NFR Project: 'Gun Crazy' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Gun Crazy”

Dir: Joseph H. Lewis

Scr: Dalton Trumbo, MacKinlay Kantor

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Harry Gerstad

Premiere: Jan. 20, 1950

87 min.

Joseph H. Lewis was a talented director who came up the hard way. He made “B” pictures – those films that were cheap and created to fill out a double bill at a theater with a more prestigious “A” picture. He worked in practically every genre – Westerns (he was known as “Wagon Wheel Joe” for shooting scenes through that object to vary up the look of things), comedies, horror movies, costume dramas, and musicals.

It wasn’t until 1945 that he really hit on his strength, when he made the excellent film noir My Name is Julia Ross. Other fine examples of his work in this genre are So Dark the Night (1946), The Big Combo (1950), and this film, largely regarded as his masterpiece.

This screenplay was written by MacKinlay Kantor and the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, working under a pseudonym. It’s the story of the love between two disturbed people. Bart (John Dall) grows up obsessed with guns – although he is averse to killing. He gets in trouble with the law, serves in the Army, and comes back after his service to his hometown.

At a carnival he meets sharpshooter Laurie (Peggy Cummins), whom he beats in a shooting contest. They fall for each other, and run off together. Laurie wants to get money the quick and easy way, and she handily gets Bart to join her in armed robberies. Their crime spree gets them in the sights of the law. Laurie advocates one more big heist to set themselves up. They pull it off, but Laurie kills two people in the commission of the crime.

Laurie is trigger-happy, and unconcerned about committing murder. Pursued by the police, the two run into the mountains. Lost in the fog, surrounded by police, Laurie intends to kill in order to escape, but Bart balks at this and kills her, only to be killed himself shortly after.

The movie is enlivened by unique and innovative filming techniques. Lewis places close-ups off-center, to disorient and throw off the viewer, perhaps echoing the skewed perspective of the criminals. Notably, he directs the commission of a robbery from the back seat of a car in a continuous, 10-minute take (he repeats this back-seat filming a few more times in the film).

At the end, the two are lost in the (moral) fog they find themselves in. Bart is lured to his death by a femme fatale; he does the right thing in the end, but too late to change his fate.

Lewis makes a mean, lean picture that’s entertaining and thoughtful.

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

NFR Project: 'All the King's Men' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “All the King’s Men”

Dir: Robert Rossen

Scr: Robert Rossen

Pho: Burnett Guffey

Ed: Al Clark, Robert Parrish

Premiere: Nov. 8, 1949

110 min.

This adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Proze-winning novel is a story of corruption, based on the sketchy career of Louisiana politician Huey Long (1893-1935). Long was governor of the state, and was a powerful demagogue who was assassinated.

Such is the case with the film’s fictional Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), an idealist who gets involved with the political process and who starts to make back-room deals and gathers damaging information on his opponents. He wins the governorship, and continues with his corrupt ways.

He is aided and abetted by the film’s narrator, the journalist Jack Burden (John Ireland). Burden begins by covering the failures of the idealistic Stark, but soon grows into the position of being his campaign advisor (and the keeper of his opponents’ dirty secrets). As Stark becomes more and more powerful, principled others start impeachment proceedings against him. Stark survives impeachment, but is shot to death by a doctor who’s outraged that Stark is having an affair with his sister.

The film won Best Picture. Broderick Crawford won Best Actor, and Mercedes McCambridge won Best Supporting Actress. The axiom that power corrupts is thoroughly explored here.

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

NFR Project: 'Adam's Rib' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “Adam’s Rib”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin

Pho: George J. Folsey

Ed: George Boemler

Premiere: Nov. 18, 1949

101 min.

When last we saw Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn on film together in this series, it was in their first collaboration, Woman of the Year (1942). Over the next eight years, they made seven more pictures together. Their chemistry was perfect – he, the wry average guy, her the rapid-fire overachiever.

