Thursday, November 30, 2017
334 - Rififi, France, 1955. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Ah, Rififi.
Our American filmmaker with the French name is now filming in France.
In the wet streets of Paris.
And he delivers one of the great heist films of all time. And one of the first.
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) came out a few years earlier, but Dassin tells us he had not seen it. Instead, he took a novel, rewrote it in a few days, and made up his own heist.
Rififi is based on the novel by Auguste Le Breton, the same man who wrote the screenplay of the heist film Bob Le Flambeur (1956), a film we saw earlier this year, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Melville, the Frenchman with the American name, had originally been tapped to direct this film but turned it over to Dassin instead.
Tony Le Stephanois is now out of jail. He took the rap for the last job because his partner, Jo the Swede was just a kid then. Jo appreciates it and is loyal to him.
Tony was in for five years, and during that time he missed his mistress Mado, Mado the Big Arms. While he was in she was not loyal to him. She moved on to rival gangster and nightclub owner Louis Grutter, aka Louis the Tattoo.
We open on Tony playing all-night poker, and he is out of money. He tries to get the others to stake him, but they refuse. So he calls Jo to help him out--it is now morning--and Jo, who has been reading the newspaper and playing with his son Tonio, Tony's godson and namesake, comes running.
Jo takes Tony to a restaurant where he and his friend Mario pitch their next job to Tony.
Get out of the pen and get back to work.
They propose a smash-and-grab. Break the window of Webb's Jewelry Store in broad daylight. Time the traffic light. In and out before anyone notices.
Tony turns them down. He is not so fast anymore. Five years in the pen does something to you. It breaks your body. Ages you. Slows you down.
He goes on to the club to meet his mistress. He introduces himself to Grutter. Grutter offers a proposition. You leave me alone and I will leave you alone. Only Mado is with me now.
Mado is surprised to see Tony. Perhaps she still loves him. Perhaps she pities him. Perhaps she fears him. But regardless, she goes back to his apartment with him and tries to please him. He responds unforgivingly. Brutally. It is not nice.
Tony covets Grutter's life. He feels as though he cannot live up to the lifestyle Grutter offers Mado. She wears expensive fur and jewelry. So he decides to go in with Jo and Mario. Only forget the smash-and-grab. He wants the big stuff.
The safe.
They need a safecracker to go in with them.
And they need to set up a fence to sell the jewels.
Then it is all about setting it up.
And pulling it off.
Rififi has several memorable set pieces, the most famous one being the heist itself. Nearly thirty minutes of physical behavior without dialogue and without a score. Just the men, under the pressure of the clock, trying to bore a hole in the floor of the apartment above without creating enough vibration to set off the alarm. They must work slowly and quietly in the details, but quickly in the big picture.
Rififi also contains a song and dance, as just about nearly every movie should, the song of which is sung by Viviane, played by Magali Noel. Viviane attracts the attention of the safecracker, Cesar the Milanese, played by none other than Jules Dassin himself. Cesar is dashing and highly cultured. At first Mario does not believe he could be good with a safe. He is too upper class. But he is.
And why does Cesar have to hook up with Viviane anyway? She might prove to be a downfall for the gang, whether intentionally or not. Jo offers to go with Tony to the club, l'Age d'Or (The Golden Age), and Tony says No! They go anyway. Jo and Mario go anyway. And Cesar meets them there. Well . . .
But what makes the song and dance memorable is that it is done in silhouette, with a man trained in ballet. And a woman who joins him. We never see them. Only their shadows. Precisely outlined. Precisely choreographed.
There is a house in the hills. And a shootout.
And a drive Tony makes after he picks up a certain person. And what happens along the way.
Rififi is a film that does not look as though it were made under duress on a tight budget. Yet it was. And Dassin brings to bear his experience in America and his recent experience in England to create something special.
Rififi means a tough guy. And the trouble that goes with him.
Sometimes there is just too much trouble.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
333 - Night and the City, United States, 1950. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
333 - Night and the City, United States, 1950. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Harry Fabian is running. Running through the streets of London. Running at night. Running at night in the city.
He reaches the building of Mary Bristol. Runs up the stairs. Runs to her apartment. Runs inside.
He looks through her purse. She comes out of the bedroom and catches him. He smiles and says he was just looking for a cigarette.
She asks him how much money he wants. He denies it. She knows better. She presses him. He pulls out a brochure. He has a ground-floor opportunity. This is their chance. He can finally make his fortune. And take care of her.
They are together. Harry and Mary are dating. She is angry that he was gone for a few days, and she did not know where he was. She had horrible images of him lying in a gutter dead somewhere. And then she comes out to find him going through her purse.
But--and this is the part he is too slow to understand, too slow to understand really--she loves him. She really loves him.
He is a lucky man to be loved by a woman such as her. If only he knew it.
Mary works at The Silver Fox. Her job is to get drunk men drunker. Her supervisor, Helen Nosseross, trains the girls. Shows them how to pick men's pockets.
Approach them warmly and offer them company. Get them to buy you a drink. Get them to buy a whole bottle of drink. Whatever cigarettes they are smoking, tell them you smoke a different brand so that they will have to buy a new pack from the bar. Here are some empty boxes labelled as chocolates. Get them to buy you a box of chocolates. Then say you will eat them later, when you are at home. After we close, when they are at home, we will buy the boxes back from you for a few dollars. You get your cut. We get ours. We recycle the boxes night after night.
Mary does her job and she does it well. She sings at the club. Sings the ode "Here's to Champagne."
Raise your elbow. Down she goes.
Here's to La France. Here's to champagne.
Empty your glass. Fill it again.
Here's to the Frenchman who knew
What to do with the grapes that he grew.
Here's to the sun ripening the vine.
Here's to the bottles holding the wine.
Drink till the daylight is dawning.
Here's to tomorrow morning.
Mary sings. The champagne flows. The men are happy. The money flows. Philip Nosseross gets rich. He gives his wife Helen a stole. He always thought the wife of the owner of The Silver Fox should wear a silver fox.
But even though Mary is good at her job, she does not want to have her job. She wants to settle down with Harry. In order to do that, Harry will need to settle down from all his hustling. And all his running.
Harry goes to the fights. Not boxing but wrestling. And the opportunity of a lifetime falls into his lap.
Kristo runs all of wrestling in all of London. He would never allow anyone to try to compete with him.
But his father, Gregorius, a former World Heavyweight Champion in Greco-Roman wrestling, is visiting from out of the country. Gregorius watches the match for a while and then stands up in protest. This is not Greco-Roman wrestling. This is something else. Greco-Roman wrestling is an art form. It is beautiful. It is pure. And it is more powerful.
Harry overhears the conversation and plays it to his advantage. He approaches the father and son later outside and praises Gregorius as though he were a lifelong fan. He repeats the point of view Gregorius had expressed inside to his son, and so insinuates himself into Gregorius' good graces.
Kristo is suspicious of Harry, but he cannot do anything about the fact that his father trusts him and comes to be his friend.
Harry goes to Phil Nosseross for money. He has Kristo in his pocket! He could make all of them rich. Phil does not believe him. His wife Helen, however, proposes a deal. If Harry can raise two hundred quid on his own, Phil will match it. Phil agrees. Phil is drunk. Plus, Phil believes Harry could never raise two hundred quid in a hundred years.
Helen gives Harry the money under the table.
Just as we discover that--wait a second--Harry and Helen had a past. And she threw him over to be the boss's wife. To get all that money. And the silver fox. And one day, The Silver Fox. Oh, she promises Harry she will return to him. After bilking Phil for all he is worth.
And we are never quite sure if Harry will be faithful to Mary or go back to Helen. Or if he knows. Or if he is even thinking about that. He seems to be thinking only of his next deal. And getting the money for it. His emotions swing back and forth like an alarm clock bell clapper. And he goes from enthusiasm to shock to anger to despair to enthusiasm again, all depending on what Phil or Helen have just said. He is like a baby, reacting viscerally to the immediate moment without ever seeming to process it more thoughtfully.
And as such, Richard Widmark turns in an excellent performance. Yes, it is a bit in the vein of his first role, the one that made him a star, as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), with his maniacal cackle, but it is also different. He draws from deeper reservoirs here. He is more human. More vulnerable. More desperate.
Jules Dassin, our American director, films this one in London. Darryl Zanuck sent him over to avoid the blacklist, and he asked him to get to work quickly, before pressure might be put on the studio to stop it. Dassin worked so quickly that he made the film without having read the novel, an admission he makes years later in the supplementary interview. But he follows the script scrupulously, the script that Zanuck gives him when he sends him to England. It is already finished, written by Jo Eisinger.
Of the four Jules Dassin films we have just watched, it is the first one that can truly be categorized as a film noir, both stylistically and thematically. It has the expressionistic lighting, with artificial and unusual light sources, the intense framing, including Dutch angles and exaggerated single-point perspective two shots, the high stakes, the love triangle with uncertain trust, the double crosses, the racketeering, the fatal protagonist, the femme fatale, the fatalism, obsession, desperation, and violent forms of death.
Of course Dassin himself knew nothing of the term when he was making these movies. It was popularized later by the Nouvelle Vague in France. But retroactively, it fits the pattern.
He shot a long sequence at dawn.
And in so doing, he reveals his genius. His mastery. The ending features a long sequence of running, hiding, conversations with multiple characters, interiors and exteriors, a bridge, the riverbank, an old river shack, a sidewalk with houses, and the build-up of tension the leads to the explosive climax.
Because Dassin was shooting at dawn, he had only one hour a day of suitable daylight in which to shoot the exteriors. After that, he would have to shoot interiors and wait until the next day.
The studio asked him how many days he would need to shoot the sequence. He said, If you give me a day of rehearsal to prepare for it, I can shoot the whole thing in one day.
He would just need six cameras.
They gave him six cameras.
He rehearsed rigorously.
The next day they finished the shoot. Not only was it completed in one day. It was also completed in one take! Watch the film to appreciate more fully this impressive feat.
"That was quite a day. . . . A lot of shots--interior and exterior. We were all feeling so triumphant. . . . It was a nice experience.
Night and the City is a satisfying crime drama. Featuring some strong filmmaking and solid performances.
Will Harry Fabian make it out in time?
Will he make it at all?
* * * * *
I think Richard Widmark is one of the best actors who never, never was given the opportunity to show you his range. He was quite content to make that his life. I wanted to do Hamlet, because I had this high regard for what this man was capable of.
Zanuck called me, and he said, Do you owe me one? I said, I sure do owe you one. He said, I want you to cast Gene Tierney. She's just had a bad time, a very unhappy love affair, and she's rather suicidal. Nobody could imagine Zanuck's thinking like that. So I said, Yeah. Okay. So we wrote in a whole love story.
When Rififi came out, they talked about how I was indebted to The Asphalt Jungle by John Huston. I had not seen the film. I still cannot see the connection.
It had nothing to do with film noir. That term became more celebrated by the pre-New Wave movement in France.
I felt a need for a friendship. Out of that grew characters who have this relationship to each other, dependence upon each other, professionally and in human terms. I can't explain much more than that. Sometimes we know not why we do. It just happens.
333 - Night and the City, United States, 1950. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Harry Fabian is running. Running through the streets of London. Running at night. Running at night in the city.
He reaches the building of Mary Bristol. Runs up the stairs. Runs to her apartment. Runs inside.
He looks through her purse. She comes out of the bedroom and catches him. He smiles and says he was just looking for a cigarette.
She asks him how much money he wants. He denies it. She knows better. She presses him. He pulls out a brochure. He has a ground-floor opportunity. This is their chance. He can finally make his fortune. And take care of her.
They are together. Harry and Mary are dating. She is angry that he was gone for a few days, and she did not know where he was. She had horrible images of him lying in a gutter dead somewhere. And then she comes out to find him going through her purse.
But--and this is the part he is too slow to understand, too slow to understand really--she loves him. She really loves him.
He is a lucky man to be loved by a woman such as her. If only he knew it.
Mary works at The Silver Fox. Her job is to get drunk men drunker. Her supervisor, Helen Nosseross, trains the girls. Shows them how to pick men's pockets.
Approach them warmly and offer them company. Get them to buy you a drink. Get them to buy a whole bottle of drink. Whatever cigarettes they are smoking, tell them you smoke a different brand so that they will have to buy a new pack from the bar. Here are some empty boxes labelled as chocolates. Get them to buy you a box of chocolates. Then say you will eat them later, when you are at home. After we close, when they are at home, we will buy the boxes back from you for a few dollars. You get your cut. We get ours. We recycle the boxes night after night.
Mary does her job and she does it well. She sings at the club. Sings the ode "Here's to Champagne."
Raise your elbow. Down she goes.
Here's to La France. Here's to champagne.
Empty your glass. Fill it again.
Here's to the Frenchman who knew
What to do with the grapes that he grew.
Here's to the sun ripening the vine.
Here's to the bottles holding the wine.
Drink till the daylight is dawning.
Here's to tomorrow morning.
Mary sings. The champagne flows. The men are happy. The money flows. Philip Nosseross gets rich. He gives his wife Helen a stole. He always thought the wife of the owner of The Silver Fox should wear a silver fox.
But even though Mary is good at her job, she does not want to have her job. She wants to settle down with Harry. In order to do that, Harry will need to settle down from all his hustling. And all his running.
Harry goes to the fights. Not boxing but wrestling. And the opportunity of a lifetime falls into his lap.
Kristo runs all of wrestling in all of London. He would never allow anyone to try to compete with him.
But his father, Gregorius, a former World Heavyweight Champion in Greco-Roman wrestling, is visiting from out of the country. Gregorius watches the match for a while and then stands up in protest. This is not Greco-Roman wrestling. This is something else. Greco-Roman wrestling is an art form. It is beautiful. It is pure. And it is more powerful.
Harry overhears the conversation and plays it to his advantage. He approaches the father and son later outside and praises Gregorius as though he were a lifelong fan. He repeats the point of view Gregorius had expressed inside to his son, and so insinuates himself into Gregorius' good graces.
Kristo is suspicious of Harry, but he cannot do anything about the fact that his father trusts him and comes to be his friend.
Harry goes to Phil Nosseross for money. He has Kristo in his pocket! He could make all of them rich. Phil does not believe him. His wife Helen, however, proposes a deal. If Harry can raise two hundred quid on his own, Phil will match it. Phil agrees. Phil is drunk. Plus, Phil believes Harry could never raise two hundred quid in a hundred years.
Helen gives Harry the money under the table.
Just as we discover that--wait a second--Harry and Helen had a past. And she threw him over to be the boss's wife. To get all that money. And the silver fox. And one day, The Silver Fox. Oh, she promises Harry she will return to him. After bilking Phil for all he is worth.
And we are never quite sure if Harry will be faithful to Mary or go back to Helen. Or if he knows. Or if he is even thinking about that. He seems to be thinking only of his next deal. And getting the money for it. His emotions swing back and forth like an alarm clock bell clapper. And he goes from enthusiasm to shock to anger to despair to enthusiasm again, all depending on what Phil or Helen have just said. He is like a baby, reacting viscerally to the immediate moment without ever seeming to process it more thoughtfully.
And as such, Richard Widmark turns in an excellent performance. Yes, it is a bit in the vein of his first role, the one that made him a star, as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), with his maniacal cackle, but it is also different. He draws from deeper reservoirs here. He is more human. More vulnerable. More desperate.
Jules Dassin, our American director, films this one in London. Darryl Zanuck sent him over to avoid the blacklist, and he asked him to get to work quickly, before pressure might be put on the studio to stop it. Dassin worked so quickly that he made the film without having read the novel, an admission he makes years later in the supplementary interview. But he follows the script scrupulously, the script that Zanuck gives him when he sends him to England. It is already finished, written by Jo Eisinger.
Of the four Jules Dassin films we have just watched, it is the first one that can truly be categorized as a film noir, both stylistically and thematically. It has the expressionistic lighting, with artificial and unusual light sources, the intense framing, including Dutch angles and exaggerated single-point perspective two shots, the high stakes, the love triangle with uncertain trust, the double crosses, the racketeering, the fatal protagonist, the femme fatale, the fatalism, obsession, desperation, and violent forms of death.
Of course Dassin himself knew nothing of the term when he was making these movies. It was popularized later by the Nouvelle Vague in France. But retroactively, it fits the pattern.
He shot a long sequence at dawn.
