Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) - One of the first Classic Hollywood Noir

Here is an RKO Radio Pictures cheapo, it along with The Letter are one of Hollywood's first Noirs.

Directed by Boris Ingster (Southside 1-1000). Written by Nathanael West based on a story by Frank Partos.

 Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People, The Seventh Victim, The Fallen Sparrow, Deadline at Dawn, The Spiral Staircase, The Blue Gardenia, The Hitch-Hiker  ). Music by Roy Webb

Starring Classic Noir icons Peter Lorre as The Stranger and Elisha Cook Jr. as Joe Briggs, between them they are in just under twenty Films Noir. with leads John McGuire as Michael Ward, Margaret Tallichet as Jane, and  Charles Waldron as the District Attorney.

Margaret Tallichet as Jane

John McGuire as Michael Ward

Peter Lorre as The Stranger

Elisha Cook Jr. as Joe Briggs

I was surprised when I first watched this years ago to find out that it wasn't a Cornell Woolrich story. The gritty city tale constructed from Partos' story and Wests screenplay, is quite similar to those Woolrich tales of impending doom where a woman is basically the sleuth trying to save her man from the electric chair (The Phantom Lady, and Black Angel). 

The best things about films based on Woolrich is that they speed up the action. Woolrich has a tendency to milk what could be said in a simple sentence into a paragraph, the bad things are the films also leave a lot of details out, and completely fuck with the plots. There probably isn't one film based on Woolrich's work that is completely true to his writings. Of the ones I've read, The Phantom Lady, The Window and maybe No Man of Her Own are close.  They all could be remade (keeping around the time period they were set in is crucial), and if they actually followed the plots better they would seen like completely different films. 

So in Stranger on the Third Floor we have two lovers Michael and Jane wanting to get married. Michael is a reporter and Jane a secretary. Michael lies in a single room flop, while Jane lives with a roommate. The big obstacle is money. Between them they don't have enough for a big apartment.

 Jane and Michael

Michael gets a big break when he is a witness to a murder in Nick's All Nite Coffee Pot across the street from his apartment. He walks into Nick's, sees Joe Briggs standing at the open cash register with Nick's body draped over it. Nick's throat is slashed. Briggs runs out the back door when he sees Michael.  

Michael reports the murder to the police then, writes an exclusive story for the paper. Michael gets a raise as a result and he proposes to Jane, and all is going well until the Briggs trial. 

At the trial Michael gives his testimony. Briggs version was that he arrived at Nick's after the murder also, and right before Michael walked in. Surprised by Michael, Briggs didn't think it out, and ran away out the back door to the alley. 

Here is your typical Film Noir stupid move. It happens over and over in Noir. Think Detour. Al Roberts opens the door of Charles Haskell Jr's 1941 Lincoln Continental convertible. Haskell already dead falls out and hits his head on a rock. Al thinks the blow of hitting the rock killed him. He panics and figures that the cops won't believe the story. Now we, the noweducated on countless crime shows audience, knows, that forensics can verify what Al would have told the authorities. 

But, we also know now from numerous wrong convictions proven by DNA evidence, that some law enforcement, back in the day, weren't that thorough, were incompetent, or manufactured false evidence, deliberately framing undesirables, transients, and people of color.

So if police work was that shoddy back then, that would shed a bit of light on what we think now is whacky behavior in Noir. If you were a transient, and saw the police pulling other down and outers in, and pinning local crimes on them, and you, stumbled in on a murder scene, you'd probably want to get the hell out of Dodge too. Maybe that move isn't stupid, it might have once been an instinct for self preservation, in a Depression Nightmare America that existed if you were an unlucky denizen from the wrong side of the tracks.

Guilty

So Michael's testimony gets Briggs convicted even though Michael did not see Briggs actually commit the murder. Briggs is shocked and screams his innocence. Jane who watched the trial proceedings believes Briggs. Michael has second thoughts. 

Michael has second thoughts. A few nights later Michael discovers his neighbor with his throat cut and tells the police he saw a strange man going in and out of his neighbors apartment suspiciously and chased him down the stairway before losing him out in the street. This was just before he discovered the body. His description is of a man with bulging eyes and a white scarf. Michael mentions that the cut throat was similar to the wound that killed Nick. 

 

Later in his apartment, thinking of Briggs, Michael is not so sure anymore of his guilt. He nods out and has a nightmare where he dreams that he is accused of murder like Briggs. It's a highly stylized German expressionistic dream sequence. 

It goes Noirsville when the district attorney realizing that Michael was at both murder scenes accuses him of being the murderer.

Noirsville

Rear screen projection of Washington Square Park, Manhattan - NYC

Its an interesting low budget Noir that might be known better if it had a few well known headliners as the two lovers in the cast. Everyone performs well but only Lorre and Cook sustained their marks in Noir and beyond. 6.5-710 

Where Danger Lives (1950)

A San Francisco kid doctor.

A good one. Dr. Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum).  A nice guy but a schmo. He's about to leave the children's ward and the hospital for the weekend when an emergency arrives. A suicide attempt. A woman. It's Faith Domergue. A smokey Creole brunette named Margo. So Jeff saves Margo.

