Most Ambiguous Movie Endings, Ray Milland: so suave & dangerous

"Blade Runner" (Director's Cut, 1992): Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi noir was a rather cut-and-dried affair when first released in 1982. Yet that all changed when he revisited the film for 1992's "Director's Cut," which immediately became the definitive version of the film. While its most obvious alteration was the removal of Harrison Ford's awkward narration, the inclusion of a sequence in which Ford's cyborg-hunting cop Deckard dreams of a unicorn — especially when matched with an existing closing moment involving origami — famously intimates that the detective himself might, in fact, be a machine.

"Mulholland Drive" (2001): David Lynch's neo-noir Hollywood satire is a deliriously surreal head trip about an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) who arrives in L.A. and, alongside a beautiful amnesiac (Laura Harring), finds herself at the center of a twisty-turny mystery. As per usual, Lynch's film is a non-linear tumble down the rabbit hole, and ends with a flurry of what's-going-on action that, like the best ambiguous finales, leaves one trying to untangle its knotty enigmas even after it's over. Source: www.esquire.com

Jean-Pierre Chartier – the other French critic who used the term “film noir” – wrote 'Americans Also Make Noir Films for La Révue du Cinéma' in November of 1946. In that article he discusses three films: “Murder My Sweet,” “Double Indemnity” and “The Lost Weekend.” Here we have one of the legendary postwar French critics specifically citing “The Lost Weekend” as a “noir” and yet this film has been ignored by the noirists. In the pantheon of American so-called film noirs, “The Lost Weekend” could be known as “The Lost Noir.”

“The Lost Weekend” isn’t listed in 'Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference of the American Style'. In 'A Panorama of American Film Noir,' Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton mention “The Lost Weekend” as “having been classified, somewhat superficially, as belonging to the noir genre, doubtless because of the hospital scenes and the description of delirium tremens. Strangeness and crime, however, were absent from it, and the psychology of the drunk offered one of the most classic examples there are of the all-powerfulness of a rudimentary desire.”

On “The Lost Weekend,” Chartier writes, “The impressions of insanity, of a senseless void, left by the drama of a young man in the grip of singular addiction, makes ‘The Lost Weekend’ one of the most depressing films I have ever seen. Certainly a charming young lady helps our alcoholic hero sober up and permits the film to end with a kiss. But the impression of extreme despair persists despite this upbeat ending.” While Chartier noticed the kiss, he should have been watching the gun. Near the end of the film, the alcoholic – who has swapped the woman’s coat for a gun at a pawnshop – has the gun in the bathroom sink where he was going to blow his brains out.

The coat is not a minor item. It symbolizes their relationship. At the end of the film he doesn’t give the gun to the woman to retrieve the coat. He puts the gun in his pocket. And there it stays.

And there it will stay because he’s doomed. It’s only a matter of time and he knows it. And if the audience is paying attention, they know it too. There is no redemption here and there is nothing ambiguous about it because he makes the choice to keep the gun and to blow his brains out and find the darkness. That “The Lost Weekend” harks back to the film noirs of poetic realism is obvious to anyone familiar with “La Bête Humaine” or “Les Bas-fonds.” Wilder insisted on shooting on location for the exterior shots in New York City, going so far as to build a box to hide the camera from pedestrians. Wilder insisted on the “realism” of the film and Don Burnam’s search for an open pawnshop on Yom Kippur – among other scenes – adds that dimension to the film. Source: www.williamahearn.com

Nick Beal’s guiding hand over Hanson’s fate is given an extra nudge from the surefooted presence of Audrey Totter, who plays a prostitute who is circling the drain when she encounters the icy Ray Milland character one fog-bound night. Soon ensconced in a surreally plush apartment, Beal reveals that he knows all about her sorry history. Swathed in ermine with her name embroidered inside it, the blowsy blonde asks Beal if she has to commit murder to earn all this, to which he replies, “No, reform work. At a boys club.” Totter, who has described her experience on this film as among the best experiences of her career, described the film as one designed “to stimulate your imagination.”

