NFR Project: 'The Bad and the Beautiful' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “The Bad and the Beautiful”

Dir: Vincente Minnelli

Scr: Charles Schnee

Pho: Robert L. Surtees

Ed: Conrad A, Nervig

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1952

118 min.

It’s another in that grand tradition of “Hollywood is hell” movies which Hollywood loves to tell. It purports to tell the real backstage story of the dirty business known as show. In this, it’s a kind of Citizen Kane-esque tale, told by three people who were screwed over by the central character.

Three prominent Hollywood types – director Fred (Barry Sullivan), starlet Georgia (Lana Turner) and writer Bartlow (Dick Powell) – convene in film producer Harry’s (Walter Pidgeon) office. They are pitched to support a new project from washed-up producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas, playing his usual charismatic rotter). They refuse, and each of them thinks back to their interactions with him. These flashbacks constitute the story.

Shields is an unscrupulous man who will do anything to get his films made. After we get the lowdown on what he’s done to them, we have no problem with their lack of enthusiasm about working with him. Yet at the end, they are listening to his proposal.

Shields was supposedly based on Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. Director Minnelli makes a backhanded tribute to the ins and outs of Tinseltown, turning a movie about an unpleasant person into a poisonous valentine to the business.

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

NFR Project: 'The Thing (from Another World)' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “The Thing (from Another World)”

Dir: Christian Nyby

Scr: Charles Lederer, Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Roland Gross

Premiere: April 7, 1951

87 min.

The idea of alien conquest was as old as H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel The War of the Worlds, but this was an onslaught. The positive and negative poles of that speculative subgenre were released in the same year, 1951 — Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, about a Christlike ambassador from outer space, and Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby’s paranoid The Thing from Another World.

Thing was based on John W. Campbell’s scarier original 1938 story “Who Goes There?” (done justice years later by director John Carpenter). Despite Christian Nyby’s directorial credit, Thing is a Hawks film, containing many Hawks touches — the culture of manliness, the fast, overlapping, wisecracking dialogue, the idealization of teamwork, and the achievement of a definite mission. But Thing also contains all the hallmarks of ‘50s horror — aliens with unknown powers, pervasive paranoia, and a slam-bang violent conclusion.

A military crew and scientists examine a crashed alien starship in the Arctic. They seek to free it from the ice with “thermite” bombs, but succeed only in destroying it completely (and looking like a bunch of idiots as they do it). They do find a eight-foot-tall . . . something . . . frozen in the ice beside the ship. They chop out the giant ice cube and bring it back to their research station and military base. The scientists want to thaw it out and study it. The leader decides to keep it on ice. An idiot covers the icy slab with a ELECTRIC blanket, unleashing a blood-drinking vegetable being bent on destroying them all, the possible harbinger of a future invasion.

All the archetypes are present. Robert Cornthwaite plays to perfection the egotistical, dour intellectual, the Nobel-winning “egghead” scientist with well-formed vowels who insists on endangering all humanity in the name of knowledge (a more well-behaved but no less mad scientist type). In this movie, the pointy-headed intellectuals are the fools and villains who endanger the Earth.

Kenneth Tobey plays the hypermasculine leader, fond of following orders and sticking to practical solutions. There is a chauvinist cast to the whole enterprise — the Arctic research station’s greenhouse door is locked because “the Eskimos are too fond of our strawberries.” Someone says at one point, “You look like a lynch mob.”

Margaret Sheridan is simultaneously the scientist’s secretary and the leader’s love interest — the typical Hawksian tough girl, who can drink and smoke and banter with the best of them — a prehistoric predecessor of the fabled “Final Girl” in horror film. (As the decade progressed, this female archetype, mirroring the culture’s swing toward sexism, devolved rapidly back into the archetype of Helpless Female Victim. To kill monsters during the 1950s, you needed a penis, and were preferably white, American, and Christian: in that order.)

The film is taut, fast-moving. The creature starts draining the personnel; it lurks in the freezing cold, defying bullets and flames. Finally, Sheridan comes up with the solution. “What do you do with a vegetable? You cook it!” The men set up an electrical trap for the monster. The mad scientist runs to the creature, trying to communicate, praising it as superior to Earth men. It promptly decimates him with a blow to the clavicle. The men fry the creature.

Hawks legitimized the science-fiction genre simply by making a good, solid film within its strictures, filming the unreal in a ho-hum, every-day, deadpan style. Hawks showed that the new gimmicks could fit into a standard Hollywood template.

The heart of Thing is not science-fiction but horror — the threat of destruction, the fear of what’s on the other side of the door. In fact, the Cold War subtext comes right to the surface in the final line — “Keep watching the skies!” The price of freedom in the America of the 1950s was eternal paranoia.

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

NFR Project: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “A Streetcar Named Desire”

Dir: Elia Kazan

Scr: Tennessee Williams, Oscar Saul

Pho: Harry Stradling

Ed: David Weisbart

Premiere: Sept. 19, 1951

125 min.

It’s one of the best film adaptations of a great American play – until it blows the ending.

This film features three actors – Marlon Brando, Him Hunter, and Karl Malden -- in the roles they originated in this play on Broadway in 1947. Tennessee Williams’ landmark drama was a huge hit, and soon spawned a British production starring Vivian Leigh as the tragic heroine Blanche DuBois.

When the time came to make the film, the eminent director who opened the play, Elia Kazan, was behind the camera. Jessica Tandy, who originated the role of Blanche on stage, was out of the running as the producers wanted more of a name in the title role. Fortunately, they engaged Vivian Leigh, who is iconic here. Together with the three original actors, she staged the definitive interpretation of a stunning and savagely beautiful drama. Leigh, Malden, and Hunter won Oscars for their roles (Brando lost out to Bogart that year).

The film is largely stagebound, barring a few attempts to take the audience out of the seedy New Orleans flat inhabited by crude, working-class Stanley (Brando) and his wife Stella (Hunter). Along comes Stella’s sister, ex-teacher Blanche (Leigh), who is at the end of her rope. A self-styled delicate Southern belle, she is penniless – having lost the family home and been fired for a dalliance with a young student.

She camps out in Stella and Stanley’s place, infuriating Stanley, who begins to poke into her past. Meanwhile, Blanche sparks a courtship from Stanley’s buddy Mitch (Malden). As Blanche becomes more and more delusional, Stanley reveals Blanche’s indiscretions to Mitch, who rejects her. At the same time, Stella has her baby. The night she’s at the hospital, Blanche and Stanley clash for the final time, which ends in him raping her (it is implied – his famous line, “We had this date with each other from the beginning,” is absent here).

Soon after, Blanche is committed to a mental asylum. The doctors come for her; she leaves tentatively, now completely mad. “Whoever you are,” she says, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

Then the movie blows it. In the play, nothing changes between Stanley and Stella at the end. Due to the consideration of the film censors, Stanley could not be seen as getting away with doing evil, as he does in the play. Therefore, in the film Stella walks out on Stanley. Finis.

Despite this, it’s an extraordinary film document. The quartet of primary characters – Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch – are expertly embodied. Leigh is masterful. Her Blanche is like a ravaged, unstable Scarlett O’Hara, living feebly on the remnants of her charm. Her world is gone; she drifts aimlessly in the present, one step above homelessness. Her belief in the illusion of grace and propriety is belied by her alcoholic, slatternly behavior – a division of personality she resolves by losing her mind.

And Brando. He blew the door wide open with this performance. If he had done nothing else in his decades-long career, he would be remembered for his Stanley. He is a force of nature – completely immersed in the scene, violently unable to do otherwise than to inhabit this frustrated, angry dynamo of a character. Williams intended Blanche to be the heroine, but Stanley is played with such a raw edge of energy and unpredictability that it almost becomes Brando’s film. This performance would codify and popularize the acting discipline known as “the Method.” The Oscars they won are a tribute to the other three actors that they stand up to Brando and acquit themselves honorably.

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

NFR Project: 'A Place in the Sun' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “A Place in the Sun”

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Michael Wilson, Harry Brown

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: William Hornbeck

Premiere: Aug. 14, 1951

122 min.

It’s derived from Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel An American Tragedy – and it certainly is. It’s a profound critique of capitalism garbed in a true-crime plot. Grace Brown fell in love with Chester Gillette, who was the nephew of the factory owner for whom Brown worked. In 1906, Grace Brown was murdered by her lover by drowning after she revealed to him that she was pregnant. Her love letters to him, which he kept, damned him. He was executed in the electric chair.

In the film, George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) is an ambitious young man without any education or connections. He falls in with his rich uncle, who hires him to work at his factory. George agrees, and while working there falls into a relationship with shopgirl Alice (Shelley Winters) – which is forbidden by company policy.

George meets and falls in love with Angela (Elizabeth Taylor), a beautiful and wealthy young socialite. Suddenly, Alice announces she is pregnant. George puts her off, keeping their relationship secret while he sucks up to and hangs around with Angela, her parents, and her rich friends. He explains to Alice that he is just trying to better their lot in life by being promoted.

Finally, Alice gives him an ultimatum. He must marry her. They go to the Justice of the Peace, but his office is closed due to Labor Day. George proposes that they spend the night at a nearby lodge. He pretends the car is out of gas, then rents a boat for the two of them under a false name.

They row far out onto the lake and Alice tries to reason with him, telling him how they will be happy, if poor; and finally wonders if he wants her dead. He denies it angrily; she stands up and capsizes the boat. She drowns; he swims to shore.

George tries to cover his tracks, but he does so poorly, and is soon apprehended. Raymond Burr has a fine turn as an intrepid prosecuting attorney; George is promptly found guilty.

In an improbable coda, Angela visits George on Death Row, proclaims her undying love for him and kisses him. As he is marched to the site of execution, his mind goes back to a vision of Angela’s rapturous face.

Poor George. His social, romantic, and economic ambitions completely dull him to compassion and good sense. His desire to be with Angela and be a big shot turns him into a murderer, in thought if not in deed. Clift plays George as a person devoid of character; thinking only in terms of the immediate future. Clift and Winters were nominated for Oscars. The film won six Oscars, including Best Director for George Stevens.

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

NFR Project: 'Gerald McBoing-Boing" (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Gerald McBoing-Boing”

Dir: Robert Cannon, John Hubley

Scr: Dr. Seuss, Phil Eastman, Bill Scott

Premiere: Nov. 4, 1950

7 min.

This delighted short animated subject was created at the studios of United Productions of America (UPA). UPA was an independent animation production house, made up primarily of defectors from Disney studios. They broke away from the realistic style of the time and emphasized a free and stylized approach that influenced animators who followed. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

It’s the story of the boy of the title, Gerald McClory, who speaks only in sound effects. (The story, by Dr. Seuss, was originally made for a sound recording scored by Billy May and narrated by Hal Peary. Here, Marvin Miller provides the narration and all the voices.) He doesn’t get along with his schoolmates, who call him “Gerald McBoing-Boing.” After angering his father, Gerald decides to run away, but before he can hop a freight train, he is buttonholed by a radio executive. The man signs him up to do all the effects for his radio shows, which Gerald does par excellence. Now a success, everyone is happy about his unique talent.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Notes on the Port of St. Francis.

NFR Project: 'Duck and Cover' (1952)

  

NFR Project: “Duck and Cover”

Dir: Anthony Rizzo

Scr: Raymond J. Mauer

Pho: Drummond Drury

Premiere: 1952

9:15

It’s the most dissociative thing I’ve ever seen. It consciencelessly lies to children about their chances of survival in an atomic attack. It’s what was known as a civil-defense film; it was propaganda.

I am a Space Age kid. Born in 1960, I grew up in a house with a bomb shelter in the basement. You can read that story here.

During the Cold War, the uncertainty about the perils of Communism and the Soviet Union was intense. It provoked a second Red Scare, from 1946 to 1957 (the first being in 1919-1920). It motivated people to build bomb shelters in their backyards. Public buildings had yellow-and-back signs on them stating their status as a “Fallout Shelter.” The idea of nuclear annihilation was thought to be high, especially after the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in August of 1949.

There were a lot of misconceptions about what an atomic bomb could do to you, despite the excruciating reporting of John Hersey in his Hiroshima in 1946. This film reinforces them all.

We are shown a cartoon turtle, Bert. A monkey dangles a firecracker in front of him; Bert goes into his shell. The firecracker blows up. The monkey vanishes; the tree is wrecked. Bert is fine. And a cute little jingle proclaims: “There was a turtle by the name of Bert/and Bert the turtle was very alert/When danger threatened him he never got hurt/he knew just what to do:/He'd duck and cover!/Duck and cover!/He did what we all must learn to do/You, and you, and you, and you/Duck and cover!”

Then the film shows us what it means: schoolchildren get under their desks, clasp their hands behind their heads, and scrunch down into a ball. This is the government’s recommendation for the population in case of atomic attack. Duck and cover.

“If you were not ready and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways.” No kidding.

In all probability, many of these schoolchildren would be vaporized. The survivors on the edges of the blast will all have been polluted with radiation, sporting tattered flesh. The film does not cover this. Instead, we are proffered the examples of good little children in various situations, ducking and covering. In the end, we are shown a family crouched under a picnic blanket.

This film was rightly cited extensively in the 1982 documentary The Atomic Café. It represents the wishful thinking of a generation of adults who had no idea what they were talking about.

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

NFR Project: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Dir: Robert Wise

Scr: Edmund H. North

Pho: Leo Tover

Ed: William H. Reynolds

Premiere: Sept. 18, 1951

92 min.

“Gort – Klaatu barada nikto.”

It’s not just one of the most intelligent and compelling science-fiction films ever made; it’s one of the most intelligent and thoughtful films ever made. It’s a perfect example of the science-fiction genre’s power to use elements of the fantastic to create a commentary on the virtues and foibles of the human race.

From the beginning, this movie was intended to send a message. Producer Julian Blaustein was looking to make a film that would be a cry for world peace, an appropriate ambition in the fraught early days of the Cold War and the threat of atomic annihilation. He searched sci-fi literature until he found the 1940 short story by Harry Bates, “Farewell to the Master.” He turned to the project over to screenwriter Edmund North, who adapted it with the aid of sci-fi writer Raymond F. Jones.

