Watching these Film Noir titles has been an un-learning experience. I can like them if I just adjust my expectations. Watched The Lineup yesterday and now this: The Burglar Directed by Paul Wendkos • 1957 • United States Starring Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield Based on the pulp-fiction novel by David Goodis, who also penned the screenplay, this little-known crime thriller stars noir mainstay Dan Duryea as a jewel thief who targets the mansion of a wealthy evangelist for his final heist—only to see his plan upended when his half sister (Jayne Mansfield) is kidnapped by a crooked cop. Directed by Paul Wendkos, THE BURGLAR has more twists and hairpin turns than a winding mountain road.
The Criterion Channel has a number of sub-pages for a handful of art house theaters across the USA. Yesterday I went to the page of the Belcourt Theater of Nashville. Apart from having a short documentary about the theater and its programs, there are 7 films grouped on the page. I'm not sure if these are supposed to represent choices curated by the theater staff, but since the Belcourt has never let me down (I go there every time I visit Nashville for concerts) I let them make the choices last night. Of course my arm didn't have to be twisted to watch "Ikiru" again, which is one of my all-time favorite films. I also watched "Elevator to the Gallows", which despite a few holes in the plot, is a riveting film. "Life is brief" - Watanabe, 1952 "Life is brief" - Bob Dylan, 1967
I've never seen this from beginning to end, until now. One of the better Film Noir I've been watching lately, IMO. The Big Heat Directed by Fritz Lang • 1953 • United States Starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin Fritz Lang’s hard-boiled cop vs. criminals yarn stars Glenn Ford as Dave Bannion, a police detective and family man driven by grief to conduct a relentless vendetta against a mobster (Alexander Scourby) and his brutal henchman (Lee Marvin). Once dedicated to protect and serve, Bannion sacrifices everything—principles, career, and even the woman who comes to him for protection—in a rage to destroy his gangland foes.
“Profound Desires of the Gods” (1968 - Japan) A nice payoff but at just under 3 hours this was mostly a long and winding slog for my taste. It does answer the question “What if Sisyphus was a nasty creep on a small island near Tokyo?”
One of my favourite movies of all time! I saw it for the first time in the late 70's when I was in art school, after reading the book. I think I read that it was based on the temperament of Dylan Thomas. The Horse’s Mouth Directed by Ronald Neame • 1958 • United Kingdom In Ronald Neame's film of Joyce Cary's classic novel, Alec Guinness transforms himself into one of cinema's most indelible comic figures: the lovably scruffy painter Gulley Jimson. As the ill-behaved Jimson searches for a perfect canvas, he determines to let nothing come between himself and the realization of his exalted vision. A perceptive examination of the struggle of artistic creation, The Horse's Mouth is also Neame's comic masterpiece.
More Alec Guinness, and a charming movie: The Card Directed by Ronald Neame • 1952 • United Kingdom Starring Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns Alec Guinness and Glynis Johns are at their best in THE CARD, a story of an enterprising young man determined to succeed in a hard, cruel world. In the course of his upward climb, he meets an equally sharp-witted and conscienceless young dancing-school director. Their various entanglements are happy combinations of the romantic and the treacherous . . . until Guinness’s “card” plays one last, surprising trick.
Only Angels Have Wings Directed by Howard Hawks • 1939 • United States Starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth Electrified by crackling dialogue and visual craftsmanship of the great Howard Hawks, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS stars Jean Arthur as a traveling entertainer who gets more than she bargained for during a stopover in a South American port town. There she meets a handsome and aloof daredevil pilot, played by Cary Grant, who runs an airmail company, staring down death while servicing towns in treacherous mountain terrain. Both attracted to and repelled by his romantic sense of danger, she decides to stay on, despite his protestations. This masterful and mysterious adventure, featuring Oscar-nominated special effects, high-wire aerial photography, and Rita Hayworth in a small but breakout role, explores Hawks’s recurring themes of masculine codes and the strong-willed women who question them.
I've watched all the Cary Grant films that ever came my way, so I've seen this one a bunch of times (and rewatched it recently). It has a weird (as in interesting weird) tone for a Hollywood film. I recently rewatched it as part of the Criterion Rita Hayworth "festival". Thomas Mitchell ... Uncle Billy to all you folks who don't watch a lot of old movies ... is really good in this film.
Before I revisit Ozu's Late Spring I thought I'd give Early Spring a go. First watch this afternoon. It's also streaming on The Tube.
Last Holiday Directed by Henry Cass • 1950 • United Kingdom Starring Alec Guinness, Beatrice Campbell Told by his doctor he has no more than a few months to live, drab British workingman George Bird (Alec Guinness) decides to spend his savings on lodging at a seaside resort. Once there, however, he finds his identity caught between upstairs and downstairs, the guests and the “help.” A droll social commentary as well as an unpredictable dark comedy about life, death, and luck, LAST HOLIDAY is one of Guinness’s finest moments.
