Witness for the Prosecution
When we think of the great detective and mystery writers of our time, we could start with Edgar Allan Poe, who invented the genre stylistically, then move on to the great popularizer Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler (the two finest classic hardboiled writers), the dime-store Dostoyevski Jim Thompson, the erudite Elmore Leonard, and of course John D and Ross MacDonald. Women have done equally well in the field, as proved by the works of Margery Allingham, Ruth Rendell, Frances Fyfield, Patricia Highsmith, Denise Mina, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie.
That last name is, for me, the most uncomfortable inclusion here because I've always found that Christie's characterizations came through in wordiness rather than in behavior and thought, but maybe that's just my problem. Certainly the fans of Marple and Poirot would disagree.
All the same, I had resisted watching one of the most celebrated movies based on a Christie plot, that being director Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957). The loss was my own. The movie is amazing. It is also occasionally gasping for its own breath at one moment and lumbering up a flight of stairs at the next, but that's all right because the payoffs tip the scales of justice in favor of the viewer.
Originally a stage play (a fact which is clear within the first few minutes--we can even tell when the acts begin and end), Wilder molded the screenplay into an infrequently stilted set of dialogues that remain charming, chilling and often hilarious.
Charles Laughton plays barrister Sir Wilfrid, an aging, feisty heart patient addicted to brandy, cigars and chicanery in the courtroom. Prim and proper loving servants surround him with protection which he resists with varying degrees of success. At a time when his health suggests he should be taking calcium shots and sponge baths, he insists on taking a case brought to him by a solicitor. We learn that Leonard Vole, a nasty American type played by Tyrone Powers, is about to be arrested for murdering his benefactor, the widowed Mrs. French. Vole's wife is played to devastating perfection by Marlene Dietrich. It is she--and only she--who can make or break the case for the defense.
So far this probably sounds hokey. And it is. You might also throw in the descriptors contrived, cliched, weary and predictable. You also may feel free to toss in the word "remarkable" because it is remarkable that Wilder and his cast were able to take this premise to the edge of the hole that leads to the center of the earth and then threaten to push us all inside.
The best way to describe Dietrich's performance is that she plays a cold-blooded Eva Braun type about whom we are stunned to find ourselves care deeply. Powers ricochets from over-acting to understated magnificence, often in the same scene. And Laughton's crestfallen manner near the conclusion is enough to distract you from an impending sentence for income tax evasion. The story itself has more twists than a desert rattler and fangs just as lethal.
Nothing in the cinematography will last the ages. The film work itself is so staid that it virtually called forth the French New Wave movement singlehandedly.
Yet I am certain you will enjoy this movie. You will never forget Marlene Dietrich as long as you live. You may even reconsider the value of the writings of Agatha Christie.
That last name is, for me, the most uncomfortable inclusion here because I've always found that Christie's characterizations came through in wordiness rather than in behavior and thought, but maybe that's just my problem. Certainly the fans of Marple and Poirot would disagree.
All the same, I had resisted watching one of the most celebrated movies based on a Christie plot, that being director Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957). The loss was my own. The movie is amazing. It is also occasionally gasping for its own breath at one moment and lumbering up a flight of stairs at the next, but that's all right because the payoffs tip the scales of justice in favor of the viewer.
Originally a stage play (a fact which is clear within the first few minutes--we can even tell when the acts begin and end), Wilder molded the screenplay into an infrequently stilted set of dialogues that remain charming, chilling and often hilarious.
Charles Laughton plays barrister Sir Wilfrid, an aging, feisty heart patient addicted to brandy, cigars and chicanery in the courtroom. Prim and proper loving servants surround him with protection which he resists with varying degrees of success. At a time when his health suggests he should be taking calcium shots and sponge baths, he insists on taking a case brought to him by a solicitor. We learn that Leonard Vole, a nasty American type played by Tyrone Powers, is about to be arrested for murdering his benefactor, the widowed Mrs. French. Vole's wife is played to devastating perfection by Marlene Dietrich. It is she--and only she--who can make or break the case for the defense.
So far this probably sounds hokey. And it is. You might also throw in the descriptors contrived, cliched, weary and predictable. You also may feel free to toss in the word "remarkable" because it is remarkable that Wilder and his cast were able to take this premise to the edge of the hole that leads to the center of the earth and then threaten to push us all inside.
The best way to describe Dietrich's performance is that she plays a cold-blooded Eva Braun type about whom we are stunned to find ourselves care deeply. Powers ricochets from over-acting to understated magnificence, often in the same scene. And Laughton's crestfallen manner near the conclusion is enough to distract you from an impending sentence for income tax evasion. The story itself has more twists than a desert rattler and fangs just as lethal.
Nothing in the cinematography will last the ages. The film work itself is so staid that it virtually called forth the French New Wave movement singlehandedly.
Yet I am certain you will enjoy this movie. You will never forget Marlene Dietrich as long as you live. You may even reconsider the value of the writings of Agatha Christie.
Down 3 Dark Streets
Oh, to be young, hip and free now that murder is in the air.
If, as I believe, George Orwell was correct when he wrote that all art is propaganda, then what is trash? After watching the movie Down 3 Dark Streets (1954), pure, unfettered propaganda smells like the answer.
A few days after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as the Censor in Chief. Hoover teamed with popular "journalists" Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell, along with many Hollywood executives to overemphasize the victories of the Allies and send up the failures and incompetencies of the Axis. Well, if there has to be a bias, I'll likewise err in favor of killing Nazis. Unfortunately, Orwell was also correct in his various depictions of leaders as soulless individuals who misuse their power simply because they can. That leaves us with two types of fascism: one where jackbooted thugs stomp on the faces of their enemies for the good of the Volk, and another where guys in suits and ties scramble the minds of their followers for the good of the followers themselves.
It also gives us rather wretched art. They Came to Blow Up America (1943) and The House on 92nd Street (1945) were among the worst. But the immediate Cold War following World War II found Hollywood policing itself, churning out stench such as I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Walk East on Beacon (1952), My Son John (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953) all of which painted the FBI in strokes of honor, efficiency and glory, as did tonight's giggle, Down 3 Dark Streets.
It may surprise the more cynically inclined among the readership to discover that the camera work in this film is very good. In addition to street scenes that capture the Los Angeles of the early 1950s with an awkward authenticity, we're also treated to a Hitchcock-style scene behind the giant Hollywood sign on the hills. Otherwise, of course, the movie is a pathetic attempt to glorify the brilliance and tenacity of the FBI, so much so that today's audiences rightly find it hilarious.
Of course. We are so young and hip and free these days. Anything out of time feels like such a charade. Being young, hip and free, we would never fall for such transparent nonsense.
