Film noir: 'Night and the City," "Fallen Angle"

20th Century Fox
RICHARD WIDMARK and Gene Tierney in "Night and the City."

20th Century Fox
DANA ANDREWS and Alice Faye in "Fallen Angel" at right.


Lighten your day with a little film noir

Every once in awhile, you just need a little film noir in your life.
Two that really grabbed my attention are “Night and the City” starring Richard Widmark as a grifter in London and “Fallen Angel,” featuring Dana Andrews who drifts into a small California town to fall for one woman and marry another.
Film noir was popular in the 1940s and early 50s. It is a technique that uses dark and light to create a mood.
It often involves men in fedoras and love-struck couples blowing cigarette smoke in each other’s faces.
Humphrey Bogart was in a lot of film noir.
Film noir has been revived at times with films like “Chinatown” in 1974 and “Body Heat” in 1981.
“Night and the City” was remade in 1992, but this is the original from 1950. Richard Widmark plays Harry Fabian, the king of the angles. He’s the kind of guy who works so hard at making a fast buck, it would probably be easier for him to find a regular job.
It starts with him running across a London street to the apartment of a girlfriend, Mary Bristol, played by the luscious Gene Tierney, who gets precious little film time.
Mary isn’t right there so Harry plunges into her purse, looking for money to pay off a debt.
She catches him and for the upteenth time he tells her about his latest business venture. He only needs $300.
But he quickly switches business ventures. Harry wants to literally wrestle away London’s wrestling interests from a mobster. To do this, he plans to use a newfound friendship with past famed wrestler Gregorius, played by Stanislaus Zbyszko.
Widmark is absolutely phenomenal in this role of the hyper huckster.
There is a shocking, hateful wrestling sequence between Gregorius and rival wrestler The Strangler, played by habitual goon Mike Mazurki.
This is a relentlessly exciting picture, directed by Jules Dassin. My only question is, if it takes place in London, why does no one have a British accent?
If you want to find out why Otto Preminger was such a great actor, check out “Fallen Angel,” his second film in a row with Dana Andrews. The previous film was the classic “Laura.”
Forget the critics. This movie is almost as good.
Andrews plays Eric Stanton, a no-good transient who ends up at a diner in a small town after he is forced off a bus because he didn’t have money to go any further.
There he meets a waitress, June Mills, played by Alice Faye. Everyone is in love with June, including the restaurant owner, Percy Kilbride, best known as Pa Kettle.
Stanton starts an elaborate plan to woo the less worldly Linda Darnell, who plays Stella. She enjoys the attention. He enjoys her bank account. His plan is to marry her to get her money and return to June.
The cad, he leaves Stella on their wedding night (and Stella’s pretty good looking) to hang around the restaurant with June. But June has a date and as the dawn breaks, Eric comes home to a real surprise.
Preminger uses long, continual shots of people walking through restaurants out onto streets, much like Martin Scorsese did in “Good Fellows” 25 years later. But Preminger didn’t have the equipment in 1945 Scorsese had in 1990. Pretty impressive.
Everybody wears suits all of the time. Everyone smokes. Lights illuminate people’s faces even when there’s no light source around.
It’s the mood. It’s the dialog. It’s the apparel. It’s the era.
Film noir has always been cool. Here’s two films that show you why.
Fallen Angel
• Runtime 98 minutes
• Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox Corp.
• Not rated
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4
Night and the City
• Runtime 101 minutes
• Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox Corp.
• Not rated
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4
This appeared in the Star Beacon WEEKENDER Feb. 29, 2008.

My Best Friend

Francois (Daniel Auteuil) meets with Catherine (Julie Gayet) in the comedy "My Best Friend."

