Movie Details
| Title: | The Lineup | |
| Director: | Don Siegel | |
| Year: | 1958 | |
| Genre: | Noir | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 03.03.23 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (9)
- The Beguiled
- Charley Varrick
- Coogan's Bluff
- Dirty Harry
- Escape from Alcatraz
- Madigan
- Private Hell 36
- Riot in Cell Block 11
- Two Mules for Sister Sara
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 03.03.23 | Internet | Some time in my latter high school years, I read a book called The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. I think at the time I'd heard that David Fincher was going to make it into a movie and I guess I saw it at a book store or something. This was around when I was exploring a bit more with authors. At first it was just Stephen King, then my grandfather read Jurassic Park when it came out (before the movie) so I read all of Crichton's stuff, then it was a shitload of D&D and Lovecraft stuff, but around this time I read Snow Crash and Neuromancer and was looking for more "adult" stuff to sound cool talking to my friends about and this one seemed pretty cool. It blew my mind. Ellroy did a couple things in that book that I didn't know you could do in a book, and it was the first in a quartet! So I read the next one, The Big Nowhere, and it blew my mind even more. That one in particular was like whoa, ok, what now? This exploration happened through the end of high school and into college. At some point the movie LA Confidential came out. I can't really remember whether I saw it before reading or not. My book's cover is the movie poster so I'm guessing I saw it first, but I remember having a visceral dislike for the screenwriter of the film when I read the book around the same time because his contributions (made with good intention to make this sprawling 600-page book into a 2-hour movie that made any sense at all) dumbed the shit out of the story. I HATED that Buzz Meeks was like a cameo in the movie when he was a goddamn point-of-view protagonist in The Big Nowhere! Anyway, I write all this to say, I think Ellroy's writing got me into film noir around that same time. In college I remember renting what I could find from video stores but it wasn't until I moved back home and started going through tv guides to set my vcr to record stuff off of tcm that I really got into the genre. I remember somewhere along the way, James Ellroy published or mentioned a list of his favorite film noirs and those went on the list to track down. Of course, at that time they were not all readily available to someone living in the boonies, but TCM did an admirable job of playing a bunch of films once a year so if you were vigilant and eagle-eyed you could catch some good stuff. But a few films on that list still fell through the cracks, most notably a move called The Prowler (i had no problem finding the 80s slasher film of that name but not the noir), and a movie called The Lineup. Well, I believe noir-scholar and Ellroy-friendo Eddie Muller found and restored The Prowler some years ago for his Noir City event but I haven't tracked it down and watched it yet. To be honest, I went through so many at that time... then a few years after that different studios put out competing noir series' on DVD that I bought pretty much all of (I still have a pile of Fox noirs that I haven't gone through), but I moved to Austin and discovered exploitation cinema and kinda considered my knowledge and exploration of noir "complete." But as we all know, nothing's ever complete in the world of fandom, so whenever I have occasion to dip back into this inky black world of nihilistic worldview and post-war malaise, it feels a bit like putting on a pair of well-worm comfy sweatpants or something. Except I've seen all the best-known and most talked-about of the genre so it's usually movies like Private Hell 36 that are interesting but not elevated to the thrill and pizzazz that originally drew me in with movies like Pickup on South Street, Odds Against Tomorrow, White Heat, Out of the Past, Sunset Boulevard, Gun Crazy, Detour, Kansas City Confidential, and the "Big" movies (The Big Sleep, The Big Heat, The Big Clock, The Big Combo). This one though. This is a fantastic movie. I felt like I was getting to see one of those movies mentioned above for the first time again. It's so good! The police side of things plays as straight and procedural as Call Northside 777 but it's just an entre into the heart of the movie which is Eli Wallach and his crew rolling around 50s San Francisco doing work and being dangerous. The actual line-up scene (which is a hundred percent inspiration for that other movie with the suspects that are usual) looks fantastic. The whole movie looks fantastic. It's such a change from 4 years earlier with Private Hell where everything was basically sets and standard framing. Here, Siegel's on the street, shooting widescreen, things are fast, the beginning scene is fast. You kinda root for Wallach but you kinda also don't. Mostly you just have a hell of a good time watching this movie! It's so good. Reading the imdb trivia, it was actually a movie from a tv show, which is even crazier to me. I mean, I like the Breaking Bad and Deadwood movies, but there's no way they'd make any sense without knowing and liking the show first. Plus that explains why the cops are so good in the first act! Ten minutes in I checked the credits because I hadn't seen any of the top billed people yet but these cop actors are absolutely carrying the story, but then Wallach shows up and they take a back seat for the rest of THEIR movie. It's not quite as egregious as Optimus Prime dying at the beginning of the Transformers movie but it's pretty close. But that's what makes it work as its own piece I think. Seeing it through the lens of the tv show, the beginning and ending make more sense but really the movie is about the criminals. And they are super good criminals. Richard Jaeckel, normally pretty bland to me, is great as the alcoholic young driver ("your prescription's just been cancelled, dipso"), bleary-eyed character face Robert Keith is super creepy as the psycopathic mentor who collects peoples' last words in a book, and Eli Wallach, normally taking beefier "theater-y" roles that I don't care for, brings that training to real depth and edge here. I really liked seeing him in the role and you can tell he's got something. Then of course all the supporting cast is also great. I particularly loved the look of the guy in the wheelchair at the end. And what a tough send off! "Maybe you'll make it to the airport, maybe you won't. But your time is borrowed. You're dead. NOW GET OUT!" with his smug grin. Man... Alright it's time to move on, but I'll just also mention that the SF location photography is great. They shoot in the Sutro baths at the end, and the embarcadero freeway still in construction. It's also worth noting that the rear projection photography is top-tier. The car chase at the end made it look like the camera car recording the rear projection footage is really who we should be watching. So, yeah. An A-tier new noir after all these years. It's really experiences like this that remind me why I love watching movies so much. |