North deliberately made the story a paraphrase of the life of Jesus. The main character appears, preaches tolerance and peace, is murdered by the state, is resurrected, and ascends into heaven! Not too subtle. Still, North created an intriguing script full of apt philosophizing while not sacrificing the complexity and depth of the characters involved. This film assumes the audience’s intelligence.

An alien spaceship enters Earth’s atmosphere and is picked up on the radars of the world. It lands on the Mall in Washington, D.C. An enormous robot and a silver-clad figure exit. The robot destroys some of the offensive weapons around him with a burst of glowing light. Of course, the figure is shot by a soldier. He is captured and taken to a military hospital.

There we learn he is Klaatu (Michael Rennie), an emissary from beyond the stars who has come on a mission to share with the entire world. The powers of the world must disarm and embrace the end of violent conflict. Given that mankind has discovered atomic energy and rocketry, the Earth is now seen as a potential threat to the rest of the universe. Klaatu states that, if humanity goes on as it has, the Earth will be destroyed.

The U.S. government does not agree that a meeting of all the nations of the world can take place, given the tensions and divisions in the world. Klaatu then escapes, donning the identity of a Mr. Carpenter (another obvious Jesus nod). He registers at a nearby boarding house, and befriends young Bobby (Billy Gray) and his mother Helen (Patricia Neal).

Eventually, Klaatu/Carpenter obtains a meeting with Prof. Barnhardt (the great Sam Jaffe), the leading scientist of his day. Barnhardt vows to gather representatives from around the world to hear Klaatu’s speech. Klaatu wonders whether a demonstration of his power would help the world recognize the gravity of the situation; Barnhardt suggests something “dramatic, but not dangerous.”

The next day, Klaatu stops all the electric energy on the planet (save for hospitals, planes in flight. etc.) for a half-hour. That gets everyone’s attention. Klaatu waits for the evening to come to make his speech – but he is turned in to the military by Helen’s crass boyfriend Tom (Hugh Marlowe), who seeks fame and fortune for ratting out the “space man.” While escaping the troops, Klaatu is shot dead.

However, he has told Helen what to say to Gort the robot in case his death occurred. “Gort – Klaatu barada nikto.” She dashes to the robot and recites the line. Gort goes off, obtains Klaatu’s body, returns him to the spaceship, and in a long, engaging scene restores him to life. Gort, Klaatu, and Helen exit the ship. Klaatu admonishes the crowd gathered there one more time, and flies away.

The message is unmistakable – get your act together or die.

Robert Wise was a brilliant and versatile director; as he did in his third film, The Body Snatcher (1945), he paints his composition in strong, shadowy contrasts, faces illuminated starkly. He uses deep focus. He places every significant element need for the story in the shot, and eliminates all superfluous detail. This results in a very rich, engaging style that never lets you go, a virtue in any director.

His casting is perfect. Michael Rennie has a remote, ethereal style that fits our conception of a “space man.” Patricia Neal as Helen goes on a journey as well. She is the stand-in for the audience. She hears Klaatu’s message and agrees to aid him. When her boyfriend Tom turns Klaatu in, Helen declares to him that “she is not getting married to anyone!” She liberates herself from (Earth)male dominion. By film’s end, she’s seen the inside of the spaceship and she has earned Klaatu’s affection. She undergoes a life-changing, self-actuating experience.

The special effects, by Melbourne A. Arnold and Hal Miller, are outstanding. They are low-key but commanding. The vaporizing of various objects and people is conducted competently. The spaceship, constructed with the help of Frank Lloyd Wright, is just abstract enough to remain intriguing, inside and out. (It seals itself, seamlessly and impenetrably, when it closes.) The scene of Gort dissolving a cast of superplastic he’s placed in, burning it slowly to the ground, is handled adroitly.

As to the music: this was Bernard Herrmann’s first score after moving to Hollywood from New York. It is famously disremembered as the first film score to use the unique, eerie electronic instrument the theremin. If you are playing at home, know that the first use of the theremin was in the score for Odna (1930) by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was used by orchestral arranger Robert Russell Bennett in 1944’s Lady in the Dark, and Miklos Rozsa used it in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). It was a known commodity.

But Herrmann really made it iconic. He makes his opening theme a pun on Richard Strausss’s Thus Spake Zarathrustra, and moves boldly forward into musical language indebted to no one but himself. He scored the soundtrack for electrified violin, cello, and bass; he uses TWO theremins, “two Hammond organs, Fox studio's Wurlitzer organ, three vibraphones, two glockenspiels, marimba, tam-tam, two bass drums, three sets of timpani, two pianos, celesta, two harps, one horn, three trumpets, three trombones, and four tubas.^”

This concerted effort of excellent craftspeople remains a standard of its genre.

“I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. Now, we of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more... profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”

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

NFR Project: 'An American in Paris' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “An American in Paris”

Dir: Vincente Minelli

Scr: Alan Jay Lerner

Pho: Alfred Gilks, John Alton

Ed: Adrienne Fazan

Premiere: Oct. 4, 1951

113 min.

Was this picture really better than A Place in the Sun? A Streetcar Named Desire? Academy voters thought so, for they awarded this film with Best Picture in 1952, as well as with Oscars for best screenplay, score, cinematography, art direction, and set design. It even won a special Oscar for its choreography.

However, this film won plaudits on the strength of its final, 17-minute dance sequence, one of the most elaborate and expensive in MGM history. That consummate musical director Vincente Minnelli was at the helm, and his finishing extravaganza in this film is rightly considered his signature film creation.

The film is really more of a tone poem than a story. It takes place (natch) in Paris, where Gene Kelly plays Jerry Mulligan, an aspiring ex-G.I. who seeks fame and fortune as a painter. (Don’t look at his work too closely – it’s not that good.) He lives cheaply in a garret, next to his pal, aspiring composer Adam (Oscar Levant, playing his usual acerbic-friend role). Jerry captures the attention of rich cultural maven Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), who wants to sponsor him as a patron – and to get in his pants as well.

However, Jerry sees a young girl, Lise (Leslie Caron), in a café and falls for her immediately. Through persistence, he captures her heart. She, however, is engaged to the older musical star Henri (Georges Guetary). Can the two find happiness together? The script is gossamer-thin, and the ending is a foregone conclusion. What animates the story are the musical sequences imbedded within it, featuring the music of George and Ira Gershwin.

The initial dance numbers are very small-scale and informal, not requiring agreat deal of directorial thought. Gene taps for children and for his pal. Levant gets a bravura showpiece of him performing the final movement of Gershwin’s Concerto in F – in which he plays not only the piano but the conductor, violinists, and the appreciative audience as well. Kelly and Caron have a tender pas de deux by the banks of the Seine.

The final sequence is the highlight of the film. Set to Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” the extended ballet features Kelly and Caron cavorting among a crowd of elaborately dressed dancers who move through sets designed after the paintings of French artists such as Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. Explosively vibrant, the exuberant passage sums up the themes of the film, focusing on Kelly’s yearnings for Caron.

Gene Kelly’s inimitable dancing takes the spotlight, of course; Caron’s ballet training makes her an ideal partner. The massive resources of major film studios made such a film possible.

