The Long Goodbye - Revisited April 27, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1970s , 3 comments
I wrote a few paragraphs about Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye nearly a year ago, when I knew even less about movies and writing about them than I do now and before I realized any one else would see my drivel. I was perceptive enough then to guess that an additional viewing would greatly enhance my appreciation of the film and my instincts proved accurate. As with Altman’s subsequent teaming with Elliott Gould, California Split, the director’s update of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe mystery improved dramatically on a second screening. Seeing both in fine-looking theatrical prints surely helped, but it was just as important to sit down and relax with the film, enjoying its little inspired touches instead of focusing on the advancement of the story.
The plot, a little convoluted and slightly tweaked from Chandler’s novel, proved to be much less a distraction than it was the first time I watched The Long Goodbye. It keeps everything in gear and running properly, but isn’t what makes the film so fun. The source of enjoyment instead rests on the shoulders of Elliott Gould and, in a duel of the crazies, Sterling “Balls” Hayden, who’s almost painfully realistic as a drunken novelist. Gould’s inspired performance had actually been preceded by a psychological examination mandated by the studio. He hadn’t worked in almost two years, after going to Sweden to do The Touch with Ingmar Bergman. The character’s frequent muttering, often dubbed over to give the impression the viewer is hearing Marlowe’s thoughts I presume, makes him also initially seem a few cards short of a deck. As the film progresses, though, Marlowe is shown to actually be the most sane and decent character in the film.
With nearly twenty-five years of hindsight, the cast of characters reads like a guest panel on a B-level celebrity game show. The motley assortment includes Laugh-In regular Henry Gibson, Nina Van Pallandt, who was the girlfriend of noted hoax artist Clifford Irving, Mark Rydell, director of On Golden Pond, future California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, baseball player and author Jim Bouton, and, of course, Johnny Guitar himself, Sterling Hayden. Altman’s casts are often eclectic, interesting mixes, but several of these gained added notoriety after The Long Goodbye. The oddness of the ensemble only adds to the weird feeling emanating from the film. Even in the 1970s, there’s almost nothing that really compares to Altman’s film. It’s a completely unique experience and doesn’t fit comfortably within any genre or category.
Appropriately then, Gould’s Marlowe doesn’t really fit within the established mold for movie private eyes. Laid back, striking matches in nearly every scene, and almost always ahead of the person he’s talking to, this Marlowe is one for the ages. ”It’s okay with me,” is a favorite phrase, mumbled repeatedly by the detective. Elliott Gould is everything I like about off-center film protagonists here, cool and quirky without being annoyingly hip or goofy, and watching The Long Goodbye makes me think I’d be happy if he starred in every movie I ever watched. The bottled lightning captured here unfortunately didn’t translate into many other films though, and Gould’s leading man days were short-lived. The reasons hardly matter, but it’s nearly impossible not to wonder how he segued from the two back-to-back Altman films into some of the dreck he’s done since.
Much of the charm in watching the film a second time comes from Gould and the details shown indicating Marlowe has literally been transported from the late ’40s/early ’50s, waking up at the beginning of the movie suddenly in the ’70s. That’s not a problem for Marlowe (”It’s okay with me,” he might say), but there are a few giveaways in the film that show the audience that the world has passed him by. He still drives a 1948 Lincoln Continental (Gould’s actual car at the time), dresses from a previous era, and the specific brand of cat food he wants is unavailable in a large supermarket. He’s literally been transported to the early ’70s, with the help of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who bathes much of the film in a sun-baked haze, epitomizing the iconic Los Angeles atmosphere established in movies and television shows of the color era.
Then there are the deeper, more serious parts of Marlowe’s anachronism. Deceit and disloyalty are at every turn and friendship doesn’t mean what it once did. By the end, Marlowe seems genuinely hurt by what his friend Terry Lennox has done both to him and Lennox’s wife. A man he thought was a friend has betrayed him without any hint of remorse and Marlowe is forced to adapt to a time that had previously felt foreign. The beginning and ending snippets of “Hooray for Hollywood” take on opposite effects, hopeful nostalgia deteriorates into cynical frustration. The Long Goodbye is given new meaning, a metaphorical descent from a better place perhaps.
Playing to substantial crowds and a good deal of publicity (it’s not every day an actor gets a Village Voice cover story, much less one whose halcyon days were thirty years ago) at New York’s Film Forum this past week, The Long Goodbye may be part of the beginning of the rediscovery and reevaluation of Robert Altman’s creative peak of the 1970s, following the director’s passing last November. Not that Altman hasn’t enjoyed a vocal group of supporters for several years, but death does funny things to the public conscience and posthumous reverence seems more common than living accolades. People tend to take notice when someone’s gone often more than even if they’re still around making quality, relevant work as Altman was as late as the last year of his life. Witness the individual DVD releases of three of the director’s films these past five months, all announced after his death, as an example of death being a perspective changer.
Death probably changes how we look at artists as well, maybe in a subconscious way or maybe more willfully. I know I watched one of Altman’s films the night after his death and I’m sure at least hundreds of others did the same. Because his movies often use character more than plot, they shine brighter with additional viewings and The Long Goodbye is typical of this. I noticed numerous new things when I saw the film again and the aspects I liked the first time were even better. The repeated use of the title song never gets old and the inventive ways Altman found to stick it in scenes was much more noticeable this second time. Particularly, the cutting back and forth between Marlowe at the grocery store and Terry Lennox driving in his sports car while using different versions of the song for each setting was brilliantly done. I’m not sure how many new things are still waiting to be discovered in a third viewing, but maybe I’ll find out next year and let you know. Or maybe not. Whatever. It’s okay with me.
