Noir City: Newspaper Noir

The Music Box Theatre teamed with the Film Noir Foundation to present the third annual Noir City: Chicago film festival August 12th through the 18th. The fest presents a lot of films unavailable on DVD, a boon for fans of the genre who have worked the home viewing catalog pretty deeply. It's so fabulous to see a noir film on the big screen in a restored print; I imagine that some noir films that have floundered for me at home would prove much more serviceable screened and viewed as intended.

I was able to make it for my top-choice double-feature bill: newspaper noir, both unavailable on DVD, and each centered on super leads, Alan Ladd and Humphrey Bogart.

CHICAGO DEADLINE screened once during the fest. When we arrived at the theater there was a line down the block. It reminded me of how it felt to see movies when I was young, before home viewing generally thinned the theater crowds. I try to see a movie or two at the int'l film fest every year, in part to tap into the same gathering anticipatory susurration. CD offered the gratifying Chicago backdrops the audience had turned out to see. Ladd did not disappoint, his charm-grounded-in-sorrow particularly apt for this storyline in which Donna Reed plays a nuanced noir role, the soft, doomed Rosita Jean D'Ur,  a reversal from the roles I think of her in and in counterpoint to sparkling June Havoc who gets the happier ending here. Though some of the dialog suggests media critique (with unavoidable resonances with the current tabloid scandals), the performances riveted my attention in the characters' dramas and the newsie aspect of the film served more as fun trimmings for me.

CHICAGO DEADLINE, 1949, Director: Lewis Allen (thanks to retrografix blog for hard to find pics).

DEADLINE, U.S.A., directed by Richard Brooks, stars Humphrey Bogart as Ed "Hutch" Hutcheson, our editor-hero in an unabashed tribute to newspaper media. It's eerie to watch a "funeral for the press," made in 1952. In one shot, there's a sign posted in the printing room, visible behind Bogart/Hutch, that says something along the lines of: ""Newspapers Make Jobs" (I can't find a still or reference to get it exactly; should've jotted it down); this strand throughout contributes to the time warp effect that adds a layer of interest to an already engaging film. This is such a great Bogart role; it's boggling that this is not yet on DVD. My susceptible mind runs, momentarily, to kooky anti-media conspiracies. Ethyl Barrymore's media matron backs Bogart robustly and DEADLINE, set in Every-city, U.S.A., features a baddy politician Thomas Rienzi (Martin Gabel). Best editor versus mobster scene ever:



If you're interested in noir broadly, definitely check out the Film Noir Foundation. They offer a—now quarterly electronic—magazine with hooky articles, such as, The Heaviest of Them All: The Film Noir Legacy of Raymond Burr (on his baddie roles, pre-Perry Mason). The site also posts a monthly listing of Film Noir and Neo-Noir on TV. I dawdled posting, so I wasn't able to get this up before another great newsie noir screened on Fox: CALL NORTHSIDE 777, starring Jimmy Stewart and great views of the Windy City, based on a true story, and available via Chicago Public Library and likely through Netflix. Also screened on Fox this month (do we give Fox points for screening good noir?): I WAKE UP SCREAMING (1949), a really fun oddball noir (almost a musical noir, with a disconcertingly prevalent use of an "Over the Rainbow" instrumental) also available on DVD. So, good stuff on your telly. And save the dates for next year's Noir City fest! (This year a pass to see all 16 films went for an unbelievable $50.)

Given my penchant for print and justice, newspaper noir holds a lot of extra charm in an already fave field for me. I am guessing that with restored film prints now, we'll see CHICAGO DEADLINE and DEADLINE U.S.A. on DVD soon. In the meantime, Robert Feder created a shortlist of newsroom-centric flicks for TIME OUT CHICAGO last year; many of the films are noir; most are accessible now.

Art Please, Mr. Rahm!

Owen Smith, Brigid O'Shaughnessy

 Dear Rahm Emmanuel,

Can we get this?

This is my first (semi)official request as a constituent.

Promote Chicago visual arts and literary heritage via fetching commissioned works to be posted in public places? It's okay to copycat a really winning idea. I would love to swap out the perennial Bebe ads at my local busstop for something with beauty and brains.

Thank you for your consideration, Mr. Mayor. You would surely gain cool cred, at least in and on some corners.

I found Mark Coggins' San Fran Chronicle piece  pointing to the beautious street art posters commissioned by the San Francisco Art Commission from "San Fran's Diego Rivera"--Owen Smith--when I was looking for the name of the artist whose New Yorker Fiction Issue covers I had collected in the mid-'90s.

Owen Smith, The New Yorker, '95/'96

And Kurt Brokaw's piece on the staying power of pulp (and its marketing appeal) features two of the Smith covers, including my favorite, a subway scene in which all of the passengers are reading, along with other contemporary examples of the style, juxtaposed nicely with iconic source images.

This all got started after looking at some nice Criterion Collection DVD covers, via Rick Poynter at The Eye. Sorting through an embarrassment of visual riches, my Dad and I were both drawn to the cover for The Sweet Smell of Success, rendered in savory pulp/noir vividness by Eric Skillman, Sarah Habibi, and Sean Phillips. There's an eeriness to seeing Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster worked in the illustration and the castback style feels fresh, a perfect bridge to the world of director Alexander Mackendrick's 1957 film.

Sweet Smell of Success, dir. Alexander Mackendrick

I love this tidbit from art director/designer Skillman's process blog re: illustrator Phillips' painting for the project: "Basically, the big hurdle on this title was a clause in the contracts stating that the likenesses of both Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster MUST appear, and both MUST be the same size. And given the power imbalance between the two characters in the film, the idea of having the two of them just standing there, on equal footing with each other, felt really wrong… but the solution we came up with in the briefs meeting, was, I think, a really great one. . .  "

An extra gem lifted from Poynter's critique: links to the world of Criterion Collection cover fanart. I find endless appeal in the worlds of fanart and this was a corner of that universe with which I was not formerly acquainted . . .

Visual Paradise

"Art is a constant; it's part of you." Dennis Hopper

The Trib's piece on the Art Institute's new Taschen shop-within-a-shop quoted a consultant advising museums in matters of retail, "If you're in the middle of a whole bunch of Taschen books, you're in the middle of a visual paradise."

At Rizzoli in the mid-'90s we maintained dedicated Taschen tables, towering with  juicy, super-saturated tomes. Smart, bold catalog, it's no surprise they're still selling like hotcakes. And the company's got marketing panache to suit.

Mostly, yes, viva! Bookstores, adapt! Then, sigh, the "publishers with high wholesale prices" who didn't make the cut. Certainly some of their books are wonderful too, like endangered species. Even an ugly little biting beast is so important when it's almost gone.

Iron & Wine v. the Dalai Lama

The Living Torrent, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (ARTINFO/The National Gallery)

Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago, Monday, June 6. Reports of a massive turnout for Sam Beam's Iron  & Wine texted their way to me so I expected to sit at the back of the lawn. Two weeks before, the crowd for Bonnie Prince Billie had been good-sized, healthy and full-feeling but with room for all--channels between camps wendable and open seats up front to take in His Bare-footed Magnificence. On our way to Monday night's free concert in the park, we ran into friends coming out of the train downtown, discussed the rumors, and I recalled the gathering that surrounded the Dalai Lama when he appeared at the park to speak in 2007. We'd all seen the Decembrists (backed by full orchestra!) there in 2007 as well--the audience was standing room only and I'd perched on fences and the uprising around the lawn proper to get views. But the number assembled for the Dalai Lama was in a different category. Reverents and come-alongs accumulated far beyond the confines of the lawn, milling about  and settling down wherever there was shade. It was a fitting quiet crowd--heads bowed to hear the talk, or snoozing, not much clatter or chatter.

Streaming up the steps toward the pavilion, I was surprised to find that Beam's fine folky-psychadelic rock had already drawn people into the park on a Dalai Lama-scale. People picnicked everywhere: every patch of grass, sidewalks, inside planters; those who chose to stand stood 10 and 20 deep around the peripheries. Kennedy and I chunnelled through the thickets blocking the way to Cloud Gate and Lurie Garden, and found an unlocked door into the garden via the parking garage entrance. The gates to the garden had been locked, patrolled by a guard on a Segway to turn back the kids who periodically hopped low fences to sneak in through a dense border of bushes and small trees. The garden paths were lined with fellows, and we found a spot where we could throw down our mat and pour a glass of wine; the sound in the garden was decent and the view of hillocks on hillocks of purply blooming native plants was downright lovely--smelled sweet too.

So, Iron & Wine v. Dalai Lama:
Sheer quantity of humans: my memory is sketchy, I will call it a draw
Hula hoops: definitely more "hoopers" around the Bean for Iron & Wine
Children: another draw
Benevolence: in my own experience, another draw, though, credible reports of flare-ups at the latter event, under consideration, I will give a slight edge to the Dalai Lama, evening the overall score, which jives with my feel for the two events, though, in frankness, I enjoyed the concert more.
Sorry to disappoint anyone who might have needed to see a clear winner here.

I've never been much of a crowd lover. Now, though I still have my suspicions, my reaction to large human gatherings is much fuzzier. After the irateness of the trundling and hurtling streets of the city, the elbowing and proprietary jostling in lines and places of purchasing, I marvel at the good-natured spirit that mushrooms and settles over us during certain civic pleasures. A few summers ago, I watched Hitchcock's Psycho in Grant Park along with many hundreds of other Chicagoans. I've seen most of Hitchcock's filmography, barring this flick, and I was a bit apprehensive about the setting. That a mouthy, fidgety audience might spoil my first interface with the classic. It was a gorgeous evening--the picture looked great; the film's soundscape is tremendous; the crowd's quiet and calm broken only in audible intakes of breath at a scare and a little squealing and shifting at the scariest points. We all watched the movie together and I found it moving--it feels like a perhaps momentous cooperative effort to quiet down together. I am working on a poem that tries to get at this experience; the congruence of my species to share enjoyment without bickering or bombardiering while we watch a cool film we made about a psychotic murderer and his obsession with his mother.