Post 9: Dick Tracy, 1990, Directed by Warren Beatty

The film Dick Tracy helps sum up the main theme of romanticism, crime, and action films in the 1990s. The film is tells the story of a comic strip detective named Chester Gould, who finds his life vastly complicated. Dick Tracy depicts the detectives love relationship with Breathless Mahoney and Tess Truehart, as well as his conflict with crime boss “Big Boy” Caprice’s united mob. Warren Beatty, produced, directed, and starred in the film, which features supporting roles from Al Pacino, Charles Durning, Madonna, William Forsythe, Glenne Headly, Paul Sorvino, Dick Van Dyke, and Charlie Korsmo. Dick Tracy was released in 1990 to mixed to positive reviews, but was generally a success at the box office and at awards time. It picked up seven Academy Award nominations and won in three of the categories: Best Original Song, Best Makeup and Best Art Direction. There are vivid textures of color while the lighting borders on neon. Whole buildings are colored blue, while some are red and some are purple. Green lights are reflected onto the pavement and sometime purple again. The compositions of each individual shot are simply perfect. There are shots were an optical diopter was applied and there are wide shots of the city that remind us of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in scope and style. One final note on the look of the film is that even though it’s directed in an old-school fashion reminiscent of the gangster pictures from the 1930s and 1940s, the colors have a certain gloss that amplifies the pastels and adds a certain faded pink hue to the actors’ faces. It’s a beautiful looking film in the way that it looks old and when we are reminded that it was shot in 1990 we are thankful to Warren Beatty for sticking to “proper” filmmaking techniques.