The filmmaker Fritz Lang found his way to Hollywood in the mid-1930s, having just fled Nazi Germany. After helming a few crime movies and westerns for Fox and MGM, he struck back at the Nazis with "Man Hunt," a 1941 thriller/film noir that opens with Adolph Hitler in the crosshairs of a rifle. "Man Hunt" flirted with violations of the U.S. … [Read more...]
‘Body Heat’: The language of noir
"You're not too smart, are you?" the femme fatale of "Body Heat" says to the fall guy. "I like that in a man." Can't boil down film noir any better than that. The line comes from Lawrence Kasdan, circa 1980, who had bet big on the mostly forgotten genre for his first directing project. Kasdan was holding aces after writing "Raiders of the Lost … [Read more...]
‘The Passenger’: Antonioni’s rocky road movie
Jack Nicholson says the making of Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger" was "the biggest adventure in filming I ever had in my life." That's saying plenty and probably explains why the actor did his first solo commentary for the DVD. "It's very hard for me to separate the experience of making the movie from the movie itself," he says. For the … [Read more...]
‘The Wages of Fear’: Heart of ‘extreme blackness’
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a man ahead of his time. With "The Wages of Fear" the French director anticipated the golden age of over-amped, over-budget action films by three or four decades. In 1951, Clouzot abandoned the comfy soundstages of Paris, marching his cast and crew into the rocky hills of southern France. There, his craftsmen built a … [Read more...]
‘The Yakuza Papers’: Gangsters high and low
They have sniveling down to a fine art in Kinji Fukasaku's "The Yakuza Papers." Sniveling, weeping, groveling and myriad other abasements of the spirit. There's little nobility found in the clashes between Fukasaku's low-rent Japanese gangsters, only the "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" promised in the subtitle. "The Yakuza Papers" consists … [Read more...]
