Immigrant Reform: Anthony Mann's "Border Incident"

Like many of his contemporaries, director Anthony Mann's filmography swept across the decades of Hollywood's evolution from the dramas of the 30's, the bleak film noir of the 40's and finally ascending to the heights of big budget spectacles of the late 50's and early 60's. Just looking at the titles that dot his resume (from hard-nosed classics like "T-Men" and "Winchester '73" to the pomp and circumstance of "El Cid"), Mann undulated with the times like the best of them.

Unfortunately, I feel woefully inept at accurately responding to the breadth of his films as I've seen so few. I'm pretty damn sure I've seen "Raw Deal", "T-Men" and his western forays with Jimmy Stewart, "Winchester '73" and "The Naked Spur" on TCM or Bravo TV showings back in the day, although I don't have firm documentation in the likes of Netflix markings or Letterboxd notes... which seems to suggest that, nowadays, if this technology isn't checked, the past might not even exist.

All of this is to say I've set out to right this wrong, and if my first jab at Mann's content is any indication, I'm in for a vibrant viewing experience. Released in 1949 and starring Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy, "Border Incident" posits a spy thriller framework over the liberal minded expose of exploitative immigrant culture and the deep-seated (and deep pocketed) conspiracy that aims to use and dispose of them when the work is finished. As two police officers on opposite sides of the border seeking to end the cycle of violence, Montalban and Murphy go undercover- Montalban as a migrant worker desperate to cross the US border and find work and Murphy as one of the middlemen stealing documents to cover the tracks of those in charge.

Full of deep focus rack shots and sinewy midnight lighting- urgent because most of the film takes place in the wee hours of the night where malice and discretion are apt bedfellows- "Border Incident" parlays both the best of film noir and subterfuge thrillers in the way it establishes strong tension around believable characters stuck in-between the (at one point literal) grinding wheels of evil. In fact, although Montalban is the real star, lengthy portions of the film dart away from both he and Murphy, giving weight to the parasitic nature of the shadowy organizations in gritty detail. The forces of evil are embedded in the canyon border landscape so deeply that when one character thinks he's gotten away to safety, he runs straight into the warm den of a woman who promptly calls her husband.... and he arrives with shotgun in hand to clean up the mess for his superiors. No one said cleaning up the border would be easy.

Made right before his run of noirs would be over and he'd embark on a series of westerns throughout the 50's, Mann's "Border Incident" feels especially dark, full of heroic compromise and real-world nihilism that cancel each other out. It's also quite the prescient film. If not for a somewhat tacked-on voice over that closes the film with a hint of optimism, "Border Incident" could be released today and we'd all nod and agree that the problem is as divisive and violent as ever.

Jean Pierre Melville Files: Army of Shadows

Originally released in 1969, Jean Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" really didn't come into acclaim until 2006 when Rialto pictures re-distributed it, crafting an arthouse success out of a sort-of long lost classic. Made in between Melville's string of hard nosed, French revisionist black and white noirs, perhaps "Army of Shadows" was doomed to a quiet existence because it didn't fit squarely into the great director's expected cinema lineage. Regardless of the reasons, Rialto's diligence and foresight in re-positioning "Army of Shadows" as the one Melville you had to see is a minor stroke of genius. It is a masterpiece, in every way.

Adapted from the memoirs of French Resistance fighter Joseph Kessel, "Army of Shadows" is a patient, brooding examination of the interior workings of one French Resistance cell. Based on actual people, I'm tempted to call "Army of Shadows" the best film about the Resistance, even though it comes relatively late in this spirited genre of films. Where a majority of the Resistance films deal with a certain person or action against the deadly German war machine, "Army of Shadows" shows us both the anxious and the mundane with events as diverse as the smuggling of a transmitter through a heavily guarded train station and a night time escort onto a submarine. The results- a free France- are the same, yet Melville gives both events the same heightened tension even though the submarine landing yields far less devastating consequences as the only threat present is an old French policeman, both related to the person running the Resistance mission and stating he's the only customs officer watching the entire beach for the Germans. Shifting through a series of near misses, captures, imprisonments, escapes, and cafe conversations, "Army of Shadows" reveals an entire universe of Resistance fighters and the fragile line between freedom and torture with pristine vision. Lino Ventura, as the "star" in the film in the loosest sense, plays Philippe Verbier, a man running the cell with clarity of purpose... stone faced and confident even when mounted against the fate of death by firing squad. Though so many Ventura films are unavailable on DVD and this praise is probably limited, but I think this is his best performance.

