Richard Widmark died on March 26 at the age of 93. His debut, as crazy gangster Tommy Udo in 1947’s Kiss of Death, won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and was followed by other film noir roles.
Although he starred in a number of other noir classics — including The Street With No Name (1948), Jules Dassin’s Night and the City, Joseph Mankiewicz’s No Way Out and Panic in the Streets (all 1950, quite a year for crime dramas!) — my favorite performance has to be that of the cool Skip McCoy in Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953). Widmark is a slippery pickpocket who mistakenly lifts commie-destined microfilm from the wallet of Jean Peters in a claustrophobic opening scene aboard a New York subway car. His loyalties are tested, but like any great noir hero, he really ought to only think about himself. Plus, wouldn’t it be great to live in that rickety shack, perched above the harbor, with a case of beer cooling at the end of a rope from the window?
He made westerns too, and was good in them, but had such a great noir face that he’ll always be associated with those films. Two things I didn’t know about him: he was born in Sunrise, Minnesota, and Sandy Koufax was his son-in-law!
It’s hard to see another one of these big-screen legends go — there are so few left. RIP Mr. Widmark.
After having spent two weeks riding the couch, watching daytime TV and coughing my lungs out, I have emerged from the twilight world. I don’t know that I chose life so much as death just couldn’t close the deal. Way behind on the blogging, though, I know.
2007. Starring Tony Leung, Wei Tang. Directed by Ang Lee.
The setting is Japan-occupied China in 1942. Wong Chia Chi (Wei Tang) is a young student pulled into an acting troup — and underground resistance cell — by a classmate. Her role in a patriotic play ignites a revolutionary fire in her, which may be fueled by an attraction to the group’s leader, Kuang Yu Min (Lee-Hom Wang), but forces her into the lead role when there’s an opportunity to get close to, and eventually assassinate, an official of the occupation government, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung).
Mr. Yee hasn’t achieved his position by trusting people, and getting close to him has proven dangerous. Wong instead befriends his wife (Joan Chen) and becomes familiar to him through the frequent mah-jongg games his Mrs. Yee hosts. Wong quickly arouses Mr. Yee’s interest — and suspicion. But he orchestrates a meeting to either seduce her or interrogate her, and brutally succeeds at both. Committed to the plan and the cause, she continues to meet him, pulled in deeper by the chance to get closer and the man she finds up close.
This is a film about vulnerability, the need to exploit it and the need to conceal it. You probably should be warned about the sex scenes — they are graphic and intense. But it is in those encounters where guards are let down and character roles abandoned, where identity comes close to the surface. Both are vulnerable during the trysts — Yee leaves his gun next to the bed, Wong is escorted to out-of-the-way apartments, never sure whether her real intentions have been uncovered.
Tony Leung is a well-known, well-respected actor (best known in the US for Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love), and Lee-Hom Wang is apparently a huge pop music star across Asia, but I don’t think they are the biggest stars here. Those credits belong to Wei Tang, and that beautiful face.
It’s very surprising to learn that this is Wei Tang’s first film. She combines the spy’s wariness and the actor’s poise in her onscreen dual role and, as tough as those love scenes must have been to shoot, she’s graceful and honest in them. And that face — the camera loves Wei Tang’s face the way the camera loved Ingrid Bergman’s — focused on her dark eyes, and a smile that appears and recedes at the corners of her mouth almost imperceptibly.
More than two-and-a-half hours long, in Chinese, with the aforementioned sex scenes and a clumsy (but realistic) murder, Lust, Caution is more of a commitment than a date movie. But Ang Lee has made another well-directed, well-acted story with a few intriguing twists. And Wei Tang as the focus of nearly every scene is worth the price of admission.
Eddie Noack wrote and recorded some great songs: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Shake Hands With The Blues, and A Thinkin’ Man’s Woman among them. I think The Life You’ve Lived is his best, and it should be standard issue with every jukebox.
