Archive for the ‘Finite Focus’ Category

  • 13 Dec

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    Finite Focus: Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em (The Third Man)

    8

    Third Man One-SheetTo this day, the closing sequence of Carol Reed‘s classy and stylish 1949 noir-mystery The Third Man remains one of the finest examples of how to end a film. The story is well known, but suffice it to say, third-rate American novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) comes to Vienna on an unknown job offer from an old college buddy, Harry Lime (Orson Welles in one of his is best performances). Just as he arrives at his hotel, Holly discovers that his friend has been recently killed in a hit and run car accident. Clearly out of his element, and often drunk, Holly bumbles his way through a post-war Vienna (occupied by four countries at the time) not having a clue what he is doing, but convinced it was a murder and not an accident, and basically meddling and messing up everyone including the police, Lime’s former business associates and in particular Lime’s ex-girlfriend Anna (Italian beauty Alida Valli). Over the course of solving the murder of Harry Lime, a task which Holly stumbles gracelessly at doing, he forms a relationship with Anna of sorts. After the whole Lime affair wraps up, Holly is finally being taken to the airport to return to America, yet he insists on missing his plane to go back to Anna who is walking home from Lime’s funeral along a stunning tree-lined road. Getting out of the car, Holly leans back against a wagon all cool-as-hell and moviestar-like as Anna walks up the path towards him. But in a final gesture of casual derision, Anna does not even acknowledge Holly existence, even after all they’ve been through together. She walks past showing a totally neutral and nonchalant demeanor. That’s cold. Holly, more or less a failure, nonetheless keeps up the traditional Hollywood posturing and coolly lights a cigarette, still an American stuck in a country he doesn’t understand with nothing in particular to do while Anton Karas‘ peppy and light Zither score closes things out.

    The precise framing and beautiful black and white cinematography of The Third Man make it as relevant today as its political message of America’s destructive bumbling around the world.

  • 11 Dec

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    Finite Focus: Lifted (Enduring Love)

    5

    Enduring Love One-SheetForgive the German dubbing in the clip below. I have not uploaded a digitized version from my own DVD because the scene isn’t really about the dialogue, but more the sharp editing and careful framing (when to go wide, when to go tight). So, taking out the small talk (for those who do not speak German) between characters who have shown up on screen for only seconds may even help underscore how well the complete Air Balloon Sequence works as a piece of ‘silent’ action cinema. In particular at the end of the scene, it’s the rich use of quiet (other than the wind) and the image that is so effective at unsettling while delivering its own form of rush. Mention should also go to some great ‘shakey cam’ work put to good visceral use. Now this is how you combine long-shot, close-up, shakey cam, speed ramp photography, and a few more techniques I may be missing, all to evoke the right reaction in the audience.

    Now the film that follows is a serviceable little thriller that allows the three principals, a pre-James Bond Daniel Craig, the always luminous Samantha Morton and a grimy-creepy Rhys Ifans (I bet you could picture Ryan Gosling in this particular role though) to strut their stuff. But like many films (I’m looking at you Dawn of the Dead remake and you Saving Private Ryan and you Breaking News) it never lives up to its knock-out opening sequence. There is something compelling about a group effort to do something which is so random and futile, and presumably in the end not even necessary (!), yet leave such a lasting mark on people. In essence the jist of this scene may just come right down to the heart of the vast majority of human endeavor.

  • 08 Dec

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    Finite Focus: Reading Maps and Air Guitar (Roger Dodger)

    14

    Roger Dodger One-SheetFirst off, I love films where characters passionately monologue. A character who is introduced via a lengthy monologue can get a lot of the heavy lifting for the audience. How one observes another’s behavior can go a goodly way towards getting under their particular skin and seeing/hearing/feeling what makes them tick; and this is without much in the way of plot or story. Tone. Delivery. Body language can say so much. It is elegant when done right. Consider George C. Scott‘s knock-out intro to the biopic Patton, perhaps one of the greatest opening monologues to a film ever. Full of bravado, self confidence, and bucking against the grain. At one point Scott as Gen. George S. Patton Jr. memorably bellows, “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” It is all in the delivery.

