IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)

IN A LONELY PLACE is a superbly acted thriller starring Humphrey Bogart as a once-successful, no cynical Hollywood screen-writer called Dix.  As the film opens he asks a coat-check girl back to his apartment, ostensibly to tell him the plot of a murder-mystery she's reading so he doesn't have to read it before adapting it.  Naturally this involves her screaming "help" as she re-enacts it.  The problem is that the girl is found murdered the next day and Dix is the prime suspect until his new neighbour Laurel (Gloria Grahame) provides a false alibi and they start an affair. It starts ominously. Laurel is interviewed by the police with Dix sitting behind her looking menacing - the picture shown above. He reveals he saw her wearing a negligee. There's a lot of sexual tension and provocation right there. After this, the film really gets interesting, as we see these two characters evenly matched. Both are mature, probably sexually experienced, and go into their new relationship with their eyes open.  Both are also flawed. The question is how far this hard-drinking, violent, resentful man can ever be healed by his lover, and how far Laurel will stick it out against a background of increasing distrust and then fear.  Grahame's portrait of a woman genuinely in love with a man who is at the very least bordering on alcoholic and violently angry and at most a murderer is nuanced, heart-breaking and feels authentic.  It's one of her best, and is what I would love her to be remembered for, rather than the silly "girl who can't get enough" from OKLAHOMA!

I.O.U.S.A - Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month

I.O.U.S.A. is a poorly made, poorly argued, poorly illustrated documentary about a serious issue, the US public debt. In a nutshell, the issue is this: prudence dictates that a government should only spend (on social security, building roads, fighting wars) as much as it earns (raising taxes). This is a balanced-budget. But, for centuries, governments have borrowed to spend and run up a "public debt". It's the equivalent of taking out a mortgage, except that, being the US, supposedly the most financially secure country in the world, the mortgage payments are very cheap. Over the past decade, the US government has taken the equivalent of a massive mortgage from China and Japan. The difference is that whereas you and I pay back our own mortgage, when the government takes out a mortgage, it's the future generations who pay through higher taxes. Now, the borrowing can still be justified if the money is spent on things that make the country more productive and thus ease the burden on future generations - stuff like building roads. (The equivalent of investing in a house and building equity - so long as you don't buy at an over-inflated price!) But if the government incurs long-run debt just to spend on frivolous stuff like cash hand-outs (the equivalent of mortgage equity withdrawal used to buy a new stereo) it's less justifiable. Moreover, as with a household, the government can take on so much debt that they risk defaulting. Historically, it was unthinkable that the US would default because, hey, it was super financially secure! The documentary argues that this isn't the case any more. To my mind this is a bit of a straw man to argue against. What would be more likely to happen, though still highly unlikely, is that the US would have to pay more for its debt. This is like riskier households paying higher mortgage rates than secure households. After all, there is a good reason why China and Japan lent so much money to the US. US debt is seen as a "safe haven" asset - there are few safer places to put your money. I mean, think about, would you rather invest in the housing market or the equity market or lend to the UK government?! For instance, last October when Lehman Brothers went bust, everyone was rushing to lend to the US - for safety - despite the already large debt. Indeed, the US was paying an interest rate of zero! So much for pricing default risk.

Taking a strongly partisan stance, director Patrick Creadon frames this issue by following the leader of the lobby group, The Concord Coalition, as he tries to whip up public anger at the state of the country's finances. Admittedly, Creadon has a tough job. The lobbyist is not particularly charismatic, and the subject he is tackling is complicated and dry. But, having seen Al Gore basically make a powerpoint presentation interesting, we know it can be done. It's hard to know what someone would think who had never considered this issue. Would they be entertained and educated? Given that my day job focuses heavily on this subject, I found the substance of the film to be poorly argued, trivialised and ill-presented. The interview snippet with Warren Buffett is short and unexciting and footage of Alan Greenspan scarce. The documentary also betrays partisanship in the kind of economic assumptions it makes, and thus, the kind of political stance it leans towards. If you really want to know more about this topic, you'd do better to start here.

I.O.U.S.A. played Sundance 2008 and was released in the US last summer and in the UK last November. It is available on DVD.

CASABLANCA - wonderful contradictions

What can I say about CASABLANCA that hasn't already been said by more articulate reviewers - that hasn't been confirmed by continuous sales over the last sixty-odd years and countless accolades in those AFI Best Of.. lists? As with THE THIRD MAN, all I can give is a personal response. I first watched CASABLANCA on a scratchy video copy at college and was struck not so much by the famous love story but by the dry wit of the script. And as I continued watching it - and I have watched it many times since on video, DVD and restored at the cinema - I am always struck by the inherent contradictions in the movie and I am convinced that it is this tension and subtle complexity that make CASABLANCA such an outstanding film. *Spoilers follow*

So to take it from the top....The protagonist is a bundle of wonderful contradictions. Rick Blaine is a wry, apparently cynical night-club owner who professes to protect no-one's skin but his own. And yet, he has fought on many a losing side in Europe and ultimately makes a sacrifice not merely for love but also for the Czech independence movement. He is played by Humphrey Bogart, an unconventionally handsome man, famous for his roles as wry private eyes with a penchant for white knight behaviour that gets them beaten up and not much love or money when all the fighting's over. In other words, despite Rick's superficial cynicism, he is a romantic.

The heroine is a superficially modern woman called Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman at the height of her beauty. She had an affair with Rick in Paris, but left him for the Czech freedom fighter, Victor Lazlo. Despite the fact that she is beyond the conventional morality of the time - she will eventually leave Casablanca with Lazlo rather than staying with Blaine, to become, essentially, a conventional First Lady figure and emotional support. Blaine may push her onto that plane but I believe Ilsa has a strong enough character to refuse if she really wanted to.

The supporting characters are also a rich rogue's gallery of witty, politically slippery refugees, black marketeers and military officers. The contradiction here is in the film-makers deliberate attempt to make the rogues likeable and to allow Rick to find a certain camaraderie among these slippery people.

Further to this, we have a lushly romantic film - with one of the most emotionally devestating final scenes - wherein the best remembered lines are remarkably ordinary - remarkably colloquial and everyday. "Here's looking at you kid" is a classic example: hardly a dramatic, flowery declaration of passionate love, and yet the fantastic chemistry between the two leads makes us believe that that's exactly what they feel. But let's take this further and look at the tone of the film in which this passionate love story is played out. I give you the following dialogue as an example:

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

This dialogue is funny in its own right, but I think it does more than that. It's sharpness cuts through the heavy romance of the core story and stops it from becoming cloying. Which is why, while we adore CASABLANCA because it is a noble story of love renounced for a greater good, we watch it again and again because it is also good fun. To wit, up with all those famous lines of dialogue about love, perhaps one of the most famous lines has nothing to do with the love story at all: "Louie, this could be the start of a beautiful relationship."

You know all about this, of course. CASABLANCA is a genuinely great and popular movie. Memorable characters, general character development, a narrative that keeps you hanging even when you've seen it before, witty dialogue and an emotional payoff at the end...... But it is worth seeking the movie on re-release because you'll better really appreciate the skillful and economical direction of Michael Curtiz (ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) and the photography of Arthur Edeson (THE MALTESE FALCON) on the big screen.

CASABLANCA was originally released in 1942. It won Oscars for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay but bizarrely lost out on the Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Photography and Orchestral Score gongs. It is currently on re-release in the UK.