Radiance Films has delivered a compelling new collection of crime films for the discerning cinephile to enjoy this bleak midwinter. The World Noir Vol 1 collection is a hearty trio of morally cynical features, all emerging from the post-Second World War fog.
The mix of Japanese, French and Italian movies may seem odd, but the three films help paint a healthy picture of a crime genre emerging from the wreckage of a hostile milieu. All three films manage to make their claim to the noir genre, with each nationality subtly shaping a genre best known for its American roots.
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The earliest film in the collection is Koreyoshi Kurahara’s 1957 atmospheric debut feature I Am Waiting. Its story involving a chance meeting between a failed boxer, a melancholic club hostess and their ties with a murderous gangster boss holds a shade of American familiarity within the genre.
One of the film’s main strengths lies within with its lead performer Yūjirō Ishihara, whose portrayal of a former boxer cum restaurateur balances an American-style swagger with sloped shoulders of vulnerability. The central relationship between Ishihara and Mie Kitahara’s suicidal club singer is engaging and unpredictable. However, as the film moves towards the final third, Kitahara slips into the background. The story gets stripped of a small amount of potency. That said, this doesn’t stop cinematographer Kurataro Takamura’s camera from moving with purpose, while much of the film’s final third still holds a succulent amount of tension.
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Pressure builds in the second film, Witness in the City (1959). This surprisingly little-seen gem is the strongest of the three noirs on display. Édouard Molinaro’s Paris set thriller barely places a foot wrong, delivering a tension-fuelled film from its startling cold open until its bullet-riddled final moments. When an industrialist shamelessly escapes justice after murdering his mistress, the woman’s husband takes matters into his own hands, unwittingly setting in motion a tragic chain of events.
Filmed on location, Witness in the City builds a riveting late-night world filled with debauched shenanigans and cold-blooded murder. Witness in the City’s textured narrative is the perfect foil for the film’s star Lino Ventura, in which he provides the most complicated protagonist of the collection. A man whose motives carry a misguided sense of nobleness and only cause further pain as the film continues. The look of the film has a dynamic verve created by notable cinematographer Henri Decaë, who paints a deeply expressive picture with visuals that liberally borrow from gothic horror to classic noir. In addition, the film’s beautiful use of Paris geography comes a year before Godard’s Breathless (1960). There must have been something in the French air at the time.
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Rounding up the collection is Pietro Germi’s French-Italian production The Facts of Murder (1959). Based on the 1957 novel That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, the film details a police department’s dealings with a jewellery robbery in a neighbourhood in Rome. When a grisly murder occurs in the vicinity soon after, Chief Detective Ciccio Ingravallo (played by Germi himself) believes that both the robbery and murder are connected and seeks to dig deeper into the case. While The Facts of Murder is a smoothly crafted feature by an auteur of some pedigree, it’s also the least satisfying film of the collection. Despite its beautiful compositions, colourful Italian side characters, and blending of comedy and drama, the predictable plotting and deliberate pace buffs a little shine off the film.
The original novel is considered a highly admired panorama of life in early fascist Rome. Germi eschews this and delivers a simpler whodunit featuring an early performance from Claudia Cardinale. It’s an enjoyable yet scant performance by the actress. However, it’s within the framing of Cardinale throughout the film which belies the narrative mechanics. While hindsight can stain the first viewing of a movie, Germi does little to keep much of the film secret. This is possibly his intention, but it does soften any impact the film may have been looking to land.
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From the perspective of extras, Radiance delivers a solid batch of insightful documentaries that add insight to the films in the collection. A good handful of the extras showcase the lead actor of each film in some way. This becomes an intriguing throughline as it seems Radiance has correlated the film choices due to the commanding performances of the leading actors. The Witness in the City disc features an interview with Phillippe Durant focusing on Lino Ventura’s enthusiasm for withdrawn, loner characters. The extras also help draw attention to the disparity of the film’s meagre following despite the pedigree of talent behind the camera. The fact that the talking heads in the extras note Witness in the City along with titles such as The 400 Blows (1959), Breathless (1960), Vertigo (1958) and Les Diaboliques (1955) should not go unmentioned.
The video essay by Mark Schilling on I Am Waiting highlights the popularity of Yūjirō Ishihara within his native Japan. Meanwhile, comprehensive documentaries on The Facts of Murder disc provide a perfect starting point for anyone wanting to know about Pietro Germi and his contribution to Italian Neorealist cinema. Germi’s disastrous meeting with Billy Wilder gets mentioned more than once, but this doesn’t take away from what is said about Germi’s career. The high praise from the multitude of colleagues only helps to establish why the American writer/director held the Italian Auteur in such high regard in the first place.
World Noir Vol. 1 is out now on Blu-ray from Radiance Films.
