#i���m thinking particularly in comparison to the mcu films

[trainsinanime]

No Time To Die

Alright, now for the long post. This was a good movie. It was not a great movie, but I had fun. It was a competent action thriller, it did nothing to really annoy me, and it had lots of fun little moments. Let’s discuss, with some very intense spoilers.

First of all, I gotta give props to this movie for knowing its aesthetics, something that the first two Craig Bonds really struggled with. This one perfectly commits to its own brand of dirty and gritty that still feels like a heightened reality. There’s exotic locales but they’re generally shot from street level; there’s almost no luxury here. That might not be very Bond-like in any classic sense, but it works perfectly for this movie.

Beyond the aesthetics, the movie is big on themes and meaning to stuff, and it generally works well. As the last movie of its era (and wow do they make sure you know that), it’s full of callbacks to older Bonds, weirdly enough Lazenby and Dalton specifically, and it deals heavily with the concept of legacy. Bond gets a successor as 007, and a daughter, of all things. The question of “what’s life after Bond” is explored in a lot of detail. Seeing him in M’s office with a visitor badge is just delightful.

(And yes, giving him a five year old daughter sounds corny, and indeed it is. But it is the kind of corny that works in the heightened reality of this movie. I wouldn’t say they handled this sub-plot super well or interestingly, but it was perfectly okay, unlike all the weird “family” stuff in Spectre.)

That said, there are definitely limits to how far the themes and meaning really go. Yes, he does get his successors, but we don’t really explore what impact he has had on them. His daughter gets no character at all, and the new 007 grows warmer towards him, but she doesn’t seem to have been influenced by him in any meaningful way. I feel like that’s okay in the finished product, but this is also something that could have been even more interesting if they had been willing to go there and maybe flip fewer Land Rovers. Everybody likes a Land Rover being thrown on its roof, but after the fifth one (count them!), it gets a bit old.

This movie produces a very human Bond, which has been a core theme of the Craig era of course, but I would argue that this and Skyfall are the only ones that actually succeed. Bond is still not a particularly interesting character with a lot of depth, but this movie knows that, and instead pairs him constantly with colourful more interesting supporting characters that really make him shine. His relationships with Felix, Paloma, Q, Moneypenny, M, 007 and so on are all a lot of fun, and all very distinct and interesting.

In return, this is easily the weakest Bond villain ever by far, and I’m okay with that. This is a rare Bond movie that is really nota bout the villain or even about set pieces, but about character development, and it makes sense for the villain to take a step back here. That means the movie does have the classic Marvel problem of charismatic heroes (or here support characters) and utterly forgettable villains, but it’s a trade-off that the MCU keeps making for a reason.

If there is one part of the movie that really drags it down - a bit, it’s still perfectly okay - then it’s Madeleine.

At its core, this movie isn’t Bond, it’s Madeleine’s. The villain, in particular, does not actually have a relationship with Bond, despite a particularly weak attempt at a “we’re not so different you and I” thing at the last moment. The two men are only connected via Madeleine. Her relationship with the villain is meaningful and is the literal start of the movie; it’s what drives the plot. At the same time, her relationship with Bond is the emotional core of the movie, even if he does get quite a bit of subplots of his own.

I think that’s a great choice in theory. Compare this to Days of Future Past, an X-Men movie where technically Wolverine is the main character, but he’s really only here as a tour guide through other people’s arcs. This is the perfect way to make a Bond movie actually about something. Other Bond movies have tried similar things, of course, but this one takes it to a new level.

The problem is that Madeleine’s relationships with these two men don’t actually work that well. Her relationship with Bond was set up in Spectre, and even though I watched that movie, I cannot remember anything about it. What little I see here doesn’t really work for me. Yes, she’s pretty, he’s Bond, they’re in an Aston Martin on Italy, you know the rest, that’s good enough for an opening. But it doesn’t go beyond that. I don’t get the impression that there’s any actual intimacy here. They don’t seem to have anything in common, and they don’t seem interesting on screen together.

This is especially notable towards the end of the cold open, where Bond flies into a full-Connery style rage mode and goes essentially, “what did you do, you silly untrustworthy little girl”. Not gonna lie, I found that very uncomfortable. If that’s how close they are, then I fully support them breaking up. Their break-up definitely did not feel like the movie’s defining tragedy.

A good comparison might be Franka Potente in Bourne Identity 2. There’s a very similar setup in that movie’s opening, but it actually works, and I actually buy their relationship. This is not the case.

