NFR Project: 'Porky in Wackyland' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Porky in Wackyland’

Dir: Bob Clampett

Scr: Warren Foster

Ed: Treg Brown

Premiere: Sept. 24, 1938

7:23

Nobody was paying attention, and they got away with it.

As I wrote for Senses of Cinema in 2005, “American animators in the 1930s were a scruffy, itinerant bunch. Most bounced around from studio to studio, serving apprenticeships in the cartoon production houses of such figures as Walt Disney, Walter Lantz (best known as the home of Woody Woodpecker), the Fleischer Brothers (Betty Boop, Koko the Clown), and Disney’s once and future partner, Ub Iwerks. Serendipitously, an irreverent and rowdy crew came together at Leon Schlesinger Productions, in a ramshackle, bug-infested back-lot bungalow that later earned the affectionate sobriquet of ‘Termite Terrace.’

“For a time this group included such leading lights as Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson, and Bob Clampett, all working under the loose supervision and raucous inspiration of Fred “Tex” Avery (who lost the vision in one eye during an office paper-clip fight!). The team enjoyed that most happy of fates to be found inside any corporate structure – they were largely ignored. Left to their own devices, they began gradually and collectively to shrug off the nominally logical, linear, kid-oriented whimsies that emerged from other rivals’ drawing boards.”

In terms of structure, Porky in Wackyland is a classic type, here the “hunted outsmarts hunter” paradigm, common in the cartoon lives of Porky Pig -- he Warner’s first big cartoon star, soon to be joined by Elmer Fudd, and gradually relegated to a supporting role, usually serving as a sidekick to Daffy Duck – Bugs Bunny, Daffy, and later examples such as Speedy Gonzales and the Roadrunner.

Director Bob Clampett was working under Avery, who saw no reason why all the rules of cartooning should not be relentlessly violated. Warren Foster was the writer, but it was common for the inhabitants of the Terrace to help each other out with gags. The teamwork needed to produce a quality cartoon in a set amount of time makes every Warners cartoon a collaborative effort. And in this case, it was open season on reality.

The film opens by breaking the fourth wall. Out in front of the title credits strides a doggy newspaper vendor; “Ex-tree! Ex=tree! Read all about it! Porky off on do-do hunt! Paper, mister?”

The headline: “PORKY HUNTS RARE DO-DO BIRD WORTH $4000,000,000” (four thousand million, technically) “P.S. 000,000,000”. They really hammer the gag into the ground, an early sign that all bets are off when it comes to verisimilitude. The front-page photo comes to life, and Porky is winging his way east. He turns to us, displaying a picture of his quarry – an oblong, pointy-headed, tufted loony bird. “Hi, f-f-f-folks, here’s a pudda-- -dip-a-pudda--dip--p-p-p-p-p-picture!” He weaves his way through Dark Africa, Darker Africa, and Darkest Africa, straight into territory marked “?” Porky is an unlikely colonizer.

He screeches to a halt in front of a large sign. “WELCOME TO WACKYLAND. IT CAN HAPPEN HERE.” (A reference to Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel about an attack of American fascism, It Can’t Happen Here.) “POPULATION: 100 NUTS AND A SQUIRREL.”

Porky and his plane tiptoe nervously into a forest of mushrooms under a sky that changes immediately to night. From the foliage emerges a ravening monster, who comes at Porky, growling and howling. Suddenly, it changes to coy, lisps “Boo!” and sashays offscreen. From monster to drag queen in zero seconds.

The sun rises, held aloft by a stack of eccentric figures. Again, Porky turns to us and gives us look, pointing gleefully at the scene. The camera pans right to a creature sitting in a flower, playing its nose like a flute – then switching rapidly to drums and then piano. We track past a bizarre collection of chattering, absurd beings who seem lost in the surreal actions they execute. All of them cavort against abstract backgrounds.

We see a rabbit swinging by his ears, a derbied, bow-tied frog with human legs. There’s more creatures, a slew of them that pass in front of us – something called a Foo, another that’s only a head with legs and feet, no body; upside-down signs, crazy clocks, a jailbird who carries his own cell with him, free to move but clamoring to be let out. A tiny policeman rolls up on a wheel and bashes him in the head – which breaks the bars, triggering a handful of stars, while the prisoner grins with delight.

Another creature crosses the screen, mouthing with its big lips “Mammy! Mammy!” a la Al Jolson. A whirling, snarling streak circles Porky, then comes to rest. It’s a half-dog, half-cat fighting with itself. Another being emerges from behind an igloo – it’ a three-headed critter that abuses itself, a la the Three Stooges. The three heads address the camera in gibberish. A tiny creature rolls out and explains, “He said his mother was frightened by a pawnbroker’s sign!” (three balls were the ancient symbol of a pawnbroker’s shop).

Finally, Porky runs across a rolling-eyed goon wearing a lit candel that advertises “INFORMTION ABOUT THE DO-DO”.

