On the Waterfront (1954) ***

Many modern day viewers of director Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) don’t really know what the film is truly about because they are unfamiliar with such things as the Red Scare and method acting.  Yet, for students of film history, there is no doubt that On the Waterfront is Kazan’s own personal defense of his naming of names at the HUAC hearings and his belief in the Method acting (although he’d probably not refer to it as such)technique.  Perhaps he and screenwriter Budd Schulberg deserved the derision they received for giving the HUAC Committee the names of their friends and colleagues, but that does not negate the fact that they created one of the best dramatic films of their generation.  The twelve Academy Award nominations that On the Waterfront received were not a reward for Kazan’s being a “loyal American”—they were earned by mesmerizing actors (Best Actor winner, Marlon Brando; nominated Best Supporting Actors, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, Rod Steiger; and, Best Supporting Actress winner, Eva Marie Saint), a visionary cinematographer (Best Cinematography winner, Boris Kaufman), a gifted editor (Best Editing winner, Gene Milford), a creative art director (Best Art Direction winner, Richard Day), an innovative composer (Best Score nominee, Leonard Bernstein), a daring producer (Best Picture winner, Sam Spiegel), a brilliant screenwriter (Best Screenplay winner, Schulberg), and a revolutionary director (Best Director winner, Kazan). Deride and despise Kazan’s personal actions if you must,  but don’t hate the film because it’s an apologetic allegory of Kazan’s actions; instead, embrace it for the striking movie that it is.

The story, based on Malcolm Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Crime on the Waterfront article series that appeared in the New York Sun in 1949, confronts mob corruption in a longshoremen union.  Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is a menacing union boss who will stop at nothing to keep control of his cash cow—the longshoremen whom he exploits, bullies, and terrorizes.  When one of the longshoremen, Joey Doyle (Ben Wagner), starts talking to the Crime Commission (Kazan’s stand-in for HUAC), Johnny enlists his lawyer and right-hand man, Charley “The Gent” Malloy (Rod Steiger), to get his brother, Terry (Marlon Brando) to lure Joey unto the rooftop of his building, unaware that Johnny’s goons intend to throw Joey off of it.  A former boxer who seems a bit dim-witted, Terry finds himself filled with remorse over Joey’s death. This remorse is only exacerbated after Joey’s sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), becomes the object of Terry’s affection and the local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden), encourages the men to speak out about the union’s corrupt and murderous practices.  Terry must decide if he should remain D&D (deaf and dumb) or take a stand against what he knows is wrong, even if some of his friends, and even his brother, are brought down by his “ratting”. 

So, obviously Terry’s dilemma is a stand-in for Kazan’s decision to give the names of “known” Communists to the HUAC Committee.  It does irk me a bit that he chose a union organization, be it a corrupt one, to represent Communism, but since unionism is synonymous to some to socialism/communism I suppose it made sense to Kazan and Schulberg (even though Arthur Miller did write the first screenplay, titled The Hook, so maybe this was just a coincidence). Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that both Terry and Kazan “ratted”, but, at least in Terry’s case, for a good reason—Kazan, of course, believed he was justified as well.  Perhaps it was in bad taste to make a film that attempted to justify ruining the lives of friends and colleagues, and I expect that is why Kazan’s name, who’s been dead for over ten years now, is still hissed at today by some.  Yet, there’s more to On the Waterfront than Kazan’s own personal allegory.

On the Waterfront is considered the masterpiece of Method acting.  Kazan, along with Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis, founded the Actors Studio is 1947, which followed the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, a Russian dramatist. Method acting, as Stanislavski’s teachings later became known as, emphasizes that a performer stay in the moment and that the internal was more important than the external.  There is no room for over-the-top gestures and emoting in Method acting. Instead, actors/actresses draw on their subconscious memories of pain and pleasure to create a character, which they shape with precisely defined mannerisms, voice inflections/tones, and body language.  As such, the performer can develop characters that transcend labels, such as hero/heroine, damsel-in-distress, villain, or clown. While Kazan and two of his earliest students, Brandon and Malden, had already achieved success with A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) both on the stage and screen, it was On the Waterfront which cemented the “new” acting style and convinced many critics that there was a method to the madness—there was a reason why Brando sounded inarticulate and slouched about. 

Clearly, Brando is the star of the film.  No actor played inner turmoil better, and no character had as much as Terry Malloy.  Still, Malden’s turn as Father Barry is probably my favorite performance in the film.  The Jesus on Calvary speech he gives in the hull of the ship after Dugan (Pat Henning) is killed is filled with such indignant rage that it raises the hair on my arms each time I see it.  I also really enjoy the few scenes that we get to see Steiger in—at this point in his career he was still a nuanced actor and not a complete ham, as evidenced by his turn in The Specialist (1994).

