Originally Posted by
nycsteve
I didn't see this airing but have seen it multiple times. Its a good flic.
I've only seen it once but have wanted to see it again. And, yes, a good flick.
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From that list above, I'm looking forward to quite a few but the ones with an asterisk I'm going to do my best not to miss:
Nocturne
The Harder They Fall
This Gun For Hire* (this sounds like my kind of film noir)
Johnny Eager
Kansas City Confidential (I've seen this one but I want to see it again)
The Mask of Dimitrios* (Greenstreet & Lorre are two of cinema's great pairings!)
Berlin Express* (spy movie and film noir? sign me up!)
Criss Cross (ambivalent about this one)
Cash on Demand (mostly for Peter Cushing)
The Captive City
Try and Get Me (altho I can see having trouble watching Lloyd Bridges in an early role, as I'll probably keep thinking, "looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue")
Sweet Smell of Success* (I was actually a little ambivalent about this one until I read a blurb by Andrew Sarris for the New York Observer: Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957), from a screenplay by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, is being returned to Film Forum for an extended run after its recent successful two-week revival. Please see it if you haven’t already, and don’t be put off by its cult status after failing at the box office on its initial release. At the time, my friends and I were startled most by the brilliant performance of Tony Curtis in his much-ridiculed “my foddah, da caliph” period. Mr. Curtis’ Sidney Falco feeds items to Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker, a power-hungry right-wing gossip columnist modeled after Walter Winchell. Acting honors go also to Emile Meyer as a crooked police detective at least a decade before his time. Falco and the detective form an uneasy alliance to frame jazz musician Martin Milner on a drug rap to end his relationship with Hunsecker’s nubile sister, played by Susan Harrison. The intimations of covert incest on the part of Hunsecker toward his sister was another taboo-breaker.
But the main incentive to see this movie is its witty, pungent and idiomatic dialogue, such as you never hear on the screen anymore in this age of special-effects illiteracy.1
Oh, man, I love good dialogue. And Emile Meyer as a crooked cop? Not even having seen the movie I already know this is perfect casting. To me, Meyer is best remembered as the antagonist in
Shane who keeps harassing Van Heflin. He also played the priest in
Paths of Glory. And, of course, seeing Burt Lancaster as a villain has really piqued my interest.)
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