Wednesday Minute
No. 124 | June 23, 2010

The Art of the Heist

Our theme this week
Heist films

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, 1999)
Tuesday         —   Rififi (1955)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The Asphalt Jungle is a heist film in the noir tradition, directed by a master of film noir, John Huston, and adapted from the novel by a master of crime fiction, W.R. Burnett. 

The plot elements are not unlike what you see in other films of the genre.  A criminal gets out of prison and rounds up a team of crooks.  They plan a big score, knocking off a jewelry store.  The crime is carried off with precision—the break-in, disabling the alarm, evading the electric eye.  Then, something goes wrong.  A watchman interrupts the heist.  A shot is fired, wounding one of the criminals.  The men escape.  One of the criminals double-crosses the others.  Separately, the men try to elude a police manhunt.  Fate finds each of them, one way or another.

Sounds familiar, but that’s not to say The Asphalt Jungle is derivative.  Just the opposite.  It’s the movie that a thousand other heist films have borrowed from, some directly, some a few generations removed.

The plot is clean and compelling, but the real appeal of the story is the characters.  The thieves are ordinary men, real flesh and blood, not just types.  They’re not the kind of bad guys you often see in early gangster films.  You understand where these men come from.  You see the world through their eyes.  They make crime seem like just another line of business.

The stellar cast includes Louis Calhern as  Alonzo D. Emmerich, the lawyer whom the criminals need to finance the operation.  Sam Jaffe is the mastermind just out of prison, Doc Riedenschneider (a name borrowed years later by the Coens).  Doc’s picks for the break-in team include tough guy Dix Handley, memorably played by noir favorite Sterling Hayden; the driver Gus Minissi, an early role for James Whitmore; and the safecracker Louie Ciavelli,  portrayed by character actor Anthony Caruso.  Two of the women to watch are Jean Hagen, in one of her best performances, and Marilyn Monroe, in the first of a pair of small roles in 1950 (the other, in All About Eve) that helped launch her career.

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
John Huston, director
Trailer

 

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen

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Quote of Note
May:  Oh Lon, when I think of all those awful people you come in contact with—downright criminals—I get scared.
Alonzo:  Oh, there’s nothing so different about them.  After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.
—May Emmerich (Dorothy Tree), Alonzo D. Emmerich (Louis Calhern), The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

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Wednesday Minute
No. 114 | June 9, 2010

Derrick and the Dominoes

Our theme this week
Films about oil, and what it does to people

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Giant (1956)
Tuesday         —   The Wages of Fear (1953)

The Two Jakes (1990)

Robert Towne had the idea for a trilogy, films set in three decades (the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s), chronicling three defining elements of Los Angeles history (water, oil, and the freeway).  The first was Chinatown (1974).  The second was The Two Jakes (1990).  The third, Cloverleaf, was never made.

In today’s feature, Jake Gittes is older and wiser, even wealthier, now a member of a country club.  He’s still a private eye in the divorce racket.  One of his clients is the other Jake, Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel), a real estate developer, who suspects that his wife is having an affair.  A sting at a motel goes all wrong and Berman’s partner ends up dead.  Possibly it’s murder, and Gittes, unwittingly, could be an accessory.  The case from there is a twisted one, leading to, among other things, the corruption behind the booming times in postwar L.A., including its burgeoning oil business.  There’s also a twist involving Katherine Mulwray, the daughter from Chinatown.  Like any noir hero, Gittes has a past.

Jake Gittes is played, of course, by Jack Nicholson, reprising the role.  He also directed, taking over for Towne, who wrote the script.  The film is not considered a classic like Chinatown—but then, what is?  If it weren’t a sequel, The Two Jakes probably would have a better rep than it does.  There’s a lot more to it than your average period piece or crime movie.  The film gets deep into its characters.  It provides a darker, less glamorous view of L.A.’s past than Chinatown, and even if the plot is less tight, The Two Jakes offers a number of memorable scenes, along with other pleasures, as the story unwinds.

