Julian Shellhammer
Practically Family
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Last Friday it was The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) with top-billed Sydney Greenstreet, along with Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Peter Lorre, and a great deal of familiar faces. Taken from a Eric Ambler story, we follow Lorre as a Dutch writer who tracks down the life and crimes of Dimitrios Makropoulos (Scott, in his film debut) from Istanbul (not Constantinople) across the Balkans to Paris. Director Jean Negulesco, whose work intrigues me more and more, deftly incorporates flashbacks as various characters relate their interaction with Dimitrios. Set in 1938, with most of the flashbacks taking place in the 1920s, we see crime, betrayal, treason, and homicide follow in Dimitrios' wake. Being a production code movie, good versus bad means bad gets its comeuppance, but, here, just barely.
Lorre gets to be the good guy, and receives the most screen time, and Greenstreet is Greenstreet, a dominating presence. As a long time film nerd, I noted what seem to be directorial trademarks by Negulesco: an effortlessly gliding camera during exchanges of dialogue, an eye for gripping set ups (wounded bad guy crawling across a floor littered with a million francs), and, his most prominent shot, arms and hands and shoulders and backs right up against the camera, blurring out of focus. It could be said it's sort of like breaking down the fourth wall.
Immediately after the movie ended I subjected the audience to an impromptu mini-lesson by pulling up on YT the Glen Gray Casa Loma Orchestra video directed by Negulesco, pointing out the same danger-close positioning of clarinets, trombones, trumpets, et al, the trick set-ups with the boogie-woogie dancers using mirrors, and the non-linear flow of musicians clustered in one shot, then a completely different arrangement a mere note or two later. Real good stuff.
Lorre gets to be the good guy, and receives the most screen time, and Greenstreet is Greenstreet, a dominating presence. As a long time film nerd, I noted what seem to be directorial trademarks by Negulesco: an effortlessly gliding camera during exchanges of dialogue, an eye for gripping set ups (wounded bad guy crawling across a floor littered with a million francs), and, his most prominent shot, arms and hands and shoulders and backs right up against the camera, blurring out of focus. It could be said it's sort of like breaking down the fourth wall.
Immediately after the movie ended I subjected the audience to an impromptu mini-lesson by pulling up on YT the Glen Gray Casa Loma Orchestra video directed by Negulesco, pointing out the same danger-close positioning of clarinets, trombones, trumpets, et al, the trick set-ups with the boogie-woogie dancers using mirrors, and the non-linear flow of musicians clustered in one shot, then a completely different arrangement a mere note or two later. Real good stuff.