Chain of Evidence (1957)

Directed by Paul Andres; produced by Ben Schwalb

Trucker Steve Nordstrom (James Lydon) has just been released from an ‘honour farm’ after three years, following a conviction for assault on sleazy Carl Fowler (Timothy Carey), who had insulted Nordstrom’s finacée, Harriet (Claudia Barrett). Despite Harriet having waited for him, and the cop on the case (Bill Elliott) having put in the good word that sent him to a minimum security facility, Steve is a little bitter. But he intends to work hard, so that he can buy his own truck again some day. But when Fowler ambushes him, leaving him with amnesia, Steve becomes the pawn in an insidious murder plot.

Despite Monogram Pictures changing its name to Allied Artists four years previously, Chain of Evidence shows the clear signs of coming from Hollywood’s Poverty Row. The low production values, the bland script and the largely unknown actors are trademarks of the brand. Such characteristics do not always lead to poor entertainment and, in fact, the performances of a number of the players in Chain of Evidence are quite good, Elliott, Carey and the two adulterous killers (Tina Carver, Ross Elliott), in particular.

Nonetheless, there is little on screen to raise this movie above the average crime drama. The story is predictable - even if the use of an amnesiac for a murder plot is clever - the dialogue is unexceptional, and the direction ordinary.

The casting is likely more interesting for the performers than for their performances. Jimmy Lydon was a child actor (he was the title character in the Henry Aldrich series) and had a greatly varied career but, though 34 in 1957 (he lived to be 99), seems too young and high schoolish for an experienced truck driver. This trait, along with his performance, conveys the impression of a parody of an ‘after-school special’.

Tim Carey was a strange man (to say the least) who acted in The Killing and Paths of Glory, but once staged his own kidnapping, and created and starred in what Frank Zappa (who composed its music) called “the world’s worst movie.” Dabbs Greer is perhaps the only actor from Chain of Evidence familiar today: he portrayed the local clergyman in Little House on the Prairie. He worked into his nineties. 

Bill Elliott stars as police officer Andy Doyle. Elliott was once ‘Wild Bill’ Elliott and acted in dozens of films, mostly westerns, going back to the Silent Era. (He was an extra in the original Ben-Hur.) His last five films (he was only 53 when he retired), of which Chain of Evidence was the penultimate, were low-budget crime stories. He played the same character in all but the first, in which he played the same sort of character, named Andy Flynn. In three, he was supported by Don Haggerty as his character’s partner.

All of this trivia, of course, does not add to the quality of Chain of Evidence. It remains a routine film with nothing particularly bad about it, but certainly nothing outstanding, either.

Quiet Please, Murder (1942)

Directed by John Larkin; produced by Ralph Dietrich

Rare book connoisseur and murderous forger Jim Fleg (George Saunders) steals a priceless Shakespeare volume from the New York Public Library, fakes numerous copies and sells them to collectors who aren’t fussy about their source, and who won’t make their possession public. However, one buyer (Sidney Blackmer), working for high-ranking Nazis, suspects he’s been cheated, setting off a complicated four-way game of cat-and-mouse between himself, Fleg, Fleg’s duplicitous accomplice (Gail Patrick), and a private eye (Richard Denning), who’s not as simple as he seems.

Quiet Please, Murder starts off appearing to be a straight-forward story of theft and forgery but, thanks to the intriguing characters and the acting that runs from stylish to breezy, becomes an entertaining crime caper, half light adventure and half pseudo-psychological study.

The Kinks’s song “Celluloid Heroes” has the line “If you covered him with garbage, George Sanders would still have style”; though the band is actually singing of Sanders’s star on the Walk of Fame, they are also referring to the actor himself, and, crudity aside, it’s true: Sanders is always watchable for his languid delivery, sardonic lines and often droll appreciation of the unfunny. His part in Quiet Please, Murder is no exception.

He is well matched by Patrick. Though her Myra Blandy is as untrustworthy as a prairie fire on a windy day, Blandy does an excellent job of confounding the viewer as to what she really will do and why she will do it; Patrick makes Blandy credible. Denning’s detective, Hal McByrne, is a good foil for them: down-to-earth and honest, but not above some shady antics himself. There are some supporting characters who are well-played, such as the rare book curator (Hobart Cavanaugh) and a mute assassin (Kurt Katch).