“Oh my gosh, where is he?” Porky gasps. “Where did he go?” A profusion of pointing hands explodes, indicating everywhere. “THATAWAY!” the goon cries. Then the signboard flips, revealing shaft and proclaiming “TO THE DO-DO.” Beckoned, Porky leaps into the opening – a finds himself sliding rapidly down a long, bumpy ramp.

He is squeezed out of a tap like a drop of water, reconstituting himself in a small tub. A curtain appears in front of him, and a voice from above declares, “INTRODUCING . . . IN PERSON . . .”, after which a series of doors open, rise, turn – to reveal a castle, on which there is a neon sign reading “the Do-Do.” The castle’s drawbridge falls, and across the moat in a motorboat comes the do-do!

He anchors his boat, which blithely sinks. “Are you ree-ree-really the last of the do-dos?” asks Porky. “YEAH,” replies the bird, bending Porky backward with his emphasis. “I am de last of the do-dos!” And he proceeds to dance all over the hapless pig, singing, “Vo-do-de-o-do!” He runs off, runs back on from the other side of the screen, and hoots at Porky, driving him up into the air.

The do-do is clearly in charge of what’s real and what’s not by now, and he leads Porky on a merry chase across a surreal landscape, hiding behind impossibly thin pseudo-trees. He demonstrates his mastery over the medium by producing a pencil from this air, drawing a door to escape through -- then lifts the door up like a curtain to escape. Naturally, Porky can’t follow him.

As Porky struggles to open the door, the do-do hoots at him from a nearby second-story window suspended in the empty sky. Porky leaps into the opening, as the do-do circles behind him and kicks him through, landing him in the desert beyond, not in a notional room in a house. The do-do withdraws his permission for Porky to live by the rules he establishes.The do-do creates an elevator car, and takes it up and out of the shot. Porky stretches up to look at it, and then most bizarrely the do-do rides in on the Warner Brothers logo and snaps Porky in the head with a slingshot, retreating from whence he came.

The dodo finds himself trapped, then lifts the scene like a shade, escaping into a fresh background behind it. He pulls a brick wall across the screen after him, which Porky crashes into. The poor pig sits in the wreaked pile of bricks and cries, finally worn down to defeat.

Or is he? Disguised as a newspaper vendor, Porky cries “Ex-tree! Ex-tree! Porky catches do-do bird!” He has adopted the backwards logic of Wackylnd to achieve his goal. The do-do bird strolls by him and stops. “What’s that? What’s that? How? Where? When?”

“N-n-n-n-n-n-now!” cries Porky, and he bashes the creature on the head. Grabbing him by the neck, he exults. “Oh, b-b-b-boy, I caught the last of the d-d-d-d-d-do-dos!”

“Yeah, I’m really the last of the do-dos,” the bird exclaims. “Ain’t I, fellas?”

A hundred more do-dos fill the screen. “Yeah, man! WOOOOOO!” they cry. Porky’s discovery is not so special.

This is the comedy of frustration, extended as far as possible into absurdity as the creators thought they could go. The theme of a cartoon character not having control over his surroundings would be used again, as in Duck Amuck (1953). However, the cartooning at Termite Terrace would never go as far out of this world as in this one.

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 River.

 

 

 

NFR Project: 'Our Day' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Our Day’

Dir: Wallace Kelly

Premiere: 1938

16:27

Here’s a literal slice of life. It’s a home-made documentary that outlines the day’s activities of a typical middle-class, white American family in the early 20^th century.

The director, Wallace Kelly, enlisted his own family members to “play” themselves as they go through all their usual activities – waking, bathing, dressing, eating breakfast, going to work, coming home, having dinner, playing games, and then retiring for the evening.

The film spools silently through their pleasant day. There is nothing to indicate where these people are living (it’s Lebanon, Kentucky), their political affiliations, or anything particularly distinguishing about them (the director’s brother plays the piano). These are just regular folks, living out what looks to be a quietly satisfying life together.

As documentation of what normality looked like at the time, it’s a marvelous record.

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

NFR Project: 'The March of Time -- Inside Nazi Germany' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘March of Time: Inside Nazi Germany’

Dir: Jack Glenn

Premiere: Jan. 18, 1938

16 min.

The March of Time originated as a radio program on WLW in Cincinnati in 1928. It became popular, and went to CBS in 1931. Conceived of as a weekly half-hour summary of world news, it was sponsored by Time magazine. In each half-hour, straight reporting would be mixed with dramatic reenactments. The show used actors who sounded uncannily like the world leaders that were quoted in the show, giving the audience a sense of authenticity and immediacy that was unmatched.

In 1935, a film version of The March of Time began to play in movie houses across the country, at the rate of about one a month. These were usually a compilation of reporting on different events, but this episode is different. This particular episode tackled only one subject -- marking the first time that the mainstream American media took a good, hard look at the goings-on in Nazi Germany.

The film is definitely peddling a viewpoint. It establishes Germany as a calm and happy land, then digs underneath the rhetoric to outline the Reich’s actions against religious freedom, against Jews, against union organizing, subordinating everyone and everything to the needs of the state.

