Criss Cross (1949)

Director: Robert Siodmak

Writer: Daniel Fuchs

Based on the 1934 novel by Don Tracy

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea

Cinematography: Franz Planer
Music: Miklos Rozsa

Running time: 88 mins.                                                                                                          

Crime and Fate on Bunker Hill

     Criss Cross is a tight, well-written, and exciting example of 1940s film noir. Director Robert Siodmak uses all the fine expressionistic touches he acquired in the Weimar Germany of the 1920s. Beautiful black and white deep-focus photography along with wide angle pan shots give the film that dreamlike look that one finds in the best classic noir films. 

     The plot itself is quite deterministic and based on the premise that fate determines our actions and ultimately our end. Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) and Anna Dundee (Yvonne De Carlo), the principal characters, highlight this fact; their fate ultimately leading them to their predestined deaths. A series of unplanned occurrences propel them on a course that ends in doom. Steve keeps running into Anna, his femme fatale ex-wife, who has a history of looking out for herself alone. His mother and friends warn him, and he knows she’s bad news, but still he plunges headlong into the abyss. They hurt each other whenever they’re together, but they always wind up in each other’s arms--- and that’s the way they die. 

     Siodmak emphasizes the idea of fate by often framing Steve and Anna at critical moments in windows or mirrors. In one very effective scene Anna is seated in front of a window in a flophouse hotel, the Sunshine Apartments on 3rd Street on Bunker Hill listening to Steve, Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), her current L.A. gangster husband, and some other crooks plan an armored car robbery. Behind her, clearly visible, are the Angels Flight funicular cars going up and down, criss crossing each other like two fateful ships passing in the night. The armored car robbery itself--- a total disaster--- is depicted in a way that stresses unreality and instances of insuperable fate. Siodmak films the armored car entering the plant at odd angles emphasizing the impossibility of the robbery and the futility of its outcome. The gunfight in the smoke and explosions intensifies the unreal aspect of the scene.

     There is also a hospital sequence that beautifully epitomizes noir paranoia. Steve, who is seriously wounded after the attempted robbery, is totally vulnerable and defenseless in a hospital bed. He knows the gangster he just double crossed will send someone to silence him, but there’s nothing he can do about it except lie in bed and wait. At one point in a mirror (again a nice touch!) he even sees his executioner sitting just outside his hospital room, but fatefully convinces himself that the man is innocent. Even after he knows the man has come to take him to his death, and he bribes him to take him to Anna instead, he naively thinks the man will just take the money and split. But his fate is sealed. He and Anna die in a rain of bullets with the sound of waves breaking on the Palos Verdes beach below and the shrill of police car sirens growing louder in the distance.

     Besides being a quintessential 1940s film noir, Criss Cross presents a time capsule view of Los Angeles in the years immediately after the Second World War. The film opens with a nighttime aerial pan shot of the city with all its lights flashing like diamonds on black velvet. The camera first centers on City Hall, then moves across town, over a darkened Bunker Hill, and finally zeros in on the tragic protagonists, Steve and Anna, clandestinely meeting in a dark crowded parking lot (which I believe is the one next to the Hollywood Palladium). This opening shot and most of the early scenes give us a view of an L.A. that has long since vanished: a city of noisy post-war bars and night clubs with rumba bands, big red street cars, flashy women in ankle-strapped shoes and light summer dresses, cops in fedoras and gabardine suits---- Southern California in the Truman years.

      The story is told primarily in flashbacks and voiceover reminiscences of Steve, who after an absence of several years returns to L.A. to work in his father’s armored car company and eventually gets mixed up, through his re-involvement with his ex-wife, in a payroll robbery. We first see Steve getting off a streetcar which has just exited the Hill Street Tunnel (demolished in 1955) at the intersection of Hill and Temple Streets in the former Court Hill section of Bunker Hill, just about where the present-day L.A. County Court House now stands. He then climbs the stairway up Bunker Hill to his family residence at 215 North Hill, a large rambling 1906 Queen Ann style home.  

