Sleuth (Mankiewicz, 1972)

An older upper-class man entices his wife's young lover to commit the perfect burglary.

You can feel the theatre origin of the script extremely strongly throughout the script, with its crucial break of the first act right in the middle. It is highly interested in form as the second part of the film is basically mirroring the first one but with an unexpected twist.

The characters turn out to be much more embittered by their situations than both of them let on. They are rendered as rather caricatured versions of very realistic persons. This over-the-top characters, but played very matter-of-factly by the two actors took me quite some time to get used to. But once suspension of disbelief set in, I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

The camera work didn't look great on my screen, the interiors felt very theatrical, with too much pointed light and the exteriors on the other hand looked a little flat. I would have preferred the outside scenes also harsher in lighting, with strong shadows, even film-noirish - but maybe conditions weren't too good for filming. And it might have added a macabre touch to the funny, but also slightly unsettling scene of the burglary.

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

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...

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...

Scarface (de Palma, 1982) - TSPDT #490

A cuban refugee wreaks havoc on Miamis drug industry and realizes his version of the American Dream. The main character is really something - the acting is great and the character suffers from the most fatal of all flaws: He cannot lie - although in a practical sense he does exactly that. So his attacks on the american society he has worked so hard to become a part of work really great - he has a deep insight but at the same time he is hypocrite enough to fall in the same trap in a way. The only time when I felt that the script had to "pull" a little to take the story where it wanted it is when Tony's mother calls to ask about his sister. Her character was a little too much on hating Tony.

Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

Dieses Blog durchsuchen