Category: Conmen films

Prizzi’s Honor (1985)

Would-be satirical mafia farce, that is slow, dense and insufficiently funny to hit its target

Director: John Huston

Cast: Jack Nicholson (Charley Partanna), Kathleen Turner (Irene Walkervisks/Irene Walker/Mrs Heller), Anjelica Huston (Maerose Prizzi), Robert Loggia (Eduardo Prizzi), John Randolph (Angelo Partanna), Lee Richardson (Dominic Prizzi), Michael Lombard (Rosario Filangi), Lawrence Tierney (Lt Davey Hanley)

Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) is a good-natured guy, loyal to his job – which just happens to be rubbing people out for the Prizzi crime family in New York. His gentle amble through Mafia life is thrown out of whack after a parade of unlucky events, silly mistakes and random occurrences. All of these can be linked back to his falling in love with Irene Walkervisks (Kathleen Turner), a con-woman, assassin and practised liar who may-or-may-not be in love with the besotted Charley. These two find themselves in the middle of a complex Prizzi family feud, much of it built up by Charley’s former girlfriend Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston). What sides will everyone pick?

John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor was one of the first films to take Mafia tropes, all that iconography The Godfather had made so ubiquitous and try and satirise it. Adapted from Richard Condon’s novel (by Condon), it carefully recreates the style and features of Mafia films, replaying the conventions – feuds, hits, femme fatales, pay-offs – with a streak of comedy. But what it lacks is the zip and energy this sort of dark satire really needs. It’s far too stately and never quite funny enough. Instead, it’s often slow and difficult to follow – and, damningly, is most engaging when it’s most like a regular gangster film.

It feels like an old man’s film. I’d defy you to look at this and then The Asphalt Jungle and not feel Huston was lacking fire here with this frequently untense, and slow film. It opens with a hugely over-extended wedding sequence, almost twenty minutes long, which laboriously introduces the characters. It frequently fails to pick to the pace from there: too many scenes lack thrust and drive, working their way slowly towards narratively unclear purposes. Now sometimes that is because so many of the characters are lying to each other – but Prizzi’s Honor does a consistently poor job of making sure we are either aware of the real truth or that we are in full understanding of the stakes at play.

A large part of the fault is the wordy, dense screenplay from Richard Condon (how did a sharp adapter of books like Huston allow this?). It takes nearly an hour for the film to really get going with a proto gang-war initiated by Irene impulsively shooting a police captain’s wife during a botched hit. Along the way, it creates too many long conversation scenes that lack spark or wit. It’s a far too faithful an adaptation, relying far too much on telling not showing. Multiple off-screen plot developments (involving complex double cross schemes) are related to us through conversations that are (honestly) hard to follow, boring to watch and delivered and shot with a flat, functional lack of interest. All of these would have worked better with a mixture of words and visuals – seeing some of these complex events playout, with an accompanying voiceover (the sort of thing Scorsese would have done brilliantly – see Casino).

Neither script nor direction is sprightly or engaging enough. It’s languid musical score and the ambling camerawork and editing also doesn’t help. It consistently feels slow, it’s meaning fuzzy, it’s action not gripping enough, it’s jokes not funny enough. Each scene is either too over-stuffed with plot-heavy information or too light on emotional connection or purpose. I’d be surprised if many people could explain exactly how the plot mechanics worked when the credits roll which, for a film that gives over a lot of time to slowly explaining things in dense dialogue is not a good sign.

The film depends on its performers to spring into life. Best of all is Anjelica Huston’s Oscar-winning turn as Maerose, disgraced black sheep of the Prizzi family. She rips into this vampish manipulator, running rings around the other characters with her sexual power or superb play-acting (there is a great scene when she makes herself up to look depressed and miserable to win the sympathy of her dim kingpin father played by Lee Richardson). It’s a funny, engaging and dangerous performance that you wish was in the film a hell of a lot more than it is. Close behind is William Hickey, rasping with malice, as a lizardry Godfather full of greed, ambition and utterly lacking in morals, presenting a neat sideways parody of Brando-style figures.

The two leads have their moments. Jack Nicholson is surprisingly restrained as Charley, surely one of the most gentle and dim characters he’s ever played (probably the film’s best joke, since it’s JACK). Nicholson gives him a childish naivety, easy to manipulate, whether that’s Irene saying she definitely didn’t know about the Prizzi-robbing scam her late husband pulled alongside her or the rings the smarter Prizzi’s and his consiglieri father (a coldly jovial John Randolph) run round him. He’s sexually naïve – putty in the hands of Maerose (‘With the lights on?’ he asks with meek bewilderment when she invites him to a clinch in her apartment) and Irene (‘On the phone? Now?’ he asks when she suggests some sexy banter) – and, with his New Yoick accent and prominent upper lip feels like a dutiful child trusted to run errands by his parents.

Opposite him Kathleen Turner embraces the lusty femme fatale qualities that made her a star, playing a husky voiced practised liar with a ruthless heart. Prizzi’s Honor though deals Turner a tough-hand: she’s the most enigmatic character and possibly its most poorly developed, the film giving so little clarity to her inner life that part of me wonders if Turner herself was slightly confused as to her character. Even in a film where the female lead is a ruthless, murdering grifter, she’s still largely only seen in relation to the men in the film – a potentially satirical point the film doesn’t really develop at all.

Both actors give sterling performances, but so slow and artificial is the film, so laboured its pacing that I found it extremely hard to care about what was truth what was a lie. Prizzi’s Honor has small moments but it’s devoid of the energy and pace that could have made it a dark comic delight. With the lack of investment it creates in an audience, it’s frequently hard-to-follow plot developments and clumsy, unengaging exposition, even the dark ending is unlikely to make much an impact. Hugely praised at the time – partly, you feel, due to affection for its director – it’s a slow, unengaging film that only briefly sparks to life.

The Music Man (1962)

A star-turn and some good songs can’t quite make a shallow, over-long musical really work

Director: Morton DaCosta

Cast: Robert Preston (Harold Hill), Shirley Jones (Marian Paroo), Buddy Hackett (Marcellus Washburn), Hermione Gingold (Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn), Paul Ford (Mayor George Shinn), Pert Kelton (Mrs Paroo), The Buffalo Bills (The School Board), Timmy Everett (Tommy Djilas), Susan Luckey (Zaneeta Shinn), Ron Howard (Winthorp Paroo)

The Music Man is an ever-popular Broadway smash, the sort of charming, light, fun-filled musical with some good songs that makes it undemanding fun. It doesn’t, honestly, gain anything on screen – in fact, if anything, it’s fundamental lightness and lack of emotional or thematic substance gets rather exposed. The movie version may be ridiculously over-extended and frequently feel more like a slightly up-market filming of the Broadway production, but it’s still got some fine songs the best of them delivered with absolute aplomb by Robert Preston, masterfully recreating the Broadway role he had played nearly a thousand times already.

Preston plays Henry Hill, who arrives in the town of River City in Iowa in 1912 determined to sell instruments and uniforms to form a children’s band. Or at least that’s what he says he’s here to do: he’s actually a con man, whose plan is to sell the concept to the town, get them to invest, pass himself off as a music professor and then skip town with their money. Inciting a moral panic over a new Pool club opening in the town corrupting the kids (it will be ragtime next!), he wins them over. But it’s not all easy-sailing: librarian Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones) suspects Hill is not who he says he is. To try and protect his scheme, Hill aims to seduce her. But will this relationship actually help him find a conscience?

