Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947)

Dr. Walters:: What makes you drunk? Power?

A world of brute force is portrayed in this violent film. Westgate prison and the will to escape of prisoners Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster) and Gallagher (Charles Bickford) are a metaphor of society – we should remember the social commitment of director Jules Dassin. In fact the prisoners are portrayed as victims of an oppressive system (a few of them are there for romantic reasons) that won’t give them any chance. As Gallagher states: Those gates only open three times. When you come in, when you've served your time, or when you're dead!

On the other hand nazi-like prison guard Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn) is a portrait of fascist ambition for power and rebellion against him and the system seems the only way to escape from that nightmare.

Gallagher: That's cemetery talk.
Joe Collins: Why not, we're buried, ain't we? Only thing is, we ain't dead.

The apocalyptic final attack against Munsey and the tower is a symbol of rebellion against a rotten form of power (a few of the artists who participated in this film would become later victims of the McCarthy campaign). Captain Munsey will be killed (as Dr Walters had told him: Force does make leaders. But you forget one thing: it also destroys them) but the system will remain…

The prisoners remembering their past lives (with a series of flashbacks) was the only way to escape from that world. But in fact they were all doomed…

Dr. Walters: Nobody escapes. Nobody ever really escapes

Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur 1947)

Ann Miller: She can't be all bad. No one is.
Jeff Bailey: Well, she comes the closest.

Few films are more representative of the noir style than Out of the Past. Most of the subjects we can find in the Film Noir can be traced in this movie.

The film – based on the novel Build My Gallows High by Daniel Mainwaring – highlights the contrast between the city (associated with corruption and evil) and the purity of the countryside.

Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) tries to start a new life in the countryside and escape from his past. However one of the gunmen sent by Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) finds him and a long flashback – another key element in noir films – will show us the troubles Jeff had been into. The day-lit countryside will soon be replaced by the night and the city.

The past will get into his present life just as his angelical girlfriend Ann (Virginia Huston) will soon be overshadowed by Kathie (Jane Greer acting as a fascinating femme fatale).

Soon we can feel that everything is lost for Jeff and that he is just spinning to his final fate – a naturalistic approach is also quite common in noir movies. Kathie drags him – there is a romantic and fatalistic quality in their love - to his end in a destructive passion “We deserve each other” Jeff tells her.

The photography by Nicholas Musuraca highlights the poetic, naturalistic aspects of this film. The dialogues are witty and sharp and the performances are superb. Out of the past is the best remembered movie by Jacques Tourneur: We are facing a masterwork full of the essence of film noir.

The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)

Michael O’Hara: That's how I found her, and from that moment on, I did not use my head very much, except to be thinking of her.

Michael O’Hara (Orson Welles) meets Elsa Banister (a really beautiful short-haired Rita Hayworth) in Central Park.

O’Hara is hired as a sailor by the Bannister family and soon they set off for a pleasure cruise to Acapulco (a getaway setting for many noir films).

Irish sailor O’Hara soon realises that Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane), his partner George Grisby (Glenn Anders) and his wife are like sharks ready to destroy each other: you could smell the death, reeking up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse... until this little picnic tonight.

Later Grisby makes a strange proposition to O’Hara. Grisby himself should be killed and the sailor would receive $5000. O’Hara is willing to accept so he could run away with Elsa but in fact she is the femme fatale behind the plot…

The film is certainly a masterpiece with many of Welles’ trademarks (camera angles, a complex story, baroque settings… - the scenes at the aquarium and at the amusement park are unforgettable). Some critics may argue that the plot is complicated and nonsense but as Francois Truffaut once wrote: "The only raison d'etre for The Lady from Shanghai...is the cinema itself".

The final scene in the hall of the mirrors is one of the best remembered in film history… Bannister is killed and Elsa is also left to die alone… Like the sharks, mad with their own blood. Chewing away at their own selves.

Michael O'Hara: Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying.