The Movies Times Five: Film Noir

As a big fan of classic movies, I have often written about my favorite films in different categories – Favorite Westerns, Best War Movies, Great “Chick Flicks,” and so forth. One category that I have enjoyed more as I have gotten older is what is known as “Film Noir.” The name comes from French movie critics in the 1940s, and literally means, “dark movie.” Dark: as in made in black and white with lots of shadows, and dark: as in a pessimistic subject and cynical characters.

Noir movies have more to do with a film’s style rather than its storyline – they are often crime movies, but they don’t have to be. The classic period was from the early 1940s to the late 50s, and they were made in black and white, with high-contrast lighting and deep shadows. The style of storytelling involves a lot of flashback scenes with one of the characters serving as a narrator. The main character is usually a private detective or a plain-clothes police officer – sometimes a crooked one, or one that at least looks the other way about things. He’s tired, world-weary, and cynical. There was a time when he cared and wanted to make a difference, but life has just beaten him down, and now he’s just trying to get through his day.

Another common element – the “femme fatale.” A female character and possible love interest for the main character, but she has her own agenda, and is willing to use any means necessary to get what she wants. In many cases, the main guy gets dragged into the story against his will, either by the femme fatale or some other factor, and he ends up risking, and sometimes losing, everything to make it right. Other frequently used cinematic devices include unusual camera angles; the use of extreme close-up shots; “Venetian blind” shadows; plenty of crackling, sharp dialogue; lots of alcohol and smoking, including use of dramatic fog, smoke, or steam; and the use of voice-over narration to set up and advance the plot.

These silouetted figures from 1955’s The Big Combo are typical of the Film Noir style.

World War II was a driving force behind this type of movie, especially the war’s effects at home, and the difficulty that some GIs experienced in re-adjusting to civilian life. The disillusionment and disappointments that were very real for some former servicemen provided great material for Hollywood storytellers to explore.

Here are five of my favorites –

Double Indemnity – (1944) Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson; directed by Billy Wilder. Long before he was such a wonderful dad in “My Three Sons,” MacMurray played an insurance salesman who is seduced into committing murder and fraud. His character, Walter Neff, says, “I killed him for money and for a woman. I didn’t get the money… and I didn’t get the woman.”

Laura – (1944) Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, and Clifton Webb; directed by Otto Preminger. Dana Andrews plays a cynical, weary police detective summoned to a luxury Manhattan apartment to investigate a brutal murder. The beautiful victim (Gene Tierney) is featured in a gorgeous portrait in her living room, and as the detective (and the audience) get to know her through flashbacks, he falls in love with her through the painting.

Sunset Boulevard – (1950) William Holden, Gloria Swanson; directed by Billy Wilder. An up-and-coming screenwriter forms a dangerous relationship with a has-been movie star who is determined to make a comeback. Deadly consequences ensue. Famous for Miss Swanson’s line, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

The Maltese Falcon – (1941) Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet; directed by John Huston. Considered by many to be the first film noir: San Francisco private detective Sam Spade (Bogart) is on the trail of a priceless bejeweled statuette. The murder of his partner and the presence of three eccentric criminals and a beautiful liar make it all more difficult. “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

The Big Heat – (1953) Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin; directed by Fritz Lang. Glenn Ford plays tough guy cop Dave Bannion who is on the trail of a very powerful and very well-connected crime syndicate boss. When the case gets personal for the cop, he has to decide how far he will go to get the bad guy.

Five others I really like as well – Gilda, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Key Largo, The Naked City, Out of the Past.

See you at the movies.

A Good Habit for Life

There are some habits that nearly all of us agree are good things to do on a daily, or at least a regular, basis. We may not always DO them, but we agree that they’re good ideas. Making your bed every morning, for example. Flossing your teeth. Eating a healthy diet.

And I would add, donating blood.

I started donating blood when I was 19 and in college. (More about that in a bit.) In the years following, I made a total of 80 donations – that’s five gallons of blood. But after achieving that milestone, I decided I had done enough, and somebody else could take over. I’m not sure why I came to that conclusion. I guess I felt like I had done my part, and it could now be someone’s turn. Or maybe I was busy that day, or that five gallons was a nice accomplishment – got my name on a plaque! – so now, let that be someone else’s problem.

