DIVORCE, FILM NOIR STYLE

DEAD HUSBANDS: The collateral damage of film noir

            I’ve written often about my favorite film genre. See my “noir” posts on this blog. One of the attractions of the “noir” form of crime fiction is that it deals with common human frailties of ordinary people who we can recognize as not too dissimilar to us. There are few dukes and ladies, not too many butlers, and the settings are seldom at dinner parties or weekend fox hunts.

            A dominant character in these stories is the so-called femme fatale. This femme is fatale to the sort of man who is vulnerable to her allure, meaning a man whose dick is his guide. She is an independent tough woman who has learned to use her wiles to get ahead. She might be desperate to end a dead-end marriage, one that she entered after running out of choices. She has been waiting for a tool, a man who is greedy, horny, and bored. He will help her to solve the problem by bumping off the old man and securing a financial and sexually satisfying happy ending . . . or not.  

            One night in 1927, police in Queens, NY, were called to a house where they found a woman who was unconscious and a man who had been garroted by a picture wire. The woman, Ruth Snyder, said she had been awakened by noises, had gotten out of bed and been surprised by a giant of a man who knocked her out. When she awoke hours later, her husband Albert was dead. Police found that some furniture was overturned and jewelry was missing. 

            But there were problems with the story from the beginning. First, there were no signs of forced entry. Second, their nine-year old daughter had slept through it all, hearing no noises. Ruth’s nervousness in the face of serious questioning raised suspicions. 

            Then a detective found a note with the letters J.G. on it. Ruth seemed very upset by the note’s presence, and under questioning, revealed the name of her lover, Judd Grey, who she presumed was the J.G. (In fact, the note was one belonging to her husband, and the J.G. referred to Jessie Guishard, his lost love.) Soon, they found the jewelry, hidden in Ruth's bed.

            It didn’t take police very long to expose the truth. Ruth had been married to Albert Snyder for 10 years. He had turned to Ruth after the death of his soulmate, a woman named Jessie Guishard. All during their marriage, Albert grieved for his lost true love, keeping her portrait in a prominent place.  Understandably, Ruth resented her husband’s frequent reminder that Jessie G had been “the finest woman I have ever met. . . .” She steamed and began to imagine her husband dead. Over time, she concocted several schemes to make her dream come true, but never carried any too far beyond the planning stage.  

            Then one day, a knock on her door was the sound of fate. It was a corset salesman, Judd Grey. Grey was also unhappily wed, and shared Ruth’s dream of a different, better life. He knew an insurance salesman whose ethics were also flexible. Ruth persuaded Arthur to buy a life insurance policy. Ruth, Albert, and the agent secretly added a rider: it would pay double if the insured died violently. 

           

            During the trial both Ruth and Judd continued their poor strategic choices: each blaming the other for the crime. As defense lawyers could have predicted, both were convicted and sentenced to die.

            If it sounds familiar: former newspaperman James M. Cain remembered the case and adapted it to a story that was first serialized for a magazine in 1936 and then published as a novel in 1943. Billy Wilder made the movie the next year: "Double Indemnity."  

            [NOTE: This sort of crime has been repeated many times, with many variations. For instance, the Coen brothers used it as their directorial debut, in 1984: “Blood Simple.” In the 1990’s there was the case of the woman who persuaded her fifteen-year old lover to kill her husband. It became the novel and film, “To Die For” starring Nicole Kidman.  

            Cain’s first novel (1934) was “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” which has a similar theme. Cora is married to an older man, Nick, who owns a diner. A drifter named Frank arrives and sparks fly. Frank and Cora first plan to leave together but that would leave them broke.  Eventually they decide to kill Nick in a contrived auto accident and take over the diner. Lawyers are involved and, after shenanigans and technicalities, the couple seems to get away with it. But when Cora dies in another auto accident, Frank is convicted of her murder. Ironically, he faces death for a crime he did not commit, after escaping punishment for the one he did.    

