Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 3 (Border Incident / His Kind of Woman / Lady in the Lake / On Dangerous Ground / The Racket)
by Ida Lupino, Anthony Mann, Fred Zinnemann, John Cromwell, John Farrow
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Actor: George Murphy, Jane Russell, Ricardo Montalban, Robert Mitchum, Vincent PriceDirector: Anthony Mann, Fred Zinnemann, Ida Lupino, John Cromwell, John Farrow
Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 557 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-07-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 3 (Border Incident / His Kind of Woman / Lady in the Lake / On Dangerous Ground / The Racket)
DVD Review: My Kind of Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
Save your money about the current movie about the dog that poops and dies, and discover the power of movies to engage us at deep, unsuspected levels. Plot is usually secondary in film noir (with the exception of "The Maltese Falcon"); atmosphere, understated acting (Jimmy Stewart is practically the antithesis of film noir), and exquisitely shadowed cinematography reign supreme. Westerns, long the most popular genre in American film, examine our personal relationship to nature; film noir examines the complexities of modern urban existence and our place in a dangerous and deceptive social milieu, a world that can paradoxically leave us as isolated as the Western loner. The quintessential archetype of the Western is John Wayne and "The Searchers"; the same position in film noir is occupied by Bogart and practically any of his films from the 1940s. Later color films can qualify, providing the colors are muted so completely they play like black and white--prime examples: "Chinatown" and Clint Eastwood's underrated "Tight Rope"). America's obsession with film noir throughout the 1940s is testimony to a pervasive paranoia or a sophisticated appreciation of film art or both.
The stand-outs in the present collection are: 1. Robert Ryan and the Bernard Herrmann score for "On Dangerous Ground" (great title for a work on film noir, a genre that transplants us from the open plains to the shadowy, mysterious streets of the inner city--though surprise!--in this film the country ground is no more stable or peaceful or less "noirish" than the dark and treacherous urban pavements. Ryan, the heavy-weight-boxer-turned actor (in real life) gives another nuanced performance (in reel life); the score could not have been composed by any other than the composer of the music for "Vertigo" (splendid movie but too "operatic" to qualify as film noir); 2. "His Kind of Woman" may be the most multi-layered example of film noir yet. The fact that Vincent Price doesn't steal the show in what is arguably his best performance is a tribute to the smoldering, sensual power of the "love dance" between Mitchum and Russell on screen (after viewing him in this film, I can finally understand his appeal. That glide--the legs moving without the participation of the torso--is as unique a form of poetic pedestrian choreography as the John Wayne stride). If all this weren't enough, there's Raymond Burr in one of the most cruel, sadistic, obsessively psychotic roles ever filmed. But in the end, the film becomes swashbuckling, slapstick farce, equal parts Erroll Flynn, Mack Sennett, and Shakespeare--all of it harmonizing thanks to the charming, forgivably narcissistic theatricalism of Vincent Price. The film is at once a remarkable example of film noir and a send-up of the entire genre.
In a Special Features section included with each film are extended commentaries, often of questionable worth. On this latter one, the scholar repeats the word "wonderful" as often as Caroline Kennedy says "Y'know" and attributes Price's Shakespearean quotes to the wrong plays. The violent thriller "Border Incident," while not prototypical film noir, receives perhaps the most insightful, thoughtfully-scripted commentary from an NYU prof, though the political emphasis is often overdone (mustn't allow the slightest stereotyping of Hispanics go unnoticed, even though the filmmakers probably imagine they're pro-Mexican--the kinds of observations that, after awhile, take on a self-congratulatory quality while perhaps the most excruciating death scene ever filmed somehow gets explained away in glib archetypal/political talk. And why not pay as much attention to George Murphy's idiosyncratic "look" and acting on-screen as to his political sympathies off-screen?). But each includes at least some fascinating trivia and, best of all, they give the viewer an excuse to watch the films a second time. Each flick is well worth it!
DVD Review: well worth the price!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This set in a way is an unusual mish mash of film noir... there is nothing really in common between the movies besides the broad elusive banner of 'film noir'.. But there is much to love here and for a reasonable price..
My favorite film of the set is the Nick Ray gem - 'on dangerous ground' - which is a beautiful example or Ray's mastery.. and it features a soundtrack by Bernard Hermann... Robert Ryan gives a solid performance as a cop with a serious problem..
Another great film in the set is 'The Racket' which also features Ryan along with Robert Mitchum... It is a pretty bleak tale of the underworld which at times absolutely sizzles..
'Border Incident' is a film which has some great moments.. It is directed by the great Anthony Mann.. It is a very poignant tale which is very relevant to modern issues.. It shows that the issue of immigration has roots in the past and corruption.. not just the modern 'invasion' that fox news would have you believe.. a complex movie on a complex topic beautifuly filmed..
