Mon 1 Jun 2009
DELUSION. Cineville, 1991. Jim Metzler, Jennifer Rubin, Kyle Secor, Jerry Orbach. Director & co-screenwriter: Carl Colpaert.
This is a pretty good example of a category that can’t be called anything but neo-noir. Produced way past the usual late 1950s closing date for the first grouping of noir films, and made especially with the term (and the goal of making a) noir film in mind, movies in this particular genre are also made cheaply and have many of the same themes as the originals …
… but they’re almost always in color — often brilliant, blinding color — and obviously they include a lot more overt violence and sexuality than the directors in the 1940s could ever have dreamed of.
Most of them have had very limited theatrical releases. Many of these crime-oriented features were direct-to-video (and now direct-to-DVD) and used to show up on HBO, Showtime and Cinemax after 11 o’clock all the time.
(For some reason they don’t any more, and I don’t know why. Late night programming seems to consist of regular movies that run all day long, over and over, or really awful softcore pornography.)
Reviews I’ve seen of Delusion have been mixed. The New York Times hated it, but two reviewers for the Washington Post were of totally opposite opinions. I thought the first half was also first-rate; the second half, well, second-rate.
Here’s a question for you. Suppose you’re a guy into computers, and you’re on the run from your former employer with nearly a half million dollars in cash stashed in the trunk of your car. You’re on the road somewhere in the desert (Nevada, let’s say) and you see the car that just careened past you moments before spin off the highway and land upside down in the sand. Two people, a man and a woman, are struggling to get out.
Would you stop? Would you offer them a lift?
Generally speaking I guess most people would, and like George O’Brien (Jim Metzler), I guess a lot of people would be ruing their decision within minutes, kicking themselves no end for being so kind-hearted.
Two more flaky people — seriously flaky, let’s be emphatic here — than Patti (Jennifer Rubin) and Chevy (Kyle Secor), could scarcely be imagined. How soon can he possibly get them out of his car, George is thinking, and you can just see it in his face and tortured body language as the predicament he’s in starts to sink in.
Do they have guns? Yes. Do they have other plans in mind? Yes. Or at least Chevy does, on both counts. Patti’s involvement is not so clear. There are a couple of really good twists coming, one of them (or maybe both) involving Chevy’s friend Larry (Jerry Ohrbach) who is living alone in a trailer beside a small lake in the middle of the desert.
The couple of good twists come a little bit too early, though. I was set up to expect one or two more, and I was disappointed when I didn’t get them – or in other words, as I previously implied, the second half doesn’t begin to match up in a direct comparison with the first.
It’s still a noir film all the way, however, allowing some forgiveness for a couple of allegedly comic touches, also in the second half.
As George finds himself sinking more and more quickly into the quicksandish trap he’s let himself in for, the question he finds that he must keep asking himself is, how important is the stolen money to him?
Jennifer Rubin, by the way, was the original model in Calvin Klein Obsession ads, and this movie was relatively early in her career. She’s quite beautiful, obviously, and in the first half (I keep getting back to this, don’t I?) she’s plays enigmatic very well. Make that extremely well. Once she’s given some dialogue, you know that an actress she wasn’t yet.
Not that her career went uphill from here. Other than the lead role in the remake of Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman, which came along later, I don’t see anything but mediocre parts in even more mediocre movies on her resume.
June 1st, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I saw DELUSION a couple years ago and remember liking it. But I had trouble believing the scene where the man with a half million in his car trunk, stops and helps the two people. Sure, your average law abiding, decent, not running from the law person, would probably stop to help.
But this guy was not that and would have been concentrating on making his getaway; he certainly should not be stopping to help someone and maybe get involved with law enforcement checking into the accident, etc. I know I would be nervous as hell with a half million ill-gotten gains in my car, which would make me even less likely to stop.
If you do stop, then maybe you are not the type to steal a fortune and disappear from the your former world.
