-
Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
- Thread starter TRON
- Start date
Between his disavowed debut (Fear and Desire) and his commercial breakthrough (The Killing), Stanley Kubrick made (wrote, filmed, directed) Killer's Kiss, a film noir shot guerrilla-style on the mean streets of New York City. This overlooked and underrated movie will be shown Turner Classic Movie's Noir Alley tonight at midnight and tomorrow morning at 10:00. Highly recommended.
I've seen literally hundreds of movies over the past year, many of which are great. Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge is one of the greatest heist movies of all time (along with John Huston's Asphalt Jungle, Jules Dassin's Rififi, Melville's Bob le Flambeur, and Kubrick's The Killing). If you are not familiar with Melville, you really should be. He is in my top tier of directors (along with Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Josef von Sternberg), and has made some of the coolest movies of all time. He also inspired directors such as John Woo, Quintin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese.
Anyway, in an interview conducted in 1971 following the release of Le Cercle Rouge, Melville made the following statement:
I've seen literally hundreds of movies over the past year, many of which are great. Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge is one of the greatest heist movies of all time (along with John Huston's Asphalt Jungle, Jules Dassin's Rififi, Melville's Bob le Flambeur, and Kubrick's The Killing). If you are not familiar with Melville, you really should be. He is in my top tier of directors (along with Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Josef von Sternberg), and has made some of the coolest movies of all time. He also inspired directors such as John Woo, Quintin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese.
Anyway, in an interview conducted in 1971 following the release of Le Cercle Rouge, Melville made the following statement:
I don't know what will be left of me fifty years from now. I suspect that all films will have aged terribly and that cinema probably won't even exist anymore. My guess is that the final disappearance of cinemas will take place around the year 2020, so in fifty year's time there will be nothing but television.
Upvote
0
I watched four low budget classics yesterday - Killer's Kiss; Blast of Silence; Carnival of Souls; and Dementia. The first three are available from the Criterion Collection (with Killer's Kiss being a bonus feature of Kubrick's The Killing, a truly great movie), while Dementia was released by Kino twenty years ago, and an old copy might be found on Amazon or eBay. Each movie is a near masterpiece that is paradoxically limited by, and more innovative because of, its creator's independent status, limited budget, and lack of formal training.
- Killer's Kiss (1955). Director: Stanley Kubrick. Cast: Frank Silvera; Jamie Smith; Irene Kane.
A standard love triangle involving a washed-up boxer (Smith), a small-time hood (Silvera), and a beautiful taxi dancer (Kane) quickly devolves into kidnapping, murder, and a climactic axe-versus-pike fight-to-the-death inside a mannequin factory. Kubrick, a former still photographer for Look magazine, was always a master of capturing images on film, and the chase scenes down dark alleys and across fog-shrouded rooftops of Lower Manhattan contain some of the most evocative images of his storied career. A definite sign of the great things to come.
- Blast of Silence (1961). Director: Allen Baron. Cast: Allen Baron
Maybe the last true film noir, maybe the first neo-noir, Blast of Silence tells the story of hitman Frankie Bono who travels from Cleveland to New York to execute a contract on "a second-string Syndicate boss with too much ambition". Filmed on location, the action takes Bono through some touristy highlights (Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Plaza), but focuses mostly on the seedier parts of town (Harlem, Greenwich Village, East River, Old Mill). This ultra-gritty movie is taken to a whole 'nother level by the gravelly voiceover narration of Lionel Stander, unusually (if not uniquely) told in the second person. The disembodied voice acts like the devil on Bono's shoulder, alternately relating his sociopathic nature ("You were born in pain.... You were born with hate and anger built in.") and taunting him into further acts of violence ("He runs the girls and the dope and the book and the numbers. There's a guy you could really learn to hate!"). The directorial debut of Allen Baron is no Citizen Kane, but it compares favorably to Stanley Kubrick's early feature film, Killer's Kiss (1955), which was also filmed on location in New York on a shoestring budget. Unlike Kubrick, who almost immediately became a superstar, Baron never got "noticed" until decades after Blast of Silence was released, and in the meantime he found gainful employment as a director of television shows, most notably schlock like Love, American Style (6 episodes), Charlie's Angels (12 episodes), and The Love Boat (17 episodes). A minor classic that has seen its reputation rise immensely in recent years thanks to praise from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Joe Dante.
