Tag Archives: noir

Trois hommes à abattre/ Three Men to Kill (Jacques Deray, 1980)

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Delon made 28 films in the 70s, also producing about half of them, including TROIS HOMMES À ABATTRE, one of his best, and one of his most successful in this period. In his seventh collaboration with director Jacques Deray, Delon plays a professional poker player who drives by what he thinks is a car accident, makes the mistake of playing good Samaritan, and takes the driver to the hospital. That car accident turns out to be a hit, one put out by a large and powerful conglomerate whose multi-million dollar arms sale depends on certain information not leaking. They think Delon knows something and they’re out to get him. It takes a while for him to realise what he’s experiencing is not a coincidence — someone’s really out to kill him — and starts fighting back. But how can one man win against so many powerful forces?

 

An excellent thriller, one Delon made in a conscious attempt to give  ‘his public’ what he thought they wanted; a shy, beautiful and lonely cat, content in his own business, but who can bare his claws and become dangerous when threatened. The film’s in colour but so bleak it ends in pitch black noir mode; with an ending so dark Delon’s distributor in Japan changed it for fear his fans wouldn’t find it acceptable; a surprise since, unike Belmondo,  dying in films was hardly new to Delon. In this period villains always seem to love cats and art as much as they disdain people — surely a nod to Blofield in Bond — and Pierre Dux makes the most of his role. I also loved seeing Dalila Di Lazzaro as Delon’s girlfriend, very beautiful, funny and sexy, completely relaxed and open to the camera. I’d never heard of her. A noir worth looking out for.

Delon seems to wear white socks throughout the film; a practice then in vogue but, as far as i can tell, never seen before or since with Delon.

José Arroyo

THE ROAD TO SHAME (Des femmes disparaissent, 1959);

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Édouard Molinaro’s first three films — BACK TO THE WALL (Le Dos au mur, 1958); THE ROAD TO SHAME (Des femmes disparaissent, 1959); and WITNESS IN THE CITY (Un témoin dans le ville, 1959) are all noirs, all interesting, all at best only mildly successful when first released, all still in circulation now, and with good reason. Molinaro came up with the Nouvelle Vague but, like Claude Sautet, who was his assistant, was not of it. Moreover the filmmakers and types of criticism that together constructed the idea of the ‘Nouvelle Vague’ were much more enthusiastic about low-budget American crime films than their own indigenous variant, so it would take a while for Molinaro to find a place in the panorama of French cinema, and then only as the director of comedies à la Française (Louis de Funès films) and stage adaptations (La Cage aux folles). I’m glad he’s now receiving recognition for these early films.

The Road to Shame (Des femmes disparaissent, 1959) is about young women promised opportunities as models and actresses, who then get trafficked abroad as prostitutes. Robert Hossein plays Pierre Rossi, a young man so intensely in love with his childhood sweetheart (Estella Blain) that he follows her to this party she insists on going to without him, and thus saves her and breaks up the ring – a facile reading might claim that the message seems to be that a stalker has his uses. A visually inventive film, with a brooding Hossein, evoking a monomaniacal combination of love and lust, impactfully evoked by the patterned shots of his walking to the camera and into close-ups that are then held for a while. In his autobiography Molinaro still delights in his first view of the multi-level set constructed for the mansion where the party is held and all the different types of shots it made possible for him and his team. Magali Noël, immortal for her work with Boris Vian on FAIS-MOI MAL, JOHNNY, here plays a gangster’s moll whose job is to put the girls at ease whilst they’re enticed abroad. The film has a brilliant jazz score by Art Blakey, who like Miles Davies in LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD/ Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Louis Malle, 1958), improvised the music to the film.

José Arroyo

THE WEB (Michael Gordon, 1947)

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The last of the films in my UNIVERSAL NOIR #1 box-set, and it made me wonder what the selection process was: are they the best Universal had to offer? Are some choices mere padding?  Are some meant to be representative samples, rather than the best of? Are others illustration of genre outliers that help define the central corpus? Re-releasing these films on blu-ray gives them a new life so there’s something at stake in the choices.

