It’s true Hollywood magic—meaning never would it happen in real life—to have Kim Novak mashing lips with Fred MacMurray, as they do frequently in Pushover, which I saw tonight, another installment in Film Forum’s “B-Noir” series.
Even less likely is their meet cute, as he rescues her from her stalled car, then gives her another hand, as it were, on his couch. (He: “Your place or mine?” She: “Surprise me.”)
It is not possible to even glance at Novak with chaste thoughts, with her flawless features, oft-parted lips, and as in Vertigo, a bra-begone philosophy to getting dressed. Carnal, said Truffaut, and he was exactly right. MacMurray’s redeeming qualities, on the other hand, are limited to thick, oddly angled eyebrows, lumpy chin and ’50s suburban blandness. He’s like a high school math teacher. I kept thinking, “Watch your step, buddy. That dame’ll double-cross ya first chance she gets.”
But here in her first speaking role, Novak is mostly eye candy as a bank robber’s girlfriend who sticks with MacMurray against reason until the inevitably bloody end. She’s the subject of a stakeout by him and his honest partner (Philip Carey), glimpsed by them through binoculars from an apartment window across the way. MacMurray gets involved with her on the sly, hatching a plan to make off with her boyfriend’s stolen loot. It’s thrilling to watch MacMurray’s lies, fake alibis and body count sink him deeper into trouble. The film’s a cross between Double Indemnity, a noir that also involves MacMurray and greedy schemes gone awry, and Rear Window, with its voyeuristic snooping.
Of the two halves of tonight’s double feature, I thought I’d enjoy Pushover more because it featured familiar actors. But I liked the other film better.
Having seen many installments now in the “B-Noir” series, I’ve decided my favorite element of the genre is the archetype of the strong and saucy woman. Sure, tomatoes like Novak are fun to ogle, but they’re boring. Better are the hard-bitten, curt and fiercely independent ladies (or at least until an inevitable sappy ending), like Ann Sheridan, who fires off zingers left and right in Woman on the Run. She spends most of the film evading the San Francisco cops and cracking wise with them. They suspect she’ll eventually locate her near-estranged husband (Ross Elliott), who’s on the run himself since witnessing a gangland murder that opens the film. A newspaperman (Dennis O’Keefe) gains her confidence and tags along to help in the hunt so he can get a scoop-worthy story from the husband. Sheridan’s character unfolds gradually to realize that she doesn’t know anything about her husband and that she still has feelings for him. Unfortunately, the ending is a cheesy, stretched-thin set piece in a waterfront amusement park, with Sheridan breaking character and getting all fretful, on a hurtling roller coaster, no less.
Even more jarring than any sudden plot developments was this guy sitting in the row in front of me, one of these sweaty, overweight, middle-aged loner types clad in a too-snug short-sleeve knit shirt from the ’70s, who ate a procession of individually wrapped foodstuffs from his plastic grocery bag. He kept rooting around in there like it contained buried treasure, producing prolonged noises of polyethylene rustling, cellophane crinkling, then mouth-smacking, prompting people to hiss at him to shut the fuck up.
It may surprise you to learn that there are more inconsiderate jerks in the average Film Forum audience than at the megaplexes I’ve been frequenting lately, and Film Forum is supposed to attract all the smugly overeducated, politically conscious, Village Voice-reading types. When Katie and I were there on Sunday, we witnessed a literal screaming argument between the double-feature involving some white guy who apparently told a chatty Asian woman during the film to be quiet, which she felt was racist. As their debate reached a fevered pitch, we gathered in a loose circle to bask in the hysteria, yet kept our distance and our postures catlike in case gunfire broke out and we needed to dive under the seats.