This onscreen relationship was accompanied by an offscreen relationship, one that was deeply loving. Tracy, a Catholic, wouldn’t divorce his wife, so he and Hepburn lived a life together as much as they could, maintaining separate residences and keeping their relationship an ill-kept secret. Tracy also struggled with his mental health and with alcohol. It was not all peaches and cream.

Still, what made them compatible offscreen manifests itself in their films together. Each one had a characteristic persona, and these two types played off each other with grace and wit. Here in Adam’s Rib, their verbal exchanges chase one another across the room, and frequently dissolve into talking OVER each other, a comic dividend.

This is their second film together under the direction of George Cukor, and the first comedy essayed by the three of them. Cukor’s urbane, understated style lets the actors act their way through a philosophical debate crossed with a slapstick bedroom comedy. Cukor gazes on contentedly as a parade of distinctive character actors crowd the screen carrying on the nonsense in the background. Cukor and Hepburn wound up making 10 films together over a span of 50 years.

The extremely sharp script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin casts them as lawyers. He, Adam, an assistant district attorney; she, wife Amanda, an attorney for the defense. Their New York apartment is comfortably grand; they bought a farm upstate as well. They are both extremely good at what they do.

The crux of the plot is this: a daffy housewife (Judy Holliday in a career-making performance) trails her cheating husband (the great Tom Ewell) to the apartment of his girlfriend (a young Jean Hagen). She pulls out a revolver, emptying it blindly. She wounds her husband. She is arrested of course.

However, Amanda asserts that, if the sexual roles were reversed, the shooting would be seen as justified, a defense of the home. She represents the housewife. Unfortunately, Adam is the prosecutor assigned to the case. The two must negotiate their relationship away from the court, just as they indulge in heated debate within it. As the trial progresses, Amanda goes to extreme lengths to bolster her client’s case; Adam, riled up and outraged, chuffs along steadily.

In the end, Amanda wins the case – but Adam moves out. Beset romantically by their neighbor, songwriter Kip (David Wayne), Amanda nearly falters when Adam appears, gun in hand. Amanda shields the diminutive Kip. “You have no right!” she exclaims. His point is proven. Adam puts the gun in his mouth – and bites it. “Itth licowice,” he explains. The three then do battle.

A divorce seems inevitable. The two meet at their tax accountant’s office. They begin to reminisce, Adam cries. Amanda relents. They go up to the farm. Adam announces that he is the Republican candidate for County Court Judge and then demonstrates that he can cry on command. They are together again.

It’s lovely late screwball comedy, wherein everyone is intelligent and reasonable; their senses of honor and propriety are in opposition, not their feeling selves. So the personal and the professional get mixed up until the woman wins and the roles reverse themselves.

Tracy takes (almost) everything with a skeptical glint of humor. Hepburn dashes madly about him, dynamic and stunningly articulate. Like Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies, Adam and Amanda embody the ideal of two uniquely matched people filling a need in each other’s lives, beyond the concept of winning and losing. They communicated. They got along well. We felt we knew them. That’s a pretty stellar achievement.

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

NFR Project: 'On the Town' (1949)

NFR Project: “On the Town”

Dir: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen

Scr: Adolph Green, Betty Comden

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: Ralph E. Winters

Premiere: Dec. 8, 1949

98 min.

On the Town germinated from a stage project initiated by the talented composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein. In 1944, he wrote, for choreographer Jerome Robbins, a short ballet titled Fancy Free, which highlighted three sailors on shore leave, mixing jazz and vernacular musical styles with classical.

The piece was a big success, and prompted Bernstein and the talented writing team of Adolph Green and Betty Comden to expand the selection and turn it into a musical that same year. The story of three sailors with only 24 hours’ leave in New York City was a novel idea. On the Town was a hit, and soon discussions about adapting into a film began.

Eventually, the film was made, starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin as the three sailors. The radical idea of filming on location made this the first musical to stage scenes on the streets of New York. 

At 6 a.m., the sailors run down the gangplank from their ship and sing about how excited they are to be in the city. We are offered a montage of them traveling to all the great tourist destinations in the Big Apple. Then one of them, Gabe (Kelly), sees a picture of a girl, Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen) on the subway (she is “Miss Turnstiles,” a monthly honor bestowed on an attractive subway rider) and falls in love. He vows to find her, and his buddies join with him. 

The three try to track her down by going to all of New York’s cultural institutions. They travel to the Museum of Natural History, where Ozzy (Munshin) grabs the attention of the brainy Claire (Ann Miller). The boys go next to Symphonic Hall. They grab a cab piloted by Hildy (Betty Garrett), who falls for Chip (Sinatra). Gabe finds Ivy and makes a date with her, believing her to be a member of high society.

The six go out night-clubbing. At 11:30 p.m., Ivy must go to Coney Island, where she works as a “cooch dancer”. Gabe finds her, and she confesses her humble origins and reveals that in fact she is from the same small Indiana town as him. Meanwhile, the police and the Shore Patrol are hot on the group’s heels, and apprehends them, sending the sailors back to their ship. The girls wave goodbye. And another batch of sailors springs out of the ship, ready to go on the town.

Oddly, the film tosses many of the musical’s original numbers, including the excellent “Carried Away” and “I Can Cook, Too,” and substitutes songs not written by Bernstein for them. Fortunately, they are decent and move the plot along. The production is in vivid Technicolor, with some bravura dancing and singing scenes. It’s a pleasant enough excursion, and continued the trend of location shooting in New York.

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

 

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: John Huston

Pho: Ted D. McCord

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: Jan. 24, 1948

126 min.

It’s one of the best films ever made.

This remarkable project was just another great job done by director and screenwriter John Huston (1906-1987), and is perhaps the best of his 37 feature films.

Huston was inspired by B. Traven’s 1927 novel. Traven was a mysterious figure. Much speculation exists as to his true name and background, but he was definitely known as an anarchist in Germany under the name of Ret Marut in post-World War I Berlin. Forced into exile, he made his way to Mexico in 1928 and began writing novels about politics, greed, and social injustice.

For Traven, capitalism was the chief cause of suffering, poverty, and death in the world. Sierra Madre is his second novel; after that, he wrote the extraordinary The Death Ship, followed by a series of historical novels outlining the exploitation of indigenous peoples in Mexico. He jealously guarded his anonymity and remained an unseen factor in the creation of this film adaptation.

This was the first film project Huston made after his service in World War II, during which he made documentaries for the Army, two of which, The Battle of San Pietro and Let There Be Light were reviewed in this series. Huston wrote the screenplay and set to work. He gathered a solid trio of actors to play his leads – his own father, the venerable Walter Huston as Howard, a grizzled old prospector; Tim Holt as Curtin, a young man down on his luck; and the incomparable Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs, whose descent into madness takes up most of the film.

The movie opens in Tampico, Mexico. Dobbs is impoverished and stranded, reduced to begging for handouts from affluent American tourists. He meets Curtin, and the two sign on to work on an oil rig. They are cheated out of their pay, and later find the contractor who bilked them and beat him into submission, taking their pay from his wallet. Huston captures the desperation of the down and out.

However, the two rapidly run out of money. They go to sleep in a flophouse, and there discover Howard, who spins tales about prospecting for gold. Dobbs wins a small amount of money in a lottery, and the three use the money to equip themselves for an expedition.

Off they go into the wilderness, fighting off bandits on the train ride in (they see one bandit with a distinctive “gold hat,” but Dobbs fails to shoot him). They reach the wilderness and begin searching for a vein. Howard, unexpectedly much hardier than the other two, sets the pace. Huston went on location to get an unvarnished look at the harsh, dry landscape the trio finds themselves in. Eventually, Howard strikes paydirt and the three get to work mining the gold.

As the profits in gold dust accrue, Dobbs suggests that each man take care of his own share of the treasure. This leads to a change in the men – suddenly distrustful, they hide their shares from each other. Another American, Cody, (Bruce Bennett) finds out about their mine and asks to be included. The three determine to kill him, but they are interrupted by the bandits, led by Gold Hat, before they can execute their plan. Trapped by the bandits, the men appear to be out of luck, until federal troops come along and chase the bandits away. Cody is killed in the battle with the bandits.

