Trapeze

Carol Reed is one of the names most synonymous with the film noir genre. With other genres, there always seemed to be something amiss. Most of the time, it has to do with the picture being more about style than substance. Still, some of the tricks Reed learned from his noir pictures show up in these.

Take, for instance, Trapeze. Being one of his few films made in Hollywood, Reed has more of a scale to work on than Odd Man Out and The Third Man the previous decade. But as was commonplace for titles of the time, having more isn't always a good thing. It tries to put in too much with a two-hour runtime.

Starring in Trapeze are Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Gina Lollobrigida, all of whom as the film's living eye candy. Of them, Lollobrigida (and co-star Katy Jurado) has the more substantial role, acting as the classic femme fatale in some scenes. (Amusingly, Lancaster and Curtis' earlier interactions are similar -- albeit less cynical -- to what they'd do in Sweet Smell of Success the following year.)

Now Trapeze was shot in CinemaScope, and boy, does it show. The sweeping shots of the circus interiors courtesy of Robert Krasker proves that cinema can lead to something beautiful. The problem is that the general picture relies more on the images than the story that goes with them. Such is life.

Trapeze is by all accounts the standard spectacle picture of the 1950s but it still has its moments. A little bit more time spent on the script would've benefited it greatly. But all in all, it's the kind of film you can't see yourself watching again...unless you're in that kind of mood.

My Rating: ***1/2

Odd Man Out

Carol Reed is famous for two completely different movies: the film noir The Third Man and the musical Oliver! He has made a variety of movies, but he's known for those two.

Odd Man Out was made two years before The Third Man, and from watching it you can foretell what is to come. Like The Third Man, Odd Man Out is shot within the many dark corners of the city. The city is a character in itself.

Odd Man Out stars James Mason, a fine actor who I consider underrated by today's standards. I continually forget that he was in The Verdict and North by Northwest, but his work in A Star is Born and Bigger Than Life has stuck with me. So has Odd Man Out. He's slowly suffering throughout, but he isn't left alone to suffer. The city and its inhabitants won't let him be.

If you compare Odd Man Out to The Third Man too much, it makes it clear that The Third Man is the superior one. That doesn't mean Odd Man Out isn't as good. There are certain aspects that work better in The Third Man, but Odd Man Out is a fine film in its own right.

My Rating: ****1/2

The Third Man

Just reviewed Orson Welles' best-known work as a director, now onto his best-known work as an actor.

Pulp fiction writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is invited to Vienna by his friend Harry Lime (Welles). When he arrives, Martins finds out that Lime was killed after getting hit by a truck. Martins tries to figure out what happened the night Lime was killed by asking people that knew him very well.

The movie is noted for the "cuckoo clock" speech that Welles utters shortly after his character is revealed. It goes:

"You know what the fellow said--in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace--and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Interesting bit of trivia: Welles ad-libbed that speech (and after the film's release, he was corrected by the Swiss saying "that they've never made any cuckoo clocks"). Bravo, Mr. Welles. Bravo.

My Rating: *****