We're going to sail through the night sky like a pair of bottle rockets

[sovay]

I wish the Brattle Theatre did not feel the need to deafen its clientele. It's a small theater; it doesn't screen big dumb action movies; it doesn't need to go all the way up to eleven. I had tissues stuffed into both my ears and they still ache sharply. Maybe everyone else in the audience is losing their hearing, but I don't need to be made to fit the profile. Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln . . . Actually, I loved White Heat. Right now I'm having trouble thinking of another actor who uses himself as physically as Cagney—he hurls himself into the role literally and it's like watching lit magnesium, it's mesmerizing. He was a dancer. He could sculpt matter out of motion. But the result is not at all stylized, and neither is the film; one of the aspects that struck me most was its modernity, carphones, fast food, electronic tracking, the increasing difficulty of vanishing off the grid even in 1949. The edges of the map are closing in. Cody Jarrett goes up in a sheet of flame: he looks like apocalyptic science fiction, the end of the gangster era in a mushroom cloud. I don't know what the hell the movie should be classified as, but I'm very glad I saw it. I think my ears are still out on their verdict, though.

Comments

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

It's true, all of it. And I noticed the grid-will-get-you-ness of it the last time I saw it, too, which is one of the primary reasons I think it's such a very strong candidate for being turned into one of the increasingly rare good remakes. As I recall, my fantasy cast had Keifer Sutherland as Cody, Helen Mirren as Ma (for the incestuous win), and I wanted to cast Verna with a POC (of hopefully the same stripe as whoever played Cody's undercover nemesis--Vic? I can never remember that rat's name); I also really wanted to ramp up the omnisexual subtext into text, 'cause...um...you can DO that, nowadays. If you're brave enough.

[sovay]

And I noticed the grid-will-get-you-ness of it the last time I saw it, too, which is one of the primary reasons I think it's such a very strong candidate for being turned into one of the increasingly rare good remakes.

I can't even think about that right now. I've still got Cagney in my head.

(Ironically, I also have a splintering headache. At least it's not seizures.)

I also really wanted to ramp up the omnisexual subtext into text, 'cause...um...you can DO that, nowadays. If you're brave enough.

I think it's there in the text; Cagney is certainly throwing off the right sparks. Look at the conversation between him and Edmond O'Brien (Hank Fallon, Vic Pardo) after Vic has tried to sneak out and Cody has caught him. Vic claims he was trying to see his wife in L.A.; Cody responds by confessing that he's been out in the dark talking to his dead mother. "You're just lonesome. Lonesome like me." He calls the undercover cop "kid," like he's adopted him. He goes fifty-fifty with Vic, to the Trader's astonishment: "I split even with Ma, didn't I?" As you say, for the incestuous win.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

ramp up the omnisexual subtext into text

Now, there's a concept I love. But it's also endless fun to play the game of "How much can we get past the censors?" Your comments make me remember the guys in "Little Caesar", speaking of gangster movies; there's a nice bit where the hero, Rico, is lying around with a gunshot wound, and his henchman crawls into bed with him. In a purely platonic way. Really, Your Honor.