It’s a feel-good Hollywood musical so… I’ll leave you to guess. The Music Man is an odd musical. In many ways, you can see it as a slice of nostalgia, with its gentle 1910s setting and portrait of small-town America as a gentle, easy-going place where everybody knows everybody else, nobody locks their doors and the most dangerous thing is a pool table. But, at the same time, The Music Man frequently portrays its townspeople as staggeringly gullible (no one doubts Hill’s ‘imagination’ method of learning – don’t practice, just imagine you can play an instrument and you can!) and very hostile to outsiders (Hill receives the coldest, most suspicious of welcomes when he first gets off the train, even before he has announced any plan). Then, when he is exposed, their plan to tar-and-feather him sounds dangerously close to a lynching.

Put frankly, I have no idea what The Music Man is trying to say about small-town life or really anything else, seeming to want to have its cake and eat it by making the townspeople both a joke and an idealist past we can aspire to. Each of the characters is, in any case, a reassuring cliché. From Shirley Jones’ librarian (a mousy, but independently-minded intellectual who has never been kissed) to her mother (a blowsy, loud-mouthed Irish-woman who just wants a good man for her daughter), to the Mayor (a puffed-up, self-important idiot) and his wife (an attention-seeking moralist grande dame) to its sweetly love-struck teens, every character more or less feels like a stock figure carefully placed for comic or emotional impact.

It also rather fudges the semi-redemption arc it feels like its aiming for with Hill. He brings back memories of Elmer Gantry (the presence of Shirley Jones – here cast to type as the sweet, virginial mark rather than an infuriated floozy – also helps with this), and you can see a certain similarity between that shameless opportunist and this egotistical showman determined to make an immoral buck. The Music Man, I think, wants to show Hill’s conscious growing as he gets closer to the townspeople: it’s slightly under-mined by the fact it continually plays the townspeople as jokes and Hill’s character has no real depth (he remains, more or less throughout, a friendly, amoral opportunist).

As such, it needs a surprisingly sudden pivot to give some genuineness to Hill (a few minutes before changing his mind, he’s literally joking about not leaving town until he’s earned the fruits of his seduction campaign by bedding Marian). The fact that this even vaguely works is largely due to Preston. In fact, almost anything that works is due to Preston. He had a Broadway triumph with the role, and Da Costa (director of the stage production) and writer Meredith Wilson insisted he got the role over preferred choices Bing Crosby, James Cagney and (most inexplicably) Cary Grant. And it’s great they did, because Preston is triumphant: magnetic, charismatic, funny and delivering the film’s best numbers with an energetic, sublime aplomb. His comic timing is perfect and he successfully makes a persistently lying, opportunistic shit immensely likeable.

He also nails the best songs. The Music Man may be slightly fudged in its themes and its exploration of its central character, but it does have some very striking, catchy musical numbers. ‘Ya Got Trouble’ (essentially an energetically sung, word-heavy, fast-paced monologue) is funny and brilliantly performed by Preston. Similarly, ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ is a show-stopper from Preston and he brings real lyrical charm to ‘Gary, Indiana’. There are further fine numbers, from the inventive ‘Rock Island’ that opens the film (sung in imitation of a steam train) and ‘Shipoopi’ a high-kicking dance number.

This is all filmed with a decent competence but very little flair. Da Costa essentially re-creates his stage production with very little of the sort of dynamism and flair someone like Stanley Donen had. Da Costa also doesn’t accelerate the pace – the light plot stretches over a very long, two and a half hours (almost nothing really happens in the middle hour. Remove Preston from it and I’m not sure there would be enough there to hold anyone’s interest. In fact, with its shallow plot, lifting and shifting of an existing musical to a (more expensive) real location with no re-thinking of the material for a different medium and its over extended, epic run-time, you can sort of see in it the DNA that would go on to become some of the mega-flop musicals that would weigh down the studios in a few years. The Music Man was a smash hit (probably because when it works, it is fun) but many of those that followed would not be.

And, as a side note, I was stunned to find out, that this beat West Side Story to the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Burt Lancaster gives a magnetic, Oscar-winning, performance in this entertaining plot-boiler

irector: Richard Brooks

Cast: Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry), Jean Simmons (Sister Sharon Falconer), Arthur Kennedy (Jim Lefferts), Dean Jagger (William L. Morgan), Shirley Jones (Lulu Bains), Patti Page (Sister Rachel), Edward Andrews (George F Babbitt), John McIntire (Rev John Pengilly), Hugh Marlowe (Rev Philip Garrison), Joe Maross (Pete)

Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) has the patter down perfectly. He can charm, wheedle and turn a phrase to set the whole room alight with laughter. He wants success but the big break never comes, perhaps because he’s selling two-bit vacuum cleaners rather than something people really want. Elmer is smart and works out, when everyone is afraid of dying, it’s a captive market for salvation. With his seminary background, he’s a natural preacher and inveigles himself into the revivalist roadshow of Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) which his force of personality shifts into a fire-and-brimstone exhibition of frenzied religious passion – just the sort of thing that gets the punters back into the church. But when the roadshow moves to the big city, will Gantry’s young affair with priest’s-daughter-turned-prostitute Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones) come back to bite him?

Elmer Gantry was seen as controversial and even outlandish at the time of its release – so much so a lengthy pre-credits opening crawl distances it from all those decent servants of the Lord who were worried it was tarring them with the same brush. But with TV evangelists raking in the cash and travelling preachers whipping crowds up into wild-eyed ecstasy, Elmer Gantry doesn’t seem so outlandish these days. Richard Brooks film adapts the middle-act only of Sinclair Lewis’ sharply satirical novel, and while it does smooth down the rough edges and offer touches of redemption for its charismatically selfish hero, it’s still a very entertaining plot-boiler with a well-delivered message and subtle character development.

Above all though it’s a defining star-vehicle for a perfectly cast, Oscar-winning, Burt Lancaster. Elmer Gantry plays to all his strengths: charismatic, larger-than-life and charming, overflowing with boundless energy and nimble, physical grace. Lancaster’s intense eyes and excitable grin burns through the screen and he’s totally believable as the sort of rogue everyone knows is a rogue but give him a pass because he’s so likeable. And he nails the magnetic charisma of fire-and-brimstone preaching, full of self-aggrandising comments about his own holy conversion from salesman to man of God. It helps that Lancaster’s physical prowess (at one point he does a body slide down the full length of the aisle mid-sermon) really helps build Gantry’s magnetic presence.

Elmer Gantry superpower isn’t that he’s shameless – he looks suitably guilty when calling his mother on Christmas day to explain, once again, he isn’t coming home – but that he can compartmentalise and forget shame so quickly. He manipulates and uses people with such charm they either don’t notice or don’t care – from charming clients on Christmas Eve with dirty stories to plugging Sister Sharon’s naïve assistant Sister Ruth (Patti Page) for details on Sharon’s life that he will then use to get his foot in the door of her roadshow. Even cynical journalist Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy, warming up for effectively the same role in Lawrence of Arabia), who knows he’s a complete bastard, still finds him a great guy to hang out with.

