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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Tough guys and the great unsolved mystery: the dangerous female with the gun

Lizabeth Scott and Van Heflin in "The Strange love of Martha Ivers" (1946) directed by Lewis Milestone

"Scott was groomed as a troubled “good girl” first as Toni Marachek, a wrong-side-of-the-tracks-with-a-heart-of-gold type, in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). As per Wallis’s plan, director of photography Victor Milner (often overshadowed in the scheme of things at Paramount by lens legend John Seitz, but an extremely accomplished craftsman in his own right) gave Scott a lavish glamour tableau, especially in her silent reaction shots.
The fact that she didn’t register even a scintilla of streetwise sense in her characterization of an ostensible “blue collar girl” was glossed over. Her earlier career as a model was sent up in a scene where she gives Van Heflin a tour of her new outfit—complete with removable skirt.
Lizabeth Scott relaxing on the set of "The Strange love of Martha Ivers" (1946)

The “eye candy” approach worked well, and Martha Ivers was a hit—more due to the tense triangle between Van Heflin, Barbara Stanwyck, and Kirk Douglas, but Scott was swept along for the ride.
As a result, Wallis gave her the lead in the grimly gay sagebrush noir Desert Fury, a film designed to take full advantage of Scott’s youthful glow. An ultra-rare Technicolor noir, Desert Fury (1947) showcased Arizona locations and a rapturous color scheme coordinated to Scott’s complexion, facial expressions—even her wardrobe. She’s no longer incongruously hardscrabble; instead she’s incongruously innocent and impetuous at the same time, lurching into a hornet’s nest of past pain and homoerotic reckonings.
At times it seems she’s being pursued more passionately by her own mother (Mary Astor) than by the two men who are, in theory at least, rivals for her favors (Burt Lancaster and John Hodiak). Too well bred to be truly bratty, Scott has to settle for simmering in a film that desperately needs something more fiery than the endless innuendo it dispenses.

When Rita Hayworth backed out of playing Coral Chandler in Dead Reckoning (1947), Scott pestered Wallis to make a loan-out deal. He did so, but with a good deal of reluctance: the screenplay was muddled, much more so than the type of dark films Wallis preferred to make (unlike other “noir auteurs”, Wallis eschewed flashback narration, only allowing a bare minimum of it in I Walk Alone).

An inordinate amount of time in the film is spent in misdirection about Coral Chandler’s character: the back-and-forth is so dizzying that one is almost exhausted at the point when the film finally makes up its mind.

For Lizabeth Scott, the role was clearly confusing, even though she clearly understood the idea that Coral was supposed to be struggling with her own nature. The “good bad girl” concept got a strenuous and ultimately tenuous workout here: Coral Chandler is a “bad good bad good bad” girl (if one has counted the script flipflops accurately). Scott is so exhausted at the end of the film that she goes wooden, capitulating to a hopelessly muddled role after a valiant attempt to tame it.

It’s probably no wonder that Scott threw herself into the role of Jane Palmer with a sense of gusto— was she working out her frustrations with Wallis when she made the astonishing transformation from housewife to murderess in Too Late for Tears (1949).

There is little duality to be found in Jane Palmer, though Roy Huggins’ script gives her some Phyllis Dietrichson -like backstory as a kind of belated explanation. In a few brief scenes, we see Jane embrace her obsession and grow into a persona that clearly eschews the notion of marriage. We get a brief glimpse of what femme fatales do when they actually get away with their misdeeds —they become feminist free agents.

Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea as Jane Palmer and Danny Fuller in "Too late for tears" (1949) directed by Byron Haskin

Scott, who has up to this point been a bit too overt in displaying the roughening edges of her character’s pose of gentility, achieves a new level of relaxation in these brief scenes —a “character state of mind” that she will return to in later noirs. For a little while, at least, Jane Palmer has defied the patriarchy in all of its forms —smarmy but smothering (as embodied in her husband Alan, played by Arthur Kennedy), lowdown and conniving (Dan Duryea in a hammy turn as grifter Danny Fuller, who knows the scoop about the $60,000 that Jane is trying to hold on to), smirky and covert (Don DeFore, a most avuncular avenger). It is a character a good bit ahead of its time" -Lizabeth Scott: Noir's Quicksilver Anti-Heroine" by Anastasia Lin (Special to the Sentinel, Fall 2010)

