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 Elevator to the Gallows
Directed by: Louis Malle 1958 Spine #335 Elevator to the Gallows - which Louis Malle directed in 1958 when he was (preposterously) just twenty-four years old - is best described as a conventional crime-thriller dipping its toes into the nascent waters of the French New Wave. These latter elements are what the film tends to be celebrated for today, but the story is very much rooted in the tightly-plotted fatalism of film noir. The initial domino, not surprisingly, is murder. Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) concludes a normal Saturday at the office by shooting his boss - wealthy industrialist Simon Carala (Jean Wall) - and making it look like a suicide. Unfortunately, his carefully orchestrated crime is thwarted when he’s forced to re-enter the building to tie up a loose end… and ends up trapped in the elevator between floors after the security guard shuts down the power for the weekend (let’s just say this isn’t one of the more cryptic titles ever bestowed upon a film). This is a juicy setup… but it doesn’t take long to realize that it doesn’t make for much of a movie on its own. After all, there’s not much for Tavernier to actually *do* in his predicament, other than brood, poke about the elevator paneling in a vain attempt to escape, and smoke cigarettes at the furious rate of your average 1950s Frenchman. Which brings us to the second - and by far the most iconic - part of the story, which concerns Florence (Jeanne Moreau)… who’s Carala’s wife and, more importantly, Tavernier’s lover. Assuming Tavernier lost his nerve when he fails to show at their scheduled rendezvous (and thinking she’s been jilted when she sees his car pass with a young girl hanging out the window - we’ll get to that momentarily), the despondent Florence takes to wandering the streets of Paris as conventional form dissolves into the stylistic equivalent of improvised jazz. Both figuratively - as Moreau is captured with a startling level of realism, her face freed of the customary layers of makeup and illuminated entirely by the natural light cast by nocturnal cafe signs and shop windows - and quite literally, thanks to an indelible score composed by none other than Miles Davis. Davis’s involvement was a stroke of serendipity and the lonely ache of his trumpet is impossible to describe (it evokes the same feelings of dreamlike sorrow that Vangelis later achieved with “Blade Runner Blues”). The melancholy shots of Moreau’s rain-lashed face linger in the memory; they suggest Parisian romanticism and longing at their most timelessly cinematic. Of course, Maurice Ronet marooned in an elevator and Jeanne Moreau strolling glumly through the night still don’t quite make for a fully-realized movie, which brings us to the third side of the narrative triangle… angry delinquent Louis (Georges Poujouly) and his shopgirl sweetheart Véronique (the adorably cherubic Yori Bertin), who impulsively steal Tavernier’s car and take it for a joyride (they’re like the bratty, high school freshmen version of Belmondo and Seberg in Breathless). Youthful indiscretion takes a dark turn, however, resulting in further violence and a chain reaction of misunderstandings and mistaken identity. We’re meant to take a rather dim view of these callow lovebirds - Louis, endlessly posturing and quick to anger, Véronique punch-drunk on her own romantic naïveté (she practically swoons at the idea of a suicide pact as the logical solution to their predicament) - but the film questions if Florence and Tavernier, for all their relative sophistication and emotional maturity, are really any worthier of our regard. Whereas Louis is rash and reactionary, Tavernier is coolly methodical… their specific crimes deliberately juxtaposed… and yet, their fates don’t become intertwined by accident. Love, it would seem, just makes a mess of everything. It binds the two couples together, a veritable agent of endless chaos. There are many who seem to feel that, minus the Miles Davis score or the vulnerable beauty etched onto Moreau’s performance, Elevator to the Gallows would be viewed as a forgettable - even unaccomplished - effort… but that does a disservice to the elegance of the film’s plotting. Malle’s technique is impressive for someone so young. The movie is nothing if not a consistent triumph of plant and playoff. Scene composition reflects the instincts of a filmmaker twice his age. Lino Ventura eventually shows up as a homicide detective with a nose for bullshit and it’s a relatively minor performance in terms of his filmography, yet his oak-like stolidity is always welcome. The final half-hour is fiercely propulsive; when we reach the denouement, the final puzzle piece falls into its waiting place so neatly and effortlessly, all you can do is incline your head in admiration. “FIN” has become a symbolic punchline of European arthouse cinema, but in this instance, it feels like a stiletto blade slipping right through our ribcage and piercing the heart.
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12/1/2023 0 Comments targets (spine 1179) Targets
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich 1968 Spine #1179 Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature Targets was released over 55 years ago, and yet - in some ways - it wouldn’t feel out of place if it were screening in theaters this past weekend. You could easily pair it with The Parallax View as a double bill with “eerily prescient” as the dominant theme. Watching the movie today, one can’t help but marvel at how much has changed over the ensuing half-century… and yet, in other respects, it almost feels as if time is standing completely still, like society is simply marching in place - caught in an infinite loop of senseless violence. The film is heavily steeped in meta-textures, starting with the casting of the legendary Boris Karloff… who plays a thinly-veiled version of himself (so thinly-veiled, frankly, it might as well be translucent tissue) as Byron Orlok, a longtime icon of the horror genre who abruptly announces his retirement after a screening of his latest picture. Orlok takes a certain impish satisfaction in the obvious distress his decision causes in those around him - from the frazzled and uncomprehending studio execs, to his increasingly exasperated secretary Jenny (Nancy Hsueh), to screenwriter Sammy Michaels (Bogdanovich himself, in another meta flourish), who was eagerly slated to direct his next movie (a different, more “elevated” horror project - presumably one not altogether different from Targets itself). But one senses a genuine distress behind Orlok’s facade - an embitterment over his old age and feelings of disconnect from society… exemplified by his belief that the gothic horror brand he built his persona upon no longer holds any relevance, certainly not in a world where real-life horror and tragedy dominate the daily headlines. Orlok’s plight is juxtaposed against the character of Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly), an unassuming and clean-cut young insurance agent who lives in the San Fernando suburbs with his wife and parents. Thompson has the vague look of a ventriloquist dummy - his toothy smile plastered from ear-to-ear, as if his facial muscles have become paralyzed in some sort of jolly rictus grin, not unlike the Joker. In spite of his cheerful and politely deferential manner, we can tell there’s something deeply off about him. If the trunkful of firearms and ammunition he’s secretly amassed weren’t enough of a red flag, there’s the trembling excitement that comes over him when he stares down the rifle sights at his father during some recreational can shooting… we wait for the cord to inevitably snap in an agonizing state of tension, our nerves the equivalent of rubber bands that have been stretched unbearably taut. And snap it finally does. Thompson abruptly murders his wife and mother one morning (a sequence that still manages to jolt, even though we’ve been waiting for it - kind of like the cinematic equivalent of a jack-in-the-box), then embarks on a random killing spree, initially setting up shop atop an oil storage tanker and