Saturday Morning

Downtown Chesterton, Indiana. Taken at about 9:00 am this morning.

Summer Regards: Key Largo (1948)

Loosely adapted from the 1939 Maxwell Anderson stage play, John Huston's Key Largo ('48) is a ratchet-tight one-set psychological film noir about selflessness and sticking your neck out in the face of oppression, evil and cruelty and all that jazz.

Taking place entirely inside and around a Florida Keys hotel during a hurricane, the film is owned by Edward G. Robinson's performance as the notorious gangster Johnny Rocco, who is holed up inside, keeping the hotel owner (Lionel Barrymore), his daughter (Lauren Bacall) and a Army veteran (Humphrey Bogart) at his mercy.

Of course, it's a classic Bogart role and performance (as another cynical practitioner of self-preservation who sees a sudden change of heart), as John Huston's slick direction and smooth accompanying dialogue make sweet music throughout. Even Claire Trevor's washed-up, alcoholic dive singer (an Oscar winning performance) has a moment or two in the spotlight - including a humiliating a cappella crooning for the promise of a glass of whiskey - and she nails them.

An identity swap involving a main character actually severely hinders the impact of the finale, but this is still a poignant, balmy practice in psychological power-plays with a stunning cast. Think of a more expansive version of The Petrified Forest ('37), only with Bogart now taking his turn as the heroic hostage. [A-]

Lunch and Noir

Summer Regards: Dark Passage (1947)

This Warner Bros. film noir, a follow up to The Big Sleep ('46), is a commendable, technically affluent potboiler in the first half, but this Delmer Daves penned screenplay (based on the 1946 David Goodis novel) is too unspectacular to merit the talents of its cast.

The proceeding romp entails the journey of an escaped convict (Humphrey Bogart) who runs into a willing accomplice (Lauren Bacall) and seeks reconstructive facial surgery to alter his appearance both physically and metaphorically, as he sets out to prove his innocence.

The first forty-five minutes are shot almost entirely from a first-person point-of-view, as Bogart's face doesn't even appear until the one-hour mark. (His stream-of-consciousness narration serves to hold us over.) The effect is a bit of a double-edged sword - by turns dazzling and detrimental - for it provides both virtuoso camerawork and limited screen-time for our chiseled protagonist.

And once the camera becomes complacently third-person, Dark Passage wilts a tad under its stable but insubstantial plotting. Perhaps the biggest swerve from the road is the one that surprises us with its optimism. Nevertheless, the ride is nervy and engaging, registering as a middleweight Bogart vehicle, preceded and followed by better efforts. [B]

Short Review: Splice (2010)

Advertised as a genetic freakshow monster-flick, Vincenzo Natali's Splice is actually something far more darkly peculiar and creepily absorbing. It still chugs too much like an icky genre schlocker at times, but for the willing participant, it's that rare horror film that eschews cheap thrills in favor of discomforting topicality and psychological debilitation.

Like a recently discovered David Cronenberg effort from thirty years ago, Splice takes a reasonably familiar horror formula and turns it on its head, morphing into a disturbing resource of violence and sexual physicality, not to mention social concern.

Like Videodrome (which loosely examined the effects of raw violence on television), Splice similarly deals in the 21st century realm of genetic science and its disturbing future. Rather than simply crafting a slasher, it's fortunately a lot smarter and a lot more distinguished.

Unexpectedly, just as the film giddily taps into those dark, treacherously unsettling waters, it reverts back to its genre casing, limping to a mute, dishonest and predictable conclusion that was set up an hour ago. Such a folly could be excused more readily had the rest of the film in question been as proportionately vapid and tasteless - we'll take what we can get. [B-]

Summer Regards: Adam's Rib (1949)

The greatest thing about George Cukor's Adam's Rib ('49) is the way that it manages to prematurely address gender equality and women's rights and do it in a way that's unfussy and delicately comedic.

Katharine Hepburn, who would constantly play roles in which her chiseled features and self-confidence threatened to dominate her male co-stars, is perfect here in one of her better comedic roles and films.

Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, the screenplay (a deserved Oscar nominee) is based on a real-life court case in which a woman was tried for assault after catching her husband's deceit first-hand. Hepburn's Amanda Bonner is the defendant while Spencer Tracy's Adam prosecutes in this definitive battle-of-the-sexes.

Adam's Rib isn't a howler or anything, but it's a brave film that only becomes more relevant with each passing year. It also features two noteworthy appearances by Judy Holliday (Born Yesterday, Bells Are Ringing) and Jean Hagen (Singin' in the Rain). [B+]

Hometown Heroes

LaPorte High School (located about 15-20 miles southeast of Michigan City) has one of the oddest mascots/team names I've heard, so I just had to take a picture.