Chico and Rita

A lush, vibrant film about Cuban musicians struggling to maintain love as their careers pull them apart, Chico and Rita hits two buttons for me. Firstly, I love the animation style, which employs simple broad lines to describe human motion. The eloquence of line is one of this film’s great successes, not just in depicting its characters but also in rendering dazzling cityscapes of Havana, New York, Hollywood, Paris and Las Vegas. Secondly, it’s a film about jazz that speaks not just to the history of the music, but also to the way it has been portrayed previously onscreen.

Havana, 1946

The plot is very familiar. A feckless jazz musician falls in love with a talented singer. Their romance is fuelled by a fulfilling stage partnership. However, personal and professional jealousies tear them apart. The jazz musician languishes self-pityingly, as his ex-lover’s star rises. After many years, they meet once more. The film ends on a bittersweet note, the happiness of their reunion tempered by the loss of youthful passion. I could be describing Scorsese’s New York New York.

The film sometimes fails to play interesting changes on this old familiar song. I found myself struggling through the opening sequences, where the first attraction between Chico and Rita was written so broadly that it was hard to care what was happening. Luckily, things really pick up in the middle section, when the action moves to New York.

In jazz films, NY is often the Bad Place, where pushers get you high and cops beat on you (see ‘Round Midnight and Bird). It’s nice, then, that Chico and Rita is eager to convey the excitement of the city, and the buzz felt by our Cuban protagonists as they explore the emergent bebop scene. There are some lovely “cameos” from Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster and Thelonious Monk (and, elsewhere in the film, Chucho Valdes, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, Nat King Cole and Marlon Brando). These appearances by famous men are brief, and all the better for that. There’s none of the hand-wringing reverence that mars Bird.

I loved the sequences set in Paris. Seeing Diz and Chico play Caveau de la Huchette was a thrill, as it’s a joint that Dolly Clackett and I have danced in. And there’s a nice touch as Chico queues at the cinema, a poster for Vertigo reminding us of the Hitchcocko-Hawksians cinephiles of the Left Bank.

The movie comes apart a little towards the end, as it shifts focus from Rita to Chico’s Buena Vista Social Club-style rediscovery. By privileging one protagonist over the other in this way, there’s a sense of over-balancing. The admirable delicacy of emotion maintained so far gives way to coarse sentimentality, at its worse in an extraneous final montage.

These problems of narrative aside, Chico and Rita is one of the most interesting and successful of jazz films. The music itself is gorgeous, beautifully integrated into the action, gently leading us through the lives of its players. There’s even a dream ballet featuring Fred Astaire and Humphrey Bogart (!), reminiscent of Gene Kelly’s choreographed interludes in Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris. The love and craft that has gone into this film radiates, staying with you long after the lights have gone up.

The Guardian’s top 25 crime films

As I read through this list on Sunday, I couldn’t help comparing it to Dick Lochte’s recent collection of films, which I blogged about here. Of course, Lochte’s had the advantage of specificity – he was only writing about private eye films – and I think that led to some very interesting and unusual choices. It was a list that I learnt from, and I’m looking forward to hunting down some of those obscure gems.

Perhaps that’s the problem I have with The Guardian‘s choice. “Crime” is really too vague a classification, or at least it seems that way to me. Everything’s present and correct (detectives, gangsters, doomed lovers etc.) but at a very superficial level. Most strikingly, these are all either well-remembered or recent films. Perhaps intentionally, this looks less like a “top 25″ and more like a “top 25 available on DVD”.

Here is the list – as before, I’ve linked to the relevant Imdb pages for ease of reference.

1. Chinatown

2. Touch of Evil

3. Vertigo

4. Badlands

5. Rashomon

6. Double Indemnity

7. Get Carter

8. Pulp Fiction

9. Hidden

10. Goodfellas

11. Bonnie and Clyde

12. The Conversation

13. The Killing

14. The French Connection

15. The Big Sleep

16. La Ceremonie

17. Point Blank

18. Hard Boiled

19. A Prophet

20. The Long Good Friday

21. Scarface (1983, DePalma version)

22. Heat

23. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, Garnett version)

24. Miller’s Crossing

25. Le Jour Se Leve

Of course, there are many fine films here. I’m pleased to see The Killing get a mention, one of the few Kubricks that I can stomach thanks to its wonderful performances and crisp Jim Thompson screenplay. Personally I’ve never been that fond of Bonnie and Clyde or The Postman Always Rings Twice, while the excesses of Hard Boiled and Heat just bore me. Miller’s Crossing is a decent enough pastiche of Hammett but why not go for the real thing? I’m astonished by the absence of The Maltese Falcon and by the selection of the 1983 Scarface over the 1932 version. And where’s Out of the Past?

The biggest omission for me is James Cagney. A star who shaped the progress of the gangster genre through performances in The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties and White Heat, Cagney has been somewhat forgotten in modern film culture. His absence here makes me suspicious of the list’s compilers (as does their illustration of The French Connection with a still from its sequel and of The Big Sleep with a photo of Bogie from the 1950s).

Over to you, gang. Which films are you pleased to see here, and what do you think should be on this list?

Gumshoe trails #5

It’s been a while since I did one of these, so I thought I should pick something rather special. The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston) constantly tops polls of the greatest private eye films. It’s a very faithful adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s steely novel, with one of the great film ensembles.

Amazingly, this was Huston’s first film as director. No doubt his job was made much easier by his wonderful cast: Mary Astor as the duplicitous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre as effeminate Joel Cairo, the expansive Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman and Elisha Cook Jnr. speaking through clenched teeth as the gunsel Wilmer.

This is the film that convinced Hollywood that Humphrey Bogart could be a romantic lead (in a sadistic kind of way). It’s a brilliant performance, by turns controlled, vicious and sardonic. Bogart is Sam Spade, and this is the film that made him a star.

The trailer displays many of those pleasurable features we’ve identified in others from the period. There’s the outré framing device, here Gutman addressing the audience directly. Look at the way he casts his eyes around, as though surveying those beneath him! Also, there are those wonderful captions describing the actors. I’m not going to spoil these ones. Just watch the video – they’re hysterical and yet magnificent.

Gumshoe trails #1

Raymond Chandler, creator of Philip Marlowe, was born on this day in 1888. In his honour, here’s the trailer to Howard Hawks’ 1946 adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Chandler enjoyed the movie, writing to a friend, “You will realize what can be done with this sort of story by a director with the gift of atmosphere and the requisite touch of hidden sadism… As we say here, Bogart can be tough without a gun.”

I wish movie trailers were still like this. The conceit of having Bogart (famous for his role as ‘tec Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, 1941) discover the book of The Big Sleep in a public library is marvellous, and very funny. And what a tagline: ‘That Man Bogart! And That Woman Bacall! Are That Way Again!’ Expect another fun trailer next Friday…