Displaying Review 6 - 10 of 16 in total

• Unique urban noir — for The Naked City
  Written by them00ch on 18.07.2010

  Jules Dassin’s Naked City is a refreshing spin on the American noir detective genre of the 40s, and a turning point for all film productions. Rather than use the glossy, perfectly lit sets of films such as Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, Dassin chose to use no sets, and film right in the thick of real-life New York City. Hidden cameras were used to film much of the street action to capture the essence of the city itself, lending a documentary slant, and making the beautiful art deco city an organic character in the film, rather than a stale, pref-fab backdrop.

  As the film opens, and fitting with the documentary style employed by the picture, we are shown brief snippets of everyday life for a few NY civillians, one of which is our fictional story, the murder of model Jean Dexter. That the story we are witnessing is but one of the 8million stories happening around the vast city of New York, is a recurring visual and narrative theme of the film.

  The documentary style shooting, while giving the film an impressive, unique flavour and style, has some disadvantages, predominantly sound. On the interior shots, character voices are often echoing, and fighting for microphone-time with the hum of real life. On two occasions in the film I had to rewind and concentrate to decipher the dialogue. When outdoors, capturing the sound was near-impossible with the equipment and technology available to a hidden crew, and so a narrator was employed. Rather than hinder the film, the narration actually benefits it, as much of the dialogue is delivered flatly by the weak performances of the cast.

  There is one exception to the dialled-in performances, and that is the exemplary Barry Fitzgerald as the heroic, aged, yet sharp as a pin Det. Lt. Dan Muldoon. While dealing with an obviously mentally ill lady who claims she knows something about the murder, Muldoon slips behind her and makes a “cuckoo!” face to the other characters, and while trying to revive an unlikeable man from unconciousness, he plants an extra hard slap on his face while no-one is looking, grinning like a naughty schoolboy. Fitzgerald manages to walk the line between authoritative and likeable without missing a beat, and along with the city itself, is easily the highlight of the cast.

  The film’s plot is a fairly simplistic and straightforward affair, but is paced quickly enough to be very entertaining. There are no complex twists here, instead we are treated to the facts as the police uncover them, and the “in the moment” feeling the film produces is more than satisfactory for any fans of traditional detective yarns. The finale is an exciting one, and capitalises on the films outdoor shooting style with a fantastic chase across New York, which is peppered with the most beatifully shot views of urban art deco architecture.

  Overall the film was an inventive and fresh take on the genre, and despite some overly-melodramatic performances manages to remain fast-paced and entertaining. The solid script, tight direction, impressive visual style and Fitzgerald’s performance combine to elevate the film above some mediocre acting, into a thoroughly entertaining movie. Highly recommended for genre-fans.

• "A pocket fulla firecrackers - looking for a match!" — for Sweet Smell of Success
  Written by them00ch on 24.07.2010

  “Sweet smell of success” - a film focused on the struggle for power, influence and money, played out on the gossip columns of a New York newspaper.

  Tony Curtis plays Sid Falco, a press agent paid by wannabe stars to get their name known around town. Burt Lancaster plays J.J Hunsecker, the most influential columnist of New York with a readership of millions, who can make and break careers with a simply flurry on his typewriter. Both men endure a symbiotic, parasitic relationship which destroys lives for their own gain. Though they obviously despise each other, the smooth-talking, slimy Falco needs Hunsecker to promote his latest clients, and the domineering influential Hunsecker likewise needs Falco for the latest crumbs of a story, and to carry out his dirty work, which in this film is to break up the relationship of Hunsecker’s sister (Susan Harrison) and her lover Steve Dallas (Martin Millner).

  Standard twisty-turny noir faire? Well yes. Although the relationship between the two lead protagonists is written masterfully, the underlying structure sometimes feels a little familiar and formulaic, but there are a few things that make this film stand head and shoulders above others of the genre.

  Firstly – and this film’s biggest selling point – the snappy, cutting dialogue is just about the best I have ever heard in film-noir. Sweet Smell of Success uses words like other films use bullets, quick-fire putdowns between Curtis and Lancaster akin to blazing firefights. This is old-school, unrealistic but effortlessly cool-as-ice noir dialogue the likes of which have never been seen before or since in such a relentless form. While most of the cast have their moments, the best lines fall to Lancaster and Curtis, and they both produce in spades, never faltering from perfectly delivered, poetic, metaphor-littered lines.

  “Son, I don’t relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don’t you just shuffle along?”

  “The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.”

