Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

By a strange coincidence 1944 saw the release of two film noirs starring Edward G Robinson which have some similarities in plot. In 'Double Indemnity' he plays an insurance investigator who doesn't realise that the salesman he trusts and keeps informed is actually the murderer in the case he is looking into. In this film, it is Robinson himself who is the murderer who is kept informed as to how the police investigation is proceeding by his friend who happens to be the DA. But whereas the Billy Wilder picture is a classic and in my opinion the definitive film noir , this Fritz Lang movie is merely entertaining. Anton Chekhov, had he still been alive in 1944, might have been astonished at how liberally his Chekhov's Gun concept is being applied in this film. We start off with overhearing part of a psychology lecture by assistant professor Wanley (Robinson) in which he refers to murder in self defence, and sure enough not that long afterwards he himself is committing just...

This is a rather odd film noir directed by Fritz Lang. It starts off predictably enough. Middle-aged Chris (Edward G Robinson), who has a low paying job as a bank cashier and a very unpleasant wife, meets pretty young Kitty (Joan Bennett). He falls madly in love with her, not realising that she is just humouring him.  She has a grifter for a boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea) who immediately sees the opportunity for some easy money.  Very quickly Chris is persuaded to set Kitty up in an apartment even though their relationship is so chaste they haven’t even kissed.  Chris is an amateur painter who pretends to Kitty that he is successful and well-off.  In reality the only way he can fund her lifestyle is to steal money from both his wife and his bank.  It’s at this point that the story takes a bizarre turn.  Johnny takes it into his head to try to sell some of Chris' paintings, and through an improbable series of events an eminent art critic sees them and, very...

My bible for any film of this era ("The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on TV") is surprisingly lukewarm about this 1953 crime film directed by Fritz Lang, not liking the 'gratuitous violence'. Well, a lot of blood has flowed since that review was written.  Sure, there are a couple of moments here of shocking violence, but they are integral to the story. And what a taut, well-plotted story it is, more than capably performed and directed, with not a moment wasted. Glenn Ford is fine as an honest homicide detective, trying to do his job despite the corruption all around him.  He eventually triumphs, but at a huge personal cost, and only with the help of the splendid Gloria Grahame, as a gangster's moll.   The gangster in question is the psychopathic Lee Marvin, having a whale of a time. Unusually for a film of this period there is some suggestion that Ford's happy relationship with his wife might extend to the bedroom,  or maybe I am reading too much into a couple ...

What an entertaining but odd Western this is, directed by the German  émigr é Fritz Lang, and starring Marlene Dietrich. The eponymous ranch is named Chuck-a-Luck, which was the original title of the film until the studio boss Howard Hughes objected - one of his better decisions.  Apparently Chuck-a-Luck is a real thing, a game using dice and a form of roulette wheel.  With the help of Frenchie (Mel Ferrer), Altar Crane (Dietrich) wins enough money at the game to set up the ranch as a refuge for outlaws, who in return give her 10% of their ill-gotten gains. Into this happy setup comes Vern (played by Arthur Kennedy) seeking revenge on the guy, Kinch, who raped and murdered his fiancée at the beginning of the film, the only problem being he doesn't know what his quarry looks like, or indeed anything about him.  Things rapidly escalate what with Vern romancing Altar in order to extract information (who responds enough to make Frenchie jealous), a bank robbery, and Kin...

For some reason (probably the title) I'd always assumed that this 1943 film by Fritz Lang was a film noir.  In fact, it's a bit of an oddity, being set in occupied Czechoslovakia in 1942, and centred on a real event - the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi known as "The Hangman of Europe".  The film is based on a story by Lang and Bertold Brecht, which departs from the truth in having the assassination be by a Czech surgeon, Svoboda, somewhat implausibly played by Brian Donlevy. Svoboda takes refuge with a family headed by Professor Novotny, played by Walter Brennan, whose daughter Mascha (Anna Lee) emerges as the main character in the ensuing tale. The Nazis take several hundred citizens, including the Professor, as hostages, and start executing handfuls of them at regular intervals to put pressure on the locals to betray Svobòda.  How this situation is resolved is told by way of a quite complicated plot which involves  numerous characters, both membe...