     Bunker Hill in the late 40s was approaching its last years as a once upscale, now downscale residential neighborhood of one family Victorian mansions, cheap rooming house hotels, and small mom and pop businesses. Twenty years later it would be totally  gone and eventually covered with skyscraper bank buildings, the Music Center, and other massive steel and glass structures that form today’s L.A. skyline.

     Siodmak also makes good use of Union Station, both inside and out. The views of the station presented in Criss Cross can give present-day Angelenos and visitors an idea of just how well the restoration of Union Station some twenty years ago was carried out--- it’s one of the few Los Angeles icons, other than City Hall and the Hollywood sign, that still faithfully reflects that era. Union Station, built in 1939, came just in time to handle the great numbers of people who flocked to L. A., during World  War II and after in the post-war boom years. But with the expansion of air travel in the 50s and 60s, and a falloff of train passengers, it fell into a state of neglect. Now, thanks to its faithful restoration and to the greatly expanded L.A. subway and surface rail Metro system, along with the Metrolink suburban system and the still dependable Amtrak system, Union Station has again become a transport hub.

     Robert Siodmak and Universal Studios, as well as all the other great directors and producers who turned out what was then thought of as short-term escapist entertainment---- noirish crime thrillers, are owed a great deal of thanks by present-day viewers. They didn’t realize it at the time, but seventy plus years later their films act as a window on the past and a look (if only a short one) at a great city at a particular moment in its history. 

    

     

In Time (2011)

Director: Andrew Niccol
Producers: Andrew Niccol, Marc Abraham, Amy Israel
                  Kristel Laiblin, Eric Newman
Writer: Andrew Niccol
Actors: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy
             Olivia Wilde, Alex Pettyfer, Vincent Kartheiser, Matt Bomer
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
Music: Craig Armstrong
Rated: PG-13
Running time: 109 minutes

L.A.’s Bridges of Time

     What if we lived in a dystopian world where time was money--- literally; a world where people lived free of charge to the age of twenty-five never getting any older; but upon reaching that age had to earn--- however possible, every year, day, hour, and minute of the rest of their lives?

      Immortality was possible in this world, but it had to be acquired and held on to. The unscrupulous, corrupt, rich could live forever; whereas the rest of society (the poor) had to work hard, scrimp, bargain, and steal to survive and not “time out” (die). This is the world Andrew Niccol presents us in his tech-noir thriller In Time. The theme is similar to that of his 1997 science fiction hit Gattaca: human inequality owing to circumstances of birth and status. In Gattaca it’s genetic engineering, here it’s longevity.

      Each person in this time-based world has a digital clock with one free year on it genetically implanted at birth in his or her arm that starts ticking off time when the person reaches twenty-five. This clock is what is used to pay for one’s needs and debts; value is conceived in seconds, minutes, days, and years. One is paid in time. The more prices for things rise, the more time it costs--- and prices continually rise, causing the poor to die off rather young, or if they can survive, be perpetually poor.

      Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), the film’s protagonist, is a twenty-eight year old factory worker living in Dayton, a poor manufacturing district, or “time zone”, where life is rough and short. One evening in a neighborhood dive bar he encounters Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), a one hundred and five year old millionaire, who is tired of living and is recklessly throwing his money/years away. Will saves Henry from local murderous gang members (called “minutemen”), and Henry in turn tells Will about how the rich minority maintain their long-lived dominance by rigging it so that prices continually rise causing the poor and disadvantaged majority to rapidly die off. This leaves most time in the hands of the few to the detriment of the many.

    
  While hiding from the gang Hamilton secretly gives Will all but five minutes of his accumulated hundred plus years, and then times out on a bridge above the river channel. When Will goes to look for Henry on the bridge he’s caught on a surveillance camera and the police (called “time keepers”) suspect him of killing the millionaire for his time.

       Things get worse for Will that night when he goes to meet with his fifty year old mother (Olivia Wilde) to tell her about, and share with her his good fortune; but she tragically times out, dying in his arms. Will, now knowing the closely-held secret that the rich use to control time and keep living high on the hog, and unexpectedly possessing over a hundred years to spend, decides to head to New Greenwich, the affluent time zone several bridges distant from Dayton, and wreak revenge on the rich.

