NFR Project: 'Mrs. Miniver' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Mrs. Miniver”

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Arthur Wimperis, George Froeschel, James Hilton, Claudine West

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg

Ed: Harold F. Kress

Premiere: June 4, 1942

133 min.

It won Best Picture, Best Director for William Wyler, Best Actress for Greer Garson, Best Supporting Actress for Teresa Wright. Walter Pidgeon was nominated for Best Actor; Henry Travers was nominated for Best Supporting Actor his impersonation of the kindly, rose-growing stationmaster, Mr. Ballard.

It is a propaganda film. As Orwell wrote, “All art is propaganda. On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.” It is a great propaganda film; it makes you want to take up arms and march out into the streets. It is a fair evocation of the struggles suffered by the English people during World War II.

Mrs. Miniver (Garson) is a lovely, kind, and intelligent citizen/goddess whose husband Clem (Pidgeon) is a bluff, pipe-smoking kind of guy. They have three children. Their eldest son (Richard Ney) is a cheeky lad who falls for the rich girl in the estate next door, Carol (Wright), and rapidly goes off to war. Privations increase. The family holds up, impeccably dressed. (If one is going to be bombed, one wishes to dress well for it.)

We are given their vital statistics: they live in a village outside London; they are typical folk; he’s a professional, an architect in fact. The results of the war on his home are testament to the havoc wrought by Nazi bombings, night after night in those early and crucial opening months of the War. Wyler astutely gets his actors to underplay, engaging the viewer’s sympathies. His characters are lit from within.

Clem is called upon to be part of the Dunkirk flotilla; Mrs. M faces down a Nazi who’s parachuted into her garden. The bombings decimate their home as they huddle in their back yard’s improvised bomb shelter. Tragedy strikes. Throughout, director Wyler quietly focuses us on the faces of the Minivers as they negotiate an uneasy path among the horrors of war.

It was a message England desperately wanted to articulate for American audiences; the result is a faithful recreation of a critical time in a nation’s life, and an articulation of the values that distinguished it from its enemies.

Wyler knows that the drama sells itself, and focuses instead on moments of pain alternating with twinges of hope; he articulates the kind of calm and confidence that is the most vital ally in a nation is distress.

It ends with Henry Wilcoxson as the Vicar saying from the ruined pulpit,

“The homes of many of us have been destroyed, and the lives of young and old have been taken. There is scarcely a household that hasn't been struck to the heart. And why? Surely you must have asked yourself this question. Why in all conscience should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness. Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed? I shall tell you why. Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home, and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom! Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves and those who come after us from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the people's war! It is our war! We are the fighters! Fight it then! Fight it with all that is in us, and may God defend the right!”

And then everyone sings, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” A categorical imperative. We are convinced that the cause is just (especially with a grim encounter with one of the Nazis’ finest – a sinister Helmut Dantine) because we empathize with this stereotypical clutch of stiff-upper-lip, no-nonsense civilian-saints whose sufferings transform them into holy soldiers.

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

NFR Project: 'The Magnificent Ambersons' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “The Magnificent Ambersons”

Dir: Orson Welles

Scr: Orson Welles

Pho: Stanley Cortez

Ed: Robert Wise

Premiere: July 10, 1942

88 min.

This is a famously mutilated masterpiece. It’s not alone: other noted films marred by missing footage include von Stroheim’s Greed (1924), Browning’s London After Midnight (1927), and Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937). But Ambersons was plagued by a seemingly avoidable series of ill-advised edits and reshoots, initiated by the studio against the wishes of its writer and director, that destroyed the last third of the film and supposedly imposed a fake, happy Hollywood ending on it.

In other words, it’s the classic romantic tragedy of American culture, one of those times when wallets outbid hearts and a creative genius was stymied. It marks the point after which Welles had to struggle to get projects made, an increasingly severe drawback that seemingly drove him to self-destruction. This production turned into a nightmare.

What’s there is brilliant, an American horror story, in which an idiotic young man triggers the loss of his soul as well as his fortune, changing from a prince of post-Civil War upper-crust society into a wounded and tormented manual laborer. Welles understatedly characterized the effort as “downbeat.” It is founded in a literal horror of capitalism, the idea of losing it all.

The players include various of Welles’ ensemble, the Mercury Players – Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead. They are expert. Peculiarly, they are vulnerable and grand, confused and tragically certain, insistent on bending the world to their will until life defeats them. A classic American anti-success story.

We open late in the 19^th century. The Ambersons reside in the highest estimation of the townsfolk of the small city of the Midwest of America, as they are its wealthiest and most successful family. They live in a magnificent mansion (its confines would be later used in the Val Lewton horror films). The house is a character unto itself; its profuse abundance of set pieces, art works, and elaborate furniture set the Ambersons as an encumbered, materialistic result of what would naturally result no matter who was in their place.

