NFR Project: 'One Froggy Evening' (1955)

NFR Project: “One Froggy Evening”

Dir: Charles M. Jones

Scr: Michael Maltese

Animated by Ken Harris, Abe Levitow, Ben Washam, Richard Thompson, Robert Gribbroek, Philip DeGarde

Premiere: Dec. 31, 1955

6:56

It is deemed one of the greatest cartoons of all time.

This one has a lengthy pedigree. This film began as a magazine story written by one of radio’s best writers, Lucille Fletcher. The story was adapted as a radio play by none other than the great Norman Corwin, as “My Client Curley.” This in turn was adapted into a screenplay by Lewis Meltzer and Oscar Saul and made as Once Upon a Time (1944), starring Cary Grant. It is said that this long chain of ideas playing out from their initial inspiration all influenced Chuck Jones and company over at Warner Brothers cartoon studios..

Interestingly, it contains none of the studio’s patented “starring” characters – Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig. It’s a prefect little gem of a cartoon. It requires no dialogue whatsoever; we only hear the singing voice of the short’s diminutive star. It’s vivid, punchy, perfectly timed, filled with subtle expressions and bold conceptions.

In it, a construction worker uncovers a sealed box in the cornerstone of an old building. He opens it, and out jumps a singing frog, complete with top hat and cane. (Cornily, it croons the hits of the turn of the 20^th century.)

The worker sees dollars signs, literally. He grabs the frog and takes him to a talent scout. He presents the frog, who does nothing. The scout throws him out. The man rents a theater, packs it with people. The frog is singing. The curtain opens. The frog stops. In fact, it only performs when it and the worker are alone.

The worker goes nuts. His life falls apart. He’s sent to the funny farm. With the frog. Finally, he is wandering past a construction site. He finds the cornerstone. He puts the box with the frog in it inside and flees. Fast-forward to the distant future. A worker is disintegrating the now-old building and exposes the cornerstone. He finds the box. The frog leaps out and puts on a show. The worker grabs the box and gallops off. Once again, the frog has found a victim.

It’s a great little shaggy-dog story, the nightmare of knowing or possessing something special and not being acknowledged for it. The worker sees, hears the frog; why can’t anyone else? Is he nuts? Does this frog just have it in for him? Is life but a sadistic joke with a recurring punchline?

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'Modesta' (1956)

NFR Project: “Modesta”

Dir: Benjamin Doniger

Scr: Benjamin Doniger, Luis A. Maisonet, Rene Marques

Pho: Luis A. Maisonet

Ed: Paul Falkenberg

Premiere: 1956

35:55

This remarkable little film shows us a way of using cinema to implement an agenda.

Read Daniel Eagan’s essay at the National Film Registry here; it is good and comprehensive about this film and the context in which it was made.

It is but one of 65 short films made by Puerto Rico’s Office of Community Education between 1950 and 1975. These informational films were directed at rural audiences, seeking to improve their lot.

Here we have a tale of primitive feminism. A husband comes home and disrespects his wife. She hits him in the head with a stick, driving him away. She becomes the leader of the local group of women, who all take up sticks in solidarity with her. They and the men confront each other; the men back down.

A simple story, well and efficiently told, using local talent in front of and behind the camera, and sometimes utilizing non-acting locals. Director Benjamin Doniger was an experienced cinematographer – he had worked for director Robert Flaherty on Louisiana Story (1948) -- and he, straightforward and efficient, tells us a story.

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

NFR Project: 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1956)

NFR Project: “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”

Dir: Don Siegel

Scr: Daniel Mainwaring

Pho: Ellsworth Fredericks

Ed: Robert S. Eisen

Premiere: Feb. 5, 1956

80 min.

First, read the definitive essay on this film, by the great Robert Sklar, at the National Film Registry.

To it I can only add:

Here is a portrait of an alien invasion, insidious and silent. The many vectors of interpretation of the political or social ramifications underlying the movie simply prove the universal terror of being taken over by The Other, any other, of being reduced to something less (or even more) than human. It resonates with all manner of people, in all sorts of ways.

A small-town doctor notices a bunch of appointments being made at his clinic and then cancelled. Citizens stumble in, claiming that their relatives and loved ones are not themselves anymore. The doctor (Kevin McCarthy) tries to rationalize his way through the problem – until he encounters large seed pods that spawn identical copies of their intended human hosts.

From that point on, it’s a race for survival that is, again, nightmare fodder. Imagine a whole town turned against you, seeking to change you into one of them. Their reasonableness. Their persistence. Mainwaring and Siegel evoke the fight-or-flight impulse straight to the reptile brain. Our hero is prey for an alien race. And there is no mercy for Miles.

The source material is impeccable. The original novel The Body Snatchers was written by Jack Finney, a noted science-fiction writer. Daniel Mainwaring, who wrote the screenplay, had crafted such excellent scripts as his noirs Out of the Past, The Big Steal, and The Phenix City Story. Here he captures Cold War paranoia in a crisply-moving succession of uncanny setups in a nondescript rural town in California.

The protagonist, Miles Bennell, is played by the iconic Kevin McCarthy, whose reputation rests largely on his accomplishments here. He plays the hero as a reasonable man driven to madness as he warns an oblivious world of a conspiracy against its very human soul. The original ending of the movie has him ranting in the midst of traffic. “You’re next! You’re next!” he roars, and we drive past him, sheepishly. What does he know that we don’t?

Considering the lack of A-list resources at their creation, the results achieved with light, analog special effects, and subtly pitched performances make this a believable and haunting classic, a common nightmare brought to life. Ellsworth Frederick's cinematography is beautiful and well thought out. The score by Carmen Dragon is surprisingly top-notch.

The studio intervened and had them construct a framing story, a la The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Miles is brought into the nuthouse as he’s been found wandering in traffic. After the film originally ends, a scene informs us that Miles’ worst fears have root in reality.

The authorities react appropriately. Miles is left gasping as they sweep into action. He is disoriented, grieving (despite gobbling speed, his lover Dan Wynter falls asleep and instantly transforms into the Other). He lost everyone he cared about. The End. A bitter note seeps into the finale despite the studio’s rewrite. Body Snatchers resonates because it’s about first being swept away by the majority – and then hunted by it.

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

NFR Project: 'High Society' (1956)

NFR Project: “High Society”

Dir: Charles Walters

Scr: John Patrick

Pho: Paul C Vogel

Ed: Ralph E. Winters

Premiere: July 17, 1956

111 min.

The premise was golden. Remake the classic screwball comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940) as a musical. Get Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, the two greatest singers of their respective generations, to act and sing together. Have Cole Porter write the songs. Throw in Louis Armstrong. Throw in Grace Kelly in her last starring role.

Fortunately, it works. An excellent screen adaptation by John Patrick draws on both the Oscar-winning original screenplay and the original 1939 Broadway play, written expressly for Katharine Hepburn by Philip Barry.

The story is this: young socialite Tracy Lord (Kelly) in fashionable Newport, Rhode Island is on the eve of her wedding to an earnest dullard (John Lund). Her ex-husband, songwriter and incidentally crooner C.K. Dexter Haven (Crosby), decides to woo her back. Added to this is an intrusive reporter, Mike Connor (Sinatra), who also falls for Tracy. Complications ensue. Safe to say all is sorted out by film’s end, which culminates in the remarriage of Dexter and Tracy.

Now, the plot is shoehorned into the frame of a musical fable narrated by none other than the immortal Louis Armstrong. With his sidemen, he introduces the story, comments on it, and wraps it up at the end. It’s always a pleasure to watch him play and sing, and the movie captures his performance with Bing of “Now You Has Jazz.”

Now it’s a little creepy as Bing was 53 when he made this film, and Grace Kelly was 26. He’s old enough to be her father. (Evidently the two did have an affair.) Still, the Old Groaner aka Der Bingle floats easily through the film, exuding quips and serenely taking Tracy back. Sinatra is fine as Mike – and who wouldn’t want to have a record of Crosby and Sinatra singing together? Celeste Holm and Louis Calhern have fun with their respective characters as well.

The biggest surprise is that Grace Kelly can do comedy. It’s not something she was called on a lot to do in her brief career (she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco in April), but she handles the gags with charm, and reacts splendidly throughout. The songs are good, of course, especially “True Love” and “Well, Did You Evah!” Director Charles Walters seems to have trouble with the broad VistaVision format. He divides the screen into thirds, and places something in each third. The scenes are static. The performers stand in their places and crack wise and sing soulfully.

So the movie rests on the charisma of the three primary players. Crosby, Sinatra, and Kelly manage to put the thing over.

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

NFR Project: 'Giant' (1956)

 

NFR Project: “Giant”

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Fred Guiol, Ivan Moffat

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: William Hornbeck, Philip W. Anderson, Fred Bohanan

Premiere: Nov. 24, 1956

201 min.

It’s a big, giant film. Unfortunately, it’s boring as hell.

It’s a three-and-a-half-hour epic that covers decades in the lives of rancher Bick (Rock Hudson), his wife Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), and rival Jett Rink (James Dean in his last role). The setting is the bare plains of Texas, where Bick runs cattle on more than half a million acres. Bick initially dismisses his wife’s attempt to take part in male conversation; she leaves him for a while, but they get back together.

Then Jett strikes oil on a small plot bequeathed to him by Bick’s sister. He becomes unbelievably, obnoxiously rich and soon becomes an annoying drunk as well. Bick tries to get his children interested in running the ranch, but they all want to lead their own lives. Bick drills for oil too.

Later, Bick’s son Jordan is incensed by Jett’s orders that no Hispanic people be served at his big new hotel; Jordan’s wife is Mexican-American. The two fight, and Jordan is hauled out of the banquet hall where they confront each other. Bick realizes that this prejudice is unacceptable. On their way home, the family stops at a diner where the owner refuses to serve Bick’s daughter-in-law and son. Bick fights him and loses. Leslie declares how proud she is that he stood up for Hispanics. The end.

It’s all delivered in a long, slow, casual, soap-opera style. Hudson can’t act; Dean mumbles. We are supposed to watch the characters age, but they never really evolve. Director Stevens is at his best when he is composing images of great depth and beauty – an elaborate mansion sitting by itself on the empty plains, a seething, churning roundup, a soldier’s coffin returned home. Unfortunately, the movie is not worth the effort.

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

NFR Project: 'Forbidden Planet' (1956)

 

NFR Project: “Forbidden Planet”

Dir: Fred M. Wilcox

Scr: Cyril Hume

Pho: George J. Folsey

Ed: Ferris Webster

Premiere: March 2, 1956

98 min.

This is the first epic science-fiction film to be made since Things to Come in 1936, the first in color, the first in CinemaScope – one of the first in the genre to really to be conceived of as an A-list picture.

Read Ian Olney’s excellent essay on this film at the National Film Registry here.

No expense was spared to tell this outer-space tale. The sets were designed by Cedric Gibbons and Arthur Lonergan, who created a vast alien world for our protagonists to explore. A key character is Robby the Robot, who was created by industrial designer Robert Kintoshita at a then-astronomical cost of $125,000. Disney animator Joshua Meador created the at-times invisible monster of the film. All in all, every effort was expended to make this film look convincing.

It’s the story of a United Planets space expedition to the distant planet Altair IV, on which a ship crashed 20 years before. The crew seeks the survivors. There they find only a scientist, Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his grown daughter Altaira (Anne Francis). Morbius warns that an unknown power slaughtered everyone in his expedition save himself, his late wife, and his daughter. Soon an immense, invisible creature starts attacking the crew, killing them off one by one and damaging their spaceship.

Morbius explains to the ship’s captain (Leslie Nielsen) that the planet was the home of the late Krell, a civilization wiped out in one night 200,000 years ago. The Krell were incredibly advanced, and eventually they figured out how to make any thought in their minds real using their superior technology.

It turns out that the Krells, in creating their mind machines, unleashed the contents of their subconscious minds. These “monsters of the id” wrought havoc, destroying everything. Morbius had tinkered with the Krell’s technology, and Morbius’s subconscious created a monster that destroyed everyone around him save his daughter. Now the monster is out to kill off the rescue mission, and even Altaira, who falls for the captain and plans on leaving the planet with him.

Horribly, inexorably, the monster advances on the remaining individuals. Only the collapse of Morbius, who finally realizes it is he himself who is the monster, makes the monster disappear. Knowing that the power the Krells wielded is deadly, Morbius sets off a self-destruction device and urges the survivors to flee. They escape, and the planet is vaporized.

It’s intelligent and interesting stuff, to be sure, well thought out – not the usual juvenile content of most sci-fi films of the era. The top-notch production values sell the film, taking us into outer space and onto Altair IV. The suspense and thrills of the story are intense, leading to a satisfying conclusion. Forbidden Planet set the bar for the science-fiction genre, and was not equaled for many years.

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

NFR Project: 'Disneyland Dream'

 

NFR Project: “Disneyland Dream”

Dir: Robbins Barstow

Scr: Robbins Barstow

Pho: Robbins Barstow

Ed: Robbins Barstow

Premiere: 1956

35 min.

The home movie is one of the most common means of self-expression in America. As early as 1898, people were beginning to record their significant events and family portraits on film. It’s an amateur art form that almost anyone in America can find the resources to practice. (I used to work on a local broadcast TV show, “Homemovies,” that highlighted the artistic efforts of aspiring rookie filmmakers. The efforts ranged from fascinating to awful.)

One of the more extraordinary home movie efforts is highlighted here. Disneyland Dream is the brainchild of the enthusiastic dilettante Robbins Barstow, who plied his hobby in his off hours. In 1956, he and his family won a contest sponsored by the Scotch adhesive tape company, which awarded 25 families with a trip to the then-new Disneyland amusement park in Anaheim, California.

Read Liz Coffey’s excellent summation of this entry at the National Film Registry here.

The Robbins family were an extroverted bunch, unafraid to stage antics for the camera. This 35-minute epic covers everything from their entry into the contest to the trip itself. Their exuberant behavior is charming in a hokey kind of way; they react to winning the contest in slapstick manner. The film then shows them leaving for the flight to California, then traveling via plane.

Their vacation lasted almost a week; they document their trips to other Los Angeles-area attractions and then segue into their adventures in the Magic Kingdom. They visit Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Frontierland. This documentation of what was then considered the premier family vacation experience is a remarkable, giving us a slice-of-life record of an average American middle-class family at play in mid-century.

