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@Major_Boothroyd thanks for the tip.
watched THE THIRD MAN tonight.
Visually this might be the best Film Noir, the cinematography is breathtaking and seeing Vienna in 1949 still pretty much destroyed from the war, is interesting, shocking, captivating.
The camera angles in many scenes are also a stroke of genius. Overall the atmosphere in this film is most unique and fascinating and compelling.
The zither tune is famous and it is played all over the place in so many scenes that it becomes a character of its own which for the most part works in my opinion, but in some instances it becomes almost annoying.
Joseph Cotten is his usual self, just brilliant. Orson Welles for the few scenes he has in the movie is unforgettable.
The story is almost the least important piece of the puzzle in this film. It's quite simple but with all the visuals, score and unrivalled cinematography it doesn't matter.
The many Austrian actors are shining in this film. They create a highly realistic scenario of post war Vienna.
And then of course there is a young Bernard Lee playing one of the Sergeants.
Once again I have to praise the transfer to High Definition. The movie looks like it was shot yesterday with the newest equipment.
Thanks to cameras capturing up to 8K resolution as early as the 30s we can watch such films in this fantastic picture quality once there (re)mastered in HD.
Sounds like it! I would have enjoyed that. I think Kubrick films should be replayed at the theater every week!
Had to revisit an old favorite and what is called the grandaddy noir of them all, for good reason. Because, what doesn't this film have? Pounding music, breathtaking camerawork, beautiful sets, masterwork actors and amazing direction by a rookie John Huston in a film that would define him right out of the gate as a visionary.
This film is the reason Bogart is awarded the reigning title of the king of noir, right up there with Robert Mitchum (they can share the crown). His acting as Spade at the start is rather unassuming and quite amiable, but when the plot thickens and the private dick finds himself in the center of a double-cross game of deceit and subterfuge, his devilish nature rises to the surface. As good as Bogart is in everything, here especially he is as illuminating as eleven suns. His performance is a masterpiece of the dramatic craft, and he's able to jump from sweet and charming to cruel and rigid in the blink of an eye. The moments where he smiles devilishly as his plan comes together or snaps under the suffocating weight of the duplicity and lets his anger rise to the surface at being strung around are awe-inspiring to watch.
And of course the rest of the cast, filled to the brim with the likes of Mary Astor, Syndney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook as the main players make the entire film an "act-off" where each talent feed off each other's dramatic energy to an extent that is rarely seen to such a high mark. Truly one of the greatest cast line-ups of the Golden Age and cinema as a whole, and Bogie, Greenstreet and Lorre would repeat their phenomenal chemistry just a year later in Casablanca, where they treat each other far less ruthlessly than here! It's such a treat to watch Bogart bouncing from actor to actor, and to see Spade playing his own game inside the crooks' bigger game, with so many moving gears and motivations to dizzy you.
I could just go on and on about this film forever, and it truly deserves all the praise it's constantly drowned in. One of the greatest casts and scripts for any genre, but especially for noirs. Each character feels alive, and part of the fun that comes from unraveling the tangled story comes in gauging and feeling out each of the characters and their motivations for doing what they are doing such that you feel as if you're more of a psychologist than a regular consumer of entertainment. The actors play off each other so well here, and the film is an endless sequence of class-A scenes between them all that are worthy of awards all on their own. Whether it's Bogie disarming Lorre and giving him a slap or Elisha Cook's gunsel trying to act tough to his boss to no avail, there is so much fun to be had watching these talents do what they do best throughout. I personally get the most laughs from Greenstreet's Gutman, and crack up every time he looks at Bogie's Spade and remarks to the effect of, "I hope you don't mind me saying it, but you sir are a character." I wouldn't be surprised if there's entire drinking games built around taking a sip of your poison every time Gutman speaks to Spade like that, actually.
And of course at the heart of the film is the falcon, possibly cinema's most iconic MacGuffin. The beauty of this film is that the real magic is found not in the mystery of the object, but in everything surrounding it. Through the hurried chase sparked by the falcon we uncover the greed of humanity and the lengths each character is willing to go-and what they are willing to sacrifice-to make it their own, willing to take themselves and their lives to the very brink of oblivion if it gets them there. Spade sums up the cast of characters and their modus operandi in the movie perfectly with his iconic final line that leaves you feeling it long after the credits roll.
And that's why The Maltese Falcon is and always will be "the stuff that noirs are made of."
