1. The temperature was lower today. It was not smoky out. After a month or so of staying out of the heat and the smoke and not walking, I took a comfortable walk to the Yoke's pharmacy and back home again. I was relieved that my legs held up well. Upon returning home, I was a little bit out of breath as I walked through the front door. I took two naps after this walk.
2. Early this evening Debbie called me. We had a very good, lengthy conversation. She was sitting out on the deck, enjoying some botanical gin with Gibbs at her side. We rambled all over the place in our conversation. We dreamed a little bit about the future, but didn't make any plans. We'll reunite when the time is right and by that time that table on which we have been putting conversation topics for years will once again be fully covered with any number of things we have to discuss.
3. I decided to take a break from Robert Altman and from neo-noir movies and watch the 1948 film noir movie, Key Largo, directed by John Huston and featuring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and, in an Academy Award winning performance, Claire Trevor. During the movie I enjoyed an ice cold gin and tonic and a bowl of popcorn.
In keeping with the noir tradition, this is a dark movie, much of it dominated by a cruel, sadistic mobster on the lam named Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson). Johnny's foil is Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart), a disillusioned veteran of WWII who hasn't quite landed on his feet since returning home. Rocco's sadism forces McCloud, who professes to no longer believe in anything beyond self-preservation, to decide whether he will only act on behalf of himself or confront the evil of Johnny Rocco.
Much of the movie's action is claustrophobic, confined to the Key Largo Hotel where Johnny Rocco holds its wheelchaired owner (Lionel Barrymore) and his daughter (Lauren Bacall), along with Frank McCloud, hostage during a hurricane.
I enjoyed watching this seventy- three year old black and white movie. Unlike so many movies I've watched lately, Key Largo was not filmed on location, is dominated by a melodramatic music soundtrack, and leaves no doubt about who the good guys and bad guys are in the story.
The neo-noir movies feature flawed heroes. Sometimes they are anti-heroes. The neo-noir films are naturalistic, profane, and feature detectives or cops working to discover some truth who don't necessarily see clearly what's happening in their world. Others feature marks who get duped in some kind of scam (e.g. Body Heat) and are in over their heads. These neo-noir characters lack the kind of straight arrow sureness of what they face that, say, Frank McCloud does in Key Largo. Yes, Frank McCloud has a decision of conscience to make, but it's a matter of whether he'll rise to act bravely in a situation he fully understands. In the neo-noir movies, things are never this clear.
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