Latest BALCONY DVD Views: Warner Bros. Film Noir

So, you probably woke up this morning wondering, what th' heck is film film noir, anyway? Well, we'll tell you: nobody's really sure. There, now that we cleared that up...

Actually, what happened was that following WWII, when American films of the early 1940s began to be released in Europe, a bunch of French guys noticed that the films were darker and more pessimistic than the Great Depression-era American films they were used to seeing. They said something like, "Sacre bleu! Zees crazy Americans... zay have created zee new type of ze cinema, no?" By the early 1950s, the term "film noir" had been assigned to a certain type of film. It's not really a genre, more of a... well, of an attitude. Over the years, the term has been much used, and much misused. So here In The Balcony, we assign it to movies in which a dumb guy is played for a sucker by a beautiful dame. She convinces him he's smart, see, but he ain't, and a couple of people end up dead, and one of 'em is him. In between the opening and closing credits, there's a rain-slickened street, a fedora brim in the darkness lit by a match touching a cigarette, and the overall feeling that no matter what the guy does, everything is going to end badly, and it almost always does. Cops are poor but honest, crooks are killers, and women are to be avoided because if they're good they'll nag you and if they're bad they'll do a thousand times worse. They're still irresistible, though. But so is a whirlpool, and you'll end up just as much in over your head from either one, a vortex or a femme fatale. Noirs are generally realistic. They're in B&W. They stopped making them in the 1950s. They're not westerns or musicals or the first season of The Adventures of Superman. Just because a DVD company CALLS a release a "film noir" don't make it a film noir, ya git me? Crime dramas are not necessarily film noirs, but some of 'em are, or share many of the same traits, or are close enough to be counted as noirs. And another thing -- the gritty realism and pessimism seems to have come back in vogue these days, because they're top sellers on DVD, and when great big companies can sell a lot of old B&W, non-widescreen movies on DVD, they think it's a miracle. Here In The Balcony, we're going to present a brief overview of the most important noir series on DVD so far, beginning with Warners Bros.

Warners has the rights to its own films plus many of those from MGM, RKO, United Artists, Monogram, and Allied Artists. They've released four colossal boxed sets with a total of 25 gritty classics, and the boxes are essentials. Vol. 1 ($49.98) offers my favorite boxing movie, The Set-Up (Dir. Robert Wise, RKO, 1949) with Robert Ryan as a pugilist who's offered a choice between taking a dive or taking a bullet. Murder My Sweet (Dmytryk, RKO, 1945) gives us Dick Powell breaking his boy singer mold as tough P.I. Phillip Marlowe. Out of the Past (Tourneur, RKO, 1947) is quintessential noir with Robert Mitchum crossing swords with a rich mobster (Kirk Douglas) for the love of Jane Greer. Gun Crazy (Joseph Lewis, 1949, United Artists) belongs to a subset of noir I like to call "Gun Crazy" movies; I named it after this film, actually: it's a movie in which some poor soul does what evil deeds he or she does, not because they're caught in the usual noir web and can't escape, but because they're nuts. Finally, The Asphalt Jungle (Huston, MGM, 1950) gives us a great crime drama about a group of ex-cons who plan the perfect heist, only to be doomed by their own imperfections. Sterling Hayden stars.

Warners couldn't top that set, but still made a pretty good sophomore effort with their second Noir Collection ($49.98). This time, they gave us one of the greatest suspense films ever, The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, RKO, 1952). Marie Windsor is on a train from Chicago to L.A. to testify against her ex-boyfriend, a brutal gangster who's placed some hitmen onboard to make sure she never reaches the station. Real edge-of-your-smoking-coach-seat stuff. Dillinger (Max Nosseck, Monogram, 1945) was nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay, and when a Monogram film gets an Oscar nomination, you know it's plenty good. Lawrence Tierney stars as the legendary gunman in this loosely truthful but entertaining drama. Crossfire (Dmytryk, 1947, RKO) is a real eye-opener that show how far Hollywood could go in the postwar era; Robert Young is investigating the death of a man who was murdered for being Jewish. Robert Mitchum, Paul Kelly, and, in an unforgettable performance, Robert Ryan, costar in this multiple-Oscar nominee. Director Fritz Lang is one of the superstars of noir, and his Clash by Night (RKO, 1952), one of his masterpieces. Barbara Stanwyck tries to change her messy life by settling down with a dull husband, but finds herself in the arms of Robert Ryan instead. Rising starlet Marilyn Monroe lights up the screen in a small part. The film is based on a play by Clifford Odets. Finally, we've got another "Gun Crazy" film with Born to Kill (Robert Wise, RKO, 1947) with beautiful Audrey Long entranced by a trigger-happy criminal.

