|
|
Content by Edward
Commentateur n° : 6,712
Votes Utiles:
18
|
|
|
Reviews Written by
Edward (San Francisco)
|
Reviewer Rank:
6712 |
Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lethal History, Dec 12 2003
A vanity production if there ever was one, Mel Gibson's 1995 "Braveheart" is not so much a movie as it is a video game of medieval mayhem. As the 13th Century Scottish rebel Sir William Wallace, Mel makes love to beautiful women, fights gruesome battles, and barks speeches filled with repetitions of those democratic catchwords "country" and "freedom". Aware that the average 14-year old's eyes glaze at the mere mention of the 13th Century, the screenplay by Randall Wallace skims over the English domination of Scotland, quickly resorting to standard blood and guts, while the conflict between the clans and William Wallace's uneasy allegiance are too sketchy to be enlightening. Edward I of England, called Longshanks,is the movie's villain; and he's represented as a sadistic psychopath. In "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" Winston S Churchill says that Edward I "presents us with qualities which are a mixture of the administrative capacity of Henry II and the personal prowess and magnanimity of Coeur de Lion." Granted, Churchill was somewhat partial to royalty, but another source says Edward I was "at heart a good and honest man." In a hagiography like "Braveheart" the opposition must look as bad as possible if the hero's murders and arson are going to be represented as sympathetic, so Longshanks gets the shaft. (Shakespeare had to dramatize Richard III as a ruthless child-killer to make justifiable the usurpation of Henry VII, who was the grandfather of Shakespeare's sovereign.) As a director, Mel Gibson is no Eisenstein. As an actor, he woodenly plays Wallace as a peace-loving man who just wants to tend his farm and raise a family. When Edward establishes droit de seigneur in Scotland, Wallace marries in secret, but even then his wife is assaulted by English soldiers. In defending her honor, Wallace starts the rebellion almost by accident; and he soon becomes the hero of the Scottish cause, his followers (in a ludicrously anachronistic touch) chanting "Wah-les! Wah-les! Wah-les!" Little is known of the real William Wallace, the nearest thing to a biography being a poem that may or may not have been written by a bard named Henry the Minstrel about 180 years after Wallace's death. There is no mention of this poem in the movie's credits. Whether or not Wallace was multilingual is anyone's guess, but it's extremely unlikely he had an affair with the future Queen of England, a subplot thrown in to gratify the Harlequin Romance element in the audience. Isabella is depicted here as a yearning soul, but she's known to history as the "she-wolf" because of her cold-blooded betrayal of her husband Edward II. I know a lot of reviewers have said "Lighten up, it's only a movie", and I would agree if "Braveheart" were not so solemn and sententious. Bending facts is one thing (Sir Walter Scott did it all the time), but then to plaster these distortions across the screen in pseudo-historic splendor is a little dishonest. Now I see that Mel's coming out with a film based on the Passion. God help us.
|
|
|
|
|
|
No Title Available
|
Availability: This item is currently unavailable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disney in Dixie, Nov 24 2003
I'm pleased to see all the customer reviews praising Walt Disney's 1946 Technicolor feature "Song of the South", and I want to add my support for its (hopefully soon) transfer to DVD. This is one of Disney's most engaging movies and one of the first (perhaps the first -- references are a little vague) to combine animation with live action, a process which TV commercials have made as common as soapy dishwater. The 57-year old technology here is remarkably sophisticated, the "toons" often sharing the screen with the live actors. As a matter of fact, there are two directorial credits, Wilfred Jackson for animation and Harve Foster for live-action. (Evidently, Uncle Walt really had little to do with this production.) Based on the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), the plot is simple and sentimental: a little Southern boy travels with his parents to visit his grandmother only to learn that his father is moving on. Feeling hurt and lonely, Johnny accepts Uncle Remus, a middle-aged black man, as his father-figure friend and, from him, hears the adventures of clever Br'er Rabbit, malicious Br'er Fox, and dumb really dumb Br'er Bear. ("Br'er" was the 19th Century equivalent of "Bro".) The earnest child star Bobby Driscoll plays Johnny, the sensitive James Baskett plays Uncle Remus (he was given a special Oscar), and their rapport is perfectly presented. What the racial discrimination or degradation or whatever is all about leaves me completely flummoxed. Obviously, the black characters are not slaves (judging from the costumes, the story