Extras:

• Commentary track with William Friedkin
  
• "Counterfeit World: The Making of TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A." (29:49)
  
• Deleted scene (4:25)
  
• Alternate ending (8:39)
  
• Photo gallery (61 screens)
  
• Theatrical trailer (2:06) and teaser trailer (1:25)
  
• Trailers for FARGO, DARK BLUE, LA FEMME NIKITA
  

I can now stop searching for DVDs. After about five years I've got almost all the films that I had been wishing to see in the format. With the release just this season of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and now TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., I can give up, sit back, relax, watch and re-watch these favorite movies, and concentrate on collecting DVD porno.

TO LIVE is something like the third or fourth underrated William Friedkin film, after SORCERER and RAMPAGE. I loved SORCERER when I saw it in the theater, and found TO LIVE to be another great film when it first came out in the winter of 1985. The public supposedly found nothing of interest in either, and the films floundered at the box office. I'm not sure how he manages to keep going. Today, both films have cults around them, some finding SORCERER a much better film than its inspiration, THE WAGES OF FEAR, and TO LIVE filled with great actors, great scenes, and a disturbing portrayal of crime fighting, one of the last films to take a sour and depressing view of that enterprise.

Let's look at the impact of this film for a second. It was the first lead role by William Petersen, a subsequently underused actor who has found a measure of richly deserved success with CSI. It was the third or fourth film with Willem Dafoe, now a major art house actor and character actor in mainstream movies. John Pankow went on to a part in MAD ABOUT YOU. John Turturro became an indie favorite and key element in Coen Brothers movies. Dean Stockwell offers a subtly brilliant turn as a lawyer. Robert Downey, the director and father of Jr. appears in a small part. Robby Muller beautifully photographs the film, and the second unit car chase was shot by Robert Yeoman, who has gone on to do several important movies (here he includes two beautiful pan shots from off of moving cars that I just love). Wang Chung did the catchy soundtrack. Even Jane Leeves, pops up looking different and spelling her name different, long before her FRASIER fame.

TO LIVE is of course about a Treasury agent named Chance (Petersen) out to get the counterfeiter who killed his partner. The paper man is a former convict and faux artist named Rick Masters (Dafoe), who seems in despair about the fact that he is a better counterfeiter than he is a painter. The Treasury has tried to get to him several times with no success. But Chance will let nothing stand in his way. After a series of machinations, Chance and his new partner, John Vukovich (Pankow) get access to Masters. But of course things go awry.

TO LIVE AND DIE's L.A. is different from any other you have seen. It's not the Los Angeles of Rodeo Drive and Hollywood and palm trees. It's the industrial L.A. of oil rigs dry humping the earth and warehouses and docks and huge tanks sitting near the water, and the smell of industry rising over a bleak city. It is a world of perpetual sunset, when the purple sky mocks the pallid faces of the driven, desperate people all hustling each other. Counterfeit money is the prime mover, and all the people in the film are counterfeit. All the women are playing the men. All the underlings are faking out their bosses. No one's identity is real. Into this swirling whirlpool of falsity and unreality, Chance is trying to right a wrong, and Vukovich is trying to keep his head on straight. It's hard when Chance drives him 100 miles an hour the wrong way down a freeway in a harebrained scheme to raise some quick cash.

All the women in TO LIVE are sexy, Kubrick level sexy. Here is an R rated movie in which two people actual fuck. Naked. You hardly ever see that anymore. And it's part of the participants' character. They are both using each other. Darlanne Fluegel as Ruth the snitch looks fantastic with her Nordic blonde locks. I love the way she walks.

Debra Feuer, also known as Debie Feuer and Debra Feuer-Fuller according to IMDB-Pro, is equally sexy but a lot more mysterious. Here she plays Masters's girlfriend and partner in crime. I've never seen any of her 10 or so other films. She looks strikingly similar to a porno actress named Serena who was popular in the early '80s. It's not uncommon for directors to insert adult movie actresses in their films: both Blake Edwards and Paul Schrader have done so at one time or another. On the commentary track, Friedkin kind of laughs when he talks about the casting director coming up with the movie's female stars, and that is mysterious, too. What's also puzzling is that in the movie, her character acquires a girlfriend, a fellow dancer in her avant-garde troupe. That character's name is Serena.

At the end of the audio track Friedkin says that he worked with a digital expert Michael Eric and Brian McMahon, to restore the film, re-time the color and erase all dirt and other flaws. So this is a restored version of the film. The box doesn't brag about this at all. The film looks great. I'm not entirely fond of the ad hoc 5.1 soundtrack, however, which sounds a little clunky to me, as 5.1 versions of formerly stereo or mono tracks often do. To hear what the movie originally sounded like you can flip to one of the other tracks, if you don't mind hearing the dialogue in French or Spanish.

Friedkin's audio track is informative. There are some gaps between his comments, which seem to be either moments when he is sitting back and just watching the film, or the spaces left behind by deleted questions. Some of his remarks start out sounding like there are responses to queries. He goes into amusing detail about the money they made for the film and his intentions in making what amounted to an independent film, and how he cast it, but there is a lot of stuff he leaves out. For example, why, at different times, do Dafoe to Petersen, and then Petersen to Dafoe, say, "You're beautiful." Friedkin is good at explaining and exploring Pankow's character and others but not so much on the interactions of characters.

Another thing I would like to know is, why are the cars in the famous chase scene going down the lanes the wrong way? In every freeway I have gazed down upon the right hand lane goes up and the left hand lane goes down. Here, the right hand lane goes down, and the left hand up. I looked at this for about 20 minutes while absorbing the film on DVD and came to the conclusion that either I had gone mad, or that the filmmakers had flipped the film or reconfigured the freeway they were using for the chase. No one comments on that, neither Friedkin, nor the filmmakers on the short making of doc included as an extra.

The other extras include the trailer and a teaser, and production stills. There is also an alternate ending that shows the main characters re-assigned to Alaska. This sequence was apparently never shown to an audience, and is here for historical purposes only, with an introductory doc with the cast and crew talking about it. There is also a nice deleted scene, with an intro by Friedkin and Pankow. It shows more of Vukovich freaking out over the actions of his partner. Friedkin says he can't remember why they deleted it, and would put it back into the movie if he knew how.

The Game's Misfoot

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION, VOLUME TWO

Original Movie, THE SCARLET CLAW:

• Theatrical premiere: 26 May, 1944
  
• Universal
  
• 85 minutes
  
• NR
  
• Directed by Roy William Neill
  
• Credited writers: Paul Gangelin, Edmund L. Hartmann, Roy William Neill, Brenda Weisberg
  
• Cast: Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes), Nigel Bruce (Dr. John H. Watson), Gerald Hamer (Potts), Paul Cavanagh (Lord William Penrose), Arthur Hohl (Emile Journet)
  
• Cinematography: George Robinson
  
• Editing: Paul Landres
  
• Significant music: series theme music by Frank Skinner
  
• Awards: none
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: In Canada, Holmes investigates the mystical creature terrorizing a small town.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Audio commentary by Holmes scholar David Stuart Davies on THE SCARLET CLAW
  
• Restoration introduction by Robert Gitt
  
• Animated stills and poster gallery
  
  
• Sixteen page insert with chapter titles, transfer information, and essays on each of the four films
  

MPI continues with the second of its three projected Rathbone-Holmes sets, taking up the middle four films. They are all good transfers with good sound, and a modest amount of supplements. This is an excellent clump of Holmes adaptations. The hair designers have freed Rathbone of the strange Roman senator forward comb that he sported in the first group, and the stories have forsaken modernity and Nazis and spies for old dark house plots and other stories inspired, directly or not, by Doyle's tales.

The best in this batch is THE RED CLAW. Though set in French Canada, it is obviously a variation on the HOUSE OF THE BASKERVILLES, and there is little that is "French" in it but a couple of names. Still, Rathbone is at his best in this episode, even though Holmes is at his worst (failing to prevent two murders). The only thing annoying about this middle group of films is the continual patronizing of Watson, so different a character from the Doyle stories and later, different, and perhaps better adaptations, such as the relatively recent BBC series. Holmes is always telling Watson to shut up, and Watson himself is always falling asleep at a crucial moment, always eating, and always mumbling rebellious statements. It's something of an embarrassment. I find it hard to imagine why Nigel Bruce would subject himself to this role, but in fact he savored it, and pressured Rathbone to stay on in the part, especially in radio, long after the actor was sick of the part.

