"Gangster Squad" - LAPD Noir Encore

The pulp fiction hard boiled writing style that translated so easily to the screen as film noir has a long and continuing influence on our culture in general and movie making in particular.  
      
Los Angeles has been used as a setting almost from the beginning, in the literature, and translated to films: authors James M. Cain (“Double Indemnity"); Horace McCoy (“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”); Nathaniel West (“Day Of the Locust”); Raymond Chandler (“The Big Sleep” et. al.); John Fante (“Ask The Dust”) all have inspired movie makers for generations.  Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the script for “Double Indemnity” (1944), the film many historians credit as the first Hollywood film of the genre, followed up with the noir classic, “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), from a script credited to his longtime collaborator, Charles Brackett. 

Robert Towne, who wrote and directed the movie adaptation of Fante’s novel, is most famous for the Oscar winning screenplay of “Chinatown” (1974).  There followed “True Confessions” (1981) directed by Ulu Grosbard from a novel by John Gregory Dunne and an adaptation by he and his wife, Joan Didion, starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, is an overlooked classic.
  
Towne wrote the screenplay for a “Chinatown” sequel, “The Two Jakes” (1990) directed by Jack Nicholson. “Devil With The Blue Dress” (1995) adapted Walter Moseley’s “Easy Rollins noir series of books starring Denzel Washington, set in post World War II south central L.A. .

The latest variant of the genre will be “Gangster Squad,” based on a book by L. A. Times staffer Paul Lieberman (“Tales of The Gangster Squad) about a team of L.A.P.D. detectives who were tasked by their chief, the legendary William Parker, to secretly terrorize Mickey Cohen and other mobsters who were threatening to rule their world and endanger the emerging prosperity of post World War II Los Angeles.  

Local lore has it that the LAPD had a history of corruption until Chief Parker took over and professionalized the organization, eliminating corruption, incompetence, passivity toward the evils of crime.  He relied on a new breed of lawmen, returning vets toughened by their war experience, inured to escalating violence, and unwilling to accede to the tyranny of arrogant criminals, especially the flamboyant mobsters who had migrated west from rotten eastern cities. They had no more tolerance for those invaders with Italian or Jewish names than they did for their own resident underclass of Mexicans, Japanese and African Americans.   

The subject has been handled before in movies. “L. A. Confidential" (1997) exploits the essential elements of LA noir — crooked cops, the seedy fringes of the movie business, racial prejudice. A key plot element of the movie is the character of Bud White (Russell Crowe) who is assigned to muscle mobsters to encourage them to leave town.  

All were there in James Ellroy’s novel.  Ellroy, a self-proclaimed keeper of the flame of LA noir (his own mother was murdered when he was a child, a life altering event which sparked his continuing fascination with crime). Curtis Hansen directed the brilliant script by Brian Helgeland. 

The year before, “Mulholland Falls” (1996) failed with critics and box office. The story was based on “The Hat Squad,” a group of LAPD officers who, in the 1950's, were assigned by reform chief Parker to dispose of mobsters. 

Lieberman in a recent interview observed that The Gangster Squad preceded The Hats by a few years and were more secretive about their work, but basically they had the same goal, to convince visiting mobsters that L.A. was not welcoming them with open arms, but rather was showing them the exit. 

While the original noir era was the 1940's, its revival is known by some as neo-noir, which tries to re-create the flavor of the genre with post modern sensibility. 

In 2006, Brian De Palma’s movie of James Ellroy’s novel “The Black Dahlia” was released (or rather escaped). Based on the legendary unsolved sensational 1947 murder of starlet Elizabeth Short, the novel and movie rework themes involving femme fatales, the perverse and untouchable rich, and corrupt cops.  Unfortunately the movie is a mess and was a critical and commercial flop.

The same year, “Lonely Hearts” written by Todd Robinson, recycled the sensational “lonely hearts killers” story from the 1940's.  (It had been previously mined twice: in 1970's “The Honeymoon Killers”; and 1996, “Deep Crimson”.) Now it was John Travolta and James Gandolfini as the cops with Jared Leto and Salma Hayek as the twisted con artist killers.
It also failed with critics and box office. 

I should also mention the other tangential though obvious influences: 

The Coens’ (1990) “Miller’s Crossing” is based on elements from two Hammett novels, “Red Harvest” and “The Glass Key”. “Blood Simple”, “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Fargo” and “No Country For Old Men,” all owe enormous debts to the noir originators.

Tarantino’s work (obviously “Pulp Fiction” “Reservoir Dogs” and “Jackie Brown”) inherited the hard-boiled attitude toward greed, sex, and violence. 

Graphic novelists Max Collins (“The Road To Perdition” and his “Nathan Heller” novels), and Frank Miller (“Sin City”) are inheritors of the Dashiell Hammett / John Huston / Humphrey Bogart genetic code.  The video game, “L. A. Noire,” pays violent homage to the era via role play as an L. A. P. D. officer.  

The soon to be released “Gangster Squad” was directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay by Will Beall (a former cop).  It departs from Lieberman’s nonfiction book in many respects, eliminating key people of the true story, and “fictionalizing” other characters and events. That is fine, it is, after all, “just a movie” and not a documentary.  

However, the screenplay goes much further, leaves any resemblance to real life in the bloody dust, tearing up the facts or even most of the “true story” on which it is barely based. It dials up the violence to a deafening roar. 

Crime movies crossed a threshold long ago, with the remake of “Scarface” in 1983. The original, from 1932, co-written by Ben Hecht and directed by Howard Hawks, was considered extremely violent and perverse in its time. It had been one of the last straws that brought on picture Code that censored violence in films for many years.  Brian De Palma’s filming of Oliver Stone’s script dialed up the violence to a level that had never been met in previous American films, including Sam Peckinpagh’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969) or “Bonnie And Clyde” (1967), which had shocked the public in the blood soaked Viet-Nam era.  

The explosive climax of “Gangster Squad” is a shootout seemingly modeled on a western template, but channeled through the post modern tolerance or rather addiction to extreme shooting.  It is as if the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was updated to include Thompson submachine guns and grenades wielded by the Clantons and Tarantino’s “Crazy 88's” against the Earp, Doc Holliday, and “The Justice League”.  In fact, I was not surprised to learn that Fleischer’s previous movie was “Zombieland” and that Beall is attached to “Justice League” and “Lethal Weapon 5".

It is no wonder that the film’s release has been delayed in the wake of recent shootings at Aurora and now Newtown. 

Whether the venerable film noir genre can survive all of this is in doubt.   

Jim Thompson And Noir Cinema

In previous posts, I’ve remarked on the influence of popular crime writing on the history of moving pictures, especially in the genre known as film noir and the far reaching influence of its style and values.  

I noted the writing of Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, Nathaniel West, Raymond Chandler, W.R. Burnett, and John Fante, who wrote hard boiled stylish stories about desperate dangerous people.  

Their writing reflected and illuminated their times better than so-called mainstream literature: beginning in the 1920's prohibition / mobster era and continuing through the Depression with existential and socially aware crime stories.  Into the 1940's with its cynical worldly post-war weary violence, and the paranoid angst ridden 1950's, their vivid stories were easily adaptable into cheap — mostly black and white, mostly B — movies.  

One writer I neglected to mention — and neglected to know at the time — was Jim Thompson (born 1906), who was a rough contemporary of the more famous writers but whose best work seems to have been written in the mid-1950's and early 60's.  

Thompson followed the time honored pledge of the worldly writer, writing about places, people, things he knew about.  Many of his novels are set in small southern towns he knew well.  He was born in Oklahoma territory, lived later in Texas, his father a local sheriff who was forced out of office by accusations of misdeeds, which haunted Thompson's childhood. (The central protagonists of some of his best novels, “Pop. 1980" and “The Killer Inside Me” were lawmen who are not heroes). 

He worked at many jobs, notably as a bellhop (used this in “A Swell Looking Babe”) during prohibition in an atmosphere of hustling, liquor, women, gambling.  He suffered a nervous breakdown early in life and many of his protagonists suffer from mental states that motivate and underlie their actions. 

During the Depression his politics were left leaning, being active in WPA writers project and the Communist Party. His novels are replete with the suggestion of class and race injustice.

For most of his life he was an alcoholic, but that illness did not seem to affect his prolific writing, at least during his most productive period.  

The novels I have read thus far vary from and expand upon the earlier work of the previous generation of writers. Reflecting the 1950's, his characters are more psychologically complex, often driven to their inevitable (though unpredictable and therefore exciting) doom by their fatalistic attraction to violent risks. Often seeing themselves as victims of injustice, they see their crimes as justified by a twisted sense of entitlement, the impulse for justified revenge, or explained as the way things must be. 

