What films did you see last week? - 14th-20th April 2008
“You know, it isn’t what a man wants to do, Lacey, but what he has to do. Now you take me. I love to smoke cigarettes, but the doctors say I can’t have them. So what do I do? I chew toothpicks. Tons of ‘em.”
Developed as The City is Dark and shot as Don’t Cry, Baby before being released as Crime Wave, Andre de Toth’s still surprisingly tough police procedural is a film that wears its economy as a badge of pride. Offered a big budget and a 35-day shooting schedule if he made it with Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner, de Toth held out for Sterling Hayden even though it mean a fraction of the budget and a 15-day shooting schedule – and still managed to come in ahead and shoot the film in only 13 days. It was worth sticking to his guns. The film may have made little splash when it opened in 1954, but it’s a near classic that fully deserves its growing reputation, and as the hardboiled cop who’s all-knowing judge and jury, Hayden so effectively strides through the film like a colossus in a towering performance (literally: for much of the film he’s shot from low angles) that it’s impossible to imagine Bogart as being anything but a comparative disappointment in the role. The kind of guy who doesn’t need doors because he can walk through walls, he doesn’t act tough – he is tough. He’s practically the blueprint for L.A. Confidential’s Bud White, and it’s no surprise that James Ellroy is a big fan of the film, sharing an entertaining, occasionally expletive-deleted audio commentary with Eddie Muller on Warner’s Region 1 DVD.
The plot is simple enough: a trio of escaped cons (Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson when he was still Charles Buchinsky and Ned Young) kill a cop when robbing Dub Taylor’s gas station for eating money and involve innocent parolee Gene Nelson, leaned on by cops and crooks alike, in their escape plans. But the execution is what raises the bar here, particularly in the first third when the police bring in all the usual suspects. Shot in an almost verite documentary style, the film has a great look thanks to Bert Glennon’s striking cinematography – deep focus, harsh blacks and bright fluorescent whites often sharing the same frame, with such a stark photojournalistic realism that some of the setups could pass for Weegee’s classic crime scene photos. It captures the feeling of L.A. at night like almost no other film, with outstanding location work and an unforgiving eye for human weakness and hopeless cases. It certainly takes some of the shine off Kubrick’s subsequent The Killing – it certainly got there first in terms of its look, and it’s probably no accident that Kubrick hired two of the cast for his own caper movie.
While its undoubtedly Hayden’s movie, the supporting cast is for the most part exceptionally strong and well-drawn. Nelson is convincing enough as the bitter ex-con caught in the middle that it’s a shame that the former dancer didn’t go on to anything more interesting than directing some of Elvis’ worst movies, Phyllis Kirk makes more of an impression as his wife than the script would lead you to expect while Jay Novello makes a big impact as a drunken horse doctor who hates people but loves dogs and has no scruples about rifling a corpse’s pockets for services not rendered. Not everyone is quite so good, unfortunately: Bronson overdoes his dumb thug and a wildly miscast Hank Worden is barely able to deliver his lines as Nelson’s airport boss (is there anyone you’d feel less safe being in charge of airplane maintenance than Hank Worden?). As for Timothy Carey’s truly amazing display of psychotic tics as the last guy in the world you’d want to leave your wife with – well, since all his directors maintained Carey was never acting but really was like that offscreen as well, we can let that slide.
The film does briefly give into sentimentality at the end – though very, very begrudgingly – and it’s never quite as good as that powerhouse first third, but it’s certainly a sharp punch below the belt to the cop movie that you won’t forget in a hurry. Along with a brief adulatory featurette with various noir historians and Oliver Stone waxing lyrical about the film, the DVD also includes the original trailer introduced by an in-character Hayden telling us “Murder is my business and midnight is my beat.” Great stuff.
Neither Decoy nor its short-lived star Jean Gillie are great rediscoveries waiting to happen, but this Monogram Poverty Row effort makes for a satisfying enough second feature. The plot is absurd – Gillie’s displaced British femme fatale romances prison doctor Edward Norris into reviving Robert Armstrong an hour after his execution with ‘Methalyn Blue’ so she and her partner in crime Herbert Rudley can find out where he buried $400,000 in stolen loot – but even by noir standards Gillie’s character is stunningly ruthless as she destroys everyone in her path. But striking moments, such as Armstrong’s dazed reaction to his own revival, are few and far between and aside from Sheldon Leonard’s cop, charisma and acting ability are in similarly short supply. Norris is a disastrous lead, a zombie-like blank slate long before his character slips into near-catatonic shock for the last third of the film, while as his secretary the startlingly awful Marjorie Woodwarth gives a practical masterclass in the difference between acting and more or less remembering her lines. Still, there’s a neat dying kiss off before the payoff and it doesn’t outstay its welcome at a brisk 76 minutes.