Recounting plot:

I raise these questions because THE WEB is almost a quintessential programmer, a standard crime film in which a rich industrialist (Vincent Price) scams a million dollars, kills his associates and tries to frame his secretary (Ella Raines) and her soon to be boyfriend (Edmond O’Brien) for the murder, only to be foiled by a detective who’s much brighter than he looks (William Bendix). It’s got some snappy dialogue and an attractive, second-string cast, though only Vincent Price is given enough to shine with.

A shot:

Visually, there’s an attempt to bring some flair (a shot that begins with contrasting close-up of two pianists playing, then mirrored in a piano and descending onto the subjects in a night-club scene — see above) and there’s a lovely edit with the sound of a gunshot over-taken by a truck discharging pebbles but is otherwise undistinguished (see below).

A cut:

There’s not much suspense EITHER as a third of the way through, in a hypothetical, the villain gives away the plot (see first. clip at the very top). All that remains is to catch him with enough to indict. William Bendix, with what comes pretty close to a deux ex-machina, takes care of it. An enjoyable if unimpressive watch; and, of course, one does need a sense of the norm before discussing whatever is better or worse, so far from useless viewing.

José Arroyo

NAKED ALIBI (Jerry Hopper, 1954)

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Is Al Willis (Gene Barry) a humble baker or a gangland psychopath? Is Chief Inspector Joe Conroy (Sterling Hayden) condoning police brutality or is he merely doing his job? Marianna (Gloria Grahame), a girl who gets hit and might like it, will be the key to the solution.

A girl who gets hit and might like it:

 

Gloria Grahame’s introduction in the film, lip-synching to Jo Anne Greer’s rendition of  Cole Porter’s ‘Ace in the Hole,’ is sublime: external desirability as an evocation of sexual alienation; the body a sad, desultory last-chance exchange mechanism; each shimmy a tired indication that there really is no way out; another of the already innumerable reason why Grahame is such an essential figure in noir.

Gloria Grahame Intro

NAKED ALIBI  is beautifully lit by the great Russell Metty, so that light and its absence becomes an additional layer of signification into what the actors, dialogue and framing are already evoking; beautiful, bleak, expressive. It was partly shot in Tijuana and director Jerry Hopper intelligently weaves in the physical and metaphorical dimensions of a’ border-town’ into the story.

Russell Metty lighting:

Windows and Mirrors as Framing:

Hayden is lanky, cool, with a very expressive body but minimal facial movement, and eyes suggesting that he’s seen it all and nothing he’s seen is nice. The police ‘win’ of course, but only On the surface. This is a film where there’s a victory but one without victors: no one really wins. At the end, Joe Conroy, having already lost much, walks under a lamp-post and into a dark, dark night. Alone.

Chuck Connors, even taller than Hayden, appears in an early role:

The Indicator disk has also has a superb ten minute film demonstrating what it is a cinematographer does, featuring Karl Struss, who shot Murnau’s SUNRISE and many other films. Billy Wilder briefly appears on-set.

José Arroyo

Larceny (George Sherman, 1948)

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Joan Caulfield gets an Orry-Kelly wardrobe but Shelley Winters gets all the best lines…and the reviews. When Winters was doing the rounds of talk shows in the 80s, hawking her biography and commenting on what a sex bomb she’d been in her films…I don’t think I quite believed her. Sure, she flashed a couple of pictures but I’d known her my whole life as…well, other people. But here she is in LARCENY, the first film in which she got star billing, as the sultry femme fatale who can’t keep her mitts off John Payne –no woman in this film can but it’s a bigger mistake for Shelley as she’s meant to be Dan Duryea’s girl, never a good idea in the movies. I’ve spliced together all her scenes – under 14 minutes. She’s got some archetypal hard-boiled dialogue, so recognisable it must have carried a hint of parody even then, and endlessly quotable now.  Had the film been better, she’d have become a queer icon earlier (or perhaps she was…even as early as this?

