Moom pitchers not to miss

Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead) 1975 West Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/10/wrong-place-wrong-time-wrong-victim.html

Germany Post-Reunification

Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul 2005 Germany
http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/03/turkish-delight.html

Im Juli (In July) 2004 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/03/goody-two-shoes-sees-double.html

Die Innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In) 2000 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/08/hanging-on-to-dream_15.html

Jerichow 2008 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/meet-acute.html

Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior) 2000 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/02/lovers-leap.html

Schussangst (Gun-shy) 2003 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/07/talk-stalk-and-one-smoking-barrel.html

Soul Kitchen 2009 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/02/hipness-on-edge-of-town.html

Vision—Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen (Vision—From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen) 2009 Germany

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/08/woman-of-vision.html

Aus dem Nichts (In the Fade) 2017 Germany

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/07/in-fade.html

Babylon Berlin 2017- Germany

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/10/poetic-license.html

Das schweigende Klassenzimmer (The Silent Revolution) 2018 Germany

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/05/teenage-wasteland.html

Greece

Κυνοδοντας [kinodontas] Dogtooth) 2010 Greece

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-great-big-fat-gay-greek-adolescence.html

Ireland

Kisses 2008 Ireland/Sweden

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/09/tangled-up-in-green.html

Israel

Footnote (הערת שוליים‎ ‎ [He'arat Shulayim]) 2011 Israel

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/04/footnote.html

Italy

Bellissima 1951 Italy

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/07/mamma-cinema.html

Il posto (The Position) 1961 Italy

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/11/world-of-wonder.html

Il momento della verità (The Moment of Truth) 1965 Italy

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-lot-of-bull.html

Pane e tulipani (Bread and tulips) 2000 Italy

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/07/rosalba-takes-powder.html

La doppia ora (The Double Hour) 2009 Italy

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/06/dagger-of-mind_22.html

Luxembourg

Brudermord (Fratricide) 2005 Luxembourg/Germany/France

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/05/fratricide.html

Mexico

Aventurera (The Adventuress) 1950 Mexico

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/03/when-youre-down-in-juarez-and-youre.html

El Topo (The Mole) 1970 Mexico

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/kaleidoscopic-cult-western-all-about.html

The Holy Mountain 1973 Mexico

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/09/head-games-and-eye-candy.html

El imperio de la fortuna (The Realm of Fortune) 1986 Mexico

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/07/cockfights-and-cantantes-down-mexico.html

Poland

Demony wojny w/g Goi (Demons of War [according to Goya]) 1998 Poland

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/10/horse-sense-v-horses-asses.html

Jańcio Wodnik (Johnny Waterman/Johnny Aquarius) 1993 Poland

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/08/jancio-wodnikjohnny-aquarius.html

Russia

USSR

Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране Большевиков (Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane Bol’shevikov—The Extraordinary Adventures of Mister West in the Land of the Bolsheviks) 1924 U.S.S.R.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-kuleshov-effect.html

Летят журавли [Letyát zhurávli] (The Cranes Are Flying) 1957 U.S.S.R.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/04/boy-leaves-girl.html

Печки-лавочки [Pyéchki-lávochki] (Happy-Go-Lucky) 1972 U.S.S.R.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/01/vanya-and-nyurkas-excellent-adventure.html

Russia

Мы едем в Америку [My yédem v Amériku]—מיר פארן אין אמצריקצ [Mir forn in Amerike]—We Are Going to America 1992 Russia

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/03/freewheelin-motl.html

Девятая рота [Devyátaya róta] (Ninth Company) 2005 Russia/Ukraine

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/07/poor-devils.html

Мое счастье [Moyó schást’ye] (My Joy) 2010 Russia

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/06/just-my-luck.html

Солнце [Sóln’tse] (The Sun) 2005 Russia

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/09/almost-like-being-there.html

Spain

Muerte de un ciclista (Death of a Cyclist) 1955 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/12/hit-and-run.html

Viridiana 1961 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/12/beggars-banquet.html

