Tension (1950)

January 11, 1950, release date

Directed by John Berry

Screenplay by Allen Rivkin

Story by John D. Klorer

Music by André Previn

Edited by Albert Akst

Cinematography by Harry Stradling

Richard Basehart as Warren Quimby, aka Paul Sothern

Audrey Totter as Claire Quimby

Cyd Charisse as Mary Chanler

Barry Sullivan as Police Lt. Collier Bonnabel

Lloyd Gough as Barney Deager

Tom D’Andrea as Freddie, counter help at Coast to Coast drugstore

William Conrad as Police Lt. Edgar “Blackie” Gonsales

Tito Renaldo as Narco, Deager’s houseboy

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

I had to see Tension at least twice before I noticed the plot’s intricacies, and I’m sure there’s plenty more that I missed. But I won’t mind seeing this film again to sort things out.

Collier Bonnabel introduces himself on-screen as a homicide detective, and that is where Tension starts, with him addressing the audience directly:

“. . . I only know one way, one thing that breaks them wide open. Tension. I work on people, on suspects. Play up to them. Play up to their strengths, pour it on their weaknesses. Romance ’em or ignore ’em. Kiss ’em. Press ’em. But whatever way, keep stretching them. Everything, everybody’s got a breaking point. And when they get stretched so tight, they can’t take it any longer . . .” [the title card for the movie now appears: Tension].

Bonnabel continues in voice-over to start the story and to introduce Warren Quimby, whose wife Claire left him for Barney Deager. Deager is killed rather early in the film, and the Quimbys are likely suspects: Claire Quimby had an affair with Deager, which gives Warren Quimby, and maybe Claire, too, a motive. And Warren does want to kill Deager. He in fact assumes another identity (as Paul Sothern) so he can carry out his plan.

(This blog post about Tension contains spoilers.)

In the meantime, Bonnabel manipulates the suspects and the witnesses in his murder investigation to get the information he needs. He also manipulates the viewers in setting up the story as one in which Warren Quimby is the primary murder suspect. But the plot twists and turns until the final scene.

Claire Quimby doesn’t want anything to do with a house and children in suburbia: She wants no part of the suburban postwar lifestyle, and she’d like more lucrative prospects than what her husband Warren can offer. Warren takes her out to a new tract development to look at a house that he apparently has already picked out. But Claire won’t even get out of the car to look at it. She is more attached to her doll than she is to any one man, including her husband. And she doesn’t want to live in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do.

Why is a grown woman carrying around that doll? The fact that the film never explains anything about the doll merely adds to the unease and mystery. Claire Quimby’s doll isn’t the only prop crying out to be noticed, I thought. Barney Deager’s barbecue fork looks more like a devil’s pitchfork. It almost becomes the murder weapon. Or does it? Viewers can’t be entirely sure until later in the film.

And is the whole film a flashback? Bonnabel addresses the audience in voice-over, but he is also an active on-screen participant in the story starting at 00:43:21. That’s when the murder investigation begins, but Lieutenant Bonnabel and his partner Lieutenant Gonsales appear for the first time at 00:12:19, in the background of a scene when Warren Quimby is on the sidewalk watching his wife Claire walk out of the all-night, twenty-four-hour drugstore where he works. And she’s in the company of another man.

When the murder investigation starts, Bonnabel and Gonsales arrive at the Quimby apartment to talk to Claire and Warren Quimby. Bonnabel has Mary Chanler’s stick figure. (Chanler knows Warren as Paul Sothern and regards him as her kind and dutiful boyfriend.) Chanler makes these stick figures and places one of them in Warren’s front jacket pocket. It falls out of his pocket when he goes to Barney Deager’s house with the intention of killing him but then changes his mind. It’s clear that Bonnabel and Gonsales have been to the murder scene, maybe even immediately before arriving at the Quimbys’, but viewers know that Warren Quimby didn’t kill Barney Deager. What do Bonnabel and Gonsales know about Deager’s murder at this point?

