The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Although it can be daunting to have an ever-growing “to watch” list, with every main movie title reminding me of at least three or four other movies I have still to get around to, I love any time when the film conversation flows around certain genres or topics in a way that leads to me being encouraged to check out something considered a classic by many. And that is how I came to belatedly watching The Asphalt Jungle recently.

It’s a simple tale. A group of people are put together to commit a robbery, but the job is endangered by the potential for misfortune and treachery. People start to suffer, but the moral core of the film means that viewers will be expecting a downbeat finale from the very opening scenes.

Based on a novel by W. R. Burnett, this is a screenplay co-written by Ben Maddow and director John Huston that nicely blends the prep and execution of the crime with moments showing us some more background of some of the key players. Huston keeps things paced perfectly, and benefits from an excellent cast.

Sterling Hayden is the nominal lead, Dix Handley, and he tries hard to keep a cool head, even as others start to panic. Sam Jaffe is the man with the expertise required to pull off the robbery, allowing himself to trust in the men who make up the brawn surrounding his brain. James Whitmore and Anthony Caruso play Gus and Ciavelli, respectively, the other two men making up the core team. Everyone does good work, but Hayden and Jaffe stand out, helped by the fact that we get to spend a bit more time with their characters. There’s also a great selection of supporting players, allowing us to enjoy great performances from Louis Calhern and Jean Hagen, the former as slippery and untrustworthy as the latter is sweet and dependable. I could reel off many other names, each deserving a mention for their part in making this a consistently gripping tale, but you should just see them all for yourself. Oh, and Marilyn Monroe shines in one main scene (the merest hint of what was to come with her star ascending).

It goes without saying that Huston is a great director for this material, and those familiar with any of his films will know what to expect here. The Asphalt Jungle shows a number of people who end up stuck between a rock and a hard place, some holding on to their own moral code while others are willing to make bigger sacrifices if it gets them an escape route, and it may well have you rooting for one or two people that you wouldn’t normally root for. 

A classic, but most people know that already.

9/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Prime Time: Crime Of Passion (1956)

If you are looking for a great film starting Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr, or Fay Wray, then I could point you to at least a dozen better viewing options. But if you are looking for a not necessarily great film starring all four of these people then you may, like me, find plenty to enjoy in Crime Of Passion, a light noir that is elevated by the cast.

Stanwyck is Kathy, a successful woman who leaves her newspaper job to become the happy housewife of a policeman named Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden). Unfortunately, it turns out that the role of happy housewife isn’t really enough for her, especially as she sees her husband unable to climb further up the career ladder. Sharing her frustrations, and her hopes, with Tony Pope (Raymond Burr), Kathy also starts to consider that being nice to Tony, who already IS higher up that career ladder, might be a way to help Bill. But Tony is married to Alice (Fay Wray), which means that Kathy’s plan could potentially destroy a number of lives.

Directed by Gerd Oswald, this is a perfectly decent movie in a safe pair of hands. Oswald had a good run at this time (other movies from him including A Kiss Before Dying and Screaming Mimi) and would then go on to direct various episodes for numerous TV shows. As enjoyable as this is, it feels like a film directed by someone ready for a long career in TV (although he did deliver some more feature films towards the end of his career, after work on the likes of Gentle Ben, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, etc).

Writer Jo Eisinger has another couple of greats to their name (namely Gilda and Night And The City), but they seem happy to write this as something that simply simmers away while the cast enjoy themselves in their roles. Nothing ever becomes too explosive, nor is it ever too tense (even when things happen in the finale that change everything for the main characters), but it is never dull or unenjoyable, thanks to the excellent lead turn.

She may not be subtle for most of her scenes, particularly in the second half of the film, but Stanwyck is hugely entertaining here. The film seems to take a perverse pleasure in showing the contentment/boredom creating a rot that eats away at her character from the inside. Hayden gives another one of his stoic and dependable roles, the kind of thing he easily did so well, and he remains someone to root for, even if others are due to pay a hefty price while he dutifully gets on with his job and life in a way that suits him best. Burr is amusingly shady, the script helping to ring alarm bells in the minds of viewers as soon as he appears, while Wray plays the kind of sweet and content housewife that Stanwyck’s character never really wants to become.

