Rick's 100 favourite movies: Part 3

This is the third of four posts about my favourite movies, taking in everything from Elia Kazan's apologia for informing to Pixar's finest film, via martial arts, pastries and Lillian Gish with a big gun.

Part 1 (100-76) is here, and part 2 (75-51) can be found here.

50. Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937)

A crackling feminist masterpiece that passes the Bechdel Test 90 times a minute, as a flawless ensemble cast trades blistering, bitchy, pitch-black wisecracks while hanging out in a theatrical boarding house for women. It's also the tearjerker to end them all, though it only seems to be me who feels that way. Full review.

49. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Sex and death in Texas, as dissolution sweeps an ailing town and its picture house gets ready to close. Ben Johnson gives one of my favourite performances, as that old, sad voice of reason, Sam the Lion, delivering a waterside monologue that's perhaps the best three minutes of the New Hollywood.

48. The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
One of the great late silents, with Vidor interrogating the American Dream like the big leftie he was. Completely heartbreaking.

47. The Dreamlife of Angels (Erich Zonka, 1998)

Profound, poignant film about the friendship that develops – and then unravels – between two young women who meet at a factory in Lille. Ila (Élodie Bouchez) is friendly, compassionate and happy to ask for help; self-centred Maria (Natacha Régnier) throws her pride and practicality to the wind as she embarks on a self-destructive affair with an utter shit. A wise, insightful and immersive study of human relationships, and the nature of friendship, with exceptional performances from the two leads – especially the big-eyed, expressive Bouchez.

46. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
Unforgiven is Clint Eastwood's masterpiece: a towering dismantling of Western mythos, extraordinary in every way. I wrote one of my best pieces on it.

45. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
"I want... to die." *sob*

44. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

With Les 400 Coups (see the final part of the list!) and Star Wars, this was the movie that got me into movies, and inspired a Marlon Brando obsession that's never really gone away. I must have seen it 30 times. It's also fascinating – though troubling – from a historical perspective, as writer Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan's apologia for naming names to HUAC. I still know the entire taxicab scene off by heart. Try me.

43. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962)
Melville par excellence, with Belmondo at his best and a killer twist.

42. Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth, 1932)
Arguably the greatest comedy film of all time, with “that kid from advertising” Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) commandeering his newspaper’s society section, and turning it into the filthiest gossip column in America. Tracy is my favourite male actor and was once one of the biggest stars in the world, until the Production Code outlawed his brand of comedy and he compounded matters by allegedly urinating on the Mexican Army, with the result that he was unceremoniously fired by the biggest film studio in the world. I've reviewed the film here, and written about Tracy here.

41. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)

Bergman does sex comedy - and the result is a deep, delicate, just about perfect movie, like the best of Lubitsch and Ophüls mixed with Partie de campagne. And while it's influenced everyone from New York-based Jewish songwriter Stephen Sondheim to New York-based Jewish filmmaker Woody Allen, the original remains by far the best. A lawyer, his young wife, his mistress, her lover, her lover's wife, the mistress's mother, the lawyer's son and a couple of horny servants flirt, argue and try to cop off with each other (except the mum), the whole group ultimately coming together for a sunlit weekend in the country. Beautifully written, acted and photographed, it's equal parts sentiment, melancholia, absurdism, witty badinage, and timeless, mind-expanding philosophy on the nature of love, lust and language, full of surprises, clever bon mots and rich characterisation. There's even a bit where someone falls in a puddle.

40. Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984)

Danny Rose: What'd you do, you divorced him, or got a separation, or what?
Tina Vitale: Nah, some guy shot him in the eyes.
Danny Rose: Really? He's blind?
Tina Vitale: Dead.
Danny Rose: Dead. Of course, 'cause the bullets go right through.

I don't think this is Woody's greatest film, but it's the one I return to most often: a sweet, funny, utterly charming tall tale - with hidden emotional heft - about a loveable Broadway talent agent (Woody Allen) trying to escort his best client's mistress (Mia Farrow) to a crucial show, and unwittingly incurring the wrath of the mafia. What seems at first glance a slight, minor movie holds untold pleasures, from Allen's script - stuffed with gems - to Gordon Willis's mesmerising monochrome cinematography, and an unforgettable, uncharacteristic performance from an unrecognisable Farrow, as the forceful, temperamental Tina Vitale, her late husband a juice man for the mob. "He made juice for the mob?" asks a baffled Allen.

39. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)

Crouching Tiger is one of the great films of last decade, often claustrophobic in scale, but epic in its treatment of human emotion, and chock-full of magic, magnificence and good old-fashioned fucking mayhem. It looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful - hell, it is beautiful - and where it's going, we don't needs roads, or even floors. Much more on it here.

38. The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Éric Rohmer, 1963)
A mesmerising, intoxicating Rohmer short that's as close to a personal manifesto as you'll ever see on screen. His enduring preoccupation was where eroticism touches romance, and his view of both was heady, wise, ironic. After the false start that was the director's abysmal debut feature, the tedious, neorealist Signe du Lion, this story of a law student (Barbet Schroeder) flirting with a counter girl at a Parisian bakery (Claudine Soubrier) as he waits for his true love (Michèle Girardon) to walk past is extraordinarily affecting, honest and insightful: grubbily conspiratorial as we're asked to see everything from his jaundiced viewpoint (it's a 'moral tale' in so much as it's about personal morality), a little eerie as it ponders fate and chance, and gloriously sensual when they duck into an alleyway to talk and he starts stroking her neck. The first of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, and – at 23 minutes – the best film I've seen this year.

37. Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)

An astonishing movie that I only heard of for the first time in May; it sounded amazing, so I got a ticket to a BFI screening. It's the Orpheus myth transplanted to the Rio Carnival, with womanising guitarist Breno Mello falling in love with pure, troubled Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn). They dance, have sex, and save one another, but his feisty ex-girlfriend and Eurydice's psychotic, death-faced stalker hint at the unlikeliness of a happy ending. It's a feast for the eyes and ears, with impossibly vibrant Eastman Color cinematography showcasing Rio and its carnival (those yellows!), invigorating dance and intoxicating bossa nova music, while the story moves effortlessly from utterly joyous to blackly terrifying and then abstractly spiritual. Perhaps it runs out of steam towards the very end, but for the most part it captures Rio with a startling immediacy: its characters pulsating with passion, natural charm and an unapologetic, everyday eroticism. The story - adapted from a Brazilian play - struck me as one of those high-concept ideas that might extract a certain truth from its material by dropping it into Rio. In actuality, it's difficult to believe when watching Black Orpheus that it would or could make sense anywhere else, such is the film's complete conviction, and the virtuosic skill that Camus displays in meshing these diverse elements together, while capturing the penury, charm and beauty of the setting, and inspiring a host of pitch perfect performances. It's extraordinary.

36. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
One of the high watermarks of silent cinema: a stunningly atmospheric drama ignited by a tour-de-force performance from the incomparable Lillian Gish, who plays a tormented, tortured waif driven to madness as she’s buffeted by a desert wind and by unfettered male sexual aggression. More here.

35. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
My favourite performance of all time, courtesy of the incomparable Emily Watson. I also find von Trier the most interesting director working today.

34. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)

Debra Granik's feminist masterwork is the key film of the decade so far: an unorthodox, spine-tingling thriller, a humanist fable, and a staggering study of a good person under almost intolerable pressure. In her breakout role, Jennifer Lawrence is Ree Dolly, a strong, selfless, smart-mouthed 17-year-old living with her vacant mother and two young siblings in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. Once it ran with bootleg moonshine, now this here's Meth Country, and if her crystal-cooking father doesn't turn up for his court hearing, they're going to lose the house, the woods and the whole family unit. So Ree sets out in search of him, facing threats, silence and regular beatings from pinch-faced people who share a lot of the same blood that runs in her veins, and down her face. Full review here.

33. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
From the astute, literate voiceover and classic freeze-frame that launches the story, via stinging one-liners, sublime reaction faces and a litany of unimprovable set-pieces, to one of the most memorable, satisfying (and scary) endings in the history of movies, All About Eve is a landmark of Hollywood’s Golden Age: an unassailable classic with the kind of dialogue that a moviegoer dreams about. More here.

32. The Snowman (Dianne Jackson and Jimmy T. Murakami, 1982)
What Christmas Eves were invented for (as well as venerating the baby Jesus), and the first film I ever loved.

31. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)
The twist. That twist. This mercurial masterpiece of ‘90s cinema has now been reduced to just one thing. Not that its twist isn’t magnificent, but it’s certainly not the film’s raison d’etre, or its reason to be celebrated. It doesn’t explain why the film continues to enrapture, enthral and grow in emotional resonance as the years pass and the viewings rack up. And, unlike most twists, it doesn’t come at the end, but at the halfway point, meaning that if you’ve avoided seeing the film because you think you know how it ends – you really don’t. Full review.

30. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

My favourite musical, starring my favourite musical star, Fred Astaire. The immortal 'Cheek to Cheek' is unquestionably the highlight, but this slice of ineffable, irrepressible escapism is stuffed with great jokes, timeless Irving Berlin songs and irreproachable dancing.

29. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
Garbo Laughs! And Ernst Lubitsch reminds everyone once again that he's the best director of romantic comedies in the history of movies.

28. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
One of the great films, a beguiling, bewitching, sometimes bewildering collision of Gothic horror and fairytale, a haunting, hypnotic vision of pure evil, of goodness, of redemption, of innocence lost and perhaps regained, of greed and guilt, loss, delusion, sexual obsession and puritanical perversion. It has some weak acting, wild lurches in tone and even a little Schufftan silliness, and yet also many of the most striking, magical sequences of its era, climaxing with a half-hour confrontation between good and evil that is amongst the most indelibly artistic and impossibly moving passages of pure cinema ever put onto celluloid. And just when you think it can’t get any better, silent screen icon Lillian Gish turns up, armed with the only truly worthy role of her sound career. Full write-up here.

27. Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, 1942)

Incredible short from propagandist (and anarchist, and surrealist) Humphrey Jennings, one of my favourite filmmakers. Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and Diary for Timothy are his most well-known films, and this one contains my favourite shot in his ouevre (it's the bloke exhaling smoke through his nose while watching Flanagan and Allen), though most of his work from 1939 onwards is great, especially Spare Time and The Silent Village.

26. Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009)
This is the review I wrote for the paper when it came out: "PIXAR'S latest - and greatest - is a very special piece of work, a deliriously enjoyable yarn that packs a considerable emotional wallop. It begins, gloriously, with a scrupulously detailed faux '30s newsreel, as a Lindbergh-esque aviator − Charles Muntz − returns triumphant from exploring the Venezuelan wilds only to fall from grace amidst accusations of fakery. Watching, transfixed, is Carl Fredricksen, a bespectacled, toothy wannabe adventurer. Returning home from the theatre, he stumbles across a fellow Muntz afficionado, the talkative Ellie, and a friendship blossoms. Through an exquisite, intensely moving wordless montage ('Married Life'), we see Carl and Ellie's life together, as they fall in love, marry and grow old, their dream of exploring South America dashed time and again - the savings jar smashed and raided to cover house repairs and hospital bills. Ending with Ellie's passing, this four minute sequence is a bold, breathtakingly brilliant bit of moviemaking that evokes It's a Wonderful Life and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with that exalted predecessor. Having lost his wife, and set to relinquish his home and independence, retired balloon salesman Carl (voiced by Edward Asner) does the only thing he can, affixing 20,000 balloons to his house in a bid to fly it to Paradise Falls - the lost world of Muntz's famous mission. Accidentally along for the ride is Russell, a young Wilderness Explorer who's desperate to secure his "assisting the elderly" badge and has been hunting for a snipe under the porch. From then on in, all bets are off, as the film's boundless imagination and anarchic sensibility conjure up a world of neurotic talking dogs, androgynous, chocolate-gobbling birds and paranoid adventurers, whilst never forgetting that we care what happens to its damaged, appealing central duo. Hysterically funny and emotionally resonant, Up hums with invention from first frame to last and, in having the guts to tackle big subjects with honesty, subtlety and intelligence, emerges as one of the finest films of recent years."

