Voyage to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) 1953 **

Ingrid Bergman’s “shocking” affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini was very unfortunate. It wasn’t harmful because they were both married to other people, or that he ran off with another woman seven years after they were married.  No, what was unequivocally catastrophic about their affair was that it caused Bergman’s banishment from the American film industry because by playing a nun in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) and Joan of Arc (1948) it was believed that she should have behaved differently than every other actress in Hollywood. No one was calling Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, or Joan Crawford out on the floor of the U.S. Senate for immorality. And, so at the ripe old age of 34, and at the height of her acting career, she was banished to Italy to make five forgettable films with Rossellini (Stromboli, Europa ‘51, Voyage to Italy, Fear, and Joan of Arc).  Thankfully, French director Jean Renoir saved her from obscurity by giving her the lead in his fun-loving Elena and Her Men (1956) and 20th Century Fox and director Anatole Litvak brought her back to the States to star in Anastasia (1956), in a role that would win her her second Best Actress Oscar. Oh, but the films she made with Rossellini between 1950-1954… One being today’s entry, Voyage to Italy (Viaggio in Italia).

For years the Italian-language version of Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy was nowhere to be seen (or heard) in the U.S., and  it was originally shown in English. However, quite recently Turner Classic Movies aired the film in its original form (in Italian). Loosely based on Colette’s novel, Duo, the story follows an English couple on their trip to Naples to sell an estate that they’ve recently inherited.  Married for more than eight years, Alex (George Sanders) and Katharine Joyce (Bergman) quickly realize on their Italian voyage that they don’t really know anything about one another, and what they do know they don’t seem to like.  He’s a workaholic and she’s an artistic type.  While she’s off visiting museums, the Acropolis, and the catacombs, he’s off licking his wounds and looking for a conquest because she happened to mention an old admirer of hers.  I can see why he might be jealous, as Katharine is years younger than him and much more attractive as well, but to get irked because his wife mentions an old admirer who happens to be dead is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, the couple seem to be on the verge of divorce when divine intervention steps in to save the day.

Did I like Voyage to Italy?  Not particularly, but I didn’t dislike it, either. A movie starring Ingrid Bergman would have to be God-awful for me to truly hate it because she’s such a good actress.  Still, she doesn’t get to do a lot of acting in this—she spends most of her time combing the cultural sites and either looking horrified or mesmerized by what she sees.  However, the few caustic, but semi-polite, exchanges she has with her worthless husband are entertaining to watch.  Sanders, for his part, looks particularly bored throughout the picture. I’m not sure if this was intentional, as Alex was bored by Italy and probably Joyce as well, but Sanders didn’t seem particularly happy at any point in the movie—he despised the way Rossellini “directed” it. 

I’m pretty sure that most of the production was shot on location, and in that sense, at least, it has at least one element of Italian neorealism (however, that particular film period ended in 1952). As such, there is an authentic feel to Voyage to Italy—even if its ending is far from realistic. The fact that Rossellini features the Naples’ National Museum of Archaeology, Duomo Cathedral, hypogea (underground tombs) and, of course, Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii makes the film much more enjoyable for me.  You see, I don’t necessarily agree with Francois Truffaut’s assessment that it’s a masterpiece or that it should be labeled as the first modern film—if you are unfamiliar with the French New Wave, here’s a quick history lesson: Truffaut, Godard, and the rest of the Cashiers du Cinema worshiped Voyage to Italy and, as The Guardian has pointed out, saw the film as “the moment when poetic cinema grew up and became indisputably modern”. 

Other than the sights explored by Katharine, the most interesting thing about Voyage to Italy is the climatic staging of the would-be destruction of the Joyce’s marriage.  The couple, rather Alex, matter-of-factly comes to the conclusion that they should get a divorce as they are exploring the ruins of Pompeii.  Perhaps the symbolic correlations between the ruins of a civilization and a marriage is a tad heavy-handed, but nonetheless it was cleverly done.  Still, I’m not exactly sure if this was planned, as most of the movie was shot without a script and Rossellini created most of his “brilliance” haphazardly. 

The absolute worst thing about Voyage to Italy is the ending.  I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but I can tell you that it has a symbolic staging as well.  Trite is the word that best describes what I think of the ending.  Which, of course, lessens the overall appeal of the movie for me.

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An American in Paris (1951) **

Artistically director Vincent Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1951) is a triumph.  It rightfully earned Oscars for its art direction (Cedric Gibbons, Preston Ames, Edwin B. Willis, and Keogh Gleason) and costume design (Orry-Kelly, Walter Plunkett, and Irene Sharaff), and I suppose one could make the case that its win for Best Music (Johnny Green and Saul Chaplin) wasn’t too far of a stretch—but one could definitely make a valid argument for Adolph Deutsch and Conrad Salinger’s work for Show Boat (1951), too. However, under no circumstance should An American in Paris have won Best Picture over the likes of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), A Place in the Sun (1951) or even Quo Vadis (1951); and, while the field for Best Screenplay was weak, there is no question that Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman’s script for The Big Carnival (a.k.a. Ace in the Hole, 1951) was far superior to what Alan Jay Lerner produced for An American in Paris. Its win for Best Color Cinematography (Alfred Gilks and John Alton) is a mild irritant since, again, there weren’t any true standouts in the field.  Unlike many of my fellow classic movie fans I don’t like An American in Paris very much.  I hate the story and find the musical numbers less than thrilling.  However, if you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that my main complaint with An American in Paris is Gene Kelly’s beautifully staged vanity project: a 17-minute ballet performed at the end of the movie. 