        Without going too far into the plot, let me say that Will does what he intended with the help of Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried), the bored and protected daughter of Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser), a millionaire time-loaning businessman. He meets her at a casino while playing for high time stakes with her father. Later at a party at the Weis’s villa, after the time keepers led by Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) arrive and try to arrest Will, he escapes them taking Sylvia as a hostage.The rest of the movie involves Will and Sylvia, who soon becomes sympathetic to Will’s plan, being chased by Leon from New Greenwich back to Dayton. Will and Sylvia in the course of the film become time bandits robbing (a la Bonnie and Clyde) Weis’s time banks.

         In Time is fast-paced and thought provoking from beginning to end. The “time is money” theme has been used before (The Price of Life 1987), but not so effectively as it is presented here. The use of an all under thirty year old cast is different and surprisingly believable.

         I chose this film, however, not for the story, the acting, or the production quality, all of which are quite good; but for its locations. In Time uses L.A. locations that are for the most part off the beaten track: Boyle Heights and the downtown Arts District for derelict Dayton; and Century City and Malibu for affluent New Greenwich. Most noteworthy is the prominence of Los Angeles’s iconic bridges--- especially the Sixth Street Bridge (now being replaced by a newer version (sad!). In the story the bridges serve as connectors between the different time zones (actually segregated economic zones), with Dayton at the low end and New Greenwich at the top.

        Besides the L.A. bridges Andrew Niccol also makes good use of the L.A. River channel itself for car chases and Henry Hamilton’s death plunge. Film buffs will remember these sites from classic movies like Them (1954) and Point Blank (1967). It’s good to see them again so extensively used. The cars used throughout the movie are all older models (Chevrolets, Dodges, Lincolns etc.) and help to enhance the future-retro feel and look of the film.The Boyle Heights area with its decayed and derelict buildings just east of the river makes for a perfect Dayton, a place of hopelessness and random violence. The vast forlorn Central Market area off Seventh Street is also effectively used, along with the famous rundown King Edward Hotel on Los Angeles Street downtown. The steel and glass of Century City and the lusciousness of Malibu contrast starkly with the rather squalid locations east of the river.

          Another interesting point about this movie (if you have not already noticed) is that most of the proper names used refer to clock makers, watch companies and other names associated with time (Salas, Weis, Dayton and Greenwich etc.). Niccol used this same clever conceit in Gattaca where all the names had astronomic associations.

       

     

Point Blank (1967)

Director: John Boorman

Writers: Alexander Jacobs; David Newhouse; Rafe Newhouse

Based on The Hunter by Richard Stark

Actors: Lee Marvin; Angie Dickinson; John Vernon; Keenan Wynn; Carrol O’Connor

Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop

Music: Johnny Mandel

Running Time: 92 mins.

Neo-noir begins in L.A.

        Something happened in 1967 that changed the way we view movies and altered our idea of what film was capable of. It was a turning point year in Hollywood that brought in a cinematic golden age of innovation unequaled since the 1930s. A new generation of filmmakers appeared on the scene who were free agents, independent of the old studio system, and free to turn their individualistic style of storytelling into reality. Directors like Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde), Mike Nichols (The Graduate), and John Boorman (Point Blank) pushed the envelope that year, breaking new ground and creating examples that filmmakers have followed ever since.

           John Boorman’s Point Blank is a neo-noir--- a film noir produced after the classic period (1940 to1960), but maintaining the basic elements of the classics (e.g Double Indemnity 1944): psychological crime story, involving a fated protagonist, and told in a distinct expressionistic style that underlined the dark theme of the material. It is, in fact, the first neo-noir (in my opinion), for it set the pattern and look for most of the neo-noirs that were to follow.

             Point Blank is an offbeat story of revenge set in both San Francisco and Los Angeles (mostly in L.A.). It’s violent, unpredictable, and revolutionary. Walker (no first name), the principal character, played by Lee Marvin, is shot and apparently killed in the first ten minutes of the film after a robbery scam on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. But he then turns up again a year later bent on obtaining the $93,000 owed him, and determined to wreak revenge on Mal Reese (John Vernon), the man who shot him, cheated him out of his cut, and ran off with his wife.