Yet a twenty-two-year-old pampered and precious little shit fuck named Elliot Rodger bought into the current propaganda that his self worth was somehow connected to his socio-economic class, which in turn was dependent upon him getting laid by hot blondes from a specific sorority and being seen in the finest of cars. And even though this pusillanimous putz was bullied as a young teenager, that fact in no way mitigates his well-to-do parents enabling his moronic lifestyle choices, much less his easy access to expensive weaponry. He was a media junkie, as befits the spoiled offspring of the assistant director of The Hunger Games. He uploaded multiple videos of his planned escapades, the grizzly details of which need not be recited here. You see, Elliot Rodger understood that the only way you count in this world is if you have the acceptance and acknowledgement of rich white hemorrhoid breeders such as Mark Cuban and Donald Sterling and their supporters at ESPN. This twisted little smidgen of puked up worm snot knew in his elitist bones that he would only matter in this world if the future dental assistant blondes of his choosing fawned over him to distract him from his own creeping impotency. This reject from the Borderline Personality Disorder ward knew it was thrilling to use his intellect and unctuous charm to con the police into believing he was merely throwing a video tantrum rather than foreshadowing disaster when he ego-plotted his mission on the installment plan with YouTube. (There's a reason shrinks can't cure Borderline Personality Disorder. It is not a disorder at all. It is a complex series of character flaws, of which the vile Elliot Rodger had in abundance.) Rodger swallowed whole the lunatic propaganda of the National Rifle Association when he oozed with the temporary power of purchasing his Glock 34 semiautomatic. And he thoroughly absorbed the joy of contemporary dread when he blew away his roommates and others he sought out last Friday night in Isla Vista, California.
He was, in many ways, the best and the brightest of his generation, at least if by best and brightest we mean tipped in favor of digesting expectations set up by everyone from Beyonce to Larry Ellison regarding what it means to be of true value in our world today. The same people who would view a scrap of well-produced drivel such as Down 3 Dark Streets with contempt and sneers view the propaganda of their own age with the same opened-mouth drooling as the Cold War generation did its own Dragnet-style fixation on law and order. Therefore we risk much by scoffing down our own elitist cuffs at the trash of long ago. Today's garbage may be shinier, but the stench is just as lethal.
If, as I believe, George Orwell was correct when he wrote that all art is propaganda, then what is trash? After watching the movie Down 3 Dark Streets (1954), pure, unfettered propaganda smells like the answer.
A few days after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as the Censor in Chief. Hoover teamed with popular "journalists" Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell, along with many Hollywood executives to overemphasize the victories of the Allies and send up the failures and incompetencies of the Axis. Well, if there has to be a bias, I'll likewise err in favor of killing Nazis. Unfortunately, Orwell was also correct in his various depictions of leaders as soulless individuals who misuse their power simply because they can. That leaves us with two types of fascism: one where jackbooted thugs stomp on the faces of their enemies for the good of the Volk, and another where guys in suits and ties scramble the minds of their followers for the good of the followers themselves.
It also gives us rather wretched art. They Came to Blow Up America (1943) and The House on 92nd Street (1945) were among the worst. But the immediate Cold War following World War II found Hollywood policing itself, churning out stench such as I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Walk East on Beacon (1952), My Son John (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953) all of which painted the FBI in strokes of honor, efficiency and glory, as did tonight's giggle, Down 3 Dark Streets.
It may surprise the more cynically inclined among the readership to discover that the camera work in this film is very good. In addition to street scenes that capture the Los Angeles of the early 1950s with an awkward authenticity, we're also treated to a Hitchcock-style scene behind the giant Hollywood sign on the hills. Otherwise, of course, the movie is a pathetic attempt to glorify the brilliance and tenacity of the FBI, so much so that today's audiences rightly find it hilarious.
Of course. We are so young and hip and free these days. Anything out of time feels like such a charade. Being young, hip and free, we would never fall for such transparent nonsense.
Yet a twenty-two-year-old pampered and precious little shit fuck named Elliot Rodger bought into the current propaganda that his self worth was somehow connected to his socio-economic class, which in turn was dependent upon him getting laid by hot blondes from a specific sorority and being seen in the finest of cars. And even though this pusillanimous putz was bullied as a young teenager, that fact in no way mitigates his well-to-do parents enabling his moronic lifestyle choices, much less his easy access to expensive weaponry. He was a media junkie, as befits the spoiled offspring of the assistant director of The Hunger Games. He uploaded multiple videos of his planned escapades, the grizzly details of which need not be recited here. You see, Elliot Rodger understood that the only way you count in this world is if you have the acceptance and acknowledgement of rich white hemorrhoid breeders such as Mark Cuban and Donald Sterling and their supporters at ESPN. This twisted little smidgen of puked up worm snot knew in his elitist bones that he would only matter in this world if the future dental assistant blondes of his choosing fawned over him to distract him from his own creeping impotency. This reject from the Borderline Personality Disorder ward knew it was thrilling to use his intellect and unctuous charm to con the police into believing he was merely throwing a video tantrum rather than foreshadowing disaster when he ego-plotted his mission on the installment plan with YouTube. (There's a reason shrinks can't cure Borderline Personality Disorder. It is not a disorder at all. It is a complex series of character flaws, of which the vile Elliot Rodger had in abundance.) Rodger swallowed whole the lunatic propaganda of the National Rifle Association when he oozed with the temporary power of purchasing his Glock 34 semiautomatic. And he thoroughly absorbed the joy of contemporary dread when he blew away his roommates and others he sought out last Friday night in Isla Vista, California.
He was, in many ways, the best and the brightest of his generation, at least if by best and brightest we mean tipped in favor of digesting expectations set up by everyone from Beyonce to Larry Ellison regarding what it means to be of true value in our world today. The same people who would view a scrap of well-produced drivel such as Down 3 Dark Streets with contempt and sneers view the propaganda of their own age with the same opened-mouth drooling as the Cold War generation did its own Dragnet-style fixation on law and order. Therefore we risk much by scoffing down our own elitist cuffs at the trash of long ago. Today's garbage may be shinier, but the stench is just as lethal.
The Night of the Hunter
An impressionist masterpiece. That's the first superlative that comes to mind when revisiting The Night of the Hunter (1955). The screen credits say the film was written by James Agee (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), but that seems unlikely since Agee had boozed himself into oblivion by that time and probably couldn't have written his name on a royalty check. More likely the screenplay came to us from the film's director Charles Laughton, the man who most people know as an actor. Indeed, this was Laughton's only spin at directing and what a spin it is.
We also have to give vast credit to cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who was responsible for some of the spookiest and strangely lovely images in American film. The shot of Shelley Winters at the bottom of the river is enough to make you wonder if they hang nightmares on the walls of art museums. Cortez also worked successfully at giving the viewer sudden clues as to the appearance of villain and reverend Harry Powell. Whenever he's outside a house, we see the silhouette of his hat or the outline of his knuckles. On those knuckles are tattooed the words HATE (Left) and LOVE (right) ["Love and hate tattooed on the fingers of his hands, hands that slap his kids around cause they don't understand how death or glory becomes just another story," sang the Clash.]
