Foreign Bodies

Since its earliest days, Hollywood has been a magnet for talented filmmakers from around the world. From Charlie Chaplin and Otto Preminger right up to Ridley Scott and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, innovative directors have come to America to make movies, including several who left their mark on what's usually considered an American genre: film noir.

In Germany between the world wars, few directors won the renown accorded Fritz Lang. Throughout the 1920s and early 30s, he created masterpieces such at The Spiders, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, and Metropolis. But in his paranoid serial-killer film M, and especially in The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse, he produced what amounted to thinly veiled critiques of Nazi rule, which did not sit well with the authorities. After a meeting with Herman Goering, Lang returned to his home, packed a suitcase with a few belongings and as much money as he could carry, and departed that same day for France. He stayed in Paris for a while before eventually emigrating to the States.

Once ensconced in the studio system, Lang was given mostly B-movie material to direct. Still, his mastery of style is notable in proto-noir films such as Fury and You Only Live Once. Later in the 1940s he turned out a series of strong, suspenseful films, notably Ministry Of Fear, The Woman In The Window, and Scarlet Street.

Ministry Of Fear, his strongest Hollywood film, features Ray Milland as a man just recovered from a nervous breakdown in Blitz-era Britain. He stumbles upon a spy ring in the upper reaches of government that leaves him unsure of whom he can trust. The paranoia of his German film returns here, together with his innovative treatments of lighting and shadow.

In the 1950s Lang again made a string of very good crime films, culminating in The Big Heat, his story of a good cop driven to become a bloodthirsty vigilante. Tagged as a difficult to work with, Lang's Hollywood career was winding down. In the late 50s he returned to Germany and made a series of inferior films before eventually retiring.

Another German forced to flee the Nazis was Robert Siodmak. Along with his screenwriting brother Curt, he followed the same path as Lang: first Paris, then on to Hollywood. Siodmak never really got the recognition that Lang received, and was consequently forced to do a whole lot with a whole little. Coupled with his early experiences with German expressionism, this produced a dark, moody style that didn't rely on expensive sets (in fact it frequently concealed their cheapness).

Siodmak worked on a string of mostly undistinguished films up until he directed Phantom Lady in 1944. Made from a Cornell Woolrich novel, the film was a tightly wound marvel of suspense. This marked the beginning of the best phase of Siodmak's career, a series of dark suspense films including The Suspect, The Spiral Staircase, The Dark Mirror, Cry Of The City, and a pair featuring Burt Lancaster: The Killers and Criss Cross.

Siodmak, again like Lang, returned to Germany in the late 1960s, and closed out his career with a number of second-rate films.

Frenchman Jacques Tourneur didn't come to America fleeing repression; instead, he arrived with his father, directory Maurice Tourneur, and grew up in the film industry, working in a variety of jobs before directing his first picture in 1931. He got his big break when he went to work for producer Val Lewton in RKO's horror unit. He and Lewton worked together on low-budget but ambitious films such as Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and The Leopard Man (from Woolrich's Black Alibi).

In 1947 he directed a film from Daniel Mainwaring's Build My Gallows High, starring young actors Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. The result was Out Of The Past, one of the greatest noir pictures ever made. Tourneur's horror background clearly informed his direction, with much of the action taking place at night and in the shadows.

Tourneur continued to make various genre pictures over the next few years, including Nightfall, from the novel by David Goodis, and the horror classic Night Of The Demon.

Another Frenchman who had a major impact on Hollywood stayed mostly in France, but his love for American suspense films is unmistakable. That man was Francois Truffaut, one of the principle directors of the French New Wave.

Truffaut was a lifelong movie fan, but a poor student and general delinquent. Legendary critic Andre Bazin took him under his wing and set him on the straight and narrow. Truffaut began contributing articles to the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinema, and made his breakthrough as director in 1959 with The Four Hundred Blows.

The following year brough Shoot The Piano Player, based on the novel Down There by Goodis. This intense film follows the fall of a pianist who fails because of weakness, and clearly shows the influence of American noir. Later Truffaut filmed a pair of Cornell Woolrich novels: The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid (from Waltz Into Darkness). The final feature before his untimely death from cancer was the lighthearted mystery Finally Sunday, from The Long Saturday Night by Charles Williams.

Truffaut, and the New Wave in general, inspired a number of directors who looked at film noir through the lens of his movies, and reinvented it for the late 60s and early 70s in films like Bullitt, Klute, and Night Moves.

The 1990s have already seen he wholesale import of style, as the Hong Kong style has taken over in movies from Mission Impossible 2 to the remake of Get Carter. Will the next import come from Britain (Sexy Beast), France (The Crimson Rivers), or further afield? Stay tuned.