    Now consider his son, Campbell Scott, who gets a less iconic, but no less magnetic monologue on the future total obsolescence of the male gender in Dylan Kidd‘s Rodger Dodger. It’s certainly more ironic (and often interrupted by those of lesser wit) but no less earnest than his fathers 1970 speech. It defines the slightly deluded misanthrope character of Rodger who will undergo subtle changes over the course of the film (note: those of you who think the movie is about Roger’s nephew Jesse and his sexual education in the movie, watch the film again). It throws in Darwinism into a modern sociological cistern (Manhattan) and clearly positions Roger as the alpha-male of modern society (i.e. an advertisement copy writer). His battle (of sorts) is no different than those of the classic western macho-men who are on the eve of their own demise (Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch and Ride the High Country).

    The handheld photography on display here is similar to the work of Steven Soderbergh, although used to an entirely different end. Not aiming for intimacy, but rather a lurid spying, observing the human animal in their natural habitat. The conversation revolves around some frank sexuality undercut by embarrassed (yet enraptured, particularly the women) listeners, where the men try to diffuse Roger’s intensity with lesser quips. Note that there is a certain air of Isabella Rossellini both humouring him and mocking him at the same time. Roger remains undeterred, plowing forward, seeing (or imagining) the collective futile end for his gender, but fighting the good fight nonetheless. Certainly something in common there with the good General.

  • 06 Dec

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    Finite Focus: Sensual Soderbergh (Out of Sight)

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    Out Of Sight One-SheetI could (and will) make a case that the single best sex scene ever filmed, certainly my favorite, is in Steven Soderbergh‘s Out Of Sight (or as the cool kids say, Oceans 10). George Clooney is the charming bank robber, Jennifer Lopez is the sexy US Marshall. Clearly the movie is more interested in letting the actors and the audience have fun (in the way Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn do in Charade, but it is equally worth a mention that it is a part of the trifecta of high quality Elmore Leonard adaptations in the 1990s (Jackie Brown and Get Shorty being the other two). This is a movie star picture of the highest quality, even if Clooney and Lopez were far from A-Listers at the time. A case could be made that this is Lopez‘s only good performance in a movie (she is a solid 10/10 in the acting department here) that hangs a crime plot around the romance and sexual desire of two good looking people in completely opposite professions who feel a spark during a chance encounter. Fantasy and desire and the danger of the whole thing cause them to flirt with the idea of a sexual time-out. Scenes of flirtation in a bar are intercut with foreplay in hotel room while the intimate handheld camera is often in closeup with little gestures and body language. Snow falls outside a warmly lit hotel room.

    Structurally this scene is incredibly ambitious (apparently it owes an inspiration to the nearly pornographic scene in Don’t Look Now, a dark and moody thriller that couldn’t be further from this glossy crime/romance picture. Here the scene is glossy and slick and even tasteful, yet hardly gratuitous (a claim often made in Don’t Look Now). Why would you want a sex scene tasteful and glossy? Well, you’ll understand after you see this scene just what can be done with the right editing rhythm, lighting and angles. Soderbergh experiments with time and space and uses the audio as the bridge between the two (and he would carry these experiments much further with the underseen The Limey one year later). It’s a knock out of a scene on its own, but seen as the real climax of Out of Sight, in context with the rest of the film (a snippet of dialogue says it best, “It’s like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there’s this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it.“), this scene, for me, is some sort of cinema landmark.

  • 03 Dec

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    Finite Focus: Acceptance in Slow Motion (Birth)

    5

    Birth One SheetHere is a fine use of the long take and an effective way to use music within the movie (the egghead term is diegetic) in a way that score is traditionally used. In Jonathan Glazer‘s criminally under seen Birth, Nicole Kidman‘s husband dies mysteriously of a heart attack while jogging through central park one snowy evening (another stellar long take shot worthy of a finite focus). Ten years later a young boy (yes, he is 10 years old) shows up mysteriously at Nicole Kidman‘s upscale New York Apartment claiming to be her husband reincarnated. Everyone present, including Kidman, her mother and her new fiancé scoff at such a preposterous notion and send the kid on his way. But the kid has very, very intimate details of their relationship, highly specific details only her husband would know.

    Doubt yields to acceptance in a startlingly effective visual manner in the scene. She is attending the Opera with her fiancé shortly after the encounter with the kid. A close up on Nicole Kidman‘s face for 2 solid minutes to the opening strains of Wagner‘s The Valkyrie. Is it her acting? Is it what the viewer tries to read into her subtle shifts in facial expression and put their own expectations of what her character will do? Is it the direction/sound/framing on the scene? Perhaps all of the above. In particular I love that twice Danny Huston leans in to say something which we do not hear. It clear that Kidman is so absorbed in the mental tug-of-war with what to believe that she just ignores him. This mirrors her own ignoring of good sense (dealing with her husbands death) and accepting some sort of supernatural reappearance of her husband.

