NFR Project: 'Blackboard Jungle' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Blackboard Jungle”

Dir: Richard Brooks

Scr: Richard Brooks

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Ferris Webster

Premiere: March 25, 1955

101 min.

The most revolutionary part of this movie is the reaction it provoked. The violence it triggered and the bans on its showing swept the nation and the world. Its debut meant that teen life and rock ‘n’ roll were here to stay.

This movie was derived from the Evan Hunter novel of the previous year. Hunter, born as Salvatore Lombino, worked as a teacher in a high school in the South Bronx. Frustrated by the delinquency and scorn he encountered from the students, he angrily quit after two months.

His novel attracted writer/director Richard Brooks (1912-1992). Brooks, born as Reuben Sax, first made his name in Hollywood as a screenwriter. He penned The Killers (1946), Brute Force (1947), and Key Largo (1948), eventually winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Elmer Gantry (1960). He was nominated five times for Best Director. He was known for tackling “tough” subjects, and this was no exception.

It’s the story of an idealistic teacher, Mr. Dadier (Glenn Ford). Hired to work in an inner-city, boys-only high school. He finds that the students don’t pay attention. They talk back. They act out. They terrorize the teachers, assault them. How can he put up with it?

He doesn’t. He threatens to quit, and plans to until he survives a violent in-class incident and rededicates himself to teaching.

That’s as much as there is to it. However, the movie should first be noted for the use of multiple future stars in the cast. Anne Francis played Dadier’s wife. Old pro Louis Calhern and the up-and-coming Richard Kiley are on hand, too. The biggest surprise is the number of young adult actors playing teenagers – here, Vic Morrow in his screen debut as the savage Artie, future directing great Paul Mazursky, Rafael Campos, even Jamie Farr. But the real revelation is Sidney Poitier, 27 at the time this film was made. Though a decade older than the part he was playing, Poitier was magnetic. This film launched his movie career.

Now, as to the reaction. Brooks put Bill Haley and the Comets’ 1954 anthem “Rock Around the Clock” to the opening credits. The movie sparked the attention of teenagers, who loved the song and the kids’ attitudes. They began dancing in the aisles and tearing up the movie theaters where the film was shown. Culturally, this movie marks the beginning of America’s youth revolution, which culminated in the self-indulgences and protests of the 1960s.

Government quickly reacted. The film was banned in Nashville, Atlanta, England, India. Op-ed writers feasted on disdain for the disturbing reaction of kids to this film. And, of course, the film made a lot of money and spawned a whole subgenre of teen-rebellion movies. The children of the Depression Era and World War II were the teens of the ‘50s. They wanted to see themselves truthfully portrayed on film, and they got what they asked for.

Instead of being portrayed as basically cute and obsessed with dating and status, these new films showed us high-schoolers as troubled souls struggling to make sense of of a hostile world.

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

NFR Project: 'Bad Day at Black Rock' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Bad Day at Black Rock”

Dir: John Sturges

Scr: Millard Kaufman, Don McGuire

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: Newell P. Kimlin

Premiere: Jan. 7, 1955

81 min.

John Sturges (1910-1992) was a profoundly gifted director who never really received his due in the awards department. He created many great action films, including The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and Ice Station Zebra (1968). Here he first makes his mark, with an effective and compelling film that builds its suspense slowly until its violent conclusion.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a modern-dress Western. A stranger comes to town and imposes justice on a lawless environment, the basic plot of many a horse opera. What distinguishes this film is the stalwart presence of Spencer Tracy as the One-Armed Man, and the themes of prejudice and cowardly collusion that it raises.

Shooting in the hot, dusty scrub desert of California, the film is set in 1945, immediately after the end of World War II. Tracy is John J. Macreedy, a one-armed veteran who has come to the tiny town of Black Rock on an unspecified mission. (No one has gotten off the train at Black Rock for four years.) Macreedy is a bit of a Zen master – calm, cool, deliberate, deferential. He is after something, something only gradually revealed as the film unwinds.

The townsfolk are not pleased about this. Something bad happened in Black Rock during the war, and nobody wants to talk about it. At the center of this web of silence is Reno Smith (Robert Ryan, evil as only he could be), a violently prejudiced rancher who’s resentful as he was rejected for military service and therefore couldn’t kill any “Japs.” It turns out he was a perpetrator of an evil deed, and he has all the other inhabitants of Black Rock under his sway. Everyone is complicit.

