True Crime Movies

[sdreid]

Hi Ian,

Do you mean Conspiracy of Silence about the murder of Helen Betty Osbourne?

[ianincleveland]

Can always remember watching a film set in early 70s Canada about a young Inuit(or native indian i cant totally remember) girl being raped and murdered by a group of drunk white youths and the cover up by the police and almost the whole town until one person lawyer got the case reexamined.Apparently the whole thing was true as well.

[LadyG]

whoops and also FATAL VISION, BLIND FAITH and ECHOES IN THE DARKNESS.

[LadyG]

Love this thread. HBO's production CITIZEN X remains a favorite of mine, and I am delighted to see other folks have actually seen and watched THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN. I was hooked on COMPULSION for quite awhile-- Leopold/Loeb pretty well done, with fictionalized names-- And I am also happy to learn I am not the only one dissatisfied with THE BLACK DAHLIA-- must keep reminding myself it is a work of fiction, but I disliked TITANIC, too, for cheapening the truth with that ;romance'. I enjoy watching alot of crime documentaries, though I know they are not everyone's cup of tea, with victims, scene photos, and...hey...that's like this place!! THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS (film adaptation of Dylan Thomas' play) is an artsy 'retelling' of Dr. Lister, Burke and Hare-- yeh, fictionalized but an EXCELLENT cast-- Timothy Dalton, Patrick Stewart, Sian Phillips (major sp??) Julian Sands, Stephen Rea, and Twiggy.... still need to read the rest of this thread-- yoikes!

[sdreid]

I watched The Alphabet Killer about the alliterative serial child murders in Rochester during the early 1970s. There will be no need to alter my list. It's a shame too because this is an interesting case and the film seemed to have a good budget. A squandered opportunity I guess.

[Mayerling]

I have to keep reminding myself of this title - it's a French film.

THE JUDGE AND THE ASSASSIN (Philippe Noiret, Michel Galibro) (1976) - this little known French movie is the only one I know of dealing with the case of Joseph Vacher, the French Ripper of the 1890s. Noiret is a pliable and ambitious judge who is ready to overlook Galibro's obvious insanity because the public wants him guilloutined. The powers that be want a show trial of the madman because it will take the public mind off the really big legal mess of the day (the Dreyfus Case). Galibro won a "Cesar" as the killer.

The French film "The Elegant Criminal" about Lacenaire was mentioned, but there is an earlier and greater film that pushes that egotist (ah, how he would have loved it!) toward center stage: THE CHILDREN OF PARADISE
(1944). The character is one of four lovers of the heroine played by Arletty, the others including Jean Baptiste Dubureau (the great mime - who I believe went to prison for manslaughter at one point), Frederic LeMaitre, the leading actor of the 1830s and 1840s, Lacenaire, and a Count. Lacenaire kills the Count (historically inaccurate), but calmly waits for the police to arrive while his assistant Avril runs out.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Dir: Joseph Von Sternberg, 1935) (Peter Lorre, Edward Arnold, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Douglas Dumbrille) is also based in part on Laceniare, as a model for Raskolnikoff and in the way the crime was described (the murder of the pawn broker and her sister by an axe, similar to the double murder Laceniare was caught on).

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY (Dir: Joseph Von Sternberg, 1931) (Philip Holmes, Sylvia Sidney, Charles Middleton). Based on the novel by Theodore Dreiser, which is based on the 1908 Chester Gillette Case (as is A PLACE IN THE SUN, which was mentioned on another list on this thread). Dreiser hated Von Sternberg's stylized film, and sued to have the film destroyed. He lost.

WE ARE NOT ALONE (1940)(Paul Muni, Flora Robson, Una O'Connor, Henry Daniel, Alan Napier). Based on a novel by James Hilton (LOST HORIZON, GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, RANDOM HARVEST), it is a retelling of the Crippen case, suggesting the poisoning of the shrewish wife (Robson) was an accident committed by another (a fiction invented by Hilton) so that the author takes the prosecution of the "innocent" doctor and his girlfriend as due to the blunderings of the same men who are sending thousands of men to their deaths in the Great War (the story is moved from 1910 to 1914-15).