His novels revel in the notion that life is absurd, pointless except to survive and continue to exist without interference from hypocrites or other moralists.  His protagonists are anti-social in the sense of seeing their victims as mere obstacles to their existence.  Many characters fit the Thoreau model of leading “lives of quiet desperation”, that is until fate provides opportunities: meeting a beautiful woman or a con artist, being put into an anxious box by events.  Their adventures are like surreal dramas of the fantasies of all losers: success at sex, feeling the thrill of action, risking all at a chance to win the game, all the while knowing deep down that it will be futile.  

His insights into humanity are incisive, and his conclusions are among the darkest and least optimistic in popular literature. Heroes are rare in these stories.  Romance is often manipulative, for his characters love is not the cure. 

The stories are sexist, in tune with their time in that the central protagonists are mostly men, and women are sexualized --- although as in the previous generation of noir pulp writing, they are often empowered and independent, using their sexual natures to survive. Women are often victimized, rarely innocent, sometimes survivors.  

Psychological depth involves delving into perversion: incest, sadism, masochism.  Thompson's characters seem capable of anything to please or pleasure themselves. In his stories, crime often doesn’t pay in the end, though not because of a sense of values or morality. Rather, losers lose, irony and fate demand payment, and it is a zero sum game.     

His pulp novels were often published primarily in paperback form and on the book racks of the time their covers with leggy bosomy blondes and cigarette dangling gunmen would have been easily lost amid the crowded pulp titles.  He came to the attention of some Hollywood movie people, notably Stanley Kubrick, for whom he wrote some screen treatments (including a script for "The Killers" and "Paths Of Glory"), Robert Redford, Sam Fuller, and writer Harlan Ellison. When the few cognoscenti discovered him during his last years (he died in 1977), the movie adaptations began to flow.  

The first was “The Getaway” directed by Sam Peckinpah in 1972, starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, remade in 1994 with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger). 

That was followed by “The Killer Inside Me” (1976) directed by Burt Kennedy and starring Stacy Keach as Sheriff Lew Ford.  It was remade in 2010 by Michael Winterbottom, starring Casey Affleck, with Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson.  

The French director Alain Corneau filmed a version of Thompson’s novel “A Hell Of A Woman” re-titled “Série noire,” (1979).  In 1981, “Coup de Torchon” an adaptation of Thompson’s “Pop. 1280" was released, directed by Bertrand Tavernier, starring Phillipe Noiret, with Isabelle Huppert and Stéphane Audran.  

Three Thompson novels were adapted into movies released in 1990:

“The Kill-Off” is one of Thompson’s novels that was a novelization based on a proposed screen treatment or screenplay. It was filmed by Maggie Greenwald based on her own screenplay which apparently abandoned most of Thompson’s plot and dialogue and sank into oblivion after a few decent festival showings.

“After Dark, My Sweet” was released in the same year. James Foley and Robert Ridlin adapted Thompson’s novel for a movie staring Jason Patric, with Bruce Dern and Rachel Ward. 

The most successful Thompson based movie of 1990 was obviously “The Grifters.”  The script was written by Donald Westlake who, along with director Stephen Frears, and lead actors John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening, intentionally honored the novel on which it was based.  Frears in his commentary to the DVD shows his awareness of movie lore by referencing John Huston’s successful strategy in adapting “The Maltese Falcon” by filming the book with few thoughtful exceptions. Frears goes so far as to quote from the classic Huston movie by showing his femme fatale, “Lilly,” descending in a grated elevator as his climax.  

The 90's also saw the Baldwin / Basinger remake of “The Getaway” in 1994, and two years later, the release of “Hit Me” with Elias Koteas in Stephen Shainberg’s adaptation of Thompson’s novel, “A Swell Looking Babe”.  The next year “This World, Then The Fireworks” was released, starring Billy Zane and Gina Gershon as a perverse brother and sister.  

How I Feel About "The Descendants"

Blunted affect is the scientific term describing a lack of emotional reactivity on the part of an individual. It is manifest as a failure to express feelings either verbally or non-verbally, even when talking about issues that would normally be expected to engage the emotions. Expressive gestures are rare and there is little animation in facial expression or in vocal inflection.[1]
Blunt affect 'can be symptomatic of schizophrenia, depression, or brain damage'.[2] 'The difference between flat and blunted affect is in degree. A person with flat affect has no or nearly no emotional expression. He or she may not react at all to circumstances that usually evoke strong emotions in others. A person with blunted affect, on the other hand, has a significantly reduced intensity in emotional expression'.[3]

That seems to define the acting technique that is the modern equal of "The Method" that influenced acting in the previous generation (Clift, Dean, Brando, Pacino).  

The latest advocate of Blunted Affect is George Clooney, the favorite in the best actor race for this year's Oscar for "The Descendants".  Others who espouse this technique include Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, and other comics who dial down their personalities when they want to be taken seriously. 

Peter Sellers in "Being There" was the best example of this school which was pioneered long long ago by Buster Keaton, "The Great Stone Face". Sellers, of all the actors mentioned, was probably the most natural exponent of the style, inasmuch as he was, by most accounts, a certifiable schizophrenic.  

Other actors of past generations sometimes resorted to the flattened affect approach to character. Gregory Peck was accused by critics of having a limited range of expression. Cary Grant, when trying for drama, suppressed his naturally abundant personality. Gary Cooper was viewed as a shallow "yup-nope" type, which I think was a sad under rating of his talents as a film actor. He understood his face and at his best (as in "High Noon") he was nearly perfect.  

A still earlier school of screen actors resorted to a more extreme style, which could be labeled bipolar. They indulged in severe mood swings chewing the scenery in emotive flailing. The pantomime needs of silent films led to acting that would later be ridiculed for its over the top manner. 

Garbo's critical acclaim was based on a perception that she, apart from other silent stars, was able to express a wide range of emotions with reactions that were subtle. (Oddly, when she was able to speak, her acting became less subtle, sometimes awful, as in "Grand Hotel" and "Camille"). She was the first screen actor of whom it was said that the camera alone exposed her genius. On the set, directors worried about her performances. But when they saw the film, they were awed.  Garbo's face was described as like the Mona Lisa, a slate upon which the viewer wrote his or her feelings.  Famously, in the final scene of "Queen Christina", she stares at the horizon evoking profound emotions, and was told by the director to think of nothing. 

In "The Descendants," Clooney's character has plenty of reason to be closed down emotionally and to be somewhat depressed, considering the difficulties of his domestic life: a wife in a coma who he learns was unfaithful and in fact planning to leave him, a rebellious teen daughter, and financial burdens about whether to dispose of his inherited fortune.  I must admit that I myself felt detached from these characters. I felt that in one sense I had little in common with them because I do not have the terrible dilemma of being filthy rich and living in paradise. Depressing.  

The Next Voice You Hear ....

Impressionists were staples of early television variety shows. Stand-up comics almost all began doing impressions of movie stars as part of their routines, repeated so often in night clubs, the Catskills, or on The Ed Sullivan show that the patter became kitchy signatures: Bogart ("Play it again, Sam") and Cagney ("You dirty rat...") and Gable ("Listen, Scarlett...") and Bette Davis ("Petah, Petah..."). Some, like Rich Little and Frank Gorshin, developed the skill into a near art form.
Today, it is nearly a lost art. The few remaining impressionists rely on politicians as in SNL skits or sports figures (Frank Calliendo has made a career of doing John Madden). Some of the best comic performances on SNL were those of Dana Carvey (Bush 42), Daryl Hammond (Bill Clinton and Al Gore), Will Ferrell (Bush 43), Tina Fey (Sarah Palin). But there are few modern impressionists who do vocal caricatures of contemporary actors.

The fact is that, with the notable exception of Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro, contemporary actors don’t have distinctive memorable voices. Can anyone get a laugh imitating the the voice of Meryl Streep or Nicole Kidman or Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston? Is there anything about their voices that captures their personas?

Despite the popularity of the horror genre, has any actor in any horror flick of the past thirty years been more memorable than the old timers, Bela Lugosi ("Dracula") or Boris Karloff ("The Mummy")? As funny as Robin Williams can be, is his voice as distinctive or funnier than Groucho’s or Stan Laurel or Oliver Hardy? Angelina Jolie has a sexy face and figure, but can you identify her voice as easily as you could Marilyn Monroe’s, whose breathy tones say it all in a rapid heartbeat.

Think about the voice of James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Katherine Hepburn or Henry Fonda. Some of today’s movie stars have the charisma to stop traffic, but once they speak, who cares? 

