FILM REVIEW OF ''CRISS CROSS'' (1949)

Yvonne De Carlo smolders as a sultry femme fatale who juggles both fall guy Burt Lancaster and bad guy Dan Duryea in “Son of Dracula” director Robert Siodmak’s “Criss Cross,” (*** out of ****) an above-average but predictable exercise in film noir that boasts gloomy atmosphere, a gritty urban environment, and solid performances. Burt Lancaster gives an exceptional performance as the vulnerable protagonist who cannot conceal his sentiments about the De Carlo character from anybody, even the supporting characters. Speaking of supporting characters, “Criss Cross” boasts its share and they take an active part in the proceedings. Percy Helton as a bartender, Alan Napier as a crime planner, Joan Minor as the lush, Griff Barrett as Pop, Isabel Randolph as the hospital nurse and Tom Pedi as Dundee’s accomplice all contribute memorably to the action. Tony Curtis appears briefly without credit as a gigolo dancing with De Carlo and Raymond Burr puts in a similarly momentary appearance as a gangster.

Although the film noir elements aren’t as oppressive as in Siodmak’s earlier and superior collaboration with Lancaster on “The Killers,” “Criss Cross” is unmistakably noir. For example, a larger number of scenes in “Criss Cross” take place during the day rather than at night. Siodmak never wears out his welcome here and the use of an extended flashback 14 minutes into the action that takes us back for important exposition is expertly integrated into the narrative. Siodmak stages the action nimbly without lingering unduly on anybody or anything. A Dresden-born German, Siodmak is a highly underrated helmer who has never received the well-deserved recognition accorded Fritz Lang. Mind you, Siodmak doesn’t have Lang’s cinematic flair with staging scenes, but his films are nevertheless robust.

Scenarist Daniel Fuchs, who later won an Oscar for “Love Me or Leave Me” (1955), based his screenplay on Don Tracy’s crime novel with tough guy dialogue and continuity supplemented by William Bowers that emphasizes the theme of fatalism so essential to film noir. Moreover, Fuchs received an Edgar nomination for his “Criss Cross” script. Everybody in “Criss Cross” is destined to lose in some way or another. Lancaster’s doomed character, however, suffers the greatest anguish by comparison. De Carlo’s siren is second in line. Surprisingly, Fuchs and Siodmak generate more tension among their scheming principals in the first half of the action than they do with the gripping armored truck heist in broad daylight during the second half of the movie. Interestingly, the police don’t figure prominently in “Criss Cross, though they hover on the periphery in the form of Lieutenant Frank Ramirez. The heist is still pretty engrossing material from its carefully planned stages to its skillful execution.

The production values of “Criss Cross” look first-rate. Universal doesn’t appear to have confined either Siodmak or the film--despite its B-movie subject matter—to claustrophobic studio sets. The armored truck set looks terrific, particularly when they load the truck up and leave with a tilting high angle shot that shows them exiting the building. “Champion” cinematographer Frank (later Franz) Planer’s evocative black & white photography is a considerable asset. Planer’s location lensing is top-notch in several scenes, especially the multi-layered Round Up Bar and later at the factory where the heist occurs. Planer does an exceptional job of photographing the Lancaster character after he winds up in the hospital with his arm in traction. An interesting slice-of-life moment occurs early in the movie during a conversation between two employees at the armored truck firm when they discuss about the competitive price of two grocery stores and how one store undercuts the other with their prices o soap and tomato juice that enhances the 1949 setting.

“Criss Cross” starts out suspensefully as we learn that Anna (Yvonne De Carlo of “Brute Force”) and Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster of “Elmer Gantry”) are hiding in the parking lot of the nightclub called The Round Up where they are necking. The story unfolds chronologically to begin with because Anna is married to notorious gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea of “Black Bart”) who is looking for her at that very moment inside the Round Up. Dundee gives Anna the third degree later when she comes back inside about what she was doing. Steve cautions her earlier that they must be discreet or they could blow the entire set-up. Later, Steve enters the Round Up to gate crash on Dundee’s party. You see, Dundee and company plan to relocate to Detroit and he is giving a farewell party. Los Angeles Police Detective Lieutenant Pete Ramirez (Stephen McNally of “Winchester ‘73”) tries to dissuade Steve from butting in where he hasn’t been invited. Steve blows him off and moments later Ramirez gate crashes the party himself after Dundee has pulled a knife on Steve. Ramirez is Steve’s friend, though we never know the basis of their back and forth relationship. Whenever Steve calls Ramirez ‘lieutenant,’ Ramirez has him call him ‘Pete.’ When Ramirez is all business because Steve has crossed the line, he makes Steve call him ‘lieutenant.’