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

NFR Project: 'The African Queen' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “The African Queen”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: James Agee, John Huston

Pho: Jack Cardiff

Ed: Ralph Kemplen

Premiere: Dec. 26, 1951

105 min.

Do you see how John Huston’s name keeps popping in the National Film Registry?

There’s a reason for that. He knew how to tell a story on film. A versatile artist, he changed his style from movie to movie. There are few distinctive Huston-isms in his movies; Huston is always taking a direct, clear path through whatever material he has decided to master. He gives the story what it needs.

He gives the actors what they need, too. Huston's characters define themselves through action, but Huston always gives the players time to work out their feelings on the screen. Thus, he garners many acting awards for his performers. For this film, Bogart won his only Oscar.

The tale is, on its surface, simple. Take two contrasting natures, put them in a life-or-death situation, and watch what happens. A man and a woman take a perilous boat trip. She’s “respectable,” he a bit of a lout. They fall in love. Do they make it to their destination?

It is 1914. In German East Africa, a middle-aged brother (Robert Morley) and sister, Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) run a mission. Bringing them their mail and supplies by his little steamboat The African Queen is Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), one of those incessantly wearied by feeling put upon, washed with the genial glaze of the alcoholic. A long early scene shows the three interacting awkwardly together. Charlie’s lack of manners, and self-consciousness, contrast comically with the siblings’ genteel aspirations transplanted to the African bush.

World War I begins. The Germans attack, the village is burned, the brother is killed. Charlie returns to aid the situation. He buries the brother, and takes Rose with him on the boat.

They begin to travel down the Ulanga-Bora Rivers to freedom. That the two are a mismatched pair is to be expected. She is prim and proper, he is rough and coarse. Charlie explains that the Germans command a warship on the lake that is their destination. Rose has an inspired idea. Taking the supplies on the Queen, they could fashion torpedoes and ram into the side of the German warship.

Charlie reluctantly agrees, and down they go, shooting the rapids. Rose loves it. Charlie angrily refuses to continue, and berates Rose as he drinks heavily. She rebels, and pours out all his alcohol as he sleeps it off, leaving a trail of empty bottles in their wake. “A man takes a drop once in a while, it’s only human nature,” argues Charlie. “Nature,” replies Rose, “Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

Once again, Charlie gives in. They sail successfully past a German fort, and joyfully embrace – which turns into a clinch. It is implied that they sleep together. They go down a second set of rapids, more destructive than the first. They are forced to fix the ship’s drive shaft and propeller blade. The fight their way through mosquitoes, and pull the boat through a leech-infested swampy part of the river.

Finally, they make it to their destination, and prepare to ram the German ship. However, in a night storm the boat sinks. Charlie and Rose are picked up by the Germans, who are intent on hanging them. They ask to be married first. The captain of the German boat does so. Suddenly, the Queen surfaces and drfits into the German ship, exploding and  sinking it. Charlie and Rose survive, and swim off together.

This was Huston’s (and Bogart’s and Hepburn’s) first color film, but he keeps his colors muted, working in greens and grays. There is extensive location shooting in Africa, combined with some excellent in-studio tank work. A little miniature work and some dummy boat work complete the effort. Given the excellent script and the sheer watchability of Bogart and Hepburn, the result is a compulsively engaging film.

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

NFR Project: 'Ace in the Hole' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “Ace in the Hole”

Dir: Billy Wilder

Scr: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Doane Harrison, Arthur P. Schmidt

Premiere: June 14, 1951

111 min.

In 1949, director/screenwriter Billy Wilder’s long and highly successful collaboration with screenwriter Charles Brackett ended. Together, they created classics such Ninotchka, Ball of Fire, The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Boulevard. His first project after the end of their partnership was this film, a corrosive and cynical examination of the American way of life. It failed at the box office; however, it stands up today as a great film – albeit one that’s relentlessly downbeat.

The film’s premise is based on the famous 1925 incident of Floyd Collins, whose fatal entrapment in a Kentucky cave prompted a media frenzy and won the reporter covering the event a Pulitzer Prize. Here the setting is New Mexico, and the reporter in question is Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), a cynical and opportunistic newsman who’s been fired from 11 different papers and finds himself washed up with a job at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin.

Tatum prays for a story that will send him back into the limelight. He gets his prayer answered when pothunter Leo Minosa gets trapped in a cave-in at the site of an ancient cliff dwelling. Tatum sees the value in exploiting the story immediately. He befriends Leo, makes a deal with the crooked sheriff to cement a monopoly on the story, and begins to pump out copy.

Soon thousands of the curious are drawn to the site. Tatum deliberately delays the rescue operations so that he can make more of the story. He convinces Leo’s slatternly wife (Jan Sterling) to play the part of the bereaved spouse. Soon Leo’s roadside cantina and store starts raking in the bucks. Admission is charged to visit the site. A carnival sets up. Musicians make up songs about Leo, and people flock to buy the sheet music. The out-of-town papers struggle to get the story, but Tatum has a lock on it, quitting the Sun-Bulletin and making $1,000 a day. Everyone around poor Leo is on the take; Tatum is the ringleader. It is implied that he sleeps with Leo’s wife.

But then Leo sickens. The delayed rescue operation won’t get to him in time to save his life. Tatum gets into a fight with Leo’s wife, who stabs him with a pair of scissors. Tatum, wounded, fetches a priest, who administers the last rites to Leo. Tatum lets the story go and Leo dies. Everyone else gets the scoop but Tatum, and he is fired. The crowd disperses; all that is left is a trash-strewn roadside. Tatum goes back to the Sun-Bulletin, where he collapses and dies.

Wilder’s take on American society is blatantly caustic. Everyone is out for their own interests. Death and danger are merely ways to attract the gruesome public’s disgusting, vulturous attention. Everything is reduced to the simple equation – what will sell the most newspapers? Douglas is ruthlessly energetic as Tatum. Character actor Porter Hall has his greatest role as the publisher with a conscience.

Nobody liked Wilder’s blunt assessment of the behavior of the masses and the news game. Later decades would bring a reevaluation of the work, acknowledging it as an unvarnished pan of American culture.

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

NFR Project: 'Strangers on a Train' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “Strangers on a Train”

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde

Pho: Robert Burks

Ed: William Ziegler

Premiere: June 30, 1951

101 min.

Director Alfred Hitchcock continued his run as the Master of Suspense with this film, one of his most efficient entries in the genre.

The movie is adapted from the great crime writer Patricia Highsmith’s first novel of the same name. The idea is perfect: what if two individuals “traded” murders?

Tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is on a train where he randomly meets an attentive stranger, Bruno Antony (Robert Walker). Bruno, who gradually reveals himself to be mentally disturbed, eventually gets around to theorizing that two people could get away with murder if they each kill the other’s intended victim – giving both an alibi and no link to the commission of the crimes.

As Guy wants to be rid of his promiscuous wife Miriam (Kasey Rogers) in order to be with his beloved, senator’s daughter Anne (Ruth Roman), and Bruno wants to kill his hated father, Bruno thinks they should do each other’s dirty work. “Your wife. My father. Criss-cross!” he exclaims.

Guy nervously turns him down, thinking he is joking. He meets Miriam, who reveals she is pregnant by someone else. Guy wants a divorce, but Miriam won’t cooperate. In fact, she intends to claim that the baby is Guy’s.

