Convict 13 (1920)

October 27, 1920, release date

Directed by Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton

Screenplay by Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton

Edited by Buster Keaton

Cinematography by Elgin Lessley

Buster Keaton as golfer turned prisoner turned prison guard

Sybil Seely as warden’s daughter and Keaton’s girlfriend

Joe Roberts as the crazed prisoner

Edward F. Cline as the hangman

Joe Keaton as a prisoner

Louise Keaton

Distributed by Metro Pictures

It may seem hard to believe that there could be any connection between Buster Keaton and film noir, but I think a strong case can be made for regarding Convict 13, a short film by Keaton, as an example of avant noir, or a precursor to noir. The film has many dark elements, even though it was shown as a comedy short (almost exactly 96 years ago). I’ve never been a big fan of categories, and so it’s easy for me to place Keaton’s short film in more than one category. It’s in the public domain, and it’s less than 20 minutes long; you can view it at the Internet Archive by clicking here.

The title alone is one clue that the humor has dark undertones. In addition to the obvious prison reference, the number 13 is considered very unlucky in the United States. The plot involves one unlucky break after another for Keaton.

(This blog post about Convict 13 contains spoilers.)

The film begins with Buster Keaton out for a day of golf with his girlfriend. After a series of mishaps on the course, he knocks himself out with his own golf ball when it ricochets off a wooden fence. While he’s unconscious, he dreams about an escaped prison inmate who finds him unconscious and exchanges his own prison uniform for Keaton’s clothes. Keaton comes to, but he is still in the dream. Viewers aren’t made aware that the entire sequence about Keaton being a prisoner is a dream until the final scene in the film, when his girlfriend rouses him on the golf course. Although the unconsciousness is played for laughs in Convict 13, it is often a feature of film noir, and Keaton’s dream sequence leads him to some dark themes.

Keaton, now dressed as a prisoner in prison stripes, runs away from prison guards who are looking for the escaped convict. Keaton runs into the prison grounds and locks himself in the prison, thinking that he’s locking out the guards chasing him. In the prison, Keaton comes upon his girlfriend. She wants him to meet her father, who happens to be the prison warden. When the prison warden sees the number 13 on Keaton’s uniform, he tells Keaton that he is due to be hanged that day. Keaton’s girlfriend is dismayed by the news and, before the hanging is scheduled to take place, she replaces the hangman’s noose with some stretchy exercise bands that her father was using in his office. She saves Keaton, much to the displeasure of the other prisoners, who have come to see the spectacle at the scheduled time.

The scenes in the prison are especially dark in theme. Keaton is mistaken for a prisoner to be hanged, and everyone in the prison except his girlfriend is looking forward to his hanging. The other prisoners sit in attendance and applaud when Keaton gets to the hangman’s platform. Someone (perhaps a guard?) takes advantage of the situation and sells snacks and drinks to the prisoners. When the hangman’s noose doesn’t work because of the switch by the girlfriend, the prisoners boo. To appease the prisoners in the audience, the guard tells them that they will get two hangings the next day, after they get the noose fixed: “Sorry, boys. We’ll fix it and tomorrow we’ll hang two of you to make up for this.”

During his temporary reprieve from the gallows, Keaton is assigned to break rocks. During this task, he accidently knocks out the guard supervising him. This time it’s his turn to exchange clothes: He exchanges his prisoner’s uniform for the guard’s uniform. Another prisoner revolts and starts a prison riot. He comes to the warden’s office, takes Keaton’s girlfriend hostage, and carries her off. At this point in the plot, the humor takes an even darker turn: I didn’t find it funny that this prisoner carries the woman off. Keaton manages to save his girlfriend and all the guards by knocking out all the prisoners.

The film ends with Keaton’s girlfriend shaking him out of his unconsciousness, and they head back to their golf game. They are safe from the dark elements of Keaton’s imagination (Keaton’s close call at the gallows, the prison riot, the girlfriend’s abduction) because they weren’t real in the first place. Otherwise, they would be frightening, perhaps too much so, even for a film noir.

