The Snooze Button

Mugs and dames return to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood April 2-19 for the annual Film Noir Festival, Deadline: Noir City. A notice of the event from the Egyptian popped up on my Gmail calendar yesterday, coincidently after a week I’d just spent re-watching my collection of the Fox Film Noir series. Most of them have an excellent commentary track by noir historian Eddie Muller, who will be at the festival. Muller’s film commentary is only rivaled in my opinion by Peter Bogdanovich. I try to buy every film each has done. If you’ve only experienced commentary tracks familiar in newer releases, stuff done by historians and film critics on older movies can tend to run like they are reading a prepared statement, which can be rather dry, especially when some of them concentrate exclusively on actor backgrounds. Some even sit there and describe what you are seeing on the screen, as if it were meant for a blind person. Muller talks about the movie, like you are re-watching it with a friend who knows a hell of a lot about what you are seeing. I’m sure it takes a lot of natural talent along with a lifetime of study to be able to sit there and ad lib for an hour and a half while making the commentary conversational and informative. Muller will be at the festival giving introductions to the films, which range from popular, well-known films to much rarer selections.

Victor Mature in Bruce Humberstone’s “I Wake Up Screaming”

I like A.O. Scott’s Critics’ Picks video blog on the New York Times Web site, but his take on “Midnight Cowboy” was off. I was glad to see it highlighted, but I don’t agree with the assessment, which seems not only off-base but condescending. The review concentrates on the movie’s achievement as a time capsule and notes that the story of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo is a heroic tale of friendship.

I think the movie is a classic buddy picture. Buddy pictures were hot in that era (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was also nominated that year and “The Sting” won a few years later). It’s not a heroic tale, however. Joe Buck doesn’t, as Scott contends, learn anything but more anguish by the end. In fact it’s one of the ultra-rare Hollywood films that ends on a down note, without any redemption. And as far as being a time capsule, that seems a narrow and insignificant attribute compared to the movie’s timelessness as a universal statement. 

- Wayne