Homework Movie - Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966)

The French Heist movie Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) has everything you can ask for in a film noir heist film. A criminal that has escaped prison, police following the moves of the major players with such a cool attitude, a femme fatale who's in love with the hardened criminal, and a score that's worth the risk. It's the way the Jean-Pierre Melville crafted this movie that makes it a must see for anyone that enjoys crime stories.

In beautiful black & white film, Melville composes wonderfully long scenes of flight from prison, sets the mood in both planning scenes with the gangsters and the romantic interlude with Gu (our main protagonist played by Lino Ventura) and Manouche (his love interest played by Christine Fabrega). The cool Inspector Blot doesn't skip a beat when in the room with criminals covering for their partners in crime nor does he break a sweat when interrogating them once he's got them in custody.

Melville cleverly goes between the criminals telling what they are going to do and the police showing where things might be happening to give a duel narrative for the audience to follow the story along without seeming to spoon feed the material. The whole time line for the story takes a little over a months time and the title cards tell us when everything's going down to keep track. The added time on the departure is worth the risk for Gu as he needs the money to travel, so he decides to do one last score for a large sum of money. However, he doesn't know all the players until it's too late.

We watched another Melville movie in class that had similar subject matter. In Le Doulos every character in it was two faced. Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot showed the desperation of a man that was released from prison and couldn't find any other work but manual labor. The struggles he had to make ends meet were the least of his worries in the field. Every turn he had issues from the co-workers to the location itself being dangerous.

Homework Movie - Written on the Wind (1956)

"A whiskey bottle is about all you'd kill"

For our examination of the Suburbs Gone Haywire, we took a look at some movies that showed how house wives sleep with their bosses or husbands friends, guys that are stepping out on their wives, spending their family's inheritance before the parents are dead, and a lot of the mixed bag of other Noir topics. Written on the Wind is a family of wealthy siblings and their relationships with the parents, and themselves. We've got an alcoholic, a straying wife, a frisky sister and the best friend that has to endure it all with a strong sense of friendship.

Douglas Sirk directed Written on the Wind about half way through his career, and it shows. The whole movie is very well crafted from the story to the settings and the casting. This was done for Universal Studios, which might mean that he was able to have a larger budget. With the cast he had, Including Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall which both already had very successful movie careers before starting this picture, led this wonderful yet tragic look into people with more money than sense.

Movies like this one prove that even when times were supposed to be simpler, there was understandings that people didn’t all have it together. Along with movies like Crime of Passion, where a young woman leaves the family business to find love with a detective then to feel unsatisfied when he's not moving up in his career, Written on the wind shares a look into complacency or the lack thereof.

Be careful not to take a slug to the belly, be happy with what you

Homework Movie - Chinatown (Revised review)

When someone wants to get dirt on his or her spouse affairs or someone they are doing business with that they don't trust, the call Jake Gittes. So when JJ is confronted by not one, but two woman as Evelyn Mulwray, he gets just a bit confused and wants to get to the bottom of this. So begins Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Solving that case of mistaken identity wraps Jake up into a messy case of murder and politics.

Roman Polanski directed this movie in 1974, twenty years after making his first movies. By this time Polanski had crafted a great storytelling technique and a great visual style that was very imaginative. The use of long camera shots and mirror tricks gives the audience the impression that they too are watching someone as a detective.

When everyone's a suspect, there's no one to trust. Everyone in this movie has an agenda involving the water and Gittes has to sort it all out before he loses his whole nose. Fingers are being pointed in every which direction and Gittes complicates things when he get personal with the real Mrs. Mulwray late in the story.

Detectives and reporters work in the same way in the movies we've watched this week. They check their facts against news clips and photos, talk to the right (or wrong) people, and then they get their big payoff in either a check from their employer (people of interest), or by capturing the correct person for the now solved murder. Each protagonist is obsessed with solving their crime (Chinatown) or getting their story (Shock corridor) so much that it takes over their life.

