Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Moontide.
DVD Review
Moontide, starring Jean Gabon, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, 20th Century-Fox, 1942
There are a million ways, a million ways cinematically and maybe in life too, that boy meets girl, crime noir or not. Even if that “boy” is a not so young drifter sailor, Bobo (played by Jean Gabin last seen by this reviewer in the incredible French film, Max Ophuls' Children of Paradise), whose been around, and thinks he wants to stay been around. Except fastened to the California waterfront like glue by his profession he is called upon to save a damsel in distress. A young woman, Anna, who serves them off the arm in some hash house (played here by Ida Lupino last seen by this reviewer in High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Pard) who was, at wits end for some unknown reason, sets out to drown herself. Naturally sea-worthy Gabin saves her, and the romance is on.
But wait a minute this is a crime noir as well as a boy meets girl story. And Bobo is set up to fit the frame while he was drunk by his friend Tiny, a serious ne’er do well and slightly psycho, after Tiny has killed a denizen of the waterfront over some trivial matter. So the boy meets girls setting up house (on a barge of course out on the breakwater) part keeps on getting set back by the Bobo frame-up part. All, by the way, done in high 1940s melodramatic style.
But there is more. This film’s script is filled with little philosophical reflections by one and all, Bobo most of all. For Bobo about leaving the high seas adventure life and its down time waterfront dive existence and settling down. By Anna about whether she is “worthy” to be Bobo bride and find happiness in their cozy little barge by the breakwater. And by other characters, as well, like Doc (a boat owner) and the night watchman, Nutsy (played by Claude Rains). Hell, even Tiny makes a pitch that he just needs a new life up north to break out of his psycho ways. Like I said very melodramatic but as always with Gabin you get some incredibly expressive acting and Ms. Lupino does her misspent working class unworthiness existence whine to a tee.
Showing posts with label crime novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crime novels. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Out In the 1950s Crime Noir Night- A Grifter’s Farewell- “Dark City- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, Dark City.
DVD Review
Dark City, starring Charleston Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paramount Pictures, 1950
No question after running through a seemingly endless run of crime noir films that not all the films in the genre are equal. The classics like The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Gilda, and Out Of The Past speak for themselves with fine plot lines and slightly awry femme fatales to brighten things up. The film under review, although not in that category, could have been better had it not gotten caught up in some melodramatic flim-flam and stayed the hard-boiled, gritty classic grifter story that it set out to be. The outlines of the plot surely gave more promise that was delivered.
Down in those post-World War II means streets out West a lot of war-weary, war-tousled, war-scarred guys tried to do, well, the best they could. And the best they could usually was some grifter scheme to make a score off some bozo mark and hit the road, hit the road fast, and leave no forwarding address. That is the substance of the plot here. Ex-soldier (World War II just in case you might have forgotten, or were not sure what war I was talking about since there are many to choose from these days) Dan Healy (played in an understated, post-war alienated, existential man kind of way by Charleston Heston before he became Moses or Ben Hur or whatever big screen techno-color champ he became later) make his downwardly mobile way to grifter-dom in some seedy skid row town.
Dan's thing is gambling and, of course, for such an endeavor you need suckers with dough, easily parted with dough. And, as well, some confederates in on the scam. That is the case here as Dan and two fellow grifters (one played by Jack Webb before he got “religion” and became Sergeant Friday on the 1950s television show, Dragnet) rope in the sucker, a guy holding a five thousand dollar check (serious money, serious money down on mean street then) although the money is not actually his. Needless to say a fool and his dough are soon parted.
And that is where things start to go wrong with this film (as well as in the lives of our three gamblers). Filled with remorse the mark (played by Don DeFore) can’t face the horror of going back and confessing to his employers that he blew the dough on gambling, and instead hanged himself in his lonely room. Not for him the easy road of blowing town and changing his name, toughing it out, or even filing a court claim against the miscreant gamblers. In short, nobody, nobody this side of Hollywood takes the rope on the facts presented here. And then it gets worst. See the mark has an older dominating brother who watches out for him. Now this suicide business once he finds out the cause gets him a little exercised. See the brother is a stone-cold psycho and he is out to even the score-three dead, very dead gamblers.