I’ve edited together all of her scenes in the film, under 14 minutes, so those interested might see: she’s fantastic!

José Arroyo

Tight Spot (Phil Karlson, 1955)

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Ginger Rogers returns to the type of ‘Anytime Annie’ role that first got her noticed in the early thirties. Vince Striker, the cop played by Brian Keith, describes her as ‘smart talking, brassy, third class citizen’. But Ginger’s now on her third decade of stardom, so even though we first see her doing laundry in jail, she’s got the type of manicured nails that would make Barbra Streisand proud decades later; and this being Ginger in the 50s, her character’s a product of her environment, which here means a good girl who’s been accompanied by the wrong men but never so far as to do anything ‘cheap’; she’s been jailed for being a chump rather than for being guilty of anything.

Fingernails

She plays Sherry Conley, the only person left who can finger mob boss Benjamin Costain (Lorne Green) and get him kicked out of the country as an ‘undesirable alien’. Edward G. Robinson is the D.A who hopes to convince her. Brian Keith is the love interest as the cop who’s charged with protecting her. It’s a film worth seeing for its brilliant cast. Robinson and Keith are old dependables but it’s lovely to see Ginger play so broad and brass and Lorne Greene surprises (and makes one think of what all those years playing Pa in Bonanza might have deprived us of).

noir

The film itself hovers between comedy (mainly at the beginning) and noir (near the end). It takes very cheap shots at television with the camera repeatedly cutting to what’s on television (hair lotion commercials, hillbilly music, fund-raising marathons) followed by the characters derision of the content (‘television should be so good that when you close your eyes it sounds like the radio’). The recent House of Unamerican Activities Hearings are also everywhere evident in the narrative: the film begins with Ginger in jail telling a new inmate, ‘never volunteer for ‘nuting’ and ends with her convinced that it’s everyone’s responsibility – a well-worn word throughout the narrative – to point the finger and inform.

Television:

Ostensibly inspired by the strong-arm tactics used to get Virginia Hill to testify against Bugsy Siegel. Based on Leonard Kantor’s 1953 Broadway play, DEAD PIGEON, which took place entirely in a hotel room, and which the film opens up with a chase scene at the beginning, a court-room scene at the end, and by designing the hotel so that it’s at angles where one sees the various rooms, the windows looking outside, and the doorways at angles so one can see the hotel corridor. An ingenious use of mirrors enhances the view into the different spaces.

Spaces

 

An uneven film that progressively turns up the tension, becomes increasingly more interesting, visually and narratively, as it goes long, with a wise-cracking and rousing finale in the courtroom scene at he finale. I ended up liking it.

 

An Act of Murder (Michael Gordon, 1948)

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An example of the fluidity of noir as a term. ACT OF MURDER is a domestic melodrama which would have been marketed as a ‘serious’ film on difficult moral and ethical issues: is mercy killing acceptable even if a dear one is terminal and in unbearable pain? Should intentions be a consideration when applying the law, by whom and to what extent? It’s the themes and the ‘seriousness’ of treatment that would have drawn in Fredric March and Florence Eldridge to star. They’d subsequently perform Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Ibsen’s THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE and O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT on Broadway in the 50s to great acclaim as one of America’s great couples of the theatres (the Lunts being the only rivals).

 

March plays Calvin Cooke, a judge who applies the law literally and harshly. His daughter (Geraldine Brooks) is about to be engaged to a lawyer (Edmond O’Brien) with a different, more liberal interpretation and understanding. Cooke’s convictions are put to the test when, after celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary, the wife he still loves is diagnosed with a terminal illness whose ending will be accompanied by horrifying pain, currently untreatable. When he sees the pain she’s in, he decides to put an end to further reoccurrences by crashing his car in the hopes of killing her and himself. She dies. He turns himself in with every expectation of having the law applied to himself as he has applied it to others. But his daughter’s fiancé steps in to offer an unsolicited and unwelcome defence that nonetheless saves his neck, and converts him to the point of view the film hopes to convince the audience of: that intentions and individual circumstances matter.

