David Hast: Scott, have you seen Act of Violence?
Scott Vander Werf: I have seen Act of Violence just recently, the 1948 film noir, and I had never heard of it until you suggested watching this for our podcast, and I was very impressed.
DH: Oh, good. Yeah, it's not a well-known film noir now,but it is really one of the best examples of the genre.It is from 1948, which I guess is many scholars offilm noir would say that's kind of the peak of the genre of the late40s into the early50s. It stars several great actors from classic Hollywood. Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, who is a regular in film noir, typically plays a bad guy and a very young Janet Leigh. Janet Leigh is only like 21 years old in this movie. And then Mary Astor is in it too and has a small but very memorable part. Mary Astor, of course, was in what many people consider to the first film noir, The Maltese Falcon.
SVW: And in fact, her role is, uh she plays a very strong woman.
DH: Yeah. Sothis was directed by Fred Zinnaman, which makes it kind of interesting, because Fred Zinnaman, it's the only film noir that Fred Zinnaman directed. And yet he said it was a very good experience. He said it was the first movie he felt like he had real creative freedom on and started to understand working in the medium better than ever before. But Zinnaman's best known for these high-art Oscar-nominated movies like From Here to Eternity, High Noon, A Man for All Seasons.He never worked in noir again, but he certainly brings a great director's touch to this movie.
SVW: And his career in terms of filmmaking went into the 70s. He didThe Day of the Jackal. Right, he's a big name of classic directors, but not known for noir. So this story is,it's a little different in that it's more of a bit of a social message one maybe, but Van Heflin is excellent as a veteran with a dark secret from his time in World War II when he was in a German POW camp. Janet Leigh plays his wife in one of her first movie roles in really an incredibly, you can't believe she's 21, when you look at it. It's a very mature kind of performance, which is kind of the story of Janet Leigh…to digress a little. Janet Leigh sort of had this Hollywood dream story where she was discovered, Norma Shearer, the great actress from the silent era, saw her picture and said, she should be in movies, got her a screen test. She wasn't, you know, she had no ambitions to be an actress. Maybe she did high school theater, I don't know. But all of a sudden, boom, 1947, she's in a movie called Romance of Rosie Ridge in a leading role at age 19. And it just turned out she was a natural. She just was a really good actress and she's very good in this. She doesn't seem 21. She seems like amore mature actress as Van Heflin's wife. And then Robert Ryan is in it, one of the great film noir actors who's almost always a menacing, dangerous character, often the bad guy. And he certainly seems dangerous and menacing in this movie as it gets going but then the story turns out to bemuch more complex and surprising than we think.
SVW: Yeah, and we really can't go into the details of the movie, but there are several twists and turns here that make it even uh better than you would think in its hour and twenty-two minutes.
DH: Yeah, and I think that's part of why uh it's such a great movie. It has many of the great characteristics of film noir. Butitalso has surprising, it's sort of a thriller tooit also surprising twists and turns. This is our second in a row. We're gonna do three shows on film noir. Our last one was on the great color film noir, Leave Her to Heaven.And now we're doing this one. Film noir started about the same time that the U.S. entered World War II. It started in the early40s. And at first it was kind of more of an escapist entertainment. But when the war ended, film noir kind of changed, just as many movies in Hollywood changed. Instead of always being about criminals from some other walk of life or, you know, hard-bitten detectives or whatever, some of the stories started to be about ordinary, regular middle-class Americans who get caught up in dangerous situations. This movie is one of those. They started to tackle the kind of hard reality of American post-war anxiety. You know, lot of movies after World War II in the late40s into the 50s, it's almost like they had a project to portray America as everything was great. Everything was bright, shiny, booming economy, people moving to the suburbs, white picket fences, you know, perfect life. But some movies and film noir like this one are among them, started to look atdifficult subjects likeveterans who'd really been damaged in the war physically or mentally.
SVW: And in terms ofthe way that they showthat in terms ofthe changeover in the course of the film, the first scene that you see Van Heflin, he's at a veterans, it's Memorial Day, he's at a veterans parade with his wife, his kids on his shoulders,and then he's at a…there are people at a podium who call out his name and refer to him as a captain.
DH: Right, war hero, right? Andyes, it's the look of it. Of course, we're doing these shows on film noir andyou only watch film noir if you're kind of, you love the black and white look that they have, the dark shadowy cinematography. And this one is a great example because in that opening scene, what is it? It’s suburban America, it's in bright sunlight. You see this ideal, perfect, happy family, the youngcouple and their like three-year-old kid and...everything just you know, they're all beaming and smiling and it doesn't take very long Did you notice once it goes to their home?