Bruno then stalks Miriam at an amusement park and kills her –strangling her in a scene reflected dimly in Miriam’s shattered glasses on the ground – a difficult and masterful shot.

Guy immediately comes under suspicion, as he cannot prove his whereabouts at the time of the murder. Bruno then tries to blackmail Guy into killing Bruno’s father, using his possession of a distinctive lighter of Guy’s as evidence.

Bruno stalks Guy, crashing Anne’s father’s party. While there, he chats gaily about the best way to murder someone. Catching sight of Anne’s sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock, the director’s daughter), who resembles Miriam, he gets carried away and squeezes the neck of one of the guests until she cries out.

Bruno sends Guy a map of his house, a key, and a gun. Guy goes along, hoping to alert Bruno’s father about his intentions. However, Bruno is in his father’s bed, waiting for him. Bruno vows that he will make Guy fulfill his part of their supposed bargain.

Guy is trapped. Anne suspects the truth, and gets Guy to confess it to her. She tries warning Bruno’s mother about his insanity, to no avail. Bruno catches up with Anne and tells her that he intends to plant Guy’s lighter at the scene of the crime.

Now the race is on. Guy must compete in a championship tennis match before he can go to the amusement park to stop Bruno. Meanwhile, Bruno is busy getting to the scene first. Guy’s match goes long; he struggles for point after point as the clock ticks on. At the same time, Bruno loses the lighter down a grating and hysterically struggles to reach through it and grasp the incriminating object.

Both men succeed. Bruno gets there first, and is recognized by a witness to the murder. He leaps aboard a carousel; Guy follows him. A policeman shoots at Bruno, but kills the carousel operator instead, who falls onto the controls. The ride whirligigs out of control; the passengers scream (save for one delighted boy) as Bruno and Guy fight it out.

The carousel smashes up; Guy is flung free, but Bruno is crushed. Guy tries to get Bruno to confess before he dies, but Bruno refuses. As he dies, his clenched fist relaxes – and there is Guy’s lighter. Guy is exonerated.

Hitchcock has a marvelous time making this film. Bruno is Guy’s doppelganger, his shadow self. Guy wants to kill his wife – at one point, he cries out, “I could strangle her!” – but his civilized impulses restrain him. Not so for Bruno, a spoiled rich kid with a mother fixation and a father complex. Guy talks; Bruno, darkly, acts.

Everything is doubled in the film – the main characters, the glasses, the party guests, the detectives trailing Guy. The director keeps things bright around Guy, while Bruno operates in darkness. Hitchcock works his accustomed magic – ratcheting up the suspense as Guy toils to finish off his court opponent in tense silence, while simultaneously Bruno gropes for the lighter which could hang him.

Hitchcock was shortly to begin making color feature films. Strangers on a Train shows off his marvelous black-and-white technique, aided here ably by cinematographer Robert Burks.

In the novel, Guy commits the reciprocal murder. Hitchcock changes that to make it yet another one of his stories, like The 39 Steps and Saboteur, about an innocent man dragged into a disoriented world where death and calamity reign. Once again, Hitchcock’s hero stares into the abyss.

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

NFR Project: 'Winchester '73' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Winchester ‘73”

Dir: Anthony Mann

Scr: Borden Chase, Robert L. Richards

Pho: William H. Daniels

Ed: Edward Curtiss

Premiere: July 12, 1950

92 min.

Anthony Mann (1906-1967) was a genius.

Although he is best known today for his extensive work with Jimmy Stewart, with whom he made eight films, five of which were Westerns, Mann worked his way up from nothing. He started his career as a stage actor, and worked his way up to the position of director.

In 1937, he went to Hollywood and again, working from the bottom up, graduated into the role of director. He was versatile, but he became first known for his film noirs – T-Men, Strange Impersonation, Railroaded!, and Raw Deal. When a deal to make this movie with director Fritz Lang fell through, Jimmy Stewart picked Mann to helm the film. Mann rewrote the script with Borden Chase, and Winchester ’73 was born. It was the first of his Western collaborations with Stewart.

The idea of the “adult” Western was new. John Ford had always presented Westerns as adult dramas, but by and large Westerns for decades were kid stuff – featuring a white-hatted hero, a dastardly villain, and a damsel in distress. Chases, fistfights, and shootouts were crammed onto the screen.

Then, in 1947, Raoul Walsh made what is considered the first “noir” Western, Pursued. Dark, forbidding, and full of psychological torment, it heralded a shift in the way Westerns were made. Suddenly, the genre could accommodate complexity and ambiguity, and began to address real-life issues.

Winchester ’73 is firmly in this new tradition. Here, Stewart plays Lin McAdam, a sharpshooter in pursuit of the villainous Dutch Henry Brown, for reasons we are not privy to. He and his saddle pal High-Spade (Millard Mitchell) ride into Dodge City, Kansas. Lin finds his prey but can’t shoot him, as all guns in town are confiscated on entry by the sheriff. Both men enter a shooting contest to win a “One in a Thousand” Winchester 1873 rifle. Lin wins, but Dutch Henry ambushes him and steals his new rifle. He and his gang flee town without their guns.

Now the film takes us on an odyssey. The gun is a fetish; it imbues those who possess it with distinction and dominance. For a while. The rifle changes hands many times, and it brings bad luck and destruction to all who come across it. First, a sharpie, Lamont, (John McIntire) wins the gun a card game. He goes to sell arms to the Indians. There, the chief (a young Rock Hudson) decides he wants the rifle, and casually kills Lamont for it.

The tribe then attacks a troop of soldiers, and the chief is slain. A young trooper (Tony Curtis!) then gives the rifle to another man, who is promptly killed for it by Waco Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea, playing his usual film role of creep, only in Western wear). Johnny hooks up with Dutch, who takes the rifle back from him. Seeking to thwart another robbery by the gang, Lin kills Johnny.

Finally, Lin pursues Dutch into the bare and rocky landscape – and it is revealed that they are brothers. Dutch killed their father by shooting him in the back. A brief but exciting gun duel follows, with the brothers trying to kill each other with ricocheted bullets. Finally, Lin takes aim and nails Dutch, who falls to his death. The rifle has returned to Lin’s possession.

Stewart was playing a new kind of Western hero – a man haunted by past trouble, out for revenge. Stewart’s happy, lovable persona was replaced by something deeper. Lin is bitter, untrusting, obsessed. He refuses to share his problem with others, moving sternly forward in his quest for retribution. In a scene with Dan Duryea, Stewart snaps and dashes Duryea’s head on a bar, twisting his arm and demanding to know where Dutch is. There’s a wild gleam of rage in Stewart’s eye, and we feel how close he is to being overwhelmed by his violent instincts.

Mann’s West is markedly different from the usual setup. It’s dusty, dirty, crowded with characters following their own selfish agendas. Tragic blindness takes a front seat in Mann’s Westerns. Additionally, Mann upped the ante by shooting on location – the players are let loose in the vast empty space of the frontier, where their battles play out on an epic canvas.

Mann took the Western and moved it into new territory.

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

NFR Project: 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Sunset Boulevard”

Dir: Billy Wilder

Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshan Jr.

