Pitfall (1948)

August 24, 1948, release date

Directed by André de Toth

Screenplay by Karl Kamb, André de Toth, and William Bowers

Based on the novel Pitfall by Jay Dratler

Music by Louis Forbes

Cinematography by Harry J. Wild

Dick Powell as John Forbes, aka Johnny

Lizabeth Scott as Mona Stevens

Jane Wyatt as Sue Forbes

Raymond Burr as MacDonald, aka Mac

John Litel as the district attorney

Byron Barr as Bill Smiley

Jimmy Hunt as Tommy Forbes

Ann Doran as Maggie

Selmer Jackson as Ed Brawley

Margaret Wells as Terry

Dick Wessel as the desk sergeant

Produced by Regal Films

Distributed by United Artists

I really enjoyed this film noir for the performances by the main actors: Dick Powell (Powell is a noir favorite of mine), Jane Wyatt, Raymond Burr, and Lizabeth Scott (another favorite). Raymond Burr’s performance as the slimy private detective J. B. MacDonald, also known as Mac, is creepy. He gives every justification he can think of for his infatuation with Mona Stevens and why he will continue to stalk her. Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, and Jane Wyatt don’t sugarcoat anything as three people caught in a situation that none of them asked for and fell into because of one or two indiscretions.

Mac first mentions Mona Stevens during his conversation with John Forbes on an insurance theft case, and his tone suggests that he’ll be trouble. When John Forbes shows up at Mona Stevens’s apartment to collect what her boyfriend stole, Mona says this about Mac: “He shouldn’t be let loose without a keeper.” Forbes’s secretary describes Mac as gruesome. The scene where Mac makes Mona pose for him while she’s modeling and on the job made me squirm.

(This blog post about Pitfall contains spoilers.)

Something is wrong in suburbia for John Forbes, his wife Sue, and their son Tommy—and it isn’t just John’s boredom and his brief infidelity that is causing discontent. Smiley (Mona’s jealous boyfriend) is coming to the Forbes residence and he’s got a gun. Before he arrives, the camera pans the first floor of the Forbes house in darkness. John knows Smiley is coming and has turned off all the lamps, and he’s outside in the dark lurking around his own home. The scene shows how things can go terribly wrong even in the postwar world, when everything is supposed to be right in the suburbs.

From this point on, John’s life spirals out of control, and he can’t seem to do anything to stop it. Smiley breaks a window and John kills him because he’s threatening to do the same to John. Sue comes downstairs when she hears the ruckus. John tells her, “Sue, you better call the police. I just killed a man.” The camera follows her from the back as she registers alarm and then goes to make the phone call. It’s a great shot: The lighting is dim and the medium shot of her from the back still registers her distress.

John confesses everything to Sue and wants a reaction from her before he confesses everything to the police. He doesn’t get the response that he (or I!) expected: “You lied once. It came easy enough for you then. You’ve got to lie now. I mean this, Johnny. If you drag this family through the dirt, I’ll never forgive you.” But John does talk to the district attorney, and the district attorney tells him that Mona shot Mac. He can’t charge John in Smiley’s death because his story about Smiley matches Mona’s: The facts in their stories match and Smiley was indeed a threat.

But the district attorney believes that the police have the wrong person: Forbes should pay for the whole sordid mess and Mona should go free. This conversation in the district attorney’s office gives the theme of the story in a nutshell. John Forbes started the events by cheating on his wife, but he won’t be the one to pay the price.

I think the story is even more complicated than the district attorney’s summation: Pitfall shows John and Mona to be caring people who make a mistake. Mac cannot leave Mona alone. He’s jealous of her feelings for both John and her boyfriend Smiley, and he plants the seeds of jealousy in Smiley while he’s still in prison serving time for insurance fraud. Without Mac, the brief affair between Mona and John might have ended quietly—and we never would have had a film noir.

Sue picks up John at the district attorney’s office, and they have a frank discussion about their options, including divorce. They talk about how their marriage might never be the same after the events that they have just experienced. Thus, the film ends without giving a decisive ending for John and Sue’s marriage or for Mona’s legal troubles. Mona could be charged with murder if Mac doesn’t survive his gunshot wound. But at least she got rid of Mac; I hope she gets a good lawyer!

Pitfall is very realistic. It’s true to its characters, all of whom (except Mac) come across as sympathetic in spite of their faults and mistakes. And the story holds up after more than sixty-five years.

