Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread II

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Love this scene where Claire confronts the twins...



CLAIRE: This is the most disgusting thing that's ever happened to me

ELLIOTT: I doubt that...

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Call it Sleazy Rider. Salvador updates Captain America and Billy's ill-fated road trip for the dawn of the Reagan Era, sending a pair of scoundrels representing (now-jaded) 60s idealism on a last-chance spree to El Salvador. Boyle's a combat photographer who hasn't produced in years, his sidekick Dr. Rock is a washed-up DJ under pressure from the Mrs to pursue computer sales in Silicon Valley. Somehow with three American dollars between them they keep the whisky flowing--is Dr. Rock pimping?--while their paradise turns into a fascist hell with them in the crossfire of civil war.

James Woods is wonderfully weaselly in this character study of a creep who knows the difference between right and wrong but tries to not let it cramp his style, he'll play both sides as long as he can. But things will catch up eventually. I'm also impressed with Jim Belushi here...sure, he's playing a boorish slob, but he's a convincing boorish slob, a real-life Blutarsky.

Salvador is as subtle as the goal horn, there's machine gun fire over the opening credits as civilians are gunned down on the steps of the cathedral, first scene the baby's crying while the wife and landlord are shouting at each other, it's in your face and rarely lets up. The quiet moments usually involve grisly shots of dead bodies. It's definitely a guy film, action-packed and almost misogyinistic with the female characters basically props and the male characters revelling in pre-PC misbehaviour. If Richard Boyle is your salvador (saviour) then you're in deep trouble.

And it may be one of the most anti-American movies made in the USA, pointing the finger at yuppie complacency for letting the 60s dream of peace love and understanding die, betraying the conscience of a generation galvanized by the Vietnam war. But as a pretty MP tells Dr. Rock at an embassy function, "I was kind of young during all that. And you're weird. So f*** off."

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Salvador
Stone (1986)
“You got to get close to get the truth. You get too close. You die.”

Based on a true story: Richard Boyle (James Woods) is a cynical journalist. Confident and jaded, he’s a veteran war correspondent of many foreign conflicts. We know this because he recites his resume in a phone conversation in the first few minutes. He’s also a bit of an ass. We also know this from the first few scenes of conversation. He’s almost like a drug addict the way he begs on the phone for a gig in El Salvador. With prospects dried up in the U.S. (this isn’t the first time, one assumes), he (somewhat) shanghais his friend Dr. Rock (Jim Belushi always speaking in shouts) into a roadtrip to the war-torn country. The combatants in that battle vary based on the perspective. Poor peasants fighting the government or another case of “commie aggression,” aka a mini-Vietnam? Only your interfering super-power may know for sure! Boyle, for his part, is a “left winger, but no commie” and he gets gradually more and more sucked into the conflict and the personal stakes. He loves Maria and her children (how much of her vs. the thrill of the moment, is something I’m willing to debate). It isn’t long before he’s agitating and putting anyone he cares about at risk, including his makeshift family and a young nun/aide worker. It ends up ok for him in the end in that he’s still alive and not lost in a military state. Others in his orbit cannot say as much.

This one was a bit of a struggle for me. The story moves and there are moments of genuine tension, but it was also hard for me to not actively dislike Boyle at almost all times and I put a fair amount of that blame on Woods’ performance. He’s amped and, at times, entertaining, but the character arc that clearly is in the script never feels like it’s actually playing out on screen so when the shit really starts to get serious around him, I just never really bought into any of it. The emotional beats should have had some impact, but none of it did. Despite his tears and pleadings at the end, I never really felt he shook his adrenaline junkie tendencies. It's a good performance, but I'm not sure it's in the right movie. He’s really pissed at the U.S. and El Salvador, but never seems to put any blame on himself. He never seems effective enough at his job to play crusader and he certainly isn’t sympathetic enough to invest in emotionally. Is that because of Woods?