Pho: John F. Seitz

Ed: Doane Harrison, Arthur Schmidt

Premiere: August 10, 1950

110 min.

It’s a monumental story; it’s no surprise it inspired a lavish Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It’s operatic. It’s a noir. It’s a black comedy. It’s a character study.

That a film can do so many things at once is a tribute to its director, Billy Wilder. His ability to distill the exact amount of footage to tell a story richly, serious or comic, is legendary, and he is rightly featured many times in the National Film Registry.

Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece. Richard Corliss called it a horror story; David Thomson notes its irony in that the guy who wanted a Hollywood swimming pool ends up face-down dead in his. There are a host of interpretations of the meanings to be found in Wilder’s film – so much the better for Wilder. The movie welcomes a multiplicity of thoughts, as a great film does.

It’s yet another “movie about the movies” story, about how Hollywood is all fakery and ego. Yet at its heart is a titanically tragic figure, an insane former silent screen goddess whose predatory claws turn everything around into death and waste. Norma Desmond is played by Gloria Swanson, who herself was a “forgotten” actress from the Silent Era, a great star who made millions and ruled as royalty in Tinsel Town.

Swanson here plays the role of her career. Norma is a monster of self-regard, insulated by wealth from reality, living cocooned in her past greatness. She lives in the decayed grandeur of her Hollywood mansion. Her narcissism consumes everyone around her, and into her orbit drifts lackluster young screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by William Holden in the first of his trademark “lovable heel” roles. Joe is a hack; he hasn’t sold a screenplay in years, he is behind on his rent, and he refuses to quit the movie business and go back to life as a copy editor in Dayton, Ohio.

Holden narrates the flashback from the afterlife, as his dead body is floating in Norma Desmond’s pool. It seems that Joe pulled in to Norma’s demesne one day, fleeing from men looking to repossess his car. She mistakes him for a funeral director; she is burying her pet monkey. Joe agrees to look over a script she contemplates as being for her big comeback (it is wretchedly awful). Norma is rich; she finds out he’s broke, pays off the landlord, and brings all his stuff to her house. She needs a new pet.

Slowly, Norma starts grooming him, taking him out with her, and eventually – yes, we are given to believe – sleeping with him. Swanson as Desmond is a grotesque caricature of a woman, but there are moments when you can see a ruined beauty in her tortured gaze. It is conceivable that Joe whores himself out, given his cynicism and self-contempt.

Norma is served only by her butler, Max, played by Eric von Stroheim (“the Hun you love to hate!”). Stroheim was a key director of the Silent Era; his comedown to playing a butler was not lost on studio viewers. Max writes fan mail to Norma on the sly, to keep her illusion alive. It later turns out that Max was a great director – and Norma’s first husband. (We watch Norma watching Swanson in Queen Kelly [1929] . . . which was directed by Stroheim! in her private theater.)

Joe’s lifeline to sanity is Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), fellow screenwriter and fiancée of Joe’s best friend. She reviews (and pans) his latest work . . . but then declares she sees some good in it, and proposes that they work on it together. Gradually, they fall in love.

Meanwhile, Norma thinks she is wanted to star in a new film for director Cecil B. DeMille; actually, his production sstaff wants to use her vintage automobile. Self-deluded, she begins planning her big comeback.

Joe starts sneaking out at night to work on the screenplay. Norma finds out and calls Betty. Joe reveals that he is a gigolo, and claims to prefer it. In short, he drives Betty away. He angrily tells Norma the truth – she is a has-been. He then goes to pack and head back to Dayton – and Norma drills him three times with an automatic.

The coda to the film is the most memorable closing scene of all. Norma, now completely insane and surrounded by police, is coaxed down from her bedroom by newsreel cameras she mistakes for DeMille’s crew. Down the stairs she floats like a ghost, with a leering rictus of a face. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” she says. And walks straight into the camera as the vision of her face diffuses.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Winchester ‘73.

NFR Project: 'In a Lonely Place' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “In a Lonely Place”

Dir: Nicholas Ray

Scr: Andrew P. Solt, Edmund H. North

Pho: Burnett Guffey

Ed: Viola Lawrence

Premiere: August 1950

94 min.

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived for a few weeks while she loved me.”

The French have a phrase for it: amour fou, crazy love, love that makes no sense and leads nowhere. Ostensibly a film noir, this movie is a treatise on dysfunction and obsession, the portrait of a potential murderer, an epic emotional tale for an unlikely heroine.

The protagonist is nominally screenwriter Dixon Steele, played by Humphrey Bogart near the end of his era of plausibility as a romantic lead. Dix is a down and out storyteller who hasn’t written a successful movie since before the war. He is caustic, cynical, temperamental, morbid. We are told he broke a woman’s nose. In short, he is a jerk.

He’s supposed to read a book for adaptation as a screenplay. He gives it to the hat-check girl to read. She reads it, and purports to tell him the story. He suggests they go to his place. They do, she does. Nothing unseemly occurs. The girl leaves, headed around the corner to a cab stand.

The next morning, it is revealed that the girl was murdered. Dix is a suspect until a neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), testifies to the cops that she saw her leave his place alive, and that Dix was in after that. Dix thanks her, and the two fall madly and immediately in love. Suddenly, they are blissfully together, and Dix is writing better than he has in years.

But Dix feels he is being watched. He lashes out as random people, to the degree of nearly smashing a man’s head in with a rock. His erratic behavior begins to disturb Lauren. She is terrified, and reluctantly accepts his proposal to marry her – right away. She plans on leaving him, but he catches her on her way out and strangles her. “I can’t live with a maniac!” she screetches.

Suddenly, the phone rings. It is the police; the real murderer has confessed. Dix is off the hook. But as Laurel says, “It doesn’t matter now.” It’s over. Dix slinks away, down her stairs, out through the entrance of their apartment building. Laurel has narrowly avoided death at the hands of her lover.

Bogart plays a true villain. Supposedly this kind of behavior was acceptable when you were a hard-drinking cynical screenwriter after the war. Dix has a friendly relationship with the policeman in charge of the case, Sgt. Nicolai (Frank Lovejoy), who refers to him as “major.” Obviously, Dix was in the fighting. Still, his nasty temper and suspicious mind poison the miraculous-seeming romance that ignites him and Lauren.

It’s only Ray’s fourth film, but he already infuses the story with a weary fatalism that would pervade his later On Dangerous Ground¸Johnny Guitar, and Rebel Without a Cause. Ray gives his actors room to breathe here. We develop our understanding of them just as they do of each other.

Ray takes the full measure of Bogart’s character, and gently moves him from hero to heel as the picture progresses. Gloria Grahame is at her most beautiful and empathetic here (Ray obviously loved her, though their marriage was dissolving at the time), and she gets to play at three-dimensional character -- a thoughtful young aspiring actress who falls for the good she sees in a needy and dangerous man. Dix smothers Laurel with attention while he displays his distrust of her. It’s a no-win situation.

The original script called for Laurel to be killed. Ray changed it, not wanting to go for the obvious ending. In this way, In a Lonely Place persevered as a story of two people fated to find each other for only a short time. In an instant, loves shatters in front of our eyes.

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

NFR Project: 'D.O.A.' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “D.O.A.”

