The Basement of My Brain March 16, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Modern Films, Classic Films , 3 commentsI don’t think I want to make it a habit here, but this is a little chance to catch my breath and mention the reviews I’ve been writing for DVD Times. In case anyone reads this who doesn’t regularly visit the DVD Times site, here’s a link to all the reviews I’ve done. I’d prefer to mostly keep what I do here separate, but I’ve just put up something I wrote about one of my very favorite films, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, and I’ve been so terrified I would screw it up that I had to put together some sort of addendum over here to help alleviate my anxiety. Like I do most of the time, I wrote the bulk of the piece in one sitting, and I’ve fretted and repeatedly read over the thing for nearly a week now. At some point, I just had to let it go and move on. I think it reads better the first or second time than the hundredth, for sure.
I also wanted to thank anyone who read or commented on my No Country for Old Men review, which has been predictably popular and yielded some kind words. I think it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written, and it’s always more fun to write about a film you love than something you’re indifferent to or flat-out don’t like. Night and the City was another one of those for me. I do like the variety of different works I get to review, and a look at what I have here coming up confirms that. The three Second Run releases I’ve reviewed have been especially rewarding, particularly Palms, and Miklós Jancsó’s The Round Up promises to be at least as challenging. Also in the near future, I’ll be writing about new volumes of The Untouchables and The Mod Squad television shows. Neither one is particularly great, but I do find something comforting and entertaining about both.
The BFI will be releasing an Otto Preminger double feature of his pre- and post-Laura films, Margin for Error and A Royal Scandal. I’ll aim to have that reviewed by the March 31st release date. There’s also the animated Bee Movie, from Jerry Seinfeld, which I just received on release date last week. That will get a run-through after I finish Eclipse’s “Lubitsch Musicals” set. There’s a certain aptness in moving through Wilder to Lubitsch to A Royal Scandal. Serendipity, I guess. I should also mention that I’m modestly proud of most likely being the first person to turn E.E. Cummings’ “anyone lived in a pretty how town” into a template for a film/DVD review of Last Holiday. I amuse myself in funny ways, not all of them successful.
Violent Saturday March 7, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , add a comment
Richard Fleischer’s 1955 CinemaScope extravaganza Violent Saturday isn’t the small town film noir I was led to believe, but its dual climaxes certainly live up to the noir-appropriate title. I might more aptly characterize the film as some odd noir-melodrama hybrid, Stahl or Sirk via John Sturges maybe. Violent Saturday reminded me especially of Bad Day at Black Rock without the anxiety. In the Sturges film Spencer Tracy is an outsider who arrives to a suspicious town while trying to find a particular man. Fleischer’s movie also depicts outsiders, but they’re met only with smiles and courtesy despite being men with criminal intentions. Visually, the full-color dusty and dirt-filled landscapes of the two films are similar, but Violent Saturday has the distinction of including a much more inviting and active small town atmosphere. Yet, the Fleischer movie often gets a film noir label while Bad Day at Black Rock rarely does? Seems inconsistent to me. If anything, Sturges created a much more traditional noir, save for the color photography, than what we see in Violent Saturday.
For one thing, there is no true protagonist in Fleischer’s movie. Victor Mature gets top billing, but I think it’s a stretch to call his role or storyline the main thread in the film. He’s a mine engineer whose young son expresses disappointment that his best friend’s father has a war medal from Iwo Jima while Mature has merely a plaque of recognition. Macho notions of he-man masculinity and heroism require a somewhat predictable and safe ending. The idea that Mature can only make his son proud once he’s proven his “bravery” reeks of justifications for violence and I find it to be highly problematic. I’d like to think it’s just a misguided sign of the times, as outdated as the flowery dress his wife greets him in and the poptop beer can eagerly delivered by the maid as soon as he gets home from work.
The men Mature must somehow foil, for his son, his town, and, apparently, his manhood, are a trio of bank robbers who enter the small hamlet of Bradenville with their eyes set on a vault full of cash. Stephen McNally plays the leader and J. Carrol Naish is a bow-tied accomplice. Stealing the film in a gunmetal gray suit and hat is Lee Marvin as the third gang member. Marvin makes nearly every movie he’s in his own, but the scenes without the actor in Violent Saturday particularly suffer for his absence. Whether it’s stepping on a little kid’s hand after dropping his ever-present sinus inhaler or restlessly yammering on about his ex-wife to McNally in the middle of the night prior to the robbery, Marvin just keeps things more interesting when he’s around. The film slides into its turgid melodrama phase in the interim, but survives by never taking itself too seriously.
The audacity of Fleischer’s direction and Sydney Boehm’s screenplay now seems novel and almost precious. Boehm, whose other screenwriting credits include more typical noir fare like Anthony Mann’s Side Street and Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat, was working from a novel by William L. Heath. Without knowing anything about Heath or the source material, I can only assume that Boehm either emphasized the seemingly paradoxical crime thriller/melodrama aspect from the novel or that he put his own slant on the robbery aspect. Regardless, it makes for a somewhat strange animal that’s ultimately taken new places by Fleischer. All but the robbers (setting aside Marvin’s hinted neuroses) are given significant problems at home that are essentially relieved by the bank robbery. The swift crash of the title makes most everyone’s lives a little easier, with the added bonus of brief excitement, and the bad guys get their production code mandated consequence.
