Hit Me... "The Woman in the Window"

In the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series we all chime in on what we think of as the best shot from a pre-selected movie. Last week 19 partipicants looked at Moulin Rouge!. This week, it's Fritz Lang's...

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944)

We begin with a great moment in Art Direction. The most curious attribute of The Woman in the Window is it's sexlessness. Despite having all the trappings of a traditional film noir including the femme fatale (Joan Bennett as "Alice Reed" pictured above) there's no sex in the movie, not even the implied offscreen kind. Naturally then, it has to be abstracted so how better to do so than placing a nude statue in Alice Reed's (Joan Bennett) apartment. It keeps her in the room even when she wanders out of it. It also gets framed between her and the three doomed men who want her throughout the course of the movie: the john, the pickup and the blackmailer.

Even the murder near the beginning of the film which informs every moment that follows is a kind of abstraction. We see it happening but it's not technically a murder so much as an accidental necessity involving self-defense. It's the covering up of this "crime" that's the actual crime, so The Woman in the Window seems to cheekily be happening behind glass, always a bit removed from itself.

Best Shot
Take this worrying witty shot of our sorry protagonist Professor Richard Wanley (Edward G Robinson).

outside his own story

He has just PURPOSEFULLY removed himself from the story in progress, his story!, by feigning sickness. But though he keeps mopping his brow nervously in the safety of the car, he can't help but keep twisting around to peer back in on the murder cover-up story, his story. His best friend happens to be the DA and has taken him to the scene of the crime where an investigation is underway.

Throughout the movie people will keep telling the Professor the story, which he already knows being the protagonist, and he will keep nervously listening and watching and nearly giving himself away.

All these layers of telling lift what might be considered a minor Lang picture into something that's quite fun to watch if you're in the right mood. It's a noir that happens more in your head than in your heart or loins.

My favorite sequence illustrating the humor of these "layers" of telling is when the word first gets out about the murder. The police are offering a $10,000 reward for information. Bear in mind that we've already seen the murder and the coverup firsthand. So has Alice, who is seen reading about it in the paper. The paper reads "Boys Scout Finds Slain Millionaire's Body". Cut to: a movie screen telling us the same thing (they used to show newsreels prior to movies starting). HEY, THAT'S US WATCHING THIS MOVIE. Cut to the Boy Scout in the news reel filling out his own details...

Layers of Telling in "The Woman in the Window"

I was practicing woodcraft in the woods just off the Bronx River Parkway extension when I found Mr... Mr. Mazard's remains.  No I was not scared, a boy scout is never scared. If I get the reward I will send my younger brother to some good college and I will go to Harvard.

Imagine it. A Harvard education AND a second "good college" for only $10,000 bucks? Sweet deal.

Accomplices To This "Best Shot" Crime

• Film Actually has been a tireless contributor to this web series. Check that blog out.
• Movies Kick Ass on Fritz Lang's constant "frames" within the frames.
• Pussy Goes Grrr two choices.
• Awww, the Movies picks a shot I almost picked. It's so "Dead Again". I bet Kenneth Branagh saw this movie before directing that.

What's next in this series?

Wed June 15th @ 10 PM: Peggy Sue Got Married (nominated for Best Cinematography at the Oscars) starring the one and only Kathleen Turner, 80s film-stealer Nicolas Cage and a few supporting cast members that went on to much greater fame in the 1990s.

Wed June 22nd @10 PM: Rocco and His Brothers (1960) 
Luchino Visconti's homoerotic drama about a widow and her five volatile sons. Those readers who loved I Am Love (2009) should definitely check this out as Visconti was a major influence on Tilda's auteur. Auteur giants like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola are also among Visconti's fanbase.

Join us! 
All you need is a blog, tumblr, flickr or site where you can upload your choice for best shot, with or without an essay or capsule as to why you chose it. We link up to participating entries!

