NFR Project: 'Salt of the Earth' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Salt of the Earth”

Dir: Herbert J. Biberman

Scr: Michael Wilson

Pho: Stanley Meredith, Leonard Stark

Ed: Joan Laird, Ed Spiegel

Premiere: March 14, 1954

94 min.

It’s an extraordinary film, still ahead of its time.

First, read the splendid essay by Stacie Seifrit-Griffin at the National Film Registry. It covers all the points I was to address: therefore, I can only add my impressions to the conversation.

Salt of the Earth is radical in every way. It’s a how-to for strikers. It outlines the challenges and roadblocks that ordinary workers have to face when they want to better their lot collectively. It advocates for women and minorities. It offers the hope of eventual triumph over the negative forces of unrestrained capitalism. And it does so while remaining viable as a film. A project like this could easily become pedantic and lecturing. 

It was the creation of a group of exiled artists. Several people involved in this film were blacklisted as a result of their refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee, including the director, the screenwriter, and several of the actors. They gathered in New Mexico to shoot the story of a miners’ strike, a topic no right-thinking mainstream movie studio would ever think of tackling. It would be one of the few films to be made outside of Hollywood during this period. It was the first and only film to be blacklisted.

In the film, the men who work in the mines strike for better conditions. They are harassed by the police, who are in the pay of the rich industrialist who owns the mine. After they are forbidden to picjet the mine’s entrance, their women step in and march for them. The women and children are hauled off to jail, but eventually released.

While the women are organizing, the men are relegated to doing housework, which they find as onerous as mining for zinc. The women declare that they seek liberation and equality.

The emotional center of the film is the new mother Esperanza (Rosaura Revueltas), whose husband (Juan Chacon) is beaten and jailed early on in the strike. She is transformed from a beaten-down housewife into a dynamic labor leader in the course of the film.

Finally, the company evicts Esperanza and her family from their home. From all around come men and women determined to stop the eviction from taking place. The company finally capitulates and decides to settle. The strike is a success.

The film is shot in plain, neorealist style. The actor,s most of whom are non-professional, are convincing. No one would repeat this experiment in filmmaking. The principals were harassed for making this film. Their careers went nowhere. They paid the price for speaking truth to power.

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

NFR Project: 'Sabrina' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Sabrina”

Dir: Billy Wilder

Scr: Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor, Ernest Lehman

Pho: Charles Lang Jr.

Ed: Arthur Schmidt

Premiere: Sept. 23, 1954

113 min.

A lovely little fantasy from the usually irascible Billy Wilder.

Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of the chauffeur for the wealthy Larrabee family. She is infatuated with the irresponsible younger scion of the family, David (William Holden, playing a carefree dimwit). His older brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) is dour and practical.

Sabrina loves David, who is in line to marry his fourth wife, the daughter of another business tycoon. In order to preserve the merger of the two families, Linus is set to distract Sabrina. He wines and dines her . . . and the two fall in love.

That’s pretty much it. It’s a romance, and is concerned with the pleasantries of affection.

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

NFR Project: 'Rear Window' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Rear Window”

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: John Michael Hayes

Pho: Robert Burks

Ed: George Tomasini

Premiere: Sept. 1, 1954

112 min.

First, read here John Belton’s superior analysis of this film at the National Film Registry. I have not much to add! It’s quite comprehensive.

To wit I would only note:

This is another example of Hitchcock’s matchless ability to formulate a conceit and stage it impeccably. Here he takes a screenplay derived from a 1944 Cornell Woolrich short story. Woolrich (1903-1968) was a prolific and talented American crime writer, one of the best of his era. His idea of an idle apartment-dweller believing he sees the commission of a murder across the way is brilliant, and John Michael Hayes’ screenplay adaptation is taut, intelligent, and captivating. It would be the first of four straight Hitchcock films for which Hayes would write the screenplay.

In this case, Hitchcock deliberately traps himself as a filmmaker in the protagonist’s environment. He sets himself visual limitations, then transcends them. It’s an elegant game of a movie.

He doesn’t give himself much to work with. We as the audience are confined to the view of Jeff’s apartment, what’s visible out his back window, and what he sees through binoculars or a telephoto lens. We know only what Jeff knows. We are mercilessly left to draw our own conclusions as the film progresses.

Dashing Greenwich Village photojournalist Jeff Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is recovering from a broken leg that was gotten while filming an auto race. Also, he is grumpy. He is tended by a faithful, acerbic nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his faithful, voluptuous, intelligent, stylish, and beautiful girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). Bored as hell in recuperation, he gazes out on the courtyard and the surrounding apartments and ruminates on the lives those within.

Lisa wants him to commit. He’s leery of doing so, and complains about women and marriage throughout most of the film. Instead, he operates as a voyeur, which his nurse and Lia comment on and discourage.

Until it seems that someone across the way has murdered his wife. Jeff makes a conjecture as to what happened to Mrs. Thorwald – he sees her nagging her husband (Raymond Burr as the literal heavy), then she seems to disappear.

Jeff sees Thorwald carrying a suitcase out into the rain, three times in one night. Jeff sees him wrap up a saw and a butcher knife. He infers that Mrs. Thorwald is dead, and that Thorwald is the murderer. He alerts his war buddy, a police lieutenant (Wendell Corey). The detective checks out what evidence he can, but he ends up discounting Jeff’s warnings and tells him to lay off.

The suspicions continue to breed. Lisa becomes convinced as well. Jeff lures Thorwald out of the apartment with a phone call, and Lisa breaks in. Thorwald catches her. The police get involved. Thorwald realizes he is being watched by Jeff. Lisa gets arrested. Now Thorwald goes into Jeff’s apartment and confronts him. He advances ominously as Jeff tries to blind him with flashbulbs. Thorwald throws Jeff out of the window, and the cops and Lisa bust in and capture him.

In the coda, Jeff is now propped up with TWO broken legs and Lisa watching over him. He was right.

This is one movie you can have a lot of fun interpreting. Is Thorwald’s brutal killing a literal projection of Jeff’s hidden desires?

Is Jeff “broken” sexually? Does Lisa represent an unreal female ideal? One that’s openly soliciting sex with the hero?

The movie gives us extensive glimpses of the lives of many ordinary citizens, seen through their windows. All varieties of living situations, all ages of life, live on top of each and beside other, their windows opened to Jeff’s observation and judgement (and ours – for we are voyeurs, just like Jeff). It’s an opportunity to comment on the society of the day. Each individual within Jeff’s range of vision is pantomiming their inner lives for us. It is painful and compelling at once.

Stewart is great, having fun playing a “darker” character. Stewart abandoned his good-guy persona after World War II, initially in the Westerns he made with Anthony Mann (you can read my essays on their work together Winchester ’73 [1950] and The Naked Spur [1953] by clicking on the titles). His Jeff Jeffries is, frankly, a pain in the ass. He is bitter and at times abusive. He is sick of being laid up and he takes it out on the women around him. He is not whole. (Stewart would later play some of Hitchcock's most conflicted and tortured heroes.)

Lisa seemingly only becomes real to him when he sees her across the way, trapped in Thorwald’s apartment. His near-death at the hands of Thorwald punishes him for his voyeurism, and now he’s completely immobilized and under the control of his woman. The adventurer is literally disabled, so that he becomes a suitable mate. Jeff is, presumably, tamed.

Even if you don’t read anything into it, it’s still a classic thriller. Is Jeff nuts? Did we see what we thought we saw? The movie puts us on the edge of our seats.

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