Jeff

[sdreid]

Hi Eduardo,

In the 1971 movie, the detective is actually called Inspector Vidocq.

[Captain Hook]

I believe Vidocq was the model for the cop in Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Hello Stan and Jeff,

In The Murders in the Rue Morgue Poe introduced a detective, the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, who was not a cop. I forget who was the inspiration for him, but I doubt it was Vidocq, who was more of a savvy policeman than a detective. On the other hand, Dupin might have been created by Poe out of a number of sources.

Cheers
Eduardo

[sdreid]

Hi Jeff and Eduardo,

Savage actually made a film in 2006, My Winnipeg. She would have been 88 in February.

I believe Vidocq was the model for the cop in Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue. It is generally considered the first detective story, I believe, although it also looks like Sci-Fi to me.

[Mayerling]

Vidocq and Anne Savage

Hi Stan and Eduardo,

You know I still have not seen DETOUR, but I know of it's great reputation. Possibly the cheapest great film noir classic. I did not even know Ms Savage was still alive.

Vidocq was fictionalized by Balzac as "Vautrin" in several of his Comedie Humane series. If you saw (years ago) the B.B.C. series of PERE GORIOT,
Vautrin is a main character there.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Ann Savage, in my view the most underappreciated actress in film, died Christmas Day. She should have won the Oscar in 1945 for her role in Detour, which I don't know as a true-crime film but it is a true-criminal movie since her costar in the production was Tom Neal who was later convicted of killing his wife. A couple of years back, Time said that her portrayal of "Vera" in that film was one of the "10 All-Time Best Villains" in the history of movies. God speed Ann. She was 87.

[Captain Hook]

Vidocq

[QUOTE=Mayerling;59605]A Scandal in Paris (1944) (Dir.: Douglas Sirk) (George Sanders, Alan Napier, Gene Lockhart). A well done "B" feature starring Sanders, it is entirely fictional, but is (as far as I know) the only film about the career of Vidocq, the rogue turned policeman who founded the Surete.]

Hello Jeff,

Vidocq , a French film perhaps 8 years old or so, starring Gerard Depardieu and Ines Sastre, had Vidocq as its protagonist, but bore little relationship to the real-life character.

Cheers,
Eduardo

[Mayerling]

A few more

Hi Stan,

The recent release of Tom Cruise's newest reminded me of these:

The Desert Fox
The Night of the Generals
Valkyrie
[There was also a television film about this about fifteen years ago]:

The Rastenburg Bomb fiasco of July 20, 1944. A noble and brave attempt to end a nightmare, which was prevented from total success due to the bomb planter not doing the obvious (sacrificing himself by staying put with the bomb next to the target until it exploded). Had von Stauffenberg done that, more than likely he would have died, but more than likely so would have Hitler.

The Damned (1970) (Dir: Luigi Visconti) (Dirk Bogart)
The film included the first retelling of the massacre of Ernst Roehm and his S.A. members in a surprise attack by the S.S known as "the night of the Long Knives" in 1934. It also is briefly shown and discussed in the biographical film Hitler with Richard Basehart.

The Mask of Demetrios (1945) (Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Zachary Scott, Victor Francken): Based on one of the best espionage and mystery novels of the 1940s, Eric Ambler's A COFFIN FOR DEMETRIOS / THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS. Lorre traces the career of a notorious criminal (whose body was just found in the Bosphorus) across Europe, discovering he was exceptional clever, and exceptionally evil. It is an episodic novel, and Greenstreet and Lorre eventually do find the secret of the mystery. One of the episodes deals with an actual event: the attempted shooting (and wounding) of Stambouliski, the Bulgarian Agrarian leader and Prime Ministerl in 1921. He survived it (in the story Demetrios is behind the attack). Unfortunately for Stambouliski, he was assassinated a number of years later.

