The Orestean Trilogy?

Film: O Thiassos (Travelling Players)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I’ve never really objected to long films. Some of my favorite film experiences from the past couple of years have been films of extreme length--The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Decalogue to name just a couple. What I don’t understand, though, is the evident idea that a film is somehow given more power and more weight and more importance simply because of its length. That is certainly the case with Theo Angelopoulos’s O Thiassos (Travelling Players).

There are three stories at work here, which may account for a little of the length. On the surface, we have the tale of a group of (as the English title suggests) travelling players, a theater troupe wandering around Greece attempting to perform an erotic drama about a woman named Golfo. Frequently, we see the opening scene of the play only to have it interrupted by some event.

Second, O Thiassos is a sort of history of Greece from before World War II, through the war, and into the post-war period of civil strife with the communists, and into the years of Anglo-American intervention. The film does not tell this history in a straight narrative. In fact, it frequently jumps back and forth and sometimes happily mashes two time periods together in the same shot. For instance, we may see German troops standing guard at an installation while a truck drives by, telling people to vote for the man who put down the communist rebels in the late 1940s.

Third, and perhaps most significantly in terms of film narrative and art, O Thiassos serves as a modern retelling of the Orestean cycle of classic Greek plays. Our major characters bear the same names as their classic counterparts, and in good retelling fashion appear to be completely unaware that they are the namesakes of a series of tragedies.

It would seem like that should be more than enough to fill a film of nearly four hours in length. In reality, though, it’s not nearly enough. This film is packed with long takes, frequently with the aftermath of what has just happened appearing on screen for half a minute before moving on. Allegedly, the entire film is made with a mere 80 shots, and based on the length of some scenes involving a static camera, I wouldn’t doubt the veracity of that claim. All of this serves to further slow down a film that is by all accounts dreadfully slow in pace. What this means is that, for instance, when the inevitable rape/interrogation scene happens (because you just knew there was going to be one), we see it at length.

Additionally, the film is very confusing. Part of this may well be the language barrier and the fact that while watching, I am forced to spend at least a part of the time reading the bottom of the screen. However, there are long sequences without speech of any kind, so there’s evidently some natural confusion in the narrative itself. I point to the blending of time periods as being the biggest culprit in this. In fact, I was confused for the first half hour or so of the film, thinking I had perhaps misread something. We see World War II-era German soldiers and hear about the Communist Party in 1949. It wasn’t until this happened a second time that I started to realize what was going on. In a way, it seems sort of unfair to create a film of this length and at this pace that requires a second viewing to truly understand. There are a couple of moments of fourth wall breaking during which a character will approach the camera and speak at length about their past and what has happened. These soliloquies do help, but they don’t quite go far enough.

And really, I don’t think I’ll give it a second viewing. O Thiassos is not a bad film by any stretch, but it is a film that requires a significant commitment to watch. As it is, I have watched it over the course of about a week, half an hour here, a little bit there, until a final marathon at the end to finish it up. That I call how I finished the film a marathon is not merely a pun on the film taking place in Greece. My final push was perhaps two-and-a-half hours give or take. It’s a length of time that wouldn’t phase me for most films, and I’ve watched much longer without a break and without complaint. But it felt like a marathon here, because the film simply never wanted to end.

I’m not sure where cuts should or could be made. It’s sort of in general overweight and bloated. Ultimately, I think I might rather read the Orestean plays again rather than sit through an overlong modernization a second time.

Why to watch O Thiassos: It gives a reason for the benefits of a classical education.
Why not to watch: It’s the length of two movies with the content of one.

Das ist Immer Nach So

Film: Der Himmel Uber Berlin (Wings of Desire)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Religiously, as I have said once or twice before in the context of this blog, I consider myself an agnostic who, at the very least, has essentially decided that Humanity’s attempts at connecting with the infinite are misguided at best. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I still find particular expressions of religious thought and belief to be very moving and powerful. This is essentially what I expected with my first Wim Wenders film, Der Himmel Uber Berlin (Wings of Desire). What I got was a lot more.

This is a film of staggering power and truly moving beauty. Having said that, it would surprise me not at all if many people find this film difficult or almost unwatchable. I think it requires a particular mindset to truly become immersed in what this film is. The story is most unusual both in what it is and how it is told.

