El aura (The Aura) (2005)

September 15, 2005 (Argentina), release date

Directed by Fabián Bielinsky

Screenplay by Fabián Bielinsky

Music by Dario Eskenazi

Edited by Alejandro Carrillo Penovi and Fernando Pardo

Cinematography by Checco Varese

Ricardo Darín as Esteban Espinosa, the taxidermist

Dolores Fonzi as Diana Dietrich

Pablo Cedrón as Sosa

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Julio

Jorge D’Elía as Urien

Alejandro Awada as Sontag

Rafael Castejón as Vega

Manuel Rodal as Carlos Dietrich

Walter Reyno as Montero

Distributed by Buena Vista International and IFC Films

 El aura is an unusual neo-noir. It has many of the typical characteristics of noir and neo-noir films: murder; the elaborate planning of a heist; an almost constant threat of violence; muted, drab color throughout. Almost the entire film seems green-tinted, with black, gray, white, brown, and more green. Even though most of the film is shot outdoors, we rarely see the sun. But other nontraditional features give El aura the neo-noir label: Esteban’s seeming lack of motivation, Dietrich’s dog as a character throughout, the relentless music and the many times that it is the only sound that can be heard during the film, the significance of the title and Esteban’s epilepsy.

Esteban’s epilepsy is a key feature of his life and thus the plot of the film. The film opens with Esteban sprawled on a white floor crisscrossed with black lines; the camera is at floor level, then moves up and then over Esteban. The camera’s movement isn’t large, but it’s a disorienting shot all the same. Esteban had an attack while getting money out of the ATM. The only sound is the beeping (one, two, three, pause; one, two, three, pause) of an ATM machine, but viewers don’t know that at first. Esteban could be in a hospital. Finally, the seizure is over. Esteban rises, and the camera reveals that he is in the front of a bank.

(This blog post about El aura contains spoilers.)

Fate also plays a large role in El aura. Esteban lives at the mercy of his seizures. He doesn’t want to go hunting with his friend Sontag when Sontag first extends the invitation, but Esteban changes his mind when he arrives home to discover that his wife has left him. A series of mishaps bring the two friends to the Dietrichs’ rental cabin, and from that point on, fate seems to take on an even more pronounced role in the plot and in Esteban’s life.

Diana Dietrich asks Esteban about his attacks. In a very poignant scene, he describes what it’s like to have an epileptic seizure to Diana:

• Esteban: “A few seconds before it happens, I know I’m going to have an attack. There’s a moment, a shift. The doctors call it an aura. Things suddenly change. It’s as if . . . as if everything stopped . . . and a door opened in your head that lets things in.”

• Diana: “What things?”

• Esteban: “Sounds. Music. Voices. Images. Smells. The smell of school, the kitchen, the family. It tells me the fit is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it . . . nothing. It’s horrible. And it’s perfect because during those few seconds, you’re free. There’s no choice, there’s no alternative. Nothing for you to decide. Everything tightens up, gets narrower and you surrender yourself.”

Esteban explains his seizures as a loss of control: He must surrender himself to a seizure after it starts because there is nothing else he can do. When he has a seizure, the viewer also experiences it as a loss of control because the plot is momentarily interrupted. But in his last seizure in the film, Esteban does not lose control like he did in the past. This time, he sees what he must do to survive, and he does exactly what his mind, during the seizure, presents to him. Instead of being at the mercy of his epilepsy, it seems to give him a resolution to his current and—desperate—situation.

The film ends in Esteban’s office. He is back at work as a taxidermist. The camera pans away from Esteban at his desk to Dietrich’s dog lying on the floor in Esteban’s office. The camera moves in steadily on the dog’s face, then its eyes, then one eye. The scene is unnerving. I couldn’t help wondering if there were another message in that closing scene. Is the viewer supposed to compare Esteban to the dog and its most primitive instincts? Was Esteban at the mercy of his epileptic seizures until a survival instinct in his brain presented a solution and kept him alive in a desperate situation?