Jerry Mulligan (Kelly) is a struggling American painter who lives in the most pristine section of Montmartre ever depicted on film.  Friends with a middle-aged child prodigy (Oscar Levant) and successful cabaret singer, Henri (Georges Guetary), Jerry is also “sponsored” by American heiress, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch). Obviously Nina has the hots for Jerry, but that doesn’t stop him from hitting on 19-year-old Lise (Leslie Caron, who was really two years older than her character) at a nightclub right in front of Milo and her friends.  At first, Lise has the good sense to give Jerry the brush off, but eventually she caves into his harassment for a date after he stalks her at her job at a perfumery. But don’t feel bad for Lise, because she’s a two-timer, too. Unbeknownst to Jerry, Lise is engaged to Henri, the man who protected her during the Nazi occupation.  And, that’s the story.  There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that is compelling or engaging about it.  It also doesn’t help that Kelly was twice Caron’s age or that Minnelli and the screenwriters attempted to portray Foch’s Milo as what is now known as a “cougar” when she was twelve years younger than Kelly—this is way more than a mild irritant.

An American in Paris was inspired by George Gershwin’s music, most notably his 1928 orchestral composition of the same name. Several of Gershwin’s notable standards are performed: “Embraceable You “(from Girl Crazy, 1930); “Nice Work If You Can Get It” (from A Damsel in Distress, 1937); “Our Love Is Here to Stay” (which was a slightly altered version of his “Love Is Here to Stay” from The Goldwyn Follies, 1938); and, “’S Wonderful” (from Funny Face, 1927).  However, the only Gershwin musical number in the entire film that I like is “I Got Rhythm”, and even it pails in comparison to Judy Garland’s performance of it in the lackluster Girl Crazy (1943).  Additionally, right smack in the middle of the movie there is what amounts to an unnecessary intermission when Oscar Levant’s character dreams that he plays every instrument in “Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra”. His character, Adam, is completely useless to the plot—why must we watch him in an extended 4+ minute sequence?

Gene Kelly could dance, there’s no doubt about it, but how many of the same tap routines must one watch in the same movie?  And, then there are the ballet sequences. I can get over that Kelly and Minnelli chose to introduce their big discovery, Caron, in a hodgepodge ballet number—at this time, she was a ballerina and not an actress.  Moreover, I can somewhat stomach their interpretive dance along the Seine for “Our Love Is Here to Stay”.  But, that’s where my patience ends.  When Minnelli chooses to do a close-up of Kelly’s Jerry and the film morphs into la-la land (what I assume is Jerry’s subconscious) and for 17 minutes I have to watch a ballet tribute to French art, most notable Toulouse-Lautrec, but the works of Raoul Dufy, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Maurice Utrillo, Henri Rousseau are also paid homage.  Should the art direction,  costumes, and choreography be commended?  Sure, those things make the film palatable.  Yet, they don’t negate the fact that having a 17-minute ballet as the conclusion of your film is ridiculous. Is it pretty to look at? Yes. Does it drag on for what seems like forever? Yes.  Does it make any difference in the overall plot narrative of the film? No.  And, when your story is already suspect and not the least engaging, why would you choose to end it with a ballet sequence that people can’t wait to be over?  Vanity—particularly, Gene Kelly’s. 

So, I know I’m probably in the minority regarding my distaste for An American in Paris.  Frankly, I don’t care.  The story is lackluster. The acting is passable but by no means stellar.  The most memorable musical number is a ballet sequence that has no connection to the plot narrative. Seventeen minutes of spectacular art direction and costume design, and beautiful choreography does not make a film great—especially when the other 96 minutes are only mildly entertaining. 

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Guys and Dolls (1955) **1/2

 

When I think of Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra I envision them in musicals—they belong in this genre.  But Marlon Brando in a musical?  WTF!  The first time I sat down to watch Brando’s starring turn in director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Guys and Dolls (1955) I thought to myself: This isn’t going to end well, is it?  But, what a surprise, as the movie is actually rather entertaining and Brando does a relatively good job (thanks to a lot of sound engineering). Still, Brando’s not the best thing about Guys and Dolls. What makes the film really tick are the musical numbers performed by Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. 

Frank Loesser’s hugely successful original 1950 Broadway musical, Guys and Dolls, won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical.  Loesser based his musical on two short stories by Damon Runyon, “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown” and “Blood Pressure”. While screenwriters Mankiewicz and Ben Hecht made a few changes from Loesser’s musical, the film is essentially about a $1,000 bet between two professional gamblers, Sky Masterson (Brando) and Nathan Detroit (Sinatra), that Sky can’t take repressed Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) on a date.  Nathan desperately needs the money to secure a location for a floating crap game that he runs, and knowing that Sky will bet on just about anything and that Sister Sarah is a no-nonsense woman, especially when it comes to sin, i.e. gambling and drinking, Nathan believes he has a sure bet.  However, Sister Sarah’s mission is failing and General Cartwright (Kathryn Givney) is threatening to shut it down. Seeing an opportunity to win his bet and also take a rather attractive, if not uptight, woman to dinner in Havana, Sky guarantees that he can fill the mission with at least 12 bona fide sinners for the mission’s next meeting if she agrees to go with him.  When Sister Sarah agrees and Nathan loses the bet he must find another place to hold his crap game. Fortunately for him with Sister Sarah away in Havana, the mission is the perfect place to hold the game—Lieutenant Brannigan (Robert Keith) and the cops would never suspect such a venue. 

