How one of the masters of noir survived 1950s America
The Archivist — Welcome to the Archive. As home video formats have evolved over the years, a multitude of films have found themselves in danger of being forgotten forever due to their niche appeal. Thankfully, Warner Bros. established the Archive Collection, a Manufacture-On-Demand DVD operation devoted to thousands of idiosyncratic and ephemeral works of cinema. The Archive has expanded to include a streaming service, revivals of out-of-print DVDs, and Blu-ray discs (which, unlike the DVDs, are factory pressed rather than burned). Join us as we explore this treasure trove of cinematic discovery!
There’s hardly a cinephile who doesn’t have an affinity for the film noir era. That period of time in the 1940s when the country was dealing with a war-conscious society played itself out beautifully in cinema through tales of suspense and crime all gloriously illustrated through some of the most visually expressive camera movements ever to exist. One of the genre’s most invaluable artists was director Fritz Lang and the assortment of films he made during this time. From The Woman in the Window to Scarlet Street to (my personal favorite) Secret Beyond the Door…, each noir effort was a treasure and a one-of-a-kind testament to the genre. With each film he made, Lang unearthed another layer to film noir through the magnetic stories he told and hypnotic style in which he executed them.
Yet by the time the 1950s had come along, the era of film noir was becoming passe, despite a few notable exceptions. With moviegoers flocking to stories which favored the romantic and melodramatic over the darkness of society’s underbelly, filmmakers such as Lang found themselves at a creative crossroads. What’s most interesting about Lang during this period was the way he was able to reconcile his instincts as a storyteller with the pulse of cinema landscape in the 1950s. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Lang prevailed by churning out a handful of worthwhile titles which exist now as fascinating hybrids best described as post-noir.
In keeping with the post-noir ‘50s theme of this year’s annual Noir City Austin, the retrospective film festival put on each year by the Film Noir Foundation featuring a collection of little-seen titles that have been rescued and restored by the organization, I felt the timing was perfect for paying tribute to a pair of Lang films, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and While the City Sleeps (both 1956), which show a master filmmaker who never stopped.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)
Lang ventured into the courtroom for this story of novelist Tom (Dana Andrews), who cooks up a scheme with his future father-in-law Austin (Sidney Blackmer) to frame himself for the murder of a local stripper as a protest towards capital punishment. While the pair manage to keep the plan from Tom’s fiance Susan (Joan Fontaine), the two men are left powerless when unforeseen circumstances make their plan go awry and place Mark’s future in grave danger.
While Lang flirted with social issues in many of his classic titles, the director rarely tackled a subject as hot button as the death penalty. It was certainly a gutsy move which couldn’t have sat well with studio executives, but it was one from which Lang was determined not to stray. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt has a good collection of scenes which explore the various problems with the death penalty, giving a somewhat solid argument with regards to its abolishment. So much emphasis on theme meant that Lang’s genre-defining style is sadly lacking here, with very little visual imagination showing up on the screen in terms of angles and lighting, showing that perhaps the filmmaker (like the times) had begun to move on from the dark visual flair of film noir. It’s sad, but unsurprising, that the movie was not a success given its subject matter and throwback genre trappings. Still, the two leads are fantastic (Andrews bucks typecasting, while Fontaine elevates the typical socialite role), and the overall plot of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt boasts enough twists and turns to delight genre fans right up until the final genuinely dramatic moments.
While the City Sleeps (1956)
Featuring a somewhat sprawling ensemble (largely leftover from the glory noir days) including Andrews, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, and Rhonda Fleming, While the City Sleeps opens on a 1950s New York City that is being plagued by a deranged serial killer (John Barrymore, Jr.) targeting beautiful women. At the same time, the owner of a major media conglomerate has just died, placing the heads of his companies, which includes a pair of rival newspapers, in jeopardy. At the center of this is a cynical, yet determined reporter (Andrews) who will stop at nothing to save his relationship, keep his job, and catch the terrorizing madman at whatever the cost.
While the City Sleeps can purely be seen as Lang’s attempt to keep up with the day’s fashion of large ensemble melodramas, a precedent set by the likes of titles such as Executive Suite and Titanic. The film has plenty of the kind of sudsy plotlines which drove such efforts, including a cheating spouse, a compromised romance, and a desire to make it to the top of the business ladder, a climb which leads to one character’s premature death with his hospital bed literally in his office. Lang being Lang, however, couldn’t help but inject some noir elements into the proceedings, which he does through Andrews’s somewhat jaded reporter. The actor may well have been channeling both his director and himself in the character of Ed Mobley, playing him as a man tainted by everything he’s seen and struggling to find out where it is he now belongs. Lang also pushed boundaries by daring to spend quality time with his movie’s killer and probing into his twisted nature in scenes doubtless considered more than a little startling at the time. The shades of noir are there, but they can’t help but feel diminished by the ending of While the City Sleeps, as the film’s ‘50s era shows itself in an ending purely belonging to the decade. It was a conclusion which showed quite plainly that the era of darkness in film had vanished, a fact Lang fascinatingly managed to both capture and absorb.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and While the City Sleeps are now available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Warner Archive.
Noir City Austin runs from May 17th-19th at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, TX. For more information, please visit: https://drafthouse.com/austin/program/noir-city-austin, http://www.noircity.com or http://filmnoirfoundation.org/home.html.