takes place in the 1870's or 1880's), and all of them are depicted as warm and intelligent. I suspect many people object to the original Harris stories, written in a heavy dialect, rather than to the movie itself. (Incidently, the film's working title was "Uncle Remus".) The censure of unpleasant stereotypes could much easier be aimed at "Gone With the Wind", what with the hysterically inane Prissy and the black potential robber/rapist in the Shantytown sequence. ("Song of the South" shares several elements with "GWTW", not the least of which is Hattie McDaniel tracing her Mammy performance.) The story's "villains" are two trailer-trash white boys who are the live-action approximations of Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. Aristocratic-looking Ruth Warrick (who played Charles Foster Kane's first wife) is Johnny's mother, and if the character seems a little cold one assumes it's because she's going through a bad time with her marriage -- not to mention dealing with her mother, the tiresome Lucile Watson. This being a Disney picture, there is a Broadwayish score including the Oscar-winning "Zip a Dee Doo Dah" and a playful ballad "Sooner or Later (You're Going to Be Coming Around)", which Hattie McDaniel sings while baking pies. When this song was popularized the lyric "want my cookin' again" was changed to "want my lovin' again", and there's just the slightest hint that the Hattie McDaniel character and Uncle Remus have had a "thing". Altogether, "Song of the South" is beautifully realized, Americana at its most charming, and to deny it DVD status is sort of like denying Br'er Rabbit his brier patch. DVD is just where it belongs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cobb: A Biography
|
de Al Stump
Édition : Paperback |
| Price: CDN$ 16.02 |
|
| Availability: In Stock |
|
|
|
|
|
A not-so-sweet Peach, Nov 16 2003
A "natural" with a Napoleonic complex ("He knew how to win against the odds"), Tyrus R Cobb was, in the words of his biographer Al Stump, "the most chilling, the eeriest of all American sport figures". In fact, Mr Stump's impressed if sometimes impatient "Cobb" (1994) is subtitled "The Life and Times of the Meanest Man Who Ever Played Baseball"; and Mr Stump, who has contributed to Esquire and Sports Illustrated, has the anecdotes to prove it -- some from the Georgia Peach himself. Mr Stump helped Cobb write his memoirs in 1960, and it seems their collaboration was wary, to put it mildly. One thing Mr Stump never had any doubt about: Cobb was a great player. With a career batting average of .367 (compared to Honus Wagner's .329, for instance) and 6,294 put-outs, he was formidable both at bat or in the outfield. Then there was the draconian side: the bullying of team mates (even worse when he became player/manager of the Detroit Tigers) and using his spikes as stilettoes against opponents. Cobb had a reputation as a virulent racist, his hatred of Negroes causing him on one occasion to even beat up a black woman. During his rivalry with Babe Ruth Cobb's ethnic prejudice went so haywire he accused Ruth of being the product of miscegenation and applied all the common slurs. He also attacked fans (as did Ruth), sending at least one to the hospital. Of course, the "cranks" often asked for it, the stands filled with a rudeness and disrespect mainly confined today to a stadium which shall remain unnamed. Cobb's personal life and the reasons for his problems are sketchy. The razzing he received as a rookie, added to a bizarre family tragedy, caused him to have a nervous breakdown at the age of twenty. Some of Cobb's contemporaries thought he was truly insane, but the explanation for his behavior could be less drastic. Emotionally selfish (though financially generous) and subject to tantrums, it could be he simply never grew up; but Mr Stump doesn't explore the complexities that thoroughly. Of the 20 photographic illustrations in the book only one shows one of his five children. The wives are not pictured at all. Cobb was married twice and divorced twice. The second wife is barely mentioned; the first wife was strictly kinder Kirche Küche. As Cobb grew older, the Game grew away from him. His despotic attitude (Mr Stump calls him "the Torquemada of the ballpark") became unacceptable to a new breed of better-educated ballplayer, and his rejection of the Ruthian home run meant that many of his tactics didn't work anymore. He died in 1961, an alcoholic alienated millionaire, admired by Mr Stump though he felt distanced from Cobb. (Just three of Cobb's fellow players attended his funeral.) The fact that Mr Stump wrote this lengthy biography is proof that he thought Ty Cobb was an athlete worthy of respect and remembrance for his professional intelligence. As Connie Mack said: "His secret is that he thinks two plays ahead of everybody else."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The mother of all motels, Oct 6 2003
