Odds Against Tomorrow 1959

 

A last stand noir heist film of the late 50's, shot in great black and white with location shooting in New York City and Upstate New York. A simple tale really. Based on a book by hard core mystery crime writer William P. McGiven who also wrote “The Big Heat”. Ed Begley who is great here, plays an ex copper who has a scheme to rob a bank in a small run down town on the Hudson. He needs two more guys to help with the robbery so he gives a yell out to old pals Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte. Both guys are worn around the edges vets with lots of baggage.

Ryan lives somewhere on the upper west side in a shitty apartment with his blowzy wife played by Shelley Winters who is her usual great self and works at some kind of short shift shit job and supports Ryan who is nasty and run down and is an all out racist which is a stream running through the movie. Their upstairs neighbor is played by the superb Gloria Grahame who gives what she gives good in two way too brief scenes with Ryan getting it on with him while his wife is away. Hell the entire cast is plain and simple great.

Ryan's reactions to Belafonte are predictable and nasty and threatens to ruin the job before it even gets moving and his uncontrollable temper which simmers just below the surface erupts in a bar scene with a soldier played by Wayne Rogers. Both Ryan and Belafonte at first say no to Begley's offer, Ryan because he hates blacks and won't work with Belafonte and Belafonte no's it because he is trying to go clean from his gambling problems and get back with his wife and little girl who he is separated from.

Handsome Harry is an on again off again musician, (we get to hear him sing a bit) but he is in big trouble with some loan sharks, a trio of cliches including a fey gay nasty homo played in great 50's homo flair by the always terrific Richard Bright who is known here as Coco and made me winch.

So Because of the money problems and pressures they both finally say yes setting in motion the doom and gloom that will come. There is a nice sequence in Central Park with Belafonte and his kid riding the carousel a happy moment that is shattered by a busted balloon. There are also images of pearls usually around a woman's neck and an expensive strand torn apart by one of the threatening loan sharks. Visual metaphors all around.

Directed by Robert Wise who the year before made the equally grim “I Want To Live”. His career was varied beginning with film editor on “The Magnificent Ambersons” which he was forced to edit when Welles skipped town. For years he took the blame for the butchering of the film, when the blame should have been placed squarely on Orson's plate. He went on to directed some dandy B's including “Curse of the Cat People”, “Born To Kill”, “The Set Up” and the very popular “The Day The Earth Stood Still” before becoming a director of big budget technicolor fat cats including “West Side Story” and “The Sound Of Music”, both of which won him directing Oscars. Odds is a tight 90 minute scab of a film, hard, fast and grim with a tight script co written by black listed Abraham Polonsky still writing under pseudonyms and Nelson Gidding. Editing by the great Dede Allen whose first major film this was and with a hot to trot jazz score by John Lewis who was an original member of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Also look for the marvelous jazz singer Mae Barnes in a small singing bit ruined by a drunk Handsome Harry and in uncredited bits Zohra Lampert, Robert Earl Jones & Cicely Tyson.

Michael Denneny 1943-2023

 

Early Summer. Mixed on Board 2023

 

Harry Belafonte 1927-2023

 

Yvonne Jacquette 1934-2023

 

Robert Patrick 1937-2023

 

Early Summer 2023. Mixed on board.

 

Valda Setterfield 1934-2009

 I reprint my post on Valda from 2009 to honor her life and her passing.

Coming back to Brooklyn on the R train the other day, the lovely dancer and actress Valda Setterfield sat down next to me. It was a three seater, so there was an empty seat between us. I saw her dance sometime in the early 70’s at some event that was held at the Whitney Museum. Her partner was an apple, and a more thrilling dance I had never seen. To this day I still remember her beautiful dance with that apple. I had over the years seen her and her dancer-choreographer husband David Gordon here and there and was always taken by how attractive and elegant they were. I didn’t know them personally. I would just sometimes see them at an art opening or a performance but I never spoke to either of them. Too shy I guess. Once in the early 80’s Tom and me went to see her and David dance at the Joyce Theatre, both of us loving their performance. Now in her mid 70’s Valda is still striking and elegant. I stopped reading my novel and leaned over and told her that I had once seen her dance with an apple and I have never forgotten it. “That was so long ago, thank you how nice of you. Its on film you know.” “Maybe its on Youtube I said.” But unfortunately it isn’t. “Is this train going to Atlantic Ave” she asked? Yes it is. She was no doubt going to some dance function at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I went back to my reading, not wanting to intrude on her privacy, but kept sneaking peeks at her in profile. What a great looking woman she is, I thought to myself. At 75 with her short silver hair, and her lovely lived in face, this was an artist aging beautifully and gracefully. Occasionally she pops up in some movie in small bits and walk ons. Woody Allen uses her quite alot, and she turns up as a guest at a dinner party in Six Degrees of Separation, and recently as a parishioner in Doubt. I didn’t tell her who I was; that I was an artist, that I did this and that, and when we reached her stop she got up and said thank you to me. I like to think that we made each other’s day. You know that’s one of the things I love about my city. Just think on the stinking R train going to Brooklyn, a dance legend got on and sat down next to me.