But the truth is Gantry corrupts everything he touches. It happens by degrees, pushed along with winning arguments and eager ‘I’m just trying to help’ excitability, but its inevitable. Before he arrives, Sister Sharon’s roadshow is a dry but heartfelt and earnest mission focused on winning converts. Under Gantry’s influence it becomes religious entertainment. Because Gantry knows people need to have their passions stirred to really invest in something, and mesmerising patter is a huge part of that. Lancaster’s delivery of these showpiece sermons drip with eye-catching, inspiring passion – even when we know he’s a hypocritical bullshit artist who probably doesn’t truly believe word he’s saying, but sure does believe it in the moment. When even we feel stirred by it, is it a surprise his audiences start to get whipped into a frenzy, barking at devils and clawing across the floor to be saved by Gantry’s touch?

Sister Sharon’s manager and sponsor William Morgan (Dean Jagger skilfully playing a character who is far more susceptible to manipulation than he thinks) might have his doubts, but it works. Elmer Gantry takes a satirical swing at the Church as the reverends of the town of Zenith swiftly put aside any doubts (other than straight-shooter Garrison, inevitably played by Hugh Marlowe) and bring Sister Sharon’s Gantry-inspired roadshow into the big city to help drag more punters (and it’s quite clear that they see congregations as customers for religion) into their church. Elmer Gantry gets some subtle blows in on the commercialisation of the Church, even if it is careful to largely distance it as a whole from the tactics of Gantry.

Gantry’s corruption also touches Sister Sharon herself. Well-played by Jean Simmons, Sharon is earnest but surprisingly steely but as she lets a little of Gantry’s shallowness into her roadshow, so she starts to compromise on the very qualities that made her stand-out. From entering into a ‘good-cop-bad-cop’ performance for sinners to opening her heart to Gantry’s persistent seduction, Sharon becomes a portrait of corruption by degrees. Brooks’ film also implies in its dark finale that she has allowed herself to absorb Gantry’s spin that she could be a vessel of holy power, which puts her life at deadly risk.

Elmer Gantry is overlong and perhaps relies a little too much on Lancaster’s charisma – it fair to say when he is off-screen it’s energy lags. Its satiric edge is sometimes blunted by focusing on Gantry as the disease rather than a symptom of a church struggling to survive in a secular age. The introduction of Lulu Baines – an Oscar-winning Shirley Jones, playing against type as a bitter floozy – is a little late in-the-day and while her performance is solid enough, the character is more of a cipher in a plot-required final act conundrum than a fully-formed character.

But when the film focuses on Gantry, it’s a fascinating character study. How much does he believe in the things he says? Does he feel shame? How ambitious is he? When he says he loves Sharon, does he? Or does he feel everything he says in the moment, but it never sticks? Either way, it’s at the heart of Burt Lancaster’s compelling, charismatic performance which juggles a mountain of contradictions but never loses the sense of the shallow selfishness that lies behind the charm.

Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1923)

Lang’s crime drama is a sprawling silent mini-series, still gripping today

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Dr Mabuse), Bernhard Goetzke (State Prosecutor von Wenk), Aud Aged Nissen (Cara Carozza), Gertrude Welker (Countess Dusy Told), Alfred Abel (Count Told), Paul Richter (Edgar Hull), Robert Forster-Larringa (Spoebri), Hans Adalbert von Schlettow (Georg), Georg John (Pesch), Karl Huszar (Hawasch), Grete Berger (Fine)

In a world before television, there were only two places for long-form stories – and Fritz Lang wasn’t a novelist. His four-and-a-hour epic Dr Mabuse der Spieler is really a sort of gargantuan mini-series, a rollicking action-adventure about a conscience-free conman wiling to go to any lengths to get the things he wants. It’s pulled together as a pacey, episodic yarn – each reel is basically an individual act (or episode) and filmed with such visionary vividness that it remains compelling today. Whether you decide to settle in for the long haul or split its parts and acts over a series of nights (and why not, the film was released in two parts, months apart) it won’t fail to entertain.

It was based on Norbert Jacques novel, a publishing sensation (so much so this was rushed into production while Jacques novel was still being serialised). At its heart: Dr Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), practically the dictionary definition of an omnipotent, amoral villain. Mabuse is a practiced liar, master-of-disguise, ruthless murderer, conman and has such demonic will power he is capable of extraordinary levels of hypnotic control, whose gang of acolytes switch between terror and outright worship of him. He can manipulate the rich into handing over their money as easily as he can the collapse of businesses on the stock exchange. No one knows who this malign spider is. But State Prosecutor von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) will make it his business to know.

Lang’s film is a gorgeous mix of the sort of urban realism he mastered in M and little touches of mystical realism more reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, wrapped up in the sort of action that inspired everything from The Sting to Mission: Impossible. It’s opening section is a brilliant example of both. Essentially a twenty-minute prologue to introduce Mabuse’s nefarious genius, it sees our anti-hero masterfully execute a plot mixing heist, disguise, manipulation and brazen self-confidence to make a fortune on the stock exchange. The theft of a secret commercial contract from a train involves the sort of disguises and split-second timing (to throw the contract from a train passing over a bridge into a car passing under it) which would make Ethan Hunt’s heart race.

It’s a perfect entrée to our villainous lead, Mabuse. First introduced rifling through photos of the many expert disguises he will effortlessly assume during the film – he becomes everything from banker to magician, psychologist to hypnotist, tramp to member of high society – Mabuse has no moral code what-so-ever other than the accumulation of things. That ranges from wealth, to an obsessive desire for ownership over attractive women (and his desire for Gertrude Welker’s Countess Told eventually contributes to his undoing) to simply the having power over the wills of weaker men. Rudolf Klein-Rogge is magnetic as this monster of the dark, ruthlessly calm but equally wild-eyed, unflappable but willing to go to any lengths.

Spieler is often translated as “gambler” – but it’s German meaning is richer than that and many have commented a better translation might well be “player”. Mabuse is certainly that. He is a master actor, who can be lose himself in different roles, undetectable to others. He weaves elaborate games around his victims, where only he knows the rules (and, often, only he knows a game is even being played). Other people are pawns to moved and gambled with. He’s a monster, but one born from disillusion of the end of the First World War, part of the hedonistic self-regard of dissolute Weimar. We can see touches of this environment throughout Lang’s film, in its hedonistic gambling dens and the casual thoughtlessness of the rich. Mabuse flourishes because he is the rash an age has come out in. (Retrospectively, you can detect the shadow of Hitler in this ruthlessly power-mad monster who hides in plain sight but demands absolute control).

Mabuse is “the Great Unknown” and the natural target of methodical if uncharismatic von Wenk, played with a stolidness by Bernhard Goetzke, balancing Klein-Rogge’s larger-than-life portrayal perfectly. The duel between these two moves from gambling rooms to elaborate houses, from the streets to the jails of the city, taking in chases, bombs, shootings, kidnappings and all sorts of attempted moves and counter-moves, culminating in a shoot-out that surely inspired countless Hollywood gangster movies.

Through it all Lang directs with astonishing freshness and invention. Dr Mabuse der Speiler throws a slice of cinematic visual inventiveness into almost every scene. Lang makes extensive use of superimpositions, cross-fading, location shooting, fast-paced editing and brilliantly evocative lighting to create a world both highly realistic and also dancing to the tune of its demonic lead. Some of this has become such a part of cinematic language that it’s unlikely to draw comment from modern viewers today – we are unlikely to be wowed by night-time footage of Wenk pursing Mabuse in a car, but to viewers at the time such scenes of photorealism taken in darkness were unheard of.

There is plenty that will continue to thrill audiences. Lang’s visual portrayal of Mabuse’s hypnotic powers is superb. In his first confrontation with von Wenk (both men are disguised at the time – this really is a game of move and counter-move), Mabuse attempts to implant a hypnotic suggestion in von Wenk. Lang demonstrates with an astonishing use of lighting which slowly concentrates the light into a small pool on Mabuse’s face before his face seems to grow to fill the frame (technical effects like this were a small miracle in 1923). On a second attempt, the hypnotically suggestive words are imposed on the screen as a set of animated letters which loom over von Wenk and later seem to be almost leading him (in his car) to the clifftop Mabuse has suggested he drive off. It’s a superb way of showing the power of Mabuse, building on the intimidating cross-fade from our stock-exchange opening that briefly shows Mabuse’s face super-imposed over the clutter-filed room.

Lang mixes this imaginative dynamism with some superbly done realist scenes that help make Dr Mabuse der Spieler a gripping crime thriller. That stock-exchange opening is followed by car chases and murders – one character is dispatched in the streets after dark with a brutal suddenness. Lang creates a series of locations, all perfectly detailed but instantly recognisable, from the distinctive look of each gambling den (from art deco lined walls to a strange rotating gambling pit filled with cards and erotic dangers) to the objet d’Art packed rooms of Mabuse’s mark Count Told (a gloriously ineffective Alfred Abel – unrecognisable from the world controller he would become in Metropolis) to the white-lined jails and careful detailed offices of von Wenk’s police headquarters.

Dr Mabuse der Spieler uses these real locations to constantly remind us that, underneath the Moriarty genius of its lead, this is also a tragedy of real people caught in the web of an uncaring spider. Mabuse cares nothing for his underlings, sacrificing them as readily as pawns. None more so than Cara Carozza, beautifully played by Aud Aged Nissen, a seducer in love with Mabuse who dedicates her life to him, at the cost of her own. She makes a dark mirror for Countess Told, drawn into Mabuse’s web but drawing strength from her admiration of Cara who is, in her own way, deeply principled. Mabuse’s victims are prodded, pushed and outright shoved into punishing and often self-destructive behaviours, their lives flourishing or ending according to his whims.

As a sort of epic mini-series, Dr Mabuse der Speiler is sublime entertainment. Each act follows its own clear arc and the culmination in a brutal shoot-out throws in a nightmare of surrealist imagery at its close as a crucial character tips, under pressure, into madness and delusion. (This series of horrors, the ghosts of fallen characters arising to torment him, is a masterclass in ghostly horror). It gripped audiences then and its surprisingly brisk pace and pulpy sensibility still do now.

Atlantic City (1981)

A never-was romances a dreamer in Malle’s low-key film, full of neat observations

Director: Louis Malle

Cast: Burt Lancaster (Lou), Susan Sarandon (Sally), Kate Reid (Grace), Michel Piccoli (Joseph), Hollis McLaren (Chrissie), Robert Joy (Dave), Al Waxman (Alfie), Moses Znaimer (Felix)

Lou trundles around Atlantic City taking a few cents for bets and wanting anyone who listens to know that back in the glory days of the Boardwalk Empire he was a big shot. Bugsy Siegel roomed with him in the slammer. Meyer Lansky asked his opinions on the latest scores. When he killed someone, he dove into the sea to wash the exhilaration from his body. Not his fault the glory days are gone, and his life has crumbled as much as the worn out city around him. He’s still a player.

Only of course he’s not. Played in a fine autumnal performance by Burt Lancaster, Lou has the front of an ageing star, but is a dyed-in-the-wool loser. He trades on a past that never happened, full of tall stories that only the dimmest and most impressionable would consider believing. He’s essentially a kept servant of Grace (Kate Reid), a former local beauty queen (third place) and spends his nights spying on his neighbour Sally (Susan Sarandon), while she washes away the stench of the hotel fish counter she works in.

When the chance comes to spin a fantasy that means Lou could actually impress and seduce this women, he jumps at it. That chance is Dave (Robert Joy), Sally’s pathetic dweeb of an ex-husband who believes Lou is the perfect to peddle his stolen cocaine around town. Dave winds up dead, Lou pockets the money, impresses the naïve but determined Sally (training to be a croupier) and very firmly considers letting her take the rap when the cocaine’s owners turn up looking for the money.

Both Lou and Sally are dreamers – or fantasists – at the opposite end of life’s scale. Lou dreams big about a past that never was. Sally is dreaming of an impossible future – one of French class, Monaco high-rollers and earning a future as a flash croupier. Really, we know both of their dreams are fantasies. After all it should be clear only losers wind up in Atlantic City. The casinos are dumps and even the criminals are pathetic, easily out-matched by Philadelphia hoods. Louis Malle’s film captures this perfectly in a crumpling city that looks like mouldy leftovers.

Malle’s film is a marvellously structured, low-key but highly effective character study, very well acted and shot with an intelligent, detailed eye. It’s a showcase for Malle’s subtle but intelligent camera work and composition. As Lou serves Grace early in the film, he is kept constantly in the centre of the frame, the camera jerking up and down to match his movements as he fetches and carries for the bed-bound Grace. Dave is frequently shot from above, looking even more pathetic and irrelevant with every shot. This is framing that speaks volume for status and character. The camera fluidly shifts across large spaces – the boardwalk, a casino – to show different interactions in different plains, characters either unaware of each other or using events elsewhere to escape notice.

Grimy and fabulously capturing the collapsing grandeur of a city fallen on very hard times, the setting is the perfect metaphor for the disaster of the character’s lives. None more so than Lou. You can argue Malle’s film may be too sympathetic to Lou – and, indeed, contemporary reviews discussed Lancaster’s inherent dignity mistaking it for the character. Lancaster however is smarter. Lou is a pathetic, sad figure. Look how he delights in puffing himself up as a big shot for the feeble Dave. Watch the childish excitement he takes in the notoriety he collects late in the film. Lancaster perfectly understands the desperate need to dress the part, longing to be something you are not: the grand, well-dressed sugar daddy who solves problems for his moll by unwrapping the elastic band from a roll of dollar bills.

Lancaster never allows this fantasy to be mistaken for reality. When danger comes, Lou almost always freezes or looks to keep himself safe. When he spins his stories of daring or classy confidence, Lancaster shows us a Lou who is replicating behaviours he has seen elsewhere. After completing his first cocaine deal, he has to wash his face in fear in a bathroom – then instantly condescends to an old friend who has been reduced to toilet attendant.