Also present in "Army of Shadows" (and most Resistance films) is the parlor of doom. Granted, Melville drapes a majority of his films in this, yet the tone is set from the opening scene as German soldiers march towards the camera next to the Arch de Triomph and central characters are picked up, tortured and executed with little warning. The film's central colors- drab blacks, deep browns and winter-time gray skies- also denote the seemingly insurmountable task the French Resistance fighters have against the German Army. But it's the procedural nature of the film and Melville's insistence on transferring a quiet thriller over the historical context that makes "Army of Shadows" such a breathless exercise. In the face of defeat, what shines through most deeply in Melville's film is determined resolve of human nature to fight for what belongs to us. Whether that's a smuggled transistor radio to hear BBC broadcasts or arranging for the violent escape of a fellow prisoner, "Army of Shadows" gives hefty weight and reverent reflection to both.


"Army of Shadows" is the first film in a series of posts looking at films that deal with the Resistance during World War 2.

The Great St Louis Bank Robbery

The direct cinematic lineage of Michael Mann and Jean Pierre Melville can be found in one little known film from 1959 called "The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery". Made a few years before Melville created an international splash with films like "Le Doulos" and "Second Breath" and decades before Michael Mann stepped behind a camera, John Stix's "The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery" takes as its main themes some very familiar touchstones of these two varied filmmakers- the consummate career criminal obsessed with detail, the fatal relationship with a woman and brazen masculinity. It's a shame that director John Stix didn't get the chance to accumulate these themes and form the same type of stylistically riveting career as Mann or Melville.


"The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery" is a genuinely fatalistic enterprise. The very opening scene, where four men meet in a cold park, is doomed from the outset as their buried resentments, jealousy and inexperience (in the case of college drop out wheelman Steve McQueen in only his second film role) comes boiling to the surface. Add to the mixture an almost repressed homosexuality in ring leader Egan's eyes (Crahan Denton) as he tries to steer the group away from any outside influences (women namely) and judiciously go over every detail of the robbery and one soon gets the idea that we're watching walking corpses going through the motion. The tension comes in the thought of who will survive, if anyone. In essence, "The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery" is 80 minutes of careful preparation and ten minutes of abrupt violence during the bank robbery. Outside of the bank robbery itself, there are several scenes in "The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery" that feel revelatory for 1959. The long shot on Egan as he monologues about the death of his mother... an especially terse scene with McQueen's ex-girlfriend as the crew find out she may know about the robbery... and the aforementioned final bank robbery in which Stix precisely frames and edits the robbery with calm detail, giving precedence to the shadows that steel bars create on the ground or the tormented God shot as McQueen terrorizes a husband and wife. And, the fact that actual police officers and detectives involved in the real-life incident reprised their roles is even more revealing to the film's search for the authentic.

Stix, a Julliard film teacher and director of numerous Broadway plays, never returned to film after "The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery". Perhaps because he was born in St. Louis and wanted to share some hometown flavor with the movie-going public, his debut film struck lightning in a bottle. I would've loved to see what else he could do with the cinematic medium, and especially with the gray-skied and fedora'd criminals who slink beneath the surface and patiently study until they strike. If "The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery" is any indication of his intelligence, we've all missed some great stuff.

