Indie noir new to Blu-ray

Film noir fans can be thankful this weekend that more and more noir titles have been showing up on Blu-ray over the past few months. Independent films (past and present) can be strong personal cinematic visions or slick packages designed to sell tickets and fill a particular bill. On November 17 Kino Video came out with great-looking Blu-ray editions of movies from the 1940s and 50s that demonstrate both approaches, each film fitting to various degrees into the “film noir” category and each running under 90 minutes. 

One of the classic noir films is “Pitfall” (1948), an independent production that breaks many of the film noir “rules” but hits even harder on several of the most common noir themes as a result, mostly in subtler ways than a standard Hollywood production. The main themes pervading the film are alienation and dissatisfaction – with job, with relationships, with life and the status quo in general. Talented director André de Toth twists what seems mostly a domestic romantic melodrama of modern (i.e., post-war) suburbia into an increasingly darker look at American values, morals, and dreams. As in noir tradition, ironic wisecracks pepper the dialogue in a number of scenes. The obligatory femme fatale in this film is not scheming to use the protagonist for a doomed crime plot, but is instead serves as merely a temptation for three of the central male characters, although the jealousy she unwittingly creates among them leads to at least two killings by the end of the movie. 

There’s also an ambiguity in characters’ pasts and futures that major studio films of the era (or even today) would likely take the time to explain. Our erstwhile hero/antihero John Forbes (Dick Powell) is an L.A. insurance executive with a comfortable job, a beautiful wife (Jane Wyatt), and an adoring if often irritating son (Jimmy Hunt). Nevertheless he feels empty, like life has passed him by and left him in a boring rut of repetition. Then he meets Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), the sultry girlfriend of a convicted embezzler named Bill Smiley (Byron Barr) that his company insured and is attempting to recover their losses, most of which paid for various gifts from Smiley to Stevens. They start a passionate but brief affair that both realize is wrong and can’t continue. This was all it took for Forbes to rediscover an interest in his home life, but it’s a bit too late. 

The trouble is that shady private detective J. B. MacDonald (Raymond Burr), who discovered Stevens’ role in the case, is unhealthily attracted to her himself, to the point of stalking her and threatening Forbes even after they have broken off with each other. By this time the film has shifted into full noir mode and events build to various final showdowns. Powell is at his darkest in a role tailored especially for him, after transitioning from juvenile lead in romantic musical comedies to detective dramas. Scott (who died earlier this year at 92) is also in fine form as the vulnerable fashion model who always gets mixed up with the wrong men. She considered it her favorite role. Burr, decades before becoming a TV icon as the respectable lawyer Perry Mason and Detective Ironside, is at his smarmiest and most intimidating as the movie’s villain. Picture quality is outstanding on Kino’s Blu-ray, mastered from a duplicate negative at UCLA, and the sound is fine. Bonus features are sparse, just two HD trailers (for other noir movies from Kino) and an audio commentary, but the commentary is an excellent one by noir expert Eddie Muller that gives great insight into the film as well as backgrounds of cast and crew and the production itself. 

PITFALL on Blu-ray – Movie: A- / Video: A / Audio: A / Extras: B-

The trailer to “A Bullet for Joey” (1955) makes it look like it’s going to be a fast-paced and moody film noir in the classic tradition starring two big-name actors popular as tough guys in gangster films a couple of decades earlier. However, by a short time into the feature itself, it soon becomes apparent that this is a routine police procedural crime drama using the familiar formula of foreign agents trying to kidnap a brilliant scientist (George Dolenz) who’s working on a top-secret government project. 

When the action finally picks up in the last reel or so, the film becomes a laughably (or at least an eye-rollingly) over-the-top melodrama with no surprises. Journeyman director Lewis Allen and most of the cast seem to be simply doing a job rather than showing dedication to the material. For whatever reason, the film is set in Montreal. Edward G. Robinson plays Raoul Leduc, a no-nonsense but relatively low-key police inspector investigating a series of murders he gradually realizes are related. 

Meanwhile, the ominous and well-funded Eric Hartman (Peter van Eyck) brings deported gangster Joey Victor (George Raft) to Canada to reassemble his gang and pull off the kidnapping for a hefty fee. Victor recruits his reluctant aging ex-girlfriend Joyce (Audrey Totter) to seduce the romantically-challenged scientist. It’s not too hard to figure out most of what happens next. Raft has a few good scenes with his trigger-happy henchmen, but is rather heavy-handed with Totter and frequently a bit subdued, like Robinson. Dolenz is adequate if underwhelming as the scientist and van Eyck is merely a caricature as the villain. Totter delivers the most interesting and complex performance in the film, world-weary with a mind of her own even though she knows she’s being used. Kino’s Blu-ray has a fine, film-like HD transfer at the appropriate 1.75:1 aspect ratio, a major aspect in enjoying this film, as well as very decent audio. The only bonus features are three trailers, including one for “A Bullet for Joey” plus two other Kino noir releases. 

A BULLET FOR JOEY on Blu-ray -- Movie: C+ / Video: A / Audio: A- / Extras: D