Guest-hosting a #BNoirDetour Live Tweet double feature on Sun., Sept. 13

Holy maloney, when did I die and go to film-noir heaven? I’m as giddy as Richard Widmark pushing a wheelchair-bound woman down the stairs!

For this Sunday, the film-noir blog BNoirDetour is letting me completely handle her usual Sunday Twitter.com presentation of noir movies. She kindly let me co-host about a month ago, but this is the first time she’s given me the whole she-bang to handle. Don’t worry, though, I’m giving you a couple of memorable flicks to finish off your weekend!

My first choice is a particularly earthy number from 1955 titled Murder Is My Beat. It stars Paul Langton as Ray Patrick, a police detective who is aboard a train to accompany Eden Lane (Barbara Payton), a convicted murderess, to prison to carry out her sentence. But during a brief layover, Eden happens to look out the window — and wouldn’t you know it, she sees the very man whom she has been convicted of murdering. Once Eden convinces Ray of this, it’s Ray’s minor task to convince the rest of the world that Eden is telling the truth.

This sounds about as far-out as noir gets, but it’s riveting all the way, in no small part to the bare-bones direction of Edgar G. Ulmer, director of the almost existential noir classic Detour. And I gotta admit, I’m a pushover for buxom blondes — and if somebody like Eden told me she’d just seen Bigfoot outside her window, I’d probably do all I could to prove her right, so I can relate to Ray’s plight.

My second entry for the evening is 1948’s Cry of the City, starring Victor Mature as Lt. Candella, a seen-it-all cop who’s trying to nail high-profile gangster Martin Rome (Richard Conte, The Big Combo) for a jewel robbery that Rome won’t cop to. The movie starts out as a lively game of cat-and-mouse, but with a tough-as-nails screenplay by an uncredited Ben Hecht, and taut direction from noir veteran Richard Siodmak (Criss Cross), the movie evolves into an unforgettable character study of both sides of the law. This might seem a strange description, but this movie is as beautiful as film noir gets.

Join us on Twitter.com at 9 p.m. EST on Sun., Sept. 13; if you’re looking for an “anchor” Twitter account, go to mine (@MovieMovieBlogB). (If you don’t usually “follow” me on Twitter, be sure to add me so that I can read your Live Tweet comments. You can always “unfollow” me after the double feature.) Use the hashtag #BNoirDetour to follow the movies and comment on them whenever you’d like, and have a BNoir blast with us!

POSTSCRIPT. I — Movie Movie Blog Blog, that is — would like to take this opportunity to invite the regular viewers of #BNoirDetour to follow The Gangsters All Here, my Twitter page devoted to my Saturday Live Tweets of classic-era gangster movies. If you like film-noir, you are sure to enjoy my selection of films featuring fedora, fast talkers, and Feds!

Just click on the above banner to go to my The Gangsters All Here Twitter page. Then, every Saturday at 2:30 p.m. EST, join us for a great gangster movie, and use the hashtag #GangstersAllHere to comment on the movie with your fellow Twitterers. And if you want a heads-up on the week’s movie selection, click here to visit my blog devoted to this same Live Tweet. Enjoy the movies, you mugs!

(My enthusiastic thanks goes out to Salome at BNoirDetour for letting me take over her “director’s chair” this week!)

I’m so happy!

Join us at Twitter.com on Sunday night for a film-noir double-feature!

Join us on Twitter.com on Sun., Aug. 23, and tweet along with us as we watch — for free, online — two splendid film-noir movies: The Shanghai Gesture (1941), starring Gene Tierney and Victor Mature, and Behind Green Lights (1946), starring Carole Landis and William Gargan. Hosted by your good blogs Movie Movie Blog Blog and BNoirDetour. Click here for more information. B Noir or be square!

Guest-hosting a Live Tweet double feature with #BNoirDetour on Sun., Aug. 23

The film-noir blog BNoirDetour hosts a Live Tweet of a noir movie at Twitter.com every Sunday night starting at 9:00 p.m. EST. This Sunday, she has graciously allowed me to join her in Tweeting a movie of my choice after she Tweets hers.

