Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
204. Force Of Evil (1948)
Directed By Abraham Polonsky
Synopsis
A lawyer for what are basically gambling gangsters tries to protect his brother who is in the numbers business, when he ultimately fails he takes revenge.
Review
The synopsis makes what is a very complex film seem quite simple. This is another of those cases of a noir which is quite complex and not really tied down by convention. Not even the film's structure is conventional, and that is the one major problem with the film.
The film spends about two thirds establishing and explaining the intricacies of the gambling business and doing a pretty good job of what is a pretty boring subject by keeping you interested in where it is all going. The last third really has all the action here, and therefore the film is too short for its own good, you need the lengthy explanation to understand what goes on in the film, but 10 more minutes would have been enough not to make the ending seem rushed.
Other than that it is a film which is pretty much ahead of its time. It reminds me more of modern Gangster films, like those of Scorsese who is a big fan of this film, and the last scenes in particular remind me of some nouvelle vague films. And this, together with some amazingly realistic dialogue is what makes the film so surprising. The acting is very competent, particularly by Thomas Gomez who plays the lawyer's poor brother. Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Polonsky's career as a director and credited writer came to an abrupt halt after he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1951. Illinois congressman Harold Velde called the director a "very dangerous citizen" at the hearings. While blacklisted, Polonsky continued to write film scripts under various pseudonyms that have never been revealed. It is known that Polonsky, along with Harry Belafonte and Robert Wise co-wrote Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), in which Polonsky's name was initially dropped from the film credits. Polonsky was not given public credit for the screenplay until 1997, when the Writers Guild of America, west officially restored his name to the film under the WGA screenwriting credit system.
No youtube today... completely absent from youtube. If anyone wants to put a clip up let me know and I'll post here.
Rebecca, Jane Eyre, this chick, all marry into the wrong family. But thanks to Freud all is resolved!
Review
No one loves Fritz Lang more than me... well maybe his mother. But really I don't get why this is such a worshipped film, frankly it has a good idea for a story in it but all is ruined by psychoanalysis that seems to have come from the bottom of a cereal pack.
There are some pretty nifty flourishes by the part of Lang, like when she is pacing around the room after he leaves to New York, and her anxiety is excellently expressed through some nifty camera tricks.
The skeleton of the story is fascinating, however and this is one of those rare cases of a film which demands a good remake, of course I know that if this is ever remade in today's climate it will be yet another teen horror film, but it could do with an adult remake. Now 1948 audiences might have been less sophisticated when it comes to psychology and that would explain a lot, but the whole "forgive your mother and you won't be evil anymore" is just a really bitter pill.
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From IMDB:
References:
Rebecca (1940) Suspicion (1941)
Referenced in:
Merci pour le chocolat (2000)
No films of it on Youtube so here's an excerpt from a Godard film in which Jack Palance gets annoyed with Fritz Lang:
A guy is trying to escape a difficult duel in early 20th century Vienna when he gets a letter from an unknown woman... He reads how her life intersected his and what a bastard he was. In the end he decides to fight the duel.
Review
Ahhh we haven't had melodrama in a while here and this is a mother of a melodrama. I have always been a little girly for melodramas, I love the stuff, I love suffering with the characters, even though more often than not melodramas are a bit shitty.
This is actually not at all the case with this film, it is a smartly done melodrama with an interesting perspective from the point of view of someone who loves form afar someone who doesn't really deserve that love.
The acting is great and I am a particular lover of Louis Jourdan who is great in his part of what is a well intentioned fuck-up of a guy.That very rare thing, a good melodrama.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The whole film is on youtube, here's the first part look for the other ones:
201. The Bicycle Thief (Ladri Di Biciclete) (1948)
Directed By Vittorio De Sica
Synopsis
A guy needs a bike for his work, he gets it out of the pawn shop and it gets stolen on his first day. Doh! He and his kid go around Rome looking for it. The never find it. Doh!
Review
Italian neo-realism can be a bit of a hit and miss affair, the reliance on non-professional actors demands quite a bit of luck and de Sica had all the luck he needed here. There are only two real main characters and they are both excellent, the kid is particularly good. It is hard to find non-annoying child actors, and the fact that he was just a kid avoids that inflated child-ego which makes them all punch-worthy.
So like all neo-realist films it is touching in its realistic portrayals of human emotions, actually, like most Italian cinema it is a thoroughly depressive affair. While the main character is in a really shit economic situation the fact is that most of the people he meets when he tries to get his bike back are actually in a worse situation than himself.