picking off motorists on the nearby highway with his sniper’s rifle. Targets was O’Kelly’s only major role of note. He had a few TV guest spots and was originally cast as “Danno” on Hawaii Five-O, but was replaced after filming the pilot… and eventually passed away when he was just 48. He has the camera-ready appearance and photogenic quality of an actor you’re certain you’ve seen before, but can’t put your finger on where… and that elusive tickle of familiarity is a major part of the movie’s mystique. As a character, Thompson remains just beyond our grasp. He feels like someone who lives in the corner of your eye as you pass him on the street. Bogdanovich isn’t interested in what makes him tick; he’s a cipher, a vessel for nihilistic chaos, a ticking time bomb incubated within the violent fabric of American culture. His killings are staged with a bone-chilling matter-of-factness, free of stylistic artifice. The layer of fantasy, the comfortable cinematic buffer that exists in the films of Byron Orlok, has been well and truly stripped away. As someone who’s never had particularly strong feelings one way or another on Bogdanovich as a filmmaker, I must concede that this is a remarkably self-assured debut… and one in which the director is mature enough not to exempt himself from potential self-incrimination. Part of Orlok’s fear of irrelevancy is tied to the sense that exploitation of real-life tragedy will become the new breed of horror… with Targets itself the de facto blueprint, given that Bogdanovich was openly appropriating the Charles Whitmore tower shooting as inspiration (the director would, ironically, also play a direct hand in arguably the most infamous movie of this nature - Bob Fosse’s Star 80). As an actor, Bogdanovich’s casting isn’t an act of vanity - he and Karloff have a limber and pleasing chemistry (with his hangdog expression, Bogdanovich bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the animated character Droopy - particularly when he was younger). Orlok and Thompson’s destinies ultimately converge at the Reseda drive-in theater, where Orlok has been talked into making one final promotional appearance. Boris Karloff’s legacy as an actor may be predominately an iconic one, but he’s almost heartbreakingly good in the film’s climactic sequence (the amount of nuance and emotion he’s able to wring from a simple line reading of “That man has a rifle” is astonishing). The final reckoning - an alchemical convergence of cinema and reality - finds a way to genuinely startle (and, in a strange way, almost lays the groundwork for Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Any sense of triumph proves fleeting, however. Targets presaged a taste for carnage that had already taken root in our cultural identity… one that unfortunately can’t be mitigated by a few choice key strokes on a screenwriter’s laptop. 9/21/2023 0 Comments the parallax view (spine 1064) The Parallax View
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula 1974 Spine #1064 The Parallax View, like many great movies, is a film both intensely, indivisibly of its time and eerily relevant today. As one of the key paranoia thrillers of the 1970s, its premise was forged in the crucible of the JFK/MLK/RFK assassinations, while dovetailing directly into the fallout of the Watergate scandal. Watching the movie today, it’s startling just how much its cultural echoes have come full-circle. So much has changed in the past 50 years, but in some respects nothing has changed at all. The story begins at the Seattle Space Needle, where popular Senator and Presidential hopeful Charles Carroll is assassinated, his killer subsequently plummeting to his death (the movie takes great pains to divorce itself from any sort of political stance; much is made of how the maverick Carroll adheres to neither party). Three years later, investigative journalist Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty) is visited by his TV reporter ex Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss)… who bore witness to the Senator’s murder and is convinced her life is in danger, revealing that six other people who were present that day have since died under mysterious circumstances. Frady dismisses her concerns, but when she’s found dead of a drug overdose, guilt compels him to look into her claims. His ensuing investigation eventually leads him to the Parallax Corporation… a private organization that claims to be recruiting “security operatives,” but appears in practice to be targeting the socially disaffected and maladjusted, and training them as assassins-for-hire. There are two ways of looking at this movie. Director Alan J. Pakula has precisely one mode as a filmmaker: sober-faced self-seriousness… and one could argue that his terse approach squanders the obvious pulp potential of the premise (Vincent Canby of The New York Times hinted at the sort of macabre fun a director such as Hitchcock might have unleashed with this material). On the other hand, the film’s matter-of-factness gives off a slight chill that’s slowly absorbed by the surface of your skin, without you even being fully aware of it… at least until it insinuates its way into your nerve fibers. The signature set piece, in which Frady - having successfully positioned himself as a potential recruit - is subjected to subliminal conditioning (LOVE. MOTHER. FATHER. HOME. COUNTRY. GOD. ENEMY. HAPPINESS), recalls A Clockwork Orange, only with none of Kubrick’s fabled showmanship. Pakula’s camera tips absolutely nothing. The sequence goes on for so long - the interplay between words and images so unnervingly opaque - that the effect is downright disquieting. We’re not sure what to think or feel. After a while, we begin to question whether the montage is actually having some sort of subconscious effect on the viewer. How would you even know? It leaves one feeling genuinely shaken. Warren Beatty, paradoxically, is very much a movie star… who happens to not really be giving a movie star performance in this film. With his feathered hair and chiseled features, he was at the absolute apex of his 70s studliness, but Frady frankly isn’t much of a character. His crusade for the truth isn’t framed with any particular driving motivation or specificity (we know he used to have a drinking problem, that’s about it) - rather he’s the vessel through which all social grievances and frustrations on the part of the moviegoing public were filtered and expressed vicariously. Director of photography Gordon Willis did exemplary work on Pakula’s prior feature Klute, but he outdoes himself here… utilizing light and shadow within his screen compositions almost like a Renaissance painter (okay, it’s not exactly Caravaggio, but characters emerge from - and disappear into - shrouded corners of the frame, as if to express the moral murkiness at work). Speaking of insidious conspiracies, Willis somehow lensed this picture AND The Godfather Part II in 1974, but didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for either - try explaining *that* particular nugget, if you care to. The Parallax View, a case could be made, was the single most pessimistic movie of the 1970s - which is saying a hell of a lot. More than anything, Pakula conveys that particular sense of bitter helplessness that raged throughout the decade. It’s reinforced at virtually every turn. When Carroll is assassinated, we witness the shooting on the other side of a pane of glass - powerless to intercede. When Frady pursues a lead to the small town of Salmontail, in Washington, a confrontation takes place against the backdrop of a dam opening its floodgates - the massive wall of water that comes bearing down on him a fitting visual metaphor for the system he’s fruitlessly attempting to expose. Best of all are the congressional committees - faceless, dispassionate tribunals… Willis’s camera starting at midrange, then slowly pulling further and further back… presenting their findings as immutable fact and declaring “There will be no questions.” Of course, when you take this festering form of paranoia and mistrust and merge it with the internet age, it’s hardly surprising that something like QAnon eventually takes root and proliferates - sucking vulnerable people down its toxic rabbit hole. It also explains, sadly, how a cheap demagogue like Trump rises to power. In 2016 there was at least a kernel of logic, however misguided, to Trump’s base of support… but it’s astonishing, even now, having been laid bare as the most pedestrian of snake oil hucksters, how people remain absolutely convinced that he’s some sort of noble outsider crusading against a corrupt cabal of Washington elites. Unfortunately, that renders a film like The Parallax View a bit of a bummer. It was never really a “fun” movie by any conventional definition, but its chilling truths no longer feel like a warning, but a prophecy.  Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Directed by: Pedro Almodovar 1988 Spine #855 Growing up, the prospect of watching Pedro Almodovar’s cosmopolitan farce Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in high school Spanish class was generally regarded as far cooler than watching Gregory Nava’s El Norte… though admittedly not quite as cool as watching Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (but then anything was better than conjugating verbs). Although it’s since been overshadowed by much of the director’s later output (including Oscar winners All About My Mother and Talk to Her), the film still pops with a rapturous zest; it’s not hard to see why it was Almodovar’s international breakthrough. Pepa (Carmen Maura) is a television actress who isn’t coping particularly well after being spurned by her smooth-talking lover Ivan (Fernando Guillen). Unable to get hold of him, she whips up a batch of gazpacho packed with sleeping pills (the Criterion case indicates she’s planning to kill herself, though the movie suggests the lethal concoction is meant for Ivan). At any rate, it quickly becomes Chekhov’s gazpacho-laced-with-sleeping-pills as Pepa finds herself pulled from one madcap scenario to the next… leaving her entangled with Ivan’s mentally unstable ex Lucia (Julieta Serrano), his estranged son Carlos (Antonio Banderas), Carlos’s snobbish and overbearing fiancee Marisa (Rossy de Palma), a mambo-loving cabbie (Guillermo Montesinos), and her high-strung friend Candela (Maria Barranco), who’s on the run after getting mixed up with a Shiite terrorist cell that may or may not be planning to hijack a flight to Stockholm that Ivan may or may not be booked on with his current lover. Screwball is a term that tends to suggest a riotous state of comedic bliss. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is more like the cinematic equivalent of champagne bubbles; it’s buoyed by its own classy and uniquely fizzy pep… though it’s not exactly what you’d call laugh-out-loud funny. Rather, it generates a momentum of perpetually spicy amusement. The screwball tag is earned through scenes of comedic misunderstanding and coincidence flowing naturally together, as if by fate, with no obvious trace of screenwriting seams (even though the film happily embraces contrivance - what are the odds Carlos and Marisa would be the couple that wants to tour Pepa’s flat?). Almodovar’s narrative hand remains impressively unobtrusive. Carmen Maura (one of several Almodovar muses) is the right kind of actress to occupy the center of a movie like this - the sort of performer who can seamlessly adjust to the tonal parameters of whatever scene she’s in (one moment she’s accidentally setting her mattress on fire and hurling her telephone through the window, the next she’s the confident calm at the eye of the storm… handling cops and hauling Candela in off the literal and figurative ledge). Banderas was pushed as a smoldering hunk at his 90s apex for fairly self-explanatory reasons, but his early work with Almodovar reflected a deft comedic touch. The entire cast, right down to the bit parts (such as the eccentric porter for Pepa’s building), feels carefully considered, and part of an organic whole. Almodovar is, of course, the sort of filmmaker who couldn’t be visually dull or subdued if he tried. The movie is well-regarded for its vibrant color palette (and Elvira Lindo’s accompanying Criterion essay does a good job outlining how the film’s aesthetic reflected the shifting social and cultural landscape of 1980s Spain - specifically Madrid), but what’s particularly striking is the precision of the shot-making… almost Hitchcockian in its deliberate calibration. There’s a playful suggestion of a suspense-thriller lurking on the periphery, one that gains the occasional foothold (particularly near the climax) but is unable to quell the comedic chaos for long. It would seem the absurdities of life are simply too great to suppress… love, at least in Almodovar’s eyes, just makes everyone act a bit cuckoo.  The Devil's Backbone
Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro 2001 Spine #666 “One for them, one for me” is an adage that many filmmakers have lived by, as a means of navigating the tricky creative vortex of Hollywood… and it’s one that Guillermo Del Toro exercised to particularly fascinating effect early in his career. Not that any Del Toro film - even an obvious studio “for hire” job such as Blade II - could ever truly be termed “for them”… the director feels his work far too deeply and sincerely for that… but the interplay between the frenetic, bursting-at-the-seams pop enthusiasm of a rambunctious comic flick like Hellboy with the elegiac sadness infused deep within the trilogy of Spanish-language allegories he made between 1993 and 2006 is almost jolting in terms of its artistic whiplash. Pan’s Labyrinth is, of course, the best and most beloved of these films, but its 2001 predecessor The Devil’s Backbone is, perhaps, the most fascinating. Set in the waning months of the Spanish Civil War, it follows a 12-year-old boy named Carlos (Fernando Tielve) who’s deposited at a remote orphanage for what he believes is just a temporary stay - unaware that his freedom fighter father died on the front lines weeks ago. Within moments of his arrival, Del Toro establishes the film’s most iconic and evocative image - a bomb, dropped from the sky, that failed to detonate on impact and now remains permanently-lodged in the courtyard, its tail jutting skyward at a slightly askew angle… supposedly defused, yet a constant, eerie reminder of the war still raging beyond the orphanage’s walls and the omnipresent threat of death. “They all say she’s switched off. But I don’t believe it. Put your ear against her, you can hear her ticking. That’s her heart… she’s still alive, and she knows we’re here,” another boy named Jaime tells Carlos. Contrary to what you might assume, the orphanage isn’t a particularly awful place - run by the maternal, one-legged headmistress Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and the kindly Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi, like an Argentine Christopher Lee). In fact, the only significant downsides to be found are hot-tempered handyman Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega, who looks like a matinee idol version of Eli Roth’s character from Inglourious Basterds)… and the apparent specter of a young boy who roams the hallways at night. The ghost in question - known as “the one who sighs” - is a particularly splendid visual creation - a pale-faced wraith, his skeleton partially visible beneath his translucent skin, forehead cracked like porcelain china, leaking blood that unfurls from the wound like plumes of red flare smoke. Carlos, the only one to actually lay eyes on him, comes to believe this restless spirit may be Santi - a boy who supposedly ran away months earlier - but remains uncertain of his intentions… sinister or otherwise. Del Toro, more than any other contemporary filmmaker (save, perhaps, Spielberg), understands intuitively how to craft a story from a child’s perspective (perhaps because the artistic relationship with his own inner child is so clearly deep-rooted and symbiotic)… and only Del Toro could deliver a ghost story this profoundly melancholy. Many have described the film as terrifying, but it really isn’t. There are some effective, goose-pimpled scares (peeking through a keyhole only for a magnified eyeball to suddenly appear rarely fails