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

NFR Project: 'The Court Jester' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “The Court Jester”

Dir: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank

Scr: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank

Pho: Ray June

Ed: Tom McAdoo

Premiere: Dec. 24, 1955

101 min.

“The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!”

Norman Panama and Melvin Frank got their start as gag writers in 1935. Gradually, they worked their way up the food chain, becoming screenwriters – and finally getting a contract to write and direct films in tandem. Their third film in this collaboration was The Court Jester.

It is an amusing starring outing for Danny Kaye (1911-1987), a multitalented comedic presence in the American culture in the mid-20^th Century. Kaye was renowned for his tongue-twisting Tverbal acrobatics and his ability to improvise using all manner of accents. He got his start in clubs in the Catskills and rapidly moved into stage work, more club work, radio, and finally film. Much of his material was written by his brilliant wife, Sylvia Fine.

This film is a vehicle for Kaye, who plays Hubert, a noodnik in medieval England. A follower of a Robin Hood-style crusader named the Black Fox, he is ordered to safeguard the travel of a baby who is the rightful King of England. By way of various machinations, Hubert takes on the identity of Giacomo, a jester who is also a secret assassin. Hubert must negotiate his way between the forces of the usurper (Cecil Parker), a haughty princess (Angela Lansbury), an evil lord (Basil Rathbone), and a witch (Mildred Natwick).

This he does with his usual Kaye goofiness – stuttering, double-taking, gasping, and gulping. Naturally a coward, he is hypnotized by the witch into thinking of himself as a great lover and swordsman. Her spell can be broken and re-applied through the snapping of fingers; needless to say, there is a lot of amusing back and forth on this premise.

Is it a classic? It’s OK.

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

NFR Project: 'Rebel Without A Cause' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Rebel Without A Cause”

Dir: Nicholas Ray

Scr: Stewart Stern, Irving Shulman

Pho: Ernest Haller

Ed: William H. Ziegler

Premiere: Oct, 27, 1955

111 min.

“Why do we do this?”

“You got to do something.”

The last, a rejoinder from Buzz the teenage bad guy, and nearly his last words. A minute later, he’s plunging off the edge of a cliff to his doom, screaming.

The mood of Rebel Without A Cause is nihilistic. In the American society of the time, it judged that nothing the adult world had to offer was worthwhile. Their hypocrisy and self-involvement invalidated them from being able to lead their families. Teens were cut loose from both dependency and responsibility, living in an intense, confused time when everything was unsatisfactory, crazy-making. Being a teenager was a curse. A naturalistic drama that plays out like a horror movie, Rebel persists because of its incredibly well-written script and enthusiastic and innovative direction from Nicholas Ray. (Ray started making it as a black-and-white B movie; when Dean became popular, the studio decreed he remake it in color and in Cinemascope.)

The movie was supposedly based on Robert M. Linder’s 1944 book of the same name, a case study of a criminal psychopath. Stern’s screenplay is vastly different and, fortunately, brilliant. It outlines and justifies the alienated feelings of its teenaged central characters, drawing us into compassion for them as the adult world contracts around them, literally killing their souls.

It’s the swan song of actor James Dean, his only starring role (he died at age 24 in a car crash a month before the movie’s premiere), and his charisma and appeal cannot be understated here. Whatever one may say about his Method approach to the role, he shows that he was rapidly understanding film acting in a fairly profound way. It would have been fascinating to watch his progression as an actor. He remains a perpetually youthful teen icon, largely because of this film.

Here he is Jim Stark, the teenage Everyman, a would-be knight of maturity and compassion who just wants to be left alone. His Jim has just moved to town after moving away from trouble somewhere else. His parents are well-off; his mother is castrating, his father is impotent. Seventeen years old, he starts his first day at his new school, and is immediately picked on by the cool kids, who happen to be brain-dead thugs.

Jim makes friends with Plato (Sal Mineo), a not-so-repressed gay fellow classmate. An outing to the planetarium ends up with a knife fight, and a pledge to race later in the evening. Jim looks for guidance from his parents, but they are useless. Jim lashes out angrily, and drives away furiously.

At a nearby cliff overlooking the ocean, Buzz challenges Jim to a chicken race in cars to the cliff. First one who jumps out is chicken. Buzz gets stuck inside his car, falls off the cliff, and dies.

Now his friends are after Jim. They attack his house, track him down. Meanwhile, Jim falls for the late Buzz’s girlfriend Judy (Natalie Wood). Jim tries to turn himself in, unsuccessfully. Jim and Judy escape to an abandoned house where they meet up with Plato, who unknown to them is packing a gun. The bad kids go after Plato – and he shoots one of them.

The cops and the parents show up. Plato is trapped inside the observatory; Jim goes in to get him out peacefully. He takes Plato’s bullets away. They walk out, but Plato panics, running and brandishing the gun. The police kill him. Jim grieves; he’s assured by his dad that he did “all that a man can do.” He introduces his parents to Judy.

Rebel can’t give us a happy ending. Jim and Judy’s troubles, we feel, are just beginning. Buzz dies following the code; Plato dies because he can’t follow the code. There’s no way to win.

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

NFR Project: 'Oklahoma!' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Oklahoma!”

Dir: Fred Zinnemann

Scr: Sonya Levien, William Ludwig

Pho: Robert Surtees

Ed: George Boemler, Gene Ruggiero

Premiere: Oct. 11, 1955

148 min.

The opening of Oklahoma! on Broadway in 1943 marked a new chapter in the history of the American musical. With a few exceptions, musicals in the first half of the 20^th century were scattershot affairs – the songs usually had nothing to do with the story. Now, numbers grew organically out of the plot and out of the characters’ development. You can read my notes on that original production here.

It’s a simple story. Cowboy Curly (Gordon MacCrae) loves Laurey (Shirely Jones in her film debut). However, Laurey is claimed by hired hand Judd (Rod Steiger). This romantic triangle takes up the bulk of the film, although there is a second one involving Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), peddler Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert), and cowboy Will Parker (Gene Nelson).

When time came for a film version, no expense was spared. Utilizing Technicolor and wide-screen filming, the story takes on an epic quality. This was director Fred Zinnemann’s only musical; he was also challenged by shooting in 70mm. His compositions are awkward, and many times he simply resorts to shooting the singer statically in the center of the screen.

Neither Steiger nor Grahame can sing, which retards the movie’s appeal. The real highlight of the film is Laurey’s dream sequence, in which she vacillates between Curly and Judd. It’s danced out in an elaborate number choreographed by Agnes DeMille. Inserting a ballet into the middle of a musical was unheard of before this; fortunately, the movie preserves this innovation.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Rebel Without A Cause.

NFR Project: 'Night of the Hunter' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “The Night of the Hunter”

Dir: Charles Laughton

Scr: James Agee

Pho: Stanley Cortez

Ed: Robert Golden

Premiere: July 26, 1955

92 min.

This haunting, barely redeemed nightmare of a film is a Southern Gothic horror story/fairy tale that registers as the only directorial outing of actor Charles Laughton. It’s an extraordinary movie that makes me wonder what other wonders Laughton might have produced if he had been given the chance.

Read Peter Rainer’s comprehensive essay on this entry here at the National Film Registry.