Well, if you have been paying attention you know that Charleston Heston, the star and therefore kill-proof, is one of those marked for extinction so the other two get their just desserts and old Heston squeaks by after some close moments. The problem is when we see finally see who the killer-brother is there is no way that anyone could believe, or at least I could believe, that this gorilla was anybody’s brother. Come on.
The other place where the film goes wrong is on the inevitable love interest angle. Now Danny boy, who spends a good part of the film moodily cutting up old torches from back in the day, has a sort of girlfriend. A very fetching smoky-voiced chanteuse, Fran, (played by Lizabeth Scott) girlfriend who wears her heart on her sleeve for him, although he is mostly indifferent to her. No femme fatale here-just a what you see is what you get gal who can sing the blues, while having them over her man who done her wrong. The problem is that the chemistry between Danny and Fran is all wrong, all wrong alls ways. Fran is the girl next door and Danny, is well Danny, a grifter and the two don’t mix. And the plot gets further muddied when Dan, trying to get a lead of where the mark’s brother is, starts to play footsie with the dead mark's non-grieving widow. So you see now what I mean when I say that not all crime noirs are created equal.
DVD Review
Dark City, starring Charleston Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paramount Pictures, 1950
No question after running through a seemingly endless run of crime noir films that not all the films in the genre are equal. The classics like The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Gilda, and Out Of The Past speak for themselves with fine plot lines and slightly awry femme fatales to brighten things up. The film under review, although not in that category, could have been better had it not gotten caught up in some melodramatic flim-flam and stayed the hard-boiled, gritty classic grifter story that it set out to be. The outlines of the plot surely gave more promise that was delivered.
Down in those post-World War II means streets out West a lot of war-weary, war-tousled, war-scarred guys tried to do, well, the best they could. And the best they could usually was some grifter scheme to make a score off some bozo mark and hit the road, hit the road fast, and leave no forwarding address. That is the substance of the plot here. Ex-soldier (World War II just in case you might have forgotten, or were not sure what war I was talking about since there are many to choose from these days) Dan Healy (played in an understated, post-war alienated, existential man kind of way by Charleston Heston before he became Moses or Ben Hur or whatever big screen techno-color champ he became later) make his downwardly mobile way to grifter-dom in some seedy skid row town.
Dan's thing is gambling and, of course, for such an endeavor you need suckers with dough, easily parted with dough. And, as well, some confederates in on the scam. That is the case here as Dan and two fellow grifters (one played by Jack Webb before he got “religion” and became Sergeant Friday on the 1950s television show, Dragnet) rope in the sucker, a guy holding a five thousand dollar check (serious money, serious money down on mean street then) although the money is not actually his. Needless to say a fool and his dough are soon parted.
And that is where things start to go wrong with this film (as well as in the lives of our three gamblers). Filled with remorse the mark (played by Don DeFore) can’t face the horror of going back and confessing to his employers that he blew the dough on gambling, and instead hanged himself in his lonely room. Not for him the easy road of blowing town and changing his name, toughing it out, or even filing a court claim against the miscreant gamblers. In short, nobody, nobody this side of Hollywood takes the rope on the facts presented here. And then it gets worst. See the mark has an older dominating brother who watches out for him. Now this suicide business once he finds out the cause gets him a little exercised. See the brother is a stone-cold psycho and he is out to even the score-three dead, very dead gamblers.
Well, if you have been paying attention you know that Charleston Heston, the star and therefore kill-proof, is one of those marked for extinction so the other two get their just desserts and old Heston squeaks by after some close moments. The problem is when we see finally see who the killer-brother is there is no way that anyone could believe, or at least I could believe, that this gorilla was anybody’s brother. Come on.
The other place where the film goes wrong is on the inevitable love interest angle. Now Danny boy, who spends a good part of the film moodily cutting up old torches from back in the day, has a sort of girlfriend. A very fetching smoky-voiced chanteuse, Fran, (played by Lizabeth Scott) girlfriend who wears her heart on her sleeve for him, although he is mostly indifferent to her. No femme fatale here-just a what you see is what you get gal who can sing the blues, while having them over her man who done her wrong. The problem is that the chemistry between Danny and Fran is all wrong, all wrong alls ways. Fran is the girl next door and Danny, is well Danny, a grifter and the two don’t mix. And the plot gets further muddied when Dan, trying to get a lead of where the mark’s brother is, starts to play footsie with the dead mark's non-grieving widow. So you see now what I mean when I say that not all crime noirs are created equal.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night- Robert Mitchum Watch Out For Berserk Femme Fatales, Will You- Angel Face- A Review
Click on the headline to link to Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, Angel Face.