An absorbing, efficient melodrama that in the last twenty minutes develops into a court-room drama, very well-acted throughout but ultimately unconvincing. The famous Universal Courthouse set was built for this film. The gap between the film’s ambitions and its achievements can be seen in the funhouse sequence, clearly influenced by Welles’ A LADY FROM SHANGAHI but not a patch on it. Based on a novel by Ernst Lothar.

THE LINEUP (Don Siegel, 1958)

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THE LINEUP (Don Siegel, 1958)

 

The best of the noirs I’ve been seeing recently. It starts with an exciting set-piece – a driver steals someone’s suitcase from the port; the police chase him; and he ends up killed. It starts great and it doesn’t let up. The premise is that a gang is using innocent tourists returning from Hong Kong by ship to smuggle heroin by hiding the powder in their belongings (dolls, statues, silverware handles). Like many of the crime films of the period, the film makes great use of its on-location shooting. It’s a thrill just to see the San Francisco of this period. But Siegel does more with this. It’s like his characters are always caught on the edge of some barrier or some praecipe; highways made for freedom become dead-ends; aquariums where one is meant to gaze though glass prisons end up imprisoning; the wheelchair-bound are pushed to fly on air; steam that’s meant to revive and relax becomes a cover for death; etc. The choice of shots, camera movement, angle; everything seems economic, purposeful, meaningful; beautiful to see and exciting to watch. There’s a terrific mirror shot of murder in the mansion scene. Eli Wallach is a great psycho killer, simultaneously controlled and unhinged. Robert Keith is his more cerebral partner in crime. Perhaps one of the earliest spinoffs from radio  (1950-53), then to TV (54-60); with the film coming out in the midst of its run. The ad-line was ‘Too Hot…Too Big…for TV’.

 

The Mirror Shot:

José Arroyo

Singapore (John Brahm, 1947)

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A bit of tosh set in Singapore during WWII. It’s got pearl smuggling, Japanese invasion, amnesia and uses voice-over narration and super noir lighting to tell its story:

It also makes great use of Nancio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed’s ‘Temptation’:

‘You came,
I was alone,
I should have known,
you were temptation!’

Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner star and Ava, at the height of her beauty, gets a superb star intro:

The film is also notable for its queer coding. Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon set a certain pathway for gay male representation: mincing, duplicitous, smelling of gardenias, charming but deadly. In Singapore, George Lloyd follows in his footsteps, the coding is less explicit, as is the effect. But the message remains clear.

 

Part of the great Universal Noir #2 box set from Indicator.

 

José Arroyo

 

The American Soldier (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany, 1970)

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THE AMERICAN SOLDIER is not so much a pastiche of noir as a noirish dream incurred by watching American gangster films of the fifties and sixties.

The plot is basic: Ricky (Karl Scheydt), a German-American Vietnam Vet returns to Munich and is hired as a contract killer by three policemen. The whodunnit element is negligible. There is no suspense.

Graphic but inchoate

The psycho-sexual elements are heightened. It’s all songs and smoke, fedoras and phone booths, a romance of futility, of dark forbidden desires, laced with whiskey and ennui, that lead to death.

Your future’s all used up.

There are innumerable references to crime films, of which my favourite is the Dietrich ‘your future’s all used up’ scene from TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1958). It’s full of personal references, not, I suspect, meant for a general audience: the prostitute who falls for Ricky played by Elga Sorbas is called Rosa von Praunheim, after the director who would soon release IT IS NOT THE HOMOSEXUAL WHO IS PERVERSE, BUT THE SOCIETY IN WHICH HE LIVES (1971). The film is self -referential. The nightclub the characters go to is the ‘Lola Montes’, just as in GODS OF THE PLAGUE(1970); Ricky goes to visit his old home, in front of which are railings exactly like the ones the characters of KATZLEMACHER sit on throughout much of that film.