Cinema de Gym: 'Daredevil'

Kurt here. For those of you just tuning in, Cinema de Gym is an experimental series in which I give my two cents on movies that play in an in-house theater at my local gym, where I'm attempting to shed "writer's pounds." Instead of seats, this screening room has treadmills and such, and plays a daily film on a loop. For the first installment, we chatted about Barry Levinson's Bandits. Today, inspired by Nathaniel's "Mutant Week," the subject is Daredevil, the 2003 handicapped-hero flick and the third big comic book movie of the Aughts (following, of course, X-Men and Spider-Man).

This is an easy movie to belittle for a whole mess of reasons. Box office clout be damned, Ben Affleck makes for an unwieldy superhero, especially since he was nowhere near his lean Town physique when this film was shot (directing just literally takes it outta ya, I suppose). That he looked a lot older than 30 at the time certainly didn't help matters, and both age and unwieldiness compounded the secondhand discomfort of that red leather suit, which, frankly, wasn't worth the poor cows' hides.

Then there was the silliness of Colin Farrell's Bullseye who, however well cast, would be one of the first of many counterproductively-comical superbaddies, saddled with meta lines like, "I want a bloody costume."

Farrell as Bullseye, Garner as Elektra

But I hardly count this among the worst of our last decade of superhero cinema, as the subsequent years would give us beauts like Jonah Hex, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and, oh yes, Elektra. Before the spinoff, I thought Jennifer Garner excelled as Daredevil's sai-wielding vigilantess, balancing sex appeal with girl-next-doorness and fitting much more nicely into her S&M gear than future hubby Ben. She certainly has this movie, not Alias, to thank for her big-screen career.

Moving on, I'm with Roger Ebert in regard to the film's visual f/x, which the uncannily prolific critic championed heartily upon the film's release. In a movie of fickle success, writer/director Mark Steven Johnson – whose own professional fickleness we'll get to in a sec – finds some handsome ways to envision the tricky nature of hero Matt Murdock's powers, which are akin to Sonar in that the blind crime fighter can "see" sound vibrations. Specifically, a scene in which Elektra stands in the rain so Matt can see her face via droplet sound waves is quite purdy, if overtly digital.

Matt Murdock. No relation to Scott Summers.The thing with Cinema de Gym is, I only see 15- to 30-minute snippets of the film in question (depending on the day's endurance level), so I ought to discuss the segment. What I saw of Daredevil was in fact a lot of down time – the slower bits in which Matt chats with his co-worker and Hollywood-prescribed best bud, played by future Iron Man helmer Jon Favreau. Matt, a lawyer, has a built-in taste for justice, but that's not all that interesting. What I liked were curious details about his handicap, like how he folds bills of different denominations in different ways, so as to feel the correct amount. I remembered that part from first viewing, and saw it again in my gym segment.

About Mark Steven Johnson, the guy's got a really odd filmography, penning a grab bag of screenplays and directing a few of them to all-over-the-map results. In the '90s, he wrote the Grumpy Old Men movies, Simon Birch and Jack Frost (the Michael Keaton weepie, not the straight-to-video slasher), then did Daredevil before writing and directing...Ghost Rider and When In Rome.

[Pause] ...whoa.

At a recent party, someone told me he felt Daredevil was the movie that shaped the superhero film as we now know it. I'm not sure about that, but it certainly seems to have been a tipping point for its director.

Conclusions?

1. Ben Affleck is wise to have not returned to comic book cinema (assuming it would have had him back).
2. If nothing else, mediocre superhero movies can lead to loving, lasting Hollywood marriages.
3. Supporting parts in superhero flicks can give actors the comic book director's bug. (Might the long-awaited Wonder Woman be helmed by Thor's Kat Dennings?)
4. I'm suddenly dying to see what Mark Steven Johnson does next, and I imagine he's open to suggestions. The floor is yours, TFE readers.

Newish on DVD. Reader's Choice?

Last time we did this you chose The Other Woman -- curse you!!! -- but we'll do this bi-weekly because I aim to please. The following films debuted on DVD yesterday or last week. Which are you planning to watch? Which would you have me watch/write up?

