Two minutes… ⏱️ … two minutes of reverent silence lapse as the camera passes under a gate bearing an encircled letter K. In the distance, a castle-like mansion beckons, a single lit window draws in the audience.
Through the glass, snow, swirling mysterious snow. When the camera pulls back, the scene reveals a snow globe cupped by an aged, dying man.
As the old man expires, the sphere rolls from his hand and shatters.
At that moment, theatre doors burst open. A piercing shaft of light slices the audience’s peripheral vision. The late-comers stumble and mumble, and their voices boom through the hushed auditorium.
“Hold this. Oh geez, I told that kid extra butter, no ice and lookie, extra ice and no butter. I’m gonna slap him silly. Hey, it’s started already. Oh, it’s that old guy, Orkin something. Scuse me. Oh crap, it’s in black and white.”
“Damn it. I can’t see. Scuse me. Scuse me.”
“Shh! Shh!”
On screen, the dying man whispers something approximating, “Яzzchoz€ßplub.”
“Whuh?”
💬
“What’d he say?”
“Don’t know.”
“Shhh!”
“He said nose rub.”
“Slow snub?”
“Or clothes scrub.”
“No, no. Hose tub.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Maybe he whispered nose blood.”
“Like nosebleed? ’Cause he’s dying?”
“I’m thinkin’ Moe’s Pub.”
“Nonsense, no Moe and no pub.”
“It’s the bar next door. I need a drink.”
“Are you all deaf? He said toe stub.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Shhh.”
“Huh?”
“He said snow glub.”
“No way. It was a snow globe, not a glub.”
“When it rolled, it went glub-glub.”
“That’s silly.”
“Honey, would you go back to the concession stand?. I can’t eat popcorn without butter.”
“Shhh!”
“Scuse me. Scuse me. Scuse me.”
“What?”
“Turn off your phone!”
“I’m googling.”
“What’s it say?”
“Yo. Reddit says rosebud.”
“What? That makes even less sense.”
“Facebook misheard it too.”
“Scuse me. Scuse me. Okay, they gave us triple butter.”
“Two hours debate and we still don’t know.”
“I vote to close-caption theatre subtitles.”
“That concessions kid forgot salt.”
“Shhh.”
“#@%£∂!”
👀
“Hey, look. Something’s painted on… on… on that burning thing. What is that?”
I'm putting my hand up. I don't watch it. Game of Thrones. After several years, apparently, of riveting viewing, the big final season is going down in Middle Earth, or Westworld, or where ever it's set. For three days in a row this week, I've heard people discussing it at the office. When I flick open a news site on the web (CNN, The Guardian, Slate, et al) I'll see a link to an article to something about the show; often more than one. Event television, water cooler television, apparently. I have only ever seen ONE episode of GOT (see, I even know the fan acronym) and that was about six years ago, but through sheer force of osmosis of the press and social media, I know more about that TV show (who's in it, plot lines, plot twists, plot holes, spoilers, surprises, murders, deaths, trivia, controversy, and Starbucks' coffee cups) than I know about I Love Lucy, which I did watch.
Some guy and some girl (who has something to do with dragons) and a coffee cup.
Will I ever watch GOT? I have no idea. I might, I've come late to a lot of TV things. Breaking Bad, for example, which I binge watched over the course of a couple of months a year ago, long after everyone else had seen it. The Wire is another example, and I think it's an excellent show, but I've so far only binged the first season; I'm due to watch the second in 2030. The Wire is now so old it's not even in widescreen—it's in that old boxy TV 4x3 format. And then there's a bunch of recent shows I want to watch, but haven't even begun to make the effort, like The Knick, Peaky Blinders, The Alienist.
And then there are movies, and a couple by Orson Welles I've never seen.
I like Welles' movies and have watched many more than once—Citizen Kane maybe thirty times (I was a nerdy, film crazy kid). I think Touch of Evil (1958) is his best, and I recently rewatched it when I discovered Netflix had the HD version. I've seen that movie maybe ten times over the years, and I still come to the same conclusion the next day about why it's not one of the greatest movies ever made: Charlton Heston, the second least convincing actor in history (in my opinion). He was the 1950s' Tom Cruise (the first). Wood. Grade-A certification. Heston's impersonation of a Mexican man in Touch of Evil is about as good as my impersonation of a New York bagel.
Orson Welles in Touch of Evil
Oh, why couldn't they have cast someone like Ramón Novarro, or Ricardo Montalbán to play the Mexican drug enforcement agent, you know, a real actor (and Mexican)? Oh, yeah. Charlton Heston, that's right. He was the only reason the picture got made at all, and the only reason Orson Welles did the writing, directing, and taking the lead role in it. The studio really didn't want Welles anywhere near the thing. Heston probably laid down one of his you'll have to pry this movie out of my cold dead hands speeches to the studio bosses; such is the clout of a Grade-A certification movie star. I'll give Heston this, he believed in Welles, and Welles gave him his best picture (Welles' best picture, that is).
