NFR Project: 'The Big Heat' (1953)

 NFR Project: “The Big Heat”

Dir: Fritz Lang

Scr: Sydney Boehm

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Charles Nelson

Premiere: Oct. 14, 1953

90 min.

Fritz Lang was a master at depicting the darkness of humanity. One of his earliest efforts, the film serial The Spiders (1919-1920) – possibly inspired by Feulliade’s Fantomas (1913) -- dealt with a crime syndicate. He directed a four-and-a-half hour film about the doings of Dr. Mabuse, a criminal mastermind (1922). He made Spies in 1928. He tracked a serial killer in M in 1931.

He fled Germany to avoid Nazi persecution. Once he came to Hollywood, he specialized in genre films. He engaged with crime in Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). The Big Heat is an off-beat noir, the culmination of his tough crime pictures, and their attendant attitudes about humanity.

The story is told in complete deadpan, with very few stylistic flourishes. Lang is subverting the perverse content of the film by rendering it in a naturalistic manner. People do bad things; life goes on.

Here, Glenn Ford is Dave Bannion, a police sergeant trying to find out why a veteran cop killed himself. He talks to the lying widow (Jeanette Nolan), who is blackmailing the crime syndicate that had the officer in its pocket. He finds the cop’s girlfriend, who talks. She is soon found dead, having been tortured and murdered.

Bannion is ordered off the case, but he keeps probing. Ultimately, his wife is killed is their driveway by a car bomb meant for Dave. Bannion then accuses his higher-ups of corruption, and is suspended. He vows to keep searching for his wife’s killers.

Debby (Gloria Grahame), girlfriend of volatile, sadistic mob killer Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), grows to trust Dave and gives him information. When Vince finds out about her talking to the ex-cop, he brutally throws a pot of boiling coffee in her face. Scarred horribly, she goes to Bannion and fingers the man behind the car bombing. He is roughed up by Bannion and spills the beans, dooming him to an ugly fate as a snitch.

Bannion tails Stone. Debby goes to the policeman’s widow. If she dies, the damaging evidence her husband had on the mob will be revealed. Debby shoots her to death. She then lies in wait for Stone at his apartment. She throws hot coffee in his face, scalding him. He shoots her to death. Bannion rushes in and captures Stone. The corrupt police commissioner and the crime boss are indicted.

In Lang’s world, the bad do whatever they like, and the powers that be are paid off. Bannion is an ordinary, nice guy, but after his wife’s murder and expulsion from the force, he comes an avenging angel, grimly threatening to kill those he can’t squeeze information out of. Extrajudicial violence is the price the honest cop has to pay to see justice done.

Notably, all the women in the film with speaking parts get killed. It’s a reverse of the usual pattern of the noir protagonist being destroyed by a femme fatale. Here, the females are just collateral damage.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film (Registry in chronological order. Next time: Duck Amuck.

NFR Project: 'The Band Wagon' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “The Band Wagon”

Dir: Vincente Minnelli

Scr: Betty Comden, Adolf Green

Pho: Harry Jackson

Ed: Albert Akst

Premiere: July 9, 1953

111 min.

Which movie musical is the better? Singin’ in the Rain or this?

It depends on whether you are a Gene Kelly fan or a Fred Astaire man. I’m an Astaire guy. Kelly was athletic, surprising, gung-ho . . . but dancer/singer/actor Astaire was magic. He would gently weave his spells of reassuring motion, always alive on camera, precise, smooth, demanding perfection from himself in the dance and delivering like a pro every time. He could convey feelings as few could merely by moving.

Known first for his on-screen collaborations with Ginger Rogers (1933-1949), he moved on to other partners, such as Judy Garland, Jane Powell, and here Cyd Charisse, the most talented female dancer of her day. (And she could act!) In all of his later film incarnations, Astaire remained committed to the bit. He made his partners look good, and successfully played the love interest far into middle age. He later made a dance partner out of a coat rack.

Listen to some of his studio recordings. His voice is thin and of limited range. Yet he understands rhythms so well that he talk/sings his way, very evocatively, through the material. He had a jazzy sensibility. He grew up in shows by Gershwin and Irving Berlin. He had a cool which, coupled with his relaxed thereness in a scene, caused him to compel your attention.

Here he is yoked to the genius of director Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli’s musicals (Meet Me in St. Louis, ‘Til the Clouds Roll By, The Pirate) were top-notch; He here gets to embody the vibrant, Technicolor-soaked Minnelli-esque take on theatrical life through the contrivance of the backstage musical story. Betty Comden and Adolf Green, the iconic writing duo that gave us On the Town (1944) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) here concoct the classic plot of “let’s put on a show” and turns it into a wicked satire of aesthetic pretentiousness.