***



Thanks for reading.

Review of 2015: Part 1 - Movies

I may have curbed the obsessive movie-watching a little this year and last, but I still managed to catch 167 movies, 134 of them for the first time, and 31 of them at the cinema. In this, part one of my review of the year (live performances and books are coming up later in separate instalments), I'll talk you through the best of them, imagining myself to be some sort of gold/flax filter, rather than just a 31-year-old man who sits in the dark watching telly. First up are my top 10 movies of the year, then the 15 best new discoveries, followed by a brief round-up and a few old favourites.

Top 10 of 2015:

10. Orion: The Man Who Would Be King



Director: Jeanie Finlay
What we said: "A fantastic story, told almost as well as it could be, about a masked Elvis soundalike who was marketed to a public that didn’t want to believe the King was dead. Working with a limited amount of archive film, director Jeanie Finlay weaves this stranger-than-fiction tale with the use of talking heads, intelligent reconstructions, melancholic bucolic footage and audio interviews, and while a few interesting eyewitnesses are absent – including Ellis’s various wives – and it doesn't always delve as deeply as it might, the result is a compelling, fascinating film with a couple of devastating late twists."

9. Spectre



Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Monica Bellucci, Ben Whishaw, Andrew Scott and Ralph Fiennes
I, erm, went to the premiere of this movie, as it was at my office. What we said: "Since when did Bond movies get good? Spectre isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn great: riotously enjoyable, genuinely affecting and with a handling of Bond mythology that’s fresh yet respectful, the film pervaded by a swaggering self-confidence (and featuring additional dialogue by West End superstar Jez Butterworth!). If it is Mendes and Craig’s final Bond, it’s a good one to bow out with, but I really hope it’s not, since its balance of artistry, intelligence and blockbuster smarts lifts it way, way out of the ordinary. Not only did Bond films get good, but they’ve stayed good."

8. Mistress America



Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Seth Barrish and Juliet Brett
What we said: "Noah Baumbach is reunited with Greta Gerwig, the stunningly gifted comedian who is to screen humour what Michelle Williams and Jennifer Lawrence are to drama – i.e. better at playing it than anyone else on the planet. And for Mistress America, the director has reinvented himself as Howard Hawks for a fast-talking, ultimately old-fashioned screwball comedy of absurdism and interruption in which Gerwig is essentially his Ros Russell. It’s a film of moral and narrative daring. That, a vivid NY atmosphere and a pair of exceptional performances: Kirke’s pretty, pretty lost freshman holding her own against Brooke, another superb entry in Gerwig’s gallery of appealing, aimless young women, drifting attractively towards oblivion."

7. Star Wars: The Force Awakens



Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Harrison Ford
What we said: "Well, J. J. Abrams certainly seems to understand what Star Wars fans want more than George Lucas does, because The Force Awakens is fun - and there's not a discussion of international trade tariffs in sight. For great portions of the movie, I just had a big grin plastered across my face. It gets Star Wars, it really does. It knows how much we love the original trilogy, and it loves it too. That affection, evidenced by a million tiny touches, doesn't always blend seamlessly with the new narrative, but it does underpin and underscore everything that happens."

6. Birdman



Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cast: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone and Naomi Watts
What we said: Like last year's best film, Boyhood, this gave me the feeling of euphoria that comes from seeing something utterly new and startlingly ambitious. Whereas Linklater's movie was wise, universal and steeped in contemporary Americana, this one is pin-sharp, blackly comic and streaked with greasepaint, with at least two scenes of fantastical wonder, one of underpants-based humiliation, and a dozen comprising stylised human drama between vivid, unforgettable characters.

5. Inside Out



Director: Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen
Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader, Lewis Black and Kaitlyn Dias
What we said: This is a major return to form for Pixar: an extremely creative, wilfully different movie that draws on inspirations as diverse as The Beano’s Numskulls, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, but has an existential imagination and emotional sensibility more akin to an arthouse movie.

4. Whiplash



Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Miles Teller, J. K. Simmons and Melissa Benoit
What we said: For once, the hype barely goes far enough. Whiplash knows what its strong suit is: the dynamic between the combustible conductor and his potential protégé, whose development from a taciturn up-and-comer to a bleeding-handed, budding Buddy Rich not afraid to stand his ground, is invigorating to watch. As an antidote to innumerable 'inspirational teacher' of insurmountable treacliness, it's undeniably welcome. But more than that: it's not just great... it's one of the greats.

3. Mad Max: Fury Road



Director: George Miller
Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult
What we said: "An exhilarating feminist actioner that unleashes torrents of water on the risible '80s Mad Max films from an improbably great height." Its hold on me has only grown throughout the year, while the initial impact of Birdman and Whiplash has lessened a little.

2. Carol



Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Kyle Chandler
What we said: A small miracle of a film, about a quiet, emotionally straightforward shopgirl (Rooney Mara) - on the cusp of self-revelation - who falls in love with a middle-aged housewife (Cate Blanchett), herself careening towards divorce; a blissfully textured, stunningly authentic and seductively realistic portrait of love busting up through the floorboards of stifling conformity.

1. Amy



Director: Asif Kapadia
What we said: "A haunting, heartbreaking and stunningly brilliant film from Senna director Asif Kapadia, which takes us into the confidence of Amy Winehouse, as the bolshy, big-voiced, jazzy Jewish girl from North London becomes a megastar, while her personal demons, her relationship with a drug addict, and a ravenous, amoral press proceed to rip her to shreds. It's a tough watch, but it feels essential, not just for its vivid picture of a fascinating, deeply troubled young woman, but also for its wider significance: as a plea for people to stop being so horribly selfish, to stop seeing excess and illness as ‘rock and roll’ and drug abuse as a joke, and for the media to realise that if it wants to paint itself as a crusading Fifth Estate, then some basic humanity wouldn’t go amiss."