Rosemary Ceravolo 1940-2023

 Rosemary Ceravolo 1940-2023

I am so heartbroken to learn of my dear old friend Rosemary Passing. I always called her Rose. She was married to the poet Joe Ceravolo and both were important presences in my life when I was a young man. I haven't seen Rose in a long time but we kept in touch on facebook. I had a feeling that something was not good because I hadn't heard from her in a long time. Two photos. one of her and Joe when they were young and one of me, rose and Joe in their kitchen. This hurts.

Tar 2022

 

Tar 2022

First of all I must note Cate Blanchett's towering performance as a famous but flawed orchestra conductor. This is a complex great role for her and she covers it like a silken piece of cloth floating down from above. She is so complete and sure in her role as Lydia Tar that at times I thought this person really existed, the opening interview with her and the real Adam Gopnik on stage at a concert hall helped this illusion. She is famous, talented and tangy, sometimes rude and at this point in time she is the conductor of The Berlin Philharmonic the first female to get this high honor.

There she lives in Berlin with her wife and their young adopted daughter who has problems of her own. The problems come out as lydia once did in her sexual orientation and these troubling incidents both with her daughter and Tar get more pronounced as this long movie goes on. A former student and probably lover commits suicide which causes great upheaval in her life and career and starts the ball of twine to unravel and start rolling. She tries to eradicate all traces of her relationship with the student and involves her much put upon and neglected assistant Francesca in the misdeed. Indeed.

We see her in all sorts of activities both domestic and in her career, teaching a seminar that gets nasty and in her stressful conducting duties that also sometimes get nasty. What to think of her? She does bad things including treating the people close to her with distance, aloofness and disdain, and works on taking down a few of them. Later in the film she has a physical public confrontation with a fellow conductor played by Mark Strong that is startling and shocking, and yet I was still drawn to her. We don't know much about her background, but towards the end of the film, we get a glimpse of her early life when she returns home to her family's house in Staten Island of all places and has a sharp bitter short encounter with her brother.

She hears noises late at night, and on a run through a park she hears but cannot see a female screaming. This scene brought to mind the scene in the park in “Blow Up” where David Hemmings also an artist thinks he may have seen a murder being committed. She is also having low level problems with her wife acted by the great Nina Hoss who plays in the orchestra and is also the concertmaster. Their child, is being bulled at school and Lydia confronts and threatens the child doing the bullying, another girl by the way one day after school. A dangerous moment. Oh her downfall is coming and is huge, demeaning and damaging. She is we see a careful sexual predator, and this is about to catch up with her Her carefulness is not as careful as she thought as she is being stalked and sent threatening emails and is physically attacked and badly beaten. We don't witness the attack only the results on her bruised face.
What is striking (and disturbing) about the film is that the character is an abusive woman, not the usual abusive man of which we have become used to dealing with and seeing both in real life and fiction. Difficult and mean women in high power jobs and positions is nothing new and I have dealt and known some in my life and career as we probably all have. Still it was not easy for me to digest her behavior or accept it.

The director and writer of the film Todd Field was an actor and appeared in quite a few movies and tv shows and is best known for his small but pivotal role in Stanley Kubrick's last film “Eyes Wide Shut” before he directed his first “commercial film” the very good “In The Bedroom” followed by the equally good “Little Children” He waited 16 years before making Tar and let's hope he doesn't wait another 16 years before making another film. One of the ten best films of 2022

Murray Melvin 1932-2023

 

Edward Koren 1935-2023

 

Summer 2023 New collage. Mixed on board.

 

Michael Lerner 1941-2023

 

Bill Butler 1921-2023