MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

(Um Haaresbreite [de])

USA 1952
d: Richard Fleischer
Warner Home Video (Region 0 us)

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Fleischer has yet to have his critical day: with Blake Edwards, he is one of the last surviving classically trained American directors. Here is classic pulp premise (cops escorting hoodlum's widow to Grand Jury trial with a pack of killers bent on eliminating her before she talks); essence of B movie casting (the malevolently magnificent McGraw and the sleazy siren Windsor); and classic setting (transcontinental express train with every passenger, every stop a possibly malign menace). Teeming with incident, it is fashioned into a taut, breathtakingly fast and highly suspenseful 'sleeper' par excellence.
— CW, Time Out Film Guide
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Originally titled The Target, RKO's noir programmer "The Narrow Margin" (1952) was a hard-boiled masterpiece of gangland-flavored tough-guy dialogue and of economy in setting and pace. The plot contrivances, shootings, taut pace, and a major narrative twist in the third act helped it become an instant audience favorite and earn enough critical clout for an Oscar nomination as Best Original Screenplay. Practically a primer on how to produce a B-movie, it began its life as the lower half of a double bill with "Tembo" (1952), a laughable African safari adventure from star-director-producer Howard Hill, promoted as the "World's Greatest Archer." The son of famed cartoonist Max Fleischer (the creator of "Popeye" and "Betty Boop"), director Richard Fleischer reached the high water mark of his low budget career with "The Narrow Margin". Having already won a Short Subject Oscar in 1948, the former newsreel editor's career took off on the popularity and reputation of the film, and he was soon directing glossy A-list projects like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), although he never completely gave up his affinity for crime melodrama. Critical respect for "The Narrow Margin" grew over the years until, at around the same time as a big-budget 1990 remake, a new print of the original was screened on the revival circuit. Without a bit of irony, "The Narrow Margin" was once again shown as half of a double bill, this time with the lurid classic "Detour" (1946), to which "The Narrow Margin" was often favorably compared (both films featured scripts co-written by Martin Goldsmith). With apologies to Howard Hill, most aficionados of lower-tier Hollywood noir consider "The Narrow Margin" one of the greatest B-movies ever made.
— Karl Williams, AMG
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This crisp thriller makes quick business of illustrating one of film noir's more unsettling tenets, that in our society, morality is relative. A detective is the reluctant escort for a racketeer's contemptuous widow who is to appear as a witness against organized crime; various mobsters make it their business to see that she does not arrive alive. The film takes place almost entirely within the narrow margins of a locomotive's interior, which cinematographer George Diskant (who shot Nicholas Ray's "On Dangerous Ground" and "They Live by Night") turns into a glistening noir setting for fast turns and cruel deceptions.
— PFA

Soylent Green

(Soylent Green - 2022 ... die überleben wollen [de])

USA 1973
d: Richard Fleischer
Warner Home Video (Region 2 de)

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