Posted by Nick Beal
The Noir Film is often celebrated as being simply a canon of stylised, doom-laden, existential parables. Fall Guys and Femme Fatales trapped helplessly in deadly infatuations, hurtling to self-destruction in an unremittingly dark and random universe.
That's one perspective. Another is that corruption and redemption walk hand-in-hand down the mean streets,and,like the staccato glow of the inevitable 'Hotel' sign winking through venetian blinds,the Noir milieu is equally composed of Light and Dark, and Free Will and Predestination. Like a neophyte in a crazy atavistic rebirth of an ancient mystery religion the true Noir protagonist waltzes into the dark labrynthe seeking the truth about himself and the world he inhabits. As John Hodiak, stumbling through the sublime 'Somewhere in the Night' mantramistically repeated 'Who Am I?'
Another subtle and compelling odyssey of self-discovery through brutal experience is Jean Negulesco's masterly 1946 Noir classic 'Nobody Lives Forever'.
Scam artist Nick Blake (the iconic John Garfield), honourably discharged from wartime service,returns home to NYC to find that girlfriend Toni (Faye 'Lady Gangster' Emerson's typically trashy platinum-blonde chanteuse) has swindled him out of the $50,000 he left her to hold. Nick seeks redress by working over Toni's new business partner (the suavely villainous Robert Shayne) and after getting back the cash with interest takes off for LA accompanied by lumbering sidekick Al Doyle (George Tobias). Out on the coast Nick's disillusionment is compounded when he encounters former mentor Pop Gruber (the great Walter Brennan) now scratching a living working a 10 cent telescope scam -"See the wonders of Nature..the Rings of Saturn..the Mountains of the Moon..."-and while the suckers gaze in awe through the lens into the lofty vault of heaven, Pop relieves them of their wallets.
Word spreads that Nick is in town and through Pop he is approached by the twitchy, posturing and possibly psychotic Doc Ganson (a crackerjack performance from George Coulouris) to front a con to relieve a young widow (..'a 2 millon dollar sucker') of her inheritance. Despite long-time emnity between the two (Nick is described as the Doc's 'pet hate') the swindle cannot proceed without Nick's bankroll or his superior sting skills and after pressure from both Al and Pop he reluctantly checks into the swanky Marwood Arms and the con is on. The mark is the lonely and innocent Gladys Halvorsen, played in a career best performance (IMHO), by a radiant Geraldine Fitzgerald. Possibly best remembered as George Sander's neurotic,emotionally incestuous sister in 'The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry' and wasted alongside Alan Ladd in 'OSS', Fitzgerald is simply wonderful in this picture.
Inevitably, the two begin to date and the scam falls perfectly into place as Nick finds favor with straight-down-the-line business adviser Manning (Charles Gaines). Equally inevitably the practised seduction mutates into an affair of genuine passion and in one of the movie's finest moments, during a visit to the exquisite sixteenth century Mission Church of San Juan Capisto, Garfield's conflicted protagonist feels compelled to admit his genuine love for Gladys.
Meanwhile, back at the Doc's seedy HQ at the Hotel Eldorado the boys (Doc's two hoods named 'Windy' and 'Shake' play like characters out of a Dick Tracey movie) hear, via Toni (in town and scenting a payday), that Nick is 'forgetting business' and events begin to spiral out of control. Desperate to protect his last chance of a big money score Doc kidnaps Gladys who by now is fully aware'and fully accepting of Nick's true identity.
(Nick:"People like me don't change"-Gladys:"What does it matter what you were ..we love each other") and the scene is set for a bullet ridden denouement at the desolate fogbound wharf where Gladys is being held.
Before Doc Ganson dies in a hail of lead he fatally wounds Pop Gruber who,crumpled on the wharf's rotting boards,rolls his eyes heavenward and again in tones his 10 cent telescope spiel.. "See the moon..see the stars..all for one dime" and as he dies so, symbolically, does the cul-de-sac that is Nick's future career as a grifter.
As the police sirens wail in the distance Nick clutches Gladys with one hand and a smoking .45 with the other and looks down at the body of his fallen friend, saying... "He would have wanted it this way.... Nobody Lives Forever".
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