Classic Films in Focus: WHERE DANGER LIVES (1950)

Robert Mitchum takes another dive into darkness in Where Danger Lives (1950), and once again he plays an easy mark for a dangerous dame, this time embodied by the sultry Faith Domergue. An icon of film noir, Mitchum made more celebrated forays into the genre both before and after this outing, but Where Danger Lives has much to offer in its 82 minutes of twisted flight, thanks to expert direction from John Farrow and gripping performances from Mitchum, Domergue, and the perpetually brilliant Claude Rains. Like many noir films, Where Danger Lives depicts people's lives crashing into ruin in spectacular fashion, but the peculiarly bent nature of Domergue's femme fatale gives this story an extra shot of the strange and perverse.

Mitchum plays a young doctor named Jeff Cameron, who unexpectedly meets trouble when the seductive Margo Lannington (Faith Domergue) tries to commit suicide and is placed under his care. Almost immediately, Margo and Jeff begin a steamy romance, and Jeff decides to dump his steady girlfriend, Julie (Maureen O'Sullivan), in order to marry Margo. Jeff finds out too late that Margo is already married, and her husband (Claude Rains) ends up dead after an altercation with Jeff. Dizzy and disoriented from a concussion sustained in the fight, Jeff accompanies Margo on a run for the Mexican border, but her mental instability and the pair's bad luck get worse with every passing hour.

Jeff is one of Mitchum's most straight-laced and passive noir protagonists, just a normal young professional until Margo tempts him into the depths. Admittedly, his resistance is pretty weak, especially when he already has a good match in Julie, who lacks Margo's glamor but shares Jeff's professional world and is grade A wife material. Once he's in over his head, Jeff lets Margo take the lead, largely because he keeps passing out thanks to a poker blow from Margo's husband, but also because Margo constantly manipulates the situation to her own ends. Mitchum's best scenes are the woozy ones, where he doesn't really know what's going on and has to plunge ahead in spite of it, always getting himself deeper and deeper into Margo's crazy scheme. Faith Domergue, perfectly cast as the unstable siren, has her finest moments when Margo is at her worst; the wildest, most maniacal actions light a strange fire in her dark eyes, and we believe that she's capable of anything. Her scenes with Rains are electric; he has just a hint of madness about him, too, so that we understand their attraction to each other as well as their mutual hatred. Sadly, Rains' character gets killed off early in the picture, but his warnings haunt Jeff until the end. "If you take her," Lannington tells Jeff, "it's a long road. There's no turning back!" Like Edward G. Robinson's trolley car speech in Double Indemnity (1944), the admonition proves prophetic.

From the moment Jeff and Lannington have their fatal encounter, the action of the picture never lets up, but the protagonists are driven forward more by cruel quirks of fate than their own intentions. Jeff and Margo think the police are after them long before Lannington's body is actually found, which forces them to abandon their plan to fly to Mexico in favor of a more dangerous journey by car. They make rookie mistakes; neither is an experienced criminal, so they get into more jams and become more desperate with each new error. For Jeff, drifting in and out of consciousness, the trip has a nightmarish quality, reflected in the desolate landscapes and strange characters they encounter. All around them are opportunists, eager to take advantage of their obvious problems, like the car dealer who profits by swapping an antiquated clunker for their car and even gets Margo's forgotten fur coat into the bargain. There's a darkly comical element to many of their misadventures, especially the town that forces them to stop and get married because of some goofy local festival going on. In a screwball comedy it would be the start of marital bliss, but in this setting it's a perverse punishment, giving Jeff exactly what he thought he wanted at a point where he no longer wants it. When he finally realizes the extent of Margo's madness, it's too late to walk away; Jeff and Margo can only be separated by the same kind of violence that first brought them together, and the finale is an explosive confrontation on the Mexican border, a symbolic line that mirrors the film's juxtapositions of good and evil, sanity and madness, and life and death.

