28 December 2014

#WTW: Shallow Grave

(#WhatThomWatched seven....)


Shallow Grave

(Danny Boyle, 1994; Criterion spine 616)




#WTW Shallow Grave: MatesThe three primary characters in Shallow Grave, the great Danny Boyle’s (and writer John Hodge’s) first theatrical film, are as unlikable as they come; many read Ewan McGregor’s character as having earned some kind of redemption at the end, but the alternative view that each horrible flatmate deserves exactly what he or she gets (or doesn’t get) seems most credible (people may simply be seduced by McGregor’s laughing blue eyes, and who can blame them?) Boyle’s deployment of minimal resources deserves to be studied as an exemplar of how low-budget can be stylish to a fault. The taut 90-minute story is as simple as can be: three young professional friends take in a fourth roomer who immediately turns up dead, leaving a suitcase of cash. How the friends deal with the body, the money, and each other comprises the rest of the film. You fully expect alliances to form and shift, and some players to be more mentally and emotionally capable than others, but the actual paths those shifts take is unpredictable and exciting. Loud, splashy events occur, as both police and a terrifying pair of remorseless killers close in on the money, but it’s equally rewarding to follow the adjusting mental states of the friends when paranoia sets in, visible through their narrowing eyes and behind their tight expressions.


#WTW Shallow Grave: Color

#WTW Shallow Grave: The reveal












Reminds me of:


#WTW Shallow Grave: Phantom ride
Trainspotting, inevitably; that crawling troll doll (first in the overindulgence montage and later in McGregor’s nightmares) seems directly transported to Renton’s drug trips and a similar baby doll. And having recently watched the Mark Cousins documentary series The Story of Film, my antennae were up for the opening “phantom ride” shots; sped-up footage from a camera mounted on a car streaking through Edinburgh, evoking something out-of-control that might be going on behind the staid rows of Scottish flats. It’s a striking touch that doesn’t immediately connect to the following scene — turns out the rider is just a nice boring bloke who is answering an ad for a room — but once we begin to understand the sick game that our three heroes are playing with him (and many other hopefuls), the visual starts to make sense.




#WTW Shallow Grave: Game




Speaking of visual connections — albeit ones that are clearly coincidental and specific to #WTW! — having just posted images for Youth of the Beast, I couldn’t help but notice scenes with Kerry Fox that evoked it, both the tower of champagne glasses and (more viciously) the point of her black shoe threateningly pushing on McGregor’s chest after he’s fallen on the dance floor — of course that move is aggressively seductive in Grave, but the unintended echo left it tasting perverse and violent.

#WTW Shallow Grave: Youth?

#WTW Shallow Grave: Beast?













(And to give the final actor in the trio his (geek-out) due: Christopher Eccleston is phenomenal here as an easily damaged milquetoast . . . . and, yes, it had to come out sooner or later — I’m a Doctor Who fan (both old and Nu), and Eccleston is far and above my favorite Doctor of the modern series.)
#WTW Shallow Grave: Not a sonic.


But also — the guilt!

I don’t like (or get) Slumdog Millionaire, or at least I didn’t when it came out — maybe I’ll give it another chance, someday, but I’ve got several other Boyle films to see first: Millions, his lightly comedic take on a similar found-money setup; or certainly Sunshine, or last year’s Trance.

There’s some controversy among the fans about the ending — not about its quality, but about whether events occur exactly as shown, or if we’re meant to understand that the literal action is an ironic counterpoint to reality. I must report that Boyle’s commentary on the Criterion disk gives a definitive answer and that it’s not the one I would personally prefer. I’m sure this is my (true?) cynical self coming out, but I prefer a worldview where none of these characters gets an out. I might just choose to read my own implications into the final scene even in the face of authorial intent. (Hmmph; between this and the admission about the Ninth Doctor above I may have just lost half my audience — that’s a whole one of you!)


#WTW Shallow Grave: Things get complicated.
#WTW Shallow Grave: Things get nasty.


#WTW Shallow Grave: Things get sticky.












