NFR Project: 'This Is Cinerama' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “This is Cinerama”

Dir: Mike Todd, Michael Todd, Jr., Walter A. Thompson, Fred Rickey

Pho: Harry Squire

Ed: William Henry, Milton Shifman

Premiere: Sept. 30, 1952

115 min.

It’s a gimmick. It’s a gag.

I thoroughly agree with and endorse Kyle Westphal’s essay on this film at the National Film Registry. Read it! He captures the sheer daffiness of it.

After World War II, television made major inroads on America’s movie-going public. The big studios were worried. Hollywood was looking to provide something television could not. It started casting about for various new ways to attract viewers. First was an increase in “road show” screenings. These were prestigious showings of big-budget, epic, full-color films that featured reserved seats, an overture, and an intermission. Then there were first-generation 3-D films, for which viewers donned special red/green glasses – offerings such as Bwana Devil, House of Wax, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Then there was Cinerama. This was a special wide-screen mode of movie projection invented by Fred Waller, consisting of three projectors strapped together side by side, providing an exceptionally wide field of vision as it is projected on a wide, special curved screen. The result was supposed to engage the viewer’s peripheral vision and provide an overwhelming visual experience.

This Is Cinerama purported to sell this dynamic concept. The journalist and broadcaster Lowell Thomas was an investor in this new process, and he served as producer on this film as well as its on-screen narrator. This Is Cinerama is a sales pitch, really – a demonstration of the possibilities of the medium.

The film opens with a brief sequence summarizing the history of film, from prehistoric times to the present. This is shown in the 4:3 ratio, in black and white. Suddenly the screen expands, bursts into color, and we are in the front car of a roller coaster in New York. This leads to a series of sequences filmed at various places. We see the Temple Dance from Verdi’s Aida, shots of Niagara Falls from the air, a church choir, and the Vienna Boys’ Choir (Cinerama also pushed the advent of the new “stereophonic sound”).

The rest of the film is pretty much a glorified travelogue. We go to Venice, Edinburgh,  a bullfight in Spain, the performers at the now-defunct Cypress Gardens in Florida. We end with an aerial flyover of many national monuments, all while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang hymns and patriotic songs.

The travelogue aspect of the full-length feature film is remindful of the travel films created during the early Silent Era. Back then, it was remarkable to see something you’d only read about; with Cinerama, you see familiar landmarks in a brand new way.

But was it worth it? What do you gain when you have wide-screen? What do you lose?

On the positive side, it is impressive. I was lucky enough to see the Cinerama project How the West Was Won (1962) on a Cinerama screen in Denver – at the late, lamented Cooper Theater. You feel like you are inside the movie – it’s uncanny and affecting, an overwhelming sensual experience.

But there were problems. First, to make three screens’ worth of images, you needed to yoke three cameras together when filming. Thus, the cameras couldn’t really move. They were usually bolted down to something, so that their three screens’ worth of images would later align accurately. Scenes were static.

Then there’s the problem of composition. Instead of a screen aspect ratio of 4:3, as most classic-period American films had, Cinerama had a ratio of 2.65:1! This elongated kind of view demanded an entirely different aesthetic, in the attempt to fill the screen, as well as to balance compositions.

Thirdly, you needed a special screen on which to view it. Thus the creation of the Cinerama theater, which needed the special Cinerama film to display. This required more projectionists and  special equipment. It was not cost-effective.

Despite initial enthusiasm for the new technology, Cinerama never took off. A number of epic films were made in Cinerama – It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Battle of the Bulge (1965), Ice Station Zebra (1968). But it wasn’t enough. Additionally, other film studios developed rival widescreen processes that did not require special theaters or retooling. These included VistaVision, CinemaScope, and Ultra Panavision. By the early 1970s, Cinerama was dead.

Today only three Cinerama theaters remain in the United States – in Seattle, Providence RI, and San Diego. Widescreen projection has now become the norm, and is even being supplanted for epic films by the immersive IMAX projection system.

Cinerama was a noble, failed experiment.

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

NFR Project: 'Singin' in the Rain' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “Singin’ in the Rain”

Dir: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

Scr: Betty Comden, Adolph Green

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: Adrienne Fazan

Premiere: March 27, 1952

103 min.

It’s a perfect picture.

The stars aligned for this project, but a key element in the success of the film was the presence of Stanley Donen as co-director.

Donen started his career as a dancer, and moved on to the role of a choreographer. He paired up with Gene Kelly, and helped to choreograph many of Kelly’s dance numbers in pictures from 1943 on. He worked on Cover Girl, Anchors Aweigh, Living in a Big Way, and Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Finally, in 1949 he and Kelly co-directed On the Town.

Now that his reputation was established, Donen was able to helm other movies. He directed Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951) – and then came Singin’ in the Rain.