• BIUTIFUL -in which Javier Bardem gives Job a run for his money in the personal misery department. Sounds like a laugh riot.
• BLUE CRUSH 2 -in which... well, surfer girls! Three of them.
• THE COMPANY MEN - in which rich famous-looking guys lose their jobs and must rebuild their lives. It's hard being super rich and then not quite as rich, okay !?!
• DRIVE ANGRY - in which Nicolas Cage and Amber Heard put medal to the pedal and chase after a cult leader in some sort of exploitation movie. 3D only obviously not now that it's for home viewing.
• JUST GO WITH IT -in which Jennifer Aniston pretends to be Adam Sandler's wife for reasons we can't comprehend and Nicole Kidman cameos for reasons currently unknown to us.
• PASSION PLAY -in which musician Mickey Rourke falls for "bird woman" Megan Fox at a travelling circus. Bird women do have their appeal.
• RUBBER - in which a tire menaces people.
• SANCTUM - in which... no, I don't know what happens. I think it's about a watery cave? Produced by James Cameron but not directed by him.
• TRUE GRIT - in which Hailee Steinfeld looks for people who have True Grit, even though she already possesses it. Very Wizard of Oz, that. Also: Pigtails.

I'm not including True Grit in the poll because it got plentiful attention from December through March. (I even interviewed the great cinematographer Roger Deakins.) And I'm not including The Company Men because I tried to sit through it once already and just could not deal.

poll by twiigs.com

If you want to sway undecided votes your way, make a case in the comments.

Reader Request: "The Other Woman"

We held a poll for new DVD write-ups and you chose this one. It's your fault! ;)

You're familiar with the ol' term "edited with a chainsaw", yes? Thist post will surely be written by one. Edited with a chainsaw is an odd phrase since it scapegoats the editor when messy jumbled narrative choices and general incoherence are just as often the fault of screenwriters and directors. Not that editing can't make things worse. Quick, explain what happened in that final battle on the rainbow bridge in Thor because I still don't know. If I ever meet Paul Rubell I will definitely ask him. I don't mean to single Mr Rubell out among editors but my mind lept to Thor because The Other Woman -- our topic du jour -- also stars Her Lady of Ubiquity Natalie Portman. But, really, Thor isn't particularly egregious as incoherent actioners go. Continuity and visual coherence are no longer the end goals they once were. (Thanks for nothing, Paul Greengrass!)

Bad Lawyer! Natalie's sexting when she ought to be working.

When people use that chainsaw phrase today -- if they do at all - it merely means "this makes no sense!" or perhaps  "I hate this". It's flexible which is why it's still useful as verbal shorthand even though there's been no actual "cutting" of film in some time.

What are we even talking about? Oh, yes, The Other Woman: It makes no sense. I hated it.

I wish flexibility were a trait we could assign to writer/director Don Roos' latest but for as much as the new movie twists and bends, frequently and often in its attempt to be several different movies or perhaps a television series, it's always snapping and breaking rather than stretching and settling into new poses. My first urge is to call it incoherent (hence the editing cliché) but that's not quite right. The narrative is neither ambitious nor inept enough for true incoherence. But one thing is for certain, The Other Woman does not know itself. It's vague whenever it needs to be precise and bloated whenever it needs to trim.

Is it a romantic drama? Quite often but only for a few minutes at a time.

Is it a flashback picture about a hasty romantic decision? Well, it's structured a bit like that at first but then you realize the flashback is over and it was more like oddly placed first act decorative exposition and you're back in the present.

Is it a comedy? Not really, although there are a few jokes.

Is it a story about a woman who is way too immature to parent, suddenly thrust into the Stepmom role? It seems like that but then why all the romance? It keeps hinting that there's more to her than immaturity though that "more" never shows itself.

This blended family isn't blending well at all. Both moms, biological & step, like to verbally lash out at everyone around them.

Is it a thorny drama about blended families? Yes, half the time.

Is it a piercing drama about grief and the fragility of new life and love? At times but not for very long at a time.

Do all of these separate movies star two hugely unlikable women, who are members of the First Wives Club and the Young Homewreckers of America club? Ding! Ding! Ding!