    This is the type of filmmaking that both maximizes the tall Australian actresses icy onscreen persona and deconstructs it all at the same time. It echoes Stanley Kubrick in style and technique (he also used Nicole Kidman to capitalize on her ice and fire in his final film, Eyes Wide Shut and used several diegetic musical cues in A Clockwork Orange) and yet, Kidman‘s insular and fragile performance also recalls Todd Haynes‘ Safe, specifically the scene where Julianne Moore is getting her hair permed; also done in a 30 second-long close-up. As effective as it is, I think this technique should be used more.

  • 01 Dec

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    Finite Focus: Hey. Am I Laughing? (Sullivan’s Travels)

    12

    SullivansTravelsIn my mind, if there is ever a scene from classic cinema that warms the cockles of my heart, it is this rendition of “Go Down Moses” near the end of Preston Sturges‘ Sullivan’s Travels. As for the film itself, it is a great meandering blend of slapstick, screwball comedy and social commentary. In other words, the kind of film that is simply not being made today outside of David O. Russell and The Coen Brothers (No Country for Old Men excepted). It’s an easy follow up to the previous Finite Focus on Miller’s Crossing, because Sturges in general, and Sullivan’s Travels in particular, play such a large part on informing the Coen‘s films from The Lady Killers, Intolerable Cruelty to the most obvious one, O Brother Where Art Thou? which derives its title in direct reference to this film. While I’m on the subject, check out the framing in this scene and tell me you don’t think of at least 5 or 6 different Coen films.

    The story follows Joel McCrea‘s well-to-do director, Sully, who is getting tired and bored of making slapstick comedy pictures. He wants to adapt an ‘important’ novel on poverty called “O Brother Where Art Thou?” but his people, at first baffled, inform him that he doesn’t know anything about being poor because he has been rich all of his life. Sully then has several abortive and over-the-top bumbling attempts to ‘become poor’ (picking up the sexy Veronica Lake along the way). He finally does (accidentally) end up on (very) hard times through a extraordinarily convoluted series of events and is sent to a prison labour camp.

    Cut to a church in the middle of a swamp and a sermon and an act of charity by letting the inmates watch a Disney cartoon. While Stanley Kubrick ends Full Metal Jacket on a note of bleak irony with Mickey Mouse, Sturges uses the comic pratfalls of Pluto to bind different social classes of the poor together in the bond of nearly hysterical laughter. Despite the somewhat disturbing intensity of the mirth at one point or another, it ends up making a convincing case for the value (and necessity) of silly comedies as an escape valve. That it takes place in a church is no coincidence, there is an honest to goodness reverence for the movies in this scene, bordering on holy vision. This is especially strange (yet still wonderful) to me in light of the mega-corp that Disney is today over what it was in 1941. And the message filtered down through the decades may very well be that Rob Schneider, Will Farrell and The Stooges should be pretty darn proud of themselves. In the end, “O Brother Where Art Thou?” is never made (well, actually it was in the year 2000 as a sepia tone, loopy and musical take on Homer and the deep south with a KKK rally envisioned as an homage to the Wizard of Oz, hardly the social-realist picture imagined by Sully, but funny in and of itself by far) Sully’s voyage of self-discovery lends credence to his earlier career having more value to a larger number of people than going all Oscar on his audience. (Aside: the Coen‘s missed that point (or chose to ignore it) with their recent feature!) Sullivan’s Travels pulls a variety of tones and moods off in a nearly effortless seeming tight-rope walk; but it is a celebration of laughter as the universal cure-all and often the only one. Its heart is in the right place and the schmaltz is left at the door. I’d buy that for a dollar!

  • 29 Nov

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    Finite Focus: Oh Danny Boy! (Miller’s Crossing)

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    Miller’s Crossing One SheetIn a recent Time Magazine article, the elusive Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers sat down for a little chat. At one point in the conversation, McCarthy praises The Coen’s 1990 Miller’s Crossing by saying simply “I don’t want to embarrass you, but that’s just a very, very fine movie.” To which Joel Coen replies, “Eh, it’s just a damn rip-off.” And McCarthy concludes, “No, I didn’t say it wasn’t a rip-off. I understand it’s a rip-off. I’m just saying it’s good.” A pastiche of modern and classic gangster conventions, film noir and even Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo set to the rhythm of the Coen’s mighty gift for good gab, to say there is a lot going on in Miller’s Crossing is a bit of an understatement. Story, characters, production and cinematography are all spot on. The feather in the cap, however, is how almost every scene has touches that amp things up to 11 without spoiling the flow, feel or texture of the film. Along with the ridiculously quotable dialogue (“Now take your flunky and dangle”), this becomes the essence of the film.

