I didn’t know about Underworld before and it took me a few minutes to get acclimated, but I soon got drawn into the course of the story and realized how significant this film really is for the genre of gangster movies. I couldn’t agree more with the festival guide summary quoted above.

Underworld was the precursor for movies like Scarface: it was shot from the gangster’s point of view and included many of the concepts used so often in the history of the genre: the lawyer closely collaborating with the gangster, the romantic triangle between the gangster, his girl and the lawyer, loyalty, jealousy, rivalry with other groups of gangsters, the gangster ball and its code, the overall helplessness of the police and their inability to get to him until much later during the climax of the story.

The first gangster movie was really well done, I enjoyed it very much. [imdb]

Josef von Sternberg is one of the seminal figures in American moviemaking. His casting of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel elevated her to international superstardom, and the two maintained a close collaboration for several classic films thereafter. Before any of this, however, von Sternberg established himself as a force to be reckoned with which such silent classics as 1927′s Underworld.

Built on a script from legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht (he also wrote The Front Page and Scarface, and won the first Academy Award for “Best Writing” for his work here) Underworld crowned von Sternberg as the first king of the gangster film. Shot by legendary cinematographer Bill Glennon, who went on to make numerous films with John Ford and was a master of film noir, Underworld tells the story of a gangster, “Bull” Weed (George Bancroft), his lawyer, “Rolls Royce” (Clive Brook), and “Feathers,” the kingpin’s mistress (Evelyn Brent). It’s a love triangle, but when “Bull” shoots a man and is sentenced to die, he depends on his two friends to get him out.

Mildly regarded at the time it opened in 1927 (it “contains a good deal of sound drama,” wrote New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall), it gradually grew to be one of the biggest box office hits of the year, and inspired a slew of imitators. Indeed, a whole genre of moviemaking has been built on the artistic shoulders of Underworld. (Jed Dietz) (from the filmfest-guide)

With Edmond O’Brien, Audrey Totter, Ted de Corsia, Horace MacMahon, Nick Dennis, Dayton Lummis, Dan Riso, Shepard Menken, John Harmon, Ruth Warren

Edmond O’Brien stars as a former gangster who undergoes experimental brain surgery in hopes of curing his criminal tendencies and wiping out all memory of his past misdeeds. Unfortunately, his old gang is interested in recovering one particular forgotten memory – the location of their stashed loot – and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. A high stakes game of cat-and-mouse ensues, eventually ending up in an amusement park and climaxing with the film’s famous roller coaster scene.” (from the filmfest-guide)

One must-see highlight of the film festival we wouldn’t want to miss is the 3-D movie each year. When do you ever get to see a movie in 3-D? In the past few years we watched films like The Mad Magician, Gorilla At Large and House of Wax. This year’s 3-D movie pick was 1953’s Man In the Dark by Lew Landers and presented by the festival’s resident expert on 3-D movies Chris Kaltenbach, who also brought the previous years’ 3-D choices to the festival.

Man In The Dark is described as the first 3-D feature to use a production method in which the film was shot flat first, then projected behind foreground scenery props and re-filmed in 3-D so that only the props would jump off the screen. I thought this really decreased the quality of the 3-D effects and environment if I recall the experience I had with House of Wax or the Mad Magician before. Some effects like the scalpels used in the operation appeared way too busy or strong to be watched from the first rows, and other moments like the roof-top race deserved a much better use of the 3-D effect.

No doubt, it definitely was a pleasure to watch, in a 50s trashy classic sort of way.