Welcome to Collinwood (2002)

October 18, 2002, release date

Directed by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Screenplay by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Based on the screenplay I Soliti Ignoti by Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Mario Monicelli, Agenore Incorici, Furio Scarpellil

Music by Mark Mothersbaugh

Edited by Amy E. Duddleston

Cinematography by Lisa Rinzler, Charles Minsky

William H. Macy as Riley

Isaiah Washington as Leon

Sam Rockwell as Pero Mahlovic

Michael Jeter as Toto

Luis Guzmán as Cosimo

Patricia Clarkson as Rosalind

Andrew Davoli as Basil

George Clooney as Jerzy Antwerp

David Warshofsky as Sergeant Babitch

Jennifer Esposito as Carmela

Gabrielle Union as Michelle

John Buck Jr. as the old man in prison

Basil David Russo at the baby

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures

Produced by Gaylord Films, H5B5 Media AG, Pandora Cinema, Section Eight

I was so looking forward to seeing Welcome to Collinwood when I found out that it is a remake of one of my favorite films noir: I Solito Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street). A remake that pays homage to its source material should be fun to watch. And it can’t hurt that William H. Macy, Patricia Clarkson, and Sam Rockwell are some of the stars.

Alas, I am sorry to say that Welcome to Collinwood doesn’t come close to matching the charm and good humor of the original film, a film that I found to be a complete joy. I can still recommend Welcome to Collinwood. There’s a lot to like about the film, even if it didn’t capture the esprit of the original (which has always been a tall task in my film-viewing experience).

I can heartily recommend the original film: I Solito Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street). Click here for my blog post about it.

Anthony and Joe Russo, the writers and directors of Welcome to Collinwood, are from Cleveland, Ohio, and Collinwood is a neighborhood of Cleveland. The plot is remarkably true to the original screenplay, but it is updated and adjusted for references to the Collinwood area. For example, the film’s soundtrack starts with a long train whistle, or maybe it’s a factory whistle, or maybe one blends into the other: Cleveland, and the Collinwood neighborhood in particular, is a rail hub and once was home to many factory workers.

Click here for more information about Collinwood, in Cleveland, Ohio.

It’s obvious that Welcome to Collinwood is meant to be a valentine to the original film and to film in general. One after another silent-era intertitle cards, with line borders and with scrolls in the corners, tell viewers at the start the location and the time of the film:

“Somewhere in Cleveland.”

“Not so long ago.”

A shot of the four main characters—Riley, Leon, Pero, Toto, a gang of thieves standing in a row—comes next. Their story is told in flashback, which is introduced with another intertitle card stating that their story starts about three weeks earlier.

Later in the film, during the stakeout of the jeweler’s apartment, an iris lens is used to focus on the jeweler’s safe and to mimic the fact that one of the characters, Pero, is using a telescope to check out the apartment. The use of intertitle cards and the iris lens recalls the silent era, and both techniques move the narrative of Welcome to Collinwood forward.

The musical score is jazzy and whimsical, which is perfect for this film. Its touches of humor come almost directly from the original script for I Solito Ignoti. For example, the gang films the jeweler and his safe for use in planning their heist. Riley presents the final result to the rest of the gang, and they discover that the footage starts accidentally with shots of Riley’s baby. Riley explains that he wants to send the footage of the baby to the baby’s mother while she’s serving her prison sentence for fraud. Thanks to Riley, the footage has other flaws, including the fact that the jeweler blocks the last number on the safe’s combination in all nine takes. Jerzy, who is helping the gang in the planning of the heist, declares, “Well, as a film, it’s a disaster.” Riley responds, “It’s a documentary. It’s supposed to look like that.”

In spite of all the good intentions on the part of the Russo brothers, this remake just cannot compete with the original. This modern-day group of thieves is not as lovable as the thieves in the original film. It was hard for me to find a lot of sympathy for them when they repeatedly beat and stabbed Pero Mahlovic—and in the presence of the baby, Riley’s son, no less! Welcome to Collinwood clearly pays homage to its source material, but it didn’t have to be updated so completely, with so much violence and so much foul language. (And in front of the baby, too!)

For me, the baby is the real star of Welcome to Collinwood. He steals every scene in which he appears. From my research online and from the features on the DVD, I learned that the actor playing the baby is related to the directors, and maybe that explains why he makes so many appearances. He could have been in more scenes as far as I’m concerned. He was a natural in front of the camera. But, please, no realistic violence and foul language—for the baby’s sake!

