Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2017 14:12:44 GMT -5
The winner of October's Anniversary Film Club poll is Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind girl and Alan Arkin as a criminal, directed by early James Bond staple Terence Young and given a limited release on October 26, 1967, featuring a dark, brooding Henry Mancini score. Tell us what you think of this film in the wake of its 50th anniversary, which saw its star get nominated for an Oscar and enter semi-retirement a year later, a 2007 soundtrack release, and 2016's Don't Breathe, an inverted version of it. What was happening on October 1967: - Che Guevara is executed in Bolivia.
- The Soviet Union's Venera 4 becomes the first man-made object to land on Venus.
- Thurgood Marshall is sworn into office as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court.
- Expo 67 closes.
- Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran coronates himself and his wife.
- The Abortion Act 1967 is approved by the British Parliament.
Available for rent/purchase on Amazon Video, YouTube, Vudu, Google Play, and iTunes.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Oct 1, 2017 21:05:41 GMT -5
YES! I love this movie so much.
I recently saw it at the Music Box in Chicago, so I won't even need to rewatch it.
Before I get into thoughts on it, here are some fun facts about it, paraphrased from IMDB:
- Hepburn was a volunteer nurse during WWII, and helped take care of the director of this movie.
- They had an extremely hard time casting this movie, because so few people wanted to play someone who would terrorize a blind Audrey Hepburn.
- Hepburn picked her own clothes for this role.
- During the screenings of this, as a gimmick, theaters would darken the theater to the legal limit for part of the climax, which takes place in near total darkness.
Anyway. There are very few movies that do suspense this masterfully in my opinion. The film lets you know just enough to be pleasantly frustrated by what Hepburn doesn't know, but not so much that you aren't still on the edge of your seat throughout. Arkin and Hepburn are both absolutely suburb in their roles. That several-minute scene in near total darkness is terrifying, and has one of the most terrifying jump scares ever, before jump scares were an overused thing. I've seen the movie probably half a dozen times and I still jump every time.
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dwarfoscar
TI Forumite
it's complicated
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Post by dwarfoscar on Oct 2, 2017 9:53:22 GMT -5
I'm gonna do with this movie what I didn't do and should have with Spirited Away : watch it again.
But I remember being very impressed with Wait Until Dark. There aren't a lot of movies made before the 70's that I love. I like, appreciate, admire a lot of them, but oldies that I love aren't that frequent. Citizen Kane, The Third Man, Gone with the wind ? Very good movies, but none of them really made their way into my heart in a sensible manner.
Wait Until Dark taught me that I should never give up on pre-70's movies, . Such an incredibly gripping film. I made the comparison with Panic Room during the nominations, for obvious reasons : a woman is trapped in her house with three invaders. Fincher uses all the artificial tricks of modern cinema but loses the essence of what makes a movie thrilling. In all its apparent 'Old Hollywood' conventionality, Wait Until Dark is infinitely more efficient.
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dwarfoscar
TI Forumite
it's complicated
Posts: 503
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Post by dwarfoscar on Oct 10, 2017 16:18:56 GMT -5
I did it ! I watched it again ! God, that's a good movie. The numbers of thrillers I've seen that peter out after second viewing... Wait Until Dark is not one of them. I forgot how much of a slow-burner that movie is. The trailer makes it look like a much higher octane film than it actually is. The last 15 minutes are intense, but before that, it's extremely slow and dialogue-driven, but riveting all the same. The movie is adapted from a play, but I don't know how faithful it is to the original text. The dialogues seem especially theatry (everyone is eloquent and seems to have their moment of wit), as is the somewhat improbable plot. I think a crime play, because the constraint of making everything happen in the same location is already difficult enough, is allowed higher 'poetic license', story-wise, than a crime movie. Wait Until Dark demands a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, and, in that, shows again its theatrical roots. The Mancini score is sober and great. The leitmotiv is a dissonant and unnerving alternation of two notes and is heard quite often, although it has to be said that, in a lot of tense moments, we're in complete silence. During the climax, the music waits a long time before makings its entry. Complete darkness AND complete silence. Random thoughts - Overall, and to paraphrase one of my favorite SNL sketches, it seems like a lot of effort over a very small amount of heroine. - We always talk about movies that wouldn't work anymore now that everyone has a cellphone. Wait Until Dark would totally work today : the intruders would just have to confiscate Hepburn's cellphone early in the movie. - Gloria looks like a very young Clea Duvall. By the looks of it, that movie hasn't set the forum on fire. Which is too bad but not completely unexpected. It's just not that famous. But give it a shot guys ! You'll be surprised how efficient it is still in 2017. |
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Post by ganews on Oct 23, 2017 22:20:08 GMT -5
Not bad. The first half is very stagey, which I find off-putting. The set-up is fairly ridiculous without explanation as to why the doll got handed off in the first place. And was that heroin really worth four to eight thousand dollars? Why not just straight-up kill Audrey Hepburn? Anyway once she figures things out, the movie really snaps up. It's very effective once the lights are out.
Great score. Love Henry Mancini.
Heh, young Alan Arkin. But it's impossible for me to look at Richard Crenna and not see Col. Trautman. I rather hated the Gloria character.
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ArchieLeach
AV Clubber
I talk too much, I worry me to death
Posts: 289
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Post by ArchieLeach on Oct 24, 2017 15:37:09 GMT -5
I saw it a few months ago. It comes from a time when horror and suspense films and TV shows didn't have huge budgets or sophisticated special effects available to them. They made creepiness the old fashioned way - strange clothing, weird posture and vocal inflections, and a willingness to just creep you out through shear effort. There's an episode of Death Valley where bad guys made Barbara Stanwyck stare into a slowly turning wheel of colored light. It was silly as hell, but it was also sick and upsetting ("Any questions?")
The plunge into black made this movie's bones, but the cold blue stream of light in the scene which comes after is also very effective. It makes it clear that there's a very big difference between hard to see and unable to see.
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