentioned back in December 2015:

• The narrator in the book is never named except for the nickname Peg (for Pegasus) that Jill gives him. The entire plot in the novel is told from his perspective, in first-person narration. In the film, he is Frankie Christopher.

• The book takes place in the Los Angeles, California, area and also seems to cover many months, from summer through winter the following year. It references Christmas at the appropriate points in the timeline. The film doesn’t mention anything about the holidays or the seasons, and it takes place in New York City.

Some might argue that I Wake up Screaming is not really a film noir but an avant noir (or proto-noir), and I think it’s true that the film could be classified either way. But I lean more toward classifying it as a film noir for several reasons.

(This blog post about the I Wake up Screaming contains spoilers.)

The world of the film is fairly dark. Even though the two main characters Jill Lynn and Frankie Christopher come out of it in love and cleared of murder, they are on their own in a series of harrowing events. Frankie in particular has to prove his own innocence against formidable odds. Here is what I mean about the dark tone of the film:

• Jill’s sister Vicky is dead, and Frankie is accused of the murder by a police detective intent on proving him guilty no matter what.

• The detective Ed Cornell is dead by the end of the film.

• Ed Cornell might not be a sympathetic character; he represents corruption, sexual obsession, stalking.

• I Wake up Screaming was filmed during the Great Depression and several weeks before the U.S. entry into World War II. The overall noir tone reinforces the social context. For example, my favorite scene in the film comes when Jill Lynn and Frankie Christopher have just arrived on the sidewalk outside the Pegasus Club (a club name that I think is a nod to the nickname for the main character in the novel). Frankie meets an ex-boxer, an acquaintance of his, who is not doing so well: He still has “that ringing” in his head. Frankie is sympathetic and gives him some money for “a big dinner.” After the ex-boxer walks off, Jill asks Frankie about him.

• Jill: “He seemed to know you were going to give him that money.”

• Frankie: “Always do. I may be a has-been myself someday.”

It’s a quick moment in the entire film, but I thought the scene was a recognition of hard times in general. This scene, more than any other in the film, showed Frankie’s generosity and caring for other people—and his recognition that poverty and need could happen to him or to anyone else at any moment. (It was also the point at which I was pretty sure Frankie had not killed Vicky, but given the film’s plot, I couldn’t be entirely sure.)

• The shot of Frankie Christopher in shadow on the stairs in the Lynns’ apartment building is meant to show that Frankie is eavesdropping on the murderer and waiting for him to incriminate himself. That’s an important noir detail. Frankie is conducting his own civilian investigation; he is responsible for proving himself innocent because Ed Cornell is stacking the evidence against him out of jealousy.

The cinematography is noir in many respects, and not just in the shot of Frankie in shadow waiting to hear the murderer incriminate himself. At the beginning of the film, both Jill and Frankie are subject to police interrogation. The use of light and shadow shows how each one is hemmed in by the detectives and by the circumstances of Vicky Lynn’s murder. Both could be suspects, but Frankie is chosen for intense police scrutiny because Ed Cornell wants him to take the fall, even though he knows Frankie didn’t kill Vicky. (Viewers learn these details later in the film.) These scenes are shot so that the detectives are in shadow, making them difficult to see and thus increasing the tension for each suspect in their respective interrogations.

At the end of the film, Frankie Christopher goes to Cornell’s apartment to confront him with the facts of the murder that he has uncovered himself. Frankie enters the apartment almost completely in shadow. The scene reminded me of Dana Andrews in Where the Sidewalk Ends, when he enters an apartment to confront a suspect. Andrews is noir-perfect in his fedora and overcoat; Mature is noir-perfect in his hat and in the shadows.

So with all these noir details, it’s easy for me to classify I Wake up Screaming as a film noir more so than an avant noir. Plus it’s just a great story. I read the novel first, and it kept me guessing about the murderer’s identity until the end. The film almost did, too.