Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Border and torture from a Lucky Charms Cheesecake and two John Alton noirs
As tasty as a gulp of watered-down wheat paste
The Big Combo: Richard Conte, Earl Holliman, and Lee Van Cleef drive Cornel Wilde.
While on the lookout for three films that dealt with the importance of borders (or lack thereof), I was sidetracked by other forms of torture.
Dodge City (1939)
Video:
Dodge City trailer
The indolent Mookie tossed a trash can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria so that Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing might end in violence. Norman Taurog took a similar approach with cheap sentimentality. To ensure that no eye in the house was left dry, the director of Boys Town climaxed his film by steering a young, bleary-eyed Bobs Watson into the path of an on-coming (and badly rear-projected) truck. It was one of the first times in my life that Little Scooter laughed at — as opposed to with — a movie. As sickeningly sweet as they get, even legendary director Michael Curtiz couldn’t erase from Watson the same coma-inducing effect on an audience that a Lucky Charms Cheesecake would have on a diabetic. Imagine my delight when the nauseating tyke’s death-by-dragging served as the motivation behind Errol Flynn’s expurgation of Dodge City. No sooner is the kid yanked from the stagecoach than I’m cheering for the ground. Stream it tonight!
Border Incident (1949)
Video:
Border Incident trailer
Though nowhere near either’s pinnacle, any collaboration between noir-chitect Anthony Mann and his cameraman John “Prince of Darkness” Alton is worth at least a dozen viewings. George Murphy and Ricardo Montalban star as a pair of feds who go undercover to cork the gush of illegal farm workers crossing into San Diego. Let’s set aside style (and topicality) for a moment to address Murphy, whose transition from mediocre movie star to mediocre Republican Senator anticipated the arrival in politics of other alleged actors, people like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (It was Reagan who dubbed Murphy his own “John the Baptist.”) It’s doubtful that a scene depicting Murphy strapped to a car battery and screaming for his life could have come out of Hollywood before the end of World War II. See it, and you too will be glad they waited.
The Big Combo (1955)
Video:
The Big Combo clip
This time, John Alton teams with Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy) for an uncharacteristically sadistic (and sexually charged) noir. As tasty as a gulp of watered-down wheat paste, Cornel Wilde stars as a sneering police lieutenant whose mind is set on taking down the town’s #1 crime kingpin, played with well-dressed malevolence by Richard Conte. All the characters are lit by Alton in accordance with their psychological state. Equally atypical of films from this period is David Raksin’s jazz score. It comes in handy when Conte turns up the twinge by placing a hearing aid in Wilde’s ear and cranking up the drum solo. Paul Schrader once established the stylistic boundaries of film noir between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958). This one, made near the end of the cycle, climaxes with a shootout in a fogbound airplane hangar. Alton’s deep-focus, dreamily-lit chiaroscuro reminds us how far we’ve come from Casablanca.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Border and torture from a Lucky Charms Cheesecake and two John Alton noirs
As tasty as a gulp of watered-down wheat paste
Border and torture from a Lucky Charms Cheesecake and two John Alton noirs
As tasty as a gulp of watered-down wheat paste
The Big Combo: Richard Conte, Earl Holliman, and Lee Van Cleef drive Cornel Wilde.
While on the lookout for three films that dealt with the importance of borders (or lack thereof), I was sidetracked by other forms of torture.
Dodge City (1939)
Video:
Dodge City trailer
The indolent Mookie tossed a trash can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria so that Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing might end in violence. Norman Taurog took a similar approach with cheap sentimentality. To ensure that no eye in the house was left dry, the director of Boys Town climaxed his film by steering a young, bleary-eyed Bobs Watson into the path of an on-coming (and badly rear-projected) truck. It was one of the first times in my life that Little Scooter laughed at — as opposed to with — a movie. As sickeningly sweet as they get, even legendary director Michael Curtiz couldn’t erase from Watson the same coma-inducing effect on an audience that a Lucky Charms Cheesecake would have on a diabetic. Imagine my delight when the nauseating tyke’s death-by-dragging served as the motivation behind Errol Flynn’s expurgation of Dodge City. No sooner is the kid yanked from the stagecoach than I’m cheering for the ground. Stream it tonight!
Border Incident (1949)
Video:
Border Incident trailer
Though nowhere near either’s pinnacle, any collaboration between noir-chitect Anthony Mann and his cameraman John “Prince of Darkness” Alton is worth at least a dozen viewings. George Murphy and Ricardo Montalban star as a pair of feds who go undercover to cork the gush of illegal farm workers crossing into San Diego. Let’s set aside style (and topicality) for a moment to address Murphy, whose transition from mediocre movie star to mediocre Republican Senator anticipated the arrival in politics of other alleged actors, people like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (It was Reagan who dubbed Murphy his own “John the Baptist.”) It’s doubtful that a scene depicting Murphy strapped to a car battery and screaming for his life could have come out of Hollywood before the end of World War II. See it, and you too will be glad they waited.
The Big Combo (1955)
Video:
The Big Combo clip
This time, John Alton teams with Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy) for an uncharacteristically sadistic (and sexually charged) noir. As tasty as a gulp of watered-down wheat paste, Cornel Wilde stars as a sneering police lieutenant whose mind is set on taking down the town’s #1 crime kingpin, played with well-dressed malevolence by Richard Conte. All the characters are lit by Alton in accordance with their psychological state. Equally atypical of films from this period is David Raksin’s jazz score. It comes in handy when Conte turns up the twinge by placing a hearing aid in Wilde’s ear and cranking up the drum solo. Paul Schrader once established the stylistic boundaries of film noir between The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958). This one, made near the end of the cycle, climaxes with a shootout in a fogbound airplane hangar. Alton’s deep-focus, dreamily-lit chiaroscuro reminds us how far we’ve come from Casablanca.
Comments