A related issue is that Madeleine’s main agency in this movie is choosing to lie to Bond. She does not tell him about her tragic backstory, or how that could have led to people shooting at him, or her daughter, or that she’s being blackmailed. Now, I think it’s perfectly valid for her to do so. If she doesn’t trust Bond enough to tell him this, that would be interesting and I’d definitely believe it. If she’s too traumatised, yeah, I get it (that seems to be what the movie is going for but it doesn’t really commit to this). But the movie doesn’t establish anything like that. She lies to him, well, just because, I guess.

Her relationship with the villain (yes, I do not remember his name, well spotted) is a similar waste of potential. The two don’t really talk. He is fascinated with her because… he didn’t kill her that one time, I guess. But this isn’t explored in any way. Meanwhile, her relationship with him is that he threatens her and her daughter, and she’d like for that to stop. For all the weight this relationship has been given at the start of the movie, it doesn’t actually end up going anywhere once they meet. And that’s particularly notable because she is a psychoanalyst; the opportunity for her to explore what makes him tick was right there.

I’m making this sound worse than it is. It’s still perfectly enjoyable. But I feel like there’s a hypothetical extended cut of this movie that’s three times better, where Maddy gets five minutes of screen time to just talk with the men, and where she actually makes choices about what she tells them and why.

The final issue is that the theming, already not super strong, breaks down at the end. The movie actually seems to think that there is a sort of meaningful parallel or connection between the villain and Bond, and even goes for a particular deep and meaningful plot point where Bond can’t be with his family because he’ll literally kill them if he touches them. You know, he’s a killer, he brings death to the ones he loves, it’s what passes for a metaphor in these parts. Except textually speaking, that’s just not the case. Felix was killed by someone who Felix dragged along, and the villain here was after Madeleine, not Bond. He is 100% a force for good here.

Is that a huge problem? Nah, but again, it’s something that could have been better.

The real main problem with the movie is something else: Throughout the film, it is clearly established that explosions don’t harm James Bond, they just disorient him. It starts at Vesper’s grave, then Felix’s ship gets sunk, then there’s the hand grenades in the video game section in the final bunker, and it’s always absolutely clear: Explosions may stun Bond, but they don’t actually hurt him. Only bullets can do that.

And then they go and kill him in a huge explosion. That’s just sloppy foreshadowing.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (semi-stream of consciousness) Thoughts Part 2: A Superior Spider-Miles

Lets talk about how this movie handled its primary protagonist, Miles Morales. SPOILERS ahead.

Look I could just go on for ages listing off specific examples of how this movie is hilarious, action packed, emotional and so on, but I think you can take that as a given. It’s all round great okay, so let’s maybe talk in more specifics.

Miles Morales is of course the primary character in this movie.

As I began to get at in the last part of my thoughts on this film, there is a distinction to be made between the primary protagonist and the sole or main protagonist.

In Spider-Man movies of the past there has been one main character, one protagonist, one lead character, Peter Parker of course.

This movie doesn’t simply switch that focus to Miles because that would mean the other characters who get play are supporting players in Miles’ story and that is not the case.

This is an ensemble/team story with Miles as the central focus of that team.

I suppose the most apt comparison would be that in Lord of the Rings Frodo might be the primary character but Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf and Gimli are more than merely supporting players in the story, they are vital and integral protagonists along with Frodo, even if the story belongs more to Frodo than to them.

So Miles in this movie = Frodo, even right down to having his mentor die and his uncle be semi-nasty.

As such most of the characters featured in the movie are filtered through the lens of serving the story wherein Miles is the heart and soul of the piece.

We will discuss the other characters a bit more in a future instalment, but broadly speaking their roles in relation to Miles is to serve as a barometer of how far he has to come to truly become a Spider-Hero among their ranks. This is after all his origin story and unlike the Maguire or Garfield Spider-Men he lacks the benefit of a montage sequence or time skip to herald in his experience.

The film follows his origin very linearly across the space of what at best is a few weeks thus we truly see Miles clear progression from unable to control even his wall-crawling to fully fledged Spider-Hero. Albeit one who still has much to learn and stumbles from time to time.

It is a beautifully executed arc that allows Miles to far more earnestly earn the mantle of Spider-Man compared to his comic book counterpart.

Indeed this version of Miles and his origin is for the most part grossly superior to how Bendis did it in the Ultimate Universe.