My least favorite performances come from Saint and Cobb. For me, Saint’s Edie is just too hysterical in her quest to find out what happened to her brother.  I’ll admit that I have never been a fan of hers, but at least I could tolerate her in North by Northwest (1959).  In On the Waterfront I find her voice to be even more shrill than usual and her uncanny way of making you dislike an otherwise likable character almost criminal.  More surprisingly to me, at least, is that I was not completely enamored with Cobb’s turn as Johnny Friendly.  For me, there is a disconnect from his performance in the first two-thirds of the film and the last third of the movie.  Cobb was a character actor who specialized in playing menacing SOBs, so Johnny was the perfect role for him.  However, his last few scenes in On the Waterfront seem overacted and don’t come off as true to me.

As mentioned above, I thoroughly enjoyed the Christ on Calvary speech and it’s probably my favorite scene in the movie. Of course, the most quoted scene is the one between Terry and Charley in the back of the cab, where Terry says, “I could’a had class. I could’a been a contender. I could’a been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley.”  The resignation that both Steiger and Brando display in this scene is thoroughly engrossing to watch. 

And, then there are the scenes which bear the hallmarks of a Kazan picture.  The wandering camera along the shoreline as Terry talks with Father Barry, a conversation which we are not privy to, and the confession scene between Terry and Edie probably bear the Kazan signature the most.  Throughout the story guilt has been building up inside of Terry to the point that he’s ready to explode, and so when he does come clean to Edie all the audience hears is a squealing steam whistle.  For me, although some may disagree, this squealing whistle can be construed in two ways: 1) it represent Edie’s rage at what the man she loves has done, or 2) it symbolizes the burden of truth being lifted from the core of Terry’s being. Kazan was a fan of ambiguity, so you read the scene however you want, but you do it without any dialogue, as no words could really express the emotions of the characters.

So, let’s get to the elephant in the room: why did I only give On the Waterfront three out of four stars?  Reason number one, I don’t like how Eva Marie Saint plays Edie.  Reason number two, and 95% of why I always leave the film with a bad taste in my mouth, is the ending.  There is a complete disconnect in the last ten minutes of the film. When Terry goes to the dock after testifying and then every last man shuns him, I get it. But, when he confronts Johnny Friendly and all the men seem to be standing around letting Johnny’s goons beat the crap out of Terry and THEN the men refuse to go into work without Terry leading them in makes absolutely no sense to me.  Perhaps this was Kazan’s own personal vindication scene—he spoke out against Communism, found himself ostracized by former friends and colleagues (although it got much worse after people started speaking out about the evils of the Red Scare in the late 1960s), but still had the personal fortitude and courage to continue to stand up for what he thought was right.  Whatever his intent may have been, the ending is sanctimonious and unpleasant to watch—especially after the first 98 minutes had been so terrific.

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Sleeper (1973) **

As if poor Woody Allen didn’t have enough problems, he now, unfortunately, reminds me of a most despised man I used to work for.  Same hair, same glasses, same neuroses, and the same condescending nature.  As such, Allen films in which he both stars and directs now have an irrational way of irritating me. It doesn’t help that the main character in Sleeper (1973), Miles Monroe (Allen), has many of the same foibles that my former boss has: health food fanatic, attracted to vapid blonde women, and an unrelenting desire to overcome his inferiority complex by attempting to project that his is the most superior intellect. Now, whenever I watch Sleeper I feel as if I am being forced into some sort of trauma therapy to deal with PTSD.  Still, somehow my irrational dislike of Allen and Miles can’t make me hate Sleeper because it is mildly entertaining in its homage to Buster Keaton, Bob Hope, and the Keystone Cops—and Diane Keaton’s impersonation of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) is hilarious.