Stalag 17 April 23, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Billy Wilder , 9 comments
Context is everything in movies. In any particular scene, a line of dialogue can elicit hearty laughs if given the right set-up while the same exact line might cause an audience to break down into tears when used in a different situation. The idea of context is just as important for directors and, to a lesser extent, actors. It can be helpful for the viewer to look at a film within the director’s larger filmography, especially taking into consideration where the filmmaker was at that point in his career. A perfect example of the importance of context is Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17
By increasingly filling his movies with both biting satiric comedy and jokes easily understood by the masses, Wilder wisely moved on from the commercial failure of Ace in the Hole, knowing success assured the director he could essentially make his own rules while still retaining the freedom of major studio budgets. Prior to Stalag 17, Wilder had mostly been directing dramatic films, notably Double Indemnity and then winning an Oscar for The Lost Weekend. Though many of the screenplays he wrote for other directors were comedies and his directorial debut, The Major and the Minor, was lighter fare, the large majority of his earlier films were steeped in a seriousness that rarely popped up afterwards. With Stalag 17, the filmmaker, perhaps better than in any of his other films, balanced a dire, almost hopeless situation with frequent retreats into laughter. Every Wilder drama has moments of humor and every Wilder comedy has an undercurrent of seriousness, but none of his other films dared to repeatedly show the lighter side of a subject as seemingly grave as a Nazi-run American prisoner-of-war camp. A generation before Robert Altman made M*A*S*H, Wilder unapologetically mixed laughter with war.
Using the director’s favorite narrative device, the voiceover, Wilder throws his audience into an American POW camp just before Christmas 1944. Our occasional narrator is Cookie, one of the men of Stalag 17 (Stalag, the German shorthand for a prisoner-of-war camp, was an abbreviation of the word Stammlager) and the only ally of the film’s protagonist, J.J. Sefton. In an attempted escape, two American prisoners from Sefton’s barracks are soon shot and killed after emerging out of a tunnel. All of their fellow captives are optimistic that the two men will make it through alive, except Sefton. Just after the two men have initiated their escape, Sefton lays down a couple of packs of cigarettes on their execution. The ever cynical Sefton cleans up when the men are shot down, never displaying a shred of emotion. Every prisoner has found a way to cope with his imprisonment, whether it’s through impaired reality or the elimination of the outside world completely, but Sefton appears to be the only one who’s decided to use it to his advantage. Where the others are hopeful idealists, Sefton’s a realist biding his time until he can enjoy freedom once again.
As tensions continue between Sefton and the others, two new prisoners replace the failed escapees - Lieutenant Dunbar (Don Taylor), whose name Sefton recognizes as part of a wealthy Boston family, and an actor who entertains with movie star impressions (Jay Lawrence, real-life brother of F-Troop’s Larry Storch). After repeated plans of action are intercepted by the Germans and Lt. Dunbar is fingered for blowing up an ammunitions train prior to being captured, the prisoners realize one of the men is telling the Nazis their every move. Since Sefton has a well-stocked supply of alcohol, cigarettes and various other goods, which he uses to bribe his way past Nazi guards into the Russian female prisoners’ quarters, he becomes the leading suspect. His surliness towards the other men surely doesn’t help matters. Their suspicion climaxes in a physical attack on Sefton, holding him down and bruising his face when their paranoia caroms out of control. Even Sefton’s loyal helper Cookie eventually begins to suspect him. Though he’s not interested in popularity contests and doesn’t seem too concerned with being ostracized, Sefton realizes that identifying the real spy may be his ticket out of the POW camp, with the added bonus of a potential reward for returning Dunbar to his wealthy family.
William Holden won an Academy Award playing Sefton, an iconoclast who perfectly embodies the Wilder opportunist that we’ve seem so often in his films. It’s not surprising that Wilder all but identified him as the character most like himself from one of his films. He’s a remarkably different kind of hero, one who looks after number one more than his fellow soldiers and values survival above all else. You could say he even anticipates the antiheroes made famous in American films of the 1970s. Holden deserved his Oscar, despite initially turning down the role out of concern for the character’s unwavering cynicism and being uneasy with some of Sefton’s choices. The actor had worked with Wilder before in Sunset Blvd., when the filmmaker revived Holden’s foundering career, so it would seem that he should have anticipated a different kind of hero role and a director unwilling to budge from his ideas. Like many a Wilder protagonist, Sefton is in it for himself, nearly to a fault. He seems completely unconcerned with the welfare of anyone else, treating the Nazis no worse than the other men in his barracks.
Those other prisoners, specifically the characters of Animal and Shapiro, provide the film’s comic relief (along with director Otto Preminger, as the Nazi commandant, putting on his boots for a phone call). As Animal, Robert Strauss was Oscar-nominated for the Betty Grable-obsessed character, a combination of three Marx brothers with a dash of Moe Howard’s commanding assertiveness. His buddy Shapiro, played by Harvey Lembeck, seems to keep Animal grounded through distractions like sneaking over to the Russian females’ de-lousing shower and cross-dressing to temporarily recreate a Betty Grable pin-up picture. This humor, poignantly portrayed by the two actors who also played their roles in the original Broadway version, is painted with broad strokes but still can’t conceal the painful uncertainty of the two men’s fates. Their actions are merely an example of personal coping and shouldn’t be diminished as a denial of the unpleasant circumstances that often accompany war.
Wilder actually wrings more emotion out of the frequently funny Stalag 17 than he had any film before, and few afterwards. With the prisoners’ rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” as Sefton lies recovering from his wounds in bed, slowly putting the pieces together concerning who’s the spy, Wilder skillfully turns the moment into a heart-wrenching culmination of patriotic bravery and defiant heroism. It’s a dagger of emotion that reminds the viewer what’s at stake for these men. Even if Sefton’s actions always remain primarily self-serving (and it’s difficult to argue that his unmasking of the German was for love of country or fellow servicemen), he’s a hero nonetheless. He raises morale and eliminates the German spy while securing the freedom of two American soldiers.
