About Kid Deth Violates the Rules of Mystery

About Kid Deth, the story of the boy on the run, can easily be put into the category of a typical mystery story. It has the key aspects of murder, suspense, simplicity, and realism. However, as with everything else, nothing is perfect. By nothing, I mean that one of the notes on mystery stories written by Raymond Chandler is violated.

This note is the idea of the inevitable solution. According to Chandler, the reader must finish the story with the feeling that they should not have been fooled. They should have seen it coming. The way the story came across, it seemed like it was going to fit the stereotype that “you cannot escape your past.” Taking this to be the inevitable solution, I believe Whitfield failed. He may have done it to keep himself from the norm, but if looked at completely on facts, he failed in his attempt to write an “actual” mystery.

Kid Deth was thought of by all to be a killer. Even though he had claimed he never carried a gun, there was something about him that made everyone think he was the criminal. From this, I came to the conclusion from the beginning that he was going to end up dead. This was not the case. It could be said perhaps that he was one of the only characters to remain alive because of the fact that he truly and honestly did not commit a murder. I am not convinced. I still think that in order to follow the notes of a mystery story, he should have died, according to what the people in the town already thought of him.

The solution is even less inevitable because of the confusion at the end. What really happens to Kid Deth? I thought he was off the hook because the detective thought he had grown out of his childish games. The reader is never really told the outcome, so how could it be inevitable?

For the most part, Whitfield followed the trends of an ordinary mystery story. In a way I think it is slightly impossible to take care of them all in one story. About Kid Deth is a mystery in my eyes, even though he had overlooked just one of the aspects to the classification of one.

The Past is Inescapable

Out of the Past is the perfect title for this film. The film protrays how Jeff Bailey gets caught up in the past, as his old partner Joe Stefanos, tracks him down at his new gas station business along with his mute assistant, Jimmy. Bailey, previously known as Jeff Markam, was hired by Whit Sterling to find Whit’s mistress whom had shot and stolen $40,000 from him. Bailey fills in his own mistress at the time, Ann, about the previous events that had occurred when he went in search of Whit’s mistress, Kathie Moffett, on the drive to Whit’s mansion in Sterling Lake.
When all is said and done, and nobody is left but Kathie and Jeff, Kathie convinces Jeff to run away with her once again. Jeff decides to inform the police and both are killed as Kathie attempts to drive through a roadblock that the police had put up. Mistress Ann attends the funeral as well as Jimmy. Jimmy makes it seem as though Jeff truly and honestly wanted to run away with Kathie because he loved her. He does this for Ann’s sake so that she can forget Jeff and their past to continue forward in her life. I think because of this, Jimmy can be thought of as a hero in the film.
This film takes the city to be a place of drama, deceit, and violence and the country as what seems to be the escape route. The country is the place where Jeff thinks he can start over and avoid any kind of run in with his past which inevitably, in film noir, is never the case. Kathie, Jeff’s past, is at first the hero in the story. She takes Jeff out of his ordinary life and makes it seem almost worthwhile. Eventually she is the destruction of it all as she bounces between Jeff, the other hero, and Whit. Jeff’s flashbacks are the presence of the fall of his character until his fate, death.
Out of the Past is comparable to The Killers in the sense that in the first ten minutes of The Killers the audience is informed of the idea that you cannot escape your past. The same holds true for Out of the Past. Jeff Bailey’s life is told through a flashback, where in the end, he finds himself dead all due to his past that cannot be escaped.
Ann plays the role of the damsel while Kathie is the obvious femme fatale taking Jeff down the road of destruction. Out of the Past is a classic example of film noir as it fits the general profile. The situation is realistic as to the characters, setting, and atmosphere. The suspense and the confusion all boil down to a simplistic, inevitable explanation at the end, in the form of a denouement. The main factor that makes this film a noir is the idea that the criminal was punished in the end.
The visual aspects of film noir are to set a mood of claustrophobia, paranoia, and despair. In order to achieve this, the lighting of the film is most important. There are three different types of lighting: key, fill, and back light. The key light is the main source of light in the film and is generally used to create the dark shadows and high contrast. The fill light is the soft contrasted light that fills in the shadows created by the key light. The back light is the light that shines on the back of the actors themselves which create highlights giving the actors shape. Film noir uses low-key lighting which implies that the ratio of key light to fill light is large which results in the high contrast shadows. In film noir, there is no stability in the scenes. The angles are off and are not very well arranged in the frame to give a sense of instability to imply an unsafe world for the characters in it.

