Lorre And Sydney Greenstreet

Cute clip featuring Patty Andrews of the Andrews Sisters- big musical stars in the 1940s.

Peter Lorre Montage

Interesting.

Peter Lorre, Again

Casablanca is a good solid little film, but it's not a masterpiece. As I wrote in my review of it:

'Casablanca is quite a modern film, in terms of pacing (and in some aspects of editing), for within the first ten or twelve minutes, you feel as if you know these archetypal characters (for good or ill), as if you’d already had a full movie’s worth of them under your belt, and this is part of the reason why the film sucks you in to its vortex, and gets better, subjectively, as it goes on, even if, objectively, it’s a fairly static film, in terms of plotting. Yet, the film has not dated well. The two most obvious aspects of this are the not so special effects (at the level of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930s British films) and the handling of the black character, Sam. Yes, the film reflects its time fine enough, in that sense, but there still is a cringe-inducing quality to Dooley Wilson’s slightly above coonish attitude of deference to Rick. Despite many critics’ claims that the film portrays the two men as equals, this is clearly not so. Sam’s deference is typical of black depictions of the time, as if he had no personal nor interior life of his own, as if he exists merely as an extension of his white friend and employer. The worst scene in the film, though, in this aspect, is when Bergman’s Ilsa offhandedly refers to same as the ‘boy’ who plays piano, even though he’s clearly fortysomething years old, and a decade and a half or more older than Ilsa. The moment is teeth-grinding to a modern sensibility because, unlike the black characters in Gone With The Wind, with this film set in France’s colony (as well as Africa), there was no reason to not reflect the more modern and accepting French attitude toward blacks. Naturally, this aspect dates the film, cementing it to a bygone era (in the worst sense), as the lack of other contravening social or aesthetic pluses means this flaw is unmitigated. This, and many of the other flaws I’ve enumerated, certainly makes Casablanca far from the great or ‘perfect film’ its champions claim. The truth is, the more one cogitates on the film, the more flaws one finds with it, and the lower it sinks in estimation. Yet, this serves to point out the power and correctness of objectively critically evaluating art, because it does not allow personal biases to cloud judgment, pro or con; for, criticism is analysis, and analysis is always about evaluation, for analysis without evaluation is merely recapitulation and description, and what is the point of merely describing a work of art? The art should always be its own best description.'

But, there's also the acting. I wrote of the three main leads:

'....it is also the flaw of acting that ranges from mediocre to bad. First, let’s go with the performances of some of the leading characters, and let me start by stating that most of the characterizations of the acting abilities of the actors in this film, by critics, are often quite wrongheaded. Let us start with the three top billed actors, Humphrey Bogart as club owner Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as his ex-lover Ilsa Lund, and Paul Henreid as Ilsa’s husband, the Czechoslovakian Nazi Resistance outlaw, Victor Laszlo. Virtually all critiques of this trio leave Henreid as the odd man out, mainly because the film focuses on the love angle between Rick and Ilsa. But, from a purely technical standpoint, Henreid gives, by far, the best acting performance of the trio (and, it’s not even close). Because it is the most restrained and understated, however, it usually gets dismissed as stiff acting, rather than good acting of an intentionally stiff character. Well, the character of Victor is certainly restrained, and a bit stiff, but the performance of Henreid is not. In many ways, his performance reminds me of the performance of Masayuki Mori, as the murdered samurai husband in Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film, Rashomon. Like Mori, Henreid conveys emotional depth and complexity with his eyes alone, or even the slight lift of a brow. He is restrained, but this is because his character is über-disciplined. He (the character) is a concentration camp escapee, and a guerilla fighter, who has to not draw attention to himself, and must repress his emotions. He is not demonstrative in his overt feelings toward Ilsa, but one need only look at Henreid’s eyes, and the physical postures of his constant leaning in toward Ilsa, to see how Victor truly adores his wife. And, despite what some critics say, his two time overt declaration of love for Ilsa stands in stark positive contrast to the more cartoonish and caveman-like refusal to utter such words by Bogart’s Rick. Furthermore, Victor shows his love for Ilsa throughout the film, while Rick’s love is displayed only in the final scene, but even Rick’s final gesture is not something that emanates from within. Why? Because he ends up doing the very thing that Victor initially suggests to Rick that he is willing to do- allow Rick to leave Casablanca and take his wife with him, for her own safety! Why? Because we never get a moment that we doubt Victor’s love for Ilsa, whereas there is the sneaking suspicion that Rick merely had the hots for Ilsa, even if he blew it up into more than it was. That not a single critic, to my knowledge, in the nearly seven decades since the film’s release, has ever commented on Rick’s final ‘grand and altruistic gesture’ merely being the inverse of Victor’s earlier suggestion, and that this places Victor at the center of the film, heroically, maturely (in contrast to the more puerile Rick and Ilsa), romantically, and dramatically, is further proof that a) most critics simply are not good enough at their jobs to break down more complex aspects of a work of art, and b) they too often rely on critically cribbing others in their profession. This means that a few ‘talking points’ per film are disseminated by the most widely known and read critics, and all the ancillary ‘second and third tier critics’ merely regurge the same talking points, supplemented with their own biased and emotion-bases yeas or nays on the film. But, getting back to Henreid’s characterization, one need only look at the cheesy scene in the bar, where Victor hears the Nazis singing their song, Die Wacht Am Rhein, and dares to get the band to play La Marseillaise, then look in Victor’s eyes, to see that, far from what critics claim, Victor is a man of great passion and principles from the get go, and this break from his usual restraint gains in power precisely because it is a break, but one that seems wholly natural for a man who has been frustrated for the bulk of his scenes in the film, and then feels he is having his face rubbed in it. While the political implications of the scene have lost their resonance (as do most blatantly political gestures in art), Henreid’s volcanically restrained performance in that scene has not. '

