Frilmz Noir: The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street

Before recently, my experience with Fritz Lang's films began and ended with his Expressionist science fiction masterpiece Metropolis. Considering how amazing that movie is, it's baffling that I've gone so long without seeking out more.

1944's The Woman in the Window and the following year's Scarlet Street, are two of Lang's early film noirs, both very dark tales of passion and murder, and both featuring the same main cast. They were made nearly two decades after Metropolis, and by this point he had gone from Germany to Hollywood.

The first, The Woman in the Window stars Edward G. Robinson as Richard Wanley a timid, middle-aged professor who yearns for the adventurousness of youth. After a quiet night of drinking at a social club with friends, he finds himself admiring a painting of a beautiful woman in a storefront window. He is then surprised to meet the subject of the painting herself, Alice (Joan Bennett). They get a drink together and Wanley soon finds himself at her home. Not long after that, her lover comes in, furious and violent. Wanley ends up killing him, and he and Alice work out a plan to cover up the murder.

The rest of the movie is Wanley trying to live with his guilt and cover his tracks, even as his own friends from earlier, the District Attorney, and a doctor, investigate the case and come ever closer to finding the culprit. At the same time, a blackmailer (Dan Duryea) is tormenting Alice with his knowledge of what really went down.

The whole thing builds toward a beautifully dark, poetic and ironic conclusion. That is, until it's all taken away in the last three minutes by the strict guidelines of the Hayes Code, whose regulations restricted pretty much anything cool in American movies until the mid-60's. That's right, they didn't accept the original ending, so Lang had to tack on a crappy little scene afterwards that negates pretty much everything that went on before. It's very disappointing, but if you just turn off the movie a little bit early (you'll know when), you'll get a story that feels complete, uncompromised, and uncompromising.

Lang's very next film, Scarlet Street, feels like he wanted a do-over after his previous film had been tampered with. It explores some of the same themes, of midlife restlessness, and of the nature of guilt. This time around, Robinson plays Christopher Cross, a timid, middle aged bank cashier in a loveless marriage whose true passion is painting. At a celebration honoring his long years with the bank, he jealously watches his boss leave the party with a young mistress. Walking home that night, he witnesses what he believes to be a mugging. Chasing off the mugger, he takes the victim, Kitty (Bennett), for a drink. Smitten, he tells her about his aspirations as a painter.

Kitty, in actuality, is the girlfriend of the mugger, Johnny (Duryea). Knowing little of the arts, Kitty believes Cross is actually a successful but modest painter, not just a hobbyist. Together, they work up a scheme to bleed Christopher dry, with Kitty acting as a muse for his paintings and Johnny selling them. It all leads to, you guessed it, a murder. And then guilt. I won't spoil the outcome, though.

Of the two, I liked the second film better. The Woman in the Window almost feels like a sketch for what ultimately became Scarlet Street. The characters were all around more three dimensional in Scarlet Street, the plot more fully formed, and the sad ending was not compromised. Also, even though no blood is shown, and the victim is cleverly obscured, the murder scene in Scarlet Street is still really brutal and effective. It takes some pretty sly work for a director to sneak something past the Hayes Code, and Lang gets away with quite a bit here.

These two films were the first I'd ever seen starring Edward G. Robinson, and I have to say, he really surprised me. Like everyone, I associate him with the "Nyeah, see, NYEAH!" voice that he's often parodied with. He's not like that at all in these. In both movies, he's a shy and timid loser-y guy who gets tangled up with the wrong kind of girl and makes a series of bad decisions. He's very sympathetic along the way, and it hurts to see him eaten alive by the end.

If you're in the mood for a good Film Noir double feature, you could do worse than these two movies. They play great as companion pieces to each other, and seeing Edward G. Robinson playing against the type he's come to be synonymous with is really fun. I'd love to watch more Fritz Lang films, especially more of his early German work.

Sonatine

Sonatine is a 1993 Japanese crime thriller written and directed by and starring Takeshi Kitano. I believe it's the first movie that garnered him international attention as a director.

Kitano stars as Murakawa, a Yakuza guy who has kind of had it with being a Yakuza, and is looking for a way out. When he and his men are sent to Okinawa for what is essentially some busywork, Murakawa smells a rat and suspects that his bosses are planning to get rid of him. When it turns out he was right, Murakawa and some of his men go into hiding at a beach house in the hopes that this will all blow over.