The cruelties of American speculation kill them off and they deserve it; they have forgotten how to thrive in adverse circumstances. All the characters erode during the course of the movie; they are ground down by life. Nobody comes out unscathed. A staggering admission about a society for which you’re supposed to be making escapist, popular entertainment.

Its patriarch is industrialist Major Amberson (Richard Bennett), who served in the Civil War. His daughter Isabel (Dolores Costello) marries Wilbur Minafer (Don Dillaway); their son George (Tim Holt) is a spoiled brat, a dolt who counts on his money to make everything right.

Wilbur makes a string of bad investments, and inconveniently dies. Inventor and automobile pioneer Eugene (Joseph Cotten), new-made millionaire and a former suitor of Isabel’s, returns to town and woos her. Simultaneously, Eugene’s wonderful daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter) is both attracted to and critical of George.

Eugene and Isabel fall in love; George furiously forces them to part, making his mother take him on a trip around the world. His mother gives in to him, and destroys her happiness and her health. She comes home to die; Eugene barges in, demanding to see her, he is too late.

Throughout, Welles and cinematographer Stanley Cortez’s vision is deeply focused, smoothly flowing, delicate and voluptuous, capable of creating timeless images while advancing the plot. The Amberson’s lighting is dark and moody. We are presented initially, with corny glee, the absurdities of the changes in fashion, as we are given as a comic preview of the havoc the changes of destiny that overwhelm and destroy the characters in front of us.

(Bernard Herrmann's score, what there is of it, is excellent; the studio took out over half of it and the composer angrily ripped his name from the credits.)

The family falls apart. Agnes Moorehead, fresh from playing Kane’s mother in Citizen Kane, here plays Fanny, Wilbur’s sister and aunt of George. In a performance etched in acid, she goes from a coltish young lady to a mad woman. She loses everything. She ends up crouching in the darkness, up against a disconnected boiler, crying and undone. It’s one the best performances put on film. Watch her when she’s on the screen; she is really completely in the moment, uniquely and dynamically there even when stock-still. When Isabel dies, she seizes George and whispers into the night, “She loved you!” She looks up, and it’s a supplication, and fervor, and heartbreak.

The city grows. It grows dirty and dark and crowded around the Amberson mansion. The city rises; and the Ambersons become irrelevant. George and Fanny must go and live in a boardinghouse. George wants to study to be lawyer, but he can’t earn enough while doing it. He goes to work in an explosives factory.

It is simultaneously a grieving for that unique and signal American dread: the loss of fortune. The most heinous of sins: thou shalt not be poor. Financial insufficiency sits its victim in despair. Bankuptcy begs the mercy of forgetting. The family shatters, and time passes, and things change, and we see landmarks obliterated and memory fail. The family passes from a unified, exemplary pinnacle to a fragmented sliver of survivors, not exactly a wholesome message at the time for a country at war.

At the point where George gets to his knees and prays at his dead mother’s bedside during his last night in the mansion, Welles’ film held true to his original vision. We quickly see that, ironically, George has been run over by a car and has broken both his legs. After this point, two clunky scenes are obviously reshoots – the first with Cotten and Baxter, and then Cotten with Moorehead – resolving all the plot points neatly and bringing us to a close. Lucy goes to the hospital with Eugene and reconciles with George. Eugene will take care of George and Fanny.

Is this what Welles wanted? Is it congruent with the end of book? It is interesting to note that Welles’ Mercury Theatre produced a radio version of the story on The Campbell Playhouse on Oct. 29, 1939, a full three years before the film was made. Walter Huston played Eugene, and Welles played George. Its ending suggests a reconciliation in the hospital as well; it simply must have developed more organically on film, accounting for the loss of a reputed 40 minutes of footage.

It's not just a history lesson. The content is dark, twisted material. A young man’s unresolved complex about his mother leads to her death. He spends himself into penury. He is ignorant and savagely unpleasant, yet he is reconciled at film’s end and is guaranteed salvation from the consequences of his actions. The ending negates what has come before; George is saved by the deus ex machina, the god of the machine that floats down and makes everything all right at the end. Perhaps this miraculous deliverance is ironic, as it was at the end of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (1928).

So you have three-quarters of a profound examination of the destruction of an American family . . . then it goes a bit south.

Can we see the rest of the movie? Can we recreate that missing 40 minutes of footage and reintegrate into what was organically Welles’ intention? It has been announced that, using AI, there will be an attempt to complete the film. The outfit Show Runner, in consultation with Brian Rose, who has spent five years gathering documentation as to how the film should end, intends to recreate it. They estimate it will take two years. Will it pan out? Can we reach back into the past and fill in holes? Should we? Can we not accept it for its tattered self?

