All posts by Jeff

Trench Coats, Cigarettes and Shootouts: Crime films from France and around the globe

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In the movies, crime might not pay; quite the opposite generally.  But it’s  a different outcome for the audience – they make their getaway from the experience all the richer with a metaphorical loot-bag of rewards for their eyes, ears and mind – not a bad haul for their viewing efforts.  And best of all? No one has to split up the riches! (If I’ve learned anything after watching a lot of crime films I’ve come to appreciate that the divvying up of spoils is so often where things go very wrong)

Okay, I’ll stop before I get arrested for torturing the metaphor any further. 

Like many people, I enjoy genre films. The biggest genre out there may be the one that I’ll refer to broadly as crime films.  I gravitate towards  crime movies in all their varieties: the heist film, the gangster film, prison break film, police procedural and so on.  Always popular, they keep coming to the screen year after year.

Why are people drawn to crime films? Maybe similar to horror films, there is some degree of escapism, but also catharsis and perhaps curiosity about how (or if)  it will all be resolved by the time the end credits roll.  No doubt about it, times are hard right now so maybe it’s the relief that comes after watching the action and telling yourself “Well…at least I’m having a better day than those guys there.” Sure you have spent 23 of the last 24 hours inside but you’re still probably thankful that it’s not you who is  on the lam (unless it’s the ever-cool Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Breathless in which case maybe you wouldn’t mind being them…just for a bit.)  Blu Ray cover of Breathless

One thing that draws me to of the  films I’m going to look at is that being from the 1950s – 1970s they give me a chance to see the character of cities like Paris and London as they used to be.  The era before most urban landscapes became dominated by a glut of global franchises creating a look of sameness.  

And just maybe since I haven’t worn anything that includes a collar for over 6 weeks I enjoy a little nattiness on the screen – because I sure don’t see it when I look in the mirror these days. (Although I remain very much unconvinced a fedora has any place in 21st century fashion)

A few weeks ago I took a look at Italian crime films from the 1970’s available on Kanopy.  As mentioned,  I’ll stick  with older films in the crime genre but this time I’ll look at how they do it around the globe.  Starting with France which is the headliner here.   In that last entry  I wrote about how none of the movies being discussed will ever be candidates for a Criterion release.  Well, it’s quite the opposite with the French movies. Many of them received the high brow treatment and are in fact available through the Criterion Collection and of course through Kanopy. 

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Big Men in Small Cars – Italian Movies in the ‘70s

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Fellini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, Rossellini, Leone. Everyone listed here is a) an iconic and generally well-regarded Italian film director and b) absolutely not the subject of this blog entry.

Instead I’m going to look at a very different sort of Italian filmmaker and the films they made, none of which are likely being considered for their own Criterion Collection release any time soon. (One of my alternate title choices was Italian Movies: The Not Exactly Criterion Edition) I’m referring to the trend in Italian crime films from the late 1960 into the mid-70s called Poliziotteschi.

Before I jump in with a quick summary of Poliziotteschi for the few readers who aren’t already fans of these decades-old Euro-crime thrillers I should add that most of the films mentioned here are available for streaming on Kanopy through the library.

My love of Italian crime films did not fully bloom until fairly recently. A few years ago, I started bringing home some Italian made Westerns (aka Spaghetti Westerns) from the library’s movie collection. Once those were exhausted, it was followed by a steady flow of Italian crime films (Poliziotteschi) and Italian horror-mystery (Giallo) from the 1970s. Italian crime film directors of the day wore their influences on their sleeves. They watched American films such as Bullitt, The French Connection, The Godfather, Dirty Harry, Serpico and Death Wish and I assume thought to themselves “Why not us?”

The Italian film industry of the time seems to have never met a single mini-trend in popular cinema it didn’t try to exploit and make their own. With mixed results. American films provided the inspiration, Italian directors provided the formula: Watch, imitate, repeat (It’s a small feat of linguistic contortionism that I have avoided using “rip off” here) until some level of financial success followed. Once they had a hit, like a stunt driver in their films’ obligatory car chase scenes, they kept the pedal to the medal churning out film after film in a movie-making-mill. Each trend was ridden remorselessly hard until it was bled dry financially and creatively. However, the fact is, the creative teams behind these movies put their own wonderfully unique stamp on the films that weren’t found in their American counterparts.

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Book(er) It Danno!

