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About 4 Star Films

I am a film critic and historian preserving a love of good movies. Check out my blog, 4 Star Films, and follow me on Twitter @FourStarFilmFan or Letterboxd. Thank you for reading!

Favorite Films of 2023

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I was a bit behind on my movie-watching for 2023, but here is a list of a few movies I enjoyed from the past year. I’ve either linked to a previous review or included a short capsule. Enjoy!

Past Lives

Writer-director Celine Song’s use of time is self-assured and brazen. She’s loose and elastic with it, bravely allowing her story to cut 24 years into the past before fast-forwarding 12 years and then 12 years again. But these jumps in time feel subtle and right with the perfectly applied sense of space and context. We never feel like we’re being rushed. The elliptical nature of a single cut is imbued with so much power. The movie is the epitome of contemplative cinema as it tells a fated love story.

Greta Lee is such a phenomenal conduit of this drama, and she takes every scene with a composure full of warmth and feeling. Teo Yoo has a forthright candor morphing from a boyish heartthrob to a man still grappling with unresolved feelings. John Magaro could easily be a whiny-voiced annoyance — the white evil of the movie — and yet it’s a credit to his humanity that we like him and even empathize with him (especially if we don’t speak Korean like this viewer).

As humans, we’re always looking to discern what our future will be. Religious people question God’s plan for their lives. And often we have the nagging thoughts of what-ifs and how things could have been. Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks like this. But Past Lives seems to suggest this is not the case.

Perfect Days 

It feels almost too convenient to evoke Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson from a few years back when considering this new film from Wim Wenders, but I can find no other alternative. They both focus on individuals who live contented analog lives with daily rhythms that feel almost radical in the face of the world around them. It doesn’t matter if it involves bus driving or in the case of Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), cleaning toilets in Japan under the watchful eye of the Tokyo Skytree.

Jarmusch, much like Wenders, has always felt like a sojourner with an insatiable curiosity, and both men seem to be continually expanding the cultural canvas of cinema through their travels and observations of a wide swath of humanity. Of course, Wenders started out first and has been doing sustained work for many years. It seems fitting that a film like this, while focusing on a very specific Japanese milieu, with the help of co-writer Takuma Takasaki, still boasts some of Wenders prevailing passions from photography to rock and roll music.

But what could feel like a mere gimmick gives rise to a man, thanks in part to Yakusho’s disarming performance, who has so much to offer the audience and others within the frames of the film. Because there’s something so quietly instructive about him. We can learn so much and appreciate so much more if we only observe the people and things around us. I found it charming, and it was a stirring reminder of why I love Japan (and the films of Wenders).

The Taste of Things

Babette’s Feast is a film that was a revelation to me from the very first time I watched it. I’m no gourmet and yet such sumptuous delights are hard to resist wrapped up in a Danish parable as it is. The Taste of Things is much the same – coming out of the same lineage – and the unbroken introduction to this tactile, delicious world of food in a 19th-century French kitchen is equally entrancing. There’s something so compelling and equally remarkable about these epicurean delights being created before our eyes. How something can have an extravagant simplicity to them requiring the utmost amount of tender loving care (and the freshest ingredients plucked straight from the garden).

While it’s not quite as thematically rich as its predecessor, it does rest on a love story brought to the screen by the incomparable Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, a pair of performers with a real-life history albeit one in the past. Food is their undisputed love language. It buoys their romance in such a rapturous way paired with the delicious cavalcade of eateries and a vow to train up another generation of chefs who have the intuitive gifts and the innate passion for food that can be further cultivated. There’s something quiet, beautiful, and melancholy about Tran Anh Hung’s film that I greatly relished. 

Killers of the Flower Moon

There’s something more fundamental here. You see it in many of Scorsese’s movies from Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street, or any of his gangster pictures showing the traditional villains in an intimate if not entirely sympathetic light. He always seems to return to this because this was his childhood — he grew up in a neighborhood with these sorts. By the world’s standard are they corrupt? Yes, but they aren’t personified evil. They act as complicated characters full of charisma, humor, and whatever else.

It feels like this is his gift as a filmmaker. Because we don’t always like these people, but he was never interested in a black hat and white hat morality. Perhaps that’s why he did not make Killers a more traditional Western because this would not be true to the ethos he’s had since the very beginning.

Lily Gladstone is such a powerful emotive force in this movie because if Leo’s performance is so pitiful, she is his perfect scene partner by maintaining an equilibrium; there’s a regality to her that’s not easy to break and yet she’s not an unknowable stoic. She loves deeply and with Ernest and her family, we see both her affection and her deep sorrow when they are ripped away from her one by one. The movie requires her strength to hold it together and instill it with resonance. Scorsese never asks easy questions, and I believe that comes with honesty, and it’s part of the reason he’s still one of our premier filmmakers. He’s still curious and the questions he asks with his films are ones he’s still wrestling with now 80 years on. They’re universal.

Oppenheimer 

It’s easy to cast Oppenheimer as one of the most important figures of the 20th century since he was the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” but he was also one of its greatest tragedies. There’s a scale and scope to this narrative woven right into the very fabric of history. A whole movie could be borne on Cillian Murphy’s face and it is. Between his vivid eyes, gaunt contour, the porkpie hat, and pipe, there’s something instantly iconic about him. He’s haunted and profound even before he says or does much of anything.

It’s also dizzying watching Christopher Nolan develop the rich world around Oppenheimer packed with substance — a real world of real people and events we get to experience firsthand. This immediacy is key and although I’ve read the book, I don’t think you’re required to keep it in your back pocket. Nolan has done the unthinkable by making a potentially stodgy historical piece into a gripping blockbuster. In the age of superhero movies, studios have mostly assumed historical genres are dead.

Likewise, by shaking up a prosaic biopic form, the director alights on something that’s narratively audacious even when it falters. That’s why he’s remained one of our most beloved filmmakers over the last decades. He makes big movies for thinking people, and if nothing else, I hope Oppenheimer acts as a clarion call for more thoughtful tentpoles in the industry. The audience seems to be more than rewarding his efforts.

The Boy and The Heron

I was thinking how grateful I am that filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Hayao Miyazaki are still giving us their art. How lucky are we? The Boy and The Heron gleans some inspiration from the 1937 book How Do You Live? and also the annals of Japanese history and Ghibli Studio’s own lineage. Watching the film there are many echoes of Miyazaki’s favorite topics and also the influence of his mentor Issao Takahata.

For a Western audience, it has the tinges of Narnia where the war is an everyday tragic reality, and thus a world outside our own gives space for respite and marvelous things that can break in and heal our hurts so we might make peace with them. I was reminded of Petitte Mamam where the magical can somehow bring a parent and child closer together, even forge them by fire and trials of many kinds. 

All this fits for the simple reason that the film is very much a fairy tale. I couldn’t get away from this idea that Miyazaki’s film is so beautiful to look at, absolutely resplendent (he also has a penchant for the cutest creatures), and yet it has these pointed moments of ugliness even terror that feel like a necessity. The contrast is key to making the magical world feel in a sense real because we recognize both the good and evil from our own lives. It’s within this space where children can grow and thereby enter back into their lives ready to face the challenges ahead. It occurs to me that Scorsese, Miyazaki, and others like them maintain the curiosity and wonderment of youth. The years they’ve been on this earth belie their child-like spirit. It makes their movies still so accessible and universal to the masses, well worth our time and consideration. 