While Sky and Sister Sarah make an interesting pairing, it is Nathan’s relationship with his nightclub singing fiancee, Adelaide (Vivian Blaine), that makes the film entertaining to watch.  Blaine, one of the four original Broadway cast members, is flawless as a woman with a 14-year old cold to match her 14-year old engagement to Nathan.  Yes, her baby-doll voice is a little annoying at first, but it grows on you as the picture progresses, and eventually you’ll accept it as a necessary character trait (or flaw).  She and her Hot Box chorus girls get to perform two outrageous numbers, “Pet Me Poppa” and “Take Back Your Mink”, that you can’t help but be amused by.  Her one solo number, “Adelaide’s Lament”, is about the psychology behind her cold and delivers the laughs.  Additionally, she sings “Sue Me” with Frank Sinatra near the end of the film, which spotlights that they were by far the two most talented singers in the movie. 

Sinatra, for his part, plays a member of the gambling underworld well—of course, he had the background for this role.  Perhaps he was miffed that Sam Goldwyn and Mankiewicz decided to cast a less than stellar singer who had never been in a musical before as the lead, but Sinatra really amped up his game for Guys and Dolls.  From his rousing rendition of “The Oldest Established (Permanent Floating Crap Game)” to his delivery of the best musical number of the movie, “Adelaide”, Sinatra showcases why people would eventually pay so much to watch his live shows—he has the chutzpah to deliver the goods. 

Surprisingly, the most well-known song from Guys and Dolls, “Luck Be a Lady Tonight”, was not sung by Sinatra but by Brando.  Of course, Sinatra went on to later record his own version and it became one of his signature songs.  Brando may have had an inflated sense of self regarding his abilities as an actor, but he was the first to admit that he had a terrible singing voice.  In an interview ten years after his performance in Guys and Dolls he revealed that all of the songs we hear him sing in the film were the result of countless takes being cut into one version of a song.  This probably explains why Brando never did another musical, even with Guys and Dolls making an estimated $14.5 million profit.  Of course, he had company when it came to less than stellar voices, as Jean Simmons was known for her dramatic abilities and not her singing.  Still, they muddle along well together in the film and do admirable jobs on “I’ll Know” and “A Woman in Love”.  But, truthfully, their best interactions are when they are just acting. 

One musical number that is often overlooked in Guys and Dolls is “Fugue for Tinhorns”, which is sung by Stubby Kaye, Johnny Silver, and Danny Dayton.  This is a shame because it’s probably the most difficult to sing and best arranged song in the entire film.  Stubby Kaye was a fabulous singer, who was relegated to ancillary roles because of his weight, so it’s nice to see him shine in “Fugue for Tinhorns” as well as “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”. 

Overall, Guys and Dolls is an entertaining, not-all-together ridiculous 1950s Hollywood musical. It’s light and fun, and filled with catchy, memorable songs.  Most importantly, no one wanders off to dance a 10 to 15 minute ballet solo for the sake of art which makes absolutely no sense to the film’s overall narrative.  On the down side, it is a tad too long and would have benefitted from some editing.

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Three Colors: Blue (Trois couleurs: Bleu) 1993 **

 

I find it odd that the editors of the 1001 Book only selected two films from director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, White, and Red), as they are all connected in their exploration of the ideals of the French Revolution (and the French tricolor flag)--liberty, equality, and fraternity—and have overlapping themes.  Of the three films, I prefer Red (1994) because of the story arc and Irene Jacob’s phenomenal performance.  That’s not to say that Blue (1993) isn’t good or that Juliette Binoche isn’t compelling as an emotionally withdrawn widow, but the plot is not nearly as interesting as Red’s. And, while I found White (1994) to be the weakest installment of the trilogy, it probably should have made it onto “The List” as a matter of principle, since all of the movies from the Toy Story Trilogy and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy made it even though each of these trilogies had a weak link, too.

Three Colors: Blue (1993), the first entry in the trilogy, was Kieslowski’s analysis of the meaning of emotional liberty.  Binoche plays Julie, a Parisian woman who wakes up from a car accident to learn that both her husband and daughter were killed in the crash. The only way that she can deal with her sudden loss is to completely shut down emotionally. To accomplish this, she decides to shed any “baggage” that reminds her of her prior existence, and so she gets rid of everything except a blue-beaded chandelier that was in her daughter’s room.  She then moves into a half-furnished and half-finished apartment without telling anyone where she’s gone off to.  However, try as she might, she is haunted by a musical score that her husband was supposedly writing for the impending unification of Europe under the EU which she believes she’s destroyed. I say supposedly because Kieslowski’s script seems to imply that Julie is actually the composer but he never explicitly says this. Anyway, when this pesky incomplete score isn’t overwhelming Julie’s solitary moments in the swimming pool or at a café, it causes people like Olivier (Benoit Regent), who is asked by the EU Council to finish the score, to seek her out for guidance or to guilt her into helping.  In the end, Julie must decide between isolation from or unification with other people. 

Stylistically, Blue is a French art film with good acting and excellent music.  Kieslowski and his cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, make numerous visual allusions to the movie’s title by somewhat overwhelming us with various shades of blue.  Forget that key objects, like the chandelier and the ink used to write the score, are blue, the most striking use of the color documents Julie’s emotional state.  For example, there are several scenes of her swimming alone in an indoor swimming pool that are lensed with blue filters and lighting that are aesthetically unique and pleasing, but that also convey an overwhelming atmosphere of isolation and despair. And, strangely, Kieslowski and Idziak have forever changed my visual interpretation of the color blue by making it an ominous, unrelenting terrorist of the psyche, as anytime Julie thinks of the musical score her mind drowns in a powerful shade of blue.