What is there demonstrates a maturity of vision that was profoundly deeper than what passed for show in Hollywood. It was a revolutionary synthesis of vision and sound, of performance and setting. IF Welles had seen it through, would he have nailed it, or muffed it? Welles had the goods; like George in the film, oddly, he is a victim only of fate and of his worst tendencies. His unnecessarily limited output was always brave and challenging.

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

NFR Project: 'Jam Session' (1942)

 

NFR Project: ‘Jam Session’ (1942)

Dir: Josef Berne

Premiered 1942

3 min.

They were the first music videos. Known as “Soundies,” for a brief period they had a unique appeal to customers in bars, pool rooms, restaurants, and the like. Filmed musical c by a variety of entertainers were collected in a kind of visual jukebox – put in a dime, see and hear the artist.

First, you should read Mark Cantor’s comprehensive essay on the subject on the Library of Congress website. It says in part:

“The individual, three-minute films were ultimately produced by close to fifty separate concerns . . . Those who purchased a Panoram machine . . . received eight musical shorts each week, or nine during the war years, when a propaganda piece was added. There were more than 1,850 shorts released over a period of six years, and ‘Jam Session,’ featuring Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, was one of the best.”

There’s not too much more to add. The soundie in question takes place in a “joint” where the Duke and his men are tossing off a rendition of “C Jam Blues” with seeming effortlessness. Their relaxed, happy demeanor sets off their sharp professionalism. As each soloist takes his turn with the tune, the Duke grins and beats time on the piano.

Duke Ellington faced the same kind of racial discrimination as other Black artists did. The thing about the Duke was, he transcended it. He maintained a calm and genially commanding presence on stage, and it created a kind of safe space for those working with him. His beaming face and closing wink to the camera are priceless.

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

NFR Project: 'Cat People' (1942)

 

Holy cow! I was looking for my notes on this movie when I found this piece on Cat People that I wrote for that great Australian film site, Senses of Cinema, almost 20 years ago. To see it in its original configuration click here.

Cat People

Dir: Jacques Tourneur 

Scr: DeWitt Bodeen 

Phot: Nicholas Musuraca 

Ed: Mark Robson 

Premiered Dec. 25, 1942

73 min.

When the completed Cat People was first screened for RKO president Charles Koerner in the autumn of 1942, he wouldn’t speak to producer Val Lewton or director Jacques Tourneur, “then left in a hurry” (1). Critics were not bowled over by it, either – and then it took off with audiences, grossing an estimated $4,000,000, and saving a studio left seriously in the red by the indulgence of Orson Welles’ expensive but unprofitable masterpieces Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).

This success paved the way, for better and worse, for the rest of legendary producer Lewton’s career. Of the 14 films he guided into being before his premature death in 1951, nine were, ostensibly, “B” horror flicks. However, he and his creative teams invested these modest projects with a style and resonance that have distinguished them in the genre. To this day, Lewton is one of the few film producers who have left a body of stylistically coherent work.

The Russian-born Lewton (anglicised from Leventon) was a voluminous reader and compulsive performer – his aunt, Adelaide, became one of the early 20^th century’s most celebrated actresses and flamboyant personalities, under the name of Alla Nazimova. He cranked out a number of novels, some a bit unsavory, before finagling his way into a job as what is variously described as editorial assistant to or story editor for producer David O. Selznick.

In 1942, he took on the responsibility and challenge of helming a low-budget production unit at RKO. His task: to create a series of inexpensive and successful horror features. He achieved this, in spades.

He impressed his first effort with his own personality. An outwardly affable man, Lewton suffered from bouts of anxiety, hostility to authority figures, and a number of phobias – including, most significantly, an aversion to be being touched and a terror of cats. These obsessions coalesced into the thematic centre of Cat People.

The film can be dissected according to any number of theoretical approaches, and, as such, is a bit of catnip for intellectuals. Its incredible popularity at the time can probably be ascribed to its forthright discussion of sexual feeling – and its seeming demonization of the same. The brief shot of water glistening on the heroine’s naked back as she crouches, sobbing, after a kill, is one of the more disturbing moments in 1940s film. But the armchair Freudianism underneath the film’s most wearisome bouts of imagery (doors, keys, swords) has long ago lost its punch.

More persuasive is Dana B. Polan’s assertion that “Cat People is a tragedy about a world’s inability to accept, or even attempt to understand, whatever falls outside its defining frames” (2). The doomed Irena’s struggle owes a great deal to The Wolf Man (directed by George Waggner and scripted by Curt Siodmak) from the previous year – particularly the cursed protagonist, who struggles to warn those who scoff around him (Siodmak was on board for Lewton’s next film, 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie).