In the early days when movies began to talk and voice recording technology was primitive, many silent film stars flopped because they had voices that scared the moguls. Some were "too foreign," other voices didn’t match faces.

John Gilbert, a romantic lead in silents, had a decent speaking voice face to face, but rumors spread that in sound tests his voice was laughably high pitched. He panicked, adopted a stilted, overly trained diction that led to ridicule, fatal for a screen lover and his career swooned. In a few years he became an unemployed alcoholic and died.

Others were luckier. Gary Cooper made the transition by emphasizing his Wyoming bred western twang (though he was educated partly in England). MGM was so terrified that Greta Garbo’s thick Swedish accent would doom their meal ticket that they delayed her first talkie for years. After crash diction classes made her sound legible, they put her in Eugene O’Neill’s "Anna Christie," about a prostitute who returns home to her Swedish father, which made her accent appropriate.

Her opening line: "Giff me a viskey, ginger ale on da side, and don’ be stingy, baby," became an instant classic. Breathing relieved sighs, Louis B. Meyer and Irving Thalberg trumpeted their marketing: "Garbo talks." Garbo’s most famous contralto tag line, "I vant to be alone" was part of all stock imitations of the iconoclastic star.

Later, Marlene Dietrich’s success solidified the notion that deep voices and foreign accents could add to the sex appeal of female stars.

The best voice of the era was Ronald Colman’s. He had been an established silent star but with talkies, his mellow English voice was almost poetic. In period epics derived from literature, he spoke the classic lines as audiences heard them in their minds. "A Tale Of Two Cities" ("Its a far, far better thing I do..."), "The Prisoner Of Zenda", "Lost Horizon".

In 1942, George Stevens directed Colman, along with Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, and character actor Edgar Buchanan, a cast that may have had the most interesting voices of the decade in a comedy / drama, "Talk Of The Town".

Talking pictures compelled studio heads to scour the stage for actors who could speak and their ears perked up when they heard voices that could project to the balconies and were impervious to tinny sound systems.

In 1929, James Cagney was signed directly from a Broadway play called "Penny Arcade". Seven pictures and two years later, he shot to stardom when he really found "his voice" as "The Public Enemy," spitting his dialogue into the faces of his enemies as if they were bullets, creating an entirely new style of street-wise acting, that influenced all later tough guys, including De Niro.    

Warners found most of their gangsters on the stage: Muni, Robinson, Bogart. Spencer Tracy made a hit on Broadway in "The Last Mile" and was signed by John Ford to play another convict (with Bogart) in "Up The River" in 1930. 

These great stars were lucky for the timely advent of talkies. None of them had faces that would have made them leads in silents; their voices were their fortune.

Of course, the most famous stage actor of his day was John Barrymore. Considered the best American classical actor of the early 20^th century stage, "the Great Profile" found steady work, then stardom as a silent movie star, playing "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" among many other roles.

In 1926, Warner Brothers released the experimental "Don Juan" starring Barrymore. The film included the first fully synchronized sound track. When talkies began (the next year, 1927, "The Jazz Singer" came out), Barrymore continued to thrive.

His performance in the Hecht / MacArthur / Hawks production of "Twentieth Century" is one of the first and best of the screwball genre co-starring Carole Lombard, who exhibited her brilliant comic manner in such dialogue as in "My Man Godfrey," in which she created the persona of a charming, sexy, ditzy but somehow wise woman.

Another important reason for the dominance of voices was that the other mass medium of the era was radio.

By the 1930's, radio had trained audiences to listen — writers who came from the medium were all about the dialogue, and their words told the story as much or even more than the images. They craved actors who could punch the lines, bring them to life. Actors with characteristic voices were listened to and writers loved to write for them. 

That is why Capra’s favorite collaborating writer, Robert Riskin, and the writer / director of great comedies of the 1940's, Preston Sturges, treasured actors like Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, Fonda, Joel McCrea, Cooper, and Stewart.

They also filled out their films with supporting players who had terrific voices: the gravel voiced Lionel Stander ("Mr. Deeds Goes To Town"), Charles Coburn "The Lady Eve"), Roscoe Karns ("It Happened One Night)", Walter Connolly ("Mr. Deeds..."), Eugene Pollard ("Mr. Smith Goes To Washington"), James Gleason ("Arsenic And Old Lace"). You may never remember their names, but their voices can’t be forgotten.

Now, who was that actor who played Ryan Reynolds’ friend in that romcom with what’s-her-name?

HEREAFTER (2010)

Clint Eastwood dedicates his considerable talents as a cinematic storyteller to a script about the possibility of life after death by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) which has (no irony intended) fatal flaws. Premised on the hackneyed notion that the departed hang around in order to assist their grieving loved ones, it presents it as a given fact, but one that it claims the sophisticated, insistently rational world wants to deny and suppress.

These are dubious assumptions, as the lengthy history of afterlife mythology, whether propagated in almost any religious faith or the entirety of movie history, testifies. As recently as last year's "The Lovely Bones" the idea has been such a well worn staple of movies that it constitutes a genre with several sub-genres (Topper, Ghost, The Sixth Sense, Ghost Town, Blithe Spirit, et. al.).

The truth is that as a matter of faith and desperate wishes, the impulse to believe in a hereafter is a universal and insistent human frailty. if an afterlife was convincingly proved, it would be a discovery far more important than finding life on other planets. Any scientist (or psychic) who could prove it would be as famous as Einstein. 

Eastwood has gained a reputation as a thoughtful filmmaker, at his best when he allows his characters and scenarios to tell a simple, moving, and fundamentally honest story. Unforgiven is his best, minimizing sentimentality. He deals well with ambiguous emotions and attitudes, especially about violence, as in A Perfect World, Mystic River, Gran Torino, and his Iwo Jima films. Now that he is 80 years old, the subject matter of this movie is not unexpected and may be forgiven.  But here, he has allowed ambiguity to yield to confusion, sentimentality to rule over coherence.  

In another movie cliché, he chooses a form which is annoyingly popular in recent years. Crash and Babel are two examples. Three stories are told, seeming at first to be disparate, taking place at distant locales, coming together or overlapping in meaningful and unsatisfyingly contrived ways.

Here, Cecile de France is a Parisian tele-journalist whose Indonesian vacation is shortened by her near death in the tsunami. In a masterful terrifying and lengthy CGI scene, we see her drown, while she sees blurry images of dead people. She returns to life but is haunted by the visions. It takes Eastwood a long time to get her on the road we know she's going to follow, the one that teaches her about the "truth" of her experience. Her producer and her publisher both think her batty and sentimental. But she is determined to write a book about it. 

She meets a "scientist," a doctor (played by Marthe Keller) whose 25 years in hospice work has convinced her that there is an afterlife. The evidence the doctor asserts as proof, that all of her patients describe similar visions which she concludes cannot be coincidental, seems unscientific and illogical, easily answerable by rudimentary knowledge of how the human brain works when deprived of oxygen and when the mind becomes aware of its impending death.

The doctor asserts that the truth she has found has been suppressed. By whom, is not clear. Of course, that is nonsense. By setting this part of the film in Europe Eastwood strives for an ironic credibility. He seems to imply that the secularized and cultured continentals  are far less believing than we naive Americans.

The ultra American actor Matt Damon is the second main character, a reluctant San Francisco psychic who really possesses the gift of " connection" with the dead. By touching the hand of his subject, he can hear the dead speak to him. The mechanics of this are not questioned. It is a gift which was presented to him as a result of illness and some medical malpractice, and he has used to make a good living by exploiting it. But it caused him grief by denying to him any connection with living women.

We see an example when he meets a sweet girl in an Italian cooking class (played by Bryce Dallas Howard as if she signed on for a rom- com, but hadn't read the last page of her role). When she discovers his gift, she insists that he do her and when her dead father begs her forgiveness for abusing her, it chills the date and we get why our guy calls the gift "a curse."

It has been suggested by other reviewers that the movie permits an alternate explanation for the afterlife explanation. Maybe Damon’s character is telepathic, reading the emotions of his grieving subject – as if that would be more “realistic.” But the plot and dialogue detail really does not permit that apologetic interpretation. It is presented in the film as fact, as shown in the climactic scenes when the third plot thread weaves together.

The third main character’s arc is the most painful story to sit through. Twin twelve year old sons of an English heroin addicted mum are separated when one dies after being taunted by street bullies while on an errand to get medicine for mummy. The surviving twin is the quiet one, who idolized his protective older ( by minutes) brother. When mum goes into rehab, boy is sent to foster parents by the social workers. The adults are so understanding and forgiving of the little shit's neuroses that you want to slap them, especially when he steals money to seek out psychics to contact his brother.

