NFR Project: 'The Blood of Jesus'

 

NFR Project: ‘The Blood of Jesus’

Dir: Spencer Williams

Scr: Spencer Williams

Pho: Jack Whitman

Ed: N/A

Premiere: April 26, 1941

56 min.

The Blood of Jesus is a “race” film, meaning it was made specifically for African American audiences. Its director and screenwriter was Spencer Williams, whose second film this is. It’s a celebration of holiness couched in the shape of a fable about faith and temptation.

It is crudely made, but convincing. The director’s deficiencies can be duly noted, but his knowledge of narrative and film grammar mark him as a prodigious filmmaker.

It’s a pedagogic film, a film that seeks to instruct, in this case morals. It was screened not only in theaters but in churches. It is certainly a film for the faithful.

In the rural South, a young woman named Martha gets baptized in the river. Others note her husband isn’t there. She returns home, and he lies about poaching some of his neighbors’ stoats. His shotgun slips and falls and wounds Martha grievously. In bed, she is prayed over and sung over.

An angel appears and takes her to the crossroads between heaven and hell. There, an emissary of mean old Satan incudes Martha to dress up and go to the club with him. There we see people dance, drink, and watch an acrobat and a singer. Tame stuff now, but the movie looks on it as abhorrent behavior.

The angel appears again, to warn her. Martha escapes, pursued by a mob. She falls at the sign delineating Zion and Hell. There Satan is driving a flatbed truck with a jazz band on it – others mill about, dancing, drinking, fighting. The signpost turns into the crucifix – Christ’s blood drips onto Martha’s face – and she is redeemed and restored to health. What’s more, her husband has gone straight.

The film is steeped in the Puritan hypocrisy. It wants to experience some sinning, but it wants to see it condemned as well. The club footage looks like it was shot one night in a real club; the film is part documentary. Only the framing is evangelical.

But this Pilgrim’s Progress, redemptive and devoted to right living and salvation, hasn’t got a hateful bone in its body. It looks down on sinners but gives hope of everlasting glory for the faithful. It is literally a come-to-Jesus movie.

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

NFR Project: 'Ball of Fire' (1941)

 

NFR Project: ‘Ball of Fire’

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder

Pho: Gregg Toland

Ed: Daniel Mandell

Premiere: Dec. 2, 1941

111 min.

What do you get when you produce the combined creative efforts of four individuals at the top of their game? You get a Ball of Fire.

Released days before Pearl Harbor, it marks the high water of screwball comedy in American film.

The eminently versatile director, Howard Hawks, had already proved his ability to make screwball comedy with Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and His Girl Friday (1940). Brackett and Wilder had been writing together since 1936, and would continue to do so, through 1950. They had already penned Ninotchka (1939), and had The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) ahead of them. Cinematographer Gregg Toland had just won the Oscar for Wuthering Heights (1939) and was also working on a little film called Citizen Kane (1941).

Ball of Fire (aka, in some locations, as The Professor and the Burlesque Queen) is an archetypal screwball comedy – a dynamic dame seduces a strait-laced, oafish but handsome leading man and leads him to a finer appreciation of life. Here the dame is the beautiful and witty Barbara Stanwyck, a tough chick who sings in a joint and is named Sugarpuss O’Shea. She’s the reluctant girlfriend of the mobster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews).

She’s encountered singing “Drum Boogie” (actually it’s the voice of Martha Tilton) with Gene Krupa and his orchestra. She’s being observed by the mild-mannered Professor Potts (Gary Cooper), who is compiling an encyclopedia entry on slang and has bivouacked in the real, vernacular world to learn all the new expressions.

He resides in an ornate brownstone in mid-town Manhattan with seven other shy and retiring bachelor professors, each played by a consummate character actor (Oskar Homolka! Henry Travers! S.Z. ‘Cuddles’ Sakall!). The supporting cast of academics is clearly patterned on the Seven Dwarves in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). That makes Gary Cooper Snow White and Barbara Stanwyck the handsome prince.

Potts and his septet of colleagues are engaged in creating a reference work in accordance with the dictates of the Daniel S. Totten Foundation. The Foundation has run out of money, and the professors are urged to wrap things up. Potts realizes he is deficient in hipster lingo, and goes out into the big wide world to write it all down.

He is slumming in a nightclub when Sugarpuss O’Shea appears. He asks her to come to the Foundation for research purposes – and she figures it’s a good place to hide out to avoid being forced to testify against Joe Lilac. Lilac wants to marry her so she can’t testify against him.

So, she delivers herself to the professors’ door and makes herself at home. Now SHE is playing Snow White, and she enchants the shy, retiring old men who surround her. She and Potts, or Pottsie, fall in love.

And there’s the rub. Far be it from me to reveal the interesting twists and convergences that flow, symphony-like, straight through the heart of the film. It is all of a piece, directed not obtrusively but in a definitive, convincing manner that sells the absurd premise perfectly. All the actors are skirting around overplaying it, just a bit. Hawks had a way of winding up an actor to make them more vivid.

This is easily the most sentimental of the Brackett and Wilder scripts. It’s simply crisp, wry, a well-made play. (Supposedly, Hawks let Wilder shadow him as he was making the movie, to learn the directing trade. Wilder had impeccable taste.) Sugarpuss and Pottsie’s ill-starred romance is whole-hearted, sincere, and very sweet. You get to watch two people fall in love.

To top it all off, there’s Toland’s cinematography, which ranges from the practical to the dreamy. With precious few setups, he conveys the shimmering loveliness of Stanwyck, the befuddled comedy of Cooper . . . even the goombah toughness of Duke Pastrami, the hood played in what is essentially a gifted cameo by Dan Duryea.

A farce anchored in real feeling, Ball of Fire makes the most of every occasion for humor, wending its way to its improbable but crowd-pleasing finale. It’s a fairy tale with a fairly sexy happy ending for the time. True love, and good  grammar, prevails.

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

NFR Project: 'Dumbo' (1941)

 

NFR Project: ‘Dumbo’

Dir: Ben Sharpsteen, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Bill Roberts, Jack Kinney, Samuel Armstrong

Scr: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer

Premiere: Oct 23, 1941

64 min.

Dumbo derives from a “Roll-a-Book” tale told in 1939 by Helen Aberson-Mayer and Harold Pearl, with illustrations by Helen Durney. It’s a heart-warming tale of a little circus elephant with oversized ears, who is at first rejected but then accepted when it turns out that he can fly.

Disney sought to counter the financial losses incurred by Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940). He deliberately made this a low-budget film, content even have it clock in at a mere 64 minutes. The film profited wonderfully, getting Disney out of debt.

