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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Seconds (1966) **1/2

Based on David Ely’s 1963 novel of the same name, Seconds (1966) is a disturbing science fiction—and, I would go as far as to say horror—film about a man who completely takes on a new identity to escape his meaningless suburban lifestyle.  Director John Frankenheimer, along with cinematographer James Wong Howe, depicts a stark vision of a world where lives can be created or taken by an underground company headed by a man who looks and sounds a lot like Harry S. Truman (Will Geer).  The story itself is so bizarre that it is frightening, and Howe’s voyeuristic cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith’s eerily haunting score only heighten the troubling plot. 

On his nightly commute from his New York banking job to his suburban home in Scarsdale, Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is given a scrap of paper with an address written on it. Later that evening he receives a phone call from a man claiming to be his dead best friend, Charlie (Murray Hamilton), who attempts to convince him to change his life.  What happens next is a series of shockingly matter-of-fact conversations between Arthur and the “Company”.  It seems that they can help him extricate himself from his empty existence, in which he no longer shares intimacy with his wife (Frances Reid), sees his married daughter, or enjoys his job.  All he has to do is set up a trust worth $30,000 to handle his transition—a cadaver must be procured for his “death”; extensive plastic surgery must be performed; and, his new identity must be established. Trust signed, Arthur goes under the knife and several weeks later Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson) emerges.  He chooses artist as his new career, and the company sets him up in a beach house in Malibu and assigns John (Wesley Addy) as his adjustment advisor (and servant).  When it appears that Tony isn’t transitioning as they would like, they send in a woman (Salome Jens) to help the process along, as well as some other “reborns” to monitor his behavior. Unfortunately, Wilson doesn’t adapt to his new life and returns to New York to see where he went wrong with his wife and to ask the Company for a redo, so to speak.  Without giving the ending of the movie away, I will say that the last five minutes of the story are startling and uneasy to watch.

There’s something about black and white film that makes psychologically disturbing movies even more frightening.  Howe’s cinematography creates a cold, austere atmosphere for Seconds, which expertly matches the disturbingly detached narrative.  Cinematically, the most important theme created by Howe and Frankenheimer is the distortion of reality. Their use of a fisheye lens to capture Arthur/Wilson’s distorted sense of being creates a mode of expression that a standard lens could not achieve. Additionally, the use of extreme close ups (so close you can see the character’s pores) elevate the tension/anxiety level and are almost jarringly uncomfortable to look at.  In one particular scene, after Arthur has spoken on the telephone to Charlie, Arthur is framed in a tight close up shot which depicts his unease and unhappiness. This shot is then followed, in rapid succession, by a medium and then a long shot, which emphasize Arthur’s isolation. Another scene that I especially enjoyed was when Wilson returns home and picks up a picture of Arthur, while standing in front of a mirror, and his face is reflected across the glass of the picture frame and the two faces of the same man are captured. 

Of course, such disturbing images deserved to be set to an equally disturbing soundtrack. While it has a sound all its own, Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack seems to pay homage to Bach’s Baroque style. Filled with imposing organs, melodic strings, and eerie 60s electronic music, the soundtrack is just as disquieting as the film’s subject matter.

Seconds did not do well at the box office or with critics.  Some found the idea ridiculous that John Randolph’s Arthur could be transformed into Rock Hudson’s Wilson. This is a valid complaint, as Hudson was nearly a half foot taller than Randolph and ten years younger, too.  Moreover, audiences weren’t quite prepared to watch Hudson in such a dark film—especially not after seeing him in a string of light romantic comedies.  Personally, I was equally impressed by Hudson and Randolph’s performances. Randolph expresses his character’s disillusionment and resignation quite effectively—so much so that you actually do feel sorry for him.  And, Hudson, for his part, is quite memorable in the last few scenes of the film, where he displays a gamut of emotions: regret, hostility, and horror.  

Overall, while I must admit that the story is a bit far-fetched, it is also so disturbing that I couldn’t help but be drawn into it.  It also helps that it was expertly filmed and that the soundtrack only enhanced the terror of the narrative. 

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) **1/2

No one in classic Hollywood did melodrama better than director Douglas Sirk.  With films like All I Desire (1953), Magnificent Obsession (1954), There’s Always Tomorrow (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), Imitation of Life (1959), and today’s entry, All That Heaven Allows (1955), Sirk made movies that focused on domestic concerns, almost always centered around the emotional needs and desires of women. Over and over again certain themes would appear in his pictures: female alienation from social norms; motherly love tested by the selfishness of their children; and, criticism of conformity—although this particular theme was not always recognized by critics, at least not until the veil was lifted about how un-ideal the 1950s actually were for many American women.  Yes, the plots of many of his films played like a soap opera, but no soap opera was ever so well acted or sumptuously lensed. 

Such is the case with All That Heaven Allows, a melodrama which reteamed Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson following their hugely successful pairing in Magnificent Obsession. While Wyman was a star and an acclaimed actress (she had three Best Actress nominations and one Oscar statute) when she first worked with Sirk on Magnificent Obsession (for which she earned her fourth Best Actress nomination), Hudson was pretty much a second, third, or fourth banana in Hollywood and was regarded more for his looks than for his acting abilities.  Sirk must have seen something in Hudson that others did not, because between 1952-1958 he and Hudson made nine films together at Universal.  All That Heaven Allows was their fifth collaboration, and their second pairing with Wyman.  Clearly, Wyman was the star of the show, but by this point Sirk new how to get the most out of Hudson that he could.

Based on Edna and Harry Lee’s 1952 story of the same name, All That Heaven Allows is billed as a May/December romance between a well-to-do widow and a working-class gardener/arborist.  Mrs. Cary Scott (Wyman) is a lonely widow who feels isolated by the world she and her deceased husband used to occupy. Her two grown children, Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds), are preoccupied with their lives at their Ivy League schools and assume that their mother will eventually marry a mature, and very passionless, man from their social set—or purchase a television set to spend her evenings with.  However, she strikes up a friendship with Ron Kirby (Hudson), the man who prunes her trees, and against her better judgment begins an affair with the handsome man who is both younger than herself and who is also of lower social standing.  She is attracted to more than his good looks, though.  She admires his individuality and his simplicity, and through interactions with he and his friends Cary finds a world where people care about other people—not about how much money they have or their social standing.  Yet, when Ron asks her to marry him, at first she says that it will never work because of their differences. Ah, but love is strong and she decides to take a chance—and that’s when the nastiness begins.  Her snobby friends (sans poor Agnes Moorehead’s Sara) find the relationship scandalous and her children think it’s humiliating—mostly to them.  Unable to “thine own self be true”, Cary breaks off the engagement to appease her beyond-selfish children and finds herself alone and miserable.  Finding herself at a personal crossroads (in front of a television nonetheless), Cary has to make up her mind about whether she’s going to live her life for others or for herself.

Personally, I don’t think this is a film about a May/December romance. Wyman was 38 years old and Hudson was 30 when they made All That Heaven Allows. While I know Cary is supposed to be in her early to mid forties and have two college-age children, she doesn’t look all that much older than Ron.  Perhaps that was a focal point in the Lees’ story (I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be fifteen years older than Ron), but it really isn’t in the movie. Yes, there are a few barbs from the town gossip (Jacqueline De Wit) and a not so kind muscle reference from her son that insinuates that there is an age difference, but that’s not really what All That Heaven Allows is about.  Instead, I view it as an critique on American consumerism and conformity (there’s a reason Cary reads from Thoreau’s Walden).  The thing that seems to rankle Cary’s friends and children the most about Ron is that he’s not one of them—driven by money and having fine, expensive things.  He doesn’t belong, nor does he want to, to their worldview.  And the fact that someone from their social/economic group would want to shed the life that they so value and esteem to live a simple existence is almost anathema to them.  Cary doesn’t want to conform and so she is ostracized by her friends and shamed by her own children.  As a result of doing what others expect of her, she finds herself locked inside a world that holds no meaning for her.  It is only when she realizes that she needs to do what makes her happy that she can truly be free.  In 1955, women, in general, did not do this and I expect the ending of this film was shocking to some—hopefully, it was also enlightening to others.

While she may not be as well remembered as Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, or Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman was a very fine actress who could do comedy or drama, and was also a dancer and a singer.  Wyman, much like Stanwyck, had had a difficult childhood which she used to her advantage when playing characters who needed to draw upon their own internal fortitude to face difficult situations.  And although she was not what one would call a classic beauty, she had a certain personal grace and countenance that was admired by moviegoers.  These qualities, of course, allowed her to play Cary Scott as a gracefully polite woman stifled by the circumstances of her life.  It’s not easy to play a sacrificing woman and not be tinged by sanctimony, but Wyman does an excellent job of melding Cary’s two worlds and personalities into one overall character.  She must be refined, composed, and repressed at certain times, and at others she is free to display desire, unencumbered happiness, and hopefulness—but not too much, because there are voices of doubt that still rattle around in her mind that makes her happiness guarded and almost unrealistic. 