In another startling episode, the boy’s cap falls off his head preventing his entry into a subway car which is soon blown up in a London terrorist attack that really did happen. Later, Damon’s psychic reveals that the twin brother knocked the cap to save his brother.  It is another proof of that we are meant to take the notion of ghostly assistance as literal.

Contrary to the views of some reviewers that the movie avoids a religious POV, the movie gives a foggy spiritual explanation for coincidences as well as loss of loved ones.

By tying the supernatural with current events like the tsunami and terrorist attacks, Eastwood seems to be saying that there is meaning to the randomness of natural and man-made violence in our world.

Ghost Tales

Having recently seen and hated “The Lovely Bones,” I tried to remember other ghost stories that I preferred. Here is the list I came up with so far in no particular order:


1. "Ghost" (1990) Possibly the most successful romantic ghost story. Directed by Jerry Zucker, with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, some very sexy clay, and Whoopi. Loving spouse is murdered, sticks around to solve crime, save his wife, give her closure. The whole package of sentiment and wishing.


2. "Topper" (1937) The playful society ghosts stay on to loosen up their uptight friend. Cary Grant, Constance Bennet, Roland Young, and a classic white Cord fishtail. Spawned sequels and a T.V. series.  Also in this genre are the recent “Ghost Town” which itself was a twist on “Hearts And Souls” (1993) Robert Downey, Jr. as the guy who has to help ghosts find closure.


3. "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1945) Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney, directed by Jos. Mankiewicz. A classic woman’s fantasy - a lusty sea captain ghost who helps her to independence and dreamy passion without leaving the toilet seat up.


4. "The Canterville Ghost", story by Oscar Wilde (filmed at least 6 times, including Charles Laughton version) in which a meek dead knight tries to haunt but doesn't have the heart to really scare.


5. "The Sixth Sense" (1999) M. Night Shyamalan’s coming out party with Bruce Willis in dialed down non action mode and Haley Joel Osmond seeing dead people. Everybody claims they guessed the twist - but like deja vu, not until afterwards.


6. "Blithe Spirit" (1945) Rex Harrison play by Noel Coward (sub-sub genre: dead spouse returns to mess up new relationship eg “Kiss Me Goodbye” - James Caan, Sally Field, “Chances Are” Downey, Jr and Cybil Shepard.


7. "The Others" (2001) Alejandro Amenabar sets Nicole Kidman and her supposedly photosensitive kids in a dark house on an isolated foggy island after World War II. The chilling solution to the scary story is logical and satisfying in its horror.


8. "The Innocents" (1961) ("The Turn Of The Screw") Henry James classic ghost tale, directed in glorious black and white by Jack Clayton, starring Deborah Kerr as the prim Victorian (ergo sexually repressed) governess who sees things the children see - or does she?


9. "The Amityville Horror" (1979) Based on the true story of a family that was murdered in their beds, the next occupants have serious problems with the previous owners.


10. "Ghostbusters" (1984) Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, directed by Ivan Reitman. Launched sequels, early video game, hit song and thankfully, Bill’s wacky comic persona.


11. "The Haunting" (Of Hill House) (1963) Shirley Jackson's classic sample of the psychological ghost story genre. Julie Harris, Claire Bloom. Directed by Robt Wise.


12. "The Shining" (1980) A haunted hotel sparks insanity for a frustrated writer - Stephen King’s story as told by Stanley Kubrick through Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and a kid on a trike who meets scary twins.


13. "A Christmas Carol". The ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come visit poor Scrooge, filmed many times and versions. My favorite is the classic Alistair Sim (1951) .


14. "Beetlejuice" (1988) Tim Burton’s twisted vision stars with ghosts Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis.


15. "Casper" (1995) Christina Ricci meets the animated friendly marshmallow looking ghost.


16. "Field Of Dreams" (1989) The ghosts of Chicago Black Sox players and a father come to Iowa to make me cry simply by saying “wanna play catch?”. Gulp.



see Wikipedia for a more inclusive list

The Lubitsch Touch

LACMA is in the midst of a four week program showing the films of Ernst Lubitsch, the master of the romantic comedy, a genre that has been a mainstay of Hollywood movies since they began to flicker.


Old school cranks like me wish that more contemporary filmmakers would review the Lubitsch library and learn just a bit of “The Lubitsch Touch”.


His ‘touch’ forbade coarseness in any part of his productions. The plot, dialogue, motivations, themes all had to be elegantly thought out, polished, coherent. Words like “sloppy,” “crass,” or “gross,” couldn’t be used to critique any of his movies. Even his pre-code movies showed a sophisticated view of sex and relationships. The battle of the sexes in Lubitsch films is fought with passion, wit, suggestion, tantalizing comic tension — but never with mean spirited nastiness.


Maurice Zolotow, in his biography of Billy Wilder (“Billy Wilder In Hollywood", Putnam 1977) writes of Lubitsch:


“He was a believer in a well-made screenplay and he didn’t start shooting until the screenplay was perfect. Lubitsch never improvised on a set — nor allowed his actors to utter spontaneous lines. He choreographed each word and gag. He made sure that there was not a single superfluous detail in the script, Once, B.P. Schulberg, then Paramount’s head of production, asked him why he was shooting a scene in a certain way, and he replied that he couldn’t remember exactly why at the moment, 'but it is in the script, which is good enough for me. If I didn’t have a good reason, it would not have been there when *Sam Raphaelson was writing it in the first place.'"


(*Samson Raphaelson writer on 9 Lubitsch films, including "The Merry Widow", "Shop Around The Corner", "Heaven Can Wait", and also Hitchcock’s "Suspicion".)


One of the best is “Design For Living”. Skirting the era of the Code, the movie drastically adapts Noel Coward’s play about a menage a trois among a writer (Fredric March), artist (Gary Cooper), and their muse (Miriam Hopkins). Ben Hecht’s screenplay downplays Coward’s homoerotic suggestions, keeps the eyebrow raising notion that marriage is not the only permissible alternative for relationships. He allows Lubitsch to keep the titillating hetero situations afloat as the three Bohemians assert their desire to preserve a “gentleman’s agreement” of no sex.


The movie’s wisdom about such an idealistic fantasy — which makes it a worthy guide for the 60's renewal of the Bohemian ideal of communal relations — is that it won’t work. But Lubitsch juggles the lovers so deftly that it seems like great fun. When the girl caves in the inevitable, she sprawls languidly on a divan, sighs, “unfortunately, I’m no gentleman.” Of course, the triangle plays out to its logical extremes.


Another pre-code Lubitsch treasure is “Trouble In Paradise”. Herbert Marshall, a thief, combines with soulmate, Miriam Hopkins, to steal from socialite Kay Francis. Marshall falls for Kay and Lubitsch creates subtle scenes suggesting liaisons as George gropes with his choices.


The fact that Lubitsch survived the strictures of The Code is instructive. The Touch thrived with the kind of subtle innuendo that The Code could not repress. “The Shop Around The Corner” is a sweetly innocent love story set in a Hungarian store. The head clerk (James Stewart) and the new girl he reluctantly hires (Margaret Sullavan) disagree about almost everything. Each sees the other as unromantic, although each has been writing anonymous love letters to a secret admirer. If you saw the remake, “You’ve Got Mail” you get the idea.


During the war, his anti-Nazi comedy, “To Be Or Not To Be” proved to be Carole Lombard’s last movie. The story of that movie was credited to Melchior Lengyel, a Hungarian born screen writer, who also had the idea for Lubitsch’s masterpiece, "Ninotchka".


According to Zolotow, the inspiration came in true Hollywood style — over lunch, at the Brown Derby, no less. Lengyel met Salka Viertel there. She was Greta Garbo’s companion and advisor, mentioned to Lengyel that MGM was looking for a comedy that could revive Garbo’s career, so they could trumpet “Garbo Laughs” the way they hyped “Garbo Talks.”


The next day, he called her with an idea. She invited him to tell it to Garbo. At the pool, where Garbo was swimming in the nude, he said, “‘Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance, and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism is not no bad, after all.’ MGM paid him $15,000 for these three sentences.” (Zolotow, p. 79).


Also in typical Hollywood style, Viertel and Lengyel’s script of his idea was rejected. The first director assigned, resigned. Jacques Deval, who wrote “Tovarich” a comedy about Russian aristocrats in Paris tried his hand. S.N. Behrman’s draft created the shell of a plot about a Russian commissar and French gigolo. She comes to Paris to sell nickel ore.


