THE MASTERPIECE
Miller’s Crossing
We reassess the greatest films of all time, one film at a time
The incongruity so enjoyed by the Coens: Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) cowers before Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) in an idyllic setting.
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AT THE START of production for Miller’s Crossing in January 1989, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld asked writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen an obvious but necessary question: how did they want the film to look? “It should be a handsome movie,” Ethan told him, distinguishing it instantly from the madcap, camera-whirling antics of the trio’s previous collaboration, Raising Arizona. “A handsome movie about men in hats.”
The Coens had long been fans of the gangster genre, one well-known for its wealth of hat-wearing men. They particularly enjoyed the way it was explored by novelist Dashiell Hammett, whose Red Harvest and The Glass Key were the main inspirations for Miller’s Crossing. “He took the genre and used it to tell a story that was interesting about people and other things besides just the plot,” said Joel in 1990. “In Hammett, the plot is like a big jigsaw puzzle that can be seen in the background. It may make some internal sense, but the momentum of the characters is more important.”