Undertow (1949)

When I heard that Scott Brady is the star of Undertow and that he was the brother of another noir actor, Lawrence Tierney, I had to put Undertow on my list. It’s always fun to see the Brady/Tierney brothers on the screen. I know that both had a few scrapes with the law and were tough guys in real life. Seeing them on the screen puts them at a safe distance, however, and I can admire both of them as much as I like in a film. And Scott Brady did not disappoint in the role of Tony Reagan in Undertow.

Tony Reagan’s story starts in Reno, Nevada, with him leaning against a car marked “Mile High Lounge.” (Blink and you’ll miss it.) From across the street, he sees two people, an older man (Pop) and a young boy (Willie); they are the family of someone he knew while fighting in World War II, someone who died in the war. Tony is a new partner in their lodge thanks to his friendship with his fallen comrade. Tony would be going back to the lodge with them right then and there, but he wants to go to Chicago and propose to his sweetheart, Sally Lee. In other words, he is a returning war veteran with big dreams, both financially and romantically.

(This article about Undertow contains spoilers.)

Tony runs into an old friend from Chicago, Danny Morgan, in the street while he is still in Reno. His plane doesn’t leave until later that day, so he as the time to go with Danny to the casino that Danny runs. They talk about old times in Chicago, before the war. Tony shows Danny the engagement ring he bought for Sally. Danny shows the engagement ring that he bought for his own girlfriend, although he doesn’t give any details at all about this person. It’s a little bit of foreshadowing about what’s in store for Tony when he returns to Chicago

Tony walks around the casino and literally runs into the same woman named Ann McKnight twice. They start chatting, and Tony advises Ann about gambling technique. He helps her win some money, then warns her about quitting while she is ahead and still has her winnings. Tony and Ann meet again by chance on the plane. Ann is also from Chicago, where she is a schoolteacher. She is instantly attracted to Tony: She is visibly disappointed when he says that he doesn’t plan to stay in Chicago and that he has a girlfriend that he plans to marry.

Getting off the plane, Tony runs into another childhood friend: Detective Chuck Reckling. Reckling is quick to make it clear that this meeting is not a social call. He is meeting Tony at the airport with Detective Cooper because Captain Kerrigan wants to talk to Tony. At the police station, the captain accuses Tony of wanting to kill Big Jim Lee. The captain has no proof and Tony has no such intention, but the police did receive an anonymous tip. Big Jim Lee is Sally Lee’s uncle, and he ran Tony out of town several years ago, before the war, because he doesn’t want Tony involved with his niece. Captain Kerrigan is using that information, combined with the tip, to warn Tony about staying in Chicago. Tony knows his rights, however: If the captain has no evidence and isn’t going to arrest him, then he is free to leave, and he does. But the captain sends another detective to follow Tony, who loses him by ducking into an overhead El station.

Sally Lee and Tony Reagan arrange to meet, and Sally tells Tony that there has been no one else in her life since he left Chicago seven years ago. She is lying; she is Danny Morgan’s girlfriend, the one he is planning to marry. Sally is the one who plays the role of femme fatale in Undertow. She and Danny are in on a setup: They plan to kill Sally’s uncle, place the blame for the murder on Tony, and then take over Big Jim Lee’s businesses. Sally knows that Tony is determined to break the news about his marriage intentions to Big Jim Lee himself, and when Tony arrives at the Lee residence, someone ambushes him and knocks him unconscious. It’s all part of Danny’s and Sally’s plans.

When Tony regains consciousness, he finds two men putting him back in his car and staging it to make it look like he had been in an accident. He knows that he is a wanted man because he overhears a police radio broadcast stating that he is the main suspect in Big Jim Lee’s murder. It’s going to be hard for him to hide in Chicago. He has plenty of friends and everyone seems to know him—and the police are checking with all of them. His only recourse is to look up Ann McKnight. She is the only one who doesn’t have an obvious connection to him.

Or that’s what he thinks. Tony Reagan then goes to Charles Reckling’s apartment to see if Reckling will use his police connections to help him find evidence and clear his name. Reagan holds Reckling at gunpoint because he is desperate for the help; he knows that he is innocent of Big Jim Lee’s murder and he is convinced someone is trying to set him up. Reckling is willing to help Tony out of loyalty to an old friend and eventually comes around to Tony’s way of thinking. But his loyalties are divided because he is also a law enforcement officer. He also knows how to find Tony because he remembers Ann McKnight from the airport.

What follows is a bit of a blur because Reagan and Reckling move fast once the general public knows that Reagan is a wanted man. I’ll have to see the film again to make sure I didn’t miss any plot details. It won’t be a hardship because Undertow is a fun for a film noir. I won’t have any trouble watching Tony Reagan fighting fate and winning in the end.

I watched Undertow on a DVD collection of four films called Dark Crimes: Film Noir Thrillers, Volume Two, released by TCM Classic Movies. Each film came with a featurette starring Eddie Muller, who, as always, gives some great facts and background for all the films, including Undertow. Muller describes Scott Brady as very charismatic, virile, and comfortable in the lead role, probably because Brady was a war veteran himself. Nothing to argue with there! I already think Scott Brady looks great on the movie screen.

But then Muller mentions that a lot of people have trouble with Peggy Dow because she is so sweet and charming in the role of Ann McKnight; they cannot understand what she sees in Scott Brady. This last observation left me scratching my head after I saw the film. I didn’t think anything of it when I watched the featurette (I watched the featurette before seeing the film, even though Muller advises against it!) because Undertow is a noir after all, and someone acting a bit psychotic wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary.

But Scott Brady plays the good guy in this noir, the guy who is set up and wrongly accused, the guy who desperately wants to clear his name. Peggy Dow’s character Ann McKnight might have fallen in love with Tony Reagan very quickly, but I think most people would call that love at first sight. That’s what I call it, at any rate, and I believe that the on-screen romance and chemistry between the two leads are genuine: I bought the romance angle completely.

Considering the way that the film ended, with Tony Reagan and Ann McKnight getting married, I don’t think the film’s screenwriters and producers had an unhappy outcome in mind for the two of them. It’s an uncharacteristic ending for noir—that’s true. But Tony Reagan deserves an uncharacteristically happy ending after all he had been through!

December 1, 1949, release date  •  Directed by William Castle  •  Screenplay by Arthur T. Horman, Lee Loeb  •  Based on a story by Arthur T. Horman  •  Music by Milton Schwarzwald  •  Edited by Ralph Dawson  •  Cinematography by Irving Glassberg

Scott Brady as Tony Reagan  •  John Russell as Danny Morgan  •  Dorothy Hart as Sally Lee  •  Peggy Dow as Ann McKnight  •  Bruce Bennett as Detective Chuck Reckling  •  Thomas Browne Henry as Captain Kerrigan  •  Charles Sherlock as Detective Cooper  •  Gregg Martell as Frost  •  Robert Anderson as Stoner  •  Daniel Ferniel as Gene  •  Rock (as Roc) Hudson as a detective  •  Anne P. Kramer (as Ann Pearce) as the clerk in the airport  •  Robert Easton as Fisher, the parking lot attendant  •  George Eldredge as Pop  •  Almira Sessions as Prentiss, the landlady

Distributed by Universal-International  •  Produced by Universal-International

Dark Passage (1947)

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall get star billing in Dark Passage. It is the third of four films that they made together:

◊ To Have and Have Not (1944), loosely based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway (Click here for my post about the film.)

◊ The Big Sleep (1946), based on the novel by Raymond Chandler (Click here for my post.)

◊ Dark Passage (1947), based on the novel by David Goodis

◊ Key Largo (1948), based on the play Key Largo by Maxwell Anderson

I haven’t yet read the book Dark Passage by David Goodis. I plan to because I want to see how it compares to the film. I imagine it’s a lot darker in theme than the film version.

Vincent Parry is a convict in Dark Passage who escapes from San Quentin in California by riding in a barrel in the bed of a pickup truck. The truck is rattling loudly, which explains why Parry can get the barrel rolling off the back of the truck without being noticed. Once the barrel is off the truck, the camera takes the first-person point of view (POV): that of Parry.

The DVD featurette claims that the first-person POV worked as well as it did in Dark Passage because of the new technology now available: the handheld camera. Shooting scenes from the first-person POV was still considered experimental in 1947, and it struck me as cumbersome when I saw Dark Passage the first time. I have come to appreciate its use in this film more on subsequent viewings. Voice-over narration from Parry, combined with dialogue when he encounters other characters, helps fill in the gaps and explain what he is thinking and planning.

Click here for more information at Wikipedia about this film and the use of first-person point of view.

Once he is out of the barrel, Parry flags down a car for a ride. The driver, a man named Baker, asks a lot of questions. An alert comes over the car radio, warning of the escaped convict. The driver realizes the identity of his passenger, but Vincent beats him, drags him out of the car, and exchanges clothes with him. He is willing to resort to violence if he deems it necessary, so viewers are already inclined to judge him negatively.

Irene Jansen happens to drive by, stop, and offer to help Vincent Parry. (She and Parry talk about their meeting later in the film, so it doesn’t seem quite so contrived as I am describing it here.) She hides him in the backseat of her car and takes him to San Francisco. They’re stopped by a police roadblock, but they don’t get caught, even though a police officer starts a search of Irene’s car. Irene cuts the search short by warning the officer not to get paint all over his clothes (she has paint supplies in the backseat). She and Vincent make it to her apartment, and she offers him a place to stay.

Click here to visit “Reel SF: San Francisco movie locations from classic films” for comparisons (then and now) of Irene Jansen’s apartment located at 1360 Montgomery Street in Telegraph Hill. This site offers “then and now” shots of locations from several films noir.