The film’s narrator notes that there is “no apparent resentment against a government whose campaign and suppression and regimentation has shocked the world’s democracies,” going on to state that “Every known radical, every known liberal, is either in hiding, in prison, or dead.”

It sees the Nazis as abhorrent and is not unwilling to say so. “To the good Nazi, not even God is above Hitler.” It outlines how all media is controlled by state propagandists, and how all communications of its citizens are monitored to ensure purity of thought. All the resources of the state are placed at the disposal of Hitler and his minions, to glorify their hateful philosophy of racial superiority.

It speaks to the privations of the ordinary people of Germany, condemning them for trading freedom for security. The film is bolstered with images of the duped people, of Hitler, of Nazi-ism at work. The indoctrination of youth is particularly emphasized. A child is taught that “he is born to die for the Fatherland,” that he must “think and act as he is told.” The movie even makes the eerie prediction that Germany would soon invade other countries in order to absorb their resources and means of production. It even exposed the activities of American pro-Nazi groups, which were more prevalent than we would care to remember today.

Surprisingly, many in America weren’t ready for the message. Warner Brothers refused to show the film in its theaters, and the Chicago Board of Censors banned it as unfriendly to Germany. It was unusual for a news organization to advocate strongly against a sitting government, but by this time, the truth about the dangers of fascism was finally getting out and finding general acceptance. The March of Time is sounding a warning; one that would go unheeded until it was too late to stop a second World War.

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

NFR Project: 'Love Finds Andy Hardy' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Love Finds Andy Hardy’

Dir: George B. Seitz

Scr: Vivien R. Bretherton

Pho: Lester White

Ed: Ben Lewis

Premiere: July 22, 1938

91 min.

Nostalgia for a reality that never existed.

This film is a shining example of what used to be referred to as a “B movie,” one that was paired with a more prestigious “A” picture to fill out a theater’s schedule. (Double features, preceded by such things as a newsreel, a cartoon, and a “short subject” film, were once the norm.)

This is the fourth of 16 Andy Hardy movies, and the first one in which his name is used in the title, cementing Mickey Rooney’s status as a star performer. These small-town comedy/dramas dealt with the adventures of teenage Andy (Rooney), his older sister, and his parents.

In Andy’s world, there is no poverty, no strife, and no minorities. His father, kindly old Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone), is wise and relatable, his mother sweet and domestic. Andy’s big issue is buying a used car to take his girlfriend Polly to the high school’s big Christmas Eve dance.

But then Polly has to go out of town and miss the festivities. Andy pledges to go stag (alone) to the dance – but then a friend of his is going out of town, and wants Andy to “date” his girl (a very young Lana Turner) in his absence, to keep other boys from hitting on her. Promised enough money to buy his car for this favor, he agrees.

Soon, it happens that Polly will actually be back in town in time for the dance. Andy must now juggle two girls at once. Fortunately, he is helped by a third girl, young Betsy (Judy Garland!), who acts as a kind of friend and fairy godsister to him. Plans go awry, misunderstandings crop up, and soon it’s anyone’s guess whether Andy will have any date at all. It takes some time for him to unravel his problems, in order to produce the requisite happy ending.

The film is directed competently by George Seitz; the script is inoffensive and the hijinks are, today, somewhat watchable. (The big highlight is seeing a 16-year-old Garland belt out a couple of musical numbers, one year before her star-making turn as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.)

The movie is comfort food. At a time when America was still climbing out of the Great Depression, the innocent contretemps of a scamp-ish adolescent was just the kind of reassuring, safe content that audiences wanted to see. The movie was a huge hit for MGM, the major studio that focused most intensely on producing family-friendly fare.

Andy’s simple and happy world is a construct of Americana, that yearning for an ideal environment in which no one goes hungry and no big issues are at stake. Other studios seeing MGM’s success, followed with similar content.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: March of Time: Inside Nazi Germany.

 

 

NFR Project: 'Jezebel' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Jezebel’

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, John Huston

Pho: Ernest Haller

Ed: Warren Low

Premiere: March 10, 1938

103 min.

On the National Film Registry there are not only one but two excellent essays analyzing this film – one by Gabriel Miller, which you can read here, and one by Cary O’Dell, which you can read here.

I have little to add. This film was crafted for Bette Davis, who had just lost out on winning the role of Scarlett O’Hara in the looming production of Gone with the Wind. After winning Best Actress Oscar in 1935 for Dangerous, she was ready and eager to play a leading role in an A-list film. This film, with its similar themes and historical period, was released one year before Wind.

Movie starlets of the day were best known for their beautiful appearances and pleasant dispositions. Women’s roles in film were routinely slotted into the stereotypes of victim, temptress, or mother figure. It was Davis’ outstanding performance as the hard-bitten, terminally ill waitress in Of Human Bondage in 1934 that broke open the idea that actresses could play complex or, God forbid, negative characters. Davis’ broad range meant that she could be trusted with tackling challenging roles.