The special edition DVD released by Paramount last year is a marked improvement over their previous disc. The image quality is drastically better, absent the dirt and debris that plagued the first release. Since there’s a strange absence of a DVD Beaver review for either disc, much less a comparison, my memory of the first release is all I have to go on, but I do remember being disappointed with that transfer when I watched it. The new version has a remarkably sharp picture, consistent with Paramount’s usual high standard. They also tossed on two featurettes, one recounting details of the making of the film and the other about the real Stalag XVII B camp, as well as a commentary teaming actors Gil Stratton (Cookie) and Richard Erdman (Hoffy) with playwright Donald Bevan. I’d like to have seen Peter Graves participate in the featurette and/or the commentary and wonder why he’s absent. The only real negative to the DVD is Paramount’s insistence on including forced trailers. If I wanted to see John Wayne movies or Titanic then I’d buy those DVDs. When I put in Stalag 17, that’s what I’d like to watch.
There’s apparently another aspect of Stalag 17 worth discussing, one that conveniently returns me to my initial mention of context. It’s the idea that Wilder lets Sefton’s characteristic cynicism shrivel at the end, with a wave and a grin. DVD Savant’s review devotes a paragraph to this proposition, mentioning several nameless critics who’ve identified the action as Wilder’s “’sell-out’ moment.” Since I admittedly didn’t dredge through every review I could find of the film, I’ll have to pick on what the Savant wrote. He also makes the point that “the gesture is sincere,” something I disagree with just as much as the idea that Sefton (or Wilder) goes soft here. I see it much more as a “see ya, suckers” kind of moment. If Billy Wilder made it today, one could imagine Sefton’s salute and smile being replaced by a middle finger.
Context is key here because Sefton had just said to these men, fellow soldiers who had beaten and accused him of being a Nazi collaborator despite his denials, “If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let’s pretend we never met before.” Not exactly a friendly goodbye. Sefton then heads down into the tunnel hole, and pops back up just to boastfully give the salute. If there’s a twinkle in his eye when Sefton grins, it would seem to be from knowing he’s about to get out of this hellhole while they all remain. The only hint of sincerity relies on the viewer’s subjectivity. If you want to believe Sefton “breaks character” then I think you’re going against the weight of the evidence laid forth throughout the entire film, but that’s your right as a viewer. If you choose to think Sefton’s mentally mounting his private revenge with that smile then that’s your option as well. I just can’t believe a director as uncompromising as Billy Wilder would purposefully betray what he’s worked two hours to establish if another logical explanation is available.
From DVD Savant’s review and what seems to be a general lack of critical interest, I don’t perceive the film as garnering the accolades currently received by many of the director’s other films from the 1950s. However, even if it’s the fourth-best Wilder film of the decade, which I’d attest it is, that’s still quite the endorsement. His most fruitful decade of moviemaking was arguably as accomplished as any other director’s ever. Hitchcock certainly had an impressive run in both the 40s and 50s, and Altman’s output from the 1970s now looks incredible, but Wilder churned out nine good to great films in the ten year period, co-writing all of them. Each has its merits and a few (The Seven Year Itch, for one) admittedly lack the charm of Wilder’s best, but there’s not a certifiable dud to be found in the lot. When looking for sheer entertainment value, Stalag 17 is probably the one that’s most enjoyable. It’s compelling, with a great lead performance from William Holden, and captivating, even though it has minimal action sequences.
Following the film’s success, others took note and POW films like The Great Escape and, most blatantly, television shows like Hogan’s Heroes tried to mimic the tone Wilder set with his movie by eliminating the stoic seriousness that had previously been found in war films in favor of a less gloomy approach. Missing was Sefton’s (and Wilder’s) cynicism, which gave Stalag 17 some bite not found in its imitators. For all those chastising Wilder for playing it safe with Stalag 17 (I’m thinking again of DVD Savant’s review, which has other aspects of contention also), how many other filmmakers were inserting broad humor into prisoner-of-war films less than a decade after the war ended? Where Wilder was so successful and nearly unmatched in film was the precise balance of knowing when to make the audience laugh and when to sober them up, all the while resisting the temptation to be overly manipulative.
At ease…at ease!
Criss Cross April 17, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1940s , add a comment
With the official announcement of the Warner Bros. Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4, enthusiasts can rejoice at the prospect of twice as many films as in the other three volumes, at the same price, and all with commentaries and featurettes. There are some real gems in there too, highlighted by Nicholas Ray’s debut They Live by Night and the Anthony Mann classic Side Street. Back in July 2004, when the first WB Film Noir Collection was released, Universal seemingly started their own line, christened with a Universal Noir Collection banner at the top of each cover. There were four titles, including Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross
Universal hasn’t followed up on their noir line despite the yearly Warner Bros. sets and the emergence of the Fox Film Noir series, priced the same as Universal’s discs and including paper inserts and commentaries (though the spine-numbered Fox collection has been absent lately). There’s little indication that Universal is interested in releasing much of their back catalog individually, preferring instead to package several films into affordably priced sets. A bevy of noteworthy choices, films like Ride the Pink Horse, The Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, Phantom Lady, and Ministry of Fear, are waiting to be digitally unleashed from the Universal library. Ehh, patience I guess. The studio did an impressive job on their two-disc release of Double Indemnity last year, but I’d feel better if there had been even one other noir title announced in the last four years.
