I took James Ellroy's advice -- it didn't come directly from him, you understand -- and checked out "Plunder Road," one of his all-time favorite crime films that was included in Monday's post.
It's a great-looking, pared-down gritty drama made in 1957, obviously on a small budget. The cast includes the great Elisha Cook Jr., as well as lesser known actors Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris, Stafford Repp and Steven Ritch.
"Plunder Road" starts with a train robbery that takes place in a driving rain. There's little dialog for the first 10 minutes or so, and what there is starts out with each robber's thoughts expressed in voice over. It's one of "Plunder Road"'s few unconvincing moments, and fortunately it doesn't go on for long.
The heist itself is carried out just about wordlessly, as any good heist ought to be. Then the gangsters split into three groups, each driving a truck with a third of the loot packed inside. It doesn't take long for things to go wrong, which is inevitable in a heist movie -- if the crooks got away without a hitch there would be no story.
They point their trucks toward California, which is 900 miles away, and split up rather than travel together. The crooks try to blend in with everyday traffic, which works for a while. The great irony is that while the escaping robbers are barreling down the open road toward California -- a trip that for many Americans is the very symbol of freedom -- they're trapped in a claustrophobic journey that is likely to have no good end.
The final twist in the gang's getaway plan -- a way to smuggle the ill-gotten wealth out of the country -- helps lift this film above others in this genre.
Like "Detour" and "DOA," two exquisite, low-budget noir road movies, "Plunder Road" gets a lot of mileage out of a simple but well constructed story. You can stream it on Netflix.
Crime Fiction writer James Ellroy says these are his favorite 10 crime films. His opinion is worth paying attention to because he knows a thing or two about what makes a good crime story.
The first one on his list is based on one of his novels -- not exactly a humble position to take, but "L.A. Confidential" is a very good movie.
I'm not sure why he chose "Godfather II" and not "Godfather I." I've heard many say that they prefer the sequel to the original, but I have to hold Part I in higher esteem.
I haven't seen many of the rest, but that's the point of putting together top 10 lists. You'll perhaps find a good film you might never have seen otherwise. Time to log into Netflix and put some on order.
Here are Ellroy's top 10:
L.A. Confidential (1997)
The Godfather: Part II (1974)
The Prowler (1951)
Crime Wave (1953)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
The Killing (1956)
Plunder Road (1957)
The Lineup (1958)
711 Ocean Drive (1950)
Vertigo (1958).
It's on DVD, of course, and you can stream some of it on Netflix, which is true of a lot of TV shows. Frankly I've always enjoyed the show, no matter how wooden the acting was, regardless of how embarrassingly hokey the story might have been. And, man, it gave new meaning to the words wooden and hokey.
Shot in documentary format, it's the least lifelike 30 minutes of police drama TV you're ever liable to see.
It's hard to pin down the Dragnet appeal. Others tried to do something similar, but never quite equaled the Dragnet mystique. There was Broderick Crawford in "Highway Patrol," but that didn't grab the mass market/cult following that the Jack Webb-created police drama had, and continues to maintain. Ditto for private detective Peter Gunn, or the 1960s series "77 Sunset Strip" and "The FBI," both with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Could it be the terrible lighting that makes it so stupidly appealing? In the 1950s Dragnet was in black and white, and it looked like a noir crime drama. Then the show made a comeback in the 1960s and it looked like a set the Partridge Family could walk onto and not appear out of place. You can always spot a Jack Webb-produced police drama (Dragnet 1967, Adam 12) because every scene is lighted like a sitcom -- bright, no shadows.
Dragnet 1967 worked to erase any trace of doubts about the L.A.P.D. There were no shadowy figures, except for the shady characters and scum that Webb and Harry Morgan always brought to justice.
Residing in the "so bad it's good" category for decades, Dragnet appealed to the portion of its audience who took it at face value, and those who laughed up their sleeves at the clench-teeth, over the top drama of it all.
It was especially good whenever Jack Webb, as Joe Friday, would tell off the punks and ne'er do wells he so loathed. Or, in voice-over how he'd rattle off an unintentionally hilarious roll call of supposed slang names for various illegal drugs -- did anyone ever call LSD "The Hawk"? C'mon, Jack, get real.
My first reaction to Dragnet was that it stinks. But it's so funny and strangely compelling that I kept watching. And I still am. Officers Joe Friday and Bill Gannon are the most reliable, upright citizens you're ever likely to meet in Los Angeles, and that's oddly reassuring.
