The (Concrete) Lion Sleeps Tonight

Film: The Asphalt Jungle
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

With any genre of film, there are half a dozen or so that get mentioned in the first breath. When it comes to film noir, The Asphalt Jungle is one of those films. It is close to a perfect film, one that hits every note correctly both for film in general and for film noir in particular. Yes, I’m gushing, and I’m revealing at the start how I feel about this film. I don’t really care.

Since this is a film noir, it’s going to deal almost exclusively with criminal behavior, and to perpetrate this behavior, we have a huge collection of bad, bad people. We could start anywhere, but we may as well start at the man who seems to be the amoral center—Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). Dix is a thug, a man whose job in any caper is to shoot at whatever someone points him at. He has a soft spot for Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen), who has an equal soft spot for the big lug.

Dix gets brought in on a big job knocking over a jeweler by crime mastermind Doc Erwin Riedenschneider (hereafter referred to as “Doc,” and played by Sam Jaffe). Doc’s proposed job will cost about $50,000 for Dix, the driver, and the safe cracker, but will net a cool half million in purloined gems. Fronting the operation is shady lawyer Alonzo “Lon” Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a man who lives bigger than his wallet, in part because of his penchant for spending time with Angela Phinlay (a very young Marilyn Monroe).

Emmerich’s problem is that he’s busted. Spending money on Angela hasn’t helped this, but he holds his entire lifestyle to blame—he’s just too free with the money. This is something he shares in common with Dix, who tends to play the ponies and play them poorly. Regardless, Emmerich’s plan is to fence the gems from the heist himself, and then use the money to skip to Europe, leaving Doc, Dix, and the others holding the proverbial bag.

This is all part and parcel of film noir, of course, which trades both on the idea of the anti-hero as well as the almost certainty of a double-cross somewhere in the mix. The heist runs into problems and guns blaze. People get shot. Emmerich attempts his double-cross. Guns blaze and people get shot.

I like film noir a lot. The more noir I see, the more it becomes one of my favorite genres of film. Part of this is that the plots tend to be intricate enough to warrant watching. Oh, I know going in that people are going to pursue their vices and die for their sins. That’s part and parcel of the genre. I know there’s going to be furtive meetings in shadows, plans formed and sent reeling due to bad luck or greed. I know it’s not going to have a happy ending. But what I also know going in is that the dialogue is going to be interesting and worth listening to. I know that the characters are going to be more than just the sum of their collective sins.

On all of these scores, The Asphalt Jungle is a classic. The dialogue is noteworthy mainly because it isn’t very noteworthy. There aren’t many tremendous lines or quotes to walk away with, but the dialogue here is very real, and spoken always in earnest. The characters, for all of their faults, are believable and I want to pay attention to them.

I tend to get sucked into films with this basic plot over and over again. I can predict the bad ending even as I hope for something good to happen to the poor mugs with the bad luck to be written into a noir.

Eh, I’m rambling. Film noir is an important genre of film and The Asphalt Jungle is one of the purest and best examples of the genre. There’s no real other reason to watch this film. It’s enough that it’s simply great.

Why to watch The Asphalt Jungle: Noir doesn’t get better than this one.
Why not to watch: Nothing good happens to anyone.

Kathleen Turner Overdrive

Film: Body Heat
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

There was a time when Kathleen Turner was pure sex on wheels. There was a time when every straight male over the age of 15 would pant like a puppy when Kathleen Turner walked across a movie screen. That time was the 1980s, and never has a movie shown this with more detail and with more emphasis than Lawrence Kasdan-written and directed Body Heat.

Body Heat is a film noir, and except for the very end, it follows all of the conventions of the genre. This means crime, murder, extortion, dangerous women, and sex. However, since Body Heat was made in 1981, the sex no longer has to be implied. This means a lot of nude time with stars Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. You can decide for yourself if this is a good thing or a bad thing. However, as I said previously, in the 1980s, Kathleen Turner was hot monkey sex incarnate, so we’re going to consider this not a good thing, but a really, really good thing.

We first meet lawyer Ned Racine (Hurt) as he is essentially forced to take a plea deal from the judge overseeing his current case. It’s evident that Racine is exactly the sort of shifty, no-account lawyer that is a stereotype in films like this one. It’s not that Racine is specifically a bad lawyer, it’s more that he’s always looking for a chance to make a big score. Because of this, he tends to walk the line between legitimate lawyer and crooked bastard.

Despite these tendencies, Racine is good friends with assistant prosecutor Peter Lowenstein (Ted Danson), and the two trade insults and jokes in a diner near the courthouse, and trade quips with the staff at the diner about the lousy air conditioning in the brutal Florida heat. That night, Racine encounters Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). She’s rich and lonely, and the two flirt a bit with each other, but she leaves.

They run into each other again in a bar in her town. He’s gone looking for her, and finds her, and they flirt again. She talks about her wind chimes and he says he’d like to see them (and quite a bit more, naturally), and she invites him to the house, then asks him to leave. He does, but the desire is just too strong, and he uses a lawn chair to smash his way back into the house, and we get round one of their frequent, rabid sexy time.

Matty confesses to Racine that she is dissatisfied with her husband, Edmund (Richard Crenna). He’s an investor in a variety of local projects, and there’s a strong indication that much of his money comes from places on the wrong side of the legal barrier. Edmund is locked up in a number of deals with some very dangerous people, which doesn’t really bother him. Why? Because he is also very dangerous people. Racine bumps into the couple on accident at a restaurant, and he and Matty bluff their way through how they know each other, and Edmund invites the lawyer to come sit with them. They do, and it soon becomes evident that Edmund is a very dangerous man who might actually want his wife to have an affair if only so that he could have the pleasure of killing the guy with his bare hands.

Eventually, Matty and Racine decide that what would be the best for them is to have Edmund completely out of the picture. They’re caught in flagrante fellatio by Matty’s niece at one point, but this doesn’t stop their desire to whack Edmund and be together with all of his money. Matty suggests tweaking his will so that she’ll get more, but Racine declines, saying that if he does the work, it will only cause suspicion, and that if anything happens to his will before Edmund is killed, it will raise a lot of eyebrows.