Finally, the vein peters out and the men prepare to go home. On their way back, Howard is kidnapped by some indigenous people who seek his help in reviving an unconscious child. Trusting his goods to his partners, Howard goes with them. In an extraordinary and silent scene, he brings the child back to life. Now the people adopt him and treat him to a kingly existence.

Meanwhile, Dobbs and Curtin struggle on through the desert. Dobbs becomes more and more paranoid, accusing Curtin of planning his death. Eventually, Dobbs becomes so homicidal that Curtin covers him with a gun, refusing to sleep. Of course, Curtin falls asleep and Dobbs takes his gun away and shoots him. Curtin crawls off into the brush to die.

Dobbs continues alone, and is almost to the nearest town when the bandits, still led by Gold Hat, encounter him. They attack him for his mules, brutally cutting his head off. The bandits find the gold dust and, not knowing what it is, dump it out on the ground.

Curtin survives his wound and reconnects with Howard. The two race to the town to find their treasure, but find that it has all blown away in the wind. Crestfallen at first, the two finally laugh off their futile 10-month quest for gold, and part amicably.

Greed is the driving force in the movie. Dobbs without gold is simply grumpy and a bit caustic; once the stakes are high he transforms into an inhuman, murdering monster. Bogart’s performance is one of his best – his slow dehumanization is a portrait of the human soul distorted and ultimately destroyed by selfish desire.

Played out in an unforgiving landscape, Sierra Madre serves as a cautionary tale about wealth and what it does to people. Those who maintain their morality are largely untouched, but flawed characters such as Dobbs find their negative traits ballooning to deadly proportions. Huston relishes the labor of the prospecting trio, outlining it in detail. Dobbs’ march through the desert becomes an expedition through his personal Hell, Dobbs reduced to the status of demon.

The movie is compulsively watchable. We are invested in the miners’ struggle, and sit in appalled attention as the scheme unravels. In the end, we too must laugh off the whole affair and move on, humbled by the demonstration of man’s frailties.

When Oscar time rolled around, Huston won for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and his father won for Best Supporting Actor.

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

NFR Project: 'Red River' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “Red River”

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Borden Chase, Charles Schnee

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Christian Nyby

Premiere: Aug. 26, 1948

127 min.

Leave it to Howard Hawks to make an almost perfect Western on his second try (if you count Barbary Coast as a Western). Red River is simply remarkable, until its damp squib of an ending.

Hawks mastered every genre he ever attempted. This film is no exception. Using the basic plot as that of Mutiny on the Bounty out West, the movie marries two very different actors – tough John Wayne and sensitive Montgomery Clift, making them father and adopted son in conflict. With a strong script by Borden Chase, the valuable second-unit direction of Arthur Rosson, and a spectacular cast combine to create a landmark mature Western.

Wayne is Tom Dunson, a stubborn and ornery cattleman who doesn’t let a woman get in the way of his plans. When he separates from his beloved, her wagon train is beset by Indians and she is killed. The only survivor of the massacre is a young boy, Matthew Garth, who brings his cow along. He joins up with Wayne and his sidekick Groot (Walter Brennan) and together they forge a huge cattle empire.

Years later, Matthew (now Montgomery Clift) and Dunston plan to take the herd of 10,000 cattle north 1,000 miles to the railroad, for sale. Dunston aims to wind up at Sedalia, Missouri, but it appears that railroad has penetrated further west and can be met at Abilene, Kansas. The men are conflicted over which way to go, but Dunson stubbornly insists on going to Missouri.

Dunson aims to kill a cowboy for causing a stampede, but Matt wounds the man instead. Three other men state they want to quit; Dunson and Matt kill them. Three more men escape in the night; Dunson sends Cherry Valance (John Ireland) to capture them. He returns with two, having killed one. Dunson states his intention to hang the deserters. Matt says no. He disarms Dunson and abandons him, taking the herd to Abilene. Dunston swears he’ll find him and kill him.