              The scene soon shifts to Los Angeles where Walker tracks down his wayward wife Lynn (Sharon Acker), and eventually Reese through the help of his wife’s sister Chris (Angie Dickinson). What follows is one frantic pursuit across L.A. from Santa Monica Beach to the L.A. River channel just south of downtown. This mad pursuit results in the suicide of his wife, Reese’s accidental death from a fall off his penthouse balcony, and the death of two of the syndicate heads who set up the original Alcatraz job. But oddly none of these deaths is caused by Walker directly. The movie ends where it begins on Alcatraz with Walker disappearing into the shadows of the deserted prison, never collecting his $93,000 cut.

              As in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) twelve years earlier, there’s an air of unreality in this movie that causes viewers to doubt what they’re seeing and hearing. Is it all a dream, is Walker a ghost, or is the entire film the fantasy of a dying man? Boorman leaves it up to the audience to decide.

              Like the Italian Antonioni, Boorman, an Englishman, was not fond of L.A. For him it signaled everything that was wrong with modern American society--- it was stark, over-sized, impersonal, alienating, and materialistic--- a perfect place for a vengeance- determined lone gun to operate freely. To emphasize this he chose location sites like the  empty antiseptic corridor of the L.A. Airport terminal for Walker’s arrival, the L.A. River channel between the Fourth and Sixth Street Bridges--- a huge ditch encased in concrete and lined with chain-link fences--- for a double assassination scene; the exterior of a sterile-looking glass and steel Wilshire Boulevard office building for Walker to prowl around in while doing his stalking; a super-sized Culver City car lot to highlight the materialistic superficiality of 1960’s America; and the grimy and deserted underbelly of the Santa Monica Freeway for a hair-raising white-knuckle demolition car ride. Even the more attractive locations like the Hollywood Hills home of Brewster (Carroll O’Connor), one of the syndicate heads, and the Huntley House Hotel in Santa Monica with its then futuristic outdoor elevator (still there, by the way) give the feeling of artificiality and vulgar wealth.

                What Boorman did with this movie to set the style for future neo-noirs is what makes Point Blank exceptional (other than Lee Marvin’s stunning performance). In the classic black and white noir movies of the past shades of lighting and use of shadows were used to set the mood of the story. This was no longer effective, or needed, in color movies. Boorman used color schemes to send the same messages. Different colors are highlighted in several key scenes: green in the syndicate office, orange at the Hollywood Hills house, white and blue in the car lot, and bright yellows and reds for Angie Dickinson’s dresses. It is definitely a beautiful movie to look at.

                In the classic noirs odd camera angles and distorted images were used to disorient the audience and create a feeling of unreality. Boorman uses a postmodern narrative style that jumps back and forth from past to present and seemingly out of place scenes like a bizarre nightclub episode with a screaming James Brown-like singer, a guileless clientele, and a semi-psychedelic fight scene for the same effect. These innovative techniques would become standard in the neo-noirs of Soderbergh, Mann, Lynch, and the others who have come since.

                  Point Blank was another film that was not well received by audiences in 1967, but has since become a cult classic, considered one of the “top films of the decade.” It has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

              

Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Writers: Hampton Francher & David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.

Actors: Harrison Ford; Rutger Hauer; Sean Young; Edward James Olmos; Daryl Hannah; William Sanderson

Cinematography: Jordan Cronenweth

Music: Vangelis

Running time: 114 mins.

Rated: R

 Los Angeles, November 2019?

         Blade Runner is one of those movies that seems to be on most people’s most favorite list (91% on Rotten Tomatoes). When it was released in1982 it didn’t get a very positive response. The critics were cold to it, and the public couldn’t understand it. Why then is it now a classic? What is the appeal of this movie that has endured and grown over the last thirty-two years? 

          It’s a tech-noir, or future noir, or science-fiction noir--- the sub-genre  has several names. It wasn’t the first--- that honor goes to Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965), but it was the best. It had the great fortune of having Ridley Scott (a “creator of worlds”) as its director and artistic conceiver, and what makes it appealing first of all is the look. There was never anything before that actually looked anything like Blade Runner.

