Key Largo
The bruises to my ego no doubt will fade, just as the cuts to my moral cranium will blend back to normal, but despite all my protestations as to what a monumental artistic and popular success is that movie known as Key Largo (1948), as it happens, Lisa Ann, known to loyal readers as the long suffering roommate, may have been closer to the truth when she pronounced the movie "Very stupid." She called it a "vanity movie," the equivalent of some weak and overdone story that tried to sell tickets based on the glam and glitter of stars Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Edward G. Robinson. "I have been to musicals," she declared, "on a brick and mortar stage that were more realistic. The costume designer was only interested in the women looking perfect and the men looking dapper throughout the wind-machine hurricane punctuated by that overpowering music score (Max Steiner). There was no duress in this movie except the delivery of the lines."
"Did you feel bad about the Indians?" I asked.
"Of course, I did. The Indians were not given proper attention. If you're going to call them out with any importance, you need to explain why you're calling them out, especially with Indians."
She was not impressed that one of the Seminoles was played by Jay Silverheels.
"They did not get the respect they deserved. Do you realize how many people at the time watched that movie and said, 'Stupid Indians.' Back in those days, the American Indians were viewed very poorly. A lot of the popular conceptions of Indians comes from movies like this. It really reinforces the stereotypes."
The last time I watched Key Largo was fifteen years ago. I loved it. A friend of mine and I walked around together sparring back and forth as McCloud and Rocco. "What's one more Johnny Rocco in the world, more or less?" Or "Why don't you show the storm your gun, Rocco?" "Yeah! More! That's what I want." Or even "You filth." Or especially, "What I believed was that we were fighting to save a world in which there would be no need for a Johnny Rocco."
Then again, lots of movies have great dialogue.
"There's no symbolism, no moral parallelism, no point to any of it," she said with an indignant swing of her head.
I don't quite hold with this degree of vitriol about the John Huston-directed film. But I have learned to listen to the LSR, because to not listen often feeds my detriment. Sometimes I even think hard about what she says, especially when we disagree.
I don't quite agree with the "no symbolism" argument. But maybe that's just a semantic distinction. Think of it instead as personification. Just as the mountain in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (also directed by Huston, also starring Bogart, and also from 1948) was itself a character in the movie, so was the storm in Key Largo a central player, an invisible heroine bent on trying to crush the villains, even if she had to wipe out everyone else to get the job done. On the other hand, that sort of contrivance may strike contemporary audiences as corny, maudlin, or just plain stupid.
I'm even willing to grant that the performances by Bacall and Bogart were self-serving. And if the Nora Temple character had little to do besides fawn over old memories and romantic visions of the impending future, I can only counter that I found more depth in her gaze than in the theatrics of any one else in the movie.
As to the cast, Robinson's Johnny Rocco truly terrifies, at least to my way of thinking. That may be why some people don't go for this film with the enthusiasm I brought to it. After all, Rocco threatens to shoot an old man for praying, murders a cop in the coldest of blood, ridicules a returning war veteran, dangles Scotch in front of his concubine just for meanness, and plans on flooding the American economy with counterfeit currency. He is, according to the movie, exactly what we were fighting against in World War II.
That's a little bit of a problem. If you want to argue that the parallel is Rocco to Mussolini or Hitler, it doesn't quite float. Oh, both sides of that coin were hell bent on conquest and may indeed have been pure evil, but the writer and director did pull back from making that parallel clear, probably from fear of pissing off too many Italian-Americans. (And if you doubt that theory, remember that in "The Untouchables" TV show, not even al Capone himself was portrayed as Italian, and for precisely the same reason.)
Again, to give Lisa Ann her credit, certain aspects of the movie do fail to hold together. Too much of the struggle does come across limping rather than charging and those fifteen years since I last saw Key Largo have had their effect on me. Perhaps I've succumbed to a stand-off between fatalistic Phil and moralistic Mershon. I don't know. Let us just say I liked the movie a bit more than she did. And even if you reading this remain true believers of the justified mythology of the brilliance of Bogart and Huston, you may do well to consider that some heroes exist in small part for purposes of self-criticism.
Hoping you are the same.
"Did you feel bad about the Indians?" I asked.
"Of course, I did. The Indians were not given proper attention. If you're going to call them out with any importance, you need to explain why you're calling them out, especially with Indians."
She was not impressed that one of the Seminoles was played by Jay Silverheels.
"They did not get the respect they deserved. Do you realize how many people at the time watched that movie and said, 'Stupid Indians.' Back in those days, the American Indians were viewed very poorly. A lot of the popular conceptions of Indians comes from movies like this. It really reinforces the stereotypes."
The last time I watched Key Largo was fifteen years ago. I loved it. A friend of mine and I walked around together sparring back and forth as McCloud and Rocco. "What's one more Johnny Rocco in the world, more or less?" Or "Why don't you show the storm your gun, Rocco?" "Yeah! More! That's what I want." Or even "You filth." Or especially, "What I believed was that we were fighting to save a world in which there would be no need for a Johnny Rocco."
Then again, lots of movies have great dialogue.
"There's no symbolism, no moral parallelism, no point to any of it," she said with an indignant swing of her head.
I don't quite hold with this degree of vitriol about the John Huston-directed film. But I have learned to listen to the LSR, because to not listen often feeds my detriment. Sometimes I even think hard about what she says, especially when we disagree.
I don't quite agree with the "no symbolism" argument. But maybe that's just a semantic distinction. Think of it instead as personification. Just as the mountain in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (also directed by Huston, also starring Bogart, and also from 1948) was itself a character in the movie, so was the storm in Key Largo a central player, an invisible heroine bent on trying to crush the villains, even if she had to wipe out everyone else to get the job done. On the other hand, that sort of contrivance may strike contemporary audiences as corny, maudlin, or just plain stupid.
I'm even willing to grant that the performances by Bacall and Bogart were self-serving. And if the Nora Temple character had little to do besides fawn over old memories and romantic visions of the impending future, I can only counter that I found more depth in her gaze than in the theatrics of any one else in the movie.
As to the cast, Robinson's Johnny Rocco truly terrifies, at least to my way of thinking. That may be why some people don't go for this film with the enthusiasm I brought to it. After all, Rocco threatens to shoot an old man for praying, murders a cop in the coldest of blood, ridicules a returning war veteran, dangles Scotch in front of his concubine just for meanness, and plans on flooding the American economy with counterfeit currency. He is, according to the movie, exactly what we were fighting against in World War II.
That's a little bit of a problem. If you want to argue that the parallel is Rocco to Mussolini or Hitler, it doesn't quite float. Oh, both sides of that coin were hell bent on conquest and may indeed have been pure evil, but the writer and director did pull back from making that parallel clear, probably from fear of pissing off too many Italian-Americans. (And if you doubt that theory, remember that in "The Untouchables" TV show, not even al Capone himself was portrayed as Italian, and for precisely the same reason.)
Again, to give Lisa Ann her credit, certain aspects of the movie do fail to hold together. Too much of the struggle does come across limping rather than charging and those fifteen years since I last saw Key Largo have had their effect on me. Perhaps I've succumbed to a stand-off between fatalistic Phil and moralistic Mershon. I don't know. Let us just say I liked the movie a bit more than she did. And even if you reading this remain true believers of the justified mythology of the brilliance of Bogart and Huston, you may do well to consider that some heroes exist in small part for purposes of self-criticism.
Hoping you are the same.
The Bicycle Thief
Perhaps you remember the scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Paul Newman peddles Katharine Ross around on a bicycle while B.J. Thomas sings "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head." The scene was good for more than merely cheap sentiment because the two-wheeler, which might have been stolen from Wilbur and Orville's famous bicycle shop, signified the very pre-flight moment in human evolution when robbing trains was no longer a viable means of making an honest living.
As Randy Newman so simply put it:
Sing a song of long ago
When things were green and movin' slow
and people'd stop to say hello,
or they'd say "hi" to you.
Would you like to come over for tea
with the missus and me?
It's a real nice way
to spend the day
in Dayton, Ohio
on a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1903.
But in post-war Rome, Antonio Ricci needed his bicycle for commercial reasons. It was the primary reason he was selected from dozens of men for a job hanging Rita Hayworth posters on city walls. So he goes to the pawn shop and pays sixty-five hundred lire to get his two-wheeler out of hock. Now he can make money for his wife and son. On the first day of work, an Italian wearing a German cap steals the bicycle. Antonio spends the rest of the movie attempting to get it back. His efforts change him, or reveal him to himself.