Garbo asked for Lubitsch, on loan from Paramount. He admired her acting, brought on Walter Reisch, a contract MGM writer, and his people, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, to create a polished script worthy of a Lubitsch picture. According to Zolotow, it was Lubitsch’s notion to have her come to Paris to sell with Czarist jewels, previously owned by a dutchess living in Paris with her lover, the gigolo who is going to fall for Ninotchka. Diamonds, Lubitsch said, were more cinematic than nickel ore.


Which brings us to another of the aspects of the Lubitsch Touch that is not often acknowledged. Like many artists of the 1930's, Lubitsch wanted his movies to have “social significance.” But unlike Frank Capra, Lubitsch (abetted by Wilder) would treat the “issues” with subtlety and wit. Ninotchka is a satire of Soviet seriousness. Gags touch upon news items familiar to all movie goers. Stalin’s purges — “there are going to be fewer but better Russians.” The five year plan — “I’ve followed your five year plans for the past fifteen years.”


Zolotow argues that Lubitsch (born in Germany to Russian Jewish parents), like most of his peers, was mildly communist or at least leftist during the era. However, Lubitch in the early 30's had traveled to Russia and returned after three weeks, refusing to speak about his visit. After that, he had withdrawn from pro-Soviet committees that were popular then. Zolotow argues that after Lubitsch’s time in Stalinist Russia, he no longer had the illusions of his peers. Ironically, the movie’s success derived partly from the coincidence of the Nazi non-aggression pact shortly preceding the movie’s release in 1939.


Zolotow also remarks on the circumstances of Lubitsch’s death in 1947. He had a fatal heart attack in the shower. A famous Hollywood story is that Billy Wilder arrived shortly after the death and found a woman there, sobbing uncontrollably. He tried to soothe her, but finally reverted to his somewhat sardonic character. “Look,” he said, “he was almost a father to me, but I’m not crying.” The woman said “Sure, he didn’t fuck you and die before he paid you.” Wilder paid her the $50. Of course, Zolotow reports, Wilder denied the story. “‘The chauffeur paid her.’” (Zolotow, p.85).

Notes On Oscars

The renewed expansion of the best movie category to 10 was a transparently desperate move, akin to a closeout sale at Wal-mart. In the Golden Age when studios released many more movies to much larger audiences,10 nominations made sense.

It is unfair to even compare this year’s 10 with the nominees from the best year in movie history, 1939:
"Gone With The Wind" winning over "Dark Victory", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Love Affair", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington","Ninotchka", "Of Mice and Men", "Stagecoach", "The Wizard of Oz", "Wuthering Heights".

Not even making the cut:
“The Hunchback Of Notre Dame”, “Gunga Din”, “Golden Boy,” “Intermezzo”, “Young Mr. Lincoln”, “Destry Rides Again”.

Although money earning statistics for movies are as reliable as Washington budget projections, I doubt that the nominations of 6 or 7 of the movies moved their earnings needles very far past what they would have earned anyway.

That the award went to a low budget, indy-like war-is-hell movie set in Iraq, directed by a woman and with a small cast of unknowns rather than the blockbuster special effects juggernaut that sucked up all the available youth cash this season, was well within the traditional temperament of academy voters although it can be seen as more evidence of the Academy’s self-destructive tendency toward snubbing audience favorites for arty message movies that appeal to few.

Echoing a trend begun in the Great Depression, “Precious” and “The Blind Side”, a couple of movies that contained unambiguous social messages and captured respectable audiences, gained some recognition.

Arguably, the only movie that sought to address the current economic condition was “Up In The Air”, a droll but somewhat sad dra-medy about corporate downsizing and its cost to the human heart.

Its theme and style was closest to the tradition of Depression era classics like “Meet John Doe”, Frank Capra’s bitter commentary on inhuman corporate values, or his adaptation of Kaufman / Hart’s screwball family play,“You Can’t Take It With You”, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1938 despite competition from “Grand Illusion”, “Test Pilot”, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, and “Jezebel”, among others.

In other categories there were also echoes of the classic film era. Jeff Bridges is the kind of workmanlike actor who reminds me of Robert Mitchum. Both are often better than their material. Both have such an easy manner before the camera that they seem to be sleepwalking, whether starring or featured, whether reciting dramatic or comedic lines. For many in the audience, Bridges will always be "The Dude", his classic avatar from "The Big Lebowski".

The film he won for, “Crazy Heart”, is also well within the tradition of subjects for small showpiece movies: a portrait of a drunken country singer. One of its producers, Robert Duvall, succeeded with “Tender Mercies”. In 2005, there was “Walk The Line”, earning a nomination for Joaquin Phoeniz and years before that, “Pollack” brought Ed Harris a nomination portraying a drunken painter.

Sandra Bullock’s win is reminiscent of Sally Fields’ Oscar. Both have been more popular with audiences than with critics, both considered best at lightweight comedies, and both given a chance in their forties to stretch into drama, came up big, Fields in “Norma Rae” and now Bullock. Incidentally, their acceptance speeches are twins — Fields’ direct whine, “You like me, you really like me” compares with Bullock’s equally apparent but slightly more acerbic amazement at her acceptance into the rarefied company that included grand dames Streep and Mirren.

The Oscars have always been little more than a showcase for the huckstering of often tawdry, sometimes collectible, always suspiciously glittering, merchandise. This year the salesmanship made it seem more like a three hour infomercial for products that may have a limited shelf life.

My nominees for Worst Movies of 2009 involving talented movie makers:

Angels And Demons
One of the worst movies of the decade, especially considering the quality of those responsible, particularly David Koepp & Akiva Goldman who took credit and enormous sums of money for their script. Part audio book with interminable babbling exposition or mostly bogus history and part travelogue of Rome (as if on a one day tour), the script has poor Tom Hanks chasing his tail for more than two hours, scrounging for "symbols" i.e., clues. At its core, it is an old fashioned who-dumm-it, with "obvious" suspects laid out for us, while the true culprit hides in the angelic face of its second billed star. Feeling sorry for Koepp, Goldman, Howard, Hanks, et. al, because of the unwieldy implausibility of the novel they had to work from is not an option because they made too much money to care. They made a film which pretends to support a heavy theme: the tension between religion (The Catholic Church) and science and manages to be offensively dishonest and gossipy about both institutions. Pardon the pun, but the movie does not "illuminate." Rather, it chokes on "dark matter."

Public Enemies
This movie is far too clinical in its attempt to re-create the era. For all its violence, it is bloodless compared to the Warner Bros gangster films of the 1930's when the events and characters were fresh. See any Cagney movie of the time for a far greater sense of the era, far greater passion and commitment to the essence of the time. Mann tries too hard to compare the sensitive, romantic, freedom loving anti-hero desperado against the near fascist bureaucrat Hoover and the Southern, gentlemanly, aristocratic lawman Purvis, who is disturbed by what he has to do to restore order. Depp as usual controls the screen, but this time with little effect.

State Of Play
Russell Crowe needs a workout program. Robin Wright Penn is wasted. Rachel McAdams needs more work.

The International
A muddled travelogue / capitalist conspiracy police thriller. Naomi Watts is wasted, obviously in it for the paycheck. Clive Owen's scowling intensity carries the action. The Guggenheim shootout is awesome but that's about it as the rest is a cut and paste of plot points stolen from Bond movie discards.

"Too Bad She's Bad" (1955)

I get a kick out of discovering a new old film.

I remember a very late sleepless night long time ago running into a Japanese film. It was in black and white and subtitled and I soon noticed that there were no monsters attacking paper models of Tokyo and toy cars. Instead there were bald guys wearing diapers and carrying formidable swords, sploshing around in mud and taking on marauders attacking a village of peace loving ...
Wait a minute. I sat up in my seat after twenty minutes of viewing. This plot is familiar...
Five minutes later, it struck me: The Japanese stole this story from "The Magnificent Seven".
I was embarrassed to relate the tale to a friend who corrected me: the movie I was watching was Kurosawa’s "The Seven Samurai", from which the American Western was derived. Oops.

Anyway, there is something riveting about watching foreign films with subtitles. Like silent movies, they demand a degree of concentration and involvement from the viewer that far outstrips talkies in one’s own language.

The other day I caught a film on TCM that I had never seen and before I knew it I was stuck for the next hour or so.

It was an Italian import from 1955 titled in English, "Too Bad She’s Bad", starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroiani and Vittorio De Sica. It is a screwball like story of an honest cabbie, Mastroiani, who becomes victim of a family of thieves, including Loren and her father, De Sica, her brothers and even her sweet old grandmother.

The tone and plot turns of the writing and rapid fire pace of acting traces the tropes of American pre-war screwball comedies that funned authority (especially the police and politicians), the rich and pompous.