How times change. Back in 1974, after paying his dues co-writing Silent Running and Magnum Force, Michael Cimino was one of the most promising new directors on the scene thanks to his directorial debut Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In 1978 he was an Oscar winner whose place in movie history seemed assured by The Deer Hunter. Two years later he was the poster boy for directorial excess and hubris in the wake of the unjustly maligned Heaven’s Gate. Now he’s unemployable.
Thunderbolt’s once-sterling reputation seems to have fallen victim alongside Cimino’s career. It’s become one of the less-remembered films from the days when Clint Eastwood ruled the box-office yet it holds up as one of the best pictures of its over-rated decade, managing the neat trick of both delivering what the audience wants and subverting their expectations at the same time. Eastwood plays a crook on the run from ex-partners in crime George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis (often hysterically funny here) who teams up with Jeff Bridges' extrovert drifter to retrieve the loot from a previous robbery only to find his old accomplices tagging along and things – naturally – not going at all to plan. It’s an almost perfectly judged mixture of comedy and action with both feet firmly on the ground despite the more absurd moments in a way that would be almost unthinkable today. There's a real rapport between the outstanding cast and an affection for the characters that adds to the impact of the very Seventies ending – not only is the central pairing of Eastwood’s old hand and Bridges’ cocksure kid far more convincing and genuinely affecting than it has any right to be, but Kennedy and Lewis’ untrustworthy partners in crime are beautifully drawn too.
Cimino handles the mood swings adeptly and even injects a subtle undercurrent of sexual ambiguity that never gets in the way of the entertainment. While his direction is bang on target - there’s a great use of mid-Western landscape too - it’s the strength of his script that keeps the film surprisingly fresh today. It’s basically a road movie crossed with a heist movie, but Cimino throws in so many unexpected and quirky left turns that catch you off guard that you never get the feeling that you’re going over the same old ground. This was a terrific movie in 1974, and if anything it's an even better one today. Just remember; never accept a lift from a man with a raccoon in the passenger seat and a trunk full of bunnies! Sadly the DVD transfer isn’t great, but it is in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio.
“You know, it isn’t what a man wants to do, Lacey, but what he has to do. Now you take me. I love to smoke cigarettes, but the doctors say I can’t have them. So what do I do? I chew toothpicks. Tons of ‘em.”
Developed as The City is Dark and shot as Don’t Cry, Baby before being released as Crime Wave, Andre de Toth’s still surprisingly tough police procedural is a film that wears its economy as a badge of pride. Offered a big budget and a 35-day shooting schedule if he made it with Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner, de Toth held out for Sterling Hayden even though it mean a fraction of the budget and a 15-day shooting schedule – and still managed to come in ahead and shoot the film in only 13 days. It was worth sticking to his guns. The film may have made little splash when it opened in 1954, but it’s a near classic that fully deserves its growing reputation, and as the hardboiled cop who’s all-knowing judge and jury, Hayden so effectively strides through the film like a colossus in a towering performance (literally: for much of the film he’s shot from low angles) that it’s impossible to imagine Bogart as being anything but a comparative disappointment in the role. The kind of guy who doesn’t need doors because he can walk through walls, he doesn’t act tough – he is tough. He’s practically the blueprint for L.A. Confidential’s Bud White, and it’s no surprise that James Ellroy is a big fan of the film, sharing an entertaining, occasionally expletive-deleted audio commentary with Eddie Muller on Warner’s Region 1 DVD.
The plot is simple enough: a trio of escaped cons (Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson when he was still Charles Buchinsky and Ned Young) kill a cop when robbing Dub Taylor’s gas station for eating money and involve innocent parolee Gene Nelson, leaned on by cops and crooks alike, in their escape plans. But the execution is what raises the bar here, particularly in the first third when the police bring in all the usual suspects. Shot in an almost verite documentary style, the film has a great look thanks to Bert Glennon’s striking cinematography – deep focus, harsh blacks and bright fluorescent whites often sharing the same frame, with such a stark photojournalistic realism that some of the setups could pass for Weegee’s classic crime scene photos. It captures the feeling of L.A. at night like almost no other film, with outstanding location work and an unforgiving eye for human weakness and hopeless cases. It certainly takes some of the shine off Kubrick’s subsequent The Killing – it certainly got there first in terms of its look, and it’s probably no accident that Kubrick hired two of the cast for his own caper movie.