to deliver), but there’s never much sense of danger - at least from a supernatural standpoint. What the movie does particularly well (Pan’s Labyrinth to an even more heightened degree) is utilize fantasy and horror to dramatize how children process real-life terrors just beyond their grasp. The orphanage, literally miles from anywhere, would appear to be a safe haven from the war, but it’s illusory - we know, because Carmen and Casares are Republican loyalists who are safeguarding a large cache of gold that might as well be radioactive - and there’s only so long that its walls can realistically keep the nightmares at bay. The Devil’s Backbone is such a nuanced and emotionally felt drama, it’s somewhat surprising that its shakiest component is actually the gothic spook-show Del Toro conjures up. Once the puzzle pieces snap into place, the resulting picture is almost rudimentary in its conception (it’s a low-key achilles heel within Del Toro’s work - applicable to the likes of Crimson Peak and Nightmare Alley… stories whose narrative facets come across as a lot more simplified than they probably should). The film feels self-consciously allegorical in a way that Pan’s Labyrinth doesn’t. Part of the problem is the character of Jacinto, who’s established as a former ward of the orphanage and - perhaps - as a tragic, lost soul with little place or purpose in the world… but unravels into increasingly teeth-gnashing villainy, until there’s no real dimension left (in some respects, Issa Lopez’s 2017 film Tigers Are Not Afraid is the better, scarier version of what Del Toro seems to be going for). Nonetheless, the movie has a mournful wisdom that stays with you; in Del Toro’s view, ghosts aren’t to be feared… not when the real world is already so full of monsters. 4/5/2023 0 Comments la piscine (spine 1088) La Piscine
Directed by: Jacques Deray 1969 Spine #1088 If you’ve ever wanted to experience the apex of movie star glamour merged with sexual chemistry at its most intensely palpable, look no further than the 1969 French thriller La Piscine. From the opening moments - in which Romy Schneider’s glistening, black bikini-clad body emerges from the shimmering depths of the titular swimming pool and she stands seductively over Alain Delon - lounging poolside like a bronzed Adonis - and the camera pans down her sculpted torso as rivulets of water drip off her thighs onto his impassive features - the film enmeshes you in its rapturously erotic grip. It’s a titillating reminder that a movie needn’t indulge in graphic or gratuitous nudity to radiate sensual heat. Delon and Schneider were one of the reigning power couples of European cinema earlier in their careers… and their on-screen reunion carried a potent spark of anticipation. They play Jean-Paul and Marianne, a consummately chic couple engaged in a sybaritic, sun-dappled existence while on vacation on the French Riviera. Their idyllic routine of mid-afternoon lovemaking is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of their old friend Harry (Maurice Ronet) and his 18-year-old daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin)… who flits enigmatically around the periphery of the villa like a nubile sphinx. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, happy nor unhappy, innocent nor flirtatious, engaged nor bored, she’s an inscrutable wisp of a girl whose presence unsettles the dynamic between Jean-Paul and Marianne for reasons they can’t fully articulate. There’s no real question, on the other hand, about the prickle of tension that Harry’s presence causes. A onetime lover of Marianne’s, he flirts openly and brazenly with her while taking jocular but pointed jabs at Jean-Paul - both in terms of his sobriety (he used to be a lot more “fun” when he was younger) and the fact that he put his writing career on hold to take an unfulfilling ad agency job. Jean-Paul initially attempts to undercut the alpha male bravado by taking Harry’s beloved Maserati Ghibli sports car for a high-speed spin… but it isn’t until he develops a precarious bond of sorts with Penelope that this particular mixture of chemicals represented by the movie’s main foursome starts to destabilize, then turn dangerously volatile. La Piscine isn’t a conventional thriller. The film affects a leisurely stance, presenting itself very much like the placid surface of a swimming pool… but director Jacques Deray increases the unspoken tension roiling at the deeper depths, like a screw he keeps systematically tightening a millimeter at a time. Before long the sun’s once blissful rays have turned into a suffocating swelter, and the characters feel increasingly imprisoned, provoking one another in the picturesque villa that was once regarded as an oasis. It’s a rather scathing indictment of the sort of aloof, cosmopolitan attitudes embodied by characters like Jean-Paul and Marianne, who like to act as if they’re above such petty human encumbrances as jealousy and resentment… which, of course, they aren’t. No one is. Alain Delon resides on the short list of movie stars who feel as if they were engineered in a lab. He’s as handsome as anyone who’s ever graced the big-screen, but he combined his otherworldly good looks with magnetic charisma and that particular brand of icy French menthol-cool - not to mention genuine acting talent. He and Schneider’s real-life history bleeds across the edges into the fictional narrative. Their chemistry has unspoken layers and dimensions to it - to the point that it’s almost jarring when Marianne reveals they’ve only been together for two years. It’s impossible to imagine the movie with a different pair of actors. Even when events come to a head and the film appears to be treading into more conventional territory, Deray keeps his cinematic eye rooted on his two leads. He’s more intrigued by the question of whether lovers as spiritually entwined as Jean-Paul and Marianne can disentangle from one another when their bond is tested. With that in mind, it’s hard to imagine a final shot more unsettling yet devastatingly romantic.  Lady Snowblood / Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance Directed by: Toshiya Fujita 1973/1974 Spine #790/791 In the opening scene of Lady Snowblood - Toshiya Fujita’s 1973 classic of hyper-stylized Japanese revenge porn - a female figure hidden beneath a lavender parasol tiptoes daintily across freshly fallen snow. A rickshaw transporting Genzo Shibayama, leader of the Asakusa Senryo gang, arrives and the woman (played by Meiko Kaji) proceeds to slice and dice her way through his bodyguards, painting the screen with fountains of arterial spray. Shibayama takes her on and quickly finds himself skewered on the end of her blade. “Why?” “Revenge.” “For whom?” “For the powerless people you made suffer.” “Who the hell are you?” “Lady Snowblood.” In recent years, Criterion has done a commendable job incorporating more and more genre cinema from Asia into the collection - the Infernal Affairs trilogy, the Once Upon a Time in China box set, the Lone Wolf and Cub box set, Police Story I & II, the Bruce Lee box set, Throwdown (hopefully the first of many films from the great Hong Kong genre specialist Johnnie To), and, of course, the Lady Snowblood Collection. The first film in particular was a major creative influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga, both in a narrative and visual context (see the above referenced opening, which clearly evokes the Bride’s climactic showdown with O-Ren Ishii in Vol. 1). The story (adapted from the manga of the same name) begins with a woman named Sayo, whose husband and son are murdered by a quartet of ruthless criminals - and QT fans may note a rather striking similarity in terms of how the seeds of vengeance come to be sown --
Sayo, consumed with torment, eventually lands in prison… where she proceeds to seduce every guard she comes in contact with, in a calculated bid to bear a son who can become her “wrath incarnate.” Her plan comes to fruition - well, except for the “son” part. Instead she gives birth to Yuki - named after the falling snow - who, in spite of her sex, is then trained relentlessly for a singular purpose - assassination with extreme prejudice.
