No women, no KIDS

if you wish to listen to the soundtrack just push play

Luc Besson got the idea of doing this movie while working on his previous movie,La Femme Nikita (1990). In that film's third act, Victor the Cleaner (Jean Reno) appears to deal with the aftermath of Nikita's botched mission. Realizing the potential of the character was underused in that movie, Besson decided to create a story that focused on the activities of such a character. Both Victor and Leon appear dressed in a long wool coat, sunglasses and a knit cap. The film's working title was "The Cleaner".

With a 16  million dollar budget, the original title of this film was : LEÓN , in 1994 French Director Luc Besson had in mind the story of LEON a professional hired killer from a mafioso named Tony (Danny Aiello).

What Besson didn´t envisioned was the cult phenomena it will become. One of RECENT CINEMA most unique love stories.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven´t seen The Professional, 

PLEASE

STOP reading and go see it and then come back.


Storyline
"After her father and little brother are killed by her father's employers, the 12-year-old daughter of an abject drug dealer is forced to take refuge in the house of a professional murderer who by her request, teaches her the methods of his job so she can take her revenge from the corrupted DEA agent who ruined her life by killing her brother out of no actual reason".-IMDB

The Performers:

This movie is a master class on acting. From rage to tears, from anger to schizophrenia. This three performers made not only a unique film, but each performance make every scene richer. They share scenes together but are never on the same scene together all three.

3players: 

1.- LEÓN ( Jean Reno)

We don´t know who he is, we know he is a killer, he hides in shadows. He is quiet and methodical. He is a professional.

He never sleeps, he never takes his glasses off and he loves milk. In a normal world León and Mathilda would never meet. They are opposite characters completely.

Only when Mathilda arrives to his doorstep his life changes and will never be the same. From that moment he has ONE ATTACHMENT to a loved one.

 Thru the development of the film we watch as this killer,becomes a better person, who can sleep, who can close his eyes for a moment, who can go to the movies and enjoy a  film. Who can now laugh at others and at himself.
He is now an example to Mathilda. That is why he sees himself on her. As a two way mirror. The way she wants revenge, he can only protect her by teaching her how to be a killer on this crazy world.

Leon makes every effort not to love Mathilda, staying away, but he knows how to be lonely and by himself. He enjoys her company and the way he feels about himself when she is around. He will never leave her alone, afraid and scared. As his first memory of her is just like that , Mathilda suffering and crying. 

He will protect her against everything. Just as he teaches her to be nice to plants, to buy only milk, to do excercise, to breath, to stay alert, how to knock on doors and his most powerful RULE in his asassin BOOK: 
NO WOMEN , NO KIDS.

2.- Mathilda Lando ( Natalie Portman)

 She is loud and fights with her siblings all the time.

She secretly smokes cigarretes and loves watching tv.

After watching her whole family murdered she finds shelter with LEÓN. She walks towards his appartment carrying groceries and hoping he opens the door.

She decides to hire LEÓN to avenge her family. So she decides to be with him and learn from him. All his tactics, routines and most importantly how to be a killer.

 This is Natalie Portman´s first movie appearence. And to all honesty one of her finest performances. Even her parents were against her character smoking. So they decided to just allow 5 scenes where she is seen with a cigarrette( never smoking or inhaling). But also the character of Mathilda should decide to quit smoking in the course of the film.

As Léon trains Mathilda and shows her how to use various weapons. In return, she runs his errands, cleans his apartment, and teaches him how to read. Mathilda tells Léon she loves him several times, but he offers no response.  Proving mature beyond her years, Portman´s performance  IS a force onscreen.

3.- Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman) 

A psychotic drug-addict with a badge, who wants to tie up loose ends.

Mathilda's father (Michael Badalucco) attracts the ire of corrupt DEA agents, who have been paying him to stashcocaine in his apartment. After they discover he has been cutting the cocaine to keep some for himself, DEA agents storm the building, led by sharply dressed drug addict Stansfield. During the raid, Stansfield quickly becomes unhinged and murders Mathilda's entire family one by one while Mathilda is out shopping. When Mathilda returns, she realizes what has happened just in time to continue down the hall, where she desperately knocks on her neighbour's door.

If you watch closely you can see Stansfield is never seen wearing anything besides his trademark beige suit and white shirt. One of the greatest movie VILLAINS of all time. He knows no remorse and has no consideration for anyone. 

A PLANT , MILK & some GLASSES

As plants grow with the right care , sun light and water, so does a movie character during the course of the film.  They develop and become timeless. A character during a movie has to grow. He or she  develop a taste for certain things. His or her TRADE MARKS. The little things that make him or her UNIQUE. Like a toy or action figure.



Creating a character is almost as creating a costume or a desguise. 

If you are going to a halloween party you need a costume. Most people tend to use popular movie characters. This is a game they EVEN play in the movie, as dress up such as Mathilda dresses as  Marilyn Monroe and LEÓN as  John Wayne.

TRIVIA FACTS:

Keith A. Glascoe, who played the enormous Benny, or 3rd Stansfield Man, later became a member of the New York Fire Department, Ladder Company 21 in Hells Kitchen. Courageously he died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

According to Luc Besson's first script-draft, Léon's full name is Leone Montana.

According the films producer, Patrice Ledoux, Luc Besson planned Léon as filler( meanwhile movie). At the time, he had already started working on The Fifth Element (1997), but production was delayed due to Bruce Willis's schedule. Rather than dismiss the production team and lose his creative momentum, Besson wrote Léon. It took him only 30 days to write the script, and the shoot lasted only 90 days. Ironically, Léon is now generally considered to be a far superior film to The Fifth Element.