Intacto (Untouched) 2001 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/neurotics-anonymous-or-one-empty.html

Los Lunes al sol (Mondays in the Sun) 2002 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-day-is-it.html

El orfanato (The Orphanage) 2007 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/02/jeepers-creepers.html

Celda 211 (Cell 211) 2009 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/05/genre-bender.html

Biutiful 2011 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/spell-it-way-it-sounds.html

La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In) 2011 Spain

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/04/pigskin-pygmalion.html

South Korea

The Chaser (추격자 [Chu-gyeok-ja]) 2008 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/gumshoed-seoul.html

Mother (마더 [Madeo]) 2009 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-boys-best-friend.html

Poetry (시 [Shi]) 2011 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/02/true-poetry.html

Secret Sunshine (밀양 [Miryang]) 2007 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/09/secret-sunshine_7.html

Untold Scandal (스캔들 - 조선 남녀 상열지사 [Seukaendeul - Choseon nam nyeo sang yeol jisa]) 2003 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/amours-impropres.html

추격자 [Chu-gyeok-ja] (The Chaser) 2008 South Korea
http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/gumshoed-seoul.html
마더 [Madeo] (Mother) 2009 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-boys-best-friend.html

밀양 [Miryang] (Secret Sunshine) 2007 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/09/secret-sunshine_7.html

스캔들 - 조선 남녀 상열지사 [Seukaendeul - Choseon nam nyeo sang yeol jisa] (Untold Scandal) 2003 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/amours-impropres.html

시 [Shi] (Poetry) 2011 South Korea

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/02/true-poetry.html

Sweden

Jag är nyfiken-En film i gult/gul [I Am Curious (Yellow)] 1967 Sweden (121 minutes) and Jag är nyfiken-En film i blått/blå [I Am Curious (Blue)] 1968 Sweden (104 minutes)

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2023/02/chatter-questions-sex-i-am-curious.html

Searching for Sugar Man 2010 Sweden/U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/05/jannie-soet-wees.html

Switzerland

Das Fraülein 2006 Switzerland

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/08/slavic-damsels-in-distress.html

Turkey

Bir zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) 2011 Turkey

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-law-is-ass.html

United Kingdom

The Ring 1927 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-ring-1927-u.html

A Cottage on Dartmoor 1929 England

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/08/harry-meets-sallyin-prior-life.html

Murder! 1930 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/07/alfred-hitchcocks-murder-1930.html

The Lady Vanishes 1938 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-lady-vanishes-1938-u.html

Night Train to Munich 1940 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2017/12/intrigue-charm.html

Quartet 1948 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/08/quartet-1948.html

Kind Hearts and Coronets 1949 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-masterwork-of-irony.html

Under Capricorn 1949 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/05/under-capricorn.html

Pool of London 1951 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/09/pool-of-london.html

Free Cinema 1952-1963 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/03/free-cinema.html

Victim 1961 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/11/queens-counsel.html

All Night Long 1962 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/11/cool-jazz-othello.html

Good Times, Wonderful Times 1966 England/U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/06/merchants-of-peace.html

Pulp 1972 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/06/pulp-fact.html

The Day of the Jackal 1973 U.K./France

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-day-of-macguffin.html

The Sandbaggers 1978-1980 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-peculiar-british-fruit.html

The Long Good Friday 1980 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-long-good-friday.html

Wasp 2003 Scotland

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/mom-102-my-first-night-out-in-fookin.html

Red Road 2006 Scotland

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/now-voyeur.html

Man on Wire 2008 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/dancing-on-thin-air.html

Fish Tank 2009 England

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/lifes-bitchand-sos-your-mother.html

Page Eight 2011 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/smart-flick-about-intelligence.html

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 2011 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy.html

Zen 2011 U.K. (one three-episode season)

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/10/whats-meta.html

Endeavour 2012 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/03/oxford-opera.html

Skyfall 2012 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/01/skyfall.html

Darkest Hour 2017 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/03/darkest-hour.html