The singular drawback of the film’s take on Miles’ origin is that it is comparatively less grounded than Miles’ in the comics due to the presence of parallel universes, global/universal stakes and things of that nature.

However the film perfectly justifies this as a more faithful rendition of Miles origin simply would never have worked.

I’ve said countless times before in defiance of those foolishly insisting that Miles Morales should have been the Spider-Man of the MCU that this was utterly impractical.

And one the biggest reasons for this is the fact that Miles simply doesn’t have enough source material upon which to base a trilogy of movies.

This is owed to his being created as recently as 2011, his adventures being frequently derailed by crossovers and tie-ins with other characters (thus defeating the purpose of stories focussed upon him) and his stories playing out under the ‘written for the trade’ format. This means that whilst there were around 24 stories about Peter Parker in the first 28 issues of ASM’s publication (excluding annuals, but including his entire high school career) there was in truth just 7 in Miles’ first 28 issues. And not all 7 of those would have been useable in a film adaptation.

In fact if we consider just the first two (and most critically acclaimed) live action Spider-Man movies we can see that they combined elements from across Spider-Man’s then 40+ year history.

Spider-Man one combined elements of Spider-Man’s origin, the retelling of said origin from Ultimate Spider-Man, The Death of Gwen Stacy, ASM Annual #39, ASM Annual #9 and multiple other smaller elements from Spider-Man’s wider history, such as his job at the Bugle, his relationship with Mary Jane, etc.

Spider-Man 2, whilst chiefly based upon Spider-Man No More (ASM #50), also combined elements from ASM Annual #1, the broader concept of Doctor Octopus from his decades of history, ASM volume 2 #38 and other things I’m sure I am forgetting.

Again, not every Spider-Man story unto itself was particularly friendly towards being adapted into film but such a rich history made cherry picking workable elements to form a movie possible.

Miles possessing a shorter, more linear and decompressed history makes this much harder. Compounding the problem was that in order to introduce Miles to wider audiences necessitated doing an origin movie for him.

In 2018 superhero origin movies are something of a touchy subject in the wake of in excess of two decades worth of them, and for there to have been a less that 20 years a THIRD film presenting a story about a scientifically gifted NYC dwelling teenager to be bitten by a spider, gain super powers that he does not immediately use altruistically, thus generating guilt that propels him to wear web spandex and become a hero was never ever going to fly.

Unfortunately Miles’ origin is one of his relatively few reliably ‘filmic’ storylines. In fact this movie combines his origin story with elements from the second Miles story arc featuring his uncle the Prowler as well as the Spider-Men mini-series and the crossover between him and Spider-Gwen.

Oh and the Spider-Verse crossover (though in truth I think the movie owes more to the grand finale of the 1994 Spidey cartoon).

Oh and technically elements from every individual Spider-Hero they adapt into the movie, so Spider-Man: Noir, Spider-Gwen’s SP//dr’s origins from Edge of Spider-Verse (which were both anthology one shots) and Marvel Tails (Spider-Ham’s origin). And let’s not forget tiny elements from Peter’s history, including his marriage to Mary Jane, the Death of Spider-Man arc from Ultimate, etc.

There is after all a reason this movie isn’t called ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ or something like that and rather ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’.

Sony Animation wisely realized they had to /out of necessity had to overlay Miles’ origin with a whole other story and then emebellish both by cherry picking from the wider Spider-Man franchise.

Because Miles on his own, especially if you just did his origin, wasn’t going to be enough.

What is to be praised though is how organically the film makers weave (no pun intended) the different storylines together and improve upon the source material.

Much like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man PS4 before them, they recognized certain weaknesses in said source material (Miles’ origin and the Spider-Verse crossover) and turned the subpar lemons they got into delicious lemonade.

In this movie Miles has only recently begun attending the Brooklyn Visions Academy and the film first and foremost focuses upon his home life and as a consequence this mitigates Miles attendance to a school the likes of which most teens do not attend, making him more relatable.

Also appreciated is the de-emphasis upon his being ‘just a good kid’ and science skills.

In the comics these are aspects that respectively undermine the idea of him as a flawed hero and make him too similar to Peter Parker.

Peter Parker was founded upon the basis of being both a hero with problems and an imperfect person. When Miles uses his powers to risk his life and save people from a burning building within a few days of getting them, it makes him come across as a good, nice and admirable person for sure. But that’s not exactly the right philosophical approach to Spider-Man. Peter Parker was selfish and irresponsible with his abilities and nursed pent up frustration when he got his powers. He was a good person but far from immediately altruistic.

Miles in this movie has an artistic side and employs that to make stylized stickers he slaps around the city and at times engaging in graffiti. He also finds studying an incredible burden and purposefully tries to fail his classes in order to get kicked out of the school he feels is elitist and doesn’t fit in at.

Miles is a million miles away from a criminal or a vandal of course, but these minor bits of misbehaviour do much to sell the idea of Miles as more well rounded and flawed like Peter was, but in a very different way. Similarly his artistic side gives him a unique interest distinct from Peter’s passion for science, whilst the movie still sells him as intelligent (but not the science whiz Peter is). His artistic side is also used beautifully in the third act of the movie where he uses spray cans to customize one of Spider-Man’s classic red and blue costumes and turn it into his black and red comic book costume, or at least a version close enough to it.

As far as making Miles a legacy character is concerned this is perhaps an absolute stroke of genius.

The symbolism of it is just delicious isn’t it?

Miles the inheritor of Peter’s legacy literally wears Peter’s suit then uses his own special skills to make it his own. He does however leave the fingers of the gloves unchanged thus the costume incorporates a clear visual signifier that beneath it lies the original costume, thus the original Spider-Man will always be beneath Miles helping to be the basis of who he is as a hero.

The transformation is made all the more compelling when we consider that there is a clear visual progression for Miles throughout the movie.

In the first third or so of the movie he is simply in his regular clothes. Then in the second third when he adopts a cheap high street Spider-Man costume. Then in the last act he adopts his comic book suit covered up by street clothes as the posters for the movie make clear, before shedding the clothes and unveiling the finished costume.

Its one of those things you just feel frustrated wasn’t in the original comics version of the story

Miles goes from a normal person, to someone trying and failing to be Spider-Man, to being someone ready to take the leap and become Spider-Man (symbolized by his wearing his costume under normal clothes, in other words infusing Spider-Man as part of his normal life) to finally BEING his own Spider-Man.

This new approach to the costume isn’t just superior to how the comics handled it, it highlights part of the problem with how Miles adopted his suit in the comics. There Miles was simply handed his costume courtesy of Nick Fury. This again undermined Miles as a successor Spider-Man because it meant Miles, unlike Peter didn’t make his own suit (or at least stylize it himself, like Ultimate Peter did) and thus undermined his sense of independence.

In this version of the story Miles might not have literally sewn together his costume but he also wasn’t just handed the suit. He actively seeks it out and is permitted to have it by Aunt May before taking it and literally making it his own. This accentuates the idea of Miles as his own man as much as it does him being a legacy to Peter.

Speaking of which the movie also alters Miles relation to Peter’s death. In the original story Miles saves a family from a burning building then resolves to never use his powers again. Awhile after he learns Spider-Man has been shot as part of his final battle with the Green Goblin and heads over to the battlefield just in time to witness Peter’s death. He blames himself for not using his abilities thinking that if he had this would have led to him befriending Peter and being in the loop, allowing him to help him when the time came. His BFF Ganke dissuades him of this notion. Whilst Miles can still be interpreted to hold guilt over Peter’s death his role in it is far more tenuous than Peter’s role in Uncle Ben’s death and the personal pain Miles feels is somewhat questionable.

But in the movie, Miles is present for the final battle as it happens, he interacts with Spider-Man. First by him saving Miles, then promising to train him and finally imploring him to destroy the Kingpin’s machine to ensure the city’s safety. Miles considers helping Spider-Man but is too scared to do so, he witnesses Kingpin murdering him and fails to destroy the machine as he promised. Then he goes home somewhat traumatized and very clearly deeply upset by Spider-Man’s death.

This makes Peter’s death cut much, much deeper for Miles than in the comics, adds a layer of guilt to him and drive to become Spider-Man and truly save the city so he can live up to the promise he made to a dying hero. So again, like a perfect legacy character, the movie renders Miles similar yet different to the original hero.

Other improvements made to Miles himself includes the way the movie handled his powers. Rather than having Miles easily have access to all his abilities the film unveils them gradually and doesn’t give him particular control over them.