***

Top 15 discoveries of 2015:



... being the older movies that I happened upon for the first time this year.

15. Stranger on Horseback (Jacques Tourneur, 1955) - A sensational little Western about the coming of law and order, with gun-toting circuit judge Joel McCrea trying to bring the son of a powerful pioneer to justice. Made by McCrea and director Jacques Tourneur the same year as Wichita, it's a vastly superior outing in every way: a tight, slim oater that does wonders with a tiny budget, boasting a riveting story, a crackling script that includes a superb monologue for villain John McIntire and a stunning climax making full use of whip-cracking desert dominatrix Miroslava.



14. Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) - Gloriously, this blasts the shit out of those laboriously tagged 'Marvel Cinematic Universe' films, and feels like everything Avengers should have been but wasn't. It's irreverent where Avengers was smug, deft where that film was portentous, and unpredictable where its rival was ponderous and pompous.

13. Day for Night (François Truffaut, 1973) - Examining and celebrating the artifice, the potential for perfection and yet the compromise of cinema (a collaborative medium in which logistical improvisation is king), the film starts with a scene that needs to be retaken and goes on from there, tipping us a wink as it wheels out a gentle set-piece about a misbehaving cat or a hairy stuntman doubling for Bisset, tightening the knot in your stomach as a cast or crew member begins to go to pieces, and then slowly but surely revealing its subtle depths: an ability to move, enchant and beguile, as all truly great movies do.



12. Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013) - A simply wonderful movie about journo Steve Coogan trying to trace the adopted son of Irish pensioner Judi Dench, a victim of the notorious Magdalene laundries. It’s often desperately bleak, but also unstintingly warm-hearted, full of the most brilliant jokes, and as emotionally and intellectually rewarding as anything I’ve seen this year.

11. True Heart Susie (D. W. Griffith, 1919) (Cinema) - Maybe my favourite ever Lillian Gish performance, with everyone's favourite tiny-mouthed acting titan playing the "simple, plain" Susie, an angelic, motherless farmer who sells her cow to fund sweetheart Robert Harron's college career, then watches, powerless as he falls for a tight-skirted, powder-faced party animal (Clarine Seymour). Yes, that is the best premise for a movie ever, thank you for asking.



10. Toys in the Attic (George Roy Hill, 1963) - Toys in the attic and skeletons in the closet: a very entertaining slice of Southern Gothic from commie playwright Lillian Hellman: a little ripe, a little familiar, but extremely well done. It's largely shot on one set, but future New Hollywood hero George Roy Hill directs it all extremely nicely, and much of the acting is an absolute treat, with Geraldine Page and Wendy Hiller dominating in two mesmerising characterisations. Both play women who are blind and deluded, though in quite different ways, Page hitting a peak of quivering self-loathing, Hiller shuffling the moods as she did so superbly in these mid-career characterisations that she loved to (infrequently) take on: not the shimmering archetypes she had embodied in Bernard Shaw plays, but starkly real characters made beautiful by their flaws and contradictions.



9. Of Human Bondage (John Cromwell, 1934) - A short, sharp shock that still reverberates down the decades.

8. East Side, West Side (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949) - A glossy, unbelievably entertaining Hollywood meller set in New York, with Stanwyck as a wronged wife, Charisse the girl-next-door, Heflin's effortlessly modern performance, Gardner's feline sensuality, Mason's voice, colourful bits for William Conrad, Beverly Michaels and Gale Sondergaard - her last film before being blacklisted. For what it is, close to perfect.


7. Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, 2002) - Err, yes, a second documentary about Hitler on this year's list, meaning that over 13% of favourite discoveries this year are about him. This film is just 87 minutes of a single talking head. Thankfully that talking head is Traudl Junge, an 82-year-old German woman who worked as Hitler’s personal secretary from 1942 until he shot himself. Her reminiscences of the “kindly old gentleman” she worked for – contrasted with the “monster” she regards him as in retrospect – make for utterly gripping viewing, as she talks in circles about her guilt, sorrow and confusion. Her memories are moving, maddening, sometimes baffling, and the film is quite brilliantly structured, with a stunning final sequence.



6. A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1929) - A late, great British silent: a dizzying tale of romantic and sexual obsession, its slight story dazzlingly directed by Anthony Asquith. It's a little masterpiece, and it'll keep you guessing right up to the finish, while exalting you through its refusal to recognise the limits of late silent cinema.

5. The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Ray Müller, 1993) - If you find yourself saying things like: “The reason I sent that telegram to Hitler was...” or “... Hitler hated it, ask anyone who was there”, it may be time to take a long, hard look at your life. The greatest female film director of all time – and the only one to have filmed a Nuremberg Rally – had been shopping this project around for a while, and finding that more than 200 respected documentarians wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole. Enter Ray Müller, who somehow manages to walk the trickiest, most perilous of tightropes: making a credible, even-handed and deeply insightful film about Leni Riefenstahl in which she is the only interviewee.



4. Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) - The wife and the mistress of the world’s most unpleasant man plot his death in this stunning genre-hopper from Wages of Fear director Clouzot. It’s cynical and gripping, with flashes of humour and humanity, and Simone Signoret exuding malignant cool as a peroxide, jump-suited murderess with killer shades. There's twist after twist after twist - and the final two are just dynamite.



3. American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) - Magical, lightning-in-a-bottle stuff: a flavourful, nostalgic and sentimental movie - somehow made by George Lucas - with a cast of future stars as high school kids whose stories interweave on the last night before college in 1962. And it has Harrison Ford as a grumpy drag racer in a cowboy hat.

