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| Kansas visits Henderson on Death Row in "Phantom Lady" -- great noir cinematography by Woody Bredell. |
By BRAD WEISMANN
Ask around. Compelling, complex roles for actresses beyond
what society deems “breeding prime” are few. Even within that ripeness range,
women are still largely props – saintly victims, evil temptresses.
Nowhere more so than in film noir, where these stereotypes
are essential to the efficient functioning of the genre’s typical plotline. A
classic film noir is usually thought of as being the story of a hapless man
drawn cynically to his doom in an amoral, uncaring, brutal world by a femme
fatale. However, a recent pair of screenings of initial noir outings by later
masters of the genre provides an interesting contrast to this conception. These
two films feature, surprisingly, active female protagonists with their wits
about them.
I had a chance to see Robert Siodmak’s 1944 “Phantom Lady”
and Joseph H. Lewis’ “My Name is Julia Ross” from 1945 recently on the big
screen. (A curatorial pal, the International Film Series' Pablo Kjolseth, who has a dandy backyard cinema, showed these over the
course of a couple of summer weekends. They leaped to life, beautiful prints gleaming
through the lens of a venerable 16-millimeter projector, the air faintly
redolent of machine oil and heated celluloid. Mmmmmm.)
Robert Siodmak, as versatile in his workmanlike way as
Michael Curtiz or Victor Fleming (he would helm strong entries in the
swashbuckler, Western, horror, and other types). He would feature strong women
in later noirs such as “Christmas Holiday” -- the debut of Deanna Durbin as a
“serious” actress, featuring Gene Kelly as an insane killer, complete with
soundtrack from “Tristan and Isolde”! – and “The Spiral Staircase.” Lewis, too,
would give us compelling if not as heroic women in “Gun Crazy” and “The Big
Combo.”
Both films come from the first of three classic-era noir
periods as defined by Paul Schrader, which lasted only from 1941 to 1945.
Schrader characterizes this period as that of the “private eye or lone wolf,”
and its films feature A-list budgets and casts, favor static shots over action
sequences, display a disdain for location shooting, and maintain a strong
grounding in the smooth, elegant studio look that would soon be displaced by
the gritty-realism trend of the genre of the 1950s.
What unites these two films in my mind is the way they give
their protagonists the floor – as competent, nuanced characters that come up
with novel ways to overcome the obstacles they face.
Phantom Lady
1944
Dir: Robert Siodmak
Part of the film’s balance may come from the fact that it
was the first producer credit for Joan Harrison, whose work as a screenwriter
included classics such as “Rebecca,” “Suspicion,” “Saboteur,” and “Foreign
Correspondent.” Harrison would become one of only three female producers in
Hollywood at the time, and would later helm the TV series “Alfred Hitchcock
Presents.” Another contributing factor may have been the source material,
penned by Cornell Woolrich as William Irish. Woolrich, one of the best and most
adapted crime writers of the 20th century, whose novels and stories
are crammed with central female characters who are threatened, disappointed,
out for justice.
The protagonist is played by Ella Raines, a generic starlet
of the day. She plays “Kansas,” the faithful secretary of the young, dumb,
handsome and unhappily married civil engineer Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis).
When Scott’s wife is killed, he has no alibi – save for a mysterious lady he
gave a spare theater ticket to and sat with at a Broadway show. The “phantom
lady” distinguished by her uniquely designed hat, sporting a full-sized bird, identical
to one worn by the star of the show (Aurora Miranda, sister of Carmen).
Beyond the Freudian suggestiveness of a woman’s hat as an
object that defines feminine identity, a search for one takes us into uniquely
feminine territory – couture being a land few men dally in. A lady’s hat, like
Desdemona’s handkerchief, has been used as a device in stage farces and
tragedies for centuries, usually designating a woman’s virtue or reputation as
moveable and external to her essential nature. In “Phantom Lady” a hat becomes
the key to identifying a murderer.
Kansas, of course, is secretly in love with Henderson –
which, in movie-logic terms of the day, means that he must be innocent and that
they are meant to be together. She trails the few witnesses to his alibi, all
of whom have lied to the police to incriminate him. She stalks a close-mouthed
bartender with a death’s-head countenance – in a memorably staged scene on a
train platform, he nearly pushes her into the path of the cars, only to be run
down in the street later himself, on the run from her relentless questions.