The writing is, if not better than the majority of B movie fare, certainly involving. This is due in part to the strange personality given to Fleg and, to a lesser extent, Blandy. Fleg is a masochist who is thrilled by the idea that his crimes will catch up with him one day: “I don’t know when, and I don’t know how”, he says, but the notion provides excitement on which he seems to thrive. His greatest ambition is to die in terror. When Myra suggests that Fleg meet the Nazi book-buyer, who enjoys hurting people, Fleg is intrigued by the idea. Clearly, this is not standard characterisation for a 1942 B movie. Fleg holds forth more than once on Freud and psychology. Accurate or not, it must be recalled that this is psychiatry as filtered through a know-it-all who isn’t all there.

Also in the movie’s favour is the novel setting; good use of cheap production values - there are patches of melting snow on the streets; how often does one see incidental weather in B movies? - the convoluted comings and goings of fake cops holding patrons and staff in a library, supposedly until a crime is solved; an ending which leaves the fate of one villain to the last few minutes, and an abnormally precise object of crime: Richard Burbage’s personal copy of Hamlet. These factors suggest a more than routine attention to their work by the movie’s creators. Thus, Quiet Please, Murder becomes an entertaining and unusual film that deserves a bigger audience than I suspect it has had through the years.

I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes (1948)

Directed by William Nigh; produced by Walter M Mirisch

Tom and Ann Quinn (Don Castle and Elyse Knox) are a couple of professional dancers who are down on their luck. Tom is unable to find work, while Ann’s only employment has been as an instructor in a dance school, frequented principally by lonely men. Things change when Tom finds $2,000, seemingly by chance; after attempts - admittedly not very serious - to find the money’s owner, the couple keep it, buying a few luxuries before their planned trip to better times in California. That’s when Tom is arrested for murdering a reclusive miser, the charge resting on a pair of dance shoes that had gone temporarily missing.

Though the most exceptional thing about I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes is the title (for once, a film noir title isn’t generic, and actually relates to the movie), it is an mildly interesting, watchable picture. Nothing is outstanding, but neither is anything off-putting.

The story is adapted from a tale by Cornell Woolrich, an abundant source of film noir B movies. The least feasible part is the circumstantial nature of the evidence against Tom Quinn. This is cited by several characters, including, astonishingly enough, the policemen who are convinced of Quinn’s guilt, based solely on that evidence. As well, the real villain becomes obvious a little too soon.

The script is better than the story, though how much came from the original tale and how much from the screenwriter, Steve Fisher, is impossible to determine. The dialogue, especially between the married couple, is easy and natural. The script is interesting due to the sympathy it evokes for the prisoners depicted on death row, their situation causing a camaraderie and sensitivity among them.

The acting is typical B movie talent, the only face recognisable, at least to fans of old cinema, is Regis Toomey, who played everything from comic relief to menacing villain. Here, he is a significant character, a dogged police detective. His rôle is one of his bigger, and, to judge by screen-time and significance to the plot, he perhaps should have had higher billing than Don Castle.

The direction by William Nigh (not the Science Guy, and not the very talented British actor Bill Nighy) is adequate, making good atmospheric use of the cheap production values. In particular, the one-room apartment to which the Quinns are reduced gives a good impression of the constricted home-life led by too many in society. The contrast between that room and a modern, well-appointed suite seen at the end of the film is used to good effect. This was Nigh’s penultimate direction; he had directed his first picture in 1914.

While I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes is nothing memorable, it is a decent crime-drama, with some good performances, notably by Toomey.

Un Flic (1972)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville; produced by Robert Dorfmann

Commissaire Coleman (Alain Delon) is a weary Paris detective. Simon (Richard Crenna) is a night-club owner who moonlights as an armed thief. Their cat-and-mouse game is played out against a background of sterile streets of concrete and glass, and through the medium of Cathy (Catherine Deneuve), Simon’s wife and Coleman’s mistress. Who will be hurt and who will be killed is a bigger mystery than who will be caught and who will survive.

