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.
Stalag 17 April 23, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Billy Wilder , 9 comments
Context is everything in movies. In any particular scene, a line of dialogue can elicit hearty laughs if given the right set-up while the same exact line might cause an audience to break down into tears when used in a different situation. The idea of context is just as important for directors and, to a lesser extent, actors. It can be helpful for the viewer to look at a film within the director’s larger filmography, especially taking into consideration where the filmmaker was at that point in his career. A perfect example of the importance of context is Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17
By increasingly filling his movies with both biting satiric comedy and jokes easily understood by the masses, Wilder wisely moved on from the commercial failure of Ace in the Hole, knowing success assured the director he could essentially make his own rules while still retaining the freedom of major studio budgets. Prior to Stalag 17, Wilder had mostly been directing dramatic films, notably Double Indemnity and then winning an Oscar for The Lost Weekend. Though many of the screenplays he wrote for other directors were comedies and his directorial debut, The Major and the Minor, was lighter fare, the large majority of his earlier films were steeped in a seriousness that rarely popped up afterwards. With Stalag 17, the filmmaker, perhaps better than in any of his other films, balanced a dire, almost hopeless situation with frequent retreats into laughter. Every Wilder drama has moments of humor and every Wilder comedy has an undercurrent of seriousness, but none of his other films dared to repeatedly show the lighter side of a subject as seemingly grave as a Nazi-run American prisoner-of-war camp. A generation before Robert Altman made M*A*S*H, Wilder unapologetically mixed laughter with war.
Using the director’s favorite narrative device, the voiceover, Wilder throws his audience into an American POW camp just before Christmas 1944. Our occasional narrator is Cookie, one of the men of Stalag 17 (Stalag, the German shorthand for a prisoner-of-war camp, was an abbreviation of the word Stammlager) and the only ally of the film’s protagonist, J.J. Sefton. In an attempted escape, two American prisoners from Sefton’s barracks are soon shot and killed after emerging out of a tunnel. All of their fellow captives are optimistic that the two men will make it through alive, except Sefton. Just after the two men have initiated their escape, Sefton lays down a couple of packs of cigarettes on their execution. The ever cynical Sefton cleans up when the men are shot down, never displaying a shred of emotion. Every prisoner has found a way to cope with his imprisonment, whether it’s through impaired reality or the elimination of the outside world completely, but Sefton appears to be the only one who’s decided to use it to his advantage. Where the others are hopeful idealists, Sefton’s a realist biding his time until he can enjoy freedom once again.
As tensions continue between Sefton and the others, two new prisoners replace the failed escapees - Lieutenant Dunbar (Don Taylor), whose name Sefton recognizes as part of a wealthy Boston family, and an actor who entertains with movie star impressions (Jay Lawrence, real-life brother of F-Troop’s Larry Storch). After repeated plans of action are intercepted by the Germans and Lt. Dunbar is fingered for blowing up an ammunitions train prior to being captured, the prisoners realize one of the men is telling the Nazis their every move. Since Sefton has a well-stocked supply of alcohol, cigarettes and various other goods, which he uses to bribe his way past Nazi guards into the Russian female prisoners’ quarters, he becomes the leading suspect. His surliness towards the other men surely doesn’t help matters. Their suspicion climaxes in a physical attack on Sefton, holding him down and bruising his face when their paranoia caroms out of control. Even Sefton’s loyal helper Cookie eventually begins to suspect him. Though he’s not interested in popularity contests and doesn’t seem too concerned with being ostracized, Sefton realizes that identifying the real spy may be his ticket out of the POW camp, with the added bonus of a potential reward for returning Dunbar to his wealthy family.
William Holden won an Academy Award playing Sefton, an iconoclast who perfectly embodies the Wilder opportunist that we’ve seem so often in his films. It’s not surprising that Wilder all but identified him as the character most like himself from one of his films. He’s a remarkably different kind of hero, one who looks after number one more than his fellow soldiers and values survival above all else. You could say he even anticipates the antiheroes made famous in American films of the 1970s. Holden deserved his Oscar, despite initially turning down the role out of concern for the character’s unwavering cynicism and being uneasy with some of Sefton’s choices. The actor had worked with Wilder before in Sunset Blvd., when the filmmaker revived Holden’s foundering career, so it would seem that he should have anticipated a different kind of hero role and a director unwilling to budge from his ideas. Like many a Wilder protagonist, Sefton is in it for himself, nearly to a fault. He seems completely unconcerned with the welfare of anyone else, treating the Nazis no worse than the other men in his barracks.
Those other prisoners, specifically the characters of Animal and Shapiro, provide the film’s comic relief (along with director Otto Preminger, as the Nazi commandant, putting on his boots for a phone call). As Animal, Robert Strauss was Oscar-nominated for the Betty Grable-obsessed character, a combination of three Marx brothers with a dash of Moe Howard’s commanding assertiveness. His buddy Shapiro, played by Harvey Lembeck, seems to keep Animal grounded through distractions like sneaking over to the Russian females’ de-lousing shower and cross-dressing to temporarily recreate a Betty Grable pin-up picture. This humor, poignantly portrayed by the two actors who also played their roles in the original Broadway version, is painted with broad strokes but still can’t conceal the painful uncertainty of the two men’s fates. Their actions are merely an example of personal coping and shouldn’t be diminished as a denial of the unpleasant circumstances that often accompany war.
Wilder actually wrings more emotion out of the frequently funny Stalag 17 than he had any film before, and few afterwards. With the prisoners’ rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” as Sefton lies recovering from his wounds in bed, slowly putting the pieces together concerning who’s the spy, Wilder skillfully turns the moment into a heart-wrenching culmination of patriotic bravery and defiant heroism. It’s a dagger of emotion that reminds the viewer what’s at stake for these men. Even if Sefton’s actions always remain primarily self-serving (and it’s difficult to argue that his unmasking of the German was for love of country or fellow servicemen), he’s a hero nonetheless. He raises morale and eliminates the German spy while securing the freedom of two American soldiers.
