TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
March
8–March 14
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
THE
LADY IN THE LAKE (March
10, 4:30 pm): You can't go wrong with either Philip Marlowe detective
films TCM is showing on the 10th. It starts with Dick Powell in
1944's Murder,
My Sweet at
6:00 am and ends with Robert Montgomery in 1947's The
Lady in the Lake.
Montgomery, who also directed the film, is charming as Marlowe, the
hard-boiled, street-smart private detective. This movie is
fascinating for its gimmick of having nearly all of it filmed as if
the viewer is Marlowe. The detective film noir has several plot
twists and it's definitely worth watching. Montgomery brings a sense
of humor to Marlowe that isn't as developed in other films of the
famed character.
THE
FRENCH CONNECTION (March
14, 10:00 pm): This is the first film of the 1970s to truly capture
the gritty, grimy, disgusting life of cops and crooks in New York
City. While the others are great, this is the best. The
French Connection (1971),
based on two actual NYC cops, stars Gene Hackman as Jimmy "Popeye"
Doyle and Roy Scheider as his partner, Buddy "Cloudy"
Russo. The two detectives discover that a wealthy French drug dealer
(played by Fernando Rey) smuggled into New York City a large shipment
of pure heroin and is looking to make a big sale. The chase scene
that has Popeye in a car pursuing the French drug kingpin's hitman in
an elevated train is as good as it gets.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
LA
POINTE COURTE (March 8, 11:00 am): Director Agnes
Varda gained international renown with this study of a husband and
wife trying to rescue their marriage interwoven with the life and
times of a small fishing village on the Mediterranean. Known only as
Him and Her, the couple comes to the village because it’s the place
where He grew up and still loves, while She is from Paris and has the
requisite cosmopolitan tastes. Will they be able to work things out?
Meanwhile, we are drawn into the drama that plagues the town: Will
the father let his daughter marry the man she loves, even if he's
kind of a wimp? Will the cops arrest the guy who harvested his
shellfish from an off-limits stretch of water? Will the big-city
couple stay together or split up? The movie’s climax takes place at
the annual water-jousting tournament (which actually takes place in
the village each year), a sort of slow-motion skirmish where men
knock each other off boats with medieval-style lances while onlookers
cheer their favorites. This is the sort of film that will pull one in
slowly and once in, it never lets up for a minute. The village life
and drama is fascinating and the individual dramas compelling.
DETOUR (March
12, 10:00 am): It’s one of the most vaunted film noirs ever made; a
cult classic that first gained its reputation in France and quickly
spread to American film buffs. It was also one of philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre’s favorite films, and looking at the existential
irony that propels much of the film, that is no surprise. The myth
that now surrounds the film is such that we are now led to believe it
was shot by director Edgar G. Ulmer over three days for about $100.
Of course, that’s exaggerating some, but Ulmer was known for his
ability to stretch the most from the least. For instance, a simple
street lamp in a fog-enshrouded studio represents New York City, and
a drive-in restaurant and a used-car lot symbolize Los Angeles. The
story itself is a simple one: Al Roberts, an unemployed piano player,
is hitching it from New York to Los Angeles, where his girlfriend is
as singer. When he hits Arizona a dissolute gambler picks him up and
relates a story about a female hitchhiker he had picked up earlier.
Shortly after he dies of a heart attack. Al, panicked, leaves his
body by the side of the road and takes his car. He stops to pick up a
female hitchhiker, and the nightmare begins, for not only is she the
hitcher referred to earlier, but also she’s as venomous as a room
full of scorpions. This is a film that, if you haven’t yet seen it,
you should make room on your recorder. It’s highly entertaining,
and the performances by Tom Neal, and especially by Ann Savage as the
Hitchhiker From Hell, are classics of Noir. Even if you’ve seen it
before, it’s worth catching again, just for the hell of it and to
see a master craftsman at work.
WE
AGREE ON ... THE GOLD RUSH (March 14, 7:45 am)
ED:
A+. A wonderful blend of slapstick and
pathos, thankfully without the pretentious moralizing that we find in
his later work. The Little Tramp goes to the Klondike in search of
gold and love but finds only misery – and edible footwear. Besides
the eating of the shoe for Thanksgiving, there are other famous
sequences, such as Charlie being imagined as a chicken by his
starving partner, Mack Swain; a log cabin teetering on the edge of a
cliff; and the wonderful “dance” of the dinner rolls. Is it his
best? Not really, though it was voted the #2 movie of all time
(behind The Battleship Potemkin) in a 1958 critics poll.
However, it is one of the essentials for those who want to understand
Chaplin’s work.
DAVID:
A+. Even nearly 100 years later, The Gold
Rush stands out as a genuinely funny and ingenious film.
Few actors can match Charlie Chaplin for not only physical comedy,
but an incredible understanding of how to use the human body as a
prop. Chaplin takes a few prat falls, but it's his mastery of using
his body that makes this film such a classic. Oftentimes, things that
are funny from long ago – this film was released in 1925 – just
aren't that funny by today's standards. This is certainly not the
case with The Gold Rush. Playing his classic Tramp
character, Chaplin is the Lone Prospector during the Gold Rush who is
down on his luck, naturally, and unable to find any gold. That's not
the case for Big Jim (Mack Swain), who has found a huge gold deposit,
but has to leave it during a horrific snowstorm. There are a number
of great scenes in the film with my favorite being Chaplin's dance of
the rolls. It's brilliant in its simplicity and again shows his
mastery of the human body. He takes two forks and puts them into
dinner rolls and mimics a person's legs and feet dancing. There's no
special effects or any tricks. He's just moving the forks and rolls
in a way that makes it look like a dance. Another favorite is when
Big Jim and the evil Black Larsen (Tom Murray) are wrestling over a
gun with the Lone Prospector stuck inside a small cabin. No matter
where the gun is pointed, the Lone Prospector is directly in the line
of fire. The timing of the scene is perfect with the Lone Prospector
in the way at least a dozen times despite the fact he rarely stops to
move. The movie is filled with one classic comedic scene after
another and is certainly one of his most accomplished silent films.
Chaplin often said that if he was to be remembered for one film in
his career, it would be this one. I can certainly see why he felt
that way.
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