The film opens in New Orleans, 1852. Headstrong Southern belle Julie Marsden (Davis) acts without a care for what other people think, giving her a scandalous reputation. She is engaged to banker Pres Dillon (Henry Fonda just before his definitive role as Tom Joad in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath), who desires nothing more than that she conform to social niceties. When she chooses to wear a red gown to a ball (unmarried women were expected to wear white), she shocks her fiancée and everyone else in society and is ostracized. Dillon breaks their engagement.

Julie sulks, then learns Pres is coming back after a year in the North. She prepares to capture his heart again, certain that he will forgive her, even donning the white dress she spurned a year earlier. She is devastated to find that Pres has married. She maintains a crusty courtesy towards the new couple, but soon schemes to have Pres get into a duel with another admirer, the pugnacious Buck Cantrell (George Brent). Her plans go awry and Buck is killed.

Then Pres comes down with yellow fever, which is decimating the region. Julie brings him to her home, tends him – and then volunteers to accompany him to Lazaret Island, where all dying of the plague were sent to die. This final act of self-sacrifice redeems her.

Davis was fearless. Though beautiful, she had no problem displaying ugly traits, which she is called upon to do in Jezebel. Wyler was an outstanding director, winner of three Best Director Oscars, who churned out hit after hit from the ‘30s through the ‘50s. He was capable of bringing out outstanding performances from his performers, and he guided Davis to another Best Actress Oscar for her role in this film. Wyler’s camera stays on Davis’ face repeatedly throughout the film, letting emotions and thoughts register in her subtly changing features. In one scene, she moves from glee to shock to despair and then acceptance, all without saying nary a word.

The film is sometimes viewed as a proto-feminist statement, as Julie pushes against the arbitrary social boundaries that hem her in as a woman. Still, she is acting in reaction to society, not freeing herself from it. She wants respectability and acceptance – on her own terms. And indeed, at film’s end she is supposedly redeemed by her self-sacrifice, she has recast herself as a martyr. As in many of the films of the period, the woman who rebels is marked for death.

Too, the film is ambivalent about the society Julie is raised in. Southern culture is portrayed as genteel and refined, but it is also obviously built on the back of slave labor (we see lots of happy “pickanninies” who sing and dance with childish enthusiasm – look close and you will see African American actors Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and Matthew “Stymie” Beard, the latter of Little Rascals fame, as obsequious servants). The painful depiction of simple-minded Black people is painful to behold.

There is some talk of the impending civil contest over slavery, and the Southerners are presented as essentially wrong-headed about the South’s superiority and durability. Julie is obviously in conflict with a society that we as viewers know is doomed. The progressivism and industrial might of the North will lead to its eventual victory over the self-assured sons of the South.

O’Dell in particular points out Wyler’s use of elements in repetition (Julie’s dresses, fire imagery) to advance the story. The director was unique in that he could find visual cues to undergird and reinforce the points her was trying to make. Wyler and Davis would work together again, earning her two more Oscars in the process.

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

NFR Project: 'Bringing Up Baby' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Bringing Up Baby’

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde

Pho: Russell Metty

Ed: George Hively

Premiere: Feb. 16, 1938

102 min.

“This is probably the silliest thing that ever happened to me.”

This, one of the great screwball comedies, was not a hit when it debuted. In fact, studio executives thought it would bomb, and tried to micromanage its director, to no avail. Now, as the years passed, its reputation grew and it became as highly regarded as you can get, setting a template for further comedies of the same kind.

The great and versatile director Howard Hawks read the story the film is based on in a magazine, and bought the rights. He saw it as a vehicle for Katharine Hepburn, and the script was written with her in mind. The only problem: Hephurn had never done comedy and was not very good at it. Hawks got vaudeville comedy veterans, including Walter Catlett who appears in the film, as coaches for her. Cary Grant, who had just been taught improvisation onscreen by comedy legend Leo McCarey on the set of The Awful Truth, was somewhat more confident about his ability to bring off a comic performance.

Grant is David Huxley, a mild-mannered and clumsy paleontologist who’s about to be married to a repressed female colleague. He’s wooing a potential donor of $1,000,000, which will allow him to complete a Brontosaurus skeleton, among other things – a skeleton missing but one bone, an “intercoastal clavicle.” Enter Susan Vance (Hepburn), a free spirit who takes a fancy to David and begins bedeviling his life, doing anything to think of to keep him from getting married.

She inveigles him into accompanying her to Connecticut with a pet leopard named Baby. There, her aunt’s dog George steals the intercoastal clavicle and buries it, God knows where. Susan steals David’s clothes, leaving him with nothing but a negligee to wear. He then confronts Susan’s aunt, who turns out to be the donor from whom he’s seeking the donation. He lies about who he is.

The hunt for the missing bone, the confusion over everyone’s identity, and the capture of Baby (mixed up with another leopard, this one feral) create a perfect comic storm. Every character is at least slightly off, including a big-game hunter (Charlie Ruggles) and an aggrieved psychiatrist (Fritz Feld). Susan leads David on a merry chase, getting him jailed, ultimately, before the film’s whirlwind conclusion.