The special edition DVD released by Paramount last year is a marked improvement over their previous disc. The image quality is drastically better, absent the dirt and debris that plagued the first release. Since there’s a strange absence of a DVD Beaver review for either disc, much less a comparison, my memory of the first release is all I have to go on, but I do remember being disappointed with that transfer when I watched it. The new version has a remarkably sharp picture, consistent with Paramount’s usual high standard. They also tossed on two featurettes, one recounting details of the making of the film and the other about the real Stalag XVII B camp, as well as a commentary teaming actors Gil Stratton (Cookie) and Richard Erdman (Hoffy) with playwright Donald Bevan. I’d like to have seen Peter Graves participate in the featurette and/or the commentary and wonder why he’s absent. The only real negative to the DVD is Paramount’s insistence on including forced trailers. If I wanted to see John Wayne movies or Titanic then I’d buy those DVDs. When I put in Stalag 17, that’s what I’d like to watch.
There’s apparently another aspect of Stalag 17 worth discussing, one that conveniently returns me to my initial mention of context. It’s the idea that Wilder lets Sefton’s characteristic cynicism shrivel at the end, with a wave and a grin. DVD Savant’s review devotes a paragraph to this proposition, mentioning several nameless critics who’ve identified the action as Wilder’s “’sell-out’ moment.” Since I admittedly didn’t dredge through every review I could find of the film, I’ll have to pick on what the Savant wrote. He also makes the point that “the gesture is sincere,” something I disagree with just as much as the idea that Sefton (or Wilder) goes soft here. I see it much more as a “see ya, suckers” kind of moment. If Billy Wilder made it today, one could imagine Sefton’s salute and smile being replaced by a middle finger.
Context is key here because Sefton had just said to these men, fellow soldiers who had beaten and accused him of being a Nazi collaborator despite his denials, “If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let’s pretend we never met before.” Not exactly a friendly goodbye. Sefton then heads down into the tunnel hole, and pops back up just to boastfully give the salute. If there’s a twinkle in his eye when Sefton grins, it would seem to be from knowing he’s about to get out of this hellhole while they all remain. The only hint of sincerity relies on the viewer’s subjectivity. If you want to believe Sefton “breaks character” then I think you’re going against the weight of the evidence laid forth throughout the entire film, but that’s your right as a viewer. If you choose to think Sefton’s mentally mounting his private revenge with that smile then that’s your option as well. I just can’t believe a director as uncompromising as Billy Wilder would purposefully betray what he’s worked two hours to establish if another logical explanation is available.
From DVD Savant’s review and what seems to be a general lack of critical interest, I don’t perceive the film as garnering the accolades currently received by many of the director’s other films from the 1950s. However, even if it’s the fourth-best Wilder film of the decade, which I’d attest it is, that’s still quite the endorsement. His most fruitful decade of moviemaking was arguably as accomplished as any other director’s ever. Hitchcock certainly had an impressive run in both the 40s and 50s, and Altman’s output from the 1970s now looks incredible, but Wilder churned out nine good to great films in the ten year period, co-writing all of them. Each has its merits and a few (The Seven Year Itch, for one) admittedly lack the charm of Wilder’s best, but there’s not a certifiable dud to be found in the lot. When looking for sheer entertainment value, Stalag 17 is probably the one that’s most enjoyable. It’s compelling, with a great lead performance from William Holden, and captivating, even though it has minimal action sequences.
Following the film’s success, others took note and POW films like The Great Escape and, most blatantly, television shows like Hogan’s Heroes tried to mimic the tone Wilder set with his movie by eliminating the stoic seriousness that had previously been found in war films in favor of a less gloomy approach. Missing was Sefton’s (and Wilder’s) cynicism, which gave Stalag 17 some bite not found in its imitators. For all those chastising Wilder for playing it safe with Stalag 17 (I’m thinking again of DVD Savant’s review, which has other aspects of contention also), how many other filmmakers were inserting broad humor into prisoner-of-war films less than a decade after the war ended? Where Wilder was so successful and nearly unmatched in film was the precise balance of knowing when to make the audience laugh and when to sober them up, all the while resisting the temptation to be overly manipulative.
At ease…at ease!
Odds Against Tomorrow April 13, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Gloria Grahame , add a comment
Despite a title befitting a daily soap opera more than a melodramatic post-noir caper movie, Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow
The film begins with a terrific opening title sequence and ends with a dynamic bleakness. The problem is the remaining hour and a half, where we’re introduced to scheming ex-cop Burke (Begley) who enlists a white racist (Ryan) and a black man in debt (Belafonte) to help him rob a bank in upstate New York. Where other heist films often try to make audiences sympathize with the robbery participants, Odds Against Tomorrow makes no such attempt. Ryan’s character Slater is a Southern-accented, ex-con killer who hates black people (giving Ryan, who apparently was much nicer than the roles he played, a bigot companion to his anti-semite, Oscar-nominated turn in Crossfire). Belafonte is Ingram, a nightclub performer who’d rather bet his money on horses and cards than provide for his young daughter, putting him $7,500 in the hole to a bookie. Rounding out the main cast are two empty roles for Winters and Grahame, who are pretty much wasted as Ryan’s girlfriend and upstairs neighbor, respectively. Grahame, in probably her last notable film role, is still effective as a really strange woman whom Ryan beds in one of those misogynistic “no means yes” scenes we sometimes see in older movies.
Characters certainly don’t have to be likeable or easy to relate to for a film to be interesting, but it helps, at least, for them to either have some redeeming qualities or something else to give the audience an identifying action or characteristic. We just don’t get that here and the majority of the picture, leading up to the climactic bank job, subsequently disappoints. Are we supposed to feel something for the Ryan character because he’s a war veteran? I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine how it’s possible to find anything of interest in him. Ryan often played the villain in movies, but, even in many of those roles, he had a “good guy” to play off of and made his character more interesting, such as in The Naked Spur or House of Bamboo. The only other main character we have here is Belafonte, who is likeable enough but never seems to want to stop gambling. The brief scenes between him and his daughter do little to change our perception. Instead of being with her on the carousel, he gets off to talk to a couple of his bookie’s goons. The balloon he’s supposed to be taking care of for her gets popped by some teenagers as he calls Burke in a phone booth.
