James M. Cain

Long-awaited Curtiz book hits Hollywood; Egyptian Theatre hosts signing and screening

Mr E Man Noir Style, Out of the Shadows Alan K. Rode, Ann Blyth, Casablanca, Edward G. Robinson, Ernest Hemingway, Eve Arden, film noir, Ida Lupino, Jack Carson, Jack London, James M. Cain, Joan Crawford, John Garfield, Michael Curtiz, Mildred Pierce, Patricia Neal, Ranald MacDougall, Robert Rossen, The Breaking Point, The Sea Wolf, Zachary Scott

Film noir expert Alan K. Rode has released “Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film,” published by the University Press of Kentucky. To mark the book’s launch, the American Cinematheque is hosting a book signing and screening of two Curtiz gems on Thursday night in Hollywood at the Egyptian Theatre.

“The Sea Wolf” (1941) stars Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Gene Lockhart and Barry Fitzgerald in a tense and moody adaption of Jack London’s anti-fascist adventure novel. Robert Rossen (“The Hustler”) wrote the screenplay.

“The Breaking Point” (1950) takes Ernest Hemingway’s tragic novel “To Have and Have Not” as its source material. Though the setting is changed from Key West to Newport Beach, Calif., Curtiz delivers a more faithful version of the book than the famous Howard Hawks vehicle starring Bogart and Bacall.

Here, John Garfield expertly plays Skipper Harry Morgan. Gravel-voiced Patricia Neal is the alluring vamp; Phyllis Thaxter, Wallace Ford and Juano Hernandez round out the cast.

Rode set himself quite the task when he decided to write about this master director. Uncommonly prolific across many genres (including Westerns, swashbucklers and musicals), Hungarian-born Curtiz made more than 60 movies in Europe and more than 100 in Hollywood, arriving in 1926 at the behest of Warner Bros. Studio.

He won the Best Director Oscar for 1942’s noir-tinged “Casablanca” and for a short called “Sons of Liberty” from 1939. He was nominated for Oscars five times and directed 10 actors to Oscar nominations. James Cagney and Joan Crawford received their only Academy Awards under Curtiz’s direction.

Crawford won for her comeback role, “Mildred Pierce,” a domestic film noir from 1945. With a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, the movie improves and heightens the drama of James M. Cain’s novel.

Co-starring Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Eve Arden and Bruce Bennett, “Mildred Pierce” ranks as one of our all-time favorite films.

For tonight, however, we’ll just have to swoon over John Garfield. Life’s rough.

Rode will sign his book in the lobby at 6:30 p.m. He will also introduce the films, slated to start at 7:30 p.m.

‘Double Indemnity’ plays nationwide on the big screen

Mr E Man Classic Noir Reviews, Noir Style Barbara Stanwyck, Billy Wilder, Cissy Chandler, Cissy Hurlburt Porcher Pascal, Double Indemnity, Edward G. Robinson, Fathom Events, film noir, Fred MacMurray, James M. Cain, Judith Freeman, Raymond Chandler, TCM, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Cissy and Raymond Chandler were married for 30 years. — Cissy Chandler (1870-1954) was married to Raymond Chandler for 30 years.

Just this morning, I finished reading “The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved” (Pantheon Books, 2007) by Judith Freeman. It’s a look at Chandler’s work and his 30-year marriage to a mysterious woman named Cissy Hurlburt Porcher Pascal, a sexy but refined redhead from the Midwest who was 18 years his senior. (It was her third marriage; his first and only.) Not that she bothered to tell him her real age, natch. Details, details …

In the book, Freeman describes a turning point in Chandler’s career: When he received the offer from Paramount Studios to adapt James M. Cain’s novel “Double Indemnity” for the big screen, working in partnership with writer/director Billy Wilder.

The film, starring Fred Mac Murray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson, was released in 1944. It earned seven Oscar noms, including screenplay, which was extremely rare for a film noir title.

Freeman writes:

“Ray didn’t get the idea of the whole thing at first. When Joe Sistrom, the producer, called and offered him the job, Ray said he could probably do it, but he wouldn’t be able to turn in the screenplay for a couple of weeks, and it would cost them a thousand bucks. Sistrom laughed. Was the guy being funny, or was he really that naïve about the way the movie business worked? Sistrom told him he’d be working with Wilder, in an office on the studio lot, that he’d have ten weeks to do the screenplay, and he’d be getting seven hundred and fifty bucks a week. Ray did the math. Ray liked the result. Ray saw the future … and Ray said, Yes. Sure. Why not?”

Precisely! So, why not treat yourself to a big-screen viewing of this genre-defining film? TCM, Fathom Events and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment are partnering to bring this classic to select cinemas nationwide on Sunday, July 19 and Monday, July 20.

“That tears it,” as Walter Neff would say.

See you there, noiristas. Meanwhile, you can read our review as well as 14 reasons we adore this flick.

Top reasons we love ‘Double Indemnity’

Mr E Man Classic Noir Reviews, Noir Style Barbara Stanwyck, Billy Wilder, Double Indemnity, Edward G. Robinson, film noir, Fred MacMurray, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler

Yes, we're still gushing about "Double Indemnity," the film noir classic from 1944. And why not? It can still draw an audience, after all. ArcLight and the Skirball Cultural Center are showing “Double Indemnity” Monday night in Sherman Oaks.