June 1st, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Neo noir always runs the risk of the ‘too knowing wink,’ that ‘aren’t we clever, aren’t we smart’ self congratulation that shouts ‘look what we are doing, we are making a film noir!’
Some directors and some actors avoid this, and some make a virtue of it. Delusion starts out seemingly going to fall in the latter category, but then becomes tiresomely self aware as it works its way through the required twists and turns called for by noir — classic or neo.
Maybe a better name for a film like Delusion would be ‘self indulgent noir’ or ‘faux noir.’ like those fragrances that label themselves as Faux Chanel, or Faux Opium. It’s not the real thing, but in the beginning it smells a little like it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:29 am
Walker,
George is painted as perhaps a good guy at heart. The money he stole was going to be used for a good purpose, to start up a new computer company the previous management ran into the ground.
I think this is the background that you need to have it make sense that he’d stop. And of course here I am yelling at the screen, don’t stop! don’t stop! (Not out loud mind you. I know better than that.)
And what an edgy fifteen minutes follow next, as Patti & Chevy act like total whackos in the car with him, good, bad and then apologetic before starting all over again.
It’s an edge that most movies can’t keep, and David, you’re absolutely right. An edge goes away when a movie somehow becomes aware of itself.
It’s hard to put a finger on, like the definition of noir itself, and there’s not always a precise tipping point, but you can always tell when a neo-noir film has become less friend and more faux when you see one.
— Steve
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
Reading through my comments again, I see I erred in suggesting that DELUSION was a direct-to-video type of film. It’s that type of film, but it wouldn’t have been reviewed in the New York Times and the Washington Post if it were.
Commenters on IMDB are totally mixed. Half of them rave about the movie, others think it was a complete waste of time. What’s truly regrettable, though, is that those of either opinion have no compunction against revealing most of the plot twists.
Enough people seem to have liked the film that it’s a surprise that it’s never been released on DVD, only on VHS, which is how I was able to see it. There seems to be a vast graveyard of films that were made in the 70s through the 90s but not yet out on DVD, and here’s another of them.
— Steve
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Many of my friends act as though the VCR and VHS tapes no longer exist. They have disconnected their vcrs and packed away or even thrown away their video tapes. At conventions I see that you just about can’t give away VHS tapes. I know at Pulpcon I sell dvds with no problem. But the video tapes I had to stop bringing because even at a couple bucks each they simply did not sell.
I still have a couple workable vcrs because of all the tapes I have, many as you point out, have not been reissued in the dvd format. The video tape is sturdier than I ever thought it would be and I still have tapes from around 1980 that play well.
Sure the dvd is a better and more perfect format, but there are still many films only available in the vhs format.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Only 3.5% of Hollywood films are available on DVD.
Lots of films of all types were released on VHS, that never made it to DVD.
DVD’s great advantage: it is cheap to mail, enabling Netflix.
But a LOT more needs to be released in it…
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Walker, you’re right. I continue to be surprised at well my VCR tapes have held up. Some that I taped with my first VCR play just fine today.
As for shows are not available on DVD, among the problems regarding recent movies and TV, as I understand it, are the rights to the background music. They weren’t negotiated for at the time, and the owners to the rights now want too much money for them.
For older movies, but ones not yet in the public domain, the problem can be finding out who does own the various rights and working out a deal with them.
Or in lots of cases, there just doesn’t seem to be any commercial value to some movies and putting them on DVD.
Which of these applies to DELUSION, I don’t know, but even though my review was only partially positive, I think it deserves to be on DVD.
But here’s one thing more. If and when Blue Ray takes over, of that 3.5% you mention, Mike, there’ll be a lot more movies that won’t make the transition.
That will leave it up to collectors, I’d have to say, to fill in the gaps.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
i came upon this article through google alert…
So great to read these comments…good or bad…
This film was shot on super 35 widescreen and was released in a limited theatrical release. My take on the subject matter was to make an existential comment on blue collar and white collar crime and how they face off in the middle of Death Valley.
Sony has the home video rights and I’d love to see this on DVD myself, letterbox.
