Topical Guide 429
Mark Dorset
Personages, Historical: Busby Berkeley
Genres: Movie Musical
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 1
The décor — ah, the décor. Faux-zebra Formica, faux-tiger upholstery, faux-leopard carpeting, faux-peacock wallpaper. Our companion thought she had stumbled into an old Busby Berkeley musical — something like Decorators on Safari.
Busby Berkeley (born Berkeley William Enos; November 29, 1895 – March 14, 1976) was an American film director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeley's works used large numbers of showgirls and props as fantasy elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances.
Genres: Film Noir
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 1
The golden-tressed fellow who will tell you, when you phone for a reservation on a Friday or Saturday, that he can’t possibly fit you in for four weeks will be speaking to you over an old black telephone straight out of an uncolorized film noir (perhaps that should be a film noir-et-blanc).
I hope you will not object to my abandoning for a moment my objectivity (or my pretense of objectivity) to say that in my opinion, for what it’s worth, the best movie in the film noir genre is Out of the Past.
Out of the Past (billed in the United Kingdom as Build My Gallows High) is a 1947 film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. The film was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring (using the pseudonym Geoffrey Homes) from his 1946 novel Build My Gallows High (also written as Homes), with uncredited revisions by Frank Fenton and James M. Cain. Its complex, fatalistic storyline, dark cinematography, and classic femme fatale garnered the film critical acclaim and cult status. In 1991, the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress added Out of the Past to the United States National Film Registry of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” films.
There is a pretty good trailer for Out of the Past at Amazon; basically, it’s the film’s setup. The ones on YouTube do not, IMHO, FWIW, succeed in conveying the mood and tone of the film. I think that the best trailer for Out of the Past is on the Babbington Press Facebook page. I made it myself. —MD
[to be continued on Tuesday, February 14, 2023]
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