The Big Combo (1955)

Joseph Lewis (1950's Gun Crazy) directs Phillip Yordan's script.

John Alton's photography is superb. Light and Dark combine to form an always present yet silent character who helps us understand the habits of each individual in the narrative.

The lighting and photography dictates much of the criticism of the film. The following is a typical description:

The movie opens with Susan Lowell (Jean Wallace) splashed in slanting shadows as she runs through tunnels beside a boxing ring. She's chased by two hitmen, Fante and Mingo (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman), who have been hired by her Napoleonic lover, Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), to keep an eye on her. Cornered, she emerges from Alton's poetic darkness and agrees to stop running. By contrast, the hitmen remain in the dark, shapeless. Susan, centered in a spot-effect, looks stark, pale, and nearly naked.

This contrast early in the film can distract a viewer with issues of female guilt, for example. Susan is naked throughout the film, awash in light. But the darkness takes the form of the closet in this film and, for the viewer who wishes to look beyond the naked woman, lurks an entire story about how men love each other and hurt each other and compete with each other to please each other. (Susan may often be filmed awash in light, but early in the film she is presented awash in light only shoulders and above. Her body is often obscured or completely blacked out.)

Aside from the odd ridiculous assessment of the film, The Big Combo is generally well received. For all the attention to the relationships between the men--the gangster and the cop, the gangster and his righthand man, the two hitmen, and a cop and his partner--I find it more than worthwhile to reflect on why it takes Turner Classic Movies interest in the film during Gay Pride Month to get more people talking about its explicit exploration of sexuality, masculinity, and violence.

I'd like to screen this in as a double feature with Miller's Crossing.

Not I

This is a 7 minute clip from Billie Whitelaw's performance in Samuel Beckett's Not I, from 1973. I love it; but I do really enjoy Julianne Moore in Neil Jordan's version as well. Jordan's is part of a collection of Beckett's work entitled, Beckett on Film, from 2000.

May DVR Titles

Once a month, I will list the movies I've stored in my cable box. Here is my May List, in no particular order. Why not list yours in the comments...

Electra Glide in Blue
Never on Sunday
The Mystery of Picasso
The Cranes are Flying
The Spirit of the Beehive
All My Sons
The Knack...And How to Get It
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
Lonelyhearts
Thieves Like Us
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
A Thousand Clowns
This Our Life
Forbidden Games
Reconstruction
Land and Freedom
Umberto D
Mysterious Skin
The Wages of Fear
Pepe le Moko
Le Jour Se Leve
Minnie and Moskowitz
L'Avventura
The Rules of the Games
Wild Strawberries
Two Lane Blacktop

3:10 to Yuma (1957)

A classic masculinity-in-crisis tale. What I like to call post-noir (ming you different from the post-noir P.I. and the contemporary noir.) Two examples: no femme-fatales, the men are more interested in themselves and each other. Elmore Leonard's story, via Halsted Welles screenplay, catalogues male anxieties in a gripping competition of which one of us will last longer than the others.

I appreciate the attempt to allow the characters and their ideas and anxieties some depth. Films that tackle multiple perspectives within a single theme often flatten characters and oversimplify complex problems. 3:30 to Yuma, however, is rich because efficient, natural, and clear dialogue add to the wonderful direction, editing, and photography. I admire the fact that a rich filmic text was molded from sparse sets. The tension is developed as much from the dialogue as from, say, the depth of focus in shots that put characters, their roles, in perspective.

A cursory look at the film may make it appear quite a simple, little film. Upon further screenings the film becomes much more complex.

Other notes:
The drought and its end. The ending of the film is often criticized as being too simple. Consider it in the context of a hero's regained potency and the ending permits a fertility to the narrative that somehow justifies (explains) the presence of the hero's wife. And not only because it qualifies a feminine presence in the desert but because it illustrates the importance of HER character to the story--in this case, or in my opinion, the Husband/Father and Wife/Mother require the love that draws one to the other. It might be easy to pan this as romantic, sentimental strictly, and paternalistic. Fortunately, I think the relationship between Dan and Alice Evans is a nice foil to the relationship Dan develops with his nemesis Ben Wade.

The Men. Glenn Ford as Ben Wade and Van Heflin as Dan Evans. Amazing chemistry. See above.

Van Heflin. Recently watched, Act of Violence. (See last post.) Van Heflin's characters are powerfully engaging and complexly charismatic yet strongly conflicted and hopelessly fragile.

Act of Violence (1948)

Dir: Fred Zinneman
Cast: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor
Studio: MGM

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Joseph Sargent directed this 1974 film based on the John Godey crime novel. Peter Stone--Charade and Sweet Charity--wrote the screenplay. Joseph Sargent is known for his TV film work.

Known more today for being one of the many films Quentin Tarrantino pays homage to in Reservoir Dogs--the hijackers are named after colors--than for its efficient dialogue and great editing, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a lot of fun.

A nameless and diverse cast of New Yorkers boo their Mayor and fuss about "broads" in the workplace. The characters are named, for example: The Maid, The Mother, The Homosexual, The Secretary, The Delivery Boy, the Salesman, among others. Yet, we do not know this from their presence in the narrative. This can make the credits, after spending an hour in the subway car with them, a very odd experience. We get their titles, generic at best, rather than their names. We might very well want to see them again and attempt to guess who is who. And then we might want to consider why we'd want to do such a thing.

The pacing and dialogue, the characters and their ticks, all are very New York. The narrative is populated with working class heroes--men and women. The honesty and care even the most minor characters are extended makes the film memorable and offers new insights with further screenings.

Walter Matthau, as a transit cop, offers a patient and humorous performance. Robert Shaw, as Mr. Blue, offers a stern, studied, almost quiet performance, that recalls other of his best roles like the Spectre assassin in From Russia with Love. Hector Elizondo's, Mr. Grey, is a real pig. And, if you're like me, you almost hope that Martin Balsam absconds with his cut of the loot. Almost.