Neon at McCarran International
Dark City (1950)
directed by William Dieterle
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
"Most war romances need a lot of understanding," says someone, either the nightclub singer Fran or honest Captain Garvey. It means that Dark City is a war movie at the fringes, which is right where war movies ought to be. Charlton Heston started here, as good guy Danny Haley, disillusioned with the system and susceptible to corruption that doesn't suit his conscience. He and his chums (including Jack Webb) lure an alcoholic into a dishonest card game. When the alcoholic hangs himself from guilt, his psychotic brother seeks revenge.
But the psycho stays largely in the shadows, outside a world where we see things like a line cook wolfing down his own meal between shifts. Danny moves from New York to Los Angeles to Las Vegas, encounters women with sad stories and has one of his own to tell in small rooms. He's in love with the nightclub singer but unable to say so; she says things like "Hit me please" when he gets a job as a casino dealer from a man with his own ghosts to carry.
Fran wears the same dress to sing in several nights in a row, and I don't think I've seen that before. She looks good, but you notice the repetition, and you realize that she's prettiest in the seedy rooms where she makes a living. It's important to see what cheap glamor does to lives lived without glamor at all - that it adds something no one has to feel sorry for.
Everyone's lonely in a movie like this, with no one to ask for advice. "You're not asking if I forgive you," Fran tells Danny. "You're asking how much a woman would forgive." In a Hollywood convertible, even the helium balloons bob gently along in the breeze. There's a great scene at the Griffith Planetarium, as that familiar music falls away and the program recedes into a sky full of stars. "You forget how beautiful things can be," a woman whispers, meaning the fake lights on the inside of a wall. But she's talking about movies sure as Fran is talking about forgiveness.
directed by William Dieterle
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
"Most war romances need a lot of understanding," says someone, either the nightclub singer Fran or honest Captain Garvey. It means that Dark City is a war movie at the fringes, which is right where war movies ought to be. Charlton Heston started here, as good guy Danny Haley, disillusioned with the system and susceptible to corruption that doesn't suit his conscience. He and his chums (including Jack Webb) lure an alcoholic into a dishonest card game. When the alcoholic hangs himself from guilt, his psychotic brother seeks revenge.
But the psycho stays largely in the shadows, outside a world where we see things like a line cook wolfing down his own meal between shifts. Danny moves from New York to Los Angeles to Las Vegas, encounters women with sad stories and has one of his own to tell in small rooms. He's in love with the nightclub singer but unable to say so; she says things like "Hit me please" when he gets a job as a casino dealer from a man with his own ghosts to carry.
Fran wears the same dress to sing in several nights in a row, and I don't think I've seen that before. She looks good, but you notice the repetition, and you realize that she's prettiest in the seedy rooms where she makes a living. It's important to see what cheap glamor does to lives lived without glamor at all - that it adds something no one has to feel sorry for.
Everyone's lonely in a movie like this, with no one to ask for advice. "You're not asking if I forgive you," Fran tells Danny. "You're asking how much a woman would forgive." In a Hollywood convertible, even the helium balloons bob gently along in the breeze. There's a great scene at the Griffith Planetarium, as that familiar music falls away and the program recedes into a sky full of stars. "You forget how beautiful things can be," a woman whispers, meaning the fake lights on the inside of a wall. But she's talking about movies sure as Fran is talking about forgiveness.
posted by NPK at 12:01 AM
<< Home