Film Noir Series: Born to Kill (1947)

My latest Film Noir Spotlight entry over at Next Projection. You can check out the review HERE. The fifth film on my list is Born to Kill (1947).

A beautiful woman watches a tall, brooding man playing a game of craps at a casino. She watches him out of the corner of her eye as he rolls the pair of dice. When their eyes eventually meet, the man’s mouth lifts into a tiny smile. This wordless exchange lasts only a couple of moments, but the powerful connection between the two leads at the centre of Born to Kill is undeniably palpable.

Based on the James Gunn pulp novel, Deadlier Than The Male, this oft-overlooked noir is arguably one of the nastiest incarnations of the genre. Adapted for the screen by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay, Born to Kill goes against type by featuring a female in the lead – a woman just as despicable as her male counterpart. This unconventional noir doesn’t rely on the familiar tropes of the genre. The film is devoid of any flashback narratives or voice-overs provided by a down-on-his luck private eye. Instead, the plot revolves around the two villains at the centre, one of whom happens to be a man with a seductive edge.

Beautiful socialite Helen Brent (Claire Trevor) finds her soul mate in the form of a psychotic murderer named Sam Wild (Lawrence Tierney). After her first glimpse of him at the casino, she’s drawn to his dark good looks and finds his grim persona irresistible. When she discovers that Sam is behind the grisly murder of an acquaintance, Helen keeps her lips sealed, preferring instead to recount the bloody scene with him privately, with breathless passion. It’s violence as foreplay for Helen and Sam. In a reversal from the traditional femme fatale seducing the lead male, it’s actually Helen who can’t help but get caught up in Sam’s tangled web of violence and deceit. There’s just something about Sam that immediately draws a person to his side – everyone agrees to help him get away with murder, from his loyal friend Marty (Elisha Cook Jr.) to Helen’s own foster sister, Georgia (Audrey Long).

Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor

Despite its stationary camera, the visuals in Born to Kill create a compelling, sometimes haunting, atmosphere – whether it’s a shot of dark shadows obscuring the corpse of a young woman or the image of Sam menacingly crouched in a corner of the room only moments before committing a double murder. Such visuals serve only to heighten the tension, more than making up for the films often-static camerawork.

As Helen, Claire Trevor is nothing short of a revelation. Her barely concealed desire for Sam and her flippant attitude towards his violent nature touch on the dark recesses of her own soul. She hides her true nature beneath a warm and welcoming exterior, a façade that only begins to crack when her own freedom, or that of Sam’s, is under serious threat. As one character tells her: “You’re the coldest iceberg of a woman I ever saw.” Shrewd and manipulative, Helen takes what she wants and it’s a pleasure watching Trevor triumph in the role. She’s so good that you’ll catch yourself rooting for Helen.

Despite not being a strong enough actor to bring out the smaller nuances in the character of Sam, Lawrence Tierney is still strangely alluring in the role. We don’t know why Sam is so angry, only that he’s a hardened sociopath who can “make people or break them.”

In the minor role of private investigator Matthew Arnett, Austrian actor Walter Slezak excels as portraying the sleazy underbelly of a man less interested in justice and more interested in monetary gains. Although the role is under-written, Slezak succeeds at portraying yet another loathsome character in a film full of such types.

With two mesmerizingly evil lead characters, Born to Kill manages to wade through its melodrama to present an exciting and unconventional noir that is both dark and deliciously wicked. 

FINAL GRADE: A-

Film Noir Series: Dillinger (1945)

I've recently started blogging for the Toronto-based film website, Next Projection. They also have a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

I'll be doing a Film Noir series for them, which I'm really excited about. You can check out my first post HERE. I also plan on putting them on here, to help me keep track.

The first film on my list: Dillinger (1945).

Before establishing himself as a weathered thug in films like Born to Kill (1947) and Reservoir Dogs (1992), Lawrence Tierney made his major film debut playing one of America’s most notorious bank robbers.

Clocking in at a brisk 70 minutes, this mostly forgotten crime noir chronicles the illicit career of John Dillinger at breakneck speed. Having robbed more than a dozen banks with his rag-tag group of associates, Dillinger joined the ranks of Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd as the top newsmakers of the Depression era.

However, Dillinger is not a traditional biopic. The Oscar nominated screenplay by Philip Yordan played it fast and loose with the facts. Yordan chose not to dwell on the motivations that saw Dillinger resort to a life of crime. The film is, essentially, a largely fictitious glossing over of the infamous career criminal who, at the time of the films release, had only been dead for 11 years.

Lawrence Tierney (right) as Dillinger.

A B-movie from Monogram Pictures, the tiny “poverty row” studio that made a quick buck with low budget films between 1931-1953, Dillinger went on to gross more than 4 million dollars at the box office – this despite its obvious flaws.  At the time, Dillinger defied the Production Code’s unofficial rule to relegate real life criminal activity to the background in Hollywood films, likely the reason behind its popularity.

No one else in Hollywood would touch the story of Public Enemy #1, leaving the door open for Monogram to adapt Dillinger’s exploits to its own liking.

Riddled with inconsistencies, Dillinger begins with a framing narrative that is quickly abandoned. A theatre audience listens as Dillinger’s elderly father recounts his sons’ misadventures. The film than moves into a flashback of Dillinger’s early introduction to a life of crime and the story proceeds from there. There is no concluding scene that features Dillinger’s father finishing his account.

Another curiosity comes out in the DVD commentary (featuring John Milius, the director of 1973’s Dillinger) where it’s revealed that the 1945 film actually used stock footage in some of its prominent scenes. Most notably, the tear gas robbery sequence was lifted straight from Fritz Lang’s 1937 film You Only Live Once – complete with a close-up shot of the films star, Henry Fonda, peering out of the back of his car.

Although some have argued against the films classification as film noir, director Max Nosseck utilized traditional narrative devices and visuals often associated with the genre. With its use of flashbacks, albeit briefly, and reductionist lighting, Dillinger features sequences with heavy rain, thick clouds of cigarette smoke and spinning newspapers with bold titles revealing Dillinger’s criminal activity to propel the plot forward. In terms of its aesthetic qualities, the film as aged remarkably well.

However, its strongest facet is Tierney; he makes for a shifty, anxious and explosive Dillinger. Although the character development is kept to the bare minimum you understand he’s a man to be feared – the type of guy who would take serious offense to being called a “two-bit chiseler”.  His barely concealed rage simmers just beneath the surface. Tierney doesn’t strive to make Dillinger likeable, opting instead to portray him as an outright villain with questionable motivations.

Dillinger is strange hybrid of gangster flick, film noir and docudrama, without ever quite achieving success as any of the three in terms of storytelling. Its simplistic approach to storytelling propels the action forward, however it ultimately leaves little impact outside of Tierney’s performance.

FINAL GRADE: C+