Monday, March 26, 2007
NAKED CITY
One of my favorite 50s crime films is "Naked City" starring my namesake Barry Fitzgerald. The brilliant 15-minute opening narration is unavailable on YouTube but I thought I'd put up a couple of clips from the long chase sequence at the end.
The half-minute clip above is the from the playground sequence where a cop asks a kid if she knows where the villain lives. It's here because it illustrates how important it is to pack a live-action film (not an animated one) with extras. If you're making a film, even an amateur film just for fun, cram every relative and friend you can find into the background. And use deep perspective when it fits. Don't shoot everything against a wall! Film teacher Bruce Block has some interesting opinions on this subject but that's a topic for another time.
Here's (above) part of the famous chase scene, made more famous by the lengthy discussion of it in the Karel Reiz book, "Technique of Film Editing." A whole generation of filmmakers learned their craft from this book. Don't rush out to buy it because there's probably better books on the shelves now.
I'm dying to try a commentary on a few scenes but I'm sleepy and it would take more thought than I can give it now. I get the feeling that there's an interesting sub-text going on but I can't figure it out what it is. OK, the city's like a character and the villain's like an animal running away from tormenters, but there seems to be more than that here. What do you think?
Naked City was based on the book (same name) by Weegee - the famous NYC crime/society photographer. The movie was unique for its time, shot on location on the mean streets of New York, giving it a quasi-documentary feel.
ReplyDeleteI've got the original poster. Great art.
Puh-leese Eddie! I saw the title pop up and I immediately panicked & clicked over to another site because my wife "just happened to be" looking over my shoulder at that moment and my first thought was that you had posted a sequel to Saturday's post."what are you looking at?" "--N-NN-Nothing dear!"(escape, escape, escape, god dammit!)
ReplyDeleteImagine my relief that you were referring to a Classic film and not another documentary on cellulite in the '50s.
It's not like my fear wasn't a little justified, a couple of days ago you were wondering how you could make a few dollars off your blog, and with Saturday's entry I thought you had indeed discovered a more lucrative career path. I'm glad to hear this is not the case.
was it based on Weege's Naked City?? Wow, ... good to know it.
ReplyDeleteEddie, for the first time in your blog history, I disagree with you: Yes, those clips are glorious, BUT they are TOO CROWDY!! I felt uncomfortable about the amount of people doing stuff in the background. Was annoying!!.. Its absolutely necessary to use deep perspective, and have some things happening on the background, ... but maybe, at least for me, this sequences had too much.
Umm, Am I saying something stupid?...it could be..
Scoring added a heck of a lot to that climactic chase scene.
ReplyDeleteI'm with ya Eddie. Another terrific film. Just remember Kiddies, Black and white is your friend.
ReplyDeleteI love this film! In fact, didn't we watch it together? Oh yeah we did! And you made Mike rewind it to see the very scene you're talking about, because I peed all the way through it! Memories.
ReplyDelete"Just remember Kiddies, Black and white is your friend."
ReplyDeleteMy very best friend! Better than any real human companion! Well, not completely. A better friend than modern films. Shiver.
This film is now available from Criterion, one of the best companies for old films on DVD.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately modern editing books would tell people to cut to separate scenes of everyone in the room instead of focusing the camera ON THE PERSON TALKING and to constantly have the camera rotating around people's heads.
ReplyDeleteFancy tricks are okay when the scene calls for them, but constant shaking, zooming cameras and weird exposures just make most new shows headache inducing to watch.
Criterion is good, I agree, and so is Kino!
ReplyDelete"Fancy tricks are okay when the scene calls for them, but constant shaking, zooming cameras and weird exposures just make most new shows headache inducing to watch."
ReplyDeleteNot just that! But holy crap- everything has "camera shake" currently. So, you know, it feels like we're watching a home video, or cinema vertitè etc. I can't watch tv, or films for that matter, without feeling nauseas.
Remember when a camera man worked hard not to have any shake? Those were the days. I agree with Kali, it is like watching crappy home movies, or bad reality shows. I half expect an actor to bump into the camera man, and knock him over backwards.
ReplyDeleteEddie, according to the IMDB, The Naked City was 1948, missed the 50's by a few years. Still, it looks like a great movie. I will have to track down a copy.
For some reason it reminded me of the "Naked Gun" movies. It was so serious it seemed funny to me. I don't know why.
ReplyDeleteLike watching old Sci-Fi movies like George Pal's "Destination Moon".
Woody Woodpecker had a great cameo role in it. If only business men where easily influenced today to give money just because Woody said so.
I'll have to get it and watch the whole thing.
Thanks Eddie.
As to Eddie's original question, what the subtext might be: Somebody may kill me for saying this but, of the three great films noir directed by Mark Hellinger (the other two being Brute Force and The Killers) this is my least favorite [please do not firebomb my house! innocent people live there!]. The reason is precisely that there doesn't seem to be a subtext in this one. What ya see is what ya get. Oddly enough, even though two of the people who made this movie (director Jules Dassin and writer Albert Maltz) were later blacklisted for being commies, there's nothing particularly subversive about this it. The authority figures (police) are good, though unheroic, and criminals are scum. That's about it.
ReplyDeleteBTW one of the many things that make these three movies great is that they were all scored by the revered (at least by me) Miklos Rozsa. I hereby nominate him for sainthood, or maybe the next vacancy in the Holy Trinity.
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ReplyDeleteTo Lester: I think I like this film better than The Killers, although, the intro catchphrase,"bright boy" lingers with me while I can't evevn remember one line from the Naked City. No firebombs to your house!!!
ReplyDelete>> Yes, those clips are glorious, BUT they are TOO CROWDY!! I felt uncomfortable about the amount of people doing stuff in the background. Was annoying!!.. <<
ReplyDeleteYou'll get completely different impression of this scene when you see it on TV, or projected on a large screen. These low-res YouTube clips don't really give it a justice.
I love deep perspective and wide angle shots. Deep focus works really best in black & white, and if you use it with color, the shot has to be very carefully composed, otherwise it may look like a total mess.
>>But holy crap- everything has "camera shake" currently. So, you know, it feels like we're watching a home video, or cinema vertitè etc. I can't watch tv, or films for that matter, without feeling nauseas. <<
ReplyDeleteYes, it's an extremely annoying trend. It doesn't enhance realism, it gives you the feeling of cameraman suffering from delirium tremens. Hand-held camera has its place in the movie vocabulary, but in order to be really effective, such sequences should be used only in selected places, when they're really necessary or create some dramatic contrast.
Hammerson: Your comments on deep focus brings up a few peeves of mine and modern photography in film and print. The obvious short depth of field make things out of focus bugs the hell out of me when it isn't done well. I have used my 300mm camera lens to create some beautiful shots, and when appropriate I take flower photos with a macro lens to kill depth of field , but I feel it shouldn't be so obvious it distracts the viewer. I really hate when magazines feature food shots with about an inch of the food in focus and the rest so blurry you can't tell if it is edible or not. Then there are the TV shows that have more than one person in a room and as the focus of the story shifts from one person to another, so does the focus of the camera. Front person talking, back person out of focus, back person talking front person out of focus. I have seen the technique done well with great effect, but more often than not, it looks like someone's home video with the camera on auto focus.
ReplyDeleteSorry for ranting in your house Eddie.