The Man Who Wasn't There

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) is a Coen Brothers crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Santa Rosa, California, 1949. Ed Crane cuts hair for a living and barely says a word about anything.

Ed knows his wife Doris is sleeping with her boss, a loud department-store man called Big Dave, and he keeps quiet about that too. Then a stranger pitches him on dry cleaning, the coming thing in clothes care, and Ed needs cash to buy in. So he tries blackmail. The scheme looks clean on paper. Instead it pulls him into a mess of death, accusation and courtroom maneuvering he can't talk his way out of. Billy Bob Thornton anchors the film almost entirely through silence, with Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini, Tony Shalhoub and a very young Scarlett Johansson around him.

Shot in stark black and white by cinematographer Roger Deakins, the movie bends 1940s film-noir into the Coens' dry, fatalistic comedy. Joel and Ethan Coen took it to Cannes and shared the festival's directing prize. Stream The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) online on iFILM.