|
|
||||
|
Login
Month Archive
This Month
Search
|
Sunday, January 27
A JAPANESE MOVIE POSTER FOR TODAY
by
Lloydville
on Sun 27 Jan 2008 03:17 AM PST
 I ran across the poster above at a web log called Outcast Cinema, which celebrates "disreputable movies". (Thanks to Film Forno for directing me there.) I have no idea what movie this poster is advertising (Outcast Cinema doesn't say) but I do know I want to see it. Don't you? Monday, January 21
SCARLET STREET
by
Lloydville
on Mon 21 Jan 2008 06:23 AM PST
 This film by Fritz Lang, from 1945, is essentially domestic noir -- the story of an unhappy, ordinary middle-aged married man led into a life of deception and, ultimately, crime by a fetching femme fatale. It was Lang's favorite among the films he made in America and has a considerable reputation but I find it curiously dead emotionally and lacking in real suspense. The problem is that the fatal femme is so obviously on the make, so obviously not attracted to the ordinary man, so cynical and so dumb, that we feel only pity for the guy, a pity laced with scorn. We can see what attracts Walter to Phyllis in Double Indemnity -- the two are hot together -- and even if we suspect that Phyllis might be using Walter, part of us thinks it might be worth getting used by a woman like this. This implicates us morally and emotionally in Walter's transgressions, makes us care about his fate.  It's impossible to care about Chris in Scarlet Street on that level -- watching his life come apart at the seams is like watching a train wreck from a distance. It's fascinating and horrifying but we're not involved. In Double Indemnity, like it or not, we're passengers on that trolley hurtling towards the end of the line. The ending of Scarlet Street achieves a kind of tragic power, because things go so horribly wrong, and Chris's moral collapse is so complete and so bleak. It's not a genuine tragedy, though, because in a genuine tragedy we could imagine ourselves in Chris's place. In Scarlet Street we're denied that identification, that implication in his fate. Friday, January 4
REDISCOVERING PREMINGER
by
Lloydville
on Fri 04 Jan 2008 01:04 AM PST
 Following up on a recent post in which I suggested that Otto Preminger was overdue for a critical re-evaluation, I notice that Film Forum in New York is hosting a 23-film retrospective of the director's work -- which coincides with the recent release of a new Preminger biography by Foster Hirsch, which Tony D'Ambra of the films noir site recently directed attention to here. The Film Forum site offers this from Andrew Sarris -- "Otto Preminger is still the most maligned, misjudged, misunderstood and misperceived American filmmaker. His films have stood up better stylistically, thematically and subtextually than I ever imagined they would." Indeed, Preminger's films are so interesting and so good that all this attention should lead to the restoration of his reputation in no time at all. (Let's hope it leads to a widescreen DVD edition of Anatomy Of A Murder as well . . .) |
Favorites
|
||
