The Big Heat (Fritz Lang 1953)

Debbie Marsh: The main thing is to have the money. I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better.

This sentence, spoken by street wise Debbie Marsh (maybe the best performance by Gloria Grahame) tells about a society in which rotten rich people have the power and influence over all institutions.

Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) is the syndicate boss of this corrupt city. Even the police are part of this system and they receive “orders” from the crime mob.

Lt. Ted Wilks: It was bad judgment to bother a cop's widow about the love life of her husband.
Dave Bannion: Good or bad, it was my judgment.
Lt. Ted Wilks: You're missing the point. I'm the one that gets the pressure calls from upstairs. I'm the one that has to explain. You don't keep an office like this very long stepping on a lot of corns.

Policeman Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) wants to fight this corruption. However he loses his wife – killed by Lagana’s right hand, Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). Lang portrays a society in which ethics has a high price – Bannion’s quest for justice will cause the death of several innocent women. So there is a pessimistic message lying under the heroic story.

Bannion, angry with the police department loses his job and becomes an isolated figure seeking for revenge and justice – in a role that would be developed later by actors like Clint Eastwood.

Bannion can only rely on his relatives and friends to protect her young daughter. This seems to be the main message of a great movie with unforgettable sequences – like the scalding coffee scene (though it happens off screen)...

Ascenseur Pour l’Échafaud (Louis Malle, 1958)

Florence: “Je t’ai perdu dans cette nuit Julien… Mais il faut que tu reviennes. Il faut que tu sois là, vivant, à côté de moi… Julien… il faut, il faut…"

Florence (a gorgeous Jeanne Moreau) is walking alone along the half deserted Paris boulevards. We can hear Miles Davis trumpet. Its sound is cold, somewhat distant, cutting the Paris night. She walks the dim-lit, damp streets from café to café in search of his lover who will not appear.
Florence is looking for Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet). Julien has killed his employer – and Florence’s husband - Simon Carala (Jean Wall).
The two of them had planned the perfect crime making it look as if it was a suicide. But Julien gets caught in an elevator and his car is stolen by a young dissatisfied couple who want to live fast… (this film was made just two years before Godard filmed “À Bout de Souffle”).
The “nouvelle vague” directors were admirers of the American film noir and they created some gems of the genre with some “European” touches. Louis and Véronique, he young couple, remind us of those doomed fugitives in the movies of the 30s and 40s but with something of an existentialist emptiness.

Louis: “Reveille-toi, on se’n va…”
Véronique: “Mais Louis, tu es fou?”

The Third Man (Carol Reed 1949)

Harry Lime: Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils.

Pulp western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives to post war Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Just after his arrival he is told that his friend has died in an accident. The police also tell him that he was a racketeer (dealing with diluted penicillin).

The film is about friendship, loyalty, treason. However it is also about good and evil, power, ambition… As Harry points out from the top of the Prater wheel: Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?

While inquiring about Harry’s death Holly falls in love with Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), Harry’s girlfriend. But Martins fails, as a lover and maybe as a friend too (he betrays Harry and reports him to the police). As the film progresses Holly becomes a sort of pathetic hero while Harry is a fascinating villain.

Filmed in deep black and white – with an unforgettable score by Anton Karas - in a war scarred Vienna the movie leaves little room for hope: The pessimistic film ends with Anna walking along the deserted tree-lined cemetery road after Harry’s funeral. It’s autumn and the leaves roll on the ground, Holly is waiting for her. However she passes by him without a look or a gesture…

Harry Lime: Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.

Fury (Fritz Lang, 1936)

Joe Wilson: I'll give them a chance that they didn't give me. They will get a legal trial in a legal courtroom. They will have a legal judge and a legal defence. They will get a legal sentence and a legal death.

Innocent Joe Wilson wants to have his revenge after he has almost been killed by an angry mob. The jury doesn’t know he’s still alive so the rioters may be sentenced to death…

At the beginning of the movie Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy) is driving across the country to meet his girlfriend Katherine Grant (Sylvia Sidney). He is wrongly arrested as a kidnapper and held in a provincial town prison. Word spreads around town (its inhabitants are portrayed as greedy, intolerant hypocrites) that the criminal is in jail and an angry mob tries to lynch him and burn down the building.

Lang shows the people actually enjoying violence, burning the jail… It’s the hysterical mob that has escaped control… - it’s certainly an expression of the troubled times in the thirties…

However Joe’s girlfriend persuades him to show up in court:
Katherine: [to Joe] If those people die, Joe Wilson dies too; you know that, don't you? Wherever you go, whatever you do.