Irene is following, and has been following, Vincent’s case because it reminds her of her father’s. Calvin Jansen was convicted of killing his wife. He was a wealthy architect, but he died in San Quentin Prison. Irene doesn’t believe that her father killed her stepmother, and she thinks that Vincent might be innocent, too.

Madge Rapf knocks on Irene’s front door. She knows both Irene and Vincent, and she is frightened about Vincent’s escape from San Quentin. She worked against Vincent at his murder trial, in which he was tried for the murder of his wife Gert. Bob, another visitor, and Irene convince Madge to leave. Irene is relieved to see her and Bob go because she is hiding a fugitive and, of course, doesn’t want anyone knowing that Vincent is staying with her.

(This blog post about Dark Passage contains spoilers.)

Vincent Parry decides to leave Irene’s apartment the first night of his prison escape. He takes a cab with a chatty cab driver who recognizes him. (The first-person point of view is abandoned while Vincent is in the cab, but he is in almost complete shadow sitting in the backseat, and his face is obscured almost entirely.) The cab driver offers to stop so they can talk. Like Irene, he doesn’t believe that Vincent is guilty of killing his wife. The cab driver offers Vincent an idea: Let his friend, Dr. Walter Coley, perform plastic surgery to change his appearance.

It struck me as a bit odd that two strangers, Irene Jansen and Sam the cab driver, were so willing to help Vincent Parry. Irene’s reasoning is stronger than Sam’s. She draws parallels between Vincent’s case and her father’s. Both she and Sam talk about the trial and the publicity surrounding it, but viewers never see anything of the trial or its news coverage. They have only Irene’s and Sam’s descriptions to go by. But Vincent’s luck does run out, as anyone might expect in film noir. Irene and Sam may be the only two people (of three; the third is a friend of Parry’s) who believe Vincent is innocent, and he happens to run into both of them early in his prison escape. It isn’t long, however, before fate turns against Vincent.

Vincent Parry first goes to a friend’s, George Fellsinger’s, apartment. He asks George, a trumpet player, if he can stay with him while he recovers from the plastic surgery. George worries that the police will come to his apartment looking for Vincent because they already know that they are friends, but George finally agrees. They talk about Madge framing Vincent for the murder of his wife Gert because she couldn’t have him for herself, and Humphrey Bogart delivers one of my favorite lines from this film: “Maybe someday she’ll get run over or something.” This line and this conversation between Vincent and his friend George may be the strongest direct evidence that viewers have about Parry’s innocence.

After Vincent has the plastic surgery, he returns to George’s apartment to recuperate. When he arrives, he finds George dead. Vincent has no choice but to return to Irene’s apartment. He needs help with his recovery, and he has nowhere else to go. Irene is happy to help, and they develop a friendship as Vincent improves. When it is time to remove the bandages, Irene is there to assist. Once the bandages are removed, the use of the camera to shoot first-person POV from Vincent Parry’s perspective comes to an end.

Vincent decides to leave Irene’s after his recovery. Once Vincent is on his own, everything seems to conspire against him—again. Baker, the driver who gave Vincent a ride at the start of the film, comes back into his life, and he’s not back to be helpful. When Vincent confronts Madge, she has the bad luck to fall to her death in an accident. The wish that Vincent expressed to his friend George has come true. But it’s even worse luck for Vincent. Who would believe a convicted murderer that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the same moment Madge breaks through her own apartment window and falls several floors to her death? Even the real reason for his visit to Madge is a bit hard to believe. Why would he or anyone else believe that she would be willing to defend him after she falsely accused him of murder?

But no one, in 1947 and probably now, sees a Bogart and Bacall film expecting more than their onscreen performances and star power. Madge Rapf does exactly what anyone besides Vincent Parry would expect her to do. Vincent Parry’s bad luck just gets worse and worse. The ending is a little quick and bit too neat, but it’s probably the one everyone is rooting for in a Bogart and Bacall film. Their onscreen personas may really be box office magic after all, even after more than seventy years.

September 5, 1947 (New York City), September 27, 1947 (United States), release dates  •  Directed by Delmer Davies  •  Screenplay by Delmer Davies  •  Based on the novel Dark Passage by David Goodis  •  Music by Franz Waxman  •  Edited by David Weisbart  •  Cinematography by Sidney Hickox

Humphrey Bogart as Vincent Parry  •  Lauren Bacall as Irene Jansen  •  Bruce Bennett as Bob  •  Agnes Moorehead as Madge Rapf  •  Tom D’Andrea as Sam the cabby  •  Clifton Young as Baker  •  Douglas Kennedy as Detective Kennedy in the diner  •  Rory Mallinson as George Fellsinger  •  Houseley Stevenson as Dr. Walter Coley  •  John Arledge as the lonely man

Distributed by Warner Bros./First National  •  Produced by Warner Bros./First National