In Irena’s case, the burden of proof increases exponentially, due to her sex. The completely unacceptable source of her transformative power, and the ease with which she is dismissed, insulted and preyed upon, mark important points, culturally, for pre-feminist America.

Her dark warmth is no match for the wooden, obvious, two-dimensional characters by which she is surrounded. Her strange tales are not even discomforting, and are easily pooh-poohed. Even when she returns to her estranged husband, Oliver, ready to engage with him sexually, he blandly informs her that it is too late, and leaves her to ominously rip the fabric of the couch she sits on.

Irena’s otherness only reaches those she kills or nearly kills. The film’s most unbelievable moment is also its most visually impressive – a drafting room, lit at night only by beams shining up from the now-antiquated “light tables” used by design firms, in which crouch and cower Oliver and the “regular gal” he is friends with at work (and turns to when his marriage is stymied), the two of them stalked by Irena in the form of a black panther.

As Oliver lifts a T-square and (none-too-convincingly, thanks to actor Kent Smith) sings out, “In the name of God, Irena, leave us in peace!” Cat People reaches a kind of nutty transcendence. Shadows are flung upward, a pragmatic tool is pressed into supernatural service, and a beast relents.

Another, more disturbing idea is that Lewton is playing out his fears and shortcomings. Irena, like Lewton, who devised the plot, is the personification of passive/aggressive. The only way she can convince she is dangerous is by allowing her animal self to be aroused. Her aversion to touch is, in this sense, a protective move. Meanwhile, she is full of stories, secrets, legends that she longs to relate, but that no one takes seriously.

Many ascribed Lewton’s early death to his inability to be taken seriously as an “A-movie” producer. In fact, his particular set of talents and limitations seem to have fated him perfectly for the series of horror films he created with such care and passion. He was not some artist to be pitied, struggling to rise above vulgarity and shock – he used these elements to create his shadowy, evocative world (3).

Endnotes

1. Edmund G. Bansak, Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, 1995, pp. 128-29. 
2. Dana Polan, “Cat People”, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4^th ed., ed. Tom and Sara Pendergast, St. James Press, New York, 2000, p. 212-13. 
3. Other sources consulted in the preparation of this article include: Joel E. Siegel, Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror, Viking Press, New York, 1973; J. P. Telotte, Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Films of Val Lewton, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1985; Alexander Nemerov, Icons of Grief: Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2005; and Mark A. Vieira, “Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton”, Bright Lights Film Journal 50 (November 2005).

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'Casablanca' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Casablanca”

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Scr: Julius J. Epstein, Philip J. Epstein, Howard Koch

Pho: Arthur Edeson

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: Nov. 26, 1942

102 min.

The most perfect of Hollywood movies, the epitome of the Studio Era, was the result of a team effort. Somehow script, actors, director, cinematographer, and production designers all combined to make an iconic film about love and conscience.

The film capitalized on America’s entry into World War II. It portrays an American expatriate who’s ambivalent about the Allied cause. Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs Rick’s Café in Casablanca, Morocco – at the time under the rule of France’s Vichy government, a government in collaboration with the Nazis. He cynically supports no cause, even though he has a track record of fighting for noble causes.

His indifference is disturbed when Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) appears with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Lazlo is a freedom fighter wanted by the Nazis. The two seek to escape to America. The keys to their escape are “letters of transit,” passes that allow the bearers to travel freely out of the zone of danger. Rick is given the letters by an unscrupulous gangster, Ugarte (Peter Lorre), who is caught and executed shortly after.

Everybody wants those letters of transit – including Casablanca police official Captain Renault (Claude Rains) and Nazi Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt). Ilsa and Lazlo ask for the passes, but Rick turns them down. You see, in years prior Rick and Ilsa were in love in Paris, only to be mysteriously parted when the Nazis invaded. Rick is still nursing a broken heart.

It turns out that Ilsa thought her husband was dead when she got involved with Rick, and had to leave him to reunite with her husband, without explanation. Rick’s bitterness keeps him from forking over the letters to Lazlo. Finally, Ilsa confronts Rick with a gun, only to be told to shoot. She breaks down and confesses that she is still in love with him.

With the Nazis hot on Lazlo’s trail, the matter all comes down to the wire. Will Rick turn in Lazlo and keep Ilsa for himself? Or will he do the right thing and sacrifice himself so that Ilsa and Lazlo can get away?

The fact that nobody knows what Rick will do (the ending was up in the air, even during filming) drives the plot. Bogart, by now a star, carried the character of Rick into iconic status. He is worldly wise, cynically humorous, unpredictable. Ingrid Bergman is at the height of her beauty, and plays Ilsa with an enticing wistfulness. Paul Henried is suitably heroic as Lazlo, and Veidt is deliciously evil as Strasser. Even minor players are cast to perfection – Sydney Greenstreet, John Qualen, Marcel Dalio, Dooley Wilson, and S.Z. Sakall are all present.