The story is shot plainly and given a heavily shadowed, storybook-like illumination filled with resonant images. We are introduced to the story by Mrs. Cooper (Lillian Gish), who speaks to us suspended in the starry sky. She is telling a group of children a story, and she warns of wolves in sheep’s clothing – and the camera swivels down to earth and shows us the deranged and murderous “preacher,” Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) in flight. He likes to kill widows and steal their money and belongings. He converses with God, convinced that his homicidal impulses are blessed by Him.

Powell has a complex about sex. He sits with the crowd at a burlesque show, inwardly disapproving of the goings-on there. (His switchblade knife protrudes its blade from his pocket as he watches – an obscene erection.) He is nabbed by the police for stealing a car and goes off to jail.

We move on to the children John and Pearl, whose father Ben Harper (Peter Graves) has killed two men and made off with $10,000. He is hunted down by the police, but he manages to hide the money in Pearl’s doll. He makes John swear to protect Pearl and to never reveal the location of the money, then is hauled away to jail.

In jail, Powell and Harper bunk together. Powell tries to get Harper to tell where the money is, to no avail. Harper is hanged – and when Powell is released, he heads down to Harper’s place to find the money. Flashing in and out of bouts of anger, Powell harasses and cajoles the children, trying to find out where the money is. He courts John and Pearl’s mother Willa (Shelley Winters), mouthing sanctimonious sentiments that fool all the adults, but not the children.

Powell and Willa marry; Powell withholds sex from her and convinces her that she is a woeful sinner. She takes his condemnation to heart, and testifies at his revival meetings. She prepares herself for him with prayer at night, but he cuts her throat and sinks her body in the river.

He takes control of the children and torments them into confessing where the money is. However, the children escape him via the river and float downstream in a skiff. Finally, they wash up at the home of Mrs. Cooper, a saintly but tough woman who takes in stray children. Powell follows them and finds them, but Cooper holds him off with a shotgun. Powell returns at night to kill everyone and grab the money, but Cooper shoots him. He hides in the barn and is rousted out by the police. Upon his arrest, John inadvertently reveals the money.

Powell is tried and found guilty. A lynch mob comes after him, and he barely escapes a necktie party. The children settle into life at Mrs. Cooper’s, and enjoy Christmas with her.

Laughton creates a mythic dream world, shooting a majority from the viewpoint of the children, turning us into their accomplices. They get a crash course in the battle between good and evil, and good wins out – this time.

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

NFR Project: 'Marty' (1955)

 NFR Project: “Marty”

Dir: Delbert Mann

Scr: Paddy Chayefsky

Pho: Joseph LaShelle

Ed: Alan Crosland Jr.

Premiere: April 11, 1955

93 min.

Paddy Chayefsky (1923-1981) was a genius writer. Acclaimed with three Oscars, he is still considered one of America’s outstanding dramatists.

After serving in World War II, Chayefsky went to work in the new medium of television. Beginning in 1949, he cranked out scripts for what then were uniformly live broadcasts. The challenges of creating compelling drama in a studio, live, with limited resources did not daunt him. He was a master of naturalism, of “real-life” dialogue that was informal, direct, and elegant. Chayefsky reached people.

On May 24, 1953, “Marty” premiered on The Philco Television Playhouse. It starred Rod Steiger in a career-making performance, and featured Nancy Marchand as well. The broadcast made such an impact that a plan to make a movie of the script went into development immediately. It was the first time television impacted the world of moviemaking.

Chayefsky demanded creative control, consultation on casting, and the use of the broadcast director Delbert Mann as the film’s director. He got what he wanted.

Ernest Borgnine took over the role of Marty, and Betsy Blair played his date Clara. Filming took place in the Bronx for 16 days, another boost for New York City as a viable filming center. Such was the power of the result was that the film earned Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Borgnine, and Best Screenplay at the Oscars that year.

It’s a simple story, really. Marty is a butcher, 34 years old, still living with his mother in the Bronx, his brothers and sisters all married. It seems that everyone he runs into nags him about getting married. Marty bears this harassment patiently, until his mother questions him and he loses his temper.

He calls himself “a fat, ugly man.” He continues, “Ma, sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts. And one fact I gotta face is that whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my life, I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough, I don't wanna get hurt no more.”

Still, he is persuaded by his buddy Ange (Joe Mantell) to go with him to the Stardust Ballroom and look for women to pick up. He reluctantly complies. There he is accosted by a guy who wants to give him five bucks to take his date home, as he thinks she’s homely. She is Clara, 29, a sensitive single teacher. Marty declines – but he looks at Clara, goes over to her, asks her to dance.

They start talking and talk for hours. Marty takes her to his home, and briefly tries to kiss her. She rebuffs him, but she makes it very clear that she wants to see him again. Marty’s mother comes home and tries to interrogate her. Marty takes Clara home, promising to call her the next day.

The next day, he has second thoughts. His pal Ange and his mother both speak out against Clara, dismissing her and her impact on Marty. The butcher stews quietly until the early evening, when he cuts loose.

“You don't like her. My mother don't like her. She's a dog. And I'm a fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night. I'm gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times together, I'm gonna get down on my knees. I'm gonna beg that girl to marry me. If we make a party on New Year's, I got a date for that party. You don't like her? That's too bad.”

He goes to the pay phone to call her, and the film ends.

Borgnine, after playing villains and brutes for years, finally gets to ACT, and he does wonderful job as Marty, who is gentle, thoughtful, shy, and painfully polite. Betsy Blair was not the choice of the producers for Clara – she was a leftist, and this being the Red Scare – but, being the wife of Gene Kelly, she got her way.

Extra kudos to Esther Minicotti as Marty's mother, and Augusta Ciolli as the perfectly bitchy Aunt Katherine. 

It’s a great story about two lonely people. We watch Marty and Clara fall in love, and this beautiful, quiet little drama touches our hearts.

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

NFR Project: 'Kiss Me Deadly' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Kiss Me Deadly”

Dir: Robert Aldrich

Scr: A.I. Bezzerides

Pho: Ernest Laszlo

Ed: Michael Luciano

Premiere: May 18, 1955

106 min.

What in the hell is going on here? It’s a two-fisted, nihilistic film noir with plenty of action and not a lot of common sense. But it doesn’t matter, we’re having too much fun.

It’s based lightly on Mickey Spillane’s 1952 popular pulp novel. Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a bullyboy and a sleazy, salacious detective (he pimps his loving girlfriend Velda – and himself -- out for divorce cases). One night he encounters, running down the highway, a weeping, distracted girl in a trench coat and nothing else (Cloris Leachman’s film debut). She jumps into his sports car and off they go to the sound of Nat ‘King’ Cole.

She refuses to tell him what the problem is, and commences philosophizing. Bad guys jump upon them; the girl is tortured to death while Hammer lays by, helpless. Then he and the girl’s body are jammed into his car and pushed off a cliff and set aflame. And that’s just the first ten minutes.

Naturally, Mike is pissed. Once he recovers, he begins his search for the girl’s murderers. This leads him on the trail of various gangsters, and a femme fatale Lily (Gaby Rodgers). The trouble seems to be about a box of some kind, containing something dangerous and unearthly.