Even though the performances are fine, the characters are unoriginal and uninspiring. By the film’s release in 1959, Ryan had played nearly every possible stripe of bad guy and watching him portray such a repulsive character becomes tiresome. Bigotry, whether in 1959 or currently, is as easy and unwanted of a short cut to portray an antagonist as the black hat we too often see in simplistic westerns. The scene between Ryan and a pre-M*A*S*H Mike Farrell as a young soldier does nothing to alleviate any hostility the audience has for him and the character’s actions never allow him to fit the disillusioned war veteran mold. Ryan is annoyed by Farrell’s behavior, including his treatment of a young woman, but then he goes home and works over Grahame’s ditzy neighbor, whose intentions make little sense outside of the realm of other movies. Belafonte’s fellow war vet is just as lacking in depth and reason, but he manages to come across a tad better.
Much of this is due to Belafonte himself, who had few film roles and, in contrast to Ryan, was less established as one particular screen character. I’d say he’s the main reason to watch Odds Against Tomorrow and he doesn’t disappoint. Though far from a great actor, Belafonte, whose company produced the film, was probably on par with other (white) singers who dabbled in acting such as Frank Sinatra (Oscar winner), Bing Crosby (Oscar winner), and Bobby Darin (Oscar nominee). His nightclub performances, both the solo of “My Baby’s Not Around” and “All Men are Evil” alongside Mae Barnes, are the highlights of the film for me, as Belafonte shows a natural, unrestrained easiness that doesn’t really pop up when he’s reciting his scripted lines. The film’s outstanding score, by jazz pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, is reminiscent of Wise’s previous feature I Want to Live!, which won Susan Hayward a deserved Academy Award but didn’t live up to the promise of the brilliant, jazz-infused first few minutes.
Leaving the viewer somewhat unsatisfied seems to be a familiar problem with Wise’s directorial efforts. Maybe his pictures haven’t aged well, but I find myself almost always wanting to like Robert Wise’s movies more than I actually do. From what I’ve seen, only The Set-Up, his previous teaming with Robert Ryan, would earn an unqualified recommendation. Both Curse of the Cat People and The Day the Earth Stood Still have their admirers, but I’m not entirely convinced. He also won two Academy Awards for directing West Side Story (shared with Jerome Robbins) and The Sound of Music, so his versatility is difficult to question. There’s just something that I can’t quite put my finger on that seems lacking in his films though. Truth be told, I can’t come down too hard on the man because, firstly, he edited Citizen Kane (even if his subsequent work on The Magnificent Ambersons is more dubious), and, second, he was kind enough to respond to a letter I wrote as a teenager with an autographed picture. His distinctive penmanship even showed that he had addressed the return envelope himself.
Even if that thoughtful gesture made me a fan for life, it didn’t pierce my objectivity in regards to his films. Odds Against Tomorrow is far from an entirely successful film. It meanders along, focusing on underdeveloped (or possibly unworthy) characters and climaxes in a bank robbery that’s too short and inanely executed. The final “which is which” scene is impressive in its culmination of the relative likenesses and differences between the main characters, but it’s too little, too late for a film that should have been better in nearly every way. The racial aspects are mildly interesting, but still lack any real introspection or provocation into why the characters act as they do.
We’re given the sense that Belafonte’s character is distrustful of whites, though seemingly less than Ryan is of blacks, but nothing more is really made of it. As hokey and unrealistic as Stanely Kramer can be, his film from the previous year, The Defiant Ones, does a better job of exploring the relationship between a white man and a black man who have no previous reason to dislike one another aside from skin color. Even though the Kramer film has a predictable resolution, whereas Wise and his screenwriters stand firm, it still attempts to examine irrational prejudices with an eye toward improvement instead of simply linking racial hatred with ultimate downfall. The almost offensively stereotypical homosexual character in Odds Against Tomorrow sort of drowns out much of the pro-equality message the film strives for as well.
The R1 DVD release from MGM is a satisfactory, though supplement-free, affair with very good image quality and presented in the original academy ratio (a seemingly odd choice considering Wise had previously been using wider formats). It’s definitely not a bad film, but Odds Against Tomorrow is a disappointment because of the talent involved and the limp product delivered. I read that Jean-Pierre Melville was an admirer of Wise’s film, and that actually makes sense. The great French director, however, knew how to use suspense and a methodical frigidity much more than we see in this movie, which takes too much time focusing on the lacking personal lives of the main characters and fails to deliver the memorable heist that had been simmering throughout the film. There’s also an inexplicable lack of tension between Ryan and Belafonte when the movie desperately needs it. Odds Against Tomorrow may have inspired great films, but it falls short of approaching that level itself.
The Big Heat April 9, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Fritz Lang, Gloria Grahame , add a comment
What’s the best director-actor-actress triumverate that made at least two non-sequel pictures together? A good choice might be John Ford, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, who made The Quiet Man, Rio Grande and The Wings of Eagles together. There’s also Howard Hawks, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who did To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep. Otto Preminger, Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney followed up Laura with Where the Sidewalk Ends six years later. The Swedish director Ingmar Bergman paired Liv Ullmann with Max von Sydow three times and Erland Josephson a total of eight times. My personal favorite, though, might be Fritz Lang’s two films with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame - The Big Heat
At the risk of repeating myself, I find Fritz Lang’s films, both from his days in Germany and after working in America, remarkably timeless and entertaining. Each time I watch a film he directed, with very few exceptions, I refuse to believe Lang isn’t one of the top five or ten filmmakers of all time. You could isolate his output in either language and his legend is still secured. When combining the two periods, it becomes apparent that he had a career to rival most anyone, in longevity, quality and quantity. His ability to evolve from silents to sound films is equally impressive. Only a handful of other directors were successful in both, and arguably none as much so as Lang. If there’s any knock against him, it would seem to be that he never reached the heights of films like Metropolis and M after fleeing Germany Obviously unfair, this criticism fails to take into account the creative and monetary limitations he faced in Hollywood. Perhaps it also undervalues how impressive his English language work often was.
I previously touted Scarlet Street as a good candidate for the honor of Lang’s best English language film, an irrelevant title only important for discussion purposes anyway. Though I’m not exactly wavering on my suggestion since it is a vital and essential piece of cinema’s darker side, maybe I wasn’t being completely fair to The Big Heat, a film that typifies everything great about movies before they became modernized with foul language, nudity and blood-soaked violence. Those three additions to movie screens all have a time and place and have been used brilliantly by scores of filmmakers, but wouldn’t films have been a lot less interesting if taboos had never existed so that creative filmmakers could circumvent them? I see classic movies as fascinating precisely because they don’t have those forbidden elements out in the open.