DVD Review
Angel Face, starring Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, directed by Otto Preminger, RKO Pictures, 1952
Some guys never learn, never learn to leave well enough alone, and stay away, far away from femme fatales that have that slightly mad look in their eyes and lust in their hearts, as here in the Otto Preminger-directed crime noir, Angel Face, with Robert Mitchum. See, it is not like Brother Robert hadn’t been down that road before and had all the trouble he could handle and then some with femme fatale Jane Greer in Out Of The Past. Ms. Greer “took him for a ride” six ways to Sunday in that one. But you know when a guy gets heated up by a dame, well, lets’ just leave it at you know, okay. Needless to say Brother Robert is set to get “taken for a ride” six ways to Sunday here too, although the femme fatale here is a little younger, and maybe has better manners. Maybe. But that all goes for naught when the heat rises. Yes, we know, we know.
The plot here takes a little something from James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. The “fair damsel” (played by a young dark-eyed, dark-haired piano-playing Jean Simmons who, before seeing this film I might have taken a run at her myself, in my dreams anyway. But see I know how to take a lesson), after she gets her hooks into Mitchum, furthers her plot to get rid of her dear stepmother so she can have her father to herself (take that anyway you want but you do not have to be a Freudian to know that she is seriously hung up on her novelist father, a probable cause for some of her youthful, ah, monomania). But unlike the femme in Postman she just “forgets” to tell him he is part of the plan. Of course when the foul deed is done (the old "wire cut on the steering wheel of the car and off the cliff you go, dearie" gag that has been around, well, been around since femmes figured out automobiles aren’t just for driving) the pair are the obvious suspects. But with some razzle-dazzle legal work, including marriage to evoke the jury’s sympathy, they get off. (Ya, I know on that one too. But those were more romantic times than ours, I guess. I want the name and e-mail of that lawyer, by the way, just in case.) Of course what guy in his right mind is going to stick around and see, well, what is in store for him and his lovely bride after the court battles are over? Like I said though, this is Robert Mitchum, the guy who can’t learn a lesson.
Note: Naturally with a hunky guy like Robert Mitchum, he of the broad shoulders to fend off the world’s troubles, or at least any women’s troubles, those smoldering eyes, and that glib world-wary cigarette and whiskey manner, the ladies will surely be flocking to his door. And not just femme fatales. In this film, as in Out Of The Past, there is the “good” girl waiting in wings. And Mitchum tries, tries like hell, to stay in that orbit but when those maddened eyes and ruby red lips call that speak to some dark adventure, well, what’s a man to do?
DVD Review
Angel Face, starring Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, directed by Otto Preminger, RKO Pictures, 1952
Some guys never learn, never learn to leave well enough alone, and stay away, far away from femme fatales that have that slightly mad look in their eyes and lust in their hearts, as here in the Otto Preminger-directed crime noir, Angel Face, with Robert Mitchum. See, it is not like Brother Robert hadn’t been down that road before and had all the trouble he could handle and then some with femme fatale Jane Greer in Out Of The Past. Ms. Greer “took him for a ride” six ways to Sunday in that one. But you know when a guy gets heated up by a dame, well, lets’ just leave it at you know, okay. Needless to say Brother Robert is set to get “taken for a ride” six ways to Sunday here too, although the femme fatale here is a little younger, and maybe has better manners. Maybe. But that all goes for naught when the heat rises. Yes, we know, we know.
The plot here takes a little something from James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. The “fair damsel” (played by a young dark-eyed, dark-haired piano-playing Jean Simmons who, before seeing this film I might have taken a run at her myself, in my dreams anyway. But see I know how to take a lesson), after she gets her hooks into Mitchum, furthers her plot to get rid of her dear stepmother so she can have her father to herself (take that anyway you want but you do not have to be a Freudian to know that she is seriously hung up on her novelist father, a probable cause for some of her youthful, ah, monomania). But unlike the femme in Postman she just “forgets” to tell him he is part of the plan. Of course when the foul deed is done (the old "wire cut on the steering wheel of the car and off the cliff you go, dearie" gag that has been around, well, been around since femmes figured out automobiles aren’t just for driving) the pair are the obvious suspects. But with some razzle-dazzle legal work, including marriage to evoke the jury’s sympathy, they get off. (Ya, I know on that one too. But those were more romantic times than ours, I guess. I want the name and e-mail of that lawyer, by the way, just in case.) Of course what guy in his right mind is going to stick around and see, well, what is in store for him and his lovely bride after the court battles are over? Like I said though, this is Robert Mitchum, the guy who can’t learn a lesson.
