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128 4 Blues in the Night POPULAR AND CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTAL SOURCE MUSIC Violent Interludes In the form of scores as well as emanating from various sources, radio and record player and jukebox, music in forties noir and classical Hollywood cinema more generally is employed to accent almost every conceivable kind of action. One of the most distinctive, though, is the use of diegetic music to underscore scenes of physical violence. “Beatings are interludes of spectacle , like song-and-dance numbers in musicals,” Manohla Dargis writes in her BFI volume on L.A. Confidential (1997), “and as in the musical, they have a subtextual function.”¹ Robert Wise’s Born to Kill (1947) is an “excellent example” of the early RKO film noir, marrying the “atmospheric style of Welles and the moody, Gothic atmosphere of Lewton,”² but it’s also notable for its unique marriage of music and violence. Laury Palmer (Isabel Jewell) and her boyfriend, Danny (Tony Barrett), have returned to her apartment after a night out on the town in Reno. What Danny doesn’t know is that Laury has recently met another man, Sam Wild (Lawrence Tierney), and is only continuing to see Danny in order to “needle” her new beau. Laury gushes about Sam, “he’s the quiet sort,” then adds, not without admiration, “And yet, you get a feeling if you stepped out of line, he’d kick your teeth down your throat.” Miklitsch_pp128-191.indd 128 Miklitsch_pp128-191.indd 128 12/8/10 4:24:15 PM 12/8/10 4:24:15 PM Blues in the Night 129 While Laury goes to the bedroom to freshen up, Danny switches the radio on as he strolls to the kitchen to fix some drinks. Whistling along with the swing music, he breezes through the kitchen door (he’s clearly done this before) and pivots as he flips on the lights. In doing so, however, he doesn’t see Sam still wearing his hat and placidly sitting on a barstool. The ensuing scene, shot in the full, high-key light usually reserved for musicals, is fraught with menace: in the foreground, Danny’s body is blocked by the fridge door; in the background, Sam, having taken the final puff off a cigarette , stands with his hands ready at his sides. Sam tells him to get out and, for a moment, Danny tries to reason with him (“Let’s talk this out over a couple of drinks”). But when Sam says, “There’s no man big enough to cut me out,” Danny pulls out a switchblade. Mistake number one. Sam handily disarms him, then hits him four straight times, the last an upper cut to the chin that sends him crashing to the floor. Danny grabs a stick of broken furniture and gets up. Mistake number two. Sam disarms him again and, with a single punch, sends him flying across the room. Danny, still game, wipes his mouth and gets up again. Mistake number three, his final one. Danny rushes Sam and, for an instant, it’s as if they’re dancing—until, that is, Sam throws him down like a sack of coal and beats him to death. Suddenly, Laury’s voice can be heard offscreen, “Sounds like you’re tearing the house apart, the racket you’re making!” Since Sam has turned off the lights and is hiding behind the door, Laury doesn’t see him when she comes into the kitchen; instead, she sees Danny’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor. Backing up in horror, she bumps into Sam and is momentarily relieved until she sees the look on his face, then her eyes fill with terror. As the radio drones in the background, Sam proceeds to “knock her teeth down her throat”—or so we imagine, since in fact we see nothing. We only hear the big-band music, the sickening sound of flesh on flesh, and Romeo, Laury’s dog, whimpering. The working title of Wise’s film, Deadlier Than the Male, refers to Claire Trevor’s character, Helen Brent, who, such is her lust, remains completely unfazed by Wild’s brutality. “The adopted sister of a newspaper heiress” whose life of wealth and leisure she envies,³ Helen, like Sam, is “born to kill,” her overpowering sexual attraction to him eventually eroding her veneer of civility and revealing a base strain of greed and aggressivity. Still, we’re ultimately transfixed not so much by Helen as by Sam who, as played...

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