Criterion

Coming Up on TV and DVD: The Battle of Algiers

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On July 28, Turner Classic Movies will broadcast The Battle of Algiers, the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters.  Although it looks like a documentary, it is not.  Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching strategy councils of each side.  Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides.

Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency.  In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders.

In addition, Criterion is about to release The Battle of Algiers in one of its magnificent DVDs.

DVD of the Week: Kiss Me Deadly

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Now film noir is by definition dark and cynical, but 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly is downright pissed off and nasty.  Ralph Meeker stars as LA private eye Mike Hammer in this delightfully lowbrow film noir, based on a Mickey Spillane novel.  Much of the fun comes from the menacing nuclear glow of the briefcase that is the film’s MacGuffin.

On his indieWIRE blog, Peter Bogdanovich writes that Robert Aldrich hated Spillane’s pulp so much that he concluded the screenplay with nuclear annihilation.

In the subversive 1984 cult classic Repo Man, the glowing briefcase reappears in the truck of a repossessed sedan.

The Criterion Collection has just released its DVD of Kiss Me Deadly.

DVD of the Week: Diabolique

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The headmaster of a provincial boarding school is so cruel, even sadistic, that everyone wants him dead, especially his wife and his mistress.  When he goes missing, the police drain the murky pool where the killers dumped the body, and the killers get a big surprise.  Now the suspense from director Henri-Georges Clouzot really starts.

A master of the thriller, Clouzot was nicknamed the French Hitchcock.  In an achingly scary scene from Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, two truck drivers try to get a long truck around a cliff side hairpin curve  – and the truck is filled with nitroglycerin.  If you like Diabolique, you’ll probably also like another domestic murder – this time set in Paris – Quai des Orfevres.  Criterion has released the Diabolique DVD.

DVD of the Week: Le Cercle Rouge

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Can a French 1970 color film that stars cool guys like Alain Delon and Yves Montand qualify as film noir?  You bet, especially when written and directed by a master of noir like Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Samourai).

A thief gets out of prison, immediately robs his former crime boss and goes on the run.  An escaped murderer stows away in the trunk of his car.  Now they are both on the run from a very cynical and driven cop – as well as from the  gangsters.    They hire a dissolute former cop and try to pull off a heist.  The honest cop who is chasing them squeezes a shady nightclub owner to betray them.

There’s a chase and shootings and a heist that takes up the final 30 minutes, but Le Cercle Rouge is not about the action.  It’s about the nature of these characters, guys who live by their own codes.  They know what they’re gonna do, and they don’t need to think about why.  There’s minimal dialogue, and they look and act really cool for all 140 minutes.

Criterion has just released Le Cercle Rouge on DVD.  Take a look.  Here’s the trailer in French.