The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Diabolique (1955), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Goodbye Earl", by The Chicks 

 

 

We’re taking a quick detour out of the States for this one, to the country of France. Actually I’ve had my eyes on this one for a while, mainly because of that cool poster they use when it shows up on the streaming services. That black and white one with the angled lines? Yeah, that one kicks ass. Anyway let’s get to the movie.

Diabolique, or Les Diabolique, stars Vera Clouzot (Henri-Georges’ wife, and acclaimed actress in her own right) as Christina Delasalle, the principal of a Paris boarding school of the same name. Christina’s life sucks, to be brutally honest; Her passion for teaching kids and her bank account is attacked at every turn by her husband Michel (Paul Meurisse), a miserly, abusive bastard who would glady feed children rotten food if it meant one more franc in his bank account. Hell it’s so bad that even his mistress and employee Nicole (Simone Signoret) feels sorry for her, so she suggests a foolproof plan: kill him. But you can never just kill somebody in a movie and get away with it, and sure enough the whole caper soon threatens to collapse like a house of cards. What will be the fate of these devils, these…diaboliques?

If you’ve ever read this blog before, you might know that I’m a big fan of Rope, Alfred Hitchcock’s take on the infamous Leopold & Loeb murder case. In that way, you could think of Diabolique as a sort of counterpart to Rope, a film which deals with the aftermath of a murder rather than the murder itself. Although in Rope part of the enjoyment at seeing things unravel is because the protagonists are upper middle class shitheels, you want to see them get caught. In Diabolique, Clouzot spends a lot of time showing Michel is a total piece of shit, smacking his wife around, verbally abusing kids under his care, giving kids food poisoning with stank ass fish, there’s not much else you could do to make a guy who’s asking for a visit from the Grim Reaper. So the tension for the audience isn’t that legal but moral justice is served, that the bad element is removed and the rest can flourish. And maybe it’s just me, but I end up feeling a bit annoyed at Christina for consistently acting like the most guilty person who has ever lived. Like feel bad that you might end up killing these kids with food poisoning, not that you helped kill a guy who was practically wearing a ‘I’m asking for it’ T-shirt.

So I’m a bit annoyed, but on a technical level I think the whole unraveling is done pretty well, both the murder and Christina’s mental condition. Even has a bit of a Columbo vibe at one point with a detective character who always seems to know just the right thing to say, and I love me some Columbo. You want some of that fresh, organic noir, then throw this on the tube.

 

STATUS: RECOMMENDED 

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: To Catch a Thief (1955), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "To Catch A Thief" by Lovage

       I wasn’t intending for Alfred Hitchcock to end up like Terry Gilliam or David Lynch where he gets an entry year after year, but I can’t deny that he’s a great time-saver. Crafting these lists every year isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but the amount of times I revise which movies end up on the final print is annoyingly high. Does it seem interesting enough to talk about? Does it fit the criteria? Do I feel like it? Just a constant filtering program that leaves me in a perpetual state of second guessing myself, and it’s exhausting. Sometimes what you want is the cinematic equivalent of the station wagon; Solid, reliable, wood paneling, all of that good stuff. That’s what Hitchcock’s films have been for me lately: whenever I’ve had a particularly hard time deciding on films, I just take a step back and throw on Hitchcock, because I know there’s going to be something worth talking about when it comes to his films. Also, because many of his films are ‘thrillers’, thus falling under the nebulous label of genre films, it means I have one less movie to worry about for years to come. Quite the boon.

       Released in 1955, To Catch a Thief was written by John Michael Hayes and directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the book by David Dodge. Cary Grant stars as John Robie, a humble grape and flower seller who years before terrorized the French Riviera as The Cat, master jewel thief. After serving with the Resistance during WW2 Robie earned himself a parole and had made good use of it, but when a new rash of jewel thefts occur, all of which are identical in style to his old work, all eyes turn to him. Uninterested in being thrown in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Robie goes on a hunt for the copycat, casing the same joints and people that he would in order to root them out. Which would be fine if that was all he was doing, but when he meets the beautiful Francine Stephens (Grace Kelly), his best laid plans threaten to go awry.

       To Catch a Thief is certainly the most extravagant of all the Hitchcock films reviewed so far. The seaside villas, the hotels, the mansions, one wonders where the people who actually work for a living are supposed to fit in between all this luxury. You couldn’t ask for a better setting for a story as removed from the general populace as this one is though, and Hitchcock makes full use of it. Every single shot we get of the coastline and the city, especially the aerial views during the driving scenes, make it look almost otherworldly, the kind of place you thought existed only on postcards. The opening shot of the film is of the window of a travel agency advertising trips to France, and after watching this movie I want to go just to see if this place is real.