This is a fine package, but it should be noted that the films appear to be in the wrong order. SPIDER WOMAN should come first, then SCARLET CLAW, followed by THE PEARL OF DEATH. This is the order that David Stuart Davies affirms in his audio track for SCARLET CLAW. It's confusing because Universal rushed out three Holmes films a year, as per its contract with the Doyle estate. Be that as it may, the films are deliciously fun and old fashioned, and in some instances oddly progressive and modernist. Davies audio track is helpful, and even more so is Richard Valley's detailed essays about each of the films in the set. By the time all three volumes are out Valley's booklets will amount to a definitive book on the Rathbone-Holmes series.

Road to Nowhere

LA STRADA

Original Movie:

• Premiere: 6 September, 1954, at the Venice Film Festival
  
• Producer/distributor: Ponti-De Laurentiis Cinematografica
  
• 98 minutes
  
• NR
  
• Directed by Federico Fellini
  
• Credited writers: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli
  
• Cast: Anthony Quinn (Zampanò), Giulietta Masina (Gelsomina), Richard Basehart (Il 'Matto'-The 'Fool')
  
• Cinematography: Otello Martelli, Carlo Carlini
  
• Editing: Lero Cattozzo
  
• Significant music: Nino Rota
  
• Awards: Best foreign film Oscar; Bodil award; Italian critics award; NY Film Critics Circle award; Silver Lion at the Venice film festival; plus three nominations
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: A traveling strong man in post war Italy takes on a poor woman as a helper.

Disc Stats:

Extras Disc One:

• Video introduction by Martin Scorsese (13:43)
  
• Audio commentary by Peter Bondanella
  
• American theatrical trailer (2:04)
  

Extras Disc Two:

• FEDERICO FELLINI'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, made for Italian television (55:14)
  
• Eight page insert with brief essay by Peter Matthews, chapter list, film and DVD credits
  
  

European directors are too often famous for the least of their films. Bergman's rep rides on the medieval THE SEVENTH SEAL, which is very much unlike the domestic dramas that make up the bulk of his output. Kurosawa became known via RASHOMON, an uncharacteristically mannered and narratively ordered script. And Fellini first found fame through LA STRADA.

I happen to think that it is one of the worst major art house films ever made.

It is vague, sentimental, and has a truly terrible central performance by Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina. The story is "tragic," and weighty, but you are not sure what exactly it is saying, because Fellini is more concerned with highlighting the annoying magical and clown-like manner of his heroine.

I suppose the theme of the movie is redemption but if so that makes Anthony Quinn's mediocre strongman Zampanò the central character of the movie, which, in fact, he is. It is his journey down the road to redemption that we are suppose to be concerned about. But Fellini is so intent on making Masina magical that the film is thrown. She is utterly artificial in a mostly realistic setting and narrative drive. Also, the episodic structure that Fellini returned to again and again makes this film feel rambling and unconnected, to me anyway.

The film is another "existential" drama from the '50s, a genre that knew no boarders. We have them from France and Japan as well. But Fellini adds a vaguely spiritual element, and at the end of the movie, Zampanò seems to look up at God for an answer to the bestial questions that are plaguing him at the moment. The only problem for me is that I don't care. I hate Zampanò, and basically just want him to die.

Be that as it may, Criterion has done a fine job in transferring the film to DVD. It comes not only in a nice print with good sound, but the film is offered in two soundtracks, Italian and English, depending on your proclivities. There is an audio commentary track by Indiana U film scholar Peter Bondanella who tells you, in a rather dry voice and who sounds as if he is reading a paper, many interesting facts about the film and its history: that Fellini was attacked by Marxist critics as a betrayer of neorealism, that among the influences on the Masina character was the American cartoon character Happy Hooligan.