Questions:
1. Do you think Jimmy was one of the heroes in the story?
2. What is the difference between the country and city in this story?
3. Is never being able to escape your past another aspect of the genre of film noir?

Double Indemnity: The Story that Holds Your Interest, “Straight Down the Line”

Part One:

The Big Heat, reviewed by Bosley Crowther, 1944

Paragraph 1:
*The hook
*Production Company mentioned
*Genre of the film
*Main actor of the film introduced
Paragraph 2:
-Director’s name
-Writer’s name
-Setting the scene of the film(location)

Paragraph 3:
*Major plot
*Identifying of the crime(murder)
*Brief summary

Paragraph 4:
-Critiques of the film(likes and dislikes)
-Description of the intended audience or those that may be interested

Paragraph 5:
*Actors mentioned along with their character roles


Paragraph 6:
-Credibility of the director
-Closing line to play on the title of the film


Part Two:

“It’s love and murder at first sight”- the tagline of Double Indemnity for its release date September 6, 1944, is just what you will get. This intriguing love story turns cynical as Paramount takes Fred MacMurray as the main actor of the film. Naive to his own sense of love, MacMurray thought he had put himself in the right place and the right time for once in his life.

Billy Wilder takes the prize as the director of the film along side James M. Cain, the writer of the story. They stage the scene of the film at Pacific All-Risk Insurance Co. to create a sense of deceit, fraudulency, infidelity, and the ultimate betrayal. If you liked Wilder's direction in the hilarious comedy Ball of Fire, than there is no question that this film will be just as appealing. Although the genres of the two films are dissimilar, he still finds a way to keep his audience entertained due to his creative mind. In this suspenseful drama the criminals try to cheat the system in hopes of a pay out, double indemnity.

Walter Neff begins the film sitting in his boss’s office recapping the past weeks. He speaks first of the meeting with his counterpart, Phyllis Dietrichson. Caught up in an unwanted marriage, Mrs. Dietrichson, seductive housewife with the unforgettable anklet, plots with Walter Neff

to scam the company with the death of her husband. Walter and Phyllis find themselves twisted into a love affair that evidently seems to have one solitary outcome, death. The two emulate the perfect “accidental death” of Mr. Dietrichson on a train, which they believe will result in the cash from the clause. Knowing that the insurance company was way over its head on this one, the boss and best friend of Neff, Barton Keyes, decides to get involved with the investigation.

The plot line is that of curiosity and confusion as the story unfolds. The cast and crew make the film enjoyable to watch, from their lighting techniques to the attractive actors themselves. These actors follow strict orders from Billy Wilder when delivering powerful lines such as: “I couldn't hear my own footsteps...it was the walk of a dead man" and the ever popular “Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money - and a woman - and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman. Pretty, isn't it?" The actors have a way of sticking to their sought out roles which makes it easy for the audience to follow along. Whether it be Neff, who is in it for love, or Keyes, the man with all the answers, they are unmistakably on point. The only concern may be due to the fact that the plot seems fairly predictable at first with the typical love affair; however, give it time. As the plot strengthens and the characters become more involved with one another, the predictability fades away.

Fred MacMurray plays the role of the smooth talking insurance agent gone bad, with his partner-and-love-in-crime, Barbara Stanwyck. Miss Stanwyck has a way of being conniving yet likeable in her role of the murderess, while Edward G. Robinson, the boss to MacMurray, is intelligent and insightful as he picks apart the crime piece by piece. There is not a single character that is unimportant to the plot. Each character has a significant role. Remove just one, and the story falls apart.

