It is the mid 1950s and Leonard Marnham, the English “innocent” of Ian McEwan’s 1990 novel The Innocent, has joined a group of mostly Americans in an espionage endeavor in Berlin.  A tunnel is to be used for spying on the Soviets (a real-life venture), and Leonard is duly put to technical work.  By and by he becomes romantically involved with a German woman called Maria, whose ex-husband occasionally, drunkenly batters her. . . An agonizing episode drives Leonard and Maria to kill the ex-husband in self-defense, and since the Berlin law cannot be trusted in this instance, the desperate couple dismember the lout’s body and place the parts in suitcases.  Alas, the love affair is undermined by this, and after a while the spying operation is subverted.

What Leonard encounters is a non-political violence between wars—the war against the Nazis and the Cold War.  The violence of the ex-husband is an ordinary violence, but no less shattering to the individual than national or collective violence.  Violence, like life, goes on, in war or in peace, and often it paves the way for either betrayal or what looks like betrayal, as it does here.

The trauma and the contingency which James Wood says McEwan’s novels (e.g. Atonement) are about rush to the fore in this gripping book.  They aren’t pretty.

The Innocent (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As France’s Eric Rohmer got older, his films got better.  Pauline at the Beach (1982) is a minor case in point.  Herein, a 40ish Lothario and an obtuse young man unable to win back an ex-girlfriend make a mess of things in their small-scale world.  In her own way, so does lovely Marion (Arielle Dombasle), the cousin of 15-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet), who receives the brunt of it all.  The attitudes of the adult characters dismay, although I’m afraid Pauline Kael was right that Rohmer “can’t resist setting up the little girl [i.e. Pauline] as our moral instructor.”

All the same, the film is likable and crisp and less boring than such Rohmer pictures as My Night at Maud’s.  As always with Rohmer, there is much conversation, but an advantage exists in revealing things through conversation rather than sound bites.  And even on DVD Nestor Almendros’s summer-season cinematography looks great.

Cover of Pauline at the Beach

(In French with English subtitles.)

In Black Angel, from 1946, there is a veneer of pulp entertainment hiding a chunk of despair.  As in The Blue Dahlia, a naughty woman is murdered, albeit here a betrayed wife (June Vincent) strives for the exoneration of the luckless husband who did not do it.  Dan Duryea is persuasive as an alcoholic Mr. Ordinary who joins and falls for the Vincent character.  Circumstance and Time, in that order, start leaving people rattled.  That justice gets done hardly gives rise to bright conciliation.

Adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel, fruitfully directed by Roy William Neill, Black Angel has no wonderful climax—and is nearly too simple—but is still provocative and agreeable.  I like a movie where a woman (Vincent) asserts herself against a man (who means her no harm) in a normal manner and is then necessarily sympathetic to him.  It’s smarter than what we get from today’s movies.

Except for its specious final minutes, 1946’s The Blue Dahlia, written by Raymond Chandler, is a smashing crime picture.  A horrid, unfaithful woman (Doris Dowling) whom no man truly loves is murdered, and Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd), her husband and an ex-military officer, tries to find the killer.  He himself is a suspect, but so is the smooth club owner Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva)—the “lover” of Dowling and the husband of a character played by Veronica Lake (my gosh, he’s cheating on Veronica Lake!?)—and the irritable, mentally unbalanced veteran, Buzz (William Bendix).

With his foursquare direction, George Marshall and his cast have delivered a sober, classy but not too classy melodrama.  Chandler’s fine dialogue means little in the mouth of Alan Ladd, dull and Shane-like as he is, but it means a lot coming from the memorable Da Silva, Dowling, Will Wright, et al.  Lake, who is serviceable, is perfect-looking; Bendix, who is unhandsome, is scary.  Have fun.

The short (and silent) Buster Keaton flick, One Week (1920), revolves around Buster and his bride (Sybil Seely) building their first house from a do-it-yourself kit, saddled by a sabotage effort from an obnoxious old flame.  Keaton’s comedies are not only funny, they’re adventurous, for Keaton is so often on the precipice, life and limb almost lost.  Through it all, the wife he loves is at his side—and she loves him—and both of them summon delectable mirth.

Also from 1920, Convict 13 is not as good but still pleasurable—weirdly so.  For a long time I thought the 21-minute lark contained too much coarse criminal violence, but—well—it doesn’t.  The ending proves it.  Again Keaton has vigor to spare, and Seely’s in this one too, though with less personality.