After a week of political reading and some old film noir, I think I'm ready for something a little more easygoing, like running a marathon or filling out tax forms. As often occurs, the interesting stuff was at offbeat venues, including St. Louis Art Museum and the Webster University Film Series.

MOVIE 94

The Conversation
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974, 113 m.)

For some reason, I never saw this excellent movie when it was first released. A kind of follow up to Antonioni's Blowup (1966), which was about a cold photographer who may have photographed a murder, Coppola's movie is about a cold sound-man who may have eavesdropped on a murder. While Antonioni's movie was heralded as innovative and brilliant, it was also pretentiously "existential." Though still riveting visually, the philosophy now seems nearly laughable in places.

Coppola's The Conversation has aged better. The story is more emotionally satisfying thanks to a frightening, believable script by Coppola and a performance by Gene Hackman that gets under your skin and keeps scratching. Grounding the inner life of bleak-minded Harry Caul (Hackman) in devout religion was a stroke of genius. As worthy and interesting an example of inner conflict as anybody needs to witness.

For lovers of the riddles of perception-media-truth-reality, this pair of movies makes a rich and fascinating study.

MOVIE 93

Shaft
(Gordon Parks, 1971, 100 m.)

Presented as an extension of the Gordon Parks photo exhibit at St. Louis Art Museum.

Probably the greatest blaxploitation movie of the 1970s and a breakthrough that managed the tricky problem of getting white viewers to watch a hard-boiled detective movie in which the villain was basically whiteness.

The best part of the movie always was and still is the opening sequence of Shaft, the cool black private detective (Richard Roundtree) going uptown. If Sam Spade owned the streets of San Francisco, Shaft owned the streets of Harlem. No fog, no b&w skulking in the night. Shaft swaggers through the traffic of mid-day Manhattan to the wah-wah beat of (Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning) electronic music, giving the finger to a New York cabbie who gets in his way.

If you want to see how strangely ceremonial the American private detective movie is, all you need to do is watch Shaft back-to-back with any '40s classic of your choice. The plot absurdities seem to jump out more clearly when a black man routinely laughs in the faces of white cops and routinely fends off women who instantaneously fall in love with him.

MOVIE 92

Night and the City
(Jules Dassin, 1950, b&w, 96 m.)

Wow. After Jules Dassin was blacklisted early in the McCarthy era, Daryl Zanuck sent him to Europe for safekeeping. The director's first work was this masterpiece of mood based on a novel that Dassin admits he never even read! Thus, the story is not about night and not about the city, although it uses both quite well.

This movie is about being a loser, an artist with no art form but endlessly foolish dreams. Richard Widmark is astoundingly good as Harry Fabian, a two-bit schemer who never succeeds but always works hard to win the easy way. Dassin says he was so impressed with Widmark that he wanted to direct him in Hamlet. The comment makes some sense. I'd be surprised at any viewer who would not feel uncomfortably trapped along with rat-like Harry -- maybe that's why more people don't sing the praises of this gem of a story. Widmark nearly makes us into Harry. This movie really is existential (as opposed to Blowup, mentioned above) and Harry's life swirls around three self-chosen, self-defeating factors: running, sweating and his endless get-rich-quick plans.

Supporting parts are superbly handled though seeming barely sketched in: Gene Tierney as the guileless lover, Herbert Lom as the complicated mobster, British character actors unknown in the U.S. -- and wrestlers. Real greco-roman wrestlers. Sweaty.

Dassin became a movie legend. He created Rififi, the model heist movie, directed Never On Sunday and then married its star, Melina Mercouri, and served as a juror at Cannes.

MOVIE 91

Pickup on South Street
(Samuel Fuller, 1953, b&w, 80 m.)

Yet another example of a provocative and quirky movie, otherwise unavailable on big screens, presented by the venerable Webster Film Series. Sam Fuller is a cult director whose most famous movies were I Shot Jesse James (1949) and The Big Red One (1980) but he was more likely to write and direct B movies with titles like Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss and this one, Pickup on South Street.

Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a sassy bad boy, too smart for the cops and instantly beloved by women. Though he's actually an ex-con, he is presented much like a private detective. The goofy story turns on McCoy's pickpocket skills and some secret government documents. To me the movie just looks gray.

Two features stand out enough that I would see it again: first, the key location in the story, a weird little river shack where McCoy lives, which looks like one of Charlie Chaplin's joke-homes; and, second, Thelma Ritter. Playing an old stool pigeon named Moe, Ritter earned her fourth Oscar nomination in four years (out of six total). She never won, even though she was superb and usually hilarious in All about Eve, Rear Window, Pillow Talk, The Misfits, Birdman of Alcatraz. Quite a list. Watching her get serious in this movie is nearly heartbreaking.

Nick Otten is assistant director in the Theater Program at Clayton High School and adjunct professor in the graduate Communications MAT Program at Webster University. He consumes vast quantities of books and movies. In his description of Nick's List, he says,  "For every single work, I’ll quickly post a brief commentary — each week, at least 1 book and 2 movies, usually more. Maybe a paragraph, maybe a page. Sometimes, not often, I may go crazy and write some kind of extra, a page or so, on some movie or pair of movies or some genre, actor, or something else, or how one book relates to another or a movie or you or me or us. Such stuff will be just one click away, guaranteed." If you want to reach Nick, rather than comment on the articles, contact Beacon features and commentary editor Donna Korando.

To read the previous Nick's List posts click July 14 , July 7 , June 30 , June 23 , June 16, June 9 , June 2 , May 26 , May 19 , May 12,   May 5 , April 28 , April 21 , March .