Dick Tracy

Berke in this shows a great gift for editing. He occasionally reels off a sparkling composition or suave camera movement (or both), but his montage is unique: it creates an uncanny sense of forward movement, and often every shot in a sequence looks like the beginning of a new film.

How it’s done is very mysterious. Sometimes it’s by visual association (Tracy descending a staircase toward the camera cuts to Tess and a pile of mugshot books on his desk—the horizontal steps and the pile of books coincide), sometimes by a sort of logic (Tracy and Tess go out his office door on the right, emerge from his car door on the left), but there are many other factors involved (timing, camera placement, lighting, whatnot). Possibly Berke is simply inspired by his subject (a mysterious slasher), and there is a certain intermittence in his style. Every so often he shifts gears, backs up, and goes in neutral awhile.

There is some play with politics, where Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome covers the press, as well as a gag from the big fight in Chisum.