June 10 marks the fifth anniversary of the controversial "Sopranos" episode, "Made in America," and fans of the show are still grousing about how it ended -- or didn't end.
Tony and family eat onion rings in a New Jersey diner. For once, no one seated at the Soprano family table is driving the action forward -- they're just making small talk as any family would. It's soothing at first, but the scene slowly becomes unsettling. We get a nagging suspicion that an outside force is about to rain terror upon the clan.
The family is waiting for daughter Meadow to show up, and the camera shifts to the street outside. Meadow struggles to parallel park, bumping into the curb time and time again. Tension mounts.
Back inside, a thuggish looking guy in a Members Only jacket hovers around the Soprano table. The camera shifts to Tony's point of view. We expect to see Meadow coming through the door as Tony would see her. We see one more shot from a third-person point of view of Tony looking up, and the scene goes black and deathly silent. Credits roll.
Let the screaming begin.
Many people called it a cheat -- myself included. But after thinking it over I believe I know the answer.
It's obvious that this is a subtle way of showing that Tony got whacked, without actually showing it. There are some good solid pieces of evidence to support this. First, there's the technical stuff about how the all-important scene was set up. Throughout the series the camera seldom shifted to Tony's point of view. This was an exceptional directorial decision that puts us inside of Tony's head. The shift in point of view is a bit unnerving, and signals that a major event is imminent -- we're seeing the last sight that Tony will ever take in.
Another piece of evidence is a scene in an episode earlier of the finale season, "Soprano Home Movies" (#6.13) in which Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri and Tony discuss what it's like to get whacked."You probably don't even hear it when it happens," says Bobby.
And that's just what happens to Tony. Silence ... and then blackness.
Remember, too, that one of Tony's henchmen whacked rival Phil Leotardo in front of his family -- an organized crime no-no. It makes sense that Leotardo's crew would return the favor and bump Tony in front of his brood.
So there you have it. Tony got whacked in the New Jersey diner before he could finish his onion rings. Case closed. I hate to say it, but there will never be a sequel. Let's just move on, shall we?
The Larry Edmunds Bookshop in Hollywood is a cool place to visit, with it's huge assortment of film books, posters and memorabilia. There's a heavy emphasis on vintage cinema throughout the store, so you'll want to stop in sometime and browse the racks.
The shop is going to be the epicenter of film noir cool April 28, when it plays host to authors Alain Silver and James Ursini, who have written some indispensable books on film noir, including their latest, "Film Noir: The Directors." Show up at 5 p.m. on that day and they'll autograph copies of their newest tome.
Then, all you hard-core noir junkies will want to saunter down Hollywood Blvd. to the Egyptian Theater, where a noir double bill will be hitting the screen so hard it might bruise.
SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE
1956, Universal, 103 min, USA, Dir: Arnold Laven
This stepson to ON THE WATERFRONT packs a wallop of its own. An upstart district attorney (Richard Egan) tries to crack the New York waterfront’s mob-enforced code of silence and mete out justice for a murdered whistleblower. Jan Sterling is terrific as the victim’s widow, heading a dynamite supporting cast of familiar and fantastic character actors, including Dan Duryea, Charles McGraw, Sam Levene and Walter Matthau. Lawrence Roman’s fact-based script is vigorously directed by Arnold Laven. NOT ON DVD
EDGE OF THE CITY
1957, Warner Bros., 85 min, USA, Dir: Martin Ritt
Another gritty exploration of life on the Manhattan docks that’s also a powerful look at 1950s race relations. Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes play working-class pals driven apart by ignorance and racism (exemplified by a virulent thug, played brilliantly by Jack Warden). Martin Ritt’s stunning directorial debut, based on Robert Alan Aurthur’s 1955 teleplay “A Man Is Ten Feet Tall.” Not entirely noir, but a smart and suspenseful drama overdue for rediscovery! Trailer
Martin Scorsese, the director's director, names 85 films that you must see if you want to know anything about cinema. As you might expect, the list is heavy in crime films. But there are westerns, war movies, comedies and romances here, too. Read on, and update your Netflix queue.
