The movie Dillinger saw at the Biograph was Manhattan Melodrama, the first of two pictures released in May 1934 by director W.S. Van Dyke. The second was The Thin Man, also starring William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Michael Mann has two hours to build his characters toward an emotional climax, and the gushing orchestra schmaltz lets you know he's trying, but when we get there the big pathos is borrowed wholesale from a little-remembered movie made 75 years ago: The best ten seconds of Public Enemies occur during the Biograph sequence when Manhattan Melodrama is briefly permitted to fill the screen in glorious black and white. Those few well-lit frames of Clark Gable evoke more sympathy, and the few frames of Myrna Loy inflict more heartbreak, than Mann is able to coax out of Depp, Bale and Cotillard in 140 minutes. Then we cut back to the Biograph audience and I shout, Get the fuck out of the way, Depp! I'm trying to watch William Powell's eyebrows!
No comments:
Post a Comment