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WHERE THE
SIDEWALK ENDS
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“Without risks, you can’t have greatness. This is a great mix of comedy, drama,
terror and tragedy”
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But an invitation to come in for a cup of tea results in Jack being mistaken for what he is (a cop), but who is suspected of working on a case which he knows absolutely nothing about: an ingenious bank robbery being planned by a smooth operator called Tyrone (Stellan Skarsgård); his beautiful, immoral and manipulative girlfriend, Erin (Milla Jovovich in the femme fatale role without which no film noir would be complete); and Hoop (Doug Hutchison, who played the vicious prison guard in The Green Mile), a paranoid youth with a plate in his head who is prone to sustained outbursts of violence and is being played like a cheap piano by Erin. Oh, and the Quarres, who are providing the base of operations in return for a cut out of which they will soon be double-crossed.
Since all perfect robbery plans eventually prove by definition imperfect, the plan to rob the bank soon begins to go more and more wrong. And, one by one, the gang members end up dead, while the guy they have been trying to kill since he walked into their lives - Jack - is the one to walk away, talking a last wistful glance back at the beautiful Erin. As the end titles roll, Jack is finally able to set off for his well-earned vacation with the one thing he really cares about: his cello.
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“Bob is technically brilliant and, in my opinion, it’s independents like these that are saving this industrY”
Joss Ackland |
Hammett’s short story, adapted (and considerably expanded) for the screen by Steve Barancik and Christopher Canaan, eventually found its way to Seven Arts chief Peter Hoffman, who started out being mildly interested and ended up seriously intrigued. “When I started reading the script, I thought it seemed like a decent-enough thriller,” he admits. “But, as I read on, it struck me that we had a real hit on our hands: a brilliantly conceived story that could be brought to life with just the right ensemble cast.”
And, needless to say, the right director. One of the most original voices to emerge from the ‘Hollywood Renaissance’ of the late sixties and early seventies, Rafelson saw The House on Turk Street as a combination of film noir, thriller and off-centre love story.
Doug Hutchison
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“I had already adapted Cain and Chandler and I’m a Dashiell Hammett fan,” he says. “In this case, the short story was barely a sketch of the movie, but had this bizarre collection of characters – funny, hopeless, pretentious and dangerous. I worked with a wonderful writer, Steve Barancik, and we extended these qualities and added more music. If you must label this film, it’s a dark comedy thriller that contains romance. Or, a romantic thriller with comic - if dark - highlights.”
It is between Jackson’s Jack and Jovovich’s Erin that the dark romance occurs - or almost occurs. From an early scene in which his attempt to teach her to play the cello sets up a bizarre erotic charge through to their final encounter, where she tries once more to use her manipulative charms on him, this is one of those classic encounters between two misfits in which something sparks. Whether - as with Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep or Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity - we are talking about lust, love or some kind of erotic sparring match is not always easy to say. But it is enough to jolt both Jack and Erin out of their private, self-centred worlds.
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