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| Felix E. Feist: Tomorrow Is Another Day, starring Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman. |
Even though he was born into the movie business, Felix Ellison Feist was always an outlier. His father was MGM’s general sales manager in the 1920s, and Feist began in the business first as a film loader for the studio’s East Coast office, then shooting news service footage and Metro travelogues. Despite the success of his first feature, the special effects extravaganza Deluge (1933), which imagined New York wiped out by a tidal wave, Feist spent the rest of the 1930s and ’40s making shorts for MGM. But in 1947, he suddenly found his niche within the rising tide of noir that swept over Hollywood. Moving to RKO Radio Pictures – for many ‘The House of Noir’ – Feist found that brisk, low-budget crime thrillers provided him with a template to create surprising films spiked with verve and violence. He was particularly adept with desperate characters in confined spaces, as seen in the maniacally unnerving The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) and its similarly single-minded follow-up The Threat (1949).
Although he was cultured and sophisticated in his personal life, Feist’s approach to pulp material showed a subversive streak that crossed Anthony Mann-style brutality with the almost farcical momentum of Chuck Jones cartoons. He preferred operating in the B-movie trenches, where he enjoyed greater creative freedom. Producers appreciated his resourcefulness, and problem-solving élan. In many ways, Feist resembled Edgar G. Ulmer: both were filmmakers inspired by the limitations of B budgets and schedules, rather than hindered by them.
When Jack M. Warner (the studio boss’ son) made his first film as a producer, The Man Who Cheated Himself (1951), he handed the entire production over to Feist, who shot it efficiently and evocatively on location in San Francisco. Feist followed that with a Warner Bros. assignment that, for the studio, became an afterthought in the wake of the death of its original star, John Garfield. A bigger budget, a longer shooting schedule, and Art Cohn’s terrific script – Gun Crazy by way of John Steinbeck – inspired Feist to pull everything out of his bag of tricks for Tomorrow Is Another Day. The result is a fresh and deeply felt masterpiece of noir, marred only by a studio-mandated ending. Feist would make other films in the 1950s, such as The Big Trees (1952), Battles of Chief Pontiac (1952), and Donovan’s Brain (1953), but these lacked the attack and artistry he brought to his crime pictures. After more than a decade directing television, Feist died in 1965 at only 55 years of age.
Eddie Muller (Il Cinema Ritrovato, introduction to the retrospective)
Program
THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE
THE THREAT
TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY
...
THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE
Director: Felix E. Feist. Year: 1947. Country: USA
Sog.: dal romanzo omonimo (1938) di Robert C. DuSoe. Scen.: Felix Feist. F.: J. Roy Hunt. M.: Robert Swink. Scgf.: Albert D’Agostino, Charles F. Pyke. Mus.: Paul Sawtell. Int.: Lawrence Tierney (Steve Morgan), Ted North (Jimmy Ferguson), Nan Leslie (Beulah Zorn/Carol Hemming), Betty Lawford (Agnes), Andrew Tombes (Joe Brayden), Harry Shannon (Owens), Glenn Vernon (Jack Kenny), Marian Carr (Diane Ferguson). Prod.: Herman Schlom per RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.. DCP. D.: 62’. Bn.
Brutal, Nasty, and Short: The Noir of Felix E. Feist
Copy from Library of Congress
Restored in 2019 by Library of Congress and The Film Noir Foundation in collaboration with Warner Bros.
Director Felix Feist’s first film noir is a reckless and startlingly subversive B-movie thrill-ride that, without warning, careens from silly comedy to scary psychopathy. The meager plot revolves around a slightly drunk good Samaritan giving a ride to a guy who’s robbed and killed a cinema cashier. When they pick up two women along the way, things spin completely out of control. It’s merely a question of who will live through the night. Feist was eager to helm a feature again after years stuck in the trenches making shorts and travelogues for MGM, and RKO gave him ample freedom to adapt Robert DuSoe’s hitchhiker-from-hell novel, The Devil Thumbs a Ride. It was a test of his mettle since the film’s star, Lawrence Tierney, was notoriously devilish himself, a boozing and brawling demon with a police record longer than his list of film credits. Far from intimidated, Feist fully captured Tierney’s dangerous combination of ribald humor, sinister charm and hair-trigger volatility and violence. Feist’s willingness to juxtapose comedy ‘relief’ with moments of startling cruelty was unheard of at the time; the mix of sardonic humor and casual sadism wouldn’t be equaled until 1952, when Jim Thompson published The Killer Inside Me (Tierney and Feist would have been simpatico collaborators on a contemporary film version). Writer Barry Gifford remarked that “Tierney invests this basically stupid plot with such genuine virulence that Devil must be ranked in the upper echelon of indelibly American noir”. Due to rights issues, the film has been unavailable for years, but thanks to a brand new restoration by the Library of Congress, modern audiences (at least outside America) can once again see this singularly disconcerting example of B-moviemaking at its most berserk.
