Tonight's movie was called "The Man I Love" (1947), and starred Ida Lupino as a New York nightclub singer who is visiting her three siblings (two sisters, one brother) in California. The city is unspecified, but is probably meant to be Los Angeles.
The setting is Christmastime, 1944. Lupino, the eldest of the siblings, is something of a Mother Hen toward them as she is more sophisticated in the ways of the world due to her exposure to New York nightlife. In fact, upon arriving at her sisters' shared apartment, she is dismayed to learn that one of the sisters has her own job in a local club and is being hit on every night by the slick yet mildly sinister owner of the joint (played by Robert Alda, father of Alan). Lupino is further upset when she finds out that little brother Joey also works for Alda as an assistant, meaning that he does anything Alda tells him to do. This ends up landing him in jail after he gets into a fight outside the nightclub.
"The Man I Love" is technically a Noir, but it's also one of those ensemble melodramas where Many Lives Collide. Ida Lupino is a take charge gal, so she does two things in short order. First, she goes down to the jail to bail out the other man involved in the fight with her brother. She does this because she feels guilty that her brother is working for a hoodlum. Secondly, she goes to the nightclub herself to meet this oily boss (Alda) who is pressuring her sister and influencing her brother. But instead of reading him the riot act, as Joan Crawford would have done were she in this film, Lupino has a drink with him and ends up being his Star Act, the biggest draw at his club.
Now, this story is very convoluted, so after Ida Lupino settles in to her singing engagement at Robert Alda's club, she runs into the man she bailed out from jail, the guy her brother tried to beat up. The man is seated at a table watching her performance, so they have a drink and it turns out that he is a jazz pianist whose name she knows. Now we are right back in last night's movie, with a singer and a pianist, except this time the movie is good, haha.
The trouble with the pianist is that he is a has-been. Once a recording artist, he has been reduced to working as a merchant seaman. Lupino falls hard for him anyway. She has no one in her life and is trying to be the Hero for her family. Besides all of this there is a subplot with a neighbor couple in the sisters' apartment building. A young, blue-collar man - handsome and nice but not too bright - has a hottie for a wife who is going out to the nightclub with other men while hubby is at work. Ida Lupino spots her there, drunk, and it turns out that club owner Robert Alda is also after this woman, who is a classic Femme Fatale in the Film Noir sense. The subplot that involves her cheating on her husband will provide a major plot development later in the film, but for much of the middle section we are watching the back-and-forth between Ida Lupino and Bruce Bennett the pianist. He is very depressed at his downturn in life and tries to reject her so as not to drag her down with him........but this only makes her more determined. He is "The Man" referred to in the title of the movie.
Now, in addition to all of this, there are other subplots, one involving the shell-shocked husband of Lupino's next eldest sister. This man is a war hero, just like the blind pianist in last night's crazy Joan Crawford movie, and he is locked up in the Psych Ward at the VA because of his combat experience. He can't relate to his wife anymore without losing his marbles.....though there is a chance he will get them back, so keep your fingers crossed.
The bottom line is that there is a lot going on in this film. Conflict after conflict, multiple character interaction, shifting subthemes. On the back of the dvd box, it says that "The Man I Love" was the inspiration for Martin Scorcese's "New York, New York". That's an impressive stat, even though we early Scorcese fans did not love "NY,NY" when it came out. Now, it might be a great movie in retrospect. We were teenagers back when we first saw it, but anyhow, he got his inspiration from "The Man I Love", which was directed by the great Raoul Walsh, and found by me through the usual library database search using his name.
The story takes quite a while to gel, not because of any faults by the writers or by director Walsh, but because they are working with a script adapted from a novel, so you can imagine all the stuff the writers had to try and condense. Due to this condition, you the viewer are somewhat at sea for the first 12 to 15 minutes of the film, as the filmmakers throw everything they've got at you, in a diverse preamble, and expect you to follow along.
Ida Lupino was another great Golden Era actress, and she holds the picture together with her strong feminine portrayal of a family hero and leader. I give the film Two Thumbs Up because of her. For the first two thirds of the 96 minute movie, you may find yourself thoroughly involved in the relationship stories of the characters while still wondering, "is anything gonna actually happen"? Because so far, despite the 60 minute build up, nothing much has, in fact, happened.
But during the third act something does indeed take place, a culmination of all previous events in the movie. This is why I say it is one of those ensemble cast movies where everything comes together as the story rises like a wave......and then crashes, with everyone's plot issues coming to a head and then resolving, in the Noir way, somewhat darkly.
"The Man I Love" was an inspiration for Martin Scorcese, which is enough of a recommendation in itself, but I add my own two cents into the mix and suggest you see it too, even though it won't provide the type of hard-boiled conflict resolution you have come to expect as a Noir fan. It's more of a human drama, but still excellent. /////
That's all I know for tonight. I am super excited at seeing Doug Pinnick's Facebook posts that are covering the recording of the new King's X album, which is taking place in Pasadena, at the same studio Grimsley and I were privileged to hang out at during the making of Doug's "Strum Sum Up" solo album back in 2007. I was introduced to King's X by the great P.F. in June 1989, so we are coming up on the 30th anniversary of my first hearing the band, and they have meant more to me since that time than words can say.
See you in the morning, love all night as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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