More memorable actresses who played femme-fatales in the Golden Age (1940's-1950's):

Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster in "Vertigo" (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Rita Hayworth
Claire Trevor
Kaaren Verne
Ida Lupino
Julie Bishop
Ava Gardner
Jane Greer
Mary Astor
Gail Patrick
Mamie Van Doren
Barbara Patyon
Sylvia Sidney
Madeleine Carroll
Jeanne Crain
Dolores Moran
Lana Turner
Gene Tierney
Peggy Cummins
Virginia Grey
Gloria Grahame
Audrey Totter


Lizabeth Scott and Victor Mature as Liza Wilson and Pete Wilson in "Easy Living" (1949) directed by Jacques Tourneur

"Based on "Education of the Heart" a short story by Irwin Shaw, Easy Living (1949) is a peculiar mixture of football movie, a noir sexual relationship, and tentative romance.
The best reason for the viewer is his very ambitious wife, Liza (Lizabeth Scott) who is an interior decorator "with no taste and no talent" but who attracts a powerful patron (one only too pleased to snatch her up before his son does), Howard Vollmer (Art Baker). The pouty, husky-voiced Lizabeth Scott was one of the greatest (and greediest-seeming) noir femme fatales (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, I Walk Alone, Dead Reckoning, Pitfall, Too Late for Tears). Apparently the censors cut her part, but there was no doubt in my mind that her success was arranged by Vollmer in return for "sexual favors."

Tourneur directed one of the greatest noirs, "Out of the Past" and the stylish low-budget "Cat People" and "I Walked with a Zombie." His output strikes me as an impressive counterexample of "auteur theory." This makes me credit producer Val Lewton for "Cat People" (and what is good in "Zombie" and "The Leopard Man"), Burt Lancaster for the campy swashbuckler, "The Flame and the Arrow," and to consider "Out of the Past" a miracle. "Easy Living" is undistinguished except for Lizabeth Scott's performance and Roy Webb's (I Married a Witch, My Favorite Wife, Out of the Past) achey musical score". Source: www.epinions.com

Jane Greer Among Screen's Great Villainesses in Out of the Past

“Along with Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity” Ursini notes in his DVD commentary, “[Greer] is probably the most important of the [noir genre's] femme fatales, influencing people all the way down to Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown.”

Out of the Past glides between the present day of 1947 and flashback to tell the dark tale of former private detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum).

His back story is revealed in a lengthy flashback. Three years earlier, Whit sent Bailey to retrieve a girlfriend, Kathie, who'd shot him and made off with $40,000. Bailey traced her to Acapulco and – no big surprise here – they became involved. She denied stealing the money and, well, she certainly seemed sincere.

Daniel Mainwaring Wrote the Screenplay, Based on His Novel: The intricately-plotted screenplay was written by Daniel Mainwaring (under the name Geoffrey Homes), based on his novel, Build My Gallows High. And beyond the careful structure, Mainwaring’s script features countless great lines. Like when Jeff tells Kathie, “You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another". Source: www.suite101.com

"Dead Reckoning", "In a lonely place" and "The Desperate Hours" reveal even more clearly how the ongoing renegotiation of Bogart's persona after World War II charts the transformation of the 1940's film noir tough guy into the fifties psychopath, according to Freedman: "a violent male, sexual criminal".

Bogart's fifties films demonstrate that his virility itself is what disturbs his characters' relations with women and other men, his toughness functioning as a mechanism of sexual regulation supporting the authority of postwar hegemonic masculinity. In Joan Mellen's view, this representation of masculinity made Bogart the star who best personified manliness for the 1940's: "Bogart's Sam Spade is supremely masculine because he's his own man". As weaker men fall to the bottom, the tough hero rises to the top, in validation of his brand of masculinity.

