To Have and Have Not

November 18, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow.”

One can only an imagine an audience in New York in 1944 sitting back with a gasp and then collectively going, “Whoa!” From her first moment on screen, Lauren Bacall lit up the cinema with her smoky voice and burning eyes, somehow keeping cool, almost mocking, while at the same time beckoning. Of course, it didn’t hurt that future husband Humphrey Bogart was the man she was looking at.

Although To Have and Have Not started out as an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel, it ended up as a movie made to capitalize on the huge success of Casablanca and Bogart’s sudden and overwhelming popularity. Much of the film echoes the former movie with great success. Instead of Morocco, the movie is set in and around the Caribbean island of Martinique, part of the French West Indies, Bogart is a skipper of his own boat, rather than a bar owner, and the French underground is once again recruiting him to their cause of fighting the Nazis. This time, however, he doesn’t go for the foxy wife of the French freedom fighter, but rather the lost little American nightclub singer.

Skipper Harry Morgan (Bogart) has been hanging out in Martinique taking sportsmen out into the ocean for deep sea fishing. Accompanied by his alcoholic assistant, Eddie (Walter Brennan), Morgan has hired his boat out for the last two weeks to a fellow named Johnson Johnson (Walter Sande), who owes him $825. When Johnson blows his chance of hooking a big marlin, he decides to call it quits and Morgan asks for his money. Johnson tells him that he will have to get it from the bank the next morning and they agree to meet at 10:30. Returning to his hotel, the manager, a man they call “Frenchy” (Marcel Dalio), begs Morgan to help the French underground with a clandestine operation, but he refuses because the danger is too great. As they talk, a sultry young American woman, Marie Browning (Bacall), steps up to his door and asks for a light. That’s where the real fun begins. Right from the beginning, Morgan gives her the nickname “Slim” and she comes back with “Steve” and that is what they call each other from then on and there is no doubt whatsoever that these two are going to get together.

A group of French patriots visit Morgan trying to convince him to help them, but he still isn’t having anything to do with them. Later that evening in the hotel restaurant, Slim sings along with piano playing songwriter Hoagy Carmichael and flirts with Johnson, eventually picking his pocket. Morgan catches her. Up in his room, they look through the wallet and he discovers that Johnson has a plane ticket for 6:30 the next morning and a fistful of travelers checks. Figuring that Johnson was trying to skip out on him, they confront the man, but a gunfight breaks out between the police and the underground characters and Johnson is killed before he can sign over the traveler’s checks. Strapped for money and with Frenchy demanding the hotel bill get paid, Morgan agrees to go to another island and pick up resistance leader Paul de Bursac (Walter Surovy). When he and Eddie get there, they discover that de Bursac has brought his wife, sultry Helene (Dolores Moran). As they head back to Martinique, they encounter a patrol boat. Morgan raises his rifle to shoot at the boat and de Bursac, not realizing he’s firing at the spotlight, tries to stop him. In the gunfire exchange, de Bursac gets hit in the shoulder. Hiding in the basement of the hotel, Morgan removes the bullet and helps him to recover, with Helene hovering over him. This makes Slim jealous and intensifies her passion for Morgan.

With everything coming to a head, Morgan decides it’s time to get out. But how?

The nicknames Slim and Steve are really cool. It turns out that director Howard Hawks and his wife, Nancy Keith, used to call each other by those nicknames. It was Nancy, in fact, who saw Bacall’s photo in Harper’s Bazaar and pointed out the 19 year old model to Hawks, who was looking for somebody new.

Originally, Howard Hughes owned the rights to Hemingway’s novel, but sold them to Hawks, who had always wanted to do a movie based on a Hemingway book. According to the documentary which accompanies the 2003 DVD, A Love Story: The Story of ‘To Have and Have Not, Hawks told Hemingway that he could make a movie of the famous writer’s worst novel, which Hawks believed was To Have and Have Not. Getting the green light from Warner Brothers, he hired well-known Hollywood screenwriter Jules Furthman to draft the screenplay. With objections from the Roosevelt administration that the book was politically sensitive regarding Cuba, they brought in William Faulkner, who moved the location to Martinique and made other wholesale changes that rendered the book almost superfluous as source material.

The chemistry between Bogart and Bacall isn’t the only thing going on in this film. Bacall and Hoagy Carmichael are great together. Hoagy performs his own composition, “Hong Kong Blues,” co-written with Stanley Adams, and he plays with the little house band on a song called “The Rhumba Jumps,” that was co-written with Johnny Mercer. Bacall sings one song in the movie, “How Little We Know,” another Carmichael and Mercer composition.

In spite of all of the similarities with Casablanca, this movie has a completely different feel to it. The former film was pinned on the past love of the Bogart and Bergman characters and it burned with the passion of lost love. To Have and Have Not is the antidote to that: it is love found and it carries all of the positive energy of that love.

This is not a great film, but it is an iconic film. And it is undoubtedly a fun movie, one that be watched over and over without one’s brain breaking apart with deep thought or worrisome agitation. The chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, in their first movie together, finding each other, is more than enough to sustain this film through the years.

B

November 17, 2014January 16, 2015 | Paul Wake Baker

The Best Years of Our Lives

The stark reality of surviving life after war is best faced with the aid of friends and loved ones and that is story that is told in this 1946 film which remains one of the best films ever made.

The Big Sleep

This 1946 film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective novel remains one of the best films ever made for a variety of reasons. Start with Chandler’s novel, written in a unique voice and style, that delved into the underworld of big city vice, using dangerous and edgy behavior that were normally hidden from the public eye: pornography, promiscuity, and homosexuality.

The Birds

I was thirteen years old in 1963 when I went to a movie theater to Alfred Hitchcock’s latest move, The Birds, and I can still remember the effect it had, the tension it engendered, the thrill of fright, and my jangled nerves when I left the theater and stepped out into the sunlight.

The Blind Side

The Blind Side, written and directed by John Lee Hancock, is a biographical drama that tells the story of how Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), a rather large African-American, gets adopted into a white family, defeats his educational issues, and goes on to develop into a terrific left tackle on the football field.