Pitch:

I get creepy-crawly (in the best way) as McGregor climbs up into the unfinished attic space and we see what Eccelston and his efforts have wrought there — I won’t spoil it with a picture. Is it strictly realistic? I don’t think it is, or has to be. To me it’s a perfect example of art direction used to create a film image in service to the story (and to the mental states of its characters) without necessarily being literal. One thing is sure — more movies should pay this much attention to their look.


23 December 2014

#WTW Glance: Edge of Tomorrow

#WhatThomWatched Glance*:

Edge of Tomorrow (a.k.a. Live Die Repeat)

(Doug Liman, 2014; Streaming/Also available on disc from Warner Bros.)



The original title of this movie, Edge of Tomorrow, is a rare example of a marketing choice that didn’t give enough away (thus the rebranding for the home video market). This post could follow suit and attempt to hide the main conceit, but to do so would only compound this excellent movie’s problem, which was that it was largely overlooked. Via a not-too-shabby sci-fi mechanism, a character (played by Tom Cruise) resets time and jumps back to a specific point when he dies; he’s a doofus with no combat experience at first, but after hundreds of (implied) iterations, he gains not only skills but also the knowledge to progress a little farther on each try — where the enemy is hiding, which is the best path to take, who to trust and not to trust, and so on. (Yeah, Einstein — “Just like a video game!”) Thing is, as directed by Doug Liman and scripted by Dante Harper, Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (and based on the book All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka), Edge of Tomorrow turns out to be more: a damn credible satire of the big-budget explosive-y sludge into which Hollywood (and, increasingly, network television) must mash every story. Okay, it’s not satire at a Starship Troopers level, and the time-travel plot is played straight and has plenty of emotional heft. But there’s a definite current which is poking fun at the need to formulate every action movie as an Xbox first-person-shooter and vice-versa.




Reminds me of:

I really don’t expect less from Liman, who I will always love for Swingers and Go (and for whom I carefully guard my respect via the simple expedient of refusing to view Jumper, for all eternity). He has demonstrated (in movies like The Bourne Identity) that he can do big-budget while still focusing primarily on character. Edge also benefits greatly from Cruise’s comic timing and his willingness to play against his action-hero image; Emily Blunt as another time-jumper brings all of the seriousness and weight and pairs with Cruise beautifully. I am also always pleased to spot Noah Taylor in anything (he plays Dr. Carter, the scientist that Blunt’s character is working with to defeat the bad guys); his childhood character Danny Embling (from John Duigan’s The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting) has always felt like my best friend from another life (you know, the one where I grew up in Australia. And went to boarding school with Taylor. Along with Nicole Kidman and Thandie Newton.) At any rate, I jumped out of my chair when he showed up.


But then — the guilt!

When I look at those box office numbers . . . . yeah, I was one of the many who saw the splody trailer in a theater, ho-hummed at a poster of Cruise in yet another futuristic suit of armor, and at Liman’s name allowed myself the fleeting thought: “Ugh. Jumper.” When I should have thought: “Yay! Swingers!!” 

My bad, Doug. You’re so money and you don’t even know it.


Pitch:

Maybe it’s just me but I get a huge kick out of Brendan Gleeson’s two scenes as General Brigham; first where Cruise ticks him off enough to get shanghaied and sent to the front lines, and later when Cruise returns (many lives down the road and much wiser).



*For movies and shows which are current — in theaters or streaming — I'm posting a short, less-spoilery take on #WhatThomWatched (and generally only when something really strikes me as worth passing on). These shorter essays are labeled Glance.

21 December 2014

#WTW: Thieves Like Us

(#WhatThomWatched six!)