           Most science-fiction movies that dealt with future time presented a world that was totally modern and far advanced from the present. But Blade Runner did something different: it gave us a retro-future --- a future that was both technologically advanced, but also one that harked back to a familiar past. The idea that the future could possibly look like the past was until then completely unknown--- at least in Hollywood.

            The movie also dealt with the theme of what constitutes humanity, memory, and just how artificial is artificial intelligence. The humanity of the characters, both human and replicant, stands out and causes viewers to think a little more deeply than they normally would watching a sci-fi movie.

            The Los Angeles that Scott presents to us is a dark misty mega-city of gas fires, pollution, and acid rain--- a city of the left behinds--- those who could not qualify or afford to settle in the off-world colonies. Like the classic films noir it borrows from, most of the movie takes place at night. This L.A. is a city where the police patrol in air sleds(aerodyne “spinners”) and almost everyone else travels on foot, by bus or on bicycle. In its blighted crowdedness it resembles 1980s Shanghai more than 2010s Los Angeles, but that’s what makes this conception so noteworthy. It’s a possible L.A. as seen from 1982.

              Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the main character, is a blade runner, a cop who hunts down replicants, advanced androids who possess self-awareness and can pass as totally human. These replicants were developed to serve as labor in the off-world colonies and are banned from earth. When several of them make a murderous escape from the colonies and wind up somewhere in the crowded streets of L.A., Deckard is called on to retire (i.e kill) them. And this he does. We follow Deckard in his pursuits through these streets that lead to a final end for the replicants, and an awakening and self-realization for Deckard. The unexpected awakening comes to him during his investigation when he encounters and falls in love with Rachael (Sean Young), an advanced Nexus-6 replicant, who was created especially for Dr EldonTyrell (Joe Turkell), the head of Tyrell Corporation, the developer and maker of the androids. Rachael, who is unaware that she is a replicant until she hears Deckard and Tyrell talking, saves Deckard’s life when he’s attacked by one of the escapees. After this the two come to question the actual meaning of life, and what makes us human. Is it intelligence or love--- or both? The answer is left to the viewer.

             Although most of Blade Runner was shot on sound stages at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and in London, Scott used three iconic Los Angeles locations as exterior footage: Union Station, the Second Street tunnel, and especially the Bradbury Building on Broadway, which was used as the scene of the tense rooftop pursuit and finale of the film. The original novel by Phillip K. Dick takes place in San Francisco, but Scott set his version in Los Angeles because of its classic film noir associations. It was a good choice.

             The vision of Los Angeles in the second decade of the 21st century that Scott created may not be what has actually come about, but he was definitely prophetic about the multi-cultural makeup of the present-day city. Los Angeles in1980 was still a mostly white middle-American city, but In the last thirty years it has absorbed immigrants from every corner of the world, making it one of the most ethnically and racially diverse cities in the world. The multi-lingual conversations heard presently on the streets of downtown L.A., Hollywood, Westwood, or Van Nuys on any given day emphasize this change and recall the multi-lingual “Cityspeak” of Gaff (Edward James Olmos), Deckard’s cop associate, and the street people of Rick Deckard’s City of the Angels. 

A Better Life (2011)

Director: Chris Weitz

Writer: Eric Eason

Story by: Roger L. Simon

Actors: Demian Bichir: José Julián; Dolores Heredia; Carlos Linares; Bobby Soto

Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe

Music: Alexandre Desplat

Running time: 94 mins.

Rated: PG-13

L.A. and the immigrant

           America is a land of immigrants. All of us are, or are descended from, people who came here seeking a better life. Even the original Americans came here crossing the Bering Strait in search of game that was becoming scarce in the Old World of Asia. A better life is a human right. It drives us all, though we may call it by different names.

Today immigration is a politically charged term that has the tendency to polarize and alienate--- even infuriate. This movie puts a human face on the controversy and makes no political statements; it just gives a view of one man’s determination to better himself and ensure a better future for his son.

             Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir) is an undocumented Mexican immigrant who came to Los Angeles with his wife fifteen years ago to escape the poverty and lack of opportunity in his homeland. He works as a gardener and has trouble making enough to support his teenage son Luis (José Julián); his wife, we learn later in the film, deserted them when their son was an infant. The relationship between Carlos and Luis is strained. Carlos lives only for his son; he even sleeps on the couch so that Luis can have the only bedroom in their small rented house. But Luis is ashamed of his father, and is being pressured to join a local gang. Carlos needs a truck so that he can work independently and develop his own business. The opportunity comes along when his boss Blasco (Joaquín Cosio) decides to give up the business and return to Mexico. Carlos gets a loan from his sister Anita (Delores Heredia) and buys his boss’s truck and gardening tools; but on his first day as an independent contractor his dayworker assistant Santiago (Carlos Linares) steals the truck, shattering Carlos’s hopes for a better future. 

                 The rest of the movie deals with Carlos and Luis traveling around Los Angeles in search of the stolen truck. The journey they take bonds the father and son, but ultimately leads sadly to their unwanted separation. 

                A Better Life is a realistic portrayal of Latino immigrant life in Los Angeles--- the best and the worst of it. It loosely resembles the storyline of the post-war neorealist Italian film The Bicycle Thief (1948). Locations are spread out across the county: East L.A., Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and South Central. The Chicano street dialect is spot on authentic--- no clichés here, this is the real thing. Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries (one of L.A.’s living saints) was a consultant on the language and culture.

                  This movie, as I said, is not a political or social statement; it’s a character study, and the characters of both Carlos and Luis are beautifully presented by Demian Bichir and José Julián. Bichir was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance  and Julián for a Spirit Award. Bichir’s facial expressions say more in a second than a multi-worded sentence--- hurt, joy, wonder, and anger: all expressed simply in the blinking of an eye and the tightening of the lips. 

                   Two scenes in particular really stand out and show the humanity of the man. In one, Carlos, on his first day of work as a new entrepreneur with his new truck, climbs a palm tree to trim it. From the height he looks out at the view and admires the city spread out before him--- his city. He’s on top of the world and he’s made it, there’s hope. But in a second as he looks down he sees his keys are missing and Santiago is driving away in his truck--- it’s all gone. He chases the truck until he’s exhausted. 

                   The other takes place in the detention center just before he’s about to be sent back to Mexico. On their journey to find the stolen truck the father and son had stopped at a Charro rodeo in East L.A. There Luis asked his father why he had had him, but Carlos could not express it at that time, and the question went unanswered. At their last meeting he gives Luis the moving answer--- an answer the boy needed to here.

                    A Better Life is just one story of one man’s dream to carve out a future and help build a nation in the process; there have been millions before him, and there will be millions in the years to come--- this is an immigrant’s tale.

             

Shampoo (1975)

Director: Hal Ashby

Producer: Warren Beatty

Writers: Robert Towne; Warren Beatty

Actors: Warren Beatty; Julie Christie; Goldie Hawn; Lee Grant; Jack Warden; Tony Bill

Music: Paul Simon

Cinematography: László Kovács

Running time: 110 mins.

Rated: R

Beverly Hills  60s excess--- seen from the 70s.

       Shampoo is a satire on the narcissistic culture prevalent in the upper classes in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. It was made in 1975, so there was a several year period of reflection between the time depicted and the writing of the screenplay. Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, the writers knew what they were writing about having had direct experience with the subject matter. Towne was, and still is, the consumate L.A. writer (he wrote the screenplay for Chinatown), and Beatty is an actor who lived the culture of 1960s Hollywood/Beverly Hills. Both are Hollywood liberals, so the critique here is sharply directed at the self-absorbed, materialistic, hedonistic moneyed class they were very familiar with. The politics is blatant.

       The story takes place during one twenty-four hour period--- Election Day, November 4,1968--- hence the politics. Beatty plays George Roundy, a Beverly Hills hairdresser, who is trying to open his own salon while managing his overactive, multi-partnered sex life at the same time. George’s unrelenting heterosexual sex drive is beginning to catch up with him. He’s having simultaneous affairs with several women--- two of them the wife, Felicia, and the mistress, Jackie, of Lester Karpf (Jack Warden), a Beverly Hills millionaire businessman who George is hoping will help finance his business venture. George is ambitious and thinks he using his conquests to further his own ends; but not being the brightest guy on the block, he doesn’t realize that he’s just being exploited by these bored, unsatisfied, frustrated rich women. He winds up getting dumped by all of them and finding himself alone on a hill above Mulholland Drive after Jackie (Julie Christie), the one he really cared for, goes off with the money (Lester). 