In shades of Double Indemnity, the murder goes off. Racine has met with an old client named Teddy Lewis (Mickey Rourke) who has done time for arson. Teddy has rigged up a device for him. Racine places the device in one of Edmund’s properties, dumps the body, and sets off the explosive, burning the place down. For a few days, all is well.

And then the complications start. Edmund’s body was found without his glasses, and he was obsessive about them. Racine gets a call from a Miami law firm about the new will he drew up (even though he really didn’t) and the problems that there might be with it. More and more, Matty seems to be doing everything she can to get him implicated in her husband’s death, but Racine can’t stop going to see her. Evidently, the sex is just too damn good (and it does definitely have that appearance, just for the record).

I won’t spoil this, except to say that the film takes some license with the end of the traditional noir, or at least the noirs of the late 1940s. This is not necessarily a bad thing unless you are a purist, which I am really not. The plot takes a number of vicious turns, and at the end, the turns get faster and faster, and harder and harder to keep up with. But in every case, it’s completely compelling.

One of the more interesting stories going on is the relationship between Ned Racine and his friends, Peter Lowenstein and police sergeant Oscar Grace (J.A. Preston). As the evidence in the case begins to mount up, they keep returning to the conclusion that Racine must be involved in the murder somehow, but both do everything they can to look for a possible way that he could maintain his innocence.

It’s also worth saying that what happens with about 10 minutes left is inevitable. The last five minutes, however, are not, and it’s these last five minutes that break with noir tradition, and also make the film completely awesome.

Beyond the intricate and excellent plot, the sell here is the sex, and there’s a lot of it. There are quite a few just-above-the-butt-crack/pubic-bone nudity shots of both Hurt and Turner. The Florida summer being what it is in this film, there’s a constant desire on the part of the characters to wear as little clothing as possible as often as possible. This means you can expect to see a lot of skin throughout. Take this as a positive or negative as it (birthday) suits you.

Why to watch Body Heat: A great plot and no answers until the end, with the added bonus of lots and lots of sexy time.
Why not to watch: It messes with the traditional noir formula.

I've Had Worse

Film: Bad Day at Black Rock
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.


Bad Day at Black Rock is a difficult film to get a handle on in terms of classification. It has elements of film noir, for instance, in its sudden bursts of violence, hidden crimes, and a man who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. It also has elements of the Western, as a stranger rides (a train) into town and takes on all comers in his battle for justice as well as a number of other Western tropes. And yet, set in the mid-1940s, it is also a modern film, shot in brilliant color. It stars Spencer Tracy—a major star from the classy studio at MGM—but the short running time, lurid title, and criminal elements mark it as a B-picture. But it’s also a message picture. Like I said, difficult to classify.

We start with a train rushing through the desert. The train stops at the flyspeck town of Black Rock. Calling it a flyspeck is being generous. There are maybe a dozen buildings here, a one-horse town where the horse is really just a miniature pony and rented from the next nearest community. This is the first time in four years (remember that) that the train has stopped here, and off steps John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), a one-armed war veteran.

He is immediately regarded with suspicion by everyone in town. Initially, he is hassled by the obsequious stationmaster, then by a couple of cowboys named Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin). At the local hotel, he’s told by Pete (John Ericson) that there are no rooms available despite the hotel being completely empty. Macreedy takes a room anyway, takes a bath, and is confronted by Hector again, who complains to all who will hear him that this stranger is too easy to push around—he just gives in.

We learn quickly that the town is run by a local bully named Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who joins in on the hassling of Macreedy. Unwilling to give in, Macreedy rents the Jeep at the local gas station, run by Pete’s sister Liz (Anne Francis), who is evidently the only woman in town. Liz seems to have something going on with Smith, who is unhappy that she gave him the Jeep. The source of the tension is that Macreedy is looking for a Japanese American named Kamoko, who has a farm out in a place called Adobe Flat. He drives out, and discovers that the well is working, but the house has been burned to the ground. On the way back, he is run off the road by Coley, but he returns to town safely.

We learn a few important things here. First, we discover that Kamoko came to Black Rock a few months before Pearl Harbor, which was four years ago (as in, the last time the train stopped at Black Rock). He has disappeared since. We learn that the local sheriff (Dean Jagger) is a drunk and a pushover. The local doctor/vet/mortician (Walter Brennan) has some backbone and doesn’t knuckle under to Reno Smith, but he’s also apathetic and doesn’t care too much. Importantly, we discover that Macreedy lost the use of his left arm in Italy during the war, and that he was saved by Kamoko’s son, who died in the process. He’s in town to give the medal to the boy’s father.

What actually happened isn’t that hard to discover, and we as the audience have figured out the sad fate of Kamoko (aside from the actual details) long before this is revealed to us. It’s evident pretty quickly that the town has something to hide, and that almost everyone is in on it. Pete refuses to put through calls to the state police, and the stationmaster refuses to send a telegram for Macreedy, bringing it to Smith instead. We know instinctively that Smith and his gang of goons did something very bad to Kamoko because Kamoko committed the sin of being Japanese, and have ever since quashed any rumor or talk about that event. It’s also evident that something similar is planned for the friendless Macreedy, who is stranded in this town until the train arrives the next morning.

The story, then, is one of the first to seriously tackle some ideas of racism. Certainly there were others before this, but none brought it this far into the open. It doesn’t address the idea of the actual internment camps for Japanese Americans, but does pay a great deal of respect to the idea that many Japanese Americans fought bravely in World War II and deserve the thanks of the country. It deals openly with the bigotry of these small town thugs and bullies, for which it should be commended.

The film is helped greatly by some truly stellar performances. While Anne Francis gets third billing, she’s only in a couple of scenes. The rest of the cast is male, making this a very strange town—a movie town in which there are essentially no women and absolutely no families or children. So, while Anne Francis is fine, she doesn’t really carry the movie (and near the end, she runs so completely like a girl that it looks fake). Spencer Tracy is as good as he ever is, and really acts like a man who has gotten used to the idea of having only one functioning arm. As he often was, he is outspoken, firm, and a powerful onscreen presence. Robert Ryan is menacing and cool, a villain who chats amiably with his intended victim, giving him a disturbing and creepy vibe.