Mike gets to beat a lot of people up, which he enjoys. Velda is in danger, Mike goes to save her. There are character actors galore here: Strother Martin! Jack Elam! Even the inimitable Percy Helton in perhaps his greatest role as an evil coroner. Interestingly, though Hammer is supposed to be a working-class detective, many of the clues in the film are triggered by or near classical music, poetry, and art. Hammer is out of his element, so much so that he can’t foresee nuclear annihilation when it’s in his hot little hands.

The femme fatale Lily turns out to be someone else entirely. She shoots her co-conspirator, and then he shoots Mike. And she’s just got to open that box . . .

Spoiler Alert: I had watched the old, shorter ending of this film for 30 years – in which the last thing we see is the beach house exploding. This time out, I snagged a copy of the ORIGINAL ending. In it, Hammer and Velda escape the burning beach house. Hammer, though gutshot, stands in the surf clinging to Velda as they watch the place burn down. They survive! This certainly puts a new spin on the whole project. What was deemed to be a nihilistic statement about mankind was really a bad edit. It’s considerably more upbeat than before.

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

NFR Project: 'Jailhouse Rock' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “Jailhouse Rock”

Dir: Richard Thorpe

Scr: Guy Trosper

Pho: Robert J. Bronner

Ed: Ralph E. Winters

Premiere: Nov. 8, 1957

96 min.

I was flabbergasted! Somebody taught Elvis how to act! (Not really.)

Singing star Elvis Presley was only 22 when this film was made; it was his third film and probably his best, which is not saying much. The idea of his going into movies to exploit his spectacular fame was his manager Col. Tom Parker’s. Elvis wanted to win an Oscar for acting, however, his 31 films were largely the same: musical rom-coms that painted the King as a loveable, ambitious young tough guy who rises to fame on the strength of his talent. The same basic story was repeated ad infinitum.

Elvis WAS an amazing singer, well-versed in blues and gospel and translating that soulful energy into his performances. He pretty much invented rockabilly, blending blues and country into a vital new genre of music. He was the first white artist to sing as a Black artist might; the combination of his looks, his divine voice, and his raw power made him a superstar overnight. Women wanted him, men wanted to be him.

Immediately, the powers that be moved to exploit him. He changed from a rebel into an establishment crooner (he is said to have taken as much inspiration from the style of Dean Martin as from Black singers). He made three films a year from 1964 to 1969, glutting the market with his product until he burned out and tried to return to his rock roots, winding up as a garish Las Vegas attraction.

Elvis was our enchanted singer, our Orpheus. And, like Orpheus, he was destroyed by the Maenads of excess and indulgence. His life became the archetype of the story of too much, too soon. His death at the age of 42 was tragic, but avoidable.

But this film shows us the young, unspoiled artist at his peak, a year before he was drafted into the Army. Elvis’ insolent and sullen persona makes him an unlikely protagonist. Here he’s Vince, a construction worker who’s a nice guy. When a man harasses a woman in a bar, Vince beats him to death.

Vince goes to jail for manslaughter. There he meets Hunk (Mickey Shaughnessy), who is basically king of the cellblock. He takes Vince under his wing and teaches him how to play the guitar. When an opportunity comes for a concert to be broadcast on TV from prison (?), Vince makes a huge impression and receives tons of fan mail, which the warden thoughtfully keeps from him.

Vince gets out and begins a dizzyingly rapid rise to fame and fortune, egged on by Peggy (Judy Tyler), a music promoter who believes in him and comes to love him. Vince’s head is turned by his sudden fame and he becomes an arrogant jerk. As a result, Hunk punches him in the throat. His future is endangered for a time, but he recovers his voice, and Peggy, in time for the fadeout.

The entire project is a vehicle for pushing the Elvis myth. He sings a few songs (four of them written by Leiber and Stoller), either gyrating and rocking out as in the title number, or crooning something slower soulfully. In terms of acting, he can barely cross a room competently, much less show any emotion save petulance.

We are flogged into buying the idea of him as an extraordinary person – tough, working-class, but possessed of a heart. This attempt is unsuccessful. The movie Elvis is devoid of humor, friendliness, and charm. Nothing the filmmakers attempt here can overcome his basic unsuitability for film. A depressing entry.

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

NFR Project: 'East of Eden' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “East of Eden”

Dir: Elia Kazan

Scr: Paul Osborn

Pho: Ted D. McCord

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: March 9, 1955

117 min.

An interesting choice. This prestige picture is adapted from the final fourth of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel of the same name. It takes place in the run-up to World War I in the sleepy farming town of Salinas, California (where Steinbeck grew up). There, two brothers, Caleb (James Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos) vie for the approval of their father, rancher and farmer Adam (Raymond Massey).

Aron is well-behaved and focused; Caleb is rowdy and inclined to make poor choices. Adam, a strict and virtuous man, prefers Aron to Caleb (mirroring the Bible story of Cain and Abel). Caleb, or Cal, finds out that his mother, Kate (Jo van Fleet) who he was told by Adam was dead, is really a high-powered madam in the nearby town of Monterey. He confronts her, and she declares that he is like her.

He borrows $5,000 from her to grow and corner the market on beans, which are needed for the war effort. Meanwhile, he and his brother's girlfriend Abra (Julie Harris) grow close. Although he is the wild and undisciplined brother, Cal yearns to do right. He takes the money he makes from the bean venture and presents it to his father, who rejects it.

Angrily, Cal grabs his brother and takes him to see Kate. The revelation that his mother is alive and a prostitute undoes Aron, who impulsively joins the army and leaves town. Adam has a stroke. Cal considers leaving, but stays to tend to his father.

Elia Kazan directed effectively if not flashily; the script is adequate. The performances are competent; Dean earned a posthumous Oscar nomination for his performance and Jo van Fleet won for her portrayal of Kate. Despite its reputation, the film is interesting without being compelling. Dean was an interesting actor, but he still had a lot to learn when he died prematurely in an accident at age 24.

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

NFR Project: 'All That Heaven Allows' (1955)

NFR Project: “All That Heaven Allows”

Dir: Douglas Sirk

Scr: Peg Fenwick

Pho: Russell Metty

Ed: Frank Gross

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1955

89 min.

Douglas Sirk (1897-1907) was a subversive. He was a pacifist who was harassed for his beliefs during World War I. He fled Germany with his Jewish wife in 1937. In Hollywood, he continued the directing career he had begun in Germany, specializing in the making of “women’s pictures.” He used these emotional melodramas as vehicles for his own anti-Establishment thinking.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in All That Heaven Allows, which features a female protagonist lost in and subject to a male- and affluence-dominated society. She is Cary Scott (Jane Wyman, age 38), a well-off and relatively young widow with two grown children. She has centered her life around their weekend visits.

In the film’s beginning, she finally returns to society in a red dress (which her children don’t think is appropriate) via a dance at the local country club. There, two different men hit on her, swooping down on her confused self, seeking to “claim” her off the singles market. She rejects their overtures.

She incidentally meets young Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson, age 29), a gardener who has trimmed her trees for the past three years, spring and fall. A spark ignites between them, and soon Ron proposes to her. She accepts – but then quickly finds out that a) everyone in town is gossiping about her seemingly inappropriate relationship with a younger and poorer man and b) her children declare that they will disown her if she goes through with it. Most of all, the two seem outraged that she would leave their ancestral home and go live with Ron in a converted millhouse. Succumbing to societal and family pressure, she breaks up with Ron.

