film noir

Key Largo Review

January 4, 2017 by JD Hansel

This film is essentially “Film Noir’s Greatest Hits.” It has Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in leading roles, sharing the spotlight with a wealthy mob boss played in the most Edward-G.-Robinsony way possible by none other than Edward G. Robinson. In a supporting role is Claire Trevor of Murder, My Sweet and Raw Deal, and one of Robinson’s main gangsters is played by Dan Seymour, whom some may remember as Capitaine Renard from To Have and Have Not. Character actor Marc Lawrence – Cobby in The Asphalt Jungle – also makes an enjoyable appearance, so the gang’s all here. The film is as claustrophobic, dramatic, and violent as anyone could want from a film noir, with a satisfying sense of witty cynicism. That being said, there are a few ways in which this stands out from the usual film noir stereotypes.

Most films noirs – and most films in general – change locations, but this story is about people who are stuck in one building for the whole movie. The particular location the film chooses is particularly odd: it’s in a hotel on the beach in Key Largo, which is radically different from the general consensus that film noir concerns urban settings. The movie cleverly uses this to its advantage, employing a hurricane to amp up the usual noir trope of heightening drama with rain by making the rain more intense and to take out the building’s electricity. The power outage serves as both another way to create anxiety among the cast, which feels very noir, and as a great excuse for making the lighting more extreme. The result is a lighting style that is more expressionistic than any shadows I’ve seen in any film noir since Stranger on the Third Floor, and it’s absolutely delightful. It’s also very different for a film noir to avoid themes of male anxieties about women completely (or, in other words, to avoid a femme fatale or similar type), and Lauren Bacall seems almost out-of-place in her “loving, devoted wife” role.

While I think some parts of the film, such as the Bogart-Bacall romance, could have been more interesting than they are, I do think this is one of the greatest films noirs I have ever seen, and perhaps one of the greatest films I’ve seen at all.

Touch of Evil Review

December 21, 2016 by JD Hansel

Very often for these reviews, I like to take the general critical consensus of a film’s worth into account for the star rating. I usually don’t let what the professional critics have to say influence the body of my review very much, but for the number of stars, it’s nearly always a factor. This is because I want the star rating to serve as at least one of the following: an objective, logical analysis that reduces the influence of the specific emotional context of my viewing of the film and just focuses on quality; the extent to which I recommend the film to others; a “protest vote” to counter the views of the other reviewers; a bold statement to bait its viewers to read the article that goes with it. Sometimes I go for somewhere in the middle of all four, but I usually use the reviews of the other critics to help my more objective ratings by rounding them up to a higher number of stars when I’m stuck in a dilemma. For this film, I’m definitely rounding up due to critical consensus – I just can’t figure out what my own feelings are about the film, but I can’t think of anything wrong with it either.

I have no issue with the protagonist, apart from the fact that the casting is comically bizarre, and most of the other characters are fine by me as well. Welles’ character in the film is obviously a delight, and his handiwork as a director is as much of a big, eye-catching performance as his acting is. The lighting is wonderful, making for excellent “noir” visuals, and the way that some of these scenes are shot is exceptionally impressive. The choice for the music is particularly interesting because its very fun for a drama from this time period, including a lot of classic (then-contemporary) rock ‘n’ roll, making for some unique juxtaposition. The film has a few truly great scenes throughout, and the climax is just perfect. As much as I like the story of Welles’ character, it really feels like there isn’t a whole lot of story in the film – at least not for the first half. It can feel kind of slow and boring at times, leaving me wondering why I’m supposed to be interested, but these moments are balanced out with moments that are shocking, dazzling, or otherwise intriguing, making for a very fascinating piece of work in the end. If Touch of Evil is the last film noir, as many historians say it is, it’s nice to see the genre went out with a bang.