The plot has several laugh-out-loud scenes, including dialogue (even with the sporadic translations) that reminds you of classics like "Bringing Up Baby", especially when Loren and De Sica twist the logic of morality and family values, exasperating the straight faced Mastroiani. De Sica creates a character that cons with the best of Groucho Marx and W.C. Fields, but is more sophisticated and European. Loren’s character is less ditzy than Hepburn in "Baby", maybe because she has more serious equipment available to keep our attention - her traffic stopping face and figure, for instance.

Reading about the film later, I discovered that Loren was only 20 years old when this film was made. It was her first or 15 pairings with Mastroiani, several of the best directed by De Sica. The director of this movie was Alessandro Blasetti, a veteran of Italian cinema, and a co-writer was Alberto Moravia.

Now my attraction to this film began to make sense. Moravia, I knew, was a novelist whose writings were considered existentialist, some overtly erotic, and often left leaning. His books had been filmed by Godard ("Contempt"), Bertolucci ("The Conformist"), and De Sica with Loren winning the Oscar ("Two Women"), among others. Like my favorite American screenwriters of the 30's and 40's, Moravia had earned his living as a journalist, his politics was anti-fascist, and his social commentary was satirical and ascerbic, including spicy dialogue.

Although Italy’s post-war cinema was mostly noted for the gritty neo-realism of dramas by Rosselini, Fellini, and De Sica, the comedies of the era displayed the same expression of sarcastic viewpoints toward society.

Watching this movie I was reminded that Sophia Loren was a far more powerful presence in Italian films than in her American or international films, even though she mastered the English language well enough to charm co-stars like Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Clark Gable, and Cary Grant.

In that element, she is the forerunner to Penelope Cruz, whose looks and talent are sometimes compared to Loren’s. Cruz has become a star in English language movies (e.g., "Elegy" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona") but has done her best work in her native Spanish for Pedro Almodovar ("Volver"), her De Sica.

The DVD of "Too Bad She’s Bad" is not yet available on Netflix.

Ben Hecht, Hollywood's Shakespeare

Ever think of what you would do if you had another life to lead. Mine would not involve adventure, except maybe the vicarious sort. Sometimes, I think I’d like to be a historian, and recently, I’ve thought I would like to write a biography ... of someone like Ben Hecht.

Hecht (1893-1964) was first known as a Chicago newspaperman in the second and third decades of the 20th Century, part of an era that set the mood for what was to become the dominant popular culture.

In the 1920's, he and fellow newsman, Charles McArthur, moved to New York where they wrote plays, including two of the most influential hits of the decade, "The Front Page" and "Twentieth Century", and hobnobbed with the Algonquin literary crowd and the Broadway smart set.

Moving to Hollywood in 1927 at the instigation of his pal, Herman Mankiewicz, Hecht soon became known as the best screenwriter and script doctor in town. For more than 20 years, he was the "go to" repairman, called on by such as Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitch, Alfred Hitchcock, and David O. Selznick to fix damaged scripts.

His credited successes include many of the best films of the era, including several that defined genres that have become identified with the most memorable movies of the the era — gangster films: winning the first original screenplay Oscar in 1927 for "Underworld" and another for "Scarface" (1933); screwball comedies: including his adaptations of his plays, "Twentieth Century" (1934) and "The Front Page" ("His Girl Friday" (1940)), adaptation of Noel Coward’s "Design For Living" (1933) and the Carole Lombard newspaper caper, "Nothing Sacred" (1937); film noir: "Angels Over Broadway" (1940); suspense: "Spellbound"(1944) and "Notorious" (1945); action: "Viva Villa"(1936) and "Gunga Din" (1939); gothic romance: "Wuthering Heights" (1939).

His autobiography is appropriately titled "Child Of The Century" (1954). Like many of his generation, Hecht wants to be thought of as an artist — poet, serious author of short stories and novels. He admired and befriended and was considered an equal of many of those considered first rate literati of his era: Dreiser, Mencken, Sandburg, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Maxwell Anderson, Sherwood Anderson. He frequently minimizes his own work and scorns the businesses that provided the lucre that made him rich and famous. He admits to writing "creative" stories as a reporter the competitive Chicago tabloid world of his time; Broadway and Hollywood are hopelessly corrupted by commercial needs.

Hecht’s work contains the sophisticated, cynical voice that was characteristic of the best commercial writing of the period between the wars, and still rings true to our ears today. Amusement at the foibles of official corruption, hypocrisy, greed, irony, double dealing, with a heavy ladling of doses of wit and sarcasm, the writing grinds sparks of truth telling. If the goal of "Art" is to tell the truth, Hecht’s best stage and film work must qualify.

As a "child of his century," Hecht’s vocabulary is replete with Freudian references, revealing attitudes toward women (including several wives, daughters, mistresses, actresses, and whores — who are nostalgically credited as mentors), sexual obsession, Jewish mothers and aunts, male pals — confidantes, drinking buddies, raconteurs, comrades. He complains that movies of his era destroyed American culture, creating and promulgating lies (primarily about sex and morals, heroism, social justice, race) that he feared would permanently distort the reality of American life.

Although he acquainted and sympathized with radicals from the Left as early as 1911, he was never caught up the Hollywood Blacklist. But during and after World War II, he became committed to the cause of a Jewish state in Palestine. His activism included financing and organizing support for arms shipments to Menachem Begin’s Irgun, the radical terrorist anti-British Jewish army. These actions led to a blacklist of Hecht’s movies by Great Britain.

At 16, Ben Hecht went from his family home in Racine, Wisconsin to Chicago, to work for newspapers. His first job was as a "picture chaser", who snatched photos of tabloid subjects — murdered or murdering wives, cuckolded husbands. Assigned to night criminal courts, he found himself drawn to the "victims" of the sad system, often the whores and madams, petty thieves and eccentrics who populated the night. Many of the characters who show up in his columns, short stories, plays and screenplays, began their "lives" there. Hecht’s autobiography mentions real newspapermen named "Duffy" and Roy Benzinger", names which he later attached to characters in "The Front Page".

Among the many criminals he knew, he describes a stranger who bought drinks for Hecht and his friend, surprised by the generosity until Hecht discovers the man’s arrest as an embezzler. Hecht takes this experience and converts in into a column which is included in his collection, "1001 Afternoons in Chicago", in which the donor later commits suicide. Still later, Hecht’s nascent film noir, "Angels Over Broadway" includes an suicidal embezzler who is helped by three Broadway denizens played by Doug Fairbanks, Jr., Thomas Mitchell, and Rita Hayworth.

My interest in Hecht stems partly from my own experiences in criminal courts. He writes about what goes on in court houses among prosecutors, cops, reporters, lawyers, witnesses, defendants with a voice that rings true to my experience, even though his preceded my own by roughly fifty years and mine was in far less exotic Los Angeles. In his autobiography, he explains that his sympathies, or at least his interests, were more often with the culprits, the desperate men and women whose crimes led them to the courts and newspapers headlines. Hecht witnessed seventeen hangings and colorfully describes the events and the characters involved in them — the police, hangmen, the hangman’s daughter, the other wisecracking reporters, mostly the hanged.

Of the seventeen hangings he witnessed, several exposed to the young reporter human traits that surprised him and were vividly etched in his memory. He tells of the two brothers who were jointly accused of murder. All throughout the trial and sentencing, the older brother swore that he alone was responsible, trying to save his kid brother. Then at the moment both are brought to the gallows, he changes his tune, insisting they hang his guilty brother first. Hecht’s conclusion: a man will give up any principle or loved one for a few more seconds of life. He also reports of the man who, with the rope around his neck, is asked if he has any last words, and responds, "Not at this time."

My Netflix Notes ... more recent rental reviews

The International
A muddled travelogue / capitalist conspiracy police thriller. Naomi Watts is wasted, obviously in it for the paycheck. Owen's scowling intensity carries the action. The Guggenheim shootout is awesome but that's about it as the rest is a cut and paste of plot points stolen from Bond movie discards.

