IMDb #116 Review: Chinatown

Source: Wikipedia

Film noir in color feels wrong for so many reasons. Not least of them is young Jack Nicholson.

Despite the title, of the story actually happens in Chinatown; most of it concerns the Los Angeles water supply in the Silver Age of the silver screen. Water, not Asians. In California, only one of these runs in short supply.

Even then, detective work sucked. But the typical detective personality makes hard work harder. He's a cynical, morally murky, antagonistic mercenary. The perpetual poverty intrinsic to the vocation doesn't help.

When work dries up like water in the desert sun, the alleged hero resorts to dirty jobs. He secretly photographs adulterers and distributes those incriminating Polaroids and accidentally detonates marriages. Amid the sleazy paparazzi moonlighting, he strikes a gusher: the water wars.

Digging around, he unearths weird shit. Disappearing water, dead people, and forged land records signed by long-dead people. As payment for services rendered, he receives a tax-free helping of trouble. A slit nostril keeps his smug mug in bandages for a predominant portion of the film.

Apparently moving water around is serious business. Divert it from farmland, dump it in the ocean,  and people freak out and start cutting up noses.

To keep the detective on edge, he bumps into the requisite femme fatale. The daughter of a wealthy water mogul (which exist -- California), she has more issues than a water tower made of mosquito netting. Her typical L.A. marriage problems, like infidelity and murder, escalate into kidnapping and even more murder and the police doing as little as possible about it. Which makes more room to work for our anarchic detective.

The consensual underage incest subplot becomes skeevier in retrospect considering director Roman Polanski's later scandals. And the infuriating ending only makes it worse.

What's there to do when you witness something horrible that there's nothing you can do about? Forget it, it's Chinatown.

131 minutes.

IMDb #163 Review: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Source: Wikipedia

Back in the golden slate-gray age of film noir, a hard-boiled detective could hunt for a plot device just by engaging shady characters in lengthy expositional dialogues.

The stuff gleaned from that conversation is then invalidated by the next conversation, not to mention garbled by Humphrey Bogart's signature drawl. Awfully often, we hear one side of a phone conversation and have the pleasure of extrapolating the other half. And then, from this succession of half-conversations, we somehow extrapolate a classic movie.

Sam Spade is a private dick "too slick for [his] own good." (Finding unintentionally hilarious innuendo makes old movies so much more fun to watch. Other gems: "You're a good man, sister," and "I've taken all the riding from you I'm gonna take." Collect them all!)

When SS's unlikable partner loses an argument with a bullet, and so does the dude his partner was tailing. Now that it's gotten semi-personal, our alliterative detective takes up the case.

How does he do it? Well, he mumbles a lot, and mumbles fast. He only smiles ironically, and the rest of the time he emotes about as much as a stroke victim encased in concrete. With these intimidation tactics, he casually drops vaguely worded intel. The nervous nellies fill in the rest. To get the truth, Bogie slaps it out of men, obliges womanly wiles, and follows up every lead on the missing Maltese "dingus" (as he calls it -- what'd I tell you about innuendo).

The spiffy gents in fancy suits wade him into a swamp of murky morality. As an archetypical detective, he's more interested in getting paid than bringing criminals to justice (or so he claims).

As for the titular plot device? The introductory text scroll sells a hackneyed backstory about the Crusades and a gift to Charles V of Spain that fell afoul of pirates, or some such drivel. Some dame asks Bogie what it's made of, and he replies, "The stuff dreams are made of." Intangible ideals, self-deception, and 8 mm film. But things people will cheat and kill and shell out the big bucks for.

And occasionally jabber about little to nothing for 100 minutes out of 101.

101 minutes.

IMDb #178 Review: Touch of Evil (1958)

Source: Wikipedia

After the most splendid tracking shot in cinema history, a rich couple's car goes kablooey on the US-Mexico border. This kicks off an international investigation packed with more crime and drama and backstabbing than the crime that started it all.

Two butthead cops, naturally, butt heads.

Orson Welles plays the gruff, tough, cigar-chomping celebrity detective who relies on hunches. Charlton Heston, meanwhile, carries on the grand movie tradition of beefy white Americans failing to impersonate foreigners. He's *allegedly* a mustachioed Mexican cop named Vargas, on honeymoon with his full-blooded blonde American wife.

This casting transgression is the only funny part in the movie, so treasure it.