Or is it because of Stone? It’s like Stone got super-blasted on cocaine and watched Costa-Gavras movies all one weekend. I don’t mind Stone’s clear political stance (as voiced through Woods, which really funny given Woods actual publicly stated political beliefs) or that he’s angry about Vietnam, among other things. It isn’t like Costa-Gavras doesn’t have a clear and often angry POV. He does. Stone just lacks ... something. It isn’t subtly. Maybe elegance? Costa-Gavras films make me mad, but there’s also a lingering emotion there. This film just makes me mad — at both real life and the movie itself. Man, that score felt really out of place to me too. More action movie than political thriller and the scene where the tanks roll into the village sounded like some odd, half-baked cover of the Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back. Stone would be better as he moved on his career — funny enough, I’d seriously contemplated his next movie, Platoon, a few times in the past as one of my choices — but there’s something a little much about Salvador that kept me at arm’s length. Maybe it was Woods and Jim Belushi shouting at me for two hours?

Final point: I hinted at this earlier with a passing comment about Boyle’s competency at his job, but I was kinda stunned that for all the pronouncements about how accomplished he and his fellow photographer John are, we were never given a single example of their work. There were talks of accolades and achievements, but there was never any of Boyle’s writing or photos and none of John Cassady’s photos (that I recall) ever shown. I thought for sure we’d get a glimpse of some of Cassady’s work given that he is shot down while shooting. There are several stretches where they’re bravely photographing carnage either after horrific violence or during actual battle. But no photos. Nothing. Just found that a bit funny.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

@Ralph Spoilsport love your Dead Ringers perspective.

 

[kihei]

Salvador (1986) Directed by Oliver Stone

Usually I tell people that you really have to see a movie in a theatre to get its impact, both visually and dramatically. I think this is almost entirely true, and as valid for small, personal films like Revanche, Moonlight and The Double Life of Veronique as it is for cinematically splendiferous works like Gravity, The Assassin and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But there are always exceptions and it turns out that Salvador is an one of them. Seeing Salvador on big screen is deceptive. In the movie theatre Salvador was all busy action, explosions, arguments, wild gestures, and noise, much of it provided by James Woods and Jim Belushi with John Savage acting in a totally different style than everybody else. As I remember it, when I first saw it, the movie was overwhelming and a bit intoxicating. Salvador on a small screen now seems overdirected (too much cacophony, not enough time for contemplation) and underdirected (Jesus, Oliver, reign those actors in a little), unsubtle and shallow. What it looks like, I guess, is an Oliver Stone movie, and maybe over the years he has just worn me out.

I'm convinced that James Wood is either a genuine sleazy, hard-to-take guy, possibly with lice, or one of the greatest actors in the world. If he is a really nice, soft-spoken guy, then my apologies--I have underrated his genius. But if he is anything like he seems, I'd be very careful what movies I would pick him to be in. He is as much as an inveterate scene stealer as any of the great hams in film history. Lionel Barrymore and Charles Laughton got nothing on this guy. Whether it be physical ticks, shifty eyes, crazed energy, or that voice, he attracts the attention of the camera like a dead cow attracts maggots. This is his BIGGEST performance and it is simultaneously impressive and awful, no doubt encouraged by Stone, no stranger to wretched excess himself. One of the things about that performance that I noticed this time is that it put Jim Belushi's performance in not very favourable contrast. The mistake that Belushi makes is trying to keep up with Woods. Where Woods has several different ways of doing the same basic thing, Belushi has none. He isn't even a one-note actor, so sharing the screen in close proximity to Woods only exposes him as amateurish. Again, the small screen actually made this contrast appear worse than it did on the big screen where initially I was getting caught up in so many other things. Then, from a totally different universe, there is John Savage, who has made such a fetish of understatement that he allowed himself to become a living, breathing oxymoron: ostentatiously subtle. How far can you go using a squint to communicate intelligence? Not very far.

