NFR Project: 'Rebecca' (1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Rebecca’

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom

Premiere: March 21, 1940

130 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: ‘Young Mr. Lincoln’

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Lamar Trotti

Pho: Bert Glennon

Ed: Walter Thompson

Premiere: June 9, 1939

100 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Wuthering Heights' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Wuthering Heights’

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, John Huston

Pho: Gregg Toland

Ed: Daniel Mandell

Premiere: March 24, 1939

103 min.

The moody, romantic 1847 novel by Charlotte Bronte serves as the source for this 1939 adaptation. It’s the story of star-crossed lovers, and the cruelties the hopeless inflict on themselves and each other.

Screenwriters Hecht and MacArthur adapt only the first half of the novel, concentrating on the doomed romance of Cathy Earnshaw and Heathcliff, her adopted brother. Set in the wilds of Yorkshire, it opens with a traveler seeking shelter from a blizzard at Wuthering Heights, where he is received by the dark and forbidding Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier). In the night, the visitor hears aa woman crying out for Heathcliff. An impassioned Heathcliff dashes out into the storm.

The traveler asks for details from the house’s servant Ellen. Her story outlines the growing to adulthood of Cathy (Merle Oberon) and Hindley Earnshaw, who are joined at their manor of Wuthering Heights by Heathcliff, a poor beggar boy their father has taken off the streets and brought home to raise as his own.

Hindley resents Heathcliff, and when their father dies unexpectedly, he treats him like a servant. Heathcliff grows up moody, brusque, and surly, but there is a deep attachment between him and Cathy.

When they’re grown, Heathcliff and Carthy climb the wall of their neighbor the Linton’s estate, and eagerly peer in at the ball taking place there. The family’s dogs attack Cathy, wounding her severely. She is taken in by the Lintons and immediately takes to their refined ways. Edgar Linton (David Niven) falls in love with Cathy and proposes. Cathy returns to Wuthering Heights and reports the news. Heathcliff, hearing this, runs away – before he can overhear Cathy declaring her undying love for and identification with him (“I am Heathcliff,” she memorably states.)

Years later, the Lintons are a married couple. Heathcliff returns from America a rich and somewhat more cultured man, and buys up Wuthering Heights and pays for Hindley’s excessive drinking and gambling, turning him into a hopeless pawn. He scorns a regretful Cathy, and marries Edgar’s sister Isabella, rapidly making her life miserable.

Cathy becomes ill, and Heathcliff barges into her house, taking her in his arms and holding her as she dies. He pleads with her to haunt him for the rest of his life. The story returns to the present, and Heathcliff is found dead on the moors. In a complete departure from the book, the spirits of Cathy and Heathcliff are united again.

The story is dark and gloomy, and Gregg Toland’s cinematography really captures the spirit of the piece. Wyler focuses a kind of restrained frenzy into the faces of the leading players, who are all resolutely miserable.

Who is the hero of the story? Cathy dies because she can’t reconcile her love for Heathcliff with the realities of her situation. Heathcliff goomily hangs on to his obsession with Cathy until death takes him as well. It’s a somber piece, quite in keeping with the spirit of the original. There are few Golden Age Hollywood adaptations better than this.

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

NFR Project: 'The Women' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Women’

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Anita Loos, Jane Murfin

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg, Oliver T. Marsh

Ed: Robert J. Kern

Premiere: Aug. 31, 1939

133 min.

This movie is a bit of a stunt. It features only women in all its roles, and is concerned entirely with them. (It was directed by the gay George Cukor, who was known as a woman’s director.) It can be seen either as a prehistoric feminist statement, or a masterful women-are-such-feeling-creatures condescension. It’s probably both.

For what all the characters in the film think and talk about is men – how to get them, how to hang on them, how to let go of them, how to forgive them. It equates being an upper-class woman with being a venomous b- jerk.

It was written by women for women. It’s based on Clare Boothe Luce’s 1936 about the lives and loves of various wealthy women. It seems that what consumes their time is preparing themselves for men, getting fit for men, thinking what to say to men. It’s not exactly enlightened. What camaraderie exists among the women in this film is stirred by their mutual cynicism about the value and reliability of men.

It’s a bit of an epic, with many speaking roles. The film starts with a group of society ladies interacting. A fine young wife and mother Mary (Norma Shearer, the master of smile-through-the-tears, which she gets to utilize extensively here) finds out her husband has been cheating on her with perfume-counter slut Crystal (Joan Crawford).

She determines to get a divorce, promptly marring their child for life by explaining what a divorce is. She goes to Reno – at this time, Reno was known as a convenient place to file for and obtain a divorce. There, she meets other women with a similar goal, and they bond . . . or don’t. (There is a memorable cat fight.) Mary’s husband marries Crystal, who promptly alienates their child and lolls in the tub, speaking surreptitiously to her new boyfriend!

Crystal eventually sleeps with one too many men, and Mary’s husband leaves her and returns to Mary, begging forgiveness. We last see Mary advancing on the camera, ars outstretched, forgiving like some modem Madonna.

This Passion Play of women’s woes is well-acted, and includes Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, and Rosalind Russell. Marjorie Main, the future Ma Kettle, has a significant of small part, displaying her Western drawl and comic-relief attitude.

Interestingly, there is a six-minute fashion show in Technicolor in the middle of the film, which either stops things dead of you are of one mind, or exists as a kind of female hallucination of beauty if you are of another.

The upshot of all this is that women are aware of emotion, think in terms of relationships, and are capable of seeing things in shades of gray rather than black and white. The film does not expect to explain women. It presents them as witty participants in social game-playing, with questions of honor and integrity paramount in their minds. “A woman’s compromised the day she’s born,” says one. Otherwise, the characters crack wise while they sashay through their man-orbiting business.

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

NFR Project: 'The Wizard of Oz' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Dir: Richard Thorpe, Victor Fleming, George Cukor, King Vidor

Scr: Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: Blanche Sewell

Premiere: Aug, 25, 1939

102 min.

It’s one of the most popular films in history. Due to its being played yearly on network television for decades, it’s become ingrained in our collective cultural memory. What makes it such a touchstone?

First of all, it’s an easily understandable fantasy. A young girl, Dorothy (Judy Garland), living in the boring confines of sepia-toned rural Kansas, dreams of a more interesting life “somewhere over the rainbow.” A tornado hits her farm, and she’s transported to a magical (and Technicolor) land where she is hailed as a heroine, due to the fact that her falling house has crushed to death the Wicked Witch of the East.

Unfortunately, this makes her a target of the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), who yearns for the magical ruby slippers that have been placed upon her feet by Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Seeking a way home, serenaded by the little people of Munchkinland, Dorothy sets along down the path of the Yellow Brick Road, which will take her to the all-powerful Wizard of Oz.