  “Don’t remove the gangplank, Sidney – you may wanna get back onboard.”

  Next, is the cinematography. Legendary noir cinematographer James Wong Howe produces some of his best work here, as he brings New York to life. The on-location shots are breathtaking, and while the shoot doesn’t have the gritty realism of a film such as The Naked City, what Wong Howe captures is the bustling, romantic essence of New York only seen on the silver screen, and probably only since captured as beautifully in Woody Allen’s Manhattan. This is complimented by Elmer Bernstein’s frenetic and energetic Jazz score, which further helps to capture the spirit of New York in a golden age.

  Finally, the performances of our two main protagonists. This is essentially Curtis’ film, and a role which he handles well, reeling out the film’s fantastic lines with a sly, natural smirk and proving he was more than just a pretty face – but in the scenes with Lancaster he often loses out. Lancaster’s powerful screen presence is imbued with pitch-perfect arrogance and confidence to define one of the great screen bad-guys.

  In summary, Sweet Smell of Success is a movie-lover’s film. While the structure is nothing especially out of the ordinary, the film liberally applies so much “movie-magic” it is hard not to like. A very enjoyable film.

• "That's the second bullet I stopped for you." — for Touch of Evil
  Written by them00ch on 24.07.2010

  This B-movie film noir has many faults, but at the same time is a defining example of what makes a film-noir truly noir. The film captures the seedy, grimy aspects of human nature in a film with such brilliantly crafted “shades-of-grey” characters, blurring the line between good and evil.

  Welles puts in a brilliant performance, his monumental stomach adding to the powerful dominating presence of his internally tortured, corrupt detective Hank Quinlan. Heston is great (I’ll leave the arguments about a white American playing a Mexican out of this for now) as the idealistic law official determined to expose Quinlan. Star turns also from Janet Leigh, Akim Tamiroff and Marlene Dietrich help drive the shadowy, intricate plot forward. The film’s opening scene is the stuff of legends, and rightly so, with a long, complex tracking shot which lasts 3 and half minutes minutes and introduces to us the some of the main players and kickstarts the film’s plot. It’s not just the opening shot that impresses – throughout the film, Welles’ influence is felt behind the camera, with trademark POV shots and twisted camera angles. Mancini’s score, while hitting a few “elevator muzak” moments, generally compliments the on-screen action adequately, and in a few key moments (the murder of Mexican gang boss Grandi) steps up to the level of perfection.

  On the negative side, B-movie production values sometimes creep to the foreground. Wobbly set design and a very awkward, weirdly overacted performance from Dennis Weaver as a mentally-challenged motel Night Man, for my money hold the film back from its potential as a masterpiece. While there are also a few strange cuts and pacing decisions in the first third of the film, these may have been introduced when the studios infamously butchered the final edit. I watched the version which has been reconstructed based on Welles’ furious memo to the studio execs, but it is likely there are still remnants of their interference in this cut.

  Overall it is testament to Welles’ skill that a second-billing B-movie is as accomplished as this. A few weak moments and lapses in production values (no doubt budget-related) do not stop this being about as dark, grimy and intricate as film-noir gets and comes highly recommended.

• Life is short, fall in love, dear maiden... — for Ikiru
  Written by them00ch on 25.07.2010

  I would not recommend reading this review before watching the film (and you really should watch it). It is very hard to talk about this particular film without discussing the main plot, and as such this does contain some spoilers.....

  Akira Kurosawa, probably most widely known to Western audiences for action, crime, and high drama took a more sedate, introspective approach to this morally complex, beautiful film, “Ikiru” or “to live”.

  Kanji Watanabe (played by Kurosawa favourite Takashi Shimura) is a character who is dead on his feet, a faceless bureaucrat in a local ministry, suffocating under the weight of tonnes of paperwork. While he may have a pulse, he is essentially a walking corpse, and is dubbed “the mummy” by one of his employees. He has nothing to show for his shell of a life other than a “25 years of service” certificate on his lonely bedroom wall. It is only when he discovers he has stomach cancer, and mere months left, that he begins to learn to live, and strives to leave something positive in his passing.

  The film is one of two acts. Kurosawa plays the first half of the film fairly straight, in a standard linear storytelling fashion, but has left his tell-tale mark on directorial and writing choices throughout. Pre-diagnosis, in a seemingly insignificant scene, Watanabe checks his pocket watch as time ticks by to the end of another dull, empty day. Post-diagnosis however, setting his alarm clock sends him in to a panic, as he realises every second that passes is another closer to his inevitable end, and he cries himself to sleep filled with emotions he hasn’t felt in 30 years.

