Film Noir - The View from a Devotée

Alan K. Rode

"People hunger for a good story. Film noir resonates a vibe in people." 

Alan Rode, member of the board of directors of the Film Noir Foundation

Recently in Chicago, I attended two films shown at the Noir City festival at the Music Box theatre. Before each screening, Alan K. Rode one of the programmers of the event, gave a brief introduction to the movie, detailing not only the plot and production details, but also the film's historical signifigance. Rode was extremely well prepared and organized; he is also a highly engaging speaker and his seven to ten-minute speeches were models on how these things should be done.

I spoke with him briefly before one of the films (The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, 1948, Paramount, directed by John Farrow) and asked him if I could speak with him at greater length about his work as well as film noir in general. He graciously agreed and I spoke with him in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles.

Tom Hyland: Is there a typical fan that attends these Film Noir festivals? Why do people come to see these films? Is it because they are starved for a well-crafted film considering all the garbage that dilutes movie screens these days? Is there an element of nostalgia? Or is there a dark side to all of us that we want to see on the big screen?

Alan Rode: I think it's a combination of all of them. Certainly at the Noir Festival in Palm Springs (Rode hosts the annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival there), there is an older audience, so nostalgia is part of that. These are people that grew up watching these films.

It's really encouraging to see young people come to the films. But more so, people hunger for a good story. Film noir resonates a vibe in people. Scenes of men in fedoras or people talking on phones with big, clunky dials might be hard for modern audiences to understand, however the themes of treachery, lust and greed are viable in modern life. Everyone can identify with noir.

People can identify with a well-told story. They're tired of special effects. Hollywood has settled on a certain type of model and a certain type of audience.

Film noir was made during the post-World War Two years when America lost its innocence. People of different age groups are drawn to this.

Also, these films are 70 and 80 minutes long, unlike the two and two and a half-hour films of today. The makers of these film noirs told their stories with brevity and sharpness.

Marie Windsor and Charles McGraw in The Narrow Margin (1952, RKO), one of Rode's Top Ten Film Noirs

TH: This may be a difficult, if not impossible question, but how do you define film noir?

AR: When you have a situation where people are doing something that is wrong and they know that it's wrong, but they do it anyway. 

There are other aspects, such as the immigrant directors that came to Hollywood to make these films, the photography - day for night - for example. Film noir is a combination of ingredients. 

It's not a genre, like a western or a musical, where you can identify it right away. Noir is like beauty - it's in the eye of the beholder. Noir does have some demarcation markers, from the 1940s to the 1960s. It's definitely a post war phenomenon.


TH: If a contemporary film wants to be known as a film noir, does it have to be set in the past?

AR: Noir is a style that people use in modern day films. It doesn't have to have a story that's set in 1937, as with Chinatown. In large measure, the strains of the noir style that we see in present day films originate from those timeless dark films from the classic noir era: Double Indemnity, Laura, Out of the Past, to name a few. Many films have borrowed from those works and improved upon them.

Richard Conte and Jean Wallace in The Big Combo (1955, Allied Artists), another of Rode's Top Ten Film Noirs

TH: Do you have a favorite line of dialogue from a film noir that offers classic wisdom or advice on life?

AR: In The Big Combo when Richard Conte says, "First is first and second is nobody." That line also describes Hollywood.

Also in The Killers (1946, Universal), at the beginning of the film outside the diner, the young man (played by Phil Brown, who later was Luke Skywalker's uncle in Star Wars) asks Burt Lancaster why two hitmen are going to kill him. "I did something once," is Lancaster's reply and we spend the rest of the film finding out what that was.

Thanks to Alan Rode for his time and his wonderful stories (a few of which I can't repeat here!). Rode has written a marvelous book on Charles McGraw, one of noir's greatest actors, entitled Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy (see information here).

He is currently finishing a biography of the famed director, Michael Curtiz, who best-known for classic films such as Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy, also made film noir, the most notable being The Breaking Point (1950), his retelling of the Ernest Hemingway story To Have and Have Not, starring John Garfield and Phyllis Thaxter. Rode calls it, "the last great film Curtiz made at Warner Brothers. Information about the book, Michael Curtiz: A Man For all Movies can be found here.)

Article ©Tom Hyland

"Martha Ivers" - Wicked Fun

When I pick up movies at the local branch of the Chicago Public Library, I try and get a nice mix of films, be they new or old, mystery, comedy or musical, Hollywood or foreign. I’ll admit to often searching out old black and white films of the 1940s and ‘50s, as I love the craftmanship as well as entertaining stories of so many of those works.

Last week I picked up The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, a 1946 film directed by Lewis Milestone. I was intrigued by the title, but what drew me in was the fact that Barbara Stanwyck was one of the stars. I’ve always loved her work and just can’t resist watching her work; to me she was one of those actors like James Cagney who took control when they were on the screen; in my mind, she was as sultry and as mesmerizing an actress as has ever emerged from Hollyood.

Anyway, I am so glad I made this selection, as Martha Ivers is one of the most entertaining, wickedly ironic and just sheer delightful movies I’ve seen in some time. It’s a complex story, with two sets of main characters, whose lives intertwine in strange, sometimes convoluted ways and it winds up as a insightful look into the deception of love and the question of absolute power. While over films have dealt with this subject, few have done it as stylishly as this one.

The films opens up in the fictional city of Iverstown in 1928 with a sequence of two teenagers, Martha and her friend Sam who are running away from home. Martha has a special reason for doing so, as she is living with a cruel rich aunt whom she despises for her dominating presence. Sam is a poor kid and wants to run off to join the circus, a situation Martha finds entrancing.

They hop aboard a freight car in the station, but are immediately discovered by the police. They take Martha back home, but Sam mangages to escape. Martha is brought back to her house and after being scolded by her aunt, goes to her room where Walter, a boy her age who happens to be the son of Martha’s tutor, listens to her plans to escape.

Meanwhile, Sam arrives in Martha's room, planning on taking her away. A violent thunderstorm hits, the power in the house goes out and we soon see the aunt climbing the stairway to check on everyone in the house. When she sees Martha’s kitten that she despises, she starts to hit the feline with a fireplace poker. Martha sees this and in the darkness, grabs the poker from her aunt and starts to beat her, eventually causing her death when her aunt falls down the staircase and fractures her skull. Seconds later, the power in the house comes back on and Martha’s tutor sees that her aunt is dead. Martha, standing next to Walter, makes up a story about an intruder who supposedly caused the woman’s death. Walter, who saw Martha beat her aunt, confirms her version. All of this only a few minutes into the movie!

We then flash forward eighteen years where we see Sam (Van Heflin) driving by Iverstown with a sailor he picked up as a hitchhiker. He has an accident and has to take his car into town for repairs. Little does he realize at that moment how long it would be for those repairs to take place!

Killing time, he walks through town where he meets Antonia “Toni” (Lizabeth Scott), a beautiful, mysterious woman who is on her way back to her hometown, assuming she can get to the bus station on time. Both take a taxi and when she is late for the bus, he reserves rooms for himself and her in a local hotel. Soon the truth comes out that she is avoiding her return trip home, due to her passionate dislike of her father.

We then meet Martha (Stanwyck) who married Walter (Kirk Douglas, excellent in his screen debut), who is now the local district attorney. This is a marriage of convenience for her, as she stayed with Sam, thank to his keeping his mouth shut about the murder. Sam is now guilt-ridden and spends much of his time at night with a bottle, as he can’t honestly face the public and talk about the law, given his previous behavior. Neither can really leave the other, as their secret might emerge.

This is the setting then for all sorts of intrigue and double crosses, as Walter soons discovers that Sam is in town; thinking he must have returned for a blackmail scheme, as he was a witness to the murder years ago, he does his best to send Sam away. Martha meanwhile, sees that Sam is with Toni; her feelings for Sam return and she is now determined to get him back and away from this new woman in his life.

I won’t give any more of the plot away, except to say that it is constantly full of twists that you don’t expect. You’re never really sure if Sam cares much for Toni or is only spending time with her, given his forced time in town. Once Sam sees Martha, will he fall in love with her or resist her charms?

The original story by John Patrick was nominated for an Academy Award (the category of original story no longer exists), which was well-deserved. At the beginning of the film, we see Sam running away. We find out bits and pieces of his later life and discover that he is a gambler who is constantly running out of and then winning money. He’s a restless drifter, so we don’t think that he’ll fall for either woman, but this time might be a little different, given the allures of Toni and Martha.

For me, it is Robert Rossen’s screenplay that is among the greatest achievements of this film. Rossen was an immensely talented craftsman who could write and direct with great passion; after his work in the early and mid-1940s as one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters (I wrote about his adapted screenplay for The Sea Wolf in a previous post), he directed several of his screenplays, including All The King’s Men (1949) and The Hustler (1961).

I recently wrote a post about some of my favorite movie quotes; there are enough in this screenplay for a separate post. Rossen had a great ear for dialogue and for this film, his words were as sharp and acerbic as ever. Here are a few examples:

- Early on Martha talks to her husband Walter about the murder she committed and how they conspired to convict someone else:
“The man they executed was a criminal. If he hadn’t hanged for that, he would have been hanged for something else.”

- Later, Walter discusses Sam with Martha:
Walter: “You know what’s on my mind, Martha? About Sam?
Martha: “ I think I do and that’s where it will stay, in your mind. Unless I tell you differently.”

- In a scene when Sam goes to see Martha in her office:
Martha: “What do you want?”
Sam: “I think I’ve got what I want. I think I’ve got a gimmick. A gimmick is an angle that works for you to keep you from working too hard for yourself.”

- And perhaps the film’s most famous exchange, when Toni admits to Sam that she deceived him:
Toni: “Go ahead and hit me Sam. I’ve got it coming.”
Sam: “The only thing you’ve got coming kid, is a break.”

Lizabeth Scott and Van Heflin in a publicity shot for the film

Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) directed this film with a nice energy and composer Miklos Rosza cranks up the strings when things get a bit melodramatic. The acting is uniformly good, with Heflin cooly playing all the angles, Scott offering a nice combination of innocent and sexy, Kirk Douglas sneering as only he could sneer and Barbara Stanwyck giving us another of her icy, domineering females who just won’t take no for an answer. Whether you’re a lover of film noir or just someone who likes an old-fashioned, steamy potboiler, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is for you.