We
tend to forget it was the ungrateful citizens of San Francisco whom Inspector “Dirty
Harry” Callahan so diligently protected. That alone makes the Golden Gate City
one of the leading movie towns for mystery-thrillers. Yet, it’s still not as
ubiquitous as New York or LA, so it had just the right degree of difficulty for
Guy Maddin. His latest film “rhapsody” consists of excerpts snipped from other
films and TV shows shot on location in San Francisco, or the surrounding
environs. Along the way, it also became a pseudo-remake of the SF-set Vertigo, in spirit, rather than the
beat-for-beat narrative. San Francisco looks appealingly noir as it gets the
Winnipeg treatment in Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s The Green Fog (trailer here) which opens this Friday at the IFC Center.
If
you do not know Hitchcock’s Vertigo,
Maddin’s Fog will most likely leave you
thoroughly confused. By the way, you really ought to know it, but conveniently
the IFC Center will present the two films together as a double-bill during
select screenings. Regardless, there are plenty of men hanging off buildings,
just like poor Jimmy Stewart. There are also quite a few femme fatales, very
much in the Kim Novak tradition. To further reinforce the Hitchcockian
connection, Jacob Garchik’s score, performed by the Kronos Quartet, doubles,
triples, and quadruples down on Bernard Herrmann nervy jangliness.
Frankly,
while watching Maddin’s pseudo-narrative montage, it makes you wonder why more productions
do not more frequently take advantage of the city’s distinctive landmarks.
Obviously, some films were enormously helpful to Maddin and company, including
classics like Vertigo itself, Dark Passage, The Lady from
Shanghai, Sudden Fear, The Towering Inferno, The House on Telegraph Hill, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!, and
the Dirty Harry series.
Perhaps
not so surprisingly Jagged Edge and
Philip Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion of the
Body Snatchers turned out to be especially useful. Maybe the happiest
surprise is how often Chuck Norris pops up in clips from An Eye for an Eye. There are also moments of high camp or nostalgia
(take your pick) when the Winnipeg filmmakers mine unexpected vanes, such as McMillan & Wife and The Love Bug.