But the film really belongs to three other men: Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin. Brennan is full of country wisdom and great lines, and plays the role of the town mortician to its fullest. He’s a truly memorable character, dispensing his ideas throughout and is the only person to stand beside Macreedy through most of the film. Borgnine, as an oafish bully who looks to push everyone around based on his size and muscle, is threatening and vicious. But it’s Lee Marvin who really works this film like he’s playing an instrument. He is a coiled spring of menace, laconic, mean, and deadly. Of anyone, his shadow looms the largest over this film—even more so than Robert Ryan’s main villain character.

If I have a complaint, it’s that the film is too short. The ending is great. It’s inventive, creative, and interesting. I could have stood another 20 minutes easily.

Why to watch Bad Day at Black Rock: An impeccable cast and a few surprises.
Why not to watch: Too difficult to classify.

Femmes Fatale

Films: Gun Crazy (Deadly is the Female), The Killers (1946)
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television (Gun Crazy), DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player (The Killers).

There is a real draw for me to the genre of film noir. Noir is gritty, and while it may not be very realistic in many senses, it always has the feel of reality. This may simply be because it generally avoids the clichéd Hollywood-style happy ending. There aren’t good girls in film noir. Everyone is dangerous and everyone is looking out of him or herself. The central emotional state in film noir isn’t excitement or lust or fear; it’s selfishness. Everyone in a noir acts in his or her own self interests, and if that means killing someone, squealing on someone, or just standing back in the shadows while someone else takes a bullet, well, so be it.


The post-war years of the ‘40s and early ‘50s were the boom time for the genre. Falling right smack in the middle of that time frame is Gun Crazy (originally released under the equally noir-tastic title Deadly is the Female). It hits all of the highlights of the noir genre—criminal enterprise, a dangerous woman, shadows, death, cynicism, anger, lust, helplessness, existentialism, fatalism, and of course, selfishness—but differs in significant ways. Most films noir take place in decidedly urban settings where the shadows of tall buildings and the seamier parts of town can come into play. Gun Crazy takes place in Podunk, and ends in an open marshy area.

We start with Bart Tare (Russ Tamblyn at this point), a gun-obsessed youth. He breaks the front window of a store and steals a couple of pistols from the inside only to be caught by the sheriff. This leads us to Bart’s criminal hearing where we learn more about the troubled youth. We learn that Bart has always been fascinated with the bang-bang. Early in his shooting career he kills a chick, and from that moment refuses to kill any living thing. But he can’t overcome his fascination with weaponry.

Bart is sent to reform school, and when he’s out, he has a career in the military teaching shooting to recruits. A few years of that convince him to move on, and he returns home, now an adult (and played by John Dall). He reunites with his boyhood friends Clyde Boston, (Harry Lewis), now the town sheriff and Dave Allister (Nedrick Young), now the editor of the local paper. The three head off to a carnival that has come to town, and Bart’s life forever changes.

It’s at the carnival where Bart encounters shooting sensation Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) dressed in full cowgirl regalia. She puts on a whale of an act—her shooting at targets is about half shooting skill and half pure sex. It’s one hell of an effective scene with her looking back at the audience in a way that suggests she’s as much a stripper as a gunslinger. Bart challenges her to a shoot-off, and bests her in a scene that is one of the most erotic things ever put on film. Put a gun in the hands of these two, and it’s pure sex.

This pure sexual tension is not missed on the carnival owner Packett (Berry Kroeger). Packett has designs of his own on Laurie, and more than that has something to hold over her—the fact that she was responsible for a death in St. Louis. Despite this, our two ill-fated lovers demand to be together. Both fired at the same time, they run off and get a quickie marriage. They enjoy some happy time together, and then suddenly the money has run out. With only their skill at shooting to fall back on, they quickly fall into a life of crime. We get a montage of robberies, and we also learn that they’re pretty much spending everything they get just to keep going.

One of the truly great shots in this film is the bank heist. Bank heists have been done to death in films like this, of course, but few were done in the way this one was. We don’t actually see the heist itself. Instead, the camera stays in the getaway car while Bart, dressed in his full carnival Wild West regalia, goes into the bank. Laurie stays in the car, then goes up and speaks with a police officer until Bart comes out and she disables the cop. They then flee, desperate to avoid pursuit. The whole scene is done in a single take with mainly improvised dialogue to keep it fresh, and it says more about the genre than any other scene I can think of.

Our anti-heroes are still low on cash, so they plan one last job—a payroll theft at a meat packing plant. Both get jobs there and they work up a way to get the money. But things go sour almost immediately, and their getaway involves gunfire and a couple of deaths. Now desperate and on the run with the whole country after them, they try to make a life for themselves only to find that they are constantly pursued. Eventually, they wind up back in Bart’s home town where they originally met—and now Bart has to deal seriously with his conviction against killing things.

I won’t spoil the ending here, but suffice to say that this is film noir, so you shouldn’t expect sunshine and roses at the close.

What this film is, though, is pure sex and violence without showing us anything. Laurie is perhaps the greatest femme fatale around. She’s sexy, seductive, erotic, and pure menace. She tells Bart over and over that she’s no good, and that when she gets in trouble or nervous, she gets in a mood to kill things. We discover later in the film that the incident in St. Louis wasn’t an accident on stage—it was a hold-up she and Packett were working when she killed the man in question. Bart is a hell of a shot and good-hearted in the sense that he won’t kill anything. But he’s also powerless when it comes to Laurie, weak-willed, and probably a little thick. In short, he’s the perfect patsy for Laurie, the kind of guy who winds up in a film noir because he’s too lovestruck and too dumb to walk away from it.

Perhaps the greatest scene in the film, other than that single take bank heist, is when the two lovers part after the meat packing plant robbery. In separate cars and heading in separate directions, Bart turns around, stops, and rushes to her. They can’t bear to be apart from each other even if it virtually guarantees that they’ll be caught and killed.

I bought this DVD for $4.00. It’s worth a lot more than that. For as short as its running time is, Gun Crazy packs in the action, the sex, and the noir-y goodness like no other film.


