Film-Noir Discussion/DVD Review Thread

[Dust Devil]

The Hot Spot (1990)

Neo-noir directed by Dennis Hopper, starring: Don Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Virginia Madsen, Charles Martin Smith, William Sadler, and others.

Not the best neo-noir you can come across but certainly not the worst either. Watchable, thoroughly entertaining movie that doesn't try too hard, with sort of a road movie undercurrent. All the actors make it work pulling off their standard character actor repertoire, except for Jennifer Connelly that is (and was even then) very probably the most versatile of them all. Expect no surprises, and you won't be disappointed.

Glides very well for a two hour movie.


6.85/10

[dave jenkins]

Young Man with a Horn (1950)

Just came across the following in John Updike's The Centaur:

The five movie palaces of Weiser Street in Alton were Loew's, the Embassy, the Warner, the Astor, and the Ritz. I went to the Warner and saw "Young Man With a Horn," starring Kirk Douglas, Doris Day, and Lauren Bacall. . . . My best piece of luck for the day, I came in on the cartoon. . . . The cartoon was, of course, Bugs Bunny. Loew's had Tom and Jerry, the Embassy Popeye, the Astor either Disney, the best, or Paul Terry, the worst. I bought a box of popcorn and a box of Jordan Almonds . . . The sidelights were soft yellow and time melted. At the end, when the hero, the trumpeter who was based on Bix Beiderbecke, had finally fought free of the rich woman who with her insinuating crooked smile (Lauren Bacall) had been corrupting his art, and the good artistic woman (Doris Day), her lover restored to her, sang, and behind her own transparent voice Harry James's trumpet pretending to be Kirk Douglas's lifted like a silver fountain higher and higher into "With a Song in My Heart"--only here, on the last note, an absolutely level ecstasy attained, did I remember ........"

Well, the narrator is a fictional character, but he seemed to like the film.

[Dust Devil]

But the guy is talking about his childhood, right?

The movie is worth checking for one thing alone: it's a noir-musical (by some definitions), and there really aren't many of them around. Apart from that, you'll soon find that's it's not really musical, nor a biopic, nor a romance flick, nor a real noir for that matter, it is maybe a drama for the most part, but a pretty shallow and dull one. I'd say the category it best fits in is - experiment.

[dave jenkins]

An amazing post has appeared on The Blackboard, a film noir board:

Raw Deal (1948) / Part 1 - Correcting Misstatements about the Plot

Posted by Dan Hodges on 11/9/2009, 8:44 am

A great deal has been written about Raw Deal, in books, articles and web-posts. So two things, but only two, are easily accessed – summaries of the plot and commentaries on the spellbinding cinematography by John Alton. Interpretations of the movie, however, are far less available.

What’s uncanny is that plot summaries so often have at least one inaccurate assertion. These errors aren’t about trivia, but key aspects of the story.

Below are a selection of the most frequent (and bewildering) misstatements about the plot, followed by my explanations of what really happens. It’s reasonable to conclude that if events in a film can be so erroneously described so often, it means there’s something questionable – indeed, troubling – about how critics/historians “see” the film.

“A gangster, Joe Sullivan, is framed by his associates and vows revenge when he is released from prison” (Carl Macek, Film Noir: An Encyclodpedic Reference to the American Style); “Intent on getting revenge against the men who framed him” (Michael L. Stephens, Film Noir: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Reference to Movies, Terms and Persons); “Prison escapee gets caught between two women on his way to confront crime boss that had him framed” (Spencer Selby, Dark City: The Film Noir); “The tale of framed gangster’s quest for vengeance after he busts out of prison” (All Movie Guide); “O'Keefe who breaks jail to pursue a vendetta against the confederates who framed him” (The BFI Companion to Crime); "On the run from prison, seeking revenge on the gangster who framed him” (Paul Duncan, Film Noir: Films of Trust and Betrayal); “A standard revenge yarn” (Back Alley Noir, official forum for the Film Noir Foundation); “A desperate man breaks out of prison and begins a relentless and bloody pursuit of those who framed him” (Elliot Lavine, Roxie Theater program, May 16, 2009).

Joe is not framed. Jeanine Basinger correctly explains, “As the film opens, Joe is in prison, sent up because he agreed to take a rap for Rick, with the understanding that Rick would get him out and pay him $50,000 for the favor” (Anthony Mann).

