NFR Project: 'The Quiet Man' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “The Quiet Man”

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Frank S. Nugent

Pho: Winton C. Hoch

Ed: Jack Murray

Premiere: Aug. 21, 1952

129 min.

In contrast to the tough guy director John Ford portrayed himself as, he was really a big softie. And, though born in Maine, he was an Irishman who had a deep reverence for his Irish homeland and the traditions of its people. In fact, Ford’s Ireland is a dreamland, an idealized, fabulous emerald-green countryside, photographed expertly here in living Technicolor by Winton C. Hoch and represented by a fine set of character actors, members of Ford’s “stock company.”

Into this picturesque, enchanted territory drops John Wayne (as Sean Thonton), who shows he can play the lead in a romantic comedy. His opposite number is the beautiful and talented Maureen O’Hara (as Mary Kate Danaher), who had grippingly played Angharad in Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. Here, she’s a fiery redhead, full of sass, who will not take no for an answer. The two fall in love at first sight.

Sean is a man who has returned from America to purchase his boyhood home (how he gained his money we do not at first know). He does so, to the consternation of Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), who is the brother of Mary Kate and the man responsible for giving her away in marriage. He refuses to sanction her engagement – which the two promptly ignore. Danaher then refuses to give Mary Kate her “treasures” – her dowry of goods and money.

Everyone is spoiling for a fight except Sean. In a flashback, and later in confession to a minister, Sean reveals that he killed a man in the ring and swore never to fight again. (Presumably his financial resources are a result of his boxing career.) Mary Kate gets a tongue-lashing in Gaelic from the local priest (the always-fabulous Ward Bond). Sean and Mary Kate reconcile, and finally sleep together.

In the morning, Mary Kate stomps off to the train station, leaving Sean a note stating she doesn’t want to live with a man she’s ashamed of. Sean tracks her down, pulls her off the train, and in an epic sequence drags her in front of an admiring and ever-swelling crowd across the landscape, the five miles back to her brother’s estate.

He throws her at her brother’s feet. “No fortune, no marriage!” he cries. Danaher relents, angrily throwing down the money. Sean picks it up; Mary Kate opens the boiler of a nearby steam engine, and Sean chucks the money into its fire. Satisfied, she goes home. Now, at last, Sean can overcome his fear of fighting. He and Danaher now duke it out, conducting an epic throw-down that travels up and down the streets of the town, punctuated with frequent dashings of buckets of water. The low-comedy hijinks of the humorous donnybrook bring the film to a smashing conclusion.

Now, it has been bandied about that this is a chauvinist film – and it is. But it is Wayne who, as the male lead in a typical romantic comedy, forced to come to terms with the daft world he finds himself in. Tradition is tops here; the “old ways” are honored – as is fist-fighting, drinking, singing loudly, and betting. It’s a man’s world, an Irish world, Ford’s world is.

But he paints his female characters with loving strokes. Both O’Hara, and Mildred Natwick as the Widow Tillane, are given scope, depth, and wit. Ford brings us Ireland personified as Barry Fitzgerald playing the stereotypical son o’ the sod, Michaeleen Og Flynn. The little man wanders through scenes, tipsy and eloquent. He sees a bed he thinks wrecked by marital passion and exclaims, “Impetuous! Homeric!” Here too is a young Jack MacGowran who perfectly delivers the drunken line, “God bless all here.” And there is even Ford’s long-time associate, his brother Francis, as the comic old man of the village. (It was Francis who succeeded first in Hollywood, and who brought John out West to work in the film industry, back in the silent days.)

But yes, it is sexist. A woman eagerly proffers a stick to Sean, “to beat the lovely lady.” There is no feminism present, save perhaps for in O’Hara’s scrappy characterization. Still, she is shown as being pleased that her husband fought for her, and is more than happy to tend to the menfolk after they’ve had their little row. She really wants to be a good wife. In those times, that was perceived as the height of female ambition.

So all ends well, as it does in all comedies. Sean and Mary Kate are together, complete. Danaher and the widow begin to court – even the local minister is given support from the Catholics in town to keep his tiny parish open. Ford’s dream world is restored to a state of equilibrium; everyone fits into their new roles in life. Time marches on, and human beings, those curious creatures, progress and change.

