Middle of Nowhere: A Fine Neglected Film

 

 

Middle of Nowhere (2012)

Directed by Ava DuVernay

AFFRM/Participant Media, 101 minutes, R (language)

★★★★

 

Each year some of the most creative and intelligent independent American films are shown at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The sad reality is that a lot of really terrific films win prizes at Sundance but are seldom seen outside of the festival circuit. One of them was Middle of Nowhere.

 

There have been several movies made with that title, but the one I’m talking about was directed by the talented Ava DuVernay, who won a director’s award at Sundance. She and several of her actors were also feted at various festivals that spotlight Black films. DuVernay, a Los Angeles native, turned her lens and pen–she wrote the script–at the carcel state. Statistics show that 35 percent of American prison inmates are Black men, though they are just 13 percent of the overall population.

 

Middle of Nowhere references the location of the correctional facility in which Derek (Omari Hardwick) is pulling an eight-year sentence for unspecified crimes. DuVernay filmed the prison scenes at USP Victorville, which is roughly 100 miles from Compton where Derek’s wife Ruby (Emayatzy) lives. She’s a nurse who is in medical school studying to become a doctor. Derek’s arrest puts a serious crimp in her plans. Derek assures Ruby that he’s both devoted to her and that he’s a passive victim of circumstance. The long commute by bus to visit him behind bars will eventually lead her to drop out of school, a decision–along with her marriage to Derek–that leads to estrangement from her mother Ruth (Lorraine Toussaint) and her sister Rosie (Edwina Findley). A furious Ruby becomes a relentless crusader working for Derek’s early release.

 

A small number of viewers complained that Middle of Nowhere is slow and weak as a drama. They missed the point. DuVernay’s prison sequences–the journey from Compton, the barren desert landscape, the cold efficiency of check-ins and frisks, rolled coils of razor wire, electronic rows of maximum security doors–are so well done as to suggest a gritty prison drama. Ditto bodily injuries to Derek that he insists are not serious. The ambience and suggestions of block violence are chilling, but this is not Derek’s story; it’s Ruby’s.

 

DuVernay does not suggest that justice was subverted or done. This is an insider film, but one of the mind, not the clink. It probes the toll Derek’s imprisonment takes on Ruby. She has sidetracked her career, alienated her family, and lost friends to the point that her only real solace is the kindness of the bus driver, Brian (David Oyelowo). He is clearly attracted to Ruby, but he’s also sympathetic and gentle. Ruby is at the point where she needs to believe that Derek was, as he insists, just a guy who got “caught up” in stuff that he neither planned nor initiated. But what if–as Derek’s friend Rashad insists–that’s not true? What if he’s done a lot of things Ruby doesn’t know about?

 

In essence, as the late Roger Ebert observed, Ruby becomes trapped inside of her own identity crisis. Who’s the unjustly imprisoned party? Should she push on with her crusade or move on? How much personal capital can Ruby spend before concluding she has made a bad investment? And there’s Brian….

 

This is a very well-acted film that was made on a shoestring budget. If, at times, it looks it, that’s because the entire project came in at $200,000 and was a wrap after just 19 days. To put that in perspective, most Hollywood studio films take at least 40 days to film, have budgets north of $35 million, and spend about $40,000 on catering alone. Need I list for you the ones whose food was more digestible than the movie? Middle of Nowhere is both a small jewel and a bargain by comparison. It’s available on DVD and various streaming platforms.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Music for April 2024: Otava Yo, Steve Martin, Robby Hecht, Afro-Semitic Experience and more

 

 

I avoided Russian music in protest against the war in Ukraine until I came upon the St. Petersburg-based Otava Yo whose spearhead, Alexey Belkin, also opposes the war; he has a Ukrainian mother and a Latvian wife. Otava Yo has suspended concerts in Russia because of the war, a gutsy move given Putin’s iron hand and a reduced opportunity to shop its new recording Loud and Clear. I don’t speak a word of Russian, but I can tell you it’s one it’s an exciting record. The band is often called a folk rock band because of its emphasis on traditional music. In Belkin’s words, “[in] turbulent times … [when] everything we know literally crumbles before our eyes,” a return to heritage reinvigorates. (They also add modern touches.)