Journey’s End 2017 U.K.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/08/journeys-end.html

The Man in the Hat 2020 U.K.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/12/le-midi-je-taime.html

United States (by period)

The Silent Era

Traffic in Souls, or While New York Sleeps: a Photodrama of Today 1913 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/09/white-slavery.html

Hypocrites 1915 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-naked-truth.html

Lady Windermere’s Fan 1925 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/02/genuine-silent-genuine-classic.html

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Sunrise) 1927 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/03/and-first-oscar-goes-to.html

The Patsy 1928 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/06/silent-gem.html

Hollywood before the Hayes Code

The Divorcée 1930 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-lot-of-heathen-you-are.html

The Maltese Falcon (aka Dangerous Female) 1931 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/09/dangerous-female.html

Heroes for Sale 1933 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/10/plus-ca-change.html

International House 1933 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/anything-goes.html

Midnight Mary 1933 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/10/midnight-mary.html

Golden Age

Satan Met a Lady 1936 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/09/sam-spade-with-handbag.html

Make Way for Tomorrow 1937 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/facing-facts.html

Race

Moon over Harlem 1939 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/03/way-uptown-from-gone-with-wind.html

New Orleans 1947 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/birth-of-jazz.html

Film Noir

Saboteur 1942 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/05/an-easy-country-to-lose-your-way-in.html

Shadow of a Doubt 1943 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/05/shadow-of-doubt.html

Born to Kill 1947 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/04/born-to-kill.html

Daisy Kenyon 1947 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/11/gangsters-of-love.html

Road House 1948 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/07/desdemonas-handkerchief.html

The Big Steal 1949 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/vamos-will-ya.html

Border Incident 1949 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-dont-they-just-build-wall.html

Gun Crazy 1949 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/03/recipe-for-mayhem.html

Jigsaw (1949) U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/05/anti-hate-circa-1949.html

The Set-Up 1949 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/11/one-punch-away.html

Too Late for Tears 1949 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/08/homme-fatal.html

The Window 1949 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2019/06/hitchcock-for-children.html

Mystery Street 1950 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2014/02/mystery-street.html

Night and the City 1950 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/03/night-and-city-am-i-noir.html

The Breaking Point 1950 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/05/papas-words-made-flesh.html

Cry Danger 1951 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2019/05/shadows-action-camera.html

Clash by Night 1952 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/04/sex-meat-and-potatoes-on-cannery-row.html

The Narrow Margin 1952 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/10/classic-mayhem-and-menace.html

Sudden Fear (1952) U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/04/feminist-film-noir.html

The Big Combo 1955 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-big-combo.html

Illegal 1955 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/lead-pipe-cinch.html

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 1956 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/10/beyond-reasonable-doubt.html

Blast of Silence 1961 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/nowhere-man-in-land-of-sopranos.html

Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin

Little Fugitive 1953 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/06/dont-tell-mom.html

Lovers and Lollipops 1955 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/great-day-for-picture_06.html

Weddings and Babies 1958 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-so-important-al.html

Fabulous Fifties & Sixties

Fourteen Hours 1951 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-man-on-ledge.html

Pat and Mike 1952 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/06/putting-words-in-their-mouths.html

I Confess 1953 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/01/casting-out-demons-in-quebec.html

The Night of the Hunter 1955 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/03/what-frightfulness.html

Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1955-1962 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/01/hitchcock-on-technique.html

A Face in the Crowd 1957 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/tv-is-thing-this-year.html

Damn Yankees! 1958 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-year-we-wuzzent-robbed.html

Anatomy of a Murder 1959 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/12/attractive-jiggle.html

Strangers When We Meet 1960 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/07/strangers-when-we-meet.html

The Misfits 1961 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/marvelous-misfits.html

Two for the Seesaw 1962 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2020/04/two-for-seesaw.html

Seven Days in May 1964 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/05/american-coup-detat.html

Topkapi 1964 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/07/cougar-loves-emeralds.html

Documentary

On the Bowery 1956 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/07/heres-mud-in-your-eye.html

