The Blue Dahlia (1946)

Directed by George Marshall; produced by John Houseman

A U.S. Navy flyer, Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd), newly returned from the war, finds some unpleasant surprises upon his arrival at home. His wife, Helen (Doris Dowling), has a bad drinking problem, an apathetic attitude toward her marriage and at least one boyfriend. Willing to work through their problems, Morrison walks out when he learns that his spouse was responsible for the death of their son, whom he thought had perished from an illness. The couple’s arguments – not to mention a service pistol left at the scene – are reasons why the police start looking for Morrison when Helen is discovered dead.

The Blue Dahlia has some high-powered advantages: George Marshall had been directing in Hollywood for thirty years by this time (and would continue directing for almost thirty more); producer Houseman would later head the Julliard School’s Drama Department; the original script was by mystery-writer Raymond Chandler, and the stars were the popular duo of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who had already made two hit films together. Next to these, the problems are small, though significant.

The mystery is a good one, with several suspects and red herrings. Ladd is led on a trail by clues that send him in circles, reinforcing his conviction of one party’s guilt in particular. The dialogue is even better, especially when between Ladd and Lake, as in their first meeting.

The actual story falters a bit, relying on the unlikely coincidence that Lake – playing the wife of the man having an affair with Ladd’s wife – meets Ladd entirely by chance. Coincidences in dramas are acceptable, if they are rarely and cleverly used; in mysteries, they border on cheating – but Chandler wasn’t a fan of the British-style of mystery and its rules about playing fair. And the ending, though satisfying, could have been better.

Another problem is that Ladd’s is not as interesting a character as he should be. His is well written, and the performance is, as usual with the actor, convincing, in an understated manner. But Lake’s is a slightly more complex personality; a house detective (Will Wright) is annoying but fully three-dimensional, and I found the principal suspect, played by the versatile Howard Da Silva, the most intriguing, as he could be a real villain or just a rather sad man trying to stay ahead of his mistakes.

Nonetheless, The Blue Dahlia works. It captures the flavour of Los Angeles in the immediate post-World War Two era, its crowded hotels (due to returning servicemen), the carefree hedonism, and the kind of ‘now what?’ mood that must have struck many in those anti-climactic days.

The characters, though some, as described above, are better written than others, are no less involving for that, and the story, despite its flaws, carries the viewer through to its conclusion without allowing for distraction. The Blue Dahlia is typical of the higher-grade film noir produced by a higher-grade team in 1940s Hollywood.

Plunder Road (1957)

Directed by Hubert Cornfield; produced by Leon Chooluck, Laurence Stewart

Five men stage a precise and successful train-robbery, making off with $10,000,000 in gold. They know that any elation over their achievement would be premature, however, for they have eight hundred miles of public highway to cover to their intended destination, and every policeman and private citizen along that distance will be looking for them. The robbery was the easy part…

Like an old-fashioned murder mystery set in a secluded location, the premise of a caper film is often very much like that of every other. The appeal of the story is usually in the details: how the crime is committed, the scheme involved, the get-away, the dangers faced by the felons. In this, Plunder Road does pretty well, though it has its flaws.

The principal advantages to the film are the characters, the performances and the direction. The criminals are reasonably appealing: they act professionally, intend not to hurt anyone during their crime and want to make clean escapes with no trouble to police or by-standers. Several are hardened crooks, but not murderous. When a murder is committed, the viewer feels more disappointment in the character than loathing for him.

The performances are capable, if not outstanding. Gene Raymond makes a tough boss, though his hard edge is due to the need to get things done properly; he must constantly keep his men focussed. Elisha Cook and Wayne Morris give good support. No actor is out of place in his role. Steven Ritch’s nervous driver is often annoying, though it is in keeping with his character.

The direction is quite good. There are some tense moments as the criminals encounter road blocks set up to capture them, sometimes meeting each other on the route as they drive separately to their destination.

The script lets the movie down, if anything does. There are interesting elements to it. Cook gives a rambling synopsis of what he wants to do with the money he will make from the robbery, while his comrade, Morris, laconically responds. There is a brief glimpse of possibilities in the immediate attraction a waitress has for Raymond, while the latter remains fittingly mysterious as to his background.

But one of the disadvantages is the incredible use - or misuse - of time in the script. The robbers appear to have all that they need to unload heavy boxes of gold ingots from the train. The shipment belongs to the U.S. government; I find it hard to believe that even a few minutes’ delay in arriving at a scheduled station would not result in at least an inquiry from authorities as to the train’s location. Similarly, what the gang does with the gold to ready it for secret transport must surely take longer than the opportunity allowed, especially considering that only a third of the stolen gold is so treated, the plan being for much more to undergo the process.