Steve drives an armored truck and Dundee and his henchmen plan to rob the armored track company that employs Steve. Sure, “Criss Cross” has the stock-in-trade message that ‘crime doesn’t pay’ and it is emphasized by everybody but the optimistic Steve. Initially, an armored truck official brags, “Nobody ever got away with the heist on an armored truck in 28-years. Matter of fact, they don’t even try any more.” Later, Finchley (Alan Napier, who played Alfred the Butler on TV’s “Batman”) objects to the robbery because they always end in failure until he listens to Steve’s inside idea. Vincent (Tom Pedi of “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three”) raves about the interjection from another henchman that everybody on that robbery wound up dead or in the chair. Later, in the hospital, Ramiez reiterates the same message to Steve that you cannot rob an armored car and get away with it.

Initially, the armored truck robbery seems to be a spur-of-the-moment scheme by Steve to prevent Dundee and his henchmen from take reprisals against Anna for sneaking out to see Steve. The subplot about Steve and Anna is very interesting. They were married, but they divorced after two years. Steve leaves Los Angeles to get Anna out of his blood and knocks around the country performing odd jobs as a blue-collar laborer. Nevertheless, Steve is still smitten by Anna and she still has something for him. Eventually, Steve feels himself drawn back to Los Angeles and everybody from Ramirez, the bartender, the lush, Steve’s mom, and Steve’s brother’s girlfriend know that he has feelings for her. They rekindle some of their love but also their drama. As much as they rub each other the wrong way, they also rub each other enough that they get together. As it turns out, Anna has been dating a crime figure and she marries him, probably to keep herself in jewelry. Steve is as hopelessly drawn to Anna as she is to money. Anna mistakenly believes that she can manipulate Slim for his money as she can Steve for his love. Before long Anna realizes that Slim is a force to contend with and worries about Slim learning about how she is two-timing her. These two characters are puppets to their own mistaken notions of love and money. Nothing that they can do will save them from their mutual obsessions. Ironically enough, it isn’t the law that brings Steve and Anna to their demise but the jealous Slim.

Siodmak and Planer do a good job staging the heist. The criminals set off smoke bombs so that everything takes place in a kind of limbo with Steve trying to thwart the robbery after shooting breaks out that he didn’t want. The paranoia in the hospital scenes where Steve feels trapped is gripping as is the ill-fated ending that Anna and Steve meet at Dundee’s hands. Siodmak stages this final scene much the same way that he did the scene at the beginning of “The Killers” when the two hitmen knocked off the Swede. We see Slim enter the house where Steve and Anna are hiding and he fires his gun repeatedly at them off-camera. We don’t see the muzzle of Slim’s revolver belching smoke, we only see the smoke and his irate face as he watches them die in each other’s arms.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE KILLERS'' (1946)

“Son of Dracula” director Robert Siodmak, who emigrated from Germany after Joseph Goebbels drove him out of the Fatherland, made a specialty of what French film theorist Nino Frank called ‘film noir.’ These gritty, black & white melodramas usually occurred in an urban setting and involved unsavory criminal types as well as cops. Women—designated as femme fatales--often lured gullible men to their doom like the sirens did to sailors in ancient Greek myths. Although some scenes take place during daylight hours, most film noir thrillers unfold after dark. Metaphorically, film noir involve flawed protagonists suffering from some psychological neuroses. Siodmak’s “The Killers” (**** out of ****)epitomizes vintage film noir. “Black Friday” lenser Woody Bredell captures the fatalistic look of film noir, and Siodmark incorporates several mirror image scenes as they depict the solution to a mysterious robbery and the demise of all the conspirators. Basically, nobody winds up with what they set out to get in "The Killers" starting with the eponymous villains when they order supper at a lunch wagon.

“The Stranger” scenarist Anthony Veiller, along with John Huston and Richard Brooks (neither received credit for their contributions), adapted Ernest Hemingway’s famous short story that Scribner’s Magazine had published in its March 1927 issue. Siodmak and his scribes kept most of the short story intact. The short story dealt with two tough-guy gunmen who occupied a Midwestern dinner in a small town and waited to kill a prizefighter named ‘Swede’ Anderson. Undoubtedly influenced by the narrative flashbacks in “Citizen Kane,” the filmmakers forge the remainder of this concise 103 minute film with flashbacks galore as various individuals discuss their relationship with a curious lone wolf insurance investigator who cannot get over the fact that the Swede accepted his inevitable death at the hands of the gunmen without trying to defend himself. The puzzled investigator exhausts every single clue in the case and winds up solving a 6 year old hat factory robbery and recovers a portion of the loot.