Robert Siodmak’s version of The Killers is an interesting noir for anyone with any knowledge of Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name. The film takes its cue from the short story, and films virtually the entire contents of what Hemingway wrote in the first 8-10 minutes of the film. That’s where the original source material ends, but it’s where this one begins. The film instead takes the set up of two killers entering a diner and waiting for their target and posits an entire backstory, adds in a number of new characters, and gives us something that explains why these two strangers would show up in a town and bump off a gas station attendant.

That opening scene is almost literally Heminway’s story including actual dialogue. Hired guns named Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (Robert Conrad, still in the early stages of his eventual planetary bulk) arrive in town and head to a diner. The short story’s main character Nick Adams (an uncredited Phil Brown) is tied up with the diner’s cook. The men are looking for a man named Lund, who usually eats there. When he doesn’t show, the killers leave. Nick runs to warn the man, who decides that it’s not worth running—he once did something very bad and there’s no way out. Nick returns to the diner (this is where the short story ends), the bad guys arrive and shoot Lund.

The rest of this is the fancy of the screenwriter. We see the story from the point of view of Jim Reardon (or possibly Riordan, played by Edmond O’Brien), who is investigating the insurance claim of the dead man. He discovers that the beneficiary is a woman who works in a hotel, who remembers the dead man and a night when he trashed is room, screaming about a woman leaving him. This puts Reardon/Riordan (I’m going to pick one now) on the track of what must have happened.

Our dead guy is actually named Ole Andersen (Burt Lancaster), a former boxer-turned-crook and most commonly known as the Swede. Reardon tracks down his boyhood friend, Lt. Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene), the cop who eventually busted Ole back in the day. Reardon learns about a woman named Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner), once the flame of a big-time crook named Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) and then the main squeeze of Ole Andersen. He also manages to connect everything he knows about this trio to a few other crooks and the payroll robbery of a hat factory that occurred a number of years before. Coincidentally, his insurance company paid out on the robbery, and it’s Reardon’s job to see if he can get that money back.

Since this is a noir, it all comes down to the love of that dangerous dame, Kitty Collins. Ole Anderson loves her, Big Jim Colfax loves her, and the two of them can never get rid of this thing between them. Reardon starts to hone in on the actual crime and what went on around it. He finds Anderson’s old cellmate, Charleston (Vince Barnett), who starts him off by telling him about the meeting to plan the heist. This leads him to Blinky Franklin (Jeff Corey), seriously wounded and raving about the score. Blinky leads him to Dum-Dum Clarke (Jack Lambert, who is seriously one of the most frightening ugly men ever to hold a gun on someone in a noir), which takes him back to Colfax and the dangerous Kitty.

In all of this, the common thread is the sad life of Ole Anderson and the lengths he went to for his femme fatale and the destruction of his life and many other lives because of it. The performances are great throughout, particularly for the criminal set. Lancaster is great in pretty much everything he touched, and Sam Levene is believable as a cop who wants to do something to set the record straight about his old pal.

Most importantly for me, this is the first Ava Gardner film I’ve seen where I really liked her portrayal of her character. She’s cool and menacing throughout, slinky and deadly and dangerous, the way the main female focus of a noir should be. The fact that she goes as pathetically bibbledy at the end of the film just as Mary Astor does at the end of The Maltese Falcon only adds to her cred here.

Hemingway’s short story gave this film a great set up, and Siodmak had the guts to take that set up with so many unanswered questions and give us a reason for everything to happen. Pure gold.

Why to watch Gun Crazy: It wastes no time getting to the good parts.
Why not to watch: The glorification of crime.

Why to watch The Killers (1946): It answers questions the more literary minded have had for years.
Why not to watch: Sometimes, those literary questions don’t really need answers.

Lush, Lush Losers

Films: The Big Lebowski, Sideways
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television (Lebowski), DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop (Sideways).

(Author’s note: I watched The Big Lebowski last week, but haven’t had time to write it up due to my schedule. When a quarter ends, I grade papers dawn to dusk, and movies make good background noise, but I don’t have time to wax philosophic about them. So, while these movies are being presented here on the same day, they were not watched this way.)


Genre bending isn’t easy. In fact, it’s so difficult that often, when a good filmmaker (or in this case, filmmakers) do it, it goes unnoticed. I’ve watched The Big Lebowski a few times, but never realized until this latest viewing that this is more than a really good comedy. This film is a comedy, a spoof of film noir, and an actual film noir itself. I was completely blown away when this hit me. The Coens are far better at what they do than I gave them credit for, and I already give them a lot of credit.

Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), better known as “The Dude” by everyone who has ever met him, finds himself in a great deal of trouble. Unbeknownst to him, the wife of a completely different Jeffery Lebowski has run up debts with a man named Jackie Treehorn. After a shopping trip for half-and-half, The Dude finds two men in his apartment demanding the money from The Dude’s non-existent wife. One of these men urinates on the rug, a tragedy for The Dude, because “that rug really tied the room together.”

The Dude tells his troubles to his bowling friends. These are the militant and stultifyingly blunt Walter (John Goodman) and the mousey, permanently behind-the-current-discussion Donny (Steve Buscemi). Walter suggests finding the other Jeffrey Lebowski to pay for the rug cleaning, and this is what drives the rest of the plot. All The Dude wants is his rug cleaned. He meets the real Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) and his assistant Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman), walks off with a rug, and meets Bunny (Tara Reid), the woman who has run up all the debts.

From here, things get crazy. Bunny Lebowski goes missing, and Jeffrey Lebowski hires The Dude to handle the ransom. Through a series of misadventures, mostly caused by Walter, bad things happen, the hand-off isn’t made, and life gets extremely weird for The Dude for the rest of the film. We encounter the sort of characters that can only exist in the world of the Coen brothers’ ideas.

Among these bizarre characters are a trio of German nihilists (Coen regular Peter Stormare, the awesome Flea, and Torsten Voges), their girlfriend (Aimee Mann), porn king Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), Jeffrey Lebowski’s extravagant artist daughter (Julianne Moore), flamboyant bowling pederast Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), and the country/western narrator (Sam Elliot). These are film characters rather than real characters, which often plays false to my mind, but the film is so broadly comic that the characters work here.

