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Danger &
Despair's |
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Screenings |
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in Vintage 16mm Film |
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THE COPS ARE COMING! |
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THE COPS ARE COMING! |
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Yes they're coming....
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on Thursday Nights in
July |
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With a new series
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programmed by Abby
Staeble |
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FREE admission with
reservations |
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screenings@hotmail.com |
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June Vincent &
Dan Duryea in 'BLACK ANGEL' 1946 |
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- The
Cops are Coming!
“Lets get out of here--the cops are coming.” If that sentence
strikes fear in your heart, don’t panic. In this series of three
films we’ll be shining the light in their eyes. We’ll be taking a
look at the various ways in which the films’ portrayals of police
deviate from the norm of their time.
The norm was shaped by the Production Code, developed in the 30’s,
in large part as a response to America’s love of the gangster, a
love fueled by the glamorous, criminal sociopaths depicted in
gangster films like Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931)
and Scarface (1932). Authorities feared that such colorful
characters would spawn juvenile imitators and generally lower the
moral standards of an America easily swayed by the cinema.
The Code was given teeth in 1934 when the Catholic Church literally
put the fear of Hell into would-be viewers of films condemned by the
Church’s Legion of Decency. The loss of Catholic box office revenue
would mean that glamorized sex and crime would no longer pay, and
that would have been Hell for Hollywood. So Hollywood cleaned up its
act: Producers, industry-wide, required that all films be given a
seal of approval from the Hays-Breen Office. Releasing a film
without the seal would subject studios to a $25,000 fine and worse
still--the films would be barred from playing in the vast majority
of first-run theaters that were members of the Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors of America.
The seal was only granted when the Breen Office’s censors felt a
film met the Production Code’s three: “General Principles” namely,
that:
1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards
of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never
be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of
drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy
be created for its violation.
Whether the police were sympathetically treated in a film was among
the key factors systematically reviewed by the censors. See the
attached first page of the standard report form used by the Breen
Office during the 1940’s
*1, reproduced from James Naremore’s More Than
Night- Film Noir in its Contexts. As a result, in the vast majority
of films produced during the Code’s restrictive reign, when the
police arrive on the scene, they are characterized as moral and
ethical men enforcing a just law
*2. This is borne out by an analysis
of the top ten grossing films for each year between 1946 and 1965
conducted by Powers, Rothman and Rothman for their book, Hollywood’s
America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures. Further,
only one in ten police characters included in this study resorted to
violence. *3
- *1. Naremore, James.
More Than Night- Film Noir in
Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California
Press. 1998
*2. Crawford, Charles. “Law Enforcement and Popular
Movies: Hollywood as a Teaching Tool in the Classroom.“
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol6is2/crawford.html
3. Powers, S., Rothman, D. & Rothman, S. Hollywood's
America: Social and political themes in motion
pictures. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1996, p.107, as
sited in the Crawford article.
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Programming & All Film Notes by Abby Staeble |
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All
Films at a NEW show time 7:00 pm - Full BAR and Doors
open at 6:00 pm |
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Thursday
July 5th - 7:00 pm |
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'WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS'
1950 - B&W
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With:
Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Carl Malden & Gary Merrill |
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by Otto Preminger Script: Ben Hecth |
| Photgraphy:
Joseph LaShelle Costumes: Oleg Cassini |
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He’s the cop. He’s the
criminal. He’s the cop. He’s the criminal. He’s the cop and the
criminal.
In Where the Sidewalk Ends producer and director Otto Preminger reunited
Laura’s Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. But the intervening six years had
not been kind to their characters. They no longer lounge in the
overstuffed chairs of the wealthy pining for an unrequitable love. They
now live in decidedly meaner streets. Tierney’s character has been
saddled with an abusive husband. Andrews’ Mark Dixon is weighed down by
fear and self-loathing of his own sadistic nature. Tierney defends
herself with a self-deceptive giddy optimism, a defense so eggshell
fragile in its inappropriateness that it is painful to watch. Mark Dixon
punches back. |
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Anyone using the Breen Office standard report to keep score on Where the
Sidewalk Ends is likely to agree with James Naremore who finds it
amazing that the film, among many other notable noirs, was produced at
all. Ben Hecht’s script and Dana Andrews’ tight-lipped portrayal give us
a Mark Dixon who is a brutal, ticking-time-bomb of a policeman -- hardly
the image of the virtuous upstanding law enforcer wished for by the
censors. And then, how would the censors have felt about Karl Malden’s
cold, by-the-book cop, Lt. Thomas, who is far less sympathetic than the
self-tortured Dixon.
Nonetheless, released in 1950, Where the Sidewalk Ends was given the
seal of approval and appears to have opened the flood-gates to a spate
of noir rogue cops films that includes: The Prowler (1951), The Man Who
Cheated Himself (1951), On Dangerous Grounds (1952), The Big Heat
(1953), City that Never Sleeps (1953), Rogue Cop (1954), Pushover
(1954), and Touch of Evil (1958).
Perhaps Where the Sidewalk Ends was an intentional baiting of the
Production Code. It was released at a time when the Code was losing its
effectiveness due to a number of factors including the forced
divestiture by the major studios of their theater chains. Otto Preminger
is renowned for his flaunting of the Code a few years later. His 1953
comedy, The Moon Is Blue was not given the Breen Office seal of approval
because he refused to cut the words “pregnant,” “virgin,” and “seduce.”
In 1955 his The Man with the Golden Arm was not given the seal of
approval because it violated the Code’s prohibitions against depictions
of drug use. The films’ critical and popular success despite their
release without the seal helped pave the way for the end of the
Production Code and the switch to a rating system. |
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Thursday July 12th - 7:00 pm |
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'BLACK ANGEL'
1946 - B & W
Universal Pictures |
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With: Dan
Duryea, June Vincent & Peter Lorre |
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Directed:
Roy William Neill Script: Roy Chanslor Story:
Cornell Woolrich |
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Beautiful, no good nightclub
singer Mavis Marlowe is strangled to death. Kirk Bennett is accused. “I
didn’t kill her,” he says. “Then you got nothin’ to worry about,”
responds Capt. Flood (Broderick Crawford). Catherine, Bennett’s angelic,
house-frau wife played by June Vincent, continues to believe in her
philandering husband’s innocence despite a good deal of evidence to the
contrary. Hoping to find proof, she enlists the aid of Mavis’s jilted
alcoholic husband, Martin Blair, who, surprisingly, is sympathetically
and sensitively portrayed by Dan Duryea (at least it’s a surprise to
those who remember Duryea best playing misogynistic villains and pimps.)
Martin is a brilliant piano player. |
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Catherine’s voice is at
least as beautiful as that of the murdered Mavis (no surprise
there--June Vincent sings her own character’s songs and Mavis’s, too.)
Martin and Catherine exploit their musical talents in their efforts to
trap the real killer. As he sits waiting on death row, Kirk Bennett
better hope that the unlikely duo are more persistent than Capt. Flood
who is “three months behind in unsolved homicides,” and refuses to
investigate any further. Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, the film is
chock full of dark twists and irony leading to an exciting conclusion
filmed in a wonderfully subjective style. |
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The less-than-zealous Capt.
Flood barely skims the surface of Woolrich’s deep disdain for the
police. Consider this description of Woolrich’s 1935 short story “Dead
on Her Feet” from the Francis M. Nevins, Jr. biography, Cornell Woolrich:
First You Dream, Then You Die. Plainclothesman Smitty is sent to pull
the plug on a dance marathon …
… only to find that one of the last dancers on the floor has literally
died in her partner’s arms. She was desperate to win the $1,000 prize
and had been dancing for nine days and nights, but it wasn’t exhaustion
that killed her: the ambulance doctor finds that she’s been stabbed in
the heart with a metal pencil while reeling dazedly around the dance
floor. Smitty begins his investigation by publicly beating up the dead
girl’s dance partner and fiancé, and ends it, even though he knows by
this point that the fiancé is innocent, by forcing him to dance with her
corpse in his arms until he is literally driven insane. What was
Smitty’s motivation for this obscenity? He had none. Needed none. He’s a
cop. For Woolrich that means he is the earthly counterpart of the
malevolent forces that rule our lives.
*4
It is most unlikely that any filmic depiction of Smitty would have
received the Breen Office’s seal of approval. Arguably, however, Smitty
represents less of a danger to the pro-establishment world viewpoint the
Breen Office and its Production Code sought to uphold than Black Angel’s
dispassionate Capt. Flood. Smitty is an aberration, a bad apple, and our
expectation is that eventually the predominant forces of fate and/or
justice would weed him out -- order would be restored. At least that’s
the standard fate of rogue cops in films like Where the Sidewalk Ends
and The Prowler. But overworked and apathetic Capt. Floods are a dime a
dozen and still around at the end of the film. Thus, Black Angel
insidiously creates the impression that like Martin and Catherine, we
are left to our own devices to defend ourselves against a world of
murderers, philanderers, and Korsikoff’s psychosis. |
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*4. Nevins Jr.,
Francis M. Cornell Woolrich: First You
Dream, Then You Die. New York: Mysterious Press.
