Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/09/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, December 9, 2019

T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)

T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)

Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, Charles McGraw, Mary Meade, Jane Randolph, June Lockhart, Art Smith, Herbert Heyes, Jack Overman, John Wengraf, Jim Bannon, William Malten. Screenplay: John C. Higgins. Cinematography: John Alton. Art direction: Edward C. Jewell. Film editing: Fred Allen. Music: Paul Sawtell.

With its tough-guy cast, suspenseful screenplay, and superb noir-and-white cinematography by John Alton, T-Men is only slightly hindered by efforts to sell itself as a ripped-from-the-headlines True Story. It has a heavy-handed opener featuring the real head of the Treasury Department's investigative division, Elmer Lincoln Irey, selling us on the idea that the IRS is really our friend, and an ongoing voiceover narrative by the actor Reed Hadley that provides exposition we mostly don't need -- it could easily have been integrated into the dialogue. These flaws aside, the film has real grit as it follows T-man Dennis O'Brien (Dennis O'Keefe) and his partner Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder) in their investigation of a counterfeiting scheme, encountering the usual menacing thugs and hard-bitten dames. Neither of the good guys has it easy, getting beat up and shot as they sleuth through the seamy side of '40s Los Angeles. Alton's camera gives us expressionistic angles and sinister shadows as it explores some well-chosen locations from Chinatown to a Turkish bath to the waterfront.