El aura doesn’t provide any answers. Esteban appears to be completely alone in his dilemma; he’s the only character guarding the central secret of the plot. But viewers know it and are thus drawn into Esteban’s story and his point of view. The film offers nothing definitive about Esteban and his actions, and viewers can interpret the story in El aura for themselves. This last characteristic of the film does not make it a neo-noir, but it does make the film worth seeing.

Kiss of Death (1947)

August 27, 1947, release date

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Screenplay by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer

Based on a story by Eleazar Lipsky

Music by David Buttolph

Edited by J. Watson Webb, Jr.

Cinematography by Norbert Brodine

Victor Mature as Nick Bianco

Brian Donlevy as Assistant District Attorney Louis D’Angelo

Coleen Gray as Nettie

Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo

Mildred Dunnock as Mrs. Rizzo

Taylor Holmes as Attorney Earl Howser

Howard Smith as the prison warden

Karl Malden as Sergeant William Cullen

Anthony Ross as Big Eddie Williams

Millard Mitchell as Detective Shelby

J. Scott Smart as Skeets

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

(This blog post about Kiss of Death contains spoilers.)

Kiss of Death has one of the most sympathetic noir protagonists, Nick Bianco, in all of film noir. In fact, Bianco reminds me of Joe Norson in Side Street. (See my blog post about Side Street dated August 17, 2016.) I couldn’t bear to watch Side Street because I couldn’t stand to see how much serious trouble Joe got himself into; I put off seeing Kiss of Death, too, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Richard Widmark, as Tommy Udo, push Mrs. Rizzo in her wheelchair down a flight of stairs. This scene made Widmark famous, and I had heard a lot about it before I finally saw the film. The scene where Mrs. Rizzo goes down the stairs is disturbing, even now, but Kiss of Death is really Nick Bianco’s story.

It can be argued that Tommy Udo, by comparison with Nick Bianco, makes it that much easier for audiences to root for Nick Bianco. But even before he meets Udo, it is almost impossible not to like Nick. Coleen Gray’s character Nettie provides the narration in voice-over at the opening of the film. Viewers don’t know at first who she is, but it’s clear that she has a lot of sympathy for Nick. It’s Christmas Eve, and she explains that Nick Bianco has only one way to “shop” for his kids—and that’s to steal. The film opens with a jewel heist involving Nick and three accomplices (Pete Rizzo never makes an appearance on-screen, but he is the one who is driving the getaway car.) One of Nick’s first memories, Nettie says, is seeing his father killed by a police officer. And because he cannot forget that tragedy, he is haunted by his past, a familiar characteristic for many film noir protagonists. Nettie lays the groundwork, from the beginning, for the sympathy that audiences come to feel for Nick.

The scene in the prison when Nick reads his first wife’s obituary in the newspaper, in the library reading room, seems to imply that anyone would feel sympathy for his plight. Nick grieves for his wife in the only way that he can given his current situation: He stands up from the desk where he was reading the newspaper and moves to the window, and then he slumps against a reading rack. He is alone and dwarfed by the shot, with him facing a large window and with the tables and chairs in the prison library taking up the foreground.

Nettie finally appears in the film, preceded by more of her voice-over narration, when she visits Nick in prison: Now viewers know that she and the narrator are one and the same. Until this point in the film, the identity of the voice-over narrator is unclear and audiences don’t know her connection to Nick. She and his two children by his first wife gives Nick a reason to get out of prison. He finally decides to be an informant for the district attorney, Louis D’Angelo. D’Angelo had offered a deal to Nick when he was first imprisoned, but Nick was steadfast in his determination not to squeal on his associates. It’s a loyalty that he takes very seriously because the jewel heist wasn’t the first time that he served his full sentence rather than squeal. Now, however, his children are living without their mother, and they will live like orphans if he remains in prison. Nick finally changes his mind: His family comes first, no matter what.

