Once one learns that film scholar/blogger Mark Fertig has authored Film Noir 101: The 101 Best Film Noir Posters, a new Fantagraphics coffee table book, there is only one logical option. Interview him about it. Enjoy Fertig discuss the book and much more about film noir. I wish all my interviews were this content rich. Speaking of content, when discussing certain films, Fertig was kind enough to share links to his blog, Where Danger Lives, please be sure to click on all the links for even more great reading.
Tim O’Shea: You dedicated the book to your late mother. Did she live long enough to know you became a film scholar?
Mark Fertig: Unfortunately my mom passed away when I was still in my twenties; at the time I was slogging it out as an adjunct graphic design professor. However she remains the driving force behind my interest in classic films. Anyone who has ever cultivated a passion for old movies can tell you that it’s difficult to find others out there with the same interests. For me, that person was my mother. We spent countless hours watching dusty VHS tapes and discussing everyone from Alan Ladd to Zasu Pitts. Remember Mia Farrow in those last few moments of The Purple Rose of Cairo? That was my mom.
How were you able to get William Friedkin to contribute the introduction to the book?
I owe that to Gary Groth, my publisher at Fantagraphics. In the early stages of developing the book Gary asked me whom I’d like to write the introduction. William Friedkin was at the top of my wish list. The French Connection is my favorite 1970s crime film, and a movie I reference often when writing about classic noirs. And even after four decades The Exorcist remains the scariest movie ever made. I feel really fortunate that Friedkin thought well enough of the project to sign on, and I love what he wrote in his intro. I hear that he submitted his piece on typewritten pages!
What were some of the criteria to a movie making it into this book?
Film Noir 101 is several things at once: a collection of fantastic movie artwork, a ranking of the most important films of the period, and a reflection of my personal tastes. More than anything else, however, I wanted it to be a college level introduction to film noir — thus the title. I tried to select a canon of films that illustrated as many of noir’s key characteristics as possible. The idea being that if someone were to watch each of the 101 films, he would walk away with a thorough grasp of what film noir was really all about, and perhaps a better understanding of life in mid-century America. So while the posters featured inside are beautiful examples of the period style, and the vast majority of the movies listed are stellar, I was careful to paint as complete a picture of the classic film noir period as I could, even if it meant making a few peculiar choices. For example, I included an admittedly sub-par movie like Pickup (though it has one hell of a poster) because, as I say in the book, you just can’t call yourself a film noir fan until you’ve seen a Hugo Haas movie. I was also certain to put my personal feelings somewhat to the side and include the movie that generates the most is-it or is-it-not-a-film-noir controversy among enthusiasts: 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven. Gene Tierney is stunning in super-saturated Technicolor, but is she a legitimate noir femme fatale or just tragically unhinged and self-destructive? Finally, I was especially careful not to take any of this too seriously. After all, the poster for Billy Wilder’s iconic Double Indemnity is a pink monstrosity with a bizarrely disembodied Edward G. Robinson floating in space! I hope no one gets bent out of shape upon learning that in spite of such a mediocre poster I awarded that great film the top spot.
With #91 The Enforcer, how often did movie posters of that era try to explain some of the film’s slang as this one did?
“Get off the streets Angela Vetto!” Isn’t that poster great? Jack Warner was notoriously cheap in allowing his artists only two or three colors, but the restriction forced them to be creative in other ways. The poster for The Enforcer is tremendous: it lets viewers know that this is first and foremost a Bogart picture, yet it also hooks them with the promise of insight into the inner working of the crime syndicates, a hot-button issue with 1951 audiences. The “glossary” box at bottom of the design is fairly unique among posters from the period, though it makes a lot of sense in this case: The Enforcer is an exposé film based on a true crime book written by the Brooklyn district attorney. Audiences flocked to theaters for this stuff.
I was fascinated by the poster for #76 Too Late For Tears. It portrays a man on the verge of slapping a woman. Would you agree that is not a movie promo you could do today? Also I love when you see a name involved in a production that would go onto to other successes. In this case, screenwriter Roy Huggins went on to create TV shows like The Virginian and Rockford Files. How much do you enjoy perusing credits for finds like that?