The next morning Margo checked herself out of the hospital before Jeff shows up for his shift. She did send him a telegram. The telegram says that she owes him an explanation. She asks him to meet her at 8:00 PM. at 112 Sea Cliff.

Jeff goes to the address he meets Margo she tells him her last name is Lannington. Jeff tells her that he must report the suicide to the police. Margo tells him that her father who is on a fishing trip up in Canada would be devastated if he finds out she tried to kill herself. Margo tells Jeff that she'll be alright. Jeff tells her that he should get out and enjoy life.  Margo likes what she sees. Jeff likes what she offers. Jeff goes to the phone. Margo at first thinks he's calling the police. When Jeff asks for Nurse Julie, Margo tries to stop him. Jeff grabs her arm. He's calling Julie his fiance to tell her he's got another emergency. A hot pants emergency. Jeff bites. Jeff is hooked. Margo makes her move. The screen goes dark. They do the tube snake boogie.

Opening Ambulance Sequence

Dr. Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum)

Margo (Faith Domergue)

On Thursday they meet at a Tiki Club called Pogo Pete's. Margo tells Jeff that she has to split early because she is going away on a trip to Nassau with her father. Jeff get plastered. He gets the bright idea to go see her old man.



Jeff Cameron: [drinking a cocktail in a tropical-themed restaurant] These things are like water.
Waiter:They creep up on you.
Jeff Cameron: Bring me a couple more.
Waiter: But, sir, you have four and we are only allowed two to a customer.
Jeff Cameron: Why?
Waiter: That drink makes a guy talk back to his mother-in-law.
Jeff Cameron:What about his father-in-law?
Waiter: I suppose so.
Jeff Cameron: You've given me an idea.

Jeff takes a taxi cab to Margo's.

 

Mr. Lannington (Claude Rains) 

He rings the bell. Margo answers. She tells him to leave. He wont. Mr. Lannington (Claude Rains) walks into the room. Mitchum tells him he wants to marry his daughter. Mr. Lannington is amused.

Mr. Lannington: So you're quite sure of your feelings? I mean, you know, people sometimes get... carried away. Come to their senses again with a jolt.
Jeff Cameron: Mr. Lannington, I want to marry your daughter.
Mr. Lannington: I wish you'd stop calling her my daughter. She happens to be my wife.



It's as if Jeff fell through a trapdoor into Noirsville. Jeff is both pissed off at Margo and shocked at his own stupidity. He splits. Just as he gets back out side the house he hears Margo scream. He goes running back in to find her on the floor holding her ear. Mr. Lannington has ripped out one of her earrings.

Jeff and Lannington get into a scuffle Lannington grabs a fireplace poker and hits him upside the back of his head. Jeff floors him with a punch. Lannington is out.

Jeff's doctor training kicks in. He tells Margo to get a pillow under his head. Jeff stumbles to the bathroom to get some water to bring Lannington around.  Jeff's got a concussion only he doesn't know for sure yet. He goes stumbling back to the parlor where Lannington, breathing when he left, is now dead.



Margo is dangerous and a murderess. We figure she probably suffocated her husband with the pillow the Jeff told her to get. Jeff is confused Margo is manipulative.

Margo tells Jeff that they should split with the airline tickets that she and her husband have reserved for the trip. Nobody would notice Lannington's body till the servant comes back on Monday. That gives them three days. Jeff not thinking straight agrees. At the airport Margo sees police at a counter, and hears Mr Lannington paged over the public address and panics.

So for mistaken reasons (the page was a well wisher for a bon voyage, the cops were randomly there), they decide to drive their way South across the border. During the night they come upon a roadblock and they take a side road. The roadblock was for agriculture inspections, not for Margo and Jeff.. In the morning Jeff checks his eyes in the cars side mirror. He now knows for sure that he has a concussion. He tells Margo. Now after the roadblock they think they have to get rid of Margo's Caddy.

Jeff pulls into Honest Hal's Used Cars. Ends up with a straight across trade Margo's 1949 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible for a 1934 International Harvester C-1 beater. 

Mojave Desert

They continue heading South. They finally hear over the radio that the police have discovered Lannington's body. It was just four hours ago. They ran from the airport and traded off Margo's car for nothing.

And so the road trip to Mexico continues with Jeff trying to stay cognizant with a concussion, and deal with a Femme Fatale that has a screw loose.

Noirsville

Heading across the Mojave Desert with $13

Where Danger Lives was directed by John Farrow who gave us His Kind of Woman, The Big Clock and the little seen Alias Nick Beal and Night Has a Thousand Eyes. The film was written by Charles Bennett abd based on a story by Leo Rosten. Cinematography was by the great Nicholas Musuraca (The Fallen Sparrow, Cat People, The Seventh Victim, Blood on the Moon, Out of the Past, The Locket, Deadline at Dawn, The Spiral Staircase and many others), Music was by Roy Webb.

At 82 minutes the film is quick paced. There is even a comedic stopover in a fly speck town town during a whiskers week celebration. Worth a look see. 7/10