          The social comments in this film are strong--- and the political even more so. Lester, the rich Republican businessman and Nixon supporter, who claims to be concerned about the disintegration of the moral fiber of our society, drives around in a Rolls Royce listening to stock reports while his wife Felicia (Lee Grant) wiles away her time in beauty salons--- when she’s not having sex with George. Lester is unfaithful to his wife with a woman who is unfaithful to him; and his daughter Lorna (Carrie Fisher) plays tennis all day and solicits sex from men she barely knows (George again). He may be a shrewd businessman, but he’s not sharp enough to notice that he’s being cuckolded twice, or maybe thrice--- if you include his daughter. Everybody in this movie is either using someone, and/or being used by someone.

        There are two Election Night parties the principal characters attend that spotlight the political divide prevalent at the time in upper L.A. society (a divide that is still with us). One is an old-line, conservative Republican reception at the Bistro on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills. The attendees are older well-heeled establishment types. Pictures of Nixon, Agnew and Reagan abound as the partygoers await the intended victory. The other is at a private residence in Benedict Canyon attended by hip, young and seemingly liberal types--- also well-heeled and loose. But here alcohol, drugs, and sex are the order as opposed to the stuffy, ridiculousness evident at the Bistro. Both worlds depicted here are out of touch with reality and the problems afflicting the country at that time.

           Nixon is the elephant in the room in Shampoo. He’s everywhere lurking in the background, just waiting to take over. The year 1968 was when the sharp, political and social divisions in this country became deadly evident. It witnessed the assassinations of King and Kennedy, the riots that followed, the Chicago Democratic Convention debacle, and a war that refused to end. The New Frontier and the Great Society were coming to an end. Nixon was elected on the day this movie takes place with the slogan “Bring us together”; and from the vantage point of 1975 when the movie was made, and knowing what was to come: five more years of war in Vietnam, Watergate, and the eventual resignations of both Nixon and Agnew, it was obvious that that did not happen.

Note: See my overviews of Model Shop and Zabriskie Point for two other views of that pivotal year 1968 in L.A. 

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Director: Robert Aldrich

Writer: A. I. Bezzerides

Based on: Kiss Me Deadly, a novel by Mickey Spillane

Actors: Ralph Meeker; Albert Dekker; Paul Stewart; Juano Hernandez; Cloris Leachman; Maxine Cooper; Gaby Rodgers

Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo

Music: Frank DeVol

Running Time: 106 mins.

L.A. Noir Apocalypse

             Kiss Me Deadly is a 1950s detective story; at least that’s what it appears to be--- it’s more. Robert Aldrich and A.I. Bezzerides took Mickey Spillane’s lurid pulp  private eye novel and made it into something else: a critique on the Cold War American political/social mindset of the 1950s. They took Spillane’s two-dimensional characters and his standard pulp fiction plot and gave them cosmic significance.

               The story deals with detective Mike Hammer’s (Ralph Meeker) quest across L.A. for a mysterious box containing something important that several people have died for. Greedy and unscrupulous Hammer thinks it might be “something big”, something valuable, but is totally unaware of what it really is---dangerous nuclear material capable of blowing L.A. and possibly the rest of the world to kingdom come. Hammer’s obsessive quest forms the matrix for Man’s obsessive journey to ultimate destruction. This movie more than any other 50s film, with the possible exception of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), best epitomizes the doomsday paranoia of the period.

                 Hammer’s quest begins when one night he picks up a woman hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. She tells him her name is Christina and that people are chasing her. Mike grudgingly offers to drop her off at the nearest bus stop, but they are intercepted by several gangster types who knock Mike out, torture and murder Christina, and leave him unconscious in his wrecked sports car.

                 Upon recovery and released from the hospital, Mike sets out, haunted by Christina’s memory and her last words to him “ remember me”, to track down the “something big” she died for--- or the “great whatsit” as his assistant/girlfriend, Velda (Maxine Cooper) calls it.

