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.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I’m desperate to go through the whole Hitchcock library like I did with the Carpenter library last summer. But considering I never quite got myself through to Ghosts of Mars (2001), it may take me a while.

Did I Like It: You get to a certain point with films where you can’t help but begin to think you know where it’s going.

But then you hit a Hitchcock film and you should really know he’s playing with you from beyond the grave and you should never feel comfortable you know what you’re getting.

You is me, in this equation, if anyone was wondering.

Hitchcock, with this subject matter, memories of Rope (1948), and with a little bit of Farley Granger to add into the mix and one (one is me) would be forgiven for thinking that this would be a tale of two different sociopaths find each other and think that murder is just one way for adult men to forge friendships.

Once it is clear that Granger is playing something of a milquetoast who quickly finds himself in over his head, the construction becomes one of a fairly typical film noir. Hitchcock sees me coming from a mile away and just as I’m confident that Guy Haines (Granger) will unfairly get overwhelmed in both matters of tennis and murder by the machinations of Bruno Antony (Walker), a flashy, borderline ridiculous sequence involving a merry-go-round later and I should have really known that the whole thing was never going to go the way I thought.

Add in just enough of the macabre humor that elevated Hitchcock on spec beyond his contemporaries, and I really, really, must make a point to follow through on that promise to go through the rest of his films.

Rope (1948)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Joan Chandler

Have I Seen it Before: No. Let me tell you a story. Bouncing around the various streaming services in which I am somehow now obligated to subscribe, I was delighted to find Peacock possessed a wide array of Hitchcock films (to say nothing of the entire run of Alfred Hitchcock Presents/The Alfred Hitchcock Hour) including this one which, if you’ll remember from the beginning of this paragraph I had never seen.

Once I had cleared out some larger projects from the pending pile and was in a place where I felt I could actually enjoy an hour and a half of uninterrupted anything, I sat down to finally watch the movie.

Only Peacock had dropped it in those intervening weeks, and if it went to some other platform, it was one for which I wasn’t already paying.

What was I to do? Obviously, I could just rent or purchase the film from Amazon Prime or iTunes, but where is the fun in that? I’m not sure if immediate access to any film ever created for nominal prices has ruined film appreciation, but it has dinged the ecstasy a bit, hasn’t it?

So I ventured out into the world and tried to find Rope (I wasn’t just going to wait for the serendipity of stumbling over it again) on DVD (kids, ask your parents). I scoured ever used DVD shop in town, with no luck. I even drifted into a used music shop in some vague hope that they might also carry DVDs as well. They did have a very thin collection of films, but the more pressing issue was the earful I got from the proprietor about how I really needed to get into vinyl again. One antiquated thing at a time, pal.

At that point, one might have forgiven me if I had indulged the Bezos in his wares and at least ordered the disc to be shipped to me. Indeed, I could have done so, and the disc would have come to me within 48 hours.

This also feels like too quick, especially when I’ve already put so much work into this quest, just on avoiding getting on the music shop’s email newsletter alone.

So then I went to Barnes & Noble. Even in the before times, when people didn’t give you funny looks when it comes up in casual conversation that your DVD/Blu Ray collection measures up to in the 700s, B & N was never the place you’d go to grab discs. They’re prices were preposterously high, and are even more so now that the second-hand market is practically giving away discs by the truckload.

But I found it. Right there. For 30% off, no less. My gasp in the middle of that store tweaked the air pressure in the building, I’m sure.

There are so many moviegoing experiences which are in a state of flux, both post-COVID and in the midst of the streaming wars (which is what started this whole crusade in the first place), that it’s hard to imagine that the singular pleasure of going out into the world to track down a specific form of entertainment may be all but extinct.

Thus, the experience of taking in the movie was an imminently pleasurable one before I even hit play.

Did I Like It: After all that, what is left to say? The film itself is weighed down by the same problem which weighed down a lot of early talky films: the feeling that we’re watching a recorded stage production. This is certainly not an early talky, by any means, but in its experimental attempts to tell a story in one (albeit deceptive) shot, it can’t help but limit itself in this way. Reportedly, both Hitchcock and Stewart agreed with this sentiment.

Ultimately, the chief triumph of the film isn’t in its plot, or its performances, or even really in its staging, which is what everyone remembers. It’s a triumph of stage lighting, as the panorama outside the apartment slowly (although improbably) descends into night. But to call a motion picture a triumph of lighting is to pointedly damn it as a stage play recorded, so the object strengths reinforce its ultimate weakness.

But as far as films that might not have worked quite as well as everyone would want, there are far worse times to be had. There was one moment where Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson) is just about to open the chest. I have my feet up. I am eating some coffee ice cream with some dark chocolate syrup. I am having the time of my life. Even when Hitchcock trips up, he does so with ambition in his heart, and he still pairs great with coffee ice cream.