Despite the fact that everything here is comedic, the plot follows basic noir lines. Everything centers on the missing Bunny Lebowski and the equally missing million dollar ransom. No one is what they seem, and only through the white Russian and marijuana-fueled haze of The Dude’s world do we get any information. It takes him awhile to put everything together and put all of the players in their proper place. When the stoned-out, bombed-out Dude manages to think through everything in the end, it’s a magical moment.

Beyond the noir plot, you know, that whole “way the film works” thing that I completely overlooked every other time I’ve seen this film, what’s here is some of the greatest comedic moments in film from the past 20 years. The Dude is a quintessential movie character, someone who quickly became iconic—a drunk Indiana Jones or a fully stoned Napoleon Dynamite. The same is most definitely true of John Goodman’s portrayal of Walter. Walter obsesses over his comrades “dying face down in the mud in Viet Nam” and has charming character traits like pulling a gun on a fellow bowler who faults on his approach.

*** THE DUDE WANTS A SPOILER ***

The reason this film works as a noir is that it starts as a simple problem—get The Dude’s rug cleaned. But everything encountered is smoke and mirrors. Everything that is supposed to make things easier or solve problems proves to make them more difficult, and everything has a deeper meaning. Bunny Lebowski hasn’t been kidnapped. The German nihilists are trying to capitalize on her temporary disappearance, as is Jeffrey Lebowski, who has no money of his own and is desperate to steal the proposed ransom himself. Every simple problem has a complexity that lies under it. It’s noir, but slanted about 10 degrees to the left.

For instance, The Dude, like any noir gumshoe, gets assaulted multiple times and takes his fair share of beatings. However, rather than a series of smacks to the jaw, the assaults are often bizarre, like a ferret being dropped into his bathtub while he’s bathing. Any good noir detective gets the girl, as does The Dude. However, she’s not looking for a relationship—she just wants a baby with someone who won’t take an interest in raising the child. The bad guys aren’t vicious killers, but whiney jerks who get torn apart by a pissed-off Walter. All of the pieces are there; they’re just knocked loose and turned at odd, wonderful angles.

It’s interesting to note as well that Steve Buscemi tends to get killed in Coen movies, and each time, what’s left of him gets smaller and smaller. In Miller’s Crossing, he leaves a faceless body; in Fargo, all that’s left is a leg and a spray of blood and bone. Here, he is cremated, and all that’s left is his ashes.

*** THE DUDE ABIDES ***

I do enjoy this film. I think it’s a damn shame that it was removed from the main list. It should still be there.

It’s worth noting this, though: if you are offended by language, this is not a movie that you will enjoy. There is a tremendous amount of language in this film, to the tune of an f-bomb about every 30 seconds on average. That stuff washes over me completely, but I understand that there are people who are truly offended by it, so it’s worth the warning. If you can look past the language, I can’t imagine someone not finding this film entertaining.


On the other end of the boozy spectrum is Sideways. Rather than white Russians made with cheap half-and-half and cheaper vodka, we get drunken wine snobbery. Miles (Paul Giamatti) is a failed writer teaching eighth grade and still coming down off a marriage that didn’t work. His best friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), is an actor getting married in a week’s time. Miles and Jack are going to head up to wine country in California for a week of golf and wine tasting before the big event.

We discover early on that Jack really has different goals than Miles does. All Miles wants to do is show his friend a good time. Jack has decided that Miles, with his first novel sitting with a small publisher who may not want to print it and his prescriptions for a pair of anxiety/depression medications really needs to ditch the pills and the psychiatrist and just get himself old fashioned sexed up. Additionally, Jack is looking for a final casual fling or two before his big wedding day, and really doesn’t want the depressed Miles screwing this up.

Miles, in addition to his various foibles, is an unrelenting wine snob. As the pair drive through parts of Napa Valley, it appears that Miles is well known at every vineyard in the area. If this leads you to think that Miles has a drinking problem, you’d be correct. He does tip more than is fair share of bottles, but insists on drinking only the best. We learn that he is desperate in many ways when he and Jack stop by Miles’s mother’s house. Excusing himself from dinner, he sneaks into her bedroom and finds her private safe, peeling off about $1,000 in hundreds and pocketing them before rejoining the table.

At one restaurant, they meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), who is quite the cutie and is also evidently recently divorced. She’s obviously taken with Miles, although he doesn’t seem to be able to get past his own divorce to notice. At another stop, the pair meet up with Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who immediately clicks with Jack.

The obvious happens. Miles and Maya have a budding romance while Jack and Stephanie have good, old-fashioned lusty sex. It slips that Jack is a few days away from marriage, which cures Jack of nothing. It also slips that despite earlier comments, Miles’s book really isn’t “about to be published” but is only under consideration, and that’s hardly a sure thing.

The film is really about the downward trajectory of Miles’s life, his own personal failure to live up to what he wants out of life, and his self-immolation by wine bottle. Certainly there is the touch of the comic here, and many of the situations are really funny, as is a great deal of the dialogue. Smart dialogue is sometimes rare, and the conversations here are excellent, which is a large part of the charm.

Additionally, these are real characters instead of the broadly comic caricatures that frequently show up in Hollywood comedies. The characters are comic and tragic specifically because they are so completely real. Miles is smart and has done less with his life than he thinks he should have, and takes solace in knowing more about wine than anyone else he knows. Jack is a fun-loving goof, the guy who shrugs his shoulders and smiles when he gets his hand stuck in the cookie jar. Maya is sweet, open, and honest, and completely genuine.

There’s a lovely metaphor about halfway into the film. Maya asks Miles why he’s so into pinots. He answers that it’s a difficult grape to grow—they’re fragile and weak, and require constant care and attention, and only certain people are capable of doing anything with them. It’s unspoken, of course, but the brittle and fractured Miles is himself like this fragile grape, so ready to give up and die unless cared for. We get the same metaphor from Maya when she explains why she loves wine—about how it is a constantly living, evolving thing that changes constantly until it peaks, and starts its slow decline, not unlike a person. This too might be a metaphor for Miles, and the rest of the movie is there to determine if he is still evolving or if that decline has started.

