Italian-born cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (1892-1975) was a shadowy yet truly exalted figure of film noir and despite the longevity and variance of his career, his biographical details are somewhat sketchy. His reputation, interdependent on a batch of black-and-white movies he photographed whilst under contract as director of photography at RKO which feature some of the most languorous and dreamlike sequences of the noir rubric. In contrast to fellow cinematographer John Alton, Musuraca's was a simplistic brand in place of a 'technical window dressing.' Yet however frills free were his methods, his results - such as the flamboyant nightmare sequences suffered by the vulnerable protagonists in Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), which is considered the prime candidate for being the very first film noir entry and Robert Siodmak's Spiral Staircase (1945) - remain virtually indefinable.
In Stranger on the Third Floor, Mike (John McGuire) doubts his credibility as a star witness in a homicide case, prompting a daydream in which he takes the place of the wrongly accused killer Joe Briggs (Elisha Cook Jr.). His descent to the electric chair takes him through a vast labyrinthine corridor, cell and courtroom peopled by his laughing defense lawyer, a disbelieving fiancee and baying jurors - all filmed from vertiginous angles, enshrouded by jagged or crosshatched shadows and tempered with a low-key lighting.
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| Musuraca's landscapes rival George Inness' works, from the Tourner de force of 1947 Out of The Past (Mitchum on the rocks) |
As a cinematographer who thoroughly thrived on vacillation, Musuraca would not have enjoyed being pigeonholed - as he often is- as the master of chiaroscuro lighting, his generous contribution to the noir style is infinitely more complex than this. Throughout his work, shoestring or noirish sequences are not always as rule, dominated by low-key lighting. They are rather set in high-key and almost overexposed rural atmospheres - for example the bucolic scene in Out of the Past (1947) which starred Robert Mitchum; where a mute boy sends Paul Valentine's assassin 'Joe' to a most precipitous death by way of flicking of a fishing rod.
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| Musuraca's least respected work in The Blue Gardenia - is anything but weedy |
Musuraca's perpetual experimentation and versatility continued to his last noir outings with Fritz Lang. Both 1952's Clash by Night and The Blue Gardenia (1953) contracted by the Warners and tightly budgeted and scheduled with the result that director and cinematographer relied heavily on a new scuttling camera cart (a proto-type crab dolly), which enabled the crew to navigate long, complex sequences in each of the film's main locations.
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| The Bridge to Nowhere in Road Block (1951) |
A key scene in Roadblock (1951, dir. Harold Daniels) proves, conclusively that Musuraca was much more than just a master of chiaroscuro. Just before honest insurance detective Joe Peters (Charles McGraw) makes his irreversible decision to turn felon, he lights up a cigarette in front of a safe-deposit store. It has all the trimmings of an archetypal noir image until his jagged silhouette is cast over the store window's Venetian blinds. What results is a harrowing reflection of his fractured, corrupt mindset and a world beyond noir's signature slatted shadowing.