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"The Big Combo by Philip Yordan" – that's the title credit to this amusingly pulpy 1955 crime movie, playing at the AFI Silver on Saturday at 7:15 p.m. and Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. The reputation of the director, Joseph H. Lewis, has ballooned because of the cult fervor for "Gun Crazy," his feral 1949 version of the Bonnie-and-Clyde legend. ("Gun Crazy" plays at AFI Silver Saturday at 5:20 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.) But Philip Yordan - the screenwriter - is probably responsible for this picture's liveliest gimmicks. "Combo" doesn't refer to a jazz group but to "the Combination" (read: mob or Mafia), here headed by one of movie gangland's old reliables, Richard Conte. Cornel Wilde stars as the police lieutenant determined to bring Conte down. Wilde's real-life wife, Jean Wallace, plays the swing character - a cultured blonde who's Conte's latest moll and Wilde's obsession. The cop believes he can turn the gal against Conte.
Yordan allegedly put his name alone on many scripts written or co-written by other (often blacklisted) writers, yet his work on "The Big Combo" is undisputed. He contributes some intriguing peculiarities. For example, Brian Donlevy, as Conte's ex-boss and current flunky, wears a hearing aid that becomes Conte's prime tool of torture and the source of Lewis' most celebrated directorial effects. For this kind of rabid B-movie, it's also piquant that Conte's most effective defense against exposure turns out to be the writ of habeas corpus. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman, as Conte's hit men, combine with Donlevy to form a generational study of film thug-hood. And if Lewis is all punch, no jab, he does have a junk-yard visual panache. He goes in for Cheapside chiaroscuro. It pays off when Wallace uses a spotlight to trace Conte's zigzag flight on foot through a night-blackened airport.
"Ace in the Hole" (playing Saturday at 3 p.m. and Thursday at 7 p.m.) is Billy Wilder's prescient, two-pronged slam at scoop-crazy journalism and the herd mentality of the media. Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, an exiled New York reporter who rides his typewriter like a hot rod while seeking a way back into the big time. Rusticating in New Mexico, he gets a sensational scoop: The collapsing rock and sand of a sacred Indian burial cavern have trapped a local treasure-hunter. Tatum doesn't merely run with the story. He extends it into a record-breaking front-page marathon by manipulating the local sheriff to delay the rescue. In this film, misanthropy and sentimentality are two sides of the same tarnished Indian-head penny.
In reality, Tatum flattens humanity with his ruthlessness and disdain; on paper he does it with ostentatious pity. In both cases, he reduces complexities to commodities. "Ace in the Hole" draws on Wilder's firsthand knowledge of journalism - he was a reporter in Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s - as well as his observations of postwar America's moral drift. This movie boasts the bitter tang of real experience, from Wilder and from Douglas, too, who radiates alpha-male appetites with a scary intensity and killer instinct. Skewering sleaze merchants such as Douglas' Tatum, Wilder hits a bigger target: the packaged reality of "human interest."
Check www.AFI.com/Silver for updates; call 301-495-6720 for general information or 301-495-6700 for pre-recorded program information.
Fellini at The Charles: Admirers of Federico Fellini's late baroque style will savor "Amarcord," his autobiographical extravaganza about Italian provincial life in the 1930s. It won the Academy Award for the Best Foreign-Language Film in 1975. It screens Saturday at noon, Monday at 7 p.m. and Thursday at 9 p.m.
Call 410-727-FILM or go to theCharles.com.
Cinefest continues at the Gordon Center: The Jewish Film Festival's admirably selective fall CineFest series continues Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts with "Eli and Ben," an Israeli drama about a 12-year-old boy determined to prove that his architect father never took any bribes. Sanford J. Ungar, president of Goucher College, will be the guest speaker.
The Gordon Center for the Performing Arts is located at 3506 Gwynnbrook Ave., Owings Mills. For updates, check baltimorejff.com.