Other than Wyman’s performance, the thing that most stands out about All That Heaven Allows is its aesthetic appeal.  Sirk’s cinematographer of choice on this, and many of his most esteemed films, was Russell Metty.  Working in the wonderful, sumptuous world of Technicolor, they created a beautifully lensed picture.  Throughout the movie they use muted colors to heighten the personal alienation and torment of their characters.  Perhaps the most memorable scene in the film is when Cary goes to the mill to tell Ron that she’s breaking off their engagement. Set against a Monet-esque snowscape looming outside, Ron’s partly refurbished mill-home is conspicuously and overbearingly full of open space and made up of wood and stone.  Sirk and Metty will revisit this particular setting later in the film when they capture the most lasting image of the film: Cary standing in front of that same snowscape in a fully refurbished home staring at a stag standing right outside the massive window.

If I have one critique of All That Heaven Allows is its heavy-handed use of Franz Liszt’s Consolation No. 3.  Yes, we get it, it’s a melodrama, do we really need to have such overly dramatic music soaring in the background? 

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How Green Was My Valley (1941) **1/2

Director John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley (1941) was nominated for ten Academy Awards—it won five (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Supporting Actor). By taking home the Oscar for Best Picture it beat out such films as Citizen Kane (1941), The Little Foxes (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Suspicion (1941). While it definitely had one helluva cast and the massive Welsh mining town constructed at Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon was impressive, I cannot agree that How Green Was My Valley was a better film than Citizen Kane, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, or Suspicion—though it was better than Sergeant York and the other four films that were nominated for Best Picture that year (Blossoms in the Dust, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, and One Foot in Heaven). You add this oversight to the fact that Gregg Toland’s cinematography in Citizen Kane lost to Arthur Miller for his camerawork in this, and you make one heck of a depressing film even more…disagreeable. 

Based on Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel of the same name, the film depicts the trials and tribulations of the Morgan family and their late 1800s Welsh coal-mining village.  Gwilym Sr. (Donald Crisp) and Beth (Sara Allgood) Morgan are the parents of six boys and one very pretty daughter, Angharad (Maureen O’Hara).  All of the Morgan men except the youngest son, Huw (Roddy McDowall), work in the coal mines, while the Morgan women tend to the house that they all live in.  At the start of the story they all seem content with their lives; though the work is hard, they have a nice home and plenty to eat. However, as the plot progresses and the mine starts to cut wages the family is divided over the possibility of a strike. This division not only drives three of the sons from the family home (the oldest son, Ivor [Patric Knowles], has married Bronwyn [Anna Lee] and lives next door), but also finds the village turning on Gwilym, a leading member of the community, because he is against the strike.  Tragedy abounds for the Morgans, as one son is killed in the mines and eventually the other three sons are discharged from the mine and must make a new start in America, and poor Huw also finds himself temporarily paralyzed for a time.  Oh, and I almost forgot Angharad’s sad fate—she is in love with the village preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), but finds herself married off to the mine owner’s son (Marten Lamont).  There is nothing uplifting about How Green Was My Valley—a few parties, some singing and intermittent light moments cannot overcome what is a grim, unpleasant story.  And, even when there was one snippet of hope for one of the Morgans—Huw is a smart boy who could apprentice for a middle class job but decides he too should go down into the mines—that is even taken away. 

If it’s possible to ignore how completely depressing this movie is, I suppose you could marvel at the production design and appreciate the fine acting by most of the cast.  One of the strange things about How Green Was My Valley that not a lot of people know is that producer Darryl F. Zanuck planned on making it the next Gone with the Wind (1939), shot in Technicolor on location in Wales with a runtime of nearly four hours. He started pre-production with William Wyler as his director, but Zanuck’s ambition and Wyler’s notorious reputation for going over budget and taking forever to make a picture made Twentieth Century Fox place the film on hold. Eventually, Zanuck got the wheels of the production moving again by suggesting that John Ford was just the right director for the project.  While four of the most important parts had been cast by Zanuck and Wyler, Ma and Pa Morgan, Huw, and Mr. Gruffydd, it was Ford who cast Lee as Bronwyn and O’Hara as Angharad without screen tests. Lee invented an Irish grandfather and all O’Hara had to do was use her Irish accent and tell stories of her homeland—Ford was a sucker for anything and anyone from his beloved Ireland.

The expertly designed Welsh village is truly amazing. Zanuck had wanted to shoot on location in Wales, but World War II made that impossible and his budget had been drastically cut by Twentieth Century Fox anyway, and so he settled for Brent’s Crag in Malibu.  Zanuck’s Technicolor dream was also abandoned when he realized that Malibu would never match the green valleys of Wales.  The village cost approximately $110,000 to construct and tons upon tons of coal were brought in for the construction of the mines. Anyone who didn’t know better would really believe that How Green Was My Valley was actually filmed in a coal mining village in Wales. Even the coal slag looks real, although it was an illusion created by the hillsides being painted black.

While I hated the story, I loved the characters. Donald Crisp deservedly won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Gwilym Morgan.  He is the heart of the film and probably should have been nominated for Best Actor, because without him there would not have been a moral backbone to the story.  Sara Allgood, as his wife, earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her spirited performance as one-tough matriarch.  The doomed romance between Mr. Gruffydd and Angharad was bittersweet to watch.  Probably my favorite scene in the film is Angharad’s brazen attempt to get the man she loves to step in and claim her before she is married off to a man she doesn’t love.  Of course, O’Hara was much too fiery an actress for the always reserved Walter Pidgeon, so she, of course, dominates whenever they are on screen together. 

Overall, How Green Was My Valley is a depressingly nostalgic look at an idyllic Welsh mining community destroyed by greed and pollution.  Occasionally happy things occur, but mostly it’s a hard, bitter depiction of the destruction of the pastoral existence.  Oh, John Ford, thankfully you will later redeem yourself with The Quiet Man (1952), and for that I can forgive you for just about anything…even two hours of constant depression.

 

 

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950) **1/2

(This is my contribution to the CMBA's Fabulous Films of the 1950s Blogathon, which runs May 21-May 26. Check out all the great blog posts!)

Tight—that is the best word to describe director John Huston’s, The Asphalt Jungle (1950).  The plot, cinematography and the acting are all tightly wound together to create one of the most compelling film noir heist movies ever made.  Quite simply, it is the granddaddy of all heist movies, such classics as Rififi (1955) and The Killing (1956) and modern-day “classics” like Oceans Eleven (2001) and Inside Man (2006) all derive from The Asphalt Jungle. What is most compelling, however, about the movie is how it looks at the subterranean world of crime and how different from your typical noir it actually is. 

Adapted from W.R. Burnett’s novel of the same name, Ben Maddow and John Huston’s Oscar-nominated screenplay is tied together by a jewel heist.  The lives of several men are determined by the success or failure of stealing and fencing diamonds and gold worth more than a million dollars (which was a lot of money back in 1950).  The mastermind of the caper is Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe, in an Oscar-nominated performance), a recently released big timer with a full-proof plan to rob a jewelry store.  He enlists a local bookie, Cobby (Marc Lawrence), to help him snag $50,000 to put a crew together.  This leads him to Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a respected local lawyer with supposedly big pockets, who is also probably the most corrupt man in town.  The audience is then educated as to what is necessary, other than money, to pull off a grand heist—a box man, the guy who breaks into the safe (Anthony Caruso), a driver (James Whitmore), and a hooligan who handles a gun and any security guards or cops (Sterling Hayden).  Once this part of the education is over, we are then treated to a painstakingly detailed view of the entire heist. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned and a few people get shot and there is a major double-cross that throws a damper on an otherwise spectacularly planned and orchestrated crime.

The underbelly of crime always proves compelling, and in The Asphalt Jungle it is on full display. However, the seediness is not only comprised of only career criminals but also respected lawyers and police officers as well.  For example, Cobby runs a local book that is protected by Lieutenant Ditrich (Barry Kelley), who gets kickbacks for looking the other way.  And, then there’s Emmerich, a highly respected man who both finances and represents crooks, while living in a fine house and carrying on with a woman young enough to be his daughter, or niece (played by Marilyn Monroe), while his bedridden wife (Dorothy Tree) just wants to play cards.

The story does a smart job of planting small hints about the criminals’ weaknesses and also explaining what makes them commit the crimes they do.  Doc won’t touch alcohol and has a fondness for young girls (one of which will haunt him in the end).  Dix (Hayden) only wants to make enough money to buy back his family’s horse farm but can never save enough from his robberies because he bets on the horses.  And, Louie (Caruso) has a wife and child to support.  They all just want one big score so they can get out of the life. These sympathetic, human characters don’t fit the stereotypical noir criminal, who are often violent and unethical.  For the most part, all of the criminals seem to follow a code of ethics, which flies in the face of Noir 101.

And, completely opposite to other noirs, there are no femme fatales anywhere to be seen in The Asphalt Jungle, which might sound strange when one considers that the perfect femme fatale-esque actress was in the film, Marilyn Monroe.  None of the male characters are obsessed with any wicked women. In fact, all of the women in the picture are highly sympathetic—even Monroe, who comes across as the most innocent mistress ever known to cinema. 

However, like any noir, The Asphalt Jungle is a shadow-filled black and white picture full of dark, atmospheric shots. Still, Huston’s framing of the film is much more open and uncluttered compared to other noirs.  He and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Harold Rosson employed high contrast lighting from start to finish, with an extended opening scene that follows Dix walking through a deserted asphalt jungle after his most recent robbery.  Perhaps my favorite scene in the film, other than the 11-minute jewelry heist, is when Doc first paces up and down the tight hallway of Cobby’s book parlor waiting to be introduced. One blinding overhead light illuminates the otherwise dark, grimy hallway as Doc walks toward the static camera—almost walking straight into it—and then he turns his back toward the opening door and the emerging image of Cobby. It’s a small scene, but so full of brilliant lighting and lens work. 

While Hayden may have gotten top billing, Jaffe was clearly the star of the show.  Of course, it helps that Jaffe could act galaxies around Hayden, but his character was the most interesting of the lot.  It takes skill to portray a tightly-wound but always composed character. Additionally, Calhern’s turn as Emmerich is also engaging.  Yes, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for a double-crosser and a philanderer, but when he sits down to write a letter to his wife when he’s about to be arrested and then rips it up after writing it, you almost feel sorry for him. 

Overall, The Asphalt Jungle was an important development in cinema.  It pioneered the heist film and laid the foundation for generations of heist films to come.  Additionally, it broke the barriers of film noir, and ushered in characterization and a more open and uncluttered framing into the world of noir. 

For more great Fabulous Films of the 1950s blog posts click this link: http://clamba.blogspot.com/.

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His Girl Friday (1940) **1/2

There’s something unusual about director Howard Hawks’ screwball comedy, His Girl Friday—it’s not all screwy. In fact, there are quite a few dark moments in it that are not standard fare for the genre.  This unusual quirk and the witty, rapid-fire repartee makes for an interesting viewing experience.  Of course, it helps that Hawks coaxed out two great performances from his principal leads, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

Adapted from the heralded Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur play, The Front Page, His Girl Friday flips the script, so to speak, by making Hildy Johnson (Russell) a female reporter on her way out of the slimy bullpen and into respectable matrimony.  Unfortunately for Hildy she has two things standing in her way: her ex-husband and soon-to-be ex-editor, Walter Burns (Grant), and her own professional ambition.  Of course, this doesn’t bode well for her fiancee Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy).  It also doesn’t help that she delivers the news of her impending marriage to Walter on the eve of an execution that has political implications.  Walter needs his best reporter for the biggest story in town and he stops at nothing to ensure that Hildy writes it.  As the story grows bigger by the minute so does Hildy’s love of the newspaper game.

Sure, His Girl Friday is a screwball comedy.  Spit-fire dialogue infused with sexual innuendo and inside jokes abound throughout the movie.  Of course, Hildy and Walter are the two smartest people in any room and seem to relish jockeying between themselves to determine who is actually the smartest between them.  Alas, this means that others have to play the one-upped or, worse, the dumb sap, like Bruce.  But who cares, it’s all in the name of good, rollicking fun!  But is it… There’s a strangely dark side to this film that is quite unusual for the typical screwball comedy. 

For one, the big news story revolves around the impending execution of Earl Williams (John Qualen), a man who killed a black police officer.  We hear and see the police practicing for his hanging. And, when Hildy goes to interview him in jail there aren’t any hijinks—it’s a serious conversation about what led Walter to the gallows.  There’s also a few dramatic scenes that revolve around Walter’s friend Mollie Malloy (Helen Mack) and the callous way that the press treats their subject matter.  For me, this is one of the reasons that I don’t love His Girl Friday.  If you’ve seen it then you know that there’s a pretty horrific event that takes place near the end of the film and that almost without a beat the story moves back into screwball land—this is jarring, even if Hawks’ is trying to portray just how jaded the journalistic world is.

Still, who can resist the battle of the sexes between Grant and Russell.  He’s a reprehensible opportunist who knows how to use words to his advantage and she’s a fast-talking broad with an interesting fashion sense who knows all of Walter’s tricks.  They are a match made in matrimonial hell—but they are fun to watch.  Interestingly enough, Russell was far, far, far from the first choice for the role of Hildy, but after a slew of actresses (Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, Ginger Rogers, etc.) either turned down the role or were deemed too expensive by Columbia Pictures, Russell was given the role she is probably best known for (even though Auntie Mame is well-remembered, too).  And while Grant got top-billing, Russell obviously was the star and heart of His Girl Friday—funny how things work out sometimes. 

Overall, the inside jokes alone make His Girl Friday worth watching.  For example, when Walter is asked to describe what Bruce looks like he answers, “He looks like that fellow in the movies—Ralph Bellamy.”  And, then there’s the classic line Bruce quips when the Mayor (Clarence Kolb) says Bruce is through, “Listen, the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat.”  I could go on and on about how hilariously the dialogue is delivered.  Needless to say, His Girl Friday is a fast-paced, antic-filled screwball comedy—with a few odd somber moments. 

