Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Director: Alain Gsponer
Writers: Petra Biondina Volpe (screenplay), Johanna Spyri (novel)
Cast: Anuk Steffen, Anna Schinz, Lilian Naef
Genre: Adventure, Family


The classic story of a young orphan girl who is sent to live with her cantankerous old grandfather high in the Swiss Alps.

The story of Heidi has been brought to the screen many times before, most notably in 1937 with Shirley Temple playing the lead. What makes this 2015 Swiss produced film so special is the stunning on location filming in the Alps! With shooting being done in both Switzerland and Germany. The Alps look amazing! That alone is reason to watch this movie which goes to great lengths to get authentic buildings and sets that look like little Heidi belongs there.

What also amazed me is when the film was over and I was watching the credits, I realized all the actors had Swiss or Germany names. Then later I read that this film had been dubbed in English for English speaking countries. I was shocked as most dubbed films sound horrible. But this was so good I never even knew it! Maybe the actual actors dubbed themselves in English, that might explain why it worked so good.

Heidi (2015) might not be the most emotional telling of the classic story, and it's not overly dramatic, which is OK and it worked. The actors were all fine, especially the kids. So what more could you ask for?

Director: John Huston
Writers: Ben Maddow & John Huston (screenplay), W.R. Burnett (novel)
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffee, James Whitmore, Marilyn Monroe
Genre: Film Noir

An elderly master mind criminal is released from prison and immediately goes about enlisting a crack team of street wise criminals to pull off a million dollar heist. The heist goes exactly as planned too...only bad luck wasn't figured into the robbers plans. CR

John Huston's movie version of the crime novel The Asphalt Jungle by noted writer W.R. Burnett, turns noir on it's head, by giving the viewer a very noir like story, without any of the noir-ish type characters and with little noir-ish cinematography.

By the early 1950s the melodrama crime movie started changing... gone is the stylish noirs of the 1940s and in it's place is a more serious semi-documentary style of story telling. And that is the type of film John Huston delivers.


The cast is as spartan as they are talented. The studio wanted a big name lead, but Huston insisted on a little known actor Sterling Hayden. Clinched jawed and never flinching are just two descriptive phrases that come to mind regarding Sterling Hayden's acting. Hayden owns the picture by playing it real. He's backed up by Jean Hagen who plays a broad who's got the hots for Hayden. I like the un-sureness that Jean Hagen brought to the movie.


Sam Jaffee is likable as the gentleman criminal master mind. And
Louis Calhern is the very likeable but sleazy lawyer who's not only fencing the stolen goods but is cheating on his wife with a much younger woman. That woman is Marilyn Monroe in one of her first movies. At times she was hard to recognize as the later Marilyn that we all know.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: John Steinbeck (story), Jo Swerling (screenplay)
Cast: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, William Bendix
Genre: Drama Suspense

About: In a lifeboat adrift at sea, the sole occupant is a woman dressed in fur and jewels. She seems aloof and oddly calm. As time goes by other passengers from the ship a U-boat sunk, begin to swim towards the lifeboat. Eventually the life boat becomes full with people of different social levels and personality. Then one more man is pulled out of the water, a German from the U-boat that sank the ship...CR

The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)

The Killing is Stanley Kubrick's first big budget film with established stars. It's considered a must see from his film canon.

I'd seen this film before when I first got into film noir, I revisited it last night after watching several other noirs. I have to say I found The Killing to be mediocre at best. The dialogue spoken between the actors in the first act when the crime is being set up, has to be some of the dullest, most repetitive lines of drivel I've heard actors say...add to that some very uninspired acting, by actors who I damn well know can act up a storm, and I have to say this film is not all that it's cracked up to be.

Just a week ago I watched John Huston's 1950 film noir The Asphalt Jungle, a film that The Killing (1956) strongly resembles.

Both films are about an audacious, brilliantly planned robbery that will net millions to the criminals. Both films go into detail about how the robbery will be done, and both have unexpected circumstances foiling the plans of the would be thieves. Hell both films even have Sterling Hayden as the lead bad guy.

The difference is The Asphalt Jungle felt alive with dynamic characters and dialogue that crackled and popped like a Saturday Night Special. Kubrick's film on the other hand is as flat as a man gunned down by the cops. It does have some of Kubrick's trade mark cinematography, and there are some good compositions, but not enough to make it one of the greats.