#WTW Thieves Like Us: Domestic fantasy


Thieves Like Us


(Robert Altman, 1974; MGM DVD, also available on Blu-Ray)


#WTW Thieves Like Us: Sponsorship
Everyone understands the idea of product placements in movies and television shows, ranging from subtle (corporate logos in 2001: A Space Odyssey) to obnoxious (the McDonald’s-funded Mac and Me, e.g.; Cracked has this one nailed), to knowing self-parody (twenty-odd years ago, Wayne’s World had Mike Myers declaiming “Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor!” while holding up a Pizza Hut box). But the constant appearance of Coca-Cola in Thieves Like Us doesn’t feel anything like advertising; instead, it’s just the most obvious textural detail in what might be the best representation of the Depression-era American South in all cinema. Coke is everywhere: advertised on round tin signs at every store, of course, but also sponsoring the State Penitentiary; its familiar bottles grasped by many characters (most often by Shelley Duvall’s Keechie), but also, empty, lined up on mantels and porches; and in one scene, hawked from a vendor’s truck in the town square, with seemingly every kid in the county running up with their nickels. Coke represents an affordable luxury (sometimes just barely so); as such it’s also an actual working part of the Southern economy (again, so slightly; at five cents a pop it can’t fix everything). It’s also a still-current symbol for nostalgia that seems to have always been nostalgic.



#WTW Thieves Like Us: Spot the radio

#WTW Thieves Like Us: The Shadow...

#WTW Thieves Like Us: ...and The Shadow again

Equally ubiquitous in the world of Thieves: radio. Characters listen to the radio for important plot points, of course; our lead Bowie (Keith Carradine) wouldn’t know the fate of his fellow bank robbers without a radio in his car. But radio is fundamental to the 1930’s in every way: it’s in the background of many scenes both audibly and visibly; characters often listen to the same programs from different vantage points or sets, and the radio’s content always comments on the primary action. Most boldly, Altman sometimes allows the stream of radio noise to slip away from realism and into direct dialog with the film’s images; for example, as Keechie and Bowie edge into a physical relationship, a radio dramatization of Romeo and Juliet’s love sonnet plays out and loops back and back again to repeat portions of the dialogue and narration verbatim.

#WTW Thieves Like Us: Carradine

Similarly to many of Altman’s best movies, Thieves Like Us depends less on plot and incident and more on character and tone. Its ending might be its weakest point, since the conventions of a crooks-on-the-run yarn demand that the law must eventually catch up. But in contrast with that possibly purposely brief resolution, the center of the film is gloriously stretched out and extended. Carradine’s character went a bad way when he was impossibly young, just a teenager, and he sees himself as an inevitably bad person even as we (and Duvall’s character) can easily see all of his good. He falls in love with Duvall while laid up in hiding in her barn after an injury, and his weeks of recovery away from his partners and safe from discovery allow the two of them to play out a fantasy, a different life of domesticity for them both. As simple as the idea may be, and as quick as it is to sketch out in words, Altman instead chooses to allow these scenes to go on at length while the world outside seems to stand still, and their new life is allowed to get as far as a little house of their own and future plans apart from Carradine’s criminal past. When the wheel begins to turn again, the viewer is crushingly aware of what the couple will lose. That languorous, idyllic center of the movie is quite literally the pause that refreshes. 


#WTW Thieves Like Us: Waking 1

#WTW Thieves Like Us: Waking 2

#WTW Thieves Like Us: Waking 3

(Hmm — clearly Coke is on my mind.)

Reminds me of: 

For all of his brilliance Altman seems to be polarizing and I am firmly in the pro- camp, as future #WTW postings are sure to prove. There are lots of connections between Thieves and his other work but the most obvious to me is his use of sound here (the endless radio broadcasts, encompassing the news, commercials, “Gang Busters” and other famous serials) akin to M.A.S.H. and the camp’s P.A. announcements, or Nashville and Hal Phillip Walker’s megaphone car. In terms of story, Thieves Like Us obviously bears comparison to Bonnie and Clyde; where Penn’s movie chose to focus on the Barrow Gang’s presage of celebrity culture, and the couple’s fascination with fame, Bowie in Thieves desperately wants to be normal, unknown, the opposite of notorious. He and his co-criminals do scour the newspapers and the airwaves for any mention of their adventures, but — at least for Bowie — it seems more a practicality intended to keep them one step ahead of the police. There’s very little celebration among the outlaws, here; crime isn’t a catalyst for sexuality, as in Gun Crazy, or a shared bond, as in The Honeymoon Killers — it's just necessary for survival.