Lisa Kudrow and Don Roos have been frequent collaborators for years now, and though he usually casts her as very bitter or frustrated women, they've been able to find such interesting layers of hurt and comedy in the roles. Sometimes she's an outright revelation (particularly in The Opposite of Sex and in her online series Web Therapy). Natalie Portman, who was in the process of winning the Oscar when this film finally arrived, is an uneven actress and she hits some notes here very well (she doesn't shy away from Amelia's immaturity or difficulty at thinking beyond the moment) but it's a repetitive and undercooked performance.

You can forgive a lot when you watch bad movies if the protagonist or antagonist or supporting characters are either straight up likeable or charismatically flawed. But virtually no one in The Other Woman lays claim to your heart. Two of the most generally "likeable" characters, played by Lauren Ambrose and Anthony Rapp, pop in from time to time to provide a laugh line or a sympathetic ear but they're in so little of the movie that it's difficult to get any sort of bead on who they are outside of their trio friendship with Natalie Portman and The Other Woman doesn't care enough about these friendships to suggest anything about their strength.

Rapp, Portman and Ambrose are friends. But how much and for how long?

The three main characters are walking wounded nightmares: Amelia (Natalie Portman) is bitchy, self-deluding, immature and hypocritical (she married a cheater and despises cheaters and doesn't view her actions as inappropriate even though she actively pursues the married man); Carolyne (Lisa Kudrow) is the shrewish ex-wife who is so brittle and unforgiving that you can't help but be glad that her husband escaped her; Jack (Scott Cohen) doesn't make a whole lot of sense and remains a cypher since the film keeps drifting away from him towards the women and his son. You know there's more to him but he only reveals his hurt in the final moments and then, promptly and all too easily, seems to segue immediately back into Father Knows Best mode.

The same day I watched the film I attended a party and I was trying to explain my problem with the film to a friend. Since I was a little buzzed from drinks my critique veered uncomfortably away from the verbal into something approaching charades format; I played Natalie Portman and acted out One Scene As Every Scene, if you know what I mean. It went exactly like this (verbatim!) ...though I wasn't wearing a wig.

This happens over and over again in the movie whether we're in coming-of-age land, the flashback movie, in romantic drama territory, the family strife issues film or baby grief catharsis. All five of the movies we're watching have the same scene: Natalie lashes out, apologizes, feels bad about herself, and continues to blame other people; Repeat for the entire movie until she grows up a teensy bit at the end in an unconvincing and unclimactic way.

Don Roos has made two very good features in the past (The Opposite of Sex and Happy Endings) which both demonstrated a unique voice with a deft command of interlocking character arcs, plotty developments that inform the arcs in question, and the ability to conjure a whole passel of hugely flawed somewhat off-putting characters that manage to be endearing or fascinating because of the good humor, complexity and depth of the characterizations. The Other Woman shares many of these same structural elements but none of the success with them. It's tough to say what went wrong but it went very wrong. Best to call this one That Other Movie, ignore it, and rewatch one of those earlier fine pictures instead. D

Quickies: Window Women, Green Guns, Dendro Disciples

Superheroes and their phalluses. I swear.Quick Pet Peeve: I haven't seen it yet but why is Hal Jordan so unimaginative with his power ring in Green Lantern? I mean, you can create anything with it so you're just going to make a machine gun? Dullzzz-ville. Is this going to be like that time when vampires and werewolves were suddenly fighting with guns, draining them of all their supernatural mojo?

Quick Note: Tonight's episode of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" will air tomorrow at noon instead. This day is crazy busy so I won't be ready in time. To prepare why not watch Fritz Lang's 1944 noir WOMAN IN THE WINDOW on Netflix Instant Watch.

Quick Poll: So many people are [ahem] tree-inclined these days. There's more than just hugging going on. From Justin Vivian Bond to The Stark Boys, who wins Dendrophile of the Week?! Vote.

poll by twiigs.com

Quick Question: Salt sequel with Angelina Jolie is a go. Have you any interest at all?