Over Fragmenten.blog

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Welkom op Fragmenten uit het Schemerland, mijn persoonlijke website en content-verzameling. Je vindt hier veel artikelen over films en series in de FilmDungeon. Ook vind je op deze site mijn achtergrondverhaal, een selectie van mijn professionele werk, en een groeiende collectie blogs – fragmenten genaamd – over uiteenlopende onderwerpen. Veel leesplezier en bedankt voor het bezoeken van mijn blog!

— Jeppe Kleijngeld

PS: Bezoek ook eens mijn andere website over bewustzijn en mijn visie op de ware aard van het universum:

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11. Rififi (1955)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Jules Dassin
Writers: Auguste Le Breton, Jules Dassin, René Wheeler

Stars: Jean Servais, Carl Möhner, Robert Manuel, Marie Sabouret

This review is part of the feature:

The 33 Gangster Films You Can’t Refuse

Rififi – full title of the French release Du rififi chez les hommes – is an enormously influential heist film, inspiring classics like Reservoir Dogs, Ocean’s Eleven, The Usual Suspects, and Mission: Impossible.

The hard-boiled, hat-wearing criminal Tony le Stéphanois, played by Belgian actor Jean Servais, is released from prison after a five-year stint. He immediately scours the Paris underworld for his next lucrative score.

Along the way, he reconnects with his former lover, Mado (Marie Sabouret), who has since taken up with another dangerous criminal. In a brutal display of possessiveness, he beats her with a belt – a violent act that sows the seeds for later trouble once the loot is secured.

Tony soon finds his target: a diamond store. He plans to burglarize it at night with his protégé, Jo le Suédois (Jo the Swede), and two other accomplices.

Jules Dassin, a French-American director blacklisted in the U.S. for his communist sympathies, discovered the best-selling novel by Auguste le Breton, which he adapted for his first French film. Ironically, Dassin disliked the novel but needed the work.

With no budget for major stars, Dassin cast Servais in the lead and even took on a supporting role himself as César the Milanese (under the pseudonym Perlo Vita). Yet this proves no drawback: Servais is magnetic and unforgettable as Tony, and the supporting cast shines just as brightly.

The screenplay follows what is now a classic heist-movie structure: meticulous preparation, the heist itself, and a violent third act. The jewel store burglary stands as one of cinema’s most iconic sequences – a gripping, dialogue-free half-hour of pure tension.

The film earned widespread acclaim for its stunning cinematography by Philippe Agostini. The Daily Mirror called it “undoubtedly the best underworld story yet filmed”, while François Truffaut declared it “the best film noir I’ve ever seen.”

Dassin’s direction won the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and for good reason. Few gangster films achieve such visual mastery – Rififi is truly spellbinding.

12. White Heat (1949)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Raoul Walsh
Writer: Ivan Goff (screenplay), Ben Roberts (screenplay), Virginia Kellogg (Story)
Stars: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien, Margaret Wycherly

This review is part of the feature:

The 33 Gangster Films You Can’t Refuse

White Heat is a gangster thriller unlike any other, anchored by James Cagney’s greatest gangster performance as Cody Jarrett, a volatile, psychopathic criminal plagued by seizures and an Oedipal fixation on his mother.

Jarrett leads a ruthless gang alongside his mother – Ma Jarrett – who could easily have been the inspiration for Tony Soprano’s terrible mother Livia in The Sopranos.

The film’s tension ignites early when Jarrett’s gang robs a train, stealing 300,000 dollars in Treasury Bonds and leaving two railroad men dead. With the police closing in, Jarrett orchestrates his own arrest for a lesser crime, shielding himself from prosecution for the heist.

Meanwhile, his gang fractures as gang member Big Ed grows dangerously close to Jarrett’s wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo). Ma Jarrett, ever the strategist, warns her son of the betrayal brewing. Unbeknownst to Jarrett, the police have planted an undercover operative in his prison cell, determined to gather enough evidence to send him to the gas chamber.

Cagney is absolutely magnetic in his role, and he cemented his reputation as one of the great gangster performers right here. The film crackles with relentless energy, its atmosphere thick with suspense, double-crosses, and the ever-present threat of explosion – whether from Jarrett’s next violent outburst, a literal bomb, or his own unraveling psyche.