After Hours (1985)

September 13, 1985, release date

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Screenplay by Joseph Minion and Martin Scorsese (uncredited)

Music by Howard Shore

Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker

Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus

Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett

Rosanna Arquette as Marcy Franklin

Teri Garr as Julie

John Heard as Tom Schorr

Catherine O’Hara as Gail

Linda Fiorentino as Kiki Bridges

Verna Bloom as June

Tommy Chong as Pepe

Cheech Marin as Neil

Will Patton as Horst

Clarence Felder as Club Berlin bouncer

Dick Miller as Pete, waiter at the diner

Bronson Pinchot as Lloyd

Martin Scorsese as Club Berlin searchlight operator

Victor Argo as diner cashier

Larry Block as taxi driver

Rocco Sisto as coffee shop cashier

Produced by The Geffen Company and Double Play Productions

Distributed by Warner Bros.

After Hours was released thirty years ago today. I decided to celebrate this anniversary by taking another look at the film and seeing if it would work as neo-noir. I think After Hours is laugh-out-loud funny, but I do believe there is room for comedy in noir. After Hours is a good example of a neo-noir that can be very funny.

The story line is linear, told from Paul Hackett’s point of view, and that is the only way the audience knows that everything is connected. But the linear plot doesn’t detract from the absurdity of Paul’s situation. I learned from the DVD that the entire film, including the indoor scenes, was shot at night to keep the right mood throughout, and it works. Ambient lighting was used when possible. One example is Paul’s cab ride downtown, where the diegetic light adds to the realistic mood. Tracking shots leading to close-ups on Paul are used frequently. They create the feeling that he is alone in his predicament; later in the film, after the vigilante mob forms, such shots emphasize that he is a hunted man.

The entire plot hinges on fate and coincidence. Paul is lonely and wants companionship, which is why he is so eager to travel to Soho and meet Marcy again. The minute that Paul’s twenty dollar bill flies out of the cab window on his way to Soho, he is in the hands of fate. Even the ending is the result of fate. At one point in his desperate run through Soho, Paul gets to his knees in the middle of the street and addresses fate directly: “What do you want from me? What have I done? I’m just a word processor . . . !” But I don’t think fate can be described as evil in After Hours; it’s simply indifferent to Paul and his predicament.

The bouncer at Club Berlin in Soho is wearing a Checkpoint Charlie T-shirt: Checkpoint Charlie is the name given by the Western Allies in World War II to a crossing point in the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Many classic films noir are postwar films that show characters trying to cope with the absurdity of their wartime experiences, and in 1985, After Hours reaches back and connects with that period. I saw this on Wikipedia: The dialogue between Paul and the bouncer at Club Berlin was inspired by Kafka’s Before the Law, one of the short stories included in his novel The Trial. According to Scorsese, the short story reflected his experience of having to wait to get one of his film projects (The Last Temptation of Christ) completed, which didn’t happen until two years after the completion of After Hours. But it’s not necessary to know this or to be familiar with World War II and Cold War trivia before seeing After Hours. It is clear that the film is about the absurdity of Paul’s situation and his desperate attempts to get home.

On the DVD, Martin Scorsese describes Paul Hackett as a character who is guilt-ridden for no reason. Paul has plenty of reason to be angst-ridden. Scorsese mentions mythology as way to describe Paul: He is a character about to descend into Hades. Fate (chance, coincidence—whatever you call it) is what drives the plot and Paul’s desperation. But Paul isn’t completely sympathetic: He snoops through Marcy’s purse and finds medication to treat second-degree burns, and he plays the voyeur when he removes the sheet from her body and examines it.

Almost all the women could be called a femme fatale in this film. They eventually turn on him or leave him in situations that he has trouble coping with or getting out of. Julie wants to get back at Paul, so she posts drawings of him around the neighborhood to make it easier for the vigilante mob to find him. Gail repeatedly prevents Paul from phoning a friend by confusing him when he tries to dial a phone number from memory. The minute she sees one of Julie’s posters, she literally blows the whistle on him. Gail might be the best example of a femme fatale because she uses her Mister Softee truck to lead a vigilante mob looking for Paul.

Paul is suspected of being the neighborhood serial burglar in Soho. Residents recognize him as a stranger who’s been hanging out in the neighborhood. They form a vigilante mob to hunt him down. When they break into Club Berlin to look for Paul, they come downstairs into June’s apartment to investigate, and they mean harm: One of them beats June’s pillows with a baseball bat. But this isn’t the only violence in After Hours; the following examples are discussed or shown in the film:

• Rape.

• Suicide.

• Serial burglaries in Soho.

• Murder in an apartment across an alley from where Paul is hiding.

• Paul is hunted by the vigilante mob in Soho.

• The vigilante mob murders a suspect in the burglaries.

Crime, especially murder, is a hallmark of noir, and the plot of After Hours includes crime and violence.

Near the end of After Hours, the burglars Neil and Pepe break into June’s basement apartment by removing a manhole cover. (I think that this could be interpreted to mean that Paul has indeed reached Hades.) Neil wants the Paul/sculpture:

• Pepe: “Hey, man, is it worth taking this thing?”