Out of Time (2003)

October 3, 2003, release date

Directed by Carl Franklin

Screenplay by David Collard

Music by Graeme Revell

Edited by Carole Kravetz

Cinematography by Theo van de Sande

Denzel Washington as Matthias Lee Whitlock

Eva Mendes as Alex Diaz-Whitlock

Sanaa Lathan as Ann Merai Harrison

Dean Cain as Chris Harrison

John Billingsley as Chae, medical examiner

Robert Baker as Tony Dalton

Alex Carter as Paul Cabot

Antoni Corone as Deputy Baste

Terry Loughlin as Agent Stark

Nora Dunn as Dr. Donovan

James Murtaugh as Dr. Frieland

O. L. Duke as Detective Bronze

Tom Hillmann as Robert Guillette, Living Gift salesperson

Produced by Original Film

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

DVD distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment

It’s hard to believe that Out of Time was released thirteen years ago. I think the story and the emphasis on the characters make the film timeless. (And I know there’s a pun to be made because of the film’s title but I’m not going to do it!) It’s always fun to watch Denzel Washington, and his performance in Out of Time does not disappoint. The director Carl Franklin provides commentary on the DVD, and he describes the story as lighthearted, but I think the film has many noir elements. It starts out lighthearted, then the tone slowly and successfully dissolves into one of tension and unease. So there are many great reasons to see this film.

Police chief Matthias (Matt) Whitlock is having an affair with Ann Merai Harrison. He is separated, but not yet divorced, from his wife Alex, who has just been promoted to detective. Ann Merai is married to Chris, and she tells Matt that Chris beats her. So when the tension in the film comes in the form of Chris’s threatening presence, it is completely believable. The story is told from Matt Whitlock’s perspective, and viewers can sympathize with his level of concern. And then Chris and Matt trade not-so-veiled threats twice: at the Harrison house and then later at a local bar.

(This blog post about Out of Time contains spoilers.)

Not too long after the exchange between Chris and Matt, the Harrison house goes up in flames. The two bodies discovered in the charred remains are identified as the Harrisons, and the fire is labeled arson. The money that Matt took from the evidence locker and gave to Ann (because she needs alternative cancer treatment in Switzerland) is missing, although he and viewers don’t know if it was also lost in the fire. Now that the two bodies represent two homicides, Matt’s wife Alex, now a detective, is working the case. The police chief is in the predicament of having to stay one step ahead of his wife’s professional and competent murder investigation and federal agents’ search for the money, which—it turns out—they need for their own case.

Even though Out of Time includes a good bit of humor and romance (some of the tension comes from the dynamic between Matt and Alex), and a fantastic Latin jazz score, the tension surrounding the murder investigation builds slowly and steadily. Viewers can root for Matt. He’s a character in a typical film noir situation: He makes one bad decision, out of compassion, and he is caught in the ensuing complications that escalate until his guilt looks certain—and certain to be discovered. After his one bad decision, fate takes over, and Matt has to scramble to fix the repercussions of his theft from the evidence locker.

The director Carl Franklin, in his audio commentary on the DVD, talks about the heat, tropical colors, and tropical downpours: the setting and the Florida weather are characters in the film. The heat and sultry night scenes give the romance scenes and the tension an added urgency, and heat—day or night—is a feature of many neo-noirs. When heat is a feature of a neo-noir, I call it film brûlant (“burning film”). As the plot unfolds in Out of Time, viewers learn that deceit, greed, and betrayal are also factors in the story, and all these factors are evidence, for me, that Out of Time is a neo-noir.

Out of Time is fun to watch. The plot twists and turns—and Matt scrambles—until the very end, and it would be a shame to give away any more details. And then there’s Denzel Washington: He gives another great performance, with believable chemistry between him and Ann and between him and Alex. Viewers can’t go wrong with the great story in this neo-noir.

Cause for Alarm! (1951)

March 30, 1951, release date

Directed by Tay Garnett

Screenplay by Mel Dinelli and Tom Lewis

Based on the radio play Cause for Alarm by Larry Marcus

Music by André Previn

Edited by James E. Newcom

Cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg

Loretta Young as Ellen Jones

Barry Sullivan as George Z. Jones

Bruce Cowling as Dr. Ranney Grahame

Margalo Gillmore as Aunt Clara Edwards

Bradley Mora as Hoppy (Billy)

Irving Bacon as Joe Carston, the postal carrier

Georgia Backus as Mrs. Warren, the neighbor

Don Haggerty as Mr. Russell, the notary

Art Baker as the post office superintendent

Richard Anderson as the wounded sailor at a naval hospital

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

One of the reasons that I love film noir is that the films often give the lead role to the woman and then proceed to show how a woman’s life can be turned upside down as easily as any man’s. Cause for Alarm! is one of those films. It tells its story so simply, but the tension is there all the same. In addition, the film is in the public domain, and you can watch it online at Internet Archive by clicking here.

