Film: Watch This: New Orleans on film in honor of Killing Them Softly (4 of 5): Easy Rider

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Killing Them Softly has us thinking of movies set in New Orleans.

Easy Rider (1969)
New Orleans is just one stop on the journey for Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper’s drug-rich bikers in Easy Rider, but it’s among their most memorable, and most troubling. Still haunted by the murder of Jack Nicholson, a traveling companion they picked up along the way, they arrive in time for Mardi Gras and set about honoring Nicholson’s memory by visiting a brothel he recommended. After picking up a pair of prostitutes (played by Karen Black and choreographer Toni Basil, the latter of whom later enjoyed a new wave-era hit with “Mickey”), they drop some acid given to them at a commune, then head for the cemetery to let it kick in. This turns out to be a mistake, leading to the bad trip to end all bad trips.

Behind the camera, Hopper indulges in every trick used by late-’60s filmmakers to simulate the drug experience. But even the scene’s soon-to-become-clichéd touches work: the dissonant sound effects, handheld camerawork, rapid cutting, weird lenses, and religious imagery. That’s in part because the setting, the overgrown, shadow-drenched St. Louis Cemetery #1 located near the French Quarter, is one of the eerier places in the city, and in part because the performances truly seem like the work of people in the grips of bad drugs and worse emotions. (Fonda’s rambling monologue draws directly from his real-life experiences with his mother’s suicide.) The film grows steadily darker leading up to its New Orleans sequence, and in the city, what little light remains gets blown out. When Fonda’s character later declares, “We blew it,” he might well be remembering something seen amid these graves.

Availability: Available on DVD and Blu-ray. Streaming at Amazon.

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Film: Watch This: New Orleans on film in honor of Killing Them Softly (3 of 5): Angel Heart

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Killing Them Softly has us thinking of movies set in New Orleans.

Angel Heart (1987) 
In a 1996 appearance on Chicago’s public TV station, WTTW, Chicago film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum griped that he walked out of Evita halfway through because he was stuck in “Alan Parker Land,” and he didn’t want to be there. That sentiment could be accurately applied to many of Parker’s films, which tend to take viewers to disturbing spaces—particularly the discomfiting, lurid neo-noir Angel Heart. Mickey Rourke stars as a grubby private investigator hired by effete gentleman Robert De Niro to track down a missing person who reneged on some sort of contract. The trail leads Rourke from New York City to the seediest parts of New Orleans, from grungy French Quarter courtyards and run-down black-iron-balcony apartments to a violent voodoo ritual in the bayou. There’s plenty of local color in the form of a second-line parade and a gorgeous church that Parker renovated for the film; to the degree possible, Parker used existing buildings rather than sets, and real New Orleans environments, to give the film its grimy, humid, sweaty aesthetic.

That said, Angel Heart is still more a nightmarish fantasy than real-world thriller; the scene where Rourke and Lisa Bonet have sex in a room that rains blood became notorious, particularly given Bonet’s association with the family-friendly Cosby Show. Also notorious: the at-the-time shocking ending, which has since been echoed in a few too many films to retain its proper impact, and which abruptly changes the film’s genre. But while the film’s cultural cachet as a boundary-breaker has faded, it remains an intense, woozy, over-the-top visual and emotional experience, one that brings the noirs of the ’40s and ’50s into the realm of the 1980s’ stylish excess.

Availability: Widely available on DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant, etc.

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Film: Watch This: New Orleans on film in honor of Killing Them Softly (2 of 5): The Cincinnati Kid

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Killing Them Softly has us thinking of movies set in New Orleans.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965) 
Before Rounders came along in 1998, anticipating the poker boom that would sweep the nation when the aptly named amateur Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series Of Poker, hardcore students of the game often cited The Cincinnati Kid as the definitive movie on the subject. But the irony of Norman Jewison’s moody noir drama is that the poker gameplay is utterly ridiculous: The biggest round of five-card stud in the film has Edward G. Robinson beating a full house—aces full of tens—with a jack-high straight flush, which is the type of hand that would get a dealer murdered in a Texas road game. Yet as a portrait of the gambler’s life, The Cincinnati Kid gets everything right, from the romance of cash rolls and easy women to the smoke-filled back rooms of markers and marks. 

That atmosphere was important enough to Jewison that he shot the film on location in New Orleans, opening with Steve McQueen wending through a jazz funeral and continuing with a documentary-like credits sequence that marches along with a second-line brass band. (The Preservation Hall Jazz Band also makes an appearance.) McQueen stars as a Depression-era shark who has soaked up enough money around the city to earn him a reputation as the most promising young stud player around. But in order to be the best, he has to beat the best, which leads to a climatic confrontation with Robinson, reminiscent of Paul Newman’s duel with Jackie Gleason in The Hustler. Comparisons to The Hustler do it no favors—in part because pool is more naturally cinematic than poker, and Jewison is no Robert Rossen—but Jewison, along with screenwriters Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern, evoke the city’s underbelly with the right mix of verity and stylization, and McQueen has the cool temperament of a pro.    

Availability: Widely available on DVD, Amazon Instant, etc. The DVD may be worth seeking out for a commentary track by Celebrity Poker Showdown co-hosts Dave Foley and Phil Gordon.

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