Gun Crazy Review

November 28, 2016 by JD Hansel

SPOILER WARNING

In my last review, I wrote a bit about how I’m currently fascinated with génial–nanar blends – films that are very impressive and enjoyable in some scenes, yet are so stupid, bizarre, or unimpressive that they become enjoyable in other scenes. One of the best examples of this type of film is unsurprisingly found in the film noir genre: Gun Crazy, also known as Deadly Is the Female. While I don’t think it’s meant to be a comedy, many scenes are so strange or absurd that they seem laughable, giving me a feeling that’s no so different from what I get when I watch Duck Soup in that it feels almost like a child’s idea of how to make a movie rather than a rational adult’s. What I think Gun Crazy demonstrates is that this group of films, in which I would include Gun Crazy, often achieves this state by trying to be completely interesting, surprising, or unique.

First, consider the strange aspects of this film. The protagonist is obviously a very odd choice for a romantic lead in a crime drama because of his tall, lanky, silly appearance, which is only made sillier by his awkward smile and his unexplained obsession with guns. Towards the beginning of the film, two characters are presented as children – Clyde Boston and Dave Alastair – who are dressed as adults and look exactly the same when they grow up. Towards the end, Annie is randomly crazy enough to steal the baby from Ruby’s house to keep herself (and Bart) from getting shot by police. The foggy, swampy environment of the ending looks nothing like the rest of the film, and wouldn’t naturally occur in that location, breaking what little sense of realism the film had maintained. Best of all is the line that was nominated for inclusion in AFI’s 100 Movie Quotes: “We go together, Laurie. I don’t know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.”

Now consider just how much of Gun Crazy is clever and creative. The opening titles are presented over the background that becomes the first scene, meaning the cast and crew held on that shot for a few minutes before they started moving – nothing novel, but certainly something rare and interesting. As far as the storytelling goes, there is great irony in the fact that the protagonist first encounters his lover when she shoots him and their relationship ends when he shoots her. The bank robbery scene that was shot all in one take is highly impressive from a technical standpoint, not to mention how difficult it must have been for the performers to time everything properly and improvise any needed dialogue. Even some of the weirdest things can be viewed from a perspective that makes them seem clever. For example, one might see the representation of young Clyde and Dave as miniature adults as an indication that much of the film (or at least the opening scene that takes place in the past) is being presented from Bart’s perspective according to his memory.

Ultimately, all of these positive elements and bizarre elements seem to come from the same directorial approach: making the film as interesting as possible – striving to make things unique at all costs. Trying things that people have never done before in cinema can lead to the greatness of Citizen Kane or the ridiculousness of a Joel Schumacher film. In spite of its resemblance to other film noir, it clearly strives to be very much its own film, refusing to let anyone say that it is not unique. This isn’t the greatest answer to my question of how we get génial–nanar blends, and it is not my final answer – in fact one professor of mine found it very inadequate, arguing instead that it has something more to do with affect. Still, the desire to make something very different from what everyone’s seen before, something that’s very captivating and memorable at all costs, does seem to be at least a preliminary requirement for the génial–nanar. I don’t think anyone else would have thought to make a film noir with a tiny touch of the western and a big load of goofiness, but the fact that this mixture was somehow able to get produced in the height of the studio system’s panicked identity crisis is enough to make it the unique novelty that audiences never knew they wanted.

The Asphalt Jungle Review

November 17, 2016 by JD Hansel

(SPOILER ALERT)

It’s surprising to me just how much better this film is on my second viewing – how much easier it is to follow and enjoy watching it after having already seen it before. That’s not to say I really liked it the second time I watched it – in fact I never finished watching it a second time – but it is easier to appreciate. The film has a structure that’s hard to work out on the onset, and the first few minutes of the film give the impression that the story will follow the perspective of the police officers more than the criminals. Without any clear protagonist, and with an ensemble cast with intricate relationships, it’s easy to get lost in the story, as I did when I first started watching it. There’s also the fact that I generally have little interest in crime and heist films, which made me hope for better motivations behind the characters’ actions so I could have an easier time getting invested. On the second viewing, however, it has become clear to me that this film is very careful and detailed, making it rather fascinating. I’m particularly fascinated by the role of women in the film.

