Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
the story is built on slow suspense and mystery: who is Komoko? What happened to him? How does Macreedy know? And what does Macreedy want? Sturges happily lets this mull and build over the best part of an hour, before suddenly darting past the reveals as if they’re unimportant. I’m not saying they need to be sign-posted with dramatic camera angles, weighty overacting and thudding “dun-dun-DUN!” music, but they’re shoved in here as if they’re immaterial; a bit of bookkeeping before the all-action climax.Read more here.
The Saint in New York (1938)
As the Saint, Louis Hayward makes for an appealing hero. He’s cocksure, a James Bond character, so justifiably confident of his own abilities and plan that he has every right to believe he’ll be OK. (Indeed, this is certainly readable as a proto-Bond movie.) The downside is there’s no sense of jeopardy or danger, which I suppose is a shortcoming; but instead there’s a kind of comic inevitability to the villains believing they could ever beat the Saint.Read more here.
Also new-to-new-blog this week were...
M (1931)
Fritz Lang's proto-noir serial killer thriller. It's an exceptional film and I encourage you to see it wholeheartedly.
Wallander: Before the Frost and other stories
Reviews of the Swedish Wallander movies Before the Frost, Mastermind, The Secret, and The Revenge.
More next Sunday.
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