Ace in the Hole: "This Billy Wilder film
was so tough and brutal in its cynicism that it died a sudden death at
the box office, and they re-released it under the title Big Carnival,
which didn’t help. Chuck Tatum is a reporter who’s very modern--he’ll
do anything to get the story, to make up the story! He risks not only
his reputation, but also the life of this guy who’s trapped in the
mine." 1951 All That Heaven Allows: In this Douglas
Sirk melodrama, Rock Hudson plays a gardener who falls in love with a
society widow played by Jane Wyman. Scandale! 1955 America, America: Drawn directly from
director Elia Kazan’s family history, this film offers a passionate,
intense view of the challenges faced by Greek immigrants at the end of
the 19th century. 1963
An American in Paris: This Vincente Minnelli film, with Gene Kelly, picked up the idea of stopping within a film for a dance from The Red Shoes. 1951 Apocalypse Now: This Francis Ford Coppola
masterpiece is from a period when directors like Brian DePalma, John
Milius, Paul Schrader, Scorsese and others had great freedom—freedom
that they then lost. 1979 Arsenic and Old Lace: Scorsese is a big fan
of many Frank Capra movies, and this Cary Grant vehicle is one of
several that he’s enjoyed with his family at his office screening room.
1944 The Bad and the Beautiful: Vincente
Minnelli directed this film about a cynical Hollywood mogul trying to
make a comeback. It stars Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon and
Dick Powell. 1952 The Band Wagon: “It’s my favorite of the
Vincente Minnelli musicals. I love the storyline that combines Faust and
a musical comedy, and the disaster that results. Tony Hunter, the lead
character played by Fred Astaire, is a former vaudeville dancer whose
time has passed, and who’s trying to make it on Broadway, which is a
very different medium of course. By the time the movie was made, the
popularity of the Astaire/Rogers films had waned, raising the question
of what are you going to do with Fred Astaire in Technicolor? So,
really, Tony Hunter is Fred Astaire--his whole reputation is on the
line, and so was Fred Astaire’s.” 1953 Born on the Fourth of July: Produced by
Universal Pictures under Tom Pollock and Casey Silver, this Tom Cruise
movie (directed by Oliver Stone) was an example of how that studio
“wanted to make special pictures,” says Scorsese. 1989 Cape Fear: As he once explained to Stephen
Spielberg over dinner in Tribeca, one of Scorsese’s fears about
directing a remake of this film was that, “The original was so good. I
mean, you’ve got Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, it’s
terrific!” 1962
Cat People: Simone Simon plays a woman who
fears that she might turn into a panther and kill. It sounds corny, but
the psychological thrills that directors Jacques Tourneur got out of his
measly $150,000 budget make this a fascinating movie, with amazing
lighting. 1942 Caught: “There are certain styles I had
trouble with at first, like some of Max Ophuls’ films. It took me till I
was into my thirties to get The Earrings of Madame de…, for
example. But I didn’t have trouble with this one, which I saw in a
theater and which is kind of based on Howard Hughes [protagonist of The
Aviator].” 1949 Citizen Kane: “Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane
is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don’t think anything
had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike
anything we’d seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the
character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful
empathy for all of them—it’s very interesting. It still holds up, and
it’s still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air.”
1941 The Conversation: Gene Hackman stars in
this thrilled directed by Scorsese’s friend, Francis Ford Coppola. It’s a
classic example of stuido risk-taking in the early 1970s. 1974 Dial M for Murder: When discussing the
creation of Hugo, Scorsese referred to this Hitchcock film as an example
of other directors who have tangled with 3-D over the years. In its
original release most theaters only showed it in 2-D; now the 3-D
version pops up in theaters from time to time.1954
Do The Right Thing: Spike Lee’s film was
the kind of risky production that drew Scorsese to Universal Pictures
when it was run by Casey Silver and Tom Pollack. “Then Pollock left,”
says Scorsese, “and it all changed.” 1989 Duel in the Sun: Scorsese went to see this
movie, which some critics called “Lust in the Dust”, when he was 4 years
old. Jennifer Jones falls hard for a villainous Gregory Peck in this
lush King Vidor picture. A poster of the movie hangs in Scorsese’s
offices. 1946 The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: Rex
Ingram made this movie, in which Rudolph Valentino dances the tango.