Thankfully, the short-lived Universal Noir Collection gave us some quality films, the best probably being Criss Cross. The film reunites director Robert Siodmak with his leading man from The Killers, Burt Lancaster. Lancaster plays Steve Thompson, a man who’s just returned to his California home town after traveling across America for several months to get away from the divorced ex-wife, Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), he hadn’t quite gotten over. He’s a fairly typical film noir protagonist, a regular guy with a weak spot for a woman and the accompanying potential to turn into a chump as a result. As the film begins, we learn that Thompson is in on a plan to rob the armored car he drives, along with the thuggish Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea, maybe the best dressed man in the movies) who’s Anna’s new husband. This being noir, it’s not difficult to figure out that Thompson is involved because of Anna and the promise of being with her.
Watching the film, you realize how perfectly Criss Cross embodies film noir. Almost everything people love about this type of movie is present here. There’s the man who’s just returned to town and immediately gets caught up (again) with a woman of ambiguous motives. Because of her, he commits a criminal act that doesn’t appear to be in his character otherwise and suffers the consequences of betrayal and foolishness. Burt Lancaster, who had the incredible good fortune of starring in The Killers and Brute Force as his first two films, is a first-rate noir actor, De Carlo is a drop-dead gorgeous femme fatale, and Dan Duryea should be synonymous with this type of role in this type of movie. Siodmak made his mark in Hollywood with noirs like this, as well as Phantom Lady, Cry of the City (reportedly coming soon on DVD from Criterion), and The Dark Mirror. Though perhaps not as distinguished a film noir cinematographer as John Alton or James Wong Howe, Franz Planer shot the film and was a five-time Oscar nominee. On top of all that, we even have an occasional voice-over!
The problem, then, is that Criss Cross almost seems like a paint-by-numbers film noir. It’s a highly entertaining one, for sure, and since the genre/style didn’t formally exist when the movie was made, one can’t really fault the film for adhering so closely. However, there’s nothing really that makes Siodmak’s film stand out from the crowd. Even though it’s an accomplished, enjoyable entry, it’s lacking the colorful supporting characters or the surge of violence or the dynamic chiaroscuro lighting or the untethered villain, etc. that highlights so many great films of this kind. There’s nothing terribly memorable to be found here, aside from possibly the emergence of De Carlo as a missed opportunity for future femme fatale roles of this caliber. Duryea is effective, even if he’s restrained more here than in his best films.
I like Lancaster a lot in general because he was adept at combining intelligence and physicality, but he’s sort of a blank slate in this role. While that’s not intended as a knock, and he’s obviously still finding his way as an actor here, his portrayal of Thompson is fine, if not particularly affecting. Regardless, Lancaster’s early roles should establish him as one of the essential principals of noir, including three films, I believe, Universal has the rights to but has not yet released on DVD - Desert Fury, I Walk Alone, and Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, all of which I’ve not seen but sound worthwhile. He didn’t have the short-fused cruelty like Ryan or Widmark, but, in true noir fashion, his few evil characters, most strikingly J.J. Hunsecker from Sweet Smell of Success, were cold, calculating demons of men. In Criss Cross, the scenes with De Carlo stand out the most, I think, and the two actors have good chemistry together, as they allude to a smoldering sexual undercurrent between the characters. You get the feeling that the “making-up” De Carlo talks about is the whole basis of their relationship.
Speaking of which, how great is Yvonne De Carlo here. From looking at her filmography, it appears she was mostly stuck in lesser films and supporting roles, frequently cast as an exotically “ethnic” looking beauty (which is a little strange for a woman born with the name Margaret, or Peggy depending on the source, Middleton in Vancouver, Canada). The actress probably best known as Lily Munster also appeared in Brute Force, among many other film roles. Criss Cross shows not only how beautiful she was, but also how good she could be with the proper role. Her Anna never really tips her hand concerning her true interest in Thompson until the very end. Then, just after he’s risked everything to begin his life anew with her, she’s ready to bail on him with a bag full of money. I found De Carlo’s consistent, yet incomplete, affection towards Thompson throughout the film to be an accomplished ambiguity sometimes lacking in film noir. We often see a more one-dimensional female whose motives are obvious from the start, but De Carlo, who just passed away in January, does a superb job of feeding the audience little morsels of her character as the film progresses.
She also has a dynamite scene with a young, unbilled Tony Curtis (who would be Sidney Falco to Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker less than a decade later) at a dance hall. It’s the first time Thompson sees his ex-wife after returning from his sojourn outside of California. As the band plays and the pianist almost convulsively pounds the keys, the film becomes reminiscent of that remarkable Elisha Cook, Jr. drum solo in Siodmak’s Phantom Lady from five years earlier. That film can be considered the director’s breakthrough in America, after coming over from Germany via France. Interestingly, his very first directorial credit, Menschen am Sonntag, or People on Sunday, from 1930, has possibly the strongest group of filmmakers involved of any feature flim in movie history. Along with Robert Siodmak’s brother Curt, the shot on-location film was co-directed by Oscar winner Fred Zinnemann and noted B-movie director Edgar G. Ulmer. Sharing writing credit with the Siodmaks was none other than Billy Wilder.
I feel almost like I’m beeing too critical of Criss Cross, even though it’s not on the level of what I consider the great films noir. It’s more of a greatest hits package of what so many people love about this type of film and is tightly paced at 88 minutes. The film is highly attractive to those interested in noir and shouldn’t disappoint viewers in search of the typical elements found in such films. It does have a pretty great and undeniably dark ending (spoiled by the geniuses who designed the “Scenes” menu screen on the Universal DVD) that’s difficult to argue with, either from a dramatic or a karmic standpoint. There’s no reason to be apologetic in liking the film, but you might be hungry for something else not too long after watching it.
