NFR Project: 'The Asphalt Jungle' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “The Asphalt Jungle”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: Ben Maddow, John Huston

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: George Boemler

Premiere: May 12, 1950

112 min.

It’s one of John Huston’s best films, and an absolute film noir classic. In it, Huston changes his visual style completely, creating a dark, claustrophobic world in which very few can be trusted and things don’t break the protagonists’ way.

Our heroes are the criminals, and this story is told from their perspective. We in the audience are their conspirators; we can’t help but root for them. They are regular Joes, and would be considered working stiffs if it weren’t for the fact that they break the law instead of punching a clock.

A dangerous criminal mastermind, Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe, in a fantastic performance) is released from prison. He has a plan to steal $500,000 in jewelry in a big Midwestern city. To do this, he needs $50,000 in seed money. He goes to a crooked lawyer, Emmerich (Louis Calhern in his greatest role) to get his backing. Doc assembles a team – safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), getaway driver Gus (James Whitmore), and a strong-armed “hooligan,” Dix (Sterling Hayden). The plan is excellent, and everything goes like clockwork – until it doesn’t.

First, the explosion that blows the safe sets off the alarms for all the businesses in the area. A watchman intrudes and is struck down by Dix, but not before Louis is accidentally shot. Doc and Dix go to collect the money for the job, but it seems that Emmerich is secretly broke and plans to take the jewels from the team and flee the country. His private detective Brannom (Brad Dexter) tries to shoot it out and gets killed – and now Dix is wounded, too.

Doc and Dix escape and make their plans to get out of town. Emmerich is cornered by the police and kills himself. Doc is arrested; Dix drives with his girlfriend Doll (Jean Hagen) to his boyhood home in Kentucky. He makes it, but dies in a field outside his house. The horses he loves gather around his dead body.

The top-notch script, adapted from W.R. Burnett’s 1949 novel, gives us three-dimensional characters with something to say for themselves. Marc Lawrence is great in a small role as Cobby, a sweaty fixer, and Barry Kelley plays a corrupt cop to perfection. Each character has a point of view, something to shoot for, and their fair share of weaknesses. Doc is attracted to underage girls, which proves his downfall; Emmerich bankrupts himself by keeping a teen mistress (Marilyn Monroe in a sharp early role).

And Dix is an honorable man in a dishonorable profession. He sticks to his word; he’s reliable and decent. His dream of buying back his family farm is a good one; he’s simply fated not to see it happen.

In the end, the best-laid plans go awry and the guilty are punished. Order is restored. But our protagonists are all destroyed.

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

NFR Project: 'All About Eve" (1950)

 

NFR Project: “All About Eve”

Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Pho: Milton R. Krasner

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Oct. 13, 1950

138 min.

This is a true story. Did you know that? I did not. Evidently it happened to German actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986). Bergner is best remembered for some featured British film roles she filled in the early Sound Era (The Rise of Catherine the Great, Escape Me Never, As You Like It), despite her pronounced accent.

The inaugural production of The Two Mrs. Carrolls, in which Bergner starred, opened in London in 1935. A young woman huddled in the elements outside of every performance. Bergner took pity on her and hired her as an assistant. The girl became her understudy, and tried to take over her life. New York Times obit writer Mary Orr rendered it as a short story, “The Wisdom of Eve,” in Cosmopolitan in May 1946. In turn, it was staged as a radio play on NBC Radio City Playhouse on Jan. 24, 1949.

Finally Hollywood optioned it and Joseph L. Mankiewicz turned into a perfect story of deceit and betrayal, of paranoia and regret. It features three-dimensional characters, and addresses topics such as aging, faithfulness, and the blindness of kindness. Here manipulative figures advance themselves at the loss of their humanity. The good guys give ground and retain theirs. It’s a wise screenplay that takes a long look at aspirations and choices. It won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

And the film won Best Picture, and Mankiewicz won Best Director as well, and three others. Utilizing Mankiewicz’s witty and perceptive script, the cast has a blast with tale of fateful ambition.