In the Year of the Pig 1968 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/vietnam-in-pigs-year.html

La ciudad (The City) 1998 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/01/life-in-land-of-yankees-iii-yonderland.html

The Mark of Cain 2000 U.S./Russia

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/10/illustrated-men.html

Tabloid 2010 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/03/paper-vagina.html

Raging Bulls

Who’s That Knocking at My Door 1968 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/11/speak-to-me-of-love.html

End of the Road 1970 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/05/end-of-road.html

Wanda 1970 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/11/wanda_9.html

McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2021/11/mccabe-mrs-miller.html

Fat City 1972 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/08/hollow-men.html

The Man 1972 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-man.html

King of Comedy 1982 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/mad-about-jerry.html

White Dog 1982 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-incurable-weirdness-of-racism.html

Spanish America

Quinceañera 2006 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/11/life-in-land-of-yankees-ii-coming-of.html

Ladrón que roba a ladrón (It Takes a Thief to Rob a Thief) 2007 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/life-in-land-of-yankees-i-skinning.html

Cruzando (Crossing) 2008 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-stuff-wild-chorizo.html

Sin nombre 2009 U.S./Mexico

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/11/getting-luck-out-of-dodge.html

Into the Millennium

Reversal of Fortune 1990 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/05/getting-off.html

Wit 2001 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-uncompromising-way.html

Happiness 2006 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/08/slavic-damsels-in-distress.html

Homicide: Life in the Streets 1993-1999 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2023/08/tragic-timing.html

Beginners 2011 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/08/beginners.html

The Ides of March 2011 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/10/ides-of-march.html

Martha Marcy May Marlene 2011 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/04/little-girl-lost.html

The Tree of Life 2011 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/06/tree-of-life.html

Win Win 2011 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/12/win-win.html

Hitchcock 2012 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2012/12/hitchcock.html

The Counselor 2013 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2013/11/theres-something-about-malkina.html

The Post 2017 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-post.html

“First Reformed” 2017 U.S.

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/06/first-reformed.html

Ballad of Buster Scruggs 2018 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2018/12/dead-mans-hand.html

Billions 2019 U.S. (multi-season television series)

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2019/04/showtimes-billions-as-space-opera.html

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood 2019 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-western-in-cars.html

Joker 2019 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2019/11/joker.html

Ray Donovan (2013-20) U.S. (multi-season television series)

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/04/showtimes-ray-donovan.html

Stillwater 2021 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-marvel-classic.html

Tár 2022 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2022/10/tar-socrates-at-julliard.html

Killers of the Flower Moon 2023 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2023/11/killers-of-flower-moon_1.html

American Fiction 2023 U.S.

https://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2024/01/american-fiction.html

Uruguay

Whisky 2004 Uruguay

http://moompitchers.blogspot.com/2011/05/say-cheese.html

Tragic timing

The HBO series The Wire is the grandchild of Homicide: Life on the Street, the groundbreaking NBC police procedural series also set in Baltimore which ran for seven seasons in the 1990s.

Homicide is remarkable for its tragic timing, no less for its diverse cast of actors playing people who are police officers. Tragic timing lands just right as caesura, the tragic poignancy of a commonplace pressed to a still point, after which life’s comedy resumes. That Homicide’s actors played people who are police officers rather than simply TV cops jettisoned and even ironized genre stereotypes on both sides of the law and across professional and social levels.

The series is based on the 1991 book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by The Wire-creator David Simon. As a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Simon had spent a year attached to the city police homicide unit, Baltimore’s “murder po-lice.” The series’s quirkiest character is the city itself, known locally as “Smalltimore” as it often can feel like a big village where everybody seems connected.

“I may be guilty but I’m not stupid,” says a suspect (cameo Baltimore resident film director John Waters) who waived an extradition hearing in New York to return to Baltimore to face charges.

