jimbell's film blog - Archive

Key Largo

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Key Largo (1948)

Everyone likes Key Largo (1948). There is not much more to say about it. Key Largo is a good film and enjoyable to watch, but not a great film. Although it is chock full of good actors, all the characters are stereotypes. Edward G. Robinson is the amoral, tough-guy gangster; Humphrey Bogart is the heroic but disillusioned ex-soldier; Lauren Bacall is the good-looking, spirited woman ready to fall in love with a hero; Claire Trevor, up from the B-movies, is the gangster’s moll turned lush. Bogart’s war vet goes beyond a stereotype in that he is disillusioned by WW II yet deep down still a good and admirable man. This leads to the movies theme, best stated by Bogie: “When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”

Bosley Crowther’s 1948 review for The New York Times said this theme generated too much “pompous and remote” philosophical talk. But the characters have to do something as they sit and wait, wait and sit, until the action at the end of the film. The theme also addresses a feeling that may have been widespread: The war stopped Hitler but it did not make America a much better place. This was certainly on director and co-screenwriter John Huston’s mind when he, Bogart, and Bacall returned to California in 1947 after testifying at the House of Un-American Activities Committee. The three of them had gone as concerned citizens but were soon tarred with the label of Communist sympathizers. A lot of the talk and bickering in the Key Largo hotel is raising the question of what American citizens, like Bogart, should do in the face of fascist politicians, represented by Robinson’s gangland dictator.

Key Largo is often categorized as a great film noir, and I’m ok with people calling it a film noir, but it lacks as many noir elements as it displays. It has the gangland element, but the gangsters are in the Florida Keys rather than in the urban jungle. It has black and white cinematography replete with shadows, but many of the shots are rather soft as if shot through 100-percent humidity. This gives the movie quite a different feel from the cold, harsh glare of big city neon. While a film noir need not have any particular kind of music, the sound track is often sparse and certainly not standard Hollywood orchestration. But Key Largo features Max Steiner’s over-emphatic score. Probably most contrary to noir films is the ending. The strong moral themes running under the surface come to the fore, and we have an over-the-top happy ending. The alcoholic gun moll, who instantly has a soft spot for Bogie, slips him the boss’s gun as Bogie is forced to captain the gang back to Cuba. Bogie kills the entire gang single-handedly, and then he phones back to the hotel even though the phone lines have been knocked out by the tropical storm. Bacall joyously opens the shutters and light streams symbolically in. Musical strains swell and love and justice are in the air. Not typical noir fare. Actually, maybe not even a credible ending to a drama.

I enjoyed the movie and I never thought for a minute that it was not shot in some old hotel in the Keys. But the hotel and the beach were in the Warner Brothers lot, and the storm was stock footage not used in another Warner Brothers’ 1947 movie.

Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:35 PM by JimBell | with 0 comments

The Rocket

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The Rocket (2007)

The Rocket (2007) is a good enough movie to warrant serious critical attention. The story of one of hockey’s greatest players, Maurice Richard, is told with excellent acting by Francois Langlois Vallieres (young Richard) and especially Roy Dupuis (adult Richard). How fortunate to get a person who looks like Richard, speaks French and English, can actually skate well, and is a strong actor. The supporting cast, such as Julie LeBreton as his wife, is solid in the not-very-complex roles they are called on to play.

The look and feel of the 40s and 50s is captured well, including the use of stock black and white footage of Montreal. The look and feel of the hockey games are recreated faithfully. The players wear minimal equipment and look authentically small on the ice compared to the padded behemoths playing in the National Hockey League today. Several professional hockey players were involved in the movie: Sean Avery played tough guy Bob Dill, Mike Ricci played Elmer Lach, and young Vincent Lacavalier even skated like the famous Montreal Canadiens’ centre ice-man Jean Beliveau. That said about the hockey, the movie makers were in a bind. If they showed large chunks of crucial hockey games, they would create the excitement of the contest (say, like the championship fight in a boxing movie), but they would lose viewers who did not understand ice hockey. If they showed snippets of dramatic rushes on goal and had people say how fantastic The Rocket was, they would lose the excitement of a sporting contest but they would probably speak to the non-hockey viewer. The Rocket chose the latter, maybe because of the movie’s theme.

The theme of The Rocket is that ubiquitous prejudice against French Canadians was the biggest factor in Maurice Richard’s life. Thus The Rocket is more than just a sports movie. Usually when a movie can reach beyond its subject matter to a larger theme, it is all for the good. Not here. The Rocket says there was wide-spread prejudice against French Canadians on and off the ice, and we believe it because, steeped as we are in the myths of post-modernism and lobby-group politics, we instantly assume that any minority is abused and mistreated. An excellent movie would not rely on our trendy knee-jerk reaction but would rather support its claim. While the movie goes into incredible detail to portray authentic hockey and the fashions of the era, it presents little evidence to support its claim of rampant discrimination. For the oppression of French Canadian in society, we get a couple of sentence spoken by agitated Francophones: The English-speakers own (most of) the companies, and this is intolerable. As for unfair treatment on the ice, we get such things as the rhetorical question by a Rocket supporter: Why do the referees protect all the other superstars but not Richard? For all this talk of unfairness and oppression, Les Habitants (the Montreal Canadiens) won more championships than any other team in the era.

Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 3:40 AM by JimBell | with 0 comments

As You Like It

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As You Like It (2007)

Shakespeare’s throw-away title, As You Like It, and the play’s classification as a comedy, led me to think that the play would be, well, funny. When I read the play before seeing the movie, I realized that the play has a fair amount of dark material—a brother who overthrows and banishes his older brother, and an elder brother who attempt to burn his little brother to death. I also realized that the play jumps around a great deal—back and forth between the court and the forest of Arden, and among many different couples all of whom eventually wed, of course. Although I admire most of Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare work, with As You Like It (2006), he decides as director to emphasize the serious side of the play. This does not work because the play is, when all is said and done, a comedy. One actress, Romola Garai (Vanity Fair, Atonement) stands out by playing her character with broad, comedic strokes—an enthused, dizzy blonde. But all others bring out the serious side of their characters. Bryce Dallas Howard, in the lead role of Rosalind, is highly emotive and captivating on screen but manifests the trauma of being thrust out of court and the torment of being smitten by love. I think the emphasis on the heavy side of the play is what causes film critics to complain vaguely that the movie “rarely catches fire” and “lacks enthusiasm.”

Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 2:54 AM by JimBell | with 0 comments

Limbo

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Limbo (1999)

Whether you like Limbo (1999) or not depends on the last few seconds of the movie. Joe (David Strathairn), an Alaskan handyman still suffering from a tragic boating accident, and Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), a travelling lounge singer with bad taste in men, and her troubled teenaged daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), are stranded on a remote Alaskan island with winter closing in. Will the airplane approaching bring rescue or people to kill them because they witnessed a murder? The screen goes blank as a plane engine roars on the sound track. The end. To like the movie, you must do some fancy footwork to relate the ending to the rest of the movie. The best dance would claim that Joe, Donna, and Noelle are all in limbo in their own ways and that, therefore, an inconclusive ending is appropriate. But the underlying logic of this dance bears little scrutiny. Must suspenseful movies, for example, end suspensefully? Must action flicks end with more action? No. The movies may be full of suspense or action, but they have a story which has an unsuspenseful or quiet conclusion. If you insist on more fancy footwork, you can claim, rightly, that not all movies have to follow a conventional pattern. But what is gained by refusing to conclude the movie? For one, you leave people thinking—rescue or death? Because the movie does not give us enough information to tip the scales one way or the other, it becomes an ink blot test for the viewer. You could just look at an ink blot. For another, refusing to conclude the movie throws the viewer’s attention back on the rest of the movie to gain additional insight. But because director, screenwriter, and editor John Sayles takes a leisurely two hours before he suddenly cuts the film, most viewers should be able to get everything from the film as they go along. For another, ending the movie in mid-propeller spin makes some viewers think you’ve simply copped out. Interestingly, as I watched the movie I thought a couple of times, “How will he ever conclude this so that it is in keeping with the rest of the movie?” It never occurred to me that he could simply stop. To me, it was a cop-out.