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Only Angels Have Wings (1939) **1/2

While the great screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) is my all-time favorite Howard Hawks’ film, I must admit that the director made a number of enjoyable dramatic films, too.  His versatility was what made him one of the best directors of his time.  Yes, his movies often ran over budget and very rarely wrapped on time, but he usually put out quality products.  Such was the case with Only Angels Have Wings (1939), which was hugely successful for Columbia Pictures and was the third highest grossing production of 1939—no small feat in one of the greatest filmmaking years ever.  While it didn’t swallow up a ton of Academy Award nominations like Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Stagecoach (1939), Love Affair (1939), and The Wizard of Oz (1939), it was comprised of a gifted cast and some phenomenal aerial cinematography.

Of course any film that had Cary Grant as its male lead was assured of a charismatic hero, thief, cad, or jester.  Grant had screen presence and he always seemed at ease with whatever role he played. Perhaps this is why someone who did so many memorable films was so often overlooked by the Academy—he only earned three nods in his storied career.  His co-star in Only Angels Have Wings had the same problem. 

While her career wasn’t quite as long as Grant’s, Jean Arthur starred in some of the best films of the 1930s and 1940s:  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Easy Living (1937), You Can’t Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), The Talk of the Town (1942), The More the Merrier (1943), and A Foreign Affair (1948), and she ended her Hollywood career in one of the most revered westerns ever: Shane (1953). Yet, somehow Arthur only found herself nominated for one Oscar and is virtually forgotten today—except by true classic film fans. 

I wholeheartedly believe the reason Grant’s and Arthur’s acting abilities were often so overlooked—or you might say taken for granted—is because they made it look so easy. Also, they both had the ability to interweave comedy into overall dramatic films, as they did in Only Angels Have Wings, which was a heavy film.  Grant’s Geoff Carter is, to quote Dutchy (Sig Ruman), a hard man who pushes the limits of his pilots to ensure the success of his struggling Barranca Airways.  Arthur’s Bonnie Lee is a sharp-tongued and hot-tempered woman who finds herself unexpectedly involved in a masculine, adrenaline fuelled world she doesn’t understand.  Anytime someone takes to the air it might be the last thing that they do—and if it is, then the others must carry on as if nothing has happened.  With this ever-present fact hanging over their heads, Geoff and Bonnie have to maneuver through a burgeoning love affair which is jeopardized by his love of flying and her fear of his death. It would have been easy for the movie to turn into a heavy-handed melodrama, but the comedic moments between Geoff and Bonnie adds another layer to the film.  Also, who could do sly sexual banter better than Grant and Arthur—perhaps Grant and Irene Dunne, but you get my point. 

Only Angels Have Wings also benefits from good performances by Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, and Thomas Mitchell.  Barthelmess’s turn as an outcast pilot who takes the most dangerous jobs was probably his best since The Dawn Patrol (1930). Hayworth, who plays Bathelmess’s wife, Judy, turns in a performance that showed she had the chops to finally stop being cast as a lower supporting player.  Yet, it is Thomas Mitchell as Kid, the self-sacrificing almost blind pilot, that is the standout.  Not gifted with the good looks of Grant, Mitchell was a fine actor who found himself in supporting roles. Oh, but what a great supporting actor he was. While he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1939 for Stagecoach, he could just have easily been nominated for his performance in Only Angels Have Wings. While Grant and Arthur were the spine of the movie, Mitchell was the heart of it. 

The two Oscar nominations that Only Angels Have Wings did receive were primarily related to its aerial elements.  Joseph Walker earned a Best Black and White Cinematography nod, and Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hawn were nominated for Best Special Effects.  The two crash scenes (and one near-miss) in Only Angels Have Wings are expertly filmed and recorded.  I expect it was pretty dangerous to crash a burning plane at such a high speed, and it is quite jarring to watch—especially for anyone who doesn’t like to fly. 

Hawks had a fascination with airplanes and made a number of other memorable films about aviation: The Air Circus (1928), The Dawn Patrol (1930), Ceiling Zero (1936), and Air Force (1943). Hawks’ love of aviation began during WWI when he learned to fly in the U.S. Army Air Service and continued throughout his life.  It was this love that helped him showcase both the beauty and danger of flight.  No other director defined the genre better, and his depiction of the hero-pilot has been mimicked in countless films up to present day cinema.  It is shocking to me that someone hasn’t put a Blu-ray collection together of his aviation films.

