Giant (1956) ***

Giant (1956)—was there ever a more appropriately named Hollywood production?  And, I’m not just referring to its three hour and twenty-one minute runtime, either. Director George Stevens rightly earned his second Academy Award for Best Director by capturing the vast landscape and racial complexity of Texas, while coaxing out tremendous performances from his cast. 

Edna Ferber wrote novels and plays that Hollywood liked to turn into movies: So Big (1924, 1932, and 1953), Show Boat (1932, 1936 and 1951), Cimarron (1931 and 1960), Saratoga Trunk (1945), Stage Door (1937), Dinner at Eight (1933), and The Royal Family of Broadway (1930)—to name a few, although there are others. Published in 1952, Giant was Ferber’s tenth novel. Her critique of Texas race relations in the book scandalized the Lone Star state and caused quite a stir in the literary world. As controversy was good for the box office, just about every studio in Hollywood wanted to buy the rights to it, but only George Stevens made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: he made her a producer and promised to make a faithful film adaption of her novel. As it turns out, he made as faithful an adaption as he and Warner Brothers were willing to make.  Specifically, sections of the novel that dealt with African Americans and Jim Crow were cut altogether or amalgamated into the film’s discussion of racism against Mexican Americas.  Still, Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat’s Oscar-nominated adapted screenplay was groundbreaking not only in its treatment of racism but also in its portrayal of class and gender issues.  The story, spanning the lives of Jordan (Rock Hudson) and Leslie Benedict (Elizabeth Taylor) over a period of twenty-five years, is the solid foundation on which Stevens’ greatest cinematic effort is based.  And, while it most assuredly could have been trimmed down a bit, as there are, admittedly, a few scenes that could have been cut without the film missing a beat, it is still a spectacularly told story.

When Texas rancher, Jordan “Bick” Benedict, travels to Maryland to buy a feisty horse named War Winds he not only takes home a horse but its ornery, free-thinking owner, Leslie, as his wife. Somehow her straightforward critique of Texas history—Texans stole the land from the Mexicans—is overlooked by Bick—I’m sure her stunning beauty was the culprit.  Anyway, Leslie’s comfortable and lush, green world of Maryland is replaced by an endless landscape of dirt and dust and overbearing heat. She also has to deal with Bick’s unmarried, hard-as-nails sister, Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), who is threatened by Leslie’s presence.  When Leslie asserts her authority as the woman of the house, Luz takes out her anger on War Winds, who, thankfully, throws her from the saddle, which results in her death—problem bitch solved.  With Luz out of the way, the only thing that stands in Leslie’s way is racism, classicism, and sexism—all of which her husband displays throughout their marriage. How dare she treat their Mexican servants with respect or think that Mexicans should have decent places to live and proper medical care?  Why on earth would you be friendly and polite to a no-account farmhand like Jett Rink (James Dean)?  And, how dare you attempt to discuss either business or politics with men?  To say the first few years of marriage are rocky for them would be an understatement. Yet, Leslie’s progressive ways, not to mention her red-hot sex appeal, have a way of tempering her husband’s moods.  So what if they fight a lot? As Leslie likes to say, the best thing about quarreling is the making up afterward—which yields a set of fraternal twins, Jordy (Dennis Hopper) and Judy (Fran Bennett), and a high-spirited daughter, Luz (Carroll Baker).  Of course, after awhile they start getting on each other’s nerves—especially after Bick is particularly traumatized by the fact that his son doesn’t like horses. As a result, Leslie returns to Maryland with children in tow, while Bick has time to reconsider home on the range—alone.  And, so he finally yields to his wife and goes after her and a certain understanding is agreed upon.  You’d think that’s where the story ends, but wait, that’s only the first third of the picture.