  In the following days, he realises he has failed to live any kind of meaningful existence, and overdoses on excess – drink, women and music – not to try and enjoy himself, but to punish himself for wasting his life. It is in the first act he makes the first connections with others, something which he has long since ignored. He meets a writer (aptly naming himself “Mephisto”) who becomes his tour guide to all the joys and lustful sins life can offer. This culminates in one of the most moving scenes in the film. While in a rock and roll bar, he asks the piano player to play “Life is short, fall in love, dear maiden”, and while the piano plays, Watanabe sings, tears streaking down his face, and whole bar falls silent, listens to him and seem to reflect on the emptiness of their existence – an incredibly powerful scene and the first of a few times Watanabe creates opportunities for others to think about their own lives and change their ways, something which Kurosawa seems to want us to do, as viewers of the film.

  The second connection he makes is with a girl he worked with, someone who appears to have an abundance of happiness for the little joys of life. Watanabe becomes infatuated with her, not in a lustful way, but believing her to have a “key” to unlocking life’s potential. She quickly tires of his obsessive attention, and it appears Kurosawa is trying to tell us not to look to others for our own contentment, but to find the answer within ourselves. The girl’s involvement is not totally without jusification though, as she becomes the catalyst to his epiphany – to use his influence at the office to push through a scheme to create a playground for children, leaving a positive mark on the world. Kurosawa takes an unusual turn here, rather than follow Watanabe through to the end, we are now informed by a brief narration that “our hero dies 5 months later”.

  The second act of the film is not as predictable and slushy as you may expect, and Kurosawa’s final message is a complex, paradoxical mix of pessimism and hope. Abandoning the totally linear methods of the first half of the film, this half is told by way of Rashomon-esque flashbacks, and Kurosawa focuses not on the individual, but on the memories and legacy left in the passing of his life, and the influence felt by those left behind. At his wake, Watanabe’s colleagues piece together their stories of the past 5 months, and alongside them we realise that Watanabe used every ounce of his strength to get the playpark built, finishing with Watanabe dying, singing happily in the snow, on a swing in the park. This is the image that people will take away from this film. and it is almost certainly one of the most the most powerful closing images ever seen in film. After much drinking, the wake visitors joyfully declare they will strive to be more like Watanabe in their actions, strive to help others and cut through the red-tape of their job. The film appears to be taking a rather sentimental tone.

  The next day brings a dose of realism however, and when a situation arises which give Watanabe’s colleagues an opportunity to commit to the previous nights promises, they do nothing. This cynical touch of realism is really what pushes this film to masterpiece. While being a celebration of life, and that great things can be attained by an individual (a theme in itself not often found in classic Asian cinema), the film also tells us that is almost impossible for a single man to change the “big picture”. A strong, realistic message that pulls the film back from the brink of slushiness and sentimentality and grounds it in reality. Watanabe accomplished his legacy, did not waste his life, but was ultimately not able to persuade others to follow suit. Just like Watanabe had to do earlier in the film, they will have to reach that magical moment of realisation on their own terms.

  The film is seemingly a very personal film for Kurosawa who was concerned through much of his career about leaving a lasting legacy on the world. With the subject matter, and Kurosawa’s obvious personal attachment to the story, it would be very easy for the plot to fall into the realms of predictable and sentimental, and in lesser hands it probably would have. Kurosawa, aided by Shimura, traverses the pitfalls nimbly and expertly, and the film, while at times uplifting and inspiring, manages to reign it all in by maintaining a healthy realism not typical of this type and era of filmmaking.

  The supporting cast are excellent, but this is Shimura’s show, and although the role demands a lot of him, using every facet of his range he handles it faultlessly, making it my personal favourite performance of his. The irony of the situation, walking dead through life, only to truly live when given notice of impending death, is personified perfectly in Shimura’s Watanabe, whose transformation from empty shell to a love-to-live character is subtle and realistic.

  In making this film about a man determined to leave a legacy, Kurosawa succesfully avoids cliche and in turn further cements his own legacy with a deeply personal film bought to life by Takashi Shimura. This poignant, timeless film, with a powerful and heartfelt message, in my opinion, is one of Kurosawa’s career highlights, and one of those rare films that may very well make you change your outlook on life. 10 out of 10 and a must-see.