One of Welles' movies I've never seen is Chimes at Midnight (1965). I've seen several clips, I know it draws upon two Shakespeare plays (Welles plays Sir John Falstaff—Shakespeare's version of Col. Blimp), I've heard it has one of best medieval battle scenes ever put to film, and Welles thought of it as his best film. And that's all I know. Why haven't I seen it? Well, chance would be a fine thing. It's simply never come my way. Citizen Kane was always rerunning on TV when I was a kid. Same too with TOE, and The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, Journey into Fear, Lady from Shanghai, and so on. I suppose, I could simply buy it.
Another of Welles' movies I have never seen is The Other Side of the Wind. I've known about this one for years. And I've never seen it, because (up until recently) almost no one had, because Welles never finished it; he died in 1985. I can now watch this one, and I plan to soon, as it's on Netflix. Somebody finished it; and I believe one of those people was Peter Bogdanovich, who knows a thing or two about movies, was a friend of Welles, and, also, was in the movie. So, there is some authenticity to the completion. I firmly expect the movie will be a strange experiment in film making / mess. But it'll be great to see John Huston, one of my other favorite directors, playing a role in it. John Huston was no slouch as an actor; hell, even he would have made for a convincing Mexican drug enforcement agent.
I've seen almost all of John Huston's films (and a couple I wish I hadn't: The List of Adrian Messenger). And one, The Man Who Would be King, I really wished he'd made earlier, as he had planned, because then it would have starred Humphrey Bogart, and not Sean Connery (the third piece of lumber in the acting yard). Yes, I know it was Kipling and the characters were British Empire, but even Bogart would have made for a convincing Mexican drug enforcement agent. And sergeant in her majesty's army.
I'll shut up now. Forgive my loose ramble. It's the weather here in NZ. Winter is coming and I have a head cold.
Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich in a short scene from Touch of Evil that probably sums up noir in every possible way. Film making, acting, writing. It don't get much better than this.
I thought I’d do something a little different for my post this week. Instead of writing about this or that I thought I’d make it visual. Images from film noir. Images that inspire much, though not all of my work. And I don’t think I’m alone. I think a lot of us have been inspired one way or another by film noir and much of noir is its visual look.
The film noir aesthetic is full of iconic images – some might call them tropes. Either way, they’re striking, they affect us, and they hit us on a subconscious level. Iconic images of shadows, rain, fog, neon, darkness and night, dark streets and alleys, Venetian blinds, oblique angles and reflections, low key lighting, guys with gats, femme fatales and plenty of cigarettes, smoke and smoking. They’re mostly urban, though one of the best, Out of the Past, is largely rural. And, of course, pretty much all are in striking black and white.
I’ve broken the images up into various categories. Of course, one pic might fit into several categories and pretty much all have low key lighting, so there’s no category for that.
It’s hard to narrow down all the great images to a reasonable number for a blog, and I’m sure I’ve left out some good ones. But here goes. And feel free to add your own choices in the comments. I don’t think you can put pictures in but you can tell us about them and the movies they’re from.
Oblique Angles and Striking Images
D.O.A.
Fear in the Night
Born to Kill
The Big Heat
Sunset Boulevard
Strangers on a Train
Sunset Boulevard
D.O.A.
Fear in the Night
Phantom Lady
Fear in the Night
The Lady from Shanghai
He Walked by Night
The Lady from Shanghai
The Maltese Falcon
Nightmare Alley
Black Angel
Dark Passage
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Third Man
The Third Man
Touch of Evil
Shadows, Reflections and Venetian Blinds
The Killers
Crack-Up
Double Indemnity
Fear in the Night
He Walked by Night
The Maltese Falcon
The Narrow Margin
The Narrow Margin
Pitfall
Somewhere in the Night
The Crooked Way
The Woman in the Window
Fog and Rain
The Big Combo
Follow Me Quietly
The Narrow Margin
Scarlet Street
The Blue Dahlia
Smoking
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Maltese Falcon
Out of the Past
Out of the Past
Pitfall
Streets, Alleys and Neon
Act of Violence
Act of Violence
Act of Violence
The Blue Dahlia
Born to Kill
Criss Cross
The Crooked Way
Cry Danger
Cry Danger
Dark Passage
Dark Passage
D.O.A.
Kiss Me, Deadly
The Lady from Shanghai
People, Femme Fatales and Guys with Gats
Gun Crazy
Crack-Up
Scarlet Street
The Big Sleep
Born to Kill
D.O.A.
Dead Reckoning
Detour
D.O.A.
Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity
The Postman Always Rings Twice
I Walk Alone
The Blue Dahlia
Laura
The Big Sleep
Out of the Past
Out of the Past
Out of the Past
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
The Crooked Way
Too Late for Tears
In a Lonely Place and Detour
Lobby Cards, Title Cards, Posters
***
The author as a boy with gat, lucky rabbit's foot and the
shadow of noir over him.
