![]() ![]() His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless.” But Point Blank’s star, Lee Marvin, is an even more effective stand-in. Westlake once said he had Jack Palance in mind, and he certainly fit his description: “His hands looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. Westlake (1933-2008), who in 1962, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, began a series of more than two dozen lean crime novels featuring a big, rugged, impassive slab of criminality known only as Parker. The American part was the deft and prolific mystery writer Donald E. It’s a hybrid of American, British, and French influences that becomes very much its own thing. Grim, violent, elliptical, transfixingly sour and strange, it remains, 50 years later, a vital link between old and new, seeming at times like the tail end of classic noir, at others like the first sign of something fresh. But in between, in 1967, along came John Boorman’s Point Blank. Pakula ( Klute), Robert Altman ( The Long Goodbye), and Roman Polanski ( Chinatown), who consciously and formally nodded to the past while going places that ’40s and ’50s film noir couldn’t. By the early 1970s, the genre was back as neo-noir, modernized (or sometimes just air-quoted) by directors like Alan J. In the early 1960s, the 20-year film noir boom that began toward the end of World War II finally waned, its themes and concerns drifting away from the Hollywood mainstream. As the masterpieces, pathbreakers, and oddities of that landmark year reach their golden anniversaries, I’ll try to offer a sense of what it might have felt like to be an avid moviegoer 50 years ago, discovering these films as they opened. In this biweekly column, I’m revisiting 1967 from a different angle. Will he retrieve the money? Has this all been a dream from the beginning when he was left to die? The answers are left up to the viewer.In my 2008 book Pictures at a Revolution, I approached the dramatic changes in movie culture in the 1960s through the development, production, and reception of each of the five nominees for 1967’s Best Picture Academy Award: Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Doctor Dolittle. At the last moment, all you see is Walker dissipate into the darkness like a ghost. He observes the drop-off point from overhead, waits it out, and makes the men believe he didn't show up. Once again, an act of treachery is in the works. It all comes down to Walker going back to the place that haunts his memory: Alcatraz. He won't relent until his gets the money. Walker simply holds the whole Organization accountable. Since Reese wouldn't give him the cash, Walker disposes of him and move to the next guy in line. Walker enlists the help of his wife's sister (Angie Dickinson). ![]() Reese is a top man in the syndicate this time around, so getting to him is not easy. Now it's up to Walker to hunt down Reese through his connections. As the sound of footsteps come to a halt, we see Walker uninhibitedly barge in his wife's front door with a gun in hand, knock her down, and head right for the bedroom-blasting away several rounds at the bed. Since his wife is the person closest to him, and because she had an affair with Reese, Walker goes straight for her first. Shots of his wife getting out of bed, going out, and coming back home play while the pounding of his footsteps overshadow it. Walker does a lot of walking throughout the movie, going from one place to another until he finds justice. Walker is fiercely determined, a man on a mission. At the inception of this storyline we see Walker stomping down a corridor, his footsteps loud, repetitive, pounding. Now all Walker wants to do is get his money back. He is portrayed as austere, terse, and slightly aloof. They help convey Walker's thoughts and feelings, even if it seems like he doesn't have them anymore. During this sequence, and throughout the film, there are flashbacks to provide the backstory. After being shot up, Walker apparently made it out alive. The job took place at the dark and dreary old prison, Alcatraz, where money pick-ups are made. Walker's wife also came along for the ride, but she didn't know what was going to happen. ![]() Reese needed all the money to pay back his debts to the Organization. His old pal Mal Reese (John Vernon) filled him with bullet holes and left him to rot, presuming he was dead or would die soon anyway. Lee Marvin plays Walker, a man who loses his share of $93,000 when he's double-crossed on a heist. ![]()
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