Ford gives us life as it is really lived – with the boring parts cut out.

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

NFR Project: 'High Noon' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “High Noon”

Dir: Fred Zinneman

Scr: Carl Foreman

Pho: Floyd Crosby

Ed: Elmo Williams

Premiere: July 24, 1952

85 min.

It’s funny. This film, the plot of which is now so familiar as to be a cliché, was once controversial.

In the old American frontier town of Hadleyville (a nod to Twain’s 1899 story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyville”) veteran Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is getting married to the young Amy (Grace Kelly). He is all set to retire and move to another town. A new marshal is coming to replace him the next day. Word comes that Frank Miller, a killer Will sent to prison, has gotten out and is coming to town to gun him down in revenge. He arrives on the train at high noon.

Kane doesn’t run, for fear that Miller will just track him and kill him anyway. His new wife Amy is a pacifist and doesn’t believe he should fight. Kane determines that he will, and seeks others to deputize to join him in fighting the criminal and his gang. Everyone turns him down.

Kane had cleaned up the town, which had been in terror of Miller for years. Everyone praises him, but they all wish he would go away, taking the problem with him. Wife Amy determines to leave him, but she also confronts Kane’s former mistress Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), thinking he is staying for her sake. She states that she is leaving town, too, and that Amy should stand by her man.

Miller comes to town, and he and his men come gunning for Kane. The streets of the town are empty; everyone is waiting to see the outcome of the fight. By hook and crook Kane kills two of the four men up against him. His wife Amy tosses aside her pacifism, pulls out a gun and kills another one. Finally, Kane shoots Miller dead. Kane throws his badge contemptuously in the dust, and he and Amy leave town.

During the production of this film, the film’s writer, Carl Foreman, was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee due to his suspected Communist activities. He refused to name names, so he was blacklisted and kicked off this picture. (He moved to England). John Wayne refused starring in this movie, seeing it as a thinly disguised allegory about the blacklist. Howard Hawks hated this film too. They also couldn’t stand the idea of a marshal asking for help, nor could they countenance his wife saving him.

In fact, many disliked the film. It was subversive for a Western to paint a bunch of frontier townsfolk as rotten cowards, happy to be delivered from evil but unwilling to face up to it themselves. The idea of a lawman standing up to protect an ungrateful populace was a new one. It called into question the whole concept of the struggle to civilize the Wild West. Was it worth the effort? Does the taming of the lawless lead to the creation of just another community full of the flawed?

Foreman’s script examines the myth of the rugged individual as well. Is it noble for a man to still act in the right, although all may be against him? It would seem so. Gary Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the desperate, conflicted Kane. Now we routinely see a protagonist acting despite those around him, not because of them. Such was not the case in 1952.

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

NFR Project: 'Magical Maestro' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “Magical Maestro”

Dir: Tex Avery

Scr: Rich Hogan

Animators: Grant Simmons, Michael Lah, Walter Clinton

Premiere: Feb. 9, 1952

6 min. 30 sec.

Let’s face it: Tex Avery was a genius.

He only took part in inventing Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck, and even Chilly Willy! Beginning in 1935, he supervised the madness at Warner Brothers’ animation outpost, “Termite Terrace,” during the time of its codification of an anti-Disney sarcasm and surreal, fourth-wall-breaking approach to cartoon shorts. In 1941, he moved to MGM, where he ran things animated until the early 1950s.

Magical Maestro is discussed in depth, expertly, by Thad Komorowski at the National Film Registry. Avery was king of the surrealists in American animated films of the period; he would do anything in service of a gag.

His premise here is to cofound the performer, much as Chuck Jones did later in Duck Amuck (1953). The Great Poochini (played by one of Avery’s straight men, Spike) is a concert singer, talented and aloof. He throws out an auditioning Mysto the Magician, who seeks revenge. He sneaks into the theater as Poochini is singing, and takes the conductor’s place with his magic wand. He then puts Poochini through the changes, switching garments, nationalities, ages, and races as he tries to belt out Rossini’s “Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville. The rapid switch from gag to gag guarantees a laugh in there somewhere for everyone.

In the end, Poochini gets his revenge. Avery would soon, exhausted from overwork, take a sabbatical. In that sense his film now plays as the last full expression of the dominant phase of his comic genius.

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