A new setting, but Hitchcock’s penchant for marquee names remains intact. Cary Grant makes his third appearance in the filmography, his last being Notorious almost a decade previous, and despite looking a bit leathery under the Riviera sun I think he paints a interesting picture of the character of John Robie; Charming and intelligent but at the same time cynical and aloof, the kind of guy who is fun to hang out with but who never wants to hang out. Grace Kelly also makes her return after co-starring in Rear Window, one of her last films before retiring from Hollywood to become the Princess of Monaco (look it up) and once again it’s obvious why Hitchcock wanted to bring her back, because she looks like Grace Kelly. Her performance as Francine Stephens here is not too different from her character in Rear Window, the naive yet paradoxically witty and seductive woman who inserts herself into the protagonist’s life which ultimately leads to romance, although the whole ‘woman acts like a bratty kid because that’s cute’ thing tends to miss more than it hits, and overall I found her character in Rear Window far more endearing. John Williams, who appeared in Dial M for Murder and The Paradine Case as insurance agent H.H. Hughson, a man so overwhelmingly British you’d swear he pisses Earl Grey. Jessie Royce Landis (who would show up again along with Cary Grant in North by Northwest) plays Francine’s sassy mother Jessie, and honestly that bit of snark makes her my favorite character of the film. She’s also one of those actors who you’d swear was in everything because she has that certain look but that’s not the case, although she did have a career that stretched from the 30’s to the 70’s. Solid casting to be sure.

Unfortunately the concept of To Catch a Thief is more interesting than the execution. You hear the elevator pitch of a master thief forced to come out of retirement to hunt for another to clear his name and it gives the impression of a tense mystery-thriller, but that’s not really this film. There is a mystery that slowly unfolds over the course of the film, but it never feels like Robie is actively figuring anything out. There are a couple scenes where Robie has to sneak around or escape the cops but there’s no real sense of urgency to those scenes to really get the blood pumping. Most of the film is dedicated to building the romance between Robie and Francine, but despite the fact that Grant and Kelly are fine actors I don’t think they have any chemistry together. That’s the problem with the film as a whole in a way: no spark. The film looks good, sure, but there’s no stakes; It’s not like anybody cares if a bunch of rich people have their baubles stolen, and the biggest tension comes from Robie getting caught by the police, which is only a thing because he’s purposefully staking out the places that a thief would hang out in. Not that a film needs action to be good, but for a director who built their career on suspense this film lacks bite.

       To Catch a Thief gets the tentative recommendation. Getting that view of the French Riviera is great, and Hitchcock being Hitchcock still knows how to construct a watchable movie, but this is the first Hitchcock film I’ve reviewed that is definitively not a must-see. Put it on the queue if it’s there, maybe make it a movie date with the SO, but if it’s between this and Rear Window or Rope, then go for the other option. Less chance of contracting a deadly respiratory virus than actually visiting the French Riviera these days though, so that’s a plus.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Kiss Me Deadly (1955), directed by Robert Aldrich

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Kiss Me Deadly", by Lita Ford

     Before comics dominated the word, there were pulp novels. Before Batman and other costumed men of mystery became the go-to people for crime-solving you had, well, plain old detectives. Private investigators, men who explored places the law wouldn’t touch, dodging bullets and femme fatales in their dogged pursuit of the truth. They weren’t master sleuths by any means, but they could put the pieces together and they could hold their liquor as well as they could take a punch, and that was the coolest shit in the world for a number of years. Like comic book movies except they could win Oscars, basically. The Oscars that aren’t about special effects, I mean, which is the only thing those crusty assholes at the Academy can bring themselves to give movies that dare to think of themselves as science fiction.

     Much like any field of entertainment like this, there are a couple names and a couple characters that manage to stand out amongst the rest. Raymond Chandler and his creation Philip Marlowe, who has been portrayed on the silver screen by the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Elliott Gould and Robert Mitchum. Rex Stout and his character Nero Wolfe, who has been adapted to film, radio and television multiple times. And, as is most relevant to this article, Mickey Spillane and his character Mike Hammer. Mr. Hammer had his own success in movies and television, beginning with 1953’s I, The Jury all the way through to the 00’s, but the one that we’ll be looking at this time around is the second of the Mike Hammer films, 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly.

     There are a million stories in the naked city, and on a dark Los Angeles night private investigator Mike Hammer is pulled into one when a mysterious woman flags him down on a deserted road. She never gives her name, but she does reveal that she’s escaped from an asylum and that she’s looking to be dropped off at the nearest bus station in order to disappear. After they stop off at a nearby gas station, she hands the attendant a mysterious letter and tells Mike that if anything should happen to her to “Remember Me”. Which would probably set off more than a few red flags in my head, but I guess Mike Hammer is a much cooler guy than I am.

