From the Rental Vault: Crime, Not Paying

The idea of location shooting in movies today -- especially with the technology available -- is commonplace. But when director Jules Dassin and producer Mark Hellinger decided to do it with the noirish crime procedural The Naked City in 1947, they were breaking new ground.

Dassin and Hellinger tell the story of homicide detectives from Manhattan's 10th precinct investigating the murder of a young woman, Jean Dexter. The experienced and canny Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) helps teach the naïve rookie Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) how to work a case as they use old-fashioned shoe leather clue hunting as well as misdirection to keep potential suspects on their toes. Jean's friend Frank Niles (Howard Duff) may know much more than he's saying, especially when what he's saying doesn't add up. But there's also the mysterious Mr. Henderson that no one can find.

Plot-wise, City is a pretty much by-the-book procedural -- no car chases and not a lot of fisticuffs or gunplay. Its major attraction is the slice of life of late 1940s New York City -- Dassin's crew would film street scenes from a van with tinted windows so that passers-by wouldn't realize they were in a movie and he could capture real-life behavior. Fitzgerald is, as always, a hoot even while he masks his wit under a happy-go-lucky Irish bumpkin cover, and Taylor is appropriately earnest as the new young detective (and he bears a resemblance to Chris Noth, who would later take up that same mantle during his original stint on Law & Order).

Dassin, Hellinger and screenwriters Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald wisely keep their simple tale short, so as not to weigh down the spectacular visuals with lingering in a plot that's admittedly not that deep. It helps a viewer appreciate this story, which is one of the eight million that Hellinger's narration assures us is in "the naked city."

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Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) is a bounty hunter in the Old West, but he has a special mission besides making money. He looks at every capture for a way to find Frank (Lee Van Cleef), the outlaw who killed his wife several years ago. And now, by apprehending the dimwitted Billy (James Best), he has his lever -- because Frank and Billy are brothers. But the presence of the young widow Carrie (Karen Steele) will complicate Brigade's trek through the wilderness to bring Billy to justice and bring Frank to heel. So will gunmen Sam Boone (Pernell Roberts) and Whit (James Coburn). They want the bounty for Billy as well, and Brigade knows they will have few scruples about how they get it. So even though he is surrounded by people, Brigade must Ride Lonesome in the 1959 Budd Boetticher-Harry Joe Brown production.

Scott, Boetticher and Brown had worked together several times and here create yet another unassuming-looking B-Western that pays as much attention to the crafts of acting, directing and movie-making as any auteur-driven piece from the forefront of artistic cinema. Brigade may be working on the side of the law, but he is a driven man rather than a good one -- he will place innocents at risk to gain his revenge. Frank is a bad man, but his concern for his brother is genuine and motivates him as much as anything else. Sam Boone has yet to decide how good or bad he will be, and the sparring between Roberts and Scott is a highlight of the movie. In only his third picture, Roberts is already very at ease on screen and that allows him to play off the hyper-taut and driven Scott to the benefit of both their characters. Steele lives up to her name and makes Carrie more than just an incongruously beautiful woman in the middle of nowhere. And in his debut, Coburn takes hold of his role in a way that would get him his eventual attention-grabbing spot in The Magnificent Seven, with Scott commenting on their first scene together, "I like his style."

Ride Lonesome is another example of how so-called genre pictures, in this case an old-fashioned horse opera, can demonstrate a level of craft and art equal to any acclaimed masterpiece, and how when well-done can prompt the same kind of reflection and consideration of the human condition and what it means. It's not two hours of a mime weeping -- Randolph Scott could crush a mime with his squint -- but it's just as thoughtful and a whole lot more fun to watch.

Seeing the Future

In 1932, Winston Churchill was not yet the iconic figure of defiance and leadership he would become by shepherding his people through World War II. So when Popular Mechanics ran his essay about what the world might be like in fifty years, he just got tagged as a "former British Chancellor of the Exchequer."

But he already showed the breadth of vision that would identify first Adolf Hitler and then Soviet Communism as threats to freedom, as demonstrated by both how solid some of his predictions are and by his understanding of how great a change modern civilization wrought upon on the world.

And by solid, we should note that means he guessed some things that came to pass, even if they didn't necessarily happen in his predicted year of 1982. He said that wireless telephones and television would enable communication unlimited by physical connecting lines, and everyone who's ever watched Netflix stream on their iPads can agree that Winnie got that right, even if that technology became widespread more like 70 or 80 years after he wrote, rather than 50.

On some other ideas, he was in the ballpark but didn't get the process right -- he saw specialized food production as a product of manipulation of microbes rather than genetic engineering, but DNA was barely known when he wrote, let alone understood. And some of his predictions have yet to materialize -- he foresaw that same microbe-based manipulation being used to create classes of people suited for manual labor but without the intellect necessary to protest poor working conditions or desire higher pay.

But as yet we have not been bold enough to tinker with our own genome, and one might hope, as Churchill seemed to, that if that is ever done it is for the benefit of humanity rather than its convenience.

Floor Wax Plus Dessert Topping Next

A couple of physicists at the University of Warwick in England wanted to demonstrate how the ring-shaped molecules of polymers get twisted around and tangled up. So they did what anyone would do: They invented a pasta dish that modeled the behavior.

