Category Archives: Movies

French New Wave Noir: Elevator to the Gallows

 

The 1958 film Elevator to the Gallows is often considered one of the foundational films of the French New Wave of cinema and is also a dark cynical noir with an underlying theme of futility.

Julien Tavernier, an ex-paratrooper and now an executive under a corrupt businessman, Simon Carala, plots with his lover Florence to murder his boss. The film opens with the murder and reveals Julien’s careful planning, but an ill-timed telephone call disrupts the plot initiating a chain-reaction of events that over the course of a single night cascades into more murder and tragedy.

Adapted from a novel of the same name Elevator to the Gallows is a film with very little fat on it. Within its slim 91-minute running time Gallows presents fully realized characters and explores the futility of attempting to fully controls events. Julien’s plan it meticulous and intelligent but with one stray event is crumbles as chaos revealing chaos as the ultimate determiner of our fates.

Many low-budget noirs utilized inexpensive jazz scores, but Gallows stands apart from these with its improvised jazz score by legendary musical Miles Davis. Filmed on location and at night the movie has a realism that adds weight and poignancy to the doomed lovers. The cinematography often relies on short lenses, isolating the characters from their out of focus backgrounds, visually reflecting their lonely existence.

Elevator to the Gallows is currently streaming, with bonus content, on the Criterion Channel.

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Night and The City

 

Sunday night’s movie this week was another classic noir Night and The City, starring, Richard Widmark, and Gene Tierney with a standout support-role performance by Herbert Lom.

An ambitious but two-bit street con man, Harry Fabian (Widmark) dreams of making a name for himself, of becoming someone respected and admired but his life is one of running from debtors and hustling tourists for unscrupulous nightclubs that drain wallets with watered-down drinks and women hired to keep them drinking. Harry’s girlfriend Mary (Tierney) is dubious of Harry’s constantly failing get-rich-quick schemes but remains hopelessly in love with him. A chance encounter while hustling for nightclub clients leads harry to believe that he can launch an enterprise to control wrestling entertainment in all of London while neutralizing Kristo (Lom) the organized crime figure currently behind the exhibitions. when things inevitably begin to go wrong Harry’s skills at fast-talk and quick thinking are the only factors between his success and Kristo’s vengeance.

With its lack of sympathetic or moral characters, save for the ineffectual Mary, Night and The City is a perfect example of the dark, cynical tones found in true film noir. While not as depraved as Double Indemnity’s Walter Neff, Harry is a morally compromised character not unlike Squid Game’sprotagonist Gi-hun who steals from his own mother to fuel his gambling addiction. Unlike Gi-hun Harry has no redemptive arc but instead as he struggles against fate and fortune sinks ever deeper into his own immoral quicksand.

I’ve seen Richard Widmark give stellar performances and I’ve seen him ‘phone them in’ when he has no respect for the material he is in, here he is at his best form, always charming, always fully committed to the character, managing to invoke empathy for a character that in actual life it would be best to avoid. That said the standout performance to me was Herbert Lom as the respectable gangster Kristo. My principle cinematic experience with Lom has been his work with Blake Edwards in various comedies where Lom player broad exaggerated characters seeing this early turn as a nearly sociopathic heavy is quite a revelation. Kristo is a cold and precise character with only room in his heart for his beloved father and when he turns to revenge there can be no doubt that with Kristo is will be achieved.

Night and The City, while not well received upon its release has claimed its well-deserved place among the best of noirs from the classic period. The film is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their Fox Noir collection.

Please consider purchasing My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge which is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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Nightmare Alley (1947)

 

Before I get into my thoughts on this classic noir just a note that as this is the busy season for my day-job with loads of overtime my posting here will be sparser and erratic and after the new year.

Nightmare Alley, adapted from the novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham, is the relatively rare noir that boasts a cast of top studio leads, A-picture budgeting, and promotion, unlike most noirs that were either studio B-pictures, that is they played the second half of a double bills, or produced independently of the major studios. Tyrone Power, looking to expand his roles beyond dashing heroic types, plays Stan Carlisle, an amoral carnival worker willing to use and discard people in his quest for money and fame. From lowly beginnings in a second-rate travelling carnival, complete with an off-screen geek biting the heads of chickens, Stanton cons, charms, and connives his way to the top of the nightclub circuit as a ‘mentalist’ but like Icarus the higher he flies his danger grows.

