Jerichow

JERICHOW                B+                  

Germany  (93 mi)  2008  d:  Christian Petzold 

A German film that’s so German it feels like it’s Austrian, as it’s a surgically precise psychological thriller, a remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) that features an overly detached, icy cold emotional world.  Benno Fürmann is brilliant from the outset without even uttering a word, as that piercing glare in his eyes could immediately disarm anyone’s hostile intentions.  Yet in the opening sequence, the director completely breaks from the mold as the hyper aggression directed toward him defies belief, as does his perceived passivity, which hides his real intentions.  Immediately we’re lured into what’s underneath the surface.  Petzold’s last film Yella (2007) was another standout in cleverly creating multiple layers of suspense, which included the added twist of interchangeable psychological worlds, where a dreamlike Antonioni reverie would replace the meticulous minutiae of drab or dreary reality, teasing the audience with completely indistinguishable states of mind.  The same actress Nina Hoss returns here as the object of two men’s desires, all three hiding behind dark and mysterious pasts.  Her Turkish husband is Ali, Hilmi Sözer, an enterprising foreigner in Germany who runs a string of successful food huts, but has a pathological distrust of those that work for him, as he suspects everyone of cheating on him.  Over time, he uncovers several clever schemes to rob him of his profits.  He runs into Fürmann completely by accident in a scene that borders on the absurd, yet the believability factor is completely authentic, especially Fürmann’s character, a former soldier in Afghanistan, now a moody silent type who lives alone rebuilding his deceased mother’s house.  Ali hires him to be his driver after he loses his license for drunken driving, but he becomes his most trusted employee, more like a bodyguard, as he saves Ali’s life from irate or distraught employees on more than one occasion.  In friendship, he introduces him to his German wife, the beguiling Hoss, who effortlessly combines multiple levels of emotions all at once, which seems to be the inspirational emotional source of the film, that we are all things simultaneously, quite capable of wisdom along with disastrous blunders, at times not able to distinguish between the two. 

We’ve seen this before in Polanski’s initial feature film KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962), a tantalizing battle of wills between two men vying for a sultry lady, or the scandalous noir thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) featuring iconic performances from John Garfield and Lana Turner, or the loveless and amoral murder mystery of Double Indemnity (1944), all of which exaggerate the hidden intentions of the characters.  Much like Douglas Sirk clouds the emotional surface with a flamboyant color scheme that hides his character’s repressed inner worlds, noir films are drenched in darkness and doom, a fatal combination when love is in the air.  Petzold carefully crafts his own world of suspicion where Ali is surreptitiously spying on his own employees as well as his wife, supposedly trusting Fürmann, which feels out of character, allowing him access into the inner sanctum of his business and his personal life that includes his wife, the two most successful ventures of his life, which from his own poisonous behavior seems capable of precariously unraveling at any moment.  Ali can be amusing, but is subject to drinking binges, which leaves an opening for Fürmann who is initially rejected, but then pounced on by Ali’s sensuous wife.  When Ali pretends to take a business trip abroad for a few days, leaving Fürmann in charge, the audience sees that he doesn’t actually leave, something the character’s themselves don’t suspect.  Everything after that is veiled in a lurid mystery of misguided emotions, all subject to the creepy idea that Ali will jump out of the bushes at any moment and surprise our budding young lovers who are dangerously crossing the line and breaking the limits of moral acceptability.  This creates an added level of suspense and an exposed emotional vulnerability that otherwise would not be there.  Within this scenario, things usually spin out of control, even from the perfectly controlled world of Fürmann, as their behavior only grows more dangerously suspicious, where ironically Fürmann was offered a choice earlier whether or not to rescue Ali as he was dangling precariously off the edge of a cliff, an act that sealed the deal for Hoss who immediately fell madly in love with him, her knight in shining armor that might come to her own rescue. 

Petzold’s stories take their own path where the question remains whether or not any crime has been committed, and if so, to what degree does it effect one’s life?  This is a Crime and Punishment story that explores the extent of one’s guilt even before any wrongful action has been committed.  Can just the mere thought of an illicit action put one in the same moral abyss as committing the act?  Does skimming from the profits compare with spousal abuse or murder?  How far can one cross the line before it’s clear they’ve passed the point of no return?  In this film, the audience sees the various developmental stages, including the measures of protection taken to protect both business and privacy.  What can stop a crime of passion?  The three main characters are particularly strong here, smart, compelling, yet psychologically cautious and mistrustful, where emotions are seen as a weakness, something to be taken advantage of by others, where Hoss declares at one point that without money, love is never even an option.  In an economically depressed region where jobs are scarce, money is as much a fictitious object of desire as passion, where in a unique role reversal, the moneymaker is a Turkish immigrant, usually the object of racial scorn in German films, given considerable poignancy by Sözer’s performance, while his penniless, down on his luck “guest worker” driver is a German citizen.  In a film that’s hazy about true character, what’s especially compelling about both Hoss and Fürmann is coming out of the emotional void of an extended loveless state, where they are suddenly stripped of all protection as they are ensnared in the intrigue of love.  Petzold tightens the noose around each one of the characters until they nearly suffocate on their own delusions, with their paths so meticulously carved out ahead of time but never quite taking into consideration the unknown factor that is present in each and every crime.  Stripped of all pretension, souls are finally bared, but at what cost?  Everybody loses a piece of themselves until there’s finally nothing left in the end but the illusion.  While not nearly as off-the-edge and experimentally risqué as Yella, this is every bit as well crafted, balanced, and deliciously entertaining.  

