Product Description
-------------------
In the 1940s, a new genre - film noir - emerged from the world
of "hard - boiled"pulp magazines, paperback thrillers and
sensational crime movies. These films - tough and unsentimental -
depicted a black-and-white universe at once brutal, erotic and
morally ambiguous. Now, Sony Pictures and The Film Foundation
have brought five noir classics together in one collection, all
restored and remastered, and featuring brilliant performances by
Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin, Kim Novak, Eli Wallach and Gloria
Grahame, the genre-defining cinematography of Burnett Guffey, Hal
Mohr and Lucien Ballard, and focused, taut direction by
celebrated directors including Fritz Lang, Don Siegel and Phil
Karlson.
.com
----
Sony/Columbia comes late to the business of boxing classic
noirs, but their first foray is a winner. The crisp restorations
fairly pop off the screen, and although two titles tower above
the other three, every one rates as a must-see. Fritz Lang is
represented by perhaps his last great film, and there's a gem
from Don Siegel with one of the grabbiest beginnings and most
breathtaking action climaxes in thriller history. Phil Karlson, a
busy man at Columbia in the '50s, contributes a caper movie set
chiefly in Reno, and there's also a creepy, pioneering study of a
serial killer, plus a truly offbeat specimen in which minimalist
art film and bargain-basement crime movie converge as though the
French New Wave were about to roll.
The Big Heat (1953) is second only to let Street as the most
corrosive among Fritz Lang's films: honest cop Glenn Ford, in the
process of fighting an entrenched Mob and deep-seated corruption,
risks becoming a vengeful monster. The source was a novel by
William P. McGivern, turned into a steel-trap script by Sydney
Boehm. Still, it's director Lang's implacable vision, in terms of
both camera and awesome moral symmetry, that makes this American
crime story kin to Die Nibelungen. And yes, this is the movie
with Lee Marvin as a mobster, Gloria Grahame as his sassy moll,
and a legendary interaction involving scalding-hot coffee. As
James Ellroy exults in his hilariously profane commentary, Don
Siegel's The Lineup (1958) "grabs your gonads in the first five
minutes"--actually, a whirlwind first minute-and-three-seconds
involving the theft of something from a ship just docked in San
Francisco harbor and two abrupt deaths. The pressure eases for a
while as The Lineup fulfills its obligation to deliver, in
effect, an episode of the -procedural TV series of the same
name. The real Siegel movie resumes as a team of hit men arrive
in town to do a day's work. Eli Wallach, in his second big-screen
role, is brilliant as Dancer the trigger man, described by his
handler Julian (the excellent Robert Keith) as "a wonderfully
pure pathological study, a psychopath with no inhibitions." One
goose -raising scene follows another until the action peaks
at Sutro's museum-cum-skating gallery, a multitiered setting
Siegel exploits for maximum tension. The end, right? No, just the
launch pad for the finale, the most kinetic car chase the movies
have ever done (Bullitt and The French Connection
notwithstanding). Shooting on locations all over the City by the
Bay, veteran cameraman Hal Mohr rises to every challenge, no
sweat. Phil Karlson's 5 Against the House (1955) was the first
screenwriting credit for Stirling Silliphant (who also worked on
The Lineup), and the aggressively quippy dialogue gets on one's
nerves. The premise is a good one, though. Four overage college
students--two of them Korean War veterans--elect to spend their
holiday break robbing Harold's casino in Reno. The idea is simply
to "be first at something"; no one will get hurt and the money
will be returned. Except that one member of the team has other
plans: good old lovable but volatile Brick (Brian Keith), with
that old head wound and a psycho-ward history only his buddy Al
(Guy Madison) knows about. As was so often the case, Keith (son
of The Lineup's Robert Keith) is the best thing in the movie…
unless you hold out for the pre-stellar Kim Novak in frosty
black-and-white. As Al's singer girlfriend, she completes the
titular five--albeit at the expense of having to smooch with Guy
Madison, who kisses like an angry robot. There's no kissing for
The Sniper (1952), one of the strongest of independent producer
Stanley Kramer's early efforts. A foreword explains that this is
the "story of a man whose enemy was womankind," and the title
character, a pleasant-looking but effectively anonymous nebbish
(Arthur Franz), is soon expressing that enmity through his
high-powered . The script by Harry Brown lays on the hostile
gender dynamics with a trowel, and a psychiatrist (Richard Kiley)
files an indictment of society for having failed to provide
proper for the killer before it was too late ("It's our
fault"). Director Edward Dmytryk makes dynamic use of steep,
drop-away perspectives in San Francisco to suggest a world
seriously out of joint.
Murder by Contract (1958) features another sort of murderer
entirely, a young man named Claude (Vince Edwards) who makes a
very good living as a killer for hire. Trained not to feel
anything, and assured that a stranger killing a stranger is
unlikely to get caught, he goes about his business
dispassionately. He could almost be in a Robert Bresson film,
moving through a world of Antonioni-like bleakness; deaths occur
offscreen. The production resources don't even reach B-movie
levels, and that's fine: a dime more might have jeopardized this
picture's eerie spell. Irving Lerner directed, and Perry Botkin's
electric-guitar score sounds like something that, a year or two
later, would have adorned a film by Louis Malle. Only two films
are accorded running commentary, well worth the listen in each
case. Native San Franciscan and noir empire builder Eddie Muller
provides the inside dope on The Sniper, then brings in hard-guy
novelist James Ellroy to savor The Lineup; that one's a party.
Directors who've patrolled neo-noir territory--Martin Scorsese,
Michael Mann, and Christopher Nolan--supply intros. Scorsese's
are the best, but as usual, there are spoilers galore and viewers
are well advised to watch the movie, then the intro. --Richard T.
Jameson