All of this stuff distracted from the expose that Stone was trying to communicate. With the exception of the girl friend (Elpedio Carrillo, who provides the film with its most naturalistic and guile-free performance), central Americans only really fit in this movie as over-the-top bad guys. With Woods sucking all the oxygen out of the film and Stone pointing fingers in all the already obvious places, there is not much time for contemplating the real victims of these misadventures who seem little more than collateral damage in this film. Stone seems like a Big Picture guy--I'm not sure he cares about the victims as much as he just wants to call out the United States for its treachery.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Next pick is Anthony Harvey's The Lion In Winter

 

[kihei]

Orpheus (1950) Directed by Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau dabbled in many arts including literature, theatre, design, poetry illustration, and film. He directed a number of films that are hard to describe but which might best be called poetic fantasies. These include The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, The Testament of Orpheus, and a gorgeous version of Beauty and the Beast. While the films are certainly artsy in a self-conscious way, they are also incredibly imaginative and inventive. Safe to say there is no other director in film whose works resemble Cocteau's much at all. He is own case of sui generis if there ever was one. Orpheus is a very modernized and loose adaptation of the Greek myth about a poet of great charm and persuasiveness who is victimized by an envious rival and as a result loses his wife Eurydice to death. However, Orpheus is not willing to accept such a fate and travels to the "underground" to rescue her. His effort is rewarded by the gods whose hearts he melts, but with a proviso: he and she can return to the living, but he may not look at her face until their journey back home has been completed. Tragically, he is not up to this modest task.

Cocteau uses this story as a starting point and then with great imagination and wit moves a lot of stuff around, changing things dramatically in the process (but without violating the original myth greatly). What was once one tragic love story becomes two or maybe even three tragic love stories. Death (Maria Casares from Children of Paradise) becomes a beautiful woman and she, not Eurydice, becomes Orpheus's (Jean Marais) principal love interest. At the same time, Death's quite likeable assistant Heurtibise falls in love with Eurydice and, given the fact that this particular version of Orpheus to whom she is married is something of a lout, she seems to reciprocate his feelings, too. Cocteau seems to suggest that Greek myths if moved to a contemporary application would get complicated very fast in this modern day and age. Transforming the story from a supernatural rescue to a ballad about a poet in love with death herself is a risky but ultimately satisfying move. But what really makes the film memorable is how Cocteau goes about creating a hereafter. Rather than creating some gorgeous paradise, Cocteau's hereafter is mundane, stodgy, bureaucratic, and decidedly secular. Angels of death ride motorcycles, the gateway to the hereafter is a mirror; and important messages from the underworld are communicated through car radio. With a minimum of special effects, mostly related to venturing through mirrors, resurrecting the dead, and getting from place to place in the underworld, Cocteau creates an utterly unique image of an afterlife like none other in movies or in fiction. It is as visually intoxicating as it is wondrously imaginative. Orpheus is one of those movies that can be seen over and over again and still seem fresh and full of new ideas and experiences. It also becomes funnier each time I see it as I recognize more of the subtle bits of humour that Cocteau throws frequently into the mix. Orpheus represents poetical cinema at its absolute most enthralling.

subtitiles

 

[kihei]

My next pick will be Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) directed by Sergei Parajanov

 

[Jevo]

Salvador (1986) dir. Oliver Stone

What to do when you are an accomplished photojournalist with plenty of experience from reporting from the worst parts of the world, but you have a few vices with drugs and alcohol, which means it's hard to get a steady job back in America? For Richard Boyle the answer is packing up his things and going to the newest hot spot on the list: El Salvador. Couldn't be anything too bad compared to what he experienced in Vietnam. However it quickly becomes clear that El Salvador is not a walk in the park. As he and his buddy Doctor Rock enters the country, they witness a young student being executed by government troops. Things soon turn from bad to worse, with death squads roaming around, and it becomes a dangerous place to be an American due to Americas involvement in the conflict. Just as Boyle is about to leave for safer shores, he runs into an old lover and her kids, and he becomes determined to get them out safely.

I'm not sure you can make a non-political war movie, but Oliver Stone certainly wouldn't be the one to make it. But what I really like about Salvador is that all the politics are in the background somewhat. It's not the main focus of the film, but it affects everything that happens in the film. Oliver Stone is someone who can get very on the nose about politics in his films, and I think that's often for the worse. I think Stone's best films are the ones where he lets the politics affect the film, but not make it a main point. I think he does that here, and I think he does that in Platoon as well. Both movies are character focused, instead of focusing heavily on everything that is going on in the background. This makes for more interesting films. As we are able to see and experience how the whole thing affects these people, and the people around them. Especially the last part I think is quite important in this movie as well as Platoon. Seeing how "we" are treating the people who actually live in these places day-to-day. I think that's where Stone really manages to drive home a point with Salvador. I think when you are doing it the way he's doing it here, you are able to get more in depth with your critique, than if you are doing it more on the nose and tackling it head on. The latter way I think can also be off putting, even if you politically aligned with the viewpoint being put forward. You have to walk a very fine line for it not to feel pushy. I think several of us touched upon this when we reviewed Roger And Me, where Michael Moore's style ends feeling played out, and you get tired by it and his way of making films. Even if you are sympathetic to his point of view and what he is doing.