Nothing says current like choosing for a title a now semi-obscure but formally wide spread catch phrase from a cop show that went off the air 35 years ago (The original Hawaii 5-0: 1968 -1980)

booker

Lately it seems like everywhere I look, things are turning up Booker.  The literary prize formerly awarded to a work of fiction written by anyone from the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe, but as of this year (much to the dismay of many) it is a free for all open to anyone who writes in English… i.e. The Americans are now eligible (because the Pen/Faulkner, Pulitzer and National Book award aren’t enough for them I guess). Canadian authors have won three times, Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin) , Micheal Ondaatje (The English Patient) and Yann Martel (Life of Pi) …and if I’m not being a stickler, I could include Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries) who was born in Canada before moving to New Zealand at age 6.

Officially (and often reluctantly) called the Man Booker Prize since 2002 when the Man Group took over sponsorship of what had up to that point been called The Booker Prize ever since the Booker food wholesale distributors got behind the award in 1968…but most of the time it’s just called the Booker. And it is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world with the winning author raking in a cool £50,000 plus a real boost in sales and raised profile going to the winner.  In keeping with the way this post is all over the place, on the right  is an odd jumbled list of past winners.

Man-Booker-prize-winners--007In the last couple months I’ve gone to see two Booker winners give talks as they toured the area.  In May, the 2007 winner Anne Enright (The Gathering) spoke at the Toronto Public Library and in April the most recent recipient Richard Flanagan (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) was at Harbourfront’s International Festival of Authors.  If I had been more on top of things, the month before that 1989’s winner Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) also gave a talk down town but sadly I wasn’t clued in on time to see him.   Oh, and since I started writing this a few weeks ago, I learned another winner will be appearing in Toronto.  Salman Rushdie who won three times (that’s right! Three Times!)  for Midnight’s Children, firstly upon the book’s publication and then again in 1993 for a special 25th anniversary of prize sometimes called the Best of the Booker and then AGAIN (just to complete the hat trick) in 2008 for a 40th anniversary Best of the Booker prize.  Not bad for one title.

A couple weeks ago at Value Village I was lucky enough to find a signed first edition of The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 winner.   In the middle of all this, I happen to read a book by two time nominee, one time winner John Banville.

Of all the winning books I’ve only managed to read a few,  Possession, God Vernon Little,  The Remains of the Day, Disgrace, The Sea, The Gathering  and one of my all-time favourite books Graham Swift’s  Last Orders…all them worth your while.  Like most awards, there is generally some contention about the winners, the quality of nominees, the relevance of it in general; but It seems like the 90s were a bit of a dark time for evaluating the Booker nominees/winners..with one judge calling The God of Small Things “inexorable” and The Sea (which I thought was great) as being “possibly the most perverse decision in the history of the award”, in the year that The Last Orders won,  judge A.L. Kennedy disparaged the prize describing it thusly ” “a pile of crooked nonsense” with the winner determined by “who knows who, who’s sleeping with who, who’s selling drugs to who, who’s married to who, whose turn it is.”   Probably there is a bit of truth to that although hopefully exaggerated (maybe??).  ballroom Here we see a photo of the Booker awards gala. Sure, it looks elegant enough but with this much ego in one (very fancy) ballroom you can imagine the results.  But as a side note I do find it pretty entertaining when the literati trash talk one another.  A great example of this behaviour can be seen in a soon to be released documentary about Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. The Best of Enemies – written about here: .   Watch the famous (or is that notorious?) black and white video clip inserted in the article. It’s got some blue language but the entertainment value is through the roof. Hopefully upon its release the library will add it to the collection.

Here’s one last bit of interesting Booker related miscellanea..Slow Journalism’s magazine Delayed Gratification analysed all the winning books and came to the following conclusions. 

“By analysing data from 45 years of the Man Booker Prize, we discovered that – perhaps unsurprisingly – if you want to win, you’re best off as an Englishman in his fifties writing his fourth novel. Ticking those boxes and still no joy? Make your protagonist an Englishman too, set your story in the present day and begin your narrative in the third person and you’ve got a formula for success”


Winning a Booker Prize infographic from Delayed Gratification, the Slow Journalism magazine.
Click here for zoomable version.

 So this brings to and end a very selective and scatter-shot overview of the Booker. Keep your eyes open for 2015 Long List of nominees which will be announced on July 29.  The winner is crowned on October 13, 2015.