Noir City double feature

[randy_byers]

holyoutlaw and I caught the opening night double feature of the new Noir City series playing at SIFF Cinema this week. It was a full house, so it could be that Noir City is going to be harder to get tickets to in the future. I think this is the third year that it has played in Seattle. (It originates in San Francisco.)

The first film was Andre de Toth's Pitfall (1948). This has a reputation as an underrated gem, but I was mildly disappointed by it. It's the story of an bored insurance man (Dick Powell) who is feeling the seven year itch. He has a fling with sultry Lizabeth Scott, and soon his cozy suburban life is coming apart at the seams. The movie reminded me of a lot of others, but mostly it reminded me of Act of Violence (also 1948), which is another noir about the ideal life disrupted. The comparison suggests what I found disappointing about Pitfall. What it lacks that Act of Violence has in spades is that nightmarish sense of despair and fatalism that's so characteristic of noir. It's there in Pitfall too, but it seemed weaker somehow, less desperate, less poignant, less fatal. Still, it's full of interesting, well-drawn characters, including secondary ones like Scott's jittery imprisoned boyfriend and Raymond Burr as a sleazy stalker detective. Powell, whose independent production company made the film, is well cast as a nice guy who is feeling dissatisfied with his mundane life. There are some great lines. Despite my mild disappointment, I'd watch it again. I guess I'd say that having seen it, I don't think it's surprising that it isn't better-known than it is.

The second film was Larceny (1948), which I had never heard of before. The connection with Pitfall, as Noir City guru Eddie Muller pointed out in his introduction, is that William Bowers worked on the screenplays of both. Bowers doesn't get a credit on Pitfall, so maybe he was just a script doctor on that one. Here the snappy wit occasionally seen in Pitfall is in full flower. This is the story of a group of con men led by Dan Duryea and John Payne who are trying to bilk a young war widow (Joan Caulfield), using Payne as bait to her grieving loneliness. Shelley Winters plays a sort of femme fatale -- a moll in the middle of a love triangle with Duryea and Payne. She aptly describes herself as "a boa constrictor in high heels." She nearly steals the show, although Payne and Duryea are really good too. The snappy dialogue gives this one a lighter feel, but the selfish criminality of the leads isn't whitewashed. Payne is an ambiguous character with some sympathetic qualities, but he's something of an homme fatale himself. The fact that he's catnip to women is a running joke and key plot element, but there's definitely a dark edge to his casual use of this power. Another film of postwar malaise and disillusionment. One of the odder twists is when the widow comes to believe that her sainted husband had actually been unfaithful to her, and she feels momentarily liberated by it.