Everything's better with gangsters
I've been reading a lot of hard-boiled fiction lately and watching a few b&w thrillers.  Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett deserve their own post, but here are some of the movies in brief.

Little Caesar

Plot: Rico (Edward G. Robinson) steals stuff, shoots people, and wears increasingly more snappy suits.  Then the cops finally get him. 

Good bits: Edward G. Robinson was cute and funny.  I prefer to see him as good or chaotic neutral characters, just because I like him so much, but he can do a smashing killer, too.  He's like a ferocious, murdering chipmunk.  Rico's finest moment comes when he gets shot in front of a department store, and as he's rolling over with a bullet in his arm, he's already trying to get up, shaking his fist and roaring, "Fine aim you mugs got!"  Afterwards, you see him lying around in bed with his arm in a sling, exchanging a stare with one of his henchmen, who clambers into bed with him.  Of course, I got a huge kick out of that.  Gangster hurt/comfort?  Also good was a second-string baddie called Gabby (because he doesn't say much) who managed to be scary just by looming up, being horse-faced, and staring creepily at the camera.
The Big Sleep

Plot: All women everywhere want to make love to Philip Marlowe.  Some people get shot and poisoned.  One of the women is played by Lauren Bacall, who finally succeeds in getting Marlowe's attention.  Everybody smokes a lot.

Good bits: Humphrey Bogart.  You know what, I didn't used to like him.  I think it was because I expected something different; he'd been built up and built up for me as a wonderful actor, so I had sky-high expectations of how cool he'd be when I first saw Casablanca.  Then I found his character so annoying, self-pitying, conceited, undeservedly praised by all and sundry, and insufferably run-after-by-women, that I couldn't stand him.  I spent the entire movie wanting to smack Rick.  In fact, I remember hating on Humphrey Bogart on this very LJ a year or two ago.  Well, now that I have a better idea what to expect of his characters, I actually like him.  (Never thought I'd type those words; I guess you can take me out behind the barn and shoot me now--I've abandoned my hatin' ideals.)  Anyhow, he makes a good Marlowe.  The plot was so impenetrable that I don't pretend to follow it, but the plot wasn't the point.  The point was to have a series of weird scenes, violent death, and grotesque characters posed vis-a-vis Marlowe, plus hot outfits and witty banter with Lauren Bacall.  She even sings in a nightclub at one point.  It's a deeply creepy jazz number about domestic abuse.

An odd thing about gender roles.  Marlowe's a total Gary Stu in this movie--all the minor roles are played by sexy women in their twenties and thirties, to an unrealistic degree.  That is to say, if he goes into a bookstore, there's a beautiful chick behind the counter.  If he goes into a diner, there's a busty Italian lady running the place in a fanservice uniform.  And if he takes a cab, there's a girl cabdriver behind the wheel.  I've only ever met one female cabbie in my life, so I have a hard time believing there were many in the forties.  But of course she's a real sexpot and gives Marlowe her number.  The odd thing is that Marlowe is terribly manly and carries a gun and beats other guys up, and yet he's placed in a traditionally feminine role: passive sex object.  He never pursues a single one of the film's many hotties.  All he does is tend to his business and walk around looking world-weary in a trenchcoat, and flocks of young women court him, gush about him, and fling themselves at his head.  The more I think about every film I've seen with Bogart in it, the more it strikes me that he's always passive and disinterested.  His characters are all like, "Oh, hell, dames, who needs 'em?  I can't be bothered, I'm going to get drunk and go to bed now," whereupon Bacall appears out of nowhere and drapes herself across his lap.  He never has to lift a finger.  I suppose that's another reason I found him annoying initially.  People to whom love comes effortlessly just make me impatient.  But there must be a lot of women who find it kind of sexy, or he wouldn't be famous.

Freely will I own that he looked fantastic in a trenchcoat.  There are some looks that just never go out of style.  A trenchcoat is one of them.  (And virtually all men everywhere look pretty good in old-fashioned suits, assuming they fit okay.)  And he smoked and made smoking look like the sexiest, manliest thing in the world.  Poor Bogey.  He died of throat cancer.

And on that front:

Casablanca

Plot: Half the population of Europe are trying to flee the Nazis via Casablanca.  Some of them make it out alive.  All women everywhere, plus Louis, want to make love to Rick.