As Frank Krutnik demonstrates in his study of film noir, what then overrides the hostility otherwise resulting from this competition for power is a sense shared by all the men in the hierarchical structure that femininity -the dangerous female with the gun- is the great unsolved mystery. -"Masked men: masculinity and the movies in the fifties" by Steven Cohan

Robert Ryan (1909-1973)

"RKO was the smallest of the five major studios and while it didn’t have the biggest stars, in the late 1940s and early ’50s it had a sterling lineup of tough guys and femmes fatales well known to lovers of classic noir. Robert Mitchum was at the studio with Ryan (they made several films together, including “The Racket”) alongside those great dames Ida Lupino and Gloria Grahame. At RKO Ryan broke out with his supporting turn in Edward Dmytryk’s “Crossfire” (1947) as Montgomery, an anti-Semitic soldier who, in a fit of hate, beats a Jewish man to death. Also along for the nasty ride: Mitchum, Grahame and Robert Young. (Ryan served as a drill sergeant in the Marines near the end of World War II.)

Robert Ryan made “The Set-Up” one of his favorites and most indelible films, two years later. Directed by Robert Wise (who had edited “Citizen Kane”), “The Set-Up” is a tight, intensely moving, pocket-size masterwork about Stoker Thompson, a washed-up, 35-year-old heavyweight who believes he’s just “one punch away” from changing his lousy luck. Part redemption story, part romance
(his wife is played by Audrey Totter), the film unfolds in close to real time and takes place in the cruelly named Paradise City. Ryan, all muscle, sinew and heart-rending longing, slugs through one punishing round after another — look for the photographer Weegee hitting the bell as the timekeeper — creating a portrait of a man who endures ghastly physical punishment on his way to redemption.

In an earlier Hollywood age he might have had a more nuanced career and been able, like Bogart before him, to move away from playing so many heavies. But in 1948 old Hollywood was dealt a death blow when the Supreme Court forced the studios out of the exhibition business, changing everything.

“Bob Ryan is a marvelous person,” Renoir said decades after they worked together. “But he was unlucky in happening on a period in which the American cinema was in full cry after war epics — all of them highly successful.” In a 1971 interview Ryan reflected on the Hollywood he had known. The conformity of the material was a problem, true. But the old system had virtues, he said: studios “would gamble once in a while on an offbeat picture.” As important, they were a training ground for young actors. “We all had to go to film school, and we worked in hordes of pictures — B pictures — which were shot very fast” and were, he said, an “amazing experience.”

Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino in Nicolas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1952)

And what about the new system, the interviewer asked. “Speaking from the actor’s point of view,” Ryan said, “it’s not anywhere near as enduring. A kid will make a hit in a couple of movies and then you may not hear of him again.” Nonetheless he believed the movies had gotten better and a few years earlier had starred in one of his best, “The Wild Bunch” (1969), as a terribly sad, worn-out former outlaw hunting his old partner (William Holden)". Source: www.nytimes.com

Casinos and gambling tournaments in cinema, Poker games online

Tobey Maguire -who will be playing Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (2012), directed by Baz Luhrmann, acting as the narrator, a graduate from Yale in this adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel- competed on the first day of the World Series of Poker no-limit Texas Hold 'em at the Rio Hotel & Casinoon 28th July, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Over 8,500 players joined the event. The final nine players competed for the top prize of more than USD 11.5 million on the final table. Maguire survived days 1a, 2a and 3 but was eliminated in 292nd place on the fourth day, taking $39,445 in prize money.

In "Casino Royale" (2006) there are thrilling adventures and romance amidst rounds of poker culminating in an engrossing high-stakes poker game in Montenegro. In a fight scene Vesper “Money Penny” Lynd (Eva Green) assists James in helping to beat one of the villains.
The pace changes when Bond meets the Treasury's Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) ahead of a poker game against an international money launderer Le Chiffre. Eva Green is a great asset in "Casino Royale", first reluctant to get involved with Bond, and later helping him in eloquent manners. She subverts Bond girl cliches and gives us a female character bluffing her way through poker and later a love story.

Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna in "Casino" (1995).

Based on the book by Larry Shandling and Nicholas Pileggi, "Casino" was directed by Martin Scoresese, starring Robert De Niro as Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a character based on Frank Rosenthal, who ran casinos in Las Vegas in the 70’s, most notably the Stardust casino (gambling, poker games, etc.)

