NFR Project: 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Sunset Boulevard”

Dir: Billy Wilder

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

Pho: John F. Seitz

Ed: Doane Harrison, Arthur Schmidt

Premiere: August 10, 1950

110 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “In a Lonely Place”

Dir: Nicholas Ray

Scr: Andrew P. Solt, Edmund H. North

Pho: Burnett Guffey

Ed: Viola Lawrence

Premiere: August 1950

94 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “D.O.A.”

Dir: Rudolph Mate

Scr: Russell Rouse, Clarence Greene

Pho: Ernest Laszlo

Ed: Arthur H. Nadel

Premiere: April 21, 1950

84 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Born Yesterday' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Born Yesterday”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Albert Mannheimer, Garson Kanin

Pho: Joseph Walker

Ed: Charles Nelson

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1950

102 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'The Asphalt Jungle' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “The Asphalt Jungle”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: Ben Maddow, John Huston

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: George Boemler

Premiere: May 12, 1950

112 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'All About Eve" (1950)

 

NFR Project: “All About Eve”

Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Scr: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Pho: Milton R. Krasner

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Oct. 13, 1950

138 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Cinderella' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Cinderella”

Dir: Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi

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

Ed: Donald Halliday

Premiere: March 4, 1950

76 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Outrage' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Outrage”

Dir: Ida Lupino

Scr: Ida Lupino, Malvin Wald, Collier Young

Pho: Louis Clyde Stoumen, Archie Stout

Ed: Harvey Manger

Premiere: Oct. 14, 1950

75 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Cyrano de Bergerac”

Dir: Michael Gordon

Scr: Carl Foreman, Brian Hooker

Pho: Franz Planer

Ed: Harry W. Gerstad

Premiere: Nov. 16, 1950

113 min.

This immortal story is largely fiction, but it has its roots in reality. Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) was a real person – a writer, poet, playwright, and soldier of France. He was witty and daring. He created science fiction long before anyone else ventured into it. His brief life was studded with achievements. And, yes, he had an unnaturally large nose.

French playwright Edmond Rostand created the legendary figure of Cyrano de Bergerac in his dramatic work of the same name in 1897. He extrapolated the facts of Cyrano’s life and built what he termed an “heroic comedy” out of them. His play, wildly successful, received an extraordinary English translation by Brian Hooker, which proved to be a starring vehicle for the American actor Walter Hampden.

A revival of the play in 1947 led to a Tony win for Best Actor for Jose Ferrer. It was deemed worthwhile to capture his performance on film. This performance led to Ferrer winning an Oscar for Best Actor for the role in 1950. It was well-deserved.

In the play, Cyrano is highly regarded as a duelist and writer, someone not to be trifled with. He is proudly independent, consistently making powerful enemies that attempt to thwart him. He routinely wipes the floor with detractors who make fun of his nose, skewering them with his sword.

He has one weakness – he is madly and secretly in love with his cousin Roxanne, who sees him only as a brotherly figure. He fears that she will despise him due to his grotesque appearance. She confides to him that she is in love – he thinks excitedly at first it is with himself, but then sadly realizes that the object of her affection is a young and handsome new recruit to his fighting unit, Christian. Cyrano befriends Christian, and tells him of Roxanne’s attraction to him.

However, Christian is in despair. He has no gift for words, and Roxanne demands poetic love-talk from him. Cyrano hits upon a plan. He will write love letters to Roxanne and attribute them to Christian, so that the young cadet can win her love. In this way, Cyrano can unburden his heart to her in disguise.

In the famous nighttime balcony scene, Cyrano feeds Christian romantic lines to recite to Roxanne as she stands above him in the darkness. Christian is too hesitant, so Cyrano thrusts him aside and delivers a heartfelt romantic speech to her, which wins her heart – for Christian. The two are married, but their honeymoon is thwarted by the antagonistic Comte de Guiche, who orders Christian and Cyrano off to war.

Later, in the trenches, Cyrano writes and mails letters in Christian’s name to Roxanne, even when surrounded by enemy Spanish troops. Roxanne makes it through the lines with supplies for the cadets, and finally sees Christian again. She tells him of her delight at receiving love letters from him daily – and Christian realizes Cyrano loves her as well. Roxanne declares that she loves him for his soul, and would love him even if he were ugly.