Dir: Rudolph Mate

Scr: Russell Rouse, Clarence Greene

Pho: Ernest Laszlo

Ed: Arthur H. Nadel

Premiere: April 21, 1950

84 min.

It’s a great, gritty little noir that has a unique plot – in which a man must find his murderer.

How does this work? Well, the man was poisoned. Innocent accountant Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is slipped a toxic drink one night while he’s out on the town in San Francisco. Feeling ill the next day, he goes to the doctor and finds that he has only days to live. He is a dead man walking.

This pushes Frank into a frenzy of activity. Working against time, he tracks down the motive for his murder, thumbing through witnesses and trying to get a straight answer out of the people involved. On the way, he meets Beverly Garland in her first film role (billed as Beverly Campbell) as a tough dame; tough-guy Neville Brand gets his first credited screen appearance here as a psychotic enforcer for a criminal boss.

O’Brien is compelling as a man working against the clock to find justice. The filming itself is a little on the crude side – this was an independent production with a small budget. However, United Artists was impressed by it and distributed it. It sports an excellent score by Dimitri Tiomkin. Of most interest are the long tracking shots that director Mate captured on the sly in San Francisco. In them, the camera tracks O’Brien as he dashes down the sidewalk, upsetting unknowing passersby.

Does Frank find his killer? What does he intend to do with his last precious few hours? How can he explain all this to his beloved Paula (Pamela Britton)? The movie is lean and fast-paced – it’s a headlong rush through a criminal’s milieu that doesn’t let up until the last possible second.

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

NFR Project: 'Born Yesterday' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Born Yesterday”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Albert Mannheimer, Garson Kanin

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Charles Nelson

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1950

102 min.

Born Yesterday is a showcase for the talents of the effervescent Judy Holliday (1921-1945).

Comedian and actress, she began life as Judith Tuvim in Queens. In 1938, she joined a performing troupe called the Revuers, which providentially included that great lyric-writing team Betty Comden and Adolf Green. (Leonard Bernstein used to play the piano for their act, long before he became a name.) They became successful on New York’s nightclub scene, and soon Holliday was working on stage and in film.

Born Yesterday was written by Garson Kanin (with the help of his wife, Ruth Gordon) for Jean Arthur. When Arthur turned the opportunity down, Holliday was picked in 1946 to play the part of Billie Dawn. She got rave reviews, and was a natural to tackle the role onscreen in 1950. She did such an amazing job that she won both the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Actress.

She plays Billie Dawn, a supposedly ditzy chorus girl turned kept woman. She is the companion of Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford), a fabulously rich, abrasive junk dealer who is in Washington, D.C. to make some crooked deals and influence legislation in his favor. She is, seemingly, a classic dumb blonde – squeaky-voiced, obsessed with her looks, unfamiliar with anything complex or ambiguous. Brock wants her to mingle with polite society, so he commands that she get an education.

Enter Paul Verrall (William Holden), a journalist seeking an interview with Brock. Brock takes a shine to him and convinces him to tutor Billie, and he does – taking her on a whirlwind tour of the U.S. capitol, and assigning her a load of books to read. Unexpectedly, Billie proves to be much sharper than anyone took her for. Soon she is questioning Brock’s habit of hiding assets under her name, which entails her signing many documents she doesn’t understand. She balks at this, and declares her independence and her contempt for him. Meanwhile, she and Paul fall for each other.

Holliday plays a shallow person who develops depth; she combines sheer daffiness with a sharp emotional intelligence that makes her appealing and fascinating to watch. Billie transforms herself from a dumb bunny into a smart cookie, and the film can be read as a proto-feminist fable. However, Billie marries Paul at the film’s conclusion, and one wonders how liberated she will really become.

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

NFR Project: 'The Asphalt Jungle' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “The Asphalt Jungle”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: Ben Maddow, John Huston

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: George Boemler

Premiere: May 12, 1950

112 min.

It’s one of John Huston’s best films, and an absolute film noir classic. In it, Huston changes his visual style completely, creating a dark, claustrophobic world in which very few can be trusted and things don’t break the protagonists’ way.

Our heroes are the criminals, and this story is told from their perspective. We in the audience are their conspirators; we can’t help but root for them. They are regular Joes, and would be considered working stiffs if it weren’t for the fact that they break the law instead of punching a clock.

A dangerous criminal mastermind, Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe, in a fantastic performance) is released from prison. He has a plan to steal $500,000 in jewelry in a big Midwestern city. To do this, he needs $50,000 in seed money. He goes to a crooked lawyer, Emmerich (Louis Calhern in his greatest role) to get his backing. Doc assembles a team – safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), getaway driver Gus (James Whitmore), and a strong-armed “hooligan,” Dix (Sterling Hayden). The plan is excellent, and everything goes like clockwork – until it doesn’t.

First, the explosion that blows the safe sets off the alarms for all the businesses in the area. A watchman intrudes and is struck down by Dix, but not before Louis is accidentally shot. Doc and Dix go to collect the money for the job, but it seems that Emmerich is secretly broke and plans to take the jewels from the team and flee the country. His private detective Brannom (Brad Dexter) tries to shoot it out and gets killed – and now Dix is wounded, too.

Doc and Dix escape and make their plans to get out of town. Emmerich is cornered by the police and kills himself. Doc is arrested; Dix drives with his girlfriend Doll (Jean Hagen) to his boyhood home in Kentucky. He makes it, but dies in a field outside his house. The horses he loves gather around his dead body.

The top-notch script, adapted from W.R. Burnett’s 1949 novel, gives us three-dimensional characters with something to say for themselves. Marc Lawrence is great in a small role as Cobby, a sweaty fixer, and Barry Kelley plays a corrupt cop to perfection. Each character has a point of view, something to shoot for, and their fair share of weaknesses. Doc is attracted to underage girls, which proves his downfall; Emmerich bankrupts himself by keeping a teen mistress (Marilyn Monroe in a sharp early role).

And Dix is an honorable man in a dishonorable profession. He sticks to his word; he’s reliable and decent. His dream of buying back his family farm is a good one; he’s simply fated not to see it happen.

In the end, the best-laid plans go awry and the guilty are punished. Order is restored. But our protagonists are all destroyed.

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

NFR Project: 'All About Eve" (1950)

 

NFR Project: “All About Eve”

Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Pho: Milton R. Krasner

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Oct. 13, 1950

138 min.

This is a true story. Did you know that? I did not. Evidently it happened to German actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986). Bergner is best remembered for some featured British film roles she filled in the early Sound Era (The Rise of Catherine the Great, Escape Me Never, As You Like It), despite her pronounced accent.

The inaugural production of The Two Mrs. Carrolls, in which Bergner starred, opened in London in 1935. A young woman huddled in the elements outside of every performance. Bergner took pity on her and hired her as an assistant. The girl became her understudy, and tried to take over her life. New York Times obit writer Mary Orr rendered it as a short story, “The Wisdom of Eve,” in Cosmopolitan in May 1946. In turn, it was staged as a radio play on NBC Radio City Playhouse on Jan. 24, 1949.

