Random Thoughts

But not well!

Vincent Price!

I would never have guessed that this was a Sam Fuller movie. It’s so… staid? At least so far. We’ve got a cumbersome framing device where one of these guys is telling the story, and he also provides a voiceover.

Neither seems necessary?

Such subtle.

So passion.

I’m finding this movie to be a bit tedious? Price is fine, but the rest of the actors are playing it for laughs.

The heist plot (i.e., getting Arizona) should be so much more fun than this. It’s just … molasses.

This is pretty accurate:

A minor low-budget Sam Fuller (“I Shot Jesse James”) bizarre western, his second feature, tells a fabulous story loosely based on true events that are inefficiently worked out thereby making it seem unlikely. It’s at first appealing but soon becomes tiresome

It has no zip — it just trudges along for what seems like hours. I mean, this should be more fun:

During the course of the fraud, Reavis collected an estimated US$5.3 million in cash and promissory notes ($173 million in present-day terms) through the sale of quitclaims and proposed investment plans.

The Baron of Arizona. Samuel Fuller. 1950.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

This is the final movie on the silent family comedy Ozu box set. And since it’s silent, I’m playing disco bangers while watching it.

“You know why your hand has five fingers? If it only had four, your glove would have one extra.”

There’s jokes here.

Anyway, this is a very amiable movie… it’s not quite clear what the movie is going to be about (but I bet there’s gonna be hi-jinx with that girl he picked up), and it has a very natural flow: One scene follows the next without too much overt plot.

Is that a recommended chopstick technique?

This is really good. I know, you’re all going “duh, it’s Ozu”, but it really is. It follows some melodrama conventions (like The Sick Child), but it’s otherwise amorphously strange, even if straightforward.

It’s really enjoyable to watch.

(Some of the scenes are very splotchy indeed.)

The Japanese have superior fever chilling techniques. I must get one of those hanging bag thingies.

… Oh! There’s a sountrack here! If I push `#’ I get somebody playing the pianner.

Oh well.

Passing Fancy. Yasujirô Ozu. 1933.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

This is a box set of three early Sam Fuller movies, and as such is an outlier in the Eclipse series — the films are mostly Japanese and French things where Janus Films had distribution rights.

And it’s odd that Criterion wouldn’t just release these movies as part of their regular series. I mean, Fuller’s a popular director. But I guess they know what they’re doing.

Anyway.

How er touching.

Oh yeah! I had forgotten that I had (started to) see The Assasinatetc, but it was terrible.

So this is an earlier version of the same story, but it has some of the same set pieces, like the bathing scene?

SPOILER ALERT Ford kills James.

It’s fascinating just how full on this is — the movie is like “of course Ford’s killing him” and then just gets on with it within the first twenty minutes.

It’s great.

This is really weird. I assume that this didn’t actually happen?

No, it’s apparently true:

This sentiment clashed with the general public opinion at the time of James’s death that it had been time for James to be stopped by any means. For a period, Bob earned money by posing for photographs as “the man who killed Jesse James” in dime museums. He also appeared on stage with his brother Charles, reenacting the murder in a touring stage show.

This looks really good. It apparently had a minuscule budget and shooting schedule, but you totally can’t tell.

But…

It’s just that the last half of the movie isn’t as good as it should be?

Good performances and all.

Some scenes zing and other scenes are just there.

John Ireland is kinda perfect here — he does dim well.

La nuit américaine.

I Shot Jesse James. Samuel Fuller. 1949.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.