A pair of angels named Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are charged with wandering Berlin and preserve and remember what they see. In essence, they are a sort of impartial recording of the people in and passing through Berlin, not judging or punishing or rewarding, but merely observing. We learn as the film continues that the pair have been here since before there was a Berlin, when it was nothing but grassland. They have been here through the city’s founding, through wars and progress, always observing.

This, observing and listening to the thoughts of the masses of Berlin, makes up a great deal of the film. A few things become evident as we follow the angels—Damiel primarily but not exclusively. We learn that the angels are frequently moved to moments of exultation, for instance. It becomes evident that children are able to see the angels. And the angels evidently have their favorites. Cassiel, for instance, seems to spend a lot of time following an old poet named Homer (Curt Bois), comforting him when he can. Damiel soon becomes enamored of a French trapeze artist named Marion (Solveig Dommartin). Additionally, Peter Falk as himself is in Berlin to work on a film. Damiel spends a great deal of time on the film set observing, and perhaps remembering, since the film concerns World War II.

It’s interesting that Falk, while credited as “Der Filmstar” is really playing himself; he makes mention of his time spent as Columbo, for instance. And so, in a sort of meta moment, it’s not really Peter Falk as himself, but Peter Falk playing Peter Falk, and the difference is all the difference. The distinction is important, because within the context of the film, we discover critically important information about Falk.

The vast majority of the film is shot in gorgeous black-and-white, which represents the point of view of the angels. In the rare moments in which neither Damiel nor Cassiel are present, the film is in color. The distinction is important. Why do the angels see in black-and-white? Because the angels are unable to experience the world, and this is where the real dramatic tension of the film comes from. The angels do not truly understand what it means to experience…anything. They do not truly want or fear or suffer or experience joy. This is true except that there is truly one desire—the desire to experience.

It manifests itself primarily in Damiel, who wants to feel and touch and eat and have pain and know what hot and cold really mean. It becomes an obsession for him when he meets the trapeze artist, and slowly, over the course of the film, the desire becomes something that is inevitable for him. It takes us the first two acts of the film to get there, but eventually, Damiel decides to truly exist and experience the world. And more than this, he intends to find his trapeze artist and cure both her loneliness and his own.

I said it at the start of this, but I will say it again—this is a film of surpassing beauty. It very easily could have become a film of darkness and depression, a film of terrible unspoken desire. Instead, it is a film that revels in existence, a film that expresses nothing so much as the pure joy of being. It is uplifting, and not merely in an emotional sense, but in a spiritual one. It is a movie that, with the right mindset going in, can fill its audience with the pure joy of a weekend morning spent overlong in bed, of a hot bath after a long day, of that first long pull of caffeine before a long day starts. It is films like this that make me come back to magical realism as a genre, because it is films like this one that sometimes make me believe in anything beyond the world we live in. If such spirituality can exist in film, then perhaps there truly is a human spirit after all.

Needless to say, I loved this film. I don’t know if you do or will, but I heartily recommend you give it a try.

Why to watch Der Himmel Uber Berlin: Because even the least spiritual of us is still a spiritual being.
Why not to watch: You don't believe the previous sentence.

Fear, Loathing, and a Pint of Bitters

Film: Withnail and I
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

The traditional coming of age story happens when someone hits puberty, because that is the time that most of us go through a period of “growing up.” But what happens in cases of arrested development? What happens when we pass through puberty and emerge still a child, still supremely selfish, still mired in our own wants and desires, crippled by addictions and feelings that everyone else gets the things that we want? What happens is Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I.

Our unnamed narrator (“Marwood” according to a telegram, and played by Paul McGann) lives in a dilapidated London flat with his friend Withnail (pronounced “Withnull” and played by Richard Grant). The apartment is reminiscent of the house on Paper Street that eventually houses Tyler Durden in Fight Club. There is garbage everywhere and the kitchen has become an area requiring a hazmat suit to enter. The narrator is perpetually disturbed, constantly irritated, and frequently paranoid. A struggling actor, he and Withnail live from government check to government check, drugging themselves, drinking, looking for theater auditions, and slowly freezing to death because they can’t afford heat.

Withnail, though comes from money, and he decides that he will hit up his flamboyantly gay uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) for the opportunity to use his country cottage. And so the two young men head off for a weekend or so in the country, which turns out to be significantly different than they had hoped. In fact, they end up in essentially the same situation—no heat, no food, and now surrounded by country folk who are evidently not too pleased or willing to help a couple of dandies from the big city. Compound this with the arrival of Monty, who is convinced that the narrator is gay, and you end up with quite a weekend.

