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I went to see The Killing (1956) on Wednesday by myself, and the double feature The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974) and Charley Varrick with A (person to be pseudonymed later).
The Killing was excellent noir, full of chiascuro and dutch angles, with a tight tight script, including the final escape with the money being foiled by airline safety regulations!
For the double feature, Eddie Mueller, who hosts Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies if you have that on cable, was there to introduce both movies. Since the theme of Noir City this year is "The Big Knockover: Heists, Hold-ups, and Schemes Gone Wrong", the Noir Foundation included several movies that are strictly speaking outside of the classic Noir genre, but are classics demonstrating the evolution of heist movies. Thus, we had 'Walter Matthau night' with the double feature.
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974) is an excellent movie, and surprisingly funny. Some of the characters are painfully racist and sexist (though generally we're supposed to laugh at them for being so embarrassing to themselves), and more than one of the subway workers are Too Dumb To Live, but it's a tense, controlled heist. Also, Hector Elizondo was damn near unrecognizable to me -- I'm so used to him in his usual roles of dignified authority figure that I didn't realize that the gang member who was so violent that he'd been kicked out the Mafia was played by him until about half way through the movie, even though he'd been listed in the opening credits! And the guy playing Mr. Brown was completely unrecognizable; it wasn't until I looked up Earl Hindman that I realized where I'd seen him before...sort of.
We did wonder if there were cultural clues that we missing, as one hostage characters is credited as The Homosexual, another as The W.A.S.P., and another as The Salesman -- I had to look up the actors to figure out who was playing who, which was slightly weird since I did live through most of the 70s (admittedly as a child) and I was completely confused by what were the contextual clues of who was who.
Charley Varrick was incredible entertaining, except for two random 'sex' scenes (it was a PG movie, so it was all heavily implied) that I think contributed nothing to the story and also seemed to come out of left field. As A (person to be pseudonymed later) said, "on, right... the 70s". Amusingly, in his introduction Eddie Mueller explained that the movie was originally written with the intention of having Clint Eastwood play Charlie -- Eastwood was a frequent collaborator with director Don Siegel and scriptwriter Dean Reisner -- but he turned down the part and Malthau was cast. Which is just as well, because Andrew Robinson played Harman Sullivan, Charley's fellow bank-robber, and him playing that role opposite Eastwood the year after playing the killer in Dirty Harry would have been... different, to say the least.
One of the delights of Charley Varrick as a movie and a character is that Charley is extremely competent and quickly figures out that the fact they have grabbed $375,000 from a local bank in a nowhere town in New Mexico ('Tres Cruces', which was suspiciously lacking in both adobe buildings and creosote bush; I think they filmed the movie mostly in SoCal) means that they've accidentally stolen money from the mob. Harman, because he's dumb as a sack of hammers, still wants to spend his share on liquor, women, and high living. Pretty soon the story is about Charley setting up his getaway without getting killed by his erstwhile partner-in-crime or tracked down by the mob enforcer sent to recover the money and deal with the theives, a man of little humor named Molly.
The conservation of detail was amazing -- the ending tied in the mob banker, Molly, and Charley's history as a barnstormer in a way that extremely satisfying and was a nice change from classic noir, where no one gets away with the heist, no matter how clever or professional they've been in the criminal efforts.
And tonight, because I wanted to, I made Flemish Waffles from Everyone Eats Well In Belgium. I omitted the cognac, because making waffles taste of alcohol is pretty much a Do-Not-Want for me, but they were pretty tasty nevertheless, and I have a stack of waffles for breakfast for the week; I'm still getting used to my waffle iron, and it's a bit tricky to get it adjusted to be Just Crispy Enough. The waffle was especially good with the salted brown sugar peach jam I put up several weeks ago, and tomorrow I might try it with the rest of the black raspberry preserve I have open, or the pear compote. Maybe someday I'll get some pearl sugar and try the recipe for Leige waffles -- though I think I'd need a different waffle iron to actually get them perfectly right.
