Les Diaboliques; Fish with vinegar and onions

Les Diaboliques (1955)

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Had I seen this before: Yes

And now we say au revoir to Noirvember with a movie that is probably more accurately classified as a thriller-bordering-on-horror than a strict noir, but it is in black and white and involves an impressively dispassionate murder and some excellent cat-and-mouse shenanigans and a Citroën 2CV Fourgonnette that I am obsessed with, and it is French and I love it. I am hesitant to go all-out on selling this movie to you because I really believe the fact that I went into it the first time with basically no expectations enhanced my experience tremendously, therefore I am going to do my best cold, calculating, noir-heroine impression and simply give you the facts. Not to mention that it ends with a title screen admonishing you not to spoil the movie for others, in French, and I do not want this movie to be mad at me.

The film opens with my favorite character, the Citroën Fourgonnette delivery van, pulling up to the gates of a boys boarding school outside of Paris. To my 21st century American eyes, this little fella looks like a delivery van for ants. It's the cutest, funniest vehicle possible to exist at the center of an extremely dark story, and I want one very badly. I would be so good at parking a Fourgonnette. Making my little deliveries. Anyway, the person driving it in this case is not a jaunty delivery person, as one would hope, but rather the principal of the aforementioned boarding school, Michel Delassalle. Michel is not jaunty. He's a huge jerk. He does not deserve this charming vehicle. He does not deserve the staff he treats poorly, or the students he terrorizes, or the wife and mistress he abuses physically and emotionally. He is sadistic and appalling and frankly, with all due respect to actor Paul Meurisse, he is simply not handsome enough to pull off this level of assholery.

Michel's long-suffering wife, Christina, is styled like Dorothy Gale--gingham and twin brunette braids--and presented as a worryingly delicate due to an oft-referenced heart condition. Michel's mistress, Nicole, is a surly blonde with a take-charge demeanor who is styled like Rizzo from Grease. Both of these women work at the school with Michel and apparently everyone in the building is fully aware of their tangled relationship. This situation is a real mess. Très unprofessional. Nicole sulks in to work one morning wearing shades, which are hiding not a hangover (well, not just a hangover) but a bruise. Christina consoles her. The staff shakes their head in bewilderment. But Nicole is fed up--Michel has to die, and she has a plan. Christina, who is not only very delicate but also very religious and jumpy and superstitious, takes some convincing, but is eventually onboard.

Now, I am going to spoil some things up to a point and then I am going to slowly lower my shades and walk away. The first half of this movie is probably the most noir-ish. The two ladies have a plan, and we watch them unspool it. They lure Michel out to Nicole's family home in western France, where they put sedatives in his whiskey and drown him in the bathtub. Christina almost can't go through with it, but Michel just manages to be that much of a dick that she gathers all of her homicidal strength. Once the deed is done, the tension shifts to whether they can move the body undetected from Nicole's house back to the boarding school, where they intend to stage it as an accidental drowning in the neglected campus pool. There are several close calls and many tense discussions in the cab of the most adorable van to ever transport a human corpse in a giant wicker trunk. But they do make it back to the school, where in the middle of the night they unceremoniously dump the remains of this horrible man into the murky water.

The next day, both ladies eye the still, dark surface of the pool with mounting anxiety, until eventually Nicole "accidentally" drops her keys, requiring that they drain the pool to find them. So drain the pool they do, and there at the bottom are...the keys. And nothing else. Needless to say, this is a concerning development for our murderesses, who are now missing a corpse. Things very soon go from bad to worse when the dry cleaners deliver the suit that Michel was murdered in, freshly pressed. *Slowly lowers shades.*

This is the point where the movie really gets cooking and I am doing my best not to over-hype it, but a sort of proto-Columbo rumpled ex-detective gets into the mix and the mind games get intense and the first time I watched it I almost covered my eyes with my hands in the last ten minutes, which is an incredible achievement in tension for an almost 70-year-old movie. Alfred Hitchcock was a fan, and Hitch had a lot of issues but he did know from building tension. Anyway, this is probably the last black-and-white French film I will attempt to entice you into watching until this time next year, but if I have led you to discover any midcentury gems in the past month and you are absolutely brimming with gratitude, I will point out that there is now an all-electric version of the Citroën Berlingo 2CV Fourgonnette available and I'm almost certain it would fit snuggly under my Christmas tree.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: One of the troublemaking students is ordered to write on the blackboard 20 times "I provoke my comrades' frivolity with my absurd comments," which I is something I personally aspire to with every blog post.