Billy Wilder just about outdid himself on this one. Double Indemnity is a suspenseful, crime gone awry thriller, which intertwines love and deceit to decide the fate of the double indemnity clause “straight down the line”.

Kid: "Never carried a rod until now..."

“About Kid Deth,” by Raoul Whitfield was such an action-packed story that every once in awhile, I found myself confused with the characters involved in the story. The main character was Joey Deth. The people in town knew him as “Kid”. It seemed like Kid was always getting himself into situations that he should not have been in. When it came to the plot of this story it started off at a fast pace. He was immediately picked up by a policeman, Lou Rands, that apparently had never been able to get enough on Kid to keep him locked up. There was a man in the car with them, Barney Nasser, whom Kid had seen around before. Barney Nasser was dead. Rands was attempting to frame Kid as a way to get him locked away for good. All of a sudden, Kid and Rands begin to wrestle and shots are fired. These shots are not from Kid and Rands however, they are from across the street which hits Rands and kills him. Frightened, Kid runs down an alleyway to flee the scene. At one o’clock, like he had previously told Rands, he met with a woman, Bess Grotes, at the cellar for their date. The story escalates and Bess gets shot and killed. The rest of the story is a confusing plot which results in many more deaths and killings between the other characters in the story.
I had a little bit of a hard time keeping track of who was who in the story and how they related to the other characters in the cast. It seemed to me that the main characters were Kid and Bess, as the criminals, and Rands and the Nausser brothers, as the law. As in any other noir, the criminal is usually the good guy and the law is considered to be the bad. The story only continued on as a way for Kid to find justice in Bess’ murder. Bess, the femme fatale, was trying to keep Kid safe by not allowing him to go out the back door like they had wanted him to and in turn put herself in danger. What I liked most about this story was that Kid “never carried a rod.” He admits that he never had carried a gun until he found out that a woman had been murdered. I do not see why or how the police force has put him in the category of a criminal. He seems to be the one finding justice, not the cops. Overall, I definitely feel like “About Kid Deth” fits the definition of a film noir.

Questions:

1. Was there a significance to Kid’s last name being “Deth”?
2. What was the real story behind Bess Grote?
3. Did Kid get away with everything in the end and do you think he was truly involved with the rest of the deaths in the story?

Definition of Film Noir Remains Unknown

After reading the Introduction of “Film Noir Reader” it still remains unclear what the definition of film noir truly is. “Almost every critic has his own definition of film noir, and a personal list of film titles....How many noir elements does it take to make a film noir noir?” This quote said by Paul Schrader, was memorable after reading this introduction because I thought the same thing. It is hard to put a definition on this type of film which many of the critics have said cannot even be considered a genre. Arguing that a genre is something created after-the-fact, how could it not be? I doubt these types of films were titled noirs right from the beginning. If that was the case, what makes any film distinguishable as a particular genre?

When I try to invent my own definition of film noir, it does not just come down to a single sentence or two. There is much more to it than that. Film noir is about the characters and their emotions to those that they come in contact with throughout the film. Film noir is focused around the events that were taken place in America at the time, although it seems like the authors were mainly European. If the name were broken down literally, it would mean dark film. This has to do with the actual lighting of the scenes and shadows that evolve as well as the sometimes dark or even “shady” personality of one or more of the characters.

I would say that noir films are timeless. Even watching them now, fifty or so years after they were first made, they still keep me entertained. I think this is due to the fact that film noir is told from the eye of the criminal rather than the ones protecting the city, the police. This is done using the private detective. It is interesting learning about the crime as an inside source and developing our own ideas of what has happened rather than having to be told, step-by-step, through evidence.

When it comes down to it, I take film noir to be that of realistic drama with a protagonist and antagonist although it it usually difficult to determine who the actual antagonist is until the end. The antagonist may be the women of the story, known as the femme fatale whom is, “frustrated and deviant, half predator, half prey, detached yet ensnared, she falls victim to her own traps” or even the victims themselves. The violence of the film is not typically what keeps the audience intrigued, it is simply the twists and turn of events that draws them in.


