The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

May 23, 1950, release date

Directed by John Huston

Screenplay by Ben Maddow and John Huston

Based on The Asphalt Jungle by W. R. Burnett

Cinematography by Harold Rosson

Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley

Louis Calhern as Alonzo D. Emmerich

Jean Hagen as Doll Conovan

James Whitmore as Gus Minissi

Sam Jaffe as “Doc” Erwin Riedenschneider

John McIntire as Police Commissioner Hardy

Marc Lawrence as Cobby

Barry Kelley as Lieutenant Ditrich

Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli

Teresa Celli as Maria Ciavelli, Louis's wife

Marilyn Monroe as Angela Phinlay

William “Wee Willie” Davis as Timmons

Dorothy Tree as May Emmerich, Emmerich’s sickly wife

Brad Dexter as private detective Bob Brannom, Emmerich’s henchman

Helene Stanley as Jeannie

John Maxwell as Dr. Swanson

Frank Cady as the night clerk

Produced by MGM

Black-and-White Cinematography Makes “Blind Accident” Gorgeous

One of the characters in The Asphalt Jungle, Doc Riedenschneider, repeats, using a slightly different phrase, what could be said and has been said about the role of fate in film noir in general: “Blind accident. What can you do against blind accident?” For most film noir characters, the answer is, “Nothing.” The cinematography, by Harold Rosson, is wonderful in The Asphalt Jungle, and it seems to accentuate the twists and turns of fate, blind accident, for all the major characters in the film.

During and after the credits, the camera does a slow pan of cobblestones and pavement; it seems to be almost at ground level. A police car approaches starting on the left-hand side of the screen in the distance and moves slowly along the street, still in the distance. The police chatter on the car radio accentuates the realism of the sequence. And it reminds me of Where the Sidewalk Ends, another great film noir but one that is told from the perspective of the police officer. The rest of the opening sequence in The Asphalt Jungle is even more spectacular on subsequent viewings (I have seen the film at least twice). I could pick out more details: litter, dirty pillars, rubble, an old brick façade, wires criss-crossing the sky. The setting is very gritty and realistic, and it sets the mood for the action to come.

(This blog post about The Asphalt Jungle contains spoilers.)

The Asphalt Jungle doesn’t have a femme fatale, but there are female characters and they are not treated very well in this film. None of the female characters could be considered leads, and they have no power in this film, although they sometimes embody the fate that thwarts the jewel thieves. The Asphalt Jungle is an unusual film noir in this instance. But in almost every other respect it is quite conventional: It is a heist film gone terribly wrong, with some sympathetic characters who can’t catch a break because fate keeps getting in their way.

When Ridenschneider is released from prison, he goes back to doing what he does best: planning a heist. He brings together a group of men—Cobby, Dix, Gus, Ciavelli, and Emmerich—who can perform each task in his plan so that they can work as a team. But there are too many of them with conflicting interests, and there are too many chance occurrences that none of them foresee.

During the heist in jewelry store, Dix looks out the jeweler’s window several times, and each shot could be a painting of a street scene in any Midwest town. He sees people walking along the street as though it were any other night. After the alarms go off, the point of view and the street scenes change. Now it is the viewer who sees police cars moving toward the center of the screen and pedestrians walking in toward the center. The cars, the pedestrians, and the viewer’s eye are moving in on the center of the crime scene—and the bank heist participants are being hemmed in by the law.

Dix is the only one who seems to form close bonds with others in the film. Reidenschneider and Dix become close, even though their heist unravels and they have to go their separate ways. Dix doesn’t even accept a single jewel, and neither does Doll, after Reidenschneider decides to go on the run. Dix is also close to Gus; the viewer sees what their relationship is like in Dix’s visits to Gus’s café at the start of the film. Dix and Doll seem to share some affection, although Dix seems almost oblivious at times about it: His first love is horses. And he dreams of buying back the farm (Hickorywood Farm) that his family lost after his father died.

Dix gets what he wants—in a way. He makes it out of the asphalt jungle and returns to Hickorywood Farm. But fate (blind accident) steps in: His gunshot wound (which he suffered when Emmerich and Brannom try to double-cross Reidenschneider and Dix) is worsening, and he collapses in a farm field. The final shot of the horses around him and Doll running toward the farmhouse in the distance, desperately seeking help, was both pastoral and sad. I could see why Doll fell for Dix, in spite of his occasionally menacing demeanor and his crime spree. I think it was the filmmakers’ intention to create sympathy for these characters; I wanted to see Dix and Doll achieve their dreams, even though I knew the plot couldn’t possibly end that way.