And in so doing, he reveals his genius. His mastery. The ending features a long sequence of running, hiding, conversations with multiple characters, interiors and exteriors, a bridge, the riverbank, an old river shack, a sidewalk with houses, and the build-up of tension the leads to the explosive climax.
Because Dassin was shooting at dawn, he had only one hour a day of suitable daylight in which to shoot the exteriors. After that, he would have to shoot interiors and wait until the next day.
The studio asked him how many days he would need to shoot the sequence. He said, If you give me a day of rehearsal to prepare for it, I can shoot the whole thing in one day.
He would just need six cameras.
They gave him six cameras.
He rehearsed rigorously.
The next day they finished the shoot. Not only was it completed in one day. It was also completed in one take! Watch the film to appreciate more fully this impressive feat.
"That was quite a day. . . . A lot of shots--interior and exterior. We were all feeling so triumphant. . . . It was a nice experience.
Night and the City is a satisfying crime drama. Featuring some strong filmmaking and solid performances.
Will Harry Fabian make it out in time?
Will he make it at all?
* * * * *
I think Richard Widmark is one of the best actors who never, never was given the opportunity to show you his range. He was quite content to make that his life. I wanted to do Hamlet, because I had this high regard for what this man was capable of.
Zanuck called me, and he said, Do you owe me one? I said, I sure do owe you one. He said, I want you to cast Gene Tierney. She's just had a bad time, a very unhappy love affair, and she's rather suicidal. Nobody could imagine Zanuck's thinking like that. So I said, Yeah. Okay. So we wrote in a whole love story.
When Rififi came out, they talked about how I was indebted to The Asphalt Jungle by John Huston. I had not seen the film. I still cannot see the connection.
It had nothing to do with film noir. That term became more celebrated by the pre-New Wave movement in France.
I felt a need for a friendship. Out of that grew characters who have this relationship to each other, dependence upon each other, professionally and in human terms. I can't explain much more than that. Sometimes we know not why we do. It just happens.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
332 - Thieves' Highway, United States, 1949. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
332 - Thieves' Highway, United States, 1949. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Nick Garcos comes home from the East. He has fought in the War and has travelled overseas. Now he returns to his father, mother, and girlfriend. He brings gifts. He gives his girlfriend, Polly Faber, an engagement ring. And he discovers, awkwardly, that his father has lost his feet in a truck driving accident instigated by crooked fruit peddler Mike Figlia.
To make matters worse, Yanko, his father, sold his truck to Ed Kinney, and Kinney is a few payments behind. He might be taking advantage of Nick's father.
Nick is angry. He vows to make things right for Pop. To get his truck back. To get justice..
Nick goes to Ed Kinney and demands the truck. He acts as his own repo man. Kinney appeals to him. He has to have the truck to make a run in order to make money to make the payment. And he has just found a grove of Red Delicious apples on a sun-facing slope of a hill. He can be the first to get to them. He can get top dollar up in San Francisco. Then he can catch up on the payments.
Kinney offers for Nick to go in with him. Nick relents. And threatens Ed not to try any funny business.
Nick makes a down payment on a second truck, and the two men are now in business. The new father figure is driving the real father's truck. Nick is driving the new truck. And they are both loaded with apples. Now if they can just make it to San Francisco before their competition drives the prices down. And if they can just make it there at all. . . .
Pete and Slob are two members of their competition. They have followed them. Found the grove. Loaded their newer and stronger truck. And are following them. Right on their tail bumper.
The film follows the adventure and drama of the truckers and the produce workers as Nick and Ed and Pete and Slob, make their way to the market, and as Nick deals with the crooked Mike Figlia. And his men. And a woman. A working woman. Rica. Who puts him up in her room. And who either loves him or is being paid by Figlia to make him think so. Meanwhile, his fiancee Polly is coming up to be with him.
Uh-oh.
Thieves' Highway is the second trucking film based on a novel by A. I. Bezzerides, a writer who had been a truck driver himself.
The first film, and first novel, was They Drive By Night (1940), directed by Raoul Walsh and starring George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart--a film which begins as a straight trucking drama and then turns into a proto film noir, just one year before Bogart became a star and film noir started its ascendancy with John Huston's debut film The Maltese Falcon (1941).
The second film, Thieves' Highway came out nine years later.
Director Jules Dassin seems to enjoy location shooting and the lives of working people. He stated in an interview that he loved markets, deriving joy from a French market he frequented when he lived in Paris. He loved the cleverness and wit of the workers and the steady hum of their workings.
Conte delivers a strong performance here, as does a young Lee J. Cobb as Mike Figlia and Millard Mitchell as Ed Kinney. The Italian Valentina Cortese plays Rica in one of her early American roles. You may know Cortese from The Barefoot Contessa (1954), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner.
Driving a truck is risky business. The men invest a lot of money up front--for the truck and for the produce. Driving itself is dangerous--with long hours, the chance of falling asleep, having a flat tire, getting pinned under the truck, losing the drive shaft, and crashing. And the buyers at the other end are organized and working to cheat them and even hurt them. In the end the are either going to make good money or barely make anything. Or lose money. Or lose their lives.
The rule seems to be a life of hardship and struggle.
Nick is determined to be the exception to the rule.
332 - Thieves' Highway, United States, 1949. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Nick Garcos comes home from the East. He has fought in the War and has travelled overseas. Now he returns to his father, mother, and girlfriend. He brings gifts. He gives his girlfriend, Polly Faber, an engagement ring. And he discovers, awkwardly, that his father has lost his feet in a truck driving accident instigated by crooked fruit peddler Mike Figlia.
To make matters worse, Yanko, his father, sold his truck to Ed Kinney, and Kinney is a few payments behind. He might be taking advantage of Nick's father.
Nick is angry. He vows to make things right for Pop. To get his truck back. To get justice..
Nick goes to Ed Kinney and demands the truck. He acts as his own repo man. Kinney appeals to him. He has to have the truck to make a run in order to make money to make the payment. And he has just found a grove of Red Delicious apples on a sun-facing slope of a hill. He can be the first to get to them. He can get top dollar up in San Francisco. Then he can catch up on the payments.
Kinney offers for Nick to go in with him. Nick relents. And threatens Ed not to try any funny business.
Nick makes a down payment on a second truck, and the two men are now in business. The new father figure is driving the real father's truck. Nick is driving the new truck. And they are both loaded with apples. Now if they can just make it to San Francisco before their competition drives the prices down. And if they can just make it there at all. . . .
Pete and Slob are two members of their competition. They have followed them. Found the grove. Loaded their newer and stronger truck. And are following them. Right on their tail bumper.
The film follows the adventure and drama of the truckers and the produce workers as Nick and Ed and Pete and Slob, make their way to the market, and as Nick deals with the crooked Mike Figlia. And his men. And a woman. A working woman. Rica. Who puts him up in her room. And who either loves him or is being paid by Figlia to make him think so. Meanwhile, his fiancee Polly is coming up to be with him.
Uh-oh.
Thieves' Highway is the second trucking film based on a novel by A. I. Bezzerides, a writer who had been a truck driver himself.
The first film, and first novel, was They Drive By Night (1940), directed by Raoul Walsh and starring George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart--a film which begins as a straight trucking drama and then turns into a proto film noir, just one year before Bogart became a star and film noir started its ascendancy with John Huston's debut film The Maltese Falcon (1941).
The second film, Thieves' Highway came out nine years later.
Director Jules Dassin seems to enjoy location shooting and the lives of working people. He stated in an interview that he loved markets, deriving joy from a French market he frequented when he lived in Paris. He loved the cleverness and wit of the workers and the steady hum of their workings.
Conte delivers a strong performance here, as does a young Lee J. Cobb as Mike Figlia and Millard Mitchell as Ed Kinney. The Italian Valentina Cortese plays Rica in one of her early American roles. You may know Cortese from The Barefoot Contessa (1954), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner.
Driving a truck is risky business. The men invest a lot of money up front--for the truck and for the produce. Driving itself is dangerous--with long hours, the chance of falling asleep, having a flat tire, getting pinned under the truck, losing the drive shaft, and crashing. And the buyers at the other end are organized and working to cheat them and even hurt them. In the end the are either going to make good money or barely make anything. Or lose money. Or lose their lives.
The rule seems to be a life of hardship and struggle.
Nick is determined to be the exception to the rule.
Monday, November 27, 2017
331 - The Naked City, United States, 1948. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Monday, November 27, 2017
331 - The Naked City, United States, 1948. Dir. Jules Dassin.
The Beginning of the Police Procedural.
Producer Mark Hellenger himself opens the film with a voice-over introduction as a helicopter flies over Manhattan.
He describes the city, showcases its defining characteristics, discusses what happens in the night versus the day, and shows us the event of the murder.
Detective Lieutenant Daniel Muldoon, the Irish character actor Barry Fitzgerald, winner of the Academy Award for Going My Way, appears on the scene. He is a veteran. He knows what he is doing.
His young partner, James Halloran, arrives with him. He is new on the job. Makes the same mistakes Muldoon made when he was his age. But he is smart and talented and learns fast.
The men collect evidence.
They collected witnesses and people of interest.
They follow up on every lead.
They work the case.
Jean Dexter, 26 years old, unmarried. Murdered. She used to be a dress model at Grace Hewitt's on West 57th Street. She is no more.
Miss Dexter lived a fast life.
This is what one person says of her.
"She needed a good spanking. Took stimulants by day and needed sleeping pills to sleep at night. I told her to slow down but, no, life was too short for her."
The person who said it was her doctor.
The men talk to her doctor, Dr. Stoneman. Then they talk to others who work at Grace Hewitt's on West 57th Street. Her friend Ruth Morrison. Their supervisor. Their workmates.
They talk to Frank Niles. A fine, upstanding young businessman.
Or perhaps a pathological liar.
Who may have something to do with Ruth Morrison.
And something else to do with Jean Dexter.
Then there is a man named Henderson.
And Dexter's parents, the Batorys.
Somebody named Backalis.
And somebody else who plays the harmonica.
And what about that second body? The one that turned up in the East River a couple hours after Jean Dexter's?
It is a lot to sort out.
Halloran does his best. Muldoon helps him. He has been on the force 36 years. He knows what to do. They do it methodically. Procedurally. By the book.
The Naked City is not a film noir movie. Neither was yesterday's Brute Force.
Stylistically, neither has high contrast lighting; neither has stylized artificial lighting; neither has deep focus; neither has unusual camera angles. There is no wet street and no fog. Both are shot with conventional lighting conventional camera angles, conventional coverage, conventional framing, and conventional staging--in well-lit shades of gray.
Thematically, there is nothing nightmarish, strange, ambivalent, erotic, or cruel. There is no doomed protagonist; no femme fatale. In fact, there is almost no sex at all--other than traditional domesticity. There is no philosophical exploration of naturalism, determinism, or fatalism. There is no bribery, extortion, money laundering, racketeering, or blackmail.
The two films do touch upon crime--Brute Force taking place in a penitentiary and The Naked City following a homicide case--and they were both filmed in the 1940s, so some folks mistakenly label them as film noir. But a crime film from the 1940s is not automatically a film noir.
Yes, Brute Force does have an unusual and violent death with the flame throwers and the shop press, and it does present the fanaticism of the national Socialist leaning Munsey, but otherwise it is a straight prison drama, a rather straightforward moral told in a straightforward manner--with flashbacks interspersed to show the lives of the men with their women before they were incarcerated. Then it becomes an escape movie like A Man Escaped, Escape from Alcatraz, and The Shawshank Redemption, only with a failed result.
Meanwhile, The Naked City goes out of its way to portray its subject matter not as strange or ambivalent or nightmarish, but, on the contrary, very ordinary, routine, and able to be understood and resolved. The film even explicitly says so. After showing a drunk man shoved into the river Hellenger states, "And even this, too, can be called routine, in a city of 8 million people." The film further makes the point that it has not been filmed in a sound stage or on a lot and has not used movie stars, but goes on location in the vein of Italian neorealism and in the manner of a documentary. Dassin praised the documentary form, because he believed that it, with added poetry, was a solid way to get at the truth.
The Naked City is a comforting film. It presents the police as good guys doing noble work. It portrays their work as being explicitly good and ultimately successful. It details the forensic process in a methodically organized manner. It affirms the best ideals of a young country.
As such, The Naked City has stood as the prototype for many procedurals to come, from its own television series to franchises of today, such as Law & Order, CSI, and NCIS.
There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.
331 - The Naked City, United States, 1948. Dir. Jules Dassin.
The Beginning of the Police Procedural.
Producer Mark Hellenger himself opens the film with a voice-over introduction as a helicopter flies over Manhattan.
He describes the city, showcases its defining characteristics, discusses what happens in the night versus the day, and shows us the event of the murder.
Detective Lieutenant Daniel Muldoon, the Irish character actor Barry Fitzgerald, winner of the Academy Award for Going My Way, appears on the scene. He is a veteran. He knows what he is doing.
His young partner, James Halloran, arrives with him. He is new on the job. Makes the same mistakes Muldoon made when he was his age. But he is smart and talented and learns fast.
The men collect evidence.
They collected witnesses and people of interest.
They follow up on every lead.
They work the case.
Jean Dexter, 26 years old, unmarried. Murdered. She used to be a dress model at Grace Hewitt's on West 57th Street. She is no more.
Miss Dexter lived a fast life.
This is what one person says of her.
"She needed a good spanking. Took stimulants by day and needed sleeping pills to sleep at night. I told her to slow down but, no, life was too short for her."
The person who said it was her doctor.
The men talk to her doctor, Dr. Stoneman. Then they talk to others who work at Grace Hewitt's on West 57th Street. Her friend Ruth Morrison. Their supervisor. Their workmates.
They talk to Frank Niles. A fine, upstanding young businessman.
Or perhaps a pathological liar.
Who may have something to do with Ruth Morrison.
And something else to do with Jean Dexter.
Then there is a man named Henderson.
And Dexter's parents, the Batorys.
Somebody named Backalis.
And somebody else who plays the harmonica.
And what about that second body? The one that turned up in the East River a couple hours after Jean Dexter's?
It is a lot to sort out.
Halloran does his best. Muldoon helps him. He has been on the force 36 years. He knows what to do. They do it methodically. Procedurally. By the book.
The Naked City is not a film noir movie. Neither was yesterday's Brute Force.
Stylistically, neither has high contrast lighting; neither has stylized artificial lighting; neither has deep focus; neither has unusual camera angles. There is no wet street and no fog. Both are shot with conventional lighting conventional camera angles, conventional coverage, conventional framing, and conventional staging--in well-lit shades of gray.
Thematically, there is nothing nightmarish, strange, ambivalent, erotic, or cruel. There is no doomed protagonist; no femme fatale. In fact, there is almost no sex at all--other than traditional domesticity. There is no philosophical exploration of naturalism, determinism, or fatalism. There is no bribery, extortion, money laundering, racketeering, or blackmail.
The two films do touch upon crime--Brute Force taking place in a penitentiary and The Naked City following a homicide case--and they were both filmed in the 1940s, so some folks mistakenly label them as film noir. But a crime film from the 1940s is not automatically a film noir.
Yes, Brute Force does have an unusual and violent death with the flame throwers and the shop press, and it does present the fanaticism of the national Socialist leaning Munsey, but otherwise it is a straight prison drama, a rather straightforward moral told in a straightforward manner--with flashbacks interspersed to show the lives of the men with their women before they were incarcerated. Then it becomes an escape movie like A Man Escaped, Escape from Alcatraz, and The Shawshank Redemption, only with a failed result.
Meanwhile, The Naked City goes out of its way to portray its subject matter not as strange or ambivalent or nightmarish, but, on the contrary, very ordinary, routine, and able to be understood and resolved. The film even explicitly says so. After showing a drunk man shoved into the river Hellenger states, "And even this, too, can be called routine, in a city of 8 million people." The film further makes the point that it has not been filmed in a sound stage or on a lot and has not used movie stars, but goes on location in the vein of Italian neorealism and in the manner of a documentary. Dassin praised the documentary form, because he believed that it, with added poetry, was a solid way to get at the truth.
The Naked City is a comforting film. It presents the police as good guys doing noble work. It portrays their work as being explicitly good and ultimately successful. It details the forensic process in a methodically organized manner. It affirms the best ideals of a young country.
As such, The Naked City has stood as the prototype for many procedurals to come, from its own television series to franchises of today, such as Law & Order, CSI, and NCIS.