The plot is what it is. The film isn’t particularly interested in psychological dimension or moral equivocation. Yuki has a list with three names on it and by God, after 90 minutes those names will be crossed off - each bisected by a bloody red slash. The obvious draw of the movie is its gory pulp fervor. Fujita, working with a vivid color palette (that lavender parasol, along with the yellow-and-black butterflies on Yuki’s kimono, pops right off the screen, like a champagne cork), fills his widescreen compositions with lavish swordplay and visceral geysers of crimson (blood just bled brighter in the 70s). Meiko Kaji isn’t exactly given a great deal to play, character-wise, but she has an arresting presence - features as delicate as her character’s namesake, but eyes like smoldering chunks of obsidian. The outrageous climax, set amidst an elaborate masquerade ball, is thrillingly staged… leading to a bittersweet ending that suggests revenge is simply an endless red circle. A provocative thought, certainly, though Fujita can’t help but leave the door ajar for a sequel… … which, in fact, would arrive the following year in the form of Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance. The second film takes more of an overt political slant. Doggedly pursued by the authorities, a weary Yuki accepts her fate at the end of a hangman’s rope… only to receive a Faustian offer from the Japanese Secret Police, who want her to spy on Ransui Tokunaga, a local anarchist who has a MacGuffin - *cough* political document - in his possession that’s of great threat to the government. Once again, the script mostly skims the psychological surface. Yuki agrees to the deal - because, well, there’s no movie otherwise - but quickly comes to sympathize with Tokunaga’s cause. Fujita feels like he has more on his mind this time, but - paradoxically - Lady Snowblood herself is left adrift in her own movie. Turns out political intrigue suits her far less than samurai retribution. Nonetheless, this is the sort of movie in which the corrupt Chief of Police gets not one, but both of his eyes stabbed in gruesome close-up. The plot meanders, but the climax is still big, bold and bloody. Like the first Lady Snowblood film, it understands its lead character’s claim to fame; there are few titles in the Criterion Collection that average more arterial spray per frame. 2/20/2023 4 Comments dressed to kill (spine 770) Dressed to Kill
Directed by: Brian De Palma 1980 Spine #770 Frequent Pop contributor Joe Frankel is the biggest Brian De Palma fan/expert I know. We recently rewatched Dressed to Kill together, and I post this piece knowing that he almost certainly could have written something ten times more insightful. Watching Brian De Palma’s early thrillers is almost like experiencing a director working in a cinematic language that no longer exists. Plenty of other filmmakers have exhibited a self-consciousness in terms of the camera’s existence… but in De Palma’s case, it’s almost like a physical extension of himself; assimilated, like some Cronenberg-style body horror, on an organic level - a next-level fusion of flesh and lens. Dressed to Kill is arguably the best of De Palma’s lurid exercises in cinematic suspense (at worst it’s a coin flip between it and Blow Out). The director’s Hitchcockian influences are so well-documented (and this film, in particular, is such a transparent spiritual successor to Psycho), it’s easy to overlook the fact that the picture remains arguably the most successful attempt to incorporate the DNA of the Italian giallo subgenre popularized throughout the 70s into an American slasher. It’s clear that De Palma has no interest in anything outside of the artificial constructs of the movie’s own heightened reality - a world where dream bleeds into nightmare, and nightmare into dream. As was the case with Psycho, we spend the first third of the film following a character who’s not actually the protagonist - Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson), who has a teenage egghead son named Peter (Keith Gordon) and a not-particularly-gratifying sex life with her second husband… a fact she confides to her therapist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine, a quintessential portrait of cerebral, poker-faced calm). Kate eventually ends up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she engages in a flirtation with a mysterious stranger… the two of them wordlessly stalking one another to Pino Donaggio’s evocative score as the camera tracks through the cavernous galleries, De Palma allowing a vague undercurrent of danger to dig its nails into the scene’s underbelly. Eventually this leads to a sexual tryst, and just when you believe the tension’s been defused (or misdirected, rather, thanks to a darkly comic reveal in the mystery man’s apartment), Kate meets an unfortunate demise in the building’s elevator. De Palma stages her murder with maximum ghoulish bravado. The set piece is teased out with such a deliberate and stylistic gusto, one can almost picture him immediately off-screen, directing like a frenzied conductor, demanding more crescendoing thunder from the timpani drums. The end result frankly rivals anything Argento, Bava, Fulci, Dallamano, or Martino ever produced. The killer is a transsexual named “Bobbi” - a former patient of Dr. Elliott’s who, enraged over his refusal to authorize her sexual reassignment surgery, has stolen his straight razor and makes it clear she intends to do nefarious things with it. The idea of a film from 1980 - in the hands of any director, let alone one with a distinct flair for the salacious, such as De Palma - dealing with a transsexual killer sets off nervous alarm bells. But while the film doesn’t necessarily pass the smell test in 2023 (trans people, understandably, are queasy over anything that links their community to sexual violence and mental illness), the depiction isn’t quite as retrograde as you might think (the portrayal of some Black street toughs on the subway is arguably far more cringeworthy). De Palma, interestingly, includes footage of Phil Donohue’s real-life interview with trans woman Nancy Hunt at one point… and his outlook is one of clinical detachment, rather than judgment. Transsexuality is mainly utilized for the sake of providing the film, like Psycho, with a Freudian subtext. It’s a tool entirely in service of the story’s pulp thriller conventions - like the cheap paperback suspense melodramas with their trademark yellow covers from which the giallo subgenre derives its name. The second half of the movie follows Peter, as he tries to track down Bobbi with the help of Liz (Nancy Allen), the high-class prostitute who witnessed Kate’s murder (Dennis Franz, meanwhile, hams it up as a New York detective who’s all gold chains, cheap cologne and spearmint gum). The climax is a suspense masterclass (even if you know exactly where the plot is going, it hardly matters - such is the audacious, high-wire spell the film casts), the movie taking on a dreamlike terror and elegance as its denouement unfolds. De Palma detractors might argue that the film exists solely for the sake of its own inflated showmanship, but that does a disservice to the director’s rigorous technique. Dressed to Kill doesn’t just wear its stylistic influences on its sleeve - it completely envelops itself in them, like an expensive mink coat, and preens about unapologetically… yet it would be a mistake to regard any perceived lack of subtly as a drawback. The end result is magnetic theater. We go to the movies to be dazzled, transported, to be held rapt - and De Palma puts on a hell of a show. 1/30/2023 0 Comments exotica (spine 1150) Exotica