In The Big Heat, we see shocking moments of violence that make much more of an impact than the climactic hail of bullets exchanged between Glenn Ford and Lee Marvin. Ford’s character, Dave Bannion, is a respected police sergeant with a loving wife (played by Jocelyn Brando, Marlon’s older sister) and young daughter. He seems to have a happy marriage and a blossoming career, stunted only by corruption in the upper ranks. There’s no hint of a dark or sadistic side and Bannion appears to be the rare noir cop protagonist without an obvious fatal flaw (the violent tendencies of Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground and Dana Andrews in Where the Sidewalk Ends are two examples that immediately spring to mind). Then he perceives his family being threatened and Bannion becomes possessed by the struggle to protect them.
The wallop he gives George, a goon of the syndicate boss Mike Lagana, is unexpectedly vicious and forceful. Ford transforms from stand-up police officer to live wire in an instant. After tragedy strikes home and he’s forced to go on leave, Bannion’s hair-trigger violence begins to parallel the sadistic Vince Stone (Marvin), never more so than when he throws a conniving police widow against the wall and begins choking her. His savagery, interrupted by a couple of uniformed officers barging in, had progressed from an earlier altercation with Larry Gordon, the man who planted dynamite in his car. Bannion had just set up Gordon for a certain death at the hands of his mobster buddies, grinning almost uncontrollably as he tells the thug his plan. There’s never any indication that Bannion feels a twinge of conflict that this guy will be in the river in a few hours.
I’m not saying I disagree with Bannion’s actions, but the lack of emotion from Ford (who’s really superb throughout), that he’s giving Gordon a fate much worse than if Bannion just shot him at that moment, is downright startling for a film from 1953. This is Death Wish territory in the decade of Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie & Harriet. Lang was able to defy the more conservative audience’s expectations by peeling away at what was generally considered acceptable at the time. By showing such unexpectedly violent behavior from the good guy of the story, with whom we empathize, The Big Heat provokes the viewer to take notice at what’s being shown. This type of audience stimulant is an exhilarating and effective use of violence in film. If a character did the same thing in a film or television show today though, it would barely register at all.
The more famous scene of violence from The Big Heat, and one that actually might still prompt quite a reaction if it were done today, is when Lee Marvin’s character Stone scalds his girlfriend Debby’s face with a pot of steaming hot coffee. The act is not shown on camera, but we see the aftermath in the form of the scarred left side of her face just before Debby gets her own revenge against Stone. The scene is reminiscent of Cagney shoving a grapefruit into his lady friend’s face at the breakfast table in The Public Enemy, 22 years earlier but prior to the implementation of the production code. A big difference between the two is that Cagney’s fit seems more humiliating and degrading than the sadistic rage that comes from Marvin. A little grapefruit juice is nothing compared to a half-scarred face.
The java-burned victim is played by Gloria Grahame, who, in full disclosure, I think I may be in love with. Grahame has long been one of my favorite actresses and, despite popping up in classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and winning an Academy Award for The Bad and the Beautiful, deserved a better film career. The talented beauty had perhaps her best role as the female lead in Nicholas Ray’s brilliant In a Lonely Place, my favorite of Ray’s films and one I try to mention here as often as possible. After Odds Against Tomorrow in 1959, she pretty much stopped acting in films, instead taking television and stage work before dying from cancer at the age of 57. She also had the odd distinction of marrying both Nicholas Ray and his son (her stepson) Anthony Ray, star of the John Cassavetes film Shadows, and having children with both men.
Grahame’s character in The Big Heat knows the type of guy she’s involved with in Stone, but accepts his volatility as part of the price of living a financially charmed existence. She hints at a sadness from a poverty-filled past she never wants to revisit, even if it means being with crooks like Stone. Unlike so many gangster molls and femmes fatale, Debby is refreshingly honest with Bannion, never hiding her motives or betraying his loyalty. Her initial seductive interest in him, probably as a result of seeing Stone cower away from the suspended cop like a retreating puppy, changes when Debby takes refuge with Bannion following the coffee scalding. The sensitive, almost domestic kindness she shows Bannion seems to help him find redemption from his spiraling violent streak. Grahame is memorable and compelling in her performance, showing us a woman much brighter than she initially seems.
Likewise, Glenn Ford embodies Bannion with an everyman quality that separates him from so many main characters associated with film noir. He’s neither a ticking time bomb, ready to explode when given the littlest opportunity, nor an emotionally wounded shell who’s unable to function in society. Bannion is the seemingly reasonable man, an ordinary citizen who could be any one of us. For me, what makes The Big Heat fascinating is its exploration of the depths a man can plummet to avenge wrongs committed against his family. Unlike many of the articles I’ve read, I really don’t see the film as primarily about one man against a city of corruption. The focus instead seems to be on the riveting transformation of Bannion as his family life disintegrates and he becomes bent on exacting revenge. His motivating factor is the vengeance he craves, not a noble fight against corruption.
There’s another interpretation I’ve read about The Big Heat, most notably by Roger Ebert in his “The Great Movies” essay, that places Bannion as an oblivious angel of death for the female characters he encounters. I disagree with this take as well, and would argue that each death is more a result of circumstance than Bannion’s actions. Lucy Chapman, the mistress of the dead police officer, is murdered shortly after contacting Bannion, but his involvement is completely tangential to her death. Chapman’s demise comes as a result of her own actions, with Bannion’s role merely as a dutiful police officer doing what he’s been instructed to do. Their meeting and her death subsequently get Bannion involved with Lagana, escalated by the threatening phone call to his house. It’s also unlikely Bannion could have foreseen his car being loaded with explosives based solely on his visit to Lagana’s house since the murder of a police sergeant would logically raise several eyebrows, even in a city plagued by corruption.
The death of Mrs. Duncan, the police officer’s widow, comes the closest to being caused by Bannion because it came as a direct result of telling Debby the consequences for Stone if she were dead. However, by this point, Debby began to serve as a substitute for Bannion’s wife and he was telling her about his work (now being done without the aid of his police credentials) just as he had his wife at the beginning of the movie. There’s little reason to think, based on what we’re shown, that Bannion was intending for Debby to kill Mrs. Duncan. Debby’s own death, an inevitable conclusion given her circumstances and her actions, comes as a result of her quest for revenge against Stone for scarring her face. Bannion is present, but far from directly responsible. The idea that his encounters with women lead to their deaths is certainly an interesting one, but any theory as to his culpability, whether implicit or direct, seems flawed.
