Word: traps
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...changed identities as easily as he changed his stylish clothes, led a double life. Although police records show that he was arrested 23 times in 48 years for fraud, confidence schemes and burglary, they also show that he was a valuable undercover man for the Federal Government. He helped trap some of the late Vito Genovese's mafiosi for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He also posed as a buyer for the FBI, luring thieves into selling him stolen paintings and jewelry and then testifying against them in court...
...York, a bachelor dentist named Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) enjoys the benefits of a towheaded gamine, Toni Simmons (Goldie Hawn). How can he elude the marriage trap? Simple: by telling Toni that he is already bridled with a wife and saddled with three children. Suspicious, the mistress demands to see the wife. Winston persuades his spinster nurse, Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman), to pose as Mrs. Dentist. Byzantine complications add a flush to Stephanie's sallow countenance, but the complications are purely formal. Once Bergman zeroes in on a male lead, the light comedienne should pack her gags...
When I entered the terminal, there were cops all over the place, big Philadelphia cops with black leather jackets like the Panthers, and big nightsticks. I thought for a moment that my man was still on the plane, waiting to spring his trap on the next leg of the flight, down to Houston. Hijacking a plane on its way to Houston made more terrorist sense than hijacking it over New Jersey...
Lang's world supports this cynical statement. His framing is so tight that it chops off the tops of people's heads. Instead of revealing the depth in which the characters move, the frame has become a trap, as we see in an early tracking shot that closes in on a fleeing man. The studio in which Lang shot the film must have been a prison. The cells, psychiatric or criminal, in which characters are repeatedly locked completely differ from the one cell that appeared in The Gambler. That room realized the romantic plight of its inhabitant, Mabuse's mistress...
Like Philoctetes' stinking wound-a classical symbol of the relationship between art and abnormality-Orsini's back is the burden of his genius. It compels him to refine everything into art, including cruelty and murder. He even lays a beautifully cunning trap to secure an heir by mating his brother with his wife. Ironically, this perverted, successful stratagem restores his own potency. A brood of his own follows-including another hunchback...