The Reverend is played by Robert Mitchum and if Mitchum's reputation as a purveyor of criminal illusions hangs on any one film, The Night of the Hunter is that film. The star of Rachel and the Stranger andCape Fear had been busted back in 1949 for possession of marijuana and ended up spending two months in the Los Angeles Country prison farm. His rep as a mysterious tough guy was based in a certain amount of fact since the only people who blew weed in those days were black jazz musicians and the precursors of the beats. In The Night of the Hunter, Mitchum comes at us driving down the road in a jalopy while talking to the Lord. The Lord has always provided a good living for Powell and he appreciates it. He knows the Lord will point him in the right direction and help him steer clear of strip clubs and women with curly hair. Unfortunately, that is where fate takes him. He is watching a comely young thing undressed as the cops burst in, asking if he owns the jalopy parked outside. They were just in time since Powell's switchblade had moments earlier popped out of his pants like a bladed erection.
It turns out the car was stolen, so Powell goes to jail for thirty days--as in the Chuck Berry tune of that title, wherein the singer growls: "If I don't get no satisfaction from the judge, I'm gonna take it to the FBI and voice my grudge. If they don't give me no consolation I'm gonna take it to the United Nations, I'm gonna see that you be back home in thirty days."
Peter Graves has just robbed a bank so that he can keep Shelley Winters in make up and jewelry. He has stolen the hearty amount of ten thousand dollars. When he gets home, his son John and daughter Pearl are happy to see him. Peter Graves says to not be so happy because those cops up the road will be here in a few seconds so please don't tell your ma where I hid the money 'cause she ain't got no sense at all.
The cops fall on Graves and as he's being carted off we learn that he croaked someone getting the loot. He ends up sharing a cell with Mitchum. The Reverend hears abou the cash and wants it, so after the state offs Graves, Mitchum gets released and decides to marry Shelley Winters so that she'll convince the kids to tell him where the money is. You see, he wants to build a tabernacle.
Watching Mitchum coerce marriage but not sex--simply won't have anything to do with Shelley unless procreation is the goal--is a thing of wonder. So is the way he navigates through the children. It's also extremely worrisome.
We also have to give vast credit to cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who was responsible for some of the spookiest and strangely lovely images in American film. The shot of Shelley Winters at the bottom of the river is enough to make you wonder if they hang nightmares on the walls of art museums. Cortez also worked successfully at giving the viewer sudden clues as to the appearance of villain and reverend Harry Powell. Whenever he's outside a house, we see the silhouette of his hat or the outline of his knuckles. On those knuckles are tattooed the words HATE (Left) and LOVE (right) ["Love and hate tattooed on the fingers of his hands, hands that slap his kids around cause they don't understand how death or glory becomes just another story," sang the Clash.]
The Reverend is played by Robert Mitchum and if Mitchum's reputation as a purveyor of criminal illusions hangs on any one film, The Night of the Hunter is that film. The star of Rachel and the Stranger andCape Fear had been busted back in 1949 for possession of marijuana and ended up spending two months in the Los Angeles Country prison farm. His rep as a mysterious tough guy was based in a certain amount of fact since the only people who blew weed in those days were black jazz musicians and the precursors of the beats. In The Night of the Hunter, Mitchum comes at us driving down the road in a jalopy while talking to the Lord. The Lord has always provided a good living for Powell and he appreciates it. He knows the Lord will point him in the right direction and help him steer clear of strip clubs and women with curly hair. Unfortunately, that is where fate takes him. He is watching a comely young thing undressed as the cops burst in, asking if he owns the jalopy parked outside. They were just in time since Powell's switchblade had moments earlier popped out of his pants like a bladed erection.
It turns out the car was stolen, so Powell goes to jail for thirty days--as in the Chuck Berry tune of that title, wherein the singer growls: "If I don't get no satisfaction from the judge, I'm gonna take it to the FBI and voice my grudge. If they don't give me no consolation I'm gonna take it to the United Nations, I'm gonna see that you be back home in thirty days."
Peter Graves has just robbed a bank so that he can keep Shelley Winters in make up and jewelry. He has stolen the hearty amount of ten thousand dollars. When he gets home, his son John and daughter Pearl are happy to see him. Peter Graves says to not be so happy because those cops up the road will be here in a few seconds so please don't tell your ma where I hid the money 'cause she ain't got no sense at all.
The cops fall on Graves and as he's being carted off we learn that he croaked someone getting the loot. He ends up sharing a cell with Mitchum. The Reverend hears abou the cash and wants it, so after the state offs Graves, Mitchum gets released and decides to marry Shelley Winters so that she'll convince the kids to tell him where the money is. You see, he wants to build a tabernacle.
Watching Mitchum coerce marriage but not sex--simply won't have anything to do with Shelley unless procreation is the goal--is a thing of wonder. So is the way he navigates through the children. It's also extremely worrisome.
The first time I ever saw Robert Mitchum was on a television screen back in the early 1970s. He was a guest--the guest--on the Dick Cavett program. I had no idea who the man was but you could tell during the build-up that Cavett liked the guy, so I settled in for a teenage thrill.
I was not disappointed. To say the man had style is to say that the bombing of Nagasaki was a mild explosion. His tory about getting thrown by a horse alone was enough to convince me that I wanted to grow up to write movies with Mitchum in them. That never happened, but even now whenever I write any type of fiction, there's always one character in the plot who I've imagined Robert playing.
I was not disappointed. To say the man had style is to say that the bombing of Nagasaki was a mild explosion. His tory about getting thrown by a horse alone was enough to convince me that I wanted to grow up to write movies with Mitchum in them. That never happened, but even now whenever I write any type of fiction, there's always one character in the plot who I've imagined Robert playing.
Back to the movie, though, I cannot overstate what a masterpiece this film remains. Even the very weird introduction of Lillian Gish as the old woman who takes in the two orphaned children goes beyond impressionist into expressionist and almost into something surreal, living as she does in a house that has an exterior that appears to change with the seasons. Even the town she lives in--somewhere between Cincinnati, Ohio and Parkersburg, West Virginia--feels like a set cut-out of an old Gary Cooper western. None of these deliberate incongruities or even the brilliant lighting effects take away from the grim story itself because Mitchum remains the terrifying paste throughout this movie.
Kansas City Confidential and Union Station
If I were called upon to show a Frenchman one film made by Americans that served to influence the French New Wave that later would influence American filmmakers all over again, that one film would be Phil Karlson's 1952 brain-buster Kansas City Confidential. Everything that's great about American film-making comes across with instant punch and grit and KCC does it better than anything ever did.
From the second we place eyes on Tim Foster (played by Preston Foster), we swallow an ambivalence about whether this is a very decent man or one of the most cold and calculating criminals we've ever met. As we watch him, he is watching a building across the street from what feels like a hotel room. He's watching things from a seventy-five degree angle. That turns out to matter because almost all the tension this movie builds is done at that same exact angle. And it works.
Foster puts together three other men to pull off a big robbery. He brings out Pete Harris (Jack Elam, weird-eyed and chain smoking), Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef, sweaty and paranoid), and Boyd Kane (Neville Brand, throaty-voiced and merciless). These three guys have one last heist in them and Foster knows it. When he interviews them, he wears a mask. He has the perfect crime, he tells them. No one will be able to rat out the others because they'll all be wearing masks. But somebody has to be sacrificed. Foster settles on Joe Rolfe (John Payne), an ex-GI, a guy with a one-time crime on the books, a guy who drives a florist delivery truck. He takes the fall when the others get away with 1.2 million.
