FRANCO
NOIR: DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES (1964)/RIFIFI
IN THE CITY (1963) Blu-rayDirector: Jess Franco
Severin Films
Before Jess Franco became known for his erotic horror films, he made a bid at the mainstream in his native Spain, two examples of which are showcased in FRANCO NOIR, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.
DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES: Among his jet set friends, Paul Radeck (Georges Rollin, THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS) is a philanthropist brought wealth and prosperity to their island paradise. Among the locals of Kingston, Radeck is a tyrant who has bought up their fishing rights and their local hot spots. What neither of them know is that Radeck is actually Vogel, a racketeer who dabbled in the weapons smuggling in South America, a venture that cost the life of partner Castro whose widow Lina (Perla Cristal, FURY OF THE WOLFMAN) he then married. His false identity is threatened, however, when Lina mentions running into Julius Smith (Manuel Alexandre, HIGH VOLTAGE) – their other partner recently released from prison and playing the trumpet in a nightclub band – on a trip to New Orleans.
Radeck orders a hit on Smith, but a letter he intended to send to Lina found on his person gives Commissioner Fenton (Fortunio Bonanova, DOUBLE INDEMNITY) the idea of using nightclub singer informant Moira Santos (Danik Patisson, DANIELA BY NIGHT) to try to discover Radeck's relationship to Smith and Castro. Radeck smells a rat as soon as Rosita arrives, but keeps her in his employ since he is not sure who sent her; particularly, when he gets a letter in Castro's handwriting warning him threatening his life. Lina is torn between her unhappy marriage to Radeck and her memories of her first husband. Meanwhile, a third player enters the game in Portuguese sailor Joao (Conrado San Martín, THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF) who may or may not be Castro.
A strain of film noir has run through Jess Franco's filmography, particularly in his non-supernatural erotic works, more noticeable in films like KISS ME KILLER (a semi-remake of this film), DOWNTOWN, and even his women-in-prison works, but also underlying some of his erotic mind control films like NIGHTMARES COME AT NIGHT and THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND DESIRES. DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES not only allowed Franco to first indulge in homages to the genre, it is one of the earliest films to feature themes that would run throughout his filmography from nightclub performers, jazz music – including the targeted use of a song to stir up memories of the past in guilt-ridden characters to the point where it takes on a ghostly significance – false identities, as well as the origins of character names that would recur throughout Franco's films including the introduction of private investigator Al Pereira who would turn up again in the late seventies played by Franco himself in DOWNTOWN, by Lina Romay as "Alma Pereira" in Franco's experimental PAULA-PAULA, but most often by Antonio Mayans in a handful of Franco's eighties Spanish films along with Franco's final films AL PEREIRA VS THE ALLIGATOR LADIES and REVENGE OF THE ALLIGATOR LADIES.
While it seems as though Rollin's Radeck is more concerned about what the exposure of his true identity will do to the memoirs he is writing rather than his actual life, Lina is sidelined for stretches of the running time, and Joao's actions are so ambiguous even the local characters he interacts with are questioning why he didn't bother to kill Radeck when he broke into his house, the supporting cast includes some familiar faces from Franco's filmography as well as Spanish genre film in general, including Maria Silva (CURSE OF THE DEVIL), Gerard Tichy (THE HANGING WOMAN), Rosa Palomar (A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD), Victoria Zinny (VIRIDIANA), as well as Yocasta Grey (GRAVEYARD OF HORROR) whose future director husband Miguel Madrid (THE KILLING OF THE DOLLS) is glimpsed playing in the nightclub band alongside Jess Franco himself on saxophone.
Although lensed in silky black and white by future Juan Piquer Simon cinematographer Juan Marine (THE RIFT), the island setting and the overall production values seem not that far away from the first James Bond film DR. NO (which was indeed quite low budget compared to the rest of the series), perhaps so much so, that French distributor Eurociné retitled the film AGENT 077: OPERATION JAMAICA when they released it in 1964 (and again in 1968 as AGENT 077: OPERATION SEXY, possibly with nude inserts). Franco composed the recurring theme "Blues del Tejado" while the rest of the score was the work of Anton Garcia Abril who would become better known in Spanish horror for his "Blind Dead" theme for the films of Armando de Ossorio.
In RIFIFI IN THE CITY, Detective Miguel Mora (Fernando Fernán Gómez, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE) has been trying to get the dirt on nightclub owner Puig (Robert Manuel, DEADLIER THAN THE MALE), installing handsome, young Juan (Serafín García Vázquez) as barman to act as informant. Juan calls him one night and tells him that he has evidence that wealthy political hopeful Maurice Leprince (Jean Servais, THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE) is the real operator behind Puig's criminal ventures. When Juan fails to turn up with the evidence, Mora barrels into Leprince's villa and demands that he turn over Juan or he will kill him. That night, someone hurls Juan's body through Mora's window. Mora shows up at Puig's club to threaten him, and catches Leprince in the company of singer Nina (Maria Vincent, JOE CALIGULA) but is brutally beaten by Puig's men and thrown off the docks. Mora is rescued by Juan's girlfriend Juanita (Dina Loy, ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS) and friend Manolo (Luis Marín, I HATE MY BODY) who were also looking for the younger man.