Sally is fooled for a while. But then we know she has a weakness for glamour. After all we’ve seen her indulge the pervy whims of casino trainer Joseph, a lecherous Michel Piccoli. In a clever performance by Sarandon, Sally is naïve enough to be sucked in but guileful enough to just about keep afloat. She tends to trust anyone who oozes confidence. She’s a little star-struck by the idea of Lou perving at her across the window (as if happy that she’s sexy enough to win the attentions of this seemingly classy old guy). But, turned, Sarandon makes clear she’s righteously furious when cheated and far more adept at confidence-tricksterism than the increasingly hapless Lou.

Because when crime comes Lou is out of his depth. But what would you expect from a man who is a live-in cook, dog-walker and sometime-stud for Grace, entombed in her kitsch-nightmare room. Kate Reid is very good as this clear-eyed bully who needs but also despises Lou, who knows all about what an unreliable and cowardly fellow he is deep-down but jealously guards his attentions.

Malle’s film plays out like a sort of noir short story, an adept study of its characters more focused on their damage and flaws than on the crimes at its nominal heart. This is about fantasy and the lies we tell ourselves. Just like Atlantic City kids itself it’s still a gambling mecca, so Lou and Sally believe they still have chances in life. It makes for an intriguing, engrossing film as they lie to themselves and each other, denying the truth until it hits them squarely and unavoidably in their face.

Atlantic City muses on familiar themes, but does so with freshness and intelligence. Perhaps Malle is a little too sympathetic to its characters (Lou in particular), but he is very clear-eyed about the Dennis Potterish fantasy world they are clinging onto and the shabby decline and disrepair that clutters their existence. It makes for a very fine, well-made and fascinating little film, full of sharp observations and wonderfully played beats.

Croupier (1999)

Slow-burn delight in this low-key but compelling British crime and gambling drama

Director: Mike Hodges

Cast: Clive Owen (Jack Manfred), Alex Kingston (Jani de Villiers), Gina McKee (Marion Neil), Kate Hardie (Bella), Nicholas Ball (Jack Manfred Snr), Nick Reding (Giles Cremorne), Paul Reynolds (Matt)

The last thing would-be writer Jack (Clive Owen) wants is to be sucked back into the grimy underbelly of the casinos where his father (Nicholas Ball) made his living. Jack fears his addiction to the places. But his buzz is not the gambling or the chance of raking in cash himself. Nah, his particular hit is the cold voyeuristic delight of watching others lose. The greedy, the arrogant, the clueless, the desperate: he gets the same buzz from sweeping their chips away from the table in front of them. Jack knows you play, you only guarantee you will lose: but will glamourous South African Jani (Alex Kingston) persuade him to join her in another game against the casino?

Mike Hodges’ fascinating crime drama struck out of the blue to restore Hodges from yesterday’s man – the forgotten master of Get Carter – as a vibrant voice in British cinema. Typically, of course, this was only after the film had been all but ignored in Britain but became a hit in America. An Oscar campaign was planned but cancelled when it emerged a single screening on Dutch TV before its release in LA made it ineligible. Nevertheless, the film’s cold, arch mix of distance, cool and menace was a keen reminder of what a great director of mood and intention Hodges could be.

Hodges also has the perfect actor in its lead role. Clive Owen’s precision, quiet exactitude and mastery of the micro-expression is perfect for a man as distant, observant and (at times) uncaring as Jack. Only someone as effortlessly cool and striking as Owen could have made us like Jack as much as we do, a particular challenge as he is a cocky shit with an almost sociopathic coldness, viewing the creep of the voyeur who loves control. Owen captures all this perfectly, his voice rarely rising, his life lived to a sort of bizarre samurai code where he the only person he needs to impress with his superiority is himself.

Hodges film is one of mood and sensation rather than plot. Events unfurl with an increasingly dream-like logic, dictated by Jack’s noir-like voiceover as he slowly turns his life and experiences in the casino more-and-more into fiction. Sections of the film are divided into chapters in voiceover and Jack’s arch commentary exposes his views of those around him (communicated only by the most micro expressions on Owen’s face). Jack dreams of publishing a novel that will worm its way inside people: it’s the yearning not of the artist but the control freak, as excited by the sensation of knowing his words can guide people’s reactions and feelings just as a flick of his wrist at the card table or the roulette wheel can enrich them or drive them to destitution.

Jack’s control makes him a perverse stickler for rules. Jack’s professional croupier life – slicing money with a thunk down a pipe to the cashier or sweeping lost chips into a count-up oblivion (Hodges’ eye for the brutality and violence in the mechanisms of gambling is matched by his brilliance in demonstrating the businesses cold-eyed indifference to short-tern winning and losing) – is one of masterly control. His personal something else. The drama comes from wondering how far he will stick to that when offered the temptation, not of wealth but of proving he’s smarter than anyone else. There he allows himself the risks that he would never take when working.

Three women rotate around Jack. Gina McKee has the most thankless role of the three, a cop turned store detective who seems to be propping up the initially bohemian (a blonde, porkpie hatted Owen) Jack but offers the sort of dull, parental support lacking in his life. Two other women appeal to different parts of him. Kate Hardie’s Bella – a fellow croupier as chillingly professional as the DJ-suited Jack – is a sort of half-mirror image, bubbling with temptation (and very appealing to an egotist like Jack, who would like nothing better than to sleep with himself). Most striking of all is Alex Kingston’s erotic punter Jani, a mysterious South African who attempts to both seduce and bring out the protective side in Jack. Jack may never gamble his money, but risk in her personal life seems a harder dodge. He sleeps with women, gets in fights – which he engages in with a terrifying capacity for violence – and casually seems to invite dangers to drop into his path.

Spontaneously taking Jani to a weekend at the country-house of a would-be publisher, Jack mixes his buzz of voyeuristic control with the temptation of doing something wild and dangerous. He agrees to join a late-night card-game as dealer only – and promptly uses his card shark skills to deal out a series of progressively brilliant hands to the players in the final game. He then goes to bed with Jani, doesn’t touch her but quietly listens to her offer of ten grand in return for his aid in stealing from the casino. This is not the behaviour of a normal man.

If the film has a flaw, it’s the almost indifference with which Hodges wraps up most of these plots. There is a shock death, but the impact of it is almost deliberately passing and the heist of the casino is as laughable in its amateurishness as it is sudden in its resolution. Is it because we have moved from the real world to Jack’s noirish I, Croupier novel without realising it? You could imagine, as the film grows more dreamlike, that at some point we shifted from Jack’s reality to the constructed one he has formed for his novel. What better thrill for a control freak than to become ‘God’ of the narrative. After all Jack dreamed of his novel climbing inside people’s brain and infesting their thoughts.

Jack ends the film the smartest, most well-adjusted addict you could ever imagine, The short-term job at the casino is something he cannot let-go and Hodges’ shooting of this den of addiction, this theatre of destitution turns it into a mirror-lined sess-pit of human frailty, reflecting vice back into itself, presided over by a man who delights in weakness. More money is swept, triumphantly, from the table by Jack and its clear being there for him is the real triumph. Atmosphere, style and vicarious thrills. It’s these chilling things Croupier finds so thrilling, enticing and fascinating.

