http://www.seanax.com/2009/11/02/new-on-dvd-columbia-pictures-film-noir-classics-i/ Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:57:54 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.seanax.com/2009/11/02/new-on-dvd-columbia-pictures-film-noir-classics-i/comment-page-1/#comment-4860 Good Things in Big Packages: DVD Box Sets of 2009 | Parallax View Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:06:09 +0000 http://www.seanax.com/?p=3455#comment-4860 [...] The remaining three features showcase the docu-noir style of daylight thrillers with darkly psychotic characters. The Sniper (1952), produced by Stanley Kramer and directed on location in San Francisco by Edward Dmytryk, has a much edgier atmosphere and modern feel. Adolphe Menjou’s police detective has seen everything, but the spree of a woman-hating psychopath troubles him because (police psychiatrist aside) he can’t understand the motivation. The direction straddles the studio model of storytelling and the immediacy of low-budget location shooting and Dmytryk punctuates the violence with vivid explosions of brutal force without showing a drop of blood. Don Siegel’s The Lineup (1958), also shot on location in San Francisco, stars Eli Wallach as a killer on the trail of smuggled heroine shipments ready to kill anyone in his way. It’s low budget theatrical version of a TV series, but Siegel makes it all about the killers and gives the film a matter-of-fact violence that gives the film a life of its own. Murder by Contract (1958), by contrast, is almost laconic it its story of a self-made assassin-for-hire (Vince Edwards), an almost existential figure who is happy to share his philosophy while on a job to silence an inconvenient witness. Irving Lerner’s direction is almost hypnotic as he matches the deliberation of his killer with meticulous direction: every murder is so carefully set up that we never need to see the follow through. All three of these films take place mostly in the daylight and all have a crispness to them that the shadowy studio noirs don’t. There are introductions to four of the films (three of them by Martin Scorsese) and commentary on two of them. Film noir historian Eddie Muller is more focused on The Sniper but is more lively trying to keep James Ellroy in check on The Line-up (Ellroy’s colorful language is not censored in this track, as it was on his previous commentary track with Muller). More on The Big Heat here. [...] [...] The remaining three features showcase the docu-noir style of daylight thrillers with darkly psychotic characters. The Sniper (1952), produced by Stanley Kramer and directed on location in San Francisco by Edward Dmytryk, has a much edgier atmosphere and modern feel. Adolphe Menjou’s police detective has seen everything, but the spree of a woman-hating psychopath troubles him because (police psychiatrist aside) he can’t understand the motivation. The direction straddles the studio model of storytelling and the immediacy of low-budget location shooting and Dmytryk punctuates the violence with vivid explosions of brutal force without showing a drop of blood. Don Siegel’s The Lineup (1958), also shot on location in San Francisco, stars Eli Wallach as a killer on the trail of smuggled heroine shipments ready to kill anyone in his way. It’s low budget theatrical version of a TV series, but Siegel makes it all about the killers and gives the film a matter-of-fact violence that gives the film a life of its own. Murder by Contract (1958), by contrast, is almost laconic it its story of a self-made assassin-for-hire (Vince Edwards), an almost existential figure who is happy to share his philosophy while on a job to silence an inconvenient witness. Irving Lerner’s direction is almost hypnotic as he matches the deliberation of his killer with meticulous direction: every murder is so carefully set up that we never need to see the follow through. All three of these films take place mostly in the daylight and all have a crispness to them that the shadowy studio noirs don’t. There are introductions to four of the films (three of them by Martin Scorsese) and commentary on two of them. Film noir historian Eddie Muller is more focused on The Sniper but is more lively trying to keep James Ellroy in check on The Line-up (Ellroy’s colorful language is not censored in this track, as it was on his previous commentary track with Muller). More on The Big Heat here. [...]

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