Matt and his followers come upon a wagon train under Indian attack; they fight them off. Matt meets a spunky gal, Tess (Joanne Dru). They form a bond, but the cattle drive moves on. Eight days later, Dunson meets Tess, still bent on revenge. He offers her half the ranch if she will bear him a son. She agrees if Dunston will stop chasing Matt, but he refuses.

In the end, Dunson finds Matt and tries to goad him into gunplay. Matt refuses. Dunson and Matt then beat the stuffing out of each other.

This is where is movie goes south. Tess shows up, wielding a gun, and yells at them to stop fighting, stating that they know that they love each other. They stop fighting and reconcile. The end.

This unconvincing wrap-up solves the dilemma of the plot – who will die? It turns out, no one.

Up until then, everything was great. The story unfolds with epic sweep. There is a who’s who of great Western character actors on hand – Hank Worden, Paul Fix, Noah Beery Jr., Harry Carey and Harry Carey Jr., Tom Tyler, and Glenn Strange. Together they create a classic.

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

NFR Project: 'The Pearl' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “The Pearl”

Dir: Emilio Fernandez

Scr: John Steinbeck, Emilio Fernandez, Jack Wagner

Pho: Gabriel Figueroa

Ed: Gloria Schoemann

Premiere: Feb. 17, 1948 (U.S.) / Sept. 12, 1947 (Mexico)

77 min.

There are two great film figures at work here that you’ve probably not heard of.

Emilio Fernandez was one of the premier directors, screenwriters, and actors of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema (1936-1956). He made more than 100 films; he garnered international acclaim. But because Mexican culture didn’t by and large make it north of the border, he remains an unknown quantity to American eyes. The same is true for cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, who was similarly honored for his efforts, and who worked on more than 200 films.

The two of them combine forces to film an epic fable or parable about the dangers of greed, the oppression of colonialism, and basic questions of good and evil, penned by that master John Steinbeck. The simplicity of the story is like that of a fairy tale; but the story is dotted with blood.

A pearl fisherman, Kino (Pedro Armendariz, best known in America for his John Ford roles), finds an enormous pearl, which he shows his wife Juana (Mari Elena Marquez). The village celebrates the find. The doctor who previously refused to treat his infant son now hurries to their bedside, eager to exchange his expertise for the pearl.

The dealers in town agree to keep their estimation of the pearl’s value low. Kino refuses to sell to them, and he and his family seek to escape the village, to make it to the capital to sell the pearl. He kills an assailant. They try to flee by water, but fail. They begin an arduous overland journey, pursued by two native trackers and a man with a gun.

The men trap them, and Kino slithers down the mountainside, knife in hand. He ambushes the man with the gun and kills him. However, the man gets a shot off. It kills the baby.

Kino and Juana return to their village, hand in hand. They go up a high cliff looking over the sea – and cast the pearl into it.

A simple story, but resonant. Wealth is evil. The pearl is a curse, revealing the worst in every man. It nearly destroys those who possess it. And the world of men is not fair, nor even-handed. It is on one level another Steinbeck indictment of man’s behavior.

The images in the film progress from one beautiful composition to another. Figueroa is at his best when he’s close in to actor’s faces, lovingly recording their responses to the tragedy around them. Armendariz is masterful as Kino.

The film was made twice; once in English and once in Spanish. I could not find the English version, but I broke into my high-school Spanish to follow a screening along as best I could. Fortunately, Fernandez tells the story purely through visuals – it is possible to understand the story without understanding the language. This grasp of materials in service of telling the story is exemplary.

No matter what language you see it in, the strong visuals propel the fable along. It’s a gateway to the underappreciated Golden Age of Mexican cinema, which deserves wider viewing.

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

NFR Project: 'The Naked City' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “The Naked City”

Dir: Jules Dassin

Scr: Albert Maltz, Malvin Wald

Pho: William H. Daniels

Ed: Paul Weatherwax

Premiere: March 4, 1948

96 min.

“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This was one of them.”