This second act of Sonatine is what really sets the movie apart from other crime films. While at the beach house, the characters essentially goof off Yakuza style for a good long while. They play games and tease each other, Murakawa plays pranks such as digging sand traps for them to fall into. But it isn't all about laughs. There's a melancholy feel to all the scenes, and the fun and games have a violent underpinning to them, as this is the only life these Yakuza guys really know. There's a scene where Murakawa spies two of his underlings shooting a can off of each others' heads. He approaches them and it quickly becomes a tense game of Russian Roulette. It plays as a reminder of just what these guys are capable of, and also gives us a glimpse of the inner turmoil Murakawa is experiencing.

The strange turbulent peace of act two eventual comes to an abrupt end, and the third act features Murakawa turning the tables on the people who are out to get him, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you things get pretty bloody.

Sonatine is a very well made movie, and pretty enjoyable, although it can be kind of depressing at times too. Don't hold out for a happy ending, folks. You pretty much know from the get go that there's no way that's going to happen. The whole middle section is where Sonatine shined for me, and I believe it is what ultimately makes the movie richer and more thoughtful than other crime movies of this type.

Johnny Dangerously

Every, I don't know, 5 or 10 years, Hollywood decides it's once again time for a humorous pastiche of a bygone era of cinema. Usually those movies come and go without making much of a splash. Comedies are marketed towards youth, and the youth has little to no connection to or interest in the old days. But they always try, and hey, some of them are actually pretty good movies.

Johnny Dangerously is one of those movies that was on Comedy Central all the time in the late 90's. I don't believe I've ever seen the whole movie from beginning to end, but it's very possible that I've seen it in bits and pieces. I always enjoyed it, it's a really fun movie.

Made in the early 80's by director Amy Heckerling, Johnny Dangerously is the story of the rise of a prohibition-era Chicago gangster (played by Michael Keaton) who went into a life of crime to pay for his perpetually sick mother's medical bills. Meanwhile, his own brother (Griffin Dunne) is climbing the ranks of the District Attorney office. Not knowing that Johnny Dangerously (an alias) is his brother, he is determined to bring him in.

What follows is a fast paced barrage of silly sight gags and one liners, not unlike Airplane! or Top Secret!, the difference being that Dangerously plays them with a self aware wink at the audience, hell, even address the camera, whereas the humor of the Zucker comedies is found in the straight faced seriousness the actors play it with.

There's some really funny stuff in here. Michael Keaton is awesome as always, funny and mischievous and suave in the title role. Joe Piscopo found the role he was born to play: a cartoonish old timey gangster. Peter Boyle has some great stuff as Johnny's mentor. Maureen Stapleton gets some good material as Johnny's mother.

There are some great running gags throughout. I especially liked the bookends, where Johnny is telling his story to a kid at the pet store he now owns. Keaton is always maintaining his pet store business with the animals while he's talking, putting price tag stickers on dogs, polishing the turtles, etc.

When Johnny Dangerously begins the joke pacing is pretty fast and furious. Unfortunately, it can't sustain that rate through the entire running time. While still funny, the movie does gradually lose its steam as it goes. Some of the jokes are a little corny, but more gags hit than miss.

In my last few reviews, I notice that I've been throwing in another movie that might play as a good double feature with the one I'm reviewing. It wasn't intentional, it just happened that way, but I'm thinking of making it a regular feature of my reviews. Sort of a "if you like this, try these together" recommendation. With that in mind, I think Johnny Dangerously would play really well in a double bill with one of the Coen Brothers' most underrated films, The Hudsucker Proxy. Yes, that would make a pretty great movie night.

Charley Varrick

Charley Varrick is one of those older movies (1973, in this case) that holds up ridiculously well. It's a shame that nobody seems to have heard of it. It was directed by Don Siegel, who had directed many movies of almost every genre before this, but had achieved a huge box office success with the gritty crime action genre with his previous film, Dirty Harry. While Dirty Harry was an over the top action movie, built around an iconic, badass performance by Clint Eastwood, Charley Varrick is much more subdued, with intelligent plotting, a more relaxed pace, and really good dialogue. In fact, I would even say that Charley Varrick is the better of the two films, if not quite as memorable.