The Breakfast Club

Yelling one minute, giggling the next, while cool music plays throughout. Welcome to The Breakfast Club, John Hughes’ 1985 comedy-drama about five teenagers confined to a Saturday detention in the Shermer High School library in Shermer, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

Bridget Jones’s Diary

Based ever so loosely on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, this 2001 British romantic comedy directed by Sharon Maguire is full of hits and misses. The hits are all punches thrown between the two men who seek Bridget’s attention and the misses are all those single women who wish they had a choice between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.

Bright Star

Written and directed by Jane Campion and based on the John Keats biography by Andrew Motion, this 2009 film is one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen and it captures one of the most touching romances in history. It takes its title from one of Keats’ most moving poems, “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art.”

Broken Arrow

This 1950 movie was one of the first to portray western Native Americans in a balanced manner and carries as its message racial equality and peaceful relations between Indians and Anglos. Based on the popular novel, Blood Brother, by Elliott Arnold, the film adaptation by Michael Blankfort dramatizes the historical relationship between Tom Jeffords (James Stewart) and Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise (Jeff Chandler).

The Birds

November 17, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

I was thirteen years old in 1963 when I went to a movie theater to Alfred Hitchcock’s latest move, The Birds, and I can still remember the effect it had, the tension it engendered, the thrill of fright, and my jangled nerves when I left the theater and stepped out into the sunlight. Based on the novella of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, it is one Hitchcock’s best films. When I watched it again over fifty years later, I was surprised that it created exactly the same effect as when I saw it in a movie theater for the first time.

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) stops into a pet store in downtown San Francisco on a Friday afternoon to pick up a minah bird as a gift, but it hasn’t arrived at the shop yet, so she writes down her name and address for delivery. As she stands at the counter, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), asks her if she can help him. He’s looking for a pair of lovebirds as a birthday present for his little sister. Pretending to be a clerk, she shows him around the store, making up stories about lovebirds, even though she hasn’t the slightest idea what they look like. When a bird accidentally escapes, he traps it under his hat and addresses her by her name. A lawyer, he had actually recognized her from the first, but wanted to show her what it was like to be the butt of a practical joke. Angered, she follows him to the street, gets the number of his license plate, and calls her father’s newspaper to get his address. She then purchases a pair of lovebirds and tries to deliver them to his apartment, but a neighbor informs her that he will be in Bodega Bay all weekend visiting his family. Undeterred, she decides to deliver them there and drives the sixty miles north the next morning, Saturday.

Finding out that the Brenner family home is directly across the bay, she decides to take rent a motorboat and make a surprise delivery by sneaking up on the house from the water, but she doesn’t know his sister’s name. A local store owner directs to her to home of the school teacher, Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette). When the two women meet, it is obvious that Annie is sizing her up as a rival for Mitch’s affections. The sister’s name is Cathy, so Melanie makes out a card, gets in her boat and sets out across the bay. Seeing Mitch go out to the barn, she sneaks inside, leaves the birds with a note and returns to her boat. She watches as Mitch goes back inside then comes outside, surprised and looking around for her. He spots her in the boat and as she goes back across the bay, he gets in his truck and drives around to meet her. As she nears the dock, a gull shoots out of the sky and scratches her head badly enough that she is bleeding. Mitch takes her into the Tides restaurant to clean and bandage the wound. His mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy) meets Melanie rather coldly, but everyone is curious about the bird attack.

When Mitch smugly remarks that she drove all that way to see him, Melanie lies and says that she was actually coming up to see her old friend Annie. Mitch invites her to come to dinner that evening and she meets Cathy (Veronica Cartwright), who begs her to attend her birthday party the next day. Melanie likes Cathy immediately, but Lydia seems to be almost jealous of her budding relationship with Mitch. As they sit down to eat, masses of sparrows fly down the chimney and fill the house. Mitch opens the windows and doors and tries to shoo them out. After they have fought them off, Melanie returns to Annie’s house to spend the night. As they discuss Annie’s former relationship with Mitch, a gull crashes against the door and dies.

On Sunday morning, she attends the birthday party, intending to drive back to San Francisco immediately afterward, but the party is attacked by a flock of gulls, diving and purposely trying to injure the children. As the family recovers from the attack, Melanie is persuaded to spend the night there. The next morning, Monday, Lydia goes to a nearby farm to investigate a problem she is having with her chickens, but discovers that the farmer is dead, his eyes picked out and his home destroyed by birds. In a panic, she returns home and the sheriff is called in. Mitch leaves with him to investigate further, but Lydia is so worried about Cathy at school that she sends Melanie to pick her up and bring her home.

At the school, Melanie waits for the children to finish their lesson. As they sing a children’s song, she waits outside, smoking a cigarette in front of the jungle gym, which slowly fills up with crows. Alarmed, she goes inside and she and Annie organize the children to leave in a mock fire drill. As the move down the road, the crows take flight and attack them as they run toward the village. Inside the Tides, she calls her father to alert him to the danger in Bodega Bay and everyone becomes concerned about the situation. A local fisherman reports that one of his boats was just recently attacked by gulls. An ornithologist, Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies) tries to tell them that it is impossible for birds to work together in such a way, but if they did, there was no way humans could fight against the millions of birds in the world. A mother, with two young children, is panicked by their discussion and tries to flee, but the birds attack again, knocking over a man filling his car with gas. As the gas runs down the street, another man, lighting a cigar, ignites it and cars and the filling station all explode in fire as the birds corner Melanie in a telephone booth. Mitch gets her back into the restaurant and the mother accuses her of bringing on the bird attacks, crying out that none of it started until her arrival.

The attacks of the birds steadily escalate into an unforgettable conclusion to the movie.

When Hitchcock hired Evan Hunter to write the screenplay, he told him that the only thing there were keeping from du Maurier’s story was the title and the menace of the birds. With that freedom, Hunter moved the location from England to Northern California, an area that Hitchcock loved. The two of them then worked together to create an original story. The decision was made early on that they would make no attempt to explain the strange behavior of the birds, but Hitchcock suggested the scene where the townspeople discuss the situation.

The Birds follows Psycho in Hitchcock’s chronology of films and he had strongly considered not using a score for the previous film, but eventually worked with his musical collaborator, Bernard Herrmann in making his shocking fright film. For The Birds, he called in Hermann as a consultant, but actually used electronic sounds (by Sala and Remi Gassmann) and silence to create the terror in the film. All of the sounds of the birds are semi-artificial. They are natural bird sounds that have been input a mellotron-like keyboard system and played directly into a sound recorder. This was highly experimental for the time and a stark departure from the heavily scored films of the day.