By film’s end, she has caused David to give up his cautious ways and embrace her – and chaos. The screwball comedy always prizes eccentricity over sober judgement, and freedom over constraint. Hepburn plays here for the first time in film what has now been termed the archetype of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl – a feather-headed, taboo-busting female who liberates a male protagonist from his stodgy ways.

Bringing Up Baby also introduces a new word into the American vocabulary. When asked why he’s wearing a negligee, he cries, “Because I just went GAY all of a sudden!”

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

NFR Project: 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’

Dir: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley

Scr: Norman Reilly Raine, Seton I. Miller

Pho: Tony Gaudio, Sol Polito, W. Howard Greene

Ed: Ralph Dawson

Premiere: May 14, 1938

102 min.

Warner Brothers really stepped out of its comfort zone (gangster movies) to create this swashbuckling epic.

Robin Hood had famously and memorably served as a starring vehicle for Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. in 1922. Now, in the sound era, Warners spared no expense – this being only their second feature film to be shot in Technicolor. It was their most costly production to date.

And what color! Very rarely has a film been so completely convincing in creating a world of its own. The massive sets, colorful costumes, and lavish production design give the whole outing an air of authenticity (whether deserved or no). The viewer is immersed in the period.

It is England, the 12^th century. King Richard the Lion-Hearted has been captured by ransomers in Europe. In his place is the evil Prince John (Claude Rains), a Norman who despises the native Saxon people of the country, and who oppresses them with heavy taxation and cruel violence.

Against him is arrayed Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) and his Merry Men, who fight for freedom, justice, and the return of Richard. Our gay and laughing hero is opposed by the sinister Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone). They are rivals for the affection of the young and beautiful Maid Marian (Olivia de Haviland).

In a bravura set piece, Robin enters John’s castle and swears to oppose him, escaping his guards in spectacular fashion. He soon gathers allies, including Little John (Alan Hale, Sr.) and Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette). Again and again, the rebels defeat the Normans. Robin is captured at an archery tournament (another enormous production piece), but soon escapes.

When Richard returns secretly to England, John tries to have him rubbed out, but fails. Not knowing that Richard is still alive, John sets a date for coronation – but Robin, Richard, and the rest sneak in and disrupt the proceedings. During the massive brawl that results, Robin and Sir Guy finally get to face each other, one on one. In one of the iconic swordplay scenes in film, they battle all over the castle until Robin defeats him. Richard is restored to his throne, Robin and Marian are united.

Errol Flynn is at this best as Robin Hood; he is teamed with Olivia de Haviland, a pairing that would be turned to for eight films. Their chemistry is palpable.

The action is brisk and well-directed; the camera sweeps through the settings, giving scenes a more expansive feel. Every actor is perfectly cast, right down to the reliable Harry Cording as an assassin. Thrills and humorous moments are piled willy-nilly on each other as the film races to its conclusion. There is no down time in Robin Hood.

Another key element in the film’s success is its score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Its lush, fully orchestrated approach underpins the scenes with a vibrant intensity. The influence of late German Romanticism is heavy in the music here; this kind of score-writing would become the norm for decades.

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

NFR Project: 'Angels with Dirty Faces' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Scr: John Wexley, Warren Duff

Pho: Sol Polito

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: Nov. 26, 1938

97 min.

Warner Brothers was tops when it came to gangster melodramas – a genre they pioneered with films such as Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. This is one of the best in the lot – a story that seems cliched now, but only because it has been recycled countless times. It’s a hard-hitting, gritty tale about a gangster (James Cagney) and a priest (Pat O’Brien) who grew up together, and their influence over a group of impressionable young boys (the Dead End Kids – more on them later).

Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly are two ghetto kids in New York City, knocking around together and stealing when they get the chance. They are chased by police – Jerry gets away but Rocky does not. Rocky goes to reform school and becomes a career criminal. Jerry joins the church.

Fifteen years later, the old friends reunite, as Rocky is released from prison and returns ot his old neighborhood. He meets up with Father Jerry, and gets to be looked up to by the gang of local kids, who idolize his criminal lifestyle. Rocky has trouble with his former criminal partners, and battles them even as Father Jerry takes to the airwaves to condemn him and his like.

Rocky finds out that his former friends plan to rub out him and Father Jerry, so he kills them first. Running from the police, Rocky is trapped in a warehouse. Father Jerry tries to get him to surrender, but is taken hostage. Rocky is captured, tried, and sentenced to death.

In the death house, Father Jerry pleads with Rocky to act scared at his execution, to show the kids who admire him that he is no better than a yellow rat. Rocky boldly refuses – then breaks down at the last minute, sobbing and begging for mercy. The kids re suitably chastened. And Father Jerry says, “Let’s go, boys . . . and say a prayer for a boy who couldn’t run as as fast as I could.”

Cagney is in fine form as Rocky, generous one moment and murderous the next. O’Brien has the thankless role of playing the saintly priest, but does well with it. Humphrey Bogart is on hand, in one of his last bad-guy roles as a crooked lawyer.