Then, that Christmas, her children gleefully tell her they are leaving home, due to impending marriage and work. They buy her a TV to distract her from her now-empty life. They suggest she sell the house after all. Realizing that her children are insensitive monsters, Cary flees back to Ron’s side. He has been injured in a fall, so she takes up a seat beside him. Slowly, he comes to consciousness. “Cary, you’ve come home,” he says. “Yes,” she replies, “I’m home.”

That Ron is a fan of Thoreau is an important plot point. The anti-materialism that Thoreau championed finds a living practitioner in Ron. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him or Cary. He is jolly, handy, handsome, loving, wise – everything a gal could wish for. It is a testament to the coercive powers of society that Cary denies herself for as long as she does of the life she truly wants to live.

Sirk uses a rich color palette, and production-designs his projects to a T. His worlds are very detailed, almost claustrophobic. Multiple surfaces gleam and reflect the characters, until the last stunning image of Cary trapped within the reflection of her new TV set's inert screen. The camera opens up only when freethinkers such as Ron enter the scene.

Cary finds redemption (Ron was originally supposed to die!) and happiness with her perfect man. Neighbors be damned.

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

NFR Project: 'Blackboard Jungle' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Blackboard Jungle”

Dir: Richard Brooks

Scr: Richard Brooks

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Ferris Webster

Premiere: March 25, 1955

101 min.

The most revolutionary part of this movie is the reaction it provoked. The violence it triggered and the bans on its showing swept the nation and the world. Its debut meant that teen life and rock ‘n’ roll were here to stay.

This movie was derived from the Evan Hunter novel of the previous year. Hunter, born as Salvatore Lombino, worked as a teacher in a high school in the South Bronx. Frustrated by the delinquency and scorn he encountered from the students, he angrily quit after two months.

His novel attracted writer/director Richard Brooks (1912-1992). Brooks, born as Reuben Sax, first made his name in Hollywood as a screenwriter. He penned The Killers (1946), Brute Force (1947), and Key Largo (1948), eventually winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Elmer Gantry (1960). He was nominated five times for Best Director. He was known for tackling “tough” subjects, and this was no exception.

It’s the story of an idealistic teacher, Mr. Dadier (Glenn Ford). Hired to work in an inner-city, boys-only high school. He finds that the students don’t pay attention. They talk back. They act out. They terrorize the teachers, assault them. How can he put up with it?

He doesn’t. He threatens to quit, and plans to until he survives a violent in-class incident and rededicates himself to teaching.

That’s as much as there is to it. However, the movie should first be noted for the use of multiple future stars in the cast. Anne Francis played Dadier’s wife. Old pro Louis Calhern and the up-and-coming Richard Kiley are on hand, too. The biggest surprise is the number of young adult actors playing teenagers – here, Vic Morrow in his screen debut as the savage Artie, future directing great Paul Mazursky, Rafael Campos, even Jamie Farr. But the real revelation is Sidney Poitier, 27 at the time this film was made. Though a decade older than the part he was playing, Poitier was magnetic. This film launched his movie career.

Now, as to the reaction. Brooks put Bill Haley and the Comets’ 1954 anthem “Rock Around the Clock” to the opening credits. The movie sparked the attention of teenagers, who loved the song and the kids’ attitudes. They began dancing in the aisles and tearing up the movie theaters where the film was shown. Culturally, this movie marks the beginning of America’s youth revolution, which culminated in the self-indulgences and protests of the 1960s.

Government quickly reacted. The film was banned in Nashville, Atlanta, England, India. Op-ed writers feasted on disdain for the disturbing reaction of kids to this film. And, of course, the film made a lot of money and spawned a whole subgenre of teen-rebellion movies. The children of the Depression Era and World War II were the teens of the ‘50s. They wanted to see themselves truthfully portrayed on film, and they got what they asked for.

Instead of being portrayed as basically cute and obsessed with dating and status, these new films showed us high-schoolers as troubled souls struggling to make sense of of a hostile world.

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

NFR Project: 'Bad Day at Black Rock' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Bad Day at Black Rock”

Dir: John Sturges

Scr: Millard Kaufman, Don McGuire

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: Newell P. Kimlin

Premiere: Jan. 7, 1955

81 min.

John Sturges (1910-1992) was a profoundly gifted director who never really received his due in the awards department. He created many great action films, including The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and Ice Station Zebra (1968). Here he first makes his mark, with an effective and compelling film that builds its suspense slowly until its violent conclusion.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a modern-dress Western. A stranger comes to town and imposes justice on a lawless environment, the basic plot of many a horse opera. What distinguishes this film is the stalwart presence of Spencer Tracy as the One-Armed Man, and the themes of prejudice and cowardly collusion that it raises.

Shooting in the hot, dusty scrub desert of California, the film is set in 1945, immediately after the end of World War II. Tracy is John J. Macreedy, a one-armed veteran who has come to the tiny town of Black Rock on an unspecified mission. (No one has gotten off the train at Black Rock for four years.) Macreedy is a bit of a Zen master – calm, cool, deliberate, deferential. He is after something, something only gradually revealed as the film unwinds.

The townsfolk are not pleased about this. Something bad happened in Black Rock during the war, and nobody wants to talk about it. At the center of this web of silence is Reno Smith (Robert Ryan, evil as only he could be), a violently prejudiced rancher who’s resentful as he was rejected for military service and therefore couldn’t kill any “Japs.” It turns out he was a perpetrator of an evil deed, and he has all the other inhabitants of Black Rock under his sway. Everyone is complicit.

Among Smith’s compatriots are the sadistic Trimble (Ernest Borgnine) and the insolent Homer (Lee Marvin). Others, such as Liz (Anne Francis), the local sheriff (Dean Jagger), and the town doctor (Walter Brennan), grudgingly reveal bits of information that add up to solve the mystery of what happened. Meanwhile, Macreedy reveals his reason for coming to town. He is there to deliver a medal won by a late soldier under his command to the boy’s father. That father and son are Japanese-American is significant.

Sturges had directed 20 B movies before Black Rock, and he is perfectly assured here. He uses the CinemaScope screen with wisdom, composing shots that utilize the expanded frame beautifully. His use of Technicolor is also incomparable, given the lack of a broad palette on the desert. Millard Kaufman’s script is tight and fast-moving, and manages to make effective points about the emptiness of racial prejudice and citizen inaction in the face of evil as well.

There! I managed to describe the film without giving away too much of the plot. It is exhilarating to see this film for the first time, and I would not spoil your pleasure. Tracy, playing his age, in particular plays a noble, understated, and brilliant protagonist who breaks the spell of a curse that overhangs this tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

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

NFR Project: 'The Phenix City Story' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “The Phenix City Story”

Dir: Phil Karlson

Scr: Daniel Mainwaring, Crane Wilbur

Pho: Harry Neumann

Ed: George White

Premiere: Aug. 14, 1955

100 min.

An interesting low-budget anomaly. This film is an awkward combination of would-be documentary and fictionalized potboiler. It purports to show the events surrounding the uncovering of systemic and pervasive corruption in Phenix City, Alabama in the early 1950s. (In fact, the Columbus, GA Ledger-Enquirer won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for its reporting on Phenix City.)