2. The Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941) - A caustic, troubling, profound examination of a Southern family brought low – or high and to prominence, depending on how you view it – by a sea of moral dissolution. You could argue that the film’s delineation between good and evil is rather simplistic for a work aspiring to high art, but it’s that heightened sensibility that gives it much of its haunting power, particularly as the vultures gather and you realise that Hellman’s vision of America – imagined by Toland, enlivened by a killer ensemble, given order by the gifted Wyler – is far darker than anyone could have expected, the blanched Davis poisoned by greed, leaving goodness, humanity and virtue all gasping for breath.



1. Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996) - A middle-class black woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) goes in search of her birth mother and finds a coarse, tearful, loving, unhappy, chain-smoking working-class white woman (Blenda Blethyn), whose family is a powder keg just waiting for a match. There aren’t many films that change the way you see the world. Or many pieces of art, for that matter. Secrets & Lies does just that. It's brilliantly conceived, bracingly authentic and emotionally overpowering, opting at its climax not for soap or sentiment, but something truly remarkable: the truth. It's simply a masterpiece.

***


Miss Gish. Now and always.

Crazes: Bette Davis
Continuing preoccupations: Lillian Gish, Star Wars, Joel McCrea Westerns
Stuff I caught up on: Books, to be honest.
Revelations: Oft-derided silent star John Gilbert. He was weak in La Boheme, but superb in The Big Parade and his early talkie triumph, Downstairs. One to watch.
Happiest surprises: The barely-known, never-before-released Stranger on Horseback being a killer little movie, rather than a generic B Western. The 1949 version of Little Women still casting its strange and enduring spell, after a slightly rocky beginning.
Biggest disappointment: Quite a few. Cobain: Montage of Heck fucked it up badly: it was incoherent, embarrassing and portentous. The original Mad Max films were nothing. The Yearling wasn't awful, but I was expecting more poetry and also more realism from a movie often classed among the greats.
Oddest film: Batman Returns seems to misjudge its audience at every turn. Séance on a Wet Afternoon amorality might give you nightmares.
Worst films: Ryan Gosling's directorial debut, Lost River, was absolutely woeful. That I managed to see several worse films - a couple of B Westerns, the Stanwyck rom-com The Bride Wore Boots, the execrable Adventure in Sahara and particularly the WWII propaganda film, The Power of the Press - was in some ways an accomplishment. In some ways.
Some favourite moments: The dance at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy, the meeting in the cafe in Secrets & Lies, All That Jazz's living room number, which boots Meet Me in St Louis's cakewalk into the modern era and fuses sex, sentiment and sheer, unadulterated genius.
2015 was... A good year at work, a fair one at the cinema.
Best film I saw at the cinema: Winter's Bone at the Barbican
I was bored by: Too many films. Sometimes I fear I'm running out of good ones, especially in my beloved '20s-'40s Hollywood bracket.
I wrote this pretty good review of _______________, you should read it if you have a minute: My series on the original Star Wars movies wasn't bad.

***

15 I revisited in 2015:

The top 10 are actually the best 10 films I've seen all year.

15. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980) (Cinema)
14. A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings, 1945) (and Spare Time, for that matter, on the same link)
13. Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)
12. A Thousand Clowns (Fred Coe, 1965)
11. Way Down East (D. W. Griffith, 1920)
10. Kiss Me Kate 3D (George Sidney, 1953) (Cinema)
9. Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) (Cinema, film with live orchestra)
8. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
7. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
6. The Wind (Victor Sjӧstrӧm, 1928) (Cinema)
5. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
4. The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)
3. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) (Cinema)
2. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
1. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)

***

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Bette Davis, Mistress America, and Bogart poisoning his wife - Reviews #214

I've been to an exhibition, to the theatre and to my bed, where I reclined whilst watching the following movies...

BETTE DAVIS TRIPLE-BILL



I'm starting to acquaint myself better with the movies of Bette Davis. The big-name highlights - All About Eve; Now, Voyager; Jezebel - I know, and I'm au fait with a lot of her earlier work at Warner's... but her less high-profile star vehicles have thus far eluded me, and seem a suitable subject for my next obsessive venture in the world of classic film. I revisited All About Eve - because why wouldn't you? - and then made in-roads on this rather attractive box-set.



*I'VE TRIED TO AVOID SPOILERS, BUT TAKE CARE JUST IN CASE*
All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

“How about calling it a night?”
“And you pose as a playwright? A situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is ‘everybody go to sleep’.”

The greatest film ever made about the theatre (or the best I’ve seen, anyway): a movie I love still more every time I watch it, whilst wrestling with my continuing astonishment that anyone could write anything this good. That anyone was Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the verbose writer-director responsible for such enchanting, weighty and ominous fare as A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, before he rather forgot what his strong suit was and started adapting other people’s work.

In arguably her definitive role, Bette Davis is seasoned Broadway star Margo Channing, whose mentoring of mousy, stage-struck kid Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) inflames her demons whilst causing small explosions in the lives of her boyfriend Bill (Gary Merrill), a playwright and his wife (Hugh Marlowe and Celeste Holm) and an acidic, vicious but extraordinarily charming columnist by the name of Addison DeWitt (George Sanders).

The script is as good as any ever written. It’s steeped in the theatre, in a hypocrisy and misery and masochism offset by the electrification of applause. It’s wise yet devilishly witty, giving as many unbeatable lines to its villains as its heroes. It’s about love and ambition and mistakes and chance and the cleansing power of celebrity. Its story – of effortlessly shifting fortunes and sympathies, of breakneck turns – is timeless, full of surprises and grips like nothing else: the fate of its villainess as chilling as a man being bricked up alive in a Val Lewton horror.