Another selling point is that Martin Scorsese provides a video introduction. His presence here reminds me that I really need to watch his documentary about Italian film. He almost sells me on LA STRADA. He notes the Franciscan element of Fellini's worldview, a compassion for everyone, not just a select (Bondanella, on the other hand, discounts the religious aspects of Fellini's films). Scorsese says that Fellini is trying to get the viewer to understand and have compassion for Zampanò, and "That’s the tough place to go, to feel for him." Scorsese also mentions before I could get to it and lay claim to the insight the influence of LA STRADA and the bullish Zampanò, on RAGING BULL. Just as GANGS OF NEW YORK strikes me as something of a remake of Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, RAGING BULL is his take on LA STRADA, and how a dumb, fierce, and conflicted man like that can make it through society (I say this knowing that the project originated with De Niro). Scorsese, to put it bluntly, is an excellent critic, perhaps the best of all the filmmakers I have ever heard or read talking about movies other than Kubrick, and I would like to hear much more from him on the topic.

Why is this a double-disc set, however? The second disc contains only one 60-minute documentary. It is in black and white and obviously not taking up a wealth of digital space. It could easily be on the primary disc, and not compromise the quality of the transfer. Because it is a two-disc set, LA STRADA is now a forty dollar DVD instead of a thirty dollar purchase.

Great Scott

THE GREAT GATSBY

Original Movie:

• Release date: 1974
  
• 144 minutes
  
• PG
  
• Paramount
  
• Directed by Jack Clayton
  
• Credited writers: Francis Ford Coppola, from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• Cast: Robert Redford (Jay Gatsby), Mia Farrow (Daisy Buchanan), Bruce Dern (Tom Buchanan), Karen Black (Myrtle Wilson), Scott Wilson (George Wilson), Sam Waterston (Nick Carraway), Lois Chiles (Jordan Baker), Howard Da Silva (Meyer Wolfsheim), Roberts Blossom (Mr. Gatz), Edward Herrmann (Klipspringer), Patsy Kensit (Pamela Buchanan)
  
• Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
  
• Editing: Tom Priestley
  
• Significant music: Nelson Riddle
  
• Awards: two Oscars, for costumes and music, three BAFTAs, a British cinematography award, a Golden Globe, and three nominations
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: A young man finds himself drawn into the romantic intrigue between a mysterious millionaire on Long Island and his flighty married cousin.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Zero extras
  

THE GREAT GATSBY is such a great American novel that filmmakers have tried to adept it at least three times. Unfortunately none of them have accurately adapted the book, which has a dream-like quality and which doesn't tell its story sequentially, and which casts itself as an exploration of memory itself, an American version of Proust. Cut-rate Proust, but Proust nonetheless.

At the height of Francis Ford Coppola's post-Godfather success he was contracted to write a screenplay of the novel. I'm sure that, just on paper, it is probably a good text. I'd like to read it someday, in conjunction with a re-read of the book itself. It's in the realization that this version of GATSBY goes awry, from the casting, to the music, clothes, and directorial intrusions.

As is well known, GATSBY is a story set in the American '20s about a mysterious millionaire (who may be a gangster) whose whole life, we eventually learn, has been dedicated to retrieving a lost love. The chronicler of Gatsby's last days is Nick Carraway, a callow and inexperienced young man now moving in rich circles, and becoming something of a go-between for Gatsby and the love of his life, the married Daisy Buchanan, a married relative of Carraway's.

To indicate how all this goes wrong from page to screen all I have to mention are two words: Mia Farrow. I can think of no one who is less likely to be a successful Daisy than Mia Farrow. In the film proper she over acts, and also looks just downright ugly, hardly the object of a lifelong obsession. Then you've got Bruce Dern as her husband, and he is terrible, not at all with the style of the athletic rich that he is suppose to represent. Then you've got Sam Waterston as Nick, who is OK though a little too lanky and old-seeming for the part, and Robert Redford as Gatsby. Gatsby should be dark and mysterious. Redford is light and bright and handsome. When I first saw the film in a theater as a tyke, the women in the audience gasped in amused unison when Redford as Gatsby was revealed. In large part, they had all been propagandized into this reaction, by PEOPLE magazine articles and other media. Sure, he is a good looking guy, but he is not that handsome, and in any case the point is that he is not right for the part, though he acts it well, and Redford, an underrated actor, is about the only one who emerges from this carnage unscathed. (At this point I think only Whit Stillman could do a good adaptation of this novel.)