#WTW Thieves Like Us: Mist

#WTW Thieves Like Us: Plotting

But also — the guilt! 

Among the comparisons I can draw, I can’t compare Altman’s film to the other high-profile movie that was made from the same Edward Anderson source novel, Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night — I’ve never seen it. I also never watch an Altman without feeling guilty that I don’t watch him more often. His films are fine literature in a world that’s increasingly tuning out for the movie equivalent of tweets and listicles. Hopefully #WTW will shame me into rewatching some of the best — California Split, The Player, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 3 Women — and also spur me into hunting down some of the ones I’ve never seen — I hear there’s a new-ish release of Brewster McCloud, for instance.


#WTW Thieves Like Us: Injured


Pitch: 

Amongst all the intertwining of the criminal life and run-of-the-mill life in 1937 Mississippi, there’s a brilliant scene where Carradine’s partners (played by John Schuck and Bert Remsen) practice for a bank job with Remsen’s girlfriend and her kid brother playing the bank employees, chairs up on a table to represent teller’s cages, literally a grown-up’s game of make believe. When things go sour in the play-acting version, you can sure bet things won’t be any sweeter in real life.


#WTW Thieves Like Us: Sadder and wiser

19 December 2014

#WTW: Youth of the Beast


(#WhatThomWatched numbah five)



#WTW Youth of the Beast: Jô in trouble

Youth of the Beast (Yajû no seishun)

(Seijun Suzuki, 1963; Criterion spine 268)


So from 1958 through 1963, in five years, Seijun Suziki had made at least 25 features, one after the other, which were more or less straight-up noir and standard genre police-procedurals. And then, with Youth of the Beast, he went utterly bonkers. It’s all the more fantastic for being announced in such an obvious way: the film begins in old-school fifties mode, with a static long shot of curious crowds gathering (though the green titles over the black-and-white are a clear indication that something is up). Police investigators pull a shade to shut the gawkers out of the room where two bodies are lying. After some quick dialogue scenes that could have come from any of the previous films, there’s a cut to a still life of items on a dresser; pills, booze — with one flower, seemingly pasted right in from a different reality, a shocking red . . . . and then the movie takes off in blazing color, and never slows down.

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Black and white...
#WTW Youth of the Beast: ...transition...
#WTW Youth of the Beast: ...color!

Just a film or two away, Suziki’s crazed compositions would not need to be motivated by any logic, but here there are the flimsiest justifications: One of the rival yazuka mobs has tricked out their sexy nightclub with walls of one-way glass, even the floors, to allow for a shot of a confrontation from below; meanwhile, the other gang does their business in a theater, so that entire scenes of this movie play out in front of a giant screen showing scenes from older crime movies. When an unfortunate junkie is reduced to screaming and begging for her heroin fix, she not only somersaults off a landing, but we see hallucinations of her tormentors from her point of view.

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Frame from below

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Frames behind
And so on and on: Story elements that are otherwise simple are made outrageous by visual detail and/or by choice of incident. Our anti-hero is a hard man who’s out to be hired by one of the mobs, and we need to know how hard he is, so we meet him instigating a street brawl, knocking a man down, kicking him senseless and bloody — and then carefully wiping his shoes off on the man’s white shirt. Or, sent to parley with a rival of his new boss and finding him unwilling to listen, he wordlessly, casually, lights the man’s hair on fire.

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Bloody shoes

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Fire

The jazz score is excellent. Some of the pulpy choices, of course, aren’t politically correct to us today, but at least they evoke the classical clichés: every dame is two-timing (if she’s not a pervert’s victim), the loyal thug is as slow as a box of hammers, and the sickest sadist of all is, naturally, a homosexual — but no one would mistake this flick for social realism. It's fun, fun from first frame to last, slick, outrageous fun.


