By David in TN
Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 8:50:00 P.M. EST
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Jacques Tourneur’s Berlin Express (1948), featuring Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, and Charles McGraw.
Film Noir Guide: “An important West German diplomat (Lukas) on his way to present a plan for the unification of Germany, is kidnapped by a group of postwar Nazis as he boards an American troop train in Frankfurt. Ryan, a U.S. Agriculture Department employee, and three other passengers (an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian soldier) join the diplomat’s secretary (Oberon) in the search for her missing boss. Ryan does a good job as an American who isn’t crazy about Germans but is ripe for an attitude adjustment (especially if it’s administered by the delectable Oberon). Mostly unexciting, Express contains many sobering shots of the bombed-out ruins in Frankfurt and Berlin. Filmed during the earliest stages of the Cold War, the moral of the story is, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’”
N.S.: This must have been like déjà vu all over again for Paul Lukas, who had made a kidnapping-on-a-train picture for Alfred Hitchcock, the classic The Lady Vanishes, which was released in 1938, but had supposedly sat on a shelf since 1937. In Lady, Lukas played the leader of the bad guys.
The time at which Hitchcock finished cutting Lady is historically significant, because the story is of a spy who has learned of a secret non-aggression pact between the Soviets and the Nazis, and one side’s efforts to catch and kill said spy. If the picture was really completed in 1937, or even if it wasn’t until 1938, the “secret pact” would have been one the whole world was privy to!
In 1952, Charles McGraw would appear again, though in a lead role, in another train thriller, The Narrow Margin. Trains served as a popular movie setting for thrillers and romantic comedies alike for generations.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 am ET is Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949), with Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Alan Napier, Percy Helton.
Siodmak and Lancaster are back with a story similar to their previous effort, The Killers (1946). Our friend Eddie Muller considers Robert Siodmak the best film noir director and rates Criss Cross one of the top five in the genre.
Film Noir Guide: "Lancaster is terribly miscast as the 'prize sucker of all time,' but this powerful film noir entry has other things going for it, namely, impressive performances by De Carlo as his femme fatale ex-wife, and noir icon Duryea as De Carlo's gangster husband. When Lancaster returns home from a self-imposed exile after his divorce from the beautiful De Carlo, he finds himself irresistibly drawn back into her web, despite his mother's concerns. ('Out of all the girls in Los Angeles, why did you have to pick her?') De Carlo seems interested in resuming their relationship but, after being frightened off by Lancaster's well-meaning detective friend (McNally), she marries the abusive Duryea. But even the dangerous gangster can't keep the lovers apart, and, when he catches them together, armored car driver Lancaster comes up with an ingenious lie about being there to talk about a six-figure payroll heist. Duryea, putting aside his jealousy for the time being, assembles his gang and recruits an alcoholic heist expert (Napier) to devise the perfect plan which, in typical noir fashion, goes tragically awry. Veteran character actor Helton, playing a bartender, is actually likable for a change. Remade in 1995 as The Underneath, Criss Cross is a must-see for all noir fans. Tony Curtis, in his film debut, has a non-speaking role as De Carlo's rhumba partner."
Film Noir Guide calls Lancaster "terribly miscast" even though his characterization resembles his part in The Killers.
Today we see the media use the word "awry" in cases like the murder of Tessa Majors.
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