I Wake Up Screaming!

This 1941 film directed by H. Bruce Humberstone has to have one of the silliest, most nonsensical titles in Hollywood history. The title has nothing to do with anything in the movie, unless we really dig toward the argument that it alludes to the idea that what happens to the main characters is rather nightmarish. Based on a novel by Steve Fisher, adapted for the screen by Dwight Taylor and starring Betty Grable, Victor Mature and Carole Landis, the film noir tells the story of a young, gorgeous waitress named Vicky Lynn (Landis) who gets discovered by an agent type named Frankie (Mature) and some other well-to-do gentlemen. She becomes a Hollywood actress and is on her way to fame until she is tragically murdered. Soon, the chief inspector is trying to frame Frankie for the murder. Yada yada yada, Betty Grable plays Vicky's sister who falls in love with Frankie and so on and so on.

Betty Grable and Carole Landis

Vicky's sister recalls seeing a scary man following her sister.

Lots of good scary man shadows in this film.

Vicky Lynn's (Landis) screen test.

After Vicky's death the film centers on Grable and Mature.

The most compelling part of the film is the reality surrounding the tragic history of Carole Landis. I read a little online and it turns out that she, though beautiful and not untalented, made quite a few movies, but her career quickly faded with a cancelled Twentieth Century-Fox contract in the mid-forties and in 1948 she ended her own life at the age of twenty-nine. Eerily enough, her last film was entitled Noose.

The Perfect Double Feature

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity

I love it when things just magically work out.  Coming back to school, having to change my schedule around, being ill, sleeping in and missing what I consider to be my most important class?  Not fun.  

However, last night I caught Double Indemnity (1944) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) back to back thanks to my Netflix account and I couldn't have chosen a much better pairing of films.  Let me get this out in the open: I really like Woody Allen movies.  Clearly, not all are created equal and I don't like All of them, but generally speaking, the ones I do like, I Really enjoy.  The characters are clever and witty and odd, and the women have souls and not necessarily clothing that is there solely to comment on the size of their breasts and so forth.  I also like a film noir now and again.  I love the shadows in old black and white films and the glamorous femme fatales.  They're usually sort of melodramatic and cheesy, but fun, and sometimes they happen to be really good movies.

"Shut up, Baby." Mmm, so romantic!!

My two little complaints about Double Indemnity are small and silly. Firstly, Humphrey Bogart and Orson Welles are my favored noir boys.  I'm not much for Glenn Ford and Fred MacMurray sort of leaves me bored.  What can I say?  The charisma of the male star can win or lose me on a film.  Does this make me shallow?  If so, all I can say is: I don't care. Secondly, Barbara Stanwyck should have stayed a brunette.  These opinions entered,  still an enjoyable picture involving a murderous woman, and a man who goes weak for her and makes a lot of bad choices.  Yay!

This film links well with Manhattan Murder Mystery because, no kidding, within about the first twenty minutes, the main characters, Larry and Carol (played by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) go see Double Indemnity at a movie theatre in New York City.  When the couple returns home to their apartment, they bump into neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. House who live down the hall.  The wife invites them in for coffee.  They are an idyllically sweet, happy, older couple.  Larry and Carol leave and Bam!, the next day, Mrs. House has died of a heart attack.  The perhaps over-imaginative Carol thinks Mr. House acts much too casually about the death of his wife and is convinced that he murdered her.  Larry (who is very much the Woody Allen character he often plays...but of course, this rarely gets old with me) thinks Carol is crazy, until such and such happens.  Throw in Alan Alda, Anjelica Huston, Joy Behar* and that guy who used to play the bad guy on Alias**, and it's a great big, 'Woody Allen likes noir and good jazz and he and Diane are adorable'-Party.***  What's not to love?

*My grandma loves The View.

**Ron Rifkin.  I used to love Alias.

***Pardon my lazy punctuation.

The Third Man

"The Third Man" is possibly the best film noir ever made.  I've seen a nice amount of Humphrey Bogart movies.  I've seen Gilda, I've seen some film noirs.  Don't ask how many.  I don't know.

I love my Bogie but this film?  The way it looks and feels, the zither music by Anton Karas, the adorable rogue character played by Orson Welles.  Something about this film just really sets it apart.  I'm never very good at analyzing why I like something so much.  Maybe it's the way Vienna looks so real...because it is real.  So many old films are on sound stages that look like sound stages.  Post-war Vienna grounds everything in reality, a bit.  It's just marvelous.  I highly recommend.