Odds Against Tomorrow April 13, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Gloria Grahame , add a comment
Despite a title befitting a daily soap opera more than a melodramatic post-noir caper movie, Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow
The film begins with a terrific opening title sequence and ends with a dynamic bleakness. The problem is the remaining hour and a half, where we’re introduced to scheming ex-cop Burke (Begley) who enlists a white racist (Ryan) and a black man in debt (Belafonte) to help him rob a bank in upstate New York. Where other heist films often try to make audiences sympathize with the robbery participants, Odds Against Tomorrow makes no such attempt. Ryan’s character Slater is a Southern-accented, ex-con killer who hates black people (giving Ryan, who apparently was much nicer than the roles he played, a bigot companion to his anti-semite, Oscar-nominated turn in Crossfire). Belafonte is Ingram, a nightclub performer who’d rather bet his money on horses and cards than provide for his young daughter, putting him $7,500 in the hole to a bookie. Rounding out the main cast are two empty roles for Winters and Grahame, who are pretty much wasted as Ryan’s girlfriend and upstairs neighbor, respectively. Grahame, in probably her last notable film role, is still effective as a really strange woman whom Ryan beds in one of those misogynistic “no means yes” scenes we sometimes see in older movies.
Characters certainly don’t have to be likeable or easy to relate to for a film to be interesting, but it helps, at least, for them to either have some redeeming qualities or something else to give the audience an identifying action or characteristic. We just don’t get that here and the majority of the picture, leading up to the climactic bank job, subsequently disappoints. Are we supposed to feel something for the Ryan character because he’s a war veteran? I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine how it’s possible to find anything of interest in him. Ryan often played the villain in movies, but, even in many of those roles, he had a “good guy” to play off of and made his character more interesting, such as in The Naked Spur or House of Bamboo. The only other main character we have here is Belafonte, who is likeable enough but never seems to want to stop gambling. The brief scenes between him and his daughter do little to change our perception. Instead of being with her on the carousel, he gets off to talk to a couple of his bookie’s goons. The balloon he’s supposed to be taking care of for her gets popped by some teenagers as he calls Burke in a phone booth.
Even though the performances are fine, the characters are unoriginal and uninspiring. By the film’s release in 1959, Ryan had played nearly every possible stripe of bad guy and watching him portray such a repulsive character becomes tiresome. Bigotry, whether in 1959 or currently, is as easy and unwanted of a short cut to portray an antagonist as the black hat we too often see in simplistic westerns. The scene between Ryan and a pre-M*A*S*H Mike Farrell as a young soldier does nothing to alleviate any hostility the audience has for him and the character’s actions never allow him to fit the disillusioned war veteran mold. Ryan is annoyed by Farrell’s behavior, including his treatment of a young woman, but then he goes home and works over Grahame’s ditzy neighbor, whose intentions make little sense outside of the realm of other movies. Belafonte’s fellow war vet is just as lacking in depth and reason, but he manages to come across a tad better.
Much of this is due to Belafonte himself, who had few film roles and, in contrast to Ryan, was less established as one particular screen character. I’d say he’s the main reason to watch Odds Against Tomorrow and he doesn’t disappoint. Though far from a great actor, Belafonte, whose company produced the film, was probably on par with other (white) singers who dabbled in acting such as Frank Sinatra (Oscar winner), Bing Crosby (Oscar winner), and Bobby Darin (Oscar nominee). His nightclub performances, both the solo of “My Baby’s Not Around” and “All Men are Evil” alongside Mae Barnes, are the highlights of the film for me, as Belafonte shows a natural, unrestrained easiness that doesn’t really pop up when he’s reciting his scripted lines. The film’s outstanding score, by jazz pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, is reminiscent of Wise’s previous feature I Want to Live!, which won Susan Hayward a deserved Academy Award but didn’t live up to the promise of the brilliant, jazz-infused first few minutes.
Leaving the viewer somewhat unsatisfied seems to be a familiar problem with Wise’s directorial efforts. Maybe his pictures haven’t aged well, but I find myself almost always wanting to like Robert Wise’s movies more than I actually do. From what I’ve seen, only The Set-Up, his previous teaming with Robert Ryan, would earn an unqualified recommendation. Both Curse of the Cat People and The Day the Earth Stood Still have their admirers, but I’m not entirely convinced. He also won two Academy Awards for directing West Side Story (shared with Jerome Robbins) and The Sound of Music, so his versatility is difficult to question. There’s just something that I can’t quite put my finger on that seems lacking in his films though. Truth be told, I can’t come down too hard on the man because, firstly, he edited Citizen Kane (even if his subsequent work on The Magnificent Ambersons is more dubious), and, second, he was kind enough to respond to a letter I wrote as a teenager with an autographed picture. His distinctive penmanship even showed that he had addressed the return envelope himself.
Even if that thoughtful gesture made me a fan for life, it didn’t pierce my objectivity in regards to his films. Odds Against Tomorrow is far from an entirely successful film. It meanders along, focusing on underdeveloped (or possibly unworthy) characters and climaxes in a bank robbery that’s too short and inanely executed. The final “which is which” scene is impressive in its culmination of the relative likenesses and differences between the main characters, but it’s too little, too late for a film that should have been better in nearly every way. The racial aspects are mildly interesting, but still lack any real introspection or provocation into why the characters act as they do.
