Poll

What's your favorite film by Jules Dassin?

Nazi Agent
0 (0%)
Reunion in France
0 (0%)
The Canterville Ghost
1 (4.3%)
Brute Force
0 (0%)
The Naked City
2 (8.7%)
Night and the City
3 (13%)
Rififi
11 (47.8%)
Never on Sunday
0 (0%)
Phaedra
0 (0%)
Topkapi
0 (0%)
other
1 (4.3%)
haven't seen any
5 (21.7%)
don't like any
0 (0%)
Thieves' Highway
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 22

Author Topic: Dassin, Jules  (Read 4645 times)

roujin

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Re: Director's Best: Jules Dassin
« Reply #10 on: March 03, 2011, 09:21:24 PM »
Night and the City Jules Dassin, 1950

Widmark is the weasely hustler who's always on the move. Gene Tierney, wasted/beautiful, is the girl who loves him and wants him to do well. We're all artists without an art, trying get rich quick schemes that indubitably always fails. Widmark, sweating profusely, in shadows most of the time, tries another time, but gets defeated by an underworld that repeatedly tells him that he's a dead man. Not that Widmark is an innocent who simply gets CINECAST!ed by the uncaring world or anything. He cheats his benefactor, goes against his boss, tries robbing his girl in order to pay his debts; he's scum, desperate and cornered. The shadows of our existence may drive certain men to this state, men who could've been good. Maybe in another life. Then again, if you have Gene Tierney by your side and you still refuse to settle down, maybe you're just a dumbass? roujin may have the best plans in existence. But they'll always go unfunded. Nobody has any time for dreamers. Time to regain the throne.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2020, 12:52:58 AM by 1SO »

sdedalus

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Re: Director's Best: Jules Dassin
« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2011, 12:08:32 AM »
I can never understand why people aren't satisfied with Gene Tierney.  It's a major flaw of films of the 1940s and 50s.
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1SO

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Dassin, Jules
« Reply #12 on: July 28, 2014, 06:36:34 PM »
1. The Naked City
2. Brute Force
3. Night and the City
4. Thieves' Highway
5. Rififi
6. Never On Sunday
7. Two Smart People

8. Topkapi

« Last Edit: May 27, 2018, 08:23:35 AM by 1SO »

1SO

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Re: Director's Best: Jules Dassin
« Reply #13 on: August 01, 2014, 11:05:23 PM »

The Naked City (1948)

My original review holds up. The film opens not with credits, but with narration by the film's producer, Mark Hellinger. He mentions some of the key players that helped make The Naked City, boasts about the extensive use of actual locations. Hellinger slides into his fiction with a series of images that remind me of city symphony documentaries. Within these snippets, we meet our main cast including the two murder victims.

I'm sure someone can name films that came before The Naked City that took this approach of using the city as the tapestry and not just window dressing. I don't know of any that commits to the idea this thoroughly. and there's not much room for this docu-drama approach to be handled any better. Sure, with a cast so large, many of whom only speak a couple of lines, there are going to be weak performances. Most of the weak ones are tied to red herrings, lonely and mentally unstable folk taking advantage of the publicity connected to the murder. The parents of the dead girl are also bad. There are standouts as well, like the woman who pours one cop a root beer. However, I love the technique so much I'm willing to deal with some cringe moments for the richness of the narrative.

I also love watching Barry Fitzgerald in peak form as the lead Detective. His filmography is too small for what he gave to the cinema, particularly as a leading man, where he's able to do things with a kindly wisdom or an entertaining directness that just makes me smile all over. Top 5 scenes with Actors working a crime scene, you got Pacino in Heat and Fitzgerald definitely goes on the list. I love how his team pulls up a room full of clues, but most of the clues are only good as evidence if the murderer is caught. Many clues, but only a few leads.

Fitzgerald interrogates suspects while he banters with new Detective Don Taylor. Taylor gets into an exciting chase in the middle of the film and the momentum keeps building to the exciting finale where that location filming really pays off. 2nd time through this one remains a winner.
Rating: * * * 1/2

roujin

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Re: Director's Best: Jules Dassin
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2014, 03:50:41 PM »
1. Night and the City (1950)
2. Thieves' Highway (1949)

oldkid

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Re: Director's Best: Jules Dassin
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2014, 04:08:55 PM »
The Naked City I liked quite a bit.  The Canterville Ghost was okay.  Shamefully, I haven't seen Rififi yet.
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Re: Dassin, Jules
« Reply #16 on: March 29, 2016, 02:32:20 PM »
1. The Naked City (3.5)
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

1SO

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Re: Dassin, Jules
« Reply #17 on: May 25, 2018, 11:34:40 PM »

Thieves' Highway (1949)
"He'd be so crazy to get 'em he might even make a straight deal."

Thieves' Highway started out like a classic. Characters and situations are set up cleanly with smart dialogue and great directorial touches (like the kids trying to catch the falling apples.) Loved seeing Millard Mitchell (Singin' in the Rain) in a strong supporting performance. There's a phenomenal suspense scene involving a flat tire on a dirt ditch. Jules Dassin brings a slightly stylized grit and the imagery is so stark and crisp it looks like a breakthrough in camera photography. Overall I loved the direction and the bargaining for apple prices. This is where Richard Conte's Nick came off a capable going up against Lee J. Cobb's Figlia.

The question I'm wrestling with is how much leeway do I give this rube because I know he's in a Film Noir and he doesn't? Nick is too naive for my tastes. It makes sense because he's new to the business, but it makes it hard to root for him when a history of dozens of prior Noirs makes me so aware of problems I think even a newbie like Sandy would be yelling at her television. (Don't yell out in a restaurant full of desperate truckers that you have $4000 on you. Especially when you know they're listening.)