The story, written by Allen and Marshall Brickman, finds Greenwich Village health food store owner and jazz musician Miles Monroe being defrosted by revolutionaries 200 years after being cryogenically frozen after a botched surgery for a peptic ulcer.  The revolutionaries, who have all been fingerprinted, imprinted, and given numbers, believe that they can use Miles, who has not been “Big Brothered”, to find out what the Aries project is.  Pursued by security forces who look a lot like Strumtruppen (SA Stormtroopers) but who act very much like Keystone Cops (I’m sure the irony was not lost on Nazis hiding in South America who saw this), Miles disguises himself as a domestic robot and does his best impression of what would happen if somehow life was created as the result of a threesome involving a mime, the Little Tramp, and Buster Keaton. “Robot” Miles ends up at  pseudo-intellectual and horrible poet Luna’s house where people get high from holding an orb and use a machine called the Orgasmatron to simulate sex.  After revealing his true self to Luna, Miles finds that she has alerted security forces to his whereabouts and they have to go on the run.  Once Luna realizes that the authorities want to reprogram her brain because she had been contaminated by the alien (Miles), she helps Miles with his plan to infiltrate the Aries project.  When he is captured and taken in for brainwashing, Luna joins a Maoist-esque group led by John Beck, who kidnap Miles and use him to destroy the Aries project.

Sleeper could be considered a futurist look at society, I suppose.  It would be a sad look at how little science could progress in 200 years, with cars that look like the eggship that Mork arrived in from Ork and a Sculpted House that looks like a clamshell which was actually built in the early 1960s. The only advance made in society appears to be that cryogenically frozen people can be revived and that cloning is a possibility—baa, baa says Dolly the sheep! Obviously Sleeper is a spoof on the sci-fi genre.  Miles awakens from an H.G. Wells novel (The Sleeper Awakes) in an Orwellian world (1984) where the Government controls everything. References are made to Dr. Spock and even Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) are parodied—Alex DeLarge wishes he had Miles’ brainwashing experience, but the evil computer in Sleeper is voiced by Douglas Rain, the same man who did HAL’s voice in 2001, so it was just as creepy.

There is a lot of slapstick and attempts at physical comedy in Sleeper which is reminiscent of many Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin silent films.  Still, Woody Allen is no Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton. He lacks the daredevil nature of those physical comedy juggernauts. Allen also channels the cowardly quipper Bob Hope throughout the movie.

The absolute best thing about Sleeper is Keaton’s spot-on impersonation of Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Personally, I could have done without Allen’s take on Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois, but it was obviously necessary in order to see Keaton mimic the man who was playing her father-in-law in The Godfather films. 

Overall, Sleeper makes me recall unrelated unhappy times working for a neuroses filled ego-maniac.  Still, there are a few laughs to be had with Allen’s parodying of the sci-fi genre while honoring the early pioneers of physical comedy. 

 

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Winchester ‘73 (1950) **

Director Anthony Mann and legendary actor James Stewart made eight films together, five of which were westerns. Their first collaboration was Winchester ‘73 (1950), which is credited as the first “modern western”.  Stewart was 42 years old and worried that he was seen as an actor without range when he was presented with the opportunity to make Winchester ‘73. Fritz Lang had originally been slated as the movie’s director, but Universal Pictures wasn’t interested in having Lang’s own production company, Diana Productions, produce the film. Plus, Universal studio head William Goetz was trying to nail down a deal with Stewart to make Harvey (1950), which Stewart wanted $200,000 for. A deal was brokered for Stewart to earn 50% of the profits for both Harvey and Winchester ‘73, which also allowed Stewart to pick each film’s cast and director—he chose Mann for Winchester ‘73, and his career and the western genre would never be the same again.

The Mann/Stewart western redefined the western by making the protagonist of the film an ambiguous anti-hero.  Gone was the traditional white-hatted cowboy whose intentions were pure and straightforward. The new western “hero” was often a violent, bitter, and vengeful man who was either seeking redemption or revenge—or maybe both. 

Lin McAdam (Stewart) is seeking revenge in Winchester ‘73.  He arrives in Dodge City with two aims: winning a shooting contest for a prized Winchester ‘73 rifle and killing the man who shot his father in the back.  An outlaw and no-good bastard by all accounts, Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally) is Lin’s sworn enemy and also ends up being his main competition at the shooting contest.  It’s hardly a surprise that Lin wins the rifle or that Dutch and his crew waylay him in his room and steal it.  From this point on, the Winchester becomes a character on its own—anyone who comes into possession of it, no matter under what circumstances, meets a bad end: Indian trader Lamont (Joe McIntire) gets scalped; Indian chief Young Bull (Rock Hudson) gets mowed down by the cavalry; would-be outlaw Steve Miller (Charles Drake) gets shot by crazy gunslinger, Waco Johnnie Dean (Dan Duryea); and, then there’s the epic battle between Lin and Dutch—one dies and then the other walks away with the rifle. Personally, I think the victor should have tried to sell that cursed rifle as soon as possible.

