Silver Screen Streak List #02, Round 2: 21 Immortal Classics

Flickcharted: #2317 (65.06%)
0 pass spent; passes remaining: 2

I found Port of Shadows surprising, and not just because it was not primarily a thriller as its title suggests. Marcel Carné's film, while set in a shallow sort of criminal underworld, is, primarily, a treatise on masculinity, and, secondarily, a romance. It takes nearly a third of the movie for any semblance of plot to become apparent, as a military deserter (Jean Gabin) arrives in a port city hoping to skulk under the radar of the authorities before he heads out to sea. When he runs afoul of some feckless criminals and attracts a teenage girl (Michèle Morgan) drawn to his refreshing style of reluctant bravado and righteous aggression, his plan for escape becomes complicated.

Aside from Gabin's erstwhile star power, the strength of this movie is its script, which is full of poignant and wistfully delivered dialog, like:

At odds with Gabin's indefatigable likeability is the sense that the rest of the world is mired in muck; it could be called "No City for Good Men."

Flickcharted: #3035 (54.31%)
1 pass spent; passes remaining: 1

I've had some difficulty with Robert Rossen's work — I found All the King's Men (1949) heavy-handed and The Hustler (1961) shockingly dull — but there's a nice, almost floating sense of lyricism to the otherwise very heavy Lilith (1964). It's almost like this older director had been waiting for post-French New Wave Hollywood to free him up. This one is loose and jazzy, and the cast is magnetic. I dare say I'd like just about any movie featuring young people in horn-rimmed glasses playing ping pong in black and white and scored to flute music. Warren Beatty stars as a troubled former soldier who — perhaps due to his own post-war mental issues — is drawn to work at a mental hospital for affluent patients, where he becomes enamored of the titular inmate (Jean Seberg). Some may find the era's depiction of the mentally ill problematic or reductive, but that's the style of the 1960s. At one point, a doctor tries to claim that the mentally ill are infirmed due to their superiority over others; and Lilith's condition is described thusly: "She wants to leave the mark of her desire on every living creature in the world." It's not a subtle movie, and its supposed sensitivity reeks of condescension and exploitation. Worse yet, its plotting isn't always credible or clear. It begs credulity that no one notices Beatty's intense relationship with Lilith, especially when her modus operandi is well-known, and their sexual chemistry is off the charts. Because their infatuation goes unnoticed, the narrative culminates too quickly when it goes topsy-turvy, and the sensational ending muddies rather than wrestles with its characters' issues. I'm not sure Lilith had anything interesting to say about its setting or characters, but it sure looks great. Co-stars Kim Hunter, Peter Fonda, Jessica Walters and Gene Hackman.

Flickcharted: #1322 (80.10%)
2 passes earned; passes remaining: 3

Sometimes a movie comes along that pushes so many personal pleasure buttons that it's hard to tell if it's objectively good — THE OUTSIDE MAN (1972) is one of those movies for me.

A French hit man (Jean-Louis Trintignant, who is as cool as they have ever come) is stranded by his double-crossing employers in 1970s Los Angeles and — in an unfamiliar city and disconnected from all of his usual resources — must outfox the killers hired to hit him. This little beauty not only basks in the irresistible landscape of '70s L.A., one of my favorite locations, but it co-stars Roy Scheider, Georgia Engel (Georgette from The Bob Newhart Show), Jackie Earle Haley, Alex Fucking Rocco, and Ann-Margret in an awful white wig. It also features a totally sick jazz score by none other than Michel Legrand. It even has a scene in an empty drive-in movie parking lot.

I love everything about this minor crime masterpiece — except for maybe the final scene, which uncharacteristically features too much 'acting.' I'm putting many more Jacques Deray movies on my watchlist.

Flickcharted: #2941 (55.74%)
1 pass spent; passes remaining: 2

It's hard to hate any movie that features Harvey Keitel as a clueless asshole who does lame shit like bringing his ghetto blaster into public restaurants, awkwardly forces himself on women, and talks incessantly about his dick hurting. This could be an origin story for Bad Lieutenant (1992) — or, really, any of the many other Keitel characters who routinely call random women "whores" out of sheer impotence. Aside from the morbid likability of its central mental and emotional cripple, Fingers is like a first-draft mash-up of Five Easy Pieces (1971), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Rocky (1976), and Mean Streets (1973) — a pretty good set of influences even if James Toback's script never really pulls them together meaningfully in any fashion that outweighs the comic pathos of Keitel's loser.

There's other good stuff: Michael V. Gazzo is immensely enjoyable as the walking heart-attack of a shitty father who clearly raised his son in his own sad image ("I should've strangled you in your crib!," is just one of his charming paternal sentiments). Tanya Roberts is at her smokin' hottest, and Jim Brown's appearance as a dominating pimp is truly emasculating. But Fingers is a good example of how many '70s movies came overstuffed with 'hungry young man' creative energy, but when it came to putting all the pieces together, they were as awkward and anti-climactic as Keitel trying to put the moves on a passively disinterested Tisa Farrow. At the very least, a movie like Fingers is nothing but true to Toback's own apparent artistic desires, frustrations, and inadequacies. Fun for people like me, who like this kind of thing, and probably exceedingly hateable for anyone else.

Flickcharted: #3046 (53.52%)
1 pass spent; passes remaining: 1

I watched this strange religious drama when it was released, and it's as surprising now as it was then. Mimi Rogers stars as a bored swinger experiencing a midlife crisis, and when rumors grow about an upcoming religious event, she struggles to join the flock. There are moments in The Rapture when the filmmaking is awkward, but that only lends to the eerie sense that this is a made-for-religious-TV morality play gone horribly off-the-rails. While Rogers' transition from sinner to holy woman is too quick, and some of the characterizations feel condescending, The Rapture is full of provocative and often grueling set-pieces that seem to be made out of an unholy and very ballsy transfiguration of cynicism and sincerity. David Duchovny costars, along with Will Patton, and, as he does in most of the great indie movies of the 1990s, James Legros pops in to steal a few scenes.

Flickcharted: #4558 (30.56%)
1 pass spent; passes remaining: 0

This fun streak had to end somewhere, and it ends on this semi-likable curiosity directed by famed fashion photographer William Klein. With something only slightly resembling a narrative, Klein follows around the titular fashion model (played by Dorothy McGowan) as she rises in her dehumanizing career. Klein uses this backdrop as a playpen for several other disconnected satirical observations that are sometimes obvious, often inscrutable, and rarely sharp. While the cinematography and mise-en-scène are striking throughout, it's not always clear what Klein is after, especially after he exhausts his early thesis that models are objectified. Well, duh. It feels like something made up on-the-fly and then constructed in the editing room without ever discovering a sense of intent. Music by Michel Legrand.