For more of Mitchum's noir films, see Out of the Past (1947), The Racket (1951), and Angel Face (1952); he also worked with John Farrow on His Kind of Woman (1951). Faith Domergue's career never quite came together, but you can find her in The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), Santa Fe Passage (1955), and This Island Earth (1955). Catch Claude Rains making other noir turns in Moontide (1942), Notorious (1946), and The Unsuspected (1947). John Farrow also directed Wake Island (1941), for which he won an Oscar for Best Director, Alias Nick Beal (1949), and Hondo (1953). Maureen O'Sullivan, best remembered as Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan, was married to John Farrow; the two worked together on The Big Clock (1948) as well as Where Danger Lives, but their most famous collaboration would be their actress daughter, Mia Farrow, the third of their seven children.

Classic Films in Focus: CROSSFIRE (1947)

Shadowy cinematography and a twisted murder plot make Crossfire (1947) seem like standard noir fare, but this movie also has a serious message for its audience about the dangers of prejudice and bigotry. Anti-Semitism is the particular concern, with the murder of a Jewish man setting the action in motion, but the film encourages us to recognize the connections between this type of hatred and many others. Moral purpose does not, however, lessen the entertainment value of the picture as a whole; director Edward Dmytryk has a top-notch cast to work with, including Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, and Robert Ryan, with Gloria Grahame also putting in a memorable appearance. Five Oscar nominations, including a nod for Best Picture, prove that Crossfire struck a chord in Hollywood in the late 1940s, and it still has a lot to say to viewers today.

Robert Young plays police detective Finlay, the man in charge of figuring out who killed Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene). Evidence seems to incriminate Corporal Mitchell (George Cooper), one of three soldiers known to have been drinking with Samuels at a bar that night. Mitchell's friend, Keeley (Robert Mitchum), believes that Mitchell is innocent and tries to protect him from the police until the truth can be revealed, but even Mitchell isn't quite clear about what happened. The only people who seem to know what really took place are Mitchell's companions, Montgomery (Robert Ryan) and Floyd (Steve Brodie), and they have their own reasons for letting Mitchell take the blame.

Robert Ryan earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, which drives the picture forward and increases in intensity as the investigation proceeds. Early on, Ryan's character tries to pass himself off as an average guy and upstanding citizen, but Robert Mitchum's Keeley quickly casts doubt on his motives, and Montgomery gives himself away as a bigot with his cracks to Finlay about non-soldiers and people with "funnier names" than Samuels. Ryan plays Montgomery as a stick of dynamite always ready to explode; he shifts from false friendliness into dangerous rage at the barest provocation, making even his unit mates afraid of him. Next to Montgomery, George Cooper's Mitchell looks like a lamb led to the slaughter, and he's actually one of the film's most passive characters, drifting through a mental haze and completely led by the smarter and more active Keeley. During Mitchell's night of confused rambling, he encounters a jaded but ultimately sympathetic working girl, Ginny, played to great effect by Gloria Grahame, who also picked up an Oscar nomination for her performance.

Although anti-Semitism serves as the picture's specific focus, Crossfire invites the viewer to see this kind of prejudice as just one instance of a larger problem. Finlay draws a pointed comparison between the way Jews are mistreated in the 20th century and the way Irish Catholics were abused in the 19th, and he also observes that a minor character, Leroy (William Phipps), is subjected to similar treatment by Montgomery simply for being from Tennessee. Anti-Semitism stands in for all kinds of prejudice, even within the context of the story's production history; in The Brick Foxhole, the original novel by Richard Brooks, the subject was homophobia, but RKO knew that kind of story would never get past the Breen Office, and the screenplay changed the identity of the victim. Crossfire was not the only 1947 picture to deal with the topic of anti-Semitism; the Best Picture winner for that year was Gentleman's Agreement, in which Gregory Peck plays a reporter who pretends to be Jewish in order to find out about bigotry and prejudice for himself. Gentleman's Agreement went home with eight nominations and three wins, while Crossfire struck out with all five of its nominations, but the two movies still make for a provocative double feature.