While its undoubtedly Hayden’s movie, the supporting cast is for the most part exceptionally strong and well-drawn. Nelson is convincing enough as the bitter ex-con caught in the middle that it’s a shame that the former dancer didn’t go on to anything more interesting than directing some of Elvis’ worst movies, Phyllis Kirk makes more of an impression as his wife than the script would lead you to expect while Jay Novello makes a big impact as a drunken horse doctor who hates people but loves dogs and has no scruples about rifling a corpse’s pockets for services not rendered. Not everyone is quite so good, unfortunately: Bronson overdoes his dumb thug and a wildly miscast Hank Worden is barely able to deliver his lines as Nelson’s airport boss (is there anyone you’d feel less safe being in charge of airplane maintenance than Hank Worden?). As for Timothy Carey’s truly amazing display of psychotic tics as the last guy in the world you’d want to leave your wife with – well, since all his directors maintained Carey was never acting but really was like that offscreen as well, we can let that slide.
The film does briefly give into sentimentality at the end – though very, very begrudgingly – and it’s never quite as good as that powerhouse first third, but it’s certainly a sharp punch below the belt to the cop movie that you won’t forget in a hurry. Along with a brief adulatory featurette with various noir historians and Oliver Stone waxing lyrical about the film, the DVD also includes the original trailer introduced by an in-character Hayden telling us “Murder is my business and midnight is my beat.” Great stuff.
Neither Decoy nor its short-lived star Jean Gillie are great rediscoveries waiting to happen, but this Monogram Poverty Row effort makes for a satisfying enough second feature. The plot is absurd – Gillie’s displaced British femme fatale romances prison doctor Edward Norris into reviving Robert Armstrong an hour after his execution with ‘Methalyn Blue’ so she and her partner in crime Herbert Rudley can find out where he buried $400,000 in stolen loot – but even by noir standards Gillie’s character is stunningly ruthless as she destroys everyone in her path. But striking moments, such as Armstrong’s dazed reaction to his own revival, are few and far between and aside from Sheldon Leonard’s cop, charisma and acting ability are in similarly short supply. Norris is a disastrous lead, a zombie-like blank slate long before his character slips into near-catatonic shock for the last third of the film, while as his secretary the startlingly awful Marjorie Woodwarth gives a practical masterclass in the difference between acting and more or less remembering her lines. Still, there’s a neat dying kiss off before the payoff and it doesn’t outstay its welcome at a brisk 76 minutes.
How times change. Back in 1974, after paying his dues co-writing Silent Running and Magnum Force, Michael Cimino was one of the most promising new directors on the scene thanks to his directorial debut Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In 1978 he was an Oscar winner whose place in movie history seemed assured by The Deer Hunter. Two years later he was the poster boy for directorial excess and hubris in the wake of the unjustly maligned Heaven’s Gate. Now he’s unemployable.
Thunderbolt’s once-sterling reputation seems to have fallen victim alongside Cimino’s career. It’s become one of the less-remembered films from the days when Clint Eastwood ruled the box-office yet it holds up as one of the best pictures of its over-rated decade, managing the neat trick of both delivering what the audience wants and subverting their expectations at the same time. Eastwood plays a crook on the run from ex-partners in crime George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis (often hysterically funny here) who teams up with Jeff Bridges' extrovert drifter to retrieve the loot from a previous robbery only to find his old accomplices tagging along and things – naturally – not going at all to plan. It’s an almost perfectly judged mixture of comedy and action with both feet firmly on the ground despite the more absurd moments in a way that would be almost unthinkable today. There's a real rapport between the outstanding cast and an affection for the characters that adds to the impact of the very Seventies ending – not only is the central pairing of Eastwood’s old hand and Bridges’ cocksure kid far more convincing and genuinely affecting than it has any right to be, but Kennedy and Lewis’ untrustworthy partners in crime are beautifully drawn too.
Cimino handles the mood swings adeptly and even injects a subtle undercurrent of sexual ambiguity that never gets in the way of the entertainment. While his direction is bang on target - there’s a great use of mid-Western landscape too - it’s the strength of his script that keeps the film surprisingly fresh today. It’s basically a road movie crossed with a heist movie, but Cimino throws in so many unexpected and quirky left turns that catch you off guard that you never get the feeling that you’re going over the same old ground. This was a terrific movie in 1974, and if anything it's an even better one today. Just remember; never accept a lift from a man with a raccoon in the passenger seat and a trunk full of bunnies! Sadly the DVD transfer isn’t great, but it is in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio.