Audrey Totter, who described the often difficult director John Farrow as “very good” thought her co-star Ray Milland as “ so sweet. He was great in that part. He was very impressive as the devil in modern times. He was so suave and smooth, but dangerous. He was a very good actor.” Totter, who is quite beguiling and touching in her degradation and her worldly exaltation, apparently loved the movie, though she felt that the original title -“The Dark Circle”- suited it better than the criminal implications evoked by "Alias Nick Beal." Source: moviemorlocks.com

Ray Milland's marital existence has been as turbulent as his screen career. Married to Marina Muriel Weber, his connubial life has run from moments of ecstatic joy to the depths of utter despair and unhappiness. Ray is subject to temperamental fits, he runs hot and cold. The Millands have separated three times. It's never [been] a separation over waning love. The Millands are mad about each other, proving the old bromidic line about 'true love never runs smooth.' All dramatic actors at one time or another, when interviewed, will admit that they would like to play 'Hamlet.' Ray is different - When I asked him what sort of part he would like to do next he said: 'Death Takes a Holiday.' -Milton Mohr for Screenland magazine, 1947

Scandals of Classic Hollywood, "The World Is My Mistress" by Ray Milland

"Scandals of Classic Hollywood," Anne Helen Petersen's first book, chronicles the making and unmaking of several leading lights from the height to the eclipse of the studio era. It's structured as a series of star mini-biographies, but when recounting the familiar railroading of Fatty Arbuckle or the turbulent career of Judy Garland, Petersen is less interested in compiling a history of Hollywood's juiciest scandals than in detailing how stars and their studio fixers have managed ruptures to their carefully pruned and highly valuable image. Collecting fabricated anecdote and "well-circulated legend" along with biographical fact, "Scandals" is an episodic but exhaustive study of the Hollywood studio system that puts public relations on equal footing with film aesthetics and makes a strong case that narratives of stardom can be more tragic, ironic and savagely entertaining than the movies that prop them up.

In particularly strong chapters on Clara Bow, Dorothy Dandridge, Jean Harlow and Mae West, Petersen is attuned to the ways the celebrity female body can serve as an unwitting battleground for societal discomfort about sex. Contemporary tabloids make it clear that not much has changed. Source: www.latimes.com

Grace Kelly's reputation for sleeping with any man who might further her career was deserved, since she had countless affairs with men married and unmarried. She slept with Bing Crosby while his wife was dying of cancer, meeting for sex at the pool house of his next door neighbor Alan Ladd. Her affair with Ray Milland, Hollywood's most-married man, was a major scandal. William Holden was also married when she slept with him, and Gene Lyon tried to have his marriage annulled during their affair. She slept with Spencer Tracy while he was married to his wife Louise and having his affair with Katharine Hepburn. She slept with Aly Khan and allegedly had affairs with directors Fred Zinnemann and Alfred Hitchcock.

Confidential magazine described her as "the most dangerous dame in the movies today." Her father and brother were so upset about the magazine's coverage that they stalked into the offices and beat up two of the editors. The Mogambo crew escaped Kenya unscathed except for Gable's costar Ava Gardner, who discovered that she was pregnant during the African shoot. When the crew moved on to London an abortion was arranged for Gardner.

At the time Gable was completing Mogambo, his Never Let Me Go was such a flop that Dore Schary thought about not re-signing him. Gable wanted not only an extension but for the first time wanted a percentage of his films' profits. Common now, percentage deals were never done in the 1950s. Schary and Nick Schenck were adamant that no MGM actor would set that precedent, knowing the studio system in place since the 1920s would be gone. Schary offered Gable a two-year extension, banking on Never Let Me Go's failure to sway Gable, but Gable told them they "could take their money, their studio, their cameras and lighting equipment and shove it up their asses."