• The grand-daddy of heist movies. — for The Asphalt Jungle
  Written by them00ch on 27.07.2010

  #couple of spoilers ahead#

  John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” is arguably the grand-daddy of all noir heist movies, and it reads like a dictionary of the underworld. Boxmen, getaway drivers, fences, hoodlums, bent cops, double-crossers, stoolies - the language of the heist movie was defined here for most enthusiasts, and it's influence can be strongly felt in movies such as "The Usual Suspects", "Heat", and (in my opinion, the superior) "Du rififi chez les hommes".

  Doc (Sam Jaffe) is fresh out of jail after serving a seven-year stretch, and has used his time inside to concoct the perfect heist of sparkly macguffin-stones. On his release he wastes no time in gathering a team and funding to put his plan into action. First stop is Cobby (Marc Lawrence), an underground bookie with police on the payroll and contacts in every shadowy corner. Cobby puts Doc in touch with Emmerich (Louis Calhern) a lawyer and the money behind the operation. Unbeknownst to everyone, Emmerich is actually broke, bled dry by his young lover (Marilyn Monroe) and so has plans for the diamonds himself. Together they assemble the perfect team; Dix, the muscle (Stirling Hayden), a boxman Louis Ciavelli (aka safecracker, Anthony Caruso) and a getaway driver Gus Minissi (James Whitmore). Sound familiar? Probably because this blueprint has been respectfully copied and blatantly plagiarised many times over since. Cue a tightly woven, suspenseful plot with more backstabbing and well-written character interplay than you can shake a bag of diamonds at.

  What Asphalt Jungle succeeds gloriously at, is fleshing out all the characters amply, and there is no waste here, no superfluous character expositions aside from a couple of odd moments in the final scenes of the film. It is Stirling Hayden's Dix though who has the most backstory, and is essentially the film's anti-hero, and here is one of my main problems with the film. Hayden, to be honest, is a little stiff. Mannerisms which would play in his favour as Jack D Ripper in Dr Strangelove (a distant look, a look of always being somewhere else mentally) hold him back here. As the film advances he relaxes into the role, but he also visibly lacks range. Luckily, this generally sits favourably with his character, a musclebound brawn-over-brain type hoodlum, but Dix is at times shown to have a lot of heart and emotion under the hood, and Hayden isn't really able to express this too well. The rest of the cast are pretty damn faultless however, especially the charismatic Sam Jaffe. Monroe even manages to pull off the laughable line "You big banana-head!" without attracting too much attention. I should probably also mention at this point that despite Marilyn being plastered all over the box-art and promotional material for this film, she has the smallest part with only a few lines, and really only exists to be an alibi for one of the main characters - but oh what a beautiful alibi!

  The heist is actually very straightforward, and if truth be told could have been thought up in a few days brainstorming instead of taking seven years of planning in prison to figure out, but I guess the thought process is slowed when you are being buggered daily by your cell-mates. That being said, it is still executed very well with ample tension, and proceeds as flawlessly as Doc imagined - until things start to unravel. A series of double-crosses, accidents and errors make the group dynamics shift, loyalties sway, and tensions mount as the whole exit strategy falls down around the protagonists heads. This leads to a decent third act which is marred by a couple of strange moments.

  In the final scenes, Dix, losing blood from an earlier wound, passes out on the road to freedom, and is taken in by a doctor who realises the situation and calls the police. Dix, hearing this, somehow revives himself and drives off. Why? No idea - it didn't change anything in the plot and seemed only to serve as a reminder to the audience that Dix was losing blood and dying, something which the film had already gone out of its way to show us. Perhaps it was to show the audience that he wasn't free yet, and the unseen police were still on his tail, inducing a sense of false tension, but to me it was unnecessary exposition that spoilt the pacing of the final act. The very final shot in the film does make up for this slightly, while at the same time only proves how pointless the scene was.

  Alongside this, in another moment, Doc (also seperately on the road to freedomsville) takes time out with the police on his heels, to watch a young girl perform a rather bizarre dance in a cafe, leading to his capture. Although he sets this up with a line earlier in the film "we all work for our vices" this surrender to personal vice was a strange decision at this point of the film and didn't gel with my previous impressions of the character.

  In summary a few minor things do not detract too much from the film's overall pull, which is to be a very entertaining film-noir heist movie with well developed criminal characters, nimble pacing and excellent character dynamics - and it is these things that secure the films undeniable influence. It is just a shame the pay-off is spoilt slightly and as such does not quite meet the great expectations set by the tense setup, and heist itself. Watch this first, and then follow up with Rififi, which has all of this film's positive points, and none of the negative.