Astaire plays his familiar persona, a song-and-dance man named Tony Hunter. At the show’s beginning, his Broadway memorabilia is being auctioned off – and there are no takers. Tony is seemingly a has-been which is unfortunate as he is a nice guy, wise to himself and high-spirited despite his problems. His pals Lily (Nanette Fabray) and Lester (Oscar Levant) Marton have written a killer new musical for him to star in, enabling him to make a comeback.

Unfortunately they are hot on a new theatrical wunderkind, the great impresario and writer/producer/director Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), who is currently wowing them in Oedipus Rex. They tell him about their idea. Immediately he fixates on the idea that the show should take the shape of a Faustian fable, dark and anxious in nature. Jeffrey is an immense ham, of course, and is very sure of himself. (He is supposedly based on Jose Ferrer.)

Tony’s leading lady is famous ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Charisse). At first, the two misunderstand each other and are hostile, but as they spend time together through the chaotic, ever-changing rehearsals, they fall in love. In one magical sequence, they duet in Central Park, under a lamplight, moving together perfectly to “Dancing in the Dark." It’s as direct, classic expression of male/female interaction in the art form. (The great Michael Kidd did the choreography.)

The show bombs out of town. Everyone has a beer, and Tony leads them in deciding to put on the show – but to go back to the original freewheeling script.

Another key to the success of this movie is that all the songs were written by the great team of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. We move on to a classic montage of musical bits, unrelated yet all standouts – “New Sun in the Sky,” “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan,” “Louisiana Hayride,”  “Triplets,” and the crowning, fabulously inventive “Girl Hunt Ballet.” It's a hit -- and Gaby's in love with him.

The show is, in a way, a rebuke to the book musical epitomized by Oklahoma! and South Pacific. The eponymous show-within-the-show finally works when it goes back to the approach of making a musical out of a bunch of unrelated bits and numbers, as was the fashion prior to the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution. Tony is a humble hoofer who succeeds by deflating the pretentious and bringing them down to his level – and to the good, old-fashioned way of doing things.

Tony is magic. His exuberant ode “Shine on Your Shoes” early in the film encapsulates everything we like about Astaire – he’s quirky, he has great reactions, he’s just in love with moving. Charisse, alone and with Astaire, shows off her incredible strength, smoothness, and precision, just as demanding as Astaire, going full out in an exemplary performance. She is both Astaire's and Kelly's ideal dance partner.

Buchanan is fine as the ham Cordova; Fabray and Levant are talented second bananas. Every little detail is perfect. Minnelli crowds the film with motion and color, speeding the satire along merrily as he stops everything periodically to give the cast a chance ato entertain us. It’s unfailingly cheerful and still so, so very good.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Big Heat.

NFR Project: 'All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story' (1953)

NFR Project: “All My Babies: A Midwife’s Own Story”

Dir: George C. Stoney

Scr: George C. Stoney

Premiere: 1953

An extraordinary film. Read Joshua Glick’s excellent article on it here. He gives us a keen biography of writer/director George C. Stoney as well as a thorough analysis of the film.

Educational films were a category unto themselves. Shorn of the production values of commercial films, they were practical in nature, seeking to delineate procedures legibly and to transmit information effectively. This Stoney does; but he also shows us a time and place unimaginable now, a place of primitive conditions and wound up in the profound distrust of white officials.

What’s so special about this film is the empowerment it gives to its subjects. George Stoney worked with his central figure, veteran midwife Mary Francis Hill Coley, on the creation of the movie. She collaborated on the sequences to be filmed, if not the method with which they are recorded. In a time when Black people were treated on film at best condescendingly, this deep respect for the people it profiles makes All My Babies a landmark of compassionate cinema.

The story follows Coley as she goes about doing the duties of midwifery. (At the time of filming, Coley had performed more than 1,400 deliveries.) The emphasis on coming under a doctor’s care when pregnant is strong but friendly. White people are not to be feared – at least the ones who want to be helpful. Coley is profiled as she goes about her business; she even narrates the film. The film covers two pregnancies, a textbook case in one instance and a difficult and emotionally fraught delivery as well.

The film is not shy about showing us the process of birth. Let the squeamish be warned. In spite of its graphic nature, there is something wholesome about it. This basic human mechanism, long bound up in myth and conjecture, is revealed as a natural process that requires the assistance of an experienced obstetric figure.

In this case, the traditional midwife is addressed directly by the film. Sanitation is emphasized. Preparation and procedure are outlined, and we get a bit of a profile of the prospective couples as well. (Some of these parts are performances.) There is the accompaniment of a gospel choir as well, singing passages written by Louis Applebaum. The result is an effective examination of the process and conditions of medical treatment in the rural South at the dawn of the Civil Rights era.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Band Wagon.