Of course, Kieslowski and Idziak’s aggressive use of the color blue is heightened by Zbigniew Preisner’s dramatic musical score, which sounds quite antagonistic up until it is finally completed.  This, of course, is quite clever, because the score itself becomes a character and serves as Julie’s adversary.  As Julie’s isolation grows so does the intensity of the music. It is not until the ending, and what appears to be Julie’s need to be connected to something, that the tone of the score changes.  Still, the chorus of the finale, taken from 1 Corinthians 13, sounds a little more haunting than what St. Paul probably had in mind when he wrote about the power of love. 

Binoche, for her part, is definitely haunting as a woman who refuses to grieve for those she’s lost.  Maybe that’s why the score doesn’t sound very sentimental, because Julie is incapable of mawkishness. Still, I wonder if Binoche ever got tired of playing such a tightly wound woman.  Plus, her matter of fact conversations with friends and loved ones, most notably the one with her Alzheimer-stricken mother (Emmanuelle Riva), required her to sound quite callous and unfeeling.  It was probably just as emotionally draining for her to play the part as it was for the audience to watch it—if only the story had been more engrossing and less ambiguous.

Overall, Blue is an interesting film to watch because of its cinematic elements, but the story lurks in the realm of ambiguity and drags at certain points.  Perhaps if Kieslowski had cut the entire Charlotte Very as a sex worker/exotic dancer element out of the movie things would have moved along at a brisker pace. 

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On the Town (1949) **

I’m a sucker for a good musical, but there’s one particular aspect of a Gene Kelly musical that I rather don’t like: the soliloquy dance number.  I can forgive the “Singin’ in the Rain” soliloquy because it’s absolutely breathtaking to watch, but the soliloquies in his two other notable musicals, An American in Paris (1951) and On the Town (1949),  really rankle me.  Kelly was an amazing dancer and choreographer, and so I understand that he wanted to show off his immense skills, but these interludes in the action come off, at least to me, as vanity projects that don’t always mesh with the overall productions in which they appear.  This is one of the reasons that I’m not more of a fan of On the Town—the other reason is that other than Betty Garrett’s hilarious turn as Hildy and Ann Miller’s fantastic song-and-dance number, “Prehistoric Man”, I wasn’t overly impressed by anything else. In my opinion, Leonard Bernstein’s music and Roger Edens, Adolph Green, and Betty Comden’s lyrics are rather pedestrian.  Perhaps this is musical heresy, but after Miller finishes her awesome tap dance at the end of “Prehistoric Man” I could have happily stopped watching the movie and been quite happy.

Kelly co-directed On the Town with Stanley Donen, whom he would go on to make probably the greatest musical ever, Singin’ in the Rain (1952). While they are regaled for the their innovative dance numbers, they should also be remembered as the first directors to shoot a musical number on location.  As On the Town is about three sailors who go on shore leave for one day in New York City, Kelly thought it only right that the film be shot on location.  Of course, this was not a cost-effective way to shoot a musical (or any film for that matter), especially when MGM had an entire lot of studios that had been good enough for countless other musicals, most notably, The Wizard of Oz (1939).  Yet, Kelly persisted and eventually got the green light to shoot nine days’ worth of footage of the sailors visiting various landmarks in NYC, as well as the opening (and closing) number, “New York, New York”.  Most of the sight-seeing scenes were captured by a camera mounted on the back of a station wagon, while “New York, New York” required a bit more traditional way of filming. 

On premise, On the Town is based on Leonard Bernstein’s 1944 Broadway musical of the same name, but Roger Edens changed or omitted several of Bernstein’s songs to appeal to a larger audience—namely he got rid of any hint of opera.  Since I have never seen Bernstein’s original vision of On the Town I cannot say which version is better, but hopefully the Broadway edition had more entertaining and engaging songs.  Still, Edens did create the most memorable number in the film, “Prehistoric Man”, so for that he should be applauded. Maybe I like risqué songs, because there’s a whole heaping load of “oomph” and “ooh la la” in the lyrics of “Prehistoric Man” and Miller sings them with such vim and vigor that you can’t help but be amused.  You add the dazzling tap dance number that she performs while singing this song (with a little help from her backup singers and dancers Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin, and Betty Garrett), which has a tremendous ending to it, and you easily have the best musical number in the movie.

Still, Kelly had to have his moment to shine, too, and so we get to watch him dance, for what seems like forever, the soliloquy ballet number, “A Day in New York”.  Let’s forget that it’s completely useless to the continuity of the musical—although that is also exceedingly annoying to me.  What is most irritating is that the only person, other than himself, from the starring cast who performs the number is Vera-Ellen (who, I must admit, I don’t like), even though part of the sequence includes two male and two female dancers who accompany Kelly.  To me, that’s like saying, “Hey, Frank, Jules, Betty, and Ann, sorry, but you ain’t good enough to do this routine.” And, maybe they weren’t, but that’s beside the point. By making the decision to use other dancers in that scene, Donen and Kelly purposefully chose to disrupt the overall continuity of the film. 