I Wake up Screaming (1941)

November 14, 1941, release date

Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone

Screenplay by Dwight Taylor and Steve Fisher

Based on the novel I Wake up Screaming by Steve Fisher

Music by Cyril J. Mockridge

Edited by Robert L. Simpson

Cinematography by Edward Cronjager

Betty Grable as Jill Lynn

Victor Mature as Frankie Christopher

Carole Landis as Vicky Lynn

Laird Cregar as Ed Cornell

Alan Mowbray as Robin Ray

Allyn Joslyn as Larry Evans

Elisha Cook, Jr., as Harry Williams

Chick Chandler as a reporter

Cyril Ring as a reporter

Morris Ankrum as the assistant district attorney

Charles Lane as the florist

Frank Orth as the cemetery caretaker

Gregory Gaye as the headwaiter

May Beatty as Mrs. Handel

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

I Wake up Screaming is another of my favorite films noir. I have read the book on which the film is based and, as I have already posted, the book and film are a little bit different. Here are a couple of the points I mentioned back in December 2015:

• The narrator in the book is never named except for the nickname Peg (for Pegasus) that Jill gives him. The entire plot in the novel is told from his perspective, in first-person narration. In the film, he is Frankie Christopher.

• The book takes place in the Los Angeles, California, area and also seems to cover many months, from summer through winter the following year. It references Christmas at the appropriate points in the timeline. The film doesn’t mention anything about the holidays or the seasons, and it takes place in New York City.

Some might argue that I Wake up Screaming is not really a film noir but an avant noir (or proto-noir), and I think it’s true that the film could be classified either way. But I lean more toward classifying it as a film noir for several reasons.

(This blog post about the I Wake up Screaming contains spoilers.)

The world of the film is fairly dark. Even though the two main characters Jill Lynn and Frankie Christopher come out of it in love and cleared of murder, they are on their own in a series of harrowing events. Frankie in particular has to prove his own innocence against formidable odds. Here is what I mean about the dark tone of the film:

• Jill’s sister Vicky is dead, and Frankie is accused of the murder by a police detective intent on proving him guilty no matter what.

• The detective Ed Cornell is dead by the end of the film.

• Ed Cornell might not be a sympathetic character; he represents corruption, sexual obsession, stalking.

• I Wake up Screaming was filmed during the Great Depression and several weeks before the U.S. entry into World War II. The overall noir tone reinforces the social context. For example, my favorite scene in the film comes when Jill Lynn and Frankie Christopher have just arrived on the sidewalk outside the Pegasus Club (a club name that I think is a nod to the nickname for the main character in the novel). Frankie meets an ex-boxer, an acquaintance of his, who is not doing so well: He still has “that ringing” in his head. Frankie is sympathetic and gives him some money for “a big dinner.” After the ex-boxer walks off, Jill asks Frankie about him.

• Jill: “He seemed to know you were going to give him that money.”

• Frankie: “Always do. I may be a has-been myself someday.”

It’s a quick moment in the entire film, but I thought the scene was a recognition of hard times in general. This scene, more than any other in the film, showed Frankie’s generosity and caring for other people—and his recognition that poverty and need could happen to him or to anyone else at any moment. (It was also the point at which I was pretty sure Frankie had not killed Vicky, but given the film’s plot, I couldn’t be entirely sure.)

• The shot of Frankie Christopher in shadow on the stairs in the Lynns’ apartment building is meant to show that Frankie is eavesdropping on the murderer and waiting for him to incriminate himself. That’s an important noir detail. Frankie is conducting his own civilian investigation; he is responsible for proving himself innocent because Ed Cornell is stacking the evidence against him out of jealousy.

The cinematography is noir in many respects, and not just in the shot of Frankie in shadow waiting to hear the murderer incriminate himself. At the beginning of the film, both Jill and Frankie are subject to police interrogation. The use of light and shadow shows how each one is hemmed in by the detectives and by the circumstances of Vicky Lynn’s murder. Both could be suspects, but Frankie is chosen for intense police scrutiny because Ed Cornell wants him to take the fall, even though he knows Frankie didn’t kill Vicky. (Viewers learn these details later in the film.) These scenes are shot so that the detectives are in shadow, making them difficult to see and thus increasing the tension for each suspect in their respective interrogations.