The title character is played by the great Walter Matthau (who won a BAFTA for this performance over in the UK), a down-on-his-luck former stunt pilot, now cropduster, who puts together a gang and masterminds a low-profile, small town bank robbery in New Mexico. The robbery is a bit of a disaster, with half his gang getting killed, along with some cops, but Varrick is very good at thinking on his feet, and he and his (surviving) partner in crime manage to elude suspicion.

When they return to his trailer park and check out their haul, they realize that they've stolen almost a million dollars, which is almost a million dollars more than they expected a tiny small town bank to have in its vault. Varrick deduces, correctly, that the money must belong to the mob, and was being held there until it could be properly invested overseas. This means that the mob is going to stop at nothing until they're dead and the money is returned.

What follows is a chess game, where Varrick must stay ahead of all the obstacles in his path, including the police, a nosy old lady neighbor, the corrupt owner of the bank (played by John Vernon), and a man named Molly (Joe Don Baker), the hitman employed by the banker. The question is, will Charley Varrick get away with the money and his life?

Charley Varrick (the movie, not the character) reminds me a great deal of the work of Elmore Leonard. In fact, I would go so far as saying that this film was a direct inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown. I haven't read anything saying this, but I am sure of it nonetheless. They are quite similar in style and tone, and both contain a smarter-than-their-station-in-life hero working a long game against all odds for a huge sum of money.

Charley Varrick (the movie, not the character) is an extremely smart caper with funny moments, great performances and colorful characters. Another thing worth noting is the awesome score, composed by the great Lalo Schifrin. There are so many reasons you should all watch this movie. Check it out on Netflix Instant!

The Killing

Recently, I purchased the Criterion Collection Blu Ray of Stanley Kubrick's classic racetrack heist film noir, The Killing. This was my first time seeing it, as well as his previous film, Killer's Kiss, which is also featured on the Blu Ray.

I've seen I guess about half of Kubrick's films now, maybe a little more than that, but The Killing was the first one I've ever seen that feels, you know, kind of mainstream. It follows a group of guys plotting to steal $2 million worth of betting money at a racetrack. Besides Johnny, the mastermind, these guys aren't criminals, just normal guys who have some unfortunate circumstances in their lives to motivate them. Each have an important role to play in the heist itself.

The first two acts follow the plotting of the heist, as Johnny gets all of the pieces in line. We also see all of the guys at home, and learn what is driving them. One of them, George, is a pushover in a loveless marriage. If they remade this, he would be played by William H. Macy. Hoping for a little bit of respect, he tells his wife what's going on, and she, in turn, tells the guy she's sleeping with on the side, and they hatch a little plot of their own.

The third act is, of course, the heist itself. It's pretty brilliantly staged, where we see one guy perform his duty, and then jump back in time a bit to see what the next guy does. Though techniques like this are not rare for slick heist movies now, it was pretty unique for the 1950's. It reminds me, surely not coincidentally, of the third act of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.

I won't spoil the ending, of course, other than to say that things do get bloody. Do they get away with the robbery? And then what after that? It has one of my favorite endings I've seen in a long time. The last line of dialogue is killer.

Even though it was still very early in his career, Stanley Kubrick's presence is still very much felt. The lower budget probably prevented it from having the ridiculously exacting detail that Kubrick later obsessed over, but the cinematography is still great. The acting is good, too. Little flourishes and details in their performances make the characters seem far more human than a lot of other movies from this time did. My favorite character was probably the sharpshooter Johnny hires to take down a horse to cause a distraction. When we meet him, he's demonstrating his skills by shooting a string of man-shaped targets. When he's done shooting, Johnny hands him his little dog back and he plays the rest of the scene cradling a puppy.

I really enjoyed The Killing. It was noir all the way, with razor sharp dialogue, but not so dark as to be depressing. The heist was truly fun to watch play out. It was interesting to see a young Kubrick at work, and I admit, even a bit of a relief that it wasn't as esoteric as his later work tended to be. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite Kubrick film is cinema's greatest riddle, 2001: A Space Odyssey. See it if you haven't already!