If I had to pick one shining bright spot, other than the “Prehistoric Man” number, in On the Town, it would have to be watching Betty Garrett’s feisty performance as Hildy. Garrett was no Ava Gardner in the looks department, but her Hildy comes across as a wanton woman nonetheless. Her unsubtle sexual innuendo toward Sinatra’s character, Chip, is undeniably worth the price of admission.  Probably the best description of Garrett’s brassy talents came from New York Times columnist Bosley Crowther, who once wrote that Garrett’s “way with a line is homicidal. What’s more she can dance and sing.” 

Overall, On the Town is, for me, a one trick pony.  When I watch a musical I want to be wowed by several great song and dance numbers. Here I only got one: “Prehistoric Man”.  This spirited routine coupled with Betty Garrett’s spunky performance is not enough to overcome what I find to be a set of lackluster musical numbers.

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The Wrong Man (1956) **

Had Alfred Hitchcock not appeared at the beginning of The Wrong Man (1956) to introduce it and to say that it was different than his other films you wouldn’t believe that the master of suspense directed it.  It doesn’t look like or develop like any other Hitchcock movie I’ve ever seen.  Yes, the Hitchcockian theme of the wrongfully accused man is the centerpiece of the story, but countless other directors also enjoyed employing this plot device.  Furthermore, the poster above is misleading, The Wrong Man is not an “adventure into terror”. Instead, it is a dark and depressing docu-drama that is based on the true story of a man arrested and tried for a crime that he did not commit. This, of course, makes it somewhat difficult for me to say that the story is boring and that the movie drags, but it so desperately does both of these things. 

Hitchcock had an unnatural fear of the police and so when he read about Manny Balestrero’s (Henry Fonda) wrongful arrest and subsequent trial for armed robbery, he was intrigued.  And, it is a rather compelling story. A jazz musician at the Stork Club makes the fateful decision to take out a loan against his wife Rose’s (Vera Miles) insurance policy to pay for her to have her wisdom teeth removed.  While at the insurance company, the overly sensitive women who work there mistake Manny for the man who’d robbed them twice in one year. The next thing you know, Manny is picked up by the police, taken on several perp walks, and then arrested for a crime that he did not commit. While out on bail, Manny and his wife try to find witnesses who can prove that he was away on vacation when one of the robberies occurred, but every lead falls through. Surprisingly, his wife has a nervous breakdown and has to be sent to an asylum while Manny stands trial. 

If you work very hard you can pinpoint some of Hitchcock’s stylistic elements. He and cinematographer Robert Burks spend a lot of time focusing on the hands of characters and inanimate objects, and there are a number of low-angle close-ups of faces—what is sometimes referred to as framing for emotion. Additionally, they shot the booking sequence from Manny’s perspective, which had the effect of involving the audience in his distress. Yet, probably the most Hitchcockian element comes when Manny is placed in a cell for the first time.  After suffering through the humility of being questioned, fingerprinted, and charged for armed robbery, Manny is completely overwhelmed by the insanity of the entire situation by the time he stands alone in his cell. To emphasize Manny’s  confusion and mental anguish the camera appears to start spinning—so much so that it is both disorienting and nauseating to the audience.  However, these few elements, along with a cracked mirror and transposed shot near the movie’s ending, is where any resemblance to a Hitchcock production ends—there isn’t even a MacGuffin that I noticed!

For me, The Wrong Man suffers immensely from Hitchcock’s insistence that the audience experience the entire arrest process.  I know that he wanted to put his audience in Manny’s place, but while it does have some effect, it demands that the story be told at a crawling pace, which allows distraction and boredom to creep in.  Boring is not a word that I often associate with a Hitchcock production, but The Wrong Man is indeed just that.  Plus, his matter-of-fact way of telling the story really doesn’t allow the audience to emotionally connect with either Manny or his wife.  Sadly, when Rose goes off the deep end, I found myself annoyed by her presence and the story arc, as it made the movie even longer than it needed to be.

The one good thing about The Wrong Man is Henry Fonda, who stoically portrays a character who should have been at his wit's end but never seems to lose his composure.  Emotionally restrained performances can be difficult for some actors, but Fonda does an excellent job of displaying Manny’s terror through his eyes and body language.  Plus, he capitalized on his own persona as a solid ,trustworthy person to get the audience to be even more outraged by what Manny goes through.

Overall, I am not a fan of The Wrong Man.  The story drags and is often quite boring, which is a black mark for any movie helmed by a master storyteller like Hitchcock.  Thankfully, Fonda’s performance gets me through such tedium. 

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The Big Sleep (1946) **

There is no doubt that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had oodles of chemistry, which jumped off the screen whenever they were paired together. And, they had a way of making risqué dialogue sound even more racier than it was probably intended. Yet, the fact remains that early in her career Lauren Bacall just wasn’t a very good actress.  Fortunately for her, she had two things on her side: her ability to project sexual tension with Bogart and a cool beauty that made her the perfect femme fatale. Strangely enough, however, she isn’t the most compelling femme fatale in director Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep (1946)—that honor rests with Martha Vickers, who plays Bacall’s younger sister in the movie.  This is a rather disturbing fact when you consider that many of Vickers scenes were cut after Raymond Chandler, upon seeing the two women on-screen together, commented that Vickers unequivocally overshadowed Bacall.  This, of course, is a sad tidbit to know, since, for me at least, whenever Vickers made an appearance on the screen the movie always seemed to get better.  Perhaps if the film’s plot hadn’t been so convoluted and full of countless red herrings I could have overlooked the sidelining of Vickers in favor of Bacall, but The Big Sleep suffers acutely from an ill-conceived narrative.