                  In the course of his odyssey through mid-1950s Los Angeles Hammer meets an assortment of characters: a wily boxing promoter, a nervous truck driver, a cagey morgue assistant, a philosophical furniture mover; sarcastic apartment managers; an opera enthusiast, gangsters, an extremely deadly femme fatale, and various other strange types. Some are helpful, but most, especially the gangsters and the police, try to discourage him from his pursuit; but pig-headed, avaricious Mike takes no heed. In the end he finds what he’s looking for, but the big payoff turns out to be a nuclear apocalypse. The movie ends with him and Velda fleeing into the Pacific Ocean as the Malibu beach house where they were being held by the mysterious and sinister Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker) and his gangster minions erupts in a nuclear reaction.

               For Aldrich and Bezzerides, political leftists, Spillane’s pulp novel Mike Hammer with his latent fascist inclinations symbolized what they felt was wrong with America at that time of political witch hunts and McCarthy hearings. Instead of Spillane’s hero figure this movie version of him is anything but heroic. Hammer is self-centered and narcissistic, as Christina so aptly tags him. He likes the good life: sharp sports cars, a comfortable art-bedecked apartment, and fancy up-to-date gadgets (e.g. a tape operated answering machine decades before they became available to the public)--- and he’s not particular how he gets it. He uses Velda shamefully, taking advantage of her affection for him by pimping her out to get dirt for his divorce clients. He roughs up old men, insults women, and enjoys inflicting pain. He symbolizes the pettiness of those of us with assumed superior egos. And he, like the rest of us, is too concerned with his own little world to realize what’s going on in the greater world around him. His pettiness in the end will bring down the curtain on us all.

              Kiss Me Deadly is a remarkable piece of filmmaking on several different levels. The utter unreality of the style is unique. Almost everything in the movie seems to be out of joint. The whole film has a dreamlike quality that causes the viewer to doubt what he’s seeing and hearing. Camera angles are off, dialogues seem unnatural, sequences appear to have incongruities and odd time lapses. The opening credits tell right off that this movie is not ordinary--- they’re reversed. They move from bottom to top, not in the expected order. The L.A. portrayed is a strange place located between reality and fantasy.

               This movie is a cautionary tale, and Aldrich and Bezzerides artfully use mythological and classical allusions throughout the film to express the eternal truths and cataclysmic  message they want to relate. Hammer’s investigation is nothing less than a trip into the underworld, and a journey through the labyrinth. Like Virgil’s Aeneas, he even picks up a “golden bough” (in the wheel of his car) upon his entrance, but foolishly discards it, thereby sealing his fate. The “great whatsit” is the fatal box containing the Medusa’s head and guarded by Cerberus the hound of hell. And Gabrielle (Gaby Rodgers), Soberin’s femme fatale associate and the woman who out of curiosity and lust opens the deadly box, is no other than Pandora herself bringing ultimate woe and destruction into the world. Who would have thought that a 1950s rather run of the mill film noir could be so ingeniously contrived?

                Besides its oddness and offbeat artistry, Kiss Me Deadly has one more very important element to offer the modern viewer: it’s a cinematic time capsule of a long-gone Los Angeles. Dwight Eisenhower was president, take-cover drills were a common occurrence in most schools, and in a couple of years backyard bomb shelters would be all the rage. L.A. was changing fast and Hammer’s quest gives us a last view of what was about to pass away. Hammer does most of his investigating on Bunker Hill--- the former Bunker Hill of decrepit Victorian mansions, rickety old hotels, decaying apartment buildings, and the original Angel’s Flight. His travels also take him from his up-scale apartment building (still there) in a then sparsely populated Westwood, to a gangster’s estate in Beverly Hills (Greystone Mansion), a black lounge in South Central, the Hollywood Athletic Club (still there), a gas station in Calabasas, and finally to a spectacular explosive ending in the surf in Malibu.

                  Kiss Me Deadly is a one of a kind movie. Once you see it your opinion of 1950s Hollywood filmmaking as formulaic and unimaginative will be forever altered.