Along the way, she meets up and befriends the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), who wants a brain; the Tin Woodsman (Jack Haley), who wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), who wants courage. They band together and journey to the Emerald City, where the Wizard (a large disembodied head) commands them to bring to him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch before granting their wishes – which means the Witch’s death.

The four set out for the Witch’s domain. Dorothy is captured, and her friends try to rescue her. After an exciting chase, Dorothy accidently drenches the Witch with a bucket of water, melting her. They return to the Wizard with the broomstick, but the Wizard puts them off. Dorothy’s faithful dog Toto exposes the real wizard (Frank Morgan), who is a bit of a charlatan. Nonetheless, he gives the friends what they desire, and promises to take Dorothy back to Kansas in his balloon.

The balloon escapes prematurely, and Dorothy bewails her fate. Glinda steps in and tells her she can wish her way back by clicking her heels together and chanting, “There’s no place like home.” This she does, and she awakens in her own bed at home. The adventure was all a dream.

Everyone can identify with Dorothy, and she is the perfect innocent protagonist. The action is intense, and does not shy away from disturbing imagery (the tornado, the dead witch’s shrinking feet, grotesque flying monkeys, the forbidding Wizard’s head, and the perfectly horrible Witch), which oddly gives the movie much more heft than a run-of-the-mill fantasy film. There are real, life-and-death issues at stake – questions of identity, belonging, merit, right and wrong. It teaches compassion and bravery. It tells us that indeed there’s no place like home.

Second of all, movie magic makes this a perfect realization of L. Frank Baum’s original story. The production values are magnificent, detailed and convincing in all their extravagant splendor. The casting is perfect, and the script spins us merrily through the action with wit and surprising depth. The musical numbers interspersed, courtesy of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, are instantly memorable. “Over the Rainbow” won the Oscar for Best Song, and remains the most widely known of all movie tunes.

The film has provided food for thought for decades, spurring several critics to lay out various theories as to the allegorical meaning of the film. It’s inspired a disturbing sequel, and a hugely popular alternative interpretation, Gregory Macguire’s Wicked.

Most of all, it’s entered our collective consciousness. “If I only had a brain,” “SURRENDER DOROTHY,” “Toto, too?”, all these phrases and more have entered our daily lives. The resonance of The Wizard of Oz still reverberates in our minds.

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

NFR Project: 'Verbena tragica' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Verbena tragica’

Dir: Charles Lamont

Scr: Jean Bart, Miguel de Zarraga

Pho: Arthur Martinelli

Ed: Guy V. Thayer Jr.

Premiere: 1939

75 min.

Golden Age Hollywood tried to make films specifically for Hispanic audiences, mostly by filming Spanish-language copies of their feature films. These were largely unsuccessful, as viewers wanted to see the big Hollywood stars, not Hispanic replacements. (The art of the subtitle was not very advanced at the time.)

Verbena tragica (“Tragic Festival”) is a rare example of a standalone Spanish-language film that tries to appeal directly to Hispanic audiences. It is not a copy of an English-language film, but an original production. It’s the story of a fateful Columbus Daay in the barrio. Prizefighter Mateo (Jose Soler) is released from prison for punching a cop. In his absence, however, his wife Blanca (Luana Alcaniz) has been having an affair with Claudio, the fiancé of Blanca’s half-sister Lola. She is pregnant.

Mateo learns this when Blanca faints at the sight of his return. She knows trouble is ahead, and is trapped by her choice. Mateo seeks to find out who’s been sleeping with his wife. When he discovers Claudio is to blame, he punches him, sending him reeling off the balcony and onto the street below, killing him. The police take Mateo away, and Blanca is left to rue her fate.

The extremely mature subject matter was simply not treated by Hollywood in English-language films. The film is competently executed, and the performances are convincing. Shortly after this film was made, all attempts to create Spanish versions of stories in English ceased, making this a unique example of material created for a specialized audience.

At the same time, Mexico began its own special Golden Age of cinema, producing a number of outstanding films, in a tradition that would last through the 1950s. These films were played to Hispanic-American audiences with great success.

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

NFR Project: 'Tevya' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Tevya’

Dir: Maurice Schwartz

Scr: Maurice Schwartz, Marcy Klauber

Pho: Larry Williams

Ed: Sam Citron

Premiere: Dec. 21, 1939

93 min.

A labor of love that serves as a memorial to a now-vanished theatrical tradition.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Yiddish theater thrived in New York City. The masses of Jewish immigrants spoke, read, and wrote it, and became a kind of lingua franca for those who came from central and eastern Europe to the U.S. Many honored writers used it, including Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), whose tales of Jewish village life in Europe featured Tevya the dairyman, a Torah-quoting villager who took life with a sense of humor and irony.

Aleichem wrote numerous plays, the last of which was Tevye der milkhiker (Tevye the Dairyman) – performed posthumously in 1917. The play proved immensely popular, and made a star of its lead player, Maurice Scwartz. (This play later became the basis for the blockbuster, award-winning musical Fiddler on the Roof.) Schwartz was among the last in the tradition of great Yiddish players – Boris Thomashefsky, the Adlers, the Finkels, Molly Picon, and others.

Twenty years after first acting Tevye, Schwartz set out to get the performance of the play on film. He combined two Tevye stories and created a screenplay in Yiddish; raising $70,000 from friends and family, he directed himself as the comic milkman in this unique film record, shooting in New York and on Long Island.

The story takes place in Tevye’s village, where he has lived for 50 years. He is evidently one of the few Jews in the area, but he suffers no more than the usual amount of anti-semitic scorn as he plies his trade. One of his two daughters, Chava, has eyes for Fedya, a Christian. Going against her father, she marries him and converts, breaking her parents’ hearts and contributing to the death of her mother, Golde.

Without warning, the Russian rulers decree that Jews must be expelled from its cities and villages. Given only 24 hours to pack, Tevye sells everything he owns at a loss and prepares to leave. At the last minute, Chava returns to him, spurning her husband and declaring her undying commitment to Judaism. Taking her along, Tevye and family set out for the Holy Land.

The melodrama is intense. The heartbreak of not fitting in with the Christian world is palpable, and Schwartz expertly plays Tevye with wit and depth. The entire ensemble is top-notch (having performed the theatrical version of these stories numerous times). It is easy to see why audiences found this material so compelling. While not cinematically extraordinary, the film manages to convey the life of its characters with fidelity and grace.

By the time the film was released, Yiddish theater was pretty much dead. Assimilation meant that Jews in America now spoke English. Yiddish, despite the continuing efforts of writers such as the Nobel-winning Issac Bashevis Singer, became a dead language. Meanwhile, the ancient language of Hebrew was modernized and popularized, becoming the official language of the newly formed state of Israel.

It is unfortunate that this lively tongue has gone out of fashion. Tevya stands as a testament to its vibrancy and ability to convey thought and feeling.