The movie’s title refers not to motion pictures, or to a switchblade knife. It is a French slang term for ‘a cop’, though the point of view in the film is, in fact, a little more often with the criminals than with the police. This was Melville’s last movie before he died and, though not an outstanding example of the director’s work, is a good one.

The story is intriguing, with a gang of four quiet, low-key robbers who plan their heists meticulously, and a detective who is determined, though in an equally under-stated way, to catch them. There are some holes in the story, if not in the plot. For instance, we never learn the motives for the robberies committed. One of the criminals, certainly, has reason for participation: Paul Weber (Riccardo Cucciolla) has been unemployed for a year, and needs money. Why the others have turned to crime is left undiscovered.

The acting is just as restrained, with Delon coming off best. He seems a relatively mild-mannered policeman, but when he is crossed, he can turn violent, and even his routine embodies harshness, though it is all in a day’s work. It is surprising to see American actors Crenna and Michael Conrad (best known for his role as the police sergeant in the tv series Hill Street Blues) in a French movie. They both spoke French for their roles, but their characters’ voices were dubbed in by native actors, to give them appropriate accents. Deneuve has little to do that another actress could not.

Just as significant as any other aspect of Un Flic is the look. There is something bleakly modern to the settings, starting with the impressive opening scene. This takes place on a provincial city’s sea-front, with great blocks of unimaginative apartment buildings - every apartment shuttered - being pounded by a rain-storm. Like a portal to a different world, one ground floor space - a bank - is lit and occupied.

Later, we see police headquarters, an avant garde structure that seems to bend and warp. Other exteriors are bland; interiors could be from any city in the world. Only reflections in glass, or views through windows, remind the viewer that he is in Paris or even France.

The characters seem more suited to the 1940s, many of them wearing trilbies or fedoras, and trench coats. It is easy to see the whole movie transferred to an earlier era. The contrast of the modern architecture with the dated fashions is probably intentional.

While not an excellent heist film - the use of a model train and helicopter during one extended scene is noticeable - Un Flic is quite good, and is a strangely stylistic finale to Melville’s career.

Limbo (1999)

Directed and produced by John Sayles

Donna De Angelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is a small-time singer, whose relationship with her daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), is strained. Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) is a former fisherman with a troubled past. Donna and Joe’s slowly building romance has a minor snag - Noelle - and then a major problem. Joe’s brother, Bobby (Casey Siemaszko), comes to town asking a favour of his sibling - a favour that could prove costly for everyone.

Writing a synopsis for Limbo is difficult, as the first half of the movie is undramatic but absorbing, while the second half is adventurous but less interesting. A John Sayles movie is certainly different than most others. Indeed, each Sayles movie is usually different from every other. Limbo fulfills that qualification, but in a bad way: it’s the only one I’ve seen that I have found unsatisfying.

Certainly, there is nothing to complain about with the acting. Everyone here is excellent. Strathairn is an old favourite of Sayles, going back to the latter’s first film, Return of the Secaucus 7. Mastrantonio, not quite a star, but definitely an actress, does a fine job as a woman trying to negotiate motherhood while continually striving for a life of her own. (Mastrantonio does her own singing here.) Martinez is very effective as the young girl. As is often the case in Sayles’s films, the lesser roles are filled very well with largely unfamous names, excepting Siemaszko and Kris Kristofferson.

Sayles the director takes full advantage of the setting, a town in Alaska suffering economic hardship. Its fish cannery has closed, fishing itself is suffering, and the only booming industry, tourism, threatens to slap up an artificial image of Alaskan life, while turning the townspeople into props. As in Lone Star, Matewan and other of his films, Sayles uses the setting as a character, giving Alaska a slightly menacing background, as if straying off a paved highway could bring danger.

The script is also typically good with regard to dialogue. Each of the lesser characters is created with just a few lines, letting the audience know what they are like with a minimum of words, yet building on that minimum for detail afterward. Everything sounds natural and realistic.