Based on Raymond Chandler 1939 novel of the same name, The Big Sleep is a film noir detective story set in Los Angeles.  Private dick Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is hired by General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) to handle his youngest daughter Carmen’s (Vickers) gambling debts, which are a source of blackmail—but there’s more to the story than that.  Carmen is a drug addict and nymphomaniac (per the Hays Code, this is only alluded to) with a nasty temper who has a very bad habit of getting caught up in all kinds of jams.  These jams, unfortunately, also ensnare her older sister, Vivian (Bacall), into her sordid affairs.  Don’t get me wrong, Vivian is a piece of work, too, but while she might like to gamble and emasculate men, she’s smart enough not to pose for pornographic pictures (again, only alluded to) or have affairs with chauffeurs and errand boys—and, most importantly, Vivian isn’t the reason countless men meet their big sleep—death.  Marlowe, for his part, must navigate the endless webs of deceit spun by the Sternwood women to fully comprehend the corrupt and seedy world which controls their fate.  Along the way, he develops a hot-and-cold relationship with Vivian that is tempered by their mutual distrust of one another. In the end, he must make a fateful decision to free the Sternwood women from a hell of their own making.

First, let me say that The Big Sleep is not a bad movie. Yes, the plot is difficult to follow, but even I must admit that it is never boring—it is, however, irritating and meandering. Chandler, himself, admitted that when Hawks and screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman contacted him for clarity regarding the story’s narrative that even he could not explain all of the plot developments—this was a bad omen.  It also doesn’t help that the Hays Code restricted the screenwriters from telling the story as it ought to have been told. The novel is both more complex and perverse than what eventually made its way to the screen in 1946. Audiences would have to wait until Michael Winner’s 1978 film version of the novel to see the truly explicit nature of the book.

By far, the most entertaining thing about The Big Sleep is how far the screenwriters pushed the censors with their sexually charged dialogue and innuendo.  For example, early in the film Dorothy Malone makes a brief appearance as a bookstore clerk who spends an afternoon with Marlowe doing everything but discussing books.  Of course, none of this is shown, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s obvious what has occurred.  And, then there is probably one of the more risqué exchanges ever to get past the censors: the racehorse metaphor.

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they're front runners or come from behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.

Marlowe: Find out mine?

Vivian: I think so.

Marlowe: Go ahead.

Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.

Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.

Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?

Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.

Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

This exchange alone is enough to make me suffer through the film’s ever winding and unwinding plot. And, of course, then there’s also those brief moments when Vickers lights up the screen.  From her first exchange with Marlowe, “You’re not very tall are you"?”, to her would-be seduction of him, Vickers is electrifying.  It can’t be said too many times, The Big Sleep would have been a much better film with more of her in it. And, even worse, the second most interesting woman in the film isn’t even Bacall, but rather Sonia Darrin, who plays every scene she’s in with a compelling level of intensity sorely lacking on the part of Bacall.

Overall, The Big Sleep is the type of film you wish were better because it does have some redeeming qualities. Yet, it suffers from a labyrinthine plot and a less than stellar leading lady. Thankfully, the dialogue was entertainingly witty, and occasionally Vickers or Darrin popped in and made the film much more interesting.

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Written on the Wind (1956) **

Of Douglas Sirk’s many heralded melodramas, Written on the Wind (1956) is probably my least favorite.  Yes, the Technicolor is as bright as ever and Sirk, generally, draws out  good performances from his cast, but the story and most of the characters fall flat for me.  If you take away Dorothy Malone’s scintillating performance, there is nothing compelling about the film.

Based on Robert Wilder’s 1945 novel of the same name, Written on the Wind opens with a bang—literally. A drunken man, who we later learn is Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), tears across a Texas road toward his family’s estate and stumbles into the house. As leaves blow inside the open door, we see a woman, who we soon learn is Kyle’s sister Marylee (Malone), slam the door shut. A few moments later, we hear a shot ring out and we see Kyle stagger back outside with a gun in his hand, where he proceeds to crumble to the ground dead.  And, then the wind blows again and turns a calendar back more than a year—Sirk’s not so clever way of saying he’s going to show us the events that led up to Kyle’s last fateful night.  It all began when Kyle’s best friend Mitch (Rock Hudson) brought a pretty secretary to lunch who caught Kyle’s eye. The heir to an oil fortune and a world-class playboy, Kyle doesn’t care that Mitch saw Lucy (Lauren Bacall) first—what he wants he gets.  And, so he turns on the charm by flying her to Miami in his private plane and stocking a luxury suite with fine clothes for her. When she informs him that she’s not a tramp he marries her after knowing her for only one day.  This was undoubtedly a mistake on Lucy’s part, because she soon learns that her new husband not only suffers from anxiety, depression, and alcoholism, but that he also has an inferiority complex when it comes to Mitch—the man his father (Robert Keith) adores and calls his second son.  It also doesn’t help that her sister-in-law, Marylee (Malone), is a world-class bitch and whore who is obsessed with Mitch—who happens to only have eyes for Lucy. When Kyle learns that he has weak sperm and that he may never be able to father a child he goes into a tailspin, which is exacerbated by Marylee’s insinuations that Mitch and Lucy are having an affair.  Oh, it’s so soapy—even for Sirk!