The cops beat Joe bloody every day for a week until they realize they've got the wrong guy. They say they're sorry. Joe says to stuff their pity. He figures if he's going to take a beating for some other men, the least they owe him is a cut, so he travels to Mexico to find them.
You see, Foster is an ex cop. He got burned for an offense he probably did commit in a moment of weakness and all he wants now is to set up his three cohorts so the cops will pin the crime on them and maybe realize that they shouldn't have ousted him from the force.
These are not the kind of people we meet every day. Or, actually, they are precisely the kind of people we meet. They are in situations that we don't think about much and what we're doing is watching ourselves in unimaginably tough situations, hoping that at least Joe will pull through and maybe even get the girl. The girl turns out to be a tough number who is also Foster's daughter, a chippy who wants to grow up to be a lawyer.
That's only the plot, of course.
Foster puts together three other men to pull off a big robbery. He brings out Pete Harris (Jack Elam, weird-eyed and chain smoking), Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef, sweaty and paranoid), and Boyd Kane (Neville Brand, throaty-voiced and merciless). These three guys have one last heist in them and Foster knows it. When he interviews them, he wears a mask. He has the perfect crime, he tells them. No one will be able to rat out the others because they'll all be wearing masks. But somebody has to be sacrificed. Foster settles on Joe Rolfe (John Payne), an ex-GI, a guy with a one-time crime on the books, a guy who drives a florist delivery truck. He takes the fall when the others get away with 1.2 million.
The cops beat Joe bloody every day for a week until they realize they've got the wrong guy. They say they're sorry. Joe says to stuff their pity. He figures if he's going to take a beating for some other men, the least they owe him is a cut, so he travels to Mexico to find them.
You see, Foster is an ex cop. He got burned for an offense he probably did commit in a moment of weakness and all he wants now is to set up his three cohorts so the cops will pin the crime on them and maybe realize that they shouldn't have ousted him from the force.
These are not the kind of people we meet every day. Or, actually, they are precisely the kind of people we meet. They are in situations that we don't think about much and what we're doing is watching ourselves in unimaginably tough situations, hoping that at least Joe will pull through and maybe even get the girl. The girl turns out to be a tough number who is also Foster's daughter, a chippy who wants to grow up to be a lawyer.
That's only the plot, of course.
Every bit as important is the fact that the music doesn't swallow the story by announcing to the audience that, what, hey, here is where you need to pay attention, dude. Truthfully, I don't even remember there being any music in the movie, which is how it should be since music isn't supposed to be the story.
The acting is off the charts. You can't tell whether these guys are seasoned professionals or escapees from a drop-outs glee club. The reality is that these were Van Cleef and Brand's first big roles, but Payne, Colleen Gray (the girl), and Elam had been in the biz for years, although nothing they'd ever hammered out came close to the power of this.
You can contrast the beauty of this noir classic with Union Station (1950), an even more plot-complex movie that loses out in a battle of the bands because it lacks the emotional tumult of KCC. William Holden--a better actor than anyone mentioned here so far--is the saving grace in this instant mystery about a nasty group of guys who kidnap a blind girl for a hefty ransom. The actor Joe Beacom, who plays the head kidnapper, is just as vile as Holden's character--Don't Call Me Willy--is good, telling his blind victim that if she wants to escape she is welcome to find her way out among all the live wires lying around. Yes, the movie's shot hard and quick and there's nothing cheap in the portrayals. But once you've watched Kansas City Confidential--a movie that encompasses all the gangster movies, buddy films, betrayal stories and love affair flicks in the world, shakes out the losers and keeps only the best parts--there's really not much sense in watching anything else from the film noir period, even if this did come near the end. Life is noir, after all. Why not see what it looks like?
The acting is off the charts. You can't tell whether these guys are seasoned professionals or escapees from a drop-outs glee club. The reality is that these were Van Cleef and Brand's first big roles, but Payne, Colleen Gray (the girl), and Elam had been in the biz for years, although nothing they'd ever hammered out came close to the power of this.
You can contrast the beauty of this noir classic with Union Station (1950), an even more plot-complex movie that loses out in a battle of the bands because it lacks the emotional tumult of KCC. William Holden--a better actor than anyone mentioned here so far--is the saving grace in this instant mystery about a nasty group of guys who kidnap a blind girl for a hefty ransom. The actor Joe Beacom, who plays the head kidnapper, is just as vile as Holden's character--Don't Call Me Willy--is good, telling his blind victim that if she wants to escape she is welcome to find her way out among all the live wires lying around. Yes, the movie's shot hard and quick and there's nothing cheap in the portrayals. But once you've watched Kansas City Confidential--a movie that encompasses all the gangster movies, buddy films, betrayal stories and love affair flicks in the world, shakes out the losers and keeps only the best parts--there's really not much sense in watching anything else from the film noir period, even if this did come near the end. Life is noir, after all. Why not see what it looks like?
High School Hellcats
Parents used to take an awful beating at the movies. Rebel Without a Cause was the first major film to suggest that mom and dad were out to lunch. American-International Pictures hopped on that particular wagon with a vengeance three years later with High School Hellcats(1958), a movie that might not quite be up there on the ultimate drive-in marquee with Switchblade Sisters, but it's still a good movie because of the way it identified a mood in America that the old folks were out of touch. In this scenario, dad is a big deal lawyer who knows he's loosing control over his daughter Joyce and can't quite make the connection between his fourteen hour days and the fact that his daughter wants to run around the house in her underwear. Meanwhile, mom spends her days and early evenings boozing it down with her socially upward bridge club. So who's bringing up baby?
It's no coincidence that Joyce is an only child. Sure, that helped AIP save money on expenses. But the other reason is that mom and dad didn't want to have a financial drain on themselves and so they cut each other off after one kid, the selfish fools. They live in the recently constructed suburbs and Joyce finds the attention she's looking for in the eyes of a female gang and in the arms of a soda jerk named Mike.
The Hellcats are kind of a wuss gang, in my opinion. Granted, this was only 1958, but even auxiliary debs gangs of that era were scarier than this bunch. Here's what they do for fun. They smoke, drink, heist cheap watches from jewelry stores, play a very stupid party game called sardines, listen to bad instrumental records, attend club meetings in an abandoned movie house, and occasionally wear slacks to class. All of these mad acts of wild abandon are committed in moderation, mind you. Oh, and the rules are something else! No one does homework. You can't date outside the permission of Connie, the leader. And if you have to pass a course to keep the heat off at home, that's cool, but you'd better not get a grade above a D. They hate eggheads and they despise a teacher's pet.
