Also once movie ends with the scene of the father killing Hoffman, I don't think the final shot of the father walking down the corridor and sunlight streaming through was appropriate. I mean, the father's life sure ain't sunnier now that Hoffman is dead. Yeah, he avenged his wife's senseless death, but his life is still just as miserable.
(If anything, a more appropriate shot would have been for the father to leave the room, and have the camera fixate on Hoffman's dead body as the final shot. Or perhaps even better, it could have panned across the city to a shot of Hawke running away or something, like getting on a Greyhound bus and fleeing somewhere ("to the asshole of the world" ? ) Hoffman and Hawke are the main characters here: they were in desperate situations and did something desperate and their lives have now become even more desperate. The fate of the two of them mean much more to me than the fate of the father. So eg. in the scene where the father kills Hoffman, I view it as "look at what happened to Hoffman," rather than "the father got his revenge and can now walk away in peace." The father's actions are only relevant in how they affect the main characters. What concerns us is not whether or not the father gets his revenge per se, but the effect on Hoffman/Hawke.
Still, I'd really like to know what fascinates you in this movie. If I didn't I would probably not bother posting a review here. If it works on a direct emotional level, you probably identify yourself with the main character? Doing so was impossible to me: I could never understand his actions. Is he supposed to be simple minded? He knows there is a trap and goes right into it, doing even things that he doesn't need to. He never anticipates anything. I cannot understand his actions or even what he wants.There is a Cult of Welles, of course, and if you ask me he deserves it. Someone who has done Citizen Kane at the time he did it, the way he did it and before he was 25 is my hero (even if CK is too cold to be a personal favorite of mine). I don't really really like his other films I saw (Amberson and Touch of Evil) but at least they had this "Mr.-Orson-Welles-aka-the-guy-who-changed-Cinema-for-ever" feeling. Now, with The Lady, like I said: remove the 5 last minutes, the very very few (I mean no more than 3 or 4... I actually can think of only one) cool shots before that, and I sincerely cannot see anything else than real garbage taking all the clichés from Noir and executing them very poorly without really understanding them.
Ok then, I have re-watched The Lady from Shanghai meanwhile. Don't know what's wrong with the film. It is probably the visually most extravagant film of the 40s (save maybe for Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible), and for me it works visually very well as all it looks quite stunning. I can't say that I identify with one of the characters, probably I rarely do in any film, but the film works for me that I enjoy the visual style very directly. And the film becomes more and more bizarre the further the story goes on, and then culminates in the famous mirror sequence. I enjoy the storytelling with its artificial dialogues and of course I enjoy the partly over the top acting. And the story, well it is too unimportant to think about the details, which means it was never really necessary for me to check if it all is logically developed or if there are big plot holes. The plot is secondary to the film's style.
The Best Man - 8/10 - A pretty spot-on political satire that (sadly) still has resonance today.
Try and Get Me! (aka The Sound of Fury) - 8/10 - Hmm, this obscure, not available on DVD film is lurking in the deep recesses of Netflix Instant Watch! It's basically a more realistic version of Fritz Lang's Fury, a heavily-fictionalized depiction of the 1933 Brooke Hart murder and lynching of his killers in San Jose. Lots of anger at economic destitution and society's indifference to social ills; it's hard to come up for a starker attack on society than a lynch mob. There's a good amount of heavy-handed preaching, especially towards the end, but it's dramatically sound and reaches a shocking denouement. Claustrophobic direction by Cy Endfield (Zulu) helps a lot and the cast is superb, especially Lloyd Bridges.
The direction in The King's Speech irritated me to no end. Tom Hooper is one of the most obnoxiously ostentateous directors out there; just because you can tilt a camera doesn't mean you should. (See also John Adams.) Otherwise it was a good film.
Are you referring to the fact that during the therapy sessions, he often framed Firth in the corner of the screen? Wasn't that as a means of showing the king's insecurities, or something like that?