Ingram stopped making films when sound came in. Michael Powell’s father
worked for Ingram; living in that milieu gave Michael the cultural
knowledge that informed his own movies like The Red Shoes. 1921
Europa ’51: “After making The Flowers of St. Francis,
Rossellini asked, what would a modern day saint be like? I think they
based it on Simone Weil, and Ingird Bergman played the part. It really
takes everything we’re dealing with today, whether it’s revolutions in
other countries or people trying to change their lifestyles, and it’s
all there in that film. The character tries everything, because she has a
tragedy in her family that really changes her, so she tries politics
and even working in a factory, and in the end it has a very moving
resolution.” [Also known as The Greatest Love] 1952 Faces: “[Director John] Cassavetes went to Hollywood to shoot films like A Child is Waiting and Too Late Blues, and after Too Late Blues
he became disenchanted. Those of us in the New York scene, we kept
asking, “What’s Cassavetes doing? What’s he up to?” And he was shooting
this film in his house in L.A. with his wife Gena Rowlands and his
friends. And when Faces showed at the New York Film Festival,
it absolutely trumped everything that was shown at the time. Cassavetes
is the person who ultimately exemplifies independence in film.” 1968 The Fall of the Roman Empire: One of the
last “sandal epics,” this sweeping Anthony Mann picture boasted a
stellar cast of Sophia Loren, Anthony Boyd, James Mason, Alec Guinness,
Christopher Plummer and Anthony Quayle. And it failed miserably at the
box office. 1964 The Flowers of St. Francis: “This Rossellini movie and Europa ’51
are two of the best films about the part of being human that yearns for
something beyond the material. Rossellini used real monks for this
movie. It’s very simple and beautiful.” 1950 Force of Evil: Another picture that defined
the American gangster image, this noir stars John Garfield as the evil
older brother whose younger sibling won’t join his numbers-running
conglomerate. 1948
Forty Guns: Barbara Stanwyck stars in this Sam Fuller Western. She plays a bad-ass cattle rancher with a soft spot for a local lawman. 1957 Germany Year Zero: “Roberto Rossellini
always felt he had an obligation to inform. He was the first one to do a
story about compassion for the enemy, in this film--it’s always been
hard to find, but now there’s a Criterion edition. It’s a very
disturbing picture. He was the first one to go there after the war, to
say we all have to live together. And he felt cinema was the tool that
could do this, that could inform people.” 1948 Gilda: “I saw this when I was 10 or 11, I
had some sort of funny reaction to her, I tell you! Me and my friends
didn’t know what to do about Rita Hayworth, and we didn’t really
understand what George McCready was doing to her. Can you imagine? Gilda
at age 11. But that’s what we did. We went to the movies.” 1946
The Godfather: “Gordon Willis did the same dark filming trick on The Godfather as he had done on Klute.
And now audiences accepted it, and went along with it, and every
director of photography and now every director of photography of the
past 40 years owes him the greatest debt, for changing the style
completely--until now, of course, with the advent of digital.” 1972 Gun Crazy: A romantic example of film noir, this one features a gun-toting husband and a sharp-shooting wife. 1950 Health: This Altman movie came out at the same time as King of Comedy. They were both flops, and we were both out. The age of the director was over. E.T. was a very big worldwide hit around then, and that changed the whole business of film finance. 1980 Heaven’s Gate: Scorsese was with United Artists in the 70s, with producers he describes as ”understanding and supportive.” Heaven’s Gate,
one of the ambitious films UA backed at the time, was a critical and
box office bomb, although its reputation has improved over the years.
1980 House of Wax: This was the first 3-D movie
produced by a major American studio. It starred Vincent Price as a wax
sculptor whose sourcing was, shall we say, unusual. 1953 How Green Was My Valley: “I appreciate the
visual poetry of [director John] Ford’s film, like in the famous scene
where Maureen O’Hara is married and the wind blows the veil on her head.
It’s absolute poetry. No words. It’s all there in the image.” 1941
The Hustler: Scorsese liked the Paul Newman
character (Eddie Felson) in this movie so much that when Newman came
calling about a possible update of the movie, he agreed to direct The Color of Money. He says the movie’s box office success helped rehabilitate his career after a tough slog. 1961 I Walk Alone: One of several movies that
Scorsese says clearly defined the American gangster ideal, this one
stars Burt Lancaster and the smoldering Lizabeth Scott. 1948 The Infernal Cakewalk: One of the many
George Melies movies that have been restored and can now be seen on DVD.
Melies, a French director of silent films, is at the center of the plot
of Hugo. 1903 It Happened One Night: “I didn’t think much
of this Frank Capra film, until I saw it recently on the big screen.