When Mogambo earned raves Schary increased his offer, but Gable refused to re-sign. He left MGM in March 1954 after 51 films, but Schary was comforted that no actor had a percentage deal. Everything MGM was removed from Gable's life, except Grace Kelly. He rekindled his affair with Kelly, meeting at her Bel Air Hotel bungalow. She was also sleeping with Bing Crosby and William Holden at the time. -"The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine" (2004) by E. J. Fleming

In September 1932, Ray Milland married Muriel Weber, and they remained together for 54 years until his death in 1986. There was a whiff of scandal in 1954 when Milland was rumoured to have had an affair with his co-star in 'Dial M for Murder', Grace Kelly, who was notorious for bedding her leading men. Apart from that, the Millands led a remarkably quiet life, eschewing the normal Hollywood party scene, staying home and raising son, Daniel, and adopted daughter, Victoria. When the Second World War began, Milland was rejected when he tried to enlist in the armed forces due to an injured hand. He was an enthusiastic amateur pilot and he worked as a civilian flight instructor for the Army, as well as touring with a United Service Organisation (USO) South Pacific troupe in 1944. In 1976 he published his autobiography, "Wide-Eyed in Babylon", a self-deprecating account of his life to date. Source: www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com

"The World Is My Mistress" by Ray Milland: "Like everyone, I too have searched for something most of my life. Today I have found it. Today I am a peaceful man. I am no longer afraid of the world. People who were born sensitive and shy will especially understand this admission. I have learned how to live with myself. Therein lies [my] salvation. I'm afraid each individual has to seek out his own solution. We are what we are because - People think and feel because of luck, fate, background, breeding, environment. There is still a reason why each of us fits into his own particular pattern. And because of this reason, we are loved or loathed... Nostalgia can be the most harrowing experience of all. Maybe you go to a party, a woman walks by... Suddenly her perfume catches you. In a split second you can be rendered physically ill, or transported into near ecstasy. I vividly recall my first Hollywood party - I was new, unknown, of friends and dollars I had precious few. Here I was mingling with the great stars. I became aware that salaries and the box-office actually had something to do with people and nothing to do with human qualities." -Screenland magazine, 1954

Retro Cinema: Dial M for Murder, Ray Milland (Film Progression) video

Retro Cinema screening series Canal Place, Kenner Grand, Covington Movie Tavern, Slidell Grand. The local theaters continue their new screening series focusing on Hollywood classics, which for the next few weeks will double as a tribute to master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. This week: Hitchcock's 1954 classic "Dial M for Murder 3D" (7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 7-8), starring Grace Kelly and Ray Milland. Coming up: "Vertigo" (Oct. 14-15), "Rear Window" (Oct. 21-22) and "Psycho" (Oct. 28-29). Tickets available at the websites and box offices of participating theaters. Source: www.nola.com

"Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement." -Alfred Hitchcock

As Tania Modleski has pointed out, Grace Kelly’s “perfection” in Rear Window, as in Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief (1955), is in itself enough to visit male anger upon her. Margot’s perfect beauty is on display in Dial M for Murder, whose events will render her by the last scene exquisitely drab.

She makes an appearance early in the film in a closely fitted red gown with long, peek-a-boo lace sleeves. This is the film’s only costume designed specifically for Kelly (by Moss Mabry) – as for Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960), the rest are off the rack. In this scene Margot realizes fully the visual power first wielded by another Hitchcock model, Daisy (June Tripp) in The Lodger (1926). While Daisy’s diegetic profession is modeling, Margot is without profession – but is played by an accomplished fashion model whose profession deploys an obvious theatricality that often destabilizes conventional gender roles; precisely her ability to model without modeling, achieving, like Cary Grant, perfect photogeneity through posture and line.