The small-town connectedness makes for a lazy screen door in the fourth wall between series fiction and city fact. Actual officials such as then-Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke appear and sometimes engage with fictional ones. In one of three separate episodes directed by Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple, series regulars Detectives Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) and Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond), filmed by police videographer J.H. Brodie (Max Perlich), corner a confused suspect into an alley filled with a working film crew. Director Barry Levinson (a Homicide co-executive producer, here wearing a “Homicide”-embroidered baseball cap) shouts “Cut!” The fictional Lewis recognizes the actual Levinson as a local high school classmate: for Baltimoreans, one’s high school is a social marker.

Baltimore-born and -bred Levinson was key to the series as a major director and Academy Award-winner. He directed the series pilot “Gone for Goode” featuring a serial black widow, as well as the Season 3 finale, “The Gas Man,” shot from the point of view of two marginal Eastsiders shadowing Detective Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher): Bruno (Victor Helms Jr.), just out of prison, is bent on revenge against Pembleton whose by-the-book detective work had put him there, with his sidekick Danny (Richard Edson) in a disco-happy mist.

Homicide develops its odd-lots characters and partner pairs in their daily routines interacting with colleagues and each other, locals, the media, and their command to turn red names on a large whiteboard—murder victims—into black names—closed cased: “Black is beautiful,” hard-driving shift commander “G”, Lieutenant Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), exhorts his team, referring to the names in black with a smile. The half-Black, half-Sicilian Giardello is the series’ center; Kotto leads a cast of mostly television and character actors, several of whom may have done their best work making this series.

The show’s creators and writers explore issues beyond conventional boundaries of race, class, and gender with a variety of directors and an unusual mix of actors and guest stars, stories and dialogue showcases ensemble acting. Episodes sometimes center on a single location: the unit interrogation room, the squad room, a stakeout in a private living room, a detective’s rural hometown while on leave, a hostage-taker’s home; and unlike standard police procedurals episodes can be told from the point of view of perpetrators or of murder victims’ families.

The Season 1 episode “Three Men and Adena” works as an intense one-act play. Shot mostly within “The Box,” the unit’s small, yellow-tiled interrogation room, Dets. Pembleton and Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) grill suspect Risley Tucker (Moses Gunn) whom they believe murdered 11-year-old Adena Watson. As the pair browbeat the apparently cowering suspect for a confession, he reads each of them and then tries to turn the psychological tables by probing his interrogators’ insecurities over race, class, and their own inner demons. In Season 3’s “Every Mother’s Son,” the same detectives investigate the purportedly “accidental” execution of a 13-year-old in a bowling alley, questioning a blasé 14-year-old named Ronnie Sayers (Sean Nelson):

Ronnie: “If you’re driving a car and hit somebody you didn’t mean to, it’s an accident.”

Pembleton: “Ronnie, you shot the wrong kid!”

Ronnie: “Car accidents kill innocent people all the time. How’s it any different?”

The boys’ mothers (Rhonda Stubbins White and Gay Thomas Wilson) meet by chance in the unit waiting area as women with pairs of boys the same ages while detectives work the case. This subplot puts ordinary human faces on the toll gun violence takes on communities, here working single mothers struggling to raise families and live their lives.

Among the series’s many guest stars are Robin Williams as a family man whose wife is shot in front of him and their two children in a stick-up near the then-new Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Steve Buscemi is a white supremacist and murder suspect who purports to read Greek, shown up by the Black detective interrogating him who actually does. Lily Tomlin eludes a police escort to settle a longtime score. Melvin Van Peebles is a funeral director who “socializes” with his subjects. Elijah Wood is a smarmy adolescent sociopath. Joan Chen is an ambitious crime reporter. James Earl Jones and Jeffrey Wright are father and son in a prominent local family whose Haitian refugee “domestic” is murdered. A vindictive shove catches Vincent D’Onofrio between subway car and platform. Alfre Woodard spars with Det. Pembleton over her clinical care of the terminally ill. Charles Durning is a retired cop brought back to help close a 60-year-old case.