Foreign Correspondent (1940) (Dir: Alfred Hitchcock) (Joel McCrea, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Eduardo Cianelli, Albert Bassermann - his first English language film role): An espionage fictional caper about a secret treaty clause (Hitch's "McGuffin" here), there is a segment at a peace conference that is obviously based on a tragedy in 1934. Bassermann (in the movie) is the leading political figure from Holland, who probably can prevent a war. He is entering the conference, when assassinated by a fake photographer, who proceeds to fire at McCrea (who is chasing him) shooting people in the crowd. This is suggestive of the assassination at Marseilles in 1934 of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou by a Croatian, when Alexander and Barthou were holding meetings about what was known as the "Little Entente" of France and the states of Eastern Europe, which was meant to try to keep the Germans and Italian in check. [That double assassination was actually filmed by newsreel cameramen, and you can still see it on You Tube.]

A Scandal in Paris (1944) (Dir.: Douglas Sirk) (George Sanders, Alan Napier, Gene Lockhart). A well done "B" feature starring Sanders, it is entirely fictional, but is (as far as I know) the only film about the career of Vidocq,
the rogue turned policeman who founded the Surete.

That is all I can think of right now.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[sdreid]

Thanks Jeff. Of those, Marat / De Sade and Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons are the only ones I've seen.

[Mayerling]

A Few Other Titles

The Man With Two Faces (Edward G. Robinson, Louis Calhern) - a 1936 film based on a play written in part by true-crime maven Alexander Woolcott. So far it is the only movie somewhat based on the Peltzer Murder Mystery of 1882 in Belgium.

So Evil My Love (Ann Todd, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ray Milland, Raymond Huntley, and Leo G. Carroll) - 1947. Based on a novel that is suggested by the Bravo Poisoning Case. But the conclusion, in a closed hansom cab, is somewhat closer to the 1904 Nan Patterson/Caesar Young Case of New York City.

Blanche Fury (1945) (Stewart Granger). This is a fictionalized version of the Stanfield Hall Slaughter of 1848, wherein a farmer and renter named James Blomfield Rush tried to get out of debt by killing his landlord and the landlord's son, and critically wounded the son's wife and a maid (he wanted no witnesses). Granger played the "Rush" character, but was far more handsome looking than the short and fat killer (who was hung. Blanche Fury in the film is a fictional character, egging on Granger to his deed to benefit by it - she doesn't actually.

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960) (George Sanders). Sanders certainly was the most elegant and suave actor to play Landru.

Monsieur Verdoux (1946) (Directed: Charles Chaplin) (Charles Chaplin, Martha Raye, Isobel Elsom, William Frawley, Fritz Lieber, Arthur Hoyt) - the best black comedy ever made, based on Chaplin's spin on the Landru Case (suggested by an idea given him by Orson Welles for a straight biography).

Death of a Scoundrel (1957) (George Sanders, John Hoyt) - a fictionalization of the career and "mysterious' murder of crooked financier Serge Rubenstein.

Marat / De Sade (1968) (Glenda Jackson) - a filming of the drama based on the so-called play and production of the Marquis De Sade at the insane asylum he was in, regarding the 1793 assassination of Jean Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday (Jackson).

The Patriot (1929) (Emil Jannings, Lewis Stone) - this lost film was supposedly the last great silent film performance of Jannings. It is about the events leading to the deposing of Tsar Paul I of Russia (which led to his murder) in a conspiracy led by Count Pahlen (Stone), who was the one man in court who actually befriended the Tsar. Stone was the "patriot" in the story.

The Scarlet Empress (1934) (Directed: Josef von Sternberg) (Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Louise Dresser, Sam Jaffe); The Loves of Catherine the Great (1934) (Elisabeth Bergner, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) Both films try to tell the story of the events leading from the arranged marriage of Sophia Dorothea of Mecklenberg Streglitz (later Catherine the Great of Russia) to Crown Prince Peter of Russia (later Peter the III). Dietrich and Bergner played the future great ruler in their respective pictures, and Jaffe and Fairbanks were the ill-fated mad Tsar whos was overthrown and murdered in 1764. The Scarlet Empress shows von Sternberg's use of artistic scenery and costume to make La Dietrich even lovelier than she was). Bergner's film is good too, but tries to make a case that she did love the insane Peter, and regretted his fate.

Jeff