NFR Project: 'Duck Amuck' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Duck Amuck”

Dir: Chuck Jones

Scr: Michael Maltese

Premiere: Feb. 28, 1953

6:53

Poor Daffy. Created by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett on April 17, 1937, he was soon to be one of cartoon history’s indelible characters – and perhaps its most unfortunate.

The Warner Brothers’ cartoon studio was by far the most imaginative and captivating of all motion-picture cartoon-crafting outfits of the period, giving us a slew of immortal characters housed in a slapstick paradise, a hilariously visualized space where the gags come thick and fast, where reality is bent, a reality in which heads flatten out and rebound upon being struck, where duck bills are blasted, spinning them to the rear and carefully swivelled back into place. The permissive atmosphere at “Termite Terrace” led to extensive, brilliant, experimental and successful comedies. Their efforts resulted in the creation of a body of animated short subjects that express the unique American comic sensibility.

The sarcastic, egotistical little black duck was born as a zany, anarchic prankster (read my essay on his first film, Porky’s Duck Hunt, here). It was a role he would play, usually with Porky Pig as his innocent foil, until 1940, when Bugs Bunny came along and took over being a witty miscreant in Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon shorts of the era.

So what’s a duck to do? Daffy turned into a much more complex character, an anti-hero usually hoisted by his own petard, a greedy, cynical coward – who regularly played Bugs’ nemesis in battles of wits staged in front of a befuddled Elmer Fudd. Bugs was cool, a consummate trickster. Daffy was an insecure, vain mess.

We watched it all, growing up, fixated on the adventures of Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer and the rest. Their restless, intense artistry was engraved on our little skulls. We were children of Daffy.

The anything-goes vividness of this attack on Daffy bears the fingerprints of the immortal animator Chuck Jones, who wielded the director’s mace in most of Warner Brothers’ best cartoons. Jones was capable of pushing and crystallizing his characters’ ethos, resulting in gems such as The Rabbit of Seville, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½ Century, and One Froggy Evening. This film stands as a classic beside them.

The movie is a tantalizing thought-product spawned by writer Michael Maltese, expressing a kind of existential despair about the certainties of reality. First Daffy dashes out in front of the camera, clad as a musketeer. The background disappears. Daffy appeals to us, as the acknowledged creator of the film, to put in some scenery. The artist obliges, brushing on a rural scene instead of a Gothic one. “Stand back, Musketeers, they shall sample . . . my . . . blade?” Daffy exclaims. He re-costumes himself. He is switched then to the Arctic, the tropics . . .. and back to nothingness. He complains, and is erased.

He is brought back as a cowboy singer – but there is no sound. Soon mismatched sounds come out of Daffy’s guitar and out of his mouth, culminating in him raving, “And I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life!” He begs the animators to quit kidding around. And is transformed into a misshapen creature. Then he is redrawn as himself, in a sailor suit. And let fall into the sea. He suffers from long shots and close-ups.

Finally, the darkness of the frame-edge above him droops and sags, descending like goo. Daffy fights it, goes berserk, tears it to shreds. He is doubled, and fights himself. He is given a plane to fly, and a mountain to fly into. He bails out of the plane, and is given an anvil for a parachute. Dazed and woozy in front of an abstract background, he hammers the anvil, chanting Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith.” The animator erases the anvil, replacing it with a bomb. Daffy strikes it until it explodes. Singed, he raves at the cartoon’s creator. “Who are you?” he screams. A door is drawn and closed upon him, and camera pulls out. The animator is Bugs. “Ain’t I a stinker?” he confides.

Daffy learns that he’s at the mercy of the animator – incapable of doing anything but rapidly adapt to the prevailing conditions. In that, he becomes an enraged existential hero. Daffy’s predicament is descended from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924) dream sequence, in which Buster enters the film and flails about in the rapid and seemingly spiteful changes of scene. But Duck Amuck can go further into the absurdity, pulling aside the curtain and showing the mechanics of making a cartoon come to life – a self-referential folly that illuminates the fragility of our assumptions about reality. We all get the rug pulled out from beneath us, repeatedly, hilariously.