At the end of the film, Frankie Christopher goes to Cornell’s apartment to confront him with the facts of the murder that he has uncovered himself. Frankie enters the apartment almost completely in shadow. The scene reminded me of Dana Andrews in Where the Sidewalk Ends, when he enters an apartment to confront a suspect. Andrews is noir-perfect in his fedora and overcoat; Mature is noir-perfect in his hat and in the shadows.

So with all these noir details, it’s easy for me to classify I Wake up Screaming as a film noir more so than an avant noir. Plus it’s just a great story. I read the novel first, and it kept me guessing about the murderer’s identity until the end. The film almost did, too.

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

June 26, 1950, release date

Directed by Otto Preminger

Screenplay by Ben Hecht

Story by Victor Trivas, Frank P. Rosenberg, and Robert E. Kent

Based on the 1948 novel Night Cry by William L. Stuart

Music by Cyril Mockridge

Edited by Louis Loeffler

Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle

Dana Andrews as Detective Sgt. Mark Dixon

Gene Tierney as Morgan Taylor-Paine

Gary Merrill as Tommy Scalise

Bert Freed as Detective Sgt. Paul Klein (Dixon’s partner)

Tom Tully as Jiggs Taylor, Morgan’s father

Karl Malden as Detective Lt. Thomas

Ruth Donnelly as Martha, owner of Martha’s Café

Craig Stevens as Ken Paine

Robert Simon as Inspector Nicholas Foley

Harry Von Zell as Ted Morrison

Don Appell as Willie Bender

Neville Brand as Steve (Scalise’s henchman)

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

The opening title sequence is great, with chalk-like writing on a sidewalk. Gene Tierney’s and Dana Andrews’s names are shown first, then the movie title. Then two men, seen only via their shoes and their pants legs, walk over the movie title and exit off screen. The camera pans just a bit to the gutter and drain with running water. Only then do the credits start, with Mark Dixon and his partner riding in their police car and listening to the chatter on the police radio. (The police radio is a bit of realism that reminds me of the opening of another film noir: The Asphalt Jungle. The films were released only a month apart.)

Mark Dixon is a man haunted by his past. His father died trying to shoot his way out of prison, and Mark can’t let the memory go. He worries that he is exactly like his father, which only makes him more physical and aggressive in his police work. He accidently kills a murder suspect, which proves to him that he is his father’s son. But the movie’s portrayal of the fight scene leaves no doubt that it was an accident; it’s much more sympathetic to Mark than Mark is to himself.

By the way, the fight scenes in Where the Sidewalk Ends are very realistic. The fight between Dixon and Paine, the man he accidently kills, doesn’t use any stunt doubles. Dana Andrews and the actors give great performances here and in other fight scenes throughout the film. When Paine grabs Dixon by the throat, I could almost feel my own throat squeezed shut!

Why does Dixon tried to hide the accidental murder of Paine when it’s so clearly a matter of self-defense? Maybe he can’t bear the comparisons that will be made between him and his father. Maybe he can’t bear to hear Inspector Foley berate him again for his heavy-handed tactics. Dixon’s decisions, one bad one after another, lead deeper and deeper into a dark world that fate hands to him and he makes worse.

And I rooted for him the whole way! I wanted him to right his wrongs so he could spend time with his love interest, Morgan Taylor. Played by Gene Tierney, Morgan is separated from the dead man and still legally his wife. This fact compounds Mark’s torment: He knows what he has done and he continues to lie about it, both to his fellow officers and to the woman he loves. The rest of the film left me wondering, almost until the very end, whether Mark would live long enough, first of all, and whether he would start to turn his life around.

I did wonder a bit about the title: Where the Sidewalk Ends. Is it a metaphor for what can happen to people when they decide to leave civilization, or law and order, behind? Or when civilization (or law and order) doesn’t consider them worthy of protection anymore? Mark Dixon gives the clearest explanation of the theme and the meaning of the title when he says to Morgan, “Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.” You end up in a world that has no clear edges and no longer makes sense.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is a great example of a film noir that keeps the suspense building. It gives a wonderful and sympathetic portrayal of a man burdened by his past.

And it certainly helps that Dana Andrews looks noir-perfect in his fedora and overcoat. He and Dick Tracy could have been brothers!