By the way, how do the previous two adaptations of The Maltese Falcon stack up? After loving this version so much I've never really bothered looking at the 30s versions, especially since one is labeled a comedy.
Both are definitely fun to see in the way the '54 CR is a curio, but not fair to compare to the Bogart film.
If someone asked me to point them towards "perfect" films, those four are among some of the ones I would pick for the job that get closest to that feeling of utter cinematic artistry. A lot of my picks would be 70s and 40s films, two decades of movies that are just utterly iconic and game-changing, each for their own reasons.
@Birdlesone, @ToTheRight, I'll have to check out those two versions of Maltese at one point or another; thanks for the info. The 1931 film seems interesting, to say the least.
Ryan is, IMO, one of the unsung heroes of noir. He always gives a top notch performance, looks imposing and is great in both the antihero and villainous roles. He made a great heavy opposite Robert Mitchum in THE RACKET.
I put him alongside Sterling Hayden as one of the great noir actors not often talked about.
Speaking of Sterling Hayden, for fans of THE KILLING, there's another great noir he did called CRIME WAVE(1954). It's about a gang that sets up a gas station robbery. Hayden is the tough cop, Charles Bronson is one of the robbers, and Timothy Leary is a complete psycho. With Gene Nelson and Phyllis Kirk. Directed by Andre de Toth.
As the last noir I saw was The Maltese Falcon, I've been drafting a lot of rough sketches for posters I want to do create inspired by the movie, and my first project was to make a replication of a notable neo-noir poster for the 1968 neo-noir The Detective starring Frank Sinatra. I love this poster and wanted to purse a tribute to it because the central image of Frank's stylized white face in shadow cast over the cityscape is captivating to me and eerie, as it is combining the troubled detective character with the living, breathing city they are suffocating inside, which is often a vital part of noir:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vTQ0OIcm3FE/UKR4yWoEWrI/AAAAAAAAB-M/UpVeV8glJeY/s1600/26.jpg
I wanted to recreate that same visual look and feeling with a poster for The Maltese Falcon, with Bogie's face cast over a similarly eerie set of buildings, this time structures from San Francisco, the setting of the film. I did as good a recreation of the original poster of The Detective as I could, and made my own alterations here and there where I thought the layout could be improved:
I'll have much more noir art coming soon, with a few more Maltese Falcon posters I'll be doing and I can post them here if there's interest in seeing them (otherwise I don't want to fill the thread with them).
Boy oh boy, what a knockout neo-noir that easily contends with the best of the old guard noir.
While the films of the 1970s seem to get most of the credit for breaking established cinematic rules, giving their audiences on screen representations of no holds barred worlds that refused to censor the way things were, Gordon Douglas' 1968 powerhouse picture The Detective seems to be largely forgotten in the mix as a film that bravely paved the way for the next decade's movie climate.
At the start of the 60s the censorship of the Hayes Code still made it shocking to see Janet Leigh in a bra and skirt on screen in Hitchcock's Psycho, but just eight years later, The Detective was stripping away those filters of the old code and depicted on screen the world the way it was for the audiences themselves. While many in the audience at the time may have hoped to escape their twisted world by going to see this film for an evening out, soon they found that same inescapable and twisted world encountering them face-to-face, even on the fictional movie screen. The Detective is a valuable film in the history of cinema post-Hayes because it was ballsy and commented overtly on the state of the world and the issues that the society of that day was facing. Civil rights and the deaths of innocent black men are given their due in the plot itself, and what makes up the larger core of the film is an exploration of society's views of homosexuality (that time a disease), and paints a beautiful and heartbreaking portrait of what it meant to be gay in that time and place.
At the center of this film is the stunning Frank Sinatra, who gives a nuanced and Oscar worthy performance as a cop by the name of Joe Leland who sees a world on fire and tries in futility to snuff the flames out. But, as with most noir detectives, he doesn't come away unscathed. From the very beginning of this movie, Leland became one of my all-time favorite noir characters, or movie characters in general. He is surrounded by corruption and goes out of his way, no matter how much it endangers him, to stand up to it. Sinatra plays so many scenes with a quiet look or gives his head a shake of dismay as Leland watches a world tearing itself apart around him, with him barely afloat in it himself, but still choosing to do the right thing no matter the cost. In many ways, Leland represents a vision back in the late 60s of the more progressive policemen we all hope are out there acting fairly to all citizens, regardless of their gender, skin color or sexual persuasion.