After Bick and Leslie’s reconciliation the film jumps ahead about fifteen years, where we find the couple fully engaged in the lives of their nearly grown children.  Obviously, Leslie’s free-thinking ways ruled the nursery, because all of their children do exactly the opposite of what their parents want them to.  Instead of taking over the ranch as his father demands, Jordy goes off to Harvard and then medical school, and eventually, God-forbid, marries a Mexican girl. Judy, for her part, disregards her mother’s desire that she go to a Swiss finishing school and attends Texas Tech, where she studies animal husbandry, and then elopes with a local ranch hand (Earl Holliman).  And, Luz…well, she becomes involved with the one absolute man that both her parents universally dislike: Jett Rink. By this time, Old Jett has struck it oil rich on the Benedict land that the first Luz left to him when War Winds snapped her neck. And while Jett and Uncle Sam might have convinced Bick to use his own ranch land for oil wells during World War II, Jett is still seen as a no-good son of a bitch by Bick and as a drunken manhandler by Leslie.  You see, Leslie knows that Jett wants Luz as a consolation for herself, but she can’t really say that to her daughter. With children like these, is it any wonder that both Leslie and Bick are fully gray after only twenty-five years of parenting?

Okay, so let’s get this out of the way right now: contrary to popular opinion, James Dean is NOT the best thing about Giant. In my opinion, judgment of his performance is colored by the fact that he died a few weeks after his scenes wrapped and months before the movie was released.  Don’t get me wrong, he does an admirable job of playing an anti-social, ill-mannered non-conformist—the same role he pretty much played in all three of his films (East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause being the other two)—but he is not what makes Giant tick. That responsibility rests solely on the delicate shoulders of Elizabeth Taylor, who finally was allowed to show that she was indeed a gifted, ADULT actress who deserved to be given substantial roles.  Stevens gave Hudson the choice of picking either Taylor or Grace Kelly as his leading lady in Giant.  For his part, Stevens didn’t think the 23-year-old Taylor had the emotional range required for Leslie and wanted Kelly for the role. Thankfully, Hudson chose Taylor—who, in my opinion, could act circles around Kelly.  It’s not easy playing a character who ages over twenty-five years during a movie, and especially when you are so highly regarded for your beauty, as Taylor was.  Yet, she expertly depicts the various periods of life her character encounters in the story. In the beginning, her Leslie is flirty and precocious but also a young woman who knows what she wants, namely Bick.  In the early stages of her marriage she comes off as caught between two worlds or selves—the woman Bick wants her to be and the woman she knows she is.  Leslie’s ability to stand up to her husband, and Texas for that matter, in a defiant but polite manner without appearing as a sort of Pollyanna or saint-like figure is a direct result of Taylor’s deft acting abilities. 

My two absolute favorite scenes in Giant take place in the Benedict’s bedroom. This is fitting, of course, because this is probably the one place that she always got her way.  The first scene follows the aftermath of her defiant speech to Bick and his friends about them being cavemen and that women have enough sense to discuss politics and business.  When he comes up to the bedroom she pretends to be asleep but when he purposefully throws his boots on the floor to wake her up, she serenely pretends like she has forgotten her daring scene.  But he hasn’t, and so to appease him she apologizes for being rude to his friends, but that’s not enough for Bick and he says, “I'm asking you right now when you are gonna settle down and behave like everybody else.” Her answer of “never” sends him toward the adjoining room, where he plans to sleep.  But Leslie knows how to control Bick and she simply says, “You knew what a dreadful girl I was when you married me. I did not deceive you, sir. From the first moment I couldn’t have been more unpleasant,” and then she just sits there staring at him smoldering with unbridled sexuality.  The next morning, having completely decimated all of her husband’s strength by her wanton ways, she casually mentions, oh by the way, that she’s pregnant. 