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Stealing, swindling and sex abound in Lubitsch’s masterful – and influential – early Hollywood comedy

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Miriam Hopkins (Lily), Kay Francis (Madame Colet), Herbert Marshall (Gaston Monescu), Charles Ruggles (The Major), Edward Everett Horton (Francois Filiba), C. Aubrey Smith (Adolph J Giron), Robert Greig (Jacques, the butler)

“Ah, that Lubitsch touch!” It was a slogan invented by the studio (probably to help turn Lubitsch into a brand – see also “The Master of Suspense!”). No one has ever been quite sure what it is exactly – but you can’t argue it doesn’t exist after watching Trouble in Paradise. A smoother, more charming slice of Wildean wit mixed with saucy naughtiness you couldn’t hope to find. All put together with effortless, cosmopolitan wit by Lubitsch, where every shot and camera movement has been planned for maximum effect. No wonder it’s one of the great early Hollywood comedies.

It’s Vienna and a Baron and a Countess are sitting down to a wonderful dinner together. But both know all is not what it seems: they’re both professional conmen. The Baron is Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall), the Countess Lily (Miriam Hopkins) – and they can pick each other’s pockets as easy as breathing. Falling in love, they team up and head for Paris, there to relieve fabulously wealthy Marie Colet (Kay Francis) of some of her firm’s dividends. Gaston becomes Marie’s private secretary – but don’t you know it, he finds himself falling in love with her. Will he go through with the scam? And will Lily give him the choice? The answer is almost certainly not what you think.

Trouble in Paradise is so swift, smooth and gloriously comically inventive that its very existence is enough proof of that Lubitsch touch. The comic business here is so marvellously done, so hugely influential and inventive, that half the comedies existing owe it a debt. Take a look at that first sequence as the two of accuse each other of being thieves and liars, in between passing each other the salt, with consummate politeness then proceed to take part in a pickpocketing game of one-upmanship (purses, pins, watches, garters, you name it!). All shot and directed with a perfect mixture of one-take dryness, matched with perfectly chosen fluid camera movements that accentuate punchlines.

Then there’s that script (“Do you remember the man who walked into the Bank of Constantinople and walked out with the Bank of Constantinople?”). It’s crammed to the gills with sensational bon mots with more than a touch of Wilde or Coward but also a certain emotional truth (“I came here to rob you, but unfortunately I fell in love with you.”). Trouble in Paradise is an intensely suave and sophisticated film that delights in making its characters feel like the nimble-thinking smartie-pants who always know what to say, that you’d love to be, but never quite are.

It’s grist to the mill of Lubitsch, who coats the film in the three things that really makes it work: European sophistication and ruthlessly dry wit; playfully smooth direction; and more than a dollop of sex (and lots of people in this, let’s face it, are pretty impure to say the least). Sex is in fact what’s at the heart of this film: they may be criminals, but Gaston and Lily are at least as interested in getting some of that as anything else and Marie is more than a match for them.

Trouble in Paradise is pre-Code – and far racier than anything we normally expect from Old Hollywood. After all, this is a film that makes a series of perfectly timed punchlines out of a Butler constantly knocking on the wrong bedroom door to find Marie, unaware that Gaston and Marie are “spending time together” elsewhere. Gaston and Lily’s first meeting is capped with a “do not disturb” sign being hung on their bedroom door. The word sex gets bandied about. In case we missed the point, Lubitsch shoots a romantic clinch between Gaston and Marie by focusing the camera on the bed where their shadows are being cast, looking for all the world like they are lying down on it. Later Lubtisch will focus on a clock marching forward in time as we hear Gaston and Marie flirt (and clearly more than just flirt) as the time flows by.

No wonder when the Code was introduced, Trouble in Paradise was slammed on the shelf for years. It’s more than clear that Gaston has it away with Marie and Lily – and, even more scandalously, no one seems to mind that much. There is sexual liberalness to Trouble in Paradise. Marie is happily stringing along two boorishly foolish suitors (Charles Ruggles as a bluff retired major and Edward Everett Horton as a slightly pompous fop, fleeced in the past by Gaston – both very funny). Gaston feels many things, but never ashamed, while Marie seems sexually excited by the idea that he might be a crook. (Their first meeting is a simmering swamp of sexual tension.)

Lubitsch keeps the film flowing so effortlessly, it glides down barely touching the edges. The humour is spot on and perfectly delivered. At one point Lily (still disguised as the Countess at this point) phones her “mother” in front of Gaston. Her conversation is polite and giddy – then Lubitsch cuts to the other end of the call where her crude landlady is prattling bored on the end, and we realise it’s all part of a con. Gags like this have inspired filmmakers for years. You can see the root of half the screwballs that were to come in the love triangle flirtatiousness between Marshall, Francis and Hopkins.

All three of them are excellent. Marshall had few better opportunities to showcase his dry wit and sex appeal (he was so often cast as stuffy, dull husbands), and he’s the ideal arch gentleman here, with a twinkle in his eye at his daring smartness and very sexy in his confidence. (The constant shots of Gaston running up and down stairs is, in itself, a gag – Marshall had only one leg and all that running was a body double). Far from a rube, Kay Francis makes Marie a sexually curious, determined and out-going woman who knows what she wants and happily plays the game to get it. Miriam Hopkins has a punchier feistiness as a woman who can shift personae with effortless ease.

Trouble in Paradise – that Paradise being Gaston and Lily’s natural partnership – slides so smoothly from set-piece to set-piece, each of them shot with superbly smooth camera movements that perfectly accentuate their comic impact, that it continues to offer huge entertainment. Brilliantly acted, packed with superb set-pieces, it benefits above all from that glorious Lubitsch touch. Sophisticated, amoral, naughty but with a touch of heart among all the lying and cheating, it’s very funny and very cheeky and all about sex and stealing. It’s a landmark film.

Airport (1970)

Disaster awaits in the sky in this ridiculous soap that is less exciting than Airplane!

Director: George Seaton

Cast: Burt Lancaster (Mel Bakersfied), Dean Martin (Captain Vernon Demerest), Jean Seberg (Tanya Livingston), Jacqueline Bisset (Gwen Meighen), George Kennedy (Joe Patroni), Helen Hayes (Ada Quonsett), Van Heflin (DO Guerrero), Maureen Stapleton (Inez Guerrero), Barry Nelson (Captain Anson Harris), Dana Wynter (Cindy Bakersfeld), Lloyd Nolan (Harry Standish), Barbara Hale (Sarah Demarest), Gary Collins (Cy Jordan)

A busy Chicago airport in the middle of a snowstorm. Workaholic Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) doesn’t have time to prop up his failing marriage to his humourless wife: he’s got to keep the flights moving, clear the runways and solve the problems other people can’t. He’s not dissimilar to his brother-in-law Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), who hasn’t got time for his plain-Jane wife at home when he’s got a flight to Rome to run and a saintly pregnant air hostess girlfriend Gwen (Jacqueline Bisset), to deal with. Tensions will come to a head when depressed former construction worker Guerrero (Van Heflin) joins Demerest’s flight, planning to blow himself up so his wife can profit from his life insurance. Disaster awaits!

“A piece of junk”. That was Burt Lancaster’s pithy review of this box-office smash that was garlanded with no fewer than ten Oscar nominations. He’s pretty much spot on. Airport is a dreadful picture, a puffed-up, wooden soap opera that never takes flight, stapled together with a brief disaster plotline that only really kicks in during the final act of the film and is solved with relative ease. Other than that, it’s all hands to the pumps to coat the film in soapy suds, which can be stirred up by the strips of wooden dialogue that fall from the actors’ mouths.

