SHADOWLAND
The emotional otherworlds of classic cinema. Unspooling the ribbon of dreams every Sunday afternoon.
Films in this Series
Robert Siodmak
87 minutes
After a fight with his wife sends him out on the town and into the arms of a mystery woman, the fate of Manhattan engineer Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is seemingly sealed when he returns to find his wife murdered and himself the primary suspect. Imprisoned and without a solid alibi, the case is taken up by Henderson’s loyal secretary Carol, a.k.a. ‘Kansas’ (Ella Raines), whose quest to prove her boss’ innocence takes her through a labyrinthine underground of shadowy figures where all is not as it seems. Robert Siodmak's PHANTOM LADY takes one of the great noir premises and drives it directly into a fog bank of obsession, anxiety, and wartime New York weirdness.
Much like his fellow European exiles, Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger, Siodmak’s influential style would have a lasting impact on Hollywood filmmaking, of which PHANTOM LADY is among his best, and would define Siodmak’s career as a visionary and signature artist of film noir. It also contains one of the strangest sequences in 1940s studio filmmaking: an extended jazz performance that escalates from nightclub entertainment into what feels like a psychological breakdown accompanied by Elisha Cook Jr. drums.
“A cavalcade of arresting shots, mixing oneiric shadows and plunging sets (not always in deep focus, adding to the haze) for its waking nightmare. Figures disappear and reappear just when they are needed or not needed most, and death hangs in the air like a chill. Stunning.” - Jake Cole
Much like his fellow European exiles, Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger, Siodmak’s influential style would have a lasting impact on Hollywood filmmaking, of which PHANTOM LADY is among his best, and would define Siodmak’s career as a visionary and signature artist of film noir. It also contains one of the strangest sequences in 1940s studio filmmaking: an extended jazz performance that escalates from nightclub entertainment into what feels like a psychological breakdown accompanied by Elisha Cook Jr. drums.
“A cavalcade of arresting shots, mixing oneiric shadows and plunging sets (not always in deep focus, adding to the haze) for its waking nightmare. Figures disappear and reappear just when they are needed or not needed most, and death hangs in the air like a chill. Stunning.” - Jake Cole
Robert Siodmak
103 minutes
Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story gets the noir runaround in the 1946 adaptation (the first of many!) of THE KILLERS directed by German expat Robert Siodmak, whose penchant for chiaroscuro and deep well of misanthropy lend themselves perfectly to this jet-black crime caper. Starring square-cut specimen Burt Lancaster, in his film debut, as the target of a small town murder plot, this taut potboiler teems with diner grease, cigarette smoke, and gasoline fumes—exactly the kind of heady bouquet that will leave you dizzily on edge until the credits roll. Released within a year of D-Day, Siodmak’s post-War angst fest is an early entry into a nail-biting canon that placed average Joes like Lancaster’s “Swede—and his creeping feelings of obsolescence and status anxiety – at the forefront of a new and frightening genre.
Swede’s journey to the business end of a .38 reveals a gritty origin story that imbues timeless gangster skullduggery with a hard luck boxing story and—what else?—a backstreet love triangle between the square-jawed fallen prizefighter and an especially appetizing Eva Gardner. The superficial stakes are comically low, but as with any noir worth its rolling tobacco, it’s the simmering motive behind this $25,000 hit job that makes this prize worth killing for. And kudos to hitmen Max and Al, played with thick-lipped humorlessness by veteran character actors William Conrad and Charles McGraw, for proving that anyone can bump off a station attendant and make off with the bag, but it takes a real piece of work to revel in the execution.
“The splintered chronology, the flashbacks presented from multiple points of view, and the flashbacks within flashbacks, all have a crucial impact on both the mood and the meaning of the story… Swede is one of the most elusive of Noir’s anti-heroes, Kitty one of the genre’s most masked spider women; and the film’s own devious structure, its conflicting points of view, its choppy handling of time, reinforce the enigmatic aura that enshrouds the two main characters.” - Foster Hirsch
“The CITIZEN KANE of crime movies.” - Eddie Muller
Swede’s journey to the business end of a .38 reveals a gritty origin story that imbues timeless gangster skullduggery with a hard luck boxing story and—what else?—a backstreet love triangle between the square-jawed fallen prizefighter and an especially appetizing Eva Gardner. The superficial stakes are comically low, but as with any noir worth its rolling tobacco, it’s the simmering motive behind this $25,000 hit job that makes this prize worth killing for. And kudos to hitmen Max and Al, played with thick-lipped humorlessness by veteran character actors William Conrad and Charles McGraw, for proving that anyone can bump off a station attendant and make off with the bag, but it takes a real piece of work to revel in the execution.