The second memorable bedroom scene isn’t based on sex, though. No, this one is all about a class that all successfully married people eventually graduate from: Spouse Psychology 101. Nope, by the time the Benedict’s are approaching middle age and sleeping in twin beds, Leslie can’t really rely on sex to impose her will on Bick anymore. Instead, when he believes he is manipulating her into agreeing to allow their daughter not to go to school in Switzerland but in Texas by saying, “I wonder if we love them enough to do what's really right for them,” Leslie knows what he’s doing and lets him have just enough rope to hang himself before dropping the hammer by informing him to brace himself because there’s another sacrifice to be made: Jordy wants to go to Harvard and then Columbia medical school. Priceless…and all done in the comfort of her twin bed.

For its time, the film’s straightforward look at racism against Mexicans was rather bold—not as bold as it was in the novel, but still bold nonetheless. However, Leslie’s insistence that Mexicans be treated with dignity isn’t necessarily the same as saying that they deserve to be treated as equals, either. Still, by the end of the movie, when Bick gets his ass kicked by a racist diner owner who makes comments about his daughter-in-law and grandson, it is clear that Stevens is making a statement about racism in general, when he has the diner owner toss a sign on Bick which reads: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”.  Was it an all-out attack on Jim Crow? No, but at least it was a start.

Overall, Giant is an entertaining film that dares to take on such things as racism, classism and sexism.  While it would have benefitted from a bit more editing, fine performances from Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean elevate the overall effectiveness of the movie.  In particular, Taylor is mesmerizing as Leslie—how on earth she wasn’t nominated for a Best Actress Oscar is beyond me.

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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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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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Orpheus (Orphée) 1950 **

Writer/poet, and sometimes director, Jean Cocteau was a fan of surrealism and an opium addict—this explains a lot about his own unique retelling of the Orpheus myth, Orphée (1950). For those unfamiliar with the Greek myth, Orpheus is a musician who is compelled by his love for his wife, Eurydice, to descend into the underworld to reclaim her. He so enchants the gods with his lyre playing that they allow Eurydice to return to the upper world on the condition that Orpheus not look at her on the journey out of the underworld, but he does and she dies again.  Cocteau’s Orphée is most assuredly not a classic interpretation of this myth but, rather, a surrealistic reimagining of one of the most romantic tragic myths ever composed.  Simply put, it’s an art film with cool special effects and a bizarre storyline.

Set in modern day Paris, the story begins with famed poet Orpheus (Jean Marais) witnessing an accident involving a young poet named Cégeste (Edouard Dermithe) and being told by a princess” (Maria Casares) to escort her and the body to the hospital. However, the princess is not really a princess but actually Death, and she’s come to claim Cégeste as her servant—she brings Orpheus along for the ride because she wants to enchant him with her beautiful mystique. When he is escorted home by Death’s assistant Heurtebise (François Périer) in her Rolls Royce, he is consumed by his love for Death and the messages that she has transmitted to him via her car radio, totally ignoring his pregnant wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa).  Every night when the couple goes to sleep Death emerges from a mirror in their bedroom to watch Orpheus sleep.  Wanting Orpheus for herself, she arranges an accident to befall Eurydice, knowing that Heurtebise will convince Orpheus that he must reclaim his wife from the underworld.  In an underworld that looks like the blitzkrieg has hit it, Orpheus is reunited with Death and doesn’t seem too concerned with getting Eurydice back, although he told Heurtebise that he wanted to see both women.  The judges see that Eurydice was unjustly brought to the underworld and release her on the condition that Orpheus NEVER look at her again—anywhere. Eventually he does and she returns to the underworld, and then Cocteau rewrites the myth with his own strange ending, which I will not reveal because it’s stupid and, also, because I don’t want to “ruin” it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. 

The premise for Orphée is rather inspired but that doesn’t mean that the finished product is.  The story suffers from an idiotic ancillary plot device (the Bacchante’s dislike of Orpheus) and requires too much suspended common sense on the viewer’s part—even for watching a fantasy film. Although they are minutely necessary for Orpheus’ second journey to the underworld, the Bacchante’s distaste for Orpheus is never explained and at the end of the story they seem to have floated away into nothingness. Additionally, in the myth, Orpheus truly loved his wife and wanted her to return to him.  In the movie, Orpheus could care less about his wife and is totally consumed with passion for Death—it’s a ridiculous love triangle.  This would-be love triangle, in turn, makes the ending of the movie completely unpalatable. The ending will have you asking: really, that’s how it ends?  It’s surrealist art films like this that leave a bad taste in my mouth.