Mora wakes from a coma to be warned off of Leprince by his superior Commissioner Vargas (Antonio Prieto, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS) who has received a visit from Leprince's lawyer (Jacinto San Emeterio, FACE OF TERROR) alleging harassment. In spite of the warnings of his superiors and misgivings of his wife Pilar (Laura Granados, SHOOT TO KILL), Mora continues to investigate unofficially during his recovery. When the men responsible for his beating, and possibly Juan's torture and murder – Ribera (Agustín González, BELLE EPOQUE), Mirelles (Manuel Gas, THE KILLER WORE GLOVES), and Torres (Davidson Hepburn) – are targeted for death, and Leprince receives a letter telling him that his own death will follow theirs, Vargas is not so sure about the legitimacy of Mora's motives or even his alibis during the murders; however, it turns out that there may be not just another but possibly many other suspects behind the whispered threat of "Do you remember Juan Solano?"
Loosely based on the French thriller "Do You Remember Paco?" – indeed, the Spanish RIFIFÍ EN LA CIUDAD title card bears the French subtitle "Vous souvenez vous de Paco?" despite the film changing the doomed informant's name – RIFIFI IN THE CITY has nothing to do with the Jules Dassin heist thriller RIFIFI other than the presence of star Servais. With this second noir homage (DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES was produced in 1962 but not released until 1964), Franco was able not only to refine the scripting so the multitude of characters feel more organic to the plot but also to indulge in some visual nods to Orson Welles including a secret meeting at an aquarium based on a scene in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Although Servais was just picking up a paycheck here – having gained a reputation for alcoholism and being difficult to work with – he does seems a bit more lively here at times, including his bullshitting political campaign speech in which the man who suspiciously immigrated to the South American nation setting in April 1944 is introduced as a "distinguished spirit, who combines ancient French culture with the spirit of young America."
Gomez's detective seems to go around in circles but the actor gives a somber and authoritative performance, and the supporting trio of thugs marked for death are appropriately slimy, along with Leprince's lawyer and his personal secretary (an early appearance by Spanish genre character actor Frank Braña (RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD). The film's narrative flow, instead, comes from the mournful narration of Juan's unidentified lover, who may or may not also be the murderer. Franco is greatly aided in his Wellsian homages by cinematographer Godofredo Pacheco – who also lensed THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF and THE SADISTIC BARON VON KLAUS – and composer Daniel White (FEMALE VAMPIRE), particularly when it comes to the standout set-piece that intercuts Mora's beating with Nina's singing and the unconventional costumed pairings of dancers on the nightclub floor. While there might not be a close remake of the film in Franco's filmography, the spirit of the film may exist in later Franco films in which the revenge of mourning females is a death wish in itself that has often been attributed to inspiration from THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (the 1940 Cornell Woolrich novel and the 1968 François Truffaut film).
Apparently only distribute in Spain and France, DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES could only be seen for some time in its French version which altered some of the dialogue, until a Spanish TV broadcast started making the rounds with added English subtitles. RIFIFI IN THE CITY has been available on DVD in Spain in a non-anamorphic, letterboxed edition with no English options. Severin offers no information about the sources of their 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC widescreen presentations, but they have been framed at 1.78:1 rather than 1.66:1, only truly impeding the composition in some close-ups (although this may not be noticeable to fans of Franco's more zoom-happy later works). Neither has undergone the sort of cleanup seen on Gaumont's restorations of Franco's THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z or ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS – to name two other monochrome Franco pics – looking not unlike some of the Eurocine Franco transfers, but they maintain their silvery noir slickness apart from some obvious stock shots – including a New Orleans establishing shot that must have been sourced from 16mm and had its graininess exacerbated by the addition of an optical title – and the pre-credits sequence of RIFIFI that might be from standard definition – and both are quite watchable given that they were some of the least likely Franco films to hit Blu-ray. The Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks are clean, with the entirely post-dubbed dialogue always intelligible, and optional English subtitles free of any distracting errors.
The sole extra covering both films is "Franco Noir" (66:57), an interview with Stephen Thrower, author of "Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco", who discusses Franco's early career as an assistant director, his self-taught course of filmmaking crossing the border for viewings of American cinema at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, his early credits including the experimental comedy WE ARE 18 YEARS OLD and the opportunity to step in for Leon Klimovsky to direct the musical QUEEN OF THE TABARIN which would turn out to be a hit, his hard-to-see LABIOS ROJOS – the first appearance of the "Red Lips" duo who would appear later in the back-to-back SADISTEROTICA and KISS ME MONSTER, the later TWO FEMALE SPIES IN FLOWERED PANTIES, and the shot-on-video RED SILK – and his second musical VAMPIRESAS 1930.
He then notes that the crime film is a second thread alongside horror in Franco's filmography (with the director being able to shoehorn erotica into any genre), and provides background on DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES and RIFIFI IN THE CITY, as well as the noir influences and borrowings of both films. He also discusses the differences between RIFIFI and its literary source, dubbing alterations in the French versions of both films, and suggests that Franco might have been able to get around Spain's censorship in the context of the latter film's critique of political corruption by suggesting that democracy is a sham (in spite of the film being set in a South American republic and the literary and cinematic connotations of dictatorship that come along with them). The back cover misstates the running time of RIFIFI IN THE CITY as eighty-five minutes (it actually runs the correct length of 104:22 while DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES is also complete at 81:10, at least as far as the original Spanish version goes). (Eric Cotenas)