I’m sure many people will be unhappy that I only gave Winchester ‘73 two out of four stars.  Yes, it is a rather revolutionary film with its reimagining of the western.  However, for me, it doesn’t go far enough and holds onto some of the moralizing effects of the traditional western.  For example, Lin is supposed to be a man hell bent on revenge, but he still comes off as hero-esque.  Yes. he’s supposed to be a conflicted man—at his heart he’s a good, decent man but vengeance drives him to hunt down and kill a man. Yet, I don’t really ever see much confliction. I do see him standing with the cavalry against Rock Hudson’s Indians and behaving like a gallant gentleman to dance hall girl Lola Manners (Shelley Winters).  Only in small snippets of conversation with his friend and traveling companion High-Spade (Millard Mitchell) do I slightly sense that perhaps there is something evil brimming in Lin.  Still, the idea that a western would premise itself as a revenge tale with the “hero” acting as judge and executioner was something new.

For my money, I’ll take Stewart in The Man from Laramie (1955) and The Naked Spur (1953) over his turn in Winchester ‘73. Perhaps it took him a few films to hone the nuances needed for this new character type, but by the time he made The Man from Laramie he had perfected the part.  It may have also helped if Dutch had been played by the great Dan Duryea instead of Stephen McNally, as he would have probably pushed Stewart more, as Arthur Kennedy’s Vic Hansbro does in The Man from Laramie and Robert Ryan’s Ben Vandergroat does in The Naked Spur. 

I won’t complain about the fact that Rock Hudson plays an Indian—this is just a sad fact about older Hollywood films that I try to ignore.  And, I won’t say much about Shelley Winter’s Brooklyn accent in the middle of Kansas, either.  Perhaps Lola had made her way west and that was really how she spoke.  Plus, Winter’s rather unique way of portraying tough broads played well here.  Her interactions with Duryea are probably my favorite scenes in the film.

Overall, Winchester ‘73 is to be credited for modernizing and revitalizing the western genre.  It also reshaped Stewart’s career and probably helped him prepare for his later roles in Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). Yet, for me, Winchester ‘73 lacks a legitimate villain and does not allow Lin to venture down a dark enough path to capitalize on the ambiguity of playing a man who is essentially good but driven by very bad intentions.

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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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Alien (1979) ***

When I was growing up a popular dream job of adolescents was that of astronaut.  In the 1970s and 1980s the U.S. space program was a big deal and, of course, we had grown up watching films like Star Wars (1977), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Alien (1979). Yet, unlike many of my peers I wanted nothing to do with the mysteries of space. To me, anyone crazy enough to want to take a chance with the great unknown of the cosmos could have it—they were the type of people who wound end up being killed by face-hugging and intestinal-destroying aliens.  That’s right, director Ridley Scott’s second feature film, Alien, freaked me out so much that had Neil Armstrong himself stopped by my house to offer me a trip to the moon I would have declined. 

Alien was the brainchild of Dan O’Bannon who combined two popular box office genres, horror and sci-fi, to create probably the best sci-fi horror film ever made. Using a story he’d written with Ronald Shusett, O’Bannon penned the screenplay, which incorporated elements from such sci-fi movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Thing from Another World (1951) with horror flicks like Halloween (1978) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Seven crew members aboard the space tugboat, Nostromo, are on their way back to Earth when they receive an unknown transmission from a nearby planet which awakens them from their space-pod slumber.  Regulations say they must investigate all transmissions and so off to LV-426 (not named in this film but in later sequels) they go. They have a bumpy landing and the ship is damaged, so three crew members, Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), and Officer Kane (John Hurt) go out to investigate LV-426 while Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) and Engineers Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) are left to fix the ship and monitor the expedition of the other crew members. The explorers find an underground alien egg farm and after Kane pokes one he suddenly finds his space helmet attached to an octopus-like creature.  Dallas and Lambert bring Kane and the creature back to the ship, which for some reason Ash opens after Ripley orders him not to.  The rest of the film is then a series of unfortunate events for the rest of the crew, as they attempt to get the alien off the ship.

Without a doubt the visuals are probably the most spectacular thing about Alien.  The film earned two Academy Award nominations, one for Art Direction and the other for Visual Effects, which it won.  The massive design of the various sections of the 3-deck spaceship and planet LV-426 are pretty awesome, especially when you consider there wasn’t CGI in 1979.  And, of course, the iconic creation of the alien, as well as the creepy android, were highly unique as well. Visual Effects Supervisor Brian Johnson and Bray Studios based many of their designs on Scott’s countless storyboards as well as drawings created by Ron Cobb. What I think sets the alien creatures in the movie apart from their earlier predecessors is just how real the face-hugger, chestburster, and eventually the full-grown alien look. 