Revisiting a Classic- Bob Le Flambeur

Is film noir passe? Have we, via modern times, recycled and re-invented the genre so much that a majority of its energy has been parodied, zapped out and left for dead? Well the cure for this type of dirge is to go back and enjoy the black and white melodies emanating from the films of Jean Pierre Melville, and especially the relaxed 1955 character study called "Bob Le Flambeur". Starring Robert Duchesne as the title character, Bob is a degenerate gambler who sleeps until eight every night and then stumbles through the neon lights of Paris, drinking and gambling his way to oblivion. He's a genial enough fellow, creating a makeshift family along the way in his friendship with two youngsters, Paolo (Daniel Cauchy) a small time hood and the beautiful (yet frisky) Anne (Isabel Corey). He invites Anne to share his apartment, but not for sex, but due to the fact he feels sorry for her having to walk the glittery streets in the morning hoping that an American GI or a Frenchman with money will open a door for her. She's just an inch away from prostitution, and Bob sees the tremendous damage a life like that might do to the young Anne. Through an acquaintance, Bob discovers that a local casino usually holds close to 800 million francs the night before the Grand Prix. Armed with that information (and the fact that Bob has done time in the past for robbery) Bob slowly sets a plan in motion to recruit and rob the casino. As in alot of Melville's films, good and evil are closely intertwined as Bob is friends with a local detective (Guy Decomble) and, naturally, in this world of pimps, thieves and jealousy, not everyone can keep a tight lip about Bob's foray into crime. Melville slowly boils the plot to a deceptively simple climax. Like the best of the burgeoning French New Wave cinema (which many regard this film as the first), Melville infuses more life and thought into the longeurs leading up to the crime rather than the crime itself. When most films would stage a set-piece around the casino hold-up, "Bob Le Flambeur" magnifies the small moments- the act of learning to crack a safe, the precise way in which Bob gets dressed before the robbery and looks around his apartment, and certainly the hypnotic spell that one gains when confronted with a hot winning streak. Like the best of Melville, the glory is in the details.

I first watched "Bob Le Flambeur" about five years ago when I was catching up with the films of Melville (few there are on DVD and VHS). It's unusual that 2006 was, perhaps, Melville's breakthrough year in filmmaking after being dead for over 30 years (he died in 1973 of a heart attack). Last year saw the release of his previously unseen 1969 film entitled Army of Shadows. The film went onto claim top spots in many critics' lists and renew an interest in Melville. It renewed my interest as well, forcing me to place the few Melville films I've seen onto my Netflix queue. My favorites, a close tie between "The Red Circle" and "Un Flic" (unusual because both are color efforts) are there but "Bob Le Flambeur" is something altogether different. It's a film that feels both familiar and alien at the same time. The similiarities are striking upon second viewing, however, that Melville was always working close to something basic, such as the way Detective Ledru and Bob are friends. All of Melville's films pare the film noir genre down to its simple essence. His characters are men of few words, calmly going through the rhythmns of crime with a precise attention to detail. In one scene, Bob takes all of his recruits out to a field where chalk lines are drawn on the ground mimicking the lay out of the casino. He forcefully but scientifically walks each man through his assignment, then calls it quits and hops back into the car without a word further. One gets the sense that Bob (like all of Melville's men) are floating towards an inescapable destiny that owe less to man's choices and more to the roulette wheel of chance. And that is what makes a great film noir- the idea that this is a world that defies calculation and planning, and runs by an entirely different set of rules that act like a black hole and, eventually, will suck the life and energy out of any man who chooses to step into the noir universe. Melville understood that, and Bob is the definitive noir character. If Bob could've been something else... a dentist or a construction worker... he would've been that nice guy next door. But, this is film noir, so he's a high rolling gambler who walks towards the void. The alien part comes with the way Melville's Paris feels like something out of a science fiction novel, framed at just the right moment when night is fading and daylight begins to unmask the neon ugliness. I can't think of another black and white film that uses light and darkness in quite the same way.