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Wuthering Heights (1939) **1/2

As novel to screen adaptions go, director William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939) is far from a faithful retelling of Emily Bronte’s gothic tale of love, jealousy, and vengeance.  Never mind that the entire second half of the novel is omitted by screenwriters Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht’s Oscar nominated screenplay, it’s the last twenty minutes of the film that will forever cause Bronte to turn in her grave. Yet, I’m not going to discuss how insanely wrong MGM presented the true meaning of Wuthering Heights to countless generations of non-readers in this review. Instead, I want to talk about two things: Greg Toland’s gorgeous black and white cinematography and the romanticization of pathological behavior.

Wuthering Heights was nominated for eight Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), Best Supporting Actress (Geraldine Page), Best Art Direction (James Basevi), Best Director (Wyler), Best Original Score (Alfred Newman), Best Screenplay (MacArthur and Hecht), and Best Black and White Cinematography (Toland).  Of these eight nominations, only Toland went home with the gold statue, and only because Gone with the Wind (1939) was in color and thus won Best Color Cinematography.  Perhaps things would have turned out better that award season for Sam Goldwyn had he opted for Vivien Leigh to play Cathy instead of Merle Oberon. I expect his unrelenting statement that Wuthering Heights, a commercial failure until its reissue, was his favorite of all of his productions instead of such superior films as The Best Years of Our Lives (1945) and The Little Foxes (1941) was a direct result of getting trounced by Leigh and Gone with the Wind in 1939. 

Toland described Wuthering Heights as “a soft, diffused picture, a fantasy”.  Through Toland’s lighting and camerawork, Wyler was able to depict four separate thematic moods.  Every last scene in the Earnshaw house (Wuthering Heights) is presented as somber, dark and foreboding.  From the opening scene where Heathcliff (Olivier), Isabella (Fitzgerald), and Ellen (Flora Robson) are sitting around the hearth when Lockwood (Miles Mander) interrupts their constant unhappiness, this house is lensed as a house of doom.  The moors that Cathy (Oberon) and Heathcliff escape to in times of both happiness and despair are depicted in two ways.  While Toland always seemed to capture the windy look of the rugged moors, he also appeared to present them based on the mood of the story.  When the couple experiences happiness the lighting is warm and inviting, but when things are going bad, say when Cathy chases after Heathcliff in a torrential downpour, the sky is dark and menacing.  And, then there is the Linton house, which always seems to be presented as extremely bright and cheerful, but can also be filmed in a way that its brightness also seems overbearing—more on that in a minute.

Known for his penchant for filming scenes in front of mirrors, Toland captured two of the most memorable scenes in Wuthering Heights by employing mirrors. It is not a coincidence that both scenes involved Cathy, since in Bronte’s novel mirrors had the habit of mocking and tormenting Cathy.  One scene occurs after Cathy and Heathcliff have a big fight, in which she treats him like a servant after returning from her first convalescence at the Linton house. Upon returning to her room she gazes at herself, dressed in one of Isabella’s fine dresses, in a full-length mirror. As she grows enraged with herself over how she treated Heathcliff she proceeds to violently rip the dress from her body. The other memorable mirror scene finds Cathy gazing into a mirrored dressing table as she prepares for Edgar Linton’s visit (David Niven). When Heathcliff barges into her room to dissuade her from the meeting, her mood completely changes.  For Cathy, both in the film and in the novel, mirrors represent her two personalities/faces—one is wild, carefree, and in love with the world in which Heathcliff resides, the other face is wanton for fine, pretty, respectable things and maliciously hateful toward Heathcliff’s presence, as it endangers her ability to first obtain and then keep “respectable” things. 

And this brings me to Wyler’s romanticization of pathological behavior in Wuthering Heights.  I’ve heard people say that this is a film about undying love and all of the idiotic things that go along with such a statement. Quite frankly, it is not, even if that is what Goldwyn wanted with his insane demand that the ending, which Wyler refused to shoot, find the ghosts of Cathy and Heathcliff wandering the moors eternally together. In today’s world, Cathy and Heathcliff’s story would have been one you would see on the nightly news: obsession turns to murder suicide.  Let’s forget that Heathcliff’s true character is bastardized by this movie—he was a horrible, though troubled, man in the novel.  It is Cathy’s behavior that is pathological—she probably would have been diagnosed with some sort of personality disorder if such a diagnosis existed at the time.  She loves Heathcliff but despises him at the same time. She doesn’t want to settle so she marries someone she doesn’t love to achieve the security and respectability that she so desires. Yet, when Heathcliff elopes with Isabella she has a nervous breakdown which causes her health to deteriorate, which causes her premature death. Ick! 