SVW: I was gonna mention that. eah, but they get into the house and already The the Ryan the Robert Ryan character has stopped by the house.
DH: Right. now that the scary bad has been introduced and so what starts to happen with the look of the movie?
SVW: Yes, and Van Heflin doesn't know that he stopped by. Janet Leigh's character knows that he stopped by and she mentioned it and immediately he begins drawing the shades of the house, turning off lights, and the house transforms from being this like perfect little bright domicile to being sort of a menacing cave.
DH: Absolutely, he turns this suburban home environment that we expect to be bright and cheerful into this menacing, yes, shadowy place. And it just goes on from there.Then all of a sudden the movie's got excuses to be, we've got this long sequence in the third act, which is this sort of journey to the underworld for Van Heflin on the seedy side ofLos Angeles, where thenthe great cinematographer Robert Sertes, who shot this, who also shot
Ben Hur, The Graduate, The Last Picture Show, The Sting, many great, great, movies. He gets to really, you know, show off and does all these like dark shadowy alleys and tunnels and gets to just go into full blown film noir mode.
SVW: And one of the things I loved about that sequence is that it did not seem to me that they were filming on a set. It really did seem as if you are in the streets of Los Angeles in the late 1940s and this is what it looks like. And it's not the Los Angeles that you're used to seeing even from the 60s, 70s onward. Certainly not today in terms of the look of the buildings, the look of the streetsand the way that it's shot and then getting into the,again, we're not going to give out any spoilers, but there's a sequence in a tunnelthat's a revelatory sequence as well.
DH: Well, Scott, they did shoot it on location in Los Angeles. This is funny because yeah, you just saw it and I've done more research on it. But yeah, it that it actually some of the scenes, of course, are on sets, but they did shoot an awful lot of iton location in the Los Angeles of 1948. So uh like that that weird uh elevated train that goes at an angle and stuff that I forgot what it's got a special name. But this thing really existed in L.A.
SVW: There's also the sequence. It's the beginning of him fleeing a hotel that he's staying at in Los Angelesand he goes downthis long leveled staircase that I wonder if the director of Parasite, the great South Korean film that Bong Joon-Ho, if he was influenced, if that was some film that he might have seen because there's all those sequences in Parasite where the characters are, the family are rushing down these stairways.
DH: Oh, that's interesting. You gotta know Bong Joon-ho is a
is going to watch old film noir's from Hollywood.
SVW: And going back in terms of the before we get that whole long sequence in Los Angeles, he's he has fled to this hotel where there's a convention of builders and construction conventionhopingto evade Robert Ryan and he's there and again things are bright and cheery and there's drunken men, businessmen, they're having a good time and when Janet Leigh follows him there again we get a change over where to he's going to explain things to her and he pulls her into a staircase and again he gets into the staircase and then everything becomes dark and shadowy in the staircase.
DH: This is where everything changes in the movie you're right it's like the sort of bright all a bunch of people drinking and having a great time and partying at this convention in a brightly lit hotel but when they have their scene together. The war veteran and his wife it's on this fire escape kind of thing and now it's very dark and they use a lot of low and high angle shots and this is where he reveals to her some of the deep truths about what happened in the war and why this scary guyis uh looking for him. So it's, uh this movie is just, is worth seeingbecause not only is it just, it's just got everything going for it. It'swell performed, well directed. It's a very serious film noir um and just enjoyable. And of course, like many of the great noirs of the period, it's not very long.
SVW: Yeah, it's one of those movies that has no fat whatsoever. It’s 82 minutes long, 83 minutes long. And one of the things that I just found compelling about it was howunpredictable it is. It has twists that you don't see comingand the way it resolves itself is completely satisfying in a way that I think that todaymost, unless it was an unusual producer-director, would not be resolved the way it's resolved.
DH: Yeah, and this is one of the noirs, you know, I mean some people now,we've talked about this before, thatone of the ways in which Hollywood has changed. Now, looking at the big picture from the golden age of Hollywood,comparing say the40s and the 50s andthen how did it change into the 21st century? Part of it is a demand for a sort of like really strong naturalism and realism in drama. Whereas when you look at a lot of the films from the golden age of Hollywood, particularly things like film noir, they're very stylized. They're not saying this is exactly what reality is like and how people act. This is art. But at the same time, they can kind of have it both ways in the best movies. And this movie is a very believable and challenging drama at the same time that it's just kind of interesting and otherworldly.
SVW: All right. Well, thanks for joining us.
DH: Thanks, Scott.