That is the entire movie.
The movie is, of course, The Bicycle Thief (1949).
And yet it is so much more than what I have said.
In part it is the staggering brilliance of director Vittorio de Sica placing millions of bicycles in the path of Ricci and his son Bruno. In part it is the carelessness of the way Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani, looking very much like a young Robert Duvall) treats the machine when he first gets it back, only to have its value scream at him as it is taken away. In part it is the depths to which he sinks trying to get it back. But mostly it is Bruno watching his father deteriorate in front of him. This kid is no Mickey Rooney, with eyes full of innocent deviltry. This is a kid who talks back freely, a kid who disobeys on a regular basis, a kid who sees his own future and nearly suffocates beneath it.
De Sica knew poverty, he knew desperation, and he knew about the ways that men turn against men. He understood the way that people rationalize within their own economic class. Everyone in the movie is dirt poor and yet each person imagines himself to be in a different economic class from everyone else. Ricci finds an old man who is somehow involved in the theft of the bike. The old man is surviving out of a Catholic soup kitchen. The old man is in far worse shape than Ricci, even though if things do not improve, Ricci will find himself in similar digs, and Ricci knows this. Nevertheless he hounds the old man relentlessly. Antonio encounters an old fortune-teller woman who exploits the misery of those who come to her. He holds the woman in contempt and yet finds himself reaching out to her when he has nowhere else to seek help. He encounters a city block owned and operated by thieving grease-balls who are doing well to have two lire to rub together, yet he takes on the whole lot of them in an effort to retrieve his trusty bicycle. In the end, he must make a moral decision about whether to steal someone else's bicycle.
So there is actually very little simplicity to this seemingly uncomplicated work of Italian cinema.
As Randy Newman so simply put it:
Sing a song of long ago
When things were green and movin' slow
and people'd stop to say hello,
or they'd say "hi" to you.
Would you like to come over for tea
with the missus and me?
It's a real nice way
to spend the day
in Dayton, Ohio
on a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1903.
But in post-war Rome, Antonio Ricci needed his bicycle for commercial reasons. It was the primary reason he was selected from dozens of men for a job hanging Rita Hayworth posters on city walls. So he goes to the pawn shop and pays sixty-five hundred lire to get his two-wheeler out of hock. Now he can make money for his wife and son. On the first day of work, an Italian wearing a German cap steals the bicycle. Antonio spends the rest of the movie attempting to get it back. His efforts change him, or reveal him to himself.
That is the entire movie.
The movie is, of course, The Bicycle Thief (1949).
And yet it is so much more than what I have said.
In part it is the staggering brilliance of director Vittorio de Sica placing millions of bicycles in the path of Ricci and his son Bruno. In part it is the carelessness of the way Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani, looking very much like a young Robert Duvall) treats the machine when he first gets it back, only to have its value scream at him as it is taken away. In part it is the depths to which he sinks trying to get it back. But mostly it is Bruno watching his father deteriorate in front of him. This kid is no Mickey Rooney, with eyes full of innocent deviltry. This is a kid who talks back freely, a kid who disobeys on a regular basis, a kid who sees his own future and nearly suffocates beneath it.
De Sica knew poverty, he knew desperation, and he knew about the ways that men turn against men. He understood the way that people rationalize within their own economic class. Everyone in the movie is dirt poor and yet each person imagines himself to be in a different economic class from everyone else. Ricci finds an old man who is somehow involved in the theft of the bike. The old man is surviving out of a Catholic soup kitchen. The old man is in far worse shape than Ricci, even though if things do not improve, Ricci will find himself in similar digs, and Ricci knows this. Nevertheless he hounds the old man relentlessly. Antonio encounters an old fortune-teller woman who exploits the misery of those who come to her. He holds the woman in contempt and yet finds himself reaching out to her when he has nowhere else to seek help. He encounters a city block owned and operated by thieving grease-balls who are doing well to have two lire to rub together, yet he takes on the whole lot of them in an effort to retrieve his trusty bicycle. In the end, he must make a moral decision about whether to steal someone else's bicycle.
So there is actually very little simplicity to this seemingly uncomplicated work of Italian cinema.
A Night in Casablanca
The gang and I were watching A Night in Casablanca last night, the Marx Brothers film from 1946, the movie about which there was a fascinating but not altogether true story that Warner Bros, who had made the film Casablanca, attempted to force the Marx Brothers from calling their film what they called it because the studio claimed ownership of the key word. The not really true story went that Groucho Marx then fired off a letter to Warner Bros saying that his comedy team had been using the word "Brothers" longer than Warner had and that they should
(a) stop using it, or at least
(b) begin spelling it correctly.
The movie itself, though, while perhaps not the best effort ever put together by Groucho, Chico and Harpo, still had its share of laughs and the experience of watching these three geniuses got me to ruminating about how here in this country we have a long and noble tradition of hating Nazis, as well as other fascists. If I'm not mistaken, we were active participants in something called World War II from around about 1941 until 1945 and the stated purpose of that global conflict was to kick the shit out of fascism. Just because we lost that particular crusade (yes, I know we defeated the Axis Powers, but that doesn't mean we beat fascism), for years hence the people of the United States have had a strong tendency to oppose fascism because it was an elitist economic system that celebrated what its enthusiasts, such as Benito Mussolini, referred to as the "basic inequality" of human beings; because its various political manifestos encouraged the belief that the so-called Aryan race was superior to all others and that men were superior to women; because it embraced a world view that said the means were justified by the ends; and because of the willingness of its adherents to accept any kind of political behavior so long as they were able to remain psychologically and intellectually anesthetized from the racist barbarism that was its stock and trade. Yes, we were against the fascist philosophy, if it may be called such, and we were quite proud of that fact. And we were reasonably united as a country in our opposition to that disposition. In the movie Frances we saw all kinds of subliminal period signs proclaiming that Loose Lips Sink Ships and that we should turn off our headlights on the west coast. We rationed food and gasoline, copper and gold, and it seems that everyone knew somebody who was directly involved in the war effort to kill fascism.
Whereas today the philosophy as practiced by Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Horthy, Antonescu, Filov, Pavelic and their ilk is considered, at least by some, to be just fine, as hunky dory, okey doke, and a viable alternative to democracy.
Since the end of World War II, fascist leaders and their not particularly affable followers have enjoyed their share of fortune. There was Juan Peron in Argentina, Luis Garcia Meza Tejada in Bolivia, Mario Sandoval Alcaron in Guatemala, Hsu Na-Chi in Taiwan, Nick Griffin in the United Kingdom, and the ideological cousins of Wesley Swift here in the United States.
Huey Long may or may not have said it, but when fascism comes to America (as it may have already done) it will come in the name of anti-fascism.
Since the last days of the second world war, the United States and some of its allies have been as much on the side of the founders of the Third Reich as any Romanian dictator ever was. Before he became Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles helped recruit Nazi generals into the western alliance as a presumed hedge against communism. Project Paperclip brought dozens of Nazi scientists to the United States to form what was then the fledgling enterprise known as NASA. And our Cold War philosophies have found the United States on the side of all manner of neo-fascist regimes from Iran to Nicaragua.
And now we are faced with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
Whoa, hey. Didn't see that one coming, did you?
From Alma 3: 6 "And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men." Until 1978, black people could not join the Mormon Church. They were perceived to be the wicked descendants of Cain, whereas the whites of America were thought to be the inevitable sons and daughters of Seth. Yikes.
I am not suggesting that because he is Mormon that Mitt Romney is a racist. I have no idea what his racial views are. I doubt if he even knows who Nelson Mandela is. However, his "I like firing people" stance and his recent selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate indicates that Willard is not particularly in love with poor people and it certainly screams out that he would be right at home with the elitist global view of realpolitik.
Yet there seems to be little outrage, at least from the arbiters of civilization in the media. It was not all that long ago that the Road Map to Ruin, or whatever the Ryan budget plan was called, was being dissected as that thing that would end Medicare and Social Security, and now, just a year later, the media seems all a-quiver with the widow's peak and the gym workouts that are more than a little reminiscent of the real popularity of Ronald Reagan. (My own blessed grandmother voted for Ronnie because, as she put it, he was so handsome.) People who did not know David Stockman and Milton Friedman from Maynard Keynes and Betty Friedan got themselves all hard and wet over the Gipper and his intellectual cravens, just as people are trying to do with Willard and Benito--I mean Ryan, just as they did with the attractive Barack Obama in 2008. Come one, you don't think Sarah Palin was on the GOP ticket for any other reason than her appearance, do you? Somebody had to get women thinking about something other than the joys of miscegenation.