Ray Milland as her husband perfectly matches Kelly’s patrician quality, playing Hitchcock’s typically smooth villain, reminiscent of Brandon (John Dall) in Rope (1948) or Vandamm (James Mason) in North by Northwest, but also reeking faintly of the sleazy arrivisme of Jack Favell (George Sanders) in Rebecca.

Despite the presence of marquee stars Ray Milland and Grace Kelly, Hitchcock sometimes gave the impression that Dial M for Murder was a potboiler, and that the ponderousness of 3-D filming relegated it to minor status from the start. Yet he told Truffaut that he had wanted to “emphasize the theatrical aspects,” and his comments reveal definite pride in what he was able to accomplish, however imperfect the results had often been. “All of the action… takes place in a living room,” he said, “but that doesn’t matter. I could just as well have shot the whole film in a telephone booth. You might say that a filmmaker can use a telephone booth pretty much in the same way a novelist uses a blank piece of paper.”

Tony’s desperate impatience and need to control his agitation become ours, and it suddenly feels a matter of the greatest urgency that Tony solve the problem facing us. Hitchcock’s mammoth close-up of Tony’s finger dialing the number once the old man has cleared the way highlights the fact that this is a moment of moral choice for the viewer as well. It is the point of no return. The viewer collaborates with Tony by willing his finger forward in a kind of blank exhilaration.

In what is perhaps the most moving and edifying paragraph on the challenge of Hitchcockian morality that any critic has yet given us, William Rothman ushers us into the real mystery at the heart of all of the director’s work: Dial M for Murder, like every Hitchcock film, presents itself to us as a mystery, akin to the mystery of murder and the mystery of love. It declares itself to be no more mysterious, but also no less, than we are to ourselves.

Its mystery is the mystery of our own being as creatures who are fated to be born, to love, to kill, to create, to destroy, and to die in a world in which we are at every moment alone even as we are joined in a human community that knows no tangible sign, a world we did not create and yet for which we are responsible. Or we might say that a film is made and viewed and a life is lived; yet both pass before us like dreams. -"A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock" (2011) by Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague




Ray Milland - Film Progression video

New Femme Fatales: Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) in David Fincher's "Gone Girl"

Happy Anniversary, Janis Carter!

Glenn Ford was always a good fit for the role of a seemingly normal guy with rage boiling inside. There’s something just a little off about him, a grumpy discontent that belies that decent, working man’s face. Janis Carter only had a short career in films before she retired to become a socialite in the mid-fifties, but during her brief time in the city of sin she etched out a notable place among the bad girls. While some femme fatales are misunderstood, even sympathetic, Carter excelled at playing women who seem twisted, maybe even perverted.

Late in Framed, she commits a brutal murder, but watch her as she’s disposing of the body and you’ll notice there’s a little smile that creeps onto her face, a rush at being this bad. It can’t help but remind you of her brilliant turn as the deranged femme in Night Editor. Paula is a little more sane than that character—which isn’t difficult since that character was totally nuts—but she’s still a nasty piece of business. Carter can put this kind of unbalanced wacko across because she has charm to burn. She isn’t just good looking; she has a charisma that pulls you in—usually at your own peril. Source: thenighteditor.blogspot.com

Flawlessly coiffed, impeccably dressed, she floats onto the screen in the dim half-light of a smoky nightclub or a foggy back alley. As she moves across the frame, we catch a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror or a shop window. She is, of course, the femme fatale—a recurring fixture of 1940s film noir and its offshoots. As poised as she is pitiless, as charming as she is calculating, the femme fatale expertly balances her image and her true intentions to manipulate a tangle of hapless husbands, lovers, and admirers. Dizzyingly, dazzlingly dangerous, she’s the picture of traditional feminine elegance—but she did real violence, both symbolic and literal, to the institution of marriage.