Edward Dmytryk earned an Oscar nomination for Best Director for Crossfire; his other films include Murder, My Sweet (1944), The Caine Mutiny (1954), and Warlock (1959). See more of Robert Ryan's noir work in The Set-Up (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1951), and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). Don't miss Robert Mitchum taking the villain's role in The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Cape Fear (1962); you'll find both Mitchum and Ryan in the 1951 noir film, The Racket. Robert Young transitioned to television and lasting fame as Marcus Welby later in his career, but for more of his work from the 1940s see Lady Be Good (1941), The Canterville Ghost (1944), and The Enchanted Cottage (1945). Gloria Grahame later won her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952); she's best remembered today for roles in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), The Big Heat (1953), and Oklahoma! (1955).

Classic Films in Focus: HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951)

His Kind of Woman (1951) combines film noir and cock-eyed comedy in the performances of two great stars, Robert Mitchum and Vincent Price. Mitchum handles the grimmer business, facing off against Raymond Burr and a gang of nasty lackeys, while Price hams it up gloriously as an actor who yearns to play the hero in real life. John Farrow directs the whole with a skillful hand, weaving together the lighter and darker elements to create a thoroughly entertaining film that also highlights the charms of Jane Russell as the love interest of both leading men.

Mitchum heads up the cast as Dan Milner, a gambler whose run of bad luck pushes him to accept a mysterious but lucrative job in Mexico. Installed in a posh resort and awaiting further orders, Milner tries to figure out who hired him and why, but the more he learns the less he likes it. Meanwhile, Milner strikes up a romance with Lenore Brent (Jane Russell) in spite of her relationship with Hollywood star Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price).

The picture begins as straightforward noir and slowly evolves into something else. Very early on we see Milner get worked over for a bet he didn't make, and we hear that bad things have been happening to him a lot lately. Soon he's told that "maybe this part of the country isn't lucky for you anymore." Milner is no dummy; he realizes that his acceptance of the Mexican job has been orchestrated by some unknown party that probably doesn't have his welfare in mind, but he knows a fix when he's in one. He bides his time for an opportunity to fight back, which gives him plenty of leisure to pursue Lenore, even though she isn't what she seems. All of this is strictly noir material, and when Raymond Burr's vicious Nick Ferraro shows up things get really ugly. Around the midway point, however, Price's bombastic, good-natured character starts to undermine our fatalistic view of the action with his hilarious antics. Whether he's clapping at his own picture, spouting Shakespeare, or firing shots at Milner's enemies, Cardigan is always a hoot, and Price steals every scene where he turns up. Mitchum makes the movie cool, but Price makes it fun, and His Kind of Woman thus occupies a space all its own in the classic noir canon.

The film's other performances also contribute to its overall appeal, with Russell in fine form, especially during her musical numbers. She holds the screen against both of her male costars and moves easily between the picture's moods. Jim Backus provides comedy with a hint of menace as a scheming resort guest with his eye on a pretty newlywed, and Tim Holt is solid as a federal agent who tries to get Milner to help the law nab Ferraro. Charles McGraw is thoroughly unpleasant as Thompson, whose job is to keep Milner in line until his boss arrives, but Raymond Burr really takes the prize for worst bad guy as the brutal and possibly insane Ferraro. Deported from the United States but determined to get back to his underworld business, Ferraro plans to replace Milner by having plastic surgery to look like him. He doesn't take it well when Milner wants out of the arrangement. "I hate welchers, Milner," he growls, just before he knees Milner in the groin and then has him lashed with a belt. Later he threatens Milner with a Nazi drug that will destroy his mind and slowly kill him. It's no wonder that Milner objects to handing over his identity.

Dedicated fans of Vincent Price, who was a noted gourmet, will appreciate the scene in which Cardigan enthusiastically prepares a duck for dinner. For more of Price in film noir, see Laura (1944), Shock (1946), and The Web (1947). Robert Mitchum tackles more noir roles in Out of the Past (1947), The Racket (1951), and Angel Face (1952). Catch Jane Russell in The Outlaw (1943), The Paleface (1948), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). John Farrow earned an Oscar nomination for Best Director for Wake Island (1940); he also directed Mitchum in another noir thriller, Where Danger Lives (1950).