I'd like to see some real ugly motherfucker run for President, someone from a major political party that actually has a chance. I'd like to see someone with the girth of Chris Christie and the face of Dan Boren run for President. Whatever happened to the good old days of fat and hideous-faced politicians like McArthur, Taft, Cleveland, McKinley (after whom a mountain was named, and for no other reason), or even Teddy Roosevelt? Come on, people! Fascists are supposed to be physically unsightly, like Oswald Mosley. That's why your rank and file skinhead is bald, tattooed and unshaven. If the people at the bottom know how to scare others with their physical hideousness, you'd think the leaders could do the same.
But then again, that might make them harder to love because with people like my dear old grandma not being able to focus on their superficial aspects, we might actually examine their hatefulness and run the bastards out of town.
(a) stop using it, or at least
(b) begin spelling it correctly.
The movie itself, though, while perhaps not the best effort ever put together by Groucho, Chico and Harpo, still had its share of laughs and the experience of watching these three geniuses got me to ruminating about how here in this country we have a long and noble tradition of hating Nazis, as well as other fascists. If I'm not mistaken, we were active participants in something called World War II from around about 1941 until 1945 and the stated purpose of that global conflict was to kick the shit out of fascism. Just because we lost that particular crusade (yes, I know we defeated the Axis Powers, but that doesn't mean we beat fascism), for years hence the people of the United States have had a strong tendency to oppose fascism because it was an elitist economic system that celebrated what its enthusiasts, such as Benito Mussolini, referred to as the "basic inequality" of human beings; because its various political manifestos encouraged the belief that the so-called Aryan race was superior to all others and that men were superior to women; because it embraced a world view that said the means were justified by the ends; and because of the willingness of its adherents to accept any kind of political behavior so long as they were able to remain psychologically and intellectually anesthetized from the racist barbarism that was its stock and trade. Yes, we were against the fascist philosophy, if it may be called such, and we were quite proud of that fact. And we were reasonably united as a country in our opposition to that disposition. In the movie Frances we saw all kinds of subliminal period signs proclaiming that Loose Lips Sink Ships and that we should turn off our headlights on the west coast. We rationed food and gasoline, copper and gold, and it seems that everyone knew somebody who was directly involved in the war effort to kill fascism.
Whereas today the philosophy as practiced by Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Horthy, Antonescu, Filov, Pavelic and their ilk is considered, at least by some, to be just fine, as hunky dory, okey doke, and a viable alternative to democracy.
Since the end of World War II, fascist leaders and their not particularly affable followers have enjoyed their share of fortune. There was Juan Peron in Argentina, Luis Garcia Meza Tejada in Bolivia, Mario Sandoval Alcaron in Guatemala, Hsu Na-Chi in Taiwan, Nick Griffin in the United Kingdom, and the ideological cousins of Wesley Swift here in the United States.
Huey Long may or may not have said it, but when fascism comes to America (as it may have already done) it will come in the name of anti-fascism.
Since the last days of the second world war, the United States and some of its allies have been as much on the side of the founders of the Third Reich as any Romanian dictator ever was. Before he became Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles helped recruit Nazi generals into the western alliance as a presumed hedge against communism. Project Paperclip brought dozens of Nazi scientists to the United States to form what was then the fledgling enterprise known as NASA. And our Cold War philosophies have found the United States on the side of all manner of neo-fascist regimes from Iran to Nicaragua.
And now we are faced with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
Whoa, hey. Didn't see that one coming, did you?
From Alma 3: 6 "And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men." Until 1978, black people could not join the Mormon Church. They were perceived to be the wicked descendants of Cain, whereas the whites of America were thought to be the inevitable sons and daughters of Seth. Yikes.
I am not suggesting that because he is Mormon that Mitt Romney is a racist. I have no idea what his racial views are. I doubt if he even knows who Nelson Mandela is. However, his "I like firing people" stance and his recent selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate indicates that Willard is not particularly in love with poor people and it certainly screams out that he would be right at home with the elitist global view of realpolitik.
Yet there seems to be little outrage, at least from the arbiters of civilization in the media. It was not all that long ago that the Road Map to Ruin, or whatever the Ryan budget plan was called, was being dissected as that thing that would end Medicare and Social Security, and now, just a year later, the media seems all a-quiver with the widow's peak and the gym workouts that are more than a little reminiscent of the real popularity of Ronald Reagan. (My own blessed grandmother voted for Ronnie because, as she put it, he was so handsome.) People who did not know David Stockman and Milton Friedman from Maynard Keynes and Betty Friedan got themselves all hard and wet over the Gipper and his intellectual cravens, just as people are trying to do with Willard and Benito--I mean Ryan, just as they did with the attractive Barack Obama in 2008. Come one, you don't think Sarah Palin was on the GOP ticket for any other reason than her appearance, do you? Somebody had to get women thinking about something other than the joys of miscegenation.
I'd like to see some real ugly motherfucker run for President, someone from a major political party that actually has a chance. I'd like to see someone with the girth of Chris Christie and the face of Dan Boren run for President. Whatever happened to the good old days of fat and hideous-faced politicians like McArthur, Taft, Cleveland, McKinley (after whom a mountain was named, and for no other reason), or even Teddy Roosevelt? Come on, people! Fascists are supposed to be physically unsightly, like Oswald Mosley. That's why your rank and file skinhead is bald, tattooed and unshaven. If the people at the bottom know how to scare others with their physical hideousness, you'd think the leaders could do the same.
But then again, that might make them harder to love because with people like my dear old grandma not being able to focus on their superficial aspects, we might actually examine their hatefulness and run the bastards out of town.
The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca
The term "independent film" is as meaningless as the expression "alternative music." Neither phrase says what it implies and neither implication is remotely accurate. United Artists is as close as we have come in this country to having a legitimate outlet for movies outside the realm of what used to be called the Hollywood studio system. Nowadays, that system is based on the early U/A model of providing financial backing and distribution to a film idea while (often) leasing the studio facilities to the filmmakers. In the days and years of the original studio system, there was something called five and three. The five were the biggest studios (Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO and Warner Bros). The three were lesser majors (Universal, Columbia, and United Artists). Today there's still a Big Five, and the names are familiar: Columbia (owned by Sony), Warner Bros (Time-Warner), Paramount (Viacom), Fox (News Corporation), and Universal (Comcast/NBC). You can even throw Disney into the mix, if that helps, despite the stench that company continues to exude.
Under the studio system, the majors had things locked up. They owned the studios. They had the directors, writers and actors under contract. They owned the means of distribution. And they owned most of the theater chains where the films were shown. From the release of the first all "live" talking movie Lights of New York in 1928 until an anti-trust Supreme Court decision in 1954, the majors ruled and while you might think that this would mean that a lot of garbage dictated the tastes of the American public, funny enough the exact opposite is true. During this first phase of the Hollywood invasion, we were treated to something known as the Golden Age of Film, yielding such wondrous gems as All Quite on the Western Front, Duck Soup, The Thin Man, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, The Big Sleep, High Noon, Sunset Boulevard, An Affair to Remember, Seven Samurai, On the Waterfront, Rear Window, Rashomon, Singin' in the Rain, A Streetcar Named Desire, Strangers on a Train, From Here to Eternity, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Roman Holiday, An American in Paris, The Big Heat, Othello, The Wild One, My Darling Clementine, The Maltese Falcon, andCasablanca.
The second Hollywood period ran from roughly 1955 through 1967. Those were rough times for the industry, with a certain audience rejection of the pre-blockbuster mentality and the ascent of the New Wave, where the director became very much the guiding hand of the film, which he'd always been anyway, only now the conception of the film as totally the purview of the filmmaker became entranced with the director himself. So with the dawning, as it were, of killer foreign directors such as Truffaut, Godard, Kurusawa and Kubrick, we began to be treated to an absorption or assimilation into the new mainstream with American filmmakers, some carrying over from the Golden Age, others being new faces. The Man with the Golden Arm, Lust for Life, The Defiant Ones, Shadows, Witness for the Prosecution, East of Eden, Anatomy of a Murder, The Night of the Hunter, Kansas City Confidential, Touch of Evil, Bridge on the River Kwai, Knife in the Water, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Breathless, The 400 Blows, Contempt, Cape Fear, Long Day's Journey into Night, Jules and Jim, Hud, A Raisin in the Sun, Judgment at Nuremberg, Blow-Up, Spartacus, Alphaville, A Hard Day's Night, Doctor Strangelove, and the film that kicked down all the doors, Bonnie and Clyde: these movies changed the way audiences came to understand the idea of going to the movies. As with the best movies of the Golden Age, the process of enjoying the movies was helped by an intelligence on the part of the filmgoer. But what mattered the most was sophistication, an understanding of movies as an art form that could actually change the lives of the people who watched them.