The Life You’ve Lived is a song of profound regret, and something about this song tells me it was written from first-hand experience — Noack died at age 47 and was reputed to be a hard drinker to the end. The lyrics don’t waste a word in describing a man who realizes too late what he’s about to lose. And although he’s sincere and determined, and believes he’s made a start down the right path, he has a lifetime of unfaithfulness and neglect to prove that he’s no good and never will be.
The Life You’ve Lived (recorded by Eddie Noack)
written by Eddie Noack
You think now that you’ve seen the light
The world’s forgot the life you’ve lived
And you can’t understand why she’s afraid of you
And though your change is plain to see
It’s not so easy to forgive
She can’t forget the many times you were untrue
You find each sin that you did two by two
You pay for one by one
You’re asking for a love so good and true
Now that you’ve had your fun
For years you’ve taken it all and now
She can’t believe that you can give
You find it’s hard to live down the life you’ve lived
The life you’ve lived makes people wonder
If the life you’re living now
Is just a pastime or if this time, you’re sincere
You thought she’d take you back so gladly
But in sorrow you find now
That you’re untrusted by the one you hold most dear
If you could live your life all over
You’d have cherished every vow
You’d have placed no one above her
You’d live like you’re living now
A few short days cannot erase
A lifetime that’s been spent in sin
You find it’s hard to live down the life you’ve lived
Nothing gets to me quite like that line “you’d live like you’re living now.” I’m not sure what demons chased Eddie Noack — he also wrote and recorded two very twisted and entertaining singles about killers, Psycho and Dolores — but as it is with many artists, his pain somehow produced this beauty of a song.
I was in Quizno’s the other day, and noticed that one of the options for their new Sammies sandwiches is “Alpine Chicken.” What kind of exotic poultry is this? I can just picture them gathering on icy mountaintops, pecking at the barren rock, occasionally fluttering to the valleys below. (Actually, come to think of it, this might be a fanciful way of describing frozen, pounded-flat pieces of chicken meat.) I haven’t seen a Quizno’s commercial for a while, but maybe these will be new character pitchmen, somewhat less disturbing than the spongmonkeys or the man-raised-by-wolf.
2007. Starring Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Good vs evil, circa 1980. Sheriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) no longer understands the capacity for evil in his fellow human beings. He feels overmatched. The aging end of a line of gritty Texas lawmen, he struggles to admit to himself that “the dismal tide” is about to overtake him and his kind. “I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job,” he intones as the film begins. “But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘O.K., I’ll be part of this world.’”
When Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds $2 million in cash in the midst of a drug deal gone bad, he pushes his chips forward and begins the chase that occupies the majority of the film. Following him is a relentless and remorseless killer named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), whose devotion to fate allows him to make life-or-death decisions based on the toss of a coin.
Chigurh is definitely a striking presence in the film (although too much is made of the haircut — this was 1980, you know — there were worse haircuts), but he likely feels familiar to fans of Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel on which this film is based. Chigurh, like the Judge in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, personifies the distilled evil that can be found walking around disguised as man. As Chigurh reminds us, “You know how this is going to end.” Still, the film’s ending proves that we still don’t.
I’m not going to give anything away. But after a second viewing, I don’t find a false scene in this film. The acting is incredible, from the stars down to the most incidental characters. Long scenes pass without dialogue, and without need of any. The violence is realistic, distressing, disheartening. The dismal tide rolls in, and we are up to our knees in it before we realize it.
Tempted by retirement and haunted by his failure to right the world, Sheriff Bell relates a dream he’s had of his father, another lawman, carrying a “fire in a horn” and riding into the unknown darkness. Waiting for him down the trail. Like all of us who face down evil, or have tried, with varying degrees of success.
My mom passed away five years ago this morning. She died in her sleep at home, in her own bed, the way she wanted to go. As the sun came up that morning, I saw a cardinal outside her window. I don’t believe in the significance of such things, usually, but I’ll make an exception in this case, because everytime I see a cardinal, I think of her. Five years feels like so little time passed, but it also feels like forever. I miss you every day, Mom.
There’s an old, sort of funny joke that asks “What happens when you play a country song backwards?” The punchline has something to do with having your dog come back to life, uncrashing your pickup and getting let back into the trailer park. I admit — I couldn’t find the actual joke anywhere on the internets, but I did see that some awful “hot new country” band did record a song loosely based on the joke.