Finally Hollywood optioned it and Joseph L. Mankiewicz turned into a perfect story of deceit and betrayal, of paranoia and regret. It features three-dimensional characters, and addresses topics such as aging, faithfulness, and the blindness of kindness. Here manipulative figures advance themselves at the loss of their humanity. The good guys give ground and retain theirs. It’s a wise screenplay that takes a long look at aspirations and choices. It won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

And the film won Best Picture, and Mankiewicz won Best Director as well, and three others. Utilizing Mankiewicz’s witty and perceptive script, the cast has a blast with tale of fateful ambition.

It’s set in the New York theater world, where Margo Channing (Bette Davis) rules as queen of leading ladies. She is brilliant in her new play, though she is playing a 24-year-old at the age of 40. She questions the path her life is taking. She is in love with her director, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill). Their best friends are leading playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Karen (Celeste Holm). There are tons of martinis and cigarettes.

Into their lives sneaks Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter, in a killer performance), a meek, mousy fan who hangs around outside the theater – and goes to all the performances of – Margo’s new play. The group takes her in, save for the cynical maid Birdie (the great Thelma Ritter); Margo gives her a job as an assistant.

Soon evil Eve is manipulating everyone around her, nominating herself as Margo’s understudy and enlisting the help of Karen to get Margo offstage so that Eve can play the role in front of the press corps. Margo rails against Eve, and her friends tell her she's imagining things. Eve soon seduces Lloyd (it is implied), and nabs the leading role in his new play. She wins the Sarah Siddons award for acting excellence (the great Walter Hampden speaks), and she is off to Hollywood and everyone is pleased save for the people she screwed over to get there.

Baxter is at her conniving best as Eve, coming on all smooth and sweet and abjectly humble while advancing her own interests ruthlessly. Davis is at her best as Margo; Davis was also a beautiful, aging actress doomed to soon leave leading roles and start playing matrons. She fights against the stage’s ageism, but in the end accepts her fate. Unlike Eve, she finds happiness – with herself, with Bill.

Davis is nearly a tragic heroine here; she looms over all the other actors with her bold expression of the vibrant and brassy Margo. And she made other people look good; Holm and Ritter were nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and George Sanders won Best Supporting Actor for his role as “that venomous fishwife, Addison DeWitt!” Theater critic and casual blackmailer. In the end, Eve's life is a complete lie.

The direction is effortless – there are no great artistic “signature” camera moves. It’s a seamless assortment of mid-range shots, duos and trios, and closeups. Mankiewicz lets the actors act, and gets much more from them than a director usually does. All About Eve is about performing, on and off stage; everyone acts with measured thought with the best of intentions, generally, and things get all balled up. Emotions are repressed and indulged to a delicious degree.

Specific as it is, Eve expresses some home truths about human nature. The pattern is doomed to repeat itself. How will one play her role in the game of life?

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

NFR Project: 'Cinderella' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Cinderella”

Dir: Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi

Scr: William Peet, Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, Kenneth Anderson, Erdman Penner, Winston Hibler, Harry Reeves, Joe Rinaldi

Ed: Donald Halliday

Premiere: March 4, 1950

76 min.

As you may know from reading me, I hate Disney films. This is all due to me being traumatized at a young age by the likes of Bambi and Pinocchio (and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty and on and on . . . ). Their nightmare-inducing fare was not for me.

That being said, Cinderella is one of their least offensive movies, primarily because nothing horribly villainous happens to the protagonist. We are given a straight-up transcription, by and large, of the original fairy tale. Cinderella is the poor put-upon young lady who’s dominated by her wicked stepmother (not too scary) and her mean old stepsisters.

She has a fairy godmother who grants her wish to go to the ball, and her clothes are magically transformed. She and her handsome prince fall in love – but then she must flee by midnight, when the spell is broken. Only one glass slipper remains.

The prince then sends out a comic-opera duke to fit all the maidens in the kingdom with the slipper, in order to find his beloved. Cinderella, almost thwarted, reveals that she possesses the other slipper. And they live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, there is much comic byplay here with the birds and the mice, who are Cinderella’s allies. This helps to move the plot forward, but it is not actually funny, so the effort on them seems wasted. The songs are OK. Lovers of voice actors will note that Verna Felton, Candy Candido, and June Foray lend their skills to the production.

There is a kind of plastic-y sheen to a Disney film that makes me resist it. It is polished, airtight, precocious, condescending, a perfectly machined mechanism to provide family entertainment. It is, at its base, soulless and manipulative. The studio made tons of money from it, and it remains a significant component of Disney’s intellectual property.

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

NFR Project: 'Outrage' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Outrage”

Dir: Ida Lupino

Scr: Ida Lupino, Malvin Wald, Collier Young

Pho: Louis Clyde Stoumen, Archie Stout

Ed: Harvey Manger

Premiere: Oct. 14, 1950

75 min.

Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was a force of nature. She was a member of a long-lived, illustrious English theatrical family, and went to Hollywood as an early age to work as an actress. She quickly found success in films such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), They Drive by Night (1940), and High Sierra (1941).

However, she wanted to do more. Learning about the job of directing as she continued to perform onscreen, she formed her own independent production company and began writing, producing, and directing low-budget films that focused on female protagonists dealing with contemporary problems. Her company, The Filmmakers Inc., created 12 films beginning in 1948. She directed six of them.

Outrage deals with rape and its consequences. Previously the subject had been tackled in mainstream American film only by Johnny Belinda (1948). Outrage starred Mala Powers, who had just been seen in Cyrano de Bergerac. In it, she plays Ann Walton, a young bookkeeper with plans for the future with her fiancé Jim.

She walks home alone one night. In a sequence shot in Expressionist style, she is stalked by a rapist, moving further and further into a nightmarish landscape of urban decay. Eventually, the man catches up to her and violates her (offscreen).

Her family, the police, and Jim all try to be supportive of her, but she feels guilty, that somehow she was responsible for her victimization. Paranoid, she thinks that everyone is staring at her and making comments about her. Lupino’s expert direction makes her impressions ambiguous – is she really an object of scorn, or is she just imagining it?

She abruptly leaves town on a bus, fleeing to Los Angeles to start a new life, she hopes. At a rest stop, she hears a radio report that everyone is looking for her. She leaves the bus, starts walking, and sprains her ankle. Lying pprone by the side of the road, she is picked up by a sympathetic and handsome minister, Bruce, who takes her to a nearby farm where she can find lodging and a job.

She changes her name and recovers slowly. Then, she attends a country dance where she is glommed onto by a horny male. He pushes her around, pins her down, tries to force himself on her. She nails him in the head with a handy pipe wrench.

She is put on trial. Bruce finds out about her earlier rape, and convinces the judge to commute her sentence. She spends a year under psychiatric supervision instead.

Ann is strongly attracted to Bruce, but he encourages her to return to her home and to Jim. She eventually agrees and leaves Bruce to his own musings.

The movie is as realistic as the censorial strictures of the time allow. The movie respects Ann and doesn’t trivialize her trauma. We see her go through a rocky process of healing, into a new and integrated sense of self. This kind of awareness was sorely lacking in films of the period. Lupino pushed for real-life stories about people with real-life problems, complex psyches, and ambiguous outcomes.

Lupino’s reputation has grown over the past few decades, and today she is seen as an essential proto-feminist filmmaker.

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