Revisiting Katzelmacher

Like in Almodóvar’s work, where a scene in one film is developed into the main plot of a later one, here we get a chambermaid (played by Margarethe von Trotta, the celebrated director) who comes into Ricky’s hotel room as he’s making love to Rosa, sits by the bed, and tells us the story of what will become ALI, FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974) .

There’s luminous black and white cinematography by Dietrich Lohmann that adds to the incantatory quality in the film, and seen to advantage in this very beautiful restoration. The acting seems posey and theatrical, though that too adds a symbolic dream-like dimension to the drama. There are moments that seem awkward and amateurish. Some of the compositions seem well thought-through, others merely grabbed, but this too adds to the film’s dream logic. It’s less a pastiche than a dramatic rendering of personal fantasies and desires that are rendered vividly, sometimes even graphically,  but remain inchoate. Murnau, Clark Gable and Batman are referenced. I loved it, though I don’t know if I would have had I not already been immersed in Fassbinder’s world.

Incestuous brotherly love and Clark Gable

 

José Arroyo

 

Thinking Aloud About Film: Cadena perpetua/ Life Sentence (Arturo Ripstein, Mexico, 1979)

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A great noir, currently on MUBI, that brings to mind Crime & Punishment, Jean Valjean, Bresson’s Pickpocket and I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, among others. A petty thief and former pimp, now a banker, s forced back into a life of crime by the very police who are meant to uphold the law. The story is told in flashback, through voice-over; the setting is contemporary; the indictment of the culture in the final shot, brutal. Whilst a society of spectacle is obsessed with a football match our hero’s odds against tomorrow are nil. There’s no exit, he’s got no way out. He’s no good, but the structures of the culture are even worse. A great film.

The podcast may be listened to below;

 

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

The Podcast references:

A Place Without Limits

Las Islas Marias

Pedro Armendariz Sr, here in another great noir: La noche avanza.

Dolores Del Rio, in one of the great films of Mexican Cinema’s Golden Age, here also with Pedro Armendariz

Emilio Fernandez (here a marvellous scene from Victimas del pecado/ Victims of Sin

Tom Shepherd on ‘Noir in Brick’, a video essay

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Creator’s Statement:

 

The process of the video essay began with the film review for Rian Johnson’s film noir, Brick and was then furthered in the consecutive essay. The review attempted to convey the tones and narrative of the feature while bringing attention to various filmic elements such as cinematography and mise-en-scène. The essay builds upon this foundational text and conclusions on the main points of subjectivity and guilt take root. Despite, being devoid of literary sources, a fact rectified in the video essays development, the essay’s focus on the film allowed crucial understanding of Brick’s tactics and meanings. Moreover, the inclusion of close analysis marked the beginning of the structure to be seen within the final video essay itself as well as the identification of key elements such as music which go onto frame later arguments.

 

The video essay, as a combination of these past two texts with theory and close analysis to the film, attempts to convey the ways in which Johnson uses the genre of noir with the high school setting. Key to this is the way in which he utilises the idea of two worlds; the first being the surface banality of the ‘ordinary’ high school, and the second, highly stylised world of the noir. Assigned to these respective worlds are Brendan’s relationship with Emily, which uses the authentic tone of reality to garner empathy from the viewer, and ideas of immorality and crime. The video essay shows how Johnson uses conventions of the genre and camerawork to express Brendan’s feelings of guilt which allows the viewer to track the submeaning of his quest to “find the one who put her on the spot”, which, in this reading of the film, is Brendan himself.

The structure of the essay frames the points most important to the argument while allowing flow through film. Unlike words which have no corresponding signifiers, the video essay required words to be constructed around the visuals of the film. The introduction simply eases the viewer into the film, clarifying the features main ideas, styles and goals of the director. James Naremore’s summary of the iconography and devices of noir furthers the viewers knowledge as the essay mirrors examples on screen. A quote from ‘A Companion to Film Noir’ presents another side of the discourse on what noir is by noting the entity’s abstract nature that exists more in the discussion that in physical properties. The sequential opening analysis introduces the primary idea of the camera’s alignment to Brendan’s subjectivity while framing the secondary ‘noir world’ as the evil that killed Emily. The essay moves on to the idea of complementary worlds, something that was included to further Naremore’s examples, address reviews and to bring the argument neatly onto the topic of the Pin. Furthermore, an insert of a quote by Raymond Chandler, whose books massively influenced the noir genre, works nicely with Roger Ebert’s review of Brick as it displays how the tone has shifted from the urban city of the 40s, to a high school. The importance of addressing these reviews stems from the essay’s argument that Johnson is attempting to use the noir genre to his own ends, whereas the reviews allude to the notion that it is for that sake of gimmick and parody. The pin’s character, while not entirely to blame for Emily’s murder, comes to symbolise the noir world that certainly did play a part in said crime. As the part of the narrative concerned with the Pin climaxes, the noir style similarly increases, with a focus on the lighting in, and around the pin’s house. The essay uses this part in its narrative to again reinforce the ideas and effects of alignment within the film as well as Johnson’s use of it. Moreover, the character of the Pin takes the viewer to an example of Johnson’s portrayal of the idea that there are two worlds within Brick by showing the camera’s cut from the dark and stylised lighting of the basement to the light, playful setting of the kitchen with its entailing banality. Finishing the segment with a point on its world-oriented dialogue style, the essay begins upon the topic of lines and edges as an expansion on the idea of two worlds. The text, detailing the music used within the current point, is manipulated on the screen to exemplify the lines of which the narrator discusses. Shifting the essay’s focus from Brendan to Emily, the question of where does Emily belong in this system of worlds is brought to the foreground by the narrator. In this portion of the essay, the essay brings a focus to the main reason as to why a noir was set in a high school which was to utilise the familiar setting’s reserve of easily accessible empathy. While referencing, Chinatown and The Maltese Falcon, the principle is displayed through the comparison in plots; rather than a political scheme or a jewelled bird, Brick’s focus is on the relationship between two schoolmates, something most people can relate to, and empathise with. The pronouncement of this empathy is then developed in the essay with the idea of guilt which is brought to the forefront through the analysis of Dode’s murder and the flashback. The quote by Paul Schrader is inserted here to strengthen the concept of Johnson’s manipulation of genre convention to the effect of generating emotion on and off the screen. The perspective of guilt is guided by the essay to its end with a summary of the place of the football pitch as a site that tracks Brendan’s story. The match shots that came before refresh the audience of his feelings of guilt. The final turn from Brendan conveys his acknowledgment of his complicity in Emily’s tragedy.

 Filmography:

Rian Johnson, Brick, Bergman Lustig Productions, 2005.

Roman Polanski, Chinatown, Paramount Pictures, 1974.

John Huston, The Maltese Falcon, Warner Brothers Pictures (1941)

Bibliography:

Schrader, Paul. Notes on Film Noir. Film Comment, vol. 8, no. 1, 1972.

Spicer, Andre, and Helen Hanson. A Companion to Film Noir, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013.

Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2nd edn, 2008.

 

Sam Hamilton, ‘The Obsessive Perspective’

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Video Essay

 

Creator’s Statement: 

 

This work has three principle aims; to delineate a term in the canon of stereoscopic (3D) film studies which Spöhrer points out1 is a fledgling field and warrants investigation, secondly to link this term to the longstanding cinematic device of one point perspective, and finally to create an impression of how the director of Long Day’s Journey Into Night reveals an obsessive protagonist and how this ultimately links to the use of 3D.

 

The term is the Obsessive Perspective, which can be understood as Mulvey’s notion of the ‘gaze’2 and its potency when combined with an obsessed protagonist and one point perspective. Although this is not an essay on the male gaze, the notion of the male gaze is a fascinating pretext for this video essay which associates the way (often male) directors deploy one point perspective to channel an (often male) character’s psychological fixation on a singular goal into the audience’s viewpoint. I link this to the use of 3D in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

 

In Long Day’s Journey Into Night the philosophy of the sun, Buddhism, meshes with the genre of the night, film noir. It is intensely stylish and a beautiful modern restaging of the classical Hollywood noir, full of all the anxiety, eroticism, existential terror and rain-soaked nocturnal imagery that identifies the genre, applied to a new country, a new language and a new culture. But what makes Long Day exceptional is two things. A poetic wisdom to the way these elements combine to affect the audience. And a 59-minute shot stereo converted in post production to alluring 3D.