 

Otava Yo display an array of expected instruments–fiddles, guitar, bass, drums–but also those less familiar: glockenspiel, fife, gusli (a psaltery in the zither family), zhaleika (a type of hornpipe), and volynka (Russian bagpipes). Add the female vocal ensemble Vasilisa and the result is something that sounds like a hybrid of Swedish folk/grunge band Garmarna and the high-octane vocals of Finland’s Värttinä. Try “Don’t You Fly, Nightingale” for robust singing. Though it’s one of the more “subdued” pieces on the album you can see and hear what Belkin means about leaning on tradition during trying times. “This One” gives insight into their goofy sense of humor and how a gusli integrates into a tune. For crashing sounds, lusty voices, bagpipes and psychedelic fiddles, “Good Evening” will get you energized. “Timonia” reminds me of Quebeçois music when the performers decide to go full-scale insouciant. It’s over the top, but in a good way! I love Otava Yo and Loud and Clear is my album of the month.

 

 

I vividly recall when Steve Martin did a standup act at my Pennsylvania college before  he was a big star He was so funny that we rolled out thinking, “Who is this guy?” Back then, he had a banjo as comic prop. It’s no longer a secret that he really knows how to play it. If you’ve not gotten the word, listen to him exchange licks with Grammy Award bluegrass banjo artist Alison Brown, mandolin wizard Sam Bush, and Grammy Award fiddler Stuart Duncan. Martin even handles the vocals on “Bluegrass Radio” on a new Compass Records release.

 

 

New Haven-based Afro-Semitic Experience began as the meeting of two jazz-infused minds, African-American pianist Warren Byrd and bass player David Chevan, a white Jew. It grew into a movable feast of up to eight musicians in a mixed-race ensemble that ventures into jazz, funk, world music, swing, group singing, and social justice offerings. You’ll hear most of them on My Feet Began to Pray, words attributed to the late Representative John Lewis when he was a young man on the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. The band commemorates that episode, all so traumatic back then but now a pivotal moment that justifies the group’s sunny  treatment. Check out Byrd leading the band in “Unity in the Community,” which has a decided Black church feel. Then duck into the synagogue for “Rakhmones Nign,” rakhmones being Yiddish for mercy or empathy. “Moanin’” opens with some scat and sways into bebop-influenced jazz with sizzling horns and swinging keys. Get the picture?

 

Anandi is the one-name handle for Portland, Oregon-based jazz singer Anandi Gefroh. A Better Way is jazz-based but contains message music, some rock instrumentation, and tinges of pop. Anandi is Sanskrit for bliss and she brings that, her yoga practices, and her devotion to social justice to the fore. The title track, for instance, probes homelessness and poverty. Producer/keyboardist Greg Goebel lays down solid hooks that add drama to Anandi’s simple-yet-profound condemnation of the status quo: There’s got to be a better way. She gives a big-vocal bluesy soul treatment to “Truth, Peace, and Solitude,” a call to balance body, soul, and mind. Other songs are reverential (“Mandela”), reminders that love can be like Kahlil Gibran’s A Tear and a Smile (“Pleasure With the Pain”), and pleading with a scintilla of common sense (“Please Don’t Go to Bed Angry”). She also does a jazz cover of Jim Pepper’s “Witchi Tai To,” widely regarded to as the first Native American hit single back in 1969. You can decide what you think of a non-Native woman covering a peyote ritual chant. 

  

Robby Hecht titled his new release Not a Number. It’s the title track as well, his attempt to put faces on the Covid’s human toll. His echoey guitar is designed to haunt and hurt. In numerous ways, the same sentiments are personalized elsewhere. This album deals with other forms of misfortune, disappointment, and struggle: divorce, sadness, recovery…. Hecht’s voice is perfect for conveying poignancy–sweet, but with a hint of pain. Note the content and video visuals of “Someone to Dance With.” He sings: I’m trying as hard as I can/To follow the steps of my well-rehearsed plan/To keep my wingtips on the ground/But up in my head I’m spinning around. The vid ends with dog adoption, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the dance he envisioned whilst acting as the proverbial third wheel. “Old Radio” is surface nostalgia, but its folk-styled wistfulness suggests both memory and yearning. As a transition Hecht offers a mirthful homage to “Tattoos.” That’s not my thing, but if it’s yours it’s show-and-tell time. I’m always a fan of well-crafted songs, though, and Hecht delivers.