Valkyrie
The documentary films on this subject are better - cover the same ground and tell you much more about the motives and character of those involved, including Rauchenberg. They were not heroes by any stretch, sought to replace Hitler only when the war began to go badly and they feared their beloved wehrmacht was going down the tubes. They were autocrats - just with a different fuhrer. The movie sticks close to the facts without access to the emotional core we should get from drama. Knowing the true ending diminished the thrill aspect and Tom Cruise's strong presence wasn't enough to keep my involvement.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
My admittedly minority view is that this film is a monumental waste of effort - for the makers and the viewer. The technical achievement of turning the premise into visual reality is notable, but the script by Eric Roth simply restates his fuzzy sentimentality of Forrest Gump - trying to answer the profound big question: "Life is ___." His answers in this film are just as unsatisfying - "some people are mothers, some artists, some dance" - some write sappy screenplays, some make bad movies.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
The first thing the aliens should destroy are all prints of remakes of movie classics. No one who fondly recalls the black & white classic should come anywhere near this one. Why do they think it will succeed? Didn't they learn from last years 'Invasion' or 'The Manchurian Candidate'? Only Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds' was worthy of remake in the genre of paranoid sci-fi. The idiot producer must have thought Keanu was Klaatu's grandson - maybe he is - his acting is otherworldly.

Cadillac Records
Old Hollywood's pop music composer bios were summed as "... and then he wrote, etc." Like 'Dreamgirls' & Ray, this one can be summed, "... and then they sang." Fitting in the hits of the stars + Chess's story + the often tragic endings + the racial issues was too much for this film. But for those who are ignorant of these pioneers of rock & soul, I'm glad it was made. Not answered was why Chess loved this music. Was it just the money? They imply something deeper, but never convinced me.


Last Chance Harvey
Good acting, mediocre script. Two middle aged self-described failures find each other and take one last risk at seeking love. Simple, a good short story that is not often told on screen. But to fill out the 93 minutes, there is far too much accessory plot - her mother and his daughter, ex-wife, and boss - and way too many scenes showing the pair walking, sightseeing, apparently finding things to talk about - the details of the beginnings of trust and love. But the writer and director deny the audience these moments by dialing up the music score, avoiding the difficulty of letting us in on it. It's a fantasy, especially considering Hoffman's character, who is set up as a loser, but acts with a self-confidence that seems contrary to the set-up.

New In Town
Pretty bad. Not a surprise in sight. Every beat is foreshadowed long before it happens. The local "characters" are not close to any real people who live in any world. Timely? The jobs are saved by a tapioca recipe? Yuck.

Doubt
Not being Catholic, I don't want to yield to the temptation of seeing this film as a critique of what's wrong with The Church, or Religion. I also resist the notion that it is a tract about abusive priests. The acting, of course, is first rate, even dazzling. The writing & direction are fluent, with appropriate twists and dramatic turns. My small quibbles involve the plotting, which is deceptively contrived. The setup misleads you - the apparently "good" person may have done evil; the unlikeable "bad" person may be "right". The event that triggers the "doubt" is a bit contrived - I doubted that 'Sister James', as portrayed by Amy Adams, would have interpreted what she saw as something suspect. Other than those small problems, the performances by Streep, Hoffman and the surprisingly moving Viola Davis, are what remain in the afterglow.

The Earrings Of Madame De ...
A film that proves that classic art films with subtitles can be entertaining, if given a chance. Max Ophuls is one of the least known of the great classic film stylists who made full use of the "moving picture camera." Like Welles, Fellini & Hitchcock, the moving camera sets the mood, tells the story, moves the viewer's emotions more eloquently than the words. The story here, like the camera movement, is complex, ironic, witty, and ultimately profound on its many levels.

La Plaisir
As a trilogy showcasing Ophuls brilliant style, 'La Plaisir', joins 'The Earrings of Madame de...' and 'La Ronde'. All set in France's Belle Epoque, an era of decadence and prudery, ostentatious wealth and rigid class pomposity. You can see why Ophuls dazzles and influences modern filmmakers - his camera style and story telling ability are singular.

Quantum Of Solace
What made this JB different from others was the ruthlessness, arrogance, blatant machismo plus a debonair English dry wit, the wry smile, the cool settings. Craig lived up to that in 'Casino Royale', but here he is not much more than 'Jason Bourne' on a revenge trip, a humorless lethal weapon. His adversary, 'Greene', was not worthy - never had a chance. Disappointing.

Frost / Nixon
With the original interviews available (see below) and fresh in my memory. Damn, I'm old. I found the back story about Frost more interesting. Sheen captures Frost's smarmy lightweight personality & the drama in his desperation to be seen as legitimate. The subtext should be noted: the celebrity non-journalist interviewer now rules over the serious traditional reporters. Imagine Larry King, Oprah, Matthews, or O’Reilly interviewing Nixon.

Frost / Nixon: the Watergate Interviews
Having watched it when it first aired, I welcomed reliving the disgust I felt then listening to the pathos Nixon tried to squeeze when revealed as the liar he was. The close-up camera, Frost's incredulous tone, Nixon's falsely earnest voice make gripping viewing, fully understood only in context of the entire historical record. Nixon's defense - that his motives were not criminal - is so weak that only the most air-headed apologist could swallow it without gagging

The Spirit
Frank Miller as film director went for an unapologetic comic book look and over-the-top self-conscious acting style that undercuts the noir mood he managed to capture in ‘Sin City’. It didn't work - you can't take it seriously and it wasn't very funny or original.

Vicky Christina Barcelona
Woody Allen at his best manages to cloak a very deep and insightful film about the human condition in apparently frivolous forms. I would rank this film in the upper 1/3 of Woody’s work, certainly below his earlier works of genius, but far superior to his later tossaways. The best since ‘Match Point’. It exploits Woody's special talent as a short story writer and it is the most authentic of his European set films. Woody works his favorite themes - the messiness of love, sex and relationships; the mystery of art and genius. His characters are complex, self-deceiving, struggling with self image, passion, seeking the elusive happiness and romance and fulfillment that Woody knows often makes them (and all of us) look silly, pretentious, and sometimes tragic. Well schooled in Americans-abroad literature and European film sensibility toward 'life' and 'passion' and unconventionality, Woody is ultimately a realist rather than a romantic - at least, here his realist side wins out in a logical, tho not completely satisfying ending. The film, like Vicky & Christina's summer vacation, is itself something of a fantasy. Cruz's brilliant realization of the mercurial artist Maria Elena is more than a cipher, but she is another of Woody's singular characters, raising one of his favorite themes - genius residing in a flawed human may never be fulfilled.

Tell No One
Another French film that owes much to American film style and form. Guillaume Canet's previous films, 'Love Me If You Dare' and 'Merry Christmas' showed a willingness to tweak genres. This mystery / thriller of the Hitchcock wrong man-racing-to-solve-riddles is overly complex and long and reliant on contrived twists, but still stylish, with interesting characters & familiar faces in minor roles - Rochefort, Baye, Scott-Thomas.

Rachel Getting Married
I'm ambivalent about this film. Anne Hathaway stretches into drama quite comfortably - impressive. The family dynamic of the wedding and the warmth & charm of the celebrants is enjoyable to watch, filmed so that you feel you are part of the fun in the intimate multi-focused witness-like style that suggests Robert Altman. BUT the elephant in the room plot - the tragedy that might have destroyed the possibility of happiness for this family, and seemingly almost did, is a bit melodramatic for my taste. Anne's 'Kym' is the one who understandably can't put it completely to rest. Her intense need for re-connection with the the family she hurt is painful to watch.

Synecdoche, New York
I think the previous Charlie Kaufman works are among the best films in recent times. I got the idea he was trying for in this one. His images & metaphors are brilliant as usual. BUT I didn't "enjoy" this film. I squirmed. And it is not a great film. My problem is the same one I have with Kubrick (especially his last film) and later Woody Allen. The philosophical world view is ultimately too sad to be credited. 'Caden', however, is a poor example of an everyman. He is an artist groping for a way to express all about his life. He seems captivated by every neurosis that precludes man from happiness. Kaufman stacks the deck. Life is beyond this character - is that sad life, art? Sure, but it is not the whole truth. Is it all so meaningless and trivial? Caden's "art" certainly turned out to be a delusion.

Elegy
A film to love or hate. Sexist, creepy, sentimental, contrived or sensitive, insightful, tragic, ironic. Filled with undeniably excellent actors. I felt less sympathy for ‘David's’ dilemma than others might. What many will find unreal is ‘Consuela's’ love for him. But Penelope Cruz finds honest and brave motivation in her character's attraction to him. She overcomes the assumptions of her startling beauty with a depth that only a truly beautiful woman can.

What Just Happened
The best work De Niro has done in a long long time. Though it failed to hit with critics or audiences, this Hollywood movie biz bitter comedy deserved better. In the tradition of 'The Player' & many others, it comes close to the nasty truth about the fragile egos & self deceptions rampant in that town.