There is also the inclusion of voice-overs from each character in the opening scene, a technique not repeated elsewhere in the film. I dislike the availability of omniscience to the viewer given at one point then abandoned at others. It makes for an inconsistent point of view.

While Plunder Road could have been better, its low budget and lack of stars certainly don’t make it less entertaining than it is. It is a decent caper flick, if the viewer doesn’t think about it too much.

D.O.A. (1949)

Directed by Rudolf Maté; produced by Leo C Popkin

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is an ordinary man, an accountant with a moderately prosperous business, a loving girlfriend (Pamela Britton) to whom he isn’t sure if he’s committed, and not an enemy in the world. On a trip to San Francisco, however, he is poisoned. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t know by whom. With only a few days of life remaining, Bigelow has little time and even fewer clues with which to solve his own murder.

The scenario of the innocent man caught up in crime and mystery is a staple of film noir; usually, the protagonist is accused of a crime, or even sentenced for one, that he didn’t commit. It’s a scenario we’ve seen often before. Here, the unique premise gives the movie not only a new angle but an urgency that pushes the action.

For such a movie to work, the direction and the performances - especially of the lead - are vital, and they are what contribute to D.O.A.’s success. Maté was best known as a cinematographer, but here he appears to be in his element as a director. The pacing is deliberately pedestrian at first; after Bigelow learns that he has been poisoned, though, it becomes hectic. There is a scene in which the panicky main character, having just been persuaded of his imminent demise, runs through San Francisco, going nowhere, just running, and the velocity of his running and his fear come off the screen at the viewer.

O’Brien is easily up to the task of portraying the doomed man. Not well-known today as a leading man, he nonetheless filled that role several times. This part is probably his best work. He convincingly shows us at first a man who has a decent life but is feeling pressured in a relationship and, perhaps, a little weighed down by mundanity. His horror at the revelation of his impending mortality is realistic. But then we see a transformation, a grief-stricken man walking down a sidewalk who slowly becomes his own avenging angel, filled with anger at the theft of his life. The rest of that life is lived with determination and purpose.

Of the other actors, Britton does well with the little she is given, the loyal girlfriend who doesn’t understand what’s going on with her man. And Neville Brand, in his first credited role, is a psychopathic gunman whom the viewer very, very much wants to see get his. Frank Gerstle may be notable as a doctor with a curt bedside manner: he confirms that the hero has ‘luminous toxin’ poisoning with the almost accusatory phrase, “Yeah, you got it, Bigelow.” A young Beverly Garland (billed as Beverly Campbell) has a substantial part for her first movie role.

The story’s premise is original and intriguing, though the bulk of it is the usual film noir mystery, with red herrings and a number of suspects. The names of characters come fairly fast at one point, but Bigelow sorts things out for the viewer (he could have been a detective, if he hadn’t gone into accounting.) The tale is compacted by time, however, which is running out for the protagonist; it was wise for the writers to give him anywhere from a day or two to a week. He - and the viewer - has no idea if he has even a few hours in which to solve his killing.

D.O.A.’s innovative premise and opening scene introduce an exciting and energetic crime story that doesn’t let up until the end.

Fortress of War (2010)

Directed by Aleksandr Kott; produced by Ruben Dishdishyan, Igor Ugolnikov, Vladimir Zametalin

Alexander ‘Sasha’ Akimov is a 15 year old horn-player in the Red Army’s 333^rd Rifle Regiment’s band. Andrey Kizhevatov is the commander of the Soviet Border Guard’s 9^th Frontier Post. Yefim Fomin is the political commissar of the 84^th Rifle Regiment. Pyotr Gavrilov is the commanding officer of the 44^th Motor Rifle Regiment. They live and work in the Brest-Litovsk Fortress, on the edge of the USSR. The day is 22^nd June, 1941, and the German Army invaded Russia that morning. Without warning, the four, and thousands of their compatriots, are fighting for their lives and their country. Not many will survive.