My aversion to Disney fare continues unabated, but not so strongly with Dumbo. Fear not, for it is politically incorrect, traumatizingly surreal, and emotionally manipulative. Beyond, that, it’s a fine entertainment.

Dumbo is a little elephant with big ears. He is, in fact, deformed. This deformed individual is scorned by all and demoted to the bottom level of his society. But then he demonstrates that his deformation is socially utile, and quickly becomes the favorite of all. It’s depressing.

It’s much the same conceit as the plot of the later-penned Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Dumbo’s main problem is the crows. These comic-relief “black” birds are voiced by Black actors, who speak in a real shuck-and-jive kind of Negro slang that’s pretty offensive. Not Song of the South (1946) offensive, but bad enough.

Then there’s “Pink Elephants on Parade.” This drunken hallucination of Dumbo’s is pretty much what I saw when I had my tonsils out at age 5. Pure nightmare fuel. For supposedly sane children, I am sure it’s a delightful romp.

Then there’s “Baby Mine.” Is there anything more heart-rending than Mrs. Jumbo reaching through the bars of her cage to rock little Dumbo for while? No, there is not. I was traumatized for life.

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

NFR Project: 'Tarantella' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Tarantella’

Made by Mary Ellen Bute

Premiere: 1940

4:41

 

Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983) was a visual artist who became obsessed with sequential art. Naturally she turned with her great strength as an abstract artist to the problem of setting images to music. She’s a pioneer of experimental film. (Read Lauren Rabinovitz's excellent essay here.)

Between 1934 and 1967, she made 17 films, mostly her famous “motion paintings,” which coordinated shapes, squiggles, swathes of color, kinetic explosions of dots and lines, all writhing and intermingling with a recorded soundtrack.

In this case, her pictures, over 7,000 of them, are set to music by pianist and composer Edwin Gerschefski. Her kinetic abstractions throb and hustle, pounding along with the crashing chords. The film declares itself “a swift moving dance presented musically and in linear forms in color.” It needs to be seen to be believed.

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

NFR Project: 'Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse' (Nov. 7, 1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse’

Shot by Barney Elliott and Herbie Monroe, owners, The Camera Shop, Tacoma; Arthur Leach

Filmed November 7, 1940

Various minutes

These films fascinate engineers, physicists, mathematicians – and weirdos like me. This may be the earliest footage placed in the National Film Registry because it looked COOL.

You’ve all seen it – the undulating, mis-engineered bridge, twisting and warping as a sole abandoned car jiggers frantically back and forth at its middle, until finally it oscillates itself out of existence, fracturing and crashing apart, the central span plummeting into the river.

Leon Moisseiff's design was, in a clinical example you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, faulty.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was opened on July 1, 1940. It crossed the Puget Sound in Washington State, and was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world by main span when it was completed. On Nov. 7, in a high wind of 40 miles per hour, its deck began to oscillate radically and in ever-increasing arcs from side to side, prompting several to flee on foot for their lives. (A three-legged cocker spaniel named Tubby died when the bridge collapsed. You can see three different attempts to go back and get him out of the car in which he was trapped. Read Sara Kay’s story in Grit City Magazine here.)

The mathematics and the physics of the bridge’s self-canceling strategy has fascinated the brainy ever since. Me, I know nothing about it but I am enlightened by the insanely extensive and detailed analysis of what happened on Wikipedia, which you canconsult here. Evidently, the bridge was already known as “Galloping Gertie” by all before the accident happened. We couldn’t see it coming.

Well, one guy did. David B. Steinman, noted bridge engineer. Again in Wikipedia it states that “At the 1938 meeting of the structural division of the American Society of Civil Engineers, during the construction of the bridge, with its designer in the audience, Steinman predicted its failure.”

Elliott, Monroe, and Leach were simply prepared, in the right place at the right time. Their records of the bridge’s aberrant behavior remain a classic and graphic commentary on the best-laid plans of men.

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

NFR Project: 'Siege' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Siege’

Dir: Julien Bryan

Scr: Julien Bryan

Pho: Julien Bryan

Ed: Frederick Ullman Jr., Frank Donovan

Premiere: 1940

10 min.

This essential viewing is bone-chilling. On September 7, 1939, Julien Hequembourg Bryan was the only neutral photographer to shoot film of the infamous Siege of Warsaw (Sept. 1 – Oct. 1, 1939) by the Nazi regime. This is a compassionate and sorrowful record of the tragedies of war.

He filmed and photographed in central Europe during the years 1935 to 1939. He had previously made the prescient short documentary Inside Nazi Germany, outlining the dangers of Hitler’s regime, in 1938. Bryan arrived in Warsaw on the 7^th, carrying a still camera, a film camera, and 6,000 feet of film. Until September 21 he lived in Warsaw, documenting the brutal facts about the attack of a fascist military machine against a largely defenseless civilian population. He shot 5,000 of it.

He smuggled the photos and pictures out, wrapping some of the film around his torso, on Sept. 12.

The resulting 10-minute grim masterpiece gives us all the consequences of a city’s defense against its attackers. Bryan himself narrates the footage, noting that conditions were far worse than those articulated in the major media at the time. He finds barricades, soldiers in the streets, wholesale destruction of property, breadlines . . . and the bodies of the dead, the faces of the suffering. He tracks refugees, records the incessant air raids. He films blocks of apartments in flame, by night, lighting up the city for another round of bombers.

Bryan’s compassionate gaze surveys the ruins of hospitals, then moves to the plight of women with newborns, and casts lingering looks on a ruined church. This is advocacy journalism, to be sure. It is clear where Bryan’s sentiments lie. He gives us a montage of the despairing faces of the besieged. Bryan concludes his narrative by stating, “May God have mercy on them.”

The film is candid. A viewer is faced with the unpalatable, improbable horrors of war and carnage; Bryan was getting the message out. The film was nominated for an Oscar in 1941. It stands as an indictment of armed aggression.

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

NFR Project: 'The Shop Around the Corner' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Shop Around the Corner’

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch

Scr: Samson Raphaelson, Ben Hecht

Pho: William Daniels

Ed: Gege Ruggiero

Premiere: Jan. 12, 1940

99 min.

Director Ernst Lubitsch is known for his “Lubitsch touch,” a sure sense of sophisticated and understated comedy on film. He spent most of the early sound era creating frothy romantic comedies, usually set in imaginary kingdoms. His sharp observations of the vagaries of human behavior are tempered with affection, always leading to happy endings.

The Shop Around the Corner is another romantic comedy, but this time it is set in the real world of commerce. In Budapest, the leather goods store of Matuschek is inhabited by a squad of employees under Mr. Matuschek himself (a wonderful Frank Morgan). Jimmy Stewart plays Alfred, Mr. Matuschek’s number-one man, and Margaret Sullavan plays Klara, a new employee who fails to hit it off with Alfred. They constantly argue.

However, unbeknownst to them both, they are secretly pen pals who love each other through epistolary channels. The contrast between the love they carry for their unmet correspondents and their fractious real-life relationship forms the core of the movie. We watch as, slowly, Alfred finally understands that Klara is the girl he loves. He begins to think about how to break it to her.

Meanwhile, Mr. Matuschek’s unseen wife is discovered to be having an affair – with another employee of Matuschek, Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut). When Matuschek finds out, he tries to kill himself. He is prevented from doing so by Pepi, the errand boy (William Tracy). Matuschek suffers a nervous breakdown, and Alfred takes over as manager of the shop. Soon the equilibrium of the situation is restored. Matuschek realizes that his employees are his true family, and treats them all to Christmas bonuses. Alfred reveals himself to Klara, and they clinch to close the film.

The film’s pace is steady. Lubitsch carefully gives each character just enough time in front of the camera (Felix Bressart, one of Lubitsch’s regulars, puts in a significant performance as the mild Pirovitch), and the subtleties are communicated with a minimum of fuss. The result is a delightful and warm-hearted look at regular folks in their daily lives.

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

NFR Project: 'Pinocchio' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Pinocchio’

Dir: Ben Sharpsteen, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Norman Ferguson, Jack Kinney, Wilfred Jackson, T. Hee

Scr: Ted Sears, Otto Englander, Webb Smith, William Cottrell, Joseph Sabo, Erdman Penner, Aurelius Battaglia

Pho: N/A                                                             

Ed: N/A

Premiere: Feb. 23, 1940

88 min.

I hate Disney.

I was traumatized for life by the emotional manipulations exercised by Disney in the course of their classic films such as Dumbo, Bambi, and . . . Pinocchio. All of these, for me as a child, were Technicolor nightmare fuel. All of them mixed syrupy, over-the-top cuteness and jokes with a certain doomful certainty that all innocents can DIE, that an extremely prejudiced and exploitative world awaited them, and that a happy ending, indeed their survival, was conditional upon extraordinary behavior.

Think about those classic scenes. Dumbo’s mother goes to jail. Bambi’s mother DIES. That Wicked Witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “Pink Elephants on Parade” reads like a passage from a Burroughs novel. I can’t help it. I’m damaged.

So keep this in mind.

Pinocchio traumatized me too. We all have a sneaking suspicion our parents somehow manufactured us, and that we must be in some fundamental and irrevocable way defective. We can become “real” if we fulfill a list of specifications, but are instantly deflected out of the path of righteousness by smooth-talking sociopaths. The physical and psychological tortures of Pinocchio seem far out of proportion to the sin implied in his native state, that is, one of complete innocence. He is helpless in the face of the world. It's the Rotoscoped Blue Fairy who saves him, again and again.

Pinocchio is brought to life with a gaggle of infectious songs and sure-fire gags. His creator, Geppetto, wishes he would be a real boy. The Blue Fairy comes down and animates the puppet, promising him that he can become real if he show himself full of virtue.

Pinocchio is deflected from going to school by a crafty fox and cat, who inveigle him into joining Stromboli’s puppet theater (Stromboli is an Italian stereotype). Stromboli locks Pinocchio up, but the Blue Fairy frees him.

He then gets tempted to go to Pleasure Island, where all the bad lazy boys go to have fun. One small problem – the misbehaving lads are turned into little donkeys. TERRIFYING! To this day. Pinocchio is partially transformed, escapes, goes to the bottom to find his father in the belly of a whale. He masterminds their escape, is seemingly killed, but then is resurrected as “real.” The End! And Jiminy Cricket is along as his “conscience” for comic relief (Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards voices Jiminy) and sings the hit, “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

This is not to say you won’t like it. It has the assured, precisely machined quality of all the Disney classics of the early years. Many hands make light work, and you can see by the credits that a large number of people worked hard to craft this out of the whole cloth (Collodi’s original is far more cynical). It’s a children’s tale, elegantly told. The animation demonstrates a huge step forward in technique.

But it’s scary. It gives me the willies. It’s not you, I’m sure it’s me.

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

NFR Project: 'The Philadelphia Story' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Philadelphia Story’

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Donald Ogden Stewart

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg

Ed: Frank Sullivan

Premiere: Dec. 26, 1940

112 min.

Katherine Hepburn’s career was in trouble. She was labeled “box office poison” due to the string of film flops she had starred in over the course of three years. No one was willing to cast her – in anything.

How did she solve her problem? First, she commissioned playwright Philip Barry to write a romantic comedy for her to star in. The play, The Philadelphia Story, ran for over a year. Her then-boyfriend, millionaire Howard Hughes, bought the film rights to the play and then gave them to her. She then turned around and sold the rights to MGM for $250,000, and insisted on creative control over the project as well.

She selected George Cukor as director. Cukor was by then well known for his comedic skills, as well as his ability to work with female stars. Cary Grant hopped aboard, as did Jimmy Stewart. Soon the film was off to the races – and it is now considered Golden Age Hollywood’s best romantic comedy.

It’s the story of Tracy Lord (Hepburn), a wealthy Philadelphia socialite who’s divorced her first husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant). (Their breakup is summarized in a single, wordless scene that’s a comedy classic.) She’s now ready to wed self-made tycoon George Kittredge (John Howard). Her household is aflutter with preparations for the wedding. Ex-husband Dexter shows up to interfere with the proceedings. The most notable development he instigates is the forced (through blackmail) invitation of tabloid reporter Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and his photographer and paramour Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) to cover the event for their magazine.

Tracy finds herself torn – between affection for George, a sudden interest in the besotted Mike, and the rekindling of a torch for Dexter. The usual complications and mishaps ensue, leading to nothing but chaos and instability. This merry-go-round of possible relationships is dizzying and witty, played with extreme sang-froid by all involved.

The result is an entertaining spin through the relatively innocuous woes of America’s upper class. The film is too controlled to be truly regarded as a screwball comedy. Call it a comedy of manners. This style of narrative is as old as the ancient Greeks, and found its clearest expression in the plays of Moliere, highlighted as a genre in the English theater of the early 18^th century, and persisted to the present day through the work of authors such as Oscr Wilde and Noel Coward.

As with all good comedies of the type, almost everyone gets what they want by the end.

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

NFR Project: 'Men and Dust' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Men and Dust’

Dir: Lee Dick

Scr: Sheldon Dick

Pho: Sheldon Dick

Ed: Jules Bucher

Premiere: 1940

16 min.