"My husband keeps me on a leash so tight I can’t breathe," Phyllis Dietrichson, the iconic femme fatale in Billy Wilder’s 1944 classic Double Indemnity, famously complained-a familiar schema, and it recurs in dozens of noirs from the period: in the 1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice, the 1947 The Paradine Case, the 1948 The Lady from Shanghai, and the 1949 Too Late for Tears. The punishment that Phyllis Dietrichson meted out to her husband in Double Indemnity in 1944 was harsh, but there was some sense in which it fit his crime. He was controlling, stifling, all-too-present—so Phyllis got rid of him. But what Nick wants from Amy—and what modern sexism wants from women—is altogether different.

Seventy years after the release of Double Indemnity, David Fincher’s new thriller, Gone Girl, presents itself as one of these. The film is an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, and its protagonist, Amy Dunne, is a new kind of femme fatale, a reaction to a new kind of patriarchy. Where sexism once manifested itself straightforwardly, it has since evolved into a subtler affair. Modern patriarchy is evasive, shifty, slimily manipulative, and it requires a different sort of resistance. An homage to its dark roots, Gone Girl is cynical and atmospheric, a jumble of infidelities, conflicting narratives, and abrupt police interrogations.

The most powerful scene in Gone Girl takes place when Amy recounts the tale of Nick’s betrayal to a fellow guest at the rural motel where she’s been playing fugitive. She recalls how he performed the same touching gesture with his student that he once performed with her, gently wiping snow off the girl’s lips before he kissed her. The poignancy of Amy’s confession cuts through all her coldness, all her calculations, highlighting the tender, emotional core of the whole convoluted drama: on the one hand, Nick’s self-serving apathy; on the other, Amy’s warped, ineffectual caring.

Amy, neo-femme-fatale that she is, holds Nick accountable. And, in the grand tradition of noir retribution, Nick’s punishment is perversely suited to his crimes. He wants to evade responsibility, to wash his hands of the mess he’s made of his marriage—so Amy ensures that the damned spot won’t come out. Rather than murdering him, she forces him to stick around and own up to his misdeeds—on television, in front of a national audience. “He needed to learn…. Grown-ups pay. Grown-ups suffer consequences,” she says, coolly. Phyllis Dietrich killed her husband and implicated herself. Amy Dunne “kills herself”—and implicates her husband. And, in so doing, she turns the Cool Girl trope on its sorry head. “I’m not a quitter,” she tells Nick at the end of the movie. “I’ve killed for you. Who else can say that? You think you would be happy with a nice Midwestern girl? …I’m it, baby.” Source: www.newrepublic.com

Happy Anniversary, Carole Lombard!

Happy Anniversary, Carole Lombard! (born Jane Alice Peters; October 6, 1908 - January 18, 1942)

Carole Lombard counted among her lovers in the early Paramount days a young scriptwriter named Preston Sturges, who had done the screenplay for one of her pictures "Fast and Loose" (1930). The highly intelligent, well-to-do, 10-years-older Sturges fit Lombard's bill, as did fading publishing mogul Horace Liveright with whom she had a short liaison before Paramount dismissed him.

Sparks flew between Carole Lombard and William Powell from the first rehearsals of "Man of the World" (1931) and a healthy infatuation catapulted them to the nearest bedroom. He was almost 40; she was 22 playing the field by night and determined not to marry. Lombard also acquired another business partner, Myron Selznick, because he represented William Powell. The first thing Selznick did was to solidify Lombard's deal at Paramount.

Lombard portrayed a hooker in a risqué Pre-Code drama at the Columbia Studios on nearby Gower Street, "Virtue" (1932), which co-starred Mayo Methot who would meet and marry Humphrey Bogart a few years later.