Afire

I appreciated Afire because, like many of the director’s earlier films, it’s deep in conversation with the vast annals of cinema. This one in particular feels like a paler, pudgier version of an Eric Rohmer movie. Something in the vein of La Collectionneuse, Pauline at the Beach, or even A Summer’s Tale. I felt vindicated hearing that Petzold was in fact consuming some Rohmer films during the pandemic, but that was only part of his inspiration. Unlike Hollywood, Germany doesn’t have a lineage of summer movies about the last day of school or hanging out at the beach with no adult supervision. The summer had vanished not only from their filmographies but from Germany as a whole. The nation rarely got this opportunity with the ascension of the Nazis and this historical backdrop gave rise to many of the specters which have haunted most of Petzold’s oeuvre.

If you wanted to make a case, Afire is actually Petzold’s most comedic film to date and his closest to romantic comedy thanks to its lead. I’m still trying to get my feelings in order, but Afire delivered like the director always seems to. It’s deeply observed and engaging with its perceptive vision of humanity and interpersonal relationships. But what makes it richer comes with how the writer-director takes a simple premise and simultaneously imbues it with all this intertextual meaning. His references are not always overt, but couched within his stories are the echoes of his nation’s films as well as literature and mythologies – many of his projects over the years have been adaptations of much older work. In our current age of cursory knowledge and vapid fads, he’s a refreshingly thoughtful filmmaker.

Godzilla Minus One

I found Godzilla Minus One feeling like this year’s Top Gun for what it teaches us about sequels. Obviously, Godzilla is an institution in Japan, but here we see a film that takes the very specific context of the original film amid the nuclear age — reminding us of the context of a post-war world — while building on the past in new ways. Top Gun: Maverick did much the same as its predecessor, and it was oddly such a human and intimate film in the same way that this giant monster movie with tinges of Jaws (and The Dark Knight Rises) feels even least nominally invested in interpersonal relationships beyond mere kaiju eye candy.

This new film is a spectacular bit of construction blending period drama with solid special effects, a quintessential demolition of Tokyo, and deep sea confrontation that brims with menace and personal stakes. Perhaps what’s most spectacular is how director and general mastermind Takashi Yamazaki was able to offer up a low-budget tentpole full of invention and a stirring message of hope. In a film full of devastation and general destruction, the narrative bends refreshingly toward a message promoting the sanctity of human life. This feels like a radical position for a genre that feels almost antithetical to this kind of sentiment. 

Godland

It’s the kind of taxing epic that is not for everyone. Positioned somewhere between Carl Theodor Dreyer and Werner Herzog, it’s both gloriously desolate with the raw beauty and power only nature can attain. It also brims with the kind of existential weight one feels when your attempt at Christian faith is found lacking and all your pride and human vigor are laid bare.

Our protagonist cuts a gaunt figure. He’s the most ascetic and joyless man of the cloth, but out of many striking images in the film, there is a sequence that feels emblematic of the trail he leaves in his wake. First, an interpreter who must be buried, and then his horse which is left for dead, followed by a final summative death. Seasons change and yet in our limited capacity we are so insignificant in comparison to God’s creation and his majesty and it is arrogance and folly to think otherwise. I am reminded of the verse: “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

This is a spectacular perspective, and it is something to be held with a loose rein of humility. Grace is something to be cherished because it changes your outlook and how you treat others. Meanwhile, colonialism is something we still feel the repercussions of here, and we see it here in the cultural and linguistic tension between Denmark and Iceland. Condescension has no place in the supposed Christian way of life; it’s ultimately a pernicious force. 

Across The Spider-Verse

As we watch the live-action Marvel comic book movies show what feels like signs of slightly waning dividends, it makes the animated iterations all the more intriguing. They exhibit a meshing of style and storytelling. It’s exquisite to look at, but they’re not simply empty animated images. The form fits the content and we get a sense of atmosphere, even emotion through the way they are distilled through the visual palette. There’s an invention and a sense of craft that takes into consideration the modern landscape while still staying true to the form of split panels or even the evolving painterly watercolor aesthetic of Gwen’s world. Somehow everything is all but typified by our hero fighting a Renaissance vulture with Jeff Koons balloon sculpture left as collateral damage. 

I still remember when they made Star Wars literature legends and they were no longer canonical. That was probably one of the first instances I began to understand the term. Now it’s pervasive across fan culture. Canon events form the building blocks of the spider-verse world, but they also say something about our search to make meaning out of circumstances. It may be entertainment but it could probably spawn a whole conversation about predestination, free will, reincarnation, and the afterlife in general.

Part of me wonders if the reason these concepts are so intriguing to us or even comforting is that we are longing for something more (or something else) — something beyond the life that we lead. Surely this can’t be all there is. Why else would the world continually clamor for sequels and ever-expanding universes? My only qualm about the movie is my problem with all these “metaverses.” We can never leave well enough alone. But then again, they never satiate us. 

Documentaries: Beyond Utopia, The Mission, The League, Still: A Michael J. Fox Story, Being Mary Tyler Moore

Honorable Mentions: Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Earth Mama, Suzume, Flora and Son, and Fallen Leaves

It’s a Gift (1934): “California, Here I Come!”

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It’s a Gift is built out of the framework of the domestic lifestyle. This is where it gets its comedy. Take for exhibit A an early sequence. Harold Bissonette (pronounced bis-on-ay) tries to shave with a straight edge despite the interference of his daughter. It leads him to resort to using the reflection of a can and then a mirror suspended from the ceiling dangling around the room.

He follows it around taking intermittent swipes at his gullet covered with shaving cream quite unsuccessfully. It’s a wordless sequence that’s a wonderful escalation of utter absurdity. Because it bubbles with human invention and though Fields takes it further than seems necessary, that’s part of the fun — watching him keep it going.

For any of this comedy to function, there must be a suffocating bulwark around Fields in the form of his family. He has a perfectly henpecked, windbag of a wife (Kathleen Howard) berating him incessantly. His cackling kid’s either gliding around on his roller skates or leaving them lying around so they can be tripped over. His daughter is simply boy-crazy.

Put them together and it’s a perfect combustion engine for his comedic shtick. He has dreams of leaving his corner drugstore for an orange grove in California. If his uncle keels over like he’s supposed to maybe he’ll be left some inheritance.

For the time being, he has the daily grind, which isn’t much better than his home life. A huffy man demanding kumquats. There’s a blind and deaf fellow with an ear horn who’s a walking booby trap. The stock of light bulbs never had a chance. Even his oafish shop hand is hopeless; riding his bicycle indoors, falling asleep, failing to keep a wayward baby from spreading molasses all over the shop floor. You name it. It happens to him.

W.C. Fields becomes a vehicle of antagonism and all the ires of the world seem to be directed at him. This is the source of giddy delight in the comedy strung out over the progression of loosely connected scenes. Could it be he can never catch a break or maybe he’s just enough of a doddering fool to never warrant one?

Normally the image of the comedian is sculpted as a hater of mutts and tykes. It’s true this ornery image makes him all the more human. Here in this movie, it feels strikingly different because he’s effectively accosted on all sides even as he’s just lying around minding his own business. He’s allowed no peace.

One of the ripest gags is set out on the back porch one morning. Fields is trying rather unsuccessfully to get some shuteye, thwarted by an uncooperative couch, a milkman rattling his morning stock of “sleigh bells,” and about anything else you might possibly imagine. Don’t forget a rolling coconut exuding 10 times its decibel level — it’s practically a bowling ball as it thunks down the steps. Likewise, babies are infernal creatures out to get him and wage war against his comforts, no fault of his own.