Is it under two hours: By un cheveu

How fatale are les femmes: Well, they don't smoke much, but the movie is called "The Devils" for a reason. 8/10

Apple Cider Vinegar sauce from Big Oven on cod over onions

One of the more stomach-churningly villainous scenes for Principal Delassalle is early in the movie, when it becomes clear that not only is he feeding everyone fish that is past its prime (half-heartedly disguised by vinegar and onions), he humiliates Christina in front of everyone when she struggles to swallow the rancid seafood. I promise I used perfectly good fish here and hardly had to threaten anyone at all.

Up next: I don't know if you realize this but it's actually a Christmas movie

The Third Man; Sacher Torte

The Third Man (1949)

Director: Carol Reed

Had I seen this before: Yes

I want to quickly point out--and I don't know whether this is a brag or a sheepish admission--that this is the 1000th entry I have posted here since 2010, and furthermore, I'm going to kick it off by discussing the zither.

Your relationship to the sound of the zither will go a long way in determining your relationship to the 1949 film The Third Man. Personally, I enjoy it (although perhaps not as much as mid-century Britain, who collectively went so wild for Anton Karas's bouncy score that he became a top-selling musician of the era, then opened a nightclub called The Third Man which he ran for the rest of his life). As the opening credits roll and the strings of the zither sing, I feel that I am being promised pleasant and lively European vacation. It isn't at all ominous, like the opening notes of many noirs, but it is appropriate. For as much as this film is about dark opportunism and elastic morality, the structure holding it all together--essentially the main character of the movie--is post-war Vienna itself, with its 18th century busts and paintings and marble and tight spiral staircases and rainy cobblestone streets, all in various states ranging from timeless elegance to age-worn disrepair to literal piles of rubble. The juxtaposition of the shady dealings of a desperate post-war population and the towering Old World grandeur surrounding them gives the movie its vibrant tension, and the cheerful strings contribute to the sense that no matter what becomes of any of these people, Vienna will go on, shimmering and zithering far into the future.

It also serves as a constant reminder that if you weren't mixed up in some nefarious nonsense--the "you" in this case being Joseph Cotton's dime novelist Holly Martins--you could simply take one step to the side into das Cafe and have a lovely evening. In fact, various characters spend the movie encouraging Martins to forget about his concerns and go back home, which emphasizes the degree to which he truly is not as trapped as anyone around him, until of course he is. But it's also hard to blame the guy--he shows up in Vienna looking for his dear old friend Harry Lime, who theoretically has a job lined up for him there, only to discover--hat and coat still on and suitcase still in hand--that his dear old friend Harry Lime has very recently been struck by a car and killed. So recently, in fact, that Martins goes directly to Lime's funeral--suitcase very much still in hand--and stoically dumps a scoop of dirt onto his casket.

One would think that Martins would find himself utterly alone in this foreign city, with his one friend unexpectedly deceased and his prospects apparently vaporized, but one would be wrong. By the end of his first day in town, he has been given a lift and treated to a perhaps inadvisable amount of alcohol by a British police officer, been both punched in the face and complimented on his writing by another officer, been offered a guest lecturer gig by the concerningly-titled head of cultural reeducation, and received a phone call from a baron friend of Harry's. He has also started to notice that not all of the pieces of what happened to Harry add up in a satisfying way, and that different people seem to have different versions of what occurred. Is anything as it seems? Generally not, in this genre. The police have strongly indicated to him that Harry was mixed up in some sketchy business and it's better for everyone that he's gone; Harry's friend the baron calmly responds to this by informing Martins that "everyone in Vienna is--we all sell cigarettes and that kind of a thing." 

Martins soon connects with Harry's grieving girlfriend Anna, a stage comedienne with a fake passport, a preposterously beautiful apartment, and a landlady who is, for me, the most relatable character in the film--just showing up to yell in irritated German about the cops and so forth trampling through her building, always wrapped head to toe in what can only be described as a large duvet (I don't want you to picture a regular blanket here, this thing has some real heft). Who hasn't wanted to scold annoying people while wearing a full set of bedding? Anna seems sad but also stoic and world-weary, one of several people to tell Martins "You shouldn't get mixed up in this." What Martins soon wants to get mixed up in is Anna herself but she politely declines his advances, sadly and stoically throughout, even when he drunkenly tries to engage with a cat in a manner that is, to me, extremely charming.