The Killing was excellent noir, full of chiascuro and dutch angles, with a tight tight script, including the final escape with the money being foiled by airline safety regulations!
For the double feature, Eddie Mueller, who hosts Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies if you have that on cable, was there to introduce both movies. Since the theme of Noir City this year is "The Big Knockover: Heists, Hold-ups, and Schemes Gone Wrong", the Noir Foundation included several movies that are strictly speaking outside of the classic Noir genre, but are classics demonstrating the evolution of heist movies. Thus, we had 'Walter Matthau night' with the double feature.
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974) is an excellent movie, and surprisingly funny. Some of the characters are painfully racist and sexist (though generally we're supposed to laugh at them for being so embarrassing to themselves), and more than one of the subway workers are Too Dumb To Live, but it's a tense, controlled heist. Also, Hector Elizondo was damn near unrecognizable to me -- I'm so used to him in his usual roles of dignified authority figure that I didn't realize that the gang member who was so violent that he'd been kicked out the Mafia was played by him until about half way through the movie, even though he'd been listed in the opening credits! And the guy playing Mr. Brown was completely unrecognizable; it wasn't until I looked up Earl Hindman that I realized where I'd seen him before...sort of.
We did wonder if there were cultural clues that we missing, as one hostage characters is credited as The Homosexual, another as The W.A.S.P., and another as The Salesman -- I had to look up the actors to figure out who was playing who, which was slightly weird since I did live through most of the 70s (admittedly as a child) and I was completely confused by what were the contextual clues of who was who.
Charley Varrick was incredible entertaining, except for two random 'sex' scenes (it was a PG movie, so it was all heavily implied) that I think contributed nothing to the story and also seemed to come out of left field. As A (person to be pseudonymed later) said, "on, right... the 70s". Amusingly, in his introduction Eddie Mueller explained that the movie was originally written with the intention of having Clint Eastwood play Charlie -- Eastwood was a frequent collaborator with director Don Siegel and scriptwriter Dean Reisner -- but he turned down the part and Malthau was cast. Which is just as well, because Andrew Robinson played Harman Sullivan, Charley's fellow bank-robber, and him playing that role opposite Eastwood the year after playing the killer in Dirty Harry would have been... different, to say the least.
One of the delights of Charley Varrick as a movie and a character is that Charley is extremely competent and quickly figures out that the fact they have grabbed $375,000 from a local bank in a nowhere town in New Mexico ('Tres Cruces', which was suspiciously lacking in both adobe buildings and creosote bush; I think they filmed the movie mostly in SoCal) means that they've accidentally stolen money from the mob. Harman, because he's dumb as a sack of hammers, still wants to spend his share on liquor, women, and high living. Pretty soon the story is about Charley setting up his getaway without getting killed by his erstwhile partner-in-crime or tracked down by the mob enforcer sent to recover the money and deal with the theives, a man of little humor named Molly.
The conservation of detail was amazing -- the ending tied in the mob banker, Molly, and Charley's history as a barnstormer in a way that extremely satisfying and was a nice change from classic noir, where no one gets away with the heist, no matter how clever or professional they've been in the criminal efforts.
And tonight, because I wanted to, I made Flemish Waffles from Everyone Eats Well In Belgium. I omitted the cognac, because making waffles taste of alcohol is pretty much a Do-Not-Want for me, but they were pretty tasty nevertheless, and I have a stack of waffles for breakfast for the week; I'm still getting used to my waffle iron, and it's a bit tricky to get it adjusted to be Just Crispy Enough. The waffle was especially good with the salted brown sugar peach jam I put up several weeks ago, and tomorrow I might try it with the rest of the black raspberry preserve I have open, or the pear compote. Maybe someday I'll get some pearl sugar and try the recipe for Leige waffles -- though I think I'd need a different waffle iron to actually get them perfectly right.
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