Revenge is not the mainspring of the plot. After Joe escapes from prison and gets by a police dragnet, he goes, as planned, to Grimshaw’s Taxidermy shop in Crescent City. He expects to meet Rick and collect $50 G’s. He brings Ann into the shop, and they make small talk with Grimshaw. Then Grimshaw tells Joe that Rick is in the backroom waiting for him.

The film has run over 47 minutes before Joe discovers he’s walked into a trap. Joe has no idea that Rick sent Fantail to the taxidermist’s to kill him.

After more than 57 minutes in the film, in a scene in a San Francisco hotel room just before they’re supposed to take a ship to South America, Joe tells Pat he’s going to kill Rick. Although Pat strenuously argues with Joe, she can’t convince him to forget about the money, avoid the risk of getting killed and stay with her. Then, her anger rising, she says, “If Ann asked you, I bet you’d do it.” Joe slaps Pat hard in the face, and she leaves the room. Joe pours himself a drink, downs it and throws the glass against a wall.

Soon Pat comes back. She’s upset because, in her jealousy about Ann, she almost betrayed Joe to the police. Joe’s unsettled because he knows it’s his fault, yet he can’t say to her what he should. He grouses, “You’ve forgiven me a thousand times before without my asking.” After a pause, as they sit silently next to each other on a bed, she presses his hand to her cheek. Suddenly, he stands up and tells her to get ready to go to the ship.

The conflict between Pat and Joe is ultimately about Ann, not Rick. Joe gives in to Pat because resolving his complicated romantic situation becomes more important than upholding his sense of an-eye-for-an-eye manliness. At the start of their argument he tells Pat that he’s “got to” get revenge. When the scene ends, Joe’s willing to forget about Rick and, though she’s not his first choice, to start life anew and abroad with Pat. The total run-time about vengeance – the repeatedly but incorrectly cited theme of the film – is less than five minutes.

“Rick sets up a prison escape for Joe which is, in fact, designed for his capture” (Jeanine Basinger).

On the contrary, early in the evening before Joe makes his break, Rick explains to Spider, citing one reason after another, that the odds of Joe not being killed by the police are greater than 10,000 to 1. Rick is setting up Joe to be “cut down,” not sent back to his cell.

“Coyle has arranged for Joe to be killed during the break-out in order to avoid confronting him” (Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, “RAW DEAL: The Case of the Flamin’ Man”); Rick “has arranged for Joe to be killed during the break-out” (Wikipedia).

Rick has only helped arrange for Joe to break out by “opening up three doors and letting him take his chances.” He’s confident that, either when Joe’s still inside the prison walls or while he’s on the lam, the police will kill him.

“Do-gooder Ann Martin is kidnapped by Joe Sullivan and eventually kills Fantail to protect him” (Alain Silver & Jim Ursini, Film Noir); “Joe Sullivan…enchants Ann so much that she kills for him” (Bruce Crowther, Film Noir); “Ann shoots Joe’s attacker in the back. After this act of murder” (Wikipedia); “After this act of murder, Ann decides she’s in love with Joe” (Carl Macek); “A fight with a vicious thug ends when Joe convinces Ann to shoot his attacker in the back. After this act of murder” (allexperts.com).

Joe doesn’t convince Ann to shoot Fantail. In fact, he doesn’t appear to even see that she’s entered the taxidermist’s back room. As Joe and Grimshaw fight, Fantail comes up behind Joe with a large iron pipe. Ann picks up Joe’s gun from the floor and, standing in back of all three men, she takes aim at Fantail and fires.

In the next scene, on a beach outside the taxidermist’s, Joe comforts Ann because she thinks that she’s killed Fantail. Joe tells her that she didn’t, and she’s relieved.

The next day Fantail is at a gas station and he sees Ann. After he kidnaps her, he brings her to Rick. When Rick learns Joe’s on his way to rescue Ann, he sends Fantail and Spider outside to kill him. In a shootout in the fog across the street from Rick’s apartment building, Spider and Fantail accidentally kill one another, each thinking he’s firing his gun at Joe. In other words, Fantail has lots of screen time after Ann shoots him.

“When they return to the motel in the morning, Joe knows it can't work out with Ann and gets her to take one of the cars back to San Francisco while he and Pat go their separate way to San Francisco” (Dennis Schwartz).