I really enjoyed Salvador. It's a better version of The Killing Fields, but I might just be making that comparison because it's two films about journalists in wars. A big part of why I like it is James Woods. I think he's a very underrated actor. He has enough chops to completely carry a film, and he has enough quirks to play a character like Boyle here. He was nominated for the Oscar, and probably should have won it. But Paul Newman got a lifetime achievement win for a lesser performance in The Color of Money.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

For a bohemian with highbrow literary credentials Jean Cocteau seemed to have a good handle on film as a popular medium. Orpheus is unpretentious, a modern retelling of a Greek legend and as mainstream as a man and wife bickering over the breakfast table (except the man can make the wife disappear with a glance--how's that for a husband's fantasy). I think Cocteau must have been a movie fan himself, or at least understood his audience numbers: tens of thousands may see his plays, hundreds of thousands may read his novels, but millions will see his films. I don't know anything about his written work--I assume it's more challenging--but he pitches this film perfectly, even makes fun of avant-garde pretensions (like the book of poetry with nothing but blank pages, or the cryptic radio transmissions that Orpheus believes is a new form of poetry), while helping the audience along (such as Hurtibese explaining to Orpheus how he can move effortlessly in the underworld while Orpheus struggles). As a dummy I appreciate these gestures. Orpheus can be the springboard to any number of philosophical or psychoanalytic digressions, touching on the nature of true love, immortality, egotism, even fame and pop culture. Or it can simply be enjoyed as a fairytale with lots of playful camera tricks. It is a film for many audiences.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

@Ralph Spoilsport love your Dead Ringers perspective.

Thanks Kal!

Not exactly sure what you're referring to, but I'll take it as a compliment!

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Orpheus
Cocteau (1950)
“Beware of mirrors.”

Based on the classic Greek myth, Orpheus is an artist (here a poet, there a musician) whose wife dies. He descends to the underworld to free her and so enchants the powers that be that they agree to free her on one condition — he can never look at her again. He fails. She returns to hell and he’s eventually ripped to shreds by the Furies. Cocteau takes this and throws a few more complications into it. Death herself (well, maybe not exactly) falls in love with Orpheus who willingly reciprocates, while her companion Hertuebise is in love with Orpheus’ wife, Eurydyce. The equation should work out there and maybe if they were above ground it would, but alas that is not to be. Rules are rules and some were broken. We jet off to an underworld court room, which decides Orpehus and Eurydyce can return to their mortal lives ... on the condition he never looks upon her. Orpheus seems more put out by this complication than appreciative of the ruling. Sure enough, he blows it. Those damn mirrors! Eurydyce is gone and an angry mob murders Orpheus. After a grueling journey back to hell, he declares his love to Death (he does seem happier with her) but he and Eurydyce are sent back to life again, this time with no memories of their journeys. Death and Hertuebise walk off into a questionable future. It probably is not the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

From a story/adaptation standpoint, I was most taken with Cocteau’s decision to complicate Orpheus’ relationship with Eurydyce in ways that I don’t recall the original story being, namely his love here of Death, which truly feels like a stronger bond than the one he has with his wife. Sure, Death has been manipulating the game a bit. The original feels more tragic to me than this one here. In the original (again, if I am recalling correct) Orpheus has lost his love and his ultimate folly and heartbreak is ours. Here, he feels like he’s moved on. Again, on their first return from the underworld, Eurydyce is more of an inconvenience than anything and my heart broke for her. My rambling about story here isn’t really important. I’m burying the lede, as they say.