Men and Dust is a short documentary made by the wife-and-husband team of Lee and Sheldon Dick. It focuses on the plight of zinc and lead miners in the tri-state region of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas.

The documentary is left-leaning, advocating the fair and compassionate treatment of workers, their wives, and children, all who suffer from lung diseases such as silicosis and tuberculosis due to the accumulation of dust – in the mines themselves and the slag piles that dominate the landscape around the mines.

The documentary uses a quartet of narrative voices that outlines the problems the miners face, all while touting the ubiquity of the products that result from their labor. This somewhat sardonic approach sits side by side with frank pictures of ailing people, underlining the relationship between their suffering and the profit made from the mining companies’ products.

The film received viewings, not in theaters, but in town halls, union meetings, and private homes. As a tool of advocacy, it is far ahead of its time.

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

NFR Project: 'Melody Ranch' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Melody Ranch’

Dir: Joseph Santley

Scr: Jack Moffitt, F. Hugh Herbert, Bradford Ropes, Betty Burbridge

Pho: Joseph H. August

Ed: Lester Orlebeck

Premiere: Nov. 15, 1940

84 min.

Orvon Grover Autry was born in Texas in 1907. Taking on the moniker of Gene, he grew up on the family ranch. After high school, he got work as a telegrapher, and he used to sing and play guitar to while away the time on the job (and got fired for it). He received encouragement from many people who heard him play, most notably Will Rogers. 

He started off singing on the radio in Oklahoma in 1928. In 1929, he landed a recording deal with Columbia Records. He finally scored a hit with “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” which he co-wrote. Soon his popularity went through the roof, and he became known as “The Singing Cowboy.”

In 1935, he was cast as the star of The Phantom Empire, a 12-part movie serial that improbably mashed together music, Western drama, and science fiction. He soon was the leading man in low-budget Westerns in which he would sing, fight bad guys, and joke around with his sidekick, Smiley Burnette. He wound up making 96 films in the course of his career, and made an amazing 640 recordings. He was Public Cowboy #1, and inspired a host of imitators.

Autry had a melodious voice, and an easy-going, upbeat persona that appealed to just about everybody. On his horse Champion, he righted wrongs and crooned cowboy ballads. He eventually would branch off into radio and television as well. He is the only person to have five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for his work in film, radio, TV, recording, and live performance.

It is difficult to gauge now just how popular Autry was. Everyone played his songs, saw his movies, listened to him on the radio, read his comic books, played with toys licensed by his brand. He became a role model for the nation’s youth, and penned a 10-part Cowboy Code that outlined the attributes of an upstanding human being. Kids worshipped him.

Melody Ranch is a typical Autry vehicle. It mixes together a few songs, some rip-roaring Western action, and comedy bits executed by Jimmy Durante and Barbara Jo Allen, better known as her comedic persona Vera Vague. Autry’s love interest in the film is played by the 17-year-old singer and dancer Ann Miller (the film originally had Gene kissing her, but fans complained that this was too “sissy,” and it was edited out). Other notable participants included the venerable old coot George “Gabby” Hayes, bad buy Barton MacLane, and the musical outfit Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

Gene could sing wonderfully, ride well, act a little, and do a little fighting stunt work as well. He gets to do all this in Melody Ranch, which stands out from his usual films for its budget and its gorgeous visuals filmed by the great cinematographer Joseph H. August. Of course, Gene defeats the villains and gets the girl, ending the film on a warbling note. It’s a fun romp that doesn’t make you think too hard, a perfect escapist Western fantasy that millions loved to watch.

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

NFR Project: 'The Mark of Zorro' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Mark of Zorro’

Dir: Rouben Mamoulian

Scr: John Taintor Foote

Pho: Arthur C. Miller

Ed: Robert Bischoff

Premiere: Nov. 8, 1940

94 min.

How do you remake a classic? If you are director Rouben Mamoulian, you do it by following your own path.

The silent-era Mark of Zorro (1920) starred Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and marked his transition from a comedic character actor to a swashbuckling hero in the movies. The original Zorro is almost all action, in keeping with the robust physicality Fairbanks made a cornerstone of his personal brand.

When 20^th Century Fox decided to remake the film, it emphasized dialogue over action. They selected the well-spoken and dashing Tyrone Power for the Zorro role, and surrounded him with the best supporting actors they could find. Joining Power were such old acting pros as Montagu Love, Eugene Pallette, Gale Sondergaard . . . and especially Basil Rathbone as a ruthless villain.

Mamoulian was known for his direction of opera and musicals – he famously directed the first staging of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. When he moved into film, he directed prestige projects such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Love Me Tonight, and Becky Sharp. Mamoulian gave the impression of speed and movement in this movie by editing the film in a unique way – cutting in the middle of motion onscreen instead of moving from static shot to static shot.

Here, Power is Don Diego Vega, son of a wealthy 19th-Century California landowner, who returns from Spain to discover that his father is no longer the alcalde, or ruling representative of Spain in California. Instead, the area is run by the corrupt Don Luis, who is really the catspaw of the sadistic and braggardly Captain Esteban (Rathbone). The peasants are being taxed to death, and those that resist are tortured.

Don Diego protectively assumes the attitude of an effeminate fop, lulling the villains into treating him with contempt. Meanwhile, Diego dresses in black outfit and mask as Zorro (Spanish for “fox”), and fights the oppressors, soon making the bad guys quiver in their boots. This he does while wooing the innocent niece of Don Luis, Lolita (Linda Darnell at the tender age of 17!).

The plot device of a hero in disguise who pretends to be a sissy in normal life was taken from Orczy’s 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel. Zorro would perpetuate this device; in fact, it is said that Zorro influenced the creators of Batman, Superman, and other heroes in the same manner. By the time we arrive at the blood-pumping finale of a duel between Diego and Esteban, the audience is completely caught up in the story.

Zorro would later be revived as a Disney television series in the late 1950s. To date, all the incarnations of the bold masked vigilante onscreen have been memorable.

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

NFR Project: 'Knute Rockne, All American'

 

NFR Project: ‘Knute Rockne, All American’

Dir: Lloyd Bacon, William K. Howard (uncredited)

Scr: Robert Buckner

Pho: Tony Gaudio

Ed: Ralph Dawson

Premiere: Oct. 4, 1940

98 min.

This film biography outlines the short but busy life of football coach Knute Rockne (1888-1931). He is best known for incorporating the forward pass into the game, and for his successful coaching of the Notre Dame football squad.

The film reads like a marvelous and continuous series of successes that propelled the honored coach to prominence. Rockne is played by Pat O’Brien, an Irish-American actor who specialized in fast-talking tough guys. Rockne was known for his rapid-fire patter, and O’Brien captures that here.

