Just watched this on DVD for the first time, after reading for years that it had one of the best screenplays ever. Good, but so cynical that you wonder what they were really trying to tell us. Another gritty, black & white, "slice of life" film like many...telling us how ugly life really is. Depressing...
I'll take a second look and have more to say.
Regards,
RSGRE
Well, actually I saw this in one of my classes and my teacher told us that there actually was a guy in real life around that time that was the same as J.J. Hunsecker. Everyone was afraid of him and he could actually just clap his hands to have what he wanted and could bring anyone down. So imagine all the fuss it made when this came out back then...I believe they wanted to make him sweat...hehe
shareThanks for your comments chapndry. Yes, you are right, and the name of that man is the famous NYC columnist Walter Winchell. He was very powerful in his day, but slowly faded away in the 60's, when newspapers began to lose their influence to TV. Lost even more of his prestige when his son committed suicide.
"SSOS" is sort of like "Citizen Kane"...a mildly disguised expose of a powerful real personality.
Best regards,
RSGRE
Just watched this again...better the second time around, too much plot, sub-plot the first time, and I didn't quite realize just who all these people were supposed to be. As I said: it's as cynical as it gets. Even the NYC police are depicted as a bunch of goons for hire. Very interesting location "time capsule" quality to the film. Not for the meek or the weak...!
Regards,
RSGRE
Hehe this movie actually had bright spots (the girl and her lover, ...as boring as they were ), AND a (more or less) happy ending (the boy was crushed and in the hospital, but JJ had cleared him of the accusations, and now the girl had finally made her decision to leave her brother, which means that he couldn't harm the boy anymore without harming her DIRECTLY - as long as she was still attached to him, things were different.
It's another movie that is COMPLETELY dark and muddy - Sorry, Wrong Number. If I remember correctly, that flick has positively NO clean heroes.
...Which doesn't mean that I don't understand your disgust with this flick's protagonists - I remember myself thinking that gosh, these are a bunch of really really nasty fellows (that was after Sidney delivers almost forcefully that blond dame to Otis, before she is left alone with him and actually admits to having known him from earlier). But I find it a bit comforting to watch movies about nasty people - there's little chance that I'd get attached to them too much and suffer for their fate. I feel much more exposed when the protagonist is a nice (and vulnerable) character, and much more affected if the movie is about the fall of an initially likeable protagonist.
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I think of this picture as a critique of liberal capitalism as a whole. That is, a critique of a system which puts the profit in the first place. Falco's main goal is success, he'll do anything to get it, and he'll subdue to a man(Hunsecker) who is already on the top of the game, but we don't see him satisfied, we see him miserable, and in a wrongheaded relationship with his sister. I'll also point out that the only pure character in this picture(Steve) is smeared with a notion that he is a commie, and a stoner as well.
This kind of allegation, that was i believe usual for those times, hides(IMO) a frustration with the political system that makes us slaves for profit or fame, when those are not the things that make one happy or fulfilled.
I think that this movie is more about humans in general, and less about humans in a specific political system. Do you think that in a non-liberal-capitalistic regime guys like Falco or Hunsecker would behave differently? They may fight for different goals (even though "fight for success" is present in any regime), but they would still be ready to do anything to reach them. Sidney Falco was a slave of his own greed, not of a political system. Greed has always been present among us humans.
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I don't mean to offend you, but i think it's pretty shallow to say that this is a movie about humans in general.
I don't see Falco as a slave of greed, because than he would be merciless, i see him as i think director wanted us to see him, as a lost man who is trying to fit in. The problem is that he thinks the only way to be successful is to lie and scheme. If he was a slave of pure greed we wouldn't feel any sympathy towards him, but we do because we see he is lost, insecure and on a wrong track.
I think you lost a bigger picture of the movie that is filled with people trying to make it. Blond singer, senator, musicians, actors, journalists... All people obsessed with fame and nothing else.
And i think that's what society today(and back then) is all about. It doesn't matter what you do, but are you successful in it.
P.S. I'm also fan of The Pixies. Fave LP Bossanova :)
"The movie is about humanity" constitutes a larger picture than "The movie is about humans in a social system", so you can't say that I lost the bigger picture anyway, if anything I may have looked on a larger picture than intended. However, what you said was not an argument that the movie talks about a social system and not about humanity in general - blond singers, politicians, artists and journalists are at the core of the top level of any type of society. And trying to get close to them is what the little fish do all the time. If we want to get more specific, the movie is about people who deal with fame, about the dirt behind the shiny façade, about people who want to make it big, and fast, and there is a whole load of dirt behind all façades, and people who want fast money and fame all over the place.
And Sidney, though not 100% drenched in it, is a slave of his own greed, JJ says so himself in that extremely poignant moment when Sidney could have broken free and followed his straight instincts, but ends up falling back into his own cage: You're in jail. You're a prisoner of your own fears, your own greed and ambition.. We may feel sympathy for him (I haven't, but he didn't look like a monster either) because he is not deliberately vile like JJ, he even has sparks of morality in him, except that the nasty bits always get the better of him. Another quote, from JJ's secretary: You're a real rascal, Sidney. An amusing boy, but you haven't got a drop of respect in you for anything alive. You're so immersed in a theology of making a fast buck. Not that I don't sometimes feel that you yearn for something better. I wouldn't confuse "a theology of making a fast buck" with the general behaviour of a liberal capitalist society, unless I really wanted to see things in the narrowest key possible. Liberalism or capitalism are not synonymous with human greed and disregard for the other's sufferance and reaching one's goal by backstabbing and stealing, and the movie doesn't make a clear statement in this respect either - the world around Sidney is populated by all sorts of characters, only some of which are depraved and mean.
Also, Sidney being on the wrong track (I really wouldn't be so sure about lost and insecure) really does not make him less responsible for the damage he causes, particularly since he's well aware of it, accepting to hold JJ's column in that specific moment is a conscientious decision on his part, he knows very well that he's selling his soul. Except he's too weak and too yearning to be a part of the cool clique. Unlike another similar character, Harry Fabian from Night and the City, who was to a large degree childish and unaware of the trouble he created.
Unfortunately, my nick doesn't come from The Pixies, but anyway!
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I would confuse "a theology of making a fast buck" with the general behavior of a liberal capitalist society.
Anyway it was a pleasure chit chatting with you, honestly :-)
Thank you!
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Its a great example of the power that the Media hold, which is still relevent today. The first few mintues that we are introducted to JJ clearly shows this, he dominants the conversation with the senator and friends along with easily gaining information from the corrput policemen, as they refer to him as Mr Hunsecker. Therefore they show respect to him when really it should be the other way round. In most of JJ's scenes the cinematography with the low angle shots of him present JJ as a dominant individual. Besides from these points JJ had people like Falcon running around the city doing his dirty work, which leds to the smearing of the people JJ didn't like. Its proven true as Dallas loses his job over the allegations made against him. Overall it shows the audience that the Media is the most powerful entity of all, which can be a dangerous thing.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
I wondered if anyone else saw the movie as a quest for power. It's not the money so much as the power that money can bring that JJ has and Sidney wants.
Where are the flying cars? I want my flying car!