neotoma

Today I went with A Person to Be Pseudonymed Later to see Rear Window and A Man in the Dark (1953) (which was the first 3-D film from a major studio).

Rear Window is a classic for a reason -- it is a tightly written suspense story with engaging characters that use the constrained setting (one room of an apartment and the surrounding apartments as they can be seen from the rear window) to great effect.

A Man in the Dark is entertaining for a b-movie film noir. The best part of it is the ending set on amusement pier (and thus a chase and fight on rollercoaster tracks) and the insurance investigator who is the smartest person in the movie.

Last night, A Person to Be Pseudonymed Later and I went to the Noir City DC festival and attended a screening of The Killer Who Stalked New York (1950).

The basic premise is that a woman, who being pursued by Customs Officers because she's smuggling stolen diamonds, comes back from a trip to Cuba. She comes back to her husband, who is also involved in the diamond smuggling, and unbeknownst to her he's having an affair with her sister. Unbeknowst to everyone, she's picked up smallpox. She evades the Customs Officers persueing her, but winds up sick on the street and is taken to a public health clinic, where the doctor misdiagnosis her, though not before she interacts with a child in the waiting room.

The movie is pretty heavy-handed, and some of the "it's so frustrating that we can't beat this even with all the modern medical technology of 1947!" is more than a little awkward in retrospective, but it's definitely a good attempt to tell a noir story with an interesting twist. The vaccination effort running into supply shortages was also a nice touch, though the mayor telling the vaccine manufacturing executives to break regulations in order to get more vaccine made had me rolling my eyes; FDA safety regulations were only 9 years old at the time, and no one in the pharmaceutical industry would have been ignorant of why they existed. The idea that you could get a sewing machine company to make smallpox innocculation needles was also Hollywood Logic at its finest.

The movies suffers a little bit because the make-up technology of the time isn't up to producing a convincing smallpox rash -- the main character does manage to look ill, through pasty, unflattering make-up, but none of the other characters who fall ill show any sign of the characteristic rash. The only time there's convincing smallpox on the screen is the scene in the military lab with a high-powered microscope, and I'm pretty sure the actor who said "if you survive, you wind up looking like this" was actually a smallpox survivor, because that pebbly skin texture would have been impossible for the movie make-up of the time.

Still, it was pretty obvious why the Noir Foundation put this movie on the roster, and I did enjoy it a lot.

Went to see Cat People (1942) as the AFI is showing all of Val Lewton's movies as the Val Lewton: Master of Macabre movie series for Halloween with greenygal and A (person to be pseydonymed later).

The movie has some truly stunning sequences, including a walk through the dark that ends with a bus pulling up while sounding like a screaming pather. You can really see techniques that came to define Noir in the film, including really gorgeous use of chiaroscuro lighting effects. And the scene at the pool allowed the secondary female character to be smart and displayed the terrifying uses of lighting and sound effects in the hands of someone who knew how to do a lot with minimal equipment.

We all wound up rooting for the death of the psychiatrist by halfway through the film, for being a boundary-violating creep. I don't know if any of that was accurate to acceptable practice of the day, but even his Dr. Van Helsing vibe couldn't get us to sympathize with him.

Also, Alan Napier made another appearance in a noir-ish film, and I'm beginning to wonder if I should make a spotter's list of all the actors who I recognize from other roles that show up in my vintage movies...

I went to see The Killing (1956) on Wednesday by myself, and the double feature The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974) and Charley Varrick with A (person to be pseudonymed later).

The Killing was excellent noir, full of chiascuro and dutch angles, with a tight tight script, including the final escape with the money being foiled by airline safety regulations!

For the double feature, Eddie Mueller, who hosts Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies if you have that on cable, was there to introduce both movies. Since the theme of Noir City this year is "The Big Knockover: Heists, Hold-ups, and Schemes Gone Wrong", the Noir Foundation included several movies that are strictly speaking outside of the classic Noir genre, but are classics demonstrating the evolution of heist movies. Thus, we had 'Walter Matthau night' with the double feature.

( The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974) )

( Charley Varrick )

And tonight, because I wanted to, I made Flemish Waffles from Everyone Eats Well In Belgium. I omitted the cognac, because making waffles taste of alcohol is pretty much a Do-Not-Want for me, but they were pretty tasty nevertheless, and I have a stack of waffles for breakfast for the week; I'm still getting used to my waffle iron, and it's a bit tricky to get it adjusted to be Just Crispy Enough. The waffle was especially good with the salted brown sugar peach jam I put up several weeks ago, and tomorrow I might try it with the rest of the black raspberry preserve I have open, or the pear compote. Maybe someday I'll get some pearl sugar and try the recipe for Leige waffles -- though I think I'd need a different waffle iron to actually get them perfectly right.

Went to see Gaslight (1944) with A (person without a pseudonym) and greenygal; ellen_fremedon was supposed to join us, but the theater was sold out before she got there... for some reason, they were showing it in one of the smaller cinemas, instead of in the biggest one, which is at least twice as large and wouldn't have been as ridiculously sold out.

It was an excellent film, this print in 35 mm, and still completely relevant and at moments hard to watch. And it passes the Bechdel Test in the first 15 minutes! If you get a chance to see it on the big screen, it's definitely worth it.

This wasn't officially part of the Noir City DC film festival, but it was a nice run up to that. Next week is, though, and I might be seeing three movies next Saturday: Kansas City Confidential, Criss-Cross, and The Asphalt Jungle, with Sunday's White Heat a strong possibility as well.

I am definitely going to see the double-feature of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 & Charley Varrick on Friday, October 20th, if anyone wants to join me.