There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
330 - Brute Force, United States, 1947. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Sunday, November 25, 2017
330 - Brute Force, United States, 1947. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Chapel is a wonderful place.
You can pray. Meditate. Worship.
And plan your next jailbreak.
Amen.
No, he said, "I'm in."
But then if you are a guard, you were not supposed to hear that.
Gallagher and Joe Collins are the last two people one would expect to be sitting in the Westgate Penitentiary chapel. But then it is a place where one is allowed to whisper.
Gallagher has taken all he can. He trusted Warden A. J. Barnes when Barnes told him he would get parole, but the Warden has always been a lackey to his own subordinate, the muculent Captain Munsey.
So Gallagher passed a note to Collins. "You were right." And asked to meet.
It helps to have fought in the war. Now you know military strategy. And you have battle experience. You can calculate the odds going in and steel yourself against what is to come.
The men plan.
Gallagher is played by the wonderfully craggy character actor Charles Bickford, the man with the furrowed face. He did not start in motion pictures until he was nearly forty. He appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man, which seems about right, as he looks captured from another time, the kind of man who does not appear in photographs but daguerreotypes. He plays seasoned men in all his films, appearing perpetually weathered, sunbaked, life wrinkled. And comfortably dishevelled. He played Slim in Of Mice and Men. Of course he did.
Joe Collins is played by break-out sensation and former circus acrobat Burt Lancaster. We just saw him in his first film, The Killers, produced by Mark Hellinger. Now Hellinger has brought him back for his second film.
Collins keeps a chip on his shoulder. He begins the film coming out of solitary confinement. He keeps a distance from the other men. Watching. Perching. Spring-loaded. The safety switch could slip off at any moment.
Captain Munsey is played by Hume Cronyn. If you know him only as the elderly husband of Jessica Tandy from movies such as Cocoon (1985), The Pelican Brief (1993), and Marvin's Room (1996), check out his earlier work from fifty years before, such as his Hitchcock films Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Lifeboat (1944), or his supporting roles in Phantom of the Opera (1943) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
Munsey believes in Darwin as filtered through Nietzsche and embodied by the national Socialist Hitler. In fact, just when one imagines Munsey must listen to Wagner, Munsey actually does put on a Wagner record. He plays it in his office as he interrogates Louie Miller, played by Sam Levene (Police Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky in The Killers!).
One of the most ominous images in the film occurs when Munsey pulls down a black shade. He increases the length of the dark fabric. He decreases the area of light allowed to enter the room. He enshrouds his office in darkness.
Then he punishes Levene. Ruthlessly. Savagely. Brutally.
And we discover that the title of the film, Brute Force, does not apply to two large prisoners now meeting in the chapel, nor to the rage that seeps through their pours. Nor does it apply to the manner in which they end the life of a man who has been a snitch--with flame throwers and a hydraulic shop press.
No. Brute Force refers to the tyrannical methods of the socialist Captain Munsey.
Munsey and Doctor Walters are in the Warden's office. The Warden is not in. Somehow, as Munsey speaks he finds himself sitting at the Warden's desk.
Munsey proclaims his Darwinian worldview. "Nature proves that the weak must die so that the strong may live."
He continues. "Authority. Cleverness. Imagination. Those are the real differences between men. I walk among these convicts, these thieves and murders, alone, unarmed, but they respect me. They obey me."
The Doctor responds, "Fits you, doesn't it?"
"Hmm?"
"The Warden's chair. It fits you."
"You're drunk."
"Why not? I'm a very ordinary man. I get drunk on whiskey. What makes you drunk? Power?"
"You flatter me, Doctor. I'm just a policeman. I carry out the Warden's orders."
"Did he ever order you to crucify the prisoners?"
Then he reveals to Munsey that he knows Munsey used psychology to manipulate Tom Lister into hanging himself.
Munsey defends himself. "Visiting cells is part of my job. It helps me keep tabs on the men. In that way I can control them."
"Control them? You mean torture them, don't you?"
Walters drives his point home. "The more pain you inflict, the more pleasure you get."
"You're obvious, Munsey. Your every move is obvious. You've cheated. You've lied. You've murdered. You're worse than the worst inmates of this prison. You're the psychopath here, not they. That's it. Not cleverness. Not imagination. Just force. Brute force. . . . Force does make leaders. . . . It also destroys them."
In the end, Brute Force is about a system where there are no solutions.
330 - Brute Force, United States, 1947. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Chapel is a wonderful place.
You can pray. Meditate. Worship.
And plan your next jailbreak.
Amen.
No, he said, "I'm in."
But then if you are a guard, you were not supposed to hear that.
Gallagher and Joe Collins are the last two people one would expect to be sitting in the Westgate Penitentiary chapel. But then it is a place where one is allowed to whisper.
Gallagher has taken all he can. He trusted Warden A. J. Barnes when Barnes told him he would get parole, but the Warden has always been a lackey to his own subordinate, the muculent Captain Munsey.
So Gallagher passed a note to Collins. "You were right." And asked to meet.
It helps to have fought in the war. Now you know military strategy. And you have battle experience. You can calculate the odds going in and steel yourself against what is to come.
The men plan.
Gallagher is played by the wonderfully craggy character actor Charles Bickford, the man with the furrowed face. He did not start in motion pictures until he was nearly forty. He appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man, which seems about right, as he looks captured from another time, the kind of man who does not appear in photographs but daguerreotypes. He plays seasoned men in all his films, appearing perpetually weathered, sunbaked, life wrinkled. And comfortably dishevelled. He played Slim in Of Mice and Men. Of course he did.
Joe Collins is played by break-out sensation and former circus acrobat Burt Lancaster. We just saw him in his first film, The Killers, produced by Mark Hellinger. Now Hellinger has brought him back for his second film.
Collins keeps a chip on his shoulder. He begins the film coming out of solitary confinement. He keeps a distance from the other men. Watching. Perching. Spring-loaded. The safety switch could slip off at any moment.
Captain Munsey is played by Hume Cronyn. If you know him only as the elderly husband of Jessica Tandy from movies such as Cocoon (1985), The Pelican Brief (1993), and Marvin's Room (1996), check out his earlier work from fifty years before, such as his Hitchcock films Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Lifeboat (1944), or his supporting roles in Phantom of the Opera (1943) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
Munsey believes in Darwin as filtered through Nietzsche and embodied by the national Socialist Hitler. In fact, just when one imagines Munsey must listen to Wagner, Munsey actually does put on a Wagner record. He plays it in his office as he interrogates Louie Miller, played by Sam Levene (Police Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky in The Killers!).
One of the most ominous images in the film occurs when Munsey pulls down a black shade. He increases the length of the dark fabric. He decreases the area of light allowed to enter the room. He enshrouds his office in darkness.
Then he punishes Levene. Ruthlessly. Savagely. Brutally.
And we discover that the title of the film, Brute Force, does not apply to two large prisoners now meeting in the chapel, nor to the rage that seeps through their pours. Nor does it apply to the manner in which they end the life of a man who has been a snitch--with flame throwers and a hydraulic shop press.
No. Brute Force refers to the tyrannical methods of the socialist Captain Munsey.
Munsey and Doctor Walters are in the Warden's office. The Warden is not in. Somehow, as Munsey speaks he finds himself sitting at the Warden's desk.
Munsey proclaims his Darwinian worldview. "Nature proves that the weak must die so that the strong may live."
He continues. "Authority. Cleverness. Imagination. Those are the real differences between men. I walk among these convicts, these thieves and murders, alone, unarmed, but they respect me. They obey me."
The Doctor responds, "Fits you, doesn't it?"
"Hmm?"
"The Warden's chair. It fits you."
"You're drunk."
"Why not? I'm a very ordinary man. I get drunk on whiskey. What makes you drunk? Power?"
"You flatter me, Doctor. I'm just a policeman. I carry out the Warden's orders."
"Did he ever order you to crucify the prisoners?"
Then he reveals to Munsey that he knows Munsey used psychology to manipulate Tom Lister into hanging himself.
Munsey defends himself. "Visiting cells is part of my job. It helps me keep tabs on the men. In that way I can control them."
"Control them? You mean torture them, don't you?"
Walters drives his point home. "The more pain you inflict, the more pleasure you get."
"You're obvious, Munsey. Your every move is obvious. You've cheated. You've lied. You've murdered. You're worse than the worst inmates of this prison. You're the psychopath here, not they. That's it. Not cleverness. Not imagination. Just force. Brute force. . . . Force does make leaders. . . . It also destroys them."
In the end, Brute Force is about a system where there are no solutions.
Saturday, November 25, 2017
329 - Ride the Pink Horse, United States, 1947. Dir. Robert Montgomery.
Saturday, November 25, 2017
329 - Ride the Pink Horse, United States, 1947. Dir. Robert Montgomery.
If you wanna ride
Don't ride the pink horse.
If you wanna ride
Don't ride the pink horse.
If you wanna ride
Ride the pink pony.
If you wanna ride
Ride the pink pony.
If you wanna be rich . . .
(Other than that last line that rhymes with rich (you know it), I have just listed the entire lyrics to the song--well, modified with a new color. Think how much money they have made in the last 30+ years.)
No, this film has absolutely nothing to do with the 1983 dance song recorded by Laid Back (the Danish Tim Stahl and John Guldberg) and still played in clubs today.
But that song popped into your head when you read the title, so we might as well get it out of the way at the beginning.
You're welcome.
Now to the film at hand. . . .
A Greyhound bus drives down a two-lane road through the open desert.
In three shots. First shot. Cross-fade to itself after time lapse. Second shot. Cross-fade to itself after time lapse. Third shot. Cross-fade . . .
Then we stay in one shot for more than three minutes.
Exterior. The bus comes to a stop at the Bus Stop. We are in San Pablo. A fictional town in what we think is Mexico. It turns out to be New Mexico. A New Mexico that feels like old Mexico. In the real town of Santa Fe.
People get off the bus. Lucky Gagin gets off the bus. He strolls. Makes his way to the Terminal. Goes inside.
We pass by a telephone pole on our way in, giving master cinematographer Russell Metty a moment in which to adjust the exposure and the aperture. We stop on the sign above the door.
Welcome to San Pablo
Muchas Gracias
Howdy!
We enter the terminal without any noticeable change in lighting. Lucky Gagin looks around. He sees the lockers. He goes to a seat. Sits down. We dolly in. Pass him. Pan back. Tilt down.
He sets his briefcase in his lap. Opens it. Retrieves a pistol. Darts his eyes. Hides it in his breast pocket. He opens his briefcase again. Retrieves a folded check. Opens it. Glances at it. Refolds it. Pockets it. Stands.
He ambles to the lockers. We dolly ahead of him. Looking back. He places the check in a locker. Glances at it again. Closes the door. Inserts a coin. Removes the key. He turns to a gum dispenser machine behind him. We pan left. He inserts a coin. Turns the handle. Retrieves a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint. The end is open. He removes a stick of gum without having to open the package. Pockets the package. Unwraps the gum. Drops the wrapper on the floor. Chews the gum.
He walks over to a map on the wall. A map facing back to the open door. We dolly and pan to follow him. He looks around. Sees that no one is looking. He removes the gum from his mouth. Sticks it to the key. Inserts the key to a gap behind the map. Presses it against the back of the map. Walks away.
We pan back to the door. Follow him. Dolly back out of the terminal. Back through the open door. Other than the three brief opening shots of the Greyhound bus driving through the open desert, the entire movie thus far has taken place all in one shot.
And there has been no dialogue.
No one has spoken.
Finally, we cut to the exterior again. The outside of the terminal. The telephone pole. A man stands in the courtyard. Lucky Gagin asks him a question.
"Where's the La Fonda Hotel?"
Hotel?
Where's the La Fonda Hotel?
The man points him in a certain direction but he still gets lost. He gets lost at a carousel.
A Tiovivo. Spanish for merry-go-round. Literally "Uncle Alive" or "Uncle Lively."
I wonder if Blake calls her uncle that? "Hey, Uncle Lively. Hey, Merry-Go-Round."
Three girls are standing by the carousel. Two of them turn. He asks them.
Where's the La Fonda Hotel?
They do not know. The third girl turns around. He sees her. Speaks to her. He is brusque. Brash. Curt. Rude.
I show you.
She offers to help him anyway. She is young. Petite. Mysterious. With big bright eyes and a shawl she drapes over her head like the Virgin Mary. Or Obi Wan Kenobi.
Her name is Pila. She will attach herself to Gagin for the remainder of the film. She is not from San Pablo. She is from San Melo. Seventy-five miles away. She is poor. Innocent. Naive. Uncultured. Unrefined. With a soul as deep as the ocean. And fiercely loyal. He will owe his life to her. At least four times.
Lucky Gagin makes his way to the La Fonda Hotel. And through subterfuge and brashness he discovers where Frank Hugo's room is. Enters his room. Knocks out his secretary. Meets his girl, Marjorie Lundeen. And delivers a message to Hugo over the phone.
He is here to settle a score.
For his friend Shorty.
To blackmail Frank Hugo in the process.
And to collect lots and lots of money.
Or maybe not so much money.
We will discover that he is a small-time player. Inexperienced. In over his head. And asking for way too little.
Frank tells him he would have given him three times that amount if he had asked.
Marjorie tells him Frank would have given him thirty-three times that amount if he had asked.
Of course Frank might give him nothing in the end anyway. Except a slug in the gut. Or a knife in the back.
And just to make things more interesting, Lucky himself is being tailed. All the way from Washington D.C.
Someone knows every step he has taken. Every move he has made. Someone is watching him.
Someone named Mr. Retz. R-e-t-z. Retz.
He will owe his life to him.
One more man will join the story.
Pancho.
Owner of the Tiovivo. The carousel.
"I own everything. Twelve beautiful horses. Three beautiful chariots. Whole beautiful orchestra. All Pancho's."
Lucky meets Pancho at the Tres Violetas saloon. When the bartender cannot make change. So Lucky is left buying a round for everyone. And Pancho becomes his steadfast friend.
"I have a fine dream last night. All my horses is alive and we all riding on desert for hunting lions. And I am young again."
Pancho and Lucky.
All the Federales say . . .
Townes Van Zandt wrote the song "Pancho and Lefty" and recorded it in 1972. Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard made it legendary in 1983. It feels older, though, right? Here we are decades earlier with Pancho and Lucky.
Lucky will owe his life to Pancho.
We now have three guardian angels. For one man who is trying so hard to act tough.
Robert Montgomery himself is trying to act tough. He is pushing. Posing. Putting on. In a manner similar to (but not nearly as unconvincing as) Dick Powell in 1944's Murder, My Sweet. Robert Montgomery is a 1930s suave screwball comedy leading man. Dick Powell, meanwhile, is a 1930s musical song-and-dance man. Now in the 1940s they are both trying to act tough. In the 1930s they did not seem to try to emulate Paul Muni or George Raft or Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney. They seemed willing to stick to their strengths and let the tough men be the tough men. But now in the 1940s it seems everybody wants to be Humphrey Bogart.
And they are not.
Montgomery does a better job than Powell in pulling it off. He is more confident. More centered. Less goofy. And playing a character who is in the same position as he is as an actor. In over his head.
But Montgomery here is not playing a franchise character as Powell was with Philip Marlowe, where comparisons can be made to superior performances. He is playing a character unique to this film. One who is equally outmatched and underprepared, who in turn tries to protect his vulnerabilities through unsubtle posturing. And he has the temerity to do it.
He has another strength.
Robert Montgomery directs himself in this film, just a few months after his debut as a director, in a wildly experimental film called Lady in the Lake, the one in which he played Philip Marlowe, where the camera looks only through his eyes the entire film, and we see him only when he looks in mirrors. Showing off the fact that we cannot see the camera. In an age before digital technology.
In this film he works, as stated earlier, with veteran cinematographer Russell Metty, who was already a veteran when he worked on Orson Welles masterpieces, and he uses the camera beautifully and fluidly. In addition to the opening long shot, he uses a few other long shots, and he keeps it all hidden without drawing attention to it.
Montgomery is the master of the two-shot. He often frames two people in a tight master in three-dimensional space, one foregrounded, the other backgrounded, and he uses overs in place of close-ups.
"Overs" means "over-the-shoulder" shots, where the listener's head and shoulder are always visible while the other person is talking. We almost never cut in tighter than that, into a true close-up. We are always aware of both people in the room, and often of the room itself.
Thomas Gomez was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Pancho. When you watch it, you will see why. He had a long and prolific career.
The film is based on a novel of the same name, written by Dorothy B. Hughes in 1946. She also wrote the novel on which another juicy film noir is based, one which we will be watching soon, starring Humphrey Bogart himself, In a Lonely Place (1947 novel, 1950 film), directed by Nicholas Ray.
Ride the Pink Horse is an undiscovered jewel. Discover it.
Ride the Tiovivo. It might just save your life.
Which horse?
Try the pink one.
* * * * *
A cancelled check for a hundred grand, on a Mexican bank, signed by you.
The number on the check is 6431
How much do you want? 30 grand.
Shorty only wanted 15.
Do I get the 30 grand or do I turn it over to Mr. Retz.
You and me, we eat out of the same dish. You used to think if you were a square guy, worked hard, played on the level, things would come your way. You found out you were wrong. All you get is pushed around. You found people are interested in only one thing--the payoff.
There are two kinds of people in this world: ones that fiddle around worrying about whether things are right or wrong, and guys like us.
I cam down to enjoy the Fiesta. I'll charge it up to pleasure.
Diamonds, and a dead fish where her heart ought to be. . . . You touch them and you get stung. You always lose.
* * * * *
Actors who have played Philip Marlowe--
Dick Powell, Murder, My Sweet (1944), Climax! (TV) (1954)
Humphrey Bogart, The Big Sleep (1946)
Robert Montgomery, Lady in the Lake (1947)
George Montgomery, The Brasher Doubloon (1947)
Zachary Scott, Robert Montgomery Presents, "The Big Sleep" (TV) (1950)
Philip Carey, Philip Marlowe (TV) (1959-60)
James Garner, Marlowe (1969)
Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye, 1973
Robert Mitchum, Farewell My Lovely (1975), The Big Sleep, (1978)
329 - Ride the Pink Horse, United States, 1947. Dir. Robert Montgomery.
If you wanna ride
Don't ride the pink horse.
If you wanna ride
Don't ride the pink horse.
If you wanna ride
Ride the pink pony.
If you wanna ride
Ride the pink pony.
(Other than that last line that rhymes with rich (you know it), I have just listed the entire lyrics to the song--well, modified with a new color. Think how much money they have made in the last 30+ years.)
No, this film has absolutely nothing to do with the 1983 dance song recorded by Laid Back (the Danish Tim Stahl and John Guldberg) and still played in clubs today.
But that song popped into your head when you read the title, so we might as well get it out of the way at the beginning.
You're welcome.
Now to the film at hand. . . .
A Greyhound bus drives down a two-lane road through the open desert.
In three shots. First shot. Cross-fade to itself after time lapse. Second shot. Cross-fade to itself after time lapse. Third shot. Cross-fade . . .
Then we stay in one shot for more than three minutes.
Exterior. The bus comes to a stop at the Bus Stop. We are in San Pablo. A fictional town in what we think is Mexico. It turns out to be New Mexico. A New Mexico that feels like old Mexico. In the real town of Santa Fe.
People get off the bus. Lucky Gagin gets off the bus. He strolls. Makes his way to the Terminal. Goes inside.
We pass by a telephone pole on our way in, giving master cinematographer Russell Metty a moment in which to adjust the exposure and the aperture. We stop on the sign above the door.
Welcome to San Pablo
Muchas Gracias
Howdy!
We enter the terminal without any noticeable change in lighting. Lucky Gagin looks around. He sees the lockers. He goes to a seat. Sits down. We dolly in. Pass him. Pan back. Tilt down.
He sets his briefcase in his lap. Opens it. Retrieves a pistol. Darts his eyes. Hides it in his breast pocket. He opens his briefcase again. Retrieves a folded check. Opens it. Glances at it. Refolds it. Pockets it. Stands.
He ambles to the lockers. We dolly ahead of him. Looking back. He places the check in a locker. Glances at it again. Closes the door. Inserts a coin. Removes the key. He turns to a gum dispenser machine behind him. We pan left. He inserts a coin. Turns the handle. Retrieves a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint. The end is open. He removes a stick of gum without having to open the package. Pockets the package. Unwraps the gum. Drops the wrapper on the floor. Chews the gum.
He walks over to a map on the wall. A map facing back to the open door. We dolly and pan to follow him. He looks around. Sees that no one is looking. He removes the gum from his mouth. Sticks it to the key. Inserts the key to a gap behind the map. Presses it against the back of the map. Walks away.
We pan back to the door. Follow him. Dolly back out of the terminal. Back through the open door. Other than the three brief opening shots of the Greyhound bus driving through the open desert, the entire movie thus far has taken place all in one shot.
And there has been no dialogue.
No one has spoken.
Finally, we cut to the exterior again. The outside of the terminal. The telephone pole. A man stands in the courtyard. Lucky Gagin asks him a question.
"Where's the La Fonda Hotel?"
Hotel?
Where's the La Fonda Hotel?
The man points him in a certain direction but he still gets lost. He gets lost at a carousel.
A Tiovivo. Spanish for merry-go-round. Literally "Uncle Alive" or "Uncle Lively."
I wonder if Blake calls her uncle that? "Hey, Uncle Lively. Hey, Merry-Go-Round."
Three girls are standing by the carousel. Two of them turn. He asks them.
Where's the La Fonda Hotel?
They do not know. The third girl turns around. He sees her. Speaks to her. He is brusque. Brash. Curt. Rude.
I show you.
She offers to help him anyway. She is young. Petite. Mysterious. With big bright eyes and a shawl she drapes over her head like the Virgin Mary. Or Obi Wan Kenobi.
Her name is Pila. She will attach herself to Gagin for the remainder of the film. She is not from San Pablo. She is from San Melo. Seventy-five miles away. She is poor. Innocent. Naive. Uncultured. Unrefined. With a soul as deep as the ocean. And fiercely loyal. He will owe his life to her. At least four times.
Lucky Gagin makes his way to the La Fonda Hotel. And through subterfuge and brashness he discovers where Frank Hugo's room is. Enters his room. Knocks out his secretary. Meets his girl, Marjorie Lundeen. And delivers a message to Hugo over the phone.
He is here to settle a score.
For his friend Shorty.
To blackmail Frank Hugo in the process.
And to collect lots and lots of money.
Or maybe not so much money.
We will discover that he is a small-time player. Inexperienced. In over his head. And asking for way too little.
Frank tells him he would have given him three times that amount if he had asked.
Marjorie tells him Frank would have given him thirty-three times that amount if he had asked.
Of course Frank might give him nothing in the end anyway. Except a slug in the gut. Or a knife in the back.
And just to make things more interesting, Lucky himself is being tailed. All the way from Washington D.C.
Someone knows every step he has taken. Every move he has made. Someone is watching him.
Someone named Mr. Retz. R-e-t-z. Retz.
He will owe his life to him.
One more man will join the story.
Pancho.
Owner of the Tiovivo. The carousel.
"I own everything. Twelve beautiful horses. Three beautiful chariots. Whole beautiful orchestra. All Pancho's."
Lucky meets Pancho at the Tres Violetas saloon. When the bartender cannot make change. So Lucky is left buying a round for everyone. And Pancho becomes his steadfast friend.
"I have a fine dream last night. All my horses is alive and we all riding on desert for hunting lions. And I am young again."
Pancho and Lucky.
All the Federales say . . .
Townes Van Zandt wrote the song "Pancho and Lefty" and recorded it in 1972. Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard made it legendary in 1983. It feels older, though, right? Here we are decades earlier with Pancho and Lucky.
Lucky will owe his life to Pancho.
We now have three guardian angels. For one man who is trying so hard to act tough.
Robert Montgomery himself is trying to act tough. He is pushing. Posing. Putting on. In a manner similar to (but not nearly as unconvincing as) Dick Powell in 1944's Murder, My Sweet. Robert Montgomery is a 1930s suave screwball comedy leading man. Dick Powell, meanwhile, is a 1930s musical song-and-dance man. Now in the 1940s they are both trying to act tough. In the 1930s they did not seem to try to emulate Paul Muni or George Raft or Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney. They seemed willing to stick to their strengths and let the tough men be the tough men. But now in the 1940s it seems everybody wants to be Humphrey Bogart.
And they are not.
Montgomery does a better job than Powell in pulling it off. He is more confident. More centered. Less goofy. And playing a character who is in the same position as he is as an actor. In over his head.
But Montgomery here is not playing a franchise character as Powell was with Philip Marlowe, where comparisons can be made to superior performances. He is playing a character unique to this film. One who is equally outmatched and underprepared, who in turn tries to protect his vulnerabilities through unsubtle posturing. And he has the temerity to do it.
He has another strength.
Robert Montgomery directs himself in this film, just a few months after his debut as a director, in a wildly experimental film called Lady in the Lake, the one in which he played Philip Marlowe, where the camera looks only through his eyes the entire film, and we see him only when he looks in mirrors. Showing off the fact that we cannot see the camera. In an age before digital technology.
In this film he works, as stated earlier, with veteran cinematographer Russell Metty, who was already a veteran when he worked on Orson Welles masterpieces, and he uses the camera beautifully and fluidly. In addition to the opening long shot, he uses a few other long shots, and he keeps it all hidden without drawing attention to it.
Montgomery is the master of the two-shot. He often frames two people in a tight master in three-dimensional space, one foregrounded, the other backgrounded, and he uses overs in place of close-ups.
"Overs" means "over-the-shoulder" shots, where the listener's head and shoulder are always visible while the other person is talking. We almost never cut in tighter than that, into a true close-up. We are always aware of both people in the room, and often of the room itself.
Thomas Gomez was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Pancho. When you watch it, you will see why. He had a long and prolific career.
The film is based on a novel of the same name, written by Dorothy B. Hughes in 1946. She also wrote the novel on which another juicy film noir is based, one which we will be watching soon, starring Humphrey Bogart himself, In a Lonely Place (1947 novel, 1950 film), directed by Nicholas Ray.
Ride the Pink Horse is an undiscovered jewel. Discover it.
Ride the Tiovivo. It might just save your life.
Which horse?
Try the pink one.
* * * * *
A cancelled check for a hundred grand, on a Mexican bank, signed by you.
The number on the check is 6431
How much do you want? 30 grand.
Shorty only wanted 15.
Do I get the 30 grand or do I turn it over to Mr. Retz.
You and me, we eat out of the same dish. You used to think if you were a square guy, worked hard, played on the level, things would come your way. You found out you were wrong. All you get is pushed around. You found people are interested in only one thing--the payoff.
There are two kinds of people in this world: ones that fiddle around worrying about whether things are right or wrong, and guys like us.
I cam down to enjoy the Fiesta. I'll charge it up to pleasure.
Diamonds, and a dead fish where her heart ought to be. . . . You touch them and you get stung. You always lose.
* * * * *
Actors who have played Philip Marlowe--
Dick Powell, Murder, My Sweet (1944), Climax! (TV) (1954)
Humphrey Bogart, The Big Sleep (1946)
Robert Montgomery, Lady in the Lake (1947)
George Montgomery, The Brasher Doubloon (1947)
Zachary Scott, Robert Montgomery Presents, "The Big Sleep" (TV) (1950)
Philip Carey, Philip Marlowe (TV) (1959-60)
James Garner, Marlowe (1969)
Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye, 1973
Robert Mitchum, Farewell My Lovely (1975), The Big Sleep, (1978)
Powers Boothe, Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (TV) (1983-86)
David Garrison, Remington Steele, "Elementary Steele," (TV) (1984)
David Garrison, Remington Steele, "Elementary Steele," (TV) (1984)
Michael Gambon, The Singing Detective (mini-series) (1986)
Danny Glover, Fallen Angels, "Red Wind" (TV) (1995)
James Caan, Poodle Springs (TV movie) (1998)
Danny Glover, Fallen Angels, "Red Wind" (TV) (1995)
James Caan, Poodle Springs (TV movie) (1998)
Tomas Hanak, Smart Philip (Czech Republic) (2003)
Jason O'Mara, Marlowe (TV Pilot) (2007)
(You used to think if you were a square guy, worked hard played on the level, things would come your way. You found out you were wrong. All you get is pushed around. You found people are intested in only one thing--the payoff. That's all I'm interested in. You know, Gagin, I like you. There are two kinds of people in this world: ones that fiddle around worrying about whether things are right or wrong and guys like us. Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ride-the-pink-horse
You and me, we, eat out of the same dish. You used to think if you were a square guy, worked hard played on the level, things would come your way. You found out you were wrong. All you get is pushed around. You found people are intested in only one thing--the payoff. That's all I'm interested in. You know, Gagin, I like you. There are two kinds of people in this world: ones that fiddle around worrying about whether things are right or wrong and guys like us. Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ride-the-pink-horse
You and me, we, eat out of the same dish. You used to think if you were a square guy, worked hard played on the level, things would come your way. You found out you were wrong. All you get is pushed around. You found people are intested in only one thing--the payoff. That's all I'm interested in. You know, Gagin, I like you. There are two kinds of people in this world: ones that fiddle around worrying about whether things are right or wrong and guys like us. Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=ride-the-pink-horse
D
In Murder, My Sweet Dick Powell is playing Philip Marlowe himself, a private detective made famous by the literary writing of Raymond Chandler and embodied in the acting of strong and muscular actors--Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, James Garner, James Caan, Michael Gambon, Powers Boothe, Philip Carey, Elliott Gould, and even Robert Montgomery in the film before this one. To be fair to Powell, he was the first actor ever to play Philip Marlowe, so he had no way of knowing what stellar performances were to come which would make him pale in comparison.
Friday, November 24, 2017
328 - The Killers, United States, 1964. Dir. Don Siegel.
Friday, November 24, 2017
328 - The Killers, United States, 1964. Dir. Don Siegel.
Yesterday we watched The Killers.
Today we watch The Killers.
Yesterday's 1946 film noir masterpiece was produced by Mark Hellinger and directed by Robert Siodmak. It starred Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, and Sam Levine, with a host of strong supporting character actors.
Today's 1964 color film, originally filmed for television, was produced and directed by Don Siegel, who became known as Clint Eastwood's director, directing Clint in Coogan's Bluff, Two Mules for Sister Sara, The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz.
Hellinger had originally wanted Siegel for the 1946 version. Siegel had spent several years working as a Montage Editor and Assistant Director and was now an up-and-coming director with his Warner Bros. crime drama The Verdict, starring Warner staples Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. But Hellinger could not get him, so he hired Siodmak instead. Siodmak, as it turns out, made one of the great film noir films in history.
With this film Siegel gets the chance to come back and film his own version--probably one that is different from what he himself would have filmed 18 years earlier.
Today's The Killers stars Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes (see our entries from 1/31 to 2/04 on the films he directed!), Clu Galager, Claude Akins, Norman Fell, Virginia Christine, Don Haggerty.
And Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan packs a punch. Or in this case a slap. His character Jack Browning famously slaps Angie Dickinson's character Sheila Farr. (On the left cheek. She turns and clutches her right cheek. Both times it is the downstage side.)
With this film, Reagan, who often plays the good guy, has the opportunity to explore a darker side.
Claude Akins, known as a dependable slow-paced heavy, also famously cries in this film. He has the opportunity to explore a more sensitive side.
Don Siegel has provided a venue at least in which the actors may explore things.
Because Ernest Hemingway's source story is a short story and takes up only the beginning minutes of both versions, each version has the freedom to create its own explanation for why the Swede does not resist the killers.
In this case, Siegel changes the short story itself. He changes the opening scene. The killers' victim is no longer the Swede but an American, Johnny North, and the killers no longer obtain knowledge of his whereabouts from the local diner but at the local school for the blind. Johnny further is not shot at home but upstairs at the school, in his classroom, at his desk.
Another change is that rather than having an insurance adjuster follow clues to discover why the victim does not resist, Siegel turns the search over to one of the killers himself.
Charlie Strom, played by Lee Marvin, is so puzzled by Johnny's unwillingness to flee, that he himself, with partner Lee in tow, played by Clu Galager, does the investigating.
Some of the other elements that follow retain some similarities to the earlier story that was basically fleshed out by John Huston, as well as credited screenwriter Anthony Veiller.
The film would have been one of the first made-for-TV movies but was considered too violent at the time to air on television, so it was made into a feature film.
Now sit back and relax and enjoy.
The Killers.
328 - The Killers, United States, 1964. Dir. Don Siegel.
Yesterday we watched The Killers.
Today we watch The Killers.
Yesterday's 1946 film noir masterpiece was produced by Mark Hellinger and directed by Robert Siodmak. It starred Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, and Sam Levine, with a host of strong supporting character actors.
Today's 1964 color film, originally filmed for television, was produced and directed by Don Siegel, who became known as Clint Eastwood's director, directing Clint in Coogan's Bluff, Two Mules for Sister Sara, The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz.
Hellinger had originally wanted Siegel for the 1946 version. Siegel had spent several years working as a Montage Editor and Assistant Director and was now an up-and-coming director with his Warner Bros. crime drama The Verdict, starring Warner staples Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. But Hellinger could not get him, so he hired Siodmak instead. Siodmak, as it turns out, made one of the great film noir films in history.
With this film Siegel gets the chance to come back and film his own version--probably one that is different from what he himself would have filmed 18 years earlier.
Today's The Killers stars Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes (see our entries from 1/31 to 2/04 on the films he directed!), Clu Galager, Claude Akins, Norman Fell, Virginia Christine, Don Haggerty.
And Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan packs a punch. Or in this case a slap. His character Jack Browning famously slaps Angie Dickinson's character Sheila Farr. (On the left cheek. She turns and clutches her right cheek. Both times it is the downstage side.)
With this film, Reagan, who often plays the good guy, has the opportunity to explore a darker side.
Claude Akins, known as a dependable slow-paced heavy, also famously cries in this film. He has the opportunity to explore a more sensitive side.
Don Siegel has provided a venue at least in which the actors may explore things.
Because Ernest Hemingway's source story is a short story and takes up only the beginning minutes of both versions, each version has the freedom to create its own explanation for why the Swede does not resist the killers.
In this case, Siegel changes the short story itself. He changes the opening scene. The killers' victim is no longer the Swede but an American, Johnny North, and the killers no longer obtain knowledge of his whereabouts from the local diner but at the local school for the blind. Johnny further is not shot at home but upstairs at the school, in his classroom, at his desk.
Another change is that rather than having an insurance adjuster follow clues to discover why the victim does not resist, Siegel turns the search over to one of the killers himself.
Charlie Strom, played by Lee Marvin, is so puzzled by Johnny's unwillingness to flee, that he himself, with partner Lee in tow, played by Clu Galager, does the investigating.
Some of the other elements that follow retain some similarities to the earlier story that was basically fleshed out by John Huston, as well as credited screenwriter Anthony Veiller.
The film would have been one of the first made-for-TV movies but was considered too violent at the time to air on television, so it was made into a feature film.
Now sit back and relax and enjoy.
The Killers.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
327 - The Killers, United States, 1946. Dir. Robert Siodmak.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
327 - The Killers, United States, 1946. Dir. Robert Siodmak.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
He that raised up Jesus from the dead will also quicken our mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in us.
At thy right hand there is pleasure forevermore.
These are the words the Minister speaks over the body of Ole Anderson as he commits his body to the ground. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Happy Thanksgiving.
On Sunday, January 1, of this year we began with our first Film Blog. It featured an independent German feature made by young amateurs who went on to become some of the important filmmakers in world cinema history.
Click here.
www.realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/001-sunday-january-1-2017-people-on.html
The film was People On Sunday. The director was Robert Siodmak. He was 29 years old. The day after its screening he was offered a job by the great German studio UFA.
Three years later he was working in France.
Seven years after that he was working for Paramount.
He would also work for Republic, Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, RKO, and Warner Bros., but he would work most often, and here, at Universal.
Mark Hellinger was the theater critic-turned-producer who put this film together, based on one of Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams short stories. He originally wanted the young, up-and-coming Don Siegel to direct it, but he could not afford what it would cost to borrow him from Warner Bros. So he turned to Siodmak. For our money, it worked out fortuitously.
The Killers is a quintessential film noir movie. It is included in the original list of ten films that came to France in that fateful Summer of 1946, which Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton describe in their 1955 book, A Panorama of American Film Noir. French film critic Nino Frank coined the term film noir that year, 1946. Borde and Chaumeton canonized the list a few years later in their seminal book.
John Huston, the great writer-director, who made the earliest of the ten films named in their book, The Maltese Falcon (1941), wrote much of the screenplay for this film but had to remain uncredited, because he too was with Warner Bros.
The film received four Academy Award nominations: for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Music.
A car careens down a narrow highway in the dark of night. Two head silhouettes appear in the front seat. Strident music surges as the credits appear, the score of composer Miklos Rozsa.
A sign welcomes tourists, hoping they stay.
Welcome to Brentwood, New Jersey.
The town's streets are dark and silent. Street lamps cast long light across the pavement. It is not yet six pm but the town is already dark and deserted.
Two men cast long shadows in the long lamplight. They approach the filling station. It is closed. They cross the street. They enter Henry's Diner, the dining car-styled lunch counter, each from a separate door, as if to bookend their entrance, as if to create a battle on two fronts.
Nick Adams, the lone customer, sits at the counter. He is handed his plate. He asks for ketchup. The first spoken line in the film. "Ketchup." The manager wipes down the counter with a damp rag. The two men sit at the corner, perpendicular to each other, facing in. From the beginning they speak in menacing tones. They order off the dinner menu.
The roast pork tenderloin with the applesauce and mashed potatoes.
The chicken croquettes with the cream sauce, the green peas, and the mashed potatoes.
The manager tells them dinner is not served till six. He can give them any kind of sandwich until then. Bacon and eggs. Liver and bacon. Ham and eggs. Steaks. They settle for ham-and-eggs and bacon-and-eggs. They ask for drinks. He can give them soda, beer, ginger ale. No, they want drinks. Even beer is not good enough for what they want.
It does not matter. They are not here to eat anyway. They will not be eating. They will not be paying. They will be pulling a gun, kidnapping, gagging, tying up, and hiding. In order to get information.
You know the big Swede, works over at that filling station?
You mean Pete Lund?
If that's what he calls himself.
We're gonna kill the Swede.
What are you going to kill him for? What did Pete Lund ever do to you?
He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us. He's only going to see us once. We're killing him for a friend.
Over the next several minutes two customers enter one after the other as the manager stands at attention, the gun at his back from inside the kitchen window, and we watch each encounter from a different view of the counter. In the first, we have moved from the 180 angle to the 45, and we see from behind the point of view of the killers. In the second, we move outside from a low angle, on the ground and therefore below the interior floor, through the screen door at the 135 angle, and we see from behind the point of view of Nick Adams.
In a very short time we have been thrown into extreme driving, extreme music, extreme darkness, extreme lighting, extreme camera angles, and extreme tension.
And we will crane-dolly sweepingly through neighboring yards and up and inside the apartment window as Nick Adams, freed from being bound and gagged, races the killers to Pete Lund's room to warn him before they arrive.
Nick warns him.
Pete does nothing.
The killers arrive and kill him. A dozen bullets? Six each? Count them.
And the movie has just started.
Why did they kill him?
Why did he not try to flee?
What was he hiding from?
In 1947 Jacques Tourneur directed one of the great film noir classics, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Dickie Moore. In that film Robert Mitchum's character Jeff works at a filling station in a small town, trying to hide from his past. But his past catches up to him when one of his old cronies runs into him by accident, while just passing through that small town and stopping at that filling station.
That is happening here too, in 1946, one year before. Ole Anderson--the Swede's real name--is living in a small town, working at a filling station, trying to hide from something in his past. But his past catches up to him when one of his old cronies comes into town and stops at that station. He will go back home and hire the two killers.
If you think Citizen Kane is complicated, and if you think Pulp Fiction plays with time, feast your eyes on this film.
Like Citizen Kane, where we begin with the death of the protagonist and spend the film interviewing witnesses, going into their backstories, reliving the past to try to understand the mystery, here too we begin with a death and spend the film interviewing witnesses and players, trying to put the pieces together, trying to uncover the mystery.
In Citizen Kane, reporter Jerry Thompson tries to understand the meaning behind Charles Foster Kane's last word, Rosebud, as he drops the object, the snow globe.
In The Killers, insurance adjuster Jim Reardon tries to understand the meaning behind Ole Anderson's last words, "I did something wrong once," as he leaves behind the object, a green silk handkerchief with harps on it.
What did he do wrong once?
When? And to whom?
And what does the handkerchief mean?
Jim Reardon is determined to find out.
Maybe it will cost him his job.
Maybe it will cost him his life.
He is not a cop or a detective. Yet he is going up against gangsters.
As the threads keep unraveling.
And the people keep coming.
And more people keep dying.
If only he can find the woman.
There is always a woman.
The one who took a powder.
She must know something.
All of this would have been dead and buried.
Forgotten long ago.
If it had not been for that chance meeting at the filling station.
A $2,500 death benefit.
And that green silk handkerchief.
327 - The Killers, United States, 1946. Dir. Robert Siodmak.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
He that raised up Jesus from the dead will also quicken our mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in us.
At thy right hand there is pleasure forevermore.
These are the words the Minister speaks over the body of Ole Anderson as he commits his body to the ground. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Happy Thanksgiving.
On Sunday, January 1, of this year we began with our first Film Blog. It featured an independent German feature made by young amateurs who went on to become some of the important filmmakers in world cinema history.
Click here.
www.realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/001-sunday-january-1-2017-people-on.html
The film was People On Sunday. The director was Robert Siodmak. He was 29 years old. The day after its screening he was offered a job by the great German studio UFA.
Three years later he was working in France.
Seven years after that he was working for Paramount.
He would also work for Republic, Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, RKO, and Warner Bros., but he would work most often, and here, at Universal.
Mark Hellinger was the theater critic-turned-producer who put this film together, based on one of Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams short stories. He originally wanted the young, up-and-coming Don Siegel to direct it, but he could not afford what it would cost to borrow him from Warner Bros. So he turned to Siodmak. For our money, it worked out fortuitously.
The Killers is a quintessential film noir movie. It is included in the original list of ten films that came to France in that fateful Summer of 1946, which Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton describe in their 1955 book, A Panorama of American Film Noir. French film critic Nino Frank coined the term film noir that year, 1946. Borde and Chaumeton canonized the list a few years later in their seminal book.
John Huston, the great writer-director, who made the earliest of the ten films named in their book, The Maltese Falcon (1941), wrote much of the screenplay for this film but had to remain uncredited, because he too was with Warner Bros.
The film received four Academy Award nominations: for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Music.
A car careens down a narrow highway in the dark of night. Two head silhouettes appear in the front seat. Strident music surges as the credits appear, the score of composer Miklos Rozsa.
A sign welcomes tourists, hoping they stay.
Welcome to Brentwood, New Jersey.
The town's streets are dark and silent. Street lamps cast long light across the pavement. It is not yet six pm but the town is already dark and deserted.
Two men cast long shadows in the long lamplight. They approach the filling station. It is closed. They cross the street. They enter Henry's Diner, the dining car-styled lunch counter, each from a separate door, as if to bookend their entrance, as if to create a battle on two fronts.
Nick Adams, the lone customer, sits at the counter. He is handed his plate. He asks for ketchup. The first spoken line in the film. "Ketchup." The manager wipes down the counter with a damp rag. The two men sit at the corner, perpendicular to each other, facing in. From the beginning they speak in menacing tones. They order off the dinner menu.
The roast pork tenderloin with the applesauce and mashed potatoes.
The chicken croquettes with the cream sauce, the green peas, and the mashed potatoes.
The manager tells them dinner is not served till six. He can give them any kind of sandwich until then. Bacon and eggs. Liver and bacon. Ham and eggs. Steaks. They settle for ham-and-eggs and bacon-and-eggs. They ask for drinks. He can give them soda, beer, ginger ale. No, they want drinks. Even beer is not good enough for what they want.
It does not matter. They are not here to eat anyway. They will not be eating. They will not be paying. They will be pulling a gun, kidnapping, gagging, tying up, and hiding. In order to get information.
You know the big Swede, works over at that filling station?
You mean Pete Lund?
If that's what he calls himself.
We're gonna kill the Swede.
What are you going to kill him for? What did Pete Lund ever do to you?
He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us. He's only going to see us once. We're killing him for a friend.
Over the next several minutes two customers enter one after the other as the manager stands at attention, the gun at his back from inside the kitchen window, and we watch each encounter from a different view of the counter. In the first, we have moved from the 180 angle to the 45, and we see from behind the point of view of the killers. In the second, we move outside from a low angle, on the ground and therefore below the interior floor, through the screen door at the 135 angle, and we see from behind the point of view of Nick Adams.
In a very short time we have been thrown into extreme driving, extreme music, extreme darkness, extreme lighting, extreme camera angles, and extreme tension.
And we will crane-dolly sweepingly through neighboring yards and up and inside the apartment window as Nick Adams, freed from being bound and gagged, races the killers to Pete Lund's room to warn him before they arrive.
Nick warns him.
Pete does nothing.
The killers arrive and kill him. A dozen bullets? Six each? Count them.
And the movie has just started.
Why did they kill him?
Why did he not try to flee?
What was he hiding from?
In 1947 Jacques Tourneur directed one of the great film noir classics, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Dickie Moore. In that film Robert Mitchum's character Jeff works at a filling station in a small town, trying to hide from his past. But his past catches up to him when one of his old cronies runs into him by accident, while just passing through that small town and stopping at that filling station.
That is happening here too, in 1946, one year before. Ole Anderson--the Swede's real name--is living in a small town, working at a filling station, trying to hide from something in his past. But his past catches up to him when one of his old cronies comes into town and stops at that station. He will go back home and hire the two killers.
If you think Citizen Kane is complicated, and if you think Pulp Fiction plays with time, feast your eyes on this film.
Like Citizen Kane, where we begin with the death of the protagonist and spend the film interviewing witnesses, going into their backstories, reliving the past to try to understand the mystery, here too we begin with a death and spend the film interviewing witnesses and players, trying to put the pieces together, trying to uncover the mystery.
In Citizen Kane, reporter Jerry Thompson tries to understand the meaning behind Charles Foster Kane's last word, Rosebud, as he drops the object, the snow globe.
In The Killers, insurance adjuster Jim Reardon tries to understand the meaning behind Ole Anderson's last words, "I did something wrong once," as he leaves behind the object, a green silk handkerchief with harps on it.
What did he do wrong once?
When? And to whom?
And what does the handkerchief mean?
Jim Reardon is determined to find out.
Maybe it will cost him his job.
Maybe it will cost him his life.
He is not a cop or a detective. Yet he is going up against gangsters.
As the threads keep unraveling.
And the people keep coming.
And more people keep dying.
If only he can find the woman.
There is always a woman.
The one who took a powder.
She must know something.
All of this would have been dead and buried.
Forgotten long ago.
If it had not been for that chance meeting at the filling station.
A $2,500 death benefit.
And that green silk handkerchief.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
326 - The Breaking Point, United States, 1950. Dir. Michael Curtiz.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
326 - The Breaking Point, United States, 1950. Dir. Michael Curtiz.
Harry owns a fishing boat. He has worked ten years to buy it. He charters it out to take vacationers fishing. He uses his fees to pay his mate--his best friend Wesley Park--cover expenses, make payments on the boat, and provide for his family, a wife and two daughters who live on the water in Newport Beach, California.
The water is all Harry has ever known. He calls himself a "boat jockey." He served in the Navy, saw combat, and earned a Purple Heart. His wife needles him occasionally about going to work for her family in the lettuce groves in the Salinas Valley, but he refuses to quit his life. He says he can spot a marlin a mile away, and that is his one talent.
Of course we know if he were to move from Newport to Salinas, he would be leaving the world of Hemingway for the world of Steinbeck, and that cannot happen. But he does not know that. He is a character in the world of Hemingway. He has tests ahead of him. Grace under pressure.
This season has been lean. His credit has dried up. He has to spend his entire deposit from his new customer to get gas and give his wife Lucy grocery money. His new customer is a man named Hannagan. He is about to run up an $830 tab fishing off the coast of Mexico. That is good news for Harry. Harry can use that money to make a couple boat payments and pay down his creditors.
But the good news turns to bad news rather quickly. Hannagan brings a girl aboard. Leona Charles. She looks as though she has not come for fishing. She also looks as though she has not come for Hannagan. Harry is not too keen about that. He runs a clean outfit. He does not want trouble. But sure enough, over the course of the trip she immediately begins working on him, flirting with him, trying to get his attention, trying to find his cracks. He ignores her.
But the real news is yet to come. In Mexico Hannagan goes gambling. Cockfighting. He spends his money. He catches a plane back. He stiffs Harry. He abandons Leona. Now she expects a ride back. And Harry has forty cents to his name.
Enter Duncan. Attorney by trade. Dealmaker by design. He has never met a hand under the table that he would not shake. An underhanded undertabler. An undertabled underhand. He has been leaning on Harry for months. Harry runs a clean boat. Harry himself is clean. Therefore, he is the perfect person to do things dirty. Everyone respects him. No one will suspect him. Last night at the cockfight Harry turned him down. But this afternoon with Hannagan gone, his girlfriend hanging on, and no money, what else is he to do? Duncan knows.
Sixteen minutes into the movie Leona calls Harry by name. Harry Morgan. Harry Morgan! Ding ding ding ding ding. (That is the sound of the bell going off in your head.) Aside from Nick Adams, Harry Morgan is the most famous character name out of Hemingway. Not Harry Morgan the prolific character actor who became a household name as Col. Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H, and not Harry Morgan from the Showtime series Dexter, whose name the novelist Jeff Lindsay shamelessly stole from Hemingway (his wife is after all Hemingway's niece), but the Harry Morgan Hemingway made famous in his 1937 novel To Have and Have Not.
At this point, if you are a reader, you realize that you are watching an adaptation of To Have and Have Not. Then you forget it. It is not important to compare it to either the book or the Howard Hawks film. This film is better enjoyed watching it on its own.
Duncan will set up Harry with a job, though he is really setting him up with a set up. And Harry's challenges will continue to build up to the breaking point.
Michael Curtiz is a phenomenal director. We talked about him yesterday. We are now five years and ten films after Mildred Pierce, and he continues to fire on all cylinders. One thing that stands out in this film is his stage-like framing. He angles the set in perspective, with a single vanishing point to the right or left, often to the right, offscreen. Then he places pairs of actors upstage and downstage of one another along that access to create depth. He sets the camera, allows the actors to enter the space, and then adjusts the camera to follow the actors, by dollying down, pushing in, and dollying left or right in one subtle motion, and then ending by stopping again on the new framing, with each similar take beginning and ending in a static shot with a smooth movement in the middle.
Meanwhile, John Garfield's American Laboratory and Group Theater training are apparent from the beginning. From the moment he steps onto the boat it seems as though he is a boatman and not an actor, as though he has lived and worked on this boat his entire life. He is so familiar with every square inch of it, and where to go, what to do, and how to do it, that it is a delight to watch him. He stays alive in behavior throughout the film, working deftly with his hands, at ease, relaxed, and natural. He is an actor's actor.
Victor Sen Yung appears as Mr. Sing. He was a brilliant contract player who worked steadily for a quarter century, including both the Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan series, several Bogart thrillers, and most deliciously in William Wylers proto-noir starring Bette Davis, The Letter (1940).
Patricia Neal plays Leona, and she plays her with abandon.
Juano Hernandez plays Harry's best friend and shipmate Wesley Park in a beautifully modern role. Juano Hernandez's entire career appears to have been beautifully modern. He was born in 1896 and started working very early--in the circus, on radio, in Vaudeville, and in choirs. He made his first film in 1914 and was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1949's William Faulkner adaptation Intruder in the Dust. His son, Juan Hernandez, plays his son, Joseph Park. Harry's daughters, Amelia and Connie, played respectively by Sherry Jackson and Donna Jo Boyce, are friends with Joseph.
The film ends--and this is not a spoiler--with Joseph standing alone as the forgotten boy, the son of the forgotten man. In fact--and this may be why this is a not a spoiler--this may be the forgotten ending. The viewer's attention is on Harry and his family. The director's attention is on Wesley and his family, in this case his son.
The novel To Have and Have Not is one thing.
The film To Have and Have Not is another thing.
This film, The Breaking Point, is yet another thing.
Allow them to stand on their own. It is not necessary to compare them to one another and discuss which is more like the source material. They are different stories told by different storytellers in different mediums over different years. And they are all outstanding.
This film is exceptional.
It is a good film for actors to study.
As well as filmmakers.
It is also a good film to watch and enjoy.
In the good and capable hands of one of the great directors.
At one of the great studios.
At the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
326 - The Breaking Point, United States, 1950. Dir. Michael Curtiz.
Harry owns a fishing boat. He has worked ten years to buy it. He charters it out to take vacationers fishing. He uses his fees to pay his mate--his best friend Wesley Park--cover expenses, make payments on the boat, and provide for his family, a wife and two daughters who live on the water in Newport Beach, California.
The water is all Harry has ever known. He calls himself a "boat jockey." He served in the Navy, saw combat, and earned a Purple Heart. His wife needles him occasionally about going to work for her family in the lettuce groves in the Salinas Valley, but he refuses to quit his life. He says he can spot a marlin a mile away, and that is his one talent.
Of course we know if he were to move from Newport to Salinas, he would be leaving the world of Hemingway for the world of Steinbeck, and that cannot happen. But he does not know that. He is a character in the world of Hemingway. He has tests ahead of him. Grace under pressure.
This season has been lean. His credit has dried up. He has to spend his entire deposit from his new customer to get gas and give his wife Lucy grocery money. His new customer is a man named Hannagan. He is about to run up an $830 tab fishing off the coast of Mexico. That is good news for Harry. Harry can use that money to make a couple boat payments and pay down his creditors.
But the good news turns to bad news rather quickly. Hannagan brings a girl aboard. Leona Charles. She looks as though she has not come for fishing. She also looks as though she has not come for Hannagan. Harry is not too keen about that. He runs a clean outfit. He does not want trouble. But sure enough, over the course of the trip she immediately begins working on him, flirting with him, trying to get his attention, trying to find his cracks. He ignores her.
But the real news is yet to come. In Mexico Hannagan goes gambling. Cockfighting. He spends his money. He catches a plane back. He stiffs Harry. He abandons Leona. Now she expects a ride back. And Harry has forty cents to his name.
Enter Duncan. Attorney by trade. Dealmaker by design. He has never met a hand under the table that he would not shake. An underhanded undertabler. An undertabled underhand. He has been leaning on Harry for months. Harry runs a clean boat. Harry himself is clean. Therefore, he is the perfect person to do things dirty. Everyone respects him. No one will suspect him. Last night at the cockfight Harry turned him down. But this afternoon with Hannagan gone, his girlfriend hanging on, and no money, what else is he to do? Duncan knows.
Sixteen minutes into the movie Leona calls Harry by name. Harry Morgan. Harry Morgan! Ding ding ding ding ding. (That is the sound of the bell going off in your head.) Aside from Nick Adams, Harry Morgan is the most famous character name out of Hemingway. Not Harry Morgan the prolific character actor who became a household name as Col. Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H, and not Harry Morgan from the Showtime series Dexter, whose name the novelist Jeff Lindsay shamelessly stole from Hemingway (his wife is after all Hemingway's niece), but the Harry Morgan Hemingway made famous in his 1937 novel To Have and Have Not.
At this point, if you are a reader, you realize that you are watching an adaptation of To Have and Have Not. Then you forget it. It is not important to compare it to either the book or the Howard Hawks film. This film is better enjoyed watching it on its own.
Duncan will set up Harry with a job, though he is really setting him up with a set up. And Harry's challenges will continue to build up to the breaking point.
Michael Curtiz is a phenomenal director. We talked about him yesterday. We are now five years and ten films after Mildred Pierce, and he continues to fire on all cylinders. One thing that stands out in this film is his stage-like framing. He angles the set in perspective, with a single vanishing point to the right or left, often to the right, offscreen. Then he places pairs of actors upstage and downstage of one another along that access to create depth. He sets the camera, allows the actors to enter the space, and then adjusts the camera to follow the actors, by dollying down, pushing in, and dollying left or right in one subtle motion, and then ending by stopping again on the new framing, with each similar take beginning and ending in a static shot with a smooth movement in the middle.
Meanwhile, John Garfield's American Laboratory and Group Theater training are apparent from the beginning. From the moment he steps onto the boat it seems as though he is a boatman and not an actor, as though he has lived and worked on this boat his entire life. He is so familiar with every square inch of it, and where to go, what to do, and how to do it, that it is a delight to watch him. He stays alive in behavior throughout the film, working deftly with his hands, at ease, relaxed, and natural. He is an actor's actor.
Victor Sen Yung appears as Mr. Sing. He was a brilliant contract player who worked steadily for a quarter century, including both the Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan series, several Bogart thrillers, and most deliciously in William Wylers proto-noir starring Bette Davis, The Letter (1940).
Patricia Neal plays Leona, and she plays her with abandon.
Juano Hernandez plays Harry's best friend and shipmate Wesley Park in a beautifully modern role. Juano Hernandez's entire career appears to have been beautifully modern. He was born in 1896 and started working very early--in the circus, on radio, in Vaudeville, and in choirs. He made his first film in 1914 and was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1949's William Faulkner adaptation Intruder in the Dust. His son, Juan Hernandez, plays his son, Joseph Park. Harry's daughters, Amelia and Connie, played respectively by Sherry Jackson and Donna Jo Boyce, are friends with Joseph.
The film ends--and this is not a spoiler--with Joseph standing alone as the forgotten boy, the son of the forgotten man. In fact--and this may be why this is a not a spoiler--this may be the forgotten ending. The viewer's attention is on Harry and his family. The director's attention is on Wesley and his family, in this case his son.
The novel To Have and Have Not is one thing.
The film To Have and Have Not is another thing.
This film, The Breaking Point, is yet another thing.
Allow them to stand on their own. It is not necessary to compare them to one another and discuss which is more like the source material. They are different stories told by different storytellers in different mediums over different years. And they are all outstanding.
This film is exceptional.
It is a good film for actors to study.
As well as filmmakers.
It is also a good film to watch and enjoy.
In the good and capable hands of one of the great directors.
At one of the great studios.
At the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
325 - Mildred Pierce, United States, 1945. Dir. Michael Curtiz.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
325 - Mildred Pierce, United States, 1945. Dir. Michael Curtiz.
The gun goes off six times. Monte Beragon falls to his death. He looks at his wife Mildred and calls her name. "Mildred!" She flees the scene.
She drives to the Santa Monica pier. Walks out over the water. Prepares to jump. A police officer stops her.
She wanders to a bar. She runs into Wally Fay. A man who has chased her for years. From before, during, and after her first husband and before and during her second husband. And now after. He chases her again.
Back to the house.
He thinks maybe this time she will say Yes to him. He has never given up. He has always tried.
She goes into a room and locks the door. The room with the stiff. The room with her dead husband.
She is still upset. She leaves the house. The house by the ocean. She walks up the beach.
He wonders what she is doing in there. Calls out to her. Tries different doors. Finally breaks in. He finds the body. What is going on?
He leaves the house. The house by the ocean. He walks up the beach.
Just in time for the police to catch him.
They bring him in.
They bring her in.
They bring in her first husband.
Wally is set up for the murder, but the police are too smart. They pin it on Bert Pierce.
What?
Mildred Pierce Beragon and Wally Fay were at the scene of the crime. Wally was caught fleeing the scene. The police pick him up. They do not suspect her. They clear him. They pin it on Bert?
Smart police.
Mildred defends Bert. He could not have done it. He is too gentle a man. She could let herself off, but she chooses not to. She refuses to let him go down. Yes, he is her ex-husband but she must realize she still loves him. She does realize that she was wrong to leave him. And she wants them to understand. Is she really going to confess?
Mildred tells her story.
She was married to Bert and raising two daughters. He was out of work and she nagged him incessantly. She baked pies to make ends meet. He spent time with another woman. She spent time with Wally. They quarreled. She threatened him. She drove him away. He left.
Mildred spoils her daughters.
Veda, the older one, takes to it. She demands the very best. She becomes a diva.
Kay, the younger one, does not. She is a tomboy. She is practical. She is happy with what she has.
Now Mildred is a single mother. In 1945. She has to find a way to make money. Everywhere she applies turns her down. She does not have experience.
Finally, she talks an overwhelmed restaurant manager into bringing her aboard. She is hard-working. She is creative. She understands the restaurant business. She believes one can make money at it if one manages it the right way.
She gets her chance.
Monte Beragon is from Pasadena. He has money. He helps her get started. She makes a go of it. She is successful.
Her daughter Veda has a voracious appetite and intends to spend her mother's money.
Mildred has a weakness for her daughter and keeps giving her money to try to please her.
Perhaps she serves good meals at her restaurant, but not in this area of her life. This is a recipe for disaster.
And what might turn into a dish best served cold.
Mildred Pierce begins as a gritty, tension-packed film noir. With stunning high key lighting and dark shadows.
Then it turns into a woman's picture. A melodrama. A drama about drama.
With standard lighting and even angles and medium contrast and shallow focus and no shadows.
And stories of human relationships. Personal finance. Economics. Comic relief. And family problems.
Then something happens.
It returns to film noir. To low angles and high contrast and deep focus and dark shadows.
And obsession.
And lies.
And betrayal.
And murder.
And something . . .
Shocking.
Michael Curtiz is still riding high from a little picture he made--you may have heard of it--called Casablanca (1942). And the Academy Award he won for Best Director. And the two others it won for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. And the other five nominations it received.
That coming right after Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and its three wins and eight nominations, including his nomination for Best Director.
And his thirty years of working in motion pictures as a director before making Casablanca.
He made five feature films since Casablanca before this one, and he will go on for two more decades, but he is still riding high.
Michael Curtiz may not be a name as well known as some. Such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, or George Cukor. But he was as prolific or more so as they.
You can go online right now and purchase on Blu-Ray his 1915 silent feature The Undesirable as well as his 1961 John Wayne feature The Comancheros, made forty-six years apart. And so many in between. From Jimmy Cagney gangster pictures to Humphrey Bogart action thrillers to Errol Flynn swashbucklers to musicals to biographies to literary adaptations to Westerns to sports pictures to war films to Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954) to a remake of The Jazz Singer with Danny Thomas in the Al Jolson role to, yes, Elvis Presley in King Creole (1958).
Michael Curtiz did something well. He worked.
And he left a legacy of many great classics and others that will be rediscovered one day as classics.
For this picture he works with cinematographer Ernest Haller, the cinematographer of Gone With the Wind (1939), a man nominated for seven Academy Awards and winner for Gone With the Wind.
Together they produce stunning visuals, especially in the bookends of the film, in the film noir sections, with beautiful, intense, lighting and shadows.
The film is based on the novel by James M. Cain. A writer worth noting. He gave us both The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934, filmed in 1939, 1943, 1946, 1981, 1998, 2004) and Double Indemnity (1936, filmed in 1944).
That alone should make you take notice.
The two prototypical film noir movies about a couple having an affair and conspiring to kill her husband were based on novels (or a novel and a novella) written by the same man. And here is a film based on one of his novels where it appears a woman is killing her husband not for another man but for . . .
You will need to see the movie to understand what for.
And to allow the movie to give you what for.
Because it will if you let it.
There are different kinds of love.
And then there are things that might seem like love to the person doing it but are really the crossing of boundaries into indulgence and obsession.
Let us just say that Mildred Pierce seems like a really good woman in many ways.
But she has crossed a boundary in at least one area of her life.
And she will pay the price for it.
And so will her family.
There will be a resolution.
And catharsis.
But not until the price is paid.
And someone has to pay it.
325 - Mildred Pierce, United States, 1945. Dir. Michael Curtiz.
The gun goes off six times. Monte Beragon falls to his death. He looks at his wife Mildred and calls her name. "Mildred!" She flees the scene.
She drives to the Santa Monica pier. Walks out over the water. Prepares to jump. A police officer stops her.
She wanders to a bar. She runs into Wally Fay. A man who has chased her for years. From before, during, and after her first husband and before and during her second husband. And now after. He chases her again.
Back to the house.
He thinks maybe this time she will say Yes to him. He has never given up. He has always tried.
She goes into a room and locks the door. The room with the stiff. The room with her dead husband.
She is still upset. She leaves the house. The house by the ocean. She walks up the beach.
He wonders what she is doing in there. Calls out to her. Tries different doors. Finally breaks in. He finds the body. What is going on?
He leaves the house. The house by the ocean. He walks up the beach.
Just in time for the police to catch him.
They bring him in.
They bring her in.
They bring in her first husband.
Wally is set up for the murder, but the police are too smart. They pin it on Bert Pierce.
What?
Mildred Pierce Beragon and Wally Fay were at the scene of the crime. Wally was caught fleeing the scene. The police pick him up. They do not suspect her. They clear him. They pin it on Bert?
Smart police.
Mildred defends Bert. He could not have done it. He is too gentle a man. She could let herself off, but she chooses not to. She refuses to let him go down. Yes, he is her ex-husband but she must realize she still loves him. She does realize that she was wrong to leave him. And she wants them to understand. Is she really going to confess?
Mildred tells her story.
She was married to Bert and raising two daughters. He was out of work and she nagged him incessantly. She baked pies to make ends meet. He spent time with another woman. She spent time with Wally. They quarreled. She threatened him. She drove him away. He left.
Mildred spoils her daughters.
Veda, the older one, takes to it. She demands the very best. She becomes a diva.
Kay, the younger one, does not. She is a tomboy. She is practical. She is happy with what she has.
Now Mildred is a single mother. In 1945. She has to find a way to make money. Everywhere she applies turns her down. She does not have experience.
Finally, she talks an overwhelmed restaurant manager into bringing her aboard. She is hard-working. She is creative. She understands the restaurant business. She believes one can make money at it if one manages it the right way.
She gets her chance.
Monte Beragon is from Pasadena. He has money. He helps her get started. She makes a go of it. She is successful.
Her daughter Veda has a voracious appetite and intends to spend her mother's money.
Mildred has a weakness for her daughter and keeps giving her money to try to please her.
Perhaps she serves good meals at her restaurant, but not in this area of her life. This is a recipe for disaster.
And what might turn into a dish best served cold.
Mildred Pierce begins as a gritty, tension-packed film noir. With stunning high key lighting and dark shadows.
Then it turns into a woman's picture. A melodrama. A drama about drama.
With standard lighting and even angles and medium contrast and shallow focus and no shadows.
And stories of human relationships. Personal finance. Economics. Comic relief. And family problems.
Then something happens.
It returns to film noir. To low angles and high contrast and deep focus and dark shadows.
And obsession.
And lies.
And betrayal.
And murder.
And something . . .
Shocking.
Michael Curtiz is still riding high from a little picture he made--you may have heard of it--called Casablanca (1942). And the Academy Award he won for Best Director. And the two others it won for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. And the other five nominations it received.
That coming right after Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and its three wins and eight nominations, including his nomination for Best Director.
And his thirty years of working in motion pictures as a director before making Casablanca.
He made five feature films since Casablanca before this one, and he will go on for two more decades, but he is still riding high.
Michael Curtiz may not be a name as well known as some. Such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, or George Cukor. But he was as prolific or more so as they.
You can go online right now and purchase on Blu-Ray his 1915 silent feature The Undesirable as well as his 1961 John Wayne feature The Comancheros, made forty-six years apart. And so many in between. From Jimmy Cagney gangster pictures to Humphrey Bogart action thrillers to Errol Flynn swashbucklers to musicals to biographies to literary adaptations to Westerns to sports pictures to war films to Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954) to a remake of The Jazz Singer with Danny Thomas in the Al Jolson role to, yes, Elvis Presley in King Creole (1958).
Michael Curtiz did something well. He worked.
And he left a legacy of many great classics and others that will be rediscovered one day as classics.
For this picture he works with cinematographer Ernest Haller, the cinematographer of Gone With the Wind (1939), a man nominated for seven Academy Awards and winner for Gone With the Wind.
Together they produce stunning visuals, especially in the bookends of the film, in the film noir sections, with beautiful, intense, lighting and shadows.
The film is based on the novel by James M. Cain. A writer worth noting. He gave us both The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934, filmed in 1939, 1943, 1946, 1981, 1998, 2004) and Double Indemnity (1936, filmed in 1944).
That alone should make you take notice.
The two prototypical film noir movies about a couple having an affair and conspiring to kill her husband were based on novels (or a novel and a novella) written by the same man. And here is a film based on one of his novels where it appears a woman is killing her husband not for another man but for . . .
You will need to see the movie to understand what for.
And to allow the movie to give you what for.
Because it will if you let it.
There are different kinds of love.
And then there are things that might seem like love to the person doing it but are really the crossing of boundaries into indulgence and obsession.
Let us just say that Mildred Pierce seems like a really good woman in many ways.
But she has crossed a boundary in at least one area of her life.
And she will pay the price for it.
And so will her family.
There will be a resolution.
And catharsis.
But not until the price is paid.
And someone has to pay it.
Monday, November 20, 2017
324 - Ministry of Fear, United States, 1944. Dir. Fritz Lang.
Monday, November 20, 2017
324 - Ministry of Fear, United States, 1944. Dir. Fritz Lang.
Cake!
Boy, that cake sure must be tasty. At least three people die for it. One of them twice.
We have seen Fritz Lang as a German director in M (1931) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), and we have seen him portraying a version of himself as the great director in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963).
Now we see him as an American Hollywood director at the height of wartime film noir.
Stephen Neale watches the clock tick. When it reaches 12:00 noon he will be released from the Lembridge Asylum, where he has spent the past two years. He was sentenced to the asylum rather than jail because whatever he did he did under extenuating circumstances.
He chooses to take a train to London to begin his new life. He is a widower now, and he intends to start again. While waiting for the train he attends what is called in Britain a village fete, a local outdoor festival, part fair, for the purpose of raising funds for charity.
He pays a shilling to guess the weight of a cake. Then he gets his fortune told. And then strangely, the fortune teller asks him to guess the weight of the cake again. She gives him the weight.
Four pounds, fifteen and one-half ounces.
Congratulations, Sir! You have won a cake. He takes it and leaves. But something has gone wrong. He was not supposed to win it. We told that palm reader not to guess the future. Somebody says something to somebody and they try to get the cake back.
Nothing doing. Even after they change the correct weight, Stephen's original guess still comes the closest.
He boards the train.
A blind man sits with him.
The blind man has a cane.
A cane can be a weapon.
Stephen offers him some cake. He crumbles it strangely with his fingers and lets the crumbs fall to the compartment floor.
Looking for something?
Yes. But it is not in his piece. It must still be in the large portion still in the box.
The train stops.
The blind man uses that cane.
He takes the cake.
Stephen gets up. Gives chase. The German planes are bombing overhead. The blind man pulls out a gun and starts shooting at Stephen. The planes drop bombs ever more closely to them.
Something explodes.
Somebody dies.
And we're off.
We will meet bad men and beautiful women and strange twists and turns as we risk our lives repeatedly in search of the truth.
Yesterday in The Uninvited (1944) Ray Milland attended a seance. Today in Ministry of Fear (1944), the same year, Ray Milland attends a seance. He may want to reconsider these excursions. They do not always turn out so well.
Maybe he will get the girl in the end. If he does not die first. If she does not die. If she does not turn out to be, well . . .
Whom can you trust?
Anyone?
324 - Ministry of Fear, United States, 1944. Dir. Fritz Lang.
Cake!
Boy, that cake sure must be tasty. At least three people die for it. One of them twice.
We have seen Fritz Lang as a German director in M (1931) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), and we have seen him portraying a version of himself as the great director in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963).
Now we see him as an American Hollywood director at the height of wartime film noir.
Stephen Neale watches the clock tick. When it reaches 12:00 noon he will be released from the Lembridge Asylum, where he has spent the past two years. He was sentenced to the asylum rather than jail because whatever he did he did under extenuating circumstances.
He chooses to take a train to London to begin his new life. He is a widower now, and he intends to start again. While waiting for the train he attends what is called in Britain a village fete, a local outdoor festival, part fair, for the purpose of raising funds for charity.
He pays a shilling to guess the weight of a cake. Then he gets his fortune told. And then strangely, the fortune teller asks him to guess the weight of the cake again. She gives him the weight.
Four pounds, fifteen and one-half ounces.
Congratulations, Sir! You have won a cake. He takes it and leaves. But something has gone wrong. He was not supposed to win it. We told that palm reader not to guess the future. Somebody says something to somebody and they try to get the cake back.
Nothing doing. Even after they change the correct weight, Stephen's original guess still comes the closest.
He boards the train.
A blind man sits with him.
The blind man has a cane.
A cane can be a weapon.
Stephen offers him some cake. He crumbles it strangely with his fingers and lets the crumbs fall to the compartment floor.
Looking for something?
Yes. But it is not in his piece. It must still be in the large portion still in the box.
The train stops.
The blind man uses that cane.
He takes the cake.
Stephen gets up. Gives chase. The German planes are bombing overhead. The blind man pulls out a gun and starts shooting at Stephen. The planes drop bombs ever more closely to them.
Something explodes.
Somebody dies.
And we're off.
We will meet bad men and beautiful women and strange twists and turns as we risk our lives repeatedly in search of the truth.
Yesterday in The Uninvited (1944) Ray Milland attended a seance. Today in Ministry of Fear (1944), the same year, Ray Milland attends a seance. He may want to reconsider these excursions. They do not always turn out so well.
Maybe he will get the girl in the end. If he does not die first. If she does not die. If she does not turn out to be, well . . .
Whom can you trust?
Anyone?
Sunday, November 19, 2017
323 - The Uninvited, United States, 1944. Dir. Lewis Allen.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
323 - The Uninvited, United States, 1944. Dir. Lewis Allen.
Disturbances wouldn't disturb me.
So says Roderick Fitzgerald to Commander Beech. He is talking about the house. The charming old house on top of the cliff overlooking the sea.
They call the sea the haunted shores.
They call the house Windward.
Roderick and his sister Pamela want to buy it. It reminds her of childhood. It has a room where he can work on his music and writing.
He should be a composer, but he has settled for being a music critic as a way of paying the bills.
"What a job. Going to concerts and telling your readers how bad the music was."
They buy the house without an inspection. Without sleeping on it. Without any due diligence of any kind. It is just too charming. They make Commander Beech an offer. He accepts without countering. They are surprised. He tells them he will take less because it is haunted.
Haunted.
Ha! Fitzgerald laughs at such a silly notion. He is not worried about the house's being haunted.
He will be.
Commander Beech's granddaughter Stella Meredith loves the place and does not wish it to be sold. Commander Beech has forbidden her to go there, so he is all too happy to get it off his hands.
Little does he know that Fitzgerald will take a liking to Stella and take her out in the boat. And invite her back when he gets back from London. Invite her back. Inside the house.
Things are going to get darker.
Something happened once in that house.
Something involving Stella's mother.
Stella's mother returns with the scent of mimosa.
Another presence returns with a different scent.
They are both uninvited.
Stella's father, Mr. Meredith, was an artist. He painted. In that room where Roderick wants to write his music.
But something happened.
And it has never been resolved. Now it wants to be resolved.
Painters need models.
And sometimes models . . . well . . .
Dr. Scott gets involved.
So does that strange former secretary named Miss Holloway.
Somebody is up to something.
And they might not make it in time.
323 - The Uninvited, United States, 1944. Dir. Lewis Allen.
Disturbances wouldn't disturb me.
So says Roderick Fitzgerald to Commander Beech. He is talking about the house. The charming old house on top of the cliff overlooking the sea.
They call the sea the haunted shores.
They call the house Windward.
Roderick and his sister Pamela want to buy it. It reminds her of childhood. It has a room where he can work on his music and writing.
He should be a composer, but he has settled for being a music critic as a way of paying the bills.
"What a job. Going to concerts and telling your readers how bad the music was."
Haunted.
Ha! Fitzgerald laughs at such a silly notion. He is not worried about the house's being haunted.
He will be.
Commander Beech's granddaughter Stella Meredith loves the place and does not wish it to be sold. Commander Beech has forbidden her to go there, so he is all too happy to get it off his hands.
Little does he know that Fitzgerald will take a liking to Stella and take her out in the boat. And invite her back when he gets back from London. Invite her back. Inside the house.
Things are going to get darker.
Something happened once in that house.
Something involving Stella's mother.
Stella's mother returns with the scent of mimosa.
Another presence returns with a different scent.
They are both uninvited.
Stella's father, Mr. Meredith, was an artist. He painted. In that room where Roderick wants to write his music.
But something happened.
And it has never been resolved. Now it wants to be resolved.
Painters need models.
And sometimes models . . . well . . .
Dr. Scott gets involved.
So does that strange former secretary named Miss Holloway.
Somebody is up to something.
And they might not make it in time.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
322 - Cat People, United States, 1942. Jacques Tourneur.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
322 - Cat People, United States, 1942. Jacques Tourneur.
Oliver and Alice smell Irena's perfume.
It is called Lalage. It is "warm and living." Living, perhaps, the way a cat is living.
Uh-oh.
The doctor, Dr. Louis Judd, has felt some . . . claws.
Things have not worked out well for him.
Oliver and Alice leave the building, following the smell of the perfume.
Maybe Irena knows something.
Maybe she has done. Something.
Irena is from Serbia. She has come to America, where she designs fashions. She does not yet have any friends. She goes to the zoo to watch animals to inspire her drawings. While there she meets Oliver. He becomes her first friend. She invites him to tea.
King John is also from Serbia. Not the King John of the Magna Carta. But the King John of Serbia.
She keeps a statue of him in her apartment.
She explains.
"At first the people were good and worshiped God in a true Christian way, but little by little people changed. People bowed down to Satan and said their masses to him. They had become witches and were evil."
King John took care of that. He drove the Mamelukes out of Serbia and freed the people
But some, the wicked, escaped into the mountains, and they continue to haunt Irena's village.
Maybe her mother was descended from them.
Maybe . . . she . . .
Irena is afraid. She loves Oliver and does not wish to hurt him. She does everything she can do to be good and loving.
If only that strange, catlike, Serbian woman had not approached her at that dinner and called her Moja Sestra, "My Sister."
That did not encourage her.
Nor does the fact that she has the key to the panther cage hiding in her pocket. The zookeeper left it in the lock by mistake.
That scares her too.
With this film Jacques Tourneur launches his career as a director. Well, he had been working in the industry for twenty years, as an editor and assistant director, and as a director of short films. He had also directed features sporadically, and this is now his fifth feature in the past three years. But this is the one that puts him on the map. He will do nothing but direct features for the remainder of his career, and he will work in a variety of genres, including romantic comedy, religious drama, action adventure, war, mystery, thriller, horror, and Western.
From I Walked with a Zombie (1943) to Days of Glory (1944) to Stars in My Crown (1950) to The Flame and the Arrow (1950) to Appointment in Honduras (1953) to Wichita (1955).
And the great one. That film noir of films noir, Out of the Past (1947). Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Richard Webb. I predict Criterion will issue it on their label before long.
And here is something important to know--
In Cat People Jacques Tourneur works with the same cinematographer that he will work with later in Out of the Past. Nicholas Musuraca. One of the giants of film noir photography.
Dark blacks. Deep shadows. High contrast lighting. Wide angles. Deep focus.
And their producer. Val Lewton. Who after starting as a writer and story editor (including on Gone with the Wind (1939)) is producing his first film, one of a string of hits that will keep RKO in the black and prospering. He works with Jacques Tourneur on a few in a row and with Musuraca on a few more.
Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness. - The Anatomy of Atavism, Dr. Louis Judd.
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My world, both parts, and both parts must die.
John Donne, Holy Sonnets, V.
Things might not work out for Irena.
She is a good woman, but she is afraid she is not good.
If she keeps giving voice to it, her fear may win.
322 - Cat People, United States, 1942. Jacques Tourneur.
Oliver and Alice smell Irena's perfume.
It is called Lalage. It is "warm and living." Living, perhaps, the way a cat is living.
Uh-oh.
The doctor, Dr. Louis Judd, has felt some . . . claws.
Things have not worked out well for him.
Oliver and Alice leave the building, following the smell of the perfume.
Maybe Irena knows something.
Maybe she has done. Something.
Irena is from Serbia. She has come to America, where she designs fashions. She does not yet have any friends. She goes to the zoo to watch animals to inspire her drawings. While there she meets Oliver. He becomes her first friend. She invites him to tea.
King John is also from Serbia. Not the King John of the Magna Carta. But the King John of Serbia.
She keeps a statue of him in her apartment.
She explains.
"At first the people were good and worshiped God in a true Christian way, but little by little people changed. People bowed down to Satan and said their masses to him. They had become witches and were evil."
King John took care of that. He drove the Mamelukes out of Serbia and freed the people
Maybe her mother was descended from them.
