Miller’s Crossing (1990): It’s not in the hat

The night calls and repels, cradles and scares. How many shades of darkness will the mortal eye discern? How much darkness will his heart contain? In the very heart of this darkness live ugly greedy creatures. James Kane researched and described them, possessing human souls, with passionate enthusiasm, Deshil Hammett dissected with the coldness of an entomologist, Flannery O’Connor found Gogol’s grotesque in them. One of the pioneers of the “black” genre should be called the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, whose Hammer of Witches, if it had been written in the twentieth century, would have told about fatal beauties and men walking to the abyss at the wave of an elegant finger.

Unfortunately, Kramer was somewhat one-sided in his judgments and had no ambitions in fiction. But ambition, as well as talent, taste and erudition are fully inherent in the Cohen brothers. Joel and Ethan were born three years apart in the family of an ethnic economist. Already at school, they began shooting amateur movies for the notorious super 8. With the same childlike spontaneity, but after college, the brothers joined the crew of the Sinister Dead, gaining the necessary experience and becoming friends with director Sam Raimi. Raimi will help them on the set of the debut film Just Blood, a noir about adultery and revenge, whose script the Coens wrote under the impression of the novels of the aforementioned James Caine.

Having made their second picture, The Upbringing of Arizona, the complete opposite, or rather, a wild comedy, in 1990, the brothers returned to the crime drama genre with Miller’s Crossing, a gangster movie about the confrontation between the Irish and Italians, the fault of which is a woman. Critics, like Inquisitor Kramer in search of the Devil’s mark, found in him an abyss of hidden meanings, starting with the hat of Tom Regan, the main character. And indeed, at times the hat seems to live its own life, betraying the emotions that Tom (Gabriel Byrne) is trying to hide. Do not believe the critics, the hat remains only a hat, and art, according to Chandler, it seems, should entertain, first of all.

And Miller’s Crossing entertains, being a witty, satirical, at times mockingly absurd film. Where did the wig of the guy nicknamed Wig, sewn in the alley, go?

“If bribery can’t be trusted, what can it be?” – laments Johnny Caspar (John Polito), a funny little man who is the boss of the Italian mafia in this city. He is the best mockery of Coppola’s Godfather, where antique marble Brando gives phrases in the voice of a tired Olympian god.

The Comic Is Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro), a small Jewish bookmaker, the brother of That Very Woman, Verna. Tom Regan’s boss, Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney), who holds the mayor and the police by the very reasons, is touchingly clumsy in his courtship. Verna’s secret lover, Tom is cold, calm and the only one who understands what’s going on. That’s why he doesn’t understand what the hell he’s doing here.

What happens is this: Brother Bernie little by little fleeces Caspar, Caspar complains about him to Leo, Leo refuses to make a Final Verdict on the case of the closest relative of his beloved woman. And when violence begins on the screen, this violence is real, terrible. The unforgettable “Thompson jitterbug” under the unofficial anthem of the Irish Danny Boy is one of the most impressive deaths in the history of criminal cinema.

The cinematography of Barry Sonnenfeld, the future director of Men in Black and the Addams Family, is simply admirable. Composer Carter Burwell, who worked on all the films of the Cohens and Martin McDonagh, does not let you forget that the main character is an Irishman, in fact, jazz of the 1920s is not heard here, only a Celtic pastoral, chasing autumn leaves in the forest at the Crossroads. In the forest, where the corpses are brought.

The Crossroads is scary… The characters who seemed ridiculous and ridiculous show a different side, the one where darkness settled. Kaspar with a straight razor, Leo with a machine gun – big fish in the murky waters of violence and crime. Only Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) has a shaky desire to get away from this bloody bedlam, but, as the Cheshire Cat’s smile used to say, “you’re not yourself either, girl, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

The Cohen brothers, these Tweedledee and Tweedledee of Hollywood, extremely realistically and subtly recreate real pulp fiction before Pulp Fiction. Pulp fiction with a taste of Alice Through the Looking Glass, one of the most truthful and creepy books. The film’s advertising slogan is very accurate: “Everything is not what it seems at Miller’s Crossing.” In 1990, the film failed at the American box office, receiving only a modest award for best director at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

One of the best works of the Cohens, a reference neo-noir about the times of Prohibition, and just an exciting, deep and multifaceted story that every connoisseur of Real Cinema should see. And read the Hammer of Witches, it’s informative.

PS: Sam Raimi played a small role of a giggling killer in Crossroads. A broad-hearted man.