 

If you don’t know the difference between bluegrass and “old-time” music, the first is recently composed and slicker, whereas the second is traditional and more raw. Listen to Molsky’s Mountain Drifters for a clinic in the latter. Bruce Molsky plays banjo, guitar, and fiddler but it’s the last of these in which he’s in the upper crust. Hence,  in his trio work Molsky leaves the banjo and guitar in the capable hands of Allison de Groot and Stash Wyslouch respectively. All of their recordings are wonderful but I recently took advantage of a two-for-one offer to score Closing the Gap and the eponymously titled Molsky’s Mountain Drifters. Theirs is Appalachian music stripped to its basics, yet filled with verve, energy, and expert musicianship. “There’s a Bright Side Somewhere” ought to get you sashaying. If you know the folk standard “Stewball,” “Old Kimball” is closer to its root. “Old Jawbone” is pure infectious hills music and “Cumberland Gap” is a classic Americana tune.  There’s lots more you can find online to whet your appetite.   

 

Rob Weir

A Novel for Jackie Robinson Day

 

 

 Double Play (2004)

By Robert B. Parker

G. P. Putnam & Sons, 288 pages

★★★ ★

 

A few weeks ago I reviewed Mortal Stakes, an older Robert Parker Spenser mystery with baseball at its center. I noted that the late Parker was a baseball fan. Later he wrote Double Play, an unusual book that’s part memoir, part history, and part fiction. Its pivotal character is Jackie Robison who, in 1947, broke the color barrier that had been in place in Major League Baseball since the 1887.

 

Fact: When Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, he received death threats. Just how credible they were versus demented posturing by cowardly White racists is a hotly contested topic, but they were enough of them that they could not be ignored. Fact: Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1932, and spent much of his life in Boston, but was devoted to the Dodgers. The memoir voice of “Bobby” in Double Play is a thinly disguised homage to his childhood memories. Fiction: Robinson never had a White bodyguard named Joseph Burke.

 

Double Play is as much about Burke as Robinson. Parker was nine when World War II began and filtered his memories of the 1940s through Burke, a young man who hastily marries an older woman before heading off to war. He survives Guadalcanal, though he took five machine gun bullets and nearly died. Burke musters out and returns home to find his wife has left him. Burke is hollowed out by all of it: war, the metal in his body, his father’s death, divorce…. He copes by feeling nothing, caring about nothing, and saying as little as possible. He (like Parker) does a stint as a boxer, though he’s more of a brawler than a ring artiste. Through all of the character development Parker gets the rhythms and moods of the period letter-perfect: the movies, how the Japanese are reconfigured as “Japs,” the music, the tough guys and celebs at Toots Shor’s New York restaurant, USO shows, clothing….

 

Burke becomes a tough guy for hire and has no moral qualms about who pays his meal ticket. He signs on to chauffer/babysit 18-year-old Lauren, the daughter of Julius Roach, who has a fondness for bad boys. Her current obsession is Louis Bouciault, the spoiled son of another gangster. This doesn’t work out according to script, but his demeanor and work ethic leads Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey to hire him as Jackie Robinson’s bodyguard. Although the book is titled Double Play–a double entendre of the baseball term and criminal double crosses–there is enough intrigue that it could have just as easily been called Triple Play and even that might not cover it. Niceties go out the window when thugs are embarrassed and word on the street is that one spurned wise guy wants to take out Robinson.