The title of this film is the first clue that it’s a film noir, but just in case viewers missed that first clue, the camera starts by zooming in on a sign reading “Quiet Illness Within.” If that sign on a white picket fence in suburbia doesn’t say film noir, then . . . I’m stumped! And then there’s Ellen Jones (played by Loretta Young) in voice-over:

That Tuesday in July started out just like any other day the past few months. There was no warning it was to be the most terrifying day of my life. I remember thinking how tired I felt. Even the housework seemed drudgery, so meaningless with George confined to his bed. . . .

Even the housework seemed drudgery? Housework is drudgery every day, but this film was released in 1951, and the postwar dream of a home in suburbia, with the husband as breadwinner and the wife as a stay-at-home housewife, was held up as the ideal. Cause for Alarm! shows viewers that the postwar ideal could be awfully misleading.

(This blog post about Cause for Alarm! contains spoilers.)

Ellen Jones’s voice-over also tells viewers, “This is where I live.” Viewers don’t know initially what to expect, of course, but the illness within could refer to the suspicion, not just the heart ailment, that plagues Ellen’s husband George Jones. For Ellen, the “illness within” could be her terror over her husband’s threats and his death.

George is lying about not getting out of bed. He also tells his wife a horrible story about a ship in a bottle that he owned when he was a young boy. One day one of the boys in his neighborhood came out of the house holding it, so George beat him with it. George’s mother told him that now he will have to give the ship in the bottle to the boy; instead, George drops it on the floor and smashes it. When George finishes telling the story to Ellen, he promises to do the same to her and to Dr. Grahame, whom he suspects of having an affair with his wife.

George writes a letter to the local district attorney accusing Ellen and Dr. Grahame of plotting to murder him. He asks Ellen to mail the letter, and because she isn’t aware of its contents, Ellen unwittingly aids George in his plot to torment her. Most of the film involves Ellen’s attempts to retrieve George’s letter once she learns of her husband’s intentions, and bureaucratic red tape thwarts her every move. The postal carrier won’t give Ellen the letter because he can return it only to the letter writer (her husband). But it isn’t an arbitrary regulation: It actually makes sense in this case that someone other than the letter writer shouldn’t be able to retrieve a letter that’s already mailed. Ellen goes to the local postal inspector, who wants Ellen’s husband to fill out a form. He relents and says that Ellen can fill out the form, but only if he can read the contents of the letter. Of course, Ellen cannot agree to that stipulation. She is trapped by fate and by regulations that would make sense in any situation but hers.

Every time I see Cause for Alarm! (I have seen it I think three times), I wonder what Ellen sees in George. I cannot understand why she would choose him over Dr. Ranney Grahame. But her poor choice for a spouse is the only sticking point for me. The rest of the plot is a believable story of a woman’s suburban nightmare.

Toward the end of the film, everything seems to be falling back into place. The nosy neighbor whose behavior seemed hostile to Ellen for much of the movie offers to help her. The postal carrier returns the letter because of insufficient postage (a plot twist that came as a surprise to me). Dr. Grahame is there to comfort her, but the story doesn’t conclude with the two of them falling into each others’ arms. The last shot is of George and Ellen’s house, with the little boy who lives in the neighborhood riding by on his tricycle. But Ellen, in another voice-over, tells viewers that she has to figure out a way to put her life back together. The film doesn’t offer any definitive answers.

Cause for Alarm! is an MGM production: a film noir that doesn’t have many of the traditional film noir characteristics (for example, more light than shadows, more day than night), but it was creepy, with lots of psychological worry, fear, illness—in other words, plenty of angst. Here was a loyal, loving housewife who still couldn’t find the idyllic suburban life promised to Americans after the suffering of World War II. The ending was a complete surprise to me the first time I saw it, and I was very relieved for Ellen Jones when she dodged a bullet—almost literally.