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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
We’re back into the regular run of AMAD. I’ll miss you Halloween movies, but we have a good recovery week with an eclectic group of flicks. I’ve also done some work to add in another 100 titles into the pool, many of which are horror films I didn’t get to during October, so there’s even more variety.
We ease back in following the radiant Gene Tierney over from September 30th’s LAURA to 1954’s Fox Noir DVD title BLACK WIDOW.
First thing’s first. Fox Noir needs to actually watch the movies before they put them out under noir releases. There are a couple of femme fatales in the movie, but I wouldn’t categorize this movie as noir.
For one, it’s bright, beautiful Technicolor and super scope. Can you have a film noir shot in Technicolor? I think that automatically cancels out the noir categorization, unless there’s an example anyone out there can throw at me, of course. None come to my mind. I can even see the case being made that any color film can not be film noir, but I wouldn’t go that far. Movies like BRICK play up film noir archetypes and have a muted enough color palate to feel right.
So, the flick’s in color, but it’s also not very hard-boiled. In other words, if it’s a noir it’s a very unique one, atypical of the genre.
When the flick started I thought it was a dramedy, actually. Set amongst the Broadway elite of New York, we meet some colorful characters, including Lottie Martin, a diva of an actress played by Ginger Rogers who seems to delight in being the biggest bitch in the world to everybody. She lets loose some stingers in the first few minutes to unwitting party-goers that were so harsh and snobby that I couldn’t help but laugh.
Van Heflin is the lead of the movie, playing a Broadway producer named Peter Danver whose wife (Tierney) has to go take care of her sick mother, leaving Heflin to go it alone to one of Rogers’ big parties. Heflin intends to walk in and walk right back out again and almost gets away with it, too, before being pulled back in by Rogers’ husband, Brian Mullen (played by Reginald Gardiner).
At the party Heflin meets a beautiful young woman, an aspiring writer who speaks her mind and is adorably blunt. Peggy Anne Garner plays Nanny Ordway. Nanny turns out to be a real social climber and her trick is her ability to appear absolutely honest, straight and non-manipulative.
Okay, I thought about half an hour into the movie. This is a take on the ALL ABOUT EVE story and we’re going to see an unfortunately realistic series of backstabbings as a seemingly forthright and moral girl manipulates her way to her goals without any regard to the people she fucks over along the way.
That had to be it. Heflin was keeping faithful to his wife, but he took a liking to Garner right away and wanted to help her out. He gives her his apartment to use as a place to write, with it’s inspiring view of the New York cityscape, while he’s out all day, which of course starts some gossip since the talkative diva lives in the apartment above him.
But Heflin is through and through a good guy. He’s transparent about his new friendship with his wife, alerting her to it immediately after the first dinner they share.
So, Tierney comes home and they enter the apartment, which is supposed to be empty, but the record player is blaring. They enter to find all of Garner’s shit still there… and then they find her body, hanging from a rope.
What the fuck!?! This is less than 40 minutes into the movie and completely made me throw out my expectations of where this movie was going. And on top of that, it’s a creepy-ass image. Heflin slowly opens the bedroom door and we see the girl’s shadow…
And I don’t know about you guys, but the image of a human hanged really gets under my skin. I know it’s not a pleasant image for anybody, but it’s one that particularly works to unnerve me. I don’t know why that image over other horrific shit I see in horror flicks gets me, but it does. And in this movie they do a particularly disturbing version of the hanging person image. Garner’s head is bent backwards, so the face is staring straight up. Fuck that!
The rest of the movie is Heflin figuring out why Garner died. At first it’s an average curiosity, but the more that gets uncovered, the more he is implemented in her death, which looks less and less like suicide, despite a bizarre suicide note (there’s a drawing of a hanged girl) left on the scene.
How clean is Heflin? Is he dodging the investigative team in order to clear his name like he says or is he trying to find a way to cover up his crime?
It’s a very interesting story and what I like about it is how the layers are pulled back bit by bit, revealing Garner to be quite a different character than we expect. If you’re like me you won’t want to believe that Garner was anything other than the quirky innocent girl she presented herself as.