We’re given the sense that Belafonte’s character is distrustful of whites, though seemingly less than Ryan is of blacks, but nothing more is really made of it. As hokey and unrealistic as Stanely Kramer can be, his film from the previous year, The Defiant Ones, does a better job of exploring the relationship between a white man and a black man who have no previous reason to dislike one another aside from skin color. Even though the Kramer film has a predictable resolution, whereas Wise and his screenwriters stand firm, it still attempts to examine irrational prejudices with an eye toward improvement instead of simply linking racial hatred with ultimate downfall. The almost offensively stereotypical homosexual character in Odds Against Tomorrow sort of drowns out much of the pro-equality message the film strives for as well.
The R1 DVD release from MGM is a satisfactory, though supplement-free, affair with very good image quality and presented in the original academy ratio (a seemingly odd choice considering Wise had previously been using wider formats). It’s definitely not a bad film, but Odds Against Tomorrow is a disappointment because of the talent involved and the limp product delivered. I read that Jean-Pierre Melville was an admirer of Wise’s film, and that actually makes sense. The great French director, however, knew how to use suspense and a methodical frigidity much more than we see in this movie, which takes too much time focusing on the lacking personal lives of the main characters and fails to deliver the memorable heist that had been simmering throughout the film. There’s also an inexplicable lack of tension between Ryan and Belafonte when the movie desperately needs it. Odds Against Tomorrow may have inspired great films, but it falls short of approaching that level itself.
The Big Heat April 9, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Fritz Lang, Gloria Grahame , 1 comment so far
What’s the best director-actor-actress triumverate that made at least two non-sequel pictures together? A good choice might be John Ford, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, who made The Quiet Man, Rio Grande and The Wings of Eagles together. There’s also Howard Hawks, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who did To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep. Otto Preminger, Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney followed up Laura with Where the Sidewalk Ends six years later. The Swedish director Ingmar Bergman paired Liv Ullmann with Max von Sydow three times and Erland Josephson a total of eight times. My personal favorite, though, might be Fritz Lang’s two films with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame - The Big Heat
At the risk of repeating myself, I find Fritz Lang’s films, both from his days in Germany and after working in America, remarkably timeless and entertaining. Each time I watch a film he directed, with very few exceptions, I refuse to believe Lang isn’t one of the top five or ten filmmakers of all time. You could isolate his output in either language and his legend is still secured. When combining the two periods, it becomes apparent that he had a career to rival most anyone, in longevity, quality and quantity. His ability to evolve from silents to sound films is equally impressive. Only a handful of other directors were successful in both, and arguably none as much so as Lang. If there’s any knock against him, it would seem to be that he never reached the heights of films like Metropolis and M after fleeing Germany Obviously unfair, this criticism fails to take into account the creative and monetary limitations he faced in Hollywood. Perhaps it also undervalues how impressive his English language work often was.
I previously touted Scarlet Street as a good candidate for the honor of Lang’s best English language film, an irrelevant title only important for discussion purposes anyway. Though I’m not exactly wavering on my suggestion since it is a vital and essential piece of cinema’s darker side, maybe I wasn’t being completely fair to The Big Heat, a film that typifies everything great about movies before they became modernized with foul language, nudity and blood-soaked violence. Those three additions to movie screens all have a time and place and have been used brilliantly by scores of filmmakers, but wouldn’t films have been a lot less interesting if taboos had never existed so that creative filmmakers could circumvent them? I see classic movies as fascinating precisely because they don’t have those forbidden elements out in the open.
In The Big Heat, we see shocking moments of violence that make much more of an impact than the climactic hail of bullets exchanged between Glenn Ford and Lee Marvin. Ford’s character, Dave Bannion, is a respected police sergeant with a loving wife (played by Jocelyn Brando, Marlon’s older sister) and young daughter. He seems to have a happy marriage and a blossoming career, stunted only by corruption in the upper ranks. There’s no hint of a dark or sadistic side and Bannion appears to be the rare noir cop protagonist without an obvious fatal flaw (the violent tendencies of Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground and Dana Andrews in Where the Sidewalk Ends are two examples that immediately spring to mind). Then he perceives his family being threatened and Bannion becomes possessed by the struggle to protect them.
The wallop he gives George, a goon of the syndicate boss Mike Lagana, is unexpectedly vicious and forceful. Ford transforms from stand-up police officer to live wire in an instant. After tragedy strikes home and he’s forced to go on leave, Bannion’s hair-trigger violence begins to parallel the sadistic Vince Stone (Marvin), never more so than when he throws a conniving police widow against the wall and begins choking her. His savagery, interrupted by a couple of uniformed officers barging in, had progressed from an earlier altercation with Larry Gordon, the man who planted dynamite in his car. Bannion had just set up Gordon for a certain death at the hands of his mobster buddies, grinning almost uncontrollably as he tells the thug his plan. There’s never any indication that Bannion feels a twinge of conflict that this guy will be in the river in a few hours.
I’m not saying I disagree with Bannion’s actions, but the lack of emotion from Ford (who’s really superb throughout), that he’s giving Gordon a fate much worse than if Bannion just shot him at that moment, is downright startling for a film from 1953. This is Death Wish territory in the decade of Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie & Harriet. Lang was able to defy the more conservative audience’s expectations by peeling away at what was generally considered acceptable at the time. By showing such unexpectedly violent behavior from the good guy of the story, with whom we empathize, The Big Heat provokes the viewer to take notice at what’s being shown. This type of audience stimulant is an exhilarating and effective use of violence in film. If a character did the same thing in a film or television show today though, it would barely register at all.
The more famous scene of violence from The Big Heat, and one that actually might still prompt quite a reaction if it were done today, is when Lee Marvin’s character Stone scalds his girlfriend Debby’s face with a pot of steaming hot coffee. The act is not shown on camera, but we see the aftermath in the form of the scarred left side of her face just before Debby gets her own revenge against Stone. The scene is reminiscent of Cagney shoving a grapefruit into his lady friend’s face at the breakfast table in The Public Enemy, 22 years earlier but prior to the implementation of the production code. A big difference between the two is that Cagney’s fit seems more humiliating and degrading than the sadistic rage that comes from Marvin. A little grapefruit juice is nothing compared to a half-scarred face.
