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.

NFR Project: 'Roman Holiday' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Roman Holiday”

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Dalton Trumbo, Ian McLellan Hunter, John Dighton

Pho: Henri Alekan, Franz Planer

Ed: Robert Swink

Premiere: Aug. 20, 1953

118 min.

It’s a wonderful little romance, and the American screen debut of Audrey Hepburn – which won her an Oscar for Best Actress – and an Oscar for its blacklisted author.

This charming idea was the brain-product of Dalton Trumbo (1905-1976), a prominent and excellent American writer and screenwriter who was blacklisted for his leftist views during the Second Red Scare of 1947-1957. He was one of the infamous Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. To survive, he was forced to submit his work under a pseudonym – and won an Oscar for this screenplay, which he was unable to accept as he was officially a “non-person” due to the right’s witch hunts. The screenwriter was named as the imaginary “Robert Rich.”

It makes central its location. The city of Rome is canvassed, is used to maximum effect, due to a cute plot about a reluctant princess and an earnest reporter. Gregory Peck is Joe Bradley, a journalist in the Holy City who’s anticipating an interview with Crown Princess Ann. Ann – the radiant Audrey Hepburn, 24 -- resents her endless list of meetings, openings, interviews, and profiles that fills her relentless days of duty. She rebels. Her handlers drug her.

Alone, she changes and goes out, escapes.  Increasingly stupefied, she falls asleep on top of a wall. Joe finds her and takes her in, letting her sleep on his couch. The word goes out that the princess is missing. He goes to work and sees that the sleeping girl at his place is the princess. He gets his editor to pledge him $5,000 for his exclusive story about her – and bets him $500 to boot. She promptly gets her long hair lopped off and shaped into a pixie cut: a style which would be imitated by a generation of women that included my mother.

He returns to Ann, who calls herself Anya and pretends to be playing hooky from school. Joe contrives a meeting with her, and then the two run around Rome all day. Joe claims to be a fertilizer salesman. (Joe gets his buddy, a young, bearded Eddie Albert, to secretly take photos of their antics.) Meanwhile, the officials of Ann’s (unnamed) country send out a small army of agents to track her down. Joe and Ann, of course, fall for each other in the course of a day. They end up fighting the agents at a dance party on the Tiber, get soaked and kiss - and get arrested.

Joe springs them by using his press pass, claiming they were on their way to be married. They dry off, she makes him drive her to the palace, they kiss again, and she runs around the corner and out of sight.

Princess Ann returns to her place in the hierarchy, but famously says, "Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and my country, I would not have come back tonight . . . or indeed ever again." Joe tells his editor he doesn’t have a story, forfeiting the $5,000 and the $500 to boot. He goes to her press conference the next day. She recognizes him and his pal, who slips her the photos he took. She says goodbye to Joe indirectly, and avers that Rome was her favorite city on her tour.

She glides away offstage. The numerous reporters file out. Joe is last, as he ruminatively meanders toward the camera.

Peck is fine as Joe: really too nice an actor to play an crass, opportunistic journalist. But the revelation is Hepburn. She is charming, transparent, and sensitive. She transmits states of mind with seeming effortlessness. Waif-thin, big-eyed, she created a new ideal of beauty, androgynous and soulful. She is endlessly fascinating to watch. The closer you get, the better she looks. She does a lot here with a thin character. She communicates the joy of simply being alive.

Her adventures can never lead to her and Joe getting together. They create closure for each other, and move on, as grownups do.

If Roman Holiday has any political message, it is merely that it elevates the personal above the political. Do our roles in life dictate who we are? Wouldn’t we do as Ann, a slumming princess who becomes a reverse Cinderella, did? Isn’t the minutiae of life what creates its meaning? The bountiful joy of Hepburn, unleashed from an oppressive fate, if only for a day, is stunning. Director Wyler, always good with actors, strikes gold with Hepburn. He just steps back and shoots her. She’s a natural film actress.

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