What will stick with me about Orpheus is the mirror effects and the look/feel of the entire endeavor. So dreamy and spooky. The effects are so simple — water doubling for serene glass surfaces, running film in reverse to make people and objects move backwards. But it is so effective and striking. There is an eerie element throughout. The bombed out building that stands in for a corner of hell is quite a setting itself. Spirits aren’t always present, but feel just beyond the edges of the frame. Nothing in Orpheus is scary, yet I could see it pass as horror for some. It isn’t a nightmare, but it feels truly dream like.

 

[Jevo]

Orpheus (1950) dir. Jean Cocteau

Orpheus is at Cafe des Poetes when a beautiful woman arrives with a young poet arrives. The young poet gets drunk and starts a brawl, and he gets badly beaten. The woman asks the police to put him in her car, a big Rolls Royce, and she will take him to the hospital. Orpheus is dragged into the car to act as a witness. Orpheus quickly realises that they aren't going to the hospital, and that the young man is dead. At the womans chateau, the young poet is revived into a zombie like state, and he together with the woman disappear into a mirror. The woman's driver Heurtebise takes Orpheus back to his home where his worried wife Eurydice is waiting for him. She is pregnant and announces that to him, but the only thing he can think about is the beautiful woman he spent the night before with. Meanwhile Heurtebise falls in love with Eurydice. The woman returns from the underworld together with her henchmen to Eurydice's bedroom and takes her to the Underworld. Heurtebise proposes to lead Orpheus to the underworld to get Eurydice back. Orpheus agrees to go, but also tells Heurtebise he's fallen in love with the woman from the underworld. Orpheus manages to be allowed to take Eurydice back, but on the condition that he can't look at her.

Cocteau suceeds really well at translating an old myth to a contemporary setting. Something which doesn't always work out well. Maybe it's that all the supernatural stuff seem like the most natural thing in the world. Going through mirrors to go the underworld via the help of magic dishwashing gloves is all perfectly natural. Even if it sounds a bit stupid now, I never questioned it for a second in the film, and that's what really matters. I love the way Cocteau imagines the underworld and the supernaturals surrounding it. Taking off a pair of gloves and then playing it in reverse gives a great impression of the gloves being put on by some kind of outside force. He also uses plays something in reverse when Orpheus is going through the underworld, and I think also when he and Heurtebise are kinda crawling along a wall and then being blown away once they pass the corner. But I'm not sure about the last one. I think he makes that effect really well. It's something that often reaches uncanny valley I think, but I never had that here. I also love his vision of the underworld as bureaucratic organisation, with several 'Deaths' working on bringing people down there, and where you can go and plea for your loved ones.

Orpheus and Eurydice is a timeless story, and one that does well on film. Black Orpheus from around the same time is another great adaptation of the story, but a very different style from Cocteau's. I think Cocteau makes some interesting alterations to the story. Notably having Orpheus fall in love with death, as well as a less fatal ending to the story. Neither of which I think hurt the story, and work very well for the story that Cocteau is trying to tell.

 

[Jevo]

Daisies (1966) dir. Vera Chytilova

Marie and Marie are two friends, and I guess you can call them pranksters in lack of a better word. There's no story, it's mostly a series of 'pranks' by the two girls, and there's not necessarily any direct connection between the scenes, and there's no indication of what happens when, and what the chronological order is. Among the pranks are a sugar daddy con, where they go to an expensive restaurant with an older man, eats a lot of food and then ditch him at the train station.

I loved the way this movie starts. Just after the intro with the industrial footage, we see Marie and Marie sitting together, talking in a very robotic way, and going up and down as they talk, like a pair of pistons. After that it's a weird scene in nature and eventually they end up in bed in their apartment. And during that scene any kind of continuity in regards to space and time are basically thrown out of the window, and the tone is set for the rest of the film. It is also already allegorical in terms of it's visual language. Something that continues to be the case for the rest of the film.

I'm not really sure if the two principal actresses are good actors, but they do fit very well what the film needs them to do. Which is mainly to run around and be silly, and they do that really well. It's often very slapstick like and it works really well in the tone that Chytilova sets for the film. Sometimes you wonder if there was any restraints at all when filming this, but how well the style works without ever feeling out of place or over the stop, shows that there has to have been a very good plan from Chytilova, which kept things on the right path.

