It’s certainly an arresting title (which would be replaced in some territories) which perhaps evokes genres such as horror, but this is actually a classic film noir or possibly a gothic romance/melodrama. Following my viewing of Criss Cross (1949) I may have to rethink some of my comments about Burt Lancaster as producer-star. I’ve been watching a Blu-ray disc of this film from the ‘Universal Noir’ Vol #1 box set from Powerhouse/Indicator, but although this film was distributed by Universal-International and filmed primarily at Universal Studios, it was actually the first film from the production partnership of Burt Lancaster and Harold Hecht, listing both ‘Harold Hecht Productions’ and ‘Norma Productions’ brands in the credits. Norma Anderson was Lancaster’s wife from 1946 to 1969. This production partnership became arguably the most important of the ‘Independent’ production partnerships in the new Hollywood ecology of the late 1940s and 1950s lasting through to 1962 and The Bird Man of Alcatranz. Hecht was a major Hollywood figure as a producer and talent agent (the new source of power in Hollywood) and later the duo would expand to include writer-producer James Hill. By 1948 Lancaster had already established, after just a couple of films, a persona as a tough guy with the possibility of vulnerability and in 1948 he also played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry Wrong Number at Paramount and with Edward G. Robinson in All My Sons at Universal. In the new Hollywood world Lancaster could move between studios, eventually being in a position to negotiate multi-picture deals for Hecht-Lancaster.
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands was only 79 minutes long but it was not conceived as a B feature or ‘programmer’. Lancaster was cast opposite Joan Fontaine, herself something of an ‘independent’ agent at this time, having formed Rampart Productions with her husband William Dozier. In 1948 she also made Letter to an Unknown Woman for Rampart and Universal with Max Ophüls directing. All this followed Fontaine’s decision to be an independent after her contract with David O. Selznik ended in 1947. Lancaster-Fontaine looked a prestige pairing but the production attracted a lesser-known director in the form of Norman Foster. Foster was perhaps best known for the B picture series of Mr Moto and Charlie Chan films at 20th Century Fox in the late 1930s but he had an interesting background that included directing four features in Mexico when the local industry was very strong. He also worked with Orson Welles in 1943 on Journey into Fear and It’s All True. In 1948 he also worked at RKO directing Loretta Young, William Holden and Robert Mitchum in Rachel and the Stranger. Norma Productions’ Universal shoot would be photographed by Russell Metty and have a music score from Miklós Rósza, but perhaps most importantly Foster had a team of art directors and set decorators headed by Bernard Herzbrun and Nathan Juran who produced an extensive set representing an East London waterside district, presumably meant to be Wapping. The script by Leonardo Bercovici was based on a novel by Gerald Butler, the British writer whose work was also adapted around this time for Nick Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1951) with Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino. But where that film transposed the story to the US, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands remained set in London. The adaptation was by Ben Maddow and Walter Bernstein. Hugh Gray, a British writer was also hired as a dialogue writer and ‘technical advisor’.
The narrative kicks off with an altercation at closing time in a local pub in which Bill Saunders (Burt Lancaster) has had a few too many and lashes out at the landlord who falls and cracks his head. Realising the man is dead, Bill scarpers, pursued by locals and soon two local police ‘bobbies’. The athletic Lancaster convincingly leaps over walls and fences and eventually climbs through a first-floor window into the room of a sleeping Jane Wharton (Joan Fontaine). After the initial shock of Bill’s sudden appearance, Jane composes herself and doesn’t alert the police. It isn’t long before we realise there is something bringing these two people together following such an unusual introduction. We learn that Bill is an ex-GI who spent two years in a German POW camp and that Jane was engaged to an RAF officer who was killed. Now she works at some form of Medical Institute as a nurse. It will emerge that Bill is suffering from what would now be termed PTSD after his wartime experiences. A relationship develops between Bill and Jane, although there are things she doesn’t know about him. She may also have sublimated her grief by taking her current job in which she helps children needing basic medical care. Could this relationship work? It might, but in this case there is a complicating factor. Harry Carter (Robert Newton) is a criminal who was in the pub and witnessed the incident in which Bill killed the landlord. Later, a chance encounter enables him to use his hold over Bill to suggest a way to make a lot of money.