“The splintered chronology, the flashbacks presented from multiple points of view, and the flashbacks within flashbacks, all have a crucial impact on both the mood and the meaning of the story… Swede is one of the most elusive of Noir’s anti-heroes, Kitty one of the genre’s most masked spider women; and the film’s own devious structure, its conflicting points of view, its choppy handling of time, reinforce the enigmatic aura that enshrouds the two main characters.” - Foster Hirsch
“The CITIZEN KANE of crime movies.” - Eddie Muller
Robert Siodmak
95 minutes
Director Robert Siodmak frequently used the noir genre as a means of moral-philosophizing, and this is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in this gritty crime drama about two childhood best friends who take divergent paths: one becomes a cop (Victor Mature); the other, a cop killer (Richard Conte). The killer must grapple with confessing to a murder he did not commit in order to save his girlfriend from being framed for the crime.
CRY OF THE CITY is something of an anomaly for Siodmak, who preferred to create his dream worlds in the controlled environment of a soundstage. Made during a brief period of Hollywood neorealism in the late 1940s—when films like KISS OF DEATH, CALL NORTHSIDE 777, and HOUSE ON 92ND STREET were filmed on location—much of CRY OF THE CITY was filmed in New York, giving it a raw immediacy in counterpoint to other more ethereal noir films. But the movie’s most fascinating factor by far is Madame Rose, a tough-talking criminal and Swedish masseuse played by the 6’ 2” strongwoman actress Hope Emerson, who towers over Mature in one unforgettable scene.
“Back in the studio era they used to just constantly churn out movies that were masterworks on every level of craft, and everyone took it for granted.” - Will Sloan
CRY OF THE CITY is something of an anomaly for Siodmak, who preferred to create his dream worlds in the controlled environment of a soundstage. Made during a brief period of Hollywood neorealism in the late 1940s—when films like KISS OF DEATH, CALL NORTHSIDE 777, and HOUSE ON 92ND STREET were filmed on location—much of CRY OF THE CITY was filmed in New York, giving it a raw immediacy in counterpoint to other more ethereal noir films. But the movie’s most fascinating factor by far is Madame Rose, a tough-talking criminal and Swedish masseuse played by the 6’ 2” strongwoman actress Hope Emerson, who towers over Mature in one unforgettable scene.
“Back in the studio era they used to just constantly churn out movies that were masterworks on every level of craft, and everyone took it for granted.” - Will Sloan
Robert Siodmak
88 minutes
Burt Lancaster spends CRISS CROSS making a series of decisions so visibly catastrophic that the suspense comes from wondering how much worse it can possibly get. The answer is: considerably.
Robert Siodmak's second collaboration with Lancaster begins when drifter Steve Thompson returns to Los Angeles and makes the mistake at the heart of nearly every great noir—he goes looking for a girl. He finds old flame Yvonne De Carlo and the situation deteriorates immediately. Before long Steve is entangled with gangsters, armored-car robbery plans, double-crosses, triple-crosses, and a romance that operates entirely on poor judgment.
Siodmak’s decision to have the film unravel as a long flashback instills Steve’s story with a sharp sense of pathos, each wistful line of voice-over ringing with mulled-over heartache until it doesn’t, at which point it aches with regret and transforms the entire film into a treatise on deception—both self-induced and imposed. CRISS CROSS, though full of twists and turns, is a film of predetermined ends, and it’s the latter rather than the former that makes it so exciting to watch, as each narrative surprise, each suggestion its protagonist could live out another life, only makes the inevitable nature of its ending all the more painful to experience. CRISS CROSS now stands as perhaps the most darkly poetic rendering of amour fou in all film noir.
Robert Siodmak's second collaboration with Lancaster begins when drifter Steve Thompson returns to Los Angeles and makes the mistake at the heart of nearly every great noir—he goes looking for a girl. He finds old flame Yvonne De Carlo and the situation deteriorates immediately. Before long Steve is entangled with gangsters, armored-car robbery plans, double-crosses, triple-crosses, and a romance that operates entirely on poor judgment.
Siodmak’s decision to have the film unravel as a long flashback instills Steve’s story with a sharp sense of pathos, each wistful line of voice-over ringing with mulled-over heartache until it doesn’t, at which point it aches with regret and transforms the entire film into a treatise on deception—both self-induced and imposed. CRISS CROSS, though full of twists and turns, is a film of predetermined ends, and it’s the latter rather than the former that makes it so exciting to watch, as each narrative surprise, each suggestion its protagonist could live out another life, only makes the inevitable nature of its ending all the more painful to experience. CRISS CROSS now stands as perhaps the most darkly poetic rendering of amour fou in all film noir.
