By Theresa Rodewald.
There is a lot of dark, a lot of noir to be found in Bologna after all….”
Bologna in late June is terracotta porticos, scorching sun and sweat. A city in dusty pastel colours, full of medieval remnants, with the world’s oldest university. Quite possibly the opposite of noir. But hidden away between the pasta places and the ice cream shops are cinemas – one quite literally under the Piazza Maggiore, the main square. And for 38 years now, late June sees the arrival of people who like to lurk in the dark: cinema lovers, restaurateurs, archivists. During the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, they fill the Piazzetta in front of the Cineteca di Bologna, they form queues that span several blocks – just to watch newly restored or seldomly screened gems of cinema history. There is a lot of dark, a lot of noir to be found in Bologna after all.
Here are three gems to add to your watchlist – two of them are noir, one of them is brightly-coloured, lovely and a bit of a palate cleanser.
Trauma on the Surface and in the Shadows: Act of Violence (1948, Fred Zinnemann)
Edith Enley (Janet Leight) can’t understand why her husband Frank (Van Heflin) is so adamantly opposed to wearing his army jacket on an upcoming fishing trip. It’s warm, it’s durable – and he can’t stand the sight of it. Frank is a model citizen, a pillar of his community, a war hero. Or is he? Joe Parson (Robert Ryan) doesn’t think so. Joe has been biding his time, waiting for a sign that points him toward Frank. When he gets it, there is only one thing on his mind: to hunt Frank down, to kill him. Joe was in the war too – but he isn’t a model citizen. Joe is mentally unstable, he has a limb, he is a psychotic killer. Or is he?
The film opens in New York with Joe who, in pursuit of Frank, catches the next Greyhound bus to California. While Joe is definitely both unstable and violent, he is also hurting – both physically and emotionally. Robert Ryan plays the character with equal parts obsession and vulnerability – not your regular psychotic killer at all. And Frank? He hates his army jacket because it reminds him of a secret he is ashamed to even think about, something he thought he’s left behind. In the end, Frank’s secret is just really sad – it has to do with cracking under pressure with self-delusion and self-preservation. The film frequently shifts focus from Joe to Frank and back again – we first feel for one of them, then for the other. There are no villains in this story, except maybe those who are hungry for money, eager to profit from the pain of others.
As a genre, film noir mirrors the trauma of World War II. Most of its films, however, do so between the lines – the aftermath of war lurks in the shadows, is present the nihilism of the storylines, the violence of the male protagonists. Act of Violence brings this trauma to the surface. Joe‘s obsessive quest for revenge, Frank‘s crushing sense of guilt – both go back to their experience as prisoners of war in Germany. Joe and Frank are caught in patterns of trauma, patterns established during captivity. The war has never left them.
This is a perfect noir, the genre at its best. Also, Act of Violence does not even need a femme fatale. Frank and Joe direct their suffering and rage at each other and the film sees no need to vilify or debase its female characters. Yes, they are relegated to the edges of the narrative but they are also relatively complex, with their own fears and desires. And should you still be undecided whether to hunt this movie down like Joe hunts Frank: the cast includes not just Robert Ryan and Van Heflin but also Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, Phyllis Thaxter and Barry Kroeger. The absolutely stunning cinematography is by Robert Surtees who would later film classics such as Ben Hur (1959) and The Sting (1973). So, go on, watch it!
Femme Fatale With a Twist: Kivnna utan ansikte (1947, Gustaf Molander; see top image)
Written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Gustaf Molander – whose career spans four exciting decades of Swedish cinema – this movie takes the psycho-sexual aspect of noir and runs with it. The trappings of the formula are all present and accounted for: flashback structure and disjointed narrative, voice-over, dramatic lighting with plenty of shadows, tightly framed images and a femme fatale with seemingly supernatural erotic powers.
Martin (Alf Kjellin) is married to Frida (Anita Björk) but he does not like her very much. He leaves all parental duties to Frida, treats her either with thinly vailed disdain or open hostility and when she is about to break, he buys her flowers and gaslights her into thinking she is too sensitive. In a Stockholm flower shop, he meets Rut (Gunn Wållgren) and is immediately enthralled by her. Rut is beautiful, coquettish, forward – good for a good time. Martin and Rut embark on an affair that will lead to Martin ditching not just army service (a felony, by the way) but also his family. From the sidelines, Martin’s friend, the film’s narrator, Ragnar (Sting Olin) watches the drama unfold.
There is understanding of and empathy for Rut that exceeds all expectations of noir, that undermines and reassembles the genre – this film is of its time and yet transcends it.”
Kinna utan ansikte seems to say: yes, Martin is awful, he is abusive, aggressive, openly misogynistic – but he can’t help it. He’s under Rut’s spell after all! But as the plot unfolds, Stockholm becomes darker and dingier and more miserable by the second. And while Rut remains coquettish, remains a man-eater, we slowly begin to notice something – something behind Rut’s eyes, something that is masked by her sexual voraciousness, something dark and sad. Simultaneously, Martin’s hatred towards his lover becomes more and more vicious, harder and harder to stand, to excuse, to overlook. Maybe Rut is the one who can’t help herself, who in fact needs support and doesn’t get it. There is a scene where she stabs Martin’s hand with a fork and it doesn’t feel crazy at all, it feels like self-defence. It’s over pretty quickly, though.
Saying more would be spoiling the movie but here is a twist to Rut’s character, to her psychology and her past. It’s a twist that makes clear who the fatal character really is (and it’s not her). There is understanding of and empathy for Rut that exceeds all expectations of noir, that undermines and reassembles the genre – this film is of its time and yet transcends it.
Not Noir: Onna No Saka (1960, Kōzaburō Yoshimura)
This Japanese gem of a movie is a wild card of candy-coloured female entrepreneurship among the neurotic black and whites of Act of Violence and Kvinna utan anstike.
Akie (Mariko Okada) moves to Kyoto where she inherited a shop that used to produce traditional Japanese sweets called wagashi. At first, Japan’s former capital seems old-fashioned, stuck and backwards to her. Akie prefers Western clothes, trousers, jumpers, neck-ties and flat shoes to the kimonos and geta sandals of her friends. Modernity, however, is just behind the corner – like the neon lights that bathe one of the rooms in her house in glossy greens and reds.
Akie brings savvy business sensibility, joy and leadership to the slumbering candy store and the traditional house with its many empty rooms and crumbling beauty. In this careful, tender film, modernity and tradition are not opposites but different modes of being that, once combined, form a balanced and hopeful present. Still, there is drama: not only does Akie have to deal with an ambitious business rival, she also falls in love with visiting artist Kaburo (Keiji Sada) who – unknown to her – is rumoured to have had an affair with Akie’s mother Keiko (Nobuko Otowa).
On the surface, Onna No Saka draws a line between success and romance, suggesting that Akie can either have one or the other. Deeper down, however, the film tells a different kind of love story, about love for one’s friends and, yes, for one’s profession. Onna No Saka is about the joy of getting things done without ever resorting to toxic positivity. Being a working woman, in this film, is something exciting, satisfying and beautiful. Not exactly noir but an intriguingly suspenseful, bright gem of Japanese cinema.
Theresa Rodewald, MA, studied Cinema Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden and Cultural Studies in Germany and Ireland. She writes for a number of independent film magazines, including L-MAG and Berliner Filmfestivals, and has written about critiques of capitalism in current gangster films, images of masculinity in Scarface (1932) and the representation of queer women in mainstream cinema. She is a contributor to David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).