Seaton adapted the script from a popular low-brow novel, though it feels as if precious little effort went into it. It’s corny, predictable dialogue does very little to freshen up the bog-standard domestic drama we’re watching in a novel setting. Both lead actors juggle loveless marriages with far prettier (and much younger) girlfriends. Those girlfriends – Jean Seberg for Burt and Jacqueline Bisset for Dean – play thankless roles, happily accepting of their place as no more than a potential bit-on-the-side and very respectful of the fact that the job damn it is the most important thing.

The film bends over backwards so that we find Burt and Dean admirable, despite the fact that objectively their behaviour is awful. Burt treats his home like a stopover, barely sees his kids and seems affronted that his wife objects he doesn’t attend her important charity functions and doesn’t want the cushy job he’s being offered by her father. Just in case we sympathise with her, she’s a cold, frigid, mean and demanding shrew who – just to put the tin lid on it – is carrying on behind Burt’s back. We, meanwhile, applaud Burt for showing restraint around the besotted Jean Seberg, merely kissing, hugging and chatting with her about how he’d love to but he can’t because of the kids at home damn it!

He looks like a prince though compared to Dean. Only in the 1970s surely would we be expected to find it admirable that a pregnant girlfriend happily takes all the blame – the contraceptive pills made her fat and she knows the deal – begs her boyfriend not to leave his wife and then urges him to not worry about her. Dean’s wife doesn’t even seem that bad, other than the fact she’s a mumsy type who can’t hold a candle to Bisset’s sensuality. That sensuality is overpowering for Dean, who at one point pleads with her to stay in their hotel room because the taxi “can wait another 15 minutes”. Like a gentleman his reaction to finding out Bisset is pregnant, is to offer to fly her to Norway for a classy abortion (rather than the backstreet offerings at home?).

This soapy nonsense, with its stink of Mad Men-ish sexual politics (where men are hard-working, hard-playing types, and women accept that when they age out, he has the right to look elsewhere) is counterbalanced by some laboriously-pleased-with-itself looks at airport operations. Baggage handling. Customer check-in. Customs control checks. Airport maintenance. All get trotted through with a curious eye by Seaton. Just enough to make parts of the film feel briefly like a dull fly-on-the-wall drama rather than a turgid soap.

Soap is where its heart is though. Helen Hayes won an Oscar for a crowd-pleasing turn (from which she wrings the maximum amount of charm) as a seemingly sweet old woman who is in fact an expert stowaway. Van Heflin and Maureen Stapleton play with maximum commitment (Stapleton in particular goes for it as if this was an O’Neil play rather than trash) a married couple whose finances are in the doldrums, leading the husband to take drastic steps.

It’s all marshalled together with a personality-free lack of pizzaz by Seaton, who simply points the camera and lets the actors go through their paces, with a few shots of humour here and there. There are some interesting split-screen effects, but that’s about the last touch of invention in the piece. It’s mostly played with po-faced seriousness – something that feels almost impossible to take seriously today, seeing as the structure, tone and airport observational style of the film was spoofed so successfully in Airplane (a much better film than this on every single level, from humour, to drama even to tension – how damning is that, that a pisstake is a more exciting disaster thriller?)

It smashed the box office in 1970 and got nominated for Best Picture. But its dryness, dullness and lack of pace mean it has hardly been watched since. Although it can claim to be the first all-star disaster movie, it’s not even fit to lace the flippers of The Poseidon Adventure, which far more successfully kickstarted the cliches that would become standard for the genre (and is a tonne more fun as well as being a disaster movie – this has a disaster epilogue at best). An overlong, soapy, dull mess.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

A mysterious drifter gets more than he bargained for in del Toro’ flashy but unsatisfying film

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Bradley Cooper (Stanton Carlisle), Cate Blanchett (Lilith Ritter), Rooney Mara (Molly Cahill), Toni Collette (Zeena Krumbein), Willem Dafoe (Clem Hoatley), Richard Jenkins (Ezra Grindle), Ron Perlman (Bruno), David Strathairn (Pete Krumbein), Mark Povinelli (Major Mosquito), Mary Steenburgen (Felicia Kimball), Peter MacNeill (Judge Kimball), Paul Anderson (Geek), Clifton Collins Jnr (Funhouse Jack), Jim Beaver (Sheriff Jedediah Judd), Tim Blake Nelson (Carny Boss)

There isn’t any magic left in the world, it’s all show and tricks and no wonder. Nightmare Alley is del Toro’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Shape of Water and you can’t not admit it’s a triumph of style. It’s a glorious fusion of film noir and plush, gothic-tinged horror. There is something to admire in almost every frame. But it’s also all tricks and no wonder. There’s no heart to it, just a huge show that in the end makes nowhere near the impact you could expect.

In the late 1930s Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a drifter with a dark past, who is recruited as a labourer in a travelling carnival. Learning the ropes from freak show owner Clem (Willem Dafoe), he’s taken under the wing (in every sense) by mesmerist mind reader Zeena (Toni Collette) and taught the tricks of the art (observation and careful word codes using an assistant to guess names, objects and other facts) by Pete (David Strathairn). Eventually Stanton and his love, circus performer Molly (Rooney Mara), head to the big city where, after two years, Stanton reinvents himself as celebrity mind-reader and medium. There Stanton gets involved with psychiatrist Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) in a long con where he will use the recordings of her sessions with patients to act as a medium to put them in touch with their lost ones. But is there a danger Stanton isn’t ready for in one of his clients, powerful businessman Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins)?

Nightmare Alley looks fabulous. But it’s hellishly overlong and curiously uninvolving. It’s like Del Toro fell in love with the whole project and forgot to search for the reason why somebody else would love it. It’s a strangely unshaped film, alternating between long, loving scenes glorying in the dark mood, baroque performances and design but then makes drastic, swift jumps in character psychology that constantly leaves you grasping at engaging with or understanding the personalities of its characters.

Its design is faultless though – it’s no surprise that its only Oscar nominations outside the Best Picture nod were all in technical categories. Dan Lautsen’s cinematography is inky black, with splashes of all-consuming colour. It’s a marvellous updating of film noir, with deep shadows spliced with angles reminiscent of Hammer-style horror. The production design is a labour of love, the carnival sets a hellish nightmare of unsettling shapes, forms and structure contrasting with the art deco grandness of the big city. The design is pretty much faultless, a real labour of love.

But the same effort didn’t go into pacing and story. This is a slow-moving, self-indulgent film, that frequently seems to be holding itself at arm’s length to make it all the easier for it to admire itself. It looks extraordinary, but it’s a frequently empty experience, more interested in mood and striking imagery than character and emotion.

Bradley Cooper gives a fine performance as Stanton. He has an air of cocksure charm, and Cooper skilfully shows this is largely a front of a man who, when push comes to shove, is capable of sudden and unflinching acts of violence. We get an early hint of this when he reacts to being struck by an escaping circus freak with unhesitating brutality. It recurs again and again in the film, and Stanton proudly states his avoidance of alcohol with all the assurance of a man who knows the bottle could unleash dark forces that he could never control. Cooper is vulnerable but selfish and above all becomes more and more arrogantly convinced of his own genius and bulletproof invulnerability, so much so that he drives himself further and further on into self-destruction.