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

NFR Project: 'Stagecoach' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Stagecoach’

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Dudley Nichols

Pho: Bert Glennon

Ed: Otho Lovering, Dorothy Spencer

Premiere: March 3, 1939

96 min.

How do you describe perfection?

There are very few “perfect” films out there, ones to which you would not remove or add a frame. Seven Samurai, Grand Illusion, Children of Paradise. Director John Ford has made more immaculately conceived and executed films than anyone I know. The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Searchers, Wagonmaster, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, his cavalry trilogy. Stagecoach is one of these.

At the time this film was made, Westerns were an unreputable genre, strictly kid stuff. No one had attempted to make an “A” list Western since the notorious flop The Big Trail in 1930.

John Ford had started out his directing career in the silent era, making Westerns, and he had a taste for the mythic possibilities of frontier storytelling. (The closest he had come previously to making a Western epic was the excellent The Iron Horse, in 1924.) Now he focused all his genius on telling a solid story about the Old West.

In the movie, the stagecoach is set to go from Tonto (which means “stupid” in Spanish) to Lordsburg. The Apaches are on the warpath, and the coach’s passengers are warned of the dangers. However, some of them are in no position to stay. Dallas (Claire Trevor), a prostitute, is being forced out of town by the shrewish ladies of Tonto. They also have no use for the alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), whom they consider a reprobate.

They are joined by a proper Eastern lady (Louise Platt) who is off to see her military husband, and who is very pregnant to boot. A Southern gambler, the gentlemanly Hatfield (John Carradine), gallantly adds himself to the roster in order to look after the lady. To the coach comes also Peacock (Donald Meek), a mild-mannered whiskey drummer, and the crooked banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill), who’s absconding with the bank’s funds.

Driving the coach is the scratchy-voiced comic relief character Buck (Andy Devine), who is accompanied by the marshal Curley (George Bancroft), who is on the lookout for the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), who busted out of jail and is looking for the three Plummer brothers, who killed his father and brother. The don’t get very far when they encounter Ringo, who is walking due to his horse coming up lame. Provisionally under arrest, he joins the others, squeezing into the coach.

Together they wheel across the desert, interacting with each other. The polite members of their society disdain Dallas, but Ringo falls for her and treats her with respect. The lady is forced to give birth at a way station, and Doc Boone gets sober in order to facilitate the delivery – redeeming himself somewhat. Ringo almost escapes, but stays when he sees Apache smoke signals.

Finally, the Indians attack. In along sequence, the stagecoach races frantically along a salt pan, with tribesmen in pursuit. Just as all seems lost, the cavalry arrives to save them and bring them into Lordsburg.

There, Ringo asks for the chance to face down the Plummers, and Curley lets him go. In a nighttime shootout, he kills them all and prepares to return to jail. However, Curley and Doc give him and Dallas a buckboard and set them free, off to his ranch south of the border to start a new life.

The script by Dudley Nichols is exceptional, creating a ensemble of complex, three-dimensional characters who change and grow during the course of the film. (The lady befriends Dallas; the banker is apprehended; Peacock and Buck are wounded, and Hatfield is killed.) Ford wisely lingers his camera on the faces of the participants, letting their reactions further the story. Ford shot his location work in the iconic Monument Valley, that magnificent hunk of desert on the border of Utah and Arizona. It was a landscape he would return to again and again.

The juxtaposition of the epic scope of the setting and journey with the small intimate moments the characters dwell in give the film an intense resonance. With cinematographer Bert Glennon, Ford crafts stunningly beautiful screen compositions, minute after minute. And of course, this was the movie that made John Wayne a star. (He was the lead in The Big Trail; its lack of success doomed him to a deace of work in “B” Westerns.)

The group is a microcosm of society, and a subversive one at that. The “legitimate” characters are crooked, snobbish, ineffectual. It is the outcasts and rejects who are the real noblemen and -women here. Those who lead with words do nothing to solve the group’s problems; it is those who take action that count for something. In the end, they are the only ones who emerge unscatched.

Stagecoach also includes iconic stuntwork, courtesy of the stuntman legend Yakima Canutt. The film never lags or loses its way. We are given just enough information in any given moment to advance the story or illuminate character in depth, making this a genre film that transcends genre, one that can truly be called the first adult Western.

The Old West proved fertile ground for Ford to examine the convolutions and contradictions of the American character, turning myths inside out and holding them up for our examination. Stagecoach rewards repeated viewings – notably, Orson Welles screened it multiple times prior to his making Citizen Kane. What is ostensibly a simple story becomes a moving, stirring, thought-provoking, classic motion picture.

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

NFR Project: 'Ninotchka' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Ninotchka’

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch

Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch

Pho: William H. Daniels

Ed: Gene Ruggerio

Premiere: Nov. 9, 1939

110 min.

MGM was searching for a comedy to suit Greta Garbo, the mysterious and glamorous star of many dramas, both in the silent and the sound eras. A poolside conference led to the creation of a winning idea: Communist woman goes to Paris, finds out that capitalism and materialism are not so bad.

The expert writing team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder were put on the assignment, and they produced a witty and captivating script. Then MGM brought in the master of subtle and adult film comedies Ernst Lubitsch, to direct. It was nothing less than a high-class effort, all the way.

Here Garbo plays Nina “Ninotchka” Yakushova, a stern and unsmiling Soviet bureaucrat who flies to Paris from Moscow to straighten out some comrades – the bumbling comic trio of Buljanoff, Iranoff, and Kopalski – who were assigned to sell some jewels taken by the State from their aristocratic owners, but who fell prey to the delights of the City of Light.

Ninotchka gets grimly to work, but she isn’t prepared for the charming onslaught of Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas), who is immediately attracted to her and enjoys the challenge of melting her cold, cold heart. This he does by degrees, loosening her up, making her laugh, introducing her to champagne. He and Ninotchka are rapidly falling in love, but Ninotchka is blackmailed by Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire). Swana agrees to give up her claim to the jewelry if Ninotchka will leave Paris for Moscow immediately.

This she does, returning to a Soviet existence that is defined by crowded tenements and little to eat. Morose, she waits for word from Leon, but the only letter she receives from him is censored completely. When Buljanoff, Iranoff, and Kopalski get in trouble again in Constantinople, Ninotchka is ordered once again to go to the scene of the trouble and clear things up. There she finds the three have opened a restaurant – and that Leon is there waiting for her as well. She abandons Communism and falls into Leon’s arms.

The film was a big success – except in Russia, where it was banned.

The promotional tagline of the film is “Garbo Laughs!” It was her first comedy, an her second-to-last film. After a second comedy, a flop, she spurned Hollywood and lived as a recluse in New York City.

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

NFR Project: 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’

Dir: Frank Capra

Scr: Sidney Buchman, Myles Connolly

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Gene Havlick, Al Clark

Premiere: Oct. 17, 1939

130 min.