When it comes to modern-dress movie monsters, you can keep your Freddys and Jasons. I'll take the shy young man perched in a gingerbread house on a hill overlooking a failed business venture off the main highway. Yes, it's Mr Bates (wide smile: "Norman Bates"), leading a life of quiet desperation, perhaps with a deranged parent. "But she's harmless! She's as harmless as one of those stuffed birds!" Norman has a hobby: he stuffs things. In Robert Bloch's 1959 novel "Psycho" Norman is an overweight, middle-aged whiner. In Joseph Stefano's 1960 screenplay, stunningly directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Norman is a handsome 20-ish recluse who offers sandwiches and milk to the woman arrivng at his motel late one rainy night. Mr Bloch introduced Mary Crane in Chapter II and had her dispatched in Chapter III. In the movie version Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is the central character through the story's first half. With her biological clock ticking away, Marion finds herself in an impasse with a divorcé named Sam (John Gavin), who has financial problems and cannot offer her marriage. Entrusted with $40,000.00 in cash (she's a realty secretary), Marion cannot resist the temptation; and embezzling the money, she drives out of Phoenix, heading for California and her lover. Her encounters with a patrolman (Mort Mills) and a used-car salesman (John Anderson), both of them suspicious, generate cumulative tension and incipient terror. Part of this is due to Janet Leigh's excellent performance, her fear, her confusion skillfully presented. The fact that she creates such a sympathetic character makes Marion's predicament (and her ultimate fate) all the more compelling. Marion is basically an honest woman and, boy, can you tell when she's lying. (Basically honest, yes, but notice her sister's odd reaction when Sam says "I can't believe it -- can you?") The picture's best scene takes place between Norman and Marion in Norman's back parlour. Their conversation is at first distantly polite, but soon it becomes more personal; and when Marion makes the mistake of suggesting that Norman's mother should be put "some place", the mood abruptly darkens. Bernard Herrmann's spooky strings enter the sound track and Norman, his shyness erased, sits forward, his face hard, his voice sharp and dangerous. The story's second half is concerned with Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) who, searching for Marion, comes to Sam's small home town, she herself followed by an insurance detective (played by the strong character actor Martin Balsam). The second half is not as logical as the first half. Why does Sam deliberately antagonize Norman, thus endangering Lila, who has sneaked up to the house to find the "sick old woman"? The acting throughout is superlative, though Simon Oakland's last-scene psychiatrist is not aging well. The most difficult role, of course, is Norman; and Anthony Perkins, turning his adolescent charm inside out, balances the character's awkwardness with a sly, cynical understanding. It's a terrific performance, in both senses of the word, and many people were surprised and upset when he wasn't nominated for an Oscar. (Hitchcock and Janet Leigh were both nominated.) Unfortunately, we have Anthony Perkins partly to blame for the "Psycho" sequels of the 1980's, each one becoming increasingly garish and silly. As for Gus Van Sant's 1998 "replication", it's to be avoided like ... well, like the Bates Motel.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Helter Skelter
|
de Vincent Bugliosi
Édition : Paperback |
| Price: CDN$ 13.51 |
|
| Availability: In Stock |
|
|
|
|
|
Horror for Hollywood, Sep 21 2003
Despite its length (600 + pages) and punctilious court room detail in the second half, Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" is a fascinating account of the two nights of savagery which shocked the nation in 1969: starlet Sharon Tate and her three house guests (plus an unfortunate young man who, like Ronald Goldman, was in the wrong place at the wrong time) on August 9th, then the LaBiancas, a middle-aged upper-class couple on August 10th. With his co-author Curt Gentry, Mr Bugliosi opens the narrative with the discovery of the carnage at the Tate residence, goes through the invesigation (the LAPD does NOT look good here), and closes with the nine-month trial where Charles Manson and his "Family" members were brought to justice. The story is haunted by Hollywood history. Sharon Tate was the beautiful wife of acclaimed director Roman Polanski (they met while filming his "The Fearless Vampire Killers"); but her chances of ever becoming a major star, had she lived, is today debatable. Before she moved into the residence where she was murdered, the house had been occupied by Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day and producer Martin Melcher. (He had been living there with Candice Bergen, herself the child of a popular entertainer.) Manson was introduced to Terry Melcher by Gregg Jacobson, a talent scout who was married to Lou Costello's daughter. One of the TV crewmen who discovered the bloody clothes discarded by the murderers was named King Baggott. It's an unusual name, and I assume he was the son or grandson of the silent film star. On a darker level, one of Manson's "indoctrinated", Bobby Beausoleil, appeared (according to Mr Bugliosi) in a Kenneth Anger film; and one of Manson's victims, a ranch hand named Donald "Shorty" Shea, had aspirations to be a movie actor. Hollywood Babylon,indeed.The "star"of the story, even with Mr Bugliosi's first-person narrative in the major part of the book, is Charles Manson. Extremely enigmatic, with a rhapsodic influence over individuals as well as groups, he is simple and extraordinarily complicated. One thinks of Rasputin, but Mr Bugliosi successfully compares him to Hitler: both were frustrated artists, both had nagging doubts regarding legitimacy and ethnicity in their family backgrounds, and both were vegetarians who loved animals (according to one of Manson's followers, he once petted a rattlesnake). Manson's mystique is undeniable. Mr Bugliosi relates how in court one day with Manson time literally stood still -- i.e., Mr Bugliosi's watch stopped. Manson was giving him a strange little smile. But in the final analysis one realizes that Manson, for all his mystical blend of the Bible and the Beatles, was simply a person who liked to kill people.As other reviewers have stated, while reading "Helter Skelter" you may as well resign yourself to nightmares, as well as checking and re-checking your windows and doors. (Sometimes the most casual detail will turn your blood to ice: after butchering the LaBiancas, the killers raided their refrigerator and had a snack.) But stop reading? No, not once you've started. A gripping revelation of Hollywood's "creepy-crawley" underside, "Helter Skelter" gives the Bad and the Beautiful a horrible new meaning.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
18th Century Ecologists, Jan 6 2003
The title page of James Fenimore Cooper's 1823 novel "The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna" defines it as "a Descriptive Tale"; and indeed the narrative is more a series of descriptions rather than a straight-forward plot. There is a well-drawn set of characters living quiet country lives. There is a plot "teaser" that is fairly obvious and finally resolved in the penultimate chapter, and there is a vague love triangle that never intensifies. In fact,Cooper seems to be not so much concerned with events as with attitudes. The story opens at Christmastime of 1793, and the settlers discuss the tumult of that year in Paris and the Vendée. (One of their company is an émigré who keeps muttering "Les monstres!" and "Mon pauvre roi!") Unfortunately, Cooper seems to have lost track of his time scheme because several months later in the story it's still 1793. This is one of the Leatherstocking Tales, which means that Nathaniel Bumppo (called Leatherstocking by the newcomers, Hawkeye by the Indians) is one of the major characters. But "The Pioneers", unlike "The Last of the Mohicans", does not involve Natty in dangerous adventures. (Which is just as well -- he's suppose to be 70 years old.) Instead, the novel presents frontier life in central New York at a settlement on Lake Otsego through commonplace but colorful occurrences: a fishing expedition, a turkey shoot, a gathering at the Bold Dragoon, a trial. The remarkable aspect of "The Pioneers", and the reason today's readers will identify with it, is the many arguments for the conservation of natural resources, both flora and fauna.Natty Bumppo's concern is understandable, as he is a man of the wilderness. More surprising is the wealthy entrepreneur Judge Temple's insistence that "we are stripping the forests, as if a single year would replace what we destroy. But the hour approaches when the laws will take notice of not only the woods, but the game they contain also". Later, both he and the Leatherstocking are appalled by the indiscriminate slaughter of birds in a single outing. This ecological attitude gives an unexpectedly modern tone to "The Pioneers" and makes it sympathetic reading in the 21st Century.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The World as Intellect and Music, Jul 16 2002
