The Amazing Mr. X (1948)

Director: Bernard Vorhaus

Cast: Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell, Richard Carlson

Have I Seen It Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: It’s so rare that a film noir rolls so slowly in its opening half, only to mostly recover in its second, that I’m tempted to give the film a recommendation on that criteria alone.

When the film is about the glassy-eyed widow (Bari) who hears voices coming in from the coast, the film is so deeply cliché and boring that I was struck only by the behavior of audience members around me. Cell phones went off with impunity. One guy snored like a jackhammer through most of the film. I’d be more mad at him if I was more thoroughly convinced I, too, didn’t fall asleep for a stretch. Scorsese recently complained about movie audiences, and I’m starting to see where he’s coming from.

When Alexis (Bey) really turns on his wares to keep his con going, the film veers into deeply embarrassing territory. I can’t really fathom any sort of optical effects that would still work after nearly eighty years, but I’m also having a bit of a hard time imagining that anyone saw the various phantoms Alexis creates and not laugh at any point in history. Grafting such video effects on to a noir drains a lot of the charm that even the cheaper entries in the genre can offer.

But then the film offers a fairly interesting twist, and does so at exactly the right time. What was a silly trifle for so long becomes an engrossing cat and mouse game that—would this even be a spoiler—results in the shifty participants in the plot getting their just desserts, and just an inch of redemption moments before it would have been too late. The film thankfully doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to get you to believe its more groan-worthy moments, and doesn’t let up on the tension until the end. That may be all I need from noir. Your mileage may vary.

Side Street (1949)

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Jean Hagen

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: You’ve seen one b-noir film (or even more than a few of the a-list examples in the genre), you’ve probably seen them all. Hapless Regular Joe* wanders into a situation where a “whole lotta dough” is his for the taking. Figuring “Hey, why can’t a lucky break come my way? Why shouldn’t it?” he either takes the money outright or agrees to the scheme at hand which is the only imaginable obstacle between him and that money.

Things don’t work out. Often because a dame (see that footnote) is either too wise to be good or too good to be wise. Mix. Repeat.

This sounds like I’m about to complain that Side Street is a little humdrum. It might be. Even at 82 minutes, it feels like there may be ten minutes to cut out of the thing in the middle. There are some Side Streets featured in the film, but not nearly enough to prevent me from wanting to suggest a different title. I would really prefer the film to at least be called Side Streets (plural), but alas I wasn’t working for MGM’s publicity department in the 1940s.

But it has more than enough going for it to make one not resentful for the time spent viewing. I’m having a hard time these days not enjoying any film in black and white, even if it is a little weighed down by voice over narration. That might once again qualify as damning with faint ambivalence. The action in the film’s final minutes is quite good, but the big recommending factor? While he’ll be remembered for Strangers on a Train (1951) or even Rope (1948), I’m struggling to think of another actor who is more capable of communicating simmering guilt with a simultaneously hangdog and twitchy expression than Farley Granger. The man was built for noir.

*It is never a Hapless Regular Jane, because A) Women are incapable of haplessness in these films, unless they’re freshly (or about to be) murdered. B) They have a different role to play in these stories.