"Film Noir Classics Collection"
Noir fanatics, film history professors and DVD aficionados likely rejoiced with the release of Warner Bros.' "Film Noir Classic Collection," an essential set of five films — never before available on DVD — all of which are considered defining examples of the Golden Era genre the French famously coined, "dark (or black) cinema."
Even the less culturally savvy hepcat has notions of what comprises a typical noir picture: Convoluted plotlines, chiaroscuro lighting — or partly shadowed — chain-smoking (my personal favorite), crime, police corruption, world-weary private dicks, doomed love, slinky femme fatales…all hallmarks of a distinctly American archetype, a sensibility bathed in the moral ambiguity of the late 1940s and early '50s.
But cultural stereotyping of the genre — that is, the cheeky list-making found in the last paragraph — overtook the movie-going public, and noirs unfortunately dwindled into parodic endeavors as time went on, save for something like "The Man Who Wasn't There," Joel and Ethan Coen's ingenious reinvention of the genre.
Despite the falloff in popularity, the five discs included in the DVD set reinforce the vitality and significant effect noir had over Hollywood, past and present.
Edward Dmytryk's "Murder, My Sweet" (1944) adapts Raymond Chandler's novel of the same name, as another installment of the author's perennial antihero, Philip Marlowe. After being hired to recover a priceless jade necklace, Marlowe faces dimwit thugs, dapper criminals and suspicious beauties, all while doling out one biting quip after another.
Bogart, Mitchum and even Elliot Gould all took a crack at Chandler's favorite protagonist, but none of them matched the blue-collar desperation and lackadaisical ease of the underrated Dick Powell. Those other actors' iconography sometimes overshadowed Marlowe's humanity — Powell channels it back with considerable skill.
Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past" (1947) elevates noir with a sense of gravity and unavoidable doom, dramatic traits usually suited for Greek tragedy. The labyrinth plotting has Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) — once a hired hand for gangster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) — doing an overdue favor for his former boss, though he suspects a double-cross.
The mise-en-scène hints at lurking danger around every shadowy corner, making "Past" the set's best directed film, a work historians regularly cite as a defining moment in the genre's evolution.
"West Side Story" director Robert Wise propels an earlier picture, "The Set-Up" (1949), at a breakneck speed, unfolding the story over real-time with washed-up boxer Bill "Stoker" Thompson (Robert Ryan) grappling over whether to take a fall his manager arranges before a match or face the wrath of unscrupulous gangsters. This taut thriller has fewer noir qualities than the others in the collection, but the unrelenting tempo culminates in a memorable conclusion.
Written by Dalton Trumbo — the venerated blacklisted screenwriter — the low-budget "Gun Crazy" (1949), directed by Joseph H. Lewis, circumvents any B-movie trappings in its detailing of a couple's destructive rise and fall. Peggy Cummins and John Dall portray the hopeless young lovers who embark on a Bonnie and Clyde-like rampage through Middle America. This inventive yet minimally financed production influenced the French New Wave years later, including the likes of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Rounding out the set is John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), a heist picture with a top-heavy cast of noir players — Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe and Jean Hagen, among others — conspiring to crack a safe and make off with close to a million bucks. Backed by a lively array of characters with conflicting agendas, Huston set the framework for the modern heist thriller, a model that's been imitated frequently and rarely equaled.
The five discs boast commentary tracks by a film historian — with "Asphalt" actor James Whitmore contributing sound bites. "The Set-Up" commentary features a notable interaction between Wise and Martin Scorsese, who admits the film's boxing sequences trump even those in "Raging Bull."
"Film Noir: Classics Collection" (all five features): A
Supplements: AB