It’s also one of the most visibly cinematic scenes in which we get this stratified sense of comedy as if it’s from the old two-reeler days of the silent era.  Though, here, the sound is such a vital element. That’s what sets it apart.

Then, the needle drops on “California Here I Come” to send the move in motion again. He’s gone and put his money into his dream. He done and bought an orange grove on a whim, loading up the jalopy and taking the wife and kids out west.

With it comes camping and sprawling West coast estates with rolling greens and statues. In fact, a witty passing gag has Fields crashing into the lawn ornament while his wife exclaims, “It’s the Venus de Milo” now in mint condition having been decapitated a la real life.

They make themselves at home on the private land. Their ensuing picnic is replete with sandwiches and meats wrapped in paper, feather pillows, feisty dogs, and sprinkler systems. By the time they leave the premises, it looks a bit like a ravaged water park gone awry. It’s an example of incremental chaos all conjoining into this culminating mayhem.

In the end, Bissonette is duped with what looks to be a precursor to Green Acres‘ Haney Place. In the immortal words of Bette Davis, “What a dump.” It’s a shack falling apart at the seams. His wife is indignant, ready to walk out on him, and he’s left to sit on the front stoop. What a dismal place to be in if this is truly the end. We only have minutes left after all.

But the cinematic world of W.C. Fields is an absurd space where only moments later all his miseries are turned on their head. Soon he’s sitting on the veranda pulling Oranges straight off the tree to squeeze into his own juice. It’s an outrageous joke scenario and a lampooning of idealized California culture, but in the face of The Grapes of Wrath and other such images, it’s a welcomed relief. If only every Tom, DIck, and Harry who took his family plunking out to the west coast struck it rich like this. It really is a comedy…That is until he sees the property taxes he owes.

3.5/5 Stars

Million Dollar Legs (1932): Klopstokia and The 1932 Olympics

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“All the women here are named Angela. And all the men are named George.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” – Jack Okey and Susan Fleming

This kind of laissez-faire, anything-goes mentality is one of the obvious strengths of Million Dollar Legs‘ comic tableau. There need not be a given rationale behind what it does and with this brand of laxity, there is an empowerment to do anything it so desires.

Thus, the narrative opens in a far-off Eastern European land called Klopstokia. Their chief exports, imports, and inhabitants are goats and nuts! If it’s not evident already the movie looks like it might be an equally oddball companion piece to Duck Soup.

It’s hard not to see its shared space and that’s mostly on a perfunctory level (and because of the fact Susan Fleming married Harpo Marx). One must also note it came first to precede the L.A. Olympics, though it’s not too hard to believe the Mankiewicz brothers did conceive the movie as a vehicle for the crown princes of anarchy.

Since this is not the case, Million Dollar Legs is ripe for rediscovery propping up some other stars who are sometimes less remembered. They didn’t get them, but Herman and Joseph working with director Edward F. Cline wrangled together an absurdist universe for the likes of Jack Okey. He might be most famous to modern audiences for parodying Mussolini in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

Here he’s front and center, an itinerant brush salesman, who happens upon the nation on business only to fall head over heels for the country and its people — one person in particular — her name is, of course, Angela (Susan Marx). They brush each other off rather seductively as her kid brother (Dickie Moore), a begrudging and silent cupid, does his best to keep them apart.

But she also has a connection to the country’s fearless leader. Her father is the President (and also W.C. Fields) with his hat and a dictaphone perfect for bad-mouthing his subordinates on his daily carriage ride to the office. He’s the broadest, most formidable name in the movie.

He makes a daily show of his brawn arm-wrestling his sneezing cabinet including such hoodwinked bumblers as Hugh Herbert and Billy Gilbert. The President is oblivious to their conspiratorial endeavors because frankly, even with their secret cache of spies, they hardly seem likely to hurt a fly. One of their spies out in the field, no less, is a pantomiming, cross-eyed man in black portrayed by Ben Turpin.

However, despite their impotence, they agree to call upon the woman who men can’t resist — the ultimate vamp and a caricature of the Dietrich archetype — Mata Macree (Lyda Roberti). What are her plans? To seduce the entire Klopstokia Olympic team in their bid for the 1932 Olympics! It has no import aside from meeting narrative expectations.

So everyone piles onto the ocean liner, including the President, Migg, and his best girl Angela. The movie’s apex might come when W.C. Fields on one side and his cabinet on the other start yanking the wall back and forth as Okey tries to woo his girl with the gibberish national anthem. It’s delightfully absurd both in the immediate visuals and the auditory accompaniment.

The Olympics aren’t much different with the Klopstokian contingent in a shambles before Angela rallies them jumping from the high dive to have it out with the duplicitous mata hari once and for all. Then, her father shows off his feats of strength in the weightlifting competition against his rival cabinet member. All pretense of logic is gone. Just go with it. Take it for what it is.

The final baton is taken up by the speedy Major-Domo who zips past the competition as a last-second entry coming from behind on the urging of Angela on a motorbike.  Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out who owned the pair of million-dollar legs. For my money, it’s the galloping Major-Domo

What’s not up for contention is Million Dollar Legs as an intriguing vessel of comedy functioning as a kind of cultural time capsule. Not only does it help chart the famed Mankiewicz brothers before the heights of their future successes, it’s also a contemporary commemoration of the L.A. Olympics. Marx Brothers or not, it might just be worth a look as a historical curio.

3.5/ Stars

Bill Forsyth’s Films: Gregory’s Girl, Local Hero, Etc.

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Bill Forsyth is a director who has flown under my radar, and yet only after a week’s time and a handful of films, he’s quietly become a new favorite. Now I heartily understand why he’s one of Scotland’s most beloved directors. Part of his appeal is because he wrote and directed his own projects, but it also comes down to how he imbues his films with a certain sensibility that’s thoroughly disarming.

That Sinking Feeling (1979)

That Sinking Feeling was his debut, a microbudget caper about a pack of eccentric Glasgow youth who alight on a plan to make a buck stealing sinks. It follows the beats of a heist while straining them through a very specific experience.

What Forsyth brings out of his youthful troupe of actors are the lovely idiosyncrasies his films are all utterly replete with. It’s the kind of humor that feels honest in its truth and the good nature behind it. Many of the faces that show up throughout would crop up in some of his later works as well.

Comfort and Joy (1984)

For some, Comfort and Joy might be a new Christmas tradition. It’s a low-key movie finding its footing by focusing on a disc jockey (Bill Patterson) who’s a kind of local celebrity thanks to his good humor, jingles, and the fact he’s in people’s homes just about every day.

There’s a curious streak to the movie as Dicky becomes a kind of mediator between two rival families in the local ice cream racket. I’m not sure where these premonitions come from, but the way Dicky gets caught up in the late-night escapades in the feud between ice cream vendors, I couldn’t help but think of the milieu of After Hours. It’s probably because the situation escalates into this quirky absurdity with a touch of doom.

It has a few fanciful dreams and feels like it could be a sick nightmare. Still, Forsyth never allows any of this to totality derail the prevailing good nature of his characters.

Housekeeping (1987)

In 1987, he alighted on another journey, writing and directing an adaptation of Marilynn Robinson’s Housekeeping. Although it was his first American production, it also brought him together again with his fellow countryman, producer David Putnam.

