Mine Own Executioner (1947)

Burgess Meredith and Dulcie Gray

TCM has been showing some seldom seen noirs of late, including the gripping drama Mine Own Executioner (1947), in which Burgess Meredith plays Felix Milne, a London "lay psychotherapist." (What we would call a Clinical Psychologist these days) Milne has a successful practice, although he is privately somewhat scornful of many of his patients, whom he feels are rich middle aged ladies who just need someone to talk to. He does have the gift of empathy and is genuinely helpful to those in real need. He also donates part of his time to a free mental clinic in chronic need of cash.

Meredith's portrait of Milne is wonderfully deep. Although often able to figure out how to lay the demons to rest in his patients' lives, he is entirely powerless to quiet his own. He suffers from feelings of insecurity because of his lack of a medical degree; loves his wife, (Dulcie Gray) but is annoyed by her clumsiness and lack of the social graces and is fighting his attraction to his friends' beautiful young wife, played by Christine Norden.

Christine Norden

Kieron Moore and Barbara White

When the young wife (Barbara White) of a former POW who is showing signs of schizophrenia and violence comes to ask Milne to treat her husband, (Kieron Moore) Milne tries to recommend her to a medical doctor, feeing that the young man's mental illness seems too profound to be susceptible to analysis alone, but the ex-RAF pilot's fear and distrust of doctors prevents this option from being viable, and Milne reluctantly agrees to try to help, but takes the precaution of consulting his good friend Dr. James Garsten (John Laurie) from the free clinic. The two begin intensive therapy, but Milne soon finds himself in over his head and fears that his new patient may be a time bomb waiting to explode.

Kieron Moore

Barbara White, Burgess Meredith, and John Laurie

Ronald Simpson, Dulcie Gray, John Laurie and Burgess Meredith

Three Strangers (1946)

I just saw this interesting little black comedy this evening. I recorded it a couple of weeks ago off of TCM, but only got around to watching it tonight. It starred a couple of my favorite noir "second banana" players, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, along with Geraldine Fitzgerald, whom I remember from Dark Victory (1939) with Bette Davis.

The premise is kind of unusual. Geraldine Fitzgerald plays Crystal Shackleford, the estranged wife of a British consular official who, during her travels in China, has picked up and come to believe in a bronze idol to the Chinese Goddess of fortune and destiny, Kwan Yin. According to a legend, if three strangers gather before the idol on the night of the Chinese New Year and make a common wish, Kwan Yin will open her eyes and her heart and grant the wish. In order to facilitate this, Mrs. Shackleford has invited two strangers into her flat on this night. One is a respectable Barrister, Jerome K. Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) and the other is Johnny West (Peter Lorre). Without any of them learning the others' names, they agree to go into partnership on a sweepstakes ticket that Johnny West has bought for 10 shillings, and their wish is that the ticket win the sweepstakes.

After this opening, we come to learn more about our three protagonists. Mrs. Shackleford, as it turns out, is completely amoral and sociopathic. She is obsessed with winning back the affections of her husband, (Alan Napier) who has gone off on assignment to Canada and returned in love with another woman (Marjorie Riordan) and wanting a divorce. She refuses to consent to the divorce and attempts to ruin his career by spreading scandalous gossip to his superiors in the consular service and drives his new love interest away by telling her falsely that the couple has reconciled and she is pregnant with the husband's child.

Jerome K. Arbutny is revealed as a tyrant to his office staff, and we discover he has been speculating with the principle from a trust fund he administers. The investments, naturally, have not been doing well and he has become desperate for money. Sydney Greenstreet often played nasty men deliciously but here he takes his character's weakness and pettiness much further than usual, and his scenes of escalating madness are very effective..

As the real star of the film, Peter Lorre is wonderfully wry and quite lovable as one of life's eternal losers. Of the three strangers, Johnny West is the least villainous, being merely a drunken ne'er-do-well. Ironically, he is the one wanted by the police for being involved in a robbery in which a police officer is killed. In truth Johnny was duped into being involved and was so drunk at the time that he didn't know a robbery was in progress. A girl with the unlikely name of Icey (Joan Lorring) is helping to hide him from the cops. Johnny is a weak man, but gentle and intelligent and Icey ends up falling in love with him.

Joan Lorring and Arthur Shields

I won't spoil the ending, but I will tell you that, naturally, the sweepstakes ticket wins, but the results are not what any of our three strangers could have expected. Fickle fortune deals several surprises in this black comedy about human greed and fate's cruelty. Three Strangers has no big stars, no glamor, and only the sliest, cruelest humor. What it does have are the perfectly executed performances of the three principals, and that's enough to make it a neglected classic.

