Tuesday, July 28, 2009
YELLOW PRESS
Today's movie was Billy Wilder's
with Kirk Douglas, rotten to the core.
Nothing is soft or compromised in this tough and cynical look at the corrupt press (or at least the part of it that is corrupt). A film noir with a final scene that is worth waiting through the "hole" picture for.
Not that the wait is a bad one. Nothing stays still. Everything moves forward.
Jan Stirling is the "moll" in this. I had forgotten her. She was one tough broad and she handles herself well here against the nasty version of Douglas. He played both sides of the moral extremes in his films and comes out better as the bad guy in my opinion.
A man is pinned in a cave and Douglas covers the rescue, manipulating the operation to take a time long enough to really milk the story. Sell some papers. Get a reputation.
The scene is the desert and the crowds which assemble to see the action are as scary as Douglas. There are so many crowd scenes and I mean big overhead ones that I worried about how much this cost Wilder to do.
The other story here is mass hysteria and the attraction to spectacle.
There is nothing new in this film that we have not seen before or even see today. It is just that Wilder distills it in a way that keeps clarity and focus.
And talk about clarity and focus! This new Criterion restoration is beautiful to watch and to listen to.
I would gladly see this film again maybe in a Douglas or Wilder fest.
That makes it a 4 out of Netflix5.