While Tom Skerritt received top-billing, everyone knows that Weaver was the main character (countless sequels have more than validated this point).  Still, for more than half the movie it seems like this is an ensemble piece, with each crew member having their own fair share of screen time.  Yet, by the time the alien is almost done running amok on the Nostromo there are only two crew members left on the ship: Ripley and Mr. Jones.  Oh, did I forget to mention Mr. Jones?  Mr. Jones is a tabby cat who plays a pivotal role in why I like Alien so much, but he’s also the reason why I don’t absolutely love it.  Please let me explain.

First, Mr. Jones has the honor of being in my favorite shot in the entire film. After being scared away while Ripley, Parker, and Brett are searching for the alien, Mr. Jones has to be found so his motion doesn’t distract the crew from monitoring the motion of the alien.  And, so Brett is sent, alone, to find the cat. This search leads to a massive chain hanging decorated quadrant of the ship. Instead of jumping into Brett’s arms, Mr. Jones hides behind a door and hisses at what one can only assume is a hiding alien.  When the alien emerges from the entangled chains the scene shifts to and focuses on the cat’s face as Brett is killed by the alien.  It’s such a simple shot, but it’s probably the most memorable one for me.

And, then there’s the most inane, idiotic thing about Alien…who in their right mind would go looking for a cat when you are trying to get materials together for an emergency shuttle escape right before you blow up the ship, and consequently, the alien?  In no world does it make any sense that Ripley, who’s seen members of her crew killed by an alien, would scour the ship for Mr. Jones—especially when you consider that she later throws his cage down right in front of the alien when she comes face to face with it.  Personally, it sort of feels like an anti-feminist statement on the part of Scott and O’Bannon: accomplished single, female space officer would rather save cat than exercise common sense.  Thus, such idiocy takes some of the shine off on otherwise tense and gripping story.

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Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard) (1955) ***

(Warning: Some images in this post may be disturbing.)

Ten years after the end of World War II and the frightening revelation of what Nazi Germany attempted to do to “rid” the world of Jews, French director Alain Resnais made his startling short documentary, Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog), which unflinchingly documents the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.  The images depicted in the film are startling to watch and serve as a reminder to countless generations that true evil did and does exist in human beings.

The film opens in color, with the camera capturing the grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek.  The overgrown and deserted camps look like long-lost factory towns where people may have worked and raised families in a saner world.  However, as the narrator, Michel Bouquet, reminds us, these were places of unimaginable horror. The film transitions to black and white stock photos and newsreel-esque footage to attempt to explain how millions of “deportees” found themselves transported to and then imprisoned, tortured, and killed in these seemingly innocent looking camps.  Yes, the emaciated bodies, hollowed-out faces of the dead, and the mass graves are unfathomable and almost incomprehensible to anyone with a shred of human decency, but perhaps the most perplexing images are those of the detainees first being loaded into the trains that would take them to the camps. The sheer number of people being peacefully herded into the cars, some even waving as the train pulls away, is mind-blowing.  Of course, we, the viewer, know what is in store for these unfortunate souls, so for us it is unconceivable that anyone would get on such a train without being drug onto it.  Yet, these detainees, at least in the early stages of the deportments before horror stories started to be whispered about in the ghettos, had no idea that they were being sent to hell of earth.  Who in their right mind would have imagined the true intentions of the Nazis?

This is why Night and Fog, among other documentaries about genocide, is important.  Seemingly normal people put those deportees on the train, ran the train, declothed and deloused the deportees, took all their possessions, denied them adequate food rations and medical care, worked them to death, shot, raped and tortured them, and told them that they were going to take showers when in reality they were going to be gassed.  And, as if that wasn’t enough, they denied them proper burials, removing their teeth for silver and gold and using their bodies to make soap and other “products”—as if they were actual cattle that had arrived in cattle cars to a slaughterhouse. Perhaps one of the most telling scenes in the film is when the guards at the camps are put on trial and they say, “I am not responsible” for which the narrator answers, “Who is responsible then?” At what point did human decency leave these people? 