Blade Runner (1982)

In Ridley Scott's dystopian vision of futuristic Los Angeles, Blade Runner (1982), Harrison Ford plays a "Blade Runner;" A sort of policeman charged with eliminating "replicants," who are human-appearing androids that are forbidden to be on the suface of the Earth. This is, in my personal opinion, the greatest science fiction movie ever made. In addition, it is a splendid example of the neo-noir style.

Harrison Ford brings an exquisite moral ambiguity to the character of Richard Deckard, a man who is tired of killing and hates his job, but cannot find a way to escape it.

Sean Young plays Rachael, struggling with her identity, haunted by memories that may not be her own and afraid that she will discover she is a replicant.

Rutger Hauer is brilliant as Roy Batty, the replicant leader, willing to fight and kill for the chance to live.

Edward James Olmos is Gaff, the cynical detective who leaves little origami figures wherever he goes and who ropes Deckard into one final Blade Runner task.

Daryl Hannah is Pris, the "basic pleasure model" who seduces J.F. Sebastian into providing access to the Tyrell inner sanctum and the replicants' creator.

The beautiful but deadly Zhora is played by Joanna Cassidy.

Joe Turkel as Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the creator of the Nexus series of replicants.

J.F. Sebastian, who works for Tyrell, and whose hobby is the creation of android toys, is played by William Sanderson.

The cinematography in this film is nothing less than gorgeous. The bluish haze of the city, dirty, wet and gritty, contribute to the noirish atmosphere and the brilliant use of shadow and low camera angles lend it a familiar tone to those familiar will the noir tradition. This is not CGI, either. It was made in 1982, so the effects are all achieved through models.

This is neither space opera nor post apocalyptic horror story. It is detective noir set in a grim unappealing future cityscape. It's also a love story, but a story of lovers afraid of what the truth about themselves might be. Most of all, this is a philosophical treatise on what it means to be human and the questions each of us have about life. How long will I live? Why must I die? What happens when I die? Does my creator care? At the end of the film we are left wondering if the replicants are human, and if Deckard himself is a replicant. Scott raises more questions than he answers, and critics are still debating the many layers of meaning in this film.

Crossfire (1947)

Memorable, not only for it's dark and brooding atmosphere, (in this world, it seems always night) and for the fact that it was Gloria Grahame's first soiree into the world of Film Noir, Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire (1947) is the screen adaptation of Richard Brooks' The Brick Foxhole.

The novel dealt with the murder of a homosexual, but Hollywood was NOT prepared to go there in 1947, so the movie substitutes antisemitism to preach against. Because of the war, hating jews had become a lot less respectable than it had been heretofore.

Perhaps because of this substitution, the film gives us no explanation of why Robert Ryan's character hates jews. It seems that any group could have been the object of his wrath. This is counter to the usual tendency in movies, where motivations are considered essential, but may be the most true-to-life aspect of the film. The fact that this is purposeful is indicated in Robert Young's tale of his Irish grandfather's long ago murder at the hands of bigots.

This movie has a lot going for it. The cinematography is just marvelous, but it's the characterizations that are the meat of the matter. Robert Young, as the moralizing detective does a good job of keeping his pipe-smoking character, saddled with delivering the movie's earnest message, this side of pompousness. Robert Mitchum gives a spot on performance as the placid survivor, whom war has tempered but not destroyed. George Cooper is the shell-shocked young basket case, (what we would consider a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder today) and, like many suffering from this condition, is taunted and branded as a coward by his fellow soldiers. He has become utterly self-loathing and fears the return to normalcy. He is the obvious candidate for the frame-up.

Robert Ryan is truly spine chilling. What a performance! He creates a frighteningly convincing portrait of an ignorant, violently unstable bigot, repleat with phony geniality, bullying, and resentment of anyone with advantages he lacks.

Gloria Grahame nearly steals the movie with her two scenes. Bleached-blonde, cynical and caustic. She looks ready to barf when Mitchell (George Cooper) tells her that she reminds him of his wife, but his wistful sincerity manages to penetrate her hard defensive shell, and she dances with Mitchell in a deserted courtyard, then offers to cook him spaghetti at her apartment.

Adding little to the plot, but much to the atmosphere as the compulsive liar who might or might not be Gloria Grahame's husband, Paul Kelly, delivers a wonderful performance, approaching the surreal. At one point, he says to George Cooper, "You know what I told you? All those things I just told you? They're all lies."

Ginny: (Gloria Grahame) [to Mitchell's wife (Jacqueline White)] Okay, where were you when he needed you? Maybe you were someplace having beautiful thoughts. Well, I wasn't. I was in a stinkin' gin mill, where all he had to do to see me was walk in, sit down at the table and buy me a drink.