Unfortunately, the story was less enjoyable, and, eventually, frustrating. For the first portion, when it concentrates on human drama of the every-day, it’s rather engrossing, thanks to the dialogue and the actors. Without giving too much away, I can write that something occurs about three fifths of the way through that alters the tone and direction of the movie, as if there were two distinct stories, almost unrelated to each other. Being a Sayles creation, I suspect very strongly that one was meant to complement the other, but the result does not quite work.

The finale is controversial, some viewers having felt that it was a cop-out, even a non-ending. Unpredictability permeates the story; in the characters’ lives, in their situations. I believe that Sayles wanted to utilise that same quality in the conclusion. I cannot think, however, that an ending such as this, without warning or foreshadowing, is dramatically good; time invested in characters, particularly those the viewer comes to care about, seems wasted if they do not receive a pay-off - happy or otherwise - that rounds out the situation.

As well, the script, as laudable as it is, does leave loose ends. There is a theme of drowning throughout the movie, not just of people, but even of fish ‘drowning in the air’ - note Noelle’s story about the ‘water-baby’. In connection with that, an incident from Joe’s past relates to drowning, yet it seems to have no bearing on the story except to make his personality tragic. Noelle’s crush on Joe is also pointless.

While there is much to admire in Limbo, the admiration is for the pieces, rather than the whole, which is not up to the director/writer’s usual standard.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Directed by Colin Trevorrow; produced by Derek Connolly, Stephanie Langhoff, Peter Saraf, Collin Trevorrow, Marc Turtletaub

Darius Britt (Aubrey Plaza) is disenchanted with her job as an intern at a Seattle-based magazine, and dissatisfied with her life in general. Things may change for her when she is chosen to join reporter Jeff (Jake Johnson) and fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) on an assignment. They are sent to a small seaside town to interview Kenneth (Mark Duplass), who advertised for a companion with whom to travel in time. Whether the man is genuine, serious, deluded or crazy, Darius will find her life altered, in more ways than one.

One of the advantages of choosing to watch films based on one-sentence synopses is that sometimes I come across small but quietly delightful films such as Safety Not Guaranteed. Though the description in the first paragraph suggests either a comedy or science fiction, it is in fact a movie about relationships more than anything else, about relationships and how they can create regret and remorse, yet also how they can restore and rehabilitate. The title comes from the advertisement - seen in the poster - and can be applied to relationships as much as to time-travel.

Certainly, there is a large element of comedy in the film. It is low-key, deadpan comedy for the most part. Plaza and, to a lesser extent, Duplass, deliver most of the humour in that style. Johnson’s sarcastic, louder style also provides some fun. The amusing lines feel less like dialogue written for a movie and more like banter among acquaintances. They make the viewer smile rather than laugh; not because they aren’t funny, but because they are realistic, and real life is rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The writing by Derek Connolly, as may be inferred, is very good. This was Connolly’s first cinematic feature, and he shows great talent here. It’s rather a disappointment to see that he went into big budget monster movies afterward. To be fair, I have seen none of those, but I can’t help thinking he has a real flare for the smaller, more intimate stories. His latest - Deep Cover - may be a return to something closer to Safety Not Guaranteed.

The script shows insight into characters as diverse as Darius and Jeff, and actually creates a fuller person in the latter, a cynical, sardonic young man who nonetheless appears to harbour deep, traditional desires. The screenplay ties relationships, and the mistakes and lost opportunities inherent in them, to time-travel, and how most people wish they could go back to repair or re-do what is already written in the stone of the past. There are a few holes in the story, such as Kenneth’s ad stating that he has ‘done this once before’, though nothing is mentioned of this and, indeed, his preparations in the film imply that he has not.

The acting is perfect for the movie. Plaza is quite winning, hiding her character’s vulnerability in a kind of Wednesday Addams morbidity; she is well-paired with Duplass. He creates a character who is part action hero, part science nerd. Johnson’s work is touched upon above: combining with the writing, he makes Jeff someone you might not want to know, but would like to see happy even so.

Safety Not Guaranteed is a well-crafted film, taking the notion of time-travel correcting the past and making that notion more personal and more universal than in many other films with similar premises. It achieves this by showing that the decisions that change lives come not as a result of travel but in the preparations for it. And, in what I perceive to be a clever twist, it encapsulates that idea in the last few lines of dialogue - indeed, in the last two words.