NFR Project: 'Kiss Me Deadly' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Kiss Me Deadly”

Dir: Robert Aldrich

Scr: A.I. Bezzerides

Pho: Ernest Laszlo

Ed: Michael Luciano

Premiere: May 18, 1955

106 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Jailhouse Rock' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “Jailhouse Rock”

Dir: Richard Thorpe

Scr: Guy Trosper

Pho: Robert J. Bronner

Ed: Ralph E. Winters

Premiere: Nov. 8, 1957

96 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'East of Eden' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “East of Eden”

Dir: Elia Kazan

Scr: Paul Osborn

Pho: Ted D. McCord

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: March 9, 1955

117 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: “All That Heaven Allows”

Dir: Douglas Sirk

Scr: Peg Fenwick

Pho: Russell Metty

Ed: Frank Gross

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1955

89 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NFR Project: 'Blackboard Jungle' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Blackboard Jungle”

Dir: Richard Brooks

Scr: Richard Brooks

Pho: Russell Harlan

Ed: Ferris Webster

Premiere: March 25, 1955

101 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “Bad Day at Black Rock”

Dir: John Sturges

Scr: Millard Kaufman, Don McGuire

Pho: William C. Mellor

Ed: Newell P. Kimlin

Premiere: Jan. 7, 1955

81 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “The Phenix City Story”

Dir: Phil Karlson

Scr: Daniel Mainwaring, Crane Wilbur

Pho: Harry Neumann

Ed: George White

Premiere: Aug. 14, 1955

100 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

NFR Project: “The Man with the Golden Arm”

Dir: Otto Preminger

Scr: Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer, Ben Hecht

Pho: Sam Leavitt

Ed: Louis R. Loeffler

Premiere: Dec. 15, 1955

119 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “Lady and the Tramp”

Dir: Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson

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

Ed: Don Halliday

Premiere: June 22, 1955

76 min.

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

Yep. Nightmare fuel.

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

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

 

NFR Project: “A Time Out of War”

Dir: Denis Sanders

Premiere: 1954

20 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “A Star is Born”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Moss Hart

Pho: Sam Leavitt

Ed: Folmar Blangsted

Premiere: Sept. 12, 1954

182/154/178 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

NFR Project: “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”

Dir: Stanley Donen

Scr: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, Dorothy Kingsley

Pho: George Folsey

Ed: Ralph E. Winters

Premiere: Dec. 20, 1954

102 min.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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