The java-burned victim is played by Gloria Grahame, who, in full disclosure, I think I may be in love with. Grahame has long been one of my favorite actresses and, despite popping up in classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and winning an Academy Award for The Bad and the Beautiful, deserved a better film career. The talented beauty had perhaps her best role as the female lead in Nicholas Ray’s brilliant In a Lonely Place, my favorite of Ray’s films and one I try to mention here as often as possible. After Odds Against Tomorrow in 1959, she pretty much stopped acting in films, instead taking television and stage work before dying from cancer at the age of 57. She also had the odd distinction of marrying both Nicholas Ray and his son (her stepson) Anthony Ray, star of the John Cassavetes film Shadows, and having children with both men.
Grahame’s character in The Big Heat knows the type of guy she’s involved with in Stone, but accepts his volatility as part of the price of living a financially charmed existence. She hints at a sadness from a poverty-filled past she never wants to revisit, even if it means being with crooks like Stone. Unlike so many gangster molls and femmes fatale, Debby is refreshingly honest with Bannion, never hiding her motives or betraying his loyalty. Her initial seductive interest in him, probably as a result of seeing Stone cower away from the suspended cop like a retreating puppy, changes when Debby takes refuge with Bannion following the coffee scalding. The sensitive, almost domestic kindness she shows Bannion seems to help him find redemption from his spiraling violent streak. Grahame is memorable and compelling in her performance, showing us a woman much brighter than she initially seems.
Likewise, Glenn Ford embodies Bannion with an everyman quality that separates him from so many main characters associated with film noir. He’s neither a ticking time bomb, ready to explode when given the littlest opportunity, nor an emotionally wounded shell who’s unable to function in society. Bannion is the seemingly reasonable man, an ordinary citizen who could be any one of us. For me, what makes The Big Heat fascinating is its exploration of the depths a man can plummet to avenge wrongs committed against his family. Unlike many of the articles I’ve read, I really don’t see the film as primarily about one man against a city of corruption. The focus instead seems to be on the riveting transformation of Bannion as his family life disintegrates and he becomes bent on exacting revenge. His motivating factor is the vengeance he craves, not a noble fight against corruption.
There’s another interpretation I’ve read about The Big Heat, most notably by Roger Ebert in his “The Great Movies” essay, that places Bannion as an oblivious angel of death for the female characters he encounters. I disagree with this take as well, and would argue that each death is more a result of circumstance than Bannion’s actions. Lucy Chapman, the mistress of the dead police officer, is murdered shortly after contacting Bannion, but his involvement is completely tangential to her death. Chapman’s demise comes as a result of her own actions, with Bannion’s role merely as a dutiful police officer doing what he’s been instructed to do. Their meeting and her death subsequently get Bannion involved with Lagana, escalated by the threatening phone call to his house. It’s also unlikely Bannion could have foreseen his car being loaded with explosives based solely on his visit to Lagana’s house since the murder of a police sergeant would logically raise several eyebrows, even in a city plagued by corruption.
The death of Mrs. Duncan, the police officer’s widow, comes the closest to being caused by Bannion because it came as a direct result of telling Debby the consequences for Stone if she were dead. However, by this point, Debby began to serve as a substitute for Bannion’s wife and he was telling her about his work (now being done without the aid of his police credentials) just as he had his wife at the beginning of the movie. There’s little reason to think, based on what we’re shown, that Bannion was intending for Debby to kill Mrs. Duncan. Debby’s own death, an inevitable conclusion given her circumstances and her actions, comes as a result of her quest for revenge against Stone for scarring her face. Bannion is present, but far from directly responsible. The idea that his encounters with women lead to their deaths is certainly an interesting one, but any theory as to his culpability, whether implicit or direct, seems flawed.
The three principals of The Big Heat re-teamed the next year for Human Desire, based on an Emile Zola novel and previously filmed by Jean Renoir as La bête humaine. The plot involves Ford’s Korean War vet returning to his old railroad job and becoming involved with Grahame, whose husband (played by Broderick Crawford) is Ford’s co-worker. It’s probably second-tier Lang, but it makes a nice companion piece to the earlier film. Grahame gets more time on screen and her character’s ambiguous actions give the film an interesting spin on what at times appears to be another variation of the Double Indemnity/The Postman Always Rings Twice kind of story. Even if it’s just to watch Ford and Grahame again, I’d imagine strong admirers of The Big Heat would also enjoy Human Desire quite a bit.
While The Big Heat can be found on DVD in a good (if overpriced) edition from Sony/Columbia, Human Desire is still unreleased from the same studio. The disc for the earlier title has only a re-release trailer and an advertising gallery, but the picture quality, after the first few minutes of frequent dust and debris spots, is especially impressive for a DVD that came out in 2001. The Columbia Pictures library was well-represented in the earlier days of DVD, with strong transfers and occasional featurettes, but Sony has more recently been content on mostly re-packaging a few titles here and there in sets without turning their attention to the unreleased films still waiting for their digital debuts. That’s rather disappointing for consumers anxious to get their hands on deserving titles like Human Desire, though there is a Japanese release that appears to be of good quality in the DVD Beaver review (here) and is enhanced in anamorphic widescreen. Both of the Lang-Ford-Grahame films are excellent and worth owning, but The Big Heat is an essential, a borderline masterpiece of raw, visceral violence and man’s animalistic need for revenge.