However, there are two saving graces to Orphée: the acting is good and the special effects are entertaining.  Regarding the acting, the four principal leads (Marais, Casares, Déa, and Périer) are all enchanting to watch.  In particular, Périer does a stellar job of portraying Heurtebise’s unease in carrying out Death’s orders while falling in love with Eurydice himself.  His resigned disgust of Orpheus’ behavior is the one thing that somehow holds the story together.  And, while I know many people found Casares to lack the screen presence to play Death, I rather enjoyed her interpretation of a nihilistic dominatrix. Quite frankly, if the story had been just about Death and Heurtebise I would have been quite pleased because Orpheus does nothing for me in this, even though I can’t really say that Marais plays the role poorly.  As a matter of fact, a love triangle between Death, Heurtebise, and Eurydice (who is played as a universally sweet woman by Déa) would have made a much more compelling story.

Still, it is the special effects that primarily saves this movie from my ultimate ire. Strangely, the funny thing is that Cocteau doesn’t really use any revolutionary special effects.  He relies heavily on reverse motion and back projection to dazzle his viewer—but he does it so cleverly that you have to admire it.  He uses reverse motion to make it appear that a pair of “magical” gloves put themselves on the hands that are to wear them and also to break mirrors, which are used to transport people to and from the underworld.  The best line of Orphée explains why: “Look at a mirror for a lifetime you will see death at work.” Although it appears as if the characters are walking through mirrors, Cocteau filmed still pools of water which reflected first the actors hands, which were in the pool of water, and then their faces which appeared in the water when the hands were removed.  Today such special effects may seem cheap, but in 1950 people had to be a little more creative than having a computer program do all the heavy lifting. 

Overall, Orphée’s bastardization of the Orpheus myth annoys me beyond comprehension. That said, Cocteau cleverly uses special effects to create a dreamlike atmosphere that is quite aesthetically pleasing and, thus, saves the film, somewhat, for me.

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Notorious (1946) ****

Without a doubt, Notorious (1946) is my all-time favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie. At its core, it’s a romantic spy thriller, but there is so much more to it than Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman sneaking three second kisses one after the other while engaging in espionage against the Nazis.  Yes, it’s filled with suspense and sexual tension, but the film, at least for me, is also a surprisingly sharp analysis of human frailty and morality. As if the story weren’t enough, Notorious also has the best cinematography of any of Hitchcock’s black and white films (and some might argue, his entire oeuvre).  

Ben Hecht’s intricately orchestrated Oscar nominated screenplay tells the story of an American espionage operation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil , where escaped Nazis are planning their next move following the Third Reich’s defeat.  The Strategic Services Unit (SSU, which eventually morphed into, along with other clandestine groups formed after the dissolution of the OSS, into the CIA) recruits Alicia Huberman (Bergman), the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy (Fred Nurney), to infiltrate the Nazis in Rio. Alicia is a high-class notorious good-time girl—simply said, she’s a drunk and a tramp who comes from money. Yet, while awaiting her orders, Alicia falls in love with her SSU handler, Devlin (Grant), a man who does not have a very high opinion of her. Their budding relationship is compromised when she is asked to gain the confidence of her former friend (and perhaps lover) Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), a leading figure in the Nazi group living in Rio, by whatever means necessary. This, of course, means that Alicia has to use her notorious behavior to seduce Alex. When Devlin raises no objections to this plan, Alicia believes Devlin does not love her and so she sets off on her mission. She obviously does an expert job of this, because before long she is married to Alex and living in a house where Nazis regularly meet and a lot of doors are locked. One door in particular is locked by a key that only Alex has access to: the wine cellar door. Devlin and his superior, Captain Prescott (Louis Calhern), are sure this is where the Nazis are hiding something. An elaborate plan, requiring a huge party be thrown at the Sebastian house, is hatched which calls for Alicia to steal the key from Alex and then pass it onto Devlin, an invited guest. When this betrayal is discovered by Alex, he and his mother (Leopoldine Konstantin) enact a poisonous plan of revenge on Alicia.