The Vienna of The Third Man is a city where everyone is a little suspicious but almost no one is directly menacing. As Martins begins to tie some of the various threads together, the action naturally picks up, including a chase scene through the bombed remains of buildings, another through the intricate underground sewer system, a very tense conversation on a moving Ferris wheel car, an absolute crash and burn stint as a guest lecturer, and one of the greatest character introduction shots in all of cinema. Dutch angles abound. The rumor that both the producer and director of this film were on a great deal of speed at the time is interesting, because I don't find anything particularly frantic about the pace of the film--if anything, as I said, there is almost a sort of amused detachment from the frenzied goings on of the tiny humans and their wee dramas--but maybe operating on two hours of sleep a night is sometimes what it takes to make a movie this good. Come for the cobblestones and the high ceilings and the gleaming marble, stay for Orson Welles pronouncing the phrase "cuckoo clock." You won't be disappointed.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "I don't want another murder in this case and you were born to be murdered so you're going to hear the facts."

Is it under two hours:  Yes

How fatale is la femme: Poor Anna is not a femme fatale, she's just a pretty lady with questionable taste in men, trying to get by in a city back on its heels and minding her own business. No scheming, no double-crossing, not a single corpse to her name, but she does make cigarettes look very appealing and if she ever had a mind to start causing the downfall of greedy saps I really believe she could do it. 2/10

Sacher Torte from King Arthur Baking

Martins mostly--say it with me now--smokes and drinks. But one of the buildings prominently featured in this film is the Sacher Hotel, as it served as the British headquarters during Vienna's occupation. Aside from being a world-renowned luxury hotel, it is primarily known for producing the Sachertorte, an apricot-filled dark chocolate cake and one of Austria's most famous exports. Between this movie and this cake, the fact that I have never been to Vienna grows increasingly distressing by the second.

Up next: Some French ladies getting up to no good

Double Indemnity; Chicken Enchiladas

Double Indemnity (1944)

Director: Billy Wilder

Had I seen this before: Yes

I don't know about y'all, but to my mind, this is probably one of the most entertaining films ever named after a semi-obscure insurance policy clause. Director Billy Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler, who apparently detested working together, nevertheless combined forces to adapt James M. Cain's 1943 crime novella into a crackling, propulsive screenplay with a dynamite cast. My favorite thread running through the trivia for this movie is the open disgust with which Chandler constantly referred to Cain's work--he's quoted as saying that "everything he touches smells like billygoat," not an insult you hear every day--while Cain loved the film adaptation and saw it multiple times. Anyway, I know which guy I would rather chain-smoke in a dramatically-lit room with, discussing how great this movie is even if one of the screenwriters was sort of a jerk.

The opening credits are full of menacing music and a shadowy figure on crutches, inching ominously toward the camera. Already I'm hooked--who is this hobbled man and what does he want with me? Answers come quickly, as Wilder gives us the end of the story at the beginning (a trick he would use again a few years later in one of my all-time favorite movies), opening with insurance agent Walter Neff stumbling into his near-empty office building and sweatily starting to unload a murder confession into his dictaphone. Worth noting that even in this entirely wretched state--we learn up top that this man has done unthinkable things for "money, and a woman...and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman"--he still can't help being low-key pleased with himself as he unravels the sordid tale. Walter is another classic 1940s American white man for our cinematic collection, less guileless than Oliver "I Don't Understand The Concept of Unhappiness" Reed, but just as accustomed to things going his way. The difference is, Oliver credits his charmed life to luck, whereas Walter undoubtedly credits his to his own cleverness. This aspect of the character, and the way Fred MacMurray strides through every scene with six feet and three inches worth of pure self-confidence, makes for an excellent noir antihero whose dramatic fall we are instantly excited to see unfold.

This downfall, is of course, precipitated by a dame. And listen--unlike Mary Astor's chilly villainess, Barbara Stanwyck comes in hot as Phyllis Dietrichson. I mean, she literally enters this movie wearing a towel and a mischievous expression (and, it must be said, a real beast of a blonde wig, with which she must spend the entire movie capably and impressively wrestling for control of each scene). Her voice is husky and her flirt game is lightning-quick, and sure she's unhappily married but she's only interested in taking out a great deal of insurance on her oil-industry husband because she's so worried about potential accidents, not that she wants something bad to happen to him, what are you even suggesting, Walter?? I'm not saying this specific performance rises quite to the level of Judy Maxwell please ruin my life for me, but I am saying...I get it. Walter is very clearly outmatched here, and I wouldn't give myself great odds in the ring with this one either.