It’s a film rather reminiscent of Jonathan Demme’s Swing Shift and it’s not simply due to the inclusion of Christina Lathi. It’s the way Forsyth hones in on a story of keenly observed moments and distinct characters rather than a fierce adherence to form and structure. Yet again, there’s a clear-eyed authenticity to it that feels far from being fabricated. It maintains this ethos, and time and time again succumbs to these quietly profound moments that are all too easy to disregard.

I’d like to take the rest of my time to highlight Forsyth’s two most noteworthy films because they all but embody my newfound appreciation for the director.

Gregory’s Girl (1980)

The opening tag immediately feels like the opening moment in any number of cringe coming-of-age films. A group of prepubescent peeping toms gape at a beautiful woman hidden behind glass. Gregory’s Girl looks destined to join the trashy, smutty cadre of ’80s locker room movies. And yet around every turn as I kept expecting the worst, here is a film that constantly surprised and left the dorkiest, most curious, and strangely poignant impressions.

Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) is one of those iconic coming-of-age protagonists, meaning he’s a spindly dork with the most atrocious head of hair imaginable, and we’re already talking about the ’80s. Still, in a word that could easily be harsh and unfeeling, he makes it genial and a tad innocent.

He doesn’t have a killer instinct out on the football pitch. He loses his coveted striker spot only to bump his best friend, another loser named Andy, out of goal. They hardly seem to mind. Because they’ve made way for the school’s latest talent: the athletic blonde Dorothy (Dee Hepburn).

Again, this brings with it all sorts of potential problems. The male population is quick to rally around her — cheering her on ardently — though it could be a lot worse. It suggests girls can excel in many facets. However, it does run the danger of turning her into a regressive object where the girl is a trophy to be won.

On more than one occasion, it bends away from the expected gauntlet of crude jokes giving us something lighter, more agreeable. It comes with how it conceives of a very particular version of adolescence: small-town Scotland outside the urban decay of the big city. It feels quieter and more hopeful, even if the world itself and the time in life is incredibly transient.

Gregory’s Girl is nothing like what I expected. It was far better. Yes, it’s a slight film, but this plays to its strengths because it gives us these characters and these moments — observations we can appreciate — and then we get to leave them with a wealth of affection. It’s easy to see my estimation of this one rising after future viewings. Even as I ruminate on the title Gregory’s Girl, it has new meaning, and it makes me smile. It’s a pleasure to have expectations subverted and then exceeded.

4/5 Stars

Local Hero (1983)

Local Hero is bolstered by a simple premise being subverted. A colossal American oil company looks to gobble up land in and around an idyllic Scottish village. However, there’s no malevolent corruption and their eccentric benefactor, Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster), would much rather chart the stars than deal with any amount of oil refineries.

Likewise, it’s never a story of the little guys trying to hold out against progress. The locals are delirious about the money coming their way. Instead, we come to appreciate what this kind of life has to offer as does our stand-in Mac (Peter Riegert).

It hearkens back to an era — the days that made my parents fall in love with the U.K. –where there were still pockets of the world seemingly untouched by modernity and true western influence. The Texas businessman and his Scottish sidekick (Peter Capaldi), pay a visit to the small town and set up shop in the B&B. The local pub is where the whole town pools their funds to make change for an intercontinental phone call.

At first they look rather out of place: two suits walking across the beaches with their briefcases. But then we get a passing sense of who they are as people. They are romantics even friends of passing rabbits. We come to like them. The same might be said of the town and why not? Wow, is the countryside breathtaking. I miss it so.

This is never a movie about board rooms or business, but the bits of business happening in a community. There are all sorts of people, and the quaint elements prove utterly charming.

What a lovely connection between Star Wars and Local Hero to have Wedge Antilles be the town’s main accountant and hotelkeeper prepared to cut a deal with the man from America. Though any amount of haggling or conflict never materializes and they quickly become best buds.

If there was any conflict, it all but evaporates and what is left is warm humor and the forming of lasting relationships. There are the cultural differences, the manifold eccentricities, but there’s also the congeniality. It’s part of what makes this unassuming movie such a pleasure.  Local Hero is gentle cinema, and it’s exactly what we need.

4/5 Stars

Touch of Evil (1958): The Mad Genius Orson Welles and Janet Leigh in Hotel Rooms

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On even a cursory level Touch of Evil has all the ready hallmarks of Orson Welles the auteur. Working in tandem with veteran Universal cinematographer Russell Metty (they had collaborated before on The Stranger), they develop the director’s preferred mise en scene from claustrophobic Dutch angles to deep focus photography.

It’s no minor coincidence that these all feel like a holdover from his days of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons with the late Gregg Toland. Of course, in that time the industry had certainly changed and with it Welles’s place within the establishment.

His most recent film before Evil was the globe-trotting European crime picture Mr. Arkadin and besides the tinges of noir, and an earlier appearance by Akim Tamiroff, it feels closer to the template Welles would have to vie for in the future.

Because Touch of Evil was his last opportunity to make a purely Hollywood picture and he had A-List talent like Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, and the studio’s technicians, albeit with B-level material. What’s more, he was initially given artistic control over the production which in Welles’s case felt like an utter necessity.

What happened after principal photography was a different story and remains a part of cinema lore up there with the long saga involving the likes of The Magnificent Ambersons director’s cut and the completion of The Other Side of the Wind.

Touch of Evil was altered by the studio and released in 1958. About 40 years later an in-depth memo written by Welles was rediscovered and used to create a cut that purportedly more closely aligned to his artistic vision. Thankfully, we get to see that today. And yet Welles would never work through traditional studio means again.

He would scrounge up joint funding across Europe where his name carried a cachet and in spite of lower budgets, he was able to make a handful of uncompromising films like The Trial and Chimes At Midnight that showcased his skills and gravitas. Touch of Evil is often put up as a convenient sign post to mark the waning of classic film noir. It would also spell a kind of end for Welles also.

Taken in the context of all the Brobdingnagian and Shakespearian heavyweights he played across his career, it’s remarkable to observe what confidence Welles seems to have in himself as a performer. Certainly we marvel at how he could embody Charles Foster Kane at the age of 25 — a man beyond his years — or capture the devilish and brash bravado of Harry Lime in The Third Man.

But Hank Quinlan is yet another iteration of his performative legacy in front of the camera. The man is portly and haggard with Welles taking on ample padding and prosthetics anticipating his future girth. The camera is perfectly angled to make his look all the less appealing, augmenting his size on the screen as he dwarfs the frame.

However, more crucial than that, he is a cruel, racist, and vindictive man in power who feels a need to tip the scales in his favor. In other words, Welles is not squeamish about looking terribly flawed and Quinlan is an iconic example as he looks to plant evidence, frame, and murder all in the name of his perverted sense of truth and justice.

I am always intrigued by this idea that as modern audiences we should come into contact with older cultural texts because they can somehow speak into our present moment and our cultural blind spots. However, we also have the benefit of seeing where our predecessors may have missed something.

Touch of Evil has become more complicated and muddied by its show of inadvertent racism, which was commonplace at the time. It begins with Charlton Heston who plays a stalwart and conscientious Mexican narcotics agent named Miguel Vargas who has married a lovely American woman (Janet Leigh).

The white actor’s complexion and hair are darkened, and he wears a pencil mustache. Meanwhile his wife while no wilting wallflower is slightly patronizing and culturally inept when she comes in contact with anyone else within the Mexican community. One wonders how she fell in love with this man if she doesn’t speak any of his native language and lacks sensitivity. Was he just a pretty face?

Unwittingly it hearkens back to the earliest precedence of the Production Codes forbidding any kind of miscegenation or romance between the races onscreen. Because Leigh and Heston are both white, it proves less disconcerting to a majority white audience. And while Vargas is a harbinger of justice, all the Latino actors who round out the world are characterized as stereotypical thugs and reprobates.

This is not so much a criticism as it is a reality worth noting. Because it potentially clouds the fact Welles fundamentally changed the crux of the source material. By changing Heston’s character from a white lawman and moving the milieu right on the border, his intent is clear. His direct aim is to tackle racism and interracial relationships and tension head on. It creates the soil for much richer thematic ideas and more pointed drama.

Also, the headlining relationship feels less landmark compared to something contemporary like Island in The Sun or The Crimson Kimono; there are also secondary characters who function similarly although they have far less screen time.

Marcia (Joanna Cooke Moore) is the daughter of a local businessman who is killed with his mistress in a car bombing that opens the film so spectacularly. It comes out that she was in the company of a Mexican shoe clerk (Victor Millan) who Quinlan quickly pegs as his primary suspect.

This whole sequence is one of the crucial inflection points of the movie as Vargas recognizes the character of this man he’s dealing with. Because he is meant to be an observer of American tactics — a nation prided on its sense of moral uprightness and democracy in defense of the little guy.

What he sees instead is a man blinded by contempt and prejudice for the Mexican minorities. It’s a terrifying and powerless place to be in as Quinlan’s all but ready to railroad the man. He’s not merely paternalistic or a big brother trying to impart his ideals; he’s unequivocally xenophobic and distrustful.

Behind the scenes the corrupt detective begins sowing lies about Vargas as well using his influence to fabricate his involvement in the local dope racket. Where he goes next is even more incorrigible, but in his own twisted sense of justice he feels completely justified.

One aspect of the film I failed to appreciate before is how it exhibits a precursor to the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Leigh’s part is fairly peripheral as she spends the majority of the picture stuck in a half-empty room at the Mirador Motel.

Dennis Weaver behind the desk shows up as a jumpy eccentric — not a prototype for Norman Bates per se — but he has his own paranoia about women. He doesn’t want to be caught making the bed anywhere near her, and he’s easily intimidated.

He’s the least of her worries as some local thugs led by “Pancho” (Val de Vargas) take over the lobby desk and pile into the room next to hers with a certain foreboding. She is alone and isolated as her husband continues with his work; it leaves Mrs. Vargas vulnerable. What ultimately happens to her isn’t as shocking as Psycho, but the danger is palpable as she is ambushed and set-up as part of a broader conspiracy.

The films opening sequence, filmed in Venice, California, is the one for the textbooks, and it rightfully gets its plaudits. There’s an ostentatious bravura around the unbroken 3 minute take that still exemplifies a converging of artfulness and narrative storytelling.

However, this time around I was taken with how Welles’s films his showdown with Akim Tamiroff slimy local crime boss. Not to belabor the comparisons because it’s nothing like the shower sequence, but so much is done through the the impression of images cut together with music, and this juxtaposition between everything in the scene compounding into a stylized and still egregiously violent end.

It galvanizes a drunken, tottering Quinlan as a premeditated embodiment of evil. Opposite Welles the movie has some fairly unexpected cameos from the likes of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mercedes McCambridge and certainly Marlene Dietrich who plays a prominent role in the picture as a raven-haired Mexican gypsy no less.

Joseph Cotten’s even featured as a misanthropic coroner; I kept on missing him because there’s no vanity to the role. Momentarily I even mistook him and Mort Mills since they both wear glasses, and I misplaced the timber of his voice. No one sound quite like Cotten.

There’s no great substantive thing I can say about all these folks creatively except how evident it is what a vast network of friends and admirers Welles cultivated. True, he had such an inertia around him, drawing other people into his orbit, but as confounding as he was as a person and a maestro, it shows a love of creative people who in turn loved him back.

I’d like to believe this to be true, and I’ll always return to the postscript of The Trial where he lists off all his players as if they’re in a close-knit theater troupe. That’s the energy you get from it.

If I’m to be honest Welles is always larger than life and given the misgivings there are about Heston and Leigh, Joseph Calleia has the most compelling and unsung role in the picture. I don’t recall seeing him this way before and he’s a bit older; he’s not exactly senile, but he’s obviously deferential to others, especially Quinlan.

He likes to be associated with him, to be seen with a man who always gets his mark and who has such a stirling record. Thus, he would never wish to take him down or believe there was any foul play involved.

Still, as much as any of Vargas’s revelations break his heart, he’s not callous or unfeeling. The worst that can be said of him is that he’s pitiful, weak even, and when he’s asked to implicate Quinlan, he’s forced to make a moral judgment.

The corpulent cop goes out as merciless as ever espousing his vitriol against  guardian angels and starry-eyed idealists, who wind up being worse than crooks. At least you can always do something with crooks like put them away to rot in jail.

To the very end he shows his distaste for real democracy, not ruled by fear and white supremacy but rather governed by justice for all and due process of law. One imagines that there are whole treatises here pertaining to the unscrupulous tactics of J. Edgar Hoover and the red scare hysteria during the Cold War, but I’m not the one to write it.

Every time I watch a creative endeavor by Orson Welles his stamp is all over it and whether for good or for ill, his work is inimitable. Try as they might, no studio and no one could take that away from him — at least not in its entirety. The singular, mad genius always bleeds through even when tampered with. He was one for the ages.

4/5 Stars

Orson Welles: Mr. Arkadin (1955) and Compulsion (1959)

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Mr. Arkadin (also known as Confidential Report) has the abundance of canted angles and striking visual flourishes one usually attributes to the films of Orson Welles. It also boasts his ever more disorienting sense of space and shot-reverse-shot even as the international cast, financing, and locales outside the prying eyes of Hollywood map his labyrinthian journey to continue making movies.

His entry into this particular story is a small-time smuggler, Guy Van Stratten. There’s something abrasive and unplaceable about Robert Arden. It’s rather like when non-English-speaking filmmakers will cast an American, and it sounds tone-deaf in a picture that otherwise feels normal. Regardless, he receives a tip-off from a dying man, and it sends him in search of something…

Arkadin, an aristocratic Russian, as played by Welles, is really another version of Harry Lime from The Third Man with everyone talking about him and wanting to meet him as he remains just out of reach and hidden behind a mask at a masquerade party.

Stratten has ambitions to get in with the daughter of the enigmatic Arkadin. Welles casts his wife Paola Mori to play his carefree young daughter (albeit dubbed). In the end, the gruff answer-seeker winds up globetrotting after Arkadin, hired by the man himself to see if he can dig up any dirt on him. It feels like the ultimate act of paranoia if in fact a double-cross isn’t in order.

While his accomplice Mily (Patricia Medina) is out on her own, he crosses paths with the likes of Michael Redgrave, an eccentric pawnbroker providing some leads, and then Akim Tamiroff who is also somehow implicated in a web of conspiracy.

Plot notwithstanding, Mr. Arkadin feels increasingly emblematic of what Welles’s cinema became after his earlier successes. He was scrounging around for funding, cobbling together films all across Europe with a cadre of international talent, and increasingly drastic creative choices.

