jklugman Blog

Across 110th Street is about three desperate black criminals, whose ambitions are checked by poverty, racism, and their own criminal pasts, who rob the Mafia intending to strike it rich.  Instead they end up killing a number of gangsters and two police-officers, and bring a nightmare down on their lives as mobsters ruthlessly hunt them down one by one and torture them for leads to another collaborator.  Yaphet Kotto and Anthony Quinn play police officers who are trying to track down the robbers before the Mafia can get to them.  Kotto has to deal with the racism, brutality, and corruption of his elder partner.

I really like this film.  This is one of Kotto's best performances I have ever seen, as a noble detective who is overwhelmed by the situation.   The film does not glamorize violence at all--all that violence accomplishes is bring pain, and even its perpetrators become engulfed by it.  

 The biggest problem with the film is that the film is a little too efficient with its narrative, and many of the characters (even the two leads) seem to function merely to advance the plot.

It is hard to evaluate this film without comparing it to the superior 1931 version (directed by Rouben Mamoulian).  To me the 1941 version feels pedantic and stodgy, largely because of Spencer Tracy's performance.  Tracy plays Jekyll like a sitcom Dad and consequently there is zero chemistry between him and Lana Turner and him and Ingrid Bergman.  Fredric March, who played Jekyll in the 1931 version, actually made you believe his Jekyll was capable of great deeds but also evil deeds.  There is no such depth to Tracy's Jekyll performance.  When he pontificates about good and eivl the film feels very leaden and talky, because the film is actually taking this nonsense seriously (in the 1931 version, March used these scenes to highlight how grandiose the Jekyll character is).  

 

Ingrid Bergman is pretty good in the thankless role of Ivy Peterson (when she realizes her predicament, her depseration is visceral), but to be honest, Miriam Hopkins, who played Ivy in the 1931 version gives a better portrayal of a working-class British woman living in the Victorian era.  Come to think of it, Hopkins made the 1931 version much more racier than this one.   Which raises the obvious question, why on earth did MGM feel the need to remake this film?  It uses the exact same story structure as the 1931 version (both the 1931 and 1941 versions are more directly related to Thomas Russell Sullivan's 1887 stage adaptation than the actual Robert Louis Stevenson novella) and it really doesn't add anything unique that the 1931 version did not have.  I originally thought that Mamoulian's use of subjective photography was ostentatious, but after seeing this version, I have come to appreciate Mamoulian's experimental techniques.  His diagonal split screens are very memorable (especially the one where Jekyll-as-Hyde runs off into the park while his fiancee is stood up at her party) but the camera work here feels more workmanship than anything else.

After suffering through Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and being underwhelmed by Shaft, I had low expectations for my third blaxploitation film.  I was pleasantly surprised by Superfly, and I ended up loving it.   The acting in this film is actually good.  Ron O'Neal  and Carl Lee , as the film's "heroes", play off each other very well.  O'Neal's Youngblood Priest is serious and reflective, realizing his life as a cocaine dealer is not all there is.  Carl Lee's Eddie is more flippant and ultimately corruptable.  When he tells Priest he is OK with being owned, his character becomes simultaneously pathetic and scary, because we know there is nothing to stop him from selling out his friends.  Unlike in SSBS and Shaft, the police are convincing villains, they are effective, corrupt, and pose a real threat to the hero (whereas in the other films they come off more as clowns). 

Finally, the ending is unusual, in that the hero does have a climatic confrontation with the  film's villain and triumphs over him, but his victory is a tentative and ironic one, and the viewer is left to doubt if Priest will truly be able to escape his cage.   

It goes without saying that my enjoyment of the film was probably due in no small part to Curtis Mayfield's musical score.  The music, the setting, the costumes, all scream "1970s" and I loved it.