MOVIES

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Contact: bennett@wweek.com

Dick Tracy (1990)

For every cartoonishly grotesque 1930s gangster in Dick Tracy—Big Boy (Al Pacino), Flattop (William Forsythe), Pruneface (R.G. Armstrong)—there’s a gallery of craftspeople giving Warren Beatty’s adaptation of the classic detective comic strip its indelible expressionism.

Danny Elfman follows up Batman (1989) with another shadowy, anthemic score (plus five original songs by Stephen Sondheim). Costume designer Milena Canonero (a frequent Wes Anderson collaborator) contributes the film’s classic monochromatic hats and coats. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now) shoots a fascinatingly rich but empty city, backdropped by Richard Sylbert and Rick Simpson’s Oscar-winning art direction.

In the resulting comedy-noir, for every element that soars joyfully over the top, there’s another playing it straight. Sight gags are savored, never gawky. Pacino warms up his larynx for a decade of campy screaming while Beatty is keen to let the joke be on his squarejawed title character. Fittingly, Tracy can deliver only about a speech bubble’s worth of dialogue at a time. The movie? A whole universe more.

Dick Tracy screens at the Hollywood Theatre on July 14 to celebrate Floating World Comics’ relocation to Lloyd Center. Sam Ashurst of the Arrow Video podcast hosts.

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