Questions:

1. What films do you think are modern day examples of film noir?

2. Is it possible to give a one sentence definition of film noir?

The Maltese Falcon

After watching and reading part of “The Maltese Falcon” I think it can be stated that they are primarily the same with slight differences. I feel that the relationship between Miss Wonderly and Samuel Spade was less romantic in the book than it seemed to be in the film. In the novel, I did not notice any interest on Spade’s part of Miss Wonderly. I believe that Spade had more of the connection with Effie. Also, I think that the film had less intensity then I what I would have thought. This may have been due to the fact that when you are reading something, you have to visually make the story come to life on your own, rather than having someone else do it for you so that all you have to do is watch it.

Another point of “The Maltese Falcon” that I found to be fairly interesting was the character of Samuel Spade himself. The hard-boiled detective seems to have a pretty standard description like Marlowe did in “Red Wind”. From Marlowe’s character, I had taken the detective to be caring, sensitive, witty, dependable, honest, and rather independent. However, when it came to Sam Spade, although he was still the dependable, honest, sarcastic, and witty fellow, he seemed less attached to those involved in the story, like a sort of emotionless man.

By emotionless, I mean that he did not seem shocked or upset when he had discovered that his partner had been murdered. Also, I did not understand why he could not bring himself to tell his partner’s wife of her husband’s death. This seems rather emotionless to me as well. If he were even slightly mourning the death or his partner, whom he should have cared for I would think, I believe he would want to inform her of his death and pay his respects.

I found the memo written by Warner Brothers to the author stating what changes needed to be made to the script in order to have the movie shot without problems with censors, to be interesting. It was interesting, but almost expected, that the film could not be as blunt and vulgar as he had originally portrayed in the story written on paper. I am not sure if the audience at that time was ready to face those things such as: the sexuality, the drinking, the violence, and the gruesomeness.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you think that the fact that you have to visually make the story come alive when you are reading makes the movie seem less intense when you actually watch the same scene?

2.Why is it that the aspects of the story that Warner Brothers demanded be taken out seem to be the most entertaining?

Red Wind

I thought "Red Wind" was a pretty interesting story. When I first started reading it I found it slightly confusing but I knew I would because most detectives stories are not figured out until the end. Right when I thought I was losing interest, there was another twist in the story. I liked how all of the characters were connected somehow unknowingly, both male and female. In the first scene, where the man known as Waldo was shot, I initially was confused as to why and wondered if there was ever a deeper meaning to the fact that he had left his car running, rather than him just being in a hurry to find Mrs. Barsaley. Even after finishing the story, I still find that questionable. I like how Detective Marlowe took care of his business on his own and it seemed as though he knew, even if he were to discover the truth, he would be able to keep Mrs. Barsaley away from Copernik. Do you think they knew each other beforehand? It was odd that his investigation continued strictly for the purpose of finding these pearls for a women. Then at the end, when he had imitation pearls made so that he could keep the old ones just to throw out into the ocean, was this also for Lola's sake? Maybe he had some attachment to the women from his own personal life, such as trying to forget someone? I am not really sure but I enjoyed reading the story. It all seemed to make sense in the end but I feel as though there may be some more to it.

Foreword

After reading the foreword I can say that I am excited about the rest of the quarter for this class. I feel as though the material that we will read will be highly entertaining and for the most part fast moving. I like the concept of pulp, learning as how it was developed during the time of the depression as a way to partially take those suffering out of a torturing reality. The villain is a comical character because it reminds me of Batman’s character in the Dark Knight when he eventually was seen as the bad guy although he was not causing any harm. Women roles in the pulp seem about right for this time period as they were not thought as being of any importance other than to look pretty. When they talk about detectives and such, are they referring to the times of Sherlock Holmes? I know those were generally black and white films but I do not really understand the meaning of a hard-boiled detective.