As a comedy this film really also have to be funny, and I think it was. Not exactly laugh out loud funny, but very entertaining and I sat with a smile on my face for much of the film. It's enough that I can see myself going back to watch the film just for that. But I also think that there's a lot of depth to explore on subsequent viewings. I didn't really know what to expect from the movie as I had never seen it before, but I was really impressed with it.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick is the documentary short Vive Le Tour by Louis Malle. It's on youtube with English subtitles:

 

[kihei]

Daisies (1966) Directed by Vera Chytilova

Daisies is an attempt at making an experimental dada-esque nonsense movie in which two young, seemingly not very bright girls wreak various kinds of havoc on one convention or another. The end result looks like a not-especially gifted undergraduate's student film. Watching the girls bop around, pouting and smiling and getting into various kinds of mischief, kept me interested for about fifteen minutes and then it was all downhill from there--though there is a fun scene near the end where the pair ruin a lavish feast fit for a king that made me very hungry.

Random thoughts:

1) Good thing the free spirits are cute and sexy. I can't imagine what this film would have been like with two silly guys in the lead roles. Can any male imagine sitting though that? I'll say one thing: the movie wouldn't have the reputation it has if that had been the case.

2) Come to think of it, why does this movie have a reputation at all, at least a good one?

3) If you are a practitioner of dada art, the fun thing is you don't really have to be good. If fact, being good might be seen as a liability, sort of a concession to bourgeois norms.

4) Incoherence is part of the fun, I guess. The movie can be seen as an attack on dirty old men, lavish dinners, social values, and mature behaviour, a movie singing the praises of a youth revolution that will throw everything topsy turvy just for the hell of it. Or it can also be seen as mindless children with no values thumbing their noses at their elders because they are irresponsible and can get away with it. In which case, the youth revolution is a harbinger of the end of civilization as we know it. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

5) The two leads didn't fare very well in terms of longevity. Blond Ivana Karbonova's career lasted through four more films, ending two years after it began; brunette Jitka Cerhova's career actually lasted ten years.

6) Experimental film can be such a joy when it works, but such an extravagance when it doesn't.

7) Daisies does smack of the sixties. At the risk of offending someone, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Eastern Europeans of this period weren't very good at being "psychedelic."

PS: Given the period that we are currently in, anyone who wants to get on my case about finding these two teenyboppers sexy should realize that they and I are literally the same age.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Daisies
Chytilova (1966)
“Nobody pays attention to us.”

Marie I and Marie II frolic. They torment men who are desirous of them. They gorge on food and engage in food fights. They get bored. They bathe. That’s about the extent of plot recap to Daisies I am capable of offering up. It opens and closes with shots and sounds of war, which probably mean something to someone, but not so much to me.

This was my second go-round with this flick. I’m not sure I make any more sense of it now than I did before. I remain entertained, if a little worn out. It’s a manic, frantic film. It’s almost like a collage. At one point their heads and limbs are disembodied. It bounces between black and white and color, numerous filters and tints. It’s goofy. More than a little bit slapstick. But I have to say that is has it’s charms. The two Maries, zany though they may be, are a fun pair to follow. The political commentary is lost me. I liked the flapper dance sequence. I’m probably not giving this movie a full fair shake (despite seeing it twice), but I know when I’m licked.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Marie and Marie are a couple of dolls with Barbie brains and Pinnochio ambitions. They come to life with a pledge to be bad (or spoiled, depending on who's translating) because the world is bad/spoiled. From there they cause as much mischief and mayhem as they can while they are still cute enough to get away with it. They repent at the end, but they're not very good at being good. The chandelier drops on them anyway. And why not? They were born to be bad.

It's no wonder Daisies was banned after it was completed. It IS a wonder it was approved in the first place. (Maybe a dinner date with the stars helped?) Anyhow, Daisies was made at a time when Czech and Slovakian filmmakers were expressing more artistic freedom, and there aren't many films, from anywhere or anytime, as free as Daisies. It is anarchic, surreal, bold and bratty, like its main characters. It grabs your attention, it does what it wants. Numerous psychedelic non-sequiturs and graphic inserts disrupt any comprehension of a coherent plotline. Playful but with a little mean streak (the gals spend some time chopping phallic symbols and laughing at the men foolish enough to waste time on them), its girls-will-be-girls spirit doesn't forget that this is (or at least was) a man's world, and whatever destruction and debauchery the girls get into, boys can do much, much, much worse. It's a beauty of a film.