The crux of the film is: what will Rick do? The conclusion is satisfying. Rick and Ilsa have their moment of love rekindled, AND Rick does the right thing. Strasser is vanquished, and Rick and Renault stroll off into the fog, headed off to join the Resistance.

In the meantime, we have the memorable dialogue ringing in our ears: “Here’s looking at you, kid,” ‘we’ll always have Paris,” ‘Play ‘As Time Goes by.’” The movie is heavy in sentiment and heartache, but the combined elements of inspired casting, a taut, witty script, and shadowy cinematography add up to an undeniable romantic experience. We are swept away by the “problems of three little people,” and share in the quiet affirmation of the conclusion.

To this day, we watch Casablanca every New Year’s Eve. It’s a fine tradition.

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

NFR Project: 'Bambi' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Bambi”

Dir: David D. Hand; James Algar. Bill Roberts, Norman Wright, Sam Armstrong, Paul Satterfield, Graham Heid

Scr: Perce Pearce, Larry Morey, George Stallings, Melvin Shaw, Carl Fallberg, Chuck Couch, Ralph Wright

Premiere: Aug. 13, 1942

70 min.

Bambi ruined my life. Can I be any clearer? I hate Bambi. There is nothing objective in my evaluation of this movie.

It’s personal. I was taken to the movie at a very young age (probably the 1966 re-release). You see, dear reader, I was initially lulled by the beauty and the careful craftsmanship that went into this movie and then BAM! They kill Bambi’s mother.

I know, it was offscreen. That somehow makes it worse. I could imagine a far more painful and horrible death for the creature I was already emotionally invested in than any animator could provide. My infantile sense of being safe and cared for was ripped away from by the power of the big screen. I was Traumatized for Life.

Then followed a lot of syrupy-sweet comic interplay among young forest creatures. I wasn’t buying it. I was burned. The juxtaposition of the kid-friendly comedy and stark horror at the edges of the film threw me.

Then his girlfriend is cornered by vicious dogs! Then Bambi gets SHOT! THEN THE FOREST BURNS DOWN! All because of stupid humanity.

You can see why this is not my favorite movie. For me, it was nothing but prime nightmare fuel.

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

NFR Project: The Pride of the Yankees' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “The Pride of the Yankees”

Dir: Sam Wood

Scr: Jo Swerling, Herman J. Mankiewicz

Pho: Rudolph Mate

Ed: Daniel Mandell

Premiere: July 14, 1942

128 min.

This is the story of an American hero. In fact, it is a hagiography, the depiction of the life of a secular saint. It’s a tribute to baseball’s Lou Gehrig. (“It’s the great American story!” insists the movie’s poster.)

Gehrig (1903-1941) was an outstanding baseball player, one of history’s finest. He is best remembered as “The Iron Horse,” who played in 2,130 consecutive games (a record that stood until 1995). A tremendous hitter, he was part of the New York Yankees infamous “Murderer’s Row” during the ‘20s and ‘30s.

Unfortunately, at the height of his career he began to suffer from the degenerative neuromuscular disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. On May 2, 1939, he took himself out of the lineup and never played ball again. Two and half years later, he passed away.

All this information was fresh in the minds of viewers when this film biography came out only a year after his death. Actor Gary Cooper was a natural pick to play Gehrig, as he was the go-to guy for the portrayal of heroes at this time in Hollywood. Cooper knew nothing about baseball, but was coached through the film to be as convincing as possible. He was also 41, and just at the edge of being too old for the role.

The screenplay is rather thin. This is due to, primarily, the fact that Gehrig was a quiet, humble man with an insane work ethic. There were no scandals in his life, and he never made with the bad attitude. This wholesome individual simply performed on the field as few did, and lived out his days in peace.

So the screenplay contains a lot of what might best be described as “bush-wah.’” Gehrig is shown shattering a neighboring shop window with a home-run ball as child, and a campus building’s window when a freshman at Columbia University, both apocryphal stories.

His prowess short-circuits his plan to go finish college and get a degree in engineering, to the consternation of his overbearing mother. (Gehrig lived with his parents, and didn’t marry until he was 30.)

His baseball career is stellar, but we spend only a little time on the field, mainly though swiftly moving montages. The focus on the film is his relationship with his wife, Eleanor (Teresa Wright). Their love is story is enheartening, and mostly made up. (They did not meet cute at a ball game; Eleanor’s struggles with Gehrig’s mother are downplayed here.) Gehrig’s pal reporter Sam Blake (the indispensable Walter Brennan) becomes convinced that Gehrig is cheating on his wife; in reality, Eleanor shows him that Gehrig is busy umpiring a sandlot baseball game with a lot of kids.