Bonnabel’s voice-over continues at the drugstore, at the end of the scene during which he brings Mary Chanler there to confront Warren Quimby. It’s the first time that Mary Chanler sees Warren in his old milieu and as Warren Quimby, but she refuses to let go of her faith in him. She walks out of the drugstore, and Bonnabel, while still on-screen, says in voice-over that maybe Claire is the next one to whom he should apply his interrogation techniques.

When Bonnabel meets Claire Quimby in the apartment that her husband has rented as Paul Sothern, he says to her: “I got a file goes back further than you’d like to remember and up to where you wish you could forget. And that includes San Diego. I like that part about San Diego. That makes good reading, Claire.” San Diego is where she and Warren met and got married, but the implication is that she was working there as a prostitute and perhaps was involved in other criminal activity. Has Bonnabel been tailing Claire Quimby all along? Does he suspect her of Barney Deager’s murder from the beginning? Is this story all flashback for detectives Bonnabel and Gonsales?

Tension is an unconventional film noir. Sure, it has a femme fatale in Claire Quimby and a murder that needs to be solved. And everything about the film creates doubt: for the characters and for the viewers. The lead detective Bonnabel is unconventional in his approach to solving homicide cases: He will do whatever it takes to get his murderer. His role in the story helps to make Tension a great film noir, one I’ll have to see again.

Tattooed Tears (2016)

May 2016 post date

Directed by Aaron Lewis

Screenplay by Alverne Ball

Edited by David B Freeman

Cinematography by Joshua Lassing

Simeon Henderson as Worm G

Jose Santiago as Needle

Produced by Alverne Ball, Gregory Ball, Aaron Lewis

Posted by Arion Digital Media Group

(This blog post about the video short Tattooed Tears contains spoilers.)

You can watch Tattooed Tears before reading any further by clicking on this link: Vimeo. The entire video, including credits, is six minutes and nineteen seconds (00:06:19) long.

Tattooed Tears is a powerful neo-noir video short about a violent, self-centered man, Worm G, visiting a tattoo artist, Needle, for another tattoo that will proclaim his tough reputation on the street. The title comes from the tears tattooed on Worm G’s face. Each one represents someone that he has killed, and one of them is the tattoo artist’s brother.

On subsequent viewings, it’s easy to see all the signs that Worm G misses about the fate that awaits him: the newspaper clippings that line Needle’s apartment walls, the shrine on one wall complete with a photo and candles, the questions that the tattoo artist asks as he begins his work. And then comes a change in the conversation; the following two lines of dialogue mark a turning point in the story:

Needle: “You know, uh, I lost somebody recently.”

Worm G: “Yeah? Sorry to hear that.”

Worm G is anything but sorry. He came to the apartment talking tough, and his arrogance makes the tattoo artist’s plan for revenge easier: Worm G doesn’t care at all about the artist, what he has to say, or anyone else’s feelings. But when he realizes that the artist has poisoned his needle, he is bewildered and finally becomes vulnerable. The last thing Worm G says as he lies on Needle’s apartment floor is, “Whadjou do to me, man?” It’s a question he’s probably heard from one or more of his murder victims. His death is so quick that it’s hard to know if he even realizes that the tables have been turned on him and why.

The tattoo artist, on the other hand, is more complicated. His decision about revenge takes place in the past, before the story even starts; his actions during the film move it forward. Before the video starts, he has seized the upper hand by planning his revenge, but he doesn’t seem to take any joy or satisfaction in it once his plan is realized. Once Worm G is dead, Needle says, “Now I shed the tattooed tears,” and walks off-screen so that viewers see the photograph of his brother in the camera’s frame.