Over the last two evenings, my roommate and I have spent some time in the Golden Age. While I favor the period 1967 through 1975 (approximately Bonnie and Clyde through Jaws), I've also come to recognize that without the two periods that preceded The Revolution, there could have been no revolution to celebrate. My roommate, on the other hand, has the advantage of not being bogged down in all the cerebral history and simply gets to watch movies for the thrill they quite organically offer. The two movies we selected were The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.
The first time I watched The Maltese Falcon was in 1980 with Ruth Ann Hendrickson and Julia Keller, two friends at college. Marshall University was showing it as part of a retrospective of Golden Age films. Trying to make a good impression on the two women, I had read the Dashiell Hammett novel the night before, found in it a mild satisfaction, and loved the movie. Then I pretty much forgot about it. Such is the attention span of a college student.
Then a couple years ago I was diddling around in the local video store and there that 1941 movie was, staring back at me from its perch on the shelf as if to say, "I remember you, buddy. The question is: Do you remember me?" The cost was, I think, five dollars. I couldn't resist. I rushed home, watched it again, and fell asleep somewhere near the middle. Then came the Christmas/New Year's season and Lisa Ann, the roommate in question, had her son Gerrit over for a visit. We were trying to think up something to do to enhance our collective entertainment needs and Lisa Ann suggested we watch The Maltese Falcon. It is one indication of Lisa Ann's intelligence trumping mine that we watched it again this holiday season. I have no idea why I zoned out when I watched it alone unless possibly this is a movie that works better when you have someone you like in the room with you. This film is one of the best indications that the aforementioned studio system had some things going for it. Directed and written by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Ward Bond and Sidney Greenstreet, the Maltese Falcon is, as Sam Spade himself said, "the stuff that dreams are made of." Like the book that spawned it, the movie is all plot and the plot is driven almost entirely by dialogue, a facet that might have hindered a less gifted director. But Huston knew exactly what he was doing. So we get scenes where the camera holds on a door that Sam Spade bursts through rather than having the camera follow him from one spot to another. When our protagonist gets a late night phone call informing him of the murder of his partner Miles Archer, the camera hangs rigidly on the telephone itself for the entire scene. The phone rings, a hand reaches up to take the receiver, Bogart's voice handles his half of the conversation, the hand replaces the receiver, and Bogart rises into the frame to dress himself. This "economy" of style forces the story along better than any half-assed car chase ever could. Speaking of Bogart, throughout the scenes in his apartment, Houston has him with his back to us much of the time so that we, the audience, are watching the characters around him as he himself would watch them. And they are a fascinating lot. Mary Astor plays a woman with more names than costume changes, eventually settling on Bridgit O'Shaughnessy, essentially a bad actress who Spade sees through and falls for simultaneously. She's lethal in the way that only people driven by greed can be, something she shares with Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, a sniveling shark who is one of the people looking for the black bird, a statuette from the days of Charles I of Spain, encrusted with jewels varnished over with black shoe polish. Rounding out the cast of villains is Kasper Gutman, played by Sidney Greenstreet. The Fat Man, as he's known, is the intellectual in the pack. He's been searching for the bird for seventeen years. Whatever he has to do to get it, he'll do, including selling out his hired killer Wilmer, a kid who may even be the son he'd always wanted. "One can always acquire a new son," says the Fat Man. "But there is only one Maltese falcon."
The movie is jam packed with snappy patter just like that, including one like that uses the word patter itself: "The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter."
So well received was this movie in our home that Lisa Ann suggested we watch another "old" movie the following night. She gave me a list of about twenty possibles. I went back to the video store and pretended to have a hard time. I knew all along I'd bring home Casablanca, a movie that featured many of the same cast members as the previous night's film because those actors were under contract to Warner Bros. Talk about a movie jam packed with memorable lines!
I came to Casablanca for my health.
Why?
The healing waters.
This is the desert. There's no water here.
I was misinformed.
Or:
Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
Or:
You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.
Or:
What kind of man is Captain Renault?
Oh, just like any other man, only more so.
Indeed, there is not one wasted line in the whole movie, nor one wasted shot, nor even a wasted frame. Everything that's there needs to be and upon each frame depends all the frames that follow. While Lisa Ann and I watched the movie--her first time, my tenth--we stopped the movie a few times so that I could give her the historical context and if you want to fault the film for anything, you can't even use that as a reason because the failing is less with the movie than our history classes. The truth is that Lisa Ann would have loved the movie for the dialogue alone, or for the acting alone, or for the cinematography all by itself, or for the way Bogart single-handedly redefined what it means to be attractive, just as Ingrid Bergman redefined what it means to be beautiful.
"I feel changed," the roommate admitted as we decompressed following the film.
I knew what she meant. Great movies like the two we watched over the weekend can do that to you. They can change the way you experience the world. Sure, the affect is most intense in the hours immediately following the closing credits, it lingers into the next day, and it usually dissipates by nightfall. But it's never gone entirely. You cannot watch The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca without having new standards for what it takes to be watching a great film. Those may be the watchwords of the Golden Age: "I feel changed."
Under the studio system, the majors had things locked up. They owned the studios. They had the directors, writers and actors under contract. They owned the means of distribution. And they owned most of the theater chains where the films were shown. From the release of the first all "live" talking movie Lights of New York in 1928 until an anti-trust Supreme Court decision in 1954, the majors ruled and while you might think that this would mean that a lot of garbage dictated the tastes of the American public, funny enough the exact opposite is true. During this first phase of the Hollywood invasion, we were treated to something known as the Golden Age of Film, yielding such wondrous gems as All Quite on the Western Front, Duck Soup, The Thin Man, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, The Big Sleep, High Noon, Sunset Boulevard, An Affair to Remember, Seven Samurai, On the Waterfront, Rear Window, Rashomon, Singin' in the Rain, A Streetcar Named Desire, Strangers on a Train, From Here to Eternity, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Roman Holiday, An American in Paris, The Big Heat, Othello, The Wild One, My Darling Clementine, The Maltese Falcon, andCasablanca.
The second Hollywood period ran from roughly 1955 through 1967. Those were rough times for the industry, with a certain audience rejection of the pre-blockbuster mentality and the ascent of the New Wave, where the director became very much the guiding hand of the film, which he'd always been anyway, only now the conception of the film as totally the purview of the filmmaker became entranced with the director himself. So with the dawning, as it were, of killer foreign directors such as Truffaut, Godard, Kurusawa and Kubrick, we began to be treated to an absorption or assimilation into the new mainstream with American filmmakers, some carrying over from the Golden Age, others being new faces. The Man with the Golden Arm, Lust for Life, The Defiant Ones, Shadows, Witness for the Prosecution, East of Eden, Anatomy of a Murder, The Night of the Hunter, Kansas City Confidential, Touch of Evil, Bridge on the River Kwai, Knife in the Water, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Breathless, The 400 Blows, Contempt, Cape Fear, Long Day's Journey into Night, Jules and Jim, Hud, A Raisin in the Sun, Judgment at Nuremberg, Blow-Up, Spartacus, Alphaville, A Hard Day's Night, Doctor Strangelove, and the film that kicked down all the doors, Bonnie and Clyde: these movies changed the way audiences came to understand the idea of going to the movies. As with the best movies of the Golden Age, the process of enjoying the movies was helped by an intelligence on the part of the filmgoer. But what mattered the most was sophistication, an understanding of movies as an art form that could actually change the lives of the people who watched them.
Over the last two evenings, my roommate and I have spent some time in the Golden Age. While I favor the period 1967 through 1975 (approximately Bonnie and Clyde through Jaws), I've also come to recognize that without the two periods that preceded The Revolution, there could have been no revolution to celebrate. My roommate, on the other hand, has the advantage of not being bogged down in all the cerebral history and simply gets to watch movies for the thrill they quite organically offer. The two movies we selected were The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.