Some of Gehrig’s teammates appear in the film, mostly notably Babe Ruth. The Babe gets to act as his gregarious self in a few scenes, which is a bit of a lark. Gehrig and Ruth hit homers for a crippled kid in the hospital. Also, for some unknown reason, we are treated to an extended performance by Ray Noble and His Orchestra, who accompany dancers Veloz and Yolanda in a sequence that seems to have cavorted in from another universe.

The movie plays pretty much as a romantic comedy until the last half-hour, when Gehrig receives his diagnosis and he stands up to fact that his days are numbered. “All the arguing in the world can't change the decision of the umpire,” he says. (It is reported elsewhere that x-rays taken of Gehrig at the Mayo Clinic showed several fractured bones, breaks that did not prevent him from playing his record number of consecutive games.)

He gets to say his goodbyes. Finally, the Yankees host a special tribute to him, at which he says, famously, “People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Play ball! The End.

The movie has nothing bad to say about its subject, and why should it? Gehrig’s story is tragic and perhaps unfortunately made for telling via the movies. It’s a heartstring-tugger and a tearjerker. Like Gehrig, it is exactly what it seems to be, a gentle and romanticized tribute to a unique and courageous human being.

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

NFR Project: 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941)

 

NFR Project: “Sullivan’s Travels”

Dir: Preston Sturges

Scr: Preston Sturges

Pho: John Seitz

Ed: Stuart Gilmore

Premiere: Dec. 29, 1941

90 min.

Preston Sturges’ greatest film lays out his theory of comedy. According to the writer/director Sturges, mankind is ridiculous, dangerous, and stupid. And the only worthwhile response is to laugh at it.

This he does in this marvelous fable of an idealistic young movie director, John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrae), who’s tired of making fluffy comedies. He wants to make a “serious” movie, highlighting the sufferings of the poor and the injustice of the system. Unfortunately, Sullivan knows nothing about poverty, having a privileged background.

He decides to learn about the life of the poor by disguising himself as a hobo and traveling across the country. His studio rails against his idea, and tries to follow him with a luxuriously appointed bus. Sullivan soon shakes off his handlers, promising to meet them further down the road. He has a run-in with a horny widow, escapes, and hitches a ride in a truck – which promptly returns him to Hollywood.

Stuck without any money at a diner, he is treated to a meal by an aspiring actress (Veronica Lake) who’s giving up on stardom. He reveals himself, and she asks to go with him when he resumes his disguised travels. He reluctantly agrees.

The two experience poverty, as we are shown through a pathetic montage of hoboes, bums, and people down on their luck. The two decide they’ve had enough and return to Hollywood. There, Sullivan plans to go out one more time in bum gear, passing out five-dollar bills to the unfortunate. However, one bum hits him over the head, and steals his money and his shoes. He tosses Sullivan into a freight car. The bum is then run over by a train – and everyone thinks Sullivan is dead.

Sullivan, dazed from the blow to the head, gets into a fight with a railroad-yard watchman and gets sentenced to six years on the chain gang. He protests his innocence, but no one believes him. Really suffering now, he experiences the full weight of being on society’s bottom. His only relief is a movie night he and his fellow prisoners share with the congregation of a poor Black church. There he finds solace in laughing at a Mickey Mouse cartoon.

Finally, Sullivan hits upon an answer to his troubles – he confesses to his own murder! This gets his picture in the paper and he is soon released. When asked if he still wants to make his serious epic, he refuses. He chooses to go back to making comedies. "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh,” he says. “Did you know that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."

Throughout, Sturges deflates the pretensions of the well-meaning, those who want to make an epic statement about suffering. All around Sullivan, characters again and again remind him that he knows nothing of what he is talking about. It takes real hardship for Sullivan to see that the best he can do for others is to help them forget their troubles for a time.

Sturges’ credo is clear. He mixes moments of slapstick with passages of actual, brutal life – showing us how the less fortunate are ground down. Sturges gets to display his awareness of the ugly facts of life while simultaneously mocking the fawning condescension of the privileged.

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

NFR Project: 'Sergeant York' (1941)

 

NFR Project: “Sergeant York”

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, John Huston, Howard E. Koch

Pho: Sol Polito

Ed: William Holmes

Premiere: July 2, 1941

134 min.

He was a modern Cincinnatus – a man who left his plow to go to war and then returned quietly to it. Alvin York was a real person, one awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty during the First World War. In a single engagement, he killed 20 German soldiers and captured 132 more. By himself.

Oddly, though, he was initially a pacifist, and this film adaptation (and embroiderment on) the diaries of York takes great pains to mark the journey of a man from conscientious objector to war hero.

