Word: spading
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hard-boiled masterpiece on his first feature assignment for Warner Brothers. Like Welles, Huston grew up around the greasepaint. And like Welles, Huston came to films with a gleeful yet prodigiously discriminating eye for characature and atmosphere-creating jargon. He handles Humphrey Bogart perfectly in the role of Sam Spade--by letting Bogart do Bogart, but without the "sentimentalist" soft spots of Rick in "Casablanca" or the nervousness of the hunted criminal in "Petrified Forest." Bogart is nothing more nor less than leather-skinned in this role: cool, jaded, manipulative. Dashiell Hammit included a last scene in his book during...
...rest of the cast comes alive in the superb musical numbers. Showing classical grace in his dancing, Hud (Duquincy Cooks) sparkles the company's renditions of "Colored Spade" and the drug-induced "Walking in Space." Leslye Freeman, as Dionne, delivers a spicey, soul version of "White Boys." The songs steam along with the powerful backing of a rock band, which builds to a fervent finale in the title number. But the band becomes successfully muted for the soul-searching lyrics of "Easy to Be Hard" and "Where...
...hard-boiled masterpiece on his first feature assignment for Warner Brothers. Like Welles, Huston grew up around the greasepaint. And like Welles, Huston came to films with a gleeful yet prodigiously discriminating eye for characature and atmosphere-creating jargon. He handles Humphrey Bogart perfectly in the role of Sam Spade--by letting Bogart do Bogart, but without the "sentimantalist" soft spots of Rick in Casablanca or the nervousness of the hunted criminal in Petrified Forest. Bogart is nothing more nor less than leather-skinned in this role: cool, jaded, manipulative. Dashiell Hammit included a last scene in his book during...
...Wells (Art Carney), who has outlived his day. He is discovered existing in a rented room on Social Security, watching old movies on TV while his attempt at an autobiography languishes in the typewriter, just one paragraph written. Then his old partner (played by Howard Duff, who was Sam Spade on the radio in the old days) arrives gut-shot at his door, dies in his arms, and Wells takes over the case his friend was working on. On its face, it is not much: Duff had been trying to recover a kidnaped cat for Lily Tomlin, who plays...
...slow, believable way she al lows Carney's realism, his low-keyed contempt for such nonsense, to win her over. It may be a trifle too much for the film to suggest at the end the blooming of, as we now say, "a relationship" be tween them. Spade or Marlowe would have let her go. It may be that Benton is occasionally a trifle too aware of his own cleverness. On the other hand, he has made a first-class entertainment out of material that has defied other modernizers...