 

Parker presents the Burke/Robinson relationship as fraught by indifference on Burke’s part and prideful distrust on Robinson’s. Burke has one job: Keep Jackie safe and he couldn’t care less about what Robinson thinks. Robinson, a Black man, views Burke as just a piece of White muscle. Well, we kind of know how that is going to change. Parker wrote a piece of what we now call alt.history wrapped inside his remembrances and an imagined mystery. It’s filled with contrivances–a good kid ruined by war, a damaged man redeemed by love, turf battles, two gun men on opposite sides who bond, the don’t- mess-with-family rule of thugs–yet somehow Parker makes it work.

 

Double Play, like most of Parker’s books, is a quick read. It might have been his singular talent to make his tales so breezy that readers are spirited along and don’t dwell on the unlikely. Call it an impressionistic novel that evokes the time period and gives a sense of what Jackie Robinson endured before he became an American icon. Read it in that spirit.

 

I emphasize again that this is not a true story in any literal sense. If you want an actual Robinson biography, I recommend Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. If, on the other hand, you want a thrilling read and some insight into how a Springfield White kid was transfixed and transformed by a Black man wearing an MLB uniform, Double Play is your ticket.

 

Rob Weir

Phil Spector: Reasonable Doubt?

 

 

Phil Spector (2013)

Directed by David Mamet

HBO, 92 minutes, Not-rated (strong language, murder gore)

★★★ ½

 

I avoided Phil Spector when it came out in 2013. Like many people, Spector (1939-2021) struck me as a creep, independent of his two trials for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. I wasn’t alone. In many ways, those who reviled Spector presaged how the public would later regard Harvey Weinstein–right down to the coincidence that Spector’s given first name (which he seldom used) was also Harvey.

 

A better way of considering Spector is whether he was his generation’s Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. If that fails to ring any bells, Arbuckle was a major movie personality in the silent era until he was accused of the rape and murder of actress Virginia Rappe. He was acquitted after three trials (1921-23), but Arbuckle’s reputation lay in tatters and he was informally blacklisted. David Mamet, who wrote and directed Phil Spector, asks viewers to consider whether Spector was indeed like Arbuckle–perhaps an innocent man. Sort of. Mamet hedged his bets by prefacing the film with the statement, “This is a work of fiction. It is not ‘based on a true story.’” That disclaimer alone helps explain why Phil Spector got reactions that ranged from okay or tepid to outrage that Mamet would deign to rewrite history.

 

I’d rate it PG, for Pretty Good. But make no mistake; Phil Spector was not a nice man. He was a bombastic egoist, a foul-mouthed jerk, an autocrat, a gun nut, abusive, a druggie, and as modest as Donald Trump. Though rich as Croesus, Spector quite possibly suffered from for-real delusions of grandeur. Yet, the unassailable fact is that he was a musical genius. From 1962 into the 21^st century, Spector produced, played with, and wrote for a veritable who’s who of pop and rock n’ roll luminaries: The Beatles, Cher, Leonard Cohen, Dion, Ben E. King, The Plastic Ono Band, The Ramones, The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner…. The list goes on and on.

 

Like Arbuckle, though, Spector’s legacy is unlikely to recover fully from what did (or didn’t) happen the night of February 3, 2003, when Clarkson was inside of Spector’s mansion and died from a bullet to her head. Spector infamously remarked that Clarkson “kissed the gun.” The possibilities were an intentional suicide, an unintentional suicide, an intentional murder, or a night of drinking and drug-taking in which the facts were fungible. No wonder it took four years for the case to come to trial.

 

Mamet wrote a mix of a play, cinéma véritié, and alt-history that focuses on the first trial in 2007. Defense attorney Bruce Cutler (Jeffrey Tambor) has serious doubts about Spector’s guilt based on the path of the gunshot and blood splatter. He attempts to recruit his high-powered colleague Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) for his legal team. Two problems. First, she’s sick as a dog and second, she thinks Spector is guilty. That is, until she meets Spector (Al Pacino) and looks at the evidence. She’s not charmed–she knows he’s a sexist megalomaniac–but she’s savvy enough to realize that the case against Spector is riddled with reasonable doubt. Mamet’s script zeroes in on the cat-and-mouse relationship between Spector and Kenney Baden as they play intellectual games–neither of them willing to yield an inch.

