99 River Street April 27, 2008
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If film noir had an official sport it would be boxing. Black and white cinematography perfectly captures the sweat and grit of two men pounding their gloved fists into each other’s raw skin. Raging Bull isn’t a film noir, but it accomplishes the visual doom of a fight without the use of color, as does The Set-Up, Robert Wise’s brilliantly lean noir starring Robert Ryan. Boxing threatens to be the subject of Phil Karlson’s 99 River Street, too, but it’s soon shown to be a visual trick. The audience sees a match that turns out to be a television replay being watched by the man getting his eye punched into partial working order. Ernie Driscoll (John Payne) is now driving taxi cabs in New York City and his marriage to Pauline (Peggie Castle) seems ruptured. Things were probably better when Ernie was regularly winning fights, but his new dream of opening a filling station isn’t glamorous enough for Pauline’s taste.
Ernie’s boss and pal Stan (Frank Faylen) suggests a tried and true method of patching things up with Pauline: buy her a big box of chocolates, take her out on the town, mix in a few glasses of brandy, and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. The next thing you know a bouncing baby will pop out and everything will be good as new again. Ernie’s plan never gets off the ground, though. He has the chocolates, but it’s Pauline who surprises him by kissing her lover Victor Rawlins (Brad Dexter) at the flower shop where she works. Ernie is both devastated and livid. He then gets distracted by would-be Broadway actress Linda James (Evelyn Keyes) who confesses she’s killed someone. Ernie means well, but ends up with an arrest warrant for assault and battery. By the time the ex-boxer finds his wife’s dead body in the backseat of his cab, things seem like they could hardly be any worse
Though Payne is a generic noir protagonist, 99 River Street has enough other attributes to merit a closer look. Karlson’s direction is expectedly stellar, and Franz Planer, who would go on to shoot several Audrey Hepburn films, emits some strong noir camera work. There’s a very striking cut to Peggie Castle’s legs, with a mirror visible in the background between her two outstretched limbs and Brad Dexter appearing in the reflection. It’s an exquisite image. Another memorably framed shot comes when Linda, by now tagging along to help Ernie no matter the cost, meets up with Rawlins. Their cigarettes kiss and ash never looked so sensual. The entire scene, played out in a Jersey bar, gives Keyes the chance to fully steal the film.
Her performance is deserving of high praise as one of film noir’s essential female characterizations. Linda is first introduced as seemingly delusional, an actress who’s been in the city three years without a job and thinks she’ll land a lead role in a Broadway play. We next encounter her as a more hysterical figure, but learn this was merely her acting a part. This back story of the character as a struggling actress works perfectly within the film’s plot. Unhappy with letting down her friend Ernie, she remains loyal as a witness to his innocence and gets another opportunity to play a role, this time as a flirtatious barfly. The bedroom eyes she gives Rawlins make for an absolutely breathtaking shift that’s perfectly executed by Keyes. To see the importance of contextual performance in film noir, watch Evelyn Keyes here. She’s exceptional.
Another turn I enjoyed in the film was from Jack Lambert, a character actor who initially comes across as a poor man’s Lee Marvin, but sort of carves out his own B-movie villain niche in the process. He also pops up in Kiss Me Deadly alongside Jack Elam as Paul Stewart’s henchmen. That 99 River Street was obviously a low-budget film with modest expectations is a reality that probably should be taken into consideration, but it doesn’t really burden the picture in any way. Sure you could put Robert Mitchum in the Payne role and have a stronger film, but you’d also lose something. Mitchum would make it his own and distract from the narrative. As it is, the film curves through unpredictable paths and the audience can never be sure how Ernie, with a built-in volatility from his fighting days, will react. Payne’s a stiff, but the fact that his character has been placed in a very noir and desperate situation shouldn’t be overlooked.
One of the hallmarks of 1950’s film noir, as opposed to most of what came out of the 1940’s, can be found in the evolution of the protagonist into a wrongly accused innocent. It’s the paranoia angle that would especially rise up in the politically-themed films of the 1970’s. Hitchcock loved this motif, using it to good effect in The Wrong Man, I Confess, and the non-noir North by Northwest. It’s also found in The Big Heat, Crime Wave, Nightfall, and Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential, among others. The idea that someone not guilty of a crime would be hunted by law enforcement now seems very much like a movie plot, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that this basic insinuation betrays the ideal that the police are infallible. We know, of course, that they’re not, but we also know that criminals don’t always receive the justice they do in movies. Exploring these themes of vengeance owed and non-guilty protagonists getting framed for crimes they didn’t commit was a favorite of Karlson’s, as well.
In 99 River Street, the director was able to put both to good use. It seems like Ernie might have killed someone if given the chance, but his hands stay clean. He certainly has reason to lash out, and the overall tone feels bleakly pessimistic. By the film’s end, when we learn the title address is actually in Jersey City, desolate blacks cover the night sky of the waterfront and that unmistakable noir mood becomes all-consuming. The happy conclusion betrays the template, but it’s forgivable. Even with Payne’s shortcomings, which admittedly could be seen as strengths allowing the viewer to easily relate to the actor, this is still an important film noir, made by one of the movement’s unsung champions. A DVD release seems like an obvious prospect, but nothing so far. The theatrical print I saw was almost stunning in detail and rich black levels, nearly immaculate from start to finish. It was part of a United Artists’ 90th anniversary retrospective so here’s hoping MGM follows their noir releases of last summer with a fresh set very soon.
The Sniper April 3, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , 4 comments
You know you’re in for a bit of “social enlightenment” when a prologue comes up even before the studio logo. In the case of The Sniper, Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 return from the Hollywood blacklist, the viewer is promised a “man whose enemy was womankind.” In several ways, this is a novel approach. Here we have a movie about a man who was sent away to prison for violently going after a woman with a baseball bat, placed in the psych ward, and paroled despite still being under psychological care. The film’s point of view could easily have been that Edward Miller (played by Arthur Franz) was a product of either his own insanity or, alternatively, society’s. Even the idea that an unstable criminal might have a reason for his madness is unusual for movies of this era, when the bad guys are often portrayed as shadowy black hats without the need for analysis. We accept villains simply because they do unseemly things the same way we recognize cops because they carry a badge and retain a serious demeanor at all times.
The much more humanistic path taken by Dmytryk’s film, trying to understand what causes men like Miller to inflict pain on others, is a tricky one, especially when dealing with someone who’s shown killing pretty brunettes in cold blood. Though not elaborated on, the culprit of Miller’s irrational violence towards women is implied to be his mother. A handful of years before the screen’s most famous mother complex, in Psycho, a man is shown indiscriminately shooting women from afar because he’s apparently trying to repeatedly murder the one who gave birth to him. The audience witnesses a test run when Wilson aims his rifle from above, steadies a female neighbor in his sight, and pulls the trigger, resulting in an empty click. In the first of many hints of sympathy, the man copes with his psychosis by struggling for help. His prison shrink isn’t available so he intentionally burns his hand on the apartment stove.
By the time Miller actually does claim someone’s life, his reaction veers significantly from remorse. A friendly customer of the killer’s dry cleaning delivery job, played by the always welcome Marie Windsor, is coldly shot outside the club where she plays piano, her head breaking the glass that encloses an advertisement with her own picture on it. The images are bold, abrupt, and startling. The killer’s answer is to have a drink at a bar. He’s happier now than at any other point in the film, acting as though some pressurized force has finally been unleashed. The second killing is even more striking and follows soon after. A woman at the same bar writes her address on a coaster, but soon rebuffs him upon sensing his instability. She then goes home, fixes herself a drink and stands behind an uncovered window. She too is shot in the head, as an efficient bullet leaves behind shattered glass. As we’ve seen and read about serial killers in the decades since, Wilson is the type who begs to be caught, and even writes a letter to the police anonymously seeking capture.
