Dick Tracy comic strips had a family-oriented feature that made it less appealing. It seemed that each of its characters had been blended into one entity and then placed into a mixed-up lunatic asylum of crime.
Warren Beatty‘s “Dick Tracy” tackled the plot with the same delight I had when reading the stories. The adventures of Tracy had no clever plots and, as expected, no suspense because we all know Tracy would always win.
For me, the first comic strip of Tracy was interesting due to its characters. Forget the age of humorous animals, with a persistent gaze, they were all crafted to reflect their souls and occupations. Their character design is precisely what I expected. Tracy had a square jaw and shouted into his radio, while Pruneface and Flattop were quite the opposite.
It was first established that these grotesque people who, because of nature, were bound to wear their souls on their faces, were beyond help. This also reminds me of one of the film’s earliest scenes in which a poker game is being played. Everyone who was seated at the table looked like a sideshow, including Little Face, whose features were set against a background of dissipation, and the Brow who was always deep in shallow thought.
To the delight of magnificence, another one of the movie’s opening shots describes the Tracy universe. The camera starts at a window, and then pans out and upwards until we catch sight of the city’s skyline and dive through the unseen city. It rotates while it is moving so that we swoop over a never-ending view of urban scenery. Until we come to the conclusion that this is the most extravagant and the most disgusting city that has ever existed. It contains more than skyscrapers, Bridges, tenements, overlooked railways, and stretches of horizon. It is the best and the worst this city will ever have. This place is the perfect eloquence of what City means. It is a massive, bleak, mythicistic empire that conceives millions of lives and secrets in all directions.
Subsequently, the camera focuses on one of those structures, and upon seeing people once more, we understand that all the buildings and the bridges were made in a film studio, “Dick Tracy” is a brilliant piece of work that plunges the viewer into the immersive world of detailed miniature sets, matte drawings and stunning optical effects. Everything is masterfully crafted in such a way that will leave you wondering about its very existence.
Somebody has constructed a breathtaking model train that clearly overpowers the proportion of a young boy, with the intention of depicting an astonishingly euphoric locomotive. Imagine the wall shattering heart pumping feeling we would get when a train head-on collides, the boy in an autoregressive model jumps in front and oddly enough every person quivers. No need to mention, the spectators at the train crash are all lies.
In the theatre of the night, a man breaks through the shadows with a yellow hat and a yellow raincoat. It is none other than Dick Tracy. His character was developed several years ago, and I wonder if it was far-fetched to think that yellow was a color of preference for a police detective. Perhaps, it wasn’t. His entire existence was set in a comic strip so he did not live in an actual city. The blowing primary colors needed to be exuberant. It is right that Beatty decided to film “Dick Tracy” using only seven colors which are the basics of comic strips. This is a story about products of fantasies and people who inhabit structures that have every lamp shaped like a table lamp and every image hanging on the wall is simply a picture on the wall.
Thus, it was logically mandatory for Tracy to sport the yellow essence of hats and coats. Everything else would have been too dull.
In the comics, Tracy was always a mystery. His character was devoid of emotions and complexity. Warren Beatty portrays his Tracy as a little more human which is welcomed, as a cop he is allowed to have some personality, albeit limited. The critics who have described Tracy as shallow have completely missed the point. I believe it is the point that is being made which is that we are not discussing real people, but archetypes. And Tracy, as square-jawed as he is, should be just as a Tracy should be.
The more descriptive characters of the movie are all around him. For instance, the scene-stealer Big Boy Caprice is performed by Al Pacino in such a grotesque style that he could be a character from a Dickens novel. Note the scene where Big Boy is chronicling the chorus line in his nightclub. He trains like a dog, rather than like a choreographer. There is a certain degree of cruelty in his actions, The dished-out cruelty is firstly targeted towards other individuals, however, later it is also dished out to himself. Most modern movie villains display their evil deeds, whereas he is somewhat embarrassed by it. This trait makes him interesting and adds a flavor of Victorian treachery to his character.
Many other grotesque characters lurk in the shadows around Big Boy metaphorically like Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman), who is so fast-paced that he becomes inaudible. They all carry terrible names based on their physical deformities like Lips Manlist and Shoulders.
They described so quickly the cast’s makeup could be eccentric; characters who appear on screen continually are more normal looking and these inclusions would be two women who have some significance in Tracy’s life his loyal wife Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly) and My Fair Lady’s Breathless Mahoney (Madonna).
Sociologists have devoted their time to studying Madonna’s philosophy, saying that she transforms her image so often that she is always a step ahead of the audience, always at the forefront. They say that every new tour comes with a new clue on what she wants to say this time about pop culture. I think her big blunder in “Dick Tracy” is that she honestly pulls out every trick from Marilyn Monroe’s book and tries to turn Breathless into a Minnie Mouse character. From the lighting to the costumes of some numbers, it seems to be taking inspiration from Monroe in “Some Like It Hot.” It is simply ineffective. She is neither Monroe nor Madonna. My fair lady Breathless needed to be born out of a new location in her head.
That is not an important issue with the movie because even Tracy himself is so listless that it is difficult to accept he can be wooed. The most poignant bonds in the life of the detective, in fact, are not even with Tess Trueheart, but rather with Kid, who is an orphan taken in by Tracy (played by Charlie Korsmo), and the emotional climax of the film is probably when the Kid decides to name himself Dick Tracy Jr.
At least the “Batman” which came out last summer was a letdown for me in terms of plot, but it offered some of the best set designs and aided in the special effects.
‘Dick Tracy’ a more vibrant and positive film, beats the Batman movie in visual appeal. This means this is a movie where every single frame has some form of visual enhancement. An entire universe has been constructed here, separated from illumination and the ordinary realism of city streets. And Dick Tracy similarly mirrors the simplicity of the comic strip the film is drawn from. This PG rated, blood-gushing ‘Batman’ that had the potential to disturb younger children, is also do not so children. Unlike the movie version of ‘Batman,’ this has no swearing, blood or realistic violence. Dick Tracy, on another hand, is one of the most unique, original and imaginative films I have watched on screen.
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