Phil Karlson (1908-1982) was a maestro of the mediocre. He made his living directing movies for off-brand studios such as Monogram. He was competent and professional, bringing in all his efforts on time and under budget. Name a genre, and he directed a film in it. He was one of a fraternity of lesser-known but steadily working Hollywood directors such as Allan Dwan, Joseph H. Lewis, Edward L. Cahn, Roger Corman, and Edgar Ulmer.

Phenix City is located across the river from Columbus, Georgia, which hosts Fort Benning. The presence of enlisted men led to the creation of a red-light district that gave the town the unofficial title of “Sin City, USA.” In the 1940s and ‘50s, gambling, prostitution, and drug usage there were rampant. The town was run by organized crime, with the full cooperation of the municipal authorities.

Attempts were made at reform that were rebuffed violently. On June 18, 1954, the Alabama attorney general pro tem Albert Patterson, who ran on reform, was shot to death outside his law office in downtown Phenix City. The situation was so out of hand that martial law was declared in the city on July 22.

So this film was made immediately after the fact. Interestingly, it opens with about 20 minutes of interviews between journalist Clete Roberts and some of the citizens who witnessed the actual carnage. It then kicks in to an overview of the sordid conditions in Phenix City. We are taken into the story of John Patterson (Richard Kiely), a lawyer and Korean War vet who goes into practice with his father Albert (John McIntire) in town.

An improvement committee is formed, but there is a spy in its midst. Its efforts are thwarted by the town’s criminals. The committee members are harassed and assaulted; one man’s daughter is murdered and tossed onto John’s lawn.

Albert, initially disinclined to get involved, eventually consents to run for attorney general. As in real life, the character is murdered. Son John flies into enraged action, finding the crime boss (Edward Andrews) responsible and beating him half to death. He is only restrained by Zeke (James Edwards), father of the slain girl, who exhorts, “Thou shalt not kill!”

The movie ends with armed soldiers taking over the district, and destroying its crooked gambling equipment. It is implied that the reign of terror is over. However, Karlson had a pessimistic outlook that runs like a thread through his films. The Phenix City Story is consonant with that perspective.

Those in charge are the bad guys, and violence is their stock in trade. Almost all the citizens have given up, resigning themselves to domination by society’s dark forces. Almost everyone is crooked; almost everyone can be bought. Crime is a major industry, a revenue source for a whole culture. It takes making it personal with a murder, for a man to avenge his father’s death, for anything positive to happen.

The tone is spare, shrouded in night on rain-slicked streets. The actors are a curious combination of polished pros, local amateur actors, and people seemingly drawn in off the street. The result is a documentary-like evocation of the underbelly of the American dream.

And, in real life, unlike the seemingly liberal character in the film, John Patterson went on to be one of the most anti-Black governors of all time.

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

NFR Project: 'The Man with the Golden Arm' (1955)

  

NFR Project: “The Man with the Golden Arm”

Dir: Otto Preminger

Scr: Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer, Ben Hecht

Pho: Sam Leavitt

Ed: Louis R. Loeffler

Premiere: Dec. 15, 1955

119 min.

Otto Preminger, a dictatorial menace of a director, was noted for his willingness to tackle controversial subjects. He had just addressed premarital sex in The Moon Is Blue (1953). Here he was to turn a great, gritty American novel into a slightly more palatable product starring Frank Sinatra in a role that confirms his ability as an actor. (He lost the Best Actor Oscar to Ernest Borgnine in Marty.)

Nelson Algren (1909-1961) was a novelist and short-story and non-fiction writer out of Chicago. He was a “bard of the down and out,” a chronicler of the American underclass, the folks who lived on the fringes of society. Read him; he’s good. He has a kind of tough-guy poesy that puts him somewhere between Chandler and Bukowski.

He is a resolute pessimist, and this is reflected in the original, National Book Award-winning novel, The Man with the Golden Arm, he wrote in 1949. It took a while for his work to percolate into the mainstream, but when it did it hit hard. Preminger, no stranger to controversy, snapped it up.

The resulting script, originally essayed by Algren, was turned over to Walter Newman. The script made tailor-made as a Best-Actor type of project Frank Sinatra could star in. In the novel, the protagonist kills himself. Obviously, this could not be in mainstream cinema. Therefore, the story was altered to give us an equivocally upbeat ending (that doesn’t work, by the way).

It’s the story of addiction. Frank plays Frankie, a would-be drummer in a studio recreation of a blighted Chicago slum. The feeling is gritty, tense; it does evoke the lives of people on the bottom rung of society, the criminals, prostitutes, drug dealers, gamblers who populate Algren’s world. Preminger gives us a wretched aesthetic that magnifies the emotional content of the brutal narrative. It is not Neorealism, but it is as close as Hollywood would ever come.

There in the depths of degradation and despair Frankie dwells with his wife “Zosh” (Eleanor Parker), who is out of her fricking mind. She sits around all day in a wheelchair, as Frankie had crippled her when he was driving drunk. Except she’s not: she’s faking it to keep Frankie around out of guilt!

He really digs Molly (Kim Novak), who works the door at a strip club. She loves him and believes in him, all the more important for him as he’s just returned from the Narcotic Farm in Kentucky, free from his addiction to what is generally regarded, though never specified, as heroin. (In the novel, pointedly, Frankie gets hooked on morphine due to injury in World War II combat.)

Frankie tries to go straight. He joins the musicians’ union, he goes out on an audition (disastrously). He rubs up against the local gambling shark Schwiefka (Robert Strauss), who gets him to deal illegal poker games for him again – as he is known as a genius with cards, “the man with the golden arm.” Meanwhile, the local pusher Louie (a young Darren McGavin) gets him hooked on the stuff again.

Things go from bad to worse. Frankie’s agony over his relapse manifests itself in Sintra’s sweaty, desperate features, lit grimly in a kind of dour “problem picture” style.

Preminger doesn’t preach; he simply follows the increasingly frantic machinations of the hero, Frankie Machine, as he declines into hopelessness. Frankie gets involved in a violent, crooked card game. Louie gets murdered and everyone thinks Frankie did it. Preminger and Newman give him a kind of ersatz redemption. Frank as Frankie gets to kick heroin in front of our eyes.

Surprisingly, it still works. Sinatra really could act, usually in proportion with the quality of the director he worked with (Zinnemann in Fron Here to Eternity, Frankenheimer in The Manchurian Candidate). He carries the film and makes us root for him.

He is ably assisted by the immortal Arnold Stang as Sparrow, his sidekick, Parker (an uncharacteristic choice) as his wife, and Novak in a star-making turn (with Picnic the same year). 

Frankie gets to walk away in the end . . . but where is he walking to? The ineffectiveness of its contrived ending reduces what came before to mere melodrama. There is no indication that Frankie is on his way to better things, save that he is clean. For now. This provisional view of humanity was about all the censors of the day could stand.

But it was important. It raised an issue that was pernicious and unacknowledged. History has not yet decided whether Preminger was a huckster exploiting the controversies of the day or a sincere pioneer of “problem” cinema in the modern era.