The Natural April 5, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1980s , add a comment
The Natural
Then again, I was partially right, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Aside from the period detail, the main reason Roy Hobbs’ story resonates so loudly and feels so authentic is because it’s heavily steeped in mythology. Taking its cues from Malamud’s book, the film goes to great lengths to connect Roy Hobbs, fully embodied by Robert Redford, to characters like Odysseus and King Arthur. This not only adds a sense of timelessness, but also advances the idea that baseball is merely a backdrop for a story that applies to countless persons throughout history. A large part of why Greek tragedy and mythological stories have remained popular for so long is their eternal relevance to human life. Specific circumstances have changed over time, but no emotions are felt that haven’t been agonized over repeatedly before.
There’s more to the mythology angle though. No other film about baseball has had the cognizance to recognize the nearly intangible mythic qualities of the game of baseball itself. It’s the journey of Roy Hobbs in the story of The Natural, but there are many other figures from the real life history of the game that inspire comparisons to mythology. Babe Ruth, the obvious inspiration for the character of “The Whammer” in Malamud’s story, will probably always be the supreme baseball god, the Zeus of the diamond. His legendary strength (he finished his career with 714 home runs, surpassing the all time record when he hit his 139th in 1921) and seeming invincibility were unknown to baseball mortals. Other players from before World War II, when baseball was unrivaled in popularity among sports, have been deified for their unbelievable accomplishments as well. Lou Gehrig’s incredible 2,130 consecutive games played and the once-believed untouchable strikeout total of pitcher Walter Johnson have both been bested, but in significantly different circumstances and decades later. Thus, it’s not too much of a stretch to call baseball players the mythological gods of the American twentieth century.
If Roy Hobbs had been real, he might have been right up there on baseball’s Mt. Olympus with Ruth and Gehrig. Sports stories have a way of feeling stale or recycled in the movies, but The Natural is able to make its own path despite using a few of the old stand-bys we’ve come to expect. Much of its enjoyment lies in the intriguing idea of a supremely talented, confident young ball player who is literally shot down before his prime, only to be resurrected on the downside of his thirties to lead a cellar dwelling team to the pennant. The execution is key as well though, with Barry Levinson ably directing only his second feature film. Levinson has been a frustratingly inconsistent director who’s made some wonderful films like Bugsy, Wag the Dog and the Oscar-winning Rain Man, a film I still love despite a downsliding critical consensus. He’s also directed some pretty mediocre things, but his heavy involvement in the television series Homicide: Life on the Street, the best procedural drama ever, tips the scale in his favor for me.
A lot of what makes The Natural so enjoyable for myself and others is subjective. The viewer has to approach the film more as a fantasy than reality-based (similar to another great baseball movie of the eighties, Field of Dreams), and it surely helps to be a fan of baseball. But if you give yourself over to the mythology of the story, The Natural is a wonderful film. The cinematography of Caleb Deschanel is spectacular and was deserving of an Academy Award (he was nominated, but lost to the work of Chris Menges on The Killing Fields). Countless scenes look like poster-ready photographs in motion. The slow motion sequences, complete with Randy Newman’s intense and oft-imitated score, succeed because they’re reinforcements of the cliche, serving as an example of why such scenes became cliches in the first place instead of seeming trite and unoriginal. The acting is uniformly top-notch, including great character turns from Wilford Brimley and Richard Farnsworth and Redford’s charismatic lead performance.
There are plenty of possible criticisms to hurl at Levinson’s film though. It’s emotionally manipulative, arguably too long, the baseball scenes are lacking from a technical standpoint, and some more character development would have been nice. All are valid complaints, but most wouldn’t provide significant improvement over the finished product (or the recently released director’s cut, which has apparently become the only version available since Sony decided to not include the theatrical cut on the new release while also taking the original disc out of print). There’s magic running through The Natural and you either allow yourself to fall under its spell or you don’t. Some of the pitching and hitting scenes look a little too inauthentic for my taste, but that’s a minor, nagging detail that still doesn’t detract enough to stamp out the twinkle that appears in my eye when Hobbs shatters the clock or breaks the stadium light. A film as earnest as The Natural, with a subject as cinematic as baseball, gets a free pass for a few tugs at the heartstrings.
For some people, though, the main problem with the movie was that it changed the ending from what was written in the novel. The happy Hollywood version eschews the bitter failure and public decline of Malamud’s Hobbs. The mythological aspects are more in tact in its literary incarnation also, punishing Hobbs and denying him a second-chance victory. The character, in both film and book, doesn’t really learn from the mistake that got him shot initially so perhaps Malamud’s original conclusion is the fate Roy Hobbs deserved. Regardless, I’m not one who believes movies based on books are obligated to adhere strictly to their source. The film version of The Natural would seem more appropriate to end as it does, given the filmmakers’ other creative decisions to make the picture less dark and more crowd-pleasing than the book. Hobbs is still a deeply flawed character in the movie, but, as one of the interviewees on the newly released two-disc director’s cut alludes to, the 1980s audience was different than the post-war readers of Malamud’s novel.
Twenty-first century audiences may not see with rose hues like they did twenty years ago, but the legend of Roy Hobbs remains as vital as ever. The man who wanted to be “the best there ever was” is baseball’s great mythic figure of fiction, a name more famous today than the majority of the actual players enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The company Ebbets Field Flannels produces and sells replica uniforms and hats of vintage professional baseball teams. All their memorabilia is authentically detailed to closely match what real players wore in baseball’s bygone era, but I believe there’s only one team whose merchandise they sell that’s fictional - the New York Knights, the team of Roy Hobbs. I wonder if, fifty years from now, kids will know Hobbs’ name and, if so, think he actually played the game. I’m guessing they will, on both counts.