Noir Watch: Gun Crazy (1950)

I've lost track of how many times I've seen Gun Crazy (1950).  And, in fact, over the past ten years its easily become one of my favorite movies.  Tuesday night JAL and I met up at the Alamo to catch a screening which was, it turned out, part of a series the Alamo was doing about social issues in movies.  And, of course, Gun Crazy is as good an example of how a good gun owner gets sucked into the issues of a bad gun owner as you're like to see.

The screening was either sold out or nearly so, which, even in a small theater at The Alamo on a Tuesday at 7:30 - for a movie that's now 66 years old - is a pretty good thing.  What was truly surprising was that the screening was of a 35mm print struck in the 1960's, as near as I could tell.

Noir Watch: Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

This one has been on my hit list for a couple of years now.  I recorded it off TCM way back in December and finally pulled the trigger and watched it.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is one of those movies like Sunset Boulevard, The Hustler or On the Waterfront that came out during a certain window of moviemaking that I think people associate with Eisenhower-era positivity, thanks to TV re-runs and a deluge of Disney movies in their youth.  Of course, Noir sort of blows the doors off all that.  But a lot of Noir gets caught up in incredible situations, with dames on the make, gangsters, long-game scams.  But sometimes something like this - stylized though it may be - gets at something a bit beyond the grift or the crime.

Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a press agent for live acts in the Big Apple.  Things are falling apart for him as he can't seem to place a story with any of the major columnists, especially J.J. Hunsecker - played with menace usually reserved for dictators and ganglords by Burt Lancaster in a pair of horn-rimmed specs.  J.J. wanted Falco to break up a brewing romance between his sister, Susan, and a jazz guitarist, Steve Dallas.  With the two planning an engagement, Falco sees doom for his own business and begins wheeling and dealing, going to Hunsecker with his problem and the two pair, their styles different but need to manipulate people and situations spinning into darker and darker territory.

This was one hell of a movie.