“The Killers” opens after dark as two gunsels in fedoras and trench coats, Max (William Conrad) and Al (Charles McGraw of "The Narrow Margin"), cruise into the cozy hamlet of Brentwood, New Jersey, check out the Tri-States Gas Station and then step over to Henry’s lunch counter a little before 6 PM when supper is served and set up an ambush to kill ‘Swede’ Anderson. The diner owner warns them that if the ‘Swede’ doesn’t show at 6 PM then he isn’t going to show. The gunmen leave Henry’s dinner and he unties his black cook and a customer, Nick Adams. Adams (Phil Brown) works with the Swede at the gas station. Henry sends Nick off to warn the Swede (Burt Lancaster in his film debut) before the gunmen can find him. Nick warns the Swede, but the Swede refuses to flee. “I once did something bad,” he explains to Nick. Later, Max and Al barge into his room and shoot the Swede eight times. All we see is the flash of their firearms barking off-camera as they perforate the Swede.

Riordan (Edmond O’Brien of “DOA”) investigates claims for an insurance company. He learns that the Swede left $2,500 to a beneficiary. Riordan questions Nick about the Swede. The flashbacks begin with Nick’s story about the Swede meeting an out-of-town motorist who makes him so queasy that he takes a day off of work and lies in the darkness of his boarding house. Initially, Riordan’s boss, R.S. Kenyon (Donald MacBride of “Room Service”), considers it a nickel and dime case and wants Riordan on another case. Riordan convinces Kenyon to give him more time. Riordan calls on Philadelphia Police Detective Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene of “Golden Boy”) who not only grew up with the Swede but later arrested him for theft and sent him to prison for three years. Lubinsky tells Riordan about the Swede's ill-fated boxing days and later how he fell into bad company. Lubinsky arrested his own childhood friend on a theft charge because the Swede refused to let him arrest his flame Kitty on a shoplifting charge. Riordan attends the Swede’s funeral that Lubinsky and his wife, Lilly Harmon Lubinsky (Virginia Christine of the Folgers Coffee commercials), have arranged and asks about another funeral guest.

Charleston (Vince Barrett of “Scarface”) shared a prison cell with the Swede for two years. He tells Riordan his side of the story. In the flashback, Charleston contacts the Swede as soon as he got out of prison about a job. The Swede joins the ring of criminals led by ‘Big’ Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker of “The Wild Bunch”), a trigger-happy goon, Dum Dum Clarke (Jack Lambert of “Vera Cruz”), and Blinky Franklin (Jeff Corey of “True Grit”). Charleston refuses to participate in the robbery caper because he thinks that it is too big and will end in failure. He explains that he will never go back to prison and lives only for 'easy pickings.'
Riordan learns that Colfax, Clarke, Franklin and the Swede robbed the Prentiss Hat factory from a single lead, a green silk bandana with an Irish harp on it. An incredulous Kenyon reads about the robbery.

While Kenyon reads about the robbery on the soundtrack, Siodmak presents the robbery in a single take with a crane shot. Clearly, Siodmak knew his craft to pull off this complicated camera movement. This scene exemplifies Siodmak’s finesse with the mise-en-scene. Touches like this one elevate “The Killers” and make it look better than it convoluted story. Indeed, Veiller, Huston, and Brooks expand the scope of the action, going back seven years to depict the Swede’s victories and successes. Usually, the Swede lost. He goes soft on a dame, Kitty (Ava Gardner of “Whistle Stop”) and takes a fall for her so that she won’t land in prison. The remainder of “The Killers” deals with caper that Big Jim cooks up. When the Swede joins them, he is surprised to see Kitty as Big Jim’s squeeze. Later, Big Jim and the Swede fight over a card game. Big Jim hates the Swede and tries to cut him out of the robbery. The Swede trumps him because Kitty tells him about the new rendezvous and he swipes the $250-thousand from Colfax, Clarke, and Blinky.