Kiss Me, Stupid

KISS ME, STUPID         A-               

USA  (126 mi)  1964  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

Utter tastelessness was never funnier, where this film opens with Dean Martin at the Sands Resort doing his closing night shtick at Las Vegas, singing “S’Wonderful” in between statuesque showgirls and a host of bad jokes, which, if truth be told, are the mainstay of comedy.  How else could the nation survive Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, The Andy Griffith Show, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, or Flipper, all among the most watched TV shows of the era when this film was made.  Nonetheless, the film was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency (perhaps the biggest joke of all, especially looking back from the present era where the Catholic Church is embroiled in their own *indecent* sex scandal, covering up decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, effectively eliminating any new order of priests coming out of the United States) and dismissed as too lewd and crude by most critics over the Christmas holiday release.  While adultery could be tolerated by the public in The Apartment (1961), winner of 5 Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture largely because the immoral offender was portrayed as such a sleazeball, it’s harder to justify adultery from a happily married couple in small town America, even if that’s part of the joke, as the film is really a bedroom farce about fidelity in love and marriage.  In comedy timing is everything, and this film was released just a year after the JFK Kennedy assassination, with a nation obsessed and still reeling from the larger implications of what happened, who’s behind it, and who’s running the country?  As a result, this film tends to get lost in the Billy Wilder pantheon of great movies, though it has to be one of his funniest films, where the double and triple entendre quality of the jokes ranks with the Marx Brothers.  Wilder's film treats vulgarity with the same in-your-face brashness as One, Two, Three  (1961), something few other directors could have even attempted, hardly immoral or smutty, where this is really fairly benign and no worse than other pictures.  Vastly underrated, what is perhaps most surprising, and may have been lost on initial audiences, is Wilder attempted to write a genuine sex comedy about a mainstream, small town marriage that was more about what held the couple together in marriage than what kept them apart, brilliantly using a spoof on Dean Martin as a Rat Pack swinger (Dean Martin And The Rat Pack) in an attempt to expose America’s love of celebrity as little more than sexual hypocrisy, meant to heighten the suspense and raise the salacious level of comic expectations, but then throws in a heavy dose of reality like a cold shower, where the couple’s real feelings are exposed by actually downplaying the adulterous sex angle.  Underneath it all, filled with a musical stream of Gershwin tunes, the film has a heart. 

Martin’s lecherous lounge act is clearly a parody of his celebrity, always seen with a drink in his hand, suggesting young showgirls are all clamoring to sleep with him, where keeping up with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in the Rat Pack is one long unending party of drinks and wild girls, where what Martin does really well is throw out WC Fields style one-liners written by professional joke writers, giving his character a sense of suave sophistication.  Wilder simply uses what he does in his act and places it in a completely off-the-wall and absurd setting, placing Dino away from the bright lights and applause of Vegas, instead plagued with car trouble, driving his own rare 1957 Dual Ghia convertible (only 100 were built) that gets stuck in the tiny town of Climax, Nevada, where not much of anything ever happens.  What’s a swinger to do?  But really he’s been tricked by a couple of locals, piano instructor Orville J. Spooner, everyman Ray Walston from My Favorite Martian, a replacement for Peter Sellers who suffered a heart attack during the first few weeks of shooting, and a somewhat oafish but overeager car mechanic Barney, Cliff Osmond.  The two write songs in their spare time, sending them away to various singers and publishers, but hear nothing back.  Wilder wanted the songs to be awful, so awful they would be hilarious, so he asked Ira Gershwin if he and his brother George had ever written any real clunkers?  Out of the files of shame come the unheard of Gershwin standards, “I’m a Poached Egg,” or “I’m Taking Mom to the Junior Prom Because She’s a Better Twister Than My Sister.”  Dino’s arrival to Barney’s gas station appears heaven sent, so he hatches a plot to remove the fuel valve from his car to give the impression of serious car trouble, explaining it’s an overnight fix, but he can conveniently stay with Orville across the street, who has the entire evening to push their songs, hoping this is a surefire way to get rich quick.  But because of his reputation as a womanizer, the obsessively jealous Orville doesn’t want Dino around his wife Zelda, Felicia Farr, so he intentionally picks a fight to get her out of the house, forcing her to spend the night with her mother while Barney picks up a girl from the Belly-Button Club just outside of town, where the neon sign outside reads “Drop In and Get Lost.”  But not just any girl, it turns out to be Polly the Pistol, Kim Novak, who literally steals the show, a part-time hooker who has a trailer behind the club.  Her job for the evening is to pretend to be Mrs. Orville Spooner and keep Dino and his constantly prowling fingers entertained, hoping he’ll buy a few songs along the way. 

The plot thickens.  While we get a taste of Orville playing “Sophia” at the piano, where the chorus returns over and over again like a bad dream, Dino is positively smitten with Polly and the so-called “Western hospitality” where over dinner with Chianti, Orville all but pushes her in Dino’s direction—anything to show him a good time.  Delighted with the turn of events, drinking Chianti out of her shoes, Dino has his hands full.  But refusing to be pawed, Polly shows unexpected outrage, “What right has he got to treat your wife like that?”  Polly is no fool and is really touched by the romance sentiment in Orville’s songs, where she urges him to keep playing, completely changing the movie’s implications, as the hooker with the heart of gold is more interested in the long-term interests of the husband than the raunchy needs of the customer.  Meanwhile, in what feels like a parallel world, poor Zelda has to face her mother, who is nothing more than a sour-pussed old hag (Doro Merande) who can think of nothing but non-stop criticism of her no good husband and her destroyed marriage.  This verbal assault is hilariously cringe worthy, as she resembles the tyrannical ravings of the Wicked Witch of the East, which quickly sends her daughter back out the door in a return to her husband, where she sees through the window a lively and simply extraordinarily intimate dance between her husband and Polly (choreographed by Gene Kelly, who was just passing by the studio one afternoon), where they clearly seemed to be enjoying themselves, so what could she do?  The night of sex and sin has a way of overshadowing Wilder’s real intent, establishing sex as a business, where sex and commerce are interchangeable, but things go awry when Orville starts seeing Polly as a person, not a commodity, so when Dino actually likes one of the more romantic ballads, like “All the Livelong Day,” Orville refuses to sell it, standing up for his pretend wife in this ridiculously fast paced sex farce, suddenly taking all the fun out of it, where Orville instead turns on Dino as a cad for making inappropriate, lurid advancements on his wife.  “Whatever happened to Western hospitality?” he pleads as he’s being thrown out on his ass.  But not to worry, the film follows Zelda instead, who turns out to be more than a handful, getting plastered at the local watering hole, ending up in Polly’s trailer just to sleep it off, where Dino arrives shortly afterwards, steered by the bartender to the trailer where all the “action” is.  Having exchanged places with Polly, Zelda realizes what’s up and asks Dino to serenade her with a few choruses of her husband’s “Sophia.”  Adultery within the marriage has a redemptive quality here, as being with an “other” only reminds each one of who they’re really missing.  Love and romance wins out in the end, overshadowing all sins of the flesh, taking us all by storm with this wild little ride in the desert concocted by Billy Wilder.   