BNoirDetour starts the party at 9 p.m. with The Shanghai Gesture (1941). It takes place in a Shanghai casino where the lives of the casino’s dragon-lady boss, a privileged young woman (Gene Tierney of Laura), a gigolo (Victor Mature), and a wealthy Englishman (Walter Huston) converge. As the movie is directed by Josef von Sternberg, who did his best to turn cinema into the Shrine of Marlene Dietrich, you have no reason to believe that this movie will be low-key in any way.

This movie will be followed by my choice and one of my favorite recent film-noir viewings, Behind Green Lights (1946). It stars the very likable William Gargan as a police lieutenant who does his level best to keep control of the many goings-on during the night shift at his police station. This includes a woman suspected of murder (Carole Landis), whom the lieutenant would like to avoid arresting because it would make the corrupt editor of the city newspaper all too happy. (Look closely at the actor playing the editor. He’s Roy Roberts, 20 years prior to gaining sitcom fame as Mr. Cheever, Mr. Mooney’s dyspeptic boss on “The Lucy Show”!)

To join our noir nosh, just log onto Twitter and type @BNoirDetour to get to the main host’s Twitter page for either the 9:00 or the 10:45 show, or type @MovieMovieBlogB to get to my Twitter page for just the 10:45 show. Either way, you’ll get a free link to each movie via YouTube. When you are instructed at the given time, just click on the start of the movie and follow along. No matter which movie you view, if you want to post comments about each movie while it’s running, use the hashtag #BNoirDetour, and you’ll be part of our Live Tweet.

My thanks to BNoirDetour for graciously letting me piggy-bank (for lack of a better word) on her Twitter following. We look forward to tweeting with you this Sunday night!

KISS OF DEATH (1947) – Gritty, to-the-point film-noir

A crook turns stoolie so that he can see his kids again. The basic plot of Kiss of Death would work perfectly in high-concept Hollywood. Sadly, these days, Hollywood would leave out the terrific touches that have made this movie such a memorable example of film noir. (In fact, Hollywood did just that with a half-hearted remake in 1995.)

The movie begins with jewelry-store thief Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) and his gang pulling off a heist at a jewelry store in a New York City high-rise. Director Henry Hathaway tightens the suspense by showing the gang trying to escape on an elevator that makes far too many stops for fresh passengers, and the gang members start sweating out every new stop. When a movie takes the time for little nuances that a lot of big movies would brush off, you know you’re in for a great feat of storytelling.

Mature as Nick.

At first, Nick is the stoic gangster, willing to go to Sing Sing rather than squeal on his fellow hoodlums. But when his family is thrown asunder while he’s in jail, Nick caves and starts naming names to the assistant district attorney (Brian Donlevy). Nick also gets in good with gangster Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark in his screen debut) so that he can get some juicy info on him for the ADA. The movie is quite eager to show us that Udo is not someone whom you double-cross lightly. This is depicted most graphically in what is probably the movie’s most famous scene, dramatically demonstrating that Udo is…well, not terribly sensitive to the physically disabled.

Widmark as Udo.

The screenplay by Hollywood veterans Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer (from Eleazar Lipsky’s original story), and Henry Hathaway’s taut direction, give the movie a straight-from-the-headlines tabloid feel. This is further aided by Norbert Brodine’s straight-to-the-point photography, which beautifully captures the movie (as is boasted in the opening titles) at authentic New York locations. And the flawless cast further punches the movie’s gritty tableau across. Mature, Widmark, Donlevy, and utterly charming Coleen Gray (also making her film debut here) provide a riveting movie experience.

A lot of films-noir make their points with heightened dialogue and stylized photography. Kiss of Death gives you the refreshing feeling of seeing an Everyman placed in the middle of a film-noir situation and doing his best to escape it. (Talk about stylized, though — if you ever hear anyone laugh like Richard Widmark, run for the hills.)