My Week of Movie Watching

The Wrong Man – A first-time-for-me Hitchcock. The falsely accused individual was a favorite topic for Hitch, and here, he takes a true life case of a jazz musician (played by Henry Fonda) accused of a string of armed robberies, and makes it into a docu-drama. The film points up the helplessness of the Fonda character, as he is arrested right outside his door, and doesn’t get a chance to even tell his family. I’m a huge fan of just about everything Hitchcock does, but this is not his best work. Fonda is too bland here – He seems in a perpetual state of bewilderment, when you are thinking that he should get mad at some point. The other drawback is a late plot development pertaining to Fondas wife, played by Vera Miles. In the last half hour or, so the movie starts being about her, and her breakdown due to the stress of the ordeal. This plotline is left hanging, and only resolved in a note at the end of the film. This is actually part of the real story, but in the movie, it has a tacked-on feel. Thus, I can’t quite recommend this.

Man on the Eiffel Tower – Fun little crime drama from a Georges Simonen story. A wealthy older woman is murdered and a poor knife sharpener (Burgess Meredith) becomes the prime suspect because he was trying to rob the place when the murder occurred. A smug former medical student named Radek (Franchot Tone) approaches the police, feeding them info about the case, and almost daring them to arrest him. There is also a nephew of the murdered woman who would benefit from her being dead. At the centre of it all is Charles Laughton as Simonens’ Inspector Maigret, trying to put it all together. This one has an interesting Dostovevsky-esque quality, as the intellectual Radek thinks of himself as a superman above the laws of normal man. For much of the film, he and Laughton are together, Radek taunting, and Maigret quietly taking it all in and waiting. The climax features an exciting chase scene on the Eiffel Tower. Directed by Meredith. Recommended.

The Naked City – Top shelf documentary-style police procedural from Jules Dassin. City follows a group of NY cops as they work on the case of a murdered model. Notable about this film is that much of the location photography was obtained amidst pedestrians who were oblivious as to what was happening. The result is that the film has an easy-feeling, genuine vibe. Interestingly, the filmmakers cast Irish character actor Barry Fitzgerald in the lead, rather than a big name Hollywood leading man, and this also helps with the naturalistic feel of the film. The film culminates in an exhilarating chase scene on a NYC bridge, which has Dassin’s stylish fingerprints all over it. Recommended.