1988, p 134. |
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Thursday
July 19th - 7:00 pm |
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'THE PHENIX CITY STORY' 1955 - B& W Allied
Artists |
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With: Richard
Kiley, John McIntire & Kathreen Grant |
| Directed
by Phil Karlson Script: Crane Wilber & Daniel
Mainwaring |
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The Phenix City Story is a
noirish docu-drama complete with a story line stolen from the headlines,
authoritarian voice-overs, and location shooting, but if you’re looking
for a police procedural in the vein of The Naked City or He Walked by
Night, where techno-savvy law officers cleanse the city of its criminal
elements, you’re in the wrong city. It is also a returning veteran
story, but if you’re looking for a case of a confused veteran arriving
home to find his world has changed (think The Blue Dahlia) you’re in the
wrong city. |
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The problem with Phenix City is that it hasn’t changed. In this telling
of a “true story” John Patterson returns home from the Nuremberg trials
where he helped bring Nazis to justice to find that his hometown has
remained the same vice-ridden place it’s been for generations. The only
new twist is that the syndicate has taken over the show and modernized
operations.
Half the town’s citizenry are seemingly willing participants in the
rigged gambling, prostitution and violence that’s taking place right out
in the open. Factory workers efficiently turn out loaded dice and marked
cards. Good girls deal the marked cards while the bad girls peddle
themselves on the street. The police are not merely disinterested; they
are paid for tasks like clearing out any losers who have had the bad
sense to object to the stacked odds. Those citizens who are not actually
participating in the corruption, with sadly few exceptions, simply look
the other way. That’s clearly the safest course. While the mob has
introduced corporate efficiency to corruption, it relies on time honored
intimidation tactics to protect its turf.
The brutality of the intimidation and the seediness of the corruption
are convincingly conveyed—fully honoring the Production Code’s tenet of
not glorifying crime. Brilliant framing and editing make us feel every
cheap gut punch, hold our breath against the fetid atmosphere, and
generally convey a real sense of you-are-there documentary (with one
exception where the investment in a more convincing dummy was definitely
warranted). Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the film is that the
perpetrators and victims of all this violence and squalor are the most
banal looking of individuals. The kind of people we see in the
supermarket or sit next to on BART.
The film is introduced by news interviews with real life citizens of
Phenix City who were involved in the “clean-up” of the town which the
dramatized portion of the film prequels and with which the public would
have been familiar through headline news stories of the day. These
interviews are slow-going, but they serve several purposes. The
interviewees are not heroic looking in any sense which, together with
the ordinariness of the characters in the drama, may be read to
underscore several contradictory messages imparted by the film.
One such message is that what happened in Phenix City could happen
anywhere where the public looks the other way in the face of encroaching
evil. Without the ordinary citizen’s vigilance an unchecked
establishment is easily corrupted and unreliable as a deterrent to evil
that can quickly spread to the point where it is invincible. This is a
message which could equally serve anti-McCarthyites or communist
witchhunters.
The message of the film which the Production Code office would likely
prefer is that Phenix City was in a sense a “rogue” city and the
corrupted police force an anomaly. The plot line follows the standard
rogue cop plot line. The ordinary man on the street would be unable to
fight the mob alone. The good guys, led by John Patterson, must call in
the establishment, in this case the National Guard, to cleanse the
otherwise virtuous state of Alabama of an isolated stain. Order is
restored. Never mind that as revealed to the American public by
televised investigations instigated by Senator Estes Kefauvers in1950,
the mob was now highly organized, corporatized and everywhere. Never
mind one of the interviewee’s pronouncements that at the time of the
interview the mob was already reasserting its tentacles in Phenix City.
In any event, the film propelled the real John Patterson into the
Alabama Governor’s office where he served several terms. Despite his
filmic friendship with the good Zeke Ward, according to Bullets Over
Hollywood author John McCarty, he became a staunch segregationist even
earning the Ku Klux Klan’s endorsement.
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- All Films
start at 7:00 pm - |
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ROBERT MARION Hosts the series which starts at a NEW TIME 7:00 pm. |
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FREE ADMISSION - Luscious
Libations of all varieties - Doors & Bar open at 6:00 pm - Films at
7:00 pm |
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RSVP A MUST! Get on the
Door List to be admitted - Reserve a Seat. |
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Event location given with a
seat confirmation Contact:
screenings@hotmail.com |
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The Thursday Night
Screenings are private film events, admission to these events is by
invitation only through a request and is |
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solely at the discretion of
Danger & Despair and the City Club! At least according to our attorneys
who tell us... |
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"
The Screenings are private
events!, ...and DON’T FORGET IT !! " |
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www.noirfilm.com |
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