Mayo shines as the duplicitous yet oddly sympathetic Verna, while Margaret Wycherly delivers an indelible turn as Ma Jarrett, a matriarch whose toxic influence would echo through decades of cinema.

White Heat is more than a classic; it’s a cornerstone of the gangster genre. In 2003, the U.S. Library of Congress enshrined it in the National Film Registry for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance and for good reason. Its DNA is woven into the fabric of modern crime epics like GoodFellas and The Sopranos. Without White Heat, would those hallmarks of crime cinema even exist? Unlikely.

 

13. City of God (2002)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Kátia Lund, Fernando Meirelles
Writers: Bráulio Mantovani, Paulo Lins
Stars: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino Da Hora, Jonathan Haagensen

This review is part of the feature:

The 33 Gangster Films You Can’t Refuse

City of God follows the coming of age of Rocket, an aspiring photographer who grows up in the favelas – the Brazilian slums of Rio de Janeiro, where gangsters rule.

The film starts in the early 1960s, where he, his brother, and their friends grow up and play football. He explains his life story, and that of his (former) friends, in voice-over.

One of them is Li’l Dice, who is already a psychopath as a child. When Rocket’s brother and his gang hold up a hotel, Li’l Dice singlehandedly executes most of its staff and clients.

Years later, Li’l Dice, aided by his accomplice Benny, has become king of the favela – the City of God – running a lucrative drug business. Li’l Dice and Benny are the happiest gangster duo ever, although Li’l Dice can change moods at the flip of a switch. They take out most of the competition, but later get involved in an all-out gang war with rival Carrot and Knockout Ned, a bus driver out for revenge.

Rocket, in the meantime, gets a job as a photographer at the city newspaper, as he has unique access to the gangster types and the places they frequent. He also falls in love with a girl who is unavailable.

City of God attacks the senses with dazzling camerawork and kinetic editing. The colourful settings are bristling with life and energy. The story is based on true events and is extremely poignant – taken straight from life. Especially heartbreaking is the way these really young kids are dragged into a life of crime they can never escape.

The convincing cast of youths – most of them from the actual slums – really helps to tell this fascinating story. The screenplay is great, with everything coming full circle at the end. Cidade de Deus – international title City of God – is a true triumph of Brazilian cinema.

14. Carlito’s Way (1993)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Brian De Palma
Writers: David Koepp (screenplay), Edwin Torres (books)
Stars: Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller

This review is part of the feature:

The 33 Gangster Films You Can’t Refuse

Carlito’s Way is a character study of a Latino gangster, Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino), who is released early from a lifelong prison sentence due to the use of illegal evidence during his trial.

He desperately wants to stay clean, but the underworld of New York City keeps drawing him back in. In that sense, it is also a plot-driven movie: can Carlito escape with his love, the dancer Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), to the Bahamas?

Carlito’s Way is based on two novels – ‘Carlito’s Way’ and ‘After Hours’ – written by a New York judge of Puerto Rican descent, Edwin Torres. It’s an intriguing crime story with an interesting lead character and thereby the perfect vehicle for the reteaming of Brian De Palma and Al Pacino after the gangster classic Scarface ten years earlier.

De Palma is often called the second Master of Suspense (second only to Alfred Hitchcock), and with Carlito’s Way he lives up to that reputation. The film is very much a thriller as well as a gangster picture. De Palma even has the nerve to show us how the movie will end right at the beginning. Yet the suspenseful scenes lose none of their power, even though as a viewer you already have a pretty good sense of how things will play out.

The masterful finale at the train station is, just like the unforgettable train station sequence in De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987), a classic nail biter with fantastic cinematography.

Pacino is once again excellent in the lead, and the supporting cast members all hit the mark. The outlier is Sean Penn who is sensational as the sleazebag lawyer Kleinfeld, whose awful haircut inspired the classic video game character Ken Rosenberg in GTA Vice City.

The ending, even though it’s expected, will hit you hard. ‘You are so beautiful’, a wonderful song by Joe Cocker, never sounded more poignant.