It’s evident in a picture like The Other Side of the Wind generations later, which historically took years to be completed long after Welles’s death. It does feel like every subsequent picture after Kane continued to be a monumental struggle, and it’s some small marvel that each one got made for any number of reasons. Add Mr. Arkadin to the list.

It’s not explicitly Shakespearian, but it has a certain gravitas blended with the cheap smuttiness of noir street corners and pulp novels. We are treated to a Wellesian Christmas party. The focal point is a rather perturbing visual carousel full of jocund gaiety and lurking menace capped off by a band playing “Silent Night.”

Ask me to say exactly what we’ve watched with all the various plot details, and I don’t dare try. But it bears the markers of Welles, full of flourishes and at one time both mystifying and inexorable. It’s easy to criticize the flaws, but Orson Welles hardly makes mediocre pictures. There’s always a gloriously messy vision behind them. It’s the same with Mr. Arkadin.

3.5/5 Stars

Compulsion (1959)

I never thought about it much until his passing but there’s something about Dean Stockwell in his young adult years and even his later roles that’s reminiscent of James Dean. He’s not emotive in the same way as the method actors; he’s a button-upped clean-cut version with his own neuroses.

They have some facial similarities, true, but it comes down to something more difficult to pin down when it comes to actors, whether eccentricities or the bits of business that draw in your gaze so you can’t help but watch them at work. With Stockwell, it’s something he was able to draw upon later in his career when he had a reemergence and a renaissance; acting seemed fun again.

In 1959, James Dean was gone for a few years already and Stockwell was still closer to the beginning of his career than the end. He plays one two young men who have read too much about Nietzsche’s superman believing themselves to be above the law.

Bradford Gilman is his counterpart a disingenuous sociopath who knows how to throw his charisma and influence around. Both Arthur and Judd are different than normal college students, but Arthur knows how to play the game. Then, when they’re alone in each other’s company he’s able to dominate the other boy as they play out their sick fantasies.

In one moment, stirred by his accomplice Judd takes a girl to observe some birds — it happens to be near where a boy was killed — the bird calls in the distance play against the increasingly uncomfortable conversation. He plans to force himself on her, and though he tries he cannot bring himself to go through with it. There’s a sliver of decency still left inside of him.

Soon enough he and Artie are brought in for questioning by E.G. Marshall, a calm and collected beacon of authority. I’ve never seen The Defenders, but I could see him carrying it off with a level of pragmatic stability. Artie’s the one who walks in the room and tries to flip all the power dynamics. He pointedly stays standing as Marshall questions him sitting down. He’s confident enough not to be thrown off his game though he implicates them soon enough. They must vie for their lives in the courtroom.

Jonathan Wilk shows up sooner or later. Orson Welles hardly needs a great deal of time to put his mark on the picture. His haggard magnetism holds its own against anyone as he takes in this most harrowing case defending two privileged boys who were unquestionably implicated in murder.

The ensuing case comes with a myriad of perplexing caveats. Judd was coerced into trying to attack the girl, Ruth Evans. She later takes the stand in his defense. Martin Milner is an up-and-coming newshound who at one time was classmates with the boys and soon desires to watch them hang. His feelings toward Ruth are very protective.

Wilk is a bit of a moral cypher: He’s atheist who has the KKK showing up on his lawn blazing a cross as an act of intimidation. He also flips the case on its head with a rather unorthodox and risky decision.

He looks to appeal to the so-called Christian community of the court reminding them that cruelty breeds cruelty, and charity and love are what they have devoted their lives to. When he admits to a lifetime of doubt and questioning, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s reached any final conclusions. It makes me appreciate him more for his moral transparency

Given the fact Welles was probably playing his version of Williams Jennings Bryant, a man who was also featured in Inherit The Wind portrayed by Spencer Tracy, it’s hard not to connect the two pictures. Their subject matter is very different and yet they both dwell on these ideas of religious beliefs and how narrow-minded societies can use them to stubbornly maintain their agendas. However, they can also be exploited.

For this reason, Compulsion is a fairly perplexing courtroom drama for the 1950s; between the performances of Stockwell and others it offers up something persistently interesting.

3.5/5 Stars

The Clay Pigeon (1949) and The Japanese-American Experience

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The Clay Pigeon is a film that I have spent several years trying to track down, and I’ve finally been able to see it. From the outside, it feels like fairly run-of-the-mill post-war noir fare. It’s directed by an up-and-coming workhorse in Richard Fleischer and stars real-life couple Barbara Hale and Bill Williams.

It’s one of those amnesia plots steeped in the residual post-traumatic stress of WWII reminiscent of Somewhere in The Night, Act of Violence or even a later entry like Time Limit. It’s this kind of narrative device that injects instant ambiguity into our story since G.I. Jim Fletcher (Williams) doesn’t know why he is currently in a hospital, and he seems to be implicated in some far more dubious crimes. Richard Quine also turns up, and he still has a couple years to go before his prolific career behind the camera.

Williams feels like a bit of an innocuous leading man without the gravelly charisma of a Van Heflin though he works in a pinch. Barbara Hale is a fond friend from Perry Mason so it’s easy enough to take her even if she transforms fairly quickly from victimized hostage to loyal female companion.

Because during the war her deceased husband was compatriots with Williams and Quine in a notorious Japanese prisoner of war camp. This clouded mystery of how their buddy was snitched on drives the movie with dubious implications in their own backyard.

Screenwriter Carl Foreman (known for High Noon) spins a swift tale that incorporates some real-life history that’s too farfetched to be fiction. It came out of an incident where a former POW walked into a department store only to see the unmistakable face of his former tormentor, a notorious prison guard nicknamed “The Meatball.” What a nightmare scenario.

Tomoya Kawaita was an American-born Japanese, going to Japan for university, but he got stuck overseas as the war heated up and ultimately became a notorious prison guard who would speak to his captors in English. After the war, he returned to States to attend USC. He was ultimately tried for treason and eventually got deported, spending the remainder of his days in Japan living in obscurity.

We usually think of the idyllic serenity of returning home from war albeit with growing pains. Warzones and  home are mutually exclusive spaces. But here these scenes collide. The movie ties all of these details into a widespread conspiracy with broader implications and still it pales in comparison to the facts.

Richard Loo becomes “The Weasel” and the fateful encounter happens at a Chinese restaurant called “The White Lotus.” It’s possible that the movie conflates the Japanese and Chinese cultures, but regardless, it’s rather striking to even have this space acknowledged at all.

Loo purportedly relished the opportunity to put the Japanese in such a bad light, and he was often called upon to play such demented roles for WWII propaganda. The Clay Pigeon was no different in how it called on his wartime persona. It’s a bit of a holdover of the earlier sentiments.

However, there is one obvious difference. The movie does actually provide some nuance or at least an alternate depiction of the Japanese. This is the other reason I’ve searched so earnestly for this otherwise unassuming movie.

During a chase where Fletcher’s trying to flee his pursuers and clear his name with the Naval authorities, he rushes into an open door seeking asylum. The woman (Marya Marco) calmly doing her laundry looks him over and allows him to hide as she answers the door.

Once the danger passes, they share another moment. It’s an interaction that the tiny film, barely over an hour long, didn’t require, but whether it was screenwriter Carl Foreman or someone else, he takes time to honor this lady and her people. You see she has a young son, but also her husband was a Nisei who died during the war. His commendation and photo are displayed proudly for all to see.

When Fletcher sees it, it changes his whole demeanor because the 442nd carries a certain cachet. They paid for it with their lives and through their bravery. That’s something that anyone fighting in the armed forces can accept. It’s a badge of honor.

The movie rumbles to its inevitable conclusion, and it’s a nice bit of meta narrative to watch Hale and Williams embrace right outside the doors with all the loose ends wrapped up neat and tidy and our hero vindicated.

But for me, I already got what I came for with this one solitary interaction as an emblematic remembrance memorialized for all time. In the face of so much discrimination and wartime paranoia, the Japanese-Americans proved themselves to be fearless, fiercely loyal, and just as profoundly American as anyone else.

3/5 Stars

La Otra (1946): Dolores Del Rio and Her Doppelganger

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Recently some coworkers were waxing about what they would do if they won the power ball. How they would spend the money, where they would go, and also the drawbacks that come in the wake of what seems like a purely golden opportunity.

I’ve never much thought about it, but I do admit for those who are trapped in life (or at least with active imaginations), it’s easy to make the mental leap. I couldn’t get these conversations out of my head while watching Roberto Gavaldón’s La Otra.

It is a movie about a manicurist. Her work is menial and she takes no joy in it, doting over cosseted businessmen with lecherous intentions. It’s a way to survive though her prospects feel like a dead-end apart from her burgeoning romance with an earnest policeman. All throughout the workday before she runs off to spend an evening with her man (José Baviera), the garish lights above her workspace blare with the National lottery: 5 million! Almost as if to taunt her.

La Otra is built out of a premise not unfamiliar to noir. If you read production notes, it sounds like the picture was potentially slated for an English-language release with Bette Davis, though it was deemed too similar to one of her other recent projects. She would end up remaking it a generation later as Dead Ringers.

Because La Otra actually opens with a funeral. María Méndez rushes onto the scene late, and public perception is one of contempt. How improper of her to show up late to a funeral while her twin sister, Magdalena mourns the death of her husband. Although the widow is masked by her veil, we learn soon enough, Dolores Del Rio stars in both roles. Hence, La Otra.

The doppelganger is not a new phenomenon used in all sorts of mistaken identity comedies and certainly in melodrama. Here it feels like it serves a utility to the story, but there’s also something else. The movie plays with the dichotomy and preconceived notions between Mary, the Madonna, and Mary Magdalene, a sinful woman. The movie casts Del Rio in both of these rolls, and they continually shift and evolve over this muddied canvas of morality.

Tension (1949) with Richard Basehart worked the doppelganger angle thanks to hard contact lenses and Del Rio pulls it off by wearing glasses to play her manicurist self. Still, these are only the visual features. It does not consider personality changes.

Meanwhile, we realize in the wake of her husband’s death, Magdalena has come into a great sum of money. She chides her sister while she walks into her lavish closet, “You haven’t learned to face the world with the same weapons it uses.” Namely, cunning, cynicism, hypocrisy…crime.

Soon enough, María does learn what it takes to get ahead in noir, although she must also live with the consequences. Passages of the film feel quite literally like a silent movie, and then with dialogue the scenes come alive played against the otherworldly whirring modulations of the theremin.

La Otra hits its stride with its first twist cut against the chaotic pinata-infused celebration in the city square. María has the opportunity to take over her sister’s life and commandeers it using all the aforementioned weapons at her disposal. Going so far as to scald herself so her signature won’t be disputed.

Still, she is trapped in a life she was not expecting. Because her rash decision only considered the upside — not the tragedy hanging over her head. Instantly, she gains wealth and repute, leaving her life of destitution behind, but she also must give up her man lest she implicate herself in the new life she takes up in its stead.

But also a dashing suitor (Víctor Junco) slinks back into her life — a mysterious man from her sister’s own shrouded past. She’s more implicated than even she realized, and the film is imbued with this sense of Catholic penance. We watched men like James Cagney be sent to the electric chair for their sins, and this woman is resigned to her own fate…

What’s fascinating to me is how this film could have been made in Hollywood — with Bette Davis no less. However, it was made in Mexico and as a result Dolores Del Rio was given unadulterated star treatment. The way she’s dressed, lit, and given full reign over the movie, augments her regality but also her abilities as a screen personality. She owns the movie both in its moments of drama and pathos.

And although it was shot below the border in Mexico City with many actors we aren’t aware of, it functions like a stunning system in parallel with Hollywood. There’s a technical prowess and a commitment to classical storytelling. There’s gorgeous light and shadow, a commitment to the semiotic nature of visual narrative, and also a daring sense of invention.

It feels alive and emotive like all the greatest classic melodramas. Analogous endings could be cropped out of other movies, but as a dutiful policeman, now disaffected in his duties, wanders off into the night, the woman stares back at him through the bars confining her. Her face settles in such a way, first, we see the luminous contours of her eyes before she drops down and they are enveloped in an abyss of shadow.

These are the kind of moments that not necessary for telling a story, and yet somehow it feels elegant and imperative because this final image articulates so much of the journey of this movie and so much of the duality in many of these great melodramas of old. I never tire of them, and it’s always a pleasure to find a new addition to the canon regardless of where it originates from.

4/5 Stars

Peter Lorre: Stranger on The Third Floor, Mask of Dimitrios, The Verdict

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Stranger on The Third Floor (1940)

Although it’s not a highly touted picture, Stranger on The Third Floor feels like an important enough footnote to aficionados of film noir because it embodies a few of the earliest definable features of the movement. It’s not an entirely new concept per se, but it feels like it’s reaching a new market taking the influences of European Émigré cinema to the American public.

The influence of German Expressionism on ensuing generations cannot be underappreciated, and there’s this very practical suffusing of these techniques into Hollywood because many of these writers and technicians were physically transplanted to the west coast thanks to the scourge of Hitler. He unwittingly injected American cinema with some of its foremost talents.

Although he was an immigrant from Italy, Nicholas Musuraca would soon prove himself to be one of the foremost figures in noir cinematography thanks to his run at RKO Studios, which hardly had the budget and personnel to pull off the lavish A-list productions of MGM and other bigger studios. This necessitated a different niche and an ongoing visual ingenuity.

It becomes evident early on in the film thanks to severe shadows and a patchwork of light and dark. The story itself is incredibly contrived but the movie is saturated in voiceover and fatalistic dread thanks to a man (John McGuire) being sent up for murder.

The tenets of what would become noir are plainly evident. Still, there’s something organic about it. This is not premeditated; it simply happened with the confluence of talents and a bit of happenstance.

It’s fitting that while The Maltese Falcon feels like the most high profile distillation of noir as an American breed, Stranger on The Third Floor uses two of its primary culprits. By this I’m referring first to Peter Lorre.  He’s called upon to do an import of his psychotic killer in M complete with his gaunt hand crawling up an apartment door frame. He’s hardly as slimy and therefore as conflicted and interesting as Joel Cairo; it’s his slinking foreignness that conjures up menace in the eye of the viewer.

However, there’s also Elisha Cook Jr. who plays one of his more reticent types a bit different than his blustering henchman Wilmer. However, they would both become integral figures to the movement even if it were only for their association with that individual film.

Although the movie’s a quickie, it still finds time for mini flashbacks as the inevitable noose of noir gets tied ever tighter around our hapless hero’s neck. The finest moments are when he’s overtaken by the nightmare of his conscience with men in bowlers chomping cigars start to cross examine him, and he falls apart inside his own head. As such, it’s probably more intriguing for its place in film history than as an undisputed piece of art.