Season 5 includes “Heart of a Saturday Night,” an understated auteur episode by film director Whit Stillman with the feel of a short film. In addition to the usual series cast, Stillman regular Chris Eigeman (Metropolitan, 1990; Barcelona, 1994), along with Rosanna Arquette, Polly Holliday and Tom Quinn play the husband, wife, and parents of three murder victims, brought together with Chief Medical Examiner Julianna Cox (Michelle Forbes) in a survivor support group. The action shifts between the support group, the three murders, and detectives working these cases.

“Of all the movie theaters in all the towns in all the world, he had to walk into mine,” a Baltimore theater manager (Wallace Shawn) told police detectives investigating a murder.

In “A Case of Do or Die” (Season 7) Wallace Shawn manages a movie theater showing Casablanca (1942) in which an obnoxious film-going regular who blurts out classic movie lines with running commentaries does not survive a screening. The episode written by Homicide regular Anya Epstein focuses more centrally on a pair of stories about women who leave men. Epstein is the granddaughter and grandniece of the team who wrote the Casablanca screenplay; the episode title was taken from the lyrics of Casablanca’s classic theme “As Time Goes By”, the song Sam (Dooley Wilson) immortalized in playing again.

In addition to Kotto, Braugher (whose actual wife Ami Brabson plays his non-police officer wife Mary in the series), Johnson (who directed six episodes and also acted, directed, and wrote in The Wire), Secor, Diamond, and Forbes, long-term unit regulars include stand-up comic Richard Belzer as Det. John Munch, Melissa Leo as Det. Kay Howard and Isabella Hoffman as Det. Megan Russert. In the early seasons, Ned Beatty, Adam Baldwin, and Jon Polito featured as detectives; Toni Lewis, Peter Gerety, Jon Seda, Callie Thorne and Michael Michele join the unit in later seasons, with Giancarlo Esposito as FBI Special Agent Mike Giardello, G’s son. Željko Ivanek is Assistant State’s Attorney Ed Danvers.

In the sense that Homicide’s cast played people who were law enforcement officers, the series may have humanized its older NBC sibling Law & Order and cop shows that followed. Characters from the two NBC series crossed over several times to work cases involving Manhattan and Baltimore law enforcement agencies. Belzer’s Munch transferred to the NYPD in the Law & Order franchise after Homicide was canceled in 1999 (and reprised the role on another nine shows). His serial, rambling commentaries were memorably brought up short once by an adolescent:

“It’s like you have to use all these weird words, and it’s like you’re listening to the words like they were a cartoon coming out of your mouth, and you’re watching them, thinking: ‘I’m cool. I’m cool,’” Fidel McGibney (Ryan Todd) told the uncharacteristically speechless Munch in the Season 3 episode “All Through the House.”

Homicide won critical acclaim throughout its run but chronically low Nielsen ratings made it a constant target for cancellation and “massaging” by NBC. This did not go unremarked by the show’s writers. In an episode late in the series’s final season, a detective compares the apparent “invisibility” of a so-called Nielsen family to a suspect who may be a mobster relocated with his family to Baltimore in a federal witness protection program.

However, the genuine actors’ studio of regulars and guest stars and the diversity of directorial, shooting, and writing styles made a statement and remain a phenomenon: Each episode is a thing in itself, memorable, and seldom gives the viewer the same thing twice. Although Homicide’s telephones sit on desks and police officers type reports on typewriters, first-time viewers nearly three decades later may be surprised to find its race, class, gender, and criminal justice issues easily in step with today’s.

Homicide: Life on the Street 1993-1999 U.S. (122 50-minute episodes) Baltimore Pictures/NBC Studios. Created by Paul Attanasio; written by Tom Fontana, James Yoshimura, Anya Epstein, David Simon, and many others, based on Simon’s 1991 book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets; executive producers Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana, and others.

Friday, February 24, 2023

Chatter, questions, & sex: I Am Curious (Yellow)

Notorious in the 1960s for its sex scenes, censors in the US and elsewhere may have had more problems with the left-wing politics of I Am Curious (Yellow) and (Blue).