Rockne is treated worshipfully here; he is almost a secular saint, in fact. How accurate is the film? Well, for one, Rockne was never named an All-American player or coach. Most Hollywood biographies were known for their inaccuracy (Yankee Doodle Dandy, They Died with Their Boots On). Movies almost never let the facts get in the way of a good story. His exploits on the field are summarized with great energy. Interestingly, Rockne was a trained chemist, and almost took that career path instead of coaching.

Ronald Reagan is here, playing the doomed freshman halfback George Gipp, who dies at a tragic young age and, on his deathbed, encourages Rockne to, when things looked bleak for the team, to “win one for the Gipper.” This Rockne did years later, when the team was down in a game. His speech inspired the team to make a comeback and win.

Rockne moves from success to success, right up to the time of his untimely death in an air crash at the age of 43. The movie is inspirational; as such it was adored by boys of all ages.

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

NFR Project: 'His Girl Friday' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘His Girl Friday’

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Charles Lederer

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Gene Havlick

Premiere: Jan. 18, 1940

92 min.

His Girl Friday has a lot going for it. It is grounded in the playscript for Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’scomedy The Front Page, which premiered in 1928 and was first adapted for film in 1931. It’s made by the master craftsman, director Howard Hawks. It’s shot with economy and energy, with the sensation of watching the shooting a live play. And its main characters are played by comedy experts Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. They are surrounded by a bevy of great character actors.

It seems that Hawks wanted to remake The Front Page, which had proved so successful. The story of a corrosive friendship between manipulative editor Watler Burns and cheeky, rebellious reporter Hildy Johnson, it was a huge success. In readthroughs for the new adaptation Hawks asked one of his female employees to read Hildy’s lines – and decided he liked the switch from male to female.

He soon got a small succession of writers to turn a withering satire of corruption into a battle of the sexes. The film still takes place in the frenzied, fast-paced setting of daily journalism. Hildy (Russell) was now Walter’s (Grant) ex, and she has quit his newspaper and is off to get married to quiet, loving Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). Seeking to thwart their impending marriage, Walter resorts to crazier and crazier ploys to keep Hildy on the trail of the hot Earl Williams (John Qualen) execution story.

Williams escapes. Hildy hides him in a roll-top desk in the courthouse’s press room. Burns struggles to get the story and get Hildy back at the same time. The pace is frenetic throughout, with people talking over each other – very unlike the Hollywood style of dialogue. Hawks encouraged the speed of delivery and manipulated the studio microphones to cover the action, resulting in an intrivate sound plot.

The basic premise of most screwball comedies is the eventual get-together of a man snd a woman who completely misunderstand each other at the beginning. The woman is usually the catalyst of the change.With movies such as It Happened One Night, 20^th Century, Bringing Up Baby, and all of Preston Sturges’s work, from 1933 to 1942, this short-lived genre captivated audiences.

However, in The Front Page, it is Hildy who changes – back to her old self. Walter, at best an indifferent husband when his mind is set on business, merely reiterates the love of the chase the two of them share, and convinces Hildy to dump Bruce and get married to him – again. A rather facile ending, and the last we see of Hildy she is trailing Walter, lugging a suitcase. There is likely to be no more consideration for her than in the past, and she’s fine with that.

There is a slew of great character actors here, too, including Gene Lockhart, Cliff “Ukulele” Ike Edwards, Roscoe Karns; Abner Biberman, and Billy Gilbert. The movie is a fast-paced pleasure, and deserves the high esteem in which it is held.

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

 

NFR Project: 'The Great Dictator' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Great Dictator’

Dir: Charles Chaplin

Scr: Charles Chaplin

Pho: Karl Struss, Roland Totheroh

Ed: Willard Nico

Premiere: Oct. 15, 1940

125 min.

The Great Dictator gives us Charlie Chaplin at his most pungent politically. His first sound film, it pulls no punches when making fun of the powerful . . . and then finishes with a heartfelt cry for peace and justice.

The idea that he should make fun of Hitler was prompted by Hitler’s Chaplin moustache, a defining part of his image. Chaplin no doubt thought this an excellent excuse to tweak the noses of the German Fuhrer and his ilk, exposing their intolerance and insatiable ambition to rule the world.

This he did by creating a Prince and the Pauper-like tale of two men, identical but diametrically opposed – the dictator of the tile, Adenoid Hynkel of the imaginary country of Tomania (highly similar to the Germany of his day), and a nameless, helpless little Jewish barber. Chaplin bounces back and forth between the two, giving us a look at the mad ecstasies indulged in by Hynkel and the simple impetus to survive on the part of the barber.

Chaplin’s purely visual jokes come off as a bit dated and strained – it is his dissection of Hynkel that is truly innovative. No one had ever made such fun of the country’s leader before (the film was banned in occupied Europe), and it hurt. It remains the first and foremost example of satire in a motion picture, something unprecedented at the time and rarely attempted even today.

The true heart of the film is revealed at the end, when Chaplin drops all pretense and speaks directly to the audience. Hynkel is arrested by those who think he is the barber, and the barber is mistaken for Hynkel. As such, he is transported to a microphone and given the opportunity to make a speech. Finally able to speak, Chaplin makes the most of his chance to speak as he really feels, espousing a humanistic credo that embraces the world. It is worth setting down his sentiments here, as they are still quite relevant today:

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

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

NFR Project: 'The Grapes of Wrath' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Grapes of Wrath’

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Nunnally Johnson

Pho: Gregg Toland

Ed: Robert L. Simpson

Premiere: Jan. 24, 1940

129 min.

It’s one of the greatest films of all time. Adapted from John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer-winning 1939 novel, this movie embodies the spirit of it, when it is not amplifying and transcending it. It was the great fortune of the director John Ford, who won the Oscar for Best Director for this film, that he obtained everyone involved in the production; for all were at the top of their game.

It’s an epic saga married to a keenly felt family drama, and is almost Biblical in tone. The Joads, sharecroppers of Oklahoma, are forced to migrate to California when the Great Depression causes them to lose their farm.

Henry Fonda is at his best as the recently paroled Tom Joad, who goes home but finds only the ex-preacher Casy (John Carridine in his definitive, Messianic performance) and Old Muley (John Qualen), who inhabits the abandoned buildings of the area like a ghost.

Cinematographer Gregg Toland, only a year from lensing Citizen Kane, captures many scenes with a single light source, emulating Rembrandt in a bravura display of conveying mood and emotion solely with light. The sinister shadows are palpable, and the faces on screen fight out of them to come into view.