 

Those who felt Mamet ignored prosecutor arguments and tried to whitewash Spector overlook the facts that Mamet based much of the script on actual court records and that Kenney Baden did raise enough reasonable doubt that the first trial ended in a hung jury. She was unavailable for the second trial in 2009 in which Spector was found guilty and sentenced to 19 years to life.

 

Did Mamet play fast and loose with facts? Check it out for yourself and decide, but do so with the mindset that under American law, a loathsome person is not necessarily a murderer. How would you define reasonable doubt? If you’re not buying it, enjoy cameo roles from Chitwel Ejiofor, Linda Miller (as Ronnie Spector), Rebecca Pidgeon, and Mamet’s daughter Clara. Not to mention riveting and intense lead performances from Mirren and Pacino.

 

Rob Weir

Mudbound Deserves a Wider Audience

 

 

Mudbound (2017)

Directed by Dee Rees

Netflix, 134 minutes, R (violence, brief nudity, language)

★★★★★

 

Mudbound is a superb, well-reviewed film that was nominated for numerous awards. Too bad almost no one has seen it. It had a budget of over $10 million but earned just $117,000 in limited release. Ouch!

 

An obvious suspect for this is racism, but a few other factors were at play. In 2017, the only known star power was Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, though the latter wasn’t known for her acting chops. A second factor is that wider release plans got scuttled when Covid hit. Third, it’s set right after World War II, which is ancient history for younger viewers and its 134-minute length (sadly) runs counter to audience attention spans.

 

Mudbound is a powerful look at the deep background of modern racial tension and resonates with recent trauma of African Americans being harassed and/or killed by police. The difference is that in the immediate postwar period, a lot of White authority figures wore Ku Klux Klan robes. The film revolves around two families. The McAllans are White. Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) uproots his family–wife Laura (Mulligan), his two daughters, and his father, “Pappy” (Jonathan Banks)–to rural Mississippi. When his first plan goes awry, Henry relocates a second time–to Delta cotton-growing land he claims as his, though a local Black family, the Jacksons, have been working it as theirs. Not that their deed meant a thing versus a White man’s claim.

 

Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) and his wife Florence (Blige) know better than to push back in Klan-riven Mississippi where Black folks are routinely saddled with the N-word, especially by the bilious Pappy. For the sake of their children at home and Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) who is fighting in Europe, they bite their tongues and say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, m’am” to all demands placed on them. Laura is a dutiful wife, though she’s often at odds with her unexciting, commanding, aloof, and racist husband. Yet even she makes demands upon Florence that are polite but unintentionally clueless.

 

As the McAllan/Jackson dynamic plays out at home, Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) is flying B-25 bombers and Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) is driving tanks across Europe in advance of General Patton. By the time VE Day rolls around, Jamie shows symptoms of what we now call PTSD, which he proceeds to drown in booze. Ronsel, on the other hand, has taken up with a White German-speaking woman and has been treated well in Europe. He can’t adjust to the reality that his wartime gallantry means nothing in Mississippi, where he’s “boy,” not “Sergeant Jackson.” That immediately lands him into trouble with Pappy and local good ‘ole boys.

 

Against all odds, Jamie and Ronsel bond. Like many vets, their battle experiences transcend race­. Jamie’s life was saved by a Black pilot; Ronsel had White friendships. Ronsel realizes that theirs is dangerous camaraderie–he has to duck down when riding in Jamie’s truck–but he can talk to Jamie about things he can’t with his folks. Can a hard-drinking, devil-may-care White Southern kid from a racist family be a true friend to an articulate Black man who dreams of going back to Europe? It has long been said that racism damages racists and their targets alike. Both the McAllans and the Jacksons have their crosses to bear. Hubris will visit Henry; sorrows the Jacksons.

 

Mudbound is an apt title. There is a lot of actual sucking mud in the film, but the title also implies the mudsill theory. Among contractors the mudsill is the load-bearing first layer above a foundation; in society it’s the idea that some groups–people of color, recent immigrants, the poor, women–bear the social weight of all those above them. If you know your history, you recognize a long and ongoing civil rights struggle loomed on the horizon. So too did second-wave feminism. Mulligan foreshadows the latter.