    The scene which comes the closest to running the film off the rails, almost becoming a cartoon (It’s operatic and silly in the way the Warner Brother’s Looney Tunes did Wagner), is one that sticks out on first viewing, but then becomes something that you just cannot help but look forward to on subsequent viewings.

    Gang boss Leo, played by the great Albert Finney, who is a bit of a bumbler and a blowhard in the film up to this point, is ambushed in his mansion by two assassins as he settles down in his bed with a cigar. Noticing smoke coming up from the floor boards (the result of a slaying in another part of the house) he springs to action resulting in a vicious head shot of one of the killers (considering the constant hat motif in Miller’s Crossing, any head shot probably isn’t by accident). Seizing the dead mans Tommy Gun and diving out a window (still in his nightrobe), Leo opens up on the other assassin and fires and endless stream of bullets first at the man, then at the getaway car and driver. He just keeps firing and firing (and firing) until the car finally crashes and explodes. The whole scene plays like orchestrated slapstick with a gory grace note or two and Irish ballad “Danny Boy” crescendos on the soundtrack. But the thing that really and truly makes the scene own the screen is that all the gunplay and murder is for Leo like great sex (or it is just the thrill to be alive?) In a bit of movie-only foresight, just before the shooting must have started, Leo thoughtfully kept his extinguished cigar close at hand. At the end of the rumpus he produces it from his nightrobe and plants it in his mouth with pure satisfaction.

    There are hundreds of moments, both large and small, in Miller’s Crossing worthy of comment and consideration, but the joyous lunacy of this sequence is a signature Coen Brothers invention. Hardly the rip-off that the brothers themselves self-deprecatingly consider it. Heck, Miller’s Crossing might just be the best American Film of the 1990′s *Wink Wink*

  • 28 Nov

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    Finite Focus: Shame on You! (Magnolia)

    17

    Magnolia One SheetJulianne Moore‘s fragile and foul (or is it foully fragile?) trophy wife in Magnolia has a whopper of a break-down/snap at while getting a drug prescription filled out at a pharmacy in Magnolia. Her character and this scene in particluar is like a very, very aggressive riff on her introverted wilting flower character in Todd Haynes’ Safe (a movie that might possibly be the best American film of the 1990s). Note the somewhat upbeat and amusing yet driving musical score in the background here. Certainly another American director that specializes in this sort of laugh-and-empathize-with-the-character-simultaneously style is Alexander Payne, but he has yet to achieve a scene as riveting as this in any of his films. There is so much guilt and truth and emotion (and visual information in the form of body language) in this scene. Quite simply, it does the great thing that movies can do.

    The scene gives the viewer the context of why she melts down (as in pharmacists are condescending jerks), yet also puts them in the shoes of just seeing some half-crazy person tee off in a pharmacy. People that would have you look away in awkward social embarrassment (as in ‘whoa, back off there lady, too much!’) in real life, yet it is all so riveting on the big screen. Like reading Elmore Leonard novels. Lowlifes and recovering burnouts that you wouldn’t give a second glance to, or steer clear of them completely now become like ‘best friends’ from reading about their scheming trials and tribulations. Furthermore, if you ever encountered Bubbles from HBO’s The Wire, you probably wouldn’t even give him loose change, yet he is perhaps the stand-out sympathetic/compelling character in a show full of fascinating individuals. Magnolia may be one of the great reminders that melodrama and art-film are not mutually exclusive (Hmmm, there’s Haynes and Moore again with Far From Heaven). In the end, I just love Ms. Moore in full-on unhinged mode and it is unlikely this scene will ever be topped in her career.

    (Note: Before you click below, Fair Warning on the Strong Language in this Scene.)

