Larceny (1948)

Dir: George Sherman
SIFF Theater

A fast paced film about con men that are trying to swindle a war widow out of money by building a phony war memorial. It features a top notch cast lead by John Payne, Dan Duryea doing his best at being Dan Duryea, and Shelley Winters in one of her best performances ever as Duryea's girlfriend that is secretly with Payne. The story is incredibly tight even if it's slightly predictable. Working with a script by Bowers, Sherman has very little to do to make this one a home run, but helps it along by making a quickly paced picture. Like many other noir leads, John Payne came from a song and dance background which helps him to be a sympathetic bad guy. Fun fact: Payne was apparently the first person to buy the rights to James Bond novel and planned on playing him, obviously this wasn't to come to fruition. A travesty that this, along with most of the others at the festival, is not available on DVD.
Another great print and presentation to end the first double feature, and I had a better seat since some of the audience left.

8/10

Pitfall (1948)

Dir: Andre De Toth
SIFF Theater

The first film shown this year at the Noir City Film Fest and the first of four that featured the writing of Bill Bowers, the revelation of the experience for me. While Bowers' name wasn't credited on every film or it was a shared credit, there was no mistaking his witty, rapid dialog. Not only was it some of the most memorable writing I have seen in a long time, it just wasn't clever for it's own sake, all the dialog was character specific. The story of Pitfall follows an insurance man (played by Dick Powell who also produced in a successful attempt to change his image) that is bored with his routine. He meets Lizabeth Scott's Mona Stevens and is smitten. He decides to break the rules of his job and also withholds some key information from her, like that he's married to Sue (Jane Wyatt) and has a son. To complicate matters even further, Raymond Burr plays a private eye that is obsessed with Mona and is a violent goon with a sadistic streak. What set this apart from alot of others in the genre, was the fact that Lizabeth Scotts' character would normally be portrayed as the femme fatale that gets Dick Powell into all kinds of trouble, but here it is the opposite. Once Mona Stevens finds out Powell's insurance man is married, she immediately ends the relationship, it is Powell's bad decisions that forces the action. If I had any complaints, it's that De Toth tells the story almost exclusively in medium close-ups and a lot of the conversations look like a tennis match of back and forth editing.
The print looked great and the whole presentation was excellent with Eddie Muller introducing the movie with tons of great info.

8/10

The Big Combo (1955)

Dir: Joseph H. Lewis
Image DVD OOP

I actually watched this about a week ago, but the next day I left for Seattle for the Noir City Film Fest, so I never got a chance to post anything on it. I had seen this one before and was very fond of it, I was glad to see my memory and opinion of it held up well. Cornel Wilde plays a cop that has it out for Richard Conte's Mr. Brown, a guy with a lot of money and power, and Wilde wants to know how he got it. Wilde is willing to do just about anything to catch Conte up to no good, but has had almost no success over the years. His boss is ready to pull his budget and he tells Wilde to move on. Wilde finally gets a chance at Conte when his dame, Susan, attempts suicide and says a little too much in a weakened state. (In an interesting side note, Susan is played by Jean Wallace who herself attempted suicide twice in the 1940's and then later went on to marry star Cornel Wilde in 1951, the two stayed together for thirty years.) A name Susan gives is enough to uncover a murder plot to keep Wilde's character going. Conte is pitch perfect as Brown delivering a powerhouse of a speech to a boxer he has interest in that sets the tone for the film and tells you everything you need to know about his character. The most memorable scenes, however, involve Brian Donlevy and his hearing aid, just watch it. Lewis is best known for Gun Crazy (1950), but in many ways, I prefer this film. Gun Crazy is often cited for it's association of sex to violence, with The Big Combo, Lewis hints at a desire to explore homosexuality as it has been cited that two supporting characters, played by Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman, seem to be in a relationship. Even though they are muscle that kill for Mr. Brown, they are shown as being a fiercely loyal duo with a suggestion of a positive coupling, making the film all the more interesting.
The movie is available from at least three sources, I have only seen the Image disc. The transfer is solid if not perfect and the other two are from Geneon and Alpha, this makes me believe the reviews I have read that state that this is the only edition worth watching. There are no extra features and the disc is out of print, but if you're interested in this one or already a fan, I would pay the extra for the Image disc.

8/10

Night Train Murders (1975)