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

NFR Project: 'Lady and the Tramp' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Lady and the Tramp”

Dir: Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson

Scr: Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ralph Wright, Don DaGraadi

Ed: Don Halliday

Premiere: June 22, 1955

76 min.

OK, those of you who read me consistently know that I hate Disney films, the center of my childhood trauma. This particular entry is less offensive than many of Disney’s products, with only a little trauma towards the end when THE RAT TRIES TO EAT THE BABY.

Yep. Nightmare fuel.

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

NFR Project: 'A Time Out of War' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “A Time Out of War”

Dir: Denis Sanders

Premiere: 1954

20 min.

This beautiful little film, barely 20 minutes long, helped to launch two brothers into the business and garnered an Oscar to boot.

Denis and Terry Sanders created this film to serve as Denis’ thesis at UCLA. It is a gentle, elegiac film. Two Union sharpshooters cover a river crossing sometime during the Civil War. A Confederate soldier holds the opposite bank.

The Rebel soldier calls out for an hour truce. The Yanks agree, and the two share the pleasures of the river, and even trade goods by hurling it across the river. One Yankee, determined to fish, finds a body – the remains of a Union cavalryman. The two men dig a grave and bury the body; all three soldiers fire their guns into the sky together in salute. The sun goes down.

The Sanders approach is simplicity itself. There are no directorial flourishes; the camera tells the tale as though it were true. The film’s black-and-white cinematography is stunning; it makes full use of the evening’s “golden hour.”

This low-key, assured short showed Hollywood that students ould craft excellent films as well – nd at that teaching cinema could lead to commercially viable careers for its students.

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

NFR Project: 'A Star Is Born' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “A Star is Born”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Moss Hart

Pho: Sam Leavitt

Ed: Folmar Blangsted

Premiere: Sept. 12, 1954

182/154/178 min.

This film is all about the wonder that is Judy Garland.

The childhood star of The Wizard of Oz was afflicted with illness and substance abuse problems as her career progressed at MGM. She was universally popular, but she was manipulated and abused by those in charge of her career. Gradually, she became incapable of performing. In 1950, her contract with MGM was suspended.

After some rehab and a return to live performance, she and her then-husband and -manager Sid Luft came up with the idea to remake William Wellman’s 1937 melodrama A Star Is Born as a vehicle for her comeback.

This time, the plot of the movie was augmented with a number of musical performances by Garland. This hybrid of musical theater and melodrama proved to be a winner.

Garland plays Esther Blodgett, a struggling performer in L.A. trying to get noticed. She meets Norman Maine (James Mason), a matinee idol with a severe drinking problem. He falls for her and helps her break into the big time. She becomes a big star, with a new name, Vicki Lester – but at the same time, Norman’s career goes to hell in a handbasket. After an attempt at rehab, he finally gives up and kills himself, walking into the ocean. Vicky/Esther appears at a benefit immediately after, proudly identifying herself s “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

Garland suffers exquisitely throughout the film. She loves Norman, but his self-destructive behavior drives her to distraction. Judy does the best acting of her career in the offstage portions of the film, and dazzles during the musical sequences. (Her big number, the “Born In a Trunk” sequence, was filmed after Cukor left the production, and was inserted to beef up her screen time.)

The initial cut of the film was 182 minutes, but the studio cut it down by a half-hour in order to accommodate more showings in theaters. Decades later, much of the footage was restored, giving us a much better sense of story than the original commercial release.

Cukor’s ability to capture the feelings of women onscreen was unmatched, and his visual sense is impeccable. Working in Technicolor and CinemaScope for the first time, he makes it look easy. This is still the definitive version of this classic show-biz story.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: A Time Out of War.

NFR Project: 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”

Dir: Stanley Donen

Scr: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, Dorothy Kingsley

Pho: George Folsey

Ed: Ralph E. Winters

Premiere: Dec. 20, 1954

102 min.

Ho boy. All right, kids, read Liz Gloyn’s hilarious and accurate assessment of this film at the National Film Registry. It’s right on target.

This film is problematic to say the least. It endorses abduction and (near) statutory rape. It proclaims Man as the Unmoved Mover and Woman as the clay upon which he works. It reinforces every white heterosexual norm in existence. This is an all-white musical for an all-white audience.

The reason it made it onto the Registry is its astonishing dance sequences. The brilliant Stanley Donen, fully primed to film dance after making movies with Gene Kelly, directed the film with largely studio-bound perfection. As no one ever had tried before, he supported the performers with an understanding of how they fit the film space. That, and he was shooting in CinemaScope. He utilizes his expanded canvas to its uttermost, creating lovingly staged ensemble pieces and exuberant solos.

The story is regressive. It is derived from Stephen Vincent Benet’s 1938 short story, “The Sobbin’ Women.” This car-crash musical is set in Oregon in 1850. There are seven Pontipee brothers living in the wilderness together, all with flaming red hair. Their eldest brother Adam (Howard Keel) goes to town to “get” a wife. He finds Milly (Jane Powell) and proposes. That day. She accepts, of course, and back they go to their backwoods home.

There she discovers Adam’s six other brothers. She civilizes them, and brings them to a barn raising. The brothers, providentially, discover six eligible young women who, appropriately pair off with each brother. This enrages the townsfolk, who drive the Pontipees out.

Winter comes, and the men pine for their women. Adam reads to them one of Milly’s books, Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. He comes across the story of the Rape of the Sabine Women by the Romans. The seven decide to sneak into town and kidnap all their special ladies! Like the Romans! Yeah!

So they do. They trigger an avalanche, separating the townsmen from them for the time being. But oh golly! They forgot to kidnap the preacher! The men go live in the barn, the women take the house. Adam goes away to a trapping cabin. Milly finds she is pregnant. She has her and Adam’s child. Adam returns; he and Milly make up. The angry townsfolk arrive. Every girl claims the baby is hers. Everyone gets married immediately. The End.

It’s ridiculous. The misogyny is palpable. And it is executed in the highest MGM tradition, lavishly staged, costumed to a T, overflowing with talent, lit and shot with meticulous care.

The barn-raising sequence is one of the most captivating dance numbers ever filmed. Choreographer Michael Kidd was a genius, and this is his finest work. The brothers, clad in primary colors, woo the girls who are bust dancing with the men of the town. As the music plays, the women are traded back and forth by their opposing partners, in a delirious display of timing and agility. The men compete, bouncing on suspended wooden boards and performing all manner of astonishing feats. Donen keeps the camera low the more to admire the incredible moves of Kidd’s dancers.

Shortly after this, the brothers and the townsmen compete in raising a barn. This leads to an all-out brawl that ends with the complete collapse of the building’s frame as the brothers stand triumphant, untouched, in the center, surrounded by their prone foes. It’s a manly musical. The fight is shot perfectly, quietly escalating in intensity until the screen explodes with flying fists and bodies. It’s aestheticized violence, a comedy of mayhem.

And then there’s axe dance in the snow. The men (or their overdubbers) sing “Lonesome Polecat” while wielding sharp tools. It’s inventive, but it’s kitschy beyond belief, seeing these men cavorting in slow motion in a studio blizzard. Plus they sing, “But a man can’t sleep/When he sleeps with sheep.” Yeah.

So there you have it. Something really strange from the past that wouldn’t fly today. But as a film musical, it’s a dance-lover’s dream.

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