commander_zero
Joined Jul 2009
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commander_zero's rating
From its rocky welcome in 1964, Marnie has evidently found critical redemption, but as a viewing experience it hasn't aged well. Granted the opening sequences, where the viewer only sees Marnie from behind, are brilliant, with the suspenseful montage and striking colour coding between her bright yellow bag and charcoal surroundings.
Throughout the film, however, Marnie's strengths alternate regularly with a generally unpalatable story. At times it's as if Hitchcock was trying a re-do of Vertigo (similarly panned on its release, but with time reinforcing rather than weakening its many strengths). There is once again a Bernard Herrmann score (lush and romantic, but not as striking as the early minimalism of his Vertigo score), but this time the man obsessed with a troubled blonde woman doesn't seem quite as troubled himself; among other things, Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren are much closer in age, so that Connery (who had just started his career as James Bond) seems more like an active young man in love with a woman his own age than a traumatized middle-aged retired cop (like James Stewart in Vertigo) who wants to possess a younger dream-woman. Although Tippi Hedren, still new to acting, does pretty well with a difficult role, she is frequently upstaged by her rival for Connery's affections, Diane Baker; a switch in casting could have made a more effective film with Baker as the neurotic Marnie and Hedren as the secure caretaker, both in love with Connery and because she's looking out for him, always watching and judging Marnie (it is necessary to pay attention closely; Baker calls Connery's father "Dad" and at the same time acts like Connery's sister, but at least for plot purposes, she can be legitimately in love with him, I think, without a suggestion of incest because she is actually the sister of his deceased wife).
The climactic flashback-that-explains-everything (with Bruce Dern as the sailor who comes to buy sex with Marnie's mother, and meets a bad end for fondling five-year-old Marnie) is strikingly photographed, but fails to erase the viewer's impression that Connery's character is driving off into the Baltimore sunset with a woman who is certainly going to make his life miserable. When the film was released, Hitchcock - post-North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds - had reached the peak of his stardom and, afflicted with the curse of the Genius label, was about to start losing the circle of collaborators who had helped him make several decades of great films. One might want to celebrate Marnie as a Hitchcock classic, but instead of re-watching it, go back to Foreign Correspondent, Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo ... in fact, almost anything else but Marnie.
Throughout the film, however, Marnie's strengths alternate regularly with a generally unpalatable story. At times it's as if Hitchcock was trying a re-do of Vertigo (similarly panned on its release, but with time reinforcing rather than weakening its many strengths). There is once again a Bernard Herrmann score (lush and romantic, but not as striking as the early minimalism of his Vertigo score), but this time the man obsessed with a troubled blonde woman doesn't seem quite as troubled himself; among other things, Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren are much closer in age, so that Connery (who had just started his career as James Bond) seems more like an active young man in love with a woman his own age than a traumatized middle-aged retired cop (like James Stewart in Vertigo) who wants to possess a younger dream-woman. Although Tippi Hedren, still new to acting, does pretty well with a difficult role, she is frequently upstaged by her rival for Connery's affections, Diane Baker; a switch in casting could have made a more effective film with Baker as the neurotic Marnie and Hedren as the secure caretaker, both in love with Connery and because she's looking out for him, always watching and judging Marnie (it is necessary to pay attention closely; Baker calls Connery's father "Dad" and at the same time acts like Connery's sister, but at least for plot purposes, she can be legitimately in love with him, I think, without a suggestion of incest because she is actually the sister of his deceased wife).
The climactic flashback-that-explains-everything (with Bruce Dern as the sailor who comes to buy sex with Marnie's mother, and meets a bad end for fondling five-year-old Marnie) is strikingly photographed, but fails to erase the viewer's impression that Connery's character is driving off into the Baltimore sunset with a woman who is certainly going to make his life miserable. When the film was released, Hitchcock - post-North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds - had reached the peak of his stardom and, afflicted with the curse of the Genius label, was about to start losing the circle of collaborators who had helped him make several decades of great films. One might want to celebrate Marnie as a Hitchcock classic, but instead of re-watching it, go back to Foreign Correspondent, Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo ... in fact, almost anything else but Marnie.
Ignoring phone calls from his landlord, and dissembling on calls from his live-in partner - who wants to know when he'll be home to help with the baby, and why the wifi isn't working, he's paid the bill hasn't he? - ride-sharing driver D doesn't have to think long and hard when a passenger suggests he do the same work for a new company. As long as he doesn't talk to the passengers, and does EVERYTHING the app tells him to do, he can make a lot more money essentially doing the same work that is leaving him broke.
Nathanael Chadwick's D has quickly established himself as a sympathetic character: laid off from his office job by a corporate merger, he uncomplainingly tries to do right by his young family and even by his often-obnoxious customers. So when he accepts the stranger's offer, we're rooting for him to start pulling down several thousand bucks a night, even if it means - what? - transporting drugs and guns?
At first this seems to be the case, and maybe D can handle it, but as the long night wears on, the tension mounts as D is ordered to transport an armed thief - or maybe hit man - and this new rideshare's business starts to appear more and more predatory. This might be D's first big night to make big bucks, but the rideshare fines him every time he makes a wrong move, and the things it makes him do become more ruthless and more dangerous.
Chadwick heads a small cast (augmented by hundreds of bystanders and partygoers in the background of Toronto night streets, and late in the film, even a pair of prowling raccoons) with vivid entries also made by Christian Aldo as the gunman, Catt Filippov as a professional party girl, and Reece Presley and Lauren Welchner as a pair of nasty quasi-vampiric kidnappers. With these forces at play, not until the last scenes do we find out if D can both extricate and redeem himself.
Since its emergence after World War II, film noir has always been cinema's low-budget underbelly, devising works that have kept stoking viewers' imaginations longer than most of their more mainstream contemporaries. Made with cellphones, a small cast and crew, and an expert score from Antonio Naranjo, Michael Pierro's "Self Driver" makes a good case for nouveau film noirs that are even darker and grittier than their predecessors.
Nathanael Chadwick's D has quickly established himself as a sympathetic character: laid off from his office job by a corporate merger, he uncomplainingly tries to do right by his young family and even by his often-obnoxious customers. So when he accepts the stranger's offer, we're rooting for him to start pulling down several thousand bucks a night, even if it means - what? - transporting drugs and guns?
At first this seems to be the case, and maybe D can handle it, but as the long night wears on, the tension mounts as D is ordered to transport an armed thief - or maybe hit man - and this new rideshare's business starts to appear more and more predatory. This might be D's first big night to make big bucks, but the rideshare fines him every time he makes a wrong move, and the things it makes him do become more ruthless and more dangerous.
Chadwick heads a small cast (augmented by hundreds of bystanders and partygoers in the background of Toronto night streets, and late in the film, even a pair of prowling raccoons) with vivid entries also made by Christian Aldo as the gunman, Catt Filippov as a professional party girl, and Reece Presley and Lauren Welchner as a pair of nasty quasi-vampiric kidnappers. With these forces at play, not until the last scenes do we find out if D can both extricate and redeem himself.
Since its emergence after World War II, film noir has always been cinema's low-budget underbelly, devising works that have kept stoking viewers' imaginations longer than most of their more mainstream contemporaries. Made with cellphones, a small cast and crew, and an expert score from Antonio Naranjo, Michael Pierro's "Self Driver" makes a good case for nouveau film noirs that are even darker and grittier than their predecessors.