Directed by: Atom Egoyan 1994 Spine #1150 You have to ask yourself, what brought the person to this point? What we’re seeing in his face, his manner that channeled him here. You have to convince yourself that this person has something hidden that you have to find. Check his bags… though it’s his face, his gestures that you’re really watching. He’s staring straight at you. Look at him. Carefully. What do you see? Most people understandably regard the Russell Banks adaptation The Sweet Hereafter as Atom Egoyan’s magnum opus, but its predecessor - Exotica - is the film that feels like the culmination of all the themes - voyeurism, human connection, familial damage, identity - that consumed the Canadian filmmaker’s early work. The above dialogue is recited by a customs agent in the film’s opening scene, and speaks to Egoyan’s fixation with the inscrutability of one’s inner being. If the eyes are the window to the soul, what happens when every character’s are permanently shaded? Exotica was marketed as an erotic thriller, though it’s not particularly erotic, nor is it much of a thriller - though there’s a vague undercurrent of danger that underscores the entire movie, as if the fragile dynamic between its characters could shatter in the space of a drawn breath. The story revolves around the titular Toronto strip club (vaguely jungle-themed), where viewers are dropped in blindly and left to unravel the narrative knot binding the main characters. Tax auditor Francis (Bruce Greenwood) is a broken man whose soul has seemingly been permeated by an unspoken grief - each day he pays his teenage niece Tracey (Sarah Polley) to sit in his empty house and practice the piano, while he heads to Exotica and requests a private dance from Christina (Mia Kirshner)… who performs on-stage in a schoolgirl outfit to Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows.” Christina has a romantic history with the club’s DJ Eric (Elias Koteas), who seems preoccupied - if not outright obsessed - with the bond of mutual dependency she and Francis appear to share. Somehow this all connects in turn to Thomas (Don McKeller), an introverted gay man who runs an exotic pet store and smuggles rare bird eggs into the country. “Labyrinthine” is the word most often used to described Egoyan’s work, and it’s both appropriate and somewhat overstated. The film doesn’t suffer from tortured denseness; there’s a slippery ease to how the narrative pieces settle into place… and once they do, the revelations are satisfying, if not necessarily earth-shaking. Egoyan is more like a street artist, performing a sleight-of-hand trick that’s perhaps a little more intricate than it needs to be. Much of his cinema has a built-in layer of obfuscation - it’s an indulgent but forgivable flourish. More intriguing is the director’s interest in the transactional nature of human interaction - which makes a strip club an appropriate hub for the lives of his characters to converge. “He gets what he needs from me… and I get what I need from him,” Christina says cryptically, of her relationship with Francis (there’s something fitting about her remaining clothed during her stage routines - if you interpret a striptease as the allegorical act of shedding layers until all is laid bare, she reveals precious little of herself). But transactions inform every facet of the movie. Francis pays Tracey for “babysitting,” even though there’s a tacit understanding that the term is farcical. Exotica’s owner Zoe (Egoyan’s real-life wife Arsinee Khanjian) is pregnant with Eric’s child, but there’s no romantic connection between them. Eventually Francis presents Thomas with a quid pro quo offer that he’s in no position to reject. Thomas himself begins picking up men under the guise of having an extra ballet ticket, then returning their money afterwards - an opportunity for connection without intimacy (the one time he crosses that line, it results in the film’s one goofy plotting misstep). Ultimately, we come to understand the sense of shared trauma that unites the characters and - to quote Tolkien - "in the darkness bind them." Each of them, in their own way, is searching for that sliver of normalcy to cling to, no matter how temporary or fleeting. The entire cast - consisting predominantly of Egoyan regulars - is quite good, but it’s Sarah Polley - just 15 at the time - who somehow leaves the most lingering impression… even though Tracey is very much a secondary role (Polley, to her credit, has successfully segued into a full-time filmmaking career… but she really was a gifted actress, and was even better in The Sweet Hereafter). Egoyan himself has largely drifted into irrelevance in recent years, but for a brief moment in the 90s his cinematic viewpoint crystallized into something that felt singular and strange. It too proved transient… but in that instant, his own eyes were left momentarily unshaded. 1/12/2023 0 Comments klute (spine 987) Klute
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula 1971 Spine #987 Klute, released in 1971 and directed by Alan J. Pakula, reflects a certain determination - seen throughout the decade - to marry the psychological dimensions of a gritty character study with a thriller’s lurid grip. It’s not hard to see the appeal. Splicing together the DNA of Sidney Lumet and Brian De Palma has the potential for cinematic Xanadu, but equilibrium is exceptionally tricky to achieve - one half invariably overwhelms the other. And such is the case with Klute, which proves a genuinely outstanding character study… and a rather mediocre thriller. It’s hard to imagine beginning an analysis of the film anywhere other than with Jane Fonda, who won a well-deserved Oscar for playing New York call girl Bree Daniels. She is, to put it plainly, absolutely tremendous. Like… pantheon-level great. Her performance helped usher in a newfound emphasis on frank realism and interior dimension, and over fifty years later it still carries a revelatory power (Fonda spent a week in the company of real-life prostitutes during pre-production, which simply convinced her that she was all wrong for the role). Bree isn’t the proverbial hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, nor is she a tragic figure or an object of pity - there’s a matter-of-factness to her portrayal that’s initially disarming… but Fonda offers so many different shades to the character - defiance, edginess, vibrancy, bitterness. This is, unquestionably, one of the great, multifaceted performances of 70s cinema, and reason alone to make a specific point of checking out the movie post-haste. Bree is an aspiring actress, and she has talent - just not enough to rise above the noise (early on we see her at a casting call for a cosmetics ad, in which the girls are brusquely dismissed for a variety of Seinfeldian reasons - Bree’s hands are deemed “weird-looking”). Instead, her abilities are put to use while turning tricks, such as when we see her put a john at ease with a seductive purr that’s utterly hypnotic. But that cool air of self-possession cracks in an astonishing series of scenes with Bree’s therapist - supposedly all but completely improvised by Fonda - which take on the air of stark confessionals delivered directly to the audience. I feel this time, that’s what’s different. I mean, I feel, my body feels, I enjoy, uh… making love with him. Which, uh… is a very baffling and bewildering thing for me, because I’ve never felt that before. I just wish I could let things happen and, uh, enjoy it, you know, for what it is and while it lasts and, uh… relax about it. But ALL THE TIME, all the time, I keep feeling the need to destroy it, to break it off, to go back to the comfort of being numb again. So far this doesn’t sound like much of a thriller. Enter John Klute (Donald Sutherland), a detective whose best friend, Tom Gruneman, came to the Big Apple on business six months ago and never returned. It’s assumed he’s on the lam, or met some seedy demise (as one tends to do when venturing into the big, bad city), but Klute remains unconvinced - even after the authorities uncover an obscene letter Gruneman supposedly wrote to Bree, which constitutes his primary lead (the film teases the idea of New York City as a corrupting influence - a place where a morally upright family man can indulge his dark side and allow it to take root). Pakula, who made paranoia his stock-and-trade in the 70s (he’d go on to direct The Parallax