DVD Review
Backfire, starring Edmond O’Brien, Dane Clark, Virginia Mayo, Gordon MacRae, Warner Brothers, 1950
Sometimes a woman will twist up a man so bad it is not funny. Twist up a guy like Ben Arno so bad that he is ready to give up everything, including his life, just for a whiff of that perfume, or whatever it is that drove him to it, to murder. (And guys can do the same to women, okay, but just this minute, this film noir minute, it is about what dames do to guys, seemingly rational guys, okay). And it’s not like Ben (played by a seemingly sane Dane Clark), a genuine bad guy in the end, is not the only one caught up by that damn fragrance. Good guys, tough guys, guys that don’t crack so easy like Robert Mitchum turned to putty once Jane Greer came within ten feet of that café down Sonora, Mexico way or wherever it was, in Out Of The Past. Hang him high. Ditto a genuine smart guy like Orson Welles when Rita Hayworth (who had her own) asked for a tramp cigarette in New York’s Central park in The Lady From Shang-hai.End of story. Need I mention street-wise, hobo road king John Garfield when he spied Lana Turner coming through that diner door in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Gone. Or Fred MacMurray, a guy who should have figured the percentages better since he was in the insurance business, when he saw Barbara Standwyck (hell, saw just her damn bracelet) coming down those stairs in Double Indemnity. Hell, it hit a small, no account guy like Harry in The Big Sleep who was ready to give his all, and did, for his round-heeled Agnes. Even hard guy Sam, Sam Spade, was led a merry chase before he sobered after getting a look at Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, but I’ll bet he spent many a lonely winter night wondering, candidly wondering, whether he had played it right. So Ben join the line, the long line.
Here is why. Lysa (no sichere, that is the way she spelled it, spelled her foreign name, probably the first lure that roped Ben in), a refugee from war-torn Austria, who like a lot of men and women in that period in Europe grabbed whatever they could, with whatever they had. And what Lysa had was that fragrance, or something like that, and Ben fell, fell hard, brought her back to the states, set her up as his untamed mistress and was ready to fight tooth and nail to get her to love him, love him just a little, damn. That is literally tooth and nail. See, Ben would see red (and about six other colors) if another guy looked at her, or maybe even thought about it. And that maddened state is what drives the plot of this little 1950 film noir.
Ben was, well, let’s call him a sportsman, a gentleman gambler, out in California (back East or in Chicago, less kind and exalted places he would be called a flat-out hood) and, as a favor to an old World War II war buddy, Steve (played by Edmond O’Brian last seen in this space trying to figure out how he died, and who did it, in the classic D.O.A.) in need of dough he hires him on as a high-grade enforcer, maybe gofer is better. Problem is that Steve too gets a whiff of that perfume, or whatever it is that old Lysa had, that drove both good guys and bad guys hoopy. And then Ben sees the pair one night in a lovers’ embrace. Like I said he didn’t like, didn’t like that one bit and tried to kill Steve via the old automobile smash. He didn’t succeed but in a rage he started killing off, including Lysa for different reasons obviously, anyone that could connect him with Steve, and his rage.
Well as we have gotten this far you might as well know just in case you are not a film noir fan, or if you couldn’t figure things out for yourself, that Ben can’t get away with all this murder stuff. Crime does not pay, remember, film noir101. That is where his severely wounded war buddy recuperating in a VA hospital, Bob (played by Gordon MacRae), comes in, as well as Bob’s VA nurse love interest, Julie, (played by Virginia Mayo). Ben has Steve hidden away recuperating (maybe) while he covers his tracks. Bob, like a good war buddy, has to find out what happened to him after he get discharged from the hospital since Steve stopped coming to the hospital to see him. And so they proceed to do just that.
I have mentioned in other film noir reviews how ordinary citizens, here ordinary citizen-soldiers, are important to the solution of certain noir crimes, of taking care of business especially when their necks (or their buddy’s neck) are on the line. In film noir, as in life, solving big time crimes like murder can’t be left to the cops, no way. They, the cops, are good for writing up traffic tickets and telling drivers to move on, maybe collaring you for some tickets to some police charity, cadging some coffee and crullers, and, maybe coming in at the end to brace the bad guys but to solve a murder when your neck is on the line, no, no.
Although Bob and Julie co-operate (kind of) with the local cops (headed by a Captain played by classic character actor Ed Begley) who are looking for Steve in order to pin a murder on him they figure that they had better solve this crime spree themselves. And they do, but you can watch this so-so film noir (a little too good guy cute in places, a little too pat in the dialogue, and a few too many false leads place helter-skelter to make it really work). But remember this one is about what a dame, a good dame here, can do to twist a guy up, twist him up bad.
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