The director Frank Capra (1897-1991) is frequently disparaged as a terminal optimist. He’s a flag-waver, a vehement believer in truth, justice, and the American way. However, there’s a dark side to his popular and awarded “message” pictures, one that isn’t dispelled by their inevitable happy endings.

Capra got his start at the bottom, working all kinds of jobs and finally finding himself, through luck and bluff, contributing as a gag writer to Hal Roach’s silent Our Gang comedy shorts. Then he moved up to directing the comedian Harry Langdon in a series of successful silent films. Finally, he began to choose and create his own projects.

He struck paydirt with It Happened One Night, which won several Oscars, including Best Director for Capra. Two more of his films, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can’t Take It With You, earned him Oscars as well. He was flying in industry esteem, then, when he picked his next project Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

No film executives wanted to film this picture, feeling that its discussion of political corruption would be a black eye for America, at home and abroad. A determined Capra pushed the project through.

It’s the story of naïve young Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart in a career-defining role), a publisher and scoutmaster who’s chosen to fill a Senate seat vacated by death. Little does he know that the multimedia tycoon James Taylor (Edward Arnold, marvelously villainous) really runs things in his home state, with the help of “the Silver Knight, ” Senator Paine (Claude Rains), Smith’s late father’s friend, who’s in conspiracy with him. Together they plan to pass a bill that establishes a dam built on property they’ve bought up on the sly. Their immediate goal is to keep Smith busy and distracted, so he doesn’t ask any questions about the bill.

Smith is abused by the press as a stooge, a know-nothing. His cynical, wisecracking assistant Saunders (Jean Arthur) takes pity on him, and attempts to tell how politics really work in Washington. Smith comes up with a bill of his own – the creation of national boys’ camp, unfortunately situated right where Taylor and Paine want to set up their dam. Smith discovers the conspiracy, and attempts to denounce it, but he is interrupted by Paine, who accuses him of using his bill to line his own pockets.

Soon Smith is up on charges of graft, and Taylor and his media outlets suppress his side of the story and demonize him, even going far as to forge documents insinuating Smith’s guilt. As a last-ditch effort, Smith begins a filibuster on the Senate floor, with the bemused support of the president of the Senate (Harry Carey). Taloy and his machine keep blackening Smith’s name, even going to far as to firehouse marchers and injure children distributing newspapers containing the truth.

An exhausted Smith is confronted with stacks of telegrams and letters against, finally collapses. Suddenly, Paine dashes from the room and attempts to kill himself, then runs back onto the Senate floor and confesses everything. Smith is saved.

The movie follows the pattern of many Capra films. The idealistic hero is brought down to earth by the realities of an uncaring world. He is knocked down, but not out, when others, the common people, rally around him and bring about his redemption. These finishes are crowd-pleasers, but they strain to express their ecstatic vaunting of common sense and good will. Capra believes in the power of the people – but his unrealistic endings make his sentiments appear are merely wishful thinking.

Stewart was perfect for the role, and he is aided and abetted by some of Hollywood’s best character actors – Capra’s “regulars” such as Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Beulah Bondi, Guy Kibbee, and H.B. Warner. They are regulars in Capra’s films over the years, and they too are well-matched with their parts. The direction is unobtrusive and low-key, save for the patriotic montages concocted by the master editor Slavko Vorkapich.

When the film was released, it caused a lot of controversy. Some thought the film denigrated democracy. In truth, Capra’s revelation of how power brokers have their way with the American political process is deeply subversive, and it’s not quite cancelled out by the film’s abrupt happy ending. Taylors and Paines still abound, and the film is particularly apt for viewing in our present time of governmental corruption and scandal.

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

NFR Project: 'Midnight' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Midnight’

Dir: Mitchell Leisen

Scr: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Doane Harrison

Premiere: March 24, 1939

94 min.

Midnight is an excellent and elegant screwball comedy, with much of the flavor of a classic French farce. It’s set in a Paris that seems equally divided between working-class cabbies and high-society figures. Its tale of love and money, and how the two don’t go hand in hand.

Claudette Colbert plays Eve Peabody, a down-on-her-luck American showgirl who arrives in the City of Light on a train, possessing nothing but the gold lamé dress on her back. She is quickly taken up by a friendly cab driver, Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), who gallantly drives her around town to look for a job.

Unable to accept his help any further, she escapes him and makes her way into a society soiree. Desperate, she fakes belonging to this upper-crust group until she is noticed by an aging toff, Georges (John Barrymore). Georges notices that Eve draws the attention of Jacques (Francis Lederer), who is currently in the middle of an affair with his wife (Mary Astor). Georges schemes, and sets up Eve as a wealthy baroness, asking her to seduce Jacques as a way of getting him away from Georges’ wife.

Meanwhile, Tibor searches for her relentlessly, enlisting the aid of an army of cabbies to find her and report back to him. He finds that she has gone to Georges’ country estate for the weekend. Renting evening wear, he turns up at the chateau and declares himself to be Eve’s husband, “Baron” Czerny. Now all the characters are wrapped up in the throes of mistaken identity and conflicting affections.

The script is the creation of that stupendous screenwriting team, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder (this film is only the second of their 16 collaborations). The script went through the usual round of studio-dictated rewrites – surprisingly, the rewrite request came around to Brackett and Wilder as well. They simply retyped the manuscript and sent it in, and were highly praised for their inventive rewrite.

The farcical photoplay in inhabited by comedic experts – Colbert and Ameche are top-notch, and Barrymore steals every scene he’s in. Eve Peabody is a modern Cinderella, but all the money in the world can’t sway her heart – she loves Tibor and can’t be without him. Mitchell Leisen does a smooth, professional job of directing. It’s not a film that leaps out at you, as do many of the more significant films of that year, but it is lovingly crafted and wittily wise.

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

NFR Project: 'The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair' (1939)

  

The Middletons examining the Time Capsule, to be opened in 6939.

NFR Project: ‘The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair’

Dir: Robert R. Snody

Scr: Reed Drummond, G.R. Hunter, Robert R. Snody

Pho: William Steiner

Ed: Sol S. Feuerman

Released 1939

54:39

It’s corporate propaganda, and as such it’s not too bad.

This is an hour-long infomercial presented by Westinghouse, which wants to show you how cool everything is with electricity, which naturally they sell.

You see, it’s the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and a big feature of the event was indeed the Westinghouse pavilion, where the family, fresh from out of town, (Ma, Pa, Grandma, the young lady Babs, and her little brother Bud) learns about how cool electricity is and how it will create a Golden Age for all of us. Thanks to the exposition provided by good old Jim Treadway who’s from back home. Oh, and he works for Westinghouse.

The heart of the drama is the romantic triangle among Babs, and the slimy art teacher-boyfriend of Babs, the evil Nicholas Makaroff, who makes paintings – abstract ones! Horreur terrible! And scoffs at everything, calling it a CAPITALIST conspiracy. In the lingo of the day, he’s a drip. Contrast him with the third leg of our triangle, good old Jim. Much more suitable, and informed. He’s a regular guy, a textbook heterosexual suitable for mating with Babs.

