#why we watch
Why We Watch: The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)
Sterling Hayden lays down the law to this lawless crew, and it’s a master class in close-work cinema.The entire picture is a minor masterpiece of noir fatalism, with a tone that’s desperate and downbeat at the same time. Astute observers will notice that this heist movie is the DNA from which Quentin Tarantino created Reservoir Dogs.
And what a bunch of ugly mugs are on hand to pull off this caper (when Sterling Hayden is the handsome one of the bunch, you know the camera won’t help anyone). Elisha Cook Jr.—film noir’s ever-inept leprechaun—brings his bug-eyed anxiety to the table. J.C. Flippen brings a more subdued kind of worry, something resembling shame, while his hair (clearly an inspiration for the Heat Miser) seems to be undulating off his head.
Still uglier mugs from Central Casting come on board: Ted de Corsia, Joe Sawyer, and the always deranged Timothy Carey, whose heavy-lidded visage ought to be the main image for the DSM-5’s section on sociopaths. His very presence signals ice-cold brutality and mayhem (it was Carey to whom Tarantino dedicated the script for Reservoir Dogs, by the way).
And there has to be a dame, therefore a leggy, vulgar Marie Windsor slithers around as Elisha Cook Jr.’s calculating wife, who is capable of everything and ashamed of nothing. Windsor took roles in a lot of the cheaper, darker noir pictures of that era, effortlessly defining the very concepts of cheapness and darkness.
In any case, the dialogue crackles, thanks to a script assist by hardboiled legend Jim Thompson. Lucien Ballard’s camera is in the right place, with the right angle, with the right lighting.
And if you see little moments that hint at big moments in Kubrick’s later work, well, yeah, there’s that to enjoy here as well.
Why We Watch: The Third Man (1949, directed by Carol Reed)
It is doubtful that anyone will ever fully explain why this masterpiece of cinematography, atmosphere, mood, and suspense is universally regarded as a textbook example of why we go to the movies. Much of what is admirable about the works of Hitchcock, Ford, Lang, Cocteau, and Welles finds its way into this picture, yet without emerging as discrete elements or distillations of a particular style. Location shooting provides the effortless capture of time and place, rendering a mesmerizing evocation of post–World War II Austria’s sinister, melancholy, and mysterious ambience. Cinematographer Robert Krasker makes it all lovely and indelible.
Reed has his players make similar impressions, the strongest of which belongs to Orson Welles. Certainly Joseph Cotten earns our affection, but Welles steals our imagination.
Yet in terms of immediate impact, even Welles may be surpassed by some of the minor characters, a cadre of ominous European gargoyles who creep in and out of the story like fog from those storm drains Harry Lime secretly navigates. Most unforgettable is the moment when we first see Harry Lime—that brief glimpse of his impish, hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile. Some of us have the same look on our face while we watch this work of art.
Why We Watch: The Bell Boy (1960, directed by Jerry Lewis)
This might be the most successful sight gag among many in Lewis’ masterwork of minimalism, which offers the physics-defying visual elegance of Jacques Tati, Buster Keaton, and countless Warner Bros. animated classics. Haskell Bogg’s deep-focus camera adds to this picture’s marvelous style and technical mastery, while Lewis (who speaks barely two dozen words) indulges himself with the extended take and the extra gesture.
Why We Watch: Ingmar Bergman
As the son of a stern Lutheran minister whose disciplinary measures made Bergman’s childhood a time of fear and resentment, and as a resident of a country in which the very climate itself can induce a lifelong depressed state, the widely acclaimed director was perhaps not well suited for a career in the entertainment industry. But then, the definition of entertainment must be broad indeed if any of Bergman’s work is to fall into that category, unless being mesmerized, inspired, or deeply troubled by a motion picture means we’ve been entertained.
It wasn’t that the themes of his pictures (death, pain, isolation, fear, God, doubt, damnation) were in themselves inherently grim; the dour, downbeat nature of those films derived from Bergman’s resolute, formal, and direct manner of exploring those themes. The most obvious manifestation of his directness was the close-up shot, and casual viewers might mistakenly (but understandably) remember, for example, Persona, as nothing but a series of close-ups of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. (The two actresses, most assuredly worthy of close-ups, were members of what amounted to Bergman’s stock company). Less obvious at first, but quite moving and memorable over time, is the quiet, deathly still atmosphere of certain scenes. The effect doesn’t lend itself to description, but some quality of that stillness results in immediacy, creating the illusion we are somehow in physical proximity of what transpires. This subtle fly-on-the-wall approach makes many scenes rough going, as nobody wants to be up close and personal during forays into the metaphysics of alienation and anguish.
Then viewers realize that they’ve been tricked into an investment in the proceedings, and not merely because the photographic splendor of these films, usually compliments of cinematographers Gunnar Fischer and Sven Nykvist, has seduced them. What’s going on is a creative feat that for decades countless critics, scholars, and filmmakers have attempted to grasp and/or emulate: the creation of a boldly expressive cinematic style that conveys utter detachment, and the presentation of alienation, inner conflict, and human suffering that is highly engaging and ultimately life-affirming. On paper, these elements should not work together toward those results, but in Bergman’s films they do because, against all odds, the most depressed artist in Sweden found a way to connect with us.
Attempts to fully explicate how that is so are exercises in futility. In fact, it’s extremely hard to definitively state that a particular Bergman film is intriguing, off-putting, engaging, boring, funny, sad, tedious, or scintillating. They are all wholly personal, phenomenal visual experiences with universal impact, and they are usually impossible to ignore. That brilliant sunlight filtered through a forest in The Virgin Spring, the expressionist cinematography that recalls medieval woodcuts in The Seventh Seal; the eerie blending of faces in Persona—those are reasons alone for going to the theatre, purchasing the DVD, or updating a Netflix queue. To that end, see Silence,The Seventh Seal,The Virgin Spring, and Hour of the Wolf.
Reposted for 100th birthday