  • 26 Nov

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    Finite Focus: Me And My Shadow (Time Bandits)

    5

    Time Bandits One SheetThe complexity of the scene is the thing. Here we are as viewers laughing at the ridiculousness of half a dozen short men who themselves are conning another short man based on his hang-ups on being short. What really cracks me up is that even though everyones life is on the line, the ‘Bandits cannot help but getting into a petty fight due to their inherent lack of choreography. And despite this scrum, David Rappaport‘s fearless leader Randall thinks the whole thing went smashing! This scene is slapstick absurdity with a whimsical flavour, but is hardly random or unconsidered. In other words this is vintage Terry Gilliam. The coup de grace of the whole thing is how much Ian Holm‘s Napoleon Bonapart, the man for whom the performance is presented, has these sublime reaction shots during the scene before he succumbs to the mad genius of the whole episode, much like the audience does. Of course there are many other great vignettes in Time Bandits, the film delights in going from one to the next. But other than Ralph Richardson‘s truly brilliant Supreme Being (“I’m not entirely Dim!”) I can’t think of a single section that captures the flavour of the film better than this one.

  • 22 Nov

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    Finite Focus: The Musical Bus Ride (Almost Famous)

    0

    Almost Famous One SheetAs a regular feature for those of us sitting in the third row, we’ve decided it worthy to not only pick apart film and cinema as a whole, but also the individual scene. This regular feature here at Row Three has been dubbed “Finite Focus;” an in depth look at a finite moment of time in a motion picture instead of the neverending stream of celluloid that graces our many multiplexes and repertory theaters across the globe.

    Throughout my movie watching lifetime, I’ve found that quite often, a feature can be won or lost by one individual component; even if the other parts to the cinematic mechanism seem to be sticking a bit. That component might be the cinematography, an excellent acting performance or an extremely compellling and well thought out story line. Sometimes though, even if a film is sub-par as a whole, certain individual scenes may stand out as excellent for any number of reasons. While the particular film discussed within this (innaugural) edition of “Finite Focus” doesn’t fall within that category, I can think of several that do; which I’m sure will be discussed at some point in the hopefully long and illustrious life of Row Three.

    Today’s “Finite Focus” feature film that carries the scene of which I’d like to mention is Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. There are few things in life I appreciate and love more than, or as much as, movies. Two of those things, however, are music and friends. The bus ride scene in Almost Famous embodies all three of those things magically and beautifully.

    The film, if you’ve not seen it (shame on you!), revolves around a young journalist following a rock and roll band and touring with them as their career rises during the early 1970′s. After one particularly nasty and potentially band breaking fight, all the members split up for the evening and go their seperate ways. The camera chooses to follow the young journalist and the lead singer, Russell, to a party where Russell ingests massive amounts of drugs and alcohol. So much so that the band has to come searching for him in the morning. When they find him, they are still none too happy with him especially as he is still in a drug induced stupor and has put them behind schedule.

    Almost FamousHere is where one of my most memorable and beautiful and smile inducing scenes begins to take off. As the sun rises in the distance and the tour bus travels along the countryside with its occupants on non speaking terms, the soft flow of a piano is heard slowly emerging seemingly out of thin air. As the volume grows, we hear that it is none other than Sir Elton John and his ballad, “Tiny Dancer.”

    As the lyrics open, everyone on the bus is still bitter and hostile. Suddenly, the drummer starts bobbing his head and silently grooving to himself. Then another band mate starts to mumble along with some of the words and carry a slight tune. Soon, more voices spring to life and back up the drummer’s vocals with much more authority and volume. Various sleeping eyes slowly open around the bus as the memorable tune fills their collective heads. As the song begins to crescendo, more voices start to fill the air until when the song finally hits its peak at the chorus, the entire bus is filled with smiling faces and jovial singing. There are knowing glances amongst the band mates and manly shoulder grabs as the mood shifts from smug to joyous in mere minutes.

    What makes the scene so memorable for me, is the message of the sheer emotional power of music. With a nice hook, some memorable lyrics and a slowly crescendoing tune, all the bad things in the world disappear and everything is right with the world. Even now, I can’t help but allow for a nice large smile to creep across my face just thinking about this scene.

    Of course, Cameron Crowe is well known in the film industry as someone who knows how to pick just the right soundtrack; then how to utilize and time those songs perfectly to individual sequences within his films. In this particular case, Crowe’s choice to use Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” for the magical music is a big part of what makes the sequence work so well. It’s a great road trip song, it sounds lovely, it’s easy to sing along with and most importantly, while it builds its listeners in aural brilliance, it is a near perfect musical choice to help slowly build a scene; a scene that needs to be built deliberately, slowly and emotionally.

    These types of scenarios, real or imagined, are the parts of life that make it so enjoyable. The little things: good music, good friends and good times. These are also the things that make life, and this scene, so damn memorable and pleasurable.

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