 

3D, which also creates artificial depth in a 2D medium as does perspective, creates the feeling of almost being able to touch the object in the frame3. I introduce this train of thought in the essay by invoking Jeong’s claim that 3D long takes are ‘not just a complete representation of reality, but a complete presentation of our being embedded in a represented reality’4. This chimes with the director’s intentions for Long Day’s Journey Into Night, being ‘the conjuration of fake three dimensional memories’5. The film clearly illustrates a psychological journey, full of intentional lapses in unities of space and time, that prevent any assumption we are watching a physical reality. For in this filmmaking intention, there is grounds to suggest that 3D in Long Day’s Journey Into Night activates a closer sense of viewing the perceived reality we live in than a by-standing Bazinian camera. A represented reality, as opposed to mere reality, is a subjective one, one which must by nature have a perspective, which in this case relates everything in the frame back to Wan Qiwen. Hence every texture and element of mise-en-scene which is heightened by 3D, an effect which mesmerised a mass audience in Avatar, is channelled back to that focal point of Wan Qiwen, at the centre of a psychological one point perspective even when the frame is not set up as a one point perspective with her in it.

 

Kogonada made clear the prevalence of one point perspective in the cinema of Stanley Kubrick, by cutting together over a hundred frames from his filmography6. But there is more than a filmmaking style to the way one point perspective has been used throughout cinematic history. This video essay draws upon the proclivity to use one point perspective in those moments where characters or their mental states are represented in a vortex. Spinning spirals, illusions and stereoscopic effects using vortexes that incur stereolepsis – seeing in 3D –  were eventually omitted from the final cut of the video essay on the one hand because it drew time away from the important explanation of Luo’s psychological state but also because such effects are known to trigger seizures in some viewers. They are useful tools, however, to distort vision and make the same clip appear different afterwards, demonstrating the important point behind 3D’s significance in Long Day’s Journey Into Night that should you change the way you look at a thing, what you look at changes too.

 

This video essay ultimately left me with more questions as to the specific nature of watching a film in 3D. Since autostereograms and optical illusions possess such a capability to reshape the frame as your eyes perceive it7, those curious about 3D should look into its own inherent effects on the film experience. One of the more curious discoveries I made while researching for this video essay, for example, one of the central pieces of information that I find warrants an intrinsic investigation of 3D as a technology, was a neurological discovery made by Liuye Yao, not long after the release of the film, that indicates extended viewing of 3D movies triggers theta wave activity, which only ever appears elsewhere during REM sleep. The suggestion that 3D has a hypnotic nature here gains some credence. It shows there is some psychological utility to the technology beyond merely exciting our senses. And it reinforces this video essay’s presupposition that 3D was the right choice for invoking an obsessive man’s wandering odyssey into a dreamworld.

Sam Hamilton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Practice of Film Criticism Podcast 2022, No. 3: Sam Hamilton on Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)

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An insightful conversation on a film that’s difficult to grasp in terms of plot but which nonetheless offers us enough to have returned twice more to see it. In the podcast, we discuss the famous 59 minute tracking shot, how the film shifts gears narratively and stylistically; how the first half may deal with memory and the second with dreams; we talk of the film’s texture, how sound often works against image and how the images themselves are precise and controlled; we relate the film to noir (time, rain, vamps, fedoras, its evocation of BLADE RUNNER). We relate the film to the work of Jia Zhang Ke and Tsiai Ming Lang; and we talk of how it’s a film that may leave audiences initially puzzled but that seems to grow in their estimation as discussion unfolds. All this, and much, much more.

The podcast may be listened to here:

 

José Arroyo and Sam Hamilton

Thinking Aloud About Film: Pedro Almodóvar 5 – Matador, with special guest Harry Russell

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We continue to think aloud about Pedró Almodovar, this time focussing on Matador. Richard is ill so I am joined by Harry Russell to discuss the film. Some of the topics touched upon are the themes of sex and death, Spanish-ness and bullfighting, camp, masculinity, the classical structuring of the plot, the glossy production values, and why — whilst it is hugely entertaining — it might yet not be up to the heights of Almodóvar’s other work.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

 

From Church to Police Station:

 

 

Fashion Show Camp:

 

Images discussed in the Podcast:

REDEMPTION (IO TE CERCHERÒ)

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Whilst everyone’s wasting their breath over the various demerits of the new LORD OF THE RINGS or GAME OF THRONES TV shows, the best TV show I’ve seen this season is tucked away in Walter Presents on All 4: REDEMPTION (IO TE CERCHERÒ) is a noir/ crime thriller/ family melodrama about a disgraced cop, Valerio (Alessandro Gassman), fired from the force for corruption and cocaine possession, now pumping gas at a petrol station, who is told that his estranged son – a social rights activist working with migrants — has committed suicide. But, as his former lover tells him, things don’t add up. He’s finally convinced of foul play, and as he sets out to find out the truth about his son’s death, he finally gets to know his son as a human being and not just as an extension of himself. The more he digs, the more corruption he finds: African migrants cheated out of their council homes by gangs, drug enforcers in the service of ‘respectable’ serviceman laundering money through off-shore accounts, and a police force in the service of Big Business. Everyone’s implicated and his search finally leads him to his own family. A very moving thriller with lots of social commentary but fundamentally about families – biological and otherwise –  father-son relationships…and the importance of justice. The setting is Rome, the look is noir, sometimes tinged with the duller hues of neon. What holds it all together is Gassman, in an extraordinary performance, mostly minimalist: a still face with eyes that don’t dare move much for fear of betraying what he really feels; a halo of sadness around his face; a tall, thin, wiry body, trained, moving fluidly and capable of quick bursts of violence; and an awkwardness and emotional restraint with the people he loves that also burst forth out of his isolation and into moments of great tenderness. Highly recommend.

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 360 – Get Carter

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Returning guest Celia joins us from Canada to discuss the 1970s Tyneside noir of Get Carter, a moody story of a man’s investigation into his brother’s death that’s today considered a classic of British cinema. We discuss its setting in Newcastle, Michael Caine’s stardom, the influence of its director, Mike Hodges, along with two other British directors, on Hollywood aethetics, its use of women, and more.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 346 – The Batman

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

The latest in a long line of Batman reboots, The Batman claims the definite article for itself – and deserves to. Richly shot, dark, romantic expressiveness spilling from every frame, The Batman leans in hard on bringing the noir of the source material to the screen with unabashed sincerity. It’s the best Batman film of them all.

Deleted scene of Barry Keoghan’s character meeting Batman giving a clearer view of the Conrad Veidt makeup job

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 341 – Nightmare Alley (1947)

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Listen to our discussion of 2021’s Nightmare Alley here.

We explore 1947’s Nightmare Alley, directed by Edmund Goulding, and compare it to Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation of the material, which we find superior in almost every way. Mike in particular finds, in the reflection of Goulding’s version, useful ways to appreciate del Toro’s, which at first blush he found uninspiring. We discuss the portrayal and use of the geek, the differences in the introduction of the protagonist (played by Tyrone Power and Bradley Cooper in the old and new films respectively), del Toro’s greater focus on mood and scene setting, and how thoroughly Goulding’s film adheres to the noir genre. And we express our joy at seeing del Toro’s version at the grand reopening of the Electric, the UK’s oldest working cinema, which we completely forgot to do in the last podcast.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 340 – Nightmare Alley (2021)

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Listen to our discussion of 1947’s Nightmare Alley here.

We talk swoony visuals, alcoholism, a femme fatale pastiche, moral descent, Bradley Cooper’s sexual presence and more in our discussion of Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel of the same name.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.