The most important theme in Notorious is the idea of trust, which makes sense because it’s about tradecraft (spying).  Still, the way the theme is developed and carried out throughout the story is quite clever. First, Alicia and Devlin’s first meeting is based on deception, as he pretends to be a party crasher at her home. Her notorious behavior as a first class tramp makes Devlin mistrust any changes that she attempts to make in her character. Has she stopped boozing it up and making conquests?  Does she love Devlin, or is he a passing fancy?  As such, he withholds his love and trust from her, even when she begs him to do otherwise, and raises no objections when she is asked to prostitute herself to get the goods on the Nazis.  In turn, Alicia feels betrayed by the man that she loves and sets about proving to Devlin that she’s an accomplished whore.  Her manipulation of Alex’s trust in her, which he gives ever so easily and freely, only exacerbates Devlin’s mistrust in her.  Hopefully, the irony is not lost on anyone that the most trusting person in Notorious is Alex, who is an unwitting pawn in Alicia and Devlin’s twisted game of Truth or Dare. This is why Alex Sebastian is Hitchcock’s most sympathetic villain.  When he learns the truth about Alicia his world is shattered, and you can’t really blame him for wanting to kill her after what she’s done to him. Still, his stupidity, as noted by his mother, was enormous. 

The love story between Alicia and Devlin is extremely complicated and comes off as an indictment on society’s rules on morality. There’s a reason why Alicia drinks and sleeps around—it’s how she learned to cope with her father being a Nazi spy.  There is a very small scene in the film where after Alicia has learned of her father’s suicide that she says, “When he told me a few years ago what he was, everything went to pot. I didn't care what happened to me. Now I remember how nice he once was, how nice we both were. It's a very curious feeling, a feeling as if something had happened to me, not to him. You see I don't have to hate him anymore or myself.”  It is not a coincidence that Alicia attempts to mend her “wicked” ways after his death and that she allows herself to fall in love with a decent man like Devlin.  The problem is that Devlin can’t forget her past, as evidenced by this exchange:

Alicia: The time has come when you must tell me you have a wife and two adorable children and this madness between us can't go on any longer.

Devlin: Bet you've heard that line often enough.

Alicia: Right below the belt every time. That isn't fair, Dev.

Of course, the worst part is that Alicia is recruited as a spy because of her notorious reputation.  The Government has no qualms about prostituting this woman for their political aims precisely because she is a known tramp, but, for some reason, those pimping her out seem to think that it’s okay to defame her in their private conversations with one another.  Worse yet, Devlin throws her past character flaws in her face every chance he gets.  Don’t he and his colleagues bear some responsibility for her behavior?  It is precisely Alicia’s emotional frailty that drives her to seduce and manipulate Alex.  She wouldn’t have taken the assignment in the first place if, as she says to Devlin, “If you only once had said that you loved me.”  In what world does Devlin have any right to be pissed off the entire time that Alicia is risking her life to spy on the Nazis? Surely someone willing to risk imminent danger deserves a little more respect than constant reminders that she’s a whore. And, really, hadn’t Devlin used his own charms on Alicia to get her to go to Rio?  Didn’t he engage in an affair with her and then have the audacity to ask her to seduce Alex?  He could have told his superiors that they were in love and that she was out of the spy business, but he didn’t.  How was his behavior any better than hers? Yet, because she is a fallen woman she is the one who is open to ridicule and judgment. Plus, Devlin’s refusal to believe that Alicia is capable of change is ultimately almost what gets her killed (and, who really knows what happened after that car pulled away from the Sebastian mansion at the end?), as he believes she’s back to boozing when she comes to a meeting gaunt, unsteady, and clearly unwell.