Leland's character not only signaled a change in how society could be growing to accept differences in people, but also remains to this day a relevant film almost fifty years after its initial release. I was shocked at the number of scenes in this movie that felt ripped from the headlines of today. Protests gone rabid and cops shooting unarmed black men are put in the spotlight, as are corrupt dealings of an elite who control all the interests such that they can guide the stakes the way they desire. And of course, center stage is the issue of homosexuality, vilified by the society of the day as sick and unnatural, which we still see signs of today in the form of hate crimes and suicides on the part of those in the LGBT community who these kinds of acts are perpetrated against until they feel they can no longer bear being alive.
I went into The Detective expecting to simply be entertained and compelled by Sinatra doing his thing inside the noir formula solving a twisty, turny murder. And while I certainly got that, I also received a surprisingly ground-breaking, relevant and human movie that in some ways is social commentary wrapped in the veneer of a neo-noir, doing both masterfully. And though this film sticks to the grand noir tradition of showing a world at its most broken and cynical, in the brave image of Sinatra's Leland we also see a glimmer of hope for society in the form of a good cop who is able to see difference and not be frightened of it, and who only seeks the judgement of those who do ill to the downtrodden and misunderstood.
In so many ways, The Detective represents the very best of noir cinema, and depicts the very best in the kinds of people we should all strive to be in our society, as Leland himself strives.
On another note, when the rumours of a Die Hard prequel were doing the rounds, I remember people saying "Haven't we already had the Die Hard" prequel as this movie is based on the novel The Detective, where Die Hard is based on the sequel Nothing Lasts Forever. Think that's correct anyway.
For the reasons I outlined, I think everyone should watch this film to be confronted with a lot of issues that still poison our society. I don't know any other genre outside of war films that can educate us as a people like noir movies can. It doesn't get more human and "real" than these stories.
Very true. There is so much substance in this film which is relevant today. It's also incredibly entertaining. Been quite a long time sine I watched it. I'll have to get a copy.
One of the great things about noir is the general theme of the consequences that occur as the result of a bad choice- often in relationships or money related. It's so easy to relate to a protagonist that gets involved with the wrong person or situation. That's what I love about film noir as a style.
Even if a noir ending gut punches me and leaves me in pain, like Chinatown, for example, my respect for it and the genre it represents overpowers those feelings of anger and sadness and fury, and makes me appreciate its existence so much more. I can't be angry at noir endings, no matter how much they can pain me, because they dare to show an unflinching truth that other movies may only sugarcoat or botch entirely.
The most common thought I have when watching a noir film is, "Yep, this is exactly how this would end in real life," and that's what makes the genre more unnerving than the greatest horror film. You watch characters of all sorts try their best to stand up to forces that you know they are destined to be struck down by, but all you can do is watch as everything comes undone. Most powerful of all for me, though, is the realization that the fractured world we see on the screen bleeding alone in a corner is our world. Yikes.
That's interesting. I love it when actors return in an older age to a character they once played earlier on in their career.
By the way, speaking of Chinatown, how does everyone here feel about its sequel, The Two Jakes? A great example of an actor returning to a character that defined them to explore where they've been since.
The flashbacks, seeing Jake still affected by what happened all those years back, how the war had changed him and the world; quite magnificent. I think the film would have faired better with more of the original crew returning for cinematography and editing especially and more resources in general (some of the film seems low budget), but it still works as a follow-up. Parts of it just feel like more of a TV movie than a big screen noir, that's all.
I know the third film was to deal with air (to connect with the element of water from the first film and fire/energy/oil of the second) as well as Gittes facing divorce in court as an older man. Jack spoke about it in an MTV interview about 9 years back:
http://www.mtv.com/news/1573487/jack-nicholson-talks-in-rare-interview-actor-reveals-details-of-never-shot-chinatown-sequel/
It would be great to see Jack and Towne team up one more time to rope off the trilogy and give us a portrait of Gittes as an older man in an even more developed LA, which at that time would've been grown out of its desert beginnings to bustling, wealthy locations like seen in Nevada's Las Vegas. Gittes would see the product of all the dirty dealings with oil and water he saw develop as a younger man, and it would be interesting to see him come face to face with those demons again.
The latest footage shot featuring Jack is an interview he did in reaction to Muhammad Ali's death a few months ago, during which he looked sprightly and in good health:
I think he could still have the stamina to do a third Gittes film, but if he can't be involved (or Towne) I'd say it shouldn't go through. It would be erroneous for the character to be recast, after all, as Jack has complete ownership of him, as Gittes was written with him in mind from the very beginning.