It’s not really cinematic, there are no major twists and turns in the plot, and the title tells you exactly where things are going, but I still liked this. There’s a good enough framework here, nicely fleshed out and given a nice sheen by the cast, and any fans of the stars should have some fun.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Noir November: The Long Goodbye (1973)

Also known as THAT Philip Marlowe movie that starts off with an extended sequence that shows him trying to feed his cat, The Long Goodbye is to noir what Blow-Up is to traditional whodunnits. Director Robert Altman, working from a script by Leigh Brackett (which is based on the tale by Raymond Chandler), keeps a lot of familiar touches here, but he derives a lot of subversive fun by placing Marlowe as a man out of time. He's an anachronism who can still manage to get results, mainly because he's underestimated by everyone he comes into contact with,

Gould plays Marlowe, and that famous opening sequence leads straight into the first main plot point. It's the middle of the night, but a friend named Terry (Jim Bouton) turns up on Marlowe's doorstep, looking for a favour. He's in a bit of trouble and would like a lift to Tijuana. Marlowe obliges, because that's the kind of friend that he is, but that just leads him into trouble over the course of the next few days. It turns out that Terry is supposed to have murdered his wife, and he owed a lot of money to someone who doesn't take kindly to being taken advantage of. Meanwhile, the detective is also hired by a woman (Nina van Pallandt) who wants to find out exactly where her husband (Sterling Hayden) has got to. The two situations soon start to intertwine, and Marlowe starts to suspect that there are connections he has yet to figure out.

As much a product of the time as the many classic noirs that influence it, The Long Goodbye is a fine example of how to have your cake and eat it. Altman has his fingerprints all over the thing - the camera movement, the overlapping dialogue, the focus on characters taking precedence over the plot getting from A to B - but he also keeps everything that makes Marlowe who he always has been. Of course, a lot of credit should go to Brackett's screenplay, but there seems to have been a lot of improvisation on the set (particularly from Gould and Hayden) and leaving in what worked is as beneficial to the movie, of course, as cutting out whatever didn't.

Gould gives a fantastic performance as Marlowe, and I'd go as far as saying it may well be his career-best. Making the most of the chance given to him by Altman (his behaviour had led to him being slightly ostracised from major productions for a while), he makes the character his own, yet retains the essence of the character. Smart, laid-back, funny, cynical - he and the film are one and the same in their approach. Van Pallandt and Hayden both do brilliant work in their supporting roles, with the latter particularly memorable, thanks to his character being louder and slightly larger than life. Mark Rydell is the man who wants the money owed to him, and he's pretty good. Initially coming across as not particularly threatening, he has enough heavies to back him up anyway, but shows just how ruthless he can be with a shocking moment of violence that really hammers home the point about just how far he is willing to go to deal with any problem.

Despite the style of the movie seeming to push against the entire history of noir, The Long Goodbye earns its place among the classics. It's a GREAT Philip Marlowe film. It just happens to be a very different type of Philip Marlowe film.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Goodbye-Blu-ray-Elliot-Gould/dp/B00MYMTANU/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1416503530&sr=1-1&keywords=the+long+goodbye

Noir November: The Killing (1956)

An early film in the career of one Mr. Stanley Kubrick, The Killing may be a relatively low-budget, low-key movie compared to some of his later works, but it's no less enjoyable for it. Based on a novel ("Clean Break") by Lionel White, this is a tense, unhurried look at a group of criminals planning a major heist.

The main players are: Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), the man with the plan, a corrupt cop named Randy Kennan (Ted De Corsia), a teller who works at the racecourse they're planning to rob (Elisha Cook Jr), a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey), and a couple of other guys who will help to distract people while the robbery occurs. Everything is planned out precisely, and onscreen details, as well as narration, help viewers to keep track of just how all of the pieces fall into place. But no plan is foolproof, is it?

Kubrick may be working on a smaller scale here, compared to his more famous works, but he shows the same attention to detail and clinical approach to the material that cinema fans would respond so well to. The script, with dialogue by Jim Thompson, nicely balances things out between the specifics of the job and the drama derived from the fluctuating dynamic of the group.

Performances are pretty great across the board, especially for a film that many would consider as nothing more than a b-movie (I guess). Hayden, Corsia, Carey and the others all do well, but I have to admit that Cook Jr. is someone I have always loved seeing onscreen, and his role here is a great one. Coleen Gray and Marie Windsor also do well, being the two main women in a film that focuses very much on the men. The fact that two make such a memorable impression, for very different reasons, is further testament to the script and their performances.

I'm not sure how audiences would have reacted to the content back in 1956, when this was first released, but it seems to have enough darker elements in there to make some people uncomfortable. There are some moments of violence, as expected from a film about an armed robbery, a healthy dollop of cynicism coating everything, and at least one outburst that uses a racial slur to shocking, though also brilliant, effect.

With it being so slight, however, it's hard to push this forward as an essential noir viewing. Yet it's easy to see how influential it has been, at least on certain people (Tarantino, I'm looking at you). It's also simply an excellent little movie that doesn't outstay its welcome. Give it a watch soon, if you've not seen it already.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B005152C78/ref=sr_1_10?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415885702&sr=1-10&keywords=the+killing

You know how you can show your appreciation for bloggers? If you share and share then every additional reader helps. Connect through Google or Blogger or any way you can, and rest easy in the knowledge that you've made little ol' me a very happy man.

And/or you could also buy my e-book, that has almost every review I've written over the past 5 years. It's very reasonably priced for the sheer amount of content.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.