Christian confronts Cyrano, and declares that Cyrano must reveal his love for her – that she must choose between them. This Cyrano is about to do when Christian is fatally wounded. Before dying, Cyrano lies to him, saying that Roxanne has chosen him. As Roxanne mourns, “My love weeps for me, and does not know!” Cyrano exclaims.

We move forward several years. Roxanne is now ensconced in a convent. Cyrano, as her old friend, visits her weekly, bringing with him amusing bits of court gossip. However, on this day, he has been attacked by his enemies and is fatally wounded. Hiding the bandages around his head, he goes to see her, though it means his death. The truth is finally revealed, and Roxanne declares her love for him. But it is too late. Sword in hand, Cyrano defies death and proclaims his triumph over it in the form of his panache, his vibrant spirit, his “white plume.” And he dies.

Ferrer’s performance is extraordinary. He is alert, intelligent, intense, not letting his cumbersome nose prevent him from fleshing out his heroic character. Whether he is dueling and rhyming simultaneously, or pretending to be a lunar traveler, his hearty spirit dominates the proceedings. The film follows the play faithfully, with minimal cuts to the original script. The settings and costumes are lavish, and the ensemble of actors is ideal.

Rostand’s Cyrano is the Cyrano we know today. Rarely has a fictional elaboration so completely eclipsed an actual historical figure.

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

 

 

 

 

 

NFR Project: Bohulano family film collection (1950s-1970s)

NFR Project: Bohulano family film collection

Recorded 1950s – 1970s

An admirable compendium of the joys of family life in a Filipinx immigrant community in Stockton, California, from the 1950s through the 1970s. These are truly home movies, and they document the life of an extended family and a segregated community in America. It includes the usual content of home movies – records of community events, family gatherings, and vacation trips. What elevates this collection above normal home-movie fare is that it gives the viewer a sense of family and how it endures, even in discriminated populations.

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'White Heat' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “White Heat”

Dir: Raoul Walsh

Scr: Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts

Pho: Sidney Hickox

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: Sept. 2, 1949

114 min.

James Cagney was looking for a hit. After he won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1942, he left Warner Brothers, went off on his own and tried to make his own movies independently. He failed. So back he went to Warner Brothers, signing up to make more movies for the studio he had originally rejected.

The studio was eager for him to make a gangster film. Cagney resisted, as he thought he was being overidentified with the genre. However, he overcame his reluctance and made White Heat, one of the most iconic of all crime films.

It’s a bifurcated story. One half of it is about the modern police’s enhanced abilities and procedures that allow them to track down and neutralize bad guys; the other half is about Cody Jarrett. Cagney is Jarrett, in a towering performance of psychotic intensity.

Jarrett is a bank robber, ruthless and insane, unconcerned with his casual murders. He is unnaturally attached to his criminal “Ma” (Margaret Wycherly), who both lives for him and controls him. He suffers from spells of burning headaches that torment him; only Ma can soothe them away. Together, they seek to live large (“top of the world,” she tells him) He leads a gang that includes his wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) and right-hand man “Big Ed” (Steve Cochran).

Cody is almost nabbed for a train robbery, but pleads to a lesser (false) charge, so that he is sentenced to only two years in prison. A Treasury agent places an undercover man, Fallon (Edmond O’Brien) in prison, assigning him to befriend Cody.

Verna and Big Ed are playing around behind Cody’s back. Big Ed tries unsuccessfully to have Cody killed in prison. In an iconic scene in the prison mess, Jarrett finds out that Ma is dead. (Look closely in this scene for the great Native American athlete, Jim Thorpe.) He goes berserk, slugging guards and writhing frantically as he is carted away.

He vows to escape, and does with Fallon in tow. Returning home, he kills Big Ed and the inmate who tried to kill him. Soon the gang has another robbery in mind – the payroll department of a big chemical plant. Using a gas truck like a Trojan horse, the gang enters the plant and begins to crack the safe. Fallon is recognized, but escapes. Surrounded, the gang is rubbed out one by one. Jarrett climbs to the top of an enormous storage tank and fires into it. It bursts into flame. Shouting “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” Jarrett exults and is blown to smithereens.