There are a number of interesting questions raised by this film. The first is its possible status as a film noir. I introduced the idea that this is a classic noir or possibly a romance melodrama. One important consideration is the idea of Bill as a disturbed war veteran. This is a key feature of both American and British noirs. The idea of a mentally disturbed veteran appears in the Blue Dahlia (1946) featuring Alan Ladd. Problems with re-adjustment appear in the British films They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) and Cage of Gold (1950). But as several recent commentators have noted, the two central characters are inversions of typical noir roles. Instead of a male character who is cynical and not beyond bending a few rules faced with a manipulative femme fatale, Bill is a ‘wronged’ character who tries to change and seek redemption while Jane is actually a strong and intelligent woman with a moral centre who appears to genuinely love Bill. Without spoiling the narrative too much the couple are given an open ending rather than being definitively gunned down as in similar films. Monthly Film Bulletin in the UK termed the film a ‘melodrama’ and that is reinforced by the presentation of a dark and smoky/foggy London with interior low-key lighting. (By chance this film and Criss Cross were reviewed in the same April 1949 issue of MFB.)
The British question is also intriguing. I have to say that the studio sets are very convincing and the location shooting around LA as well. The railway scenes in particular have convincing detail and even a loco that might be British. At this point in the late 1940s there were many British actors in Hollywood so accents are not a problem. Robert Newton was a star of British Cinema at this time and his films included films noirs and melodramas. I’m thinking of Temptation Harbour (1947) with Simone Simone and Obsession (1949) with Sally Gray, directed by Edward Dmytryk. I suppose Newton’s most famous role was as Long John Silver in Disney’s Treasure Island (1950) and its sequels. He was often seen as overacting and easily lampooned in the pirate role. In a British production he might have been replaced by an actor cast in a ‘spiv’ role (a ‘spiv’ would be linked to ‘black market’ operations during this period.) The only real ‘mistake’ in the production was the left-hand drive truck (‘lorry’) that Bill drives. Having said that, there were probably many ex-US trucks as well as ex-US servicemen in Britain in 1948. The most striking confirmation of Britishness comes when Jane explains that she knows about truck engines and danger because she drove an ambulance for four years during the war (this kind of experience was the focus of Sarah Waters’ novel Night Watch in 2006). I was impressed by Joan Fontaine’s performance in this film. I found her a little insipid in her earlier two films for Hitchcock (Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941)), but here I find her more attractive because she’s more in control. Because of her English background as a de Havilland she fitted into this role very well. I note that one reviewer refers to Fontaine’s dislike of Lancaster – something perhaps covered in biographies of the star. This wasn’t visible to me in the film.
The Blu-ray carries a commentary by film historian Josh Nelson (which covers the PTSD angle) plus an essay in the box-set booklet by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry and a compilation of news stories about Lancaster as a producer. One of the issues for the script was the depiction of the punishment that Bill receives from the court and what would have been the outcome if he had been convicted of murder (which surely would have been manslaughter, not a capital offence?). The producers were thrown by news that the death penalty was being abolished in the UK, but in reality it was maintained until the 1960s. Oddly , the judicial flogging pictured above was finally abolished in 1948 (though it continued within prisons for attacks on prison officers). I’ve seen a couple of reviews in which the reviewer can’t cope with what they see as the ‘gloom’ of this narrative but I enjoyed the film, perhaps not expecting anything else but gloom in austerity London in 1948. I think this is a useful addition to the film noir archive even if it doesn’t fit all the criteria for a classic film noir. On a final note, if you want to see a British feature from the same period with a similar setting in East London, I would recommend It Always Rains on Sunday (UK 1947). Taken together with Blood on My Hands (the UK release title) this would be a great double bill.
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