AmateisGal
I'll Lock Up
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Suicide Squad. Better than I expected.
I watched the first half hour of this before I left yesterday, and liked what I saw. Unfortunately, I forgot to hit the "record" button. ...
The Duellists (1977) It won the Best Debut Film of 1977 at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a Ridley Scott film based on a Joseph Conrad short story The Duel ( Point of Honor in the US). Acting is great Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel and the photography superb. A story set during the Napoleonic Wars about a long standing duel. I would consider a must watch.
Suicide Squad. Better than I expected.
The Duellists (1977) It won the Best Debut Film of 1977 at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a Ridley Scott film based on a Joseph Conrad short story The Duel ( Point of Honor in the US). Acting is great Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel and the photography superb. A story set during the Napoleonic Wars about a long standing duel. I would consider a must watch.
I saw this when it debuted in London. It was our first glimpse of what Ridley Scott was capable of. It was shot on an amazingly small budget. Having seen it, you'd swear that it was a big-budget movie. Scott just made you remember it that way. A full half of the budget went to the soldiers' elaborate uniforms, some of them made by the same companies that made the Napoleonic originals.The Duellists (1977) It won the Best Debut Film of 1977 at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a Ridley Scott film based on a Joseph Conrad short story The Duel ( Point of Honor in the US). Acting is great Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel and the photography superb. A story set during the Napoleonic Wars about a long standing duel. I would consider a must watch.
The final 40 minutes or so of Billy Wilder's The Apartment from 1960. Noticed 3 little details. Late in the film, when C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is helping Fran Kubelik (Shirley Maclaine) recover from her suicide attempt in the early hours of Christmas Day, he's still wearing the shirt he wore to the office on Christmas Eve. His collar is unbuttoned and his tie undone, and his collar pin is still dangling from the right side of his collar.
A little later, he takes his safety razor from the medicine cabinet, and we see it's a butterfly type, where you unscrew the bottom of the shaft and the doors open for the blade to be removed or inserted. No idea if it's an adjustable, but otherwise it could well be a twin for the one I use. Bud seems to prefer shave foam in a can, though.
All of these things add to the realism of the scenes.
(Early this year I had fun writing a fan fiction crossover with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and these two characters, married, 4 years later.)
Such a nice movie. Good story. Very good acting. And really nice cinematography.The final 40 minutes or so of Billy Wilder's The Apartment from 1960. Noticed 3 little details. Late in the film, when C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is helping Fran Kubelik (Shirley Maclaine) recover from her suicide attempt in the early hours of Christmas Day, he's still wearing the shirt he wore to the office on Christmas Eve. His collar is unbuttoned and his tie undone, and his collar pin is still dangling from the right side of his collar.
A little later, he takes his safety razor from the medicine cabinet, and we see it's a butterfly type, where you unscrew the bottom of the shaft and the doors open for the blade to be removed or inserted. No idea if it's an adjustable, but otherwise it could well be a twin for the one I use. Bud seems to prefer shave foam in a can, though.
All of these things add to the realism of the scenes.
(Early this year I had fun writing a fan fiction crossover with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and these two characters, married, 4 years later.)
I must admit I never noticed this detail in all the previous times, dating back to the early '70s, that I've watched this film. You're probably right about the highlight it provides. Always I wonder, though, if a creative person, writer or director, actually has such interpretations, or any "subsurface" meaning, consciously in mind at the moment of writing of filming -- or if he merely goes with what his instinct tells him works.I know the exact detail you mentioned about the collar - it is, for some reason, poignant - that, or we are both oddballs who notice those things.
But kidding aside, I think it is smart directing that highlights the exhaustion of it all at that point and the insignificance / superficiality of a "buttoned-up / pinned-collar smartness" in a world of shabby affairs and inequality amidst the hardships and struggles of life.