As in that film, the story concerns a conspiracy to murder. Ex-Foreign Legion soldier Julien Tavernier Maurice Ronet , a veteran of French military misadventures in Algeria and Indochina, is planning to kill his boss, who is also his lover's husband. On paper, the plan is seamless — Tavernier secures his alibis and enters his victim's office unseen, by means of a rope — but things soon get messy.
On returning to the crime scene to retrieve a key piece of evidence, Tavernier finds himself trapped in the elevator, leaving his car parked outside with the keys in the ignition. Although its elements point towards nailbiting tension, this isn't so much what Lift to the Scaffold is about; it draws more on the blanket fatalism of film noir rather than the savage irony so often associated with the genre. Key to this is Jeanne Moreau as Tavernier's lover, Florence; in the film's signature sequence her man fails to turn up, so she walks the streets trying vainly to find him. Filmed on the fly without professional lighting, accompanied only by Miles Davis's brilliant, melancholy score, these few minutes capture the bleak and beautiful essence of Malle's film.
It's one of the greatest, in fact: Except that when Martins arrives, Lime turns out to be dead. At least that's the prevailing wisdom at his funeral. To say anything else about the mystery that Martins unravels would be to jeopardise some of the zesty surprises of this year-old masterpiece. Is there a statute of limitations on spoilers? But then The Third Man is about more than plot. The morally fermented atmosphere of Vienna mapped out by Graham Greene's screenplay based on his own story is sustained beautifully by Robert Krasker's cinematography, with top notes of mischief introduced by Anton Karas's sprightly zither playing.
An unassuming actor named Orson Welles also puts in an appearance, skulking in a doorway in one of the wittiest of all movie entrances, then delivering a speech full of humble horrors from the vantage point of a ferris wheel overlooking the city. The key to the picture's genius is undoubtedly the mutually nourishing collaboration between Greene and the director Carol Reed. Reed is not only alert to every nuance in Greene's writing but adept at finding pointed visual equivalents for his prose. No one ever smoked and brooded and loomed like Robert Mitchum. And he never did it as definitively as he does in Out of the Past, a stylish and devastating noir that was one of a hat-trick of perfect genre pieces directed by Jacques Tourneur in the s along with Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie.
Viewers not enamoured of the actor's somnambulant manner might take the latter title for a description of what it must be like to act alongside Mitchum. But that would be to miss the bitter, internalised hurt and wounded hope he brings to his performance here; just because he's still, that doesn't mean he's not suffering. Oh, and shooting him. It may not be any surprise that when Jeff catches up with the fugitive femme fatale, there is a crackle of attraction between them. The seductive skill of the movie lies in its masterful evocation of that sensual, fatalistic bleakness crucial to noir.
From Nicholas Musuraca's chiaroscuro cinematography "It was so dark on set, you didn't know who else was there half the time," said Greer to Roy Webb's plangent score and the guarded, electrifying performances, it's nothing short of a noir masterclass. But the sharpened splinters of dialogue also bear the mark of Cain — James M Cain, that is, the legendary author of noir landmarks The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, who performed vital but uncredited rewrites.
According to Mitchum's biographer, Lee Server, it was Cain who expunged Kathie of any traces of lovability. To which Jeff shoots back: Cameron Crowe called Double Indemnity "flawless film-making".
Oct 16, Hddkuwwjk rated it it was amazing Shelves: The most compelling study of the nature of consciousness, and turn of the last century literary eloquence. Hva handler den om? Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. His only clue to his identity is a name and phone number. Realizing that he would stay transformed as Hyde, Jekyll decided to write his "confession". Jan 14, Colby rated it it was amazing.
Woody Allen declared it "the greatest movie ever made". Even if you can't go along with that, there can be no disputing that it is the finest film noir of all time, though it was made in , before the term film noir was even coined. Adapting James M Cain's novella about a straight-arrow insurance salesman tempted into murder by a duplicitous housewife, genre-hopping director Billy Wilder recruited Raymond Chandler as co-writer. Chandler, said Wilder, "was a mess, but he could write a beautiful sentence".
Noir's visual style, which had its roots in German expressionism, was forged here, though Wilder insisted that he was going for a "newsreel" effect. Fred MacMurray, who had specialised largely in comedy until that point, was an inspired choice to play the big dope Walter Neff, who narrates the sorry mess in flashback, and wonders: But the ace in the hole is Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson, a vision of amorality in a "honey of an anklet" and a platinum wig.
She can lower her sunglasses and make it look like the last word in predatory desire. And she's not just a vamp: There are few shots in cinema as bone-chilling as the closeup on Stanwyck's face as Neff dispatches Phyllis's husband in the back seat of a car. Stanwyck had been reluctant to take the role, confessing: When she plumped for the former, he shot back: In the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson — the source material for this movie — the hero is an American man who has been married to a Mexican woman for nine years.
It was Orson Welles who flipped the racial mix, and made the marriage brand new. Welles intended a story of three frontiers: To be sure, it's a recognisable Charlton Heston in makeup as Mike Vargas, with Janet Leigh as Susie — but in , that bond disturbed a lot of viewers.