But, look at Lorre's performance. It is small, canned, and off the rack, as was much of his work in Hollywood, after M skyrocketed him to acclaim. Hollywood did not invent typecasting in the last quarter century, but just compare the scenes and writing.

'Tis a shame, but Lorre never really hit his full potential as an actor, although he may have cashed in well.

Fritz Lang's M

Ok, back to more serious things.

Fritz Lang is likely best noted for two films, his silent Metropolis (1927), a film which wielded an enormous impact in the genres of science fiction and apocalyptic films. It also was a forerunner (moreso than The Golem) of the perils or robotics theme that has entwined many a film since then. In fact, forget robotics, it really is the precursor of the whole Artificial Intelligence idea in film.

It is a landmark film, and had it been the only great contribution to film, from Lang, it would have been enough. But, he also pioneered the serial genre of film with The Spiders (1919-1920), contributed films to the Mabuse mythos of German cinema, became influential in 1950s film noir, but, most of all, asides from Metropolis, created M, with Peter Lorre as a pedophilic serial killer.

Yes, the serial killer film genre was not created in the 1980s, but a half century earlier, in 1931. The film, which depicted the depravity loose in Weimar era Germany was, ironically, used by the Nazi Party as an agitprop film for their rise to power to 'clean up' German society of its filth and gangsterism.

In fact, once Hitler came to power, Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the post of top German war film propagandist. To his credit, Lang swiftly and discreetly left the country.

The trailer for M:


Yes, Peter Lorre's capture and trial by the German Underworld, who want to get him out of the way because his crimes are bringing down too much heat on their crimes, is a bit too much and unrealistic, but given what preceded this film, psychologically, it is one of the early sound era's masterpieces of character exposition.

And Lorre really does a good job at restraining himself. Again, to modern eyes, it's melodramatic, but seen as a progression toward the realism that swept films in the 1950s through 1970s, it shows Lang was ahead of his time. That dramas in the USA have regressed to 1930s level melodrama, even lacking the witty screenplays of a Frank Capra, is really damning.

Here is the whole film:


Oh, and note the technique established her, and used in all subsequent great horror films- Lorre is never really glimpsed fully until nearer the end. Lang lets the viewer imagine the child killer. Then, we get the recoil when it's the seemingly harmless and pathetic looking Lorre.

Dark City Redux?

I earlier posted about this film, and rewatched it last week, in the Director's Cut edition. A great film, but I don't know if the additions, and deletion of the opening voiceover really makes the film better. Proyas, in the DVD commentary thinks so. But I think the changes are more akin to the Apocalypse Now-Apocalypse Now Redux cut- longer, but still of the same quality. Oftentimes directors are screwed, but other times it's their vanity and egos at work when they decry studio edits. Blade Runner, while no great film, is actually better in its first cut, with cheesy voiceover that leavens some of the mawkish scenes within by adding a taste of unintended POMo self-deprecation.

Here is Kiefer Sutherland doing his Peter Lorre best:



However, the most famous scene from this film made iconic the image of Jennifer Connelly at the end of a long pier.