Nightmare Alley - Film Noir And The American Dream

by Mark Osteen

  To find out the truth, Frank/Danny returns to the Diedrich house, where he meets Grandma Diedrich (Adeline De Walt Reynolds), an invalid who can neither move nor speak. In a compelling scene, they devise a means for her to communicate through eye blinks (once for yes, twice for no). This curious encounter is a meeting of doubles: the woman who can’t speak addresses the man who can’t remember—missing body meets missing mind. As Marlisa Santos remarks, her “mute and paralyzed state” signifies “Thompson’s inability to prove his innocence or identity” (90). It’s as if Frank is attempting to gain access to his own absent memory through her. And her eyes—which compensate for Frank’s/Danny’s blindness to his own motives and emotions—are also a gateway to truth, since she witnessed the murder. The next day he induces Grandma to spell out words letter by letter, but she resists telling him about the murder because she is “a-f-r-a-i-d.” That night he tries to learn more, and she quickly eliminates Bill and Alma. Who could it be, then? The answer enters the room: Ruth, whom Grandma saw stab Diedrich via a reflection in the bedroom mirror. This image is fitting, for Frank has become Grandma’s mirror, itself an element in the looking-glass world where he is Danny Nearing.

  Claiming she committed the murder “for us,” Ruth begs him to flee with her. He refuses: “I don’t love you. I’ve only known you two days. I’m not the man you think I am. … My name is Frank Thompson, and I’m married.” As she prepares to shoot Frank, Marucci enters and guns her down; dying, she admits that “Danny” is innocent. But is he? Why did he drop out of his life as Frank Thompson to become a feckless character consorting with a murderous maid? Was he, as I speculated above, sick to death of his life as the staid Mr. Thompson? Or did he, like Flitcraft, somehow glimpse the randomness of existence and suddenly decide to live “in step” with its absurdity? We never find out. Although Frank asserts that the “me inside” isn’t a killer, he already “killed” Frank Thompson once, just as he now puts Danny Nearing to rest: if not a murderer, he is at least a kind of suicide. Ironically, he reinhabits his old self only through the ministrations of Nearing, who is then sacrificed for his troubles. One set of past attachments is severed so that he can take up another set. Was his life as Nearing a “journey into his own unconscious, a dream-world” (98), as Santos suggests? Or is Nearing his aboriginal self, the identity he so yearned to occupy that he was willing to give up everything for it? Will he do so again? Even at the conclusion Frank Thompson remains a partial person, as disabled in his own way as Grandma Diedrich—and far less honest.

  “I Did Something Wrong—Once”

  As haltingly spoken by “The Swede,” also known as Pete Lund (Burt Lancaster), these words reverberate throughout Robert Siodmak’s brilliant The Killers. They are the Swede’s only explanation for why he waits passively in his room for two thugs to execute him. He is not merely resigned to his fate; he believes he deserves it. Why? That question motivates Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien), an insurance investigator whose interviews with Lund’s acquaintances compose most of the film. This narrative structure (borrowed, perhaps, from Citizen Kane) pushes the signature noir flashback device nearly to its limit, splintering the narration into eleven dramatized narrations by eight characters, each one supplying a different memory of the Swede, whose real name was Ole Anderson. A different character for each narrator—reliable gas station attendant, suicidal hotel guest, boxer and childhood buddy, mooning lover, intimate cellmate, double-crossing rat—Ole is at once mysterious and simple. Many flashbacks begin or end with lap dissolves from the narrator’s present face to his or her face at the time of the action, indicating that each tale is less about Ole than about the teller’s own fears and aspirations (and excuses for not helping him): Ole is a mirror. At other moments narrators’ faces dissolve to Reardon’s, implying that in listening he “becomes” each one—on his way to “becoming” the Swede.

  Ole’s haunting words testify that he can’t outrun his original self or forgive his original sin. They also suggest, as Shadoian remarks, that he was already “dead while he was alive” (81). Indeed, as he lies waiting for the killers, Ole’s face is engulfed in shadow: he is literally effaced, just as he has effaced himself by changing his name to hide from the gang of Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker), whom he betrayed after they robbed a hat factory of its payroll. His initial erasure is revealed in an early flashback by his childhood friend, police lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene), who recalls how, after the Swede broke his right hand in a boxing match, he became a worthless commodity to his trainer and manager. As Ole showers behind the pair, they discuss his replacement. Cinematographer Woody Bredell’s use of deep focus is telling: the washed up Ole literally recedes into the background. Similar compositions characterize many shots in the flashbacks, as Swede is consistently crammed into the corner or overshadowed by others. Likewise, as the backlit Ole strides down an archway after refusing Sam’s offer to become a cop, Siodmak implies that he is already enclosed by fate.