     Sure enough, as soon as she mentions that something might happen, a car ends up driving Hammer’s car off the road, and the two are kidnapped. The woman is tortured to death, and Hammer almost dies when they push him and his car down a hill. A situation that most would rather forget, but Mike, not a huge fan of almost being murdered over something he knows nothing about, decides to look into it. Things can’t just be that easy though, and Mike soon finds himself entangled in a web of conspiracy that just might go all the way up to the F.B.I. Who was this mysterious woman, and what kind of mysterious knowledge did she have that was worth killing over? Mike Hammer is on the case.

     As far as being a mystery story goes, KMD ends up stumbling at the starting bell. I dunno what it is, maybe my attention was elsewhere at the time, but it seems like it takes until the end of the movie before you ever really figure out what it is Mike is supposed to be doing or what he’s looking for, and the thread of the story just becomes totally disjointed. I mean, it’s about a half hour in before we even find out the name of the murdered woman, and by that point in time we find out there’s actually another murder that’s actually the one we should be paying attention to about a character we never meet, and it ends up congealing into a one big clusterfuck of a plot. Oh, and don’t expect the ending to clear anything up either. It’s one of those ‘and now the movie ends’-type jams.

     What Kiss Me Deadly, and Mickey Spillane in general, does well however, is provide all the sex and violence you could want in a hardboiled detective story. What Mike Hammer lacks in depth and complex emotional he makes up for in pure grit: making out with the ladies (who all fling themselves to his feet), punching out the goons (who are A-grade dumb, brutish bastards), slapping around the wimpy types (who are A-grade weak, nebbish milquetoasts) and getting stone-faced drunk at least once. A male power fantasy in its basest form, and while that could be and has been considered a point of criticism with Spillane’s work, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing or that it negatively impacts the film itself. Literature is as much a source of entertainment as it is of art, perhaps more so in some people’s opinion, and occasionally people just want something simple and dirty to pass the time. It’s the same way that people can be into anything Frank Miller has written since Year One, despite it being one-note garbage. It’s something to be consumed rather than analyzed, and in that way Kiss Me Deadly is more a movie that invokes feelings, anger, satisfaction, lust, rather than provoke thoughts. Way better than anything Frank Miller ever wrote too.

     So when it comes to the actual acting itself I’m not exactly sure what to say, as they all pretty much have one pigment to paint with in a manner of speaking, and they paint it just fine. Ralph Meeker’s portrayal of Mike Hammer is rather good, every line he speaks has this intensity about it, a sort of definite air about it. No matter whether he’s the one in control or not, whether he actually knows anything or not (and he generally doesn’t), he always manages to project this feeling of being the one who really knows the score. He may not be a guy who considers the consequences of his actions, but you can’t doubt the strength of his convictions.

     Also worth noting that is Cloris Leachman’s first credited role, as the mysterious murdered woman Christina. I’ll admit that I didn’t even realize that she was the one that played Christina, which isn’t meant as a slight against Ms. Leachman, just that there isn’t much to take away from the character besides ‘crazy woman who ends up dead’.

     With the story the way it is, I suppose I can’t say Kiss Me Deadly is ‘uncomplicated’, but if you want something hardboiled and you’ve run out of eggs, then this might be right up your alley. Hell, if you’re looking for something to watch on Halloween (aren’t we all?) this movie actually has a higher body count than Hardware and The Raven combined, and we all know how the amount of deaths in a movie is indicative of its quality. So grab yourself a bottle of scotch and settle in for a night of Hammer. It’s bound to be a fun one.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: The Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by Charles Laughton

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Hunter", by Portishead

     In film, much like any art form, one of the most persistent debates in its history is quantity vs. quality, or whether the scarcity of an artist’s work gives it more relevancy and artistic merit than that which is more prevalent. For example, Roger Corman is the most prolific director of all time, having directed 50 feature films and produced over 400 others as well as mentoring future talents like Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese, yet many of those films would probably be considered bargain bin B-movies at best. John Milius, on the other hand, only directed around 8 films (though he wrote several more) in his career, and yet many of those films garnered enormous critical and commercial acclaim at the time. Does the fact that Milius made less yet more well-known films make those works more ‘artistic’ than others? Does the fact that Corman approaches filmmaking from a business standpoint, and Hollywood is indeed a business, mean his movies lack merit. These are the questions that film scholars concern themselves with, instead of making or watching movies.

     Falling on the side of the ‘quality’ argument is Charles Laughton. A star of stage & screen whose career stretched back all the way to 1928, Laughton is probably most well known for his roles as Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls, Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Captain William Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty. In 1955 however, Laughton stepped behind the camera to bring us The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum (Cape Fear, Out of the Past) and Shelley Winters (A Place in the Sun, Lolita). Although it was to be his only directorial role, and one of the last films he’d ever work on until his death in 1962, it has since gone down as one of the greatest films of all time, even holding a spot on a list of Top 100 American Films as compiled by the BBC. Which means that there is a lot of hype going in, and that it probably shouldn’t be haphazardly reviewed for a Halloween Movie list, but I say screw it! We’re doing it live, ladies and gents.

     A long, long time ago, in those lean Depression-era years of the Ohio River Valley, Ben Harper, desperate not to see his kids grow up in the crippling poverty that he sees befall other children, murders two men in cold blood and steals a large stash of money. Before the police come to take him away, Ben hides the money somewhere near his house, and makes his son John and daughter Pearl swear never to reveal its location. The police then arrive and arrest Ben, sending him to Moundsville Penitentiary, where he is eventually executed by hanging. Despite his young age, John never reveals the location of the money, and with no other clues it eventually passes into the realm of urban legend.

     Some time later, the sleepy little Ohio Valley town is visited by a traveling preacher, known as Harry Powers, a strikingly compelling man with the words LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers. Powers claims to have been friends with Ben in Moundsville, and manages to charm the entire town with his holy speeches and magnetic personality, even marrying the widow Harper within the week of his visiting (marriage didn’t require a lot of thought in those days, apparently). John is the only person in town who isn’t take in by Mr. Powers, and for good reason: The marriage, the friendship with Ben, it was all a fabrication, a series of lies that Powers told in order to find the stolen money. Harry Powers isn’t even a preacher at all in fact, but is instead a con man, a violently misogynistic lunatic with a history of murdering widows and robbing them of their possessions. With the whole town against him and Powers getting more and more impatient (as well as dangerous) by the day, John and Pearl must make a desperate escape and hopefully find someone, anyone, who can help them. Like a little Stand By Me with your Shining? Try The Night of the Hunter on for size.

     Although Night of the Hunter is listed as thriller, and I’d say the first half of the film certainly feels like one, by the second half I’d almost say it turns into a fairy tale. You have the child protagonist, the evil step parent, the child going on a journey and facing hardships, which eventually leads to a happy ending (because there’s not a movie made in America that will allow a child being stabbed to death). There’s never that feeling of whimsicality that comes from fairy tales here however; though the road John and Pearl travel is extraordinary it’s still tinged with the harsh realities of the time, the poverty, violence and ignorance of Depression. Perhaps that is what marks it as part of the folklore of America though. I mean, what else is Little Orphan Annie but a fairy tale?

     I will say though, that even if Hunter is a more realistic fairy tale, there are several scenes that are strikingly picturesque, and some which seem years before their time. The scene with Powers and the widow Harper, with the way the shadows cut through the room and obscures Robert Mitchum’s face, seems more like something from a German Expressionist film than the Golden Age of Hollywood. The scene of John and Pearl’s first setting out on the Ohio River by night also feels unlike anything I’ve before in films of that era, with the night sky literally looking like how one might represent it in a picture book (or a play, which makes sense given Laughton’s background in theater). I’m reminded of both Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now!, but not for anything specific.

     I’ve also got to give props for the acting, which was top notch. Robert Mitchum is to Harry Powers as Mads Mikkelsen is to Hannibal Lector: Supremely calm, genial, even likable to a degree, and then a switch is flipped and you see him for the monster that he really is. Shelley Winters is great, a bit simple, but then if she’s a fairy tale parent you kind of expect it. Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper the kindly is great. Hell, even Billy Chapin as John Harper is great, which is a nice surprise. It was a huge gamble really, because like The Goonies or Stand By Me or Monster Squad this is a movie that relies heavily on the child actors to make it work, and a whole hell of a lot of time it doesn’t at all.

     The only nit I’d have to pick with this one is that the ending is not quite the explosive finish that I was hoping for, but then that might just be my modern sensibilities triggering unfair expectations. Otherwise I’d say this was a very good film, very deserving of the praise it has earned over the years, and I’m making a recommendation to watch it. It may be a little tame compared to your typical Halloween fare, but as you might have noticed from my previous entries, I don’t necessarily think you need to watch a dude getting his arms ripped off by some hideous monster to have a good time. If I want gratuitous violence and apathetic, toxic personalities, I’ll just watch the news.