So intones the voice of Mark Hellinger, New York journalist and this film’s producer, who died weeks before this film opened. Hellinger’s voice is the first you hear in the preamble to this story of a crime and its solution, as a sometimes-sardonic offscreen chronicler of New York City’s bigness and complex functions, faithfully telling a police procedural story as a documentary-style “location” film, before anyone else and most successfully.

For a lot of this was shot on New York streets, starting a trend that would accelerate as the years passed. The movie is a classic policier – the story of a given case from the perspective of law enforcement, from beginning to end. Here, a murder sporting two suspects branches off into all manner of scenes with a cross-section of New York’s vibrant culture.

The leader of the investigation is Dt. Lt. Muldoon, played by Barry Fitzgerald. You finally get a good look at Fitzgerald as a legit character actor, and not as his typical comic Irish stereotype. He wisely prods witnesses, focuses his team’s attention, and delegates the legwork to an eager young Detective, Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor).

The trouble comes down to a shifty suspect (Howard Duff, in a truly villainous role) and his relation to several women. There is jewel theft, and a wrester that plays the harmonica (Ted de Corsia, sweaty and desperate). Somehow Muldoon and Company take down the bad guys, the last of which is vanquished at the summit of the Williamsburg Bridge (William H. Daniels won Best Cinematography at the Oscars that year for it).

One of its more trivia-minded aspects is the onslaught of New York acting talent that surfaced in this film. If you pluck out in your memory the now-familiar faces of character actors Kathleen Freeman, James Gregory, Nehemiah Persoff, John Randolph, Paul Ford, John Marley, and/or Arthur O’Connell, you would be seeing for the first time in years a “real” East Coast film.

It is by today’s standards sedate, but it was revolutionary for its time. It was wildly successful. You did not have to go to Hollywood to make a movie, once again. People liked seeing “the real thing,” and naturalism became the name of the game in film, at least in black-and-white. (Note: there was a string of “Technicolor noirs” concurrently, some of which were such sterling examples as Vertigo, House of Bamboo, and Leave Her to Heaven.) There was a big pool of cheap talent in New York. In future, views of the city would increase appreciably on nation-wide screens.

The director, Jules Dassin, was not a Frenchman, but a kid from Harlem. He knew his way around the city. He had just made the hit Brute Force; after Naked City, he would make, in a row, Thieves’ Highway, Night and the City, and Rififi. A true noir master. Saying that, it is interesting how Dassin presents the story in pseudo-documentary style, with Hellinger’s narrative voice continuing, moving the story along.

Dassin doesn’t exercise any style. His directing is strictly functional. They want it to look like the real thing? We get the drudgery of daily police work, see its odd chances at grasping the truth, trace the track-down of a criminal on an iconic NYC bridge. It is proud of its pedestrianism. It was all done surreptitiously; no one gave their permission to use their image to the filmmakers. They just went out into the streets and got it.

The blacklist got Dassin shortly after. He got off Thieves’ Highway, but he had to scamper to England to make Night and the City, away from the bad press that labeled him as a Communist. He then stuck to working in Europe, still producing popular and visually adroit films such as Rififi, Never on Sunday and Topkapi.

The Naked City epitomizes the tough urban thriller. Shot on location willy-nilly, it’s gritty and tough, delivers a New York sensibility that would soon revitalize the industry. It’s NYC neorealism.

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

NFR Project: 'Louisiana Story' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “Louisiana Story”

Dir: Robert J. Flaherty

Scr: Robert J. Flaherty, Frances H. Flaherty

Pho: Richard Leacock

Ed: Helen van Dongen

Premiere: Sept. 28, 1948

78 min.

A slightly interesting artifact. This is a promotional film, commissioned by the Standard Oil Company. They wanted to show rural audiences that letting them drill for oil on their property was a lovely, interesting way to make them some money.

They hired the great documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Moana, Man of Aran) to direct it. He and his wife wrote the scenario. In it, a young boy and his parents live in a shack out in the Louisiana swamp. The oil company comes through and gets the old man to sign a contract. Soon an oil rig is towed to the portion of the river nearest their home.