The story is developed in pure Hitchcock style. It begins very lightly, with a comedic feel to it, an almost like the screwball comedies of the 1940’s, with a flighty society woman and a straight-laced lawyer, but it gradually becomes serious as small incidents with birds escalate into the terrorizing attacks that build steadily in intensity until the very end.

With the exception of a few uncertain moments from the young Veronica Cartwright early in the movie, all of the performances are very natural and believable, even Tippi Hedren who was acting in her first movie. Rod Taylor’s character wasn’t written with any depth, so he stands out as a man who reacts to the situation around him, which makes him a typical Hitchcock hero. Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette both bring incredible nuance and detail to their characters and so does Tippi Hedren. The women are created with the deepest detail, not only in this film, but in most of Hitchcock’s movies.

The technical detail and difficulty makes this a very unusual film for the master of suspense. Although he normally used the “blue screen” effect so that he could shoot most of his films in a studio, under controlled lighting, almost all of the effects using birds, both real and mechanical, were “sodium yellow screen” effects used in the film’s print, created by Ub Iwerks of Walt Disney Studios. In addition, he used many matte paintings that were printed into the final cut. For instance, in the scene where Hedren takes the boat across the bay, the entire village of Bodega Bay in the background is a painting. The same technique was used in the famous shot of the burning village from high above, with birds in the foreground. Part of the screen is live action on a limited stage, part is filled in with matte painting, and then the birds were actually painted onto the negative. All of these effects were quite radical for the day and today could all be done effortlessly using computer generated CGI effects.

The DVD contains a wonderful documentary called “All About the Birds” in which many of the principals, including Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, and Veronica Cartwright are interviewed. Evan Hunter provides great insight into how he developed the script with Hitchcock, technical wizards explain the special effects, and the original ending is discussed in some depth, using pages from Hunter’s original script. Hedren also discusses the psychological effect of how Hitchcock shot the scene in the upstairs bedroom using real birds that terrorized her and exhausted her to the point where she could no longer perform. That incident was featured in the derivative film, The Girl, which portrayed Hitchcock as a lustful man who inflicted that terror on Hedren for her refusal to have an affair with him.

The film will always have a place among the most frightening films ever made. Watching it at home on DVD, even on a big screen television, will never duplicate the effect it had in a theater full of people, all grasping their popcorn, gasping, sitting on the edge of their seats and even screaming, at times, together.

Nevertheless, it packs a huge punch and I highly recommend it!

Rear Window

November 16, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

A nation of Peeping Toms.

That’s us, according to home care nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 masterpiece Rear Window. She’s complaining to photographer L. B. Jefferies (James Stewart) as he sits in his wheelchair staring out the rear window of his apartment in Greenwich Village. His left leg is encased in a great white cast bearing the inscription, “Here lie the broken bones of L. B. Jefferies.” He’s been housebound for six weeks recovering from an accident that occurred in the middle of a raceway as he attempted to photograph a racecar breaking apart.

Not only is he broken apart, but a long, slow pan at the opening of the film shows a camera lying in pieces in front of the photograph he took. The small apartment is full of his equipment, past photos, and magazine spreads, and presents a kind of homey messiness in the middle of New York City. His entertainment is watching his neighbors. Through the back window, he can see several little adjoining patios and up to four stories of the apartment houses that abut his. It is a little world of its own. Across the way, Miss Lonelyheart (Judith Evelyn) fantasizes about having a romance, while directly above her traveling salesman Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) argues with his invalid, bedridden wife. On the top floor, a man and his sleep outside in the sweltering summer heat. They have a little dog that they let down into the patio in a basket on a pulley. To the left, a young dancer, Miss Torso (Georgine Darcy) exercises and fends off a spate of young admirers, while right below a middle-aged sculptress works on her latest project. At the upper right, a songwriter struggles to find a melody, while frequently entertaining his friends in show business. And on the far left, a newlywed couple honeymoons with the shade drawn most of the time.

Jefferies hates his confined existence, but he has to live with the cast for one more week. After learning his trade in the Army taking photos from an airplane with his buddy Doyle (Wendell Corey), he is accustomed to traveling the world and putting himself in danger to get his award winning photographs. It is his life and he loves it. Unfortunately, he is in a serious relationship with Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly), a fashionista who works in one of the big stores downtown. Convinced that their lifestyles are too different for anything to work between them, he puts her off. She’s simply too perfect for him. Beautiful, worldly, she seems unreal, but she loves him and is willing to sacrifice her safe, cozy world to be with him.

One night, as Jefferies dozes in his chair, he hears a glass shatter and a woman scream, but is too tired even to look out his window. Later, it begins to rain and he stirs himself, noticing Thorwald leave in the middle of the night with his sample suitcase, not once but twice. In the early morning hours, as he dozes we see Thorwald and a woman leaving their apartment. The next day, he sees a change in the accustomed pattern. The shades are drawn across the way and he can’t see Mrs. Thorwald, but later he sees the man cleaning a saw and a knife with a long, curved blade and his suspicion turns into a belief that Thorwald killed his wife. At first, no one believes him, but when Lisa sees the mattress rolled up and a trunk tied together, she also becomes convinced and finally Stella comes around. The only one who doesn’t believe that a murder has occurred is Detective Doyle.

The film contains everything Hitchcock does best and it is therefore the best example of all of his filmmaking techniques. In addition, it is a first rate suspense film with great comic relief that induces edge-of-your-seat tension. In other words, it’s a really good movie purely on its own merits.

Based on a short story, “It Had to Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich, the story unfolds in a confined space. The script, written by John Michael Hayes in conjunction with Hitchcock, initially contained one scene outside this confined space, at the office of his editor (Gig Young), but faithful and creative Assistant Director Henry Bumstead pointed this out to Hitchcock and the scene was not used in the final cut, although Young’s voice is heard over the telephone. By restricting the scene to Jefferies’ apartment and only what he can see through his rear window, Hitchcock has confined the universe to just one small area and everything you need to see is present and accounted for.