Reminds me of: 

According to Katherine Rife’s If You Like Quentin Tarantino…. (and her 2013 interview with DailyGrindhouse.com), Tarantino denies any Suziki influence (though neither she nor interviewer King B are convinced: “...he says he’s not, but he totally was.”) The mid-sixties Suzukis, especially Branded to Kill, have some clear parallels in movies like Kill Bill — though the chop-socky, early-seventies exploitation films are perhaps more direct precursors. I’ve seen about half of the available Criterion Suzukis — BrandedTokyo DrifterTake Aim At the Police Van — with a couple more purchased and ready to spin: Gate of FleshFighting Elegy. As mentioned before, his later films don’t need any excuse to slip into impressionistic and associative images, like the butterfly graphics that suffuse Branded

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Multiples

I also was struck a couple times with a thought that I’ve only ever had while watching Kurosawa: both men have a real knack for wide compositions that incorporate large groups of people, often ten, fifteen men scattered throughout the frame, each seeming to pull the viewer’s focus one direction or another. For instance, the first half of The Bad Sleep Well is largely set in the industrialist’s mansion, and a huge crowd of people are in the room at any one moment, usually all visible in the frame, like a version of The Last Supper but with ever-shifting figures and interrelationships. Or in Sanjuro, where Mifune is trailed by a snaking line of samurai followers through several scenes. In Youth, it’s most notable in a scene in the Sanko Mob’s hideout, where at least ten heavies are in the room. Maybe it’s a particularly Japanese style; I’ll have to keep an eye out.

#WTW Youth of the Beast: Style

But also — the guilt! 

Well, there’s those thirty-odd more Suzukis to see! But seriously, with so many of my contemporary film enthusiasts into Japanese genre flicks, I’ll always be hopelessly behind. I will state that I have gone gaga for several other Japanese directors and films, some from the Criterion collection (including Hiroshi Teshigahara, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s House, the 25 Zatoichi films) and some from dedicated distributors like AnimEgo (Lone Wolf and Cub, the Sleepy Eyes of Death series) — so many more #WTWs are in the cards. But a year or two’s worth of backlog doesn’t begin to even scratch the surface of amazing Japanese cinema.

And: I honestly do not understand what the English title is supposed to mean. Youth? Beast? Other than “Hey, it’s the Sixties and the wacky kids with their crazy and it’s kooky and we straights are scared of them” (which certainly has its parallels in Hollywood — Psych-OutLady in a CageThe Wild Angels, etc. etc.), I can’t really suss it out. Maybe it’s just a too-literal translation of a more nuanced Japanese idiom in its original title Yajû no seishun. IMDb also lists Wild Youth as an alternate English translation. Anyone have other ideas? 


#WTW Youth of the Beast: Evil cat trope


Pitch: 

Scene after scene after scene presents new visionary delights; I’ll start the pitch right at Joe Shishido’s early entrance (technically, his pointy shoes’ entrance) right through his jaded act at the Nomoto club, as he drags you into the movie beat by beat. And then  it never lets up. If I didn’t worry about my brain exploding, I’d want to put in another Suzuki movie as soon as the final scene rolls on the one before.

13 December 2014

#WTW Glance: Birdman

#WhatThomWatched Glance*:

Birdman

(Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014; In theaters)

Recommended for: Anyone, really; see the 230-word sentence below for details.
There are several clear entry points into Birdman and probably at least one for every moviegoer on the planet; most obviously, fans of the superhero genre that’s (again) fomenting a complete takeover of screens of all sizes and seemingly all available flat surfaces; fans of the mighty trio of Mexican directors that includes Iñárritu (Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful) along with Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro (no stranger to superhero films); fans of stunt cinema where artists set impossible restrictions on themselves, in this case a script which drives forward with almost no evident camera cuts for the entire length of the film, evoking the building pressures that torment the main character; fans of the varied work of Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton (who, yes, deserves full respect for a mostly impeccable resumé despite — well, no indictment here); fans of any of the other superb actors including Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Zack Galifianakis, Amy Ryan . . . but one fanbase perhaps least remarked on by the (rave) reviews are the backstage fans: viewers with some theater experience, on-stage or off-, for whom the story beats and the personalities connected to the late rehearsals, last-minute accidents, preview audiences, narrow corridors and stairways, semi-private dressing rooms, talk of backers and finances and legal issues — and of critics and box office — hits some bittersweet spot deep in the psyche. The movie clearly sets up the battle between Hollywood and Broadway, West Coast and East Coast, movie star and Great White Hope, blockbuster and opening night triumph, “popular” (actor, work or art) and “true” (actor et al.) — and characters make points on all sides and from many perspectives. But it’s interesting to consider it from the non-popcorn-movie perspective: What is Birdman saying about the increasingly rarefied world of classical theater in the U.S.? The high-minded critic and the purist rival actor are satirically played, and our sympathies are mostly with Keaton’s self-doubting actor and his wish to prove himself a capital-“a” Artist. But the movie itself is arguably a faithful representation of pure stage theater, with all of the difficulties for an audience that come with it: watch the prologue with that in mind, with its insistent percussion, literary quote, surrealist images — and then the film proper, which is constructed as a play, mostly as a series of short conversations and (Keaton) soliloquies, often in a just-slightly elevated style — recognizable to a theatergoer, but a bit much for the movies. Birdman is not just about Hollywood vs. Broadway; it takes Broadway in and breathes it out as a Hollywood movie — an art movie, but a full-blooded production just the same.




Reminds me of:

Well, the form reminds me of little else -- sure, Hitchcock’s Rope and Sokurov’s Russian Ark are single-shot (simulated and actual, respectively), but the single-shot conceit is used to different ends in all three films, and Birdman is much more likely to focus on Keaton's and other actors' faces, arguing intimately or (in Keaton’s case) being harangued by his alter-ego. But as far as the business of theater and theater personalities goes, I think of Marcel Carné’s Les enfants du paradis, the ultimate backstage movie (not to mention the key to understanding the French’s respect for mime).


But also — the guilt!

Entirely apart from movies -- I walked out of Birdman wistfully remembering my past as a season subscription holder for multiple theaters, an entirely worthwhile expense that’s just a bit too rich for me these days. Post-kids-in-college, perhaps, this will rise again.


Pitch:

There are a myriad of memorable details throughout Birdman, but for a representative combination of visual and aural punch: the moments when the frantic drum-only score (a stellar work by Antonio Sanchez) is literalized by a street performer (Nate Smith standing in) — who, at one point, is passed by the never-resting camera inside the theater. The unconventional score alone is worth experiencing (a score which, incidentally, the Academy has just ruled as ineligible for an Oscar nomination, due to its being interrupted regularly by other “found” music. Boo.)


*For movies and shows which are current -- in theaters or streaming -- I'm posting a short, less-spoilery take on #WhatThomWatched (and generally only when something really strikes me as worth passing on).
These shorter essays are labeled Glance.



12 December 2014

#WTW: The Killing

(#WhatThomWatched IV)

#WTW The Killing: Masked


The Killing 

(Stanley Kubrick, 1956; Criterion spine 575)