Cagney was 49 when he made White Heat; his youthful good looks were leaving him and he was making the transition to character roles. His decision to play an utterly despicable character was unique, but it worked. Jarrett is a complex of violent impulses, barely capable of getting through the day without killing someone. It’s a brilliant portrayal of a criminal as a mentally damaged individual.

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

NFR Project: 'Twelve O'Clock High' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “Twelve O’Clock High”

Dir: Henry King

Scr: Henry King, Sy Bartlett, Beirne Lay Jr.

Pho: Leon Shamroy

Ed: Barbara McLean

Premiere: Dec. 21, 1949

132 min.

American war movies made during World War II were pure propaganda – gung-ho adventure stories in which the bad guys, the Nazis and the “Japs,” always lost. There was no shading, no questioning of the effort. It took a few years for more nuanced examinations of the conflict to appear on film.

One of the best is Twelve O’Clock High. It’s the fact-based story of an American bomber group in England in 1942. At that time, they were the only part of the American fighting forces to do battle with Nazi Germany. In order to blunt the German war effort, they engaged in daylight bombing of enemy targets. The difficulty and danger of these sorties were magnified by the fact that Allied fighter planes at the time did not have the range that would allow them to protect the bombers. B-17s flew into enemy airspace guarded only by their own guns.

The pressure was intense, as the higher-ups called for “maximum effort” – an unrelenting schedule of bombing raids, day after day, despite losses and despite the fatigue of its crews. Twelve O’Clock High takes on the story of the imaginary 918^th Bomber Group. Its efficiency is questioned, and complaints center on the attitude of its commander, Col. Davenport (Gary Merrill). Major Gen. Pritchard (Millard Mitchell) decides to replace him with Brigadier Gen. Savage (Gregory Peck), a by-the-book man who takes the tough-love approach with his fliers.

He is assisted by the capable and thoughtful Group Adjutant, Major Stovall (Dean Jagger) and the group doctor, Major Kaiser (Paul Stewart). Savage reads the riot act to his men, demoting some and disciplining others. All the pilots request transfers.

Savage delays their requests while he struggles to earn their confidence. He finds himself moved by the efforts and attitudes of his airmen, and begins to unbend. The transfer requests are withdrawn.

The action takes place in and around the base; the film could be a stage play save for a long combat sequence late in the film, culled entirely from documentary footage.

Gradually, he begins to identify with his men. He becomes more and more concerned with their survival, as the missions become longer and more devastating to the attackers. Finally, Savage finds himself incapable of entering his airplane for a mission. Catatonic, he is returned to base while his men fly off without him. It’s only when they return safely that he snaps out of it and goes to sleep.

All this is bracketed by the post-war visit of Stovall to the old field – this is a memory play, his memory. We never learn what happened to Savage.

The movie is a textbook study of the management of men – in this case, men in battle. Despite the formalities and conventions of military life, the human factor bleeds through and engulfs even the hardest-hearted general. Peck is solid as Savage, and Jagger delivers a Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winning performance as Stovall. Gary Merrill and Millard Mitchell, usually not seen in central roles, do a great job in their performances. Hugh Marlow, in particular, makes a memorable impression as disgraced pilot Gately.

Vulnerable men try to do the impossible, and they largely succeed. But at what cost?

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

NFR Project: 'The Lead Shoes' (1949)

NFR Project: “The Lead Shoes”

Dir: Sidney Peterson

Premiere: 1949

17 min.

Uh, OK. An experimental film, shot in surrealist style. A young woman drags an empty diving suit around. Hopscotch is played in slow motion. Blood splatters from a loaf of bread. There is no attempt to make sense of things. This film is an exercise in non-narrative cinema. As such, I guess that it is successful – on its terms. For me, it is merely a self-indulgent curio.