I don’t know if Victor Mature, who plays Nick Bianco, liked children, but his performance as the father of the two children in Kiss of Death is utterly convincing. He kisses and hugs them when he is granted a visit at the orphanage. At this point, he is still in prison and the visit is courtesy of D’Angelo in the district attorney’s office. D’Angelo also builds sympathy for himself with his interactions with Nick and the visits he arranges between Nick and his children in exchange for Nick’s information. When he is finally paroled, Nick is visibly heartbroken when he must send them away with their stepmother Nettie to protect them from Tommy Udo’s vengeance.

Before too long, both Nick Bianco and Louis D’Angelo are on the same side of the law after all, with all its flaws and ambiguous compromises:

• Bianco: “Your side of the fence is almost as dirty as mine.”

• D’Angelo: “With one big difference. We hurt bad people, not good ones.”

Nick Bianco doesn’t look entirely reassured in this scene. Nick is a flawed character; he makes many mistakes, most of them outside the law. But D’Angelo also makes many mistakes, and some of them have dire consequences. In fact, he loses his case against Tommy Udo, which was based on information provided by Nick Bianco. He is responsible for putting Nick and the Bianco family in danger.

The scene when D’Angelo comes to check on Nick while Nick waits for Tommy Udo is suspenseful even today. It is staged and photographed to build doubt in the viewer’s mind: Is it Udo coming after Nick? It is also the scene where Bianco tells D’Angleo that he knows the police can’t help him or prevent Tommy Udo from coming after him. Udo can’t come after Nick’s wife and children only because Nick has sent them away, not because the police can protect them.

Kiss of Death, like Side Street, is a film noir with a sympathetic main character, someone that audiences can identify with because of his love for his family. The scenes with Nettie and his children are heartwarming, which is amazing considering that this film noir also features Richard Widmark in his landmark role of Tommy Udo, a character that exudes barely suppressed violence every time he is on-screen. But the Bianco family prevails, and I’m sorry that I put off seeing the film for so long.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Book) (1934)

 The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

New York, NY: Triangle Books, 1934

(Originally published in 1934 by Alfred A. Knopf)

List of main characters:

Frank Chambers, drifter hired by Nick Papadakis

Nick Papadakis, owner of Twin Oaks Tavern

Cora Papadakis, née Smith, Nick’s wife

Sackett, district attorney

Katz, defense attorney

The image of the dust jacket comes from the first edition published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1934. The quotations in this blog post come from the Triangle Books edition, which is probably difficult to find. I happened to find it in my local library system. I think it’s an advantage to read an early edition, especially when something was published as far back as 1934. It adds to the historical perspective.

For my one-year anniversary blogging about noir, I am going with the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. Even if you have never read it, you have undoubtedly heard of it and know something of its reputation. At least two U.S. films have been made of this story by James M. Cain: one in 1946 starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and one in 1981 starring Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson. Several foreign-language adaptations have also been made: Two examples are Ossessione (1943) and Jerichow (2008).

I have read The Postman Always Rings Twice (the Triangle Books edition) at least twice, and the novel is worth a reread. The ending came as a complete surprise (always a plus) the first time that I read it. The second time, I found that knowing the ending was a plus in a different way: It enhanced the noir characteristics that much more. I had heard a lot about this novel and the U.S. films based on it before I read it: The steamy love affair and the passion of the characters are always sensationalized, especially in the marketing for the U.S. films. But the story is more layered than its reputation had me believing. For me, it is a real treat to go back to the source and wipe away all my preconceived ideas about the story.

(This blog post about the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice contains spoilers.)

Frank Chambers, the main character, is a drifter and the narrator of the story. He makes an unplanned stop at a roadside eatery, the Twin Oaks Tavern, in California, and begins an affair with the proprietor’s wife, Cora. It isn’t long before they start planning the murder of Cora’s husband, but the two of them are attracted to violence before murder is mentioned in the novel. Their sex life includes some violence from the very beginning. Here is one example:

. . . Except for the shape, she [Nick Papadakis’s wife] really wasn’t any raving beauty, but she had a sulky look to her, and her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her. (page 6)

When Frank has his first chance to kiss Cora, he bites her lips, making them bleed, and leaves his teeth marks.