He might have a better shot at keeping a clear head if he didn't have a classic noir appetite for booze--especially noticeable if you are aware that one of the reasons Wilder did not like collaborating with Chandler was that he was allegedly quite frequently drunk and allegedly inspired Wilder's next film The Lost Weekend. (In comparison, Chandler's complaints about Wilder included that he allegedly spoke too fast and allegedly wore a baseball cap indoors.) When Walter visits Phyllis in the early afternoon, he asks for a beer, settles for an iced tea, then casually muses "Wonder if a little rum would get this up on its feet?" A perfect line in a movie full of perfect lines, and a character trait that perhaps contributes to some slight shoddiness in their intricate scheme.

Rounding out the main cast is Edward G. Robinson, playing Walter's boss Keyes, the man to whom the voice-over murder confession is addressed. Robinson was a pint-sized actor, especially next to the towering MacMurray, but a huge presence on screen--probably best remembered for his singular voice and accent, most familiar to people my age as the inspiration for The Simpsons' Chief Wiggum. In this movie, his character is a pretty straightforward one--just an insurance manager with a strong gut instinct regarding fraud, but everything about him pops in in a very amusing way. He's forever patting down his pockets for a book of matches that aren't there and talking about the "concrete" he gets in his stomach when something isn't right. In some ways Keyes is the main antagonist for our leads, as he's the one closest to the case and closest to sniffing them out. But in a different framing he is, of course, the hero, and the only one with the correct take on our leading man--"You're not smarter, Walter, you're just a little bit taller."

Line I repeated quietly to myself: The dialogue in this movie is so delightfully constructed and delivered that I repeated many, many lines out loud just to hear the sound of them again. I think the one that made me laugh the most was when Walter hands Phyllis a drink in the kitchen and then, for absolutely no reason, says "See if you can carry this as far as the living room."

Is it under two hours: Yes

How fatale is la femme: Can't say enough good things about the bad Mrs. Dietrichson. Seductive, dangerous, plausibly convincing, great legs, amazing wardrobe, killer line delivery. This lady murdered her way into and out of the same relationship, you have to respect it. Slight deduction for failing to get off that second shot at the end. 9/10

Chicken Enchiladas inspired by The El Paseo Inn and Mexican Rice from The Kitchn

You will not be shocked to hear that Walter does not eat, Walter only drinks and smokes, but at one point he does take Phyllis's stepdaughter out to a "Mexican restaurant on Olvera Street." The El Paseo Inn on Olvera Street in Los Angeles has been in operation since 1930, so I figure there's a decent chance that was the spot. I attempted to recreate the Avila Adobe Enchiladas from their menu, and I can't say whether they're accurate, but I can say they garnered enthusiasm from every member of my family, which is not...usually how dinner goes.

Up next: What if there were...a third man? 

The Maltese Falcon; Pork Chops and Sliced Tomatoes

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Director: John Huston

Had I seen this before: Yes

Welcome to Noirvember, where we are kicking things off with one of the true classics of the genre, John Huston's directorial debut The Maltese Falcon. Now, John Huston is one of my personal most-watched directors (is a phrase that I could leave alone if I wanted you to infer that I have spent a great deal of time considering celebrated and influential films such as Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, or The Night of the Iguana when in fact it is) because I have seen his 1982 Albert Finney-starring adaptation of Annie approaching somewhere around 2,000 times in my life. So it's of course exciting for me to discover what he can do outside of the musical theater realm.

Picture it: Malta, 1539. Thus beseeches our opening crawl, an exciting tale of ancient Knights Templar and a lost, unimaginably valuable treasure in the form of a bird statue. I would estimate that 95% of the times I have referenced this film in my life have been in order to provide an example of a MacGuffin--it's possibly the most important unimportant item in 20th century film. A real slippery fellow, that falcon. Nearly as slippery is the beautiful Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), who slides into the San Francisco office of detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) with a fake name, a suspicious story about a missing sister, and an even more suspicious amount of money to throw at the problem. The cigarette smoke is drifting, the blinds are slanted, the characters are clever but wary--we're really noiring it up, right out of the gate. Spade's partner Archer goes to stake out the situation and is shot dead in the process, at which point we are made aware of several things at once--Spade does not seem especially alarmed at the news, indicating that he did not like his partner all that much and is not easily excitable in the face of danger, oh and also by the way he was having an affair with Archer's wife. I appreciated the efficiency of establishing this character, who could perhaps have been mistaken for more of a straight-ahead good guy in the opening scene with Brigid, as the anti-hero that he is. No soft-boiled guy, this. When they boiled Sam Spade they boiled him hard.