Duck Amuck is the ultimate expression of the rivalry between Bugs and Daffy, and Bugs is again the easy winner. His magical qualities let him transcend the cartoon page and have agency in our reality. Daffy, no matter how hard he tries, will always be the victim of fate or of himself. Jones comes close here to being the cartoon equivalent of Samuel Beckett. Identity and reality are up for grabs, and the choices are not our own. A pretty gritty statement, truth be told.

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

NFR Project: 'The Big Heat' (1953)

 NFR Project: “The Big Heat”

Dir: Fritz Lang

Scr: Sydney Boehm

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Charles Nelson

Premiere: Oct. 14, 1953

90 min.

Fritz Lang was a master at depicting the darkness of humanity. One of his earliest efforts, the film serial The Spiders (1919-1920) – possibly inspired by Feulliade’s Fantomas (1913) -- dealt with a crime syndicate. He directed a four-and-a-half hour film about the doings of Dr. Mabuse, a criminal mastermind (1922). He made Spies in 1928. He tracked a serial killer in M in 1931.

He fled Germany to avoid Nazi persecution. Once he came to Hollywood, he specialized in genre films. He engaged with crime in Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Scarlet Street (1945). The Big Heat is an off-beat noir, the culmination of his tough crime pictures, and their attendant attitudes about humanity.

The story is told in complete deadpan, with very few stylistic flourishes. Lang is subverting the perverse content of the film by rendering it in a naturalistic manner. People do bad things; life goes on.

Here, Glenn Ford is Dave Bannion, a police sergeant trying to find out why a veteran cop killed himself. He talks to the lying widow (Jeanette Nolan), who is blackmailing the crime syndicate that had the officer in its pocket. He finds the cop’s girlfriend, who talks. She is soon found dead, having been tortured and murdered.

Bannion is ordered off the case, but he keeps probing. Ultimately, his wife is killed is their driveway by a car bomb meant for Dave. Bannion then accuses his higher-ups of corruption, and is suspended. He vows to keep searching for his wife’s killers.

Debby (Gloria Grahame), girlfriend of volatile, sadistic mob killer Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), grows to trust Dave and gives him information. When Vince finds out about her talking to the ex-cop, he brutally throws a pot of boiling coffee in her face. Scarred horribly, she goes to Bannion and fingers the man behind the car bombing. He is roughed up by Bannion and spills the beans, dooming him to an ugly fate as a snitch.

Bannion tails Stone. Debby goes to the policeman’s widow. If she dies, the damaging evidence her husband had on the mob will be revealed. Debby shoots her to death. She then lies in wait for Stone at his apartment. She throws hot coffee in his face, scalding him. He shoots her to death. Bannion rushes in and captures Stone. The corrupt police commissioner and the crime boss are indicted.

In Lang’s world, the bad do whatever they like, and the powers that be are paid off. Bannion is an ordinary, nice guy, but after his wife’s murder and expulsion from the force, he comes an avenging angel, grimly threatening to kill those he can’t squeeze information out of. Extrajudicial violence is the price the honest cop has to pay to see justice done.

Notably, all the women in the film with speaking parts get killed. It’s a reverse of the usual pattern of the noir protagonist being destroyed by a femme fatale. Here, the females are just collateral damage.

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

NFR Project: 'The Band Wagon' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “The Band Wagon”

Dir: Vincente Minnelli

Scr: Betty Comden, Adolf Green

Pho: Harry Jackson

Ed: Albert Akst

Premiere: July 9, 1953

111 min.

Which movie musical is the better? Singin’ in the Rain or this?

It depends on whether you are a Gene Kelly fan or a Fred Astaire man. I’m an Astaire guy. Kelly was athletic, surprising, gung-ho . . . but dancer/singer/actor Astaire was magic. He would gently weave his spells of reassuring motion, always alive on camera, precise, smooth, demanding perfection from himself in the dance and delivering like a pro every time. He could convey feelings as few could merely by moving.

