When screenwriter AI Bezzerides was asked about the complex layers of meaning running through his adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s classic crime novel “Kiss Me Deadly,” he denied any conscious intention to explore post-WWII troubling. What made the film its main focus. “People ask me about the hidden meaning in the script,” he told an interviewer. “About the A-bomb, about McCarthyism, what poetry means, etc. And all I can say is that I didn’t think about that when I wrote it. . . . I had fun. was coming.” Bezerzides may have just been “having fun,” but in the process, he and director Robert Aldrich created one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, a detective story set in the heart of 1950s America. Sees and sees annihilation.
It’s one of several stoner masterpieces penned by the novelist-turned-screenwriter, whose work the American Cinematheque is rightfully recognizing in its upcoming “Written by AI” series, on five essential films. Contains either Bezzerides’ script or is based on it. The play on words in the past title on his fiction goes beyond the beautiful reference to a cowardly subject. It refers to the intersection between film and technology that characterized Beziers’ best work in films about mankind’s complex relationship with machines that both facilitate life and ultimately lead to self-destruction. Is.
Although “Kiss Me Deadly” is Bezzerides’ best and most famous film, it is hardly an isolated example of his talent for the devastatingly dark and ironic. The 1951 thriller “On Dangerous Ground,” directed by Nicholas Ray, is equally compelling and boasts an even more brutal protagonist in the form of Robert Ryan’s civil-rights abolitionist. “They Drive By Night,” which was based on Bezzerides’ novel “The Long Haul,” is another example of the author’s skill at combining upbeat suspense and social reality with its gripping tale of long-haul truck drivers. The ideals are synthesized by those who pursue the American dream. to kill The joyous technicolor noir “Desert Fury” and the Syria-based action film “Sirocco,” boasting stellar performances by Humphrey Bogart and Lee J. Cobb, opened the Cinematheque’s program. All five films are essential viewing and a great way to take a crash course in one of Hollywood’s most indispensable voices — a voice that AI will never be able to replicate.
The film, written by AI, plays at the American Cinematheque from April 20 to May 19.