The script is exemplary – every scene is absolutely necessary, and accurately conveys Steinbeck’s “leftist” sentiments. Ford is masterful in his depictions of sorrow and regret. When Ma Joad goes through her box of keepsakes, feeding memories into the fire, Jane Darwell gets a lovely and measured scene that’s simply a recording of behavior . . . as if not nearly acting at all. The deeply felt, strongly conveyed emotions of these stoic people counterbalances the sections of the film that are exposes of capitalism that the film so forthrightly lays out.

Nearly everyone in the film is ripe for exploitation, and there’s not much anybody can do about it. The Joads are in the hell of poverty, reduced to near beggary by an uncaring economy. Tom reunites with his family, and they set out in an overloaded truck to supposed jobs in California.

They quickly find out that the job offer is not what it seems, and hear a heartbreaking tale of woe. They press on, enduring the deaths of both grandparents en route, finally to make it to the green fields of their destination. But even there is exploitation, with owners and managers proposing absurdly low wages for laborers, keeping them on the edge of starvation as they move from harvesting job to harvesting job.

Tom finds Casey again, and helps him stop a trouper from killing an innocent man who is speaking his mind. Casy takes the rap.

Later, Tom finds Casy a third time, and this time Casy is agitating for the union. Lit from above, he looks almost Christlike, glaring down with wide eyes at his interlocutor. The union’s HQ is raided, and a man stoves Casy’s head in with a pickaxe. Tom, in turn, kills him. Tom is wounded on the face, and must be hidden from those in charge, and the law.

The family escapes to a well-run government camp in which migrants are treated kindly and with respect. Tom realizes he has to go, and says goodbye to his mother in the dead of night with one of the greatest monologues on film.

Here the movie deviates from the more melancholy original. Here, the rest of the family moves on together, and Best Supporting Actress Jane Darwell as Ma gets to deliver a gung-ho speech: “Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.”

This upbeat ending seems tacked to a saga of distress and humiliation. The novel derived from Steinbeck’s notes as a journalist, covering the plight of the migrant work in California. Steinbeck’s humanist values are at the forefront here – he identifies with the least powerful people in the world. And they, he reminds us, are our neighbors.

Every frame is precisely imagined, from extreme close-up to a long shot of a character running away from the camera, receding into ever-shrinking panels of light. Ford renders it as a penitential journey, filled with temptation and despair, a secular Stations of the Cross. In that way, it’s his most Catholic film next to The Fugitive (1947), also with Fonda.

Watching the film is life-changing. It teaches compassion, one of our rarest resources.

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

Review: 'Superman' (2025)

 

Superman

Dir: James Gunn

Prod: Peter Safran, James Gunn

Scr: James Gunn

Pho: Henry Braham 

Leading Players: David Corenswet, Rachael Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult

129 min.

Superman has a dog.

If this seems odd to you, it’s probably because you were raised on the gentle and subdued Christopher Reeve in the super-role, or Henry Cavill’s forbidding seriousness. This is neither of those. It’s all part of a desperate attempt by the DC film studio to reboot their unsuccessful rollout of a DC Extended Universe, which faced diminishing returns in recent years.

Fortunately, they called on writer/director James Gunn to work his magic. Gunn, who created the wildly popular Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, as well as 2021’s successful adaptation of DC’s The Suicide Squad. Gunn knows his comics inside and out, and it shows.

This super-story doesn’t go back over our hero’s unique origin. We are initially given Superman at his lowest ebb, defeated and injured. This is a vulnerable Superman, a relatable and imperfect character that is given life by the excellent David Corenswet. He is still using the persona of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet. He is in a relationship with hotshot journalist Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), who in this film knows all about his secret identity.

But Superman has an enemy. The bald, evil billionaire Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) hates Superman, and seeks to destroy him by any means necessary. He invades his Fortress of Solitude, hacks into his database, and recovers a fragmented message from Superman’s Kryptonian parents – one that makes Superman question his identity and mission.

And he kidnaps Superman’s super-dog, Krypto. The Man of Steel having a pet humanizes him. Corenswet plays him like a regular guy with a big responsibility, instead of some kind of messiah. He leads with his humility, and that makes his performance the more appealing.

The production design is bright and primary-colored, better reflecting the movie’s comic book origins. The action sequences are well-staged, and moments of banter and the necessary snatches of exposition are integrated seamlessly into the film. Subsidiary characters – an obnoxious Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, and Metamorpho – are rendered in three dimensions and given their due. Importantly, Hoult’s Luthor is completely credible – not played with the sly wit of Gene Hackman, but grounded in an earnest thirst for power and control.

When all is said and done, the result is satisfying and affirmative. This Superman is a fun adventure for kids of all ages.

NFR Project: 'Fantasia' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Fantasia’

Dir: Samuel Armstrong, James Algar, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, Ben Sharpsteen, David D. Hand, Hamilton Luske, Jim Handley, Ford Beebe, T. Hee, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson

Scr: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: N/A

Premiere: Nov. 13, 1940

126 min.

One of cinema’s greatest achievements, Fantasia was a huge gamble for the Disney company. The idea of marrying great classical works to animation posed extraordinary technical problems, ones that took an extraordinary amount of time, effort, and money to solve. More than 1,000 workers labored together to produce the finished product – which remains one of the most honored films of all time.

Fantasia is a trip through eight classical music pieces, with animation set to each. The legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski worked in close collaboration with Disney to perfect edited versions of the pieces involved. They were as follows:

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor is the setting for a collage of abstract images designed to evoke the music. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite provides the soundtrack for a survey of nature’s seasons, complete with dancing flowers and fairies. Mickey Mouse stars as the hero of the sequence highlighting Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in which he plays the servant of a wizard. He uses the wizard’s magic to create inanimate helpers, who quickly get out of hand.

The prehistory of Earth is outlined in the segment devoted to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is the soundtrack for a fanciful sequence involving centaurs and the ancient Greek gods. Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours gives us comic ballet dancing by ostriches, alligators, and elephants. To finish, a dark world is conjured to the tune of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, and close with a serene rendition of Ave Maria.

There are few words that can indicate the scope and impact of the film. The animated sequences are painstakingly crafted, each colorfully vibrant. The different styles of each passage complement each other wonderfully, and the detail in each segment is still unsurpassed today. For audiences at the time, the sheer intensity of the finished film must have been nearly overwhelming. It is still a memorable viewing experience.

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

NFR Project: 'Down Argentine Way' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Down Argentine Way’

Dir: Irving Cummings

Scr: Rian James, Ralph Spence

Pho: Leon Shamroy, Ray Rennahan

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Oct. 11,1940

89 min.