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| Kansas, alone and vulnerable on a midnight train platform. |
Kansas, abetted marginally by a male authority figure, Burgess
(Thomas Gomez, usually a villain, as the supportive police inspector), even
dresses up as a jazz-loving, gum-chewing floozy to attract the attention of pit
drummer/witness Cliff (Elisha Cook Jr.). Cliff takes her to a shadowy basement
jam session, littered with beer bottles and Dutch angles, and populated improbably
by solid jazzmen Jimmy Slack, Barney Bigard, Howard Rumsey, Roger Hanson, and
Dole Nicolls.
It’s the most inventive and disturbing sequence in the film.
Kansas, dodging the phallic instruments that protrude across her eye line,
plies Cliff with booze, after which he kisses her roughly. She puts up with it,
fist obviously clenched in distress. She walks away, reapplying her makeup in a
handy mirror – and stopping a moment to shake herself and regard herself in her
slutty disguise, as though this persona could so easily envelop her own.
Meanwhile, Cliff looks her up and down lustfully, while
banging out a wild drum solo. Kansas is seen now from below, stretching out her
arms and goading him on like some demon, even laughing with head thrown back
like the clichéd vamp. Cliff’s face becomes a rictus of unfulfilled orgasmic
expectation. This is a man who is certain he’s going to get laid. (No wonder
this scene got censored in Pennsylvania (1).)
As with the first perjured witness, Cliff is marked for
death as well (the killer? I’m not going to tell you who he is, but his
initials are Franchot Tone, playing the standard
I’m-a-sensitive-artist-so-I-strangle-people-who-piss-me-off-as-I-rub-my-eye-furtively-as-though-I-might-have-a-brain-tumor
role). Kansas finally tracks the hat’s owner through the milliner, whose
employee, an oppressed-looking immigrant woman who knocks off copies under the
table. The Phantom Lady is found – she turns out to be a dead end -- in a
doctor’s care, distraught and deranged over the death of her intended husband
(of course! Wouldn’t that drive any woman mad?). Hung up on a man she can’t
have, she serves as a kind of passive doppelganger for Kansas.
Eventually, the plot succumbs to Movie Logic and Kansas is
rescued by Burgess just after the murderer’s confession, but before he can
dispatch the heroine. The final blow comes when the freed Henderson proposes to
Kansas via Dictaphone. Whatever autonomy Kansas has earned is about to be
snuffed out again.
My Name is Julia Ross
1945
Dir: Joseph H. Lewis
Good old George Macready. He’s such a stinker.
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| George Macready as Ralph -- obviously not ready to appear on "The Newlywed Game." |
The cultured, well-spoken actor, marked by a distinctive
scar on his right cheek, had a long career as a screen villain, and is
remembered particularly for his roles as baddies in “Gilda” and “Paths of
Glory.” He’s the perfect choice to play the psychotic, murderous man-child Ralph
Hughes in “Julia Ross” – the incarnation of Husband as Monster. He is that
rarity in film noir – rather than a femme fatale, he is a “homme fatale.”
The writers of both the source novel and screenplay were
women – the book “Lady in Red” was penned by Lucy Beatrice Malleson, writing as
Anthony Gilbert (wheels within wheels!) and the script came from Muriel Roy
Bolton. Like “Gaslight” and other thrillers that always seem to take place in
old Victorian mansions, memory, identity, and threatened male dominance are key
themes.
Julia Ross (Nina Foch) is a young woman, just getting over a
breakup and needed surgery. She applies for a secretarial position at an agency
that insists that she have “no family entanglements, no romantic interests.” “I’m
absolutely alone,” she responds. She’s a blank slate.
She also happens to resemble the late unlamented wife of
Ralph, who, it seems, gets a little bloodthirsty when he’s on edge. His
overprotective mother, played by May Whitty, chides, “Try to remember -- if it
wasn’t for your temper, you wouldn’t be in this awful trouble today.” Ralph
responds later, “It’s all Marion’s fault – she shouldn’t have cried.” Ralph has
a tendency to shred things, like spouses, with knives – his mother has a drawer
full of weapons she has confiscated from him. To get Marion’s money, Ralph and
his mum need a body that doesn’t look like it was stabbed over and over and
over. And over. Welcome Julia!