The first time I watched The Maltese Falcon was in 1980 with Ruth Ann Hendrickson and Julia Keller, two friends at college. Marshall University was showing it as part of a retrospective of Golden Age films. Trying to make a good impression on the two women, I had read the Dashiell Hammett novel the night before, found in it a mild satisfaction, and loved the movie. Then I pretty much forgot about it. Such is the attention span of a college student.
Then a couple years ago I was diddling around in the local video store and there that 1941 movie was, staring back at me from its perch on the shelf as if to say, "I remember you, buddy. The question is: Do you remember me?" The cost was, I think, five dollars. I couldn't resist. I rushed home, watched it again, and fell asleep somewhere near the middle. Then came the Christmas/New Year's season and Lisa Ann, the roommate in question, had her son Gerrit over for a visit. We were trying to think up something to do to enhance our collective entertainment needs and Lisa Ann suggested we watch The Maltese Falcon. It is one indication of Lisa Ann's intelligence trumping mine that we watched it again this holiday season. I have no idea why I zoned out when I watched it alone unless possibly this is a movie that works better when you have someone you like in the room with you. This film is one of the best indications that the aforementioned studio system had some things going for it. Directed and written by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Ward Bond and Sidney Greenstreet, the Maltese Falcon is, as Sam Spade himself said, "the stuff that dreams are made of." Like the book that spawned it, the movie is all plot and the plot is driven almost entirely by dialogue, a facet that might have hindered a less gifted director. But Huston knew exactly what he was doing. So we get scenes where the camera holds on a door that Sam Spade bursts through rather than having the camera follow him from one spot to another. When our protagonist gets a late night phone call informing him of the murder of his partner Miles Archer, the camera hangs rigidly on the telephone itself for the entire scene. The phone rings, a hand reaches up to take the receiver, Bogart's voice handles his half of the conversation, the hand replaces the receiver, and Bogart rises into the frame to dress himself. This "economy" of style forces the story along better than any half-assed car chase ever could. Speaking of Bogart, throughout the scenes in his apartment, Houston has him with his back to us much of the time so that we, the audience, are watching the characters around him as he himself would watch them. And they are a fascinating lot. Mary Astor plays a woman with more names than costume changes, eventually settling on Bridgit O'Shaughnessy, essentially a bad actress who Spade sees through and falls for simultaneously. She's lethal in the way that only people driven by greed can be, something she shares with Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, a sniveling shark who is one of the people looking for the black bird, a statuette from the days of Charles I of Spain, encrusted with jewels varnished over with black shoe polish. Rounding out the cast of villains is Kasper Gutman, played by Sidney Greenstreet. The Fat Man, as he's known, is the intellectual in the pack. He's been searching for the bird for seventeen years. Whatever he has to do to get it, he'll do, including selling out his hired killer Wilmer, a kid who may even be the son he'd always wanted. "One can always acquire a new son," says the Fat Man. "But there is only one Maltese falcon."
The movie is jam packed with snappy patter just like that, including one like that uses the word patter itself: "The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter."
So well received was this movie in our home that Lisa Ann suggested we watch another "old" movie the following night. She gave me a list of about twenty possibles. I went back to the video store and pretended to have a hard time. I knew all along I'd bring home Casablanca, a movie that featured many of the same cast members as the previous night's film because those actors were under contract to Warner Bros. Talk about a movie jam packed with memorable lines!
I came to Casablanca for my health.
Why?
The healing waters.
This is the desert. There's no water here.
I was misinformed.
Or:
Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
Or:
You know, Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca, but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.
Or:
What kind of man is Captain Renault?
Oh, just like any other man, only more so.
Indeed, there is not one wasted line in the whole movie, nor one wasted shot, nor even a wasted frame. Everything that's there needs to be and upon each frame depends all the frames that follow. While Lisa Ann and I watched the movie--her first time, my tenth--we stopped the movie a few times so that I could give her the historical context and if you want to fault the film for anything, you can't even use that as a reason because the failing is less with the movie than our history classes. The truth is that Lisa Ann would have loved the movie for the dialogue alone, or for the acting alone, or for the cinematography all by itself, or for the way Bogart single-handedly redefined what it means to be attractive, just as Ingrid Bergman redefined what it means to be beautiful.
"I feel changed," the roommate admitted as we decompressed following the film.
I knew what she meant. Great movies like the two we watched over the weekend can do that to you. They can change the way you experience the world. Sure, the affect is most intense in the hours immediately following the closing credits, it lingers into the next day, and it usually dissipates by nightfall. But it's never gone entirely. You cannot watch The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca without having new standards for what it takes to be watching a great film. Those may be the watchwords of the Golden Age: "I feel changed."
Hitchcock Movies in the 1940s
The roomie and I paid for having a jolly time of singing and card playing Saturday night by being a pair of sick and sad-eyed puppies all day Sunday and on into the week. But the second half of the week-end did not slip away without purpose. The occasionally inventive folks at Turner Classic Movies put together an interesting string of director Alfred Hitchcock movies to help ease the walking pneumatic aches and pains.
I'm not an aficionado of Hitchcock, coming to his movies after the television shows rather than the other way around. Still, each of the movies bearing his name that I've seen have something to recommend and most of them have a tremendous appeal. Here, then, comes a mix of the movies we watched while convalescing along with some of the movies I've already committed to memory. This section we'll think of as Hitchcock's movies of the 1940s.
Foreign Correspondent (1940). If what you believe makes a Hitchcock movie sail is cinematic technique, imaginative staging, and a fortune teller's prescience, then you will likely still find this movie a bit of a yawn, mostly because actor Joel McCrea falls flat at being convincing as the in-house roustabout at a major newspaper. The senior editor/publisher sends Johnny Jones to cover the mood of Europe about the engagement of war against Hitler because Jones, we are assured, beat up a cop. Hearing this myself, I thought, "Way to go, Al! Your anti-establishment colors are waving true!" Then we meet McCrea. He might have sent the policeman to the ground by putting him to sleep in the face of glib and poorly delivered commentary, yes. But beat him up? That degree of inherent dissent just doesn't mesh with the apolitical nature of the character. McCrea should have stuck with Westerns.
Hitchcock, on the other hand, does occasionally mesmerize us with windmills. Seriously. A bad guy who appears to have assassinated an aged and dementia-addled leader named Van Meer leads us into some Holland windmills. Once inside, the split-action sequences are amazing, all the more sensational in black and white. Split action, in this sense, means that part of the action takes place in one area of the camera frame while other connected actions transfix us elsewhere in the same frame. So when Jones gets his jacket caught in the gears of the windmill, we cringe waiting to see what the assassins will do. We do not have to wait for the joined cut. We see it in the same shot. Hitchcock, of course, was famous for this type of work, as his many imitators can attest. But there is often a weirdness to the overarching construct, something that people often miss. How many people have even bothered to wonder what the inside of a Dutch windmill looks like, much less explored it? So we enter a curious locale, replete with motors, gears, windows and ladders, along with glares and shadows, heroes and villains. For a smart audience, this type of work may be just enough to tip the hands toward applauding, at least if the overt propaganda effect doesn't turn off the meter. The anti-war group turns out to be the love-interest's father who turns out to be the very opposite of what he claims. We can attribute the urgency to get into the war to the uncredited script work of Ben Hecht.
Several scenes in Foreign Correspondent sparkle with occasional pizzazz. The floating sequence once the plane goes down goes beyond convincing. I swear you'll check your shoes for water before the scene is over. And the scenes with George Sanders are hilarious. (His explanation for choosing the name "ffolliott" is a scream.)
Still, McCrea just can't pull off the demands of the leading role. A good screenplay wasted.
Suspicion (1941). Cary Grant gave his best performances for Alfred Hitchcock. To invariably blend a touch of sinister ambition along with an ample dash of the jollies and a robust self-confidence, Grant rivals only Jimmy Stewart for the honor of being the most successful leading man in the Hitchcock pantheon. In Suspicion, he plays a cad named Johnnie, the sort of scoundrel we just know is going to break the heart of poor Joan Fontaine, who plays--embodies--the role of Lina, aka Monkey Face. Around every corner, Johnnie borrows and spends Lina's money, yet his explanations likewise contain a substantial amount of plausibility. Being that he is Cary Grant, the audience is inclined to want him to be the victim of circumstance he claims himself to be, especially in the realm of Lina, a woman who seems much more appropriately called Girl, as well as with Nigel Bruce, the former Dr. Watson who plays Beaky, whose nickname, if he needed another, might be humble stooge sidekick.