The Dead End Kids are the centerpiece of this film. They had starred in the 1935 Broadway show Dead End, and then were brought out to Hollywood to play the same roles in the movie version. The original Dead End Kids consisted of teen actors Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Leo B. Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, and Bernard Punsley. This dese-and-dose collection of New York truants proved popular, and started appearing in movies written around them. They appeared in Crime School in 1937, this film a year later. Eventually, the group starred in its own series of poorly written, low-budget comedies – nearly 60 films until 1958, bearing names such as the Bowery Boys, the Little Tough Guys, and the East Side Kids.

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

NFR Project: 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' (1937)

 

NFR Project: ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’

Dir: David Hand, Perce Pearce, William Cottrell, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson, Ben Sharpsteen

Scr: Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris, Dorothy Ann Blank, Webb Smith

Premiere: Dec. 21, 1937

83 min.

Snow White is a revelation – the first animated feature film, it’s magnificent and beautiful construction, animation’s version of building the Pyramids.

When Walt Disney decided to make the jump from cartoon shorts to feature films, he assembled tribes of writers and animators to get the job done. All animation at that point was hand-made, cel by cel, a painstaking and frustrating effort that required dozens of workers to complete. Disney thought of several stories to adapt before settling on Grimm’s fairy tale, something known to almost all Western children.

Snow White is, of course, the princess whose evil stepmother, the Wicked Queen, keeps her in rags, scrubbing the castle floors. Still, Snow White remains charming and optimistic, as every Disney heroine will from this moment on. She sings (this is also the first film to have a soundtrack album issued from it), she waits, she meets a handsome (singing) prince and charms him.

Meanwhile, though, the Wicked Queen’s magic mirror informs her that she is longer the fairest in the land, but that Snow White is. The queen, in a rage, orders her taken to the forest and have her heart cut out. The woodsman consigned to this task urges her to flee, and she does, spending a scary night in the woods.

In the morning, she charms a whole barrelful of forest creatures, who lead to the house of the Seven Dwarfs. She enters, cleans up, sings, and goes to sleep. Soon the comical septet return and find her – wary at first, they are soon won over. They live happily together.

But wait! The Wicked Queen discovers that Snow White still lives. Taking a poiton, she transforms herself into the guise of an old woman peddler, and prepares a poison apple for Snow White. She convinces her to bite into it, and Snow White drops dead.

But wait! The dwarves don’t have the heart of bury her, so they enclose her in a glass coffin and worship at it. Soon the prince (remember him?) shows up, kisses Snow White’s dead lips (huh?), and wowza! She comes back to life. The End.

There are no words for the quality of the work. It is simply astonishing, and a tribute to the scores of creatives who sweated out the details. Every frame is composed, every sequence is dynamic. The bright colors, the neat characterizations, the sheer beauty of the settings -- it all comes together here.

Though all Disney products, since the beginning, have been designed for be acceptable for the whole family, there is an essential and terrifying darkness in his tales. Here, the sequence into the woods at night, the queen’s transformation, and her eventual end during a terrific storm are all nightmare fuel for young children. As one theater owner said after a screening of the film, “There wasn’t a dry seat in the house.”

From this point on, Disney strove to reach the broadest possible audience, creating fairy tales, funny animal adventures, and the like. Innovation, unless it was technical, was not tolerated and soon the Disney house style was recognizable – one grounded in cuteness.

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

NFR Project: Republic Steel strike riot newsreel footage

 

NFR Project: Republic Steel strike riot newsreel footage

Paramount newsreel crew

Filmed May 30, 1937

This is footage those in power never wanted you to see. When it finally was shared with the public, it was edited to make the victims look like the aggressors. It took a Congressional investigation for the film to be shown as it was taken. It documents a shameful moment in American history.

In 1937, union labor signed a contract with U.S. Steel. However, smaller steelmakers balked. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee and the Congress of Industrial Organizations called a strike.

On Memorial Day, May 30, a couple thousand union members, friends, and family celebrated the holiday with a Chicago picnic – and then set off to picket a nearby mill. Waiting for them in front of the site were 300 Chicago policemen, armed with gear provided by Republic Steel.

The cops blocked the strikers’ path. The crowd argued that it should be allowed to pass. The police drew their guns and fired. Ten people were killed, and more than 60 were injured. The police waded in, firing tear gas and clubbing strikers in the head (nine people were disabled and 28 were serious injured from the blows).

It is fairly obvious from the footage that police were to blame. The strikers approach, are halted, argue heatedly. Then the police lurch forward, and the crowd falls back, swirling like a retreating wave. The police pursue the victims, striking at them randomly. Several bodies litter the scene. It’s still a shocking documentation.

The “Memorial Day massacre” footage shot by the news crew was originally suppressed, as the Chicago police feared “mass hysteria” would result. Then, when it became known that the footage existed, it was cut together to make the strikers appear to to be the aggressors in the attack. Finally, a 1938 Congressional investigation into the incident finally brought the footage to light, proving the police’s culpability.