Once again, Russell Metty was Sirk’s cinematographer of choice for Written on the Wind. Over a period of seven years, Metty and Sirk worked together on ten films. There’s a reason that of the more than 30 films that Sirk directed in his career that his most highly regarded ones had Metty as their cinematographer: Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Imitation of Life (1959), and Written on the Wind. Metty’s deft understanding of how to use light/shade and angles to superbly capture the mood of a scene was the perfect compliment to Sirk’s brilliance when it came to visual composition. Most of their films had a reoccurring visual motif (for example, their endless use of windows in All That Heaven Allows) which they employed throughout the picture. Written on the Wind was primarily about psychologically fractured people, so Sirk and Metty used several mirror shots to depict characterization.  Additionally, I suppose they wanted to make a statement about how empty and sterile the lives of the Hadleys were because they used a lot of glaringly bright lights and garish colors—gone was the matte world of All That Heaven Allows, replaced by full enamel, ala Magnificent Obsession.

My overall disregard for Written on the Wind stems from the fact that I could never bring myself to care about what happened to the characters. About twenty minutes into the film it becomes obvious that the most entertaining and engaging person in the movie, Marylee, is doomed to end up unhappy, so it’s irritating to watch Mitch politely pine for the beyond boring Lucy, who spends most of her time fretting over her overacting (on so many levels) husband.  Sure, Marylee’s a tramp and a manipulator, but her pathological desire to have Mitch love her is far more exciting to watch than both Bacall and Hudson’s mediocre performances.  Of course, they may have only appeared to be sleepwalking through this movie because Dorothy Malone was completely on fire throughout it.  Malone deservedly won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her turn as a bitter woman who vehemently and defiantly acts out as a result of being constantly rebuffed by the man that she loves. Her testimony scene at the inquest is nothing short of brilliant—full of rawness, honesty and vulnerability.  It irks me beyond measure that this most pivotal scene has absolutely no chance of changing the inevitable ending of the film—boring and boring ride off together while the most electrifying person is doomed to an empty life of unhappiness.

Overall, I’m not a big fan of Written on the Wind. It’s not a bad picture, per se, but it is irritatingly predictable and cursed by the fact that every character other than Maryann is beyond boring.  Thank you, Dorothy Malone, for making it somewhat palatable.

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Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) **

Upon its release, director Sam Peckinpah’s last western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), was a box office and critical failure.  Peckinpah and then MGM president James Aubrey had a severe disagreement regarding the film’s original runtime of over two hours and Aubrey brought in outside editors to trim the film down to 106 minutes. It didn’t help that during filming Peckinpah believed he was being forced to work with substandard equipment and an inexperienced crew because Aubrey wanted to cut production costs.  Additionally, Peckinpah and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer didn’t see eye to eye about the movie’s narrative—Peckinpah rewrote sections of the script so that Garret and Billy interact with one another in a few scenes prior to their final showdown, which Wurlitzer had intended to be the only time the characters met on screen.  When Peckinpah saw what Aubrey’s editors had done to his film he sued to have his name removed from it.  He lost, of course, and for more than ten years his directing name was besmirched by the original hot mess theatrical release of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. However, like most directors, Peckinpah had his own private preview copy that he liked to show to his friends. This version was released by Turner Home Entertainment in 1988 and led to a critical rediscovery of what Peckinpah thought was his best film ever.  While I’ve not seen all of his films, I believe I can safely say that other than The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and perhaps Ride the High Country (1962), I’m not overly impressed with his body of work, and I certainly wasn’t overly impressed by his Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. For me, the best things about the movie are that Bob Dylan wrote “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” for it and James Coburn’s performance as Pat Garrett is riveting. You take these two things away from it and it’s just another drab, violent western.

The story follows Pat Garrett’s (Coburn) pursuit of Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) in 1881 New Mexico.  A former outlaw himself, Garrett has been made sheriff by Billy’s arch-nemesis John Chisum (Barry Sullivan) and is ordered by the New Mexico Territory Governor, Lew Wallace (Jason Robards), to bring the Kid to justice.  This task is hampered by the fact that Billy and Pat are friends and former outlaw colleagues. Having realized the West is changing and the days of the outlaw are slowing dying, Pat chooses to wear a badge and collect money for hunting down outlaws.  This act seems repulsive to him and turns him into a very bitter man, but he still carries out his mission, no matter how loathsome it is to him.

Most of the ancillary cast is comprised of a who’s who of the western genre: Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, Paul Fix, Jack Elam, Matt Clark, R.G, Armstrong, Chill Wills, Katy Jurado, and Jason Robards.  They all play minor roles, but both Elam and Robards make the most of the limited screen time that they are given. I’m not exactly sure why Peckinpah chose to showcase Bob Dylan’s superfluous character, Alias, more than some of the western stalwarts in his cast, but he did—I have read that it was done as a favor to Kristofferson and because Peckinpah was impressed with the title song that Dylan wrote for the movie. Personally, I find his presence distracting—especially when I hear his songs being played while he’s onscreen.

I’d like to say that the two principal leads were evenly matched, but they weren’t.  To say that Kristofferson lacks range would be an understatement. Plus, in what world would he pass for a 21-year-old baby-faced killer? Whereas, James Coburn looks and acts like a grizzled Wild West lawman.  It also helps that he had the acting chops to play a complex character who was conflicted by his past and the future that he yearned for.  In some scenes he plays Garrett almost whimsically, while in others he must portray a man who is deeply tortured and repulsed by what he must do.  For me, Coburn’s performance is the only thing that makes Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid mildly entertaining.