The film begins with grainy stock footage of a track; the horses are led from the stables, the starting gate is pulled into position, a flat-voiced announcer (represented by a static shot of the loudspeaker horn on a pole)  blares out race information. And then a second, stentorian voice begins to reel off details, times, places, character names. It’s late-era film noir and we are being introduced to the primary players in a heist operation, but something seems strange: with each new character and situation that’s introduced , the time of day given runs backwards. More stock footage sets up locations or can be seen in process shots outside windows of rooms, or integrated behind newly filmed action -- and then we see the gang’s mastermind, Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), side-on, talking to his girl and striding stage left through a railway apartment, room after room after room, as the the camera smoothly pans with him for the entire length -- a shot that’s pure Kubrick, used to devastating effect in the trench scenes in the next year’s Paths of Glory. And then, having been introduced to too many characters to follow . . . the horses are led from the stables, the starting gate is pulled into position, and the flat-voiced announcer and stentorian narration start up again as another detail of the plot is revealed. Hayden has a convoluted plan in his head and he’s the only one allowed to know how all the pieces fit together; truthfully, it’s not even clear that the narrator has all his facts straight. As with all the best noirs, the coherence of the plan is less important than the endless doors opening and closing, the locking and unlocking and relocking of lockers and cases, the parcels carried, suit jackets hung, rifles carefully aimed, and, at the epicenter of tension, the ugly misshapen rubber hobo mask pulled down over Hayden’s head. He lines up his temporary hostages in the track’s business office, like the lined-up policeman targets at his rifleman’s makeshift range, and dust motes float through the air of the hideouts and the walkups like leaves in the wind. Or money.

#WTW The Killing: Target range




#WTW The Killing: Chess














Reminds me of

Although filmed in California, the portrait-like black-and-white shots of city streets and gaming parlors make me think of the Manhattan of Sweet Smell of Success, or the Greenwich Village of Scarlet Street. Lots of people notice the real-world strip club that advertises their headliner Lenny Bruce (shades of Fosse’s Lenny, or its fictitious beard Stand-Up in All That Jazz). And of course, a defining noir trait is the complexity of the plot; my first in-depth experience with the genre was Hawks’s The Big Sleep, which Raymond Chandler famously said he couldn’t follow even though he wrote it. (I am certain that Chandler is going to come up again in #WTW, since early in my collecting years I set myself the task of acquiring every film depiction of detective Phil(l)ip Marlow(e), and with the sole exception of Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely, I have.)

#WTW The Killing: Street


(I have one more RMO item which is too crazy to be detailed here but has been relegated to a footnote below.)


But also — the guilt!

This is the final major Kubrick film which I had not seen; I’ll eventually watch his previous Killer’s Kiss (included on the Criterion disc) but unless it really knocks me out, I doubt I’ll document it — it’s just my fetish for completism driving me. Where I really fall down is in the larger noir universe. Despite my aforementioned collection of seven-of-eight major film depictions of Marlowe, there are literally hundreds of important noir films which I haven’t seen, despite the availability of  multiple collections from key studios.


#WTW The Killing: Elisha Cook and Marie Windsor
I also feel guilty that my chosen format for #WTW means that I’ve left out a long list of all the amazing actors and characters in this movie’s pileup. I especially love Sherry Peatty and her bullied-by-everyone husband George (Marie Windsor and Elisha Cook), who at least made it into the illustrative photos.


And: I will put in my vote that the film’s title is an ironic reference to the big score that the conspirators are expecting as reward — their “killing” — and not a reference to anyone, man woman or horse, who might meet an untimely end. But I could be wrong.




Pitch:

The final scene has such a jarring change of tone — all of the meticulous detail and sense of dread is deflated into rotten luck and cruel slapstick comedy. And yet, upon second thought . . . . it’s a brilliant ending. Hayden is the ultimate control freak, pulling every cord and dribbling out the barest minimum of information, and his plan is wound too tightly to succeed.


#WTW The Killing: Dr. Mabuse has me seeing things?
*So I am no DVD Savant — his reviews are so well informed by his years in the industry, thousands of viewed films, and army of equally knowledgeable correspondents — and his ability to spot actors in bit parts awes me. And my obsession with Dr. Mabuse, sure to be detailed in future #WTWs, borders on the insane— I am likely remote-controlled by the evil doctor, with no will of my own. That certainly explains my love for German actor Werner Peters, who everyone else thinks of in evil parts but whom I find cuddly, having been introduced to him in Lang's The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse as Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig. What is my point? I am convinced that Werner is standing in front center frame talking animatedly to the airport employee with a clipboard in the single, silent shot at the very end of the movie, next to Lady with Small Dog. If you are a fellow Mabusaphile, see if you agree with me. If not, watch this space for future details of my sickness.