Joel Coen

The eldest, Joel, was born in 1954. Ethan saw the light of day in 1957. His hometown is Minneapolis, Minnesota, where his most celebrated film, Fargo , takes place , with permission from Death Among the Flowers . The former studied film in New York, and shared a classroom with Barry Sonnenfeld , the cinematographer of his first films. While Ethan did philosophy at Princeton. Joel would naturally take his first steps behind the camera, editing Possession infernal (1982) for Sam Raimi . But his destiny was clear: to work with Ethan. The strong bet of both was a story with the air of film noir: adultery, blackmail and crimes, like James M. Cain. With the script under their arms, they raised the $750,000 the film cost. Money well spent, as Easy Blood became a cult gem. Frances McDormand , the leading lady, soon after became Mrs. Joel Coen.

From that moment on, the Coens demonstrate their versatility, while defining their hallmarks. A little hooligans, they include surreal touches and authentic human types “freaks” in their films. Arizona Baby (1987) is a fun comedy with a cartoon air: the priceless bounty hunter who chases a married couple who, unable to have children, kidnap a quintuplet. The little brothers, with Sonnenfeld, commit the mischief of some incredible chopped of the baby, leaning on the vertigo of a staircase.

Dashiell Hammett and “The Crystal Key” is the non-confessed reference to Death Among the Flowers (1990), one of gangsters, with a thug who changes sides as it suits him. The scene in the forest, in which his life hangs by a thread, is masterful. That the Coens are aware of creative problems is proven by Barton Fink (1991), about the tribulations of a screenwriter in Hollywood. His blocking before the blank sheet has the complicity of anyone who calls himself a writer.

Taking the spirit of Frank Capra resulted in The Great Leap , a peculiar film that united them with Paul Newman . The Coens continued to drink from someone else’s source, but putting their powerful personality at stake: pop culture, interest in outlandish characters… Like the assassins hired by the pathetic William H. Macy to kidnap his wife in Fargo . Although the film contains a hymn to normal and “boring” people, represented by the inhabitants of rural Minnesota, and more specifically by the pregnant sheriff and her husband, designer of a postage stamp.

The Big Lebowski tried, fitfully, to combine a detective story with comedy and dream sequences. Homer’s spirit was revived in the American South in O Brother! , with Ulysses accompanied by two escaped convicts, who found “a treasure, but not the treasure you are looking for”. The risk they took on The Man Who Wasn’t There was to shoot it in black and white. Miniature reminiscent of Cain, it contained homages to the science fiction series, including the appearance of… a flying saucer! In Intolerable Cruelty they direct their vitriolic humor to marital infidelity and the fortunes that arise from millionaire divorces. The script was someone else’s (the Coens rewrote it), as it is also someone else’s idea that supports Ladykillers , a remake of the funny Ealing film The Quintet of Death .