Cinematically, the most striking thing about Notorious is the camerawork. This was Ted Tetzlaff’s last picture as a director of photography, and while he was never as highly regarded as Gregg Toland, Jack Cardiff, Robert Krasker, John Alton, Stanley Cortez, or probably Hitchcock’s favorite cameraman, Robert Burks, he probably shot the best black and white film Hitchcock ever made.  While there are several scenes we could discuss, three in particular stand out for me.

The first scenario is what I like to refer to as the hangover scene. The scene opens with a close-up of a glass of Alka Seltzer, with Alicia in the background, lying on a bed. The camera then zooms out and switches to what Alicia sees. Hung over and seeing things cockeyed, she sees a man, at a titled angle, standing in the shadow of the doorway. As he comes closer, and she is lying on her back in obvious pain, the camera flips upside down and we see a fuzzy, backlit Devlin.  Without a doubt, this is probably the most creatively shot hangover scene ever.

I also find the tea cup scene (yes, they were drinking coffee, but it’s looks like a tea cup), or what I call “Tea is served”, near the end of Notorious to be exceptionally well done.  By this point in the story the tea cup has become it’s own Hitchcockian motif, and the audience is aware that Alex and his mother are well on their way to killing Alicia with poison. Again, drink of some sort seems to be Alicia’s undoing. Just as the fizzing Alka Seltzer is the starting focal point in the hangover scene, the tea cup is shot in the forefront of this scene, which opens with one of the Nazis commenting about how poorly Alicia, dressed in black, looks, and then the focus of the scene shifts from the conversation to a tea set sitting in front of Mrs. Sebastian and then to a particular cup that she brings to Alicia. After a slight shift back to the conversing people, the cup is shot from an ominously low angle with Alicia in the background. When there is a mix up with the cups and Alicia realizes what’s going on, a single, innocent shot of a tea cup moves directly to a bewildered Alicia to a sweeping close-up of first her mother-in-law and then Alex. As she gathers herself up to leave the room, her two poisoners dissolve into shadow figures and seem to be guarding her from the door. Once out in the foyer, her deteriorating health, not to mention her now-altered emotional state, is echoed through the use of distorted images. She then passes out on the checkered tile, which looks a lot like a chess board. Is it just me, or do tea cups and chess boards make you think of Alice in Wonderland?  Is this an overlooked theme by film critics… Or was Alicia a sacrificed pawn in the Government’s chess game with the Nazis?

Perhaps the most famous sequence in Notorious is the infamous wine cellar key swap. Once Alicia swipes the key from Alex it becomes the focal point of the next few minutes of the film. First, Alicia’s closed hands (one containing the key) must elude Alex’s kisses. Next, Tetzlaff uses a crane to do a sweeping shot from the top of the massive staircase to the bottom of the steps where Alex and Alicia are greeting guests and to Alicia’s nervously fidgeting left hand which is gripping the key, anxiously awaiting Devlin’s arrival. When he does finally arrive, the camera focuses in on Alicia’s hand as Devlin kisses it and she passes him the key. All of these elements are seamlessly completed but done in such a way that it heightens the viewer’s anxiety. 

I could go on and on about why I’m such a fan of Notorious.  Every character was expertly cast, with no one giving a false performance.  The story was well paced and quite believable (especially when you consider how many Nazis did end up hiding in Brazil and planning a resurgence of the Reich) and, like almost every Hitchcock picture, meticulously constructed into an edge of your seat thriller, and, in this case, right down to the very last minute on screen.  All of these elements, as well as the ones discussed above, are why I am such an admirer of Notorious. Oh, and the MacGuffin is a wine cellar full of wine bottles filled with uranium…thought I’d add that for all the hardcore Hitch fans out there.

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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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