'His kind of Woman' is probably the most 'fun' of all the films.. Robert Mitchum and Vincent Price light up the screen - in a film that is almost as comic as film noir gets..
Which brings me to the final film 'Lady in the Lake' which is unintenionally comic.. It was a bold experiment in using a subjective camera throughout an entire picture.. in my opinion it fails.. but in a way it is so bad its good.. i wish mystery science theatre would have a go at this one.. but it is interesting to see nontheless.. and a piece of film noir history..
DVD Review: Wonderful Classic Noir!
Summary: 5 Stars
Short and sweet - if you like classic 40's - 50's cops and robbers, gumshoes, gangster/moll, good girl/bad girl B&W Noir, you will love these collections. The films in this particular collection are really great - all except Lady in the Lake, which used an odd and unusual concept of filming in the first person, so to speak. It didn't work for me, but you might like it. Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan are superb in their various roles - Robert Ryan especially. In one he's a cop, in another a hood. He was just one fine actor, whatever the role. I have to mention also that in "On Dangerous Ground", Ida Lupino was outstanding. She was a wonderful actress. Try this collection on for size - I know you will really like it! DVD Review: 'film noir' at it's best
Summary: 4 Stars
I have all the collections so far and have enjoyed all tremendously. You have great actors and good story lines - these were considered our "B" movies when I was young (I'm 60 yrs. old) and remember most of them. Good entertainment and great to see all these old stars. I love "film noir" and am looking forward to more collections.DVD Review: Lesser known, but still a good set
Summary: 5 Stars
Genre is often hard to define. Even something as simple as the Western has its difficulties. Sure, The Searchers or Once Upon a Time in the West are Westerns, but what about Brokeback Mountain, which has the right setting, or Little House on the Prairie, which has both the setting and the standard time period? If the Western is hard to really set in stone, how much harder is it to define Film Noir, which may not even be a genre but more of a style?
The Film Noir Classic Collection Volume 3 provides five more examples of how the "noir" label can be applied to a wide range of movies. The first film in the set, Lady in the Lake, is also the most off-beat. An adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel with Philip Marlowe, this movie both stars and is directed by Robert Montgomery. What makes this movie unique is it is shot from Marlowe's perspective: only occasionally, such as when he looks in a mirror, do we get to see the character. It's a different approach, and after you get used to it, it even works.
Border Incident is the most topical of the five movies as it deals with illegal immigration, particularly from Mexico. Ricardo Montalban plays the Mexican undercover agent in a joint U.S./Mexico effort to stop a ring of crooks who smuggle in workers and then put them to work under slave-labor conditions. Those who cause trouble disappear.
The Racket is much more of a straight gangster film, with Robert Ryan as the vicious crime boss who doesn't like being part of the Syndicate (which he finds too polite in its criminality). Opposing him is Robert Mitchum as a police captain whose efforts to clean up the town have caused him career damage.
His Kind of Woman is my favorite of the five, with Mitchum as a gambler sent to Mexico as part of a scheme to get a deported gangster (played by Raymond Burr) back into the country. While waiting at a resort, Mitchum befriends the locals, including Jane Russell (who he wants to be more than friends with). What's merely a decent movie becomes highly entertaining in the second half when Vincent Price steals the show as a hammy actor who assists Mitchum with a truly Shakespearean flare.
On Dangerous Ground has Robert Ryan as a brutal, cynical cop who is forced to leave the city to help find a child killer in the snow-covered mountains. Out of his environment, he is forced to rediscover his humanity when he meets the blind Ida Lupino, who is the sister of the killer.
How much any of these movies fit into the film noir category will vary from person to person. Certainly, the strongest argument can be made for the last two movies, with their more complicated characters. To help the viewer make his own determination, this set also includes a nice documentary on film noir; this final disc also includes five of MGMs "Crime Doesn't Pay" shorts. Four of these are so-so, the preachy sort of short subjects that would often lead off a Mystery Science Theater. The best in the bunch - and also the most noirish - is The Luckiest Guy in the World, an ironic tale of a man driven to crime out of desperation.
Each film comes with some nice commentary. Overall, the films rate four stars on average, with some better, some worse (I personally rank them, best to worst, as His Kind of Woman, On Dangerous Ground, Border Incident, Lady in the Lake and The Racket). With all the bonuses, I am pushing my rating up to five stars. These are not the most well-known movies, but if you are a fan of film noir (whatever it is), this is a set worth picking up.
Description of Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 3 (Border Incident / His Kind of Woman / Lady in the Lake / On Dangerous Ground / The Racket)
Five more film noir classics lined up with genre stars such as Robert Mitchum, Robert Montgomery, Robert Ryan, and Jane Russell, are now available in Volume 3 of the Film Noir Classics Collection series. The new 6-Disc DVD set is only available as a collection and includes a bonus documentary disc on the Noir genre.Two peak achievements by as many top noir directors ... a customized vehicle for one of noir's premier icons ... an oddball experiment in making a truly "private eye" movie ... and a Howard Hughes remake of his earliest contribution to the gangster genre. Such are the five titles corralled for Warner Home Video's third box set of film noir classics.