It’s appropriate that a new country act idiotically enforce the stereotype. After all, it’s new country artists and their fans who have trashed this important and noble art form. Contemporary jazz artists and jazz fans don’t tolerate their early heroes being described as anything less than innovators and artists, and they shouldn’t.
Robbie Fulks’ song “Every Kind of Music But Country” describes the current attitude about country music better than I can — the girl he sings about says she loves music, just every kind of music but country. It’s an attitude expressed almost as a default. It’s not until she hears real country music that she changes her mind. Which is the remedy for anyone who is country-phobic.
I love music — especially country music. Part of it is due to the exposure I’ve had to country music all my life. But a big part of it is learning to love the depth and insight of the lyrics, which were often based on heartache, guilt and desperation.
I chose to name this blog after the Louvin Brothers song “When I Stop Dreaming,” which is one of the most haunting songs in all of music, and a great example of what I call real country music. So I’m going to make it the first in a series:
When I Stop Dreaming (recorded by the Louvin Brothers)
written by Ira & Charlie Louvin
The worst that I’ve ever been hurt in my life
The first time I ever wanted to die
Was the night when you told me you loved someone else
And asked me if I could forget
When I stop dreaming
That’s when I’ll stop loving you
I’d be like a flower unwanted in spring
Alone and neglected, transplanted in vain
To a garden of sadness where its petals will fall
In the shadow of undying pain
When I stop dreaming
That’s when I’ll stop thinking of you
You may teach the flowers to bloom in the snow
You may take a pebble and teach it to grow
You can teach all the raindrops to return to the clouds
But you can’t teach my heart to forget
When I stop dreaming
That’s when I’ll stop crying for you
The lyrics alone express a defiant declaration of unrequited love, but with Ira and Charlie’s harmony, the song becomes a plea. It’s the kind of song that makes you feel alive — whether it feels good or not.
If you like every kind of music but country, you’re missing out.
1973. Starring Christopher Mitchum. dir. Tulio Demicheli.
Death by acid bath. Rifle-butt dentistry. Switchblade castrations. Ricco the Mean Machine delivers everything the DVD cover promises, and then some. Maybe a bit too much.
A Spanish production, starring Christopher Mitchum (yep, Robert’s son), who may be the least-bloodthirsty avenger ever portrayed on film. Under long blond hair, Christopher looks a lot like his dad, with a lazy delivery that adds some ruthlessness to this character. Oh, he’ll kill you, but he won’t go out of his way to do it.
Mitchum plays Ricco, the son of a organized-crime boss, who doesn’t care much for his father or his business. After his father is gunned down by colleagues (one delivers a brutal-but-unconvincingly-shot “coup de grace”), Ricco vows to exact revenge his way, which begins by wandering into the guarded compound where the new boss has happened to keep captive Ricco’s old girlfriend, played by Maliso Longo.
Ricco begins making trouble for the new boss (Don Vito, played by Arthur Kennedy) by stealing extortion payments and knocking off his unimpressive bodyguards. Aided by his former girlfriend’s cousin and a few of his father’s old buddies, Ricco really starts annoying Don Vito. That’s when the acid baths and switchblade castrations start.
Don Vito also took over “the factory” when he became boss, and the factory makes and packages soap, which besides being a profitable commodity business largely unaffected by market flucuations and seasonal demand, also allows the boss to have a couple big acid vats in which to throw the incompetent and disloyal. And Ricco’s old girlfriend. Which really makes Ricco a mean machine.
If you can get through a couple of the scenes — oh, let’s say the switchblade castration, which at least is ridiculously unrealistic — Ricco is entertaining, with fun early-70s music, clothes, cars and attitude. The ladies (Longo and Barbara Bouchet as the cousin) are very attractive, and Mitchum is fun to watch as he sleepily throws karate chops and tears down one of film history’s least-competent crime organizations.
I don’t know what I have to say. But that never stopped anyone from blogging.