M (1931)

M announces from the get-go what the film is going to be about. Before we even see a moving image, we hear a child counting out a playmate with a gruesome rhyme about a bogeyman who will soon come grinding down those present. A woman who overhears the kids cusses them out, but that only stops them until she’s out of sight, upon which they resume their game. To them, it’s abstract entertainment with no connection to real life, a naivety that carries through the rest of the film. To her, it’s a reminder of the very real threat of a serial child murderer (played to great effect by Peter Lorre) on the loose in Berlin, then one of the largest cities in the world.

This beginning also signals the importance of sound to the internal structure of the film, one of Germany’s first using the new technology. There is no non-diegetic music, something that would have been weird for a silent movie, much less one that could finally play back the same background music in synch in every cinema showing it. In fact, there are even stretches of the film that are fully devoid of any sound: no music, no speech, no effects. Those are quite eerie, certainly for a modern viewer not used to complete silence in films, especially when briefly broken by individual sound effects. The lack of non-diegetic music also accentuates every moment in which music is being heard, mainly in the form of whistling. Most prominently and famously, Hans Beckert, the killer, whistles a portion from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt (1876) when in pursuit of his compulsion; while not heard in its entirety, only in broken segments, the full piece is played ever faster and more chaotic until its conclusion, a fitting melody for a man forced to kill by his inner demons.

Du rififi chez les hommes (1955)

My Blu-ray set makes a valiant effort to translate the word “rififi”, but can’t quite convey all of its aspects. That’s understandable if you consider that even the film itself requires a three-minute musical number to explain what it means, including an admission that it won’t be found in any dictionary. It’s Parisian gangster slang that expresses, among other things, violent conflict resulting out of a particularly male disposition for roughness and macho posturing.

Variations of “rififi” are plentiful in the film. It’s in the air in the very first scene, where a card game briefly threatens to spill over into violence because a character fresh out of prison doesn’t have enough money to continue playing. That individual, Tony, is the main character, an over-the-hill criminal who makes a half-hearted attempt to stay on the straight and narrow, but soon embraces his old life. The catalyst setting him on the path of wanting in on one last score is an encounter with his old girlfriend, who has naturally moved on to another underworld figure. Mildly apologetic, she expresses her willingness to help Tony out, which he takes as an invitation to whip her with his belt. In his eyes – and maybe in hers, since she just stands there and takes it -, that is the just punishment for her disloyalty. Having indulged in one kind of rififi, he’s ready for the next: the brazen burglary of a jewelry store with his old crew, who had just been waiting on his participation to get rolling.

Backfire (1950)

I chose this film for my last review of 2011 because of an impulse that made me type “Christmas” and “noir” into google, and one of the films that popped up was Backfire. I didn’t know anything else about the movie before I started watching and tried to keep it that way, because I occasionally like to be surprised (most recently, Hangover Square was a pleasure to watch unfold with no idea what to expect). I’m glad I didn’t take a look at the original release poster beforehand, because it’s utter nonsense, suggesting a femme fatale where there is none to be found.

The two soldiers Steve (Edmond O’Brien) and Bob (Gordon MacRae) become friends during World War 2. Because of a complicated spinal injury, Bob spends several years in a veteran’s hospital, leaving Steve to draw up plans and gather money to fulfill their dream: buy and operate a ranch. Shortly before Bob’s final operation, Steve disappears without a trace. A lady with a foreign accent visits Bob in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, 1948, telling him that Steve has been injured; however, nobody believes him, since his doctors explain the visit away as a drug-enhanced vision. The day Bob is released from the hospital, the police intercept him. Apparently Steve is wanted for murder, and the police advise him not to look for his friend. Naturally, Bob does not believe his buddy to be a killer and starts looking for clues about Steve’s whereabouts, thus reversing the character dynamic from the brief prologue. That’s neat, but it’s unfortunately also the only clever bit of thematic structuring in the script.
That is pretty much it for the christmas connection, incidentally. Nothing is made of the timing; the plot could have been set at any time of the year.

Hangover Square (1945)

Every week after posting a new blog entry, I have a “tradition” (if you can call it that after such a short period of time) of clicking on the tags below and taking a look at what other wordpress users recently had to say about the subjects at hand. Last week, this brought Hangover Square to my attention, a film reuniting George Sanders, an actor whom I admire greatly, and Laird Cregar, who had been unknown to me prior to watching The Black Swan (1942), but whose performance in that film I enjoyed. As it turned out, I had a copy of the movie in my possession already (such surprises being an advantage of building one’s film collection primarily around pig-in-a-poke box sets as opposed to preferring select individual releases). I took this as a sign and put the movie on my watch-it-soon pile.

The film opens with a murder: up-and-coming composer George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar) stabs an antiques dealer and sets fire to the place. Next we see him, he is stumbling through the streets, confused, with a head wound, and apparently ignorant of how he came to be in that part of London. When he arrives at his home, his friend/prospective girlfriend Barbara (Faye Marlowe) is waiting for him along with noted conductor Sir Henry Chapman (Alan Napier), her father and a champion of George’s work. He offers George the opportunity to present his newest composition to some influential friends of his, if he can finish it in time.

After the old man leaves, George confesses that he does not remember where he has been, nor why he has a knife in his coat. When the newspaper boy comes by and cries out that there’s been a murder, George and Barbara decide to seek the help of a professional, police consultant Dr. Middleton (George Sanders). He suggests to George that he ought to take his mind off the music and have some fun occasionally, in order to alleviate the stress that may be causing his blackouts. Fatally, George takes his advice: he goes to a local bar, gets drunk, and falls for Netta, an American singer who wants to make it big but needs a great song or two to do so.