Known first for his on-screen collaborations with Ginger Rogers (1933-1949), he moved on to other partners, such as Judy Garland, Jane Powell, and here Cyd Charisse, the most talented female dancer of her day. (And she could act!) In all of his later film incarnations, Astaire remained committed to the bit. He made his partners look good, and successfully played the love interest far into middle age. He later made a dance partner out of a coat rack.

Listen to some of his studio recordings. His voice is thin and of limited range. Yet he understands rhythms so well that he talk/sings his way, very evocatively, through the material. He had a jazzy sensibility. He grew up in shows by Gershwin and Irving Berlin. He had a cool which, coupled with his relaxed thereness in a scene, caused him to compel your attention.

Here he is yoked to the genius of director Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli’s musicals (Meet Me in St. Louis, ‘Til the Clouds Roll By, The Pirate) were top-notch; He here gets to embody the vibrant, Technicolor-soaked Minnelli-esque take on theatrical life through the contrivance of the backstage musical story. Betty Comden and Adolf Green, the iconic writing duo that gave us On the Town (1944) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) here concoct the classic plot of “let’s put on a show” and turns it into a wicked satire of aesthetic pretentiousness.

Astaire plays his familiar persona, a song-and-dance man named Tony Hunter. At the show’s beginning, his Broadway memorabilia is being auctioned off – and there are no takers. Tony is seemingly a has-been which is unfortunate as he is a nice guy, wise to himself and high-spirited despite his problems. His pals Lily (Nanette Fabray) and Lester (Oscar Levant) Marton have written a killer new musical for him to star in, enabling him to make a comeback.

Unfortunately they are hot on a new theatrical wunderkind, the great impresario and writer/producer/director Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), who is currently wowing them in Oedipus Rex. They tell him about their idea. Immediately he fixates on the idea that the show should take the shape of a Faustian fable, dark and anxious in nature. Jeffrey is an immense ham, of course, and is very sure of himself. (He is supposedly based on Jose Ferrer.)

Tony’s leading lady is famous ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Charisse). At first, the two misunderstand each other and are hostile, but as they spend time together through the chaotic, ever-changing rehearsals, they fall in love. In one magical sequence, they duet in Central Park, under a lamplight, moving together perfectly to “Dancing in the Dark." It’s as direct, classic expression of male/female interaction in the art form. (The great Michael Kidd did the choreography.)

The show bombs out of town. Everyone has a beer, and Tony leads them in deciding to put on the show – but to go back to the original freewheeling script.

Another key to the success of this movie is that all the songs were written by the great team of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. We move on to a classic montage of musical bits, unrelated yet all standouts – “New Sun in the Sky,” “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan,” “Louisiana Hayride,”  “Triplets,” and the crowning, fabulously inventive “Girl Hunt Ballet.” It's a hit -- and Gaby's in love with him.

The show is, in a way, a rebuke to the book musical epitomized by Oklahoma! and South Pacific. The eponymous show-within-the-show finally works when it goes back to the approach of making a musical out of a bunch of unrelated bits and numbers, as was the fashion prior to the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution. Tony is a humble hoofer who succeeds by deflating the pretentious and bringing them down to his level – and to the good, old-fashioned way of doing things.

Tony is magic. His exuberant ode “Shine on Your Shoes” early in the film encapsulates everything we like about Astaire – he’s quirky, he has great reactions, he’s just in love with moving. Charisse, alone and with Astaire, shows off her incredible strength, smoothness, and precision, just as demanding as Astaire, going full out in an exemplary performance. She is both Astaire's and Kelly's ideal dance partner.

Buchanan is fine as the ham Cordova; Fabray and Levant are talented second bananas. Every little detail is perfect. Minnelli crowds the film with motion and color, speeding the satire along merrily as he stops everything periodically to give the cast a chance ato entertain us. It’s unfailingly cheerful and still so, so very good.

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 Big Heat.