Scarlet Street, dir. Fritz Lang (1945)

Panic in the Streets, dir. Elia Kazan (1950)

NIKKI says:
After this and The Sweet Smell of Success, I think I only want to watch movies from the 1950s. This one is about a man trying to stop the spreading of the plague. Richard Widmark is a health services officer who has 48 hours to find the people responsible for the death of a grifter in New Orleans. The grifter was discovered with gunshot wounds to the chest, but he died from plague-like symptoms. Widmark wants the press left out of it lest a national scare is caused and the men he must track down disappear to Africa or somewhere and take their diseases with them.

Ooh, it's a tense one. Another before-its-time picture with rapid-fire, super-smart dialogue, and intensity to burn. Widmark is just great, and so is scary-tall Jack Palance as the heavy who'll do anything -- including tossing a dying man over a second floor banister -- to get away from the cops.

It's shot on location in New Orleans, too, with a great old-timey inside look at the city that no longer exists. I loved this one, and must watch more like it.

3.5/5

Sweet Smell of Success, dir. Alexander Mackendrick (1957)

NIKKI says:
Further proof that they don't make them like they used to. You know, we're supposed to think we live in the age of liberation, but watching a movie like this one, you realise things weren't so stilted and stale back in the day. So, they couldn't outright say bad words on screen, instead creativity came into play, and the evil words and callous thoughts and true reflections of the time had to be delivered smartly and less obviously. Well, this movie takes even that a step further. It's clever, but relatively free of innuendo here -- this is 1957 and Sidney Falco, press agent, chastises the naive young Susan Hunsecker:

"Start thinking with your head instead of your hips... By the way, I got nothing against women thinking with their hips. That's their nature. Just like it's a man's nature to go out and hustle and get the things he wants."

Wow, really? I often forget how progressive movies were back then if you just knew where to look. This is up there with the best crime drama and film noir in that it takes a harsh look at men, women, New York City, and society at large. We look at the way starlets and politicians and people in the public eye are made or broken by the press -- it feels like a new thing. But it's origins are old. This is the story of columnists and press agents and the tearing down of a young man's reputation based on the personal views and desires of the columnist himself, and the need for recognition by the press agent. The seedy pair come together and they don't care who's lives they destroy. And by the time one of them decides he has a conscience, it might just be too late.

This is a classic in every sense. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis are on fire, trading jibes like racing tips. The writing is super-slick, the story builds expertly, and the fall out is devastating.

I said to Steve during that I just wanted to go live in old time-y New York where men wore suits all the time and the women were always coiffed, and there were cigarette girls and jazz clubs, and guys said things like "What me run a 50 yard dash with my legs cut off" instead of "watch me calm this guy down with my smooth, fast-talking". I miss the old days, especially the ones I only get to look at through some old filmmaker's lens.

4.5/5

Out of the Past, dir. Jacques Tourneur (1947)

The Maltese Falcon, dir. John Huston (1941)

Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder (1944)

STEVE says:
Well, what can you say? Double Indemnity is simply one of the best films ever made. Where do you go from there?

Showed this one to my class tonight. I've got them looking into Film Noir this term and since Double Indemnity was the first Noir I saw (not the first I'd watched, but the first I really saw for something other than just "an old movie"), I decided to open with it. As I'd hoped, it blew them away. The dialog, the plotting, Edward G. Robinson's "little man"; it all made an impact, and elicited some spirited discussion afterwards.

Something I learned while researching the movie for class: It's based on an actual event. In Queens in 1927, a woman named Ruth Snyder talked her boyfriend into killing her husband Albert, after having Albert take out a big insurance policy with a double-indemnity clause. This inspired James M. Cain to write not only his novel Double Indemnity, but also The Postman Always Rings Twice. Apparently this story struck quite a chord with Mr. Cain.

5/5

Nikki did not view.

The Big Sleep, dir. Howard Hawkes (1946)

STEVE says:
Every time I watch The Big Sleep, I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons: Homer's sitting on the couch, watching Twin Peaks, as Special Agent Cooper opines "That's some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks... and damn good cherry pie." On TV, The Giant is waltzing with a white horse as a traffic light swings from a nearby tree branch. Homer stares at the TV, transfixed.

"Brilliant!" Homer says. "I have absolutely no idea what’s going on."

Much the same way I feel watching The Big Sleep. I know it's brilliant, the direction is faultless, the writing top-notch. But I can't shake the feeling, when all is said and done, that I've missed something.

It's like Hawkes and screenwriters, Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner and Jules Furthman set out to make the most deliberately obtuse film they could. Based on Chandler, you know the plotting is going to be intricate, and with the machine gun dialog, you want to be paying attention and not wandering off mid-film to make a sandwich. But still, no matter how much attention is paid, you come out wishing for Cliff's Notes.

But when Chandler himself is shocked to find that even he doesn't know who killed the chauffeur Owen Taylor, what the hell chance to I stand?

4/5

Nikki did not view.