The brilliant team of Betty Comden and Adolf Green, lyricists and screenwriters, conjured up a hilarious scenario. The movie is set in Hollywood, during the period of transition from silent film to sound. Its hero is Don Lockwood (Kelly), a silent matinee idol, who has been paired with the squeaky-voiced, egomaniacal actress Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen).

As Don and Lina attend the opening of their new film, The Royal Rascal, Don describes his rise in show business to a radio audience. As he goes on and on about the dignity of the profession, we see in flashback him starting out as a baggy-pants comic, then as a vaudeville hoofer with his pal Cosmo (Donald O’Connor). Eventually, Don breaks in to on-screen work as a humble stuntman and graduates to leading roles. The contrast between Hollywood hype and the real facts of the case are emphasized here.

While all of this happens, Don meets the lovely young singer and dancer, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) who at first spurns him but then falls for him as he pursues her passionately.

Sound comes in, and the entire industry is turned upside down. Suddenly, actors must be able to speak well. Voice coaches are called in, but nobody can do anything with Lina’s shrill Brooklynese. Lockwood and Lamont’s new costume drama, The Dueling Cavalier, is revamped as a sound film. But the preview of the film is disastrous. Stumped, Don, Cosmo, and Kathy try to think of some way to save the picture. Finally, they decide – let’s change the movie into a musical!

But what to do about Lina’s voice? Cosmo comes up with the answer – have Kathy dub Lina’s lines and songs. However, Lina is displeased. She hates Kathy, and demands that her role in covering Lina’s voice be covered up.

The movie is a huge hit. Lina declares that she will never let Kathy get credit, and even dismisses Don as unnecessary to her success. She goes out to take a bow after the premiere. She tries to speak, but is laughed at by the crowd. They urge her to sing instead. Don, Cosmo, and producer R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) force Kathy to set up behind the curtain and sing so that Lina can lip-sync along. Then they haul up the curtain, exposing the fraud. Lina flees and Don identifies Kathy as the beautiful voice behind Lina. At film’s end, Don and Kathy kiss in afront of a billboard advertising their new film together – Singin’ in the Rain.

The dialogue sparkles, and the comedy is perfectly pitched. The art direction is flawless – the settings are bright, candy-colored, and extravagantly beautiful. Donen uses the crane extensively, swooping effortlessly in and out of the action.

However, it’s the musical numbers that are truly extraordinary. The songs are all taken from the period, most of them written by the film’s producer Arthur Freed, and Nacio Herb Brown. “All I Do Is Dream of You,” “Make ‘em Laugh,” “I’ve Got a Feeling You’re Fooling,” “Beautiful Girl,” “You Were Meant for Me,” “Good Morning,” and the title song are all sure-fire hit material. The one song not by them, “Moses Supposes,” features lyrics by Comden and Green.

All of the resources of MGM were put into play to create this vibrant film. Costumes, sets, and lighting are impeccable. They serve as a backdrop for the superior clowning of Donald O’Connor, the dash and dynamic verve of Gene Kelly – and the winsomeness of Debbie Reynolds, only 19 at the time of filming.

O'Connor's comic dance, "Make 'em Laugh," is a whirlwind of fun. Another top sequence is the unfailingly funny scene of Don and Lina trying to deal with the vagaries of early sound filming. The spectacular heart of the film is Kelly singing and dancing in the rain outside Kathy’s apartment. This has become the representative number that symbolizes the film musical. It deserves it!

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

NFR Project: 'The Quiet Man' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “The Quiet Man”

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Frank S. Nugent

Pho: Winton C. Hoch

Ed: Jack Murray

Premiere: Aug. 21, 1952

129 min.

In contrast to the tough guy director John Ford portrayed himself as, he was really a big softie. And, though born in Maine, he was an Irishman who had a deep reverence for his Irish homeland and the traditions of its people. In fact, Ford’s Ireland is a dreamland, an idealized, fabulous emerald-green countryside, photographed expertly here in living Technicolor by Winton C. Hoch and represented by a fine set of character actors, members of Ford’s “stock company.”

Into this picturesque, enchanted territory drops John Wayne (as Sean Thonton), who shows he can play the lead in a romantic comedy. His opposite number is the beautiful and talented Maureen O’Hara (as Mary Kate Danaher), who had grippingly played Angharad in Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. Here, she’s a fiery redhead, full of sass, who will not take no for an answer. The two fall in love at first sight.

Sean is a man who has returned from America to purchase his boyhood home (how he gained his money we do not at first know). He does so, to the consternation of Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), who is the brother of Mary Kate and the man responsible for giving her away in marriage. He refuses to sanction her engagement – which the two promptly ignore. Danaher then refuses to give Mary Kate her “treasures” – her dowry of goods and money.