What shines through in this film more than anything else is that the overriding mental state of Withnail is one of selfishness and jealousy. Grant plays the part as if Withnail had had a privileged life until very recently. Withnail is rude and demanding, and stops at nothing to get what he wants. He breaks promises continually, lies to get his way, forces the blame for his mistakes and bad behavior onto other shoulders, and generally acts like a spoiled little child who wants a cookie.

How to explain Withnail? Imagine the Bill Murray character from Ghostbusters. Multiply his assholish behavior by ten, add booze, and remove most of the charm. Throw in a disproportionate sense of entitlement. Now you’ve got a start.

For as much as the film seems to focus on the narrator, his various paranoias and problems, and the intense relationships he has, a great deal of the focus is naturally on Withnail. In many ways, Withnail is the central character of the film despite the fact that he never really changes. Withnail is something like a mathematical constant. He is unwaveying in his desire to please himself at any cost. Because of this, because he is a pure constant in the film and serves as a terrific counterpointing to the narrator’s story.

So what we ultimately have here is a coming of age story for someone who should have come of ages years before. And while Withnail dominates much of the narrative, it is evident quickly that this is truly the narrator’s story. While he goes on auditions and has frequent contact with his agent, Withnail complains about auditions he doesn’t get and drinks anything he can find, including lighter fluid at one point. Withnail is consumed by jealousy, by arrogance, and by frustration that he can’t get everything he wants and that no one will recognize his particular genius. And thus he is in many ways like a typical kid going through puberty. He just never left.

This is an interesting film. McGann’s performance is frenetic and filled with paranoia and consuming fear. Grant, on the other hand, appears not to care about anything in the world, causing scenes and getting sloppily drunk at all hours of the day. This too is a fantastic performance.

I like the performances very much in general. I also love the scenery that served as a backdrop for the film. This film is unpleasant, but is so by design.

Why to watch Withnail and I: A very different coming of age story.
Why not to watch: Because you can smell the booze through the screen.

Prison Break

Film: Un Condamne a Mort S’est Echappe ou le Vent Souffle ou il Veut (A Man Escaped)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

It’s not immediately apparent in Robert Bresson’s Un Condamne a Mort S’est Echappe ou le Vent Souffle ou il Veut (A Man Escaped, literally something like The Condemned has Escaped, or The Wind Blows Where it Will) what the hell is going on. It takes a few minutes to fully understand the situation we are in. We see a man in a car. He’s handcuffed, and he regularly seems to be thinking about trying the door handle. Eventually, he does try the handle and gets away, but is immediately recaptured. Strangely, for a film that appears to be in French based on the titles and the director, the dialogue we hear is in German. Soon, the car arrives at its destination, the man is beaten, and he is thrown into a cell.

We soon discover that the man in question is named Fontaine (Francois Leterrier, who bears a disturbing similarity to D.J. Qualls) and that he has been captured by the Nazis for being a member of the French Resistance. He spends some time in a cell on the second floor of the building, and has some contact with a few men in the courtyard below. He’s able to send a little mail to the outside world, and the men in the courtyard get him a safety pin, which he uses to undo his handcuffs. Fontaine’s only thought is of escape, and the handcuffs are the first step. As it turns out, though, the step is moot; he is eventually moved to the top floor and his handcuffs are taken away anyway.

We learn other things as well. Executions are conducted at the prison regularly, which we learn by the spurts of machinegun fire. Fontaine learns to communicate with other prisoners by tapping on the walls of his cell, something he tries immediately upon being brought to his new cell. He also learns that the door of his new cell is made from weak wood, and with a spoon he keeps from a meal, he starts to loosen the boards to work on his possible escape.

A Man Escaped (I’m sticking with the English title so I don’t have to type the eternal French one again) is a strange combination of bleak despair and continued, eternal hope. While certainly there have been more terrible prisons in cinematic and human history, the prison in which Fontaine spends his days is a vast nothing. While not specifically filled with torture or horror, it is one of the bleakest places in cinematic history. We watch him in this place filled with nothingness painstakingly scraping along the boards of his door, never losing hope. At the very least, he never loses focus. He is aware at all times that he may be discovered in his attempt to escape, and will be punished or killed for trying. And yet he continues, compelled to attempt to get away from the terrible place. It adds to the overall feel of genuine evil of the place that Fontaine spends the entire film in the same shirt, stained with his own blood from the beating at the start of the film.

