The bride wore black. Robin Williams played football

I’ve seen THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (1967) described as Truffaut’s tribute to Hitchcock though I’ve never felt there’s anything really Hitchcockian about it, despite using Hitchcock’s favorite musical collaborator, Bernard Herrman.

Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, this has a woman (Jeanne Moreau) hunting down five men, insinuating herself into their lives as a teacher, maid, flirt or artist’s model, and bringing death to each of them in revenge for the death of her husband (I won’t spoil it beyond that). It’s a good film, with a nice little sketch of each man (petty thug, shy dude, pompous politician and so on), but as my friend Ross has said, it’s hard to believe the police couldn’t figure out the connection before the end. And the novel has an ending twist that’s more effective — I wouldn’t mind seeing a faithful adaptation some day. Still, this is an entertaining film, even if Truffaut thought it a misfire (he wished he’d made it in black and white). “Listen to the sounds of her stockings rubbing against each other.”

SCARFACE (1932) is the first really great movie since I started working through Howard Hawks’ films. Paul Muni plays Tony Camonte, a thinly veiled Capone rising to the top of the rackets despite competition from coin-flipping George Raft and Boris Karloff in one of his last Supporting Gangster roles before stardom struck him; Ann Dvorak is Muni’s sister, whom he’s a little too protective of. A raw, striking gangster film that hit enough of a nerve with the New York state censors Hawks had to offer a new ending (Tony goes to trial, convicted, and hangs by the neck until he is dead); when that didn’t work either, he released it in every other state with the original ending and it was a hit.

The Films of Howard Hawks argues that Tony Camonte is very much a prototype for later, selfish antiheroes such as the protagonists of Twentieth Century and His Girl Friday. Like them, Tony is a selfish prick who goes after what he wants with little regard for fair play or the rules, but there’s even less of a velvet glove over his iron first. A very good gangster film. “Colorful? What color is a crawling louse.”

Frank Sinatra’s Ocean’s Eleven was a tedious Rat Pack film in which Sinatra reunites his commando team from WW II to pull off a casino robbery. Steven Soderbergh’s OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001) is much better. Con man George Clooney gets out of prison to discover wife Julia Roberts has now attached herself to casino magnate Andy Garcia; he sets out to settle the score by stealing millions from Garcia’s supposedly impregnable money vault (5 Against the House would be a good double-bill) with the help of Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould. It’s an entertaining caper film but way too much a sausage fest: Julia Roberts is the only woman with more than a walk-on and she’s nothing but the McGuffin Clooney and Garcia are fighting over. “There’s a 95-pound man with $160 million behind that door.”While in Florida I rewatched THE BEST OF TIMES (1985) with my BFF Cindy and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Robin Williams’ entire life has been defined by dropping the ball in the Big Game; now he launches a crazy scheme to lay his ghost to rest by re-enacting the game, much to the discomfort of his lifelong buddy and former star quarterback Kurt Russell, who’s worried this could destroy his own legend (“I was good for around here but everyone remembers I was great.”). Donald Moffatt plays Williams’ malevolent father-in-law; a fun film about obsession, old injuries, high school and making peace with your past..“Victories for the underdog are an aberration in the natural order of the universe.”

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