SCFZ poll: Robert Siodmak

[...]

Can't remember when this poll is supposed to close, but if I could have the weekend to finish one I'm watching and another short one I have in queue, I'd appreciate it.

[flip]

sure, i can extend the deadline to monday or tuesday, let me know when your ballot is finalized

[...]

Will do and thanks!

[ororama]

I would like to take advantage of the extension as well. I expect to watch Criss Cross tomorrow night.

[...]

Finished Fly By Night, Siodmak doing a surprisingly robust for its budget little thriller, call it Hitchcock-lite perhaps, but, please, don't say noir or screwball comedy as it's about as close to either as Scooby Doo. It's got enemy agents, a sanitarium, some nice car stunts, a couple bumbling cops and some other amusing complications to pad out its rather unbelievable mystery around a missing scientist and his dangerous invention, G32, which the bad guys want to get a hold of. It seems that WIlder wasn't the only one who picked up some tips from Lubitsch on how to suggest more than is said, Siodmak's had sly moments in several of the films I've watched recently that share some light family resemblance in that way. I quite liked it, but I suppose it helps that I'm something of a Richard Carlson fan,nonetheless I suspect it's a movie most would find at least mildly enjoyable and maybe more. It's much better made than it has any right to be, another example I think of Siodmak really being more invested in these lowish budget films than most of the other studio directors who worked on them, that and just being more talented surely helps too.

[john ryan]

Flip, can I have 90 minutes to watch Criss Cross?

ETA: done and updated

[MrCarmady]

Cry of the City was nifty - I like The Fugitive-esque dynamic between Mature and Conte, both of whom are smart, resourceful, and hell-bent on getting their way. (Another film like that I saw recently was Lonely Are the Brave, I'm sure there's more good examples) The whole acting ensemble plays an important part in fleshing out the world of the film (compensating for the somewhat flimsy/implausible plot) - Kroeger is a great slimy lawyer, Shayne is a good desperate doctor, and Paget and Winters are both fantastic in bit parts (Paget was 15, wow). The cinematography is excellent and there's rarely a dull moment.
It goes on the list and I'm going to take advantage of greg's request and try to watch one or two more before the deadline.

[flip]

Flip, can I have 90 minutes to watch Criss Cross?

deadline is extended to at least Monday, can wait longer if people want to watch more Siodmak!

[MrCarmady]

Used the extension to watch The Suspect. I really like Laughton in this, he carries the film with his air of goodheartedness mixed with desperation. Kudos go to the actors who play the victims as they made me want to bump them both off as well. But visually it's nothing to write home about, there's too many average characters (also, why is the actor who plays his son not even bothering to pretend to hide his accent?), and while it ends on a strong note, I wasn't really convinced by the central romance and so the plot on the whole. Need to decide what goes on the list now that I have 6, but probably not that.

[ororama]

1. The Spiral Staircase
2. The Killers
3. Criss Cross
4. Phantom Lady
5. Cry of the City

I have seen 10 movies directed by Robert Siodmak.

I'm glad that this poll pushed me to watch Criss Cross and Cry of the City this month. I might have watched them anyway, but there are always lots of choices.

[Umbugbene]

The Suspect

Just watched this too but didn't change my list either. I agree, Laughton's excellent as he almost always is (except in the unfinished I Clavdivs). Unfortunately the movie exaggerates too many things for it to be much good: the wife is too much of a shrew, Laughton's almost too much of a gentleman, his romance is too lucky, etc. And the moment when his son notices the missing cane is badly done and should have been cut.

[MrCarmady]

Yeah, there wasn't much subtlety there. (I agree with you on the bad missing cane scene but the scene with the cat under the couch makes up for it) Then again Cry of the City is a pretty simple morality tale and it's great.
Downloaded The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and wanna squeeze both that and People on Sunday before the deadline (is it on Tuesday now?)

[...]

Thanks for the extension Flip. I guess I'm done for now, managed to see seven more for the poll, every one of them worth it. Don't know which five I really want to choose so I'll lean towards some of the ones I just watched since they're fresher in my memory, but I'll keep a couple of my favorite previously viewed ones for their lasting impression just to mix it up a little. My initial ballot has been adjusted to reflect the changes.

[flip]

Downloaded The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and wanna squeeze both that and People on Sunday before the deadline (is it on Tuesday now?)

sure, i can wait until tomorrow.

[Lencho of the Apes]

tips from Lubitsch

The things you've said about this and the earliest Hollywood Siodmaks reminds me a lot of of the Lubitschy fun that some of his pre-Hollywood Euromovies were. Le Sexe Faible comes to mind.

[MrCarmady]

Downloaded The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and wanna squeeze both that and People on Sunday before the deadline (is it on Tuesday now?)

sure, i can wait until tomorrow.

Work got in the way so I'm just gonna watch these after the deadline, thanks anyway.

