Criminal Film

The sports use to be a very common thing in crime films, boxing above all, except some cases where corruption and amorality in other sports is shown, such as Eight Man Out (1988) with baseball, The Last Boy Scout (1991) with american football. Boxing has been the most popular sport in that gender due to the fact that is related with illegal bets, and many times it's just an excuse behind the main theme. For example, we can find in Pulp Fiction the character of Butch (Bruce Willis), the violent boxer.

Boxing itself got success during the thirties with titles such as The Champ (1931) or Kid Galahad (1937), growing in importance again between fourties and fifties, with Body and Soul (1947), Champion(1949) or The Harder They Fall (1956). From 1959 crime film has eased off boxing in films, although it's exploited in minor films. Raging Bull (1980), by Martin Scorsese and Fat city (1984), by John Huston , with Rocky (1976), are the most popular boxing films not being considered crime films.

Its lost of presence in that gender it's due to the lost of importance of boxing as a popular sport. However, his treatment has been always similar, expressed through a physically detroyed boxer, a second class femme fatale, , dehumanized gangsters, amoral reporters, and, obviously, violent and explicit boxing combats.

I can not remember how many times I watched that film when I was a child, but I really liked it although I didn't know about it's importance and all the significance it has. I was really impressed how that man was able to manage that way with birds. It's one of the first films from Neonoir that denounces the established system in prisons as a regeneration form for convict criminals. Based on real facts and on a novel by Thomas E.Gaddis, tells us the story about Robert Stroud, condemned to 12 years for having killed a man who abused physically his girlfriend. After some fatalities he was condemned to death penalty, reduced to life inprisonment in condition he was in solitary confinement.. That time he stayed there he studied the birds, he became a bird specialist, writing articles and developping care methods and medicines, having success around the world. But he never got freedom. Instead Frankenheimer changed some points, as his violent behaviour and his known homosexuality, the film is a good portrait of his humanity and gets his objective: denounce the system.


About the director:

John Michael Frankenheimer. Director and producer. New York, 1930-2002.

One of the most influent persons in the TV generation. After having directed war documentaries and commercials, he produced TV series in the CBS. He started in cinema in 1957 with The Young Stranger. He is not a very known crime film director, having directed very few films, as Young Savages (1961), starred by Burt Lancaster, his favourite actor. Nevertheless some of his films have had an actual version in the last decade. His main themes are social and political reflections in the criminal gender, as The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and The Manchurian candidate (1962). Absorbed by the system and by personal problems he changed of gender to do commercial films, trying to renew the aesthetic.

The film noir never was a gender, but a film movement. It belongs to a concrete period, from 1940 to 1958, and to a concrete country, The United States of Americ. It was born due to a collection of social and political successes. Touch of Evil (1958), by Orson Welles was the film that closed that period and Humphrey Bogart the only man that has been considered exclusively a criminal film actor.

The term film noir is used not to talk about gangster films or social films to describe that different type. Normally they talk about different crimes, with a hard expressive content and a characteristic visual aesthetic. His formal construction is next to expressionism, using a metaphoric language where the scene is described by a dark and sinister lighting in chiaroscuro, night escenes in a damp environment, playing with the shadows to underline the character psicology. Some of that effects were specially shocking in black and white, a very good help at that time. Fronteers between good and bad characters were very thin and the heroe used to be an anti-heroe with a dark past.
Film noir presents a violent society, cinical, corrupted, that not only threatens the main character but the rest of the characters inside of a fatalist environement, presenting most of the films a failure ending for the heroe. Another important point to take on account is the presence of the femme fatale, the apparently inoffensive woman that takes her victims to danger or death in most cases. 


Some important films:

The third man(1949), Carol Reed
The Maltese Falcon(1941) and The asphalt jungle(1950), John Huston
Touch of evil (1958), Orson Welles
Strangers on a train (1951), Alfred Hitchcock
The Killing (1955), Stanley Kubrick

I would say It's one of the funniest and more paranoid crime film. It denounces Los Angeles society, where millionaires, gangsters and lazy people who don't give a damn about anything live together without having a problem. The main character is a relaxed man, only liking to go with the flow and bowling that one day finds himself involved in a money conflict because of his name. Lebowski seems to be inspired by a film producer, not by chance, so we can find a lot of cinema references and influences in the film. Once again the BSO it's original and perfectly found, in my opinion. I must point out that one of the secondary characters is Steve Buscemi, a very good actor that has had a role in successful films such as Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, Big Fish or Con Air.


