NFR Project: 'All That Heaven Allows' (1955)

NFR Project: “All That Heaven Allows”

Dir: Douglas Sirk

Scr: Peg Fenwick

Pho: Russell Metty

Ed: Frank Gross

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1955

89 min.

Douglas Sirk (1897-1907) was a subversive. He was a pacifist who was harassed for his beliefs during World War I. He fled Germany with his Jewish wife in 1937. In Hollywood, he continued the directing career he had begun in Germany, specializing in the making of “women’s pictures.” He used these emotional melodramas as vehicles for his own anti-Establishment thinking.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in All That Heaven Allows, which features a female protagonist lost in and subject to a male- and affluence-dominated society. She is Cary Scott (Jane Wyman, age 38), a well-off and relatively young widow with two grown children. She has centered her life around their weekend visits.

In the film’s beginning, she finally returns to society in a red dress (which her children don’t think is appropriate) via a dance at the local country club. There, two different men hit on her, swooping down on her confused self, seeking to “claim” her off the singles market. She rejects their overtures.

She incidentally meets young Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson, age 29), a gardener who has trimmed her trees for the past three years, spring and fall. A spark ignites between them, and soon Ron proposes to her. She accepts – but then quickly finds out that a) everyone in town is gossiping about her seemingly inappropriate relationship with a younger and poorer man and b) her children declare that they will disown her if she goes through with it. Most of all, the two seem outraged that she would leave their ancestral home and go live with Ron in a converted millhouse. Succumbing to societal and family pressure, she breaks up with Ron.

Then, that Christmas, her children gleefully tell her they are leaving home, due to impending marriage and work. They buy her a TV to distract her from her now-empty life. They suggest she sell the house after all. Realizing that her children are insensitive monsters, Cary flees back to Ron’s side. He has been injured in a fall, so she takes up a seat beside him. Slowly, he comes to consciousness. “Cary, you’ve come home,” he says. “Yes,” she replies, “I’m home.”

That Ron is a fan of Thoreau is an important plot point. The anti-materialism that Thoreau championed finds a living practitioner in Ron. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him or Cary. He is jolly, handy, handsome, loving, wise – everything a gal could wish for. It is a testament to the coercive powers of society that Cary denies herself for as long as she does of the life she truly wants to live.

Sirk uses a rich color palette, and production-designs his projects to a T. His worlds are very detailed, almost claustrophobic. Multiple surfaces gleam and reflect the characters, until the last stunning image of Cary trapped within the reflection of her new TV set's inert screen. The camera opens up only when freethinkers such as Ron enter the scene.

Cary finds redemption (Ron was originally supposed to die!) and happiness with her perfect man. Neighbors be damned.

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

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.