While I’ve never been a fan of Bob Dylan’s music, I must say that if there was ever an appropriate song written for a bloody western, it was “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”.  Peckinpah’s use of it at the end of the film (and other sections as well) creates an atmosphere of foreboding and then unpleasant reality. Still, I could have done without the theme song that Dylan wrote for the movie.

Overall, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is somewhat enjoyable because of James' Coburn’s turn as Pat Garrett.  The movie probably would have been stronger if a more capable actor had played the Kid, but hindsight is 20/20.  The story itself is mildly entertaining, and much better than that of Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), but I somewhat agree with Aubrey that the film drags in certain places and would have benefitted from a few cut scenes—maybe not twenty minutes worth, but there is definitely unnecessary fat that could have been trimmed. Additionally, Dylan deserves credit for creating a highly memorable song, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”, for the picture.

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The Wild Bunch (1969) **

(This post will include spoilers.)

Revisionist westerns aren’t really my thing.  Yes, they are more realistic and grittier than the classic westerns of John Ford, but, for the most part, they seem to have more style than substance.  If I’m going to watch an ultra-violent western it better darn well have a compelling storyline that makes me care if someone gets shredded by bullets.  For example, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is a savage film, but at least it’s plot driven and makes you care about (or in Henry Fonda’s case, hate) its characters. Yet, in the case of director Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), I had no investment in either its plot or its characters.  Yes, the gunfights are superbly edited and there is no sugar-coating what being shot actually looks and feels like, but so what?  I felt absolutely nothing when all of the outlaws (the “Wild Bunch”) got slaughtered for being sentimental idiots. And, I don’t care if Peckinpah believed that he was making an allegory about the senseless violence taking place in the Vietnam War at the time he was making the movie. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to me is that at no point in the story did I find myself caring one way or the other about what happened to any of the characters.  I was not entertained, educated, or enthralled by anything in The Wild Bunch other than the, then new, editing style that Peckinpah and editor Lou Lombardo employed to create an epically barbaric final gunfight.  For me, that’s just not enough.

Penned by Peckinpah and Walon Green, the story is set along the Texas-Mexico border in 1913—the last days of the wild west and its outlaws.  Pike Bishop (William Holden) is the leader of a group of outlaws pursued by bounty hunters hired by the railroad.  After surviving an ambush at a bank in Texas, the “Wild Bunch” flee into Mexico to regroup and plan their next move. The outlaws are at a disadvantage because the bounty hunters are led by Pike’s former partner, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), a man familiar with how the group operates. A short flashback shows us that Deke had been captured by the law due to Pike’s whoring and drinking ways. As such, Pike suffers from guilt, while Deke must deal with his own betrayal of the outlaw code: “When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished!” Anyway, the outlaws are hired by a corrupt Mexican Federal Army general named Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) who is being advised by emissaries of the German government (quick history lesson: in 1914 the First World War started, but before that the Germans had made preemptive plans to engage the Mexican Army if America entered the war—there’s a whole saga that played out in 1917, please look up the Zimmermann telegram if you want to learn more) to steal Army guns off a train, which they do quite cleverly. However, one of the “Wild Bunch”, Angel (Jaime Sanchez), is a member of one of the villages that Mapache has raped and pillaged and demands he be paid with a case of guns. When Mapache finds out Angel took the guns he takes him prisoner and tortures him. At first the outlaws do nothing, as Pike remarks that “$10,000 cuts an awful lot of family ties”, but eventually they decide that four men should take on an entire army.  You do the math…

The “Wild Bunch” are scumbags.  They kill innocent people and steal things that don’t belong to them.  They like to drink, screw, and joke around.  This is not the type of behavior that elicits sympathy from me when their way of life is threatened by cars and Gatling guns. The ambiguous villain seems to be Deke, but he’s nothing more than a mild annoyance and he most assuredly does not come off as “bad” man.  I suppose Mapache is pretty much a bastard, but no more than the “Wild Bunch” themselves.  As such, I cannot bring myself to root for or against anyone—they’re all low-life bastards who deserve to die.  Plus, there is truly no logically explanation as to why they decide to go on a suicide mission.  They had $10,000! And, for those who are going to say there’s honor among thieves, please remember that Pike shot one of his fellow outlaws because he was injured and couldn’t ride his horse.  Yes, Pike was old and decrepit and the outlaw life was waning, but Dutch (Ernest Borgnine), Lyle (Warren Oates), and Tector (Ben Johnson) still had a lot of years ahead of them, and $10,000 would have been a great way to start a new outlaw-free lifestyle. So, when that infamous last stand takes place I just sit and watch the revolutionary editing and think to myself: that’s sure a lot of blood and bullets.

The one thing that saves The Wild Bunch from my complete disdain is its technical elements.  Cinematographer Lucien Ballard had his hands full capturing Peckinpah’s wide-screen vision of the bloody shootouts, using up to six cameras at varying film rates all at once to capture the action.  Additionally, Ballard used telephoto lenses that brought the foreground and background into the same visual perspective.  All of Ballard’s camerawork, which was comprised of over 300,000 feet of film shot at varying speeds, was then spliced together by Lombardo and Peckinpah to create dazzling action sequences that could at one moment be a rapid-fire rampage and then the next a slow-motion symphony of destruction.  And, when you think about it, what do most people remember about The Wild Bunch—the famous Last Stand…and perhaps it’s theme song.

Overall, The Wild Bunch is a ferociously violent western that benefits from masterful editing and cinematography. However, the story is far from compelling and none of the characters are worth emotionally investing in.

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