Nicholas scoffs. Then it turns out Nicholas is a fraud, and a cheap one at that! He is soon exposed through a Clever Ruse, and dashes away. Babs sidles up to manly Jim. Cue the electric sparks lighting up the nighttime sky.

Yes, it’s thin soup. But the narrative simply propels us into viewing Westinghouse’s concept of the future, which is filled with handy electric gadgets. There’s an electric dishwasher! There’s television, for crying out loud (the development of which was squelched by WWII). There’s even a robot who makes a dirty innuendo and smokes a cigarette! He’s like a robot Lenny Bruce..

The acting is indifferent good. The name performer in the film is Marjorie Lord as Babs. Marjorie later played Danny’s Thomas’ second wife, after Jean Hagen, in TV’s Make Room for Daddy.

As the film progresses everyone stresses their acceptance of and enthusiasm for just about everything Westinghouse wants to sell them. It’s hard to conceive of under what circumstances this film was shown. To patrons at the Fair? To the general public? To customers? Anyway, it’s an adequately filmed promotional tool. It expresses a fervid belief in the saving grace of an oncoming technological age. World War II delayed the techno-explosion that sprang to life in the postwar era.

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

NFR Project: Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial

 

NFR Project: ‘Marian Anderson: the Lincoln Memorial Concert’

Filmed April 9, 1939

Marian Anderson (1897-1993) was one of the most gifted contraltos of the 20^th century. Her only problem – she was Black.

Fighting prejudice every step of the way, she trained with various voice teachers and finally made an impact with a recital held with the New York Philharmonic on Aug. 26, 1925. People loved her rich, velvety voice, which expressed itself with precision and grace. However, because of her skin color, many times she could not get access to traditional classical-music venues in America.

So she went to Europe to study and perform. There she became incredibly popular, building a reputation, and notably establishing a friendship with the composer Sibelius. Her increased reputation led to more concert appearances in the U.S., but again she had problems being accommodated in hotels and restaurants due merely to her skin color. Friends would house and feed her -- including Albert Einstein.

In 1939, she attempted to give a concert at Washington, D.C.’s Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, which had a whites-only policy. She was denied. She then tried to secure the use of the auditorium of D.C.’s Central High School – and was again turned down, this time by the District of Columbia Board of Education. Thousands of her supporters were pissed, and a coalition of Black activists got to work.

Finally, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes was convinced to stage her recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This they did on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. The open-air concert was attended by more than 75,000 people, and was carried on NBC radio. “Genius, like Justice, is blind,” declared Ickes.

Anderson sang her heart out. She sang “My CVountry ‘Tis of Thee,” the aria “O mio Fernando” from Donizetti’s “La Favorita”, and Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” After a brief intermission, she sang three spirituals, “Gospel Train,” “Travelin’”, and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” She was applauded frenetically. For once, a Black artist stood up to the racists that controlled the American culture, and triumphed over them with a concert heard by millions.

She continued her career. She sang for the troops during World War II and the Korean War. She headlined on live TV on June 15, 1953, broadcast on both NBC and CBS. Finally, on January 7, 1955, she became the first Black singer to appear on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera. She continued to work extensively until her retirement form singing in 1965.

Only excerpts of her concert were released on newsreel film at the time, but the entire performance was recorded on film and archived. Today we can see and hear her thrilling performance, and wonder now what kind of society made it so hard for her to shine her light for everyone.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair.

NFR Project: 'Gunga Din' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Gunga Din’

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Joel Sayre, Fred Guiol

Pho: Joseph A. August

Ed: Henry Berman

Premiere: Feb.17, 1939

117 min.

It’s one of the most successful adventure films of all time, structured perfectly to propel its story forward. It took many writers to get it into shape. It has since drawn fire for its pro-imperialist, fundamentally racist foundations.

The movie is derived very loosely from the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling. It’s set in India, during the days when the British Empire ruled it. A sect of religious fanatics, the Thugees, threaten to overthrow English rule. Arrayed against them is the British army, and three sergeants – Cutter (Cary Grant), MacChesney (Victor McLaglen), and Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) The three are happy-go-lucky soldiers who aren’t afraid of a fight. One of their regimental bhistis (water carriers), Gunga Din, (played by the white Sam Jaffe in brownface). Din longs to be a soldier, but is looked down on as a mere servant. Ballantine, shortly to end his enlistment and retire, is mocked by his two friends.

A fight they get. First, they are sent out to discover what happened to an outpost that has lost contact with headquarters. There they find the Thugees in strength, and they fight their way to safety in a well-staged set piece of a battle. The three return to base, but Cutter soon goes astray. He wants to loot a hidden temple high in the mountains, but is placed in the stockade to prevent this. He escapes with the help of Din and an elephant.

The temple is found, but it is full of Thugees who are planning an uprising against the regiment. Cutter sends Din to warn the others, then gets himself captured. MacChesney and Ballantine come to his rescue (Ballantine signs reenlistment papers to do so), but are captured as well. There they hear from the sinister Guru of the Thugees (another white man in brownface, Eduardo Cianelli), who outline his plan for the destruction of the regiment.

The regiment arrives, and the three try desperately to warn them, to no avail. Din climbs to the top of the temple and sounds the alarm on a bugle saving the regiment – and is shot down for his pains. The enemy is routed, and the three are back together again, somewhat worse for wear. Din is posthumously made a corporal.

The script was worked on by Joel Sayre and Fred Guiol, working from an outline created by the great writing team of Ben Hechy and Charles MacArthur. Additional rewrites were wrung out of Leston Cohen, James Colton, the famous novelist William Faulkner, Vincent Lawrence, Dudley Nichols, and Anthony Veiller.

Despite all these cooks, the broth comes out tasty. The action is inventive, streamlined, and continuous, broken up only by effective comic scenes. It’s a boys’ film – the only woman in the scenario is dispensed with rather quickly. The movie has energy, flair, and wit.

The problems? Well, naturally, the movie is on the side of the Empire, portraying non-white character as either fools or devils. The primary Indian roles are played by white men in literal brownface and body makeup. This kind of taken-for-granted racism pervades the film.

The great German playwright Bertolt Brecht had these interesting words to say about it: “"I felt like applauding, and laughed in all the right places, despite the fact that I knew all the time that there was something wrong, that the Indians are not primitive and uncultured people but have a magnificent age-old culture, and that this Gunga Din could also be seen in a different light, e.g. as a traitor to his people, I was amused and touched because this utterly distorted account was an artistic success and considerable resources in talent and ingenuity had been applied in making it. Obviously artistic appreciation of this sort is not without effects. It weakens the good instincts and strengthens the bad, it contradicts true experience and spreads misconceptions, in short it perverts our picture of the world."

Interesting. Of course, he is correct in his observations. If you turn off your brain and watch it, you are bound to have a good time. Grant, MacLaglen, and Fairbanks are all perfect for their roles, and their banter is top-notch. Director Stevens creates two battles, the latter staged with hundreds of extras, and handles those conflicts with flair. In the end, the movie is irresistible, despite its imperialistic underpinnings.

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

NFR Project: 'Gone with the Wind' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Gone with the Wind’

Dir: Victor Fleming (and four others)

Scr: Sidney Howard (and 14 others)

Pho: Ernest Haller

Ed: Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom

Premiere: Dec. 15, 1939

221 min.

It’s the ultimate blockbuster. Based on a best-selling historical novel, Gone with the Wind is still the highest-grossing motion picture of all time. It is also the epitome of Hollywood style, a textbook example of how to create a stirring epic that still leaves room and bears focus enough to illuminate the lives of its imaginary characters.

Margareet Mitchell’s 1936 book, a literary pot-boiler, was so popular that it was quickly optioned for adaptation to the big screen. Producer David O. Selznick was determined to create the ultimate epic, and the run-up to filming included contributions by no fewer than 15 scriptwriters. Additionally, the competition for the lead role of Scarlett O’Hara meant that thousands of actresses were considered for the part. In the end, Selznick had a screenplay that told the mammoth story cogently. At the last, he found his Scarlett in the person of English actress Vivien Leigh.

The process of making the film was debilitating, requiring the efforts of five different directors to finish. Its enormous crowd scenes and awe-inspiring special effects were logistical nightmares to pull off. Thousands of extras were costumed, herded, and shot (with a camera, natch). Max Steiner’s brilliant score pumped the movie full of energy. Given the fine performances by the principals, the result is a luxurious four-hour visual feast that manages to be compelling on the human scale as well.

It’s a story of the American South. It’s the eve of the Civil War, and young Scarlett O’Hara (Leigh) is a treasured, and spoiled, oldest daughter of Gerald O’Hara (Thomas Mitchell), owner of the plantation Tara. She is selfish, narcissistic, and materialistic – but she is our heroine, and Leigh gives this Southern belle a flinty, stubbornly brave core that causes us to root for her, despite her obvious drawbacks (let’s face it, she’s a bitch).

Scarlett is obsessed with Ashley Wilkes (fellow English actor Leslie Howard), a planter who’s engaged to her do-good cousin Melanie (Olivia de Havilland). Scarlett frets and stews over her attraction to Ashley, but all this drama recedes into the background when war is declared and all the menfolk set out for what they think will be a brief campaign. Into the picture steps the anti-hero Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), an assured, amoral

Spitefully, Scarlett agrees to marry Melanie’s brother, Charles, who shortly after dies of pneumonia on the battlefield. Freshly widowed, Scarlett insists on dancing with Butler at a charity ball, scandalizing her peers. The two are obviously meant for each other, but their initial contacts are fraught with conflict.

The South’s inevitable losses begin to pile up, and soon Atlanta is under siege. Melanie gives birth, and she and Scarlett are brought out of the path of the advancing Union Army by Rhett and returned to Tara, now an abandoned and bereft locale. Scarlett swears that she and her family will never go hungry again.

In the aftermath of the War, the family toils in the fields in order to maintain their ownership of Tara. Scarlett tries to obtain needed tax money form Rhett, to no avail. She then steals her sister’s beau, the well-off store owner Frank Kennedy and saves the plantation. Scarlett proves to be a ruthless businesswoman, utilizing convict labor to staff her business interests.

She becomes a free woman again after her husband is killed leading an attack on the “poor trash” that threaten the safety of Atlanta’s (white) womenfolk. Free to marry, she accepts Rhett’s proposal.

Though they are wealthy, their marriage is a tempestuous one. They have a child together, but that daughter dies tragically. Finally, Rhett is determined to leave Scarlett, who asks for another chance. “What will I do?” she asks. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” he replies, and leaves. But Scarlett is not deterred; she realizes she really loves Rhett, not Ashley, and vows to get him back, considering that “tomorrow is another day!”

Scarlett is a difficult character to figure out. She is a proto-feminist figure, one who acts rather than is acted upon, as is the case with the film’s other female characters. However, she does define herself through her relationships with men, and was the case for most women at the time. She is willful and spirited, but the story goes out of its way to punish her for her independence. It is only her final affirmation that she will survive and succeed that breaks her out of the Hollywood trap of destroying a female character that challenges society’s norms.

Then there is the elephant in the room: slavery. Although their plight motivates the entirety of the film, Black characters are seldom to be found here, and when they are they are at best portrayed as benevolent children – at worst, as loud and threatening Negroes. Hollywood was just as racist as the rest of the country when the book was written and the film was made, and the procession of Black stereotypes – the whiny maid, the bossy “mammy”, the stupid groomsman – plods steadily through the movie. According to the film, slavery exists merely to suffice as plot points for the doings of the movie’s white characters. It would have you believe that the War was about states’ rights and the preservation of the South’s courtly, antebellum way of life.

The film’s lavish settings and big set pieces – the camera’s dolly shot, pulling back and back, revealing more and more dead and wounded Confederates in the Atlanta rail yards, is still stirring – are feasts for the eye. Never was so much effort put into a convincing remounting of history, prejudiced in the “Lost Cause” of the South though it is. Despite its numerous drawbacks, it still plays well today, a remarkable artifact from when Hollywood was king and no expense was too great to make a memorable film.

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

NFR Project: Harry Smith's ‘Early Abstractions: #1-5, 7, 10’ (1939-1956)

 

NFR Project: ‘Early Abstractions: #1-5, 7, 10’ (1939-1956)

Created by Harry Smith

Premiere: various

23 min.

Harry Smith (1923-1991) was a genius. He is best known today for compiling the famous 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, which influenced countless musicians and listeners, and helped to fuel the folk boom of the early 1960s.

Smith himself swung wildly from obsession to obsession. He studied anthropology and the occult. He painted pictures, many of them lost or destroyed; he pioneered the use of psychotropic drugs. He was a mystic and a self-styled shaman.

His films were always works in progress. He was decades ahead of his time in that he created abstract animations, some painted directly on the film stock, others utilizing a cut-and-paste, stop-motion technique. His innovations inspired filmmakers as diverse as Stan Brakhage and Terry Gilliam.

The fruits of his painstaking labors are fascinating. They are a rush of changing shapes and colors, culminating in the kaleidoscope effects of Variation #10, which features mandalas, sephiras (kabalistic “trees of life”), spirals, cascades of tarot cards, and demonic and Buddhist symbols.

Smith, in his own inimitable way, describes his output below.

Per EM Arts --

“My cinematic excreta is of four varieties: - batiked abstractions made directly on film between 1939 and 1946, optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950, semi-realistic animated collages made as part of my alchemical labours of 1957 to 1962, and chronologically superimposed photographs of actualities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organised in specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEG Alpha component and should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works, works that will live forever - they made me gray.

No. 1: Hand-drawn animation of dirty shapes - the history of the geologic period reduced to orgasm length.

No. 2: Batiked animation, etc. etc. The action takes place either inside the sun or in Zurich, Switzerland.

No. 3: Batiked animation made of dead squares, the most complex hand-drawn film imaginable.

No. 4: Black-and-white abstractions of dots and grill-works made in a single night.

No. 5: Color abstraction. Homage to Oscar Fischinger - a sequel to No. 4.

No. 7: Optically printed Pythagoreanism in four movements supported on squares, circles, grill-works and triangles with an interlude concerning an experiment.

No. 10: An exposition of Buddhism and the Kabala in the form of a collage. The final scene shows Aquatic mushrooms (not in No. 11) growing on the moon while the Hero and Heroine row by on a cerebrum.”

Harry Smith from Film-makers’ Cooperative Catalogue 3, pp. 57-58

Sitting down to a intensely focused session of viewing his films, it is easy to see the hallucinogenic thrusts of his work, which seeks to overwhelm the visual sense of the viewer and push them into a transcendent state. Nearly a century after their creation, they are still ahead of their time, full of mystery and the excitement of seeing everything with otherworldly eyes.

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

NFR Project: 'Destry Rides Again' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Destry Rides Again’

Dir: George Marshall

Scr: Henry Myers, Gertrude Purcell

Pho: Hal Mohr

Ed: Miton Carruth

Premiere: Dec. 29, 1939

95 min.

Another curious selection by the National Film Registry. A pleasant film, but there is little that is remarkable about it.

The film is a Western, a comedy, and a musical all wrapped into one. It concerns the Old West town of Bottleneck, in which there is little enforcement of the laws, leading to chaos controlled only by the corrupt actions of saloon owner Kent (Brian Donlevy) and the tobacco-chewing mayor Slade (Samuel S. Hinds). When the town’s sheriff is murdered for trying to interfere with some criminal behavior, the town drunk Wash (Charles Winninger) is cynically chosen by the bad guys to serve as his replacement.

However, Wash takes his new job seriously, stops drinking, and hires the son of a famous lawman, Tom Destry Jr. (Jimmy Stewart) to serve as deputy. Destry shows up in town, wearing no guns and promoting the peaceful solution of the town’s problems. He is immediately mocked and despised by the citizenry. However, the bad guys underestimate him. First he proves to be a crack shot, then he uncovers the mystery of the previous sheriff’s murder.

He also wins the affections of Frenchy, the dance-hall girl (Marlene Dietrich) who is Kent’s companion and fellow crook. Destry apprehends one of Kent’s gang, but a gang of badmen release the prisoner from the jail, shooting Wash fatally in the process. An incensed Destry straps on his guns and rallies the whole town to attack Kent’s saloon and overthrow his reign of terror.

The film was a departure for Dietrich, who had appeared in a lavish series of films, most directed by Josef von Sternberg, but was now not deemed to be star material. She took a pay cut to play Frenchy, which she pulls off with grace and panache, singing several musical numbers along the way (this character was parodied by Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles). She proves to be as adept doing comedy as she does the drama of the film.

This is Jimmy Stewart’s first Western, remarkably; the iconic, brooding Westerns he made with Anthony Mann were more than a decade away.

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

NFR Project: 'Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther’

Dir: Esther and Ray Dowidat

Scr: Esther and Ray Dowidat

Pho: Esther and Ray Dowidat

Ed: Esther and Ray Dowidat

Premiere: 1939

15:30 

Home movies are exactly that – records of family life, a way of preserving the memory of loved ones. In this case, the home movie becomes an ambitious documentary that gives us the portrait of a small town in America in the 1930s.

First, do read Scott Simmon’s excellent essay on the film, which you can click on here. He makes the point that the filmmakers, married couple Esther and Dr. Ray Dowidat, were possessed of a very professional spirit. Their film covers the time period from July to September, 1939, and profiles the tiny town of Cologne, Minnesota, pop. 350, located southwest of Minneapolis.

The film starts with a literal overview of the town – a panoramic taking-in of the town from its highest points. It discusses the nature of the inhabitants – mostly of German and Dutch descent – and provides a pocket history of the town, once an important rail junction but now a sleepy backwater. We see various citizens doing their jobs (fortunately, Dowdidat had access to a bright spotlight, and used it to record interior scenes fairly clearly). We go to the local saloon.

The film moves briskly along, punctuated by written passages from the Dowidats’ “diary” entries, which serve as a guide and as a framing device. The end result is a well-crafted film that belies its origins as a hobby, and rises to the level of homespun art.

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

NFR Project: 'The City' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘The City’

Dir: Ralph Steiner, Willard Van Dyke

Scr: Pare Lorentz, Henwar Rodakiewicz, Lewis Mumford

Pho: Ralph Steiner, Willard Van Dyke

Ed: Theodore Lawrence

Premiere: 1939

43:43

This documentary is one that advocates for a new kind of living space – the suburbs.

This film was produced under the auspices of a coalition of urban planners. It seeks to outline the nature of American city structures, decries the negative aspects of urban life, and posits “planned communities” to take their place. It was firt shown at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.

The movie is simply one of visuals married to a voiceover narration. In the first third of the film, we are taken on a survey of the typical American small town, adjacent to the country’s rural roots. Then we move into an indictment of the big city, decrying its negative influence on its inhabitants. Then we are whisked away to admire the virtues of the suburbs – an integration of nature and the man-made landscape, single-family homes with lawns, all inhabited by white people. It’s a vision that would come to fruition after World War II, when Levittown and its descendants began to cover the landscape.

The film is impressively matched up with an Aaron Copland score (his first for film), and sonorous narration by Morris Carnovsky. The argument for a reconstruction of American living space is somewhat persuasive, but then this film is on a mission of advocacy, and the images and words are in the service of that vision. The suburbs, it turns out, came with their own drawbacks, economic and environmental. However, at the time this film was made, there was little thought given to a different way of life than the crowded, congested stresses of urban living.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther.

NFR Project: 'Only Angels Have Wings' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Only Angels Have Wings’

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Jules Furthman, Howard Hawks

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Viola Lawrence

Premiere: May 15, 1939

121 min.

This film, one of cinema’s great adventure dramas, is considered the epitome of the Howard Hawks style. Director Hawks left a distinctive fingerprint on many of his films – so much so that this particular kind of film is regularly referred to as “Hawksian.”

The Hawksian world is inhabited by cynical, tough-talking men. They face danger bravely and with a dismissive humor. A man is what he does, or in the worst case, what he cannot do. The Hawksian woman is independent, tough-talking, gifted with the ability to trade wisecracks with the guys. Together they create a miniature society of daredevils, people who inhabit the dangerous margins of life to fulfill tasks that ordinary people would balk at.