Scissor sisters: this sample gives a good taste of Daisies' brew:

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Night and the City
Dassin (1950)
“I just wanna be somebody.”

We first see Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) on the run from some unknown assailant. He never really stops running over the course of the next 90 minutes. He’s a schemer and dreamer, a get rich quick man, always looking for an angle and more than willing to sell out anyone around him to get ahead. His first destination is the apartment of his girlfriend (Gene Tierney) where he gets caught trying to steal from her wallet. He flashes a smile and turns the accusation around on her for spying. We get a brief tour of this London underworld. His job, as much as he has one, is to corral rich dupes into visiting a night club where it’s operators — Phillip (Francis Sullivan) and Helen (Googie Withers) — slowly bleed them dry with attractive women and alcohol. But Harry has dreams. While working one of his games at a wrestling match, he overhears a dispute between the gangster promoter (Herbert Lom) and his father, a former wrestler offended by what his son has done to the sport. Harry sees opportunity. Soon (with the clandestine help of Helen, a past and potential future lover) he’s roped Gregorious (Stanislaus Zbyszko) into a rival wrestling promotion of his own. This plan blows up in spectacular fashion leaving the doomed Harry with no way out for his body, but maybe just maybe a small escape for his soul.

Widmark is an actor I’ve long had an affinity for. Boyish looks. A bit wild-eyed. Wired energy. One of the many things that fascinates me about this classic noir, however, is how unsympathetic Harry Fabian ultimately is. He’s tragic and there’s some cosmic sadness there, I suppose, but he’s unrepentant and craven up until the very end. His second attempt to rob poor Mary is heartbreaking in its desperation. You really feel for Mary. His performance is good though. So smug and cocky. The two primary antagonists, Cristo and Phillip, get more shading than Fabian does. Cristo loses his father and Phillip loses his lover both due to Harry’s crackpot plan and even though they’re maybe not the nicest guys either, you get a bit of the feels for them. Poor Gene Tierney doesn’t get much to do, but the rest of the cast is aces. Certainly Zbyszko leaves an impression as the stubborn, naive, but tough old bastard Gregorious and I appreciated Sullivan too — when Harry returns to get Phillip’s half of the 400 quid and Phillip goes to his closet, sees the fur is missing. He doesn’t say anything but you know it that moment Harry is f***ed.

Dassin was coming off a run of crime pics like Brute Force and The Naked City and would go to France a few years later to make the masterpiece that is Rififi, but as far as classic American noir goes, this one is among the best for me (yeah, I know it’s set in London). The long shadows constantly cast, the framing and use of foreground and background as characters either eavesdrop on conversations or peak around corners. It’s claustorphobic at times, even in outdoor spaces. I adored the prolonged wrestling fight that sends the movie toward its climax. Everything was running at a pitch and then there’s this prolonged pause for a scene (Rififi does something similar). The chase toward the end of the movie through a bombed out industrial landscape isn’t quite the Vienna sewers sequence from The Third Man, but it’s not too far behind.

If I had a few minor quibbles, the very end (literally the last two minutes or so) feel a bit rushed. Harry is killed, disposed of and his killer is arrested all in about a minute. I kinda chuckled at the scene of The Strangler getting pushed into the back of a police car. Was that tacked on to fit code? Someone had to pay for the crime? It’s a little melodramatic at times. Harry’s “I’ll show you!” speech to Phillip and Helen was a tad whiny and a bit much. I would understand if someone rolled their eyes at Gregorious’ death, though I am not one of those people.