Only the deathbed scene, at least for me, somehow salvages the true nature of this unhealthy relationship.  Perhaps some found it romantic, but for me it was filmed in such a way that it truly represented their relationship.  Usually death scenes are shot in an aura of softness and employ somber lighting, but Cathy’s room of death is filled with bright lighting and so much white that it is sharp to the eye.  Forget Heathcliff’s whimpering and declarations of undying love, this brightly lit room is spotlighting how selfishness, vanity, vengeance, and revenge have no place in the world of love.  Cry Heathcliff for the world of happiness you never had. Feel your pitiful life drain from your listless sick body Cathy as you document the true state of your relationship by saying, “If I could only hold you till we were both dead.” In the end, your depravity not only destroyed both of you but those who made the mistake of loving you.  I expect many will not agree with my interpretation of the ending, but I take solace in the knowledge that Bronte probably would look at it the same as I do. 

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The Lady Vanishes (1938) **1/2

(There may be spoilers in this post.)

I’m not certain what most people see when they watch director Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Lady Vanishes (1938).  To many, it is the most suspenseful and wittiest of his British films.  Perhaps it is the wittiest, but I would dare say that The 39 Steps (1935) is far more suspenseful.  Still, those points aren’t really  what I contemplate when I watch this movie.  What I think about is how politically symbolic it is—perhaps without even trying.

While The Lady Vanishes premiered in London on October 7, 1938, and, thus, could not have been affected by Neville Chamberlain’s idiotic “Peace for Our Time” speech on September 30, 1938, regarding the Munich Agreement, the movie is a reflection of its time.  First, the film begins in the small, fictitious European country of Bandrika, which has just suffered an avalanche that has blocked the railway.  To me, the avalanche is Nazi Germany—which would scoop up the Sudetenland after Chamberlain’s act of appeasement.  As a result of the avalanche, a small group of British citizens find their trip back home delayed and they must lodge overnight in a crowded hotel infested with all sorts of Continentals who don’t speak English and seem unfamiliar with common  British manners. In an uncivilized world (any European country east of France in this case), the British, of course, are overly civilized—which, by the way, was causing them all sorts of trouble with dealing with Hitler.

Then there are the principal leads: Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.  Iris Henderson (Lockwood) is an heiress returning to England to marry a man she obviously doesn’t love because it is time for her to settle down.  Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) is a whimsical musicologist who is researching regional folk music and customs. Together, they are the British Empire: practical observers of the European conundrum—the Nazis. When Iris’ takes a flower pot to the skull, which leads her to blackout on the train, her worldview becomes a bit off-kilter—as had the British mindset during Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria.

When Iris awakes, she is tended to by the kindly Ms. Froy (Dame May Whitty), who unfortunately vanishes (hence the title) soon thereafter.  When Iris attempts to find Ms. Froy she finds herself fighting against two groups of people: the conspirers and the do-nothings.  The conspirers are a mix of Europeans (who seem to speak Italian and German) who work together to trick Iris into believing that her bump on the head is causing her to mistrust them, and that Ms. Froy is not missing.  And, then there are the do-nothings, who all happen to be British.  There are the adulterers (Cecil Parker and Linden Travers), who don’t want to become involved in case of scandal, and then there are Caldicott (Naunton Wayne) and Charters (Basil Radford), two British cricket enthusiasts who would rather stay mum about having seen Ms. Froy than miss an all-important cricket match.  I view this as a statement that scandal leads to confrontation and that it is better to preoccupy oneself with unimportant distractions than seeing what is truly happening around oneself. 

And, then there is the stranded train scene.  By this time, with no help from their fellow British passengers, Iris and Gilbert have recovered Ms. Froy and are trying to convince their fellow travelers that something is amiss in whatever Godforsaken European nation they are stranded in.  It takes a bullet to the hand for Charters to believe that they are in grave danger and Cecil Parker’s character, a pacifist, gets shot down while waving a white handkerchief in the air.  It is not until the British citizens band together against their enemy that they can escape danger.

Oh, and Ms. Froy—why was she “vanished” by the Europeans in the first place?  She was a British spy on her way back to report that two European nations had made a secret pact with one another.  Please pick one: the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviets and Germany or the Pact of Steel between Italy and Germany, both of which were signed in 1939. 

I expect mine is an unusual viewpoint of The Lady Vanishes.  Perhaps you would rather I discuss how the serenader is killed by an unknown person via shadow or that Hitchcock employs birds and a magician’s disappearing woman cabinet to make a statement?  Or what about the fact that one of the conspirators (Paul Lukas) is a likable villain or that the heroine finds herself in world where reality is pitted against illusion?  All of those common Hitchcockian themes do appear in the movie and work quite well, but as a historian I see an accidentally  politically prophetic film. 

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