There is some rich material here, so it’s a shame that for all that we never really seem to be given a moment to really understand who he is. Much has to be inferred from Cooper’s performance, since the film seems content to state motivational factors – troubled parental relationships, greed, ambition, a desire to make something of himself – without ever crafting them into a whole. Stanton remains someone defined by what he does.

And Stanton is the only character who gets any real oxygen to breathe, with the others largely ciphers or over-played caricatures. Rooney Mara as his gentle love interest is under-developed and disappears from the film for long stretches. Cate Blanchett gives a distractingly arch performance, somewhere between femme fatale and Hannibal Lector and is so blatantly untrustworthy it’s never clear why Stanton (an expert reader of people!) trusts her completely. Richard Jenkins is miscast as a ruthless businessman, lacking the sense of danger and capacity of violence the part demands.

Most of the rest of the cast are swallowed by the long carnival prologue, that consumes almost a third of the film but boils down to little more than mood-setting and a repeated hammering home of a series of statements that will lead into a final scene twist (and I will admit that is a good payoff). The carnival seems like a self-indulgent exploration of style, and several actors (Perlman, Povinelli and even Collette) play roles that add very little to the film other than ballooning its runtime.

The earlier section would have perhaps been better if it was tighter and more focused on Stanton and his mentor, well played by David Straithairn. I appreciate that would have been more conventional – but it would also have been less self-indulgent and helped the opening third be less of a stylish but empty and rather superfluous experience (since the film’s real plot doesn’t start until it finishes). Drive My Car demonstrated how a long prologue can deepen a whole film – Nightmare Alley just takes a long, handsome route to giving us some plot essential facts, without really telling us anything engaging about its lead character.

It makes for an unsatisfying whole, a cold and distant film packed with arch performances – although Cooper is good – and events that frequently jump with a dreamlike logic. It’s a marvel of design but way too much of a good thing, and constantly seems to stop to admire itself in the mirror and wonder at its own beauty. It becomes a cold and arch study of a film not a narrative that you can embrace. And you can’t the same about many of Del Toro’s other films – from Pan’s Labyrinth to Pacific Rim they’ve got heart. Nightmare Alley doesn’t really have that.

The Color of Money (1986)

Newman and Cruise set the table in The Color of Money

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Paul Newman (“Fast” Eddie Felsen), Tom Cruise (Vincent Lauria), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Carmen), Helen Shaver (Janelle), John Turturro (Julian), Bill Cobbs (Orvis), Forest Whitaker (Amos), Keith McGready (Grady Sessions)

The Hustler is one of Newman’s most iconic roles. It’s remembered for his cocksure cool, leaning across the table and dispatching balls with a twinkling smirk. What people don’t remember is that The Hustler is actually more of a kitchen-sink drama than a Rat Pack party. It deals with depression, assault, corruption, injustice and suicide. It’s not even remotely a laugh a minute. The Color of Money is a belated sequel, that feels made by people who remember their impression of what The Hustler was, but don’t actually remember the tone of the film itself. But then, Scorsese intended from the very start to make an entertainment to showcase a star, so I’m sure he knew that making a real tonal companion to the original film was always going to be a no-no.

It’s 25 years since “Fast Eddie” Felsen (Paul Newman) was banished from pool clubs throughout the land by gangsters. He now earns a living selling booze to clubs, largely so he can hang out pool clubs and mentor and stake the ‘hustler’s and stars of tomorrow. The kid who catches his eye is Vincent Lauria (Tom Cruise) an exceptionally gifted pool player with a cocksure confidence and a love of the game, that perhaps reminds Eddie more than a little of himself. Vincent, and his girlfriend Carmen’s (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) grifting skills leave a lot to be desired: but Eddie sees promise and takes them out on a road trip to train them up and make a fortune.

It’s a fitting title, as it’s pretty clear that The Color of Money was the main thing on Scorsese’s mind when he made this. Don’t get me wrong, this is an enjoyable and well-made star vehicle, but it’s also the only time Scorsese was a hired gun working for a star who made films he grew up watching. Scorsese has spoken openly that his main aim here was to bring it in on time and on budget (he made it faster and cheaper than that), in order to help win studio backing for The Last Temptation of Christ. (Ironically of course, most people have far fonder memories of The Color of Money than that film, but then this is a film designed to entertain not challenge.)

It’s a fairly traditional and even predictable storyline. The mentor and the mentee, the latter jaded but rediscovering some of his old fire from the callow exuberance of the other. To be honest not very much actually happens in the film other than pool games and some predictable feuds before the final reconciliation. Inevitable lessons are learned and understandings are achieved. Compared to The Hustler, this is a very callow piece of work indeed, a straight entertainment vehicle that takes the fun, memorable beats of the original and crafts a whole film around them. In many ways you could argue it’s as much a sort of spiritual sequel to Newman’s work in The Sting as anything else.

But Scorsese shoots the hell out of it, so there is always something to look at. No end of editing and camera tricks are used for the pool games, which are shot like action sequences. Swift pans, tracking shots, sharp camera spins are all used to turn a game of knocking nine balls into pockets into something epic. Interesting shots abound, especially several sequences where a camera is mounted on a car bonnet to product an odd Steadicam effect. This is work way beyond a journey-man-pro director, but compared to Scorsese’s other works it’s minor. Scorsese opens the film by delivering a voiceover introducing nine-ball-pool, but the film never feels personal.

What it is, is a triumph for its two leading men. The year before Newman had won an honorary ‘career’ Oscar, which he accepted with a slight air of surprised resentment. No wonder, since he won a ‘real’ Oscar a year later for this reprise. To be honest, the film doesn’t ask anything particularly demanding of Newman, compared to the heights he had achieved in, for instance, The Verdict. It’s a lot of charm and aged confidence, mixed with a mentor exasperation and an unspoken concern that his powers are fading. Newman does spice things up with some interesting character work – there is a great scene when Eddie berates himself for being suckered by pool shark Amos (also a beautiful cameo from Forest Whitaker), humiliated for having lost his touch. But, whereas the first film was a below-the-skin character study, this is more like a victory parade for a charismatic star who even signs off the film by stating “I’m back!”. He’s great but not challenged.

Cruise raises game as he always does when working with legends (see also his work with Hoffman and Nicholson). The film captures perfectly both his cocksure confidence and the gentleness and vulnerability that Cruise manages to hide beneath it. You only need to see how vulnerable and scared Vincent is of being abandoned by the more sophisticated Carmen, to know that his karate moves with a pool cue while singing along to Werewolves of London is a front of a young man wanting to look like a big one to the world. Mastrantonio is pretty good in a fairly simplistic role, that is essentially a twist on a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold.

The Color of Money offers up fairly predictable charms and plot twists and no real surprises at all. While its original film was a piece of neo-realism tinged social drama, this is a brash entertainment, stuffed with pop songs and charismatic actors doing their thing. All pulled together by a director who wanted to prove he could make something as glossy and empty as the next man. Entertaining but forgettable.