Nightmare Alley is a dark and cynical film even for the genre of film noir. While there are ‘good’ characters in the story their effects are limited, and Stanton uses them as ruthlessly as anyone else he encounters. It is perhaps a fault of the film that a few early scenes telegraph the films ending a little too precisely or perhaps that is simply the danger of a writer watching the filmmakers palm the card because we know the tricks played on the rubes. Either way Nightmare Alley, with is impressive cast and excellent production values combined with a thematically compelling story about the cost of an ambition is a classic noir worth watching.

In December of 2021, next month as I write this, Guillermo del Torro, reportedly inspired by the novel and not the classic film, will release his adaptation for theatrical distribution starring Bradley Cooper as Stan Carlisle.

Nightmare Alley (1947) is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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Eternals

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe returned to solely theatrical distribution this weekend with the release of the Kirby inspired, grand cosmically themed movie Eternals. Sadly, Eternals is the MCU’s first unqualified miss of an entry into their massively successful and expanding set of shared stories.

Boasting a roster of ten powered cosmic beings the Eternals were dispatched to Earth at the dawn of human civilization to protect humanity from extraterrestrial monstrosities Deviants that feed on intelligent lifeforms. Having extinguished the deviant threat in the 16th century the Eternals now mission-less scattered around the globe only to be surprised by the return of their ancient foe a heralding a greater threat and a darker truth about their mission.

The reasons why Eternals did not work for me falls into three major elements.

1) Too many major characters. With the limited scope of a feature film, even one with a running time of just over two and half hours, it is very difficult to have that many characters with their own arcs and issues. I found the plotlines that were emotionally resonate for me sidelined and given only cursory attention. There was only a surface treatment of interesting characters and as such only surface emotional engagement.

2) Too much mythology for a single story. Eternals opens with a block of text giving the audience backstory on the situation, then several times stops for more extended blocks of exposition revising the history and lore of the story. Again, and again narrative moment is killed in the name of exposition.

3) Spectacle over story. Eternals has several large set-piece special effects battles, each more massive in scale than the previous but flash/bang doesn’t create emotional meaning. Whose yet there are times when the filmmakers simply cheat the audience. Presenting one thing as reality directly contradicting a few moments later for the sake of a ‘reveal.’ In the theaters I sat in none of the moments evoked much of an audience response.

Despite an engaging and talented cast Eternals fails to deliver on a story that can make audiences care about the events on the screen. It is a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

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Improving Dune (2021)

 

Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed Dune, seeing it twice, once as the theater and again at home, on the same day. It is an excellent adaptation of half the novel but there is room for some improvement.

A common complaint is that the film doesn’t feel like it has an ending but rather simply stops. This is because there is no arc for the character Paul and the final act lacks an objective for the protagonist to strive for. Both of these elements are simple fixes that could have been done in ADR and maybe a couple of pick-up shoots.

First, when Duncan is telling Paul about the Fremen  it is here that they should have established that the Fremen were bribing the Spacing Guild with spice to keep the skies free of spy satellites. This gets glossed over far too quickly in the current edit.

Next, when Paul and his mother Jessica escape, their guards they should make it clear their goal, now that the House has fallen and the planet is under the control of their enemies, is to make contact with the Fremen to bribe their way off Dune and back to Caladan where they have allies. This give the final act an objective and direction.

In the final scenes after Paul’s duel, the arc is completed when Paul makes the affirmative decision to not run for safety off-world but he will throw his lot with the Fremen. Now there is an emotional payoff to his decision giving the film a better overall shape.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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Last Night in Soho

 

Edgar Wright, director of such films as Shaun of the Dead, andScott Pilgrim vs the World, last week released his psychological/supernatural horror film Last Night in Soho.

Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young woman from the countryside of England coming to London for University to study at an art institute chasing her dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Already obsessed with the swinging sixties and sensitive enough to be aware of her mother’s ghost in mirrors, Ellie is primed for when a living in her new and unfamiliar settings to psychically link with the spirit of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) an outgoing, confident aspiring singer of sixties London. Seemingly a blessing as Ellie draws confidence and inspiration from Sandie things turn dark and terrifying as tragedy of the singer’s life unravels and Ellie learns that the sixties are not as distant as she thought them to be.