• Neil: “What? Are you crazy, man? This is art.”

• Pepe: “Art sure is ugly, man.”

• Neil: “Yeah, that’s how much you know, man, you know? The uglier the art, the more it’s worth.”

• Pepe: “This thing must be worth a fortune, man.”

• Neil: “That’s right.”

According to Neil: A stereo is a stereo (even more true now in 2015!), but art is forever.

This dialogue between Neil and Pepe reminds me of the two police officers discussing art in the Cathcart Gallery at the end of The Dark Corner (a classic film noir filled with humor). After Hours is a neo-noir that uses humor to great effect, too.

The Dark Corner (1946)

April 9, 1946, release date

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Screenplay by Bernard C. Schoenfeld and Jay Dratler

Based on a story in Good Housekeeping by Leo Rosten

Music by Cyril J. Mockridge

Edited by J. Watson Webb, Jr.

Cinematography by Joseph MacDonald

Lucile Ball as Kathleen Stuart

Mark Stevens as Bradford Galt

Clifton Webb as Hardy Cathcart

William Bendix as Stauffer, alias Fred Foss, White Suit

Kurt Kreuger as Anthony Jardine

Cathy Downs as Mari Cathcart

Reed Hadley as Lieutenant Frank Reeves

Constance Collier as Mrs. Kingsley

Eddie Heywood as himself, playing with his orchestra

Molly Lamont as Lucy Wilding

Ellen Corby as the maid

This film noir is one of my favorites. The dialogue is snappy, which I think is one of its strongest features. And the writing is tight: The story holds up well considering the film was released in 1946. And, yes, that’s Lucille Ball (of I Love Lucy fame) showing that she can handle film noir as well as comedy. Her performance makes me wish that she had devoted her acting talent to more films just like this one and had never started her run in television.

The Dark Corner is a postwar film noir, and many consumer goods, including stockings, were still in short supply after World War II. Maybe stockings were a subject that would have been considered a come-on in a film made in 1946. They give Kathleen several chances during the course of the film to ask her boss, Brad, a private investigator, if he can find some for her. Kathleen is in love with him. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s in love with her, too, of course. They go back and forth several times throughout the film about the stockings, always with Brad promising to “make a note of it.”

Even the baseball banter (also full of innuendo) holds up well. It starts when Brad and Kathleen are at the Tudor Penny Arcade:

• Kathleen: “I haven’t worked for you very long, Mr. Galt, but I know when you’re pitching a curve at me and I always carry a catcher’s mitt.”

• Brad: “No offense. A guy’s gotta try to score, doesn’t he?”
• Kathleen: “Not in my league. ‘I don’t play for score, I play for keeps,’ said she with a smile.”

More dialogue about baseball comes later in the movie:

• Kathleen: “Thanks, Brad. Good night.”

• Brad: “Good night! Can’t I come up for a minute? I’m thirsty. I want a drink of water.”

• Kathleen: “There you go again, pitching low and outside.”

• Brad: “Okay.” He leaves, but he stops at the bottom of the stoop in front of Kathleen’s apartment building to give an umpire’s safe sign.

I was definitely rooting for Brad and Kathleen by this point in the film.

The High Hat Club is where Eddie Heywood and his orchestra play some great jazz, which serves a dual purpose. It is diegetic music that is part of the reason for Kathleen’s and Brad’s date (they’re out for a night of dancing), and it becomes great background music that can still be heard and enjoyed when the two of them, together or with other characters, are in conversation. It pulls viewers into the story.

Brad is the one who explains the title of the film, and he does so in a way that makes complete sense in the course of the plot. When he finds out that White Suit isn’t really Fred Foss, he says to Kathleen: “There goes my last lead. I feel all dead inside. I’m backed up in a dark corner, and I don’t know who’s hitting me.” His lines express the mood of the film all along: Brad really can’t seem to catch a break and find out who is trying to frame him—not once but twice—for murder.

William Bendix (as White Suit) and Mark Stevens (as Brad Galt) have realistic, one-sided phone conversations, with the right pauses to make viewers believe there’s a live person at the other end of the phone line. The fight scenes between Brad and Anthony Jardine, and between Brad and White Suit, are well-staged and add even more authenticity to the film. Until Alain Silver and James Ursini (they provided commentary on the DVD) pointed out that Brad is fighting with a stand-in for Kurt Kreuger, who plays Anthony Jardine, I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t Kurt Kreuger.

I have seen The Dark Corner several times, and I am always amazed at how well it holds up. The Dark Corner is well acted, with believable details. It’s a good choice, whether you are already a fan of film noir or you are looking for an introduction to the genre.