The three principals of The Big Heat re-teamed the next year for Human Desire, based on an Emile Zola novel and previously filmed by Jean Renoir as La bête humaine. The plot involves Ford’s Korean War vet returning to his old railroad job and becoming involved with Grahame, whose husband (played by Broderick Crawford) is Ford’s co-worker. It’s probably second-tier Lang, but it makes a nice companion piece to the earlier film. Grahame gets more time on screen and her character’s ambiguous actions give the film an interesting spin on what at times appears to be another variation of the Double Indemnity/The Postman Always Rings Twice kind of story. Even if it’s just to watch Ford and Grahame again, I’d imagine strong admirers of The Big Heat would also enjoy Human Desire quite a bit.
While The Big Heat can be found on DVD in a good (if overpriced) edition from Sony/Columbia, Human Desire is still unreleased from the same studio. The disc for the earlier title has only a re-release trailer and an advertising gallery, but the picture quality, after the first few minutes of frequent dust and debris spots, is especially impressive for a DVD that came out in 2001. The Columbia Pictures library was well-represented in the earlier days of DVD, with strong transfers and occasional featurettes, but Sony has more recently been content on mostly re-packaging a few titles here and there in sets without turning their attention to the unreleased films still waiting for their digital debuts. That’s rather disappointing for consumers anxious to get their hands on deserving titles like Human Desire, though there is a Japanese release that appears to be of good quality in the DVD Beaver review (here) and is enhanced in anamorphic widescreen. Both of the Lang-Ford-Grahame films are excellent and worth owning, but The Big Heat is an essential, a borderline masterpiece of raw, visceral violence and man’s animalistic need for revenge.
East of Eden March 30, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , 3 comments
Elia Kazan was incredibly prolific between the years 1947 and 1957, directing twelve films released in that period and one each year beginning with 1949’s Pinky. Two won him Oscars while also taking Best Picture - Gentleman’s Agreement and On the Waterfront - and two more earned him nominations - A Streetcar Named Desire and East of Eden
If you go back to his feature debut A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Kazan directed an astounding 24 Oscar-nominated performances, with 9 wins, from 1945 to Splendor in the Grass in 1961. As movies, though, I’d argue that most of his directorial output is spotty and inconsistent. He was much better at making great performances than great movies. Under his direction, many actors gave the performance generally regarded as the best in their career, but extraordinary acting certainly does not always translate into high-level cinema. In fact, showy roles can often hinder a movie, turning it into an acting showcase that’s ultimately less than the sum of its parts. Of course, electric performers like Marlon Brando or James Dean can make films fascinating and enjoyable without perfect stories, but, even for Kazan’s films, those actors are more the exception than the rule.
I have a lot of conflicting feelings about Elia Kazan and his films (even excluding politics and his involvement with HUAC). I’m stunned by the raw, emotional acting of Brando, Dean, and, especially, Andy Griffith, who never even came close to being utilized like he was by Kazan in A Face in the Crowd. I see the unmistakeable correlation between the great performances he directed in the 1950s and the dynamic accomplishments two decades later by Hoffman, Pacino, De Niro, etc. Yet, Kazan’s films often seem ridiculous, phony, and overcooked fifty years later. By all accounts, he was a tyrannical troublemaker on the set, stopping at nothing to elicit the best performance possible from his actors. That makes me wonder how much attention he was actually paying to the finished product, in lieu of his dogged determination to torment his actors into creative perfection. Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that Elia Kazan nearly ruined the 1950s for American film.
I mentioned the weakness of 1950s Hollywood movies in my last entry, without citing Kazan specifically, and I’ve thought about it a little since. As a transitional decade, the fifties were plagued by a lot of cinematic overacting, undoubtedly influenced by the Method and the Actors’ Studio, but probably exacerbated and encouraged by Kazan’s success with A Streetcar Named Desire. This style of acting eventually begat brilliance, but it also did away with the fluid gracefulness of movie acting from the 30s and 40s. Some of the magic of Hollywood was destroyed in favor of a step towards brooding realism. All of that’s fine, I suppose, since it arguably allowed the viewer a greater emotional connection and expanded the possibilities of movies, but sometimes I still lament the loss of suavity and glamour. Keeping all that in mind, I thought I’d finally sit down with East of Eden, one of the few pictures Kazan directed from this fruitful period that I’d previously not seen.
Adapted from John Steinbeck’s classic book, Kazan’s East of Eden focuses on the Trask brothers, Cal and Aron, and their stern father Adam (Raymond Massey). Cal, played brilliantly by James Dean, is different from his brother and deeply covets love and acceptance from his father. Cal sees Aron as a difficult example to live up to and struggles to please their father in the same way he thinks Aron does. The allusions to the biblical story of Cain and Abel are obvious, from the similarity in the names to the direct reference in the title. As the film begins in 1917, the United States is on the brink of entering World War I and Adam is experimenting with using blocks of ice to refrigerate shipments of lettuce. Like other Steinbeck stories, East of Eden is set amid the Salinas Valley, off the coast of Northern California. The film uses beautiful Cinemascope photography and vibrant, painterly colors, both finally well-represented on the two-disc DVD from Warner Bros., to great advantage, and is probably the most visually appealing movie Kazan ever directed.
Like many of Kazan’s films, East of Eden is engrossing, but uneven. The contrast of acting styles between James Dean and pretty much everyone else can be disorienting. Dean comes across as a living, breathing young man excitingly captured on film. The viewer is transfixed when he’s on the screen, and the film suffers when he’s not. His magnetic presence distracts from the often wooden or comparatively uninteresting performances of his co-stars (with the exception of Jo Van Fleet, who deservedly won an Oscar for her work here). Dean’s acting style makes most of the other actors seem like they’re in a different movie from a different era. It’s this problem that frequently plagues dramatic films of the decade, as actors of disparate generations often fail to mix well with each other. You marvel at one performance, such as Dean’s here, but, in terms of the evolution of screen acting, you realize how much ahead he was of most everyone else in the film.
