CollisionWorks

(A: I get frazzled easily by my giant multicolored Excel charts of rehearsal schedules and conflicts and need frequent breaks to keep sane)

I just read the New York Times obit for actor Richard Widmark.

He made a lot of movies in his career, and most of them, especially near the end, aren't exactly memorable (though he's great as the evil victim in Sidney Lumet's incredibly fun film of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express).

At the start of his career, however, he was almost an exclusively film noir actor, and gave two of the best and deepest performances of the genre.

And no, neither of them is his famous debut performance as Tommy Udo in the noir Kiss of Death. Fine work, sure, but he really shone his brightest elsewhere (if not as distinctively in Kiss, for which - to his chagrin - he would always be best remembered "for a giggle").

He is in Samuel Fuller's 1953 Pickup on South Street as Skip McCoy, pickpocket - an amoral criminal who finds a spark of morality in himself by the end of the picture, enough to make him (to his own surprise) a hero - made believable only by Widmark's performance (which ensures that the spark remains only a spark, and not a wholesale redemption).

And he is so good as to be almost impossible to watch as low-level hustler (trying to become a big-level hustler) Harry Fabian in Jules Dassin's 1950 Night and the City. I've only watched this film once since acquiring it in my research for World Gone Wrong in 2005, despite thinking it's probably one of the very best noirs ever made. The reason I can't bear to go back to it is the pain I felt in watching the slow destruction of Widmark's character - a stupid, unskilled man who is somehow (well, through Widmark's performance) someone you can feel great empathy for. Maybe it's also because Harry Fabian may be one of the unluckiest characters in film history - despite his own lack of knowledge and talent, he nearly gets everything he wants, and it is only taken away from him by random, blind chance.

(in watching as much noir around this home as we do, the most regular statements uttered sometimes by me, and more often by Berit, when film-watching are "you poor bastard" or "you stupid bastard" or "you poor, stupid bastard" - for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who knows the genre well - I think this was said more during Night than any other film we've ever watched)

The film actually features a pretty amazing cast top-to-bottom - especially Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, and the beautiful, haunted, and heartbreaking Gene Tierney.

I think I'll try and steel myself and watch Night and the City this evening, maybe Pickup too, if I have it (not sure about that).

If you haven't seen either, they're both worth it, and available on DVD in lovely editions from The Criterion Collection. Watch them for Widmark, who deserves to be remembered for things other than being well-impersonated by Frank Gorshin.