The boy watches the goings-on at the rig with curiosity, slightly intimidated by the huge pieces of machinery and the loud clankings of its operation. However, the drillers are nice guys, and soon make the boy feel at home.

The progress of the well is deterred briefly by a blowout (the pressurized emission of a pocket of gas and salt water). However, things soon get back on track and finally, they strike oil.

Meanwhile, the boy has some adventures in the swamp. He loses his pet racoon to an alligator, then captures and kills and skins the gator in consequence. The cinematography by Richard Leacock is beautiful; the boy grows up in an enchanted world.

The movie ends when the family gets paid off. Mother gets a new cooking pot; the boy gets a new gun!

The film also contains an exquisite score by Virgil Thomson, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Composition.

The fable-like falsity of the narrative sells the viewpoint of the entity commissioning the product. Drilling is good, the end. The rest is just wondow-dressing. It is quite a comedown for Flaherty, who get points for crafting a visually interesting film – but turns over control of its meaning to its owners. It is a work-for-hire.

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

NFR Project 'Letter from an Unknown Woman' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “Letter from an Unknown Woman”

Dir: Max Ophuls

Scr: Howard Koch

Pho: Franz Planer

Ed: Ted J. Kent

Premiere: April 28, 1948

86 min.

This is a very uncharacteristic Hollywood movie. This is due to three men – writer Stefan Zweig, producer John Houseman, and director Max Ophuls.

Zweig (1881-1942) was one of the world’s most popular writers. An Austrian, he wrote histories, biographies, and fiction, and was translated into many languages. When Hitler came to power, he escaped his homeland and came first to England and then America. He wrote of life and love in turn-of-the-century Vienna quite eloquently, and with a nostalgia for the pre-World War I culture of the capital. Tragically, his despair over the loss of that culture led to his eventual suicide.

John Houseman (1902-1988), known today for his acting work late in his life, was in fact a Hungarian who was educated in England, and who moved to America in 1925. After a successful career as a grain merchant, he turned to the theater and became a highly regarded writer and producer, best known for his collaborations with a young Orson Welles. When he moved into producing films, he was noted for his meticulous work on prestigious projects. Letter from an Unknown Woman is an example of his superior attention to period detail.

Max Ophuls (1902-1957) was the third Jewish man of this triumvirate of talent. An acclaimed and experienced film director, he also escaped the Nazis and came first to France, and then to America in 1941. Here he continued his career. Letter from an Unknown Woman is his most honored film from this period; he returned to Europe after World War II and made his masterpieces – La Ronde, Lola Montes, Le Plaisir, and The Earrings of Madame de . . . .

Letter is an urbane and mature work, adapted from Zweig's 1922 novella, which examines a curse of unrequited love. A young woman (Joan Fontaine) falls in love with a promising – and womanizing – pianist (Louis Jordan). After years, she finally engineers an evening with him, which he promptly forgets. However, she becomes pregnant, gives birth, and raises their son alone, unknown to him.

Years later, the woman has married an officer, who adopts her son. By chance, she sees the pianist at a concert and determines to see him again. Her husband notes this and promises that he will act with decisiveness if she pursues her passion. Ignoring him, she attempts to reunite with the pianist but finds him a shallow individual who has wasted his talent. Unfortunately, she and her son contract typhus shortly after this and die, but not before she writes a letter to the pianist explaining all. At film’s end, the pianist finds that he has been challenged to a duel by the woman’s husband, and he sets off to an uncertain fate.

The film is told primarily in flashback, and we are given a vision of fin-de-siecle Vienna, gorgeously recreated for the cameras. The subjects of sex outside of wedlock and illegitimate birth was unheard of in Hollywood at the time, but Zweig, Houseman, and Ophus together craft an adult and sophisticated story that accepts the fact that these things happen, and that morality is not entirely black and white.

Ophuls’ patented swooping camera moves are here, and his delicate touch renders this most unconventional story realistic and comprehensible. Its maturity was far beyond the American standards of the time – Ophuls would have to return to Europe to craft more films in this vein.

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