Joe doesn’t send Ann away at a motel. Instead, they split up elsewhere, in an exquisite scene of filmmaking and nonpareil noir. As Basinger writes, “Ann takes Pat’s place in Joe’s affection, but Joe sends her back to her own world. This is beautifully realized in a scene in which Joe and Ann [after they’ve spent the night together] drive up to meet Pat on a flat stretch of deserted road along the costal highway. Joe stops his car at frame right, a goodly distance from Pat in her car at frame left. A long shot stresses the distance between the two cars, the isolation of all three characters, the hopeless, fatalistic sense of their situation, and the relationship of the two women vis-à-vis Joe. After Joe pushes Ann out of the car, another long shot shows the two women walking silently past each other as they change positions. Pat’s voice on the track says, ‘I suppose I should feel some kind of victory, but I don’t. Walking past her this way…She, too, is just a dame in love with Joe.’ The image of the two women passing without speaking, set against the loneliness of the barren highway, is the equivalent of a bleak modern poem. Years before the alienated European films of the 1960s, Mann captured the same feeling in a cheapie for Eagle-Lion.”

The following quotes refer to the penultimate scene when Joe, trying to rescue Ann, fights Rick. “Rick inadvertently starts a fire. He jumps out of a window to his death” (Michael L. Stephens); “Rick trips over the candles which sets the place on fire as he tries to pull Joe into the fire with him. Rick then jumps out the window in a ball of flames” (Dennis Schwartz).

It’s misleading to say “inadvertently,” and it’s mistaken to say Rick “jumps.” Rick shoots Joe first. Joe fires back and the impact of the bullets pushes Rick backward, overturning a candelabra. The candles fall on the floor, setting some draperies on fire. Joe and Rick struggle until Joe spins Rick away and Rick falls backward through the flaming draperies and out a window. The camera shows him on fire, falling toward the street, face up, and screaming.

This “final” scene doesn’t exist. “Pat, back at her apartment, is resigned to a life of loneliness” (Michael L. Stephens).

In the actual final scene, Pat steps out of police car in handcuffs just in time to see Joe, mortally wounded by Rick’s gunshot, come out of the front door of Rick’s apartment building. Ann’s with him. Joe dies on the sidewalk, in Ann’s arms. The camera shifts across the street to show the street sign for “Corkscrew Alley,” the poor neighborhood where Joe, Pat and Rick grew up. Raw Deals ends with the symbolism of Joe and Ann united because above “Corkscrew Alley” is another sign that says, “Jane St.”

Can't wait for Part 2!

[dave jenkins]

And here it is:

Raw Deal (1948) / Part 2 - Correcting Misinterpretations of the Plot

Posted by Dan Hodges [User Info] on 11/9/2009, 8:45 am
Message modified by user Dan Hodges 11/9/2009, 8:56 am

Although there are many published (and Internet-posted) summaries of the plot of Raw Deal, which often contain one or more factual errors, there are only a few interpretations of this pantheonic film noir.

Carl Macek says, “Joe Sullivan exists as a homme fatale seducing Ann Martin into a world filled with violent action and murder, enticing her with a promise of sexual fulfillment that goes beyond the realm of normal relationships. She surrenders completely to Joe, committing murder as the ultimate expression of her love” (Film Noir: An Encyclodpedic Reference to the American Style).

And Jeanine Basinger says, “In forming her relationship with Joe, Ann undergoes a moral change. After idealizing him as a former child hero gone wrong…, she learns the situation is more hopeless—in film noir terms, more predetermined—than that. She has to reform her understanding of him along newer, more realistic lines” (Anthony Mann). To prove her point, Basinger also cites Ann’s decision to fire a gun to save Joe’s life.

Macek and Basinger are wrong because it’s Ann who gets Joe to change.

Joe, Ann and Pat break the rules in a state park by building a campfire. As Ann sweet-talks a park ranger into letting the two women off with just a warning, Joe hides behind a tree, with his pistol drawn. After the ranger leaves, Joe thanks Ann. But Ann berates him, “Thanks? I didn’t do it for you. I did it for that kid. You’d have shot him down. I saw you with that gun. I saw the look on your face. You’re a murderer. I may have romanticized you before, but now I know you. You’re something from under a rock. You don’t have to worry about me turning you in anymore. I don’t have to. You’ll get yours. Somehow, sometime, somewhere!”

As they drive through the night to a mountain lodge, Joe doesn’t say a word. Pat thinks it means Ann “was getting under his skin.”

Outside the lodge, Joe tries to flirt with Ann, but she rebuffs him. He says, “You’re right. I am something from underneath a rock…that famous rock that hits you in the back of the head after you’ve tried to help someone…But I’m climbing right up…until I reach the top.” She asks, “To what end? More crime?” He grabs her and forces a kiss on her. Holding her arms tightly, he says he wanted to see how she’d react when she got “kissed by something from under a stone.” Suggesting that he’s ashamed of his class background, she says, “That bothers you, doesn’t it?” He answers, “Oh, what do you know about anything? You’ve probably had your bread buttered on both sides since the day you were born. Safe! Safe on first, second, third, and home.”