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES             B-                     

Great Britain  (125 mi)  1970  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

Not sure where Wilder was going with a 3-hour version of this film, which is certainly slow enough as is, originally conceiving a mythic epic of 4 different stories along with a prologue and epilogue divided by an intermission, becoming a bone of contention between the director and United Artists who forced him to reduce the film to 2 episodes, something that haunted him the rest of his life as the missing footage was lost.  Fraught with production troubles, the film was shot on location in Scotland featuring a scene with the Loch Ness monster, where the original sequence was too difficult to light properly and in the trial run the mechanical monster unfortunately sank to the bottom of the sea, forcing Wilder to reshoot the entire sequence in a studio.  Nonetheless, this exposes both a different side of Wilder and Sherlock Holmes, showing a human face to this conventional storybook character, who as he ages grows more sadly circumspect, questioning himself and his abilities, his fading reputation, especially when he is unable to adequately solve a case, unhappy about his lifelong insecurities and loneliness, along with his detachment from women, acknowledging his use of cocaine while intimating he is secretly gay.  Showing a darker more complex side of his personality, Holmes (Robert Stephens) retains his intellectual acumen while Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) is no slouch in that department either, where both are an excellent compliment to one another, displaying, as the title suggests, a more intimate side of the infamous and world renowned investigating team.

The opening sequence shows Wilder’s love and fascination with the Russians, our arch enemy during the Cold War, always given that duplicitous face, as if they’d sell out their own mother for a price, using comic exaggeration to overemphasize dialog and dubious character, where Holmes is drawn into a case involving a conniving Russian ballerina, where backstage at a performance he becomes the chosen one selected to sire her future child, as she has the beauty but is looking for the perfect combination of intellect, offering him a Stradivarius violin for his troubles.  Thinking quickly on his feet, he’s required to graciously deny the request as he shares Tchaikovsky’s amorous inclinations which would prove disastrous under these circumstances, insinuating a lifelong partnership with Watson.  When word gets out it spreads across the floor, where Watson is in the midst of drunken revelry dancing to Russian balalaika music with a line of beautiful ballerina dancers, where amusingly one by one the females are replaced by male dancers, all staring adoringly at him.  Afterwards, still in a drunken rage, Watson is furious with Holmes for ruining his reputation with his Army buddies, supposedly staining his reputation across the entire nation, where presumably he’s a ladies man.  Watson’s insults lead to a question of Holmes’ flawed character, as he typically distrusts women in general, which leads to the next case which is literally dropped in their lap. 

A driver arrives at their doorstep carrying a lovely woman (Geneviève Page, the brothel Madame in Buñuel’s 1967 BELLE DE JOUR) who can’t remember who she is, but is carrying a card in her hand of Holmes’ address.  They quickly determine her identity, Gabrielle Valladon from Brussels, but not the location of her missing husband, supposedly a Belgian engineer, leading them on a search to Inverness, Scotland to find him.  Despite her coy answers and elusive beauty, Holmes finds her quite the challenge, becoming fond of her and dumfounded actually until a visit from his own brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) tips him off that she’s working undercover as a secret agent and is a threat to national security.  Their leads uncover a sect of silent Trappist monks, a band of midgets, a communicating parasol, dead canaries, and a strange confrontation with the Loch Ness Monster during a fog drenched afternoon boat ride on a lake.  The parallel lives of the two adversaries interestingly carry a similar underside they both share, each committed to a lifelong commitment to undercover or secret operations, both missing their romantic other half, both relying on their intellectual skills to get them out of trouble, and both emotionally challenged by living lives of such deep-seeded isolation.  Holmes is still Holmes, always the smartest guy in the room, but exhibits a somewhat imperfect character here, developing conflicting feelings on a case, thrown off his game by his developing affection and disappointment in love.  While the characters themselves are excellent, especially Watson, musical score by Miklós Rózsa, again co-written by I.A. L. Diamond, Wilder allows the pace to continually languish, where he never finds a natural rhythm, instead giving it a kind of awkward Victorian Gothic feel.

One, Two, Three

ONE, TWO, THREE               B+                  

USA  (115 mi)  1961  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

On Sunday, August 13th, 1961, the eyes of America were on the nation’s capital, where Roger Maris was hitting home runs #44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show the kind of people we’re dealing with—REAL SHIFTY!     — C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney)

Working relentlessly at breakneck speed, Wilder delivers a comic romp not seen since the Marx Brothers, a free for all of unparalleled mayhem, something reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ madcap screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY (1938) or the Coen Brother’s irreverent antics in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000), where the film reels off one-liners as if the screenwriters were getting paid by the joke.  The frantic pace is hilarious, as is the use of James Cagney as the corporate emblem of America, synonymous with the product Coca Cola.  What’s weaker here is the overall level of acting, much of it downright pathetic, which may actually add some level of sick cultish appeal to the film.  While many of Wilder’s films have a timeless feel about them and feel as fresh today as when they were written, this is not one of them.  Filmed almost entirely in Berlin, the city Wilder left three decades ago with the anti-Semitic rise of Nazism, this movie relentlessly exploits the politics of the Cold War, making it unfashionably out of date, more of a period piece that may suffer from a time warp.  For those who can set aside today for a glimpse into yesteryear, the experience is not much different than Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), which is the penultimate Cold War exposé.  While Wilder’s breakneck pace is more frantic and his jokes neverending, like a cheap burlesque routine, Kubrick’s vision is more icily chilling, smart and superbly rendered, well acted and brilliantly conceived, with an unforgettable finale, an ending to end all endings.  This film is simply not in that league, pitting capitalism against communism, targeting American imperialism as capitalist pigs with “Yankee Go Home” slogans referenced throughout, made at the height of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall was actually constructed during the middle of the shooting, sealing off the East Germans from the West, requiring extensive on-the-spot screenplay and set adjustments, rebuilding the Brandenburg Gate in Munich.    