The Dude: It’s like what Lenin said… you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh…
Donny: I am the walrus.
The Dude: You know what I’m trying to say…
Walter Sobchak: That fucking bitch…
The Dude: Oh yeah!
Donny: I am the walrus.
Walter Sobchak: Shut the fuck up, Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!
Donny: What the fuck is he talking about, Dude?
Walter Sobchak: Those rich fucks! This whole fucking thing… I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck so that this fucking strumpet…
The Dude: I don’t see any connection to Vietnam, Walter.
Walter Sobchak: Well, there isn’t a literal connection, Dude.
The Dude: Walter, face it, there isn’t any connection.
Jesus Quintana: You ready to be fucked, man? I see you rolled your way into the semis. Dios mio, man. Liam and me, we’re gonna fuck you up.
The Dude: Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Jesus Quintana: Let me tell you something, pendejo. You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I’ll take it away from you, stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger ‘til it goes “click.”
The Dude: Jesus.
Jesus Quintana: You said it, man. Nobody fucks with the Jesus.
Walter Sobchak: Eight-year-olds, Dude.


About the director:


Joel Coen. Director, scriptwriter and film editor. Minessota, 1954.

His name is inevitably united to his brother´s, Ethan, who is officialy the producer, although his films are the result of the creative and commercial efforts of both, so that-s why we talk always about both. Their films are comical as they both are, talking about the "two-headed  director" when they refer to themselves. They also have an exhaustive knowledge about classical films and a big capability to pay tribute to them. They are not in their hole filmography crime film directors, they study different genders, but all of them very delicately done and treated personally. Nevertheless their big successes are in the film noir gender, such as Blood Simple (1984), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Man who wasn´t there (2001) and Ladykillers (2004).

From 3rd October we can find in cinemas Asesinato justo, by Jon Avnet, a new crime film where Robert de Niro and Al Pacino star in. After having seen Heat, by Michael Mann, I was expecting for something different, maybe better. I found that both main characters seemed a little bit lazy, tired in their roles, the few jokes were a little poor, only arousing little giggles from the audience, and some points in the story had no sense, they seemed to be only written down to confuse the spectator. Nevertheless I had a good time, but not farther than with any other film of that gender. I would see it again, firstly to be more attentive with some details, and secondly because I must recognize that De Niro and Pacino achieve to make up for the hole film, although they are not brilliant that time.

Few weeks ago we knew the new that Quentin Tarantino is coming back to cinemas with a new production, Inglorious Bastards.
I'm dying to know what Tarantino has for us!

To start with I've chosen one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite films with one of the best BSO by one of my favourite directors. The first film of the "young" Tarantino, the man who knows how to ease off the extreme violence and how to reach the audience with the more original but at the same time ordinary dialogues in our life.


About the director:

Quentin Jerome Tarantino. Director, scriptwriter, producer and actor. Knoxville, Tennessee, 1963.

It's one of the biggest specialists in new criminal cinema, I would say a kind of self-taught film director, knowing about the classics of the cinema through having had a job in a videoclub. He started founding ,with the help of his friend Lawrence Bender, the A Band Apart Records that turned into A Band Apart Films. His first feature film was Reservoir Dogs, with which he achieved fame (In fact, his first feature was My best friend's birthday (1987), from which only 34 minutes remain nowadays). After that great success he kept on with other brilliant films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997) and Kill Bill, vol.1 and vol.2. (2003). His films, containing a big argumental and aesthetic complexity, have a thorough narrative structure, always looking for innovative visual solutions, without forgetting the classic structure. With that short filmography he has achieved the enviable consideration of cult director.

The word crime doesn't mean only murders and blood; that term refers to "an action or an instance of negligence that is doomed injurious to the public welfare or morals, or to the interests of the state and that is legally prohibited". This blog intends to offer a taste of some crime films that have had a big success in the "film noir" gender. In fact, we can not qualify it as a gender, but as a film movement.

I hope you enjoy it!