One of the difficult things about shooting a movie in Los Angeles is that the city itself seems so dull. Every vista looks flat and tends to fall into one or another of two types. There are the wide car-choked boulevards with used car lots and Chinese restaurants, or there are the sterile, empty residential areas of trimmed lawns and ranch houses. Fast food dispensaries proudly proclaim, "Serving the Public Since 2009." There is no downtown. Some films manage to overcome this disadvantage. "Chinatown" was one. This one partially succeeds. The urban setting here has a texture to it. Not just the familiar Bradbury Building (in which Neff tried to outwit Keyes) or the Santa Monica pier but hills with steps, and multilayered wooden apartments, and corner candy stores. The location scout should get a screen credit.
Few remakes live up to the original, even if the remake was directed by a young Joseph Losey. It's pretty thoroughly Americanized. In the original, Peter Lorre was the helpless child killer. Here, David Wayne is driven by ego-alien impulses too but Lang gave Lorre no facile excuse, whereas this script has Wayne hating his mother and taking his rage out on little girls. He was probably abused as a child. That accounts for all rudeness these days, doesn't it? Lang's treatment is both less sentimental and more in line with what psychologists know about serial killers, which is virtually nothing. Not all the changes are dumb. Instead of being trapped in the wooden bin of a warehouse, Wayne (and a kidnapped girl) are stuck in a room jammed with plastic mannequins and the air is full of legs dangling as if recently severed. What really freaks me about those mannequins is that their feet are shaped into smooth wedges but they have no toes.
I don't think I'll go farther into the plot. Wayne is hauled up before "a jury of his peers" and defended by a drunk but I can't discuss the case out of court.
Wayne has a heavy duty speech at his mock trial. The camera doesn't cut away from him for a long while. And he handles it pretty well -- not like Lorre, whose only justification is that he's in the grip of his obsession, but equally pathetic.
In general, Lang's is the better film because, for one thing, it was an original, not a remake. For another, the agency of social control was Berlin's horde of beggars and small-time thieves in 1931 who formed a convincing network. Losey's movie loses that sense of solidarity and tries to being together too disparate a group: juvenile delinquents, rich racketeers, a black shoe shine boy. And Lang's depiction of police procedure is more explicit and more interesting. This version looks like a gangster movie.
On his hunting trips, Lorre whistled a piece from Grieg's "Peer Gynt", "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which was both catchy and a little ominous. Here, David Wayne plays a lugubrious tune in a minor key on a flute, bespeaking utter misery and impending doom. The overall effect of these and other modifications is just to simplify the story by reducing, or eliminating, the ambiguity. Everything is spelled out for the viewer, as in a kindergarten class where the ABCs are being taught.
Few remakes live up to the original, even if the remake was directed by a young Joseph Losey. It's pretty thoroughly Americanized. In the original, Peter Lorre was the helpless child killer. Here, David Wayne is driven by ego-alien impulses too but Lang gave Lorre no facile excuse, whereas this script has Wayne hating his mother and taking his rage out on little girls. He was probably abused as a child. That accounts for all rudeness these days, doesn't it? Lang's treatment is both less sentimental and more in line with what psychologists know about serial killers, which is virtually nothing. Not all the changes are dumb. Instead of being trapped in the wooden bin of a warehouse, Wayne (and a kidnapped girl) are stuck in a room jammed with plastic mannequins and the air is full of legs dangling as if recently severed. What really freaks me about those mannequins is that their feet are shaped into smooth wedges but they have no toes.
I don't think I'll go farther into the plot. Wayne is hauled up before "a jury of his peers" and defended by a drunk but I can't discuss the case out of court.
Wayne has a heavy duty speech at his mock trial. The camera doesn't cut away from him for a long while. And he handles it pretty well -- not like Lorre, whose only justification is that he's in the grip of his obsession, but equally pathetic.
In general, Lang's is the better film because, for one thing, it was an original, not a remake. For another, the agency of social control was Berlin's horde of beggars and small-time thieves in 1931 who formed a convincing network. Losey's movie loses that sense of solidarity and tries to being together too disparate a group: juvenile delinquents, rich racketeers, a black shoe shine boy. And Lang's depiction of police procedure is more explicit and more interesting. This version looks like a gangster movie.
On his hunting trips, Lorre whistled a piece from Grieg's "Peer Gynt", "In the Hall of the Mountain King," which was both catchy and a little ominous. Here, David Wayne plays a lugubrious tune in a minor key on a flute, bespeaking utter misery and impending doom. The overall effect of these and other modifications is just to simplify the story by reducing, or eliminating, the ambiguity. Everything is spelled out for the viewer, as in a kindergarten class where the ABCs are being taught.