The Man Who Wasn't There [Blu-ray]

Director: Joel Coen, Joel Cohen Joel Coen

Overview

Set in a sleepy Northern California town in the 1940s, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There stars Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, a humble barber who suspects his hard-hearted and hard-drinking wife Doris (Frances McDormand) of having an affair with her boss (James Gandolfini). When a jocular stranger (Jon Polito) breezes into town hinting at the fortune to be made investing in an outlandish-sounding new invention called dry cleaning, Ed hatches a blackmail scheme he hopes will make him rich and get him some revenge at the same time. His plan goes horribly awry when he accidentally commits a murder for which Doris ends up being blamed, landing her in the slammer and Ed at the mercy of blowhard big-city lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub). Filmed in black-and-white by three-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Roger Deakins, The Man Who Wasn't There was inspired by the seedy crime novels of James M. Cain, putting a distinctly Coen brothers' spin on the film noir tradition. Though spiked with their characteristic humor, its moody atmosphere hearkens back to the darker moments of Blood Simple and Fargo -- a marked departure from the high-spirited slapstick of O Brother Where Art Thou. ~ Tom Vick

Product Details

Release Date:	09/08/2015
UPC:	0025192275159
Original Release:	2001
Rating:	R
Source:	STUDIO DISTRIBUTION SERVS LLC
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:57:00
Sales rank:	4,940

Special Features

Deleted Scenes Making The Man Who Wasn't There Interview with Cinematographer Roger Deakins Feature Commentary by Billy Bob Thornton and Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Billy Bob Thornton	Ed
Frances McDormand	Doris
Michael Badalucco	Frank
James Gandolfini	Big Dave
Scarlett Johansson	Birdy Abundas
Katherine Borowitz	Ann Nirdlinger
Jon Polito	Creighton Toliver
Richard Jenkins	Walter Abundas
Tony Shalhoub	Freddy Riedenschneider
Christopher Kriesa	Persky
Brian Haley	Krebs
Jack McGee	Burns
Gregg Binkley	The New Man
Alan Fudge	Diedrickson
Lilyan Chauvin	Medium
Adam Alexi-Malle	Carcanogues
Ted Rooney	Bingo Caller
Abraham Benrubi	Young Man
Christian Ferrati	Child
Rhoda Gemingnani	Costanza
E.J. Callahan	Customer
Brooke Smith	Sobbing Prisoner
Ron Ross	Banker
Hallie Singleton	Waitress
Jon Donnelly	Gatto Eater
Dan Martin	Bailiff
Nicholas Lanier	Tony
Tom Dahlgren	Judge No. 1
Booth Colman	Judge No. 2
Stanley DeSantis	New Man's Customer
Peter Siragusa	Bartender
Christopher McDonald	Macadam Salesman
John Michael Higgins	Doctor
Rick Scarry	District Attorney
George Ives	Lloyd Garroway
Devin Cole Borisoff	Swimming Boy
Mary Bogue	Prisoner Visitor
Don Donati	Pie Contest Timer
Arthur Reeves	Flophouse Clerk
Carter Burwell	Composer
Rhoda Gemignani	Costanza
Dan Lorge	Bailiff

Technical Credits

Joel Coen

Joel Coen	Director,Screenwriter,Screenwriter,Producer
Ellen Chenoweth	Casting
Peter Chesney	Special Effects
Jery Hewitt	Stunts
Janek Sirrs	Special Effects
Eric Fellner	Executive Producer,Producer
Tim Bevan	Executive Producer,Producer
Joel Cohen	Director
Benjamin Cheah	Sound Effects
Jesse Ehredt	Sound Effects
Eugene Gearty	Sound Effects
Robert Graf	Producer