 

Mudbound is an adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s 2008 debut novel, not a real-life tale. Both Jordan and director Dee Rees did, however, have Depression-era photographs from Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein in mind in capturing the look of the Delta. Jordan also drew on a Life Magazine essay by African American photographer Gordon Parks, whose pen was as sharp as his eye. Maybe they, an English woman (Mulligan), and an Aussie (Clarke) can help Americans remove their remaining blinders.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Godland is Slow, but Masterful

 

Godland (2022)

Directed by Hlynur Pálmason

Sena/Scanbox Entertainment, 142 minutes, Not rated

In Danish and Icelandic with subtitles

★★★★★

 

I recently reviewed Ordet, a classic film about religious fanaticism and mental instability in 1920s Denmark. Apparently the Danes are not quite done with the topic. Godland could be seen as a sequel set in Iceland and filmed in color. It’s an amazing film for those with patience.

 

The film has religious subtexts, but the Danish title Vanskabte land means “malformed land,” an excellent way to approach a film with the externals of religion but with hidden motives at its core. Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), a pious young Lutheran priest, is on a mission to build a church in eastern Iceland where Christianity’s hold is tenuous.

 

Lucas insists on traveling overland through the sparsely-populated, glacier-filled treacherous middle of Iceland, ostensibly because he wants to get to know the land. In truth, he’s an amateur photographer looking for subject material. His eight plates are used as a ”hook,” often as film transitions. It is the 19th century, a time in which Iceland was still a Danish territory. Many Icelanders distrust the Danes, most of whom are like Lucas and don't bother to learn Icelandic.

Hardship akin to those in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982) plague the trek eastward including the loss of Lucas’ translator. This puts him at the mercy of expedition leader Ragnar (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) who thinks Lucas is a fool to insist on lugging a heavy box camera, glass plate negatives, and chemicals through snowmelt rivers and dangerous terrain. Ragnar also dislikes Danes, claims to speak no Danish, and sees Lucas as arrogant. He senses there’s something a bit off about Lucas.

The intrepid band make their way to their destination, a remote coastal outpost whose rawness is evocative of a frontier settlement. The only form of transportation is on the back of (smaller-framed) Icelandic horses and, of course, Lucas doesn’t know how to ride. The area is jaw-dropping awesome and contrasts with the austerity of the homes, fragile gardens, and close-to-the-vest lifestyles of local inhabitants. Remember that the Danish title refers to malformed land. It is beautiful enough to invoke divine creation, but is also unforgiving–as viewers will see in several stark examples. One could, if one wished, evoke divinity in the contrast between the largeness and power of the land versus the vulnerability of diminutive humans within it.

Lucas is greeted by Carl (Jacob  Lohmann), the father of two lovely daughters, Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne) and younger Ída (Ída Mekkin Hlynsdðttir). (Ída, the real-life offspring of director Hlynur Pálmason, is a spunky, blonde, pig-tailed delight.) Carl is glad to welcome a proper priest, but he too experiences nagging discomfort around him, especially when he realizes there is frisson between Lucas and Anna. Lucas is the very embodiment of presumption of moral and ethnic superiority. He’s a priest, not a minister, in the stern Protestant Lutheran hierarchy of the day. We see him refuse to perform a wedding because the church has not been finished. (No matter, we watch the villagers having a better time reverting to folk customs.) Lucas also tries to remain aloof, as if village life is somehow beneath him.  

On the micro level, Godland is about Lucas’ tortured soul, the gap between his outward beliefs and his not-so-righteous pride, desires, and anger. The film adds a macro perspective in that it is also about culture clash dressed in the garb of Lucas and Ragnar–each in his own way deceitful and stubborn. Observe the old proverb pride goeth before a fall come into play. Iceland was formed by volcanos and is home to active ones. Early on we see an eruption in the distance; it foreshadows the violence that ensues.