Posted Saturday, October 27, 2007 5:04 PM by JimBell | with 0 comments

Please Vote For Me

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Please Vote for Me (2007)

Please Vote For Me (2007) is a wonderful documentary about democracy coming to China. Specifically, a Grade 3 class in the city of Wuhan in central China learns about democracy by voting for the class monitor. The incumbent is a militaristic little boss whose father is a police chief. One of his challengers is a tubby, spoiled guy who seems pretty resourceful and gets plenty of help from his parents. The third and final candidate is a rather shy girl who seems overwhelmed at times, as does her mother who worries that as a single parent she cannot give her daughter as much assistance as the other parents can. Before the parents really get involved, the chubby guy has an idea of how to undermine the girl’s talent performance. When she starts to play the flute, he and his cronies shout insults like “Out of tune” and “You’re a slow eater.” She dissolves in tears.

The parents are very helpful in preparation for the debate: The three kids and their election teams make lists of their opponents weaknesses. Then in face-to-face combat they make accusation after accusation. The chubby tactician makes a successful strategic move by asking anyone in class who has been beaten by the incumbent monitor to raise their hand—and three-quarters of the students do so. As the day of final speeches approaches, one kid’s parents are coaching him so much that he yells to keep it simple and wants to be left alone. The girl’s mother simply writes the speech and says to give it because she wrote it. The incumbent’s father sits him down and explains a strategy. The day after the speeches will be a holiday, so his son should end by wishing everyone a great holiday and by giving everyone a gift.

The students get ballots, vote, put the results on the board, and cheer their new monitor who won by a landslide.

Weijun Chen’s documentary makes you think you are a fly on the wall. You’re in the lunch room hearing 8-year olds whispering dirty tactics; you’re in each candidate’s home watching the coaching; you’re in the classroom witnessing the reaction to the teacher’s lesson. Everyone is refreshingly unconscious of the cameras. Also, the documentary does not tell you what to think. In fact, one reaction to the film is not being sure what to take away from it. Most of all, it is a look at how a culture not familiar with democracy interprets the concept of democracy. How would democracy look if introduced to China? When you witness the character attacks, the bribery, and crafty rhetoric, you wonder whether this isn’t pretty much like democracy here. Then, when you see the results of the election, you wonder again whether 8-year olds in dictatorial China aren’t a lot like our electorate.

Note: Please Vote For Me won the Sterling Feature Award at this year’s Silverdocs Documentary Festival, and it aired October 23 on PBS’s “Independent Lens.”

Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 2:18 AM by JimBell | with 0 comments

Top Movies of 2007 So Far

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These are the best films I've seen in 2007 so far. Because 2007 has been a major viewing of film noir, and because i find it difficult to compare old and contemporary films, I have created two lists.

Top Films of 2007 Viewing

1. The Painted Veil (2006)

2. Blood Diamond (2006)

3. The White Countess (2005)

4. Who Killed the Electric Car? (documentary) (2006)

5. Enemy at the Gates (2001)

6. The Human Stain (2003)

7. Seven Up and 7 Plus Seven (documentary) (n/d/)

10.. Casino Royale (2006) 10. Falling Down (1993) 10. The Lives of Others (2006) 10. 3:10 to Yuma (2007) 10. Local Hero (1983) 10. Children of Men (2006) 10. The Three Burials (2005)

Top Film Noir of 2007 Viewing

1. Scarlet Street

2. The Lady from Shanghai

3. Murder, My Sweet

4. This Gun for Hire

5. The Killers

6. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

7. Criss Cross

Posted Sunday, October 21, 2007 3:42 AM by JimBell | with 0 comments

JimBell Blog

Key Largo

The Rocket

As You Like It

Limbo

Please Vote For Me

Top Movies of 2007 So Far

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