NFR Project: 'Helen Keller in Her Story' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Helen Keller in Her Story”

Dir: Nancy Hamilton

Scr: Nancy Hamilton, James L. Shute

Ed: James L. Shute

Premiere: June 15, 1954

55 min.

This documentary outlines the life and achievements of Helen Keller (1880-1968). Keller was struck deaf and blind by illness when she was two years old. Cut off from humanity, she lived a savage-like existence for several years, her family at a loss as to how to reach her, much less socialize her.

Then a remarkable teacher, Annie Sullivan, came to work with her in 1887. (This is documented in the play and film The Miracle Worker.) After months of training, spelling words into her hand, Sullivan finally got the concept of language across to Helen – and her rise from helplessness to leadership began.

Keller attended school and went on to college, becoming the first blind-deaf person to earn a college degree. Keller was quite intelligent and eloquent, and soon she was writing about her experiences, inspiring others who felt imprisoned by their disabilities. She became an icon, an extraordinary woman who overcame her limitations.

This documentary summarizes Keller’s life, even as it delineates her typical day at home. Keller is remarkably self-sufficient, and undertakes quite a lot of activity on behalf of the disabled, traveling extensively, meeting the famous, and busily running her own life (with the help of a companion: first Sullivan, then Polly Thomson, then Willie Corbally). Keller speaks, somewhat distinctly; her words are often repeated by her companion.

A particularly joyous moment is documented when she goes to bed. Her companion bids her good night, and puts the Braille book she has been reading on the nightstand. She turns out the light. After she leaves, Keller picks up the book again and reads it happily in the dark.

Keller’s extraordinary existence remains an inspiration.

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

NFR Project: 'White Christmas' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “White Christmas”

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Scr: Norman Krasna, Norman Panama, Melvin Frank

Pho: Loyal Griggs

Ed: Frank Bracht

Premiere: Oct. 14, 1954

120 min.

I hate this movie. HATE it. Yet I watched it again, hoping to be fair and give it another chance before I wrote you. I took the hit for you. Because I love you.

I still hate this movie.

First of all, it’s a lackluster mutation of a much better film idea, which was Mark Sandrich’s 1942 Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and featuring the words and music of Irving Berlin. This was the movie that introduced the song “White Christmas” to the world, and it’s done beautifully.

That movie is quite enjoyable, as it’s a romantic triangle backgrounded by an inn/nightclub only open on holidays (which gave Berlin a chance to lump all his holiday-related songs into one picture). That film is also marred by a blackface number, which pretty much disqualifies it from being shown today. It’s not incidental. It’s a plot point. It’s too bad that this number stops the movie cold, as the song it illustrates, “Abraham,” celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday, is not racist and is in fact quite catchy.

So, they decided to remake it in color. Minus Lincoln. They sent Fred Astaire a new script; he turned them down. Bing was in; they enlisted Danny Kaye to co-star. Crosby and Kaye don’t have that spark that Crosby and Astaire had. They completely rewrote the story, making it at once much more sentimental and more patriotic. Bing and Danny are pals from WWII, who served under a beloved general (Dean Jagger). They are a big hit as a song and dance team in the postwar world.

Alas, their general owns the financially distressed inn, and Bing and Danny pitch in and put on a show for him there, saving his bacon. In amongst all this they woo performing sisters Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Bing and Rosemary sing together; Vera-Ellen dances. Danny Kaye does his best.

And it’s just awful. This is the whitest film ever made. It was made by white people, for white people. It is the Caucasian experience personified. It is utterly generic and bland, lurching from one number to another in an overlit, garishly colorful sense-fest that bowls the viewer over. It is a surfeit of whipped cream.

Director Michael Curitz, a remarkably versatile talent, seems to phone it in here. He was possibly thrown by the new widescreen technique that Paramount developed and displayed here for the first time, called VistaVision, that called for a different compositional skill. Everything that needs to be visible in a scene, is visible, jumbled across the screen like a handful of nursery toys.

To top it all off, the Technicolor intensity of the hues is almost hallucinatory. It is loud. Art-directed to within an inch of its life, this feature shot obviously and entirely in studio lacks the breeziness and gusto of its predecessor. Still, we still get a lot of great Irving Berlin songs (the title card reads “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.”) There are “Sisters” and “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)”. Those are great.

But there is yet another problem. They perform a minstrel show. However, they do not wear blackface; you have a bunch of white people shucking and jiving, inexplicably. Aggressively storming the camera. It’s disconcerting. 

The designated singers are talented, of course; Clooney is still, I think, underestimated as a singer. Vera-Ellen is an amazing dancer. Kaye seems dimmed, not allowed to assume his trademark manic, surreal persona until he does a spoof of Martha Graham dance in “Choreography.”

 Of course, it’s a classic. What do I know? Bah humbug.

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

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.