We all know which books are good, but which ones deserve credit just for looking good? I'll be keeping an eye out for books of notable design at my place of work. The ones with a crime-oriented or sufficiently macabre theme will be showcased here. You agree that some rooms are better than others for death to take place in, don't you?
It's hard to see this from the photograph (I will try to get more detail in subsequent shots), but the title of the book has been done in a sketch-like fashion. The UK price of £2 is denoted in a much smoother style. There is a head of a man in the doorway that's pretty much just floating ominously. Love the red lipstick and slender fingers.
Since watching the original “Brighton Rock”i, I have become interested in what has been termed British noir. It therefore caught my eye that this film, “On the Night of the Fire,” had been proclaimed the first British noir. I have always wondered whether British cinema of the '30s-'50s could ever dislodge my full-on obsession with American cinema of that same era, particularly within the boundaries of the noir genre. I can't say I am any closer to answering that question – although, to be honest, that sort-of-question only counts as a typical sort-of-game I play inside my own head – but with films like “On the Night of the Fire,” so-called British noir is looking pretty good. I think this film fails as a tragedy, but succeeds as a noir. I should very much like to see this film again. I will make three points, and call it a day.
First, the really wonderful cinematography: please do not let this escape your notice. As it happens, the exquisite cinematography is done by Günther Krampf – the man responsible for the cinematography in “Pandora's Box”, a good portion of “Nosferatu”, and so on. When Kit comes-to (from having fainted following the realization that her husband Will Kobling, the town barber, has committed murder), the shot that Krampf frames is almost avant-garde and completely breathtaking. Perfectly paranoid close-ups and clever use of montage: there is much to admire in the cinematography alone, and with such a range of types of shots on display, it's no small feat that every shot feels masterfully but not arrogantly handled.
Second, the film isn't gripping throughout. There are moments that feel strange and misplaced – at times, the mundane/domestic is given a jarring feel, as though this softer side of life is what should actually be questioned. The scene in which Will Kobling is given his mince supper – or whatever that was, you Brits tell me – illustrates the point. Perhaps we're not supposed to see the quieter moments in a murderer's life. Next we'll probably be seeing his wife darn his socks with ambivalence in her heart, with him going back and forth both guiltily and listlessly, unable to decide whether to put them on because, see, this marriage is crumbling under the weight of something too unexpectedly dark for direct communication. Allow me to explain: when Will Kobling is given his mince supper, it's a dull moment because he's being given his supper, but also an important moment because it is one of several following scenes that depict their bittersweet alienation from one another. The pressure builds, and it is heartbreaking. All the same, you half expect to see a murderer sharpening knives in his spare time – perhaps smashing delicate porcelain objects, sweating, or, as Pinky does with great aplomb in "Brighton Rock," playing Cat's Cradle. There are, of course, sparks of anger in Kobling's eyes (particularly when you should expect it, as he confronts Pilleger and accuses him, correctly, of attempting to “bleed” him). But he is a loving husband and doting father – you see him, as his marriage and inner life are undoing themselves, just as often picking up and putting down cutlery more like a little child sensing it is in trouble than someone who has just killed a man with his bare hands*. There is nothing menacing about Will Kobling, the barber. Crucially, neither is he a dolt to be written off – he has an acerbic sense of humor about the fix he's gotten himself into, as in the scene with Kobling's last customer, as it were: “I'm going to make you pretty.”
Let me pull things back in from the digression: it is this bizarre intimacy on the director's part that makes this film so unusually good, the intimacy of portraying these characters and their situation just this way. What I like about the treatment of the dramatic pulse is that it varies erratically, as it should when exploring the psyche of someone who isn't a real criminal, but a person of mangled expression who hasn't played his cards right. While one may be tempted to call these moments of indecision in the film a failure, they are in fact well-crafted. It is amazing how this film progresses from a missing coat button to murder, untimely death, and suicide, without losing anyone on board; a plot like this would normally strain audience credulity. When Kobling strangles Pilleger to death, I must say I have seen only one gramophone murder scene that's betterii – e.g., when Moe (played by the incomparable Thelma Ritter) has her head blown off by a commie in “Pickup on South Street”. Unlike Moe, whose gramophone is another warm aspect of her being and a symbol of the simple indisputable (not to be taken for good, sensible) things to which her life is dedicated, Pilleger's gramophone represents his exacting nature: the tremendous pleasure he takes in the petty strands of peoples' lives he is able to manipulate, and the irritating perfectionism it comes with, make him a great candidate for being killed off.
Third, what impresses me about this film most of all – even more than the fact that the marriage feels real throughout the occasionally conventional mechanics of melodrama – is its smart, subtle exposure of the conflict between the outer and inner lives. This point extends from the second. Revealing conversations take place between Will and Kit that could easily demonstrate my point. But – more impressively – there are two scenes not centered around dialogue that achieve this. They both involve the use of Kobling's curtains: the border, the guise, the line between commodity and sanctity … bustle and gossip on one side, hope and hypocrisy on the other ... indicating the psychological space, where for more settled lives only a slight friction exists, but for Kobling results in an explosion of fear and resentment. In the first scene, as I recall, Kobling has just walked back home from the murder. He is disoriented. He has been walking through the rain without bothering to try to shield himself, drenched in guilt and fatigued bewilderment. In a black-and-white film, the droplets of rain on his skin look briefly like beads of sweat – that split second of ambiguity is nice, even though it is not a meaningful, sustained illusion. As he looks up, his face covered in droplets, the rain is crawling down the window pane, which is ever so slightly perceptible through the drawn curtains. The second scene that brings out the paranoia – the paranoia is full intensity now – is when the community / mob of men decide to take matters into their own hands and turn Kobling in to the police by force [(in reference to the police) “Catch a murderer? They can't even catch a cold”]. The community has it all figured out on its own; it has its own conception of meeting the standard of proof. The mob of men takes the reward notice and presses it against Kobling's shop window. A member of the mob slowly paints his name across the warrant: K-O-B-L-I-N-G. The curtains remain drawn closed in both scenes; Kobling watches the rain crawl and the mob paint his name through the curtains. The outer world encroaches; his inner world has collapsed.
i Much to my horror and disdain, a remake is on its way to theatres near us all.
ii I should also mention, since I have brought up “Brighton Rock” in this piece, that there is an incredible gramophone scene in that one as well – it doesn't involve murder, otherwise it would be in competition with these other two scenes. Ralph Richardson gives a brilliant performance in "Brighton Rock" as well. * I should make fun of my own sentence here - he is both! And it is the latter that has triggered the former.
Addendum:
Director: Brian Desmond Hurst Cinematographer: Günther Krampf Will Kobling: Ralph Richardson Kit (Mrs.) Kobling: Diana Wynyard
*No one will be convinced of Richardson and Wynyard as lower-middle-class cockneys.
**The first film-still above is not from "On the Night of the Fire," but is so wonderfully manic I had to post it.
***What do they say about this film? => Brian McIlroy: "From the above summary, it may appear a simple 'crime does not pay' production, but Hurst spends considerable time on the main character - his desire to please his wife, his hopes to escape the back streets, his gradual deterioration, and his decision to let himself be killed by the police, once he learns his wife has died from injuries in a car crash (escaping newspapermen who are following her husband's story) - and the result impresses the viewer as an intense psychological analysis of the first order."
“People took the silence of the movies for granted because they never quite lost the feeling that what they saw was after all only pictures. This feeling alone, however, would not be sufficient to prevent the lack of sound being felt as an unpleasant violation of the illusion. That this did not happen is again connected with what was explained above: that in order to get a full impression it is not necessary for it to be complete in the naturalistic sense. All kinds of things may be left out which would be present in real life, so long as what is shown contains the essentials. Only after one has known talkies is the lack of sound conspicuous in a silent film. But that proves nothing and is not an argument against the potentialities of silent film, even since the introduction of sound.”
--Rudolf Arnheim
Part I: The Silent Films
(Written on a comedown from the first installment of the BFI Hawks retrospective. Enjoy the unintegrated Arnheim quote, taken from the canonical Film As Art. Apologies in advance for my parenthetical – or pathetic-al? – asides. This is the first of too many.)
How to characterize Hawks' early silent films? What about them matters?
What I have seen: “Fig Leaves,” “The Cradle Snatchers,” “Trent's Last Case,” and “A Girl In Every Port.” The last is the most successful of the crop (not to be confused with the one from the fifties with Groucho!). It is credited with establishing Hawks as an auteur and Brooks as a luminously beautiful sex kitten possessing unusual qualities that stretch beyond the parameters of this film and were eventually brought to fruition in “Pandora’s Box”. (It would be a disgrace to call her a man-eater; everyone knows she did everything in inimitable style.) What usually comes with the territory of discussing this film is modernity, sexually forward Hawksian women, the sublimation of homosexual desire within the male dyad, an overall candid attitude towards sex, the presence of key thematic elements that have lasted throughout Hawks’ career, and a “simplifying style” that doesn’t call attention to itself cinematographically or dramatically. I am not really going to set up arguments for any of this; it’s not what especially interests me. The program[i] insinuates that it is the casting of Louise Brooks in this context that constitutes the success of the film. But this is not so. It is partly due to pacing. None of the other silent films move at the right clip; they make you feel grateful for Chaplin, and they make you glad that Hawks outgrew silence, jumping right into dialogue and gunfire and sound in general. However, there is one exception - “A Girl In Every Port” reassures you that Hawks does not need talk to cover up awkward silences. This film moves exactly as it should and achieves dramatic focus – well, it is a film about two sailors trying to get girls in every port. “Fig Leaves” is too whimsical, “The Cradle Snatchers” revolves around a plot that overworks a tired joke (you won’t find any proto-feminist reappraisals here), and “Trent's Last Case” is possibly too clever for its own good, marked by eccentricities, intricacies, and flashbacks that are only an exercise in themselves[ii].
It is possible to criticize or, more likely, dismiss “A Girl In Every Port” for its calculated simplicity, for being so well-oiled a little machine, yielding laughs against your better judgment – this isn't the question of how something so obvious in its workings could have artistic merit, but rather why a taciturn, all-American prick like Hawks would spend time on such transparent, giddily formulaic structures, especially in light of the fact that he is not able to imbue them with any magic. I think the solution to this puzzle is twofold: first, to say that there is always something dark, if not pointedly cynical or downright sinister, going on in a Hawks film, and second, which I will get to in a moment, to ask what sort of magic you are looking for. As for the first, I think the innocence of the early films is only used as a conduit for nastier themes; can you see that too? Moreover, that is what makes them enjoyable. The dark and the light are always in close contact. This brings me to my next point: London strikes me as a great city in which to experience a Hawks retrospective. As an outsider, what was most notable to me about London from the start is its inability to relax – reflected in the carefully constructed androgyny of the young and pretties, the confined panic of the Tube, and bursts of unprompted attitude, misplaced interest. A Hawks film has bite – I’m sure you have thought about it before, and if you are new to Hawks’ films, you can see it in Bacall’s perma-sneer (more on my obsession with Bacall in the forthcoming Part II). If London is warped and unsentimental, so is Hawks. Not a bad match – I should also say that rainy days and cigarette smoke suit them both. Except with the former that's all you ever get; with Hawks, you can expect more.
The “more,” as I have already mentioned, does not have much to do with MAGIC – the magic, the lift, the transcendent ray of light and genius you find in Capra, Chaplin, and Vigo – but with a layered naturalism that you can see even from the early silents. If you look more carefully, in these films you will find that it is not the transparent formulas – as beautifully as they work – that do the work. The structure easily falls away like Christmas wrapping, and it's what's left that every “critic” or film lover is challenged to properly characterize. In “A Girl In Every Port,” you can see miles away that Marie (Louise Brooks) will show up with that tattoo under her arm bracelet. You know, and of course are a bit relieved, that the friendship between Spike and Bill will outlast the treacherous ways of the Parisian high-diving carnival star Mlle. Godiva, who exhibitionistically glitters one moment and looks privately depraved the next (as on the park bench with Spike, who has just sincerely asked her if there could ever be a chance for him).
So, what do we have left? Which scenes stay in the mind, other than Louise Brooks’ seamless, deadly physique? When Spike and Bill are out carousing – little black book serving as compass – looking for the woman with a “body like an eel,” it is a hit or miss set of affairs. They hit up the wrong apartment. A stern, matronly woman opens the door; her life is about iron will, not abandonment. There are many such gags that revolve around the little black book – and the need to update it – throughout the film. In fact, the film starts off with just such a slapstick joke, involving Girl From Holland #2 and a tandem bicycle. This scene is prima facie no different, but comes with a surprising touch. On the second try, the two sailors enter an apartment that is seemingly vacant but for a child – a little boy. The conversation that takes place between the sailors and the boy unfolds mostly in the imagination. However, you can see Spike form the words “Poor little fella,” after the child asks Spike if he knew his dad, since his dad was a sailor too (Spike’s had a series of children popping out of apartments, so far who are not his own, but this one would have been hatched around the right time according to the black book) and that he was “drownded.” There is a long, grim pause. The two sailors, who have been nothing but trouble, a pair of drunken buffoons,[iii] reveal more of their inner personality than outer persona (intrinsic vs. instrumental, if you like) in this moment.
Glimpses into how individuals work are usually not this peeled in the Hawksian legacy, but they are a consistent and unstrained part of it. No formulas come with this sort of thing: these are naturalistic moments that push their way out of the backdrop of formulas, or the most elegant and labyrinthine of structures. Not exactly MAGIC, though, as there is nothing transcendent about them; they tend to inform you about the characters on screen you thought you already knew, and they perform their cinematic duty quietly.
[i] Not the program notes, by the way, which are snatched up from this dumb paper holder attached to the wall before the film starts – I never got a copy of the program notes on “A Girl In Every Port.” If I do, I may make some additions to this piece (also, if I ever get the chance to view Capra's early films, I would like to do a comparison). Why can’t the BFI just hand them out?
[ii]Although, having said this, I should admit that of the three, “Trent's Last Case” yielded the most buoyant laughter in the audience, which was counter to my expectations. I may need to see the film again! There are campy elements, but they mostly didn’t hit home for me. Originally “Murder Will Out,” based on a British mystery Hawks loved, it suffered from being shot as Hawks’ first all-talking picture then forced back into being shot as a silent. Maybe it had to do with silent star Raymond Griffith’s damaged vocal chords – thanks to WWI poison gas – or maybe it didn’t. In the end, probably a legal screw-up over sound rights ultimately killed the film’s commercial promise and bungled its aesthetic composition.
[iii]There is an incredible, swift shot, haphazardly framed, of the sailors’ trousers and shoes, recklessly weaving back and forth across the street – a simple cinematographic concept, but gold, and a good example of what people mean when they say Hawks is economical.
