This week I decided to do another batch of con artist films.
The first on my list was Irvin Kershner’s The Film-Flam Man with George C Scott and Michael Sarrazin. Sarazan plays Curley an army deserter who is in hiding in Kentucky, who helps a man he sees thrown from a train. This man turns out to be Mordecai Jones (Scott) an itinerant conman.
Mordecai takes Jones under his wing and partners with him to assist him in short cons, (the guy who “wins” at three card monte, and such.) after pulling a few hustles things get a little messy after Curley falls in love with a Bonnie Lee Packard ( Sue Lyon) a girl the pair store a car from. He starts to get sloppy, and the sheriff is beginning to close in on our heroes.
What makes this film fun is George C Scott on the top of his game, hamming it up as Mordecai with several other good comic performances, including Harry Morgan as the Sheriff and Slim Pickens as one of the marks, backing him up.
Obviously, I’d heard the next film on my list, Stephen Friers’ The Grifters, for years. But to my embarrassment it’s one of those films you know is good, but never get around to it.
Based on the book of the same name The Grifters tells the story of three Con artists, Roy Dillon (John Cusack)a small timer who specialized in short cons, his Girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening) and his mother, Lilly played by Angelica Huston.
We begin as Roy is reunited with Lilly after a botched con at a bar hospitalizes him. This leads to a downward spiral of blood, betrayal, and greed.
This film was dark and quite depressing. I have been very much enjoying checking off my list of Stephen Friers films
I’d heard about the character Harry Palmer played by Micheal Caine for the first time last year but put off watching any of the films since I’d done spy stuff recently.
Harry Palmer first appeared in a series of novels by Len Deighton.(actually in the books Palmer is unidentified only given a name when played by Caine) Caine played the characters sporadically from the sixties to the mid-nineties. I was looking forward to taking a look at this as this was apparently a good example of the LeCarre school of “stale beer” Spy Fiction.
I started with the first film the Ipcress File. Palmer is introduced doing basic nine to five surveillance. He is quickly moved over to another division to replace an agent who was killed when the scientist he had been escorting was kidnapped. This is believed to be connected to the disappearance of several other scientists. Palmer and his associates are entrusted to find the missing scientists, even if it means buying them back from the kidnappers!
I really liked this film. Caine’s Palmer is a fascinated character simultaneously a low brow, a borderline criminal who I probably wouldn’t like if I actually knew him, and partly a cultured man who likes cooking and Mozart.
Director does a Sidney J. Furie great job making sure there is nothing glamorous going on here with a department more obsessed with paperwork and the spies have to buy their own groceries.
My only problem with it was that I found that there were certain science fiction elements involving brainwashing that clashed with the otherwise hyperrealistic world.
Where The Ipcress File shows us the beginning of Palmer’s career in the middle of the cold war, the second film on my list, Bullet to Beijing directed by George Mihalka takes us to the end of Palmer’s career after the fall of the Soviet Union.
We begin with Palmer being retired from the service. He promptly receives a job offer in St. Petersburg that he can’t refuse as a courier to take a biological weapon to China which shall be sold to the North Koreans… or so we believe.
For the most part, after enjoying the Ipcress File so much I found. This film was fairly disappointing. What action there was, most notably a fairly cool boat chase down the canals of St. Petersburg, felt mostly gratuitous. The rest of the movie barring a few detours take place on a train going to China, the Bullet to Beijing in the title (except we eventually discover, it isn’t.)
Uh oh… It looks like the real Ariane Elder thinks we left out some key information about our consulate party storyline. She thinks we wasted too much time talking about what happened with Gage and Dielle. So it’s probably in our best interests to let her tell her story about what happened after we left her and Fedya off here.
All in all, it sounds like she had a good night. We have to wonder why Ms. Wren has taken an interest in her. At least Arriane appears to have noticed her, so she has some warning.
Let us hope for her sake and all of the eldritch abominations she claims to hang out with that she only gave Brian decaf!
Today’s selection started with an interesting thread. First I was trying to take another crack at magical realism a topic I always enjoy but have trouble finding good examples. This led me to the first film on today’s list Time of the Gypsies by Yugoslavian director Emir Kusturica. From there I thought I’d try movies about gypsies. Regrettably, I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have them as villainous stereotypes (besides Latcho Drum anyway. I didn’t pick that one since it’s more of a documentary.) So I ended up going with all of Kustrica’s work.
As mentioned above, the first film on the list that started all of this, Time of the Gypsy tells the story of a Tehran, a simple Gypsy boy, played by Davor Dujmovi? who live’s with his grandmother, tripled sister and deadbeat uncle in a rundown village. Pehran’s needs are simple, limited to his pet turkey. playing his accordion and mooning over the girl next door. On a side note, he has the power to move small objects with his mind.
When the hovel he lives in is torn down by his uncle, looking for money after he lost everything in a game of dice, Pehran’s life is turned upside down and he is put in the hands of Ahmed, played by Bora Todorovi? , a gangster whose brothers had stolen all of his uncle’s money in the first place.
From here Pehran is taken to Milan where he helps in Ahmed’s criminal endeavors which includes maintaining a small herd of beggars and pitch pockets and human trafficking From here we watch Pehran grow in both maturity and corruption.
This was an amazing film, sometimes whimsical and sometimes almost operatic, made all the more so with its wonderfully haunting soundtrack by Goran Bregovi?. Other times it almost feels like a documentary showing us the life of the life of the modern gypsy, warts and all but never patronizing. The fantasy elements are almost invisible with Pehran mostly using his powers as a party trick that most people ignore. The one time he uses it for real, in his final conflict with Ahmid, it probably would have been easier for him to just hold the fork in his hands.
I’m not sure if Kustrica’s next film on my list Black Cat, White Cat counts as magical realism the only real fantasy element are two people being “dead” for most of the final act. But I’ll go with it because it’s hilarious.
Bajram Severdžan plays Matko Destanov a totally incompetent smuggler who lives on the coast of the Danube with his teenage son Zare (Florijan Ajdini). He has what he thinks is his lucky break to steal a trainload of petrol and needs the support of local mobster Dandan Karambolo (Sr?an Todorovi?). However, Dandan double-crosses him and steals everything and puts Matko in debt. Dandan agrees to clear the debt provided Zare marries his dwarfen sister (who isn’t particularly crazy about the idea either.) What could go wrong?
This movie was a lot of fun with a wicked gallows sense of humor, showing us all of the absurdities that life can throw at us. The humor goes to every extreme, from Matko trying to pull down a corpse that is strapped to a raised train crossing to a recurring shot of a pig eating an old rusty car (and making considerable progress) to Zare’s reluctant bride hiding in a tree stump.
Like Kustrica’s other film it shows a wonderful job showing the underside of society. Vibrant in its own way, but virtually invisible to those who are not part of it.
I really need to start doing this more, but it’s a case of having to spend more time for research. So let’s start where we first began, with George Gershwin.
I found this one completely by accident, but it’s well worth it. Denis Matsuev is brilliant!
The Jazz bit’s are sprinkled around the entire piece. The rest is just a very good version of Rhapsody in Blue.
The first on my list was Irvin Kershner’s The Film-Flam Man with George C Scott and Michael Sarrazin. Sarazan plays Curley an army deserter who is in hiding in Kentucky, who helps a man he sees thrown from a train. This man turns out to be Mordecai Jones (Scott) an itinerant conman.
Obviously, I’d heard the next film on my list, Stephen Friers’ The Grifters, for years. But to my embarrassment it’s one of those films you know is good, but never get around to it.