Jodie Foster plays in "Maverick" (1994) a scheming southern belle and a skillful poker player. Bret Maverick (Mel Gibson) is attempting to enter a five-card draw tournament to prove that he is the best poker player. He needs an additional $3,000 to participate in the $25,000 event. In the town of Crystal Rivers he meets two other poker players: Foster’s Annabelle and Angel, played by Alfred Molina.
The tournament hits a high point when it’s down to three players: Maverick, Angel and The Commodore: While the odds of Gibson’s Ace of Spades draw are low (52 cards in a deck) the Commodore has four of a kind (eights) and Angel has a low straight flush. In the third act, the poker fans will be delighted since the interactions are all secondary to the poker action, which is some of the best captured on film.

Paul Newman playing poker in "The Sting" (1973)

After Henry Gondorf (Paul Newman) and John Hooker (Robert Redford) spot Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), a high-stakes gambler during a poker game, they come up with a cunning method of manipulating him into placing sure bets on fixed horse races.

"The Sting" on Top 250 #99 in Imdb List won 7 Oscars in 1974 - Best Picture, Best Director: George Roy Hill, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published: David S. Ward, Best Film Editing: William Reynolds, Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Julia Phillips became the first female producer to win the Best Picture category.

The incorporation of gambling, casinos, poker and other games in movies goes all the way back to the 1930's with "Gambling Lady" starring Barbara Stanwyck.

Yvonne de Carlo and Dan Duryea playing the roulette in "River Lady" (1948) directed by George Sherman

Dan Duryea, the onetime advertising copywriter turned actor, became synonymous with a particularly decadent and insidious form of evil, Catch "Criss Cross" (1949) for a prototypical Duryea performance as Slim Dundee, a well-dressed gambler and syndicate boss who could teach Dennis Hopper a few tricks about sneering with nasty intent.

Duryea reserves his most chilling glares for Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster), the viral, young buck one married to Dundee's wife, Anna (Yvonne De Carlo) Sultry Anna longs to burn again in Steve's arms, but how can she manage without the money from her sugar daddy Slim?

Accessing this site you can enjoy playing poker online which offers you the most number of online poker games, with continuous tournaments starting. Through Internet you can enjoy one of the largest poker directories, featuring reviews of the best strategies and qualify for live events.
One of their sections is PokerStars Women exclusively designed for female poker players, offering a variety of schemes and exclusive tournaments.

Online free poker allows amateur players across the world to enjoy their favorite casino games withouth limitations, using the possibility of downloading software for playing poker in their PCS and catching up with international poker events.

"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1" with never before seen footage









In this brand new trailer, Edward and Bella tie the knot and hit the road for their dream honeymoon — but when the Quileute and Volturi discover that the couple is expecting, they come after their unborn child who poses different threats to the wolf pack and vampire coven. Source: www.accesshollywood.com

Poster of "Breaking Dawn" (2011)

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Lizabeth Scott, noir icon defying patriarchy, modern films draw inspiration from film noir

Jane Greer and Lizabeth Scott in " The Company She Keeps" (1951)

"Confidential published allegations that Scott had solicited sex from lesbian call girls. She was linked to Parisian “madame” Frede, whom Marlene Dietrich had befriended; the publisher, Robert Harrison, indulged in a little “sexual Darwinism” by assigning Scott to the legion of so-called “baritone babes” who engaged in such subversive activities as wearing pants.

Lizabeth Scott did not conform. She valued her freedom and independence. She found the ways of the patriarchy to be stifling, and moved on with her life —a very personal life— just as soon as her contractual obligations had been fulfilled. Her silence regarding that life dovetails back to the duality that intrigued her from an early age —the forced dichotomy between a woman’s mind and heart, and the ongoing conflict about the ownership of a woman’s body and soul.

Too beautiful to be taken seriously, too unusual and odd to be accepted solely as eye candy, Lizabeth Scott embodies the tension that already existed in sexual politics in America in the 1940s and 50s —a tension that has still yet to be resolved.

Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott and Raymond Burr in Pitfall (1948) directed by André de Toth

“Life is a betrayal. And sometimes you betray yourself too, you know. Let’s have the guts to admit it. There isn’t anybody born here lately who didn’t play dirty sometime, somewhere in his life. So why do you hide it? Truth, honesty, that’s my key [to] filmmaking.” -André de Toth, quoted in "A Personal Journey through American Movies with Martin Scorsese" (1995)

For that reason and several more, her performance in Pitfall will continue to resonate as one of the most eloquent, realistic portrayals of “woman’s fate” in American society" -"Lizabeth Scott: Noir's Quicksilver Anti-Heroine" by Anastasia Lin (Special to the Sentinel, 2010)

"Juliette Lewis - one of the more interesting actresses out there - might have concentrated a lot on her music career over the last few years with her band Juliette and the Licks and then The New Romantiques but that doesn't stop her from taking on more film roles all the same.

Sam Rockwell holds Juliette Lewis on 5th October 2010

The Hollywood Reporter has the news that Lewis has signed on to star in contemporary film noir Blood or Water, from Scottish director Justin Molotnikov. She joins the cast which includes Stephen McCole (Stone of Destiny), Katie Dickie (Red Road), Gary Lewis (Billy Elliot) and Greta Scacchi (The Player).

Lewis had this to say:

"I am excited by Justin Molotnikov's unconventional, completely organic approach to storytelling and filmmaking... He creates one of a kind, totally engrossing stories with characters that jump off the screen." Source: twitchfilm.com

Still of Emily Hampshire as Louise in Good Neighbours (2010)

Good Neighbors is not at all the movie I expected it to be. Don't be scared off by that, though; I mean it in the best way possible. Good Neighbors instead draws its inspiration from film noir and the like, bringing Blood Simple in particular to mind, and compliments don't get much higher than that. The construction of the movie is flawless. No detail is inconsequential, and writer/director Jacob Tierney weaves it all together so brilliantly that everything you've seen and heard remains etched in your mind. He doesn't need to resort to flashes from earlier in the film to remind you what the clues were. He doesn't need to bother with monologues or heavy-handed exposition. Gifted storytellers have no use for those sorts of crutches. The whodunnit? element is basically a means to an end.

Still of Scott Speedman, Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire in "Good Neighbours" directed by Jacob Tierney

Good Neighbors takes that in a direction that makes perfect sense in the context of who these people are, and it's something so inspired and so fucked-up that you'll never see it coming. Even then, the movie keeps building and building on top of that, staying intelligent and respectful all the way but always steering clear of whatever it is you might be expecting. Like the best works of noir, there are no heroes. There are no villains.
Most everyone is instead a darker shade of gray in between, and wait'll you see how the film wrangles in its femme fatale. Source: www.dvdtalk.com

Still of Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough as Pinkie Brown and Rose in Brighton Rock (2010)

"Oh those bad boys. A mousy waitress in a British resort town is drawn to a minor-league thug, and she won't heed her boss's warning that he's no good. That's the crux of "Brighton Rock" a stylish film noir remake of a 1947 film based on Graham Greene's 1938 novel. Writer-director Rowan Joffe has set it in the '60s, so there are numerous mod references.

Despite what his name might imply, Pinkie Brown is a ruthless low-life who kills a rival gang leader out of revenge. We understand that nothing good will come of this. Sam Riley ("Control") is convincing as the strange young man who is desperate to not be found out, so when the dowdy young thing could possibly finger him for the murder, he starts wooing her.

An appealing Andrea Riseborough ("Never Let Me Go") is the good Catholic girl who refuses to believe Pinkie has ulterior motives.

In a supporting role, Helen Mirren plays Ida, owner of the tea room where Rose works. She suspects what Pinkie is up to, and won't stop from exposing the psychopath. The venerable John Hurt shows up as a bookie, and they both lend class to the rather glum proceedings.

Handsomely shot, "Brighton Rock" boasts breathtaking scenic views, with moonlit nights as attractive as a stroll on Brighton's pier. When dark is called for, the moodiness and shadows are evocative, and melancholic music punctuates a string-heavy score". Source: www.bnd.com

Kristen Stewart discusses her film experiences and wrapping the Twilight series



Actress Kristen Stewart discusses her most impactful (and disturbing) film experiences, trying on wedding dresses, and wrapping the Twilight series.