The police were right to be afraid. People were outraged. The demonstration of the raw power of the state to destroy people, at the bidding of corporate masters, was not new. The 1914 Ludlow massacre is the most prominent of the many instances of labor organizers being vilified and exterminated by the powers that be. The Republic massacre was the last of its kind.

The massacre footage remains a testament to an unpleasant historical fact, but one that needs to be seen and comprehended, if only to understand what crimes we are capable of.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

NFR Project: 'The Prisoner of Zenda' (1937)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’

Dir: John Cromwell, W.S. Van Dyke

Scr: Wells Root, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ben Hecht, Sidney Howard

Pho: James Wong Howe, Bert Glennon

Ed: James E. Newcom, Hal C. Kern

Premiere: Sept. 2, 1937

101 min.

It’s one of the best Hollywood Golden Age films, a lavish adventure/romance that never fails to intrigue and entertain. From its absurd premise springs a very well-reasoned set of consequences, which keep our hero, his allies, and his enemies on their toes until the thrilling conclusion.

It was not a smooth shoot. The director mistrusted his actors. Multiple writers worked the script over, over and over again. There were reshoots. Bu the result is seamless.

The film is based on the 1894 novel by Anthony Hope. It is set in the mythical Austro-Hungarian country of Ruritania, where Englishman Rudolph Rassendyll (Ronald Colman) is engaged in a fishing expedition. He is happened upon by Colonel Zapt (C. Aubrey Smith) and Captain Fritz von Tarlenheim (David Niven), who remark at his resemblance to the soon-to-be-crowned King Rudolph (also Colman). Rudolph is a bit of an irresponsible ruler, with a definite problem with alcohol.

It turns out they are distant cousins, and that the king is to be crowned on the morrow. The cousins carouse – until it turns out the next morning that the king has been served drugged wine and cannot make his coronation. A desperate plot is hatched – could Rassendyll play the king for a day, just to get through the coronation? For if he does not, his evil brother, the prince “Black” Michael (Raymond Massey) will supplant him.

Rassendyll agrees, and makes his way through the ceremony, tutored by Zapt and Tarlenheim. There he meets his cousin Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll), who he is intended to marry. Naturally, Rassendyll immediately falls in love with her. She, used to the indifference of the real Rudolph, falls in love with the new one.

But wait! The king has been kidnapped, and what follows is a series of tense negotiations as each side tries to win out over the other. The villainous Rupert of Hentzau (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), ally of Michael, taunts the new Rudolph, whose secret he knows. Finally, a scheme to rescue to king is planned – and the new Rudolph must risk his life to save the king’s.

It’s all high melodrama, with a soupcon of redeeming humor. The idea of being “king for a day” is certainly appealing to the imagination, and Colman plays a noble Everyman who’s selected by fate to impersonate a king. He’s everything you’d want in a hero -- dashing, witty, self-deprecating. Every actor is supremely well-chosen, so much so that their performances are the iconic interpretation of this story.

James Wong Howe’s shadowy cinematography is breathtaking; Lyle Wheeler’s settings are grandiose, dripping with decoration, stretching off into the vast distance. It feels like the story is taking place somewhere real, so convincing is the production design. There is a climatic swordfight that’s one of film history’s best; everyone does the Right Thing in a bittersweet ending.

This film highlights Hollywood’s virtues, its ability to mount a convincing fantasy and stock it with indelible characters. It’s a blueprint for commercial success.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Republic Steel strike riot newsreel footage.

NFR Project: 'The Old Mill' (1937)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Old Mill’

Dir: Wilfred Jackson

Scr: Dick Huemer

Premiere: Nov. 5, 1937

9 min.

An exercise in pure visuals, Disney’s Silly Symphony The Old Mill won the Oscar for best animated short in 1937. It served as a test run for the techniques used to make Disney’s first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

It represents the first use of the multiplane camera in animation, which allowed multiple layers of animation to be shot at the same time, allowing the animators to create ever-more-involved visual complexities. The Old Mill has a quality of facility to it that today we take for granted.

The short film is set to Leigh Harline’s orchestral score. Troops of various animated animals maek their home in the old mill of the title. A summer storm blows up, threatening the safety of the animals – they take shelter, avoid disaster, and eventually return to their peaceful home after the storm abates. It’s all rendered in classic Disney style, with cute animals and commendable attention to detail.

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

NFR Project: 'Make Way for Tomorrow" (1937)

 

NFR Project: ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’

Dir: Leo McCarey

Scr: Vina Delmar

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: LeRoy Stone

Premiere: May 9, 1937

92 min.

If this film doesn’t make you cry, you have no heart.

This completely uncharacteristic film from Leo McCarey, best known for his comedies, is a serious examination of a difficult topic – the care of elders, and their places in our lives.

Aged Ma and Pa (Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore) find that hard times have caught up with them, and they can’t make their house payments any longer. Pa has tried to find work, but no one will employ him because of his age. They have five grown children – none of whom is willing or able to take the two of them in together.

The two are forcibly separated. Ma, chatty and cheerful, is seen as an embarrassment by her family. When Pa becomes ill, friends and neighbors try to step but his crabby daughter drives them away.