The world is further narrowed to just two points of view. The first and most significant point of view is that of the audience. Like a voyeur, we are allowed to see into Jefferies’s private life, his affair with Lisa, the care given him by Stella, his arguments with Doyle, and his phone calls, but nothing else. We are in the position of looking through our own little window into his life. The second point of view is Jefferies’, as he peers into the courtyard and the windows of his constricted little universe. Only once in the film are we allowed to see something he doesn’t–and that is when Thorwald leaves his apartment in the early morning accompanied by a woman. Jefferies is asleep when that happens. It is a little thing, but it makes us realize that Thorwald may have actually taken his wife away, rather than killing her. It implants a little seed of doubt that Jefferies may be wrong.

Part of the point that Hitchcock makes with this restriction of point of view is that we are all constricted, each in our own way. Jefferies is literally constricted. He cannot move from his chair. Lisa is constricted in that she is tied to a man who is pushing her away and it seems like the main event of her life takes place in this little apartment. Doyle is constricted because he can’t investigate something on such restricted circumstantial evidence.

The only evidence of the outside world is in one narrow view of the street and in the people who come and leave from his own apartment and those of the other characters in his rear window. Those connections are tenuous. Miss Lonelyheart is looking for romance, but the only man who responds to her wants her only for sex. Miss Torso can’t accept a steady man into her life, but we don’t discover why until the end of the movie. The songwriter is restricted by the creative process. And Thorwald is restricted by his wife and he takes violent action to escape to freedom.

The movie also says a lot about human relationships, as described above, and the relationships between men and women. Jeffries and Lisa are the prime example of two people who are miles apart in view and who find a common ground through the action of a murderer. Only when Jefferies sees that Lisa can be adventurous and take chances does he truly reveal his love for her. Even though she appears ready to embrace his adventurous lifestyle, she makes a statement for her feminity in the end.

But the best of this movie lies in the camera work and the way Hitchcock moves point of view through the lens. He uses the camera relentlessly to build suspense, moving in a steady arc that starts slow, languid almost, and accelerates into rapid montage by the end of the movie. The comic parts are organic, derived from the situation and the characters’ natural involvement with the story. When I saw this movie on its first run in theaters, I was moved by the shared tension of the audience in the theater, each person so involved in the story that we all seemed to react as one person as it raced toward its conclusion.

At the end of the film, you want to go outside and breathe fresh air, to walk around see what exists beyond your four walls.

Every element of the movie works, including the sound. Although it begins with a jazz score, denoting Greenwich Village in the 1950’s, and there are snippets of score dropped in throughout, most of the movie sound appears natural: the songwriter’s piano, the babbling of neighbors, the laughter of children and the traffic in the street. It is all slightly muted, as if we are hearing what Jefferies hears.

If I had to recommend one Hitchcock movie–and only one–for everyone to see, this would be it. It is absolutely representative and might very well be his best film.

A

November 14, 2014January 30, 2015 | Paul Wake Baker

Across the Universe

Conceived, produced and directed by the eclectic Julie Taymor, this film is a romantic musical that incorporates parts of 34 songs composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and the three of them plus Ringo Starr (“Flying”). Most of the songs are sung on-screen by the characters, though there are some instrumentals. This places the film in the category of old-style musicals where people seem to burst into song as a part of the story. To everyone’s credit, it actually seems to work very well indeed.

The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau, based on a Phillip K. Dick story, is a far-fetched, but very engaging film. David Norris (Matt Damon) is a Brooklyn politician who meets a fascinating woman, Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) on the night that he has just lost the Senate election. When she runs away, he is motivated to give a galvanizing concession speech that will reenergize his career.

Adventureland

Adventureland is a funny and moving teen romance written and directed by Greg Mattola about a group of teens working at a summer carnival. The main character, James Brennan, is a student who has just graduated from a small college and is saving up his money to go to the Columbia School of Journalism so he can begin a career in travel writing. Played with both humor and angst by Jesse Eisenberg, James is trying to find romance, but his own geekiness stands in his way.

All is Lost

A man sleeps peacefully aboard his small yacht when it suddenly bangs into some sea debris, tearing a hole in the side. This begins a great survival story where one problems piles upon another as he is tossed across the Indian sea toward shipping lanes and possible rescue. But he must first face storms, sharks, and other menaces. And even when he reaches the shipping lanes, will anyone see him?

Amadeus

A terrible way to triumph over God. These are the words of 18th Century Italian composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) referring to his murder of the brilliant, meteoric Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ((Tom Hulce). He tells the story to Father Vogler (Richard Frank) who has come to hear his confession at the insane asylum to which Salieri has been confined following a suicide attempt.

American Hustle

Loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM sting operation, this 2013 film was written by David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer and directed by Russell of The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook fame. Bringing along Christian Bale and Amy Adams from The Fighter and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from Silver Linings Playbook, he has created a brilliant sting comedy that takes place at the height of disco mania, 1978.

The Art of Getting By

In The Art of Getting By (2011), George (Freddie Highmore), a high school senior living in New York City, falls into a fatalistic funk. Although he is a gifted artist, he realizes that he’s going to die some day and asks himself: What is the point of trying? Seeing no point, he gives up working on his school assignments, skips class and tests and just skates by as a loner. Facing this failure, he is placed on academic probation.

Austenland

The heroine of the movie, Jane Hayes (Keri Russell) is a disheartened Jane Austen fan. Obsessed with the writer, she looks at her own life and sees failed relationships, a dead-end job and no future, so she decides to spend her life savings on a trip to England to resort called Austenland

Amadeus

November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

A terrible way to triumph over God.

These are the words of 18th Century Italian composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) referring to his murder of the brilliant, meteoric Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ((Tom Hulce). He tells the story to Father Vogler (Richard Frank) who has come to hear his confession at the insane asylum to which Salieri has been confined following a suicide attempt.

From an early age, Salieri was convinced that he could show God his love through composing music, but his father forbade it. When his father accidentally chokes to death, he becomes convinced that God had killed his father so that he could now compose music in His honor. It seemed destined and his arrival in Vienna was followed by one success after another. By the time he was 24, he had been appointed court composer of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones) and had attained fame for his operas and other works. As a child, Mozart was a prodigy and Salieri was very much aware of his budding genius. When Mozart arrived in Vienna, Salieri was eager to meet him. As he wandered around the palace looking for the young composer, he saw Mozart chasing a girl, Constanze (Elizabeth Berridge), giggling hysterically, and making vulgar jokes. Already aware of his own inferiority to Mozart, Salieri cannot understand why God would have chosen such a coarse vessel to express the most profound, holy music possible.