Classic Films in Focus: ANGEL FACE (1952)

Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons play a deadly game of dysfunctional romance in Otto Preminger's Angel Face (1952), which features a particularly tragic femme fatale caught in the undertow of her own insanity. Everyone around her is in danger of being dragged down, as well, but Mitchum's protagonist is foolhardy enough to see the danger signs and still dive in. Angel Face benefits tremendously from Preminger's direction and the performances of the two stars, but the picture ultimately belongs to Simmons, whose sweet face conceals the murderous disorder of her obsessive mind.

Mitchum stars as Frank, an ambulance driver who answers a call at the Tremayne house only to become drawn into the family's affairs by Diane (Jean Simmons), a beautiful but manipulative young woman who hates her wealthy stepmother (Barbara O'Neil) as much as she adores her novelist father (Herbert Marshall). Frank blows off his steady girl, Mary (Mona Freeman), in order to spend time with Diane, even though he realizes that he's setting himself up for trouble. When Diane is accused of murder, Frank finds his own life on the line, as well, and he's forced to stick with her in spite of his desire to break things off and go back to Mary.

Mitchum, of course, was made for film noir, but this performance sees him in a more passive role. Frank lets Diane lead him around by the nose until it's far too late to walk out, even though he eventually gets fed up enough to try. The actor has a unique ability to make us believe how a smart guy might do a series of very stupid things. "Never be the innocent bystander," Frank says, "that's the guy that always gets hurt." He doesn't take his own advice. Simmons is a marvel as the siren who lures Frank on toward disaster; she isn't intentionally bad so much as she is utterly deranged, a broken doll with a little girl's face and a jealous killer's heart. Like Ellen Berent in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Annie Laurie Starr in Gun Crazy (1950), Diane is capable of love, but it's a passionate, possessive storm of emotion that destroys the ones it adores. Diane loves her father, but she can't tolerate her stepmother's intrusion into their lives, and her desire to get rid of Catherine Tremayne takes her well beyond the point of no return. She loves Frank, even though she knows that he never stops thinking about returning to Mary. Eventually she realizes that there's only one way to make sure that he never walks out.

The supporting performances are all solid, with Herbert Marshall especially sympathetic and rather pitiable as the novelist whose marriage into money has ruined him for his art. We can see why Diane worships her father, but we also recognize the essential weakness of his nature. Barbara O'Neil does an excellent job with the tough role of Diane's stepmother. Diane, resentful and childish, wants to cast her as a fairy tale villain, while O'Neil shows us the extent to which Diane's vision is self-deluding. Mona Freeman has some very good scenes with Mitchum as the justly offended girlfriend, but her best moment is the luncheon confrontation with Diane, where Mary proves that she's not going to play Diane's duplicitous game. Leon Ames is polished and rather disturbing as the attorney who defends Diane, and Jim Backus turns up for a few energetic scenes on behalf of the prosecution.

Otto Preminger directed other noir films, including Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1945), and Whirlpool (1949); he also directed Mitchum again in the Western, River of No Return (1954). See more of the magnificent Mitchum in Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Cape Fear (1962). You'll find Jean Simmons in Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), and Spartacus (1960). Barbara O'Neil is best remembered today for playing Scarlett O'Hara's mother in Gone with the Wind (1939), while Herbert Marshall is known for Foreign Correspondent (1940) and The Letter (1940).

My Christmas Movies

Every film buff has a favorite Christmas movie, a picture that is such a part of the holiday that it just isn't Christmas without it. Plenty of us even have lists of such movies, and I'm no exception. As we head into the holidays, these are the movies - both classic and more recent - that I'll be watching to get into the holiday spirit.


IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

Sure, it's the obvious choice, but for me the Jimmy Stewart classic is a holiday necessity because I often feel down during the Christmas season, and George Bailey's story reminds me that Christmas is a hard time for a lot of people. Besides, it has such a fantastic cast, and every year as I watch more classic movies I appreciate the actors more, from Lionel Barrymore and Thomas Mitchell to Beulah Bondi and Gloria Grahame. 

WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)

I love pretty much everything about this musical, but I'm especially fond of Danny Kaye and the movie's depiction of soldiers' lives after the war. "Snow" is a beautiful tune (they should play it on the holiday radio stations more often), and Mary Wickes is such a hoot as the nosy housekeeper. The drag performance of "Sisters" by Crosby and Kaye cracks me up, and the finale's salute to Dean Jagger's character always gets me right in the old ticker.


SCROOGED (1988)

My taste in Christmas Carol adaptations tends toward the bizarre, and this is certainly one of the weirdest and funniest versions. I just can't resist Carol Kane's sadistic sugar plum Ghost of Christmas Present or David Johansen's hilarious cab driver Ghost of Christmas Past - "Niagara Falls!" It even has Robert Mitchum in it! I don't love everything Bill Murray has done, but this picture and Groundhog Day are right up there with Ghostbusters in the comedian's canon. I laugh, I cry; it's better than Cats.


THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (1992)

As the co-editor of two books about Jim Henson, I'm definitely a Muppet fan, and this twist on Dickens is such a fun outing for the familiar cast of characters. Gonzo, my favorite Muppet, gets an especially good part as Charles Dickens himself, and the Ghost puppets represent some of the Henson group's most beautiful creative designs. Michael Caine is a delight as Scrooge, even if he experiences his essential change of heart rather too quickly to be as mean as he's supposed to be. When I saw this movie in the theater after its original release, it made me sad because Jim Henson had died in 1990, and this picture was the first to appear after his passing. Today, its bittersweet quality has softened, but like the original story it remains a sentimental experience.

What movies make your Christmas holiday complete? Let me know in the comments!


 

Classic Films in Focus: UNDERCURRENT (1946)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Undercurrent (1946) plays with the same thematic elements as other feminine thrillers like Suspicion (1941), Gaslight (1944), and Dial M for Murder (1954), but in spite of a very attractive cast the picture falls short of its genre peers. It’s an interesting and very unusual foray into noir territory for star Katharine Hepburn, with Robert Taylor and noir stalwart Robert Mitchum along for the ride, but Undercurrent never quite comes together as a picture, and it doesn’t use its impressive cast to the best effect.

Hepburn plays Ann Hamilton, the awkward spinster daughter of a scientist (Edmund Gwenn) whose latest work attracts the attention of a suave industrialist named Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor). Alan acquires more than he came for when he meets and marries Ann, taking her with him to Washington, D.C., California, and his family’s estate in Virginia. In every place, Ann learns more confusing clues about Alan’s history with his missing brother, Michael (Robert Mitchum), while Alan begins to seem less and less like the man Ann believed him to be.

The plot reworks the motifs of Gothic romance and film noir, with Ann hiding behind doors, peering into forbidden spaces, and playing detective in the mystery of her brother-in-law’s disappearance. Hepburn might make a better Ann if the heroine possessed more nerve, but she seems miscast as the coltish, self-doubting victim, if only because she has too much inherent strength of character herself. She gives as good a performance as possible considering the stark contrast between performer and part, but even Hepburn has her limits. Robert Taylor also does his best with Alan, but he needs more scenes in which to work the character’s darker side, and Robert Mitchum has so little screen time that he barely gets to do anything at all with Michael.

The supporting cast fare no better than the top-billed stars. Both Edmund Gwenn and Marjorie Main appear only briefly. Both were glorious character actors capable of breathing life into almost any picture, which leaves us to wonder why they were cast in the parts if they weren’t going to be put to good use. Leigh Whipper has better luck and more scenes as the Garroway estate’s caretaker, and he does a good job adding to the home’s Gothic ambience.

None of the actors can really be faulted for the movie’s failure to deliver, but Undercurrent is best appreciated by hardcore fans looking to see all of Hepburn’s minor films or survey the lesser entries in the noir canon. For a better pairing of Hepburn and Gwenn as father and daughter, try Sylvia Scarlett (1935). See Robert Mitchum’s signature performances in Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Cape Fear (1962). For different takes on Robert Taylor, try Westward the Women (1951) and Ivanhoe (1952).

This review was originally posted on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.