            The story, like many in the Depression, is marked with a sense of hopelessness and inevitability of doom. The protagonists are desperate losers clinging to each other but also distrustful of each other. These notions struck a chord with existentialists, especially after World War II, when pessimism about human nature seemed justified. (Several versions have been made by foreign filmmakers – in France, Italy, Hungary, Russia – it has also been adapted as an opera.)

            The MGM movie released in 1946 starred Lana Turner and John Garfield. Apparently, Lana didn’t like Garfield and he thought she was sexy but a lousy actress. Naturally, they had a steamy affair during filming and the on-screen chemistry is palpable. One critic argued that the contrived potboiler plot made sense as soon as Frank sees Cora in a doorway. She is wearing a white halter top and shorts and he is clearly awestruck.

            The story was remade in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, written by David Mamet. It was not as successful as the first one, either with critics or the public. But it is worth watching, at least for Jack’s raw power and Jessica Lange’s sexy earthiness. Some critics were upset by a violent sex scene on a kitchen table, deemed to be either too brutally explicit . . . or too silly – with bread dough and flour filling the air and powdering their faces as they breathlessly lock loins. 

            In this one, Cora is less a femme fatale than a lonely woman who is swept up into a passionate love for a manly man who might save her from a boring life. Jessica Lange played her as easy prey to Nicholson’s intensity. Lana Turner had played it differently; her Cora is vulnerable but she is also deviously aware of her power over men, especially Frank’s kind of sap who thinks he is smart, but isn’t very.

 

            While John Garfield played Frank as a street wise but not too clever guy, Nicholson’s persona is too smart for that sort of portrayal. His character may be fooled (as in “Chinatown”) but he is too wary to be led into a trap by a scheming woman. His Frank is more in charge. He is a survivor and the film’s ending allows him to mourn Cora’s death without demanding his punishment.

            Another film that deserves mention is “The Lady From Shanghai,” (1947) in which Orson Welles as seaman “Michael O’Hara” is lured by “Elsa” (Rita Hayworth, her hair dyed blond) in a convoluted plot to kill her husband, criminal lawyer “Arthur Bannister,” played by Everett Sloane (“Mr. Bernstein” of “Citizen Kane.”) At the famous climax, the husband and wife kill each other in the hall of mirrors while the fool escapes.

            By 1981 it was permissible to allow the guilty to escape punishment. The Production Code had long since faded away. Illicit sex could occur and be shown without crashing waves or musical cues. Crime could pay.

            That year another similarly themed movie became a hit. Lawrence Kasdan consciously modeled “Body Heat” on “Double Indemnity.” He checked all the boxes: corrupt lawyer, not-too sympathetic husband-victim, complex murder scheme, and a male protagonist who is the fall guy, the easy foil of a devious, clever, manipulative, sexy female. The setting is steamy Florida and the wind blows ill. This not Chandler’s L.A. Santa Ana wind, the “Red Wind” when “. . . housewives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks . . .” but Kasdan foreshadows a similar mood. 

            In 1944, Fred MacMurray had played “Walter Neff,” a wise-cracking Insurance salesman who falls for the scent of honeysuckle and the sight of “Phyllis Diedrichson’s” ankle bracelet. Neff doesn’t need too much convincing to devise the plan to kill Phyllis’s husband.

            I always thought that Barbara Stanwyck’s blond wig was a bit much, too blatant a symbol of her character’s sleazy allure. Stanwyck’s sexiness was always more subtle than that, her looks more natural, less blowsy. But it was credible that a goof like Neff, who thinks himself such a wolf, would drool over her in that hair, red lipstick (in a black and white film) and assume that she couldn’t resist him.

            In “Body Heat,” Kasdan had William Hurt playing a barely competent lawyer, “Ned Ravine,” as the sort of dope who would fall for Kathleen Turner’s “Matty,” a role she plays as a sex kitten in heat. He was the type who would follow her scent, smash a door in to get to her, and take her on the floor of her mansion while the wind chimes whistle. It was the sort of fantasy that “Walter Neff” must have had as he ogled “Phyllis” as she stood on the balcony, clad in her beach towel and ankle bracelet.