Eventually towards the end of the film the main character creates a mirror image of what happened to him by attempting to steal a richer person's bike. This doesn't work out for the best however and the open ending of father and son crying in the middle of the crowd leaving the football game is a powerful one. Another film Hollywood would never make. Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, lauded the film and its message in his review. He wrote, "Again the Italians have sent us a brilliant and devastating film in Vittorio De Sica's rueful drama of modern city life, The Bicycle Thief. Widely and fervently heralded by those who had seen it abroad (where it already has won several prizes at various film festivals), this heart-tearing picture of frustration, which came to the [World Theater] yesterday, bids fair to fulfill all the forecasts of its absolute triumph over here. For once more the talented De Sica, who gave us the shattering Shoe Shine that desperately tragic demonstration of juvenile corruption in post-war Rome, has laid hold upon and sharply imaged in simple and realistic terms a major—indeed, a fundamental and universal—dramatic theme. It is the isolation and loneliness of the little man in this complex social world that is ironically blessed with institutions to comfort and protect mankind."
A chief of an Irish independentist Organisation gets shot. Spends the rest of the film trying to find shelter while bleeding. Ends up dead.
Review
This was a really great film with great performances all around particularly by a moribund James Mason who gets shot 10 minutes into the film and spends the remaining 1 hour and 45 minutes slowly dying. But that is really not the best part of the film.
Firstly this film would have been unthinkable some years earlier, in 1947 colonies were no longer seen as a divine right which would last forever, India was lost, most African colonies as well and it didn't seem unthinkable for Northern Ireland to be next. And so making a film with a sympathetic independentist was also a possibility and this is the case here.
So a film which would never be done in America then... and not now as well because this guy is basically a lovable terrorist. And then there is a great cast of supporting characters particularly the three guys who live in this amazing dilapidated building, the drunk bird-fancier, the drunk artist and the drunk medical school drop-out... it is Ireland after all. And look out for a young William Hartnell - the first Doctor Who- as the publican. Amazing Film.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film's reception was mostly rapturous, with direction and acting receiving high praise. However, its arguably sympathetic stance toward a criminal, attracted some criticism. The film's violent ending also attracted advance criticism from the censors, and had to be toned down in the finished film.
The film received the BAFTA Award for Best British Film in 1948. It was nominated for the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1947, and nominated for a Best Film Editing Oscar in 1948.
Widow gets a haunted house near the coast and falls in love with the ghost of a sea-captain. Eventually she starts seeing flesh and blood men and out of the kindness of his heart the ghost departs... she lives a life of loneliness until she finally dies and is reunited with her only love.
Review
This is a delightful film, although it reminds us now a bit of Swayze's vehicle Ghost it is in fact a really good film. Firstly all the characters are very loveable and none more than the ghost that haunts the house, and it is easy to see how a woman who needed something exciting in her life would fall in love with him.
The other characters are just as good and George Sanders is particularly good as the very funny and suave pretender to Mrs. Muir's love. Then there are other details here, the soundtrack is great and the passage of time shown by the bit of driftwood eroding on the beach is also a nice little touch. Also, notice a very little Natalie Wood as the young Anna Muir.
In the end it is a tender, lovely and actually very funny film which is a beautiful love story as well and a delight to watch. Girls, bin your Ghost VHS' and get The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, a much more adult and well developed love story about a person who has some actual depth below the skin. Highly Recommended. Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
It is based on a 1945 novel written by Josephine Leslie under the pseudonym of R. A. Dick. In 1945, Twentieth Century Fox bought the film rights to the novel, which had only been published in the United Kingdom at that time.
Mitchum is minding his own business in Tahoe when along comes Kirk Douglas out of the past and so does a dame complicating his life to the point of death.
Review
Tourneur can hardly do wrong and he is in top shape here. Tourneur graduates to the A class of films here, after the brilliant Cat People and the quite good I Walked With A Zombie here is the more traditional fare of Noire that we have all learned to know and love... even if I am getting slightly tired of the formula.
And that is where Tourneur gives us a curve ball a lot of the tropes are still there but the formula is shifted in enough exciting ways to make the film look fresh. It is extremely well written and the acting by Mitchum and particularly Kirk Douglas is above reproach.
Tourneur seems to actually go out of his way to defy genre expectations and makes this a balm for someone who has been watching many noirs lately. And then there is the expert eye for light and shadows of the man. Highly Recommended.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Out of the Past was remade unofficially as Città violenta (1970) with Charles Bronson and officially as Against All Odds (1984) with Jeff Bridges and with Jane Greer as the mother of her original character in Out of the Past.