Much of the success of Sideways comes from the actors playing these roles. I’m a big fan of Paul Giamatti. I think he’s made some really poor choices for film roles in the past, but he’s also made some great ones. He tends to fail when he takes broadly comic roles—actually, I think he fails when he plays anything broadly. Films like Big Fat Liar, Planet of the Apes, and Shoot ‘Em Up fail to play to his strengths. Where Giamatti is really successful is in roles like this one, or similar lovable loser roles in films like American Splendor and Winchell. He’s also excellent in straight dramatic roles. If he’d stick to roles like these, he might end up being typecast, but he’d always be worth watching.

I feel similarly about Thomas Haden Church. He works well in roles where he can be subtle and funny, and less well in films like Spider-Man 3. He’s certainly capable of comedy, and he’s good in comedy, but he’s a much better actor than he often gets credit for. Virginia Madsen shows here that she is capable of a performance with some heart and subtlety, and I like her in the role.

And then there’s Sandra Oh. She’s good here, and I can’t dispute it, but there’s something about her I find really disconcerting and weird. She always looks to me like she’s just smelled something unpleasant, like her companion has floated an air biscuit and she’s trying not to let anyone know. I feel the same way (actually, far more intensely) about Renee Zellweger, who looks either like she’s just left an unclean bathroom or she’s finished sucking on half a lemon. There’s something about these two actors that make my hand ball up into a fist. I’m not justifying this, and I realize it’s irrational. I can’t control it, but the first step to a problem like this is admitting that the problem exists, right?

Ultimately, Sideways works because it isn’t a traditional Hollywood movie and it avoids the traditional Hollywood ending. The ending is instead quite realistic, believable, and oddly uplifting. It also has one of the great tragic moments ever filmed, a moment best left to spoilers.

*** OPENING A BOTTLE OF PINOT ***

Miles has a prized bottle of wine that he had been saving for his 10th anniversary with his wife. When he realizes that she has not only remarried but is pregnant, and thus lost to him forever, he cracks the bottle and drinks it from a Styrofoam cup at a fast food restaurant. It’s so sad and painful, and yet perfectly human and believable.

*** THE BOTTLE IS EMPTY ***

This is a bittersweet film spiced with smart comedy, coming mostly from the realistic and entertaining dialogue between Miles and Jack. All of the elements of this film blend together into something bigger and better than any individual element. Like a great wine (at least from what I’ve been told—I can’t tell a $50 bottle from two-buck Chuck), the end product is far more than what the bottle appears to hold.

Why to watch The Big Lebowski: It’s funny. It’s really, really funny. And it’s the weirdest noir you’ll ever see.
Why not to watch: More language than you might expect.

Why to watch Sideways: It’s human, meaning it’s funny and tragic in equal doses.
Why not to watch: If you know nothing about wine, it will give you an oenological hangover.

Non-Political Politics

Film: Odd Man Out
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.


The comedian Eddie Izzard does a great impression of James Mason. Usually, it’s Izzard talking as God with the voice of James Mason. This is, I think, appropriate. James Mason was a hell of an actor. He could play anything—good guys, bad guys, misunderstood geniuses, and conflicted heroes. He happens to be the bad guy in North by Northwest, which is my favorite movie ever. How could I not love James Mason?

Mason plays an Irish rebel named Johnny McQueen in Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out. It’s never mentioned exactly what organization McQueen works for, but it’s not difficult to make the assumption that the works for the Irish Republican Army. Regardless, McQueen broke out of prison and has reunited with his cell. For months he has planned a raid on a mill to generate the cash needed to keep his cell of the organization going.

It all goes according to plan until the gang makes its break after the heist. Johnny is temporarily dazzled by the light of the sun and is attacked by a guard. In the scuffle, two shots are fired; one hits Johnny in the left shoulder while the other kills the guard. Johnny is pulled into the getaway car, but falls out, and the rest of the gang bicker and end up abandoning him while Johnny runs off to hide.

What follows is series of interconnected vignettes. We see the members of the gang fight with each other, blaming each other for what happened to Johnny. Johnny staggers off, now badly wounded both from the gunshot and the fall from the car, and finds himself in an abandoned air raid shelter left over from the war. No one wants Johnny back safely more than Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan), since it is evident she loves him desperately—although it may not be clear to Johnny himself.

While the various gang members attempt to rescue Johnny and come to a variety of conclusions, Johnny begins to hallucinate, is spotted a few times, and attempts to stumble home. What ensues throughout is that Johnny becomes less a man and more of a problem for the people who encounter him. Everyone he meets quickly discovers who he is, and either wants to help him or bring him to justice for their own selfish reasons. The police are looking for him and offering a substantial reward. Many see the betrayal of Johnny and his friends both morally correct and financially beneficial. Others see his presence as a problem to be dealt with, seeking only to shove him off to somewhere else before they are caught with him.

Where Carol Reed went right here is in keeping politics as far away from this film as he could. There’s no morality here in terms of Johnny’s believes, the rightness or wrongness of the IRA, or the actions taken by Johnny McQueen. Reed doesn’t ask us to praise Johnny and his band of revolutionaries, nor does he expect us to condemn him or be morally outraged by him. Instead, the film concerns Johnny’s struggle to survive the night, wounded and hunted like an animal, and ultimately, an animal is what he becomes.

What’s worth seeing here, though, is that Johnny is not the only one who turns into an animal. The characters who interact with Johnny act the same way. They become interested in Johnny only for what they can get from him—money, fame, power. Johnny stops being a man and starts instead to be merely an object, a thing. Conversations happen around Johnny and at him rather than with him.

Mason’s portrayal of Johnny McQueen is played in mime, essentially, for a large part of the film as people talk around and about him. Much of the drama comes from his eyes. It’s a hell of a performance to convey as much as he does throughout the film without speaking. It allows both Mason the actor and Johnny McQueen the character to deliver a rousing speech toward the end of the film in a way that is believable, even inspiring.

For a film that is ostensibly a political drama, or at least promises political overtones at the beginning, it instead turns out to be a very human drama. A police inspector hunting for Johnny to bring him to justice sums up the essential mood of the film when he says, “In my profession there is neither good nor bad. There is innocence and guilt.” Reed’s film doesn’t ask us to judge whether or not the cause is just, but how the person of Johnny McQueen should be viewed. That he is guilty is certain—the value of his beliefs is not on trial. What is a bigger question is whether or not he should be viewed with sympathy or empathy.

That sympathy can only come, however, if we are capable of viewing the man’s actions as justified. Or can it? Mason’s portrayal of the wounded and dying man is geared to create exactly that sympathy, and it works. Agree with the cause or not (and really, as a non-Irish American, I’m pretty neutral) the character engenders a significant emotional response. That’s the genius of Odd Man Out.

You want to know what’s even better? You might be able to guess the ending correctly, but you won’t really know how it’s going to turn out until the last few minutes, and yet the ending fits with everything we’ve been shown.

Why to watch Odd Man Out: Plots and twists and turns and no one to trust. Oh, and James Mason.
Why not to watch: A tendency to speak in an Irish accent once the movie is done.

Bogart and Bacall

Film: The Big Sleep
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

There are certain things that, when I see them on the description of a film, give me a very good feeling. Certain elements almost guarantee that I will enjoy a film very much. I tend to like films done in the noir style, for instance. I also tend to really like films that star Humphrey Bogart. This gives The Big Sleep a lot of potential.

Okay, I’m kind of bullshitting here. I’ve seen The Big Sleep before and I know I like it. I’ve even read the book it was based on—in fact, I read the book before I saw the film. Philip Marlowe is in many ways the greatest of the noir detectives, and Bogart is really the best guy to play Marlowe. And here, he gets to play opposite his real-life eventual wife, Lauren Bacall. What could be better?

The Big Sleep starts simply and gets complicated quickly, like many film noirs. Marlowe (Bogart) is called to the house of General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). Sternwood is old, sickly, and near death. Those aren’t the problems on his mind, though. What is on his mind is the actions of his two daughters. The older is Vivian Rutledge (Bacall). She has her vices, which include gambling and booze, and she also married badly, considering her husband is now out of the picture. The younger daughter, Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), is a bigger problem. Carmen has all of Vivian’s problems and more. Her biggest problem is that it appears that she likes men far too much.

In this case, Carmen has incurred a number of promissory notes to a man named Arthur Gwynn Geiger, who runs a rare bookstore. It looks like a simple case of blackmail. General Sternwood wants Marlowe to take care of the problem because his old go-to guy has gone missing for the past year or so. Marlowe goes to investigate and discovers that the woman who works at Geiger’s store appears to know nothing of antique books.

Marlowe tails Geiger to his house and guess who shows up. It’s Carmen. A few gunshots later, and Marlowe rushes in to see what’s happened. He finds Geiger dead on the floor and Carmen dressed up in a slinky outfit in front of a hidden camera and drugged off her ass. It’s never stated outright, but Carmen has descended into the world of pornography, either to pay off those promissory notes or for some other reason.

And this is where things get complicated. Bodies begin to pile up. The Sternwoods’ chauffeur ends up blackjacked and dead in the bay, and bodies seem to tail Marlowe wherever he goes. Much of this is in the pursuit of finding the pictures of Carmen. But in comes many more complications and many more people and more and more shooting. Marlowe and Mrs. Rutledge flirt with each other, and eventually, the bad guys get what they deserve.

The joy of any film noir is in the dialogue between the characters and the twists and turns of the plot and all of the gunplay. The Big Sleep has all of this in spades—and it’s got Bogart and Bacall doing what they do best. This is what a film noir should be. I could say a lot more, but it’s more fun to see this film for the first time and watch where it goes, to see the back and forth between the characters, and enjoy Bogart do what he does.

Why to watch The Big Sleep: It’s noir. What more do you need?
Why not to watch: So many characters, so much shooting.

Thought Crime

Film: Alphaville: Une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution (Alphaville)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

A note: Typically, I refer to foreign films by their foreign language title in my write-ups. Today, however, since the first word of the English title is precisely the same as the French title, and because the French title is so long, it is easier to simply call the film by its English name.

I was recently asked by a co-1001 Movies blogger if I had watched any Godard yet. I hadn’t at the time, but assured him that I would undoubtedly dip my toes into the Godard pond this week, thus Alphaville in the spinner tonight. It’s hardly a stretch to say that in this day and age, Godard is no longer the most culturally relevant Jean-Luc for most people. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, only a true thing. I’m guilty of the same. Say “Jean-Luc” to me, and I’ll respond “Picard” long before I’ll say “Godard.”

Before we delve to heavily into this film, it’s worth getting a few things out of the way. Lemmy Caution is the creation of British pulp writer Peter Cheyney. Eddie Constantine, who plays Caution in this film, played the same role a number of times before this film was made. Caution is, therefore, the British equivalent of Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade.

Similarities to other Lemmy Caution films ends here. In true existential fashion, Alphaville takes place in a sort of no-time and no-place. Certainly with some of the events and ideas here, the film is absolutely science fiction. However, the film also quite evidently takes place in the mid-20th century (Caution refers to himself as a Guadalcanal veteran). In terms of place, all that matters is that we are in Alphaville, and that everything is run by Alpha 60.

So what is Alpha 60? It’s the computer that runs Alphaville with an iron processor. Alpha 60 has made emotion illegal within the city limits of Alphaville. It is a sentient machine that has determined that the only way to have the city run efficiently is to eliminate anything that does not make perfectly logical sense. In short, love, art, poetry, and emotion are all illegal within the city. Failure to comply means a brutal interrogation followed by execution, even for the smallest infractions, like displaying grief at the death of a spouse.

Essentially, this film falls in terms of ideal between Orwell’s 1984 and George Lucas’s THX1138. Like Orwell’s work, the society is highly dystopic and rigidly controlled by an overwhelming, implacable force. Resistance is essentially futile because it is impossible to organize any resistance. Like Big Brother, the computer is everywhere and is always looking for any slip or sign of weakness to eliminate anything that stands in the way of its complete power. Like Lucas’s film that follows this one, there is no love or emotion, and expressing either is a crime of the highest order.