Fleischer takes us along for the ride with often beautiful blue skies, chirping birds and an altogether idyllic backdrop. Even the trio of criminals aren’t exactly menacing until Marvin spins around to fire a couple of convenient bullets during the robbery. The fact that one victim dies, setting up the opportunity for her husband to break off an unhappy marriage without the financial trappings of divorce, and the other (Tommy Noonan) turns out just fine enough to confess his near-stalking and peeping of his nurse (Virginia Leith) is like some kind of deranged male fantasy. The drenched-in-scotch Richard Egan should just barely eke out the time to wipe his tears away before scooping up Leith and keeping that suitcase nice and packed. Maybe it’s my cynicism, but the whole thing turns out mighty nicely for Egan.
Aside from the suds and tears (and well-orchestrated laughs thrown in for levity), it’s the idea of violence as some kind of therapeutic release that I found most intriguing about the film. As I said, the robbery becomes a magic key for the spectators and allows them to move on from the melodrama in their lives. It also gives Mature the heroism he missed in the war. We see humble reactions from the character, but no real remorse or psychological consequences. Then there’s the utterly peaceful Amish family man and farmer played by Ernest Borgnine. Very early on, the audience gets a lesson on the ways of the Amish when Naish encounters a family on a train. Later on, the robbers choose Borgnine’s farm as the place to cool off after the robbery. The Amish are portrayed as almost saintly and non-violent to a fault, espousing the message that God will watch over them. But when it comes time to throw a pitchfork into Lee Marvin’s back, it’s Borgnine, not God, who’s the hurler.
The Good Die Young March 4, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Gloria Grahame , add a comment
(There are a lot of spoilers here, more than I usually include.)
Late in Lewis Gilbert’s The Good Die Young, Miles “Rave” Ravenscourt, expertly played by Laurence Harvey, opines that the men of the film’s title perish in war while the surviving soldiers are, in my words, sort of like sediment shifting to the bottom of a glass. Rave himself is a supposed war hero, having killed six Germans “in the desert.” Two of the other men, both Americans, have military experience as well. Eddie Blaine (John Ireland) is an air force pilot stationed in England, but about to be shipped off to Germany, and Joe Halsey (Richard Basehart) is a Korean War vet whose two years of service are held against him as little more than missed time by his boss. A fourth man, Mike Morgan (Stanley Baker), is a boxer who’s unexpectedly won his final fight and loses the use of a hand in the process.
For varying reasons, all four are placed in desperate situations and consumed by the struggle of retaining the women they love or once loved. Rave is a careless, jobless professional gentleman with a wealthy wife who’s tired of his sponging and a wealthier father who tells him in no uncertain terms that he’d rather see Rave dead and buried than live for his share of an inheritance. A £1,000 check for losses incurred while gambling is set to bounce unless Rave can talk his way into the money. Failure to do so and the lure of financial freedom (at least for awhile) causes Rave to eye the bank notes at a nearby post office, £90,000 worth. The idea is for Rave and his three new bar buddies to catch the money as it’s being transported. And, of course, no one gets hurt.
Rave is the catalyst and each man, reluctantly, has to be convinced. Mike’s the classic boxer type you frequently see in older movies. He’s made a little from fighting, but not equal to the sacrifices of partial hearing and vision loss. The money he saved up gets wasted in lost bail money for his useless brother-in-law. Mike takes his anger out on his wife, not surprising since boxers are used to unleashing their aggression on whatever’s within arm’s reach. Eddie and Joe both have marital problems of their own. When the movie begins, Eddie’s on 48-hours leave and his wife Denise (Gloria Grahame) couldn’t care less. She’s sort of an actress, sort of a tramp, but Eddie’s all of a cuckold.
There’s a funny scene the first time we see Denise, when she’s coming home with her co-star, and a group of young girls swarm around the leading man for an autograph. He urges the girls to have Denise sign something, too. After she signs for the one fan with any interest, Denise adjusts herself and announces they have to be going now, barely fooling anyone. I love how Grahame makes the character so unapologetically bitchy and completely without sympathy. She’s a wolf fully dressed in wolf’s clothing. The last scene she has is my favorite in the film, when Eddie literally kicks the actor boyfriend in his backside and quits being so submissive. Denise likes this side of her husband and we see her warm up to him for the first time - only to have Eddie throw her into a bathtub full of water.
It’s not another man that stands between Joe and his wife Mary (Joan Collins), but another woman. Mary’s mother has been sick and so she flew to England from the U.S. to be with her, but, after a few weeks, Joe’s getting antsy. He flies over himself and learns the delay was because Mary’s pregnant. But when Joe’s ready to take Mary home, her mother fakes a suicide attempt. The flight money for tickets back to New York dries up quickly and Joe’s daily trips to a bar lead him to meeting Mike first, his old pal Eddie next, and, finally, the slithering Rave. The coincidence of film manifests itself into four guys, each with a lot to lose and all close to wit’s end. Rave is opportunistic and, as we find out, full of greed and evil.
The film’s final twenty minutes or so, post-heist, are cold-hearted and fascinating, played out on grimy and uninviting London streets. The Good Die Young isn’t really a heist thriller at all. It’s a fairly dark character study about these four men, their desperation and the reasoning for their involvement in a predictably ill-fated robbery. You could make comparisons to The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, but, aside from this being inferior and missing Sterling Hayden, I think Gilbert’s film exists in a different, more noirlike area. It’s a very good picture and fits nicely in what I’d consider to be the style of film noir. Death, desperation, darkness - what more could you ask for?
Controlled, I believe, by MGM, there’s not yet a DVD for The Good Die Young in R1. The unfortunately named Wienerworld Ltd is listed as distributor for this in R2. Horrible cover art, and I can’t speak to the quality. The broadcast version I watched from a TCM recording looked a little weak, if acceptable, but the sound had a persistent hiss.