The movie hasn't much of a plot and the cinematic inventions are missing. Still, the utter charm of the leads collides against the will the audience actually brings to this, one of Hitchcock's most satisfying efforts.
It must be an incredible thing to be able to understand, anticipate and utilize the point of view of the audience. To know that the crowds of popcorn eaters will want Johnnie to ultimately be a good guy because they in turn will feel protective of Lina, sympathetic toward Beaky and maladjusted toward any rumors that run contrary--and then to use that pre-existing point of view to manipulate it as a component of the tension and suspense--that alone would make Hitchcock a master.
Saboteur (1942). The war effort was in full swing by the time of this film's release. One thing that happens during declared wars is that the countries involved utilize patriotism as a driving force for morale and support. When the enemy presents a clear distinction between sides, as happened during World War II, the glowing gulf between good guys and bad guys makes for an irresistible motif to writers and directors. Frank Capra made an entire career with such admitted propaganda in favor of the American Way. You could argue that Casablanca served a propaganda function and I'd be hard pressed to argue, especially since propaganda often works to the benefit of art. John Ford created a fine documentary called The Battle for Midway. He also directed less-celebrated works, including one called Sex Hygiene. There was also that great anti-Hearst movie, Hemp For Victory! Walt Disney even released a cartoon with Donald Duck as a Nazi, something most of us had long suspected. It certainly explained the goose-stepping.
Hitchcock was not immune to manipulations, as long as his art was not compromised. Saboteur was his response. Working through a script in part written by Dorothy Parker, Hitchcock reluctantly cast Robert Cummings as the lead character, Barry Kane, a military stud who loses a friend in an act of sabotage committed by "Fry," played by the omnipresent Norman Lloyd.
The thing about Bob Cummings is that he worked very hard. So hard did he work that you could actually marvel as how hard he was working. He came across as an actor in a movie, an actor who was struggling very hard to be as handsome, as believable, as sincere, as tough yet sensitive, as witty and clever as any actors to whom these qualities appeared a bit more natural. As a consequence, you can always tell that Cummings is acting. "There's Bob, being smart or vulgar, I can't remember which." To cast him alongside Priscilla Lane (as a presumably sexy Pat Martin) was unfortunate because neither person comes across as even vaguely authentic.
That's a shame, too, because this blend of ideas in search of a movie to appear in has its moments, perhaps the best of all being when Barry and Pat seek refuge aboard a train of circus performers, including a thin man, a bearded lady, a Siamese twin, and a midget. There was no artistic reason to bring "freaks" into the film. But with so many other elements floating around, Hitchcock probably figured it couldn't hurt. It turns out the entire scene is as touching a moment as we get here. There is a degree of humanity here that is absent from the rest of the movie.
As with several Hitchcock movies, American symbolism figures in the denouement. Here the figure is the Statue of Liberty. We get inside the gift from the French. Literally. We get a nice reading of Ezra Lazarus. We get some subtle use of split action shots. Perhaps most importantly, we get a sense of dread that this icon may be besmirched. And that is the real brilliance of the movie. It's the only real brilliance, mind you. But it is damned effective.
Lifeboat (1944). An incredible wave of claustrophobia permeates the tone of this movie, based on a story by John Steinbeck. The story itself is deceptively simple. A U.S. ship and a German U-Boat collide in the Atlantic during the Second World War. The survivors of the American ship gather on a lifeboat. They pick up another survivor along the way. He turns out to be from the U-Boat.
Sophisticated viewers expect characterization to come from the desperate and glib lines spoken and shouted by the passengers. Those viewers are not disappointed.
Making everything take place in such tight quarters creates a number of phobias, as well as the more rational fear of dehydration, starvation, drowning and murder. The irony is that the claustrophobia happens alongside a palpable display of agoraphobia. This was one of Hitchcock's first overtly psychological works, and while it was never a serious contender for his best, it's worth watching once.
Spellbound (1945). This is Hitchcock's first thoroughly successful dip into the pool of psychoanalysis. Starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, both remarkably miscast and both sensational, as a young psychoanalyst and her struggling patient, Spellbound is probably best remembered for a twisted dream sequence created by Salvador Dali.
The plot here is completely and deliberately meaningless. The emphasis is divided between John Ballantyne's (Peck's) motivation and Dr. Peterson's (Bergman's) ability to discover a cause--and hence a cure. Without much deftness, the screenplay makes it clear that the essence of analysis here is that the hidden motivations for the bizarre behavior represent the only means of freeing the patient's mind. There's a large element of faith involved in the psychoanalytic method, but like most other approaches, the fact that it is being applied is in itself enough to do some good most of the time.
It's always great to watch Ingrid Bergman. She was never in an artistic flop. Hitchcock seldom bombed. Take those two, stir in some Peck, whip up a beautiful Dali montage, and you'll be glad you watched. You'll never bother to see it again, but you'll be able to speak of it intelligently.
Notorious (1946). Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest triumphs. Everything here is perfect, including the casting, which for a change, actually works against type and thrives because of the switch. To a generation raised on intelligent sentiment, Ingrid Bergman was sacred. That she should appear as the daughter of a convicted and unapologetic Nazi war criminal felt anathema. That we meet her at a reckless celebration cum commiseration likewise jars the senses. As she is determined to get herself into as much trouble as her father, she looks for someone with whom to go on a drunken drive. There, with his back to the camera, silhouetted to us, clear as an azure sky to her, sits the unmistakable outline of Cary Grant's head.
Grant plays Devlin, an agent of some American intelligence operation. He employs Bergman (Alicia) to spy on her father's old friends, working up a re-emergence in Rio de Janeiro, appropriately enough. The two fall in love, a minor problem since Alicia finds herself engaged and married to Claude Raines' character Sebastian. Both Bergman and Raines were in Casablanca. This is not a strange twist of fate that reunites them. It was brilliance.
Sebastian is fascinating. He's no ideologue. He just wants to please his mommy, wallow in wealth, and sleep with Alicia, at least two of which goals I can merrily relate. His mother is instantly suspicious of this tepid vixen come to get her son in trouble with the members of the Party. And indeed they are a nasty bunch, each one ready to sell out the other and at the same time each competing to prove himself the crueler Nazi.
In short, we have worthy actors who only happen to be stars, we have a plot that exemplifies suspense, we have a tight and snappy script with volumes of memorable lines (my favorite is the last line of the film, delivered by Grant to Raines, one which won't make sense out of context but which I'll divulge anyway: "That's your headache."), and we have a theme that was ahead of its time then and which hangs just as urgently even to this day.
One of the director's five best movies.
Rope (1948). Who but Hitchcock could make a successful thriller about the amoral behavior of Leopold and Loeb while tying it in with the intellectual snobbery of the Nazi scientists we'd only recently brought over to the winning side? Who else could utilize unending shots that do not call attention to themselves? Who else could have cast Jimmy Stewart as a smarmy professor who must confront the logical extension of his own cavalier theories? Who else could have added touches of more than one Shakespearean tragedy? Who else would have staged a scene where a strangled youth is buried in a crate used as a coffee table upon which the dead boy's parents are invited to dine (Think Titus Andronicus)? Who else could make a film with a resolution that falls apart only because having suffered the two killers for the duration of the film we come to feel gypped by not seeing them suffer? Who? Not a living soul, that's who.
I'm not an aficionado of Hitchcock, coming to his movies after the television shows rather than the other way around. Still, each of the movies bearing his name that I've seen have something to recommend and most of them have a tremendous appeal. Here, then, comes a mix of the movies we watched while convalescing along with some of the movies I've already committed to memory. This section we'll think of as Hitchcock's movies of the 1940s.
Foreign Correspondent (1940). If what you believe makes a Hitchcock movie sail is cinematic technique, imaginative staging, and a fortune teller's prescience, then you will likely still find this movie a bit of a yawn, mostly because actor Joel McCrea falls flat at being convincing as the in-house roustabout at a major newspaper. The senior editor/publisher sends Johnny Jones to cover the mood of Europe about the engagement of war against Hitler because Jones, we are assured, beat up a cop. Hearing this myself, I thought, "Way to go, Al! Your anti-establishment colors are waving true!" Then we meet McCrea. He might have sent the policeman to the ground by putting him to sleep in the face of glib and poorly delivered commentary, yes. But beat him up? That degree of inherent dissent just doesn't mesh with the apolitical nature of the character. McCrea should have stuck with Westerns.
