Toi… Le Venin (Night is Not for Sleep) (1958)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Toi… Le Venin (Night is Not for Sleep) (1958) – R. Hossein

Last night, I thought I might have stumbled onto a forgotten French noir gem. The first few minutes held promise: a drifter (Robert Hossein, who also directed) is alone on the road at night when he is offered a lift by a mysterious blonde in a white Cadillac. Instead of driving on, she pulls over, seduces him, and then kicks him out of the car. Catching a glimpse of the number plate as she drives off, the drifter, Pierre Menda, resolves to track her down, which he does by visiting the police station. When he arrives at the address, he finds two sisters, Helene and Eva (played by Odile Versois and Marina Vlady, real sisters), but cannot figure out if either of them or neither was the mysterious woman from the night before. To complicate matters, Eva is in a wheelchair, unable to walk due to polio. The rest of the movie involves Pierre and viewers trying to guess who goes out each night in the white car, while both women compete for his affections.  Unfortunately, by the time we reach the conclusion, I didn’t care too much anymore; the filmmakers had undermined my interest with a hesitant plot.  In addition, I’m not sure the film is really a noir either, as the protagonist is able to walk away shrugging his shoulders just as easily as he fell into the sisters’ story.  It turns out that there is an entire oeuvre of Hossein movies, across different genres, which he wrote, directed, and starred in. Perhaps for those with more time on their hands than I?

 

T-Men (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

T-Men (1947) – A. Mann

John Alton was one of noir’s great cinematographers and his work on T-Men for director Anthony Mann is a good example. Shadows are everywhere here, with some scenes nearly pitch black. The film falls into the category of noirs that aimed to tell “true stories” under the auspices of U. S. Government agencies, often the FBI but here the Treasury Department (the “T” in T-Men). We begin with a brief introduction by an official before launching into a procedural look at an attempt to infiltrate a counterfeiting ring (complete with matter-of-fact narration; Dragnet was not far off). Dennis O’Keefe and Alfred Ryder play the title characters who go undercover, first in Detroit and then in L. A., to find out who is making new bills on impossibly good paper (discovered to come from Shanghai, eventually).  They have access to some high-quality engraved plates, retrieved from another counterfeiter now in prison, to give them credibility and to help them to get access to the big boss of the ring. Of course, things don’t always go to plan.  A solid outing for Mann and Alton who made a run of noirs together (and separately) in the late Forties.

 

Black Widow (1987)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Black Widow (1987) – B. Rafelson

Debra Winger stars as the Department of Justice investigator who suspects Theresa Russell of marrying and then killing successive wealthy husbands across multiple states. No one believes her but her boss lets her take time off to pursue her theory, which leads her first to Seattle and then to Hawaii where she befriends Russell and tries to thwart her plot. There’s a twist ending, as befits a film noir.  However, as directed by Bob Rafelson, the result is a bit flat. I didn’t care for his earlier take on noir either, a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1981, with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. Perhaps, in the hands of another director, the screenplay by Ron Bass might have worked – or perhaps if we had other actors in the leads? Winger is fine playing a bit of a schlub who blossoms when competing with Russell’s black widow for romantic attention but Russell herself seems dull and unconvincing in her part. Overall, it’s okay, especially because there are few films where the detective is female (and that adds a little frisson), but there are other much better ‘80s neonoirs out there (such as Body Heat, 1981, for example).

 

The Big Clock (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Big Clock (1948) – J. Farrow

This film came packaged in a “Universal Noir” DVD boxset (alongside This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia) – to be honest, I always felt this was the lesser of the bunch (the only one without Ladd & Lake). Watching it again last night for Noirvember, I appreciated it a bit more but still feel that its often jokey tone doesn’t quite allow the darkness of the noir themes to come through. As “Crimeways” magazine editor George Stroud, Ray Milland is, in many ways, an archetypal noir protagonist – he’s a bit of a cad who ignores his wife and child, partly because he’s pressured by the publisher Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) and partly because he likes a drink and is happy to chat up a pretty lady. For these latter sins, he is made to pay when one of the women he is out with ends up murdered and his magazine is charged with finding the killer, using their special board of clues that all begin to point directly to George himself.  He’s in a tight spot but thinks he knows the real killer – however time is running out as witnesses who saw the victim with him are lining up to take a look at all of the employees in the building. Janoth cruelly ramps up the pressure, demanding an outcome, without knowing the squeeze George is in. And yet, and yet, Milland’s performance never really captures the dread he would be feeling, instead he displays fast-thinking and scrambles to get out of the jam (with the help of his wife played by Maureen O’Sullivan, director John Farrow’s real wife and mother of Mia Farrow) with a bit of sardonic humour to boot. Enjoyable but I want the darkness.