That’s one of the most extraordinary posters ever made, though for the time its imagery wasn’t unusual, just extreme. Several crime film posters, most notably including The Big Heat, also depict this sort of male on female violence. I can’t imagine a contemporary poster (or film, for that matter) taking a similar approach. The copy of Too Late for Tears depicted in the book is from my own collection, though it’s not a poster I’d ever put in a frame; some things are better left to history. The most ironic thing about the poster image is that it doesn’t offer a very fair reflection of the film. Lizabeth Scott’s femme fatale is the movie’s deadliest character, and in short order she turns the tables on Dan Duryea. Speaking of Mr. Duryea, he was often at the center of such violent noir narratives: the poster for Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street shows Dan moments away from accosting Joan Bennett under that famous street lamp, while the poster for 1949’s Manhandled may even surpass that of Too Late for Tears: it shows Dan about to toss Dotty Lamour of the roof of a New York City tenement!
As for Roy Huggins, don’t forget that he also created The Fugitive! And yes, I love mining IMDb for credit connections. Do it long enough and you begin to get a sense of just how small a community Hollywood — especially on the television side — really was.
I am surprised at how often Glenn Ford was in Film Noir projects (albeit his career really took off with #72 Gilda), who would you say were the top two or three actors and actresses that launched long term successful careers in the film noir genre?
Burt Lancaster immediately comes to mind. His first screen appearance was in the 1946 noir classic The Killers, which he followed with star turns in Brute Force (1947), I Walk Alone (1948), and Criss Cross (1949) before going on to leading roles in prestige productions such as From Here to Eternity (1953) and Elmer Gantry (1960), for which he won the Academy Award. The same could be said of Kirk Douglas, whose earliest parts were in noir films such as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) and as the heavy in the iconic Out of the Past (1947). The list of performers known almost exclusively for their noir roles is impressive as well, and includes Dan Duryea, Lizabeth Scott, Charles McGraw, Jane Greer, Robert Ryan, and Audrey Totter.
Wasn’t #68 Angel Face a bit risky as the poster was made to look like a giant newspaper article?
My suspicion is that the design is meant to look less like a newspaper and more like a gossip rag such as Confidential magazine (which Fertig wrote about as well at his blog), which first appeared around the same time that Angel Face was released, and quickly became the largest-selling newsstand publication in the United States. These magazines, with titles such as Whisper, Pic, and Exposed were an absolute sensation, and even spawned Scandal Sheet, a 1952 film noir starring Broderick Crawford.
How surprised were you to learn that legendary comedienne Lucille Ball got top billing in #46 The Dark Corner?
Thanks for asking this. I don’t have the space to get into the evolution of Lucille Ball’s screen persona, but her casting here wasn’t especially unusual. Lucy was well into her feature film career by 1946, and still five years away from I Love Lucy. She had even appeared alongside Henry Fonda in a somewhat noirish film, 1942’s The Big Street. It isn’t surprising to see the redhead’s name first on the poster given that the film’s real star, Mark Stevens, was an unknown at the time (Fertig on Stevens). Stevens is considered by many to be a poor man’s Alan Ladd (Fertig on Ladd), and coincidentally both men were billed fourth in their breakout films: Stevens here and Ladd in 1942’s This Gun for Hire. In the end though, while it’s a novelty to watch Lucy play it straight in a crime picture, her presence somewhat diminishes the movie for contemporary audiences. The Dark Corner is incredibly significant because it contains one of film noir’s definitive lines, “I feel all dead inside. I’m backed up in a dark corner and I don’t know who’s hitting me.” Yet I’ve always believed that Lucy’s colossal fame makes it too difficult for current viewers to truly immerse themselves in the picture and properly empathize with one of film noir’s most put-upon private detectives.
In terms of #36 Mildred Pierce, you note that Joan Crawford’s work in the film allows it to transcend the noir genre. How much did you debate with yourself rather or not to include it in the rankings, given the film’s ability to transcend?