It's a vulgar movie. Everyone is ugly. Everyone delivers bad speeches, or only delivers them badly. The film's idea of flapper decadence is dancing, drinking, jumping into fountains and other clichés. It's shoes left behind in a wrecked ballroom at dawn.

Britisher Jack Clayton, who is responsible for other self-important social dramas, such as THE PUMPKIN EATER, directs the film. His contribution here amounts only to an occasional zoom or cutaway to a dead bird, a puddle in the rain, an ashtray. His direction of Redford's Gatsby is to ask him to stand around and stare at Daisy. He even does a couple of love scenes that are so obscured by Vaseline that they become boring pastel romance.

At root, GATSBY is a portrait of three relationships, observed by an outsider. There's Daisy and her husband, there is Gatsby and Daisy, and there is the Wilsons (Karen Black and Scott Wilson) whose marriage Buchanan is ruining. They are weak characters and in the story at least as Coppola presents it is about weakness versus strength, and the social Darwinism of wealth that destroys weakness and romanticism.

There transfer of this film to DVD struck me as a little soft, but I don't recall the movie as looking all that good in the first place, even though the photography was done by Douglas Slocombe, who has a high reputation. There are no extras. As a side note, supposedly much of the musical score was replaced at some point due to copyright issues, such as a song titled "What'll I Do?" The disc does not address this issue or offer itself as a restoration of the film to its former musical glory.

Studio Bound Drama

THE LAST TYCOON

Original Movie:

• Theatrical premiere: 15 November, 1976
  
• 122 minutes
  
• PG
  
• Paramount
  
• Directed by Elia Kazan
  
• Credited writer: Harold Pinter from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• Cast: Robert De Niro (Monroe Stahr), Robert Mitchum (Pat Brady), Jack Nicholson (Brimmer), Theresa Russell (Cecilia Brady), Jeanne Moreau (Didi), Tony Curtis (Rodriguez), Donald Pleasence (Boxley), Ray Milland (Fleishacker), Dana Andrews (Red Ridingwood), Ingrid Boulting (Kathleen Moore), Peter Strauss (Wylie), John Carradine (Tour guide), Jeff Corey (Doctor), Seymour Cassel (Seal trainer), Angelica Huston (Edna)
  
• Cinematography: Victor Kemper
  
• Editing: Richard Marks
  
• Significant music: Maurice Jarre
  
• Awards: Oscar nom of art direction
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: A studio executive faces troubles with directors, actors, studio chiefs, and a woman who looks like his dead wife.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Zero extras
  

If THE GREAT GATSBY is a major studio disaster, THE LAST TYCOON is a quietly failed effort. From the very first frames, TYCOON shows no sense of how movies are made or look or what they were like in the '30s. Which is a problem, since the movie is about a studio executive in the '30s.

Fitzgerald never finished THE LAST TYCOON. His college chum Edmund Wilson compiled it for him long after the novelist's death, providing notes and outlines as to where the story was going to go. But it is clear that the filmmakers, Elia Kazan and his scripter Harold Pinter, don't care about Fitzgerald per se. What they offer up instead is a faux movie about movies, and the chance to see Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson act in the same movie. Their encounter doesn't generate as much heat as HEAT, but it is at least of historical interest.

It's a great cast, but like Redford De Niro, whose character is supposedly based on Irving Thalberg, strikes me as being not quite Fitzgeraldian (in fact, each is better suited to the other role: De Niro would have made a better Gatsby). Meanwhile Robert Mitchum, Nicholson, and Donald Pleasance don't distract the viewer with actorliness. They present casualness and authenticity. But another misstep is Ingrid Boulting, the aspiring actress whom De Niro's production head Monroe Starr sees as the embodiment of his now dead wife, also an actress. Again, like Farrow's Daisy she just isn't likable or charismatic. Boulting is a dull actress, not worthy of the obsession of a millionaire (unless that is the point, and if it is, it's not a very good one).