Man waiting on a friend in French film

Francois Coste is a wheeler and a dealer, but he thinks he?s a regular guy.
He attends the funeral for a supposed friend, only because he wants to buy some merchandise from the widow.
When he meets with other supposed friends for dinner, he comments that there were few attending the deceased's services.
The Coste character is shocked when a business partner, played by Julie Durand, suggests when he dies, nobody will attend the service. Everyone at the dinner party quickly agrees.
Thus reveals the premise for "Mon Meilleur Ami," better known as "My Best Friend."
This thought-provoking 2006 independent film stars Daniel Auteuil, best known as the slow-witted nephew in the "Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring" films.
Auteuil's character is taken back by the comment and the animosity displayed by people he thought were friends.
United in their disdain for him, he declares he indeed has friends and is given a deadline to reveal a friend to the group.
It's sort of a mature takeoff on the old film cliche about the teen virgin who makes a bet he will have sex by a certain date.
Francois collects antique items as cheaply as possible and sells them at a profit. He outbids one art lover for a vase that dates before Christ. Francois offers the vase at cost, in exchange for the art lover's friendship. He declines.
Francois enlists a taxi driver to take him around Paris as he seeks a friend.
In a sad but funny scene, Francois spots an old grade school contemporary going into a grocery store.
He follows the man and his wife around the store like a puppy dog looking for a chew toy. The couple tries to ignore him, but he persists. Francois maintains school chums are the only true friends and they last forever. He tries to get himself invited for dinner. The pair are horrified.
Finally, outside the store, the former fellow student tells Francois he couldn?t stand him in school and can?t stand him now and nobody else in school could stand him either.
My what a kick in the groin.
Slowly he gets to know the cab driver who is helping him, Bruno, played by Dany Boon. Francois hires Bruno to teach him how to be a friend and slowly they do become friends, well, as much as Francois can have a friend.
The film unfolds slowly but smartly. Hey, it's little more than 90 minutes long.
It's the kind of film Hollywood probably wouldn?t make, unless they could put Paris Hilton in it as the cab driver and the Francois character has so many days to bed her and keep her panties for a souvenir.
That's why films like this are a nice change of pace.
The biggest criticism I have is that the Francois character isn?t nasty enough to be lothed this much. Maybe we just have to trust the other characters when they say he is bad news.
It won?t have a profound influence on your life, but I liked the premise and found and its characters and plot worth exploring.

Mon Meilleur Ami
(My Best Friend)
In French with English subtitles available
94 minutes
Rated PG-13 for strong language
Three stars out of four

This appeared in the Star Beacon Weekender on Feb. 22, 2008.

Missing in America

DANNY GLOVER and Linda Hamilton in "Missing in America."
‘Missing in America’ missing a lot
There’s something missing about the film “Missing in America.”
Like a few less clichés, a compelling plot and a story that is believable.
This movie is missing all of this and more.
Danny Glover is the world-weary Vietnam veteran who lives in a rustic cabin in Washington state.
His bathroom is an outhouse. He gets water from a pump. He has no electricity.
So it is with little doubt his Army buddy thinks the Glover character, Jake, is the best person to raise his young part Vietnamese daughter.
David Straithairn plays the dad, who stays on screen long enough to establish he has lung cancer, leave the girl and go off to die offscreen.
The young girl is Lenny, aptly played by Zoe Weizenbaum, later to be seen in “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
This is a by-the-numbers movie for much of its length. Glover is the crusty veteran who loathes the little girl.
The little girl doesn’t want anything to do with the Glover character.
Glover’s Jake visits the local general store, operated by Linda Hamilton of “Terminator” fame. She sees to it he has $20 worth of canned good weekly, well, until costs creep up. Then she gets him $25 worth of canned goods.
Jake and the little girl distribute the goods around the wooded area near his home. We are asked to believe fellow veterans Jake has never met live in caves and in holes and wherever, take the canned goods and leave him chopped wood in return.
Yeah, right.
Bright Lenny, who apparently doesn’t mind outhouses and no electricity or running water, has her conflicts with Jake.
They fight. Jake drinks to forget.
But when perky Lenny decides to go to the lake and the pair barbecue a chicken, she knows she can get these mysterious veterans to come out of the woods by playing a boom box with the song “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by the Animals.
And it does!
We learn one guy was hiding with his wife by living in a camper on the other side of the lake. No wonder Jake didn’t spot him. Who would ever see a camper parked on a lake every day? And the guy closes his eyes and drinks a beer like he hasn’t had one in decades. Don’t most homeless vets drink?
Ron Perlman, who once teamed with Hamilton in TV’s “Beauty and the Beast,” plays a man-beast veteran who had part of his face blown off by a little girl in Vietnam. Uh-oh. You know there’s going to be problems.
This film starts to sag well into the movie. It’s just plain underwritten.
And you are asked to believe somehow this older veteran fathered this Vietnamese girl four decades after the war ended. Shouldn’t the girl be 40, not 9?
And do veterans live in caves and the trees like wild men?
Inevitably, the Glover character and little Lenny start to like each other. She makes his life complete. The little girl has a father, or maybe a grandfather figure. All is right. Who needs electricity? And you can always shower while it’s raining out, right?
Life is perfect for a scene or two.
Then the tension mounts. Glover is chopping wood. The girl is running through the woods. She is heading toward a taunt string between two trees, ready to launch some weapon. Chop, chop. Run, run. Tragedy!
But with tragedy comes some redemption, as any formulaic film champions.
And soon the credits roll on another movie that will soon be forgotten.
Missing in America
• Directed by Gabrielle Savage Dockterman
• Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and language
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• Ratings: One and a half stars out of four

