Famous "barroom analyst" Eddie Muller has devised a sendup of college basketball's "March madness" that uses Twitter for the thing it was meant for: mindlessly entertaining polls that occasionally reveal something interesting within a sub-group. "March Badness" (a name doubtless conjured up after several libations) is an amusing conceit, but whether the poll means anything at all depends on how it is executed (and we don't mean choosing between the noose and lethal injection!).
The voting is underway, and a few surprising results as the contest snakes its way down to the so-called "ultimate noir villain" have prompted us to look more closely at both the poll's initial construction and the related factors involved with each villain. Is there a predictable pattern in the voting results that might hold up no matter what pair of villains face off? The short answer: probably. Whatever art/artifice was used to generate the noir "field of 16" (semi-conscious choice, drawn out of a hat, ouija board) may not matter in terms of who wins.
The long answer is below, focused on an interesting anomaly in the voting that cropped up in the first round: bratty little Veda Pierce (Ann Blyth) from MILDRED PIERCE knocked out the formidable Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) from OUT OF THE PAST. Veda is the only teenager on the list (though Annie Laurie Starr isn't much older, and certainly isn't psychologically) and yet there she is (as you can see in the table below...) ready to face off against giggling madman Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in KISS OF DEATH.
That anomaly made me think that we can apply two control measures to create a form of "factor analysis" to predict results in these polls. I'll deal with the second first, which is simply the number of "rating votes" that the film in which the villain appears has received at the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB).
The primary factor for our purposes is a "noir element" taken from our old friend the "Noir-o-Meter," which those who occasionally frequent (is that an oxymoron?) this blog will remember (presumably neither wisely nor too well). The element that matters to us for "badness" is the "fatal(e)" element, which we make more verbose with the following: "degree of peril produced by fatal(e) characters." The element has a maximum of 15 points (out of the 200-point scale), so it has a good bit of significance in the overall method and it has enough room for gradation (which I've tried to make as systematic as possible). That said, it is still a subjective measure, and some will not agree with our conclusions (of course, some people never agree with anything).
The "factor analysis" is to compare the two films by the "fatal(e) value" and their likely familiarity to voters (the IMDB vote total). In the table (above) we show the "factor relationships" with a two-character code. If a film has a "fatal(e)" character rating higher than its opponent and it has more votes cast in the IMDB poll, we code it "xx." If it has a higher character rating but fewer votes, it's coded "xy." If it has a lower character rating but more votes, the code is "yx." And if it has both a lower character rating and fewer votes, the code is "yy." (Chromosomes, you can start your engines...)
There are two more possible categories we should mention, which occur if the character ratings are identical. With a tie score in factor 1, we assign a "z" to that factor, so a tie in the character rating plus more votes produces a "zx" code, and a tie in the character rating plus fewer votes creates a "zy" code.
What we see in the results is that the character rating code predicts the winner almost all of the time (at least thus far--we have only 7 results in from the poll as yet, so things could change). Any factor code beginning with "x" has a 5-1 record; only that Veda Pierce, with a character score well below that of Kathie Moffat and (surprisingly) fewer votes, pulled off a win with a factor code beginning with "y."
In the one case where the character scores were identical (Kasper Gutman in MALTESE FALCON and Johnny Prince in SCARLET STREET), the film with greater familiarity seems to have carried its anti-hero to the next plateau in "Eddie Muller's Badness Valhalla" (which is a great name for a stage act, BTW: "Eddie will be here all week--try the veal!").
So if we were to predict what will happen via the "factor analysis," we'd see Mr. Brown (Richard Conte) overcome his opponent Vince Stone's (Lee Marvin) greater visibility (check the IMDB vote totals: shockingly, THE BIG COMBO is the least-seen of these films). At that point, he'd be up against the Fat Man, and their character scores are much closer than the IMDB votes; thus one would figure that Gutman will win in the second round.
If Veda can take down Kathie freakin' Moffat, she's probably a match for Tommy Udo (particularly since Veda is young and lithe and has no need for wheelchairs). So in this bracket it's Veda vs. the Fat Man, and it's hard to vote against a man who enjoys talking to a man who likes to talk. In that scenario, Gutman is still on his seventeen-year quest to be the biggest baddie of them all ("not just in girth!" he grunts: "I'm not made out of lead...I'm no phony!!"). To which we say: thank God that Gutman is not made out of lead--he'd be the original immovable object if he were...
Over in the other bracket, we figure Phyllis D. (Barbara Stanwyck) will take down J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) thanks to the "xx" code (and that honey of an anklet: our male voters don't miss a trick!). In the other contest, let's first admit that the IMDB vote total for NIGHT OF THE HUNTER vis-a-vis DETOUR is just staggering, and since the two villains are tied in the Noir-o-Meter's "fatal(e)" category, we have to go with Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) over the fearsome Vera (Ann Savage). So it's Phyllis vs. Harry in the semi-finals.
And in that round, Phyllis will take out Harry, with the other bracket simply too close to call due to the "Veda anomaly." Gutman would beat Tommy Udo rather handily, but folks seem to cotton to these teenage vixens (says something sick about present-day society, if ya know what I mean...) and Veda just might commandeer that wheelchair from Tommy's victim, lure Gutman into it, and push him down the stairs!
Either way, however, I think it's safe to assume that the eventual winner of this is going to be the lady whose blonde wig freaked out Paramount's Buddy DeSylva so much that he compared his femme fatale to George Washington. Despite that lamentable attribute, Phyllis Dietrichson is almost certain to be the baddest when all the votes have been counted (except the ones they will be suppressing in Georgia).
And at that point, Eddie may want to start to get worried when this is all over, and in one of his booze-encrusted dreams, Phyllis sidles up to him and says: "Bourbon will be fine, Eddie." Time to go on the wagon, Muller!
No comments:
Post a Comment