The British teacher and author Bryan Magee has approached Richard Wagner in the past (in his "Aspects of Wagner"), but never has he presented Wagner as an artist so deeply influenced by philosophy as he does in "The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy". Mr Magee is a perceptive scholar and evidently a very good teacher. Anyone who can make Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche lucid has got to be good. Wagner became entranced by Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation" at the age of 41, and its spellbinding influence stayed with him for the rest of his life. An atheist, Schopenhauer saw the world, dominated by the Will to have and keep, as a grasping, relentlessly unhappy place. We can escape this torment by entering a metaphysical state similar to the Buddhist Nirvana, a bliss exemplified by music. Bertrand Russell, in "A History of Western Philosophy", can't resist pointing out that Schopenhauer, despite his ethereal pessimism, loved good food, fine wines, and casual affairs. (We won't even discuss his nasty temper.) Similarly, Wagner himself coveted luxury and power. But more important is Schopenhauer's influence on the music dramas themselves -- "The Ring", obviously, but even more so "Tristan und Isolde", with its rejection of the phenomenal world, the longing for death, expertly explained by Mr Magee. He also discusses the other operas with great insight. For instance, in "Die Meistersinger" (written after "Tristan") Wagner reverted to his Romantic roots, composing rhymed verse, a quintet, even a ballet. The longest and most interesting chapter is titled "Wagner and Nietzsche". The philosopher was only 24 when he met Wagner, young enough to be the composer's son, and indeed he became Wagner's somewhat slavish protégé. Their strongest point of reference was Schopenhauer, for they both loved "The World as Will and Representation". Later Nietzsche turned against both Schopenhauer and Wagner, his attacks on the latter ("Is Wagner a human being at all? ... a clever rattlesnake") becoming irrationally bitter. The deterioration of their relationship was exacerbated by Nietzsche's failing health and the indiscretion of a Frankfurt physician (denounced by Mr Magee as "a lightweight, silly fellow") who communicated with a layman, Wagner, in a manner that was professionally inappropriate. Obviously, the most difficult aspect of Wagner for an author to deal with is the undeniable anti-Semitism. But Mr Magee emphasizes that this was a fairly common European attitude and was, of course, more than half a century before the Holocaust. He makes a very strong argument against Wagner's popularity with the Nazis, the idea of Wagner's music being "a sort of sound track to the Third Reich". In fact, he notes, Wagner's popularity in Germany dropped between 1933 and 1940. The anti-Semitic writings are extremely unfortunate, but they can't be taken out of historical context and made to stand for something they were never meant to stand for. Sometimes the prose in "The Tristan Chord" becomes a little awkward, and there is no bibliography, which would have been interesting. But overall this is a fascinating study of brilliant minds meeting in the 19th Century.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Adams
|
de David McCullough
Édition : Hardcover |
| Price: CDN$ 27.72 |
|
| Availability: In Stock |
|
|
|
|
|
Second in the hearts of his countrymen, Jul 4 2002
This is David McCullough's second book about an American President and the second also to win the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Like his 1992 epic "Truman", this life of our 2nd President is filled not only with the man's existence but with the atmosphere of his time. In describing Adams's career from ministerships to the Netherlands, Russia, France and England, to his Vice Presidency and finally to the White House (its first occupant), Mr McCullough gives the reader a Grand Tour of late 18th Century and early 19th Century America and Europe. There are extremely interesting side trips. For instance, when Adams and Thomas Jefferson were in London in 1786 they took a tour of English gardens, and Mr McCullough takes us along with them,including the glories of Stowe and the capabilities of "Capabiity" Brown.Inconveniences of the age are also described. The term "snail mail" takes on a new meaning when we read that if Adams sent a letter from Paris to his wife Abigail (in Massachusetts) at Christmastime she may or may not receive it by June. Travel in the Colonies was hit-and-miss, so that public coach itineraries were virtually worthless. It's a wonder the Colonies progressed at all. At 650 pages, Adams's character gets a thorough investigation. Mr McCullough obviously admires both the private citizen and the politician, but he never whitewashes. The Alien and Sedition Acts are laid firmly on Adams's doorstep, and his adamant insistence on employing regal terms (king!) in a new democracy can only be called foolish. The long estrangement between Adams and Jefferson was more Adams's fault than Jefferson's; and Abigail must have had the fortitude of a saint to put up with her husband's long absences, sometimes lasting years. As for his children, one son became 6th President of the United States, of course, but another became an alcoholic failure. Our 2nd President was "Not a simple man!", as someone said of another American; and Mr McCullough deservedly won the Pulitzer for bringing complicated John Adams to life.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Man Who Laughs
|
de Victor Hugo
Édition : Hardcover |
| Price: CDN$ 49.21 |
|
| Availability: Usually ships in 4 to 6 weeks |
|