View and All the President’s Men), and DP Gordon Willis generate a thick, at times palpable atmosphere of dread, accentuated by Michael Small’s unsettling score. But what they achieve is mostly a tonal baseline, an overarching sense of mood… rarely tethered to actual suspense or narrative propulsion. The few scenes that actually adhere to the tenets of the thriller genre are staged with no particular panache (or even logic). The mystery surrounding Gruneman’s fate is paper-thin and more or less tipped well in advance of the denouement. These plot elements feel like a commercial garnish; it's almost like the complete inverse of a giallo picture, in which psychological nuance is typically sacrificed in the name of salacious sensation. If you’re wondering why on earth the film is called Klute, the character was initially written as the protagonist - an incorruptible outsider who arrives, like a Western hero, in an urban sprawl of sin to set things right. It was Pakula, working in tandem with Fonda, who recognized how much more textured and compelling the story would be if it were tilted in Bree’s direction instead. With that in mind, he could hardly have picked a better leading man than Sutherland, whose self-effacing performance is all quiet constraint and observation. It’s a generously deferential turn, so internalized that Klute’s facial expression rarely even changes (sadly, it’s also a reminder why Sutherland - inexplicably - has never even received an Oscar nomination, let alone won; this sort of disciplined and understated work is far too easy to overlook). In the end, neither Klute nor New York City rub off on the other in any notable way; it’s Bree, caught between the two, whose fate is left up in the air. And the fact she’s unlikely to ever be fulfilled by either is the great tragedy of the character - and, by extension, the film itself. 12/8/2022 0 Comments The ice storm (spine 426) The Ice Storm
Directed by: Ang Lee 1997 Spine #426 Thanksgiving hasn’t exactly proven the most fertile of holidays cinematically - in part because it’s difficult to utilize it for much more than gravy-doused familial dysfunction. Most would likely opt for the easy comfort and laughs of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but for those who prefer their turkey meat a shade darker, The Ice Storm - Ang Lee’s trenchant ode to Nixon-era suburban alienation - might prove the shrewder choice. Based on Rick Moody’s novel, the story takes place in the New England suburb of New Canaan, Connecticut circa 1973 - amidst the backdrop of the Watergate scandal - and examines the decade’s shifting cultural currents through the pointed lens of the Hood family. Given that the movie’s introductory image is an ice-coated train slowly coming back to life, its wheels cracking free of their glacial armor, it’s hardly a stretch to suggest its characters are trapped in their own fog of middle-class malaise when we first meet them. Ben (Kevin Kline) is dissatisfied with his job and engaged in an emotionally vacant affair with his neighbor Janey (Sigourney Weaver), while his wife Elena (Joan Allen) dabbles in casual kleptomania, among other things. Their teenage children Paul (Tobey Maguire) and Wendy (Christina Ricci) are faced with the usual coming-of-age dilemmas and drama (with their matching cherubic, Hallmark card ready features, Maguire and Ricci really do look like they could be siblings - and the fact the movie doesn’t take better advantage of their chemistry together is a disappointment). The film takes place over Thanksgiving (“It’s great that we can all be together. No yelling, no hysteria - especially with your grandpa not here, although we miss him”), but most of the drama comes to a head the following day, as the titular ice storm descends on the town like the visual metaphor to end all visual metaphors (anticipate various characters skidding and sliding on slippery surfaces that symbolize the lack of control over their own lives). Most notably, Ben and Elena’s marital discord comes bubbling rancorously to the surface (“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Paul asks, when Wendy notes that they recently stopped going to couples counseling) just as they arrive at what turns out to be a key party - that most cringe-inducing of attempts to combat the emotional ennui of suburban existence with a hearty dose of free-wheeling sexual liberation left over from the 60s (the women basically fish a set of car keys out of a bowl to determine who they’re going home with - what a time to be alive). Initially, back in 1997, it felt as if the film’s dark humor could be more heightened… but it seems to sharpen with each subsequent viewing. It’s hard not to crack up over exchanges like these, between Janey’s spaced-out teenage son Mikey (Elijah Wood) and his semi-bewildered dad Jim (Jamey Sheridan) -- Jim: Hey guys. I’m back. Mikey: You were gone? Jim: Yeah, Mikey. I was in Houston, working on some great new ideas about silicon. Comes from sand. It’s a semiconductor. So how’s school? Mikey: I… I don’t know. Or there’s the scene in which Ben heads next door for a mid-afternoon rendezvous, only for Janey to randomly drive off - without explanation - to run errands… leaving him to wander her boxy white modernist monstrosity of a home in his boxers and lie on his backside on the undulating waterbed (how’s *that* for an upper middle-class 70s status symbol?). If you’re looking for someone to mask his own spiritual turmoil with an armor of white-collar geniality, you could scarcely ask for a better actor than Kevin Kline - it’s one of the best performances of his career (as an added bonus, he can actually appear in an ascot without being laughed off screen). Weaver was pushed relatively hard for an Oscar, and Allen was coming off back-to-back nominations of her own… but the real standout otherwise is Ricci, who perfectly captures that awkward transition between adolescence and womanhood - a character both too precocious and too naive for her own good. Ang Lee, not surprisingly, proves a sure hand at navigating the film’s delicate mood shifts, which often feel as fragile as New Canaan’s ice-tipped tree branches… there’s a distinct yet elusive melancholy to the picture, one that drifts subtly through scenes like the draft from an open window. Some have gone so far as to declare The Ice Storm the best American film of the 90s, which is frankly more than a little ludicrous (consider the implications of that statement very, very carefully for a moment). Paul’s main subplot - in which he returns to Manhattan to meet up with a posh boarding school classmate (played by a fresh-faced Katie Holmes) - always feels like a bit of a nothingburger. Then there’s the fact that this isn’t exactly unexplored thematic territory… at least if you’ve watched actual films from the 70s or, I dunno - picked up any book by John Updike? But the film is definitely onto something with its view of the complicated bonding atoms that constitute a family dynamic, which Paul explains through the prism of his latest Fantastic Four comic book - “And the more power they had, the more harm they could do to each other without even knowing it. That was the meaning of the Fantastic Four: that a family is like your own personal anti-matter. Your family is the void you emerge from, and the place you return to when you die. And that's the paradox - the closer you're drawn back in, the deeper into the void you go.” A return to the void… isn’t that what the holidays are all about? On second thought, maybe Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the more prudent choice. 11/28/2022 0 Comments Menace ii society (spine 1105) Menace II Society
