Tuesday Minute
No. 103 | May 25, 2010

Shades of Gray

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

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)

Clerks (1994)

Cinematographer:  David Klein

Why make a movie in black-and-white?  Black-and-white may be a good fit for the period and subject matter (see Monday’s feature).  Or, it may be a choice made for artistic reasons (see last year’s Tetro, from Francis Ford Coppola).  Then again, it may just be a matter of budget.

It’s true, color is more expensive than black-and-white, and in Clerks, the language is so flagrantly colorful that virtually nothing was left for film itself.  If not for black-and-white, there might have been no movie at all.

Director Kevin Smith sold his comic book collection and maxed out his credit cards to raise the cash to make Clerks.  The film didn’t cost much to shoot—about $27,000, peanuts for the movie biz—then earned about $3 million at the box office.  Chump change by Hollywood standards, but a huge return for a DIY film, and enough to launch Smith’s career, along with a few others’.

The action in Clerks takes place inside, outside, and on top of a convenience store, during a single day, a day that should have been an off-day for Dante Hicks, the clerk who’s called in when his fellow worker is sick.  No doubt Kevin Smith had read Aristotle’s Poetics, as the story closely adheres to the three unities of drama.  I’d guess that Aristotle was not the source for one of the more shocking (and hilarious) plot developments:  Dante’s girlfriend has sex in the bathroom with a dead man, who had died while reading a porn magazine.  There are various comings and goings, a hockey game on the roof, but mostly a lot of talk.  Silent Bob doesn’t have much to say, but he and his buddy, Jay, make their big screen debut.

The film is uneven, and certainly rough in places, but that’s part of its appeal.  Hollywood could never have made a movie like Clerks, and part of the success of the film is that it validated the indie movement.  It showed that movies could be done another way, and among other things, done funnier.

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Clerks (1994)
Kevin Smith, director
David Klein, cinematographer
Trailer

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Clerks (1994)
Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith
Jay & Silent Bob
 

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Quote of Note
Coroner:  My question is, how did she come to have sex with a dead man?
Dante:  She thought it was me.
Coroner:  What kind of convenience store do you run here?
—Coroner (Pattijean Csik), Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran), Clerks (1994)

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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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