The movie itself also doesn't feel complete, and is content to let Starr disappear in to some convenient shadows. But does Kazan really understand movies? That question comes up as you see the films within this film that the studio that Starr works for are supposedly making. In the film's films Tony Curtis and Jeanne Moreau play famous lovers. Unfortunately, for the era the film is supposed to be recreating, Curtis and Moreau are way too old and haggard. When you think back up on the popular Warner films of the era most of the stars were about the same age as the audience seeing the films, late teens and early 20s. This youth bias goes toward explaining why Norma Desmond is considered over the hill in SUNSET BOULEVARD, even though she is only somewhere in her late 40s. Worse, the movies within the movies don't look like movies. Billy Wilder would never have done this. His films within the film would have looked as authentic as something viewers at the time might have seen. Here the movie-movie scenes are black and white, but obviously shot in color and printed in black and white. They are leaden and lack the flair and glamour of the studio movies.

But Kazan doesn't care. He made some good movies but he wasn't a "movie person." He was a man of the theater who didn't care how his movies looked, concentrating more on the emotional or intellectual truth that his actors could come up with. In other words, like the British Jack Clayton, the American Kazan, along with his British playwright scriptwriter, is the wrong choice to bring Fitzgerald's vision to the screen.

The famous "nickel" scene is good, but then the famous "screening" scene follows it, where a lackey dies quietly in his sleep in the room because he didn't want to "disturb the screening." It's a moment so arch and obvious you can't believe that everyone conspired to put it in the film and not see how lame it is. The "prison house" of Starr's under construction beach home is also obvious, the wooden planks of the walls obvious stand-ins for whatever emotional prison the filmmakers are vaguely suggesting that Starr is trapped in.

And by the way, why is he the "last" tycoon. We have had many thousands more since then, and all of them have been awful. We have a surfeit of tycoons, and they won't go away. One wishes that there were a little more Upton Sinclair in the wealth-worshiping Fitzgerald.

Anyway, the person who survives THE LAST TYCOON for me is Theresa Russell, as Celia Brady, the daughter of Robert Mitchum's studio chief character, and who narrates the novel and is secretly in love with Starr. Brady's name became the SPY magazine pseudonym for its deliciously gossipy movie news column. Russell also would have been much better in the part of Kathleen Moore, Starr's obsession. She is great here as a down-home person, but she can also be mysterious and alluring. She continues to be sadly underused by the movie industry.

Races Against Time

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW

Original Movie:

• Theatrical premiere: 15 October, 1959
  
• 96 minutes
  
• NR
  
• HarBel Productions/United Artists
  
• Directed by Robert Wise
  
• Credited Writers: Abraham Polansky, fronted by John O. Killens, and Nelson Gidding, from the novel by William P. McGivern
  
• Cast: Harry Belafonte (Johnny Ingram), Robert Ryan (Earle Slater), Shelley Winters (Lorry), Ed Begley (Dave Burke), Gloria Grahame (Helen), Cicely Tyson (Fra)
  
• Cinematography: Joseph C. Brun
  
• Editing: Dede Allen
  
• Significant music: John Lewis
  
• Awards: none
  
• Budget: NA
  
• Stated initial box office returns: NA

Plot in one sentence: A white racist and a black jazz musician with a gambling addiction join forces to pull a bank heist.

Disc Stats:

Extras:

• Theatrical trailer
  

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is a nifty little existential noir with a social conscience. The film is an optimum example of what people thought a good noir was like before the designation "film noir" was invented: a good solid urban crime story rooted in a semblance of reality represented by city streets, and featuring A-list actors in melodramatic roles.

ODDS is in the "cop turned bad" strain of noirs. The brains behind the hold-up is Dave Burke (Ed Begley), a retired cop down on his luck. Like the bent copper in KANSAS CITY STORY, he assembles a team to pull off a job. Unfortunately in this case, the executors can't stand each other.