There's been one attempt to remake "Bob Le Flambeur", notably by director Neil Jordan in "The Good Thief" from 2003. Lacking in worn-out feel and featuring a disenchanted lead played by Nick Nolte, if anything, "The Good Thief" was to glossy to be a true noir. In a much less structured attempt, there are also some similiarities of "Bob Le Flambeur" to Paul Thomas Anderson's "Hard Eight" in 1997. The great Philip Baker Hall embodies the same type of wordless, gentle creature of the night who sulks across the Las Vegas dens and casinos with pure cool. He too befriends a puppy-dog like loser named John (John C. Reilly) and a down-on-her-luck beauty (Gwyneth Paltrow) who create a small family out of very little expectations with each other. Whereas Melville's world outlook was bleaker than Anderson's, giving the Paolo/John dependent a more sinister denouement in "Bob Le Flambeur" at the scene of the hotel robbery, "Hard Eight" is probably the closest any modern film noir has come to establishing that feel of all night activity taking a toll on the human body and mind. Both films portray the world outside of the dark gambling rooms as frustrating and encroaching. And both films present main characters who come from a life of crime and are simply waiting for that lifestyle to collect its dues. And its almost sad when those dues catch up to Bob the Gambler.

"Bob Le Flambeur" is the type of film that's easy to saddle with the monikor of film noir, and even easier to admire as a cynical and brilliantly simple representation of characters drawn to a certain type of lifestyle. I don't think film noir is dead. I just think it was done with more intelligence and passion when Jean Pierre Melville was creating masterpiece after masterpiece. 1955 and "Bob Le Flambeur" is as good as any place to start.

DVD classic- I, Vitelloni

Years before Federico Fellini came to cinematic prominence with films like “La Dolce Vita”, “81/2” and even “Nights of Cabiria”, he struck a minor miracle with his third film entitled “I, Vitelloni”. Probably one of the few best films about hanging out and not wanting to grow old ever filmed, it follows the lives of four young Italian friends as they chase women, party, obsess over future desires and kick about lazy jobs in a resort town. This was way before Fellini’s sprawling interest documenting the large social stratus of Rome… and it’s even a little tender when one of the friends, eventually, runs away to the city. It’s even more devastating because we know what this man will become in the amoral wash of “La Dolce Vita”. Fellini’s only intent here is to charm and present these five men as aimless, young and discontent… a feeling we all have at 23. And for its 1 hour and 45 minute running time, “I, Vitelloni” strikes a resonant chord as it observantly details the languidness of small time Italian life, as well as giving any film lover the glimpses of family and friendship that emerges in the later works of Scorsese and others.

Each character is drawn with vivid and humanistic flourishes. Fausto (Franco Fabrizi) is a relentless skirt chaser. When he impregnates Moraldo’s (Franco Interlenghi) sister Sandra, he learns to grow up fast and lands himself a boring job in an antique store that gives him equally flirtatious time with the shop owner’s wife. Leopoldo (Leopoldo Trieste) dreams of becoming a famous playwright, but when his idol comes to town, he receives a life lesson in major disappointment. Alberto (Alberto Sordi) continually worries about his mother and the effect the relationship his sister carries on with a married man will have upon her. In between the interruptions of modern life, Fellini frames his four young protagonists as genuinely likeable and ingratiating subjects. They fill their days walking along the beach, going to parties that last all night and drinking until they can’t stand up. But what’s even more prevalent in Fellini’s general outlook throughout the film are the bittersweet emotions that slowly build beneath the surface. We know someone, for all their posturing and talk of starting adult lives somewhere else, has to get out alive. And when it does happen and one character hops the train for Rome, there’s a simple camera move that’s earth-shattering in its translation of that single moment when we outgrow one part of our life and face ahead to the uncertain future as an adult. At its core, “I, Vitelloni” is about that five seconds of film, and everything up until that point is preparation.


So in regards to films about hanging out, I think there are 4 definitive versions that capture a vulnerable sense of time-standing-still. Only “I, Vitelloni” is an outright masterpiece, but…

2. Mean Streets, Scorsese’s ode to youth and violence that rolls Catholic guilt, taboo romance and violent urges into one rabble rousing tale of youth loose at night.
3. Beautiful Girls, Ted Demme’s highly overlooked 1995 film about the return home of one man to his childhood. It’s a film that reaches poignant heights and never gets old.
4. Diner, Barry Levinson’s portrait of 50’s youth enriches upon each viewing simply because the banter between the film’s actors feels so natural.
5. The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich’s supreme elegy to small town Texas life that gets it right on so many levels. If you didn’t grow up here, the nostalgia may be lost on you.