As I say, along comes Joyce, the new girl. She's tired of getting slapped around the house by a father who's afraid of his own sexual impulses and being ignored by a mother who'd rather play hide the snake with the pool boy, so when a chance comes up to join the Hellcats, she goes for it, just as she goes for Mike, the father substitute boyfriend and the only halfway recognizable actor in the flick--actually, his name's Brett Halsey and he has one of the longest runs of movie work I've ever come across: 1953 to the present. The Hellcats decide to throw a party at a house where the owners are gone on vacation, another slap at the values of the generation that made its loot after World War II. During the aforementioned game of sardines, Connie takes a header down a flight and manages to die. Knowing the cops won't approve of this, the kids split, no doubt leaving the front door locked so no miscreants would vandalize the joint.
When the owners of the house return, they find Connie in their basement, still dead. The cops move in on the high school. Somebody there must know something!
In the end it turns out Connie was pushed by Dolly Crane--pun most likely intended--her second in command. Dolly figures Joyce has to know what happened and decides to off her to keep the bitch quiet. The weapon of choice? You guessed it: a knife, one Dolly just loves to caress. My God! Where are these children's parents? Probably prosecuting Charles Starkweather and playing cards with Caril Fugate's mother instead of making sure their home grown cuties got their homework done. Damn that middle class.
We don't have to worry about this kind of thing nowadays and that's one reason this film comes across so tame: there no longer is a middle class. You don't have to take my word for it. Just the fact that every American politician on the national level has been screaming about how unfair the middle class is being treated is proof positive that this group no longer exists. Besides, the conditions that allowed for an American middle class no longer reign. Corporate income tax as a share of GDP has dropped from a high in 1954 of better than six percent to a low in 2009 of one percent. The marginal tax rate for corporations in 1969 was fifty-two percent. Today it is thirty-five percent. In 2010, the top one percent of this country held forty-two percent of all financial wealth. The next nineteen percent held fifty-four percent. The remaining eighty percent of the American people shared in the remaining five percent of this nation's wealth. To put it another way, the top twenty percent in America hold ninety-five percent of the financial assets. What that means is that there still are three broad economic classes in this country: the poor, the rich, and the wealthy.
Bashing mom and dad about their material aggrandizement is now passe, however applicable to a given situation it may be. Chances are that mom and dad both work at jobs they don't much like. The kids are holding down jobs as soon as they hit sixteen. One of the kids is going to college and incurring the monumental debt that comes with turning financial aid into a for-profit business. And one of the other kids is reading this movie review, thinking about what to do about this mess.
The Hellcats are kind of a wuss gang, in my opinion. Granted, this was only 1958, but even auxiliary debs gangs of that era were scarier than this bunch. Here's what they do for fun. They smoke, drink, heist cheap watches from jewelry stores, play a very stupid party game called sardines, listen to bad instrumental records, attend club meetings in an abandoned movie house, and occasionally wear slacks to class. All of these mad acts of wild abandon are committed in moderation, mind you. Oh, and the rules are something else! No one does homework. You can't date outside the permission of Connie, the leader. And if you have to pass a course to keep the heat off at home, that's cool, but you'd better not get a grade above a D. They hate eggheads and they despise a teacher's pet.
As I say, along comes Joyce, the new girl. She's tired of getting slapped around the house by a father who's afraid of his own sexual impulses and being ignored by a mother who'd rather play hide the snake with the pool boy, so when a chance comes up to join the Hellcats, she goes for it, just as she goes for Mike, the father substitute boyfriend and the only halfway recognizable actor in the flick--actually, his name's Brett Halsey and he has one of the longest runs of movie work I've ever come across: 1953 to the present. The Hellcats decide to throw a party at a house where the owners are gone on vacation, another slap at the values of the generation that made its loot after World War II. During the aforementioned game of sardines, Connie takes a header down a flight and manages to die. Knowing the cops won't approve of this, the kids split, no doubt leaving the front door locked so no miscreants would vandalize the joint.
When the owners of the house return, they find Connie in their basement, still dead. The cops move in on the high school. Somebody there must know something!
In the end it turns out Connie was pushed by Dolly Crane--pun most likely intended--her second in command. Dolly figures Joyce has to know what happened and decides to off her to keep the bitch quiet. The weapon of choice? You guessed it: a knife, one Dolly just loves to caress. My God! Where are these children's parents? Probably prosecuting Charles Starkweather and playing cards with Caril Fugate's mother instead of making sure their home grown cuties got their homework done. Damn that middle class.
We don't have to worry about this kind of thing nowadays and that's one reason this film comes across so tame: there no longer is a middle class. You don't have to take my word for it. Just the fact that every American politician on the national level has been screaming about how unfair the middle class is being treated is proof positive that this group no longer exists. Besides, the conditions that allowed for an American middle class no longer reign. Corporate income tax as a share of GDP has dropped from a high in 1954 of better than six percent to a low in 2009 of one percent. The marginal tax rate for corporations in 1969 was fifty-two percent. Today it is thirty-five percent. In 2010, the top one percent of this country held forty-two percent of all financial wealth. The next nineteen percent held fifty-four percent. The remaining eighty percent of the American people shared in the remaining five percent of this nation's wealth. To put it another way, the top twenty percent in America hold ninety-five percent of the financial assets. What that means is that there still are three broad economic classes in this country: the poor, the rich, and the wealthy.
Bashing mom and dad about their material aggrandizement is now passe, however applicable to a given situation it may be. Chances are that mom and dad both work at jobs they don't much like. The kids are holding down jobs as soon as they hit sixteen. One of the kids is going to college and incurring the monumental debt that comes with turning financial aid into a for-profit business. And one of the other kids is reading this movie review, thinking about what to do about this mess.
The Big Knife
New Year's Eve fell last night as it often does this time of the annual and, not being much of a drinker and not a doper of any sort, I decided it would be tremendous fun to watch Jack Palance and Ida Lupino in The Big Knife (1955). We've grown so accustomed to seeing Palance as the embodiment of hard evil that I figured seeing him as a sensitive artiste who chose to reject the corruptions of Hollywood would be a major thrill. Watching Ida Lupino is a thrill in and of itself. I was not disappointed.
Palance, who died in 2006, is one of those rare performers who really gets missed as time clops by. Born Vladimir Palahnuik, he fought as a heavyweight boxer under the name Jack Brazzo. After World War II, he got a job as an understudy to Marlon Brando and soon enough he was getting good work in what he considered mediocre roles. He never really received the magnitude of recognition he deserved, as is evidenced by his appearance at the Oscars in 1992 where, in accepting the award for Best Supporting Actor in City Slickers, he proceeded to do a series of one-handed push-ups because, as he later admitted, "I didn't know what the hell else to do."
I like to think that Jack Palance was sort of playing himself in The Big Knife. As Charlie Castle, a fine Hollywood actor who wants to escape the studio system because the moguls keep casting him in lousy films, he must confront a number of personal character flaws of his own, including an intense depression that leads him into a string of stupid trysts and prolonged drinking bouts. We recognize right away that Charlie is a man of great intellect, education, physicality, and, in a word, presence. He is also in love with his estranged wife Marion (Lupino), herself somewhat short of sainthood, although we never question her devotion to the man she imagines her husband to be.
