Burt Lancaster noir

A double bill of Burt Lancaster over the last couple of days; Brute Force and Criss Cross. Both are unashamed B-movies, but that's fine because I'm an unashamed B-movie lover; they're tightly-written, economically characterised, and heavy on the dialogue as opposed to the art and landscape shots. Where a modern feature will wend its way for two hours or more, a B-movie will typically clock in at ninety minutes or less, and cram in more value into the bargain. Lancaster at this stage of his career was undoubtedly decorative, and both films' black and white cinematography makes the most of the strong planes of his face, but I found "Criss Cross" the more satisfying picture of the two.

"Brute Force" is a rain-lashed, dark and violent — amazingly so for the era — prison movie, whose tight, effective formula is weakened by periodic spasms of manipulation. When it comes to making a moral point, the film isn't always best at judging when to lay off and let the implication work for itself, alas. Still, by and large it's powerful stuff, overseen by the seemingly omniscient menace of Hume Cronyn as Captain Munsey as chief prison guard.

Cronyn draws the eye — and ear — from his first appearance alongside Burt Lancaster; Munsey is probably the most intelligent character on the set (always a hazard for me, alas, especially when coupled to someone physically small enough for me to identify with), and he seems to anticipate and manipulate everything the others do, from his nominal superiors on the staff to the prisoners who hate him. Sympathy for the devil is often a good thing in a story, since it adds greater depth to the interaction of the characters, but in Hollywood productions it tends to be a drawback, since the very traits that attract me tend to be those the studios use as a shorthand for Un-American evil and expect to invoke unambiguous revulsion...

Anyway, I found the film recommendable, but lacking in greatness. The irony of the ending, where lack of communication causes one escape party's dying gesture to foil that of the other, is highly effective, for example; but the lecturing voice-over from the doctor that follows, apparently in order to ensure that the viewers are not tempted to try this at home, undermines its impact. If they'd just left it at "Why do they try?", that would have been fine — but as on other occasions, the script just has to push it that little bit further in order to make sure the moral point is clear, and undercuts itself in the process.

"Criss Cross" has no more ambition to high art than "Brute Force", with the exception of its tricksy flashback structure (the story starts in the middle and then jumps back to a voice-over-backed account of how it got there); but I felt it was more successful in achieving its modest aims without, as it were, over-egging the pudding.

Yvonne de Carlo features again, this time as weak, greedy Anna whose sleepy, almost feline looks hold Lancaster's Steve Thompson fascinated. (The scene in which she appears in slacks, incidentally, only goes to reinforce my prejudice that these garments fail to flatter even a beautiful woman — while the scene where she tries to negotiate San Francisco's hills in high heels make one wonder how the female population ever survived the dictates of fashion!) She has far more to deal with here than in "Brute Force", character-wise, and makes far more of her part: Anna is fatal to the men who love her, but she doesn't mean harm, as such. It's just that her priorities are always, ultimately, swayed by survival when her own welfare is at stake.

Burt Lancaster is again impressive, although there are a few scenes here when his grin comes across as ill-at-ease. His reactions in the hospital scene, however — for example — are a tour de force. The shading of that face is a powerful instrument, and both actor and director know precisely how to use it.

And again, the film boasts an impressive villain, Dan Duryea, although here he does not overbalance the picture. This is film noir. We know it's almost certainly going to end badly — for somebody, and probably the hero. But what we don't anticipate is in just what way. Arguably, it's a happy ending...

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Finished the final volume of La Dame de Monsoreau this morning — an unexpectedly downbeat and bloody ending to what had seemed a lighthearted tale of courtly adultery. It's unfortunate that I managed to lose Volume I before having followed the lovers beyond their first meeting, and re-encountered Saint-Luc in the person of a reckless and happily-married gallant after having left him apparently doomed — in other words, there's a gaping hole in my comprehension of the plot — but since I find that a copy exists on Project Gutenberg, I'm theoretically in a position to catch up with what I missed. Whether this will ever happen or not, of course, is another matter.

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I think Annabel is dead, or dying.

She wouldn't come out when I brought them the navel of an orange to eat this evening, although I could see her breathing, or when I offered the rats yoghurt drops later tonight, although she had moved to the back of the bedchamber. Now she has moved to the front again, but is still all curled up with her fur on end, and showing no interest in food or drink — I don't know if she is even alive, or if the others are pushing her body around to get in and out of bed.

Tomorrow morning I'll have to clean out the cage and find out...