- Carnival of Souls (1962). Director: Herk Harvey. Cast: Candace Hilligoss. Sidney Berger.
Mary Henry (Hilligoss) is a church organist whose car crashes off a bridge and into the river below. After being submerged for three hours, Mary suddenly walks out of the water seemingly unaffected by her aquatic journey. But after a few days, things start happening to Mary – she plays profane music on her church organ as if her hands were possessed (a nod to Hands of Orlac); she suffers fugues in which she seems to exist outside of the normal space-time continuum; and most importantly she begins to see zombies everywhere. A doctor tells Mary that these strange phenomena are the natural results of her traumatic experience; a wolfish neighbor (Berger) tells her that she needs to chill out and have a couple of beers with him; a minister hits closer to the truth when he tells her that she has lost her soul. Eerily similar to the French avant-garde classic Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais; 1961). The first and only feature film from the creative duo of director Herk Harvey and screenwriter John Clifford, who made dozens of industrial and educational movies for Centron Corporation. Filmed on location in Lawrence, Kansas, and Salt Lake City. The definitive low budget masterpiece; avoid the 1998 "remake".
- Dementia [Daughter of Horror] (1955). Director: John Parker. Cast: Adrienne Barrett. Bruno Ve Sota.
Barrett, who must have been the inspiration for any number of John Waters's butch bad girls, is a switchblade-wielding schizophrenic on a killing spree, her latest victim being fat cat Ve Sota. To reveal any more of the plot would be difficult due to the warped point of view of the psychotic leading lady, and pointless because this movie is all about mood, atmosphere, and images. Originally released (as Dementia) as a silent film (music, sound effects, but no dialogue), then re-released two years later (as Daughter of Horror) with voiceover narration from none other than a pre-Carson Ed McMahon. Essentially a German Expressionist movie filmed in 1953 on the mean streets of Venice, California, the seediness of which were used to similar effect a few years later by Orson Welles in Touch of Evil. Not to be confused with Dementia 13, an early low budget effort from Francis Ford Coppola (and itself a pretty decent movie).
Upvote
0
St Maud: I did a free 7 day of Epix just to watch this movie based on the hype. Setup was good, and the finale could have been epic, but it was rushed and left the wrong kind of unanswered questions. Thus, the “shocking” ending fell somewhat flat. Decent, but could have been so much more.
Upvote
0
JohnnyCockfight
Beer is God's proof that he loves us.
@LordJeffBuck are you watching these on the Criterion Channel app? I subscribed to FilmStruck until its demise and really enjoyed the Criterion Collection films, but have not made the transition over to Criterion.
Upvote
0
No, I buy the DVDs. I have not tried the Criterion Channel. If you do try it, let me know if it's worth the investment.
Upvote
0
Taosman
Your Cousin In New Mexxico
I love all the David Lean films. Could binge watch them for days. I really want to find "A Passage to India". "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was my first exposure to epic films. I saw it at a drive in with my family. Amazing!
https://www.goldderby.com/gallery/david-lean-movies-all-16-films-ranked-worst-to-best/
https://www.goldderby.com/gallery/david-lean-movies-all-16-films-ranked-worst-to-best/
Last edited:
Upvote
0
Really solid top 6 for sure. (I'll admit to not being a Dr Zhivago or Oliver Twist fan in any media, but I get why people like them)
Upvote
0
Tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern, Turner Classic Movies is showing two of the best that Hollywood has to offer....
- The Maltese Falcon (1941). Director: John Huston. Cast: Humphrey Bogart; Mary Astor; Peter Lorre; Sidney Greenstreet; Elisha Cook, Jr.; Barton MacLane; Ward Bond.