Critics state the MGM imposed a happy ending with Joe showing up and therefore the condemned mob avoided punishment.
However there seems to be no mercy for the villagers the from Lang. They don’t seem to have learned any lesson – the only relief when they see Joe alive is the relief of knowing they will not be condemned…

House of Bamboo (Sam Fuller, 1955)

Sandy Dawson: Who are you working for?
Eddie Kenner: [pretending to be Eddie Spanier] Spanier.
Sandy Dawson: Who's Spanier?
Eddie Kenner: Me.
Sandy Dawson: Who else you working for?
Eddie Kenner: Eddie.

Sergeant Kenner - posing as Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack) - tries to become a member of Sandy Dawson’s gang. Dawson (a role played by Robert Ryan who has a strong presence in the film) is the head of a violent gang formed by expatriate war veterans. Kenner is helped by Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi); eventually he will win Dawson’s confidence (some critics see a hint of homosexuality in their relationship) and will try to warn the police about the gang future crimes.

This is an unusual film noir (a loose remake of The Street with no Name). It was filmed in Technicolor and the setting was Japan. There are stills with Mount Fuji, the Kamakura Buddha; Tokyo is the real stage where most of the action takes place. From our perspective the Japanese background may seem a little exotic and stereotyped but there are very beautiful stills (in fact the setting is one of the strong points of the movie) and there is also some hint of American violence towards Japanese society - the ending in the amusement park reinforces this idea.

The final climax on the bizarre park tower may have some resemblance with White Heat. Some gangsters may reach to the top but they are bound to fall…

Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)

Caesar Enrico Bandello: Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?

These are the famous last words spoken in this milestone of gangster movies (the seeds of film noir had been planted).

Rico or “little Caesar” (Edward G Robinson) is a small-town gangster (the opening scene with a robbery at a gas station is one of the best moments of the movie). He ambitions to become a big racketeer: I could do all the things that fella does, and more, only I never got my chance. And when I get in a tight spot, I shoot my way out of it. Why sure. Shoot first and argue afterwards. You know, this game ain't for guys that's soft!

He decides to move east with his colleague Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks Jr). However Joe doesn’t want to follow Rico’s footsteps the crime league and his ambition is to become a professional dancer together with his loved Olga (Glenda Farrell).

Rico will continue his rise to become a big racketeer - a memorable scene is the killing of gang member Tony on the church stairs (it reminded me of Eddie Bartlett’s death in The Roaring Twenties). The will to have former colleague Joe by his side – seeking true loyalty - will lead to Rico’s downfall.

The rise and fall of Rico Bandello is narrated using the technique of early cinema (for example with the use of written “tableaux”). There are clear references to the Italian American world (as in the 1Club Palermo). Little Caesar became an iconic film and E.G. Robinson would also become one of the references in gangster film and later in noir movies.

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy 1932)

Helen: Jim, why haven't you come before?
Jim: I couldn't, I was afraid to.
Helen: But you could have written. It's been almost a year since you escaped.
Jim: But I haven't escaped. They're still after me. They'll always be after me. I've had jobs but I can't keep them. Something happens. Someone turns up. I hide in rooms all day and travel by night. No friends. No rest. No peace.
…
Helen: How do you live?
James Allen: I steal.

In the famous last scene of this film James Allen (excellent acting by Paul Muni) appears from the shadows of the night to bid farewell to her lover before disappearing in the dark The prison system hasn’t given him any chances and has broken his life and respectability.

Allen, a war veteran had refused to work in a routine factory job because he wanted something else in life: “I don't want to be spending the rest of my life answering a factory whistle instead of a bugle call… I want to do something worthwhile… life is more important than a medal on my chest or a stupid, insignificant job”

His ambition was to build bridges as an engineer, however he had a difficult start and in the south he was involved in a crime. In spite of being innocent he was sentenced to ten years of hard labour.

After some months of harsh conditions he manages to escape with the help of some inmates and later moves to Chicago where he finds a good job and respectability.

But Marie (Glenda Farrell) - a primitive femme fatale – blackmails him and he returns to the south to serve for some weeks to get his pardon.

However the southern justice doesn’t keep its promise and he is confined for years in a tougher camp. Eventually he manages to escape together with inmate Bomber (Edward Ellis) but he will be a chased character, forced to live in the shadows…

The film (based on an autobiographic novel by Robert Elliot Burns was controversial at the time of its release – especially in the Southern States - and it contributed to the abolition of forced labour in the US. As one of the tagline of the film reads: "Six sticks of dynamite that blasted his way to freedom...and awoke America's conscience!"