Editorial Reviews

This intricately plotted, beautifully photographed homage to post-World War II film noir is nothing short of remarkable -- even if it’s also, in the words of noir novelist James M. Cain, "just a little bit cold around the heart." Billy Bob Thornton, who’s undeniably compelling in his most restrained performance ever, plays a taciturn small-town barber who blackmails his wife’s philandering boss. He just wants enough money to invest in a dry-cleaning business, but his scheme goes horribly awry when the blackmail victim turns up dead -- and the finger of suspicion points in the barber’s direction. Frances McDormand plays Thornton’s brittle wife with just the right touch of weary indignation, and James Gandolfini is letter-perfect as her smarmy employer. Jon Polito (as a smooth-talking promoter), Tony Shalhoub (as a hard-charging lawyer), and Scarlett Johansson (as a virginal teen) all deliver memorable supporting turns. The script by filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (O Brother, Where Art Thou?), while clearly inspired by such classic films as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, playfully tweaks genre conventions with welcome flashes of black humor. The crisp, Oscar-nominated black-and-white cinematography of Roger Deakins evokes noir masterpieces of the ‘40s and enhances the shadowy, unsettling atmosphere conjured up by the Coens. The Man Who Wasn’t There shows the talented brothers at the top of their game and is a top-flight melodrama that bears comparison to the best examples of the genre it celebrates. Joel and Ethan supply a commentary for the DVD -- their first ever, with Thornton along for the ride. There are also deleted scenes, interviews with principal cast members, a making-of featurette, and a photo gallery.

Barnes & Noble

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen have often been dogged by accusations that they're content to use their prodigious talent to do nothing more than celebrate their own cleverness, and that for all the snappy dialogue and visual flair, their films amount to cynical jokes at the expense of the dull-witted characters who populate them. The Man Who Wasn't There features striking cinematography and meticulous set design, both of which perfectly invoke the aura of film noir. Whether or not it's just another empty stylistic exercise, a noir homage with none of the genre's moral ambiguity or political subversiveness, it's still one of the Coen brothers' most involving explorations of self-delusion, irony, and fate. Billy Bob Thornton's Ed Crane is a man so nondescript that neighbors are always forgetting his name and no one seems to recognize him when he's not wearing his barber's smock. As he embarks on his poorly planned blackmail scheme, he even comes to see his invisibility as a kind of freedom, that is until the consequences of his actions begin to mount. Much like he did in Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan, Thornton endows his character with a tragic dimension that gives the film a weight it might not otherwise possess. His prolonged silences and blank stares suggest a deep sadness that no one around him seems to see or care about. The film's central idea, that one impulsive action can set in motion a web of fate that ultimately ensnares the hero, not only pays tribute to pulp novelists like James M. Cain and Jim Thompson, it's also an implicit tribute to the German director Fritz Lang, whose American noirs often revolved around that very theme. Indeed, The Man Who Wasn't There includes a number of subtle references to Lang. Tony Shalhoub's blustery attorney Freddy Riedenschneider's name resembles that of a Lang character, and he repeatedly talks about "this German guy named Werner, or was it Fritz," while bathed in cinematographer Roger Deakins' gorgeous, high-contrast Langian light (this isn't the first reference to Lang in the Coen brothers' oeuvre; Blood Simple quotes an image from Lang's Ministry of Fear: bullets piercing a door, creating intense shafts of light in a darkened room). While the film follows a tragic trajectory, the Coens can't resist leavening it with oddball humor. Frances McDormand plays Doris Crane as a boozy, high-camp parody of those classic tough-talking noir heroines, and there are a couple of red herring subplots involving UFOs and a Lolita-esque neighborhood girl (Scarlett Johansson) in whose budding musical career Ed takes an interest. Amusing in themselves, these diversions do little to advance the plot, yet don't detract from the film's final impact, which tempers Ed's doom with a hint of transcendence.

All Movie Guide

Full of delightful idiosyncrasies and surprising bits of acting.

New York Times - A.O. Scott

A glorious tribute to the splendors of what should rightfully be called the blackish and whitish movie. Stephen Hunter

Washington Post

The Man Who Wasn't There is so assured and perceptive in its style, so loving, so intensely right, that if you can receive on that frequency, the film is like a voluptuous feast.

Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert