NFR Project: 'Meshes of the Afternoon' (1943)

 

NFR Project: “Meshes of the Afternoon”

Dir: Maya Deren, Alexandr Hackenschmied

Scr: Maya Deren

Pho: Alexandr Hackenschmied

Ed: Maya Deren

Premiere: 1943

14 min.

There is a long alternate, dimly seen history of film – a hidden history of the avant-garde. Coming from Stan Brakhage’s old stomping grounds, I have sought out and been exposed to more of it than most. Still, I was unfamiliar with this proclaimed “classic” of American avant-garde cinema.

It’s a beautiful example of the subjective purposing of camera language, combined with a desire to impart a rhyming set of images that fix in the mind with forbidding clarity. It’s a poem, not a story, as such completely subverting the narrative drive that underlies all mainstream movies. Meshes is compelling to watch, but you don’t know why; it reaches something in your subconscious. Film in America had rarely staged dream and vision so effectively, with such economy of means.

Wife and husband Maya Deren, originally Eleonora Derenkovskaya, and Alexandr Hackenschmied, later Alexander Hammid, both emigres, created this film in their own (ironically, Hollywood) home; it is shot silently with a dreamy feel. A woman wanders through a house. She encounters a flower, a key, a knife, a telephone. The camera switches from subjective to (supposedly) objective without warning.

The woman pursues a garbed figure with a mirror for a face, also holding a flower – but breaks off, over and again. The woman sleeps, she dreams: she splits into multiples. The beautiful Deren, expressionless like a medieval Madonna, sees, and is observed. With mirrored balls for eyes, she stalks herself with a knife, striding now on the beach, then in a furrow, then in the grass, then onto a city sidewalk. This explosion is followed by the vision of a man seeing to woo her. The screen bursts open. Deren repeats actions, gestures, symbols, gestures, varying them slightly each time.

She ends up dead. Or is that a dream? What the hell is going on? The viewer has to supply their own answers as a set of confusing images are thrown at them.

The film resembles the early work of Cocteau, Man Ray, Leger, and others – but Deren, who asserted that hers was the lion’s share of the creative effort, denied having seen them. She creates her own unique filmed poetry, and it’s assured, and watchable. It inspires confusion and stimulates thought. At the same time.

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'Lassie Come Home' (1943)

 

NFR Project: “Lassie Come Home”

Dir: Fred M. Wilcox

Scr: Hugo Butler

Pho: Leonard Smith

Ed: Ben Lewis

Premiere: Oct. 7, 1943

89 min.

Do you love dogs? I do. Growing up, the character of Lassie the collie was familiar to all of us due to several different TV shows that featured this canine hero.

It all started with this film, adapted from Eric Knight’s 1940 novel. In Yorkshire, an impoverished family is forced to sell their beloved dog Lassie to a Duke who raises dogs for sport and exhibition.

The problem is, Lassie loves her family and refuses to leave them. Several times she escapes, until she is transported all the way to Scotland. There she escapes again, and makes her laborious way on foot over hundreds of miles, encountering both hardships and kindness on her way.

The film features Roddy McDowall as her young master Joe, and Donald Crisp and Elsa Lancaster as his parents. The Duke is portrayed by the huffing and puffing Nigel Bruce, and his little granddaughter is played by Elizabeth Taylor. Along the way, Lassie interacts with solid character actors such as Dame Mae Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Alan Napier, and Arthur Shields.

The film is simple and moving. We all want Lassie to come home! The intrepid Pal, a male collie who played Lassie, is intelligent and emotive, more so than many a human actor. The epic journey Lassie undergoes makes her a true champion, faithful and shall we say dogged? in her pursuit of home. This is a fun and exciting family classic that everyone in their right mind should love.

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

NFR Project: George Stevens' World War II footage (1943-1945)

 

NFR Project: George Stevens’ World War II footage

103 min.

George Stevens’ work is already well-represented in the National Film Registry. He started out making comedies, shooting them for Hal Roach. He was the Director of Photography for the Laural and Hardy’s Battle of the Century (1927) and Big Business (1929), as well as Max Davidson’s Pass the Gravy (1928).

He showed his versality by directing such disparate pictures as Swing Time (1936), Gunga Din (1939), and Woman of the Year (1942). When World War II broke out, Stevens enlisted in the Signal Corps, where he was appointed Major. General Eisenhower issued him orders -- it was his mission to assemble a team that would document the war in Europe. A motley crew dubbed “Stevens’ Irregulars” followed closely behind the men in the front lines, shooting a visual history of the war in a way never before achieved. It is a brutal indictment of those who provoked the destruction, death, and anguish that war imposes on the world.

The Special Coverage Unit group assembled 304 minutes of color footage, and 54 minutes of silent black-and-white footage. Stevens shot his own color home-movie 16-millimeter film as well. (You can find much of the footage here.) The intrepid gang of journalists went to North Africa, covered D-Day, the march across France, the liberation of Paris, the advance to reach the Russians at Torgau. The discovery of the concentration camp at Dachau. (This footage was used as evidence in the Nuremburg trials.) They showed us the trench where Hitler's body was incinerated. They ascended to Berchtesgaden.

There is some of the obligatory footage of generals interacting, of troops being reviewed. But they captured the misery and trauma all around them. Soldiers fought, lay wounded, were carted away dead. Civilians fled or suffered. Cities became heaps of brick-and-mortar caves of rubble. Prisoners wearily shuffled their way onto trucks. Concentration camp prisoners stumbled about in shock, or lay dead in heaps. It profoundly affected everyone involved in documenting it.

The filmmakers documented the Allied vision of World War II. It set down a true picture of populations at war, not romanticized, not prettied up. This sobering gathering of facts puts the lie to those who would claim that some of this never happened. Stevens turned to more serious fare upon his return from service, helming classics such as A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956), and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

This collection of film contains moments of tragic beauty, long looks into the faces of the captured, even moments of absurdity -- a deranged man in a top hat swings a dead rabbit at American soldiers. Throughout, there is not the feeling of it being a propaganda project. Here is an impeccable record of humanity at war.

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

 

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Gang's All Here' (1943)

 

NFR Project: “The Gang’s All Here”

Dir: Busby Berkeley

Scr: Walter Bullock

Pho: Edward Cronjager

Ed: Ray Curtiss

Premiere: Dec. 24, 1943

103 min.

A really weak effort from the redoubtable Busby Berekeley. This Technicolor extravaganza is a musical that tells the story of a young soldier (James Ellison) who falls for singer Alice Faye. They are accompanied by stalwart players such as Eugene Pallette, Edward Everett Horton, Charlotte Greenwood, and Phil Baker.

The two young lovers are a tad star-crossed, but get together at the end in a flimsy and anemic plot that does little to hold the attention. The real star of the show is Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian bombshell whose outrageous outfits and comic style enliven the movie. She is featured in the “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” number, in which chorus girls wave giant phallic bananas from the stage. Benny Goodman and his band are on hand, but they don’t help much.

Berkeley’s use of color is garish and over-the-top, but it’s all in the service of a very perfunctory project. A very ordinary outing, which begs the question: why was this film chosen for the National Film Registry?

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: George Stevens’ World War II footage.

NFR Project: 'Cabin in the Sky' (1943)

 

NFR Project: “Cabin in the Sky”

Dir: Vincente Minnelli

Scr: Marc Connelly, Lynn Root, Joseph Schrank

Pho: Sidney Wagner

Ed: Harold F. Kress

Premiere: April 9, 1943

98 min.

It is hard to believe that the NAACP signed off on this one. But they did. In fact, they congratulated the filmmakers on their project, stating it “avoided cliches and racial stereotypes.” Yet there is something condescending about this effort. It offers a simplified and hokey vision of the African-American experience.

True, it avoids the worst insults to Blacks that American cinema has imposed – no one acts like an idiot, everyone speaks normal English instead of slavish patois. But the film still treats them as simple-minded folk perpetually poised between the flames of Hell and the Kingdom of Heaven. It is this kind of neglect of reality that makes movies by and for Black people of the era, rare as they were, often fairy tales of damnation and salvation. It fits a very Caucasian-centric vision of Black life that can’t help but come off as tone deaf. It is well-intentioned but fundamentally inept. It wants to be Porgy and Bess (1935), but it isn’t.

The film is an adaptation of a 1940 Broadway production, with music by Vernon Duke, book by Lynn Root, and lyrics by John Tatouche. Ethel Waters killed as the heroine, Petunia; she debuted the hit song “Taking a Chance on Love” there. The powers that be decided to make a film of it, and they brought Waters in to reprise her stage role. (They threw in a few new songs by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg as well, including the great "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe".)

She is surrounded by some great performers – Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Rex Ingram, Oscar Polk, Bill Bailey, Butterfly McQueen. Hell, there is Louis Armstrong, gleefully playing a little devil! And in the Paradise club, there reigns Duke Ellington and his orchestra. There are also some Black actors who purveyed Black stereotypes on film – Mantan Moreland, Willie Best. (Bill Bailey performs the first “moonwalk” on film as well.)

It’s the story of Little Joe (Anderson) and his wife Petunia (Waters). Little Joe is trying to reform, but he is lured into shooting dice and is seriously wounded by gambler Domino (“Bubbles” John W. Sublett). Lucifer Jr. (Ingram) fights the angelic General (Kenneth Spencer) for Joe’s soul. Joe gets six months to change his ways.

The Devil makes Joe win the lottery, after which he lives high on the hog and starts running around with the devilish Georgia Brown (a very young Lena Horne). Petunia shows up to a fancy nightclub to confront him, then she and Joe are shot down by Domino as a storm she prayed for destroys the club. Joe, redeemed by a repentant, dead Georgia Brown, is allowed into Heaven with Petunia.

After which, Little Joe wakes up – it was all a dream! He vows to mend his ways. Petunia is happy at last.

This was the first directorial effort of Vincente Minelli (Busby Berkeley stepped and directed the musical number “Shine”) – and some of Minelli’s trademarks are already here: the swooping dolly shots, the loving close-ups, the willingness to play with trick photography. It is admirably made, notwithstanding its fundamentally racist message. It proves that Hollywood could sell any kind of ideology that was fed it.

Waters is great as Petunia; Anderson is funny – and proves he can sing! Everyone does a stellar job with the material they were given. Nonetheless, this film was banned in many Southern states, which rejected the idea of a movie with Black performers in the lead roles. Today, Cabin in the Sky represents a tiny step forward and a big step sideways in the saga of Black culture in America.

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

NFR Project: 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Yankee Doodle Dandy”

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Scr: Robert Buckner, Edmund Joseph

Pho: James Wong Howe

Ed: George Amy

Premiere: May 29, 1942

126 min.

Fun fact: does this film exist because someone called Jimmy Cagney a Communist?

Evidently, yes. According to Patrick McGillican in his Cagney: The Actor as Auteur, in 1940 Cagney and 15 others were named as Communists by the supposed American Communist chief John R. Leech. Cagney was cleared, but a publicity corrective was needed. His brother, producer William, reportedly said, “We're going to have to make the goddamndest patriotic picture that's ever been made. I think it's the Cohan story”. (Cagney was hostile to George M. Cohan – the grandly successful Broadway actor, playwright, composer, lyricist, producer [1878-1942] -- who had famously sided with management during the pivotal Actors’ Equity strike of 1919.)

The resulting film is perhaps Hollywood’s most patriotic film, but it is largely fantasy. Even at the time of its release, critics called it out for its numerous factual inaccuracies. Cohan himself was dying at the time of its making, and it is said that this was a film of his life as he had wanted it to be. It is the rosy, high-stepping story of an indomitable entertainer who loved his country. (Having Michael Curtiz direct and James Wong Howe as cinematographer increases by considerable odds the success of your film project.)

Cohan did start off as a boy performer with his family; here his egotism loses the family jobs until he learns his lesson and gets a spanking. (Warning: there is a brief scene of the Four Cohans in blackface. Racism was still casual in Movieland.) Nonetheless, he grows up into Cagney and, in that incarnation, he is compulsively watchable. Cagney’s natural go-get-it spirit and easy familiarity with the camera make him a magnetizing Cohan.

Cohan is blackballed for his arrogant behavior. He struggles, plugging his songs. He falls in love with and marries Mary (an amalgam of Cohan’s two wives). He makes a pitch for his musical, 1904’s Little Johnny Jones, containing the smash hit “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. Finally a success, his shows proliferate on Broadway.

A producer in the film summarizes his appeal to audiences of the day: “He's the most original thing on Broadway. You know why? Because he's the whole darn country, squeezed into one pair of pants. His writing, his songs, why even his walk and his talk. They all touch something way down here in people. Don't ask me why it is, but it happens every time the curtain goes up. It's pure magic. . ."

“I know his formula," responds a haughty singer. “A fresh young sprout gets rich between 8:30 and 11:00 p.m.”

“Yes,” says the producer. “George M. Cohan has invented the success story, and every American loves it because it happens to be his own private dream. He's found the mainspring in the antique clock. Ambition, pride, patriotism. That's why they call him the Yankee Doodle Boy.”

“Critics said musicals and cheap comedies were all I could write," says Cagney in voiceover. “I'd wave a flag, they said. Nothing else.” He writes “Mary” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “Over There.”

And oh what musical numbers are conceived and carried off here! The camera captures the thrill in these performances, led by Cagney’s impeccable half-singing, half-chanting vocals and expert dancing in the stiff-legged style of Cohan himself. (Cagney won Best Actor for this uncharacteristic role, and proved himself an old song-and-dance man at heart.) Eventually, the camera moves into the action and the stage dissolves and we get epic stretches of tuneful patriotic fervor. The choruses of military men, brass bands, and general flag-waving is very stirring – just what America wanted to see at the beginning of its involvement in a world war the outcome of which was not yet certain. America is portrayed are the epitome of mankind’s hopes – as indeed, at the time it was, aspirationally.

He retires, he returns to the stage in an F.D.R. impression in the musical I’d Rather Be Right (1937).

The framing story of this narrative is that Cohan is summoned to the White House by Roosevelt himself. Cohan thinks he’s in trouble for making fun of the President, and he nervously narrates this smoothly-flowing stream of reminiscence of his life. In the end, F.D.R. awards him a Gold Medal from the American people “because of his ability to instill in the hearts of the growing citizenry a loyal and patriotic spirit for their country and what it stands for in the eyes of the world.” 

Cagney says, "I wouldn't worry about this country, if I were you. We got this thing licked. Where else in the world can a plain guy like me come in and talk things over with the head man?"

Roosevelt replies, "That's about as good a definition of America that I ever heard."

Cagney gratefully accepts the medal and descends the majestic staircase of the White House. As he walks down, he gently segues into a cheerful little tap routine. Supposedly, Cagney threw this bit in off the cuff; it is a perfect evocation of the character. Cagney deserved his Oscar.

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

NFR Project: 'Woman of the Year' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Woman of the Year”

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Ring Lardner, Jr., Michael Kanin

Pho: Joseph Ruttenberg

Ed: Frank Sullivan

Premiere: Feb. 19, 1942

114 min.

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn were both respected actors when they collaborated for the first time on this film. The chemistry they generated was amazing, and it enlivened the next eight films they made together. Their real-life romance comes to life on screen in Woman of the Year.

The idea for the movie came from writer Garson Kanin, who passed off writing responsibilities to his brother Michael when he joined the armed services during World War II. The premise is based on the reputation of the formidable journalist of the day Dorothy Thompson, who seemed to go everywhere, cover everything, and make informed pronouncements about it to the nation. What would it be like to have a relationship with her?

Tracy was solid, imperturbable, wry, confident. Hepburn was quick, lively, witty, intelligent. On and off the screen, they fell in love. This was complicated largely by Tracy’s marriage, which he refused to leave. They were as together as they could be until Tracy’s death in 1967.

Here, Sam Craig (Tracy) is a sports columnist for the fictional newspaper the New York Chronicle. He gets into a spat with the paper’s political affairs correspondent Tess Harding (Hepburn). They clash, then discover a mutual fascination for each other. Hurriedly, they wed – and Sam discovers that he is just a footnote in Tess’s busy career. He puts up with it for as long as he can, but after an escalating number of castrating events, he declares he is ready to give up on the marriage.

Tess, seeing her father wed her aunt in a beautiful and touching ceremony, determines to make things right with Sam. She returns home and tries to make him breakfast, a task she is not up to. Sam observes her, and goes to her, claiming that he does not want to either be ignored or waited on. He wants a marriage of equals, and Tess agrees.

It is quite obvious from the way Tracy and Hepburn regard each other that they are falling in love on screen. Each of them is witty and engaging, and their comic timing together is perfect. This is a naturalistic film, and both actors play the comedy with a great sense of minimalism and detail. George Stevens was a fine director; here, he leans on two-shots and close-ups, letting the leads take up the screen with their memorable, expressive faces. The script is filled with taut gags (“You read Chinese? Fluently!”)

Tracy’s Sam is grumpy but human. When Tracy is told he must wait outside Hepburn’s office, his features flash into outright anger for a moment, and then relax into a more charitable arrangement in a disarming facial expression. Hepburn bats her lashes and leans in to her conversations with Tracy, fascinated and fascinating at the same time.

The film’s ending was changed after previews. Instead of the breakfast scene in the finished ending, the original conclusion had Tess interfering in Sam’s prizefighting coverage. It seems that Hepburn’s character had to be punished for her presumptuousness, and the breakfast scene takes her down a peg.

The film was wildly successful, and prompted the numerous co-starrings the two engaged in through the next two decades. This is subtle comedy for the emotionally mature.

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

NFR Project: 'Tulips Shall Grow' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Tulips Shall Grow”

Dir: George Pal

Scr: Cecil Beard, George Pal, Jack Miller

Pho: George Pal

Premiere: June 26, 1942

7 min.

The film marks the bursting on to the scene of animator George Pal. Pal was born in Hungary, started off as an architect, and moved into the profession of animation. He was so talented he was made the head of Germany’s UFA studio’s animation department. However, the rise of Hitler caused him to move to Holland. He continued his career there, but then, again to escape the Nazis, he and his wife relocated to America.

He found work in animation at Paramount, and there crafted his unique take on stop-motion animation – replacement animation. Instead of posing flexible figures, Pal would create new puppets or parts of puppets to shoot one frame at a time, allowing him more flexibility with the images produced.

Here, he tells the story of two Netherlanders – Jan and Janette. They live in windmills, and play music and dance happily amid fields of tulips. Suddenly, over the horizon comes an army of “screwballs” – mechanical figures that are obvious stand-ins for Nazis. The Screwballs lay waste to the countryside, and Jan and Janette are separated.

Jan winds up praying and crying inside a ruined church. His prayers seem to be answered when a powerful rainstorm lashes down, destroying the enemy’s planes and tanks and rusting all the invaders until they disintegrate. Then Jan finds Janette, and they resume their happy lives. The windmills reconstitute themselves, and the tulips grow again.

Pal’s techniques would hold him in good stead for decades to come, during which he would help create such classic sci-fi films as When Worlds Collide (1951) and The Time Machine (1960).

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'To Be or Not to Be' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “To Be or Not to Be”

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch

Scr: Edwin Justis Mayer

Pho: Rudolph Mate

Ed: Dorothy Spencer

Premiere: March 6, 1942

99 min.

Is Hitler funny? Chaplin thought so, and he mocked him in his The Great Dictator (1940). The great comedic director Ernst Lubitsch thought so too, although many disagreed with him.

Lubitsch said, “What I have satirized in this picture are the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology. I have also satirized the attitude of actors who always remain actors regardless how dangerous the situation might be, which I believe is a true observation. It can be argued if the tragedy of Poland realistically portrayed in To Be or Not to Be can be merged with satire. I believe it can be and so do the audience which I observed during a screening of To Be or Not to Be, but this is a matter of debate and everyone is entitled to his point of view.”

To Be or Not to Be has grown in reputation over the years. The combination of political thriller and wicked satire was jarring for most audiences of the day, leaving them uncertain as to whether to laugh or not.

The film takes place in Warsaw at the beginning of World War II. A theater troupe wants to put on a play called Gestapo, but the local censors ban its performance. The leading actor of the theater, Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), is a vain ham who fears his actress wife (Carole Lombard) is cheating on him. A handsome young flier (Robert Stack) leaves the theater when Tura starts his “To be or not to be” speech from Hamlet and visits Lombard backstage.

The Nazis invade Poland, and Stack goes to England to serve in the allied air force. The theater people plod on glumly.

In London, a supposed resistance leader, Dr. Siletsky, volunteers to take messages from the Polish fliers to their families. In reality, he is a double agent who plans to turn over the fliers’ information to the Nazis. Stack is sent back to Warsaw to intercept and assassinate Siletsky, and stop the flow of information to the Gestapo. Tura agrees to help the resistance stop Siletsky.

The performers trick Siletsky into giving the list of names and addresses to them. Tura plays a Nazi, Colonel Ehrhardt. “So, they call me ‘Concentration Camp Ehrhart’?” he chuckles in character. Siletsky quickly gets wise and tries to escape, but is shot dead. Tura must now impersonate Siletsky in order to get his hands on a duplicate copy of the information.

Tura as Siletsky meets with the real Colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Rumann). “So they call me ‘Concentration Camp Ehrhardt’, eh?” he chuckles. “I thought you’d react that way,” says Tura. Unfortunately, the real Siletsky’s body is found, and Tura’s deception is discovered. He is locked in a room with Siletsky’s dead body – the Nazis hope he will crack. Instead, Tura shaves off Siletsky’s beard and replaces it with a false one, pulling it off in front of the Nazis to prove that he is the real Siletsky. Suddenly, his acting troupe, all dressed up as Nazis, break into Gestapo headquarters and reveal that he is an imposter, taking him into “custody.”

Now the troupe must escape. Using an actor disguised as Hitler (“Heil myself,” he says at one point) they bluff their way to a waiting plane and make their way out of Poland.

The Nazis are stupid, the actors are self-indulgent, and no one gets off unscathed in this movie. Of particular interest is Jack Benny’s performance. The radio comedian was not known for his film performances, but Lubitsch thought Benny’s egotistical, brittle persona was perfect for Tura. Benny later reported that Lubitsch said, “You think you are a comedian. You are not a comedian . . . you are fooling the public for thirty years. You are fooling even yourself. A clown, he is a performer what is doing funny things. A comedian, he is a comedian what is saying funny things. But you, Jack, you are an actor, you are an actor playing the part of a comedian and this you are doing very well.”

The film is also notable for the fact that it was the last performance of Carole Lombard, who was killed in a plane crash shortly after filming wrapped. Her cool delivery in a supporting role is a worthy monument to her genuine comedic genius.

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

NFR Project: 'Road to Morocco' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Road to Morocco”

Dir: David Butler

Scr: Frank Butler, Don Hartman

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: Irene Morra

Premiere: Nov. 10, 1942

83 min.

First of all, read Richard Zoglin’s excellent essay on this film at the Library of Congress website.

For me, the central conceit of the Hope/Crosby “Road” films is that it is all, after all, just a movie. The comedy duo takes nothing seriously, mysteriously gifted with the sense that all that defines their existence is their proclivity to crack jokes about whatever situation they are in.

Now, for 1942, this attitude was refreshing. People were tired of realism; finding themselves at war was surely a part of it. A film that tells this kind of tale is looking to distract you, to pick your comedy pocket while it does its sleight of hand. It is not so much a film as it is the performance of the making of a film, a post-modernist kind of entertainment that congratulates us for being in on the gag. We know that, for them, this is all just another gig.

The chemistry of smooth crooner Bing Crosby and fast-talking comic Bob Hope was exceptional. The deadpan of Crosby paired with the manic mugging of Hope was a perfect repartee-barbed volleyball game. Their dialogue developed, loose and informal, like a jazz improvisation. Between the age of Laurel and Hardy and the age of Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby were moviedom’s comedy kings, and their relaxed, sometimes smarmy “Is this thing on?” sensibility was much imitated by all manner of comedians.

The two made seven Road pictures in all, between 1940 and 1962. This is the third and the most successful. As usual, Crosby is the smart schemer with the beautiful voice, and Hope is the cowardly, inane schpritzer, letting loose a torrent of clowning that sometimes makes Crosby look comatose. It was a formula that worked.

Crosby is Jeff Peters, and Hope is his idiot cousin Orville “Turkey” Jackson. They are adrift upon the ocean, victim of Orville’s idiocy with matches. They land in a desert country and fall in with Arabians; chiefly, their princess (the ever-lovely Dorothy Lamour). Crosby sells Hope as a slave, but finds that Hope is in the lap of the princess, prepared to be her (doomed) husband.

Hope is resigned to die at the hands of the stone-faced Kasim (Anthony Quinn!). They crack wise through being abducted, abandoned in the desert, then chased by bandits, all while Crosby gets the girl. They sabotage the meeting of the sheiks, allowing them to escape. (Crosby dumps gunpowder into a batch of hand-rolled cigarettes; Hope opines, “What are you making, reefers?”)

Two camels with animated eyes and mouths discuss the proceedings. “When I see how silly people behave, I’m glad I’m a camel,” says one. “Oh, I’m glad you’re a camel too, Mabel!” says the other, his eyes rolling lasciviously. 

Somewhere in there, Der Bingle sings that great hit song, “Moonlight Becomes You” (Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke).

It’s a film that goes at the pace of a gag a minute. It’s got a little of everything in it, and nothing is taken seriously (except by Anthony Quinn).

It’s hokey, it’s corny, it’s vaguely racist. We are living in the land of comic stereotypes. It’s just what a stressed-out WWII-era audience found to be entertaining. If you dig Crosby, or you like Hope, or both, then this film is right up your alley. If you’re not into their pre-hipster banter then this film will be a irritant.

Hope and Crosby were not friendly in real life, and the put-downs they trade have some of that emotional juice to them. They were pros going through their paces.

But they made it look easy; they made it look as though they were in it just for kicks.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: To Be or Not to Be.

 

 

NFR Project: 'Now, Voyager' (1942)

 

NFR Project: “Now, Voyager”

Dir: Irving Rapper

Scr: Casey Robinson

Pho: Sol Polito

Ed: Warren Low

Premiere: Oct. 22, 1942

117 min.

It’s the most romantic film you could possibly hope for. It’s a woman’s film, but remarkably it’s not about a woman’s relationship with a man; it’s about a woman establishing herself as an independent, integrated personality.

Most “women’s pictures” revolved around a woman’s relationship with a man, for better or worse. Instead, Now, Voyager is about the central character’s liberation from a repressed personality to a free-willed, confident member of society. Containing a revelatory performance from Bette Davis, the movie speaks to the possibility of freeing oneself from negative, destructive patterns into a life marked by inner peace and contentment, a remarkable statement for its time.

Davis is Charlotte Vale, a wealthy Bostonian, a dowdy, subdued, and overweight young woman dominated by her controlling bitch of a mother (Gladys Cooper). She lives quietly in her room until she is treated by the psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), who takes her into his care and teaches her how to think, and live, for herself. Almost magically, Charlotte drops some weight and restyles herself into a beautiful swan of a human being.

Jaquith sends her on an ocean cruise to avoid her mother undoing all the work she has done. There she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid), a dashing architect who happens to be trapped in a loveless marriage. The two fall in love, but realize they cannot be together. In a grand romantic gesture, Jerry lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to her – an iconic move repeated throughout the film. (Max Steiner’s lush score underpinning every significant moment, is magnificent.)

Charlotte returns home, and handles her mother handily. (She lights a fire in her home’s long-unused fireplace, symbolically relighting her spirit. She wears camellias, a reminder of her romance with Jerry.) Charlotte gets engaged to a fellow high-society member, but cancels the engagement when she reaizes she still loves Jerry. She tells her mother, who verbally abuses her. Charlotte stands up for herself and it literally kills her mother!

She returns to Dr. Jaquith’s sanitarium, and there meets Tina, the alienated daughter of Jerry and his wife. She befriends her, becoming a second mother to her. Jerry finds out, and wants to relieve Charlotte of the burden of caring for Tina. But Charlotte refuses, insisting that, even though they can’t be together, they can share in the upbringing of Tina. “Oh, Jerry,” she says, “let’s not ask for the moon; we have the stars!”

Davis gives bravura performance as an ugly duckling who transforms into a healthy and sane person. She learns how to overcome her feelings of inferiority, asserting herself and charting her own path in life. (Of course, being a millionaire helps; her gowns are gorgeous.) Now, Voyager is a paean to self-realization.

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

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.