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The Two Jakes (1990)
Jack Nicholson, director
Trailer

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The Two Jakes (1990)
Jack Nicholson
Jake Gittes remembers his past

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Quote of Note
“You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures.  You can follow your instincts, which’ll probably get you in trouble.  Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth.”
—Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), The Two Jakes (1990)

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Monday Minute
No. 102 | May 24, 2010

Shades of Gray

One of the constants in the history of film is the advance of technology.  Filmmakers are always inventing new ways of telling stories, and in many ways those developments have created a richer experience for film audiences.  Sometimes a new technology is adopted widely and immediately.  Sound came to Hollywood in 1927 and by 1931 Chaplin’s silent classic City Lights was viewed as a nostalgic anomaly.  Other times, technology is adopted in fits and starts.  Bwana Devil arrived in 1952 but 3-D never went mainstream; now, with Avatar and other films, 3-D seems new all over again.

Then, there are times when the shift to new technology happens gradually.  So it was with the introduction of color, with the transition in Hollywood films from almost all black-and-white to almost no black-and-white taking decades.  From 1939 to 1966 (except 1957), the Academy awarded separate Oscars each year for black-and-white and color cinematography, with Gone with the Wind winning the first for color and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? winning the last for black-and-white.  Since the change to a single award, only one black-and-white film, Schindler’s List in 1993 (with a few scenes in color), has won the cinematography prize.

The black-and-white film is now an endangered species, but not extinct.  Recent years have seen a few exceptions to the general trend, and we’ll look at some of them in this week’s theme.

Our theme this week
Black-and-white movies since 1990

The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

Cinematographer:  Roger Deakins

The Man Who Wasn’t There is typical for the rare black-and-white film of recent times.  Its story is set in a period when black-and-white was the predominant choice for the medium.  In this case, the film borrows heavily from the traditions of film noir.  Some of the apparent influences, in style and theme, include The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and In a Lonely Place.

Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and directed the movie, with frequent collaborator Roger Deakins, who earned the film’s sole Oscar nomination, handling the cinematography.  (Notably, and unlike movies from decades earlier, the film was shot in color but released as a black-and-while film.)

Set in mid-century Santa Rosa, California, the film stars Billy Bob Thornton as barber Ed Crane.  In the early minutes of the film, Ed says, “I don’t talk much,” and it’s true that he has little to say to the characters in the movie, yet in a series of voiceovers, he doesn’t shut up.  Ed shows little emotion but has a lot on his mind.  Much of it has to do with the people from his small-town world.  They include his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), her boss, Big Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini), who’s having an affair with her, his brother-in-law Frank (Michael Badalucco), who owns the barber shop, and Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito), the businessman who talks Ed into investing in a dry cleaning operation.  Ed may be the protagonist in the film, but his true fate is as a secondary character subject to the whims and conceits of the others.

Ed is not unlike the heroes in some other Coen brothers’ movies—the man whose best efforts are no match against forces greater than himself.  He’s in one respect a tragic figure, but also darkly comic.  The Man Who Wasn’t There seems to get the balance just right.  The performances and writing are crisp, as you’d expect from the Coens.  The black-and-white photography is a feast for the eyes.  Part homage to earlier films, the visuals are unmistakably Coen brothers’ material.  When a shot dollies in, the Coens don’t stop at a close-up, they continue moving in till the camera is nearly inserted into the character’s mouth.  The Coens are playing with viewer expectations, and even dentists in the audience probably feel uncomfortable.

Unlike films from the noir era, which typically zip along,  The Man Who Wasn’t There is slow-paced, even meditative.  Perhaps the movie is a little too concerned with appearances rather than just telling its story.  That said, the film truly comes alive when Tony Shalhoub is onscreen.  Shalhoub plays Freddy Riedenschneider, a brilliant, slick lawyer hired to defend Doris in a murder trial.  It’s one of the great portrayals of any lawyer in any film from recent years—a performance not to be missed.

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The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen (uncreditied), directors
Roger Deakins, cinematographer
Trailer

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The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Shalhoub

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The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Shalhoub

 

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Quote of Note
“Time slows down right before an accident, and I had time to think about things.  I thought about what an undertaker had told me once, that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops.  I thought, What keeps it growing?  Is it like a plant in soil?  What goes out of the soil?  The soul?  And when does the hair realize that it’s gone?”
—Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

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