Back within the walls of Paramount, Lombard portrayed a librarian in a romance called "No Man of Her Own" (1932) opposite MGM's 31-year-old sensation Clark Gable. Gable's vibe at this early point was enacting a growling tough guy. It was his first picture after making MGM's sensational "Red Dust" with Jean Harlow, the blonde bombshell who had stolen Howard Hughes from Lombard. -"Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3" (2013) by Robert Matzen

"Her story is a simple one and must be simply told. For the truth is that she was a very simple woman for all her success and her love affairs and her final great love and marriage. They were extraneous. Her true life was within. She was a lusty, faulty, rowdy, two-fisted, terrific dame, who knew all there was to know about life and love and temptation, and that is why it is important to understand her laughter. The philosophy of her life was laughter. You see, that was her secret, the thing she seldom talked about. She believed that laughter bubbled up from the heart that was filled with faith. She had known black despair and heartbreak. She believed that you had to win through them and believe that good would triumph, that right made might, and thus that laughter was an outward sign of an inward grace." - Adela Rogers St. Johns on Carole Lombard

“We called her The Profane Angel because she looked like an angel but she swore like a sailor. She was the only woman I ever knew who could tell a dirty story without losing her femininity.” -Mitchell Leisen on Carole Lombard

“She was so alive, modern, frank, and natural that she stands out like a beacon on a lightship in this odd place called Hollywood.” -Barbara Stanwyck on Carole Lombard

"You can trust that little screwball with your life or your hopes or your weaknesses, and she wouldn’t even know how to think about letting you down.” -Clark Gable on Carole Lombard

"She brought great joy to all who knew her and to millions who knew her only as a great artist… She is and always will be a star, one we shall never forget, nor cease to be grateful to.” -President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Carole Lombard

"There were many things about Carole that were oh-boy-out-of-this-world wonderful. She was class. She was a good actress, and she always looked great. More important, she had a lot of heart. No wonder Clark Gable adored her so. When I’m weighing a particularly difficult decision, sometimes I ask myself what Carole would have said, and it helps." - Lucille Ball on Carole Lombard

“I’ll work a few more years, and then I want a family. I’ll let Pa be the star, and I’ll stay home, darn the socks and look after the kids.” - Carole Lombard

"I love everything I do. I’m immensely interested in and enthusiastic in everything I do, everything. No matter what it is I’m doing, no matter how trivial, it isn’t trivial to me. I give it all I got and love it. I love living. I love life. Eating, sleeping, waking up again, skeet-shooting, sitting around an old barn doing nothing, my work, taking a bath, talking my ears off, the little things, the big things, the simplest things, the most complicated things—I get a kick out of everything I do while I’m doing it. If I don’t love what I’m doing I don’t do it. But if I have to do something I’m not nuts about now and then, as who doesn’t, I do it and get it over with. I never anticipate trouble. I never worry, never fret. I can’t duck issues. Ducking issues causes more grief than the issues themselves ever do. I never sit around and clutch my head and moan, ‘I have to do so-and-so, alas Lo, the poor Lombard!’—I just say, ‘Let’s do it’ or ‘Okay, let’s go!’—and it’s done and there’s nothing to it” — Carole Lombard, 1938

"Cynicism, at best, is only mental and spiritual indigestion. I made up my mind to avoid it by cultivating an inner happiness." — Carole Lombard.

"A realization knocked Carole over and she couldn't resist it. Gable was a big kid, a lot like she was a big gee-whiz kid herself. He liked toys, the simplest guy things. Gable's hard life, and his struggles, had led to appreciation. Gable had never seen anyone like her - a dame this naturally energetic, naturally up." "She laughed all the time," said director Delmer Daves, and soon Gable was laughing right along with her. Lombard was damaged goods, and so was Gable, but together they made one spectacular package and after the 1936 Mayfair Ball they became an item." -Robert Matzen

Elaine Barrymore (wife of John) perhaps said it best, “Clark adored her. She was the light in his eyes. He admitted to me that he had always loved the company of ladies and he knew he had a reputation of being a ladies man, but with her it was different. He really was in love. To have her taken from him was like someone ripped out his soul. I saw him periodically for years afterward. The light in his eyes was gone. Even when he smiled. That light never returned.” Source: dearmrgable.com