Eddie Muller
THE THREAT
Braccati dai G-Men. Director: Felix E. Feist. Year: 1949. Country: USA
Sog.: Hugh King. Scen.: Dick Irving Hyland, Hugh King. F.: Harry Wild. M.: Samuel E. Beetley. Scgf.: Albert D’Agostino, Charles F. Pyke. Mus.: Paul Sawtell. Int.: Charles McGraw (Arnold Kluger), Virginia Grey (Carol), Michael O’Shea (Ray Williams), Frank Conroy (Barker ‘Mac’ MacDonald), Don McGuire (Joe Turner), Robert Shayne (Murphy), Anthony Caruso (Nick Damon), Frank Richards (Lefty). Prod.: Hugh King per RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.. 35mm. D.: 66’. Bn.
Brutal, Nasty, and Short: The Noir of Felix E. Feist
Copy from Warner Bros. Pictures.
By courtesy of Park Circus e RKO
The Threat, a brisk and brutal B-movie from RKO, concerns a notorious crook (played with savage cool by Charles McGraw) who breaks out of prison looking for revenge. That is the entire plot. What it lacks in story, it makes up for with a hostage drama that is surprisingly violent for its era. The creative force is Feist, who had previously made The Devil Thumbs a Ride for the studio – and The Threat is a nasty encore. Both revolve around an unrepentant psychopath holding a houseful of people hostage. Neither movie cares about plot – they’re all about the guilty pleasure of watching a powerful actor given free rein to wreak havoc, escalating to a satisfying and cleverly directed finale in a forlorn shack in the California desert. Feist flourished within the constraints of a picture like The Threat. His brilliance shone in violent contemporary melodrama, while his historical pieces such as Battles of Chief Pontiac and Pirates of Tripoli, weren’t nearly as exciting.
The Threat was the breakout picture for supporting actor Charles McGraw – RKO gave him only third billing, but the press heralded him as a new and entertaining menace in the mold of Richard Widmark, Dan Duryea, and Lawrence Tierney. McGraw had already made 25 pictures prior to this, working with geniuses like Robert Siodmak (The Killers) and Anthony Mann (T-Men, Border Incident). But in The Threat, he wasn’t a scary hoodlum lurking at the edge of the frame – he’s front and center, a burly juggernaut. Feist relishes turning this ferocious bulldog loose on a bruised and battered supporting cast that includes Michael O’Shea, Frank Conroy, Don McGuire and Virginia Grey – who takes her fair share of lumps as McGraw’s possibly duplicitous girlfriend. Like The Devil Thumbs a Ride, this is a live-action cartoon, with humans standing in for savvy roadrunners and wily coyotes. Buckle up for this 66-minute flight from justice; it may be short, but there is much turbulence.
Eddie Muller
TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY Felix E. Feist
Gli uomini perdonano
Director: Felix E. Feist. Year: 1951. Country: USA
Sog.: Guy Endore. Scen.: Art Cohn, Guy Endore. F.: Robert Burks. M.: Alan Crosland Jr. Scgf.: Charles H. Clarke. Mus.: Daniele Amfitheatrof. Int.: Ruth Roman (‘Cay’ Higgins), Steve Cochran (Bill Clark/Mike Lewis), Lurene Tuttle (Stella Dawson), Ray Teal (Henry Dawson), Bobby Hyatt (Johnny Dawson), Morris Ankrum (Hugh Wagner), John Kellogg (Dan Monroe), Lee Patrick (Janet Higgins). Prod.: Henry Blanke per Warner Bros.. DCP. D.: 91’. Bn.
Brutal, Nasty, and Short: The Noir of Felix E. Feist
Copy from Harvard Film Archive
Tomorrow Is Another Day is such a bad title it’s not surprising the film has escaped critical reappraisal – and viewers. Which is unfortunate, because this movie is brimming with stylish pleasures and surprisingly deep feeling. The ‘lovers on the run’ premise will be familiar to anyone who has seen Lang’s You Only Live Once, Ray’s They Live by Night, Lewis’ Gun Crazy or Sirk’s Shockproof. In fact, Samuel Fuller, writer of Shockproof, could have sued for plagiarism, since much of Tomorrow Is Another Day seems lifted from his script, made two years earlier. But it’s not the story that makes this film special, it’s Feist’s direction. He’d shown a flair for volatile action in confined spaces in the B-films The Devil Thumbs a Ride and The Threat, but this Warner Bros. picture was born from bigger plans, having been tailored for John Garfield. The male lead was eventually played by Steve Cochran instead, who typically played sinister and sexy supporting studs in movies such as White Heat, The Damned Don’t Cry and Storm Warning. Here he gives a troubled, vulnerable performance, which may have convinced Antonioni to cast Cochran in his existential drama Il grido. Costar Ruth Roman had appeared in major movies without ever playing a memorable character. Here she makes the most out of tough taxi dancer Cay Higgins, a hard-as-nails dame who gradually opens up to the possibility of kindness and affection. DP Robert Burks, who’d just shot Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, shows his facility with difficult camera set-ups and an ability to integrate location footage with back projection. He and Feist concoct several unexpected and thrilling set pieces. You’ll never again see a car-carrier on the road and not think of this film. This is not a groundbreaking film, it’s more like a familiar jazz standard rendered in a fresh and soulful way, in a minor key. You’ve taken the trip before, but this time the journey is revelatory and memorable. It’s Feist’s best film.
Eddie Muller
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