As much as this film is about the indomitable will of Fontaine and his desire for freedom, it is also very much about trust and the nature of trust. Always on the verge of being caught should a guard find him working on his door, he is forced to depend on his neighbors to assist him in maintaining his quiet work and keeping it secret from his captors. Eventually, he is able to pull out three boards from his door and walk around outside his cell, then get back inside and repaire the look of the door without detection. However, he had never thought beyond that moment of getting out of the cell, and finds himself unsure of where to go next. And so he must trust his other prisoners. Eventually, his ability to trust is put to the true test, when he is given a cellmate who was a member of the German Army.

Fontaine’s relationships with several of the other prisoners are central to the story he goes through and the story being told. Next to him on the top floor is a man named Blanchet (Maurice Beerblock), who attempts to get Fontaine to stop his attempts at escape so that there will be no reprisals against the other inmates. Fontaine attempts to get him to care again. Across the hall is Orsini (Jacques Ertaud), who is also trying to escape. The two men form a sort of bond of mutual suffering, and help each other when they can. Finally, and most importantly, is Francois Jost (Charles le Clainche, who has a rather astounding pompadour), a member of the German Army. Trust, nearly impossible to come by, becomes essential for even Fontaine’s hope of survival.

All of this is relevant to what the film is about, but none of this speaks to the reason the film is important or worth watching. After all, it would be relatively easy to make a bad film about a guy trying to escape from a Nazi prison, and the film that Bresson has made is gripping from open to close. Much of this is because of Bresson’s style. We are frequently in close proximity with Fontaine, frequently seeing only his hands and arms as he works. Watching him dig at his door, unroll wire from his bed frame, and tear sheets and clothing into strips to make rope sounds like it would be terribly dull, but the reality of Fontaine’s situation lends a fascination to these proceedings. This is made all the more real when Fontaine is given a death sentence for his complicity in a planned Resistance bombing.

A Man Escaped is a fascinating study in solitude, trust, and the desire for freedom. I haven’t seen all of Bresson by far, but I’m not sure I’ll find one better than this.

Why to watch Un Condamne a Mort S’est Echappe ou le Vent Souffle ou il Veut: Intense prison drama.
Why not to watch: It's hard to get past the whole D.J. Qualls thing.

Waffle House

Film: Rosetta
Format: Internet video on laptop.

All children rebel against their parents in one way or another. It’s a part of growing up, I suppose. I rebelled in my own way, as did my siblings, as did my wife. I’m starting to see that here and there with my older daughter, and I’m sure of the knowledge that it will get worse. In the minds of those rebelling, there’s always a reason for doing so. And sometimes, those on the outside looking might well agree with that reason.

Rosetta is a film from the middle of the careers of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who are evidently the Belgian equivalent of the Coens. It focuses on the life of Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), a young woman who wants only to escape the life that she has. She lives with her mother (Anne Yernaux) in a trailer in almost complete poverty. Her mother, an alcoholic who has sex with the other trailer park residents in exchange for booze, is abusive and terrible. All Rosetta wants is to get away from this life any possible way she can.

Her first choice is by finding a job and saving up enough money to get away. But the film opens with her being let go from her factory job because her trial period is over. She sells clothing for extra money, and asks everyone she encounters if they have work for her. She’s so desperate that her reaction when thwarted from the simple goal of employment is violence. Her reaction upon losing the factory job is excessively violent (to the point where she couldn’t conceivably keep the job anyway). She fights physically and verbally with her mother, typically over the drinking and sex. She asks a guy named Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione) at a waffle stand for a job, and when he eventually follows her home, her first inclination is to knock him off his scooter.

As it turns out, he was coming to offer her a job, and despite her violent reaction to his arrival, she gets it. And as with her previous job, Rosetta essentially becomes the job. For her, the job is life because without it, she is left with nothing. There is no room in her life for anything but the job, earning any money she can, and the strange stomach pains she suffers from (never fully explained—possibly an ulcer). Despite Riquet’s obvious interest in her, she has no time for him. She is obsessive about money to the point of leaving lines in the local river to hook fish and doing laundry by hand in a plastic tub.