The cast, too, could scarcely be better, with career-best turns from everyone involved, aside from perhaps Thelma Ritter, who’s characteristically superb, but had rather more to do in The Mating Season and Pickup on South Street. In a characterisation stripped of glamour, playing a bitter, bitterly funny heroine, caked in make-up remover, drenched in self-pity and marinated in booze, Davis is the last word in fading stage stars. As her potential replacement, the bright-eyed Baxter gives a performance that came from nowhere and which she never approached again, nailing a succession of chilling, unforgettable scenes to which the word ‘ruthless’ really doesn’t do justice. Marlowe was always a little bland, but Merrill shows an unexpected force and conviction as Davis’s patient – but not limitlessly patient – beau, tiring of her complexes, Marilyn Monroe has a hysterical bit as a savvy starlet, while Holm is simply the archetypal Mankiewicz character: sad-eyed, good-hearted and ultimately omniscient, but entirely shorn of the power to act.

Sanders, meanwhile, is just... wicked.

From the astute, literate voiceover and classic freeze-frame that launches the story, via stinging one-liners, sublime reaction faces and a litany of unimprovable set-pieces, to one of the most memorable, satisfying (and scary) endings in the history of movies, All About Eve is a landmark of Hollywood’s Golden Age: an unassailable classic with the kind of dialogue that a moviegoer dreams about. (4)



The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding) - A somewhat far-fetched but moving story of warring Southern cousins Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, and the four weddings and a funeral that define their lives. Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, it's extremely episodic but very entertaining and sometimes artistically valuable, lit by Davis's star turn, as she ages from a bright-eyed belle to a harsh, scolding shrew alienated from her beloved daughter, aided by atypically convincing make-up, characteristic charisma and that ability to immerse herself within the particular, peculiar minutiae of a role, without forgetting to emotionally connect. She has one line near the end that is liable to absolutely floor you.

The supporting cast is variable: George Brent is better than usual, but only as good as George Brent can be, which is not very; his principal mannerism being sighing and looking down (like Mark Kermode says that Richard Gere does), while Jane Bryan is too vague and broad as Davis's grown-up daughter, though there are decent performances from former silent star Louise Fazenda, and veteran Scottish character actor Donald Crisp.

Really, though, it's about Davis and to a lesser extent Hopkins, their convincing characterisations housed in a good-looking, sensitive and sometimes bitterly explosive movie that throws the stereotype of the 'old maid' askew, whilst delivering some universal truths about love, happiness and self-sacrificial devotion. The stars reteamed for Old Acquaintance, which was altogether lacking in nuance, with Hopkins cast as one of the most annoying characters in the history of anything.



In This Our Life (John Huston, 1942) - Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland play sisters named Stanley and Roy (what is going on?) in this excitable melodrama, which sacrifices truth for dramatic dynamism.

Bette's an amoral, husband-stealing whirlwind who takes after her ruthless capitalist uncle (Charles Coburn), Olivia's more like her softly-spoken, kind-hearted father (Frank Craven), at least at first, though both women are entirely free spirits, a pleasant antidote to the conformity peddled so frequently during Hollywood's Golden Age.

As is Ernest Anderson's character, a young black trainee lawyer who gets a stirring but understated speech about the lack of promotion or recognition typically offered to African-Americans. Meanwhile, Dennis Morgan - as an unhappy puppet of lust - and the ever-wooden George Brent, playing a lawyer made of wood, are your male leads this evening.

The plotting becomes increasingly unrealistic in the second half, but a strong cast helps (including an uncredited cameo from Walter Huston, the director's father), as well as Ernest Haller's atmospheric photography. Just try to take your eyes off Bette. (2.5)

(Incidentally, movie folklore has it that John Huston - directing this, his second film - included most of the cast of his debut, The Maltese Falcon, in walk-ons: Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet. Sadly it's not the case.)

***



The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925) - King Vidor's emotionally overpowering WWI film - of layabout aristo John Gilbert going off to fight in a fug of patriotism, falling in love with French farmgirl Renée Adorée, then finding that war is hell - was a critical and box-office sensation in 1925, and remains unsurpassed in the genre.

With a lighthearted first half followed by a brutal second, it's a seamless whole formed of countless unforgettable vignettes, its knockabout comedy and beguiling romance giving way to taut, then horrific action sequences emphasising the brutal lottery of battle.

Adorée learning to chew gum; Gilbert arsing about with a barrel on his head, then later sharing a shellhole with the dying German he's just shot; that astonishing ending - its classic scenes are legion, each blessed by an astounding visual poetry.

Best of all is the lovers' devastating farewell, one of my favourite scenes in movies, in which a departing Gilbert - finally prised from Adorée's grip - flings his treasured possessions at her from the back of a truck. Finding that he has nothing else of value to throw, he takes off a boot, and chucks that instead. She cradles it in her arms, before collapsing on the road, alone.

She's great, as the sexy, pure-hearted, then bereft love interest. And Gilbert's excellent too: this is Exhibit A for the case that his damaged reputation is ill-deserved. The Big Parade made a star out of him, and made the career of Vidor, who would create another contender for 'finest film of the silent era' - The Crowd - and then the first great American talkie (and singie), Hallelujah! (4)

(Thanks to DirectorsCut for suggesting that I pick up the recent Region 1 Blu-ray of The Big Parade, which is surely a high watermark in terms of print, music and presentation.)

***



CINEMA: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015) - This is a major return to form for Pixar: an extremely creative, wilfully different movie that draws on inspirations as diverse as The Beano’s Numskulls, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, but has an existential imagination and emotional sensibility more akin to an arthouse movie.

The film takes place largely in the brain of 11-year-old Riley, who moves from an idyllic existence in Minnesota to a cripplingly different one in San Francisco, where her ties to friends and family start to sever. And that’s about it.

Within her brain, the emotions of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger try to restore equilibrium (or merely fight for supremacy), abetted or distracted by a litany of imaginative - even imaginary - supporting characters, as they carry core memories, brave the subconscious or ride the Train of Thought.

A few of the jokes are broad or bad – didn’t Toy Story 2 teach Pixar that incongruous movie spoofs are far beneath the standard that the studio prizes and so often meets? – and it seems odd that the script feels it needs to explain gags about broccoli but not about neurological functions.

On the whole, though, it’s a triumph: extremely funny and intensely moving (oh Bing Bong!), with superb animation, apposite voicework from the likes of Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith, and a melancholy disposition that punctures and subverts the appealing but naïve character of Joy, who regards putting a brave face on a situation as a universal panacea.