The film went downhill for me when Rica (Valentina Cortese) hit on Nick. It's such an obvious obstacle, I wanted to see Nick show some resistance. I wondered if he was aware but playing dumb to get in deeper. Nope, he's just being stupid. This relationship develops in an interesting way. Martin calls it "turning the good girl/bad girl motif on its ear" except I don't believe it. Not for a moment.

Then there are the little things. There's another pair of apple truckers who lay on the city hick talk real thick. Figlia's got a couple of cronies of his own who push their character actor quirkiness to the limit. The ending, while not as big a turnaround as Woman in the Window feels like it was written by the studio. Through it all, I remained impressed by Jules Dassin's direction. He's got a bum tune, but he makes it sing.
RATING: ★ ★ ★ - Okay



Brute Force (1947)
★ ★ ★ - Good
I don't know which prison films are said to be the gold standard, but this one hits all the classic beats and hits them quite well, with good, tough performances and smooth direction that's just a hair shy of seeming too artfully staged. The last two prison films I watched were the stripped down A Man Escaped and Le Trou. This is a much fuller picture, with backstories on the prisoners and more time with the warden and his staff. It feels bloated with so many side trips (though I loved seeing the mesmerizing eyes of Ella Raines again), but overall this is a solid film. It also has a terrific last 15 minutes. I've complained about there being very few good, exciting action sequences before 1970 (except in Westerns). This is one of the few. A real edge of your seat blast of excitement where the outcome doesn't feel pre-determined in the least.



Night and the City (1950)
★ ★
A bit of a disappointment, especially after hearing critics sing its praises back when the DeNiro remake was being trashed. Having not seen the original I liked Bobby D's film okay. I was hoping for something here on par with Pickup on South Street at the least. Not even close. The film noir style is in full visual effect, and this is an appropriately hard-edged trip down the seedy streets of London. (I say 'visual' because the dialogue is lacking the sharp-tongued hipsterism I love most of all about noir.) The story is too thin, like a noir fairy tale where every character is there to fulfill their one big plot point. Nearly all of the characters aren't fleshed out into anything interesting. Many of them get two major scenes: a set up and the payoff. They merely keep our lead running around.

What completely sinks Night and the City is Richard Widmark's awful performance in the lead. He acts with the boundless ham of Mickey Rooney, but Rooney was doing comedies and musicals. This is supposed to be serious. He's endlessly unconvincing. I'm talking Tommy Wiseau bad. There's a moment in the beginning where he's caught looking through a woman's purse and he goes, "What do you mean spying on me? I was just looking for a cigarette." Only he says the first line really angry and the second totally charming with barely a pause between the two.

The big dramatic turn involves a fight that turns into a life or death wrestling match. I have to assume this kind of wrestling was exciting back in 1950. Today, it looks uncomfortably, accidentally homoerotic as the two bare-chested men try to bear hug each other into submission. Goes on for what feels like quite a long time. Probably because there's no feeling anyone is winning. Just a lot of closeups of arms running across the rolls of sweaty back fat.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2018, 08:23:01 AM by 1SO »

1SO

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Re: Dassin, Jules
« Reply #18 on: May 26, 2018, 11:17:50 PM »

Night and the City (1950)
"Harry. You could have been anything. Anything. You had brains... ambition.
You worked harder than any 10 men. But the wrong things. Always the wrong things."


For now, I'm keeping my first review from 2011 in the post above. I agree with parts of it, but this was a completely different experience, enhanced more by my watching Thieves' Highway right after. If making a list of Top 5 movie hustlers, you have to seriously consider Richard Widmark's Harry Fabian. Dassin sets the tempo to Fabian's energy, which is like a top wobbling just before it topples over. Desperately spinning in all directions, too lost in his own dreams to worry about the risks, which keep hitting him faster an harder.

Harry Fabian's flaw is that he just isn't very good. He knows a lot of angles, enough to convince himself he can pull something off, but the more we see him interact with the seedy world around him the more we become aware that he's an amateur among pros. It's cool (and very Noir) to center the film on someone who isn't the best but doesn't realize it, except in brief moments of reflection. Widmark makes Harry someone you can root for even though you're pretty sure he's doomed. It's a wildly uneven character, but also a wildly uneven performance. Most of the time, Widmark is really strong but when he gets cocky he tends to get cartoonish, like The Joker, Jared Leto style.


The film looks amazing, one of the best combinations of Noir grit with Noir style. Makes me think when I'm looking for a good Noir, I should be looking at who shot the film, not who directed it. And that wrestling match I mentioned above, that's the most wrong part of my first review. Yeah, there's an unwanted element of homoeroticism and sweaty fat, but it's a suspenseful sequence because you're watching the drawn-out destruction of everything Harry is aiming for and there's nothing he can do no matter how it turns out.
RATING: ★ ★ ★ - Good

1SO

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Re: Dassin, Jules
« Reply #19 on: May 27, 2018, 08:43:01 AM »
Never on Sunday (1960)
★ ★ ★ - Okay
Unusual story and very unexpected from Dassin was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Director, Screenplay and Actress. (Melina Mercouri won Best Actress at Cannes and was an activist who was elected to the Greek Parliament in 1977.) It won Best Song. The story casts Mercouri as one of the ultimate hookers with a heart of gold. I've never seen a prostitute character so in control of her life choices to where even the women in town can't find reason to shun her. She encounters a visiting American, played by Dassin himself, who sees her as the symbol of Greece's fall from greatness and the two engage in a moral tug of war. This plays out within the region's rich culture, much like Coco does for Mexico. It's a thin story, but there's a lot here to think about. Or you could just let Dassin's enchantment with Greece carry you along too.