On to Warners third Noir Collection ($49.98), a change of pace in that, recognizing that the selection of films weren't as choice as the first two two go-rounds, Warners gave us some very special special features beyond the usual commentary and trailers. First, though the films themselves: Border Incident (Anthony Mann, MGM, 1949) has Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy investigating racketeers taking advantage of illegal immigrants on the U.S./Mexico border. The Racket (John Cromwell, RKO, 1951) presents cop Bob Mitchum on the trail of gangster Bob Ryan. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, RKO, 1952) is the gem of the set, with Robert Ryan as a psycho cop who's relieved of his city duty and sent out in the country to look for a rapist/murderer, where he falls in love the killer's blind sister, Ida Lupino. See, it even SOUNDS good. Bernard Herrmann did the score. One of the daffiest noir-type films ever is Howard Hughes' production of His Kind of Woman! (John Farrow, RKO, 1951). Apparently, RKO head Hughes kept fiddling with the movie for months; the result is an entertaining hodgepodge of murder, mystery, comedy, and romance. Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell star, and look for Vincent Price as an egotistical actor: it's one of his finest, strangest, most memorable scenery-chewing performances in this rollicking film of fun. One of the most notorious of all noirs is Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, MGM, 1949), in which director Montgomery gives actor Montgomery the chance to stay off-camera for most of the film. The movie is shot from the perspective of private eye Phillip Marlowe, who is only seen when he's looking in a mirror. Gets old fast.

We promised you special features with this set, and here they are: a bonus disc called Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light, featuring a full-length documentary on noir that you're going to want to skip until you've seen all the movies in Warners' collections, 'cause the clips contain a bunch of spoilers. There's a not-too-in-depth history of noir, interviews with fans like Christopher Nolan, James Ellroy, and Frank Miller, and many other talking heads. The real bonus is a cavalcade of five Crime Does Not Pay MGM shorts of the 1940s. This series, which totaled 48 episodes released between 1937 and 1949, were brisk, 2-reel melodramas showing enforcement officers in their never-ending battle against the forces of crime. The shorts herein, the first three of which were Oscar nominees, are Forbidden Passage (1941, concerning wartime smuggling of foreigners into the U.S.); A Gun in his Hand (1945, with a gunman becoming a cop to cover his crimes); The Luckiest Guy in the World (1947, with Barry Nelson as a criminal who stumbles into the perfect alibi; the final Crime Does Not Pay Short); Women in Hiding (1940, a surprisingly adult story about seedy maternity hospitals); and You, The People (1940), all about how elections can be hijacked. No! Really?

Just released as of this writing (August 2007) is the fourth Warners Noir Collection ($59.98) and this time, we've got 10 films on five discs, and a pretty entertaining lot they are, headed by the essential Crime Wave (Andre de Toth, Warners, 1954). Sterling Hayden at his toughest tracks a trio of cop killers through the dark streets of Los Angeles; he's scarier than they are! Decoy (Jack Bernhard, Monogram, 1946) is a real find, opening with a brutal murder (or two, depending on how you look at it) and narrated in flashback by the beautiful victim. The ending to this film will, as one Balconeer recently put it, leave you unable to comment until you can pick your jaw up off the floor. Where Danger Lives (Farrow, RKO, 1950) has Mitchum again, this time in the arms of Faith Domergue, who is married to Claude Rains. There's more marital disharmony in Tension (John Berry, MGM, 1949), only this time Richard Basehart is the husband and Audrey Totter the unfaithful wife. Edward G. Robinson makes his first Warners Noir DVD appearance in Illegal (Lewis Allen, Warners, 1955) as a former District Attorney now representing the lowest of the criminal lowlifes. Look for Jayne Mansfield in one of her first films; you really can't miss her, folks. Bob Mitchum and Jane Greer (Out of the Past) were no strangers, and here they're reunited in The Big Steal (Don Siegel, RKO, 1949), from the director of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry. Farley Granger shines opposite Cathy O'Donnell in both They Live By Night (Ray, RKO, 1948) and Side Street (Mann, MGM, 1950). In both, they're young lovers tangled in a web of crime. Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann, MGM, 1948) matches tough guys Van Heflin and Robert Ryan settling an old grudge; Mystery Street (John Sturges, MGM, 1950) offers Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Bennett using modern science to crack a "perfect murder". For the first time, in addition to commentary and trailers for most of the films, Warners gives us featurettes on the making of each film, but they're extremely brief (5 or 6 min. each).

Picture and sound quality on the 25 films that comprise the Warners Noir Collections has been uniformly outstanding, even for the rarely-seen Monogram entries. These four boxed sets are worthy additions to any DVD collection, offer rewatchability on most titles, and will have you shopping for a fedora and never seeing a slick, rain-soaked city street in quite the same way again.

Meanwhile, MGM -- now distributed by Fox -- has just begun its own Film Noir series, and the initial release offers four worthwhile films from the vaults, A Bullet for Joey, Kansas City Confidential, Woman in the Window, and The Stranger. Watch for a discussion of these and the Universal and Fox noir DVD releases, coming soon In The Balcony!