At this point, about midway in, the film shifts from a character study about a mentally ill serial killer to a rather conventional, sometimes preachy police procedural. Most surprising is that the headlining actor playing the main detective is none other than political wingnut Adolphe Menjou, one of the loudest voices of the HUAC-supporting Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Showing his true stripes were dotted with green instead of faux red, white, and blue, Menjou here takes top billing in a movie directed by a man who was an admitted Communist for a brief period of time, and who had just recently been released from serving four and a half months of prison time for refusing to cooperate with the Congressional witch hunt. Values. Of course, Dmytryk by this time had groveled away his reputation (RIP Jules) and helped legitimize the whole sordid mess, so he was apparently “cured.” The involvement of message man Stanley Kramer as producer adds even more to the intrigue.
Reportedly shot, er, filmed in a remarkably quick amount of time (just 18 days according to this excellent article), The Sniper may have given Menjou a swift paycheck and top billing, but his character is underwritten and the true lead performance is from Franz as the troubled killer. Menjou’s most effective scene comes when a young punk is mistaken for the sniper and brought into the police station. The kid puts on a tough act, but Menjou gives him a good slap and he starts bawling. Is this the best way to handle those who have trouble coping with their problems? Give the whiners a swift kick in the pants so they’ll swallow their complaints? The crybaby is annoying, but the film still seems inconsistent. Miller can’t find anyone to save him from himself, yet he’s portrayed with incredible humanity given the circumstances. Menjou’s character slaps the potential junior sniper into place, but the entire movie bathes the actual killer in a warm glow of empathy.
Whether a result of intentionally ambiguous filmmaking or simply a sloppy narrative, The Sniper leaves quite a few blanks unfilled. Instead of seeming bothersome, it gives the film a tautness commonly found in such low-budget, quickly-shot films of the time. Proponents of the movie could easily argue that it urges the viewer to look deeper inside the killer’s mind and not be content to expect an explanatory flashback of the character’s various traumas. A criminal psychologist played by Richard Kiley preaches about the mentality of men like Miller, sketching out the makings of what we now know as profiling, and, though it can’t help but be slightly tedious, the scene is also fascinating because the methodology has proven true time and again. The Sniper was a decade or more ahead of its time, but it nevertheless resembles an early, truncated version of some of the finer serial killer films of the past two decades. The main difference, and the reason the film is still interesting, comes from the decision to spend well over half the runtime with the killer in a mostly non-judgmental tone, including a consistent, but still unexpected final scene that emphasizes him as a man more than a monster.
Violent Saturday March 7, 2008
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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
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(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.
The Cobweb August 20, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Gloria Grahame , 3 comments
I have seen the Technicolor light and it is good. The Cobweb, not so much. Let’s say it’s a bad film, a ridiculous film, even a hideously dangerous film. It’s still kind of fun and it still has an auburn-haired Gloria Grahame in a low-cut glamour dress, a darkly lit nightgown and a shoulder-baring shower scene. So it can’t be all bad, right? The only way to really get through Vincente Minnelli’s CinemaScope melodrama is to realize it’s a trashy mess. The film’s plot centers around drapes in a mental institution’s library, for goodness sake. Over two hours about drapes! Would a jab about The Drapes of Wrath be too much? For this film, I think not!
So The Drapes-, er The Cobweb concerns a mental institution filled with patients waiting to be “healed” and a staff as ineptly nutso as the people being treated. Richard Widmark stars as the head doctor, Gloria Grahame is his wife, Charles Boyer is the faded shell of a once-great psychiatrist, Lauren Bacall plays a new employee getting over the death of her husband and child in an auto accident, and silent film great Lillian Gish is the bitter old woman who’s the clinic administrator. The eccentric cast is rounded out by Oscar Levant as a patient who gets to say some of the best lines in the movie, newcomer John Kerr as a troubled artist (in a role originally set for James Dean until MGM was unable to strike a deal with Warner Bros.), Susan Strasberg as the “phobic” girl Kerr falls for in the institution, Tommy Rettig as Widmark and Grahame’s son and the most sane person in the film, Paul Stewart as another of the clinic’s doctors, and, finally, Fay Wray as Boyer’s wife. Whew, an exhaustingly great cast Minnelli had to work with and at least they’re not the ones who let the audience down.
I can’t say the same for the ridiculous plot and screenplay. Based on a novel by William Gibson, who’s credited with “additional dialogue” in a screenplay written by John Paxton, the film actually tells the story of the trouble surrounding new curtains in the institution library. The competing potential designs are Grahame’s expensive flower pattern, Gish’s economy cotton, and a patient-designed choice based on Kerr’s artwork resembling elementary school fingerpaint drawings. The remaining difficulties in our characters’ lives comprise the meat of the story, but they’re basically ridiculous too. Widmark and Grahame are having (intimate) marital problems, she goes out with Boyer for four hours worth of cocktails to discuss the drapes (!), and when he drops by and makes a move on her the next day she is awestruck at such nerve from Boyer, who delivers an incredulously sincere response when accused of impropriety that must be heard to be believed.
Meanwhile, Widmark closes in on the widow Bacall, who ultimately puts a stop to their short-lived liaison, but not until Grahame has discovered her husband’s impropriety. Remarkably, Widmark and Grahame end the film as a happy couple and we’re left with the words “the trouble was over,” to bookmark the opening “the trouble began” seen at the beginning of the film. This is an absurd conclusion though, as ridiculous as the film’s repeated idea that a little analysis and time at the clinic will cure the patients and make them just like new again. The couple have been in icy turmoil the entire film, one’s had an affair while the other declined her own, and nothing has made the audience see why these two would have patched things up. Widmark especially comes off like a jerk for returning to Grahame only after Bacall declined to continue their affair.
There’s also an internal struggle amongst the administration at the clinic, with Gish, Widmark, and Boyer constantly at each other’s throats, over the drapes and other matters. The patients themselves are portrayed sympathetically, as though they’re rehabilitating broken bones. This dangerously simplistic take on psychological disorder seems common for the time, but no less negligent. Furthermore, the patients appear to have total freedom of their actions. The neurotic narcissist portrayed by Kerr is first seen wading through a field near the clinic and later takes Strasberg to the movies before inciting a panic by disappearing, only to turn up ragged and wet at Widmark’s house. Oscar Levant, who struggled with time in mental hospitals in real life, seems to pop up whenever and wherever a “look how funny the crazy person is” chuckle is required.
Scenes like Levant’s create a too frequent conflict over whether the audience should or shouldn’t be laughing. A significant amount of the film is played so deadly serious (again with the drapes!) that the viewer can’t help but snicker. This is a common problem I have with melodrama of the 1950s, but The Cobweb is almost in a class of its own for such a high-powered cast and director. The score by Leonard Rosenman is a big, overdone part of why the film works better as an unintentional comedy and has the effect of a jackhammer alerting the audience to just how important every little crisis can be. Rosenman also scored Rebel Without a Cause the same year, his first in the movies, and would win back-to-back Academy Awards, for Barry Lyndon and Bound for Glory. His work here in itself isn’t particularly bad, but it really doesn’t belong as a means of simply creating dramatic tension when there should be none. By the end of the film, it already feels like self-parody.