Everyone is spoiling for a fight except Sean. In a flashback, and later in confession to a minister, Sean reveals that he killed a man in the ring and swore never to fight again. (Presumably his financial resources are a result of his boxing career.) Mary Kate gets a tongue-lashing in Gaelic from the local priest (the always-fabulous Ward Bond). Sean and Mary Kate reconcile, and finally sleep together.

In the morning, Mary Kate stomps off to the train station, leaving Sean a note stating she doesn’t want to live with a man she’s ashamed of. Sean tracks her down, pulls her off the train, and in an epic sequence drags her in front of an admiring and ever-swelling crowd across the landscape, the five miles back to her brother’s estate.

He throws her at her brother’s feet. “No fortune, no marriage!” he cries. Danaher relents, angrily throwing down the money. Sean picks it up; Mary Kate opens the boiler of a nearby steam engine, and Sean chucks the money into its fire. Satisfied, she goes home. Now, at last, Sean can overcome his fear of fighting. He and Danaher now duke it out, conducting an epic throw-down that travels up and down the streets of the town, punctuated with frequent dashings of buckets of water. The low-comedy hijinks of the humorous donnybrook bring the film to a smashing conclusion.

Now, it has been bandied about that this is a chauvinist film – and it is. But it is Wayne who, as the male lead in a typical romantic comedy, forced to come to terms with the daft world he finds himself in. Tradition is tops here; the “old ways” are honored – as is fist-fighting, drinking, singing loudly, and betting. It’s a man’s world, an Irish world, Ford’s world is.

But he paints his female characters with loving strokes. Both O’Hara, and Mildred Natwick as the Widow Tillane, are given scope, depth, and wit. Ford brings us Ireland personified as Barry Fitzgerald playing the stereotypical son o’ the sod, Michaeleen Og Flynn. The little man wanders through scenes, tipsy and eloquent. He sees a bed he thinks wrecked by marital passion and exclaims, “Impetuous! Homeric!” Here too is a young Jack MacGowran who perfectly delivers the drunken line, “God bless all here.” And there is even Ford’s long-time associate, his brother Francis, as the comic old man of the village. (It was Francis who succeeded first in Hollywood, and who brought John out West to work in the film industry, back in the silent days.)

But yes, it is sexist. A woman eagerly proffers a stick to Sean, “to beat the lovely lady.” There is no feminism present, save perhaps for in O’Hara’s scrappy characterization. Still, she is shown as being pleased that her husband fought for her, and is more than happy to tend to the menfolk after they’ve had their little row. She really wants to be a good wife. In those times, that was perceived as the height of female ambition.

So all ends well, as it does in all comedies. Sean and Mary Kate are together, complete. Danaher and the widow begin to court – even the local minister is given support from the Catholics in town to keep his tiny parish open. Ford’s dream world is restored to a state of equilibrium; everyone fits into their new roles in life. Time marches on, and human beings, those curious creatures, progress and change.

Ford gives us life as it is really lived – with the boring parts cut out.

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

NFR Project: 'High Noon' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “High Noon”

Dir: Fred Zinneman

Scr: Carl Foreman

Pho: Floyd Crosby

Ed: Elmo Williams

Premiere: July 24, 1952

85 min.

It’s funny. This film, the plot of which is now so familiar as to be a cliché, was once controversial.

In the old American frontier town of Hadleyville (a nod to Twain’s 1899 story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyville”) veteran Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is getting married to the young Amy (Grace Kelly). He is all set to retire and move to another town. A new marshal is coming to replace him the next day. Word comes that Frank Miller, a killer Will sent to prison, has gotten out and is coming to town to gun him down in revenge. He arrives on the train at high noon.

Kane doesn’t run, for fear that Miller will just track him and kill him anyway. His new wife Amy is a pacifist and doesn’t believe he should fight. Kane determines that he will, and seeks others to deputize to join him in fighting the criminal and his gang. Everyone turns him down.

Kane had cleaned up the town, which had been in terror of Miller for years. Everyone praises him, but they all wish he would go away, taking the problem with him. Wife Amy determines to leave him, but she also confronts Kane’s former mistress Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), thinking he is staying for her sake. She states that she is leaving town, too, and that Amy should stand by her man.

Miller comes to town, and he and his men come gunning for Kane. The streets of the town are empty; everyone is waiting to see the outcome of the fight. By hook and crook Kane kills two of the four men up against him. His wife Amy tosses aside her pacifism, pulls out a gun and kills another one. Finally, Kane shoots Miller dead. Kane throws his badge contemptuously in the dust, and he and Amy leave town.

During the production of this film, the film’s writer, Carl Foreman, was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee due to his suspected Communist activities. He refused to name names, so he was blacklisted and kicked off this picture. (He moved to England). John Wayne refused starring in this movie, seeing it as a thinly disguised allegory about the blacklist. Howard Hawks hated this film too. They also couldn’t stand the idea of a marshal asking for help, nor could they countenance his wife saving him.