Moreover, the overtone of honeymoon is a wicked setup for threats of rape. Will the horrendous border scum get to Susie before Mike? If you doubt that suggestiveness, just notice how the car bomb explodes as the honeymooners are ready to enjoy their first kiss on US soil. This is a crime picture in which coitus interruptus has to be listed with all the other charges. Metaphorically and cinematically, it's a picture about crossing over — in one sumptuous camera setup we track the characters over the border.
That shot is famous, but it's no richer than the single setup in a cramped motel suite that proves how Hank Quinlan Welles himself plants dynamite on the man he intends to frame. These scenes were a way for Welles to say, "I'm as good as ever", but they are also crucial to the uneasiness that runs through the picture and the gloating panorama of an unwholesome society. The aura of crime has seeped into every cell of ordinary behaviour: Not least, of course, Quinlan — a sheriff gone to hell on candy bars. So evil is not just a "touch".
It is criminality in the blood. Marlene Dietrich's Tanya watches over this doom like a witch or prophet, a bleak reminder that there is no hope. Fifty years later, that border is still an open wound. The movie ends equally unforgettably with the line, "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown! Behind the angst-ridden noirs of the 40s and 50s lie the social and political tensions of the second world war and the postwar decade.
Similarly, Chinatown was conceived, written, produced and released in the troubled period that included the last years of the Vietnam war, Watergate, and Nixon's fraught second term in the White House. But it retained its freshness, vitality and timelessness by being set so immaculately in an earlier period — Los Angeles in the long, hot summer of — and it deals with the scandals of that era, those touching on the complex politics of water in the arid west.
While gathering divorce evidence on behalf of a suspicious wife, Gittes Nicholson is sucked into a world beyond his comprehension involving municipal corruption, sexual transgression and the power of old money. Return to Book Page. The famous opening line of Monsieur Teste -- "Stupidity is not my strong suit" -- is typical of Monsieur Teste, and of Valery as well. Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, the book is profoundly personal.
Valery said he could not imagine the existence of the novel, vet he could not resist the character living in his mind. On the one hand. Monsieur Teste reflec The famous opening line of Monsieur Teste -- "Stupidity is not my strong suit" -- is typical of Monsieur Teste, and of Valery as well.
Monsieur Teste reflects Valery's preoccupation with the phenomenon of a mind detached from sensibility; on the other, he is an ordinary fictional character seen from many viewpoints. Paperback , pages. Published September 22nd by Gallimard French first published National Book Award for Translation To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Monsieur Teste , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Por que odeio o que odeio? De mudar o sentido dos seus movimentos instintivos? Quase tanto como a View all 3 comments.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about bullshit. More specifically, I've been thinking about the assumptions that underpin any bullshit-imputing judgment. For instance, it seems to me that judgments of the form " x is bullshit" necessarily presuppose that the judging party has an adequate understanding of the x 's semantic content or alleged lack thereof. And if the judging party further determines that the x in question happens to be truth-apt i.
The potential dubiety of these two assumptions can be problematic enough in the truth-centered disciplines of science, philosophy and mathematics. Just look at how many times thinkers like Derrida have had to parry charges of "charlatanism. When you read a poem or a short story or a novel, how can you ever satisfy that first step?
And what about a work like Monsieur Teste , which seems to be a novel masquerading as a philosophical treatise? Suffice to say, I have absolutely no clue what to make of this opaque and puzzling work. Superficially, it purports to comprise a study of "a mind detached from sensibility" whatever the hell that means ; and while the book made me feel as if I was on the cusp of something profound, the critical moment of enlightenment never materialized. Did I miss the point of the book? Or is Monsieur Teste little more than a steaming pile of bullshit?
And importantly, did translator Jackson Mathews find himself struggling with these very uncertainties? Apr 29, Debra rated it it was amazing. The most compelling study of the nature of consciousness, and turn of the last century literary eloquence. It's almost impossible to comment articulately about Valery. His writing is poetry, his mind is etherial.
This book gives just a taste of both. Jan 14, Colby rated it it was amazing. Apr 15, Stringbean rated it it was amazing. In it, there is no place for the incidental, the accidental, or unnecessary. The book comprises of the short anecdote referenced above, two others like it, selections from a logbook, some recorded thoughts of M.
It cannot resign its centre to concretion. Really, I just want to quote, but it's worth noting that what other characters write about M. Teste is much more interesting than the texts attributed to Teste himself. But at the end of the body, the mind. Jan 04, NL rated it it was amazing. I read this book in and it made a strong impression on me without my actually understanding it.
It's like how I knew at 17 that Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" would be applicable to my love life, but didn't appreciate the tragi-comic implications of that until hearing the album again at Jan 11, Ekin rated it really liked it. Signore, io ero nel nulla; infinitamente nessuno e tranquillo. Sono stato disturbato in quella situazione per venir immesso in uno strano carnevale Feb 12, Blogbaas Van 'tVliegend Eiland rated it really liked it. Sep 16, Namnlaus rated it it was ok. Hva handler den om? Her er en og annen tankevekkende betraktning, en og annen fyndig aforisme, og boken er helt tydelig et produkt av et uregjerlig ungt sinn.
Mar 27, Alexandra rated it liked it.