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Archive for the ‘PRIVATE EYE’ Category

Sherlock Holmes: The Game Of Shadows

18 Dec

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows — Directed by Guy Ritchie. Boulevard Thriller. 129 minutes Color 2011.

* * * * *

Better than the first one by a long shot. Firstly because it is more witty, and secondly and thirdly because it is more witty. By that I mean that while it is also more spectacular, the spectacle is witty. I am not going to spoil the jests by describing them; let them come upon you unawares. Then too, the story swans around Europe with uncommon velocity and the picture simply expects you to go along for the ride, which is essentially Dr. Watson’s ride, since that is who we have to be, since none of us can ever be Holmes, can we. When a director or storyteller takes wit for granted in his audience he has done the wittiest thing he could do. And always the director lets us in on the joke, by which is meant that he expects us to finish the punch line for him, Alà Lubitsch. And it also means that the dialogue is witty, and dialogue can only be witty in a film if there is really a lot of it, so that we can sink our ears into it and live with the flavor of it as things unfold. There are mistakes, or rather one mistake, which is that, again, the fight scenes fall prey to scrambled editing so that there is no knowing what is going on or what is doing by whom to whom. But these are over early, and the story opens out into its drolleries and detours amply. The décor, the costumes, the carriages, and the protocols are all Teutonic, the jammed living rooms, the opulent restaurants, the creamy excesses of dress and manner, the expression, the repression – all are Germanic. It is 1891 and Victoria is on the throne and she was a German. Victorianism everywhere always has a German accent. And the designers have made the most of this and played off against it in the person and personality of Robert Downey Junior, who is the most romantic in appearance and affect of any Sherlock Holmes before. He never wears a high collar or a tie. His shirts are always Byronically open at the neck. He never does the prim Basil Rathbone/Jeremy Brett thing of the pinched genius with the long condescending nose. Instead he is all close-up and personal and tousled and Peck’s Bad Boy. Of course, like those others, he is dreadfully neurotic. He also speaks a lot more clearly here than in the first installment. In all this he is ably mated by Jude Law, again as Watson, who almost equals Holmes in magical prestidigitations. Stephen Fry makes an astounding appearance as Mycroft Holmes, Sherry’s brother, and a welcome presence he is indeed. Can we follow all this? We are not meant to. All we are meant is to feel privileged to tag along. I liked doing that. It is a sumptuous ride.

 

 

 

Kiss Me Deadly

14 Nov

Kiss Me Deadly — Directed by Richard Aldrich. Private Eye Flick. An L.A. detective tracks down the killer of a hitchhiker he picked up. 106 minutes Black and White 1955

* *

Howard Hawks should sue for criminal impersonation. Instead of The Big Sleep, Aldrich has made The Big Sleaze.  It is peopled by women who ravage the person of Mike Hammer on sight. They simply will not stop kissing him, and he will not stop discarding them like lint as soon as they do. Hawks’ famous females of sexual insolence are thus degraded to nymphomania, and Mike Hammer would have had to have had the sexual solidity of a pepper mill to respond, but he brooks no distraction, for he is not hot on the tail but hot on the trail. Aldrich seems to be a very bad director, and now that he is dead we can malign him as such with impunity if not with glee. For he makes the mistake which Hawks never made, of very fancy camera angles at every turn. Ernest Laszlo shot every scene from some crazy place, every scene with something jutting in the foreground, every scene as though Max Ophuls were the director. I would like to bet that the result is that it took so long to set up these scenes that the actors had no time to rehearse. The result is that every actor in the cast is absolutely lousy, even the great Cloris Leachman who is out of this farrago early, since she plays the hitchhiker. The one actor who does not suffer is Ralph Meeker who is just dandy as Hammer. Skip it.

 

 
 
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