In this version of Hollywood, a man like Charlie Castle has a friend named Buddy Bliss, largely an errand boy, who has proved his devotion to Castle by serving prison time for a crime Castle actually committed, which, if the truth were exposed, would certainly derail Castle's celebrity. The actor in turn shows his devotion to Buddy by schtupping the man's wife for no other reason than that it's easier than trying to throw the bitch out of the house. When Buddy Bliss discovers this betrayal, he spits on Castle. Marion, the wife, quickly fetches a towel to wipe away the saliva.
But the real thrust, as it were, is with the studio mogul, Stanley Shriner Hoff, embodied by Rod Steiger. Stanley Hoff and his loyal underling Smiley Coy (love these names!) believe they control Castle because they know his dirty secret about the crime. As secrets go, this one isn't particularly well kept and part of the plot is that Castle must wrestle with just letting the dirt fly, knowing he'll abandon his financial security and never get those great roles for which he yearns, although he figures maybe Marion will stick with him.
A lot of the real Hollywood honchos at the time found themselves apoplectic with the Stanley Hoff role because Steiger really totally embodied it, even playing it with a meanness and cruelty that goes far beyond mere manipulation and dances boldly into plans for murdering Shelley Winters, who plays the toss-pot fame-climber Dixie Evans.
The Stanley Hoff character in The Big Knife threatens to steal the show, appropriately enough. Watching this character, I was reminded less of Hollywood swindlers than of one particular fellow in the recording industry, a guy by the name of Morris Levy. The former head and founded of Roulette Records died in 1990, but I imagine he still has what might be called a certain reach, so I want to be sort of careful here because when he was alive and kicking, he had a knack for litigation and other means of persuasion.
Morrie Levy was a smart guy and a major player, but it's highly unlikely that he had anything at all to do with songwriting. That didn't stop him from affixing his signature to the songwriting credits of a bunch of tunes actually written by the artists he controlled. His name appeared on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," "Ya Ya," "My Boy Lollipop," and "California Sun," among others.
The biggest act on Roulette Records during the 1960s was Tommy James and the Shondells, a group that had well-deserved hits with "Mony Mony," "Hanky Panky," "Crimson and Clover" and "I Think We're Alone Now." In his autobiography, Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and the Shondells (2010), James writes:
It was not for nothing that Morris Levy was called the Godfather of the music business. People from all over the industry called him or came to him to sort out problems. If somebody from Atlantic Records or Kama Sutra found out their records were being bootlegged, they called Morris. It seemed like once a month Morris would grab Nate McCalla and a few baseball bats and take off for somewhere in New Jersey or upstate New York.
A good mob story can be fun because those of us watching it have the safety of sterility borne of distance, meaning that when we watchGoodfellas, we know that we aren't gonna run into Paul Sorveno and get our balls crushed. But go outside of this realm and into the world of mass entertainment and suddenly we must confront our own culpability in purchasing music and buying tickets to movies. The idea that there is some connection between a kid spinning a disc on his suburban turntable in 1963 and a car bomb exploding in Harlem is anathema to us. Yet the fact remains that the nature of any economic system requires the employ of certain rules that only apply to those with very little power. When Stanley Hoff and Smiley Coy whisper about murdering Dixie, they do not think of themselves as killers. They are businessmen doing what needs to be done to preserve something far larger than their own standard of living or even the essence of the capitalist system. They are preserving their own version of what it means to be a human being. When you surround that version with the appeal of easy sex, free liquor and dimly-lit fans, they reason that only a fool would fail to see the simple logic of doing whatever needs to be done.
So when John Lennon lifted a few patterns and lines from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" (which Morris Levy owned) for The Beatles' "Come Together," he sued Lennon for $42 million. It didn't matter to him whether he was suing a former Beatle or a machine shop owner--you didn't fuck with Morrie and that needed to be understood. It didn't matter that Levy had no natural right to own a song that he hadn't had anything to do with writing. You didn't fuck with Morrie.
It's something to think about as we tiptoe into a new year. Whether it's our relationship to the state lottery, the Super Bowl, some worldwide talent broadcast, or the home owners association, we should at least consider the possibility that there actually is a connection between our own demand for our entitlement of entertainment and the repercussions of the actions of men and women to whom that entertainment has little to do with art and everything to do with the swindle. After all, Charlie Castle chose the only reasonable way for himself in The Big Knife. That would be a sad way to start the new year for any of we lesser mortals.
I like to think that Jack Palance was sort of playing himself in The Big Knife. As Charlie Castle, a fine Hollywood actor who wants to escape the studio system because the moguls keep casting him in lousy films, he must confront a number of personal character flaws of his own, including an intense depression that leads him into a string of stupid trysts and prolonged drinking bouts. We recognize right away that Charlie is a man of great intellect, education, physicality, and, in a word, presence. He is also in love with his estranged wife Marion (Lupino), herself somewhat short of sainthood, although we never question her devotion to the man she imagines her husband to be.
In this version of Hollywood, a man like Charlie Castle has a friend named Buddy Bliss, largely an errand boy, who has proved his devotion to Castle by serving prison time for a crime Castle actually committed, which, if the truth were exposed, would certainly derail Castle's celebrity. The actor in turn shows his devotion to Buddy by schtupping the man's wife for no other reason than that it's easier than trying to throw the bitch out of the house. When Buddy Bliss discovers this betrayal, he spits on Castle. Marion, the wife, quickly fetches a towel to wipe away the saliva.
But the real thrust, as it were, is with the studio mogul, Stanley Shriner Hoff, embodied by Rod Steiger. Stanley Hoff and his loyal underling Smiley Coy (love these names!) believe they control Castle because they know his dirty secret about the crime. As secrets go, this one isn't particularly well kept and part of the plot is that Castle must wrestle with just letting the dirt fly, knowing he'll abandon his financial security and never get those great roles for which he yearns, although he figures maybe Marion will stick with him.
A lot of the real Hollywood honchos at the time found themselves apoplectic with the Stanley Hoff role because Steiger really totally embodied it, even playing it with a meanness and cruelty that goes far beyond mere manipulation and dances boldly into plans for murdering Shelley Winters, who plays the toss-pot fame-climber Dixie Evans.
The Stanley Hoff character in The Big Knife threatens to steal the show, appropriately enough. Watching this character, I was reminded less of Hollywood swindlers than of one particular fellow in the recording industry, a guy by the name of Morris Levy. The former head and founded of Roulette Records died in 1990, but I imagine he still has what might be called a certain reach, so I want to be sort of careful here because when he was alive and kicking, he had a knack for litigation and other means of persuasion.
Morrie Levy was a smart guy and a major player, but it's highly unlikely that he had anything at all to do with songwriting. That didn't stop him from affixing his signature to the songwriting credits of a bunch of tunes actually written by the artists he controlled. His name appeared on "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," "Ya Ya," "My Boy Lollipop," and "California Sun," among others.
The biggest act on Roulette Records during the 1960s was Tommy James and the Shondells, a group that had well-deserved hits with "Mony Mony," "Hanky Panky," "Crimson and Clover" and "I Think We're Alone Now." In his autobiography, Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and the Shondells (2010), James writes:
It was not for nothing that Morris Levy was called the Godfather of the music business. People from all over the industry called him or came to him to sort out problems. If somebody from Atlantic Records or Kama Sutra found out their records were being bootlegged, they called Morris. It seemed like once a month Morris would grab Nate McCalla and a few baseball bats and take off for somewhere in New Jersey or upstate New York.