Julia is taken to the Hughes’, and promptly drugged. Everything
she owns is incinerated. When she wakes, everyone calls her Marion, tells her
she is married to Ralph, and informs her that she is recovering from a nervous
breakdown. Everything she owns has an “MH” monogram. The Hughes’ ornate seaside
mansion, which nominally might seem to be a dream come true for a single woman
of the period, a scene of domestic bliss and security, is a prison and a death
trap.
Lewis’ use of objects and light patterns to convey meaning
is exemplary. Secret passages abound in the house; the shadow of a hand stretches
across her covers, Nosferatu-like; Julia screams and flings a brush across the
room, breaking a mirror – more Freudianism, still in vogue across the cinema of
the day (think “Spellbound”). Bars, physical or shadow, constantly obscure
Julia’s face.
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| Nina Foch as Julia/Marion, trapped in her dream house. |
The standout scene in “Julia Ross” in one in which, gutsily,
Lewis shoots over Ralph’s shoulder as he engages in a bit of a psychotic ramble.
Only Julia’s eyes can be seen, reacting warily. Ralph’s image is literally
blotting her out. Julia fights back repeatedly when Ralph tries to kiss her,
slapping him once and triggering his attempt to throw her out a window. Julia
would rather be dead than subsumed.
Julia hangs on to her identity, against all odds, and works
actively to free herself, escaping once in a visiting car and getting letters
in the post. The usual authority figures – minister, doctor, policeman – all come
to the Hughes’ door, only to be fooled by the family’s pretense. Only when
Julia fakes her suicide, forcing Ralph and his mother’s hands, do Julia’s
friend Dennis and some officers appear in the nick of time – shooting Ralph to
death as he flees down the beach.
The reassuring male paradigm is reasserted. Julia’s friend
and savior Dennis proposes a new job for her. “A combination secretary, companion,
nurse, housekeep-“ “That sounds like a wife,” Julia responds. She accepts
immediately, and they embrace. Alarmingly, they are driving at the time – but thanks
to Movie Logic, their car doesn’t crash. Fadeout. “Ironically, she will soon
assume a new name and a new identity, although one presumably not at the hands
of a violent psychopath.” (2) In both “Phantom Lady” and “My Name is Julia
Ross,” the possibility of female autonomy is tantalizingly dangled, only to be
snatched away at the very end.
These two films are emblematic of a transition point in
American film – a move away from complex, independent female characters as
embodied in “women’s films”/”weepies” of the ‘30s and ‘40s (“Dark Victory,”
“Imitation of Life,” “Now, Voyager,” and other vehicles for Davis, Crawford,
Stanwyck, Harlow, et al) and the post-war reassertion of male privilege
onscreen. As soldiers came home and reintegrated into society, women film
characters shifted into rigidly defined categories. They became either
wholesome and home-abiding, or they dangerous free agents, up to no good.
Film noir can be a fertile ground for heroines. Here we have
women as protagonists, righters of wrongs, refusing to be victims – agents of
positive change rather than ministers of destruction or helpless victims or
good girls that stand by and watch. It was fun while it lasted.
NOTES
1. Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from ‘Phantom
Lady’ to ‘Last Seduction’, David Butler, Praeger, 2002, pg. 68
“People Can Think Themselves into Anything: The Domestic
Nightmare in ‘My Name is Julia Ross,”
Marlisa Santos, The Films of Joseph H.
Lewis, Gary D. Rhodes, ed., Wayne State University Press, 2012, pg. 144
OTHER SOURCES
Who the Devil
Made It
Peter Bogdanovich
Alfred A. Knopf
New York
1997
Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic
Film
Helen Hanson
I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.
London/New York
2007
Joseph H. Lewis: Overview, Interview, and Filmography
Francis M. Nevins
The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Lanham, Md./London
1998
Robert Siodmak
Deborah Lazaroff Alpi
McFarland & Company, Inc.
1998
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