The Frame » crime

The Petrified Forest

Jandy — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:53:43 +0000

AKA Humphrey Bogart’s first real Hollywood film, playing the tough-guy criminal role that typecast him until the early 1940s. As Duke Mantee, he takes a desert gas station hostage when his getaway car breaks down. The station/diner is run by Bette Davis, who recently met and became enamored of philosophical traveler Leslie Howard. They are ostensibly the main characters, but honestly, Bogart owns the film. Davis is quite good as well, but the film would’ve been better if Bogart had shot Howard’s character immediately to save us from his inane ramblings.
Above Average

Shock Corridor

Jandy — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:13:09 +0000

This is the best-known film by Samuel Fuller, whose The Naked Kiss so pleasantly surprised me a few months ago, so I had high hopes for Shock Corridor. And I didn’t like it as much. A detective pretends to be insane to get committed to an asylum in order to find out who killed one of the inmates. While he’s in there he pretty much goes insane himself. Its more overwrought than Naked Kiss, and what I found so compelling about the latter is the unexpected weirdness of it–whereas Shock Corridor sort of had built-in weirdness from the insane asylum setting.
Average

Bob le flambeur

Jandy — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:32:30 +0000

This was part of my attempt to move beyond the New Wave proper and into some of the (non-American) directors who influenced it. Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime films are New Wavish in their appropriation of American crime/gangster genre films, but they precede the films of Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, and Chabrol by a half-decade or so. (Godard actually references this film in Breathless, one of the characters suggesting that “Bob le flambeur” would help if he weren’t in prison.) Bob is a former con-man whose vices are now mostly confined to gambling; however, when he’s faced with the opportunity to heist a casino, he decides to pull this one last job. The interplay between Bob’s criminal dealings and his very ethical, humanist, and moral character gives the film a depth that a lot of crime films don’t necessarily have. I didn’t love it as much as I do Godard and Truffaut (the pacing doesn’t suit me as well), but I definitely want to revisit it in a few years and see how a more mature me sees it.
Well Above Average

I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

Jandy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:52:00 +0000

Moving from Germany’s idea of a socially-conscious film to a prime example of 1930s Warner Bros. example of a social problem film. Paul Muni plays an initially optimistic and energetic young man who struggles to find a job during the depression. Eventually, down on his luck, he ends up unwillingly involved in a robbery and sentenced to the chain gang. He eventually manages to escape from the brutal system, change his name and start a new life, only to have the police discover who he is years later and force him, now a hugely productive member of society, back into the chain gang. It’s all a bit overwrought and about as subtle as an anvil, but if the dichotomy between the severity of the crime and the severity of the punishment was really as broad as it’s painted here, then it was a real social concern.
Above Average

The Killers (1964)

Jandy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:42:10 +0000

Criterion packages both the 1946 and the 1964 versions of The Killers together, so after I finished watching the earlier one, I popped the later one in to compare. Wow different. You can still see elements of the same story, though the whole diner scene which was taken directly from the short story has been scrapped–even though they still call it “Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers,” there’s really nothing left of Hemingway in it, except the barebones idea of a former criminal’s old gang catching up to him. The Swede character is now a former racecar driver rather than a boxer, and the hitmen are characterized a lot more strongly–really, it’s almost their movie rather than his now. The whole thing doesn’t hold together as well as the earlier film, but it’s flashy and enjoyable like any average 1960s crime caper.
Average

The Killers (1946)

Jandy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:39:28 +0000

Loosely based on one of Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams short stories, the 1946 version of The Killers tells of a washed-up boxer and his involvement with a crime ring that later comes around to haunt him. It’s always interesting to see adaptations of short stories, simply because so much as to be added to make a full-length film. After watching this, I found the story and read it, and it’s basically just the first scene of the film, which shows two strangers enter a diner, intending to kill a man known as the Swede when he comes in for dinner–when he doesn’t come in, Nick Adams, one of the diner’s patrons, runs off to warn him, but he’s tired of running from his past and succumbs. The movie takes off from there to tell us the backstory. It’s a noirish approach, and works very well. A young Burt Lancaster as the Swede and a young Ava Gardner as the obligatory femme fatale don’t hurt either.
Above Average

Band of Outsiders

Jandy — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:23:10 +0000

Oh, Jean-Luc Godard. You and I have had a rather uneasy cinematic relationship, I know. I’ve considered your colleague François Truffaut to be the essential New Wave director and his masterpiece The 400 Blows to be greater than yours, Breathless. So why, after seeing Breathless multiple times, as well as your other most famous film Contempt, is it this admittedly important but slightly lesser film Band of Outsiders that made me fall voraciously in love with your films? Why should this slight story of three young people and their rather apathetic and doomed robbery attempt have captivated me so much? Is it the joyful spontaneity with which the characters suddenly break into an imitation of an American crime film? Is it your noncommital camera that seems both objective and tragically sympathetic at the same time? Is it the almost wholly foreign (to Americans) tendency to showcase scenes–like the scene where the characters dance in a cafe for several minutes, or the one where they experiment with a minute of complete silence–that seem to do nothing to advance the plot, but rather embrace the lives of the characters? Is it your bittersweet, detached yet complicit voiceover narration? Maybe. I only know that after watching it, I immediately added all of your movies to my Netflix queue.
Superior

This Gun for Hire

Jandy — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:30:36 +0000

Early noirish film depicts a hitman (Alan Ladd in his first big role), trying to revenge himself on a former-employer-turned-police-informant, while evading the police (led by Robert Cummings), with the help of the policeman’s girlfriend (Veronica Lake), who also happens to be a spy trying to ferret out information on the informant, who is smuggling bomb plans out of the country. Confused yet? It’s intricately-plotted, but most of it makes sense, and the shifting alliances make for engaging viewing. Throw in a sultry magic act for Lake, posing as a showgirl, and This Gun for Hire comes off a good example of a 1940s B-level crime film.
Above Average