Wordplay

IFC Films
‘WORDPLAY’ CAST includes crossword champion Tyler Hinman (left), past multiple-year champion Jon Delfin, N.Y. Times Crossword editor Will Shortz, master crossword constructor Merl Reagle and, sitting, form left past multiple-year champion Trip Payne, one-time champion Ellen Ripstein and contender Al Sanders

Even watching puzzles can be fun
I watch a lot of movies and many can be summarized in one word: Dumb.
The characters are dumb, people you would never want to meet. The plots are dumb. The situations are dumb.
So it was with great enthusiasm I sat down to watch “Wordplay,” a fun documentary about the world of crossword puzzles.
And guess what, you don’t need to be a fan of crossword puzzles to enjoy this film.
Patrick Creadon directed this amazing documentary.
We learn briefly the hows and whys of creating a puzzle. You would think in the digital age it would all be done on the computer.
But Will Shortz, New York Times puzzle editor, is surprisingly low tech. He gives us the basic setup and we see the inevitable challenges that take place and how some obscure words quickly jump into his head that he can use.
Shortz, who has guested on many a late-night talk shows, works in a cramped office lined with dictionaries and other reference materials.
We see how he made the “NBC Nightly News” back in 1996. He created a puzzle with the answer to “winner of tomorrow’s presidential contest.” And when you go to the space, the answer is “Clinton wins.” Wow! How did he know?
But wait. You could also write in “Bob Dole wins.” and the clues to the words that form the letters each have two answers, one of which lines up to make the world “Clinton,” the other “Bob Dole.”
Nobody appreciated this puzzle more than the two candidates themselves, especially Clinton, a big puzzle fan. We even see him in his darker-hair days as president, working on a crossworld puzzle, sandwich in hand, taking a break from running the free world.
We see how Clinton, TV host Jon Stewart, PBS documentarian Ken Burns, Yankee pitcher Mike Mussina and the Indigo Girls work separately on the same puzzle. It’s a pretty funny sequence.
The film centers on the 28th annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held yearly in Stamford, Conn.
We get to know a group of somewhat nerdy individuals who annually trek to the event. One woman tells how her husband had a heart attack at the event back in 1982 and subsequently died, but it didn’t stop her from coming the next year.
At night, there are amateur talent shows. People catch up on the lives of their rivals.
By day, competition gets intense. Participants discuss how they messed up one day and what the gameplan is to make up lost ground.
Not only do all of the spaces have to be filled and properly, but the person who can do it the fastest gets extra credit.
Nobody is eliminated during the contest. Everyone who starts continues to participate, until the final puzzle where the top winner is named. The three top contenders complete the puzzle using a large poster version on a stage. They wear earphones with white noise to drown out distractions.
And when one participant pulls off his headphones, signifying he is finished, we groan as we see he failed to look closely and didn’t fill the entire puzzle. He slams the headphones to the floor and buries his hands in disgust.
There really is a great deal of drama and humanity in this film, along with great admiration for the clever people who put these puzzles together and those who can race through difficult questions and finish in three minutes.
Maybe after every Adam Sandler picture, it might be a good idea to revisit “Wordplay.”
What is a five-letter word for a critic who enjoyed this film?: Viper.

Wordplay
• Directed by Pat Creadon
• Rated PG for languages, thematic elements
• 94 minutes
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4