Detour, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer (1945)

NIKKI says:
We decided to end Hitchcock week, and head into Noir Night, with Detour. We picked it because the plot sounded too good to resist -- a hitchhiker takes a ride from a guy who dies during their ride. To avoid suspicion of murder, the hitchhiker takes on the driver's identity. He then picks up a hitchhiker who knows his dastardly secret!

Come on, right? Perfect noir set-up. I enjoyed it, though it had its faults. I wondered why he didn't just go to the cops. If the guy died of natural causes or whatever, surely that would be revealed. But then, I'm forced to think back to The Wrong Man, and I'm with Al in this movie -- if ever I ride with a dead man, I might just cover it up, too.

Particularly brilliant in this movie, and something I'd love to see redone in a modern film, is the death scene involving the telephone wire. How great was that? Ulger is definitely a Hitchcock rival as far as tension and horror goes. I enjoyed it, and will watch more like it, for sure. I do think this is ready for a remake, too.

3/5

Blade Runner: The Final Cut, dir. Ridley Scott (1982/2007)

NIKKI says:
The first time I watched Blade Runner was at the Allen Theatre in Annville, PA, with Steve and his brother, Mike. I fell asleep. I can't remember why, exactly. But I missed much of the movie, and, therefore, really didn't know all that much about it, apart from stuff Steve has mentioned over the years. Basically, it was a film I considered an indisputable classic, not because of my own opinion, but how revered it is, and, now, of course, because it merits a massive DVD release featuring five version of the thing. Does any film need five versions? What other movies out there would fans want to watch five times in five different ways? Maybe Star Wars... and Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, after viewing the movie again, I realised just why it's so revered. It really is a great picture, from storytelling to visuals. Hard to believe, sometimes, it was made back at the beginning of the '80s when "special effects" were just cheesy neon shooty lights and wires and stuff. This didn't have any cheesiness to it at all, really, which surprised me. I was also taken by the seriousness of the whole thing -- illegal robots inhabiting Los Angeles in 2019 and a rogue-ish cop is sent to destroy them! The potential for unintentional comedy is written all over that, but this was gripping. It was emotionally scarring. That's really what I'm taking away from it was just how sad I felt at the end that the replicants had to die. I was cursing the society that built them more than anything, which is likely the point. And, in turn, Harrison Ford's character wasn't really a hero. He was sad, too, in that he went about his robot slaying really without question. A job, sure, but more than that, especially after learning of Rachel's identity and listening to Roy Batty's speech at the end. I don't remember Ford questioning himself.

I can't compare the version I just saw with any other version, but I know Ford's character was debated as far as his replicant status in early versions, whereas this final version make it fairly clear he, too, is a replicant and that he and Rachel only have a short time together. I love this element of the story and I think it's beautiful. The end was great, with Ford finding the unicorn, and the other cop (Edward James Olmos) saying that it's a shame Rachel won't live. Just perfect, so tragic.

Great movie. In a way I'm annoyed I haven't enjoyed it more frequently over years. But then I'm happy this was the version I was able to see as my "first" experience of the story, because it was really effective.

Now, can someone get me the five-disc edition of The Breakfast Club? I'd watch that.

4/5

STEVE says:
Watching Ridley Scott's Final Cut of Blade Runner, I've finally come to realize what a wank George Lucas is.

Lucas' rape and pillage of the original Star Wars trilogy soured me on the idea of director's cuts and special editions. The original movies never met with his approval because special effects at the time couldn't bring his true vision to fruition. By 1997, though, technology had caught up with him and he released the Star Wars Special Editions. But by adding state-of-the-art effects to these classic films, he did nothing more than remove the credibility of the existing effects, making them look even dodgier by comparison than they did to begin with. As an artist, I can appreciate his wanting to see his vision realized. What I'm against is his refusal to let us enjoy the original movies.

I can't think of another special edition or director's cut where this is the case, especially since the DVD revolution. The Abyss, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, even Stargate, all come with the original as well as the special edition. Lucas, in a childish fit of "they're mine, not yours, I'll do what I want with them" has refused to release the original trilogy (even the new 2-disc editions of the original films only offer a pan and scan version, instead of the original widescreen presentation).

Ridley Scott, however, knows how to do a special edition. This new Blade Runner set has five versions of the movie: the original theatrical release, the international release (which doubled as the original vhs release in the States), the 1992 Director's Cut (which wasn't), the new Final Cut (which is), and just for fun, an early work-print. Good grief, Ridley.

Apart from the narration and the happy ending, the differences are mostly cosmetic: tighter editing, re-touched special effects, that sort of thing. When I heard that Scott got Joanna Cassidy back to re-film her character Zorah's death scene, I cringed, thinking immediately of Lucas and his retro-fitting. But it works here. I don't know why. Maybe it's just a psychological thing; I'm not offended by Scott's touch-ups because I know, should I want to, I can go back and watch the original version where it's not Cassidy but an obviously be-wigged stunt woman crashing through panes of glass and dying on the sidewalk. Not that I'm going to, but the option is there.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut gets a perfect score - 5/5

[Viewed again by Steve on Feb 13.]