 

[kihei]

Night and the City (1950) Directed by Jules Dassin

If one has to depend on Harry Fabian for a rooting interest, one is in deep trouble. I think the most noteworthy thing about Night and the City is that the movie provides its audience with no rooting interests at all. Having fallen for every get rich scheme in the book, Fabian comes across as a total loser who is lucky that he has found a good woman to put up with him. He strives mightily to be somebody, but it is a foregone conclusion that whatever hopes he may aspire to will get squished sooner or later in no uncertain terms. So what are we left with? A noir, set in foggy London town, without much to recommend it except for the sleaze. It never felt like tragedy to me, more like hopeless melodrama. But then again, I have never been a big Jules Dassin fan.

Richard Widmark kept me watching, though. In certain roles where he plays the heavy, he has an almost maniacal energy, a kind of craziness, punctuated by truly demented laughter, that most actors couldn't get away with in a hundred years. But he takes these big chances and somehow his characters draw you in. The odd thing is that as his career progressed he could do either the villain or the leading man thing without missing a beat. He is intense and often it is uncomfortable watching him because he can dominate the screen but he also seems always in danger of falling off the tightrope, pushing the crazed persona too far. He is one of those actors who is inherently interesting because it is impossible to predict exactly how he will play any given scene. He keeps you guessing in a way that Burt Lancaster or Henry Fonda never dreamed of. And he can communicate a very real sense of pain that is almost palpable. I don't think people appreciate Widmark as much as they should.

 

[kihei]

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[kihei]

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[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

For my next pick, inspired dually by the upcoming The Disaster Artist and the recent season of the You Must Remember This podcast focused on Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, I choose Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994).

 

[Jevo]

Night and The City (1950) dir. Jules Dassin

Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) is a small time crook, with plenty of get rich quick schemes behind him. But rarely have they worked out for him. He's employed to lure rich men into his boss' gentlemens club. When Fabian at a wrestling match spots Gregorius, a famed former wrestler call the thing a sham and yell at his boy Kristo, the organiser of all wrestling in London. Fabian spots an opportunity to get into the wrestling promotion business if he can get Gregorius and his protegé to join him. Fabian huddles some money together and gets his boss to put up the other half as joint partners. Only Fabian doesn't know that before he even got the money, he had already been backstabbed by his boss in favour of Kristo.

The story hits many traditional film-noir notes with morally ambiguous characters, femme fatales, and a dark crime riddled world. Stylistically it's also very noir with the black/white cinematography, which often looks very good. London as a location is used quite interesting visually. In the film it looks both industrial and futuristic at the same time, but both versions of London manages to look equally ominous. I really liked the cinematography in this film. Well done noir cinematography is perhaps my favourite visual look for a film, and I think it's really well done here. Plenty of beautiful shots, but it also creates an atmosphere for the whole film.

The world that Harry Fabian inhabits is very ominous. Danger seem to lie just around the corner. All the people with power in that world only look out for the skin on their own nose, with no care for the lives and well beings of others. As long as they can remain in their position and amass power and wealth, they are happy. As such it's a dangerous world to try and stir up some things in as Fabian learns. Fabian is not dumb and he knows how to play people as long as knows all the cards that are in play. But he's perhaps a bit naive in terms of what his venture will accomplish, and perhaps he's overrating his own hand. I think Richard Widmark does a very admirable job of portraying Fabian. Fabian is not sympathetic. I don't think there's really any truly sympathetic characters in the whole film. But Fabian is very charming, and at times you might confuse that with him being a sympathetic character. I think that's one of the things that the movie does really well. Fabian is charming enough that you ends up kinda rooting for him, even though he has hardly shown any sympathetic traits in the whole film. And the film skirts that line between being amoral and charming enough that you end up forgetting about the amoral things he does. I think Widmark has struck just the right tone with his performance to achieve that.

With my only prior reference to Jules Dassin being Rififi, I was surprised to see that a French director at the time would make an English language movie. Well imagine my surprise when I found out that Dassin isn't from France, he's American. Not that it matters much in terms of the film. But his name looks so French I never questioned whether he was actually from there or not.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

With my only prior reference to Jules Dassin being Rififi, I was surprised to see that a French director at the time would make an English language movie. Well imagine my surprise when I found out that Dassin isn't from France, he's American. Not that it matters much in terms of the film. But his name looks so French I never questioned whether he was actually from there or not.

I went through the same thing. Saw Rififi first. Assumed he was French. Later found out he wasn't.