The only bright spots in the film come from its cast of second-tier movie stars. My affection for Gloria Grahame has been well-documented here in the past, and this is one of her better leading roles. Though billed fourth, it’s Grahame’s show and her reunion with Minnelli after taking home an Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful three years earlier doesn’t disappoint. I guess I could see where some might find her annoying, and she goes unmistakably over the top, but for such a wacky film it fits. Often relegated to supporting roles, Grahame made the most of her rare star turns and The Cobweb pulsates in a littler higher pitch when she’s on the screen.
It’s also interesting to see Richard Widmark head the cast of a melodrama, in a role more often played by someone like Rock Hudson or even William Holden. I like Widmark, but Minnelli’s film (and the inane script) bring out his weaknesses more than his strengths. Bacall doesn’t bring a whole lot to her role either, and, like Boyer, isn’t in the film as much you’d think from the billing, while Lillian Gish’s character has a personality switch stuck on “angry old bitch.” It’s John Kerr, though, who overacts his way into bad film infamy as a troubled youth caricature. Seeing Kerr is enough to remind the viewer just how compelling James Dean was. Everything Kerr does plays like fake histrionics, bypassing any real emotion, whereas Dean commanded the screen with disillusioned anxiety like you were seeing a young man disintegrate before your very eyes. Don’t blame Dean for Kerr’s style either; East of Eden was released in March, The Cobweb followed in July, and Rebel hit screens in October of 1955.
The Cobweb was made for MGM and its home video rights are controlled by Warner Bros. Never released on VHS or DVD, there was a laserdisc MGM put out prior to losing control of the title. As terrible as the film often is, I would still like to have it on DVD (along with another unreleased Minnelli title Some Came Running) if the color and sharpness are up to snuff. It’s certainly worth seeing if you like Gloria Grahame or, I guess, Vincente Minnelli and if you enjoy melodramas that take themselves way, way too seriously then you might like it outright. Or, you could do like almost every character in the film and soothe your problems with a nip of alcohol. I’d think that would greatly enhance the film and you can smile along to the happy ending as Hollywood tells us everything is just fine. There’s no need to worry because the trouble is now over.
Film Noir x 4 August 8, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1940s, 1950s , 4 comments
Four viewings of movies designated as film noir in a 24-hour period and the only side effects I seem to have are the almost uncontrollable desires to rob a bank and get mixed up with a woman who’s no good for me. It’ll pass, I’m sure. The new Warner Bros. Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4 has been my most anticipated in the series yet, mostly because we get ten films instead of the usual five. Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night is the best of the lot, but I was most anxious to first sit down with the disc containing both Andre De Toth’s Crime Wave and the rarely seen Decoy, directed by Jack Bernhard. In between the two, I shuttled off to New York City’s Film Forum to take in a double feature of The Window (directed by Ted Tetzlaff, cinematographer of the Hitchcock masterpiece Notorious, as well as the squishily feelgood Stanwyck-MacMurray Christmas movie Remember the Night) and the absurdly-named Deadline at Dawn, in their NYC Noir series.
Let’s start with Crime Wave. Has there been a more stylish noir ever? The only candidate I can think of from memory is Ray’s On Dangerous Ground, but De Toth probably outdoes even that excellent film here. Sterling Hayden (currently staring in disbelief at the top of my film journal here) plays an aggressively tough homicide detective who’s trying to find the perp responsible for a gas station shooting of a cop. The film’s real focus is on Gene Nelson’s Steve Lacey, an ex-con who’s been straight since leaving prison before he gets roped up with some former associates responsible for the cop killing. Nelson is very good here and it’s a shame he never had much of an acting career. He did go on to direct numerous television shows, everything from “The Andy Griffith Show” to “Starsky and Hutch,” as well as a couple of Elvis Presley movies.
I still miss Hayden when he’s not on the screen though, which is far too often. As far as 1950s unsung actors go, Sterling Hayden is right there at the top of the list. His more famous roles, like in The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, are as crooks, but he’s effectively authoritative here in Crime Wave. The low angle shots De Toth and cinematographer Bert Glennon use to showcase Hayden are remarkably modern. His crisp white shirt and mussed blonde hair are used to great effect and the toothpick as cigarette substitute is a nice touch. Really, the entire film sparkles and shines. It’s even better than I imagined and a clear influence, indirect or not, on film and television crime dramas from the last fifty years. Los Angeles gets its own day in the dark to rival the many, many films noir set in New York City.
One such film, arguably a noir but included in the NYC Noir series nonetheless, is The Window, a 1949 RKO picture. It’s about a boy who tends to make up outlandish stories, reminiscent of the Aesop’s fable about the boy who cried “wolf,” featured on the screen in the film’s opening titles. Tommy, played by the tragic child actor Bobby Driscoll whose unidentified 31-year old body was found by two young boys and subsequently buried in potter’s field less than 20 years after this film was made, can’t sleep one sultry summer night and goes out on the fire escape. He climbs up to sleep outside his upstairs neighbors’ window and awakens to see a man stabbed in the back with scissors fall to his death. When he tells his parents, played by Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale (the future Della Street), they don’t believe him and neither do the police when he tries to convince them.
The film is ultimately effective despite basically every adult acting liking an idiot. After Tommy pleads his case to the police and his parents, what do the parents do but leave him alone all night with the sinister neighbors the Kellersons lurking upstairs. The thin plot is stretched out as far as possible, but redeemed by an exciting and suspenseful climax. It’s interesting just how inept the police are portrayed, including a ridiculous sequence where they have Tommy jump from maybe fifty feet or more onto a large round fireman’s net. Throughout, Driscoll does a nice job of being not too annoying to the audience while playing a character who pretty much should be bothersome. It’s a very entertaining, worthwhile picture languishing in the WB vaults probably because they’re not sure exactly how to release it on DVD. I would expect it sooner rather than later though.
The second movie up in the NYC Noir double feature, also an RKO picture, was Deadline at Dawn from 1946, the only film directed by Broadway veteran (and ex-husband of acting guru Stella Adler) Harold Clurman. First and foremost, the main reason to see this movie is the involvement of Clifford Odets as screenwriter, adapting a story by William Irish, pen name of Cornell Woolrich, who also wrote the source material for Rear Window and, coincidentally, The Window. His dialogue sparkles with ludicrous, unnatural humor. “Out of the mouths of actors…” I can only describe the film as terrifically bad. It’s much funnier, as a result of the Odets screenplay, than most any of the traditional comedies of the era. The biggest laugh might be via Joseph Calleia as the gangster brother of the deceased, who comments to a blonde-haired vixen something to the effect that she would look pretty good if someone cut off her head.
The other thing the film has going for it is the presence of the beautiful and talented Susan Hayward. She plays a dancer relegated to long sessions with a creepy guy who wears white gloves to disguise his infectious hands while performing at a night club. There, she meets a sailor who blacked out after going back to another woman’s apartment earlier in the night and found a large sum of money he’d taken from her. Together, they discover the woman’s been murdered and team up with a cabbie (played by Paul Lukas) to try and solve the crime. It’s highly convoluted, but kind of fun anyway. The cops come off as morons in this one too, notably when they encounter a drunken star baseball player. Instead of taking him home or to the station when he wants another bottle of liquor at three or four in the morning, a police officer literally goes up to the dead woman’s apartment in search of more alcohol for the inebriated athlete.