Directed by: The Hughes Brothers 1993 Spine #1105 In the opening scene of Menace II Society, 21-year-old twin filmmakers Allen and Albert Hughes introduced themselves like a crack of lightning across the cinematic sky. In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, circa 1993, two young Black teens - Caine (Tyrin Turner) and O-Dog (Larenz Tate) - stroll into a convenience store, where the Korean owner and his wife hang on their every move, making little effort to mask their distrust (or disdain). At first it feels like a textbook case of racial profiling… until that initial sense of unease is trampled by a sudden and shocking eruption of violence that’s not unlike the tightly coiled jaws of a bear trap snapping shut. In that moment, the Hughes Brothers laser in on the uncomfortably hazy nexus between truth and stereotype (which Best Picture winner Crash would explore in far more ham-handed fashion years later). “After that,” Caine comments in matter-of-fact voice-over “I knew it was going to be a long summer.” It’s difficult to analyze Menace II Society without first passing through the lens of Boyz n the Hood - John Singleton’s landmark 1991 debut, which helped usher in the wave of Black urban dramas and crime thrillers that proliferated throughout the 90s. Boyz n the Hood was the more significant film, but one could argue that Menace II Society is the more cinematically accomplished, more aesthetically audacious, more immediate in its grit and verve. Boyz n the Hood, with its “increase the peace” messaging, was also a fundamentally optimistic film at heart (one that couldn’t help but stray into raw yet blunt social commentary - “Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood”), whereas Menace II Society revels more boldly in its own clear-eyed nihilism. Cuba Gooding Jr’s Tre was essentially a good kid at heart, trying to avoid falling victim to his own circumstances… whereas the Hughes Brothers make clear that their film represents the battle for Caine’s troubled soul. Caine graduates from high school, which is initially a cause for celebration… but that quickly gives way to an aimless and volatile summer for him and his friends. He is portrayed as neither hero nor villain, sinner nor saint; he dabbles in drug-dealing and other petty crime, but has no particular taste for it… he simply exists in the moment, no vision of the future, no direction, no discernible passions or interests that might offer a glimmer of salvation. A carjacking results in the death of his cousin Harold, which in turn leads to vicious retribution. In the film’s eyes, Watts symbolizes a never-ending cycle of violence - almost Dante-esque in its sense of spiritual damnation and despair - and the Hughes Brothers aren’t remotely cryptic about the fact that Caine’s only hope is to escape… either with his friends Stacy and Sharif, who invite him to accompany them to Kansas, or his love interest Ronnie (an impossibly young Jada Pinkett-not-yet-Smith), who asks him to move to Atlanta with her and her young son Anthony. To stay is to end up dead or jailed - no other outcome is an option. Tyrin Turner is quite good as Caine (and many have puzzled over why he didn’t go on to a bigger career)… but it’s Larenz Tate, as the charismatic, baby-faced sociopath O-Dog, who sends jolts of electrical current shivering through the screen. His scenes are genuinely scary (“America’s nightmare - young, Black, and didn’t give a fuck” Caine offers, by way of description) - at one point, he puts a bullet in a desperate crack addict out of sheer annoyance, then casually asks his friends if anyone wants the dead junkie’s discarded cheeseburger. Unlike Caine, his destiny feels immutable - a damned soul locked on a path to oblivion before he’s even reached legal age. It’s still hard to understand why the Hughes Brothers never quite reached the cinematic stratosphere. Their underrated follow-up Dead Presidents led to From Hell - their indelible adaptation of Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper graphic novel - which should have cemented their standing as directing superstars. Instead it took them almost a decade to make another movie - the Denzel Washington post-apocalyptic neo-Western The Book of Eli - and then they broke up. Both have continued to produce quality work on their own, but they were a far more formidable force together. The unflinching power of their debut feature continues to endure, however. At one point early on in the movie, Caine’s exasperated grandfather asks his grandson if he even cares whether he lives or dies, to which Caine is unsure how to respond. As the film reaches its harrowing climax, and Caine faces his reckoning, he thinks back to that moment and declares “Yeah… I do.” And we realize that we feel the same way. 11/17/2022 0 Comments Double indemnity (spine 1126) Double Indemnity
Directed by: Billy Wilder 1944 Spine #1126 What is it about old movies that makes the craft look so damn easy? Double Indemnity was released almost 80 years ago, yet remains the gold standard for cinematic noir. From the moment Fred MacMurray’s slick insurance salesman Walter Neff arrives at the Los Feliz home of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), the plotting and dialogue flow so effortlessly, it’s almost as if the script is writing itself (in actuality it was courtesy of Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler - not exactly a shabby duo when it comes to this sort of thing). Neff is only there to remind Mr. Dietrichson to renew his auto insurance… but instead fatefully crosses paths with his wife, a blonde Venus flytrap in heels, who innocently inquires about the possibility of purchasing accident insurance for her husband without his knowledge. Neff sees straight through her, but for all his bluster, he’s smitten (“I stopped at a drive-in for a bottle of beer, the one I had wanted all along, only I wanted it worse now, to get rid of the sour taste of her iced tea and everything that went with it”)… and before long he’s helping her plot the perfect murder. One that involves Dietrichson meeting his unfortunate demise on a train, thereby triggering his policy’s “double indemnity” clause, which means twice the payout. Not surprisingly, things don’t go according to plan. In fact, that’s never even in question, given Wilder’s bold decision to open the film with a gravely injured Neff staggering into the insurance office and recording his confession into a dictaphone as the story’s framing device. As good as the two leads are, the best performance might be courtesy of the man Neff’s confessing to - his boss, Barton Keyes, an insurance biz bloodhound played by the great Edward G. Robinson, who starts to pick at the threads of Neff’s ingenious plot (laying out the risk of two people committing a murder - “It’s not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They’re stuck with each other and they got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.” Lord, who writes dialogue like this anymore?). Younger audiences, of course, might question the fuss (admittedly not all the dialogue is quite so ageless - if you took a shot every time Neff calls Phyllis “baby,” you’d be under the table within ten minutes). Double Indemnity portended the sort of stark cynicism that would flower in the coming postwar years, but there have certainly been darker and nastier examples of film noir. Likewise there have been more physically striking, more cold-blooded, more casually cruel, and more just plain hazardous-to-your-health femme fatales than Stanwyck over the years, but she - like the film itself - is the measuring stick (one thing that never was topped, however, is the cunning intelligence that glitters in Stanwyck’s eyes in each and every shot she’s in - in an industry that often favors girls, she’s most definitely a woman). And hey - Fred MacMurray’s pretty darn good too. For a movie about sordid subjects such as murder and fatalism, Double Indemnity - with its classic, black-and-white compositions and exterior shots of a 1940s Los Angeles that feels like the stuff of myth - is strangely comforting… the sort of movie you want to envelop yourself in, like the clouds of cigarette smoke that fill the screen. It makes Phyllis commenting “We’re both rotten,” to which Neff responds “Only you’re a little more rotten” almost feel downright romantic. |
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