A Handful Of Dust
'Tony Last' may be one of the most infuriatingly naive characters in Brit lit. He is always the 'last' to get the picture - his wife's infidelities, his guide's incompetence, his captor's dark intentions. Evelyn Waugh’s picture of between-the-wars English society is typical of its genre. Whether meant as social parable of England's naivete, or satire of upper class twits & their reliance on outmoded traditions of decency, or a postmodern tale of the wreckage of selfish indulgence ('Unfaithful' is the most recent example), the acting by Scott Thomas, Wilby, and of course, Guiness, is first rate. You will squirm for poor ‘Tony’ and his ilk - the trusting and foolish wellborn, about to become (justifiably) extinct.

Lady Chatterley
Stories about passionate affairs by bored - or abused - wives of inattentive - or sexually crippled - husbands with manly men - usually defined as those with two day beards - are common in literature (‘Anna Karenina’) and film (‘Unfaithful’). Lawrence's novel has been filmed many times, mostly for the explicit sex & sometimes with the class issue as a rationale. This one, released in 2006 directed by Pascale Ferran, though painfully long & very French (while set in England) finds a new fresh slant. After an hour of meandering through forests and glades, we realize that it is about 'nature' and the natural urges of the human animal, not in the brutish sense of mere lust, though that counts, but to show that sex and physical connections are as natural as rain, flowers, and birds. 'Constance'- the same character name as in 'Unfaithful' - conveys a completely different meaning. This woman is completely true to her nature, in the end trying to live a complete life.

Ghost Town
Apart from the idiot conceit that a woman such as Tea Leoni's character would end up with a guy like Ricky Gervais', this re-cycled ghost-helps-living-guy-live-better romantic comedy is pretty pleasant. Ricky's initial character flaw - you know, the one he's going to learn to suppress so he can get the girl and be a better guy - is a bit less painful than his dentist drill - his whiny misanthropy grates like the sound of the drill. But his snide asides - reminiscent of W.C. Fields sarcastic throwaways - are often very funny & his self deprecating insights are on the mark. Greg Kinnear & Tea, as always, hit theirs on the money.

Righteous Kill
It's time for De Niro & Pacino to retire at least as cops. They've played these parts so often they qualify for pensions. And we need the rest. Please. The entire premise - that ‘Fisk’ lost his faith when his partner planted evidence, so decided to kill all the bad guys - is absurd. These guys would have been fixing cases all their careers. The big reveal is so transparent because of bad writing or bad acting by De Niro. His rants make him too obviously the suspect and only one other is likely. As a buddy film, it also fails, partly because De Niro & Pacino occupy the same personas. Other matches: Gable & Tracy, Newman & Redford etc, have far better chemistry due to age, personality & style differences.

Mad Men: Season 1
Terrific series all around. How did HBO pass on it? ‘Sopranos’ vets are the creative force and the structure is similar - eg, ‘Draper’, like ‘Tony’, has deep secrets from his family & ruthlessness vs. compassion. Startlingly accurate & insightful in its depiction of place & time, attitudes & biases. Revealing in understanding of the truth that we are all trapped in the assumptions of our social milieu. The second season will move to the 60's and the changes should be something for these "people".

Nights In Rodanthe
Gere & Lane: boy met girl in 'Cotton Club' lost girl in 'Unfaithful', now gets her back but are they doomed? Thrown together at a crucial turning point in their lives (i.e. careers), will they survive a hurricane (in an inn perched on stilts on a beach), their kids, their script? Only a romance novel reader would care very much or take any of the supersilly plot devices or soapy morals seriously. Emotions are all by the numbers here, and fantasy is all about the sub-pornographic dreams of unfulfilled middle aged women. A sad story.

Tropic Thunder
Proof that war is (funny as) hell in the movies Stiller finally hit the mark with a broad satire of actors, stars, agents, action films. Downey, Jr's work is up there with Peter Sellers for inventiveness. Tom Cruise is shockingly great in his character role. Jack Black, Steve Coogan are hysterical. The DVD contains deleted scenes that are terrific & don't miss the commentary by Stiller, Black, & Downey (still in character).

Wanted
A stew of plots, characters, and effects from previous comic book action flicks - chops bits from 'Matrix', 'Spiderman', too many hitman films to count. Jolie & Freeman walk through without effort. McAvoy could have been Toby Maguire, but with much more whining. The teen nerds who have had sand kicked in their faces can dream of bending bullets around school lockers to get back at the BMOC's. By the way, why do they have to be able to bend bullets around meat?

Appaloosa
I liked this slow moving western that isn't as cynical as 'Unforgiven' or as violent as ‘Wild Bunch’ or as old fashioned as any John Wayne film. Ed Harris as director & actor clearly cares about the characters, tells us just enough about them - except maybe ‘Mrs. French.’ We'd like to know a lot more about her - she says she does what she does in order to survive, but I wonder if she's a sort of pre-noir femme fatale in training. Mortensen is Eastwood's heir for showing intelligence with a minimum of words.

Holy Smoke
Jane Campion, like her French feminist counterpart, Catherine Breillat, is an angry woman. Her films slice into sexual politics with a sometimes cruel scalpel. Of the two, Campion is more entertaining, for sure. This film is visually interesting, often funny. Like Breillat, her take on eroticism focuses on sexual power as a woman's weapon for independence rather than identity. Winslet & Keitel are brave actors, committed to full out risk.

The Duchess
Recognizing the quality work involved in this film, by the actors, costumers, wigmakers, et. al., my reservation stands on the too obvious issues which smash the viewer over the head well beyond unconsciousness. (1)Women were literally treated like dogs by their husbands: kept for breeding and show. They had no legal rights. (2) This ancestor of Lady Diana Spencer led a life not much different from the tragic Di. She married a cold fish who openly had a mistress. She was a celebrity, involved in current events, a fashion icon, a beauty, a socialite, hounded by the press.

RocknRolla
How good? (1) Watched it all the way through (2) without once fast forwarding. (3) I used English subtitles - that helped. (3) Tom Wilkenson bald? (4) Not enough Thandie. (4) Ahh, its kind of Elmore Leonard (‘Get Shorty’)lite. (5) One hour later - did I watch that one?

The Reader
A film that should make moral absolutists sputter obscenities. After all, it asks you to consider as human a woman who has committed the most heinous of crimes. For some in our times, her seduction of a 15 year old boy for sex would be enough to condemn her. But later we discover(through the eyes of the boy, who was left emotionally damaged by the affair) that it was the least of her crimes. But if we are more accepting of human frailty, we may see more ambiguity in the morality choices she made and which he also makes, reflecting on those judgments we are capable of - certainly German society and we are forced to question ourselves as well if we are to be honest. The film wisely gives no answers. Strong views are voiced (by a fellow law student and in the end by another of the woman's victims) and they are just as moving as the pity, if not forgiveness, that we are manipulated into feeling. It is also about the terrible cost to the soul of concealing shameful secrets, and the potential of redemption. A powerful film with a spectacularly brave performance by Kate Winslet, the best of its kind since Meryl Streep's in ‘Sophie's Choice’.

The Incredible Hulk
The Hulk in the end becomes more like Kong in his toying with his little girlfriend. The cynical "Ka-ching" of Marvel's marketing genius is nothing new. Nor is the CG effects auto - destructo binge. Nor is the counter supervillain green thing - Abomination’ (?) maybe a better title for the movie itself. Nothing original. Nothing to feel or think - so its a big hit, right?


Exterminating Angels
Jean-Claude Brisseau, like his female counterpart, Breillat, is not for everyone - especially those who can't abide sexually explicit takes on sexual power politics & a peculiarly French attitude about attraction, obsessive love, and sadness. There is also a creepy dirty-old-man voyeurist sense about Brisseau's eye that is off-putting. But this film does succeed as mainstream soft porn, satisfying the two goals: arousal and involvement. For us men who are always stumped by the mind of woman, it is some help, but not much. As the story shows, in the end, it is a dangerous place to go.

Lies
Nice to see that Korean society is just as confused about sex as we are. Issues like repression, obsession, taboos, sexual power and deception, westernization, all underlie the film with not much subtlety. Contrary to many reviews, there is a plotline and arc to the tale - involving the relationship. The man begins by manipulating the girl. It ends with her dominance over him, sexually as a metaphor for her awareness of her power over him. In the end, she has changed, matured, while he is trapped in his obsession.

Traitor
A better than average political thriller with a far better than average lead, Don Cheadle, one of the few current actors who gives an impression to an audience that he is thinking while he listens, watches & speaks. The critical complaints that the film can't decide whether it is a blow-em up / shoot-em up action flick, or a political issues movie are quibbles - like 'Munich' it is thought provoking, raising troubling questions about terrorism, religion, loyalty. So it is not 'fun' like a superhero action ride, but it is gripping, with some neat twists, and a lot of suspense.