The film is both an epic and a spiritual journey. Howard Hawks directed, and his ingenious approach to the material is textbook Hollywood: the expansion of an ordinary person’s life into that of a mythic character. None other than Gary Cooper played York. Cooper’s aw-shucks demeanor and good looks, combined with his superb underplaying (in every scene he’s in he draws the eye because he’s listening fully) made him into an American icon. He personified the way America liked to think of itself. Who better to play the ultimate American warrior?

The film starts in backwoods Tennessee, where York rides around as a young ruffian, drinking hard liquor and shooting his initials into tree trunks. Walter Brennan is his minister, Margaret Wycherly, his impossibly stoic mother. He is cheated on a land deal, and goes to deal death to his opponent when he is literally struck by lightning, as was the Apostle Paul, and gets religion.

York feels that the Bible teaches that killing is wrong. When war comes, he tries to register as a conscientious objector, but is refused. He then goes into the service, willingly. He is launched into a mixed bag of fellow soldiers, who are bemused by his back woods ignorance. He then, practiced from shooting turkey in the hills, proves a dead shot and gets advanced to teach his skills, provoking the spiritual crisis within him that that is resolved by his settling on serving his country.

We are swept into the defining battle that made York’s reputation. Hawks stages war brilliantly, and this rendition of the Meuse-Argonne offensive of October of 1918 plays like the real thing. William Holmes’ Oscar-winning editing makes the battle scenes riveting. Cooper as York seems to be in touched with a special type of Providence as he advances through the bullet-pocked terrain alone, picking off men without a thought.

York is of course lauded for his actions, receives a parade, and get commercial offers. He turns thejm all down and goes home to Tennessee to marry his sweetheart (Joan Leslie). And everybody chips in and buys him that farm he always wanted. The End.

It’s a propaganda film. While this film opened in July, 1941, the Germans invaded Russia. England had fought the Battle of Britain the year previous. It seemed more and more apparent that the U.S. was going to go to war. The film espouses a deep devotion to the concept of the defense of American democratic principles. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” intones Cooper on a rocky crag overlooking his beloved valley as he reads the history of America. And like flicking a switch, he’s in for participating, and he does so in the most skillful way. He’s inspired. He doesn’t suffer a scratch.

And he comes home, and he’s the same nice guy he was when he left.  Unimpressed by the bright lights and big city, he returns to his country roots. He, a farmer, achieves acts of valor and gets everything he wants just for being so brave. And he doesn’t get hurt. It’s a loaded statement, a mythic statement.

This all is largely true, but it’s been sculpted to fit the exigencies of the Hollywood biography. It’s bound to have some fibs in it. But in real life, York was a hero and a good man; he used the proceeds from his movie deal to fund a Bible school in his home town.

Cooper is straight-up doing the will of God in this movie. He is a secular saint, all the more for being a spiritually redeemed character. He proves that you can be a Christian and a warrior at the same time – a message American audiences of the time were ready to hear.  It was a hit. Cooper won the Oscar for Best Actor. It inspired men to enlist.

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

NFR Project: 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941)

 

NFR Project: “The Maltese Falcon”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: John Huston

Pho: Arthur Edeson

Ed: Thomas Richards

Premiere: Oct. 18, 1941

101 min.

The list of directors that have made perfect feature films on their first try is short. It is even rarer for these wunderkinds to continue to create engaging work. Well, writer/director John Huston did it with his first film, The Maltese Falcon, and kept making fascinating films, 36 more, over the next 46 years.

The story was adapted from Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel of the same name – two films prior to this tried to adapt it, with indifferent success. Huston was by this time a go-to screenwriter in Hollywood. He relished the opportunity to make the film he wrote as he saw it in his mind. He studiously planned out the entire film, creating storyboards for every scene. He worked carefully with his cast, shooting almost entirely in sequence. This kept the players on the same page, and added immensely to the suspense inherent in the screenplay.

This definitive film noir gives us a world in which everyone is suspect. “Everyone has something to conceal,” says the protagonist, private detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart). Huston’s selection of Bogart was inspired – after years of knocking around as a supporting player, Bogie finally fell into the persona that would carry him through the rest of his career. The smart, cynical, world-weary professional, Sam Spade is the archetypical gumshoe – a man who has seen everything and has a low estimation of the integrity of his fellow human beings. He is rarely disappointed. He seems to subsist on cigarettes and whiskey. He is a dark knight who slickly navigates the slimy contours of the urban jungle. He discovers hidden truths and makes wrongs right. Thanks to this film, Bogie became a hard-bitten movie hero.

The story is as convoluted as you might expect a mystery film to be. Spade takes on the case of a woman, Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor) searching for her sister. Spade’s partner Archer (Jerome Cowan) goes out to help the lady, and gets murdered for his pains. Now Spade is determined to find out the truth from the lady, who turns out to be Brigid O’Shaughnessy. She is after a “black bird” – the fabled Maltese Falcon, a statuette encrusted with jewels, crafted in centuries past.