And I discovered it was a masterpiece! The body language of Claudette
Colbert and Clark Gable, the way they related--it’s really quite
remarkable.” 1934
Jason and the Argonauts: As part of his film education of his daughter, Scorsese screened a bunch of Ray Harryhausen classics, including this one. 1963 Journey to Italy: “After Rossellini married
Ingrid Bergman he wiped the slate clean and left Neo-Realism behind.
Instead he made these intimate stories that had a great deal to do with a
certain intellectual mysticism, a sense of cultural power. In Viaggio [Viaggio in Italia
is the Italian title], for example, the English couple played by George
Sanders and Ingrid Bergman are traveling in Naples on vacation while
marriage is faling apart, but the land around them—the people the
museums, and especially their visit to Pompeii, these thousands of years
of culture around them—work on them like a modern miracle. The film is
basically two people in a car, and that became the entire New Wave. Kids
may not have seen this film, but it’s basically in all the independent
film of today.” 1954 Julius Caesar: “This is another example of Orson Welles’ risktaking, with Caesar’s crew as out-and-out gangsters.” 1953 Kansas City: “This is one of the great jazz
movies ever. If you could hang on with Altman, you were going to go on
one of the great rides of your lives.” 1996 Kiss Me Deadly: A great example of the noir genre that so inspired Scorsese. This one stars Ralph Meeker as detective Mike Hammer. 1955
Klute: “There are movies that change the whole way in which films are made, like Klute,
where Gordon Willis’s photography on the film is so textured, and, they
said, too dark. At first this was alarming to people, because they’re
used to a certain way things are done within the studio system. And the
studio is selling a product, so they were wary of people thinking that
it’s too dark.” 1971 La Terra Trema: This Lucchino Visconti film is one of the founding films of Neo-Realism. 1948 The Lady from Shanghai: “The story goes
that Welles had to make a film and he was in this railway station, and
there were some paperbacks there and he was talking to Harry Cohn of
Columbia and he said look, I’ve got the greatest film it’s called Lady
from Shanghai, which was this paperback he saw there. And then he made
up this story, taking elements of Moby Dick, where he talks
about the sharks, and the whole mirror sequence in that picture is
unsurpassed. I don’t know if Lady is a noir, but it’s awkward, and it’s
brilliant.” 1947 The Leopard: “Visconti and Rossellini and
deSica were the founders of Neo-Realism. Visconti went a different way
from Rossellini. He made this movie, which is one of the greatest films
ever made.” 1963 Macbeth: “This was the first Welles movie I
saw, on television. He shot it in 27 days. The look of it, the Celtic
barbarism, the Druid priest, this was all very different from other
Macbeth productions I’d seen. The use of superimpositions, the effigies
at the beginning of the film—it was more like cinema than theatre.
Anything Welles did, given his background in radio, was a big risk. Macbeth is an audacious film, set in Haiti of all places.” 1948 The Magic Box: “There were a number of
people who felt that they had invented moving pictures. Robert Donat
plays William Friese-Greene, one of those people, who’s obsessed from
childhood with movement and color. Donat was a great actor. And this is a
beautifully done film.” 1951
M*A*S*H: “I saw it at a press screening.