Whilst by the end of the movie Miles is mostly fighting and web-swinging like a pro, he spends most of the movie bumbling around. Usually I hate this in Spider-Man media but here it works. Unlike in Homecoming where we are expected to believe Spider-Man after nearly a year is still a jackass, Miles has literally only had his powers for maybe a few weeks at the absolute most has had little chance to practice or refine them (even comic book Peter did a little bit via his show business career). Moreover whilst most versions of Peter make him relatively competent very quickly (presumably a biproduct of his scientific acumen) having Miles NOT be like that again works for his character.

Having Miles be less competent than Peter was off the bat again makes him more distinct than Peter and frankly is a better way to handle most legacy characters. When a legacy character is actively removed so as to allow for a replacement to fill their role one of the worst things you can do is have the replacement measure up to the skill of their predecessor particularly quickly. You want them to earn that role and begin with a major skill gap that they gradually improve upon. Case in point in the excellent Batman Beyond TV show, Terry McGinnis did not in his first season have anywhere near the competency of Bruce Wayne in his prime. He had talent but it grew over time.

In the comics whilst one could argue Miles either wasn’t truly as skilled as Peter was in the same amount of time (or if he was then it was sufficiently justified) a lot of that went out the window when you factor in his invisibility and venom blast powers.

These particular abilities opened up two problems with Miles character. They both over powered him or alternatively made him look foolish.

With the Venom Blast alone Miles could deliver extremely potent finishing moves to various opponents, even electrically powered ones with there being for the most part little limit on the effectiveness of the power. Similarly his invisibility doesn’t seem in my experience to be a power with many drawbacks meaning that between those two abilities alone (let alone his other powers) Miles could simply sneak up on and zap any opponent into submission, even immensely powerful foes like Blackheart.

This creates a Superman problem for Miles where there is either no drama because he could easily end most conflicts or else there is false drama because the stories must wilfully ignore his ability to easily end most conflicts.

The movie side steps these problems by simply making Miles incapable of using these abilities (or his wall crawling) on command until the third act climax, thus Miles isn’t over powered and his mastery of these abilities exists in tandem with his acceptance and transformation into Spider-Man. This is beautifully illustrated by him taking a literal leap of faith from atop a high building and demonstrating he is now fully capable of engaging his wall crawling powers (perhaps Spidey’s most iconic ability) at will.

Whether his invisibility and venom blast powers will be problematic going forward remains to be seen but within the context of this self contained movie, relegating mastery of them to the climax mitigates the problem of potential false drama.

The last bit of improvement this movie made was in his relationship with his ‘Uncle Ben analogues’.

Of course Peter Parker is to Miles what Uncle Ben was to Peter. But Miles also has a literal uncle, Aaron Davis a.k.a. the Prowler.

I already spoke of how the movie greatly improves Miles relationship to Peter’s death, but the movie’s nature as being about parallel universes allows it to have it’s cake and eat it.

Because of course there is another Peter Parker who can function as Miles’ mentor. It is by the way very, very telling that the most acclaimed and beloved versions of Miles (both of whom have come out in 2018) both have Peter Parker as a mentor baked into their origin stories, as the PS4 game did the same thing in a very different way.

Whilst PS4 Peter and Miles are akin to an older and younger brother, movie Peter and Miles are more like father and son or uncle and nephew or perhaps yet more appropriately Peter is the Mr Miyagi/Phil from Disney’s Hercules to Miles’ Daniel LaRusso/Hercules.

Pretty much EVERY Miles fan and a large number of Peter fans love this dynamic. They LOVE seeing Peter as a mentor and Miles as his student.

Even those, like me, who feel that comic book Miles should exist in his own universe independent of Peter Parker, acknowledge there is fertile ground from that dynamic that should be cultivated.

And yet frustratingly in spite of crossovers when they lived in different dimensions and guest appearances when they lived in the same one, this well of potential has remained untapped. As much as the comics pay lip service to Peter as Miles’ mentor the truth is it is simply not a thing in the comic books, Peter Parker has never truly trained Miles.

This movie gives us some training scenes but more poignantly interpersonal bonding scenes where both characters grow and improve via their relationship with one another.

Then you get to Uncle Aaron. In the Ultimate comics Aaron was a super villain thief who sought to use his nephew for his own gain, was willing to kill him and then presumably died. Then crazy shit happened because of Secret Wars but that isn’t important.