Her opponents include the Fat Man, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet, marvelously malevolent in his first film) and Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), an effeminate schemer. They are assisted by the psychotic young gunman Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.). Together, this quartet bedevils Spade as they all seek to deceive each other and get ot the Falcon first.

The Falcon’s atmosphere is gloomy – everything is shot indoors or at night. Huston plays fair with the story – we rarely know more than Spade does at any given moment, and we are kept guessing as to the outcome until literally the final five minutes. Spade is tempted, time and again, to make a crooked choice, but each time he manages to walk a straight line without getting himself killed. Spade has a perverse integrity that means he lives by his own code, come what may. He is in society but not of it – his bleak take on humanity isolates him from his fellow man, making him an outlier. In this world, Spades are necessary and expendable at the same time. By film’s end, however, only Spade is standing. His caution and intelligence preclude him from being caught up in the greed and need for manipulation that infects the others onscreen.

Falcon boasts ingenious plotting, exquisite dialogue, and inspired performances. It has something more than this, however. There is something melancholy and affecting about the proceedings. Huston has captured a vibe that will resonate through countless succeeding examples of the film noir genre. This is simultaneously the starting point and most perfect example of the noir sensibility.

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

NFR Project: 'The Lady Eve' (1941)

 

NFR Project: “The Lady Eve”

Dir: Preston Sturges

Scr: Preston Sturges

Pho: Victor Milner

Ed: Stuart Gilmore

Premiere: Feb. 25, 1941

94 min.

It’s tremendously filthy and tremendously heartfelt at the same time. Preston Sturges was at the height of his powers when he made this movie, an outrageous, improbable farce that plays with the ideas of real and ideal. It’s a perfect little movie.

Sturges’ screenplays are essays on morals and manners, universals that everyone could appreciate. He made highbrow comedies for middle-class audiences. And he still believed in love.

In this film, the putative Adam, destined to fall, in this case from ignorance and prejudice, for his Eve is Charles “Hopsie” Pike, scion of an ale fortune (“Pike’s Ale – The Ale That Won for Yale.”). He’s a quiet young chap who’s just spent a year up the Amazon studying snakes. Henry Fonda is oddly quiet as the seemingly impassive Hopsie, who’s hornswoggled at every turn.

His Eve is Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck), a professional gambler, a card shark who’s working the cruise ship he finds himself on with her father, the “Colonel” (an affecting Charles Coburn) and their manservant/accomplice Gerald (Melville Cooper). Hopsie and Jean fall in love, but then his zealous and cynical aide de camp/bodyguard Muggsy (a hilarious William Demarest) tells him the truth about her. He turns on Jean, and spurns her.

She vows revenge. With her pal, scammer Sir Alfred (Eric Blore, perfect) she infiltrates high society as the Lady Eve Sidwich, and artfully seduces the awkward Hopsie. Despite Muggsy’s protests that “it’s the same dame,” the two get married. Then, as their train hurtles through the night of their honeymoon, “Eve” confesses a multitude of previous couplings, until Hopsie is forced out into the rain and the mud.

Sturges gives us a universe peopled with distinct characters. The Lady Eve sports dozens of characters, each of whom possesses a personality, many of whom worked for Sturges as a kind of stock company through many of his films.

Early in the film, someone holding a blurry, absurd object crosses Fonda on the boat deck. Fonda shoots him a look. Minutes later, Fonda is in the same position, and the same guy crosses again, holding something different. “Good morning,” he says. We never see him again. Sturges plants jokes everywhere, if you look sharp.

His sharp writing, combined with his expertly chosen casts and venturesome story-telling – we follow a running conversation that moves along the deck of the ship in an elegant tracing shot; the climax of Jean’s seduction of Hopsie comes in a ridiculously prolonged close-up of the two, entwined on her cabin floor.

The gap between the ideal and the real is apparent from the beginning. Hopise is leaving the Amazon, bearing a rare reptile; his servant Muggsy turns to a native girl and says, “So long, Lulu. I’ll send you a postcard.” Sturges deflates Freudian conceits throughout, emphasizing snakes and giving us a sexual confession in a train roaring through a tunnel. Young Pike is smug, entitled, isolated; as in all screwball comedies; he needs an active heroine who will step in and change his life, usually through the strategy of chaos. Jean, the knowing and intelligently manipulative leading lady, is impersonated perfectly by Stanwyck. Her frequently passionate musings are delectably delivered.

Jean/Eve refuses to consent to a divorce. Hopsie boards another cruise ship. Jean and company follow him. Overjoyed to see Jean again, he races with her to her cabin.

“And I have no right to be in your cabin. I’m married,” Hopsie says.

She replies, “But so am I, darling. So am I.”

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