Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat.
1.) The Stunt Man
Featuring a ferocious (and Oscar-nominated) performance from Peter O’Toole as the maniacal director of a WWI epic, Richard Rush’s late-’70s-produced, 1980s-released film is one of the era’s highest-rated but least-seen treasures. The real story behind The Stunt Man is about as harried and hectic as the fictional film-within-the-film: released in only a handful of theaters in 1980, The Stunt Man garnered rave reviews and Oscar nominations but it seemed no one but critics saw it. Virtually unavailable on home video and DVD for nearly 30 years, The Stunt Man just got its Blu-Ray release last year. One of the most unique, bizarre, intricate and original American films ever made, The Stunt Man is a must-see for those interested in the behind-the-scenes of how movies get made.
2.) The Man With the Golden Arm
Widely credit as being the first mainstream Hollywood film to tackle the issue of drug addiction, Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm is just one of a series of serious “issue” films from the director. In the ’50s and ’60s, Preminger pushed the boundaries of the Production Code, so much so that he released Golden Arm without the MPAA’s certification (unheard of at the time). Frank Sinatra gives one of his best performances as Frankie Machine, a former heroin addict who got clean in prison and after his release, struggles to stay that way. He’s saddled with a disabled wife, a group of low-life, underworld friends and the reappearance of a sexy old flame (Kim Novak). Featuring a harrowing sequences of Sinatra going “cold turkey,” Golden Arm pulls no punches in its depictions of the ravaging effects of heroin addiction, as well as the difficulties of working class people to stay “clean” in both drugs and crime.
3.) Meet John Doe
The plot of Meet John Doe is as dark and cynical as you can get, and yet the film is leavened by director Frank Capra’s signature optimism (and a convenient, last-minute Christ allegory). Barbara Stanwyck stars as a hard-bitten newspaper reporter tasked to write a final story before she’s unceremoniously canned. She pens a fake suicide note from a John Doe who’s decided to off himself because society is cruel and unjust. The newspaper receives a flood of support for John Doe, so much so that the Stanwyck and the paper must cast a bum to play the fictional John Doe. Their pick is Gary Cooper, a down-on-his-luck former baseball player with an injured arm and no money to fix it. Cooper gets wrapped up in political manipulation, exploitative social commentary and all manner of shenanigans, until he really does become suicidal. Imagine if the story ended there! A last-minute swell of good-feeling from the public buoys Cooper, Stanwyck and all the opportunistic newspapermen and politicians, depositing them safely in the harbor of redemption and societal harmony.
Buster Keaton’s last great film, Steamboat Bill Jr. has probably the greatest thirty minutes of any movie ever made: an epically destructive cyclone that hits Jr’s (Keaton’s) riverside town, tearing the roofs off buildings, uprooting trees and flooding the city. Keaton’s intricately choreographed navigation through the melee (like the iconic stunt seen above) resembles the zigzagging of a pinball through a buzzing, dinging, lit-up machine (Keaton’s the pinball). The gags flow so seamlessly together, it’s immediately apparent that you’re witnessing the work of a cinematic (and mechanical) genius at the apex of his powers. If only the rest of the movie were as good!
5.) Bob Le Flambeur
An early film from the French master of the policier, Jean-Pierre Melville (a personal favorite director of mine), Bob Le Flambeur tells the tale of an aging gambler plotting his last, big score–the brazen (and ill-advised) heist of a Deauville casino. Melville’s view of Paris is one of elegiac romance: Bob’s time has clearly come and gone and his last grasps of dignity fall short in this new era of pimps and gangsters. No longer is the “gentlemen gambler” welcome to a seat at the table. Roger Duchesne’s stark white hair, crisp black tuxedo and hardened visage communicate a kind of moral white knight, untouched by the degredation of urban crime, navigating the underworld with the compulsive momentum of an unstoppable gambling addict. Flamber (verb, French): To wager not only the money you have, but the money you don’t have.
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