Best
Carl Colpaert
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Carl
I feel as though I should go back and scrub out the bad comments, but since you’ve already seen them, I won’t. At least you have some honest opinions, for what they’re worth!
And I’d certainly buy the DVD, if it were ever made available. The photography was great, as you say, and while I thought the overall story was uneven, I’d love to hear a commentary track done by you throughout the film.
If I may ask a question of you, I see that you’re the executive producer of a planned movie version of William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST. That’s a film I’d really like to see. How far along is the project? Any actors that are definite so far?
— Steve
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Like Steve and Walker I have vhs tapes from 1981 that are still good and play as well as they ever did. Especially store bought tapes, though those I recorded myself have held up well including the first I ever recorded.
The only problems I’ve ever had were either with cheap tapes I purchased before I knew better or some of the nine and ten hour cassettes that they never quite perfected, that and over the years some players didn’t play tapes from other machines as well as others. In fact my first vhs player didn’t crater until five or six years ago, though later ones haven’t lasted that long. That said the worst of them outlast DVRs.
I have a DVR now and I’m converting some of my vhs to DVD, but not all, since even the best DVR only lasts about two years before cratering (it’s the heat, but since they can be purchased under $100 now it’s less a tragedy than it once was — and of course some store bought encoded vhs can’t be copied — at least not by me). They are a bit more complicated than vhs since the DVD’s have to be converted so they play on other DVD machines, but quality from machine to machine is better than vhs ever was and you don’t have to mess with tracking. I think you can buy a machine that converts VHS to DVD at a faster pace than the length of the movie much like some PC’s make copies of DVD’s in fifteen or so minutes.
In any case I’ll be keeping a vhs player or two around. You can pick one up for under $50 most places, and the quality is okay or better on most older stuff or things you recorded yourself than you might expect if you have gotten use to dvds. Most modern digital VHS players even improve some of your old tapes by ‘filling in’ lost info to improve the picture. I never noticed much problem with ‘dropout’ on older tapes, but then I’m not a perfectionist like some — I’m happy just to see some of this stuff.
That said, there is more available on DVD than ever came out on VHS, at least more that I was looking for, and if you buy a multi format player that can handle Region 2 and Pal formats you can buy many exceptional dvds from England and Europe that don’t play on Region 1 players. That said there is much that was on VHS that may not make the cut to DVD even though there may be fans that still want to see it. Still, I can think of a dozen fairly good and even important films with major stars that never made it to VHS that are available on DVD including films with stars like Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Ronald Colman, and others, not to mention the plethora of old television series that were never on VHS.
Me, I’m lucky if I can program the vcr or dvr, but if I can operate this stuff anyone can. I’m taking it slow about Blu Ray since most will be able to play old DVDs and I suspect that Blu Ray may not be the last format. I’ve still got a box of CED’s and a CED player — and the picture on those is superior to the best VHS I ever saw, but the inability to record killed the format, not to mention those large lp size boxes. I’m sure there will be something cutting edge any day now to make our DVD collections as worthless as our VHS now seem to be.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I’d love to see Delusion on DVD and hear the directors comments. It’s not a success, but there is much good in it, and it isn’t as if some classic noir doesn’t lose its way about midway through the film.
What I meant by faux noir in someways is a reference to that, since I think a director with a clear noir vision may make a bad film, but he won’t lose that noir vision the way this and some films do. That’s why some small independent and even cheap noir films, like the recently reviewed Blast of Silence, work when more professional films may not. Noir is very much a product of a director’s vision and state of mind, it only takes one false step to kill the mood.
On another subject brought up by Mike Nevins in his review of Crime and Punishment, one reason so many thirties films feel as if they belong to the noir school is because they come out of German Expressionism, the American hardboiled school of writing, and the gangster film which were all major contributors to the noir style. Major noir directors influenced by those schools (and in some case part of them) include Lang, Hitchcock, Zinneman, Wilder, and Dmytryk.