I adore Joan Crawford, and there’s no way I could have done this book without reserving a special place for Mildred Pierce. There are plenty of fans out there who have mainstream star vehicles to thank for first nudging them down the dark back alleys of film noir. I call them gateway pictures: Mildred Pierce, Laura, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep. As you know, film noir is notoriously difficult to define. While this ambiguity has been particularly frustrating to me ever since I began discussing noir films on social media, it also gave me a sense of freedom when I was pondering which films to include in the book. When it comes to Mildred Pierce however, there was never any doubt — it’s a bona fide film noir if ever there was one.
How hard was it to settle on which films and posters made the top 10?
It wasn’t especially difficult. When I began the process I imagined that I’d really struggle with the arrangement of the films, but looking back (right now!) at the initial iteration of my rankings, I see that I made very few changes over the course of actually writing the book. I’m a tinkerer, but not an indecisive one. As I mentioned before, the biggest challenge with this project was finding a way to make what is on the surface a coffee table movie poster book into something more, a book that celebrates and informs about the 101 best films in the noir cycle. What I realized is that the subjectivity of personal taste lets me get away with having a book that is two things at once: a collection of the 101 best film noir movies and the 101 best film noir posters. Anyone who ranks movies is just begging for trouble, but in this case I’m looking forward to some spirited debate.
Were there any films that proved more challenging to research or write about than the others?
Yes — the ones that everyone has already seen. If you scan the list of films I’ve essayed about on my blog you’ll see that I don’t cover very many household noirs such as Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity, or Out of the Past. It isn’t that I don’t think those are wonderful films; I’ve just struggled to write about movies that have already been written into the ground. I’ve always gotten a bigger kick out of tracking down and shining a light on pictures that are rare, hard-to-find, or forgotten, and I tried to include a few such films in the book. Throughout the classic film noir period studios large and small cranked out hundreds and hundreds and crime pictures. And given that the noir visual style lends itself to economical and inventive filmmaking it isn’t surprising that a Poverty Row cheapie like Detour (1945) could end as one of the most cornerstones of the classic period. Yet there many brilliant B and C movies that deserve a wider audience: Loophole (1954), Pickup (1951), Plunder Road (1957), Black Tuesday (1954) and Private Hell 36 (1954) are just a few!
In working on this project did you gain a newfound appreciation for some of these films?
Fortunately I didn’t need to do very many first-time viewings as I researched the book. Depending on whom you ask there are as many as a thousand films that have been given the film noir label (which is outrageous!). Yet I’ve somehow managed to see practically all of them at least once, and most of them several times. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to rescreen every movie I considered for inclusion, and what dawned on me early in the process was that I hadn’t seen many of the top-shelf noir films in quite a long time.
I was an “early adopter” with Netflix in the late 1990s (anyone remember credits and cardboard mailers?), which allowed me to see the crime films that I had always lusted after but weren’t available at my local video store. I plowed through disc after disc back then, many of which were films I hadn’t revisited in the years since. One example is the 1950 Otto Preminger and Dana Andrews movie Where the Sidewalk Ends. I hadn’t thought much of it when I first watched it more than a decade ago, but it blew me away when I watched it for the book.
Anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask you about?
I’ve somehow managed to become “a blogger with a book deal,” which means that I receive a lot amount of email from aspiring bloggers looking for advice. I’m often asked how to build readership (ok), how to make a living as a blogger (ha!), how to use social media to promote your work (?), and even how to land a book deal (yikes!) — all very entrepreneurial stuff. Building readership is one thing. To do so you’ve got to write about something people care about, and hopefully with enough style to make for interesting reading (and if you are writing about movies, remember that nobody really wants to read a plot summary). But I can tell you for certain that if fame and fortune are part of your writing agenda, there are better ways to go about it than blogging. I actually started my blog because I was an awful writer and wanted to get better, and because I was passionate about old movies and old movie posters. It was never important to me that anyone actually read my stuff, and I was certain when I launched that no one ever would. This is a labor of love for me, which means that whatever small notoriety I’ve received in the process is merely icing on the cake. It’ll surely pass, but I’ll still be blogging.