If you're invited to dinner at the home of either Davide Michieletto or Matthew Turner, you may very well be served a dish of anneloni, or pasta rings, which began to illustrate the twisty nature of those polymer molecules. It takes its name from the Italian annello, which translates into English as "ring."

Polymers are large molecules composed of repeating subsets of molecules -- sort of like like smaller molecules grouped together in patterns. Once they become long enough, they begin twisting around each other, sometimes to the point that they are no longer flexible. The picture with the story at Physicis World illustrates an obvious but less tasty and more frustrating example: Christmas lights. They illustrate the same characteristics, but are not nearly so good with marinara sauce.

Canute Sought

Tonight the local basketball teams begin their seasons with a tournament. As a resident of many small towns because of the itinerant nature of my profession, I have long believed that a fun evening of high school sports can offer a remedy to a stress-filled grinder of a day. Just about every story of human existence can be found at a game if you watch closely enough. And even though there are plenty of examples of the low end of human character, these are almost always some wonderful things to see also, and they may even outnumber the others.

Then, of course, there is the rising tide of these idiots.

Grownups Wanted: Must Be Able to Verify Adult Status

This afternoon, the board of the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association met to determine what it was going to do about 64 seconds of high school football. They denied a protest about a bad call. That could mean that this all is over, or it could mean that an even greater level of absurdity is reached when people who are supposed to be adults extend their tantrum into the legal arena and start paying people to argue about it.

Last Friday, the Locust Grove Pirates beat the Oklahoma City Douglass Trojans 20-19 in a Class 3A football quarterfinal. The problem is that they did it because the officiating crew blew a call against Douglass and negated a Douglass touchdown scored with 1:04 left in the game. That touchdown made the score 25-20 and had Douglass made the extra point, they would have led 26-20 with that 1:04 to play.

But they didn't, because the officiating crew didn't assess the penalty on the kickoff after the point, as the rules said they should. Since then, the Douglass coach and, eventually, people who should have more to do who work for the Oklahoma City Public School system, have asked the OSSAA to either allow the game to be replayed from the 1:04 mark on or have it declared a no contest and replayed over completely. Members of the officiating crew have said they were threatened by the behavior of the Douglass crowd, while the coach and others deny that.

The OSSAA originally denied the request, but the Oklahoma City Public Schools appealed the denial, which is why we have this hearing going on now. In addition to the folks at OKCPS and Douglass, two state senators have said OSSAA should allow the game to be replayed -- either the whole thing or just the 1:04. This is kind of understandable -- the state legislature only meets from January through May and legislators get bored when they're not spending our money. But it's also kind of not. In fact, while the bad feelings and frustration seem well within bounds, all of the talk about replaying part or all of a game is the kind of idea you come up with after subbing in for the tackling dummy without wearing a helmet.

Does the replay count the touchdown or not? Is it fair to Locust Grove to make them start a game five points behind and say, "Score in a minute or your season's done?" Because a week has gone by since this game was played, so it's not really "continuing" anything -- it's a whole new game. Should they then just void the previous game and play a whole new one? Does the winner of the make-up game get some kind of advantage from an extra game when they finally play the winner of the other quarterfinal or are they at a disadvantage? What if a major player gets hurt in this extra game and the winning team has to face an opponent without him? What if a player who was hurt now gets to play because of the extra week, and makes some kind of game-defining play that affects the outcome? There are a lot more where those came from, and the fact is they are all silly. Because this whole discussion is silly.

A definite wrong happened, and it happened to kids because adults screwed up. But there's no way to put it right. None of the solutions fixes the problem in any way that doesn't cause a half-dozen more problems.

Were I the Locust Grove coach, I would apologize. If the touchdown against me had been a game-ender, scored with no time left, I'd voluntarily vacate the result and forfeit the game to Douglass. But it wasn't a game-ender; my team might have scored. So I can't do that. I'm stuck with the game as it is. And if the OSSAA ruled that I had to replay, I'd forfeit then also. If winning the game means so much to the Douglass coaching staff and the Oklahoma City Public Schools system, let them have it. If some judge says the game has to be replayed, then I'm still forfeiting. Stage whatever farce you want and dress it up in talk of fairness, and enjoy your win.

But do it without me. I'm not playing.

Did I Miss Something?

A handful of the online retailers with whom I shop e-mailed me links to surveys about my Black Friday shopping experience. I decided to cooperate with them and give them what I would hope is useful information.

The first question on every survey was, "Did you shop on Friday after Thanksgiving?" Since I didn't, I clicked, "No." That seemed to pretty much end their interest in my opinion. I didn't even have to provide my age, gender and ethnic background for demographic purposes.

I feel kind of left out.

And Having Written, Moves On

Charles Hill of Dustbury reflects on some of the features of having written his blog long enough for it to be able to vote -- specifically, the allure and possible meaning of re-reading.

I won't actually hit seven years of clattering away until January, but I'll sometimes do the same thing and reread old posts. I might edit a typo or adjust a label here and there when I do, but the main reason is just a little yen to see what I might have said once upon a time. Of course, sometimes that's for research purposes as I prepare a new post on an old subject. And sometimes it's so I can be assured that the meaning of what was written is still comprehensible to this blog's less insightful readers, among whom time has shown I must count myself.