2 results
5 - “Like a crazy nightmare”: Noirish Vampirism and Deviance in Bowery at Midnight
- Edited by Gary D. Rhodes, Oklahoma Baptist University, Joanna Hearne
-
- Book:
- ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 26 October 2023
- Print publication:
- 31 July 2022, pp 105-115
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In 1942, the L.A. Times called Wallace Fox’s Bowery at Midnight “maybe the most farthest fetched of the Bela Lugosi films.” Given Lugosi’s filmography up to that point, that is indeed saying something significant. With such offerings as Murder by Television (1935), The Phantom Creeps serial (1939), and Spooks Run Wild (1941) in the intervening years after Dracula, one might well question that reviewer’s assessment. Bowery at Midnight does indeed push the disbelief suspension quite far, but in fact, these very surrealistic, logicstretched aspects of the film set it apart from conventional B-picture horror fare and place it squarely as a weirdly compelling proto-noir, in the same— albeit less polished—vein as Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942). Fox capitalizes on viewer associations with Lugosi’s vampire roles, making the ensuing narrative about underground criminal networks, drug addiction, and class privilege much deeper than those of typical scare features and displaying the unapologetically violent, logic-averse, and morally ambiguous elements of film noir that would come to define the cycle.
As film noir developed, elements of post-WWII angst, including gender role shifts and global fears of communism and nuclear annihilation, became some of its significant themes. However, the roots of noir are solidly found in Depression-era economic and social crises, with 1930’s pulp fiction depicting these crises and functioning as the source material for so many film noir narratives. At the core of these crises is the crushing sense of instability engendered by the Depression fallout. The depth of this instability is emphasized by Philip Hanson, who argues that “[i]ntensifying the collapse of prosperity was the sense that the reputations of society’s pillars had been illusory; intensifying the dissolution of respected reputations was a fear that fundamental American values had themselves been an illusion.’” It is these sensibilities that hover around the edges of Bowery at Midnight, centered on the ironically named “Friendly Mission”—soup kitchen on the outside, but criminal headquarters on the inside. Lugosi’s apparently kindly Karl Wagner operates the establishment, offering “food for your body, as well as counsel for your troubled mind.” The down-and-out clientele prefer Wagner’s secular approach to social reform, as one comments approvingly, “Most places you go to, they want to save your soul.”
1 - “I never did think he was crazy”: Mystery and Criminality in Boetticher's Psychological Noirs
- from Part 1 - The Non-Westerns
-
- By Marlisa Santos, Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Gary D. Rhodes, Queen’s University in Belfast, Robert Singer, CUNY Graduate Center
-
- Book:
- ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 22 December 2017
- Print publication:
- 03 February 2017, pp 15-27
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
No one was more dismissive of Budd Boetticher's early films than Boetticher himself. He disparaged them on numerous occasions in interviews, from calling working on them “a learning experience … I faked it” and even going so far as to say, “They were terrible pictures.” And, indeed, what limited critical treatment of Boetticher's work exists focuses on either his work with Westerns or bullfighting in cinema, rather than on his intriguing early forays into the war and mystery arenas. Two of the first ten films in Boetticher's canon are particularly worthy of further study, Escape in the Fog (1945) and Behind Locked Doors (1948). Both arguably films noir, these economical— both clock in at just over an hour—but expressive pictures reveal the early elemental precursors of what would become Boetticher's minimalist style and his interest in issues fundamental to the human condition, such as the negotiation between knowledge and mystery and the lines between the lawful and criminal.
Escape in the Fog, in true noir fashion, begins with a dream, a measure of unreality that will frame the entirety of the narrative. Eileen Carr (Nina Foch), a former army nurse, awakens screaming from this dream in a secluded inn, where she is recovering from a bomb attack. The dream sequence, which parallels a later and “real” sequence in the film, is shrouded in dense fog. Reviews of Escape in the Fog will often comment that this proliferation of fog, though expertly used, is perhaps the only stylistic mark of note in the film. Indeed, Boetticher spares no use of the fog machine in these scenes, creating an obfuscated atmosphere of uncertainty and dread. In both scenes, Carr is walking on the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, where she meets a policeman who initially suspects that she is contemplating suicide, and cautions her about walking there alone: “You never can tell what'll come outta the fog.” And this warning proves to be true, as Carr witnesses a car pulling up near her, men falling out of it struggling, and one of them getting shot, whereupon the dream ends. Mark Osteen notes: “noir dreams stage ruptures in identity and integration that are not just individual but collective.”