I did wonder about the tattoo that Needle is working on when he poisons Worm G. At first, I couldn’t see what he was applying to Worm G’s skin just under his right shoulder. No tattoo is visible while Worm G is checking the outline in the bathroom mirror, but he starts to feel sharp pain in his chest at this point. When he returns to the room where Needle works, he clutches his right chest and a large tattoo is now visible under his right shoulder. Is this an oversight on the part of the filmmakers? Or does a tattoo take a few minutes to fade in when the ink is applied to the skin? From my perspective, the newly visible tattoo seems like an oversight, but I must confess that I know little about tattooing.

Viewers understand Needle’s actions and motivation, but Tattooed Tears ends on an ambiguous note for me, and I consider the ambiguity to be one of its strengths. I had many questions that the video short leaves unanswered: What is Needle going to do with Worm G’s body? Has Needle started a cycle of revenge killings by poisoning his brother’s murderer? How will he support himself if people discover that he is capable of poisoning someone through his work, his art? I think the ambiguity enhances the noir tone and allows viewers to make up their own minds about Needle’s actions.

In just over six minutes, Tattooed Tears packs in many noir elements: a planned murder for revenge, plenty of angst (mostly in the form of grief and despair for Needle, the tattoo artist), an ambiguous ending, a minimal set with newspapers hung everywhere, a blue-tinted opening, a nighttime urban setting, candles, smoke (from a cigarette?) curling up in the bathroom. I originally found it on LinkedIn and I’m glad I did.

Mystery Street (1950)

July 28, 1950, release date

Directed by John Sturges

Screenplay by Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks

Based on a story by Leonard Spigelgass

Music by Rudolph G. Kopp

Edited by Ferris Webster

Cinematography by John Alton

Ricardo Montalban as Lieutenant Peter Moralas

Sally Forrest as Grace Shanway

Marshall Thompson as Henry Shanway, Grace’s husband

Bruce Bennett as Dr. McAdoo, of Harvard Medical School

Willy Maher as Tim Sharkey

Elsa Lanchester as Mrs. Smerrling, the landlady

Jan Sterling as Vivian Heldon

Edmon Ryan as James Joshua Harkley

Betsy Blair as Jackie Elcott

John Maxwell as Detective Kilrain

Ralph Dumke as the tattoo artist

Willard Waterman as the mortician

Walter Burke as the ornithologist

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

A few things about Mystery Street really popped out at me, beside the fact that it is one of the first films to be shot in Boston and the greater Boston area. First was the use of forensic science. Even though I’m used to watching shows like Law and Order: SVU, I was still intrigued by the state of the art in 1950. Lieutenant Peter Moralas and Dr. McAdoo work together using hair strands, examination of skeletal remains, facial recognition (matching the photos of women known to be missing at about the time of the murder and the dumping of the body), among other forensic techniques. Without computers, the work is painstaking and slow, but it still involves a lot of science, and the magic of cinema compresses the timeline so viewers don’t have to experience the passage of time. I found it fascinating to learn that forensic science has a longer history than modern viewers might imagine.

Another detail that popped out at me was the yellow Ford owned by Henry Shanway and the way that it was dumped in the pond. (By the way, Mystery Street is filmed in black and white, but Shanway’s car is referred to so often in the film as the yellow Ford that it’s almost hard not to imagine the car in color!) I remember a very similar scene in Psycho (1960) when Janet Leigh’s car is dumped in the water by Anthony Perkins. The yellow Ford is pulled out of the water as part of the plot and the investigation in Mystery Street, but in Psycho, as I recall, it’s pulled out behind the closing credits. But the similarities still made me wonder if Hitchcock saw Mystery Street and did a bit of creative borrowing.

Lieutenant Peter Moralas, from the Barnstable (Massachusetts) Police Department, is in charge of the investigation because Vivian Heldon’s skeleton is discovered on the dunes of Cape Cod. (By the time her body is discovered, the skeleton is all that’s left.) Moralas mentions that he works in “the Portuguese district.” I take that to mean southeastern Massachusetts, an area known today as the Southcoast. The Southcoast area of Massachusetts and Rhode Island had, and still has, many Portuguese immigrants and people of Portuguese descent. But a lot of the police investigation and most of the forensic work in Mystery Street take place in Boston and the Boston area because that’s where Vivian lived before she was murdered. Dr. McAdoo works at Harvard and helps Moralas—and Harvard University gets film credit for allowing some on-location filming.