Huston's directorial debut is a faithful adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel about a crew of adventurers searching for a legendary treasure, with just a few trims (Flitcraft monologue; Gutman's daughter) to keep the story tight, quick, and under two hours in length. This movie might or might not be the first true film noir (some cite 1940's Stranger on the Third Floor, also with Lorre and Cook), but with its able direction, crisp dialogue, and first-rate acting, The Maltese Falcon is definitely the movie that put film noir on the cinematic map. The cast is nearly perfect: Bogart (in his breakout role) as the cynical, world-weary private eye Sam Spade; Lorre as the mincing but menacing Joel Cairo; Greenstreet (in his movie debut) as the dreamer-schemer Kaspar Gutman; Cook as the punk who's constantly getting punked by Spade; MacLane and Bond as a pair of dumb tough cops trying to figure out who shot whom; the only misfit is Astor, who (at age 35) is neither femme nor fatale enough for the crucial role of Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the seductive and treacherous dame who shoots arrows into Spade's heart while simultaneously trying to stab him in the back.
- Casablanca (1942). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Humphrey Bogart; Mary Ingrid Bergman; Paul Henreid; Claude Rains; Conrad Veidt; Peter Lorre; Sidney Greenstreet.
A love triangle involving a Czech freedom fighter (Henreid), his beautiful wife (Bergman), and her former lover intersects with an intrigue triangle involving a Nazi major (Veidt), the local French police chief (Rains), and an American night club owner, with Bogart being the common vertex as the enigmatic Rick Blaine. Mixing romance with propaganda was a dicey proposition, but somehow everything comes off perfectly - you don't know until the very end who will do the right thing and who will get the dame, and you will be entertained every minute along the way to the exciting conclusion. Truly an international production, with performers from Germany (Veidt), Austria (Henreid), Sweden (Bergman), Hungary (Curtiz), Slovakia (Lorre), England (Rains, Greenstreet), France (Marcel Dalio), Russia (Leonid Kinskey), Canada (John Qualen), and of course the United States (Bogart), with even African Americans being represented (Dooley Wilson as the piano player, Sam) - this was Hollywood showing on a small scale the world's united front against Nazism.
Last edited:
Upvote
0
JohnnyCockfight
Beer is God's proof that he loves us.
Thanks for the heads-up. Casablanca is fantastic. Such a well-done, fun movie, and its pace really moves. How can an almost 80 year old film be more entertaining than anything being made today?
Upvote
0
This week on TCM's Noir Alley (tonight at midnight, tomorrow at 10:00 AM).... The Third Man, which isn't really American (it's British, despite the fact that the AFI lists it as the 57th-best Hollywood movie), which means it isn't really film noir, but that's an argument for another day....
- The Third Man (1949). Director: Carol Reed. Cast: Joseph Cotten; Orson Welles; Alida Valli; Trevor Howard; Bernard Lee; Ernst Deutsch; Siegfried Breuer; Erich Ponto.
On a lark, American author Holly Martins (Cotten) travels to post-war Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime (Welles). Before Martins can even get acclimated to the war-torn and military-occupied city, he learns that Lime has been killed in a suspicious road accident (he was run over by a truck in front of his own apartment building). At Lime's funeral, Martins meets a pair of British soldiers (Howard and Lee), who tell him that his friend was a ruthless racketeer as they try to send him packing back to America. This, of course, piques Martins's interest in the matter and provides more than enough incentive for him to stick around Vienna and investigate Lime's death, which is beginning to look less like an accident and more like a murder. As Martins travels through the seedy Vienna underworld (filmed on location, complete with bombed-out buildings and piles of rubble), he meets Lime's shady friends (Deutsch; Breuer; Ponto) and sexy paramour (Valli), whose stories about Lime's life and death tend to confirm his darkest suspicions. Welles did not direct or write this movie (although he is generally credited with creating his famous cuckoo clock monologue), and he appears on screen for only a few minutes, but he is clearly the star of the show, the X-factor who not only drives the plot but also turns a standard thriller into a cinematic masterpiece. Justly famous for Robert Krasker's dark cinematography, Anton Karas's haunting zither score, Graham Greene's taut screenplay (from his own novella), the climatic chase scene in the sewers of Vienna, and the very un-Hollywood coda at Harry Lime's grave. A must-see classic.
Last edited:
Upvote
0
I’m glad they mentioned the zither music, that’s the first thing I think of when this movie is mentioned.
Upvote
0
ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
I watched The Trial of The Chicago 7 last night. A lot of really good performances, but the movie suffered from Sorkin's overly self-reverential, melodramatic West Wing style. It's good and worth a watch, but a less sentimental and melodramatic filmmaker could have made something great.
Upvote
0