Mozart was presented to the Emperor in 1781, with a march of Salieri’s to welcome him, played by the Emperor himself. Mozart is clumsy socially and offends Salieri by playing the march back to them with perfect memory and then improvising to improve the composition into something great. Mozart thought “outside the box” and proposed to compose an opera in German, The Abduction from the Seraglio, that took place in a Turkish harem. Although the opera is a success, the Emperor proclaims that it “has too many notes” and that Mozart should “cut some out.” Mozart marries Constanze over the objections of his father, Leopold (Roy Dotrice). Although his opera has been a qualified success, Mozart struggles to earn enough money to support his lavish lifestyle. When Leopold comes to visit they go out on the town and end up at a costume ball, where Leopold dresses in black, with a mask of tragedy over his face and a mask of comedy on the back of his head. Playing musical chairs, Mozart loses and must pay a penalty. Although his father demands that he return to Salzburg, Mozart points out to him that the penalty must be served in the room. A friend makes him play in style of various composers and when he comes to Salieri, he makes a grim face and plays pompous music. Salieri, himself behind a mask, watches as Mozart ridicules him to the laughter of the entire party. He vows that he will get even with the boy somehow.

He hires a girl and gives her to the Mozart household anonymously as a servant so he can have a spy inside their apartment. Through her, he discovers that the young man is writing another opera, this one based on the play Figaro, which the Emperor has banned. Mozart is hauled before the royalty to explain himself and he is so brilliant and enthused that he convinces the Emperor to let him proceed. The Marriage of Figaro was destined to be a huge success, but when the Emperor yawns during the fourth act, it is doomed to a short run.

Salieri is so grieved that he turns his back on God and is determined to ruin His plans by ruining Mozart himself. Every opportunity to ingratiate himself to the court is deftly put aside by Salieri, who continues to have the Emperor’s ear. Mozart’s debts grow deeper and he is thrown into an emotional landslide when his father dies. Drinking and carousing temporarily give way to work as Mozart composes the incandescent Don Giovanni, where the figure of his father appears to humble Mozart before him. With every brilliant advance of Mozart, Salieri’s hatred grows until he finally decided to do something about it. Appearing at Mozart’s door dressed in the same costume as Leopold at the party, Salieri commissions a Requiem (the Requiem Mass in D minor). Under the influence of this memory of his father and strapped for money, Mozart accepts the commission while at the same time promising a friend to compose something for the popular stage. With these two demands weighing him down, Mozart drinks more and burns himself out. When he goes out alone in the middle of the night to carouse until dawn with his friends, Constanze takes their son, Karl, and runs away. Grief-stricken, Mozart completes his friend’s commission, The Magic Flute, but is so worn out that he faints during the performance. Salieri sees this and escorts Mozart back to his apartment. Pretending to be his friend, Salieri goads him into finishing the Requiem, volunteering to help by writing down what Mozart dictates.

As they work through the night, Constanze returns to Vienna. When she arrives in the morning, she finds Salieri asleep on a sofa and Mozart passed out in bed. She orders Salieri to leave, but as they talk and argue, Mozart dies, his Requiem unfinished. He is buried in a pauper’s grave with other bodies, lye tossed in on top of him.

In the asylum, Salieri explains to Father Vogler that he had his victory over God in Mozart’s death and he forgives himself for his own mediocrity. Indeed, as he is wheeled away to his breakfast of sweets, he magnanimously forgives everyone for their mediocrity.

Does mediocrity always triumph?

What a brilliant concept to built a work of art!

This amazing screenplay was written by a terrific playwright, Peter Shaffer, based on his own stage play of the same name. The title could have been anything, but Shaffer’s choice of Mozart’s middle name was inspired. The translation of Amadeus is “God’s Beloved” and it serves as the basis of Shaffer’s thematic development. Salieri’s belief that God chose to speak through the vulgar Mozart served as his inspiration to impliment and drive this great tragedy to its conclusion. He serves himself up as an instrument of evil to bring about this “triumph over God.”

Director Miloš Forman, who saw the play before it opened, got in touch with Shaffer the moment the curtain went down and began to discuss the film he would make. Forman’s vision, combined with Shaffer’s script and Abraham’s performance combine to create one of the best films ever made. The movie won eight 1984 Academy Awards, including Best Picture (producer Saul Zaentz), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Best Art Direction (Karel Černý and Patrizia von Brandenstein), Best Costume Design (Theodor Pištěk), Best Makeup (Dick Smith and Paul LeBlanc), and Best Sound Mixing (Mark Berger, Thomas Scott, Todd Boekelheide and Christopher Newman). In addition, it was nominated for Best Cinematography (Miroslav Ondříček), Best Actor (Tom Hulce), and Best Film Editing (Nena Danevic and Michael Chandler).

With such an abundance of artistic contribution, it is hard to find a place to begin praising this movie, once you get beyond the writer and director, but the third wheel that accounts for its staggering success is F. Murray Abraham. Salieri, not Mozart represents the heart of the film and Abraham’s attention to detail in both time periods makes a two hour and forty minute tragedy actually work–and not just work, but work beyond what anyone might imagine as possible, especially for a plain, middle-aged actor. He infuses the character with such depth that he evokes sympathy for the villain, which is difficult under the best of scripts.

Added to this is sterling sound. With the brilliant music Mozart and Salieri on the soundtrack, the viewer is inundated with a variety of great listening pleasure. Salieri’s make-up in the asylum is terrific, the costumes are wonderful, and the art direction in general is first rate, creating 18th Century Vienna in glorious detail.

Although lengthy, the film moves quickly and time is not a factor. It passes so quickly, one hardly notices the length.

The only thing in the entire film that bothered me was the relentless American speech of Hulce and Berridge. They both give good, solid performances and Hulce was good enough to receive an Academy Award nomination, but throughout the film, I kept thinking that might have been from Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, but were definitely not Austrian.