Good bits: I liked this movie a lot, the second time around.  The best moments weren't even in the A-list plot.  They came from the  background faces: the pickpocket, the fat guy in the fez (hi, Sydney!), the crazy Russian barman who smooches Rick, the shy Bulgarian girl trying to help her husband, the younger fat-guy-in-a-fez who works at the cafe, the older woman who plays the guitar and sings torch songs, the weaselly little guy in the white dinner jacket (hi, Peter!) and the nervous refugees.  I wish there had been three times as much with Sam; I'd have liked to get to know him.  This time, I even found Rick less insufferable.  Everybody is crazy about him, of course, but I can accept that as long as it's played for laughs.  When Ugarte comes to him to brag at the beginning, it's like a little kid looking for approval from a cool grown-up, and it sets up Rick's character as everybody's hero, without Rick himself having to do much but stand there.

Favorite.  Put-down.  Ever. 

"You despise me, don't you, Rick?"
"Well, if I ever gave you any thought, I probably would."

Ilsa got so little characterization that I found it hard to believe any of the guys would fancy her.  I've seen Ingrid Bergmann (sp?) be much better in other movies.  The guy playing Victor Lazlo was also kind of wooden, but he did have one heroic moment that was worth coming in for.  A bunch of German soldiers are sitting around Rick's getting drunk and singing, I dunno what it's called, "Watch on the Rhine" and pounding their beer steins on the table.  And Lazlo walks downstairs, gets the band together, and makes them play the Marseillaise to drown out the Germans, who falter and shut up and look aggrieved.  Everyone else in the building leaps to their feet and sings right along with Lazlo.  It was awe-inspiring.  I even teared up a little, and I don't know enough history or enough French to fully understand the French national anthem.  It was just awesome from the context.

Key Largo

Plot: Johnny Rocco the mobster takes over a hotel in the Florida Keys in the off-season and exploits and terrorizes the people there for his own benefit.  Unfortunately for him, one of the people is played by Humphrey Bogart.  There are only two women in the movie, but they both want to make love to Humphrey Bogart.  

Good bits: Everything about Edward G. Robinson, beginning with the very first moment you see him: he's lying in the bathtub, reading the paper, with an electric fan blowing on his face.  Cute, ridiculous, and terrifying.  The camera follows him across the room but hovers politely just above his waist as he towels off.  The following scene, where he struts around intimidating everybody, is made slightly  worse by the viewer's knowledge that he doesn't have anything on under that robe. 

One of his henchmen is a big fat guy named Angel who doesn't say much.  Hey!  He's the same guy who played the young-dude-in-a-fez in Casablanca.  He plays a good thug.  At one point he has to shave Johnny Rocco, a worrying task given that Rocco keeps talking and jouncing up and down the entire time.  Another henchman is a nervous young guy called Toots who wears suspenders and a belt at the same time.  He's the Wilmer-equivalent character.  I feel sorry for Toots because he's young, and dumb, and clearly only in this line of work so he can carry a gun and swagger around feeling like a big man, and because he's clearly going to get it in the neck.  Which he does, before the film is over.  

To Have And Have Not

Plot: Humphrey Bogart is awesome and everybody loves him.  Somewhere off in the background, World War II is happening.  Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart smoke at each other and trade brittle, witty banter.  All women everywhere want to make love to Humphrey Bogart, except for the hotel manager's mother, and even she is probably nursing a secret crush.

Good bits: Lauren Bacall was only nineteen when she made this one.  She doesn't look young.  She doesn't look old, either.  She looks like someone who just dropped in from another planet, or a human/greyhound hybrid, or a changeling.  I find her extremely fun to watch, yet her persona is at odds with her lines.  She talks as though we're supposed to think she's scared, vulnerable, alone, and maybe selling herself.  But she's so extremely confident, icy calm, and pleased with herself, that I find it hard to buy her ever being scared of anything.  And she's making me think I need a suit with giant lapels and a little fitted jacket.  

The heavy villain in this piece was Captain Renaud, slimeball Vichy captain of police.  You can tell he's French because he wears a beret.  You can tell he's evil because he looks like a giant slug.  Guess who's playing him?  None other than Dan Seymour, the actor who played Angel the gangster and Fez Guy in Key Largo and Casablanca.  And he is having the time of his life.  I swear he gained an extra fifty pounds for the role.  He looks and talks like Jabba the Hutt; he slimes around alternately bribing the good guys and having his scummy henchmen slap their faces; when he sits down, he sinks into himself, and when he's thwarted, he pouts out his lips and lets his whole face slump downwards like Silly Putty in a scowl of ultimate villainy.  It was strangely wonderful to watch him.  I was like, "Yay!  My friend the background gangster finally gets a good lead role!"