1947 was a key year for successful films noirs in Hollywood and Framed is a great title that says everything about noir in the most succinct way possible. This is one of the relatively obscure films in Indicator’s Vol 2 of ‘Columbia Noirs’. The poor sap thrown into a desperate situation is Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford) who we first meet careering down a mountain road in a truck with failing brakes. He avoids killing himself but still crashes into a pick-up when he arrives in a small town. He has to use the little money he earns for driving the truck to pay the victim of the crash but in the process he’s charged with several offences and given a fine or 10 days in clink . . . and then a beautiful woman pays his fine.
This must be a scam? But Mike only cares enough to get drunk and, sober the next morning, he tries to get a proper job. He’s a mining engineer by trade. I won’t spoil any more of the plotting. This is a genuine noir, at least in narrative terms, and the femme fatale is Paula (Janis Carter). Paula is the mistress of local bank vice-president Steve Price (Barry Sullivan). The narrative is one of those in which the audience knows what Paula is up to but Mike appears oblivious, focusing only on the prospect of employment. Seemingly, he’ll only wake up to what is happening at the last moment. In fact there is a twist in the tale so our interest is engaged throughout but we don’t get to enjoy the chiaroscuro of noir to the same extent as in other crime thrillers of the period. The cinematography is by the ever reliable Burnett Guffey, so it serves its narrative purpose very well of course but isn’t particularly expressive apart from a couple of nighttime sequences.
The film depends on the playing of the three leads and a fourth character played by Edward Buchanan, a character actor who is recognisable to me from a host of 1950s Westerns and later TV series. He was a friend of Glenn Ford and often appeared alongside him. Here he plays the prospector who might employ Mike to help him re-open an old mine. All four performances by the leads work well. The film’s director is Richard Wallace who has been forgotten, mainly I think because he died relatively young in 1951 after a solid career of making studio films since the late 1920s. Barry Sullivan was a dependable second lead in a host of films in the late 1940s and into the 1950s after an early career on the stage. He was into TV quite early and prospered throughout the 1960s. I remember him as the film director in Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). The revelation in the film is Janis Carter. I don’t remember seeing her before but she makes a big impression in this film. She’s another actor with a stage background, Slightly older than Ford she was certainly attractive with fine features and big hair (blonde). In this film she looks and acts very professional and efficient, but although she smiles sweetly she somehow isn’t convincing as a girl paying out a lot of money to help a guy she doesn’t know. Come to that, what is she doing working in a cheap bar/restaurant with a craps game upstairs? Does she encourage him to drink? Is that why he seems so befuddled?
Glenn Ford is arguably underrated as a major Hollywood star. He started early in 1939 and lasted through to the 1980s in over 100 films and TV shows. He wasn’t the tallest or the most handsome but he was certainly attractive. He seemed to shift from boyish charm in the early years to an almost avuncular figure later but always beneath the surface was a seriousness and a sense of decency and responsibility. His character’s drinking in this film seems to be a reaction to anxiety and despair but once sober he acts sensibly. Ford’s big break had come a year earlier with his role opposite Rita Hayworth in Gilda. He was contracted to Columbia – one of the earliest actors to be contracted by the mini-major which had previously relied on ‘borrowing’ stars from the majors. Ford was a reliable front-line star alongside Rita Hayworth and William Holden but he wasn’t fully appreciated by studio boss Harry Cohn. Post-Gilda he was used as frequently as possible and Framed is a relatively low-budget crime thriller running around 82 minutes. In other words it appears to be one of Columbia’s ‘B’ pictures. Bs seemed to have been categorised mainly by running time and I would argue that in quality terms this is an ‘A’. I decided to investigate how the film was distributed and exhibited.
Variety (March 5th 1947) described the film as a ‘taut melodrama’ and placed it in the cycle of ‘unscrupulous women’ film suggesting that it would do “okay business all down the line”. ” It doesn’t pack enough weight for the de luxe spots but as a dual bill topper in other situations will carry itself well at the box office.” Checking some of the city reports for the next few weeks, it looks like Variety‘s prediction was carried through with the film doing well in several cities as the top half of a Columbia double bill. The film was released in the UK as Paula and the local trade paper was impressed: “Romantic crime melodrama. Plot ingenious and holding. Characterisation good and denouement effective. Very good thriller.” (Kine Weekly, 3rd July 1947) In Blackpool, Paula was top of the bill at the Winter Gardens Pavilion for the Tower Company in September 1947. Later the film appeared at the top of double bills at various Gaumont cinemas. Ford was actually everywhere in UK cinemas in 1947 with five titles appearing across the year. Gilda was still around and an earlier picture Destroyer (US 1943) with Edward G. Robinson popped up on one bill. Two other 1946 films were very visible in the UK in 1947. A Stolen Life in which Ford (on loan) played opposite Bette Davis and Gallant Journey, a biopic of an American aviation pioneer were both still doing the rounds of cinemas when Paula was released.
These box office reports suggest that Columbia’s ‘middle budget’ pictures could command top spot in cinemas outside the major city centre circuit houses (usually for 3 days in the UK) and that B pictures at this time could play like As. It is also interesting to note Kine Weekly‘s description of Paula as romance/crime/melodrama. The contemporary enthusiasm for labelling all crime films from the 1940s as films noirs masks the complex genre mixing that has always been a feature of popular cinema.
The Indicator Blu-ray includes a short public service mental heath film, The Steps of Age (1951) directed by the screenwriter of Framed, Ben Maddow, which rather terrifyingly warns us older folk about the dangers to our mental health of a retirement from full-time employment without the substitution of hobbies and/or volunteering. Framed was Maddow’s first feature script. He went on to write The Asphalt Jungle (1950) for John Huston and was then blacklisted after HUAC and had to write with another ‘front’ writer taking credit. The disc also carries a commentary by the film critic and historian Imogen Sara Smith. I only listened to a few minutes of this but I could immediately see that it was informative and very useful. I rarely listen to commentaries unless I’m going to teach a film or write about it extensively. I much prefer a separate presentation to camera. It’s perhaps just a personal thing and not a reflection on this commentator. Framed is solid entertainment and widely available on sites like YouTube and very much recommended.
The Case for Global Film 