Born to Kill: lurid but likeable

Born to Kill (1947) is one of the most controversial films ever made. Dismissed, despised, banned, held responsible for corrupting public morals and even used in the defence of a murderer, who held that he was spurred on to commit his crime after watching the film, Robert Wise’s lurid film noir, even with less squeamish contemporary sensibilities, still has the ability to shock with its issues of depraved lust, casual violence, extreme selfishness, alcoholism, greed, uncontainable resentment and hatred.

Lawrence Tierney plays a psychopath who also happens to be irresistible to women, which enables him to ingratiate himself into the love life of wealthy San Francisco socialite Helen Brent (played by Claire Trevor) and her step-sister Georgia Staples (played by Audrey Long) and it is his character – Sam Wilde – who we presume is the person ‘born to kill’ of the film’s title.

However, the novel by James Gunn on which the film is based is called Deadlier than the Male and this should tell us that the story as originally imagined wasn’t about Sam Wilde but Helen Barnes and Georgia Staples and that Sam Wilde was just a cypher to explore the women’s turbulent inner lives and how this leads to them making catastrophic choices in the social world.

It’s a fault that the Sam Wilde character is supposed to carry the film. He’s not that interesting. Violent lunatics rarely are and, indeed, it’s difficult to imagine how this charmless, unpleasant and quite stupid man can still possess the animal magnetism to worm himself into so many lives, break their will power and warp their sense of right and wrong.

The film has a well-written script and is effectively directed by Robert Wise, who before this worked with Orson Welles as his editor on Citizen Kane and directed the Val Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher, though perhaps he’s best known for directing two musicals, West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965).

What really lifts Born to Kill are the characters of the private detective Albert Arnett (played by Walter Slezak), his client, Mrs Kraft (played by Esther Howard) – the neighbour of the young woman murdered by Wilde – and Sam Wilde’s loyal friend, Marty Waterman (played by Elisha Cook Jr.).

Slezak is particularly entertaining to watch. His Bible-quoting private detective is unctuous and avaricious and has nothing in common with the tough-guy members of his trade – Dashiel Hammet’s Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlow, both moral crusaders out to assure right triumphs over wrong, regardless of the financial consequences, the personal dangers and harm that come their way.

Albert Arnett, on the other hand, has no such courage or convictions. He lives on the breadline and when he sees an opportunity to fleece his client he has no remorse, his motivation being to sell the information he has gathered through his investigation to the highest bidder. He has no consideration for justice or the restoration of order. He is not a seeker of truth nor an avenger, but a sleazy blackmailer.

Lawrence Tierney: the toughest man in Hollywood

 

The toughest, most remorseless, cold-hearted protagonist in film noir has to be Lawrence Tierney.

Apparently, in real life Tierney was just as hard, prone to losing his short temper, benders and bar room brawling that often ended with the Brooklyn-born actor on the wrong side of the law and in the clink.

Since acting and film is about make-believe, it’s difficult to know whether Tierney was being himself when playing all these thugs and heavies or fell victim to believing his on screen image and acting it out in real life. No matter. 

The Hoodlum (1951) is classic Tierney. In it, he plays Vincent Lubeck, who starts off his life of crime as an adolescent, gradually climbing – or going down – the ladder of lawlessness, his crimes becoming increasingly serious and his prison sentences increasingly long. 

Not that the punishment he has to endure turns him onto the straight and narrow. 

Rather, he comes to see himself as a victim of the system and is consumed by hatred of society, determined to revenge himself against it by repudiating its basic rules of hard work, family solidarity, deferred gratification, opting instead for the easy money that theft brings; showing contempt for the honest ways of his brother – the gas station owner who believes in the American Dream – seducing his earnest sibling’s fiancée; and wanting all his desires fulfilled and wanting them fulfilled right now. 

Tierney gives a similar sociopathic portrait of John Dillinger in another collaboration with director Max Nosseck in the eponymous gangster film, which purports to tell the story of the Great Depression bank robber, whose crimes – and the notoriety and popularity they earned him – contributed to the formation of the FBI and helped make the name of J. Edgar Hoover. 

The screenplay for Dillinger (1945) was written by Philip Yordan, whose career spanned everything from classic film noirs – House of Strangers, The Big Combo, Detective Story; to Westerns – The Man from Laramie, Day of the Outlaw, Broken Lance; and epics – 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire, El Cid. 

The third film noir Tierney made with Nosseck was Kill or be Killed (1950), which is not only not set in the urban mean streets – it’s actually set in the Brazilian jungle – but it also has Tierney playing a more conventional hero, albeit a very tough, smart and proud one, who is framed for murder and sets out to find the real killers, on the way dealing with piranhas, poisonous snakes and the lethal husband of the woman he's fallen in love with.