Seedy Sexy Dirty Drum Boogie

American cinema isn't really that dangerously sexy anymore. It likes to pretend it is, and some stars will put it out there (in nude scenes, in magazine spreads, or simply in the work of Kate Winslet -- check the Night Porter light The Reader for proof), but in my mind (and with some exceptions, I'm looking at you my beloved Penelope Cruz -- Vicky Christina Barcelona) it lacks the edge and thrill of say, Peggy Cummins shooting between her legs in Gun Crazy. Or Decoy's Jean Gille laughing with maniac, orgasmic glee after she's offed her duped boyfriend who's just dug up the only thing that turns her on -- money. Or Cloris Leachman's panting, hard hyper-ventilating co-mingling with Nat King Cole's silky singing over the credits to Kiss Me Deadly. Or, dear God, Lana and that lipstick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The look John Garfield gives her when it rolls across the floor is worth one hundred sex scenes.

But, clearly I'm showing a bias. Based on my examples, it's not surprising that film noir is the place (or rather, my place) for screwy sexy made all the more erotic because even as sex, often toxic sex, motivates many of its character's actions, the genre's aim isn't merely to steam your glasses. So when it does hit an arousing bulls-eye, well, as the lady says, put your lips together and blow.

Which led me to a film I hadn't seen in years -- Robert Siodmack's Phantom Lady -- a picture that features a performance by Ella Raines that's so sizzling and yet so alluringly poignant, you're a little overwhelmed by it.

Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel, Phantom Lady was Siodmak's first American screen success and he would later craft some sublime noirs including Criss Cross, Cry of the City, The Dark Mirror, The File on Thelma Jordan and The Killers (among others). I'll run down the story: Ella Raines (her character's nicknamed "Kansas" -- which seems like a Wizard of Oz reference given the subterranean world she will find herself in) works as Alan Curtis's secretary. When he's framed for the murder of his wife, she sets out to help him because she doesn't believe he did it. She's also besotted with him (lucky fella). Sexing up her image as cub private dick, she's off to find this "Phantom Lady" with the help of Curtis's friend (Franchot Tone) and an off duty police detective (Thomas Gomez, so wonderful in Force of Evil). OK, so that's the story, but what I really want to discuss is Raines's interaction with the hep cat, hopped up jazz drummer, played by noir staple, the great Elisha Cook, Jr.

I am absolutely gob-smack over their famed moments together. Ella's seduction of Elisha -- an overwhelming sexy, conflicted, crazily drugged sequence (you can practically smell the booze, marijuana, heroin and dexies permeating the joint) in which Raines plays hot-to-trot, seems to be eating up her vampy method of getting to the straight dirt and yet, is repulsed by both Cook (that kiss!) and herself for having to go this far. Showcasing Siodmak's (and cinematographer Woody Bredell's) evocative, angled compositions (used gorgeously throughout the movie), the style brilliantly underscores the mounting hysteria and varied state of Raines's psychology. This is an extreme example, but what Raines reveals is something many women feel when finding themselves in the belly of the sleazy beast. It's a little fun and a little horrifying and you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Not that this situation isn't also sickly erotic -- it is. And the frantic, psychosexual, hop headed-ness makes me feel high (I'll have what Elisha's having, thank you). It sure as hell makes me want to put on some Gene Krupa. That's some seedy, sexy, dirty drum boogie.

Read more Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun.

Comments

[rockyersocksoff]

So why aren't YOU a movie star, Kim?

You look like one. Yowza.

Maybe you're too smart.

[mamacat]

Thanks for that scene - they portrayed something worth watching, entertaining, but rarely accomplished so well.

It is not easy to figure out why one actress does well and another doesn't. I am not familiar with Ms. Raines, but I would like to see more of her work.
Perhaps the world was not ready for that kind of realism.

Respectfully, I disagree with your characterisation of The Reader as NIght Porter light, unless one wishes to evaluate it only for its sex scenes. For me The Reader is much more than its sex scenes, although they are believable. I am still trying to understand what I think and feel about the movie, but in broad terms, I see in it another example of how war can ruin the lives of those who can't even understand it, or who aren't even involved in it.

[quitelikemike]

Thanks, Kim, for rescuing the good name of a fine film from oblivion. I first saw "The Phantom Lady" about 10 years ago on TV and was never good for anything but femmes fatales afterward. I thought for sure that Ella Raines would have occupied a high place in film memories. I was surprised to find out otherwise. She apparently left the business not many years after this, her best role. And the modern assessment of her brief career was that she was uncastable by the standards of femininity and public appeal of Hollywood immediately after the war. As beautiful and alluring as she was, she was judged to be too masculine in some obscure fashion. Or perhaps she just struck a jittery nerve not very far under the skin of a business ready to to see women back in more demure roles.

Thanks again, Kim, for turning the key light on Ella Raines, even for a moment. She deserves to be remembered.

Now how about a few words for the 50-foot lady of slinky treachery, the peerless Marie Windsor?