I think it is quite safe to say that the filmmakers planned on having a mostly male audience, seeing as how the main characters in the film (or at least the ones who push the plot along) are men, so the film looks at women from a few male perspectives. There seems to be a dichotomy presented between the “good life,” represented by adhering to domestic norms, and the wrong way of living, represented by inappropriate lust (or, to a lesser extent, greed). The professor seems to have no interest in settling down with a wife – his ideal retirement is chasing the pretty Mexican girls around in the sunshine. The film seems adamant about making the point that greed, lust, and criminality are all in the same family of things that ought to be avoided, and it is no surprise that Doc’s lust becomes his undoing. Similarly, Emmerich’s affair seems to be at the very least related to his unhappy ending. When Bob Brannom suggests that Emmerich went broke because of Angela (Marilyn), Emmerich denies it, saying it was his extravagant way of living, but I argue Emmerich would have no need for his many properties if he didn’t need places to have his affair. “Doll” tries to pull Dix into the conventional, domestic, married life, but he inexplicably resists, instead pining after the horses of his home.

Interestingly, the film only touches on the subject of how crime can hurt one’s family. The brief memorial service scene seems to mostly serve the function of reminding the audience of the consequences of criminal behavior, which is a message the film probably needed to drive home quite severely in order to get approved. If a big proponent of Sobchack were to try to figure out why a family would be brought into this film, it seems that the reasons would be purely functional: to raise the stakes so the drama of the heist is more interesting, and to help the film get its approval. I can’t help but wonder how entirely different the film would be if one woman had been involved in the heist itself and how the perspective on women the film presents might completely change.

Unfortunately, a film that’s fascinating in hindsight is not the same as one that’s entertaining from the start, which is really what I was hoping to see. Some of the characters are really good and leave a strong impression, and I think that’s largely due to the great performances from Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, and of course Marilyn, but somehow this isn’t enough to keep the film interesting. I recognize that it’s a well-made film in many respects, but it’s not my kind of thing. I think I’ll have to finish my second viewing sometime, or maybe even watch it a third time, because as of right now, I’m wondering if I’ll ever decide if the film’s ending is an unsatisfying bummer or a work of poetic genius.

Raw Deal Review

October 30, 2016 by JD Hansel

SPOILER ALERT

Unlike many of my fellow millennials, I have no reservations or concerns about watching films from Classical Hollywood, because I do not share in their fears that old movies are “too boring.” My issue with classic cinema is that it can be uncomfortable recommending or showing older films to friends of mine without explaining to them beforehand that I don’t condone the sexism or racism that sometimes appears in these classic films. When I heard that Raw Deal brings a female perspective to film noir by having a woman narrate, I was hoping that it would be a film noir I could show to friends with no such concerns. Better yet, the professor of the class that was screening Raw Deal said it was his favorite film noir, which sounded like a good sign (as he was also a big fan of Double Indemnity, which I find excellent). Regrettably, I not only greatly disliked the film, but was very disappointed to find no trace of feminism or anything of the sort. While I do think the recurring theme throughout the film is the theme of the choice(s) of its women, I do not think that the film presents the women’s freedom to choose in a positive light.

Most scenes in Raw Deal are part of a set up for the main female choices in the film: Pat’s choice to lie to Joe about Rick’s goon’s phone call concerning Ann, and then her choice tell him the truth. Pat is the character who is most clearly being silenced throughout the film, never getting the chance to take part in the decision-making in her and Joe’s relationship during the first two acts. She’s actually being told what to do by men even before Joe starts – at the prison, she’s told she’ll have to wait to see Joe, which is just the first of many moments in the film that focus on how she’s forced to wait, and then she and Joe are commanded by the security guard to keep their voices up. When Joe starts, if Pat’s narration is to be trusted, the commanding gets alarmingly strict. She hardly gets to finish one sentence once he gets in the car before he tells her to focus on the wheel, and then when she tells him he doesn’t like his plan to use her and Ann to get through the dragnet, he dismisses her concerns immediately and tells her to get dressed. She is similarly told what to do and/or silenced when speaking her mind – either on screen or according to her voiceover – in their car ride to the border, just after they pass the dragnet, at the campfire, when they make their way to Walt’s bar by the beach, and repeatedly throughout their whole discussion when he decides to leave her behind and go to Rick’s. Pat’s narration makes it seem almost as though it’s the story of a woman who’s trapped in a film that’s about her lover’s love story, not hers.