Among Smith’s compatriots are the sadistic Trimble (Ernest Borgnine) and the insolent Homer (Lee Marvin). Others, such as Liz (Anne Francis), the local sheriff (Dean Jagger), and the town doctor (Walter Brennan), grudgingly reveal bits of information that add up to solve the mystery of what happened. Meanwhile, Macreedy reveals his reason for coming to town. He is there to deliver a medal won by a late soldier under his command to the boy’s father. That father and son are Japanese-American is significant.

Sturges had directed 20 B movies before Black Rock, and he is perfectly assured here. He uses the CinemaScope screen with wisdom, composing shots that utilize the expanded frame beautifully. His use of Technicolor is also incomparable, given the lack of a broad palette on the desert. Millard Kaufman’s script is tight and fast-moving, and manages to make effective points about the emptiness of racial prejudice and citizen inaction in the face of evil as well.

There! I managed to describe the film without giving away too much of the plot. It is exhilarating to see this film for the first time, and I would not spoil your pleasure. Tracy, playing his age, in particular plays a noble, understated, and brilliant protagonist who breaks the spell of a curse that overhangs this tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

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

NFR Project: 'The Phenix City Story' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “The Phenix City Story”

Dir: Phil Karlson

Scr: Daniel Mainwaring, Crane Wilbur

Pho: Harry Neumann

Ed: George White

Premiere: Aug. 14, 1955

100 min.

An interesting low-budget anomaly. This film is an awkward combination of would-be documentary and fictionalized potboiler. It purports to show the events surrounding the uncovering of systemic and pervasive corruption in Phenix City, Alabama in the early 1950s. (In fact, the Columbus, GA Ledger-Enquirer won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for its reporting on Phenix City.)

Phil Karlson (1908-1982) was a maestro of the mediocre. He made his living directing movies for off-brand studios such as Monogram. He was competent and professional, bringing in all his efforts on time and under budget. Name a genre, and he directed a film in it. He was one of a fraternity of lesser-known but steadily working Hollywood directors such as Allan Dwan, Joseph H. Lewis, Edward L. Cahn, Roger Corman, and Edgar Ulmer.

Phenix City is located across the river from Columbus, Georgia, which hosts Fort Benning. The presence of enlisted men led to the creation of a red-light district that gave the town the unofficial title of “Sin City, USA.” In the 1940s and ‘50s, gambling, prostitution, and drug usage there were rampant. The town was run by organized crime, with the full cooperation of the municipal authorities.

Attempts were made at reform that were rebuffed violently. On June 18, 1954, the Alabama attorney general pro tem Albert Patterson, who ran on reform, was shot to death outside his law office in downtown Phenix City. The situation was so out of hand that martial law was declared in the city on July 22.

So this film was made immediately after the fact. Interestingly, it opens with about 20 minutes of interviews between journalist Clete Roberts and some of the citizens who witnessed the actual carnage. It then kicks in to an overview of the sordid conditions in Phenix City. We are taken into the story of John Patterson (Richard Kiely), a lawyer and Korean War vet who goes into practice with his father Albert (John McIntire) in town.

An improvement committee is formed, but there is a spy in its midst. Its efforts are thwarted by the town’s criminals. The committee members are harassed and assaulted; one man’s daughter is murdered and tossed onto John’s lawn.

Albert, initially disinclined to get involved, eventually consents to run for attorney general. As in real life, the character is murdered. Son John flies into enraged action, finding the crime boss (Edward Andrews) responsible and beating him half to death. He is only restrained by Zeke (James Edwards), father of the slain girl, who exhorts, “Thou shalt not kill!”

The movie ends with armed soldiers taking over the district, and destroying its crooked gambling equipment. It is implied that the reign of terror is over. However, Karlson had a pessimistic outlook that runs like a thread through his films. The Phenix City Story is consonant with that perspective.

Those in charge are the bad guys, and violence is their stock in trade. Almost all the citizens have given up, resigning themselves to domination by society’s dark forces. Almost everyone is crooked; almost everyone can be bought. Crime is a major industry, a revenue source for a whole culture. It takes making it personal with a murder, for a man to avenge his father’s death, for anything positive to happen.

The tone is spare, shrouded in night on rain-slicked streets. The actors are a curious combination of polished pros, local amateur actors, and people seemingly drawn in off the street. The result is a documentary-like evocation of the underbelly of the American dream.

And, in real life, unlike the seemingly liberal character in the film, John Patterson went on to be one of the most anti-Black governors of all time.

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