The cinematography of Maria Von Hausswolff is so stunning that she rightly won awards for it. What is particularly noteworthy about her work on Godland is that hers is a mix of grandeur–sweeping vistas, angled aerial shots, changes in lighting to evoke weather and moods–and of stillness. I implied that some will find the film slow of pace. In part that’s because Von Hausswolff often allows the camera to dwell on small things, such as vegetation, marshes, or the sea before panning ever so slowly. We wonder what will be revealed and that’s exactly why she did it! Take your time and appreciate this wondrous film.

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Past a Masterful Film Noir

 

 

 

Out of the Past (1947)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

RKO Radio Pictures, 97 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★★

 

It's not exactly classified information that I’m a film noir fan. Somehow, though, I managed to overlook Out of the Past. Having now seen it, I wonder how it escaped previous notice. It's not merely good; it's one of the best film noir classics ever made–providing you let you let yourself roll with 1940s gender assumptions.

 

We come in on a small gas station in Bridgeport, California, a real hamlet south of Lake Tahoe near the Nevada border. Joe Stefanos (Paul Valentine) stops and asks if owner Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) is around. He doesn't get much information from the attendant (Dickie Moore) for the simple reason that he is suspicious, plus he’s deaf and mute. Jeff is actually fishing in a Sierra Nevada-fed river with his new squeeze Ann Miller (Virginia Houston). Her folks don't trust Jeff, but she's crazy about him, though he's a guy who doesn't say much about his past.

 

That past is about to catch up with him. When Stefanos finally locates Jeff he delivers the message that Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) wants to see him immediately. On the way to Whit’s spectacular cliff compound, Jeff spills the beans to Ann about his pre-Bridgeport life. Given that we are watching film noir, you know there a woman was involved. And how!

 

We learn that several years earlier Whit hired Jeff, whose real surname is Markham, to locate his girlfriend. Jeff is a private detective in partnership with another gumshoe named Jack Fisher (Steve Brody), but this time Jeff is going solo. Whit, a wealthy gambler–read a crooked one­–wants Jeff to locate Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer).

 

Jeff finds her in Acapulco and understands immediately why Whit wants her back even though she shot him four times and absconded with $40,000 of his money. Jeff violates rule number one of the private detective business, which is don’t fall for the dame you’re hired to find! Of course, it’s almost de rigueur he will in such films. Kathie is a va-va-voom knockout with a sob story that Jeff swallows like a hungry brook trout. Can you say femme fatale? Better say it twice as Meta Carson (Rhonda Fleming), the secretary for corrupt lawyer Leonard Eels (Ken Niles), spins yarns of woe and entrapment just as well as Kathie.

 

Out of the Past takes convoluted twists involving tax fraud, murder, an affidavit, and a veritable Russian roulette of who's playing whom. Can a hard broiled ex-P.I. redeem himself in a small town and in the arms of a wholesome lass that's everything Kathie isn't? I will reveal only that this well-scripted screenplay came from Daniel Mainwaring. He uses stock characters but builds a plot filled with surprises that make it much more than a schmaltzy vamp versus good girl saga. At one point there's an unusual line uttered by Jeff. Rather than saying he's caught between a rock and a hard place, he says, “Build my gallows high.” That's a wink and a nod to Mainwaring whose book of that title was adapted for Out of the Past.

 

The film is very well acted. The blocky Mitchum spends a lot of time filling out a trench coat that could have been rented from central casting. We see Mitchum hatted, wearing his belted calf-length coat, and through a haze of cigarette smoke that suggests he’s not telling us everything. Kirk Douglas is so oily we expect droplets to cascade from his dimple. Jane Greer and Rhonda Fleming wear exactly what you'd expect sexy glam gals to wear, whereas Virginia Huston is more the plaid shirt and overalls type. But don't get hung up on externals as each delivers compelling performances, even though Huston’s part is a bit underwritten.

 

Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca masters darkness, as one would expect in a noir film, but check out what he does with backlighting. This is especially the case of Greer as she floats in and out of dark Mexican bars and of Mitchum, who is often filmed from behind with his trench coat absorbing ambient light.

 

Post when you've seen it. I'd like to know what you think of the ending.

 

Rob Weir