From the perspective of screenwriting theory, it seems like this would be the obvious set-up for a story about a woman who finally learns to make her own choice. While Joe may be the protagonist and dominate the film’s climax, Pat has her own semi-climactic moment when she decides to lie about the phone call. However, the liberation that seems to be displayed in this scene is undercut by her more climactic scene, when she realizes her one big decision in the film was a mistake. If she learns any moral lesson – although that’s debatable – it’s that she should have done as Joe told her in the first place and told him what the man said on the phone call.

Rick goes further in his mistreatment of women, as I suppose one would expect of the villain, and he shows this by keeping his cool after he’s lost his poker game and found out that Joe successfully escaped, but losing it when his lady friend accidentally spills a little bit of her drink on him. (That’s rather small in comparison, even if it is supposed to be the last straw.) Still, it’s ultimately Pat’s narrative that reveals time and time again that she lives in a world in which women’s views aren’t as important as men’s, and I don’t see how her decision to withhold information from Joe changes that. Ann’s choice to shoot a man, which is also set up earlier in the film (with her mentioning in her apartment that she’d be able to stop Joe if she had a gun), but this choice leads to her overwhelming guilt, and ultimately Joe ends up dying hours later anyway. Add this to the number of times they use the word dame and the way the whistle blows when Ann walks out of the prison and it’s clear that the film does not play as well as one would hope to younger audiences who find anti-feminism in film morally unsatisfactory. While I’ve heard some make the case today that the way women are presented and/or treated in film today seems worse that it was back in the days of Classical Hollywood, this is clearly the kind of movie that people are afraid to find when they watch classic films because it perpetuates the view that it is the woman’s place to shut up and obey. At the end of the day, as much as I really appreciate the film’s charmingly “Noir-Expressionist” visual style, I have found nothing else about the film which is particularly noteworthy or memorable, which presents me in the Song of the South conundrum – if all that’s really memorable about the film are the few parts that seem particularly politically inappropriate, should those alone be the memorable part of its reception and ratings?

In this case, I vote yes.

Double Indemnity Review

October 23, 2016 by JD Hansel

MINOR SPOILER ALERT

Before watching this film, I was informed by a reliable source that this is the “perfect film noir,” and its screenplay by Raymond Chandler and cinema god Billy Wilder is commonly regarded as holy. Perhaps it was because of the hype that I did not find the film absolutely perfect, but I have been having a hard time thinking of anything that’s wrong with the film, and it’s been growing on me both in hindsight and as I’ve re-watched certain scenes. I do consider it brilliant, and I hail it as a great cinematic achievement, but maybe its simply not quite my style of film. Much of the visual style is more or less in the cinematographic territory that I most like, and there are good tracks on the soundtrack, and the story is interesting, and the performances are very good, and the pacing keeps me engaged, but I think I still have a hard time loving a story that doesn’t have the kinds of characters that really interest me in it. Duck Soup has one type of character that I like in Firefly, while Labyrinth has a protagonist that reminds me of my youth, and Little Shop of Horrors has a great villain, and Phantom of the Paradise has an even better villain, while Gremlins is a delightful, childlike collective of loony villainy – but Double Indemnity doesn’t have any of the usual character types that tickle my fancy. Still, that’s never stopped me from enjoying films like Mockingjay or Casablanca, and Edward G. Robinson’s character, Keyes, is probably one of my favorite characters in all of cinema at this point, so what’s the problem?

I think that the reason why I haven’t fallen head-over-heels in love with the film is that I’m not wrapped up in the goals of the characters – their motives don’t grab me. Phyllis gives the impression that she’s willing to attempt to kill off her husband simply because she’s grown bored with him, and Walter Neff is willing to attempt murder just for the fun of it – an attitude that comes out of nowhere from this otherwise charming, polite, likable every-man. The results of Walter’s efforts don’t seem to matter to him much, and neither does his life, so it’s very difficult for the audience to care too much about what happens to him. That being said, I still have both an intellectual appreciate and a special soft spot for this film noir classic, and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good drama.