East of Eden is nevertheless one of the stronger efforts in Kazan’s filmography. Aside from Dean’s staggering debut, the movie also has a well-told story to work with via Steinbeck’s book. The allegory is laid on quite thick, but the idea of family dysfunction remains endlessly fascinating due to its nearly universal applicability. Bitterness and jealousy, to varying degrees, are such common themes in sibling relationships that Steinbeck is able to sacrifice originality for compelling entertainment without much complaint. In Kazan’s best films, such as the two written by Budd Schulberg, the viewer becomes enmeshed in the story as much as the acting. If that’s not completely the case with East of Eden, it’s probably more the result of Dean’s acting than Kazan’s storytelling. It’s almost understandable for the actor’s presence to border on distraction given his unique position in film history. With only three significant screen roles, the iconic Dean commands the viewer’s attention when he’s on screen.
No one has played festering alienation hardly as well as James Dean did both here and in the more successful Rebel Without a Cause. His brief career, unfettered with attempts at stretching his persona, has placed a mystical quality on Dean that blurs the line between acting and being. Unlike other movie stars, we have little to explore outside of his screen performances. The footage we know of Dean consists almost exclusively of him in character, removed from the constraints of “celebrity.” Straddling between cool antihero and annoying young punk, no one was doing what James Dean was at the time. He may (or may not) have been a mostly one-trick actor, but it was a trick no one had ever pulled off before.
Paths of Glory March 22, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , 2 comments
Given the opportunity to attend a conversation with the beyond legendary Kirk Douglas, I not only jumped at such a chance but also finally gave Paths of Glory
With that admission comes another one: I tend to avoid Stanley Kubrick films. I’ve never watched a lot of his movies (2001, The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon) and I rarely re-watch the ones I have seen. Eyes Wide Shut is the major exception, probably because it was the only one I was able to discover for myself in the theater, despite bad publicity, lackluster box office and many misguided reviews. All of the Kubrick films I’ve seen have been highly worthwhile, extraordinary experiences that I’ve enjoyed immensely. Nevertheless, I’m keenly aware of his position as a point of entry for so many cliched young film enthusiasts and I’m not a fan of cliches so I’ve tried to not fall into that trap. This speaks nothing to the quality of Kubrick’s films, only to the quality of his admirers. You know, the ones with the poster for A Clockwork Orange in their dorm room. Yeah, that wasn’t me.
Related to that point, I also usually shy away from writing about films that have been discussed elsewhere enough to destroy a small forest’s worth of trees and/or induce massive amounts of carpal tunnel syndrome. Those films, with enough critical baggage of brilliant essays already churned out to intimidate most would-be writers or force them to rehash every single idea that’s already been written more persuasively and observantly ten times previous by others, are only interesting to read about if you’re attacking them in a provocative manner. Since that’s not my aim, I normally stick to underappreciated topics in the hope that I can figure out why I’ve liked or disliked a movie. Writing as cathartic therapy for my love of movies, I guess.
With that lengthy introduction necessarily complete, I have to say that there are times when I watch a canonical classic and the astonishment lingers enough that I have to type up something just so it will loosen its grip on me. Kubrick’s Paths of Glory has been pinging around my head since I watched it, two days before last night’s conversation between Mr. Douglas and Dr. Annette Insdorf, film professor at Columbia University and frequent contributor to DVD supplemental features. The film is a masterpiece of restraint, its 87 minutes covering more about the hypocrisies of war than any overblown epic or multipart documentary has ever managed to achieve. Insdorf called it the greatest war film in the English language and I’d have difficulty mounting much of an argument. War films should be more than just realistic explosions and hellish imagery. Better than anything by Spielberg, Stone or Coppola, Paths of Glory brilliantly shows the bureaucratic senselessness that almost always accompanies the much more glamorous battle scenes in war, but only rarely in film.
Loosely based on a true story and adapted from the novel by Humphrey Cobb, Kubrick’s fourth feature film is set in France during World War I. A French general (played by Adolphe Menjou) instructs the subordinate Mireau to take a hill from German invaders and promises him a promotion. General Mireau then commands Colonel Dax (Douglas) to formulate the mission despite the low possibility of success and certain death of a majority of the soldiers. Dax understandably balks at the suicide mission, but Mireau insists. When the attack fails, as numerous French soldiers lie dead, Mireau demands accountability to deflect negative attention from himself. Three men are chosen as examples, all innocents, to be tried for cowardice. Dax, a criminal attorney before the war, asks to defend the three soldiers, but their fates have already been sealed. Banned in France until 1975, the film remains an upsetting, uneasy experience.
It’s not surprising that Douglas, who also produced the film, is great as Col. Dax, giving one of the best performances of his career as the somewhat unconventional hero. On the one hand, it’s the most morally centered role I’ve ever seen from Douglas, an actor who claimed to have made a career of playing “sons-of-bitches.” Yet, even though Dax never strays from moral high ground, his actions ultimately make no difference. His mission, that he fought against conducting, is gravely unsuccessful and he’s unable to spare an additional three soldiers from their deaths. Heroes usually save people in movies, but Dax is met with failure at every turn. It’s certainly no direct fault of his own that his actions are ineffectual, but all the dead soldiers are casualties nonetheless. Dax’s continued failure, coupled with the film’s final scenes reminding us of the seemingly endless cycle of war, make for a much more powerful and emotional wallop than the rah-rah jingoistic sacrifices we’re used to seeing in war movies.
Aside from the short, documentary-like battle scenes that are brutal and technically impressive, one of the most striking things about Paths of Glory is how modern and fresh it remains, now fifty years since its release. A big complaint I have with American films from the 1950s is a certain awkward staginess that often makes for uninteresting films with over-emoting actors yelling away their “pain.” The studio system was collapsing and a new era in Hollywood was emerging that required movies to sort of shed their skin and stumble around a little before regaining their footing the following two decades. Of course there are exceptions, like many of the films from Hitchcock, Wilder and Ray, but too many stage adaptations crippled the drama genre, in my mind, and the method acting style, while eventually leading to many superb performances, made for lots of overblown, unbearable to watch films and performances.
The ones that survive unscathed are mostly either one-offs like Laughton’s Night of the Hunter and Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success, or from visionary directors who put their own unique stamp on their selection of actors and material. After watching Paths of Glory, though, I’m inclined to ease up a little on the 1950s, just because of how unabashedly brilliant a film Kubrick made. I’d probably still rank the decade below all others of the sound era except the 1980s, and possibly the 1930s, but I’m nonetheless impressed to see a non-noir, studio-financed drama from the ’50s that’s at such a high level. It’s the kind of movie that I honestly doubt would be made by a major Hollywood studio today, especially by a young, unproven director.