BTW, if you're a fan of the movie Joe vs. the Volcano you'll like this. I'm guessing that Last Holiday influenced it, particularly the luggage scene and of course the strategic terminal illness concept.
Did Cassavetes ever make a bad film? Gloria Directed by John Cassavetes • 1980 • United States Starring Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands put their unique spin on the classic gangster drama in this offbeat thriller. Rowlands stars as Gloria Swenson, a former showgirl and gun moll who unexpectedly finds herself responsible for a seven-year-old boy (John Adames) when his family is killed in a gangland massacre. The prey in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, they run for their lives across a gritty 1980s New York City as Gloria is gradually transformed into an unlikely action hero. Paying homage to a tradition that extends from PUBLIC ENEMY to DIRTY HARRY, GLORIA marries genre thrills with the raw emotional realism of Cassavetes at his best.
I have yet to be even remotely let down by Jia Zhang-ke. I very much enjoyed this. Unknown Pleasures Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2002 • China Starring Wu Qiong, Zhao Wei Wei, Zhao Tao One of the first great films of the twenty-first century, Jia Zhangke’s third feature (and his first shot on digital) sets an arresting tale of disaffected youth against the backdrop of a changing China. Evoking the existential malaise of China’s so-called “birth control” generation—who came of age following the country’s one-child policy—UNKNOWN PLEASURES unfolds in a series of stunning, slow-burn long takes as it traces the relationship between an aimless teenage couple searching for meaning amid the detritus of Western pop culture.
Stray Dogs Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • 2013 • Taiwan, France Starring Lee Kang-sheng, Yang Kuei-mei, Lu Yi-ching On the margins of a crumbling, perpetually rain-soaked Taipei, a single father (Lee Kang-sheng) makes his meager living holding up an advertising placard on a traffic island in the middle of a busy highway. His children, meanwhile, wait out their days in supermarkets, living off samples of free food. And then one day, a mysterious woman enters their lives. There are real stray dogs to be fed in Tsai’s everyday apocalypse, but the title also refers to its principal characters, living the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world. STRAY DOGS is many things at once: minimal in its narrative content and syntax, as visually powerful as it is emotionally overwhelming, and bracingly pure in both its anger and its compassion.
The Wayward Cloud Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • 2005 • Taiwan Starring Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shiang-chyi, Lu Yi-ching Sex, musical numbers, and watermelons collide in the most daringly outrageous film yet from visionary director Tsai Ming-liang. In a drought-stricken Taipei where water is so scarce that people have taken to drinking watermelon juice for sustenance, a pornographic actor (Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng) and a museum tour guide (Chen Shiang-chyi) find themselves drawn together by fate—but will they ever truly connect? Punctuated by surrealist production numbers that play like MGM extravaganzas gone avant-garde, THE WAYWARD CLOUD blends high camp and genuine human feeling into a fantastically strange, singular romance.
I was up until 7:30a watching this: War and Peace At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet film industry set out to prove it could outdo Hollywood with a production that would dazzle the world: a titanic, awe-inspiring adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic tome in which the fates of three souls—the blundering, good-hearted Pierre; the heroically tragic Prince Andrei; and the radiant, tempestuous Natasha—collide amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. Employing a cast of thousands and an array of innovative camera techniques, director Sergei Bondarchuk conjures a sweeping vision of grand balls that glitter with rococo beauty and breathtaking battles that overwhelm with their expressionistic power. As a statement of Soviet cinema’s might, WAR AND PEACE succeeded wildly, garnering the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and setting a new standard for epic moviemaking.
Ivan’s Childhood Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1962 • Soviet Union The debut feature by the great Andrei Tarkovsky, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, is a poetic journey through the shards and shadows of one boy's war-ravaged youth. Moving back and forth between the traumatic realities of World War II and serene moments of family life before the conflict began, Tarkovsky's film remains one of the most jarring and unforgettable depictions of the impact of war on children.
Rebels of the Neon God Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • 1992 • Taiwan Starring Chen Chao-jung, Jen Chang-bin, Lee Kang-sheng Tsai Ming-liang’s debut feature heralded the arrival of one of contemporary cinema’s most acclaimed and idiosyncratic auteurs. The striking first expression of the Taiwanese director’s recurring theme of urban alienation, REBELS OF THE NEON GOD centers on a directionless student (Lee Kang-sheng) as he becomes involved with a pair of petty criminals amid the arcades, roller rinks, and seedy hotels of the Taipei night world. Paying homage to a tradition of troubled teen pictures stretching back to Nicholas Ray, Tsai crafts a coolly stylized vision of lost youth adrift in a dead-end world.