The film comes across something like a response to THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, the way RIO BRAVO is suppose to be a response to HIGH NOON. The seedier aspects of ASPHALT are emphasized with all of the ennobling elements denied. Begley is the Doc Riedenschneider of the group; Ryan is in the Sterling Hayden-Dix role; Winters is the Jean Hagen surrogate; and both films are adapted from tough novels. In addition to wallowing in the seediness of the milieu ODDS reveals its real agendum quickly, a liberal '50s protest against racism.

Though directed by Robert Wise, the real brains behind the film was the screenwriter, Abraham Polansky, who had done earlier hard-bitten noirs such as BODY AND SOUL and FORCE OF EVIL. Blacklisted at the time, Polansky was secretly writing episodes of YOU ARE THERE, and the script for ODDS was "fronted" by one John O. Killens. Wise does an adequate job of getting the script on the screen, but relies on his charismatic actors and the NAKED CITYish lensing of Joseph C. Brun, in which tall concrete buildings tower over the gray empty streets of dawn. Polansky comes to the fore, however, by making Harry Belafonte's Johnny Ingram the actual lead character, although you don't know that at first. Ingram is a jazz musician with a gambling problem. When a debt comes due, his boss at the club can't come through and so Ingram has to succumb to Burke's scheme, which he initially rejected (although why Burke would want an identifiable public figure, even a minor one, to help him in a tense heist is unclear). In keeping with Polansky's presumed radical beliefs, the heart of the film is the tension between the racist Earl Slater (Ryan) and Ingram, which ends in a the only way that such conflicts can end in '50s noirs, disastrously atop huge oil storage tanks. The coda makes a point of mentioning that their remains are indistinguishable from each other, a message both powerful and mushily off-kilter at the same time. Sixties youth radicalism encouraged ethnic diversity and pride in identity, rather than a vague notion that we are all the same under the skin, a Stanley Kramer level message.

Which isn't to say that Polansky isn't starry eyed about race. There's an interesting scene early in the film. First Slater arrives at the run down hotel where Burke is spinning his webs. Slater gets into the elevator, operated by a black guy. Slater is mean and dismissive to the operator, and he clues in quickly that Slater is not someone he can suck up to. But then, a few minutes later, Ingram arrives, and there is a subtle class distinction between these two African-Americans. The operator can see from his suit and manner that Ingram is a man who has bettered himself. He instantly adopts a servile attitude toward Ingram, laughing too hard at his jokes. This is an interesting observation rarely seen in movies. Polansky also includes a gay gangster, played by Richard Bright, who went on to become one of the Don's henchmen in the GODFATHER series.

Otherwise if ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW sounds a little derivative that's because it probably is. Despite the fact that it is derived from a novel the film does show the impact of ASPHALT JUNGLE, WHITE HEAT, THE KILLING, and various French crime films. The film is "existential" in that, of course, the heist goes all wrong, and wrong because of the protagonists' character rather than any superior skills of the cops. The fatalism of noir is always present. It's the nagging voice of someone who is not going along with the high spirits of the time. The war is over. We should all be happy. Noir is the guy on the playground not joining in. It's the depressed person at the party who sees the skulls beneath the skin.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW comes in a very good black and white transfer with minimal extras. Brun's cinematography is luminous, of that style you see in the mid-'50s to the early '60s in which the black and white actually looks like it is in color.

DVD QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.: "I don't know what is acceptable. The film got an R rating. And there were no cuts requested The same is true of THE EXORCIST when it came out in 1973. It got an R rating, with no cuts. Today, of course, the envelope has been pushed a lot farther than anything we did. But I think that if a film is depicting violence and a violent world, that it's up to the individual filmmaker to decide where to draw back. And it's up to the audience to decide if they want to go to that place or not. But I don't believe in a great deal of self-censorship. I don't believe in any form of censorship. Anybody watching this tape or DVD, if they don't like it they can just click it off, you know, put on another DVD. I'm sure you have a huge collection out there, who ever you are. And there's always REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, or there's always LETHAL WEAPON 3 or there's POLICE ACADEMY 6."—Director William Friedkin on TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., 01:46:21.

NEXT TIME: KING OF THE HILL, YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, and more!

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