Winchester ’73: An Anthony Mann western, probably his most widely-known and acclaimed, starring a dizzying ensemble of mid-century movie actors: Jimmy Stewart, Shelley Winters, Rock Hudson, Dan Duryea, Tony Curtis. Hudson and Curtis are in early roles, billed low but featured prominently; Hudson’s in redface as Young Bull, a trader, and unrecognizable until he speaks. He dies fairly quickly, while Curtis supports Duryea through much of the upper middle of the movie. It’s a great western, fantastic day-for-night shots on horseback, a relatively unusual structure that follows the titular gun rather than the stars (Stewart is absent for nearly half an hour in the middle), and strong compositions not close to John Ford but in the same building.
Three bandits looking out a window, guns drawn: “How many dead?” “Eight.” “I think there’s one left…” BLAM! “…I’d make it about eight.” An enormous laugh. I can’t follow plots and characters, just images and actors, and this is full of great ones. It’ll continue to sink into relative obscurity as more and more people turn away from westerns entirely. Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga flopped in theaters, but became a huge hit on Amazon Prime—will parts two through four be released or even finished?
Maybe, but it’s even more amazing to me that Costner directed and starred in Dances with Wolves and swept the Oscars so early in his career; that was 1990, and it wasn’t until The Untouchables in 1987 that he even became a star. Cut out of The Big Chill in 1983, he remained dead and off screen until De Palma picked him for a hit. And again, that was almost 40 years ago… Costner’s audience, and by extension the western audience, is dying out, and it’s a much more diffuse and certainly less artful death than the allegories of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and even Clint Eastwood’s 2011 J. Edgar. Anthony Mann’s films, and Winchester ’73, aren’t dated—they still play to rapt audiences rather than the hysterical hyenas “inspired” by the noxious Mystery Science Theater 3000.
But people still love film noir; unless your action movie stars a muscleman, it’s going to be promoted as a “neo-noir.” There’s nothing film noir about David Fincher besides his underlit sets, but he’s made a career of a certain kind of crime film that’s been around since James Cagney was in his prime. There’s a through line from Angels with Dirty Faces to Fincher’s Panic Room, because noir was always future proof: the West is always on its way out, but crime is forever.
Cuckoo: A German failure starring Hunter Schafer. This movie was shot in early-2022 and I’m positive that it’s only getting a theatrical release from Neon because of the strike drought. It looks relatively good, isn’t as underlit as most other new movies, and it’s completely incomprehensible. As noted above, I don’t care about plots, character relationships, that shit isn’t essential in cinema. Harmony Korine has demonstrated this throughout his career, most recently with his remarkable AGRRO DR1FT; if I felt like being charitable, if the movie earned it somehow, I’d say Cuckoo is a collection of images, effects, moments that could stand on their own; but they don’t, none of them do, it’s all just cliche after cliche, impossible to follow and without anything else to offer. A dud through and through—see It Ends with Us instead.
Black Tight Killers: This movie fucking ruled. Japanese pop cinema from 1966, a Nikkatsu production revolving around a group of girl assassins clad in black leather jumpsuits with stealth swords and throwing stars. Some guy gets caught up in their whole thing—once again, I cannot follow the plot of a movie to save my life. None of that stuff matters when there’s so much else on offer, when things are moving faster than you can think, faster than you can distract yourself. I often zone out during movies, like Cuckoo, and try to do some work or planning in my head. A bad movie I’ll zone out completely, but there have only been a few times in a life when a movie completely overwhelmed me: Synecdoche, New York; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; and most recently a revival of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom at the Charles in May. I can’t remember the last time my palms were sweating during a film, the last time I felt like I was sinking into the sink, into the emulsion it was shot on.
Was Black Tight Killers one of those transcendental cinema experiences? No, it was just a lot of fun, with a giddy crowd totally in sync with this very particular and of-its-time pop cinema. Bright colors, bold sets, beautiful people, booming music—THAT’S a movie. Nikkatsu made so many of these, it doesn’t matter where you start, just make sure it’s in WIDESCREEN and COLOR.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith