# 180 The Killing (1956)

The Killing is a film noir, directed by Stanley Kubrick. It's a story about a race track heist, committed by a man who, after spending five years in prison, decides not to aim low anymore and steal $2,000,000. He seems to have a good plan, the people he can rely on, and everything else he needs in order to achieve the goal, however, the more people involved in the scheme, the higher the chances of things going wrong.

What I like most of all about this film is how Kubrick takes each character and shows us his involvement in the scheme, then goes back and shows us what somebody else was doing at the same period of time. The narration, with the time of every step being announced helps build the tension, and to me sounds like somebody reading out a police report. By the way, the narration was added at the studio's insistence. Stanley Kubrick hated the idea and thus makes much of the information that the narrator provides false or mistaken.

I don't agree with the people who say that they liked the movie, but hated the ending. They say that with two million bucks he could have bought a better suitcase, but who knows, may be back then they didn't have too much of an assortment of suitcases, and it wasn't easy to find a good one, especially when you're running out of time. Besides, it was fun to watch all that money flying around.

Now I won't say that The Killing is brilliant because Stanley Kubrick is not my favorite director, but he was definitely very talented, whether I like what he was doing or not. He made this movie at a very young age, and it's not as weird as some of his later works, but still shows that he was already very skillful when he was working on it.

Interesting fact: "Day of Violence" and "Bed of Fear" were both working titles for the film. Oh, and if anyone can explain the title to me, please comment.

Favorite quote: Johnny Clay: A friend of mine will be stopping by tomorrow to drop something off for me. He's a cop.

Joe: A cop? That's a funny kind of a friend.

Johnny Clay: Well, he's a funny kind of a cop.

# 176 The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The Night of The Hunter tells us a story about Harry Powell, a man who marries widows for money and kills them. While in jail, he finds out that his cellmate, Ben who is about to be hanged, had committed a robbery. After being released, Harry Powell decided to marry Ben's widow in order to find out where Ben had hid the stolen money before he was captured.

The interesting part of this film is that the main character is a religious fanatic. He did not only use people's faith to get them to do anything he wanted, but he actually believed that what he was doing was right. He also had his own weird principles I guess, for example, on their wedding night he tells Ben's widow that they will never have sex because it is sinful. I highly doubt he acted this way because he found her unattractive, I mean, after all the things he had done to find the money, sleeping with a woman he didn't like wouldn't be much of a problem.

The rest of the movie is a disaster. At first I thought that may be The Night of the Hunter is considered to be good because it was way ahead of its time back in 1955, but then in Wikipedia I read that it was not a success with either audiences or critics at its initial release, and Laughton never directed another film, nevertheless, the film has found a wider audience over the years.

This leaves me at loss. The beginning with the drifting heads is cheesy. All the women in the movie are absolutely dumb, what is up with their fanatic devotion to Powell? He's definitely not very slick, so why does he always come out on top? And whereas the first half of the plot was not that bad, and at times even thrilling, the second half, after the kids flee down the river turns into a social drama. And that's where the movie stopped making sense to me, and left me wondering why it had gained such widespread acclaim.

Interesting fact: So disappointed was he by the poor reception of this film on its initial release both critically and commercially, Charles Laughton vowed never to direct a film again, and he never did. The film he was planning to direct next was going to be a screen adaptation of "The Naked and the Dead.

Favorite quote: "Salvation is a last-minute business, boy".

# 141 The Big Sleep (1946)

The Big Sleep is a movie about a private detective hired by a rich man to get the blackmailer off his daughter's back. It is based on a novel, and the title is probably explained in the book, however, I've never read it, so I have no idea why the movie is called "The Big Sleep".

I think the main problem of this film is that they tried to put too much plot into it. I've seen it happen with so many films that are based of book (The Da Vinci Code being the brightest example). Seriously, the plot is very hard ot follow. When I first started watching this movie I had to stop it and start all over because I could not understand a thing. Some of the main characters never appear in the movie, and are being talked about so much that it gets confusing.

There is a lot of sexual innuendo in the movie. Note that is was filmed in the age of Hays office censorship, so many things from the novel were presented discreetly, and I didn't understand what they were about until I read about it in Wikipedia.

What I loved the most was, of course, Humphrey Bogart's acting. I'm amazed how such a short skinny man with a lisp managed to become a sex symbol. The greatest witty lines in the movie come out of his character's mouth too. Here is one of them.

Favorite quote: "She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up".

Interesting fact: Due to Humphrey Bogart's affair with co-star Lauren Bacall, his marital problems escalated during filming, and his drinking often resulted in his being unable to work. Three months after the film was finished, Bacall and Bogart were married.

# 128 Notorious (1946)

Alfred Hitchcock's fans are going to hate me for this one...

I don't want to go into details about the plot, but basically Notorious is a combination of love story and espionage story. In reality, all we see in this movie is a pseudo love triangle between an incompetent spy, a fallen woman, and a Nazi. Come on, do really really beleive that a secret agent could fall in love after a drunk date? Aside from all missteps in the plot, the film is simply too slow-paced. Three Hollywood stars (Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Claude Rains) fail to deliver their best performance this time.

There is one thing I liked about the movie though, it's the final scene (the one involving the staircase). This is the only scene in this film that is likable, Hitchcock finally manages to build the tension that I expected to see throughout the whole film. Technically the movie is pretty good, but emotionally it didn't engage me at all.

This is the worst movie by Alfred Hitchcock I've seen so far.

Favorite quote: "We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity, for a time".

Interesting fact: Mission Impossible II is a remake of this film