(Stay around for the credits too, the cat joke is amazing.) (3.5)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Mistress America (Noah Baumbach, 2015) - After a little while apart so he could make the patronising misstep, While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach is reunited with Greta Gerwig, the stunningly gifted comedian who is to screen humour what Michelle Williams and Jennifer Lawrence are to drama – i.e. better at playing it than anyone else on the planet. And for Mistress America, the director has reinvented himself as Howard Hawks for a fast-talking, ultimately old-fashioned screwball comedy of absurdism and interruption in which Gerwig is essentially his Ros Russell.

Lola Kirke is college starter Tracy, for whom campus life is not really that much fun. Enter her new big step-sister Brooke (Gerwig), a shimmering beacon of compulsive likeability, spurious theorising and increasingly apparent neuroses, who envelopes and enraptures the strait-laced, closeted Kirke, her influence unlocking a side of ‘baby Tracy’ that didn’t necessarily need to be seen. The first half is fairly Baumbachian in structure – with his usual slight self-satisfaction and spirited subversion of genre cliches – before he kicks off his shoes, rolls up his sleeves and essentially slips in a disc of ‘30s screwball mayhem, Hawksian in pace and volume, but inhabiting the ‘wacky family’ world of something like Merrily We Live.

The film isn’t in the same league as Frances Ha, the monochrome masterpiece that established Gerwig as an actress of almost unparalleled if strictly parametered ability, but it is full of great ideas and one-liners - from “’Adultery’? Since when do you have such grown-up ideas about morality. You’re 18, you should just be touching each other all the time” to "I like compressed MP3s", a perfect, contrarian rebuke to the tiresome fetishisation of vinyl in indie cinema - as well as rug-pulling twists that consistently brook convention. It manages to be extremely touching whilst refusing to fall back on almost any of the stock scenarios that even independent movies lean upon to generate emotion.

Particularly welcome is Tracy’s pathological lack of remorse when she does what’s widely agreed upon to be A Very Bad Thing. Like Whiplash’s Neimann, she just doesn’t really care, an approach borrowed from a sublime exchange earlier in the movie where Brooke encounters a girl she bullied at school, refuses to apologise and still come out on top.

It’s that kind of moral and narrative daring that sets the film apart and sustains it even when the frantic, frenzied exchanges risk degenerating into shrillness or pastiche. That, a vivid NY atmosphere and a pair of exceptional performances: Kirke’s pretty, pretty lost freshman holding her own against Brooke, another superb entry in Gerwig’s gallery of appealing, aimless young women, drifting attractively towards oblivion. (3.5)

***

WENDY HILLER DOUBLE BILL

... in which I investigate some more obscure entries in the sporadic, highly odd career of screen legend Wendy Hiller, whom I adore.


Sorry about the watermark, but you try to find a picture of Hiller in this film.

Something of Value (Richard Brooks, 1957) - A sincere but muddled movie about the Mau Mau uprising in colonial Kenya, with Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier as childhood friends caught on opposite sides of the conflict. It's a gruelling watch and its narrative flaws are legion, but there are some very powerful moments, Poitier is superb and Wendy Hiller steals the film (doesn't she always?) being variously sexy and transcendent and covered in blood and shooting a gun. Phwoarr. (2)


Same deal with this pic.

Toys in the Attic (George Roy Hill) - Toys in the attic and skeletons in the closet: a very entertaining slice of Southern Gothic from commie playwright Lillian Hellman: a little ripe, a little familiar, but extremely well done.

Geraldine Page and Wendy Hiller are spinster sisters in New Orleans whose sheltered life is shaken by the return of ne'er-do-well brother, Dean Martin, suddenly flush with cash but somewhat reticent to say why. In his company is his neurotic young wife (Yvette Mimieux), whose harsh, strident mother (Gene Tierney) may have made the match.

It's largely shot on one set, but future New Hollywood hero George Roy Hill directs it all extremely nicely, and much of the acting is an absolute treat, with Page and Hiller dominating in two mesmerising characterisations.

Both play women who are blind and deluded, though in quite different ways, Page hitting a peak of quivering self-loathing, Hiller shuffling the moods as she did so superbly in these mid-career characterisations that she loved to (infrequently) take on: not the shimmering archetypes she had embodied in Bernard Shaw plays, but starkly real characters made beautiful by their flaws and contradictions. Though billed fourth, it's actually a rare instance during her postwar career that she was front and centre, and the results are simply sublime. (3.5)

***



The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960) ... whereas Toshiro Mifune's mysterious, whistling avenger is up till all hours.

Kurosawa's homage to '40s Warner gangster movies is long and mostly enthralling, doubling as a furious indictment of corporate corruption, as Mifune goes undercover in a crooked administration, then finds himself tormented by love, his own growing cruelty and the stone cold psychopaths he's dealing with.

The plotting wobbles a bit here, especially in the second half, but it's tough, intriguing and - as usual with AK - provides an insightful look at the structures and strictures of Japanese society.

It's also quite brilliantly directed, distinctively shot in widescreen Tohoscope and showing both another side and the very definite fingerprints of a master filmmaker.

The first half hour, as Scorsese observes on the DVD case, is an absolute knockout. (3)

***


Well, yeah.

The Two Mrs Carrolls (Peter Godfrey, 1947) - Silly, joyless thriller about psychotic painter Humphrey Bogart offing his first wife and trying to do the same to his second (Barbara Stanwyck). It's derivative, particularly of Gaslight, and frequently makes no narrative sense, though there are lolz to be had from a terrifying villain being called Geoffrey, and Alexis Smith is really rather hot as Bogie's mistress. She transmitted complete horniness better than anybody in classic Hollywood, except for perhaps Mary Astor. You can kind of see why Bogart's poisoning his wife for her, especially as Stanwyck is being so very shrill. (1.5)

See also: To read about Bogart being rather more in his element, here's my piece on the original cut of The Big Sleep, complete with graphic I made on MS Paint.