Dir: Aldo Lado
Blue Underground DVD

In general, I think horror films are made for escapist viewing. They provide a sort of catharsis for things we internalize and can help us overcome fears. Audiences tend to laugh at violent moments, often to relieve tension, and at the end of the day, we feel safe and head off to bed. Lado's Night Train Murders does absolutely nothing to support this generalization. This is often mentioned as Euro sleaze and does contain sequences that are most definitely sleazy. But to write this film off as mere exploitation is to do it a great disservice. While it's not a movie I would recommend, to anyone!!, it just may be the most effective movie of it's kind ever made. If you're familiar with Bergman's The Virgin Spring or Craven's The Last House on the Left, then you can tell where this film is headed from the start. We see two thugs mugging a Santa and causing chaos intermingled with two young girls heading home for the winter break so obviously the two duo's are on a collision course. The variation on the story is that it takes place on a train and that the two thugs are just that, hoodlums. That is until they meet an educated, affluent, middle-classed woman that feeds her own depravity by directing the boys into increasingly disturbing acts involving the college girls. What makes the film both repulsive and impressive, is just how shockingly competent a director Lado is. Not once could you possibly laugh or make a joke about what is happening on screen. In this respect it is the exact opposite movie that Last House on the Left is, which may be the most incompetent movie ever made. Director Lado states in the interview accompanying the film, that he has never seen Craven's film and doesn't mention Bergman's at all! If this is true, it makes Craven's film that much worse. Now the film follows all of the same plot points, including the ending where the villains accidentally run into the parents of one of the victims. Revenge is exacted, but not in such a way where we as the audience feel satisfied, merely the futility of the situation. Lado flips our own wants and expectations by making the real villain the middle-class, where the woman on the train and a well-to-do gent, that passes by and participates in the horrible deeds, are the real reason for all the violence but feel and act that they are above being held accountable. We never get true justice, just more senseless violence. Credit certainly has to go to Lado for getting his point across but the final piece is incredibly difficult to watch. As I stated, I could never recommend this to someone, but if you're in to remakes of The Virgin Spring, then don't pass this one up.
The difficulty in watching the horrendous violence perpetrated upon the girls makes this one difficult to assign a numerical rating too, so I'll give a slight cop-out and just drop it in the middle.

5/10

Quest For Fire (1981)

Dir: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Fox Movie Channel

I have always been fascinated by films and filmmakers that could create story without the use of dialog. Dassin's Rififi and Svankmajer's Conspirators of Pleasure come to mind as two of the best examples. This film certainly would fall into this category as their is no spoken dialog that is recognizable. In case you're unaware of this one, it's about a clan of cavemen that lose their fire to another more primitive looking clan and then must send three of their own on a, you guessed it, QUEST FOR FIRE! Everett McGill (Big Ed from Twin Peaks!) and Ron Perlman star as two of the neanderthals that must avoid saber-tooth tigers, fight other cro-mags, and tame woolly mammoths on their journey for precious flame. Where the other films succeed is in their ability to tell a gripping story and create tension without the need for words at all. Quest for Fire's story is so easy to follow, that aspect of the film is not all that interesting. The more interesting thing is that novelist Anthony Burgess was brought in to create the cavemen's grunts. It's certainly not a bad movie but at some points can't help but feel like an overly long gimmick.

5/10

Pigs & Battleships (1961)

Dir: Shohei Imamura
Criterion DVD

This is the story of Kinta, the lowest man on the Yakuza totem pole in a town built around the largest American Naval base near Tokyo in post-war Japan. Kinta's job is to take care of the pigs, whose fate and ownership always seem to be in question. Kinta's girlfriend is Haruko. She wants Kinta to run away with her and get a low-paying but respectable factory job some where so they can leave this life of filth and crime, where Haruko's own mother pushes her to be a prostitute or mistress to an American officer. Kinta, however, wants no part in a factory job and yearns to be a band manager or pimp, as these things are held in higher regard by his peers. Imamaura portrays the Americans as brutes and morons that have no concern for the Japanese people while the Japanese are portrayed as petty, bickering back-stabbers that can only aspire to more fruitful lives of crime. Haruko is the only main character with a sensible head and even she makes some decisions that she must persevere through before taking matters into her own hands. This is a recurring theme with Imamura and one of his best traits, his ability to create women characters that can overcome their situations. Imamura is a masterful director that can inject a bit of dark humor into these depressing situations without undermining the intent. Things are so bad for these people that what else is there to do sometimes except to laugh? The title Pigs & Battleships can be taken at face value but is also a metaphor for how the Japanese are being treated. They are actually trying to buy food scraps from the battleships to eat. Imamura frames the scenes in village, and chose to use a telephoto lens in close-ups, to give a real sense of claustrophobia, like these characters are living in pens themselves.
This disc is part of the Pigs, Pimps, and Prostitutes set from Criterion and I believe it's essential viewing. This disc has an hour long documentary on the director from French television and an interview/ analysis about his specific film with critic Tony Rayns.

8/10

A Serious Man (2009)

Dir: The Coen Brothers
Universal DVD

Once upon a time, the Coen Brothers seemed like a mischievous secret to me. They made the kind of films that grandparents couldn't understand and geeks could quote til you wanted to vomit. With A Serious Man, I felt like I was watching a movie by guys that got old and lost their sense of absurdity that made them so unique. Gone were jokes about video artists and in their place were jokes about draining a sist or getting high at a Bat Mitzvah, yawn. The movie concerns itself with the destruction and re-construction of a Jewish family in the late sixties. The characters are all pitiful, pathetic, and selfish. It has been said that the film is semi-autobiographical. If that's true, this may be one of the most depressing films of all time and truly an exercise in cynicism. All this sounds like I really hated the movie, but mostly I was just disappointed in how uninvolved I was at every moment. It was like breathing or drinking water, totally forgettable.

4/10