Note: Naturally with a hunky guy like Robert Mitchum, he of the broad shoulders to fend off the world’s troubles, or at least any women’s troubles, those smoldering eyes, and that glib world-wary cigarette and whiskey manner, the ladies will surely be flocking to his door. And not just femme fatales. In this film, as in Out Of The Past, there is the “good” girl waiting in wings. And Mitchum tries, tries like hell, to stay in that orbit but when those maddened eyes and ruby red lips call that speak to some dark adventure, well, what’s a man to do?
Thursday, September 8, 2011
On The Question Of Jury Nullification- John Gresham’s “The Runaway Jury”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entey for the film The Runaway Jury.
DVD Review
The Runaway Jury, from the book by John Gresham, starring John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman, 20th Century Fox, 2003.
In a sense every legal thriller (as well as the more mundane psychological and political thrillers) requires a suspension of disbelieve to draw the audience in. And many times the plotline is twisty enough to have us hanging on the edges of our seats as we watch the real villain (or villains) receive sweet, blind-eyed justice. No so here in the film under review, The Runaway Jury. And that title tells exactly what the problem is with the plot line. Just too many of us have been summoned into the real jury selection processes to take this one with anything but the grain of salt. And also, probably as a misbegotten result of watching just one or two too many legal thrillers, the actual legal twists would have had the trial in this case set up for mistrial about fourteen different ways.
And in a way that is too bad because John Cusack as one of the avenging angels (along with his fetching girlfriend) who plot the demise of the gun industry, at least make them subject to produce liability, as a result of a previous innocent victim-filled shootout gun spree that hit close to home and Gene Hackman as the over-the-top “hired gun” (metaphorically of course) jury selection consultant are more than competent in there roles, roles they have produced sparks with in other films. Here though the high moral ground drama (including a major role by a gun control freak lawyer played by Dustin Hoffman) about the question of product liability for inherently dangerous weapons, the slanted issue behind the civil action, the Second Amendment right to bear arms (since codified as an individual right by recent United States Supreme Court decisions), the ethics of jury selection (or rather of pervasive jury tampering), and, oh yes, the winning of the legal battle at whatever cost represented in their respect roles, gets lost in the convoluted and confused plot line. Better luck next time.
DVD Review
The Runaway Jury, from the book by John Gresham, starring John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman, 20th Century Fox, 2003.
In a sense every legal thriller (as well as the more mundane psychological and political thrillers) requires a suspension of disbelieve to draw the audience in. And many times the plotline is twisty enough to have us hanging on the edges of our seats as we watch the real villain (or villains) receive sweet, blind-eyed justice. No so here in the film under review, The Runaway Jury. And that title tells exactly what the problem is with the plot line. Just too many of us have been summoned into the real jury selection processes to take this one with anything but the grain of salt. And also, probably as a misbegotten result of watching just one or two too many legal thrillers, the actual legal twists would have had the trial in this case set up for mistrial about fourteen different ways.
And in a way that is too bad because John Cusack as one of the avenging angels (along with his fetching girlfriend) who plot the demise of the gun industry, at least make them subject to produce liability, as a result of a previous innocent victim-filled shootout gun spree that hit close to home and Gene Hackman as the over-the-top “hired gun” (metaphorically of course) jury selection consultant are more than competent in there roles, roles they have produced sparks with in other films. Here though the high moral ground drama (including a major role by a gun control freak lawyer played by Dustin Hoffman) about the question of product liability for inherently dangerous weapons, the slanted issue behind the civil action, the Second Amendment right to bear arms (since codified as an individual right by recent United States Supreme Court decisions), the ethics of jury selection (or rather of pervasive jury tampering), and, oh yes, the winning of the legal battle at whatever cost represented in their respect roles, gets lost in the convoluted and confused plot line. Better luck next time.
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