Hanns Eisler’s haunting score intensifies, if that’s even possible, the ghastly and grisly images that pass on the screen.  Decapitated bodies with their heads stacked in a bucket, mounds of bodies being pushed by bulldozers, and innumerable skeletons strewn across the grounds of the camps are beyond horrible to witness.  It is difficult for me to understand how anyone could have seen such images and then went on to commit similar atrocities in places like Cambodia, Serbia, Bosnia, and countless African and South American nations.  Is hate such a strong motivator to enact such heinous acts of evil? 

I cannot quibble that the narrator is obviously not attempting to give an unbiased accounting of what happened in the concentration camps, who could be unbiased? What happened in these places was horrible—is there possibly another side to the story? If so, I don’t want to hear it.  My one qualm with the film is that it is too short (although who knows how much more one could actually stand to watch) at 32 minutes.  Perhaps I have been spoiled (and one might even say over-exposed) by such Holocaust documentaries as Shoah (1985) and Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988), but a short excerpt from a camp survivor would have added even more weight to an already powerful and emotionally jarring, no-holds barred look at one of the worst facts about humankind—unspeakable evil is possible. 

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High Sierra (1941) **

For those unfamiliar with Humphrey Bogart’s first twelve years in the world of cinema, where he played countless supporting and ancillary roles, it’s probably surprising to read the above movie poster and see that Ida Lupino was awarded top-billing in High Sierra (1941).  It might be even more perplexing to learn that director Raoul Walsh didn’t want Bogart to have the lead role but wanted George Raft to play Roy Earle. The adapted screenplay, penned by Bogart’s friend John Huston, from the W.R. Burnett novel of the same name, was just the vehicle Bogart was looking for to step out as a legitimate leading man. And, so he first went about persuading Raft to turn down the part and then convincing Walsh to give him a chance.  The rest is Hollywood history, as the film was a success and both Bogart and his buddy, Huston, would go on later that year to make the first of their six films together, the iconic The Maltese Falcon (1941)—coincidentally, in yet another role that Raft passed on. 

Roy Earle (Bogart) is an old timer (although Bogart was just past 40 when the film was made) who finds himself paroled by friends with reach who want him to lead a caper at a resort town along Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  A nature lover at heart, Roy just wants to pull one more big-time score and settle down on a farm. The problem is he’s a dying breed—most of the guys he came up with are either dead or in Alcatraz—and he has to work with young punks, or in his words, “Jitterbugs”. And so he winds up saddled with Babe (Alan Curtis) and Red (Arthur Kennedy), two idiots who are constantly fighting over dancehall girl, Marie (Lupino), and a weak-willed dandy of a man as his inside man (Cornel Wilde).  With a crew like this, what could go wrong?

I expect the main reason that High Sierra made it into the 1001 Book is because it was Bogart’s breakthrough role, but the film also created a new character type, the existential gangster. The character of Roy is rather developed for your usual hard-boiled gangster type.  As mentioned above, he’s an admirer of nature, but he also has a soft spot for the disadvantaged, as evidenced by his friendship with an Ohio family who he meets on the road to California.  He not only pays to have their car fixed, but he also pays to have the granddaughter’s, Velma (Joan Leslie), clubfoot fixed.  Granted, he has eyes for Velma, but he’s attracted to her perceived decency more than anything.  This decency, of course, is illusory and he eventually realizes that sometimes cheap things (Lupino) are more reliable and valuable than fresh new things.  Of course, none of this matters in the end, because Roy isn’t bound for a happy ending anyway (not with the Hays Code in effect), which leads to his last stand in the crags of Mount Whitney. 

For me, High Sierra suffers from being too top heavy.  What I mean by this is that other than Lupino and Bogart, the rest of the cast is forgettable, sans one small appearance by Donald McBride as Big Mac. This problem would have been avoided had Huston been the director and not the screenwriter, as he knew how to put a strong supporting cast together, something, in my opinion, that Walsh was never very good at.  It doesn’t help that probably the most important supporting role, Velma, was either incorrectly played by Leslie or misdirected by Walsh.  Velma’s transformation from an innocent “cripple” to a care-free party girl is probably the most unbelievable thing about High Sierra, and that’s including the bit where Pard the dog could navigate the rocky hillside of the mountain to find Roy by only hearing his voice once. 

The other thing that I don’t like about High Sierra is the ending—specifically the last ten minutes of it. The idea that any seasoned gangster would not fill his gas tank up and have enough money in his pocket for another tank before setting out to collect $30,000 is just ridiculous.  Then, you add the fact that he would lead a chase through the mountains, for what seems like forever, round and round we go, and then set up behind rocks for his last showdown only to be lured out by a barking dog is beyond ridiculous.  As such, the film ends on a sour note and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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