Frank equates his love for Cora with religion, even though he is carrying on an affair with another man’s wife and planning murder:

“That’s it, Frank. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? Not you and me and the road, or anything else but you and me.”

                “You must be a hell cat, though. You couldn’t make me feel like this if you weren’t.”

                “That’s what we’re going to do. Kiss me, Frank. On the mouth.”

                I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church. (page 24)

It’s a jarring comparison in a novel about murder, violence, and betrayal. Frank and Cora’s first attempt at killing her husband is thwarted, and Nick is hospitalized with a head injury. Again, Frank thinks of religion as he and Cora continue their affair:

Then one day, stead of her going in alone [to the hospital] we both went in, and after she came out of the hospital, we cut for the beach. They gave her a yellow suit and a red cap, and when she came out I didn’t know her at first. She looked like a little girl. It was the first time I ever really saw how young she was. E played in the sand, and then we went way out and let the swells rock u. I like my head to the waves, she like her feet. We lay there, face to face, and held hands under water. I looked up at the sky. It was all you could see. I thought about God. (page 42)

In the last chapter, the reader finds out that the novel is a manuscript that Frank wrote while waiting on death row for his execution. He ends his “manuscript” by addressing readers directly and by again referring to religion: He asks readers to pray so that he and Cora can be together again.

Violence, betrayal, sex, murder: All of these characteristics are what readers would expect from noir literature. But I never heard anything about religion being part of The Postman Always Rings Twice. I wonder if it added to the novel’s pulp reputation in the 1930s.

The novel is surprisingly modern in one respect: Insurance money is what keeps Frank and Cora from being convicted of murder. Their second attempt to kill Nick in an automobile accident that they staged themselves is successful. Sackett, the district attorney, and even their own defense lawyer Katz get Frank and Cora to turn on each other, and Cora is eventually the one who will go on trial for Nick’s murder. But Katz has an ulterior plan.

Nick Papadakis signed up for several insurance policies before he died, and none of them had anything to do with “the accident” (the first time that Frank and Cora tried to kill him). Katz explains to Frank why all those insurance policies were so important in getting Cora acquitted, and so quickly, too:

“First, I read them [the insurance companies] the law. I read them the guest clause, Section 141¾, California Vehicle Act. That says if a guest in an automobile gets hurt, he has no right of recovery, provided, that if his injury resulted from intoxication or willful misconduct on the part of the driver, then he can recover. You see, you were a guest, and I had pleaded her guilty to murder and assault. Plenty of willful misconduct there, wasn’t there? And they couldn’t be sure, you know. Maybe she did do it alone. So those two companies on the liability policies, the ones that had their chin hanging out for a wallop from you, they chipped in $5,000 apiece to pay the Pacific States Accident policy, and the Pacific States Accident agreed to pay up and shut up, and the whole thing didn’t take over a half hour.” (pages 127–128)

Even though the lawyers know both Frank and Cora are guilty, Frank gives evidence to support Cora’s conviction, and Cora is freed because the insurance companies want to pay the least amount of money possible on the policies that Nick had purchased. Greed wins over justice.

I didn’t identify much with the main characters in The Postman Always Rings Twice. I didn’t have much sympathy for Frank and Cora, even though they seemed to care for one another in their own way. Together, however, they created so much death and destruction. But The Postman Always Rings Twice is still a satisfying read: The story is true to the characters and never wavers from its noir themes. The novel is a treat because it offers so much more than its reputation suggested that it would.

By the way, nothing in the novel explains the title. Wikipedia offers some explanations (click here to read them online. I think the story itself should have explained the title, although I don’t think it’s a big enough flaw to diminish the impact of the story. I just wish the novel had been given another title!