It’s set in the New York theater world, where Margo Channing (Bette Davis) rules as queen of leading ladies. She is brilliant in her new play, though she is playing a 24-year-old at the age of 40. She questions the path her life is taking. She is in love with her director, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill). Their best friends are leading playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Karen (Celeste Holm). There are tons of martinis and cigarettes.

Into their lives sneaks Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter, in a killer performance), a meek, mousy fan who hangs around outside the theater – and goes to all the performances of – Margo’s new play. The group takes her in, save for the cynical maid Birdie (the great Thelma Ritter); Margo gives her a job as an assistant.

Soon evil Eve is manipulating everyone around her, nominating herself as Margo’s understudy and enlisting the help of Karen to get Margo offstage so that Eve can play the role in front of the press corps. Margo rails against Eve, and her friends tell her she's imagining things. Eve soon seduces Lloyd (it is implied), and nabs the leading role in his new play. She wins the Sarah Siddons award for acting excellence (the great Walter Hampden speaks), and she is off to Hollywood and everyone is pleased save for the people she screwed over to get there.

Baxter is at her conniving best as Eve, coming on all smooth and sweet and abjectly humble while advancing her own interests ruthlessly. Davis is at her best as Margo; Davis was also a beautiful, aging actress doomed to soon leave leading roles and start playing matrons. She fights against the stage’s ageism, but in the end accepts her fate. Unlike Eve, she finds happiness – with herself, with Bill.

Davis is nearly a tragic heroine here; she looms over all the other actors with her bold expression of the vibrant and brassy Margo. And she made other people look good; Holm and Ritter were nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and George Sanders won Best Supporting Actor for his role as “that venomous fishwife, Addison DeWitt!” Theater critic and casual blackmailer. In the end, Eve's life is a complete lie.

The direction is effortless – there are no great artistic “signature” camera moves. It’s a seamless assortment of mid-range shots, duos and trios, and closeups. Mankiewicz lets the actors act, and gets much more from them than a director usually does. All About Eve is about performing, on and off stage; everyone acts with measured thought with the best of intentions, generally, and things get all balled up. Emotions are repressed and indulged to a delicious degree.

Specific as it is, Eve expresses some home truths about human nature. The pattern is doomed to repeat itself. How will one play her role in the game of life?

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

NFR Project: 'Cinderella' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Cinderella”

Dir: Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi

Scr: William Peet, Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, Kenneth Anderson, Erdman Penner, Winston Hibler, Harry Reeves, Joe Rinaldi

Ed: Donald Halliday

Premiere: March 4, 1950

76 min.

As you may know from reading me, I hate Disney films. This is all due to me being traumatized at a young age by the likes of Bambi and Pinocchio (and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty and on and on . . . ). Their nightmare-inducing fare was not for me.

That being said, Cinderella is one of their least offensive movies, primarily because nothing horribly villainous happens to the protagonist. We are given a straight-up transcription, by and large, of the original fairy tale. Cinderella is the poor put-upon young lady who’s dominated by her wicked stepmother (not too scary) and her mean old stepsisters.

She has a fairy godmother who grants her wish to go to the ball, and her clothes are magically transformed. She and her handsome prince fall in love – but then she must flee by midnight, when the spell is broken. Only one glass slipper remains.

The prince then sends out a comic-opera duke to fit all the maidens in the kingdom with the slipper, in order to find his beloved. Cinderella, almost thwarted, reveals that she possesses the other slipper. And they live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, there is much comic byplay here with the birds and the mice, who are Cinderella’s allies. This helps to move the plot forward, but it is not actually funny, so the effort on them seems wasted. The songs are OK. Lovers of voice actors will note that Verna Felton, Candy Candido, and June Foray lend their skills to the production.

There is a kind of plastic-y sheen to a Disney film that makes me resist it. It is polished, airtight, precocious, condescending, a perfectly machined mechanism to provide family entertainment. It is, at its base, soulless and manipulative. The studio made tons of money from it, and it remains a significant component of Disney’s intellectual property.

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