This very well-made movie is a good example of many things. Perhaps not the least – though probably not the first considered – is that it is a good example of how Russian movies dealing with such a potentially political subject as World War Two (or the ‘Great Patriotic War’, as the Russians called their part in it) have matured. There is no propaganda here. This is undoubtedly in the movie’s favour. As an historian, I figure that history should tell its own story, not its partisans’. As well, any attempt to depict the Soviet Union of 1941 as a paradise, when it was ruled by one of the true monsters of the twentieth century, would likely backfire. Indeed, Stalinism is given a black eye as Gavrilov complains before the invasion that it is clear the Germans will attack but nothing is being done about it. And, in the film’s denouement, it is noted that many Red Army soldiers who were captured by the enemy were later imprisoned by their own government, for a kind of fraternisation (being in German prison camps). As well, the Russian propensity for frontal assaults, to close physically with the enemy, makes for good cinema, but also may reflect Stalin’s massacre of the Red Army’s officer corps a few years before, and the incapacity of the replacements to understand their job.

But some background may be necessary – and possibly even interesting - for the reader. Brest-Litovsk was a Russian city throughout the 19^th century. It was fortified and was, once, formidable. After the First World War, it was given to the newly resurrected Poland which, unfortunately, found itself by the 1930s sandwiched between the two worst tyrannies on the planet. When Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in August of 1939, Poland’s fate was sealed. A month later, Germany invaded from the west, Russia from the east; after the enormous atrocities committed by these two powers, the transfer of Brest to Russia was almost an after-thought. By then, the fortress was long obsolete. This was symbolized by the old Imperial coat of arms inexplicably still placed above the main gate. Its fortifications were useless against 20^th century armaments, and it was defended by a garrison of only 8,000. Furthermore, these were encumbered by tens of thousands of civilians – soldiers’ families, contractors, construction crews, technicians, shop-keepers; the soldiers were barracked too far from their officers for proper control in an emergency, and support troops were too distant in the rear.

Back to the movie. The writing is straightforward in word but is especially commendable in the scenes leading up to the attack. Fomin (Pavel Derevyanko) is concerned with bringing his family to Brest; Kizhevatov (Andrey Merzlikin) worries that his adolescent daughter, Anya (Veranika Nikanava) is growing up; Sasha (Alyosha Kopashov)  is in love – with Anya. These every-day concerns are tinged with doom, felt by Gavrilov (Aleksandr Korshunov). Later, the script is sparse, conveying its text through action. Some scenes of melodrama are enacted, the perhaps too usual moments of families torn apart. Here, Fortress of War approaches the ordinary.

Something refreshing is the absence of moralising in the film (which may be an element of the missing propaganda). In particular, no one comments upon the inclusion of Sasha, a boy, in the fighting. He is there, that can’t be helped; he is Russian, he is defending his homeland. Following on the previous thirty years of war, famine and dread in the Soviet Union, none of the other characters seems to think a child in a war is reprehensible. Yet each of the adults gives him a duty they hope will keep him out of harm’s way. As well, the Germans are not demonised beyond that which their own historic actions make them. The use of hospital patients as human-shields was not documented at Brest but (unlike, for instance, the burning alive of Americans by the British in the rather awful The Patriot) such crimes by the German Army are well-known from other places.

There is undoubtedly some computer graphics (to be seen in the dive-bombing by Stuka aeroplanes) but how much of the set is so generated and how much is genuine destruction is anybody’s guess, which is a compliment to the special effects team. Certainly, a replica of much of the fortress was built life-size – and then annihilated.

The direction is compelling. The battle scenes, which take up the bulk of the film are not as bloody as Hollywood enjoys making them. Parts of anatomy are strewn liberally about, and the body count is high but, perhaps wisely, blood and gore are lost in dirt and brick dust, torn uniforms and grime. All of this makes for an interpretation of war as ugly as the most obvious of fake wounds.

The direction combines with the acting to make the best of Fortress of War. Gavrilov’s grim face as he quickly dresses under a rain of bombs tells the viewer all that he is thinking. When a wounded officer tells his wife to look out the window to see where the Germans are, she smiles; she understands what he’s asking, and so does the viewer a moment later. As usual, it is the little things, the short instances that make or break acting. As for the performers, Russia seems to produce good, young actors as frequently as does Britain. (Tragically, Nikanava, who portrays Anya, drowned in Alaska while on her honeymoon, in 2019.)

I have found that European war movies tend to use three dimensional characters to tell a wider story, the characters personal and individual, yet representing more. This gives a feeling of the epic to a movie which, objectively, actually relates a rather limited tale. This is the result of Fortress of War: it may be viewed as the depiction of one battle, or as symbolic of a nation’s determination to fight an enemy, who is hardly less horrible than their own government. In most of its elements, this film succeeds.