Ann breaks free of Joe’s grip and retorts, “That’s what you think. Just because I own a collar and a tailored suit and my nails are clean, you think I haven’t had to fight? I got a good education, sure. I suppose that means I was born with a silver spoon, doesn’t it? My father was a schoolteacher. He died in the war of the Depression. Only he didn’t get any medals or any bands or any bonus. He left three children. You think you had to fight. The only way you know how to fight is that stupid way with a gun. Well, there’s another way you probably never even heard of. It’s the daily fight that everyone has to get food and an education, to land a job and keep it, and some self-respect. Safe? I never asked for anything safe. All I want is just a little decency, that’s all.” Ann rushes back to the lodge, and Joe follows, brooding. Ann goes to Pat’s room and tells her, “Joe means nothing to me. Not now.”

Soon after, a man pursued by the state police runs up to the lodge, shouting and banging on the door. Oscar (the lodge owner), Joe and Ann are on the other side of the door in a hallway. Pat is behind and above them, on the lower steps of a stairway. Afraid the police will come to the lodge and find Joe, Oscar and Pat don’t want to let the man in. Ann begs Joe with her eyes. Joe says to Oscar, “Let the poor slob in.” Pat cries out, “Joe, use your head! Don’t be a chump! Joe, you can’t! You can’t!” Ann looks at Joe again, and he says, “Open it up, Oscar.”

The man bursts in. Everyone moves toward the camera, from the hallway into the living room. Except Pat. She’s seen on the stairs, in deep focus, far away and isolated. Joe tells Oscar’s wife to get the man a drink, but she refuses to serve a “wife murderer.” Then Joe’s startled to see Ann pouring a glass.

Wracked with remorse, the man runs outside, fires his pistol in the air and is gunned down by the cops. Ann looks at Joe and says, “That could be you.” Crucially, her tone of voice is serious and not spiteful, as it was at the state park and outside the lodge. This is because Joe’s changed. By helping the fugitive, he showed he could be unselfish. Ann showed her gratitude by doing what Joe asked and pouring the man a drink.

Just before a state trooper enters the lodge, Joe pulls Ann out of the living room and into a small closet under the stairs where Pat still stands. In previous scenes, to prevent Ann from alerting anyone he’s an escaped convict, Joe or Pat held a gun on her. Standing close together in the dark closet, they look at each other, and their gaze is romantic.

Therefore, what happens at the taxidermist’s is because of their new relationship. When Ann sees that Joe is about to “get his,” instead of standing by and letting it happen, she saves his life. Shooting Fantail doesn’t mark Ann’s change in attitude toward Joe. It’s the consequence of a change that’s already occurred. It didn’t come about because Joe seduced her or because she reforms her understanding of Joe. When Ann’s distraught that she might have killed Fantail, Joe says she did it to save his life, adding, “I know I’m not worth it, but then…” Ann interrupts, “Oh, yes, you are!” Once again they look at each other, and this time they kiss. Joe became worthy when he heeded Ann’s unspoken plea to help the fugitive. For that, Joe didn’t get a rock thrown at his head; he got Ann’s respect and love.

Why would Macek and Basinger fail to recognize Joe is changed by Ann? Why would they believe Ann accommodates herself to Joe instead of the other way around? Both authors’ views are based on a hardboiled framework for interpreting film noir. Accordingly, they analyze Ann in terms of Joe, because he’s the central character and he’s a tough guy. In fact, however, both Ann and Pat convince Joe to do as they wish. Pat stops Joe from seeking revenge on Rick. Ann gets Joe to be decent to the hunted man.

Furthermore, it’s right that Joe does what the women want. The fine person he was as a kid is still within him as a man. He was a poor boy, and those life circumstances were a raw deal. But when Ann tells Joe about everyone’s “daily fight,” she profoundly affects him. She gets even deeper under his skin.

After Fantail calls him a “jerk,” Joe says, thinking of Ann, “Called that a lot lately. Much better language.” Joe’s love for Ann and her influence on him are what change him into a different man. On the ship he tells Pat he wants to “start fresh, decent.” As Pat listens to Joe talk about having “a business…a house…[and] kids,” she realizes his dreams are meant for Ann. (In a moment Pat reveals to Joe that “Ann’s with Rick!”)

When Joe sends Ann away after they spend the night together, she thinks he prefers Pat. So until he rescues her, she doesn’t know how much he loves her. Dying in her arms, he tells her not to cry, “I got my breath of fresh air. You….” Joe knew he’d changed the way Ann wanted, which is why Pat sees there’s “a kind of happiness on his face.”

Macek and Basinger’s views fail because to interpret Raw Deal, based on what really happens, requires jettisoning a hardboiled framework.

Macek finds faults with Raw Deal when he contrasts it to a normative ideal of film noir, which he derives from a hardboiled framework. He says, “The ironic narration provided by Pat develops the romantic undercurrent evident in many noir films. It remains for the true noir film to debase any sense of pity or love that may be present, replacing it with a tough, cynical nature.”

Similarly, Robert Ottoson complains, “The only thing that keeps Raw Deal from being an exemplary film noir is its soft center. The love that O’Keefe has for Hunt is not only far-fetched, but Hunt’s excessive moralizing is not in keeping with the film’s overall quality of brutality and pessimism” (A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir, 1940-1958).

Although there’s no happy ending in Raw Deal, the love story is a deal-breaker for Macek and Ottoson, preventing it from being “true” or “exemplary” film noir.

Yet “moralizing” is an inaccurate term to describe Ann’s criticisms of Joe at the state park and outside the lodge. Furthermore, it’s the agonizing romantic triangle that makes Raw Deal so extremely noir. Joe’s physical conflict with Rick (and his henchmen, like Fantail) comes in a distant second to Joe’s emotional struggles with Ann and Pat. Indeed, the film packs a greater wallop by showing Joe’s repudiation of “a tough, cynical nature.”

Macek, Basinger, Ottoson, and many others still today, hold fast to a hardboiled framework about film noir. Raw Deal is a far better film than strict adherents to a hardboiled framework are able to acknowledge. Through a crime and love story that is the equal in its adultness with the best of French poetic realism, not to mention American film noir, Raw Deal shows the heart-wrenching despair men and women endure and the soul-deadening compromises they give in to. Not only the extraordinary visual style but also the exceptionally tense interplay of mature romantic relationships place Raw Deal among the best cinema, as well as film noir.

Wow! Who is this guy?

[cigar joe]

Somewhere in the Night (1946)    Dir by Joeseph F. Mankiewicz  with John Hodiak as George W. Taylor, Nancy Guild as Christy Smith, Lloyd Nolan as Police Lt. Donald Kendall, Richard Conte as Mel Phillips, Josephine Hutchinson as Elizabeth Conroy, Fritz Kortner as Anzelmo aka the psychic Dr. Oracle and Margo Woode as the hooker Phyllis.  George Taylor wakes up in a military  hospital with amnesia and a letter in his wallet from a girl he done wrong.  He also gets a letter from a Larry Cravat that is worth 5,000 at a local California bank, so he's off on the trail of Cravat so that he can find out his own identity. On the way he meets Nancy a local torch singer and Phyllis a hooker who comes off as a high society dame. Lots of twists and turns in this entertaining film, some great lines also, caught it on Fox Movie Channel this morning.  

Phyllis: "Who is the character with the hair" (to Christy) "that is why I haven't seen you around" (to Taylor)
Christy: (to Phyllis) If its around I'm sure you'll get it".

Great Noir 8/10

[cigar joe]

DJ got a link to "The Blackboard" forum looks interesting.

[dave jenkins]

Try this: http://members.boardhost.com/mrvalentine/

[cigar joe]

Try this: http://members.boardhost.com/mrvalentine/

thanks check out this film if you haven't:

The Capture (1950) Another one of those on the cusp "End of The West" Westerns shot in a very noir style its practically not only a bookend film to "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" but it probably could be considered as a stand alone film noir, It begins around the oil fields of Tampico and in the same time (just like TTOTSM) and then moves into the interior just like (TTOTSM). Its directed by John Sturges and has enough sleazy interior cantina shots with old whirling overhead electric fans and trains to keep me happy. It stars Lew Ayres as Lin Vanner, Teresa Wright as Ellen Tevlin Vanner, Victor Jory as    Father Gomez, Jacqueline White as Luana Ware, Jimmy Hunt   as Mike Tevlin, Barry Kelley as Earl C. Mahoney, and Duncan Renaldo (the Cisco Kid) as Carlos