Finally, it is decided that Pa must go and live in California with one of the children, for his health’s sake. There is no room for Ma; she is to be sent to a retirement home. The unhappy couple meet one last time, and go out on the town for a few hours while the children worry. In contrast to the indifference and shame the children display, all the strangers they meet that evening treats them kindly. Ma sees Pa off at the train station, likely to never see him again.

The film can and should make the viewer uncomfortable. At this point in American history, old people were just being sent to retirement homes, instead of being kept in the home. This discarding of the elderly became standard procedure by mid-century. Somehow, this film got made – at a time when, in Hollywood, happy endings were mandatory.

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Life of Emile Zola' (1937)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Life of Emile Zola’

Dir: William Dieterle

Scr: Heinz Herald, Gea Herczeg, Norman Reilly Raine

Pho: Tony Gaudio

Ed: Warren Low

Premiere: Aug. 11, 1937

116 min.

Paul Muni (1895-1967) was one-of-a kind film actor. His great success was his versatility, an inversion of the usual path to Hollywood stardom, which usually involves molding parts to fit a premade, unvarying persona.

Immigrant child Frederich Weisenfreund became Paul Muni suddenly, at the movie studio’s insistence, in 1929. Before then, he had garnered a host of positive reviews for his stage work in Chicago and New York. He was particularly known for his ability to create transforming makeup for his roles, enabling him to play a broader variety of parts.

Muni first came to fame as the star of Warner Brothers’ crime pictures Scarface and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. He immediately pulled away from this type of role and proposed playing scientist Louis Pasteur. He did so, and promptly won the Oscar for Best Actor. Now he sought to continue his streak of portraying famous men.

Emile Zola (1840-1902) was a French writer who thrived on controversy. His third novel, Therese Raquin, was a scandalous best-seller. Zola kept on in this vein, striking again with Nana, a novel about a prostitute. Zola made a career of exploring all the aspects of society criticizing stupidity and injustice, and exposing corruption and truth – to the enthusiasm of his readership and the dismay of the powers that be.

Zola eventually became a conventional and lauded figure. However, all that changed when he became involved with the Dreyfus affair.

In 1894, the French army discovered that someone on the general staff was passing secret military information to the Germans. Captain Dreyfus, a Jew, was accused without evidence of being the culprit. Despite his avowals that he was innocent, he was court-martialed and sent to Devil’s Island. Various attempts to exonerate him, bolstered by evidence, were harshly rebuffed by the army brass, who didn’t want to look like idiots.

Years passed, then Zola was finally convinced to take up the cause. In his famous public letter to the nation, “J’Accuse<” on the front page of the daily newspaper L’Aurore. In it, he accused the army and the government of obstruction of justice and antisemitism. Zola himself was brought to trial for making this statement, and was convicted. He briefly went into exile in England, but returned to France after charges were dropped against him.

The film is truly more about the Dreyfus case, which takes up two-thirds of the film’s two-hour running time. Muni quickly establishes the character of Zola and ages up to an appropriate level of maturity so that the Dreyfus scandal can be outlined in thoroughgoing detail.

Warner Brothers spared no expense to make this film look convincing, and the production design is intensely detailed and accurate, utilizing massive sets and crowds of performers to make scenes, especially the courtroom scenes, impressive. (There’s a wonderful shot of a sea of umbrellas, standing outside in a downpour, waiting for the court’s verdict.)

The film is about par for the course as far as accuracy goes, which is to say not very. Zola and the painter Cezanne were long-time friends, but in real life they had a bitter parting after he wrote the novel The Masterpiece. The Dreyfus chronology is only somewhat accurate – Dreyfus was not fully exonerated until 1906, four years after Zola’s death.

The twin engines of the film are Muni’s performance and a super-articulate script that makes a stirring case for the fight of truth against those in power. It is remarkably frank about the government and army's self-interest. Interestingly, the most significant part of the Dreyfus case, its underlying and profound antisemitism, is completely overlooked in this film – it is said that the producers didn’t want to alienate European audiences with pro-Jewish material. (Once the Nazis invaded Poland, the anti-Nazi films started coming thick and fast out of Hollywood.)

Muni is amazing not just because of his ability to transform himself physically (in the same year, he donned politically incorrect “yellowface” to play the lead role of Wang Lung in the film version of The Good Earth). He is able to put himself in the moment on screen. He is an active listener, and his reactions are spontaneous within the context of his character. You can see that he’s really living inside someone else’s head. In other words, everyone else is acting; he is being.

The ensemble cast is great and includes Donald Crisp, Louis Calhern, and Gale Sondergaard in her most sympathetic role, that of Mrs. Dreyfus. Joseph Schildkraut plays Dreyfus, and revied the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The film won Best Picture.

It’s unique for its time in that it makes a hero of a liberal iconoclast, someone who made a career out of fighting the establishment. At its heart it’s an underdog story too. Muni would continue to impersonate other historical figures, but he would never succeed as completely as he would in The Life of Emile Zola.

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