Cracking It

It'd been several years since I'd seen it so, when I saw 1981's Thief was currently on The Criterion Channel, I decided to watch it again. It was even better than I remembered.

The first ten minutes or so could work as a beautiful short film. We watch Frank (James Caan) and his cohorts crack a safe, showers of sparks around Frank as he drills into the metal. It's a success and afterwards Frank chills at the docks in the early morning. He offers a danish to a stranger and the two agree the sunrise is beautiful, which it is.

Tangerine Dream's score is a gently exciting synthasiser drone for city nighttime shots between jobs. When Frank's at work, a drone of electric guitar emerges and this movie so nicely conveys the impression of working hard at a job you're good at.

Frank does have anger issues. Over a decade in prison has deprived him of basic social skills and he lacks the patience to learn them. He practically abducts the girl he wants to marry (Tuesday Weld)--lucky for him, she really does like him. He makes a scene at the adoption agency where he's not so lucky.

The film's famous for its meticulous attention to real details, coming from real life thieves who served as technical advisors. In the end, though, the film's really a fantasy, almost in the mould of a Charles Bronson vigilante film. The climax is preposterous as Frank alone goes to take down the gang that hired him. But Caan's performance never stops being terrific and Michael Mann's direction--this was his first film--shows him already to be a master of pacing.

Thief is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Bars of Wealth are Locked!

One of the risks of locking yourself in a cage is you might not be able to get out when you want to. Duh. Olivia de Havilland makes this seemingly elementary mistake in the 1964 hagsploitation/delinquent exploitation film Lady in a Cage. The plot is strenuously ridiculous and everyone overacts, especially the director, but its gaudiness has a campy charm.

A wealthy. elderly poetess called Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland) lives in an enormous, decadently decorated house with her grown son, Malcolm (William Swan). He leaves early in the film and we never see him again. This is so she can be all alone in the house when the massive cage elevator she has installed to take her up to the second floor breaks down due to a power outage.

She only has this thing temporarily because she's recovering from a broken hip. By now you may be wondering--where the hell are her servants? I think we're meant to believe she and her son take care of the place all alone. Even Walter Neff had a cleaning woman come in once a week to his apartment in Double Indemnity. None of the delinquents who wind up busting into Cornelia's house even seem to worry for a moment that a maid or a groundskeeper might show up at some point.

Leading the bunch is none other than James Caan in his first major role. He and his two young cohorts bicker cartoonishly, assuring the viewer that these kids are just as devoid of compassion or morality as anyone reading the newspapers gathers about youths these days in the early '60s.

Caan and de Havilland both give good performances, though they're both dialed up to eleven for the duration. De Havilland very quickly descends into mental breakdown and is hallucinating before the end. There's a message about how she might be partially responsible for her son's possible suicide because she coddled him too much. In a scathing letter, he accuses her of adding another room to the house every time he thinks about moving out, in the process making it seem more incredible she has no housekeeping staff.

The influence of Psycho is clear from the Saul Bass-ish opening titles with animated lines and rapid tempo score. None of Hitchcock's subtlety or psychological insight is present but by the end I couldn't help smiling at the film's heights of absurdity amid its heavy-handed political allegory. When de Havilland stabs Caan in the eyes in an update on Oedipus I was kind of delighted.

Shinzo Abe and James Caan

After former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot yesterday in Nara City, he was taken to a hospital near the school I work at. So helicopters were flying about most of the afternoon, adding to a general feeling of gloom and dread. I don't know a lot about Abe but he seemed like a good prime minister. The first thing that comes to mind is him dressing as Mario to announce Tokyo as the location of the ill-fated 2020 Olympics. So he had a sense of humour. He managed to be effectively friendly with other countries while at the same time advocating greater military autonomy for Japan, which I do think is past due.

As this is primarily a movie blog, though, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about James Caan, who also died yesterday.

Most people will remember him from The Godfather and he is great in that movie. But The Godfather is more about Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. The great James Caan movie to see is Michael Mann's 1981 crime film Thief. Caan was front and centre doing what he did best, being a regular, yet remarkably magnetic, tough guy.

He was in a lot of other movies, too, generally in supporting roles as a gangster boss. But before The Godfather, he had the distinction of starring in the legendary Red Line 7000, a racing movie directed by none other than Howard Hawks. And he is a big part of that film's driving energy, in more ways than one.

So long, Jimmy Caan and Shinzo Abe. Hopefully we can keep the casualties down in the coming days.

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