Emmy Awards night we went to the premiere of the gloriously restored new print of the noirest of the noirs.
The song “I can’t believe you’re in love with me” prompts Al (Tom Neal) to review what has happened to him since leaving NYC. Hitch-hiking to L.A., the impossible-to-explain deadly accident, …. Later, Al picks up a woman (Ann Savage). She tells him to call her “Vera,” which is certainly not her name. Other than a cough, there is no backstory (we never find out anything about her). She falls asleep. He admires her. She wakes, and at the moment we expect flirtation to begin, she snaps, “What did you do with the body?”
At which point the movie becomes one continuous, accelerating fall down, and down, and down.
The intense concentration – the focus, the ruthless elimination of non-essentials – makes you sit up. It makes more carefully made movies seem gassy, lazy and doddering.
The restoration was another tale of decades of work, and global cooperation led by Michael Pogorzelski, Academy Film Archive, and Heather Linville, Library of Congress, with UCLA, MOMA, Cinematheque Française, Brussels, etc., etc.