Caution’s task here is to initially find an operative named Henri Dickson (Akim Tamiroff) who has not reported back for a long time. Caution finds the man, who speaks rather cryptically, dallies a bit with a local prostitute, and then dies, telling Caution that Alpha 60 must be destroyed. Coincidentally, Caution is also charged with locating and either bringing back or eliminating a man named von Braun, who created Apha 60.

Caution meets von Braun’s daughter Natasha (Anna Karina), who claims to have never met her father, nor stepped foot outside of Alphaville into the Outlands. Similarly, and predictably considering the city she was raised in, Natasha has no concept of love or morality or conscience.

Like any good noir, Caution is tempted by the devil, in this case von Braun. As Caution digs further into the city, he discovers that Alpha 60 is sending potential dissidents out to other places, other worlds, to foment revolution, hopefully bringing about more Alpha 60-style societies throughout the universe. And so, as befits many films from the mid-‘60s, there is a strong anti-communist sense to this film as well.

Ultimately, the idea here is about sense of self and individualism. Just as Orwell feared the destruction of the unique person in the service to the state, Godard fears the loss of self and emotion as being the loss of that which makes us human. It’s a nice metaphor, and it works pretty well throughout.

Eddie Constantine does look very much like a traditional noir private dick. In his fedora and trench coat, he looks the part, and his craggy, weathered face that looks chiseled out of granite fits the part as well. His complete lack of emotion throughout actually works well here, too. The anti-heroes in noirs often tend to be emotionless, even when dealing out violence, something that Caution does frequently here.

The film is disturbingly weird. Most bothersome here is the soundtrack, which seems to play nothing but the same Baaaaaahm-Bamp! Buuuuuuuuhm-Bamp! over and over. It gets oppressive quickly. Just as disturbing is the narrator-like role of Alpha 60, which speaks in a deep, throaty croak that sounds like a man with a cold trying desperately to make himself belch.

And yet, I like the ultimate conclusion. For such a strange film, it’s almost uplifting at the end, despite the sudden violence, croaking voice, and lack of expressions.

Why to watch Alphaville: Une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution: Existentialism that lifts rather than depresses.
Why not to watch: Croaky, belchy French.

"M" is for Morbid

Film: M
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

The women in my family, or at least my wife and older daughter, are in love with pugs. In their world, there is nothing so loveable and adorable as a pug. I’m not so enamored with the little dogs. They’ve got smashed faces and buggy eyes. If a pug was turned into a human being, it would look quite a bit like Peter Lorre.

Of course, this says nothing of the quality of Lorre’s acting, or in this case of Fritz Lang’s film, M. Lorre was perhaps the perfect person to play the role of Hans Beckert, a role that required the lead to have something of a disturbing look to him. The reason is that Beckert is a child murderer, and through implication throughout the film, a child molester.

Beckert hunts children, and his presence on the hunt is announced by his whistling a piece from Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” The people of this unnamed German city are naturally going berserk over the murders, causing riots every time anyone speaks to a child in public. The police are in overdrive, and have continually raided the known haunts of the city’s criminal elements.

This causes a huge amount of consternation in the criminal community, since all of the people in the city’s united criminal underworld are being pinched by the police. In an effort to restore their own criminal enterprises back on a paying basis, the criminals set up a network of beggars to keep an eye out for the child killer with the hopes of bringing him to justice themselves.

What’s worth noting here is Fritz Lang’s use of what now are common film techniques. In 1931, however, all film techniques were new ones. As the criminals meet to discuss their plans for finding and destroying the child killer, for instance, the police are meeting at the same time. Lang cuts between the two conversations in a montage, having one conversation pick up where the other leaves off, back and forth for several minutes.

Lang also uses sound in interesting ways. Beckert himself is introduced by his whistling long before he is ever seen on screen. There are sound-based jokes as well; a beggar covers his ears while listening to a badly-tuned organ grinder, and the music reappears only when he uncovers his ears. In fact, it is sound testimony given by a blind beggar that ultimately verifies the guilt of Beckert, a plot device that could not have happened in a movie half a dozen years before.

While all of these things are noteworthy, what is truly remarkable in M is the way that Hans Beckert is treated not by the police or the criminal element, but by the film itself. There is no question of the man’s guilt, and no question that he is committing one of the most terrible crimes any human being can possibly commit, and is doing so over and over. His capture is something that everyone should want, and yet his treatment by the film, while not sympathetic in any way, is at least understanding. Beckert, given the opportunity to defend himself, makes a fairly compelling argument. It is the case, he claims, that he is compelled to do what he does by something he cannot control while other criminals have chosen to break the law.

Until I had watched the film, I was unclear as to its name. The answer becomes obvious about mid-way through the movie. Identified by his whistling, a criminal arranges to place a mark on Beckert’s back, a chalk “M” identifying him to the underworld so he can be tailed. Roughly the same time this happens, the police also break the case, leading to a confrontation among Hans Beckert, the city’s criminal underworld, and the police.

M is a staggering film for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the daunting subject matter for a year like 1931. It is brilliantly made and acted, daring and impressive. In addition to this, there are elements of humor dropped into the film, a surprise in a film that deals with such an uncomfortable subject. On trial by the criminal element, Beckert’s defense attorney demands to know what right another criminal, a paid assassin, has to judge his “client.” Such touches are deft, and easily overlooked on a first pass.

The film unquestionably belongs to Lorre, who is both terrible and pitiable. He is a monster of the sort shown in another 1931 film, Frankenstein. There is no question that he must be destroyed. It is equally undeniable, though, that he is a product of something other than himself, that he was created by society, or upbringing, or something greater and more terrible than what he became. That such a creature could be viewed with anything approaching pity in the final reel is a testament to what Lang was able to accomplish.

Why to watch M: Few filmmakers today have the guts to make a film like M today; that Lang had the guts 80 years ago deserves some respect.
Why not to watch: The subject matter is too disturbing.