Except that’s not how life works. I believe we all have a lifelong responsibility to be good citizens, to be good neighbors, and to do all we can to help others. And as far as I am concerned, that means being a blood donor, so I have resumed my old habit.

Giving blood usually takes about 45 minutes. It is absolutely safe. You will be asked a few basic questions about your overall health and how you are feeling. They’ll check your temperature, your blood pressure, your weight. You’ll be asked about any prescriptions you take, your travel history, and a few questions of a personal nature – but they ask only to make sure your blood is safe to give to anyone (even a little child), and ALL of your answers are kept strictly confidential.

The American Red Cross says that about 6.8 million people give blood every year, totaling up to 13.6 million units. The fact is, someone – men, women, boys, girls, infants and the elderly, cancer patients and trauma victims – someone in this country needs blood every two seconds. A typical transfusion of red blood cells requires three units of blood, and a single car accident victim can require as much as a hundred units. Burn patients often need a lot of blood, as do victims of Sickle Cell Disease and other chronic illnesses. It has been estimated that one donation of blood can save as many as three lives.

Who can give? Just about everyone. You have to be at least 16 years of age in good overall health and weigh at least 110 pounds. As for myself, I’m 65 and a Type 2 Diabetic, but even with the meds I take to keep my blood sugar in control, it didn’t disqualify me. And I got a nice T-shirt as a bonus!

There are some common-sense precautions. If you’re not feeling well, if you’re anemic, if you have a cold or other illness, don’t try to donate – wait until you’re better. Be sure to eat a good meal before, and maybe even have a little light snack just after. Drink plenty of fluids and keep the bandage on tightly for several hours. Don’t try to get up too quickly after the donation – take it easy for a few minutes and let your system adjust before you try to move too quickly. Take it from a five-gallon donor: you’ll be fine.

So my first time giving blood? It was the summer of 1976, and I was working as a ministry intern for a church in Jackson, Mississippi. One of the dear old saints in that congregation was in the final stages of her battle against leukemia, and so the senior pastor and I went down to the local hospital, to each give a unit of blood as a “credit” on her account. He was an experienced donor, but I was a “newbie.” When we were finished, he immediately jumped up and began heading for the exit. I (of course) felt that I just had to keep up with him and be as tough as he was, but with every step, I noticed my legs getting more and more wobbly, and an increasingly unpleasant sensation of dizziness. When we got to the front door, the heat and humidity of that Mississippi summer morning hit me in the face and I collapsed. The next the thing I knew, I was in the front seat of Earl’s VW Beetle, and he was asking, “Are you okay? Are you okay?”

From that inauspicious beginning, I have now given many more times, and I’m asking you to join me and over six million others and become a blood donor.

Just don’t get up too fast.

Loving God with my Mind

Several years ago, a mainline American denomination put out a series of publicity posters that I liked very much. One said, “Just because you’ve been baptized doesn’t mean you’ve been brainwashed.” Another went, “The only problem with groups that have all the answers, is that they don’t allow any questions.”

My favorite was “Jesus came to take away your sins. Not your mind.”

Many Christians have seemed confused over the years as to the proper relationship between reason and faith. Are we supposed to check our brains at the door and “just believe”? Is science automatically and irreversibly opposed to faith? Can a thinking person hold on to his or her intellectual integrity AND be a person of faith at the same time?

This was always a topic of special, personal importance to me. Expressing emotion was difficult for me growing up, but logic – ah, now you’re speaking my language. As a fan of the original “Star Trek” (don’t you roll your eyes at me!), my favorite character was, of course, Mr. Spock, who was totally cool, totally in control, totally logical.

The problem came when I tried to reconcile my fascination with logic, with what I was learning at church. I had questions but I learned pretty quickly that there are some questions you’re not supposed to ask. Logically, I thought I should be able to ask a simple question, but it’s not as simple as that. So you learn to keep your questions to yourself.

(Typical exchange – Me: “How do we know we can trust the Bible? Is it reliable?” Answer: “Yes, because the Bible says so.” Not exactly helpful.)

Perhaps without meaning to, pastors have often made the situation worse. You may know that I served as a pastor for nearly 40 years, so trust me when I tell you that pastors have their own questions and doubts, which they keep buried deep. Whenever they hear or read some skeptic raise the same questions they have, they become even more defensive, and think the answer is to “just believe” more. As if you could put enough coats of paint on a broken fence to cover up the break.

Some Christians will hear an “expert” on the Discovery Channel or History Channel make unproven, unchallenged claims about the Bible, or the life of Jesus, or some other matter of faith, and a believer who doesn’t know any better will think that there isn’t an answer, because they’ve never heard their preacher talk about it. And they may think that the skeptics have “beaten” faith, or that Christianity must somehow go begging in the marketplace of ideas. But our God is not the Author of confusion. He is the Giver of Truth. ALL truth. There are answers to these questions, even the tough ones. (By the way – “Where did Cain get his wife?” is NOT one of the tough questions. Trust me.) God is bigger than our questions. And there is not one question you can come up with that will stump Him.

Rather than commanding us to reject reason, over and over the scripture makes it clear that God has established order and logical thinking, and that these bear witness to Him. The fact is, Jesus INVITES us to love God with our MINDS – look at Matthew 22:37. After the resurrection, He appeared to His followers and gave them “many convincing proofs” that He was alive – Acts 1:3. Peter instructs believers to “always be prepared to give the reason for the hope” that we have – 1 Peter 3:15.

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, our purpose is to “demolish arguments” and to “take captive every thought” in order to bring it in submission to Christ. That DOESN’T mean faith is opposed to logic or reason. It means that our logic and reason have to be “transformed by the renewing of our MINDS” (Romans 12:2), and in this way, we worship God with our intellect, as surely as we also worship Him with our emotion and passion.

Overcoming Fear

What is the most negative, most destructive, most harmful emotion? There certainly is no shortage of possibilities – anger, hatred, pride – but in my opinion, the worst of all has to be fear.

Have you noticed how many television commercials make their appeal by trying to make you afraid? A majority of money management and investment ads fall into this category. They’re trying to stoke your fears of outliving your money, or not being able to “keep up your lifestyle,” or some other vague concept to threaten you and make you afraid.

Our elected officials give lengthy speeches that pump up our fears and appeal to our lowest natures. A recent study by a major university found that an overwhelming majority of gun owners point to “being afraid” as their number one reason for buying weapons – and especially buying multiple weapons. And, I’m sorry to say, most national news networks seem to exist, not to keep us informed, but for the purpose of stoking our fears and inflating our anxieties, to keep us watching so they can sell more product.

We live in a society that seems to be drowning in fear – fear of running out of money, fear of burglars, fear of disasters, fear of “others.” We are afraid of dying, and afraid of living too long. We are afraid of the government and afraid of each other. Fear is destroying the very fabric of our society.

We need to realize this type of paralyzing, crippling fear is not new. In fact, one of the most frequently quoted phrases in the Bible is, “Do not fear” – by some counts, that phrase appears 365 times in the scripture. Consider –

• God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Tim. 1:7)
• Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isa. 41:10)
• He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, … (Psa. 91:1-5)
• The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psa. 27:1)

God wants us to walk in peace, not fear. So how can we do that? It’s natural and normal – even healthy – to have a certain level of fear about the unknown, about new situations, or other unfamiliar circumstances, but we can’t let that fear paralyze us into inaction. When we are making a decision about something, we need to evaluate that choice, consider the pros and cons, seek the counsel of wise friends – then decide! We must not let the fear make the choice for us.

One of the most important techniques for battling fear is to pray and to fill our minds with positive and encouraging thoughts. I am not suggesting any strategy that ignores reality, but as believers we should fill our minds with scripture, not Facebook, so that we are not so vulnerable to fear and despair. Remember that the first time God appears to Joshua after the death of Moses, three times in that conversation, God tells Joshua, “Be strong and courageous!” (Joshua 1:6-9).

I am certainly NOT against planning or preparation. By all means, we should be as ready as humanly possible. But at the same time, we must remember that we are not in charge, that sometimes situations and circumstances come that no one could have expected or prepared for. In those situations when our planning fails, let us not fall into fear, but let us know that our God is still bigger than our circumstances, that it has not taken HIM by surprise, and that He is with us, through everything.

Let us, then, have full confidence that we do not need to be anxious, that we can face each day and every situation knowing that He is with us, and that we need not fear. Strength and courage!