And that’s essentially the film here. Rosetta is brutal in the world it depicts and brutal in its depiction of that world. Most of the camera work is handheld and from mid-close and closer, providing an uncomfortable intimacy with this story. We aren’t able as the audience to get away from Rosetta, and in fact are rarely more than an arm’s length away from her. Her world becomes the only world we are able to experience in the film. This has the twin purposes of making the story simultaneously compelling and repellent.

In many ways, this is the entire point of the film. The Dardennes have built something here that is almost completely unique. They have created a character in Rosetta with whom it is impossible to have anything but the greatest sympathy, but who it is virtually impossible to like as a person. Rosetta is a product of her terrible, repressive environment and every minute of her life is a struggle to reach the next minute. This leaves her virtually no room for her own humanity or anything like kindness, pleasure, or simple enjoyment. She becomes not a person, but a thing that exists. Rosetta is unlikeable because of her environment and also fascinating because of it. She is predatory and feral, an animal always fearful of being caged or hurt, because everything she has encountered has done one or both of those. This also explains her “violence first” attitude toward everything that isn’t what she immediately needs. At one point, when Riquet falls into the river, she hesitates before saving him. After all, if he drowns, a spot will open up at the waffle stand. This makes her betrayal of him not merely terrible, but inevitable.

Rosetta’s inability to connect with anyone on a human level would be funny if it were not so painful. Invited in to Riquet’s home at one point, her lack of human feeling and connection becomes brutally evident. Riquet is clearly trying to impress her, but she is unable to notice, pay him a compliment, or, at one point, loosen up enough to dance with him. The need to escape her life is so dominant, that she can’t let it alone for a moment.

As with many films of this sort, Rosetta is difficult to watch and difficult to enjoy, but powerful and moving regardless. Our title character lives in a world in which she really has no wants because her needs are so pressing and deep-seated that she cannot get beyond them. On a podcast a few months ago, fellow blogger James Blake Ewing commented that the story of a character unable to change is a tragedy. Rosetta is one such character, and her story is a tragedy—not because she doesn’t change but because she wants nothing but change and can’t achieve it.

This is a difficult film to watch both because of its subject matter and because of the extreme intimacy of the camera, but it’s a worthy watch nonetheless.

Why to watch Rosetta: It’s what Fish Tank should have been.
Why not to watch: The camera offers no distance between audience and an unpleasant subject.

Slaving Away

Film: Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Baliff)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

It’s a tough world, and we can’t always protect our children from bad things. Movies often include bad things happening to children as a part of the narrative. That makes sense, because it’s a part of life—of any life. I expect that as a matter of course, but as a father myself, it can sometimes be tough to watch little kids placed not in peril, but in terrible circumstances beyond their control. It is an awful thing to see a child destroyed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And this is what the first act of Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Baliff) is all about.

Our story concerns a brother and sister pair. Zushio (played as a boy by Masahiko Kato and as an adult by Yashiaki Hanayagi) and Anju (Keiko Enami as a little girl and Kyoko Kagawa in her late teens) are the children of a governor who, because he refused to pay taxes in preference to feeding his servants, is stripped of his title and exiled from his province.

His wife and the two kids follow along after spending six years with her brother. On the way, they hear a rumor that there are bandits and slavers along the route. They spend a night with an old priestess who turns out to be such a slaver. The mother is sold off in slavery to a distant place while the kids are sold as a pair and forced to work under the not-very-tender guidance of the titular character, Sansho (Eitaro Shindo). We learn quickly that Sansho is a cruel man, far more heartless than he needs to be, even for a literal slavedriver. The children are forced to work immediately, and learn their first night that the penalty for attempting to escape is being branded on the forehead. But they also learn a little mercy in the son of Sansho, Taro (Akitake Kono), who gives the children fake names and what little comfort he can. And thus the first act ends.

In the second act, 10 years have passed and the children have grown. Anju has retained her pure and innocent nature, and is kind when she can be. Zushio has given up on his father’s philosophy of kindness and mercy, and has more or less embraced the cruelty inherent in his own existence as a slave. While Anju remembers their past and dreams of reuniting with their parents, Zushio believes it is better to keep his head down, do anything he is told no matter how repugnant, and stay on Sansho’s good side. Anju’s hope is rekindled when a new slave begins singing a song that includes both of their names, a song that could only have been written by their mother.

Finally given a real opportunity to escape, Anju sacrifices herself both figuratively and literally for the betterment of Zushio, who finds himself not only freed, but quickly risen to a position of power. And this is where the third act plays out.