  Indeed, Ole is rarely the primary agent in his own story, and when he is, he makes foolish decisions, such as pursuing Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner)—even going to jail for her—instead of staying with the stable Lily (Virginia Christine), and then becoming involved in the hat factory heist instead of emulating his mentor, Charleston (Vince Barnett), who finds the job too risky. The first time Ole sees Kitty, in fact, Siodmak renders his infatuation almost comically, by placing a brightly lit phallic bulb between him and the singing siren. Ole can’t take his eyes off her, but another organ motivates him even more powerfully. The Swede isn’t very bright; but more than that, as the structure implies, he is a secondary character in his own life.

  In The Killers, Ole Anderson (Burt Lancaster) falls in love with Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner) at first sight. Kobal Collection / Art Resource, NY.

  Charleston, his former cellmate, remembers him fondly. In fact, Charleston was in love with Ole and spent long evenings in prison teaching him about astronomy and advising him that women, whom he’s “studied up on” when not in stir, aren’t reliable. But Ole doesn’t listen and continues to stroke the green, harp-covered handkerchief that Kitty gave him—the fetishized “symbol of [his] dreams” (Shadoian 84). This handkerchief becomes Reardon’s fetish as well, as he carries it with him throughout the investigation. This totem raises the question of why Reardon becomes obsessed with the murder of a man he calls a “nobody.” There’s very little in it for the insurance company: the $2,500 death benefit Swede left to the hotel maid is not worth Reardon’s time; the money from the heist will merely become part of next year’s rate adjustment (while his boss relays this fact, Reardon plays with Kitty’s handkerchief).

  One answer is that Reardon is an investigator by nature. Like Sam Spade, he delights in the thrill of the hunt; he’s a hound for truth and believes there is such a thing. But another, more complex, answer speaks to the theme of self-reinvention. We know nothing about Reardon before the pursuit begins: in contrast to Anderson, who exists only as a collection of others’ memories, Reardon has “no past” (Shadoian 83). The more absorbed he becomes in Ole’s life, the more like Ole and his underworld associates he grows: his first interviews are with law-abiding folk, but his later interviews are with Charleston, Blinky Franklin, Dum Dum (Jack Lambert), Colfax, and Kitty—criminals, every one. Indeed, partway through his investigation Reardon occupies the same room in Brentwood where Ole was killed—ostensibly to catch Dum Dum but also to reenact the death scene. The mise-en-scène here even repeats the shadowy atmosphere of that sequence, as Reardon, a novice at the detective game, waits for Dum Dum. But this time Rear-don holds the gun: he has become “the killer.” He even lets Dum Dum believe that he wants the money for himself. In short, just as the opening scene’s killers parrot the tough-guy lingo of 1930s gangster movies (as in the Hemingway short story on which the film is loosely based), so Reardon now plays at being a movie thug. But not very successfully: Dum Dum easily takes the gun away and subdues him.

  Reardon is clearly fas
cinated by these crooked characters and gets a thrill from associating with them; he “fills his emptiness with a vicarious dream” (Shadoian 84). This adventure gives him a chance to inhabit a much more exciting world than the bland offices where he spends his days as a functionary. In some respects he even resembles Anderson: if Ole is an unwitting victim of others’ machinations, Reardon is subject to the cold realities of the actuarial tables. Like Ole, Reardon is a secondary character in his own life. Late in the film, at the conclusion of Reardon’s chat with Colfax, the now-legit gangster’s face dissolves to Reardon’s: the point is that he wants to be Colfax, which becomes even clearer in the justly famous Green Cat sequence.2 As Reardon and Kitty converse there, a candle rests between them, recalling the phallic bulb shining between Kitty and Swede at their first meeting; Reardon too is falling for her. “I’d like to have known the old Kitty Collins,” he declares, even after she has just told him how she betrayed Swede! When she suggests returning to his hotel with him, his eyes light up at this apparent sexual come-on. But she does to him what she did to Ole—“takes a powder,” as Reardon earlier put it. It’s almost as though Reardon wants to be killed, or perhaps, like Ole, he feels dead, with only the prospect of violence capable of reviving him.