A decorative little bauble of a film, it exemplifies an escapist American impulse that was soon to be sniffed out by World War Two.

It seems that FDR wanted to improve relations with Central and South America due to undue Nazi influence down south. This Good Neighbor Policy of his spawned several pro-Latin extravaganzas such as Flying Down to Rio (1933) That Night in Rio and Week-end in Havana (both 1941), and Disney’s The Three Caballeros (1944), efforts to “understand our southern neighbors,” as the propaganda put it. These somewhat condescending outings into a variety of cultural experiences purported to increase awareness and true understanding of these diverse cultures; however, it served as an inaccurate depiction of a culture studded with star-making turns by Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda.

Here, in garish Technicolor, the gossamer-thin plot concerns the falling in love of two rich kids, wealthy horse breeders Ricardo (Don Ameche, an Italian-American) and Glenda (Grable), whose families, misunderstanding things, complicate their relationship through misplaced hostility. There are several white actors playing prominent Latin American characters, including J. Carrol Naish, Henry Stephenson, and Leonid Kinskey. They are supported by a cast of entertainers, many not native to Argentina. In fact, this film was banned in Argentina due to audience outrage at Hollywood’s impression of their culture, which is illustrated in the film with Mexican and Caribbean cultural activities – rendering the film culturally tone-deaf.

The highlights of this are the performances of Carmen Miranda, the fabled “Brazilian bombshell.” She gets three numbers, as opposed to Grable and Ameche’s two. Still under contract to her New York nightclub, her parts of the film were made in New York studios and shipped west, to be inserted into the larger film as needed. She’s undoubtedly a beautiful and accomplished singer . . . but she got stuck in her introductory stereotype of the fruit-wearing, beturbaned dervish, a role she was destined to play ad infinitum.

The other big find, filmically, is Betty Grable. A thoroughly wholesome and unobjectionable blonde, she could sing, could dance, could do a light and gentle kind of comedy that the viewer can float on. She had been around, appearing in dozens of films, but this marked her big break. She became, with Rita Hayworth, a war-time bombshell that all the troops adored. She was regally beautiful, but she had a screen persona that was very normal, very approachable.

She gets to strut her stuff in some numbers here, when not punctuated with visits from Miss Mirands, and from the fabulous and amazing Nicholas Brothers, dancers extraordinaire which behoove you to look up and watch all their fabled onscreen dance routines.

This feel-good kind of family entertainment would become the standard for studio-driven comic American musicals, a trend that would last through the early 1950s.

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

NFR Project: 'Dance, Girl, Dance' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Dance, Girl, Dance’

Dir: Dorothy Arzner

Scr: Frank Davis, Tess Slesinger

Pho: Russell Metty, Joseph H. August

Ed: Robert Wise

Premiere: Aug. 20,1940

90 min.

It’s a rags to riches story, involving two women, one the victim of the other, both oppressed by their sexuality. It was directed by the sole female director in Hollywood in the 1930s, Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979). It is her best-known and most studied film.

Arzner made 20 films between 1927 and 1943. Her primacy as a director was such that she was not penalized for her sexual orientation – she was simply another among a crowd of studio directors. Her skill is evident, and the film is no better or worse than the typical studio output of the day.

It is interpreted as a feminist document by many film scholars. (It tried to arouse the potential audience's interest by proclaiming on one poster "NOT SUITABLE FOR GENERAL EXHIBITION/") It deals with two dancers, the innocent and aspiring young ballerina Judy (Maureen O’Hara) and the popular, cynical sexpot Bubbles (Lucille Ball). They are both looking for opportunity – but Bubbles, with her burlesque-level bumps and grinds, finds popularity much sooner. (Don’t miss the diminutive character actress Maria Ouspenskaya as Judy’s teacher.)

Soon, Bubbles is packing them in the burlesque theater. Judy goes on after her act, doing ballet and being thoroughly razzed by an unappreciative audience. She is the “good girl,” Bubbles’s “stooge,” employed to whet the appetite for the ensuing Bubbles. Meanwhile, both of them interact with a charismatic but moody millionaire Jimmy, still in love with his ex-wife  (Louis Hayward), Judy gets fed up with being objectified and berates the audience of horny males over their catcalls. Bubbles and Judy fight over Jimmy.

The two end up in court, where Judy gets ten days. She is bailed out by a beneficent ballet impresario, Steve (Ralph Bellamy), and told that she is a brilliant dancer and that he is going to elevate her to star status.

It is what was termed a “woman’s” picture – though Arzner took over the project from Roy del Ruth, who got fired – in the sense that it deals with emotions and questions of identity. Bubbles is happy to market herself like a side of beef, so she succeeds immediately. Judy holds on to her integrity and, by implication, her virginity, almost saintlike in her pursuit of her art. Bubbles gets the guy; Judy gets the career path she merits.

It's in some ways a comedy of manners, and at other times it veers into melodrama. It is all over the place, but it is firm in its address of the peculiar status of women in America at that time. Ultimately, these two women's fates are in the judgmental hands of men. The gulf between Judy and Bubbles, what makes them oppose each other, is not so remote from the dichotomy between the virgin and the whore.

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

NFR Project: 'Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina, May 1940'

 

NFR Project: ‘Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina May 1940’

Dir: Zora Neale Huston

Recorded 1940

42 min.

This is one I know only reputationally. I have no access to the actual footage. Therefore, I must point you to Fayth M. Parks’ excellent essay on it here.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a prominent and influential anthropologist and folklorist. She was recruited to go to this congregation in Beaufort, South Carolina, and to record their social and religious activities. This she did on May 18 and 19, 1940 – generating non-synchronous sound recordings at the same time. Prayers, songs, and sermons are documented.

It is thought to be invaluable for its insights into Black American vernacular culture. No one paid attention to the lives of ordinary people, let alone Black American people, on film; evidently this footage provides a rare glimpse into the social life of a certain race and class in America, and does so honestly. That in itself is a minor miracle.

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

NFR Project: 'The Bank Dick' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Bank Dick’

Dir: Edward F. Cline, Ralph Cader

Scr: Mahatma Kane Jeeves aka W.C. Fields, Richard A. Carroll

Pho: Milton R. Krasner

Ed: Arthur Hilton

Premiere: Nov. 29, 1940

73 min.

W.C. Fields (1880-1946) was a juggler, first and foremost. (For a brief replication of some of his old juggling tricks, see The Man on the Flying Trapeze [1935]). He made his reputation as a “tramp” juggler, a downscale clown who didn’t speak. He moved on to other ideas, incorporating a trick billiard table into a classic vaudeville pool-hall routine, then moved on to skewering golf on Broadway in variety revues.