For eye-popping dynamism coupled with ferocious intensity, no noir director matched Anthony Mann. Border Incident (1949) was Mann's and cinematographer John Alton's first film for MGM following a string of darkly dazzling low-budget beauties at Eagle-Lion (T-Men, Raw Deal, The Black Book, et al.). In structure it's virtually a remake of T-Men, transposed from the shadowy city where a Secret Service team battled counterfeiters, to California's Imperial Valley where the Immigration Service sets out to infiltrate a gang exploiting--and often murdering--Mexicans eager to work the farms. From the opening night scene of three laborers trying to recross the border and meeting a grisly end, the movie relentlessly imagines ways the human body can merge with the earth. Visually stunning, and replete with memorable villains (headed by Howard Da Silva, a past master at making affability lethal), this is one of Mann's strongest noirs and surely his most inventive. Its neglect can be explained only by people's assumption that nothing worthwhile could come of a movie top-billing Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy (as the government agents). Wrong, wrong, wrong.
After a scalding first reel in big-city night streets, Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground (RKO, 1951) likewise forsakes familiar noir terrain for the countryside--the mountains and snowfields where city cop Robert Ryan seeks a psychotic killer. For both the actor and the director, Ryan's character is an exemplary creation: a man with personal demons whose overzealous pursuit of criminals has pushed him into sadism. His passage from urban darkness into the silent white mountain country becomes a redemptive journey, thanks largely to his interaction with a blind woman (Ida Lupino) in an isolated farmhouse whose younger brother may be the quarry he's after. Ray developed the screenplay with A.I. Bezzerides under the supervision of producer John Houseman (for whom Ray had made his feature debut, They Live By Night). The film boasts a thrilling music score by Bernard Herrmann, anticipating his great soundtrack for North by Northwest.
His Kind of Woman (also RKO, 1951) is a vehicle for both RKO's reigning bad boy, Robert Mitchum, and Howard Hughes' definitive coup of distaff engineering, Jane Russell. Their characters cross paths en route to a seaside Mexican resort, where she aims to continue her gold-digger pursuit of Hollywood ham Vincent Price, and Mitchum will figure in a plot to get deported mobster Raymond Burr back into the U.S.A. The slow-brewing romance between this dauntingly tall, broad-shouldered pair gives off little heat, but the players' good-natured, weary-pro rapport as they go through their mostly preposterous paces makes for very good fun. Still more is supplied by Price, who just about steals the movie when he gets to extend his sub-Errol Flynn screen heroism into real life--all the while supplying his own florid running commentary on the action. The urbane director John Farrow filled the movie with one delicious, what-the-hell-is-going-on-here scene after another (highlight: a bored Mitchum ironing his money), but that wasn't enough for studio boss Hughes. Richard Fleischer was brought in to stretch the climactic melodrama aboard Burr's yacht in the harbor, and the picture grew to an overblown two hours in length. Not that you're likely to regret a minute of it.
Robert Montgomery directed and played Phillip Marlowe in Lady in the Lake (MGM, 1947), Raymond Chandler's novel as adapted by Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming). The gimmick is that, apart from a few scenes of private detective Marlowe chatting us up in his office, everything is viewed through his eyes, with Marlowe himself remaining unseen unless he glances in a mirror. This literal-minded conceit is more curious than compelling; the camera simply doesn't see the way the human eye does, and the artificiality constantly calls attention to itself. Montgomery, a suave actor who enjoyed playing it coarse and obnoxious on occasion, makes his screen Marlowe more smartass than any other ("dumb, brave, and cheap"). With him cracking wise off-camera, much of the movie is really carried by Audrey Totter, a swell late-'40s dame who has to stand up under more relentless scrutiny than even her shifty character deserves.
The Racket (RKO, 1951) is the second film version of a 1920s play about municipal corruption, gangsterism, and the attempt to squash an honest police precinct captain. John Cromwell had acted in the original Broadway production, which may help explain why, as director, he let so much of this movie turn back into a play. Eventually studio boss Howard Hughes, who had produced the 1928 film version (directed by Lewis Milestone), once again called in another director to do salvage work.
That was Nicholas Ray, whose scenes include police captain Robert Mitchum's pursuit of the man who has just bombed his home. Mitchum's fellow cast members include Robert Ryan as the ultra-paranoid gangster; husky-voiced noir blonde Lizabeth Scott as a nightclub thrush romanced by Ryan's brother; future Perry Mason D.A. William Talman as a dedicated street cop; and Ray Collins and William Conrad as two municipal officials negotiating a delicate dance with morality and expediency. --Richard T. Jameson
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