Hitchcock, on the other hand, does occasionally mesmerize us with windmills. Seriously. A bad guy who appears to have assassinated an aged and dementia-addled leader named Van Meer leads us into some Holland windmills. Once inside, the split-action sequences are amazing, all the more sensational in black and white. Split action, in this sense, means that part of the action takes place in one area of the camera frame while other connected actions transfix us elsewhere in the same frame. So when Jones gets his jacket caught in the gears of the windmill, we cringe waiting to see what the assassins will do. We do not have to wait for the joined cut. We see it in the same shot. Hitchcock, of course, was famous for this type of work, as his many imitators can attest. But there is often a weirdness to the overarching construct, something that people often miss. How many people have even bothered to wonder what the inside of a Dutch windmill looks like, much less explored it? So we enter a curious locale, replete with motors, gears, windows and ladders, along with glares and shadows, heroes and villains. For a smart audience, this type of work may be just enough to tip the hands toward applauding, at least if the overt propaganda effect doesn't turn off the meter. The anti-war group turns out to be the love-interest's father who turns out to be the very opposite of what he claims. We can attribute the urgency to get into the war to the uncredited script work of Ben Hecht.
Several scenes in Foreign Correspondent sparkle with occasional pizzazz. The floating sequence once the plane goes down goes beyond convincing. I swear you'll check your shoes for water before the scene is over. And the scenes with George Sanders are hilarious. (His explanation for choosing the name "ffolliott" is a scream.)
Still, McCrea just can't pull off the demands of the leading role. A good screenplay wasted.
Suspicion (1941). Cary Grant gave his best performances for Alfred Hitchcock. To invariably blend a touch of sinister ambition along with an ample dash of the jollies and a robust self-confidence, Grant rivals only Jimmy Stewart for the honor of being the most successful leading man in the Hitchcock pantheon. In Suspicion, he plays a cad named Johnnie, the sort of scoundrel we just know is going to break the heart of poor Joan Fontaine, who plays--embodies--the role of Lina, aka Monkey Face. Around every corner, Johnnie borrows and spends Lina's money, yet his explanations likewise contain a substantial amount of plausibility. Being that he is Cary Grant, the audience is inclined to want him to be the victim of circumstance he claims himself to be, especially in the realm of Lina, a woman who seems much more appropriately called Girl, as well as with Nigel Bruce, the former Dr. Watson who plays Beaky, whose nickname, if he needed another, might be humble stooge sidekick.
The movie hasn't much of a plot and the cinematic inventions are missing. Still, the utter charm of the leads collides against the will the audience actually brings to this, one of Hitchcock's most satisfying efforts.
It must be an incredible thing to be able to understand, anticipate and utilize the point of view of the audience. To know that the crowds of popcorn eaters will want Johnnie to ultimately be a good guy because they in turn will feel protective of Lina, sympathetic toward Beaky and maladjusted toward any rumors that run contrary--and then to use that pre-existing point of view to manipulate it as a component of the tension and suspense--that alone would make Hitchcock a master.
Saboteur (1942). The war effort was in full swing by the time of this film's release. One thing that happens during declared wars is that the countries involved utilize patriotism as a driving force for morale and support. When the enemy presents a clear distinction between sides, as happened during World War II, the glowing gulf between good guys and bad guys makes for an irresistible motif to writers and directors. Frank Capra made an entire career with such admitted propaganda in favor of the American Way. You could argue that Casablanca served a propaganda function and I'd be hard pressed to argue, especially since propaganda often works to the benefit of art. John Ford created a fine documentary called The Battle for Midway. He also directed less-celebrated works, including one called Sex Hygiene. There was also that great anti-Hearst movie, Hemp For Victory! Walt Disney even released a cartoon with Donald Duck as a Nazi, something most of us had long suspected. It certainly explained the goose-stepping.
Hitchcock was not immune to manipulations, as long as his art was not compromised. Saboteur was his response. Working through a script in part written by Dorothy Parker, Hitchcock reluctantly cast Robert Cummings as the lead character, Barry Kane, a military stud who loses a friend in an act of sabotage committed by "Fry," played by the omnipresent Norman Lloyd.
The thing about Bob Cummings is that he worked very hard. So hard did he work that you could actually marvel as how hard he was working. He came across as an actor in a movie, an actor who was struggling very hard to be as handsome, as believable, as sincere, as tough yet sensitive, as witty and clever as any actors to whom these qualities appeared a bit more natural. As a consequence, you can always tell that Cummings is acting. "There's Bob, being smart or vulgar, I can't remember which." To cast him alongside Priscilla Lane (as a presumably sexy Pat Martin) was unfortunate because neither person comes across as even vaguely authentic.
That's a shame, too, because this blend of ideas in search of a movie to appear in has its moments, perhaps the best of all being when Barry and Pat seek refuge aboard a train of circus performers, including a thin man, a bearded lady, a Siamese twin, and a midget. There was no artistic reason to bring "freaks" into the film. But with so many other elements floating around, Hitchcock probably figured it couldn't hurt. It turns out the entire scene is as touching a moment as we get here. There is a degree of humanity here that is absent from the rest of the movie.
As with several Hitchcock movies, American symbolism figures in the denouement. Here the figure is the Statue of Liberty. We get inside the gift from the French. Literally. We get a nice reading of Ezra Lazarus. We get some subtle use of split action shots. Perhaps most importantly, we get a sense of dread that this icon may be besmirched. And that is the real brilliance of the movie. It's the only real brilliance, mind you. But it is damned effective.
Lifeboat (1944). An incredible wave of claustrophobia permeates the tone of this movie, based on a story by John Steinbeck. The story itself is deceptively simple. A U.S. ship and a German U-Boat collide in the Atlantic during the Second World War. The survivors of the American ship gather on a lifeboat. They pick up another survivor along the way. He turns out to be from the U-Boat.
Sophisticated viewers expect characterization to come from the desperate and glib lines spoken and shouted by the passengers. Those viewers are not disappointed.
Making everything take place in such tight quarters creates a number of phobias, as well as the more rational fear of dehydration, starvation, drowning and murder. The irony is that the claustrophobia happens alongside a palpable display of agoraphobia. This was one of Hitchcock's first overtly psychological works, and while it was never a serious contender for his best, it's worth watching once.
Spellbound (1945). This is Hitchcock's first thoroughly successful dip into the pool of psychoanalysis. Starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, both remarkably miscast and both sensational, as a young psychoanalyst and her struggling patient, Spellbound is probably best remembered for a twisted dream sequence created by Salvador Dali.
The plot here is completely and deliberately meaningless. The emphasis is divided between John Ballantyne's (Peck's) motivation and Dr. Peterson's (Bergman's) ability to discover a cause--and hence a cure. Without much deftness, the screenplay makes it clear that the essence of analysis here is that the hidden motivations for the bizarre behavior represent the only means of freeing the patient's mind. There's a large element of faith involved in the psychoanalytic method, but like most other approaches, the fact that it is being applied is in itself enough to do some good most of the time.
It's always great to watch Ingrid Bergman. She was never in an artistic flop. Hitchcock seldom bombed. Take those two, stir in some Peck, whip up a beautiful Dali montage, and you'll be glad you watched. You'll never bother to see it again, but you'll be able to speak of it intelligently.
Notorious (1946). Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest triumphs. Everything here is perfect, including the casting, which for a change, actually works against type and thrives because of the switch. To a generation raised on intelligent sentiment, Ingrid Bergman was sacred. That she should appear as the daughter of a convicted and unapologetic Nazi war criminal felt anathema. That we meet her at a reckless celebration cum commiseration likewise jars the senses. As she is determined to get herself into as much trouble as her father, she looks for someone with whom to go on a drunken drive. There, with his back to the camera, silhouetted to us, clear as an azure sky to her, sits the unmistakable outline of Cary Grant's head.
Grant plays Devlin, an agent of some American intelligence operation. He employs Bergman (Alicia) to spy on her father's old friends, working up a re-emergence in Rio de Janeiro, appropriately enough. The two fall in love, a minor problem since Alicia finds herself engaged and married to Claude Raines' character Sebastian. Both Bergman and Raines were in Casablanca. This is not a strange twist of fate that reunites them. It was brilliance.
Sebastian is fascinating. He's no ideologue. He just wants to please his mommy, wallow in wealth, and sleep with Alicia, at least two of which goals I can merrily relate. His mother is instantly suspicious of this tepid vixen come to get her son in trouble with the members of the Party. And indeed they are a nasty bunch, each one ready to sell out the other and at the same time each competing to prove himself the crueler Nazi.