[...]

Yeah, the light resemblance to Lubitsch isn't something I'd want to push too hard on, since no one would likely mistake a Siodmak movie or even a scene for one from Lubitsch. It is more just that they share a sense of fun in their directing and in how they find ways to suggest more than they can sometimes say outright. I was able to watch one of Siodmak's early movies with subs and browsed a bit of some of the ones without and they all seem to show a real pleasure in filming and coming up with interesting solutions to keep the movies fresh. Some of the methods in cutting and set ups show up repeatedly, like cutting on matching action shots to compress time for example, but the effect still carries a sense of pleasure and surprise to it in when he chooses to do it, which is true for some of the other little "tricks" he enlists to move the story along. He'll lean into more expressionist effect when it might be fun, like at the start of Spiral Staircase where he matches a murder upstairs to a audience watching an early silent film in the rooms below, letting the diagetic musical accompaniment to the silent film carry the murder scene that plays out almost silently above.

Fly By Night and The Night Before the Divorce both tweak their noses at the production code in amusing but opposing ways. The Night Before the Divorce has the formerly married couple sleep together despite having unknowingly been granted a divorce shortly beforehand, while Fly By Night has a couple that barely knows each other married to avoid capture meet up at the end of the film in bed, recounting how little they know of each other right before the fade out and suggestion of consummation of the "marriage" that will shortly occur.

Tumultes and Christmas Holiday share a similar climax, a boyfriend/husband escapes from jail and seeks out his believed to be unfaithful partner to settle the score, but each plays it differently. Tumultes is the much more blunt film in the so-called poetic realism vein, where sex is talked about more freely and the man's actions are centered until the resolution where the effect of it all is allowed to play out on Boyer's tough guy thief/murderer in a moment where his harsh misogynistic talk is belied by his expression. It's a movie where Florelle, the actress who plays the woman he's obsessed with, ends up carrying the weight of the films contradictory appeal, by conveying the appeal of her free actions as both the cause of the end crisis and why it could be no other way for her character, which is her allure. Christmas Holiday has Durbin's character a more directly innocent one, at least to some degree, to fit US standards, and her appeal is that sense of commitment to her love. Siodmak goes Wagnerian, echoing the music theme that played at the concert where Kelly and Durbin's characters first met, Tristan and Isolde. He's not afraid to exaggerate for effect, in Spiral Staircase he does so by accentuating the melodramatic effects by having all the characters speak and act portentously, playing off the "old timey' genre feel of a old mansion murder mystery. (I say old timey, but in the day, I guess it was really sort of a rough equivalent to Stranger Things in our time, taking place about 30 years before in order to play with the trappings of that earlier time, still in recentish memory of the audience.) In Christmas Holiday, the emotions are given a different weighting. Scenes with little action are allowed to play out to see the characters reacting to something not so much seen as felt, as when we see Kelly and Durbin raptly watching the concert without even noting each other, just being caught up in the music for several minutes. Each film plays with exaggeration and has been called a "noir" by some, but the way each plays out is distinctly different in order to suit their varied dramatic needs.

[flip]

it seemed, as i was tallying, we might end up with some surprising results, but the late votes elevated the famous late 40s noirs. i found it a bit surprising, in a good way, that 21 different siodmak films got votes (just because he's rarely discussed around here). also surprising, three of the top six films are specifically from 1944 (as is a fourth film, 13th on the list) -- i'd be surprised if any other director has a single year like that in our polls.

results

1. Phantom Lady (1944) -- 35.5 pts
2. Criss Cross (1949) -- 15.5 pts
3. The Killers (1946) -- 14.5 pts
4. Cry of the City (1948) -- 11.5 pts
5. Christmas Holiday (1944) -- 11 pts
6. Cobra Woman (1944) -- 9 pts
6. The Spiral Staircase (1945) -- 9 pts
8. Mollenard (1938) -- 8 pts
9. The File on Thelma Jordon (1950) -- 7 pts
10. The Dark Mirror (1946) -- 6 pts
11. The Devil Strikes at Night (1957) -- 5 pts
11. Custer of the West (1967) -- 5 pts
13. Le Sexe Faible (1933) -- 4 pts
13. The Great Sinner (1949) -- 4 pts
13. The Suspect (1944) -- 4 pts
16. Abschied (1930) -- 3 pts
16. The Man in Search of His Murderer (1931) -- 3 pts
16. People on Sunday (1930) -- 3 pts
19. The Crimson Pirate (1952) -- 2 pts
19. The Night Before the Divorce (1942) -- 2 pts
21. Tumultes (1932) -- 1 pt

[MrCarmady]

Just caught up with The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and I can kinda see why it didn't make anyone's top 5 but that ending is so ridiculous I almost found it charming, and the cast is pretty great.

[flip]

at letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-210/