More than just a war or anti-war movie, Paths of Glory powerfully condemns the powers that get young persons killed to satisfy some childhood fantasy of heroism. Like Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Bob Dylan composed his brilliant indictment of warmongers “Masters of War” after watching Kubrick’s film. The song, part of 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, foretold the horrors to come of bellicose leaders anxious to send others to kill and be killed only a few years after the album was released. As history somewhat repeats itself, perhaps part of the strength of Paths of Glory, a power that wasn’t there the first time I saw it, is in viewing it with modern eyes and current knowledge of the existence of these same people, with the same ideals but different names. In that regard, I’d love to see the film eventually become irrelevant to modern audiences, but experience and history tell me that’s unlikely.
On a lighter note, Paths of Glory came up a couple of times in last night’s conversation. Douglas mostly deferred to Insdorf’s glowing praise without sharing any new or interesting stories about that film or my personal favorite Ace in the Hole, aside from a general compliment to director and friend Billy Wilder’s brilliance (and a regret that he turned down the lead role in Stalag 17 that eventually won William Holden an Academy Award). Instead, he talked a little about the more popular Spartacus, mentioning the well-known ordeal of Dalton Trumbo’s writing credit including Kubrick’s suggestion that the script be credited to the director. The ninety-year-old stroke survivor is probably as much an icon as any living person, with his mind and body both incredibly spry, so it was understandable that he basically stuck to the script of mentioning his new book as often as possible while telling entertaining anecdotes about his family and friends. After being in the presence of some extraordinary people the last few years, I’m not one to be starstruck, but it never left my mind how amazing it was to spend an hour and a half of seeing Kirk Douglas in person. Spartacus be damned, I saw Chuck Tatum in the flesh.
Ace in the Hole January 20, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Billy Wilder , 4 comments
There are prescient movies, ahead of their time enough for modern viewers to appreciate a retained relevance or uncanny vision into how society would reflect portions of films past, and then there’s Ace in the Hole
Appropriately, Tatum is first seen behind the wheel of his car as it’s being towed down the street. He has the tow truck stop when he sees a newspaper office and talks himself into a job with the small-time Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. The dialogue in this scene is impeccable, some of Wilder’s best (though we don’t know for sure what he wrote since there are three writers credited for the Oscar-nominated screenplay, the director’s body of work gives us a good idea), and delivered with steely precision by Douglas. The audience learns immediately what kind of sharp-witted, accomplished character we’re dealing with in Tatum and we’re assured that he’s more likely to change the paper’s principle of “Tell the Truth” than it is to change his own attitude.
After a deft cut to a year later, with Tatum desperately itching for a story to serve as his meal ticket back to the big city papers out east, the reporter is assigned to a rattlesnake hunt a few hours away and told to take along the paper’s cub photographer. On their way, they stop for gas in a tiny town and discover the fuel station’s owner was searching for Indian artifacts in a nearby cave when rocks collapsed, pinning him inside. Tatum seizes his golden opportunity, remembering the real-life incident in Kentucky where a Louisville reporter helped with the attempted rescue of the trapped Floyd Collins and won a Pulitzer Prize and nationwide attention for his troubles while Collins perished after two weeks. He soon befriends Leo, the man stuck in the cave, and, along with the sheriff he’s made a devil of a deal with, creates a literal circus around the cave site complete with ice cream, balloons and amusement park rides. People come from miles away to gawk and experience the carnival atmosphere.
It’s easy to see how audiences and critics could have avoided, even downright loathed Ace in the Hole. Wilder rarely, if ever, lets you know he’s in on the joke. Unlike many other films where the audience is immunized from the onscreen ridicule, Wilder’s movie never gives viewers the satisfaction of thinking they’re above all the madness. He directly criticizes everyone, with only Tatum’s newspaper boss and Leo’s naive father coming across as even remotely admirable, and refuses to placate the audience by giving his film a conscience. We’re all accomplices for buying Tatum’s sensationalist news and Wilder has the guts to call us on it.
If indeed we share the burden for muckrakers like Tatum then it’s not unthinkable to look at the character and still manage to recognize how much charisma the fearless Douglas manages to inject as the acerbic reporter. In an era when movie stars rarely veered away from likeable roles, or at least redeeming ones, Douglas was not afraid to play cruel when necessary, never more so than in Ace in the Hole. It seems like every word of dialogue from Tatum is both memorable and caustic. “If there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.” When asked if he drinks a lot, Tatum replies, “Not a lot. Just frequently.” I can’t say I’ve seen every performance Douglas has given on film, but I’m confident in asserting that his Chuck Tatum was never bested. The actor completely gives himself to the role, leaving any semblance of Kirk Douglas the movie star behind. He’s absolutely essential to the film’s success and he turns in a merciless, acid-tongued performance.
Amazingly, Wilder gives the audience a character who’s even more sardonic than Tatum and thankfully found an actress as talented as Jan Sterling to play the cold and ruthless Lorraine, the wife of Leo. Sterling’s dynamite as a woman unhappy in her five-year marriage and more than ready to finally escape from him and small town New Mexico. As the film progresses, it becomes obvious that she’s completely without sympathy for Leo and an undeniable femme fatale. ”I don’t pray. Kneeling bags my nylons,” she infamously says, in a line Wilder claimed was suggested by his own wife. Her frequently violent encounters with Tatum add a fascinating additional layer to the story that’s also accented by the surely intentional naming of “The Great S & M Amusement Corp.” trucks we see at the cave site.
Like the moviegoers of 1951 who made the film a financial failure, leading Paramount executives to quickly rechristen it the more cheerful sounding The Big Carnival, I was a little dismayed at the sheer bleakness of Wilder’s film the first time I saw it. I’m not sure Wilder’s other films, even cynical and nasty highlights like Sunset Blvd. and Double Indemnity, can prepare the viewer for the pessimistic nature of Ace in the Hole, darkly satirizing much of American culture and society in general. A second viewing, this time armed with a better mindset to enter the bitter world created by this atypical classic, was much more enjoyable and left me more understanding of its deserved resurgence in Wilder’s catalog. The remarkable lines that come out of Tatum’s mouth also hit harder and with more ferocious humor on subsequent viewings than the first.
