This Gun For Hire

Film Noir is a term that gets tossed around so casually now that I hardly feel like delving into a description of another 1940s Hollywood crime drama for fear that I'll have to defend it as "noir" or "not noir" or some other similarly grey area in between.

I'm not sure if Paramount's "This Gun For Hire" is a noir, or an existentialist crime drama, but frankly, whatever it is, it's one of the most mold-shattering films of the era that I've seen.

The film is steeped in existential bleakness. It's hard to imagine a film like this coming out in 1942, when the US had just entered World War II and the studios were cranking out patriotic diversions like "This is the Army" and "Stage Door Canteen". Evidently, the film was already in production when the US entered the war, and as a result, there is some of the "do it for your country" type of propaganda found in other darker, subversive films of the period, such as Hitchcock's "Saboteur".

What makes "This Gun for Hire" so totally unsettling is that it looks and feels like a film of its time, with its somewhat flatter lighting and rather ordinary interior sets (lacking the kind of high stylization that directors like Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak and Anthony Mann would bring to the noir picture later in the decade). In this very ordinary environment, however, there is a real nightmarish quality, mainly thanks to the brilliant portrayal of the hired killer, Raven, played by Alan Ladd.

Ladd, like the settings of the film, is disconcerting in that, on the surface, he looks like a handsome, good guy, but I can't think of any other film made before this one in which the protagonist is so thoroughly ruthless and cold-blooded in killing anyone who gets in his way. There are some interesting character touches, too, as when the maid swats away Ladd's beloved cat, and he responds by smacking and generally roughing her up. His portrayal brings to mind the kind of unbalanced, "ticking time bomb" element that Robert DeNiro used so effectively in "Taxi Driver".

The set-up involves the Killer, Raven, getting double-crossed by a client (Laird Creger). Raven has to set out to clear his own name, and gets involved with a girl (Veronica Lake) who can help him clear his name, despite her being engaged to a bland cop (Robert Preston) who's out to bring Raven down. If the plot description sounds simple, be aware that it shatters every previously-held convention of how the "good guy" is supposed to act. We're literally rooting for a ruthless killer who feels no remorse about killing for money, or even mere convenience.

The film lacks the kind of stylistic flourishes that Wilder, Siodmak, Tourneur, Mann, even Huston, brought to their crime dramas. In fact, the film was directed by Frank Tuttle, very much a routine director for Paramount with work going back to the silent era. How much of the film's attitude can be attributed to Tuttle is hard to say, but in any case he did a magnificent job directing the film.

"This Gun for Hire" remains one of the most unflinching, uncompromising and ruthless films of the era right before the golden age of film noir.

Schickel Tackles Warner Bros. in 5-hour Documentary

Richard Schickel's decision to tackle the entire history of the Warner Bros. studio was an ambitious undertaking. Schickel's track record on such projects varies wildly. His "The Men Who Made the Movies" series was a valuable historical record of some of the finest directors of the first half of the 20th century. More recently, however, his documentaries have alternated between one-on-one interviews with people like Spielberg and Scorsese, and larger projects such as "Charlie: The Life and Art of Charlie Chaplin" from 2003, which unfortunately offered little new insight into the work of that creative genius. The worst I can say about Schickel's recent effort is that they feel like promotional pieces, and this Warner Bros. documentary is no exception.

That said, it's hard to complain when you're treated to clips of Al Jolson singing, or the great gangster films with Cagney and Robinson, or the hard-boiled social dramas of the early 30s, and of course the Busby Berkeley musicals. Part One covers the years from the beginning of the studio, through the pivotal year of 1950, just as the studio system was really starting to collapse, and film forever relinquished its title to television as America's first choice in entertainment.

Part Two covers the period of 1950-1989, and in many ways is just as interesting as the first part, even though we've seen many of these clips before. From the studio's grappling with television, to its cutting-edge films of the 60s (Warners was one of the key studios in the American New Wave, with films like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "Bonnie and Clyde", and "Mean Streets"). The segment takes us through the 70s and 80s, with entirely too much time spent on Clint Eastwood, and not nearly enough on Stanley Kubrick, whose work remains some of the most intensely personal and unique to ever come out of a Hollywood studio.

Part Three is essentially a re-hash of Warners' biggest hits over the last decade-films like "The Matrix" and "Harry Potter". Half the episode is devoted to Clint Eastwood, one of our finest filmmakers (and I felt his inclusion here, as the director of films like "Bird" and "Unforgiven", was far more justified than spending so much time on the Dirty Harry films in part two). Considerable time is also spent on George Clooney, who remains something of an anomaly in 21st century Hollywood-a star with great taste in selecting intelligent projects, and who is able to alternate between well-produced entertainments like "Ocean's Eleven", and more serious-minded films like "Good Night and Good Luck".

The good news is that the documentary includes many clips (all restored) that help to give a really good view of the changing trends in cinema over the last century. The bad news is that too little time is spent on the actual workings of the studio. We hear surprisingly little about the Warners themselves, for instance, in the first episode (although more time is given to Jack L. Warner in part two, which covers the years when he essentially took control of the studio.)

It was especially good to see the early years covered. It's important to remember that Warners' biggest earner in the silent days was Rin Tin Tin, even though they also had prestige director Ernst Lubitsch under contract, who made some of his best films there in the 1920s. A real treat was the clip from "My Fours Years in Germany", the first film produced by Warner Bros. in 1918, and one of the real classics of its time.

A fair amount of time is spent on some of the major directors, such as Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock (who worked briefly but memorably at Warners in the early 50s).

Ultimately, though, even at five hours, the documentary leaves viewers hungry for more. This is perhaps an inevitable problem when trying to cover an entire studio's history. It's good to see this update of Warners' history, which was previously tackled in the 1992 documentary "Here's Looking at You" (also hosted by Clint Eastwood).

The history of the great studios of Hollywood's golden age is a subject that is of great importance to the history of American show business, and world cinema in general. MGM, the most prestigious studio in its day, was documented in the superb "When the Lion Roars" documentary in 1993. Unfortunately, neither Paramount, 20th Century Fox or even RKO (among the major studios) have ever had anything approaching a documented history like this. Paramount and Fox, in particular, with their galaxy of stars and directors, would seem ideal candidates for the next such documentary, although neither studio presently has any interest in preserving their history. RKO of course is not as well known today, since the studio itself is long gone, and lacked the contract players, specialty genre films and distinctive studio moguls that defined the other studios. And while studios like Columbia and Universal have grown to a staggering size today, they were distinctly "minor" studios in the golden age, making their history of that period less easy to document.

As it is, "You Must Remember This" is a commendable effort to provide a survey of the output of Warner Bros. over the last 90 years. It's flaws are understandable, given the amount of material to be covered.

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story Part One (1923-1950)

Last night saw the premiere of the first part of a wonderful new documentary by Richard Schickel, "You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story", covering the years 1923-1950.

Watching the episode, one is immediately struck by just how much things changed in American filmmaking during that time, and this survey of the Warner Bros. output is a good parallel with the developments in the industry in general during those years. Schickel takes us rather breathlessly through the studio's silent era, from the early days of the Warners' nickelodeon theatres, to their first film, "My Four Years in Germany", produced in 1918 from the book by James W. Gerard. Next, we see the unlikely coupling of "star" properties that studio brought in during the 20s-director Ernst Lubtisch, imported from Germany at the height of the silent era, and the cinema's most profitable star of 1927, Rin Tin Tin.

Of course, what really put Warners on the map was their early pioneering sound efforts, including the synchronized music and effects introduced with "Don Juan" in 1926 (starring another of the studio's early, great stars, John Barrymore), and the success of Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer" and "The Singing Fool", both of which were so successful that the Warners relocated from their Hollywood studio to a much larger facility in Burbank in 1929, where the studio resides to this day.

Warners tackled the Depression head on, and in the early years of sound, offered the seminal generic work of the gangster genre, "Little Caesar", as well as the hard-hitting "Public Enemy", which made James Cagney a star. Social dramas dealing with all sorts of hot-button issues of the time were the backbone of the studio's output, represented by films such as Mervyn LeRoy's "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang".

The early 30s also brought the musicals of Busby Berkeley, which addressed similarly gripping issues through the marvelous choreography of human shapes, inanimate objects and sweeping camera moves that did as much as any other films to bring a real sense of visual style back to pictures after the introduction of sound.

After the enforcement of the Production Code, Warners turned to slightly lighter fare-the swashbucklers of Errol Flynn and the historical biopics which covered nearly every major historical figure in the history of the world. World War II brought the uplifting wartime musicals like "Yankee Doodle Dandy", and the patriotic war films of Howard Hawks, John Huston and others. It also saw the rise of perhaps the biggest star ever under contract to the studio-Humphrey Bogart.

The end of WWII also spelled the end of the studio system, as Jack Warner dealt with strikes, anti-Communist witch hunts, and increasing change within Hollywood and the medium in general. The studio's output included more distinct films by individual directors, such as John Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", and Raoul Walsh's "White Heat", which turned the gangster genre on its head. This episode ends in the pivotal year of 1950, just before the production of Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire", a film that ushered in a new era of filmmakers, challenging production code conventions, and Method acting, effectively marking the end of "old Hollywood".

The series is very well-edited, taking us at a good pace from one clip to the next. Schickel thankfully doesn't let clips run too long, which-in other documentaries-can result in a restlessness during films we're overly familiar with. The interviews are a fascinating mix of newer interviews, including many shot in the 1990s, and older ones culled from Schickel's "Men Who Made the Movies" series, with such notables as William A. Wellman, Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh. Warners stars such as James Cagney are also seen in vintage interviews.

Part II, running 1 hour and 56 minutes and covering the period of 1950-1970, airs tonight on PBS stations as part of the "American Masters" series.

The Joys of B-Movies

The past couple of nights, I've been watching some of my "guilty pleasure" films-Hollywood B Mysteries. I love all of them. Lone Wolf, Boston Blackie, The Falcon, The Saint, The Crime Doctor, Philo Vance, Charlie Chan...the list goes on.

The past couple nights, though, I watched the Warren William "Perry Mason" films, produced by Warners in the mid-30s, which are a delight in their apparent simplicity, tight plotting, fun performances, and crisp dialogue. On the surface, these B-films (programmers would be a more fitting word, I think, as these films do not contain the kind of cheap production values that are often associated with the term "B-movie") are the very definition of slick, streamlined simplicity. But looking closer, I was taken with the level of cinematic sophistication apparent in each one of them. "The Case of the Howling Dog", from 1935, features incredibly well-executed camera moves. The interesting thing is that the camera moves do not seem terribly logical to the style of the filmmaking, but rather seem to exist to keep audiences "moving forward" in the plot. Each establishing shot of the different attorneys is opened with an elaborate pan up and pull back. It's the kind of camera move that's easy to take for granted, maybe even to dismiss as "showy", but as any filmmaker who's attempted such a camera move in one of their own films can tell you, is incredibly difficult to pull off.

It's a testament to the invention and skill of the craftsmen who put these films together. Under the studio system, it's easy to see the beaurocratic rankings of producers, technicians and stars as the crassest kind of commercialization of an art form. But upon closer examination, one can't help-viewing these films more than 70 years later-the amount of skill and craftsmanship involved in even a little programmer like "The Case of the Howling Dog".