Opening with the Saber Dance Sabre Dance - Aram Khachaturian - YouTube (2:25), conducted to full effect by musical director André Previn, a kickass, frenetic theme that plays throughout the movie, few films ever made match this kind of delirious non-stop energy, and most, including this one, have momentary let downs where the pace simply can’t keep up.  Cagney, C.R. MacNamara, affectionately known as Mein Führer by his wife, Arlene Francis, is the tyrannical head of Coca Cola in Berlin who dreams of being the first entrepreneur to break into the untapped markets behind the Iron Curtain.  His every move is satirized, as is the German staff efficiency, where Schlemmer (Hans Lothar), his right hand man, clicks his heels with each new command, while Fräulein Ingeborg (Liselotte Pulver), the curvaceous blond secretary sets the tone for a sex farce, exactly as Lee Meredith did as Ulla with Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS (1968).  Hilariously, Cagney’s office features a “Yankee Doodle Dandy” cuckoo clock where Uncle Sam pops out.  The entire premise of the film is Cagney barking out orders at a furious pace where underlings jump into action trying to obey his every command.  It plays like a three ring circus, as people are literally stepping over one another in choreographed pandemonium, where the dialogue driven film is a nonstop torrent of one-liners, zingers that leave one breathless after awhile.  Wilder devises an exaggerated soap opera for the theme, as the Atlanta executive in charge of Coca Cola (Howard St. John) phones MacNamara to inform him of the arrival of his 17-year old daughter in Berlin, Pamela Tiffin as Scarlett, asking him to look after her for a few days.  Without anyone’s knowledge, she stays for months, secretly meeting a communist boyfriend across the border, Horst Buchholz as Otto Piffl, lured by his outlandish views, calling her a “typical bourgeois parasite, and the rotten fruit of a corrupt civilization.  So naturally, I fell in love with him.”  At one point, down in the dumps, thinking his career is over, Cagney quips “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” an Edward G. Robinson line from LITTLE CAESAR (1931).  Later in the film Red Buttons has a cameo where he does a Cagney “You dirty rat” imitation in front of Cagney, as someone similarly did a George Raft imitation in front of Raft in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959).   

What follows is Cagney trying to put the lid on this budding international scandal, at first getting Otto out of the way, setting up the poor guy’s arrest by the East German police, where he is tortured by being forced to listen endlessly to the bubble gum sounds of Brian Hyland - Itsy bitsy teenie weenie Yellow polka dot bikini ... YouTube (2:27).  But when Cagney quickly learns that Scarlett’s pregnant and married, he has to embark on a secret mission into the bowels of communist East Berlin to get him back, making excellent use of real locations, especially the burnt out ruins on the East German side of the Potsdamer Platz, all set to the music of Wagner’s Die Walküre shown here (under noiseinthemirror) one, two, three | Tumblr on YouTube (6:43), embellished even further when they meet Russian trade ambassadors at the Grand Hotel Potemkin, where in the smoky ruin of a burned out café, a weary dance band plays a German version of “Yes, We have No Bananas” with a few deadbeats dancing in slow motion while aged comrades sit completely undisturbed playing chess.  Smuggling Otto out of an East Berlin jail is just the beginning, as the pace slackens a bit in a battle of wits with the infuriorated Otto, who defiantly proclaims “Capitalism is like a dead herring in the moonlight, it shines, but it stinks.”  In a furious attempt to take the Bolshevik out of the boy and make him more presentable to his family, as his future in-laws are arriving the next day, Cagney has his work cut out for him.  Engaging the full force of the Western front to accomplish the task, Cagney sneers “That’s just what the world needs, another bouncing, baby Bolshevik.”  This is a completely cynical piece on East-West relations, so when Cagney puts his stamp of family approval and places Otto in charge of a Coca Cola plant, who then immediately vows to lead the workers in revolt, yet stands there ridiculously bare-legged, Cagney snaps at him “Put your pants on, Spartacus.” While the film is zany and clever throughout, it never rises to more than a theatrical set piece, as most of the action takes place with people standing around in a room, or running breathlessly in or out, creating an exaggerated sense of melodramatic hysteria, but interesting in the way Wilder takes a real international crisis and works it into his movie, spouting silly philosophic gems like “Look at it this way, any world that can produce the Taj Mahal, William Shakespeare, and striped toothpaste can’t be all bad.”

The Apartment

THE APARTMENT              A                    

USA  (125 mi)  1960  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

Shut up and deal.   —Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine)

Following on the footsteps of his most notable career achievement, SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), Wilder along with his collaborator I.A. L. Diamond wrote what is arguably his greatest film, a strange mix of a satire on the American corporate success story of the 1950’s and a modern day romance at its most wonderful best, moving effortlessly between comedy and drama to romance.  As usual, no one really knows how love strikes, but when it hits, there’s nothing else like it.  Wilder won the best screenplay, best director, and best picture award in 1960, a trifecta of the first order, yet this film doesn’t knock you off your feet with dazzling camera work, but with wit, humor, and some amazing performances by the always nervous Jack Lemmon who is striving for a key to the executive suite and the lovable, yet klutzy elevator operator Shirley MacLaine.  Fred McMurray plays the shrewd boss who wants to have everything, and for the most part does, but ends up instead with only everything money can buy, which isn’t the same thing.  This is an interesting take on marriage, though surprising the unhappy marriage feels like a weight on one’s back, especially when one is wedded to their job.  A far cry from the American Dream, here the job is just another faceless number in the ranks of thousands, in this case an insurance company that actually employs over 30,000 workers where it’s nearly impossible to distinguish yourself, as every desk and every worker looks exactly the same.  While the worker bees flail away on the ground floor with figures and phone calls, tabulating graphs, statistics and flow charts, squeezing every last minute into their working day, the executives on the top floors seem to have plenty of idle time on their hands, sitting alone in spacious offices planning their social lives away from work, inventing excuses like evening board meetings to cover for their extra-marital activities.  At the bottom are the worker drones while at the top are a special breed of male species that can never have enough, an indulgent group that greedily takes what it wants.

A scathing critique of American capitalism, Wilder examines the life of a middle man, a drone like all the rest, but he’s got something else, lending out the keys to his bachelor apartment to various executives for illicit sexual affairs, men who remember these special favors and recommend a fast track to the top for their facilitator, C.C. Baxter, Jack Lemmon in another Everyman role.  While he’s obviously being duped out of his own life, spending his time after work dawdling at his desk or standing around outside his apartment waiting for his “special guests” to leave, Lemmon is a good-natured guy, a bit over anxious but eager to please, especially those in positions of authority, so he grovels and prostrates himself before them while pretending it doesn’t matter, that eventually they’ll send in a good word.  Using a voiceover narration by Lemmon, he recites figures and statistics about the position he’s in, becoming a meaningless number that may as well be corporate property, one in a long line of endless desks that stretch as far as the eye can see, exactly as Welles later conceived the life of K, the nameless bureaucrat in Kafka's THE TRIAL (1962).  Baxter does have something going for him that no one else has, the use of his apartment, even if it is for immoral and salacious purposes.  Wilder pokes fun at this through the use of his neighbors, who think his life is one continual party with one girl after another, with rumba music, bottles of liquor, and festive noise coming through the walls, where he’s bound to eventually drop dead on the spot from exhaustion.  Baxter has so little self esteem of his own that he’s even willing to accept this fake persona as a ladykiller as some kind of personal compliment, an attribute of his real character, borrowing it from time to time as he has no real life of his own.  

Like withholding the entrance of Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), Wilder teases the audience with the late introduction of Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik, the company elevator operator who performs her service with a smile.  Baxter is especially pleasant with her, but so are all the other male figures, many overly exuberant to the point of being distasteful and obnoxious.  The way the male executives derisively talk about women behind their backs reveals the barren emptiness of their own lives, treating each like a commodity they can impress one another with, like a prize winning trophy.  But all they get out of it is a quick fix, something to indulge their quixotic needs that are simply unquenchable, as the narcissistic greed these men are used to has no limits, as they represent the successful business model that feels like the creation of a new phenomenon of being, the titular head that underlings cannot refuse, taking whatever they desire with their rapacious appetites.  The more the underlings try to please them, the more pleased with themselves these business executives become.  In this manner, Baxter eventually draws the attention of the chief executive of the company, Fred MacMurray as Mr. Sheldrake, who vainly wants the use of the apartment all to himself, offering Baxter an executive position if he plays along.  Of course, who is the object of his cheap affections, none other than Ms. Kubelik, the one woman who treats Baxter like a decent human being.  A real conflict ensues, as both Baxter and Kubelik are separately dragged through the mud by the same lecherous man, who is inseparable from the company. 

Wilder quickly turns this satiric comedy on end, where the lives of the characters begin to matter, where the dubious manner in which they continue to be treated becomes an offense, quickly turning to a horrible personal tragedy.  This tumble and fall comes out of nowhere, but has a remarkable effect, as the audience suddenly becomes outraged and sympathizes with the lovable Ms. MacLaine like in no other movie, where she’s smart enough to know what’s happening, but is mostly miserable at herself, never blaming the man or the company behind the abuse.  This is what separates this movie from others, as this is a blisteringly accurate critique of the business world, as the executives are perceived as untouchable, obscenely rich with lavish expense accounts and plenty of high priced lawyers to protect what supposedly belongs to them.  Edie Adams as the executive secretary plays a prominent role as an outspoken whistleblower, surfacing during one of the most outlandish office parties on record, one that rivals the Romans in the picture of decadence, creating a feverish, poisonous effect.  Wilder quickly changes directions on a dime, where the portrait of corporate excess comes to a screeching halt and the impact of human tragedy prevails, focusing instead on an intimate glimpse into the small details of the living, where just getting through each day can sometimes feel like a miracle.  SOME LIKE IT HOT is funnier and more outrageous, but Wilder never wrote anything with greater depth or profound insight, feeling perhaps like this may be his most personal film, the one he’s most proud to have been associated with.  This is the American Dream gone wrong, where the myth becomes a distorted reality, and where a jolt of honesty, a splash of water in the face may finally open the eyes of workers who continue to get exploited in droves.  Despite the passage of half a century, this obscene, lopsided corporate model is the consummate picture of capitalism running amok today.          

Some Like It Hot

SOME LIKE IT HOT        A

USA  (120 mi)  1959  d:  Billy Wilder

After co-writing and directing what is arguably the seminal example of Film Noir with Double Indemnity (1944), Wilder returns more than a decade later with perhaps the best example of comic farce in American cinema, though Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) also comes to mind, listed as the funniest American movie ever made by the American Film Institute in 2000 AFI's 100 YEARS...100 LAUGHS, sitting alongside CASABLANCA (1942) as among the most quotable movies ever made.  Overlooked at the time by the sweeping popular success of William Wyler’s BEN HUR (1959), at the time the most lavishly expensive film ever made, a spectacle six years in the making, eventually winning 12 Academy Awards, while this film won a sole Oscar for costume design, notably those shimmering, form-fitting gowns worn by Marilyn Monroe who gives the most sexually appealing performance of her career, always the center of attention, even though she doesn’t show up for the first half hour of the film.  This was perhaps Monroe’s best chance at winning an Academy Award, as she carries the film, but she wasn’t nominated.  The eventual winner for Best Actress was Simone Signoret for ROOM AT THE TOP (1959).  What’s also unique here is that it doesn’t start out as a comedy, but is more of a realistic buddy picture between two jazz musician friends, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), somehow caught in a gangster picture, whose rapid fire, back and forth banter suggests an overfamiliarity, perhaps a model for Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE (1968), two guys used to being in one another’s company, which can get annoying after awhile as they continually complain about whatever’s bothering them.   Little do they know what lies ahead. 

In a wintry opening setup during Prohibition in 1929 where gangsters are delivering bootleg liquor to a speakeasy disguised as a funeral home, the two are playing raucous dance music in a jazz band for a Rockettes-style chorus line of dancers, where they escape arrest when the place is raided by the cops, beating a hasty retreat through the snowy windswept sidewalks of Chicago.  Hoping to land a job out of town, they wander into a garage where they witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, escaping once again to gunfire, as gangsters make it their business not to leave witnesses behind.  Frantic to the point where they’d do anything, they don disguises dressed as women and hop on a train to Miami with an all-girl band.  Both feel absolutely ridiculous at the idea and are having second thoughts until Monroe sashays by with her curves and her ukulele and boards the train, described by Lemmon as “like Jell-o on springs,” making them instant believers. 