Terror Street (1953)

December 4, 1953, release date

Directed by Montgomery Tully

Screenplay by Steve Fisher

Music by Ivor Slaney

Edited by James Needs

Cinematography by Walter J. Harvey

Dan Duryea as Major Bill Rogers

Elsie Albiin as Katherine “Katie” Rogers

Gudrun Ure as Jenny Miller

Eric Pohlmann as Slauson

John Chandos as Orville Hart

Kenneth Griffith as Henry Slauson

Harold Lang as Harry Cross, doorman at West End Manor

Jane Carras as the soup kitchen supervisor

Michael Golden as the police inspector

Marianne Stone as Pam Palmer

Distributed by Lippert Pictures (United States), Exclusive Films (United Kingdom)

Produced by Hammer Film Productions

Terror Street is a low-budget B film produced in Great Britain. As long as viewers keep these facts in mind, it is much easier to overlook some of the poor production quality in the film. (See “Terror Street” in the list below about the DVD featurettes from VCI Entertainment.) Dan Duryea in the starring role certainly helps, too. He is one of my favorite film noir actors.

(I don't think this blog post about Terror Street contains more than one or two spoilers.)

Bill Rogers, a U.S. fighter pilot, goes back to London, where he lives with his wife Katie. A fellow pilot and friend helps Bill make the trip, an illegal one because Bill does not have permission from his commanding officers. He must return to the airfield within thirty-six hours to return to the United States or he will be away without leave (AWOL). (Terror Street is the title given to the film for its release in the United States; in Great Britain, it was known as 36 Hours.) He goes to his apartment in London to look for his wife Katie and learns from a neighbor that Katie took another apartment, one at the West End Manor in, you guessed it, the West End of London.

Bill cons the doorman at West End Manor into letting him into Katie’s new apartment, and he waits there for her. Unbeknownst to Bill, Orville Hart has been hiding in the apartment all along. When Katie comes home and finds Bill in her living room, Orville comes out of hiding, hits Bill over the head, and knocks him unconscious. He asks Katie about something that he says belongs to him. She says that it’s not in the apartment, and he shoots her without waiting to find out where it is. Before he leaves, Orville calls the police anonymously. His plan is to frame Bill for his wife’s death. When Bill regains consciousness, he finds Katie dead beside him, and his own gun next to Katie’s body. He escapes just in time to avoid the police.

Bill hides in a stranger’s apartment and when she finds him, he explains his situation and asks for her help. She believes him and decides to help him. Bill wants to find out for himself who killed his wife Katie and why. He feels that it’s the only way to clear his name and make it back to the United States.

From that point on, viewers follow Bill in his efforts to solve several threads of the mystery:

◊ Who killed Katie?

◊ Why was she killed?

◊ What did she store in that safe deposit box?

◊ Will the stranger, Jenny Miller, turn Bill in or will she continue to help him?

◊ Will Bill clear his name and make it back to the airfield in time?

The story includes enough suspense to hold viewers’ attention and maybe overlook a couple of clumsy fight scenes. In some ways, it is a typical mystery or adventure film, but then there’s Katie, who is shot dead near the start of the film, and there’s Bill, who must clear his name—in less than thirty-six hours—because all the evidence points to him as the logical suspect. Terror Street holds a few surprises here and there, and it is a fun way to spend about eighty-three minutes.

And if you are a Dan Duryea fan (like me), you won’t be disappointed. He doesn’t play his usual bad guy role in this film, and he doesn’t slap any of his female costars, which he usually does in his films noir. He does slap Henry Slauson, however, when Henry tries to knife Bill.

The DVD from VCI Entertainment includes three featurettes, all narrated by Alan K. Rode, a writer and film historian. These short featurettes are informative for anyone interested in film noir and classic films in general. I have included a few details that I found interesting from each featurette below.

◊ “Terror Street”: Rode focuses quite a bit on the U.S. producer, Robert L. Lippert, of Terror Street. Lippert recognized the benefits of teaming up with Hammer Films in Great Britain to take advantage of the Eady Plan. After World War II, the British film industry was bolstered by the British government via the Eady (“aid-y”) Plan. Lippert specialized in low-budget films and kept a sharp eye on the bottom line. (This is obvious in Terror Street: Listen for the sound effects added to the fight scenes in which punches are thrown.)

Click here for more information at Wikipedia about the Eady Levy. Rode calls it the Eady Plan in the DVD featurette.

◊ “Dan Duryea”: Dan Duryea’s malevolent screen image was established in two pictures directed by Fritz Lang: The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street. His nickname in Hollywood was Dangerous Dan Duryea.

◊ “Steve Fisher”: This was the featurette that I enjoyed the most because I am a big fan of Steve Fisher, the screenwriter for Terror Street. I have read his novel I Wake up Screaming and seen the film version.

Click here for my blog post about the novel and here for my post about the film.

According to Alan K. Rode, Steve Fisher is one of film noir’s most prolific screenwriters. His work spans many genres, including film noir. He wrote 500 short stories, thirty novels, twelve stage plays, and numerous teleplays. One of his contemporaries called him “the Charles Dickens of Los Angeles.” He was born in Los Angeles, and he hitchhiked to New York City during the Great Depression. He lived in New York for three years and sold stories to pulp magazines like Black Mask. In 1941, Daryl F. Zanuck bought the rights to Fisher’s new novel I Wake up Screaming. The film version of the novel catapulted Betty Grable and Victor Mature to stardom.