“The Killers” qualifies as a top-notch film noir caper. Burt Lancaster became a star as did his co-star Ava Gardner. The irony is the Swede never had a chance with Kitty. He took a dive for her and she still tricked him. The theme of fate pervades “The Killers.” The Swede knows he’ll never escape either fate or the gunsels. Siodmak coaxes solid performances from a talented cast. Lancaster is simply dazzling as the thick headed Swede who goes dizzy over Kitty and is destroyed by her treachery. Ava Gardner looks spectacular as the cunning Kitty, while Albert Dekker is appropriately perfidious as Colfax. He uses Kitty to trick not only the Swede into thinking that he has robbed Colfax and his pals, but also he eliminates his conspirators—Dum Dum and Blinky—by letting the Swede take the loot. The plot twists and the ending when Kitty finds her neck finally caught in the noose of fate is outstanding. Film noir not only cheats the villains but it also cheats Riordan. Initially, Riordan is elated because he solved the six-year old robbery, but Kenyon points out:"Owing to your splendid efforts, the basic rate of the Atlantic Casualty Company as of 1947 will probably drop one-tenth of a cent." “The Killers” is powerful stuff.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE STRANGER'' (1946)

A patient, pipe-smoking Edward G. Robinson pursues an elusive Nazi war criminal Orson Welles in his third movie set after World War II. This tightly-knit, black and white, film noir thriller co-starring Loretta Young, Richard Long, and Billy House as Mr. Potter. The technical credits are beyond reproach, especially Russell Metty’s first-rate cinematography, Ernest Nims’ evocative editing, and top-flight performances by a uniformly superb cast. No, “The Stranger” (*** out of ****) isn’t as tour-de-force as “Touch of Evil,” but “The Stranger” ranks as one of Welles’ more palatable melodramas with intrigue and atmosphere galore. Anybody that enjoys a gripping cat and mouse nail-biter should find themselves wrapped up in this edgy yarn. It helps considerably that the hero is a rather ordinary fellow blessed with superior intuition that a cunning, cold-blooded villain challenges right up to his comeuppance. Robinson’s mousy detective, Orson Welles’ cornered Nazi war fugitive, and Loretta Young’s deceived wife who stands poised between them make this movie worth watching several times.

According to the Internet Movie Database, “The Stranger” represented the first Hollywood movie to show the infamous Nazi concentration camps. Furthermore, “The Stranger” remains Welles’ only film to make a profit, and the lean, mean, no-nonsense pacing underlines the brilliant simplicity of this film. Welles appears at his least pretentious, creating not only solid, three-dimensional characters with his hero, heroine, and villain, but also conjuring up the conservative mind-set in an entire community in a remote corner of Connecticut, far removed from the outside world. You feel like you’re watching a white-knuckled thriller in the setting of “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Ironically, for all its virtues, Welles had little complimentary to say about “The Stranger.” Many sources quote him as saying the “The Stranger” qualifies as “the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove I could put out a movie as well as anyone else." This alone distinguishes Welles and makes “The Stranger” loom even larger in his oeuvre. Clearly, “The Stranger” isn’t something that you can easily dismiss, even when most copies are public domain prints.

A tireless government investigator, Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson of “Little Caesar”), with the Allied War Crimes Commission, Department 12 finds himself at the end of his tether. Wilson has been hot on the trail of a notorious Nazi officer, Franz Kindler, who--in Wilson’s words--evinced “the most brilliant of the Nazi minds” and conceived the theory of genocide, mass depopulation of conquered countries so that regardless of who won the war, Germany would emerge the strongest in Europe, biologically speaking.” Kindler disappeared after the war and destroyed all clues to his identity from Poland and Germany, and nobody has been able to find him. Wilson convinces his reluctant colleagues to release from prison convicted Nazi war criminal Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne of "Vertigo") in hopes that the latter will lead Wilson to Kindler. Wilson is prepared to shoulder the burden of the blame if his plan backfires. Indeed, he is so committed that he smashes his pipe on a table to drive his fanaticism home. Afterward, Wilson repairs the pipe, wrapping tape around the stem, and uses it as if it were none the worse for wear.

Meinike believes that God intervened on his behalf so he could escape from the Allied War Crime captors, and he sets out to find fellow Nazi Franz Kindler. Studio executives slashed about 30 minutes from the film as Meinike searches for Kindler in South America. Welles took issue with their decision to eliminate this part. In all fairness, however, they have accelerated the pace and brought the film to its setting in Harper, Connecticut where most of the action occurs. Sources say that producer Sam Siegel authorized the deletion because that half-hour slowed down the action. Nevertheless, Meinike learns of Kindler’s whereabouts when he obtains picture postcard with the image of a church steeple. Presto, Welles fades to the church in Connecticut and Meinike looks for History Professor Charles Rankin who teaches at the Harper School for Boys.