In the movie though, Uncle Aaron starts off as the cool uncle and rogue to Miles as in the comics, and is changed from merely a thief to also hired (and very deadly) muscle. However unlike the comic he never uses Miles and his attempts to kill him only occur when he does not know who he is. Arguably the most dramatic and engaging scene in the movie is when he finally learns who Miles is and we see him make a fateful choice...to protect his nephew. And immediately die at the hands of Kingpin for it.

Instantly Aaron is transformed into a more compelling, nuanced and realistic character. Frankly the vast majority of uncles really WOULD protect their nieces or nephews rather than harm them, and this juxtaposed with his role in Spider-Man’s death makes Aaron a more grey and sympathetic character than his comic counterpart.

His death is arguably overly derivative of Miles but this is offset by the presence of Miles’ still very much alive parents. After all there is a critical difference between being motivated by a fallen hero and/or your uncle vs. your father figure as Uncle Ben was to Peter. The scene is then touchingly used as a springboard to showcase how each of the Spider-Heroes has lost someone and been driven by this and for the arguably OTHER most compelling scene in the movie. Jefferson and Miles’ conversation through the door, which then leads into Miles final transformation into Spider-Man.

Finally the conceit of the parallel universe idea allows for the movie to once again have it’s cake and eat it in regards to Miles’ role as Spider-Man within his universe.

Miles gets to transform into Spider-Man due to the direct involvement of Spider-Man, but he also gets to be the Spider-Man who picked up a fallen hero’s mantle and become THE Spider-Man of his world, meaning he isn’t over shadowed by the presence of another Spider-Man simultaneously. Plus he has access to all of Peter’s villains most of whom are unique to their more mainstream counter parts, with special attention going to Olivia Octopus.

However you slice it, Sony punched up Miles’ source material and just leaves me abjectly miffed that this version of Miles  isn’t the one we got in the comics.

[charliejrogers]

Rope (Or, the Hitchcock equivalent of Ant-Man)

Recently, I saw some article that described Hitchcock movies as the forerunners to the MCU. Not because of any similarity in the films’ qualities or artistic merits. But because in the ‘40s and ‘50s, Hitchcock movies were an event. In that Golden Age of Hollywood movies were sold largely on star power, (and most of Hitchcock’s movies have major stars like Grace Kelley, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Sean Connery, etc.), but in Hitchcock’s films, Hitchcock was the real star. His distinct style and complete mastery behind the camera was able to convey to audiences exactly as much as they need to build suspense and no more. And this quality has endeared his films to new generations.

All of this is a build-up for my review of his 1948 film Rope, which is a sort of run-of-the-mill Hitchcock. Continuing the analogy with the MCU, if Psycho is the equivalent to Avengers: Endgame, Rope is like Ant-Man. It meets all my expectations for the genre, has some really creative sequences, but at the end of the day it feels rather inconsequential when compared against the rest of the Hitchcock oeuvre. But that’s where the MCU-Hitchcock analogy falls apart. Average Hitchcock is still better than good MCU.

Rope falls into the play-like category of the Hitchcock film dichotomy. From my opinion, there’s the Hitchcock movies that due to its settings and ambitions feel undoubtedly like films (North By Northwest, Birds, Psycho, Vertigo), and then there are those that have much more limited sets and feel more like masterfully filmed-plays (Dial M For Murder, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window). In fact, Rope was adapted from a play of the same name from 1929, so the comparison is apt. The entirety of the film takes places within an apartment, and really just the living room of that apartment. Characters come and go from the living room to the dining room or kitchen, but rarely does the camera (and by extension we as the audience) ever leave the living room. Thus the film boils down to many tense conversations between individual characters in the living room while other characters are just off screen in some other part of the apartment.

And besides a very brief instance of “action” (though I’d hardly call it that), this is a talkie through and through, and I love it. Spoilers ahead, beware! The premise of the movie is simple: two guys decide to kill a colleague of theirs just for the challenge and for the hell of it. And to really up the ante and make their deed into more of a “game,” they host a party minutes later with the deceased’s family and friends while their dearly beloved lies in response within a trunk upon which their dinner will be served. Naturally, it’s a recipe for disaster, and the conflict builds slowly and organically throughout the film.

Part of the reason we know their plan is going to fail is that the two murderers are not on the same wavelength. One, Phillip, played by Farley Granger, is far more nervous than the other. Not that that’s a fault of his character by any means. He simply has a conscience which his partner-in-crime Brandon (a slightly comically over-played dandy played by John Dall) lacks. Brandon’s constant shit-eating grin is awesome. This guy is 1% white-privilege personified, and the performance by Dall is exactly on point, particularly when he starts to feel some pressure. Still, both Phillip and Brandon are a little too one-dimensional in their reactions to be really believable people. Phillip in particular is nothing but a nervous wreck from the start. Clearly, Brandon would have realized Phillip would never have the stomach or cool nerves to pull this thing off successfully, so why would he involve him in the first place? Then again, the very premise of the film is kinda silly, so I’ll accept that the characters and their performances are kinda silly too.

But what really makes the cartoonish nature of the villains so glaringly obvious is the arrival of Jimmy Stewart mid-way into the film. Damn. Now this is an actor. His character feels like a close relative of that which he played in Rear Window. He’s gruff but quick-witted, and undeniably charismatic. The movie’s quality increases ten-fold the second he’s on screen. In terms of the movie’s plot, he’s the part of Brandon and Phillip’s “murder game” that poses the biggest challenge. He was Brandon and Phillip’s old schoolmaster whom Brandon seemingly worshipped. He had all sorts of “funny” ideas about humanity, like there were superior and inferior beings and that murder could be OK, a privilege even, if performed as an art by superior being against those inferior. Hell, such a theory could solve poverty, homelessness, hunger! (Yikes.) Point is, as Phillip later accuses, Brandon invites Stewart’s character there because there’s no point in doing something wonderfully (in this case, a “perfect murder”) without an appreciative audience. And regardless of whether such recognition means that they get caught, Brandon thinks Stewart’s character has the best chance of understanding his work. The movie becomes a cat-and-mouse game of Stewart playing detective at the party without raising the suspicions of the other guests… or its hosts!

Coming just three years after WWII, it’s hard to imagine that audiences wouldn’t hear the Nazi-eugenic subtext in the callous talk of the right of superiors to annihilate those “inferior.” And though the Nazis or the Holocaust is not discussed directly, Nietzche and his idea of the ubermensch (a concept used by Nazis to promote its Aryan race) is. The need to thoroughly reject this idea results in an unnecessarily long and moralistic speech by Stewart towards the film’s end. Still, it’s interesting to see how Stewart’s character deals with the guilt of inspiring his pupils to do something he talked about often but never intended to actually do. Makes you wonder how Nietzche would feel if he lived long enough to see how his philosophy was used in the 1930s/40s.

But the real star of this movie? The camera. Not necessarily the cinematography. It’s a standard technicolor picture in a nice-looking apartment. But the movement of the camera is astounding. Where it places it focus, when it chooses to track the movements of its characters, and notably when it chooses not to are fascinating. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but this was filmed to look like it was done in one complete take (further strengthening the idea of this as a filmed play than a film). It’s this camera work that elevates this film from an above average script with a superb actor in Stewart to a film worthy of the Hitchcock collection. I particularly love two long shots. One occurs as Brandon walks into the kitchen to dispose of the titular murder weapon while the camera (and us with it) stay in the foyer. The kitchen door swings freely back and forth, allowing us a glimpse into the kitchen only when the door reaches one of the apices of its momentum. This builds suspense, much in the same way the revolving search light does in Apocalpyse Now. It’s genius.

My other favorite sequence comes towards the end when Stewart is already plenty suspicious of what has occurred. The party’s guests are talking about something, but we don’t see any of them except Stewart’s back. Instead the camera focuses on the trunk wherein the recently deceased lies while the maid clears off the top and prepares to put some books back inside of it. It’s classic Hitchcock. All the pieces of the puzzle are there in front of us and we are afraid/excited that something is going to go wrong. And he just forces us to sit there and watch it unfold, separate from the rest of the party. I’d even argue his use of the camera here breaks the fourth wall. This isn’t some distant remote camera man that just happens to be capturing drama unpassionately. He’s more akin to a documentary film maker, making active and knowing decisions about what to show his audience. In other words, the camera feels like a character in its own right.

So in sum, this is a silly movie with a silly plot. But it fits superbly within the Hitchcock oeuvre for two reasons. 1) Jimmy Stewart absolutely kills it and steals the show and 2) the camera work is simply stunning for how Hitchcock seemingly breaks the fourth wall and has a conversation directly with the viewer. He breaks filming conventions by focusing the lens on what’s most important to build suspense rather than simply following characters or providing neutral information. It’s not the most essential Hitchcock release, but it’s still plenty enjoyable.

*** (Three out of Four Stars)