|
|
|
|
Serious fiction, Jun 16 2002
Victor Hugo's 1868 novel "The Man Who Laughs" (l'Homme qui rit) is the superb narrative of a young man who, as a child, was abducted, sold and deformed -- obstensibly for profit, but, as it turns out, for dark political reasons as well. To tell too much of Gwynplaine's story is to give away the plot's secrets, though the truth is its key secret is revealed less than 200 pages into the novel. Set in England at the end of the 17th Century and the beginning of the 18th, "The Man Who Laughs" skewers English aristocracy the way "Les Misérables" (1862) did French authorities. Gwynplaine's long denunciation in the House of Lords is obviously Hugo speaking, while depictions of the scheming Barkilphedro, the dissolute Lord David Dirry-Moir, and the strange Josiana (whose passive-aggressive sexuality would have fascinated Freud) are reflections of the Stuart dynasty's ugly corruption "its features hidden by a mask of joy". (Queen Anne herself is dismissed as a fool.) The only pure characters are Dea, a blind woman in love with Gwynplaine, and Homo, a wolf. Even Ursus, the itinerant philosopher, seems to fight his humanity, denying the love he feels for his three companions: the scarred man, the blind woman, and the animal. Why this magnificent novel is not better known is a mystery. One reason, perhaps, is that it would be difficult to dramatize. (There was a 1928 silent film version which is rarely if ever shown.) There have, of course, been several versions of both "Les Misérables" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", not to mention a megamusical based on the former. Hugo's prolixity and his penchant for sesquipedalian words must make translation an enormous chore, which is why Joseph Blamire's English translation (to my knowledge the only English translation to date) came out a full twenty years after the original publication. For the average 21st Century reader, this is nourishment not easy to digest. Hugo's style is a series of lengthy descriptions and digressions filled with obscure references. I've got one word for you: skim. But don't skim so rapidly that you miss some of the shining epigrams: "Aristocracy is proud of what women consider a reproach -- age! Yet both cherish the same illusion, that they do not change." Obviously, this is not junk food. On the contrary, for readers with rich tastes "The Man Who Laughs" is a literary feast.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Still tough at 70, Aug 24 2001
"The Public Enemy", the gangster drama that brought James Cagney to stardom, is just as tough and effective today as it was when first released in 1931. Despite some stilted acting (Donald Cook is a little too stiff as the anti-hero's straight-arrow brother), the story of Tom Powers, a hoodlum who becomes a leading mobster, is a harrowing study of Prohibition Chicago and the racketeers who made it their oyster. Tom himself is a conscienceless but strangely compelling (due to Cagney's charm) character who lives for rapine -- and occasional revenge (poor Putty Nose!). As a kid (well-played by Frank Coghlan, Jr.), he is heavily disciplined by his cop father and pampered by his weak mother. One senses that Tom has witnessed a lot of spousal abuse and it has affected his attitude towards women. That playful little "slugging" gesture of his looks vaguely ominous. The movie's most famous scene is the one where Tom smashes a breakfast grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face. (Oddly enough, Mae Clarke doesn't get screen credit.) Later in the story, while Tom is lying low at a gangland boss's apartment, the boss's mistress makes a heavy pass at Tom, who's had one too many. The next morning, as Tom is having his coffee, the woman implies that they slept together, which is evidently untrue. Furious at the manipulation, Tom belts her one. The moral: don't bug Tom at breakfast. The only female who remotely affects Tom is Gwen, played by the rising Jean Harlow. In this role, Harlow is suppose to be a high society girl with a veddy-veddy accent, quite at variance with the doxies she later played at Metro. ("The Public Enemy" was released by Warners, one of the first of its underworld "exposés".)Joan Blondell was also at the beginning of her long career, and here she plays the warm supportive type she would specialize in. Their co-star Edward Woods as Tom's buddy Matt is engaging, but he didn't forge ahead like the others. Director William A Wellman maintains the dark, dangerous atmosphere throughout with scenes of implied rather than direct violence. This is true of the revenge on Putty Nose as well as the killing of the horse responsible for "Nails" Nathan's death and the rubbing out of Tom's rival gang. Like the ending itself, one of the most unsettling ever filmed, these chilling events leave you convinced that this is still a strong, tough movie, seven decades after it was released.
|
|
|
Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
|