A reasonable person might then ask why should we celebrate a film so unrelentingly devoid of hope and kindness. The short answer is that many people find comfort in movies reflecting their own frustration with the ills of society. It’s incredibly rare to find a studio film from this era so ruthlessly unconcerned with pleasing its audience as Ace in the Hole. If the cinema is a refuge for those reluctant to accept the harsh realities of mankind’s darkest actions, Ace in the Hole serves as a stark reminder of humans’ stunning capability to not do the proper thing. Almost no one in the film does the best thing at any given moment. Each action is a folly compounded by an increased severity and lackluster sense of selfishness.
I’ve read insinuations that the film is anti-American in its mocking of the spectacle created while a man lies dying in a cave. Obviously, that accusation has more to do with how one defines American culture and society than with the film itself. If it’s anti-American to feature oblivious participants more interested in purchasing souvenir keepsakes (fifty years before the World Trade Center site became a haven for opportunists) and ice cream cones than truly caring about the trapped man’s fate then perhaps Wilder’s film does indeed fit that description. There’s no doubt that we’re dealing with heavy satire here, though, with Wilder daring the audience to laugh at the stupidity of people who could be their own neighbors, if not themselves.
That crowd of emptyheaded onlookers is embodied by Mr. Federber (played by Frank Cady who later portrayed the character Sam Drucker on three separate sitcoms) and his family who were (proudly) the first ones to turn the site into a tourist attraction. His zeal is played for uneasy laughs, but anyone who’s ever experienced how willing people can be to gobble up tragedy will realize it rings true. Wilder also offers a sly critique of our capitalistic nature, I think, as the price of entrance to the cave site rises from free, to 25¢, then 50¢, and finally $1.00. As she apathetically passes time while her husband remains buried alive, Leo’s wife not only implements the price hike, but also rakes it in from selling burgers to the hungry crowd. The $11 she was ready to leave with, before Tatum convinced her that a grieving wife sells more papers, magically increases hundredfold.
In his later years, Wilder tended to personally rate his more popular pictures much higher than his less commercially successful ones, with the exception of Ace in the Hole. He was unflappable in his defense and held it up as a personal favorite. Yet, despite brushes with darker themes here and there, the director never made another movie anywhere near as cynical as Ace in the Hole again. He felt he’d briefly lost the audience’s trust and made a misstep as to what they’d be willing to see. Regardless of his own artistic aspirations, Wilder was keenly aware that moviegoers were the reason he was allowed to continue making films and he now realized what he couldn’t get away with from his audience. Instead, he adapted a few plays and books before finding his other great writing partner (the first being Charles Brackett, with whom he’d fallen out just before Ace in the Hole), I.A.L. Diamond, and turning his attention to some wonderful pictures beginning with Love in the Afternoon and continuing with a triumvirate of comedic masterpieces: Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and One, Two, Three.
Given the general feeling of malaise emanating from Ace in the Hole, I suppose it’s only a little surprising that it’s never been released on VHS or DVD, as opposed to the more expected shock and outrage one might feel towards Paramount for sitting on one of Billy Wilder’s true gems. The tides may be turning, however, as theatrical screenings continue to pop up in New York and elsewhere and Turner Classic Movies is finally airing the film in both January and March. Then there’s the speckle of hope that Criterion might somehow wrangle the rights away since it’s recently come to light that they’ve acquired some other Paramount titles for release. Regardless, I hope the wait for Ace in the Hole’s home video debut is nearly over and maybe this time Wilder’s message will be a little better understood. It’ll surely provide a shock to even the most jaded of film fans, who might have a hard time getting that final shot of Tatum collapsing onto the floor in low-angle close-up out of their heads.
UPDATE - Criterion will indeed be releasing Ace in the Hole on DVD this July. You can find my review of the DVD here.
Baby Doll January 8, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , add a comment
Filmed in rural Mississippi on a small budget, Baby Doll
I suppose the story is a little scandalous, as there is a sexual element involved. Karl Malden plays Archie Lee, a cotton plantation owner who’s married to the much younger Baby Doll (played by Carroll Baker) but is unable to consummate the union until she turns twenty years old. That was part of the agreement Archie had made to Baby Doll’s father, a powerful and wealthy man who was near death at the time and wished to see his little girl marry while he was still alive. The film opens with Archie’s plantation struggling and Baby Doll’s twentieth birthday only a day away. Baby Doll has an obvious contempt for her husband and still refuses him all marital intimacies, which has turned Archie into a peeping tom in his own house (the nicest one in town, but also supposedly haunted). Eli Wallach is the Sicilian Vacarro (meaning plenty of ethnic slurs) who’s nearly run Archie out of the cotton business with his more successful and modern gin. When Vacarro’s gin just happens to burn down, Archie is more than willing to help out with the needed cotton supply. Oh, and Baby Doll likes to sleep in a crib while sucking her thumb.
That last bit is most certainly a big cause of concern for the thought police who condemned the film, yet, aside from the promotional poster, the only time we see this on screen is very early on and it’s much more strange (or possibly corny) than erotic. In fact, as Eli Wallach pointed out in the featurette included on the DVD, Vacarro spends more time in the crib than Baby Doll. I have to think that the controversy that’s surrounded the film for fifty years is due in no small part to that brief image and much more lasting poster shot. It almost makes the whole fuss seem sort of manufactured since it was the film’s own promotional materials, including that jumbo size Times Square billboard with live models serving as stand-ins for Baby Doll, that impacted its notorious reputation.
Aside from the scene where Vacarro and Baby Doll share a swing while Kazan keeps the camera focused above the waist (allegedly due to the cold temperatures at the time it was shot and to hide the space heater sitting on the ground), the whole thing seems quaint even by the standards established from other controversial films of the era. While some of the featurette interviewees mention how funny the film is, I can’t share their sentiment there either. Most of the possible humor seems to land with a thud. I realize we’re in the realm of Tennessee Williams and his Southern gothic melodrama, but the Baby Doll character is much more ridiculous than outrageous. Her aunt (Mildred Dunnock) is even more inexplicably bizarre, sort of like a grandmother (who steals chocolates from hospital patients) to many of t