He also talks to his loyal secretary Effie as though she is a golden retriever--"good girl, angel, darling, sweetheart, precious," etc.--and when he reports the news of Archer's death, he sternly admonishes her "now, don't get excited." To be clear, Effie rules in this movie--she's one of those pleasantly competent side characters who enhances every scene she's in. She manages to put up with a man who is perhaps a good detective but is, I'm sorry, a very bad boss, and never breaks a sweat. More than once my notes for this movie indicate that whatever Sam is paying Effie is certainly not enough. Now, to be fair, calling his 40-year-old employee "precious" is actually one of the less condescending tones he takes with other characters. He is amusingly dismissive, for example, of the cops, who again to be fair, are sort of whinily asking him for help most of the time.

Obviously the situation with Brigid and the dead partner and the unsubtle guy tailing Spade spins out of control, as these things are wont to do. The movie doesn't really start cooking until my two MVPs show up--Peter Lorre, my favorite bug-eyed Hungarian as Joel Cairo, a character we are meant to understand is a homosexual because this is the 1940s and his business cards smell like gardenias; and stage actor Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, the inspiration for the "It's too hot today" Simpsons meme and (truly, I say this with nothing but respect and awe) an absolute unit of a man. I genuinely appreciate the way his physical presence is used here--the other character refer to him as the Fat Man, but he never seems like the butt of a joke. It adds to his gravitas as an unpredictable villain. His character is wonderful to watch, lightly amused by even the most threatening of Spade's jabs, dangerous but charismatic, focused and not at all easily deterred.

If I'm being completely honest, I don't love Bogart as Sam Spade--I know that's probably approaching blasphemy for the TCM set, but to my eye his energy never quite settles into the character in a satisfying manner. The way he grins like he's an animal barring its teeth makes him a little too unsettling and distant, not nearly as magnetic as the strange and compelling Lorre or Greenstreet. I think he's better suited to something like Casablanca, where he is just as world-weary but less sharp, or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where is allowed to go Full Dirtbag. And I never really buy the chemistry between him and Mary Astor, which is unfortunately a pretty crucial element of the story. I never feel any heat there at all, just strangled breathiness and coldly arched eyebrows.

That's not to say that this movie isn't well worth your time, of course--the dialogue is snappy and the air is smoky and the villain is oddly enchanting. Everyone is wearing hats. When the cops want to haul a bunch of people down to the station they bark "Get your hats!" Wonderful stuff. The violence is realistically random and almost comical--a wild kick, a punch in a mouth. The lit up San Francisco skyline behind Spade's office is intoxicating. The moment when Effie the competent secretary arrives with a priceless treasure bundled in newspaper and calmly hands it off to a room full of people who are all half-insane with greed and paranoia as though she's fulfilling a grocery order is deeply satisfying. The fact that they keep referring to a gunman who is clearly nearing 40 as "boy" and "kid" is charmingly inexplicable. And that maddening bird--the stuff that dreams are made of--is always in the wind.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Our private conversations have been not been such that I am anxious to continue them."

Is it under two hours: Yes

How fatale is la femme: Mary Astor's take on the duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy is more on the flustered, breathy, buttoned-up side than anything approaching a smoky siren. This is, of course, part of her character's act, but I never feel like she makes a turn into convincingly calculating trickster--she's all hats and stoles and ruffles for days and "ah, oh no, ah, oh my"s. Such long skirts that we never even see the gams. 4/10

Garlic Butter Pork Chops from The Forked Spoon

Food tie-ins are going to require a little more stretching this month, as the only substances consumed in most noirs are cigarettes, whiskey, and black coffee. In this case, as in The Haunting, I had to reach for the source novel, wherein we find Sam Spade dining on "chops, baked potatoes, and sliced tomatoes." I did not include any greenery on the plate, not even a sprig of parsley, because Sam Spade is too hard-boiled for that sort of nonsense. 

Up next: Time to closely examine the terms of that life insurance policy