  Though the convoluted story of how Ole was betrayed and disappeared—a skein of double crosses engineered by Colfax, using Kitty as bait—is finally explained, Ole’s true nature is not. Just as he exists for us only as a set of fragments, so he was even for himself a puzzle with pieces missing, a collection of half-understood dreams and impulses organized around a handkerchief. At the end he remains, like Frank Thompson, broken into parts, as the coroner’s early description of his demise implies: the slugs “near tore him in half.” Perhaps Rear-don believes he can be the glue holding Ole together. But what holds Reardon together? Clearly he and the Swede are doubles, or halves of a single self. Whereas Ole could never escape his past, Reardon acquires one by sifting through Anderson’s. Their mirrored trajectories imply that self-integration, let alone self-renewal, can be for him only fleeting or imaginary. Hence, at the film’s end Rear-don is informed that the investigation that nearly cost him his life will merely generate a minuscule difference in next year’s rates. He hasn’t become a gangster, boxer, cop, or lover; come Monday, he’ll be back to work as a cipher. Similarly, the film’s structure draws the viewer’s attention to its own artful construction, reminding us that “Ole” (like the other characters, but more so) exists only as a piecemeal concoction of “cuts”: we put him together, living, like Reardon, vicariously but fleetingly through his exploits.

  Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum), the protagonist of Jacques Tourneur’s justly celebrated Out of the Past, also tries to reinvent himself (in an odd coincidence that recurs several times in noir) as a gas station owner. He has changed his name to Bailey and started a new life in the small town of Bridgeport. Whereas once he engineered glamorous escapades in Acapulco and San Francisco with a beautiful, dangerous woman, he now seeks to satisfy himself as a modest businessman catering to the mobile lives of others. But his masquerade unravels when an old associate, Joe Stefanos (Paul Valentine), shows up in his convertible and undoes Jeff’s conversion. Jeff, too, did something wrong once: not only did he fail to fetch Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), the girlfriend of gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas), as he was paid to do; he ran off with her and then stood by as she murdered his partner, Jack Fisher (Steve Brodie). Lacking Sam Spade’s rigorous ethics (“when a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it”), he has never paid for either error. From the beginning Markham is self-divided, and when he becomes Bailey, he brings his dual nature with him. Thus, although Jeff does a lot of moving in the film, his identity isn’t really mobile: he can’t reinvent himself because he doesn’t really want to.3

  To illustrate Jeff’s cloven self, the film contains numerous symmetries and doublings. First and foremost are the settings: on the one hand is bucolic Bridgeport and environs, on the other the corrupt cities where shady business transpires. Tahoe, where Whit maintains a house, lies between the two, and provides the setting for many of Jeff’s pivotal decisions. The early scenes in Bridgeport use horizontal lines, whereas the city scenes emphasize verticality. In bright, sunny Bridgeport everybody dresses casually (and the night scenes are shot day for night); the city scenes take place after dark (are shot night for night), and people dress more formally. Thus, when Stefanos first appears in Bridgeport, he looks ludicrously out of place in his dark suit and trench coat (and even more so later when he hunts Jeff in the woods, wearing the same getup). When Jeff obeys Whit’s summons and drives to Tahoe (during which he reveals his past to his girlfriend, Ann), he dons his old trench coat and fedora. Ann (Virginia Huston) and Kathie reflect the same duality: the nice, trusting small-town girl versus one of noir’s most dangerous, duplicitous, and bewitching dames. For each woman Jeff vies with another man: Jim (Richard Webb), a dull government employee, is in love with Ann (but she doesn’t love him, being more intrigued by “the mysterious Jeff Bailey”); Whit, the corrupt gambler, loves Kathie. If Jim is the man Jeff is trying to become, Whit is closer to his aboriginal self. Indeed, Jeff and Whit are doubles, as both are in love with Kathie, and Jeff initially acts as Whit’s proxy.4

  Jeff’s wishful identity is embodied by his protégé in Bridgeport, a young, unnamed deaf boy (Dickie Moore) who works at his gas station (and who also drives a convertible, representing Jeff’s hoped-for conversion). Having remained mute about his past, Jeff has rendered others deaf to his motives and actions: he never told Whit about running off with Kathie, and he never came clean about his complicity in the death of his partner. The motif of hearing permeates the film. For example, when Stefanos first arrives in Bridgeport and enters Marny’s Cafe, she insinuates that Jeff and Ann are lovers: “I just see what I see.” Jim replies, “Are you sure you don’t see what you hear?” She later tells Stefanos, “Seems like everything people ought to know, they just don’t want to hear.” Later Whit asks Jeff, “Can you still listen?” Jeff answers, “I can hear.” But he can’t hear Whit’s real motives—or his own. If Jeff first acts as Whit’s surrogate, the deaf boy later acts as Jeff’s, using his fishing rod to pull Stefanos from a cliff to his death, and at the end allowing Ann to believe that Jeff was in love with Kathie, so as to free her to marry Jim.5

