When the actor Fred Williamson And director Jack Arnold come together to do ”Black eye1974 was not an obvious match.
Williamson was the retired Pro Football Player who, after doing its function film Debut in Robert Altman’s “M*A*H” in 1970, had skyrocketed to BlaxPloitation Stardom in “Hammer” and a couple of Larry Cohen Knockouts, ”Black Caesar“And“ Hell in Harlem. “Arnold was a reliable Hollywood traveling best known for directing universal sci-fi girls like” It came from outer space “,” The Incredible Shrinking Man “and” The Creature From The Black Lagoon “before spending 1960s speech and knocked from studio to studio to studio, genre to the genre, with an economically lucrative but creative static stay in Episodic TV.
Williamson was a rising star in the new Hollywood and Arnold a more or less discarded remnant of the old, but their collaboration gave one of the most underrated films in its era. A smart and extremely entertaining Neo-Noir who marries Williamson’s energy and edge to Arnold’s instinctive action for action for great effect, “Black Eye” is a rich atmospheric detective film that deserves to be more known than it is; Its pleasures are similar to the canonized “The Long Goodbye” and “Night moves.” While “Black Eye” is not really the masterpiece one of these films is (Arnold is an excellent craftsman but not a full -fledged visionary like Altman or Arthur Penn), it’s close enough to make you wonder why it has been so forgotten.
Fortunately a new blu-ray from Warner Archive Gives a welcome opportunity for rediscovered. I have written about the label Superb transfers Many times before, and they have done it again: “Black Eye” record is a Stunner and presents Ralph Woolsey’s movie in all its dirty and wonderful glory. Based on Jeff Jack’s novel “Murder on the Wild Side”, the movie is a Raymond Chandler-Esque mystery about a detective (Williamson) whose job looking for a missing girl crosses with a seemingly independent case that he stumbles on when he witnesses murder on A neighbor. As with Chandler, the appeal is less the action (although the construction here, with the permission of screenwriter Mark Haggard and Jim Martin, is solid) than behavior and place. Williamson spends the entire movie to move from one LA landscape and subculture to another and meet a varied crew of criminals that are rich, scary and everything in between, on the way.
“Black Eye” was released by Warner Bros. In an attempt to get money on the Blax Ploitation call (but apart from some funky music and the presence of genre icon Williamson, “Black Eye” is more “The Big Sleep” than “Superfly”), but it was an independent production, and Its low budget is one of its virtues. modest films like this are often better representations of its time and place even more well -equipped studio films, because The inability to recreate and resume means that the filmmakers are simply forced to document what is in front of them. This is the case with “Black Eye”, and in this regard it could not have had a better director than Arnold.
Arnold began his career as an apprentice to the documentary Robert Flaherty, and he never lost his taste for taking his life on the move. “Black Eye” is pushed completely in place – there is not a set throughout the movie – and one of its delicacies is its value as a time capsule from Los Angeles 1974, especially Venice Beach and Santa Monica. One of the highlights is an incredible car chase on the Venice channels; Arnold Cinema Dana Reemes claims that this sequence is managed without permission. It is an astonishing display of director crafts where Arnold integrates the action and the place so skillfully that you cannot imagine the sequence that takes place elsewhere.
The film is filled with dynamic exteriors that add vitality and structure to Williamson’s adventure, but it is in the stylish interiors where Arnold really shows his gifts. Williamson moves through an endless parade with tricky apartments (as well as higher homes where upper -class participants in the heroin ring in the film center live), each of whom has its own unique character. In accordance with the tradition of this type of detective history, the film is loaded with odd supporting characters, each given deep and taste of its surroundings and vice versa.
The film is impeccably cast from top to bottom, with several scenes that serve comparison with the masterpiece in this genre, Howard Hawks “The Big Sleep.” “Black Eye” has a similar love for language, and one of its most important delicacies is when Fred Williamson is opposite an actor who can keep up with him when participating in the 1970s sequence for Hawks Fast Badinage. In a funny scene, Williamson Head-to-Head goes with the “Good Times” star Theodore Wilson as a restaurant, and they respond to each other in rhyme. As in hawks, the dialogue is very stylized but quite likely in the established universe.
Supporting cast aside, the main reason for looking at “Black Eye” is its lead, never better than he was here – which says something, because Williamson was one of the big action stars in his era. Chapel and capable of conveying confusion, departure and rage with the subtlest of gestures, he should have been as great as Clint Eastwood; The fact that he probably has nothing to do with siloing films with black actors such as “BlaxPloitation” even when, as in this case, they had much in common with more well -equipped and extensive marketed films with white stars.
The fact that Stone, detective played by Williamson, did not receive a whole series of films like Dirty Harry is a tragedy for action fans, although we received an equally great follow-up of “Black Eye” in the form of the 1975s “Boss Nigger” ( whose title, even though it was uncontroversial at that time, was understandably changed to simply “boss” when it reached DVD 2008), a Wicker Western written by Williamson and directed by Arnold. And of course, Williamson gave us dozens of fantastic action films in the coming years as a star, writer and ultimately director.
While Williamson was at the beginning of his career in “Black Eye”, Arnold was at his twilight – his last movie, “The Swiss Conspiracy”, would be released just two years later. Like Williamson, Arnold is well regarded among genre fans but not as popular as he should get the consistency in his work. “Black Eye” is the perfect place to discover or rediscover him, Williamson and the beautiful Sleazy West La 1974.
“Black Eye” is now available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive.
