Richard Widmark Dies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83D8SaVkZ00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGf_gUDHrJM

Aw. I liked him.

Rest in Peace.

What a loss. He was a wonderful actor.

Another one of my all-time faves gone West.

As I told edgar, I remember Cheyenne Autumn because while the Indians were traveling, a jet stream appeared across the sky.

I wish I could comment further about Richard Widmark, but although I remember his face quite well, I can't recall much else. We always hate to see an actor of his caliber leave us.



Go west young M.A. n.

I have. Frequently. (I just hope you didn't mean that in the figurative sense, Letty. )

I've seen him in so many films - Loved him even when the script might be weak.

No, M.A. I just had to tease you a bit.

edgar, I have searched for Richard in Murder on the Orient Express but no luck, Texas. I loved Hercule Poirot movies, and Agatha Christie books.

Wasn't he the one that got murdered?

There are actors who are sexy, actors who are glitzy stars and there are actors who come across - whether playing heroes or villains - as just being thoroughly likeable; friends you never actually got to meet. Richard Widmark was one of these.

It's a bit disconcerting that the first mental image that pops into my mine is Richard Widmark tying up the little old lady in her wheel chair with a lamp cord and shoving her down the staircase while laughing like a maniac.

Widmark was Mr. Ratchet (a relative of Nurse Ratchet?) in "Murder On the Orient Express" and was a little lost in the large big name cast.

But his most powerful performance was in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) as the prosecuting Col. Tad Lawson. He was given some great lines, some of the best being out of the court sessions where he showed his delivery of anger, glib humor, and wise analysis while trying to keep up to the level of Spencer Tracy which is no mean trick. Of course, it wouldn't be difficult to state that every actor in that film delivered their finest performance. I mean, Marlene Dietrich was dynamite, too, even if it was just the fuse being lit and anticipation of the explosion. She holds it under a hospitable demeanor but you can still hear the sizzle.

But can there be any more timely line Col. Lawson (Widmark) delivers than this one?

Col. Tad Lawson: One thing about Americans, we're not cut out to be occupiers. We're new at it and not very good at it.

(And we still haven't learned).

Hmm, someone want to force G W Bush to watch that movie and rub his nose in that section of celluoid?

I just heard that yesterday and it didn't immediately connect. If there's a third person who worked on "Judgement," that would be spooky. The script would likely be included in any compilation of the finest film scripts of all time. There still hasn't been a film to top this indictment of Nazism, or any form of Facism (like the oil Facism now in the US). Widmark played his role under Frankenheimer's direction as an avenging angel, a 180 deg. opposite of Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death."

Or was it?

Judgement at Nuremberg was indeed a fine film for Widmark, but the best performance in the movie was that of Maximillian Schell, the defense attorney for the Nazi judges who I believe received an Academy Award for Supporting Actor for his role in the film. I have seen most of Widmark's movies and I count his role in Dassin's film noir classic-"Night and the City" as his finest role.

The most stunning part of Judgement at Nuremberg for me was the revelation coming near the end of the movie which indicated that the Soviets had blockaded Berlin. This made the judges' decisions even more perplexing. It also showed that your friend yesterday is your enemy today.

I had forgotten about "Night and the City" and it was one of the films that Turner Classic Movies ran in their tribute to Richard Widmark, which was his last birthday December 26, 2007. I did see it and it is a fine film noir thriller by a director who was hounded out of the US by Senator McCarthy's Communist Witch Hunt. It was filmed in London and Widmark was perfectly cast

He passed away on March 31st of this year, one of those coincidences that makes one think, is fate all that fickle or some crazy Universal plan?

:wink:

Anyway, one that A2K NetFlix members should positively rent!

Michael Atkinson in The Village Voice:

Jules Dassin's epi-noir classic Night and the City (1950) reappears in all of its arabesque shadowiness. But is it an authentic noir? Richard Widmark's self-deceiving dreamer is far from the prototypical, fate-slammed noir Everyman, London is positively anti-noir-ish in its touristy quaintness (only occasionally does the on-location shoot find Blitz rubble), and the supporting cast of elocutionist Brits (Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, etc.) reek of Old Vic bit parts. However defined, the movie's a moody piece of Wellesian chiaroscuro (shot by Max Greene, né Mutz Greenbaum) and an occasionally discomfiting underworld plunge, particularly when the mob-controlled wrestling milieu explodes into a kidney-punching donnybrook.

Handed to the young director by producer Darryl Zanuck as a vehicle to get him out of the country before the HUAC hammer hit him, as it did by way of warbler Edward Dmytryk a year or so later, Night is therefore the first Dassin film centered on a Yankee expat lost in an oblivious Europe. Tellingly, the film's doomy final quarter rolls ineluctably on as if Widmark's hapless, hunted club tout is already dead, an American ghost searching for an elusive Old World sanctuary.

I must locate that film and watch it.

It's worth it -- the final scenes are breathtaking and Widmark manages to delivery a powerful performance that does not even nipple at the scenery. Film Noir now has a looser definition than the tradition formula and I think it is the ambiance of a crime flick that qualifies it as in that genre. It used to be that the film was in black and white with soft contrasts against hard contrasts driving the atmosphere and the story, right out of German Expressionism.

Of course, they're have been several films in the genre in color, with the traditional detective protagonist and femme fatale, the two most notable being "Chinatown" and "LA Confidential." Both films muted the color with filters over the camera lenses and looked every bit as good as the originally famous b&w film noir.

Re: Richard Widmark Dies


RIP
At least he had a long life