  Jeff does tell the truth—or what he believes to be the truth—to Ann during the drive to Tahoe: that he aims to square things with Whit, pay for doing something wrong once, and dismiss Markham forever. But not only is Whit setting him up as a fall guy; Kathie is manipulating both men for her own ends. Indeed, she is Jeff’s closest foil in the film: both are riven by conflicting emotions and allegiances, and their resemblance is suggested repeatedly through dialogue, blocking, and cinematography. The most significant moment in their relationship occurs after Jeff and Kathie return from their Mexican “dream” (“maybe we thought we’d wake up … in Niagara Falls”) and, after parting, meet again in a secluded house. But Fisher has tracked her and demands the forty grand she insists she doesn’t have. As the scene unfolds, Jeff is gradually engulfed in shadows; then, in a superb quasi-expressionist sequence, the two men fight while Kathie, clearly enjoying the spectacle, looks on. At the very moment Jeff appears to have knocked out his ex-partner, Kathie shoots and kills Fisher, then absconds. The scene’s shadows convey Jeff’s emotions—depression, guilt, and shame for being duped—and his recognition of his complicity (it is his flashback). During the fight sequence the two men’s shadows are indistinguishable as they play over Kathie’s face: she doesn’t care who wins, so long as she gets the dough. Fortuitously, she leaves behind a bankbook revealing that she has indeed stolen Whit’s $40,000. As Jeff stares at the evidence, his shadow, now larger than he, stands beside him: it is the second self his actions have created, an embodiment of the misdeeds that will eventually come calling. This scene, which culminates Jeff’s flashback, is the moment when he first grasps K
athie’s true nature: she is a liar and a cold-blooded killer. It’s also the moment when Jeff understands his own role: he’s the fish and Kathie the fisher. The shadows also presage his death, which will be the ultimate consequence of his entrapment in Miss Moffat’s web. But when he buries Fisher, he is neither sorry nor sore: “I wasn’t anything,” he tells Ann. Precisely. Having vanished into Kathie’s shadow, he became no one at all. In the aftermath he never truly comes to life as the humble Jeff Bailey, for he still loves Kathie and the Jeff she made.

  When he next sees her, at Whit’s, he insults her (“you’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another”), mostly to convince himself he doesn’t still want her. To pay his debt to Whit, Jeff becomes enmeshed in his plot to avoid paying income tax, but he soon realizes that, as he tells the cabbie who drives him around, he is “in a frame”—that he’ll be set up for the murder of the lawyer Eels, actually committed by Stefanos. Fittingly, during these city scenes, Markham is constantly framed by doorways, windows, or small rooms. More to the point, he is boxed in by his own self-division. Like Reardon, Jeff finds the underworld more exciting than Bridgeport, lethal Kathie more enticing than bland Ann. He thinks he should desire Bridgeport but has left his heart in San Francisco. Hence, when Kathie professes to love him, protesting that she “couldn’t help” signing an affidavit framing him for Fisher’s murder, he can’t resist her allure.

  Even after Kathie sends Stefanos to kill Jeff, and then murders Whit, Jeff—though he does take time to phone the police and set her up to be captured—admits that they “deserve each other.” But he makes sure they are caught on the road, virtually assuring that he’ll be killed either by them or, as actually happens, by her. He’s not good enough for Ann but spares her the pain of loving him, while managing to take Kathie down with him. It is tempting to read his final gesture as a heroic sacrifice, which would imply that the good Jeff Bailey is his real nature, the Markham side (marked for death, perhaps?) merely a shadow brought to life by Kathie. But it’s not Jeff who spares Ann; it’s the deaf boy. Jeff remains split throughout the film, lying to Ann and to himself, veering wildly in his attitude to Kathie; although disgusted by the reflection of himself he reads in her, he can’t bring himself to discard it. Ultimately, as James Maxfield summarizes, Kathie embodies “the evil that he now recognizes within himself” (64)—the evil that he also loves. Bailey/Markham never reinvents himself, never exchanges his dark dream for a bright one, not because fate or Whit or Kathie prevents him but because he remains his own double. Whereas Ole Anderson’s identity switch fails because he has no self to change, Jeff’s identity is frozen in its schizophrenic state, as he clings to the wrong he committed, unable to sever his attachment to a past that he loves more than anything else, even himself.