Obviously, this didn’t bother me enough to ruin my enjoyment of the movie. It remains, today, one of the best films ever made and it will hold up long into the future. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t like classical music or not, the story is way strong enough to carry any viewer through till the end. It is a wonderful movie and a true tragedy that could be put up against any Greek tragedy and look good.

I highly recommend Amadeus as a classic that everyone should see!

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

November 12, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

Never endanger an American’s children. That is the advice given by a foreign minister to his English lackey when it is already too late for the villains in this remake of a film that Alfred Hitchcock originally directed in England before he crossed the pond. Wishing to enlarge and improve on his earlier film, he teamed up with his signature actor and composer to produce this widescreen thriller in 1956.

An American family, Dr. Ben McKenna (James Stewart), his famous musical wife, Jo (Doris Day), and young son, Hank (Christopher Olsen) are touring Morocco after a medical convention in Paris, when Hank accidentally yanks the veil off of a Muslim woman and gets them in trouble. A Frenchman, Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin) steps in helps them out of the jam, then invites them to dinner that evening. Jo is suspicious of his many questions, but Ben shrugs it off. Passing an English couple, Edward (Bernard Miles) and Lucy (Brenda De Banzie) Drayton at their hotel, Jo again suspects that they are being watched. That evening, a strange man appears at their door during cocktails and it excites Bernard enough that he leaves them. They meet the Draytons at the restaurant and Lucy admits that she recognized Jo from a London concert and the two couples have dinner together. When Bernard appears at the restaurant with a date and ignores them, Ben gets upset, but Jo soothes him, complaining that he gets upset too easily.

The next day, in the bazaar, Bernard, dressed in desert costume and make-up is stabbed in the back. As he is dying in Ben’s arms, he tells him that a statesman will be assassinated at Albert Hall in London and that he needs to tell the authorities there to beware of Ambrose Chapell. Lucy offers to take Hank back to the hotel while the police question Ben and Jo. Called aside to the phone, Ben is told that he must not tell anyone what the dying Bernard told him or Hank may suffer. Later, Ben discovers that Lucy never returned to the hotel and that the Draytons have checked out. Ben sedates Jo before he tells her that Hank is missing, but she is overwrought until the drug takes effect. Determined to get Hank back, they go to London to follow up on the message that Bernard gave them–and a date with Albert Hall.

At two hours, this movie runs a little long for its thin plot. Some of that time is occupied with several songs the studio put in for Doris Day, some of it is frittered away in the Marikesh bazaar. A good deal of the time is used in the Albert Hall music leading up to the attempted assassination. When it is all added up, this film, among all of the Hitchcock canon, seems a little indulgent. The suspense that the director is so well-known for is definitely present, but at a slightly lower key than in his other films. The color seems a little too bright, the rear projection effects a little too stark.

Although many scenes in the beginning of the film were actually shot in Morocco, the studio cutaways feel like movie sets. In all, the pace is just a little too slow to be an altogether successful movie.

James Stewart is good as the American doctor and Doris Day, who was a popular singer at the time, not well-known for her acting, does quite well. The script handles the two roles quite well, inserting quirks that make them more human. Jo’s outward calm, for example, is balanced by her inability to cope with the loss of their son. Her husband, aware of this vulnerability, convinces her to take medication before revealing that their son has been kidnapped. Ben himself is just the opposite. He is easily angered and tends to respond without thinking, yet when the chips are down, he is calm and steady. The two characters and the two actors are very good foils for each other.

The supporting acting and the script for the supporting characters is less well defined. Many times, I had the feeling that I was watching stock characters from the films of the forties. The notable exception to that is the entourage of Jo’s friends in London, who all seem to be more interesting and well-developed, especially given that they have little time on the screen.

It is also unusual for Hitchcock that the comedy seems a little forced in this movie. The action in the restaurant, for example, where Stewart cannot fit his long legs under the short table seems funny and first, but then it is continued and grows old. Likewise, the action in the taxidermist’s shop in London seems contrived and unnatural. Normally, Hitchcock develops his comedy directly from the script–it is organic to the action and thus seems completely natural.

Although it is most interesting to see a concert at the Albert Hall, and is even more interesting to see Hitchcock’s musical collaborator, Bernard Herrmann, directing the London Symphony. Unfortunately, the sequence goes on much too long and the tension is not as heightened as it usually is in a Hitchcock film. And that leads to the final, nearly torturous scene in the foreign embassy that climaxes with a gimmicky solution.

I generally love to watch Hitchcock’s movies, but any time I find myself looking at my watch during the show, then the movie has failed on the most fundamental level: keeping my interest.

The Best Years of Our Lives

November 9, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

The stark reality of surviving life after war is best faced with the aid of friends and loved ones and that is story that is told in this 1946 film which remains one of the best films ever made.

At the end of World War II, three men meet hopping a military plane back to their home, a fictitious mid-western metropolis called Boone City. The officer in the group, Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) is returning to Marie (Virginia Mayo), a wife he barely knows, since they were married less than 20 days before he shipped out. Although he was just a soda jerk before the war, his heroism as a bombardier in the Air Force brought him up to the rank of Captain. Fellow passenger Al Stephenson (Frederick March), is a former banker who served as a Sergeant First Class in the Army. The oldest and by far the wealthiest of the three, he is returning to his wife, Milly (Myrna Loy) and children, Peggy (Theresa Wright), who is in her early twenties, and Rob (Michael Hall) who is a freshman in college. The third member of their party is Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), a Navy man who lost both of his hands when his aircraft carrier went down in the Pacific. A former quarterback, he now uses two hook prosthetics that he is quite deft with, but when he left for the service, he was engaged to his childhood friend, Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) and now he worries how she will accept his apparent disability.

Although all three men are looking forward to their return home, there is also a deep feeling apprehension. They’ve all seen intense action, watched friends die, and suffered the many tortures of war. How will their civilian loved ones receive them? Will they ever be able to relate to anyone who hasn’t experienced battle?

Taking a cab together, they look around their old home town and Homer tells them about his uncle Butch (Hoagy Carmichael) who runs the best bar and café in town. Attempting to avoid the reunion with his family, he suggests that they get a drink first, but the others agree to meet at Butch’s some time for a drink. As Homer expected, his family is hyper-sensitive to the loss of his hands and he feels estranged from Wilma, although she shows him that she still loves him. He is haunted by the feeling that everyone is ether staring at his hooks or purposely looking away–he is different and he feels that difference intensely.