As the innocent sailor, Bill Williams shows you why he never became a star, instead remaining stuck working in television and the odd film like Son of Paleface. The whole of Deadline at Dawn plays like some kind of nutty noir, ridiculously laughable throughout but entertaining nonetheless. Again, Ms. Hayward’s screen presence goes a long way. If she weren’t in the film, it would have become overwhelmingly silly long before the Agatha Christie-lite finale seen from a mile away. The presence of Odets goes to prove the theory that older movies are far more interesting than modern ones. It seems that these smaller, low-budget films could get away with almost anything as long as it wasn’t explicitly in conflict with the production code. I can’t imagine anything like Deadline at Dawn coming out of either the major studios or the independent ones today. Even if it’s not groundbreaking or all that accomplished, it’s still loads of fun.
Finally, I finished up the WB disc of Crime Wave/Decoy with the bizarre noir of the latter. Directed by Jack Bernhard and written for the screen by blacklisted writer and Crime Wave actor Ned Young, Decoy justifiably has taken a place as a hard-to-find gem of 1940s B-movie crime thrillers. The ill-fated British actress Jean Gillie, who strangely seems to have borrowed Joan Fontaine’s cheekbones, plays a gleefully psychotic femme fatale princess unafraid of seductively killing anyone in the path of $400,000 of stolen bank robbery money buried in a hidden location. The film teeters into sci-fi/horror territory with talk of reviving gas chamber victims through the mysterious methylene blue, but it’s still definitely a noir. When Gillie’s Margot Shelby cheers on the film’s Dr. Craig as he digs for the buried loot, her lines and campy delivery echo orgasmic sexual outbursts.
DVD Savant himself and commentator Glenn Erickson likens Decoy to a Quentin Tarantino movie had he been around in the 1940s (though we all know he probably would have been aping German Expressionism so much that he wouldn’t have been able to create something as original and exhilarating as Decoy), I’d argue that it’s really much closer to David Lynch. There’s such an abundance of weird and perverse happenings going on that someone with an odd sensibility like Lynch would fit more neatly in the world created here than Tarantino. There’s also an often inappropriate score, swelling at odd times and including piano playing that doesn’t match up with the hands of the person seen in the film pounding on the keys. It’s a little mixture of corny and avant-garde and fits completely with the weird atmosphere found in Decoy.
Both Crime Wave and Decoy in the Film Noir set look outstanding, especially the crisp transfer of the former. Decoy is apparently slightly incomplete, judging from Savant’s review, but plays just fine nonetheless. The other two movies, The Window and Deadline at Dawn, are not available on DVD, but both were originally released by RKO and thus owned by Warner Bros., so we’re likely to see them at some point. Neither of these two really qualify under a strict film noir definition - no femme fatale, no brooding protagonist, and no real battle with fate or internal demons - but they’re definitely at least as close as films already classified as such like Dillinger and Clash by Night. Each of the unreleased movies deserves at least one viewing, with very little lurking beneath the surface to justify much more than that if you like interesting subtexts and seeing things from different angles, but neither is as impressive as Crime Wave or Decoy, two giants of unheralded film noir.
Ace in the Hole on DVD July 23, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Billy Wilder , 7 comments
In the Criterion Collection’s monthly newsletter, they ask a prominent figure associated with a previously released title to compose a list of ten favorite selections among the Criterion catalog. Even though it was just released this past week, I know for certain that I would choose their Ace in the Hole
At the first chance I had, I devoured every nook and cranny of the two-disc set. I was initially disappointed by the cover art, seemingly too simple and dull. When it was in my hands though, it seemed fittingly in-your-face. No complaints (though I still haven’t warmed to the figure-8 case design Criterion has adopted for double disc sets since their new logo switch last summer). Inside the case, we have a mock newspaper instead of the usual insert booklet, perfectly keeping with the film. Two lengthy essays, by critic Molly Haskell and the director Guy Maddin, make up the contents of the mini-paper and there are even advertisements to re-elect Escadero Sheriff Kretzer and for the rattlesnake hunt that proves crucial to the film’s main character, Charles “Chuck” Tatum, fearlessly embodied by Kirk Douglas.
The DVD transfer is very good, though not immaculate, and has a beautiful contrast. There are brief instances where the picture becomes soft, but certainly nothing distracting or disappointing. For your listening pleasure, Criterion has included a commentary with British film professor Neil Sinyard, co-author of Journey Down Sunset Boulevard: The Films of Billy Wilder. Sinyard has a very relaxed, easygoing voice and he provides a highly informative accompaniment to the picture (probably best heard after seeing the film though, as he does hint at things to come). He comes across as knowledgeable (despite mistakenly referring to Ace co-screenwriter Lesser Samuels as writing No Way Back, instead of the actual title No Way Out, the previous year) without turning the commentary into a dry lecture.
Indeed, there were several items of interest I learned from his commentary, notably that Sunset Blvd. party guest, and famed composer of songs like “Silver Bells” and “Que Sera, Sera,” Jay Livingston was the co-writer of the wry anthem “We’re Comin’ Leo.” Also, Sinyard astutely comments on many of the impressively subtle aspects of Wilder’s film, such as the full circle shots of Tatum at both the beginning and end of the movie in the Albuquerque newspaper office. Plus, he convinced me of the sexual relationship between Tatum and Jan Sterling’s Lorraine Minosa. Despite being a tad disappointed at one or two things omitted from the commentary, such as the failure to point out the possible connotations of the S&M Amusement Corp., overall, I was enthralled. I also appreciated that Sinyard couldn’t resist mentioning William Holden’s quip that Wilder had a “mind full of razorblades.”
Also on the first disc is the film’s original theatrical trailer, even identifying it by the briefly-released preferred title instead of The Big Carnival, which the film came to be known as after Paramount tried a happier, more cheerful alternative name when the first one didn’t attract moviegoers. The second disc of the set contains the bulk of the extra features. First up is film critic Michel Ciment’s hour-long interview documentary from 1980, Portrait of a “60% Perfect Man,” which also features brief comments from Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Wilder’s writing partner I.A.L. Diamond. It’s fun to watch, if not particularly enlightening until maybe the final segment, but Ciment is an incredibly passive interviewer. Of interest, parts of Wilder’s art collection are shown and we see the director still in possession of an almost manic energy, unable to sit still throughout the interview.
A 1984 interview with Kirk Douglas is here as well, wherein the actor repeatedly compliments Wilder and tellingly expresses his surprise that American audiences didn’t warm to Ace in the Hole while European crowds seemed to enjoy it much more. Douglas sees Tatum as slightly less inhumane than the impression I’d guess most viewers have of the character. Over thirty years after the film’s release, Douglas seemed to have the exact same speaking voice then as he did in 1951. What a virile, fit guy Kirk Douglas has always been. I mentioned this in another entry, but I saw him not too long ago and despite surviving numerous setbacks like a debilitating stroke, a death-defying helicopter accident and reconstructive knee operations, the man remains a titan. His voice is irreparably damaged by the stroke, but his spirit and energy are incredible for someone who’s ninety years of age.
Criterion has also included another Wilder interview, recorded at the American Film Institute in 1986 with George Stevens, Jr. playing silent observer to Wilder riffing on his beginnings in Hollywood, the need for directors who can read, and his thoughts on the studios. Neither of these pieces showcasing the director are as comprehensive as Volker Schlöndorff’s Billy Wilder Speaks, but both still make for welcome inclusions. The Ciment interview does a better job of showing Wilder’s daily routines, as we see him doing everything from yelling at a televised baseball game to opening a cigar while lying in a hammock. An audio interview with co-screenwriter Walter Newman by Rui Nogueira basically continues the Wilder lovefest and confirms the idea that several of the film’s trademark elements came from the director, including the blistering opening sequence of Tatum’s first visit to the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin.
Finally, we’re rewarded with a welcome afterword from Spike Lee, whose work, believe it or not, owes a significant debt to Wilder. He shows us a framed lobby card of the film, in its The Big Carnival incarnation, autographed by Wilder and Douglas. There’s a funny passage in Cameron Crowe’s Conversations with Wilder, a must for fans of the director, where Wilder mentions that Lee had stopped by his office to have a few things signed and the elder filmmaker was surprised to learn that the man in his office was Spike Lee. Wilder didn’t know what the director looked like, though he had been a fan of his work. In the afterword on the Criterion disc, Lee makes the point that Ace in the Hole shares a prophetic vision of the media circus with Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd.
Upon hearing Lee’s proclamation, I wanted to give him a huge bear hug since I too consider these two films as kindred spirits, among the best the decade had to offer. Though Cameron Crowe (who is thanked in the liner notes, but is conspicuously absent here) owes a substantial debt to Billy Wilder and is obviously a fond admirer of his films, I would nominate Spike Lee as a more likely heir to Wilder’s throne in modern filmmaking. Like Wilder, Lee is unafraid of taking bold steps in his films, even if he doesn’t share the same audience or critical popularity. He acknowledges in the interview the borrowing of Ace in the Hole’s final shot of Tatum collapsing to the floor for Lee’s own Malcolm X, a film which remains one of the key biography films of the past twenty years. Also on the disc is a stills gallery, showing several interesting behind-the-scenes photos of Wilder, Douglas, and Sterling, including what appears to be an actual deck of cards depicting the film’s doomed subject Leo Minosa as the ace of spades. What I wouldn’t give to have such a collectible.
It’s been a long time coming, but finally Ace in the Hole has made its way onto DVD. I’m anxious to see what kind of boost the release will mean for its reputation over the next few decades. Even after 56 years and repeated instances of life imitating art, the film still plays as very, very dark and unrelentingly cynical. Yet, I find myself loving it more on each viewing. I’m over the moon about Criterion stepping up to unleash the film to the masses. Such a high profile release guarantees it much more publicity and provides a greater awareness than if Paramount had simply slapped out a no-frills disc with an ugly cover (think of the atrocity that is the cover for The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek) and a bargain retail price.
Of course, they’ve had the chance to put out their own version for over a decade and haven’t so I’m thrilled Paramount came to their senses and licensed it to Criterion. For a company so used to putting out important, comprehensive editions of great films, Criterion may have outdone themselves here. This was a film completely unavailable on the home video market across the globe, rarely seen on television over the years and even less often under its original title. The quality of the movie and Wilder’s reputation should have warranted something more, but instead year after year went by without a release of any kind from Paramount. Now, finally, we’re rewarded with the Criterion set, a definitive look (though the inclusion of the animated short The Big Story would have been nice) at Wilder’s most daring film. Ace in the Hole, finally rescued.
Top 50 of 1950s June 30, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , 8 comments
It’s that time again, as the Criterion forum’s Lists Project focuses on the decade of the 1950s. As described in my list for the previous decade (here), a master list of 100 films is calculated from participating members’ individual 50 film lists. I probably take this whole thing way too seriously as I try to meticulously fill in the gaps of what I’ve seen and re-watch things where it’s been a couple of years since my last viewing. I’m not reluctant to include the films frequently honored in these type of lists, as long as I think something deserves to be there, but reputation alone isn’t going to be enough. Looking back at my list, it becomes a little too obvious the kind of film I like and a few directors (Wilder, Ray, Mann, Hitchcock) are particularly well-represented. This decade, while not as consistent as the forties in my mind, had more really good and great films than the previous one. As I said the last time around though, I’m content with the final flims included and their rankings. I’ve commented briefly on each choice and included links to pieces I’ve previously written where available.
1.) Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) - For me, the most fascinating film ever made. A helpless, wheelchair-bound photographer can’t help spying on his neighbors after weeks of being confined to his New York City apartment. It’s a cracking suspense film, up there with Hitchcock’s (and thus anyone else’s) best, but the really interesting parts are Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of L.B. Jefferies, his relationship with Grace Kelly’s character, and, of course, the voyeuristic element. Writers tend to psychoanalyze Stewart’s Vertigo character ad nauseam, but Jefferies here becomes equally unraveled. Even though his suspicions ultimately prove accurate in Rear Window, his methods are still unhealthy, intrusive and creepy at best, disturbing at worst. Also, notice how little Stewart pays attention to Kelly and how their relationship suddenly becomes warmer when he tells her he thinks one of the neighbors he’s been spying on has killed his wife. Finally, the multiple levels of watching (Stewart on his neighbors, the viewer on Stewart, and, in a sense, Hitchcock on everyone) really showcase a master director at the very top of his game. I think my favorite scene is when Stewart is looking through his lens at Raymond Burr while Kelly is being escorted from Burr’s apartment by the police and suddenly Burr turns to look at Stewart, the camera, and the audience. It always makes me feel quite uncomfortable, like I’ve been caught watching something I shouldn’t have been.
2.) Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950) - Somehow Gloria Swanson is Norma Desmond. It’s difficult to think of another actor so associated with just one role. Even though she was Oscar-nominated twice before (in 1929 and 1930), Swanson has become Norma in most of our hearts. Wilder’s scathing look at the devouring nature of Hollywood is still unsurpassed in its depiction of the insanity of the movie industry. It’s no accident that, fifty-one years later, David Lynch used another famous Hollywood road for the title of his look at the destructive side of Hollywood with Mulholland Dr.
3.) In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) - I wrote a lot about this one already so I don’t want to drone on, but I can’t think of another film in any language or decade that inspires the level of heartache found in Ray’s masterpiece.
4.) Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) - I like Rear Window better, but Vertigo (which ranked first in the last Lists Project go-around) may be the better film. Regardless, it’s difficult to argue with either’s place in cinematic history. Combined with the Capra and Mann films, shouldn’t these two make Jimmy Stewart the consensus top Hollywood movie star of all time? Really, who else could have pulled off so many variations and downright shake-ups of an image while maintaining their strong popularity. Vertigo, like Citizen Kane, can be watched literally dozens if not hundreds of times without becoming tiresome. It’s that layered and endlessly fascinating while somehow still being fun and entertaining.
5.) The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959) - Aside from Citizen Kane, this could be the greatest debut film in the history of cinema. Antoine Doinel is a remarkable character - a tad precocious, a little bratty, but ultimately a kid looking for escape. Like Welles, Truffaut probably never made anything else as perfect as his first feature. Certainly the other Doinel feature films didn’t approach the first’s brilliance and left many people disappointed. I like them all to varying degrees but The 400 Blows is in a class by itself.
6.) Ace in the Hole (Wilder, 1951) - Wilder’s long-neglected masterpiece of unbridled cynicism is as unrelenting as anything from the decade. Its power continues to increase as the pull of the media strengthens and the masses continue to give society a bad name.
7.) A Face in the Crowd (Kazan, 1957) - A perfect companion piece to Ace in the Hole, Kazan’s film outdoes Network by twenty years and still plays like a punch to the gut of all those talking head followers. Andy Griffith is remarkable and his television show persona might look just a little creepier after watching this.
8.) Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951) - A fascinating, moving look into faith, religion and the human struggle of balancing both with our own individual needs. Like Ordet, it doesn’t try to provide answers so much as encourage introspection. For Bresson, it was a leap forward from Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne stylistically and the first of his films to use his trademark “models,” or non-professional actors.
9.) Singin’ in the Rain (Donen & Kelly, 1952) - The musical for people who hate musicals. The glorious Technicolor, the transition from silents to talkies and Jean Hagen are all icing on Gene Kelly’s cake. There just aren’t very many scenes in film as magical as Kelly’s performance of the title song.
10.) Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954) - It’s amazing to see the enduring popularity of Kurosawa’s film when you take into consideration everything it seemingly has going against it. Shot in academy ratio black-and-white, the film is nearly 3 1/2 hours in length and, of course, in Japanese. Yet, generations now have been introduced to Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune, Japanese filmmaking and even international cinema through this film. It makes for a wonderful entry point and remains a resoundingly entertaining epic.
11.) Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959) - Hilarious, daring, and fun, Wilder’s first collaboration with Jack Lemmon proved to be a winning effort. I’m still amazed how the scene between Tony Curtis (doing his best Cary Grant) and Marilyn on the yacht made it past the censors.
12.) Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957) - I’m not sure how I find Giulietta Masina here so poignant and heartbreaking, but kind of annoying in La Strada. Her Cabiria is truly one of the most memorable, devastating characters in Italian film.
13.) North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) - Endlessly watchable, Hitchcock’s frequent theme of mistaken identity was never played for as much pure entertainment as it was here. Cary Grant’s likeable screen persona goes a long way. When people opine that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, this is the kind of movie they’re talking about.
14.) Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957) - Impressive for its restraint, the film that really made a young Stanley Kubrick’s career has aged incredibly well. Sadly, it will remain timeless as long as powerful, insulated men send young, vulnerable soldiers to their deaths.
15.) The Big Heat (Lang, 1953) - Lang’s violent and sexy look at vengeance remains a potent noir.
16.) Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954) - What kind of western has a supposedly tough outlaw named “The Dancing Kid?” Maybe one that’s not a western at all. Whatever Nicholas Ray’s genre-exploding film is, it’s bizarrely incredible. Joan Crawford essentially playing a stereotypically male character and Sterling Hayden as a former outlaw now reduced to a guitar instead of a gun. Throw in Mercedes McCambridge (also in a masculine role) and the ubiquitous Ernest Borgnine and you’ve got a truly odd Western mash-up. These characters’ relationships are remarkably complex and fly in the face of the genre’s expectations. Ray’s use of color is but one of the many unexpected aspects found in the film. Make sure to pay attention to the colors of Crawford’s dresses as the film progresses.
17.) Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958) - I like to laugh, it’s just that my sense of humor doesn’t necessarily mesh with the general public. Thankfully, Jacques Tati shared the Chaplin slapstick combined with topical questioning of technology that I find appealing. Does that make it a mixture of lowbrow and highbrow or is it even worth trying to characterize? Either way, it’s satire with physical comedy and without the pretentiousness.
18.) Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955) - One of the finest noirs of the decade, Aldrich and Ralph Meeker give us the uncaring, callous Mike Hammer and a mysterious glowing briefcase. A great effort from one of the more underrated American filmmakers.
19.) The Searchers (Ford, 1956) - I’m always going to have a few problems with it, but Ford’s film has justly risen to the top echelon of the American western. Endlessly debateable, the racial undercurrent is stronger here than in any other American film I can think of, impressively doing so without hitting the audience over the head with clear-cut answers. We’ll never know exactly what John Wayne was thinking while playing Ethan Edwards, but we’ll keep on watching as we try to get closer to both the character and the myth of his portrayer.
20.) Winchester ‘73 (Mann, 1950) - First Mann-Stewart teaming and arguably the best. A great collection of actors, mingling together while the determined Stewart stays on the trail of a mysterious man from his past. This film, along with the other four director-star teamings, makes so many other Westerns before and after it look corny and fake.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? June 23, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , add a comment
American film comedy took a creative hit in the 1950s. Absent are the screwball antics and the witty sophistication from the previous two decades of talking pictures. To be fair, World War II and its aftermath would be reason enough to sober up a nation full of writers, filmmakers, and audiences. Yet, it’s fairly difficult to find screen comedy in post-war Hollywood on the level of what we saw from directors like Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, even Mitchell Leisen under the studio system. If you look at the AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs list from 2000, a flawed but probably unmatched indicator for judging trends in the comedy canon, you’ll find that a whopping 31 films were released between the beginning of the 1930s and 1945. It’s certainly impressive that a fifteen year period accounted for almost a third of a list compiled over six decades after most of the films were released.
By comparison, the period between 1945 and 1959, when Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, the AFI’s choice for #1, was released, arguably reigniting the American comedy, yielded only 11 selections on the list. Additionally, the films included in that span seem lightweight and stale in comparison. Where we had the likes of Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Cary Grant, and four Sturges films earlier, now we’re looking at Father of the Bride, The Seven Year Itch, Auntie Mame and The Court Jester, films that perhaps haven’t aged quite so well. Notwithstanding Some Like It Hot, by far the most accomplished (and funniest) film from this later era on the list is Singin’ in the Rain, usually not even considered a comedy so much as a musical (though, admittedly, that may be a point of contention).
Even sticking with the AFI list, though, makes it difficult to find any real rhyme or reason in those selected films from ‘45 to ‘59. There are movie stars - Spencer Tracy and Marilyn Monroe each pop up twice, while Cary Grant and James Stewart are in one apiece - and well-known directors - two from Billy Wilder, as well as two written by Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor. But there really aren’t any dominant figures, actor, writer or director, among these eleven films like we’d seen in the decade and a half earlier. The strange thing about the list is that there actually was someone who was doing exciting, interesting things in live-action American film comedy, yet Frank Tashlin and his films were ignored by the AFI’s listmakers. I’m not arguing he should have had four or five movies in the top 100, but some recognition would have been nice.
Like other creative forces of comedy, Tashlin had his hand in the writing of many of his films. Though several of these were based on other writers’ stories, the director seems to have molded the screen versions largely himself, including the two films he made with Jayne Mansfield at Twentieth Century-Fox. The first of these was The Girl Can’t Help It, a starmaking vehicle for Mansfield. It’s now frequently cited as the first significant “rock ‘n roll film” and featured musical performances by Little Richard and Fats Domino, among others. It’s a fun movie, cinematic bubblegum. I might have enjoyed it more without Tom Ewell and Edmond O’Brien, as the latter seemed to like playing his role more than I enjoyed watching him do so. The songs can also be a little repetitive and annoying, but lots of people might disagree with me there.
With the success of The Girl Can’t Help It, director and leading lady quickly re-teamed for Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, the Broadway version of which (mostly abandoned by Tashlin’s screenplay) Mansfield had been starring in just before she made her initial film with Tashlin. I’ve noticed mixed opinions as to which film is better, funnier, sharper, etc. I’ll take the second pairing in all those criteria without hesitation. Aside from a better cast around Mansfield, especially Tony Randall in the title role, the follow-up film seems much more pointed and enjoyable. Tashlin’s trademark bright hues, even painting the screen with full color fades at times, are on display, but slightly reined in. Characters still tend to wear glossy outfits (why have a drab earthtone robe when a shiny red one works just fine), though the level of seizure-inducing, eye-popping visuals is a little less distracting this time around.