Mathilda checks herself and Léon in under the name "MacGuffin". "MacGuffin" is a movie term coined by Alfred Hitchcock for a trivial element in a movie which serves no other purpose than to drive the plot forwards.

The potted plant Léon nurtures, and which Mathilda replants at the end of the movie, is an aglaonema, pronounced "ag-leon-ema".

The code that Leon gives Matilda to knock on the door when she returns from getting more milk is two knocks, then one, then two knocks again. 212 is the telephone area code for Manhattan, which is where the story takes place.

Both Mathilda and Danny refer to Leon as a "cleaner". The front window of the bodega in Leon's apartment building prominently displays various cleaning products such as Brillo pads, bleach, Ajax, and soap.

URBAN LEGEND

During the filming involving all of the police cars on the street, a man ran from a store he had just robbed. When he encountered the movie set by accident, he saw all of the "police" and gave himself up to a bunch of uniformed extras.

As i close this post, i wish you to see a video of the song "SHAPE OF MY HEART" song by Sting.

Watch the images, it is a violent movie, but a beautiful one. The acting, the symmetry, the cinematography, the camera movements, the memorable quotes, the memorable scenes. It is a MODERN DAY CLASSIC. You should watch it again and again. It is a story of revenge. A story of characters. A story of humans being.

The most important quality movies have, at least good movies i think, is they don´t need dialogue for you to understand the emotion on the scenes. A Timeless TALE.

STORY, LANGUAGE , LEGACY

"Self plagerism, is STYLE"

-Alfred Hitchcock

Push play if you want to listen to the score, 

i feel Bernard Herrmann´s music is appropriate.

(Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. He also composed scores for many other movies, including Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, and Taxi Driver.)

The Alfred Hitchcock STORY

Alfred Hitchcock was the second son and the youngest of three children of William Hitchcock and Emma Jane Hitchcock. His parents were both of half-English and half-Irish ancestry. He often described a lonely and sheltered childhood worsened by his obesity. Around age five, Hitchcock said he was sent by his father to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for five minutes as punishment for behaving badly.This incident not only implanted a lifetime fear of policemen in Hitchcock, but such harsh treatment and wrongful accusations would be frequent themes in his films.

After leaving school, at age 15 (when his father died), he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company called Henley's. During the First World War, Hitchcock was rejected for military service because of his obesity

Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film production, working as a title card designer for the London branch of what would become Paramount Pictures. In 1920, he received a full-time position at Islington Studios with its American owner, Famous Players-Lasky, and their British successor,Gainsborough Pictures, designing the titles for silent movies

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock,  was Born 116 years ago ( 1899-1980) is undeniably the world's most famous film director. His name has become synonymous with the cinema, and each new generation takes the same pleasure in rediscovering his films, which are now treasures of our artistic heritage. If you want to learn the cinematic language. See all his BODY OF films.

Hitchcock knew why people are drawn to a darkened theater to absorb themselves for hours  with images on a screen. They do it to have fun.

"I ve never been a believer in violence, I deliberatrely made PSYCHO in black and white to avoid showing blood running down the bathtub"

-Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock started out in the British silent cinema of the 1920s, which reached its peak with successful thrillers such as :

"The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1934), "Sabotage" (1936) and "The Lady Vanishes" (1938). Recognized as a 'young genius', Hitchcock moved to Hollywood and set about reinventing cinematic tradition,combining the modern with the classic in films such as "Vertigo" (1957), "North by Northwest" (1959)and "The Birds" (1963). 

Hitchcock gave talented actors such as James Stewart and Cary Grant the chance to play enduring antiheroes and imprinted the public imagination with the myth of the 'blonde', as embodied by Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren.

The Alfred Hitchcok LANGUAGE

We don´t give him the credit he deserves, he pushed film language, a bit further than Welles,that is the main reason why he spawned a whole other generation of filmakers( spielberg, coppola, allen, lucas, scorsese, de palma, lynch, jarmusch, tarantino, fincher,  etc ) He taught them how the camera felt a relationship with the audience.

"In the early days Griffith... he used to cross cut during a chase with the rescuer on the way, i try to avoid that and stay either with one or the other, that makes the audience sweat. I did that on The Birds."

-Alfred Hitchcock

"During my american period i became very audience  conscious."

-Alfred Hitchcock

"Suspense relates entirely to calls in a audience to go through  emotion. It is an intelectual excercise."

-Alfred Hitchcock

"Sometimes a strange angle above an actor will heighten the dramatic meaning."

-François Truffaut

Hitchcock used this theory of proximity to play with the audience!

The Alfred Hitchcok LEGACY

To me Hitchcock is a master storyteller and forever will live as a monumental piece of popular culture reference. His iconic movie shots, the sounds, the silences, the way he made the camera a character or an eye witness. His work is not dated. 

"if you look at a book, and you try to translate it, its very hard to do....good literature does not make good film, thats been shown again and again."

-Alfred Hitchcok

"I am a puritan, i am a believer in visual , FILM schools should teach the history from the beggining"

-Alfred Hitchcok

He became a house hold name, because of his kept pushing the boundries.

"It was a challenge, there were no british directors in hollywood, except  for James Whale ( Dir. Frankenstein (1931) Bride of Frankenstein (1935)Invisible Man (1933) "

-Alfred Hitchcok

"I´m not keen to be scared"

-Alfred Hitchcok

"Everything you need to know about technique is in a Hitchcock film, the way he handeled comedies and romantic scenes, suspense and fear."

-Willilam Friedkin

(Director of The Exorcist)

His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters. 

Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of murder and other violence.
Often nicknamed "The Master of Suspense"