Ultimately, this film is about both the hope and resolve in the person of Anju as well as the redemption of Zushio, a redemption that begins in the second act. The pair are asked to cart a dying slave out to the wilderness to let her die. Zushio decides to escape, and Anju sacrifices herself. Freed temporarily with the chance to run away, Zushio takes the slave woman with him rather than leave her to die. In many ways, her fate is unimportant. By tying her to his own escape and freedom, he has begun remembering the lessons of his father.

That, more than anything is the story that Mizoguchi wants to tell here, and tell it he does. The film is plainly made and the story plainly told with very little frill and nothing unnecessary. It is a case of a film being all the better for being shot in beautifully vibrant black-and-white. Beautifully defined trees, their leaves standing out against a foggy backdrop, faces twisted in cruelty and emotional distress, the placid lake where Anju meets her end…these are not scenes that would be measurably enhanced by being in color. Mizoguchi is also a master of framing, with people perfectly situated between both natural and artificial frames throughout the film, drawing attention to precisely where he wants it. Like many other Japanese directors I have experienced, Mizoguchi’s work is a textbook example of basic filmmaking techniques.

But, of course, it is the story that makes all of the difference here. The film may well be worth watching as a film student for its brilliant cinematography and camera work, but it’s the story that makes the watching worthwhile.

There is a cyclical nature to the film that is both in keeping with a philosophy that embraces rebirth and very satisfying to the viewer. Zushio starts as the son of a noble, becomes a slave, and ends in a position of power. Taro, unable to deal with his father’s cruelty, protects the children as best he can and leaves. Ultimately, when Zushio flees, it is to a monastery where Taro is now in charge. People continually come back and meet again; only the size of the circle they make on the trip is different.

Sansho Dayu is a worthy film for the student, but equally worthwhile for someone who wants a movie that will provoke a little thought. If it suffers from anything, it suffers from the same illness that many Japanese period pieces do—there is a touch of the Kabuki here, and there’s a good deal of overacting. It doesn’t trouble me, but it will others.

Why to watch Sansho Dayu: A combination of tragedy and human virtue.
Why not to watch: Kabuki-style overacting.

John Garfield

Films: The Postman Always Rings Twice; Force of Evil
Format: DVD from Fountaindale Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player (Postman); VHS from Genoa Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television (Force).

I love film noir. I know that the purist says that noir is a style and not a genre, but I don’t really care. I consider it to essentially be its own genre of film. Noirs have their own feel, their own pace, their own specific pattern that makes the irresistible to me. A mediocre noir is better than a lot of other films, and a great noir will make me happy for days. So it’s a genuine pleasure to find a couple that measure up.

I’d heard of The Postman Always Rings Twice mostly because I remember when it was remade. I haven’t seen that remake, but I remember a lot of buzz around it because of how steamy it was supposed to be. And the name is pretty memorable. The name, for me, creates a lot of possible mental pictures, a sense of foreboding and possible dread, of a crime committed and remaining unpunished. Interestingly enough, the title is actually a real stretch, and fits only because of a speech at the end of the film. Having seen the original, I can probably think of a half a dozen better titles. What initially got me interested turned out to be really the weakest link of the film.

Anyway, we have a drifter named Frank Chambers (John Garfield), who shows up at a roadside diner thanks to a ride from the man who happens to be the local district attorney (Leon Ames). As it turns out, the diner is looking for help, signified by the sign “Man wanted” out front, a sign that is a nice bit of foreshadowing. The diner is run by Nick (Cecil Kellaway), a plump, jovial guy who likes a bit of a drink now and then. What Frank didn’t see coming is that nice guy Nick has a bombshell of a wife in Cora (Lana Turner).

Naturally enough, Frank and Cora fall for each other and fall hard. They plan on running away together, but, in typical femme fatale fashion, Cora has second thoughts. She doesn’t want to be a nobody, drifting from place to place. She wants the eatery. She wants to turn it into something real, and she wants Frank with her. To do that, they need to get rid of Nick. So they hatch a plan.

And it goes south. The plan is to electrocute Nick in the bathtub and have the both of them with an alibi, but a cat fouls up the works by stepping on an open wire and frying the electricity first. Nick is injured, but Frank convinces Cora that if he dies, they’re sunk, so his life is saved. Plan two goes into effect—the pair plan to get Nick sloppy drunk and then fake a car accident. This time, it works. Unfortunately, the D.A. was onto them the whole time, and books them both for murder, then convinces Frank to swear out a complaint against Cora since he was badly injured in the wreck.

