1. It's funny. I have probably watched The Lavender Hill Mob at least five times and I always forget how it begins and concludes. I do always remember, though, that it tells the story of the making of a perfect crime, spearheaded by Henry "Dutch" Holland (Alec Guinness), who spends many years perfecting his image and reputation as a meek, honorable, punctual bank clerk lacking in ambition, a man way beyond reproach. But, it's a pretense, a guise. Henry Holland has a burning ambition to be wealthy and this movie tells the story of when he seizes the opportunity to rob the Bank of England.
It's a perfectly made comedy. It's light, chaotic, and ingenious. It epitomizes the kind of underdog story the Ealing Studios loved to tell through many of their post-WWII movies and Alec Guinness is absolutely flawless as in this splendid movie that Pauline Kael referred to as "the most nearly perfect fubsy comedy of all time."
2. Tonight, Bill Davie's Poetry Break hit me just right. I enjoyed the poems he read from the mail bag and the three "Old Manhood"poems he read. The poems he read from the poetry anthology, Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy were especially fitting for my taste and mood and I enjoyed his return to poems by Billy Collins, from his book Whale Day. Bill read to an enthusiastic audience and it was fun to see that many of us were especially appreciative of Bill's selections tonight and his superb readings.
3. Recently, during my reading sessions at Vizio University, the movie Sweet Smell of Success (1957), featuring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, has been popping up in essays and on different people's list of great movies, in general, and great film noir works, in particular.
It's a brilliant movie. It's challenging. It relentlessly explores the ambition and soullessness of the two cruel and heartless characters played by Lancaster and Curtis. We move deeper and deeper into the darkness of their nihilistic pursuit of power and success in the world of celebrity and political gossip, willing to do anything to either get dirt on people or to publicize scandalous lies. In addition, Lancaster's character, J. J. Hunsecker, has a creepy and possessive obsession with his sister and his determination to ruin a love relationship she has entered into is central to the plot of this movie.
Ambition, the drive for success, the thirst to maintain and enlarge one's power can be overtaken by destructive forces within a person and that's exactly what this movie portrays.
This portrayal and exploration of human darkness is perfectly brought to life by James Wong Howe's cinematography in the way he seamlessly connects the wintry nighttime exterior images of New York City with the dark interiors of bars, diners, offices, apartments, and jazz clubs. I experienced claustrophobia which was at the same time difficult to feel, but exhilarating in the ways James Wong Howe's mastery of light and shadow and the set ups of his shots created the movie's feeling of inevitable doom.
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