We also have little jokes flying throughout the picture, beginning with Randall playing the 20th Century-Fox theme music by himself on multiple instruments. The actor then searches his pockets for the name of the film, mistakenly referring to it as The Girl Can’t Help It, before we see several fake advertisements as the opening credits roll. They’re both ridiculous and humorous while having little to do with the film’s storyline aside from the Madison Avenue backdrop. At first glance, the use of false ads may seem dated, and there was definitely a strange fascination with the advertising world in several films from this era, but it’s not too difficult to see a strand running between some of the seemingly over-the-top things we see here and the even less sensical attempts to sell us things today. The same “how did we ever get by without this product” mentality is inherently present just as much today as it was then and vice versa. (An upsetting trend towards the emotional dilution of rock music via ads hocking everything from automobiles to investment firms adds an odd twist given the subjects of the two Tashlin-Mansfield films.)
Television itself also briefly becomes the butt of one of the more clever gags in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. Randall, once again out of character as in the opening, interrupts the film to remind us how commercials disrupt television programs. We then see the screen shrink (made more noticeable by the CinemaScope format that surely lost much of its impact when seen only on broadcast television in the decades since the theatrical release, as well as a pan and scan VHS edition) and switch to black and white. It’s a little bit of propaganda in the fight for viewers between the small screen and the expanding silver one, but I still think it’s inventive fun. Tashlin is making clear that his film is more than a sitcom on a big canvas, pulling out tricks where he can. (Meanwhile I can’t help but wonder how American comedy has been dragged down to the succession of bodily function jokes gutter it’s been stuck in for years now, a lowest common [PG-13] denominator discouragingly populated by the new directorial titans of box office yuks Tom Shadyac, Shawn Levy, and the Farrellys.)
Through three separate stints working for Warner Bros. on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts, Tashlin was able to hone his ribald comic sensibility while crafting characters like Porky Pig and, later, Private Snafu, star of a military-only series of which Tashlin directed four shorts. It’s fitting, then, that the director’s feature films are so often described as being like live-action Looney Tunes, because, at their best, they basically are. Vibrant colors, crazy sight gags, and larger than life, exaggerated characters are consistent in the animated shorts just as in Tashlin’s films, with the humor aimed more at adults than children. And just as Tashlin had Porky Pig and Daffy Duck in his cartoons, he had Jerry Lewis and Jayne Mansfield in his features. While Lewis would prove to be a more frequent collaborator, with Tashlin directing two of the comic’s teamings with Dean Martin and six of his solo starring pictures, it was Mansfield who became perhaps the closest thing Hollywood has ever had to a living, breathing cartoon movie star.
Fearless and intelligent, the woman used by her movie studio as a threat to Marilyn Monroe would end up with a similarly tragic fate. Mansfield, however, had a much shorter time in the spotlight and Tashlin seemed to be the only director who knew what to do with such a unique screen presence. Her iconic figure, shrill voice, platinum hair, and painted face are all used at the actress’s expense, the punchline instead of the joke teller. Like the animated bombshells she resembled, Mansfield has minimal smoldering chemistry or sex appeal in the Tashlin films and the director never seems very interested in her sensuality. Mansfield plays Rita Marlowe with ease, and any other actress, even Marilyn, would be unimaginable in the role. The problem is that these types of roles become one-dimensional when repeated with lesser directors and an actress/sex bomb with Jayne Mansfield’s appearance and reputation wasn’t going to get the in-demand serious roles. It’s difficult not to feel a little sorry for her, especially considering how bubbly the Tashlin films can be, given the almost inevitable direction her career would take.
In contrast to the enduringly popular Mansfield, the real lead of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is Tony Randall, despite the film only being available on R1 DVD in Fox’s Jayne Mansfield Collection (a fine 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer with original four channel audio). His name comes after hers in the credits and the blonde starlet dominates the DVD cover, wearing a bedsheet and a martini, while Randall is relegated to a small photo alongside an oft-dyed poodle, Mickey Hargitay sporting a chest hairpiece and a second picture of Mansfield. At least Rock Hunter got his name in the US title. Internationally, it was released in the UK as Oh! For a Man! and known as La Blonde explosive in France. Nevertheless, Randall stands out as the great “Lover Doll,” whether he’s hiding from his adoring public behind a Rita Marlowe advertisement or basking in the glow of the executive washroom. Mansfield has kept the film moderately well-known for fifty years, but it’s Randall who’s responsible for most of the laughs on screen.
While too much analysis can take the fun out of comedy, it’s also nice to think a little as you laugh. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? appeals to my sense of humor and Frank Tashlin’s clever, though not entirely subtle, film works on several levels. Great comedy does that because it takes into consideration the many different things people find funny. For instance, I can’t help but laugh when I see the Russian newspaper taking credit for Lover Doll and adding a moustache in the process. I also think it’s funny to catch the numerous references to other Fox films. A mention of The Girl Can’t Help It or Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing alone might seem shameless or distasteful, but the overkill of adding Peyton Place, Love Me Tender, and two other Mansfield films transforms the gag into a recurring wink that makes me smile. Tashlin’s approach may seem like he’s going for broke at every opportunity, but I’d argue that such a gifted and experienced comedy talent (his entire professional life was devoted to the genre) knew exactly when to show restraint and when to give the audience the whiz-bang farcical treatment.
In a Lonely Place May 1, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Nicholas Ray, Gloria Grahame , 5 comments
I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.
I can’t even pretend to feign objectivity when discussing Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place
Ray’s best and most characteristic film (edging out Johnny Guitar by a small margin) begins with Bogart as Dixon Steele driving through the Los Angeles area, his reflection captured in the car’s rearview mirror. When he comes to a stop, a female passenger of another car begins talking to him about a movie he had written, but he doesn’t recognize her, the film’s leading actress, because he’s never seen the filmed version of what he wrote. Steele is ready to erupt after the actress’s male companion chides him for harassing his lady even though she had begun the conversation, but the car drives away. We soon learn Steele is a screenwriter of dwindling commercial success and attempting to retain his creative integrity. His new project is to adapt a bestseller, one that’s destined to become an epic - “a picture that’s real long and has lots of things going on,” according to Mildred Atkinson, the ill-fated hat-check girl who’s read the book. Since Dix doesn’t seem too interested in reading his source material, he persuades the girl to relay the story at his apartment. Mildred initially balks because she has a date, but the lure of celebrity is overwhelming and she relents.
When Dix is bringing Mildred into his apartment he runs into Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), his new neighbor. Instantly, Dix seems more interested in her than Mildred, but he sticks with the latter. At his apartment, the hat-check girl enthusiastically tells Dix the novel’s plot, but he’s turned off by her childishness. He sends her on her way with two ten dollar bills for cab fare, not even walking her to the nearby taxi stand. Ray then cuts to police Det. Brub Nicolai knocking on Steele’s door at five o’clock in the morning. Dix had served as the cop’s commanding officer during the war, but he soon realizes it’s not a social visit. Mildred was found dead on the side of the road, “in a lonely place,” and Dix was the last known person to see her alive. He’s taken into questioning, but released when Laurel provides his alibi. She thinks Dix has an interesting face and he’s intrigued.
The burgeoning love story between these two lost souls is cinema of the highest level. Bogart somehow abandons any lingering artifacts of Sam Spade, Rick Blaine or Philip Marlowe. He is Dixon Steele, one of the essential characters in film history. I’m always impressed by Bogart’s performance each time I see it. The frighteningly real and dangerous portrait of a man constantly on the brink of unbridled violence was a daring choice for Bogart at this stage of his career. It came not long after he left Warner Bros. and formed his own production company, Santana, which produced In a Lonely Place and the Ray-directed Knock on Any Door. Bogart deserves credit for taking risky, unsympathetic roles which often yielded his best performances like Dixon Steele, Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the demented Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.