***

Thanks for reading.

Sneezing and Monica Bellucci - Reviews #47

Malena (Giuseppe Tornatore, 2000) is an arresting but slightly insubstantial film from the creator of Cinema Paradiso, as village looker Malena becomes village hooker Malena, while remaining an angel in the eyes of eternally masturbating adolescent Giuseppe Sulfaro. It's really a coming-of-age story, but atypical of such films in its refusal to offer easy answers, or indeed any concessions to sentiment whatsoever. Beginning his film in 1940, with Italy on the brink of war, Tornatore displays his usual strong grasp of the Sicilian period setting: all white stone, crowded squares and appalling cattiness. And he's aided by a pair of very attractive central performances, along with cinematography and an Ennio Morricone score that are just glorious. Sadly though, while the script provides two memorable characters and considerable emotional engagement, it suffers from lurches in tone and is let down by repetition - essentially offering the same scene of Malena walking through the town over and over again - and an inability to tie up its loose ends. The narrative is augmented by a handful of very well-observed movie pastiches, but these are largely squashed into the first half. Malena is an honest, appealing, sometimes very funny film, but a touch light in the writing. (3)

***



Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943) - There's surely no genre on earth as ripe for rehab as the romcom. Well this is how it used to look, before that debilitating addiction to formula filmmaking: clever, distinguished, witty and wise, with a focus on love, lust and the nature of being rather than, say, shoes. Don Ameche is the recently-deceased man about town who presents himself "where so many people had previously told him to go" - Hell. There, His Excellency (Laird Cregar) invites him to recount his story, from a youthful dalliance with a French maid, through elopement and marriage to the sweet-hearted Mary (Gene Tierney), then onto acceptance of his place in the world. On third viewing, it appears greater and more masterful than ever, blessed by Lubitsch's matchless handling. The performances he draws from the cast are superb across the board. The leads are delightful, legendary child stars Scotty Beckett and Dickie Moore play the young Ameches, while Charles Coburn is magnificent as the crusty, genial grandfather and Allyn Joslyn unexpectedly moving as Mary's "solid" suitor. Look also for celebrated character comics Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main, as Tierney's constantly-warring screen parents. A wonderful film. (4)

Trivia note: It's interesting (to me, at least) how involuntary bodily functions play such a big part in bringing lovers together - or pulling them apart - in Lubitsch films. In That Uncertain Feeling it was hiccups. Here it's sneezing.

***

And this is the Pixar short playing before Toy Story 3:



*SOME SPOILERS*
SHORT: Day & Night (Teddy Newton, 2010) is moralistic and a little light on laughs, but boasts some tremendous animation. The plot, such as it is, features cartoonish blobs representing day and night, who show one another just what they can do - namely showcase the very best of their respective worlds. The first is big on scantily-clad sunbathers; the other displays Vegas all lit-up. Eventually the familiar-looking blobs (I can't place them) learn to overcome their fear and prejudice, and understand the other, leading to a satisfying wrap-up. Mid-range Pixar, but we've been spoiled lately, to be honest. (3)

Toy Story 3 and the French Heat - Reviews #46

*SOME SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) is perhaps the best of the series - and that's saying something. Andy is now 17, and heading for college. Clearing out his room, he earmarks cherished childhood toy Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) as a travelling companion, but consigns the rest of the gang to the attic, foolishly stashing them in a bin bag. One hair-raising encounter with a refuse lorry later and Buzz, Rex, Hamm, Mr Potato Head and the others decide they've had enough - turning themselves in to the nearest playgroup. There, they deal with obstacles both physical (terrifying toddlers, a psychotic bear) and intangible (love, mortality, the transience of being), as existential ruminations jostle for space with brilliant jokes and wildly-imaginative chase sequences. Benefiting from the leaps in digital animation over the past 12 years, this richly rewarding film adds further depth to this fully-realised world - not least in its subtle, sure-footed use of 3D - while the terrific scripting taps into both the mythology and the absurdity of toys. It's there from the spellbinding, ridiculous opening sequence, set in Monument Valley, to the masterfully-conceived running gag that sees Buzz (Tim Allen) turn Spanish - not the tired non-sequitur you'd get from any other studio, but an inspired riff on the peculiarity of mass-market electronics. That intelligence and invention is underscored by an effortless humanism that informs the whole piece, bursting through the surface during the terrifying landfill set-piece and the ending, which is just sublime. One could legitimately quibble with the excessive repetition in the earlier parts of the script or argue that the new characters can't quite match up to the returning favourites, but it really does feel like splitting hairs. This is a massively ambitious, remarkably successful third outing: mature, invigorating and deeply, deeply moving. (4)

For reviews of Toy Story and Toy Story 2, please click here. For write-ups of WALL-E, Ratatouille, Cars, Finding Nemo and a selection of Pixar shorts, just click on the name. Reviews of other Pixar shorts are dotted about the site - for our full list of contents go here.

***



36 Quai des Orfevres (Oliver Marchal, 2004), named after the police headquarters in Paris, is an entertaining but flawed thriller, loosely based on real events. Jean de Florette co-stars Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu play rival officers - and former friends - striving to bring in a gang of ruthless bank robbers. It is a case that will define their careers and change their lives forever: one for better, one for worse. The characters, that is, not the actors. Former cop Marchal is good on the day-to-day details, but his forays into fiction are largely unsuccessful, striving for epic tragedy and finding only melodrama. The dovetailing of twin narratives, in the vein of Murder, My Sweet or Le Doulos (referenced overtly in the character of the informer Silien), is similarly disappointing, creating a resolution that's too pat, smug and downright predictable to satisfy. This has been described as the French Heat (it's about cops and robbers, it has two famous stars) and while it's not as infuriatingly self-important as that damp squib, its shortcomings are all too apparent. Auteuil's performance, the glossy cinematography and the fast pace are the main draws. (2.5)