(This blog post about Mystery Street contains spoilers.)

Ricardo Montalban (a Hispanic actor) plays a Hispanic character who likely would have experienced prejudice in 1950s Massachusetts. Moralas, as a minority detective, is the target of some prejudice from Harkley, the principal murder suspect, when Moralas goes to Harkley’s office with a search warrant looking for the murder weapon. Harkley tells Moralas that he is used to respect because his family has been in the country since before there was a United States, and he guesses from Moralas’s accent that Moralas’s family is a more recent arrival. But Moralas holds his ground and tells Harkley that he is used to respect, too, even if his family hasn’t been here for even 100 years.

Mystery Street has some memorable female characters who are integral to the plot, although they are not given top billing. Jackie Elcott is a friend of Vivian Heldon’s; they live in the same rooming house owned by Mrs. Smerrling. Jackie is the one who reports Vivian missing. She collects Vivian’s suitcase from her room after she reports her disappearance, and she makes it plain to Moralas that she didn’t open it: She is a woman of principle. She connects the gun that Mrs. Smerrling shows her with Vivian’s murder after she reads more about the crime in the newspaper, although she doesn’t know how the gun landed in Mrs. Smerrling’s possession.

Elsa Lanchester is great as Mrs. Smerrling, the landlady, but I did wonder what made her think she could get away with blackmailing Harkley. The gun isn’t in Harkley’s office when Moralas goes there to look for it because Mrs. Smerrling steals it when she attempts to blackmail Harkley. And I wondered why she hides the baggage claim ticket in the birdcage. No one wants to pay any attention to the bird, but the ticket is in plain sight in the cage. Without her and her less-than-upstanding intentions, however, the story would not be as interesting and maybe a bit less noir. Mrs. Smerrling steals every scene with Moralas as he tries to ferret out the truth about Heldon’s murder. She adds some humor that even Moralas can appreciate.

Yes, Vivian Heldon is killed near the beginning of the movie, but she is the one who gets the plot going. She demands to see Harkley, and she pays the price for insisting that he meet her. After Harkley shoots her on a deserted Cape Cod road, a car approaches unexpectedly. To hide what he has done, Harkley embraces Heldon’s dead body and pretends to kiss her. When he picks up her body to leave it on the sand dunes, he hits her head on the car door. The scene is rather shocking, even today, although I did find myself a bit distracted wondering what happened to all the blood while he was embracing the body and dumping it afterward. Did Heldon really have time to bleed out while she was still in Shanway’s car?

Henry Shanway is the luckless patsy who is drawn into Vivian’s plan to get to the cape and talk to Harkley. Shanway meets her in Boston, after a night of heavy drinking at The Grass Skirt, where Vivian works as a dancer. He is drinking because his wife just lost their first child in childbirth. Just before Vivian convinces him that she can help him move his car out of a no-parking zone, he says, “I’m always where I shouldn’t be. I’m also not where I ought to be. You know, ever since Adam, man’s been crying ‘Where am I?’ ” He poses a philosophical question, but he has no answers. He succumbs to fate and lets Vivian provide her own answers.

I think that’s the best way to enjoy Mystery Street: Give in and let the plot and the female characters take control. Sure, some details might strain one’s suspension of disbelief a bit, but the story and the murder investigation are still compelling. All the characters ring true, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a film with so many strong female characters. Each one—Vivian Heldon, Jackie Elcott, and Mrs. Smerrling—are very different and clearly defined. They are a lot of fun to watch while they (especially Mrs. Smerrling) keep Lieutenant Moralas and Dr. McAdoo guessing.