Last Night in Soho made for a perfect capper to the spooky season and seeing it on Halloween itself only made the experience that much richer. The film displays Wright’s well-known talent for integrating song with his themes and actions. Dexterous camera work used during Ellie’s visions and reliving of the past create engaging sequences in which the two women, separated by six decades, share the screen and interact without ever spoiling the willing suspension of disbelief. Wright deftly avoids cinematic tropes that would have bordered on titillation while exploring and revealing the misogyny at the heart of Sandie’s tragedy. He and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns also sidestep the traps of presenting men in totality as dangerous predators with Ellie’s dependable friend John (Michael Ajao). Last Night in Soho also gives us the final screen performance of same Diana Rigg, a favorite among younger fans for her work as the queen of thorns in HBO’s Game of Thrones but known to us older fans for decades of memorable performances.

While the movie has a few well executed ‘jump scares’ this film depends more on mood, suspense, and growing dread than sharp musical queues and graphic kills to achieve its effect. If movies such as The Haunting or The Witch are to your liking, then Last Night in Soho may very well be for you.

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Movie Review: Dune (2021)

Acclaimed French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, whose films include such diverse fare as Polytechnique, a film that explores the events of a mass shooting in Canada, to time-twisted SF film Arrivalhas directed his passion project, an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 SF novel, Dune.

Dune, set in the distant year 10191, tells the story of teenage Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) the only son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), a lord whose growing popularity with the galactic feudal empire threatens the reigning emperor and in engaged in a generations long feud with a rival noble house the Harkonnens, led by the evil Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard.) Ordered to take possession of Baron Harkonnen’s prize planet, Dune, the sole source of a psychoactive substance, spice, that extents life, enhances mental capabilities, and makes faster-than-light travel possible. On Dune the Atreides hope to secure an alliance with its native populations, a stern, fierce people the Fremen, before coming war the Harkonnens erupts.

Dune is a deep and complex novel with extensive world building on the scale of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Herbert crafted deep history which even in the novel is only lightly touched on that propels the cultures and characters of his story. Villeneuve serving not only as director but also as one of three credited writers on the screenplay manages this impressive feat of presenting this detailed setting enough that it is comprehensible but without ever letting the story drown in exposition. He has managed to visualize aspects of the novel, such as the Ornithopters, aircraft that fly by beating wings, that when I read the book I found difficult to picture. Because the novel is so long and so deep the story has been split into two movies and this one covers only the first half of the story, though the filmmakers found a logical and emotionally satisfying place to end this section. There is absolutely no doubt that there remains much story to tell but this film also ends at a point that can be an ending.

The production design and cinematography are excellent presenting a thoroughly realized lived-in universe and nearly every shot, every frame is a painting imbued with a deeper meaning that just stark visual information. Dune is an accomplishment well worth seeing on the big screen if you feel safe to do so but even on your home television it should be watched.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references.

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Adaptations

 

Tomorrow I go to see the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic Sci-Fi novel Dune. This work has been adapted twice before in 1984 by idiosyncratic director David Lynch for Italian Producer Dino de Laurentiis. This version was a critical and financial failure. Rumor have reported that the first cut of this film was something like five hours long, but the theatrical release was just two hours and seventeen minutes and that the heavy use of voice over in the final cut was a product of this butchering. Whatever the reasons this film pleased neither those who were new to the story nor the fans of the novel.

In 2000 the Sci-Fi network aired a miniseries adaptation of the novel titled Frank Herbert’s Dune. The expanded time worked in this adaptation’s favor, but the limited budget and production restrictions held the final product back and while better received than Lynch’s strange yet unforgettable film this too failed to catch fire with fans.