After checking in with his parents (Gladys George and Roman Bohnen), Fred goes looking for his wife, but she is not at her apartment, having already gone to work at her nightclub job, so he ends up at Butch’s.

Al has a difficult time adjusting to the fact that his children have grown up while he was away and he is nervous and edgy. When Milly finds that they are out of liquor, Al decides to go out on the town with her and Peggy. During the course of the evening, Al gets progressively drunker, but they finally end of Butch’s and find Fred, who is already pretty well tanked himself. After Homer spills a glass of lemonade in front of Wilma and the two families, he leaves in frustration and also ends up at the bar. The three of them are like people out of time and out of place and getting drunk seems the only way to deal with having to face this return to civilian life. Peggy takes a shine to Fred, even though he is pretty well gone. They take him back to his wife’s apartment building, but there is no answer when he rings the bell and he passes out in the doorway, so Milly and Peggy load him into the back seat of the car with Al, who is passed out.

Back at Al and Milly’s apartment, Peggy puts Fred in her room, loosening his tie, taking off his shoes and tucking him in while Milly does the same with Al in their bedroom. Peggy sleeps on the couch, but during the night she hears Fred calling out in his sleep. He’s having a nightmare, reliving the loss of a friend’s life. Peggy wakes him and calms him, wiping the sweat from his face and he falls back into his drunken sleep. In the morning, he can’t remember where he is or that Peggy is Al’s daughter. She enlightens him over breakfast. When Milly joins them, Peggy gives Al a ride back to his wife’s apartment and Milly busies herself with trying to salve a very hungover Al.

Marie is a gorgeous blond and obviously lives in a completely different world of nightlife, money, and men, but when Fred tells her to quit her job, she agrees and tries to support him, even though he can’t find a job. When the money runs out, however, she can’t stand the idea of being poor and their relationship begins to suffer. Finally, he takes a job working in his old drug store, spending part of his day at the perfume counter and part of it as a soda jerk.

Meanwhile, Al receives a call from his former boss at the bank, Mr. Milton (Ray Collins). They not only want to take him back, but to promote him to Vice President in charge of handling GI loans. Al is uncertain about going back to work at the bank, but the offer is too good for him to pass up. Early on, he receives an application from a former Navy officer who wants to buy some land to begin farming. Although he has no collateral, Al approves the loan and is then counseled by Mr. Milton that they simply can’t do business that way. Al tells him that the man’s collateral is in his heart, in his guts, and in his patriotism, but they part ways each seeing the situation differently.

When Peggy runs into Fred at the drugstore, he takes her out for lunch and then kisses her in the parking lot. They are in love, but the situation of his marriage is a firm impediment. That afternoon, Peggy calls Marie and invites her and Fred to join she and her date for a night out, hoping that if she sees Fred and Marie together, she’ll get over her infatuation with him. It coincides with a bank banquet at which Al is the guest of honor. Before they all leave for the evening, Peggy confesses to her parents how she feels about Fred and that she is going to use the evening to get over her feelings.

At the banquet, Al again drinks too much. Milly watches him with apprehension and when he is invited to speak, he tells the assembled that the only way America won the war was by taking risks, by stepping in even when there was no collateral and getting the job done. At the same time, Peggy is sizing up Marie and finding out that Fred is in a loveless marriage to a woman who is not worthy of him. When she gets home, she tells her parents that she is intent on breaking up Fred’s marriage and having him for herself. While all of this is going on, Homer has isolated himself, convinced that he is no longer worthy of Wilma.

This film comes with a stunning pedigree of collaborators. Producer Samuel Goldwyn got the original idea from a Time Magazine article about the difficulties of servicemen returning home. He spoke with novelist McKinlay Kantor about writing a screenplay and Kantor produced a novella in blank verse called Glory for Me, which was adapted into the screenplay for The Best Years of Our Lives by the brilliant playwright Robert E. Sherwood.

Director William Wyler, who flew in combat missions over Europe during World War II as a cinematographer, was signed to direct. Although he assembled a top notch cast of well-known Hollywood actors to play most of the parts, he wanted to part of Homer Parrish to seem as real as possible, changing the character from a man with a psychological disorder to a tangibly physical manifestation. It was this director’s decision that led to the casting of Harold Russell, a non-actor in the critical role. Russell lost both of his hands while handling explosives making a training film.

The film taps deeply into human emotions. Almost from the very beginning, the viewer is led into the emotional landscape of each of the three men and feels a deeply human bond with them. Wyler brings forth the best that each actor has to give in crafting a deeply felt, realistic portrayal of human being struggling with recovery after traumatic experiences.

One might think that this film is all about the men, but it is definitely about the women, too. Frederick March and Dana Andrews give deep, emotionally valid performances as Al and Fred, but Myrna Loy and Theresa Wright are both amazing as Al’s wife and daughter. Throughout the early scenes after the men return home, you can feel the women’s love and empathy as the stabilizing factors. For an amateur, which Russell must be considered, his performance is beautiful and deep. Never for a one moment does the viewer feel a false step in his acting, but the role of his fiancé Wilma has its own difficulties. To be so good and true is almost impossible to achieve without seeming false, but Cathy O’Donnell’s eyes show the heart of the little girl who loved Homer and child and still holds him dear.

The movie is full of amazing little performances. Roman Bohnen as Fred’s father is mesmerizing in his brief few minutes. Virginia Mayo gives unexpected depths to Maria, a part that might have been played as a simple tramp with no heart. All of these performances add up to a movie that is completely compelling.

In glorious black and white.

I still consider this movie one of the ten best films ever made. It was certainly amply rewarded at the Academy Awards, taking Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Frederick March), Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Music (Hugo Friedhofer), and Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell). At two hours and forty-eight minutes, it’s a miracle that it even held anyone’s attention, but it is so well acted and directed, so well put together that time is no object here and time is something I take very seriously indeed. For any movie to keep me engaged for much over an hour and a half, it must be a truly special film and there is no doubt that The Best Years of Our Lives is a very, very special film.

The emotional engagement is a such a level that once begun, it is difficult to disengage until it is over. Emotional involvement is so important, so much a part of what makes a good movie that it is truly elevating.