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Heiress' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “The Heiress”

Dir: William Wyler

Scr: Augustus Goetz, Ruth Goetz

Pho: Leo Tover

Ed: William Hornbeck

Premiere: Oct. 6, 1949

115 min.

If ever you want to take a master class in acting, look no further than The Heiress. Although it won Oscars for Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, and Best Art Direction, it is the performances of the three principals – Ralph Richardson, Olivia de Havilland, and Montgomery Clift – that make it an extraordinary film. Let me explain.

First, the source material for the film was the hit 1947 play of the same name, by Augustus and Ruth Goetz, based in turn on the Henry James’ 1880 novel, Washington Square. It’s the story of a rather plain-looking, uncurious, and sheltered young woman, Catherine Sloper (de Havilland) who lives with her wealthy doctor father (Richardson) in luxury. They do not revel in it, they take it as their due. Dr. Sloper resents his daughter, as her birth caused the death of his beloved, beautiful, intelligent, and talented wife.

Catherine is prodded into attending a dance. She is approached by a young and handsome destitute upper-class fortune hunter, Morris Townsend (Clift), who tells her sweet lies and manipulates her into wanting to marry him. Dr. Sloper is onto Morris from the outset, and comments acidly on him, the proposed marriage, and on Catherine’s despised existence in general. Sloper’s barely concealed hostility and contempt for Catherine poison his words of warning about Morris. She ignores them. In fact, she touts her independence, insisting she will live on the $10,000 she has outright rather than on her father’s $30,000.

Finally, the two young lovers agree to elope. Morris finds out that Sloper has changed his will, and that if she marries him, she will not get the $30,000. He makes tender declarations of love, and vanishes. Catherine sits in the parlor, packed, ready to be whisked away. Eventually the truth becomes obvious. He’s not coming.

Fast forward a few years. Sloper is presumably dead. Catherine is still needlepointing, alone in her fabulous Washington Square home. Guess who comes to visit? I won’t spoil the ending, but it is extremely satisfying.

Wyler adapted no fewer than 12 stage plays into movies in his directing career. He was an expert at filming unobtrusively, giving his actors space to work, capturing that pleasure one gets when one sees a superior live performance.

He lets Richardson, de Havilland, and Clift inhabit a scene, really playing it instead of skating over it. The characters seem lived-in. Wyler keeps a respectable distance from the actors, lets them work through a scene slowly if they need to, giving them time to react, to indicate. He creates a superior motion picture by letting his actors work.

The dialogue is highly mannered, in the style of the repressed upper class in mid-to-late 19^th century American society, which was the landscape Henry James painted, again and again. Everyone speaks a carefully coded, polite, formal language – you must discern the emotions from other, visual, cues. (Until Morris appears, there is no display of emotion in the film. How liberating his faux endearments must have felt!) The formal language, the buried emotion of James: similar to the classic samurai film, oddly. A similar hierarchy.

Richardson is best at this: he can steal a scene just standing and staring . . . just a little too hard. De Havilland has the time of her life morphing from a mindless innocent into a wiser, sadder woman, one infinitely more intelligent than the men around her. Clift has to play a heel. He is an inspired con artist, one who lies glibly and convincingly, so much so that you feel he is amazed by his own ability to deceive and manipulate others. He is a very devil. The three clash together in quiet rooms.

The settings are sumptuous and solid, a naturalistic replication of the look of the period. Everyone is dressed to the nines (in fact they never reveal anything of the body), stiffly, at attention. The cinematography is tight, precise. Displays of passion are almost unknown, and the most intense emotions are enunciated on transits up and town the tasteful stairs of their home. An immense amount of emotion comes cascading down through a trio who would never utter a loud word, but who would negotiate the emotional shifts James and the Goetzs put them through.

Miriam Hopkins, a starlet of the 1930s, here plays a dotty, romance-besotted aunt. And Betty Linley, who I've never heard of, has a great scene as Morris' sister, Mrs. Montgomery.

Aaron Copland’s score is instantly identifiable as in his style, but for all that it is as subdued and complex as the story itself. He won the Oscar. And by the way, de Havilland won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance here. She clearly conveys Catherine’s heady trip into the world of feeling.

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