The sarcastic dialogue came later. He began to comment on what he was doing, and on the state of things in general. His sketches were wildly popular, and he began to drift into film work during the late silent era.

But it was, significantly, working in sound that made his career. On film, he usually played a male martyr – a henpecked man who snuck smokes, drinks, and peeks at the Police Gazette when not under his wife’s baleful gaze. In this film, he is Egbert Sous-say (read”Souse”), and his harridan wife, her mother, and their youngest daughter despise him. Only his oldest daughter (Una Merkel) loves and appreciates him.

Fields holds everything in contempt – home, family, fame, fortune. He knows that the ways of the world are not his, and longs constantly to float through the day on a gentle tide of alcohol. He commiserates with himself at the Black Pussy Cat Café (which all the characters refer to pointedly as the “Black Pussy Café”. The great Shemp Howard, soon to rejoin the Three Stooges, is the bartender)

Fields is visibly ailing in this film, genuinely an alcoholic who was drinking himself to death. His countenance is swollen, and his body is more rotund. He ambles through town aimlessly and is called upon, oddly, to take over the direction of a film when its director shows up drunk. For no particular reason, he abandons the shoot.and accidentally captures a bank robber, leading to his being nominated for a job as the bank’s guard. This he accepts, cautiously.

In the meantime, he falls for a swindler who wants to sell him worthless mine stocks. Fields convinces his daughter’s chinless boyfriend (the inimitable Grady Sutton), a bank clerk, to embezzle $500 to pay for it. Suddenly, the bank examiner (Franklin Pangborn) shows up, and Egbert has to do everything he can think of to dissuade him from examining the books.

Then, it turns out that the stock certificates are valuable. The day is saved – but then suddenly, as was usually the case with a Fields ending, a rather arbitrary last-second robbery takes place, and culminates in a comical car chase. Fields gets the $5,000 reward, cashes in his stock, and lands a $10,000 contract with the movie company. Resplendent in formal wear, he leaves his family in their mansion and walks back to the Black Pussy Café.

Fields has lots of fun abusing the proprieties. He mutters out of the side of his mouth at everyone, unable to assert himself until the deux-ex-machina chicanery of the happy ending he imposes on himself – a bit of wish fulfillment many can identify with. He has no endearing qualities. He suspects the world is out to get him, and he is right. Egbert could just have easily wound up dead, or a bum. He is fortune’s fool, a very intelligent and articulate and skeptical fool indeed.

Fields’ lack of logic in what takes place in what is more or less a plot in his film is a hallmark of his consistently breaking the fourth wall in his films – in The Fatal Glass of Beer, for instance, and in his last feature, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. He has no respect for continuity, internal logic, finesse. He is there, he delivers the gags, and moves on. If you don’t like it, too bad.

This bristling approach to comedy makes him an acquired taste. You have to be able to share in his sense that everything was a sham, and that that best you can be is somewhat benumbed to it all. Oddly, this cynical posture underscores the heartache that must have prompted him to pick up the comic cudgel in the first place.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina (March 1940).

NFR Project: 'Rebecca' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Rebecca’

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom

Premiere: March 21, 1940

130 min.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Rebecca is a masterful adaptation of a great psychological thriller of a novel, and well deserved its Best Picture Oscar in 1940. More importantly, it was the first American effort of director Alfred Hitchcock, and it cemented his reputation as a popular craftsman and movies steeped in mystery and suspense.

Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel was tailor-made for a film version, and producer David O. Selznick and a squad of writers toiled away to get the script in shape. There were numerous points of the book which the censor deemed inappropriate for filming, so workarounds were made in the screenplay. The result is still deeply disturbing, given Hitchcock’s ability to generate menace even in the most seemingly placid of situations.

In the film, Joan Fontaine plays the never-named protagonist. A paid companion to an obnoxious rich lady, she meets in Monte Carlo the reserved Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), a rich widower who falls in love with her. They quickly marry, and he whisks her off to his palatial estate Manderley, on the Cornwall coast.

The new Mrs. de Winter finds herself overshadowed and suffocated by the stifling, shadowy presence of Maxim’s late wife, Rebecca, a charming, beautiful, witty, and well-loved woman. De Winter’s housekeeper, the unsettling Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), is obsessed with preserving everything she can of Rebecca’s things, and her way of doing things. Hostile to the new wife, Danvers attempts to sabotage her relationship with Maxim.

Gradually, the new Mrs. de Winter begins to assert herself, and to find out hidden truths about Rebecca. It turns out that Maxim and Rebecca’s marriage was loveless, based on lies and infidelity. Rebecca had drowned in her sailboat – or had she? Revelations come thick and furious, and Rebecca is revealed as a thoroughly evil and vindictive character. As things progress, it seems that Maxim is responsible for her death.

To tell more would be to give away a delightfully twisty tale. Suffice it to say that Hitchcock plays with ambivalences, making the viewer feel always on unsteady ground, along with its heroine. The camera creeps shyly through the great halls of Manderley, where Mrs. de Winter feels overwhelmed by the luxury of the place, the dismissiveness of Mrs. Danvers, and the confessions she is forced to hear.

Cinematographer George Barnes, a mentor to the wonderful Gregg Toland, picked up an Oscar as well for his superb work. The casting is excellent, and includes some of Hitchcock’s favorite supporting actors, including Leo G. Carroll and Nigel Bruce. George Sanders is on hand to play an utter cad, as he was so good at doing. By the film’s spectacular ending, we and the protagonist have been through the wringer.

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

NFR Project: 'Young Mr. Lincoln' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Young Mr. Lincoln’

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Lamar Trotti

Pho: Bert Glennon

Ed: Walter Thompson

Premiere: June 9, 1939

100 min.

The life of Abraham Lincoln has proved fascinating for generations of Americans. Books, plays, movies, and even musical compositions have made him their subject.

John Ford was a director who loved America, and who examined the secular myths and legends of American history. This he did with Young Mr. Lincoln.

He chose one of America’s most iconic actors, Henry Fonda, to play him. Using makeup and prosthetics, Fonda was transformed into a reasonable facsimile of the great future President.

The story itself is mostly bushwa, an unconvincing collections of details about Lincoln’s early life turned into a screen story. Some basic facts are represented truly, but the bulk of the film is taken up with a made-up murder trial Lincoln is supposed to have served as a defense attorney. Lincoln is presented as an amiable, soft-spoken, thoughtful young man, awkward in the company of women.

Fonda makes a powerful impression of the title character, and he is surrounded by Ford’s usual cast of regulars, playing his friends and neighbors. The cinematography is excellent. One particular scene, in which the smoke from a pistol rises over a body like a soul departing, is memorable. Ford knew how to create myth on screen.

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