After he arrives in Harper, Meinike stashes his suitcase at Mr. Potter’s store. Although Potter amounts to little more than a peripheral character, Billy House’s chummy performance makes quite an impression. Largely, it is the way that Potter runs his store. Potter remains seated behind the cash register while his customers serve themselves and then pay him. Occasionally, he lures Wilson and Rankin separately in games of checkers, dons his visor, and beats them. Potter and his method of transacting business is a different as well as distinctive touch in another otherwise fascinating but formulaic film. Anyway, Meinike suspects that he may have been followed and uses gym equipment to knock Wilson unconscious. Meinike visits Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young of “Ladies Courageous”) in his search for Rankin. The meeting between Meinike and Mary turns out to be crucial and Mary discovers later on that not only her life but the life of her husband hangs by the string of that encounter. She directs him to Rankin and the two ex-Nazis meet his deep in the woods so that nobody can see them. Rankin strangles Meinike and conceals the corpse. Welles shows his villainous character seize Meinike by the throat, but then Rankin lowers Meinike behind a large bush and kills him with his bare hands. As the director, Welles supplements the scene with suspense because several college students are playing a paper chase game and cavorting in the woods. Frantically, Rankin scrambles to move the paper trail that is dangerously close to Meinike’s body.

Not long afterward, the cold-blooded Rankin marries Mary Longstreet. Meanwhile, Wilson noses around Harper and masquerades as an antiques dealer compiling a catalog of Paul Revere silver. He meets Mary’s father, liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Adam Longstreet (Philip Merivale of “Adventure”) and receives an invitation to dinner one evening. Wilson suspects Rankin may be the evil Kindler because clocks obsess both men. Furthermore, Rankin has been repairing a church clock that has been inactive for years. During the conversation at the Longstreet residence, Rankin makes a comment that incriminates him in Wilson’s eyes. Rankin makes a disparaging observation about Karl Marx that Wilson initially dismisses. Later, Rankin drives Mary’s dog Red away from digging up the corpse. When Rankin kicks Red, the film cuts to Wilson waking up to the realization that Rankin is Kindler. “Who but a Nazi would deny that Karl Marx was a German because he was a Jew? Earlier, Wilson was prepared to leave Harper, deciding that Rankin was “above suspicion.”

Eventually, Meinike’s body is found and Mary stands between her husband and justice. Wilson enlists the aid of Mary’s brother Noah (Richard Long of “The Big Valley”) and they keep an eye on her. Eventually, they discover the dead dog. Rankin begins to get nervous and concocts a story (not unlike the George Stevens’ movie “A Place in the Sun”) about a boating accident and the accidental death of a girlfriend and how a relative has tracked him down and tries to blackmail. Rankin confides in Mary that he had to kill the blackmailer and convinces her not to aid the authorities. Mary becomes the weakest link in the plot. She really believes that her husband is incapable of having committed heinous acts of genocide. Stoutly, she defends him against his accusers. Rankin realizes that Mary represents a threat so he tries to arrange it so that she will visit him in the church steeple and fall to her death while climbing a ladder to the belfry. Mary’s housekeeper distracts Mary so that she cannot keep her appointment with Rankin while he establishes his alibi by playing checkers with Mr. Potter. Instead, Wilson climbs the ladder and nearly dies. The indefatigable Wilson closes in on Mary. He shows the concentration camp films to both Mary and her father and tries to rattle Mary, but she stands by Rankin.

The biggest flaw in “The Stranger” is how did Rankin arrive in America and acquire a job as a college teacher. Sometime John Huston collaborator Anthony Veiller penned the screenplay that leaves out some important information that occurred during the missing South America scenes, but for the most part, Veiller and other writers who worked on “The Stranger” supply us with most of what we need to know. Veiller wrote “The Night of the Iguana,” “The List of Adrien Messenger,” “Moulin Rouge” and “Beat the Devil” for Huston. Previously, Veiller had contributed his writing skills to Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series. Veiller’s collaborator on “The Stranger” was German born Victor Trivas who received an Oscar nomination for penning the original story that Veiller rewrote as the screenplay. The ending atop the church steeple is a corker!