Enter the lawyer, Arthur Keats (Hume Cronyn). Smarmy and crooked, but smart enough to stay ahead of the law, he manages to get the pair off, but also leaves them in the unfortunate position of being prime targets for blackmail. Add in the fact that Frank gets itchy feet and an itchy zipper, and now the two are shackled together and unable to trust each other or anyone else, leading to the inevitable film noir climax.

Bluntly, this film is great. Really, really great. The performances are magnificent throughout, with not a single one missing a single beat. Kellaway plays Nick as a man satisfied with his own decisions, and not quite caring enough if anyone else agrees with what he does. Cora is cold and deceitful except for those moments when she is inflamed with desire. And Frank is a little too clever and a little too lazy for his own good. It is Garfield who truly carries the film despite Turner’s top billing. But much could also be said for the nuanced and evil performance of Hume Cronyn as the just-crooked-enough lawyer.

What I really like about this film, though, is the way the characters work. Often in a film noir, the main characters are career criminals, people who are looking for one last score or one big heist to see them through. Here, the characters are merely people caught up by their circumstances. None of them, certainly not Frank or Cora, are blameless or truly good people. But, at the same time, none of them are truly evil or terrible. They’re merely affected and afflicted by their own whims, and unable to act against their own desires.

This is a smart film, and one that I’m happy to have seen. This is one I will want to watch again.

By pure coincidence, the other film noir I got through interlibrary loan last week also happens to star John Garfield. And in this one, his character couldn’t be more different. In this film, he plays Joe Morse, a crooked lawyer working for the syndicates. He and his boss, Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts) have hatched an interesting scheme. Throughout their city, people play the numbers, which is illegal. Their plan is to convince the city to make the numbers a legal lottery.

At the same time, they’ve rigged things to destroy the independent, criminal “banks” that run the numbers. How? Well, as it turns out, on the 4th of July, everyone plays “776” as a sort of patriotic good luck charm. So Morse and Tucker have arranged for the number to hit, which will bankrupt all of the banks. Unfortunately for Morse, his brother Leo (Thomas Gomez) runs a small bank, and will be destroyed when he is bankrupted.

The two of them have a difficult relationship. Leo sacrificed everything for his younger brother, and Joe hasn’t done much for Leo to benefit. And so in a bid to make amends, Joe arranges for Leo to be in charge of the new bank that will take over when Ben Tucker moves in and controls all of the numbers action in the city. He does this by pleading, coercion, and by forcing the police to raid his brother’s bank. He also makes time with Leo’s former secretary, Doris (Beatrice Pearson) and avoids advances from Ben Tucker’s exotic wife Edna (Marie Windsor).

As I said earlier, Garfield’s character couldn’t be more different in this film. Where in Postman he fought against his baser urges unsuccessfully, in this film, he jumps into his vices with both feet, trumpeting that he is a bad man not subject to fits of morality or conscience. His voiceover narration, in fact, makes it plain that we wants to win over Doris not by pretending to be an innocent adrift in a vicious world, but as a willing shark snapping at smaller prey. And he does this with a predatory joy that is truly wonderful to watch.

Of course, since this if film noir, everything goes to hell in a handbasket by the end. The guilty, and some of the innocent, are punished by the time the final scene plays out. That’s expected—that’s the entire point of a film noir, after all. Seeing the bad guys get their comeuppance, even those we have come to like or sympathize with—is where the catharsis in these films comes in. Crime, in film noir, never pays, regardless of the reason or the intent.

It is very much to my detriment that I had not really heard of John Garfield before tonight. I’ll put this plainly—the man could act. Two reasons have kept him from being rightfully regarded as one of the true giants of the days of classic Hollywood. First, his career was significantly affected by HUAC despite his not being a communist. Second, tragically, he died at 39.

As it turns out, these are Garfield’s only two films on The List. But this is a guy who I will seek out from this point forward. You should do the same. You won’t be disappointed.

Why to watch The Postman Always Rings Twice: It may be the purest noir ever made.
Why not to watch: That title is quite a stretch.

Why to watch Force of Evil: John Garfield is the man.
Why not to watch: It’s too short.