Adaptations are tricky beasts. A novel or short story is a very different medium than a film. One of not inherently superior to the other, both have their strengths and their weaknesses, and it is foolish and unfair to expect an adaptation to be fully faithful to its source material. An adaptation can wildly deviate from the source material and still be a good or even great adaptation if it captures the tone, theme, and heart of the source. Sometimes it’s best to throws out the subplot that enrich a novel but only drag a film down to a slow death. The mafia sub-plot that explains why the mayor will not close Amity’s beaches in jaws is an excellent example. It makes the mayor’s actions more understandable, more like what a person who is facing harm or death might do to make sure they have the money the mob wants, but in a film, it would be too many scenes away from our central characters in which we spin wheels waiting for the plot to get moving again.

We shall have to wait and see if Dune captures the tone, theme, and heart of Herbert’s dense novel. We do know that this adaptation is incomplete, covering only about half the novel and if successful only then will we be allowed to have the whole story.

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Ridley’s Rashomon: The Last Duel

 

The Last Duel, set in 1386, from acclaimed director Ridley Scott is about one of the final Trails by Combat in France to determine the guilt or innocence of a criminal defendant.

Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) challenged and fought his former friend and comrade in arms Jacques Le Gris (Adman Driver) when Jacques denied the charge brought forth by Jean’s wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) that Jacques had raped her.

The film is structured in three chapters, The Truth according to Jean, The Truth according to Jacques, and the Truth according to Marguerite making the script and film very similar to the Japanese classic Rashomon where a samurai and his wife are attacked in a forest by a bandit, the wife raped and the samurai murdered but the events as recounted from four points of view vary widely in their details with objective truth being obscured by each narrator’s ego and subjectivity. Unlike Rashomon, The Last Duel privileges one account as objectively true while leaving the other two as biased betraying the intent of Rashomon’s device and reducing the film to a mere criminal narrative.

That said The Last Duel is an enjoyable film to watch. Scott is one of the most talented directors working today and none of the cast merely walk through their parts, though in my opinion Jodie Comer is leagues ahead of her costars. While have the least amount of narrative drive, Marguerite’s choices do not drive the plot and her absence from all battle and most of the court political scenes mean we are never treated to an objective version of those events, Comer’s choices as an actor make plain her character’s pain and suffering in a world dominated by violent, cruel, and selfish men.

Dariusz Wolki’s cinematography is stark and cold reflecting a medieval setting that shuns the romantic depictions often found in period adventure movies for one the presents that period as one of ugly dirty squalor where even nobles live far less appealing lives than ours today. The combat presented in the warfare and duel scenes is nasty and hard with Scott disfavoring flamboyant theatrical combat for a more grounded approach of men fighting hard for their lives.

The Last Duel while not Scott’s best work is far from his worst and is worth seeing particularly in theaters should your personal vaccinations and community spread allow it.

 

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Scary Season #5: Lamb

 

Lamb — like the meat — is not to everyone’s taste. The A24 Icelandic folk horror is methodically paced taking its time to reveals its characters, its strange, unearthly conceit, and ultimately its grief-stricken heart.

Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Guonason) struggling under a stifling and unspoken grief are a married couple on a potato and sheep ranch in the isolated and austere Icelandic landscape. In the spring a strange and unnatural lamb’s birth upsets their repetitive life as the couple bonds and adopts the lamb as though it were their own child. Ingvar’s brother and failed musician Petur (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson) arrival at the ranch coinciding with Maria’s disposing of the lamb’s sheep birth mother further complicates their lives until in the film’s final scenes mysteries and tragedies are revealed.

Lamb’s pace in deliberate and steady making other slow-burn horror films, such as Robert Eggers The Witch, seem frenetic and hurried in comparison. Director Valdimar Johannsson and Cinematographer Eli Arenson build Lamb out of long take that linger on the characters, their silent reactions, unspoken pain, and the majestic, foreboding, mist-shrouded mysterious mountains thar encircle the ranch, isolating it from the world and its rationality. The landscape presenting Iceland in stark, unforgiving, and yet beautiful images rivals the grandeur John Ford’s work in Monument Valley.

Rapace, who also executively produced the film, plays Maria with an ever-present sense of loss and the choice to present the acclaimed with little make-up displaying her natural freckled face further reinforces the stark cold reality of the film as it embraces a folklore like fantasy at its heart.

Lamb is not a film for someone seeking high adrenaline bloody ‘kills,’ but rather for those inclined for a sedate but steadily a growing sense of dread.

Lamb is currently playing in select theaters.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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