NFR Project: 'The Tell-Tale Heart' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Dir: Ted Parmelee

Scr: Bill Scott, Fred Grable

Premiere: Dec. 17, 1953

7:24

This splendid animation comes from UPA – the United Productions of America, a scrappy and independent rival to Disney in the animation field, started in 1941. It was founded by former Disney employees.

We have already encountered their 1950 Gerald McBoing-Boing on the National Film Registry list. This is a much more mature work – a little classic of horror based on the 1843 fiction of that master of terror, Edgar Allan Poe. Its dark and terrifying ambiance makes it an odd choice for a supposedly juvenile audience. This is cartooning for adults.

This genuinely creepy animation is much more like a montage of paintings, moving in jarring succession. The narrator (a sublime James Mason) seems perfectly sane at the beginning of this short, and rapidly erodes into a raving maniac. It stays very close to the original story, which you can read here.

For those unaware, the narrator lodges with a nice old man who happens to have one milky-white eye. The narrator becomes obsessed with it, and determines the old man must die. He kills him and buries him under the floorboards. The police come. He invites them in. Not needing to, he prolongs their conversation. Slowly he begins to hear the beating of the old man’s heart. Finally, he shrieks, ““Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

The cartoon adds a postlude. “True, I am nervous. Very, very dreadfully nervous. But why would you say that I am mad?” he says as we look through his cell window at the corridor beyond.

The animation moves only when necessary, preferring to plan across an illustration or make a smash cut, punctuated artfully by composer Boris Kremenliev. It was nominated for Best Animated Short at the Oscars. And it was the first cartoon to be rated “X” in Britain.

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

NFR Project: 'The War of the Worlds' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “The War of the Worlds”

Dir: Byron Haskin

Scr: Barre Lyndon

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: Everett Douglas

Premiere: Aug. 13, 1953

85 min.

One of the most innovative and accomplished science-fiction films of the 1950s, The War of the Worlds is the finest achievement of the collaboration between director Byron Haskin and producer George Pal.

George Pal (1908-1980) was born Gyorgy Pal Marczincsak in Hungary. He rapidly became an expert in the art of replacement animation – that is, using a different puppet in each frame of the animation, producing a whimsical effect that would become known in America as Puppetoons. He emigrated to the United States in 1940, and created 40 Puppetoon films between 1941 and 1947. He received a special Oscar for his efforts in 1943.

He then moved on to feature films: his love of special effects and camera magic influenced his choice of projects. He produced several films, four with director Haskin at the helm, and the works of the science-fiction great  H.G. Wells seemed a natural challenge to put before an audience. (Pal would go on to produce and direct Wells’ The Time Machine in 1960).

Special effects are the key to this film’s success. Using many models, and an extensive bundle of cinematic tricks Haskin and Pal capture the overwhelming experience of seeing the Earth get destroyed by Martian spaceships. This was cutting-edge technology in its day, akin to the advances seen in 2001 and Star Wars. Looking at it today, it is easy to see its techniques in play. There are wires; there are seams. But Haskin and Pal create absorbing scenes that trot slowly at first, then snowball into landscapes of hell-bent destruction. The film won a Special Achievement Award at the Oscars, for Visual Effects.

Sadly, the rest of the film is rather perfunctory. The plot consists of scientist Gene Barry and his partner in danger Ann Robinson fleeing from the Martians. The visitors like blowing up stuff and killing people. This happens at scenic locations worldwide. Ann can scream real good. Ann’s uncle, a minister, walks into the maw of the aliens, chanting verse. He is quickly reduced to a scorch mark on the ground. People behave badly.

That’s pretty much it. The great Les Tremayne plays a consternated general; Sir Cedric Hardwicke is the narrator, who explains the plot admirably before and after, saving the filmmakers thousands in special-effects sequences. The immortal Ned Glass gets one line.

For you see, ‘twas not technology (they even try an atomic bomb! nothing works) that slayed the invaders, ‘twas germs. And just as the white man killed off the Native Americans by infecting them with new, untested diseases, so do the Martians fall to what to you or me would be nothing more serious than a hangover.

Everybody sings a hymn. (Gene Barry has been going from church to church in search of his lady love.) It is all pretty much taken as being a divinely imposed fate. Now to rebuild, etc.

Another distinguishing feature of this film is the name of its hero – Clayton Forrester. This moniker was later adopted by a character on TV’s bad-movie-mocking Mystery Science Theater 3000.

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 Tell-Tale Heart.

NFR Project: 'Shane' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Shane”

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Jack Sher

Pho: Loyal Griggs

Ed: William Hornbeck, Tom McAdoo

Premiere: April 23, 1953

118 min.

It’s the archetypal Western. It takes all the elements of the genre and typifies them. If you had to show someone what a Western was, you would show them this film.

It’s shot primarily on location, in widescreen and glorious Technicolor. Its gorgeous look gives it an epic feel, far beyond that indicated by the simplicity of its plot. Director George Stevens was at his best telling a rollicking adventure tale, and this is one of them.

It’s set in Wyoming territory in 1889. Settlers are beginning to encroach on the open range. A cattle baron, Ryker, is set on expelling the “sodbusters” who just want to make lives for themselves on the edge of the wilderness. Joe (Van Heflin), Marian (Jean Arthur), and their son Joey (the peculiar-looking, cross-eyed Brandon deWilde) are homesteaders. Joe is the leader of the farmers, and finds himself in the crosshairs of harassment from Ryker, who wants them off what he considers to be his land.

Into the valley rides Shane (Alan Ladd), a mysterious and soft-spoken man who’s handy with a gun. (He nervously reaches for his revolver when he hears a loud sound.) He accepts Joe’s hospitality, and offers to work for him, taking off his buckskin outfit and gun and donning work clothes. He seems to be putting his past behind him.

Shane goes into town to pick up supplies, and a soda pop for Joey. When he goes into the bar to get one, he is tormented by one of Ryker’s men (an untypically evil Ben Johnson). The settlers decide to all go into town together for safety’s sake next time; there, Shane and Joe fight the whole Ryker gang and gain a temporary victory. Ryker decides to up the ante by hiring a gunfighter to clean out the emigrants.

The gunfighter, Wilson (a thoroughly evil Jack Palance) comes to town and picks a fight with an ornery Southern settler, Torrey (Elisha Cook, Jr.). Torrey draws his gun and Wilson shoots him down, brutally. His friends bury him, and contemplate leaving, but then change their minds when they see Ryker’s men trying to burn out another farm.

Ryker finally determines that Joe is the settlers’ ringleader, and he asks him to come see him at the bar in town. Shane realizes that Ryker intends to kill Joe. Shane knocks Joe unconscious, dons his traveling buckskins and gun, and rides into town. Joey follows him. Shane stands up to Wilson, Ryker, and Ryker’s brother, killing all of them. He then tells Joey he must move on, and leaves the valley, wounded, with Joey’s cry ringing in his ears – “Come back, Shane!”

It takes violence to make the West safe for settling – but the very act of taking lives disqualifies Shane from sharing in the new order. “A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can’t break the mould. I tried it and it didn’t work for me . . . There’s no living with a killing.” Shane, who yearns for a normal life (and obviously yearns for a woman like Marian), must exile himself from the very order his lawlessness has created.

The magisterial approach to the film gives it a mythic feel. The characters are at once individuated and symbolic. When Shane leaves the screen, the sense that a page in the history book has been turned is prevalent.

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 Tell-Tale Heart.