As I'm-Totally-A-Mexican sinks deeper into his work, he deposits his lovely lady at a sketchy resort motel in the pristine wasteland. Which, surprise, belongs to the local mobsters totally not responsible for the bombing. Never mind the nitwit running the front desk. Cue the kidnappers.

Meanwhile, the buttheads chase the case. Dynamite missing from a construction site? Evidence mysterious manifests in the prime suspect's personal effects. Fat-Dumb-American accuses So-Fake-Mexican of protecting his fellow countryman. Fake-Mexican accuses Fat-American of planting evidence. Not a recipe for success, just headaches. So many headaches that the ex-boozer Welles turns into an ex-ex-boozer.

Crippled by this infighting, the sloppiest joint investigation in history deteriorates further. Fake-Mexican is understandably distracted by his missing wife, once he finally realizes she's missing.

Ultimately, it's the classic contrast between the by-the-book cop and the one who gets his hands dirty. (Not always mutually exclusive categories.) But with the car bomb, the break for work, kidnapping, international squabbles, and the ugly morally-complex solution, we have yet another contender for the shittiest honeymoon ever.

112 minutes.

IMDb #221 Review: Notorious (1947)

Source: Wikipedia

At last, film noir starring the femme fatale. The stone-hearted private dick (this time a G-man snoop) takes a backseat, mostly to create romantic tension for our lovely drunken floozy.

The Americanized daughter of a Nazi officer, she receives a special job:

• Take a Brazilian vacation on Uncle Sam’s dime.
• Hook up with some Nazi expatriates (ahem: German businessmen), maybe seduce one or two, stoke up an old flame.
• Finally, report every seemingly inconsequential detail to the fedora-toting CIA spooks who just happened to follow her down.

On what motivation? To demonstrate her patriotism (veiled threat intentional). Also, to show her spontaneous love/infatuation for aforementioned G-man snoop, who fortunately happens to be devilishly handsome. Her new German fiance is notably less so.

When the twitterpated dummkopf wakes from his honeymoon daze, he makes a shocking revelation ripped straight out of Third Reich men’s magazines: "Oh sheiße, I married an American spy!"

As if the gal’s recurrent interactions with the suspicious-as-hell American Adonis weren't evidence enough. Her unlucky hubby should thank Hitler’s ghost he lives with his canny old mother, despite his own obscene wealth and scary Nazi refugee buddies who drop in for schnapps.

Alfred Hitchcock captures the war aftermath the best way he knows how: a genre movie with all the trappings. Snippy speeches about love; suspense from repeated near-discoveries; posh dinner parties; and so, so much infidelity. There are hints at the potential of Nazi nukes, foreshadowing the Cold War’s baby steps and the subsequent arms race. But, like the Cold War, after ages and ages of mounting tension, the movie just…ends.

Like so.

101 minutes.

IMDb #241 Review: The Big Sleep (1946)

Source: Wikipedia

There seem to be three distinct detective personalities. The Holmes knockoff, an eccentric bastard who works independently, usually in contempt of authorities but eventually earning their grudging respect (e.g., Auguste Dupin, Hercule Poirot, Gregory House).

There's also The innocuous snoop, usually a kid or a kindly old lady, who attracts trouble by being nice and nosy (e.g., Miss Marple, Father Brown, Nancy Drew).

Then there’s this guy. The hard-boiled detective. The tough loner, tragic lover, nihilistic wisecracker, he haunts the crime-ridden urban sprawl with a solemn sense of duty (e.g., Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Batman). No fun at parties, but objectively cooler, by virtue of being so relentlessly depressing.

Humphrey Bogart lends his sad face and nasal drawl to a private dick (or “shamus,” he calls himself) poking his nose into a blackmail case. Driven by curiosity, dumb luck, and a 1938 Plymouth DeLuxe, he gets back more trouble than is worth $25 a day plus expenses.

Here we have a noir film with all the trappings. Trench coats, fedoras, booze, cigarettes. Chilly, witty banter. Not just one, but two femme fatales, a rich old cripple’s pair of shady-ass daughters. A shamelessly melodramatic orchestral soundtrack. Dames screaming, guys dropping from one slug on the mug.

No discernible message, no social commentary, just pure plot. And what a plot. Lies, corpses, sketchy characters, and gambits pile up, then collapse in an avalanche of befuddling yet profoundly entertaining mess.

I recommend it for daytime sleepers, nostalgic old people (fine, Grandpa, I confess: folks were classier back in the day), and amateur sleuths seeking badass lessons.

114 minutes.