In this case, the scene is set in an imaginary South American country, in the town of Barranca. Here Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) leads a ragtag bunch of flyers whose job it is to fly mail and supplies up and over an intimidating range of Andean mountains inland. The company must make its deliveries in order to win a lucrative contract, despite hazards such as fog, storm, and bird strikes.

Into this milieu falls Bonnie Lee (perky Jean Arthur), an entertainer off the boat with a minimum of baggage and a maximum of curiosity. Naturally, she falls for Geoff, but Geoff was spurned by a woman over his risk-taking, so he’s sour on the idea of women, and emotion in general.

Onto the scene steps MacPherson (the great silent star Richard Barthlemess), a flyer with a checkered past who wants to get back into the game. It turns out that he bailed out of a burning plane, leaving his mechanic to die. That mechanic was the brother of The Kid (Thomas Mitchell), Geoff’s right-hand man. Despite everyone’s prejudice against him, Geoff takes him on.

It also turns out that MacPherson is married to Judy (Rita Hayworth, in her star-making turn) – the woman who broke Geoff’s heart. Their reconnection is bitter.

The Kid’s eyesight is failing, so Geoff must ban him from flying. Another dangerous mission comes up, and Geoff is all set to fly it when Bonnie accidentally shoots him. MacPherson must go, and the Kid volunteers to go with him in a new plane designed to fly over the high peaks.

The plane stalls out in the thin atmosphere, and the flying duo are forced to turn back. They run into a flock of buzzards, some of which crash through the windscreen, crippling the Kid and setting the engines on fire. MacPherson, struggling mightily, brings the plane back safely.

The Kid dies of his injuries. MacPherson, having redeemed himself, is welcomed by the other pilots. Geoff finally lets Bonnie know that he wants her to stay. Can she stand the uncertainty of not knowing whether he’ll come back alive from his job or not? The answer is a pretty confident yes.

The movie is filled with distinct characters, all cracking wise. Sig Rumann, who normally played pompous leaders or villains, actually gets a sympathetic part here and plays it well. The film, crowded with action, moves along at a dizzying pace. Add plenty of flying shots, supplemented by some good model work, and you have a strikingly engaging story on your hands.

Paradoxically, the gruff gents who work for the ragtag airline are actually sentimental fools. Their feelings of loss when one of their number crashes and dies are palpable. There are guys who care deeply about each other, and about their mission. It is their determination to be tough that makes them seem so abrasive, callous even. Hawks is careful to show us this aspect of their emotional lives, sublimated into anger and alcohol abuse.

Joseph Walker’s cinematography is top-notch; the settings are shrouded in fog and most of the action takes place at night. The noirish cast of the images perfectly suits the story of men gambling with their lives.

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

NFR Project: 'Under Western Stars' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘Under Western Stars’

Dir: Joseph Kane

Scr: Dorrell McGowan, Stuart E. McGowan, Betty Burbridge

Pho: Jack Marta

Ed: Lester Orlebeck

Premiere: April 20, 1938

65 min.

It is a dicey proposition to think that this Western musical earned its way into the National Film Registry. It is significant only in that it marks the first starring role of Roy Rogers (1911-1998), soon to become known as the “King of the Cowboys.”

Cowboy singing star Gene Autry (1907-1998) was responsible for Roy Rogers’ success. It seems that he was p.o.ed with Republic Pictures head Herbert Yates, who felt that he was solely responsible for Autry’s fame. 

Autry grew up the son of a preacher in Texas. He was a young man who worked as a telegrapher for a railroad, and sang and accompanied himself on guitar to pass the time away.

He finally won a recording contract, and in 1932 hit with his first big song, “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine”. He made it big in the movies in 1935 with his starring role in the bizarre Western/musical/sci-fi serial The Phantom Empire. He made 44 films in five years, and was everyone’s favorite singing cowboy, who could fight and shoot and ride adequately.

At this point in their association, Yates felt that he should get a cut of all of Autry's revenue. Autry, to put it mildly, disagreed.

Yates, feeling he could create another screen cowboy hero out of whole cloth, did so. He picked out a handsome, tuneful young man named Leonard Slye, who was part of the successful, original singing group the Son of the Pioneers. Yates changed his name to Roy Rogers, and stuck him in this film, which Autry was supposedly to play.

The story covers the election of Roy to Congress, where he works to ease the grip the local water company has on his constituents. That’s it. There is little to none of the chases, fights, or shootouts common to the Western B-movie to this point in time. There is a heck of a lack of water, and Rogers exposes other politicaians to the drought to make his point about releasing the life-giving water to his friends and neighbors. Roy is pleasant, winning, and sings like a bird. Even gifted with Autry’s old comic sidekick Smiley Burnette, the results are, shall we say, stultifying.

Well, it was a huge hit, and fostered Rogers’ career in film, on television, and via recordings through the rest of his life. For many, he is the personification of the happy singing cowpoke. He certainly was pleasant, and is attractive here – but he made better films (he racked up 125 before he was done).

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

NFR Project: 'The River' (1938)

 

NFR Project: ‘The River’

Dir: Pare Lorentz

Scr: Pare Lorentz

Pho: Floyd Crosby, Willard Van Dyke, Stacy Woodard

Ed: Lloyd Nosler, Leo Zochling

Premiere: Feb. 4, 1938

31 min.

Pare Lorentz made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker with The Plow that Broke the Plains in 1936. This examination of the Dust Bowl and plans for its mitigation was lauded by many, but abhorred by some as it appeared to them to be government propaganda. I wrote about it here.

For his second great documentary, Lorentz chose to cover the Mississippi River, that great avenue of commerce and travel. Once again, there was a didactic side to the film – Lorentz brings up deforestation and overfarming, and posits the dam construction work of FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority as the solution to flood control and recovery of farmland and forest.

Lorentz chose a lyrical, poetic approach to the subject. He invokes the might of the river, and reels off a list of its tributaries in Whitmanesque style. He covers the river’s past, giving us shots of abandoned Southern mansions and including a quote from Robert E. Lee. Then he turns to the present, outlining the region’s problems with water and advocating government interventions to fix it.

The film does not deal in concrete specifics – the images are generic, and are chosen for their aesthetic beauty. Men and mules are silhouetted against the sky; water drips, meanders, and rushes. The Virgil Thomson score is outstanding, providing depth and weight to the scenes that are edited together. This time, Lorentz followed a filming schedule and created a budget, allowing him to work efficiently and with more assured focus.

Once again, there was some trouble with viewers and critics, who found it to be pushing the government’s agenda, which it certainly is. But Lorentz’s strong sense of imagery, backed up by an equally strong poetic narration (which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry), transcends the programmatic aspect of the film, giving us a stirring portrait of natural and man-made forces at work.

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