The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellmann, 1943)

The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellmann, 1943) - TSPDT #1089

A posse sets out to revenge a cattle farmer's murder and soon they find three possible cattle thieves.

It is a comparatively short picture but nevertheless I was extremely impressed. It's a very moral play, and basically it all takes place in one and the same place, but there are so many layers that it is an enormous pleasure to watch all the actors. Fonda is amazing, so is Andrews and all the smaller actors are brilliant, and full of little surprises.

Despite its shortness, this is an emotional ride of a lot of hopes and ups and downs. What I really enjoyed here is the "matter of fact" situations - like when everybody stops from the lynching and has a bite to eat. This scene is so eerie that I can still remember my feeling vividly. It gave the three characters a break, but actually it made me catch my breath too - and made all the following actions even more intense.

Study this one!

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Time of the Gypsies / Dom Za Vesanje (Emir Kusturica, 1988)

A supernaturally gifted boy from a Gypsy community is forced to survive in the world of crime. The intriguing qualities of Kusturica's films I've seen is his relentless depiction of basically crazy communities. Not just agreeably potty, they're usually outright interstellar-nuts. Here, he follows the fate of the rather harmless boy Perhan, that leaves for Italy in hope of a better future for him and his loved ones. There are some enormously interesting images in the film that kept ringing long after. The ritual in the river and the last scene in the church ruin (with a horse standing somewhere far back in the image...). After sketchily mapping out the scenes it is surprising how rigorously three-acty the screenplay is constructed. The first act seems quite long in terms of time and number of scenes, but there is also a lot of imagery spent on depicting life in this crazy universe, which makes the second part in Italy much more believable. And there is a certa...

Odd Man Out (Reed, 1947) #TSPDT #469

An underground rebel is wounded during a heist and tries to evade the manhunt in Belfast. The story is of a steady decline towards the unsurprising end of terrible consequences. James Mason is quite astonishing as the soft-spoken hero, whom you just cannot imagine of doing anything as bad as scaring a child, let alone a robbery. Obviously, he does both in the film and much more. His endless odyssey which is much less about him than the various Belfastian characters towards him and - although explicitly denied by the filmmaker in a bizarre opening title card - ultimately about the struggle for independence in Northern Ireland (or any similar situation) There were two or three moments in the film that didn't hold up for me as well as they should, but the crazy painter and his bizarre co-inhabitant made it all up - a bold selection of outright frightening men from the fringes of society. There is no need to decipher the symbolism (payoff might be even bigger) - it's simply e...

Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013)

I haven't seen many of Villeneuve's movies, but I really like everything so far. When thinking about Prisoners after a few days, there was a particular scene that somehow kept returning to my memory: When Gyllenhal's character is introduced, sitting alone in Chinese restaurant, not-flirting with the waitress. For some reason this scene struck me as "different". That gave me the idea to examine all the first appearances of the characters in the movie. ( SPOILERS ) KELLER DOVER (Hugh Jackman) - we don't actually see him, we start with a very static shot into the forest. The man is looking into the forest, it is his POV (which we find out quickly). But we can hear him praying, while a deer walks into the frame. When the camera pulls back, a rifle points at the animal. And just after "Amen", a shot is fired. Now, here's a little surprise: Keller, who was doing the praying has his son RALPH (Dylan Minette) shooting the rifle. It's a fat...

Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

Dieses Blog durchsuchen