This is a very special film and as important and vibrant today as it was in 1946. It should be a part of every serious film buff’s film library and it should be watched every few years, just so we never forget what a truly great film can be.

The Big Sleep

November 8, 2014 | Paul Wake Baker

This 1946 film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective novel remains one of the best films ever made for a variety of reasons.

Start with Chandler’s novel, written in a unique voice and style, that delved into the underworld of big city vice, using dangerous and edgy behavior that were normally hidden from the public eye: pornography, promiscuity, and homosexuality. Phillip Marlowe stood out as a character. He was mature, worldly, manly, direct in a way that even criminals found disarming. Finally, you have a plot that wastes no time on deliberation or description. It moves forward relentless, with a certainty that is not obvious until the reader finds himself breathless in wonder.

The film is directed by the brilliant Howard Hawks, who understood the story arc and knew he wanted to make a film that wasted no time. He hired the same writers who had fashioned his 1944 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, the great novelist William Faulkner and science fiction/crime wizard Leigh Brackett (one of the first women to break through into either genre) and told them to waste no time. Unlike other screen adaptations, he wanted this one to leap directly from the page to the screen. Working separately on different parts of the book, they finished the first screenplay in eight days.

Private eye Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is called to the mansion of wealthy retired General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). With two wealthy, bored daughters who move in a racy crowd, the old man finds himself blackmailed with the gambling debts of his youngest girl, Carmen (Martha Vickers). Sternwood’s former detective, Sean Regan, an old acquaintance of Marlowe’s, has disappeared. Before leaving, Sternwood’s older daughter, Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) asks him if he has been hired to find Sean Regan, who had been seriously interested in Carmen, but he won’t tell her anything, but the wisecracking and banter between them creates a sexual tension that is palpable.

Marlowe begins by investigating the man who holds the gambling debts, a rare bookstore owner named Geiger, but he discovers the man’s assistant, Agnes Lowzier (Sonia Darrin) knows nothing about rare books and she stonewalls him on her boss. Hiding out in a rival bookstore across the street, he spends a rainy afternoon with the sexy proprietress (Dorothy Malone) before following Geiger home. Waiting in the car, he hears gunshots, sees a car roaring away, and then finds Carmen inside, high as a kite, with Geiger’s body on the floor before her. He finds a camera hidden inside a statue, but the film is missing. Looking around, he finds Geiger’s notebook, filled with names and unreadable ceiphers. Taking the book, he returns Carmen to the Sternwoods and finds that Mrs. Rutledge has no answers.

An old friend, Police Detective Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey) brings Marlowe along when they fish a car out of the ocean just off a local pier. It belongs to the Sternwoods and the driver turns out to be a former Sternwood chauffer who had also been in love with Carmen. It has been made to look like a suicide, but the driver had been killed before the car was driven off the pier.

Mrs. Rutledge appears at Marlowe’s office the next morning with scandalous photos of Carmen and a new blackmail demand from a small time gambler named Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt). She can get the money through her friend, gangster Eddie Mars (John Ridgely). Marlowe says he will wait for her call that night before the $5,000 in blackmail money will be paid. During the day, he tails Brody to his apartment. That night, Mrs. Rutledge puts him off, but on a hunch, he goes to Brody’s and finds not only Agnes, but Mrs. Rutledge as well. Although held at gunpoint, he puts together the sequence of events as he understands them. The chauffer had actually killed Geiger and taken the photos, but Brody stopped him and confiscated them to bribe the Sternwoods, which he had done before. Marlowe suspects that Brody killed the chauffer, but Brody maintains his innocence and that killing remains unsolved. Carmen shows up with a gun, demanding the photos. Marlowe easily disarms all of them, but before he can get more information from Brody the man is shot through the door.

It is a complicated and twisting plot, but it moves forward relentlessly. The smart, sharp dialogue crisply moves the story along and renders it secondary really to the underplot: the growing relationship between Marlowe and Mrs. Rutledge.

When Hawks directed To Have and Have Not, he knew he’d found the ideal screen couple in Bogart and Bacall, so he was determined to reunite them for this movie. By that time, their off-screen romance was big news in Hollywood and the pairing was natural. With a great script and an excellent cast, Hawks shot the film in 1944, but it was kept on the shelf for two more years, partly because Warner Bros. was working feverishly to release all of their wartime films before World War II was over and partly because there were problems with Bacall. After the huge hit with To Have and Have Not, she was considered a hot property, but her follow-up film, Confidential Agent, was a flop and she’d been widely panned in reviews. Her agent, Charles K. Feldman, wrote a letter to Jack L. Warner, asking that several scenes in The Big Sleep be re-shot and the film re-edited to take advantage of Bogart and Bacall’s screen chemistry. Warner agreed and the two actors were called in to film additional scenes, including the now famous scene in the restaurant that is full of sexual innuendo.

One thing that becomes apparent right from the beginning of this movie is that beautiful young women are used in abundance to help create a strong feeling of free sexuality. It begins when Marlowe arrives at the Sternwood residence and the gorgeous Carmen walks in wearing a really short skirt and throws herself into his arms. Then, you meet Mrs. Rutledge and Lauren Bacall shines as a young urbanite living life on the edge. It continues with the girl at Acme Books, played by Dorothy Malone, who unpins her hair and closes the store to spend an afternoon drinking rye whiskey with Marlowe. Then there is the female taxi driver that Marlowe rides with who gives him her card and tells him to call her at night when she’s not working.

In the pivotal scene between Bogart and Bacall that was re-shot, the two of them are talking about having a relationship in terms of horse racing. She wonders just how far he will go and he replies that it depends on her. Is she willing “to go all the way?” This tightly wrapped sensuality, contrasted against the violence, the mystery of not knowing exactly what is happening in a plot that moves forward darkly, relentlessly creates a movie that almost impossible to stop watching. It moves that way right to the end, when we finally sense that Marlowe and Mrs. Rutledge will be able to consummate their smoldering desires.

Shot in beautiful black and white, the film has been restored to allow modern viewers to see it as released in 1946. The DVD also includes a documentary on the two versions of the movie, showing scenes that were cut and added, so viewers can see how much the film was improved by the re-shoot.

It is every bit as strong and engaging today as when it was first released and that is one reason it will always be considered a classic, perhaps the very finest example of film noir and one of the best movies ever made.

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