That was the first football game I ever understood. Altman developed
this style that came out of his life and making television movies, it
was so unique--and his movies seemed to come out every two weeks.” 1972 A Matter of Life and Death: “This is
another beautiful film by Powell and Pressburger, but it was made after
World War II, so people said, ‘You can’t use the word ‘Death’ in the
title!’ So it got changed to Stairway to Heaven, that’s what it was called in America. Now it’s A Matter of Life and Death again.” 1946 McCabe & Mrs. Miller: “This is an absolute masterpiece. Altman could shoot quickly and get the very best actors.” 1971 The Messiah: “Rossellini’s last film in
this third period, the last film he made before he died, is this
beautiful TV film on Jesus. He had planned on making more such films,
like one on Karl Marx. He thought TV was the way to reach young people,
to educate them. But then of course TV changed.” 1975 Midnight Cowboy: One of the great movies released by UA in its glory days, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. 1969 Mishima: Scorsese describes this Paul Schrader film about the great Japanese author as a “masterpiece.” 1985 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town: In this Frank Capra
movie, one of several that Scorsese has screened for his family, Gary
Cooper plays a small-town boy who inherits a fortune--and a bevy of
big-city sharpies that he can’t quite contend with. 1936
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Jimmy Stewart stars in this Capra movie, one of the all-time greats, which features a dramatic filibuster. 1939 Nashville: “Altman had a point of view that
was uniquely American and an artistic vision to go with it. All his
early work pointed to this movie.” 1975 Night and the City: “It’s the essential
British noir film. Harry Fabien, played by Richard Widmark, is a two-bit
hustler running through the London underworld at night, and he always
oversteps, particularly with the gangster played by Herbert Lom. From
the very beginning you know Fabien’s going to fail, because he’s up
against a power he doesn’t understand. 1950 One, Two, Three: A classic Billy Wilder comedy, starring James Cagney as a Coca-Cola exec in West Berlin. The dialogue crackles. 1961 Othello: "It took (Orson Welles) years to
finish this. There were tons of quick cuts, and there’s a wonderful
sequence where two people are attacked in a Turkish bath, and it works
beautifully. They’re wearing towels, and one is dispatched under the
boards. It has a strange North African whiteness. It turns out that he
was ready to do the sequence, and the costumes didn’t show up. So he
said, let’s put it in a Turkish bath. He had the actors there! He had to
shoot it!” 1952 Paisa: “This is my all-time favorite of the Rossellini films.” 1946
Peeping Tom: “Michael Powell himself gambled everything on Peeping Tom
and lost in such a way that his career was really ended. The film was
so shocking to some British critics and the audience because he had some
sympathy, sort of, for the the serial killer. And the killer had the
audacity to photograph the killing of the women with a motion picture
camera, which of course tied in the motion picture camera as an object
of voyeurism, implicating all of us watching horror films. He was
reviled. One critic said this should be flushed down the toilet. He only
got one or two more movies done. He really disappeared. And now in
England there are cameras watching everyone all over the street.” 1960 Pickup on South Street: Richard Widmark
picks the wrong purse in this classic noir, unwittingly setting off a
series of events that come to a violent climax. 1953 The Player: “In the years before this
movie, the age of the director who had a free hand came to an end. And
yet Altman kept experimenting with different kinds of actor, different
approaches to narrative, different equipment, until finally he hit it
with this movie, which took him off onto a whole other level.” 1992 The Power and the Glory: “Directed by William K. Howard and written by Preston Sturges, it had a structure that Mankiewicz and Welles used for Citizen Kane.” 1933 Stagecoach: “Welles drew from everywhere. The ceilings and the interiors in John Ford’s classic western inspired him for Citizen Kane.” 1939
Raw Deal: NOT the Arnold Schwarzenegger pic. This one’s a noir directed by Anthony Mann, starring Dennis O’Keefe and Claire Trevor. 1948 The Red Shoes: “There’s something so rich
and powerful about the story, and the use of the color, that it deeply
affected me when I was nine or ten years old. The archness of the
approach, and how serious the ballet dancers were … When they say, “The
spotlight toujours on moi,” they mean it! The ballet sequence is almost
like the first rock video. It’s almost as if you’re seeing what the
dancer sees and hears and feels as she’s moving. It’s like in Raging Bull, where we never went outside the ring for the fighting sequences.” 1948 The Rise of Louis XIV: “In the third part
of his career, Rossellini decided to make an encyclopedia, a series of
didactic films. This is the first film in that series, and it’s an
artistic masterpiece. He shot it in 16mm for TV, and called it
anti-dramatic. Yet, I screen it once every couple of years, and when you
look at frames of it on the big screen there are shots that just look
like paintings. Rossellini couldn’t get away from it, he had an artist’s
eye. There’s nothing like the last ten minutes of that film to show the
accumulation and the display of power. It’s not done through the sword
or the speech, it’s done through the theatre he created around him with
his clothes, his food, the way he eats. It’s extraordinary.” 1966 The Roaring Twenties: James Cagney and
Humphrey Bogart star in this homage to the gangsters of the 1920s. It
was one of the many great films made in 1939 (like Gone with the Wind, The Women, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Stagecoach and many many more.) 1939 Rocco and his Brothers: “This Visconti film was also a major influence on filmmakers.” 1960
Rome, Open City: “I saw Italian movies as a
5-year-old, on a 16-inch TV my father bought. We were living in Queens.
There were only three stations. One station showed Italian films on
Friday night for the Italian-American community, subtitled, and the
family would gather to see the films. My grandparents were there—they
were the ones who moved over in 1910. So it became a ritual. [Director
Roberto] Rossellini had an intellectual approach.” 1945 Secrets of the Soul: “This was a silent movie whose flashback structure was unlike anything else. Secrets of the Soul looked almost experimental.” 1912 Senso: “An extraordinary film by Visconti, another Neo-Realist masterpiece.” Shadows: “I saw Shadows at the 8th
Street Playhouse [in Manhattan], and when I saw such a direct
communication with the human experience, of conflict and love, it was
almost as if there was no camera there at all. And I love camera
positions! But this was like you were living with the people.” 1959 Shock Corridor: A wild Sam Fuller movie about a journalist who enters an insane asylum to try to break a story. 1963
Some Came Running: This Vincent Minnelli
melodrama is definitely not a musical. It’s a tough story about an
alcoholic Army vet returning home. It stars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,
and Shirley MacLaine. 1958 Stromboli: “This too was a very important film of Rossellini’s second period. Very beautiful.” [During the shooting of Stromboli,
the star, Ingrid Bergman, who was married to an American dentist, got
pregnant with Rossellini’s child. She divorced the dentist, and became
persona non grata in America]. 1950 Sullivan’s Travels: “Billy Wilder told me,
you’re only as good as your last picture. Sullivan, played by Joel
McRae, is in the studio system, under that kind of pressure. He makes
comedies, but one day he decides he really wants to make ‘Oh, Brother,
Where Art Thou?’ He puts it all on the line to learn about the poor. The
resolution of the movie is very moving.” 1941 Sweet Smell of Success: Like Ace in the Hole,
this classic noir is about an unethical journalist who will stop at
nothing to get his way. Burt Lancaster plays the journalist. 1957 Tales of Hoffman: “This was a great risk
for Powell and Pressburger. In fact, they lost it on that. He had in
mind a composed film like a piece of music, and played the music back on
set during the shooting, so the actors moved in a certain way.” 1951
The Third Man: “Carroll Reed made one of
those films where everything came together. It made me see, with Kane,
that there was another way of interpreting stories, and another approach
to the visual frame of the classical films…all those low shots, and the
cuts.” 1949 T-Men: Another Anthony Mann noir with great
cinematography, this one’s about Department of Treasury men breaking up
a counterfeiting ring. 1947 Touch of Evil: “Welles’ radio career with
the Mercury Theater made him a master of the soundtrack. Just listen to
this movie--you can close your eyes and imagine everything that is
happening. (Young people should listen to the radio soundtrack of War of the Worlds,
which was so effective that people got in their cars and started to
drive away, because they really believed that Martians were attacking.) The Trial: “This is another film that gave
us a new way of looking at films. You’re very aware of the camera, like
when Anthony Perkins came running down this corridor of wooden slats and
light cutting the image, blades and shafts of light, talk about
paranoia!” 1962 Two Weeks in Another Town: The Vincente Minnelli movie stars Cyd Charisse, Kirk Douglas, and Edward G. Robinson. It’s a classic 1960s melodrama. 1962
Correction: Raw Deal was amended to reflect its release date of 1948.
Orson Welles directed the stage version of Julius Caesar; Joseph Mankiewicz directed the film.
So Frank Darabont will be the guy who delivers an "L.A. Noir" pilot to TNT. It's going to be an interesting experiment to see if a period crime drama makes it on a channel whose bread and butter is police procedurals ("The Closer") modern police dramas ("Southland") and a law comedy ("Franklin & Bash").
"L.A. Noir," will rub elbows, stylistically, at least, with another period crime drama, HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."
Darabont has directed stylish period features ("The Green Mile," "The Shawshank Redemption"), and he was famously canned from AMC's zombie series, "The Walking Dead."
"L.A. Noir" will be based on John Buntin’s book "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City."
"L.A. Noir" follows the true story of the street war waged by Los Angeles Police Department under Chief William Parker and the L.A. organized crime world led by Mickey Cohen. It will be set in the 1940s and ’50s, the post-World War II era, and be a backdrop where Hollywood stars and studio heads rose to fame and ran amok while a massively corrupt police force and criminals jockeyed for control of West Coast’s most prominent city.
With "Gangster Squad," a feature film in the works that will also cover the Mickey Cohen era of crime, there seems to be a sizable uptick in interest about the City of Angels' sordid past. Stay tuned.