            I am curious about movies that use legal issues as plot points. These films do that and also have lawyers as featured players who move the plot along. Often they are less interesting characters and the necessary exposition to reveal details leading to the final act are easily forgotten.

            In “Double Indemnity,” however, the legal expert role is not a lawyer, but an insurance investigator named “Keyes,” played wonderfully by Edward G. Robinson who steals all of his scenes. The legal plot point is the issue of suicide and he “solves” part of the crime by deducing that the husband could not have planned his suicide by falling off a train going five miles an hour. Later, he gets even closer to the truth by discovering that no claim had been made for the broken leg the husband suffered weeks before. This leads Keyes to focus on the wife, and to suspect a lover. It impels “Walter” to seek another fall guy, and to try to set up “Phyllis.”   

            In “Postman,” the District Attorney (Leon Ames) and defense lawyer (Hume Cronyn) are involved in moving the plot forward. The DA manages to separate the suspects by setting one against the other. This was suggested by the Ruth Snyder case, and is one tactic that is commonly used by police and prosecutors. It is easy to tell each of two suspects that the other one “rolled over” on him or her. Cain added a twist with a clever defense lawyer who is able to keep out the tainted confession that implicates the other one. But the issue poisons the relationship between the lovers and hastens their downfall.

            In “Body Heat” Ravine is a lawyer and there is a complex subplot involving an invalid will, the femme fatale’s look-alike, and a final twist: mistaken identity.

            As in many of the noir classics, these contrived clichés are overlooked as minor defects. The legend of Howard Hawks’ questioning Raymond Chandler about “whodunit and why” in “The Big Sleep” stands for this proposition: in this genre, if the characters and mood are strong enough, no one notices that the plot has more holes than a moth-eaten sweater.

            I think that the very complexity of these plots does signify something important about the genre. It is a metaphor for a world that is beyond comprehension – to the protagonist who is caught in a maze he cannot escape. And for the audience it contributes to our unease; we sense that the puzzle is too complicated. We must therefore suspend our judgment and just let the events happen, accept that they are inevitable and we cannot control them or dominate them as we might solve some standard mystery or thriller.  

            That is why the noir genre was accepted by the existentialists and why it is ripe for postmodernist interpretation.

            The stories in all of those films were written from the point of view of the male character who is to become the fall guy. In 1994, Steve Barancik wrote and John Dahl directed “The Last Seduction” which tells the story from the woman’s point of view.

            Linda Fiorentino plays “Bridget” who steals money from her crook husband “Clay” (Bill Pullman) and uses a doofus lover, “Mike,” played by Peter Berg, to kill her husband and to become her fall guy.

            Fiorentino plays the role with a powerful and gleeful sense of sexual freedom. She  revels in her contemptuous dominance over the males she encounters. She is clearly smarter and wittier than they are, fearless and intense in her willingness to risk all to gain all.  

            She has dark hair, not blond. This in itself has some sort of meaning. All those other women mentioned: Stanwyck in her wig, Hayworth dyed, Lange and both Turners — are all blondes. They are not the mythical “dumb blondes” of bad jokes, nor those of movie sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe. But in the noir genre, blondes do appear quite frequently: Lizbeth Scott (“Dead Reckoning,”) Veronica Lake (“This Gun For Hire”), Claire Trevor (“Murder, My Sweet”).  They were also rampant on the covers of paperbacks and covers of “Black Mask” and other magazines that teased the reader about the bad blondes within the pages.

            I think they represent for the males who tell the stories a certain image of womanhood that they want to convey. In the 40’s, blonde represented American wholesomeness contrary to the dark-haired exotic non-American woman. The idea was that a normal American male would assume that a blonde is innocently sexy rather than dangerously so. He easily could be duped by the clever woman. Of course, by the overuse of the meme, it has become an offensive symbol of male presumption.

            So, by 1994, Fiorentino is slim, lanky, husky voiced, but now she is more than sexually liberated, she is sexually aggressive and demanding . . .  and her hair and soul are dark.