Certainly even Bogart’s signature roles, such as Blaine or Spade, were unconventional heroes, but they’re still undeniably heroes. Their flaws are movie character flaws. Dixon Steele, by contrast, is a controlling, unstable man whose problems are fleshed out or alluded to without apology. While Cooper, Wayne, Grant, Tracy, etc. were, for the most part, retreading their personas in film after film, Bogart was inhabiting these flawed men who often bordered on madness. If pressed on his best performance, I might give the edge to Dobbs, but Dix Steele is a much more complex, difficult character and Bogart makes you think he’s not acting. Just watch the scene where he’s describing how Mildred may have been killed as he insists Det. Nicolai and his wife re-create the killing (in their own home) to be convinced of Bogart’s brilliance.
Steele starts off the film as a cynical, extremely bitter man who seems completely unfazed to learn that the young woman who had been at his apartment the night before has been brutally murdered. Even photographs of the corpse stir no emotion. The question is not whether he committed this unspeakable act, only whether he was capable of it. His guardian angel is Laurel Gray (whose last name surely represents the purgatory she treads between Steele’s violent aggression and her own empathetic curiosity), a new neighbor who happened to see Steele when Mildred was still at his apartment. She lies and tells the police she saw Steele after Mildred left to provide him with an alibi. He then pursues her romantically, resulting in a fruitful relationship eventually tainted by the screenwriter’s inability to overcome his unchained violent behavior.
It’s not the plot, though, that makes In a Lonely Place so hypnotically mesmerizing. The characters Ray and screenwriter Andrew Solt give us are terrifically flawed individuals doomed by their own fates. Steele is controlling, paranoid and unabashedly vicious, but Grahame’s character somehow tames him for a brief period. As the line that Dix wants to work into his screenplay goes, quoted here at the beginning, Laurel has given him new reason to live and work and blossom. His creativity peaks when she enters his life, even if it’s while working on a script he’s not incredibly proud of writing. She’s the best thing to ever happen to him and he likewise becomes a source for her happiness during their few weeks together. The stars only briefly align though, and he manages to sabotage their relationship through his savage violence while driving home on a road similar to the one where Mildred Atkinson was murdered. Suddenly, Laurel is no longer sure if Dix is innocent and it becomes clear that he was capable of the crime regardless of whether he actually did it.
Like other films directed by Nicholas Ray, In a Lonely Place works on many different levels. There’s the romance between Dix and Laurel, ill-fated but fleetingly happy prior to Steele’s inevitable self-destruction. We also have a scathing look at the superficiality of Hollywood, exemplified by Mildred’s mothlike attraction to Steele’s “fame” that directly leads to her murder. It’s also frequently categorized as film noir, and the murder investigation, with Dix remaining a prime candidate despite Laurel’s alibi, is constantly lingering in the background. Laurel’s confidence in Dix steadily erodes and she begins to fear what he’s capable of and what he might do to her. Like other great noir protagonists, Dix Steele is unable to overcome his fatal flaw and adapt to the outside world. More atypical is that it’s not death or imprisonment that Steele must face, but loneliness after knowing and feeling the happiness that a change of temperament could have yielded.
It’s that reason, through the film’s brilliant portrayal of the pangs of loneliness, that the relationship between Dix and Laurel surfaces as the most compelling aspect of Ray’s film. Rarely has Hollywood been able to expose with such painful truth the rollercoaster realities of finding someone to heal our innermost pain. As Dix slices open a grapefruit and tenderly exposes part of his soul to Laurel, whose own feelings have begun to ebb, his words about how Hollywood is always getting love wrong become poignantly ironic. The film’s title thus works simultaneously as a literal description of the place where Mildred Atkinson’s body was discarded and the painful, metaphoric emotional state shared by the two main characters. The common denominator, since Dix is a screenwriter and Laurel a struggling actress, is the equally lonely setting of Hollywood.
Early on, Dix accuses studio men of being “popcorn salesmen,” a brilliantly denigrating truism. Even by 1950 (or 1949, when the film was shot), it’s reasonable to assume that Nicholas Ray didn’t have too fond of an opinion of Hollywood. This was only his fifth film, but the director had already suffered through RKO forcing him to make A Woman’s Secret, a forgettable melodrama that has hardly any of Ray’s fingerprints. He was then eager to work with Bogart and Columbia on Knock on Any Door and the partnership flourished with In a Lonely Place. Given his political persuasion, there’s also little doubt that Ray was very much against the burgeoning Hollywood witch hunt at the time. (Art Smith, who played Steele’s loyal agent Mel Lippman, would soon be blacklisted as one of the names given by his former Group Theatre collaborator Elia Kazan.) Surely it was more than coincidence that Ray modeled the apartment complex where Dix and Laurel live after his own first home in Hollywood.
Regarding the director’s personal life at the time, there’s no indication that any tension stemming from the collapse of Nicholas Ray’s marriage to Gloria Grahame hurt the film. After meeting on the set of A Woman’s Secret, Grahame married her director, but their relationship was, privately, over during the filming of In a Lonely Place. Columbia head Harry Cohn had originally slotted Ginger Rogers to play Laurel, but Ray’s insistence on his then-wife proved right. This might be Grahame’s most accomplished role, an emotionally scarred woman who’s run away from a wealthy lover and finds refuge with a man completely unequipped to protect her. Grahame had a tendency to play less-refined, pouty females, which she did to great effect. Here, though, she’s much more restrained and Laurel is a mature, confident woman who’s still not afraid to make her intentions known. Grahame’s unique speaking voice and habit of raising her right eyebrow are mostly reined in as well, giving the character a natural, reserved effect.
Though Ray is uncredited with the screenplay, and the opening titles list Edmund H. North for the adaptation despite his questionable involvement in the final effort, his stamp is all over the film. The book by Dorothy B. Hughes (who also wrote the source novel for Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink Horse) shows Dixon Steele as a serial killer who repeatedly murders and rapes women in a psychosexual rampage. The first-person narrative of the novel differs significantly from Andrew Solt’s screenplay. In Bernard Eisenschitz’s Nicholas Ray: An American Journey, Ray’s personal script notes illustrate his substantial contribution to the finished film and make clear that the director’s impact was critical in turning the writing of Hughes and Solt into what would become the archetypal Nicholas Ray movie.
The poster tagline (”with the surprise finish!”) is nearly laughable for its unintentional accuracy. The real surprise is not what the poster is most likely referring to, Steele’s innocence confirmed by Sgt. Lochner over the telephone, but the utter disintegration of the relationship between Dix and Laurel. Movies are supposed to end happily (or they were in 1950, at least), failed romances conclude on good terms and the characters learn something in the process to make them better persons. Nothing even close to that happens here. Dix is only prevented from probably murdering Laurel when the phone rings. His exit is painful, pronounced and final. He walks out of Laurel’s apartment, not headed for his own home, and the audience is left with no indication of happiness, learning or redemption. It’s over between Laurel and Dix and we’re given no hint as to the future.
The original ending had Grahame’s character, Laurel Gray, not being saved by the telephone and Dixon Steele murdering her. Returning to his script to type out the lines quoted here at the top of the page, Dix was then arrested by Det. Nicolai for the murder. Ray was unhappy with the conclusion that violence was the only way out for the characters and quietly set up the final scene on his own. He cleared the set except for the principal actors and claimed to have improvised what eventually became the ending in the film. It would prove to be much more powerful and sad than the scripted version. An ambiguity now hovers over Dix and Laurel. Instead of a physical prison, Dix is relegated to a lifetime of loneliness. The great, emotionally devastating ending that remains is unrelenting and unsparing.