Native sons meet at MFF fundraiser: The Maryland Film Festival is selling tickets for its unprecedented - and, potentially, equally enlightening and uproarious - native-son summit Nov. 14 of Barry Levinson, David Simon and John Waters. TCM's Elvis Mitchell will moderate at MICA's Brown Center. There will also be an auction of movie-related items. For $250, all-access pass-holders can attend dinner with the filmmakers and a dessert reception afterward, as well as receive assigned seats. Conversation-only tickets cost $150 and include a cash bar before the event, the conversation and auction, as well as a one-year membership in Friends of the Festival at the Presenter Level (usually $50). To purchase tickets or co-sponsor the event, call 410-752-8083.
Yordan allegedly put his name alone on many scripts written or co-written by other (often blacklisted) writers, yet his work on "The Big Combo" is undisputed. He contributes some intriguing peculiarities. For example, Brian Donlevy, as Conte's ex-boss and current flunky, wears a hearing aid that becomes Conte's prime tool of torture and the source of Lewis' most celebrated directorial effects. For this kind of rabid B-movie, it's also piquant that Conte's most effective defense against exposure turns out to be the writ of habeas corpus. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman, as Conte's hit men, combine with Donlevy to form a generational study of film thug-hood. And if Lewis is all punch, no jab, he does have a junk-yard visual panache. He goes in for Cheapside chiaroscuro. It pays off when Wallace uses a spotlight to trace Conte's zigzag flight on foot through a night-blackened airport.
"Ace in the Hole" (playing Saturday at 3 p.m. and Thursday at 7 p.m.) is Billy Wilder's prescient, two-pronged slam at scoop-crazy journalism and the herd mentality of the media. Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, an exiled New York reporter who rides his typewriter like a hot rod while seeking a way back into the big time. Rusticating in New Mexico, he gets a sensational scoop: The collapsing rock and sand of a sacred Indian burial cavern have trapped a local treasure-hunter. Tatum doesn't merely run with the story. He extends it into a record-breaking front-page marathon by manipulating the local sheriff to delay the rescue. In this film, misanthropy and sentimentality are two sides of the same tarnished Indian-head penny.
In reality, Tatum flattens humanity with his ruthlessness and disdain; on paper he does it with ostentatious pity. In both cases, he reduces complexities to commodities. "Ace in the Hole" draws on Wilder's firsthand knowledge of journalism - he was a reporter in Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s - as well as his observations of postwar America's moral drift. This movie boasts the bitter tang of real experience, from Wilder and from Douglas, too, who radiates alpha-male appetites with a scary intensity and killer instinct. Skewering sleaze merchants such as Douglas' Tatum, Wilder hits a bigger target: the packaged reality of "human interest."
Check www.AFI.com/Silver for updates; call 301-495-6720 for general information or 301-495-6700 for pre-recorded program information.
Fellini at The Charles: Admirers of Federico Fellini's late baroque style will savor "Amarcord," his autobiographical extravaganza about Italian provincial life in the 1930s. It won the Academy Award for the Best Foreign-Language Film in 1975. It screens Saturday at noon, Monday at 7 p.m. and Thursday at 9 p.m.
Call 410-727-FILM or go to theCharles.com.
Cinefest continues at the Gordon Center: The Jewish Film Festival's admirably selective fall CineFest series continues Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts with "Eli and Ben," an Israeli drama about a 12-year-old boy determined to prove that his architect father never took any bribes. Sanford J. Ungar, president of Goucher College, will be the guest speaker.
The Gordon Center for the Performing Arts is located at 3506 Gwynnbrook Ave., Owings Mills. For updates, check baltimorejff.com.
Native sons meet at MFF fundraiser: The Maryland Film Festival is selling tickets for its unprecedented - and, potentially, equally enlightening and uproarious - native-son summit Nov. 14 of Barry Levinson, David Simon and John Waters. TCM's Elvis Mitchell will moderate at MICA's Brown Center. There will also be an auction of movie-related items. For $250, all-access pass-holders can attend dinner with the filmmakers and a dessert reception afterward, as well as receive assigned seats. Conversation-only tickets cost $150 and include a cash bar before the event, the conversation and auction, as well as a one-year membership in Friends of the Festival at the Presenter Level (usually $50). To purchase tickets or co-sponsor the event, call 410-752-8083.
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