A good mob story can be fun because those of us watching it have the safety of sterility borne of distance, meaning that when we watchGoodfellas, we know that we aren't gonna run into Paul Sorveno and get our balls crushed. But go outside of this realm and into the world of mass entertainment and suddenly we must confront our own culpability in purchasing music and buying tickets to movies. The idea that there is some connection between a kid spinning a disc on his suburban turntable in 1963 and a car bomb exploding in Harlem is anathema to us. Yet the fact remains that the nature of any economic system requires the employ of certain rules that only apply to those with very little power. When Stanley Hoff and Smiley Coy whisper about murdering Dixie, they do not think of themselves as killers. They are businessmen doing what needs to be done to preserve something far larger than their own standard of living or even the essence of the capitalist system. They are preserving their own version of what it means to be a human being. When you surround that version with the appeal of easy sex, free liquor and dimly-lit fans, they reason that only a fool would fail to see the simple logic of doing whatever needs to be done.
So when John Lennon lifted a few patterns and lines from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" (which Morris Levy owned) for The Beatles' "Come Together," he sued Lennon for $42 million. It didn't matter to him whether he was suing a former Beatle or a machine shop owner--you didn't fuck with Morrie and that needed to be understood. It didn't matter that Levy had no natural right to own a song that he hadn't had anything to do with writing. You didn't fuck with Morrie.
It's something to think about as we tiptoe into a new year. Whether it's our relationship to the state lottery, the Super Bowl, some worldwide talent broadcast, or the home owners association, we should at least consider the possibility that there actually is a connection between our own demand for our entitlement of entertainment and the repercussions of the actions of men and women to whom that entertainment has little to do with art and everything to do with the swindle. After all, Charlie Castle chose the only reasonable way for himself in The Big Knife. That would be a sad way to start the new year for any of we lesser mortals.
The Harder They Fall
Humphrey Bogart fared poorly with Columbia Pictures distribution of the films he made with his Santana Productions (Bogart had a fine looking boat called Santana; you can see it in Key Largo). If you want great Bogart pictures--and I think you do--stick with Warner Bros. You'll get instant class and classics such as The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Casablanca, The Big Sleep, and many more. Columbia felt so in awe of HDB--justifiably--that they let matters go to their heads and released some of the most over the top, sermon-dominated, bad acting films with major stars. Most of these films worked at some kind of social message angle, as with The Harder They Fall (1956), where Bogart plays a hack reporter who builds up the nonexistent reputation of a boxer in exchange for a piece of the kid's action, only to discover that the kid goes through two years of taking beatings to earn a measly forty-six dollars. Nice premise, lousy execution.
Far worse was Knock on Any Door (1949), starring Bogart and a young John Derek--yep, that John Derek. Here Bogart plays attorney Andy Morten, a do-gooder who has done wrong so many times he can no longer tell right from wrong. What he knows for sure is that the system has worked over his client Nicky (Derek). He tells a great flashback story that actually moves the hearts and minds, yet it turns out his plea falls on rigid cartilage. The problem is that John Derek couldn't act. But he sho do look hip, don't he, in those razor-edge suits and the hats that cost more than Italian shoes. Yes, he sho do. Dangerous, too. Unfortunately, the romantic interplay between Nicky and his good girl Emma wrings every melodramatic limb from limb until we're set to laugh our brains out at the only truly memorable exchange in the film:
"If I was that cynical, I'd hang myself.""Not me. I wouldn't trust the rope." There is one other line that rings memorable from the film. It's one that one hundred generations since have never tired of uttering: "I wanna live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse."
Nothing in this movie quite manages to point up the inexorable tragedy of that foolish plea. Besides, if it's great movie lines you're seeking, as I say, stick with Warners. They didn't become the biggest entertainment conglomerate based on their logo alone.
Far worse was Knock on Any Door (1949), starring Bogart and a young John Derek--yep, that John Derek. Here Bogart plays attorney Andy Morten, a do-gooder who has done wrong so many times he can no longer tell right from wrong. What he knows for sure is that the system has worked over his client Nicky (Derek). He tells a great flashback story that actually moves the hearts and minds, yet it turns out his plea falls on rigid cartilage. The problem is that John Derek couldn't act. But he sho do look hip, don't he, in those razor-edge suits and the hats that cost more than Italian shoes. Yes, he sho do. Dangerous, too. Unfortunately, the romantic interplay between Nicky and his good girl Emma wrings every melodramatic limb from limb until we're set to laugh our brains out at the only truly memorable exchange in the film:
"If I was that cynical, I'd hang myself.""Not me. I wouldn't trust the rope." There is one other line that rings memorable from the film. It's one that one hundred generations since have never tired of uttering: "I wanna live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse."
Nothing in this movie quite manages to point up the inexorable tragedy of that foolish plea. Besides, if it's great movie lines you're seeking, as I say, stick with Warners. They didn't become the biggest entertainment conglomerate based on their logo alone.
The 400 Blows
It's not every night of the week that I find myself engaged in wondering about what movies actress Angie Dickinson favors, but last night I made an exception. The mate and I were scrolling through the channels when we caught the tail-end of Dog Day Afternoon. The remote guide said the next movie up on Turner Classic might be an uncharacteristic joy, so we decided to stick around. After a bit of self-promotion, the channel returned to "host" Robert Osbourne. Seated across from him was the aforementioned former star of TV's "Police Woman," as well as featured performer in Dressed to Kill and Pay It Forward. To my admitted amazement, Dickinson explained to the host that she had first seen the object of tonight's review when it had come out in 1959 and had been impressed with how this movie had substantially differed from the Hollywood-style movies to which she was accustomed.
That quite succinctly sums up the unending appealing for which the movie The 400 Blows holds for its legend of fans.
This movie and Godard's Breathless virtually birthed the French new wave of film-making. Personally, I find that Jean-Luc's sensibilities suit the shattered shards of glass that are my nervous system more neatly than do Francois Truffaut's. Still, it would be a wasted life to go on for one hundred years without having at least seen this beautiful movie about the travails of young Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud. But in case you miss him as a child, you can catch him later inAntoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run. Each film follows the non-exploits of our young Antoine at various stages of his development. You could drop a feather on any of these movies and knock them completely out of kilter, a fact which speaks less of the fragility of the movies than of the carelessness of those who would drop feathers.
That quite succinctly sums up the unending appealing for which the movie The 400 Blows holds for its legend of fans.
This movie and Godard's Breathless virtually birthed the French new wave of film-making. Personally, I find that Jean-Luc's sensibilities suit the shattered shards of glass that are my nervous system more neatly than do Francois Truffaut's. Still, it would be a wasted life to go on for one hundred years without having at least seen this beautiful movie about the travails of young Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud. But in case you miss him as a child, you can catch him later inAntoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run. Each film follows the non-exploits of our young Antoine at various stages of his development. You could drop a feather on any of these movies and knock them completely out of kilter, a fact which speaks less of the fragility of the movies than of the carelessness of those who would drop feathers.
Elevator to the Gallows
It feels presumptuous and even a bit pretentious to recommendElevator to the Gallows (1958), given that virtually every critic of note and individual enlightened movie-goers everywhere already know for themselves what a sad delight director Louis Malle's elegant tragedy remains even after so many years. It also feels altogether bewildering deciding where to begin discussing the lauds and accolades this bizarre and brilliant picture continues to earn. Liberated somewhere between film noir and European art cinema, Elevator to the Gallows has been burdened with the New Wave or Nouvelle Vague label, an unfair weight to the extent that this film may well deserve a category unto itself.
Louis Malle was twenty-four when he filmed this movie, using street lights and other natural forms, as well as a baby carriage to hold the camera during the semi-famous string of scenes where Jeanne Moreau as Florence Carala walks the late night streets in somnambulist semi-paralysis in search of her beloved, Julien Tavernier, played with understated flair by Maurice Ronet. Twenty-four years old--and there are life-times within this movie. Moreau had been a big deal stage actress prior to this, her first feature appearance, yet she moves from worry to disappointment, denial to acceptance, rejection to commitment and finally dissipation, all constructed around the simple phrase "Je t'aime" because her strikingly lovely face transmogrifies with each crack in the sidewalk as she staggers with dignity from one locale to another in search of Julien, the man who has murdered her husband and whom she erroneously suspects of deserting her for a younger woman.
In point of fact, Julien works for Mr. Carala, a big time arms dealer who has made a fortune in the Indochina war and more recently in Algiers. Tavernier has served Carala's interests in both wars as a paratrooper, somewhere along the way falling in love with his boss's wife. After shooting Carala with the victim's own gun and staging the scene to look like a suicide, Julien--who has many traits of a secret agent (from the Maxwell Smart school of spying)--discovers that he has left behind a clue that will blow his cover. Intending to make a quick return to the crime scene, he leaves his car running and double parked, then gets stuck in the elevator over night after the building's power is cut off. His car is stolen, of course. The two thieves are a young couple, Veronique (the kind of fool who's afraid of everything, yet loves the excitement of being bad) and Louis (a good-bad-but-not-evil lad who would have turned the heads of the girls in the Shangri-Las). They encounter a German couple at an out-of-the-way hotel and decide to have Louis impersonate Julien. A rather ugly crime transpires, and the police suspect Tavernier of a double murder, one which he did not commit. The former paratrooper finds himself in the unhappy position of having as his only alibi that he did not kill the German couple because he was stuck in an elevator after murdering his employer so that he and the widow could live happily ever after.
It spoils nothing to share the plot here because the exquisite majesty of this movie carries the plot on its own shoulders. The aforementioned sequences of Moreau along the night streets of Paris, the smoke ring chains of Mile Davis' improvised soundtrack, the lovesick stupidity of Louis and Veronique bungling their own suicides, and the general decadence of the upper class and their immediate underlings who have to stay schnockered to live through the evil banality of their daytime existences, the crumbling confidence and malignant hostility that Julien Tavernier uses to mask what turns out to be about as substantial as an expensive paint job over a rusted out jalopy: these are the visual elements that keep our eyes focused on the screen as the story unwraps in front of us.
Because of the perfect use of natural light and shadow, as well as the moral darkness of the characters, Elevator may remind the viewer of the film noir movement, while more erudite viewers than myself have suggested that this film is a contender for the first ever French New Wave cinema production. That sort of information may be nice for those who build lists. For the rest of us, however, what matters is that Louis Malle had never made a feature-length movie before this one [he would later direct Pretty Baby (yawn), Atlantic City (hooray!) and My Dinner with Andre (double secret yay!), among others], yet somehow managed to convey generations of experience and knowledge that decades of revisiting still struggle to fathom.
Louis Malle was twenty-four when he filmed this movie, using street lights and other natural forms, as well as a baby carriage to hold the camera during the semi-famous string of scenes where Jeanne Moreau as Florence Carala walks the late night streets in somnambulist semi-paralysis in search of her beloved, Julien Tavernier, played with understated flair by Maurice Ronet. Twenty-four years old--and there are life-times within this movie. Moreau had been a big deal stage actress prior to this, her first feature appearance, yet she moves from worry to disappointment, denial to acceptance, rejection to commitment and finally dissipation, all constructed around the simple phrase "Je t'aime" because her strikingly lovely face transmogrifies with each crack in the sidewalk as she staggers with dignity from one locale to another in search of Julien, the man who has murdered her husband and whom she erroneously suspects of deserting her for a younger woman.
In point of fact, Julien works for Mr. Carala, a big time arms dealer who has made a fortune in the Indochina war and more recently in Algiers. Tavernier has served Carala's interests in both wars as a paratrooper, somewhere along the way falling in love with his boss's wife. After shooting Carala with the victim's own gun and staging the scene to look like a suicide, Julien--who has many traits of a secret agent (from the Maxwell Smart school of spying)--discovers that he has left behind a clue that will blow his cover. Intending to make a quick return to the crime scene, he leaves his car running and double parked, then gets stuck in the elevator over night after the building's power is cut off. His car is stolen, of course. The two thieves are a young couple, Veronique (the kind of fool who's afraid of everything, yet loves the excitement of being bad) and Louis (a good-bad-but-not-evil lad who would have turned the heads of the girls in the Shangri-Las). They encounter a German couple at an out-of-the-way hotel and decide to have Louis impersonate Julien. A rather ugly crime transpires, and the police suspect Tavernier of a double murder, one which he did not commit. The former paratrooper finds himself in the unhappy position of having as his only alibi that he did not kill the German couple because he was stuck in an elevator after murdering his employer so that he and the widow could live happily ever after.
It spoils nothing to share the plot here because the exquisite majesty of this movie carries the plot on its own shoulders. The aforementioned sequences of Moreau along the night streets of Paris, the smoke ring chains of Mile Davis' improvised soundtrack, the lovesick stupidity of Louis and Veronique bungling their own suicides, and the general decadence of the upper class and their immediate underlings who have to stay schnockered to live through the evil banality of their daytime existences, the crumbling confidence and malignant hostility that Julien Tavernier uses to mask what turns out to be about as substantial as an expensive paint job over a rusted out jalopy: these are the visual elements that keep our eyes focused on the screen as the story unwraps in front of us.
Because of the perfect use of natural light and shadow, as well as the moral darkness of the characters, Elevator may remind the viewer of the film noir movement, while more erudite viewers than myself have suggested that this film is a contender for the first ever French New Wave cinema production. That sort of information may be nice for those who build lists. For the rest of us, however, what matters is that Louis Malle had never made a feature-length movie before this one [he would later direct Pretty Baby (yawn), Atlantic City (hooray!) and My Dinner with Andre (double secret yay!), among others], yet somehow managed to convey generations of experience and knowledge that decades of revisiting still struggle to fathom.