In short, we have worthy actors who only happen to be stars, we have a plot that exemplifies suspense, we have a tight and snappy script with volumes of memorable lines (my favorite is the last line of the film, delivered by Grant to Raines, one which won't make sense out of context but which I'll divulge anyway: "That's your headache."), and we have a theme that was ahead of its time then and which hangs just as urgently even to this day.
One of the director's five best movies.
Rope (1948). Who but Hitchcock could make a successful thriller about the amoral behavior of Leopold and Loeb while tying it in with the intellectual snobbery of the Nazi scientists we'd only recently brought over to the winning side? Who else could utilize unending shots that do not call attention to themselves? Who else could have cast Jimmy Stewart as a smarmy professor who must confront the logical extension of his own cavalier theories? Who else could have added touches of more than one Shakespearean tragedy? Who else would have staged a scene where a strangled youth is buried in a crate used as a coffee table upon which the dead boy's parents are invited to dine (Think Titus Andronicus)? Who else could make a film with a resolution that falls apart only because having suffered the two killers for the duration of the film we come to feel gypped by not seeing them suffer? Who? Not a living soul, that's who.
The Grapes of Wrath
I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.
Henry Fonda as Tom Joad
Just as novelist John Steinbeck conveyed the rhythms of barren frustration in his militant and passionate novel, so did director John Ford etch in charcoal via aspect ratio 1.37 : 1 the shadows dripping from the cobwebs around the eyelids of the Joad family on their way from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the great west Eden of California. Agony inches along every frame of this film, daring and taunting any viewer to dare engage in supportive hope for the family sacrificed like the Son of God on the cross of the Great Depression. One can think of this movie as an allegory of the migration of eager talent seeking the unimagined glory of Hollywood, but that crap is only fodder for press releases. The Grapes of Wrath was no press release. It was the artful use of pained reality as propaganda. Jane Darwell as Ma Joad teeters on the edge of banal sentiment every five minutes. But Ford knew how to slap the smirks off the cynics' faces. He used Henry Fonda as a morbid ghost of promise, just as he would do similarly six years later with the same actor in the role of Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine.
Tom Joad is an ex-con. While he's been away, he's grown tough, just as the rich man has grown fat and the poor people back home have grown isolated from their own collective potential. These people have endured the happy populism of William Jennings Bryant and his cross of gold. What they want is to stand on land that belongs to them, hoist their hands to their hips and breathe the air they love. Just as in Steinbeck's novel, the value here is in switching one group of owners for another. Steinbeck and Ford aren't opposed to ownership or the essence of property. What they despise is some invisible hand of guidance wearing down the working man and taking away his chances. That said, there's not much point at this late date to idolize either man as some kind of radical in his profession. What both men were, however, was astute, stuck to details like a nail in a horse's shoe. And it is details that stirred the poison passion of readers and audiences alike. Fonda alone pulls off role of the struggling thinker pitted against a life that allows little time for self-awareness or reflection.
Again, the tendency toward over-sentimentalizing heartache wears thin on a cynical viewership. Nonetheless, anyone alive today who heard parents and grandparents telling stories of the "old days" would do well to consider the panicked isolation this movie masterfully recites.
Henry Fonda as Tom Joad
Just as novelist John Steinbeck conveyed the rhythms of barren frustration in his militant and passionate novel, so did director John Ford etch in charcoal via aspect ratio 1.37 : 1 the shadows dripping from the cobwebs around the eyelids of the Joad family on their way from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the great west Eden of California. Agony inches along every frame of this film, daring and taunting any viewer to dare engage in supportive hope for the family sacrificed like the Son of God on the cross of the Great Depression. One can think of this movie as an allegory of the migration of eager talent seeking the unimagined glory of Hollywood, but that crap is only fodder for press releases. The Grapes of Wrath was no press release. It was the artful use of pained reality as propaganda. Jane Darwell as Ma Joad teeters on the edge of banal sentiment every five minutes. But Ford knew how to slap the smirks off the cynics' faces. He used Henry Fonda as a morbid ghost of promise, just as he would do similarly six years later with the same actor in the role of Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine.
Tom Joad is an ex-con. While he's been away, he's grown tough, just as the rich man has grown fat and the poor people back home have grown isolated from their own collective potential. These people have endured the happy populism of William Jennings Bryant and his cross of gold. What they want is to stand on land that belongs to them, hoist their hands to their hips and breathe the air they love. Just as in Steinbeck's novel, the value here is in switching one group of owners for another. Steinbeck and Ford aren't opposed to ownership or the essence of property. What they despise is some invisible hand of guidance wearing down the working man and taking away his chances. That said, there's not much point at this late date to idolize either man as some kind of radical in his profession. What both men were, however, was astute, stuck to details like a nail in a horse's shoe. And it is details that stirred the poison passion of readers and audiences alike. Fonda alone pulls off role of the struggling thinker pitted against a life that allows little time for self-awareness or reflection.
Again, the tendency toward over-sentimentalizing heartache wears thin on a cynical viewership. Nonetheless, anyone alive today who heard parents and grandparents telling stories of the "old days" would do well to consider the panicked isolation this movie masterfully recites.
The Little Foxes
Lillian Hellman adapted the screenplay for the 1941 cinematic release of The Little Foxes from her own 1939 play of the same name. At the time, Hellman admitted that elements of the behavior of the Hubbard family came from her observations of her own family. Putting Hellman's words in the hands of director William Wyler (Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, Mrs. Minniver) was a formula for success. With Bette Davis acting the role and speaking the lines Hellman wrote for the character Regina Hubbard Giddens, The Little Foxes blew apart every mannered nuance a heartless profiteer could feign.
The plot centers on the Hubbard brothers battling sister Regina over the right to fleece Regina's estranged but temporarily returned husband Horace. The husband suffers from some debilitating illness, but his mind still contains riches which suggest that he made his money the old fashioned way, or at least the way it's written about in history books. But the plot really is of no concern, at least as far as I'm concerned. Indeed, I first saw the movie at a theater in Boston, where it was introduced by a local movie critic who urged us to ignore the political or class battle happening here and to focus on the soap opera aspects of the story. Naturally, I refused to do what the effete snob wanted me to do and instead dove right into the class struggle elements. But in truth, the realization to which Regina's daughter Alexandra comes is the complete technical knock-out this film delivers without flinching. Regina believes she has sheltered Alexandra (played by Teresa Wright) from the wicked nature of the world. What she has actually done, of course, is to inadvertently school the girl in an understanding of how coercion works. When the daughter threatens to reveal what she has realized (that her mother is a calculating passive murderess), the entire structure of power within the family slips back on itself and the rancid brothers eke away into the night, just as Regina (we trust) discovers how it feels to be ruled by her former captive.
The intricate complexities of this masterful movie deserve to be enshrined. It is certainly director Wyler's best (if least celebrated) work. And it went a long way toward instilling the image of Bette Davis as a lethal ingenue. After all, Jackie DeShannon did more than just develop a catchy phrase when she co-wrote "Bette Davis Eyes."
The plot centers on the Hubbard brothers battling sister Regina over the right to fleece Regina's estranged but temporarily returned husband Horace. The husband suffers from some debilitating illness, but his mind still contains riches which suggest that he made his money the old fashioned way, or at least the way it's written about in history books. But the plot really is of no concern, at least as far as I'm concerned. Indeed, I first saw the movie at a theater in Boston, where it was introduced by a local movie critic who urged us to ignore the political or class battle happening here and to focus on the soap opera aspects of the story. Naturally, I refused to do what the effete snob wanted me to do and instead dove right into the class struggle elements. But in truth, the realization to which Regina's daughter Alexandra comes is the complete technical knock-out this film delivers without flinching. Regina believes she has sheltered Alexandra (played by Teresa Wright) from the wicked nature of the world. What she has actually done, of course, is to inadvertently school the girl in an understanding of how coercion works. When the daughter threatens to reveal what she has realized (that her mother is a calculating passive murderess), the entire structure of power within the family slips back on itself and the rancid brothers eke away into the night, just as Regina (we trust) discovers how it feels to be ruled by her former captive.
The intricate complexities of this masterful movie deserve to be enshrined. It is certainly director Wyler's best (if least celebrated) work. And it went a long way toward instilling the image of Bette Davis as a lethal ingenue. After all, Jackie DeShannon did more than just develop a catchy phrase when she co-wrote "Bette Davis Eyes."