Billy Wilder's great prototype film noir turns 71 this year and yet it never gets old. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson, the movie boasts a screenplay that Wilder co-wrote with Raymond Chandler, based on James M. Cain's novel, which was inspired by actual events.

Here's why we hold the picture dear to our hearts, dearies.

14. As film noir historian and author Foster Hirsch once put it: "It's the quintessential film noir. This is the mother lode, primary source film noir. It's the basis for every film noir you've ever loved."

13. Someone with the name Walter Neff turns out to be a tough guy.

12. All Walter has to do to escape punishment is sit tight. Yet, his ego drives him toward a final confrontation with his lover/partner in crime. He’s so damn human.

11. Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is a fashion victim. She’s so damn human.

10. The first time Phyllis shows up at Walter's apartment, she says she is returning his hat (which he supposedly left at her house) but the previous scene clearly shows him taking his hat as he leaves. Still, there's so much tension between them, who cares?!

9. The door to Walter's apartment opens the wrong way (it shields Phyllis on one of her visits) but you're so caught up in the story you hardly notice.

As Billy Wilder acknowledged, no door in the world would open this way.

8. You could buy Phyllis Dietrichson's house for $30,000.

7. You could have a beer at a drive-in restaurant, served by a car-hop, no less.

6. The look of supreme satisfaction on Phyllis's face at the moment her husband is murdered.

5. Stanwyck and MacMurray both took a risk and played against type.

4. Edward G. Robinson almost steals the show and it's really a bromance between his character and MacMurray’s Walter Neff.

3. Raymond Chandler makes a cameo appearance, about 16 minutes into the movie, at Walter's office building.

2. It's perfectly paced - you can watch it over and over and it moves along lickety split every time, leaving you wanting more.

1. It truly ranks as a classic flick - it's as fresh, sexy and funny today as it was in 1944. The writing, acting, directing cinematography, lighting, art direction are matchless.

Do you love "Double Indemnity" as much as we do? Then let us know!

On Valentine’s Day: 14 reasons we love ‘Double Indemnity’

Mr E Man Classic Noir Reviews, Noir Style Aero Theatre, Barbara Stanwyck, Billy Wilder, Double Indemnity, Edward G. Robinson, film noir, Foster Hirsch, Fred MacMurray, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler

Yes, we're still gushing about "Double Indemnity," the film noir classic from 1944. Deal with it. Oh, and happy Valentine's weekend, btw!

Billy Wilder's great prototype film noir turns 70 this year and yet it never gets old. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson, the movie boasts a screenplay that Wilder co-wrote with Raymond Chandler, based on James M. Cain's novel, which was inspired by actual events.

Here's why we hold the picture dear to our hearts, dearies.

14. As film noir historian and author Foster Hirsch put it, at a recent screening at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, "It's the quintessential film noir. This is the mother lode, primary source film noir. It's the basis for every film noir you've ever loved."

13. Someone with the name Walter Neff turns out to be a tough guy.

12. All Walter has to do to escape punishment is sit tight. Yet, his ego drives him toward a final confrontation with his lover/partner in crime. He’s so damn human.

11. Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is a fashion victim. She’s so damn human.

9. The door to Walter's apartment opens the wrong way (it shields Phyllis on one of her visits) but you're so caught up in the story you hardly notice.

8. You could buy Phyllis Dietrichson's house for $30,000.

7. You could have a beer at a drive-in restaurant, served by a car-hop, no less.

6. The look of supreme satisfaction on Phyllis's face at the moment her husband is murdered.

5. Stanwyck and MacMurray both took a risk and played against type.

4. Edward G. Robinson almost steals the show and it's really a bromance between his character and MacMurray's Walter Neff.

3. Raymond Chandler makes a cameo appearance, about 16 minutes into the movie, at Walter's office building.

2. It's perfectly paced - you can watch it over and over and it moves along lickety split every time, leaving you wanting more.

1. It truly ranks as a classic flick - it's as fresh, sexy and funny today as it was in 1944. The writing, acting, directing cinematography, lighting, art direction are matchless.

Do you love "Double Indemnity" as much as we do? Then let us know!

The Noir File: Edgar Ulmer’s ‘Detour’ and Friday Night with Dashiell Hammett

Mr E Man Classic Noir Reviews Ann Savage, Cornell Woolrich, Dashiell Hammett, Detour, Edgar Ulmer, film noir, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, TCM, Tom Neal

By Mr E Man and Mark Harrington

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Detour duo — Ann Savage and Tom Neal star in the ultra low-budget "Detour."

“Detour” (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer). Tuesday, June 11: 2:45 p.m. (11:45 a.m.).

Luck so bad it borders on absurd, a story as flimsy as cardboard, a femme fatale who’s downright feral. That would be 1945’s “Detour,” a B classic that director Edgar Ulmer shot in less than a month for about $30,000.

Despite these limitations (or maybe because of them) Ulmer manages to work some visual miracles. Those foggy scenes where you can’t see the street? He didn’t have a street so he filled in with mist. Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Ulmer came to the US in 1923. He brought a high-art, painterly disposition to this tawdry little flick, as he did to most of his work.

You can read the full FNB review here.

Friday, June 7

11:15 a.m. (8:15 a.m.): “Stranger on the Third Floor” (1940, Boris Ingster). With Peter Lorre, Margaret Tallichet and Elisha Cook, Jr. Reviewed on FNB Nov. 3, 2012.

NOIR WRITERS SERIES: DASHIELL HAMMETT

All this month, on its Friday Night Spotlight screenings, TCM will show a series of classic film noirs – with each Friday devoted to movies based on or written by (or both) one of four top-notch noir authors – Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich.

Tonight the spotlight is on the matchless hard-boiled crime writer Dashiell Hammett – who, along with Ernest Hemingway, was probably one of the most influential American writers of the decades after World War I, and since. Terse, lean and brutally direct, empty of flourish, cliché or artifice, Hammett’s style owed a lot to his own years as a Pinkerton detective.

He decisively reveals a world of greed, murder, illicit sex, gangsterism, corruption and treachery among the rich and the crooked, telling it all with a flair and a punch that was copied endlessly but rarely recaptured. (The “Noir Writers” films were curated and will be introduced by film noir expert Eddie Muller.)

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Maltese Falcon” (1931, Roy Del Ruth). The first movie adaptation of Hammett’s classic dark private-eye novel, with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade, Bebe Daniels as the femme fatale and Dudley Digges as Gutman – all chasing the priceless black bird. It pales beside John Huston’s great version of course (see below). But it’s not bad, in a raunchy pre-Code way.

9:30 p.m. (6:30 p.m.): “City Streets” (1931, Rouben Mamoulian). Hammett’s only original movie story: an underworld romance stylishly directed by Mamoulian, who was in his most innovative period. With Gary Cooper and Sylvia Sidney as lovers caught in a vicious world of big-city crime, and Paul Lukas and Guy Kibbee as off-type bad guys.

11 p.m. (8 p.m.): “After the Thin Man” (1936, W. S. Van Dyke). The first of many sequels to the smash hit 1934 movie of Hammett’s last novel “The Thin Man,” with William Powell and Myrna Loy as the peerlessly witty and stylishly sloshed Nick and Nora Charles. (Hammett modeled the sharp-witted, hard-drinking sleuth and his charming helpmate after himself and his playwright/lover Lillian Hellman). Here, they visit Nora’s San Francisco cousin and investigate a string of murders among her rich elite family. With Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Asta (the Charles’ peppy wirehaired fox terrier), and Jimmy Stewart in one of his most atypical roles.

1 a.m. (10 p.m.): “The Glass Key” (1942, Stuart Heisler). With Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and Brian Donlevy. Reviewed on FNB Nov. 14, 2012.

2:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m.): “The Maltese Falcon” (1941, John Huston). With Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. Reviewed on FNB Nov. 10, 2012.

4:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m.): “Satan Met a Lady” (1936, William Dieterle). The second movie “Maltese Falcon” adaptation: a travesty that tries to change the story into a loony sex farce, alters all the names (Sam Spade becomes “Ted Shane”), turns Gutman the Fat Man (played for Huston by Greenstreet) into a Fat Woman (played by comedienne Alison Skipworth), and turns the Maltese falcon itself into a missing ram’s horn. Ridiculous beyond description, despite the presence of Bette Davis as the villainess. The movie also boasts Warren William (as Ted Shane) and Arthur Treacher.

Saturday, June 8

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Breathless” (1960, Jean-Luc Godard). With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg and Jean-Pierre Melville. Reviewed on FNB Nov. 3, 2012.

9:45 p.m. (6:45 p.m.): “The Thief of Paris” (1967, Louis Malle). Crime in Paris, from the director of the French noir classic “Elevator to the Gallows.” With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Genevieve Bujold.

Sunday, June 9

12 p.m. (9 a.m.): “Gaslight” (1944, George Cukor). With Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury. Reviewed on FNB Aug. 25, 2012.

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Lavender Hill Mob” (1951, Charles Crichton). With Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway and Audrey Hepburn. Reviewed on FNB, Feb. 27, 2013,

Monday, June 10

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Caged” (1950, John Cromwell). With Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson. Reviewed on FNB July 13, 2012.

Tuesday, June 11

1 p.m. (10 a.m.): “They Drive by Night” (1940, Raoul Walsh). With George Raft, Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan. Reviewed on FNB July 7, 2012.

2:45 p.m. (11:45 p.m.): “Detour” (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer). See PICK OF THE WEEK.

5:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m.): “The Hitch-Hiker” (1953, Ida Lupino). Director Lupino was at the top of her craft with this taut little B-movie noir, about a couple of hunting buddies (Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy), who pick up the wrong hitch-hiker (William Talman) and find themselves hijacked and facing death.

10:45 p.m. (7:45 p.m.): “His Girl Friday” (1940, Howard Hawks). With Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy. Reviewed on FNB Jan. 22, 2013.

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