This is another movie from the Columbia Noir #1 box set from Indicator. The previous three movies have been somewhat hit or miss…

… and this looks pretty odd. I mean, it looks kinda like a TV episode in the way it’s introduced?

I can understand why the cop is sceptical — how students are 33 years old anyway?

Here are all the students.

Oh right:

The four would-be robbers are clearly all in their 30s yet are in college. This is NOT a case of miscasting but the men are supposed to be veterans going to school on the GI Bill…and during the 1940s and 50s, many older and non-traditional students existed.

I’ll say!

I’m not quite sure what this movie is doing on a Film Noir box set — it’s a comedy that I assume is going to turn into a heist movie at some point?

And now Kim Novak sings a little song.

This movie is all over the place.

OK, now the movie took a sudden turn into noirish territory, and it’s actually starting to get kinda exciting. And we’re only 62 minutes in! So… er… 22 minutes to go.

Man, the first hour of this movie was Snoozeville, Population Me.

Nice beard.

OK, the actual heist plot is so stupid that it’s hard to keep paying attention.

OK, this bit in the automated garage is cool.

Wow, that was really stupid.

For a few minutes I thought this was at least a ⚁ movie, but nope.

5 Against the House. Phil Karlson. 1955. ⚀

This is a pretty interesting movie — as it says in the opening titles, this movie isn’t about spectacular action, but about the quotidian work done by IRS-ish agents trying to track down a criminal.

I mean, there’s a murder and stuff, but so far (at least) it’s mostly been the agents doing their low key work, sort of.

OK, there are some bits where interest lags… but then they do great scenes like this! Masterful.

Right:

Nevertheless, the film authentically portrayed the efforts of Wilson’s team to put together a tax evasion case against Capone, and in many respects, despite the name changes and nondescript settings, the film is a far more accurate depiction of the investigation than later films on the same subject like The Untouchables.

There’s a reason this isn’t a Film Noir classic — it’s a bit on the boring side at times. But! It’s a really original movie, not only for the sorta realistic portrayal of an investigation, but for things like the very moving scene with the Italian grandmother that would have been cut from any reasonable studio movie.

So I’m glad I watched it, even if it isn’t, you know, perfect.

The Undercover Man. Joseph H. Lewis. 1949. ⚃

Oh, I haven’t really seen any Three Stooges movies. Well, OK, this is a short — 18 minutes. But still!

This is trenchant social commentary! But it’s from 1940, so I’m not quite sure which side this is on — these warmongering dudes are from the kingdom of Moronika, which I guess could be a substitute for Germany…

Oh, they’re short!

OK, perhaps this is really anti Nazi.

DING DING DING! Making anti Nazi movies in 1940 was problematic, because the US was officially neutral, and you could be pulled before a pro British tribunal at the Senate if you weren’t careful. But I guess Columbia didn’t care.

Hey, the bald guy is Mussolini.

Heh heh. This is very subtle.

Mattie Herring.

You can never have too many medals.

I’ve never seen one of these before, but was it customary for the bald guy (I googled him — he’s Curly?) to mouth the other guys’ lines? You can see his lips move here in this clip along with their lines before he has to deliver his own line. It’s kinda amazing.

Wow, this is exquisitely silly and random.

Wow, this is amazing. It’s a pure FUCK YOU to Hitler — it ends with Hitler and Mussolini being eaten by lions, and the final shot is this lion belching. It’s the best short movie ever!

So now I have to do some research, because I didn’t think that the Three Stooges were this political:

The film is often recognized as Hollywood’s inaugural anti-Nazi comedy, predating Charles Chaplin’s The Great Dictator by several months

[…]

You Nazty Spy! satirized the Nazis and the Third Reich and helped publicize the Nazi threat in a period when the United States was still neutral about World War II and isolationist sentiment was prevalent among the public. During this period, isolationist senators such as Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye objected to Hollywood films on grounds that they were anti-Nazi propaganda vehicles designed to mobilize the American public for war.

[…]

The Hays code discouraged or prohibited many types of political and satirical messages in feature films, requiring that the history and prominent people of other countries must be portrayed “fairly”. Short films such as those released by the Stooges were subject to less attention than feature films.

Ah; that explains how they got away with doing something like this in 1940.

Anyway, I’m mostly being dazzled by the historical significance of this — are the gags funny? Yeah, pretty funny. The routines aren’t tight, but that lends a certain charm to the proceedings. It’s not a perfect short, but it’s fantastic, so:

You Nazty Spy!. Jules White. 1940. ⚅