In fact, many disliked the film. It was subversive for a Western to paint a bunch of frontier townsfolk as rotten cowards, happy to be delivered from evil but unwilling to face up to it themselves. The idea of a lawman standing up to protect an ungrateful populace was a new one. It called into question the whole concept of the struggle to civilize the Wild West. Was it worth the effort? Does the taming of the lawless lead to the creation of just another community full of the flawed?

Foreman’s script examines the myth of the rugged individual as well. Is it noble for a man to still act in the right, although all may be against him? It would seem so. Gary Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the desperate, conflicted Kane. Now we routinely see a protagonist acting despite those around him, not because of them. Such was not the case in 1952.

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

NFR Project: 'Magical Maestro' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “Magical Maestro”

Dir: Tex Avery

Scr: Rich Hogan

Animators: Grant Simmons, Michael Lah, Walter Clinton

Premiere: Feb. 9, 1952

6 min. 30 sec.

Let’s face it: Tex Avery was a genius.

He only took part in inventing Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck, and even Chilly Willy! Beginning in 1935, he supervised the madness at Warner Brothers’ animation outpost, “Termite Terrace,” during the time of its codification of an anti-Disney sarcasm and surreal, fourth-wall-breaking approach to cartoon shorts. In 1941, he moved to MGM, where he ran things animated until the early 1950s.

Magical Maestro is discussed in depth, expertly, by Thad Komorowski at the National Film Registry. Avery was king of the surrealists in American animated films of the period; he would do anything in service of a gag.

His premise here is to cofound the performer, much as Chuck Jones did later in Duck Amuck (1953). The Great Poochini (played by one of Avery’s straight men, Spike) is a concert singer, talented and aloof. He throws out an auditioning Mysto the Magician, who seeks revenge. He sneaks into the theater as Poochini is singing, and takes the conductor’s place with his magic wand. He then puts Poochini through the changes, switching garments, nationalities, ages, and races as he tries to belt out Rossini’s “Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville. The rapid switch from gag to gag guarantees a laugh in there somewhere for everyone.

In the end, Poochini gets his revenge. Avery would soon, exhausted from overwork, take a sabbatical. In that sense his film now plays as the last full expression of the dominant phase of his comic genius.

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

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

 

NFR Project: “The Bad and the Beautiful”

Dir: Vincente Minnelli

Scr: Charles Schnee

Pho: Robert L. Surtees

Ed: Conrad A, Nervig

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1952

118 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Dir: Christian Nyby

Scr: Charles Lederer, Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Roland Gross

Premiere: April 7, 1951

87 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “A Streetcar Named Desire”

Dir: Elia Kazan

Scr: Tennessee Williams, Oscar Saul

Pho: Harry Stradling

Ed: David Weisbart

Premiere: Sept. 19, 1951

125 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “A Place in the Sun”

Dir: George Stevens

Scr: Michael Wilson, Harry Brown

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: William Hornbeck

Premiere: Aug. 14, 1951

122 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “Gerald McBoing-Boing”

Dir: Robert Cannon, John Hubley

Scr: Dr. Seuss, Phil Eastman, Bill Scott

Premiere: Nov. 4, 1950

7 min.

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Duck and Cover' (1952)

  

NFR Project: “Duck and Cover”

Dir: Anthony Rizzo

Scr: Raymond J. Mauer

Pho: Drummond Drury

Premiere: 1952

9:15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Dir: Robert Wise

Scr: Edmund H. North

Pho: Leo Tover

Ed: William H. Reynolds

Premiere: Sept. 18, 1951

92 min.

“Gort – Klaatu barada nikto.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “An American in Paris”

Dir: Vincente Minelli

Scr: Alan Jay Lerner

Pho: Alfred Gilks, John Alton

Ed: Adrienne Fazan

Premiere: Oct. 4, 1951

113 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'The African Queen' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “The African Queen”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: James Agee, John Huston

Pho: Jack Cardiff

Ed: Ralph Kemplen

Premiere: Dec. 26, 1951

105 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “Ace in the Hole”

Dir: Billy Wilder

Scr: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman

Pho: Charles Lang

Ed: Doane Harrison, Arthur P. Schmidt

Premiere: June 14, 1951

111 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “Strangers on a Train”

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde

Pho: Robert Burks

Ed: William Ziegler

Premiere: June 30, 1951

101 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Winchester '73' (1950)

 

NFR Project: “Winchester ‘73”

Dir: Anthony Mann

Scr: Borden Chase, Robert L. Richards

Pho: William H. Daniels

Ed: Edward Curtiss

Premiere: July 12, 1950

92 min.

Anthony Mann (1906-1967) was a genius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mann took the Western and moved it into new territory.

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