3/5 Stars

The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

The Mask of Dimitrios feels like an old world adventure story centered around a phantom figure who becomes the picture’s version of a MacGuffin. Zachary Scott turns up mostly in people’s recollections as a precursor to Harry Lime, the man everyone wants to find.

Although the movies could hardly be made today, there’s something about Warner Bros. and it’s aesthetic and stable of actors that was made for transporting western audiences all over map. The movie literally globetrots around the world.

It’s a pleasure to have Peter Lorre offered a bigger piece of the film’s pie at this point in his Hollywood career.  He’s allowed to be a far more genial and charismatic figure, a writer of detective fiction and a seeker of this great mystery because he has time for such whims and frivolities if only they pique his interest.

Then, Sidney Greenstreet turns up ominously both a friend and a foe. They form a tenuous alliance after the fat man all but ransacks the other man’s room. Greenstreet and Lorre feel like unlikely cinematic bedfellows as it were, and yet they feel inextricably linked for all posterity. They feel a bit like the Laurel & Hardy duo of Warner Bros. crime pictures based on physical characteristics and also their palpable rapport.

Here there’s no Bogart in the limelight and Scott, while a headliner, is mostly the enigmatic engine behind the picture so they are allowed to anchor the story. Thus, what makes the movie are the same cloak and dagger elements that make a romp out of The Maltese Falcon where characters have motives and unseemly sides, but it feels more like unadulterated fun rather than totally depressing drama. This is a testament mostly to our two worthy protagonists.

The Verdict (1946)

The Verdict feels totally indicative of the evolution of Don Siegel’s career, a road paved with many well-remembered films, and it all began right here. We’re met with a foggy London frequented by Sidney Greenstreet with every constable and upstanding gentlemen bidding him good evening. It’s a long way from Dirty Harry although the picture is equally indebted to the criminal justice system.

This comes in part because Greenstreet made a lapse in judgment by sending an innocent man to the gallows. Instead of feeling altogether remorseful, he’s seems more intent in proving the incompetence of his supercilious successor.

It feels like a chatty picture once Peter Lorre and the rest get involved, drinking and quibbling about politics and social reform. There’s a rather vindictive pretense as the two men despise one another.

Lorre, now with a bigger billing, is allowed a broader portrayal of gravitas and jocularity. He’s the picture’s most welcomed source of inspiration. He’s found casually wondering in on murder scenes and eavesdropping in closets as it seems he has nothing better to do. What’s more, he makes it look like a grand old time as everyone else is hustled and harried going through the paces of the drama.

Because there is a murder, a murder queued off by the raging score before we’re even aware that anything has happened. The newly enlisted police chief at Scotland Yard is called to solve the mystery right quick. He proceeds to question his suspects, distrusting everyone, and keeping them all under surveillance, including a nosy housekeeper and a spirited night hall singer.

The whip pans over the faces when the verdict is made feels like a dose of Don Siegel, and the kind of visual octane he would give his movies for generations to come. Although there’s a danger with all the Victorian exteriors, the picture might easily feel stuffy. However, there’s enough noir and a surprising amount of wit sprinkled throughout to give the film a shelf life.

It somehow manages to play on both Greenstreet and Lorre’s reputation as shifty villains by first casting them as our protagonists and then making us second guess their motives again and again. It’s a perplexing picture with a dose of mystery and some twists. The fact that it’s ludicrous seems beside the point because it’s the wild ride of the experience offering the most impact.

3.5/5 Stars

Crashout (1955): William Bendix and Arthur Kennedy in a Jailbreak Noir

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If you wanted to string together a noir cast with the quintessential mélange of rogues who never quite made it to bona fide A-lister status, Crashout more than fits the bill. It’s a different kind of mission movie for a different kind of mission and a different brand of protagonist. They’re all prison convicts.

William Bendix and Arthur Kennedy both have fine pedigree. It’s a bit unfair to Kennedy because the Academy loved him — offering him 5 Oscar nominations — just never enough to ever bequeath him any hardware. Somehow, this snub alone makes him right at home in this company.

For their parts, William Talman, Marshall Thompson, Gene Evans, and Luther Adler are the kind of actors who eat these kinds of crime pictures for breakfast, and it starts with their faces. None of them are classic Hollywood handsome — even Thompson is a bit severe — but they’re invariably interesting to look at.

Cinematographer Russell Metty is more than well equipped to help instill the film’s grungy, sweat-caked aesthetic. We feel like we’re knee deep in all of their stink and squalor.  The crooked preacher among them, sent up for murder (Talman), baptizes a wounded man (Bendix) in the swampy hideaway they’ve staked out while waiting through the hysteria of the prison’s search parties.

It’s hard to know where the picture can go if they’re forced to bide their time for 3 days. Fortunately, the cast carry the picture as they rub up against each other only unified in their pursuit of self-preservation. Ultimately, they form a pact to retrieve Bendix’s dough, an alliance that’s easy enough to doubt the legitimacy of. Still, they don’t have much choice. They need money to live.

Much of the movie going forward is made by these standalone interactions with the general populous because they provide an added layer of humanity and tension to overlay the ongoing search for the fugitives.

Take for instance, when they call in a roadside visit from a rural doctor who gets pressganged into their little posse to service their injured member before being unceremoniously disposed of. Later, they roll into a dinner lodge like Bogart in Petrified Forest ready to terrorize some folks for clothes and sustenance.

There’s an exquisitely executed overhead shot encapsulating the dramatic tension of the scene when a pair of cops unwittingly pay a visit. They don’t know how close they are to their prey…

Between forcing themselves on a man’s wife and steamrolling a man in a car, there’s a level of ruthlessness that might be unanticipated for the era and yet for the initiated it’s not too surprising between genre markers like Dial 1119, The Hitch-Hiker, and Riot in Cell Block 11. Although Bendix had the earliest association with the genre with Alan Ladd in the 40s, his castmates were more than familiar themselves.

However, there are other more sensitive moments too. Thompson is befriended by a young woman on the train (Gloria Talbott). She’s just recently left her music conservatory, and she’s forthcoming and kind. They share her sandwiches and cups of water to go with the conversation. There is a sense we need this scene to diffuse the film momentarily.  Although even this brief hint of relief must be quickly stamped out. It cannot survive in such a picture.

There’s also the addition of Beverly Michaels. She’s featured in a far more angelic role especially if you’ve been conditioned by her eponymous turn in Wicked Woman. She’s not pleased to have her home desecrated by wanted criminals. However, Kennedy is the one man who reasons with her. Because he didn’t murder anyone and he has personality, they build a kind of rapport. Kennedy has his own moments where he feels warm and affectionate, hardly a hardened criminal. It’s like a prelude to his own destruction.

Two of the convicts almost maul each other to death in the living room, but this isn’t what does it. In fact, Gene Evans meets his demise in a manner in which took my breath away. Yet again we’re reminded it’s not a squeamish picture.

Crashout’s snow-powered finale isn’t quite the par de excellence of On Dangerous Ground or Nightfall (1957), but the persistent frankness of the material is something I still can’t quite shake. We often conflate the 1950s with a kind of Leave it to Beaver mentality (whatever that means), and yet watching something like Crashout is to come to terms with something about as unsentimental as they come. The 1950s aren’t always as innocuous as we’re often led to believe. Sometimes the decade seems more than capable of bludgeoning us over the head with a crowbar. Consider this a recommendation.

4/5 Stars