Spending the rest of the movie on the run, it’s only when the two guys, dressed as girls, start to make fun of each other that the tone of the film changes, continually bordering on hilarious, adding the alluring sexual element of perhaps *the* leading sex symbol in Hollywood movie history, Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, the singer of the band, and there’s instant chemistry, along with plenty of conflict, as these guys are continually posing as something other than who they are, not to mention the unfinished business with the Chicago mob.  Jack Lemmon as Daphne takes to the role like it’s second nature, laughing giddily and making jokes with the girls, eliminating that invisible wall between the sexes.  Tony Curtis as Josephine, on the other hand, is used to being that good looking matinee idol, as he’s incredibly handsome as a man, but awkward, uptight, and utterly helpless as a girl.  

The two are inseparable, never leaving one another’s side, but Daphne freely ad libs about their absent history, suggesting they’ve been studying at a music conservatory, giving them a cultivated and highbrow side to their personalities that none of the other girls have, as they’re much more liberated and open minded.  When Josephine gets a load of Sugar sipping bourbon in the rest room, confessing how she’s always been a sucker for a saxophone player, running away from yet another one, his instinctual saxophone playing male mentality takes over but he’s stuck in a female body, where all he/she can offer is support and friendship.  Band practice is a frenzied riot, containing the first of three Monroe musical numbers, Marilyn Monroe - Running Wild on YouTube (3:36).  The closeness and intimacy of the music only serves to bring the girls closer together, which turns into a Marx Brothers vaudeville routine of pandemonium when word gets out that Daphne’s cubicle is serving liquor. 

Once they’re in Miami, all bets are off, as they’re free to go their separate ways, but Josephine as Joe has become hooked on Sugar’s sad dream to meet a millionaire on a yacht, inspired to fill those shoes through divine inspiration, if necessary, which requires devising a mad plan of action.  Since Daphne has been the object of an old geezer’s affection, none other than Joe E. Brown (a guy who grew up in vaudeville) as Osgood Fielding III playing a self-confessed millionaire who happens to own his own yacht, Josephine plots to inhabit his alias as well in an attempt to attract Sugar’s attention, sending Daphne and Osgood to a night on the town dancing the night away while he charmingly lures Sugar to his yacht.  Using a sophisticated Cary Grant accent and the pretense of owning millions, Curtis and Monroe engage in a spectacle of love at first sight, where romance is always the object of their affection.  The scene on the yacht is utterly spectacular, but it’s set up perfectly by another Monroe number, Marilyn Monroe - I Wanna Be Loved By You [HD] (2:53). 

Monroe’s dress couldn’t be more glamorous and seductive, backless and barely there covering her voluptuous curves, it literally cries out for sex.  Curtis, on the other hand, plays it coy, repressed and hurt by love, supposedly deeply damaged and pretending to be in a state of emotional freeze, just awaiting the spring thaw where the floodgates will be released.  The two couldn’t be more alluringly attractive, while at the same time, Osgood and Daphne spend the entire night in ultra dramatic fashion, dancing the tango to pulsating Latin rhythms, shaking maracas and carrying roses in their teeth.  By the time the night is over, Daphne’s about given up on being a man, thrilled by the unexpected rush of excitement, while Curtis is ready to throw his wig away for good, but instead they’re met by a mob convention in the hotel, causing them to bolt once again.  In despair, seemingly dumped once again, Monroe sings her final lament, I'm Through With Love/Marilyn Monroe (3:12), which finally touches the heart and soul of the man who has to eventually come clean in a rollicking conclusion that is so memorable that the final line is written on Wilder’s gravestone.

The Artist

THE ARTIST               B+                  

France  Belgium  (100 mi)  2011  d:  Michel Hazanavicius         Official site [ca]

Despite the unapologetically nostalgic tone of a silent era film that accentuates Hollywood cinema in its golden age, along with its dashingly handsome and debonair stars, like swaggering silent star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), this film, along with Scorsese’s holiday release HUGO (2011), both eloquently pay tribute to a magical era of early cinema.  Set in the late 20’s and early 30’s, coinciding with the SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952) shift from silent to talking pictures, the camera initially adores matinee idol Valentin with cameras and news items following his every move, living in a posh Hollywood mansion with a wealthy socialite wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller) who’s too bored with show business that she spends her idle time marking up movie posters with graffiti-like mustaches and goatees, her caustic comment on the whole world of entertainment, rarely uttering a word to her husband.  This dysfunctional portrait of marriage is a satiric comment on Myrna Loy and William Powell’s supposed marital bliss in THE THIN MAN (1934), right down to a theatrical scene-stealing pet dog Uggie, who is a stand-in for Asta and all but steals the picture.  Valentin’s breakfast table scene mimicking the dog’s every move is a classic silent era comedy routine, but his wife couldn’t be bothered to even notice.  Valentin never lacks for a smile, exuding confidence and generosity from the outset, beautifully expressed in a spontaneous moment at a publicity appearance where he is accidentally bumped by a woman who drops her purse while standing in a cordoned off crowd of fans and well-wishers, where at first he expresses rude indignation at the insult, unwanted physical contact, but when he sees what a lovely and charming woman it is (Argentinean actress living in France, Bérénice Bejo, who happens to be the director's spouse), he immediately turns into the gallant gentleman, where their pictures are all over the Hollywood tabloids the next day. 

From this simple coincidence, A STAR IS BORN (1937, 1954, 1976), so to speak, as the lovely lady is Peppy Miller who suddenly lands a job working with Valentin on a picture as a chorus line dancer, nearly thrown off the set by movie mogul John Goodman, the cigar chomping movie producer who blames her for the little stunt which took the actual movie being promoted off the front page, but he relents when Valentin insists she belongs in the picture.  While the two obviously have chemistry, their careers are on different paths, as talkies are the new thing, introducing ambitious young talent like Ms. Miller, while Valentin’s career is all but over, though he refuses to believe he can’t draw an adoring public.  When the stock market crashes and the Depression hits, people show little interest in the way things used to be, despite Valentin’s insistence that he’s an “artist,” not some puppet on a string.  With his marriage on the rocks, his career in ruins, his fortune lost, he becomes a sad and destitute man, still unable to comprehend the chaotic madness of noise associated with talking pictures.  His much more organized silent life seems enchantingly simple, where all he has to do is perform before adoring fans to win their hearts, where he’s a natural born charmer.  Making matters more interesting, the film is actually silent in Valentin’s world, where sound is slowly and cleverly introduced, which others accept, where they eventually live in a world of sound, but Valentin and Uggie remain steadfastly silent.  The film effortlessly walks a fine line between the two worlds, where the unrecognized and distant love between the two stars remains confined to silence. 

The real magic of this film is an old-fashioned romance set against a backdrop of a continual stream of homages to different film eras, where Valentin begins as a 1920’s swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks hero, where his Chaplinesque comic routines or enthralling Fred Astaire dance numbers are utterly captivating, but when his luck fades, he’s a down on his luck fading movie star lost in the decaying psychological cobwebs of SUNSET BLVD. (1950), filtered through the alcoholic doldrums of meaningless despair from THE LOST WEEKEND (1945).  What’s truly remarkable is actor Jean Dujardin’s range of ability in wordlessly conveying each of these tumultuous emotional turns so effortlessly, where his eminent demeanor never slips out of character.  Despite the predictable narrative arc of falling from grace to living a life in shambles, he carries himself with an immensely appealing dignity throughout, where the scenes with Bérénice Bejo simply sparkle and couldn’t be more scintillating, becoming heartbreakingly tender at times, bringing needed poignancy to their relationship.  Labelled crowd pleasing and lighthearted entertainment by critics, that would be misleading, as this is scrupulously well put together, painting a particularly tragic note to fame, which like youth, is fleeting.  The director combines a rare combination of cleverness and craft, where the extraordinary personalities of the superb talent onscreen win out in the end.  While the relatively unknown director is French, one can’t help but think of fellow countryman Jacques Tati, whose enduring silent comedy was set entirely during the unpredictable modern landscape of the present.  Something of a living, iconic anachronism, he spent everything he earned back into his own unfailingly unique cinematic art, crushed by the lack of success at the box office, probably thinking he was something of a failure at the end of his life, while today he is revered as a rare comic genius.  One might have wished for a special tribute paid to Tati, instead there's a curious debt of thanks to Argentinean soccer superstar Diego Maradona. 

Angel Face

ANGEL FACE                   C+                   

USA  (91 mi)  1952  d:  Otto Preminger

Otto Preminger is a heralded director, known as much for his bald, Austro-Hungarian profile, where he specialized in playing brutal Nazi SS officers in various WWII movies, like Billy Wilder's STALAG 17 (1953), as for his dictatorial reputation of being rude and bullying on the set, where he was also renowned for his efficiency and work ethic.  He is one of the last of the studio directors, where in this feature he was on loan from 20th Century Fox to do one picture for Howard Hughes and RKO Pictures.  British actress Jean Simmons was unhappy with the direction of her career, which never took off in America, and was looking for a way to get out of her contract with Hughes, still fuming from his earlier romantic gestures in persuading her to sign a long term contract even while she was married to Stewart Granger.  Taking desperate measures to the extreme, in one argument she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut her hair short, knowing his predilection for women onscreen with long, flowing hair.  With only 18 days left in her RKO contract, Hughes convinced Preminger, who initially hated the script, that he could get one more picture out of her and forced Simmons to wear a wig while giving Preminger complete control of the script, allegedly telling him: “I'm going to get even with that little bitch and you're going to help me.”  The picture turned out to be ANGEL FACE, which was never a critical or box office success, seen as a kind of noir B-movie, but ironically contains one of Jean Simmons’s better performances, perhaps channeling her inner anger and fragile instability.  Paired with Robert Mitchum, the two make unlikely lovers, especially considering he’s a blue collar ambulance driver with a penchant for bowling and race cars while she’s a rich, pampered, and spoiled heiress, not exactly traveling in the same social circles.          

They meet when an ambulance is called to the scene of a palatial estate in Beverly Hills where Mrs. Tremayne (Barbara O’Neil) nearly dies under mysterious circumstances from gas asphyxiation, eventually determined to be an accident, where Frank (Mitchum) is intrigued by the lovely step-daughter Diane (Simmons) sitting alone playing the piano, usually a cue in noir films for interior psychological distress.  When she follows him secretly afterwards in her convertible race car, the wheels are set in motion where she can accidentally re-introduce herself and make the most of coincidence.  The odd woman out is Frank’s girlfriend Mary (Mona Freeman), who is stood up so Frank could paint the town with Diane.  What’s worse, he’s caught lying about it the next day when in one of the more unusual scenes of the film, Diane is seen brazenly having lunch with Mary, basically spreading the dirt about her boyfriend, but then masking her real intentions by offering her a sizeable sum of money to help realize Frank’s dream to own a garage that specializes in fixing racing cars.  Mitchum is excellent as the casual swine who’s caught lying but pretends it’s nothing, where the audience knows he’s a repeat offender and it won’t be the last time.  When Diane suggests Frank come live in the mansion and become the family chauffeur, taking care of their fleet of cars, most would think twice, but Mitchum drops everything like a chump and jumps at the chance, which is simply not in character with the Robert Mitchum the audience is familiar with, a guy who flies solo whenever he gets the chance.  When Diane reveals the utter contempt she feels for her step-mother, Frank has sense enough to tell her:  “You hate that woman and someday you're gonna hate her enough to kill her.” 

This is known as foreshadowing.  And therein lies one of the major problems in this film, as the over-explanative dialogue continually reveals too much, always making sure the audience knows exactly what’s going to happen before it happens, which actually takes some of the pleasure away from this film.  Some directors simply try to do too much, as if the audience is incapable of figuring anything out themselves.  Unfortunately in this film, where the less you know ahead of time the better, none of the so-called surprises come as a surprise, as all the evil deeds are telegraphed ahead of time.  Frank sees through Diane instantly, but she continues to use her feminine charms to lure him off his game, where eventually the two get mixed up in a bit of foul play, where the story turns on a dime into a lengthy courtroom sequence that slows the film down and adds little to the drama.  See ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959) for Preminger’s take on an excellent courtroom drama.  But if truth be told, this film works best when she is charming the pants off of him and he continually resists, but then becomes intoxicated with her hare-brained schemes, as if the thought of their dreams together can somehow weaken ordinary human beings into committing unethical acts.  When Diane is continually pulling Frank into the dark mysteries of her delusional soul, everyone in the audience has enough sense to know better, everyone except Frank.  So while they are an improbable couple, they have a way of flirting with disaster, tempting fate, continually going against better judgment, but unlike Hitchcock, for instance, there’s not a hint of suspense, in fact most of this is told in a very matter of fact manner.  This couple could be deliciously malicious, but instead they’re portrayed as bland and empty, both devious opportunists who are in over their heads, each trying to use the other, a sleight of hand on the Beauty and the Beast story, where no one is willing to see the beast in such a beauty, as everyone continually looks away from the truth that’s staring them straight in the face.  

The Blue Dahlia

THE BLUE DAHLIA               B                     

USA  (96 mi)  1946  d:  George Marshall

Bourbon straight with a bourbon chaser.       —Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix)

You've got the wrong lipstick on, Mister.       —Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd)

It’s funny, but practically all the people I know were strangers when I met them.     

—Joyce Harwood (Veronica Lake)

Like all the modern day era directors named Marshall, George Marshall was primarily a comic director before making this film, where he serves in a functional role, little more than moving the right pieces around, but hardly visionary or exemplary, where screenwriter Raymond Chandler may have actually directed several of the scenes.  This film is noted as being the only original Raymond Chandler script in Hollywood, though several of his books have been adapted, where the script was unfinished when filming began and production was about to be shut down as he developed writer’s block.  Already a hurried production, as actor Alan Ladd was being recalled for military service, so the terms Chandler demanded to finish the script on time was to start drinking again, as he felt he wrote better under the influence, also an in-home round the clock nurse to help moderate his alcohol intake, so as an alcoholic he wouldn’t drink himself into a stupor, and a car which drove his finished pages to the studio every day.  John Houseman, from the Orson Welles Mercury Theater group, was the producer on the Paramount film and he felt inclined to agree to these outlandish terms, offering in addition a $5000 incentive to finish on time, which he did, as otherwise everyone would simply be fired.  This is also the third of four films where Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake would work together.  While the two of them were never close, the diminutive Ladd at 5' 5” enjoyed working with her as she was just under 5 feet tall, and this is one of their better efforts.  The snappy and crisp Chandler dialogue, which was the film’s only Academy Award nomination, works to their benefit, as they have some terrific lines together, always keeping one another at arm’s length, but just barely.  After Lake died, it was revealed by her husband, director André de Toth, that she was a heroin addict and an alcoholic during her starring roles at Paramount, earning $4500 a week, which is why they never renewed her contract, eventually working as a barmaid near the end of her life, drifting from one cheap hotel to the next, where she had frequent arrests for public drunkenness. 

Like many of the war pictures in its day, the film opens with out of uniform soldiers returning home to Los Angeles on a bus, where they experienced a close camaraderie of serving together, but become anonymous figures upon returning home.  Alan Ladd as Johnny Morrison definitely fits that bill, even though he has a wife to come home to, while the other two, William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont, are envious.  But when Ladd arrives, his house has been taken over by a drunken crowd of perpetual party revelers, led by his wife, Doris Dowling, who is on the arm of a crooked nightclub owner Eddie Harwood, Howard Da Silva, whose career was blacklisted for the decade of the 1950's.  Da Silva, Dowling, and Frank Faylen (a small-time hood) all just finished working together on Billy Wilder’s THE LOST WEEKEND (1945).  Dowling is from the theatrical school of bold dramatic expressions, wearing lavish and spectacular gowns that might feel more appropriate in a highly decorative Josef von Sternberg film.  Her stand-offish behavior towards Johnny, not to mention being caught in a kiss with Harwood, sends Johnny back out the door, where in typical noirish fashion it has become an evening downpour of rain.  With all the hotels booked, he’s aimlessly roaming the streets, suitcase in hand, until a car pulls up and offers him a shelter from the storm, driven by Veronica Lake.  While exploring the entire Los Angeles vicinity together, from Hollywood, Santa Monica, to Malibu, they immediately hit it off, but with vague sarcasm and clever comebacks.  They are easily the glue that holds this picture together, but keep getting separated after a news report announces the murder of his wife, where Johnny is the lead suspect, spending the rest of the film on the run while the police are searching for him, leaving him little choice except to find the killer himself. 

While some of this does in fact resemble Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SLEEP (1946), another Chandler novel with Bogart and Bacall which may have borrowed liberally from this film, especially the scenes where the hero gets double crossed, beaten up and captured in an out of the way location, the claims that Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961) and the Coen Brother’s MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) also drew wholesale from this film are less obvious, as Ladd is hardly in a position trying to keep two warring sides at bay and instead is a returning war hero who has to reestablish his heroicism back here on American soil.  While not officially a detective, Ladd is placed in the position of being a detective in having to solve the crime before the police make an arrest.  In this respect, the film has more in common with THE THIN MAN (1934), where the non-explicit, bordering on dysfunctional relationship between Ladd and Lake is a stark contrast to the cozy marital bliss of William Powell and Myrna Loy, who represent the security, peace and prosperity of the pre-War years.  After the war, a man’s got to settle his own affairs with little or no help, where Bendix returns with a serious war injury, with a metal plate placed in his head, where he is constantly growing mentally agitated at the least provocation, especially the sound of American jazz music, which causes headaches and mysterious blackouts, continually demanding that people “Turn off that monkey music!”  Bendix was Chandler’s inadvertent killer in the initial script, where in noir films a character suffering from temporary amnesia is as familiar as the common cold, and everything leads up to his odd yet plausible police confession, which was unacceptable by the U.S. Navy, refusing to allow the depiction of a wounded war veteran as the damaged killer in a high profile Hollywood production coming so close to the end of the war.  The Navy threatened to refuse to cooperate in any future Paramount production, causing a hastily altered Raymond Chandler rewrite, which is really just a stab in the dark and the film’s weakest link.  Like the much publicized OJ Simpson murder case which captivated all of Los Angeles for months, there were really no other suspects.