Man Who Wasn't There

Theatrical Release Date: 2001 10 31 (USA - Limited)

UPC: 025192249624

Studio: Universal Studios

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Violence, Questionable for Children, Profanity]

Summary: 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, Rovi

Category: Comedy Drama

Awards: Best Picture – American Film Institute Best Actor – American Film Institute Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion – American Film Institute Best Cinematography – American Film Institute Best Picture – Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Screenplay – Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Screenplay – Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Picture - Drama – null Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama – null Best Screenplay – null Best Screenplay – null Best Cinematography – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Original Screenplay – Writers Guild of America Best Original Screenplay – Writers Guild of America Best Foreign Film – French Academy of Cinema Best Cinematography – Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Cinematography – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Director – Cannes Film Festival Best Actor – National Board of Review Best Picture – National Board of Review Best Cinematography – American Society of Cinematographers Best Screenplay – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Screenplay – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Picture - Drama – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Supporting Actor – American Film Institute

Features: ccCommentary by Billy Bob Thornton and Joel and Ethan Coen
Making "The Man Who Wasn't There"
Interview with cinematographer Roger Deakins
Deleted material
Behind the scenes photo gallery
Filmographies
Theatrical trailer

Man Who Wasn't There

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 04/01/2003

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 116 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: French,Spanish

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Disc #1 -- The Man Who Wasn't There
1. "I Just Cut the Hair" [8:25]
2. Risk Money [8:12]
3. Blackmail [14:28]
4. All Shot to Hell [11:40]
5. Pinched [6:19]
6. Irregularities [6:19]
7. Knowledge Is a Curse [4:00]
8. The Wheels of Justice [8:11]
9. Uncertainty Principle [6:30]
10. A Way Out [7:41]
11. Powers of Communication [5:09]
12. An Enthusiast [12:39]
13. Modern Man [10:42]
14. End Credits [5:27]

Tom Vick

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. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Tim Bevan  Executive Producer 
Carter Burwell  Composer (Music Score) 
Ethan Coen  Producer 
Ethan Coen  Screenwriter 
Joel Coen  Director 
Joel Coen  Screenwriter 
Eric Fellner  Executive Producer 
Billy Bob Thornton  Actor 
Frances McDormand  Actor 
Michael Badalucco  Actor 
James Gandolfini  Actor 
Tony Shalhoub  Actor 
Jon Polito  Actor 
Scarlett Johansson  Actor 
Richard Jenkins  Actor 
Katherine Borowitz  Actor 
Adam Alexi-Malle  Actor 

Country: USA