Homework Movie - On Dangerous Ground (1952)

On Dangerous Ground starts off with a very rough and tumble look at a sharp but very tough police detective on the force named Jim Wilson. He been suspended a few times for being too rough with the captives and his captain is about to kick him off the force when a case comes up that will get Wilson out of the city for a few days on a errant case involving a murder suspect. Robert Ryan plays Wilson, a man who's not afraid to get into it with the bad guys, comes off as a bad guy himself, even to his partners.

Mostly known for his directing of Rebel Without a cause, Nicolas Ray had made over three decades of movies with a darker, underbelly of life, approach. This movie takes our hero from his place of business in the city to the mountainous country of Colorado to find a killer on the lose. When he gets there, Wilson is teamed up with the local father of the deceased to find his daughter's killer. This brings him to the cabin in the snowy mountains of Mary, who's own brother is the prime suspect in the case. It's Mary's strong will and determination that convinces Wilson to hear out Mary's plea to capture her brother, rather than killing him on the spot. Never once did her disability come into the thought of Wilson when it came time to tell Mr. Brent to back off.

The major contrast of the city from the mountains played a part in softening the hardened police detective. He was genuinely concerned for Mary's safety once he learned that she was blind, despite her reassurance that she would be fine. She even went to search for her brother once she realized he was their suspect.

In all of this week’s movies, the bad guys were nicely captured and the story wraps up neat at the end of each movie. It wasn't until later on when crooks would be able to get away and that would be how the movie would end. Justice was served in this case, as in the rest of the weeks movies. Even in the Big Heat where the crime spread into the police force, the straight cop finds a way to figure out just who to trust in the department and smoked out the crooked cops all the way to the top.

Homework Movie - Night of the Hunter

"They abide and they endure" - Mrs. Cooper in The Night of the Hunter

Being born at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Laughton's career was largely as an actor. He has worked in movies as early as the 1930's, with a few short films earlier in 1928. He has been credited for a handful of writers credits as well as producing credits. His directing credits have gone more often than not uncredited. This is the only movie he has worked on as director that has been credited to him in his 30 plus year career. With a writers credit also, Night of the Hunter stands to be an amazing testament to his abilities for story telling through film.

Based on the Davis Grubb novel of the same name written in 1953, this movie portrays a murdering priest that finds his victims while in prison listening to death row criminals about their remaining families. This story and subsequent movie was based on events taken from headlines from Grubb's hometown of Moundsville, West Virginia.

As for the headliner, Robert Mitchum, he was the show's main attraction. As the underhanded Harry Powell, he got to play the worst type of bad guy in my opinion: a crooked preacher that kills women for their dead con husband's stolen money. If there's an example of two wrongs don't make a right, it's certainly this one. The children in the story are fully aware of this from the beginning and Father Powell doesn't want to have anything of it. When anyone is around he and the children he's just as nice as a summer's day, but get him alone with the boy and he's on him to spill the beans as to where the stashed money is with dangerous results. Mitchum has been on both sides of good and evil in other movies, but this character was such a memorable bad guy, with his tattoos on his finger and the story that he told to go with 'em, that I really felt for the kids.

When the kids take off down the river alone, their story seemed hopeless til they came to the old mother hen, played by Lillian Gish. She took in the kids as if they were her own from the moment she saw the two. This wasn't her first time taking in stray kids. She was very skeptical from the moment she heard of Mr. Powell's appearance. It took one word from John to get her to see what a wicked man Powell really was.

This story of good versus evil takes it's twist at the end with a juxtaposed picture of the evil preacher signing sweet songs staring down the house where Mrs. Cooper sits with a shot gun in hand to protect "Her" children from harms way. And just like a mother duck and her chicks, they all fall in line walking home after the trial of Mr. Powell just in time for Christmas.

Of the killers we've seen this week, Mitchum's character didn't favor the gun as did others, including Arthur Frantz's The Sniper. He used the switchblade when he wanted to do his dirty work. But as a whole, there was something very sinister about each of the men hunting down women or children in these films. As a part of film noir, the heavy dark aspects are played til the end of the movies teetering the balance of good versus evil until the very end, where the audience is never quite sure who's going to be the victor. In the case of Night of the Hunter, the children (innocence) wins as they are rewarded with a new family.

Homework Movie - Fury - Fritz Lang

At every turn in this movie, it seemed to go from bad to worse in no time at all. The couple start at a separation that was supposed to be temporary that lasted longer due to a misunderstanding. As the movie progressed, so did the game of telephone that was happening between townsfolk and the authorities. It doesn't stop there when the town begins to form the furious mob (Thus the title, Fury). Spencer Tracy plays the wrongfully accused Joe that turns his calm demeanor into a vengeful protagonist when he is suspected of being burned to death by the town that took actions into their own hands for a crime that Joe didn't commit.

What I saw in this movie was a town full of people that wanted nothing more than to busy themselves with other people's business and when that wasn't enough, they took it to extremes and it got out of hand. To make matters worse, the protagonist doesn't even try to make things right for himself with the town after escaping what was supposed to be his death. Instead he gets his two brothers to file a lawsuit with the DA to charge them all with the murder of Joe that never happened.

I enjoyed this movie for the pacing of the action. It didn't really ever stop. There was always something going on that had me actually catching myself trying to keep up. The story was easy to follow, as were most of the films of that day, looking back now. Fritz Lang didn't attempt to use any fancy camera tricks in this movie, not to say that he hadn't before or since. This movie happened to be a more straight forward movie and didn't rely on them for the affect on the audience.

Homework Movie - Blade Runner - In Theater Screening

I've watched Blade Runner now a few times to prepare for this evenings live screening in my local theater. I've rented out the room and posted an event for my friends and The Vine Cinema has put the listing on their website. I chose to screen the 1997 Director's cut of the movie based on the few audience members that I spoke with before the screening took place. That was the fan favorite despite the absence of the monologue during the opening.

Watching Harrison Ford in this role was amazing. Being someone who grew up on Indiana Jones and Han Solo, Blade Runner wasn't something I was allowed to watch because I was too young at the time. I did get to see the 1997 version when I worked at the now closed Tower Records. It was in our "cult" movie section and that was a favorite area for my rentals when I worked there.

This movie was the most expensive movie I watched for class the whole semester, but it was worth every penny. I rented out a theater, printed flyers to get an audience, and lost so much sleep that it will take the entire winter break to catch up. If I could make a movie like this of my own to bring an audience together would be such a great moment for me. I've always enjoyed movies and to see others who like them as much as I do was great.

Homework Movie - Chinatown

Chinatown has too many elements to watch it in one setting. There were some interesting uses of mirrors and camera angles to show thing in the mirrors in the beginning. Later on that theme came around to me when Gittes broke the rearview mirror on Mrs. Mulwray’s car.

I noticed some minor technical errors in the movie’s climax. When the camera panned to see the policemen and Gittes, the camera bounced a bit like someone knocked into it. After the grandfather/father gets shot he holds his chest but there isn’t any blood and it takes him a long time to even bring his hand up to his chest to hold the “wound”. Also, when Mrs. Mulwray gets shot in the very end the delayed reaction almost seems forced to me. The Horn was sounding way before the girl screamed.

Roman Polanski has made some really interesting movie choices throughout his film career. Not to mention some horrible personal choices. I've had arguments with people about his personal life recently, but that doesn't mean that his movies are bad.

In Class Movie - Lady From Shanghi

When we watched The Lady from Shanghai in class, I was really excited to see a movie with Orson Welles that most people my age haven't seen. I own Citizen Cane and The Third Man on DVD, so when Orson Wells had his accent in the movie, that was all that I could see or hear. One scene I remember was when Wells' costar Rita Hayworth was swimming in the ocean, she came out of the water with perfectly coifed hair. I can't imagine how that would happen. In any case, this movie was written, produced, directed and even stared in by Orson Wells.