The basic story is Vanner an oil company man gets a hunch and goes after a suspect in an oil company payroll robbery that Mahoney, who was guarding the money, says they passed on the rails just before the motorized railcar was attacked. Vanner takes off on a hunch on horseback to a pass through the mountains, he comes upon Sam Tevlin and orders him to throw up his hands Tevlin who has hurt his right arm yells out that he can't but Vanner can't make out what he yelled and shoots him, wounding him seriously. Tevlin denies having anything to do with the robbery that he was heading back to his ranch, wife and son,  and explains that he couldn't put his hand up because of his wound. Vanner feels disgusted with himself and puts Tevlin on his horse and leads him back to the oil company office, there Mahoney interrogates Teviln roughlyand he dies from his wounds.

Vanner quits the company and accompanies the body of Tevlin to is home town where he meets an old friend Carlos. Ellen Tevlin now with no husband puts an add in the paper for a ranch foreman and Vanner applies. He gets along good with the family until Ellen finds a newspaper clipping about Vanner taking Tevlin and she blames him for his death. Eventually they reconcile, and Vanner decides to clear Tevlin's name and go after the real robber of the payroll.

Its not a great print on the DVD but its worth renting from Netflix, 8/10 for the atmosphere alone.

[Dust Devil]

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

I found it unusual enough to hold my attention till the end, but I wouldn't climb in my top X of Film Noirs. Those characters are so overbuilt it's scary, which doesn't mean they're not entertaining to watch and listen to, but they have phony (with a capital P) written on their foreheads. Falco and JJ are like bang-bang-bang-bang, you're looking around what happened, did I miss something or what... Smart lines whenever they open their mouth; witty, humorous, insinuative, daring, bloody everything. It took me the whole movie to decrypt what's the nature of their relationship supposed to be in first place, and I still don't quite get it.

something like 7 or 7.5 out of 10

[Dust Devil]

The Ninth Gate (1999)

I guess I can understand most of the complaints, but nevertheless, it is a very entertaining and highly re-watchable movie. It's far from Polanski's best, it does not possess the level of intensity you'd expect and it (carefully) builds up to nowhere, but the characters are interesting (both Depp and Langella are excellent) to follow and the melancholic scent of old books and antiquities is hard to resist. Very well made from the technical side.


7/10

[Dust Devil]

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Something seems to be missing here; it's a solid Noir with one of Humphrey Bogart's best performances, yet once they all meet in the same room I soon get disinterested from all the talk. Forgive me but I wouldn't call it a full-blown masterpiece.


7.6/10

[dave jenkins]

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Something seems to be missing here; it's a solid Noir with one of Humphrey Bogart's best performances, yet once they all meet in the same room I soon get disinterested from all the talk. Forgive me but I wouldn't call it a full-blown masterpiece.
7.6/10

You are forgiven, although I wouldn't give it more than a "6." Too talky by half! And everything is shot on those boring sets. Move along folks, there's nothing to see here.

thread continues here: http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=1822.msg134663#msg134663

[Novecento]

Guess these posts on The Big Sleep (1945/6) would be better included in this topic:

As we seem to find ourselves in the season of the LIST, best of.....worst of.....longest.....shortest.....etc. I thought I would add one more (just for the craic).
My all time favorite TWO-PERSON screen exchange is the following:
....

Interestingly this whole scene was not in the original 1945 cut of the movie, but was added for the 1946 theatrical release. There's a DVD release with both versions and a discussion of the differences.

... the original 1945 cut is clearly the better version in my opinion.

I find it hard to choose between them. I'm glad they gave us a DVD with both.

Looks like opinions differ on this issue:

The DVD contains two versions, the superior theatrical cut, with necessary re-shoots and tightnings as well as the pre-release version. The differances are llarge between the two, and these are documented on the disk and as a curiosity piece and a look at the art of filmmaking its interesting. But don't go expecting and Alien 3 in which the pre-release was much better. Of course this is this reviewers opinion and I invite owners of this disc to give their own opinions.

[Dust Devil]

You are forgiven, although I wouldn't give it more than a "6." Too talky by half! And everything is shot on those boring sets. Move along folks, there's nothing to see here.

6 is maybe a bit harsh, but it's certainly more objective and founded than giving it a 9 or calling it a perfect movie as many do. It is an entertaining flick; the lines are often witty and the acting is very good, but the localization just killed the second half more than anything else. I know FN ain't like W, but shooting 40 minutes in the same room is a bloody crime.

Continued here...........: http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=1822.msg148608#msg148608