The acting in the movie is strong across the board, especially where Ginger Rogers is concerned. This isn’t a typical role for her, playing the nasty and mean actress and she really keeps the movie lively. She’s always entertaining and there’s a surprising depth to her character, a certain level of desperation, a motivation for her cruel and cold exterior.
Heflin is great, too, but there’s not much depth to his character and they only briefly touch upon the ambiguity of his character, which I think might have made the movie even better, but as it stands there wasn’t really much of the movie where I questioned if he was as innocent as he claimed to be.
Otto Kruger (who has appeared in previous AMADs MURDER, MY SWEET and THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS) plays Nanny’s Uncle who has a very important, but unfortunately small role in the movie. Kruger makes full use of his screen-time, though. George Raft is the detective hunting down Heflin and trying to solve the case and he gets a lot more to work with, crafting a pretty one-dimensional, but solid character.
Unfortunately, I think the big disappoint with me in the movie is that Gene Tierney was given very, very little to do besides sitting pretty on a coach for most of the movie. The foundations are there for some great, tormented work for her character… how she slowly loses confidence in her husband and has to make the decision to either believe him or believe the growing pile of evidence that contradicts him. There’s a lot of meat there, but that’s not what the movie is focused on so Tierney is left with relatively little to do.
BLACK WIDOW was directed and co-written by Nunnally Johnson, who wrote the adaptation of THE GRAPES OF WRATH in 1940. Visually, he knows what he’s doing. There are a few shots that really stand out in my memory already here, mostly playing with shadows. There the one moment I mentioned earlier with the hanging woman and then there’s another shot where a character responds to a knock at a door and when he opens it Heflin’s shadow falls upon the open door, even though he’s hidden from the camera. It’s unmistakably Heflin… he pauses before entering the room, letting his shadow be our first glimpse of him in this scene. Really cool.
All that goes to my theory that if Nunnally Johnson had made this a black and white film and really played with the shadows like he tinkers with here then it would have taken this movie from being a really good flick, a solid mystery piece to a great movie. And I love this era’s cinemascope IB Tech eye-popping colors, but in this case I think the story and tone would have been better served with black and white photography and a smaller frame.
Final Thoughts: BLACK WIDOW stands apart from like movies and I found it to be surprisingly unique, even if sometimes that hurts the story we’re left with a film that definitely keeps you guessing. Nice photography, solid direction and acting all round out the picture and keep it firmly in the recommend category.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Sunday, November 2nd: THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947)
Monday, November 3rd: THE FLYING TIGERS (1942)
Tuesday, November 4th: EXECUTIVE ACTION (1973)
Wednesday, November 5th: THE BUSY BODY (1967)
Thursday, November 6th: IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963)
Friday, November 7th: LIBELED LADY (1936)
Saturday, November 8th: UP THE RIVER (1930)
In the coming week we have quite a few different kinds of films, as you can see. Comedies, political thrillers, dramas… interesting variety. See you folks tomorrow for yet more Gene Tierney with THE GHOST & MRS. MUIR!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Previous Movies:
June 2nd: Harper
June 3rd: The Drowning Pool
June 4th: Papillon
June 5th: Gun Crazy
June 6th: Never So Few
June 7th: A Hole In The Head
June 8th: Some Came Running
June 9th: Rio Bravo
June 10th: Point Blank
June 11th: Pocket Money
June 12th: Cool Hand Luke
June 13th: The Asphalt Jungle
June 14th: Clash By Night
June 15th: Scarlet Street
June 16th: Killer Bait (aka Too Late For Tears)
June 17th: Robinson Crusoe On Mars
June 18th: City For Conquest
June 19th: San Quentin
June 20th: 42nd Street
June 21st: Dames
June 22nd: Gold Diggers of 1935
June 23rd: Murder, My Sweet
June 24th: Born To Kill
June 25th: The Sound of Music
June 26th: Torn Curtain
June 27th: The Left Handed Gun
June 28th: Caligula
June 29th: The Elephant Man
June 30th: The Good Father
July 1st: Shock Treatment
July 2nd: Flashback
July 3rd: Klute
July 4th: On Golden Pond
July 5th: The Cowboys
July 6th: The Alamo
July 7th: Sands of Iwo Jima
July 8th: Wake of the Red Witch
July 9th: D.O.A.
July 10th: Shadow of A Doubt
July 11th: The Matchmaker
July 12th: The Black Hole
July 13th: Vengeance Is Mine
July 14th: Strange Invaders
July 15th: Sleuth
July 16th: Frenzy
July 17th: Kingdom of Heaven: The Director’s Cut
July 18th: Cadillac Man
July 19th: The Sure Thing
July 20th: Moving Violations
July 21st: Meatballs
July 22nd: Cast a Giant Shadow
July 23rd: Out of the Past
July 24th: The Big Steal
July 25th: Where Danger Lives
July 26th: Crossfire
July 27th: Ricco, The Mean Machine
July 28th: In Harm’s Way
July 29th: Firecreek
July 30th: The Cheyenne Social Club
July 31st: The Man Who Knew Too Much
August 1st: The Spirit of St. Louis
August 2nd: Von Ryan’s Express
August 3rd: Can-Can
August 4th: Desperate Characters
August 5th: The Possession of Joel Delaney
August 6th: Quackser Fortune Has A Cousin In The Bronx
August 7th: Start the Revolution Without Me
August 8th: Hell Is A City
August 9th: The Pied Piper
August 10th: Partners
August 11th: Barry Lyndon
August 12th: The Skull
August 13th: The Hellfire Club
August 14th: Blood of the Vampire
August 15th: Terror of the Tongs
August 16th: Pirates of Blood River
August 17th: The Devil-Ship Pirates
August 18th: Jess Franco’s Count Dracula
August 19th: Dracula A.D. 1972
August 20th: The Stranglers of Bombay
August 21st: Man, Woman & Child
August 22nd: The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane
August 23rd: The Young Philadelphians
August 24th: The Rack
August 25th: Until They Sail
August 26th: Somebody Up There Likes Me
August 27th: The Set-Up
August 28th: The Devil & Daniel Webster
August 29th: Cat People
August 30th: The Curse of the Cat People
August 31st: The 7th Victim
September 1st: The Ghost Ship
September 2nd: Isle of the Dead
September 3rd: Bedlam
September 4th: Black Sabbath
September 5th: Black Sunday
September 6th: Twitch of the Death Nerve
September 7th: Tragic Ceremony
September 8th: Lisa & The Devil
September 9th: Baron Blood
September 10th: A Shot In The Dark
September 11th: The Pink Panther
September 12th: The Return of the Pink Panther
September 13th: The Pink Panther Strikes Again
September 14th: Revenge of the Pink Panther
September 15th: Trail of the Pink Panther
September 16th: The Real Glory
September 17th: The Winning of Barbara Worth
September 18th: The Cowboy and the Lady
September 19th: Dakota
September 20th: Red River
September 21st: Terminal Station
September 22nd: The Search
September 23rd: Act of Violence
September 24th: Houdini
September 25th: Money From Home
September 26th: Papa’s Delicate Condition
September 27th: Dillinger
September 28th: Battle of the Bulge
September 29th: Daisy Kenyon
September 30th: Laura
October 1st: The Dunwich Horror
October 2nd: Experiment In Terror
October 3rd: The Devil’s Rain
October 4th: Race With The Devil
October 5th: Salo, Or The 120 Days of Sodom
October 6th: Bad Dreams
October 7th: The House Where Evil Dwells
October 8th: Memories of Murder
October 9th: The Hunger
October 10th: I Saw What You Did
October 11th: I Spit On Your Grave
October 12th: Naked You Die
October 13th: The Wraith
October 14th: Silent Night, Bloody Night
October 15th: I Bury The Living
October 16th: The Beast Must Die
October 17th: Hellgate
October 18th: He Knows You’re Alone
October 19th: The Thing From Another World
October 20th: The Fall of the House of Usher
October 21st: Audrey Rose
October 22nd: Who Slew Auntie Roo?
October 23rd: Wait Until Dark
October 24th: Dead & Buried
October 25th: A Bucket of Blood
October 26th: The Bloodstained Shadow
October 27th: I, Madman
October 28th: Return to Horror High
October 29th: Die, Monster, Die
October 30th: Epidemic
October 31st: Student Bodies
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