Maybe . . . she . . .
Irena is afraid. She loves Oliver and does not wish to hurt him. She does everything she can do to be good and loving.
If only that strange, catlike, Serbian woman had not approached her at that dinner and called her Moja Sestra, "My Sister."
That did not encourage her.
Nor does the fact that she has the key to the panther cage hiding in her pocket. The zookeeper left it in the lock by mistake.
That scares her too.
With this film Jacques Tourneur launches his career as a director. Well, he had been working in the industry for twenty years, as an editor and assistant director, and as a director of short films. He had also directed features sporadically, and this is now his fifth feature in the past three years. But this is the one that puts him on the map. He will do nothing but direct features for the remainder of his career, and he will work in a variety of genres, including romantic comedy, religious drama, action adventure, war, mystery, thriller, horror, and Western.
From I Walked with a Zombie (1943) to Days of Glory (1944) to Stars in My Crown (1950) to The Flame and the Arrow (1950) to Appointment in Honduras (1953) to Wichita (1955).
And the great one. That film noir of films noir, Out of the Past (1947). Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Richard Webb. I predict Criterion will issue it on their label before long.
And here is something important to know--
In Cat People Jacques Tourneur works with the same cinematographer that he will work with later in Out of the Past. Nicholas Musuraca. One of the giants of film noir photography.
Dark blacks. Deep shadows. High contrast lighting. Wide angles. Deep focus.
And their producer. Val Lewton. Who after starting as a writer and story editor (including on Gone with the Wind (1939)) is producing his first film, one of a string of hits that will keep RKO in the black and prospering. He works with Jacques Tourneur on a few in a row and with Musuraca on a few more.
Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness. - The Anatomy of Atavism, Dr. Louis Judd.
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My world, both parts, and both parts must die.
John Donne, Holy Sonnets, V.
Things might not work out for Irena.
She is a good woman, but she is afraid she is not good.
If she keeps giving voice to it, her fear may win.
Friday, November 17, 2017
321 - F is for Fake, United States, 1973. Dir. Orson Welles.
Friday, November 17, 2017
321 - F is for Fake, United States, 1973. Dir. Orson Welles.
When first the flush of a newborn sun fell on the green and gold
Our father, Adam, sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold.
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart.
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
- Rudyard Kipling
The Conundrum of the Workshops
As quoted by Orson Welles.
Charles Irving went to art galleries around the world taking an art catalog with him featuring paintings that had been sold over the past few years.
One of the paintings in the catalog was a portrait of a woman by Modigliani.
He showed the Modigliani to one gallery owner and told him it was a fake. The gallery owner said, Yes, one can see that. Modigliani would not have drawn the arm parallel to the dress that way. The background is poor. The signature is wrong.
He showed the Modigliani to the next gallery owner and told him it was genuine. The gallery owner said, Yes, one can see that. It is one of his finest works, a portrait of Mademoiselle Hebuterne. We know it well. It is reproduced all over.
What?
Wherever Irving went, each gallery owner went along with whatever he told them.
Which statement was true? Was the Modigliani fake or genuine?
The "Modigliani" was really painted by Elmyr de Hory. Or Heury. Or Bury. Sury. Kury. Bury. Dury. Or Elmer Hoffman. Or Baron Raynal. Or Compte de Herzog. Or whichever of his more than 60 names he was using at the time.
Irving states, "After that, I must say, I lost my faith in the concept of expertise."
Elmyr de Hory has become the most notorious art forger in the world. He has a special gift. He can paint in the vein of many different styles of painters. The first painting he sold was a "Picasso." Painted by de Hory.
"I can paint false Picassos as well as anybody else."
Orson Welles claims, "If the lawyers would just let us, we could name you one highly respected museum which boasts of an important collection of Postimpressionists every single one of which was painted by Elmyr."
Charles Irving knows Elmyr because he has written his biography. They now each live on the island of Ibiza off the eastern coast of Spain.
And he is so impressed with Elmyr's fakery that he wants to try it himself.
So he writes the autobiography of Howard Hughes.
Except that he does not.
Howard Hughes is stunned to discover his autobiography is being published, when he has not written one. And the co-writer is a man of whom he has never heard before. He is so shocked he comes out of hiding long enough to telephone some journalists and state his case.
Let us dig further still.
Francois Reichenbach is directing a film about the art forger Elmyr de Hory.
Then they discover his biographer Charles Irving has become a literary forger.
He turns over his film to Orson Welles, who now makes a film about it all, including putting Reichenbach in front of the camera as his camera operator.
Orson Welles began his career as a faker when Welles did Wells. He faked a martian landing and sent the nation into hysterics. Or more properly, on Sunday, October 30, 1938, for the Halloween episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, he adapted and read the H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds (1898), and all of America went into a panic, believing that real Martians were really landing.
Or so that is what we have been told growing up.
Perhaps that story itself is a fake. The radio show's ratings were limited. The show was up against Edgar Bergen the ventriloquist. The newspapers, we are now told, printed the story of the panic to drive audiences back to print,
Welles then talks about his own portayal of Howard Hughes, years before, in Citizen Kane. Joseph Cotten visits us to talk about what might have been if they had gone with their original plan and he had played Howard Hughes openly, with that name. They show a new News on the March, the spoof of March of Time that opens Citizen Kane, but in this one they speak explicitly about Howard Hughes and tease him. He can no longer hurt Orson Welles, so Orson is free to be playful.
By the way, Orson says, we do not know if Hughes' telephone call was itself really him. Hughes was known to use doubles.
And Charles Irving's fake autobiography of Hughes might not have been written by Irving either. It may have been written by his wife Edith!
Orson Welles begins and ends with magic tricks. He makes a key turn into a coin and disappear. And reappear. And turn into a key and turn into a coin and disappear. Many iterations. All putting a smile on a little boy's face.
He takes us to Chartres. Chartres Cathedral. "A celebration of God's glory and to the dignity of man."
But who designed it? Who built it?
"The premiere work of man, perhaps, in the Western world, and it is without an author."
Welles takes us on a tour de force of reflection on the nature of art and commerce, truth and lies, genuines and forgeries, experts and novices.
But he promises both verbally and in writing, that everything we hear during the next hour will be true, "based on solid facts."
This film is made in the latter part of Orson Welles's career and yet in it he looks young. He is still only in his fifties.
He played older, broken men so often that viewers may mistakenly identify him with those characters. Charles Foster Kane. Gregory Arkadin. Hank Quinlan. King Saul. John Falstaff. Mr. Charles Clay.
But here he plays himself. With a childlike sparkle in his eyes. Generosity of spirit. Love of life. Love of stories. Love of filmmaking. And love of MAGIC.
He is still the five-year old boy seeing his first magic trick.
He is delighted.
And he is delightful.
And charming.
The film may be difficult at first for one to watch. If so, watch it again. It unfolds beautifully with repeated viewing.
Peter Bogdanovich observes in his introduction, "If you get on the film's wavelength and listen to what he is saying and watch what he is doing, it is riveting."
Bogdanovich is correct. This film's reputation is due only to grow with time, one day to be highly regarded. It is a record of Welles' genius.
And a record of his good-natured youthful zest. He is not the dying, decrepit old man. His is not bitter in any way. He is the living amenable artist. Fun-loving. Charismatic. And magnetic. You watch him and want to spend time with him. You listen to him and want to hear more. He has a beautiful soul to go with his deep rich voice and bright eyes.
It is also a textbook for aspiring film editors. Welles understands storytelling, and he knows how to tell great stories using cuts.
The story at the end, for example, is told first verbally by Welles and then through reenactment by Welles and Oja Kodar, with footage filmed by Welles intercut with pictures and paintings of Picasso.
And it is captivating. The tension builds with as much force as if one were watching the action take place in real time.
Oja (rhymes with Goya) Kodar is with Welles now. They tell us she was with Picasso before. She is herself a connecting link to the stories behind the film, and she has contributed to the film.
"As long as there are fakers, there have to be experts.
But if there weren't any experts, would there be any fakers?"
They ask a good question.
If so many museums around the world have so many fake paintings hanging on the walls, why not prosecute the forgers and correct the mistakes?
One, the scandal and embarrassment is too daunting to endure.
Two, the art dealers who took the stand as witnesses would themselves be made suspect. Who is to say that they were not in on it?
321 - F is for Fake, United States, 1973. Dir. Orson Welles.
When first the flush of a newborn sun fell on the green and gold
Our father, Adam, sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold.
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart.
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
- Rudyard Kipling
The Conundrum of the Workshops
As quoted by Orson Welles.
One of the paintings in the catalog was a portrait of a woman by Modigliani.
He showed the Modigliani to one gallery owner and told him it was a fake. The gallery owner said, Yes, one can see that. Modigliani would not have drawn the arm parallel to the dress that way. The background is poor. The signature is wrong.
He showed the Modigliani to the next gallery owner and told him it was genuine. The gallery owner said, Yes, one can see that. It is one of his finest works, a portrait of Mademoiselle Hebuterne. We know it well. It is reproduced all over.
What?
Wherever Irving went, each gallery owner went along with whatever he told them.
Which statement was true? Was the Modigliani fake or genuine?
The "Modigliani" was really painted by Elmyr de Hory. Or Heury. Or Bury. Sury. Kury. Bury. Dury. Or Elmer Hoffman. Or Baron Raynal. Or Compte de Herzog. Or whichever of his more than 60 names he was using at the time.
Irving dug more deeply. He tried again.
"I wanted to find out what it was really like to try and get an expertise on a fake, and I asked Elmyr to do three drawings for me: two Matisse and a Modigliani--which he did before lunch, and put a little coffee stain on the edge of the Modigliani to make it look really as if Modigliani had done it in some Paris cafe. I then took the three drawings to the Museum of Modern Art. The museum examined them for two hours and came back with the verdict that they were absolutely genuine, and, in fact, were horrified that I wanted to sell them."
Irving had his friend paint three forged paintings in one morning and in two hours the experts verified that they were genuine.
Orson Welles observes, "One nod from an expert and that piece would be worth maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars."
Elmyr puts his canvas in the fire.
We watch them burn.
No worries. He can paint another one by dinnertime. And it will look the same.
"All the world loves to see the experts and the establishment made a fool of," Irving says.
Elmyr de Hory has become the most notorious art forger in the world. He has a special gift. He can paint in the vein of many different styles of painters. The first painting he sold was a "Picasso." Painted by de Hory.
"I can paint false Picassos as well as anybody else."
Charles Irving knows Elmyr because he has written his biography. They now each live on the island of Ibiza off the eastern coast of Spain.
And he is so impressed with Elmyr's fakery that he wants to try it himself.
So he writes the autobiography of Howard Hughes.
Except that he does not.
Howard Hughes is stunned to discover his autobiography is being published, when he has not written one. And the co-writer is a man of whom he has never heard before. He is so shocked he comes out of hiding long enough to telephone some journalists and state his case.
Let us dig further still.
Francois Reichenbach is directing a film about the art forger Elmyr de Hory.
Then they discover his biographer Charles Irving has become a literary forger.
He turns over his film to Orson Welles, who now makes a film about it all, including putting Reichenbach in front of the camera as his camera operator.
Orson Welles began his career as a faker when Welles did Wells. He faked a martian landing and sent the nation into hysterics. Or more properly, on Sunday, October 30, 1938, for the Halloween episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, he adapted and read the H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds (1898), and all of America went into a panic, believing that real Martians were really landing.
Or so that is what we have been told growing up.
Perhaps that story itself is a fake. The radio show's ratings were limited. The show was up against Edgar Bergen the ventriloquist. The newspapers, we are now told, printed the story of the panic to drive audiences back to print,
Welles then talks about his own portayal of Howard Hughes, years before, in Citizen Kane. Joseph Cotten visits us to talk about what might have been if they had gone with their original plan and he had played Howard Hughes openly, with that name. They show a new News on the March, the spoof of March of Time that opens Citizen Kane, but in this one they speak explicitly about Howard Hughes and tease him. He can no longer hurt Orson Welles, so Orson is free to be playful.
By the way, Orson says, we do not know if Hughes' telephone call was itself really him. Hughes was known to use doubles.
And Charles Irving's fake autobiography of Hughes might not have been written by Irving either. It may have been written by his wife Edith!
Orson Welles begins and ends with magic tricks. He makes a key turn into a coin and disappear. And reappear. And turn into a key and turn into a coin and disappear. Many iterations. All putting a smile on a little boy's face.
He takes us to Chartres. Chartres Cathedral. "A celebration of God's glory and to the dignity of man."
But who designed it? Who built it?
"The premiere work of man, perhaps, in the Western world, and it is without an author."
Welles takes us on a tour de force of reflection on the nature of art and commerce, truth and lies, genuines and forgeries, experts and novices.
But he promises both verbally and in writing, that everything we hear during the next hour will be true, "based on solid facts."
This film is made in the latter part of Orson Welles's career and yet in it he looks young. He is still only in his fifties.
He played older, broken men so often that viewers may mistakenly identify him with those characters. Charles Foster Kane. Gregory Arkadin. Hank Quinlan. King Saul. John Falstaff. Mr. Charles Clay.
But here he plays himself. With a childlike sparkle in his eyes. Generosity of spirit. Love of life. Love of stories. Love of filmmaking. And love of MAGIC.
He is still the five-year old boy seeing his first magic trick.
He is delighted.
And he is delightful.
And charming.
The film may be difficult at first for one to watch. If so, watch it again. It unfolds beautifully with repeated viewing.
Peter Bogdanovich observes in his introduction, "If you get on the film's wavelength and listen to what he is saying and watch what he is doing, it is riveting."
Bogdanovich is correct. This film's reputation is due only to grow with time, one day to be highly regarded. It is a record of Welles' genius.
And a record of his good-natured youthful zest. He is not the dying, decrepit old man. His is not bitter in any way. He is the living amenable artist. Fun-loving. Charismatic. And magnetic. You watch him and want to spend time with him. You listen to him and want to hear more. He has a beautiful soul to go with his deep rich voice and bright eyes.
It is also a textbook for aspiring film editors. Welles understands storytelling, and he knows how to tell great stories using cuts.
The story at the end, for example, is told first verbally by Welles and then through reenactment by Welles and Oja Kodar, with footage filmed by Welles intercut with pictures and paintings of Picasso.
And it is captivating. The tension builds with as much force as if one were watching the action take place in real time.
Oja (rhymes with Goya) Kodar is with Welles now. They tell us she was with Picasso before. She is herself a connecting link to the stories behind the film, and she has contributed to the film.
"As long as there are fakers, there have to be experts.
But if there weren't any experts, would there be any fakers?"
They ask a good question.
If so many museums around the world have so many fake paintings hanging on the walls, why not prosecute the forgers and correct the mistakes?
One, the scandal and embarrassment is too daunting to endure.
Two, the art dealers who took the stand as witnesses would themselves be made suspect. Who is to say that they were not in on it?
Three, the laws of certain countries, such as France, make it too difficult to prosecute. One would have to have a minimum of two witnesses witnessing that the signature on the painting is false and they themselves witnessed the false signing.
Painting a painting is not a crime. Painting an imitation of another painting is not a crime.
It is the signing of another's name to a painting, with the intent to deceive, that makes it a crime.
And de Hory insists he has never signed a single painting. He does not know how the signatures got there. Perhaps his buyers added them later.
Cut to Charles Irving.
He looks incredulous.
Cut back and forth between Irving and de Hory. Who is telling the truth and who is lying? Another brilliant piece of editing.
Back to our list above. We have listed three reasons why the perpetrators of the forgeries on the walls of art museums are not prosecuted. Now for a fourth.
Four, Elmyr maintains "If they hang long enough there they become real."
And Welles develops the idea.
Why is Picasso celebrated as a genius and de Hory put in prison as a criminal if they can paint the same painting?
"Is it just a forgery?
Is it not also a painting?"
If you step outside the movie, you will see that these men faced tremendous consequences for their deceptions, and their lives were filled with troubles. But inside the movie, they seem to sit apart from society, laughing at the success of their duplicity. Well, Welles does acknowledge that de Hory has lived life as a fugitive, always on the run, always concerned that he might go to jail, and having already spent some time in jail. de Hory would not live long past the making of the film.
In the end we all die. And our works outlast us. But then eventually they too fade away. We sing, but not forever.
Our songs will be silenced, but what of it?
Go on singing.
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