From the place that gave the world Greta Thunberg, this once famously-banned pair of 1960s Swedish films as though foreshadow the identity passions of today in the sense that 1960s US civil rights activism fed today’s Black Lives Matter movement. It is an ambitious project that tells a similar narrative in two films that complement each other like the yellow and blue in Sweden’s flag, addressing issues of no less import today than they were sixty years ago despite the vast social, political, economic, and historical changes that have taken place.

Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) and Lena (Lena Nyman) cross the line into character in I Am Curious films.

I Am Curious (Yellow) and (Blue) were shot in a “meta” style: A small film collective makes a movie about a small film collective making a movie about the sociopolitical and sexual adventures of the “curious” Lena (Lena Nyman), a young woman footloose in Stockholm. But the sex for which the films initially had been banned around the world is barely pornographic. Contemporary censors and viewers likely were offended by the notion that an ordinary young woman would explore her own sexuality and sexual freedom to challenge her country’s social status quo. But the protagonist Lena is less porn queen Linda Lovelace than John Waters’s Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray (1988).

Lena (Lena Nyman) and Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) engage in post-coital political dialogue in Vilgot Sjöman’s I Am Curious-Blue (1968).

The documentary-style rendering of a young woman openly discussing sex, orgasms and other sexual bodily functions and having “free sex” in the ordinary run of things in circa 1966 Stockholm is a far cry from the underground “blue movies” of the time or the sex film industry to which the two I Am Curious films helped open the door in the 1970s. The films portray an assertive, politically left-leaning, sexually curious but naive heterosexual woman in her early twenties discussing politics and having sex with contemporaries, pursuing her own curiosity and desires with partners roughly as clueless in their own ways as she is in hers. The personal relationships come first.

In the I Am Curious films, filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman and his star Lena Nyman construct a critique of contemporary Swedish society.

The film opens with young filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman, playing himself, in a relationship with his star Lena, a drama student playing herself, contemplating how to tell a story about contemporary Swedish society. Inspired by the US civil rights movement, the character Lena challenges Swedish society by trying to apply Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of non-violent resistance/non-cooperation to achieve social, economic, gender, and sexual equality. The drama student Lena also half-teases Sjöman to film a sex scene between herself and a student she spots at a poetry reading—“just a quickie”.

“We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files/We’d like to help you learn to help yourself”: The file room of Nymans Institut in Vilgot Sjöman’s I Am Curious films.

The character Lena establishes “Nymans Institut” in her bedroom at her father Rune’s (Peter Lindgren) apartment where she lives: “I had to start my own business because [others] don’t do anything: Newspapers work too fast and can’t be trusted. Science works far too slow and gets no results. You have to do it yourself.” She collects data aided by informal assistants with whom she also pickets institutions (the church and the US, Soviet, and Chinese embassies). She and her collaborators sing “We Shall Overcome” many times in both films. She pens picket signs that read: MEDDELANDE TILL MÄNSKLIGHETEN; RIV PRIVILEGIE—SAMHÄLLENA RUNT OM I VÄRLDEN [LENA] (Message to humanity—down with the privileged classes all around the world) and MEDDELANDE TILL DE FÄRGADE FOLKEN: FÖRBERED ER! DE VITA SVIKTAR! [LENA] (Message to non-white people—be prepared! White people are failing!) There were very few non-white people in Sweden at this time.

Lena and her helpers also vilify the then-Spanish dictator/autocrat Francisco Franco, picket the Spanish embassy, and Lena challenges Swedes at the airport returning from vacations in Spain for tacitly supporting Franco’s regime: A woman traveler retorts that Sweden’s “dictatorship” makes a bottle of whiskey cost 50 crowns, as one might imagine a US follower of Fox News grouse today). Lena keeps a picture of Franco on her wall and a running tally on her bedroom wall of the number of days since her father purportedly “fled” the 1930s Spanish Civil War after serving just three weeks in the anti-Franco International Brigade. (The film was banned in Spain until 2005.)

Lena throws herself into the mainstream of Swedish life with a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder slung from her shoulder, posing questions on current topics to incidental men and women at work and on the street. She asks national service inductees if they would consider conscientious objector status. She campaigns for prison reform, biking 150 miles to the then-new maximum security Kumla prison in western Sweden. She opposes the högern (the political right), particularly högerstedenterna—conservative students. She and Sjöman interview figures such as Dr. King, the Swedish socialist politician Olof Palme, the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Sweden’s King Gustaf VI Adolf (played by actor Holger Löwenadler).

Film recording supervisor Raymond Lundberg and his assistant do "yoga" with Lena on retreat in I Am Curious-Blue (1968).

Sjöman films himself making statements that Dr. King appears to answer directly (from an interview on the US civil rights movement filmed earlier in Sweden). Lena tells Sjöman: “I like [King]. He talks about better things than Palme,” referring to the then-Swedish transport minister, a rising star in the country’s Social Democratic Party who opposed the US war in Vietnam. Sjöman films himself filming an actual interview with Palme in the minister’s backyard with his then five-year-old son Mårten “Råttan” [Mouse] and his wife Lisbeth at an upper window. The films were made before King was assassinated. (Palme, later Sweden’s prime minister, was assassinated in February 1986. Palme’s unsolved murder is modern Sweden’s greatest mystery.)

Filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman interviews Swedish politician Olof Palme with his five-year-old son Mårten in I Am Curious-Yellow (1967).

Sjöman and his crew also film Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko at a university poetry reading. Yevtushenko was a “rock star” of the Brezhnev regime, a charismatic, youthful-looking, officially-sanctioned “dissident” poet popular in the West. Yevtushenko’s comments at the reading are later spliced-in to rebuke Lena’s naive political views. Her interview with the king of Sweden (Löwenadler) is a fantasy that includes her lover Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) as the king’s grandson, in which she reassures His Majesty in his living quarters: “It isn’t you, personally, the socialists want to get rid of...”

Lena (Lena Nyman) and King Gustav VI Adolf (Holger Löwenadler) at home in the palace in I Am Curious-Yellow (1967).

And Lena experiences lively varieties of sex, in character and as a person. She surprises her film partner Börje (who lives unmarried with the mother of his baby daughter, which Lena later discovers) when she says that she has had sex with 23 men. “The first 19 were no fun” she said, because she “did it to satisfy them, so that they would have an orgasm...” The director Sjöman tells himself that “a love scene without consequences would be pointless.” He tells his actor Börje at the beginning of Blue that Börje will have a love scene with Lena: “A love scene with consequences.” “What kind of consequences?” “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” Sjöman works this out while filming Lena and Börje, telling himself: “[Ingmar] Bergman always used to say it’s bad to fall for your star. You get blind to her affectations. It never happened to him, though.” Or so Sjöman supposed.

Lena (Lena Nyman) and Magnus (Magnus Nilsson) watch the film crew prepare in Vilgot Sjöman’s I Am Curious-Yellow (1967).

In a moment of passion, Lena confesses to her ideal: “Listen, Martin! I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough. But that’s the way it is. Börje is a big shit, and I’m going to kill him when I get my hands on him! You said it yourself: ‘If you can’t adhere to nonviolence, you shouldn’t participate.” You need people who are strong. I won’t ever speak for your ideas again.”

But Lena’s adventures free-range a large expanse of social, political, economic, and sexual topics and give a broad picture of the universal influence of the 1960s US civil rights movement which may apply to an even greater extent in the form it takes today.

Jag är fri!!! Reformera världen!

Jag är nyfiken-En film i gult/gul [I Am Curious (Yellow)] 1967 Sweden (121 minutes) and Jag är nyfiken-En film i blått/blå [I Am Curious (Blue)] 1968 Sweden (104 minutes) Sandrews/Criterion. Written and directed by Vilgot Sjöman; cinematography by Peter Wester; edited by Wic Kjellin; music by Bengt Ernryd; produced by Göran Lindgren.